I’ve done this feature before, but this is the first of what I hope will be a series of weekly opportunities to check in on what searches people do to find themselves at Shakespeare Teacher, and to respond in the name of fun and public service. All of the following searches brought people to this site in the past week.

when queen elizabeth died what
happened to king iago in scottlandOnly one reigning Queen Elizabeth of England has ever died, so I’ll assume you are asking about Elizabeth I. When she died in 1603, the crown was inherited by King James VI of Scotland, who then became King James I of England as well. This united the two kingdoms, and today we even refer to the nation as the United Kingdom.

Iago is a fictional character in Shakespeare’s Othello. There was also a 7th century Welsh King by that name.

obama shakespeareI’m not sure what you’re looking for, but I’m not surprised it brought you here. May I interest you in an anagram?

university teachers genghis khanAnd you thought the midterm was tough.

is teaching shakespeare good?Yes.

genghis khan gameHow come you always get to be Genghis?

wife of henry 8th that was ugliest women aliveAh, you must be thinking of Anne of Cleves, though that may be a bit harsh. Henry had arranged to marry her sight unseen so that he could form a political alliance with her family. But before he agreed to marry her, he sent Hans Holbein the Younger, the greatest portrait artist of his day, to go and paint her. When he returned, as the story goes, Henry liked what he saw and agreed to the marriage. Unfortunately, Henry didn’t realize he was looking at a picture painted by the greatest portrait artist of his day. When he saw the real deal, he was less pleased. The marriage was short, and (fortunately for Anne) ended in divorce.

I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:

book: bush tragedy and Falstaffwhy was shakespeare so successful riddle

how did shakespeare change history

letters to genghis khan from family

social justice of gilligan’s island

a good headline for a shakespeare play

Via Electoral-Vote.com (which I’m still reading for some reason), we find another really cool map. This is an animated GIF showing the electoral results by county for every presidential election from 1960 – 2004. It’s called Purple America, and it was created by from Robert Vanderbei from Princeton University.

You can watch counties change from blue to red and back again. You can see where Ross Perot and George Wallace had the most support. Or you can squint your eyes and watch the entire country change its shade like a mood ring. Enjoy!

The First Folio (1623) delineates Shakespeare’s plays into three genres: Comedy, Tragedy, and History. More recent scholars added the category of Romance to describe some of his later plays, and there is also a fifth, more nebulous, category that goes by several different names, which describes plays like Troilus and Cressida that seem to defy genre.

How meaningful are these genres? Certainly, a play like King Lear has a very different tenor than, say, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s not just a question of mood, but even the rules are different. These are plays in different genres. But does this distinction hold up across the canon? Or does each play speak for itself? This is the Question of the Week.

How much stock should we put in Shakespearean genres?

And if you say that these genres are correct, I have a few follow-up questions. Perhaps you’d like to tackle one of these as well:

• Why is Macbeth a Tragedy while Richard III is a History?
• Why is As You Like It a Comedy, while The Winter’s Tale is a Romance?
• Why is Much Ado About Nothing a Comedy, while Romeo and Juliet is a Tragedy? (Is it just the ending? Is that enough to consider it a different genre?)

I was looking over the current electoral map, and I realized something extraordinary. If Obama took the states where he won by 7 percentage points or more, and McCain took all of the states where Obama won by 6 points or less, Obama would still have won the election 291 – 247. This would put Ohio, Florida, Indiana, and North Carolina in the red, but it would not have changed the outcome. Ohio may have locked in the Obama victory, but it turns out that he didn’t need it.

Looking at a traditional electoral map can be deceiving, because the states are shown in proportion to their land area. If instead, you look at a cartogram, you can see how the states compare to each other by, say, population (shown below) and you can really get a sense of how much of the country went red or blue. Professor Mark Newman from the University of Michigan has some good examples on his site:

So, is all of this just post-election gloating, or am I making a larger point? Well, it’s mostly post-election gloating; it has been a long eight years. But there is a larger point as well. President Obama will enter office with an overwhelming mandate, not to mention a friendly Congress and an enthusiastic public. I know some of my good friends are determined to cling to their cynical views, and I understand where they are coming from, but let me ask them this: If the potential for the change you want were to come along, would you recognize it? Would you believe in it? Would you do everything you could to support it? Because if this isn’t it, I don’t think we’re ever going to see it.

I know, voting can be a hassle. And it really won’t make much of a difference anyway, right?

But here are ten reasons you may want to consider showing up and making your voice heard on Election Day.

10. Because It’s a Ritual

You may not be personally deciding who the next president is going to be, but taking part in the process is a ritual that has more than symbolic value. When you personally go to the polls and perform the physical act of voting, you are establishing yourself as a member of a democratic society who has an investment in the outcome. Complaining is passive; voting is active.

9. To Create a Personal Narrative

Your voting patterns over the years can form a personal history. Were you a Reagan Democrat? Did you support Perot in 1992? I still remember that, two months after I turned eighteen, I participated in my first election. I strutted into the voting booth, and proudly cast my ballot for Michael Dukakis. That’s not a good example, but I think we understand each other.

8. Because You Never Know

In 2000, the final count in the Florida election put Bush ahead by just 537 votes. This decided the election. Your state’s presidential pick may be a foregone conclusion, but there are plenty of down-ticket races where you just might make a difference. The League of Women Voters has more examples of close races.

7. Because They Don’t Want You To Vote

In this case, “They” describes the people who have the polar opposite views as you do. They disagree with you on every major issue. They would take the country – in your opinion – in the absolute wrong direction. And they hate you. They don’t want you to vote. They have invested considerable time and resources into discouraging you to vote. Drive them mad.

6. To Represent

In the post-election analysis, pundits who suddenly have a lot of time on their hands will be breaking down the data from the election to see which demographic groups had the greatest impact. The interests of those groups will be of great interest to politicians moving forward. Just ask a soccer mom. By turning out and representing your demographic, you increase the visibility of your group and its needs.

5. For a Sense of Community

They say that all politics is local, and that always makes me think of Election Day. My polling place is an elementary school gymnasium. When I arrive, there is a bake sale in progress to raise money for the school. Elderly volunteers kindly direct me to my district’s section of the gym. And when it’s my turn, I vote. I may be alone in the booth, but we’re all in this together. I always purchase a snack on my way out – it’s for a good cause.

4. To Qualify for Jury Duty

Okay, now that’s just crazy. Isn’t that a reason not to vote? No, jury duty is every bit as much of a civic duty as voting. Sure, it can be a drag. So is paying taxes, but we do it because of what we get in return. If my house is on fire, someone will come and put it out. That’s awesome! Think of jury duty as a government tax on your time. What do you get in return? You get to live in a country where, if you get arrested, you get to be judged by a jury of your peers, not the guy who arrested you. That’s awesome!

3. To Be a Part of History

One way or another, we’re going to make history tomorrow, whether we elect a black president or a female vice president. You don’t want to be able to tell your grandchildren that you voted in that election? You don’t want to be a part of that moment in time? When the results are announced, and the numbers are tallied, you don’t want to be counted among them? I think you do.

2. Because People Have Fought and Even Died For It

That one pretty much speaks for itself. People fighting for the right to vote didn’t consider it trivial. Blacks got the right to vote in 1870. Women got the right to vote in 1920. In 1971, during the Vietnam War, the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. The reasoning was that a citizen who is old enough to be drafted to fight for the country is old enough to vote for the people who make the decisions about war. Voting is important.

1. Because Democracy is about You

The idea behind our democracy is rule by the people. There is no special class of citizens who make the decisions for the rest of us. It’s up to each of us to take part in our democracy. That’s the only way it works. It’s this incredible experiment where a people stood up and said they didn’t need a king and that they could govern themselves. When we become apathetic about that enormous responsibility, we allow the country to be taken over by interests other than our own. Voting is not only our right as citizens; it is a solemn duty.

The system is far from perfect, and you may not fully buy into all of the reasons I’ve presented. Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the others. So vote for whatever reason you want. Vote to get the little sticker that says “I Voted.” Indeed, it is a powerful statement.

I’m always curious to see what search terms bring people to this site. Here is a list of all of the search terms that brought people here yesterday:

how shakespeare demonstrated “religion” in his plays

 

presidents with the letter y in their name

 

king henry viii shakespeare for children

 

who are the present day descendants of ann boleyn

 

king henry the eighth for kids

 

modern day descendants of henry the eighth

 

free shakespeare for kids

 

shakespeare did math

 

math – coins – line drawings of

 

saddam hussein vs. iago

 

textual analysis of elizabath i letter to king james vi

 

what play of shakespeare hads the word shyster in it?

 

characterize ophelia in act 3 scene 1

 

open-ended question of the week

 

who am i riddles

 

music tech teacher.com’

 

shakespeare class distinction “as you like it”

 

sir francis bacon blog

The word “shyster” does not appear in Shakespeare. There is a character named Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and a popular anti-lawyer quote in Henry VI, Part Two.

Several United States presidents have had the letter Y in their names. First name: Ulysses S. Grant, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter; Last name: John Tyler, Rutherford B. Hayes, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy; First and Last Name: Zachary Taylor; Commonly Used Middle Name: John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison.

As for the Ophelia thing, do your own homework.

Do Barack Obama and John McCain have the same web designer?

Have you been looking for a game that combines the fun geography challenge of Traveler IQ with the social responsibility of FreeRice? Look no further. A site called FreePoverty allows you to identify locations on a label-free map while generating ad revenue that donates water to people around the world who need it. Enjoy!

I was doing pretty well at first, but my ignorance of Australian geography turned out to be quite a detriment on the higher levels. Crikey!

I was planning to post a Greek Tragedy 24 as a follow-up to last month’s Shakespeare 24, but it turned out to be much too derivative. Part of the problem seems to be that the two genres being parodied are much too close to make such a union humorous. In fact, I would go so far as to say that 24 is today’s answer to the ancient Greek tragedy. A statement like that requires some explanation.

The most obvious similarity is the real-time format. Ancient Greek drama was, for the most part, presented in real time. The audience of that age would not have accepted the traditional story-telling techniques that we take for granted today, such as flash-backs and multiple locations. Aristotle’s unity of time is often translated as meaning that the action of a play must take place within 24 hours (which would have worked just as well for this comparison), but Aristotle never actually wrote this, and if you read the plays, they could pretty much take place in the time you spent watching them. The plays start after most of the action has already happened, and the main character is about an hour and a half away from the great reversal of fortune and recognition he has coming. During the play, characters come in and out, but the audience usually stays put. Oedipus realizes that he needs to speak with someone and has to summon him and wait for him to come, unless he just happened to have already summoned him on another matter and, oh look, here he comes now. Audiences of the time had no problem accepting that sort of thing, I suppose. Shakespeare did not have to play by these rules for his audiences, shifting his scenes between Rome and Egypt in Antony and Cleopatra, and famously skipping over sixteen years in The Winter’s Tale, to name just two examples.

Similarly, when Briscoe and Curtis (or whoever the current line-up on Law & Order is this year) get a lead on a suspect, we can immediately cut to them arriving on the scene. When Jack Bauer gets a lead on a suspect, he actually has to physically get to the location. It’s worth noting that only the unity of time, not place or action, is observed. The show can easily switch back and forth between Washington DC and Los Angeles, and have multiple story lines going at the same time. But what the real-time format does for both 24 and Greek tragedy is to give an immediacy to the events being depicted. We can feel like this is something happening in front of us in the moment. When our hero is faced with a choice to make, he has to make it right now, even if it is an impossible choice.

This element of the impossible choice is crucial to both 24 and Greek tragedy. Greek playwrights would often show characters torn between their solemn duties to their oikos (family) and their polis (state). Agamemnon is told that the goddess Artemis will not allow him to sail to Troy unless he sacrifices his daughter Iphigeneia. He now must choose between his responsibility to the polis to wage war with Troy and his responsibility to the oikos to protect his daughter. There is no right answer, only two wrong ones. In true Jack Bauer fashion, he puts national security first, and offers up the kid. Antigone makes the opposite choice. She is told by King Creon that she may not bury her traitorous brother, and she has a duty to obey. But she also has a duty to bury her brother, and she makes that decision – which she will ultimately suffer for. Actions have consequences, and the characters are willing to accept those consequences even when they did not have a better choice.

Similarly, characters on 24 are often put in situations where they have to choose between oikos and polis, between someone they personally care about and national security. National security on this show is less about “protecting our way of life” and more about “millions of people will die” if we don’t stop the threat. Either way, there will be serious consequences. The show finds just those moments where the “right thing to do” is something that most of us couldn’t do. But Jack Bauer can, and he becomes elevated to the level of the mythical hero.

And there we find another similarity. Ancient Greek dramas were often set at a time when, for the Greeks, the mythological overlapped with the legendary. Gods interacted with humans, and humans were a special breed of heroes. The stories did not have to be realistic – their mythical nature allowed the playwrights to explore larger themes. In 24, events are contrived to fit the real-time format, and we accept it. Jack is able to shuttle around from location to location in record time, and we accept it. Most of all, Jack is able to embody the courage, resolve, and self-sacrifice that we admire in our present-day heroes. He does so far beyond what any human would actually be capable of doing. And we accept that, too. In our post-9/11 world, that’s the larger theme.

To sum up: Shakespeare 24 – Very funny. Greek Tragedy 24 – Too “on the nose” to really be funny. But I enjoyed coming to that recognition, and now I am pleased to share it with you.

One of my favorite pieces of trivia is that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day. What’s truly remarkable about this is that it happened on July 4, 1826, which was the 50th anniversary of the famous signing of the Declaration of Independence. John Adams’s last words are reported to be “Thomas Jefferson survives” – he did not know that his long-time friend and rival had died a few hours earlier. For us, then, knowing that Jefferson died first is an essential part of the story of these great founding fathers.

But what of the founding fathers of Western literature? Recently, we celebrated April 23 as Shakespeare’s birthday, but we also know it as his death day. Shakespeare died in Stratford on April 23, 1616. We do not know the time of his death, or his last words.

Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, might likewise be considered one of the founding fathers of Western literature. Cervantes died in Madrid on April 23, 1616. We do not know the time of his death, or his last words.

And yet, it is possible to say, with some degree of certainty, which of the two authors perished first. And that, dear readers, is today’s Conundrum.

Who died first: Shakespeare or Cervantes? How do you know?

Feel free to speculate as to last words too, if that sort of thing amuses you.

UPDATE: Question answered by Neel Mehta. See comments for answer.