http://www.googlelittrips.org/ I don’t have Google Earth installed, but I can see where this would be a very creative addition to the study of classic literature. How does geography play out in Macbeth? When Macduff says “I’ll to Fife” where is that? Where exactly is Birnam Wood? You get the idea. You have to dig a little bit for the Shakespeare, but I found a Macbeth in the 9-12 section. Somebody with Google Earth download one of these and see what it’s about, if it’s just a map or something more animated.
King Lear and Copyright
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090621124054133 Any story that opens up with “So I was goofing off….” will either be interesting or really pointless. This one is somewhere in between, and argues that well known point that since Shakespeare borrowed liberally from existing known works, that under current copyright law he would have been sued out of existence. First and foremost it’s worth noting that this argument is about as valuable as saying that he’s a bad speller according to today’s dictionary. He had no spelling rules to work with, so you can’t go applying rules that didn’t exist for him. With that in mind, it presumes a world in which, even with all this copyright law, Shakespeare still would have gone ahead and stolen the works, which is ridiculous. There is one sentence that addresses the point:
If Shakespeare had plenty of money, he could have contacted all the copyright owners and paid them whatever they asked, but if he didn’t have enough money, the result would have been he would have been unable to afford to write King Lear.
which goes back to my first argument – you’re setting up a completely hypothetical situation. Everything I’ve read tells us that Shakespeare was indeed a very shrewd (some would say penny-pinching) businessman who knew the rules of his own game well enough to garner multiple revenue streams through his writing as well as his ownership stake. Let’s think about *that* Shakespeare in this modern world. First of all he’d get a piece of the action everytime somebody wanted to print his work, so right there’s a nice piece of change to work with. When somebody like Thorpe comes along and tries to publish the Sonnets without permission? Then he’s the one getting smacked down, and Shakespeare reaps the profits. We’re not even getting into extended media rights for movies, cable tv and so on. I think that the best assumption is Shakespeare would have been a very rich man indeed. Having said that, I feel pretty confident in saying that he’d be the type to not only get all his paperwork in order and purchase the existing rights, but to invent new forms of contract that would allow him maximum return on his investment.
The Monty Python of His Day?
http://myfivebest.com/five-things-you-may-not-have-known-about-shakespeare/ I’m obligated to click on any link that promises a list of stuff we may or may not have known about Shakespeare. Typically I either knew it already, or it’s a list that just spouts out some typical urban legends that nobody really knows for sure about. So I’m happy with this list that starts out with Venus and Adonis and then moves right on the Love’s Labour’s Won (pointing out that it is probably another name for Shrew) and Cardenio, adding that it might have been written by Humphrey Moseley? There you go, I learned something. The middle – about the shotgun wedding, and all the words and cliches added to the English language – are pretty standard stuff. Then it ends again with more detail than you usually find, including credit to David Garrick for bringing Shakespeare out of obscurity 150 years after his death.
A Midsummer Night’s Lorax
I won’t be the first person to compare Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss. I just wanted to point out something that clicked in my head the other day and freaked me out a little bit:
| I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in: And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes, And make her full of hateful fantasies. |
At the far end of town where the grickle-grass grows And the wind smells slow and sour when it blows And no birds ever sing excepting old crows Is the street of the Lifted Lorax. And deep in the grickle-grass some people say If you look deep enough you can still see today Where the Lorax once stood, just as long as it could, Before somebody lifted the Lorax away. |
Those sound nearly identical to my ear. Dr. Seuss was even closer to Shakespeare than I think people realize. [And for the record, how brilliant is that opening? It’s my favorite Seuss. Look at the alliterative work – grass grows…smells slow and sour when it blows…birds ever sing excepting old crows… I’ve got about half that book memorized.]
Hot Girl, Bad Article
http://vipchain.com/2009/06/18/megan-fox-says-no-more-tattoos/ One of the many, many ways that Shakespeare geeks can count themselves lucky is because of Megan Fox’s tattoos. I think I find this more sad than funny, but the article above – which basically says that the poor girl’s covered enough of her body with ink, thank you – also says this:
…Including An Inscription On Her Right Shoulder Blade. It Reportedly Is A Reference To Shakespeare’s King Lear And Reads: “We Will All Laugh At Gilded Butterflies.”
Reportedly? Actually it is an *actual* Shakespeare reference. The text is a bit wrong, true, but I don’t think that word reportedly means what the author thinks it means. Am I being too picky? Ok, how about this one:
The Tattoos May Have Led To Comparisons With Megastar Angelina Jolie, Who Has Least A Dozen All Over Her Body.
May have? Way to take a stand.