Category: Shakespeare Geek

This is Not The Worst

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Hi Everybody.

I’m still here. Everybody in my world is still healthy. I’ve felt guilty about leaving the blog untouched for so long. But, as I said recently on Twitter, everything going on in the world has just felt so overwhelming that unless I had something important to say, everything just felt too trivial to bother. There’s actually lots of Shakespeare going on right now, but everything’s happening so fast and furious that by the time I got a useful blog post up it would already be old news.

If Shakespeare can survive, so can we.

Unfortunately, not everything is super here. Amazon has temporarily shut down its merchandise centers, which means no more t-shirts for awhile. This means that income stream dries up, right at the time when we all need whatever we can get. Though my wife and I are both lucky to still have our jobs, both of us have been impacted economically by everything that’s going on.

So you’ll notice a few small changes around here. The merchandise links are still up – only now they point to Redbubble. Redbubble’s not as big as Amazon, which means the volume isn’t there to help keep the prices down. But on the upside, Redbubble offers all kinds of merchandise that Amazon does not, including phone cases, stickers, and tote bags. I put up a new design, Have Patience and Endure, to mark the occasion.

Additionally, you may see that Google ads have come back. I’ve experimented with those over the years, as every blog did, and came to the same conclusion that most do – it’s just not worth it. But if there’s a number greater than zero to be had in there, well, I’ve got to give it a shot. I will try to keep them to a minimum. I’m sure that most folks these days are running ad blockers anyway. But I like being honest with my readers. When we get “back to normal” I’ll take them off again, believe me.

On a more positive note, I made a thing that I hope people will like and share. I call it Blank Verse and it’s pretty much Shakespeare Mad Libs. I made it a long time ago but for various technical reasons, I brought it back down again. I’ve rewritten it to be pure Javascript so it’s easier to host here. Right now it’s just version 1 so it doesn’t have many features, but I wanted to do *something* for people to enjoy and share. Please let me know what you think! I hope you like it.

Ok, that’s my brain dump of an update for now. I have stuff to talk about, products to review, links to share. I just have to get back into the mindset of making all that happen.

Take care, and be safe. Have patience and endure.

Never Miss An Opportunity (A Geeklet Story)

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

So my daughter has a friend over the other night, who happens to be involved in local theatre. Over dinner conversation, I ask, “Which play is next?”

“Musical?” she replies. I can’t tell if that’s the name of a play, or if she’s asking me to clarify which musical they’re doing next or just any play. “Oh but I guess we’re doing Shakespeare too.” This friend knows she’s in a Shakespeare house, for context.

“Which one?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“Give me the smallest clue,” I try.

“Something underground about Henry IV?”

“Well, there are two plays called Henry IV.”

“That’s probably it, then! I bet it’s one of those.”

Never one to miss a teaching opportunity I proceed to explain Henry IV in my no doubt highly inaccurate but hopefully compelling way: “So at the start of the play you’ve got the old king, Henry IV. And he’s got this son, Hal. And Hal’s being groomed to take over when his father dies, and become Henry V. Like William and Harry, from the Royal Family? Same idea. Oldest son has to live his life a certain way because he’s going to be king someday. Well, Hal has no interest in being king. Hal just wants to party with his friends.”

“They partied back in Shakespeare’s day?”

“Oh my yes. So Hal’s got this best friend, Falstaff. Falstaff’s much older than Hal, and he ends up being more like a father figure. They do everything together, they party, they get drunk, they wake up late, they get into fights. But all the while Falstaff knows that one day, one day this kid is going to be king. And that’s going to be a big day, that’s going to be everything they ever wanted.

And then one day it happens. Falstaff’s sleeping late as usual when his friends wake him up and say, “It’s happened! The king is dead! Hal is the new king!” And Falstaff goes running through town to find him and celebrate that the day has finally come. And you get this big huge scene when Falstaff comes into the coronation and bursts through the crowd shouting “My boy! My king!”

I pause and see if I’ve still got her attention. I very much do.

“And Hal turns to him and says, “I know thee not, old man.” And banishes him.”

Her jaw dropped.

Who says Shakespeare is boring? I will teach you Shakespeare in my kitchen while I clear the table. Do I get some details wrong? Probably. Does my captive audience learn anything about themes and symbolism? Nope. But are they interested now? Definitely.

This Is Not A Drill, People!

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

So here’s a funny thing that happened. My daughters’ school is having a school-wide, week-long Shakespeare celebration in April. This is unexpected and spontaneous and came up randomly in conversation at my house.

Oldest: “Did you see we’re having Shakespeare Week?”

Me: “Ummm, NO? Say more? Like, right now?”

Turns out this is a new idea they’re trying, hoping to make a tradition. I contact the head of the English department, introducing myself (though we’ve met during various parent/teacher nights) and volunteering my services. We set up a meeting.

Later that day I get a call from my youngest. “DID YOU EMAIL MY TEACHERS!? WHY IS EVERYONE TALKING ABOUT SHAKESPEARE?”

Apparently there’s an email group going on, my kids have been tapped to be some sort of “Shakespeare ambassadors”, and generally there’s a whole bunch of excitement over Shakespeare with my kids in the eye of the hurricane.

They found the blog as well as the merchandise. So now my kids’ teachers and friends are checking out the t-shirts and stickers, combing through all the old blog posts, and hopefully having fun.

Meanwhile, I’m face to face with the dream I’ve had for, oh, twenty years? More? Every day a part of me says, “How prepared am I to represent Shakespeare today?” I wonder what references will come up, what questions will need answers, what opportunities to bring more Shakespeare into the world will present themselves. What can I post on the blog, what can I tweet? How can I turn a phrase at the breakfast table to reinforce quotable material for my kids as they grow? It’s been a crazy ride. I’ve gotten better at it. What once would have been a fear that everybody who discovered my “secret identity” would already know more Shakespeare than I did? My impostor syndrome? Has dissolved over the years.

Now I think, “Yay, new Shakespeare friends!” I tried to find a GIF to represent what it feels like when suddenly there’s opportunities to talk about Shakespeare everywhere I look.

Yes. If you do it right, studying Shakespeare is like being smothered by puppies.

That doesn’t change the fact that in about a week I’m going to sit down with the head of the department and help map out an entire week’s worth of Shakespeare content for an entire school full of kids and it’s really time to put up or shut up. This could easily be the biggest opportunity I ever get.

As the saying goes, “This is what we train for!”

I know there are educators of all sorts that have followed the blog for years. I personally have been in the classroom a couple of times and generated some materials for those visits. There’s a bunch of games rattling around my head that I’d love to try out if I can sit down long enough and write them up.

But I’m putting out the call right now – give me everything you’ve got! I have no idea what they need, but I want to be able to fill that need whatever it is. Activities for the kids to get up and read? Sure. Paper games? Of course. Sonnets, iambic pentameter, memorization, foam rubber sword fights. I want to put it all on the table for them. I’ve been building up a small Shakespearean army over the years and I plan to come in guns blazing. Now we get the chance to show off everything we’ve got. A complete green field, as they say in my business. Willing participants who want the help. What more could we ask?

Shakespeare makes life better. I believe that, even when I can’t explain it. I know it when I see it. I feel it. We’re about to get the chance to put our money where my mouth is for somewhere around 800 kids, and I will accept only “knock it out of the park” as the final outcome. I want them saying, “We want to do this every year.” I want them to feel it, too.

Contact me through any means you like – comment here on the blog, or on Facebook, or Twitter. Go ahead and email me duane@shakespearegeek.com if you prefer. I will collect everything and bring it to my meeting next week. I can’t make any promises about what they’ll be able to use or what final form the various ideas will take, but I think that if you’ve been following me this long then we’re all on the same page — we just want more people exposed to more Shakespeare and we’ll take it any way we can get it.

So let’s get started! Bring it!

Hello New Friends!

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Well, this is an interesting new development. My kids’ friends, as well as their teachers (!), have found the blog.

For years as I documented every amusing Shakespeare reference in our lives my daughter would say, “Don’t put that on the blog! What if the person reads it?!” As if everything I ever have to say can be taken negatively.

My response has always been, “Something related to Shakespeare happened that I found worth sharing, and I wrote up my thoughts on it. I welcome the discussion.” I’ve always tried to write with integrity. I don’t do the anonymous thing, and I don’t snipe behind people’s backs. I try to write from the perspective that I am one person with limited input with which to form an opinion. I am open to the possibility that I misunderstand situations, and that I am wrong from time to time. I actually welcome it.

The point I’m trying to get to is that we’ve got a new audience. I don’t know how many people might be reading this who can bring it up with my kids tomorrow, and I don’t know if those people reading today will still be reading in a week or a month. Time will tell.

But for those of you that did just find the blog, welcome! I hope you find it educational and entertaining.

If you prefer other forms of social media, you can find us on Twitter @ShakespeareGeek. That’s probably my preferred channel because I can listen all day in mostly real-time, jump in on hashtag games, post questions as they occur to me, etc.. The blog posts are really more for longer-form “Here’s a story I want to tell” moments.

If you’re on Facebook? You can find us at http://www.facebook.com/ShakespeareGeekDotCom. I’ll be honest, the Facebook feed is really just links to the blog posts. But! Facebook is really where the conversation is, people tend to like to comment on Facebook.

I’ve got an Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/shakespearegeek/ but I don’t use it much. Shakespeare’s more a medium of words, not pictures. If I wanted one of those “slap a quote on a picture of a sunset” feeds I could that, but there’s already hundreds of those. I much prefer original content. When I have original images I’ll post them, but don’t expect much.

If you’ve got any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. One thing you’ll learn about me very quickly is that on the subject of Shakespeare you’ll find it very hard to shut me up.

Haha, Gottem. A Geeklet Story.

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

My son is 13 and recently got in trouble when I discovered that he’d watched the entire first season of a show called Sex Education on Netflix. I haven’t watched it yet myself, so I have no comment on the show or its content. But he’d asked, and I’d reserved judgment and told him not to watch it yet until I could look more into it, and he watched the whole thing on his own. So, he’s busted.

What happens in the balcony stays in the balcony.

Well, season 2 came out recently. He even made his case that he wasn’t watching it for “that stuff”, but that the story was actually really good and he wanted to see what happened with the characters. Father and son came to a general agreement that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he watched it, but he wasn’t to go shoving it in our faces. As parents, we know that we can’t control what our kids are exposed to, but that doesn’t mean we need to be reminded of it. So he’s been stuck on the fence of whether it’s ok for him to watch it, and whether it’s ok for me to know whether he watched it.

Well, it just so happens that season 2 has some sort of Romeo and Juliet thing going on. I haven’t looked into it yet but may have to, for research. So I decided to try something this morning at breakfast.

Me: “Hey, I heard there’s a whole Romeo and Juliet thing in Sex Education season two.”

Him: (without looking up from his phone) “There is. And it so isn’t at all like the actual Romeo and …. I mean, I’ve never seen it and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I love the straddled universe in that response. Yeah he’s a 13yr old boy who of course made a beeline to a show called “Sex Education” but he’s also a 13yr old boy so grounded in Shakespeare that he has a strong opinion about the quality of the Romeo and Juliet references. I think I’m ok with that. 🙂