A Bully Pulpit for Shakespeare

~ kj ~ 2 Comments

It’s Bardfilm! I’ve taken over Shakespeare Geek (the blog, not the guy) while he’s away.

In effect, I’ve seized this bully pulpit.

Teddy Roosevelt coined the term “bully pulpit” to describe the presidency. He meant that it was a terrific (“bully”) place to deliver important messages (“pulpit”).

Shakespeare uses the word “bully” quite a bit. When I was just thinking about it, the only one I could remember was “bully Bottom!” from Midsummer Night’s Dream, but he uses it a lot in Merry Wives of Windsor—and once each in The Tempest and Henry V.

He uses the word “pulpit” in only one play. Can anyone guess which one?  Hint: It sounds anachronistic, but it isn’t.

Give me your answer in the comments!

Fragments of Shakespeare

~ kj ~ Leave a comment

Bardfilm here!

I recently saw Baby Driver, and it had a tiny fragment of Shakespeare in it. Over at Bardfilm, I write a lot about Shakespeare and film, but sometimes the references are so tiny that they don’t merit a full write-up. But now that I’ve seized control of Shakespeare Geek, I can throw up something here quickly.

Yes, that was poorly phrased, but I’ll let it go.

In Baby Driver, one of the bad guys is searching for one of the good guys, and says, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”

So it’s the usual confusion of what wherefore actually means—it persists even though SG and I dealt with it in one of our Shakespeare Knock-Knock Jokes (for which, c.v.). In this case, though, I think it’s meant to be a marker of just how uncultured the bad guy is. It helps contribute to what makes him a bad guy. Not only is he a villain and a cad, he doesn’t even know what wherefore means!

Testing . . . Testing . . . Is this thing on?

~ kj ~ Leave a comment

Success!  It is I, Bardfilm, and I have hacked into Shakespeare Geek’s blog.

It wasn’t that hard. If you know the proper way to read the sonnets, you can find all sorts of cryptic material there.

In any case, when I learned that SG was away from social media for a while (for which, c.v.), I knew my time had come.

Now that I’m in, we’ll just have to see how I can shake (speare) things up around here.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride!

I’m Outta Here

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Mickey MouseHey all,

Just wanted to let you my faithful readers know that I’m going on vacation for a bit and will be absent from social media. That means no new posts, no Facebook, no Twitter, for at least a week or more.  We’re off to see The Mouse.

If anybody happens to be in the neighborhood and sees me — I’ll be the guy in the geeky Shakespeare t-shirt, almost certainly — don’t be afraid to say hi!  It’ll make a fun story.

I don’t expect there’s much Shakespeare related merchandise to be had, but you know that if it’s there I’ll find it. See you when I get back!

-SG

 

It’s Not Hamlet

~ duane ~ Leave a comment
Say what?

Regular readers know my opinion on the “Lion King is Hamlet” issue.  King is killed by his brother, son must go on hero’s journey and eventually regain the crown. Boom, Hamlet.  Timon and Pumbaa are kind of like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, other than the fact that they’re his friends and not spies for the bad guy, I suppose … and  Zazu is the Polonius character even though he doesn’t have any children, doesn’t end up dead…  you get the idea.  We focus on the facts that support our case and ignore the ones that don’t.  Like politics.

Well, the bombshell from the creators this week is that Scar and Mufasa aren’t brothers. That’s not how the dynamics work in lion prides.  They are not from the same gene pool.  Mufasa calls Scar “brother,” this is true, but you don’t need me to cite every time a Shakespearean character calls somebody “cousin,” do you?