ShakespeareGeek.com is Dead. Long Live ShakespeareGeek.com!

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

Hello, world!  If you’re seeing this, that means I’ve gone ahead and pulled a trigger that I’ve had my finger on for several years now.  When I started ShakespeareGeek.com back in 2005, I used the free service known as “Blogger”.  If anybody’s been around with me that long you might even remember that the original name was “Such Shakespeare Stuff” and we lived at http://suchshakespearestuff.blogspot.com.

Fast forward 10 years and almost 3000 posts and it had gotten a little cramped.  The rules for what makes up a good web experience changed on us, and I found it frequently hard to keep up. Which, in turn, made it more effort for me to put out the content I wanted to at the level I wanted. Which ultimately resulted in less content, which made me sad, and the downward spiral would continue.

But on the flip side we had lots of people linking to us, and for some queries ShakespeareGeek.com is on the first page of Google results, and that is not something you just walk away from!  So I’ve agonized over the decision for a long long time about when to switch from Blogger to WordPress.  I didn’t know what would break, or how much effort would be required to fix it.

That’s like saying I can’t ever move to a new house because some dishes might break, or I’ll forget which box holds my spare phone charger. Sometimes you just had to make it happen.

Once More, Dear Friends, Once More

And here we are!  Thank you all for taking the ride with me for so long.  It seems like only yesterday I started the site because I had no one to talk to about Shakespeare, and wanted to light a little candle and see how far it might throw its beams.  And just look at us now.  There’s over ten thousand people watching on Twitter and Facebook for this site alone, and many of them are running their own little corners of the Shakespeareverse.  Talk amongst yourselves, make some friends. I bet you have a lot in common :)!  Who knows where we’ll all be ten plus years from now?

So once again welcome to the new ShakespeareGeek.com.  My apologies if some stuff broke while I get my house in order and start unpacking the boxes.  I hope you all like the new place!

ShakespeareGeek.com original banner
June, 2005 – February, 2017

The Island of Misfit Shakespeare

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

How was everybody’s Christmas?  Man it’s feeling pretty neglected here lately.  Ye Olde Blogge is starting to look old.  I think it’s going to be time for a change in the new year.

But!  Tradition does have it that I share my Shakespeare christmas with everybody and I’m not about to let that stop.

Let’s start out with the twins.  I’ve actually had Shakespeare stickers on my work laptop since last year (I posted about a year ago during my “decorating your life” phase). But I’ve got another identical machine for personal use, that has to date been naked.  No longer!

Twins!

Ah, that’s better. Now they match.   If you can’t quite read it, the new one is the one on the left and has the “Some are born great…” quote from Twelfth Night.  It actually came as a big white sheet sticker as if they wanted me to cover the whole front with it, but I didn’t like that so I carefully cut the good bits out and just used those. You can’t quite see it in the picture but my son pointed out that the Apple logo behind it glows right through, and looks very cool.

Last year I got some Shakespeare pajamas that I wear every night, so as Christmas approached I told my wife directly, “This, I like this.  More like this.  You know, in case you need ideas.”

This year I got two, and I love them both for how wacky they are. First is a colored shirt with a Merchant of Venice image and quote:

So far so good!  The quote is on the back:

I laughed out loud at the obvious mistake. Everybody sees it, right?  For a second I wanted to double check the text to make sure I wasn’t missing something obvious (good tip for arguing politics on the internet – always be willing to entertain the possibility that you might be mistaken), but I was not.  “villains’s”.  It’s as if the creator got halfway through the shirt and said, “Wait, is it s-apostrophe or apostrophe-s?  I can’t be arsed to go look, just do both!”

My daughter said, “We should return it.”

I said, “Are you kidding?  It’s stuff like this that makes these conversation pieces! I love it.”

The second one is even better, and it’s all visual:

Man, Shakespeare does not look like he’s having a good day.  I pondered aloud, “Why is he cross-eyed?” and our neighbor offered, “Because he’s trying to look at the things he’s juggling?”  Good idea.

“Is he wearing Chuck Taylors?” another asked.  I didn’t even realize.  He is indeed.

What I noticed is what he’s juggling. There’s the comedy / tragedy masks, that makes sense. And a sword, fine, lots of Shakespeare scenes have swords.  The skull, that’s gotta by Yorick.

But … a lizard?  For the life of me I still cannot figure out why he is juggling a lizard.  He looks like Quincy, Jason’s pet lizard in the comic Foxtrot.

I know it’s a week+ late, but how was everybody else’s Christmas?  I also got a gift certificate to Newbury Comics and am looking to grab the Deadpool/Shakespeare crossover whenever I can find it.  Anybody get anything cool?

The Satirical Rogue Says That Old Men Have Grey Beards #NoShaveNovember

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Well I didn’t write a novel, but I can say I reached the end of No Shave November!  Sometimes it’s nice to just set yourself a personal motivational reminder that I can actually set my mind to do something for 30 days (or in this case, not do something) and actually follow all the way through with it.  Maybe for next month I’ll try taking the stairs every day? 🙂

Thinking about shaving it down into something Shakespeare style, but I’ve never managed to make that work in the past and I end up getting rid of it.  Droeshout style has almost no beard, while Chandos when you look close goes all the way up the jaw line, which isn’t a great modern look either.  I guess we’ll have to see!

Seriously, though, go check out No Shave November and maybe share some links or donate some money. If you already did, thanks!

Your Loss, Beatrice.

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

“Lord, I could not endure a husband with a
beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen. ” – Beatrice, Much Ado About Nothing

Every year around this time I like to take part in “No Shave November,” otherwise known as “Woohoo I don’t have to shave for two weeks!” followed by “Oh my god is it December yet this itching is going to drive me crazy!”

Seriously, though, sometimes it’s nice to have a cause and try to do something meaningful:

The goal of No-Shave November is to grow awareness by embracing our hair, which many cancer patients lose, and letting it grow wild and free. Donate the money you typically spend on shaving and grooming to educate about cancer prevention, save lives, and aid those fighting the battle.

If I count Facebook and Twitter I’ve potentially got over ten thousand people that might see this post.  Maybe some of you might find it a cause worth supporting.  I don’t really register and create my own page and that sort of thing, because it’s not really about me. If you’re in a position to donate and would like to do so, that’s awesome. If you’re not, then maybe you can share this post so more people see it. There’s lots of ways to help.

Thanks for your support!  I’ll update again later in the month!

Horatio’s Big Moment

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I may have mentioned that I did not, at all, like Horatio in Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet. It wasn’t just the over the top hipster characterization. He just didn’t … do, anything.  He’s a nonentity in almost all of the play.  When we see him in the unusual scene one he’s little more than a messenger with something very important to say, who is dismissed by Hamlet before he gets to say it.  Later it almost seems like he’s heading out of town, having given up Hamlet for dead.

Except for one scene.  Hamlet’s back, he’s relayed the ridiculous story of how he escaped the pirates, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are No More.  This takes Horatio a second to piece together, or maybe it just takes him a second to work up the guts to say it, but:

HORATIO
So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to’t.

HAMLET
Why, man, they did make love to this employment;
They are not near my conscience; their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow:
‘Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.

HORATIO
Why, what a king is this!

He yells that last line at Hamlet.  I think it’s the only time he raises his voice.  Took me by surprise, actually. But I liked the interpretation.  Hamlet is in the middle of justifying how he’s left two “friends” to their death and that he doesn’t think twice about it, and Horatio has to say, “LISTEN TO YOURSELF! Were you supposed to be king? Is this the kind of king you would have been?”

Bardfilm tells me that this line can be interpreted as meaning Claudius — agreement with Hamlet, getting back to the original “It was them or me, Claudius is the one that sent me to my potential death” argument.  If that’s the case, then at least in this production Horatio would still be just a sniveling toady.  Hamlet’s told him that he killed two guys and doesn’t care, and Horatio’s all, “Yeah, screw them!  Claudius is the real bad guy here, not you! Let’s go get a scone and an espresso, I want you to read my Nanowrimo entry…”

(P.S. I feel obliged to point out here, for those that do not have the text handy, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do NOT typically know that they are taking Hamlet to his murder.  I wonder if Hamlet knew that, if it would have given him pause?)