http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/09/08/the_tainted_muse_puts_shakespeare_in_his_time_and_place/ I’d not heard of Robert Brustein’s book “The Tainted Muse”, but it does look interesting – particularly for historians of Shakespeares’s era.  How much of the poet is reflected in his plays, and how much of that can be attributed to the time period? The most notable example, of course, is whether our boy Will was an anti-semite, given what he did with Merchant of Venice.  The argument is ancient – he was, he wasn’t, it’s not biggie because everybody else was back then too.  The article doesn’t say which side of the argument the author comes down on, which is probably a smart move.

He also wades into less charted territory with discussions of Shakespeare’s machismo, misogyny, and “effemiphobia’’ – his distaste for courtiers such as Osric in “Hamlet’’ and his abiding respect for warriors such as Hotspur in “Henry IV, Part 1.’’ Here, for example, is how he differentiates between contemporary and turn of the 17th century sensibilities – “ ‘Make love, not war’ was the primary motto of protesters against the Vietnam conflict. Elizabethans would have reversed this axiom, for moral reasons . . . but also for physical ones – making war, not love, was believed to improve one’s health’’ and he goes on to compare how copulation was considered deleterious.

The article goes on to say that the author himself acknowledges that much of the problem comes from separating the playwright from the written word.  Shakespeare never said “I feel this way about this subject”, only his characters did, so how often when we make that leap are we getting it 100% wrong?  Merchant’s still the shining example, of course.

http://ask.metafilter.com/122577/Hilarious-Shakespeare This thread on Metafilter came up back in May, but we missed it the first time around.  If somebody asked you which of Shakespeare’s scenes is the most hilarious, so that it could be acted out as part of a birthday present to a fan, what would you go with? Hard not to pick out the ending of Dream, but then again I tend to study the tragedies more than every last comedy so I don’t know if there’s some gems hiding in, say, Merry Wives of Windsor. The thread shows a wide variety – several votes for Shrew, Much Ado, and even Romeo and Juliet.  Macbeth’s porter shows up, as do the Hamlet gravediggers.  Falstaff doesn’t get as much love as you might hope, but at least one person does stand up for the jolly fat bastard. Having just seen Comedy of Errors this summer I’m glad somebody mentions Dromio’s encounter with his twin’s wife.  That’s surely one that is best acted out. Believe it or not, Pericles, All’s Well and even Henry V are mentioned as well.

http://philipschaefer.com/2009/09/03/what-shakespeare-play-would-you-assign/ There’s a simple little blog post with a deeper question.  On the subject of “What play would you assign?” the two friends discuss the understanding of revenge – one recommends Hamlet, the other suggests The Tempest.  (The interpretation of how best to handle your revenge, between those two plays alone, could fill quite a few lectures…) But let me ask the bigger question – how many of Shakespeare’s plays, and to what extent, have revenge at their core?  Is what Edmund does, revenge?  How about Iago to Othello (if we assume, as the text hints at, that Iago does in fact have some previous slights from Othello, and he’s not just a sociopath).   What about Romeo killing Tybalt?  Sure it’s a brief flash of a moment inside the play, but it’s a pretty pivotal moment.  How about Merchant of Venice? I realize that there are some “revenge plays” where that’s the overall point of the story.  I’m just curious, if you tried, whether you could find some level of revenge in just about all the plays, short of the silliest comedies.  How about Dream?  Is Oberon’s spell cast over Titania a form of revenge for the way she’s been treating him?

http://www.nj.com/celebrity-news/index.ssf/2009/08/emile_hirsch_im_going_to_give.html An interview with Emile Hirsch, mostly about his new movie “Taking Woodstock” but at the end there’s a paragraph on the upcoming Hamlet he’s doing with Catherine Hardwicke.

But I have to say we’re doing stuff with this script that’s going to give the average Shakespeare scholar cardiac arrest. That’s part of the kick, to like beat the geeks.

The geeks say, bring it.  I’ve got space for you on my wall right under Ethan Hawke, hippie.

So I’m having a total blast going over all the Hamlet clips. I noticed something that I wanted to point out in the Kevin Kline version:  Listen to the way he says “to sleep”, the way he extends the word longingly like someone saying “Sleep, there’s something I haven’t had in a long time. I want to sleep.” Made me think of a Hamlet who may merely be feigning insanity, but could also well be having serious trouble sleeping.  Who knows, maybe much of his disheveled appearance and manner have something to do with that? I love that.  I don’t know anything about form, or how Shakespeare wanted him to speak that particular passage.  All I know is what I hear as a fellow human being, and at that moment I hear a guy who wishes he could curl up and go to sleep.(*) Or we could take it the other way and look at some other plays, and try to find common ideas in what Shakespeare’s saying about the dual nature of sleep?  Look at Macbeth’s own take on the terror of what it would mean to “sleep no more”. (*) Reminds me of the story of Dustin Hoffman and  Laurence Olivier.  Hoffman’s character is supposed to have been up all night or something, so Hoffman has in fact stayed up all night.  When Olivier asks what happened to him, Hoffman explains.  “Oh Dustin,” says Olivier, “Try acting.”  I actually found this link that goes into a great deal of research about whether the story is true.