For Christmas I treated myself to a subscription at Audible.com, since I’ve found that in general my most productive reading time takes the form of listening in the car for at least an hour a day during the commute when I’m a captive audience.  Bonus over traditional audiobooks is that the audible player has a nice “read at 1.5x speed” feature that I’ve found cranks through the material at a quicker pace without making it harder to follow.

They give you a free credit to start, so naturally I went and grabbed Contested Will.  What, doesn’t everybody? 🙂  I know that I’ll never find the time to sit down and read it (despite the review copy which I was given), so this seemed like the ideal compromise.  This is an unabridged audio, so between that and having the paper copy to fall back on for any required visuals, I should be good.

This is not, however, my review of that book. I’m barely 25% done with it.  I am quite enjoying Shapiro’s dissection of exactly when “experts” in Shakespeare went all banana sandwiches on the subject and started looking for autobiographical clues anywhere they chose.

And, thus, my new game.  Pick a bit of something Shakespeare wrote, and make the case that it tells us something autobiographical about the man.  It can be your own invention or something you read and found amusing.  It can be something you’ve proposed in the past or something fresh off the top of your head.

With tongue firmly in cheek here’s my contribution, which I’m sure someone must have come up with prior but I’d never heard it:  Winter’s Tale tells the story of King Leontes accusing his pregnant wife of infidelity, and then paying for this cruelty with the untimely death of his only son.  As we all know, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway after she became pregnant.  Later, their only son died.  Clearly this is Shakespeare’s way of acknowledging that he long doubted that he was the father of that first child.  The death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet was God’s way of punishing him for his doubts.

Next?

Last year I posted some Shakespeare Resolutions of my own. Shall we see how I did?

• speak publicly on the topic of Shakespeare. Not sure how, exactly, but it’s a goal. Take it to the real world.

  As I’m sure everybody knows by now I came *this close* to teaching a unit on Shakespeare to my daughter’s second grade class.  I was preparing material and everything. Could still happen in the new year, with the fourth graders.

• use my experience in publishing my first book, Hear My Soul Speak, to try a second.

  I got nothin.  I have an idea for a book and know exactly how I’d go about doing it, just haven’t made it happen yet.  No excuses.  Bardfilm knows what I’m talking about.

• expand my empire by turning on some of the Shakespeare-related domains I’ve been sitting on for awhile now.

  I launched ShakespeareAnswers.com in May 2011.  I call this one a success. I still have another domain that I’ve not done anything with, but as it is I’m not doing a stellar job at keeping up the sites I’ve already got.

• make more concerted effort to see Shakespeare productions.

  Can’t say I made any special efforts.  Saw my usual production in Boston Common, and the local Rebel Shakespeare show that came to town, but I didn’t do anything special.

Ok, so, how about for the new year?

• I’m going to keep “Speak publicly on the topic of Shakespeare” on the list, because I still want this to happen and still think I can make it happen.
• Develop and distribute a Shakespeare mobile app.  Working on this now.  Not sure what final form it will take, but my day job as a programmer means that I’ve wanted to develop mobile apps since there were mobile apps (and by that I mean going all the way back to the Palm Pilot days).  Now circumstances may finally be correct so I can actually make something happen. Stay tuned.
• Merchandise.  We had a brief run last year where we introduced some new products, and they seem to have done well (the iPad cases are a big hit).  I need to find the time to do that more often, because it translates directly into revenue for the site.

Think I can do it?  How about you, what have you got? What did you accomplish, and what do you plan to accomplish? I’d say “hope to” but that’s too wishy washy.  Don’t just sit back and hope it happens, plan to make it happen!

Happy New Year!

So here we are at the beginning of a new year, and here I am sitting on a big pile of movies that I have to give away.  Specifically I’ve got *9* copies of Julie Taymor’s 2010 The Tempest, starring Helen Mirren.  Remember this one?  We certainly talked a lot about it.

It doesn’t happen often enough for my taste, but I do like it when a Shakespeare movie comes along in the theatre and then you get to sit down with the DVD and get a second view.  Who knows how my opinion might change? Maybe I’ll have the kids watch it (or, parts of it) after all.

In all my giveaways and contests I’ve never had this many copies of a single item, and I’m not quite sure how I want to proceed.  It seems boring to simply give them out randomly to 9 people who leave comments on this post.  I mean, good for you all, given that the average post here nets less than 20 comments so you’d probably have a better than 50% chance of winning one.  But where’s the fun in that? 🙂

So here’s my idea.  I’ll start by giving away *3* of them.  To enter, all you’ve got to do is leave a comment on this post with an idea about what I should do with the rest of them. If somebody else beats you to an idea you can still add a comment saying “Yeah, do that” and be entered for this first round. For this first round I’ll pick from all the commenters regardless of content, so don’t be afraid your idea won’t win versus somebody else’s.  Everybody who comments can be entered.

Let’s say that everything needs to be in by end of day Friday (January 6).  I’ll randomly pick 3 winners over the weekend.  Since we’re doing this in the comments I will have to publicly announce winners (I won’t have your email addresses), so remember to check back in early next week!

After we’ve given away the first 3 I’ll see what sort of ideas got cooked up and look toward giving away the rest.

Got the idea?  As usual, I have to limit the contest to continental US residents.  I am shipping these on my own nickel.  Sorry international folks.  Then again I’m not sure whether these DVDs would work across regions anyway.

As far as I can tell I’m not required to do an online giveaway, either, so if you think that donating some copies to the local school or library would be the best option, let me hear it.

TL;DR – Got 9 copies of Tempest DVD, giving away 3 this weekend to US resident folks who suggest ideas, not necessarily online, about what to do with the rest.

Thanks very much to Lauren from BH Impact for hooking us up with the most generous giveaway yet!

(*) P.S. – Extra geek points for you if you recognize the Three Amigos quote from the title 😉

How do you put a label on David Tennant? It seems unfair to categorize him solely in Dr. Who or Shakespeare terms.  So instead of introducing somebody who needs no introduction I’ll just point out that he’s on the Nerdist podcast with Chris Hardwick this week.

I’ll let you know up front, not a lot of Shakespeare. Much Ado gets some time, but mostly as it pertains to his schedule of doing other things.  There’s also a nod to Hamlet, and some very nice praise for Sir Patrick. Absolutely nothing at all on his methods for acting Shakespeare, favorite Shakespeare plays, anything like that at all. Almost the entire interview is divided up between Dr. Who and Fright Night, which is understandable when you realize where the Nerdist is coming from.  They’re firmly in that sci-fi / comic / movie culture.

The title of this post comes from an idea that Tennant drops that, were it to happen, would surely cause the internet to explode. Given that Hardwick had just had JJ Abrams (director of the new Star Trek movies) on his show and was planning to have Simon Pegg (a friend of Tennant’s, and cast member of the new Star Trek movies), it seems as if the idea at least had some potential.  It’s only a brief mention, but it’s certainly an attention grabber, innit? 🙂

Last one in a series.

When I was at my aunt’s funeral service and the priest mentioned William Shakespeare, I had no idea what he was going to say next.  There’s so much to choose from!

And with that, here’s my question. You’re attending the service of a family member. Let’s say that you weren’t terribly close to this person, not something where you’re going to be overwhelmingly distraught.  More one of those “obligations we all have to do” sorts of things.  As a niece or a nephew or what have you, you’re asked to say a few words.  You want to bring some Shakespeare into it.

What do you bring?

The grief speech from King John is pretty powerful (“Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,…”) but it’s also not terribly general purpose.  It’s pretty clearly a parent-child thing.

I’m a fan of sonnet 104 (“To me, fair Friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed
Such seems your beauty still.”) At least that opening passage. I think it’s a pretty wonderful picture to paint, especially if you’re talking about someone who’s lived a long life and left many memories.

What else you got?  I’d stay away from most of the Hamlet stuff, it’s just gotten so cliched.  Well, except one that I’ve come to cherish as my own personal meditation over those we’ve lost.

Rest in Peace, Aunt Catherine.  Flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.