What's Done, Is Done

It’s time to finish this thing. As jolly old Lady Macbeth would say, “what's done, is done.” I must admit that I enjoyed the ride, probably more than I thought I would. I really liked having this blog on the side, as it were, a sideline activity in an area I always wanted explore in greater detail. So, to finish up, I thought I would list some general thoughts and impressions (bear with me…you made it this far):

1) In some ways, this project has done one main thing for me, that is, show me how ignorant I really am on all things Shakespeare. As I have said before, you could spend a lifetime studying one play, or only one act of one play even, which I’m sure countless people have done (without ever “finishing” of course). So, first and foremost, I now know that I know hardly anything, but at least now I can claim to have some sort of clue, which is something more than clueless.

2) Taking the above observation a bit further, I found that Shakespeare, the idea of Shakespeare, is an idea that extends well beyond the boundaries of his plays, so you have to deal with that expansiveness right away, or be swept off. It is a larger-than-life domain, occupying such a huge space in this world that, when you dive into it, you are confronted by what feels like an endless universe. This is both good and bad. You get a really cool sense of almost total artistic vibrancy, which is good. However, it’s almost always coupled with a strong sense of hopeless, down-the-rabbit-hole ambiguity. Beyond the “actual” plays (actual in quotes here because no one can agree about the exact Shakespearean actuality of any of the plays), there are endless myriads of related books, books about books, experts, expert experts, colleges, professors, theaters, actors, directors, movies, movies about movies, movies about plays, plays about movies, websites, discussion boards, blogs, podcasts, and on and on and on. A huge space. Enormous. Navigating it was daunting but, as I realized early on and as with many things in life, it serves you well to keep it simple. Read the play. Watch a version of it. See it live if you can. Get what you get. Move on. That’s Shakespeare, at least for me, and that’s life, at least for us all, right?

3) Concerning the Shakespeare space, I found two main camps dividing this space: the academics and everyone else. Often, I found that these groups were at odds with one another, while overlapping all the time, in various ways, which was an interesting (and sometimes contentious) dynamic. For example, when friendly, uber-knowledgeable professors would give free lectures to non-academics like me, that was good (great even) but when opinions were offered as valid simply because they were coming from behind a degree, that was, well, not so good. There is this scholarly thing going on with the Bard, and a significant (or just overly vocal?) number of non-academics seem put off when confronted by this sort of snobbery. This I think has led to the perception, hopefully limited, that Shakespeare is only for classrooms, which kind of stinks, however limited, because it diminishes the Bard, making him into something he is most certainly not. If any truth has come out of this project for me, any single learning, it is that Shakespeare is most definitely meant for everybody. The depth and breadth of the Shakespeare universe can (and should) accommodate everyone, no problem, with lots of room to spare. It’s the whole point really, this idea of inclusion. It’s what all great art does. No one owns anything and everyone is invited to the party. This should be obvious, but unfortunately it seems to some extent to have been lost in the shuffle.

4) Speaking of obvious, I didn’t realize how much I would learn about Renaissance Theater and the Elizabethan/Jacobean age. I should have expected this but oddly I didn’t. This was pretty cool, getting a real feeling, however slight, of what it was like to sit through a play in the Globe (or Blackfriars) or having an idea, however limited, of what it was like to live in the England of the 1600’s. The life and times of Shakespeare. Now I know more about this, which I like.

5) There is absolutely no substitute for seeing some version of a play. You can’t just read each one and get everything. Not even close. This also should have been obvious, more obvious than anything probably, but for some reason it wasn’t when I first set out (see the name of this blog). Maybe it’s because I’m an introverted reader-type and, to me, words on a page equal books to sit and read alone. Unfortunately for me, this project would have quickly failed in read-only mode (assuming that it hasn’t failed for the billions of other, wholly valid reasons). Without any exceptions, I would have missed a great deal if I had only read each play, so see them all if you can (in a theater, if possible). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Shakespeare never personally published anything, so nothing was meant for just reading. Everything he produced was for theaters, to act out, in front of real people, live. These were things to be seen and heard, not just read.

6) The daily references to Shakespeare that started popping up everywhere, all day, every day, was an excellent surprise and just so cool. Like I said before, you don’t have to look for them, they just happen. This, probably more so than anything else, showed me the tremendous impact that this one man has had on all of us, in so many ways, expected and unexpected. The dude is everywhere.

7) One of the main goals of this blog was to force me to critically analyze each play through a reasonably coherent blog posting, so as to sharpen my reading and writing skills. I didn’t want to embarrass myself (not sure I succeeded there), so I worked at it a bit. There was (and is) an importance to these entries for me personally, and I treated them seriously. This blog made a forum for discussion (mostly personal, which was fine actually) where I could seek understanding and clarity on a complex thing…and I liked it, a lot actually, all that thinkin’ and figurin’ and stuff. Although I have mixed feelings about the overall quality herein (re-reading some of my entries…oy vey!), I can say with satisfaction that I tried to write well and think intelligently and by trying, have hopefully become better at it. One can dream, eh?

8) All of my posts were written in another document first and then copied into this blog. That document reached 72 pages and about 36,000 words. That’s pretty good. Like half a book almost (but not really). I like that, the idea that I have produced something with volume and substance, at some level, on the side, in off hours. It bodes well for the future in terms of finding the discipline to put something together writing-wise of maybe greater substance and ambition. Oh, and the time frame was almost exactly 19 months, just to fill out this bit on metrics.

9) Except for some notable blackouts, I got a good rhythm going, especially towards the end. The attainable goal I found, with all the other life things going on, was about one and a half plays a month, at most. That felt just about right, like I was moving at a decent pace, not slacking, but also not racing. In the beginning I was definitely moving too fast and I should have paced myself better. Maybe next time (yeah right). Bottom line: Two or three a month is too much, especially when you need to study all those ancillary things like watching the movie, or (and?) seeing the play, or (and?) reading someone’s critical analysis, or (and?) attending a lecture at a library.

10) I advertised this blog lightly, for the most part keeping it to myself and just a few close friends and family. Early on I noticed little to no interest in this thing when I would mention it (For good reason. I’m under no illusions. Who would really want to read some no-name blither on about Shakespeare?). When it did come up (rarely), it would usually elicit the same reaction, which was no reaction, usually just awkward silence. To varying degrees, I almost always got a strange why-would-anyone-do-that vibe or even worse, a feeling that I was being pretentious (a thought that really bothers me). So I stopped talking about it and it worked. Back to normal, but still in business. It’s all good and I get it. Shakespeare can be boring, really boring if you’re not into it, especially if you perceive the whole thing as something you should only be doing in school (see above). And you didn’t like school. I can respect that for sure. Different strokes for different folks (thankfully). It’s what makes the world go ‘round.

11) That being said, for me, this project was great fun. Really. I can’t explain it. It just worked for me. For example, I can say with certainty that, without fail, at any point on any day I could think about something in a given play I was reading, then think about what to write about that given play, turn it all over in my head a few times…and it would make me feel happy. Every time. So there, one of the keys to life: Read Shakespeare and write a blog about it. You’re welcome.

So there it is. Thanks for reading. I really enjoyed this project (did I say that enough?), but it is certainly time to move on. So, adios and farewell, my good old faithful Shakespeare blog, and farewell especially to anyone who followed along! Bard, blog, and readers alike were so good to me that I must end by saying that, unlike this blog, my appreciation is sincerely without end.

Some Favorites

Favorite Plays
Hamlet
Much Ado About Nothing
Richard III

Favorite Movie Adaptations
Two versions of Much Ado About Nothing (2013 Wedon and 1993 Branagh versions)
The Taming of the Shrew (1967 Taylor/Burton version)
The Hollow Crown (TV series)
Coriolanus (2013)

Favorite Movie About Shakespeare
Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard

Favorite Book About Shakespeare
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Bill Bryson)

Favorite Live Plays
Much Ado About Nothing (The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, Philadelphia, Pa., Saturday, April 6, 2013)
Cymbeline (Fiasco Theater, The Folger, Washington, D.C., 2014)
The Tempest, Act I, Scene I (Glen Ellen Theater, Glen Lake, Michigan, 2014)

Favorite Theaters
Blackfriars Playhouse

Favorite Shakespeare Websites
Shakespearences
Folger Library
Get Insulted by the Bard

A Few Favorite Quotes (Forgetting Many)
“Laud we the gods, And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils, From our blest altars.” - Cymbeline

“Now is the winter of our discontent: Made glorious summer by this sun of York” - Richard III

“If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here, While these visions did appear.” - A Midsummer Night’s Dream

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once." - Julius Caesar

Favorite Stage Directions
[Exit, pursued by a bear] - The Winter’s Tale

"What, you egg!" [stabbing him] - Macbeth

So Long Mr. Williams

As a tribute to one of my favorite entertainers of all time, I'm posting this interview by Carson on the Tonight Show back in the day where he spends a good bit of time riffing on Shakespeare. Funny stuff, really funny. Truly a great artist and an unbelievable talent that I grew up watching and admiring. He will be missed.

Ranking the Plays

Believe it or not, I have been ranking each play in a running list since I started this thing with the aim of publishing, at the end, the full list, from most to least favorite. So here it is. Yes, I know such lists are totally dumb, but I couldn't help myself and it was fun to try and place each one as they were finished, to build out the list, one at a time, as an act of progress. So there.

Hamlet
Much Ado About Nothing
Richard III
King Lear
Richard II
Macbeth
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Henry IV, Part 1
Othello
Henry V
As You Like It
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Julius Ceasar
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Henry IV, Part 2
Measure for Measure
The Winter’s Tale
Romeo and Juliet
Anthony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Henry VI, Part 1
Henry VI, Part 2
Henry VI, Part 3
The Merry Wives of Winsor
Love’s Labor’s Lost
The Merchant of Venice
The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
All’s Well That Ends Well
Twelfth Night
Timon of Athens
Troilus and Cressida
The Comedy of Errors
Titus Andronicus
King John
Henry VIII

Coriolanus - The Movie

I saw an excellent movie version of Coriolanus last night, an adaptation for sure, but a good adaptation, an interesting and provocative take on the Shakespeare original. What did it have going for it? All (and only) the best lines were picked out and used (deftly used, with great delivery by great actors), long and interesting action sequences were created to forward the plot, character, and theme (yes, stuff blows up), and interesting, modern-day sets and scenery were included (with a cool sort of CNN-media-war-coverage thing threaded throughout). But, as any adaptation must do, big parts were cut out, including my favorite patricians-are-the-stomach speech and, most notably, some key bits at the very end.

However, even with these (and other) parts excised, the story still remained, and a great story it is, full of great Shakespearean nuance. As any good adaptation should do, it enhances the original version without really changing anything, a difficult magic trick for sure, especially when you’re dealing with Shakespeare. This one did that, to a tee, which in turn helped me understanding the play way better. Indeed, I feel like I missed some things in the initial reading, like maybe I was wrong about Coriolanus the character, just a bit maybe. Although he's still mostly a jerk, the movie explores why he is the way he is, in a believable and relatable way, which builds sympathy for the guy and makes me like him, and the play, much more. So I liked this movie a lot, especially in the way it helped me appreciate the play. So kudos to them. The Bard would have been proud I think.

(38) Coriolanus

Coriolanus is a play about power, namely, the origins of power, how power relates to class, and the way in which power is gained and lost (and, in the case of this play, gained and then lost again, really lost, like dead lost…but more on that in a minute). As a tragedy, I think it holds up reasonable well, but it really doesn't compare to some of the other tragedies in the canon (but, given the competition, that can’t be too surprising, right?). My main complaint is on the main character Coriolanus: a character of only one dimension, he’s the same guy throughout and doesn't change one bit, at any point. You know who he is right away and he stays that way. Arrogant, inflexible, ridiculously proud, and utterly disdainful of the lower classes, I didn't like him very much at all I guess, which is probably a big reason why he (and this play) holds up only “reasonably well” in my humblest of estimations.

An oversimplified summary: Coriolanus saves Rome by defeating his arch rival Aufidius in battle. He is lauded as a hero by the patricians (upper class) but essentially dismissed by the plebeians (lower class). In reacting to this dismissal, he says the exact wrong things, basically intimating that, as a member of the upper class, those in the lower class can pretty much just suck it. He says this over and over, even when called upon specifically to unsay it as apology and in order to gain the consulship (so even when a lot is at stake). He's like the worst politician ever. The anti-politician.

Not surprisingly, the people of Rome expel him, which sets him off to no end. In his anger, he gathers a huge army to invade Rome. All seems lost for the Romans until his wife and family persuade him to call off the invasion. He agrees, is accepted back into Rome, but is betrayed, right at the very end, and killed (what did you expect?). In typical Shakespearean fashion, everyone immediately realizes the horror of losing such a great man and he is carried dead off stage, with much pomp and lamentation.

To read this play is to experience, in full force, the idea of the “body politic.” Shakespeare explores this concept extensively in this play, perhaps more so than any other I have read (and I have read them all…first time I can write that!). To review: the body politic is what it says, a concept that likens the political nation to the human body. The head is the king and the body the people, with endless permutations on each part as it relates to the other. Indeed, in this play, that is exactly what happens, with countless references to human body parts sprinkled throughout, including Menenius’ famous speech to the plebeians to calm them after one of Coriolanus’ many arrogant insults, a speech where Menenius likens the upper class to the stomach, which distributes nourishment to the plebian “body,” magnanimously taking only the leftovers as nourishment, after the body has had its fill. A great speech, as good any in Shakespeare, and for this alone I was glad to have read the play.

This idea of the body politic, or more accurately a “diseased” body politic, is so thematically prominent in this one that it seems overdone at points. The likening of the various parts of the nation to human body parts was apparently quite popular in Shakespeare’s day so perhaps he’s just pandering to the crowd. The king is the head, the nobility the limbs, the lower rebellious classes the “great toe of this assembly” and thus “o’ th’ lowest, basest, poorest” of people. Simple as that, the lower you go, the less your social esteem. As a monarchist (as Shakespeare most certainly was), you could see the appeal of this message, to him and to his audience, the extensible idea of body as nation, hierarchical and rigid, safe and straightforward. Religiously right. Appealing in his day for sure, and as appealing (perhaps more so), in ours?

So there it is, my last play “analyzed.” The goal has been reached. I have read every play so this project is over…but not quite. I have a few more “wrap up” posts in me I think, things like favorite lists and lessons learned and whatnot so bear with me. Just a few more, but not many, as I am more than ready to move on. It’s been a blast but enough is enough, right?

(37) Pericles, Prince of Tyre

I liked Pericles, Prince of Tyre. I liked it much more that I thought I would, given all the negative press it has garnered from critics over the years (oddly though, it was very popular in its day and was in fact the very first Shakespeare play to run after the Restoration, when the theaters reopened). This play follows the noble adventures of Pericles, who looks for and finds a wife, has a beautiful daughter by her, loses both at sea, and then is finally reunited with them, tearfully, in the end, all in that so-familiar-now artful and adept Shakespearean way.

I like it in some ways simply because it comes across as such a play, if that make any sense. Unlike many of Shakespeare’s other works, this one feels like clear drama, through and through, full of purely dramatic elements, like for example the so-called “dumb show”. Anything but dumb, these are dramatic interludes spoken by some orator (in this case, the historical poet John Gower) directly to the audience, sort of a running commentary on what’s up. Often in rhyming couplets, Gower recaps plot points, predicts future events, and generally clues you in to all the action, often with candid alacrity and sly humor. They are fun, these dumb things, and make for an artful framing of and pacing to the play, regulating the flow perfectly so that things unfold exactly, in a way the feels exactly right. Instead of say, something like Macbeth (a study of evil), Hamlet (a study of sanity/reason), or Romeo and Juliet (a study of romantic love), Pericles is just a play. Does that make sense? I guess I’m trying to say (trying being the operative word) that this one comes across as more captive to its form and thus more to point or to purpose, which I noticed, and appreciated (with nothing against those other plays of course). It’s different, this one, in a good way. So there.

Another thing this one has going for it is the story. It’s a great tale of adventure, with a big heartwarming ending, and some funny scenes thrown in involving pimps, prostitutes, and a brothel. And great characters too, especially Marina. Pure Shakespeare, this character. Funny, complex, and powerful, she’s great, trust me. Read this one for her lines alone.

So that’s that. One more to go: Coriolanus. I actually have a bit of a background on this play. It was one of the few I studied in some depth in college (I even unearthed an old paper I wrote on it way back then. I thought for sure I would sound like a blithering idiot in this paper, but when I reread it I found that I was actually making a little bit of sense, here and there. I even got an A on it. It’s written right on the back, by my teacher. Really.). Anyway, maybe I’ll share some of it in my next post. Or not. One more to go, kids.

Hermetic Magic

I attended my last Shakespeare seminar in the city over the weekend and was quite impressed with the final session and the class overall. The seminar dealt with magic in Shakespeare. One of my favorite aspects of this discussion was that it often delved into the reality of Shakespeare’s world, helping to fill out a detailed picture of what these Elizabethans and Jacobeans were all about. If I learned anything, I learned that a good understand of this (or at least some understanding of this) is key to a good understanding of Shakespeare.

One of the specific things we discussed along these lines was the influence of Hermetic magic and the hermetic worldview in Shakespeare’s day. Hermeticism is a belief system based on the ancient writings of Hermes Trismegistus (I know, great name, right?). Complex and overarching, it is a holistic, encompassing religious philosophy based (among other things) on the so-called three parts of the wisdom of the whole universe: Alchemy (the exploration of the spirituality of matter), Astrology (the movement and influence of the planets on the natural world), and Theurgy (divine magic). It is singularly monotheistic and presents a worldview where God is the ultimate reality, standing apart from the Universe, the main force who gave us, many eons ago, a singular theology that predates all other theologies. It is a protean religion.

One of the central aspects of Hermeticism deals with science, namely, the idea that humanity can connect to, control, and influence nature through scientific experiment and “magic” (I put magic in quotes here because it’s important to differentiate and define it. It means the occult in this context, not a simple card trick or a Disney movie. Magic as a real thing.). The Hermetic worldview takes a step towards science then, claiming a connection to the unnatural world through, natural, scientific means.

So, what does this have to do with Shakespeare? Although still a complete novice in this stuff, these ideas do seem central to Shakespeare, serving as the backdrop for so many of the actions and themes in his plays. From Prospero to the Weird Sisters, from Hamlet’s ghostly father to the living statue of Hermione, this relationship between (and access to) the natural/unnatural world is woven intricately throughout so many of his works, a science-meets-religion aspect that gets at the divine through concrete, scientific efforts, through natural means, through things like specific ingredients used in a witches’ brew (Macbeth) or an all-powerful magic book (The Tempest). This relationship, this hermetical ying/yang, would have not only been understood by his audience, but accepted, believed, and even looked for. So it’s not all that strange, this strange world of the Bard, when you look at it through this lens. It’s rather natural actually.

Kill Shakespeare

A colleague recently recommended the graphic novel Kill Shakespeare. It was a great recommendation. Having limited familiarity with this genre (graphic novel), I was pleasantly surprised by all of the action, artistry, and drama that this medium affords. The story is simple. Many of the villains of Shakespeare’s plays (Richard III, Iago, and Lady MacBeth, for example) have banded together to kill the Bard, or more accurately, steal his magic quill and thus steal his power, which is the ability to control the world. They are opposed by the “good” characters (Hamlet, Falstaff, Othello, and Juliet, among others), who have allied to oppose them. The story unfolds in truly great comic book fashion, with lots of honor, blood, battles, and glory, with a fair bit of homage paid back to the Bard (in the form of references, quotes, specific plot points, etc.). These graphic novelists pull it off, avoiding the “cheese” factor (for example, tired Shakespeare quotes all over the place) as well at the ivory tower factor (for example, brainy, obscurely academic Shakespearean references all over the place). It works.

One thing I loved so much about it was the way these characters were made into such total badasses. In this graphic novel, Juliet is a complete force of nature. Othello? Forget about it. Complete. Ass-kicking. Warrior. This is cool, and does not debase what Shakespeare is about (which is a criticism I have heard). Why not show these characters in all their strength and potency, which is what they are. Why not take that ball and run with it, especially when you can do it such justice in comic book form? Such larger-than-life casting, perfect for a comic and perfect for the Bard. Shakespeare would have loved it I’m sure.

(36) The Tempest

The Tempest is a pretty darn good play, but you probably knew that already. It begins with a really cool shipwreck and then moves on to a vengeful, all-powerful wizard and his sweet, innocent daughter. Next comes all sorts of magic and mayhem, followed by…you guessed it, a wedding, right at the end (well, really an engagement, not an actual wedding, but close enough). There are some great characters throughout this one (Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, and Caliban, for starters) and it just generally moves along about as well as anything I have yet read. The final epilogue, spoken by Prospero, is one of my favorites in any of the plays, reminding me of Puck’s excellent final soliloquy in Midsummer. Just some really great lines there.

Speaking of epilogues, there’s something interesting going on with this one. Legend has it that The Tempest was the last play Shakespeare wrote, suggesting that this epilogue is thus his final words, his farewell to the theater, his retirement and swansong. In it, “Prosperospeare” asks to be released from the stage by the audience, through their applause, so that he can move on (“But release me from my bands, With the help of your good hands”). It certainly seems like something someone who is retiring would say (side note: some productions go so far as to have these lines spoken not by Prospero but rather by an actor dressed as Shakespeare, coming out as a surprise, to fully drive home the Prospero-as-Shakespeare point).

So, is this a retirement speech to us from old Bill, a tearful sendoff to his admiring friends? Seems like it, right? Not so fast. To assume that Shakespeare threw down his pen at this moment and marched off into some sort of literary sunset is just way too overly dramatic for me. In fact, many believe he still wrote (co-wrote actually, as a contributor) a number of additional plays after The Tempest. This idea then, this final parting, seems to be complete fallacy (but fun fallacy). This is a clear case of us reading between the lines, of us hearing what we want to hear, of us making what we want out of his words, which we are free to do of course, because it’s all ours, not his, really, which is (if I have learned anything) exactly what the world of Shakespeare is all about.

So, speaking of endings, only two more plays to go and then finis (or exeunt) for me and this blog/project. The end (beginning?) is near.

(35) Cymbeline

I finished reading this play last week and was lucky enough to also catch a live performance in DC. I really liked both. I guess the main thing that struck me was how much recycled material seemed to exist in this one. So many of the same devices seen in previous plays reappear, for example, a really villainous lead character, a gender-switching disguise, an utterly innocent heroine, and a stormy transformative moment (there are more). As a result, this one came across as a bit of a retread. Is this a function of an uninspired Bard or, seasoned veteran as I am, am I just too used to him at this point (obviously, taken singly, this play would seem quite singular)? Or, is Shakespeare returning to his old stomping grounds in this late play (it was one of the last he wrote) because they are important to his art and work so well, on so many different levels? Probably.

Concerning the live performance, it was part of a two play tour I was again lucky enough to be able to do (I recently saw this one, and then saw Othello at the ASC). Both were excellent, but especially Cymbeline, where six multi-talented actors played all the parts, with an exceedingly great degree of skill. Once again, I am convinced of the obvious point that there is absolutely no substitute to seeing a live version if you really want to “get it.” You gotta see to believe.

I do have one really minor gripe about this Cymbeline production though, something that probably only bothered me, namely, that they removed my favorite lines. They are spoken right at the end by Cymbeline, when he jovially proclaims how great everything is (remember, this is a romance, not a tragedy):

Laud we the gods,
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our blest altars.

Isn’t that great? Unfortunately, like I said, in the production I saw (unless I missed it…which is possible), they left these lines out. No big deal of course, but just something I noticed. This happened to me one time before, right at the very beginning of this project, when I went to see Much Ado About Nothing at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theater and noticed the absence of one of my favorite lines (“No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, / nor I cannot woo in festival terms.”). I guess that’s how it goes from time to time. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that emendation happens all over the place with Shakespeare. It’s part of the game, a necessary part even, a part almost certain to disappoint someone at some point. Oh well. I guess the idea is to back up such choices with appropriate and well-considered reasoning.

Shakespeare References – A Record

I thought this could be fun as an extrapolation on my last post: a specific record of all the references to Shakespeare that I ran across in a typical day. So I picked yesterday. I probably missed a few but there were four confirmed sightings (okay, maybe three and a half, the first may be a bit of a reach). Check it out:

• 7:20am - Reading the Staunton, VA Visitor’s Guide:
  Advertisement for the “All’s Well” Massage Center. All’s Well…get the joke? It’s a “happy ending.” Or am I reaching?
• 11:14am - Listening to a Radio Podcast:
  Podcasters mentioned the movie Shakespeare in Love and that this movie was Joseph Fiennes “best role.”
• 5:11pm - Looking at an old picture of my Brother-in-Law’s beer can collection:
  Contains a beer can called “Falstaff.”
• 10:14pm - Watching the HBO Series Generation Kill:
  
  Sgt. Brad 'Iceman' Colbert quotes Julius Caesar (Act III.1):
  
  Sgt. Colbert: Once more into the great good night. Cry 'havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war.
  Cpl. Person: Man, when I get home I am gonna eat the f - - - out of my girlfriend's p - - - -.
  Evan 'Scribe' Wright: Is that Shakespeare?
  Lance Cpl. Trombley: Shakespeare wrote that? [Wright nods] About his girlfriend's p - - - -?

Funny how bawdy (implied and overt) these references are. Shakespeare would have approved. So at the risk of beating a dead horse dead, there it is. See what I mean? He's everywhere. Kind of a silly exercise, but hey, why not.

The Ubiquity of the Bard

One of my more interesting and even startling discoveries while working on this project was the realization that Shakespeare, in so many interesting and often surprising ways, wholly invades our everyday life, well…every day and in (almost?) every way. The size and scope of this ubiquity still baffles me, the way this one individual is institutionalized into our culture (world culture?) to a level surpassing anyone (anything?) else. It’s quite amazing actually, if you think about it (check out this excellent (although dated) New York Times article if you don’t believe me. It does a good job discussing this idea).

And for some reason I really love seeing the guy everywhere, like a literary uber-where’s waldo. It’s great, seeing the Bard’s pop up in some random advertisement during the ballgame or on a highway billboard, or hearing a friend say, almost word for word, a quote from one of the plays, without even knowing it. There’s something almost subversive in this heightened awareness, like being on the inside of an inside joke, and I can almost feel the Bard next to me, sort of jabbing my ribs with his elbow, pointing and laughing at some sign, picture, commercial, or whatever and saying quietly: Do you see that? Ha! (and yes, given what little we know about the guy, he would probably be more surprised at this than I, for sure).

So I love it, this omniscience. And trust me, I’m not crazy (at least not about this), it happens every day. The dude’s everywhere. The guy redefines ubiquity.

A Lecture

Of the few people that I have mentioned this project to (reading every play), a significant number of them have asked the same simple question: Why? At first, this question caught me off guard a bit. It’s just something you should do, right? A decent idea. Why not? This reason seemed deficient when I first used it, and for good reason…because it is. Nobody seemed to buy it, including myself, so I thought about it some more, and continue to do so. It’s a damn good question, so I think it deserves a damn good answer (or at least a damn good attempt at a damn good answer). At the risk of sounding like a pretentious bore here, I would like to write a little bit about where I am on this question then, this question of “why,” because it’s fun, because it seems worthwhile, and, well, because it’s my blog and I say so. So bear with me.

A Shakespeare lecture I recently attended has helped me to develop the following theory: reading Shakespeare confirms our humanity and, by doing so, brings us together and in turn elevates us to something greater. The Shakespeare canon contains the full range of human experience and can serve to affirm and strengthen our shared human condition. It is of us and in us, made for us and by us. It is US, we, the human, perfectly expressed, and thus inherently valuable as a roadmap to real meaning. This notion, if you think about it, is powerful, perhaps all-powerful, and really has legs if you get into it (again, bear with me).

Check this out: The lecture the other day partly focused on Shakespeare as a redemptive force. There is some energy these days behind this idea, with many examples of good people trying to use Shakespeare’s plays as therapy, as an uplifting experience, as a path to freedom from evil. For example, one could cast and direct a play at a troubled intercity school, or perhaps stage a play at a prison, using convicts as actors. Simply stated, the idea is that we can help someone be better through the words of the Bard.

I like this, and hope for its truth, but, interestingly, the lecture actually spent more time analyzing not how this can be done but rather what it means to put forth this idea in the first place. Why would this be true, Shakespeare as a redemptive force? How could this work? What are these plays actually doing that heals? Is the text itself redemptive? Or, is it what we bring to the text that makes it powerful (probably). So who is doing the work then? If a convicted murderer reads the passage from Hamlet where Claudio prays to God for forgiveness, what can that do for the murderer/actor? Can it help them? Why? Most interestingly, the idea that this is perhaps a misreading of the Bard was explored in the seminar (an idea I am still working out), with us readers imposing all sorts of meaning on the text so as to get to where we want (need?) to be. As such, are we then hijacking Shakespeare?

Sorry for all the questions (and sorry if this is trite, obvious, boring, or otherwise unbearable; like I said, it’s my party and I can do what I want to), but I like these ideas, especially since it dovetails nicely with something I have been turning over in my mind for a while now, namely, the assertion that literature is perhaps the greatest form of art because it helps us share our world, most notably our inner world, with greater force and fluency than any other form. This inner world (soul?) is us, our being, making a great bit of writing a form of “worship” perhaps (never have quotes been more useful around a word), an aid in transcendence from the physical to the spiritual. If indeed “we are islands to each other” (to quote a favorite artist of mine), bridging that gap is maybe then the most important and worthy goal of any artist, and books do it best. Again, simply put, when we link together, really link together, the world is a better place. Shakespeare facilitates this as well (better?) than anyone or anything, helping to reveal this inner world in all it glorious facets and helping to close the gap of singular self-consciousness. So that’s why I’m reading the guy (for those reasons, and for all the jokes of course). Seems like a good reason to me.

(There’s something else we touched on in the lecture that I found very interesting: the idea that there is something else going on here besides simply the words, namely, that there is a rhythm to the text, an iambic pentameter, a music in these lines, and that is perhaps moving us as much as anything. When you pull the car over and lift up the hood, is the poetry the engine, is that doing the work? One of my favorite writers once said (I’m paraphrasing big time here) that, although a firm and deeply convinced humanist/atheist, the only times he ever questioned this was when he heard some really great music. Indeed. Notice how I said earlier that literature is perhaps the greatest form of art? Is it music? Or, is it all one and the same, as we see in Shakespeare, and ourselves)?

(34) Othello

Othello is an excellent play, a masterful exposé on love, race, jealousy, and total betrayal. In this play, Othello, a powerful Moorish general, marries the beautiful and innocent Desdemona, a nobleman’s daughter, who loves him (as he does her). Iago, the penultimate dastardly villain, despises Othello (everybody?) and decides to ruin him by convincing him that Desdemona has been unfaithful. Tragically, he succeeds.

The character Iago in this play is an evil paragon. A great Shakespearean villain, he’s a real jerk, right from the start, plotting and planning to take down Othello (who of course totally trusts him) in the harshest way possible. Innately evil, his motivations seem to spring not from the typical justifications for bad behavior we have seen before in Shakespeare (say, justice, or honor), but from some other, way darker place. Indeed, the reasons he gives for his evil plotting is bitterness over being skipped for a promotion and a totally unsubstantiated suspicion that Othello is banging his wife, Emilia. These are hardly reasonable excuses to wantonly lie, cheat, steal, and kill.

Iago is the fountainhead for most of the action of this play, relentlessly driving theme, character, and plot. It’s a juggling act par excellence, a literary bob and weave, and it’s quite fun to follow, Iago as ringmaster, all the way to the end. And speaking of the end, I loved how Shakespeare exits this great character by having him take a total vow of silence after his villainy is exposed (“Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: From this time forth I never will speak word.”). No more words, Iago’s main weapon removed, but by his own choice (last laugh?). Perfect.

And what about the handkerchief! Sheesh! Shakespeare makes quite a big deal out of this thing. It is a key prop, maybe the most central prop of any Shakespeare play, and it seems to signify and punctuate most of the action of the later acts, both directly and indirectly (rather than describe it all here, take a look at this page. It does a good job of describing its prevalence and significance). Highly valued by Othello, it is given as a treasured gift to Desdemona, who loses it in a roundabout way to Iago (uh oh), who in turn skillfully plans to plant it on another man, also in a roundabout way (don’t you just love Shakespeare?!), all to prove Desdemona’s infidelity.

Othello absolutely loses his mind over this handkerchief, torturing himself and others about it at every turn. When he discovers it as missing he takes it as irrefutable evidence of Desdemona’s adultery, and this “evidence” eventually pushes him over the edge. He keeps mentioning it, over and over, throughout the latter parts of the play, variously and in multiple contexts, as tangible proof and testament of his cunning, cuckolding wife (Which she isn't. In fact, she’s pretty much the opposite. Almost over-the-top sweet and innocent, all the way to the end). It’s the king of all props, this handkerchief, and Shakespeare works it perfectly, passing it around (and also passing a copy of it around for good measure…again, don’t you just love this guy?!) throughout the play, so that it becomes a sort of floating, common touchpoint, a thematic home base. Trust me, the dude gets a ton of mileage out of this little piece of cloth. Analyzing and puzzling through its role in Othello has surely been the basis for many a doctoral dissertation.

Anyway, there it is, the second to last tragedy on my list. Only Coriolanus remains in that genre, then it's on to a few more Romances and I’m through. I plan on sprinting to the finish here, with a number of live performances (Cymbeline, Othello, and The Tempest) in the queue as well as some other stuff. Stay tuned, I plan to finish strong.

What, you egg! (stabbing)

This line from Macbeth, complete with stage direction, is spoken at the zenith of one of the most horrible and brutal scenes in all of Shakespeare. It has always intrigued me, this line. It’s spoken by an assassin (sent by Macbeth, of course) as he kills Macduff’s young son. It’s weird, right (not the killing, that’s pure evil, I mean the words)? What kind of insult is this? What does it mean? The only thing I can guess at is that he’s calling the kid something “worse” that an infant, like a kind of a pre-infant, undeveloped and immature? So that’s bad I guess.

(33) Macbeth

Macbeth, Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy (and almost his shortest play. I think The Comedy of Errors is his shortest, in case you were wondering), is a tight, dark exploration of evil, fate, politics, and terror. I've probably read this one more times than any of his other plays, and I can tell you, it doesn't get old. From the opening scene (the shortest opening scene in all of Shakespeare), things take off, with witches brewing and plotting, and a vicious battle, where our hero Macbeth has just cut a man in half, or in Shakespeare’s words “unseamed him from the nave to th' chops.” The action of this play is all business, and proceeds quickly and with purpose. Macbeth, the mighty warrior, buys into a prophesy spoken by the famous “weird sisters” that he will be king. Consumed by this ambition, he and his wife (the great character Lady Macbeth) become the ultimate tyrants, murdering more and more people (children even!) as they and their kingdom spiral out of control. From murder to civil war, to madness and to death, this play is brutal, complex, and strikingly brilliant.  It’s a great read.

One of the ideas that I think this play is trying to convey is the concept of fate versus freewill. We discussed this recently in a reading group I joined, the way this plays out in the play, the dichotomy of these two competing ideas. On the one hand, you can make the argument that Macbeth is charmed by the witches, right at the start, and thus not responsible for his actions. Indeed, everything changes (for the worse) after he runs into the three sisters and hears that he will be king of Scotland. Evil magic, he’s under a spell.

Too simple, right? So is it really a matter of freewill, Macbeth acting out under his own misbegotten desires? Are the weird sisters simply an excuse for him to pursue something he already wanted, just water on the seed, so to speak? Grist for the mill? Perhaps, but it is interesting to point out that the witches tell him all sorts of things throughout the play, describing in vivid detail a number of strange and bizarre prophesies. Macbeth buys into them all and Shakespeare, in his wisdom, makes each and every one of them come true. From what I can tell, everything foretold in this play comes true. What does this say? Is fate responsible for everything then, is it the only driver, the culprit and the cause of all things? Or not? Or both (is both even possible…does even the slightest bit of fate nullify all possibility of freewill…or vice versa)? And, does predicting something automatically indicate fate? Beh! My head hurts, and sorry for all the questions. The Bard can make that happen from time to time.

(32) King Lear

I really liked this one, in all its dark nihilism. This one breaks bad really fast, and stays bad, and then gets worse. It’s the most tragic tragedy I have yet read, darker and more bleak than Hamlet, devoid of the love and romance of Romeo and Juliet, empty of the somewhat uplifting martial pomp of Julius Caesar. This play is about death…lonely, meaningless, empty death, with a little betrayal and cruelty sprinkled in, for good measure. Hey ho!

To summarize: King Lear decides to retire and divide his kingdom between his three daughters. However, he demands that they profess their love for him first to “earn” their share. The two eldest profess their love (falsely), in the most flattering language possible, and are rewarded for their lies. The youngest (the great character Cordelia), refuses to play along (although she loves him most and is his favorite) and is thus banished from the kingdom. No soup for you! It’s all downhill after Cordelia gets the boot, a tale of usurping sons and gouged out eyes, of disturbing madness and unmitigated disaster. And a very foolish Fool (but more on that in a minute).

There’s so much interesting symbolism and imagery in this one, all so well placed and perfectly integrated. For example, the famous storm, in the middle of the play, that confronts Lear after he’s been turned out of his daughter’s house (there’s a lot of “turning out” in this one. Come to think of it, there’s a lot of everything in this one. With this play especially, it’s easy to see how someone could make a career out of studying a single Shakespeare play. It’s that full).

This storm, and the immortal line “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!” spoken by a half mad, enraged Lear sure seems to me to be Shakespeare at the top of his game. It all comes together in this one and it’s the kind of thing that you can turn over and over in your mind, while waiting in line at the grocery store or painting the kitchen, considering and reconsidering what this and that means or does not mean, what this line says and doesn’t say. Probably more so than any play, I can guarantee I will be reading this one again. It seems like the right thing to do. A requirement.

One other thing I found really interesting about this one (and along the lines of what I am ranting about above) is the Fool, perhaps the most interesting and creative Fool I have yet come across (save Falstaff, if you count him a fool). Lear’s Fool is all black comedy, winding words and images into twisted diatribes against everyone and everything. As an artistic vehicle, he’s just really great, an effective foil and provocateur, setting up and knocking down (and about) themes, motifs, and plot like a bull in a china shop. And, he’s in the play a lot, or at least it seems that way. Take, for example, these lines in the Act I, Scene 4, a very “fool-heavy” act (and therefore one of my favorite Acts in the play):

Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for
her frowning. Now thou art an O without a figure. I am better
than thou art now: I am a fool, thou art nothing.
[To Goneril] Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue. So your face
bids me, though you say nothing. Mum, mum!
He that keeps nor crust nor crum,
Weary of all, shall want some.
[Points at Lear] That's a sheal'd peascod.

Here’s the No Fear Shakespeare “translation,” as a helpful reference:

(to LEAR) You were better off when you didn’t have to care whether she frowned or not. Now you’re a big zero, with no digit in front of it to give it value. I’m better than you are—I’m a fool and you’re nothing.
(to GONERIL) Yes, I promise I’ll shut up. That’s what you’re telling me with that expression on your face, even though you don’t say anything. Mum, mum,
The man who gives away his crust and his crumbs
Will discover that he needs some crumbs back.
(pointing at LEAR) That guy is an empty pea pod.

He’s like this throughout. Shakespeare has the Fool speaking to many and none, calling out and gesturing, riddling and rhyming, all over the place. It’s really something, a command performance, and I am leaving this play (for now) with a distinct memory of him. As much as all the death and tragedy, of all the daughters and fathers, of all the plucked out eyes and tormented souls, the Fool really sticks with you as much, if not more, than anything.

Happy Birthday!

Happy 450^th birthday old man! You were the greatest writer to ever live and your works changed the world. Although we don’t exactly know when you were born, the 23^rd of April (St George’s Day in England) has been the traditional date used throughout time (it’s a pretty educated guess actually and has the added bonus of being the date of his death as well, in 1616. So there).

King Lear at the Zaatari Refugee Camp

I found this Times photo essay both sad and wonderful. I wonder what the full story is behind this? It is a curious choice, King Lear. Given the circumstances, is it wise to chose one of Shakespeare's most tragic tragedies to show to a bunch of displaced refugees? Perhaps there's solace in affinity. Also, apparently it wasn't a totally faithful production in that "a few scenes from “Hamlet” had been spliced in with “Lear,” making the story hard to follow." That's quite alright. They are surely forgiven. They can splice in scenes from Baywatch if it makes them feel better. Poor people. Whatever it takes.

Sorry for the long break in posts. Life intervened. Hopefully I'll be posting shortly on Lear as I am just finishing it (and watching the movie). Then it's on to the last few plays. Also, the BIG news of course is that tomorrow is the Bard's 450th birthday. Happy birthday eve you old coot! Perhaps a post on that tomorrow as well.

(31) Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens is perhaps one of the easiest Shakespeare plays to summarize (Oh, and a quick side note here. Timon rhymes with Simon, not Seamen. I ran around like a dope for a week thinking the title character’s name rhymed with the latter. It doesn’t, so don’t make my mistake. It’s “Tie-mon,” got it?). Anyway, a summary: Timon, a generous man, gives away his entire fortune to his “friends,” eventually going into debt. To get out of debt, he calls these same guys back to ask for loans. They refuse and Timon goes nuts, transforming in extreme from an altruistic gadabout to a cantankerous misanthrope. Finally, he dies, miserable and alone. Happy times!

For me, the play was a cautionary tale heavily centered on the idea of choosing your friends wisely, or, more accurately, understanding and properly dealing with the people around you, especially when you have power (in this case, power in wealth). I saw a really great live production of this play first, and then read it, reversing my typical approach (see, then read as opposed to read, then see). I’m glad I did it this way, especially with this play. It saved it for me, enabling me to understand the merits of the play much better (and easier) than I would have if I had only read it, or even read it first. Because this play had such a singular message, more so than most of the other plays I’ve read, I may have gotten lost a bit in the repetitive nature of the theme. But, at the risk of stating the obvious, the live version, among many other things, served to expand the boundaries beyond the page, an important thing in this case, adding layers onto the seemingly simple and straightforward message so as to enliven it and make it more real. Plus, the costumes were cool.

The play is rather bleak (it is a tragedy after all). Although there was certainly more to it that just one theme (for example, the idea of a shared responsibility for dysfunctional friendships, or an examination of the madness of extremes), for the most part, I couldn’t get past the laser-like focus on false friendship’s ruin of a generous man. Because of this (and other) reasons, I agree with the general consensus that this is not one of the Bard’s strongest plays. Besides its single-mindedness, it appears that parts of it are unfinished and in need of editing, especially in the later acts. Strange, out of place references and unpolished language litters the final scenes, causing some awkward moments for sure (There also the co-authorship thing. Most experts think Tom Middleton pitched in a bit). But, the first folio guys included it back in 1623, so there it is, Official Shakespeare. For me, I’m glad they did because the text isn’t by any stretch worthless and the live performance I got to see was, by every stretch, excellent.

A Shakespeare Lecture – Part 2

The lecture I attended the other day ended with a bit on Christopher Marlowe, the greatest and most interesting Shakespearean influence out there. Basically, you can argue that if Marlowe was not stabbed in the eye and killed over a bar tab back in 1593 (right when Shakespeare was getting started), we would be discussing him as much, if not more, as Shakespeare. There would be Marlowe festivals, tee shirts, symposiums, and coffee mugs all over the place, without question, because the guy was doing exactly what Shakespeare did, only slightly earlier, and with shortened duration (that kind of thing tends to happen when you die).

Marlow was apparently the theater rock star in his day, well-regarded and idolized because of his popular and oft-performed plays. Like Shakespeare, he took what was before him and transformed it into something new and better. For example, he either invented or popularized blank verse, which was a giant step forward in that it created plays using language that sounded like we sound, that felt natural and “right” as opposed to stilted and false. Blank verse was a new tool, one of many, crafted and used by Marlowe (and subsequently, Shakespeare), fueling the fire that was the Golden Age of English Theater.

But…the lecture wasn’t just a huge love-fest for Marlowe and company. It was noted that for all of Marlow’s greatness, he was in a way one-dimensional and not nearly as varied as our favorite Bard or, as the lecturer said, not quite as flexible. You don’t see the range and variety of voice in his works (for example, Marlowe’s lead character in his Jew of Malta as compared to Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. The former is simply an evil dude, through and through, while the later is something so much more nuanced).

However, as mentioned earlier, Marlowe was just getting started so who’s to say that he wouldn't hone his art like Shakespeare did? Why wouldn’t he develop and evolve? Given his great start, to what heights could this development have reached? Also, to wonder out loud some more, it’s impossible not to consider that if Marlow had lived and prospered then we would have had two great writers, writing contemporarily, perhaps in competition even, like a Lennon-and-McCartney sort of thing, an idea which is almost too awesome to consider (As a side note here, please don’t say that these two people were the same, i.e., that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s plays. He didn’t, or rather, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that he did. You might as well say Queen Elizabeth wrote Shakespeare's plays. There’s as much evidence there as in the Marlowe case).

A Shakespeare Lecture

I attended an interesting lecture the other night sponsored by the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theater called What Shakespeare Watched. It was an excellent exploration of the theater and the dramatic forms active before Shakespeare began his epic career. It is almost certain that the plays performed during this era (essentially several centuries leading up to the 1590’s) would have informed and shaped Shakespeare’s works. Of course, as we have seen before, we have no direct evidence that Shakespeare saw these plays, or any plays for that matter, but it seems logical, especially when you see how elements from these plays found their way into the plays of the Bard.

The lecture proved out that there is nothing new under the sun in that our favorite Bard most certainly absorbed and used, sometimes in entirety, the ideas of many of those that came before him. The genius of it, of course, is that he absorbed it and then extended it into something cool, different, and exciting (so I guess I should say there’s nothing entirely new under the sun). He took the ball and ran with it, so to speak, but that ball had to be there to take. That pretty much captures what the talk was about.

The entertaining and highly-informed lecturer (so important, by the way, this entertaining and informed duality in the sometimes stodgy and exclusive academic space that can be Shakespeare) started out with a survey of the drama in the centuries prior to Shakespeare’s day. There were three main types of plays during this period: Religious, Folk, and something known as “Interludes” (see below).

The religious plays are typically subdivided into three groups: Mystery plays (dramatic episodes from the Bible), Miracle plays (more Bible stuff, mainly episodes from the lives of the Saints), and Morality plays (where allegory was used to teach a lesson, such as the medieval Everyman play, as a familiar example). The folk plays are the second main type. These were more dancing celebrations than dramas (the lecturer likened them to modern day “flash mobs” or, even better for her Philadelphia audience, the Mummers) and were informal, improvised things where the action was the main focus, at the expense of plot or character development.

Finally, there were Interludes, the most interesting category (in my humblest of opinions), in that in these we start to see something approaching modern drama. Performed at court and in aristocratic houses, these were “interludes” performed in between courses of a long meal (hence the name). They focused on entertainment using many of the same devices and constructs seen in later drama, for example, scenes based on mistaken identity, lots of sexual innuendo, and a devilish character known as the “Vice” that causes heaps of trouble and mayhem (though often in a non-threatening, comic way).

So, you can see the variety in place, the diversity, an active and vibrant culture of theater, all within view of Shakespeare’s most inquisitive eye. Watching all these different plays must have added greatly to the deep, fomenting caldron of Shakespeare’s developing creative genius. This cauldron was set to boil over in the coming years of course, with drama markedly different and intense, yet still based on and harkening back to, in a very real way, these dramatic seeds planted and cultivated in earlier years.

The lecturer described all this and then, in a great show-don’t-tell way (it’s always better that way, right?), scenes from some of these protean plays were presented live, using real live actors, enabling us to see, first hand, specific scenes from specific plays that may have shaped Shakespeare’s artistic mind. My favorite example was the play Gallathea, by John Lyly, a play containing many obvious and typical Shakespearean hallmarks. For example, Gallathea includes themes of the forest retreat (see As You Like It), gender ambiguity (see Twelfth Night), and magic as a matter of course (see A Midsummer Night’s Dream). This is all familiar stuff in the Shakespeare universe.

You have to love the ending to Gallathea too (spoiler alert), an ending that has the god Neptune fixing the “problem” of two women in love by giving one of them a sex change, right there, on the spot, using his god magic. Man/woman, problem solved. As you may imagine, much confusion ensues from this, which is the point I guess. It’s a kind of funny scene (especially when the parents of the newly-minted son start complaining about the lost inheritance of the now not-so-oldest son in the family) but, for Shakespeare, this type of contrivance would be a definite nonstarter. Instead, through the best sort of poetry, he might first disguise theses characters in a cross-gender way, and then switch them back (but only for one character perhaps), and then switch them back again, after having them all fall in love. Standard Bard moves. More layers, more art.

American Shakespeare Center

I just got back from a visit to the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia to see a very interesting and unusual production of Timon of Athens. The visit included an hour long behind-the-scenes tour of the playhouse followed by the aforementioned play. In short, it was great, but you probably knew I would say that (I sometimes think that I like things too much, or rather see the merit in things too easily. Oh well. It makes for an entertained life).

The American Shakespeare Center is a playhouse that is an as-faithful-as-possible reproduction of the Blackfriar’s Playhouse active during Shakespeare’s time. It is the only one around today. Some pictures:

First, comments on the tour: It was great (there I go again!), a really first rate affair, mainly because the tour guide was so damn good. She made me realize, moments in, that all tour guides should be working actors. Entertaining, energetic, and informative, it was cool. Trust me.

The tour focused, at points, on the playhouse itself and the life and times of all things Shakespeare: the actors (both historically and in modern times), the facts and figures, the history, and the drama were all covered with equal aplomb. Most intriguingly, the guide described the details involved in staging real, live plays for real, live audiences, in real, live theaters. I found it fascinating, but, as you may have noticed, I’m a bit of a nerd for such things (and definately an outsider to that world). Some specific tour highlights, you ask? Here:

• Shakespeare was a member of the Lord’s Chamberlain’s Men, as you probably know, and by all accounts these guys were the team to beat back in the day. They kicked ass and took names, and when you visit a place such as the Blackfriar’s, you can really feel how amazing and great it must have been (and still is) to see great performances in great spaces.

• A focus at Blackfriar’s is to mimic the staging conditions of the original place so, as such, the productions have no directors, or rather, have lots of directors (everyone kind of directs themselves). This is apparently historically accurate (the concept of a director is only about 100 years old) and, contrary to what you might think, it works, at least in the example I saw. I find this interesting and wonder about its implications in terms of what impact this had on Shakespeare as a writer/actor/director. Again (we have seen this before), the actor seems to reign supreme in Shakespeare’s world.

• A decent bit of time was spent discussing the craft of acting and the life of a modern-day Shakespearean actor. This is no small thing. So much goes into it (not surprising, right?) and the tour guide did a great job describing all of the gory details around this interesting and complex life, from contracts to cue sheets and residencies to troupes, I didn’t expect to get such a comprehensive and informative “inside look." Needless to say, the dedication and work involved in being successful at this is mind boggling (at least to me) and, although I don’t know for sure, I’m going to guess that the pay is not in any way commensurate with the effort involved. Welcome to the Arts.

• The original Blackfriar’s was a Dominican monastery, which explains the “friar” part of the name. Additionally, the original Blackfriar’s was the first indoor theater and a revolution in its day. However, it was a very different experience from the Globe, the other, more familiar theater of Shakespeare’s time. It was a more upscale experience apparently (for example, the Blackfriar’s had no place for Groundlings). It was a place to see a play and to be seen seeing a play (there are seats behind and above the stage, terrible seats to see the action of the play but perfect seats for showing yourself off to the audience).

• The lighting was, in its day, also revolutionary. It consisted of multitudes of candle chandeliers, faithfully copied here using softly glowing electric bulbs (Interestingly, the five act play was integral to these contraptions in that the candles needed to be trimmed periodically. The ideal timing to do this, it turns out, is about five times, i.e., at the end of each act. This fact, as much as any other, contributed to the five act construction so prevalent in Shakespeare’s plays):

So, that’s Blackfriar’s. A great place to see and be. There’s no doubt I’ll be back some day. Concerning the actual play I saw there (this is a blog about plays, not places, after all), I’ll be posting that soon.

Anthony and Cleopatra - A Review

Here's a review of the Anthony and Cleopatra production I saw in New York. Apparently, it was a steaming pile of crap. Fortunately, I didn't notice (some critic I am). Oh well. I liked it. So sue me.

(30) Anthony and Cleopatra

Well, that break from this blog ended up lasting way longer that I had hoped. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), life intervened (in a good way), and I was too busy to get anything together. But alack! No more neglect! I am back and ready to roll on Anthony and Cleopatra, another great one, perhaps one of my favorites, which was a bit of a surprise (again, in a good way), because I had not yet come across this one in any context (aside from the historical), so all was fresh and new (again, with the exception of the history of it. I was familiar with the relationship between these two and the part they played in Augustus’ rise to power, just not familiar with any artistic interpretation of it…until now).

As in the past, I was able to read the play and then see a live performance. As usual, they complemented each other perfectly.  For the words, I used the Applause version of this play and found it laugh-out-loud great in the scene-by-scene commentary provided by the actress Janet Suzman. Her wry, enlightened, and thoroughly real comments were instrumental in comprehending and more importantly, enjoying, the play (Suzman was a great actress in her time and, in reading her comments, I really think there’s something to the theory that Shakespeare really wrote for actors and actresses. That was his true audience (don’t forget, he was one of them). Suzman’s wonderful comments clearly show, at every turn, that she “gets” the Bard, really gets him, and it makes you think that this may only be possible as a player in the play, not as a simple reader or viewer…but I digress).

Her commentary runs throughout the play, but I wanted to mention one comment in particular, towards the very end, where the action is proceeding to its violent and tragic conclusion. In describing Cleopatra’s end (spoiler alert), she points out that Shakespeare uses copious alliteration around the sound of the letter “S.” Sirrah, see thusly for yourself:

Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?

As Cleopatra commits suicide by subjecting herself to a venomous snake bite (death by asp, can it get any worse?), Suzman notes this alteration, and I could have easily missed it. On top of the poetry, plot, character development, and theme, the text gives the impression of a hissing snake. Reread the above quotation again out loud. See what I mean? I found more of this elsewhere (you’ll have to trust me) and found it fascinating in every case, the deliberate emulation of the snake’s hiss to deepen the horror for poor Cleopatra (and for voyeuristic us). It’s brilliant, another carefully crafted detail so deftly put forth that it heightens the experience and deepens the art at a level which registers viscerally (if not subconsciously) for reader.

Concerning the live version (I saw it performed live in New York last week), details abounded as well, but of a different sort. In one scene (I could look up exactly which one but I’m feeling a little lazy, and it really doesn’t matter), the three leaders of the Roman republic stand conversing in opposite corners of the stage, the great Triumvirate of Rome: Caesar, Anthony, and Lepidus. I noticed the care and deliberateness of their positions and the preciseness in the placement of their feet, a placement in complete accordance with their individual demeanors.

Caesar, a cool, calculating, political machine, stood firmly on the stage, feet aligned exactly adjacent, like a soldier at attention. Anthony, a blood-lusty, passionate, and wildly tragic hero, stood like a caged tiger, feet out of alignment, one foot stepped in front of the other, as if ready to leap up and eviscerate the enemy at any moment. And finally Lepidus, forever the awkward and bumbling odd-man-out, standing flatfooted and loose, duck-footed, almost comic, clearly doomed.

The stage direction here worked so well to forward the meaning of the play, in all its complexity, and again, like the alliteration mentioned earlier, is so subtle and, as such, so brilliant. And everything rests in these subtle details, doesn’t it? Therein lies the Great Art. The performer and the writer, in doing their jobs right, put forth their high-minded visions through a sort of deft and implicit layering, a layering that deepens the whole in the context of (and in differentiation from) The Whole, for the sake of Grandeur and Greatness, on the page as well as on the stage. I love it when that happens.

(29) Hamlet

Well, I’m back after a particularly vile illness. It was wonderful (thanks for asking), the kind of quick-hit illness that makes you reevaluate your place in this cold, dark universe. Talk about suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Anyway, I’m back and better than ever (or at least not throwing up every 20 minutes) and I do want to finish out this Hamlet business.

Interestingly, as I lay dying in bed, thoughts of this play certainly floated around in my infected mind, imparting whole new (and certainly unwanted) dimensions of meaning. To be or not to be and poor Yorick indeed. So right now, to me, this is a play about mortality, obviously and above all. I’m sure if I read it a year from now it will mean something else entirely, which is of course one of the reasons why it is so great. But anyway, some final bullet points:

• The movie version by Kenneth Branagh is really very good, excellent even. It provides a full performance (4 hours) with great acting across the board. As noted earlier, nothing beats seeing the play (as opposed to simply reading it). Never more true than in this case.
• Speaking of the movie, it’s interesting to point out that Branagh directs the play and is the lead actor. Additionally, the play-within-a-play, directed by Hamlet in the play, is also directed by Branagh (playing Hamlet of course). Everybody is directed by Shakespeare. Got it?
• It is cliché to say (oh well), but this is easily the best Shakespeare play I have yet read, and I have a hard time believing it will be supplanted by any of the others I have yet to read (and I have some pretty stellar ones left). It’s just that good. You could spend a lifetime studying this one play and, on your deathbed, find some new angle to it. Daily I think about something from it in the context of my day and wonder, when will all this noticing stuff stop? Hopefully never.
• One of my favorite scenes in the play is when Hamlet first encounters the ghost of his father, especially the father’s speech in this scene. This gives me the chills every time I read it. There are some hauntingly great lines in there. Also, it is clearly pivotal to the play in that before this scene, Hamlet is simply a grieving son. After this scene, he’s an unhinged, doomed, murderous maniac (of sorts). Also, for what it’s worth, this scene is done especially well in the Branagh movie. I showed my 10 year old son and he was totally enthralled so that must mean something, right?
• In some respects, this play boils down to an exploration of the “domino effect” that bad deeds almost always incur. Karma’s a bitch.
• The Sparknotes test (something I take and usually ace after reading every play) was particularly difficult this go around. I missed four questions (gasp!) to only earn an 84%, which is B work. I suck. Particularly irksome was missing the question about who was the first character to speak in the play…something I recorded in my own post only days earlier. In my defense, they offered both Bernardo and Francisco as answers so you had to remember which one went first in this tight scene, which is asking a lot. So eff them.

Hamlet – Act V

Well, I just finished Act V. It's a total bloodbath, in case you haven't heard. Almost everyone dies. That's it for now (brevity is the soul of wit, right?). I hope to finish the four hour Kenneth Branagh version tonight (very good so far) and publish some final thoughts soon after.

Hamlet – Act IV

Act IV. Let’s review where we are. Claudius “proves” his guilt by reacting to the play-within-a-play, freaking out when the king is murdered. Gertrude, Hamlet's mother and the queen, summons Hamlet to her chambers to angrily ask him what’s up. Polonius, an old noble, hides behind the chamber curtains, keeping an eye on things. Hamlet bursts in and berates his mother, discovers Polonius and kills him, generally acting all sorts of crazy throughout. Hamlet leaves and finds Claudius alone, in prayer. Almost killing him, he backs down (again).

After Hamlet drags Polonius’ dead corpse around a bit, Ophelia wanders in, mad as a loon. She commits suicide soon after. Laertes, her brother and Polonius’ son, is totally distraught over all this murdering and vows to kill Hamlet, with Claudio’s urging. The method: a swordfight with a poison-laced sword and, if that fails, a stiff drink from a lethally poisoned beverage.

Quite the soap opera, eh? The action is rising for sure; things are going from bad to worse, and how. That’s it for now, just along for the ride at this point. All set for the final act.

Oh yeah, one other thing. The first post on the blog was exactly one year ago. Imagine that.

Hamlet – Act III

For today’s post on act III, I thought I would lean on Shakespeare’s words, not mine (a good general policy, eh?) and do what everyone else seems to do when commenting on this act. If you recall from an earlier post, I mentioned the multiple and sometimes conflicting versions of each play floating around out there. First quartos (Q1), second quartos (Q2), bad quartos, good quartos, foul papers, first folios (F1), and so on, all different in their own unique ways and all part of the conversation, again each in their own way. There are so many versions that sometimes it's really hard to know which one is the “real” version (if this even matters…but more about that later).

This applies very much in the case of Hamlet, and the story is kind of interesting. Apparently, the first printed version to appear was a memorially reconstructed version in the summer of 1603, stolen by a hard-up actor looking for a buck. Recalled entirely from memory, this first version comes across as (surprise, surprise) corrupted and peculiar, with strange inconsistencies later “corrected” in the subsequent “cleaner” versions. Unlike other bad quartos, Q1 is thought to have come from the brain of an actor playing a minor character in the play (Marcellus?), which would make matters worse, wouldn’t it, in that one would question how much memory was correctly served by a character with only a few lines (relatively speaking)?

By all accounts, later versions (Q2 and F1) seem to provide a much more sensible play, from many perspectives (sequence of action, character consistency, language, etc.). Consider the famous “To be, or not to be” speech, as compared between Q1 and Q2. The Q1 version is very different (and placed differently in the play) as opposed to the later versions:

Q1 Version:
814: To be, or not to be, I there's the point,
815: To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all:
816: No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,
817: For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,
818: And borne before an euerlasting Iudge,
819: From whence no passenger euer retur'nd,
820: The vndiscouered country, at whose sight
821: The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd.
822: But for this, the ioyfull hope of this,
823: Whol'd beare the scornes and flattery of the world,
824: Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore?

Q2 Version:
1603: To be, or not to be, that is the question,
1604: Whether tis nobler in the minde to suffer
1605: The slings and arrowes of outragious fortune,
1606: Or to take Armes against a sea of troubles,
1607: And by opposing, end them, to die to sleepe
1608: No more, and by a sleepe, to say we end
1609: The hart-ake, and the thousand naturall shocks
1610: That flesh is heire to; tis a consumation
1611: Deuoutly to be wisht to die to sleepe,
1612: To sleepe, perchance to dreame, I there's the rub,
1613: For in that sleepe of death what dreames may come

Clearly, the Q2 version is way better, right? However, some say no, inasmuch as the purpose of this first version may have been different. It has been suggested that Q1 was maybe an alternate version, shortened and simplified for use by a small number of actors out and about on tour. This of course begs the following questions: What is the “real” version? What should we read and see as Hamlet and does this depend on purpose and context? What single version did Shakespeare intend (if any)? The answers to these questions have very interesting implications for how we experience Hamlet.

Or not. As an end note here, if you pick any modern version of Hamlet off of the shelf of any library or bookstore, it is almost definitely going to be a careful conglomeration of all the versions known, based on centuries of scholarship and consideration (with extensive notation all along the way). This is good, because I like that second version of the speech a lot better.