Ok, somebody tell me how come I’d never even heard of Arden of Faversham, one of the “missing plays” of Shakespeare?  I’m familiar with Cardenio, Love’s Labour’s Won and Sir Thomas More, but Arden of Faversham is a new one on me.  Apparently it’s about the 1551 murder of Thomas Arden, mayor of Faversham, by his wife.    Anyway, a bunch of scientists claim to have proven once and for all that Shakespeare wrote it.  Using “computational stylistics” they’ve essentially created a fingerprint for Shakespeare’s style, and they say that the play matches with a high enough accuracy to state that it was written by the same man. Of course, nobody’s mentioning this idea that if you don’t believe Shakespeare wrote *any* of the plays, then this doesn’t really prove anything :).  What they’re really saying is that “Whoever wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare also most likely wrote this one.”

I may have heard of the Juliet Club before.  Something about answering letters written to Juliet about love and romance advice.  Apparently there’s a contest for the best one. Neat site, especially if you’re a Juliet fan.  They even offer a CD full of everything you could possibly want to know about Juliet.  

I’ve done this topic before, but Sonnet Writers has a nice article up that explains iambic pentameter graphically, putting the emphasized syllables in bold.  Some of it is a little borderline to me, obviously coming from the “sonnet writer” camp and not the Shakespeare camp, like where he says “Sonnet 30 follows iambic pentameter very nicely.”  Oh?  In which sonnet does he not do that, exactly?  And “there appear to be some exceptions” to the 5 (he says 10) iambs per line rule, although there are “logical reasons for these.”   Maybe he just said that wrong — they *appear* to be exceptions, but they’re not, and here’s why. Other than that, though, he breaks it right down to the individual syllable, explaining when some words run into others (“many a”, 3 syllables,  becomes more like “man ya”, 2 syllables) or the other way around, where “be-moan-ed” is 3 syllables but “van-ish’d” is 2.  

Even though I’ve never been a teacher of Shakespeare, I’m often pondering the whole “Why learn Shakespeare?” question, as if I might stumble across the answer.  After all, I took the classes in high school just like everybody else, and claimed to hate them just like everybody else.  But then I got to college and had to pick a humanities project, and found myself strangely drawn back to Shakespeare.  When a chance came to work with an educational videogame company and pick my project, I chose Shakespeare.  Before I knew it I was becoming quite the Shakespeare geek. But enough of that rambling, back to the topic at hand.  My memories of learning Shakespeare in high school are of the “broccoli” variety.  You can guess what I’m going to say next, right?  “Trust me, it’s good for you, just do it.”  Bleh.  Does that ever work?  I’m pleasantly surprised to see the universe looking out for me, as Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users has an article on exactly that topic.  She’s got a picture of broccoli right at the top of the article! The way to win the battle, the article goes on to say, is to invoke optimism and hope.  Emphasize the pleasure.  “Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear,” it says.  I think the best teachers know this.  Nobody is really hoping to say “Sit down and shut up, and just read the thing so we can get out of here.”  Every teacher I’ve spoken with goes out of their way to seek out games and quizzes and activities for the students to do, and inevitably breaks out the movie at the end of class.  They know that it should be fun.  I guess the real question is, does the fun outweigh the “you have to do it, it’s good for you” weight that comes with the subject matter?   Is the real hurdle not with the subject matter at all, but with some students’ instinctive rebellion against anything they’re forced to do?  Do calculus teachers have the same problem? Just some rambling thoughts on the subject so that I get them down.  Feel free to chime in while I get back to work.  

The Simpsons have done Shakespeare a couple of times. I’m not sure I remember this particular scene, though. Bart as Hamlet, Ralph Wiggum as Laertes. Here’s my mad face! Rrrrrrrr!