Who wants to hear about my visit to first grade? I’m happy to say that I did not chicken out, I did not “plan B” it (that would be “Harold and the Purple Crayon”).  I really did walk into a room prepared to read Shakespeare – The Tempest, ‘natch – to a group of first graders. I came prepared with: * My bust of Shakespeare (tiny one, maybe 6” high) * Shakespeare action figure * Shakespeare pop-up Globe Theatre * Three copies of The Tempest – Shakespeare Can Be Fun, USBorne, and Manga. * Printouts of scenes from the play, to use as takeaways   Nobody recognized Shakespeare by sight – thought he was Abraham Lincoln.  But when I said his name, a bunch of hands shot up.  Apparently the “Magic Treehouse” books are popular, and there’s a Shakespeare edition of one of those. They also understood “400 years ago” when I said “Between Columbus and the Pilgrims.” My favorite student is the one who fed me the straight line, “What kinds of stories did he write?” giving me the opportunity to say, “Oh, well, he wrote about kings, and armies, and wizards and witches and ghosts and shipwrecks and sea monsters…” “And princesses?” one girl asked hopefully. “…and princesses, and princes and sword fights and weddings and happy endings…” I added.  Couldn’t have played that one better.  They seemed to quite love that. They *loved* the action figure.  Played with him the whole time. Didn’t fully understand the Globe Theatre.  Thought it was cool as a popup, and if I’d had more room to work I would have explained to them that they were the audience and I was the actor, but I had to basically show it and put it away. The story itself was difficult, as I expected.  The concept of “I will read passages, but some of it I’ll just tell you, so we can get through it” was confusing to them.  They kept asking, “Can’t you just read all the words without skipping any?”  Some kids thought it would be better to read every word, but then to only get as far in the book as we were able.  But, I persevered. Problem #2 was the attention span.  While I knew I would get interruptions, I had no idea how many (or how annoying).  Some were trivial, like “My name is Alana, that sounds like Alonzo” or “My brother is 14, you said Miranda is 15.”  But there’s always that one kid who, with the introduction of every character, “Is he good?  Is he bad?” over and over again, no matter how many times the character is brought up.  I mean, I’m 2/3rds the way through and I say Prospero.  “Is he good?  Who is he?”  You want to explain to this child that if he actually paid attention to the answers to his own questions he wouldn’t have to ask the same ones over and over again. Problem #3 was the concept of good and evil.  They haven’t finished the unit on Nietzsche yet (they couldn’t get beyond it, *badump*), so I had to explain every character in the black and white of good, or bad.  Sebastian, fine, we’ll call him bad.  But what about Alonso?  He did a bad thing in helping to get Prospero kicked out of Milan, but in the end he repents.  I made the mistake of saying “Everyone on the ship was basically bad guys” and then when Ferdinand shows up (I forgot!) they’re all “Why does Miranda like him?  You said he was a bad guy.”  D’oh.  Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano I got away with calling “loopy on too much medicine.”  One girl surprised me by saying, “Were they on drugs?”  So I explained that no, not drugs – but that they’d lost that tiny little cup you’re supposed to use for just a little medicine, and that now they’re drinking it straight out of the bottle, and look what happens when you do that! Last problem was one of pictures, which I kind of expected.  In the version of the book I used, different people wrote each picture.  So in one, Caliban is green.  But in another he is orange.  Likewise with Ariel who sometimes looks like a butterfly, sometimes like a fairy, heck, sometimes a girl and sometimes a boy.  Though I tried to explain this, hyping the whole idea that this was an imagination story and that you had to decide for yourself what you thought each person looked like, I still got “Now who is that?” for orange Caliban even when green Caliban was just 2 pages ago. We ran half an hour anyway! And even then I only really got to the harpy scene.  The teacher for the next segment came in so I had to wrap it up, and basically did the “Prospero comes out and says Haha, I’m alive!  I want my kingdom back! And then Miranda and Ferdinand say “we’re getting married!” so everybody celebrates.  Prospero tells Ariel that she can have the island, throws his magic books in the water and sails away to go play with his grandbabies.  The End.” Overall?  Glad I went for it.  I would much rather get a semi-positive response to Shakespeare than a resounding response to some random book off the shelf.  I even told the kids “If you like this story you have to remember to go home and tell your parents to get you some William Shakespeare, and your parents will be all Huh? What?”  Given a better understanding of what I was walking into, though, I think that I would much rather talk about Shakespeare for half an hour, then feel like I had a specific book I was trying to get through, you know?  Ask me to talk on the subject and you can’t shut me up (as I’m sure you’ve noticed).  But bringing a book makes it rigid, and you feel like if you do not get through it, then you will have failed.   I may even have tried that today, but technically this is supposed to be “celebrity reader” and I had no idea if the teacher wanted me to specifically focus on reading (rather than performing) something, so I didn’t think I had that option. Next time.

http://geek.shakespearezone.com/?p=1777 I love this because I knew exactly what he was talking about the minute I heard it.  Fan’s of geek fantasy movie “The Princess Bride” should recognize the reference as well – that no matter how great the legend, there is no one “Dread Pirate Roberts.”  It is a role, filled by rotating players. One answer to the authorship question does suggest exactly this, that “Shakespeare” was more a brand than a person, and numerous playwrights took turns (for whatever reason) writing under that name. I don’t know that it has any more merit than any of the other theories, but it does seem the most flexible.  When the facts don’t fit for play X by playwright Y, just insert a different playwright!

http://www.usposttoday.com/jesus-and-princess-diana-lead-poll-of-dead-people-we-most-want-to-meet/ Ok, Jesus I can see in the top spot.  Even if you’re not the religious type you have to figure that the guy must have done something to have his own religion. Our boy Shakespeare is #3 on the list.  I can’t figure out the rest, though. #2 is Princess Diana?  Really?  I’ve never understood that.  I think my feelings for Princess Diana were summed up the day, a few weeks after her death, I was at the garage and saw a woman reading Diana’s biography.  In conversation this woman told me, “You know, I never really knew how much I idolized Diana until she died.”  Doesn’t that tell you something?  That maybe it’s *because* she died that you are so enamored of her life?  That, you know, when she was alive she wasn’t that interesting to you? #4, strangely, is Albert Einstein.  On the one hand I’m impressed with the intelligence of a readership who wants to meet Einstein.  But at the same time, how many of these people do you think are scrambling go to hear Stephen Hawking speak?  Last is Marilyn Monroe.  Honestly, I think that other than getting to ask “Are you sleeping with both the Kennedy boys?”, I can’t see why she’d be on the list.

So I think I may have mentioned, I went in to my daughter’s preschool class to be a “celebrity reader” a few months ago.  Not wanting to push my luck with the Shakespeare (and not having a version handy that I would consider appropriate), I went with the modern Shakespeare – Dr. Seuss . I was a big hit. Well my oldest daughter is in first grade, and also has a similar “parents feel welcome to come in and read” program which I have studiously avoided.  First graders, for those who aren’t parents, are far wilder than preschoolers.  Much less likely to pay attention, much more likely to say “You stink” or “We hate this book” if they had this book, or, you know, if I stink. But school’s coming to a close and I may not get the chance to do this again, so I break down and tell the teacher I’ll come in this week. BUT!  I have a plan.  I head to Amazon and grab The Tempest : For Kids (Shakespeare Can Be Fun series), even getting the extra shipping to make sure it shows up on time.  This series has a number of things going for it: * written by an elementary school teacher, for her students * written in rhyming verse, ala Dr. Seuss * illustrated by her students, ages 7-8 (which I guess makes them more like second or third graders) Now, I’m getting into it.  I’ve got visions of bringing my now several versions of this story and letting them be passed around the class while I read from this one.  Heck, maybe I’ll even bring my Shakespeare bust and sit him down on the desk with me. But this is where my schemes gangs aft agley.  Book arrives, and it is indeed beautiful.  Brightly illustrated on every page, not just with images but with paraphasings of key passages. But *dense* with text.  This book is over 60 pages long, with 10+ full sentences on each page.  For 6yr olds that is a tremendous amount of information, and there’s no way they can meaningfully follow the story if I attempt to read it in one sitting.  I even tried to time it, and reading quickly – without interruption for questions – it would take me near to half an hour to get through the thing.  Heck, I was on 9 minutes before we even saw Caliban! In short, there’s no way I’m reading this to my daughter’s class.  Even though it’s written by a school teacher I’d now call this the kind of thing she could read to them over multiple sittings, not as one drive-by by a random parent who they won’t see again, Although my daughter and I found a replacement book today (Harold and the Purple Crayon), I haven’t given up hope.  I will either dig up my Usborne version and see if I think it’s good enough to keep their attention (from what I recall there aren’t enough pictures, and still too many words)., or if I have the time and energy if I can actually paraphrase this one down to just a sentence or two per page, so I can keep the pictures and still get the story across in about 10 minutes.

http://obit-mag.com/viewmedia.php/prmMID/6043 There’s actually no Shakespeare in this list.  That is, until the person in the comments mentions Orson Welles in Chimes At Midnight!  That’s a Shakespeare geek right there, let me tell you. But it does bring up the question of doing our own list.  Who in the movies has done the best Shakespearean death scenes?  Gibson’s Hamlet, or Olivier’s?  DiCaprio’s Romeo, or … that other guy’s?