I’m in the middle of a book right now, The Idiot by Elif Batuman, and while I can agree that it’s a very well-written book that deserves that praise it’s getting … I’m not enjoying it. It feels like homework. If I was back in college and this was required reading? Fine. I can read some chapters and then come to class ready to discuss the relationship between Selin and Ivan. But I’ve been out of college twenty plus years, I read things because I want to, not because I get a letter grade.
I was thinking about what to say to my book club at work and my first thought was, “I’m not about to go reading War and Peace for fun, either.” Then I thought about that for a second and realized, “But for me, King Lear is pleasure reading.”
We often talk about the difficulties of reading Shakespeare and trot out the old “see the play!” cliche. But what about actually sitting down to study a play? How many of us get the chance to do that once we’ve left school? I suppose if you’re active in a theatre group you can do that, but I’m certainly not. Most of my friends (barring my online following) barely get my references, let alone have interest in discussing the symbolism in The Tempest. I feel that once you’ve missed your window to study certain pieces of literature, you’re unlikely to get another shot at it. (In my adult life I also went back to read Catcher in the Rye and, more recently, The Great Gatsby. Both had that same feeling of, “Ok, I can see why this is good, but … I don’t love it.”)
Most of us probably have easy access to all the plays (the text, at least) and can read them at will. But which did you *study*? Where a group of students sat with a teacher and went through the deeper intricacies of the play? More interestingly, which *didn’t* you get a chance to study, that you wish you did?
For me, it’s Richard III. Never seen it live, and can only say that I’ve read it in the sense that twenty-five years ago I read all the plays. Never “studied” it, and certainly never had anybody walk me through the finer points. I feel a gap in my understanding of Shakespeare’s works as a whole, because of that.
Who else? Tell us in the comments which play you want to go back and study like somebody was going to quiz you on it.
I think that, as a general rule, if you know more about Shakespeare than the average person, chances are that’s also true of a broad number of categories. You’re likely to be good at general knowledge stuff. Which also, if you’re like me, means that people want you for their trivia team. I always hope that Shakespeare questions are going to come up, just to watch the other team throw their hands up in the air in exasperation like ‘Seriously?? He gets a Shakespeare question?!’
If I’m right so far, then is everybody out there playing HQ Trivia yet? It’s the latest mobile app craze (literally, they don’t even have a site for me to link to) that’s gaining in popularity faster than Pokemon Go. The catch is it’s free to play, and you win real money. Got your attention yet?
The app/game’s about as simple as it gets. They play roughly twice a day, at fairly predictable times – 3pm and 9pm in my experience. This is a live streamed game. A video host comes out and talks to you. If you’re not logged on within a couple minutes of the start time, you get to watch but not participate. As one newspaper article commented, “It’s like the next evolution of what used to be called appointment television.” Now instead of being on your couch at 9pm on Tuesday to watch Seinfeld, you’ve got to be on your phone, surrounded by your smart friends.
12 questions, 3 multiple choice answers for each. Get just 1 wrong, you’re out (but then you’ll want to watch the rest of the game to convince yourself that you did in fact know all the other answers). But! There’s a way you can get extra lives to keep playing. More on that in a moment.
Get them all right, you split the prize with other winners. That’s the other catch. The prize, typically $2000, sounds great! But on average over 200 people are going to complete the game and you’re going to get a share somewhere south of $10. When you have over $20 in winnings, you can get a real payout of real money. They’ve also had several special event games where the prize is much higher. I think the New Year’s Eve game was something like $18,000 in prize money.
It’s frustrating as heck, and you’ll spend the entire time saying ‘Why am I doing this?’ but you’ll get hooked just like everybody else. The process is unnecessarily long — did I say the game starts at 3pm? I meant, “You have to fire up the app at 3pm, and then the game starts … and some point in the future, once their algorithm has determined that the number of people joining has leveled off.” So you might wait 5 minutes, or 15. But then, the game st….well, no, not yet. Because here comes the video host to talk to you! It’s a game show. They’re cheesy, it’s what they do. And just like for all game shows he’s going to explain the game as if you never played. But at least it does add some variety to the game, as it is live (so they’ll do things like comment on the chat window) and sometimes surprising – last night, Jimmy Kimmel hosted.
Eventually though you do get to the game, and being as simple as it is, it’s hard to mess up. Question with three answers comes up, click an answer within 10 seconds, get told if you’re right or if you’re eliminated. No special preferences, really only one screen. Basic basic. But oh so addicting.
I haven’t actually had any Shakespeare questions yet, though I did have a Harold Pinter one.
Ok, so! About those extra lives. That’s how they get ya, as the saying goes. It’s a referral program. If you sign up because I convinced you, then you can put in my name (which is, of course, ShakespeareGeek) and I’ll get an extra life – which means, basically, another strike. There’s no collecting them or anything, no choice. If I get a question wrong, but I had an extra life, then I keep playing – and my extra life count goes down. So what I’m hoping is that I’ve intrigued a bunch of you out there to try your trivia brains for a shot at some real money, and you’ll hook a brother up by remembering to add ShakespeareGeek as your referral code. Of course, once you’re up and running, you can share with your own friends and have them use your name. Pay it forward, yo.
How Do I Get It?!
Ok, here’s the links. It’s been out on iTunes for awhile, but only recently showed up for Android. Sometimes it’s a little buggy on both sides, but in general I haven’t had a problem (my kids use iTunes, I use Android, and side by side they’re near identical).
HQ Trivia Android Link
HQ Trivia iTunes Link
That’s it! Get to downloading, remember to add ShakespeareGeek as your referral code, and I’ll see you in the next game!
I’ve often spoken of how, once people meet and get to know me, Shakespeare is in their lives forever. Months or years later, regardless of how often I might see them, I’ve now got that connection. So I’ll get Facebook messages or texts with links to something Shakespeare and a note, “Saw this and thought of you!”
So there’s this friend of mine who I worked with for five years, who actually went off to pursue his dream project and started a school (you don’t hear that too often). He texts me yesterday to let me know that one of his humanities professors has a Shakespeare book (well, chapters in a collection) coming out.
Given the guy’s name I went googling. I saw his bio for the school, but I also saw an Amazon author page. Click. Blah blah blah, thirty year veteran of stage and screen, award winning script writer … seems like this could be the guy.
He’s also got a couple dozen ebooks, the first of which is described as “an erotic fantasy, two souls in one body.”
Well that’s different, I think. But hey, it’s not my business. What people do on their own time doesn’t bother me. I figure they did their due diligence, they know what their employees are up to, they made the same call.
“I think I found his author page on Amazon,” I text my friend. “Little surprised to see the erotic fantasy pop up, I have to say.”
“HOLY SH*T!” comes the response.
Apparently not 🙂
“Maybe I have the wrong guy,” I reply. “Australian fellow?”
My friend confirms, with great relief, that I’ve got the wrong guy. But for a minute there I thought Shakespeare was about to get some dude fired who I never even met!
If I scheduled it properly and my software behaved, you should be reading this while I’m sitting up in New England under about a foot of snow.
How often does Shakespeare make a storm of some sort a major plot point?
The Tempest, duh.
Twelfth Night needs to deposit Viola in Illyria to get started, so a shipwreck seems as good a reason as any. But does the description of how they went down count as a storm, or was it just bad luck at sea?
Poor Antonio’s ships in The Merchant of Venice. Or am I misremembering that? Do we get much of an explanation about how all of his ships go down? I think I’ve always just assumed a storm but not sure my evidence.
Macbeth opens with thunder and lightning. And then there’s Macduff’s description of the night before he arrives at Macbeth’s castle, where it all hits the fan.
King Lear on the heath. I didn’t realize the power of stage directions until I went back and looked and saw how many scenes say, “Storm still.” That is a huge storm.
If you think you know what I’m going to say, I bet you’re wrong…
…because I have no idea how to answer that question. I just get a kick out of that thing that happens in our brains that makes us compelled to click on subjects like that.
So let’s flip it. You, my local Shakespeare geeks, are the experts. I don’t just say that to pander, although you are all looking simply smashing today. I say that because I learned a long time ago that most if not all of my readers know more about Mr. Shakespeare than I did, and perhaps ever will.
So how do you answer the question? Make your case. Let’s here your single choice (no fair saying all of them), and your cred for where your opinion comes from. If this post ever took off (as clickbait titles often do!) then plenty of people who don’t know their Cymbeline from their Coriolanus will be coming looking for actual advice, so let’s give it to them.
I’ve used this example before, but I used to work with a lady who was an English teacher in her former life. I asked if she was a fan of Shakespeare. She replied, “If all evidence of human civilization were wiped off the face of the Earth except for one book, that book should be King Lear.”
I’m not going there, though. While I think King Lear is probably the best thing Shakespeare wrote, I don’t think that it appeals equally to all people at all stages of life.
For my vote I’m sticking true to form and going with The Tempest. It’s far from Shakespeare’s most well known, but I think it’s under appreciated. It’s got a simple enough story line that you can introduce it to children (far, far simpler than A Midsummer Night’s Dream! And it also has fairies. Kind of.) But much like King Lear it can also be revisited later in life as a parent’s reflection on getting old, watching children grow, retiring from your pursuits and freeing yourself from the bonds you forged in life (sue me, I saw A Christmas Carol this weekend…)
As for cred, well, you’re looking at it. Shakespeare Geek has been live since 2005 and still pulling in a good number of visitors every day, so we must be doing something right. In that time I’ve raised three children on Shakespeare, so I very much practice what I preach. They seem to be doing ok with it.
