Scott Newstok is a name I recognize. He was one of the very first contributors to Shakespeare Geek, dating all the way back to January 2008 when he sent me a copy of his book about Kenneth Burke.  This was at a time when I was still re-blogging links to Wikipedia pages and pretending that I knew anything at all about the subject 🙂

So when I saw everybody sharing How To Think Like Shakespeare by Scott Newstok I thought, “Hey, I know him!” Sure enough, by the time I got home from work there was an email from Scott waiting for me.

Scott’s article, taken from a convocation address he delivered, is what I mean when I say, “Shakespeare makes life better.” I’ve always seen our mission statement as having a great deal in common with “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It’s not about “How will memorizing passage X, Y and Z get me a job that pays 10% more than the other guy?” That’s such small thinking, I’ve never understood what to do with that. It’s about a picture so much bigger than that, and I love pointing to places where people smarter than I have said it better than I can.

Through Shakespeare, Scott reminds the class of 2020 that they have “an enviable chance to undertake a serious, sustained intellectual apprenticeship. You will prove your craft every time you choose to open a book; every time you choose to settle down to write without distraction; every time you choose to listen, to consider, and to contribute to a difficult yet open conversation.”

“Do not cheat yourselves,” he tells them. I tell that to everyone I meet, whenever the subject comes up. Oh, you never paid attention to Shakespeare in school? So what, what’s stopping you now? There comes a time when you are in charge of your own education, and it never ever stops. Why would you ever miss an opportunity to make your life worth living?

Great job, Scott! Always happy to show off your stuff.

 

At lunch today we were discussing movies.  Which led to Star Trek.  Which led to a discussion of Star Trek VI, which led to a discussion of Shakespeare movie references.  Ok, I may have been driving the discussion in that direction. 🙂

Here’s the question I was asked: What movie, that is not fundamentally a movie about Shakespeare, contains the highest amount of Shakespeare references?

Star Trek VI, of course, would be a good example.  Shakespeare in Love would not.

What do we think?

EDIT : I wasn’t very clear by “references,” I meant “actual quotes.”  Not just plot lines or character names.

I mention in another post that my brother in law shared with me his newly acquired Shakespeare knowledge, that our beloved bard drank “contaminated water” and died 30 days later.   Of all the stories I’ve heard, I’ve never heard that one.  Unless he was mixing contaminated water with his alcohol.

Since this is the big anniversary of his death, it’s nice that others are doing the work to recap the details are Shakespeare’s death. Basically we know that he was out drinking a few days before, and carried home. Was this a normal occurrence? Plenty of people get carried home drunk and they don’t die.  Was Shakespeare already sick and would have been dead anyway, and the drinking thing is just a coincidence where he happens to have been seen by witnesses? We’ll never really know.

I did not see the television special that my brother in law was referring to, and I wouldn’t really be surprised to discover that contaminated water was generally a problem for everybody in a world of black plague.  But would it have sickened and killed him almost immediately?  I would assume that if it was that common to drop dead that easily from contaminated water, surely the historians of the last 400 years might have thought of that as well. And like I said, I’ve never heard that theory. It’s far more common to hear people suggest that he had syphilis.