Welcome Back!

~ duane ~ 6 Comments

Ok, I’m back. Hope everybody had a nice weekend, whether that meant spending time in church or with Chinese food.
Got a Kindle, so I look forward to reviewing some Kindle Shakespeare versions (already downloaded one that promised “254 plays poems and sonnets” and wanted to see what that math was all about ;)). Maybe I’ll read more for pleasure now. I’ve always wanted to go back and read that Edgar Sawtelle one.
Got no “Shakespeare things”, which was a little surprising. Can’t remember if I blogged about this but at one point my 6yr old was reading my wife’s computer over her shoulder, said “Hamlet!” and my wife said “Shhhhh!” so I thought maybe there was something in the works. I mentioned this to my wife after the fact, and she claimed to have no idea was talking about. So maybe she was contemplating something and changed her mind, who knows.
No Shakespeare content in this post, just saying Hi (I’ve got a real doozy coming up in the next one!). Feel free to comment at will if you’re in the mood. Anybody get any good Shakespeare loot?

Merry Christmas, Everybody

~ duane ~ 5 Comments

Hi Everyone,
Don’t expect much traffic over the next couple of days, I’ll be pretty tied up with family stuff at least for the rest of the weekend. Feel free to continue all the discussions, I get emails for all of those are read them all :). I’ve turned off that old “conversations go into moderated mode after N days” thing so you shouldn’t need me to approve comments.
Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours!
Duane

Symbolism

~ duane ~ 24 Comments

Here’s another idea that came out of the comments. In the latest Tempest movie by Julie Taymor, Caliban is black. What do you think that choice says about the Tempest as allegory for colonialism? (That’s not a direct quote, so if Charlene wants to reword her original question, kindly do so). The larger question to me is, what do you look at when you see a Shakespeare production? Do you look for “meta” things like this that speak to the director’s vision?
Here’s my thoughts : As a general rule? I don’t care about that stuff. At all. I go into every production (and really, a good movie as well) thinking of it as a parallel universe into which I get a front row seat. I assume that the people are real. I don’t get to ask why Caliban is black in this one any more than I get to ask when I’m 5’7″. I just am. Caliban is just black in this universe. No biggie.
Know what I mean? This was always one of the reasons I was concerned for teaching Shakespeare (back to that topic). I follow the homework boards and always cringe when I see questions about how Shakespeare sets the mood or what he uses to symbolize something or why he uses one literary device over another. I’m sure that these are important to understand, but I think that forever living in that space means that you never climb inside the universe he creates, either. It’s impossible to do both, you cannot immerse yourself in the experience of two characters, you cannot simultaneously think “Ophelia said” and “Shakespeare had Ophelia say”.
Apparently, in The Godfather movies (or maybe just the first one), there are oranges in every scene where somebody dies. That’s certtainly one of these “meta” things we’re talking about. I couldn’t go through all the bad things in my life and say “Hey, wait a second, somebody was always wearing purple!” What I’m wondering is, does knowing this or not knowing this alter your understanding and/or appreciation of the movie? It has a certain degree of interest, sure. It shows up in the “Trivia” bits for the movie. But unless you are a student of film making, is it important for you to know this?

Guest Review : "Contested Will" by James Shapiro

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Regular contributor Dr. Carl Atkins sent in this guest review of James Shapiro’s “Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? “. Mr. Shapiro is also well known for A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (P.S.) , his biography of Shakespeare. Dr. Atkins, or “catkins” as he’s spotted in the comments, is the author of Shakespeare’s Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Take it away, Carl:
I was actually pleasantly surprised. It was much more readable than I expected. I had read his “1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare” and found it to be rambling, disjointed, and filled with conjecture, so I was not expecting good things from a book about such a difficult subject. Yet “Contested Will” is, for the most part, tightly written, well structured, straightforward, factual without being too dry, and absorbing. It details the history of the authorship controversy, interestingly laying the blame on one of the most renowned Shakespeare scholars, Edmond Malone. He notes that Malone, frustrated at being unable to uncover any documents to help flesh out the biography he hoped to write about Shakespeare, began to look to the plays for biographical references. This opened the door for anti-Stratfordians to launch their only means of attack.
If the book has any fault it is only in spending a bit too much time detailing the course of the Oxfordian cause. I found myself getting a bit bored by the end of that section. But only a bit.

It is a testament to Shapiro’s cool-headedness that he spends two-thirds of the book discussing the (circumstantial) evidence against Shakespeare’s authorship and ends with 27 pages debunking it.
What is most impressive is that Shapiro does not come across as someone with an axe to grind, or as a scornful elitist. He actually sounds like someone who is presenting the evidence for all to see. He makes no pretense about what side he is on, but he makes the evidence very clear.
I did not think I would like a book about the authorship question because I do not think it is an important question. But this book is more about understanding the history of the authorship question than about resolving the controversy. That is a more interesting topic. This is a book I would recommend to all interested in Shakespeare. It is fun to read.