Both my two oldest now are studying Shakespeare — Othello for one, Romeo and Juliet for the other — so the content comes so fast and furious it’s hard to keep up. My oldest has to write a paper on Iago, in fact, because they finished the play when I wasn’t looking.
“That’s what I was going to tell you,” she says. “I had to look something up about Iago for research … and you came up. That was weird.”
Sure enough, if you Google “Othello’s ancient” here’s what comes up:
The funny thing is that there in the car I said, “It means his right-hand man, right?” Which is exactly what I wrote in 2011. And she said, “No, it means flag bearer,” which is also what I learned in 2011 🙂
I’ve oft-lamented that while I would love to collect and play Shakespeare board games and card games, I don’t really have anyone in the physical world to play with. My family will try to play, but the game ends up 90% me explaining things and letting them keep up. Where’s the fun in that?
Well when Shakespeare Trivial Pursuit was announced a month before my birthday I knew I had to have it, even if to just add to my collection.
But! I think I’ve found a way to rewrite the game for when the number of Shakespeare geeks is drastically outweighed by non-Shakespeareans.
All of the Shakespeare Geeks are on one team. Anyone not a self professed Shakespeare geek is playing for themselves.
The cards are shuffled and placed in the center.
The first non-SG player picks a card. Player is allowed to look at all the questions, and the answers. Player must then decide which question they think the SG team is most likely to get wrong, and ask SG team that question.
If SG team gets it right, they get the card. If they do not, asking player gets the card.
First player or team to a pre-determined number of cards, wins. SG team must get at least two times that number (since they get a chance to collect a card on every turn, whereas individual players do not). Odds can be adjusted (3x, 4x..) depending on how many players, and how good SG team is.
Always read the question out loud, as well as the answer (in cases where SG team does not guess correctly). This has the added advantage of teaching the non-SG players something about the subject 🙂
If you play this way, let me know how it goes! Also let me know your ideas on what’s up with the extra wedge holder thingie, I still don’t understand that. 🙂
Yesterday I wrote about how it’s ok – nay, expected – that you know the ending of a Shakespeare play, but you still go see it again and again, because it’s about how they tell the story to get there. The only caveat to this rule would be those movies where it’s all about “the twist” (an M Night Shyamalan production). I noted that Shakespeare doesn’t really do twists.
But what if he did? I started wondering, which plays could be presented such that you don’t see it coming until the big reveal at the end.
Twelfth Night is an obvious example. What if we leave out Viola at the beginning, and pick it up with Cesario? Then you’ve got a classic romantic comedy where Cesario’s lusting after Orsino, Olivia is lusting after Cesario, Orsino’s lusting after Olivia but kind of really confused about his feelings for Cesario, and so on. Enter this guy Sebastian, who mentions a shipwreck and searching for his lost “sibling” and we think, “Aha! Twins! This will be good!” But then we get to the big finale where we find out Cesario is actually Viola. Cue happy endings and wedding music.
But I think it’s cheating to just do the easy comedy. Could we do it with a tragedy? I was wondering – if we took out all Iago’s soliloquies and behind the scenes machinations, could we make a twist out of it? Basically tell the whole story from Othello’s perspective, rather than Iago’s. He has to deal with his new father in law’s fury. He has to deal with his right-hand man Cassio getting into drunken bar fights. All the while he puts growing faith in loyal Iago, who hates to say this, but who thinks that maybe Cassio might be fooling around with Othello’s wife.
I think this one would be much harder to splice together, but imagine the payoff at the end? Suddenly Emilia comes out of nowhere to unveil that it was her husband all along? Then the husband f%^&*(ng STABS HER?! And then, when they catch him, he’s all, “Yup, not going to explain myself. At all. You get nothing.” That would be legendary.
Now I’m sad that knowing the real ending, I could never get to see how that would actually pay off, even if they made a movie exactly like that tomorrow.
This has more potential than I thought. What other plays could we twist? The only rule is that you can’t add more original content. If Shakespeare didn’t answer the question, we can’t answer it. We can’t, for instance, learn that it was actually Gertrude that killed her husband (or Ophelia). You have to stay as close the original material as possible, just mess with how the audience gets to see it.
I was actually a little surprised today to see somebody send me an Endgame spoiler over on Reddit. It was a randomly generated account so I’m guessing it was just blasted to everybody. Reddit doesn’t really have an advanced inbox system so it’s not like I could have ignored it — I click the “new messages” button and bam, there it is. Oh well.
Here’s the thing, though. Why in the world would anybody who’s read Shakespeare care about spoiler? Newsflash, jackasses – we already know the ending. It’s not about that. If your entire investment in the story hangs on keeping something secret? Then you didn’t do a very good job telling your story.
How many times have we all read and seen King Lear? Or Hamlet? There are no twists in Shakespeare. We always know that Cesario is a girl (although, that gives me an idea for a different blog post…. 😉 ) It’s about how they tell the story to get there. Honestly, I think plenty of people knew the ending of Infinity War before they saw it – but they still saw it. Same with Endgame. We already have our tickets. Nothing’s going to change.
So, my fellow Shakespeare Geeks, laugh off any cowardly spoilers you happen to stumble across. If you’ve got any investment in the story at all – and after 10 years and 20 movies, who are we kidding, of course we do – then no little trolls should be able to spoil that for you. Enjoy the show.
In marketing my merchandise I’ve often noted that “the dream” is to randomly bump into somebody wearing one of my t-shirts, because I’ll know I’ve found a kindred spirit. This week I learned to always have my eyes open because kindred spirits are all around.
My oldest geeklet was inducted into her school’s chapter of the National Honor Society last night. It was held in the school chapel. It just so happens that their chapter coordinator is also her Shakespeare teacher. Here, to the best of my ability to recap it, is her welcome speech:
“This being Boston, I did hear on the radio that there’s some kind of important game on television tonight.” <pause for cheers from the audience> “The Bruins are in the playoffs, and game seven sounds exciting.” <more cheers> “I don’t follow sports, but I do have my own personal reasons for celebrating, because today is also Shakespeare’s Birthday.”
And that, if you can believe it, marks the very first time on a Shakespeare Day I’ve been in the room with a third party who, entirely independent of me, brings it up.
So I did what I always told myself I hoped I’d do. I threw both hands up in the air and yelled, “WOOO!” She pointed at me from her lectern and smiled. I believe there were some cheers for Shakespeare but honestly I can’t remember, I was having too much an “Ok, I can’t believe I just did that” moment 🙂
After the ceremony at the reception, she did come up to me and say, “Thanks for having my back on the Shakespeare thing.” I told her that was the only celebration of Shakespeare Day I had this year. We then started talking about the ending of Othello – or, rather, I started talking about the ending of Othello while my wife pulled me away and let her sit down and talk to her fiancé.
That’s also something I’ve told people many times — if I start talking about Shakespeare, just go ahead and walk away at some point, because I’m not going to stop. 🙂
Both my two oldest now are studying Shakespeare — Othello for one, Romeo and Juliet for the other — so the content comes so fast and furious it’s hard to keep up. My oldest has to write a paper on Iago, in fact, because they finished the play when I wasn’t looking.
I’ve oft-lamented that while I would love to collect and play Shakespeare board games and card games, I don’t really have anyone in the physical world to play with. My family will try to play, but the game ends up 90% me explaining things and letting them keep up. Where’s the fun in that?
