Decorate Your Life

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Today a coworker asked me casually, “Don’t you get sick of Shakespeare knick-knacks?”  He’d noticed my desk has, let’s see if I can get them all:

  • laptop decorated with Shakespeare stickers
  • business card with Shakespeare’s picture and “Not of an age, but for all time” catchphrase.
  • an old book, “Shakespeare Criticism 1919-1935”
  • Shakespeare teddy bear
  • multiple Shakespeare imagery postcards from “Behowl The Moon“, a successful Kickstarter that Shakespeare Geek readers helped get off the ground
  • Shakespeare bobblehead
  • Shakespeare action figure
  • homemade Shakespeare “Funko POP” figure
  • (what happened to my Shakespeare finger puppet?????)

“No,” I reply.

“Just wondering,” he said.  “I’m a Bruins fan, and everybody knows I’m a Bruins fan, but there eventually came a time when I had to tell people, stop buying me Bruins stuff, I’ve already got just about everything.  My wife’s the same way, she likes sharks, people know she likes sharks, but it’s like, enough already, stop buying me shark things.”

“I see it differently,” I replied.  “I call it decorating my life.  I don’t even necessarily use this stuff or read these books. But wherever I go, people who don’t know me can see, Shakespeare. And they ask me about it. And there’s a connection there that might not otherwise have been made.  I’m putting more Shakespeare out into the world, through that person.  Everybody wins.”

If you want more of something that you love in the universe, decorate your life with it.

 

Guest Post : The Wild Waves Whist by Erin Nelsen Parekh

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Back in September 2016, Shakespeare Geek readers helped make life better by backing Behowl the Moon, a baby board book based on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, into existence. I’m very happy to welcome back Erin Nelsen Parekh to tell us about her follow on project “The Wild Waves Whist”, using material from The Tempest.

Maybe you remember reading here about Behowl the Moon, the board book that turns two quotes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a story for babies and toddlers. There’s a second book up on Kickstarter now that would make it a series: The Wild Waves Whist, which steals two bits of The Tempest.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/172320179/shakespeare-for-babies-real-literature-to-read-on

The Wild Waves Whist will have more Shakespeare-certified animal noises, more rhymes, more funny old language, an island setting brimming with mystery and possibility. It will be a delight and a dare.

Many of you helped bring Behowl the Moon into being by supporting it on
Kickstarter. And once it was made, the pairing of Shakespeare’s words and narrative art caught a good bit of attention (link to http://drivelanddrool.com/press/). Behowl the Moon is just about sold out of its first printing and going back to press!

It’s not probably ever going to be a blockbuster—not every adult wants this kind of wordplay during storytime with a kid. Even if they did, lots of people grow up with no feelings about Shakespeare aside from vague, homework-induced distaste. But among those who love and respect the complex play of image and sound and meaning in Shakespeare’s work, Behowl the Moon finds the perfect audience.

The Wild Waves Whist
Back The Wild Waves Whist on Kickstarter now!

What actually happens when you mix small children and early modern English? My oldest, at two, told me we needed breakfast, “else the Puck a liar call.” A three-year-old remixes songs and quotes: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, and the wolf behowls the moon.” When I read for a group of kids, usually aged from about one to three or sometimes all the way to six and seven, they hiss for “’scape the serpent’s tongue,” clap on “give me your hands,” lay their heads down at “good night unto you all,” and happily roar, tweet, bray, hoot, and squeak whenever they get a chance. And everybody, everybody, howls.

Toddlers interact with a snippet of unadulterated Shakespeare just as they would any other kids’ book, remembering the bits they like the sound of, puzzling out what’s going on in the pictures, asking questions about the characters. They are hilarious and brave and unexpected. I have to make another one—just to see what they’ll do next.

If you can help me make this, by supporting the project, sharing the link, or telling a friend, you’ll get my endless gratitude—and we’ll get to find out what happens together.

What, Is There More Merch?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment
Look at that, I had a picture of Boatswain after all.

It dawns on me, as I sit here in my Tempest mood, that I’ve got almost 100 Shakespeare Geek designs in Amazon and RedBubble, but none of them have anything to do with The Tempest.

How’d that happen?

I immediately set about to remedy that problem when … I got stuck. I have no idea how to proceed! It’s easy to grab a quote and throw it on a shirt, but I think that’s just playing the “quantity over quality” rule and I don’t love that.  Maybe that’s why I’m not raking in the cash, either, but that’s never been my goal 😉  If I’m going to put up a design and ask people to spend real money to own it, I’d like to feel like I put some effort into it.

So, who wants to brainstorm with me? Amazon offers t-shirts and hooded sweatshirts, but RedBubble offers a larger selection of other merch – iPhone cases, pillows, blankets, journals, stickers, etc… so I can really do either.  If you’re a fan of The Tempest, what do you think would look good on merchandise?  A favorite quote?  One of our old jokes or hashtags games from over the years?

I suppose we could look into original artwork if somebody had a cool idea.  I’m already thinking about maybe digging into the public domain stuff and seeing if I can’t get creative with one of the old woodcut images depicting Prospero and Ariel.  Hmmm…

Who’s feeling creative? I promise I won’t nag people to buy it if we end up making it.  I just want to see some new designs flowing into the store, and
The Tempest is the biggest gap I see right now.  (Not a lot of call for Pericles merchandise.)

Let’s Hear It For The Boatswain

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Miranda and Ferdinand play chessI ran across a bunch of Tempest references last week, and was reminded each time how much I enjoy the opening scene. I was even trying to think of a gimmick post that would allow me to talk about my enjoyment of the boatswain character. I called it “One Scene Wonders”, but then remembered he technically appears at the end of the play as well.

Then I figure what the heck it’s my blog I can write whatever I want.

How much do you love Boatswain? From his opening “Cheerly my hearts! Yare, yare!” it’s like he’s got his own language and personality, even though he doesn’t even merit a proper name.

Boatswain

I pray now, keep below.

He’s also got patience.  First he tells his passengers, “Keep below.”  Then he politely tells them, “Stay out of the way, you’re doing more harm than good up here.”

Boatswain

You mar our labour: keep your cabins: you do assist the storm.

Then when Gonzalo goes and name drops the King, our hero does exactly what any worker would do when told the suits were coming.  He says, “If you can do it better than go right ahead, otherwise get out of the way.”

GONZALO
Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.

Boatswain
None that I more love than myself. You are a
counsellor; if you can command these elements to
silence, and work the peace of the present, we will
not hand a rope more; use your authority: if you
cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make
yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of
the hour, if it so hap. Cheerly, good hearts! Out
of our way, I say.

He’s not even done.  After complaining that his passengers complaints are louder than the storm, he sees them returning and asks, “Are you trying to get us killed?”  When Sebastian swears at him he says, “If you’re going to stay out here pick up a rope!”

Boatswain
Down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring
her to try with main-course.
A cry within
A plague upon this howling! they are louder than
the weather or our office.

Re-enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, and GONZALO

Yet again! what do you here? Shall we give o’er
and drown? Have you a mind to sink?

SEBASTIAN
A pox o’ your throat, you bawling, blasphemous,
incharitable dog!

Boatswain
Work you then.

This poor chap’s just trying to do his job and not get them all killed, and these sorry fools are all getting in his way.  Even Gonzalo has to acknowledge, “I like this fellow.”  Granted, I’m not sure it’s a compliment to say “I see him more fated to hanging than to drowning,” but we’ll take what little appreciation we get.

GONZALO
I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he
hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is
perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his
hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable,
for our own doth little advantage. If he be not
born to be hanged, our case is miserable.

All of Shakespeare’s openings are great, in their own way. I like this one because as far as setting the tone of the rest of the play goes (see Macbeth, Hamlet)  it’s really more about what Gonzalo says after Boatswain’s big moment, all that stuff about “give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground” because in the next scene we see the island.  So really the interaction with Boatswain is kind of extra, isn’t it?  Sure it introduces the bad guys and gives a taste of their personalities but there’s plenty of ways he could have done that. I’m glad he picked this one.

Anybody else love seeing this guy make his brief appearance?

Yare, yare!

 

The First Thing You Think Of

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

I saw a post on Reddit today that asked, “What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word Shakespeare?”

“Ooooo,” I thought, “This one’s right up my alley.”  I start mentally forming my response. I click.  I am disappointed to see everybody’s answer says nothing but “Romeo and Juliet” or “Hamlet” or something “Othello” or “Dream”.  I’m also disappointed to see that the post was put up 13 hours ago, so there’s no point in responding, as nobody will ever see it.  I only see it because I’ve got a search filter on Shakespeare posts.  I decide not to post.

Good thing, too, because before archiving the post out of my news reader I realize that the question was actually, “What is the first PLAY you think of when you hear the word Shakespeare?”  So they were all right, and I would have looked like an idiot. 🙂

So then I’ll ask and answer my own question here, because I can do that. What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word Shakespeare?

I’m grasping for the word I want but I can’t find it.  Hopefully somebody will grok what I’m saying and deliver me my word.  But for now I’m going to say it like this :  Eleven.  As in, “These go up to eleven.”  I’m not just talking about what Shakespeare the man accomplished, although that alone makes a worthy life goal (Shakespeare wrote Richard III and Romeo and Juliet by the time he was thirty, what have you done, and are children studying it four hundred years later?) I’m talking about the depth and intensity of what he put up on stage.  We’ll all feel at one time or another love, and hate, and ambition and grief and the whole host of human emotions.  And when we do there’s always some Shakespeare we can point to and say, “Yes.  That.  That is what this feels like.”

That’s what I think of.  What about you?