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.

"I'll Take Shakespeare for 500 Alex"

My head is stuffed with trivia. I blame my father. He had an eidetic memory and my siblings and I inherited various degrees of it. I can't remember how to do some of the simplest things on a computer for more than a minute and a half, but I can recount the plots of books I read at 8
I've tried out for Jeopardy a couple of times and have never made it past their trivia test. (There's always a geography question that stumps me--some question about a river in Tanzania or a mountain in one of the 'Stans.) But I would rock a Shakespeare category.
For example, di you know...
Shakespeare was 52 when he died.  Hard to believe he died that young and left such a rich legacy behind. And according to the site No Sweat Shakespeare, it was a rich legacy; Shakespeare died a wealthy man. He left everything but his second-best bed and bedclothes to his daughter Susannah. (His wife, Anne Hathaway, got the bed.)
The Fun Trivia site has a slew of Shakespearean trivia quizzes for people who just can't get enough fun factoids about the bard. If I were teaching English, I'd lean heavily on this site to engage my students and show them that Shakespeare doesn't have to be boring.  I'd also teach Macbeth as a Shakespeare noir.  It's got everything--friends betraying friends, a dangerous woman, a manipulated man. And witches!!!  But I digress.
A lot of Shakespeare sites (like the Shady Shakespeare Company)  use Shakespeare trivia as a marketing gimmick, most likely to promote "stickiness" among their users.  I know I always "stick" around to read trivia and quotes. 
Some sites are just in it for the trivial pursuit of it all, like Sporcle, which has a whole bunch of Shakespeare trivia games. Check out "Shakespeare or Batman?" with its compendium of hilariously over-the-top quotes you have to match to either the superhero or the Shakespeare hero.
It's more fun than popping virtual bubble wrap. (Don't pretend you haven't done that.)

Feminist Fiction Friday--The Nora Ephron Edition

I was working for producer Lauren Shuler Donner when her movie  You've Got Mail was filming. Nora Ephron wrote and directed the movie, so that's my one-degree of separation from a woman I considered a modern Dorothy Parker.
But of course, she was her own woman and not an imitation of anyone else. Since she died this week, people have been posting quotes from her all over social media and they're all terrific "sound" bites.
Here's one that's been posted on IMDB forever: Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
In addition to You've Got Mail,which starred Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, Nora wrote Sleepless in Seattle with the same stars and also When Harry Met Sally, the Meg Ryan-Billy Crystal film that became everybody's favorite date movie.

She wrote several movies that starred Meryl Streep--most recently Julie  & Julia. (The other two were Heartburn, a fictionalized version of Nora's marriage to journalist Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame, and the terrific true-life whistle-blower story Silkwood.) A picture of Nora with Meryl Streep (who is no giant at 5'6") makes her look impossibly tiny.
Good things come in small packages.
Here's something I'd forgotten about Nora Ephron. She was a foodie. (And long-time friend of my favorite foodie of all, Calvin Trillin, author of Alice, Let's Eat.) In one of her books, I think it might have been Heartburn, she included recipes.
The first thing I ever read by Nora was her collection of essays, Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women. It's out of print now--Amazon lists used copies in the three-figure range--but it's probably at your local library. (It's at mine.) And you might be able to find a copy on eBay. It's worth tracking down. (I just checked eBay--there are three auctions for copies of the book--one is at $14, one at $55 and the other at $125, so maybe the library IS the best option.)
I love that Nora Ephron guessed (figured out) who "Deep Throat" was before his identity was finall revealed. I knew that her marriage to Carl Bernstein had not ended well, and it seemed like her knowing that was a great "screw you" to the man who had screwed around on her. (In Heartburn, she describes her protagonist as a man "capable of having sex with a venetian blind," which is a great line that's made even more potent because you know it came from a very painful place.)
Nora began her career as a journalist and ended as a blogger with HuffPost (presumably one of the few paid ones), and in between she was a humorist, essayist, screenwriter, novelist, director, and feminist.
I have lost a role model.

Random Internet Silliness

Yes, I'll admit it.
I waste time on the Internet.
I'm not talking about the time I spend updating my social media either, which at least has a purpose.
I mean just general roaming around getting lost in the corners and crevices of the web.
Thanks to Chuck Wendig's weekly flash fiction challenge, I stumbled across the Band Name Maker, a random band name generator. And then kept hitting refresh.  It was sort of mesmerizing.
And speaking of entertaining ways to amuse yourself, check out James Hibberd's hilarious roundups of Game of Thrones episodes. He periodically suggests Heavy Metal Band names based on characters in the show.

Shakespeare Resources

I once wrote a paper comparing the character of Hotspur (from Henry IV, part 1) to Hamlet and got an A because my professor though the comparison was just too weird (Hotspur is all about action and Hamlet is deliberate) but he was entertained by my argument. I was thinking about that as I surfed around looking for resources students can use for writing papers these days. Who needs Cliff Notes?
Shakespeare Online is kind of an ugly site but it's really entertaining. The home page features something called "Bard Bite" which is a Shakespeare trivia question. (Today's is a question about what Edwin Booth thought was teh worst rhyming exit in all of the plays.)  The landing page offers fodder for at least a dozen term papers and it changes daily.
Absolute Shakespeare is another basic-looking site that includes study guides and trivia and summaries and all sorts of other info in a matter-of-fact all text format.  Their list of Shakespeare films is way out of date (it ends with the  Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet from 2000) but the rest of the material is still relevant.
Mr. Shakespeare and the Internet is a livelier looking site that has two goals--to be an annotated guide to scholarly Shakespeare resources; and to provide material not available anywhere else (like a timeline). They also have a store that will link you to DVDs of great Shakespeare plays (including a recording a performance of Macbeth by Patrick Stewart).

Adventures in Shakespeare--Ian McKellen's Acting Shakespeare

Years ago, Ian McKelen brought his one-man show Acting Shakespeare to Los Angeles, where it played to SRO crowds. It was a thrilling night of theater but I only really remember two things about it. The play contains a setpiece in which McKellen explicated the "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" speech from Macbeth, and then acted it out, turning around and around so that with each new line his face grew more and more evil. The physical transformation, which we watched step by step, was astonishing. He ended up with an almost Kabuki mask face.
The other moment that was memorable came near the end when McKellen invited members of the audience to join him on stage to act with him.  Dozens of drama students came up (and I wanted to go too--just to say I'd done it, but I was too shy).
McKellen huddled with the actors and then began proclaiming a speech from one of the history plays, I think.  And at a word cue--everyone else on stage fell down dead.  It got a huge laugh.
Here's McKellen picking the Macbeth speech apart. It's a mini-marvelous lecture.
There's also clip on YouTube of McKellen performing the speech (from a 1979 Trevor Nunn production of the play that was televised). The picture quality is poor but the sound is still quite rich. Check it out.

Coming This Friday--Special Nora Ephron edition of FFF

Nora Ephron
1941-2012