I’ve been in a survey mood lately, so I’m going to ask more questions. I like hearing your responses.

A little over a week ago I found the website Ask500People, which gives you the chance to ask a question to whoever happens to stumble across that website, as well as visitors of your own site if you choose to put the poll on it. I asked the question, “Did you have a good experience studying Shakespeare in school?” You can click on that to vote and/or see the results.

As of now, when I am posting this I have 130 responses. 57% of the voters answered yes, 43% answered no. Out of 6 comments, 5 left responses saying they had a negative experience. Most the the responses I got were from North America, but a few from elsewhere.

With only 130 answers, this isn’t a great representation of the average school Shakesperience, but it was interesting to see these numbers. To be honest I was expecting more people to have answered No. Even so, that’s a lot of people who didn’t have fun with Shakespeare in school. With all this talk about Shakespeare in schools, especially with the RSC launching their Stand Up For Shakespeare program, I think it’s good to see where we’ve come from and where we want to be headed with Shakespeare in Education.

And now I invite you to leave a comment here about YOUR Shakespeare experiences in school. When were you first required to read one of his plays? Which play? Did you get to get up and perform at all? Whatever you want to share I’d like to hear. I’ll post my experiences soon, though I’m sure your story is more interesting than mine.

I wonder… how many people would you guess have read everything contained in a volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare? All 37 plays, all 154 sonnets, A Lover’s Complaint, The Passionate Pilgrim, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and The Phoenix and the Turtle.

I’d imagine not many have. I’ll admit that I haven’t, but I’m working on it. I’ll be there soon! I keep putting off reading certain things which is rather silly of me. Do you know anyone who has? Have you? If so, do you brag about it often? I know I will as soon as I finish! Well maybe not often, but I’ll brag every now and then. It’s fun to brag.

More importantly, what insights, understanding, and wisdom do you think one gains from reading all of Shakespeare’s works in comparison to reading just the popular ones? If you’ve read most of them you’re also welcome to answer the question.

Having read MOST of the works I enjoy seeing similar passages, images, or situations in multiple plays. I say “Oooh, that’s kind of like when X says Y in the play Z!” There are a lot of other happy happenings from reading most or all of Shakespeare, but I’d like to hear your thoughts.

You may or may not be familiar with a Canadian TV show called Slings and Arrows, a show about a theatre company! A Shakespeare Festival at that. Wow! Sounds great already, right?

Well I just found the first season and started watching. Being the Shakespeare nerd that I am, you might find it amazing that I haven’t watched it yet. Even I’m amazed at myself! Especially after watching the first episode, I’m hooked. Why didn’t I ever pick this up before? S&A fans, you are welcome to chide me for my ignorance of this wonderful show. It’s so refreshing to see a show that I can really relate to. I can’t REALLY identify with the characters on Lost, Heroes, or House, even if they are great shows. But when I see people doing theatre, Shakespeare even, I’m immediately sucked in.

Get on NetFlix and find this series! I’ll be watching a lot of it over the next little while, so you might hear back from me on this. Or if you’re watching it too, feel free to comment or email me and we can discuss the show!

Oh my goodness… that’s today. AHHHHH!!!!!

The Ides of March (March 15th) is famous as the day that Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C. In the Roman calendar every month had an Ides! It was a basically day named to mark the middle of the month. It was the 15th day of the months March, May, July, and October. All the other months had theirs on the 13th.

Today most people only know of the Ides of March, made famous by the story of Julius Caesar as told by William Shakespeare. In the play, Caesar is parading down the street after a victory on the feast of Lupercal. A Soothsayer yells out from the crowd…

SOOTHSAYER. Caesar!
CAESAR. Ha? who calls?
CASCA. Bid every noise be still; peace yet again!
CAESAR. Who is it in the press that calls on me?
                I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
                Cry “Caesar!” Speak, Caesar is turn’d to hear.
SOOTHSAYER. Beware the ides of March.
CAESAR. What man is that?
BRUTUS. A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.
CAESAR. Set him before me, let me see his face.
CASSIUS. Fellow, come from the throng, look upon Caesar.
CAESAR. What say’st thou to me now? Speak once again.
SOOTHSAYER. Beware the ides of March.
CAESAR. He is a dreamer, let us leave him. Pass.

- Julius Caesar (I.ii)

“WHAAAAAAAAA!?!?”

My thoughts exactly. This is yet another authorship theory that is floating around. If it’s a joke, someone had way too much time on their hands. But more likely is that someone else out there wants to be the one who “proved who REALLY wrote Shakespeare’s plays!”

All the info is at Dark Lady Players, a theatre troupe that performs some of Amelia Bassano’s (the Black Jewish Woman that actually wrote the) plays in an interesting way. Really, just check it out for yourself. Be amazed.

What is it with all these crazy authorship stories? Someone tell me please. What is it about Shakespeare’s works that makes people think that someone else must’ve written them? Maybe William Shakespeare was a genius and he wrote them, we’ll never know for sure. But why all the fervor? Do some people hate studying Shakespeare so much that they want to try to prove that it’s not really Shakespeare so kids won’t be tortured by it in schools? Perhaps people are after fame and fortune by “discovering the real Shakespeare” and writing a best-selling novel about it.

Apparently the plays and poems are too good to be written by just anyone. Maybe someone should do some research and see who REALLY composed all of Mozart’s music.

So, gentle reader, you may have noticed that I’m not really a fan of the whole authorship question. I honestly don’t care if Elvis went back in time and wrote the plays or if it was a million monkeys. The plays and poems are wonderful pieces of art regardless of the identity of the author. Maybe we should spend more time on that. But that’s my two cents, what do you think?

I’ve been scouring the news online for anything with Shakespeare in it, lots of fun things show up. I often see articles about schools or groups that are making an effort to make learning Shakespeare a fun experience for students of all ages. Reading these warms my heart!

One that I found made me chuckle. A 13 year old students talks about the experience of acting in one of Shakespeare’s plays:

It is such an interesting thing to do. You get to portray something that you usually aren’t. Plus Shakespeare is an amazing writer. He’s one of the first people who wrote plays and I think everyone, including kids, should know about him.

In the words of our current president, “Is our children learning?” I hope that the teacher corrected the student after seeing the article… Shakespeare was far from the beginning of play-writing.

As long as the kids get the right answers at some point. The important part is that they’re learning Shakespeare and really enjoying themselves!

The kids are putting on Hamlet. I’m sure it’s a heavily cut down show, but do you think that’s a good show for students to act? At first I was a little surprised. Hamlet? Wow… But then I realized that it’s a required text in most schools and being in a production is one of the best ways to really understand the text and enjoy it.

No, Shakespeare’s not alive again. Here’s a riddle: What would Shakespeare say if he rose from the dead?

Brains…

If you’re not familiar with the term, Second Life is basically an online virtual world in which you can have an alternate life. If you’re still confused head over to Wikipedia to learn more about Second Life.

As it turns out, some people have put together a performance of Hamlet in second life. You can see a YouTube video of Act 1, Scene 1 of Hamlet. I read that this video isn’t really how the performance actually looked, but it’ll give you a vague idea of a new way that Shakespeare is being performed.

So what does this mean for Shakespeare in performance? I don’t know… I’m asking you. Please feel free to comment with your thoughts.

I think it’s a cool new way to perform the plays. It kind of goes to show that society needs live performance. Even in a virtual life, people are still motivated to put on and attend theatrical performances of Shakespeare’s work. I think I might sign up for a second life just so I can see what one of these shows is really like.

That is the question.

Patrick Stewart is the man. Sure he was on Star Trek, and was wonderful as Captain Picard… but he’s a superb Shakespearean actor, as you will see on this clip from Sesame Street.

My hero!