AP Wire | 12/02/2005 | Racine County inmates rehearse Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’:

Seriously, it’s like Othello week or something. I can’t get away from him.

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Ha! You may think that an article entitled Shakespeare for Warriors is going to be all about Henry V and the infamous “St. Crispin’s Day” speech, but you’d be wrong!
Well, after the first couple of paragraphs, that is. “We happy few, we band of brothers” is brought up as something that one SEAL quotes to his fellows before heading into battle. (Oddly, I actually wrote that quote on a card for one of my groomsmen at my wedding. Although I took out the “sheds blood with me” part :))
But what’s cool is that the article then totally goes in a different direction – to Othello, no less. Quick show of hands, how many people think of Othello as a particularly military play? I never did. But the article looks at Othello’s weaknesses (and Iago’s strengths) from that perspective, about how Othello is a total fish out of water in Venice rather than the tented fields, and how quick he is to believe Iago simply because he is more comfortable with the military language that Iago speaks to him.
Desdemona does not come off well here. She’s entirely the instigator, says the author. And “When given the choice between trusting the diabolical Iago, a warrior with many kills under his belt, or his new wife Desdemona, the Venetian, Othello doesn’t hesitate. He goes with what his officer says : soldiers don’t lie.” “Band of brothers” ends up being Othello’s downfall.

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Clairity’s Place has got up a great article on “loss of faith” in Othello. Must be a big Othello week, I was actually googling for a different Othello story that I’d lost when I turned up this one. Definitely a nice change of pace instead of always reading about Hamlet, R&J and Macbeth.

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Nope, not talking about the act of blogging dreams about Shakespeare. Last night I actually had a dream about blogging Shakespeare.

For some reason there was lots of commuting on the train going on – I remember myself and several others having to walk from one train platform to another. And at some point I think I picked up one of those small weekly papers, like a college thingie. And on the front page, in a side bar, was an article entitled “Love gave us Dr. Seuss, Churchill, and Shakespeare. Why?”

I remember thinking, “Man, I have to read that and blog it. Must find out the Seuss/Shakespeare connection! But what the heck is Churchill doing in there?” Actually in the context of the dream I remember getting all blurry eyed at the prospect of just how amazing such an article was going to be.

Woke up before I ever got a chance to read the article. But what a weird combination. Are there similarities between Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss? Sure, people over the years have had fun doing Seussian versions of the Shakespeare classics (some better than others), but that’s not what I’m talking about.

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I don’t know why exactly Reuters interviewed Roger Daltrey of “The Who”, but here it is. I particularly like his take on Shakespeare (he once acted the part of Dromio for a BBC Comedy of Errors, you see). Apparently Shakespeare was the Pete Townshend of his day, and thus Mr. Daltrey was not intimidated in the least.
Anybody besides me got an image of Will doing that cool guitar windmill thing that Townshend always used to do?

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