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.

Another year has gone by, and the time has come once again to look back over the past twelve months to remember the best posts of the year.

10. Thursday Morning Riddle (Thursdays)

This is more of a category entry than a single post. But this was a particularly good year for the blog’s longest-running feature. Nine distinct solvers cracked the year’s 41 riddles. Independence Day and Halloween always fall on the same day of the year; this year it was Thursday, so we got two extra holiday-themed riddles in addition to the yearly Thanksgiving riddle. I was able to experiment with some intertextual riddles (here and here) as well as some unusual rhymes (here and here). This year also saw the 500th riddle on the website. Have I really written 500 riddles? Who am I?

9. Theatre: Titan Theatre Company’s Hamlet (April 7)

Calling this show “the best production of Hamlet I have ever seen” was no small compliment. And, indeed, my enthusiasm for Titan’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s flagship play led me to outline in some detail my experience in attending it. I shared the review with my friends who were in the play and I came to understand that it circulated among the cast. The next thing I know, Titan has linked to the review from their website and they’re using a pull quote from the review in their print promotional materials! I’ve been back to see a few more of their shows since then; I highly recommend checking them out.

8. Shakespeare Anagram: Hamlet (October 19)

This one makes the list for the anagram, not the essay. This is my favorite of the year. The short anagrams are the most difficult, and I really liked the way the letters came together to make a coherent sentence. The quote was well-known, and both the quote and anagram applied well to the essay subject. It was everything I look for in a good Shakespeare anagram, and I’m pleased to include it here on the year-end list.

7. Lessons from Shakespeare: The Duke of Buckingham (July 28)

It was meant to be a regular feature, and may yet be, but so far there is only one of them. The idea was to take a closer look at one aspect of a Shakespeare play and apply the lessons we learn from it to today. In the lone installment, we look at the Duke of Buckingham from Richard III, and ask ourselves if silence in the face of evil is the best path, even if it is only a survival strategy.

6. More Shakespeare! (January 13)

This was just a short announcement, but for something exciting to me. Last year, I launched a resource page for people doing Shakespeare reading groups. Originally, I had posted divisions for 16 plays. But over the winter break last year, I added 8 more, for a total of 24. If you’re here reading this, why not consider putting together your own reading group?

5. Another Open Letter to Donald Trump (September 28)

Wouldn’t it just be easier if he were to step down? I make the case. Spoiler alert: he didn’t.

4. NSFW: Shakespeare Pick-Up Lines (August 21)

I wrote these for a performance I was giving in a Shakespeare event at a local bar. The piece was a big hit with the Bard-savvy crowd, so I decided to publish it here. Enjoy!

3. Shakespeare Anagram: Henry VI, Part Three (July 6)

This one makes the list for the essay, not the anagram, though the anagram is pretty good, too. The essay is about the Trump administration’s family separation policy at the border. Of the many, many instances where this president has shown himself unfit, this may be the absolute worst. And it’s still going on.

2. Grateful (July 4)

Last July 4, I wrote a poem about America, which in 2018 was mostly about retaining the ability to love our country while the president is so awful. This year, I focused my verse on his supporters. I may have lost a few people with this poem, but I guess I lost them a long time ago.

1. Shakespeare Memes (April 23)

For Shakespeare’s birthday this year, I repurposed 15 popular memes and made them about Shakespeare. From “Distracted Boyfriend” to “American Chopper Argument,” there’s something for everyone in here. After all, one does not simply celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday!

I attach to a tractor to truck down the road;
I’m a portable classroom; blank film to unload;
I’m an ad for a movie; attached meta-code;
One who’s lagging behind; or a mobile abode.

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Asher. See comments for answer.

Donald Trump now stands the third impeached president in the history of the United States.

This is not a time for celebration. I supported impeachment because I believed the president’s abuse of power was incompatible with faithful leadership, and for the House to do any less would be a dereliction of duty. But the fact that we as a nation have fallen to the point where we have a president who required impeachment is a disgrace against all of us.

The president’s party continues to vehemently defend him, though there are exceptions. Four prominent Republican pundits published an anti-Trump op-ed in The New York Times. Christianity Today supports removal. Even The National Review has turned on him. But the majority of public-facing Republicans are still in his corner. Mitch McConnell is planning to blow off the trial, while Lindsey Graham won’t even pretend he’s going to be an impartial juror.

When I hear someone defending the president, I want to ask them if they believe the president didn’t do the things he’s accused of, or he did them but was perfectly entitled to do so. Trump was impeached on two very specific charges. He abused the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to announce an embarrassing investigation of his political opponent. He issued a blanket denial of congressional subpoenas for himself, his government branch, and all documents being requested as part of Congressional oversight. So did he not do these things? Are they okay to do? I’m not really sure what the defense is supposed to be here.

Impeachment is a big deal, if for no other reason but that it indelibly records the president’s misdeeds in the history books. But I hope history will also remember the craven Republicans who stood by him when their country needed them to have some integrity and take a stand. Some are saying that Nancy Pelosi should deny sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate. But I’d like to see them take a vote. Let each and every one of them decide what they want the first line of their obituary to be.

From Richard II:

I am disgraced, impeach’d and baffled here

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

An addled chamber hid a spied crime gaffe.

I give officers rank; launch new ships as decreed;
Purchase art in advance so they’ll make what you need;
I’m a government agency; doing a deed;
And percentage of sales to the salesman agreed.

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Neel Mehta. See comments for answer.

I can store all your guns; I can organize spices;
Rib section of lamb to be cut into slices;
Set balls in the hall; where you find retail prices;
And known as a stretch among torture devices.

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Rebecca. See comments for answer.

I’m a purse held by hand; at the gym, you can punch;
I’m to bring down big game; you can take me to lunch;
I’m to pack up your groceries; hold fruit by the bunch;
And I’m lucky to grab from – just follow your hunch!

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Rebecca. See comments for answer.

Shakespeare Teacher (and Quincy) got a nice mention in the most recent issue of The Shakespeare Newsletter!

Click the image to read the entire article by Stephanie Cowell, who crafted a lovely write-up of our reading group, now running over ten years.

Or, you can click here to go directly to the resource page referenced in the article.