Review : Ryan North’s Interactive Hamlet “To Be Or Not To Be”

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I realize this one came out several years ago, but I’m pretty sure I never reviewed it. If you haven’t heard of it, have you heard of those old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books?  Where you’d get to the end of a page and it would say things like, “To talk to the pirates turn to page 19, to hide and hope they don’t catch you turn to page 25”?  It’s that.  The great thing about the ebook form is that everything’s just clicks now, which makes the format that much more flexible.  You can go crazy with the different paths through the book and not worry about producing a paperback that’s 500 pages.

You have to know, right from the start, that this is going to be mostly original material, rather than follow the plot.  How can it be otherwise? Every time you choose to do something that a character didn’t do in the original, North has to supply his own version of events.

With that in mind, you can “play” as Hamlet, Ophelia, or even Hamlet Senior. I first chose the latter thinking it to be a joke – you get one page in and find out you’re dead – but the author’s better than that.  You’re now the ghost, and you get to play the book that way, going on adventures, checking in periodically to see how your son is doing on his quest, all that good stuff.

It’s actually quite fun. There’s a lot of the author’s attitude in here, and the fourth wall is just a pile of rubble.  He is speaking right at you the whole time, asking you to double check your choices, scolding you if you don’t follow directions.  It’s great fun.

I don’t know that you’re ever really finished with a book like this.  Since it is technically a book and not a game or app, your reader will give you page numbers. Mine tells me that there are about 1200 pages.  In theory, you should visit all of them, but I’m not so sure.  I’m fairly convinced that the author has written one or more entirely separate stories as easter eggs for people who just randomly flip through the pages (because, since it is a book and not an app, he can’t stop you).

If you haven’t read it yet, you might want to give this one a chance. I see on his author page that he did a Romeo and Juliet as well, I think I might have to add that one to my collection.

Be sure to check out the new Shakespeare Geek Merchandise page, new for 2017 on Amazon! All new designs!

What Are We?

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Bardfilm and I were having an interesting conversation yesterday about the great divide (from where I sit) in the Shakespeare Universe.  If you are not a professional Shakespearean (mostly thinking of academics and researchers, though I would have to say that full-time directors, actors, etc… would also count themselves among this group) … what do you call yourself?  How do you explain your relationship to Shakespeare and his works?

From what I have seen, academia prefers to refer to us as “fans”. If you are not a professional, you are a fan.

Fans
“Woo! Play Hey Nonny Nonny!”

 

I hate that.  I am a fan of Pink Floyd.  I have not spent the last twelve years of my life writing thousands of posts about how Pink Floyd makes life better. I did not tell my kids The Wall as a bedtime story growing up. I do not have an ever-growing shrine to Roger Waters on my desk at work, and I don’t celebrate David Gilmour’s birthday like it’s a near-religious holiday.

I have invested a great deal of my life, and the lives of my friends and family, in Shakespeare. People that know me know more about Shakespeare because of me.  But for all of that, the way I am to describe myself (and those who feel the same way I do) as …. fans?

For fun I grabbed a random thesaurus entry for “fan” and here’s what it gave me to work with:

adherent, beau, believer, booster, boyfriend, buff, bug, cat, devotee, disciple, enthusiast, fan, fancier, fiend, follower, freak, girlfriend, groupie, hound, junkie, lover, nut, partisan, patron, rooter, suitor, supporter, swain, sweetheart, wooer, worshiper

You know what dawns on me is missing from that list?

Geek.

I didn’t originally pick that word because of my computer background.  It’s not supposed to be “The geek who is also into Shakespeare.”  It was more about a healthy obsession with learning everything I could about the subject. What Wikipedia has to say about the word isn’t bad, actually:

The word geek is a slang term originally used to describe eccentric or non-mainstream people; in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast or a person obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit, with a general pejorative meaning of a “peculiar person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual, unfashionable, or socially awkward”.[1]

I think I agree with almost all of that.  “Expert” is clearly tricky in this context because by definition we’re not trained professionals. Am I an expert? Are you? Who’s to say?  But we can all probably agree on enthusiast. Obsessed?  Check.  I think Shakespeare qualifies as an intellectual pursuit. And I’m even ok with the pejorative stuff – peculiar and socially awkward?  Well, yeah, I was that before I got into Shakespeare!

How about you? What do you call yourself when it comes up?

Be sure to check out the new Shakespeare Geek Merchandise page, new for 2017 on Amazon! All new designs!

The People Behind The Shakespeare

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Over on Facebook, Dana asked a good question, and I didn’t have an answer.  He asked:

Do you know of any books or articles that have attempted to identify the real people behind Shakespeare’s characters?

He cites the example of Jaques (As You Like It) possibly being modeled on Jacomo Francisci, a soldier of fortune under Sir William Stanley.  I suppose the other more obvious example would be that Polonius (Hamlet) is supposed to be William Cecil, Lord Burghley.  I also saw a theory tFalstaffhat Falstaff (Henry IV) might have been at least partially based on Robert Greene, he whose wit is worth a groat.

I’m sure that each of these has some degree of evidence and plenty to dispute.  Dana’s interested in the subject and wondering if anybody’s collected them into a single work?  It seems like an interesting topic.  Anybody know of something published?

Be sure to check out the new Shakespeare Geek Merchandise page, new for 2017 on Amazon! All new designs!

Are We Ready for Prime Time Shakespeare?

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Tis the summer of prime time Shakespeare!  TNT has announced that July 10, 2017 will be the premiere of their new series Will, chronicling the (fictional) rockstar life of up and coming playwright Will Shakespeare:

They’ll be playing catch up, though, because over on ABC, Shonda Rhimes imagines a sequel to Romeo and Juliet called Still Star-Crossed, which premieres May 29:

Which are you more excited for?  Which do you think has the better chance of surviving?

Be sure to check out the new Shakespeare Geek Merchandise page, new for 2017 on Amazon! All new designs!

Art Thou A Man of Wax?

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I may have mentioned my daughter is studying Romeo and Juliet. Her teacher knows about our history and knowledge of the subject.  So the other day at dinner, my daughter told me, “Oh!  My teacher told me to call you a man of wax, and see how you react.”

They are referring to Nurse’s opinion of County Paris in Act 3 Scene 5:

LADY CAPULET
The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.

Nurse
A man, young lady! lady, such a man
As all the world–why, he’s a man of wax.

My other daughter asked what man of wax means, so my oldest explained that it means perfect, like a sculpture.  I think it’s the wax that throws people off.  If she’d said, “he’s like a bronze sculpture” or “he looks like he was carved out of granite,” I think it would be more obvious, but it would also imply that Paris is some imposing physique, and that’s not the case here.  He’s not solid like a rock; he’s shiny like wax.

I took it as insulting. I’ve always understood the term to have an implication of “all looks, no substance, empty inside.”  I explained this, and my daughter said, “Well, yes, but we haven’t read that far yet. We don’t know anything about Paris’ character.”

County Paris, Man of Wax
The Immortal Paul Rudd, Man of Wax

Which I thought was a good point.  I’m interpreting it with the audience’s knowledge that although Paris looks good “on paper,” he’s ultimately not her true love.  But Nurse obviously means it in the more superficial “I like what I see” sense. It’s really about how Juliet takes it.  She’s not really in the market for a man of wax. It’s a juxtaposition between the superficiality of County Paris, who’s just in the market for a wife and going through the motions, and Romeo, who has deep feelings for Juliet and is ready to break them all.

No real groundbreaking revelation here, just one of those moments where you have to separate how you, the audience interpret something from how the actual speaker means it and how it is taken.