Spring is in the air, and that means I’m giving away a free book! Announcing: the April Book Giveaway contest. A new monthly(-ish) event here at the Bard Blog.

This month’s giveaway item is

MASTERING SHAKESPEARE by Scott Kaiser

This is a wonderful book with great insights for actors, directors, and anyone who speaks shakespeare to help you bring the text alive. It retails for $19.95, and here’s a chance to get it for free! You can read my review for more info about it.

Here are the rules:

• Link to this contest on Twitter, Facebook, your own Blog, wherever.
• Fill out and submit the entry form.

So simple! Basically you just have to spread the word. Here’s the neat thing: for ever person you refer that enters the contest, you get an extra entry! There’s a line on the entry form that asks who referred you to the contest, so be sure that they fill that out so you increase your chances of winning.

Contest ends on April 30th at 11:59PM Pacific Standard Time.

If you just can’t wait for the contest to end, you can Order Mastering Shakespeare from Amazon.com

So start spreading the word and then fill out this form. Good luck!

In the introduction Mr. Kaiser acknowledges that it’s impossible to really learn acting from a book. Instead, he turns it into a play. Based on the form employed by Richard Boleslavsky and his book, Acting: The First Six Lessons, Kaiser writes dialogue between a master teacher and his sixteen students. Actors are, after all, used to reading scripts and translating it into personal experience.

In that regard, the book is very effective. Reading along with the students process with the master teacher, Mr K., is a very nice change from other acting books that have a technical manual kind of approach. This book is much more practical. The questions the students have might just be what any other student would ask. Years of teaching experience has obviously culminated in this book.

Mastering Shakespeare doesn’t spend much time talking about meter, scansion, or verse vs. prose, there is an assumption that the student knows about this already. What the book really concentrates on is what inspires the text. “Why am I saying these words right now?” Reading the book offers many different tools to answer that question.

The only thing this book lacks is more introductory information on acting Shakespeare: Scansion, rhetoric, verse speaking, etc. This book assumes that a student has a fairly solid foundation in acting and acting Shakespeare. That being said, it probably shouldn’t be the first thing you read if you’re a beginning student. It is one of many books that should be a part of the actor’s arsenal. Directors and teachers should pick up a copy for insight in helping an actor create specific choices and a believable/sustainable performance.

Mastering Shakespeare is available for $19.95 on Amazon.com

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

After much time without it, I have decided to resurrect the Blog Carnival. Hopefully after all this time there is renewed interest in it as well! Since it has been a while since the last one, any post from 2009 so far will be accepted. Submit a few! Let’s make it a link-love fest! After all, the whole purpose of the carnival is to share.

So go ahead and submit your links!

I’d also like to offer the opportunity to other bloggers to host the carnival. Jen from Just Jen has offered to host the next one after this. Who else? The more hosts we have, the more sharing gets done! We Shakespeare Bloggers aren’t a large group, but so far we’ve been a very sharing group. Let’s keep it up.

If you’re new to the blog carnival scene (or need a refresher), learn more about this one and look at past editions on the Shakespeare Blog Carnival page, and check out BlogCarnival.com to see others of various subjects across the web.

So submit your links and tell some friends because the carnival is back in town!

In lieu of fooling you all on this day of fooling, I thought I might post a very short blurb of my love for the Fools in Shakespeare’s plays: Touchstone, Feste, Lear’s fool, and the rest. I’ve had the opportunity to play a few of the Fool characters. Some of the most fun I’ve ever had onstage was as Feste. Hopefully I’ll get to play the rest in the future.

Despite being labeled as fools they are actually the wisest characters in the canon. These are characters whose job it is to entertain. Court jesters who are not to be taken seriously, even though they often speak quite wisely.

The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.
– Touchstone, As You Like It, I.2

But they often speak the most true, don’t they? Anyone else that would dare to say the things that Lear’s fool does would be killed.

FOOL. That lord that counsell’d thee
To give away thy land,
Come place him here by me,
Do thou for him stand.
The sweet and bitter fool
Will presently appear:
The one in motley here,
The other found out there.
LEAR. Dost thou call me fool, boy?
FOOL. All thy other titles thou hast given away, that thou wast born with.
KENT. This is not altogether fool, my lord.
- King Lear, I.4

The power these characters have with words is wonderful and sometimes astounding. The Groucho and Chico Marx of Shakespeare’s time.

FESTE. Good madonna, why mourn’st thou?
OLIVIA. Good fool, for my brother’s death.
FESTE. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
OLIVIA. I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
FESTE. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul, being in heaven.
- Twelfth Night, I.5

Feste would make a great lawyer with that kind of rhetoric. He’d convince the jury that THEY were guilty. But he probably doesn’t think that highly of his own wordly talents. After all,

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

I hope you all had a foolish day!