Introduction: My Blog and its Story

Okay, so here is my idea. I am on a mission; a mission to conquer The Bard. My goal within these virtual pages is to chronicle my journey through the entire, collected works of one William Shakespeare. Well, at least that is the plan right now. First, I'm going to tackle the plays. Then if 1) my friends don't hate me because I only speak in iambic pentameter and 2) I am still sane enough to recognize that slim-legged pageboys are invariably disguised females pursuing/testing or otherwise befuddling would-be suitors ONLY in Elizabethan drama and thus 3) refrain from assaulting my friendly, epicene delivery man, Richard, with suspicious stares and double-edged language, THEN I shall proceed to the poems. As I wade through said works, I will be sharing what no doubt will be my deluge of insights, thoughts and absurdities with the indifferent public via this happy blog. Hopefully this will be entertaining; at the very least blog-readers will be spared mucking about with Troilus and Cressida or Pericles, Prince of Tyre themselves, while still being able to wow 'em at cocktail parties, water coolers, book club meetings, and other fetes absurdes as needed. Also, I shall be very careful to catalogue all the antiquated curses, insults and put-downs that I come across; this will no doubt provide a deep and worthy well for all to draw from to better their vocabulary of scorn and vitriol.

Is everybody with me???

In a spirit of full disclosure, I should let everyone know that I am a Blog novice, both as a consumer and a producer. I am sure I shall make many errors of blogging etiquette and I know absolutely no blogging terms of art. I should also add that I am uninterested in acquiring insight into either the etiquette or the terms, so I will not improve as time goes on. I am not, at heart, a true blogger and I hope you can forgive me. I am just someone who enjoys writing. And the major reason that I have started a blog is so I can stop looking blank when people ask me if I have one. My decision came about in this way: I decided just over a year ago to live off my savings, not look for another desk job, and write a book. I have been writing my book and am almost done. Recently, however, I got married and moved to a new town. This town happens to be Washington, DC. In Washington, DC, I have met many, many new people. These people all seem to regard themselves as incredibly hip and in the know and ravishingly intelligent. When I meet these people, several things inevitably happen. The first thing that happens is that they ask what I do (occupation is a major path to power here, and power is status, so this is everybody's first question; like asking on the West Coast what car you drive, or in the Northeast what school you graduated from). When I respond, in timid tones, that I am a writer - or at least trying to be - the second thing happens: each one in turn looks brightly at me and says a variation of, "Oh, and do you have a blog?" When I say no, the third things happens: these people condescend to educate me.

They prattle on about all the wonderful writers/bloggers out there (who's names and websites they can never remember) and how anybody can do it (not that these people actually are doing it) and how everybody is doing it (these people will no doubt be getting around to doing it soon) and how it is sooo WONDERFUL that we ALL can be writers, now. Unless I am able to make a tactful escape at this point I am well and truly stuck; they are just getting started, having taken me for a simpleton who thinks an icon is something found in a Greek Orthodox church. As I rue the day I married someone who chose a career where I have to be polite, I am serenaded with an hour-and-a-half lecture on the Wonders of Technology, which transitions easily from blogs to global information sharing and the mixing of cultures and ideas, but generally ends with a detailed accounting of how much Christmas shopping my would-be educators did online. Now, I love computers, I am a gamer, I enjoy the internet, but this is all very wearing. After about the seventh "conversation" I endured like this, I determined that either I would develop sympathies for the Unabomber, or I needed to start a blog myself. Then I could just say, "Why, yes, of course. But don't we all?" and move on so I could be condescended to on an entirely different subject. (And I hold out the dream that someday at one of these parties where I meet lots of new people I will meet an actual, active blogger who will be kind and amusing and hate these people as much as I do.)

Having resolved to create a blog, I still felt the need to do it well, or at the very least, make it interesting. I recently moved into a new house in my new town, and was unpacking the flotsam and jetsam of my new spouse's and my life as I mulled over my blog. Several social functions were looming, and I would no doubt be meeting many more Bright Young Know-it-alls. Opening up the 134th box of books, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare floated up to me from pile. We had bought it seven years ago while we were a-courting, and toyed with the idea of reading the plays aloud to one another. In the end, we settled on The Lord of the Rings (which I must add is a truly wonderful set of books to read aloud, especially as a couple; we took a self-guided bicycling tour up the West Coast of Ireland with the tome strapped to one of our bikes, and whenever we were exhausted or just saw an idyllic spot, we stopped and read a bit. One of my favorite memories.), and poor old Will got sent to the bottom of the 134th pile. As I stood there, eyeing the massive volume, I reflected, "what is the big deal about Shakespeare, anyway?" I have experienced a decent amount of Shakespeare one way or another, especially while I was getting my master's degree in London. I have enjoyed Shakespeare very much, but I've certainly never felt intellectually stimulated by his work. Is it just that he was the First to come up with some many plots, devices and characters? (Well, second, perhaps, after the ancient Greeks, but first in English, I guess.)

There must be something more; something I am missing, right? We had to read it in school, and even memorize a bit of it, and when we go to plays at any of the unavoidable Shakespeare festivals throughout the English speaking world, I have always found there to be a reverent atmosphere that puts the worshipers at most churches to shame. Why don't we make such a big fuss about Chaucer, or Sophocles or Tennessee Williams or O'Neill? And we DO make a big fuss about these guys; it just doesn't compare- in quantity, anyway- to the fuss we make about the dear old Bard (I don't think anyone's ever bastardized the ending of Romeo and Juliet the way they did in the Brando version of A Streetcar Named Desire, for example. And I bet you can count the Sophocles festivals you've picnicked at on the right hand of Captain Hook.)

Well, that vague curiosity I felt as I fingered the perfect spine of the book was good enough for me. I may have experienced an above average amount of Shakespeare compared to Joe American of Peoria, Illinois (although I'm now told that Oklahoma City is the new standard in the averagest of the average for polling and advertising purposes, but Peoria sounds cooler, I think), but my understanding is but a teardrop in the ocean compared with those true experts out there, who murmur lines along with the actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and argue for hours about the significance of the syntax at the start of Act III, Scene I in Second Part of King Henry IV.

So I'm going to launch my not virginal, but certainly still inexperienced self into the world that's really all stage, and chart my journey as I do. At best, it will be a revelation to me and an interesting, entertaining time to those who chose to peruse it. (By the way, I plan to post at least once a week, and always on Wednesdays.) At worst, people will have to think of something else to say to me at social gatherings.

Either way, man the sails as we take to the high seas! Coming up, our first port of call, The Tempest.