Despite the recent drama, reddit (“the front page of the internet”) has become famous for what it calls the AMA (“ask me anything”) segment where they frequently score impressive celebrities, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and President Barack Obama. I sometimes check the upcoming schedule to see if there’s anybody worth camping out and waiting for, but rarely do I remember to do anything about it. They typically last an hour, and you usually have to post your question well ahead of time to get it seen above the noise, so if you’re not on top of your game you’ll miss it.

“I met Patrick in Stratford-upon-Avon when we were both working in the theatre there doing Shakespeare. In about 1976.”   

Is there a character that you’d like to play before you retire from acting?

Have you ever had bad luck when saying the title of the Scottish Play?

Longtime reader and contributor catkins sent me something wonderful that I’m only just now able to fully sit and appreciate.

The task of retelling Shakespeare’s stories for children has been undertaken many times, perhaps most famously Tales From Shakespeare
by Charles and Mary Lamb. Personally I never loved that one because I went straight for The Tempest and did not enjoy how they edited it.

Well, catkins clearly knows this about me because he sent me Alice Hoffman’s 1904 version!

But happy birthday to me, because there’s images I’ve never seen! A number of the characters get this sort of head shot, as I’ve included here for Prospero, which I think is a neat touch for a children’s book as you introduce the characters.

I actually own a version of The Tempest illustrated by children, where the images change on every page. That is, Caliban does not look the same on page 3 as he does on page 5, and so on. This made it impossible to read this book aloud to school children, I found out the hard way, as they kept saying, “Who is that? Wait, I thought caliban was green and slimy? That guy is red and fiery.”

I have not read this one all the way through yet, but I’m looking forward to it. As long time readers know, I’ve always thought of The Tempest as my own personal benchmark for Shakespeare, because it is the play I first introduced to my children. Looking forward to adding this one to the collection.

So the other day I’m in my daughter’s classroom for a return visit to teach Shakespeare. I want to show them my Blank Verse but we’re having trouble with the WiFi, so while the teacher works on it I ask if there are any questions.

My daughter – MY daughter – asks me to tell about that lady who thought that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare.  So I start by disowning her :), then begrudgingly tell the story of Delia and Francis Bacon.

That’s the only question we get to, though, as my game comes up.  It’s basically Mad Libs where you fill in the blanks with nouns, adjectives, and such … only the end result comes from Shakespeare.  So I’m walking around the room asking for words, the teacher’s typing, the kids are supplying the craziness.  “Ok, I need a noun!” I’d say.

“Pig!”

“Great, pig it is.  Now an adjective?”

“Fat!”

“Ok, pig, fat, makes sense. Next…another adjective.”

“Chubby!”

“Really?  Ok, chubby it is.  Pig, fat, chubby, I think I see a pattern.  How about a … noun?”

“Bacon!”

<pause for laughter>  “I think you’re proving my point!  Pig, fat, chubby, ba….wait, did you say bacon because of pig or because of that story I told about Delia and Francis Bacon?”

“<shrug> I just like bacon,” says the kid in the back row who’d offered it as a suggestion.

Other kids in the back row nod.  “It’s true,” they say, “He answers bacon for everything.”

Here’s the kicker.  Turns out that my daughter has a crush on that kid.  So I’m pretty confident that she asked me to tell the Delia Bacon story specifically because that kid would find it cool.  Nicely played!

All we’re hearing about in the news is how he apologized to his victims, but the more interesting story today is how the judge quoted Shakespeare when sentencing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death.

Want to take any guesses? I thought maybe something about the quality of mercy, but apparently the judge was not in that kind of mood.

“The evil that men do lives after them,” he said, “The good is oft interred with their bones. So it will be for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.” 

“Whenever your name is mentioned, what will be remembered is the evil you have done. No one will remember that your teachers were fond of you. No one will mention that your friends found you funny and fun to be with. No one will say you were a talented athlete or that you displayed compassion in being a Best Buddy or that you showed more respect to your women friends than your male peers did. 

“What will be remembered is that you murdered and maimed innocent people and that you did it willfully and intentionally. You did it on purpose.”

Harsh. I approve.

He later went on to quote Iago, but from Verdi’s opera rather than the original Shakespeare text, when he spoke of those who believe in a cruel god.  I can’t find the actual quote, does anybody know it?

“Surely someone who believes that God smiles on and rewards the deliberate killing and maiming of innocents believes in a cruel God,” the judge said. “That is not, it cannot be, the God of Islam. Anyone who has been led to believe otherwise has been maliciously and willfully deceived.”