Today I learned, via @Reddit, that Barbara Feldon won the $64,000 Question in the Shakespeare category.

Ok, that is a very dated sentence, so let me break it down for everybody who is closer to my kids’ age than my own:

1. Barbara Feldon played Agent 99 on a television show called Get Smart in the 1960s, which my generation would have been watching in re-runs.
2. The $64,000 Question was a game-show that’s probably best compared to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.  The big difference, however, is that you had to answer questions all from a specific category. To give an idea of just how notoriously difficult the game was? Bobby Fischer, generally considered one of the greatest chess players of all time, did not get past the audition round in the chess category.

This clip of Barbara Feldon explaining how she got on the show is wonderful on a number of levels:

“I’m not an expert on anything.”

“You know, on my dressing table was a copy of King Lear, because I’d been re-reading the plays…”

Not just reading, re-reading.

Not just any play, King Lear.

Not just that play, “the plays”.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks!

The actual $64,000 question she “won” on is forgotten – but she tells the story of the $128,000 question that eventually sent her home. Do you think you could answer it, if you hadn’t known it was coming?

 

There have been plenty of studies that look at how Shakespeare effects your brain. Here’s another one. They try to determine if the brain is “hardwired” to appreciate the rhyme and rhythm of poetry, such as (but not only) Shakespeare.

I like the test. They read a specific kind of Welsh poetry to people who did not know the “rules” of that poetry (I suppose it would be a little something like trying to read Haiku to someone without explaining it?) If your poem follows the rules, even when the audience doesn’t know the rules, they rate it more highly than if you break them.

I can totally buy that. It’s not really a big stretch to think of the brain as a giant pattern matching machine, and what is rhythm but “this line follows the same pattern that the last line did?”  You can’t really explain it, you just kind of feel it.  I’m reminded of Dead Poet’s Society where Robin Williams’ students march in a circle, walking in step. They spontaneously begin clapping in rhythm as well.  But Williams never told them to do that.  It just felt more natural to do so. It takes more effort to go against the rhythm than to just go with it.

Can we make the leap that iambic pentameter mimics the beating of the human heart (thump THUMP, thump THUMP)? I’m not sure I’m quite willing to go that far. For starters, that would imply that poetry that is not iambic would feel worse, and that’s not true. I love me some Dr. Seuss and his meter is entirely different.

 

 

 

Learn something new every day.  Perhaps you’ve heard of Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer?  Fine.  But did you know that one of his lead sled dogs was named Shakespeare? I don’t know why I would have known that, but I’m happy that I learned it.  Like a moon of Uranus, just something to bust out during games of trivia.

They had 69 dogs apparently, but for some reason the linked page only lists names for 66 of them.  I’m not exactly sure who was in charge of naming them. Shakespeare’s the only name from literature, except perhaps Hercules and maybe Mercury. Everything else is stuff like “Surly” or “Rufus” or “Fluff.”

Unfortunately the story does not end well for Shakespeare and the King’s Dogs.  They were running out of food and it was taking more to feed the dogs than to feed the men, so the necessary decision was made to put many of the dogs – including Shakespeare’s team – down, that the explorers wouldn’t starve.