Shakespeare on Stage

Around a month ago, I read reviews of several new books on Shakespeare, and decided to read David Bevington's new book This Wide and Universal Theater. I've now obtained it, and I'm in the middle -- and finding it better than I even expected.

The author has one chapter comparing how Shakespeare's own company (and contemporaries) presented battle scenes, and how they have been presented more recently. This is really fascinating.

All of Shakespeare's nine history plays and several of his tragedies "stage military confrontations, more often than not as the climax of the play's dramatic action," writes Bevington -- in fact, the importance of war was a true reflection of the reality of history during the depicted era of Henry IV onward, and continued into Shakespeare's own time. (p. 74)

"Siege warfare is a staple of the dramatic presentation of war in Shakespeare's theater," he writes. In addition, Shakespeare often depicted an open battlefield. Both of these types of warfare received conventional depiction in Shakespeare's time, and were "strikingly different from the conventions of stage fighting with which modern audiences are familiar." (p. 74-75)

The back wall of Shakespearian stages included doors, a curtained recess, and a higher-up area. This served for presentation of the battlements or gates to a besieged city. Bevington repeatedly points out that the stage was not set up in any special way, either as a gated city, a balconied mansion, or other architectural element: rather, a character voiced the descriptive detail, setting up the viewers' imagination to see the scene as Shakespeare wanted it seen. In producing battles, Shakespeare placed a variety of statements in his characters' mouths to clue the audience in to what they should imagine the stage to represent.

By describing what can be known of 16th and 17th century performances and contrasting them with the visual details of modern stage productions and films, the author clarifies how our theater experience differs from the original (though he constantly reiterates that he doesn't mean to criticize modern choices at all, just elucidate them). Modern stage conventions, he explains, use "armed men in one-on-one combat, parrying each other's swords and timing their choreographed blows so that the actors will not get hurt.... Today's theater fighting is neither modern warfare nor Elizabethan siege warfare; it is an understood theatrical convention about the way Elizabethan warfare is 'supposed' to look on the modern stage." (p. 82)

The history plays recieve much other discussion on other topics; I found the comparison of war-presentation and attitudes especially interesting.

Eight Days in Fairfax

The first photo shows Evelyn last night, just back from 5 days at a conference. Miriam and Alice were completely cooperative while she was away, but they were really glad to see her!

A week ago, they were preparing for Miriam's birthday party:




My only expedition was to Leesylvania park.

The Home of "Lighthorse" Harry Lee

I visited a beautiful park today: Leesylvania State Park, on the Potomac River and Occoquan Bay south of Fairfax. The brief historic information in the visitor center was intriguing: Captain John Smith came through here while exploring the area; the Lee family owned it throughout the 18th and some of the 19th century, and it ended up the property of a man named Daniel Ludwig, an early-20th-century billionaire who made a fortune in tanker shipping. Ludwig seems to have been the last private owner. It's been a wilderness, an Indian village, a plantation, a strategic Civil-War military blockade site, a private estate, an amusement park with a gambling pier, and now a recreation area. Today it was so hot that scarcely any people were around, but I imagine it's really busy on summer weekends.

For more photos, see my story blog post: Leesylvania State Park, Woodbridge, VA

Birthday Presents in Fairfax

Miriam got a huge pile of presents for her birthday on Saturday. She really likes them, and is sharing them with Alice. One great gift was a snap-circuits toy from Aunt Elaine. As soon as she saw it, Miriam -- who had played with snap-circuits at school -- said she wanted to make a flying saucer. This involves wiring up a twirling device that launches a wheel into the air. The 2-story front hall is a perfect location for launching this. She has also made a sound detector and an OR-logic gate with a lightbulb, following the directions with a little help and explanation. We also played one game of Mousetrap: a very nice gift.

Both girls were very enthusiastic about a makeup kit Miriam received; Tracy helped them put on makeup and nail polish. They have been hoping for makeup for a while, especially because of a couple of false alarms when a "makeup session" for ballet classes turned out NOT to be a fashion expert, but just a re-scheduled class. Here is Alice wearing makeup and Miriam drying her nails:





Last night and this morning, Miriam and Alice were playing with two Bratz dolls: Yasmin, a gymnast, and Chloe, a soccer player. As documented in Consumer Reports, removing the dolls from the fetters and shackles of cardboard, plastic, nylon rope, and metal twisters was challenging and time-consuming, but I succeeded without snipping off any hair, clothing, or limbs.

Chloe kicks the soccer ball and gets a trophy. Yasmin does tricks on the balance beam and also gets a trophy. She owns a gym bag and a water bottle. I'm really impressed by these dolls, as they at least channel imaginative play into action, rather than just dressing the dolls and brushing their hair. Each doll in fact does own a color- coordinated hairbrush, but it is only a minor part of the game.

Like most adults, I find it unnerving that the Bratz girls' shoes are removable, but they come off with a peg into the leg which also removes their feet. Yasmin's feet are bare but they come off anyway. Unfortunately, Chloe's shoes are too big to fit into the foot-holder of the balance beam, so she can only play soccer, not join in the gymnastics contest. Alice traded their feet briefly so that Chloe could try the balance beam, but this didn't seem to appeal to them.

Thinking of Istanbul

One year ago I was just about to fly from Tel Aviv to Istanbul. I started thinking about this because I just read this report about Orhan Pamuk in the Guardian online:
Guardian Article on Pamuk

I have enjoyed two visits to Istanbul, and I always keep hoping that the modernizing elements in Turkish society can prevail and support all the good things I've experienced there. Pamuk's books Snow and Istanbul also contribute to my positive view of Turkey.

Here is a repeat of a photo from my last morning in Istanbul: the Grand Bazaar. We enjoyed the vastness of it all, the painted archways, narrow streets, and constant invitations to look at rugs, scarves, jewelry, tiles, purses, shoes, leather jackets, trinkets, inlaid boxes, more rugs, and so on, I wrote.

UC Davis Arboretum

The Arboretum on the Davis campus is divided into regions reflecting international geography. The Australian region has bottle-brush trees and some odd-shaped small flowers. The California region includes coastal redwoods, wildflowers, valley oaks, and native redbuds. The Arboretum is very narrow, as it follows a watercourse that's inside concrete banks, and goes under several big roads that give access to the campus buildings. At intervals, the paths alongside the banks go up the hillside towards one of the buildings. The design is impressive: you feel as if you are in a natural area, separated from city life -- but you aren't.

Dan, Lara, Theo, and Tessa

Theo likes to pretend to be a lion just like Alice does! We had a great visit with all the Bs! More photos later or tomorrow!

Spring in the Garden

It's raining today, but finally, we have lilacs.

Cymbeline

Shakespeare begins his play Cymbeline in the middle of a mess at the court of the title character, a king in Britain. His wife had died long ago, leaving two toddler boys and an infant girl, Imogen. Cymbeline had banished Belarius one of his most loyal noblemen, and as he fled, Belarius had convinced the children's nurse to kidnap the two boys and go with him to live in the woods, where a few scenes into the play, we see them -- now adult men -- in their cave.

At the start of the play, Imogen is a young woman, and has just eloped with a visitor to court, Leonatus Posthumus, a Roman. We quickly learn that Cymbeline's second wife was beautiful and manipulative in a very evil way. Her aptly named son Cloten (rhymes with Rotten) was a very dumb clod who could hardly speak prose and virtually never spoke the native iambic pentameter of the other characters. Cloten and his mother had had a plan: he would marry Imogen and take over the kingdom. Obviously, Imogen's love marriage thwarted that, and they were angry and vengeful. The Queen can make Cymbeline do anything: she has him banish Posthumus.

Next we have a tricky part of the plot. Leonatus Posthumus brags about Imogen to the wrong people, who wager that she can be led astray. One of them has himself smuggled into her bedroom in a chest, and while she sleeps he memorizes all its secrets and steals the bracelet that her husband had given her. Wronged and innocent, she is cast out of court and soon assumes the disguise of a boy.

Now we are set up for a series of wanderings in the woods and finally a long series of recognition scenes, as fathers and children and husbands and wives are reunited. But only the good ones: Cloten, on his way to rape Imogen and kill Posthumus, is beheaded by one of her unrecognized brothers, and Cymbeline's Queen dies, repenting all her evil deeds. Spirits and Roman gods appear in dreams to Posthumus, predicting justice and harmony. And the predictions come true as Cymbeline emerges as a more kingly figure, no longer just henpecked and stupified.

Why does it read so well? Shakespeare made it all work. The interactions, though improbable, are very dramatic, and the poetry is as impressive as any. Imponderable, I think.

Mother's Day Brunch

Here are some of the guests at Linda and George's Mother's Day brunch. For the food, see the food blog --

Food for Mother's Day

More on Islamic Fundamentalists

In my previous post I wrote about the book No god but God by Aslan. I just read about another book that makes a similar point -- though in the words of the reviewer, the author, Ed Husain, is even more forceful about the moral deficiencies of the extreme Islamists. The reviewer criticises westerners who find Islamist inditements of our society to have moral merit:

In his new book, The Islamist, Husain identifies a professed horror of western decadence as the next, infinitely promising excuse for Islamist murder. "When the political pretexts of Palestine and Iraq have been dealt with," he writes, "Wahhabi-inspired militants will turn to other social grievances. Drinking alcohol, 'impropriety', gambling, cohabitation, inappropriate dress - these and a host of miscellaneous others will become excuses for jihad, for martyrdom, feeding the tumour of Islamist domination which grows in the Wahhabi and Islamist mind."

...Following a period in modestly dressed, porn-loving Saudi Arabia, Husain concluded that the Islamists' depiction of the west as morally inferior was nothing more than "Islamist propaganda, designed to undermine the west and inject false confidence in Muslim minds". And whether through accident or design, the propaganda is working brilliantly, as it coincides with an epidemic of binge drinking, super casinos and intermittent moral panic.

I especially like this quote:

Writers whose suspicions would be instantly aroused by, say, a smarmy TV evangelist who seemed obsessively interested in fornication, or a politician who relied on divine inspiration as a justification for war, seem to have no difficulty listening to the strictures of angry young men whose primary moral interest appears to be in telling women what to wear on their heads.

This is a really good article in the Guardian online -- see: Catherine Bennett: Why should we justify ourselves to those who would bomb us?

Recent Reading

I've recently read two good books, very different from one another. Both are relatively new -- first published in 2005. One way or another both books were on my amazon.com reading lists, and I recently ordered and received them, leaving only a few hundred more books to go.

The first book, No god but God by Reza Aslan is a historic study of Islam, with lots of attention paid to the modern ramifications of each historical development. I heard John Stewart interview him on "The Daily Show," and decided to read the book.

I can't get really committed to learning details of quarrels and power struggles among the desert tribes of Arabia in the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages (to use the European names of those eras). However, I was particularly interested in the portrayal of the pre-Moslem religions of Mecca and the region, and in the author's conviction that the current disastrous confrontation between the West and Islam is really a side-effect of an internal struggle between Moslems. Specifically, Aslan sees the fundamentalists vs. the modernizers as the real struggle, and the Moslem-Western battles as peripheral.

The second book, The Genizah at the House of Shepher is a novel by Tamar Yellin. I read that it won the first Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, awarded by the Jewish Book Council in March. Besides the honor, the prize equals $100,000.

At times The Genizah... is a little romance-like for my taste. The plot is slightly forced: about an ancient codex over which a large family are quarreling, with a variety of motives. The main character -- who narrates the tale -- has roots in both Israel and England, and her family connects to other Jewish centers going back into the 19th century. Despite the constant mental and physical changes of location, the book seemed very coherent to me: a personal and family story of discovery and searching.

I found The Genizah... very beautifully written, especially the descriptions of Israel and the portrayals of the main characters. Here's an example of a passage about the narrator's English childhood that I enjoyed:

Mine was a kind father but a melancholy man. All day long he worked at the factory, measuring lengths of timber with his thick fingers. He fed the timber to the jigsaw with his workman's hands. Sometimes in the evenings he would tell me stories, for in late middle-age he had remembered the stories of his youth: about Sandalfon, the guardian angel of birds, who was responsible for forming children in the womb, and about Metatron, author of the Book of Secrets and God's heavenly scribe. About Moses, who saw God through a clear glas and Elijah, who saw him through a darkened one. About the dangers of moonlight and about the resurrection of the dead. At weekends we walked the streets of our neighbourhood, stole raspberries from Mr. Mankin's garden, bamboo sticks from the municipal park. We picked up coins from the pavement and jewellry from gutters, and wherever we went I ws taught the pleasures of being light-fingered and sharp-eyed.

There was also education by omission. My mother took responsibility for that. (p. 146)

Another passage, about her return to Jerusalem, that I liked:

I came to Jerusalem at night, in darkness, after a long absence, rain streaking the windows of the taxi as we rode from the plain to the hills. Outside, at first, there were bright signs, a golden egg, a drive-thru takeaway, a gian smile surrounded by flashing lights. We might have been in America. We might have been anywhere. Then we were on the highway. We were nowhere. Darkness, hunched trees. A change in the air. A whiff of petrol and bitumen, a hint of the sea or the desert. Strangeness. Rain.

Then as we began to climb I closed my eyes and thought I had recognized the old route, its rises and turns inscribed on my memory. But the road had changed. It had flattened, uncoiled and stretched itself into something unfamiliar. And when I opened my eyes, instead of the darkness of the hills there were masses of lights, strings and clusters of lights as far as the eye could see.

"What's that?" I asked.

The driver answered: "That's Jerusalem." (p. 11)

Channeling Shakespeare

On a completely different topic...

Here is an incredible article by Alan Dershowitz about Jimmy Carter's major reliance on funding from the Saudis and a number of Arab sources. The conclusion:

If money determines political and public views as Carter insists "Jewish money" does, Carter's views on the Middle East must be deemed to have been influenced by the vast sums of Arab money he has received. If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then Carter's off-key tunes have been called by his Saudi Arabian paymasters. It pains me to say this, but I now believe that there is no person in American public life today who has a lower ratio of real to apparent integrity than Jimmy Carter. The public perception of his integrity is extraordinarily high. His real integrity, it now turns out, is extraordinarily low. He is no better than so many former American politicians who, after leaving public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and become lobbyists for despicable causes. That is now Jimmy Carter's sad legacy.

It's very detailed -- The Real Jimmy Carter - Alan M. Dershowitz

If we all talked Shakespeare

I just found out about a column published in honor of Shakespeare's birthday in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: We can’t all be Shakespeare — but we could try to be. Author: Joe Muldoon. Also published in his blog at Thoughts upon the Bard's Birthday. Also discussed on NPR and in the blog polyglot conspiracy in Shakespeare would text.

Well, Mr. Muldoon showed us what would happen if we constantly quoted Shakespeare instead of trying to think up new ways to say things. He demonstrated that this approach would be fine as long as there was a famous quote to fit whatever was going on. I suspect that we'd all be pretty quickly bored from nothing new, even if the quotes express a past thought much better than we can speak for ourselves. All his examples are the most overused Shakespeare quotations anyway -- he didn't seem to bother to read even one play to look for a new idea!

Here's how the article ends, a passage that I think illustrates my point:

And then -- the finale! One day, bewildered by senescence or stoked to the brim on pain pills, I will rampage out the door of the nursing home to weave among the semis on I-94. In a snowstorm. It's got to be a snowstorm.

As a mighty Peterbilt juggernaut bears down, the driver will hear my defiant challenge: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes . ... "

Said driver surely will stop and scurry to my side. As life seeps from my poor body, she will pull a tarp off the flatbed and -- ye gods, let it be so! -- be reminded of something she heard in English class long ago. (Though she'll as likely have a Ph.D. in literature.)

With snow swirling about, she will whisper ever so gently, "Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Shakespeare's Birthday Presents

According to New York Times book reviewer William Grimes: this month brings "a stack of Shakespeare books released to coincide with the playwright’s birthday on April 23. Such onslaughts are a time-honored ritual, but this year the pickings are unusually rich." The review: Keeping the Faith With Shakespeare.

Most discussed is the latest single-volume edition of the plays edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (Modern Library). I'm sure it's great, but when I actually read plays, I want a small, easy-to-handle volume. In fact, in my latest project of rereading a fair portion of the plays, I've been buying new paperbacks to replace the ones I discarded many years ago.

The reviewer enthuses about the "wayward and intermittently brilliant" observations in A. D. Nuttall’s Shakespeare the Thinker (Yale University Press): "a close reading of the plays that tries to map the creases and folds in Shakespeare’s mysterious, elusive brain. ... with pithy barroom observations sharing space with arguments so fine-spun they threaten to disappear on the page." I don't know if I want to read that or not. Another reviewed book I doubt I'll read: a book about riots over Shakespeare performance in 19th century New York.

For me the most appealing of the new books from this discussion is David Bevington: This Wide and Universal Theater (University of Chicago Press). I'm adding it to my list of books to be read along with my projected Shakespeare reading. From the review:

Mr. Bevington, by focusing on the stage directions in Shakespeare’s plays, shows how actors relied on words alone to suggest time, place and action, and how the stage at the Globe could be manipulated in the hands of a canny playwright. There was no balcony in “Romeo and Juliet.” On the other hand, since there was nothing in the way of stage décor, no intervals were needed to move from scene to scene. More recent directors, returning to Shakespeare’s idea of staging, have embraced abstract spaces and let the language do the work.

From a Friend in London: Shakespeare's Birthday

Did you know that today (April 23 - also St. George's Day) is Shakespeare's "official birthday"? I learnt this nugget of information from Radio 3 (BBC's classical music channel) while showering this morning. They played

Linley
Extract from "A Shakespeare Ode On the Witches & Fairies"
Helen Parker & Julia Gooding (sopranos)
Musicians of the Globe
Philip Pickett, director
PHILIPS 4466892 Tr 2-8

The extract dealt with Shakespeare's birthday - hence the reason for playing it. I searched out the above details from the playlist on the BBC website - but I'm not recommending you to search for it - it was pretty dire.

When they say that it's his "official birthday" I don't know if that means they only know the year that he was born & therefore "gave" him St. George's day as his birthday or whether he's like the Queen (who has a real birthday and an "official" one on which she "troops the colour").

Apparently they had a party for him at "Shakespeare's Globe" yesterday evening & tonight, from 8pm onwards they are further celebrating by projecting various films of Shakespeare's plays (including one dating from 1899!) onto the walls of the theatre.

I thought of you & your blog when I learnt all these facts this morning!!

Measure for Measure

Experiments on human subjects cause much soul-searching in our society. As a result of this ingrained mistrust, I'm uncomfortable with the basic premise of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. In the play, the Duke of Vienna leaves a morally questionable man, Angelo, in charge of his duchy. While Angelo abuses his delegated power, the Duke disguises himself as a friar and watches and even manipulates some of Angelo's victims. There are no specifics to show that this is Vienna: it might as well be Venice or Stratford-on-Avon.

The Story. In an excess of legalism, Angelo imprisons Claudio and sentences him to death for having slept with his fiance before marriage. (They couldn't get married because of some problem resolving dowry issues that were comprehensible in Shakespeare's time but are not so clear now, I think.) She's off somewhere, pregnant. In his early appearances, characters portray Angelo as a cold, unfeeling man: his blood is "snow-broth." (I, iv, 58)

Claudio's sister Isabel is about to take vows as a nun. She's called in to beg Angelo to free him. Angelo demands sexual favors from her. The disguised Duke participates in quite a few of the conversations, disguised as a Friar -- he even hears confessions, and elicits unwary remarks against himself. In asides and to one in the know he gives various explanations for his experimentation and his desire to be outside of his usual reponsible role as Duke.

The Duke already knew that Angelo had jilted a woman, Mariana, several years before, when her dowry was lost. So does this mean the Duke didn't hesitate to put a morally compromised man in charge? Not clear.

The duke ensures that Mariana is sent in Isabel's place to sleep with Angelo. The next morning, he demands Claudio's head on a platter. He's clearly a bad egg! With the Duke's connivance, the jailers bring the head of a man who died in prison of natural causes -- and coincidentally resembles Claudio. (Mariana is shown in the drawing by Rosetti.)

In the last act, the Duke undisguises himself and shows up to straighten things out and extract confessions, apologies, and reconciliations from everyone, including a forced marriage of Angelo to Mariana. Isabel is offered the death of Angelo, but forgives him. Claudio returns. All occurs with maximum drama and surprises.

The Shakespearan Side of the Play. Shakespeare entertains us with lots of philosophizing by the various characters, and a bit of baudy joking between some low-lifes and a brothel owner named Mistress Overdone -- she had nine husbands: "Overdone by the last." (II, i, 211) The action flows magnificently, and the characters' emotions and personalities are very fully developed. Pure Shakespeare. But that darn Duke is so manipulative: how could he do that to them?

Says the disguised Duke when comforting Claudio, whose death he could so easily prevent:

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads the. Friend hast thou none,
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner. Thou has nor youth, nor age,
But as it were an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both, for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and whn thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid moe thousand deaths; yet death we fear
That makes these odds all even. (III, i, 27-41)

Shakespeare in "The Guardian"

A fascinating article in The Guardian presents a summary of Shakespeare's reputation throughout history. The article (which appears to be unsigned) discusses how Shakespeare's popularity developed, beginning in Shakespeare's lifetime and continuing with the Folio edition. The article shows that, as the plays were reprinted over and over again, each era reinterpreted the plays in its own context.

The headlines:

A man for all ages

According to many critics of his time, Shakespeare was vulgar, provincial and overrated. So how did he become the supreme deity of poetry, drama and high culture itself, asks Jonathan Bate, editor of the first Complete Works from the Folio for 300 years

Saturday April 14, 2007

See:

A man for all ages

As we read them

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Kurt Vonnegut Dies at 84-- according to The New York Times obituary Vonnegut "invented phenomena like chrono-synclastic infundibula (places in the universe where all truths fit neatly together) as well as religions, like the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and Bokononism."

Most of the memorials written to him today remark on his influence on "counterculture" types beginning in the mid-1960s. These (perhaps imagined) counterculturalists, who awaited publication of each new book as it was published, were at the time held responsible for all kinds of things that the opposite end of the Generation Gap hated. The elders worried about his bad influence. He didn't take serious things seriously enough, and his thoughts on war were problematic for the war in Vietnam. He invented supernatural phenomena and religions that didn't flatter existing beliefs. At all.

I loved Vonnegut. Was he deep or shallow? A bad influence or a good one? I don't care. His books were fun to read, and they captured something important: the futility and excess of the grownups' behavior. I hope I never get as old-minded as the grownups were.

PS: Last night on "The Daily Show" the Moment of Zen showed an inteview of Jon Stewart with Vonnegut. Supports my point: he was the oldest un-grownup we had.

When shall we three meet again?

From the first line of Macbeth onward, I remember indelibly much because of the intense memorization required when I was in high school. Rereading nevertheless amused me and fascinated me. I can't resist enjoying the many facets of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth even if my high school English teacher's voice keeps cackling the lines in my head. I like contemplating Lady Macbeth's steely resolve that turns to madness, and the pain and horror of all the victims.

To reread the play is always to revisit the questions of whether Macbeth is free to decide his own path or if he's inevitably condemned by his own ambition and the goading of the witches. The shaping of these questions begins with the witches' first predictions. Banquo raises questions as soon as the witches leave, setting the tone for the whole play. Are the witches (which Banquo calls "bubbles") setting Macbeth up to do evil? Or are they simple fortune tellers? Banquo's view is so rational compared to that of Macbeth -- and he so soon pays for it. His words:

But 'tis strange;
And oftentimes to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence. (I, iii, 122-126)

The witches struck me in a new way in this reading. They are just as magical, airy, and ineffible as the fairies of Midsummer Night's Dream, I realized. They fly, they only have a material presence sometimes, they answer to the abyss, they commune with all sorts of other spirits. I don't think this aspect was part of my high school lessons.

A few of the quotes that gave me a new view of Shakespeare's supernatural world especially surprised me with their similarity to Puck and the harmless fairies. Here are the words of a spirit accompanying Hecate:

O what a dainty pleasure's this,
To sail i'th'air while the moon shines fair,
To sing, to toy, to dance, and kiss.
Over woods, high rocks and mountains,
Over hills and misty fountains,
Over steeples, towers and turrets
We fly by night 'mongst troops of spirits.
No ring of bells to our ears sounds,
No howls of wolves nor yelps of hounds,
No, not the noise of water's breach,
Nor cannons' throats our height can reach. (III, v, 55-65)

A little later Hecate in person responds to the long recipe in the famous "Double, double toil and trouble" speech:

O, well done! I commend your pains,
And every one shall share i' th' gains.
And now about the cauldron sing
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.

Music and a song intervene, and Hecate continues:

Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and gray
Mingle, mingle, mingle,
You that mingle may. ( IV, i, 39-45)

The more I read, the more I picture the witches as beautiful women, even despite the reference to their beards -- beautiful, not very young, without any human responsibility, and very tempting.

Shakespeare at the Movies

From the Guardian Online I read an article titled The Bard on screen --

"Nearly 700 films and TV productions have taken their stories from Shakespeare, according to the Internet Movie Database - and the true figure may be much higher. The website does not distinguish between productions that keep the Bard's original texts, in English or in translation (Laurence Olivier's Henry V, Orson Welles's Othello, Grigori Kozintsev's Russian King Lear), and what are known as "genre adaptations" - westerns, gangster thrillers, melodramas, musicals, sci-fi, teen comedies and so on, which have abandoned Shakespeare's pentameters and settings, then customised his storylines and characters to fit their own conventions."

The article continues by summarizing the range and commercial success of both adaptations and original-text Shakespeare films, of which the most successful is Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.

A book titled 100 Shakespeare Films, by Daniel Rosenthal, will be published by the British Film Institute on April 16 (not yet listed in amazon.com -- but they list a previous book on Shakespeare films from 2001, see image at right).

I'm putting this book on my list: I would like to see more good Shakespeare films. For example, I'd like to re-view the Kurosawa films of Samurais as King Lear and MacBeth. Evidently I've barely scratched the surface!

Cherry Blossoms in Washington, D.C.

For the first time in many trips to Washington, our timing corresponded to the blossoming cherry trees around the Tidal Basin. The Jefferson Memorial is a beautiful white marble building that perfectly sets off the delicate colors of the blossoms. We walked all the way around the basin, stopping to see three memorials: to Jefferson, George Mason, and Franklin D. Rooseveldt.

Here is Evelyn with George Mason:

Here is Lenny with FDR:

We saw "300" -- I give it a 275

Unlike most critics, I think the movie "300" has a lot going for it. I went because Lenny wanted to see it, and I knew nothing about it. My main impressions as I watched were: first, I thought the dialog was wooden and the music inappropriate; second, I really liked the visuals but they often seemed small for the big screen at the theater. Who finally gets to a movie theater and then wishes to be watching on a small screen?

When I realized afterwards that the film was based on a graphic novel, those impressions really made sense. The dark sketchy scenes, the outlined scenes, the exaggerated mountain vistas (probably really like in Greece), the ships swamped by waves: all graphic.

Generally, I liked the action very much in its slo-mo, jerky stylizations. The boy Leonidas fights a wolf in a series of shots of snarling teeth and fearful spear gestures. When Leonidas climbs the mountain to see the oracle, it's a series of silhouettes with a rock falling or a missed footing. The oracle herself dances in a terrific, stylized way with outlines and swirly lines around her -- graphic novel, yes.

I liked the costumes, especially the helmets which look like the ones they dig up all around the Mediterranean. I have seen Greek helmets and armor in museums and Greek vase painting, so I know they didn't actually engage in spear battles dressed only in tighty-whities (black ones, I admit...) and red capes. Needless to say, I know that the Persians didn't ride on Star-Wars type rhinos and that Xerxes the king of Persia probably didn't wear sci-fi jewelry and eye makeup into battle. And wasn't the same size as Hagrid. But I forgive all these details.

When we got home, Len googled and found that many of the details match real history as written by Herodotus. I won't go into detail. All in all, we liked it for itself alone -- and don't mind that if the rest of the members of the audience had brought their parents we would probably still have been the oldest ones present.

"Why should Caesar be a tyrant then?"

Early in Julius Caesar Shakespeare has each of the "honorable" conspirators against Caesar explain his own good reasons for accepting assassination as a solution to the political problems they face. They decide; they act; they don't get the results they hoped for. It's far from clear that they were anywhere near as idealistic about motive nor as realistic about Caesar as they told each other. Anthony's "honorable men" speech makes sure we know that.

The play presses forward to the conspirators' ruin, and the disorderly end of an orderly state. Elizabethan politics may have been behind Shakespeare's views, but as the situation emerges, I think the reader must be in awe of the universals of the motives, methods, and results. My own feeling is awe.

Cassius sees omens, but determines that "Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius." He continues to explain his commitment by blaming the gullible Romans who are begging Caesar to abandon the republic and accept a crown:

And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?
Poor Man! I know he would not be a wolf
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep:
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a might fire
Begin it with weak straws: what trash is Rome,
What rubbish and what offal, when it serves
For the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as Caesar! (I, iii, 102-111)

Brutus, in contrast, fears Caesar himself, not for what he was in the past, but for what power will possibly do to him.

He would be crown'd:
How that might change his nature, there's the question:
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder'
And that craves wary walking. Crown him? -- that;--
And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins
Remorse from power... (II, i, 12-19)

And so they plot, they act, and they then do what they were afraid Caesar would do -- but without his greatness of imagination and love of the people (if we listen to Anthony).

Speaking to the crowd gathered to bury Caesar, just before he consents to have Anthony speak, Brutus makes the famous claim that his deed was "not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more." He asks: "Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men. ... as he was ambitious, I slew him." (III, ii, 25-30)

Brutus may or may not be too jealous of Caesar's ability to sway the crowd; the other conspirators are clearly jealous of the characteristics that make him so popular. They may be both jealous and also right. The political questions of how to have a stable government, a legitimate government that answers to the people, leaders and rescuers with either noble or self-serving motives, and that deals with crowd mentality is very fascinating. Anthony and his allies are equally fascinating.

Aside -- isn't it ironic that the internal logic of this play makes us remember the Ides of March as if it were some kind of cursed day instead of an ordinary Roman timekeeping marker? A few days ago, they mentioned this date on the radio -- as if the 15th of all other months was not the "ides."

Shakespeare Lives!

Today's Washington Post reports on a "trial" of Hamlet. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy -- an originator of the idea of this event -- presided.

Suppose Hamlet had lived, and was put on trial for the murders in the play. What would be the defense? Insanity. "It became, oddly enough, the prosecutors' job not to attack the defendant as much as to hold him up as a complex and eloquent figure." The jury tied 6 to 6. See:

Prince Hamlet's Poetic Justice

Top lawyers and psychiatrists stage mock murder trial of Western literature's most scrutinized hero.

–Peter Marks

Exit, pursued by a bear

How strange that Shakespeare could write so many plays full of memorable quotations, and then write The Winter's Tale in which only one stage direction makes a mark. I really can't find much to like in this play, which seems to split into two parts: the first a tragedy of a jealous, irrational man and his destructive behavior, the second a piece of buffonery where the reconciliation doesn't really feel satisfying. And in between, sixteen years go by, announced by a character named "Time" -- and the play's location also jumps between Sicily and Bohemia. While Shakespeare was no great lover of unities of time or place, I don't know what to make of this.

It's Spring Here -- For the Moment

A Midsummernight's Dream

And now, back to Shakespeare!
A play that everyone knows -- but it's fun to read or see one of the many films of it over and over. Here are just a few random thoughts from one more enjoyable reading.

Puck is one of my favorite characters. His descriptions of tricks, wiles, rapid travel around the world use the most wonderful language of any fairy I know.

Puck's master Oberon is angry and vengeful. So what does he do? He tells Puck to make Titania, who has refused his willful demand, fall in love. He instructs Puck how to do it -- to pick some inappropriate object, use the magic flower dust, and so on. And then, in a spirit of mischief, he has Puck also afflict a few mortals who have wandered into his way. Shakespeare knew the depths of revenge and meaningless evil-doing in human beings. His fairy people are such a light and pleasant contrast to real human emotions and actions. Their rivalry, mischief, and trivial tricks are such a relief.

Before the fairies' first scene, we have already met these fated mortals whose love life Puck is about to derail. Two men love one woman, Hermia. Her father insists that he will have her killed or made a nun if she doesn't marry his choice -- the one she dislikes. Her best friend Helena loves the rejected lover. For all of them, love is a big pain. Said Hermia, about to flee her father's wrath:

Before the time I did Lysander see
Seemed Athens as a paradise to me.
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell
That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell! (I, i, 209-212)

What does Shakespeare say about love in this play? I think he says love is a trickster just like Puck.

Love's pains and the power of revenge are both so light in this forest near "Athens" -- which seems so totally Shakespearean and English. It's only a play, Shakespeare constantly reminds us. The bumbling "mechanicals" who put on the play within a play are so worried about acting too well that they constantly get out of their roles to remind their audience that they are only pretending. Of course this is the most humorous part of the play as no one would conceiveably be fooled by their artifice!

Puck's constant motion, lists of tricks, and ability to be everywhere at once are so splendid. No wonder we have a word for him: puckish -- meaning the impish sprit of pucks or pookas.

Cancun: Relaxing and Beautiful

A Few Photos from Chichen Itza

Some of the famous "thousand columns" --
Throughout the ruins, local people set out a variety of tourist goods for sale. Our bus-tour guide disapproved, and urged us not to buy from them. In fact their presence in a national park probably says a lot about the relationship of local people and government. They are persistent and sometimes annoying, while admittedly adding a lot of color to the site.

The motivs on the various carved friezes are fascinating, but hard to understand. Is this a jaguar?

A Jaguar statue:

Cancun Wrap-Up

Our trip to Cancun was about evenly divided between two sorts of days. We spent three relaxing days sitting in recliners by the pool on the beach, jogging on the trail adjacent to our hotel, walking on the beach and snorkeling, and eating leisurely meals in very nice restaurants.

We spent three interesting days on tour. One was the trip to Isla Mujeres via cab, ferry boat, and rented golf cart. We spent two full days on organized bus tours. One was to Coba and a nearby Mayan village, and one to Chichen Itza and a nearby cenote.

Both bus tours included stops for lunch and visits to curio shops. Our only purchase was two clay masks, which we bought near Coba. The Chichen Itza guide made it almost mandatory to buy a silver or gold necklace with "hieroglyphics" that represented a name or a date of one's choice -- priced by number of letters. He also tried to sell us a bottle of tequila with our photo pasted on it. We resisted the pressure, but noted that most of our fellow tourists bought what they were told to buy. Tour bus tours have pros and cons. We really didn't want to drive for many hours -- a bus that showed videos during the many hours of travel was an overwhelming pro!

To read more about our trip to Cancun you can check my food blog posts: Maya food and plants and Restaurants in and near Cancun and to see about the Mayan village near Coba, my story blog post: Maya Children.