Long-time readers will know that I’ve been going to Commonwealth Shakespeare’s performances on Boston Common for something like 20 years. (I actually just went back and counted – 20 shows, including this year’s!)

Last year I had the idea to bring my little bag of Shakespeare toys I’ve been creating over the years – 3d printed busts, stickers, magnets, etc… It was a huge hit. I was actually told that I bring joy. Made my day.

So this year I wanted to repeat the performance. I brought my bag of toys and began looking for my victims. Unlike last year, there didn’t seem to be many volunteers wandering around. In fact, I really saw only one young man who sort of wandered past us at least three times. But he clearly had a STAFF shirt on, so he counts. I called him over.

He maneuvered his way through the labyrinth of people on blankets, said hello, and asked how he could help us. I said, “Have a tiny Shakespeare” and presented him with his gift. He said, and I’m quoting here, “Oh wait are you serious? This is so fucking cool!”

Mission accomplished. We talked for a bit about our mutual appreciation of Shakespeare outdoors, how we had only missed 2 shows in almost 25 years, and how his friends were in the show. He thanked me again; I said Be sure to make your friends jealous.

I then scope out my next victim. There are three older ladies who have positioned themselves behind us, and I’ve definitely got at least 3 Shakespeares in my bag, but I never find the opportunity to break in. I don’t want to be rude.

I notice that the concession stand’s got no line at the moment. There are two volunteers sitting in stools behind a cart. I head over.

Seeing me coming, they say, “Hi, how’s it going? How can we help you?”

I place two 3d Shakespeares on the cart and say something like, “I thought you might like some tiny Shakespeares.”

Guy hops out of his seat and says, “Oh wait seriously? Are those those things? You’re the guy? We’ve heard about you!”

I sure wasn’t expecting that! I said, “Wait, what? You’ve heard of me? That’s different.”

The girl in the other chair nodded and said, “You’re kind of famous.”

I have absolutely no idea how these stories are connected. I don’t know if there’s a story that carried over from last year. Or if the one guy that I gave the first Shakespeare to this year actually did run around saying, “Look what I got!” I most certainly did not expect the reaction I got.

Of course, now I want more. I wish I’d brought more Shakespeares. I wish I were in a position to go to the performance more days. I wish I did a better job of marketing! There’s nothing about the Shakespeares that says “Shakespeare Geek” anywhere. When people ask my name, I’ll mention ShakespeareGeek.com, but it’s not like most people are going to remember that after the fact.

This year, I’ll be exploring ideas to make my little buddies a better marketing tool. If I can swing it, they’ll have NFC tags embedded so if you get it too close to your phone it’ll bring up my website 🙂 Or maybe I can create a URL shortener so that I can print it somewhere on the back. I’m definitely going to bring more – more colors, more sizes – and I’m definitely going to be way more proactive and obvious about giving them away. The idea crossed my mind about tying a little parachute to them and just throwing them into the crowd, but that probably….wouldn’t…..fly? I’ll see myself out.

Oh, how was the show? That’s the next post 🙂

Happy Shakespeare Day, one and all!

This year, I won’t be online much, as I’ve been invited to speak at the assisted living facility where my wife works. In other words, a room full of people whose average age is 95! I’ve already been once, and they liked it enough to ask for more. I’ll report back!

In the meanwhile I also wanted to say hi to all our new newsletter subscribers! I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’ve seen a surge of new readers over the past few weeks, and I’m happy you’re all here. There are 20 years of posts to explore, so I hope you find something of interest!

Making A Name For Myself

For a very long time, I’ve been Shakespeare Geek online. Google it, they’re all me. Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, etc, me me me. But after twenty years of doing that, I discovered a problem — Shakespeare isn’t my job. It’s my hobby. I’m actually a career software engineer. When I got laid off, it was a hurdle to take this huge social media audience I’d grown and realize that they couldn’t really help me. I needed to market myself differently.

https://www.duanemorin.com

Introducing my new Project Portfolio site. Here you’ll find everything I’ve worked on (complete or in progress), both Shakespeare and not. No matter how often you visit, chances are you’ve missed a few (or possibly forgotten them), We’ve got merchandise, a couple of books, a few games. And that’s just the Shakespeare stuff.

I’ve also got a few mobile and web apps. I’m very happy with my free Daily Gratitude app. I’m always trying to get more people to use that one.

This is also the site where you can find all my contact information in one place, both social (Threads preferred) and professional (LinkedIn).

What’s New?

Lately, I’ve been working on something a little different.

I realized there are a lot of dads out there—myself included—who are working hard at the day job, supporting a family, and then trying to build something of their own in the in-between time. Nights, weekends, early mornings. Hoping that maybe one day the “want to do” work can replace the “have to do” work.

And then it hit me: I’ve been doing that for over twenty years.

Being an empty nester doesn’t mean I’m done thinking about dad stress. If anything, it means I’ve got some perspective on how to survive it—and maybe do something meaningful along the way.

So I started putting those ideas together into a short ebook called Always Building. It’s about figuring out how to make progress when time is limited, interruptions are constant, and you don’t always know where to start.

There’s a free chapter available now while I work toward the full release.

If that sounds like you—or someone you know—I’d love for you to take a look. Early interest and feedback are what will help bring it the rest of the way.

Happy Shakespeare Day!

I don’t know how many posts I’ll make today. I queue them up as I find them, and often bang them out in real time during the day if inspiration finds me. In my younger days I’d do marathons, often posting two dozen stories, but I don’t think that’s going to happen this year. Like I said, I’ll be off learning from the near-centenarians! I made cookies!

(*) At least, I think I made cookies. That’s the plan. I tell you, this queuing up posts for the future is for the time-travelling birds.

Would you like to play a game?

Just in time for the holidays, it’s Bardic – Daily Shakespeare Cryptograms!

The underlying game is simple enough – every letter represents another letter. Flip all the tiles to reveal a Shakespeare quote! I’d say “famous” Shakespeare quote but by the time I’m done there’ll be 500+ quotes represented and some of them are going to be really advanced!

You’ve got up to 6 mistakes before the answer will be revealed, and you have to try again tomorrow.

Three hints available!

Don’t forget to share your wins and streaks on social media, so everybody can play!

Seriously, I’ve tried to take into consideration all the feedback I’ve gotten about my other games. This one does allow you to play different individual versions of the game, so you can always poke around if you’re bored rather than waiting for the next day. But only the daily puzzle counts toward your streak!

Board with Bardle?

Having Pairicles pains?

See if you can beat Bardic today!

It’s that time of year again! Every year, people ask me what Shakespeare gifts to get the Shakespeare Geek in their lives. My kids, especially, since, after 20 years of doing this, they’re running out of stuff to get 😁😁😁 Rather than just google “Shakespeare gifts” like you could do yourselves, I thought this year I’d focus only on gifts that I personally own and can recommend!

This post unsurprisingly contains Amazon affiliate links, meaning that the site may receive revenue if you end up clicking and purchasing something (at no additional cost to you).

Shakespeare Books

My first pick, given the timing, is Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. I reviewed it here last month, though I think it’s grown on me the more I think about it. The book is clearly better than the movie. I went into it with a real “What do you mean Shakespeare’s barely a character?” attitude, but somewhere along the way I *got* it and realized that’s the whole point. A point that the movie doesn’t get.

The next two are probably better as audiobooks, but your mileage may vary. Both Sir Patrick Stewart and Dame Judi Dench, two gods of modern Shakespearean acting, released autobiographies this year – Stewart’s “Making It So“ and Dench’s “The Man Who Pays The Rent“. Both are loaded with Shakespeare stories, as you can rightly imagine Dame Judi’s more so, because Sir Patrick’s got a lot of Star Trek to talk about. If you’d like to read my reviews, they can be found here and here. I can’t say which I liked better. I think Stewart’s is a more compelling story, being a straight autobiography. Dench’s is organized as a series of interviews with a lifelong friend of hers. But her voice is music, I could listen to it for hours.

Of course, I have to also plug my book, My Own Personal Shakespeare: Macbeth. But I’m not just saying that! My daughter had her Shakespeare epiphany in college when studying Lady Macbeth. The calls and texts (in all capitals) began, digging deeply into her new feminist icon. She asked me if she could get an edition of Macbeth to call her own, something she could mark up with all her thoughts, and an idea was born. Together, we created “My Own Personal Shakespeare” specifically for the truly dedicated fans, those readers who want to make their thoughts stand right there next to Shakespeare’s. We hope someday to make more titles in the series. (What play should we do next, do you think?)

For something a little different, I’m also going to mention Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I’ve seen mixed reviews on this one but I loved it. It’s about two videogame designers, and while it’s not a Shakespeare retelling, there’s plenty of Shakespeare content. If a book about a lifelong love story between videogame developers already sounds like your cup of tea, the Shakespeare parts are just the icing on the cake.

Shakespeare Games and Puzzles

We love jigsaw puzzles in this house. One year for Christmas, my wife got me The World of Shakespeare jigsaw puzzle, without realizing that I’d already bought it for myself! 🙂 Review here. It’s got scenes from the plays distributed throughout the scene, so instead of the classic, “I’ve got a corner”, “Here’s an edge” and “I’m collecting blue sky over here” you’ll honestly be saying stuff like, “This looks like Hamlet! Anybody seen a skull?”

For a different kind of puzzle without so much Shakespeare content but a whole different skill set consider a “book nook!” This 3d puzzle in the form of a cozy library (complete with a reading light) is intended to sit alongside all the Shakespeare books on your shelf. Of course there’s a Shakespeare Book Nook but really it’s just named Shakespeare. Though there are Shakespeare books on the tiny shelves! It’s really quite soothing to put together, though you will eventually need tweezers, especially when getting the stickers in place.

Shakespeare Apparel

Of course no post about buying gifts for Shakespeare Geeks would be complete without a link to the Shakespeare Geek Shop! I’ve been creating original designs for 10+ years now and there’s easily over 100 of them, available on t-shirts, hoodies, phone cases and pillows. Nothing bugs me more than seeing one of those “I would challenge you to a battle of wits…” t-shirts in the Shakespeare collection, That’s not Shakespeare!

Anyway, here’s just a sampling of our best sellers! Browse The Complete Collection Now!

I’m also a big fan of socks as Shakespeare gifts, though I don’t have any to offer in the shop (but the minute Amazon offers them, I will!) I actually have these, though there are many options available. Although if we put aside the “you can get everything on Amazon” thinking, the London Sock Exchange has an entire set of high-end Shakespeare socks that I would love to get for Christmas. And by high end, I mean $20/pair – the Amazon ones are half that. The London version actually sells a kit for over $100 where you can get them all. Fingers crossed that my kids are reading this post!

Everybody Loves Shakespeare Gifts

I hope that gives you some ideas for Shakespeare gifts based on my personal experience. Anybody who loves Shakespeare loves getting Shakespeare gifts; that’s been true for me at least for twenty years. I can’t wait to see what’s waiting for me this year. Hopefully, with the help of this post, there’ll be plenty of other Shakespeare geeks out there equally blessed!

Journey back with me, friends, to this Reddit post from two years ago, announcing Bard’s Arcana, a Kickstarter project to produce a Shakespeare Tarot Card deck. I commented at the time, noting my continuing quest to add a Shakespeare Tarot to my collection. Though a few have been printed over the years, they almost always fall out of print and become incredibly difficult to find. I was in. Despite my trepidation at the proposed launch date – December 2024!

Now jump to my post, from December 2024, asking where the heck the guy had gone. It was a long and bumpy road, to be sure. Definitely one of the worst Kickstarters I’ve ever backed. Turns out the guy was busy working on a regular retail version that will be available on Amazon. Because, you know, screw the people that backed you early on, right?

Anyway, here we are in October 25 and it finally came out. Shall we review? Here’s the box:

And here are some cards:

I mean, it exists, I guess? And that’s something. But I think the gold lettering was a mistake. If you actually plan to use these are something other than decoration, you’re supposed to be able to actually read them. On many of the cards, the gold lettering quote is on a dark background making it impossible to read unless you hold the card and tilt it to hit the light just right. Ironically, I think the creator said that the Amazon version doesn’t get the gold, like it was somehow an upgrade for us Kickstarter folks. I think the plain version will probably end up being the better one.

The illustrations aren’t anything to write home about either. These are far from the kind of thing you’d frame and hang on the wall.

Shakespeare Tarot

It’s nice that a Shakespeare deck exists. I’ve always wanted a deck where every card was a character. And I love cards where it clearly says what character and play we’re referencing, and the quotes are nice. There’s something to be said for that. I could totally use this by keeping it at my desk and just randomly cutting into the deck to see what character I get.

That just makes it barely worth the wait, though. I see no reason why the creator couldn’t have produced a better product, sooner.

There are affiliate links in this post to the pre-order on Amazon. I don’t exactly like the idea of rewarding the creators for such a poor Kickstarter, but my primary mission has always been spreading Shakespeare, and I know how much I’ve wanted a Shakespeare tarot. So I figure if you want one, at least now you have the opportunity to get one.