Why Do We Read?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

I suppose this post isn’t specifically about Shakespeare. But I am assuming that many (most?) of us enjoy the subject so much that we don’t limit ourselves to waiting for a performance, and are pretty familiar with the text. Maybe not every play, but for your favorites, I’m assuming that you’ve read them. Probably closely, and probably more than once.

Why do we read?
Words, words, words.

Why?

I run a virtual bookclub at work (which is really just a Slack channel where I brain dump the audio books I go through on my commute at a rate of about 2-3 per week).  We were bouncing around recommendations and a coworker asked what kind of things I like to read. I said, “I like stuff that explores humanity’s place in the universe, and our purpose in life, if there is one.  How an individual’s actions and motivations affect everyone and everything around him.  If technology is involved, AI and stuff like that, all the better.  But that’s extra.”

In a previous discussion on the same topic, though, here’s what I’d told somebody:  “I like books where you feel changed at the end. Most books I read, I’ll forget.  Sure they were entertaining for a little while, but if they don’t leave me with something that I’m going to carry with me, I don’t feel like I got anything of value out of it.”  I’m trying to figure out if that is the same answer or the opposite answer.

Either way, I got to wondering if the same logic applies to my love of Shakespeare, and I believe that it does.  Tell me that Hamlet and King Lear don’t perfectly fit both my answers above?  I tend to trivialize the comedies (just like I would for movies or television shows), but even a Midsummer or Much Ado has a certain depth that touches on what I’m seeking.  I don’t get that from Love’s Labour’s Lost, or All’s Well That Ends Well.  Maybe that’s personal opinion, or maybe there actually is something in one play that’s not in another that strikes a universal chord.  Who knows.

What’s your story?  Why you do this? What do you get out of it?

 

Shakespeare Wedding Season

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Remember when I wrote a book? Spring is peak season for weddings, and frequently I get traffic for people looking for Shakespeare wedding ideas. So I thought it was a good opportunity to revisit the story…

Has it been seven years? Man I forget how long it’s been that I’ve been doing this.  Then I realize that there’s probably a whole slew of readers who never saw the original project.

Back in 2010 I told myself, “Listen, take one of those ideas running around your brain and actually finish it.”  Ideas are the easy part.  Execution and completion are the hard part.  That’s the story of my life right there.  This was my pure will power effort to get something from the idea stage all the way to completion.

The result is Hear My Soul Speak: Wedding Quotations from Shakespeare. I’d been to one too many weddings where they trotted out Sonnet 116 again and I said to my wife, again, “Why can’t they ever recite something different? There’s so many Shakespeare wedding quotes to choose from.”  I read Sonnet 17, personally.  Actually I recited it to my wife during our first dance.Then it dawned on me that maybe it’s because they don’t know anything else to choose from. Everybody knows 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments…” by the way) probably because they heard it at somebody else’s wedding and thought, “I’ll have that at mine, too.”

Then it dawned on me that maybe it’s because they don’t know anything else to choose from. Everybody knows 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments…” by the way) probably because they heard it at somebody else’s wedding and thought, “I’ll have that at mine, too.”

Shakespeare Wedding QuotesSo I went through all the sonnets and quote databases I could, pruning out the not by Shakespeares (*), organizing them into how they might be used (the proposal, the vows, the guest book, the toast…) and explaining their context.

Hear My Soul Speak

The end result is a tidy little Shakespeare wedding quote reference book to use whether you’re getting married, in the wedding party, or just on the guest list.  If you’re in any of the above categories, check it out!  Shakespeare makes life better.

(*) Look, I love “I love none but thee til the stars grow old and the sun grows cold,” or however it goes, but it’s not Shakespeare. It’s Bayard Taylor.

Geeklet Sorrows (And A Confession)

~ duane ~ 3 Comments

Yesterday my daughter had an unexpected medical procedure on her mouth, so she’s in some degree of pain this morning (but not enough to skip school).  So she’s getting ready and I ask, “How’s your face?”

“Bad,” she says, “And now I have a pimple!”

“When sorrows come they come not single spies but in battalions,” I offer.

“That means a third bad thing is gonna happen to me now too! Great!”

“No, it was just an opportunity for me to use a Shakespeare quote I don’t normally get to use.  King Lear?”

Both wife and geeklet look at each other and just leave the room.

Didn’t feel right, though.  Couldn’t place who said it, or where.  So over breakfast I had to look it up.  “You know what?” I told them, “When I said that quote was from Lot of sorrow in King Lear, but maybe not battalions of it.?  I was wrong, it’s Hamlet.”

Geeklet looks at wife, looks at me, and says, “Well, duh. We just didn’t want to embarrass you.”

But now I’m trying to figure out what quote I was confusing it with, because surely there’s stuff in King Lear all about the piling on of sorrows.

There To Meet With … Captain Underpants!

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Drive-by geeklet story:

When your youngest is still just an 11yr old boy and your oldest are teenage girls sometimes sacrifices have to be made for going to a “family” movie.  This weekend we went to see Captain Underpants.  Bad choice. It’s getting surprisingly good results, but I think that even at 11 my son’s a bit old for the level of maturity required.  The audience laughed at every “Uranus” joke, but if I had to guess I’d say the average age was more like 8.

Coming out of the theatre my older geeklet announced, “I could have seen Macbeth! Instead I went to see Captain Underpants.  I think I lost brain cells.”

The local high school is performing Macbeth this weekend.  I knew that, but I’ve learned from experience that going to see a high school production of Shakespeare when you have no vested interest in it is a painful experience.  What I didn’t realize is that her friends invited her to go see their friends that are actually in it.

What I should have said was, “True, but which one do you think has more jokes involving bodily functions?”

 

 

You Mean You Don’t Have A Shakespeare Cookie Cutter?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Another school year draws to a close and we continue to be a Fortune’s fools as my oldest geeklet literally still hasn’t finished Romeo and Juliet yet.  Amazing.  She’ll be finishing the play, in theory, on her very last day of that class. She does, however, love the teacher.  And she thought it would be a great idea if she brought in Shakespeare cookies for the last day of class.  Because, of course, we have a Shakespeare cookie cutter.  Doesn’t everybody?

But, here’s the thing. My daughter is a) a total nerd who will jump at extra credit any chance she gets, and b) painfully shy.  So she’s excited about the idea and totally wants to do it, but also thinks that other kids will think that it’s lame and call her a nerd.  She asks what I think.

“I think,” I tell her, “That it would be completely in character.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re not the Shakespeare geek, and your teacher and classmates know that. You’re the girl whose dad is a Shakespeare geek.  So you bring in some Shakespeare cookies and say, I made these because of course my dad is such a geek he has a Shakespeare cookie cutter. Your teacher will love it because he knows that you’re the kind of student that does extra things like that, and your fellow students love it because free cookies. Everybody knows I’m totally the kind of person that has a Shakespeare cookie cutter.  I’m glad to have the opportunity to use it.”

Being the parent, though, my opinion only counts for so much.  So she starts texting her friends asking whether they think it’s a good idea, or it’s lame.  One of her friends writes back, “I think the teacher will love it and absolutely you should do it.”  I like her. She also knows she gets cookies out of the deal.

Is that playdough they used?

So we knocked out a dozen Shakespeare cookies.  It’s a big shape, and hard to transfer from work surface to baking sheet, so each one of them came out just a little bit warped.  My daughter’s running commentary the entire way, performing surgery as necessary. I’m tempted to start making Earl of Oxford jokes but I know she won’t get them.  So instead I say, “Make sure you let the kids know that these are Chandos cookies, and not the more well known Droeshout.”

“You say weird things,” she tells me.

“I know,” I reply.  “I do that on purpose.  Everybody already knows me as a geek, right? Everybody assumes that when the subject comes up I’m going to use words that people don’t know? I embrace that and run with it and make sure that’s true.  It’s entertaining for me. Always be true to who you are, you end up much happier for it.”

She’s bringing them in Monday morning, which I guess is when you’ll see this post.  I’ll report back with an update when I find out how they went over!