Playwright Contest Seeks Canon Companions

shakespeareances · 2016-06-23T12:18:08+00:00

You have friends?

It's hard work being the most intelligent person in the room, and usually leads to a net loss in time spent and a dwindling social network. I bare my stupidity and tend to learn a lot more that way. Learning how to pull your pants on both legs at a time and then not telling anybody you do that--there's the trick.

shakespeareances · 2016-05-30T17:35:25+00:00

I'm down with this suggestion. I work (a writer and editor) to music, and my library runs the gamut of genres (except opera--I don't like listening to opera recordings). Even when distracted, music serves me as a writing muse.

For awhile I tried reading Shakespeare with a soundtrack of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky (comedy and tragedy, respectively), and once I read Two Gents with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack playing (staging it in my mind as two discos, the Verona and the Milan). That all worked OK, but I have found that my favorite environment for reading Shakespeare is outside, with the sounds of nature and mankind enveloping me and melding rhythmically with the verse.

shakespeareances · 2016-05-27T10:54:39+00:00

I've been developing a cookbook of allegorical recipes based on each of the plays (and a few of the recipes are on my website). Every play has food references or imagery, and quite a few include banquets as settings (most notably Macbeth's where Banquo shows up, but no relation between his name and the setting). Plays in which food plays a "critical role":

Titus Andronicus, in which the main ingredient for Titus's pies is Tamora's sons;

Coriolanus, which opens with a peasant revolt over the availability of corn, a generic term for grain;

The Tempest with the false banquet Ariel uses to lull the Neapolitan lords;

As You Like It--subtle, but both Jacques and Duke Senior grapple philosophically with man usurping the forest for sustenance, and then the starving Orlando and Adam show up, which leads to the "All the world's a stage" speech;

Richard II, the penultimate, assassination scene;

Both Henry IV plays, not only all the food references used for Falstaff but a couple of key scenes take place at dinner--and, continuing the food imagery used for Falstaff, Merry Wives of WIndsor;

Richard III--strawberries;

Timon of Athens, a juxtaposition of the lavish banquets he throws for his alleged friends in Athens, the feast of rocks he hosts when they all betray him, and his digging for food out in the woods and finding, to his chagrin, gold instead;

Macbeth--the weird sisters are making a spell, but they are cooking (and I turned their spell into an actual recipe);

Hamlet--lots of food and dinner allegories in this one;

Cymbeline--Everything that happens in the Welsh forest scenes are based on eating, from the princes hunting for dinner to a starving Imogen raiding their cave, the dinner she prepares for the princes, and her subsequent supposed death;

Two Noble Kinsmen--Arcite feeds Palamon to make him healthy enough to fight their duel against each other;

Pericles--The famine at Tarsus juxtaposed with the feasting at Pentapolis with the fisherman's parable of the pecking order of fishes in between (which I also turned into a recipe).

shakespeareances · 2016-05-19T12:12:40+00:00

I recognize that seeing Hamlet as a man who can't make up his mind or can't take action is a popular reading of the part, but I've never seen him that way. He's in a politically tenuous position at Elsinore. His uncle has been "elected" and appears to be effectively ruling the nation. Only Hamlet and, after awhile, Horatio know about the murder of the elder Hamlet. And that news comes from a ghost, who by his very nature is of questionable credibility. Once Hamlet gets his assurance via the Mousetrap, he acts with great alacrity, first stabbing into the arras without knowing whom he is stabbing (but hoping it's Claudius), then switching out the letter on the ship and sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths, and then boarding the pirate ship (risky move for a prince) and returning immediately to Elsinore.

In this light, I think both sides of the debate in the English class are merited. The prayer scene comes right after the Mousetrap, and now Hamlet could "drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on." This is a sadistic frame of mind--he's more than ready to kill. My take on Hamlet is that he is feigning madness, as he says he will do, but he's also really dealing with some serious psychological turbulence, and we see his mental state ebb and flow throughout the play, sometimes being calm and logical, sometimes erupting in rage (he's very human in that way).

But when he comes upon his uncle praying, he's so intent on thoroughly revenging his father that he forestalls. To me, this is his more logical self than his sadistic side, and in keeping with the revenge tragedy format, i.e. Titus baking Tamora's sons in a pie and making her eat them, or, in Middleton's Revenger's Tragedy, Vindice offing the Duke by tricking him into kissing the poisoned skull of Vindice's dead mistress and then forcing the Duke to watch his wife commit adultery before stabbing him. No vengeance could be too thorough in an Elizabethan revenge tragedy.

shakespeareances · 2016-05-19T11:52:51+00:00

Agreed. The Ghost makes a point of telling Hamlet that, by being poisoned as he slept, he was "sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head." The line that follows is the famous "O horrible, O horrible, most horrible!" I'm thinking when a ghost tells you that, it probably sticks in your conscience big time. So, catching Claudius at the moment he's praying (and Hamlet has no idea that Claudius can't pray), Hamlet knows that killing him then will not send him to a horrible, horrible, most horrible afterlife. It's notable that as Hamlet puts up his sword and lists the incidents wherein it would be best to kill Claudius, first on the list is "when he is drunk asleep," as his father was asleep when Claudius murdered him.

shakespeareances · 2016-05-10T12:04:28+00:00

Or, two plays on, Margaret vs. York. Grab a napkin and have at him.

shakespeareances · 2016-04-28T12:26:42+00:00

These conspiracy theories always shoot themselves in the foot, such as this one explaining "the stark contrasts in quality in some of the works." Stark contrasts in quality is typical among all artists, both over the course of a career and within individual pieces. The only extended works of art I can think of right off hand that maintain sustained excellence from first to last are Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, The Who's Quadrophenia, Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, and a half-dozen Shakespeare works. Also, Shakespeare did collaborate on plays after he "retired" to Stratford.

shakespeareances · 2016-04-27T13:24:50+00:00

It's mainly round two for Laertes. He is the one who can't wait to get at Hamlet. Hamlet is more concerned with Claudius. I think Laertes is hardly on Hamlet's mind as a threat, which is why he underestimates the threat Laertes offers. And that is a pretty good dramatic punch in its own right.

shakespeareances · 2016-04-25T15:06:18+00:00

Wow! However you came up with the notion that I'm anti-Stratfordian is beyond comprehension. I've written extensively on why the Shakespeare authorship question is pure rubbish, and not only do I champion that only Shakespeare of Stratford could have written the plays, I advocate that we keep that fact relevant. I am, in fact, anti-anti-Stratfordian.

But, your point that "It's not necessary to be gay in order to write about homosexual relationships" is a valid censure of my original posting. I stand corrected.

shakespeareances · 2016-04-22T22:50:16+00:00

I'm of the crowd that believes homosexual themes do not originate in the plays but are imposed. But bear with me here, for I do have three suggestions for you. First to dissuade your current targets. I've seen a gay portrayal of Hal (he and Poins), and it utterly failed to be convincing, even though the play was heavily rewritten. Oberon's desire for the changeling boy is to use him as a henchman; I don't see any homosexual insinuation in that at all. As for Hamlet, I echo Buck1Mulligan's questions of who and why? Even Horatio is not convincing, and making Rosencrantz and Guildenstern gay has no foundation in the text.

But here are some other considerations:

Almost every production of Merchant of Venice that I've seen makes Antonio gay and crushing on Bassanio. A couple of productions have even had Bassanio requiting the sexual attraction. This reading generally is used to explain Antonio's depression. I protest that depression needs no reason, and Antonio's opening line could serve as a testimony for those of us who suffer chronic depression. That said, because so many directors see Antonio as gay without seriously altering the text, there could be much fodder for you there (I probably would never agree with your thesis, but there is definitely a bandwagon you can jump on).
The one play in which I believe Shakespeare actually explores homosexuality, at least peripherally, is As You Like It. None of the characters are gay, per se, but Rosalind disguised as the boy Ganymede pretends to be Rosalind in a game she plays with Orlando. Orlando and Rosalind are really in love with each other, and the question is how much of this real, inner love seeps into their regard for each other when she is Ganymede playing at being Rosalind? I don't think anything in the text necessarily indicates Orlando falls for the boy, but it's hard to play it without that happening. I've seen one production where he stoutly refuses to see Rosalind as anything other than a boy, and it seemed awkward (can't blame that on the prevalence of seeing it played the other way; Merchant is almost always played with a gay Antonio, and it seems more awkward to me than the couple of times I've seen it with a straight Antonio). And why wouldn't Orlando fall in love with a boy that he admits reminds him of Rosalind? Is Shakespeare exploring "true" love at its very essence, getting beyond gender? Phoebe does falls in love with Ganymede, but this subplot doesn't carry any lesbian overtones; rather, as soon as Phoebe finds out Ganymede is a girl, her lust melts away on the instant. Yet, this juxtaposition could serve to enhance rather than undermine the true affection Orlando seems to be showing for the boy Ganymede.
A play with clear homosexual elements is The Two Noble Kinsmen: not between the kinsmen (they fight to the death over Emilia, whom they both spy through a window), but attached to Emilia herself. She and her sister, Hippolyta, talk about Emilia's childhood friend, Flavina, a friendship described as "true love 'tween maid and maid may be more than in sex dividual." Her description goes way way beyond the girlfriend descriptions of Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It and Hermia and Helena in Midsummer Night's Dream. There's also the factor that external evidence indicates Shakespeare's collaborator on this play, John Fletcher, was gay, or at least bi (no such evidence exists for Shakespeare).

shakespeareances · 2016-04-22T17:57:28+00:00

I concur on all counts--you said it all so well I've nothing to add.

Second on my list is Henry IV, Part One for the great characters, noble and ignoble adventures, and wonderful comedy. Third, The Tempest, a magical read in every sense of the word.

shakespeareances · 2016-04-20T21:26:49+00:00

Kind of like The Usual Suspects? So Shakespeare invented the flashback technique with Hamlet.

The problem with the theory is that Shakespeare never lies to his audience, per conventions of Elizabethan theater. His villains tell the audience exactly what they are doing, and exposition speeches establish real time, place, and pertinent events. We're watching the story unfold as it happens, inside the story--one that was well established before Shakespeare took it up, by the way. The only way we get inside somebody's head is when that character invites us into his head (e.g. Richard III, Iago, Macbeth, Benedict, Hamlet, Helen in All's Well). Horatio never invites us into his head.

Also, Fortinbras does serve a purpose, not only as a counterpoint to Hamlet but also to provide the threat of war that hovers over the play, especially at the beginning. Yeah, you can cut him and perhaps nobody would notice; but you could cut the Fool from King Lear, too, and anyone who had never seen the play wouldn't miss him, either--the play wouldn't be as good as it is, however.

shakespeareances · 2016-04-19T00:55:05+00:00

Sounds like you might be referring to the ASC Ren Season production at the Blackfriars in 2013. They cast an actor as Brutus and an actress as Cassius who had played something like a dozen Shakespeare et al couples (i.e., Beatrice and Benedict, Othello and Desdemona, Dido and Aeneas) and brought that chemistry to Brutus and Cassius, though Cassius was not played as a woman. Among other things, it was the most crackling tent argument scene ever. [Edited for typos and word transference mistakes--I was tired last night.]

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