Hi Everybody,

Just a quick administrative note that I’m going to be on a cruise ship for the next week with no laptop.  What tends to happen in these situations is that posts tip over to less than a couple days, and then when people want to have a discussion they can’t because spam moderation kicks in.

In anticipation of this I’ll be turning off the “moderation on old posts” switch for the week.  This means that all your posts should show up without my intervention. It also means that a couple of spam posts will probably slip through, so please ignore them. It seemed like a fair trade off.

Ok, that’s it for me. I’m not leaving until Sunday morning so you may spot me on the Twitter between now and then, but I wanted to get this note out while I still had access to something that could post.  While I’m gone feel free to browse the merchandise, maybe check out the book.  You know the deal. 🙂

See ya when I don’t get back, assuming I don’t get shipwrecked!

Mensa candidate Andrew Garfield had this to say upon being cast as Spiderman in the latest example of how Hollywood can’t seem to get a movie right:

“I think the material is elevated, and it’s just as meaningful and just as important as Shakespeare.”

I appreciate the desire to give comics some credibility, and arguably they are a part of modern culture (though if we’re going to talk about cultural archetypes I’d lean more towards Superman than Spiderman). But Shakespeare? Really? When you’re doing little more than starring in a movie about Facebook, and now moving on to a reboot of a movie that’s only, what, less than 10 years old?

It’s a topic we speak of often, and everybody seems to love it, but nobody to my knowledge has ever made a definitive list of “songs inspired by Shakespeare” because, quite frankly, how do you define that? Do you need lyrics from the text? Character names? Plots?
365 Days of Shakespeare doesn’t attempt to answer these questions, she just offers her top 10. I link because there’s a couple in there I’d not heard of!
No Rufus Wainwright in the mix, by the way, but that may go back to “how are you defining this”. Putting an entire sonnet to music isn’t really the same thing as rewriting a Romeo and Juliet story. I have both the Dire Straits and Indigo Girls’ versions of Romeo and Juliet in my playlist, and she’s right, the Indigo Girls version is much better.

Stanley Wells was asked who, in his opinion, were The Ten Greatest Actors. I like how right off the bat he dismisses Burbage, not because he wasn’t any good but because frankly we simply have no evidence. He starts with David Garrick, for which there is plenty.
My title comes directly from Wells’ blog, because I have no idea what it means. Did Gielgud do a famously lousy Othello, or something?
The rest of our favorites – McKellen, Dench, Jacobi, Branagh, Scofield… all make the list. Who, in Wells’ opinion, is the greatest? He does say, but I won’t steal their thunder. You have to look for it though, because he drops an understated “for me he is the greatest” in the middle of the article and you’ll skim right by it if you’re in a hurry.

Disclaimer: Yes, JM, this post is inspired by you ;). But I hope that’s not a bad thing, and I hope what I’m about to say opens up some conversation. I am going with an idea, here, not trying to paint you into a corner and most certainly not trying to put words in your mouth. Fair enough?
I think that everybody here would like Shakespeare to have a larger presence in the world around us. What exactly that means will probably be different for everybody, but I hope that this is at least a fair statement. If there was more Shakespeare in the world, we’d be happier. True?
So, then, are you angry that we don’t have that? The current state of education, the movies, the pop culture references, the badly misquoted lines that become cliches … do those things bug the living daylights out of you, to the point where you can’t be happy until you live in a world where they’re fixed? What standard do you hope to achieve? Are we aiming to recreate Shakespeare’s world, or to integrate what he gave us into our own? What’s the difference between integrating and diluting?
For me, personally, I don’t get angry about it. Sometimes I get disappointed, sure. And I do throw a minor tantrum when people use “wherefore” to mean “where”, but only people who should know better. If a coworker pulled that nonsense I would correct the mistake, gently. If somebody puts up a television commercial where Juliet says “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” and Romeo says “I’m over here, yo!” then yes, I’ll get a little more upset about that because they should at least have some level of quality assurance.
But in general I’m happy to see Shakespeare in the world wherever I see him, and encourage more. Bring up Shakespeare around me and you will have to walk away, because I won’t stop talking. Seriously. I’m ok with that. I will go see Gnomeo and Juliet, and I will tell all my friends to go see it. Maybe here on the blog I’ll pick it apart, but I’d much rather see a bunch of my children’s friends all go to see it, than to keep it from them because of the aforementioned wherefore/why problem.
Very important to note, though, is that I’m not in the business. I don’t do Shakespeare for a living, and I think that could easily be the key difference. I don’t have to write grants to get my Shakespeare projects funded, only to see them turned down so the money can go toward other, lesser projects. I’m not out of a job if my kids’ school cuts the budget for the arts. As a parent I’d do what I could to complain, sure. But I’d also have the option of taking them to more theatre on my own, at least. I wouldn’t have to worry about where my next paycheck is coming from.