Rest in Peace, Agnes Morin

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

I mentioned quickly on Twitter Friday (? is that the right order of those words ?) that my 95yr old grandmother was on her deathbed.  This was not an unexpected thing, she has lived in a nursing home for the last 4 years and has been on the decline.  This weekend was just a sharper turn.

 
Well, this morning we got the news that she passed away in her sleep last night.  This is a goodness.  She was in pain, and it was wearing on her 70+yr old children to be by her bedside for so long.  
 
I will end this post the same way that I always do when somebody in our little universe goes to visit the great undiscovered country.  But before I do that, I’d like to take a walk through some of Shakespeare’s more comforting lines at a time such as this.  After all, so many of the most memorable deaths he gave us are tragic, often men, typically violent.  Grammie was none of these things.  But, yet, death still comes.  
 
When I first heard the news on Friday I went right to “Give me my robe, put on my crown, I have immortal longings in me.”  I know that it is entirely a figment of my own brain, but I like to think that people have control over the moment in which they cross over, and do so when they are themselves at peace with it.
 

“To me, fair Friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed
Such seems your beauty still.”  This one might be a little unusual to recite over your 95yr old grandmother, but I still like the point.  We all know that old age will eventually come.  But it’s up to us to decide how we deal with it.

 
“Thy eternal summer shall not fade.”  Another nice image, just like that.
 
I’m at work, so that’s all I’ve got for now.  Please feel free to chip in your own favorite quotes.  If someone close to you died, which words from Shakespeare would you find comforting?
 
A special personal thanks to WendyGough, Minisquiggs, Bardfilm and TheShakesForum who spotted my original Twitter note and sent me their own thoughts and support.  Thank you.
 
Now cracks a noble heart.  Good night, Grammie.  And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bad Shakespeare Dreams

~ duane ~ Leave a comment
Had a Shakespeare dream last night.  My whole  family had finally made it to Stratford and we were in some sort of bookstore where they had a guy dressed up and acting like Shakespeare.  Only problem is that he wasn’t any good,  and some of his trivia was wrong,  so I started mocking him.  Of  course this then gets me kicked out!  And not just out of the book store but out of Stratford! Needless to say I was a little bent out of shape that it had taken me this long to get there and in a matter of minutes I was kicked out;)

Eight Days A Week

~ duane ~ 3 Comments

Awhile back I put a question out on Twitter asking which day of the week Shakespeare mentions the most.  Bardfilm reminds me that I never posted the answer.

For simple analytical / search questions I head over to Shakespeare.Clusty.com.  It is here that I punched in the various days, and here’s the results:

Sunday:  9 occurrences in 5 works
Monday: 7 occurrences in 5 works
Tuesday: 7 occurrences in 7 works
Wednesday: 15 occurrences in 9 works
Thursday:  15 occurrences in 3 works
Friday: 5 occurrences in 5 works
Saturday: 2 occurrences in 2 works

So Saturday is the clear loser, mentioned the least frequently across all the plays.

But the winner … should we call it Wednesday, or Thursday?  Notice that Thursday is only mentioned in 3 plays, despite having the most mentions at 15.  This is because 12 of those mentions come in Romeo and Juliet while they plan the wedding.  Comparatively, only 3 mentions of Wednesday in R+J.

I think we can to declare Wednesday the winner.  Mentioned the most often, across the widest number of plays.

Save The Michigan Shakespeare Festival

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Straight from longtime Shakespeare Geek contributor David Blixt comes the disappointing (and highly surprising) news that his beloved Michigan Shakespeare Festival has fallen on hard financial times:

The Michigan Shakespeare Festival has issued an urgent plea for aid from its friends and donors as a result of an unexpected shortfall in financial support from several key sources. The call came from Bart Williams, managing director, who described the crisis. “With so much momentum going into this coming season, it is distressing now find several funding sources we had counted on did not come through.” Williams described the budget shortfall as in the “mid five figures,” and that emergency measures were needed to fill this gap within the next few weeks. Without additional funds, the season might be shortened or cancelled altogether.

This is no struggling group trying to keep their head about water.  The MSF has been alive and thriving for quite some time, and boasts the likes of Shakespearean gods like Dame Judi Dench and Stacey Keach among  those who have endorsed their work.

Please check out the links and help spread the word.  Thanks!

Ingenious(?) Shakespeare on Film

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

There’s certainly no shortage of these lists, but I haven’t linked to one in a while.   Flavorwire delivers their list of Top 10 Ingenious Shakespeare Adaptations, but as always I’m never really sure what criteria these sites use for such a list.

All the usual suspects are on this one, and probably nothing that long time readers hadn’t seen mentioned before (Scotland, PA, which I still haven’t seen, being the most unknown).  But how do you make a list that includes both McKellen’s Richard III and Luhrman’s Romeo+Juliet with 10 Things I Hate About You, O, and Strange Brew?

I’d love it if somebody made a list with a constraint that we could all agree upon, like “Shakespeare adaptations as musicals” or something.  Hint hint, content authors.  Get to work.