Boy Meets World Meets Shakespeare

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

My kids were just the right age for Girl Meets World, the spin-off of the longer running and more popular Boy Meets World. But 1993-2000 I was already out of college and not really the audience anymore. I was going to say Saved By The Bell was more my thing but that was 1989-1993 and I would have been in college for that too!

Anyway, I didn’t have to follow the show religiously to know the Mr. Feeny character, played by William Daniels (who I knew from St. Elsewhere). Maybe it’s precisely because I was older that I could appreciate the importance of school teachers. When I did watch I would be thinking, “You stupid children, listen to the man. He knows what he’s talking about. He cares about you and wants you to succeed in life. That’s his job.”

Well today I learned that the actually wooed Daniels to the role with Shakespeare:

I live on the other side of the fence from you, Cory. It’s impossible not to face in your direction every once in a while and notice the people in the next yard. And through the years as I’ve gotten to know them, it is apparent they are fine individuals. But, their real strength comes from being a family. And do you know why they are a family, Cory? Because at one time a man and a woman realized that they loved each other and pursued the unlimited potential of what may come from that love, and here you are. There is no greater aspiration than to have love in our lives, Mr. Matthews. Romeo knew it and died for it.

In case you’ve never heard of the show and are now thinking about binge-watching it on Netflix, beware:

There were more Shakespeare references tied to Mr. Feeny’s character, but most of them landed on the cutting room floor, including the Romeo and Juliet speech.

Oh, well.  It had potential!

If you loved Mr. Feeny too, apparently this and other stories come from Daniels’ new book There I Go Again: How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, and Many Others.

For those that know the show and the character and know where I’m coming from, enjoy one of the great television finale moments. Total spoilers but come on it aired almost 20 years ago if you wanted to see it and never did you might as well:

You Think You Loved Sir Patrick Stewart Before?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

This post has no Shakespeare in it, just one of the world’s greatest living Shakespeareans. I know that’s upset some people in the past when we dare to look at the actors as people, rather than just their roles.  So consider this the disclaimer!

Sir Patrick Stewart has a new dog.  Specifically he and his wife are fostering a pitbull named Ginger. Here he gives the details on Conan:

For a clip I like even better you have to check him trying to take the dog for a swim. It does not go well, but it should certainly make everybody’s day. I wish I could embed the clip. That’s a link to his Twitter.  If you’re not following that you really should, he’s posting plenty more clips.

It’s true that this is the story of a person fostering a dog, something that no doubt happens all around the world all the time and is rarely newsworthy. I don’t care.  What I see is a 70+yr old man who hasn’t had a dog since he was a boy, who now gets to act like he’s a boy all over again. Pure joy radiates off the man, and that makes me happy. He’s given us plenty of things to he happy about, so if you’ve enjoyed his performance as Macbeth or Claudius or Prospero or any of the other myriad roles he’s played, time to enjoy him just being himself for a change.

 

[META] What Do We Think Of The Theme?

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Hi Everybody,

Hopefully everything’s settling in nicely to our home on WordPress.  I’ve spent most of my time making sure that 11 years worth of links aren’t 90% broken!

One of the main reasons to move off of Blogger was to take advantage of those features that are expectations of a modern blog, and one of them is better control over the appearance.  Right now we’re using a theme called Penscratch which I was using on my other sites Shakespeare Answers and Not By Shakespeare (both of which now redirect here, by the way). I chose it because it reminded me of the written word, crisp type on a white background.

 

Shakespeare Answers Header Image
Shakespeare Answers with the header image.

Now that I’m in it 100% of the time, I’m wondering if it needs something.  I’d like to see some more color and images as part of the main browsing experience.  This theme does have the option of a “header” graphic – which appears in a horizontal bar under the title, and I wasn’t thrilled with it.  There’s also a “background” graphic which I couldn’t figure out how to work because every time I tried to set it, it hid everything else.

 

What do you think? Are there readers out there more familiar with the “standard” in WordPress theming that could offer some suggestions about ways to decorate?  I’m open to ideas!

Is Caliban human?

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Is Caliban human? The question comes through on my logs every now and then so we must have touched on the subject at some point.  I think that perhaps students are looking for help with their homework and just want a yes or no answer and maybe a citation, but I think it’s more complicated than that.

Then was this island–
Save for the son that she did litter here,
A freckled whelp hag-born–not honour’d with
A human shape.

The very first description we have for Caliban is “not honored with a human shape.”  Does that mean not human?

EDIT:  November 1, 2017.  As the commenter rightly points out, that’s a misinterpretation of the passage.  It is the island that would be “without human shape” if it were not for Caliban, i.e. he was alone on the island. 

The word “whelp” would normally apply to animals, but Prospero’s not saying that Caliban is closer to a dog than a person. (When I drive to work each morning and inevitably call someone a jackass I don’t literally mean he’s a donkey. How can you give someone the finger if you have hooves?)

Normally we would say, “Is Caliban human? Of course Caliban is human. He’s got a mind and free will of his own and can communicate. He loves his mother Sycorax and worships her god, Setebos.” By our modern biological standards, it’s a no-brainer.  There’s no creature other than humans that can do any of that.

But this is also a play with magic and fairies, witches and devils. So maybe our modern definitions don’t apply?

Is Caliban human?We’re told that Sycorax is a witch, and that she was banished here. Prospero goes one step more, telling Caliban that he is the offspring of his mother mating with the devil himself.

By modern standards, and by that I mean post Salem witch trials, we could interpret this to mean “Single woman gets pregnant, gets on the wrong side of a conservative society’s rules, and gets kicked out.”  By that logic Caliban is human.  A little wild, maybe, from growing up outside civilization (and civilized medicine), but basically human.  Personally I like this interpretation because it keeps the play universal.  Tell me what Caliban is like as a character because he’s human, and therefore at some level he is like all of us. If he’s not human, I can’t really learn anything from his plight because everything’s different. If he is, I can feel sympathy for him.

Did Shakespeare believe in witches?  It’s not known for certain, but it was certainly typical of the time. Whether the audience believes in witches or not, however, we have to suspend that belief because this play takes place in a universe where magic exists.  Prospero rescued Ariel from a tree, after he was imprisoned there Sycorax. So Sycorax did have powers (like Prospero), and therefore was an actual witch, so is it really that far fetched that she was impregnated by a devil?  And if that is the case in this universe, what exactly does that make Caliban?  Because “appearing human” would probably be closer than “actually human”.  If that’s the case then the play isn’t nearly the same to me.  I have no sympathy for Caliban if he’s just a walking, talking animal.

So, is Caliban human? I prefer to see it that way, but I think that Shakespeare probably didn’t. What does everybody else think?

 

15 Movies You Didn’t … Yeah We Did

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I haven’t done one of these in a while.  Screen Rant offers us 15 Movies You Didn’t Know Were Based On Shakespeare. But really, if you’re at all a regular follower of what we do here, yes you did.  Their header graphic is the Lion King, for goodness sake.  Is there anybody out there today that doesn’t think Lion King is based on Hamlet?

The only reason I bother linking the list is that it’s got a good cross section of the different types of movies that Shakespeare’s original material can produce:

  • Animated (see above)
  • Teen comedies (10 Things I Hate About You, She’s The Man)
  • Drama (My Own Private Idaho, A Thousand Acres)
  • Musicals (West Side Story, Kiss Me Kate)
  • Foreign language (Throne of Blood, Ran)
  • Science-fiction (Forbidden Planet)

In case you’re looking for movie recommendations for the weekend, this is a great place to start.  While we’ve no doubt mentioned all these movies many times over the years, you probably haven’t actually seen all of them yet.