Let’s set the scene: You’re in English class on the first day of school and the teacher is going over the syllabus. You flip immediately to the section on homework assignments and reading lists (because…duh) and there it is. Shakespeare. Eerie horror music plays. You blink, shake summer cobwebs from your head, and look again at the syllabus as the…
Dear William: A letter to the Bard
A bit of what I would want to say to the Bard, if I had the chance. To W. Shakespeare: I’m not sure that you would be familiar with the idea of “fan mail.” Or rather, I’m sure you would not be familiar with the modern usage of either of those words and may form in your mind an image of…
How to have a Shakespeare stay-cation
How to have a Shakespeare stay-cation, alternatively entitled: If you think I’m not nerdy enough, just wait I decided to take some much needed time off this week and give myself an extra long weekend. I couldn’t really decide how I wanted to use that time, though, until I had the idea to see how much Shakespeare-related stuff I could…
2018 by way of 1600
After my most recent post (regarding Shakespeare’s continued relevance), I thought it would be fun to share a few of Shakespeare’s plays that feel especially relevant today. The ones that feel like they were written for 2018 more than 1600 or 1610 or 1593, etc. The list I’ve come up with are plays (in no particular order) that I would…
Why Shakespeare remains relevant
I’ve sporadically mentioned Shakespeare’s relevance in other posts, but I wanted to dive a little bit more into this. I feel like the Bard’s eternal relevance is frequently lauded, and I hint at this in my post summing up what I learned from my “Finding the Bard” project. But what about his work is relevant? And how is that even…
NaNoWriMo Tips from Shakespeare
I love writing. It’s kind of my thing and it’s something I love to talk and think about. It’s probably no surprise, then, that one of the reasons I love Shakespeare is for what I can learn about writing from him. Today, in honor of National Novel Writing Month (which I am participating in!), I thought I would put my writing…
NaNoWriMo Writing Tips from Shakespeare
If you’re tackling NaNoWriMo this year, check out these helpful tips from Shakespeare: 1. When in doubt, deus ex machina it. 2. Why write “she’s pretty hot” when you can write, “but soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the East and this chick is the sun so shine on, baby!”? 3. If you don’t have any story ideas, just…
Shakespeare as a Painter
I have always been a terrible artist, but have recently enjoyed playing around a little bit with drawing and painting. So much so, in fact, that I decided to take part in a project called Inktober and because I’m, you know, me, I thought it would be great fun to do a Shakespeare-themed Inktober. (If you’re interested, you can follow…
Best of the Bard: Thoughts on reading all Shakespeare’s 38 plays
When I started this blog, I was hoping to discover why Shakespeare is so famous, so timeless, and why he is so consistently considered to be the greatest writer of all time. More than a year and a half after beginning this project, and 38 plays later, I feel like I have barely scratched the surface. Even so, I do…
Best of the Bard: My top 6 favorite Shakespeare plays
When I started this project, I was curious to see if I would find any new favorite Shakespeare plays, or if my favorites would still be the same ones that I already loved. As I was making this list, I realized that it’s the plays I am most familiar with that I love the most (in general). That hardly seems…