Mark Twain writes about Would-Be Claimants to the Name Shakespeare

Dr. Buford Jones

I once took an entire. semester-long seminar on Mark Twain. If memory serves, the professor was Dr. Buford Jones, a professor who does not fare particularly well on that student-ranking system ratemyprofessor.com but I loved his classes in American lit and took all of them. (And for some reason, I remember this: he was from the Midwest somewhere and pronounced "Jaguar" like "jag-wire." And he would occasionally poke fun at Reynolds Price, the noted novelist and poet, who also taught a well-regarded class on John Milton. You had to be a junior to take Price's class, so that was a long, three-year wait, but worth it.) But I digress.

In the Twain seminar we went way beyond the usual Twain oeuvre. Of course we read Huckleberry Finn (again) but we also read critic Leslie Fiedler's intriguing essay on the homoerotic subtext of the book, "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in Huck Honey!" Fiedler was the author of Love and Death in the American Novel, a book that deeply impressed me at the time. I also loved that he was a proponent of genre fiction, which is pretty much all I read when I wasn't reading for my classes.

Twain left an enormous pile of unpublished manuscripts and diary entries and one of them was a huge section of thoughts calls "Is Shakespeare Dead?" You can read it here. It's very entertaining, particularly if you love the cranky side of Twain.

Shakespeare rubber stamp on Etsy

When I was a kid I loved rubber stamps and wax seals and all those things you could use to decorate letters. (I'm one of the last hold-outs when it comes to written communications. I don't do e-cards, usually, and I always send hand-written thank you notes.) I saw this very cool item on Etsy today and once again reflected that Etsy is a wonderful website that not only connects artisans to buyers (enabling buyers to feed their fantasies of being patrons of the arts) but also an excellent place to while away an hour or two (or three).

More Shakespeare Memes

I have to think the Bard would be totally tickled to know that he's found his way into pop culture by way of any number of memes. (And yes, since you asked, there IS a Grumpy Cat Shakespeare meme or two out there.)

The first time I heard a Most Interesting "Man in the World" commercial, I started laughing so hard I thought I was going to have to pull my car to the curb. So of course, it made perfect sense that there would be a "Most Interesting Man in the World" meme. If more teachers took their cue from this guy, there would be fewer high school students who hate Shakespeare.

A shakespeare Meme

Shakespeare's death mask

I missed this story when it came out in 2012. The death mask of William Shakespeare (age 52) has found a permanent home at the University of Edinburgh's Anatomy Museum. (Also on display are Sir Isaac Newton's death mask and Sir Walter Scott's.) Read the story here.

Shakespeare's World Cup

Yes, you can relate Shakespeare to any topic or any event if you put your mind to it. I typed "Shakespeare" and "World Cup" into Google and came up with about a bazillion references to a play that was performed at a Canadian fringe festival in 2002. You can download the script, hook up to the play's database, and read interviews with the creators. It's a kick. Shakespeare's World Cup.  Here's a link to this year's Shakespeare's World Cup line over at No Sweat Shakespeare.

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.