Ok, for this game you are stranded on a desert island with a young child, and it is now your job to provide an education for this child.  For maximum points you must meaningfully introduce as many subjects as you can to your student.

Here’s the catch – the only book you have to teach with is a First Folio.  You are allowed to supplement with visual aids, but only to the extent that you could create them with whatever rudimentary means might be at your disposal, such as scratching in the sand with a stick.  Nothing too complicated.

Easy example : You can teach poetry, by showing multiple examples of meter and rhyme scheme.

Harder example : Geography.   You could do a pretty good job of plotting where Prospero’s island is, simply by looking at the description of the ship’s return from Claribel’s wedding in Tunisia.  (This is where I see no way around having to draw out a globe and start pointing to various places.)  There’s actually an island that claims to have been Shakespeare’s inspiration, based entirely on this method (given that there’s no way Shakespeare could have ever been there).

What else can you come up with?  How about math?  Other than the dividing up of King Lear’s soldiers I’m trying to think of how many math problems Shakespeare may have written out for us.

Science?  Given how much science has changed in 400 years this would be a tricky one, and it’s not Shakespeare’s fault.

History?  The case of Julius Caesar is probably the most well known.  How many kids graduate from high school never truly knowing what facts about Caesar’s assassination are true, and which were created by Shakespeare?

How about spelling, or for that matter reading in the first place?  That would be interesting.  I bet with some study you could make a good list of words that are spelled in multiple different ways, and then use that to work on a basic phonetics lesson.

You are also welcome to make the case for more advanced classes such as “debating”, “politics”, “psychology” and so on.

Here’s a question that comes up in my life a lot.  We talk about Shakespeare here. That’s easy.  But when I go and add the site to various boards and services, inevitably I’m asked to place it into a category.

After the flood of pictures I took in Washington last week, I finally broke down and decided to join pinterest.com.  This site’s never been heavy into pictures, but if that’s what people want to follow these days, I’ll do what I can to start adding more visual content.

Unfortunately somebody already beat me to “ShakespeareGeek” as a username, so you can find me as ShakesGeek.  Right now I’ve got two ‘boards’ set up — one that will pin stuff directly from the blog (so if you’re already following the blog in some fashion, you’ll have seen it), and another for ‘found Shakespeare’ for all those random Shakespeare related images that I find floating around than don’t always merit their own post.

[EDIT]   Oh, and you may also see a “Pin it!” button in the upper right corner of those posts with picture content.  If you are someone who uses pinterest and you like the content I’m putting up, sharing it in this way would be a great way to support the site.  Thanks!

During my Shakespeare Day Marathon I posted 25 different items for people to talk about, ranging from links I’d queued up over the weekend, to information about Shakespeare and the Presidents, the Booth family … leading up to actual images from my invited trip through Folger Shakespeare Library vault and culminating in pictures of Folio #1, The Most Beautiful Book In The World.

And yet the post that got the most clicks that day was my … rant? diatribe? plea? … entitled “Why I Do This : The Big Picture” (I’ll give you a hint, it’s not about my kids).  I don’t know why that happened, exactly (I would have thought the pictures would generate more interest), but I’m glad it did.  That post, albeit a little over the top, was my reaction to the yearly Shakespeare’s Birthday flood of attention where people come out of the woodwork to say how much Shakespeare means to them, in one or two nice little 140character tweets.

Prove it.

I don’t want to hear what Shakespeare means to you.  I want you to show us what it means to you, and show us what you do about it.  Do you perform him, research him, teach him?  What about all those out there who, like me, can’t claim to be doing this as any more than a hobby?

If Shakespeare means something to you, then you should consider yourself obligated to return the favor and do something for him.  For every post about “I love his poetry, his words sing to me!” I’ll show you dozens upon hundreds of posts claiming he’s not relevant anymore, shouldn’t be taught, speaks a different language, banned from schools, too hard, too boring…  What are you doing about it?

Here’s your call to action.  If you’ve got a place to post something, then post it there and link it here.   If you don’t, then tell us in the comments what you’re doing to bring your love of Shakespeare to the rest of the world.