Quick question for y’all. I’ve dug one of my old projects out of mothballs where I look at how people ask Shakespeare questions. And something’s come up that intrigues me. When speaking of “Shakespeare”, do you use present or past tense? In other words, would you be more likely to ask
Why did Shakespeare use iambic pentameter?
or
Why does Shakespeare use iambic pentameter?
From my research, the split seems to be fairly even. As a language geek it bugs me because technically only one is supposed to be correct – the past tense one. The man’s dead, after all, he’s not still using iambic pentameter.
The problem goes back to that ambiguity that’s come to be associated with the word. When you say Shakespeare are you referring to the man, or to the body of work? It’s sort of funny that when people speak of him being timeless, they really have just no idea how far that idea goes. In situations like this we’ve essentially made the man himself immortal, taking the works to be something we have in the present day while still describing them as if Shakespeare’s right here with us, having just written them.
My 4yr old Hamlet
Working on my computer at home yesterday, my 4yr old son comes running into the room. He’s been on the family computer, playing what they call The Shakespeare Game, an animated flash thing we’ve talked about before where a modern actor dressed like Shakespeare asks process-of-elimination questions about characters until you finally guess the right answer (“The character I’m thinking about was not a friend of Romeo.” So, cross out Mercutio. You get the idea.)
Anyway, 4yr old comes flying into the room to announce, “Daddy Daddy Daddy! I’m playing the Shakespeare game? And the question was Hamlet? And I got the right answer!”
“Great job!” I say. “High five!”
The boy delivers an acceptable high five, and then without missing a beat leaves his hand up in the air almost as if holding Yorick’s skull and says, “To be….or not to be. That is the question.” And then runs back into the room to play more.
I love my house.
…And Geeklet Messes Back.
[ Context : Messing With Geeklet. ]
Although I’m sure she didn’t do this on purpose, I can’t help but note the timing given that I was messing with her head at dinner last night.
It’s time to run off to school, which among other things means the mad scramble to make sure that we’ve signed her homework. She never says “Checked my homework and seen that I did it”, she just always says “Sign.” So I inevitably say, “I haven’t seen that you did it, go get it.” I’m supposed sign in this organizer book that they call a “reminder binder”. Cute.
Anyway, while I’m waiting for her to get it I notice that in the tip of the day cartoon there’s a man looking through binoculars made up of two big overlapping circles, and is a Venn Diagram reference. As geeklet comes back in the room I say, “Wait, you’re doing Venn Diagrams already? Really?”
“What?” she says, pulling down the book to look. “Oh, yeah. Last year. But Daddy, look what it says? ‘To Venn or Not To Venn, That Is The Question.’ Shakespeare.”
So now they’re pointing out Shakespeare references to me???
Messing With Geeklet, Part II.
Well, now that I realize my post had no body, Alexi’s comment makes much more sense. Let’s try that again, shall we?
Over dinner, the 8yr old is telling me about her day. “Daddy, guess what? We read a book at school today called The Woman With A Dead Bird On Her Head. And guess what genre it was?” Apparently they’ve just learned about genres, and she’s digging this idea.
“Historical?” I ask.
“Nope,” she says.
“Pastoral comical?” I try.
“No.”
“Tragical historical comical pastoral?”
“No!”
“I give up.”
🙂 I’d like to think that somewhere around high school when she finally gets around to reading Hamlet in the original, she’s going to get to Polonius’ introduction of the players and finally get that. 😉
Screw Chekhov. And His Gun.
For those who don’t follow the comments, I figure I’d promote this interesting question because it’s a real head scratcher:
There were certainly guns in Shakespeare’s time. But in any of the plays, did Shakespeare ever write a stage direction requiring that one be fired? We can’t find one. Why would that be? If it’s a simple matter of safety – they didn’t have prop guns and you didn’t want to fire a gun in a closed theatre – then the next logical question would be, Did any of his contemporaries write in shooting stage directions?
(*) Chekhov’s Gun is the literary rule that says, “If you hung a pistol over the fireplace in act 1, you need to fire it in act 2.” Shakespeare apparently never fired them, so did he bring them on stage at least?