Although this article makes the Harry Potter comparison , I’m still very interested in the underlying idea that when you read, you”psychologically become part of their world and take away emotional benefits.”
Forget wizards, let’s talk Shakespeare. Isn’t this describing exactly what we’ve always known Shakespeare to be great at? We love the Henry V speech because *we* take our own personal motivation from it. We get all deep and existential with Hamlet because hey, it’s not like we know any more about the undiscovered country than he did, and we’re still just as consumed by it.
A fairly obvious question would be, “Doesn’t all fiction do this?” and I suppose the answer is “Yes…to an extent.” Sometimes to an extent so small that you don’t even notice. It takes a master to build universes. Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and yes even Harry Potter. For every “classic” (forgive me for calling Harry Potter a classic already), there are hundreds of knockoffs and wanna-be’s that tried to paint an almost identical universe, and came up short.

Whenever I see one of these 51 Facts About William Shakespeare lists, I always give it a quick glance to see if a) anything’s just wildly wrong, and/or b) to see if there’s anything new and interesting that I didn’t know.
I like this list. It does seem to cover mostly standard information – when he was born, died, what his father did for a living, etc..
But #11 was new to me:

Because Anne Hathaway Shakespeare’s tombstone states she was 67 when she died in 1623, it is generally believed that she was eight years older than her husband. However, the figures 1 and 7 are easily confused–so she might have been 61, only two years older than William.

Is that true? That this is the only information used to give us Anne’s age, and that it is questionable? I’ve never heard that, and I’ve heard an awful lot of conjecture about William Shakespeare’s marriage. I’ve yet to hear someone say “Anne was almost 10 years older than Shakespeare…..or, not.”

Happy Mother’s Day to the mother of my children my wife Kerry, to my own mom Mary (aka “Nanta”) and my mother-in-law Kathy (aka “Gammie”), and all the moms out there! (I realized that if I put a comma between “mother of my children” and “my wife Kerry”
We’ve done worst mothers, we’ve done a comprehensive list of all the mothers and we’ve even done sonnets for Mother’s Day. So, what should we cover this year?
Who do you think is the most *interesting* mother character? I’ll let you define that how you want. Lady Macbeth, maybe, precisely because there’s no child in the play? Gertrude for her complex and sometimes faulty balancing of relationships between what it means to be a mom and to be a wife? Hermione for her loyalty to her crazy jealous husband?

Thanks to Julia from The Browser for this link to their interview with James Shapiro, who we’ve mentioned once or twice in the past. The author of Contested Will lays out his picks for the 5 best biographies of Shakespeare, with lengthy explanation of why.
I just got the link and have not had time to fully grok the list, but I do recognize the name E K Chambers and I think I even have Nicholl’s The Lodger on my Kindle, I’ll have to double check. But other than that, I don’t recognize a single entry. Love it when I learn stuff!

(This post has very little to do with Shakespeare.)
May 4th is commonly known as “Star Wars Day”. May the Fourth be with you, get it? Anyway, occasions like this cause a spike in Twitter traffic, and it’s always fun to jump in on a meme with some Shakespeare. So BardFilm and I have gotten into the habit of trying to hijack the day’s trending topic and turn it Shakespeare. Twitter being what it is, though, it’s easy to lose track of them as they scroll off. Thus, for posterity, I’m archiving a bunch of them here. Join in the fun, either here or on Twitter!

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” – Macbeth
“Be or be not…there is no question.”
“Always two there are, a Rosencrantz and a Guildenstern.”
“Mercutio drew first!” Come on, you didn’t think I was going to let Star Wars Day go by without a plug, did you? 🙂
“Wonderful girl. Either I’m going to kill her or I’m beginning to like her.” – Han Benedick

“I think my eyes are getting better. Instead of a big dark blur, I see a big light blur.” – Han Gloucester

“Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is! Poor Yoda’s a-cold…” – Yoda O’Bedlam

“Kiss me, Kate!” “I’d just as soon kiss a wookie.” “I can arrange that!” – Petruchio Solo in “Taming of the Shrew Princess”

“We fail? I find your lack of faith disturbing.” -Lady MacVader

“Harry, mah bukee, keel-ee caleya ku kah. Wanta dah moole-rah? Wonkee chee sa crispa con Hotspur?” – Falstaff the Hutt
“Joined the dark side Macbeth has, Mmmm. Lies, deceit, creating mistrust are his ways now.”
“Elsinore. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.” – Fortinbras
“Lent me must your ears be, before bury Caesar I can.”
“Luke, I am thy father’s spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night.”
“I used to bull’s-eye whomp-rats in my T-16 back home; that’s not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door.”
“Fighting the Battle of Agincourt ain’t like dusting crops, boy.”
“C3P0: Sir, the possibility of winning the battle of Agincourt is approximately 3,720 to 1. Hal Solo: Never tell me the odds. “

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, it was the winter of our discontent.”