So here’s a thought that occurred to me the other night. Bear with me, this is a strange one. But what the heck, it’s my site, the whole point is supposed to be my ideas about stuff.

Lately I’ve been salting my food a lot.  Definitely when cooking regular entrees, but also seemingly odd choices, like peanut butter, or chocolate. If you haven’t tried it I highly recommend it.  Why?  Because, as the cooking shows will tell you, salt makes things taste better. The best way I heard it described was, salt makes things taste more like what they’re supposed to taste like.

Except, of course, if you use too much. Then your food tastes salty. And that defeats the whole purpose.

Ok, who sees where I’m going with this? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Shakespeare makes life better.  This is kind of what I’m talking about. You experience something. You give it a little Shakespeare. It becomes a better, deeper, more enriched experience. Sure, you can give your girlfriend a card for Valentine’s Day, or you can drop a quote from Romeo and Juliet in there. Someone’s getting married, or having a baby, and you want to send congratulations. Shakespeare’s got you. Or maybe somebody’s passed on, and you need to express your grief or condolences. Shakespeare can handle that for you, too.

Just like salt, too much can ruin it.

Not many friends are to be made if you
insist on speaking all your lines this way.

Not my greatest couplet but that was kind of my point.  Working some Shakespeare into your life isn’t supposed to be a challenge or a chore, it’s supposed to come naturally. If you have to force it, maybe change your approach.

My favorite part of this analogy is when you add the salt.  You add it at the beginning (or during). That brings out the flavor at every level.  If you add it at the end, after you’re done cooking, all you get is a surface layer.  So when’s the best time to teach Shakespeare? When a student’s formal education is approaching its end? Or right at the beginning?

Here’s a weird coincidence.  There’s a story this week about how actor Geoffrey Owens, perhaps most well known for his role as Elvin on The Cosby Show, was spotted bagging groceries at a Trader Joe’s.

I didn’t really pay much attention.  Hey, honest day’s work, right?  But then, by the magic of customized news feeds, I got a link to a Shakespeare acting class by Geoffrey Owens?

I’m not sure the timing.  I don’t know if the class is an older thing that’s no longer around, or if it’s a very small window of time and not a full-time job, or what the story is. I hope that, if he wanted to support himself teaching Shakespeare, he could.

It’s long been one of the go-to arguments of the authorship question.  Shakespeare’s work proves knowledge of certain topics and literary works. Therefore he must have had books for researching and referencing those topics.  We have no record of his books, therefore he owned no books, therefore he cannot have had that knowledge, therefore he didn’t write the plays.  Then again, as Bill Bryson pointed out in The World As Stage, there’s no evidence that Shakespeare owned pants, either.  Therefore he must not have. Surely he would have willed his pants to someone!

Apparently there are people who still hold out hope that a trove of books inscribed “Property of William Shakespeare” is going to turn up any day now.  A new book by Stuart Kells details his quest to find it.

While positing that of course Shakespeare had a personal library, the article only barely hints at what happened to it.  Shakespeare’s friend Ben Jonson had a fire at his place. Maybe Shakespeare gave Jonson his books, and they were all lost in that fire?  That’s the same kind of reasoning that the authorship people use.  “I have no proof this didn’t happen, and it supports my argument if it did, so…”

I support any research that turns up actual facts about Shakespeare. I just don’t know how many of those this guy is finding. Besides that, this particular author loses credibility with me for citing the story of Samuel Ireland and his son “finding” the letters and diaries of Shakespeare that “turned out to be forgeries.”  Yes – because Ireland’s son was the one who forged them. You forgot to mention that part.