It’s time once again to check in on what searches people have done to find themselves at Shakespeare Teacher, and to respond in the name of fun and public service. All of the following searches brought people to this site in the past week.

That’s a great question. I think it’s fair to say the idea that human beings develop in distinct stages was pioneered by Sigmund Freud in the 20th century, when he outlined his psycho-sexual stages of development in childhood. Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist strongly influenced by Freud, described his own set of psycho-social stages, which carried through to adulthood.

Groundbreaking as these ideas were, they were to some degree anticipated by Shakespeare in his Seven Ages of Man speech from As You Like It. In the speech, Shakespeare describes seven developmental stages that carry through from childhood to adulthood, and the common characteristics that men display at each stage. Freud and Erikson would later codify this scientifically, but the Bard was able to figure it out just by observing the human condition. Point: Humanities!

It’s worth noting that both Freud and Erikson wrote about Shakespeare, and Hamlet in particular, to describe their theories. In a 1962 article entitled “Youth: Fidelity and Diversity,” Erikson actually references Shakespeare’s “ages of man” before spending about four pages examining fidelity and identity in Hamlet. So it would seem that the answer to the question is, yes, Erikson was influenced by Shakespeare to some degree, as was Freud. But influence often tends to be reflective, and the developmental psychologists certainly left their mark on Shakespeare as well.

I touched on this a bit about a month ago. I used to use “Mosh” to teach poetic devices, and I’m having trouble finding a more contemporary replacement. I’ll just give a sampling of each of the poetic devices I mentioned in that post. I tend to use only the middle stanza and the chorus, which I make into a handout. I also distribute the Prologue for Romeo and Juliet as a handout, so we can compare the two.

Repetition: “We gonna fight, we gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march”; “All you can see is a sea of people”; “If it rains let it rain”; “Rebel with a rebel yell”

Rhyme: Not only is there end rhyme, but there is internal rhyme as well. “They tell us no we say yea, they tell us stop we say go/ Rebel with a rebel yell, raise hell we gonna let em know”; “yea the wetter the better”; “that we need to proceed”

Rhythm: “Mosh” is written in anapestic tetrameter, which I always point out is the same meter as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”… and other popular poems as well. The Prologue for Romeo and Juliet, of course, is in iambic pentameter.

Alliteration: Note that in “we gonna mosh through the marsh” the words “mosh” and “marsh” start and end with the same sounds. Compare with “doth with their death” in the Prologue for Romeo and Juliet.

Antithesis: “They tell us no we say yea, they tell us stop we say go”; “from the front to the back”; “some white and some black”

Allusion: There’s a reference to George W. Bush in the passage.

Emendation: This is where I edited the reference to George W. Bush. I usually change it to “Stomp, push, shove, mush, [mock] Bush” even using the brackets like a Shakespeare editor.

In a 2006 interview with Brian Williams, President Bush claimed to have recently read “three Shakespeares” in addition to curling up with some Camus:

WILLIAMS: We always talk about what you’re reading. As you know, there was a report that you just read the works of a French philosopher. (Bush laughs)

BUSH: The Stranger.

WILLIAMS: Tell us the back story of Camus.

BUSH: The back story of the the book?

WILLIAMS: What led you to…

BUSH: I was in Crawford and I said I was looking for a book to read and Laura said you oughtta try Camus, I also read three Shakespeare’s.

WILLIAMS: This is a change…

BUSH: Not really. Wait a minute.

WILLIAMS: A few months ago you were reading the life story of Joe DiMaggio by Richard Ben Cramer.

BUSH: Which was a good book.

WILLIAMS: You’ve been on a Teddy Roosevelt reading kick.

BUSH: Well, I’m reading about the battle of New Orleans right now. I’ve got an eclectic reading list.

Williams didn’t ask him what “Shakespeares” he read, but I have my guess at one of them, as well as a selection I wish he’d read.

The constant pi is nature’s random digit generator, stretching out infinitely long and with no predictable pattern. This means that any finite string of numbers can be found somewhere out in the vast expanse of digits.

So if we were to express the Complete Works of Shakespeare in, say, ASCII code, it would indeed be represented as a very long, but certainly finite, string of digits. This string of digits is represented somewhere in pi, not once, but an infinite number of times. What’s more, the very first time it appears would be a finite distance in. Which means, there is some number X where you could say that if you start X digits into pi, you can read the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

Before you get too excited by that, you should realize that X is so unfathomably large that it would most likely be beyond human comprehension to even find a way to express it, let alone come anywhere near identifying it. You may think of the monkeys-at-typewriters thought experiment (and for our purposes, we can consider both the digits of pi and monkeys typing to be generating random characters). Even using theoretical monkeys, the number of simian typists needed would be beyond astronomical.

But, yes, the Complete Works of Shakespeare are somewhere in pi with a probability of 1. If the thought of that makes you smile, I’ve done my job.

Henry IV was often referred to as Henry Bolingbroke, but actually, his last name was Plantagenet.

In fact, all of the English kings from Henry II to Richard III carried the surname Plantagenet. This means that throughout the entire Wars of the Roses, the Yorks and Lancasters all had the same last name, which is found throughout the history plays. This is because both sides were led by male-line descendants of Edward III. There is a reference to this in Richard III, as Richard hits on the widow of the cousin he killed:

Glo. He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband,
Did it to help thee to a better husband.
Anne. His better doth not breathe upon the earth.
Glo. He lives that loves thee better than he could.
Anne. Name him.
Glo. Plantagenet.
Anne. Why, that was he.
Glo. The self-same name, but one of better nature.
Anne. Where is he?
Glo. Here.

The long Plantagenet line comes to an end in 1485, when Richard III is defeated by a young man named Henry Tudor.

Rick Astley, before he became well known as a singer, did a bit of acting and even performed in some Shakespeare. Most of his Shakespeare work was done on stage and not screen, but there is a video clip of him performing the “never give her o’er” speech from The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The video can be found on YouTube here.

I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:

I was both amused and frustrated by VerizonMath, a website dedicated to an odd billing discrepancy, and the agonizing exchange that followed. You should really listen to the whole phone call, but here is the basic issue:

George Vaccaro was quoted a price of .002 cents per kilobyte for data usage while traveling in Canada. He later learned that he was being billed at a rate of .002 dollars per kilobyte. So instead of being charged an extra 71 cents, as he had expected, he found a 71 dollar charge on his bill. When he called to complain, he was unable to get anyone to understand what he was talking about, no matter how clearly he tried to explain it.

My .002 cents is that the exchange reminds me of the Upton Sinclair quote (made popular recently by Al Gore):

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

If they understood what he was saying, they’d have to take the charge off of his bill, which they clearly were not prepared to do.

I had the pleasure of observing a science teacher teach a fantastic lesson on genetics last week, and it got me thinking about the mathematics behind eye color. This Conundrum will be purely a probability question (two, actually), so I apologize in advance for over-simplifying the science.

Assume that everyone has two genes that determine eye color. For the sake of the math, we will stipulate that each gene must be either brown or blue. An individual inherits one gene from each parent. A parent will pass on one of his or her own two genes with equal probability.

Brown is dominant, which means that if an individual has one brown gene and one blue gene, then the individual will have brown eyes. An individual will also have brown eyes if both genes are brown. Only an individual with two blue genes will have blue eyes.

Now imagine this hypothetical scenario: Susan and David are a married couple, and both have brown eyes. David’s father had blue eyes, and his mother had brown eyes. Susan’s parents both had brown eyes, but her brother Bill has blue eyes. Susan and David are expecting their first child, baby Jason.

Question 1: What are the chances that Jason will have blue eyes?

Question 2: Suppose Jason had brown eyes. Susan and David are now expecting a second child, baby Ian. What are the chances that Ian will have blue eyes?

UPDATE: Both questions answered correctly by Micah. See comments for answers and discussion.

It’s time once again to check in on what searches people have done to find themselves at Shakespeare Teacher, and to respond in the name of fun and public service. All of the following searches brought people to this site in the past week.

Now we’re getting a little closer to the present. King George III was king during the American Revolution; he was the King George we were revolting against. His reign was long – over 59 years! In fact, only his granddaughter Victoria reigned longer, though Elizabeth II is likely to pass him as well on May 12, 2011. But I digress.

George III is a direct ancestor of all subsequent monarchs of England. He was succeeded by two sons, a granddaughter, a great grandson, etc. So I’d imagine he’d be a direct ancestor of pretty much everyone who we consider to be of English royal birth today, though someone with a better grasp of how all of that works may correct me. I’d also imagine that he has many descendants who are not considered English royalty, their connection to the crown being too distant. Again, I am not beyond correction on this point.

The Tudors is for adults.

Cheater!

Many important historical events occurred during the 52 years of Shakespeare’s life, both in the world and in England in particular. Shakespeare was born in 1564, just two months after Galileo, and died on his birthday in 1616 on the same day as Cervantes (actually ten days later).

That’s a lot of history to cover here, but I’ll give you a sampling of five of the more significant English, but non-Shakespearean, events that took place during Shakespeare’s lifetime and how they may have affected Shakespeare. I invite readers to quibble with my choices:

1588 – The English navy defeats the Spanish Armada. This sparked a new era of English patriotism which coincided with the beginning of Shakespeare’s writing career. It’s why a lot of his early plays are Histories, as that was a popular trend at the time.

1603 – Elizabeth I dies without an heir, and is eventually replaced by King James I. James became a patron of Shakespeare’s company, now “The King’s Men,” and Shakespeare will write Macbeth in honor of the new king.

1605 – Catholic conspirators attempt to murder James in the Gunpowder Plot. It is believed that there are references to the Gunpowder Plot in Macbeth.

1607 – Establishment of Jamestown colony in Virginia. The Tempest may have been inspired by the wreck of a ship that was headed for the colony.

1611 – Publication of the King James Bible. Rumors that Shakespeare worked on the project are mere speculation. Stories about Psalm 46 containing hidden messages should be taken with a grain of salt.

The expression “slings and arrows” is from Hamlet, but I assume you’re talking about the Canadian television series. There were three seasons, each revolving around a different Shakespearean tragedy. Julius Caesar was not one of them. The plays were, in order, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear.

He would look like a 517-year-old man holding a giant drumstick.

I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:

Via Electoral-Vote.com, we find a website with pictures of some of the disputed ballots in the Minnesota Senate recount. You can also vote on whether each ballot should count, though it’s just for fun. If Franken wins the recount, the eyes of the nation will be on the December 2 runoff election in Georgia, to see if the Democrats will wind up with the 60 seats they need to block a Republican filibuster.

In the presidential election, Missouri has finally reached a decision. The state has been won by John McCain, bringing the final electoral college count (barring any faithless electors) to 365-173. And in Iowa County, Iowa, we find an exact tie between Obama and McCain, with 4,173 votes each.

You see? You should have voted.

Via the Shakespeare Geek, we find a website that uses a Markov chain to generate an alternate version of Hamlet. Check it out!

From what I can tell, the site works from a table of which words follow other words in the play, and how often. It then constructs a chain by looking at the last word (or few words) that were entered, and choosing a random word of those that actually follow that word (or few words) in the play.

For example, one place in the play has “Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio.” Another part of the play has “I knew your father.” The Markov chain might generate “Alas! poor Yorick. I knew…” and then, only looking at the last two words “I knew” might follow up with “your father.” The final result would be “Alas! poor Yorick. I knew your father.”

This is a favorite example provided by the author, but there are a lot of funny possibilities. You can keep refreshing the page to get a new randomly-generated Hamlet.

Thanks, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead:
Ere I could accuse me of the courtier, cousin, and with a look so piteous in purport
As I perceived it, if I gall him slightly,
Whips out his rapier, cries, ‘A rat, a touch,
The queen desires you to remain
Here is your only jig-maker. What it should be old as I will be laid to us, till I know not–lost all my best obey you, and, at a shot
So art thou to me all the battlements their ordnance fire: proclaim no shame
When Roscius was an actor in Rome,–
As of a dear father murder’d,
With mirth in funeral and with a crafty madness, like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a roar? Not one now o’er
The triumph of his own scandal.

Enjoy!

I was looking over the current electoral map, and I realized something extraordinary. If Obama took the states where he won by 7 percentage points or more, and McCain took all of the states where Obama won by 6 points or less, Obama would still have won the election 291 – 247. This would put Ohio, Florida, Indiana, and North Carolina in the red, but it would not have changed the outcome. Ohio may have locked in the Obama victory, but it turns out that he didn’t need it.

Looking at a traditional electoral map can be deceiving, because the states are shown in proportion to their land area. If instead, you look at a cartogram, you can see how the states compare to each other by, say, population (shown below) and you can really get a sense of how much of the country went red or blue. Professor Mark Newman from the University of Michigan has some good examples on his site:

So, is all of this just post-election gloating, or am I making a larger point? Well, it’s mostly post-election gloating; it has been a long eight years. But there is a larger point as well. President Obama will enter office with an overwhelming mandate, not to mention a friendly Congress and an enthusiastic public. I know some of my good friends are determined to cling to their cynical views, and I understand where they are coming from, but let me ask them this: If the potential for the change you want were to come along, would you recognize it? Would you believe in it? Would you do everything you could to support it? Because if this isn’t it, I don’t think we’re ever going to see it.

As I write this, Ohio is being called for Barack Obama, which pretty much locks in his victory tonight.

And this is a historical moment for so many reasons. It’s not just that we are going to have an African-American president, which in itself is a monumental marker of progress. It’s also about voter turnout and enthusiasm. And even the most cynical among us are daring to hope for change in this country.

For me, what makes this election remarkable is that the undecided voter wasn’t much of a factor. In the past few campaigns, the two candidates were so close that both had to court undecided voters. This leads to pandering, wedge issues, and attack ad wars.

This election was different. Between Obama’s inspirational message, McCain’s coming unglued in the final weeks, the economy in crisis, and the overwhelming Bush fatigue felt by so many of us, it was a perfect storm for the Democratic candidate. As a result, Obama had such a commanding lead that he was able to take the high road and speak directly to the issues.

McCain also tried to campaign cleanly. I never had a problem with the Joe the Plumber strategy. It never bothered me that he wasn’t a licensed plumber, wasn’t about to buy a business, would not have seen a tax hike under Obama, and wasn’t named Joe. McCain was making a point about standing up for small businesses, and Joe the Plumber was convenient shorthand. That seems fair enough.

However, the constant attempts to paint Obama as not a real American were painful to watch. Sarah Palin campaigning across the country would suggest that Obama liked to pal around with terrorists. And then there were the attack ads that used code words to appeal to the worst qualities of the electorate. I don’t think this was in the spirit of what McCain was trying to accomplish with his candidacy. But in the end, the law requires the candidate to explicitly state “I approve this message.” Ironically, it’s John McCain whom we have to thank for that law.

All of that is behind us now. We may go to sleep tonight secure in the belief that we will wake up to morning in America. And President Obama will ride a massive wave of momentum into office, only to find a friendly Congress waiting for him. His first hundred days have the promise to be extraordinary. But we must not let our enthusiasm be replaced with complacency. Change is difficult under the best of circumstances, and there will be pressure to compromise. This is still our country. This is still our government. We must be as vigilant with President Obama as we were with President Bush.

But that comes later. Tonight, we celebrate.

I’m the Shakespeare Teacher, and I approve this message.

With just a month left until the election, polls indicate that Barack Obama has a healthy lead in both the popular vote and electoral college projections, and the Democrats in Congress are looking strong as well.

After 2004’s disappointment, I don’t want to put too much faith in the polls, but I am feeling cautiously optimistic.

But this week’s question isn’t about predicting the election. Let’s suppose hypothetically that Barack Obama does win next month. Let’s say that the election maintains a Democratic majority in the House, and Democrats wind up with 60 seats in the Senate (enough to block a filibuster).

This would basically put the Democrats in control of the agenda for at least two years, longer if the voters are pleased with the results.

So, the two questions I pose to my mostly liberal readership (but also my few conservative and moderate readers as well) is this:

If the Democrats were to take control, what would you like to see happen? What would you expect would actually happen?

Inspired by a video clip posted by Ro, I’m moved to examine the following question:

Right now, at this moment, what would you say is the percentage chance that Sarah Palin will become President of the United States in the next four years?

I’m going with 5%. That figure puts the election at about 50/50, and gives McCain a 90% chance of surviving his first term.

What do you think?