How it's done

Max does Shakespeare

Some things require no comment.

Well, okay. One comment: I agree wholeheartedly with Austin Tichenor of the Reduced Shakespeare Company: "Best delivery ever of 'to sleep perchance to dreeeeeeam.' "

Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

From Overheard Everywhere:

Teen boy: (glares at brother, bites thumb)

Younger brother: Mom! He's non-verbally quoting Shakespeare at me again!

--Denver, Colorado

Shades of "Slings and Arrows"

In the television series, "Slings and Arrows," Geoffrey Tennant goes to great lengths to ensure that Oliver Welles's skull is quietly used in the New Burbage production of Hamlet, as directed in Oliver's secret will left with his assistant.

This BBC story mirrors that story enough that I wonder if maybe it's more than coincidence -- that maybe the authors of "Slings and Arrows" knew this story and used it.

In 1982, Andre Tchaikowsky (a concert pianist) passed away from cancer and donated his body to science -- except for his head. He requested that his skull be donated to the Royal Shakespeare Company and used in productions of Hamlet.

The RSC has not ever actually used the skull in a production until recently. In their current production of "Hamlet" starring David "Dr. Who" Tennant, they decided to use Tchaikowsky's skull.

According to the BBC story, "...the company says a fake skull will be used when ("Hamlet") transfers to London. Tennant was the first actor to use Mr Tchaikowsky's skull during Hamlet's famous grave-digger scene. Audiences in Stratford were unaware the skull belonged to the Oxford pianist, but the secret was revealed by Tennant. The RSC told Channel 4 News that now the secret was out, it would be 'too distracting for the audience' if the skull was used."

World's Greatest WHAT?

This lovely Ozymandias trophy is available from Topatoco, seller of such novelty T-shirts as "I'm made of meat!" and "Building a Fake Future in hopes that the real future will show up to mate with it," and (in a font mimicking a movie trailer announcement) "The following PERSON has been approved for ALL AUDIENCES so don't worry it's okay you can talk to me."

They also sell another shirt with a drawing of the "PED XING" man in a top hat riding a penny-farthing with the caption, "NOT A CRIME." The catalog page bears the following description: "FACE IT! As part of the top-hat wearing intellectual elite, you find yourself the constant target of mockery and derision for your chosen mode of transport! Stick it to the Man with a shirt that says, 'Hey world, I bite my thumb at thee.'"

Novelty T- shirts made by people who assume their target audience actually remembers things they learned in English class. What a concept!

The Name of the Blog

Okay, the name comes from Shakespeare.

The Winter's Tale, Act I, Scene ii.

It's the lead-in to a monologue where Leontes convinces himself that he is not the father of the child that his wife is carrying. It marks Leontes sudden and unexplained descent into temporary madness:

"Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I
Play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour
Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play.
There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by
Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't
Whiles other men have gates and those gates open'd,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for't there is none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,
No barricado for a belly; know't; It will let in and out the enemy
With bag and baggage: many thousand on's
Have the disease, and feel't not. How now, boy?"

Frankly, I didn't pick the title for any particular love of Shakespeare or for any desire to appear erudite and hyper-cultured. I picked the title mainly because a Google search did not turn up any existing blogs with this title. All the other titles that I thought of were already taken.

"Exit, pursued by a bear" (also Winter's Tale, arguably the most famous stage direction in all of history)?

Somebody has already used that name for their blog.

"Life is so tiny, so... daily" ( a line from "Take Me Out" -- the end of the speech is "This... You... take me out of it")?

There's already a blog with that title.

"Go, Play, Boy, Play"?

No blog references found.

In context, the sentence is a bit on the dark and crazy side. Out of context, it's more open to interpretation. So I would prefer that you take the title strictly at face value, as an encouragement to myself or to yourself or to someone you know. I don't intend to use this space to demonstrate or discuss jealousy, insanity, cuckoldry or paranoia. Or, for that matter, preciousness or pretense. Instead, I'd rather use it as a playground.

Nothing more meaningful than that.