Hamlet’s Crazy Timeline

~ duane ~ 9 Comments

I’m working my way through a Hamlet summary for my daughter (their high school is performing Hamlet next week!) and I want to make sure I understand something.  Here’s the timeline of how Hamlet’s “antic disposition” goes down:

* Hamlet sees ghost.  Hatches plan to “put an antic disposition on.”

* Scene with Polonius where Ophelia runs in to tell her father that “she has been so affrighted” that Hamlet wandered into her room looking all crazy and what not. Polonius decides that he’s mad from love and runs to tell the king and queen.

* Scene with Claudius and Gertrude, who have already summoned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to snap Hamlet out o this mood he’s been in.

* Polonius enters, announcing that he has discovered the cause of Hamlet’s madness. The queen says well duh it’s obviously his father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage.

* Polonius then reads the love letters that Hamlet has sent Ophelia.

So I’m trying to figure out how much time is going by here.  If we take Ophelia out of the picture we’re led to believe that significant time has passed, for Claudius and Gertrude to decide that something’s wrong with Hamlet and to send for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, right?  Everybody seems to agree that something’s wrong with Hamlet, and has been for awhile.

If that’s true … then how does the Ophelia story work into it? Why now all of a sudden is she so suddenly affrighted? Doesn’t she know that Hamlet is crazy? And, doesn’t Polonius also know that Hamlet is crazy?

Maybe Polonius has an epiphany here, maybe in whatever months have gone by Hamlet’s had nothing to do with Ophelia (as Polonius desired), but now he suddenly bursts in on her and Polonius says “Aha!  He’s clearly mad because he hasn’t been close to my daughter! I’ve cracked the case!”

But if *that* is true…then where did the love poems come from?  He doesn’t apparently give her anything when he barges into her room.  And if the letters were part of what Ophelia gave over to her father back at the beginning when she was initially asked, those would have been written at a time before Hamlet was supposedly nuts.  So that means that Hamlet’s been writing letters to Ophelia during these intervening months?

Is that it?  Ophelia is no longer speaking to Hamlet. Hamlet is writing letters to Ophelia, which she is not answering, and he’s getting more and more desperate.  Nobody notices the connection. But now he’s so desperate he’s getting physical, and Polonius finally connects the dots.

Do I have that right?

Gertrude’s Levirate Marriage

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

This morning I learned what a “levirate marriage” is.  From the wiki page:

a type of marriage in which the brother of a deceased man is obliged to marry his brother’s widow.

Interesting.  Now, who do we know who married the brother of her deceased husband?  Gertrude is even referenced in the Wikipedia page as a popular culture reference.

Any connection, or purely a coincidence?  I expect the latter.  The technical definition of the term suggests that only *childless* widows count, and Queen Gertrude is not childless … is she? 🙂  While some folks like to argue that perhaps Claudius is Hamlet’s real father, I don’t think anybody argues that Gertrude is not his real mother.

Review : Shakespeare At Play’s “Romeo and Juliet”

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

By very strange coincidence I received two independent requests for review recently for almost the exact same thing – interactive Shakespeare for my iPad. Here’s the thing, though – one is an interactive book, and one is an app. Other than this technicality they are nearly identical both in function as well as what they hope to accomplish. As such I cannot help but review them against each other. Here we look at the app.


Read the plays or see them performed?

It’s a question we’ve beaten into the ground over the years and my position has always been that it’s the “or” that causes trouble. You absolutely positively without doubt should do one and the other. The constraints of daily life are what decide which you have the better opportunity to accomplish.

Every time I have a new project I think to myself, book or app? The traditional book format reaches a wider audience with simpler requirements, but you sacrifice  your ability to really dig in and create a truly interactive experience.  An app is a more complex beast, taking longer to produce for what is ultimately a smaller audience, but you get to make it do exactly what you envisioned.
Today we have the Shakespeare At Play app for review.  Much like other offerings in this space, this product walks you through Shakespeare’s work by providing half a page of text and half a page of video.  Each scene gets an audio description, a textual description, and a textual description of the characters.
Before getting into the quality of the content, I want to mention a few other features. Under the global Menu option is a Shakespeare FAQ, whose purpose I did not truly understand. It’s just a text file, not even searchable. There is an integrated glossary, which is a nice touch.  As you read you’ll see some words in boldface.  Hold your finger on one, and you’ll get the definiton.
There is also a Download Manager. In my previous post I mentioned that without internet connectivity I was unable to stream the videos, thus giving a point to the more traditional book format. However, you can opt to download all the videos and take them with you. The thing is you need to plan to do that ahead of time, it’s still not going to work if your internet goes out :).
This is also a player app for multiple titles, and as such it has its own Library (unlike iBooks, where going to Library takes you out of each individual title).  As of this moment I think that their Library functionality needs work, it took me ages to figure out that I’m supposed to click on the unadorned price box under each title in order to complete the in-app purchase and actually get my book.
Lastly, what I think is perhaps the most useful feature of the entire app.  Running alongside the text is not what I’d call modern translation, but more like “director’s notes” telling you what’s going on, and why.  An example:

Presumably Gregory sees Tybalt approaches, which is confusing as it is Benvolio who arrives first. This could mean that Tybalt is seen by Samson and Gregory, but is positioned so as to surprise Benvolio.

This commentary runs throughout the play, and I thought it was an excellent addition.
Ok, with features out of the way let’s talk about the content.  In this particular case I’ve chosen Romeo and Juliet, since I did Macbeth in a previous review.  The company’s Hamlet is listed as “Coming Soon”.
Similar to the previous title I reviewed, each scene is a bare stage (that in this case blends almost completely into the page), tightly focused on the speaking characters. This puts an unfortunate focus on the quality of the acting, which is far from award winning.  It’s more like people just got in front of the character with the intent of demonstrating how the lines should go.  But that’s fine, it’s not like Sir Ian and Sir Patrick are just hanging out waiting for their phone call.  The value of these apps is in their interactivity, not their stagecraft.  I don’t mean to fault the enthusiasm of the actors who made this, I just don’t think that this nothing-but-character-closeups method of filming is the best way to present Shakespeare. 
Each video represents an entire scene, which you follow along by vertically scrolling the text in a separate frame. I would love it if these could be synced up in some way.  If you let the video run for a few minutes and then actually have a question, it’s going to take you awhile to find that spot in the text. Similarly if you’re reading ahead and want to jump the video to a certain place, you’ll have equal trouble.  
I’m at a complete loss as to what I’m supposed to do when I get to the end of a scene.  There’s no obvious way to move to the next one.  The unobvious way is to tap the current Act and Scene button at the top of the page, which brings down a menu and allows you to pick another scene.  I find this so unintuitive that I assume I’m just missing something.  Sure, it allows you to easily jump around the play.  But aren’t most reader/watchers going to most often want to simply say “next scene”?
What else….  the audio commentary I suppose is a nice idea, but the interface needs work. Unlike the video player which has the traditional pause buttons and progress bars, the audio offers none of that, just a play button. Every time you stop and start, it starts over.  Which I’d be fine with except for the fact that there’s no way to tell how long he’s going to talk!  Is this a 45 second commentary or a 12 minute one?  That makes a big difference.
I’d like to see many more features to bring an app like this on par with a book.  Highlighting passages and taking notes would be a big one.  That seems like an easy add.  As I mentioned I’d like the video and text to stay in sync, even going so far as to seamlessly jump between scenes so you could if you wanted just watch the whole book end to end.
Right now I think that the “director’s commentary” I spoke of is the best part of this app.  Perhaps they could marry this together with the video syncing and the audio commentary to produce something more like a modern DVD?  Where the user could opt to turn on the commentary track and then following through the play in text and video, while listening to the director’s notes?  That would be seriously cool.
Shakespeare at Play comes in both iPhone and iPad editions. The app itself is free, but in-app purchase is required for the plays you wish to study.

Review : Read and Watch Macbeth

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

By very strange coincidence I received two independent requests for review recently for almost the exact same thing – interactive Shakespeare for my iPad. Here’s the thing, though – one is an interactive book, and one is an app. Other than this technicality they are nearly identical both in function as well as what they hope to accomplish. As such I cannot help but review them against each other.


Read the plays or see them performed?

It’s a question we’ve beaten into the ground over the years and my position has always been that it’s the “or” that causes trouble. You absolutely positively without doubt should do one and the other. The constraints of daily life are what decide which you have the better opportunity to accomplish.

I’ve always been a big proponent of using technology to fix this gap, and Apple’s new “interactive books” make some important steps in the right direction. Unfortunately I think there’s still a long way to go before they can compete with dedicated apps.

New Book Press graciously sent me a copy of their WordPlay Macbeth for review. Keep in mind that this is a book, not an app, and you’ll find it in the Books section of the iTunes Store.

What goes into an interactive book? Well, start with the original text, that’s obvious. There’s a summary page for each scene which includes clickable images of all the characters in that scene. Click one and you get a summary of that character’s role as well.

But this is only half the page! The opposite page is filled up with a movie so you can follow along the text while the actors perform for you. This is actually pretty cool. Now you truly can read and watch and the same time!

There’s more. You watch the actors perform it. You can see the text as they do it. What if you still have no idea what they just said? Here’s something you can’t do away from your computer — hit that “Tap to translate” button and up pops an English translation of what you just saw/read.

Like any book you can also bookmark your place, and search the text. You can also take notes as you go, highlighting passages and adding your own thoughts. The website mentions “social sharing” functions, but all I found was the ability to email your own notes.

This is a great deal of functionality for a book, and it should be viewed as such. I don’t want to take away from that. I do, however, feel that there are a number of things that they may want to change, if the format allows it:

  1. The “Tap to Translate” button brings up the modern copy as a balloon style dialogue box, half atop the text and half over the video (which might still be playing).  That means there’s no real “side by side” comparison to what you’re reading. You can’t move it.  The video also doesn’t switch over, which I understand (that would double the already huge filesize), but it would be cool if you clicked that button and then got to watch the actors perform it in modern language.
  2. Every page is some text, and a video.  That means that you get very little text per page, and very little acting (since each video only represents what’s on the page).  So working your way through the book would be an exercise in “Play video, watch 30 seconds, flip…play video,  watch 30 seconds, flip…” for 4 hours worth of content.
  3. I’m not sure what they were going for with the acting, whether it’s supposed to be legit or campy or educational or what.  The background of the videos is pure white, along with the book itself, so when you play a video it’s as if characters are running out of the page right at you (which is actually kind of cool).  Monologues are frequently spoken directly to the reader, breaking the fourth wall, which was a little jarring to me.
  4. They doubled up on some actors, which is no big deal in a real stage production but if this is intended to be an educational resource, you have to assume that there’s a younger audience who is actually trying to pay attention and learn something … and when the guy that was just playing the third witch a minute ago suddenly runs up to report to Duncan about Macbeth’s exploits on the battlefield, many readers will be left confused.
  5. Each “chapter” (Act and/or Scene) comes with a summary page that contains clickable portraits of all the actors, and one or more still images of the videos to come, along with a high level summary of the chapter. I found this more confusing than anything else.  I wanted to click the still images and fast forward to those sections (you cannot).  The “bio” for each actor is the same no matter where they appear in the play, so once you’ve read one they just get in the way.  It might have been better to use that space to actually talk about what each character is going to do in the scene?
  6. I’m very confused by the name to look for. The web site calls these books WordPlay Shakespeare, but when you look on iTunes the book is called “Read and Watch Macbeth : Complete Text & Performance.” I don’t know if that’s because I got some sort of early review copy or what, and I apologize to the publisher if I’m calling it by the wrong name. But I also want people to be able to find it in the store!

 Overall, I’ll say again, I like the idea of the “interactive book” format and think it has potential. I witnessed one advantage just this week when my internet went out. As I mentioned above I have another interactive Shakespeare app that is very similar to this one — but without internet I could not watch any of the videos :(.  With this version I have everything I need downloaded, so I could take it with me places that may not have a live net connection.  That’s a bonus that we often forget.

Macbeth requires iBooks 3 on an iPad device with iOS 5.1 or higher.

Crazy Eyes Went Full Shakespeare (PG-13)

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Show of hands, how many people have checked out the Netflix Original “Orange Is The New Black“? In Netflix’s own words, it’s “Trying to become HBO before HBO becomes us.”

Here’s the highlights if you know nothing about the show : It’s set in a women’s prison.  And it is original unrated content.  Which means highly NSFW and really potentially offensive to those with more delicate sensibilities.  If you hear “women’s prison” and you think “gratuitous nudity and lesbian scenes” then you’d be absolutely right – in the first episode.  The expected scene comes so quickly that I’m pretty sure the creators put it in there just to say “Here you go, everybody that came expecting that, you got what you wanted, now sit down and watch for the story.”

The theme of the show is about having nothing to hide, and having to come to terms with the ugly truth about who you really are. The inmate that’s your worst enemy one day may need a favor from you the next.  You’re innocent, it’s your cellmate that’s crazy…or is it the other way around?

Which brings us to “Crazy Eyes,” whose real character name happens to be Suzanne.  The first time we see her it’s in the context of another prisoner’s first day orientation and the lesson, “Don’t sit with Crazy Eyes at lunchtime.”  But Crazy Eyes has more depth than you might imagine!  She’s always singing, or rattling off some original poetry to her latest crush.  When an “acting opportunity” comes up for the inmates, she’s disappointed to learn that it is one of those “Scared Straight” programs for teens, because “other prisons get to do Shakespeare and sh*t. I want to play a role!” Not that that stops her.

This “Best Of Crazy Eyes” clip is all I could find. Warning again, these are highlights from a NSFW and potentially offensive show.  The Shakespeare starts at 1:37 and goes to 2:07. You’re going to want to stop at 2:10 unless you want to see how inmates in a women’s prison get back at each other when they are wronged (no violence, just a real WTF moment):

What I like about the clip is that it’s not random.  If Suzanne was just the generic lunatic that they had hanging out around the edge of the stage for random references, this would be strictly a comic piece – look, the crazy one throws down some Shakespeare.  But in later episodes we learn more about this character (just like all of them) and we learn that maybe she’s no more crazy than any others. She had a real life before she came to prison.  There’s another character who was a high school track star. One ran a restaurant with her husband. Maybe Suzanne was an actor?  I haven’t watched the entire season yet so I don’t know.

It’s a good show, but it’s hard to recommend.  There’s not much nudity or violence, but there’s an incredible amount of difficult language and content.  A character strapped to a bed in the asylum will make you cringe and reach for the fast forward button. Which is precisely why it’s so good.  Definitely recommended, if you think you can handle it.