🙁 I see an article entitled “Five People Suggest Five Books” in my Shakespeare feeds and I think, “Oh cool, they walked up to people on the street, asked what they’re reading, and at least somebody mentioned Shakespeare.”  I like stuff like that.  Ever better is that it’s not from New York or Cambridge or something, it’s from Des Moines.   I’m perfectly happy with the idea that you can wander down Main Street in some Iowa city, ask somebody what books they’ve read lately, and have them bust out a Shakespeare reference. Sure enough the first guy has Harold Bloom on his list.  Impressive, although I think I was hoping for something a little bit more accessible. But then … I read the bios.  Their “five people who live in the Des Moines metro” are: the marketing manager for the public library, a book store owner, the librarian, a college professor, and .. the dude who recommended Shakespeare?  Yeah, he’s the frickin director of the Iowa Shakespeare Experience. I swear, I cannot fathom how this article came to be written without somebody saying, “Well you know, random people on the street don’t really know about books, so no problem, we’ll just go and get people who work with books for a living.”  Yeah, that’s so very useful.  Thanks for that.

So I’ve been sharing my writing lately with a friend.  He’s not the literature type, he’s more of a music geek.  Here’s what he wrote me back:

I kind of group Shakespeare with Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan has written some incredible songs, yet to listen to him sing them turns many people off, when other artists cover the material, you really get the depth of the lyrics  and  think of Shakespeare in that same realm, where because the language is so dense if you will, that people are turned off and don’t see the real beauty of the stories being told.

I can see his point. There are Dylan people who know every word the man ever spoke, who hunt down every scrap he may have written a note upon. Then there are those who know a couple of his tunes, and he doesn’t really do it for them.  But then there’s a huge group in the middle who’ve probably heard a Dylan-penned tune and loved it, without ever realizing it was Dylan. (I could probably take it farther and say, “If you told them it was Dylan before they listened to it, they wouldn’t like it….”) The television series “Band of Brothers” was quite popular.  Yet I’m continually surprised that people don’t know this is a Henry V reference.  I wonder if I started like that – “Hey, did you see that HBO war series that’s named for Shakespeare’s Henry V?” – if people would like it as much?

http://www.tonic.com/article/happy-birthday-sherlock-holmes/ I’ve read a few Sherlock Holmes stories, but they’re not really my thing.  I never got to the ending and thought, “Wow, that’s brilliant!” it was always more like “Oh, he strung together a random set of trivia in a way that happens to work in this particular instance.” But when I spot a Shakespeare reference I look closer.  Who knew that January 6 was Sherlock Holmes’ birthday, and that Shakespeare was responsible for it?

According to an article in the New York Times’ City Room blog last year, there are multiple theories as to why January 6 was chosen as his birthday, one that’s celebrated by his fans over at Sherlockian.net. Paul Singleton, a Sherlockian scholar, said that Christopher Morley (who helped found the Baker Street Irregulars, a group dedicated to the study of Doyle) came to his theory based on the fact that Holmes, who quotes Shakespeare often, only quoted one Shakespeare play twice — that being Twelfth Night, and therefore, Holmes was born on the 12th night of Christmas, i.e. January 6.

http://www.runleiarun.com/lebowski/ Pretty sure you need to be a fan of the movie to appreciate this one, but it’s really well done.  Check it out.

WALTER
In sooth, then, faithful friend, this was a rug of value? Thou wouldst call it not a rug among ordinary rugs, but a rug of purpose? A star in a firmament, in step with the fashion alike to the Whitsun morris-dance? A worthy rug, a rug of consequence, sir?

THE KNAVE
It was of consequence, I should think; verily, it tied the room together, gather’d its qualities as the sweet lovers’ spring grass doth the morning dew or the rough scythe the first of autumn harvests. It sat between the four sides of the room, making substance of a square, respecting each wall in equal harmony, in geometer’s cap; a great reckoning in a little room. Verily, it transform’d the room from the space between four walls presented, to the harbour of a man’s monarchy.

WALTER
Indeed, a rug of value; an estimable rug, an honour’d rug; O unhappy rug, that should live to cover such days!

DONALD
Of what dost thou speak, that tied the room together, Knave? Take pains, for I would well hear of that which tied the room together.

I never really got into the histories, during high school Shakespeare.  We read a selection of histories – I remember Richard II, and at least some of the Henry’s.  I don’t remember much about Falstaff.  I remember Richard II being a big deal because of the poetry. You know what I think the problem was?  Maybe it’s a high school curriculum thing, but we were taught the *history* first.  Like, “Here’s what was going on that Shakespeare was trying to write about … and here’s what Shakespeare wrote.” Snore. I know what I love about this stuff, and it’s the exact opposite of that.  Give me Prospero over Henry IV (that is, an entirely fictional construct over a historical one) any day.  I love talking about whether Gertrude had a thing going with Claudius before the play, and what Hamlet’s relationship was to his dad, and any other number of questions that Shakespeare never answered but yet go toward the bigger purpose of making the characters real.  Ironic, then, that I could care less if you start the lesson by saying, “Ok, this character here was actually a real person.” I will take the opportunity to note that “Julius Caesar” and “Anthony and Cleopatra” had a special place for me, because I was also a Latin geek.  I was all about the ancient history.  It was the history of England that I hated.   Anyway, here’s my big idea.  What if you took all that “here’s how the stories map to real history” stuff and just chucked it out the window?  Treat the histories like they’re entirely fiction, stuff that Shakespeare just made up out of his brilliant head.  A very large epic, like a Robert Jordan Wheel of Time sort of thing.  Just play after play that all sort of ties together, with a couple of overlapping characters. I know that there are history buffs that would *hate* that.  They’re the ones that are the exact opposite of me, they want to know every last detail about the political landscape when Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, where he snuck in the satirical bits and what he was trying to say.  That’s huge to them.  Heck, there’s an entire society out in the world dedicated to shedding the image of Richard III as a bad guy. But that’s not me.  I prefer fiction.  Let me read the story front to back, get into it, appreciate the characters for who they are, and *then* tell me, “This is based on true stories.”  Then you’ll have my attention.  But to do it the other way, and give me the boring *real* people first?  And then the Shakespeare creations?  Mistake.