First Folio Is More Than Just A Book. Shakespeare Exhibit at the Tweed Stirs Generations.

During the month of May the Tweed Museum of Art has played host to a traveling exhibit from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. called First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare. Numerous activities have been organized around this touring exhibit, including projects for youth, special speakers and more.

Yesterday afternoon the art gallery was abuzz with art projects related to Shakespeare. Alison Aune and crew had set up stations where kids could work on themed projects. One room featured materials for assembling miniature books. Another room featured materials for making theater masks. In a third area I saw young people making crowns All of it was designed to inspire to renewed interest in the life and work of William Shakespeare on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of his death.

The centerpiece of the traveling exhibit is a book, one of an estimated 750 copies of the first published collection of the works of William Shakespeare. There are an estimated 233 remain in existence, and though rare I am guessing that if this were the only one it would not be on the road as it has been. In point of fact the Folger Shakespeare Library owns 82 of these 233 copies of the folio, and what makes this book exciting to people is that many of Shakespeare's plays would have been lost in the abyss of history had this book not been published.

In addition to this First Folio exhibit you will discover a Costumes & Stagecraft For Shakespeare display in several halls of the gallery, on loan from the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis displaying elements that reveal the world of theater that Shakespeare's plays fostered. You'll enjoy the elaborate costumes and miniature sets that were invented and constructed to help directors and characters envision the stories they would tell on the stage.

"All the world's a stage..."

Years ago I heard a five minute radio clip by Dan Rather of CBS in which he recited sayings and phrases that have become permanently embedded in our language today that originated with Mr. Shakespeare. "All's Well That Ends Well" is the title of a play. When we talk about a comedy of errors, this too was taken from the title of another play, "Comedy of Errors." There's something in the wind, we often say. The notion of killing with kindness can be found in another play of his. And the phrase "star-crossed lovers" was popularized in Romeo and Juliet. I'm just whetting your appetite here.

Elaborate costume from Midsummer Night's Dream.

His themes were the themes of life: love, longing, fear and death, expectation, greed, villainy and mercy. Just as Dylan mined the American folk and blues traditions, Shakespeare summoned inspiration from all the previous ages of literature while incorporating the latest discoveries of the emerging modern world.

This traveling exhibition will be folding up its curtains on October 26, so you have ten days to get up to the campus to take it in.

There are several other noteworthy exhibitions on display right now, as well. The balcony annex has a challenging showcase of the thought-provoking works of Juan Logan titled Whose Song Shall I Sing? It's relevance is inescapable in our current climate of racial discord and stereotyping.

A whimsical photo exhibition titled Head in the Clouds is also enjoyable and effective.

If you've not been to the Tweed before, you really must make the effort. This is a first class art museum, a real treasure for the community. You'll find it on the UMD campus.

"All the world ‘s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts." ~As You Like It

And if you can't remember your lines, well... just do the best you can. You only live once.

Throwback Thursday: All the World's a Stage

William Shakespeare. The name carries weight, influence. His remarkable power with words defies comprehension. Not only the quantity of his words, but the quality of his content... When writers review the rich catalog of his works, they are impressed and humbled. The guy could turn a phrase. Moreover, those phrases contained dense pearls of distilled wisdom. How did he do it?

Well, I have since learned that he did not do it. There was a committee, founded by two playwrights Geoffrey Williams and Walter Shakespeare. They hired a team of young writers and put them to work. The published sonnets and plays were said to have been penned by a William Shakespeare. A scandal arose at one point when one of the writers revealed...

Please do not believe the muttering in this previous paragraph. It would astonish me even more to discover that Shakespeare's art had been produced by committee. Have you ever done art by committee? I myself stand in awe at the volumes produced by authors like Shakespeare who with no keyboard, no word processors, no typewriters moved the world.

The best way to enjoy a good quote, by the way, is not to read a series of them quickly, as presented here. Rather, make as if each were a tea bag. Heat your cup of water, dip it and let it steep. Allow the aroma of each idea to seep into and saturate your thoughts. Once you have supped from the first, you may proceed to the next. There are flavors rich and subtle here. Take your time, enjoy each one.

» The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

» Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

» Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

» Be great in act, as you have been in thought.

» Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.

» Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Thou art not so unkind,

As man's ingratitude.

» There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

» Brevity is the soul of wit.

» Cowards die many times before their deaths,

the valiant never taste of death but once.

» Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine ownself be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

» All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts...

* * * *
This piece originally appeared on January 8, 2008
Illustration by e.

My Near Death Experience

This past winter the flu that was going around grabbed hold of me and shook me hard. I went through two forty-eight hour stretches where I couldn’t sleep, had fever and chills, and at one point literally wished I could die.

Then my life flashed before my eyes. The strange part was that half of it was fiction.

In one scene, I was sitting with William Shakespeare. He -- or we I am not sure – was trying to work some humor into the third act of Taming of the Shrew. I told him that the notion of having Petruchio stick an eggplant in his pants and strut around on stage as if it were a codpiece was a bit too lowbrow.

“Bill,” I said, “You can do better.”

He seemed to take great pleasure from imagining this scene, but finally cut the eggplant. I then took a knife and sliced another piece off, and he cut off another slice and in a few minutes we had a plateful of eggplant slices. I suggested we pour tomato sauce and cheeses on it, and bake it. “What would you call something like this?” he inquired. I hesitated, then suggested we call it eggplant parmesan, and he said maybe he could work this into a story he was developing about Venice. He was torn between Death in Venice and The Merchant of Venice as a title. I proposed the latter. (Tom Mann would later be relieved.)

In another scene that flashed before my eyes I was manicuring Charles Dickens’ nails. He was chattering on and on about Great Expectations, how much it just seemed to be flowing right out of him. He had evidently shown me an early draft of the first half, because I told him I thought the scene with the eggplant was quite hilarious. He leaned back in his chair and frowned.

“What?” I asked with my eyebrows tilted upwards.

“I didn’t think the humor was working in that scene at all. Besides, it didn’t tie to anything else in the story,” he said.

“It was an anecdote,” I said leaning forward.

He leaned a little further back, as if I had bad breath, which I may have had because of a bad tooth. He shook his head in a dejected way. And finally said, “I really don’t think there is anything funny that you can do with eggplants. Do you?”

I replied, “Maybe that’s why I am having such a hard time coming up with a punchline for ‘Why did the eggplant cross the road?’”

He gave me a quizzical look, and the next thing I knew I was trembling violently in a sweat on my couch, remembering my flu, grateful for life.

Having survived my ordeal, I have great expectations for the next chapter of my life, whatever it brings.

Eat healthy, stay fit, and you have a good day, too.

All the World's a Stage

William Shakespeare. The name carries weight, influence. His remarkable power with words defies comprehension. Not only the quantity of his words, but the quality of his content... When writers review the rich catalog of his works, they are impressed and humbled. The guy could turn a phrase. Moreover, those phrases contained dense pearls of distilled wisdom. How did he do it?

Well, I have since learned that he did not do it. There was a committee, founded by two playwrights Geoffrey Williams and Walter Shakespeare. They hired a team of young writers and put them to work. The published sonnets and plays were said to have been penned by a William Shakespeare. A scandal arose at one point when one of the writers revealed...

Please do not believe the muttering in this previous paragraph. It would astonish me even more to discover that Shakespeare's art had been produced by committee. Have you ever done art by committee? I myself stand in awe at the volumes produced by authors like Shakespeare who with no keyboard, no word processors, no typewriters moved the world.

The best way to enjoy a good quote, by the way, is not to read a series of them quickly, as presented here. Rather, make as if each were a tea bag. Heat your cup of water, dip it and let it steep. Allow the aroma of each idea to seep into and saturate your thoughts. Once you have supped from the first, you may proceed to the next. There are flavors rich and subtle here. Take your time, enjoy each one.

» The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

» Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

» Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

» Be great in act, as you have been in thought.

» Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.

» Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Thou art not so unkind,

As man's ingratitude.

» There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

» Brevity is the soul of wit.

» Cowards die many times before their deaths,

the valiant never taste of death but once.

» Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine ownself be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

» All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts...