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.