Some Richard Research

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Ok, ok, I couldn’t bring myself to title this post Some Dick Research, but that’s what I want to talk about. This post is going to be PG-13, fair warning.

I found an article about this new teenage adaptation of Richard III (kinda sorta) that chose to call itself Teenage Dick.  (Clicked that link, did you?  Now you’re on a list.  Have a seat over there… )

Not being familiar with Richard III cover to cover (and wanting to change that because I’ll be going to see it at the end of this week), I wondered, “Did Shakespeare ever make the obvious joke there?”  We often talk about how he wasn’t afraid to make a dick joke, so when his main character is named Richard, did he go for it?

The best I can tell (and by that, I mean searching the open-source Shakespeare for the obvious), he did not. The only reference I see is here:

‘Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold,
For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.’

But then I thought, “Well, was it common to abbreviate the name Richard as Dick back then?  Maybe it came later.”  But that’s not accurate because I knew that Henry VI Part 2 has a character, Dick the Butcher (most famous for his “First thing we do let’s kill all the lawyers” quote).

I also noticed something interesting in Henry IV Part 1:

Sirrah, I am sworn brother
to a leash of drawers; and can call them all by
their christen names, as Tom, Dick, and Francis.

I’ve always heard the expression as “Every Tom, Dick and Harry,” but… is that where that comes from?  Does Shakespeare get credit for that?

I could google all these things, but it’s more fun to have a discussion.  Was Dick a common nickname for Richard during Shakespeare’s time, and was it also a euphemism for other things?  I’m leaning toward some combination of no because you’d think there’d be more such puns in the works, and I just can’t find them.

On a related but different note, is he the first to use that Tom, Dick, and Francis/Harry thing?  When did it turn into Harry?

Most Dysfunctional Marriages in Shakespeare

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I love it when Shakespeare comes up at lunch.  We were talking about with a coworker who’d been in Midsummer, and I asked whether his production had been on the light and glitzy side, or touched on some of the darker bits.   This might be the play that kindergarten kids get to dress up as fairies, but it’s also the play where a husband drugs his wife and sends her off to be with an animal until he gets everything he wants.

Which led to this question. I’ve seen “Best Marriage in Shakespeare” done before (and we’ve done it here), and the Macbeths often win that one. They’re made for each other.

So how about the most dysfunctional? Define that however you like.

I am going to go ahead and disqualify Othello right off the bat. If you actually kill your wife during the course of the play then it’s just too easy.  And that goes for both Othello and Iago in that one. Claudius gets a pass because that was an accident.

Kate and Petruchio?  Whether or not you intrepret the play’s ending as happy doesn’t necessarily mean that their relationship is a healthy one. What about the Twelfth Night couples?  When you realize that the person you married isn’t the person you thought you were marrying, can you just roll with it and end up happy?

 

 

 

Aglets Came Before Shakespeare

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Mention the word “aglet” to children of a certain age (and their parents) and they’ll all point to the Phineas and Ferb episode that drilled the word into our heads forever:

If you have no idea, and don’t feel like clicking that, an aglet is the name of that hard little thing at the end of your shoelace that keeps it from fraying, allowing it to easily thread through the holes.

So why, I wondered, was there a post saved in my newsfeeds this morning entitled “This Post Will Change Your Life” and featuring a picture of aglets? I have several automatic services that search for Shakespeare references and save links so it’s not unusual to see random things in my newsfeed, but this was a new one.

I assume that it’s a throwaway reference that’s just noise, like how every time somebody mentions Gwynneth Paltrow they inevitably say “Academy Award-winning Shakespeare in Love actress” but I click anyway and see this:

Before the invention of buttons, they were used on the ends of the ribbons used to fasten clothing together. Sometimes they were formed into small figures. Shakespeare calls this type of figure an “aglet baby” in The Taming of the Shrew.

Wait, what?  Now I’m thinking this is a humor piece and that’s a joke, praising the eternal usefulness of the aglet.

But we check these things, and, would you look at that…

GRUMIO

Nay, look you, sir, he tells you flatly what his
mind is: Why give him gold enough and marry him to
a puppet or an aglet-baby; or an old trot with ne’er
a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases
as two and fifty horses: why, nothing comes amiss,
so money comes withal.

Learn something new every day.  In all the years I’ve been reading that play I never made the connection.  Now I can just picture kids in high school being forced to read Shakespeare, glossary in hand, and thinking, “Aglet baby?  That sounds like that thing on the end of your shoelace. THAT can’t be right.”

A G L E T! Aglet!

No Google, Bill Weasley Was Not In Romeo and Juliet (That I Know Of)

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Here’s a funny story that provides a glimpse into my daily life.

I’m sitting at work in the kitchen and we’re discussing just how good Google has become at predicting what you’ll search next.  We’re playing a game where we click a few links deep into something, then announce what we want to look up next, then start typing a search term one letter at a time and see how many letters you get until Google guesses it (for my examples it seemed to average 3).

Cut to a separate conversation about Star Wars and how Disney basically turned space nazis into merchandise.  I noted this is especially true in episode seven, “the one where that Weasley brother is standing up in front of them all losing his mind.”

None of us can remember which Weasley, though, so I google.  I type D…O….M…. and then laugh and announce to my coworkers, “I guess google knows me too well, do we want to see him in Romeo and Juliet or Midsummer Night’s Dream?  Actually I never knew he’d done either, so thank you google, that’s a blog post right there.  Have to come back to that. Let’s see, Dominic Dromgoole, IMDB…”

“Domhnall Gleeson is his name,” a coworker corrects me.

I knew that, once he said it. But at DOM Google had assumed I meant Dominic Dromgoole, former artistic director for Shakespeare’s Globe. I didn’t even notice when I clicked through.  Score one for Google.

 

 

Let’s Hear It For The Folger

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While I was in Washington D.C. recently I told the story of my daughter’s disappointment at not being able to get the book that, unbeknownst to me, she’d been waiting six years for.

Being a dad I knew I had to get that book, so I put the word out to you good folks and the leads immediately started coming in.  My daughter knew exactly which one it was. For that, if you’re one of the folks who went searching, thank you.

Before going to bed that night I checked my email and much to my surprise found a note from Matthew, manager of the Folger Gift Shop, who wrote, “Saw your post.  Is it one of these?” along with several links (including the one we wanted), as well as links to the publisher of some titles that they did not currently stock, but could get.   (I see that he also came back and commented on the blog post as well.)

On top of that he said they’d even include free shipping!  Which was awesome, because if we’d manage to get the book right there while we were in town, we wouldn’t have had to worry about that additional expense (which can sometimes be almost as expensive as the book!)

The book is on the way.  Thanks Matthew and the Folger gang!  Outstanding customer service.  If you’re ever in town be sure to visit, and pick up a souvenir 🙂