I first posted about this game way back in 2005, but it’s fun to bring back old posts from time to time because my readership right now is much higher than it was then. Ok, here’s a game that I just thought up while decoding some filenames on my computer. How well do you know your Shakespeare canon? Can you tell the title of a play just by the first letters? For instance TTOHPOD is The Tragedy Of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Every word (including the/a/of…) is included. Got it? Good.
TT
TTGOV
PPOT
AMND
TTOOTMOV
TLOTOA
TNOWYW
C
LLL
MFM
TFPOHTF
TSPOHTF
TLADOKJ
TTOC
TFHOTLOKHTE Not all the plays are listed, in case that is not obvious.

Maybe we’re not all students anymore, maybe some of us are, but there are always times in our lives when we need to study – for a test, for a job interview, for a presentation.  How do you do it? Trevor sent me this article from the NY Times on new research in study habits, which busts some myths about different kinds of learners, finding a specific study place, and others. Personally, I was always a lousy study.  I tended to be among the advanced students during school (up to college, at least), so I would often do much of my homework during down time at school, leaving nothing for actual home.  When it came time to study for tests, I …didn’t, really.  I was always a believer that either I had internalized the information, or I didn’t, and no amount of cramming would fix it. Sure I crammed, I read my notes over and over while always thinking “Ok, I knew this 5 minutes ago because I just re-read it 10 minutes ago, that doesn’t really say much about whether I’ll still remember it tomorrow morning.”  And, predictably, some courses I aced (the ones I’d internalized), some I failed no matter how much I studied. How about you? What can we say about study habits that might specifically apply to Shakespeare?  An old post of mine on how to memorize Shakespeare remains one of my most popular, but that’s not really all there is to it, is there? I’ve known people that can recite the words and still not tell you the plot. I don’t know how to *teach* kids this, but I know that for me that breakthrough moment came when I was able to shatter this idea of “deciphering a series of words and translating them into something I can understand” and started seeing actual people, just like me, who were expressing what was happening to them (the famous example being Hamlet’s “thrice-baked meats did coldly furnish forth the wedding tables” joke I’ve retold many times over the years).  I’ve always said that were I to write a study guide for Hamlet I’d start it like this:  Hamlet’s dad died.  Let that sink in.  Kids have dads.  Heck, some kids might well have dads that died.  So did Hamlet.  Regardless of what he said or when he said it or who wrote it for him or why or what was going on politically at the time, the reason that it survives is because, underneath at all, Hamlet is a young man whose father died, and anybody can relate to that (or at least attempt to, which is close enough). Ok, that was a bit of a tangent.  Somebody else go.

It comes up a lot.  It came up on Twitter just now.  Shakespeare is meant to be seen, not read. Which implies that it is meant to be performed, so that people can see i. But what exactly does that mean, and how can we work with it? On the one end there’s the class field trip, packing up a few dozen kids to head down to the local theatre and sit still for a production of it doesn’t matter what because most of them won’t pay attention long enough to remember it. Or, there’s “see the movie.”  Stay in the classroom, maybe you have the students’ attention, maybe you don’t, but when Olivier’s Hamlet says goodbye to his mom a little bit too enthusiastically, you can pause it for a minute and explain the who Oedipus thing (thank you Mr. Corey, my 12th grade English teacher). But can we take it another level?  A large majority of kids have iPods, or at least computer access at home (barring the edge socio-economic situations where it’s not likely). Couldn’t they download the movie and watch it at their own pace, rewinding as needed? What about looking forward when most students are packing an iPad-like tablet device? I like to imagine a world where the student has a player that shows everything they might want – the text, the footnotes, a modern translation, as well as multiple performance interpretations of each scene.  Want to study the final scene of Lear?  Great, drill down right on that.  See Olivier do it, and then James Earl Jones, and then Ian McKellan. Read the notes.  Form your own opinions. You just can’t do that stuff by simply going out and seeing the show just to say you saw it.  Sure, “live” theatre brings something different than a film does, but that’s a bigger question that really has nothing to do with Shakespeare but does have everything to do with the realities of time management in a busy world.  I don’t think it’s as easy as “see rather than read.”  I think that a combination of both is the only real option, and technology is getting us closer to it.

When I was in high school I read, if I remember correctly: Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew, Richard II and the Henry plays (not VIII). I’m trying to remember, but I think that was about it. I know no Lear, or Tempest, or R3.  Certainly not Coriolanus or Titus, and I’m having a hard time remembering whether we read any other comedies. So my question is this : Assuming we’re talking about “high school” age, and by that I mean 14-18ish, what plays do you think should be taught as part of the curriculum? This could turn into a whole discussion about curriculum overhaul, which is fine, but not really what I’m going for.  What I’m really wondering is, if you assume “A typical student will, as part of their standard English education, be exposed to Shakespeare”, what plays do you think should be included?   Do you think there are any common choices we can (or should) stop teaching?

I am happy to announce that my first Shakespeare book, Hear My Soul Speak : Wedding Quotations from Shakespeare is now available!   I’ve been playing with this idea for awhile, ever since I heard sonnet 116 recited at one too many weddings.  “Isn’t Shakespeare’s work just absolutely loaded with material that would be cool for a wedding?” I thought.  “Is it that people keep repeating the same old stuff because it’s what they know? What if they have a reference book to the rest of the good stuff?” So I asked a friend of mine, who happens to be in the wedding planning business (she’s a florist, actually), “If I could put in your hands a book that represented all the good Shakespeare material that’s relevant to weddings – stuff for vows, toasts, father of the bride speeches, but also just decorative stuff that could be used on the invitations and thank you notes and such, would you be able to get it into the hands of people who are planning their wedding? Do you think it would be of value?”  The answer was a resounding, “Yes, absolutely!” and so a book was born. What this first version represents is a hand-chosen list of well over 100 quotes from across all the sonnets and plays (and even some Venus and Adonis thrown in for good measure), organized by where they might be most useful.  The groom is going to say something different to the bride during their vows than the best man is going to say during his toast, you see.  Where necessary, the quotes are explained in their original context.  This is particularly true for the selected sonnets.  It was very important to me that if I expect people to quote Shakespeare, that they actually have some clue what they’re talking about and are not just reading words they barely understand.  To that end there’s also a chapter on tips for memorizing and reciting Shakespeare.  Lastly, quotes are grouped by play (or other source) so the reader can learn a bit about Shakespeare’s works along the way.  If all your favorite quotes are coming from a certain play, maybe you want to go seek out that play and learn more? The book is now available in the Apple iBookstore, on other ePub-compatible devices, and downloadable PDF for those without an e-reader device.  (I do not believe in DRM, so the PDF is freely printable. It’s not one of those that’s got so many locks built in you don’t enjoy reading it. Please don’t pirate. 🙂 ) Although I’m taking a bit of a break to catch my breath, I do hope to have a printed edition available sometime in the future.  The amount of effort I put into that project is directly related to how much interest I can drum up in this one, though, so help me spread the word! Going to any weddings, soon?  Buy the book.  Give it to the wedding party.  Help get more Shakespeare in everybody’s life.  If you’d like to link to me, for the moment I ask that you link to this post instead of directly to the landing page.  It’s little more than a placeholder at the moment (though that will change very soon).  Thanks for all the help that everyone’s provided over the past few months! P.S. I’ve got enough material collected that there’s also potential for a volume 2 that focuses on music, wedding customs, flowers, and all that other good stuff.  Who knows?