Blog 14: What were you thinking, Shakespeare?

What were you thinking Shakespeare when you set off to London to become an actor? Were you trying to distance yourself from the age gap that separated Anne and you? Did you really poach a deer? Those always seem so dramatic to me. Were you trying to find yourself in your salad days? I think about you in these moments, unsure of what lies ahead, possibly penniless, your head filled with ideas. Did you always have ideas? Did you dream of Rosalynd, of Titania? Were you nightmares ruled by Iago, or furtive vision of Caliban? Did you steal any material? I’m sure Marlowe appreciated the shout outs, but I have a feeling Greene would not have been crazy about The Winter’s Tale.  

What were you thinking when you wrote Lear? Did it pain you to send Cordelia into her eternal rest in such a way? Did it delight you? Did you always intend for Romeo and Juliet to die? Did you secretly wish Lady Macbeth could have gotten away with it? What did you think about love? That one puzzles me, I must say. You give us Beatrice and Benedick while Othello and Desdemona lurk in the horizon, and behind them Leontes and Hermione. Were you excited to pull a fast one in the statue scene? Was that your attempt at reconciliation? Is the real enemy time, unrelenting, tireless, time that cruelly transforms the Ephesus of our youth in the deserted islands of our autumns?

Or were you just doing your job, writing your own hybrid stories for coterie and audiences, trying to figure out the next trend and stay ahead of new, hungrier reflections of yourself? I can’t think of this possibility for too long. It breaks my heart to tell you the truth when I do not imagine you passionately hunched over a candlelit table, paper and quill in hand, frantically marking the enchanting cadence of Portia, Hamlet. That too is pretty dramatic, I know. But your shadow looms so large that it’s hard not to give you the god-like treatment, every now and then. The creator of worlds and the strange people in them. Did you see yourself in anyone you wrote? People are too quick to tie you to your characters and speculate on your mood, but it’s hard to resist (I know for a fact you were hung over when you wrote Macbeth). Harold Bloom says you invented us, and as much as it pains me to admit it, sometimes I think he’s right. Do you know Harold Bloom? If not, don’t waste your time. Read Mike Bristol, Barbara Freedman, and Stephen Orgel instead.    

What were you thinking about the world you lived in? Did you have any regret once you called Stratford your home again? Did Jonson owe you money? Tom Stoppard wrote about your last days, and it’s disturbing because a lot of it goes against the image of you that I crafted for myself, but it somehow feels so accurate. Did you struggle to finish The Two Noble Kinsmen and ask Fletcher for help? Was he stuck on Henry VIII and came to you? Did you have anything to do with Cardenio? I don’t think you would have relegated Don Quixote to that subplot. May be you just did not have the energy anymore.  

I wonder what you would do or say in today’s world. What you would write about it. Would you be amused? Fascinated? Disgusted? Things never change, I suppose. If a captain of the guard cannot escape the color of his skin, what chance does a kid in a hoodie have? What would you be doing today, Shakespeare? I often wonder. You’d be litigious, I know that much. Copyrights seem like your thing. I have a feeling you would like the internet and rail against reality TV (until you get you own show). Would you still write? Would you disown anything you’ve created? No one will call The Two Gentlemen of Verona a masterpiece but it has strong qualities. I have strong qualities but I sometimes struggle in your shadow. In my mind I know you and write for you (don’t tell anyone), and that’s hard. And it’s rewarding. And it’s common, too common on occasion. I read what you wrote and I get it more than I get myself sometimes. I see what you wrote performed and I am moved to set off to my London, poach my deer and adorn beautified feathers.   

I think of you, Shakespeare, in those times where things are grim and when sound and fury signify nothing. I thought of you when my sister left us too early after being with us for too long and I think of you as my father fades away, fumbling his sheets. I also thought of you the day I married Emily, the moment where I held my godson in my arms for the first time and yes, odd as it may seem, I think of you when I watch baseball, where the world is a stage and the men are players. Sports remind me of you, mostly in the way we think about it and the people that play it. You are a big part of my life. I read you, write you, I teach you to students. I quote you, sometimes out of pleasure, sometimes to sound smart. There’s so much more I want to ask you, but doing so would take a lot of fun out of it, like meeting some of your favorite books but realizing the mundane world in which they exist. I guess the rest is silence at this point.

Thanks,

J. F.

PS: I am applying for a tenure-track at Yale and I’d love if you could serve as one of my referees.

   

Blog 13: Shakespeare, Fair-weather M.D.

Shakespeare was many things throughout his career: writer, playwright, poet, actor, businessman, theatre owner … He was also an avid reader nay, consumer, of written material, which he recycled generously in his own plays. As a window into early modern culture, the plays offer a cornucopia of subject which likely piqued the bard’s interest to varying degrees: history, mythology, science, libations, zoology… the list goes on. Among these, Shakespeare’s engagement with medical matters has always fascinated me.

I do not wish to rehash David Hoeniger’s wonderful study of medical allusions in Shakespearean drama,[1] nor to go down the historicist rabbit hole by pointing out that Shakespeare‘s son-in-law, John Hall, was a physician.[2] Rather, my interest rests in the idea that too often, Shakespeare and his works are used as a vehicle for an ideology, as if the material found in the plays spoke in unison for a given doctrine or philosophical current. Shakespeare was catholic, protestant, Marxist, anarchist, Lutheran, stonemason, a bad tipper, etc. In few other fields is such a practice more current than when it comes to determining his relationship to medical science. Critics virtually trip over one another in making the claim for Shakespeare’s Hippocratic allegiances: he followed Galen, he aligned with Aristotle, he was influence by Timothy Bright and Robert Burton, he was a disciple of Paracelsus … There is nothing overly preposterous about any of these claims since, evidence can be found throughout the canon that supports them at least partially. At their core, they signify his knowledge of all these authors and their philosophies.  

My larger point is that in pigeonholing Shakespeare within such schools of medical thoughts, we tend to forget that he was in the business of popular theater. More so than with perhaps “touchier” early modern issues such as religion or politics, Shakespeare was free to hopscotch from one medical theory to another in order to suit the themes and concerns of whatever play he produced. Shakespeare’s engagement with medicine is thus inherently multifocal. His treatment of humours within his comedies speaks to this point at considerable lengths. Comic characters repeatedly express themselves, comment upon, or critique one another’s humoural states, and do so mainly by drawing on the humoural lexicon introduced by Galen; a matrix of balance, excess, cold, heat, and temperament that had morphed into a characterial shorthand by the time Shakespeare began writing for the theatre. Yet, the comedies also carry other perspective on humours, some which recall Aristotle’s discussion of geniality, others that reference the more contemporary ideas of Burton, Ficino, or Thomas Wright. Neither end of the spectrum holds dominion over the other in terms of determining what Shakespeare believed in. Opportunisms ruled the day, and Shakespeare had several theories to choose from when crafting a certain scene, passage or character.

Uncovering whatever Shakespeare might have believed—medically—would be a fascinating undertaking, but it is as extraordinary to witness the mastery with which he can blend writers, ideas, and doctrines for the sake of dramatic representation. It all comes down to the Jaws theory:[3] During the production of the motion picture, author Peter Benchley often found himself at odds with director Stephen Spielberg concerning the changes the latter was making to his original work. Benchley was particularly critical of alterations made to the story’s climactic ending: Spielberg’s version, which he deemed far too extravagant and unrealistic, showed protagonist Martin Brody shooting an air tank placed in the shark’s mouth, causing it to explode. Spielberg’s reply was that if he could hold the audience’s attention in his hand for the duration of the film, they would believe whatever finale he would then throw at them. The legitimacy of this Hollywood anecdote resides beyond the scope of this blog. Yet, it illustrates a process that I recognize as salient in terms of Shakespeare’s reworking medical science: everything seemingly goes as long as it makes a good play.

Now, take two sonnets and call me in the morning.

Excitement:

The Shakespeare Performance and Research Team Seminar Series continue next week and it is a treat, Paul Yachnin’s will be speaking about visual field in Cymbeline on November 25^th. The SPRiTE meetings are always stimulating and yield very interesting conversations and ideas. Come check it out!

Smooshy:

Listen here, How to Get Away with Murder, I am trying soooooo hard to like you (even if Emily has already given up on you). And you have been good if not great in some regards. For one thing, you have a bona fide MVP in Viola Davis, who infuses so much life in Annalise that some scenes are hypnotically good (even the Dangerous Liaisons “taking the makeup off” rip off). Yet every time you do something good, you immediately cancel it with something idiotic: a character trips on a pile of boxes and falls face first in the one document they need to crack the case, someone actually utters the words “no one has ever believed in me this way,” and character inevitably have frantic sex in public spaces to the beats of techno music. Get your act together HTHAWM,[4] or I’ll do to you what I did to the Chicago Code. What’s the Chicago Code, you ask? Exactly…

     

Shout out:

I was fortunate enough a few weeks ago to come into my former supervisor’s class and talk to her students about Hamlet.[5] It was fantastic. I enjoy myself, as I usually do when I get to hear myself talk for extended periods of time, but what really thrilled me was hearing their opinions about the play and its brooding protagonist.  It’s refreshing to listen to readers who have just read the play for the first time. One of the pitfalls of studying Shakespeare (or anything, for that matter) for a lengthy period of time is that you can become trapped in your ideas about a text. My discussion with them was engaging and very interesting. Thank you, Joyce’s students, for a wonderful afternoon.

Till next time!

What a piece of work is Taco Bell

Is that meat or cheese?

I can’t even…

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[1] David F. Hoeniger, Medicine and Shakespeare in the English Renaissance, Newark: U of Delaware P, 1992.  

[2] Could he have written the plays? Could I? Could you? NO ONE KNOWS!!!!

[3] Finally this week’s image makes sense! Great White Bard for the win!

[4] 2014 nominee for ugliest acronym.  

[5] For those who do not know my former supervisor, her name is Joyce Boro, she rocks, and I once had a dream I decorated her house for Halloween. Joyce, my readership. My readership, Joyce. 

Blog 12: Is it Shakespeare?

The image above this sentence would (and does) make a Shakespeare scholar cringe, since it erroneously yokes Hamlet’s “To be or not to be speech” with the scene in which he picks up the jester’s skull and reminisces upon Poor Yorick. In actuality the speech and the skull happen nearly two acts apart in the play. Yet, I suspect that this image or its description would look (or sound) accurate to most people mainly familiar with Hamlet (or Shakespeare) as a cultural icon from a distant past. Similarly, you are likely to find a plethora of images depicting Shakespeare himself holding the skull, perhaps even reciting the mislocated lines. It is perhaps the clearest example in all of Shakespeare of the process by which a collective intellectual psyche amalgamates Shakespearean tropes to form a skewed visual emblem that subsequently gains cultural significance.

But is it wrong?

As mentioned above, there is no scene in Hamlet in which the melancholic prince holds up a skull and delivers his most famous lines. Yet, all of its elements do come into play. The image somehow manages to map out the intricate ballet of death, theatricality, existentialism and tragedy that stand at the core of Shakespeare’s play. The example speaks to the unbelievable power of adaptation (indeed, of mutation) that Shakespearean drama displays in remaining in a state of constant cultural production. The works, their actors, and themes, manage to connect and stay with us, even for those not familiar with Shakespeare from a literary standpoint. My father has never read Shakespeare, but when I mentioned that I was writing on The Merchant of Venice,[1] he instantly referred to Shylock asking for a pound of Antonio’s flesh.[2] A similar channelling occurs (to different degrees) with Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene, Macbeth’s witches, or even the fairies, Bottom and the Ass head in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. To go back to Hamlet’s example, nothing stops a director adapting ther play to ask his or her Hamlet to hold a skull while delivering the speech. If the image already holds cultural significance, why discredit it?

But is it Shakespeare? The world of adaption, revision, reappropriation, hinges on a precarious balance between fidelity to a given work and the innovative spirit to take it into new and previously unimagined directions. Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep, Sons of Anarchy, and the Simpsons’ Hamlet all perform that balance astoundingly well and indeed, can be enjoyed without any prior of Shakespeare or his plays.[3] Even Julie Taymor’s The Tempest, which flips the script considerably by having a female Prospera, still manages to capture the character dynamics and power relations of the original playtext. Where I am inclined to protest too much is when adaptations seemingly veer away from a character for the purpose of shock value and creative revisionism (wouldn’t it be even cooler if…). I was at a conference in the spring where colleagues were discussing a Titus Andronicus adaptation in which Tamora, upon being informed of the content of the meat pies served to her by Titus, stares at him and takes another bite. Yes, that probably made for a surprising, gasp inducing moment, but it seems to go against the play in several aspects, devaluing her initial plea to Titus to save family members at the start of the play while also downplaying Titus’ breakdown dur9ing the climax.[4]             

Then again, four centuries after Shakespeare’s death, I suppose people are free to do what they wish with the works when adapting them. Hamlet can hold the skull, Romeo can find Juliet on Tinder, and I can groan and shake my fist and tell those kids to get off my lawn and that this is not Shakespeare. Then again, I am basing my critique of them on what I think is Shakespeare, and how am I to know that I’m right?[5] Maybe I should relish in the fact that, four hundred years later, people who have never read the works still know about Hamlet, a skull, and theatrical gravitas. Perhaps, when it comes to Shakespeare, there are actually more things in our dreams, than in heaven and earth.    

Excitement:

Halloween is fast approaching and Emily and I are gearing up for our horror movie marathon (complete with candy and Schwartz’s smoke meat… don’t judge!) I love this time of year, and we have a nice line-up of films (and Doctor Who episodes!) ready to go. I look forward to crossing off Ringu from my personal horror film bucket list (I’ve only seen the American remake). Above all else though, as we do every year, it will probably end with Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit. Fabulous animation film. Get yourself a kid and see it![6]

What about Shakespeare in this time of terror and monstrosities? Well tune in next week…

Smooshy:

This is random, specific, and perhaps pointless, but as a teacher, I am tired of seeing this sequence play out in any movie, TV show, or sketch that contains a classroom scene: the class is listening (or not) to a teacher lecturing on who knows what, the bell cuts him or her off and students rush out as the teacher yells outs reading assignments and reminds them to learn a life lesson or two along the way.[7] Do these teachers never plan a lecture/lesson? You know how much time you have and even if a class is spirited and gets off track, you still take a couple minutes at the end to cool things down, recap, and deliver assignments! Smooshy to you media representation of unprepared professors!   

Shout out:

Shout outs all around:

Shout out to friends Frederik Byrn Køhlert for nearing the end of the dissertation marathon (submitted his intro this week!), Stephen Wittek for securing a book contract for his study of early modern news circulation (can’t wait to read it!) and to Susan Harlan for braving the streets of New Orleans while attending the 16^th Century Society Conference and flooding my Facebook with amazing pictures. For those of you unfamiliar with Susan remember one thing: she has style to burn!

Till next time!

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

If you tickled us---stop it that tickles

hihihihih.

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[1] There is a wonderfully understated reference to such a process in The Sopranos, where Tony makes a comment to his friend (and moneylender) Hesch that suggests that without any knowledge of Shakespeare’s play, he somehow associates Jewish, moneylending, and performance. It’s as brilliant as it is offensive.      

[2] Joe Bidden’s recent blunder regarding his use of “shylock” reminds us of the dangers of this cultural reappropriation,

[3] There are, of course millions of other examples. The most rudimentary Google search for “Hamlet” returns nearly 8 million examples of images, videos, articles ready to assault our senses with Shakespeare’s story. To be fair, the most rudimentary Google search for “Yorkshire pudding” yields almost 2 million hits, while looking up “beanie hats” floods the curious researcher with 43 million web links. A search engine alone cannot act as an accurate barometer to gage the power of Hamlet’s virality.

[4] What really works well in that scene is that Titus never waits for Tamora to react to the news he delivers, killing her instantly. It is one of many scenes in Shakespeare where he purposely frustrates the audience.  

[5] Although, to be fair, it is my blog, so I guess I’m right. You don’t like it? Go away! Scratch that, I need the readership. Please stick around.

[6] Upon advice from my legal team, I must make it clear that The Virtual Whirligig Blog does not endorse the kidnapping of random children simply to watch a Claymation motion picture.

[7] Degrassi style!

Blog 11: How Violent is Shakespeare?

It is question I have brushed up against frequently in my engagement with Shakespeare, as a teacher, scholar, or in general conversations at parties, in cabs, or waiting for a tow truck after a car crash.[1] Though my answer generally stays the same, I have heard a spectrum of opinions about it ranging from “the plays are crude and flashy, akin to Hollywood blockbusters” to “the plays are not violent but our contemporary sensibilities make them so.” I remember once in a masters class at Concordia, while discussing Edward Bond’s Lear,[2] a student made the remark that he found the play’s excessive violence absurd and unnecessary because it went further than what (he felt) Shakespeare intended in the original.[3]

Violence is as much a part of Shakespearean drama as it is of our lives, cultures, and arts. It is once arena where Shakespeare’s theatre proves the norm rather than the exception within early modernity. Yet what I found the most interesting about the question is that everyone comes to it with a different conception of what constitutes “violence.” The student I mentioned in the opening paragraph referred to the explicitly physical violence that Bonds’ play stages. Yet, King Lear offers several types of violent acts, emotional, physical, or psychological that hint at the inherent subjectivity of the matter. A more overt (probably the most overt) example in Shakespeare would be Titus Andronicus, which offers murders, acts of cannibalism, rape, and mutilation as part of its playbill. Yet Shakespeare often manages to strike a balance between showing on stage and reporting off stage that further complicate the issue. For all the action found on stage in Macbeth, there is also considerable violence in lines that inform us of how much the King bled when murdered in his bed, or the reporting of Lady Macbeth’s demise.

Then, there are moments of ambiguous violence or rather, violence bred by ambiguity. Isabella’s silence in at the end of Measure for Measure, the murkiness surrounding Caliban’s interaction with Miranda in The Tempest, or even the recurring device of the bed trick all carry a certain understated tone of violence that reinforce the idea that, although violence is found in most plays, we chose (or we recognize) certain types more than others. As a popular dramatist, Shakespeare certainly drew on the incredible selling power that violence has always enjoyed,[4] but he usually makes a point of complicating it or, at the very least, developing it within a denser philosophical interrogation: Iago and Richard make us complicit through asides, we both champion Hamlet and come to expect his tragic demise, etc.

The better question than how violent was Shakespeare would perhaps be why is violence (or the threat of it) in Shakespeare so fascinating? There is no easy answer, but it makes for an original ice breaker at parties when standing by the dip.

Excitement:

Tom Hiddleston.

Hugh Laurie.

John LeCarre.

Nachos.

Those are things I enjoy, and (at least?) the first three will unite in a BBC production of The Night Manager. That has brilliance written all over it and I cannot wait to see it. I am less excited about the inevitable US reboot on Fox, starring David Tennant and stupid hair.[5]

  

Smooshy:

Smooshy goes out to Bell Media for pulling Pardon the Interruption from TSN 1 and 2 and putting them on their new, paying channels (TSN 3,4, and 5).[6]  I have been watching PTI for over ten years and I am sorry to see that streak come to end. Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser (an English major who frequently quotes Shakespeare on the program, by the way) will be missed. It’s a dream of mine to get Kornheiser (and Bob Ryan) on a panel somewhere to discuss Shakespeare and American sports writing. Booooo TSN!  

Shout out:

Last week’s blog on Freud reignited an research interest of mine on the putative correlation between mental illness and creative or artistic genius. This potent association has been around for a while dating back to Aristotle, and it will likely be the subject of an upcoming blog.[7] Here, I just want to use it as a segue into a shou tout to the AMI-Quebec organisation, which raises awareness and helps families cope with mental illness. They do an amazing job doing so (in addition to counting my sister-in-law and proof reader extraordinaire as an invaluable employee). They rocked last week’s Walk for Mental Health downtown, where yours truly rocked a neon pink t-shirt that made me look like plump, county fair cotton candy J. Check out their website and donate if you’re inclined to do so. http://amiquebec.org/

Till next time!

Some are born great,

Some achieve greatness,

And some have greatness thrust upon them.

Others run into a parking meter while texting.

---

[1] Actually a true story, I went off the road while coming back from teaching in Huntington, and a man helped me out of the vehicle and waited with me. After asking what I did for a living, he (a fellow English teacher) explained to me how he once wrote a paper explaining how the show Hogan’s Heroes was built on the principles of Renaissance stage comedy. It was a weird afternoon.

[2] The name is Bond, Edward Bond. I like my comma shaken not spliced.

[3] I’m now going to deftly move on from the notion that Shakespeare’s plays are “original” in any ways, since I do not currently own the necessary amounts of buckets to house all the worms that would inevitably crawl out of that can. 

[4] If it bleeds, if leads, or its early modern equivalent: “when blood was shed, to the printing house did thou sped.”

[5] Still not over that one!

[6] A whopping D- for originality on the names here!

[7] Spoiler alert! Also, Hamlet dies at the end of Hamlet. 

Blog 10: Subconsciously Dramatic

Last week marked the 75^th anniversary of Sigmund Freud’s death, which made me want to ponder the interesting connections between the man, his work, and Shakespeare. Freud was an admirer of the bard’s work, both personally and professionally. Some plays (notably Hamlet) bore considerable influence on his conceptualisation of melancholia, mourning, and narcissism. Though his use of the Danish price remains the benchmark of his involvement with Shakespeare,[1] other plays appear throughout his body of work to a lesser extent (such as The Merchant of Venice, or Julius Cesar), serving to illustrate the various psychological phenomena Freud details. When it came to outlining the intricacies of the human psyche, Freud often looked to Shakespeare’s characters as the ideal touchstone.

I find Freud’s use of Shakespeare compelling, but it can also make for a cavalier type of criticism that dangerously reads “backwards,” from psychoanalytic theory into Shakespearean drama, treating characters such as Hamlet, Portia, or Iago under purely clinical auspices. The practice too often negates the fruitful interplay between the two authors.[2] The clearest example of this critical pitfall remains the uneasy conflation of Hamlet’s melancholy with Freudian notions of melancholia and mourning. Though the play serves as a building block for Freud’s essay, the prince’s stubborn clinging to his grief and Shakespeare’s broader revision of melancholy within the play is an altogether different animal. His with melancholy rallies classical sources such as Galen, Hippocrates an Aristotle, with the contemporary writings of physicians and philosophers such as Timothy Bright and Robert Burton to offer a dramatic synecdoche of a powerful cultural, social, and historical signifier that simultaneously proves physical, psychological, and spiritual. Freud’s exploration of melancholia is an attempt to understand the modern psyche within a (then) novel scientific framework deeply rooted in the process of subjection.  Again, a contrast of both treatments is worthwhile, but reading the correlation counter-currently does a disservice to both ends of the spectrum. The parallel is also complicated by the fact that beyond the scientific revisions that Shakespearean drama undertakes, notions such as melancholy are altered by the playwright‘s own aesthetic and literary sensibilities. Though Shakespeare masters the art of characterization, the state of minds his characters exhibit are always situated within clearly defined dramatic objectives.

Interestingly, Shakespearean comedy seems to provide a more fascinating (and seldom acknowledged) resonance within psychoanalysis. Emancipated from the deadly conventions of the tragic genre, comic explorations of melancholy place a greater focus on ideas of melancholia and narcissism, and what Freud terms the individual’s “satisfaction from self-exposure.” Characters such as the merchant Antonio, Jaques, or Olivia and Orsino not only display an overwhelming sense of melancholy, but make a point of refusing to alter or abandon it, claiming it as their fundamental character trait. Comic characters that manage to transform themselves and integrate the newly form social order at the end of a Shakespearean comedy can be thought to successfully evade the process Freud discusses. Orsino and Olivia are paired off with the twins by the end of Twelfth Night. Fate is not a kind with Antonio or Jaques, and their all-encompassing melancholy is to blame.

This particular connection serves as a great reminder of the powers and limits of literature in the “real” world. Dramatic representations of melancholy can offer great examples or allusions to depression and other mental illnesses, but the link is never straightforward as we would hope. Human behaviour on the stage, on the page, or in our heads engages in a complex dance of cultural, cognitive, and emotional interplay.

Then again, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar …

Excitement:

Fall means freedom from blockbusters, and the arrival of several films I am keen on seeing, such as Fox Catcher with an unrecognizable Steve Carrel,[3] Love is Strange with John Lithgow and Alfred Molina and Jon Stewart’s Rosewater. We are still a few months away from the release of a Cymbeline adaptation with Ethan Hawke[4] and Ed Harris, and I’m not sure what to think of this one.   

Smooshy:

I’m in a good mood, so no smooshy this week. Go out and hug a tree![5]

Shout out:

This blog came out stupidly late, so I actually miss the event I was shouting out to. Yesterday was the first meeting of the season for the Shakespeare Performance and Research team at McGill (also known as the SPRiTE team)[6]. We had a wonderfully challenging discussion and reading of scenes from Cymbeline. There are more meeting coming up until Christmas (and the next one will be a rambly hot mess of a paper on Hamlet by yours truly!). Check out the schedule on the SPRiTE website: http://mcgill-shakespeare.com.

Till next time!

Who goes there?

The Tacos Salesman

…. Thou may enter.

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[1] Hmmmm danish …

[2] Hmmmm fruit …. Hmm fruit danish.

[3] In a parallel universe where I would cast an adaptation of Othello, I would cast Steve Carrel as Iago. As brilliant of a comic actor as he is, Carrel does underlying darkness really well.

[4] Also, for a little spice in your lives, walk up to a stranger on the street, point to the sky ominously and mutter “any day now…”

[5] Hmmm Sprite. No wait, I actually don’t like soft drinks. Hmmm Perrier.

Blog 9: It Takes a Village...

This week’s blog will seem a little fragmented but for one thing, it’s Friday, and for another, I stayed up late watching Sons of Anarchy last night. More importantly, fragmented or not, this is one I have been meaning to write up for a while. If there is one positive side to the beast known as the Doctoral Comprehensive Examinations, it is the opportunity to read many texts one might not be inclined (or even find the time to do so) otherwise within a packed academic schedule. Though Shakespeare remains my one true academic love (the Boston cream pie to my other desserts, the Chivas Regal to my other scotch and whiskeys, the pants to my non-pants lower body clothing garments[1]) I enjoy the broader scope of early modern drama and I thought I would share some of my thoughts on other dramatists of the period, since they often go neglected in our current cultural landscape …though some clearly should go neglected (I’m looking at you Thomas Dekker!).[2] I wanted to take a break from my rampant case of bardolatry to discuss some of the Renaissance works that struck a chord with me in hopes of perhaps bringing some of you to read new unknown works. So, in no particular order, here goes:

Ben Jonson

I have a love-hate relationship with Jonson’s work. I really enjoyed most of his plays (particularly the two Every Man comedies and The Alchemist), but his cynical attitudes (I think of Jonson as an early modern hipster, but poorer and more jaded) usually spoils them for me. Case in point: Every Man Out of His Humor is a brilliantly savage comedy poking (if not tearing asunder) fun at out of control behaviors, but the cruelty and disdain that the Jonsonian mouthpiece Asper displays throughout goes somewhat overboard. Also, though I am usually one for meta-textual references Jonson’s inner monologue turned outer commentary irks me somewhat. Still, I’ll admit his sense of an urban dramatic space trumps that of Shakespeare and characters such as Volpone are a delight to follow throughout a performance.[3]  

Christopher Marlowe:

I love Marlowe’s bombastic, blockbuster style of theater: Characters committing suicide by braining themselves on the bars of cages, poisoning wells, or making deals with the devil[4] … it’s got everything! Yet, what I truly admire is the underrated emotional complexity that infuses his works, particularly Doctor Faustus. There is a truly masterful slow-building tension in here that sucks you in every time, and release you just in time to witness the inevitable yet harrowing conclusion. Though it certainly disturbs in our current times, the unapologetically-evil characterization of Barabbas in The Jew of Malta, though it does not reach the dazzling humanity of Shylock, is an incredible dramatic feat which leaves you (or is just me), half-rooting for him to succeed in then end.     

John Fletcher

I really enjoy Fletcher’s work, particularly his adaptation of Spanish romances (thanks, Joyce!), and what I call his retro-humoral comedies such as The Woman Hater and The Humorous Lieutenant.[5] Fletcher’s plots are every energetic, his comic timing his impeccable, and his plays make great use of stage space for both comedic instances and more dramatic situations. He also writes more dynamic and fully fleshed out female characters than most of his contemporaries do. Check out The Woman Hater (kind of a reverse Taming of the Shrew, with a hilarious subplot involving whore houses and an exotic fish head dish[6]) if you have a chance.  

John Lyly:

Lyly’s courtly romance style is an acquired taste (in my opinion) that sometimes feels like it drags on the page, but Gallathea, a comedy about two cross-dressing shepherdess falling in love with each other, is a spectacular display of dramatic ingenuity (sea monsters and cross-dressing? What will they think of next?). The ending (no spoilers) is also quite interesting in its straddling of innovation and conventional theatrical wisdom. For the uninitiated, I also find that Lyly’s writing is easily to follow, and his limited cast of characters help to avoid confusion.    

George Peele:

Peele is perhaps not as recognized as some of the others names here (Harold Bloom calls him a “lesser dramatist,” which I guess is a compliment since it’s coming from Bloom?) Still, there is a child-like revel in The Old Wives Tales that makes it one of my favorite works of the period to read. As the title suggests, it feels like a bedtime fable; Old Madge’s Tale engrosses you from the start and really does drive away the time. I would love to see it staged someday (or even better, see a movie version by Julie Taymor).

Then there are dramatists I would not necessarily include in my favourites, but whose works contains little tidbits that I particularly enjoyed, remembered, or thought of after the facts. The Inn scenes in George Chapman’s A Humorous Days’ Mirth are extremely funny, the final act of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is tragically mesmerizing. I am much more a fan of Robert Greene’s non-dramatic work than I am of his state plays, but I will admit that he gave the world one of the best titles for a work of literature ever in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay).[7]

How do these works stack up against Shakespeare’s? I am obviously one of the bard’s convert, but the breadth of drama in the period is fascinating and I have found that, despite initial reticence, some of these plays actually pass the float test in a classroom. Most of these were, after all, popular works (as in for the larger public) and they usually manage to push some buttons for modern audiences. Furthermore, considering how organic (if not symbiotic) early modern theater was (dramaturges responding, to one another’s works, collaborating with each other, or attacking one another on stage) reading a wide range of plays help put in perspective the magnitude and dynamism of the theater industry in early modern England; playwriting was a business, and business was booming.  

Excitement:

The Washington Nationals clinched the Eastern division in the National League and did so without a sure-fire closer or a ,300 hitter. Well done. They are a fun team to watch and I hope they go deep into the playoffs. Looks like Strasburg and Harper are finally hitting their strides, and it should make for exciting October baseball.

Smooshy:

The Nationals clinched their division … I miss the Expos. L

                                                                                                                                

Shout out:

Emily attended Comiccon last week and brought back a wonderful video of Patrick Stewart reciting Puck’s closing soliloquy from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to end his panel. You don’t need me to tell you how awesome Patrick Stewart is, but it reminded me of the great series “Playing Shakespeare” with John Barton and the RSC, in which actors (Stewart, Ian McKellen and Judi Dench to name a few) discuss and demonstrate how they act Shakespeare. Most of it is available on YouTube and yes, it is filmed in glorious 80's vision, but it is simply awesome to watch. The episodes on speech and rehearsing the text are particularly worth watching. Give it a shot.    

Till next time….

My salad days,

When I was green in judgement, filled with vegetables

Drenched in ranch dressing and sprinkled with bacon bits

I miss college…  

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[1] The exception to this last one being a grocery bag, should I ever misplace said pants.

[2] No, I kid, I kid… Tommie, love you baby. My mother was a shoemaker… Try the veal! I’m here all week!

[3][3] I enjoy Jonson’s poetry quite a bit, but this is a blog about early modern theater and damn it, rules are there to be followed, so forget about poetry!

[4] Though I cannot prove it, I am fairly certain there is currently a reality show in development somewhere with the previous sentence as its exact premise. And Gordon Ramsay is attached to hosts too!

[5] Fletcher’s life is also fascinating, particularly the thought that he shared a house (and a woman) with writing partner Francis Beaumont. In one word” Sitcom. Make it happen.  

[6] Let’s add this to the ever growing list of “sentence which could lead me in legal trouble if taken out of context.”  

[7] My other favorite includes Jonson’s The Devil’s an Ass, Nicholas Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister (say that five times fast) and Thomas Dekker’s Satiromastix (a play and a device that helps you make perfect scramble eggs every time!).