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.

Birds and Fish

In Cancun, we saw gulls, terns, herons, and other wading birds near the beach and other bodies of water, such as the lake near Coba. Pelicans flew over the waves, dropping in to catch a fish, and taking off from a rising wave.


One night we saw frigate birds circling above the beach against the darkened sky. These birds have a white patch on their neck, and we took quite a while figuring out that the patch was reflecting the moonlight, making the birds very visible in a really spooky way. We saw frigate birds soaring all the time when we were on the hotel beach and along the shore on Isla Mujeres. In the photo they are soaring above me: you may need to click on the image and see a larger version to get a look at them.

The strong winds that blew all week reduced our opportunities for fish watching, though one morning we went in despite a red flag on the Club Med beach adjacent to our hotel beach. We snorkeled around several large coral formations, and saw a large sting ray swimming just under us, we approached a barracuda around 5-6 feet long (and then backed off), and we also saw very big angel fish and parrot fish. As we returned to shore, the life guard approached. He asked us about the visibility and conditions. We said everything was ok. He changed the flag from red to yellow, and soon afterwards several other groups of snorkelers were in the water.

Isla Mujeres

On the third day of our vacation in Mexico, we got up, took a cab to the ferry terminal, and by 10 AM we were approaching the dock on the small and charming island of Isla Mujeres. We had planned to go to La Garrafon Natural Park to snorkel, but the very stiff south wind that had been affecting the beaches near the hotel was blowing onshore here as well. When we arrived, the park was simply not allowing any snorkeling. So we got back in our little rented golf cart, and proceeded to the far east end of the island.


In a city park at the east end we found a modern sculpture garden, a spectacular cliff-side walk, and a pleasant outdoor bar and grill. Len ordered a cheesburger. I had a steak sandwich with guacamole -- a combination I found quite tasty.

The farthest point of the island is in the park, and a sign there informs you that you have come to the most eastern point in the country of Mexico. The ancient Mayans once greeted the dawn in a building that stands in ruins at the top of the cliff. We enjoyed the ocean views and the frigate birds soaring up above the island.



After lunch we continued around the island in our very noisy golf cart, parked to wade in the ocean at a beach near the town, and returned our cart. The small town is full of shops, which we browsed before lining up for the return ferryboat.


The island is not large, and this tour took only a few hours, including many stops to look at tidepools and churning waves and wind on completely deserted beaches. Along the shore we saw every kind of home you can imagine, from shanties made of tarpaper and wire to lavish stucco mansions. One stucco house was moulded into the shape of a conch shell -- quite showy. The only beach where we saw a lot of people is the one at the north end: