Let me say up front that a sonnet is nothing to be afraid of.  Sonnets were the Sudoku and the crossword puzzles of their day, that is to say, of the late 16th century.  People enjoyed writing them and figuring them out at whatever level they were capable. If sonnets were featured in the New  Read the Rest…

I need to call Regence Blue Shield to ask a question about my health insurance coverage but I am putting it off.  I have just barely recovered from asking them a question last week.  While I didn’t exactly ask, it was a question– Why the fuck didn’t I get notice that my premium was going  Read the Rest…

I started the project of reading the works of Shakespeare in late June, 2012, as a whim, really.  I thought one of two things would come of it.  Either I would peter out after a half dozen plays or I would take years to get through them all.  I was not prepared to become so  Read the Rest…

The Tempest is Shakespeare’s final play.  He’d written the histories, the comedies and the tragedies.  Then he wrote four romances–more what we would call fantasies—that slowly warmed up to this farewell to the stage and no doubt to the life he’d led in London.  Like a lot of us have discovered in our later years,  Read the Rest…

Seattle GreenStage did a Shakespeare in the Park production of Henry VIII this summer.  Most folks aren’t aware Shakespeare wrote a Henry VIII.  I thought the same thing.  When I started reading it this summer, I saw that I had read it in college.  Or at least underlined a bunch of stuff in the preface.   Read the Rest…