New friends may be poems but old friends are alphabets. Do not forget alphabets, because you will need them to read the poems.

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

Status: Not by Shakespeare

This is another one of those quotes that seems to have come up someplace and wandered around a bit until someone put “Shakespeare once said…” in front of it and it stuck.  I can find nothing even close to this quote in Shakespeare’s works (hint, Shakespeare only ever used the word “alphabet” once, in Titus Andronicus),  nor did I particularly expect to.  It sounds more like something off a Hallmark card.

Still searching for an original source, but hopes are not high.  A quote this long is typically written many different ways, which makes Googling for a true original difficult.

Question : Weddings in Shakespeare?

~ duane ~ 10 Comments

Ok, crew.  Maybe this is lazy but I like to think of it as research. :)  I need a list of the plays that have the most positive messages about marriage.  Does that make sense?  They don’t have to have a wedding in them (most of the plays don’t, at least not on stage), but anything “pro-wedding” counts. For instance I’ve got Much Ado, As You Like It, Midsummer.  But also The Tempest, because of Prospero’s conjuring of spirits to bless Miranda and Ferdinand.  Taming of the Shrew is debatably “pro marriage”, but I’m counting it. I would not on the other hand count something like Hamlet – technically the marriage between Gertrude and Claudius is a plot point, but I wouldn’t exactly call it “pro”.  You know, what with Hamlet shouting “We will have no more marriages!” and all that. Which others? I want to make sure I’m not missing any.

When I saw you I fell in love. And you smiled because you knew.

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Status: Not by Shakespeare

Totally not Romeo and Juliet. But neither is this quote.

Although often attributed to Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare aficionados the world over can assure you that neither this line nor anything like it, appears in that play. It doesn’t even sound like Shakespeare. It is by Arrigo Boito, who does at least have a Shakespeare connection in that he’s written a number of operas based on Shakespeare’s work including Othello and Falstaff.

 
In fact, it’s precisely Falstaff where we can find the original quote (although it’s in Italian):
 
Come ti vidi
M’innamorai,
E tu sorridi
Perchè lo sai.
 
which Google Translate tells me is, “How I saw you I fell in love, And you smile Because you know it.”  Close enough, Google!
 
 
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Hat tip to https://falsescribes.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/when-i-saw-you-boito/ pointing out that the text is from Falstaff, which at least gives us an excuse to make the Shakespearean connection?  I wonder if there are folks out there who know that’s the source and are just working backward, figuring that Shakespeare must have written it originally.
 
 
Nah.  All these quotes fall victim to that same “It sounds sappy and romantic, assume Shakespeare wrote it, it will get more likes on Instagram” logic.
 
Explore more posts in the Not by Shakespeare category.
 
 

Best Opening Line?

~ duane ~ 20 Comments

So I saw this Entertainment Weekly article about 2o Classic Opening Lines in Books.  For the curious, it stretches 20 pages for 20 lines, includes Harry Potter and does not include Orwell, Camus or Kafka. Of course there’s no Shakespeare, since it’s always up in the air whether someone counts his work among “books”.

So I thought we’d do our own.  What were Shakespeare’s best opening lines? I suppose Richard III’s “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York” might be the most infamous, given how frequently it is misquoted.

I like Romeo and Juliet’s “Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.” Not just because it’s one of the greatest story introductions ever, but because it contains an important clue that most modern adapters seem to forget : both alike in dignity.  Everybody always wants to tell the story along racial or economic lines, putting a gigantic obstacle between the two young lovers and hitting the audience over the head with “Here’s why they can’t be together.”  I don’t think by “ancient grudge” Shakespeare meant reparations for slavery. Who else has ideas?

Eight Years for Destroying History

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2008117,00.html When we first speculated what Raymond Scott might get as punishment for being in possession of the stolen First Folio, I don’t think any of us guessed eight years – but that’s what he’s getting. Know what makes me sad?  The title page was cut out of this one in a sad, amateurish attempt to “disguise” it.  What, exactly, happened to that page? You think somebody’s got it framed in a collection someplace? Or you think the genius just crumbled it up and threw it in the trash?