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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