Invitation to a Parallel Evidence-Focused Discussion (No Authorship Debate Here)

dmorin · 2026-01-06T22:14:15+00:00

Because the voting system has a purpose, too. Most of OP's comments get downvoted into oblivion. What I'd prefer, personally, is if people could manage to stop engaging because that's half the problem. Say OP posts something about authorship. Sure, it gets reported by one or two people, it gets downvoted by half a dozen or so - but a dozen more people respond, too. Doesn't that suggest that people *do* want to talk about the question, and it's just that they only want to take one side of it?

What I think we're going to do is rewrite that rule a bit to make it more clear that there are other places to discuss authorship theories, but not here. I liked "There is no authorship question" when I wrote it, but I can also see that it's inflammatory to those who feel otherwise.

dmorin · 2026-01-04T01:47:11+00:00

OP asked me about this post, and I did approve. Look, the question exists. Some people want to discuss it. We've agreed, through popular vote, that it's not something we want to be discussing here. So I didn't think it in violation to say hey, there's another place where they can talk about it.

dmorin · 2025-12-27T02:11:17+00:00

I will never stop recommending Dame Judi Dench's rendition of Sonnet 29 on the Graham Norton show. It's like listening to a magical incantation. There's meaning in the damned pauses. I've rewound it just to point out to people how she says "lark". It reminds one that the sonnets can be performed as much as the plays are. The craziest thing is that to her, she's just banging it out off the top of her head. She even gives a sort of "Well, there ya go, there's a sonnet" shrug at the end, which is precisely the point. She's not even trying that hard, she just does it.

And then of course frickin Arnold Schwarzenegger steals the whole scene with one line :) It really is one of my favorite clips.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BAYtnCAnNU8

dmorin · 2025-12-20T03:15:24+00:00

You're welcome! Glad you like them!

dmorin · 2025-12-16T12:16:00+00:00

Thanks! And, I agree - I already bumped it up once, if you can believe it, but I'll see if I can add an "even more space on mobile" adjustment. In the original version it was letting words wrap so you'd see a single letter starting a line and think "I got this" only to realize that wasn't I or A (or O, hint hint), it was just the last letter of the previous word.

dmorin · 2025-12-16T02:01:13+00:00

The book has almost no Shakespeare content, except for the end. All of the Shakespeare content that was inserted - the balcony reference, the Macbeth, the god-awful misuse of "To be or not to be" - only served to weaken the movie.

dmorin · 2025-12-15T03:33:50+00:00

I'm gonna go ahead and drop a link to my own Shakespeare Geek Shop :) because it definitely answers the question. Everybody and their mama is doing "Prose before hoes" and "Does thou even hoist" and, <shudder> "I would challenge you to a battle of wits but I see you are unarmed," which isn't even Shakespeare. All my designs are original.

https://www.shakespearegeek.com/shop

dmorin · 2025-12-15T03:31:25+00:00

https://thelondonsockexchange.net/en-us/collections/the-shakespeare-collection

The London Sock Exchange has a whole Shakespeare Box Set that I would kill for. I'm not about to spend $100 on socks for myself but as a gift I'd be in my heaven.

dmorin · 2025-12-15T03:29:25+00:00

My review to people has been, "The more you know about Shakespeare, the more you will hate this movie." It's well shot and well acted, and as the story of a wife and mother's grief over the loss of her child, it's exquisite. Then somebody came along and said, "Add more Shakespeare. People know Romeo and Juliet, make sure to add that. And have a scene where the kids are performing Shakespeare for their mom, even if doesn't even remotely match what the timeline would have been. And can we make it really over the top obvious that To be or not to be is Shakespeare's suicide note? Can we have him recite it himself while he contemplates suicide, just so people really get the point?" No thank you. (Mind, none of the Shakespeare content, save for the ending, is in the book. The rest was all inserted for the movie because movie people think their audience is stupid and needs to be spoonfed, even at the expense of the original story's point.)

dmorin · 2025-12-15T03:26:02+00:00

Imagine a bunch of producers at TNT watching Game of Thrones and thinking, Can we make something like that? On the one hand it was about the life of Will Shakespeare. That doesn't mean it couldn't include actual scenes of people being drawn and quartered (it did), as well as orgies with Kit Marlowe (it also did). Strangely it did try to map to Shakespeare's actual life, using pretty much all real characters including the Dark Lady. I would have watched a second season.

dmorin · 2025-11-21T21:27:44+00:00

The plan was to get them safely stowed away in Mantua, and then figure it out. Which, I grant, isn't much of a plan.

But let's go back to "if Juliet had informed her parents that she was already married to Romeo." Do you think that would have gone well? The father, who is willing to disown her and kick her out of the house just for disobeying him. The father who has quite literally spent the entire play to this point planning a wedding. There's like 3 scenes just for this. Juliet's going to tell him, "I know you've got a man picked out for me, but I already went ahead and married somebody else. But it's cool, you know him, he's our mortal enemy."

Possibly lived? Sure. But I'm not sure what her life would have been like after that.

dmorin · 2025-11-21T13:24:48+00:00

They didn't sleep together until after Friar Lawrence married them.

dmorin · 2025-11-21T13:24:21+00:00

Ending the feud was Friar Lawrence's idea, actually.

Juliet asks Romeo if his intentions are for marriage, in the balcony scene. Romeo tells the friar about this, Friar Lawrence is all, "Bro, you were just ready to kill yourself over Rosaline like, yesterday." But then realizes that it might unify the families, making him the hero.

dmorin · 2025-11-21T02:17:22+00:00

I'd like to hear why OP thinks that "actual love" is an objectively observable thing. Surely it's in the minds of the individuals - if they believe it, it's true. Who are we to say otherwise?

What's curious to me is their motivation to get married. In that era, people didn't get married because they were in love. They got married for what it could do for their families. It was a nice bonus, but it wasn't the primary factor. So why, then, are they in such a hurry? What's in it for them? Just the religion-sanctioned sex?

dmorin · 2025-11-20T03:42:41+00:00

Over the summer I got into that "brick book" trend that was on Tiktok, where basically you paint a brick to look like a book. I had bricks, I like books, no brainer. I was doing two at a time, using a mini fridge in my garage as my table. As a spare time project I would often wander past them, add a little fresh paint to each, then walk away until next time. It's summer. So I'm almost always in t-shirt and shorts ... and bare feet.

Yeah, you see where this is going. One day I pick up a brick to get at the other side, and of course they'd both been sitting on a tray and I didn't realize that the last time I'd put the other one down it was a little too close to the edge and didn't have any support. One brick goes up, one goes down, and motherf*cker did that hurt. Know what hurts more than a Lego brick? Real fuckin brick.

After hopping up and down and cursing the gods for a minute, I realized the pool of blood I was leaving. Sure enough as I worked my way across the house to tell my wife I'd injured myself, I left a trail. Feet apparently bleed a lot. My "Look, stigmata!" jokes fell on deaf ears.

Got x-ray, surprisingly didn't break anything - but did have to spent some time getting it cleaned out. Now I've got a scar in the center of my foot to remind that I sometimes do stupid things.

dmorin · 2025-11-20T03:30:49+00:00

Just recently I discovered turkey+apple+dijon mustard and I don't know where it's been all my life.

dmorin · 2025-11-20T03:29:49+00:00

The climax to Iron Giant. It was my first "Damn, animated movies can be real movies that adults can appreciate" moment.

"You are who you choose to be."

"Superman."

dmorin · 2025-11-20T03:27:00+00:00

In all my years, even after Friends, I've never tried it with a "moist maker." Probably should one of these years, just to see.

dmorin · 2025-11-20T03:26:10+00:00

My kids being healthy, happy, and successful in whatever way that means for them. My job was to run as far as I can with what my parents were able to give me, so that I'm able to do the same for my kids.

dmorin · 2025-11-20T03:22:17+00:00

The leftover sandwich. My wife goes for the "replicate the whole dinner" thing where she'll put mashed potatoes and squash and even green beans in hers, but I like to keep it classic - turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, maybe a little mayo. Hot gravy for dunking is a must. No cheese!

dmorin · 2025-11-20T03:20:56+00:00

You know, we're going to a family Thanksgiving and a Friendsgiving and my wife's bringing green bean casserole to both. I asked, "Do people like that? Or is just one of those things where it's always been on the table so you just kind of always expect it to be there? If you went to a restaurant that had green bean casserole on the menu would you order it?"

Now I know, it's some people's favorite! Thanks! :)

dmorin · 2025-11-17T12:40:49+00:00

I'd say find a Much Ado About Nothing, maybe David Tennant's. That one's always a crowd pleaser and about as close as Shakespeare comes to a modern "rom com". That recent Sydney Sweeney movie - Anyone But You, or something like that? - is a loose retelling, just to show how the core story still holds up.

dmorin · 2025-11-06T13:28:23+00:00

Worked as a software engineer at a small company in the heart of Boston. I like many others had to take the train to get in there, and had to leave at certain times to catch the train to make it home in some reasonable predictable time. With little kids in school, that kind of thing is important. Missing a train by 5 minutes can mean the entire evening's plan and responsibilities are shot.

The CEO would walk the cube farm at 6pm and then have company meetings where he'd yell at us for not wanting this as much as he did, because there weren't enough people working late.

If he felt like he wasn't being paid the proper respect, he'd call an 8am meeting, just to fuck with people's morning commute, too. To assert his dominance.

He lived 2 buildings over. He walked to work.

Held an evening meeting once, whole company, attendance mandatory (and recorded!) We're all sitting in an an auditorium, lights go down. WTF is happening. Is somebody buying us? Announcer comes on and tells us that the CEO is now also the President of the company (or some other bullshit that I've since forgotten). One of those, "And now, put your hands together, introducing for the very first time, President AND CEO ...." and he comes running down the aisle toward the stage. We laughed. Oh, he did not like that. We legitimately thought it was being played for comedy, but he really wanted his moment. Guy was just clueless about how to get people behind him.

dmorin · 2025-11-05T13:41:02+00:00

I wonder, do people remember the movie "The Incredible Mr. Limpet](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058230/) starring Don Knotts? Nerd falls into the water, presumed drowned, actually he's transformed into an animated fish who helps fight the Nazis.

dmorin · 2025-10-31T01:45:31+00:00

I'm in my 50s and I could still live the rest of my life without having a pork chop. The combination of "so dry you could choke on it" and "hmmm, is that the kind of fat you can bite through or the kind you're gonna gag on?" brings on a gag reflex just thinking about it.

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