A Soldier, A Detective, Puzzles & Plans

This book sits upon my desk at home, the ribbon bookmark ever changing. To say I like Sherlock Holmes is a bit of an understatement. I first came across his stories when I was a child, my first of his adventures being The Hounds of Baskervilles. I've read and re-read the stories many times, so many that as my first Escape Room adventure, we chose the Sherlock Holmes adventures over Edgar Allen Poe's (I also have The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe, right next to Sherlock). If you had asked me why I like Sherlock Holmes when I was small, I was rather drawn in by detective stories. I read every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys adventure story ever written, and then my grandmother told me about Sherlock. That dear readers, is all she wrote.

By the time we reached middle school, I questioned why the great sleuth wasn't taught in my particular English classes. I took great pains to hide my thick book under my desk, reading the stories when I was supposed to be focused elsewhere.

To go back a bit, I was ecstatic to discover that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle celebrated Edgar Allen Poe as being "the supreme original short story writer of all time" and I share his sentiment that once a great detective has been written, its hard to get away from that mold. Most detective stories I read now, all remind me in some ways of Sherlock, and by extension Dupin. As I mentioned, I read a lot of detective stories in my youth, and still read a lot more in my adult life, all of them bearing ties to the the great Detective and his Poe basis.

One of my favorite parts of Sherlock's stories, is that they are all written by Dr. Watson, and we see the world of Sherlock from his perspective. Dr. Watson is a very smart man in his own right, and Sherlock would not be Sherlock without his Dr. Watson. I start seeing this in how Watson begins to take life by the reins in his mission to figure out Sherlock, and the particular words Doyle chooses for Dr. Watson to describe and talk about Sherlock with (seized with a keen desire to see Holmes, he is certainly very conceited, how much this man stimulated my curiosity). Plus, the stories had to be written from Dr. Watson's perspective, otherwise they wouldn't be the approachable stories that they are. Imagine if all the stories were in Sherlock's perspective. It would be a bit like the BBC and Netflix series Sherlock. I wouldn't want to always have the thoughts in Sherlock's head narrating the story, always calculating and always analytical. It would ruin the mystery. Instead we follow Dr. Watson as Sherlock leads him to the end of the mystery. Plus it can't hurt that Sherlock even admits Dr. Watson chronicles their adventures better than he could.

'The ideas of my friend Watson, though limited, are exceedingly pertinacious. For a long time he has worried me to write an experience of my own. Perhaps I have rather invited this persecution, since I have often had occasion to point out to him how superficial are his own accounts and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste instead of confining himself rigidly to facts and figures. “Try it yourself, Holmes!” he has retorted, and I am compelled to admit that, having taken my pen in my hand, I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in such a way as may interest the reader…' -Sherlock Holmes The Blanched Soldier

On talking about other works though, at some point we started seeing movies, and television series about Sherlock Holmes, the great detective. As a fan of Robert Downey Jr. I enjoyed his movies of Sherlock.I mean, what actor is better suited for the quirky detective? Who is brave enough to take on learning the disguising techniques?

Plus, who can't think of seeing Robert Downey Jr. in a dress?

The only discrepency I found with RDJ's Sherlock Holmes were that his disguises weren't quite as natural as is described in the book.

"Accustomed as I was to my friend's amazing powers

 in the use of disguises, I had to look three times 

before I was certain that it was indeed he."

 It's pretty easy to tell that Robert Downey Jr. is Robert Downey Jr., and the disguises certainly don't hold up to the imagery you get from Dr. Watson's words.

Then there's works such as the series Elementary, which I appreciate, and the Sherlock on BBC and Netflix, which I don't appreciate as much. But those, are best left for another post.

My only qualm with the two Sherlock stories we have read so far is at the end of A Scandal in Bohemia, I wanted to shake the King by the shoulders and shout something along the lines of "You shouldn't just be okay with her leaving with the picture! She still has it!" but I know it is all in the story. If not, we wouldn't have the run ins with Irene Adler later. She in my eyes, is a good foil for Sherlock, as she is what he could be if he exploited people the way she does. Instead, he chooses to thwart crime, solving puzzles no one else can solve. If not for his love of solving said puzzles, he would be a rather large threat to London and the greater European community with his powers of observation and deduction.

Much like Shakespeare's work, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes will definitely survive the ages, because really, who doesn't like a good puzzle to solve?

Tragedy Love Feuding and the Pursuit of Happpiness

I remember first reading Romeo & Juliet in middle school. It was my first year at Walkersville Middle, eighth grade. I was the new kid. I was so nerdy and book-oriented. I remember, though, how much I hated going to English class while we read Romeo & Juliet. I remember when our teacher assigned us having to come up and deliver a soliloquy to her, and only three of us did the harder version which offered extra credit, but also made us stand out as everyone else whined about having to do it. Our soliloquy was Juliet’s soliloquy, a rose by any other name.

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father, and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.	40
Jul.  ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself though, not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part	45
Belonging to a man. O! be some other name:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes	50
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.

Reading all that at eighth grade in front of a room of my peers was probably the hardest thing I'd ever done. It was also the most rewarding. But back to the star-crossed lovers. Romeo & Juliet was considered to be a “romantic story” in middle school. That was back when kids thought each other had coodies still, or at least in my class. Reading these lines aloud to one another, was so very, painfully awkward.

That being said, that wasn’t my last dance with Shakespeare’s work. In high school, we put on the Twelfth Night. A year later, another school presented the Twelfth Night. The two were so different, though, as our school took a more Shakespearean approach, more towards the period of the play, where the other school set the show in a Hawaiian luau theme.

Linganore High School's Twelfth Night

To me, people understood the other school’s show better than ours and were more engaged. People sat forward in their seats, laughing at swords which were plastic flamingos and really tuning in to what was going on. So while I haven’t seen Romeo & Juliet on stage, I can say that how any Shakespeare play is presented really changes the story. But in all actuality, they would be different. Every director has a love for the show they are putting on, and each one wants to portray it a certain way. These range from vaguely similar to widely different and unique. I never could have pictured Shakespeare as a luau.

The same year of the other school’s production, in my senior English class, I watched the Hollywood Romeo & Juliet movie, which largely left me wanting to be sitting in a theater watching a live school production rather than… well, that. Taking away lines or changing lines from characters in a play that is already meant to have succinct lines just takes away from how the characters develop and our understanding of what is going on.

Really? An angel falls for a knight in shining armor?

Maybe I’m old fashioned like that. Why fix what’s not broken? Why change what works well already. Then again, I think about doomed or tragic love. I’ve made it to a point in my life where all my friends from before college are getting engaged, are married or are having babies. I’ve watched very good friends have their relationships shredded by pointless family fights or because of a traditional ideal. My best friend, who is like a brother to me, had his fiancee leave him on Friday night. When he first asked her father for her hand, her father said no. Talk about doomed and tragic love.

What I take from this and why I share this very personal insight, is because my friend told me in all reality it wasn’t her father’s decision, just as it's not my mother’s when I reach that point. It’s about are you happy in the relationship. How does that tie to Romeo & Juliet? Well, in the end, I believe if things hadn’t gone south, that Romeo had started to appreciate Juliet for her grace and smarts. I believe if he hadn’t been as melodramatic they could’ve had a good chance at happiness. But they focused more on their families opinions more than their own happiness. It is not about the name in the end, which goes back to what my friend told me. It's about are you happy.

I believe Shakespeare’s works hold over so much because he imparts more than just face-value stories. Even though we aren’t being forced into marriage at sixteen anymore, maybe, just maybe, we can still find ways to relate to the two doomed, star-crossed lovers.