a midsummer night’s dream

LibriVox is a fantastic free resource where public-domain works are recorded by volunteers from around the world, at home on their computers. Their selection of Shakespeare includes:

Henry IV Part 1
King Lear
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Richard II
Romeo and Juliet

There’s lots more on LibriVox, including sonnets and works in progress.

Ever heard of Shakespeare fan fiction? Well, now you have. I referenced this particular piece in an earlier post, but I felt it needed its own spotlight:

Enjoy. Good luck.

It’s funny: no matter how hard you try, it’s difficult to come up with Shakespeare-related terms that haven’t been used yet. The world is Shakespeare-saturated. (Strange, then, that I somehow managed to snag www.will-shakespeare.com).

Today I discovered that a small theater group out of San Diego named Talent to aMuse produced a play in October 2007 called Caliban’s Island that merged The Tempest with the cast of Gilligan’s Island. I kid thee not. An online news source covers it here.

As bizarre as this may seem, I admit that I’ve often thought about what it would be like to create Shakespeare “what if” crossover plays (I do this while the rest of you are reading up on the 2008 presidential elections… you time-wasters). For instance, just yesterday I imagined how it would play out if Macbeth usurped the throne of Denmark and was revenged upon by Hamlet. The two stories could fit surprisingly well in many ways. You could weave other characters from the two plays into the story as well (for instance, you could have the Weird Sisters channel Hamlet’s father’s spirit instead of him appearing directly to Hamlet). Like my blog title, I’m sure that kind of idea is far from original. In fact, I’m sure of it.

Barney of The Grateful Web points me here to an article about Ian McKellen and his affinity for the nearly-lost play, Sir Thomas More. Wikipedia says that “Hand D,” presumably the fourth unknown author of the Elizabethan work, is thought to be William Shakespeare by some scholars. The evidence, however, is flimsy at best.

Why do we keep factoring William Shakespeare into our speculations about historical authorships? Why does he always appear in the list of possible engineers of unattributed works? As someone who writes adjacent to the subject of William Shakespeare, I think I have an answer.

People–and their worldly accomplishments–are interesting and worth discussing, no doubt. But when limited to a particular individual, scholars seem to realize quickly that their field of study is very small. There’s only so much you can write about the life of William Shakespeare: where he grew up; who his family members were; how he made his living; what his best accomplishments were; how he died; how he is remembered. Books and books and books can come out of this subject. But it isn’t very long before anyone delving into this subject can feel the walls closing in. What to do when the freshness of the subject is exhausted?

1. Question his authorship.
2. Expand his authorship.
3. Question his sexuality and make a scandal.

And that’s what you see next to all the plays in the Shakespeare section at Barnes & Noble: books on the three subjects above. Over and over again. That’s why Will is on the list of potential contributers to Sir Thomas More when there is little or no evidence to suggest his slightest involvement.

I said that I write about a subject adjacent to William Shakespeare, and that’s correct. To me, the life of the man is secondary to the power of his works. Whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or a hamster wrote Shakespeare, his plays will continue to be performed and modified and reinvented and loved by actors, artists, and audiences everywhere for the foreseeable future of humanity. And that’s something you can keep writing about forever. When will A Midsummer Night’s Dream stop hitting the proverbial streets delighting fresh audiences with new interpretations of a timeless story? Never. And we can all keep talking about it and wondering what it means to our lives, in perpetuity. This is a magazine subscription that will never run out.

So don’t worry whether Will was Hand D. Just thank Hand D for a job well done if you enjoyed reading Sir Thomas More.

[P.S. There is one book in the Shakespeare section that may actually address my field of study: Becoming Shakespeare by Jack Lynch. It purports to explore Will's posthumous journey from being a playwright among many playwrights to being the playwright of Western culture. This isn't about the man, but rather the legacy of his works and the entire genre that they became.]