Ok, with a little (lotta!) help from Bardfilm we did Shakespeare’s New Year’s Resolutions. So how about some of our own? I’ll start.
I will:

• speak publicly on the topic of Shakespeare. Not sure how, exactly, but it’s a goal. Take it to the real world.
• use my experience in publishing my first book, Hear My Soul Speak, to try a second.
• expand my empire by turning on some of the Shakespeare-related domains I’ve been sitting on for awhile now.
• make more concerted effort to see Shakespeare productions. I’m always up for a local, high-quality Hamlet or Lear, of course. But if you told me tomorrow that King John was playing in Somerville in some dinky little local community theatre, I’d typically pass. Got to get better at that. Saw a high school production of Winter’s Tale last year, that’s a good start. And hiking it into Boston by myself so I wouldn’t miss the Tempest movie was a step in the right direction as well.

On a related note, I learned something recently about motivation. The traditional reasoning I’ve always heard goes like this — announce your intentions publicly, that way you feel accountable for actually doing them. Makes sense. Recently, though, I heard the exact opposite. Namely that those people who announce their intentions are the least likely to actually achieve them. Has something to do with the fact that if you keep it to yourself, then whether or not you do it is driven entirely by whether or not you want it enough, but if you announce it, then you have more of a burden on your shoulders that you feel like you have to do it. Plus, now you’ve opened up the door psychologically that “Talking about how close I am to my goals is kind of like getting closer toward them.” Which is, of course, a gigantic error.
And oh hey look! Shakespeare had something to say on the topic, who’d have guessed?
Talkers are no good doers: be assured

We come to use our hands and not our tongues.

This article, where formerly interesting actor Rupert Everett slams formerly interesting actress Jennifer Aniston, was of no interest to me at all until I spotted two things.
First, in his wild shotgunning of every topic imaginable in the hopes of stirring up something controversial, he calls Shakespeare “an overrated writer who should be banned for the next 100 years.” I could care less what he says about Jennifer Aniston or George Clooney, but taking shots at Shakespeare is stretching things pretty far.
Second, “It’s no secret that the actor feels that his coming out as a gay man stalled his Hollywood career.”
Absolutely. I mean, it pretty much wiped Sir Ian McKellen off the map, right?
Jackass.
  

Bardfilm has discovered a list of Shakespeare’s resolutions for the New Year (with additions and expansions by Shakespeare Geek himself). Enjoy this rare find!

Shakespeare’s New Year’s Resolutions

1. Stop casting Jack Lemmon, Bill Murray, and other comic characters in serious roles.
2. More bears and bear-baiting references. Maybe actually have someone pursued by a bear?
3. Lose ten pounds. Then earn it back again with a land transaction in Stratford, lol.
4. Resolve Ophelia question—did she take her own life? Was she or was she not responsible for her own actions? Thought I’d made that clear, but audience reaction poor.
5. Look for opportunities for sequels. Audience seems to love those. Maybe Richard III, Part II or Henry IV, Part II (Part II)?
6. More sonnets to Anne; fewer sonnets (none?—Nah, let’s not go that far) to You Know Who.
7. No more drinking parties with Ben and the boys. Might catch a fever and die one of these days if I don’t knock that out.
8. Donate that second best bed to charity so Anne will stop nagging me to get rid of it.
9. Consider starting New Year earlier—January 1?—will help scholars avoid confusion in future.
10. Stop letting the Earl of Oxford try to take credit for work that is clearly not his own.

Our thanks for this guest post to kj, the author of Bardfilm. Bardfilm is a blog that comments on films, plays, and other matters related to Shakespeare.

Ok, here’s a game for anybody that’s got nothing better to do than hang out on Shakespeare Geek over New Year’s :). I was looking over my year’s posts and saw that I made 67 posts in August of this year. Not bad, averaging over 2/day. But then I looked farther back and saw that in May 2008 for some unknown reason I made an insane *72* posts.
Here they all are, on one browsable page.
Many of you may not have even been around back then, so feel free to jump in Ye Olde Time Machine and see what we were talking about two and a half years ago. I like to think the quality of the post topics has gotten better, the site’s gone from entirely a “Hey look I found a Shakespeare reference on the Internet!” site to deep and serious discussion about some pretty heavy “What is the essence of what Shakespeare means to us?” topics. I haven’t given up on the former, though i have to say that the latter I think is more interesting to me.
Enjoy, and Happy New Year everybody!

Since we’re in that after-Christmas lull, let’s talk about Twelfth Night. I have a book on Twelfth Night queued up for review, I’ll see if I can get that posted tonight.
Until then, the floor is open. Do Twelfth Night productions ever have anything to do with Christmas? If not, do we have any idea where the name comes from?
What are your thoughts on this one compared to, say, the other popular cross-dressing comedy As You Like It? Is this one light and fluffy, or dark and twisty?