Book Note: Incidental Shakespeare in Two Children's Books about Dictionaries

Fagan, Cary. Maurice and his Dictionary: A True Story. Illustrated by Enzo Lord Mariano. Owlkids Books, 2020.

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Sierra, Judy. The Great Dictionary Caper. Illustrated by Eric Comstock. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2018.

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As so often happens, I chanced upon these books while searching for something else.

As so often happens, I chanced upon a bit of Shakespeare in each one.

In the business, this is called "SS" or "Serendipitous Shakespeare."

Maurice and his Dictionary, compellingly written and marvelously illustrated, tells the story of a family's flight from the holocaust from the point of view of one of the sons. They leave Belgium in 1940 and travel to the north of France, the south of France, and Spain before ending up in Jamacia. Maurice, wanting to learn English, spends some of the little money he has to buy Cambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary. Eventually, he attends university in Canada.

The image below shows Maurice preforming Shakespeare while attending Jamaica College, a well-respected high school in Kingston. 

The book itself was delightful. Naturally, there could be more Shakespeare, but it's well worth reading and re-reading nonetheless. 

The Great Dictionary Caper has a loose narrative about words escaping from Noah Webster's dictionary. That's far less important than the collection of words in various categories covered by the book. Shakespearean words get a page of their own:

Of course, entire children's books have been written about Shakespeare's words—see Flibbertigibbety Words: Young Shakespeare Chases Inspiration or Will's Words: How William Shakespeare Changed the Way You Talk (for which, q.v.)—but a two-page spread was just right for this book.

Either book would make a great addition to your children's book library. Don't hesitate; give them a try!

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Romeo and Juliet in (or, really, after) The Office (BBC)

“Special Features.” Perf. Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais. The Office Special [BBC]. Extra features. BBC. DVD. BBC Home Entertainment, 2006.

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Alert readers of Bardfilm will have noted that there's a fair bit of Shakespeare in the American version of The Office.

But what, they ask, about the BBC Office—the original Office—the truly groundbreaking Office on which the American Office was based? Do you mean to tell me there wasn't any Shakespeare in that masterpiece by Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais? After all, we know about all the Shakespeare in Extras, the later show written by that great comedy duo. You helpfulully informed us about Patrick Stewart's Prospero and the one-man Romeo and Juliet . . . and we've even know about that little bit where Ricky Gervais' character talks about the possibility in acting in a Shakespeare Retold version of King Lear. And all that's lovely.  But what about the BBC Office?

Honestly, there's not too much Shakespeare in the original Office. When I've watched the show, I've noticed just a few incidental reference to Shakespeare, the most memorable being the way David Brent introduces Tim Canterbury to the documentary crew. But there are others. Here's what I found:

We have, then, part of a quote from Gertrude ("the lady doth"), a list of Shakespeare plays as possible answers to a trivia question, part of a quote from Hamlet ("the rub"), another partial quote from Hamlet ("cruel to be kind"), Shakespeare's name mentioned, and a dance we can imagine being performed by Caliban when he sings "'Ban, 'Ban, Caliban / Has a new master: get a new man. / Freedom, hey-day!  Hey-day, freedom!"

Admittedly, that last one is a bit of a stretch, but when I next direct The Tempest, that dance is absolutely going in.

Even though there's not much beyond incidental Shakespeare in the show, I recently watched the interviews made with the actors after the show had completed its full run (including the specials) and found more. In the clip below, the show's creators liken the romance of Tim and Dawn (to American audiences, that's the rough equivalent of Jim and Pam) to the romance of Romeo and Juliet:

And that, roughly, must have been what the entire series was about. It's really a derivative of Romeo and Juliet. Fascinating.

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Links: The Film at IMDB.

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In this bonus for those who have scrolled down this far, we offer Keith introducing himself:

Book Note (Well, Short Story Note, Really): "Gertrude Talks Back"

Atwood, Margaret. "Gertrude Talks Back." In Good Bones and Simple Murders. Rockland, Massachusettes: Wheeler, 1994.

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I recently came across several references to Margaret Atwood's very short short story "Gertrude Talks Back." I was able to track it down in a collection of mostly similarly short short stories, and I enjoyed it immensely. 

The setting seems to be, generally, during the closet scene—Hamlet's "Leave wringing of your hands" (III.iv.33) is delightful recalled in Gertrude's line "I am not wringing my hands. I'm drying my nails."

According to Bardfilm's Fair Use Policy, I'm not providing it in its entirety, but I'm giving you the first page of two. I'm pretty confident that you'll want to find the rest and finish it on your own. You won't want to leave these thoughts unfinished.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the opening of "Gertrude Talks Back."

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Cracking the Shakespeare Code: A Norwegian Shakespeare Conspiracy

Cracking the Shakespeare Code. Dir. Jørgen Friberg. Perf. Petter Amundsen, Robert Crumpton, and Stanley Wells. 2017. DVD. Synergetic, 2018.

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Although I don't remember precisely, I think I bought this because it was the exact price I needed to use up my Shakespeare budget for the year. Also, I had hopes that it wouldn't be just another documentary-style propaganda piece for another anti-Stratfordian conspiracy theory. After all, it had Sir Stanley Wells!

Eventually, I gave it a try. And it interested me at first in having much higher production values than the usual fare in this genre does. And then it interested me because our narrator / presenter / guide presents himself as skeptical of the skeptical. Finally, it interested me because it seemed to be about a Baconian theory of authorship, which seemed quaint.

And then it got very odd. And odder. And then it seemed to leave the oddness scale behind.

Here's a rough summary. We start with the idea that there are codes in Shakespeare's works and Shakespeare's gravestone and the Shakespeare monument. And those codes point toward Francis Bacon. 

And then we learn about the Holy Grail to which all those codes are pointing: The manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays (in this theory, the plays were written by Shakespeare, the man from Stratford, but they were written at the instigation of Francis Bacon and Henry Neville), which are preserved in mercury somewhere on the planet Earth.

I mention the planet Earth because we have to leave it for the next step. We have to go to the constellation Cygnus (a.k.a. "The Swan") and see where it's pointing on Earth—that will be the location of the Shakespeare manuscripts stored in mercury by Francis Bacon. That turns out to be Oak Island, Nova Scotia.

Did I mention that the Rosicrucians are behind all of this?

Finally, we learn that the Shakespeare manuscripts aren't the only Holy Grail hidden on Oak Island. The Ark of the Covenant is also there. Together with a powerful and historical menorah—possibly the very one involved in the miracle of Hanukkah. And maybe the Holy Grail is there, too—I admit to letting my attention wander a bit at that point.

The documentary (I'm debating whether to put that in air quotes are not) astounded me by how outrageous its claims became. They build somewhat eccentrically but also gradually so that, if you give each step the benefit of the doubt, you hardly notice when you cross over into the utterly outlandish.

I tried to excerpt a brief clip, but I was unable to do the film justice with just a little bit. Here, then, are some key points in the presentation.

I wish that Sir Stanley had been given more screen time. He could have provided much to rectify the extreme leaps in logic that guide the conspiracy to its ultimately ridiculous conclusions.

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Links: The Film at IMDB.

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Book Note: The Collected Poems: 1956–1998 by Zbigniew Herbert

Herbert, Zbigniew. The Collected Poems: 1956–1998. Translated and Edited by Alissa Valles. Additional translations by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott. New York: Ecco, 2007.

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I don't often have the time to go through a complete volume of poetry—much less a collected works—but I took the time for Zbigniew Herbert.

He repays reading (and re-reading). 

With Bardfilm's eye, I spotted some of the Shakespeare in these works by the master Polish poet.

In "Journey to Kraków," we're presented with a convincing portrait of a conversation on a train—a conversation that breaks off at the most interesting part!

That's a very intriguing slice of life—and I'm very fond of the author of Hamlet being called "a foreign writer." And even the sudden intrusion of the tunnel makes poetic and literary sense.

The other Shakespeare-related poem is "Elegy of Fortinbras," which I found highly reminiscent of C. P. Cavafy's "King Claudius" (for which, q.v.).

I shall let that one speak for itself, but I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

When you next get a chance, try some Zbigniew Herbert. Even saying his name will bring poetry into your life: Zbigniew, Zbigniew, Zbigniew.

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A Fragment of the St. Crispin's Day Speech in an Episode of Phineas and Ferb

“The Lizard Whisperer.” By Sherm Cohen and Chong Suk Lee. Perf. Vincent Martella, Ashley Tisdale, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster. Dir. Zac Moncrief. Phineas and Ferb. Season 2, episode 27. Disney Channel. 6 March 2010.

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An alert student has informed me that there's considerable Shakespeare to be found in Phineas and Ferb. I've missed this animated show entirely, but I'm always glad to search through something interesting to find the Shakespeare therein.

In this episode, a chameleon has been unexpectedly magnified to many times its usual size. The kids are trying to track it down, and one of them suggests giving up. We then get a response that draws from Winston Churchill and Shakespeare's Henry V: 

The crowd is, as per usual, rallied by the stirring words of King Henry V. But I like the unexpected turn that the show takes when they all simply give up immediately.

If you know of any more Shakespeare in Phineas and Ferb, point us toward it, please!

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Book Note: Equivocation: A Play by Bill Cain

Cain, Bill. Equivocation. Dramatists Play Service, 2014.

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Bill Cain's Equivocation was recommended as a play about the Gunpowder Plot that had some connection to Macbeth. I dutifully requested it through Inter-Library Loan, and, after it had spent the requisite amount of time on my shelf, I read it.

Beyond the information that it connected to Macbeth, I had no idea what to expect. What I found delighted and thrilled me. I thought I was just going to dip into it, but I stayed exactly where I was until the last page—and even longer as I tried to digest what I had just experienced.

The play drops us right down in 1606 at a meeting between Shag (the name given to Shakespeare in this play—short for "Shagspeare," one contemporary spelling of the name) and Sir Robert Cecil, the Secretary of State (essentially, the Prime Minister avant la lettre) under Elizabeth the First and James the First.

Cecil is asking—make that demanding—that Shag write a play about the Gunpowder Plot (it's eventually titled The True History of the Powder Plot).

The rest of the play is about that endeavor and Shag's skepticism about the official version of events. We get glimpses of that play in rehearsal, but King Lear is also about to be performed . . . and Shakespeare is simultaneously composing Macbeth.

With your permission, I'll drop you right into the play's first scene:

That's a masterful opening—and, as you can tell, it just keeps going. We segue immediately into a rehearsal of the storm scene in King Lear where the actors try to make sense out of the chaos of one of Shakespeare's most difficult plays. Richard Burbage, playing Lear, says, "Look, I know it's a difficult scene. I'm made; he's half-mad; you're pretending to be mad and he's a fool. It might be the most difficulty scene he's ever written. But if we could get through is comedies-don't-have-to-be-funny period, we can get through whatever this is" (15).

I don't want to provide spoilers for the rest of the play, but there are insightful scenes about the purpose of playing, the value of community, the potential difficulty of fathers and daughters communicating (Judith Shakespeare is a persistent presence throughout), the nature of religious belief, what politics is and does, and why James the First will always love a play with witches in it. And I'll add that the play is quite brutal at times, enacting the torture and execution of some of the Gunpowder Plotters.

And it has quite a number of references to earlier plays by Shakespeare—and foreshadowing of the late plays as well.

Bill Cain's Equivocation is a powerful and compelling play. Please let us all know if you learn of a production. I, for one, will drop everything to see it staged.

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Shakespeare in FoxTrot's Big Dweeb Energy

Amend, Bill. Big Dweeb Energy. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2024.

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We've reached the end of our FoxTrot Fridays—for now. We've come to the last published volume of FoxTrot, but Bill Amend has (and we're all most grateful for it) kept on writing and drawing and working Shakespeare in from time to time (and Bardfilm in particular is most grateful for it).

Two of the comics in Big Dweeb Energy are tangentially connected to Shakespeare; one comic is titularly tied to the Bard.

First, then, we have Paige complaining about having to read over seventy pages of a book by the next day. Depending on the Shakespeare play she's been assigned (for it must be—almost certainly is—a Shakespeare play) and the edition, she could be being asked to read nearly the entire play (ShakespeareGeek's "My Own Personal Shakespeare" edition of Macbeth would get her almost through Act II; page 75 of the first Arden edition of Macbeth is just thirteen pages shy of the end of the play). If that's the case, perhaps her complaint is somewhat justified.

Andy Fox has her own perspective on the assignment:

Andy definitely has a point—who could stop thirteen pages shy of the end of Macbeth?

Paige may not realize it, but all her study of Shakespeare has paid off in manifold ways. In the next comic, we see that she has learned valuable things about acting (if not about iambic pentameter), and that knowledge comes in handy:

The last comic takes us to Peter and what he's learned about physical comedy from all his study of Shakespeare. And the comic takes its title from a Shakespeare play to boot!

We've come a long way from the first Shakespeare references in FoxTrot—the use of Hamlet and King Lear back in 1989 (for which). And it's been a valuable and amusing journey that is not yet at its end.

Many thanks to Bill Amend for over thirty years of entertainment and enlightenment. We all encourage you to keep up the wonderful work!

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The Brain (of Pinky and the Brain) Reveals that he has Directed Shakespeare

"Yes, Always." By Peter Hastings. Perf. Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, and Harry Andronis. Dir. David Marshall. Animaniacs. Season 1, episode 52. Fox. 11 February 1994. DVD. Studio Distribution Services, 2018. 

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Every now and then, a Shakespearean deep cut is just the ticket.

"Yes, Always" is a very odd episode of Pinky and the Brain that was broadcast before the characters had their own spin-off show. In it, we are invited to see the Brain recording some dialogue for a series of commercials.  In the course of the work, we learn that the Brain has had experience directing others in Shakespeare.

All that is very meta, which is one of the things I love most about the show.  But, as is so often the case with Pinky and the Brain (cf. their take on Hamlet, for example), there's another layer.

The biggest inside joke is that the script is derived from outtakes from some Findus Frozen Foods commercials that Orson Welles did late in life. You can find a good (though somewhat profanity-strewn) account of this here. 

Here at Bardfilm, we're generally more interested in the Shakespeare in any given material. But we also greatly admire Pinky and the Brain (and we need very little excuse to watch it). Enjoy, then, a portion of "Yes, Always" with its allusion to the Brain's directorial history.

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Book Note: William Shakespeare: Complete Works—The Royal Shakespeare Company Edition

Shakespeare, William. William Shakespeare: Complete Works. [The RSC Shakespeare.] 2nd edition. Ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. New York: The Modern Library, 2022.

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At some point, I'd like to do a "Book Note" post on each of the complete Shakespeares I have.  But that time hasn't arrived yet—though I do have a post on the New Cambridge complete works (for which, q.v.).

But I do want to talk about the Royal Shakespeare Company complete Shakespeare, mainly because it provides something other complete works lack: Devoted attention to historic performance of the plays.

By that, I don't mean the survey provided in every Arden single edition. In this volume, we learn what the RSC has done with key lines and scenes throughout its history.

First, true to much modern acting practice, the RSC complete works uses the First Folio as its starting point.  Here's what the General Introduction has to say about that (on page 51): 

Second, the preface notes that the first edition provided a distinction between stage directions specifically given in the First Folio and those that can be deduced from the text—something of an innovation in that edition. About this, the preface says "The idea was to allow readers to construct an imaginary performance in their head" (13).  But this second edition has "replaced these platonic performances with a hundred actual ones" (13).

Third, let me provide Act III, scene i of Hamlet (and the "Key Facts" section on that play) by way of example. For this play, three productions (P for production) are referenced: P1 = 2008 with Gregory Doran as director (the Stewart / Tennant Hamlet), P2 = The 2013 Hamlet directed by David Farr, P3 = Simon Godwin's 2016 production.

And that's just a sample of the richness that can be gleaned by considering how past directors and actors have staged the text.

The Royal Shakespeare Company edition of Shakespeare's complete works is ideal for the scholar who is interested in performance, for the actor or director who wants to explore the imaginative range of past productions, and for the student who gravitates more toward practical explanation than scholarly footnotes. 

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FoxTrot Friday on a Sunday?

Amend, Bill. "Comparative Studies." FoxTrot.com. Posted December 1, 2024. https://foxtrot.com/2024/12/01/comparative-studies/.

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Here at Bardfilm, we try to keep our finger on the pulse of Bill Amend's FoxTrot.

And our finger is particularly sensitive when it comes to Shakespeare in FoxTrot.

Ah, whom are we kidding?

I just like to read the Sunday FoxTrots online; I also take almost any opportunity to talk about Shakespeare.

In today's strip, Andy is grilling Paige about her homework. "Where's the Shakespeare?" I hear you ask. Well, it's in the English paper that Paige has only just begun, naturally!

I'm inferring that the paper is on Shakespeare because of the longstanding tradition of the Fox kids' educational expectations. From personal experience, I'm inferring that the two sentences Paige has "written" for her essay are "Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" and "Come, let me clutch thee."

[Paige has unwisely chosen to begin her essay with a quotation rather than seizing that important opening for herself with her own words.]

These Shakespearean layers add much to the humor of today's FoxTrot comic. Here at Bardfilm, we look forward to even more. Keep the Shakespeare allusions and quotations and references coming, Mr. Amend!

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Links: The Comic at Foxtrot.com.