Amph The Shakespeare Discussion Thread: "Anonymous"

Kurosawa was a fan of Shakespeare who was performed fairly regularly in Japanese in his day. Can't imagine Shakespeare in Japanese, really can't, but it must have worked; gave us Throne of Blood and Ran.

Yes, that Macbeth bit is one of my favorite monologues.

I'm also partial the funeral oration by Mark Antony, a masterpiece of oratory.

 

Tolstoy hated Shakespeare, and wrote an essay about how overrated he was. Orwell blew the whistle on the real problem, which was "King Lear"--Tolstoy had a rather similar family situation, and rejected Shakespeare's nihilism in that case. "Lear" is a difficult play, but a great one.

 

Interestingly enough, I'm reading D.H. Lawrence's Twilight in Italy right now and there's an extended bit about a theatre in Italy where he saw several plays.

And one of them was Amleto, which is of course, Hamlet. And he talks for about five pages about Hamlet in specific, a character he doesn't particularly care for, and about how in Italian the play, which he likes for the language, seems sheer buffoonery.

Just thought it rather fit into the topic of this thread.

Of course, his interpretations of the play are very interesting; he interprets the To Be or Not To Be as not a question about life and death (since Hamlet cannot decide whether to be; he already is and, even if he dies, will always have been), but a question about royality and what Lawrence calls 'consummation,' the becoming of everything you are born to be, in Hamlet's case, the King.

Which I find particularly interesting . . . it's a strange interpretation, but an interesting one.

 

Then there's the Freudian interpretation, hot stuff in the 30's and 40's, but not so popular now.

 

I'm ashamed to say that right now I'm feeling very glad that English is my first language. I can't imagine having to read something like Shakespeare with a dictionary. Mind you, if I were Russian I'd be thanking my lucky stars I could read Tolstoy and Pushkin in the original ...

It'd be great to be able to learn about literary classics just alongside the other stuff we had to read for school. If the teacher just said, "Okay, this is Shakespeare, it's 400 years old so go slowly" a whole lot of people might be drawn in by the vividness of the text. But when someone says "Okay, this is Shakespeare, it's 400 years old and you WILL appreciate it or else", normal bloody-mindedness kicks in.

One of the reasons I love Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books is because they posit a universe where bad Shakespeare is actually illegal. If only. *sigh* I suppose people have to have artistic freedom, but artistic freedom unfortunately includes the freedom to be awful.

Usually the language can save a mediocre production, but it sounds like the version you saw really didn't work out. Better luck next time, I suppose. Call me a conservative, but I'd hate to see a play meddled with like that. The director can cut, obviously, because nobody wants to be at the theatre until one in the morning, but moving stuff to places it wasn't written for is a risky business.

The available lexicon of the English language recently passed 1 million words IIRC, which is significantly bigger than other 'purer' languages. I think it's safe to assume that English has always been proportionally more complicated than speeches with a less mongrel ancestry, so even a contemporary translation would have been hard. Nowadays, with the problem of archaisms included as well, it must be almost impossible.

I'm not sure I've read the translation of which you speak, but I must've read I, Claudius and Claudius the God dozens of times. Graves writes superbly. In the two Claudius books there's places where he translates snippets of Latin/Greek/Etruscan/Klingon into English for the benefit of posterity, and they always seem to have an authentic ring to them.

A E Housma

 

in my english class i used to collect bits of old poetry. it was a natural progression for me to read the whole texts after that, not to say i didn't have problems with them. my trick was very simple, i read the german first and then the english (it does take away the surprise endings ) and went from there. schlegel was an awesome translator and he really made me want to read the original (i don't think that's a contradiction).

Call me a conservative, but I'd hate to see a play meddled with like that. The director can cut, obviously, because nobody wants to be at the theatre until one in the morning, but moving stuff to places it wasn't written for is a risky business.

i don't understand the appeal of theatre much a friend of mine likes to go so i shuffle along. i'd much rather see people dancing so i drag her to ballets and things. i really really dig the poetry, i just don't get why it has to be recited in a play.

all of which is silly because what blew me away about my favourite hamlet (not on stage, mind you, on film) was the context in which to be or not to be got recited in. so, i guess it counts.

Tangentially to your second comment: monologue or soliloquy? I've always preferred 'soliloquy', possibly just because it's a very Shakespearean kind of word.

soliloquy. it rolls off the tongue.

 

This summer gone by, I had the treat of seeing Much Ado About Nothing performed at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada.

I must say, I really enjoy Shakespeare. I was hesitant at first about the director's choice of placing the play in pre-WWI Italy, but it worked so well. Simple, yet elegant costumes, the Shakespeare-designed stage (really cool), and the acting pulled it all together.

Very well done.

 

I simply can't spell soliliquy with any degree of confidence, so I call them monologues.

Yes, Antony's constant reinforcements of how honorable Brutus is . . . that's just brilliant psychology. Also love how he keeps talking about the will and then saying, "Oh, but of course I'm not going to read it to you." Particularly the bit where he then says, "Oh, but if someone should . . ." Talk about working the crowd.

Lear is difficult; it's so much about madness, that's it's actually hard to follow when Lear (who may be actually mad or may be faking) is around Edgar (who is pretending to be mad), you almost have no idea what's going on. It's like a conversation made entirely of non sequiters. But Edmund is a great villian; as gleeful as Richard III and every bit as nasty.

 

Lear is a very difficult play, it makes very few concessions to the audience.

 

Shakespeare did intend for the plays to be staged; theatre is its native form, you might say. Personally I love live theatre, and there's few things more electrifying than a really well-delivered bit of Shakespeare. The poetry is all very well, but nothing caps hearing it spoken, preferably into total, awed silence because the audience is hanging on every word.

And of course there's the thing that every production will want to handle the text slightly differently. Going to the theatre sometimes presents you with interpretations you'd never have thought of on your own.

Sounds good. Much Ado in particular is one of those plays that doesn't rely hugely on context (it's not a big-picture, kingdoms-in-the-balance kind of play) so it can work well wherever it's transposed to.

Okay, that explains it

Shakespeare's dramatic poetry is rarely just shoved in for its own sake. It's always got a point to it. I love how the demonstration of just how damn clever Antony is is just coincidentally one of the greatest theatrical orations ever. Incredible stuff.

It sounds even worse than Hamlet on the madness front, but deeply, deeply intriguing. I'm going to see it *counts* next May, so I should have got it read by then at the very least. And if Edmund's as unrepentant a villain as Richard, that's a sight worth seeing.

Zaz, that seems to tie in with what Rogue said. A thought: how much soliloquising is there in Lear? Soliloquy is the usual way of letting the audience in on what's happening when the plot's convoluted. Does anyone in Lear do that, or do the audience just have to watch and try to keep up?

 

I can't say I remember exactly how many soliloquies there are in "Lear", if any. By a difficult play, I mean that it casts no sops to the audience in terms of denouement. I do recall certain characters talking sotto voce.

 

Now that I think on it, I don't recall a lot of soliliques from Lear. There may be some, as it's been a few months since I read it, but I think there probably aren't as many as you usually get.

 

Oh, I see what you meant. And I suppose it doesn't.

The soliloquy point was just one that came to mind; often when there's a lot of 'difficult' plotting happening, soliloquy lets the audience unravel a few of the intricacies. I really should just read the damn play instead of speculating

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Now, as it's been two weeks since this thread was started, I think it's time to move on to our first featured play: The Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of [b]Romeo and Juliet[/b].

R&J is probably the most famous love story in Western literature, and one of the most famous of Shakespeare's plays. It's usually not included as one of the so-called great tragedies (conventionally [i]Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello[/i] and [i]Lear[/i]) but is undoubtedly both great and tragic. Critical opinion is divided as to in which group it should go; one critic defends his decision to class it with the comedies by pointing out that the devices of feuding families, love at first sight, outrageous supporting characters like

Mercutio and a masked ball are all staples of Renaissance comedy.

So, is [i]Romeo and Juliet[/i] a true tragedy or a deliberate subversion of the genre conventions of comedy? Does it deserve a separate category, that of romance?

Stylistically, it's lyrical and vivid, full of visual image and recurring symbols, in which it anticipates the style of the late romances - [i]Cymbeline, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale[/i], and [i]Pericles[/i]. Scholars usually place it as having been written in about 1595, around the same period as [i]Love's Labours Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream[/i] and [i]Richard II[/i], which show something of the same style.

Its fame has left several segments firmly lodged in the general consciousness: almost everyone can declaim "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" even if they misunderstand the sense of as "Where are you?" rather than "Why did you have to be, of all people, Romeo Montague?" Other famous bits are the Prologue, in the form of a sonnet; the balcony scene; Mercutio's sublime and ridiculous flight of imagination on the subject of Queen Mab; and assorted snippets . . . "It is the east, and Juliet the sun"; "Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright"; "It was the nightingale and not the lark"; "Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man"; and of course "There never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet, and her Romeo".

I love this play to pieces, because it feels very short (it's not particularly) because of the headlong rush of the action. There's barely a pause anywhere. The whole course of Romeo and Juliet's romance is conducted at breakneck speed over four or five days, and the play reflects this; the intensity simply never lets up. Watching R&J usually leaves me exhausted as well as emotionally drained. It's a play with immense emotional momentum.

The characters are a varied and realistic bunch; highly-strung Romeo is a damn good counterpoint to Juliet - who's younger and yet just as mature in her emotional stability and her resolve. Mercutio, done properly, can steal most of the middle of the play with his flamboyance, whilst the Nurse does similarly with her all-conquering concern for Juliet. Friar Lawrence is a conventional man with a dangerous hobby; poor, forgotten Paris's only real sin is getting in Romeo's way.

And, of course, that dazzling torrent of language. Leitmotivs of day and night, the stars (supposedly fixed, as opposed to the "inconstant moon"), summer and the sun, flowers, heaven and hell, rain and the sea, dawn, time and the vicissitudes of Fate recur time and time again, building a powerful set of associations. Love hits Romeo and Juliet like [i]fire and powder[/i], which [i]consume[/i] one ano

 

I absolutely dispised R&J. I just found the characters to be so completely lacking in intelligence. Sure, they were young, but for God's sakes, people! Why are you so dense!?

As for his other works, I liked The Tempest a lot and MacBeth the first time I read it (after reading MacBeth three times for English, I got fed up with it). We're studying Hamlet this yer tho and I'm looking forward to that. I saw The Tempest at The Globe as well, I just wish I understood what was going on.

I do think that he has too much focus put on him in English classes though. Maybe have a few of his works studied, but only for maybe a year. As it is, I've studied him at least once for 5 of the last 7 years at school. It's just too much.

 

First time I read Romeo and Juliet, I didn't particularly like it. I've since read it two more times and I frankly love it now.

It's a very inspirational play; what I mean is, it inspires other people to imitation.

It's been filmed some 52 times, beginning in 1900 and up to next year's animated Gnomeo and Juliet. The most famous versions are Baz Luhrmann's version and the Zefferelli version. It's been adapted for robots (Romi-O and Julie-8), as a gang musical (West Side Story), as a culture clash between soviet and american cultures (Romanoff and Juliet) and even as a soft core porn comedy (The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet). It's been animated, silent and in English, Russian, Indian, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, at the very least. It's inspired television episodes, from more traditional stagings to an episode of the Dilbert cartoon.

And it inspires music too; Sergey Prokofiev wrote what is for my money the best ballet ever about it, Tchaikovsky wrote the absolutely gorgeous Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture and Hector Berlioz created his finest work with a cantata/orchestral retelling that imagines some scenes with voice and some scenes with only orchestra.

As for criticism, there's a lot, but perhaps the most famous is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's, some of which was written and published and some of which, now published with his essays, were gleaned from marginal notes he made on his own personal copy of the play.

There's something about the main theme of the star crossed lovers that crosses cultures and inspires artists. It fits, in my opinion, squarely in the tragic column. I in fact, read it most recently in the omnibus of Shakespeare's tragedies put out by the Modern Library; some collections of his tragedies omit it, making, in my opinion, quite a mistake.

Characters like Mercutio and Tybalt are endlessly fascinating; character I'd most love to play: Tybalt without a doubt, who is as endlessly and overwhelmingly passionate as the main characters, just with anger, rather than with love.

It's just a bit below the big hitters; the Hamlets, Macbeths, Much Ados, etc., but it's a great play, no question.

 

I must say, Mercutio is cool as hell.

 

Apologies for absence. I've been to the theatre

I think a lot of people feel the same way. It's overkill. Personally I can cope with near-constant Shakespeare, but I know that kind of geekery is the exception rather than the rule. It's hard to appreciate great literature when a teacher is shoving it down your throat.

I think it's the 'star-crossed' element that makes it so alluring; love stories are ten a penny, but the thing with R&J is that why they fall in love never needs explaining. The sun is hot, the sea is wet, Romeo loves Juliet. (She says, unaccountably lapsing into rhyme ...)

And I agree with you on the 'tragic' point. It is tragic, even if it's subsidiary to the four major players. The most recent omnibus edition I saw was the Everyman Millennium, which varies wildly in quality; this was the one that put R&J in with the comedies. Weird decision.

Truth be told, I'd never thought of him like that. But you're right on the mark; Tybalt's Peace? I hate the word / As I hate Hell, all Montagues, and thee is as certain and as powerful as any of Romeo's declarations to Juliet. Hell yes. I suppose the whole play could be read as being about the dire consequences of emotional overdrive: the love between Romeo and Juliet is counterpoised by the hatred between their families, of which Tybalt is the most eloquent example. Yes.

I'd love to play Mercutio. The insouciant detachment with which he watches Romeo's antics is just tremendous, and the manner of his death and his dying curse are chilling. He can steal the play, performed well. He's great. Although perhaps the Baz Luhrmann version overdid his camp side a bit . . .




It's just a bit below the big hitters; the Hamlets, Macbeths, Much Ados, etc., but it's a great play, no question.

 

I think Mercutio is Shakespeare's POV character.

I checked on IMDb, and there are 38 movie adaptations, and 13 related movies listed. One is slated for release in 2008, and stars--wait for it---Eddie Murphy. As one of the parents.

 

Thanks for the title change

That's another good reading. Dramatically speaking, his sole function's to get killed, so most of his interestingness comes from the way the character comes across; ertainly Mercutio has that 'commentary' function - a sardonic observer of most of the interesting bits rather than an active player.

Let me apologise for doubting your word - I had to check IMDb myself before I believed you.

That'll be . . . interesting.

 

No, it won't.

Though it would probably have amused Shakespeare no end.

 

You're probably right.

And Shakespeare would probably have been much amused. Most attempts to 'adapt' his work for a wider audience fall totally flat. I like the anecdote about the mid-1600s revision of The Tempest, which gave Ariel a girlfriend, Caliban a sister and Miranda a counterpart (a boy who'd never seen a woman). It was a flop of colossal proportions.

Afterwards, Dryden - one of the culprits - added to the script a somewhat rueful Prologue apologising for the awfulness of the play, explaining that "Shakespeare's magic cannot copied be; / Within that circle none durst walk but he".

He had a bit of that even in his lifetime. People tried to copy him, did it badly, and were laughed out of town.

 

Ouch . . . that's not on the list I used, which is the list under Shakespeare's name (probably the writer with the most adaptations on IMDB). So I looked it up. Untitled. I could come up with a few good titles, I think, for that idea.

Well, regardless, Bill Murray was a great Polonius (and I mean brilliant ) in Ethan Hawke's Hamlet, so perhaps, just perhaps, just someway in the absolute smallest chance, Eddie Murphy will not give the worst, most painful performance of the entire millenium.

But I doubt it.

 

I liked Murphy in "Bowfinger", but like a lot of modern comedians, he's generally too self-protective for real acting.

 

It depends. If he tries to take it seriously, then I agree with you. If they have the guts to go for all-out stupid comedy, it might not be so bad. Or it might be worse.

I liked Bowfinger. He's pretty good as Donkey in Shrek as well.

 

i'm gonna be really bland and say that i don't think i have ever properly read the play but loved luhrmann's adaptation of the play.