A Tempest Game? A Tempest Game.

~ duane ~ 1 Comment
I love when I trip over stuff rather than having it served up to me via Google’s silver platter service.

Over on DeviantArt we have Tasper’s homage to Myst, ala The Tempest:

http://tasper.deviantart.com/art/THE-ISLAND-166334489

I’m at work so I don’t have much of a change to play it, but I couldn’t not link it. How often do we get a Tempest game?

The "Not By Shakespeare" Challenge

~ duane ~ 3 Comments
Ok gang, we’ve talked about this before, and now it’s time to do something about the epidemic of mis-attributed Shakespeare quotes on the net.  It’s one thing to see misinformed high school students retweeting “When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew” as if it came from Romeo and Juliet. But when you start googling for “shakespeare quotes” and that shows up in most lists that are supposedly compiled by experts? That’s upsetting to me.

I’ve taken the best of our discussions on the topic and put them together into an e-book called, Not by Shakespeare : Correctly Attributing The Most Popular Things That Shakespeare Didn’t Say and made it available for download. It’s free and it’s only about 7 pages.  Many of my regular readers will no doubt already know everything that it says, but I’d love it if people can do me the favor of reading/downloading and maybe rating it? Helps the rankings.

The challenge is this : Bookmark that. Or download your own copy, your choice.  But now be on the lookout, be it via Twitter or Facebook, email signatures or Google searches. When you spot one of these incorrectly attributed quotes, send the person a nice note and a link to this document.  Let’s see if we can fix the problem.  I’d expect that most people don’t really care who said it, but at least now they know and I bet they’ll stop calling it Shakespeare next time.

Which Country Loves Shakespeare Most?

~ duane ~ 11 Comments
It’s often pointed out that the works of Mr. Shakespeare have been translated into basically every language (including Esperanto and Klingon). I actually own an Esperanto Hamlet.

I’m wondering about something different. In what country/region, not counting the United States and Great Britain, is Shakespeare most beloved? That is, in what non-English language do they speak of him the most? I’m not asking about translations, since after all you translate him once and you’re essentially done. I mean how much stuff is written *about* Shakespeare in foreign languages? Could I for instance find the equivalent of a “No Fear Shakespeare” or a “Lamb’s Tales” in Chinese or Arabic? I’m not even sure how I’d go about finding something like that out.

Update : A strong vote for Germany!  I had no idea there were so many resources.

Romeo and Thisbe? Pyramus and Juliet?

~ duane ~ 2 Comments
Anybody that knows Midsummer Night’s Dream will recognize the parallels between the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe, as portrayed by Bottom and his fellow mechanicals, and Romeo and Juliet.  Two lovers who can not be together because their families hate each other. A misunderstanding about the death of one leads to the real death of the other, which in turn leads to the real death of both of them.  The families realize the error of their ways and the wall that parted them comes down, happily ever after.  There’s even a prologue to explain the story ahead of time.

I’ve always assumed that there was some sort of connection, but never knew what it was.  Apparently neither did Mr. Asimov
(who I am now trying read for research into my wedding project), who speculates that either Shakespeare was working on the comedy version and decided to try his hand at telling a more serious version … or that he’d written the serious version and now wanted to poke some fun at himself.  Once Mr. Asimov has answered a question (in this case as being unanswerable) I no longer have motivation to waste time trying to answer it myself :).

But it does offer up a place for opinion.  What do you think the relationship is between the two plays, in Shakespeare’s mind?  Was he working on them both at the same time? Which came first, and fed the other? Or are they really independent and the overlap has more to do with the common source material he drew from, nothing more?

Personally I like to think that he did R&J first and then satirized himself in Dream. But I have no evidence to back that up one way or the other.

Shakespeare Geek's Fifth Anniversary

~ duane ~ 2 Comments
Hey, you know what tomorrow is?  The fifth anniversary of this site!  I knew it was coming sometime in June, but that certainly snuck up on me fast.  I wish I could say I had something special planned, but real life’s been getting hectic lately – a frickin tornado nearly hit my house this weekend – so it looks like the day’s going to come and go with more whimper than bang.

Ah well, I’m not going anywhere.  We’ll do something special for the 10 year 😉

Anybody want to see some ancient history?  Check the links to my original posts:

Ah, memories. 🙂