I just stumbled across something which in context is perfectly obvious, but still it made me laugh.  From As You Like It, Act IV, Scene 1: ROSALIND

No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is
almost six thousand years old, and in all this time
there was not any man died in his own person,
videlicit, in a love-cause. Troilus had his brains
dashed out with a Grecian club; yet he did what he
could to die before, and he is one of the patterns
of love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair
year, though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been
for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went
but forth to wash him in the Hellespont and being
taken with the cramp was drowned and the foolish
coroners of that age found it was ‘Hero of Sestos.’
But these are all lies: men have died from time to
time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

I say it’s obvious in context because Mr. Shakespeare certainly didn’t have the benefit of modern science, evolution and all that good stuff to work with.  He’s got Rosalind pretty much quoting the Bible on this point, best I can tell. I just found it funny.  If anybody today tried to argue that the world is six thousand years old (“almost”, at that!) I wouldn’t have much more for them than a sad sigh and directions to the nearest elementary school science classroom, whether they were vice presidential material or not.  So naturally when our beloved Mr. S says it, it makes you pause and say “Wait, what?” Wondering if I can get the Creationists to claim Shakespeare as one of their own? 🙂

So this morning on my “Insight from the Dalai Lama” calendar, on the “Daily Extra”, the game is to match the actor with his or her lucky charm.  The actors:

Geoffrey Rush
Cate Blanchett
Robin Williams
Meat Loaf
Sharon Stone

And the lucky charms:

Daffy Duck figurine
crystal
two stuffed bears
ivory trinket
elf ears

I do not currently have the answer, as that will be on tomorrow’s page and I do not tempt karmic fate by peeking. Does anybody else spot what I did? Leapt right out at me.  At least 4 out of those 5 people have Shakespeare credits to their name: Geoffrey Rush was Henslowe in Shakespeare In Love, though if that doesn’t count for you, you can go back to 1987 where he played Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night. Cate Blanchett you have to dig a little bit more but you’ll find that she played Ophelia theatrically (in Australia) opposite….Geoffrey Rush!  That’s different. :)  I always, always, always confuse her with Kate Winslet.  That’s why she was so fresh in my mind, even with the more obscure credit. Robin Williams played Osric in Brannagh’s Hamlet. Meat Loaf?  MEAT LOAF?  Yes, that Meatloaf.  Apparently he was quite good in As You Like it before he went on to tackle a fairly infamous musical Hamlet. The odd one out, surprisingly, is Sharon Stone, the Oscar-award nominated (and Golden Globe-winning) actress.  Try as I might, I cannot find any Shakespeare connections for her.  Well, there was Police Academy 4, but I don’t think everybody fully appreciated what she was trying to bring to that role.  Those that want to look for weird connections in the universe will note that Sharon won her Golden Globe for her role in Casino where she played opposite … you guessed it, Robert DeNiro.

P.S I hope it turns out that Geoffrey Rush’s lucky charm is the Daffy Duck, I like the idea of Daffy hanging out on the set of Shakespeare in Love.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6856891.eceThese lists come up frequently – 10 things you didn’t know about Shakespeare!  Most of the time it’s boring for geeks, half common knowledge and half not really true anyway.So I’m happy that this one includes, at least to me, some new stuff.

3 Shakespeare hid on Robben Island

There was a copy of Shakespeare on Robben Island prison that one of the Indian ANC inmates had disguised as a Hindu prayer book. It got handed around, and various inmates would read it and underline their favourite quotations and autograph them. Walter Sisulu underlined “For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe”, Shylock’s line from The Merchant of Venice. Another ANC inmate underlined Caliban’s line from The Tempest: “This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother.” So you get very different spins on apartheid between those two quotations. Nelson Mandela’s favourite quote was from Julius Caesar, when Caesar himself says: “Cowards die many times before their death, the valiant only taste of death but once.”

Of special note is point #7, about Cardenio, where he says “We’ve found a bit and the RSC is going to produce it.”  The article was written in October, 2009 – so much for this week’s “discovery”, eh? :)I did know about the “raid” by Delia Bacon, the starlings, and King John in 1899, but a couple of the others were new (although a couple of them seem to be a stretch).

Just a quick question, looking for a quick, one word answer.  When you use Shakespeare as an adjective, what do you think it means? Does it mean quality, as in “Just write me a quick blog post, I don’t need it to be Shakespeare”? Does it mean sad, as in “Shakespearean in its tragedy”? Perhaps grand, sweeping, epic? A story of Shakespearean proportion! Or maybe difficult? “It all sounds like Shakespeare to me!” Perhaps pompous? “Look who we got here, we got ourselves a real Shakespeare!”  Maybe “pompous” isn’t the right word there.  Superior? The easy answer is probably “All of the above”, but where’s the fun in that?  Let me phrase it differently – when you hear it, what’s the first usage you think of?

All this recent talk of Double Falshood / Cardenio as Shakespeare’s legendary “lost” play brings up a very different question.  Not whether it is or not, but what if it is?  How would that change our opinion of Shakespeare’s canon of work if we really and truly knew, for sure, that there was a new play to add to the mix?  One that, by most accounts, isn’t very good? I wanted to put it in terms that the modern reader can understand.  It’s so easy to speak of Shakespeare as perfect, Shakespeare as god, that it’s easy to escape Shakespeare as working man.  So instead I want you to think about Robert DeNiro.  Know the name?  You probably do, at least if you’re in the US.  Now, can you quote something from the Godfather II?  I’m willing to bet that you can.  Or how about Goodfellas? Casino?  Maybe Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, for the purists.  You like his comedy better? How about Midnight Run, or Meet the Parents? Now what about Analyze That? Or how about The Good Shepherd?  Oh, didn’t see them?  Maybe something from his earlier work, could you tell me a little bit about Bloody Mama, or Jennifer on my Mind?  What about Stardust?  Surely I have to mention Stardust, I mean come on, the man played a character named Captain Shakespeare. (There may indeed be some DeNiro Geeks in the crowd who can, indeed, speak at length on all the movies I mentioned.  But bear with me here, people, I’m trying to make a point!) Any large body of work will naturally fray at the edges.  It takes time to hone one’s craft, and then eventually time dulls the edge of even the sharpest talent.  Robert DeNiro is quite arguably one of the best actors of modern times.  He’s certainly been a part of some of the best movies.  But does that mean that all of his work was genius?  Not hardly. I think people often forget that with Shakespeare.  We’ve likened the name Shakespeare to the work as a whole when really it’s probably more like a bell curve – we’ll all put Hamlet and Lear and Dream and such up at the top, surround them with Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar and so on…until down at the edges we have the Measure for Measures and Pericleseses….however you say it. So, would a proven Cardenio jump to the top of that pile?  Almost certainly not.  Masterpieces don’t tend to disappear.  Junk is what tends to be forgotten.  Maybe Shakespeare was phoning it in during his elder years.  Maybe he collaborated loosely just to pick up the pay check.  Who knows, maybe he never wanted the burden we place upon him, and his heart just wasn’t in it anymore.  People tend to forget this.  People think we’re going to find the next Hamlet.  We’re not.