op-ed – Stumblethrough Shakespeare

I watched the Shakespeare in Love bonus featurette so you don’t have to

I love Shakespeare in Love. It’s one of my go-to cheer-up movies and I’ve seen it on stage twice (and not to brag but I’ve hung out with the dog who played Crab in the second production and given him belly rubs, so, you know, I’m basically famous by association).

Unfortunately you have to pay money to watch it these days, so I thought I’d see if the best parts were on youtube. They probably are, but I got completely sidetracked by the discovery that Miramax has put the entirety of their 45-minute educational DVD bonus featurette up as well. And I watched the whole thing, because I feel like that’s where we’re all at these days.

So you’ve run out of library books (a brief PSA)

First of all, happy International Workers’ Day; I hope everyone is being conscientious about their buying choices. We’re over a month into quarantine, and those of you who (unlike me) had the foresight to borrow a bunch of books are probably either reaching the end of that stack or got totally sidetracked by Animal Crossing. But if (like me) you don’t have a Switch, you might be in the market for some new things to read; maybe Shakespeare, maybe not.

So if it’s alright with y’all, I want to use this post as a soapbox for just a sec. (Who am I kidding; this entire blog is my soapbox. It’s either this or stand on a freeway overpass with a bigass banner saying HONK IF YOU THINK SHAKESPEARE WAS QUEER.)

Watching Hamlet over zoom

It’s April 23rd, and you know what that means: only 362 days until the next 4/20, hang in there everyone.

But perhaps less importantly, it’s the international holiday commonly known as “Shakesversary”. Of what, you ask – his birth? His death? His interment in the cave, only to rise again on the 26th? (That’s what a christening is, right?) The answer is that like 80% of Shakespeare’s life is up for debate, so really April 23rd is a day for us.

Plagues cease(d) plays

Just a reminder that when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote King Lear.
— rosanne cash (@rosannecash) March 14, 2020

As of posting, Seattle has been under quarantine for one week. (insert party streamers emoji here) But I have hot water again, so who cares, blog’s canceled, everyone go home.

Anyway, I thought I’d start us off on a downer, in the hopes that it can only go up from here: two weeks ago The Atlantic ran an article by a professor at Linfield College that basically boiled down to “hey, does anybody else think maybe this whole worldwide theatre shutdown thing could actually be kind of, idk, good for theatre?” which, as takeaways go, feels a bit like a slap in the face.