Not So Great Shakespearean Deaths (The Game)

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

When I put the Great Shakespearean Deaths Card Game on my Shakespeare Gift Guide this year, I jokingly put it in the “Stuff I Want” category.  Well god bless my mom who saw that post and thought, “Hurray, my son published his Christmas list!” and immediately bought it for me.

Apparently it’s quite a popular choice this year, as a quick Twitter poll showed at least half a dozen people who could now include it in their stash as well.

The problem is, it’s not a good game.  You have no idea how disappointed I am to say that, but it’s only reasonable, as I’m disappointed in the game.

Each card represents a character death, explaining that death briefly, offering last words where the character had some. It also rates the death on a number of scales – gore, piteousness, fairness, speed of death, and a few others.  So far so good, a chance for people unfamiliar with any deaths other than Romeo, Juliet and Hamlet to learn about the lesser known characters like Enobarbus or “the fly” from Titus Andronicus (seriously? seriously).

If I understood the directions correctly – they’re written in a weird, pidgin-Shakespearean – everybody gets a face-down hand of cards, and can only play their top card at any time. When it’s your turn, you look at your top card, then pick a scale, presumably based on which one is best for that card. Whoever has the high score for that scale (normally you, since you’d pick your best scoring chance), you get the other players cards. If there’s a tie, those stay in the middle and you play again.  It’s basically “War”, the card game.  There’s no real strategy involved. Got a ten? Pick that one.

Has anybody else played it? Did I misunderstand anything?

My kids were bored almost immediately and clearly played only so I wouldn’t be sad that my Christmas gift was boring.  I meanwhile started thinking of ways to make it more interesting.  Here’s a few that we came up with:

  • Pick the category before you look at your top card.  That makes it entirely random, but at least you don’t just keep giving your cards to whoever had a ten for Gore and Brutality.
  • Play two-factor.  Choose two attributes (by dice roll if that’s easier), and you have to maximize your score across both.  So your ten coupled with a two isn’t going to beat somebody else’s six and seven.
  • Everybody gets to look at their cards, but at each turn roll a die to randomly determine which attribute will be played. That way you at least have to decide which card to play.
  • Everybody gets a hand of six cards. Your goal is to maximize your score by playing one card per attribute. For your turn you play it like Go Fish in reverse, offering up a card to see if anybody wants to trade.  For example say you’ve already got Richard III as a 10 in Last Words.  But you’re also carrying Hamlet, and you really need somebody with a better Speed of Death score.  So you’d say, “Does anybody need Hamlet?” without specifying his numbers – people have to learn who the good cards are.  If more than one person wants him, they can make their case – “I’ll trade you a Young Macduff” – and you decide who to trade with.  When everybody’s happy with their hand and either doesn’t want to trade or can’t find someone to trade with, total up your scores.
  • Play by poker rules.  Deal out five cards, try to match up the plays – “I’ve got a full house, three of Hamlet and a pair of Richard III.”

Those are just some ideas, some literally off the top of my head as I write this post.  There aren’t enough cards to play some of the games I thought of.  You’ll quickly be surprised with who is – and isn’t – in the deck, as well as how they’re graded.  This is covered in the rules, and there’s even a blank card to add your own.  A nice idea, but I would have preferred that they just make all the deaths.  It’s been popularized in posters and infographics, it’s not really a hard data point to get.  If there’s too many you could start lumping them together (like “Macduff’s Family”).

 

As You Can Take It Or Leave It

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Whenever we discuss Shakespeare’s best or greatest play, some folks will make the case for As You Like It.  Just yesterday on Facebook, in response to yesterday’s “The One Play” thread, one reader suggested that it is “at least as good as Hamlet.”

I don’t get it.

I don’t think it’s a bad play, necessarily.  But that’s not saying much, I’m not sure I’d say that any of them are bad.  But there are some that, if I never saw again, I think I’d probably be ok.  I’m not a Love’s Labour’s Lost fan, or All’s Well That Ends Well or Two Gentlemen of Verona.  There are other potential candidates, like Merry Wives of Windsor, that I’ve simply never seen live.

But other than general agreement that Rosalind is one of Shakespeare’s strongest female leads?  As You Like It is right in that “It’s fine, I guess” category for me.  There’s no real conflict or drama, the plot is ridiculously convoluted, the ending entirely unbelievable.  The only real laugh out loud moments for me come during the exchanges between Jaques and Orlando.

Give me Twelfth Night any day if you want a strong female lead dressed up like a boy.  That one’s not afraid to play with some dark edges, like what they do to poor Malvolio.  His ending certainly isn’t happy.  Does anybody know WTF we’re supposed to take from a character whose last line is, “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you”? That’s the kind of thing somebody says before coming back with an automatic weapon.

So let’s have the alternate argument?  We’ll call it the Battle for Cross-Dressing Shakespeare.  I suppose we can go ahead and throw in Portia from if you really want to go down that path, but I don’t really think of her as the “female lead” in the same way as a Rosalind or Viola.  But, your call.

 

The One Shakespeare Play Everyone Should See Before They Die, According to Experts

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

If you think you know what I’m going to say, I bet you’re wrong…

…because I have no idea how to answer that question.  I just get a kick out of that thing that happens in our brains that makes us compelled to click on subjects like that.

So let’s flip it. You, my local Shakespeare geeks, are the experts.  I don’t just say that to pander, although you are all looking simply smashing today.  I say that because I learned a long time ago that most if not all of my readers know more about Mr. Shakespeare than I did, and perhaps ever will.

So how do you answer the question?  Make your case.  Let’s here your single choice (no fair saying all of them), and your cred for where your opinion comes from.  If this post ever took off (as clickbait titles often do!) then plenty of people who don’t know their Cymbeline from their Coriolanus will be coming looking for actual advice, so let’s give it to them.

I’ve used this example before, but I used to work with a lady who was an English teacher in her former life.  I asked if she was a fan of Shakespeare. She replied, “If all evidence of human civilization were wiped off the face of the Earth except for one book, that book should be King Lear.”

I’m not going there, though. While I think King Lear is probably the best thing Shakespeare wrote, I don’t think that it appeals equally to all people at all stages of life.

For my vote I’m sticking true to form and going with The Tempest. It’s far from Shakespeare’s most well known, but I think it’s under appreciated.  It’s got a simple enough story line that you can introduce it to children (far, far simpler than A Midsummer Night’s Dream!  And it also has fairies.  Kind of.) But much like King Lear it can also be revisited later in life as a parent’s reflection on getting old, watching children grow, retiring from your pursuits and freeing yourself from the bonds you forged in life (sue me, I saw A Christmas Carol this weekend…)

As for cred, well, you’re looking at it. Shakespeare Geek has been live since 2005 and still pulling in a good number of visitors every day, so we must be doing something right. In that time I’ve raised three children on Shakespeare, so I very much practice what I preach. They seem to be doing ok with it.

HBO’s Gunpowder : Did I Call This One, Or What?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

This summer when we got “Will” on the TNT basic cable network for 10 episodes, I said:

We watch a man’s intestines pulled out.  Another has what I believe was some sort of hot poker shoved down his throat.  Great, we get it, we live in a world where to go against the crown is to risk torture.  But you could just as easily have said “you risk losing your head” and had the same effect. Unless you want an audience turned on instead of off by that sort of thing. If I wanted that I know what channel Game of Thrones is on.

So imagine my surprise to read about HBO’s new Game of Thrones topper called Gunpowder, which at first I thought would be a western but turns out to be about, oh look!  Elizabethan England.  Specifically the Gunpowder Plot.

At first it looks as thought the young priest will be merely hung, but after he is hung, he is brought down, still breathing, and drawn and quartered. It’s…a lot.

The entire linked article is about how audiences are getting sick at this one and asks whether it’s too much.  Are they serious?  From that description, I already saw it earlier this summer.  What else you got?

Oh, and in case you were wondering about the sex to go with your violence? After all, Game of Thrones isn’t just about people getting their faces ripped off by dogs, it’s about people getting naked.  HBO’s still got your back with other people’s fronts:

So then we see what happens to the elegant older woman and the sweet young priest — and it truly is revolting. The woman is publicly stripped down for all to see, then slowly crushed to death between weights and a small, sharp rock.

But then again, so did Will:

But as I told one friend, “I didn’t realize that people were allowed to get that naked for that long.”  Seriously, it made me wonder whether they were going in and digitally erasing bits, because there’s literally nothing for them to strategically hide anything behind.

I guess the only difference between Gunpowder and Will then is … Will?  I checked the cast on IMDB, and none of our merry band of playwrights is mentioned.  My hope for humanity crumbles by the minute, though I’m not surprised.  Recipe for a successful show is more nudity, more gore, and less literature and historical accuracy.  Sigh.

I suppose having Jon Snow never hurts a show’s chances, though.

The Better Death Game

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Kit Marlowe got a great death regardless of which story you believe – stabbed in the eye during a bar fight?  Faked his own death because he was a spy for the crown? Both awesome.

Shakespeare, on the other hand, likely got a really bad cold.  Maybe it was after a night of heavy drinking when his friends carried him home, maybe not.

So, here’s the game – write Shakespeare a better death. You get to change any details you want, including where he is (or isn’t) buried, and when.  What kind of dramatic end should we give him?  Did he have issues with his daughter’s husband, who had him killed? Did he sell his soul? Did the witches finally come for him?

The more creative (while still remaining about as feasible as any random Oxford theory you’ve heard), the better!