Sir Patrick Stewart CBE is to receive this year’s Pragnell Shakespeare Birthday Prize.
I’m not really sure what that means, but past winners include Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench, so Sir Patrick is in good company.
Author: duane
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True Grit Shakespeare
I love the paradox : Shakespeare is so difficult and irrelevant to modern society that nobody can understand why we even teach him anymore … and yet every time a new movie comes out, inevitably somebody compares it to Shakespeare.
Today’s example is True Grit, the current remake of the old John Wayne western. Although the linked interview is with 14yr old Hailee Steinfeld, she quotes co-star Barry Pepper for the Shakespeare reference.
Combing through the quotes page on IMDB, I found this amusing bit of dialogue that Mr. Shakespeare himself might have penned:
Rooster Cogburn: The jakes is occupied.
Mattie Ross: I know it is occupied Mr. Cogburn. As I said, I have business with you.
Rooster Cogburn: I have prior business.
Mattie Ross: You have been at it for quite some time, Mr. Cogburn.
Rooster Cogburn: There is no clock on my business! To hell with you! To hell with you! How did you stalk me here?
Mattie Ross: The sheriff told me to look in the saloon. In the saloon they referred me here. We must talk.
Rooster Cogburn: Women ain’t allowed in the saloon!
Mattie Ross: I was not there as a customer. I am fourteen years old.
Rooster Cogburn: The jakes is occupied. And will be for some time.
A Hamlet Story
If you read a story (or see a film) and then somebody says, “Did you know that was based on Hamlet?” then what you’ll do is run it back over in your brain and spot all the spots where it wasn’t. Take for example Lion King, which I saw without even considering a Hamlet connection. Where’s the Ophelia character? Polonius? The relationship between Gertrude and Claudius? Some of them are stretched – are Timon and Poomba *really* supposed to be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Or is this a case where they said “Uncle kills father, son avenges” and then just made up the rest?
However – what if somebody tells you to read story X, because it’s based on Hamlet. Then you’ve got a whole different ball game. Such is the case with The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. This is not my review of that book, which will come when I finish it. Think of this as the intro material that would have padded my review when I finally did get around to it.
If you know you’re reading a Hamlet story, then every plot device, every new character, you find yourself saying “Who is that supposed to be? What’s happening here?” A grandfather? There’s no grandfather in Hamlet, he must not be relevant. Oh look a random hippie chick? That’s weird. Wonder if she’ll be Ophelia. It’s like a mystery story. When the dad dies – because we all know the dad dies, I hope – you get to sit there and wonder “How did he die? Did the brother do it? Will we learn that the brother did it? What’s the wife’s relationship to the brother?”
Hamlet shows us the dynamics of just about every family relationship – husbands and wives, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, brothers (Claudius and King Hamlet), sisters (Laertes and Ophelia). It would be difficult to tell a family drama/tragedy and not be able to say “Oh, yeah, a little bit like Hamlet.” Rivalry between brothers? A son with an absent father figure and mother issues? Family members who don’t want the daughter to go with the man she chooses? All there.
We already know that this is done ad nauseam with Romeo and Juliet – every “they can’t be together, oh the tragedy!” love story ever written has made the comparison.
But are there others? Does anybody ever write an Othello story, or a Macbeth story?
Repeat and Repeat and Repeat : Liev Schreiber on Shakespeare
Although modern moviegoers may know him now as Sabretooth from the X-Men movies, Liev Schreiber is actually an accomplished Shakespearean (which I personally learned when he was a guest on NPR). So when he was the invited guest at Yale University Theatre recently, interviewed by Dean of the Yale School of Drama, the conversation was not about Magneto and Wolverine:
He added that he attributes his success to rehearsals. Schreiber said he was initially intimidated by the ambiguous notion of success in theatre.
“In French, rehearsal is called repetition,” he emphasized. He added that it is important to repeat rehearsals until the actors know the verses “upside-down.”
Luckily, he said Shakespearean verses come much more easily to him than normal script.
“It’s like a nursery rhyme,” Schreiber said. “It’s so easy to just repeat and repeat and repeat.”
I appreciate the simplicity of that thought. It says that anyone can do it – but don’t fool yourself, it’s going to be hard work. He doesn’t say you have to repeat yourself a dozen times. You’ll have to repeat yourself hundreds of times.
UPDATED for spelling the man’s name right. Thanks, Christine!
Read the Cliff Notes, or Watch The Video? Why Not Both?
I suppose that, looked at from the right angle (and by that I mean “marketing”), this is genius. The Cliff’s Notes people are teaming up with AOL to create short video versions of the famously shortened classics.
Although they still clearly exist, I have to assume that the rise of Google pretty much killed the Cliff’s Notes market. Once upon a time you had to borrow it from a friend, get it out of the library, or heaven forbid go buy your copy at the store. Now you just google “Romeo and Juliet summary” or your own favorite variant thereof, and presto, 9 times out of 10 you’ve got a free answer to your questions.
All they’ve got left, really, is the brand. You can still get Cliff’s Notes, but why would you? Because something in your brain tells you that their quality is better than just googling the answer.
So, they’re hoping to carry that brand over into the video market. Just like with google, there’s plenty of video already out there for short, amusing versions of Shakespeare. First one that came to mind, 90 Second Macbeth:
See what I mean about quality? Do you want to sift through a YouTube’s worth of these? Or would you rather just fire up iTunes and pay 99 cents for something that’s professionally produced by the people that made their name summarizing classic literature? (Note, I have no idea if 99cent iTunes downloads are in their plans, it just seems like a logical distribution mechanism…)