So the other day during a meeting we notice that the boss’s clock is not out of batteries, it is in fact broken.  “Did they have clocks when Shakespeare was writing?” he asks, knowing me to be a Shakespeare geek. “Funny you should say that,” says I, and tell him the story of the Julius Caesar anachronism, how Brutus hears the clock chime three times when, for ancient Rome, there wouldn’t have been such a clock. (*) We can debate whether that’s a mistake of whether Mr. Shakespeare knew what he was doing and just went with it, but it’s no fun to say “What’s your favorite anachronism”? What are some other “mistakes” Shakespeare might have made?  Little things that, once you draw attention to them, don’t make a whole lot of sense?

Ran into one of my older daughter’s teachers (who I knew only by site, have never spoken with her) at McDonald’s the other day.  She recognized me though as well, because she said, “So I hear you’re a Shakespeare geek.”  (Actually she said “afficionado of the bard”, but afficionadoofthebard.com is too hard to spell. :))  I informed her that yes, yes I was, plugged shakespearegeek.com, and said, “My kids know Shakespeare as well.” “I know,” she said, “I was helping your oldest look for books in the library when she pointed at one and said Oh look, Shakespeare’s on that one.” This morning, oldest says to me “Mrs. M knows you’re a Shakespeare geek.” “I know,” I respond, “I saw her at lunch.” “I told her you’re a Shakespeare geek.” “Dot com, sweetie.  Shakespearegeek.com!” Hey if the girl’s gonna shill for me she might as well plug the website!

Those of you with young children will know this, but the little ones love a good joke.  They just don’t fully get how a joke works.  So they’ll often take the structure of something else they heard, swap in a few different words, and expect it to be equally funny. “What did the cow say to the Martin Luther King guy?” was one such joke my 5year old started, but she couldn’t think of a punchline so she changed it and we got this instead: “What did Queen Titania say to King Oberon?”

”Umm….I know a lot of things Titania said to Oberon, sweetie, but they’re probably not in your joke.  So I don’t know,what did Titania say to Oberon?”

“Will you marry me?”

“I suppose after she started speaking to him again, maybe.”

🙂

You’d think that “Shakespeare” is a relatively unique name, but trust me, if you monitor the newsfeed like I do, you’d realize just how wrong that is(*).  For months I’ve been distracted by headlines like “Shakespeare is Missing” and “Foul Play Suspected in Shakespeare Disappearance”, and more recently “Digging for Shakespeare’s Body.”  That last is a particularly tricky one, since there is in fact an archaeological dig going on over in Stratford as we speak. This story, though, is the unfortunate demise of lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare, who disappeared some months ago.  His body was just recovered this week.  Cases like these are sad, as you realize that his body was found under a concrete slab.  Meaning that somebody put it there.  Meaning that, no doubt, somebody killed the poor guy.  I mean, it’s sad when you find remains anyway – but it’s different if somebody falls in the river, or gets lost in the woods, or other unfortunate but accidental deaths.  This guy was murdered, almost certainly having to do with his money. Hope they catch whoever did it.  Apparently there’s a suspect in a neighbor/”friend” who claims he gave her a million dollars.   (*) I’ve learned to ignore the ironically named Shakespeare fishing rods.  When I think of people who take their fishing seriously, I do not picture them bringing a copy of the complete works out on the boat with them to read while they wait.

JD Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, has died.  He was 91. When a celebrity dies (be they famous for movies, television or even literature!), I go poking around to see if there’s any Shakespeare connection to make.  Other than a funny non-starter on WikiAnswers looking for a comparison between Hamlet and Holden Caufield, I found a larger story about Salinger’s position on copyrighting of specific characters… http://blogs.geniocity.com/friedman/2009/06/doesnt-art-require-the-use-of-symbols-that-resonate-with-the-culture-jd-salinger-and-his-ownership-of-holden-caulfield-compared-to-shakespeare-and-his-theft-of-king-lear/ (Big link!) The gist of the story is that if you can claim ownership of a character like JD Salinger attempts to do with Caufield, then Shakespeare would never have been able to write King Lear.  The article does an admirable job of tracing back the “ownership” of all Shakespeare’s ideas in that play, at least as far as characters are concerned. I wonder if this is perhaps making a mountain of a molehill.  Isn’t this what we have public domain for, and the whole “past the life of the author” thing?  If you create a character, and you are still alive to speak for that character, then aren’t you allowed to determine who uses that character?  Am I missing something?  Once the author has died, and time has passed (presumably allowing his estate to continue to receive benefit from his work?), then you can use his creation as you will. The Shakespeare case is not really comparable, what with Lear being based on a “semi-legendary” figure.  I think that multiple interpretations of a fairy tale are of a different nature than taking the specific creation of one author and trying to appropriate it for yourself.