I’m no actor, so any back story I come up with for the characters (just how long were Gertrude and Claudius an item? where is Cordelia’s mom?) is for my own amusement. If you are an actor, then the back story is obviously part of who you (at least temporarily) are.
So, tell us one. Tell us the most interesting or unexpected back story you’ve ever come up with for a character. What came first, the text or the idea? Did you imagine a back story and then find supporting evidence in the text to work off of? Or vice versa, did you get a brainstorm after reading something in the text, and expanded that backward?
It’s a Friday afternoon and I don’t get my best traffic on Fridays so I don’t know how many actors we’ll get to chime in, but I’m hoping to see a couple of different backstory interpretations of the same character. I think that could be enlightening.
Category: Uncategorized
Most of the posts in this category are simply leftovers from a previous era before the site had categories. Over time I plan to reduce that number to zero and remove this category. Until then, here they are. I had to put something in the box.
The Ages of …. Well, Anyone … Game
Shakespeare clearly states that Juliet is 13 years old (while leaving us to guess about the age of Romeo). He less clearly states that Hamlet is 30, although he could also be 16. I’m sure there are other examples, but those are the ones that come readily to mind.
So, here’s the game. Pick a character, ideally one whose age is not spelled out in the text :), and then pick *2* different ages for that character, and tell how the story might play out differently.
This idea came up over in the Othello’s Ancient thread regarding Iago’s age. On the one hand Iago could be a seasoned old soldier, roughly the same age/experience as Othello, who would make a fairly obvious case for Iago being a jealous rival of Othello’s success. *OR* Iago could be a much younger, minor officer – someone who Othello barely gives the time of day to. That is, until Iago has the chance to say “Welll, I didn’t want to say anything, buttttt…..” and Othello suddenly cozies up to Iago as his new best friend, the new best friend that is that will spy on Desdemona for him. This would explain why Iago so easily blindsides Othello, since he’s hardly on Othello’s radar until it all goes down on stage.
Got the idea? Ok, who’s got one? We do NOT have to dig in and say “Well, yeah, no, according to historical fact that would never have happened….” It’s just supposed to be fun. Pretend you’re the director and for a given actor you’ve got to decide between casting someone of age X or age Y. Which do you pick, and how does that alter the vision?
Othello and Emilia, Sitting In A Tree
One of the reasons Iago gives for his hatred of Othello is the rumor that “‘twixt my sheets he has done my office,” I surprisingly polite way for Iago to say that Othello slept with his (Iago’s) wife, Emilia. (This from a man who told Desdemona’s father that he’d better hurry up and locate his daughter because she was busy having sex with an animal (“you’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse…your nephews will neigh at you”.)
So my question is this — I believe, though I can’t quite find exact proof right at the moment, that Othello and Emilia must share the stage at some point. Does Othello ever directly address Emilia? Whether he does or not, has anybody ever seen a production, or considered one, where evidence is given that Iago’s suspicions are correct?
What would such an interpretation do to Iago’s character? Say, hypothetically, that we staged an Othello were it was perfectly obvious that Othello had indeed slept with Iago’s wife. Would that make us sympathize with what Iago is about to do? We already know that Othello is a flawed man, so I’m not sure how much he’d change if we added “lust” to “jealousy” in the list of primal urges he has trouble controlling. It would almost certainly make the whole jealousy thing far more obvious, since he’s got a reason to watch out for men sleeping with his wife.
I hadn’t actually made that connection when I first started this post. *Did* Othello sleep around? Is that why he’s so crazy jealous?
Othello’s Ancient
So here’s a question about Iago, maybe somebody familiar with the history of the play (specifically the military aspect) can answer.
I’d always assumed, based on their number of interactions, that Iago was something of a “right hand man” to Othello. A high ranking officer, who’d been in a position to compete for promotion(1) with Cassio – and lost.
However, when I went looking up that word that Iago is always called – Othello’s “ancient(2)” – doesn’t mean what I think it means. Inconceivable.
“Ancient” apparently means something along the lines of “flag-bearer”, if I’m reading the resources correctly? is that true? Doesn’t that seem like it would be … I don’t know, a fairly minor rank? Independent of the play, if somebody asked me whether flag-bearers were typically friends with generals, I’d have to say “no way”. I guess I’d always just assumed that ancient meant something more akin to how Jean Luc Picard always used to call Riker his “number 1”. Shows what I know. Nobody’s actually trusting what I say here, right? š
(1) Props to the one summary site I visited that told me ancient is “a rank below lieutenant”, one of those answers that is simultaneously exactly right (since we know he was not *promoted* to that rank, he must be below it) and yet completely useless.
(2) On one of those “we’ll sell you a Shakespeare essay” sites I stumbled across, it said that Iago “pretended to be Othello’s ancient”, showing a pretty bad misunderstanding of the character.
What Then To Do About Caliban, Stephano?
So for other unrelated reasons I found myself reading the bit in The Tempest where Ariel starts to drive a wedge between Stephano and Trinculo by shouting “Thou liest!” and making them accuse each other. Even just reading the script, that is a funny, funny scene:
Beats TRINCULOAs you like this, give me the lie another time.
I did not give the lie. Out o’ your
wits and bearing too? A pox o’ your bottle!
The way that Shakespeare actually writes in a laugh for Caliban? And how Caliban, no doubt cowering near Stephano, gets off the line about “beat him some more, and then I’ll beat him too!” They just end up looking like bumbling fools here, something out of the Three Stooges, with Stephano as Moe.
But…. earlier they were talking not just about stealing Prospero’s books, but about bashing his head in. This made me think of that particular scene in Taymor’s movie where Alfred Molina, as Stephano, and yes, Russell Brand as Trinculo did manage to give off a rather evil vibe, as if for a moment you really did think that you were looking at a couple of stone cold killers.
So I’m wondering, which is it? Are these three buffoons *ever* any threat to Prospero? Does Ariel take them seriously at all? When I tell this story to my kids I never say “Yeah they’re gonna kill Prospero”, I only ever say “they’re going to try and steal his books, because they think that’s where all the magic is.”
What do you think? Should there be a credible threat in this play, or is that story line all about comedy? I think that I’d rather play up the violence in Sebastian and Antonio, since they are the real enemy – show just how powerful Prospero is that he’s so easily manipulating these notorious bad guys.
(* I would include Trinculo in my title but I’ve been in a Jesus Christ Superstar mood lately and the line above maps nicely the “What then to do about Jesus of Nazareth?” song that’s been stuck in my head for days.)