Or so Sir Anthony Sher and Professor Sir Jonathan Bate would suggest, according to this article.

The logic seems to go like this:

There’s a really nasty anti-female diatribe in King Lear.

Perhaps it’s autobiographical? Perhaps Shakespeare had something against women?

Hey you know, in the sonnets he mentions mercury baths, and that’s where people went when you had syphilis.

Yeah, yeah!  And another thing, he wasn’t seen around the king very much, and there was a law that if you had syphilis you couldn’t be anywhere near the king!

They then play connect the dots and suggest that if he had syphilis, he got it from a woman, and therefore had some degree of resentment there.

I think my favorite part of the article (and please take that with a heavy, sarcastic eye roll) is where they mention “Oh yeah, and then there’s that thing where Shakespeare might be gay. Which doesn’t mean that he was anti-women, but, you know, I’m just sayin’.”

So confused.  If you give any credit to the theory that he was gay, then doesn’t that completely destroy everything else you’ve said in the article?  “Shakespeare said misogynistic stuff so maybe he hated women because a woman gave him a venereal disease. Or maybe he was gay, which wouldn’t have anything to do with why he hated women.”  THEN IF YOU THINK HE’S GAY WHY DID HE HATE WOMEN? AND IF YOU DON’T THINK HE’S GAY WHY DID YOU BRING IT UP?

Anybody else pulling their hair out on this one?  Careful though, they say that losing your hair was also a sign of syphilis.

A funny thing happened last week that really put the Geek in Shakespeare Geek.

It all started with a Reddit post.  A user wrote that he had a copy of the 1997 Folio Society edition of King Lear, where the text is taken from the 1986 Oxford Shakespeare edition of The Complete Works edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor.

Under “The Persons of the Play”, I see “Earl of Gloucester”. I turn the page, and the very first stage direction says “Enter the Earl of Kent, the Duke of Gloucester…”

He is referred to as the Earl of Gloucester only in the list of characters, from what I can tell. Thereafter, he is always referred to as the Duke of Gloucester.

At first, I misunderstood and thought he was saying that Gloucester is always Duke, so it was listing him as Earl on the title page was the mistake.  My error was pointed out to me – Gloucester is never Duke, always Earl – so I offered to get some first-hand input on the situation.

And by first-hand, I meant just go ahead and ask Sir Stanley Wells. Because why not? Twitter’s amazing sometimes.  We follow each other and have corresponded online on some other occasions.

Continue reading “No, The Other Duke Of Gloucester” →

By now you’ve likely seen the trailer for Amazon’s upcoming production of King Lear, starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Emily Watson and a host of other recognizable names.  If not, here you go:

What do we think?  I’ve been speaking with people about it on a number of fronts, both online and real life.  Naturally, I’m looking forward to it.

But …  I don’t know. I’m wary about something and I can’t quite place it.  I’ve watched the trailer several times now. I wanted to comment on how it’s going to be all about the costumes and scenery and less about the words (“you should be able to hear a great Shakespeare play,” I wrote in one draft of this post). But that’s not it.  Kenneth Branagh made some gorgeous productions that we loved.

And I was going to say that there’s more in the trailer that’s not Shakespeare than actual Shakespeare, but again when I went looking I couldn’t see that the problem was all that bad.  I’m still not sure where the hooded execution comes from, and the machine gun fire.  But for the most part – the cars, the hunting dogs, etc… I can see where they’ll most likely fit naturally into the story.

I think my problem is simply with Anthony Hopkins.  I don’t see King Lear (like I did with Alexander Barnett).  I see Hopkins. I see him acting angry, I see him acting silly, I see him in a jaunty little hat like he’s going fishing (or about to play Waiting for Godot). There are times when this can work, given what we know of his past roles.  Seeing a clearly pissed off Anthony Hopkins say, “Better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better,” you can almost imagine the same line coming out of Hannibal Lecter.

Is it just me?  I can’t really say the same about Ian McKellen, for example. I don’t look at Magneto and Gandalf (and King Lear ;)) and say, “Yup, same guy.” I’ve long praised Daniel Day Lewis’ ability to just absolutely disappear into his roles. But something about Hopkins. All I ever see is Hopkins.

What do you think?