Caesar and Brutus

"Why is the play called Julius Caesar if he dies half way through? Isn't it really about Brutus?"

That's a common enough question for a high school English exam. Future students who are going to go googling for an answer to that one will hopefully stumbled across David ("Master of Verona") Blixt's post on the subject in which he combines his not inconsiderable Shakespeare experience with his recent research in Roman history to answer this and many more questions. It's certainly true now that most people have trouble separating what really happened to Caesar, and who he was as a person, from what Shakespeare had to say about him.

In fact, David's post is an announcement of the play he's just written, which takes place between Caesar and Brutus the night before the Ides of March. "The great flaw, to me," writes Blixt, "has always been the lack of interaction betwen Caesar and Brutus. For men with such a tangled personal and political history, the play is remarkably slient regarding their past."

Sounds like a great idea to me, and I wish him much success with the project!

A Gift for Shakespeare Geek Readers : Words, Words, Words

I love it when my kids play Shakespeare puzzles. So much so that, as a programmer, I’m often on the hunt for puzzle generator programs so that I can fill in my own subject matter.

Well, I found a word search generator recently, and while I get it to the point where I need it for my kids, I thought I’d share it with you all. Of course, you get the hard version. Ready?

O V R U K U E A F D C D N O L V D A T T
R R O D E C C L E O P A T R A U E I X L
T O D U N C A N R R R H T C A S S I O V
L G E R T R U D E M E T R I U S D E H K
C R R M T A E C O L T O I Y F T E A M E
O E I V O L I C L E S S P N D O M C A T
C X G L I R U O U A E P I H B L O T C R
V M O A T L E A L O C U E U E R N L D O
L A N A U I R I C R U C B T N L A O U I
E C E L C I N E I L O K A R E U I S F Y
H B R O R D X D D A L D N K D O T A F I
S E I I E T S G R N G L Q I I O S F T I
C T L V M R H A U D A O U L C I A I L C
D H U E A O E R N O A S O J K T B A A Y
A N T O N Y R U Y S I V Y U S A E I B S
N M A I O A M F I S N F Z L U R S V Y U
B B S O R D I L L E A R A I T O F I T A
T R U R E G A N B H T F I E U H R L I T
O S S L B I C A S S I U S T R A A O R L
S E R S O A D D R T T O L I B C D R F U

So, here’s the catch - I’m not telling you the words I’ve hidden in it. What I will tell you is this:

• It’s all character names.
• There’s 50 of them. All one word each, I haven’t gotten tricky with stuff like “Richard III” or things like that. Kings and other titled people, if I've included any (hint hint), would be represented by their single identifiable name. So for instance "Duke of Cornwall" would show up as Cornwall. If he's in there. Which he's not.
• Not all the plays are represented, and the plays that are represented are not all represented evenly - some have half a dozen or more entries, some have just one or two.
• Since I made the list off the top of my head, long time readers get a bonus in knowing which plays I'm most familiar with and more likely to go to for content :)

This is not a contest, there is no prize. What I will do, however, is announce the name of the winner in a future blog post, if people want to play it like that. So you can proudly declare yourself a geek on a number of levels, and show all your friends. Whoever sends me back the list of 50 names first will be declared the winner. I'm not going to require you send me a scanned copy of the puzzle where you found all the names, I'll assume that if you get the list right you must have found them all.

Have fun!

Shakespeare Hated Christmas

[ First appeared December, 2005 ]

I had never before seen this parody entitled Shakespeare and Christmas, by Max Beerbohm. The premise chosen is that since Shakespeare only ever mentioned Christmas once in his entire body of work - and even then, in not very flattering light -- therefore he must have utterly loathed the holiday.

I think it's funny.