Twelfth Night (also known as “‘Back’ is such a relative term”)

I have no idea where this month has gone. Poof, even. It’s a good thing, in one way at least: Twelfth Night is coming!

Well, it’s there now, at the Hartford Stage:

Twelfth Night

May 18 – June 16

By William Shakespeare
Directed by Darko Tresnjak

- – And I’m going on Saturday. And I’m excited. Their Tempest last year was everything perfect and wonderful, and as some reading this may know I’m … rather fond of Twelfth Night. (Search it on the blog. You’ll see,)

But it’s sneaked up on me! Now all I have to do – by Saturday – is go back and read all my blog posts, watch the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production, write my piece on it, watch one or two other productions I’ve acquired since I let the Project peter off, write about them, and in all other ways refamiliarize myself with the play.

No problem.

Oh, and my sister just invited me to West Side Story at the Shubert next weekend. The theatah, my friends! *squee*

 

Shakespeare’s As You Like It, edited by Demitra Papadinis

I received this as a LibraryThing Early Reader book, in exchange for an honest review.

(Warning – pretty much all the language I generally avoid in reviews up to now shows up here, en masse.)(In fact …)

 

 

 

Now, see, they teach this stuff in school. In high school. And the kids sit there bored out of their minds in class. Little do they know.

The idea behind this edition of Shakespeare’s comedy – and, it appears, also Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet in the series so far – is to undo some of the “cleaning up” that the plays have suffered over the centuries. Papadinis has gone back to the earliest printed versions of the work (for this, to the First Folio) to suss out what the original punctuation looked like, trying to undo layer after layer of standardization and “correction”. Also, she combs through the text word by word with a few dozen reference books to hand trying to determine any and all alternate meanings for words and phrases. One of the first examples, given in the introduction, is the phrase Shakespeare used fairly often and probably most memorably in Hamlet, “country matters”. This is fairly commonly known, I think (I knew, so therefore I tend to assume anyone knows), to be a euphemism for sex; I always sort of assumed it was some sort of reference to the highjinks lads and lasses get up to in the meadow. Not quite. “Country” was pronounced as it is now, so for Hamlet to say this as he lays his head in Ophelia’s lap – emphasize the first syllable of the phrase, now … Get it, wink wink nudge nudge? That’s what I expect from wordplay in Shakespeare.

I’m a little dubious about the extent to which this idea is developed in this edition, though. It feels like a drastic overcompensation for bowdlerism. While I fully agree with the precept that the plays had to compete with bawdy houses and bear baitings and cockfights and executions to sell tickets, and that Shakespeare was more than capable of not only double but triple and quadruple entendres, and that, in brief, it was all much dirtier than we really understand it to be now (as in “country matters”) … I don’t think it was necessarily as steeped in sex and excrement as this annotation suggests. I do believe that there were an absolutely gob-smacking number of words which stood for sex acts and various body parts; if nothing else, plays had to be gotten past the censors. But – well, take Act one, scene one of this play as presented here.

On the surface, and as it is probably staged 99.9% of the time, this is a scene in which a younger brother, Orlando, complains bitterly about his lot, first to the audience and then to his oppressive older brother. It’s clear and straightforward, and easy to understand. Now, to be sure, it benefits from the idea of multiple meanings of words, with the end result that by the end of the scene it is clear that Orlando has been, as the editor says, “treated like shit” and has been, figuratively at least (I hope figuratively) pretty thoroughly buggered. (I sincerely hope this wasn’t in any way meant to hint that there actually was a forced incestuous relationship there; that would put a slightly different spin on what after all is a comedy…) But does this add anything to what a straight and straightforward reading brings? I don’t think so. Orlando has been treated like shit, and has been screwed out of his rights; I don’t think it’s really necessary to use that big a hammer to make sure the point goes home.

They say that to a man with a hammer everything begins to look like a nail; to a woman with a shelf full of Elizabethan reference books everything begins to look X-rated?

This annotated edition goes back to the First Folio for spelling and punctuation, for reasons she makes clear and which make good sense. I, however, am using text as found online, to make my life easier. So. In this first scene, there are:

- At least ten words and phrases which are defined as also meaning “buggers” or “fucks” or “screws”: grieves, shake me up, be naught, pezant/peasant; trained; “it” means “sex”; foil; give him the payment; go; search (to search is to probe, so there you go)
- At least five words and phrases which are defined as also meaning sodomy/sodomize/be sodomized: endure; villaine (eunuch, or pathic, which I now know is the passive participant in sodomy); offend; be patient; old dog (as in “be used like an”)
- At least six words and phrases which are defined as also meaning penis: (spirit; that; part; grace (with disgrace meaning castration); thing; life)
- There is a “shit” theme, too: “It”, besides meaning sex, also means “chamberpot”; somehow “nearer to his reverence” relates to turds in some way; “elder”, as in “elder brother”, is a purgative (a derivative of the elder tree); rankness; “clear all” is the equivalent to a purging; Kindle = candle = suppository = Orlando is a piece of shit. (I’m not tempted to change the name of my Kindle.)

“His horses are bred better” – “Horses” is a homonym for “whores”, of course.

“He lets me feed with his hinds” – with a little acrobatic definition of “hinds” it means that Oliver makes an ass of Orlando.

Take the line “I will no longer endure it”. Rather than meaning simply that he’s mad as hell and not gonna take this any more, it becomes something else entirely: He will no longer endure it = he will no longer be a “patient”, or “sodomite”, and suffer – allow himself to be buggered, as “it” is (as aforementioned) the sexual act.

Oliver asks Orlando if, having been given a pittance, he will beg when that is spent – and “spent” is made to refer to ejaculation, because “that” means penis.

Orlando says he will “buy my fortunes” – which refers to Lady Fortune, and Lady Fortune’s buy or bay = vagina.

“Some part of your will” = “On the other hand, perhaps Oliver means to fulfill his own will (lust, libido…) by giving Orlando’s part (‘division in the buttocks’…) his part (penis, testicles, and semen…) – i.e., to ‘fuck’ him.”

“Her cousin so loves her, being ever from their cradles bred together”: cousins = harlots; together = mutually engaged, as lovers; and that they “bred” (cherish, foster) each other’s cradles (vaginas): therefore Rosalind and Celia are lovers.

“Either you might stay him from his intendment or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into” = If Orlando “persists in his intendment” (“a purpose, an intent”…), he will suffer intendment (i.e. “be screwed”). “Tent” is “the penis” … to “tent” is “to probe”… Orlando will brook (bear or suffer) disgrace (sexual violation…) in the such (“pubic-anal area”…)…

“Entrap thee by some treacherous device”: entrap = screw; trap = female pudendum; device = emasculate (vice = penis
All – the whole – hole – arse hole
Nothing remains = nothing is left to do but ensure Orlando gets his remain = balance of sum of money = payment = fucked.

In case it wasn’t clear, many words do double duty, adding layers of profanity to the thing. (Not that kind of thing. The book. Get your mind out of the gutter. Well, no, don’t bother till this is over….)

Bang, bang, bang goes the hammer.

To me this is all a little like reinterpreting Dickens this way:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” = “It”, as we’ve seen, means “penis”, which leads naturally to “worst” as a homonym for “wurst” = sausage = penis. To “best” is to overcome – clearly = sodomy; “times” = rhythm of metronome or beating heart = rhythm = copulation.

Obviously this is not remotely a subtext of Tale of Two Cities – Dickens was a Victorian writing for Victorians, after all – whereas there certainly is a bawdy undertone (and, often, overtone) to Shakespeare. But to pick each word apart from the rest in its sentence and then reconstruct the line with alternate meanings … I don’t buy it. For one thing, it’s exhausting for nearly every line to have hidden significance. For another, context is so completely discounted that I find it hard to credit such verbal calisthenics to Shakespeare, who was, after all, first and foremost a writer.

There is no denying this is a lovely edition; it’s nice to have the play spread out luxuriously over a well-made thick trade paperback, with lots of room to breathe and such thorough annotation. So many paperbacks of the plays seem hell-bent on conserving space, squishing notes on the text into space dictated by the setting of the text itself. If scene ii takes up six pages, then the notes have to fit into whatever room is allotted over those six pages, no matter what. This edition goes in the opposite direction, fitting the play around the notes, and there’s plenty of elbow room for extensive background on allusion and quote. It’s fascinating to read the text as it was printed in the First Folio – and surprising to me how comprehensible it is. (YMMV: I’m a freak, remember.) And I’m impressed to the point of awe at the sheer scope of research that went into this project. I just wish the reverse-bowdlerism hadn’t been taken to quite this extreme. It puts me in mind of the two opposing images of Elizabeth I: the Virgin Queen, and the story certain anti-Stratfordians favor – that not only was she not literally a Virgin Queen, she slept with just about everyone and had secret bastards littering the landscape. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: that’s Newton’s Third Law writ simple. This annotation is far beyond equal and opposite.

So: do I agree with this book completely? Obviously not. But c’est la guerre – and Shakepearean scholarship, from my little observation post, really does on occasion resemble warfare. Do I recommend this? Absolutely. The research is impressive and valuable. I look forward to getting hold of the other plays Ms. Papadinis has worked on.

Related articles

• Thoughts: As You Like It by William Shakespeare (roofbeamreader.com)
• Costume & Theater: Shakespeare Resource Center (costumediscounters.com)
• Shakespeare And Emoticons (shkspr.mobi)

 

 

The winter isn’t quite so full of discontent, suddenly

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to follow the exciting Richard III news on Goodreads; heaven knows American news has been doing diddly all with it, so the Ricardians and Plantagenet fans online were where I learned about the excitement, and where I’ve been kept apprised of happenings.

What news, you say? THIS news.

The skull of Richard III

It’s so extraordinarily cool. Even if he really did have a deformed back, which Ricardians have been refuting for ages (see Josephine Tey’s Daughter of Time). Shakespeare’s depiction of him was so very very bad, I guess they felt they had to refute it point by point, but he actually had scoliosis. We may never know how much else is true or false (princes in the Tower, and all), but it’s such a stunning thing to know exactly how he died, to be able to see that spine.

O to be in England now that the facial reconstruction’s done!

Related articles

• 6 things the discovery of Richard III’s remains isn’t going to do (nevillfeast.wordpress.com)
• England’s King Richard III found after 500 years – Reuters (reuters.com)
• In praise of … lost Richard III speech | Editorial (guardian.co.uk)
• Richard III’s Remains Found In Council Car Park (news.sky.com)
• Archaeologists unearth Richard III (blogs.nature.com)
• Where does skeleton revelation leave legend of Richard III? (cnn.com)
• Was Richard “Rubbished?” (blogs.loc.gov)
• Collection of links

 

The Lodger Shakespeare – Charles Nicholl, Simon Vance

I pounced on this because I enjoyed/admired/appreciated Charles Nicholl’s [book:The Reckoning], about the murder of Christopher Marlowe, and because I was mad about Simon Vance’s reading of [book:Dust and Shadow]. Those two, plus Shakespeare, indicated an instant win.

Well… mostly.

First of all, I’m going to try to remember not to approach histories through Audible. If an author feels maps and illustrations and charts and the like are useful, then audio is not the way to go. The Civil War series I’ve already bought should be all right (except maybe for want of maps) – but something like this, which according to Google Books has 36 illustrations, loses in translation.

What this is, is an examination of what can be learned or inferred about Shakespeare from his deposition in a case that involved his landlord. “On Monday 11 May 1612, William Shakespeare gave evidence in a lawsuit at the Court of Requests in Westminster. His statement, or deposition, was taken down by a clerk of the court, writing in an averagely illegible hand on a sheet of paper measuring about 12 x 16 inches (see Plate 1) [see?]. At the end of the session Shakespeare signed his name at the bottom. It is one of six surviving signatures, and the earliest of them (though it can hardly be called early: he was forty-eight years old and already in semi-retirement).” “The dispute concerned a dowry: a sum of £60 which, Belott alleged, had been promised when he married Mountjoy’s daughter in 1604, and which had never been paid. … Belott also claimed that Mountjoy had promised to leave the couple a legacy of £200 when he died. Mountjoy denied both claims, and now, eight years after the event, the case was before the court.” Shakespeare was to be a valuable witness, as (by then) a gentleman and, very likely, a pretty well-known fellow. He turned out not to be so very valuable, and that’s part of the story.

I appreciate what I have learned from this examination of the period. Shakespeare took up lodgings over a tire-makers’ workshop on Silver Street in Cripplegate. “Tire” in the seventeenth century meant not Dunlops or Michelins, but the “tire” from which “tirewoman” and (I believe) “attire” come from: headgear worn by ladies (and those pretending to be ladies on the stage, and those wanting to attract gentlemen). The house was a decent distance away from the playhouse where Shakespeare still labored – getting there involved crossing the Thames, along with a rather lengthy land-bound slog. The whys and wherefores of this decision are explored; we can’t know once-and-for-all why, any more than we can know the details of anything else we are not given specifically in the court documents or other reliable sources, but this is one of the places where Nicholl exercises his well-honed art of learned supposition.

The tire-makers were Christopher and Marie Mountjoy; they had a daughter, Mary, and an apprentice named Stephen Belott, and, we learn in the course of the lawsuit, Marie had approached Mr. Shakespeare and asked him to persuade Belott to marry Mary. He did so, and the two were betrothed (hand-fasted, apparently) and married – and Mary’s father was not forthcoming with what he had promised. (He was apparently a real piece of work.) From the paperwork surviving from this four hundred year old family dispute (turned up by eccentric Shakespeare fanatics Hulda and Charles William Wallace) can be gleaned a surprising amount of information.

“It is true that biographical readings of the plays are dangerous, unregulated, prone to sentimentalization. It is absurd to cherry-pick passages of poetry written over more than two decades and infer from them a consistent personal attitude. Lines belong in a dramatic context and in the psychological context of the character who utters them and cannot be taken to reflect Shakespeare’s views.”

There are references to Shakespeare noted throughout this book that I’ve never heard of before, from contemporary letters and publications. I’m not an expert – but I would have thought I had read enough to have come across some of the contemporary and slightly post-mortem mentions. Dedications, and mentions of “Prince Hamlet”, notes about meeting with Shakespeare and so on – surprising.

However, this is really a great deal more “The Lodgings of Shakespeare” than “The Lodger Shakespeare”. As illumination of the setting in which Shakespeare lived, it’s wonderful; it explores the terrain in a fascinating, scholarly manner, and suddenly there are sights and sounds and scents, neighbors and lawsuits and voices and arguments enriching my mental image of Shakespeare. Nicholl, I already knew from [book:The Reckoning], has the ability to milk the smallest historical mention for everything it can possibly give. His caution is exemplary; while he does draw conclusions from the historic record, he never jumps to conclusions. The assumptions he makes are logical and sensible, and hedged about with “maybe”s and “possibly”s.

In fact, from what I was able to access on Google Books, I found the following:
Likely – 29 uses of the word
Possibly – 31
Possible – 24
May be – 91
May have – 29
Could be – 53
Perhaps – 87

There are entire chapters which barely mention Shakespeare at all. But close study of the documents surrounding the Mountjoy case and the drawing in of other documented facts allows for intelligent commentary on everything from Shakespeare’s sexuality, the state of his marriage, and the identity of the Dark Lady to what his surroundings were when he wrote. This is painting a portrait of Shakespeare by painting his surroundings. I remember one art school assignment being to pick your favorite shoes and to draw them in fine detail; this was, basically, a self-portrait. (Mine, if anyone’s interested, were a pair of tall floppy boots, which I often wore to faire.) This works both ways, and through existing information. There is an engraving of a writer’s chamber here, and a description of one there, and an average sort of a chamber elsewhere; take into account what Shakespeare’s income was and what he was working on at the time and a variety of other factors, and here is what his room looked like. Here is what the house he lived in looked like. Here is what his neighborhood looked like. Here is what he was like.

I enjoyed it, for the most part; it strayed into dry areas at times, particularly when it wandered away from the topic of Shakespeare himself. I feel I know more in some ways now about the Mountjoy family than I do about Shakespeare himself. But the portrait of William Shakespeare – the Lodger – drawn through this book is one I enjoyed the evolution of. Barring time travel or miraculous discoveries of documents, we’ll never know everything about Shakespeare; this pushed the boundaries of what is guessed into what might be called “known” a little further.

Related articles

• 10 Things You Didn’t Know About William Shakespeare (history.com)

 

Anonymous postscript

So, it’s been a little while. Last post was my review of a fairly bad movie, Anonymous. I expected some kind of reaction – but not what I got. I did not expect the childish name-calling and wrong-headed abusiveness that resulted from the two anti-Stratfordians who showed up. To be perfectly honest, the nasty childishness of it put me off till now; it’s the first time I’ve encountered such ugliness as a result of this blog. Ah well.

Ehren Ziegler said in a recent episode of Chop Bard “Neither historic facts or the fundamental physics of the universe are that important when compared to the story.” And that’s true. Facts were flexible in the plays; the only truth that counted was the truth of the narrative. Shakespeare had no overriding agenda other than to tell a great tale. If he needed a historical to be alive when according to record she was actually dead, then he revivified at will (so to speak).

The producers (by which I mean not just the filmmaking term but everyone responsible for the movie, from writers through directors through publicists) did very much have an agenda; any claims otherwise, given the slander perpetrated in the film and the way the thing was marketed, are specious. It puzzles me how they think it furthers this agenda to fill their movie with inaccuracies and outright lies. If their aim is truly to try to convince people that Devere wrote Shakespeare it seems strange; if so much of it was false, a logical assumption can be that it all was. Not the best way to change minds or win hearts.

Neither is name-calling.

Who’d have thought? Topics to be avoided in polite conversation include sex, politics, religion, and the authorship question. It’s a sad world.

 

The most tragicall comedie or comicall tragedie of Anonymous

Globe interior - gorgeous

I’m a Stratfordian, which means that I have no doubt that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare: Occam’s Razor – there is no reason to question it. But I have to say, some time back there was a PBS presentation outlining the claim that Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, actually wrote the works attributed to one William Shakespeare, and that said Will was merely an actor plucked from the ranks to provide a face, an embodiment for the noble who had to remain (wait for it -) anonymous. It was most diverting. I enjoyed the argument – it was fun. It was all hooey, but it was fun. People have devoted years, if not lifetimes, to winnowing out references in the plays and poems which tie directly to Edward, and there’s an impressive dossier.

Of course, people have also devoted years, if not lifetimes, to “proving” that the plays and poems were actually written by Ben Jonson. Or Queen Elizabeth. Or, for all I know, the same aliens which built the pyramids.

As I said, though, the Oxfordian theory as presented there was very entertaining.

This flick had little to do with the Oxfordian theory. Truly, not a single piece of evidence that actually made me think was in evidence here. And, in fact, this was not an example of Oxfordian theory, I was surprised to discover. Apparently, within the discredited fringe group of Oxfordians there is a sect that is fringe to the fringe, discredited among even Oxfordians, who espouse something called the Tudor Prince – or Tudor Rose – theory. That was what this was. It leapfrogged directly over eccentric into lunatic.

I will say in all fairness that it was beautifully filmed. The long shots of London – the Globe, London Bridge, Elizabeth’s funeral – were stunning; that would have been worth seeing on the big screen if I’d been willing to pay money to see this. The costumes were wonderful; the sets were gorgeous; many of the actors were excellent. I did enjoy the depiction of the plays being first seen by an audience; whoever those behind the film think actually was the Bard, Bardolatry is alive and well in this movie.

Cinematography, costuming, art direction, Sebastian Armesto, Bardolatry … Yes, I think that’s all the good I have to say about this. For the rest, I have the notes I made as I was watching it.

He wrote. Midsummer. At the age. Of 12.

Bol – er. The word I actually used at the time is considered pretty rude, especially in England (which was why I used it at the time), so I will look to the late great Colonel Sherman T. Potter for help. So: Horse hockey.

“One of Elizabeth’s bastards” – “We must do as we have done before” …

Buffalo chips.

De Vere pulls Henry V off his shelf, then Julius Caesar, and Macbeth (!), and finally decides to give Jonson Romeo & Juliet as the first play – he has just finished Twelfth Night.

Bull cookies. (There is ample evidence that Macbeth was written specifically for James I.)

A Tudor mosh pit?

Sweet Nefertiti. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to cry or vomit at that moment…

A death behind the arras.

Pony pucks.

Will. Shakespeare. Killed. Kit. Marlowe.

That’s the funniest, most outrageously silly thing this piece of … work has propounded yet.

And at the end of the film the audience for the bookending production departs without a single pair of hands meeting in applause. Appropriate.

As an aside: I am extremely disappointed in Sir Derek Jacobi. The man who gave the world, among many others, my favorite Hamlet should not have deigned to be involved in this mess. And, too, if the complete lack of respect he was shown backstage is remotely realistic I’m appalled.

There are so many avenues I could chase down to demolish this movie – the fact that Ben Jonson wasn’t spending all his time hanging out at the Globe trying to sell Heminges his work, that there never was a slaughter of civilians on London Bridge (afaik), and – most glaring to me – that Kit Marlowe was not found in an alley … There are, in fact, so many that it’s hardly even worth it (but you know I’m going to touch on a few anyhow). That this was going to be a mare’s nest I knew going in. That in addition to a feeble attempt to discredit the historical Shakespeare it was going to be such a hash of misinformation about – to use their word – irrefutable history … I just don’t understand the intention behind the movie. It wasn’t historical. It wasn’t an exposé. It was, in some ways, a political drama, but about some alternate world – does that make it a fantasy movie? How can this be taken seriously as anything but pure comedy when it is so very wrong about so very many things (and when it goes so far over the top in depicting the actor Shakespeare as a stupid greedy sot)? I’m not even remotely a Shakespeare or Renaissance scholar, merely an enthusiast – I prefer the title “geek” (A, not The).  And all I can think is … if I knew as I watched that so many things were dead wrong and within an hour of the movie’s ending through very basic research that so many more were off, how must actual scholars have felt? There must have been heads exploding in theatres internationally – not because of the nutty “Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare” nonsense, but because of things like seeing de Vere’s wife Anne, nee Cecil, throwing Ben Jonson out of their house after de Vere’s death – when Anne died sixteen years before de Vere.

A few more, which I either knew or found out within about an hour’s light research (meaning mostly Wikipedia):

It’s highly doubtful that de Vere was spending so much time hanging out watching the Lord Chamberlain’s Men when he had his own company of players, Oxford’s Men.

It’s highly doubtful that Ben Jonson was spending so much time hanging out watching the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, as he was usually writing for – and occasionally acting for – the Admiral’s Men at the Rose.

Thomas Nashe (here seen as the stout mug-bearing companion of Ben Jonson) might still have been alive to be hanging out at the Globe to see this purported Richard III, but probably not, since he died in 1601 at the latest and Essex (who did not, by the way, surrender in the palace courtyard) was executed in February of 1601.

Henry V - Bard-love

It’s highly doubtful that Thomas Dekker (here seen as the skinny red-headed companion of Jonson) was hanging out watching the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, especially later since he and Jonson hated each other, and he also was mostly working with the Lord Admiral’s Men.

Kit Marlowe, wherever he was hanging out before his death, was not found in an alley. He was killed, irrefutably by Ingram Frizer, irrefutably in a house in Deptford, and was not ever dumped in an alley for the peasantry to find, buzzing with flies. The background of his murder is in dispute, but the facts, for once, are not.

Oh, and that fellow Essex killed through the arras? From a thoroughly documented and well-written article on Wikipedia:

On 23 July 1567 the seventeen-year-old Oxford killed Thomas Brincknell, an under-cook in the Cecil household, while practising fencing with Edward Baynham, a Westminster tailor, in the backyard of Cecil House in the Strand. At the coroner’s inquest held the following day, the 17 jurymen, one of whom was Oxford’s servant, and another identified as Cecil’s protégé the future historian Raphael Holinshed, found that Brincknell was drunk and instigated by the devil when he ran upon de Vere’s foil, causing his own death. Cecil later recalled that he attempted to have the jury find for Oxford as acting in self-defence rather than Brincknell committing suicide.

Also, ” Under Cecil’s supervision Oxford studied French, Latin, writing, drawing, cosmography, dancing, riding and shooting.”

Oh, and as for being forced to marry Cecil’s daughter:

Oxford declared an interest in Cecil’s eldest daughter, Anne, aged 14, and received the queen’s consent to the marriage. She had been pledged to Philip Sidney in August 1569, and others had apparently sought her hand. Cecil was displeased with the arrangement, apparently having entertained the idea of her marrying the earl of Rutland instead. Oxford’s rank, however, trumped all else…

Midsummer - clearly the work of a pre-teen

And that’s as much time as I’m going to spend on correction.

If, as is posited here, some of the plays of Edward DeVere had already been performed at court (true) and then were later performed under “Anonymous” or “Shakespeare” – am I expected to believe that no one ever saw both? Hey – that Oxford kid wrote that fairy play when he was 12 – what are they doing showing it at the Globe as Shakespeare’s?

In Derek Jacobi’s Prologue – which was an interesting conceit, bookending the movie in the present, but underscored the artificiality – the point is hammered home that William Shakespeare’s father, wife, and the two daughters who survived him were all illiterate.  The point being, apparently that obviously he must be as well. Which is spurious logic; it’s a little akin to saying that because my father couldn’t type and neither can my mother and brother, why then I must not be able to either (she typed).

All I can say in conclusion is that it was a beautifully filmed movie and deserved not only the Oscar nomination for costume but one for art direction. If it was being watched with the sound off, it would be a treat. With sound on?

Bollocks.

Related articles

• William Shakespeare: The World as Stage – Bill Bryson (agoldoffish.wordpress.com)
• Ben Jonson – A Life – By Ian Donaldson – Book Review (nytimes.com)
• Anonymous Review (thevisionaryfilmfanatic.wordpress.com)
• Anonymous – Shakespeare From A Different Perspective (ethandayton.com)
• Anonymous is interesting, but could have been great - (nediunedited.com)

 

William Shakespeare: The World as Stage – Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is an old friend. His approach to history makes the standard tome all the more flat and dull by comparison – Bryson knows his stuff well enough to not only present it to an audience but to play with it, to have fun with it, to make it fun. He genuinely loves his subjects, and it is infectious. He’s like the teacher you always hoped to get – the brilliant, funny, cool one who (to use a real example) sat cross-legged on the table at the front of the room and told the most amazing stories and made you sorry when the class was over, rather than the one who turned the lights off and showed irrelevant slides to a group of uninterested and often napping art students at the deadly time of 3:00 in the afternoon.

With The World as Stage, Bryson has succumbed to the lure of adding to the groaning shelves of Shakespeare biography, with the excuse (if he needs one) that herein will lie

The Chandos portrait

only what is known beyond doubt. Shakespeare biography is, he tells us, 90% conjecture, and about 5% fact; here he tries to gather together “just the facts” (I said that, he didn’t), and talk about where they originated and about the conjecture they’ve sparked and the probabilities therein.

For example, he begins with the visual image of Shakespeare as we know it. He efficiently dissects the three images most closely associated with him, the three on which all others are based: the Chandos portrait (which may not be Shakespeare); the engraving which appeared as the frontispiece of the First Folio (which is bloody awful); and the bust that is part of his memorial (many of the details of which have been obliterated). Did he look like any or all of these? Maybe. What, exactly, did he look like? We don’t really know.

The Cobbe portrait, the Chandos, and the Droeshout engraving

When was he born, and where? We’re not sure.

Shakespeare's birthplace - maybe

How did he do in school, and what exactly did he study? We don’t even know that he went – though it’s probable.

How was his marriage to Anne Hathaway? We have no idea – we don’t even know that “Anne” was her name; her father’s will refers to her as Agnes. I never knew that.

The Cobbe portrait

And so forth. Data is so very scarce for many reasons. It’s been four hundred years; records have deteriorated or gone up in flames; what records there are can be next to impossible to locate and once located to read and/or decipher. Shakespeare’s name was spelled dozens of different ways, including by himself, and never “Shakespeare”. Even with all that, a researcher simply can’t expect so very many mentions of Shakespeare in the public record: unless he was getting married, baptizing a child, or involved in an arrest or lawsuit (or dying), there simply would be no official documentation. If for no other reason, I would treasure this book for two things: first was the story of the husband and wife team of Charles and Hulda Wallace who, driven in the early 1900′s by the husband’s obsession with Shakespeare, spent 18 hour days poring over the public record from Will’s lifetime and made some discoveries (and then he lost his mind and went paranoiac and into oil). I know it marks me out as a bit freaky, but I’ll admit it anyway: I would give a lot to be able to go and spend 18 hours a day studying cramped and often faded and illegible 16th century documents looking for mentions of Shakespeare. Sounds like a dream job. Seriously. The second gift Bryson gives me in this is the concept that if there really was a Love’s Labours Won, there were probably enough copies made that it could still be found one day. (Way to reduce a Shakespeare geek to tears, Bryson.) (Sadly, in the interview which serves as Chapter 10, he contradicts that. But hope springs, and all that.)

I call myself a Shakespeare geek, and probably shouldn’t; for me it refers to my deep affection and fascination for the man and his work – thirst for knowledge, not necessarily possession of knowledge. I know more than the average bear, but not enough to truly qualify me as a geek. For example, I had no idea that Will’s brother Edmund was an actor (and died at only 27 in the same year as their mother, both of unknown causes). I also didn’t know Walt Whitman was a rabid anti-Stratfordian (which Bryson doesn’t mention, but which I discovered in related reading.) I do know enough not to trust any single source – not even Bill Bryson …

Bill Bryson reads his own words, and I enjoy his voice, lightly deep, young and humorous and pleasant. He reads naturally and easily, with healthy pauses where they’re needed and not where they are not. And it’s fun to listen to the British influence on his accent (he was born in Des Moines, lived there from 1977 to 1995, moved back to the US, then returned to England in ’03, where he remains). It’s not wholly a British accent, but there is British in it; I feel like Sherlock Holmes tracing his travels through his enunciation, except that I’m going about it backwards.

Much as I enjoy Bryson’s reading, though, I’m not sure audio is the best format for this, for me. For a book like this I need to be able to flip back and see what year the will was found, and remind myself of names of the Folger Library archivists Bryson talked to, and how many Shakespeare-related publications he mentioned were there, and so on. It’s a lot harder to do this with audio, even the comparatively flexible medium of a digital file on my iPod. Also, I suspect there are illustrations in the tangible editions; there usually is an insert in exactly this sort of book.

If for no other reason, I owe Bill Bryson for a wonderful quote which I am adopting. I may have it tattooed somewhere. Written in a letter to a friend upon having written a preface to Delia Bacon’s dense and nutty anti-Stratfordian book (without having read it): “This shall be the last of my benevolent follies, and I will never be kind to anybody again as long as I live.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne. (In L.M. Montgomery, the only people who share my last name are nasty cows. In The World as Stage, the city of my birth is the home and gravesite of Delia Bacon. *sigh*) I kind of want to go lay Hawthorne’s quote, in illuminated calligraphy and elaborately framed, on her grave. (I just might.)

Bryson devotes a chapter – a funny, sardonic, bubble-popping chapter – to what is often called the Authorship Question. To wit: that actor guy who couldn’t even spell his own name couldn’t have written the finest works in the English language. Bryson happily takes that concept apart, and then takes its component pieces apart. I’m a Stratfordian, and … honestly, as a rock-solid Stratfordian, I’ll admit, I have a sneaking affection for the Oxfordian theory of authorship. It’s fun. It’s balderdash, but it is fun. Not, however as much fun as the Marlovian theory – who doesn’t love the idea of someone faking his death so as to become a better spy, as well as to go off and write the finest plays and poetry the English language has ever produced? I would love to play with that story … But the Kit-Marlowe-didn’t-die-at-Deptford story is mostly wishful thinking for me, because I have an unaccountable fondness for the man.

But when all is said and done, I can only marvel at the insistence of so many otherwise intelligent people that Shakespeare could not have had the education or breadth of experience to write his plays. First of all – no one knows that. Bill Bryson takes great pains to enumerate all the things we do not know about William Shakespeare. (And even at that we know more about him than about 99% of his contemporaries.) Second of all … A large plank in the platform of many of the Theorists is that the author of the plays has to have been a lawyer because of the extent to which the law is referenced in the plays, and/or has to have traveled extensively because of the non-English settings of so many plays … et cetera. I can only conclude that the people who hold those beliefs have never written fiction. I know next to nothing about cars, but if I decided to create a character like Mercedes Thompson I could crack a book or talk to a mechanic (or use the internet), and present a reasonable simulation of expertise. I am not now nor ever have been a forensic analyst, but I can talk (within very strict limits) about petechial hemorrhaging and lividity and epithelial cells and loops and whorls and so on without making a total fool of myself, because of exposure to stories about forensic analysts. If I needed more artistic verisimilitude for an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative, I could – again – crack a book or talk to a CSI (or wander the internet). If I want to set a book in Katmandu, I don’t have to go there; it’s a wonderful thing to be able to do so, but – - it’s called “research”.

Oddly, it’s an defense I haven’t seen used in what I’ve read about the Authorship Question. It just seems so obvious…

Shakespeare was not writing in a vacuum, all alone and armed only with his own direct experience. If fiction was written under those rules, science fiction, fantasy, most mystery, and a large percentage of non-subgenre novels would be impossible. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes a wonderful account of calling up a local vintner to ask what the wire gadget is called that anchors the cork in a champagne bottle. As she points out, most people are delighted to talk about their vocations. All those reference to the law? Shakespeare went out and observed, and read, and talked to lawyers. All those Italian settings? Shakespeare went out and read, and talked to sailors and other travelers (and either did not pay close attention or got bad information, as his geography is way off in several cases). Every single one of the objections that “Shakespeare couldn’t have known that” can be knocked down with two simple sentences: “We don’t know what he knew”, and “If he didn’t know, he asked”. It’s just all so foolish.

What’s rather alarming, reading about the theories, is reading in turn about this new movie that’s just come out, “Anonymous”. (Which, not to be obtuse about it, is rather an idiotic name, isn’t it, if the theory is that in order to disseminate his work Edward DeVere made use of some guy named Shakespeare as a front for the plays? They’re not by “Anonymous”, after all.) It’s part of the Oxfordian cabal’s arsenal – and the worrying bit is that they are spreading high school and college study guides as far and wide as they can. Not, from what I understand, insisting that DeVere was actually the author, but raising the question suggestively. “Make your own decision,” they seem to say, “was it Sir Edward DeVere 17th Earl of Oxford … or was it that guy Wilm Shaksper whose father made gloves?”

In the end, for me the Authorship Question has the kind of interest of one of those alternate histories: what if the South had won the Civil War, or if Hitler had won WWII? Or (not that I’ve seen this one, yet) what if the moon really was made of green cheese? The South and Hitler didn’t, and the moon isn’t, and while what-if’s are entertaining, they’re not otherwise productive.

And, in the end, did the world desperately need one more book about Shakespeare? Well, no. But am I for one happier because Bill Bryson wrote one? Yeah. I am.

 

Twelfth Night – Viola

VIOLA
A lady, sir, though it was said she much resembled
me, was yet of many accounted beautiful: but,
though I could not with such estimable wonder
overfar believe that, yet thus far I will boldly
publish her; she bore a mind that envy could not but
call fair. She is drowned already, sir, with salt
water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more.

I think for many the character of Viola, who becomes Cesario, puts Twelfth Night into the realm of fantasy as much as the fairies do for Midsummer.  Not for me.  Sure, it is far-fetched for a well-bred young lady to dress like a boy and convince everyone around her that she is, basically, her brother… but I feel Shakespeare takes care of the reasons for not suspending disbelief.  Yes, she’s a young gentlewoman – but since their father died (some four years ago, perhaps?) she and her twin brother have been much on their own.  (There’s a fan-fiction there.)  She knows him better than she knows anyone else.  And, since they’ve been alone together since the age of thirteen, she will have had a close view of his process of learning to become a man.  Additionally, there’s never a mention of their mother, so the presumption can be that she’s been gone for a long time, and that for a while before he died their father was raising them alone; she’s had masculine companionship all her life.  If you really wanted to go fan-ficty and conjecture, it’s not so far-fetched that her father and brother have taught her things, like the basics of fencing, which no girl should know.  It’s obvious she’s intelligent, and it’s believable she has had the closest thing to firsthand experience of boyhood a girl can have; she would know how to make excellent use of all of that.  Plus, she says that she is in a way keeping her brother alive by becoming his image –

VIOLA
He named Sebastian: I my brother know
Yet living in my glass; even such and so
In favour was my brother, and he went
Still in this fashion, colour, ornament,
For him I imitate: O, if it prove,
Tempests are kind and salt waves fresh in love.

And while such a thing may never have happened, I don’t think it’s my steady diet of fantasies and gothics that make the whole charade a reasonable response for her situation.  The Trevor Nunn film pads the story, making the threat to her bigger and darker, but I don’t think it’s necessary.  I know a bit about how impossible would be the position of a, say, seventeen-year old girl, completely alone in a strange land with only the clothes and possessions salvaged from a sinking ship and what money she had on her

I found a nice little examination of the names used in the play (somewhere): the viola, for example, is also a musical instrument with a deeper tone than a violin, so perhaps our Viola has (or affects) a lower voice than other girls.

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BBC (1980): Felicity Kendal‘s Viola is composed and calm, much like the rest of the production.  She does not begin shaken by grief, and continues largely unperturbed by circumstances.  She loves Orsino, and gazes longingly, and seems to quietly enjoy thinking about him while quietly sorrowing that she cannot at the moment have him.  She does not love Olivia, and shows some frustration there at not being able to shake her off; it is only toward the end that any passion breaks through, when Orsino announces he will kill Cesario – passion to allow her beloved to do whatever he thinks he needs to do to ease his heart.  Which is not to say it isn’t a lovely performance – it is; Felicity Kendal isn’t speaking lines, she’s speaking her character’s thoughts, inhabiting her “poor monster”, softly rueful there.  This Cesario is a young lad, although a bit feminine possibly convincing to someone who doesn’t look at “him” and say “oh, look, it’s Felicity Kendal”.  She does something the others don’t, standing like a boy with feet apart and hands behind back, and putting a boot up on Olivia’s bench and leaning on that knee to address the lady – not like a woman pretending to be a girl pretending to be a boy, but naturally and unaffectedly, as she delivers her lines.  Naturalistic body language.

The costume of the period helps Viola in this masquerade – it’s a very clever period to set 12 in.  The flowing hair and swags of lace and big swaggering boots are both feminine enough (to modern eyes) and ostentatious enough that it can all be hidden behind.  And all of that – the big droopy feather on the hat and the swashbuckling sword on the hip (man, what a great period for costume) – is the first thing someone is going to be seeing.  It’s wonderful camouflage.

This Viola is a cool-headed, logical, calm girl, with a great sense of humor.  She took on the role of Cesario for self-preservation, and is finding herself to be quite enjoying it, and being amused by a great deal of what goes on.

She, Michael Thomas as her brother, and the wardrobe and makeup departments (but especially she) did a good enough job that upon one of Sebastian’s entrances I was near-sightedly startled when he spoke that it wasn’t Felicity.  That’s the only time that’s happened.  Same long, feathered hair – Cavalier style; same clothes, of course; but most of all they coordinated on manner of walking and carriage, and that made what would have been a total lack of resemblance (in face, voice – and height) much, much less ridiculous.  She put on Cesario like a second skin, and played a relaxed, sharp young lad with perfect ease.  There were things I missed – but overall I loved her Viola.

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Trevor Nunn (1996): Imogen Stubbs – cut hair, bound breasts; she has a deeper voice, and husky, so passes as a boy well in that area.  And she’s the only Viola among the versions I watched who pasted on a mustache.  I don’t remember any incidents with it, which, if that memory is accurate, is remarkable: a director passing up the easy laugh.  Good on him.

This is also the only Viola (almost) who follows up on “for I can sing And speak to him in many sorts of music” – we meet Cesario playing Orsino’s piano.

This Viola is bold – she makes the leap of cutting off all that hair.  I know from experience that this is a huge move, and there’s no going back, not quickly.  It’s smart – when men’s fashion is short hair, it would be dangerous to try to hide long hair – and in the setting of this production especially it’s a big deal.  She is physical: she gamely makes an attempt in a fencing salle (which of course gave Trevor Nunn the opportunity to have the fencing master put a hand squarely on her breast), and practices spitting and other such masculine arts.  She plays pool with Orsino (very well), and cards – it’s very much an Edwardian sort of man’s world here, and this Viola fits in as well as could be expected.

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No image is available as pre-Cesario Helen Hunt in L@LC

L@LC (1998): Helen Hunt – wonderful.  I have the suspicion that it’s not fashionable to love Helen Hunt, but when have I ever cared about that?  I loved her in this.  It’s a totally different animal from the Trevor Nunn, this play, a straight-forward on-stage production rather than a full cinematic event.  Helen Hunt has lovely comic timing, and perfect reactions – broad, but appropriate for the stage.  She pulled off a very good impersonation of a young man or teenager, slightly older than many of the Cesarios appear to be – an attractive woman who can be an attractive boy.  The costume and hair made it almost perfect: hair in a sleek ponytail, as is Sebastian’s of course, and a white suit just like his (of course).  The resemblance was the best here,   Great reactions, great comic timing – all the right notes perhaps slightly overplayed for the stage, and sometimes played to the audience.  Viola here is a woman in transition, trying to get her feet under her, and suddenly set upon by love from two angles – here, the everywoman thrown into a thoroughly extraordinary situation.  A viola-like voice, low for a woman, and just right for a young man: perfect.  I still want to see the rest.  Stupid PBS.

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HVSF (2008): Katie Hartke – wonderful.  She pulls off her impersonation nicely (though there’s not so much of a resemblance to Sebastian) – could be a young boy, young enough to make it squicky – but mature for “his” age.  Her hair gathered under her hat.  She’s on edge, emotional – as a woman would be in her place.  There is a wonderful immediacy to this performance: this Viola is absolutely present in the moment, every moment, sharply aware and intent on each line, each scene.

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ATV British TV (1969): Joan Plowright – Not immensely convincing as a girl playing a boy.  It was, in a way, a nice choice to have her witness the end of Orsino’s scene and decide she will serve him.  It explains the decision nicely- because it is a drastic decision … but then it weakens the scene.  She leaves the scene with backward glances (except for the hair, he’s handsome, nice legs, and nice voice).  She is devoid of feeling for much of it, very still, with many soulful upward gazes – not the passion required for some scenes.  She also plays Sebastian, with a hint of facial hair – which solves the mistaken identity casting problem, but …

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Branagh (1988): Frances Barber is sweet, smart, good as a fifteen-year-old boy; lovely emotion.  She is a relief in a mean-spirited production – and it’s a horrible shame: if the whole thing had lived up to her, it would be one of my favorite versions instead of my far and away least favorite.

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Tim Supple (2003): Parminder Nagra

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Image via Wikipedia

 

Caliban’s Hour – Tad Williams

A long-held habit of multi-tasking is hard to break, so you’d think I’d listen to more audio books.  Effectively reading while doing chores – winner.  But I don’t.  The cost of audiobooks aside (though that’s a lot to put aside), I just never have been drawn to books-on-tape (or whatever the format).  Generally I’ll listen to music or a podcast while cleaning or some such – there’s not as much need to hear every word (except, of course, for Chop Bard).  Also, I haven’t enjoyed the narration of some of the audiobooks I’ve sampled.  Librivox is a wonderful thing, all volunteer if I understand correctly, so good on them … I just haven’t been able to settle in with some of the voices, like a Jane Austen or two I’ve started.  I’m voice-fussy.

However, my car is still trying to kill me by randomly changing stations in mid-song (several times, when it wants to).  I know there is intent behind it and that its intentions are evil because it’s switched me to the country station knowing I will do anything it takes to get OFF the country station.  Then it sent me to a hip-hop station, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I found myself upside down on the verge, wheels spinning, half-killed by the impact and the airbag and still flailing at the radio controls.  I’d tried a tape – The Hobbit, actually, which was one of the times I haven’t enjoyed the narration because it was too much rather than too little, and then something went awry with the playback.  I’d tried a CD, but after a few days of behaving just fine it suddenly would start skipping around the tracks when I accelerated.  (The car is evil, remember.)  I tried my iPod for a while, and there was nothing the car could do about that – except that the cord tangles with the seat belt and earbuds fall out, and when the buds are in place I don’t like being that deaf to outside noise.

Image via Wikipedia

So when I came across an audiobook I picked up some time back at a library sale, Tad Williams’s , I decided I’d give the cassette deck another try.  The main reason I bought it was probably the author; I liked Tailchaser’s Song, and I liked The Dragonbone Chair and Stone of Farewell, though I got bogged down after that.  I think the audiobook’s narrator came as a pleasant surprise after I bought it: Ron Perlman.

I adore Ron Perlman.  And Ron Perlman’s voice is one huge reason I adore Ron Perlman.  His performance in this was beautiful.  In places, this was not fun, and the only saving grace was that voice.

Add to Ron Perlman and Tad Williams the conceit that this is a sequel of sorts to Shakespeare’s Tempest, and this ought to have been heaven.

Well…

I started calling it a Shakespeare fan-fic, and every virtual page just cemented this for me.  It’s both a sequel to The Tempest and the story from Caliban’s point of view.  It’s both knowledgeable of the play and completely dismissive of it … and anyone who’s read any of my blog knows how “dismissive of Shakespeare” is going to sit with me.

Basically, the tale takes place some twenty years after The Tempest, and a shadow has come to Verona seeking Miranda – seeking revenge.  It’s not spoilerific to say that once he discovers where she is, he spends the rest of the story looming over her in her bed forcing her to listen as he tells her his version of everything that happened.

Everything.

Abso-bloody-lutely everything.

The two areas in which this story frustrates me are the pace and the language.  Not my usual complaint about crudity or lack of imagination, but the opposite.  This Caliban is silver-tongued, lyrical, and most of all verbose.  The language shouldn’t bother me, but I keep thinking “Really?  Caliban using a word like ‘inchoate’?”  I thought, well, I suppose Shakespeare gave him as good a vocabulary as any of them, and as Prospero taught him not only to speak but to read and he therefore had access to Prospero’s books, “inchoate” isn’t too big a stretch.  I don’t think. Except if Caliban has been alone on the island for twenty years, no one to talk to, no books, nothing, I would think some of the vocabulary might atrophy.  Now, four-plus hours of listening to guttural monosyllables would be unpleasant, even in Ron Perlman’s voice, but my opinion is that if you’re going to base your work on someone else’s you need to have some respect for the original.  Otherwise, why bother?  I contented myself while listening to (most of) it by telling myself that no character in Shakespeare is monosyllabic; Prospero did in fact teach Caliban, so Caliban could legitimately be well-spoken.  Except if Caliban has been alone on the island for twenty years, no one to talk to, no books, nothing, I would think some of the vocabulary might atrophy.  But then I finally went to take a look at the play.

Caliban speaks 1348 words in the play, totalling 5631 characters (that may actually include some punctuation; oops).  That’s an average of (assuming I did cull all the punctuation) 4.177 letters per word.  I sorted them and eliminated duplicates and counted them again, and that gave me 541 unique words, totalling 2781 characters: about 5 letters each.  (He says “I” and “me” more than any other words, which brings down his overall average.)  He never uses vocabulary like “inchoate”, he never waxes rhapsodic as the novella’s does.  He does use some polysyllabic words, but they are mostly names and words that he heard from Prospero: “nonpareil”, for example.  I don’t buy this Caliban’s eloquence.  Also, I don’t believe it was ever said that Prospero taught Caliban to read.  

The other Issue I have, the pace, is a more serious quibble.  When I step back from it, I realize that it’s a good story, and the writing is, on the whole, excellent; it’s a solid, knowledgeable (I think) imagining of Caliban’s origins and inner life.  My frustration with the book is that I can’t shake the feeling that this could easily have been a short story My issue is the storytelling conceit that Caliban is standing over Miranda spewing out all this tale, a tale which takes something like four hours on the cassettes but which would take a person telling the story ex tempore a good bit longer, I’d expect.  And I just can’t buy a setting like this, of a man stooped over a woman’s bed for hours at a time, threatening her with death, but in the meantime … just talking.  Without the framing story (and the occasional “You see, Miranda”), told as a straightforward tale of The Tempest From Caliban’s Angle, I think this would be much stronger.  Or perhaps if it started just the same in a prologue, then as he stands over Miranda and declares his intentions switched to straight storytelling, beginning, middle, and end…  As it is, the storytelling grew somewhat aggravating as Caliban described his childhood, then the second-or-third-hand details of the time before his birth, then the time after Prospero and Miranda arrived, then before, then after, then pre-birth again, and so on.

Caliban’s intent is revenge upon Miranda, of course – but it’s not a quick revenge.  First he is going to tell her things she needs to know.  Starting with the moment she and her father set foot upon the island.  No, starting with his earliest memories.  No, starting with his birth.  No … starting with before his birth.  When he finally comes to the point of killing her at the end, I was replying to Mr. Perlman along the lines of “Oh, thank God, yes, please”.

The repetitiveness of this is just a little exasperating.  It kept reminding me of a complaint I once heard about Shakespeare (and which I’ve never found true in the plays) – it goes on and on for three pages (or the audio equivalent) and the upshot of those three pages is: it’s raining. This goes in a spiral that circles tighter and tighter till there’s nowhere to go – then breaks open the spiral, only to start a new one.  I wonder if this would be as aggravating in print; probably.

I find it so very surprising that the novella directly contradicts the play in many places.  Is Shakespeare supposed to have been an unreliable storyteller?  A spin artist bent on white-washing Prospero?  Caliban bitterly attributes the deaths of all the sailors on the ship to Prospero – when, in the play, no one died.  No one.

PROSPERO
But are they, Ariel, safe?
ARIEL
Not a hair perish’d;
On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and, as thou badest me,
In troops I have dispersed them ’bout the isle.

Here Caliban, of course, limns himself as the long-suffering hard-put-upon tragic hero of the piece.  He never did nothin’.  Rape Miranda?  Why, he never.  It was all her fault.  Plot with Trinculo and Stephano to kill Prospero and give Miranda to Stephano as a gift?  Not hardly.

Either Shakespeare or Williams’s Caliban is a big lying liar, and my money is on Caliban.

 

Twelfth Night – Branagh/Thames Shakespeare

Branagh (1988) (Thames Shakespeare Collection)

Made for television?
VIOLA: Frances Barber
FESTE: Anton Lesser
DUKE ORSINO: Christopher Ravenscroft
MALVOLIO: Richard Briers
SIR TOBY BELCH: James Saxon
OLIVIA: Caroline Langrishe
SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK: James Simmons
MARIA: Abigail McKern
ANTONIO: Stuart McCreery
SEBASTIAN: Sebastian/Curio: Christopher Hollis
DIRECTOR: Paul Kafno; Producers: Paul Kafno, Ian Martin
OTHER: Paul Williams

The music for this staging is (as in Branagh’s other Shakespeares) by Patrick Doyle, except the Shakespearean ballad performed by Feste – “Come Away Death” – borrows an adapted melody from Paul McCartney’s song “Once Upon A Long Ago”. McCartney donated the melody for Kenneth Branagh’s original stage production of Twelfth Night, performed by the Renaissance Theatre Company, and allowed the melody to be used in the film version.

McCartney or no McCartney – I honestly hated this.  Once again I wanted to love it.  Come on – Kenneth Branagh and Shakespeare are like peanut butter and chocolate.  Patrick Doyle!  And Richard Briers!  And I loved the concept of Anton Lesser’s Feste.  And … But dear lord…

It’s kind of funny (funny strange, very definitely not funny … ha ha) that this was the only one – I think – in which there were references to the time of year of the title: instead of dodging about hedges the tricksters here kept a Christmas tree between them and Malvolio.

The only reason I might watch any of this again is that I just saw on imdb that Paul Williams played Curio.  That Paul Williams?  Really?  That’s just bizarre enough to bring me back – briefly.

Actually, funnily enough, it seems that this was probably relabeled for DVD sales, with Branagh’s name writ larger all over it than back in ’88; he was not as prominent in the production of it, based on some places I’ve looked, as the big letters would have one think.  I like the idea that he wasn’t – his Much Ado is one of my favorite things in the world, and did a wonderful job of capturing the joy of the story, where this … did not.

This production, like Tim Supple’s, sucked every drop of joy out of the play.  There’s a quote I saved from the Cambridge University Press, via a very messy article on archive.org: “Another feature is the genial spirit that pervades the piece . . . its tone of pure kindliness and pleasure.”  Not here.  None of the above.  Every scene takes place out of doors, in the courtyard and garden outside Olivia’s home or Orsino’s garden – despite the fact that the Twelfth Night part is taken seriously and everyone is bundled up, and in several scenes it snows.

And the weather is not the only chilly thing about it.  Olivia (Caroline Langrishe) is a stone cold bitch, with the tiniest of soft spots for Feste – not to be relied upon, because my impression of this Olivia is that she might yank her support again at any moment.  Malvolio (Richard Briers) is spiteful and vicious, and deserves what he gets – almost.  Uncle Toby (James Saxon) is just a drunk, Sir Andrew (James Simmons) is a young moron being fleeced for every cent he has, Orsino (Christopher Ravenscroft) is depressed and depressing, and Sebastian (Christopher Hollis) was such a non-entity that the actor did double duty as Curio.  I’d love to punch Maria in the face.

And Feste (Anton Lesser) … Oh my, Feste.  He looks great.  I love the long and wild hair and the costume.  He sounds great – he has an excellent voice and delivery.  But this Feste is depressed and angry and violent – outright scary in several scenes.  This is a Feste you don’t want to piss off, in plain American; this is a Feste whose life is screwed up, who should be in rehab and on antidepressants, and could use a couple of back-to-back courses on anger management.  There is, par for the course in this film, no joy in Feste, no fooling around in the Fool.

This all lends extra pain to the torture and release of Malvolio.  In other productions, Toby and company play their tricks to get revenge on a pompous twit who has wronged them and belittled them and just annoyed the hell out of them.  It starts out in high spirits – and in distilled spirits – and goes further than they meant.  In the “Branagh” version it starts out mean-spirited and only gets worse.  And when Briars as Malvolio is let out of his tiny cell, it’s one of the most horrifying things I’ve seen in a while: he’s bent, because there was not room to stand straight; he’s blinded by the winter daylight, because he was in the dark for so long; he’s filthy.  And he’s obviously injured.  This isn’t funny.  This isn’t a practical joke.  This is reason to call the police in and prosecute.  If there was any sign of remorse at any point in the film, I don’t remember it; that’s one more thing the Supple version had that this didn’t – Maria bursts into bitter tears toward the end.  To channel Kristin Chenoweth’s intro to HVSF: brightly – “It’s a comedy!”

The closest thing to a saving grace about the whole thing was Frances Barber as Viola.  I liked her a lot.  She was lovely; she was a lovely actor; she was the sole source of warmth in the thing.  She had a sparkle in her eyes, and inhabited Viola nicely – and made a natty Cesario: she made one of the best boys.  Unfortunately, she just wasn’t enough to remotely save this nasty mess.