I know not everybody’s on the east coast of the United States, but I am :).  How’d you spend your hurricane?

Personally I spent it on Twitter tossing out mostly King Lear jokes, with the occasional Tempest thrown in for good measure.  So many Lear comments, in fact, that at one point Sunday afternoon I took a bit of a nap on the couch and had this weird dream where I was some sort of guest speaker for this crowd that had gathered outside, after the hurricane.  I was directed to a podium with a microphone, and had no prepared comments, so I opened with “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!”  Of course even in my dream I can never remember the next line (I always want to say “spitfires and hurricanoes”), so that’s all I’ve got.

For the obligatory “Replace a word in the title with Irene” game on Twitter we had A Midsummer Night’s Irene, Much Ado About Irene, Irene’s Labour’s Lost, and Twelfth Hurricane, or, What Irene Will.

Then came a wide variety of stuff, some of which I think will make good t-shirt material 🙂 …

I Survived Hurricane Irene and all I got was a drunken butler, a jester,
and a fishy smelling mooncalf who tried to steal my laundry.

NC police report multiple complaints of an elderly gentleman claiming to
have caused the hurricane, to seek revenge on his enemies.

 During the storm, keep an eye out for a rambling naked fellow and his fool. He’s had a bad day, give him a cup of tea.

Oh, and lastly, for your entertainment, I found this interesting collection of three separate interpretations of the “storm scene” from Lear. It’s called “Choices”, and whoever made it has overlaid some text on each version – why did this guy swing his hands like that? why did this one choose to emphasize a certain word, or pause in a certain way?  It’s all questions, there’s no real analysis, but it’s still interesting.

I saw a discussion the other day where somebody argued that Shakespeare was these three things – actor, poet, playwright – specifically in that order. In other words he was an actor first, a poet second, a playwright last.  I don’t think he meant chronologically, either.

I disagree.  I think that while he may have gotten involved in the theatre as an actor, he certainly found himself as a poet shortly after and then spent the rest of his career putting poetry on the stage.  Nobody ever speaks of Shakespeare’s name among the great actors of his generation.  He was no Burbage or Kempe.  He acted, sure, and he started out as an actor. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say that he was primarily an actor.

Thoughts? This is another spin on the old, “Did Shakespeare really know he was that good, or was he just doing whatever it took to pay the bills?” argument.  Discuss.

Ok, people, we need some Shakespeare knock knock jokes.  After all, the man invented the form, right?  Fill in your own Hamlet or Macbeth reference, your choice :).

Feel free to make one up on the spot, that’s what I spend most of my time on Twitter doing.

“Knock, knock.”
Who’s there?
“Earl of Oxford.
Earl of Oxford who?
“Precisely.”

That’s my only real entry thus far that meets the appropriate form (i.e. you could actually tell it to somebody who plays their part correctly).  Others, that do not fit the form:

“Knock, knock.”
Who’s th….oh, hi Lavinia.  Doesn’t it hurt your head to do that?

“Knock, knock.”
…
“Knock, knock.”
…
“Knock, knock.”
Darnit didn’t we hire a Porter who’s supposed to get that? Has he been drinking again?

What else ya got?

At least, that’s our story of the morning. 

“Academics have wondered for years why music is quite so central to
the play,” said Holmes. “I have always felt that it reads like there is
something missing. There are gaps in the text and character development
is cut short. It has a reputation as an underwritten play, although it
seems clear that extra text has not been cut or lost.”
Holmes
points to unexplained musical references in every scene and his theory
has been supported by the distinguished Shakespearean Stanley Wells. “I
would want to see the evidence, but this sounds possible. I can quite
believe The Tempest might have been conceived as a musical
entertainment,” said Wells, who has edited Shakespeare texts for Oxford
University Press and chairs the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Why not? They’re right, there’s an awful lot of music references in the play (Caliban’s “Be not afeard…” speech being a particularly powerful example).
Last year (or whenever it was), Julie Taymor put an awful lot of music into her Tempest film – including lifting the “Journeys end in lovers meeting” song from Twelfth Night.

Speaking of Twelfth Night, what other Shakespeare plays would make good musicals?

Twitter user ScottySheldon brought up a new game yesterday – best “intro” in Shakespeare.  At first I thought he meant “best opening lines” which has been done to death. But that’s not what he meant.

What he meant was, a character enters, and some other characters says “Oh, hey Ophelia.”  Well, technically, someone says something like “Oh look here comes Ophelia” and then Ophelia enters.

That, I don’t think I’ve seen before.  All the plays are ripe for the picking — any character, any play, how is that character introduced?  Lots to choose from.

Off the top of my head I think I might point to “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes” as an introduction for Macbeth’s entrance. I like it so much that I once did a whole post about just that one line.  The way it introduces Macbeth, a human being, as “something”?  Not someone – some *thing*.  Something inhuman.

Should we count Orsino’s “If music be the food of love…” line?  It’s not like he’s technically introducing himself, but as far as the language of the stage goes, this is certainly his introduction to the audience.  You immediately know what sort of character he is when he starts out like that.