So Does Anybody Want To Talk About The Chinese Guy?

I didn’t really blog about this last week because it’s little more than a “news of the weird” story, but you probably heard about it. There’s a Chinese author who is apparently going to have plastic surgery to look like William Shakespeare. The folks at Reduced Shakespeare beat me to the obvious “Yes but what portrait?!” joke so I’ll give them credit 🙂
What do you think? I suppose people have done crazier things for their art. Interesting that it’s a writer of words choosing to resculpt himself. Bit of a medium switch for him.
I suppose it beats Botoxing your face into an expressionless mask, like many folks do. Ladies. Seriously. If you raise your eyebrows and your forehead doesn’t move, you’ve done too much.

Shakespeare On The Brain (Again)

For many of us this may be just one of those things that’s so obvious because we’re living it, but the neuroscientists are at it again and tell us that reading Shakespeare gives your brain a special little buzz that might actually make you smarter.
I say again because we were on the scene back in 2006 when the first major entry in this genre, Shakespeare Thinking, was released. Of course back then I was just getting started and didn’t get too much discussion going, so maybe we can change that now.
The general idea makes sense. Language has pattern, and structure. Your brain gets into a sort of auto-pilot, knowing without knowing what is coming next. So when sideways everything Shakespeare twists, up your neurons sit and notice take. Do it badly, of course, as I’ve done quickly here :), and like Master Yoda do you sound.
I’ll admit I don’t fully grok what the new research is all about – it all looks about the same to me as it did 5 years ago. But everybody’s talking about it this week (probably not a coincidence that it’s Shakespeare’s birthday week and we all need content), so I’m open to opening up the discussion again.

My Shakespeare Birthday

So, it’s my birthday (let’s hope that, unlike our patron saint, it doesn’t eventually bookend my celebrated life :)). Loyal readers may know that my kids like for me to have a “Shakespeare birthday”, and the meaning of that has changed over the years. My 3yr old used to use the word to mean “thing Daddy likes” so she would inform me that for my Shakespeare birthday she would get me a Shakespeare flower. Love it.

This year the two girls made me Shakespeare cards. Check it out! I love them.

(Click for larger images)

The first one is a computer that says “Shakespeare geek” on it. Or possibly an iPod. She likes to draw computers. Even my 4yr old (soon to be 5!) will draw them on paper at school, then cut them out and walk around like he’s got work to do on the laptop.

The second one, if you can’t quite make it out, is “Shaksbear”. That’s not intended to be a bear, that’s just the way she spelled it when left on her own. He’s even got the lack of hair on top, and the curly bits down at his shoulders. Not bad! I have no idea what model she used, but I’m putting this one up against the Cobbe Portrait and taking it on the road.

My wife told me to make sure I keep these. I informed her that they were heading straight for the web site to be immortalized :).

Hear the meaning within the word.

This one happens to be going around Twitter at the moment. And, as someone on Yahoo! Answers said, “This is quoted 100s of times around the net, but no one ever says where it’s from.” I’ve found similar results in all my searches. Although Shakespeare used the word “meaning” frequently, I can find no combination of meaning along with “hear” and “word” that suggests where this quote might have come from.

I’m still looking for a real source, but like so many other of these Hallmark sentiments, it’s just too simple to ever hope to find evidence for someone who said it first.

The Voice

So there’s a new singing competition show on tv called The Voice. Did you watch? The concept is interesting to me for a very specific reason – the judges listen to the singers with their backs turned, and only after agreeing to have them “on their team” (whatever that means) does the judge’s chair swing around so they can match a face to the voice.
It’s an amusing gimmick for the most part, until the shows says “Now you play along at home” and proceeds to do the next singer without ever actually showing her face to us. So all we get to hear is her voice, and only when a judge picks her do we get to see her face.
I loved that. I think they should do that with all of them. You just don’t have the opportunity in real life to divorce your senses like that. You can tell yourself all day long that looks don’t matter, but you can’t ever prove that until you take looks away.
So, then, what’s this got to do with Shakespeare? We’ve talked before about Shakespeare as audio book, or as radio drama. The idea that people used to go “hear” a play, rather than see it. How it’s all about the verse, and the delivery. So, is it? Ask yourself, honestly, when a character walks on stage in your favorite play and the first thing that you get to do is see him (or her) rather than hear her (or him), do you immediately match the visual to the character and think “Nope, he doesn’t look like an Iago to me.”
I’d like to think that I don’t (though, I won’t contradict myself from above – I’ll admit that I’d never know for sure without an experiment). Iago walks on stage and I just think, “Ok, that’s my Iago. Let’s see what he brings to the text.”
I wonder what sort of experiment we could do to test the idea. A singer might get 3 minutes of song for you to get a sampling of her voice, but an actor can’t very well perform an entire scene without you seeing him. Or can he? How about a mask? Even with a mask, though, you still get a great deal of info about physical characteristics (depending, I suppose, on the extent of the costume).
Here’s a question for the directors in the audience, while we’re on the subject – would you ever audition people like this? Blind, so that your entire perception of them is on the quality of their delivery? If not, why not?