I wanted to address a question that isn’t Frequently Asked, but one that is often raised in more subtle ways: Why would a blog dedicated to the teaching of Shakespeare talk so much about politics? Why risk alienating Shakespeare fans that may not agree with my viewpoints? Wouldn’t it be better to build a community of Shakespeare teachers without venturing into the socially impolite topic of partisan politics?

First of all, allow me to clarify that this blog isn’t entirely dedicated to teaching Shakespeare, as you may have noticed. “Shakespeare Teacher” is simply meant to be my blogger handle. The blog has always been about whatever I happen to find interesting at the moment, which often includes education and Shakespeare, but it also will include politics from time to time. But the question does lead to a more interesting question about how contemporary politics and Shakespeare are related in the roles they play in our lives.

In The Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal tells us that “all theater is necessarily political, because all the activities of man are political and theater is one of them.” What’s the point of studying Shakespeare if we’re not going to learn from him? And what’s the point of learning from him if we’re not going to apply what we’ve learned to build a better world? People who study that other great work of literature never hesitate to cite passages from it to imply an endorsement of their political views. We should not be timid to bring Shakespeare into the discussion when his insights would add a vital perspective.

I sometimes try to do this with the anagram, and this example from King Lear is perhaps illustrative. Lear is looking at the helpless victims of a storm and recognizing that he is partly responsible for their plight. “O! I have ta’en/ Too little care of this.” And if we can be moved by his words, it’s only fair to ask: moved to what? If we can be moved to tears, we can be moved to action. Because what moves us in that line is our recognition of the things in the world that we ourselves have ta’en too little care of. Like, for example, the helpless victims of a storm, and our responsibility to them.

We venerate Shakespeare for his wisdom about the human condition. Some go so far as to say that he teaches us what it means to be human. But how does this understanding manifest itself in our society if not in the decisions we make as public policy? How do we define ourselves? How do we treat each other? How can we meet our most fundamental human needs? How do we deal with the unexpected? What are our priorities? What is our responsibility to one another? How we answer these questions for ourselves determines how we make the big decisions about the kind of society we want to be and the kind of world we want to live in. These decisions are swayed by policy, policy is swayed by elections, and elections are swayed by public opinion. Can Shakespeare be a voice in that discussion?

I talk about Shakespeare. I talk about politics. I welcome you to the conversation.

Today, this blog is celebrating its sixth birthday. Right now, it has a Technorati authority of 103, which ranks me 28,620 out of 1,318,014 ranked blogs. There are currently 892 posts in 71 categories and 2,637 approved comments. As of right now, there have been 107,257 hits to the blog, though over 100 of them have come in today. (I don’t know why.)

Happy New Year to all of the new visitors and to all of the regulars. I’m planning to come back now, and I hope you’ll join me.

Bill

Once again, I present my top ten favorite posts of the year as a countdown. This year, nine of the ten deal directly with Shakespeare.

10. Film: The Tempest (July 29)

This is a review of the filmed version of a stage production of The Tempest from the Stratford Festival in Canada, with Des McAnuff directing Christopher Plummer as Prospero. The review talks about the film, the play, and the conventions of film vs. theatre.

9. Some Context (September 23)

I examine some of the quotes that were taken out of context during the 2012 presidential race, particularly those that tell a convenient story about the person being misquoted. Sometimes, however, the quote is even worse when viewed in context.

8. Connecting Students with the Language (August 1)

Just as we make Shakespeare more relevant to our students by drawing modern-day connections to his plots and characters, so too can we use the elements of today’s world to help them make connections to iambic pentameter, as well as other poetic devices.

7. Conundrum: Prospero’s Books (August 21)

This is a complex logic puzzle that uses the titles of Shakespeare’s plays as a part of the game. You don’t need to know anything about Shakespeare to solve the puzzle, nor will Shakespeare knowledge actually help you, but manipulating the familiar names may add to the fun.

6. Kevin Spacey as Richard III (January 15)

I was lucky enough to get to see Kevin Spacey play the title role in Richard III, and instead of writing a proper review, I decided to write a sophomoric parody of one of the scenes, replacing most of Richard’s lines with quotes from Kevin Spacey movies. Enjoy!

5. Shakespeare’s Most Underrated Characters (August 5)

Inspired by Cassius from Pursued by a Bear, I explore fifty minor characters from Shakespeare’s canon that I think are defined by more than their line counts. Wife of Simpcox, I’m looking at you.

4. Shakespeare Song Parody: Mourn This Way (September 7)

This year saw the genesis of a brand new regular feature on the blog, the Shakespeare Song Parody. I chose this Hamlet/Lady Gaga mash-up as a representative favorite. Runners-up included Agamemnon Style, The Death of Kings, and Lady, It’s Warm Outside.

3. Shakespeare Autocorrect (December 25)

I was enjoying some year-end lists of best Autocorrects when I had the idea to mock-up some examples of how Autocorrect might cause problems of Shakespearean proportions. The concept was a hit on Twitter, and the post earned a last-minute spot on this Top Ten list. Sorry, Shakespeare Palindrome.

2. Shakespeare Anagram: Sonnet CXVI (July 28)

This is not only my favorite anagram of the year, but is also one of my favorite anagrams from the past six years of the blog. I take a Shakespeare sonnet about marriage and anagram it into an original sonnet about same-sex marriage. Check it out!

1. Top Ten Shakespeare Retrochronisms (October 3)

A retrochronism is a word I coined to describe a term in a literary work that is misinterpreted by future generations. In this post, you will find numerous examples from Shakespeare. I had a lot of fun writing this, and I’m really pleased with the way it came out.

As the year is winding down, I’m looking back over the last twelve months of Shakespeare Teacher to prepare for the annual Top Ten Posts list, which will be up tomorrow. I admit that this has not been my most prolific year, but I’ve been extremely busy. Busyness is often cited as a complaint, but I have no complaints. Rather, my busyness has been the result of having too many opportunities that were too good to pass up. Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?

One of the things that has been occupying my time has been a new graduate-level course I’m teaching for NYU on evaluation for school administrators. I didn’t know I’d be teaching it until the course actually started, so I’ve been burning the candle at both ends trying to stay prepared each week. The effort has been worthwhile, as the students have been giving glowing feedback to the department, and I’ve been hired to teach it again in the spring. I’ll also be teaching my regular course for English teachers on using drama as a teaching tool, so I should still be pretty busy… the good busy, but busy nevertheless.

Still, I’d like to be using the blog to write about the things that I’m doing and to process what I’m learning while I’m doing them. I haven’t been doing that, and my New Year’s Resolution is to return to doing that. So busyness isn’t an excuse to avoid writing; it should be a call to write. Readers have continued to enjoy the regular features, and I’ve enjoyed writing them, but they were never what this blog was supposed to be about. I recently had one experience in particular that I’ve regretted not taking the time to share with the readers of this website, so I’d like to do so now. Better late than never.

Thirteen (WNET) has produced a series called Shakespeare Uncovered which will premiere on PBS stations on January 25. I had nothing to do with the creation of the series, but Thirteen asked me to sit on an advisory board to consult on the educational outreach component that accompanies their programming. So far, this has consisted of previewing the series and having a day-long meeting with Thirteen educators and other members of the advisory board.

I was excited enough to work with Thirteen and on teaching Shakespeare no less, but when I found out who the other members of the board were going to be, I was floored. These are my teaching Shakespeare heroes, some of whom I’ve met through my dealings with the Folger, others of whom I know by reputation. My claim to fame, on the other hand, is that I snatched a good Internet domain name when the snatching was good. But I think my enthusiasm for the subject matter made up the difference. Having the chance to spend an entire day discussing the teaching of Shakespeare with a team of experts was like being invited to eat ambrosia on the top of Mount Olympus. And I’ve been yearning to tell you about it ever since.

By the way, the Shakespeare Uncovered series is amazing, and you should watch it when it airs. If you’re into Shakespeare, you’ll appreciate all of the different angles the series covers. And if you’re not a Shakespeare fan, you may come to understand why some of us are.

I had hoped that this post wouldn’t come off as too self-critical or apologetic. But now that I read over it, it comes off as one big humblebrag. I can live with that. The Top Ten list will be posted tomorrow.

From Coriolanus:

A hundred thousand welcomes: I could weep,
And I could laugh; I am light, and heavy. Welcome.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Each high page-view accolade would include all who huddled around my site as monument.

This blog has just reached 100,000 hits! We haven’t done this in a while, but it’s time for the cake and SiteMeter counter!

The 100,000th hit came in at 7:27am on Wednesday, September 19, 2012 from an undisclosed location. I do know that the milestone visitor found the site via a Google search in Turkish and came in through the Shakespeare Lipogram page. I doubt the lipograms maintain their univocalic purity in Turkish, but all are welcome here.

At this point in time, there are 859 posts (including this one) in 70 categories and 2,572 comments. A recent screenshot of the blog’s Technorati Authority is chronicled below.

Thanks to all of the fans of the riddles, parodies, puzzles, and anagrams. Thanks to the Shakespeare lovers and Shakespeare teachers. Thanks to the Googlebot and people looking for living descendants of Henry VIII. Today, you all have been counted. Onward and upward!

UPDATE: A celebratory anagram.

Today, this blog celebrates its five-year anniversary. Right now, it has a Technorati authority of 96, which ranks me 47,629 out of over a million ranked blogs. There are currently 809 posts in 67 categories and 2,447 approved comments. As of midnight last night, there were 81,284 site visits.

As always, I remain grateful to the readers who form the other end of this partnership. To the riddle solvers and the anagram lovers and the Shakespeare teachers and the people who just like saying the word “blog.”

Here’s to another five years.

This year, I present my top ten favorite posts as a countdown. Only three of the entries deal directly with the authorship question.

10. Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Floods, and Tornadoes (August 28)

Come read the story of how I survive the worst earthquake in, as far as I know, East Coast history, and completely fail to notice. However, other natural disasters of biblical proportions do manage to cause me some minor inconvenience.

9. It’s a Poor Workman Who Blames Yogi Berra: Artificial Intelligence and Jeopardy! (February 23)

A computer beat humans at Jeopardy!, and I put on my school data specialist’s cap to do an item analysis of the responses. Read through to the comments to see two veteran Shakespeare bloggers debate the nature of language and technology.

8. Question of the Week (January 3)

Is teaching an art or a science? Or is it both? Or is it neither? Once a purely philosophical topic, recent developments in the field have made it a question with far-reaching implications in practice and policy.

7. Film: Anonymous (November 13)

I was as surprised as you were, but I actually liked it. So, I give it a good review. Because to be angry with this film is to acknowledge that we are actually engaging in a discussion about authorship. We aren’t, but it was a good film nevertheless.

6. Top Ten Shakespeare Audio Productions (August 29)

This is just what it sounds like, except I actually list twenty. And Bob D fills in some titles I missed. It just goes to show that Shakespeare will always be in my heart… and in my ear.

5. Fifty Apps for the iPad (January 9)

I identify ten things the iPad does better than the iPod Touch, while linking to fifty apps you can do them with. This one was popular among friends and family, and generated a lot of traffic as well.

4. A Choice to Make (April 13)

Eric Hanushek wrote something I didn’t like, and I explain why. Of all of my rants about education reform over the year, this one was the most rambling and wild-eyed. I highly recommend it.

3. Another Story (November 22)

To further make my point about Anonymous, I spin the most ridiculous science-fiction, bodice-ripping thriller I can imagine, positing that Shakespeare was given the plays by space aliens. If you’re secure in the knowledge that Shakespeare wrote the plays, this is what Anonymous looks like to you.

2. Under the Influence (April 23)

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust asked me to participate in a project in which bloggers describe in a blog post how Shakespeare has influenced their lives. People told me they thought my contribution was funny. If they only knew…

1. The Hartfordian Theory (April 27)

Long before the Anonymous controversy started brewing, I took my own shot at the Oxfordians. Actually, my real target was the birthers, but the idea is the same. What if people questioned President Obama’s legitimacy using the same arguments that Oxfordians use to question the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays? Hilarity ensues… except for one hasty reader who somehow thought I was serious; read through to the comments.

I am happy to announce that I have renewed the lease on this domain for another three years, so the blog will have a home until December 2014 at least.

Wow, that seems so far away. I remember how far away December 2011 felt in December 2008. Now, with the Twitter and the Facebook and the iPads and the kids these days with the hair and the music, I wonder if, three years from now, there will still a place for an old-fashioned blog like this one.

Or will there be something completely different?

Okay, so I missed the riddle this week. I do apologize, but I’ve been constantly besieged by natural disasters of biblical proportions. Sort of.

I was actually in Virginia for the earthquake. I’ve spent the last week vacationing with my family, visiting Jamestown and Williamsburg and the like. On Tuesday, we were at Busch Gardens, and when the group split into different factions, I took the opportunity to set off on my own for a while. I went to go see the Pirates “4-D” movie. A “4-D” movie is like a 3-D movie, except they shake your seat and squirt water at you at appropriate moments in the film. It has nothing to do with the fourth dimension, but it’s fun all the same. At one point, the whole theatre shook from side to side, which I thought was pretty cool, but I later learned that I was actually at the epicenter of a 5.8-magnitude earthquake. It even kind of fit with what was going on in the movie, so I just enjoyed it as part of the show.

After I left the theatre, I ran into my nephew Ian (age 7), accompanied by Dave, a family friend. Dave told me that there had been some kind of earthquake, and that all of the rides were shut down. I assumed that this was a story Dave told Ian to get a break from the roller coasters, so I gave him a knowing smile and went along with the charade. It’s worth noting that, at this point, I had both felt the earthquake and had been told there was an earthquake, and still I did not know there had been an earthquake.

Pretty soon, however, it became hard for even me to stay in the dark, as reports of the unusual phenomenon spread rapidly. It stayed big news for a day or two, but was just as quickly overshadowed by news of an impending hurricane. Hurricane Irene was expected to sweep up the Eastern seaboard and hit New York City by Saturday night. I decided to cut my trip short a day and head back home a bit early. My train was delayed a bit because of flooding below Washington, D.C., but my trip was largely uneventful and I made it back to New York City in time to do some grocery shopping and put my earthly affairs in order.

As I settled in for a grocery-enhanced night of a Kill Point marathon sporadically interrupted by checking online weather maps, I learned of an impending Tornado Watch for New York City. Really?

Anyway, there was no tornado, and not even really a hurricane. Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm before it hit here, and even by that standard, it was pretty mild. I had no interruptions of power or Internet, and could only occasionally hear the rustling of wind outside my window. I did make it through the entire series of The Kill Point, which was about a hostage standoff in a bank, so that was pretty exciting, but that was about it. I can’t say I’m disappointed, but I’m not feeling all that relieved either.

Mostly, I’m disappointed that I missed a riddle, which usually means I’ve been neglecting the blog for too long. I think I’m about ready to return. This week, I survived earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes, so I’m feeling pretty unstoppable. That’s right, Mother Nature, if you want a piece of this, next time you best bring a FREAKIN’ VOLCANO.

Feel free to post relevant quotes from King Lear in the comments. The Shakespeare Teacher is back.