What many new readers may not realize is that this blog existed in a different form, long since offline, before even June 2005 when Shakespeare Geek was born.

Yesterday I was looking for the story about the very first time I told The Tempest to my daughter as a bedtime story.  I remember how it went, how they knew Shakespeare as “the name of the song that Daddy’s phone plays” because I had David Gilmour’s Sonnet 18 as my ringtone.  She asked me who Shakespeare was, and I told her that he wrote the greatest stories anybody has ever written.

I found this post in my offline archives, from June 20, 2005:

I want my kids to learn Shakespeare, just like I want them to learn about computers.  But at 3years old, I have to pick and choose what Katherine is exposed to.  So if I’m going to pick the first play for her to learn, which should it be? 

The tragedies are all right out because she doesn’t get the concept of people dying yet. 

I think The Tempest is perfect.  One of the main characters after all is Miranda, a naive little girl.  Sure, maybe she’s a teenager in most interpretations of the play (and, I believe, according to Prospero’s math), but I don’t think that matters in fairy tale rules.  All the princesses always end up getting married to a prince and living happily ever after in those.  And that basically happens here, too.

So, it must have been after that :).  But check it out, from January 8, 2006! A story about finding some Shakespeare books at a dollar store.

“Before leaving I came up with Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear (!), and The Tempest. I’m particularly pleased by those last two, because I am not nearly as familiar with the plot points of King Lear as I would like (who is?), and I have in the past attempted to tell The Tempest to my daughter as a bedtime story, and having a mini freeform script of the play in a pocket reference like this will possibly help me succeed in that attempt.” 

In June I was thinking about it, and by January I’d done it.  My plan was in full swing, apparently, by August 2006 when we went to see Taming of the Shrew with some friends in Boston. The poor woman made the mistake of telling me that Shrew was better than Hamlet, because people like comedies, not dark depressing stuff.  No, wait – it gets worse:

“Know what else I hate?” this woman continues, perhaps not realizing or caring how much she has fallen in my eyes. “The Tempest.” 

“I’ve read The Tempest to my 3yr old as a bedtime fairy tale,” I tell her. 

“And did she understand it?” 

“She asked me for it. Repeatedly.”

I don’t know if they ever found her body. 🙂

I was thinking today about how often people accidentally lump Mercutio in with the Montagues, since he’s a friend of Romeo and doesn’t hold much love for Tybalt. That’s of course not true, otherwise his “A plague on both your houses!” would make no sense.

Casual audiences forget that Mercutio is actually a kinsman to the Prince himself. It’s pretty easy to forget, because … tell me again how it plays into the story?

I was trying to figure this out. Mercutio needs to be neither Montague nor Capulet, that’s clear. But Shakespeare could have just given him no affiliation. He doesn’t have to be related to the Prince, does he?

What about Romeo’s banishment? The Prince walks in to the bloodbath that was Tybalt/Mercutio/Romeo. He’s told that his kinsmen Mercutio is dead, murdered by Tybalt. Tybalt, likewise, is murdered by Romeo. Romeo’s gone.

The Prince, despite having promised execution for anybody that disturbs the streets again, decides on banishment for Romeo. How much do we think this decision has to do with the fact that it’s Mercutio we’re talking about? If Tybalt had murdered, say, Benvolio…then what? Does the Prince still call for banishment, or Romeo’s head?

This is the only place I can think of where the relationship between Mercutio and the Prince might have played into the story. Is there another one?

I don’t know why this article exists – it has neither header nor footer telling me, and the headline is merely “Shakespeare” – but the author provides a bullet list of nothing but a bunch of anecdotes about actors performing Shakespeare.

Some favorites:

• While working with Sir Donald Wolfit, Eric Porter ran into a problem at a school matinee performance of “Macbeth.” Wolfit disliked schoolchildren’s giggling during a performance, so he told the schoolchildren before the play started that there was absolutely no reason to laugh during “Macbeth.” However, Porter was playing the porter, who is a humorous character, and he said afterwards, “I had to stand on my head, practically, before I could raise a giggle!”
• While performing Shakespeare in the open air in Africa during the late 1960s, actress Judi Dench received a scare one night. She looked at the audience, saw the silhouette of a figure with horns, and thought, “The Devil’s here!” The horned figure turned out to be a goat that had wandered into the audience.
• Fred Astaire was not a reader. He once asked his son-in-law about the story of “Romeo and Juliet.” His son-in-law explained that it was like “West Side Story.”

No idea if they’re all true or what, I’m just fascinated by the random compilation that I stumbled across.

I had no idea about this one. The CW Network has a new series “Star-Crossed” which looks to be a sci-fi spin on Shakespeare?

At 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 17, The CW takes a new swing at the “Romeo and Juliet” idea with the sci-fi drama “Star-Crossed.” Aimee Teegarden (“Friday Night Lights”) and Matt Lanter (“90210”) star as Emery and Roman, a human teen and an alien teen who share a childhood bond … and perhaps more. When Emery was 6, an alien spaceship crash-landed in her small town. Not willing to assume that visitors from another world who suddenly show up are there to cure cancer and promote world peace, the indigenous human population battles the aliens, called Atrians.

It sounds, from the rest of the article, like only the lightest of connections. But, still.  Once upon a time this blog used to be about pointing to all kinds of different modern culture Shakespeare references, and if they’re trying to get an R&J vibe for their new show, that certainly counts.