So long as men can breathe and eyes can see, people are going to be arguing about Shakespeare’s Sonnets.  On this the 400th anniversary of their publication, Clinton Heylin’s book gives us a roadmap of how we got here, though there’s no reason to think that we’re any closer to the truth now than we were then. What surprised me most, although I suppose it shouldn’t have, is that Shakespeare is not in this – like, at all.  For those that are unfamiliar with the history of the sonnets, they were published in 1609 by a man named Thomas Thorpe, and the question ever since has been, “Who’s Shakespeare to him, or he to Shakespeare?”  We have no records, so we have to guess.  Were they stolen? Heylin uses the expression “publisher/pirate” quite frequently, and many of the commentaries on publication use variations on the expression “came into possession,” whatever that means. So while other books on the sonnets will take the text and look at “What did Shakespeare mean by this?” Heylin’s book asks the question more like “Who printed it, in what sequence and grouping, and how did this change how future generations interpreted what Shakespeare might have meant?” Most of the setup for the “Shakespeare didn’t want these published” argument comes from the fact that there are multiple and obvious mistakes in the initial printing, something that would not have happened if the author was working alongside the publisher to see the finished result.  I have to admit, it’s a pretty logical point, and I don’t know the answer.  Perhaps it’s true that the mistakes just weren’t as big a deal as Heylin suggests, and Shakespeare didn’t care all that much.  From there it becomes a history lesson in sonnet interpretation (once you get past some fighting and suing each other over who had the rights to publish what, and who stole from whom).  When did the  Dark Lady come into the picture, and what are the different theories about her identity?  Which editors took the position that Shakespeare was gay, and which felt obliged go with the “nonono, that’s just how men talked to other men in Shakespeare’s day” interpretation?  I remember hearing that one in high school ;).  I never really bought that one, because you can read some of Shakespeare’s own dedications (like the one at the front of Venus and Adonis) and you can see just how flowery he did get, and how very different it is from the outpouring of love found in the sonnets. Speaking of dedications, just who was “W.H”?  The sonnets are dedicated to these mysterious initials, and the book spends significant time right off the bat discussing the possible theories, most notably Pembroke (William Herbert) and Southhampton (Henry Wriothesley).  If you’re already saying “Hey wait, that second guy is an H.W., not a W.H,” then you’re starting to get a glimpse at what this detective story is all about – maybe it was a typo or a mistake?  Or maybe a secret code!  Heylin, by the way, seems to come down pretty strongly on the Pembroke side.  I don’t recall him ever actually stating his belief on the subject, but the argument does stick in my brain as being pretty lopsided in favor. [ Here’s my query : Do we know for certain that Shakespeare wrote the dedication, since we don’t even know if he wanted the sonnets published?  Perhaps Thorpe wrote it himself?  If that’s the case, then shouldn’t we be asking who WH is to Thorpe, rather than to Shakespeare? Some people see “we’ll never know the answer” as a challenge – others, like me, see it as an opportunity to say “then let’s stop asking the question, shall we?” ] I have books on Shakespeare the man, and I have books on the sonnets themselves.  I think it’s a worthy addition to anybody’s book collection to look specifically at the editing of the sonnets like this.  We may never know exactly what Shakespeare meant, but at least we can take a realistic look at what cases have been made, who made them, and why. Only then can you really decide for yourself whether you’ve found the answer than sounds right to you.

UPDATED September, 2010: Putting my money where my mouth is, I’ve released my own “more than just a book of Shakespeare quotes.” Hear My Soul Speak is a hand-picked collection of over 100 quotations and sonnets specifically chosen for their usefulness in all parts of a wedding, from best man speeches to writing your own vows. Each is grouped according to who might use it (and when), and details about why you might want to use it (the how and the why) are included.

Anybody can write a book of Shakespeare quotes – just get a Complete Works and a highlighter marker and go to town.  It takes a real Shakespeare Geek like Barry Edelstein to produce Bardisms, a guide to not only *what* to quote, but *how* and *why* to quote it.
This is great stuff.  Quoting Shakespeare properly is about more than just searching for keywords, after all.  It’s not like Shakespeare mentioned the commute to work, or college graduation, or changing diapers, yet it’s not hard (with a little imagination) to find quotes relevant to each of those.
The author goes a bit “meta” ( is that only a computer geek expression? ) by organizing the book itself according to a Shakespeare quote – in this case, the ages of man.  Perhaps you need some quotes about the birth of a new baby, or a lullaby to sing to your own children (my own ears perk up at that one).  Or maybe a toast for a wedding?  A coworker’s retirement?  Edelstein has you covered.  And everything in between.
The bit that perhaps we Shakespeare geeks can appreciate the best, though, is that Edelstein doesn’t just offer quotes.  He doesn’t just explain when and why to quote it.  He actually gives lessons on *how*, from proper pronunciation to which words you might want to swap out to fit the occasion (boys for girls, and so on).  It is a workbook not just in spotting a good phrase, but being comfortable enough with it that you might really bust it out at that retirement party, and not just keep it stuffed in your pocket scribbled down on a cocktail napkin.
Respect the source material!  I love that there’s a section, right in the introduction, that covers the topic.  It’s not necessarily important that the context of the play fit the situation you need – after all you’re probably attending a graduation, not a coronation – but it is crucial that you understand the words coming out of your mouth.  I remember when I wanted to put that “I will swear I love thee infinitely” quote on my wife’s bracelet and it was very important to me to understand whether that was heartfelt or sarcastic.
Edelstein’s step #1 to properly quoting Shakespeare is “Know what you’re saying.”  Amen, brother.  He goes on include “stress the juxtaposition of opposites”, the swing between high poetry and simple prose, “heightening agents”, scansion and metre, and watching syllables.  Truthfully if somebody picks up this book because they’ve got a specific event and they need a specific quote, I don’t expect they’ll spend much time in this section (and honestly perhaps that person needs more of a generic reference book like I described in the first paragraph).  But for those of us who want to deeply appreciate the source material, those of us who understand that we’re quoting it in our daily lives because of the infinite depth of Shakespeare’s words, I think we’d love it.  Maybe you can memorize a couple dozen quotes on your own, and maybe with Edelstein’s tips you can double or triple that number.  More Shakespeare is a good thing.
There are times, I’ll admit, when Edelstein goes so far off the geeky scale he makes me want to turn in my own credentials.  I may enjoy singing Sonnet 18 to my kids at night, and I might drop the occasional “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” in answer to when am I going to cut the lawn, or a “When the wind in southerly Daddy knows a hawk from a handsaw” when the kids tell me I’m being silly.  But it never occurred to me that I might have a quote from Winter’s Tale (“You gods look down, And from your sacred vials pour your graces Upon my daughter’s head”) ready and rearing to go as the first words my children heard upon their birth.  When they’re crying I don’t whisper anything about coming to this great stage of fools.  Maybe one day I’ll turn into that level of Shakespeare geek, who knows.
But when he uses the line “She must have change, she must!” (Iago, Act 1 scene 3) on the occasion of diaper changing, and then goes on to suggest that “One of the ways Shakespeare manages to speak to all occasions is by virture of having survived long enough to address them” and “that speech’s applicability to the present circumstances is what truly counts,” then I think he might go off the deep end a little teeny bit.   I have to say, when I read that it brought to mind people who see Jesus in their morning toast.   I love Shakespeare, but just because he turned a phrase with the word “change” in it does not mean that he was offering up wisdom on diaper duty.  (I’m also reminded of the poster who came in looking for some Shakespeare to use as a command phrase for his dog, and everybody came up with “Cry Havoc!”  – but that doesn’t mean that Shakespeare was making a statement on dog obedience, does it?)
Overall I have to say I’m loving this one, especially the easy organization into life events.  Need something for a wedding?  Got it covered – and not just Sonnet 116, thank you!  He also brings in some Tempest, Cymbeline, As You Like It and others.   Or maybe it’s not an occasion where you’ll get up to speak, maybe you’ll just write a little note to someone in need of comfort.  The section on grief and loss is particularly moving, given how much of Shakespeare’s best work was in tragedy.  I was curious if a certain passage would be in there, and it was – King John’s “grief fills up the room of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me…” speech.  I hope to never have occasion to use that one, either for myself or anyone I know.  But man is it powerful.
Summing up?  I want to find people to talk to and occasions to talk to them just so I can have an excuse to talk like this.  I want to be the kind of guy, like Edelstein, who can bust out the Shakespeare at the drop of a hat.  At any given time I can pull a couple out of thin air, but not nearly the level that could be possible with the help of a book like this.

When I first reviewed Sourcebooks Shakespeare I had not ripped into the accompanying audio CD because I wanted to give them away to my readers.  Well, now that we are giving away copies to TWO readers I am free to dig in. Umm…wow.  Or maybe, holy cow!  Or fill in your own word for “cow”.  To think I almost missed this. Let me take a moment to explain how I listen to stuff on CD these days.  Regardless of the matter, I rip it into MP3, compile it all up into a single file, turn it into audiobook format, and then put it on my ipod where I most typically listen while driving.  I got into this habit specifically because the ipod lets you put audiobooks (and not just any random MP3) on “faster” mode, allowing you to effectively speed read your way through a book on CD.  It was with this approach that I began the King Lear CD. …and it took me about 10 seconds to turn off “faster” mode, for starters.  I want to enjoy this, not merely say that I completed it. The CD ends up being something that is half lesson, half sampler, and all wonderful.  There’s a very simple structure – Derek Jacobi narrates, introducing a scene from the play followed by two different versions of that same scene.  At least I think it is always two, I’m not quite done yet.  By description I don’t just mean he says “Ok, here’s the Scofield versus the Olivier” – that would be the sampler.  It is a lesson because he explains what to listen for in each, how in the first you might hear Edgar doing a manic Poor Tom who barely prevents breaking character when he realizes he is speaking to the king, while in the second you get an Edgar who always looks to be in control of himself and is merely spouting a steady stream of gibberish. (That is my paraphrase, that is not part of the narration). I could listen to that all day.  There is no confusion, none at all, with this snipping of a scene here and a scene there, without context.  The narration provides perfect context, telling you what’s led up to this point, and walking you through the action that will happen.  It is where he says what to listen for that the real hardcore fans in the audience might find fault, as they’d like to listen for themselves first.  Not me.  I’m perfectly happy to be told the differences to watch for, and then see if I can hear it in the performance.  Quite honestly sometimes I agree, sometimes I don’t.  Jacobi may tell me that this Lear is going to speak to the storm like it’s a person standing next to him, but then when I hear that performance that’s not the thought I get at all. Walking through the scenes like this is also a great way to get a taste of productions you might not otherwise get to witness.  The first Fool I ever saw was John Hurt, playing to Olivier’s Lear.  Samples from that version are included, sometimes up against none other than Kenneth Branagh, playing the Fool vs Paul Scofield’s Lear.  You know what?  To my ear, Branagh never stood a chance. 🙂 It is easy to get confused, I have to say that.  One long stream of various people doing various scenes from the play makes it hard to connect the two and say “Ok, I remember how Olivier played Lear in the first scene, now I want to compare it to the scene on the heath…”  That might be easier with the original CD and the book for reference, rather than how I am doing it. [Funny aside, a coworker just came by as we wrap up our lunch hour and we got into a discussion about source material and multiple versions, and how there are some folks that will only ever love the first “version” they see, while others will seek out multiple versions and find their enjoyment in the intricate differences between the two.  I played a sample of this very audio for her, explaining that even though it is an analysis of King Lear, “This is the sort of thing I listen to for fun.”  You know what?  It sounds 1000x better on my headphones than in the car, I may have to switch my listening style…] Anyway, wrapping it up.  This is just wonderful, wonderful stuff.  I’d like the entire canon like this, please.  I want more than 2 examples of each, I want half a dozen.  I want a web site where they’re all indexed so I can pick and choose, a virtual Build-a-Lear Workshop (I just thought of that! :)) where I can piece together some Olivier, some Scofield, some McKellen… Don’t forget, we’re giving away two copies, so what are you waiting for?

The Sourcebooks Shakespeare I stumbled backwards into this fine resource when I saw a Twitter reference that mentioned both iPhone and Shakespeare.  So I wrote to Marie asking if she was doing some sort of software development related to Shakespeare. Long story short, I’ve got books to review :).  Marie was nice enough to send me review copies of King Lear and Macbeth (which I will be giving away next week in some sort of contest). I am very pleasantly surprised by how cool these are.  Let me see if I can break down the layout for you.  First and foremost, each book has a traditional script of the play – on the right hand pages.  Nicely laid out, lots of whitespace, which I like.  It looks visually like the kind of thing that might be read by an actor, rather than something out of an academic textbook with microscopic print. The left-hand pages are where you find all the good stuff.  Not only is there the traditional glossary of odd words, but actual trivia, anecdotes, images, and links to the accompanying audio CD where that particular part of the scene is being read aloud, so you can follow. Think about how cool that is.  We read about Lear and the Fool stumbling across Poor Tom’s hovel, while we flip through images of other people’s interpretations of that scene.  Where we don’t get images we get descriptions, like the story about a Cordelia who plays guitar through the opening scene, showing either that she was completely not paying attention to what was going on around her and thus completely taken off guard, or else that she knew exactly and was deliberately being rude.  I couldn’t get enough of that sort of thing, and only wish there was a way that they could imbed video right in there with everything else. Also strewn throughout are editorial comments that aren’t afraid to say things as they should be, like “Lear might be referring to _____ here, or possibly ______.”  I worry for textbooks that make factual statements to impressionable students, when another book might say something different with equal confidence that their answer is the only one.  Some of the editorial choices are interesting as well, and those too are called out in the comments.  I saw several times “Some editors place a scene break here, but Kent stays on stage the whole time so we chose not to.”  Cool – explanation of editor’s decisions, and not buried someplace in an appendix that I’ll never read. The book opens with a lengthy description of Shakespeare in performance, including stories about some of the more popular interpretations (like Kurosawa’s Ran, obviously).  It ends with a lesson on how to perform Shakespeare, and the importance of the spoken presentation.  This makes sense, of course because the books each come with an audio CD containing selections of well known Shakespearean actors performing key scenes from the play.  (I am deliberately not tearing into the book to listen to those, as I want to reward some of my readers with pristine copies.) I think this is a great idea.  From the web site we see that these are clearly intended for classroom use, and I’m glad to see it.  Personally as someone long out of school I think I’d boil down all the stories and images into a single volume, leaving only key passages from the play, and do it like “King Lear in Performance” or something.  After all, I already have many copies of the play and don’t need the book to be twice as long just so I know what scene they’re talking about when they talk about Gloucester’s eyes.  But maybe that’s just me? Excellent resource, fun to read.  It’s not often I get to say this about a Shakespeare book, but this is one that you can pick up just to look at the pictures!