Month: May 2013

Jonson was pals with Shakespeare (and defended him often), but considered himself a genius and Shakespeare a hack (he often heckled Shakespeare’s plays).

…and I realized that I probably have a lot to learn about this aspect of Shakespeare’s life.  I get that Jonson thought he was a genius, I’ve seen that before.  But is it true that he looked down on Shakespeare’s work?  If there was really any heckling I can only assume that it was good-natured among friends, and I can totally believe that.

Who wants to take the floor and tell us about Mr. Jonson?

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, yeah, John Ostrander on what the comics can take from Shakespeare. The fact that he uses Measure for Measure as his primary example shows that there’s going to be some depth to his argument, he’s not just pulling high school memories of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet and doing little but name dropping our dear bard.  Mr. Ostrander’s apparently thought a lot about this.

A brief excerpt:

Explore all sides of the question. What did Shakespeare think on any given question? It’s hard to tell because he would give convincing arguments to both (or more) sides of a question.

He then uses the example of Claudio preparing for his possible death, first speaking with the Duke and accepting it, but then turning around and telling his sister Isabella how much he fears it.

Which attitude speaks Shakespeare’s true mind? 

Both. Both are true, to the moment, to the character, to the author, and for the reader or audience. It comes down to which is truer for us and that was Shakespeare’s intent or what I learned from it. Shakespeare had a many faceted mind and he used it in his work.

That’s just one of several points he makes (although, to be temper my original praise, his point about Hamlet seems a little thin.)

Oh, and before I wrote this I had to google Mr. Ostrander so that I didn’t get schooled by the comic geeks in the audience for not knowing him.  Turns out he’s not only done time with Marvel and DC, he’s contributed to the Star Wars universe as well.  Looks like his Shakespeare lessons have been serving him well!

I love a good “Hey look at Shakespeare *this* way” theory, and the TV Tropes brought me some new ones to play with. Hat tip to Michigan Shakespeare Festival for posting about this on their Facebook page!

How about the idea that Iago doesn’t exist?  That he is just the personification of the individual evil side of each character?

He’s the incarnation of that voice within every person’s mind, which is why it’s so easy for him to trick everyone into believing what he says. He’s not saying it — they’re thinking it. Emilia is just a klepto with self-esteem issues; Othello is suffering from paranoia (or, if you hold that his seizures are real, he’s also having epileptic hallucinations); Roderigo is generally unstable; Cassio has a serious drinking problem… the list goes on.

Now, obviously we’re out of the realm of what Shakespeare may have actually intended – there’s no way he had the narrative to even think of something like this.  But in terms of modern interpretation, could you pull this off?  I wonder whether some sort of weird version could be made where there is no Iago character, but instead each of the characters listed above takes turns reciting Iago’s appropriate lines as if schizophrenic.

How many scenes does Iago have by himself?

There’s a few more good theories on that page (like Horatio being a hired assassin sent by Fortinbras) that maybe we’ll get to another time.

If you didn’t see the email, or the Facebook posts, or the Twitter tweets… our Shakespeare is Universal campaign has reached its goal, with 3 days to spare!  If you’re one of those 100 you will get your shirt, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining our cause.  As I wrote in a previous email this wasn’t just an opportunity to go fishing for funds, this was a bit of a crisis of faith on my part, and I’d really convinced myself that if after all these years I couldn’t find an audience of 100 people who were willing to make a real world commitment to what we were trying to do here?  Let’s just say I was seriously thinking about how I’d be spending my time going forward.

BUT!  That’s all in the past, because you do like Shakespeare, you really really like Shakespeare, and I am a very happy geek heading off into the weekend.  I will stop checking my dashboard every 3 minutes like I’ve been doing for the last 3 weeks, and I will sleep soundly.

Thanks again.

Please note that the campaign does not officially end until sometime Monday afternoon (the page actually has a counter), so if you planned on buying a shirt you still have time to do so.  Of course you won’t get to ride the rollercoaster that we all just did of not knowing whether they’d ever exist!  You’ll just know you’re getting yours.  And that’s ok, too.  Shakespeare for everybody!

In honor of our moms, this week we imagine what Mother’s Day cards might have been like from Shakespeare’s characters.  Shakespeare is a bit like Disney in not giving us very many mothers to work with, but we do our best.

Happy Mother’s Day!