Blog Like Shakespeare?

~ duane ~ 6 Comments

http://www.copyblogger.com/blog-like-shakespeare/ Copyblogger is one of the most respected sites on the net for those in the business of being bloggers.  So when our dear bard shows up in the title of one of their posts, I know it’s going to get some traffic.  The premise is an interesting one:

…he mastered the art of writing for completely different audiences. He appealed to the ultra elite, to regular theater-goers who never missed a performance, and to the illiterate mobs in the cheap seats. And he managed to satisfy each audience magnificently.

I’m wondering how true that is, or if the author of this article just needed to back up his argument and brought out Shakespeare to do it? Where my historians at?  Is the above correct?  Would you say that Shakespeare was actively addressing three distinct audiences, or even that an Elizabethan audience broke down that way?

Reductio Ad Bardum

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/jan/14/shakespeare-theatre-big-lebowski We’ve already done the “Big Lebowski” thing here on the blog (and it’s been all over Twitter), but this article is about that project yet again. What’s interesting is the reference to Godwin’s Law, and the bits in the middle.  Godwin’s Law, for those not up on the Internet lore, basically says “In any argument, once somebody brings up the Nazis no further intelligent conversation can take place.” Well, it seems that one J Holtham has put forth a similar law for discussion of things theatrical :

If you bring up Shakespeare in any discussion, particularly if it’s about diversity or style, you lose the argument….It’s lazy, it’s weak, and worst of all it’s stupid as hell.  Everybody likes Shakespeare.  You know why?  Because he was a frickin goddamned authentic genius.”

When I skim a statement like that it gets the ol’ dander up, since lord knows I mention Shakespeare often.  But I think, upon further reading, that they’re talking about modern theatre and those people inevitably say “Yeah, well, Shakespeare did it first.”  That’s useless.  I can agree with that.

Review : Actors Talk About Shakespeare

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

It is a great disservice to Mary and the good people at Hal Leonard that it’s taken me this long to get this review up, and for that I apologize.  When I opened this book I couldn’t wait to sit down and write about it, but the longer I went the more I realized how … unqualified? … I am do really do this one justice. Who are the greatest Shakespeareans of our time?  Kenneth Brannagh, Stacy Keach, Derek Jacobi?  You can stand in awe of their abilities upon the stage, but what would you give to sit down and talk with them about their acting history?  That’s exactly what Mary Z. Maher did in her book, Actors Talk About Shakespeare.   Each chapter is a household name to Shakespeare geeks – Kevin Kline, Kenneth Brannagh, Derek Jacobi, Stacy Keach, Zoe Caldwell, Nicholas Pennell, William Hutt, Martha Henry, Tony Church, Geoffrey Hutchings.  (Ok, in all honesty I only know those first four guys – and I only knew of Mr. Keach’s Shakespeare chops thanks to fellow geek David Blixt who haunts my blog from time to time and I believe got a chance to work on Keach’s Lear). This is a book about actors, for actors.  Thing is, I’m not an actor.  So I can watch Kevin Kline do Hamlet, and I can read a chapter about him explaining what goes into his Hamlet, and it will give me some insight into the man…but what would an actor take away from that chapter?  Would an actor walk into his next scene thinking, “How would Kline do it?” even though Kline himself tells stories of walking into auditions asking, “How would Brando do it?”  We’ve had some conversations here on the blog that just made me laugh as I saw them come up again in these pages:

The greatest gift [John Barton] brought to American actors is that he disabused them of the notion that there are rules. Folks would say, “But here’s a feminine ending – what does that mean?” He would reply, “It just means that there is a feminine ending.”

Or this gem:

I once had a director who said in opening remarks to the cast, “Good morning.  My single rule is that you only breathe at a full stop or colon.  No breathing on the commas or the semi-colons.”

I laugh, knowing the battles we’ve had over the importance of punctuation.  I can only imagine what it’s like from the actors’ side, having to listen to those instructions and try to follow them.   I wish I could tell stories about each chapter, but that would take me forever.  Instead I’ll jump to Stacy Keach, because I remember something specific about his method : come to rehearsal with your lines learned cold.  He compares it to actors who can’t memorize out of context because they need to know where they’re standing, and so on (advice repeated in our popular article “How to Memorize Shakespeare”, actually).  Although it may seem like an Everest in its own right, this means pretty clearly that Keach, a professional actor, still finds value in actually *reading* the play.    He’ll no doubt have to worry about beats and breaths soon enough, but for him the two can be separated.  There’s the text, and the performance of the text.  I like that. But, then, there’s the story of Keach arguing with his director over changing the line “Gather my horses” to “Gather my automobiles.”  This merits an argument and a compromise…but Edgar’s redemption scene gets cut completely.  That boggles the mind a bit. Well, look, there’s 10 different interviews so I have to stop someplace.  I’m an outsider to this process, so at most I’m still reading stories and saying “Oh, that’s neat” much like I might find a nugget of trivia on Kevin Kline’s IMDB page about filming A Fish Called Wanda.  (Well, that’s not totally true, I am getting some new insight into the acting process that I did not previously appreciate).  But this is a book to be cherished by actors.  Maybe you’re lucky enough to have worked with a Stacy Keach or Zoe Caldwell, or maybe you’ve just seen them on tv or on the stage and wished you had such a glimpse into what they do.  Well, now you can have that glimpse.

Some Love For The English Teachers

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

You know, we talk a lot about how the biggest problem most people have with Shakespeare is that they got a lousy and boring introduction in high school. I don’t think that’s fair. After all, I got the standard public high school introduction to Shakespeare, and look at me now :). I’m sure there are teachers in all subjects that phone it in and pick up their paycheck, but that doesn’t have to be specific to Shakespeare.

To that end, I’d like to show a little love to the English teachers, and encourage other regulars to do the same.

Mary Cunningham was my ninth grade English teacher. I remember she taught us Romeo and Juliet, because I remember having to memorize and recite the balcony scene, and Leah DiNapoli saying that she and I should have done it together because we were the only two in the class that took it seriously. I also remember watching the Zeffirelli version, complete with topless Juliet, and all the girls in class getting all bent out of shape at how excited the boys got. I remember she taught us Julius Caesar because she told Matt Conway that his paper was excellent, let him bask in the applause of his classmates for a bit, and then told me that mine was superb. Not a way to make the nerdy kid accepted, Ms. Cunningham! 🙂 I remember watching To Kill A Mockingbird in Ms. Cunningham’s class, and everybody realizing that she was sitting in the corner crying during the “Hi, Boo!” scene (in the intervening years I’ve come to understand the context of that scene from the eyes of someone other than a fourteen year old). I also remember reading “Three Deaths” by Tolstoy in her class, and trying to make the argument about the hypocrisy of the one lady who wants her family around her, all while still being a pain in the neck to everybody. “This lady never shuts up!” I said. The problem is I said it while Ms. Cunningham was speaking. Oops. 🙂 Sorry Ms. C! Thanks for introducing me to Shakespeare!

Mr. Corey was senior year, and he taught us Hamlet. I remember him showing us the Olivier movie, and then diving for the Pause button when he realized he’d never explained the concept of “Oedipus complex” to us :). I remember doing a stream of consciousness paper in his class about the day I got into a car accident, being asked to read it in front of the class, and chickening out. He read it, and I thought it did a mediocre job ;).

I wish I could remember my other teacher’s name, honestly. I feel bad. I want to say it was Mrs. McCormick, but I can’t remember if she was social studies. 10th grade, we learned Macbeth. I have no stories about this, honestly, other than the crush I had on the girl that sat in front of me. 🙂

I do not remember any of my college English teachers, truthfully.

I think it’s easy to say who had the biggest influence on my Shakespeare geekery. Glad I got her first!

Anybody else got a favorite teacher they want to send a shout out to? Is it ironic to end that sentence with a preposition?

Why Did Ophelia Break Up With Hamlet?

~ duane ~ 11 Comments

Here’s another one in the “timeline immediately before the play” series. When the story opens it’s been two months since the king’s death, right? And we’ve got Laertes telling Ophelia to watch out for Hamlet, and Polonius coming right out and saying “I forbid you to see him anymore” (paraphrased drastically).

Why? Why then? Does that mean that for the previous couple of months Hamlet and Ophelia have been cool, a couple even, and that the melancholy prince has actually had a girlfriend to rely on for some emotional support? And then, for no reason at all, the rug gets swept out from under him and she’s all “Nope, can’t see you anymore, sorry, take your presents back.” It seems odd to think that right in the middle of all this is when Hamlet decided for the first time “Hey I think I’ll ask Ophelia out.” Gertrude even later says “we’d hoped you would be Hamlet’s wife” or something to that effect, so surely they have a previous relationship.

Like the “Hamlet’s friends” question, I’m trying to recreate, in terms a modern reader could empathize with, the lead up to the play itself. Guy’s dad died. We know his mom is messed up at first, but seems to get over it awfully quickly, too quickly for most people’s taste, and then goes and does something that’s just so awkward it borders on gross. A couple of Hamlet’s friends come to pay their respects. So the next logical character is his girlfriend.

What I want to do is blame Laertes. He’s dragged back to the kingdom for the funeral, and can’t wait to take off again. While he’s home, he seized on the opportunity to say face to face what he’s no doubt told his little sister many times in the past – Hamlet’s no good for you. Only this time, their father Polonius hears the conversation. Who knows? Maybe Polonius is so out of it with respect to his daughter’s actual life that he had no idea they were already a couple, and all he’s really doing is picking up on what Laertes said and expanding it.

Looking at the text I see this line from Polonius: ‘Tis told me, he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you; and you yourself Have of your audience been most free and bounteous:’, so clearly he’s got some idea. But I don’t know how to interpret “very oft of late”. I mean, I know what it means, but what does Polonius think it means? Did Hamlet’s father die and then all of a sudden, with no other emotional support, Hamlet threw himself at Ophelia? Is Polonius arguing that Hamlet and Ophelia used to spend time together, and he realizes that, but now they’re spending way *too* much time together, and that’s what he doesn’t like?

I guess I’ve come around full circle. The clues are all there that Hamlet and Ophelia had some sort of relationship prior to the play. But the Polonius says “Nope, give him back his gifts and don’t see him anymore.” We can explain away Laertes, the big brother away at college, who has probably never liked the idea of his sister and Hamlet. But why does Polonius suddenly take an interest, and make her shut him down?