Shakespeare, of course. A couple of weeks ago we made our annual trek to Shakespeare at Winedale where the plays are presented by college students in an old country barn converted to theater. We saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, and The Taming of the Shrew.. We learned that Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play, but the time is worth the use on’t, that the younger generation is seriously annoyed by The Taming of the Shrew, but I think they enjoyed being annoyed, and that Bottom is a funny name for a funny character.

So now a week and a half later we haven’t had our fill of Shakespeare, so we’re hosting our own Shakespeare festival. Since none of us is an actor that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, we’ll be taking advantage of the miracle of DVD. Here’s the invitation I gave out to a few families this evening:

You�re invited to:

The First Annual Semicolon Shakespeare Festival
Presenting at 7 p.m. each evening:
Tuesday, August 9th Much Ado About Nothing

Wednesday, August 10th Romeo and Juliet

Thursday, August 11th Henry V

You and any or all of your family are invited to attend any or all three of the plays. Much Ado and Henry V are the movie versions directed by Kenneth Branagh. Romeo and Juliet is the 1968 version directed by Franco Zeffirelli.

I’d be happy to invite all my blog buddies, but the trip to Houston might be a little too long for some of you, and my living room might be a tad too small. So if you want to rent the movies and watch them in the comfort of your own home, you’re hereby invited to host your own Shakespeare festival.

Which of the three plays we are planning to watch contains which quotation and who said it?

1. “In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.”
2. “O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circle orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.”
3. “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.”
4. “The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!'”
5. “If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.”
6. “O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you!
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.”
7. “Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”
8.”See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!”
9. “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention;
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.”
10. “He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”