http://sounds.mercurytheatre.info/mercury/macbeth.mpeg Wow, now this is interesting.  From the main page:  The only surviving footage from Welles and Houseman’s first stage production, a version of Macbeth set in Haiti with an all-black cast. That’d be Orson Welles and John Houseman, for the curious. Some of the directorial choices are interesting, like killing Macbeth on the “untimely ripped” line (and apparently foregoing the entire “lay on macduff” speech), or the fact that the wyrd sisters are right there on the platform with Macduff the whole time.

http://www.shakespeareteacher.com/blog/archives/476 Well, ShakespeareTeacher has officially impressed me.  I don’t think I even got to see Shakespeare until 9th grade, and even then it was all Taming of the Shrew / Julius Caesar / Romeo and Juliet.  He’s got a class not only doing Cymbeline, but filming an entire talk show about it – including an alternate ending, and a commercial for a Cymbeline video game!  Wow.  Most people you meet who know anything about Shakespeare will still never know, sometimes never have even heard of, Cymbeline. Video included at the link, although I wish the sound was better.  I have to crank it up to max to hear the individual students, but then the overwhelming noise of the applause blows my eardrums out.  But that’s pretty standard for a no frills auditorium shoot, can’t really fault him (or the kids) for that.

When I speak of the opening to Romeo and Juliet I tend to jump right into the entrance of the Montagues, and the subsequent thumb biting.  The opening lines to me have always been simple word play intended to do little more than calm the audience down and let them know the play’s starting.  I get that they are punning off of each other, and if it’s a competition, it seems like Gregory wins (the person who goes second in such a contest usually does).  So, what is “carry coals” supposed to mean, and why is it important for Sampson to say it?  It sounds roughly like “We’re nobody’s bitches”, pardon my language.  But that’s what it sounds like, like some young kid strutting around with nobody to bully so he tells his friend “Hey, we don’t take no crap from no one,” like his friend needs to be told that. Well, then we’d be colliers – but what’s that mean? “If we be in choler we’ll draw” seems straightforward enough — piss me off (choler==anger), and I’ll draw my sword. “Draw your neck out of the collar” — keep out of trouble, stay out of the hangman’s noose / guillotine?  Would such a reference be accurate for Shakespeare, or is that a miss? “I strike quickly, being moved.”  – Sampson gives up on the punning there, apparently, and starts over with more of the “I don’t take crap from nobody” stuff. Gregory plays up on the passive voice – “But thou art not quickly moved to strike” sounds suspiciously like “You’re too chicken to take the first swing.” “A dog of the house of Montague moves me” — (thanks for the Montague reference!) “To move is to stir, to be valiant is to stand, therefore if thou art moved, thou runn’st away”  – does anybody else get the feeling that Gregory is not evenly matched in this battle of wits? … and then it gets into the whole “maidenhead” discussion.  I could keep going but there seems a good place to break.  I’m mostly curious about those first two lines (and, well, whether I’ve grossly misinterpreted any of the others).

Here’s how I describe an outstanding new restaurant to people:  The food tastes so good that after that first bite, before you’ve even finished chewing it, while you can still taste it, and you turn to the person next to you, grab her by the shoulder, and wordlessly stare at her, wide-eyed, where if you had your mouth to speak the words would come out something like, “Oh….my…..god…..”  Words won’t do justice to the sensory experience, so the best you can hope for is something more … extrasensory? You know what I’m talking about? You ever get that rush with Shakespeare?  Sometimes I get blindsided by it. Yesterday, as I mentioned in an earlier post, we were discussing Macbeth.  The line came up, “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes” and I said to my coworker, “You know, if you give it a second, that’s just a damned scary line.  That’s like something Lovecraftian.  Conjures up this mysterious image of a dark shape on the horizon, you don’t know what it is, but you know it’s coming, and it scares the living bejesus out of you.” Same type of thing.  Words just don’t quite cut it.  I know what I was trying to say, I even had the image in my head, I just couldn’t capture it.