King Lear and Sydney’s Arcadia?

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I received a request this evening from Hikari, who is studying at university in I assume Japan (from his .jp email address). Hikari asks:

I’m going to write an essay about King Lear‘s sub-plot and its source Sydney’s “Arcadia“(the story of the Paphlagonian King). But I couldn’t find secondary sources for my essay yet. Do you know any sources about it?

I had to go do my research to even understand the question, but I’ve never been shy to admit when I have no idea. The story of the Paphlagonian King refers to the Edmund/Edgar/Gloucester plot of Lear, which drew on Sydney’s Arcadia as a source.

Some quick googling brought me here:

For the sub-plot of King Lear, Shakespeare relied upon a story from Arcadia, the epic romance by Sidney, published in 1590. We can see by examining Shakespeare’s wonderful attention to the characters of Edgar and Gloucester, how much Sidney’s tale of the king of Paphlagonia and his two sons sparked the Bard’s own imagination.

I’m not quite sure what Hikari is looking for in his quest for “secondary sources”. Does anybody else have some better sites to link?

The Divine Miss Macbeth

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The other day we learned that Cyndi Lauper is really into Shakespeare. Today in another one of Reddit’s famous AMA’s, Bette Midler went ahead and dropped some Shakespeare into the conversation without needing an invitation:

Lady Midler as Lady Macbeth?

I don’t know, what do people think? I’m trying to think of her most memorable roles, and I keep coming up with comedy. Could she handle one of the great tragedies? Or do we see her more in a comic role? What I don’t see her in is any sort of supporting role. Whatever she does, it seems that she’s got to be front and center.

Stop Teasing Me, Middle School

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My daughter, I may have mentioned, is in middle school. At the beginning of the school year my wife copied down all the relevant events from the school calendar to our personal calendar. I noticed that next weekend it says, “Fall play : Shakespeare.”

What’s this now?


I hit the school web site for details.  I’ve mentioned in the past that my town has an excellent Shakespeare program at the high school, and is part of an invitation-only festival in Lennox, Mass every year.  So if they say they’re doing Shakespeare I’m not going to miss it. But alas, this is the middle school not the high school and all the calendar still says is, “Fall Play : Shakespeare”.

I tackle my daughter the next morning.  “Ummm, hello?  Fall play Shakespeare? Why do I not know about this?”

“I told you about it,” she says.  Liar!

“Pretty sure you didn’t,” I say.

“Romeo and Juliet? Remember?”

Then I remember. Back at the beginning of the year she told me that the eighth graders are doing something called “Romeo and Juliet Together and Alive At Last”.

“Ohhhhh!” I say, “That’s annoying. That’s not Shakespeare.”

So as not to miss out on any Shakespeare, however, I go googling for it. Turns out that Bardfilm beat me to it, and reviewed the story (the novel version, at least) on his blog.

I did get to read some of the script, and I agree with his assessment – the characters are eighth graders dealing with eighth grade issues, but they talk like second graders. I don’t plan on going to see the play. I hope that this is not “Shakespeare prep” for the kids before they get to high school.

 

Dancing With The Shakespeare

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I’m not sure how many of you watch ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, either because you’re in another country and have no idea what it is or because you just got sick of them playing fast and loose with the word “star” about 10 seasons ago.

But!  This week was “Dynamic Duo” week, and somebody (Val and Janel) did Romeo and Juliet. I always pay closer attention when there’s a chance that somebody’s gotten some Shakespeare into other random stuff.

Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot of Shakespeare to be found, once you get past the name. Check it out (they did get a perfect score for the performance):

On second thought, let’s look a little closer.

I’m not quite sure what they were going for here, but when I first saw it I thought, “Are they in her bedroom looking out the window?”  As in, “It was the nightingale, and not the lark?”

But here’s what sealed it for me. I can only hope that he was going for what I think he was going for:

Romeo’s reaction to discovering Juliet’s dead body? I love it.  (By the way, you may notice that he’s literally holding her up across his knees. Nice trick!)

Girls Just Wanna Have Shakespeare

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Let’s talk about Cyndi Lauper, who my younger audience will know from her show Kinky Boots (Tony Award winning show, I believe), and my audience who is more my age will know her from her domination of the pop charts back in the 80’s with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Time After Time, True Colors and many others.

Today Cyndi Lauper did one of Reddit’s famous AMA’s, short for “Ask Me Anything”. It’s always interesting to see how these go. Typically with a celebrity there’s no point in asking a question as yours will almost never float high enough to be seen, but it’s fun to come in after and read the various summaries to see what you learn.

Check it out:

Cyndi Lauper’s Reddit AMA (click to enlarge)

Wait, what? Did Cyndi Lauper just drop in an entirely out of context Shakespeare reference? Her biggest regret (well, one of) was “not doing SNL (Saturday Night Live) with all the wrestlers, because she always wanted to see them do Shakespeare with her.”  (Brief bit of context for the confused, Ms. Lauper was the centerpiece in the 1980’s of what became known as the Rock n Wrestling Connection due to her friendship with real life WWF manager Captain Lou Albano, RIP).

Where’d this Shakespeare interest come from?  To the Google!

An excerpt from her memoir (which I have not read), where she appears to be talking about an old boyfriend:

Cyndi Lauper : A Memoir (click to enlarge)

This is unfortunately the only reference I can find. It’s obvious that she’s got theatrical experience/interest/connections, look at her success with Kinky Boots. But now I’m curious about her background in Shakespeare! She must have some signficant interest in the subject for it to jump right to the top of her “big regrets” list like that.

Other snippets from the book include a note that her mother, “…wanted to be a Bohemian. She went to museums and read about Chinese architecture and yogis and Shakespeare.”

Alas I can’t find any information that suggests she’s got formal schooling in Shakespeare, or that she may have ever acted in any of the works.  Neat idea, though. I know very little about Kinky Boots, but I hear it was very well received, so I’m left to wonder how much classic theatre practice went into its development.