One of the most iconic roles of anything, ever.

This heart-wrenching  play portrays a racial and social outsider as a sympathetic protagonist, which is amazing when you consider that it was written for a culture that, you know, revolutionized the slave trade.  Yes, that means that a few uncomfortable lines slip into the dialogue, like “Her name, that was as fresh As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black As mine own face,” or “one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe,”  but those can be easily edited out and either way are overwhelmed by the sympathy that the audience feels for Othello.  However, the play does fail as truly empowering to female characters, which is another common trait in plays from this era, but much harder to overlook.  Yes Shakespeare has some badass women, yes they are usually very sympathetic, but no they are not afforded the same level of humanity in Shakespeare’s plays that you might hope.

And we all know how this play ends.

Othello is a great soldier, but like Coriolanus or Titus Andronicus before him, he is not skilled at peacetime interactions.  Guiding his life in peace are the demonic Iago, his closest friend and brother-in-arms, and the angelic Desdemona, his white wife.  While the dichotomy of pure good versus pure evil battling for the soul of an Everyman is an old metaphor and a perfectly valid story, this play puts the nail in the coffin for my opinion on Shakespeare’s women.  While he certainly writes women well, I’ve come to realize it’s for the same reason that Orson Scott Card writes homosexuals well: as a humanist writer, they create fascinating characters rounded by flaws – but as humans, they evidently consider that socially disliked trait (womanhood and homosexuality, respectively) to be among those flaws.  And that’s an awkward thing for a modern artist to have to adapt.

Like, for example, the overwhelming sexism and bigotry of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel.

Of course, that doesn’t contradict the fact that this is an inherently fascinating, heartbreaking story.  And Desdemona still has enough life in her to be a compelling character, along with Iago’s wife Emilia.  The latter offers a compelling feminist viewpoint in the play, mirroring Shylock’s famous monologue in Merchant of Venice: “Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace, Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell And have their palates both for sweet and sour, As husbands have.”  And she goes on, “have not we affections, Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?  Then let them use us well: else let them know, The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.”  Sure, for an era when women were not even allowed to perform onstage, Shakespeare gets a gold star for writing this kind of dialogue.   But at the end of the day, Desdemona is held virtuous because she is “Truly, an obedient lady.”  She dies, ultimately, because she refuses to defy her husband.  The trick in performance is to make this an act of self-destructive love, and portraying her as heartbroken instead of meek.

Pictured: the meek, uninspiring heroine, a.k.a. anathema to civilized society.

It’s Emilia who steals the show, for me, in the final scene.  She realizes the scope of what has happened before anybody else, and successfully overthrows her evil husband, Iago.  Screaming, “O villany, villany!” she refuses to be shut up by the man she is socially bound to, and exhorts “Tis proper I obey him, but not now.  Perchance, Iago, I will ne’er go home.”  To bring justice to her murdered friend, she must essentially destroy her own livelihood in a brave and daring act.

… Better.

Of course, that gets her killed.  So that sucks.  Of course, this is a play that revels in the ambivalence of a storyteller’s motives, and I suppose you can make a feminist reading in either direction.  In any case, the story is certainly written for and about a misogynist society, and a modern adaptation must come to grips with that some way.  The key to performing it lies in Emilia’s murderer, Iago: “Spartan dog, More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea!”

Hell and the Sea being two of the largest motifs in this play.

The thing that makes Iago distinct from any other Shakespearean villain is the absolute “Demi-devil” nature of his character.  The Puckish Devil archetype, who joyfully confides his schemes in the audience before ruining good people’s souls, was common in Shakespeare’s era, and is certainly echoed through much of his work.  Richard III is a good example of that echo, though he is a mortal king, freakish but not literally a demon.  Aaron the Moor shares a lot of qualities with Iago, especially his tactics and gleeful philosophy of evil for its own sake.  But even Aaron is mortal, while Iago possesses an almost supernatural evil, that causes Othello to finally double-take at the human form to see if Iago has cloven hooves:  “I look down towards his feet; but that’s a fable. If that thou best a devil, I cannot kill thee.”  Othello, a skilled soldier, then stabs the corrupter of his soul who indeed does not die.  And Iago’s final line, “Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: From this time forth I never will speak word,” bears an ominous supernatural hold on the end of the play.  Most telling of all is from one of Iago’s early soliloquies: ” I am not what I am.”

As opposed to “I Am Who I Am”

To be fair, Iago has fairly clear human motives.  Though he speaks mostly in ambiguities about why he hates the Moor, he confides in the audience that he is driven by the “mere suspicion” that Emila had an affair with him.  At one point, he admits a physical desire for Desdemona, “Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure I stand accountant for as great a sin, But partly led to diet my revenge, For that I do suspect the lusty Moor Hath leap’d into my seat.”  This could be easily overlooked, given the villain’s mercurial nature, except Emila herself cites Iago’s jealousy when she learns about Othello’s suspicions: “Some such squire he was That turn’d your wit the seamy side without, And made you to suspect me with the Moor.” – she knows that some rude rumor has soiled Othello’s love, but she does not outwardly suspect her husband as the progenitor of the lie.  Their marriage is very telling for two reasons; not only does the mask hiding Iago’s evil seem thinnest when Emilia is in the room, but also that nobody else in the society here seems to think their bickering is weird.

Nothing but games and lies, those two.

On one hand, this play clearly portrays how someone can turn to evil deeds from mere jealousy.  On the other hand, the evil in Iago’s deeds seems to transcend the jealousy of infidelity.  To say that Iago is completely honest with the audience and nobody else is very presumptuous.  In fact, that’s exactly what he probably wants us to think, and is exactly how he operates with his entire web of victims.  For example, there is Roderigo, a fatal pawn in Iago’s revenge scheme, who is in love with Desdemona.  Iago’s involvement with him predates the main thrust of the scheme to overthrow Othello, but just like the audience he is made to believe he is seeing the one true side of Iago’s persona.  With Roderigo, he pretends to hate Othello out of faithful friendship, insisting, “if thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.”

Ha.  Now, there’s a pro choice argument if I ever heard one…

Yes, I prefer to stage this play with Iago as a devil, and his corruption of souls as the main motivation for his actions.  Even his age is clouded in clever phrasing: “I have looked upon the world for four times seven years; and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself.”  So, while he could easily say he’s 28 years old, he phrases it in such a way that he has existed on the material plain for that long.  Contrast that relatively young age with the repeated references to him as Othello’s “ancient,” literally although awkwardly meaning flag-bearer (a variation of the word “ensign“).  “Ensign” would fit the meter just as easily in those cases, but Shakespeare chooses a word which carries antediluvian connotations instead.

To summarize: everything is more interesting once you recognize its demonic origins.

Along with the demonic nature of Iago, I also want to mention another crucial element for understanding the world of this play – the Venetian soldiers’ relationship with the alien “men of Cyprus”.  Othello is already somewhat of an outsider in Venetian society, where he is a ranking officer in the military.  When news of a Turkish invasion fleet comes in Act I, he is dispatched to lead a counter-strike based out of the island of Cyprus.  Of course, that whole enemy fleet is destroyed in a storm, merely a device that Shakespeare uses to get the soldiers and their civilian companions out of their element.

Not pictured on this map: how Shakespeare imagines an Italian fleet can land at that island before the Turks do.

And it is in this distant, alien land that Iago is able to take advantage of circumstance to corrupt the souls and steal lives from the innocent.  Soldiers are constantly on guard at night, though most of the civilians within the walls are foreigners.  It’s a stressful post, and it is important to remember that this tension is the basis for everything that Iago pours on top.  In fact, the entire first Act exists (in my mind) only to establish a world that the audience and the characters are violently ripped from, churned through a tempest, and brought into a strange realm where Iago can finally work his demonic purpose.

Which is not to say strange can’t also be disarmingly beautiful.

But, after that intense subject matter, let’s end the night with a fun quote from one of the more pleasant moments in the play: “every man put himself into triumph; some to dance, some to make bonfires, each man to what sport and revels his addiction leads him.”

By far the largest undertaking that B.O.T. has ever attempted, Shakespeare, I Love You is a multi-company production where the five acts of a Shakespeare play are given to five different theatre companies, each company is given complete artistic freedom over their assigned portion of the text, and then the whole play is performed together as one story from multiple perspectives.  For this project, we selected Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

Pericles is an existential epic, with no real plot to speak of other than the wanderings of the titular Prince, like Waiting for Godot on a boat.  Yet, despite one Macguffin after another leading to an amazingly improbable finale, there is significant beauty and emotional weight throughout the hero’s journey through “fortune fierce and keen.”  So, given the meandering structure of the play and the wide variety of settings that Pericles visits, it seemed like the perfect choice for this project.  After running four shows at the Den Theatre, each with great audiences and fantastic performances from all of the companies, I am incredibly proud of the show as a whole collaborative production.

Act I was produced by freelance director Stephen Murray, who created a beautiful world underlit by old-fashioned stage lighting, distinguishing between a large cast of characters with hand crafted masks.  Murray utilized the storyteller role of Gower in a very clever way, opening the show with a lone traveler’s trunk onstage that opens to unleash the characters and props.  It was a perfect way to open the play.

The cast included:

Brian Hurst - Pericles
Lee Wichman – Gower, Helicanus, & others
Joe Feliciano – Antiochus & others
Renee Keen – Daughter, Dionyza, & others
Blake Williams – Thalliard & others
Edward Rutherfold – Cleon & others

Liz Cooper – Lighting Designer
Jaci Entwisle – Costume Design

Act II was choreographed by Katie Graves and Matthew McMunn Dance, translating Shakespeare’s text into purely movement, aurally complimented by an original score from TOOM It was a visceral and intense shift in the journey of Pericles, and I especially appreciated the agency it gave to the character of Thaisa, whose love for the Prince of Tyre was wholly palpable.

The cast included:

Katie Graves
Matthew McMunn
Josh Anderson
Adam Gauzza

TOOM [aka Mason Thorne] – Composer

Act III was another dramatic shift, going to the Unrehearsed Shakespeare Company whose First Folio Cue Script Technique encouraged a wonderful level of audience participation as rowdy groundlings.  The sudden announcement, “take in your arms this piece of your dead queen” – that Marina is born and Thaisa is dead was simultaneously heartbreaking and lovely thanks to their hard work and talent.  Their daring technique requires actors to not know their roles until the day of performance, at which point they know only one line for their cue and then their own lines.  Their large company rotated roles throughout the run of this production.

The cast included:

Chris Elst
Danny Pancratz
Carl Lindberg
Peter Eli Johnson
Jessie Mutz
Ashlee Edgemon
Nicole Farmerie
Jared McDaris
Jared Wall
Sam Paulak
Tommy Iafrate

Act IV was produced by Equity Library Theatre of Chicago, who offered an entertaining gravitas to the story when it suddenly shifts to Marina’s journey from Princess to whore, and her rise to a respected tutor.  I really loved involving them in our production because it was an honest, traditional approach to the material that is the way most people expect Shakespeare to be performed, and is an essential and comfortable representation for an audience riding through this story.

The cast included:
Ronald Keaton – Gower, Pander
Molly Burns - Dionyza
Herb Lichtenstein – Leonine, Gentleman
Leslie Handelman – Marina
Matthew Fahey – Pirate, Gentleman
Connie Foster – Bawd
Michael Joseph Thomas Ward - Bolt
Razz Jenkins – Cleon
David Knoell – Lysimachus

Special Thanks to:
Steve Rashid – Music Credit
Evanston Dance Ensemble – Evanston Dance Ensemble
Luther Goins – Business Associate at AEA
Rogers Park Chicago Public Library – Rehearsal Space

Our evening concluded with Blunt Objects Theatre performing Act V, in our signature minimalist and raw style.  I’ve only recently come around to calling my style of directing “post-Brechtian,” but it really does describe the style quite succinctly, so let’s just make up that name for our style and then run with it as far as it goes. Our cut of the script essentially removed Gower as a character, dividing his narration between all of the actors as they set up a scene before entering the action.  And the final line of the play, “So, on your patience evermore attending, New joy wait on you! Here our play has ending,” resonated perfectly with the evening.

Our cast included:
Alexandra Boroff - Marina
Colin Fewell – Pericles/Gower
Tina Haglund - Costume Designer, Helicanus/Thaisa
Bohrs Hoff – Director, Lysimachus

Pericles really is a perfect example of Epic Theatre, traversing the darkest parts of human society from a famine-stricken island to the bowels of a brothel, achieving a poetic focus rather than the traditionally valued plot or character.  The insanely improbable ending is not something that can hold weight in a purely realistic style, but paradoxically the unreal world has to be believable.  By working with all of these wonderful companies, radically shifting the focus from act to act, I think we successfully achieved an engaging, entertaining, and cathartic performance.

We also want to offer a special thanks to our supporters on Kickstarter, listed in no particular order.  This project would not be possible without them:

Mary-Liz Murray
Lisa Litberg
Joseph McNulty
Chad
Henry Boroff
Jean Monfort
Tom Targos
John Graves
Lauren Valsoano
Rich Laux
Katy E. Hall
Tina Haglund
Jared McDaris
Kevin Fewell
Stephen Murray
Kate Shine
Elaine Miller

I apologize for not having an abundance of media for this production, though we are working on converting a video file that we hope to post soon. Also, we are hopeful to attempt this sort of project on a regular basis, though time will tell.

Be seeing you!

Because it's weird, that's why.

You know, the ancient pseudo-mythical decade-long conflict that even rivals World War II in pop culture.  Even if you never read Homer’s Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid, you know the general story.  But the details of that conflict have been re-imagined and repeatedly analyzed for centuries, and the literary giant William Shakespeare is among the writers who have expanded on the myth.  It’s different from Pericles, which just has an unusual structure that abandons the traditional focus on plot over character.  And it’s different from Henry VIII, which is just bad.  Troilus and Cressida suffers from a similar problem as Two Noble Kinsmen, where it can’t decide if it is a tragedy or a comedy – even though this play excels at both.  The heartbreak and the laughter are of equal power, and it is worth reading simply for the beauty of the language.  The difficulty seems to be that, despite the well-known and powerful setting, Shakespeare is truly focusing on the young Trojan lovers Troilus and Cressida instead of what a normal audience is really interested in: the War.

Crazy, absurdly pointless war.

If Shakespeare kept the war in the background, that would be one thing; like how The Good the Bad and the Ugly is set during the American Civil war even though the military conflict is purely tangential to the plot.  But instead, Shakespeare makes some really daring choices about how these characters appear.  Chief among them is the death of Trojan Prince Hector, whom Achilles famously slays in revenge for the death of his “masculine whore”, fellow soldier Patroclus.  Well, that’s a major choice already: Achilles and Patroclus are absolutely lovers in Shakespeare’s text, whereas every other classic text in the world is intriguingly ambiguous about it.  But what is downright shocking is the brutal manner of Hector’s death, which does not involve noble combat at all but instead has Achilles watch as the Myrmidons beat the Prince to a pulp onstage.   Furthermore, the Myrmidons are traditionally considered to be warrior elite alongside Achilles, yet here they are described as “his mangled Myrmidons,  That noseless, handless, hack’d and chipp’d” monstrous unit of brutal things, and these are the ones that descend upon the one great hope of Troy.

Take THAT, how-I-thought-the-story-was-supposed-to-end!

Then we have the other eternal question of the war: was Helen raped or did she go willingly to Troy with Paris?  Again, Shakespeare’s choice is fascinating.  She only appears in one scene – though she is often the topic of conversation – and there she seems awkward while Paris and Pandarus are really creepy, repeating weird shit like “Sweet queen, sweet queen! that’s a sweet queen, i’ faith.”  And then of course there’s the time Paris admits at the dinner table “Sir, I propose not merely to myself The pleasures such a beauty brings with it; But I would have the soil of her fair rape Wiped off, in honourable keeping her.”  Yup.  Among the many disturbingly casual behaviors that the Trojans and Greeks have towards this war, there is a discussion at the Trojan royal family’s dinner table where they debate the merits of returning Helen to her rightful husband, Menelaus, or not.  At this dinner table, it is decided that glory and honor in combat is better than admitting that Paris did the wrong thing.  Yup.

Kinda like Ben Roethlisberger

Yet, despite the fact that this “seven years’ siege” continues with a stalemate, daily combat becoming almost like a friendly sport with an audience, the Greeks do not have much respect for Helen or her Greek husband.  Diomedes, the man who winds up as Cressida’s lover, compares Helen’s two suitors this way: “He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up The lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece; You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins Are pleased to breed out your inheritors: Both merits poised, each weighs nor less nor more; But he as he, the heavier for a whore.” Not only is Shakespeare attacking the idea of heroism in this play, but he is also attacking the idea of love.  The love story that actually frames these episodes of the Trojan war ends in betrayal, but not any sort of cathartic death.   He is presenting the audience with a social disconnect between the absurdity of war and why it is allegedly fought.

Oh, and I should also mention that the gods are entirely spliced out of the story as well.

On top of all these cynical dramatic moments is one of my favorite characters in all of Shakespeare: Thersites, a crazy Greek bastard who’s like Falstaff and Apemantus rolled into one.  Actually, yes, I’m going to share some of my favorite lines in the play from this clown: “I am a bastard too; I love bastards,” spoken to a rival on the battlefield, “Ajax, who wears his wit in his belly and his guts in his head,” describing his former master, and my personal favorite insult: “you whoreson indistinguishable cur.” He pretty much just runs around the place throwing insults and laughing maniacally while Ajax beats the crap out of him.

And thereby secretly making him a role model...

But, as I said, the story at the center of this play is a shattered love story.  And since it’s Valentine’s Day, and “Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion,” let’s talk about that love story for a hot minute.  Troilus is a Prince, the youngest son of King Priam, but he falls in love with Cressida, whose father has defected to the Greeks.  Randomly, the politicians organize a prisoner swap and she is brought to the Greeks to be with her father.  Troilus, who was chief among the warhawks in Troy, is pretty sucky at combat, and is unable to defeat the Greek Diomedes who now holds the girl’s attention.  The same day, Hector is killed, and Troilus exhorts: “No space of earth shall sunder our two hates: I’ll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still, That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy’s thoughts. Strike a free march to Troy! with comfort go: Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe.”  Cressida’s creepy uncle, who arranged for the kids to be together, laments his poor match in the final speech of the play.  Again, the weight of the play is off, and the heartbreak of Troilus is not as momentous as the heartbreak of the city over Hector.  The end feels sudden and incomplete… but then again that is exactly how Troilus must feel.

Not that things traditionally turn out well for his character anyways

So I rephrase my original question: SHOULD this play be performed more often?  In my opinion, it should only be done if the artists are willing to play against audience expectation and really give it the focus that Shakespeare intended: the young lovers.  Granted, that is hard to do (even I didn’t focus on them during this entry), but that is the only way to go if it is going to be a self-sufficient production.  They are an interesting pair, with Troilus as “skilless as unpractised infancy” in all things, including both love and war, and then Cressida is only just discovering the power that she can have over men.  There are plenty of plays set during the Trojan War, this is the one that you can only do if you are willing to focus on these lovers set against a momentously well known tragedy.

Like the Titanic, for example.

So those are some of my thoughts for this week.  There is so much more that could be discussed, and feel free to throw stuff into the comments section if you want, but it seemed like a good anti-Valentine’s Day play to write on.  Only two more plays from Shakespeare and then I start my further exploration of his contemporaries.  Until then, here’s a great quote on the topic of painful love: “when my heart, As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain, Lest Hector or my father should perceive me, I have, as when the sun doth light a storm, Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile.”

Also, I realized that I referenced a disproportionate number of Brad Pitt movies for some reason... huh.

This guy.

There is so much that has been written about this play already, so much life sucked from it by tired schoolroom analyses, and so many interpretations of the text put onto stage and film, that a relevant discussion can prove to be very difficult.  So let me come at this entry from a different angle: Now, maybe I’m the only person experiencing this, but it seems like too many people are complaining about the lack of imagination in movies – too many remakes, adaptations of comic books, repackaging of old pop culture property.  To those people, I say, “Fuck you, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a reboot.”

And manages to be better than the original, no less.

There are not just 2, but 4 known versions of the play, including the Folio version that we are most used to – plus the story itself is based on part of a Scandinavian text.  It’s an epic saga that covers the whole known history of Denmark, and even crosses paths at one point with Beowulf.  Shakespeare alters names in his version, but the basic story is the same: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, seeks revenge for the murder of his father.  However, the simple deed is complicated by the politics of the court: Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, has married the murderer, Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius.  Hamlet pretends to be crazy in order to hide his intentions, but kills one of the king’s spies in this game of cat and mouse.  Claudius, bound by the same politics, cannot kill Hamlet outright either, and so sends him to stay with allies in England.

Where his nihilism will be appreciated

This play is about two things: grief and politics.  Hamlet’s dad is “But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two,” when his mother remarries.  His strange behavior is simply grief, in my opinion, and his is surrounded by politicians who simply lack a capacity for human empathy: it seems like everybody around Hamlet are the truly crazy ones.  Hamlet murders a member of the court, Polonius, and Gertrude is most concerned about her son’s disrespectful tone of voice than the fact that he’s dragging a corpse through her bedroom.  Claudius cannot punish Hamlet directly because “He’s loved of the distracted multitude, Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes,”  and so sends the murderer out of the public eye for a bit.  Claudius, the guy who pours poison onto every damn thing like its hot sauce or something, never has his sanity questioned.  Fatherless kids who don’t know where to direct their lives because they have literally no responsible mentor figures anymore, yeah, they must be batshit crazy.  The behavior of not only Hamlet, but even Ophelia and Laertes after the death of their father Polonius, is driven by honest emotion, and the other politicians in the court are unable to comprehend an emotional reaction that isn’t immediately buried under psychosis and professionalism.

This is what the play-within-the-play scene looks like in my head.

Hamlet may be criticized for being slow to act, but really that can be said of everyone else in the play, too.  Claudius has to appear militarily strong to the surrounding nations, while maintaining the good favor of his people.  His propaganda against Hamlet works surprisingly well on the commoners, since one Gravedigger believes Hamlet left “because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, it’s no great matter there,” since it will “not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he.”  But after Hamlet’s voyage, Shakespeare starts to depart from the original source with the details of the revenge plot.  Specifically, Hamlet’s ship is intercepted by pirates, Hamlet jumps onto the pirate ship during the course of combat, and then returns back to Denmark with his new pirate friends: as opposed to the original version where Hamlet actually makes the journey to England, marries a princess there, amasses an army after putting people on spikes Vlad Dracula style, and actually survives the final onslaught because he locks the palace doors and sets the damn thing on fire while everyone is inside.

Those crazy Vikings

I will say one last thing on the Viking version of the story, taken from Books 3 and 4 of the Saxo Grammaticus: the mythical story takes place before the birth of Christ, and deals heavily with the violence of revenge.  Conversely, the mythic source of Cymbeline takes place during the life of Christ, and explores the concept of forgiveness.  The importance of Christian religion in the Elizabethan era when Shakespeare wrote shouldn’t be underestimated, and I don’t think I’m reading too much into that timing.  Sure, it’s probably a coincidence that is far more related to the shift in focus from brutality to hope in the playwright’s own life for whatever reason.  You have the everybody-dies horrors of Titus Andronicus and the Sixes at the beginning, and then Shakespeare gradually mellows out into things like the Winter’s Tale and eventually whitewashes anything bad in the sterile Henry VIII.  Hamletoccupies an interesting middle ground, but ultimately aligns with that earlier cynicism

And being a younger, sometimes cynical person, that early period is very interesting to me...

Now, while this is all very interesting, I want to actually start talking about the play that I read and that most people are numb to because it’s been painfully dissected and left lifeless by most education systems.  It’s important to have fun with these texts, because if you take it too seriously then it becomes elitist and people lose interest.  I occasionally like to posit strong concepts for how I would personally like to approach a text, but instead I’m just going to keep pursuing the theme of grief in this play and how that grief is misunderstood.

Specifically, Ophelia.

Here’s the thing: if I don’t think Hamlet is truly mad then I can’t presuppose that Ophelia is.  She is suffering from “the poison of deep grief,” even though there is currently a movement to redefine grief as a mental disorder, but what I’m saying is that grief is normal (though let’s not waste time trying to define “normal,” eh?) and so Hamlet and Ophelia are indeed the only sane ones in this play – besides maybe Horatio, but I’m not going to spend much time talking about him today for whatever reason.  The way that people treat death in this play is disturbingly apathetic, summed up pretty succinctly when Hamlet observes the army of Fortinbras mobilizing for war with Poland: “We go to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name. To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it.”

Holy shit this play is timeless

Consider how the court perceives the “Madness,” what I am calling grief, of both Hamlet and Ophelia, respectively.  Hamlet: sees the goddamn Ghost of his recently deceased father, is already and understandably pretty grief stricken, but then learns that his beloved father was murdered by his uncle and is spurred to bloody vengeance by the Ghost.  When Ophelia is disturbed by meeting Hamlet afterwards, “No hat upon his head; his stockings foul’d, Ungarter’d, and down-gyved to his ancle; Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other; And with a look so piteous in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors,” the assumption is that Hamlet “Is mad. Mad call I it; for, to define true madness, What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?”  But really, he looks like he just saw a goddamn ghost.  And we know he’s not crazy about that, since three other people saw it before Hamlet is even onstage for the first time, plus the information given by the Ghost turns out to be completely true.  Ophelia: her boyfriend is freaking out and tells her to her face “I loved you not” before eventually killing her father, she is left all alone with a court that does not understand how to comfort a grieving person, and her own brother does not give a shit.  Seriously – Laertes gets off a boat, first thing he does is talk with the King about getting his murder on instead of comforting a sister that has been left alone for all this time.  Her mom is never mentioned at all, which, given the dynamics of this court, probably means that the woman is dead.  So Ophelia is all alone, grief-stricken, and like most teenagers with messed up families she is immersing herself in music with really dark lyrics.  Most of her responses are in song, but they are all responding to the actual questions that are asked.  She is aware, she understands what is happening, the people around her just do not understand.  It’s frustrating to see her commonly characterized as a wandering, aimless waif, when it would simply be more interesting to see an Ophelia that is deliberately messing with these sociopathic assholes when she hands them flowers.  It’s her brother Laertes that I do think is crazy, and not as a result of grief but as a product of the apathy of court life.  He thinks that he should walk up to Hamlet and “cut his throat i’ the church,” and Claudius persuades him against that, not because it’s CRAZY, but because the politics of it aren’t the best.  And don’t get me started on the sketchy description that Gertrude gives of Ophelia’s death, saying a tree branch broke under the girl and she “Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up.”  There is no indication of who saw this, or why this extensive and BEAUTIFUL description of a drowning teenager does not involve anybody trying to help the girl.

Just look at that nonsense.

Even Fortinbras, when he shows up at the end with English diplomats to meet with the King, seems weirdly detached.  “Such a sight as this Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss,” he says, as if massacre is improper at the dinner table, one ought to take that sort of thing outside.  Granted, this is a warlike culture, but Shakespeare is frequently pointing out the absurdities of war and I don’t think it should be ignored here.  In some ways, Hamlet has resemblance to Prince Hal, pursuing a plot that has absolutely nothing to do with the warlike politics raging around his King until the final Act.  But in other ways, Hamlet is unique among Shakespeare’s tragic works because it focuses almost exclusively on the court and not a war that is happening in the peripherals of the drama and even bookends the action of the entire play.  In some ways, this highlights the apathy and selfishness of the kingdom more than anything else – Fortinbras casually embraces the opportunity, while the First Ambassador can only think “The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, To tell him his commandment is fulfill’d, That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead: Where should we have our thanks?”  It’s not even stoicism, it’s full apathy towards human suffering, and nobody seems to think it is strange besides Hamlet and Ophelia.

So those are some of my thoughts on Hamlet.  Not all of them, mind you, just ones that I find most pressing at the moment.  It’s a great play, full of so many choices and depth, and I really think that it is a defining moment for an artist when they attempt to tackle the piece.  I’m glad I was finally able to reread this thing outside of the context of school for the first time, and really be able to take my time with it and enjoy it for all of its richness and darkness.  Until next time:  “Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”

Fortunately, Shakespeare does not paint himself into a corner by trying to tie all of the loose ends that turn into dead ends...

The plot of the play itself is only a small part of the Island’s history: Prospero’s usurping brother, Antonio, now Duke of Milan, happens to sail within range of the vengeful magician’s powers.  With Ariel’s help, the ship is assaulted by an imaginary storm and the passengers are magically transported to different parts of the island.  The Tempest shows how these men, each assuming that everyone else is dead, wander about the island.  Alonso, Duke of Milan, is among the largest group of presumed survivors.  His son, Ferdinand, is alone until he meets Prospero’s beautiful daughter.  Then there are Trinculo and Sebastian, the king’s servants, who decide to get excessively drunk.  We also learn about Prospero’s history: he was able to flee from Milan with his infant daughter, Miranda, on a derelict ship, “A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg’d, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats Instinctively had quit it.”  He tells this story to Miranda, now grown into a teenager, and the audience learns with her.  We then learn, through a dialogue with Ariel, about the previous ruler of the island: ”The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy Was grown into a hoop.”  At some point, Sycorax came to the island with a child of her own, Caliban, who is frequently called “a plain fish” and “monster” by his appearance, although he is still  “honour’d with A human shape” by Prospero’s description.  This is all in the text.  The details of how Prospero came to control the island are somewhat ambiguous, however.  We also know that Prospero knew how to perform magic from his books “prized over his dukedom,” well before he ever set foot on the island.  I can’t help but notice the parallel between Prospero’s curious exile and the history of Sycorax, who “For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible To enter human hearing, from Argier, Thou know’st, was banish’d.”   Like Prospero, she was evidently exiled with her son, Caliban.  There is of course the other parallel between the usurping Alonso, and Prospero’s own usurpation of the island from that fishlike Caliban.

More on him later.

We hear that Ariel was imprisoned by Sycorax for “A dozen years; within which space she died” and freed by Prospero at some point.  It seems that Prospero was able to conquer the island with Ariel’s help, since Caliban does not have his mother’s skill for magic.  Indeed, when Prospero found the human creature, Caliban “wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish,” until Prospero taught him how to read.  It then seems like Prospero does not know anything about Sycorax other than what the oppressed and therefore biased Ariel.  It seems that Caliban could easily be as young as Miranda when he first came to the island, if not younger.  We have no real timeline to suggest how old he is, or how old he was when Sycorax died, but it seems fair to assume that the witch would have taught her son how to control the spirits, or at least how to speak.  The relationship between, Prospero, Ariel, and Caliban then becomes that much more complicated.  Of course, Caliban loses any innocence when he gloats about the attempted rape of Miranda: “O ho, O ho! would’t had been done! Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else This isle with Calibans.”  This is where a postcolonialist critique of this text starts creeping in, comparing the relationships in this play with the relationship of Britain with her native subjects in the Americas.

But before I delve too heavily into that subject matter, here's a Dr. Who reference

There is an uncomfortable racial context to the characters of Caliban and Sycorax, who are of African descent.  Prospero calls Caliban “Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee, Filth as thou art, with human care,” which carries an especially significant meaning to a contemporary American audience.  This can be navigated by an intelligent production that abandons the idea of Prospero as a beneficent wizard, recognizing his similarities to the “wicked Sycorax” and treating him as just another human struggling for power.  Far from belittling his situation, this actually adds depth to the character, as well as urgency to the plot of the play at hand: despite the immense power that Prospero wields, there needs to be a chance that he will fail in his sudden chance for revenge, or else the story simply isn’t interesting.   Yet, the feminist critique of the play is harder to navigate.  First, naturally, Caliban’s dead mother is painted as an evil witch, even though Prospero never met her personally and still uses Ariel as a sort of slave.  But it is also interesting to note that Prospero’s daughter Miranda is just as simple-minded as Caliban, merely fortunate enough to have Prospero as a loving though still controlling father.  Furthermore, Miranda’s mother is noticeably absent from the play, described briefly as “a piece of virtue” and then never mentioned again.  This creates a dilemma of masculine power on the island, with the exception of one scene.

Unless you cast Prospero as a woman

When Miranda becomes engaged to Ferdinand, with Prospero’s blessing, after the boy proves his devotion by collecting firewood – a task usually assigned to Caliban.  This scene is commonly edited to remove a humorous segment that involves the utterly random appearance of Iris, Ceres, and Juno.  Prospero summons them to deliver blessings on his daughter’s marriage, and the ”nymphs, call’d Naiads, of the windring brooks” usually remain in the edit, but the uncut goddess scene is apparently hard to come by.  I actually really like the full scene because, of course, it’s the sort of random thing that always amuses me in Shakespeare’s plays.  But also, it happens to illustrate the exact nature of Prospero’s power.  Prospero’s command to Ariel sounds almost pathetic when the goddesses are summoned: “I must Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple Some vanity of mine art: it is my promise, And they expect it from me.”  Prospero isn’t picky about what the show of power is, he simply wants a pretty spectacle.  Ariel responds by summoning deities from the Roman Pantheon, which is a pretty significant response.    The text presents them as the actual goddesses, not “the rabble” that normally accompany “A vision of the Island.”  It almost suggests a shift in the power dynamic between Ariel and Prospero.  Plus, there’s the fact that this scene is a swell of feminine divine power in an otherwise masculine play.  Yes, Prospero insists that they are “Spirits, which by mine art I have from their confines call’d to enact My present fancies,” but we know from the dialogue that he just had with Ariel that this is bullshit.  He even commands the teenagers to “hush, and be mute, Or else our spell is marr’d,” and then almost immediately interrupts the ritual himself once he realizes that Caliban is coming to kill him.  The Island is a place of illusion, and even Prospero should not be taken at his word in such a place.

Honestly, if my brother was neglecting his duties as a head of state so that he could become a recluse that studied the occult... I'd usurp him too.

Like most of Shakespeare’s later plays, the play ends in forgiveness, though Prospero makes a point to threaten his brother before the entire crew unites and leaves the island.  And, perhaps most famously of all, Prospero renounces his books and therefore his magic.  But it makes me so curious to think about what happens to the Island after he leaves, not just to Ariel and the other spirits, but to Caliban.  It does not seem like he would join human civilization with the ship, but he would not be ruler of the island if he stayed with Ariel.  The relationship between Prospero and his supernatural slaves remains a fascinating dramatization of colonizer and colonized.  Of course, the Island would logically exist somewhere reasonably close to both Italy and Algeria, given the geography of how both Prospero and Sycorax found it.  Yet the implications of British colonization in the Americas is a tempting setting to draw upon.  Exact geography has never restrained Shakespeare before, so I don’t see a problem with setting this play in a fictionalized version of early colonial America.

Like Roanoke, Virginia, which is probably #2 on a list of "Things that fantasy and horror writers like speculate about," right after Nikola Tesla.

But really, The Tempest is so beautiful archetypal that it can be set almost anywhere, at any point in history.  And unlike most Shakespeare plays, which will inevitably get some unnecessarily obscure concept or setting, The Tempest can actually benefit from strange, exotic, and otherwise alien environments.  The important thing is to have a full understanding of the Island, so that there is a fully realized community of spirits that’s under Prospero’s control.  Ariel yearns to be free, and even Prospero takes the opportunity to go back to civilization instead of remain king of this fantastical place.  Otherwise, everyone is just running through the motions, and the only character that has a concrete objective is a humanoid attempted rapist.

And we can't have that.

I will also say that to actually perform this play, you need a budget.  I don’t think I felt that way about any Shakespeare play since Antony and Cleopatra, but The Tempest really does require spectacle to be effective.  Illusions are important to the Island, in every way, and even if you attempted a hyper-minimalistic and theatrical  world, then you still need very specific moments that carry visual weight, creating a sense of wonder.  Theatre is a sort of magic, anyways, and the audience deserves to share in the amazement that even Prospero feels sometimes.

So, with that, I will end my thoughts this week, and like Prospero, “a turn or two I’ll walk, To still my beating mind.” I love that line.  There’s nothing like a good walk to settle your thoughts.  Ah, this play!

Our first major undertaking is Shakespeare, I Love You: Pericles in Chicago this Spring: 5 acts, 5 companies, 1 Show.

TICKETS NOW ON SALE

Available online here, or cash only at the door.

$15 General Admission
$10 Students, Faculty, and Industry

Performances at the Den Theatre, 1333 N Milwaukee Ave.  Chicago, IL.
March 30, 7pm
March 31, 2pm
March 31, 7pm
April 1, 7pm

This is the first time we have ever attempted anything on such a scale, and so it is very exciting!  This is similar to the Secret Shakespeare event that Missoula Oblongata has been doing for the past few years.  One play by William Shakespeare is divided into its five acts, and then each act is assigned to a different theatre company.  APRIL 28, 29, 30 and 31, Blunt Objects Theatre will perform alongsid four other great performance groups to tell the fantastic story of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.  Shakespeare’s sweeping existential epic Pericles tells the story of a prince in pursuit of greatness.  From his romantic youth to bitter old age, these five different theatre companies will bring this astounding story to life.  Incest.  Murder.  Pirates.  It will be a fun time.  Each company has a distinct style, and together will create a unique and exciting theatrical experience!

In the Summer, BOT will premiere Pirate Johnny and the Irish Rover, a new musical featuring traditional sea shanties and folk songs.  From Barbara Allen to Fiddler’s Green, from John Brown’s Body to, of course, The Irish Rover, this stunning show with shadow puppetry and stirring song will invigorate young and old fans of the genre alike.  Set in a strange steampunk future, where America’s dependence on oil has forced industry to return to an age of wind power, Pirate Johnny and the Irish Rover tells of daring whalers seeking a better life.  Johnny, William, Nancy, and other popular names in folk music come to life in what is sure to become a new classic!

Finally, in time for the Halloween season, Blunt Objects Theatre presents a creepy adaptation of Aeschylus’ The Kindly Ones, more commonly known as The Eumenides.  The show’s legendary premiere in 458 BC caused a pregnant woman in the audience to miscarry and die.  In this Greek classic, Orestes has killed his mother, and the terrifying Furies have been awakened from their slumber to seek revenge on the woman’s behalf.  The gods intervene to save Orestes, creating Democracy in the process.  Will the trial of Orestes achieve the same result with a modern jury?

Plus, in this coming January, Blunt Objects Theatre Co-Founder and Artistic Director is organizing another Vaudeville Tour, this time running down the East Coast in January.  Folk-punk band ¿Fung Wah Bus? will be joining the madness, along with a puppet adaptation of the Ballad of Pious Pete, and more!  Vaudeville is a style that we have explored a number of times because it’s an easy type of show to engage in spontaneously, it’s engaging to a wide variety of audiences, plus it’s always fun to collaborate with a number of different artists in different mediums.

And then, of course, we will have our annual Mumming Plays!  Every year, we do a small bar-hopping play, going door to door.  In 2012, we plan to adapt the play a little differently so that we can get a larger group of barcrawlers to come along with us.  We will be exploring the dark and strange history of how Christmas is celebrated around the world, and encouraging the barcrawlers to come along in costume: Knights, Santas, Devils, a Lord of Misrule or a Grampus, even a Yule Goat for the Cubs fans, it will be a fantastic holiday celebration for the adult in all of us (sorry, under-21s).  We apologize for the lack of a phot0 reel for the 2011 Mumming Plays, but promise that it will be bigger and better than ever this year!  It all culminates on December 22, the Winter Solstice and the final date on the Mayan Calendar.

Happy New Year!

Ah, the inevitability of swift Time

Although The Winter’s Tale seems to be relatively obscure in popular culture – nowhere near the status of Romeo & Juliet or Midsummer Night’s Dream - it is frequently cited as the favorite play of Shakespeare fans.  And with good reason, because the language is beautiful and the relationships are fantastically poignant.  It also possesses great fairy-tale aspects of the story that seem to creep in very heavily near the end of Shakespeare’s career.  Even a Gentleman in Leontes’ court admits in the final act: “this news which is called true is so like an old tale, that the verity of it is in strong suspicion.”  The improbability of this play’s happy ending reminds me of the joyful reunions in Cymbeline and Pericles: almost unbelievable, but profoundly deserved after the suffering endured by the characters.  Perdita, the princess that was abandoned in “deserts of Bohemia,” is discovered by a Shepherd and raised as his own.  By chance, she meets Florizel, prince of Bohemia, and they fall in love.  Naturally, such a marriage is forbidden by King Polixenes, and it is not until they flee back to Sicilia that everyone realizes her true royal heritage.  Leontes, who has realized the error of his ways by now, takes his newly rediscovered daughter to see a statue of Hermoine that has been commissioned by the snarky badass Paulina.  The statue then comes alive, embraces Leontes and Perdita, and happily ever after.

Unlike Don Giovanni, where the statue drags the offender down to hell.

The crux of any production rests on the director’s decision for that final moment: has Hermoine been alive and in hiding all this time, or is this an actual statue that comes to life?  Either way, the image of a statue coming to life seems to be a fairly archetypal fantasy.  From the Pygmalion myth to Night at the Museum, the idea that anthropomorphic art can actually achieve life is something that haunts the subconscious.  Textually speaking, you can actually make a solid argument for either choice.  But as I said, it radically alters how you portray the rest of the fairy-tale.

And there are some beautiful fantasy elements to play with.

Instinctively, I prefer a realistic interpretation.  Every other event in the play, though improbable,can be explained realistically.  The infant Perdita, for example, is supplied with royal treasure in a bag on the desert ground.   The Shepherd immediately assumes “This is fairy gold, boy, and ’twill prove so,” but the audience knows better.  Perdita exclaims, when the Hermoine statue comes to life, “That she is living, Were it but told you, should be hooted at Like an old tale: but it appears she lives, Though yet she speak not. Mark a little while.”  Magic or not, she has plotted this entire thing, and is clearly in control of the situation.  And yet, while the other characters try to get close enough to touch the life-like statue, Perdita is trying to fend them off and even hide the statue: “Good my lord, forbear: The ruddiness upon her lip is wet; You’ll mar it if you kiss it, stain your own With oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain? “  She’s just so damn coy!  The decision to make the statue real or not is mired by her coyness.  And, honestly, I could spend this entire post talking about the possibility of one or the other.  But one final piece of evidence does support the fantasy world: Autolycus, Perdita’s husband who is eaten by a bear at one point, provides two textual anomolies when he lands on Bohemia’s borders: ”Our ship hath touch’d upon The deserts of Bohemia.”

One of them is visible on this map.

Yeah, there’s no way to access Bohemia by ship.  Also, what you may not be able to deduce from that map is the fact that Bohemia has no desert.  While this can easily just be a plothole explained by the author’s lack of geographic knowledge, and half of the play is set in a fictional kingdom with a name that happens to evoke a carefree lifestyle.  But a stronger choice might be to, what the hell, have Perdita raised in some magical landlocked Neverland desert, accessable only through some rift in the Time-space continuum that lets your ship out at an oasis.

Which is also susceptible to storms. And bears.

Right, and bears don’t live in the desert, anywhere in the world.  Again, giving the author the benefit of the doubt, these choices seem to be deliberately invoking a fantasy world where, sure, a statue could come to life and offer forgiveness after Princess Perdita has come home and Leontes has healed his friendship with Polixenes.  Every other time in a Shakespeare play that someone like Paulina would devise a con like what this statue might be, the audience has been informed beforehand.  So that suggests that this is not a trick.  My inclination then would be to place Time as a figure throughout the play, casting the same actor as Gentlemen and other characters in the background, secretly weilding immense power over how the “old tale” is told.

Basically, throw the entire thing into an elaborate fantasy world

So that is probably my final Shakespeare post for 2011, though Blunt Objects Theatre will announce the official 2012 season well before the ball drops in Times Square.  The Winter’s Tale clearly takes place across different seasons and climates, but it seemed like a lovely choice for a winter play.  If you haven’t read it yet, I do highly recommend it, because it feels so much more open to interpretation than Shakespeare’s other plays, and everyone will find something in it.  Perhaps the reason it isn’t done so often is precisely because it demands such a strong direction before the production even starts.  But reading it is a blank slate, and a treat to read and reread.  Especially as this project expands beyond Shakespeare, I hope the Copyright-Free Play Archive will help encourage others to explore old texts that deserve more time on the stage.

And, naturally, I end this entry with Shakespeare’s most fun stage direction:

[Exit, pursued by a Bear]

Not to be confused with the anachronistic action romp of the same name.

The plot of the original Knight’s Tale has always been interesting to me, because it happens to take place immediately after the events of Sophocles’ famous Antigone.  It also happens to take place during an anachronistic age of chivalry.  The two noble kinsmen of the title, Palamon and Arcite, are Theban knights who are also the best of friends.  However, three Queens - widows of the Seven Against Thebes  - decide to finish what Antigone started.  They flee to Athens and beg  Duke Theseus to wreak warlike vengeance upon King Creon, who is a major figure in the Greek plays but notably absent from the stage in 2NK.  Palamon and Arcite, who fight bravely for the defense of Thebes, are taken prisoner by Theseus and shacked in a tower above Athens.  That’s right, Duke Theseus and his wife Hyppolita – you may remember their names from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Like I said, interesting.

While the temptation would certainly be to continue the fantastical faery imagery of that play, there sadly isn’t any textual basis for that.  Most of the plot follows the Chaucer story pretty closely: Palamon and Arcite both see Princess Emelia from the window of their cell and immediately fall in love with her; where they were once philisophically resolved to spend the rest of their days in quiet study and friendship, they now focus all of their energy on getting close to the beautiful Princess.  It allows for some really genuinely funny exchanges between these two kinsmen, both loving friends and sworn enemies at the same time.  These are the parts of the play that I assumed belong to Shakespeare, whereas the boring and stupid parts I assume belong to Fletcher.  It’s like the 4th Indiana Jones movie: as a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, which one is probably the asshole that threw that unneccessary CGI groundhog into the opening sequence?

Why do you want to ruin my childhood, George?

However, according to most scholarship on the matter (for what that’s worth), it seems like I preferred Fletcher’s sections!  Seriously, the consensus is that this weird little comedy is exactly half Fletcher and half Billy Shakes, and most textual analysis has a clear idea of who did what.  I have concluded two things from this: first is that Billy completely checked out when contributing his pen; and second is that Fletcher would have been great at writing sitcoms.  His comedy is really brilliant and fast paced, and it seems that he contributed heavily to a sublot where the kinsmen’s Jailor has an eighteen year old Daughter who falls insanely in love with Palamon.  And by insane, I mean Palamon abandons her after she helps him escape, and she wanders the wilderness and tries to kill herself.  Fletcher actually manages to make this funny, involving her Brother, her unrequited Wooer, and a quack Doctor who seems to be strangely preoccupied with sex.

Comedy gold.

But then Act V happens, and Fletcher’s humor apparently succumbs to an elderly Shakespeare that insists on sticking close to Chaucer’s original plot.  I don’t know what it is about the working relationship between these guys is, but there is a staggering contrast between what works and what doesn’t work in the plays they did together.   With 2NK, it’s the lame collapse of the romantic relationships.  The plot seems to be naturally leading to Arcite winning the hand of Emilia, and Palamon hopefully winds up with this nameless girl who literally sings “hey nonny, nonny, nonny” and tries to drown herself because he won’t love her back.  But no.  The two knights have a duel, Arcite does win, but Emilia does not seem especially happy for whatever reason.  Then, inexplicably, Arcite’s horse goes crazy on the way to the wedding, falls on top of him, and he utters these pathetic last words: “Take Emilia And with her all the worlds joy: Reach thy hand: Farewell: I have told my last houre. I was false, Yet never treacherous: Forgive me, Cosen:– One kisse from faire Emilia: Tis done: Take her: I die.”  Offstage somewhere, the Jailor’s daughter has been tricked into believing that her Wooer is Palamon, and is engaged to marry him.  The awkwardly apologetic monologue is attributed entirely to Fletcher, which begs the question of why the play was ever produced in this form at all.  I can only assume that this thing was rushed into production, without any concern for anything but a paycheck.

Or they just got drunk and took turns writing dialogue.

The comedic scenes are almost worth putting up with the rest of the play, but ultimately these playwrights are just poison to each other.   More than anything else that Shakespeare has allegedly collaborated on, this play is uncomfortably bipolar.  I don’t have a problem with the tragedy of the ending, just the lukewarm emotion of it.  Perhaps, with a strong enough production concept – probably involving some crazy Midsummer Faeries in the background – you could throw enough spectacle into that final act to make it palatable.  But the meat of this show is entirely with the comedy in the middle, and that stale tragic crust on either side is hard to push an audience through.  In any case, I can now proudly say that I have read all of Shakespeare’s plays.  Sure, there are a number that I still have to reread for the purposes of this project, but as of Two Noble Kinsmen I can make the claim… unless you count Edward III, which has an anonymous authorship and only partial credit is assumed to go to Shakespeare.  But I don’t count that, so good for me.  I’ll get around to it eventually, I’m sure.  I just wish that this crazy anachronistic play had a better conclusion.

Anachronism, when used properly, is absolutely splendid.

Hopefully I’ll be able to do Winter’s Tale before the year runs out!  I’m really excited that this project has evolved from attempting just an act of Shakespeare every day into a full library of copyright-free plays, and soon I’ll be able to jump around a lot more with my play selections.  But in case anybody cries foul on my conclusion here, I think the Epilogue of 2NK is an appropriate response: “I would now aske ye how ye like the Play, But, as it is with Schoole Boyes, cannot say, I am cruell fearefull: pray, yet stay a while, And let me looke upon ye: No man smile? Then it goes hard, I see; He that has Lov’d a yong hansome wench, then, show his face– Tis strange if none be heere–and if he will Against his Conscience, let him hisse, and kill Our Market: Tis in vaine, I see, to stay yee; Have at the worst can come, then! Now what say ye? And yet mistake me not: I am not bold; We have no such cause. If the tale we have told (For tis no other) any way content ye (For to that honest purpose it was ment ye) We have our end; and ye shall have ere long, I dare say, many a better, to prolong Your old loves to us: we, and all our might Rest at your service. Gentlemen, good night.”

Somehow, this man is also responsible for some of the best television in the late 90's and early millenium.

I should probably mention that the title character and actual King of Britain in this play, Cymbeline, doesn’t really have much to say or do.  And I don’t mean like Henry IV or the First Part of Henry VI where the focus frequently leaves the political leader’s stage in order to explore the detailed consequences of his wars on the characters fighting the front lines, I mean the play is not at all about that worthless title character.  He shows up maybe twice to yell at his awesome daughter, Imogen, gets captured at one point, and gets to sit down and react for the final scene as it is revealed that more often than not he has no idea what is happening in his kingdom.  The play itself is not about him, though his subjects must deal with the poor choices he made as their ruler.

In my old tradition of comparing these British Kings with American Presidents, I submit Mr. Warren Harding.

So what is it about?  Read the damn play, that’s what it is about.  Read it, see it, tell all of your friends.  This is my favorite play, and everything happens.  The fastest way to describe the plot is Othello meets Romeo and Juliet, which I know sounds ridiculously awesome.  Even that Romeo and Juliet poison, “which, being ta’en, would cease The present power of life, but in short time All offices of nature should again Do their due functions,” - that’s in this play, too.  Ghosts, check.  Decapitation, check.  Mistaken identity, a woman dressed as a boy to elude discovery, all here.

It's like all the best parts of Shakespeare's plays rolled into one.

Plus, we also have the Italian pervert, Iachimo, who is only out-slimed by Cloten, Imogen’s step-brother who will stop at nothing to be king, despite being an idiot: ”That such a crafty devil as is his mother Should yield the world this ass! a woman that Bears all down with her brain; and this her son Cannot take two from twenty, for his heart, And leave eighteen.”  But not only is he a pig-headed brute… I think the best way to desccribe Cloten is in his own words, regarding his plan for Imogen and her husband: “will I ravish her: first kill him, and in her eyes; there shall she see my valour, which will then be a torment to her contempt. He on the ground, my speech of insultment ended on his dead body, and when my lust hath dined,–which, as I say, to vex her I will execute in the clothes that she so praised,–to the court I’ll knock her back, foot her home again. She hath despised me rejoicingly, and I’ll be merry in my revenge.”  Seriously.  And then he goes out to the wilderness to find them, and has another soliloquy about raping this woman on the corpse of her husband.  It’s actually very interesting to see his character reveal itself, from a comically incompetant suitor to a legitimately threatening monster.  Fortunately, Imogen has two brothers that she didn’t know about (seriously? Yes.) who defeat the evil prince.  I won’t tell you how, because that scene is such a morbidly delightful suprise, and can be so hilarious if given the right comic timing.  However, this does not mean that Imogen is in any way helpless.

She is, technically speaking, a badass.

By the way, her sometimes emotionally stunted husband, Posthumous, is also somewhat of a badass.  In one scene, it’s him, Imogen’s brothers, and an old man named Belarius versus the entire Roman army; but that’s not especially important.  Yes, Rome is invading Britain at this point in history.  Cymbeline is a mythological name associated with King Cunobeline, ruler of Britain around the same time that Jesus was doing his whole thing around the Holy Land.  And while Elizabethan law forbid the Christian God from being mentioned onstage – it was a “religious subject” – Christ seems to be an important theme running under this entire crazy adventure.

Specifically, that whole "forgiveness" thing.

Again, I don’t want to spoil the story for anybody who hasn’t read it yet (something rare and special with a Shakespearean play), but fidelity is the other major theme.  The idea that women can be either purely chaste or entirely wonton is a troublesome fallacy that shows up throughout Shakespeare and still plagues pop culture even today.  Yet here, Shakespeare gives Posthumous the words: “You married ones,If each of you should take this course, how many Must murder wives much better than themselves For wrying but a little!”  This marks a profound shift in the maturity of not only the character who says it, but the playwright who wrote it.  So many of Shakespeare’s heroines are valued for their chastity, and regardless of their other qualities it is the chastity that makes or breaks their full value.  The brothel-bound Marina, in Pericles, is another great example of how chastity is the determining factor in a female character’s worth.  And while Imogen is, technically, just as chaste as the others, it is signifigant to note this direct appeal to the contrary.

And one more thing before I go, because the relationship between Imogen and Posthumous is incredibly interesting.  They begin the play married, incredibly in love, and even after he is banished they remain devout to each other.  Posthumous, however, is tricked into believing that Imogen is an adulteress and flies into a jealous rage that involves a plan for suicide by soldiering.  Both characters have scathing things to say about each other during this period of misunderstanding, yet only kindness and praise once they believe the other dead.  So, I will offer one spoiler to you, because I think it’s fascinating and – even for this obscure play – something that seems to be overlooked: they are not reconciled at the end.  They aren’t necessarily unreconciled, either.  But textually speaking, with all of the revalations in the final scene, Posthumous and Imogen are never really given that final moment together.  The closest that we have is Posthumous’ words to Iachimo: “The power that I have on you is, to spare you; The malice towards you to forgive you: live, And deal with others better,” and Cymbeline finally recognizes his marriage to Imogen, referring to him as “son-in-law.”  Yet no dialogue between him and Imogen after her identity is revealed.  However, their circumstance is certainly hopeful after the Christian themes of forgiveness and reconciliation have been so heavily expressed.

Here's an anachronistic depiction of Jesus from the 15th century. It's crazy.

Someday, I will produce this strange play, and I’m sure it will embrace the weird anachronisms of the play’s political landscape so that I can incorporate weird steampunk armored Jesus up there as well as other manic creations that exist in my head.  They will be right at home in this play, which can be easily dismissed as silly.  However, despite the absurd levity of some parts, it is truly beautiful at other times, and it’s all suprisingly well balanced.  To that end, I will conclude with some of the most overt sexual innueno in all of Shakespeare, from Cloten’s early attempts to seduce Imogen with music: “Come on; tune: if you can penetrate her with your fingering, so; we’ll try with tongue too.”

I've always pictured there being a Mariachi band in that scene...

See you next week!

Also, the shipwreck presumably takes place in winter.

The title, Twelfth Night, refers to the final night of the Christmas season (the one with the Twelve drummers drumming).  It’s an older and mostly forgotten way of celebrating the holiday, with wonderfully anarchic sentiments and involving the democratically elected Lord of Misrule who leads the silliness through the town.  The text itself, however, does not bear any real mention of snow or Christmas.  The title itself doesn’t even appear in the text.  Subtitled What You Will, the Twelfth Night seems to just be a thematic reference to the ridiculousness of the play.

Although, I like the idea that Orsino tries to woo Olivia with the "12 Days of Christmas"

The events of the play are as strange as the title then suggests: Orsino is madly in love with Olivia, though she adamently protests because she is in mourning for her father and “her brother, Who shortly also died: for whose dear love, They say, she hath abjured the company And sight of men.”  Orsino is not the only one seeking her hand in marriage, though.  There is also the cowardly Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who has been living in her house for some time under the advisement of Olivia’s fantastically drunken uncle Sir Toby Belch. 

What a fantastic name that is, eh?

While all of this is happening, the twins are seperated in that shipwreck I mentioned.  Rescued by the Captain, Viola assumes her brother is dead and decides her best chance to survive in this new land is to dress as a boy.  Under the alias of “Master Cesario,” she gets a job delivering love letters for Orsino.  Olivia, still unaffected by the Duke’s affections, falls in love with Cesario.  Viola, meanwhile, falls in love with her master Orsino.  This goes on for some time before we realize that Sebastian is not dead at all, but is alive and well down the beach because he was rescued by a pirate named Angelo.

This play has everything!

Imagine this, but with yellow stockings.

The other choice seems to be darkening the entire play, though I think you can do both.  It’s a suprisingly realistic play, for all of its absurdities.  The emotions are real and weighted, not just poetic charicatures.  When Angelo is arrested, for example, his heartbreak can be truly poignent.  In that scene, he requests Sebastian’s money for bail, not realizing that he is addressing Sebastian’s twin in disguise.  In anger, he derides the person he thinks has betrayed him: “But O how vile an idol proves this god Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame. In nature there’s no blemish but the mind; None can be call’d deform’d but the unkind: Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil Are empty trunks o’erflourish’d by the devil.”  The scenario may be comic, but the scene itself is beautifully tragic.  Similarly, the death of loved ones is a somber theme presented early in the play, and so the tragedy in Malvolio does not seem entirely out of place.  It’s a fantastic balance of grief and joy: the true meaning of Christmas.  So a more winterized version of the play is something I’d like to see more of.

Also, I'm mildly obsessed with the dark history of Christmas celebrations.

On a related note: I recently saw the movie Anonymous, dramatization of the Oxfordian Theory directed by the guy who also did Independance Day.  Considering I’ve dedicated so much of my time to reading Shakespeare, I feel compelled to talk about it.  First off: it’s a cool story.  I enjoyed it, it’s fun and pretty, and the beautiful emotions that grace the screen make the sometimes slow pacing worth the time.  Second off: haters gonna hate.  Most criticism of the film has been idiotic.   These people just scoff at the conspiracy at the center of the plot, call it’s adherants “illiterate,” and then proceed to nitpick the historical innaccuracies of the movie.  My counter-argument is this: Shakespeare’s Macbeth is one of the most slanderous  misrepresentations of a historical figure ever produced; Shakespeare’s history plays routinely rewrite timelines, invent characters like Falstaff in the heart of historical drama, and at one point Joan of Arc even summons demons.  So don’t defend Shakespeare by invoking history, it makes you seem illiterate.  The only real criticism of the movie I can muster is that it can be slow at times, and Ben Johnson sounds like Batman.  Otherwise, it’s a great drama on Shakespearean scale, no matter who you think wrote the plays.

My personal opinion?  I don’t know, however I believe they are consistently the work of one author, who may have collaborated with other playwrights at times.  Oxfordian Theory is interesting, but I haven’t read enough about it one way or the other.  That’s all I’m going to say on the matter for now, because I have to get running to a friend’s birthday shindig.  But remember, kids: “be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em. Thy Fates open their hands; let thy blood and spirit embrace them.”

Happy Thanksgiving!