Results of Ruminations

Note: This is the third and final essay in my quasi-epistemological analysis of Truth. The first and second parts are also available. Additionally, this is the last planned daily essay on this website. Additional content can be found at my website. Thank you for reading.  Third Assumption We have a duty to learn as much Truth as possible. The meaning "obligation or duty" is tucked into the Greek word deon- and is usually known through the Kantian system of ethics known as deontology . And though I'm familiar with his work, I can't boast to have read all his works. So if he's on the same wavelength as me on this aspect of the application of his moral philosophy I don't know. Nevertheless, I think it can be rationally asserted that it is incumbent on every human being to learn more about the world. It satisfies the categorical imperative in his maxim "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal ...

Screen capture from here . This word describes Shakespeare's work, and in no other case is that more apparent than  Hamlet  (and, as is so often the case, Hamlet). Despite my parenthetical aside, I'm again struck by how the meanings and depths that Hamlet  plumbs are...you guessed it, indefatigable. I have read, seen, or taught Hamlet  countless times--not countless because I can't count that high, but because I can't remember how many I've seen or read or taught. The safe guess is that I've gone through that play, in one form or another (not counting The Lion King , my favorite of the Disney Renaissance films of my childhood) at least fifty times. I always get something out of it, I always realize something new, I always feel there's more to explore. Hamlet  is a well from which I can never overdraw, as it is like Juliet's love: Infinite ( Romeo and Juliet 2.2). How did Shakespeare pull this off? Part of it is that he allowed himself to luxuriat...

I'm teaching a new Shakespeare class this year. I've yet to really teach the same one: When I first began, it was a co-taught class with a BYU professor who was only there every other day. Yet I learned a lot about teaching writing and showing students how to improve via revisions (so totally my strong point, don't you know) and hard work on their writing. The next two years I worked with another teacher, but he was in class even less frequently than the BYU professor. Each time was a refining of what had come before, and there was always a shift in the texts. (With Shakespeare, there's a massive crop to explore, which is exciting and a little intimidating.) Last year, Shakespeare was also fine arts: Shax on the stage and the page was our idea, with different terms focusing on one part or the other of the Bard's oeuvre. I learned a lot about the actor (and acting), which was fun for me, if a little stressful. I haven't taught a drama class before, and I don...

Macbeth , act 5, scene 5: I have supped full with horrors. Heather Heyer has become a martyr, killed by domestic terrorism, though it ought to be noted that the hatred on display in Charlottesville has claimed many lives. The heritage that the neo-Nazis and white supremacists claim to be defending is one of barbarism, slavery, mutilation, rape, and death. I have walked among the concrete coffins meant to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. Nestled in the heart of Berlin, within walking distance of both the Brandenberg Gate and the rebuilt Reichstag--the building whose burning gifted Germany to Hitler and set history's course for genocide, nuclear devastation, and more--I shivered as much from the weather as from the location. There is a specter that haunts Berlin: One of regret, of shame, of unwillingness to forget but also one of determination to create a new definition of what it means to be German. Berlin struck me as a place that had woken up from a nightmare that s...

This past week, I had a lot of interesting moments. I went on a writing retreat wherein I wrote over 40,000 words in three days (with some bonus writing while I was at it, putting the end-of-the-week total at 47,500 words and change). I was hoping to write an essay about that. I had a chance to meet my dad in Manti and enjoy a dinner with him and my family, somewhat unexpectedly, and then, during that time, had some introspection that made me think more clearly of what and how I write. I'm reading a couple of books that have me pretty excited ( The Last of the Doughboys  and Building God's Kingdom , if you care to know) and I was thinking of maybe drafting a few hundred words about either one. An old Spider-Man comic came to mind that I was thinking I should reread, then do a close reading on it. (It comes from a comic published in 1994.) I mean, my Spider-Man essays don't pull in a lot of readers, but the point of these posts are more for my own growth as a writer, ...

A friend tapped me for a project that he knew I couldn't refuse: make a cut of Hamlet  for a BYU student production to produce. Actual video footage of my friend, right before talking to me. ( Source ) The catch? This production was going to be James Bond themed. But not as a gimmick; every instance, word, intonation, and gesture that pointed toward spying had to be included in the cut. The focus, then, was that the world of Hamlet was one in which deception and subterfuge reigned, and it was my job to draw that out as much as possible. Thus I gained the unpronounceable title of dramaturge . My job was to not only edit the play (the longest in Shakespeare's canon, at over 4,000 lines, always requires a hefty cut) but to omit the specific parts of the play that didn't remain focused on the spying. After some back and forth--with me trying to make the piece as lean as possible, yet still putting in all that the director wanted--we finally landed on a cut that is curre...

Over the last six or seven years, I've been trying to refine what my voice sounds like as a writer. Of course, there's the discrepancy between the fact that written language and spoken  language are rather different fundamentally. It's one of the weird things about writing: Whoever it was who did it first chose, for whatever reason, to name this phenomenon as "voice". It's not aural, but visual. It resides in its own part of the brain where characters live. I've often said that writers are strange folk because they scriven what the voices in their heads say, then demand that someone else pay money to go through that same imagination. Basically, we pay to hear the voices in another's head. I think that's where the voice concept comes in. The cadences and tones are imagined, and the best readers are the ones who differentiate between those separate voices naturally. Writers who sell well, broadly speaking, are those who can communicate that unique ...

If you don't count the calendar shifts, today marks the 2,061st anniversary of the death of Julius Caesar. I'm not a classicist, but I hang out with one, and today he dressed in black. He discussed the events of that fateful day in Roman history, explaining what transpired, why they did what they did, and the consequence of Caesar's assassination. Today, I discussed the events of a different assassination, but not one less consequential: The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo 103 years ago this June.   In the podcast lecture series I'm listening to, we covered the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, an actor who was, along with the rest of his family, best known for their Shakespearean performances. We don't know if Mister Lincoln had read Julius Caesar , but it's almost certain that Booth had. Not even a week ago, someone breached the perimeter of the White House, though his motives aren't necessarily fatal. Still, ther...

In a clever and unexpected twist on an old classic, I inverted the concepts of the cliche "practice what you preach" and made it fun and exciting! Aren't you exceedingly diverted? I knew you would be. One of the things about being a teacher that I didn't understand when I was a student was the idea that I sort of expected the teacher to have done what she was telling me to do. "Read this book" had an implied "because I have and it's worth it" to the command. Most of the time, I think that my teachers did what was asked of the students...to a certain extent. I don't think Mrs. White sat down and wrote out note cards for the ten-page research paper assignment back in tenth grade. And I know that Miss Bodily didn't make video summary of Othello  at the end of that play for a project. But one of the things that I've tried to do a little bit throughout the years is to create one of the projects that my students have to do, as it pert...

This is the last of the three mini essays that I'm hoping to submit to the Wooden O Symposium at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Unlike the other two, this one focuses on the entirety of the play instead of exclusively on the female characters. It's also the weakest of the essays, so I'll likely have to rewrite this thing and change the organization of the entire submission. Hooking Up: A Midsummer Night's Dream I'm not the first to observe that it's in some ways inconsistent that middle school students are often exposed to Shakespeare via Romeo and Juliet . It's a play about teenagers mistaking the early stages of infatuation, assuming it's the kind of love that can last, and then killing themselves when it doesn't go the way they'd hoped. Hardly the morals that we're trying to instill in Utah's youth. So perhaps there's a better play to put into the hands of resistant striplings in order to infuse them with the intoxicating dr...

I may be off my mark, but there's a bit of a black mark on Shakespeare's treatment of the Wars of the Roses. For those unfamiliar with the phrase, it's a shorthand to describe a swath of medieval years in British history that was marked by dynastic struggles, loss of French lands, and civil war between the houses of York and Lancaster. For me, it's a period of time that I've only lightly studied, having taught a little about Joan of Arc, who features in 1 Henry VI. After that, it's much the same as ever happens to me: I learn the history well enough to understand the basics of the play. Now, I've read all of Shakespeare's plays--though I admit that I read some more than others. And the Wars of the Roses are...less good than others. In some ways, even the bizarre and bloody Titus Andronicus  and the bitter Timon of Athens  are more enjoyable reads than the three parts of Henry VI. While I personally find Henry V more tiresome than inspirational (which p...

Like I mentioned before, the Utah Shakespeare Festival has an annual symposium, called the Wooden O , that is a place where scholars meet to discuss Shakespeare and to share papers that they've submitted. Here's the second part of my proposed paper for the symposium, "Hooking Up and Marrying Down: Relationships in Shakespeare." Marrying Down: Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet 's eponymous heroine is a surprisingly capable and thoughtful teenager, and certainly her Romeo's mental superior. Though perhaps her age counts against her in the analyses of language and love (and the language of love), she still provides a strong sense of capacity that many of us are loathe to see wasted by the end of the play. Sure, she is somewhat impetuous about the marriage. If you've spent any significant amount of time in the presence of teenagers, there's a pretty large problem with myopia when it comes to emotional questions, even under normal circumstances. Th...

The Utah Shakespeare Festival has an annual symposium, called the Wooden O , that is a place where scholars meet to discuss Shakespeare and to share papers that they've submitted. I've yet to go, but I'm trying to write a piece that (I hope) might be a contribution to the symposium. It's a large topic, and I'm still wrapping my head around what I want to do, but I thought I'd lay out some preliminary thoughts. Since I used up my writing time today on this, I figured I'd do double duty and post it here. So here's the first part of my proposed paper, "Hooking Up and Marrying Down: Relationships in Shakespeare." Marrying Down: As You Like It   Rosalind's charm is so pervasive and charming, Harold Bloom prefers to think of the play by an alternative title: As Rosalind Likes It (221). It's almost becomes a tragedy at the end of one of the highest comedies to think she marries a schlub like Orlando. In many ways, hers is the most conf...

I remember having waves of nausea (I'm only being slightly hyperbolic) at this comic when I first saw it many years ago: That last comment, tho... While Jason Fox has his geek cred residing firmly in the Math and Science  zip code, mine is just off Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon. I may have mentioned before that I use the hashtag #shakespeareiseverywhere  to document all the places that I find the Bard in my day-to-day life. It's not proprietary--others have used it, of course, both before I "coined it" and as time goes on. Still, I throw that around any time I see a reference, whether that's in a museum, a quote, or anything else. In other words, you replace the word "math" in that comic above with "Shakespeare", and you have...well, me. I see Shakespeare everywhere, and I have to admit, it's probably a little unhealthy. Three instances, all from yesterday. Instance the first: The lesson was on how Christ can help people who...

In 2014, I was accepted to a BYU-sponsored teacher training in Cedar City. There, I was to attend day-long workshops with Utah Shakespeare Festival. Before we went, we were tasked with reading the three plays that we would see performed that season ( Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, and Twelfth Night ). I went with Gayle, letting her prowl around Cedar City (mostly at the fabric shops) while I attended the classes, then she came with me to the different plays. It was a delightful summer. The interesting thing for me was that I was in a very foreign situation. I was surrounded by drama teachers--almost no one there was, like I, an English teacher. And while a number of them liked Shakespeare in that squishy, "He's good so I have to like him" way, there were only a couple of actual Bardolators in the mix. That's been an interesting aspect to my experience with the Bard, and it's not a unique one. Shakespeare is adored in the academy because of the ...

I've mentioned Harold Bloom before. As the first serious literary critic I read of my own volition (having studied some of the postmodern theorists in college), I've found a lot of my early interpretations of Shakespeare heavily influenced by him. There's an irony there: One of Bloom's primary theses is what he terms "the anxiety of influence", a consciousness on the part of an author of where inspiration comes from. In this case, my early critical voice was influenced by Bloom, but, being young, I didn't sense--or care--that I was so emulative. It didn't become a large 'anxiety' until I started to reread some of my earlier work. Now I see that there is definitely something to his point. I won't deny that I'm still a little anxious about how much influence Shakespeare has had on me as a writer. As I mentioned while discussing Writ in Blood , I'm nervous about how the story comes across as an homage of the Bard. But the love of ...