Tough year for Shakespeare on Boston Common, as it’s rained pretty much every night this week.  Has anybody actually gotten to see the show?  I was supposed to go Wednesday, but ended up going home sick from work (and it poured torrentially all night long anyway).  Right now the weather is good, and I’m scheduled to go with friends Saturday night…which is when the weatherman says the rain is going to start again :-/. Good year for Lear. 🙂 I am still emotionally scarred from the time we waited until the last weekend to see Hamlet, and it was rained out.  I sat in a restaurant in Boston until about 5 minutes before showtime waiting for the rain to stop, and when it did, I ran over to grounds to ask, “Is the show still on?”  They thought I was crazy. Last year’s Dream almost met a similar fate, although we chanced the drive into Boston in the hopes that the show would go on since the rain had stopped earlier in the day (if I recall, this was on their “Shakespeare Day” day for families, which was cancelled).  But we got there, and though the grass was pretty wet for sitting, the show did go on! Ever since Hamlet I’ve explained to my wife that I plan to see every show twice – once with her and friends as a social engagement, but once by myself, just staying after work, geeking out in my own little way.  I don’t care if the social event gets rained out (and I don’t think my wife and our friends do, either), but it will bother me very much if I don’t get to see the show at all.

Didn’t want this to get buried.  In a very old post about memorizing Shakespeare, an Anonymous reader asks,   I don’t imagine you would have any advice for someone playing Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well, do you?   Anybody help her out?

http://www.baltimoreshakespeare.org/Muse/ScaryFairies.htm I found this brief article interesting.  It’s all about how, prior to Shakespeare, “fairies” were actually scary little beasts that people feared.  It also puts Puck/Robin Goodfellow into a bit of context, for anybody why in the beginning of Dream one of the characters says “Hey, I know you!  You’re Robin Goodfellow!”  He is not a Shakespeare creation, although Shakespeare appears to made some changes to his story.

It’s the strangest thing, but “akfarrar shakespeare” keeps showing up very highly in my referrer logs.  I’m wondering if our own Alan K. Farrar has a fanbase I never knew about? 😉  Or if he’s just doing a huge amount of ego surfing!   🙂

http://www.aizawa.2y.net/sp/Tempest.htm Say it with me:  No matter how well, or how many different ways you translate Shakespeare, if you try to do it line by line, you are doing the source material a grave disservice. The value is in the *poetry* first and foremost, so if you take that away, then you’ve got no obligation to try and swap out the words (unless you happen to be doing a side-by-side, which most often people are not). Without the poetry, you’re left with plot and character.  So forget about the line-by-line stuff and just retell the story in your own way, if that’s what you really want to do.  If you want to get somebody interested in Shakespeare and you’re afraid of the language, that’s the way to do it.  Hook them with the story and the people, and then bring in the language.  Don’t take away the language and say “Trust me, the original is much better than this.”