Book Note: Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent

Dench, Judith, and Brendan O'Hea. Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2024.

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The key to enjoying Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent to its fullest is to align your expectations with the book. You won't find an autobiography of Judi Dench here. You also won't find uniformly deep Shakespearean analysis. And don't expect a straightforward memoir.

Do approach the book recognizing that it's a somewhat rambling collection of hundreds of anecdotes, thoughts, memories, commentary, and other bits, most of them quite fascinating. Imagine that you've been invited to tea with Brendan O'Hea and Dame Judi (but you've been cautioned not to interrupt)—you'll have a grand old time listening to the wide-ranging conversation.

I highly recommend that you read this book—or, possibly better yet, listen to the audiobook version. The reader who provides the Judi Dench sections isn't exactly doing an impression, but she certainly performs her sections in the style of Dame Judi. 

Either way, the book is great for dipping into and gleaning some wisdom or insight into plays and characters that you may or may not have thought about before. Whether you know the characters and plays or not, you'll find rewarding nuggets.

I can't give you the entirety of the book, but I can give you a sample of Dame Judi's thoughts on one of her earliest roles: that of Ophelia. The parts in italics are Brendan O'Hea's; those in roman type are Judi Dench's.

It goes on from there and includes her thoughts on Gertrude. As you can see, it's not altogether focused, but it doesn't suffer at all if you're not expecting it to be.

As a final sample, I thought we would all benefit from "Dame Judi's Advice to the Players":

Grab a copy today and start gleaning!

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Shakespeare in FoxTrot's Mother is Coming

Amend, Bill. Mother is Coming. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2018.

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For this week's FoxTrot Friday, I admittedly had to do a bit of stretching in one way or another . . . but you'll see that the payoff in the final comic here is worth it.

When we're looking for Shakespeare in FoxTrot, we often find it in the older kids' coursework. And where we're not told absolutely specifically that there's Shakespeare there, we can make a fair (at least to the brain of the Shakespeare aficionado) assumption.

That's the case here. Surely there's some Shakespeare included in the "tons of homework" Mrs. Fox mentions in the first panel: 

Although Shakespeare isn't usually part of Jason's curriculum, it is part of his world. Here's something of a Gravedigger Scene from Hamlet:

I don't know about you, but it only takes the first syllable of Shakespeare's name for me to start thinking about the Bard. Stir in a little Taylor Swift, and it's hard not to have a very subtle Shakespeare allusion:

In the next comic, there's a little backstory for all of the Shakespeare assignments in Peter's courses:

Finally, we have a clear and direct Shakespeare reference. Because he did not do well on a Hamlet exam last year, Peter has a plan for this time around:

One of the wondering things about FoxTrot is that even the ones that have to be stretched to detect even a modicum of Shakespeare are immensely enjoyable.

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More Shakespearean Deep Cuts from The Office

"The Girl Next Door." By Kelly Hannon, Jonathan Hughes, and Mary Wall. Perf. Ellie Kemper, Mindy Kaling, and B.J. Novak. Dir. Mindy Kaling. The Office. Season 8. Webisode. DVD. Universal Studios, 2009.

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Once again, it's time to dive deeply into the Shakespeare-related material in The Office—deeper than the broadcast episodes or even the deleted scenes.

This time, we're heading to the Season 8 webisodes. 

In "The Girl Next Door," we're presented with a music video that Ryan and Kelly and Erin have made. Not far into it, we get another of several references to Romeo and Juliet in The Office . . . together with a more-unexpected use of Antony and Cleopatra:

Romeo and Juliet are used—as they often are—as shorthand for the most desirable romantic relationship imaginable. Then Antony and Cleopatra are brought in for the same purpose.  And then we get the pay off. Here are the relevant lyrics of the clip above:

Kelly's Role: 

I'm just the girl next door,
But that's how it goes:
You only see me
As one of your bros.

Erin's Role:

I'm rich and I'm skinny
And I have high self esteem.
People say that I could be
A pageant queen.

 

Kelly's Role:

We could be just like Juliet and Romeo—
Cleopatra and Mark Antony

Both Together:

Or Marc Anthony and Jay Lo!

Once ShakespeareGeek explained to me that the last line was about the 2004 to 2014 marriage of Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, I saw the humor in that. To my credit, though, I had already picked up on the Shakespeare by that point.

It's in Kelley's character to understand Shakespearean romantic couples by means of a contemporary and (to her) more relevant pairing.

But the overall message is clear: Keep searching for Shakespeare! He may turn up in the most unexpected places.

[As a side note, the song itself is reminiscent of some mid-twenty-oughts Taylor Swift.]

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Book Note: The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet

Bloedel, Peter. The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet. In Random Acts of Comedy: Fifteen Hit One-Act Plays for Student Actors, edited by Jason Pizzarello. Playscripts, Inc., 2011.

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By circuitous routes that I can't quite remember at present, I chanced up The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet.

It's a madcap comic romp through the world of Shakespeare's tragedy performed in the style of Dr. Seuss (while loudly denying that that's what it's doing).

I'd like to see a performance, but I'm hesitant to recommend it. I've read a fair number of things in the style of Dr. Seuss, and the most successful ones rigorously adhere to the Dr. Seuss rhythm.  It's very difficult to do at all, and it's even harder to do well—yet it can be done. When it isn't, we're basically left with rhymed couplets that fall flat rather than flying glibly and energetically above a world of words.

This one doesn't do that. To make the rhythm work, you must stress unstressed (and often unstressable) syllables, and it all bogs down.

Here's a quick sample that includes their version of the play's infamous prologue:

I don't mind the zaniness of the plot, and I like the way they keep the ending from being tragic—but it has to start with perfection in the rhythm of Seuss.

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Shakespeare in FoxTrot's Some Clever Title: A FoxTrot Collection Blah Blah Blah

Amend, Bill. Some Clever Title: A FoxTrot Collection Blah Blah Blah. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2016.

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Welcome back for another FoxTrot Friday!

The volume Some Clever Title: A FoxTrot Collection Blah Blah Blah is the third of the Sundays-only FoxTrot books. 

There are fewer comics in those volumes, which means less opportunity for Shakespeare to find his way in. 

Yet there are a number of possibilities in this one! The first has an allusion to Hamlet:

Hamlet has to be cruel only to be kind to his mother; here, the mother is considering whether to be cruel or kind to her son.

The next one is more about Shakespearean costuming than the text of Shakespeare:

Martin Goldthwait is going for "muse" here, but I'm reading Puck or the person representing As You Like It's Hymen, the god of marriage ceremonies or (at a pinch) Julius Caesar.

The last in this collection is one I've written about before (for which, q.v.), but it loses nothing in the retelling.

Thanks for joining us for FoxTrot Friday. We shall see what the future holds.

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General Shakespeare in Specific Friends

“The One with Monica and Chandler's Wedding: Part 1.” By Greg Malins. Perf. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer, and Gary Oldman. Dir. Kevin Bright. Friends. Season 7, episode 23. NBC. 17 May 2001. DVD. WarnerBrothers, 2013.

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Alert readers will know that I prefer more Shakespeare to less, but my ears are attuned to picking up Shakespeare in even minuscule quantities. 

Having already found many more obvious or more direct connections to Shakespeare in Friends episodes (cf. Friends and Lady Macbeth, What Role did Friends' Joey play in Macbeth?, A Tiny Bit of Shakespeare in a Friends Subplot, Shakespeare Puts Joey to Sleep in Friends, and A Quick Line from Romeo and Juliet in a Friends Episode), we can move on to ever-more-obscure ones.

The first of these involves only the mention of an actor known for Shakespearean roles—and for producing spit when enunciating his lines. The famous actor's name (within the world of the show) is Richard Crosby, and he's played by Gary Oldman (a famous actor outside the world of the show), whose major Shakespeare role (to me) is Rosencrantz in the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead directed by Tom Stoppard. 

The only allusion to Shakespeare is in Joey's line. He says, "Okay . . . uh, look I know you’re a great actor, okay? And you play all those Shakespeare guys and stuff." That's it. But the premise is that this great Shakespearean actor is enunciating so well that he's spitting all over Joey. And the gag is carried out brilliantly:

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“The One with the Mugging.” By Peter Tibbals. Perf. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer. Dir. Gary Halvorson. Friends. Season 9, episode 15. NBC. 13 February 2003. DVD. WarnerBrothers, 2013.

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A couple seasons later, we have a reference to an imagined movie. This episode also has a pseudonym for an actor. Jeff Goldblum (a real actor) plays the famous actor Leonard Hayes (not a real actor), and we learn that Hayes is known for a film version of Macbeth.

My first reaction, naturally enough, was to search IMDB for the Leonard Hayes Macbeth (I had never heard of it—and I wonder if the details would help me get the joke about Jackass: The Movie.

Eventually, I realized that it wasn't a real Macbeth and it wasn't a real actor. But it's a Shakespeare reference nonetheless! 

That's all.  But you should all realize, that, for obscure Friends references to Shakespeare, Bardfilm is your site of choice.

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Links: The Episode at IMDB. The Other Episode at IMDB.

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Book Note: The Bookshop of Yesterdays

Meyerson, Amy. The Bookshop of Yesterdays. New York: Park Row, 2019.

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I found The Bookshop of Yesterdays while searching for anything Shakespeare-related that I could load from my library onto a Kindle to dip into easily. 

Its plot involves a woman named Miranda Brooks (so we see the connection to The Tempest right away) who receives a mysterious package from her estranged uncle. Almost immediately after, she learns that he has died (that's a spoiler, but it happens in chapter two). Eventually, she traces the train of clues he leaves her back to Prospero Books (Miranda Brooks and Prospero Books, see?), the bookstore her uncle ran and she loved to go to as a child.

I'll avoid any other spoilers, but I will say that my clarion cry applies to this book: "Needs More Shakespeare!"

Apart from that, it's not terrible. And it has something to say about the relationship between Prospero and Miranda in The Tempest and Prospero Books (and its owner) and Miranda Brooks in this novel.

Let me share the opening of the mystery; you can determine whether you wish to read on.

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Book Note: Then We Came to the End

Ferris, Joshua. Then We Came to the End. New York: Back Bay Books, 2008.

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This summer, I read Then We Came to the End. I knew nothing about it except that it was supposed to be humorous.

I found it hysterical and compelling—but not in any obvious way.  The most intriguing thing about it was the narrator. The narration is provided not by a third-person omniscient (or even limited omniscient) point of view—nor by a first-person protagonist or participant. Instead, the narrator is a collective first-person plural: "We" relates the story.

And it's done seamlessly. The reader almost doesn't notice as the novel takes us into the ups and downs of an advertising agency in New York City.

All of that is a great endorsement of the novel, and you all should read it. But if that isn't enough, there's also the Shakespeare. It's limited, but it's clever.

In this scene, the ad agency has been challenged to come up with public service ads that provide a humorous take on breast cancer.

One of the employees recalls a past triumph—when he consulted with his Uncle Max on a printer ink advertisement:

First, it's a great idea for an ad. Second, I'm fond of the Dickens / Shakespeare uncertainty.

There's only one more Shakespeare reference. It occurs late in the novel when the same employee is asked about the names of characters in a Shakespeare play:

It's just incidental—except that it gives a roundness to Jim's character. Having found Shakespeare useful in selling ink cartridges, he went further and decided to take a course.

Shakespeare . . . he gets the job done.

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Shakespeare in FoxTrot's Jasotron: 2012

Amend, Bill. Jasotron: 2012: A FoxTrot collection. Andrews McMeel: Kansas City, 2012.

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I hope you didn't think I'd forgotten about FoxTrot Fridays. 

Heaven forfend! 

It's just that the school year started, and that makes it difficult to prioritize blog posts on Shakespeare-related comic strips.

As things fall into place in the fall semester, free time becomes less of a chimera. 

And that means a return to FoxTrot Friday is in order.

Our first Shakespeare-related strip from Jasotron: 2012 is one of those that has more of an implicit connection to Shakespeare. Paige is, once again, somewhat reluctant to do her homework:

To me, it seems pretty self-evident that the binder is full of Shakespeare handouts. Since Quincy is attracted to it, I'm imagining that reptiles in Shakespeare feature prominently: "[I am] of the chameleon's dish," "I can add colors to the chameleon, "Give him leave, madam; he is a kind of chameleon," "Ay, but hearken, sir: though the chameleon Love can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat" et cetera.  Yes, I know Quincy is an iguana, but that doesn't mean he can't be interested in other reptiles in Shakespeare.

We move to another FoxTrot comic—one that talks about blogging in general but is likely to have Bardfilm specifically in mind.

I'm considering that business model myself. 

And last and most Shakespearean of all, we have a comic that I wrote about way back in 2013.

And there we have it! Thanks, Bill Amend, for all the great Shakespeare. Let's see what we find in our next FoxTrot Friday.

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Book Note: Is It True What They Say About Shakespeare?

Wells, Stanley. Is It True What They Say About Shakespeare? Ebrington: Long Barn Books, n.d. [Note: The edition I have isn't dated, but other sources offer 2007 as a publication date.]

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Stanley Wells is one of the great popularizers of scholarship about Shakespeare. He writes clearly and entertainingly about both simple and knotty problems.

This volume is no exception. It's brief, but it's fascinating, and it's the kind of book anyone can dip into to get succinct, comprehensible answers to a number of questions commonly (and uncommonly) asked about Shakespeare.

I'm providing a number of examples below, starting with one I've investigated and written about before (for which, q.v.).

Some of the questions Wells addresses form part of the anti-Stratfordians arguments, like these that deal with the writing habits of his family:

Here's another question related to the argument that Shakespeare didn't write the plays attributed to Shakespeare:

The questions aren't all designed to put to rest the quibbles of the anti-Stratfordian camp (though there is an extensive section toward the end of the book that deals with a host of pretenders to the authorship of Shakespeare's works), but they are all enlightening—whether you're well-versed in the bard and his oeuvre or a relative newcomer to the man and his works. I recommend getting a copy to leave on your coffee table for everyone who comes into your home to dip into.

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