I love Shakespeare, and I loathe him.
His words are enervating and exasperating, his plots dizzying yet familiar, his characters lively, sexy, and dangerous. As amazing as it seems, William Shakespeare chronicled human passion and motivation–past, present and future–in less than 40 plays.
And yet, despite his having been dead for almost 400 years, he is still as slippery as an eel, unknowable, inexplicable. How many other artists are still so distant and unattainable so long after the production of their work? Sure, there are those who require as much study and inspire as much pondering, but Shakespeare persists as a kind of unique Gordian knot.
Last summer, I completed my course work on a Master of Letters degree in Early Modern Drama and sat for an exam to prove my five summers of study had been well spent. For three hours, on a late July afternoon, I pounded away at a keyboard and tried to produce a paper that drew on my years of research in a cohesive and sensitive manner. When it was over, I felt a little sick about the whole thing. Had I really been prepared? Had I made any sense? Had I adequately expressed my thoughts? Were my thoughts even reasonable? I couldn’t be sure.
Four days later, I sat down with my professors to defend my paper. I knew I was in trouble right away. The questions were too pointed, too exacting, my teachers too hard to read for my comfort. I battled back, floundered, soldiered on, and began to surprise myself with a growing confidence. And then I took a hit to head. My dear and beloved tutor, Emma Smith, said, “I’ve never heard anyone compare Richard II to Macbeth that way, by which I mean, I think it must be wrong.” Gunh!
Fortunately, miraculously, in fact, I passed. I got my degree and graduated in fine fashion. But I was left with a feeling of hollowness. I had spent five summers at Oxford University sitting at the feet of scholars and in the stacks of great libraries, and I felt like I had learned nothing. I had studied, and studied hard, but I was still so far outside, so far from clear and confident in my subject. I had seen the plays, read the plays, examined the plays, and still…nothing. How could that be?
And then I realized I was not alone. Shakespearean scholars do not continue to write and rewrite the same book; they keep writing new ones because there are always new questions to ask and answer, new mysteries to discover and solve, new problems to write down and sort out.
Shakespeare is exhausting because nothing about him stands still for long, no facet of his work is straight and clear no matter how brightly it gleams. We strive and search, and still he eludes us. And so, I keep searching because I want to know.
Luckily, I do learn a bit more with each search, and the reading and the viewing are more satisfying (or more frustrating–Declan Donnellan, I’m talking to you!) depending on what I see, but that’s what keeps me coming back for more, year after year.
By the way, checkout www.happybirthdayshakespeare.com today for more blog posts about the man we all love (despite ourselves).
Guest Post by Anne Carter Hutchinson
While it is called The Comedy of Errors, the National Theatre Company in London seems to have left out the “errors” part.
Director Dominic Cooke’s cast turned in stunning performances of Shakespeare’s comedy that were crisp and entertaining, and though there is certainly room to go over the top in this zany misadventure, this performance stopped short of caricature.
Now I should preface this review by stating that I am easily entertained in the theatre and have never had trouble suspending my disbelief. But I found the performance so tightly bound together by the cast that even the most sceptical of viewers would be hard pressed to say that he did not find humor in the production. The comic timing was spot on, the concept was believable, and the twins actually looked identical, to the point that even when they were on stage together, I could not tell the two Dromio characters, played by Daniel Poyser and Lucian Msamati, apart.
Set in a modern context, the set was rife with scaffolding and buildings that moved and converted to the various settings. The Phoenix, Antipholus’s (Lenny Henry) lodging, for instance, emerged from the back of the stage and wedged itself between two other buildings, presenting itself as a two story condominium complete with a neon sign and coordinated trim. Most of his wife Adriana’s (Claudie Blakely) opening scenes are delivered from the balcony with martini glass in hand, and it all plays perfectly to the miscommunication that ensues between the two characters who look like her husband.
My seat, thanks to the kind generosity of Jot and Quill editor, Josina Reaves, was just to the left of center stage in the front row, so at times, I felt as if I were part of the production. Being that close to the stage has a risk, often accentuating the slip-ups and missteps that naturally occur in a live production. Sometimes you can see backstage, for instance, and the illusion is broken. But so complete was the staging that even those moving around behind the scenes were in character, bolstering the concept of the busy city.
So, should you be lucky enough to live in proximity of London’s National Theatre, I highly recommend you catch this production before the end of its run on 1 April. I, for one, am glad that Josina allowed me to be a part of it. I WAS there!
Visitors at this week’s New York Comic Con are going to get sneak peak at a new Stan Lee creation: Romeo and Juliet: The War. On November 30, this collaboration between the creator of Spider-Man and X-Men and artist Skan Srisuwan will be released as a hardcover coffee table book, if you are so inclined.
This latest version is set in the way-far future and features the cyborg Montagues and the genetically-modified Capulets in the kind of feud that involves flying vehicles and insanely huge guns. Romeo, the cyborg, glows.
Having written that sentence, I need to put my head down. I like comic books and graphic novels, but a glowing Romeo? Wow.
I do have to say that the art is simply ethereal. Brian Truitt’s article in USA Today includes an exclusive preview of the book, and it’s astonishingly beautiful, if you like that sort of thing.
And yet, Stan Lee’s writing leaves a lot–a LOT–to be desired. Admittedly, his strength was always plotting and character development and not the bits that go in the thought bubbles, but you know how I feel about Shakespeare’s verse, don’t you? In case you don’t, I love it like a fat kid loves pudding. Lee’s version involves taking out lovely lines like, “I have no joy of this contract to-night:/It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;/Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be/Ere one can say ‘It lightens,’” with “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Really? Again, wow.
Still, you should check out Truitt’s piece in USA Today and marvel (heheheh!) at this new take on an old, old idea.
You know how they say, “One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch”? Well, I’ve finally had my one bad apple at the New Yorker Festival, and I’m still getting over that queasy feeling.
I’ve already shared my complete dissatisfaction with Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous with you, but I didn’t tell you anything about the event that featured the viewing.
In addition to a sneak peek of the film at the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) in Manhattan, the festival also billed the event as a conversation with James Shapiro, noted Shakespeare scholar and—perhaps most importantly—the author of Contested Will, and the film’s director Emmerich. Okay, I thought, then the $35 ticket and the ridiculous convenience fees will be worth it. Besides, I like seeing movies at the DGA; it’s in the same block as Carnegie Hall and the Russian Tea Room, so I always feel like I’m getting a little extra swagger with my flick, even though there are no popcorn or Twizzlers in the place.
Well, we know how the movie went, for me at least, but the crowd was pretty ecstatic about it. These people had clearly gotten their money’s worth, but I needed more. I needed to hear Shapiro validate my extreme irritation with the film, so while other disgusted audience members filed out, I stayed put.
I don’t know who the woman was who moderated this talk, but she was no-nonsense in a way that actually killed conversation. What she wanted (and was going to have, even if she had to cut somebody) was a series of statements from the two parties, and no monkey business. Turns out, that might have been for the best, because by the time Shapiro was done with his opening statement, these two men hated each other.
Let me back up. I’ve seen Shapiro talk four times now. This is a man with a head full of knowledge and a lovely way of expressing himself. When he’s irritated, though, his glibness can become razor sharp. Moreover, his face registers disdain and disapproval in ways that carry all the way to the back of the room, as they say. I’ve heard him speak on the question of the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays before, so I was expecting him to be tough; I wasn’t expecting him to have been rendered speechless by his dissatisfaction.
Not totally speechless, of course, but this was not Shapiro on his A-game. One of the first things he said was, “This movie is factually inaccurate in virtually every respect.” There was a smattering a applause for that statement—including mine—but he seemed to have trouble framing the specifics of his assertion. Rather than a litany of details that Emmerich had gotten wrong, he got stuck on the point Emmerich seemed to be making that if the movie was true at all, than Shakespeare/Oxford was merely a propagandist, not an artist, not even an artisan making saleable goods for consumption. “I’ve long been interested in why smart people believe dumb things,” he said, repeating that there isn’t a shred of evidence to connecting Oxford to the plays, but he couldn’t put forward the more compelling material he does have.
To be clear, though, this was not a debate and not a point-counterpoint display of research and scholarship. Emmerich was expressing his intentions with the film and the premises he worked with, and Shapiro was expressing his concern that people might believe him. He seemed almost choked by the notion that Emmerich could take such a high post with the authorship issue without a reason. It would seem that Emmerich and his team are packaging this movie with a documentary and document packet for schoolchildren, so they can learn the truth of these plays as Emmerich and his, um, scholars have presented it. Shapiro wanted to know why Emmerich thought he needed to do that, but he couldn’t quite express why he was so incensed by the idea, aside from his contention that the facts were wrong, though he could barely express which ones he meant.
There were some questions after that short chat, and what the questions revealed was how ready people were to buy the story Emmerich had presented because they found the film entertaining. Not one person questioned Emmerich’s sources or his process or even the fact that in addition to destroying Shakespeare’s myth in this movie, he seemed very interested in destroying Jonson’s and Elizabeth’s as well. And for what?
Shapiro did manage to land one solid punch. When Emmerich asked why there was no evidence that this great playwright had ever owned and bequeathed books and manuscripts to his children—a piece of proof for him that Shakespeare was a Stratford merchant and not a London writer—Shapiro pointed out that Shakespeare had indeed left books and manuscripts to his son-in-law…on the second page of his will. Emmerich said, “Well, I did not know that,” and Shapiro countered with, “Well, you shouldn’t have skipped that part of your research.” And I knew he was finally recovering from his head punch and was ready to get into the ring with some grit. But it was over. The moderator rang the bell, so to speak, and sent us out into the rain without anything substantial to take away with us.
And that’s why I’m sick of the New Yorker Festival: exorbitant ticket prices, inane events, and conversations that aren’t actually conversations. It felt like I’d been lured to some back alley, hit in the head with a sap, and rolled like a drunk for all the money in my pockets. But I am wiser than I was before. I will never follow a hooker again…I mean, get suckered into jumping at those tickets the second they go on sale. I’ll wait, instead, for a nice bright moment, like the kind the Shakespeare Society provides, and I’ll put my money on that!
The New Yorker Festival, Director’s Guild of America, September 30, 2011
I’ll admit, I love a good train wreck, but they’re absolutely no fun when people you love are trapped in them. So is the case with the disaster that is Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous.
True, Emmerich is best known for disaster movies like Independence Day, Godzilla, 2012, and The Day After Tomorrow, and true, those movies were disasters for more than one or even two reasons, but I really thought he would have less to blow up in a movie set in the seventeenth century. Turns out, without New York City to focus his wrath upon, he just chose to blow up history.
As most everyone knows, Anonymous takes one of the more serious Shakespeare authorship theories and posits that Edward deVere, the Earl of Oxford, was the true writer of the plays we now attribute to William Shakespeare. The Oxfordians, as those theorists are called, claim that the autobiographical details of deVere’s life more closely line up with the plays than Shakespeare’s life. They also claim that no one with Shakespeare’s education could have written such enduring works of literature, only a nobleman could have dreamt of such poetry. If I excuse the grotesque classism in that idea and ignore what we know of 16th century grammar schools (which is that they provided excellent classical educations), I can at least accept that the historical elements of deVere’s life make for a compelling case.
What Emmerich does with the debate, however, is to trash the historial record of deVere, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and Philip Henslowe, not to mention Elizabeth I, and William and Robert Cecil, the Lords Burghley, and most of London. He is clearly invested in making the point that deVere was touched with genius and Shakespeare was an opportunistic lout who cheated his way into fame, and there was no fact so big that he couldn’t climb right over it to make that happen.
The story follows, non-linearly, the progress of Edward (as he’s called) through and out of Elizabeth’s court. Young Edward displays a notable precocity by writing and staging A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the pretty young queen, played sexily by Joely Richardson. As Edward (Jamie Campbell Bower) grows up, he proves to be a bit of a hothead, which lands him in trouble, in a marriage he doesn’t want to William Cecil’s daughter, and quickly thereafter into the queen’s bed. From there, some simply ridiculous things happen (including the “revelation” that Elizabeth was mother to a slew of illegitimate children who all wound up in the homes of random childless nobles), and eventually Edward winds up out of favor.
Fast-forward a whole lot of years, and the delicious Henry Wriothsley, Earl of Southampton (Xavier Samuel), takes Edward (now played ably by Rhys Ifans) to the Rose Theatre to see a play by young upstart Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armest0). The play is Every Man in His Humour, and Jonson is arrested in the middle of the performance for sedition, which is more or less true. Jonson is then bailed out by Edward who presses him to stage his play, Henry V, and put his name on it. Jonson complies with staging it, but worried about his reputation, avoids putting any name on it until he’s seen it, at which point the grubby little actor William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall) makes the claim instead.
More stuff happens, including the rise of Shakespeare as a noted playwright, the rise of the Globe (with the help of some nasty fundraising on Shakespeare’s part), and the destruction of the Earl of Essex by William Cecil (David Thewlis) and his toady of a son, Robert (Edward Hogg). The framework for these plot points is true, but the substance is shoddy and full of holes. The overlapping of the storylines is supposedly kept clear by having different actors play the parts at different ages, mostly (most effectively in the case of Richardson and her mother Vanessa Redgrave, who shared Elizabeth), but Edward, Southampton, and Essex are all blond and attractive, and you really need to have an eye for blond men if you want to keep them straight.
But these are minor irritations. The story is ridiculous, the authorship claims laughable (not because of the serious debate, but because the fictional claims are so extremely fictional), and the history offensively mishandled, but the worst of it is the tone.
More than once, the audience at the plays is called a mob. Though the term has its usefulness and its historical weight, for the film to lean so heavily on why an audience was little more than a dumb hoard is to mock playgoers in a terrible way. Edward himself suggests that his genius might actually be madness or possession, and Jonson and Marlowe are more often seen drunk and bitter than they are creative and engaged with the work of the theater. Words are treated like a sickness, plays pathetic wastes, and playwrights failed humans with little to recommend them to queen or country. The language of the screenplay further reflects that contempt being neither lyrical nor witty, never smart, often laughable. This is a much-handled script, and the result is a mess that mocks its very substance.
Emmerich manages to get quite a few literal bangs out of this movie, but the figurative ones–the knocks to the record of time, the dignity of playwrighting and playgoing, and the heart of the early modern dramatic period–are appalling. It’s not a good movie, but none of Emmerich’s movies really are. We watch them because they offer a bit of fun and excitement. I wouldn’t put money down for either with Anonymous.
If you live in New York, you’re used to people asking you for money. Sometimes they’re kids on the subway selling fruit snacks and peanut M&Ms; sometimes they’re guys singing old gospel songs or dudes who breakdance. Well, this time they’re Shakespeare companies!
First up, on Tuesday, October 4, is the Frog and Peach Theatre Co. Inc., which is doing a staged reading of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to get your dough. The fabulously bombastic Rip Torn will star alongside Austin Pendleton, Estelle Parsons, and Shirley Knight. Foreigner’s Ian McDonald is composing and performing the music, so ’80s rock fans, get your lighters out! Tickets are $99 in advance, $149 at the door, and there will be cocktails and glamour, according to the website, so that’s something. Ooh, and the reading is only 70 minutes long, so I’m guessing you’re paying for a lot of glamour, in addition to supporting “New York’s most exciting classical theatre ensemble,” so that’s something else.
On Monday, October 10, the Red Bull Theater will put on a staged reading of Ben Jonson’s nasty masterpiece, Volpone (which was on my wish list for the year, by the way!). For $100, you get the reading and a party; bump your donation up to $250, and you get premium seating (which, in their small theater, might accidentally put you on the stage, so beware) and VIP pre-show cocktails. If I’m reading this right, you could conceivably watch the play liquored up, then get completely hammered afterward! And you get to see the ever-awesome F. Murray Abraham, Richard Easton, and Jay O. Sanders, while bumping butts with Laila Robins, Richard Thomas, and John Douglas Thompson. Yowza!
Order your tickets for Julius Caesar by stabbing this link, and get foxy with Volpone with this one.
I’m sorry that just happened.
Across the Interweb, blog posts and articles abound with new admissions into the “Shakespeare is an overrated hack” club. What’s so interesting is the defensive tone the articles take, as though the writers are sure they’ll be awakened in the night by the sound of breaking glass as pitchfork- and torch-wielding English teachers fill their lawns and demand they take it back or else.
I don’t know why admitting a dislike for Shakespeare gets a headline, but celebrities of all sorts are starting to confess their anti-Bardolatry, and it always seems to bring the newsies running.
Noel Gallagher, failed rock star, thought Jude Law’s Hamlet was a waste of time. Okay. I thought it was kind of a drag, too, but I work with Shakespeare for a living, so people have occasionally asked for my opinion on the matter. Gallagher’s not exactly in the theater/English literature/entertainment review business, so why does it matter that he couldn’t understand “what the fuck was going on”? Are we judging him for that now, in addition to judging him for his bad attitude and mediocre music? Why?
And why bug the poor actors about it. Jane Horrocks debuted a new TV show this summer, but the headline The Telegraph ran when they wrote about it wasn’t “Jane Horrocks’ New Show is Delightful and Funny”; it was “Jane Horrocks: ‘Shakespeare is Inaccessible.’” Funnily enough, the article is meant to focus on her show, but that Shakespeare thing was a scoop, apparently, and they just had to jump on that. Hmmm… Honestly, there’s a vague hint in the piece that she might not be so bright for having trouble with the iambic pentameter in Macbeth. The judgment is, frankly, dumb because quite a bit of Macbeth is just hard to get your tongue around, no matter how well-studied you are. Leave her alone, Murray Wardrop! It’s not her fault!
And then there’s Glenn Ingersoll, whose blog Dare I Read? has not one but two posts about why he doesn’t like Shakespeare. I’m still not clear about why he thinks it matters, but he’s given this quite a lot of thought. Oh, and there’s a video on YouTube of a guy reciting Bassanio’s lines from the end of The Merchant of Venice to a dog who freaks out. According to the video, the dog doesn’t like Shakespeare either, and this time, that’s just funny.
Even the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has gotten in on the act, wondering whether people out there actually do like Shakespeare at all or whether we’re all just posturing. Maybe the question is their version of posturing, ’cause I’m thinking they actually like him. Still it says something that they are entertaining the question, as though they really want to be with the cool kids who hang out on the other side of the playground fence and snark at that Shakespeare dude.
Still, I say to you, whoever you are, I love Shakespeare, but I don’t care whether or not you do. Honestly, it’s okay with me if you don’t. It’s okay with most of us Shakespeare lovers if you don’t love Shakespeare, too. Some people don’t like chocolate either, but they don’t have to write sheepish blog posts about it. Admittedly, it’s not okay with everyone that Shakespeare isn’t on the hit parade, but those guys probably take cheese too seriously, too. Personally, I don’t see not liking Shakespeare as a failing. It makes some conversations uncomfortable, but, hey, we can always talk about sports.
How ’bout those Yankees?
I’m not going to get on a soapbox about this, but I’m finding it hard not to frown about the fact that Shakespeare will cease to be a mandatory part of the high school curriculum in New Zealand in 2012. Teachers can still opt to teach it, but students will only be tested on it if they choose (and let’s be honest: these days when we talk about teaching, we’re talking about testing), and most haven’t chosen the Shakespeare assessment in a while.
They have, apparently, been getting top marks by writing about Twilight, though. And I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
I think it’s fair to drop Shakespeare from the curriculum if you’re replacing it with similarly textured, challenging material (Paradise Lost, for instance, or The Canterbury Tales), but not if you’re just replacing it with pop fiction. Come on! Please! Sigh.
Read the article from Auckland Now for yourself. I can’t even lift my head up right now.
You might know that I dig the American Shakespeare Center, but I’ll tell you again. The ASC is fantastic! Located in Staunton, Virginia, not far from the University of Virginia’s campus in Charlottesville, the ASC is nestled in a sweet little historic town and boasts the only replica of a Jacobean indoor theater in existence (thus far), the Blackfriars Playouse.
On September 21, the Playhouse celebrates its tenth birthday, and they are sharing their presents with you! Show up at the theater that day and you’ll get free cake (cake!); see a performance of Henry V that night and you’ll get $10 off your ticket (the code is FREECAKE). Plus, you’ll get a nice talking to by the Co-Founder and Director of Mission (how cool is that title?) Ralph Alan Cohen before the performance that night.
If you’re in the area or just looking for a reason to take a midweek road trip–and who isn’t?–check out the ASC’s Blackfriars Playhouse.
Terminator the Second Gets a Website!
I don’t live in Nashville, so I may never get to see this amazing production, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get excited about Husky Jackal Theater’s Terminator the Second, does it? This original work rewrites the James Cameron sequel as though Shakespeare got his hands on it and put it on stage. The production will open in Nashville in October, but they’ve got their website up and running, so we can at least take a peek at the rehearsals.
When I wrote about them in April, Husky Jackal had just completed a crazily successful Kickstarter campaign to turn what would have been a one-night stand into a full production. Now, they’ve got a website, which is pretty charming, and you can get info on the history of the production, cast photos and bios, and behind-the-scenes photos with a touch of sci-fi panache. There’s also a trailer video, if you just can’t imagine what Terminator as Shakespeare would have written it could possibly look like.
Go to the site, then geek out to your friends and neighbors. Admit it, this is pretty cool!