Ok, let’s see how this goes.

I don’t think have to reintroduce Scott Newstok every time I write about him. Back in 2008 when I was just getting started he sent me a copy of his book on Kenneth Burke and my honest response was, “I don’t know who that is.”

My ignorance of things at Scott’s academic level has not turned him off, however, and he’s continued to keep in touch and send me his work over the years, including Wayward Macbeth a few years later.

Which leads me to his latest, How To Think Like Shakespeare, which started out as a convocation address he gave and is now available in book form. I actually received the book back in April and am ashamed that I have only now gotten around to writing about it.

There’s a reason for that. I have tried and tried to complete this book, and I hate to say that I can’t. It’s not for the source material or the subject. I love the idea – see the linked post above for how I raved about the idea when I originally heard it.

My problem is with the book itself. Everbody’s life is busy. During pandemic, doubly so. So we all find ways to organize our time, our priorities and our lives. For years I had a commute to work that lasted about an hour and a half each way and I learned to live on audio books. Used to go through 50+ of them a year. On the flip side, my “Sit down with an actual paper book” time has approached zero over the years. When I was in the car I had no choice what to do with my time. When I’m home and find myself with time to read a book I am plagued with thoughts of, “What other things do you need to be doing right now?” It is very, very hard to find the attention span. So if a book does not hook me right away and become something I simply can’t put down, I’m going to struggle.

What’s killing me here is the editorial structure of the book. Literally every single page is loaded with footnotes, call outs, quotes, italicized and/or emphasized words … and probably a few other flow-breaking constructs I’ve forgotten about. I tried to scan a page to give an example:

Imagine all the pages like this. Maybe it’s just what my reading style has become, maybe I’ve developed focus or attention issues as I’ve gotten older, but I simply can’t pick up any momentum reading like this. Every time the font changes or the paragraph breaks unexpectedly that voice in my head says “Whoa hey wait we just got sidetracked” and I’m left with each page feeling like a jumble of separate thoughts rather than a complete whole.

If you’re used to reading books like this, don’t let me stop you. I still love the topic, as shown by my post from a few years ago. I’m just not the best person, for whatever reason, to offer a review. My apologies to Scott and his publisher.

I’m no actor, I think I’ve made that abundantly clear over the years. So when I first saw Robert Myles’ “The Shakespeare Deck,” described as an “actor’s toolkit”, I thought that’s not for me. Then Rob wrote to me directly and asked if I wanted a copy. I may not act but I am a fan of the text, and any tools for the toolbox that help dig deeper into the text, I’m all for. So now I happily have a copy 🙂

He’s got a great video explaining exactly what it is so I won’t try to copy him:

But I can tell you my own experience. It’s a very nice product, well made with sturdy, glossy cards. If anything I find the cards just a bit too slippery, it’s a little tricky holding the whole deck in your hand to shuffle through them, they want to go scattering on you if you’re not careful.

Each card is multi purpose. They are colored coded, numbered, “short coded” (my term not his), and double sided. That’s a lot of information packed into 45 cards. I’ve pulled one at random to use as an example:

Here we have a green card, which means it is from the “Rhetoric” section of the deck. Other sections include Forensic Linguistics, Working the Text, and Engaging the Audience. The D in the lower right corner tells us this is a Definition card, focused on explaining the technique used and its purpose. Some cards might have an E, for an exercise that actors can attempt to reinforce the idea. The 11 in the other corner reminds us where in the deck this card belongs so we can keep them in a particular order for developing round-robin or circuit training practice.

And here’s the other side – an example (in this case, two) of reframing. This the part I like. If I didn’t particularly get the first part, I understand the example.

Grabbing another card I find the orange Believe Your Eyes card, which tells me to “look for opportunities in the text to play a physical action that contrasts with the text,” referencing Richard III and Lady Anne (though not the actual text) as an example.

A random yellow card shows me “Antithesis”, offering up several text examples:

• “What he has lost, noble Macbeth has won.”
• “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

I just realized that, although I grabbed those at random, all three represent juxtaposition or opposites in one form or another. “move me to stir / move me to stand”, “physical action that contrasts the text”, “what he has lost Macbeth has won.” Shakespeare played with that idea a lot.

I think I like the green cards best, mostly because they map directly to examples from the text while also teaching me something new. I may have already known about simile and exaggeration, but “topos” and “kairos” were new to me!

Definitely a neat product, quite densely packed with information about the text. Hopefully it’s the kind of thing that my kids can use as well when they go through their own Shakespeare courses.

Does the name Rob Myles ring any bells yet? Right now he’s having his moment in the spotlight as the director of The Show Must Go Online, entirely virtual performances of Shakespeare’s complete works. Check it out if you haven’t yet, highly recommended! Getting more impressive every week!

Thanks Rob for the deck and for everything you’re bringing to the Shakespeare Universe.

I’m sure that How To Stop Time by Matt Haig showed up on my lengthy book list because there was something in it about meeting Shakespeare.  I will almost always check those leads out at some point or another, even though I’ve been burned before. I’m looking at you, Neal Stephenson…

So I’m happy to report that this is a good one. Not just because of the Shakespeare content, of which there is more than a little, but because it’s also a good book by itself.

The premise feels like it’s been done before, but I can’t quite put my finger on a specific example. Our narrator ages….very…..slowly.  He’s not immortal. He’s not a vampire. He just ages about 1/15th the pace of everybody else. He’s part of a society of such people known as “albatrosses” who live almost a thousand years.

What do you do with your time when you live for a thousand years? Mostly you go looking for other people like you. You try not to let yourself “anchor” by falling in love with a “mayfly” – a regular human whose lifespan will be trivial compared to yours.  Much like Forrest Gump, you find yourself witnessing historical events firsthand. Much like Groundhog Day, you occupy your free time learning how to do, well, basically anything you want.

But there are downsides, too. The human brain is not made to hold a thousand years of memories, so the older you get, the greater the odds of losing your mind (first come the headaches, then comes the blurting out of things you’re supposed to keep secret, then the trip the asylum…)  Worse, you live in constant fear of anyone – including those you love – of finding out your secret. Whether it’s seventeenth-century witchfinders or nineteenth-century “scientists”, your existence is something they wish to see come to an end.

I suppose I should mention Shakespeare after all that. Our narrator does spend some time not just in Elizabethan England, but literally in Shakespeare’s company. Shakespeare is a character (as are Kemp and Burbage), and not just at the edge – he plays a role in the plot (granted, not a large one). A significant part of the early takes place in and around the Globe where we’re treating to the sights, sounds, and smells of our favorite era.

I’m also happy to learn that a movie is in the works – starring Benedict Cumberbatch!

Glad I got around to this one. Definitely recommended.