scene individable, or POLL unlimited: works of william shakespeare

(nah it's macbeth obv.)

Is Rosalind the most alluring woman in literature? Fine. She is.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, January 21, 2018 5:14 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm: she is a chameleonic demiurge of the kind shakes usually reserved for tragedies and AYLI was robbed here. harold bloom iirc likes to imagine falstaff escaping history to arden; likewise i wouldn't turn down rosalind/hamlet slash, fraught as it'd get.

exhilarating to see such a character go undoomed. even iago ends in silence.

jaques, tho, is my boy

I'd want to see this there - https://www.osfashland.org/productions/2018-plays/manahatta.aspx

― Moo Vaughn, Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not certain what my favorite is, but probably would have voted for As You Like It on the correct assumption it would get relatively little attention from others

― Moo Vaughn, Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whoa @ 4 whole Cymbeline voters!

― MarmiteGrrrl (Leee), Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:18 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that play is trash xp

― YouTube_-_funy_cats.flv (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:29 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

manahatta I mean

― YouTube_-_funy_cats.flv (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:30 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

Currently teaching Macbeth again. I should probably whisper it but this is the first time it's felt, I don't know, a bit two dimensional. Maybe it's me.

feel u, but macbeth's two-dimensionality seems both deliberate and aggressive after the swelling tesseracts of AYLI/hamlet/lear

in the end it's one-dimensional: a collapsed point

yeah Macbeth knows where it’s going and doesn’t really make any bones about it and to me that’s one of its strengths

Apparently Manahatta is good now

The sheer tragic focus of Macbeth, the dark hand of fate and all that, is pretty ruthless. Just utterly doom-laden.

I saw a National Theatre production of Macbeth recently. It was pretty ordinary, partly through some weird casting choices (Malcolm was as camp as a row of pink tents - to the point where it almost seemed pantomimic; Macbeth was lacklustre, at best), but mostly because of the vague 'post apocalyptic' setting, which really lacked any sense of focus.

I really like that idea that Macbeth is actually single-minded and bone sharp as opposed to two dimensional. I'm teaching it again at the moment and it's Act V and the pathos of Macbeth's weariness at his mistakes that's really hitting me.

the vague 'post apocalyptic' setting, which really lacked any sense of focus.

ha before posting last night i was having a weird vision of a postapocalyptic as you like it-- fleeing a tyrant-run city to an improvised community in a forest everyone conveniently keeps calling a "desert". pastoral doesn't have to mean lush imo. postapocalyptic macbeth is of course a lil on the nose.

saw As You Like It for the first legitimate time last night, my previous exposure being to a version performed by middle schoolers when I was like 10 and which I remembered nothing of. All superlatives about Rosalind are probably correct. Lots of emotional juice wrung out of the surprisingly-briefly-appearing and superficially ridiculous Jacques. All the comedic episodes of the Forest are gentle delights. Production I saw set lots of poetical interludes to music which was great, music in Shakespeare is great.

The songs are in the original -- well, their lyrics, anyway.

Most of Shakespeare really needs a lutenist along with the actors. Few productions can afford the extra expense.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/who-is-shakespeare-emilia-bassano/588076/

his contemporaries, who knew Shakespeare, who socialized and worked with him, had no trouble believing he wrote the works attributed to him. they never seem to have questioned his authorship. there are no sly hints, no furtive winks, no challenges, no puzzled doubts in evidence.

also worth noting how much Elizabethan authors, because they were officially heavily censored, loved to bury clues in their writing, using puns, acrostics, double meanings, and other kinds of wordplay. I didn't read the article in full, but to be convinced, I'd expect at least several instances of Emilia Bassano inserting puns or hidden clues to her authorship into the plays or poems.

i support this. we need a couple hundred years of assuming shakespeare is a woman so that the jobbing journalists of the future can pitch "reviewing the plays, i was shocked to find that othello is written with incredible, even subversive empathy for male experience-- perhaps shakespeare was a man?" pieces. also maybe people will get into shakespeare

i'm playing hamlet this summer lol

Don't rush your lines! Speak them feelingly.

you should see me saw the air w my hand

vanity unexpectedly demanding this post: (not really)

http://i67.tinypic.com/2coiekp.jpg

Branagh's new film is a hit job from a man who loathes Shakespeare.

1. recommendation for an edition of WS's complete works ? i'm in USA and it seems as if THE NORTON SHAKESPEARE is a safe bet ?

2. any thoughts on isaac asimov's two volumes on shakespeare ? i've never thought much of asimov, rightly or wrongly, but peeking at a .pdf that's available online, seems like it might be fun ? i haven't read much shakespeare crticism / commentary outside the BIG THREE (empson, hazlitt, and dr. johnson)

I bought the newest Oxford edition like a year ago, seems pretty rad (lots of additional online content) except that there's two additional weighty volumes of commentary I didn't buy and now I feel like I'm missing out on something (or will be when I start digging in).

tbc that's the 2005 second ed. yeah ?

It's the New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition (2018).

I have/had a copy of the Riverside Shakespeare (edited by my old Shakesbeard prof) which was solid but which has apparently evaporated into mist or something since my undergrad days.

I've been watching this series of John Barton masterclasses. There's something kinda fusty about them (like Barton's cardigans) but I've found them captivating tbh. For all his obvious learning, Barton keeps things relatively simple. And what a line-up of actors: David Suchet, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-MPmoQ_s18

yeah i luv these too. lol in that one @ suchet's "naturalistic" salerio.

This looks cool, thanks for the hint.

directing ilx's second-favorite shakespeare play this summer. had previously always been nonplussed by its inert single-agent surface but as usual preproduction immersion has given me more than enough to get obsessed with. the drama is there. ("mine would, sir. were i human.") outrageously difficult to edit tho: so gnarled, impacted, dense; so intricately enjambed. i cut romeo & juliet down by a third last year and it was like disassembling lego in comparison.

There’s a strange lack of drama to Timon of Athens

I've been fascinated by it since I saw the BBC version as a kid. Everything said upthread is true; Timon himself is too shallow to be tragic, and once he throws his revenge party, he sits in his cave until the play ends, like he's looking forward to Beckett.

I've tried to imagine what it might be like to play Lear every night for weeks on end and have concluded that it would kill a superhuman to give it its full due that often. Yikes!

I've been watching this series of John Barton masterclasses.

Obviously a lot of talent there, but Ian McKellen easily outshines the rest. Even reading snippets he always presents an integrated performance that incorporates facial expression and gesture with an apt tone, pace and emphasis. Damn, he's an actor down to his very bones.

directing ilx's second-favorite shakespeare play this summer.

still not my second-favorite but wouldn't have wanted the summer without it

https://i.imgur.com/BQChwW7.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/tEN5rak.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/uNbgw2y.jpg

(i played the bosun.)

been reading henry vi. the scope! the violence!

I find the Tempest both unbearably moving and irritating (language former, intrigue/mistaken identity latter)! This looks like a good production. I'm going to ask a banal but genuine question: what's directing a Shakespearean play like?

I've recently read Antony Sher's book about playing Richard and Harriet Walter's about playing Lady Macbeth and now want to read as many actors' accounts as I possibly can. Anyone got any recommendations? (I'd love to have a go at a Shakespearean acting class but can't help but feel that ship has sailed.)

i have a book called "shakespeare on stage" of julian curry interviews w (mostly) rsc types about specific roles-- likely glossier than what yr looking for, also hit and miss in terms of actor/role pairings. (don't even dislike him so feel bad for how funny the phrase "jude law on hamlet" reads to me.) more or less recommend tho. anyway acting in shakespeare is always good for you imo!

fine with mistaken identity stuff in tempest as it's just ariel fucking w stefano & trinculo and their gullibility is proportionate to ariel's superpowers (+ stef/trinc's drunken and traumatized state)-- plus the specific phrase "thou liest", as a kind of spell that reveals+widens the chasm of atomized despair underneath these two frightened castaways' surface camaraderie/bravado, is a deep choice-- but i did cut an iteration or two yeah lol.

i came around to loving the play of course and even think its Themes are Urgent And Contemporary but it still seems to me an extremely difficult one with more exposition than plot dominated by an unusually unpleasant protagonist speaking some of shakes' densest+freest verse so i'm surprised it's such a crowd fave-- tho it is def a trip so maybe that's why.

what's directing a Shakespearean play like?

i have only directed shakes actually so i don't rly know. i set aside a few weeks at the start for text work-- just sitting in a circle reading+talking-- normal for professional productions but fairly prolonged for mid-sized-town community theater-- think this paid off as partway thru production i felt a distinct shift where after having started out doing a lot of detailed discussion (caliban week 2: "this is like an english class"-- main difference being it's an english class where you actually settle on the answers to questions) i stopped having to do much except approve/adjust things people were trying. in the end all my fave business was cast-developed but early on i spent a lot of time talking about who they were.

technically things were a little harder lol-- after sticking v cautiously to a detailed+modest plan directing romeo+juliet last year i got cocky and decided to be more "exploratory" w this and it predictably turned into apocalypse tempest. ariel's costume alone a months-long series of spectacular battery-powered dead ends that ended up in plain minimalism. producer on-and-off furious with me. i got covid and had to direct over zoom for two weeks. everyone in a good mood now tho.

work at a theater so early on i herded the cast+crew into private latenite big-screenings of forbidden planet (sure) and jurassic park (magic island, storm, control-freak wizard who discovers source of supernatural power locked inside tree + must renounce it, artist-figure's speech at end simultaneously apologetic and defensive). the former influenced our music (original compositions for droning keyboard) and the latter our ambient jungle noises (maybe excessive). ferdinand and miranda started irl dating and he calls her "alta". rip morbs.

we ran for three weeks on our colossal temporary parking-lot stage-- if it's raining or you're distancing you park in front of it and tune into the show via radio-- then packed up the set and drove it ~50mi up the coast to plonk it down (no longer elevated) in a football field about as big as the town it's in. (no ambient jungle noises necessary here.) had been dreading this final roadshow weekend because every parks dept official i talked to about it, except the one whose idea it was, looked at me like it was the dumbest and vainest project they'd ever heard of, and i feared audiences of actual zero. but we forgot that there was nothing else going on for dozens of miles in every direction, because our three nights there went from 50 to 65 to 90 people sitting on bleachers getting high and watching the tempest, surrounded by pitch and cloudless black, while we city slickers staggered around backstage gawping at the stars. after having to give multiple performances, back in town, across the street from an active construction site full of beeping backhoes and crashing steel (at like 8pm????), to audiences sitting silently inside rows of SUVs, in a plague-ravaged and dying civilization, in the rain, "site B" turned out a utopian coda. we looked like we'd landed in a cheap spaceship:

https://i.imgur.com/7vzf8kN.jpg

just amateur stuff obv, but healthy.

henry 6 report: parts 3 and (especially) 2 full of good stuff if structurally a lot sloppier not just than the henriad but also than richard 3. part 1 struck me as pretty dumb, especially the part where a frenchwoman decides to lure talbot to her house; lures him to her house; says "aha! i have lured you to my house!"; he says "aha! my army is outside"; she is like damn you crafty english!! you are the best. nevertheless some semi-interesting unresolved ambiguity around its heroes+villains i guess-- also worth mentioning there are a lot of good female parts in the first history tetralogy, more than anywhere else outside the comedies: margaret, elizabeth, anne, joan of arc. (also tamora in titus, written amidst these and set in a sealed hobbesian hothouse world that seems v closely linked to the civil-war anxiety worked thru w increasing existential despair in the tetralogy.)

wavered on whether or not to include the "apocryphal" edward 3 in current survey but was glad i did. wondered if i'd be able to tell which passages are suspected of being shakespeare's-- but not only does the density and refractivity of metaphor tip you off in the first five lines of a scene, if you wait another five lines you'll prob get a reference to philomela+tereus. (or to dido.) he seems to have been brought in partly to punch up the love stuff: a long scene where edward dictates a love letter to the countess philippa, goes back over it, changes it, winces at some lines, congratulates himself on others-- couldn't believe how gratuitously meta it was.

more interesting because afaict this is the debut of shakespeare seriously on (if not in) love. in two gentlemen of verona it's a plot device; taming of the shrew is too satirical to let itself get mushy undistanced; the most convincing "love" moment in the first history tetralogy is richard coming on to anne, a terrific scene but not exactly the balcony. instead, if anything, there's a preoccupation with rape-- especially when (as in the histories+titus) characters are also instantiations of, or contenders for, the state. (in 2H6 jack cade excoriates a quailing mob of followers for accepting ius primae noctis from the enclosing crown, about thirty lines after announcing every london woman's sexual availability is now his to cybernetically redistribute.) but edward, rhapsodizing inside a much shallower and less cynical play, is free to be merely earnest-- which maybe is part of why you suddenly see shakes blushing+revising in front of your eyes.

and after the edward 3 punchups he publishes venus+adonis and the rape of lucrece (each dedicated to patron/beautiful-boy the earl of southampton)-- both again about sexual assault (and one again about the state) but both also preoccupied in much more detail than heretofore with desire-as-such: place in nature, disproportionate and ironic motive force, function as mask (or glover's-kid shakespeare would say dress) for death. the violence of the civil wars is here inside the feelings themselves. not long now till romeo+juliet, in which love+hate are different valves thru which human life gradually discharges the same finite pressure. someone (venus, juliet) will always make a mystical+crystalline case for infinitude-- the more i give to thee, the more i have-- then lose everything. it's maybe not until rosalind that a character has the reach to peacefully close the circuit between the free mind and the constrained body, or the imagined world and the real, or the self and the other, or life and death, or whatever it is that's going on here.

just a bit of fun

https://borrowers-ojs-azsu.tdl.org/borrowers/article/view/342/607

likewise i wouldn't turn down rosalind/hamlet slash, fraught as it'd get.

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, March 13, 2019 9:15 PM bookmarkflaglink

like romeo i am left so unsatisfied

pressing on. comedy of errors: lynchian farce, much richer/stranger than advertised. the mounting anguish of the antipholi as their identities implode points forward to the high trags but also made me think of after hours. the last few lines-- where the identical servants are left alone onstage to argue over who takes precedence and then give up: "and now let's go hand in hand"-- instantly a favorite shakespeare ending. seems like it'd be unusually fun to do.

love's labor's lost: lmaoooo what the fuck is this. i'm not smart enough. but after three urban-bourgeois comedies (verona/shrew/errors) increasingly vivid in their physical+cultural details ("give her this key, and tell her in the desk / that's covered o'er with turkish tapestry / there is a purse of ducats. let her send it"-- this in errors took my breath away, not sure why-- something about the sight of this elizabethan manufacturer's credenza being projected simultaneously back to greece and forward to me) i do admire the hard shift to fake aristos in a featureless and artificial play-space all talking in the most impacted possible hypershakespeare and wearing buttons reading Hi I Am Constituted Entirely Of Language. someone should set it on a message board.

How's King John? I may read it finally this week. Popular in the 19th century, no? Faulconbridge gets the good notices.

i haven't read it either but in the full chronological survey i'm currently doing like shakes were tribe albums or star wars it is coming up! just some v familiar territory (richard 2, r&j, midsummers) to recross first.

Richard II (1595)
Romeo and Juliet (1595)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

v lyrical stretch here. trying new things

― difficult listening hour, Friday, January 19, 2018 6:24 PM bookmarkflaglink

hadn't realized here that these directly follow LLL, which shares the formality i was partly trying to get at here-- all very cleanly+artificially structured (R2 is an X; R&J a solar arc; midsummers has two versions of everything) and the verse is v regular (+frequently rhymed)-- but actually in that sense these plays are pulling back a lil from the extreme formality of LLL, where people (sometimes groups of people) keep breaking out in sonnet. i don't know that he's ever again this loyal to form.

at the very same time tho it's also where genre starts to crack-- the most tragic history, the most comic tragedy. characters start talking a lot about dreaming. the flawless verse structure cannot be shored up against a weird psychedelic rot blooming inside their heads. LLL takes place in a playground and ends w a messenger announcing that the king is dead and everyone has to grow up. one of the leads' speech prefixes immediately changes from PRINCESS to QUEEN.

never been a biographical criticism guy (one of the attractions of shakespeare) but hamnet dies around here of course.

Thanks for your replies about your production of the Tempest, difficult listening hour. Looks fascinating and a total headache to organise - fair play to you. Was it recorded? Would certainly take a look if it's online anywhere.

sweet of you to ask. didn't have a copy at the time but the other night i was standing in the street and someone suddenly rolled up on a skateboard and showed me an edit they'd made of the whole thing on their phone so maybe i will soon. a little shy abt it tbh i mean i tried to do the best i could but many missed opportunities god knows. in the meantime i have this gif:

https://i.imgur.com/ZKQwVi9.gif

did you get to king john, alfred? didn't know it had katherine hepburn in it, tho five seconds' thought and i guess i would have. the bastard doing some interesting identity work. hitting the fave themes.

merchant: the early comedies are best when there is money involved (or better, realer, than money: debt) so from "your mind is tossing on the ocean" on, this is a kind of pinnacle. strangely storybookish portia/casket stuff rly powerful if staged right, a fairy tale with high stakes. shylock a classic member of the "i refuse to accept the terms of this play and i will see it destroyed" club (president: hamlet), with more reason than most, and less success.

not much to say about henry 4+5 that wouldn't take all year but had not appreshed before how much of a culminative synthesis it is: it's trying to top the tavern bawds from taming of the shrew and the slapstick from comedy of errors and the battle scenes from henry 6 and the disassociative which-is-me-and-which-the-crown stuff from richard 2 and the daddy issues from king john, all at once, and as a national epic. and lest the symphony turn totalitarian it's also where shakes' early line of usually-villainous protogeniuses (aaron, gloucester, the bastard, juliet imo) finally gives birth to someone really capable of overturning the order of the play-- not in the story which is only a story, but in yr mind. it's the bayeux tapestry (well yknow in reverse), except the largest figure in it would have been sliced out of the bayeux tapestry by the state. of course, the state slices him out of the henriad too-- but not before he's completely ruined the big patriotic finish for you. just a masterpiece, a recapitulation and surpassing of everything so far. where do we go from here??

merry wives: apparently engels really liked this one. i've played falstaff in it and prob gave myself nodules. the plum role is ford.

as you like it: finally the acid kicks in.

I did, yeah! Most of what I read is largely true (Faulconbridge yea, title character nay)

title kind of a fakeout, like julius caesar