Brush up your Shakespeare.
Start quoting him now.
Brush up your Shakespeare,
And the women you will wow.

–  Cole Porter, “Kiss Me, Kate”

Name a play written by Bartley Campbell. Of course you can’t, nor can just about anyone else alive today. Yet Campbell (1843-1888) was a popular American playwright whose giant ego towered above his talent. His professional stationery depicted two portraits on the letterhead — Bartley Campbell on one side and William Shakespeare on the other — linked by the words “A friendly rivalry.”

Today Campbell, a legend in his own mind, is forgotten, while Shakespeare endures and prevails as the one big gun in the canon of English literature who has no rival. As his contemporary, Ben Jonson, wrote of the Bard, “He was not of an age, but for all time!”

William Shakespeare is the darling of readers, playgoers and critics alike. The critical work directly about the him could constitute a library, and in fact does: the superb 300,000-volume Folger Library in Washington, D.C. Even if you somehow devoured that collection, you would still have to read 3,000 discussions of Shakespeare each year to keep up with the new scholarship.

Joined by actor and director John Tessmer, I’ll be performing “Living Will: The Legacy of William Shakespeare” on Friday, April 21, starting at 7 pm at the Sunshine Brooks Theater, 217 North Coast Highway in Oceanside; box office 760 433 8900.

On Sunday, April 23, 7 pm, and Monday, April 24, 7 pm, the show will travel to Lamplighters Theatre in La Mesa, 5915 Severin Drive; box office 619 303 5092. Come out and support your local playhouses. I’d love to meet you at one of these performances.

As the Huntsman in King Henry VI says, “This way, my lord, for this way lies the game.” I’ll raise the Bard with this untrivial quiz on a far-from-trivial author. Supply the basic facts about Shakespeare’s life posed by the following questions:

1. In what town and country did Shakespeare enter the earthly stage?
2. What are the dates of William Shakespeare’s birth and death?
3. Name the monarchs who reigned in Englsnd during Shakespeare’s lifetime.
4. Name Shakespeare’s wife. “Mrs. Shakespeare” is not acceptable.
5. With what theater was Shakespeare most intimately connected?
6. Some scholars believe that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. Name three people who, some claim, penned the plays that we attribute to the Stratford man.
7. What is the importance of the following lines (in the original spelling)?:

Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare,
To digg the dust encloased heare!
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And curst be he yt moves my bones.

8. How many plays did Shakespeare write?
9. What are the three categories by which the plays are generally classified?
10. Into how many acts is each play traditionally divided?
11. In what meter did Shakespeare write his plays?
12. What do we call the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected works?

As Belarius exclaims in Cymbeline, “The game is up!” It’s now time to consult the answers.

Answers

1. and 2. Shakespeare was baptized in Holy Trinity Church in the English village of Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564, and was probably born three days earlier, on April 23. He died in Stratford on April 23, 1616, at the exact age of 52. 3. Elizabeth I and James I. 4. Anne Hathaway (but not the woman who sang and wept Les Miserables) 5. The Globe. 6. Candidates include Sir Walter Raleigh, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Mary Spenser Herbert, and the Earl of Essex. 7. These words are the epitaph on Shakespeare’s grave in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church. 8. thirty-seven, plus a few collaborations 9. tragedies, comedies, and histories. 10. five 11. blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter 12. the First Folio

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Puns are all around us, even if we don’t perceive them. Our scrappy SDSU men’s basketball team recently ascended to the finals of the NCAA championship and fell to a talented team from the University of Connecticut. Why are athletic teams from that university called the Huskies? Because they represent the University of Connecticut = U. Conn = Yukon, where huskies pull sleds. That’s a pun!