Shakespeare's Authorship.

In honor of Anonymous being released, I'm reposting this blog entry. Originally written in April 2010.

In the LA Times today there was an editorial about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. The guy who brought you the movies of 2012 and Godzilla is filming a movie right now titled, "Anonymous". It is about the assertion that Shakespeare did not write his plays and it was a guy named Edward de Vere.

If you are an actor in theatre and have studied Shakespeare, you have run across conspiracy theories about who wrote the Bard's plays since it wasn't the Bard himself. After looking at the different sides to all this, I have come to a conclusion.

An actor/playwright named William Shakespeare wrote his fucking plays. Not Edward de Vere, Christopher Marlowe or any of the dozen people asserted to have written the plays of Shakespeare.

There is the argument that Shakespeare didn't know the royal court well enough to write about kings and queens. That he wouldn't have had the education or understanding to write the plays about foreign countries he had never traveled to.

Shakespeare was the son of a wealthy man in Stratford upon Avon. He was educated better than most people at the time. In other words, he went to school. He learned Latin and from there the other romance languages of French and Italian are easily learned. He learned histories. When he left Stratford to go to London he got hooked up with the Chancellor's Men and later the King's Men. Acting troupes that were sponsored by, wait for it, the royals of the time. They had wealthy patrons supporting the arts and the actors mingled with the aristocracy of the times. Kind of like pretty and amusing pets.

So would Shakespeare have had the opportunity to learn of royalty? Absolutely. Would he have watched and listened. Absolutely. That's what actors do. We watch and listen and when we get the chance, use what we saw on stage. Sorry, you are not just people we talk to, you are research.

So how did he write 37 plays and maybe a few that were lost to us? Well, they weren't all original. He took plays from other sources, either stories he heard and re-worked them, or he took other plays and rewrote them only better. Romeo and Juliet is based on an Italian story from years before. The history plays he worked on from the history of England! Wow, who would have thunk?

Are all his plays brilliant? No. Some are bad. Timon of Athens? A play about a guy in a cave? Cymbeline? It's a rework of other plays, but not very well done. His plays are long, over written and are made workable for todays audience by editing them down, cutting out the references that we don't understand anymore. Cutting the third plot lines that don't further the story. In Hamlet, how often will you see Fortinbras or any of the impending war. Rarely.

The reason I think there is skeptcism that he wrote his plays is for a few reasons.

1. People have a hard time with genius. How can anyone be that good? There has got to be a trick. Someone else wrote it. Really? Does anyone question the authorship of Christopher Marlowe or Ben Johnson? Or how about Sophocles or Euripides? There's even less proof they wrote the plays attributed to them. Why do people believe they wrote those plays?

2. Conspiracy theories are sexy. It's pretty boring to think that a single actor with an imagination wrote Shakespeare's plays. It's more sexy to think that it was Edward de Vere who wrote the plays, and they were autobiographical because he had be abducted by pirates,just like Hamlet! Problem is, de Vere died in 1604. Shakespeare died in 1616. 12 years is a long time to be hanging onto scripts for plays just to be perpetuating a fraud that Shakespeare was writing plays and not de Vere.

3. There are character types that are in several plays; Hotspur, Laertes, Tybalt, MacDuff, Don John. Characters that are so similar in temperment, they seem to be written for the same actor. Which a resident playwright would have done. He did it with the clown parts too; Dogberry, Aguecheek, and others. A nobleman writing under an assumed name would not know actors well enough to tailor make parts for them.

So what do we end up with? The hack who brought us Godzilla in 1998 selling fiction that the uneducated and school kids will think is fact. Well, let me tell you, there isn't an island off of Costa Rica with living dinosaurs regardless of what Michael Crichton wrote.

Though I do think dinosaurs would be very cool...

Distracted Brains

The natural state of our brain is distractedness. The distracted nature of our brains was an evolutionary adaptation to keep us safe. By seeing things that move, it alerted us to either danger or food. We gained the ability to really concentrate for long periods when we started to read books. The internet has made us distracted again.

We gear our minds for the world we live in. If you have a linear book reading world view of a techno-peasant by choice or by need, the information feeds of the internet with it's bursts of micro-information are difficult to digest or comprehend.

But for those that are used to the internet, ages 5-20, they have a non-linear mind which is hungry for the quick knowledge easily accessed via google and the web. A book would take too long to satisfy the need for information. They want to get to the core of the matter and all the rest is extraneous. Deep reading requires calm and quiet. The reader becomes the book. This isn't satisfying to the compulsive nibblers of info-snacks. They have the ability to focus, although shallowly, on multiple forms of information or stimuli. Iphone, internet, video game. They can do all of them at the same time, but not deeply.

The brain is not a fixed thing. It's a work in progress. By doing an action or activity we are changing the neural map in our brains. This rerouting of pathways is reinforced by repeating the action or activity. We create our own habits. This can lead to the creation and perpetuation of bad habits.

The hundreds of years of evolution and progress in the human brain which lead to long term concentration and changes in the way we think has been compressed into a few decades. Your computer, your Iphone, your cable TV have taken part in forming your thoughts. Your brain is not hardwired to think a certain way but changes with the software, the stimuli. The internet is not just an exterior technology but transformative of interior consciousness.

In a way we are between two technological worlds. Technology; radio, television, couldn't replace the written word. The internet can and has/does. It's still a literate world in a handheld smart phone. The internet is our typewriter and printing press, our clock and map, our calculator, our phone, post office, library, radio and television. It even takes over the computer's need to have memory built into it. Your information goes to a "cloud."

I wonder how the brain will continue to evolve. I notice I have to remove myself from the many distractions which are in my everyday environment when I really want to read for long periods. This was not the way I concentrated 10 years ago. I could focus almost anywhere, shut out the distractions. That is harder now.

Ooooo, something shiny...

Update on Death

Okay. I was a little bit behind the information curve when I wrote that last post about my friend waiting to die. He died the day before I wrote it. Maybe 2. I don't have the exact information. Mike is in the middle of the first row between the two couples. This was the production of Much Ado About Nothing we did in 1995.

He was a funny guy. The friar in the play is the guy who keeps the whole story from going off the rails and having it become a tragedy. In the wedding scene when Mike did the ceremony, he snuck a little ad lib in there. Since people generally don't get all Shakespeare wrote (I believe Shakespeare wrote his plays. There is an earlier blog about why I believe so. Don't think the movie Anonymous is a documentary.), Mike would slip in the following joke.

Friar: To Honor. Get on her and stay on her.

This would sometimes get a laugh if the audience caught it. But Shakespeare certainly did not write it. Probably the only reason is because he didn't think of it.

He was a member of the Magic Castle and a magician. He also taught me the magic trick of doing a hand pass and making a coin disappear. When I did it for him after practicing, he said, "that was really good." Coming from him, that was a compliment.

He was a funny gracious guy. He will be missed.

Don't really know how to title this one.

A friend of mine is dying. He's an actor I did a number of plays with when I first got to town. A talented humble guy. When you looked at him he looked about 10 -15 years older than he really was. Diabetes had ravaged his body for most of his life. I always freaked me out a bit to see him checking blood sugar and injecting insulin in the dressing room when we were doing plays.

He went back to San Diego to regroup at a certain point. He got married to a really nice lady. She's still with him. He had a multiple organ transplant. Liver and pancreas. Maybe a kidney. I don't really remember. It was at least 2 organs (multiple organs get you higher on the donation list, shows more need.). When he was well enough they had a party so a number of us from the theatre went down and performed for him. It was so nice to see him, and he was so grateful.

I learned today that he'd been on dialysis for 2 1/2 years and also had a couple operations to alleviate some of the pain he was in. I don't have a lot of details. But he recently decided to stop the dialysis and get released. He's at home receiving hospice care and waiting...

This type of death is so sad to watch. The wasting away of a person from a robust funny man to someone wanting to die. And thru all the time I knew him he was incredibly upbeat and optimistic. Probably much more optimistic than I would have the courage to be.

I remember we were doing Much Ado About Nothing. He had the part of the friar who marries Hero and Claudio. There was one or two performances he was in a crazy debilitating amount of pain. I didn't know it because I was onstage much of the time. When he wasn't onstage he was in the dressing room laying unmoving on a couch. When he came out he did a super funny amazing performance. We all commented on it and learned later the circumstances behind it.

I don't know if he's up for visitors, but if he is I'll try to go down. I'll hate to see what has become of him (I'd prefer to remember him as he was. This is the reason I don't do viewings of anyone who passes away. I don't want the last image if them to be in a box.), but I think he'd like a visit.

An Unexpected Wedding

I went to a wedding this past weekend with less than 5 hours to be ready from the time I was invited to the time it started.

I went to see Real Steel. Great flick. Lots of fun. I cried. It's Rocky with robots! How can you not like that? But I digress. My phone vibrated. It was a text from my friend Jen. She was getting married that day. I was not invited because it was a small wedding with LOTS of family. People flew in from other countries! So while I was a bit disappointed it was OK. If things had worked out differently I would have been out of town for the first 2 weeks of October anyway. No worries.

So I went out of the movie theatre into the hallway. I could still see the movie, but I wouldn't disturb the audience. There was a cancellation at the wedding. I could come if I wanted. I replied OK.

I didn't have time to get a gift or a card. I'll do something later. So after the movie I went on with my day and then home to get dressed. The wedding was nice. It was a wedding and the groom was nervous. The minister told him to speak up. And to tell her, the vows, not him. Both big laugh lines. The bride, a trained actress, rocked the vows. And later rocked the Eminem the DJ played when we danced.

After the ceremony, OPEN BAR until 7 pm! YAY!. I drank red wine. I like wine. It works. So I wandered around and chatted with the people I knew. I was funny because that's what alcohol does. Takes the editor off-line. Dinner was announced and I went to the dining room.

I was seated, as someone else, at a table where I knew no one. I finagled my way to a table where I knew everyone. Thanks to the guy who was shooting video who agreed to move. He'd be working anyway... Thankfully the person I was the understudy for ordered the steak. If it had been the veggie plate I would have grumbled and eaten all the dark chocolate treats at the table.

We ate. There were speeches and then dancing. I was solo since I didn't know if there was a +1 with the missing man. Also how do you ask a date, "want to go to a wedding today at 4:30?" That would be crazy. Dancing was fun.

I left at 11 pm. All in all, It was a fine night and I got to see a good friend tie the knot. I wish them all the happiness in the world. And that is a lot of happiness.

Time Travel

Terra Nova is set to premiere soon. The premise makes the logical side of me wonder.

So a way has been found to send people and machines back in time 85 million years. Dinosaurs are still around and interacting with people. They were there first of course.

So... Wouldn't the discovery of modern human skulls that are 85 million years fuck up science just in general? Or rather, if the people sent back in time actually survived, wouldn't that fuck up the future they are from? Not that modern man who has only been around for about 10-15,000 years would be able to survive 85 million years to actually screw up the timeline they came from. And the meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs happened 65 million years ago. So you go back in time to save humanity, and then face extinction again. Ok, in 20 million years, but you see what I'm saying? The logic of all this is kind of crazy.

I need to see the show, but the premise is a bit nutty. I wonder how they deal with these and the other logic problems. This may be a moot point since it is a chance to have dinosaurs chase humans in the jungle. It's all just good fun. Unless you are eaten.

More Facebook Shenanigans

Facebook has done it again. They decided that their crazy success is not good enough and have fucked with the news feed. I don't really know why but I hated it from the instant it happened. I don't want some bullshit algorithm trying to figure out what I will find an important thing in my feed. It gave you the option to accept all posts, some posts, or none.

Fuck that. I can decide what I want to read by reading it, and not reading what I don't want to read. Pretty simple. It's like with television. If I don't like a show, I change the channel. It's my choice. I don't want them choosing anything for me.

There is a way to fix the feed. You go to account settings, language, and change it to English(UK) and the feed reverts to normal. I posted on my wall and told the people how to do it. And I went on a website and let the knowledge loose. So hopefully there are enough people that protest to make FB go back.

But I really don't have much hope. Eventually they will change it worldwide and fuck up their business model. It's really sad that they have a hard time with their own mega success.

Maybe it's time to jump over to Google+ and see what it is like. Before that gets fucked up too.

WELL, that fix has now been thwarted by facebook.

There is a work around. I created a list for all and look at that feed rather than the main page.

In order to make your newsfeed look like it did & to see EVERYONE a friend of mine did this:
On your home page, to the left there is a section called lists. If you click on it it will bring up all your lists and let you create a new one. Click on create a new one call it "ALL" and add all your friends...Then on your home page click on all and the entire news feed comes up for them...If you don't want to see from everyone leave off who you don't want on that list... I had to select everyone individually the first time, but it's quick clicking.