Bard Talk: The Shakespeare Thread

Sorry for not responding, this is on my watchlist. I just read your post, and wasn't quite sure how to respond. Anyways, congratulations!

I just died a little inside today; I found out that Derek Jacobi is an Anti-Stratfordian. Oh, and there's a Roland Emmerich movie coming out this year championing the Oxford hypothesis. Excuse me while I go cry myself to sleep.

Oh joy. That can't be good.

You didn't happen to read that New York Times article about him and Lear from Sunday's Arts and Leisure section, did you? I was just reading that earlier today, and it surprised me a bit too!

Actually, I stumbled across the Wikipedia article on the movie (entitled Anonymous) and found that Sir Derek plays the narrator.

So, I have returned at last! To report on our group's latest play! This was a little something called Margaret: A Tiger's Heart, which is basically a cutting-together of all of the Henry VI plays and a tiny bit of the beginning of Richard III at the end that altogether sort of, kind of centers things on Margaret. King Henry himself basically comes across as ineffectual, while Margaret is rather more impressive, especially starting with the whole "killing Rutland and then York" thing. By the end, Richard has basically stolen the show and gets to end it with the legendary "winter of our discontent" thing (and in our case, a wonderfully evil laugh.)

Excellent performances by most of the leads. A lot of new people in fairly major roles. Some, especially York, were excellent, our Clifford on the other hand was basically kind of nuts and seems to be the designated "that one guy" for this show. It kind of fit the character, though. But great Richard, even though he doesn't show up until about halfway through, and excellent Margaret, this being the girl who had previously played such roles as Juliet and Desdemona, and Ophelia in a production elsewhere. But now she got a chance to, eventually, get really vicious, and it was glorious.

It was modern dress, essentially, a lot of military uniforms or camo or whatever. Not sure why, probably to save money. Very minimalistic set like we usually do, but effective. Altogether a worthy effort...I'll admit I was skeptical when I heard we weren't going to be doing a "real" Shakespeare play, and I'll admit that squashing three complex history plays together makes for something that's extremely chaotic while still being about 2:45 long, but enjoyed moment to moment, it was superb.

Of course, for much of it all I could think about was what role my esteemed friend Frances would have been cast in if she was still here, but one can't dwell on such things for too long...

Centered on Margaret? How interesting...

Did you have a great actress the director wanted to cast in the leading role, or was that just the way you wanted a play to go?

Well, let's see...[takes out program]

I'm honestly not sure. I think the director just found the character of Margaret to be interesting, more interesting than Henry, and thus we got this. And maybe it was just sort of the way he was acted, but Henry comes off as pretty damn ineffectual and mostly useless here. Whereas Margaret basically goes from "Ok, well, here I am...damn my husband is boring, Suffolk is much cooler..." to "Well, if the king isn't really doing anything to properly deal with York, then I guess it's up to me." And she starts, like, killing everyone...until the house of York starts getting competent again.

Also, Richard kills Margaret in the very end, then kisses her right afterward, then starts evil-laughing, and it's terrifying, but I don't think that's how Henry VI Part 3 ends...

Bumping just to say that I can link to our emergency last-minute costumer's Livejournal which has some pretty useful pictures of the costumes and explanations of how they came to be. Just don't do or say anything that would let on that I linked it. Not sure what she would think of that.

Here it is. If you want to read it in order, you should of course skip right down to the one that is Part I, read through, and then read through Part II, and so on. Note: When I made this post, Part III was not yet up, but it will be important, because it will most likely have our crazy Clifford in it.

EDIT: Part III (the last one) now up. Some people aren't in it because they basically made their own costumes.

edited 23rd Oct '11 8:17:21 PM by frog753

The think I really can't stand about anti-Stratfordian theory (aside from, you know, the fact that it's BS) is that it always seems to be based in smug societal elitism - literally the only evidence put forth by most of the anti-Stratfordians is "But, surely a PEASANT couldn't write the greatest plays of all time!"

It's like they're astonished that the Unwashed Masses™ could produce a great artist, and they always point to his lack of "formal education" ("His father couldn't even afford a fancy university!") as proof that he wasn't "refined" enough.

There's something I don't understand when people on this wiki talk about Romeo And Juliet.

Specifically, the idea that it is a deconstruction of teenage love instead of a straight example. More specifically, they will say that this is the most common academic opinion on the play. Now, I have read the introductions to several modern printings, the opinions of famous critics such as Nicholas Rowe and Bertrand Evans, modern sources such as sparknotes and cliffsnotes, the opinions of those who made modern performances and versions, and various critical websites.

They all agree that the two main characters was real, not shallow and that the play is a completely serious and unironic take on teenage love. Truth is, I literally could not find any serious critic or source that suggests otherwise. So why do many tropers say that the opposite is the prevailing academic opinion?

...what? I have yet to see any serious analysis of the play that concludes that Romeo and Juliet were in a meaningful relationship, nor have I seen any serious analysis concluding that they were not shallow. I have read Romeo and Juliet myself, and I cannot see how it could seriously hold up to that interpretation. Further, the majority of people I have seen romanticizing Romeo and Juliet are unfamiliar with the play, or at least were unfamiliar with it when they began romanticizing it.

And I have yet to read a serious academic study concluding that the love in the play was anything but true love or that the play could be interpreted as a parody/deconstruction of love stories. You can read the above sources I mentioned, I could not find it anywhere. I read Romeo And Juliet two years ago in high school, with a book that spelled out the play's meanings (funny thing, that book briefly considers the "criticism of teenage love" option, but discards it for being unlikely).

Like you, I have read the story and can not see how it can be interpreted differently than how I do. The titular characters' actions did not strike me as wrong or motivated by libido. Also, at the end of the play, Prince Escalus tells the families that it is their fault that the two lovers died. If their love was motivated by anything other than romance, you'd think he (or someone else) would have blamed them for their own deaths. To call this last part a parody would be a stretch, as one would only see it as one if they were convinced beforehand.

of course, if there are many serious studies saying it is indeed a deconstruction, I'd like to see them.

I'll second that. It kind of annoys me. IIRC, the source Shakespeare used actually did say it was their fault and the moral was that they should have obeyed their parents. Shakespeare doesn't draw that moral- his moral is that their families f-ed things up with their stupid feud.

Not to mention, Romeo's crush on Rosaline seems to be used as a contrast to his relationship with Juliet- he had a shallow crush on Rosaline and a genuine love for Juliet.

Edit- And connected to the feud aspect is the idea of fate causing things to go badly. Shakespeare has plenty of tragedies where a character's actions lead to their downfall, but Romeo and Juliet isn't one of them. It's like the first half is a comedy and you could easily see it continuing as one, but it doesn't since everything that could possibly go wrong does.

edited 4th Nov '11 5:40:14 PM by Jordan

The general interpretation of Romeo's relationship with Rosaline, as far as I've seen, is the opposite of that - it's not supposed to be a contrast; it's supposed to be an Establishing Character Moment.

The Other Wiki has some discussion here under the heading Rosaline and Juliet.

My book said something about that. It noticed that Romeo's poetry on Rosaline was extremely poor and had bad construction (it used oxymorons, which in those days was the shorthand for terrible love poems), perhaps implying that his love of Rosaline was just a shallow crush. His poetry for Juliet, by contrast, was far better, suggesting that Romeo's love was far more heartfelt and pure. These sentiments are echoed by Jay Halio, who wrote a critical guide to the play

Now, there is the view that she is to show Romeo as reckless and brash. However, most critics never get much further than that and it seems to be a minority position. Besides, all those critics who believe this position still see the love as pure, even if they were brash.

edited 4th Nov '11 6:35:58 PM by doctrainAUM

So I saw a production of Hamlet today. It was a pretty standard production at first, except for the Olivier-style cutting of the Fortinbras thread (though they kept Rosencranz and Guildenstern). The acting was great, and things peaked at Act 5 Scene 1. There had been a large pile of dirt onstage for the entire thing, and at the beginning of Act 5 Scene 1, a trapdoor opened under it, turning the dirt into a misty dust, and the two gravediggers came out of it (Rosencranz and Guildenstern doubled as the gravediggers). There were only two real liberties taken with the text, other than the cutting of Fortinbras. First, at the end of Act 5 Scene 1, after the trapdoor closed to seal Ophelia's grave, there were knocking noises to indicate that she had not drowned and was buried alive. Second, at the end of the play, instead of Fortinbras coming on, the ghost came on, followed by all the dead characters, and I swear to God, they did a Dance Party Ending. At the end of Hamlet, my response should be "how entertaining," or "how sad," not "what the fuck".

A...Dance Party Ending.

No. Just no.

We've just started Romeo and Juliet in school.

It's my personal opinion that Juliet is really just another girl in Romeo's eyes — but things sort of escalate, and it grows a bit more into proper love over the course of the play and then they end up both dying so ah well.

A problem I have with most adaptations is their choice to be more faithful to the actual dialogue than what it means. Shakespeare writes in a very specific way (10 syllables per line except during certain moments) so it can be hard to change up without messing things up, but having some modern-day rebel teenagers start speaking ye olde English when they're basically saying "I'm so totally going to bang a chick" is a bit odd.

Reminds me of the Romeo and Juliet production in Hot Fuzz, though that was implied to be more uniformly bad.

I remember watching a movie during one class that adapted the script of As You Like It into a modern setting. It didn't translate particularly well, by which I mean pretty much the whole class was laughing for all the wrong reasons by the end.

It's the problem you face with an adaption, I suppose.

A new semester, a new roster of Shakespeare at Brandeis University! And of course, I'm back to report on it, spurred on by one of the co-directors of the fall '10 (or was it spring '11?) steampunk Othello bringing it up randomly at lunch. Nice to know my fanboying has fans!

Anyway, last semester we were done with all stuff quite early, with our main play falling unusually early and whatnot. After that, we did at some point a little side project written by one of our now-graduated former regulars. (She's off getting a master's in playwriting or something at another nearby college.) It was called Merely Players and is a sort of revue featuring common/popular scenes from a whole bunch of plays framed through the wider narrative of an ambiguously modern-day Shakespeare troupe beset by infighting and generally being past its prime. It was a lot of fun and is not even an hour long, more like 30-45 minutes, one act of course. The author says she thinks it's well-suited to theater classes or to introducing high school students to Shakespeare, and would like to see it performed in such a capacity some day.

This semester, our official show is Titus Andronicus, directed by two sophomores. One has been a minor to midlevel actor in every show since he got here, the other has been a tech crew regular and made her acting debut as the stage manager in Merely Players. They intend to somehow do it as a comedy, I think. I don't know who's in the cast, though I know nothing about the play anyway except that it's not done much.

On a less official level, a senior (one of the co-directors of our spring '10 Caesar) is doing her own Cymbeline, which Titus was chosen over in the initial voting for what play to do. Don't know much about that either, but I would think there's a fair amount of cast overlap.

If you care about how these are going to go, stay tuned! Or if you want to know more about how Merely Players worked, ask away...I'll try to answer as best I can.

Titus Andronicus as a comedy? That seems... ambitious. I guess, you could treat the whole thing as an over-the-top parody of revenge plays. But that would probably require your audience to have seen a lot of revenge drama to appreciate the parody...

It definitely sounds interesting, though.

I was talking with Emily the past co-director of Othello again today at lunch, and her main comment on it is that reviewers of serious productions often said they had trouble taking it seriously. So I guess Ben and Carolyn, the directors of our production, decided to do it with the express purpose of indeed not taking it seriously! I think your idea is along the correct lines, though. I know less about this production than others, really.

edited 2nd Feb '12 2:15:48 PM by frog753