A funny thing happened the other day while discussing with my daughter. I discovered a book I’d written on the subject and completely forgotten about.
For years I’ve daydreamed about writing my own “intro to Shakespeare,” a fantasy that has evolved over time. My hard drives are littered with half-hearted starts that never went anywhere because I always talked myself out of it. Either I didn’t have the audience, the audience I wanted was already saturated, or I just plain wasn’t qualified. Finding excuses not to do something is easy.
But at some point, I sat at the keyboard long enough and wrote a complete-ish guide to The Tempest. It only goes about 17 PDF pages and is maybe 5000 words. But it has an introduction, a conclusion, and some actual structure in the middle. It’s even got pictures 🙂
Now I’m trying to decide what to do with it. I don’t expect that, by itself, I can just say “Here world, enjoy!” But I also know that I don’t need 50,000 words to throw something out on Amazon that people might find worth reading.
That’s where you come in. I’d like to send it to a few people who’d be willing to give some constructive criticism about what I might do with it – content to add, mistakes to correct, fine-tuning to …tune. I do not need an academic redlining, believe me. I’ve already got 99 reasons to forget the whole idea. I’m looking for supportive folks who’ll help me actually do something with this instead of giving me more reasons to forget the whole idea.
My real motivation for doing this is because both my girls want to be writers, and both of them suffer from terrible anxiety about letting the world see their work. I’m using this as an opportunity to throw something out there and show them that not only does the world not come to an end when other people read your stuff, but they might actually get some value out of it.
If you’re interested, please drop me a line at duane@shakespearegeek.com and I’ll send you the PDF. I’d like to get into an email correspondence with anybody that’s got feedback to offer, I’m not looking for just comments here on the blog post.
A couple of times recently I saw people asking for advice on how to read Shakespeare. Normally this turns into people telling them that Shakespeare was meant to be performed, not read. So what they should do is to go find a live production of the play they were thinking about reading and watch it instead.
I’ve always hated that response. I don’t think that anybody in the history of that question has ever meant, “Hey, I’ve got a choice between seeing a live production of this play, or reading it, what should I do?” If somebody wants to read Shakespeare, why are we trying to stop them? Either they are a student who has to, or are trying to learn more on their own. I think we should be encouraging that, not trying to talk them out of it.
To that end, I’ve come up with a new recommendation that I’m going to start using. I call it Speed Reading Shakespeare. I can’t say I’ve taken it for a spin yet personally, but I look forward to doing so because I can’t see why it wouldn’t work.
Let’s pick a play as our example. Shall we say A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
Great. I’m going to assume that you have, or can get your hands on, a reasonably modern edition of the play. By that I mean it should have some degree of footnotes/glossary, modern spelling, and just in general be more approachable/readable than going straight to the First Folio. That can be fun, too, but it’s not for beginners.
Ok, awesome. Now go get a movie version of Dream. Preferably several. This is most likely easier than it sounds – a quick search tells me that there are two versions streaming on Amazon Prime right now (the 2016 BBC version, and the all-star 1968 Peter Hall version). But a little searching on Hulu, YouTube, and other streaming sources will no doubt reap benefits.
Is live performance better? No, not for this project. First, there’s the real world limitation that maybe Dream isn’t playing someplace convenient for you. But more importantly, you can’t pause live theatre. If you are unfamiliar with the play, then you are guaranteed at points to say, “Wait, what did he just say? I’m lost.” Sitting at home with the remote control, you’ve got that under control. 30-second rewind button to the rescue!
Here’s the fun part, though. Ready for the magic? Turn on the subtitles.
Would you look at that! Now you’ve got your own personal production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream being read to you, all while sitting comfortably in your living room with your copy of the script, a bowl of popcorn and your Snuggie.
I’d love to say, “Just have the play open and follow along with the movie.” There are a few reasons why this doesn’t work. First, you’re constantly taking your eyes off the screen to read, which breaks your ability to understand the flow of the story. Second, any production you see is going to edit. They’re going to change words, they’re going to give lines to other characters, they’re going to cut large sections. If, every time they do that, you have to spend a few seconds saying, “Wait, where are we?” you’re just going to get lost.
Watch the play this way. If you have the opportunity to see multiple productions, watch all of them. You’ll discover immediately that you can spot where the productions differ (in terms of what they cut) because sometimes you’ll be saying “Wait, the first one said X Y Z and this one didn’t” or “I don’t remember the first one saying X Y Z like this one just did.” If you get lost or confused, don’t be afraid to pause and rewind.
Now, after you’ve done this, now go read the play. Suddenly it will all start to make sense because it’s not just words on the page. You’ll have sounds and images in your head to go with the words. If you’ve watched a few different interpretations you can even start to understand the characters. Maybe you think, “The Demetrius I saw in the first one delivered this speech much funnier than in the second one, in the second one he’s really kind of mean and I hate him.”
Wait, you’re perhaps asking, how is that speed reading Shakespeare? Going through a couple of movies, reading it, then watching it again? That’ll take hours. Days.
Well, yes. Speed reading is not “Go through it once, very fast, and you’ll absorb everything.” Speed reading is about making multiple passes through the material. You then use each pass to better structure your understanding of the material. The next time through you’re “filling in the gaps” you missed the previous time. The first time you watch the play you’re trying to follow the words but you’re mostly just getting the story – who are these people, and what are they doing? Watch it again and you know the people and the story, so you pay more attention to the words.
I think, after going through this exercise, you’ll have a much better understanding of the play than if you (a) sat down and read the No Fear Shakespeare version, or (b) found a live production and suffered through that. I’ve got a version of King Lear that I have to get around to watching, and I think I’ll try my subtitles trick. I’ve read Lear and seen multiple productions, but I’m curious whether that trick gives me deeper insight into the text. I’m betting it does.
I recently talked myself into reading the biography of Robin Williams. It wasn’t a question of whether I’d enjoy it. I loved the man’s body of work. It was more a question of whether I was prepared for the inside story of his end.
But we’re not there yet, I’m less than half way through. I want to talk about his Shakespeare. I think anybody that followed the man knew he had some Shakespeare in him. He attended Julliard, for starters, and was known to drop Shakespeare references throughout his improvisations:
He also, of course, played Osric in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.
What I did not realize is that he *started* with Shakespeare. His Malvolio received rave reviews. I did a little digging, and look what I found!
This image is from 1971. I only wish I could have found the complete review! I did get a pointer to it, but it was behind a subscription paywall so I gave up on that idea.
But then! I found something even more exciting. The book talks about a Western production of Taming of the Shrew that Williams was part of. I won’t say “starred in” because it looks like he played Tranio, not exactly a major role. And guess what? There’s video! Unfortunately, there’s no audio so all you really get is Robin Williams in a cowboy hat standing around in the background.
I’m about halfway through the book now, well past Mrs. Doubtfire and Dead Poets’ Society, so I’m pretty sure I’m not going to see any more live Shakespeare credits. But I was very excited to learn about a few that I never knew!
Ok, ok, I couldn’t bring myself to title this post Some Dick Research, but that’s what I want to talk about. This post is going to be PG-13, fair warning.
Not being familiar with Richard III cover to cover (and wanting to change that because I’ll be going to see it at the end of this week), I wondered, “Did Shakespeare ever make the obvious joke there?” We often talk about how he wasn’t afraid to make a dick joke, so when his main character is named Richard, did he go for it?
The best I can tell (and by that, I mean searching the open-source Shakespeare for the obvious), he did not. The only reference I see is here:
‘Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.’
But then I thought, “Well, was it common to abbreviate the name Richard as Dick back then? Maybe it came later.” But that’s not accurate because I knew that Henry VI Part 2 has a character, Dick the Butcher (most famous for his “First thing we do let’s kill all the lawyers” quote).
I also noticed something interesting in Henry IV Part 1:
Sirrah, I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers; and can call them all by their christen names, as Tom, Dick, and Francis.
I’ve always heard the expression as “Every Tom, Dick and Harry,” but… is that where that comes from? Does Shakespeare get credit for that?
I could google all these things, but it’s more fun to have a discussion. Was Dick a common nickname for Richard during Shakespeare’s time, and was it also a euphemism for other things? I’m leaning toward some combination of no because you’d think there’d be more such puns in the works, and I just can’t find them.
On a related but different note, is he the first to use that Tom, Dick, and Francis/Harry thing? When did it turn into Harry?
I love it when Shakespeare comes up at lunch. We were talking about with a coworker who’d been in Midsummer, and I asked whether his production had been on the light and glitzy side, or touched on some of the darker bits. This might be the play that kindergarten kids get to dress up as fairies, but it’s also the play where a husband drugs his wife and sends her off to be with an animal until he gets everything he wants.
Which led to this question. I’ve seen “Best Marriage in Shakespeare” done before (and we’ve done it here), and the Macbeths often win that one. They’re made for each other.
So how about the most dysfunctional? Define that however you like.
I am going to go ahead and disqualify Othello right off the bat. If you actually kill your wife during the course of the play then it’s just too easy. And that goes for both Othello and Iago in that one. Claudius gets a pass because that was an accident.
Kate and Petruchio? Whether or not you intrepret the play’s ending as happy doesn’t necessarily mean that their relationship is a healthy one. What about the Twelfth Night couples? When you realize that the person you married isn’t the person you thought you were marrying, can you just roll with it and end up happy?
with my daughter. I discovered a book I’d written on the subject and completely forgotten about.
