http://www.commshakes.org Hurray for free Shakespeare on Boston Common!  I’ve had a grand time for the past few weeks pimping the show to anybody that would listen.  Without Citibank, their big sponsor, the show had to go on entirely via donations this year.  They deliberately picked Comedy of Errors, a relatively simple show to stage, to keep costs down (and, I’d expect, a slapstick comedy to bring the audience in a bit more than a Pericles might :)). We got there on Saturday just before 6pm for the 8pm show.  I was doing play-by-play on Twitter for those that watch such things.  We got our dinner (P.F. Chang’s), got our chair rentals, and found a spot.  As usual, all the prime seating near the front of the stage was roped off.  I’ve always assumed that was for paying customers.  At the time there was a big tent right in the middle, but they took that down. I’m told there were 6000 people there, which I think is pretty good!  If everybody coughed up some donation money that would certainly help.  The volunteers were a little aggressive in the begging, but you can’t really fault them, can you?  I bought a sweatshirt for $25 and the girl working the counter even said, “…unless you want to leave more as a donation.” I informed her that I’d already rented my chairs and put my $20 in the hat that had been passed, and I was all tapped out. [ On a related note, I appreciate that they were all volunteers, though I do wish they’d maybe been trained a little better.  I could not get a single question answered, no lie.  “Are you doing chair rentals this year?” I don’t know, not my department.  “Got rained out last night, huh?”  We did?  “Did the announcement just say something about discount parking?” I don’t know I wasn’t listening. ] The show of course was wonderful.  Is there anybody reading my blog who does not know the plot?  Start with a crazy premise – that there’s two sets of identical twins, both of who have a master/servant relationship (Dromio is servant to Antipholus), who do not realize that they’re both in town at the same time.  One set, from Syracuse, has come to Ephesus, where the others live.  It just so happens that it’s illegal for people from Syracuse to come to Ephesus, which is a whole different plot point.  Anyway, you can imagine how the farce goes.  Antipholus of Ephesus is married, but Antipholus of Syracuse is not.  And then he (of Syracuse) runs into his supposed wife, who has no idea that he’s not her husband.  “Come home to dinner!” she says.  “Who are you and why are you yelling at me?” he says.  You don’t need to follow Shakespeare to know what happens when a husband says that to a wife :).  And it just gets sillier from there. The fun thing about this play is that it’s almost entirely about the over the top physical comedy.  The Dromios take the brunt of it, getting beaten regularly for screwing up messages delivered to the wrong master.  Which of course makes them more likely to run around the stage screaming like crazy people.    The “round like a Globe” scene, where Dromio describes just how big fat and sweaty his counterpart’s girlfriend (wife?) is, was hysterical.  Act out the words in the right way and the audience comes right along for the ride.  We may not know what “break your pate” means but if somebody gets clobbered over the head when it’s said, you can kinda sorta figure it out. How do you pull off two sets of twins on stage?  Well it helped that for the Dromios, one of them was clearly maybe 40lbs heavier than his counterpart, something not referenced on stage but clearly noticeable by the audience.  Whether that was intentional, I don’t know.  They were both dressed identically (as golf caddies).  The Antipholuses were much harder, since they looked identical from where I sat.  The only way you could really tell was by the staging, and by following the story.  There were logical places where one Antipholus just ran out stage left, and then entered stage right, and you’re left saying “Oh, ok, that’s the other one.”  Luckily they are never both on stage, at least until the last scene. There is one plot point we did not get (I admit to not reading up on the play before attending).  A goldsmith brings a custom made chain to Antipholus, which he had done as a gift for his wife.  He even says “Bring it to my wife and she’ll pay you,” so we know that it is intended for her.  But later some new woman shows up claiming that she gave him a ring, and in exchange she was to get the chain, or some sort of chain?  I was completely lost by that.  Where’d she come from? Not knowing what scenes may have been cut I don’t know what we missed. My wife loved the show, telling me that she much prefers the silly comedies to the deeper stuff like Hamlet.  “They’re two different things,” I point out.  “Sometimes you just go for the laugh.  But it’s not like years from now I’ll be saying Hey remember how well Egeon did the scene where he reunites with his long lost wife?  This sort of play’s not about that.  But I can tell you in detail every Hamlet I’ve seen.” [And for the record that’s different than a few years ago when another couple told us that “for her money, Taming of the Shrew is *better* than Hamlet.”  Don’t say things like that, that makes me sad when you say things like that.] The only thing I’m left to figure out is the scene breaks, where they would perform a sort of zany dance number.  We’ve got at least a partial beach theme, complete with lifeguard in his chair, and beachballs.  Fine.  But then a bunch of nuns dance by (was one of them on a bicycle? I forget), and one strips off to reveal a bathing suit underneath.  Then come the cops chasing the bad guys, cops run into nuns, everybody dances… know what I mean?  I think there’s a name for the style, and I can’t quite place it.  Was like something out of a silent movie (though there was a soundtrack).  Kind of Benny Hill, though not as fast :). This is the first I’d ever seen Comedy of Errors produced, so I was a little bit lost.  Somebody explain the significance?  I want to say that the Karamazov’s did a similar thing where there was a circus-like number between scenes.  Is all this just to put us in the mood of “Ephesus is a zany place?” Reminds me of Monty Python. If you’re around, go.  Go early and camp out with a picnic, or come late and just sit down on the grass.  There are a number of food trucks where you can get your dinner, so don’t worry about that.  Be generous in your donations, they need everything they can get.  I am tremendously appreciative of what they’ve been able to pull off on their own, and I can only hope that each year’s efforts are enough to carry the show on for another year.

Ok, this is a fairly geeky trick but it’s Shakespeare related so I thought I’d blog it here instead of one of my lesser travelled tech blogs. I’m working on a little side project involving a quotes database.  I’ve even built myself up a little web editor so I can crank through them.  Problem is that I have text, but what I really want is character and scene.  Luckily we have wonderful search engines like http://shakespeare.clusty.com that do exactly what I need. Turns out I can combine the two, using Google Chrome.   If you select some text and right click it, a menu option “Search Google for this text” comes up and you’ve just saved yourself a bunch of cut and paste.  It even opens up a new tab for you. But, it uses Google as my search engine, by default.  More often than not if I try this approach I’ll get a page full of other quote databases, none of which has my character and scene info. Not for long. 

1. Right click in the awesome bar (that’s the URL/location bar at the top) and you’ll see Edit search engines.  Pick that.
2. Now Add.  
3. Pick whatever name and keywords you like.  The URL is this:  http://clusty.com/search?input-form=simple-billy&query=%s&v:sources=billy-bundle&v:project=billy (noting the %s where the query goes).
4. Lastly, go ahead and click Make Default to make Clusty your default Shakespeare search engine.
5. Now select some text, right click and you’ll see Search Clusty for text…  Presto, I’ve got my character and scene information!
6. Remember to put it back when done:  Edit search engines, select your primary engine, Make Default.   You’ll even notice that Clusty has jumped up into the Default section so you can get to it more easily next time.

Any kind of web research, not just Shakespeare, requires lots of cutting, pasting and cross referencing.  If you’ve got a particular search engine doing 99% of the work for you, Chrome can save you a tremendous amount of work this way.

Dr. Carl Atkins is the author of Shakespeare’s Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary as well as a prolific commenter here at ShakespeareGeek, both while holding down a day job as a medical doctor. Instead of a typical author interview with press blurbs and bio questions we decided to do something different – Carl’s going to guest blog a series for us based on *your* questions. Question (from Paul, aka “emsworth”) : I just read Oscar Wilde’s story, if you want to call it that, "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.," which has to do mostly with a  theory (by the characters in the story) that the sonnets were addressed to an effeminate member of Shakespeare’s acting troupe named Willie Hughes.   Supposedly, in urging the recipient of the sonnets to have children, Shakespeare was actually encouraging Willie Hughes to take more acting roles.  Supposedly, the "Dark Lady" sonnets concerned a woman of whom Shakespeare first became jealous (because of Willie Hughes’s attention to her), then became infatuated with her himself.  Was Wilde’s theory entirely fictional?  Was this a theory that Wilde seriously urged, other than in his story?  Has anyone else ever taken it seriously? Wilde’s theory was entirely fictional, but definitely taken seriously by him and thence others. One might say that it resulted in an entire Willie Hughes fan club. The only so-called evidence that one can accumulate in support of it is the presence in the publisher’s dedication of a reference to an individual whose initials are W. H., the repetition of the word "hues" or "hewes" in Sonnet 20 in reference to the "Young Man", and a vivid imagination. The context of The Sonnets, as I point out in my book, argues against such a theory. What I mean by that is that all other sonnet series written in the late 1500s (and further back to Petrarch) were written by poets as exercises in the expression of the speaker’s love for his beloved. All shared similar themes and conventions, which are also found in Shakespeare’s sonnets. True, as Maurice Evans says, Shakespeare’s sonnet series reads like a convention that been turned on its head, but it is still difficult to view it in isolation out of context with other sonnet series. To do so, one must be very narrowly focused. About the Author This book brings together the scholarship of dozens of the most brilliant commentators who have written about Shakespeare’s Sonnets over the past three hundred years. This edition adds the significant work done by modern editors to the most important commentary culled from the two variorum editions of the last century. Atkins presents a straightforward edition without jargon with the simple goal of finding out how the poems work and how they may be interpreted. He is the first to collate the modern texts so that differences among them can be fully appreciated and compared. His discussion of meter and verse is more substantial than that of any other edition, adding particular dimension to this text. Those coming to "The Sonnets" for the first time and those seeking a fresh look at an old friend will equally find this edition scholastically rigorous and a pleasure to read. Carl D. Atkins is a practicing medical oncologist in New York. Got a question for the author? Send it in and we’ll see if we can get it in the queue!

http://www.rebelshakespeare.org Last year I learned that there’s a group of kids doing Rebel Shakespeare, relatively near to me.  Relative in that it’s an hour away, so I only got to see a portion of a show from them last year.  Well, this year they decided to do one 10 minutes from my house.  Even better?  Hamlet.  So, you all know where I spent my Sunday. How do you review something like this?  Christine (one of the folks organizing/running the show, and also a blog reader so I know she’s listening :)) told me of a bad review they got from some grumpy old dude who was holding them up to the same standard he might for a professional troop.  These are *kids* (in this case, it was the teen program).  Doing Shakespeare.  On their own.  For free.  The fact that they even *have* costumes, much less good ones, is a win.  Last year I saw a Tempest done in between stores at the mall.  Shakespeare everywhere, baby! I won’t sit here and pick apart the acting. Maybe some of these kids are destined to become professional actors, maybe not.  They’re out there doing it, for their enjoyment and my entertainment, so I’m not going to sit here and criticize them.  Sure, maybe Ophelia could have been a little louder and Gertrude a bit softer, but on the flip side I thought Ophelia had down the “My boyfriend is acting weird and it’s pissing me off” facial expressions, and Gertrude was not afraid to put it all out on the stage, particularly during a pretty intense bedchamber scene. Today I got to see their female Hamlet (they are rotating between the shows), and I quite liked her.  Though tradition dictates that Hamlet is commonly done by someone 30+, it is fascinating to watch it handled by a teen.  People joke about how “emo” Hamlet acts, complaining about his mom and his step dad and how much life stinks – but who better to play that part than a teenager?  Hamlet is not Claudius’ equal, remember – something that is lost when they both look about the same age and physical stature. Ours seemed particularly….what’s a good word…..scheming, to me.  Like she always had the plan well in hand.  On an interesting note, for this version they edited out the “antic disposition” scene, so somebody coming into the play cold might not even understand that she was attempting to play it mad.  Take the “I am but mad north by northwest” line.  That can be played so you’re left thinking that Hamlet’s a crazy person saying ‘Dude, listen, I’m not crazy, there really are aliens sending me radio signals!  Get the tinfoil!’ or, as we had here, it can be “Look, I know that you think I’m nuts but I am just way frickin smarter than you, so I’m being incredibly patronizing because I know you’re never going to understand it.”  I would have liked to see this play out even more on the “play upon this recorder” scene – that’s really an opportunity to get at Hamlet’s anguish over his supposed friends who are looking him right in the eye and lying through their teeth at him. I liked the costumes, though they did strike me a bit “Matrix” at first.  I’m told they were going for steampunk, which did not become apparent until characters started appearing wearing goggles (though I guess it did explain some of the boots).  I’m sorry to say, though I liked Polonius’ comedy, his beard was a bit much.  It was too hard to look past “that’s a kid with a grey beard glued to his face.” But what can you do?  There’s a scene or two that specifically mentions Polonius’ beard.  (Polonius actually makes a contribution to the play that I did NOT expect, and was pleasantly surprised by, but perhaps we’ll talk about that after their run is over in case anybody reading is still going to go see them.) What I loved, most surprisingly, was the soundtrack.  One of the directors sat on a blanket next to me with an ipod dock, pressing buttons at the right times.  And sometimes, like during the play within a play scene or “Now could I drink hot blood,” it was perfect.  Hard to really explain, as they were not pieces that I was familiar with.  Even better, really.  Point proven when they went for the Johnny Cash / NIN “Hurt” and I was all “Aw come on, really?” Great climax, too.  Stage combat is always tricky, even with the professionals.  The more realistic you make it, the better the chance of something going wrong or someone getting hurt.  So I was quite happy to see a real duel with real swords really hitting each other.  The trick, I guess, was to keep it brief.  Some productions will carry this scene for a long time, but here they got right to it – a first hit within about 10 seconds, a second soon after.  Good idea – make it good, but keep it short and keep the danger to a minimum.  ( Bonus points to our Hamlet as well for going all Gary Oldman on the “Follow my mother!” line to put away Claudius, even though only the ones that have seen The Professional will get that ;).  I could only wish for such intensity during the whole production. ) Have to wrap this up (it’s already tomorrow).  It’s not even like I can do a legit review, I’m such a raving fanboy when it comes to this stuff.  At intermission Christine asked me what I thought and I’m pretty sure my exact response was, “It’s Hamlet for God’s sake, it’s never bad.  Some parts are just better than others.”  Then later when comparing parts we liked I repeated something I’ve often said here, “I try to pick favorite lines and best lines and then realize that I can’t, because they’re all favorites and they’re all good.” I look forward to seeing the Rebels do their thing any chance I get, and I encourage you all to do so as well. Maybe they’re not in your town, but have you checked to see if there is a similar group? Seriously, if you’re a Shakespeare fan, you want more Shakespeare in the world, right?  I dream of a time when I can randomly walk down the street and realize that there’s a Shakespeare production going on that I can sit down and watch.  Or heck even keep walking and just listen to it in the air.  Caliban told us “Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.”  You know what?  For my money, sitting on the grass on a sunny Sunday afternoon listening for free,  to kids perform Hamlet not for grades or credit or cash but because they love doing it as much as I love listening to it?  I know exactly what he was talking about.  “I cried to dream again,” indeed.