The last line of Shakespeare’s will reads “I have hereunto put my seale”, and then seale is scratched out and replaced with “hand”, “the date and year above written.”  What does this mean?  Typically he would have used a “seal ring” to identify the official document, but presumably he could not find it when he was writing the will, and thus his signature would have to suffice. The blog “Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet” has the fascinating history of that ring, which was found in 1810, including some very frenzied reactions to the discovery (“in sooth I hope it is not Brummagem, in double sooth I hope it is his, and in triple sooth I hope I shall have an impression” :)) and even speculation about how he lost it in the first place.  Weight loss due to illness, perhaps? Pictures included, as well as plenty of links and excerpts of original dated documents.  Nice informative post.

My regular readers know that I’ve been waiting for this show for a year.  You see, I quite literally work across the street from Boston Common now.  So last year, after less than stellar seats at Taming of the Shrew, I told my wife, “Next year, for one night, I want to just walk over here after work and camp out.  Get myself a nice spot.” Then I found out that the show would only be a week this year, limiting my flexibility somewhat drastically.  Worse, the location they chose on the Common meant that they would be jamming 3x as many people into half the space.  A space, mind you, strewn about with park benches (facing the wrong way), trees,  and a big ol’ gazebo. On top of that, the play is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which most of us have seen more than any other play because it’s basically the safest, “all ages” play there is. Just got back. I LOVED IT. Loved the costumes, loved the acting, loved the music, loved everything about it!  I am thrilled to have seen that.  Ok, fine, it was a little “Circ Du Soleil”, like another reviewer said.  Everybody was dressed in colors that looked like the play was performed under a black light.   But how is that a slight against it?  The whole idea is that once the main characters have entered the forest, you need something that signifies they’ve entered a whole new world.  Dressing the Athenians in pure white, and then dressing all the fairies in day glo yellows and oranges, certainly does that. The bare stage concept worked stunningly well.  Back to basics, as it were.  The fairies carried balloons with them wherever they went, which I am assuming were supposed to represent the trees.   And there was a massive trapdoor right in the middle of the stage from which people could appear as needed.  Puck even managed a trick or two of his own, “disappearing” off the edge of the stage by what appeared to be quite literally just diving off the edge.  Tomorrow morning I’ll have to see if I can sneak over and see how he did that, I’m guessing some sort of mat or cushion he was diving onto. The mechanicals were excellent, but how can they not be?  They’re so over the top in their badness that it’s almost impossible to do them badly.  Helena stole the show for me, but doesn’t she always?  I have to admit I was more distracted than anything else by Oberon, who looked and sounded like a character out of the Lion King (complete with African headdress).  If I have to pick a fault, I’d have to say that the performance itself was nothing stellar.  Theseus goofed his opening line.  The dancers were not in sync, and the singers were out of tune.  The music was excellent, and the dancing fit well where they put it, I’m just saying that as far as performing goes they didn’t come off like professional singers and dancers, you know? I’m going back on Saturday.  

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news-cms/news/?dept=4&id=45827&template=7 Well, I just found out that the guy doing QA on my team here at work used to teach Hamlet.  Nice.  After a lengthy discussion of Shakespeare, and specifically A Midsummer Night’s Dream that begins tonight, he sent me the above link to an interview with William Carroll about the play’s appeal, popularity, and underlying themes.   

http://www.romeopublishing.com/ Ok, the Scientologist comment is my own.  But in this “sequel” to Shakespeare’s most popular play, Romeo dies for Juliet…and then awakens “on a volcano in Hawaii.”  Volcanos in Hawaii play a role in the Scientology creation story, you see. Anyway, the story we’re talking about is a “time-travel romance” where Romeo crosses paths with a reincarnated Juliet on the chatboards.  The search is then on as Romeo tries to reunite with his lost love. Sounds…different.  If I found it as an ebook I may grab it, that’s the only real way I read anything these days (not counting audiobooks).  Apparently there’s some “kinky cybersex” in there as well which might turn some folks off, but I’ve been around the net long enough to shrug that off.  The press release, by the way, makes one comment I don’t agree with.  The author says that he “wanted to place significant social barriers between them, as it was in Verona.”  The only thing keeping them apart was the feud between their families, which is not what I would call a “social barrier”.  Wasn’t that the whole point of “Two houses, both alike in dignity”?  Society in general, the townspeople who kept having their nights disturbed, thought the whole thing a big annoyance.

Here’s a question that occurred to me the other day, and I don’t know the answer.  Shakespeare had a son, Hamnet, who died as a child.  He also had two daughters, Susana and Judith, who got married and had families of their own.  Interestingly, Judith named one of her children “Shakespeare” as a first name(*), which leads to my question… What happened to the Shakespeare family name?  How long did it last after William, since he had no heir to pass it down? A little bit of searching turns up Shakespeare’s Family Tree which shows that although Shakespeare did have several brothers (Gilbert, Richard and Edmond), it appears that none of them married.  His sister Joan married, but again, same problem, what happens to the Shakespeare family name?  Was William it?    (*) I know at least one couple who had a similar issue – she was an only child, and while she did want to take her husband’s name, she wanted to do something to recognize her father’s family name.  So she posed the idea of having her current last name be the baby’s first, or at least middle, name.  They didn’t go through with it.  Judith’s Shakespeare, by the way, was her first born, who apparently only lived one year.  Sad, but common in the day.  Don’t worry, Judith.  We remember your dad’s name.