Do I have a wish list?
Dec. 16th, 2004 01:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2Keith wanted to know, do I have a wish list? And the answer is, not really.
But!
I've been reading (as I mentioned earlier) a book called Weird Tales from Shakespeare. And some of them aren't really all that weird... one is just about a fight between Will and one of his daughters over the family will. Two others concern Shakespeare meeting a witch and a mysterious wizardly man who might well have been Odin Allfather... not an uncommon theme; given some of the fantastic elements in Shakespeare's plays, it's tempting to wonder where he might have gotten his inspiration from. Neil Gaiman explored this theme quite well in his Sandman series, and I've always liked his treatment on the subject. I also own two books that give a similar treatment, Ill Met By Moonlight and All Night Awake, both by Sarah Hoyt. These are two parts of a trilogy, and since I haven't finished reading the first two, I've never gotten around to buying the third. So, there's one gift idea:
Any Man So Daring by Sarah Hoyt
Another of the stories in Weird Tales from Shakespeare is by Charles De Lint, and as part of the story it brings up the question of whether Shakespeare really was the author of the plays attributed to him. I've always thought that the question was silly and that Shakespeare of course wrote Shakespeare, and I had a vague idea that most scholars accepted this as fact, but since I didn't really know that much on the subject I decided to do a little online research today, and came across the following web site, which explains very clearly why nearly all of the arguments of authorship by someone else are full of holes:
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/
Of course, the truth is that facts from Shakespeare's time are few, which is why people can argue endlessly on the subject. But it's important to note that Shakespeare in his time was hardly considered the genius that he is considered today, and that he is considered such a towering genius is a great part of why people question whether he was really the author. You know, nobody questions whether any of the other playwrights of Shakespeare's time are really the authors of their work. And no one questioned his authorship at the time, or within roughly 200 years that followed. Only when he was given the mantle of greatest writer of the English language did anyone decide that a man like Will Shakespeare couldn't possibly be worthy of the title, and that someone else must have written those plays and poems.
In any case, any argument or conspiracy theory invented to explain how someone else was the true author is vastly more complex than simply saying that Shakespeare was the author. In other words, occam's razor, the simplest explanation is that Will was indeed a genius, whatever his background and upbringing.
(Historical side note: William of Ockham was born in the village of Ockham in Surrey (England) about 1285 and most likely died in a convent in Munich in 1349. His famous principal: Plurality should not be assumed without necessity. In other words: one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything. Or in yet other words: Keep it simple, stupid. I assume Shakespeare would have been familiar with his work. ^_^)
Oh, but what has this to do with a Christmas list?
Simple. I visited Amazon and checked out the book that was reccomended by the shakespeareauthorship web site. It looked like a book that I would find quite interesting to read:
Shakespeare, In Fact
And as usual when I look up an interesting book on Amazon, I followed several links to other interesting books:
Will In the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
Shakespeare
Nothing Like The Sun: The Story of Shakespeare's Love Life
A Dead Man In Deptford
The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe
And since we're on the subject, I wouldn't mind owning:
Shakespeare In Love dvd
And one of my goals that I rarely have worked to achieve is to own good versions of most of Shakespeare's plays on dvd. To that end, I have the Kenneth Branagh movie versions of Henery V and Much Ado About Nothing, and I also have a version of A Midsummer Night's Dream starring Kevin Kleine which really isn't all that great. I don't own the other Branaugh Shakespeare films; his Hamlet isn't currently available on dvd (although a British dvd version is apparently coming out in January 2005), but of course there's always Mel Gibson's Hamlet. But really, any good dvd version of any play other than the three I've listed as owning would be cool. ^_^
Shakespeare on cd would be cool too. ^_^ I have Twelfth Night, which I got at Half Price Books, but they tend to be expensive so I haven't picked up any others.
Naturally there are lots of non-Shakespeare things I'm interested in but often if it's something I really want then I buy it. But for example, I still don't own any Radiohead and I've always wanted to pick up some of their stuff. Future Blues and Vitaminless are the two Cowboy Bebop soundtracks that I still don't own. Or this collection of Uncle Dave Macon's music would be pretty cool.
That's probably more than enough ideas I think. Does that answer your question, Keith?
^_^
But!
I've been reading (as I mentioned earlier) a book called Weird Tales from Shakespeare. And some of them aren't really all that weird... one is just about a fight between Will and one of his daughters over the family will. Two others concern Shakespeare meeting a witch and a mysterious wizardly man who might well have been Odin Allfather... not an uncommon theme; given some of the fantastic elements in Shakespeare's plays, it's tempting to wonder where he might have gotten his inspiration from. Neil Gaiman explored this theme quite well in his Sandman series, and I've always liked his treatment on the subject. I also own two books that give a similar treatment, Ill Met By Moonlight and All Night Awake, both by Sarah Hoyt. These are two parts of a trilogy, and since I haven't finished reading the first two, I've never gotten around to buying the third. So, there's one gift idea:
Any Man So Daring by Sarah Hoyt
Another of the stories in Weird Tales from Shakespeare is by Charles De Lint, and as part of the story it brings up the question of whether Shakespeare really was the author of the plays attributed to him. I've always thought that the question was silly and that Shakespeare of course wrote Shakespeare, and I had a vague idea that most scholars accepted this as fact, but since I didn't really know that much on the subject I decided to do a little online research today, and came across the following web site, which explains very clearly why nearly all of the arguments of authorship by someone else are full of holes:
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/
Of course, the truth is that facts from Shakespeare's time are few, which is why people can argue endlessly on the subject. But it's important to note that Shakespeare in his time was hardly considered the genius that he is considered today, and that he is considered such a towering genius is a great part of why people question whether he was really the author. You know, nobody questions whether any of the other playwrights of Shakespeare's time are really the authors of their work. And no one questioned his authorship at the time, or within roughly 200 years that followed. Only when he was given the mantle of greatest writer of the English language did anyone decide that a man like Will Shakespeare couldn't possibly be worthy of the title, and that someone else must have written those plays and poems.
In any case, any argument or conspiracy theory invented to explain how someone else was the true author is vastly more complex than simply saying that Shakespeare was the author. In other words, occam's razor, the simplest explanation is that Will was indeed a genius, whatever his background and upbringing.
(Historical side note: William of Ockham was born in the village of Ockham in Surrey (England) about 1285 and most likely died in a convent in Munich in 1349. His famous principal: Plurality should not be assumed without necessity. In other words: one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything. Or in yet other words: Keep it simple, stupid. I assume Shakespeare would have been familiar with his work. ^_^)
Oh, but what has this to do with a Christmas list?
Simple. I visited Amazon and checked out the book that was reccomended by the shakespeareauthorship web site. It looked like a book that I would find quite interesting to read:
Shakespeare, In Fact
And as usual when I look up an interesting book on Amazon, I followed several links to other interesting books:
Will In the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
Shakespeare
Nothing Like The Sun: The Story of Shakespeare's Love Life
A Dead Man In Deptford
The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe
And since we're on the subject, I wouldn't mind owning:
Shakespeare In Love dvd
And one of my goals that I rarely have worked to achieve is to own good versions of most of Shakespeare's plays on dvd. To that end, I have the Kenneth Branagh movie versions of Henery V and Much Ado About Nothing, and I also have a version of A Midsummer Night's Dream starring Kevin Kleine which really isn't all that great. I don't own the other Branaugh Shakespeare films; his Hamlet isn't currently available on dvd (although a British dvd version is apparently coming out in January 2005), but of course there's always Mel Gibson's Hamlet. But really, any good dvd version of any play other than the three I've listed as owning would be cool. ^_^
Shakespeare on cd would be cool too. ^_^ I have Twelfth Night, which I got at Half Price Books, but they tend to be expensive so I haven't picked up any others.
Naturally there are lots of non-Shakespeare things I'm interested in but often if it's something I really want then I buy it. But for example, I still don't own any Radiohead and I've always wanted to pick up some of their stuff. Future Blues and Vitaminless are the two Cowboy Bebop soundtracks that I still don't own. Or this collection of Uncle Dave Macon's music would be pretty cool.
That's probably more than enough ideas I think. Does that answer your question, Keith?
^_^
