It’s time once again to check in on what searches people have done 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.

descendants of king george iii

Now we’re getting a little closer to the present. King George III was king during the American Revolution; he was the King George we were revolting against. His reign was long – over 59 years! In fact, only his granddaughter Victoria reigned longer, though Elizabeth II is likely to pass him as well on May 12, 2011. But I digress.

George III is a direct ancestor of all subsequent monarchs of England. He was succeeded by two sons, a granddaughter, a great grandson, etc. So I’d imagine he’d be a direct ancestor of pretty much everyone who we consider to be of English royal birth today, though someone with a better grasp of how all of that works may correct me. I’d also imagine that he has many descendants who are not considered English royalty, their connection to the crown being too distant. Again, I am not beyond correction on this point.

what age group is tudors for?

The Tudors is for adults.

anagrams with the word teacher

Cheater!

what historically happened when shakespeare was living

Many important historical events occurred during the 52 years of Shakespeare’s life, both in the world and in England in particular. Shakespeare was born in 1564, just two months after Galileo, and died on his birthday in 1616 on the same day as Cervantes (actually ten days later).

That’s a lot of history to cover here, but I’ll give you a sampling of five of the more significant English, but non-Shakespearean, events that took place during Shakespeare’s lifetime and how they may have affected Shakespeare. I invite readers to quibble with my choices:

1588 – The English navy defeats the Spanish Armada. This sparked a new era of English patriotism which coincided with the beginning of Shakespeare’s writing career. It’s why a lot of his early plays are Histories, as that was a popular trend at the time.

1603 – Elizabeth I dies without an heir, and is eventually replaced by King James I. James became a patron of Shakespeare’s company, now “The King’s Men,” and Shakespeare will write Macbeth in honor of the new king.

1605 – Catholic conspirators attempt to murder James in the Gunpowder Plot. It is believed that there are references to the Gunpowder Plot in Macbeth.

1607 – Establishment of Jamestown colony in Virginia. The Tempest may have been inspired by the wreck of a ship that was headed for the colony.

1611 – Publication of the King James Bible. Rumors that Shakespeare worked on the project are mere speculation. Stories about Psalm 46 containing hidden messages should be taken with a grain of salt.

shakespeare julius caesar slings and arrows

The expression “slings and arrows” is from Hamlet, but I assume you’re talking about the Canadian television series. There were three seasons, each revolving around a different Shakespearean tragedy. Julius Caesar was not one of them. The plays were, in order, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear.

if henry the 8th was alive today what would he look like

He would look like a 517-year-old man holding a giant drumstick.

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

at what point should you feel bad for iachimo

who were shakespeare’s teacher

shakespeare time machine professor

funny alternate endings for king lear

music for a powerpoint shakespeare music

shakespeare was not good at math

It’s time once again to check in on what searches people have done 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.

googleplex fridaysThis feature happens to share its name with the headquarters of Google Inc., located in Mountain View, California. I have no idea what goes on there on Fridays.

how come king james didn’t like macbethI don’t grant your premise, unless you are referring to the historical figure and not the Shakespeare play. In fact, you might say that the play was actually written specifically to appeal to the new king. Witches were a fascination for James, so he’d have been intrigued from the start. Also, James was a direct descendent of both the historical Malcolm and the historical Banquo. Notice that the witches make a prophecy that doesn’t actually come true in the play, which is an odd dramatic convention. They prophecy that Banquo will not be king, but will instead be the father to a line of kings. Later, Macbeth is shown a vision of eight kings along with the ghost of Banquo who points at them for his. The eighth king is meant to be King James, as he is the eighth king in the house of Stewart. The prophecy doesn’t come true in the play; it comes true in the audience.

presidents with the letter xSo far, it’s just Nixon, but the night is young.

shakespeare film 2010You do realize you’re skipping over a whole year, right? No interest in The Tempest with Helen Mirren as Prospero? Not anxiously awaiting the new Hamlet with Screech and the Chocolate Rain guy? Okay. From what I can tell, the Shakespeare film event of 2010 will be King Lear with Anthony Hopkins in the title role and Naomi Watts, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Keira Knightley as his three extremely beautiful daughters. Also, Eddie Murphy – I kid you not – is planning to do a version of Romeo & Juliet. I imagine he will be playing both roles, but that’s pure speculation.

shakespeare king henry lambasts halI was amused to see this one because I used the phrase “lambasts Hal” in my first Shakespeare Lipogram, and I chose the verb because it only has the vowel “A” in it. But I wonder if you’re really looking for that scene from Henry IV, Part One, or if you’re actually looking for this scene from Henry IV, Part Two. It’s one of the great scenes from one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known works and was even listed as #38 on my Top 50 scenes in all of Shakespeare.

Hal finds his deathly-ill father asleep, assumes he’s dead, and takes the crown off with him. When he returns, the King’s awake, and lambasts Hal. They reconcile, and Henry gives his son advice for how to be king. The language is… there’s no adjective I could use that you wouldn’t say “Well, yeah, it’s Shakespeare” but the language is particularly rich and evocative in this scene. I did an anagram of a quote from it a while back, but I’m surprised I still haven’t done the most timely quote of them all: “Be it thy course to busy giddy minds/ With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,/ May waste the memory of the former days.” It’s even got a “Q” in it. I’ll have to save that one for a rainy day.

is macbeth is worth readingMost definitely. I suggest gathering a group of friends together, dividing up the roles, and reading it out loud. Trust me on this one. That’s how to read Macbeth.

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

why is shakespeare is one of the founding fatherswhat did the tudors bring back to England

was shakespeare a teacher?

slings and arrows on demand time warner

which president read macbeth before he die

how did shakespeare die on youtube

 

I attended my 20-year high school reunion on Saturday. It was a lot of fun to see what everyone’s up to now. It was also a bit strange, because we were only 18 when we graduated, so it really was half a lifetime ago that we all knew each other. We’re all different people now, almost strangers, yet we have a knowledge of each other that in some ways is far more intimate than the friends we make today.

I also saw my 9th-grade English teacher, the first teacher ever to assign me to read Shakespeare. Of course, I very much enjoyed letting him know what I’m up to now, and he seemed very pleased as well. It made me think of my first Shakespeare experience, reading The Tempest in his class. I didn’t really understand it, but I was determined that I was going to, and eventually I did.

The Tempest seems like kind of an odd choice to use to introduce students to Shakespeare for the first time, though I can’t really see anything wrong with it. He also had taught us the Seven Ages of Man speech from As You Like It, which might also have been a good first play. Usually when I’m working with 5th-graders, I’m introducing them to Shakespeare for the first time, and I generally go with Macbeth or A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I recently did Cymbeline with an 8th-grade class, but they had already read Romeo and Juliet, another good choice.

Then there are other plays, like King Lear or Troilus and Cressida, that I don’t think are good choices for young children. I was once asked to teach Antony and Cleopatra to 6th-grade students, and it went well, but I think Julius Caesar might have been a more appropriate choice. I also worked with a teacher who, against my advice, wanted to teach Othello to his 8th-grade class. I was so wrong; that went really well. I thought the play was too mature for them, but those kids taught me a thing or two.

So the Question of the Week, if it’s not obvious by now, is this:

What play would you choose to introduce Shakespeare to a group of students for the first time?

Does your answer change with the grade level? What if an adult friend of yours who had never read Shakespeare asked for a recommendation? Do you go with one of the masterpieces, or a fun easy read? Is one genre better than another for a first-timer? Or do you go with something you’re passionate about, so your enthusiasm can be infectious?

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

shakespeare and technology

 

tudor riddles

 

riddle for a waste paper basket

 

plays genres

 

josh lymon secret service codename

 

descendants of king george vi

 

shakespeare reading group

 

what did the tudors find and bring back to England

 

descriptive word that starts with the letter y

 

knowledge in othello

 

is smarter a word

 

who is the more complex villain in king lear

 

new book on shakespeare, author on the daily show

 

mary queen of scots descendants in Virginia

 

macbeth simplified language

 

codependent relationship between macbeth and lady macbeth

 

who influenced sir francis bacon

 

venn diagram puzzles

 

descendents of the tudors to present day

 

fox 40 morning news riddle

 

what did tudors do in there free space

 

teaching shakespeare to four year olds

 

henry viii riddles

 

riddles in shakespeare

 

lateral thinking games

 

queen elizabeth “i am henry …”

 

multiple choice test for king henry the 8th

 

in merchant of venice two fathers in post strike rules on their daughters

 

giant shakespeare crossword puzzle

 

boleyn living relatives

 

literacy in shakespeare’s time

 

a list of twenty things that shakespeare wrote

 

top 10 reasons to vote

 

where can i find information on the descendants of bloody mary

 

what is the coincidence that happened between shakespeare and cervantes

This is a partial list. I deleted several of the search terms, mostly looking for modern-day descendants of the Tudors.

I can tackle a few of these, and I’ll leave the rest to my readers. To the best of my knowledge, Josh Lyman’s Secret Service codename was never revealed on The West Wing. Yes, “smarter” is a word. And Bloody Mary did not have any children, and thus, no descendants.

I have taught Shakespeare to a wide variety of age groups, but never to four-year-olds. I defer to the Shakespeare Geek who is building an early appreciation for the playwright with his own daughters.

As for the Elizabeth quote “I am Henry”, I’m at a loss, though you may be thinking of the Queen’s reaction to a production of Richard II, which is about the deposing of a monarch. She was aware that the Earl of Essex commissioned the production in order to foment rebellion. Elizabeth I is said to have remarked “I am Richard II, know ye not that?”

Does anyone know which Shakespeare author was on The Daily Show? And would anyone like to address the questions about Merchant and King Lear?

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?)

This blog just reached 20,000 hits, and you know what that means. Yes, it’s time to break out the cake and SiteMeter counter.

For the record, the 20,000th hit came in at 9:48pm today from Waterville, Maine. The visitor came to read the post from March 25, 2007, discussing the last episode of Slings & Arrows.

It’s worth noting that the first 10,000 hits came between January 3, 2007 and December 16, 2007, while the second 10,000 hits came between December 16, 2007 and July 8, 2008. At this point in time, the blog’s Technorati ranking is 648,508.

Once again, many thanks to all who have visited. This is your day.

Via News on the Rialto, we learn of an international event called Shakespeare 24:

Shakespeare 24 (S24) is an exciting worldwide Shakespeare performance event. Beginning in New Zealand and ending 24 hours later in Hawaii. 60 youth groups will stage 30 and 45 minute adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays at 7pm, local time on Shakespeare’s 444th birthday, April 23rd 2008.

It all sounds very exciting, but I have to admit that when I first saw the title of the post, I had something else in mind entirely…

MEMO: CONFIDENTIAL

SEASON SEVEN PLOT OUTLINE FOR SHAKESPEARE 24

In a prologue, Jack Bauer asks for the audience’s generosity in accepting the extremely contrived plot in the season to come, and informs them that the following events take place between 8am and 9am.

8:00am – 9:00am: On his way home from a mission, Jack is stopped by three witches, who offer cryptic prophecies of a terrorist attack to take place in the next 24 hours. After he threatens them with a belt sander, they agree to get more specific. The attack will come in the form of a virus that makes the infected people seem like they are dead for a short period of time, after which they will be perfectly fine. Jack doesn’t think that sounds so bad, but the witches assure him that it can actually cause quite a bit of trouble.

9:00am – 10:00am: In the White House, Sandra Palmer is now president. She is having drinks with a group of community activists, when she realizes that one of them is Richard Heller, long lost son of the former Secretary of Defense. She immediately welcomes him into her cabinet as the new Secretary of Defense.

10:00am – 11:00am: Richard is installed as the new Secretary of Defense. He makes a phone call and tells the person on the other end that the plan is working and that he will be president by the end of the day. Sandra Palmer mysteriously dies of a poisoning.

11:00am – Noon: The vice president is sworn in as president. The Speaker of the House, suspicious of the poisoning, leads a campaign against him.

Noon – 1:00pm: Jack is visited by the ghost of his father, who tells him there is a mole in CTU, and that Jack shouldn’t trust anyone. Jack appoints his most trusted lieutenant, Agent Iago, to head up the investigation.

1:00pm – 2:00pm: The president is impeached, and the Speaker of the House is sworn in as president. The former president is imprisoned and is later killed by henchmen working for Richard. Iago puts a suspicion in Jack’s mind that Chloe is the mole.

2:00pm – 3:00pm: The president is alerted to the terrorist threat, and must cancel his trip to the Holy Land. He asks Jack to track down the leader of the cell. Jack traces the money trail to a Jewish moneylender near Venice Beach.

3:00pm – 4:00pm: Jack arrives at the moneylender’s place, and tries to interrogate him, but kills him accidentally. He finds three caskets, and knows that two of them are rigged with explosives, and he must select the correct casket to find out the location of the terrorist base. With some help from the moneylender’s daughter, he chooses correctly.

4:00pm – 5:00pm: The president is assassinated by a sniper, hired by Richard. The president pro tempore of the Senate is sworn in as president. He gives a rousing speech and then orders an air strike against the terrorist base located by Jack, but the terrorists are tipped off by Iago – the mole in CTU. During the phone call, we finally see the leader of the terrorist cell is Jack’s nephew, Josh Bauer. Josh escapes with his top henchmen before the air strike hits.

5:00pm – 6:00pm: The president is killed by a bomb planted by Richard, and the Secretary of State is sworn in as president. Jack learns from aerial surveillance footage of the strike that his nephew is involved in the terrorist plot. The new first lady discovers that Richard is a terrorist and tries to warn everyone, but she is dismissed as mentally unstable. She puts a curse on Richard, and calls Jack to tell him of Richard’s involvement. Then, she disappears.

6:00pm – 7:00pm: The president dies in what appears to be an automobile accident. The Secretary of the Treasury is sworn in as president. Jack goes to the White House to stop Richard.

7:00pm – 8:00pm: The president is killed. Jack is framed. Richard is sworn in as president. Jack is sentenced to death by a secret military tribunal.

8:00pm – 9:00pm: Chloe pleads to Richard, who is now the president, for Jack’s life. Richard agrees to sign a pardon for Jack if she will sleep with him. She agrees, planning to substitute a double, but the only match in the CTU database is Jack’s daughter, Kim Bauer. At first, Jack refuses to allow her participation, but when he realizes he will die otherwise, agrees to go along with the plan.

9:00pm – 10:00pm: Before she can follow through with the plan, Kim appears to die of the virus. Richard has her put in a trunk and dropped into the ocean.

10:00pm – 11:00pm: Kim washes ashore and is recovered by the owner of a brothel and his wife. Some other stuff happens, but nobody really cares. Josh gives a canister of the virus to a mercenary and asks him to attach a timing device set to release the virus at 7am.

11:00pm – Midnight: Not knowing who she can trust, Kim tries to make her way to CTU disguised as a boy, which makes her look exactly like her cousin Josh.

Midnight – 1:00am: Kim is approached by the mercenary who has completed the timing device. He gives it to her, believing she is Josh. Kim returns to CTU with the canister where she is again mistaken for Josh and arrested immediately.

1:00am – 2:00am: Jack escapes custody and heads back to CTU disguised as a bedlam beggar. Kim is interrogated by CTU agents who still believe she is Josh. The mercenary finds the real Josh, and demands payment for the timing device. Josh refuses, insisting he never received it. Hilarity ensues, and then Josh kills the mercenary.

2:00am – 3:00am: Jack and Kim reveal their disguises. Mischievous fairies put a spell on Chloe, who falls in love with Iago. Jack leaves to confront his nephew.

3:00am – 4:00am: Jack captures Josh, and discovers evidence on Josh’s cell phone that proves the mole inside CTU is Iago. He calls Chloe to tell her Iago is the mole. Chloe goes mad, sings a song, and drowns herself in a river.

4:00am – 5:00am: Jack returns to CTU to confront Iago, who at first refuses to speak until he is given immunity, but then confirms that Richard has been responsible for the day’s events. Josh reveals that Jack is his real father, and it was his bitter resentment over his bastardy that made him turn to a life of crime.

5:00am – 6:00am: Kim learns that Josh is not her cousin, but her half-brother, and goes to see him. Josh, moved by his half-sister’s compassion, repents. Jack goes to the White House and slips past Secret Service to confront Richard. Jack and Richard fight, and Richard is slain. Before he dies, he not only confesses to his crimes, but also provides a recap of the entire plot for the season.

6:00am – 7:00am: Messengers from CTU arrive at the White House and report that Josh has had a religious conversion, and has revealed the location of all of the canisters, except for the one he gave the mercenary. Jack realizes that the canister Kim was carrying is equipped with a timing device, and rushes back to CTU. The Attorney General is sworn in as the eighth president in the last twenty-four hours.

7:00am – 8:00am: Jack gets to CTU, but it is too late. Everyone at CTU has fallen to the virus. Jack, believing he has failed, delivers a monologue on the meaningless nature of brief life and commits suicide. After he dies, everyone wakes up from the virus and, seeing Jack dead, kill themselves. The new president arrives at CTU to give Jack a medal. He sees all of the bodies and laments the tragic events of the day. He then pledges to restore peace to the nation.

This blog just reached 10,000 hits. Huzzah! Huzzah! That’s 20,000 eyeballs! I guess it’s time to break out the cake and SiteMeter counter.

For the record, the 10,000th hit came in at 1:22pm today via a link from an English teacher’s webpage at Xavier High School, right here in New York City. The teacher is a former graduate student of mine. So here’s a big shout out to Mr. Cambras and his 9th and 10th grade students who I see are studying Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. (…and some other good stuff, too.) Welcome to all.

If this blog teaches you nothing else, it’s that studying great works of literature will allow you to take the letters from passages in those great works of literature, mix them around, and form new pieces of writing that kind of relate back to the original passage. And if you do that, then eventually 10,000 people will come to see them.

I was reading recently about how Shakespeare dealt with suicide differently if he was writing about Christian characters. In Christianity, suicide is always considered a sin, while in Ancient Rome, it could be considered a noble act under certain circumstances. Shakespeare, chameleon that he was, would treat the suicide based on the culture that he was writing about.

When I first read this, it rang true for me. Hamlet laments that he wishes “that the Everlasting had not fix’d / His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!” Macbeth asks “Why should I play the Roman fool, and die/ On mine own sword?” Meanwhile, characters like Brutus and Cleopatra get heroic suicide scenes.

But the more I think about it, the less sure I am that this holds up across the canon. Off the top of my head, I can think of about four or five (arguably six) Christian characters in Shakespeare who kill themselves. There may be others as well. So I guess the Question of the Week is in two parts:

How many Shakespearean characters can you name who are Christian and commit suicide?

Do you think Shakespeare treats his non-Christian suicides differently than he treats these suicides?

Yesterday’s Cake War prompted me to think about what Shakespeare had to say about pastries and revenge. I came up with the scene where Titus tells his enemies that he’s going to bake them into pies and serve them to their mother. Enjoy!

From Titus Andronicus:

Hark! villains, I will grind your bones to dust,
And with your blood and it I’ll make a paste;
And of the paste a coffin I will rear,
And make two pasties of your shameful heads;
And bid that strumpet, your unhallow’d dam,
Like to the earth swallow her own increase.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Initially, a Nonny Nu did hail my King Lear cake as unpalatable, until I had W flip her off on her site. A mad armada from both sides, we would post the worst insults.

So, our feud oath lasted a day. Tomorrow, I will know better. The cake had proved wiser than us all.