It’s articles like this one about Shakespeare’s experience at sea that I really enjoy.  Simple premise — Shakespeare didn’t know how much time was meant by the nautical concept of a ‘glass’. Evidence — passages from The Tempest and All’s Well That End’s Well seem to indicate that he thinks it means one hour, when actually it means half an hour. Conclusion — Shakespeare never went to sea.  Or, at the very least, he was not an experienced sea-traveller. (They do offer up the possibility that he travelled once in his life and simply forgot the specifics of the term over the years). Real conclusion — <em>For believers in “alternative Shakespeares”, the sea-glasses are more of a crux. The 17th Earl of Oxenford and Sir Henry Neville, to take two popular current candidates, each crossed to the continent several times. Oxenford, according to his partisans (though non-Oxenfordian scholars disagree), even sailed with the English fleet opposing the Armada, subjecting himself to the discipline of a sailor.</em> Ha!  

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, have you gotten the gifts and arranged the flowers yet?  Don’t wait til the last minute to order the flowers, you’ll pay through the nose. As far as gifts go, Luxist has Ten Ways To Say I Love You, which is actually a box of gold-tipped chocolates accompanied by Shakespeare love quotes. If you’re more of a do-it-yourselfer, buy whatever chocolate you like and then head on over to Clusty where you can search for ‘love’ references in all of Shakespeare’s work and pick your favorite.  You’d better get started, though – there’s lots of them!  Luckily Clusty offers a nice categorized breakdown for your browsing pleasure. Personally I might go with something from Sonnet 153, which we spoke of previously.  I like that image of “my mistress’ eyes” being just the thing to rekindle Cupid’s fire.  

http://www.jasperfforde.com/hamlet.html I thought this “quiz” was cute enough to link.  I’m a type B – way too analytical to be a good Hamlet.  I should practice long pauses and just saying whatever comes into my head.  Make sure you click on the other “services” at the top of the page. I didn’t realize it at first, but these pages are actually hosted by <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=jasper%20fforde&tag=suchstuff-20&index=books&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325″>Jasper Fforde</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=suchstuff-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1″ width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />, creator of the Thursday Next series of novels that I’ve blogged about several times.  In the fourth book of the series Hamlet is a major character, so I have to assume that these pages were some sort of viral campaign to draw attention to that.