http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jhZfSZI4djl_MxnRykC5lZzlBMYQD97NUG9O4 Happy Birthday Mr. Shakespeare!  And, you know, Happy Death Day, too….I guess. Quick AP link to other stuff that happened on this day.  Some big, some small. Other folks who share this illustrious birthday:

Actress-turned-diplomat Shirley Temple Black is 81. Actor Alan Oppenheimer is 79. Actor David Birney is 70. Actor Lee Majors is 70. Irish nationalist Bernadette Devlin McAliskey is 62. Actress Blair Brown is 61. Writer-director Paul Brickman is 60. Actress Joyce DeWitt is 60. Actor James Russo is 56. Filmmaker-author Michael Moore is 55. Actress Judy Davis is 54. Actress Jan Hooks is 52. Actress Valerie Bertinelli is 49. Actor Craig Sheffer is 49. Actor George Lopez is 48. Rock musician Gen is 45. U.S. Olympic gold medal skier Donna Weinbrecht is 44. Actress Melina Kanakaredes is 42. Rock musician Stan Frazier (Sugar Ray) is 41. Country musician Tim Womack (Sons of the Desert) is 41. Actor Scott Bairstow is 39. Actor Barry Watson is 35. Actor Kal Penn is 32. Actress Jaime King is 30. Actor Aaron Hill is 26. Actress Rachel Skarsten is 24. Tennis player Nicole Vaidisova is 20. Actor Dev Patel ("Slumdog Millionaire") is 19. Actor Matthew Underwood is 19. Actor Camryn Walling is 19.

Normally this is the sort of thing one might do on an anniversary, but I don’t have one of those coming up and I do have Shakespeare’s birthday.  So I thought I’d take a quick trip to the past and visit my *first* post to ShakespeareGeek.com… —————————————-

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 08, 2005

Shakespeare ala Wikipedia

at 10:00 PM If you haven’t yet visited the Wikipedia page for Shakespeare, I highly recommend it. It’s not like you’re going to find any new information that you couldn’t find anyplace else. But here it might be better organized than anywhere else. Who knew about the "questionable" plays? I knew about the existence of Cardenio, which is more "lost" than "questionable", and The Two Noble Kinsmen, which I got into an argument with my neighbor about (I lost, arguing "I have several copies of the complete works and there ain’t no Noble Kinsmen in it!") I’m talking about plays like Edward III or Sir Thomas More, two plays which scholars think might have been collaborated on by Shakespeare.
Of course the entry itself is link-heavy enough to keep you interested in pretty much any direction you wish to go. Elizabethan history? Shakespeare contemporaries? The actual text of the plays? All there. —————————————— Wow, one small step there, certainly.  Link Wikipedia, how brilliant :).  How things change in four years.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090421142316.htm Heavy on the science geekery, this article looks at strict comparative analysis of all known (and considered) portraits of Shakespaere, most notably the Cobbe, Janssen and Droeshout.  Includes a pretty cool montage of Droeshout and Cobbe. Their conclusion, and I have to admit I have not fully understood the details of how they arrived at it, is

…that this clearly indicates once again that, only pending further research into its early history, can the Janssen portrait be admitted to the select company of genuine Shakespeare portraits; and that it cannot in all possibility be a copy of the Cobbe portrait. On the contrary, Janssen may have served as the model for the Cobbe.

When I’m really bored and looking for content I skim the sonnets.  This time it is #141 that caught my eye, in particular it’s similarities to the famous #130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”): CXLI In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted;
Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee alone:
But my five wits nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves unsway’d the likeness of a man,
Thy proud heart’s slave and vassal wretch to be:
  Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
  That she that makes me sin awards me pain. Most of this sonnet seems to go over similar themes about the gap between physical qualities and emotional attachment.  The poet’s explaining that it’s not her looks – he could pick out 1000 things wrong with her.  Nor is it the sound of her voice (makes you think that “music hath a much more pleasing sound” straight out of 130), or her smell.   It seems downright rude to say “I’d rather not be in the same room alone with you, stinky.” But yet nothing in his five senses can stop him from becoming completely entranced by her, transforming into a shell of his former self (“likeness of a man”).  Here’s where I get lost, though – the final couplet.  I count my gain that she that makes me sin awards me pain?  So she *makes* him sin, which sounds like a bad thing, and she “awards” him pain, which also sounds like a bad thing, and yet he counts this his gain? Somebody enlighten me.  Preferably without getting into a debate about ink splotches on the original page. 🙂

Why is it that on so many documents from Shakespeare’s time we’re left with just initials, and have to guess at the intended? For one we have Saint Peter’s Complaint by Robert Southwell, inscribed thus: “The Author To His Loving Cousin Master W.S.” thought to be one William Shakespeare. Second and more famously is the dedication of Shakespeare’s sonnets to “Mr. W.H.” People here go so far as to say “Oh, that’s reversed – it must be Henry Wriothesley, that’d make sense.”  That’s right up there with arguing that perhaps it should have been a G instead of an H, for example.  With one simple twist you could make 2 letters into whatever you want.   But my question is, what’s up with all the initials?  Why did people sign and dedicate things like this?  The cost of print too high? Something to do with all the class and religious warfare going on, that sending a direct dedication might often have sent the wrong message and thus needed to leave some room for mystery?