Conundrum: Shakespeare Invites
Thanks for the good feedback about last week’s invite rhymes for the Best of the Bard and Henry VIII invites. The Shakespeare invites don’t usually involve poetry, but I do like to include a tagline to catch the interest of group members. Since I haven’t actually organized a reading in some time, I could at least share with you some of the taglines I’ve used. And since there are a few Shakespeare lovers who read this blog, I thought we could make a game out of it.
Can you identify the fifteen plays represented by the taglines below?
1. Bundle up, head on over, and join us as we catch winter by its tale. Hot cocoa will be served.
2. You like it! You really like it!
3. Everybody dies.
4. Come join us at our favorite Bavarian beerhouse as we travel to an austere statehouse, a rowdy whorehouse, and a dank jailhouse.
And then we’re gonna read a play.
5. Revenge is a beach.
6. Witches! Ghosts! Swordplay! Intrigue! Betrayal! Treachery! And the cold-blooded murder of a benefactor! Come join in the fun, as we read the play that dares not speak its name.
7. An afternoon to read. A lifetime to master.
8. We all know what happens when the children of rival families fall in love. But what happens when the rulers of rival countries fall in love?
9. What better way to spend an afternoon than with Rumor, Blunt, Shallow, Silence, Fang, Snare, Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, Feeble, Pistol, Quickly, and Doll?
10. Four hundred years before Seinfeld, there was a show about nothing.
11. We’re gonna party like it’s 1199.
12. Cast of Characters: a nobleman in disguise, an adulterer, a tyrant, an outcast, a wimp, a lackey, a fugitive, a bastard, a fool, two wicked sisters, and an elderly king, slowly losing his grasp on his humanity. Yes, we’re all in there somewhere.
13. And now for something completely different.
14. Bon Appetit!
15. Come join our monthly meeting of conspirators as we sink our daggers into Shakespeare’s classic tale of political intrigue and betrayal in Ancient Rome.
BONUS QUESTION: If readings are typically held on the first Sunday of each month, what play would have been the appropriate choice for January 2008?
Please post whatever you come up with in the comments section.
UPDATE: Correct plays provided by Asher (10) and Jeremy (6).
May 26th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
And a few more invites that I liked, but contain too much information to include in the game:
For now, let’s just keep it Cymble.
If you haven’t read Pericles with us, you haven’t read Pericles.
Hi. We’re reading Coriolanus. I got nothin’.
Meet Henry IV. If one family doesn’t kill him, the other family will.
Come spend an afternoon with Agamemnon, Ulysses, Achilles, Cassandra, Ajax, Priam, Hector, Troilus, Cressida, Paris, Menelaus, and — of course — Helen. It’s the Greeks vs. the Trojans in the world’s first All-Star Celebrity Smackdown.
Two? Certainly.
Of Verona? Absolutely.
Gentlemen? Not exactly…
May 27th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
3. Everybody dies
Yeah…that narrows it down.
Still, I like it!
May 28th, 2009 at 5:44 am
Thanks, Jessica.
“Everybody dies” can be taken in more than one sense. Taken one way, it could be the familiar ending to a Shakespeare tragedy. Taken another, it can be a comment on the universal nature of mortality. Is that enough of a hint?
May 28th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
1: A Winter’s Tale
2: As You Like It
3: Hamlet (The ghost and the prince meet and everyone ends in mincemeat)
4: ?
5: The Tempest?
6: The Scottish Play
7: ?
8: ?
9: The Merry Wives of Windsor
10: Much Ado About Nothing
11: ?
12: King Lear
13: ?
14: Titus Andronicus
15: Julius Caesar
Bonus Question: Twelfth Night
Sorry, that’s all I got.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
All correct, except for #9. So that’s 11 correct out of 16. Nice work, Asher!
January 6 (the first Sunday of 2008) is Twelfth Night, the holiday for which the play was named. It is the twelfth night after Christmas.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:34 pm
4. Measure for Measure? -Not sure about the Baveria reference
8. Antony & Cleopatra
9. Henry 4 p2
11. King John.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:36 pm
or even how to spell “Bavaria”.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Four for four. Nice work, Jeremy!
I probably should have said… the Bavarian beerhouse is the location where the reading was held, and was not a reference to the play.
However, both Bavaria and Vienna were in the Holy Roman Empire at the time the play was written, and I think that may have been a factor in the play selection, so not entirely unrelated either.
Both 7 and 13 are references to something non-Shakespearean, but determining what they are might give a clue to the play being read.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:24 pm
#7 -Othello. The reference is to the board-game of the same name which was tagged “An afternoon to learn, a lifetime to master”.
Not much help for #13, other then the obvious Monty Python reference. Comedy of Errors?
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Correct on both. Welcome, Jeremy!
I’ll be posting the answers to the 1-D Shakespeare Crossword soon, if anyone wants to take a final shot at it.