Best research I can come up with at the moment suggests that this Twitter “Top Retweet” comes not from Shakespeare, but from someone named Steve Rubenstein. I have no idea who this is, perhaps someone could tell me. A magazine editor of some reputation?
What I find amusing in cases like this is to see when the quote shows up on Yahoo! Answers. If you’ve ever needed a reason to prove why community-sourced answers are as good as you pay for, check it out. The user is smart enough to ask, “If this is by Shakespeare, somebody tell me the source citation.” Best answer, chosen by voters, is a simple “It’s by Shakespeare.” An entirely wrong, by definition, answer. I don’t know what’s more annoying, the person who answers the question incorrectly just to get whatever points are offered (depending on the engine), or the people voting for it as a good answer.
Personally I’ve never seen this one attributed to Shakespeare, but when the topic came up today at lunch this is the one my new boss pulled up to test me.
“The pen is mightier than the sword” actually shares a bit of infamy with “It was a dark and stormy night.” Both, you see, were by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The latter actually inspired a contest to write in his rather unique style.
Just to regain my cred a bit (since I did not have the answer off the top of my head), I had to show my boss that Shakespeare Geek covered the topic back in April of this year, and it was reader Alexi who offered up the appropriate comment:
The one I always hear is "The pen is mightier than the sword" which is not from Shakespeare but from the 19th century novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whose other contribution to literature is the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night," which is also usually attributed to someone else. In this case, Charles Schultz, creator of Peanuts.
Great article by Paul Edmondson over at Blogging Shakespeare with a simple premise : get a group of people together to talk about just one sonnet, in this case sonnet 29, for an hour. What happens? Can you still learn something new every time? To steal from the closing sentiment of the article, can you exhaust it? Or will it merely exhaust you (temporarily)? We talk about sonnet 29 frequently here. Once Rufus Wainwright put it to music I found it easier to memorize, which in turn caused me to pay more attention to the emotional power behind the words. I’ve since added it to my wedding book for its potential in that arena as well. I started to do my own analysis here, but that’s not really fair to the original post. Go check it out.
There’s many reasons why people can claim that Shakespeare is hard to understand. First, there’s vocabulary. It’s not really as bad as people make it out to be, but some plays certainly make heavier use of archaic/obsolete words than others. Expressions that no longer have context, on the other hand, are a big problem. Jokes that would have gone over huge with Shakespeare’s crowd that no longer make sense without a little training. That’s a problem. And then there’s all the offstage stuff that happens. When somebody walks on stage and explains about a war that’s going on, dropping names left and right about who did what to do, it’s easy for a modern user to get lost because they didn’t see it. They don’t know who those people are. With that in mind I ask, what’s the easiest play? You can define it however you like (given the rough framework I provided), but I’m not just looking for most popular. You might think Lear is easy, from certain angles. It’s deep, absolutely. But hard to follow? I don’t know about that. I’m wondering which of the plays have all the action taking place on stage (so there’s no need to exposition about what we can’t see), while relying on relatively simple vocabulary that a modern audience could easily follow. Motivation : Whenever I make my wife come see Shakespeare with me, and she brings a friend along for company, I typically explain the plot of the show before we go so they’re not lost. At intermission I refresh the details of the story now that they’ve seen some characters, and answer any questions. Inevitably at the end they’ll say, “I did understand it – but thanks to what you told us in the beginning. I’m not sure I would have followed it without that.” I’m wondering what the best candidates are for a play that they would be most likely to follow, without me having to walk them through it. I think that creates a barrier to truly feeling like you’re enjoying the work, if you need a middle man to translate for you.
Ok, how many people knew who I was talking about when I teased this one a few days ago? I’m happy and grateful to report that Warner Brothers contacted me and asked if I could review the new release of Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, new on Blu-ray DVD (official release date Tuesday August 17, 2010). “I don’t have a Blu-ray player,” I responded. “Can I get some for giveaway?” Sure enough I’ve now got two, count ‘em, *2* brandy new, hot-off-the-presses, before-he-directed-Thor, Kenneth Branagh Hamlet’s. It’s not even like I can keep them for myself, because I’m not kidding, I don’t have a player for these bad boys! I don’t expect that any regular readers will need a synopsis of this one, but they kinda sorta requested that I make this a mandatory part of the post. So:
“Hamlet has the kind of power, energy and excitement that movies can truly exploit,” award-winning actor/director Kenneth Branagh says. In this first-ever full-text film of William Shakespeare’s greatest work, the power surges through every scene. The timeless tale of murder, corruptions and revenge is reset in an opulent 19th-century world, using sprawling Blenheim Palace as Elsinore and staging much of the action in shimmering mirrored and gold-filled interiors. The energy is electrifying, due to a luminous cast. The excitement of the Bard’s words and an adventurous filmmaking style lift the story from its often shadowy ambience to fully-lit pageantry and rage.
Ok, so, on to the good stuff. How can you be one of the lucky ones to “Own it on Blu-ray”? Starting now (Sunday, August 15); 1) Follow me on Twitter if you haven’t already. I need to be able to message you back if you win. 2) Send the following message via Twitter: Free DVD Giveaway: Enter to Win Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, New on Blu-ray! http://bit.ly/cbyNil @ShakespeareGeek #BlurayHamlet 3) Two winners will be chosen by midnight (Eastern time) on Tuesday, August 17 (to coincide with the official release date). This is a quick one, people, so don’t delay! 4) Winners must be in the continental United States. Sorry, but these are sitting on my desk and I’ve got to pay the shipping out of my pocket. I couldn’t even really tell you what region these are anyway, and I know the international folks would need to know that. 5) Your friendly neighborhood Shakespeare Geek reserves the right, if necessary, to extend or alter the rules if I’ve somehow written up a condition that is either a) impossible to fulfill or b) results in ambiguity that would wreck the integrity of the contest. Get started! Seriously, somebody’s got to take these off my hand and then convince me to get a Blu-ray player! I hear in high-def you can really see the melancholy in all it’s glorious detail 😉 Of course, for those that want to skip the gambling and just add to their collection, you can own it on Blu-ray anytime (well, after Tuesday) you like!
