Theme Song Shakespeare : Prospero’s Island

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

My turn! I can play too! Theme Song Shakespeare continues!

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a play,
A play about a fateful trip
That started from the port of Milan
Aboard a tiny ship.

There sat the sorceror Prospero,
His daughter at his side.
His enemies sent them out to sea
And left them there to die (left them there to die….)

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the loyalty of Gonzalo
His books would all be lost, his magic would be lost.

Now Prospero made his home on this uncharted magic isle
With Ariel,
And Caliban,
Who made his move, now he’s a slave.
They’re all alone –
But not so fast, what’s that ship out there?
Here comes King Alonso.

So this is the tale of Propero,
Setting traps for his enemies.
He’ll almost have revenge at last
Until his daughter begs mercy.

Miranda and now Ferdinand
(Who, come on now, she just met!)
Will make her dad at last accept
That now they want to wed.

Hey wait don’t forget about Caliban,
He’s hatched another plan.
Now Stefano plans to run the show
With Prospero’s books in hand.

So have no fear it all works out,
No tragedy, no one dies.
There’s guaranteed a happy ending
Here on Prospero’s Isle!

Did Hamlet Lie?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Over on the Shakespeare section of Reddit, a question came up that I’d never seen before:

Is Hamlet really telling the truth about what happened on the ship?

The submitter’s argument is basically that the story is too unbelievable.  Why would the pirate take Hamlet prisoner, and then taxi him back home?  Why would Rosencrantz and Guildenstern just sit back and let that happen, having been charged to get Hamlet to England?

The general consensus is that no, Hamlet’s not lying, and there’s enough evidence to prove that (both in the text and historically).

It’s fun to grab at a random angle like this every now and then, and re-examine bits of the play you might previously have been skimming over.  During the conversation I wondered, “Once they lost Hamlet, why did R&G bother continuing on to England, anyway?”  But then I remembered, their mission was to deliver that letter (which ended up being their execution order). They never knew that Hamlet was the primary reason for their trip.  It does make you wonder what they were thinking when they watched a pirate ship sail away with the prince, though.  “Oooooo!  Claudius is gonna be *pissed*!”

Don’t miss the later posts in the thread that focus on Shakespeare’s use of exposition, and just how big a deal it would be to have a character lie while doing that.  I personally like digging through the text, but that’s mostly because at any given time I can find and search texts, whereas the historical stuff?  I never know if there’s some book I’ve missed that completely negates everything I think I’ve just learned.

Theme Song Shakespeare : Golden Danes

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Knock, knock!

  Who’s there?

Bardfilm doing real work!

  Bardfilm doing real work who?

You’re right, that really doesn’t sound like him, does it? Here’s another theme song mashup to knock “Gangnam Style” out of your brain…

Setting the scene . . . Hamlet lies, dying in a pool of his own poisoned blood.  Horatio approaches . . . the music swells . . . and  

[Hamlet sings] 

Thank you for being a friend.
Grappled you to my soul–now and then.
Hor-a-tio, you’re a pal and a confidant.

And if you threw a fencing match
Invited both the king and the queen
You might think
They’d put some poison in your drink,
But the cup was meant for me.

[Horatio interrupts] 

Thank you for being a friend.
Travelled to Wittenberg and back again.
Funeral-baked meats furnished forth a meal or two. 

And if you saw a ghostie
That scared you into taking revenge–
Or if you say,
“Let’s do a play-within-the-play,”
I would saw the air and say,

“Thank you for being a friend.”
    “The rest is silence”
“Thank you for being a friend.”
    “Horatio, I die now.”
“Thank you for being a friend.”
    “May flights of angels . . .”

[Together]

 “. . . thank you for being a friend.”

I can’t get enough of these.  I’ve got one of my own queued up but I can’t seem to find the time to finish it off, Bardfilm keeps knocking these out so fast!  If you want to join the fun, send in your theme song mashups!

Theme Song Shakespeare : A Kingdom For A Horse, Of Course

~ duane ~ Leave a comment
One day, Bardfilm’s boss is going to learn where I live, fly here and punch me out.  Because his best Shakespeare professor has real day job work to do, and I do things like plant “ear memes” into his brain on a Friday afternoon guaranteeing that no real work gets done for the next few days.

But we benefit!   Here’s only a portion of what Bardfilm left on my doorstop this morning…

[The youngsters in the audience are directed here, in case they don’t recognize the tune.  Now get off our lawn, ya whipper snappers, we’re trying to sing along ;)]

Hello, I’m Richard the Third.

My kingdom for a horse, of course.
And no one can talk to me of remorse
Unless, of course, I get no horse and I end up being dead.

I have no remorse for Anne, of course,
though I caused her death (instead of divorce).
I’m always on a steady course–until I end up dead.

Richmond yakkity yaks a streak and wastes my Bosworth Field.
But Richard, in winters of discontent, will never, never yield!

So go check the source (Sir Thomas Morse)
And you’ll see my crown on a bush of gorse.
You want a kingdom for a horse?

Well, listen to this.

Whoops! I guess I’m dead.

Bard Baby Names

~ duane ~ 5 Comments

[Thanks to reader Angela for the link!]

When each of my children was born, people would ask me whether I was going to name them something from Shakespeare.  I did, in my own way.  Katherine, my oldest, knows well the story of her shrew-ish namesake (and her little sister loves the story about the beautiful younger daughter who all the boys want, who can’t get married until the mean older sister finds a boy who likes her).  She gets double points because her middle name, Delia, reminds me of Cordelia, the best of daughters.

My second child, Elizabeth, is not so much a Shakespeare name as a Shakespearean one – and I’ve even had conversations with her about that.  Her middle name, Anne, also happens to be the name of Shakespeare’s wife.  So there ya go.

The boy was tricky.  It was easy to pick “classic” girls’ names that have been around long enough that they meant something to Shakespeare.  But for boys we get a whole lot of Italian / Spanish sounding -o names (Banquo, Romeo, Petruchio etc…) while the more English sounding names (Richard, Henry, Edgar, Edmund…) just didn’t do anything for us.  So the boy didn’t get a Shakespeare name.  He’s Brendan.  One day Brendan Fraser will do some Shakespeare and then we’ll have a connection.

But!  I’m deep into the story and haven’t served up the link to Shakespeare Baby Names that Angela sent me.  It’s funny that the author clearly tries to suggest that only realistic names were included (so no Iago), but then Cymbeline is in the list.  Really?

Lots of minor characters listed, obviously because they had a modern connection already (like Celia, Audrey, Marina, etc…) but does that mean I could have called my son Christopher and argued that he was named after Christopher Sly from the induction of Shrew?

I still don’t see many names on the boys’ list that would have made it in my house.  Caliban? Horatio?  Interestingly the list includes Richard, but no Henry.  What’s wrong with Henry?  My son is in class with a Henry right now.