So, this weekend is Parents’ Weekend at my daughter’s college. “Want to go see a Shakespeare exhibit with me while you’re here?” she asks. I’m intrigued, but there are rules in this family, I’m not allowed to hijack the agenda for Shakespeare. “My teacher was one of the curators, and we all have to go check it out for my class and write a paper about it.” Oh, it’s for homework? I’m so in!

Off we head to the Pequot Library in Connecticut. Ready for what we saw?

The collection, like many this year, was a celebration of 400 years of the Folio. So there were many cards describing the difference between the editions and which plays were added as they came out. A pleasant surprise was the amount of space dedicated to Charles and Mary Lamb’s work, which is one of the ways I introduced my kids to Shakespeare. I’m not honestly sure of the connection between the Lambs and the Folio, but hey, I wasn’t part of the curating.

Two things I especially loved about this one. First, this small library really decorated with Shakespeare. While we were in the exhibit room, one of the ladies at the desk came to tell us that there was an additional room that we shouldn’t miss. This turned out to be mostly illustrations from later collections behind glass, so I didn’t get any good pictures. But I appreciate her making sure we didn’t miss it. There was also a Hamlet on display right by the entrance that she called out as well. I definitely hadn’t missed that one.

Also, check this out. As we walked in the door I saw a brochure for a local Shakes-Beer fest, which unfortunately I won’t be in town for. But then check this out!

They went ahead and gave him his own little display, shot glasses included!

Second, and I think I love this most of all … the exhibit blended seamlessly with the children’s section of the library.

On the wall is that very well-known “Phrases Today That We Owe To Shakespeare” poster, done up on a very nice and colorful canvas. The shelf is covered with children’s books about Shakespeare (some I have, many I don’t!) Across the top are paper dolls of Shakespeare’s characters. I imagine a family coming into the exhibit for the adults and older kids to see Shakespeare, and sometimes they’re going to have younger kids in tow. Those kids are going to be bored, right? It’s over their heads? It’s boring? Wrong! Genius idea. More exhibits should do this.

Very happy that we stopped by. There was definitely a lot of cool stuff to look at. There were some other patrons wandering around, so of course, my daughter and I had to have some fun. I mentioned that we were looking at a Fourth Folio, and she asked, “Which one did we see?”

“You guys have seen …” I paused to count … “I think 5 First Folios? I’m only now realizing that I should have kept a better count. That’s a fun bucket list item, to see as many as you can. You definitely saw Folio #1 when we were down in the Folger Vault.”

“I think I tried to touch it,” my son said.

“No, you tried to touch a different one that they had out on the counter,” I told him. “Folio #1 was special, we had to ask to see that.” Alas, none of the little old ladies seemed interested in our humble bragging. Honestly, I think they were annoyed that we were there and taking up space. They’re probably used to having the place 90% empty. I don’t care. If there’s an opportunity to talk about Shakespeare, I’m going to take it.

Shakespeare makes life better. Sir Patrick Stewart is among the pantheon of modern actors who stand as a walking embodiment of Shakespeare’s work. Ergo, SirPatStew makes life better.

I may have mentioned that I live for my audiobooks. I go into the office two days a week in this modern hybrid world, and my commute is about 90 minutes each way. That’s 6 hours a week of audiobook time. And when you listen on 1.5x speed, it’s really more like 9 hours/week. (I think I did that math right.) So, with a typical audiobook being around 8 to 12 hours, I fly through them as you might imagine.

Enter Making It So, the newly released memoir from Sir Patrick Stewart, thankfully read by the author. I had to make sure about that last part, as this would have been a totally different experience with someone else reading it. We all know that Patrick is as famous for his voice as James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman. It is so worth it.

I love every word of this book. The man’s had a lengthy and illustrious career spanning not just Shakespeare but Star Trek, the X-Men, and classic literature ranging from Charles Dickens to Herman Melville. It’s all here, but really, we’re talking probably 80% of the book is Shakespeare.

Like any memoir, we start with his growing-up years. We learn about his mom and brothers and his distant relationship with his abusive father. Strangely, his brother Geoffrey comes up maybe once in the whole book, while brother Trevor is an important part of the story. Not much is said about that disparity.

But soon we’re into the meat of the book, his time with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The stories come fast and furious, from his earliest days of being the new kid getting the non-speaking roles and standing in awe of his own idols, to eventually becoming an idol to the next generation (see what I did there?)

If you’re like me, you’ll already be hanging on his every word at this point, so when he starts dropping names – whether Shakespeare characters or Shakespeare actors – you may find yourself laughing out loud or literally having your breath taken away, as I did.

I’ll tell one quick story to illustrate how much I loved this book. Otherwise, I’ll talk forever. For me, the works of Shakespeare are kind of like a snow globe on the bookshelf. Inside, there’s this fascinating little world that I could stare at for hours, always finding something new, always wondering what that life might be like. But it’s a different world. A bubble. There’s a barrier between my world and that world. A transparent one, but not a permeable one.

Then Stewart talked about his audition for the RSC and said two words – John Barton.

And I was right there on stage with him. Words like breathtaking are rarely used literally, but I can use such a word here. I was transported. (See what I did there? ;))

John Barton did a PBS mini-series some years back called Playing Shakespeare where we got the pleasure of watching a parallel universe where young Shakespearean gods like Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, Judi Dench and Patrick Stewart learned their craft right there on the stage, in plain clothes, taking notes from teacher/director Barton in his comfy cardigan, no doubt channeling no small amount of Mr. Rogers for those of us who grew up on American television. It is the most inside and intimate look at the world of “behind the scenes” Shakespeare I’ve ever seen. It took only two words from Stewart to shatter that barrier between our worlds and make me feel like I was right there with them. I’m still getting goosebumps writing about it.

Enough about Shakespeare, though. I want to tell you all the stories like that, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. Let’s talk about the rest of the book.

There’s a lot of Star Trek in here, to be fair. But for a 12-hour audiobook, Star Trek gets mentioned maybe 8 hours in, to give you an idea. He speaks of his Captain Picard role with the same respect that he speaks of Shakespeare. The fact that he got to act in Star Trek opposite some of his Shakespeare heroes (hello, David Warner), makes it all the more special. There are four lights!

Being a brand new book, this is very up-to-date, taking us all the way through the pandemic and three seasons of the Picard show. He tells us all about his social media adventures, from “folding his first New York slice” to reading a sonnet a day on Instagram during lockdown. I was there for all of it, and I loved hearing about all of it again.

There’s one surprise in the book. Sir Ian McKellen is hardly mentioned at all. The Internet wants to think that these two are inseparable BFFs for life, but this memoir does not paint that picture. Patrick loves Ian and they are no doubt now the best of friends, but if you’d gotten the idea that they grew up together on the Shakespeare stage, that is not the case. Apparently, they never even played together at the RSC, and didn’t really start doing projects together until X-men! WHAT?

Ok I’m done. If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, what are you waiting for? You’re on a Shakespeare site, you’re a Shakespeare fan. This book is like distilled essence of Shakespeare, you’ll want to spray it on yourself like cologne and walk around in it all day.

It’s rare that I pick up a book the day it comes out. But when somebody tells me that we’re doing a science-fiction locked-room murder mystery version of Hamlet where Horatio is an AI, I’m getting in line. So it is with The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu. Was it worth the effort? Read on!

I always appreciate a good Hamlet modernization/novelization. There’s so much room to work with. How close will they stick to the original, and where will they go off on their own? After all, the original’s got ghosts and poison and all sorts of murder, intentional and accidental. How do you compose a believable story that doesn’t take place in the Danish royal court?

This one’s pretty good, all things considered. We’re in a super secret lab where they’re experimenting with the kind of thing that will revolutionize everything … so, of course, people will kill for it. You’ve got the father, chief scientist, already dead when we start. So we go into lockdown. Did the son do it? Or the uncle? What about the trusted advisor, who is also the father of the young intern who used to date the son? The characters are all there. And the plot does hit most of the necessary beats, I’m happy to say.  They handle the ghost thing in an original and, for the purpose of this story, believable way.

In the end, though, it started to lose me – and I blame the narration. If you know Hamlet, you know that there’s really only one character who can be the one to tell the story. But is that true here? The author opts to go for this sort of “I’ll justify an omniscient narrator through various excuses” approach where sometimes it’s in first person; sometimes it’s transcripts from other people’s diaries, sometimes it’s log files from the computer or security tapes … basically, especially in audiobook, when you heard “I felt this and saw this so I did this” you typically have no idea who I is. Whenever you think you know, suddenly that character’s being referred to in the third person again, so now you have to figure it out all over again.

There’s one thing I hated about the book, though, and I’ve debated just saying it since it would be a total spoiler (that has nothing to do with the plot resolution), I’ll just say it like this. Do you know how sometimes people get overly obsessed with how the Hamlet/Horatio relationship could have gone? Yeah, this is one of those books. I thought you said Horatio was an AI? I did. You’ve been warned.