Summer of Shakespeare is Coming!!

Summer of Shakespeare took the summer off last year, but this year it'll be back, commenting on all things Shakespearean for three solid months. (Along with other items of interest and bookish things.) Get in the mood by wearing your "upstart crow" t-shirt, available on Etsy. The phrase "upstart crow" is attributed to Robert Greene, one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, who was throwing shade on the bard in his own work, A Groats-Worth of Wit. Greene died young (he was only 34), so maybe it's not fair to judge him on his body of work but honestly--just on titles alone, how memorable is A Groats- Worth of Wit, bought with a Million in Repentance? It sounds like required reading from a particularly humorless Sunday School teacher.

I do like the phrase, "Upstart Crow," though.

Happy birthday Rob!

It's my little brother's birthday today. Will and I wish him a very happy birthday.

Shakespeare Meme for Thursday

William Shakespeare was the original word snoot. 

When he couldn't find the perfect word...he made it up.

Summer of Shakespeare #3

Yes, it's that time of year again--Summer of Shakespeare time. This will be SoS number three, and there will be Shakespeare geekery coming out your ears by August 31. The festivities begin June 1, so "brush up your Shakespeare" as Cole Porter urged you to in his musical Kiss Me Kate, based on his play The Taming of the Shrew (one of my least favorites).

Huzzah! the Third Summer of Shakespeare is coming!!

All Shakespeare.
All Summer.
Because it is all about the Bard!

Happy Birthday WilliamShakespeare

Brainy Quotes has a whole section of William Shakespeare quotes. Just for fun, check it out. And be amazed all over again by the genius that was the bard! (I love that when he couldn't find just the right word, he made one up.) Attached is the image I bought last week for the cover of my Shakespeare Noir collection of short stories. I know. I know. Nobody really buys short story collections. But over the years, what with one story and then another, I ended up with enough for a book. And this is a neat image. So sometime this summer, it'll be out.

Happy Birthday to authors and illustrators born in April

Before there were "listicles" there were lists and I always liked lists. Turns out Scholastic has a neat resource for teachers that lists authors and illustrators by their birthdays. turns out a lot of my favorite authors were born in April Like: Hans Christian Andersen (April 2) Washington Irving (April 3) Beverly Cleary (April 12, and next year marks her centennial) Marguerite Henry (April 13) William Shakespeare (April 23) Lois Duncan (April 28) There are more, but these are just my favorites.

did Shakespeare ever get writer's block?

Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and maybe more, if scholars are right about his authorships of plays like Edward III and Thomas More.  That's a lot, and I find myself wondering how he would have fared in today's fast-paced publishing world. It used to be that only writers like Stephen King published a novel (or more) a year, but nowadays it seems like everyone from Amanda Hocking to the novelist next door is writing at a blistering pace. that doesn't apply to stageplays of course, unless you're talking about a community playhouse where the players are creating new material for each season, but still. Could Will have kept up?  I suspect the answer is yes. 
True, not every Shakespeare play is a Hamlet (seriously, does anyone ever go see King John except out of curiosity?) but if your other work includes Richard III and Romeo & Juliet, and Othello, you really don't have to write Hamlet every time.

Maya Angelou on Shakespeare

"Shakespeare must be a Black Girl."

--Maya Angelou

Illustration from William Shakespeare Things

I read that quote years ago and have never forgotten it. Over on the William Shakespeare Things blog, there's a clarification of what Angelou meant.  It seems appropriate to revisit the quote even as the memorial service for America's poet laureate is underway.

O is for Ophelia

Painting by John William Waterhouse

I am a Shakespeare geek. One of my friends once horrified me by saying he thought Aaron Sorkin was a better writer than Shakespeare and asking me to explain "why everybody thinks Shakespeare is so great." (Don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed his scripts for The Social Network and Charlie Wilson's War. (To be honest though, I was bored to tears by Moneyball. I think Draft Day was the movie Moneyball wanted to be. It's disappointing that not more people are oging to see Draft Day.) But I digress.

The point is that because I love words and never quite outgrew my delight in ornate words (I blame Dr. Seuss with his silly, made-up words), I don't find Shakespeare's language a problem or a barrier to my enjoyment of his plays. I think most high school students learn to loathe the plays because they're forced to read Julius Caesar first.  that play is not the best gateway play into Shakespeare. (I think Macbeth is.  It's got a little bit of everything--a ghost. Murder. A strong female lead.

But wait, you say, Hamlet has a ghost. Hamlet has a murder. Hamlet has a strong female. To which I replay--if you're talking about Gertrude, I disagree. She marries the man who murdered her husband and then leaves her son to take revenge. (Wouldn't it have been kind of interesting if it had been Gertrude whoorchestrated the play that pricked the usurper's conscience?)  And don't even get me started on Ophelia.

I hate Ophelia.  I really do. Manipulated by her father. Mistreated by Hamlet. A suicide at the end. I always wanted her to have more gumption. (A word my grandparents used that has fallen out of favor despite being a great word.) Give me Lady Macbeth any time.

Planting Shakespeare--the Shakespeare Garden

The Shakespeare Garden at the Huntington Library

William Shakespeare's plays are filled with quotes about flowers, with the most famous probably being "That which we call a rose would smell as sweet" from Romeo and Juliet. Over time, gardeners developed a very special, formal version of an English garden termed a "Shakespeare garden." As the name implies, these gardens feature plants and flowers mentioned in the plays, or typical of the Elizabethan period but not mentioned.
Here in LA, there's a gorgeous "Shakespeare Garden" at the Huntington Library. (For information on the garden, go here.) There's a Shakespeare Garden in Central Park and also in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. for a list of other, public gardens, see the Wikipedia article. Shakespeare's favorite flower (at least in terms of how often he used it) was probably the rose. the Garden Web has a section on Elizabethan roses, and there are lots of forums for gardeners who want to grow heirloom roses in their own gardens.  "Elizabethan Roses" became a popular design motif for china.
Here's an excerpt from Folk-lore of Shakespeare that talks about his knowledge of plants.

Swordplay in Shakespeare

Courtesy:  Long Beach Shakespeare Company

Since fencing is the sport of the day at the Olympics, I was reminded of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 when, as part of an accompanying cultural festival that included lots of Shakespeare plays (Derek Jacobi in Much Ado About Nothing, a French version of Henry V, an Italian version of The Tempest), actor Anthony De Longis and a group of actors provided a fabulous performance of swordsmanship that was like a bladed weapon version of Cirque du Soleil.  I can't remember what it was called--I want to say "Circle of Steel" but if you Google that, all that comes up is a Gordon Lightfoot song.
One of Shakespeare's contemporaries in London was a sword master named George Silver.  Silver was noted as a master teacher but in addition to the sword, he was also fond of the quarterstaff. By Shakespeare's time, fencing was a sport and no longer the deadly martial art it had been in previous centuries when it was used to settle judicial quarrels and all the fights were to the death.
There are a lot of places that teach fencing and stage combat but it's harder to find schools that specialize in historical western martial arts. In the Los Angeles area, there's the Academy of Arms. 

What's in a name?

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," Romeo insisted. In his own time, "Shakespeare" was a household name, with many variant spellings--Shakespear and Shake-spear, for example--but though he had three children, there was no one to carry on his name. His only son Hamnet died in childhood, his daughter Judith (married to an unsavory character named Thomas Quiney) outlived all her children and died at 77. Shakespeare left most of his estate to his daughter Susanna, who married a local doctor and gave birth to one child, Elizabeth. Elizabeth married well but died childless--William Shakespeare's last direct descendant.

A Tempest in a Multi-plex

Christopher Plummer conjures a tempest

I have a friend who has season's tickets to a series of filmed entertainments (concerts, plays, operas) running one and two-night only at the local multiplex. Last night he treated me to a filmed performance of The Tempest staged by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival with Christopher Plummer as Prospero.  I don't know if this is a one-time only thing (the Festival's site notes that the movie will be playing on June 14, and no other dates) but if you love Shakespeare, you owe it to yourself to hunt this production down.
The Tempest is my favorite of Shakespeare's plays. I love the spectacle of it--the sea storm, the fanciful interpretations of Ariel and Caliban, the fabulous language. "You really  like this play don't you?" my friend said, which was my first clue I was saying some of the lines out loud along with the actors.
Christopher Plummer is the best Prospero I've ever seen and I've seen some Prosperos. Anthony Hopkins played the role here in L.A. opposite Stephanie Zimbalist as Miranda. Ellis Rabb starred in a production he also directed at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. The set, I remember, was a beach with several huge seashells scattered about. Rabb played the magician in a very patrician manner that was interesting but not engaging. Plummer's performance was ... magical. 

Soelistyo and Plummer plot

I was a little leery of the idea of a filmed play--I've seen some really static ones. And in the opening storm sequence, the sound was really muffled and muddy, which made my heart sink. But once everyone was on the island, those technical issues faded away. And let's just say, filming a play has come a long way since the days my father was recording that production of The Fantasticks from half a mile away in a school gymnasium.
The Tempest was part of the Stratford's season a few years ago (I think Plummer did King Lear last year) and I've always wanted to  go up there for a week and see as many productions as I can. This season they're doing Henry V, everybody's favorite history play, Much Ado About Nothing (my favorite comedy) and Cymbeline, which I can't even remember, although I know I read it.
This version of The Tempest was directed by Des McAnuff.
I really liked McAnuff's conception of Ariel. The tricksy spirit was played by tiny (4'10") Julyana Soelistyo  whose naughty giggle was a reminder that spirits aren't human and find different things funny. (McAnuff definitely played up the humor in the text and made the most of the subplot involving Caliban and the two comic drunkards, Trinculo and Stephano.)
Geraint Wyn Davies played Stephano and he was so hilarious I wish I'd seen him playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream when it played in rep. If you caught his turn as  pompous Shakespearean actor Henry Breedlove on the wonderful show Slings and Arrows, you have some idea of what he can do.  The man was born to speak Shakespeare and not everyone in the company was up to his and Plummer's level. (The young woman playing Miranda, for instance, sounded like she'd learned her lines phonetically at times.)
I haven't seen the Julie Taymore version of The Tempest starring Helen Mirren, but now I have to go track it down. Because really, can you think of a better way to spend a few hours?