As I like to reflect on the best posts of the blog each year, it makes sense now to look back at the past decade of Shakespeare Teacher to see what’s been accomplished. Rather than individual posts, I’ll be reflecting on threads and themes, but I’ll still present it as a top ten countdown. Happy New Year, and I’ll see you in 2020!

10. Shakespeare Lists (2011 — 2014)

Sometimes my obsessive Shakespeare fandom runs over the brim, and I have to post a list. In 2011, it was a list of my favorite Shakespeare audio productions. Then, in 2012, I posted a list of Shakespeare’s Top 50 Most Underrated Characters. Later in the year, I added a list of retrochronisms, a word I coined to describe references that were correct in Shakespeare’s time, but potentially misleading when viewed through a modern lens. In 2013, I created a seven-point scale describing how historically “real” the characters in Shakespeare are. And, though it’s only tangentially related to Shakespeare, I’m going to include my 2014 list of literary devices in Disney’s Frozen. After that, I was content to let it go.

9. Shakespeare Follow-Up (2013 — 2017)

I’ve long been fascinated with the idea of Shakespeare’s works as a primary source document for Early Modern England. So when a character from one of the plays refers to “the glorious planet Sol” or proclaims that the “poor world is almost six thousand years old,” we are reminded that we are hearing a voice from over four centuries in the past. Digging into these instances has not only helped illuminate Shakespeare’s worldview for me, but has also given me the opportunity to explore a range of diverse topics from the nature vs. nurture debate to the history of lie detection.

8. Creative Celebrations (2011 — 2019)

It all started in 2011, when I was asked by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to participate in a project where bloggers across the Internet post how Shakespeare has influenced their lives, in celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday (April 23). I posted a tongue-in-cheek essay describing how Shakespeare destroyed my life. A week later, I followed up with a satirical post comparing the birther movement to the authorship deniers. This pair of posts got some nice attention and made me think that the occasional humor piece might be a nice addition to the blog. This led to the Shakespeare Autocorrect post on Christmas 2012. I thought it might be festive to do something special for the holiday season. But that one post brought in more traffic, reposts, and backlinks than anything I had ever written before. The following Christmas, 2013, I posted Shakespeare Clickbait, which also proved to be popular. In 2017 and 2018, I celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday with two posts comparing the current White House to characters from Shakespeare, first with Sean Spicer Does Shakespeare and then with Macbeth’s Twitter Feed. In 2019, I continued the birthday celebration with a collection of Shakespeare Memes. These posts remain some of the most popular on the blog.

7. Patriotic Poetry (2018 — 2019)

Sometimes I process my thoughts by writing poems. I don’t usually post them to the blog, other than the Thursday Morning Riddle, of course. But in advance of Independence Day 2018, I noticed a lot of my liberal friends on Facebook were wondering if they could still be patriotic during these troubling times. I wrote Anthem 2018 in response to this and posted it on July 4, because this is every bit as much our country as it is his and that’s ground I’m not willing to concede. On July 4 of this year, I posted another poem, Grateful, which focused on the supporters. I’ll probably do another one this coming July 4, but I’m hoping it won’t be necessary after that.

6. Career Highlights (2010 — 2016)

Shakespeare Teacher is essentially a one-man show, so when I get a cool gig in the Shakespeare Teacher world, it’s my pleasure to come here and share it with you. The decade kicked off nicely when I published a book chapter in 2010 on teaching Shakespeare in the elementary school. Then, in 2012, I had the opportunity to serve as a member of an Educational Advisory Board for the PBS documentary Shakespeare Uncovered. In 2016, I was hired as a “Shakespeare Expert” on a Shakespeare-themed Celebrity Cruise, giving four talks onboard the ship and escorting shore excursions to Shakespeare-related destinations.

5. Shakespeare Song Parodies (2012 — 2013)

This was a temporary weekly series, but one of my favorite features on the blog. Basically, each week I would take the lyrics to a well-known song and I’d rewrite them to make the song about Shakespeare. I ended up writing 40 parodies in total: one for each of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, one for the sonnets, and a final tribute to all of the plays together. It seemed to be a popular feature at the time, and remains one of the highlights of the site. It was also cited in a peer-reviewed journal article that discussed Shakespeare contrafacta (apparently the real term for what I was doing).

4. Shakespeare Anagram (Saturdays)

If you would have told me a decade ago that this feature would still be going, I’d have had my doubts. In recent years, I’ve been adding in a political essay along with the anagram, hoping the novelty of the art form might draw some attention to topics such as the scapegoating of immigrants or the administration’s family separation policy. But my favorite anagram of the decade was when I anagrammed a Shakespeare sonnet into a new sonnet to make a statement about marriage equity, almost a year before Obergfell v. Hodges would be decided.

3. Family Trees for Shakespeare’s Histories (2014 — 2018)

In the summer of 2014, I put together a series of family trees for members of the Plantagenet family who appear as characters in Shakespeare’s history tetralogies. The idea was that they would serve as a resource for 21st century Americans reading these plays that were written for the audiences of 16th century London. When the site was expanded in 2018, I elevated the trees to have their own page. Whether these charts help clarify or add additional confusion I leave as a judgement for the reader. But I sure learned a lot from compiling them.

2. Thursday Morning Riddle (Thursdays)

What can I say about the Thursday Morning Riddle? It’s my best friend. It’s my worst enemy. When I don’t have to wake up early, it wakes me up early, and when I do have to wake up early, it wakes me up earlier. It keeps me going when I can’t go any further, and it has sustained the blog though long periods when I didn’t have any other writing in me. It has entertained children, been a hit at dinner parties, and brought in new readers to the blog over the years. And I have to give a special shout-out to my friend Asher. This site might not be here today if, during those lean months, its readership had dropped to zero instead of a reliable one.

1. Shakespeare Reading Group Resource Page (2018)

I can’t tell you what I was put on this earth to do. But if the answers are in the back of the book, and I learn someday that it was to do this, I might not be entirely surprised. I take immense, almost religious, pleasure and fulfillment from participating in Shakespeare readings with like-minded friends, and if I can help bring that experience to others, then I must. What more could a Shakespeare Teacher ask for than an outlet to help bring the text to a wider audience? Go check it out, and see if you can gather a group together to give it a try.

Happy 455th Birthday to Shakespeare!

In honor of the occasion, I present… Shakespeare Memes!

My monthly Shakespeare reading group is gearing up to do the history plays. For the next eight months, starting this Sunday, we’re going to be working our way through the two tetralogies.

Shakespeare, working in the late sixteenth century, was writing about his own country’s history spanning most of the fifteenth century. He could assume his audience was familiar with the stories and the characters to some degree. Our perspective, over four hundred years later and in another country, does not provide the same level of context.

Imagine we were watching a play about the American Civil War and characters made various passing references to “the president,” “Lincoln,” and “Honest Abe.” We would understand these are all the same person, no explanation needed. But someone unfamiliar with our history might get confused. In Shakespeare’s histories, characters refer to each other by last name, nickname, and title interchangeably, and their iconic status in English memory requires very little exposition. When we do actually get a first name, it’s usually one of the same six or seven names recycled endlessly throughout the generations, relying again on context for specificity.

Thus, in order to facilitate the readings, I have created a family tree for the Plantagenets that spans all eight plays. For each play, I have put together a version of the tree that shows the current state of the family as the action begins. It shows who’s living, who’s dead, who’s related to whom, who is actually in the play, and what names might be used to reference them. What’s more, it all fits on one page, so it makes a convenient handout for a reading.

It was quite a project, but now that I’m finished, it’s my pleasure to share the results with the Shakespeare Teacher community:

• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Richard II
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry V
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part One
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part Two
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part Three
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Richard III

Whether these charts end up providing more clarity or only more confusion will remain to be seen. I’ll be field testing them with my group and may find a need to do a rewrite in eight months time. If anyone out there sees anything seriously wrong or just has a helpful suggestion, please leave a note in the comments so I can address it in the next round of revisions.

A few notes may be helpful. A shaded box means that the character is dead before the play begins. A bold-faced box means that the character appears in the current play. Each space represents the same character across all eight plays, but there are two characters (Anne Mortimer and Isabella Neville) that are duplicated on the chart because they married across family lines. These are represented by circled numbers.

For the most part, Shakespeare sticks with history as far as the genealogy and chronology are concerned, but where he breaks with history, I generally went with Shakespeare’s version. I did this because the purpose of the chart was to make the readings easier. So if Shakespeare, for example, refers to a character by a title he technically didn’t have yet, I used that title on my chart.

One major exception to this is the case of Edmund Mortimer. Historically, there were two different men named Edmund Mortimer in this story: Sir Edmund Mortimer, and his nephew Edmund, Earl of March. An Edmund Mortimer appears in Henry IV, Part One and an Edmund Mortimer appears in Henry VI, Part One. It appears that Shakespeare has conflated the two men into a single character, as he ascribes to the character biographical details from both men in both plays. I went with the more historically appropriate choice to put Sir Edmund in 1H4 and the Earl of March in 1H6, but you should know that when using these charts with those plays.

A lot of the information in these charts were taken from the plays themselves. But the charts also include a lot of historical information, and for that, I used other sources. I took advantage of the excellent genealogical tables in The Riverside Shakespeare (G. Blakemore Evans, ed.) as well as the Arden editions of Henry V (T.W. Craik, ed.) and Henry VI, Part Three (John D. Cox and Eric Rasmussen, eds.). I found The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays (Michael Hattaway, ed.) very helpful. I also consulted the official website of the British Monarchy, as well as other online sources as needed.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: The Family Trees now have their own page on this site.

This is the last in a series of 40 pop-music parodies for Shakespeare fans.

So far, we’ve had one parody for each of Shakespeare’s 38 plays and one for the sonnets. We finish the Shakespeare Top 40 with a tribute to all of the plays, one last time.

Enjoy!

We Love the Plays of Shakespeare
sung to the tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel

(With appreciation to everyone who has followed along on the journey…)

Harry, Suffolk, Somerset,
Richard Plantagenet;
Warwick, Edward, Margaret, Rutland,
Younger Lord Clifford;
Lord John Talbot, Tony Woodeville,
Duke of Bedford, Joan La Pucelle;
Duke of Clarence, Tower Princes,
Richard the Third…

Antipholus, Dromio,
Balthazar, Angelo;
Titus gets Tamora by
Baking her kids in a pie;
Tranio, Petruchio,
Katharina, Widow;
Proteus and Valentine have
Bid Verona goodbye…

We love the plays of Shakespeare,
Jumping off the pages,
Burning up the stages.
We love the plays of Shakespeare.
First, we learned to read them.
Now, we go to see them.

Don Armado, French Princess,
Costard and Holofernes;
Romeo’s Apothecary,
Juliet’s Nurse;
Gaunt John, he passed on,
Henry’s back and Dick’s gone;
Quince, Flute, Snout, Snug,
Bottom’s got a curse…

King John, Pope, France,
Bastard’s got a second chance;
Shylock and Antonio,
Portia and Bassanio;
Bardolph, Boar’s Head,
Prince Hal, Hotspur dead;
Tavern Hostess, Lord Chief Justice,
Henry on his deathbed…

We love the plays of Shakespeare,
Jumping off the pages,
Burning up the stages.
We love the plays of Shakespeare.
First, we learned to read them.
Now, we go to see them.

Benedick, Beatrice,
Dogberry and Verges;
Cambridge, Scroop and Grey,
Fight on St. Crispin’s Day;
Cassius, Cicero,
Julius Caesar, Cato;
Duke Senior, Jacques,
Poems posted on the trees…

O, O, O…

Olivia, Antonio,
Toby Belch, Malvolio;
Ophelia, Claudius,
Hamlet kills Polonius;
Falstaff once adored
Mistress Page and Mistress Ford;
Agamemnon, Pandarus,
Cressida and Troilus…

We love the plays of Shakespeare,
Jumping off the pages,
Burning up the stages.
We love the plays of Shakespeare.
First, we learned to read them.
Now, we go to see them.

Helena for Bertram fell,
All’s Well that Ends Well;
Angelo, Claudio,
“Friar” Duke Vincentio;
Desdemona, Othello,
Duke, Iago, Cassio;
Kent’s stand, Lear’s Fool,
Edmund’s death, Edgar’s rule;
Three Witches, two Macbeths,
Scottish spirits come unsex;
Antony, Cleo P.,
Who else would you want to see?

We love the plays of Shakespeare,
Jumping off the pages,
Burning up the stages.
We love the plays of Shakespeare.
First, we learned to read them.
Now, we go to see them.

Marcius, Cominius,
Volumnia, Aufidius;
Cupid, Lucius,
Timon, Flavius;
Gower, Thaliard, Pericles,
Antiochus, Simonides;
Posthumous is shipped to Rome,
Iachimo’s gone to his home…

Autolycus, Leontes,
Perdita, Polixenes;
Stephano, Trinculo,
Ship, wreck, Prospero;
Henry starts a second life,
Anne Boleyn’s his second wife;
Kinsmen our guy partnered for;
May have helped with Thomas More…

We love the plays of Shakespeare,
Jumping off the pages,
Burning up the stages.
We love the plays of Shakespeare.
And where we have gone,
The play will start anon,
Anon, anon, anon, anon, anon, anon, anon…

We love the plays of Shakespeare,
Jumping off the pages,
Burning up the stages.
We love the plays of Shakespeare.
First, we learned to read them.
Now, we go to see them.

We love the plays of Shakespeare!

Hat tip to Shakespeare Online for the chronology.

You can click to read all 40 song parodies here.

Sonnet CXVI:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

The hero’s vivid verse betokens what
Revision moods for marriage norms befall.
Rethinking home life won’t disturb ours, but
Denying some their rights makes shames for all.
Religious voters revved up, think again.
Deem this opinion, not like proven fact.
We minimise Him at evoking men
To harbor hidden love and not to act.
To honor same-sex lovebirds who invest
In that we vehemently do erect,
To think that love should not be too suppressed;
It tends to kick in where we least suspect.
For while the Bard was wed to Mrs. Anne,
He wrote this sonnet for another man.

In a normal “Pic Tac Toe” puzzle, there are nine pictures in a 3×3 grid, like Tic-Tac-Toe. In each of the three rows, three columns, and two diagonals, there is a common theme that unites the three pictures. The challenge is to find the eight themes.

In a “3D Pic Tac Toe” puzzle, there are 27 pictures in a 3×3×3 grid, like a Rubik’s Cube. In each of the nine rows, nine columns, nine pillars, eighteen lateral diagonals, and four cross-cube diagonals, there is a common theme that unites the three pictures. The challenge is to find the 49 themes.

A “Big Picture” puzzle is just like a “3D Pic Tac Toe” puzzle, except that each of the 49 themes will be a movie. Each of the three images in that theme will picture at least one actor who was in that movie.

Imagine stacking the three levels below on top of one another. For reference, and notation guidelines, check out my last Big Picture puzzle, including the comments. The rules here are identical to that puzzle.

Looking at that puzzle will also help identify the actors in Image B5; tragically underused in that puzzle, it now plays a more central role. Although many of the same actors appear in both puzzles, none of the 49 movies in the solution to this puzzle is the same as any of the 49 movies in the previous puzzle’s solution.

In Image B3, you will use the actors who voiced the animated characters shown, but none of the movies in the solution is animated, a documentary, or Robert Altman’s The Player.

You can click on each image to see a larger version:

Top Level – Level A

Middle Level – Level B

Bottom Level – Level C

Please post whatever you come up with in the comments section.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: See comments for correct themes provided by Lee (12), Neel Mehta (20), and JBenz (11). The following 6 themes remain unsolved:

Columns

A1-A4-A7

Lateral Diagonals

B3-B5-B7
A6-B5-C4
A2-B5-C8
A8-B5-C2
A3-B6-C9

This is a new 3D Pic Tac Toe puzzle. If you are unfamiliar with the format, you can check out my last 3D Pic Tac Toe for guidelines.

In this particular 3D Pic Tac Toe, each of the forty-nine themes will be a movie. Each of the three images in that theme will picture at least one actor who was in that movie.

In Image B1, you will use the actors who voiced the animated characters shown, but none of the forty-nine movies in the solution is animated, a documentary, or Robert Altman’s The Player. A few of the movies have not yet been released.

You can click on each image to see a larger version:

Top Level – Level A

Middle Level – Level B

Bottom Level – Level C

Please post whatever you come up with in the comments section.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Correct themes provided by Neel Mehta (36), Evan (10), Ken (1), and Rodney G (2). Alternate theme suggested by Evan. See comments for discussion, or click here to skip right to the answers.

Has it really been almost a year since we’ve had a 3D Pic Tac Toe?

In a normal “Pic Tac Toe” puzzle, there are nine pictures in a 3×3 grid, like Tic-Tac-Toe. In each of the three rows, three columns, and two diagonals, there is a common theme that unites the three pictures. The challenge is to find the eight themes.

In this “Pic Tac Toe” puzzle, however, there are twenty-seven pictures in a 3x3x3 grid, like a Rubik’s Cube. In each of the nine rows, nine columns, nine pillars, eighteen lateral diagonals, and four cross-cube diagonals, there is a common theme that unites the three pictures. The challenge is to find the forty-nine themes.

Imagine stacking the three levels below on top of one another. For reference, and notation guidelines, check out my last 3D Pic Tac Toe, including the comments. The rules here are identical to that puzzle.

You can click on each image to see a larger version:

Top Level – Level A

Middle Level – Level B

Bottom Level – Level C

Please post whatever you come up with in the comments section.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Correct themes provided by Neel Mehta (37), ArtVark (4), and Billie (8). Alternate themes suggested by Billie (2), Neel Mehta (3), and Annalisa (1). See comments for all answers.

You may have noticed that posting has been light lately. Now, I’m going to need to step away from the blog for about a month. I would like to call upon my readers to help keep the ball in the air until I return.

I used to read a magazine called Games, which had a regular feature called “Your Move” that featured puzzles submitted by readers. Building on that idea, I now turn this blog over to you.

Every five days, I will post a challenge or prompt related to one of my regular features. (Actually, I’ve already written them and they are scheduled to appear every five days. Even this post was written days ago.) I’ll post a Shakespeare passage; you make the anagram. I’ll post the answer; you write the riddle. And so on.

I will return on March 11 and will select the best entry for each challenge. As always, winner gets a name check in the post.

I may stop in from time to time to make comments and/or delete spam, but the next live post will likely be on or after March 11.

Today being Monday, I’d like to begin with the Question of the Week. There’s no challenge here, but I’d like to invite you to peruse past questions and revive an interesting discussion that has petered out. You can also keep an eye on the comments, either in the right-hand side bar or the RSS feed, and join in a conversation revived by someone else.

It’s your move. Have a good month!

Ironically, the title character in what many consider to be Shakespeare’s central dramatic work is most famous for his long speeches. One speech in particular stands out as almost interchangeable with Shakespeare and perhaps even the theatre as a whole. The soliloquy manages to sum up, in just thirteen letters, the fundamental question of existence itself. Once we agree to tackle that question, then the rest of the speeches, well, they may as well just be anagrams of the big one…

From Hamlet:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life…

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not set
His precept ‘gainst self-slaughter! Rebuke! Rebuke!
How weary, foul, puffed, and abominable
Seem to me the questions of this place.
Fie on ‘t! O fie! ’tis a once heeded garden,
That’s left to pot; the rank and weed in nature
Possess it merely. But he should come to this!
Not four months dead: nay, half as much, but two:
As superior a man; so as, to this step,
Hyperion to a satyr; so caring to my mother
Permit he not beteem the beams of stars
Access her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!

You can compare it to the original speech here (starting at line 133).

Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:

I have of late, – but wherefore do not seek, – lost all my cheer, ashamed that the oddest mood upsets me so seethingly that our lush frame, at the earth, soon seems to me a detested sterile promontory; this aesthetic roof toasted by stoked mythical golden fire truthfully appears to me therefore as such a both foul and pestilent congregation of bath vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! in theme, how impressive and truthful! in action as an angel! and apprehension as a god! the beauty of the world! the crest of beasts! But, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

You can compare it to the original speech here (around line 250).

Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:

O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I:
Is’t not monstrous that this player here,
Could force his soul so to the best esteem
That from her working feebled all his looks,
Have tears in eyes, add a tempest of bombasts,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to top esteem? and all for nothing!
Frets Hecuba to him for he to tear
That he so pretty sobs? What would he do
Had he not the uttermost cue for passion
As by me? He could drown the stage in tears,
Atone the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the temperate, and to quite impress
The seemly faculties of eyes and ears.

You can compare it to the original speech here (starting at line 382).

Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What’s a man,
If his chief hope and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a helpless beast, thou.
Sure he that made us with much large esteem,
He looked from before to after, gave unto us not
That potential and smoothest reason
To fust in us effetely. Whe’r it be
Bestial petty sloth, or some softer scruple
To foresee too precisely on a theme,
A knot, which, quarter’d, hath but one part hero,
And also three parts coward, I see not
Why yet I be to say ‘This thing’s to do;’
Sith I have cause and lots of strength and means
To do ‘t.

You can compare it to the original speech here (starting at line 37).

Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:

Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of endless mirth, of most splendid fancy; he hath paraded me on his shoulders a thousand separate times; and now too detested in the greatest depths of my imagination it is! Here hung those lips that I have oft kissed. When be you at fatuous gibes? at gambols? at accents? at those deftest flashes of espoused merriment, that were wont to burst the tables on a roar? But not one to be sped now, to renounce reverence? quite chapfallen? Foot you to my lady’s chamber, tell her, let her protest, of this favour she must come; see her laugh at that.

You can compare it to the original speech here (starting at line 80).