Happy Shakespeare Day, everyone!

I hope everybody’s got plans to include Shakespeare in their day today, even if it’s just to wish people a Happy Shakespeare Day. Please get out of the habit of calling it Shakespeare’s Birthday, because then we inevitably get into that lengthy discussion about how he died on the same day, and then we end up counting anniversaries (it’s the 453rd anniversary of his birth and the 401st anniversary of his death). It’s Shakespeare Day. Celebrate Shakespeare.

Since we’re falling on a Sunday this year that can go two different ways. It’s the weekend, so maybe you’ve got time to get out and see a performance. But then again if you’re like me, most of your interaction with other people is during the work week, and on a Sunday you won’t do much more than chores around the house. Lucky for me this year there’s a volleyball tournament today, so by the time you read this I’m probably sitting on a folding chair in an auditorium somewhere waiting for my daughter’s team to come up in the rotation.  So I can combine my two great loves – I can sit in front of the computer, and I can connect with Shakespeare, and people around the world who feel like I do.

I’m not one for celebration, outwardly. I’m a heck of an introvert. I watch game shows on tv and see people jumping up and down when they win a prize and my only thought is, “Oh, god, how do they generate that much energy?”  If I went on a game show and won a new car my only reaction would be, “Awesome.”

But that doesn’t stop me from telling people that April 23 is a pretty huge holiday in my world. I’ll often use the word “religious” when trying to explain it, but I know that gets people uncomfortable.  I spend lots of time thinking about things like belief, and how we ever really know what we believe, versus what we merely tell ourselves. I don’t necessarily believe that I’ll ever switch careers and become a full-time Shakespearean, or teach, or write a best seller. I’ve been entertaining those thoughts for twenty or more years but I know when it comes down to providing for my family my career lies in my computer skills, not Shakespeare.

So often the blog gets neglected as life gets busy and I focus on the more practical matters.  On any given night you can find me juggling three choices for how to spend my evening, after the kids have gone to bed.  I can go to bed too, and sometimes I do that.  I can do stuff for my day job, telling myself that it’ll get me ahead, and more likely to be recognized when it comes time for salary bumps and promotions. Or, I can immerse myself in Shakespeare. Sometimes the posts just roll out of me and my best Shakespeare buddy Bardfilm will text me, “Where are all these posts coming from?!” But other times I’ll stare at the screen and think, “I haven’t posted in a week, I need to post something,” and it’ll feel more like I’m doing it because I have to, not because I want to.

But I’ll never give it up.  Because when I really stop and think about it? When I really break it all the way down to what I know that I believe?  It’s written up there at the top of the page.  I believe that Shakespeare makes life better, and that by doing my part to spread Shakespeare in the world, I’m making other people’s lives better.  Today is my day to remember that.

So it’s that time once again, my loyal readers. In the past I’ve had a great time doing a posting marathon, queuing up somewhere close to thirty posts on the day.  When I first started it was some sort of personal challenge for just how much effort I could put into it. Who are we kidding, though – I can write these posts ahead of time now and just schedule them to come out throughout the day. True I still have to write them, but it’s not like I’m writing them in real time. The worst part, though, is that I would put out so many posts that most of them got buried and nobody would see them!  That kind of kills the point.

I guess I’m saying that I’m ending that tradition. Don’t expect thirty or more posts from me today. I’d much rather have fewer posts and more conversation on them. If you want to share Shakespeare Day with me, then leave a comment on a post that you like. Not on the Facebook page or on Twitter, here on the blog.  Those are what really feel permanent to me.  I can still go back and look at conversations that we had in 2008 here.  Try that on Twitter.  Possible? Sure, technically.  Does anybody do it?  Nope.

There is one tradition I’m not ending, though, and it’s my own personal invocation of the Master to join us in spirit for today’s celebration. It makes me feel like a part of something hundreds of years in the making.  Happy Shakespeare Day, everybody.  And thank you, Shakespeare. I therefore will begin.

Soul of the age!

The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!

My Shakespeare, rise!

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Once again April 23 has arrived!  Shakespeare Day is what we like to call it around here.  I tell people it’s a very big holiday in my universe, and I’m not lying.  Traditionally I spend the day online. I queue up a marathon of posts throughout the day and generally immerse myself in all things Shakespeare. At least, as deeply as my daily responsibilities otherwise allow.

What makes me sad, though, is when Shakespeare Day falls on a weekend, as it does this year (Sunday).  I generally do not have the freedom to hang out in front of the computer all day on Sundays. Sundays are for family time.  I still queue my posts and monitor Twitter by phone, but it’s not the same.  I never feel quite as joyous. My mind is elsewhere.

How about everybody else?  My Shakespeare universe is generally limited to the online world, there are not many Shakespeare Day parades or celebrations.  I mean, sure, I bet I could find one.  But I think of you all as the community that I’m really interested in hanging out with.  Part of the celebration of the day is not just Shakespeare the man or his works. It’s the people that keep him alive in all the ways that we do.

That last paragraph reminds me of David Garrick and his Shakespeare Jubilee.  Maybe next year I’ll dress up?  Nobody would get it, of course, and I’d have to spend the entire day telling the story.

Which I’m totally cool with.

One more thing?

This came up last year.  One does not celebrate Shakespeare’s death.  You celebrate his birth or his accomplishments. You commemorate his death.  If you catch people calling today the day we celebrate Shakespeare’s death, please go ahead and correct them.  It makes him sound like a super villain.  That’s one of the reasons I use Shakespeare Day to describe April 23. I don’t want it mired down in stuff like that.  It is a day to celebrate Shakespeare’s work, and how it makes life better.

• See a live stage performance of all of Shakespeare’s plays exactly once in your life, and then never again.

or

• Only ever see one Shakespeare play (your choice) for the rest of your life, but you get to see as many versions and interpretations as you want?

In other words, is the ultimate value in Shakespeare’s work represented by the variety across everything he wrote, or the infinite variation to be found in each work?

I think I’d take endless versions of a single play. I’ll learn something new from a Hamlet or a King Lear every time I see it, but I’m fairly confident that I could live my life never seeing Timon of Athens or Pericles.  But could I ever pick one play? I can’t even pick one play to make the example!

I confess this is a bit of a trick question, because the only real way you can decide what play you’d want to see forever is if you’ve seen all the plays at least once in the first place 🙂

I got this idea from a Reddit post that suggested Much Ado About Nothing as a kind of sequel to Romeo and Juliet, by way of the “bride pretends she’s dead” trick, as if it’s Friar Laurence both times, having learned his lesson and getting it right the second time.

That reminded me of all the various Pixar and Disney theories about how all their movies are set in the same universe – such as the princess from Tangled coming to see the princesses from Frozen at the beginning of that movie.

Pick two plays.  Show how some character or circumstance might connect them.  The more off the wall the better!  Go ahead and use whatever was happening in Shakespeare’s real world at the time for ideas as well!

Here’s my entry:

Audiences liked the bit in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where a lion almost eats Thisbe. But they felt robbed that there wasn’t more actual violence. So Shakespeare gave them a character actually pursued and eaten by a bear in The Winter’s Tale. In early productions, Oberon and Puck make a final scene cameo as the ones that bring Hermione back to life.