Maybe We Shouldn’t Ask Men?

http://ca.askmen.com/entertainment/special_feature_200/226_special_feature.html

Here’s an odd place for a Shakespeare article, a magazine called Ask Men (the kind of barely safe-for-work site that if I’m caught looking at it I will have to plead I only read it for the Shakespeare).  The title is 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Shakespeare.

Let’s look:

1) The sonnets were written for men.  Specifically it goes on to cite sonnet 18 as an example, and says that 126 of the 154 are definitely between dudes.

2) Danielle Steel has been translated more than Shakespeare.  This point is just plain stupid, as it goes on to explain that Danielle Steel has *written* more than Shakespeare, so the math works out.  He’s been translated into 80 languages, she only 28. 

3) Shakespeare invented "torture".  No he didn’t, he just “invented” the word of course.

4) Shakespeare's grave is cursed.   Again, no, and badly written.  Yes, there’s the epitaph that reads “cursed be he who moves my bones”, but no one has moved them, so that’s a poor interpretation of “his grave is cursed.”

5) Shakespeare was rich.  Yes, he had a stake in the company, blah blah blah, owned property in London and Stratford.  But was he ever “rich”, in the way we think of it today?  I’ve always understood that not to be the case.  As a matter of fact I thought he was on the cheap side, spending much of his later years in small claims court collecting debts.

 

Points to the commenters, for the most part, for pointing out the mistakes in the article.

Bedroom Quirks

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/21414

Mental Floss has a list of “bedroom quirks” of literary greats.  Nothing fancy about our boy Will, just the old “William the Conqueror” story – but the other ones are amusing enough to forward along.

Archives : Valentine’s Day Is Coming

http://blog.shakespearegeek.com/2007/01/valentine-day-is-coming.html

Almost two years ago I made this post on some Cupid references in Shakespeare’s sonnets. Since then my readership has grown, and I know I’ve got some regular readers who are well versed in the sonnets. So I thought I’d ask the question again that is detailed in the above link:

Sonnets 153 and 154 appear to me to be nearly identical, except for the ending:

Cupid falls asleep, the nymphs come and steal his little bow and arrow and shove it in the water to cool it off.  Only instead of cooling it off, it produces a hot spring that men come to soak in.  153's ending makes clear sense - Cupid see's my mistress' eyes and that is enough to light his torch again, and the cure for the poet's ills is not the hot bath, but his mistress' eyes as well.  But what's 154 mean?  He went to the bath to try to stop thinking about his mistress, and it didn't work for him?

Somebody got the story on this one?  Surely there’s something to it.