Love's Labour's Lost--1 and Only (He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink)

Over the past couple days I have, without telling you, read Love's Labour's Lost. It is excellent and, more importantly, has taught me a valuable lesson. First, I'll talk a little about the play, then get to the moral.

The plot and characters of Love's Labour's Lost aren't particularly important. This play is about language and its characters are also about language, or are vessels through which language flows. They revel in it. The dramatic "action" is completely secondary to it, but that doesn't seem like much of a problem. I'm not sure that it would be great on stage, but it's wonderful on the page.

There is a lot to say about this play, but I'm going to skip straight to the moral, because I'm a little burnt-out. In the first act, the King of Navarre and three of his mates take a vow to do nothing but study for three years. This vow includes fasting, skipping sleep, and most importantly, not seeing women. Of course, by the end of the scene, they get word that the princess of France is outside the gates, and with her are ladies with whom the three attendant lords are already half-way in love.

Eventually, the lords decide that they must be forsworn, that they need the girls. To deny the girls is to deny their nature, which is a more grievous fault than breaking their word. Things don't actually work out all that well, which is another interesting thing about this play. But, the point is, I am going to blog all of Shakespeare. But, by nature, I'm a certain kind of reader. I'm going to use a word here that I think actually means obsessed with feces, but I've decided that it should mean something else. I'm a scatological reader, if we make the root of scatological the kind of singing called "scat." You know, be bop boo dally doo woo hoo. That's how I read. Jumping around, disconnected things. Sure, I'll read some good old Shakespeare, but eventually, I just have to read some Raymond Chandler. I got so many books for Christmas, geez! And they're all being completely neglected.

So, this weekend Jackie and I are going to Georgia to see my family. On this trip, I'm not bringing Shakespeare. I'm bringing Gravity's Rainbow and Chandler's Playback. And maybe Auster's New York Trilogy. Or something. Why all the books? Because I'm not sure that I can actually read Gravity's Rainbow, although I did like the long description of banana foods at the beginning.

So, a break, and a well-earned one. But, I'll be back with more Shakespeare lickety-split. Huh, google knows the word lickety and doesn't try to correct it.

The Scottish Play--4 (angels are bright still, though the brightest fell)

I have finished The Scottish Play and don't want to talk very much about it. It's amazing, wonderful, and cursed. You know the famous lines: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day... out out brief candle... it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing... etc.

Look, I don't want to talk too much about this, seriously. This play is cursed and it has brought me bad luck and I don't want to keep dealing with it. I rushed through it this afternoon to be done.

I'll just say this: at the end, Macbeth hears some ladies screaming. He's not sure what it is (turns out that Lady Macbeth has committed suicide). He's not scared and he says "I have almost forgot the taste of fears . . . I have supped full of horrors. Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, cannot once start me." This guy has been very scared for most of the play. He's too scared to go back into the room where he's killed Duncan, he's scared of the ghost of Banquo, I don't know, he's scared of lots of stuff, especially his own actions. By the end, he's not even scared of the possible death of his own wife.

And that's that. Now, it's time that I turn to a topic that has been neglected for far too long on this blog: Shakespeare vs. Zombies. Which Shakespeare characters do you most want on your side in the zombie apocalypse? We'll start with the ones we've covered so far. I really don't think that I want anyone from The Merchant of Venice. These guys just aren't tough. Shylock is pretty tough, but his strategy in the battle with Antonio obviously doesn't work. I can't afford that kind of miscalculation when there are 10,000 zombies outside the door.

Much Ado? Now, here I think we have some possibilities. Don Pedro just won a war with very few casualties, and none of note. As long as I'm of note, I feel safe with Don Pedro. If Don John isn't around. Can't have those two together. Benedick might also be good. He's reputedly a good soldier and it'd be nice to have some wit about, especially if Beatrice, who's smarter than Benedick, is around. It can get pretty lonesome holed up waiting for dawn while the zombies accumulate around the building.

From King John, Faulconbridge (the Bastard) is a no-brainer. He's a great fighter, he's witty, and he's loyal to the death. If he'd be happy to die for King John, who sucks, I'm sure he'd be even more willing to die for all of us against the zombies. Richard III is an absolute no. Yes, he's good in a fight, but he's always going to be calculating, thinking about how feeding us to the zombies might help him.

Finally, The Scottish Play. I think that lots of these guys would be good. Macduff, maybe, except I have my doubts about him abandoning his wife and kids. That's not too promising. And unless some witches have prophesied that zombies will only be re-killed by a man not of woman born, will he still be as good? The Macbeth at the end of the play is also good. He's done and seen such horrors that he won't be phased by the decomposing hordes of the undead. And, he's just about sick of life. At some point in a zombie apocalypse, we will have to send someone on a kamikaze mission. Macbeth is the guy.

The Scottish Play--3

I'm into Act III, almost done with it, actually. Reading it has been great, of course, but I was distracted all day by the curse. The cut on my hand hurts, especially when I put it in my pocket. Also, I'm nearly giving up on the idea of grad school since this awful person, Joy McDougall, has simply not written the letter she has promised every two weeks since November. I'm sure that this is related to the play.

It is the darkest, coldest, most awful time in Wisconsin. I think. The days are lasting at least until 4:45 now, which is actually an improvement. It's a good time to be reading Macbeth, but I think the best time would be really late Fall, just before the first snowfall. Of course, it's often performed around Halloween. I once saw it done near Halloween at the The Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta. They deserve a plug: they're good, but for some reason they had cast a guy with a really high, sissy voice as Macbeth. It kind of ruined it.

Macbeth's imagination is in full swing. As soon as the witches tell him that he'll be king, he's immediately thinking about the possibility of killing Duncan. Then, when he's fighting with himself about whether or not to do it, this dagger appears to him. It's incorporal (imaginary) and leads him to Duncan's chamber. After he has Banquo killed, Banquo's ghost comes in and terrifies him. No one else sees him.

Macbeth is a brutal killer and yet he drops some beautiful poetry on us. It's not just powerful lines, like we got from Richard III, but really beautiful language. As he gets worse, it almost feels like this gets better. The more craven the actions, the more beautiful the language. Okay, I don't think that holds up, actually, because the language is great in the beginning, too. He doesn't grow. He regresses, but not his language. That's why it seems like the language is even better, because the contrast is growing.

Lady Macbeth is a tough lady. Macbeth, at first, has real doubts.

Watching Kenneth Branagh's A Midwinter's Tale. It's really good, sometimes a little overdone. Full of inside Shakespeare/actor jokes, so maybe of limited appeal.

The Scottish Play--2 (stars hide your fires)

I have read Act One and am trying to pace myself, since this is one of the big ones (although a short big one) and I don't want to end up with just two posts for this play.

Scene One we get witches, and nothing but. Scene Two we get reports of a battle in which Macbeth (I think the name of the character is safe, just not the play) kills everybody. So, before we even see Macbeth, we hear his name in the context of witchcraft and the the context of battle, where he has been killing a lot of people. Macbeth's killing in battle is commended by all. This is violence that earns him the title of Thane of Cawdor. A different kind of violence, perpetrated later in the play, receives less commendation.

In Scene Two, a guy named Ross describes Macbeth's action to Macbeth: "Nothing afeard of what thyself did make: strange images of death." This is in war. Later, when it's more directly murder, Macbeth will for a while be very afeard of what himself does make: strange images of death. It's worthwhile to notice the different forms of violence, which are considered evil, and which good. What makes it reprehensible? War: good, capital punishment: good, killing your guest and king: bad, killing your rival's wife and child: bad. So on, so forth. There are other questions as well. What role do the witches' prophecies actually play? Would Macbeth have been king without murder? If he interprets the witches' second batch of prophecies more constructively, can he save himself?

If this play doesn't take you to a dark place, you're not reading it right. You almost can't help going to the dark place because Macbeth's imagination is so powerful, he pulls you along with him. And Macbeth is going to a very, very dark place (with the help of Lady Macbeth).

The Scottish Play--1 (fair is foul and foul is fair)

Unbelievable. This play is notoriously unlucky. Productions of it are always plagued with accidents, injuries, even deaths. And, they are rarely successful. In fact, I just read somewhere that, by consensus, the only really successful production last century was Laurence Olivier's in 1955. Actors won't say its name. They call it "The Scottish Play."
Now, I was ready to poo-poo (in a manly way) all this bad luck stuff. In fact, I've written its name several times in the last few posts. But then today, after I started it, I went to the library to pick up a book for Jackie, some more Shakespeare movies to foist on her, and Auden's Lectures on Shakespeare. Everything goes well until I leave. I hold the door open for a little girl, turn around, and really scrape my hand on the handicap door-open button. Okay, it doesn't sound bad, but it bled a bit and it kind of hurts. The point is, I'm in Act One Scene Two of this play and already it's drawn blood. What's gonna happen by the time I get to Act Three?

Richard III--2 (A horse, a horse--my kingdom for a horse!)

Finished Richard III and Jackie and I watched Ian McKellen's Richard III. The movie was great. And, as I predicted, they cut most of the cast, combining about fifteen murderers employed by Richard into one guy. It's set in about the 40's--a kind of Richard III as Hitler motif. Or Mussolini. I'm not sure, but definitely fascist. Then again, the 'stache certainly suggests Hitler.
The sympathy I suggested that I had for Richard III in my last post has somewhat evaporated, though of course he is still the vital heart of the play. In the last act, Richard III has this nightmare in which all the people he's killed come and tell him to "despair and die." They are as follows: King Edward's two sons, Anne, Hastings, Grey, Vaughan, Rivers, Buckingham, King Henry VI, his son, Clarence. I may have left some out. I'm not sure. Richard is at least a little related to almost all of them and intimately related to some of them.
A strange thing about this play is the role of curses. All of the women characters basically consist of curses. They all just wander around cursing Richard and each other, and comparing who is most miserable. There is a good part in this. Elizabeth: ...teach me how to curse mine enemies.
Margaret: Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days; compare dead happiness with living woe; think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, and he that slew them fouler than he is.
Here's the thing, though: it's hard to imagine Richard worse than he is. He's really bad. Maybe these lines are just awesome when said by Maggie Smith. But, many of the curses the women give come true. And when someone realizes that the curses are coming true, they say "Oh, so and so cursed me thus!" It's kind of weird.
We did nothing today. We each read, I played video games. It was a good day. Tomorrow I'm going to try to redeem my memory of Macbeth. Then I'll probably have to dip back down into the well of plays I don't like, for spacing purposes.
I'm intrigued, though, by Richard. Why is he so compelling? And who are some other villains (not just in Shakespeare) who are fascinating, or for whom we just can't help rooting? Hit me up in the comments.

Richard III--1 (The winter of our discontent)

I'm not sure what I did right last night, but Jackie not only watched Roman Polanski's Macbeth with me, but agreed to watch the Richard III with Ian McKellen tonight. And, said that we could watch the complete works. I didn't tell her that this would involve about twenty low-budget BBC productions made in the 80's. There just isn't any other way to find a film of The Merry Wives of Windsor (play, not opera).
Polanski's Macbeth was, um. At times, it felt like he was trying to make the most boring Shakespeare movie possible. I'm sorry if you're a huge fan of it, but I just wasn't as into it as I was when I saw it in high school. Jackie did really well for the first two hours of it. One of the worst parts is that he makes extensive use of voice-overs for the soliloquies. So you get these long scenes where the actors don't have to act, but just look intense while they think.
But this entry is about Richard III. I started it yesterday and am into Act III now. This play is even more dependent on Richard than Merchant of Venice was on Shylock. In fact, it might even be more dependent on a single character than anything else in Shakespeare (and I mean Hamlet, too). We'll have to see about that.
Richard is not just the protagonist, he is the play. The scenes without him just aren't interesting. But when he's on the stage (or page, in this case), he's magnetic. This play has a huge cast of characters. It takes up two whole pages in my copy. For it to be successfully staged, you have to cut about half of them. I think you could do this without anyone really minding, or noticing. There are a ton of people, and Richard manipulates all of them (and kills most of them). He manipulates us, too.
Richard spends a crazy amount of time onstage alone, or set aside from everyone else. He talks to us a lot. And it works. I'm pretty much rooting for Richard, even though he's awful. Or, at least, I want to see him.
He's the second great hero-villain, kind of, that we've come across so far. The thing with Shylock was that he wasn't really hero. As much as I want him to be, I don't think that he's the protagonist. Richard is, though. I'm looking forward to finishing it, because there are too many scenes without Richard, but it's fun to read.

King John--1 and Only

I began and finished King John today. After a bit of bus-ride deliberation, I've decided that this play is badly misunderstood. It sucks as a tragic history. It really does. But it is pretty good as a comedy. If this is a comedy, then Shakespeare can grow into Shakespeare. If this is serious, geez, I don't know.
Now, take the following passage, for example. John has told a guy, Hubert, to kill his nephew, Arthur, who is a kid and probably has a better claim to the throne than John.
Arthur: Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes?
Hubert: Young boy, I must.
Arthur: And will you?
Hubert: And I will.
If you ever read this play, please, try reading it as comedy. I only figured it out halfway through, so read it and let me know. Also, Faulconbridge (identified in my copy simply as "Bastard") is the highlight.
Tonight Jackie and I went to a grocery store called Pick 'n Save on the East Side of Milwaukee. The East Side is the, you know, cool side of Milwaukee. The last time we went to this grocery store, there was this old lady pushing a wheelchair up to the front door. In the wheelchair was, get this, a dog. So, the lady comes up to me and says, without preamble, "This is my dog. I always take her with me." And with that, she goes inside, leaving the wheelchair-bound poodle outside with me. The dog sat in the wheelchair, I sat on the bench, Jackie joined me, we sat, our milk started getting warm. After about fifteen minutes we left, asking the security guard to keep an eye on the dog. Ah, geez.
Tonight, no dogs, but still a crazy lady who told me that she had to keep up with her brother, hee hee, in the bread aisle.
I'm going to try to start Richard III tonight or tomorrow. I like this play, but I'm aware that it also is flawed.
Oh my god, Grey's Anatomy sucks so bad.
Oh, crap, it just got even worse. I've gotta join a Thursday night bowling league. But I do love Jackie so much.

A Midsummer Night's Dream--3 (dainty duck oh dear)

Today I finished Midsummer, amidst the craziness of my crap job. Maybe talking about the job would have fit better with Much Ado, since the main thing about my job is that it is somehow very stressful, even though absolutely nothing is at stake. I don't know how they manage to manufacture that atmosphere.

The end of A Midsummer Night's Dream is really wonderful. Everything gets pretty much restored. Bottom gets his normal head back, Titania stops loving him, Lysander goes back to loving Hermia. Demetrius stays enchanted, still in love with Helena, which I guess is good. It's fairy-induced, but it's also right. Hmmm. Fortunately, these lovers don't seem to matter too much. The great part, though, is the mechanicals' performance for what has burgeoned into a triple wedding, with the two couples joining Theseus and Hippolyta (Egeus overruled). This is another great instance of actually funny comedy. In fact, it may be the funniest sequence I can remember in Shakespeare. They're so hilariously horrible. The only time that I can remember seeing it performed, I was onstage as Theseus, being very wise next to Hippolyta and cracking what felt like really awkward jokes with the two idiots who got married with me. Even though I was wearing tights and the actors were high schoolers, it was really really funny.

One of the big themes of this play is, appropriately, dreaming. When the four lovers wake up, they wonder if they dreamt the night's shenanigans. Theseus is pretty sure they have. When Titania is disenchanted with another magical flower, she thinks that she dreamt the affair with Bottom. Bottom, in a sublime speech, describes his dream of being an ass. And, at the end. Puck suggests directly to the audience that we have all been dreaming. At that point, it's beginning to get complicated. We have a play within the play, performed for a wedding, along with the very strong possibility that Shakespeare's entire play is a kind of epithalamium. We have all kinds of people (and fairies) thinking that they dreamt, when really they didn't, and finally, someone tells us that the play we've just been watching is really a dream. Plays within weddings within plays within weddings. Reality that masquerades as dreams, and a dream that masquerades as a play, or maybe really is a play. I'm a little lost, but again we're getting this thing where Shakespeare is weaving (Bottom's a weaver) representation within his macro-representation, which suggest certain things about reality. Ah, humbug. Either you can figure all that out, or you're like me and are feeling a little lost. Either way, you don't need me to keep going.
However, I suspect that you'll wish I was still going when I start King John tomorrow.

A Midsummer Night's Dream--2

It has been brought to my attention that, while I promised to blog Shakespeare, Milwaukee, and other things happening to me everyday, instead I'm pretty much just blogging Shakespeare. In fact, a couple of times when I have mentioned daily life, I've explicitly said that I will not make a connection between Shakespeare and my life. So,this is to rectify that.
A historic day today. Obama is the new president. Or, more importantly, the Bush era is over. A couple of people at work are conservatives and they were hanging around the desk at 11 today. Officially, power doesn't transfer when the incoming takes the oath. It transfers at noon Eastern, period. So, even though it was still a few minutes before Obama took the oath, they announced at 11 Central that Barack Obama was officially the president, and George W Bush was the former president. I tried to control myself, really, given the customers and the conservatives and everything, but I couldn't help busting out the fist pump.
It was a joyous moment. Tomorrow, let the disappointment begin.
So, how can I relate the Shakespeare I read today to life today?
What's going on today is: the fairies are f-ing everything up. Oberon has told Puck to have Titania fall in love with something vile. So, he puts an ass's head on Bottom and puts a magic love flower on Titania's eyes to make her fall in love with ass-Bottom. Also, Oberon wants Demetrius to start loving Helena, via magic love-flower. But, Puck does it wrong and makes Lysander (who is happily in love with Hermia) fall in love with Helena.
Hmmm. Okay, the ass's head, I don't know. It seems forced. Tribute to the outgoing administration? This is not a political blog. And, let's face it, Bush lacks the deep, generous humanity of Bottom. Bottom answers to Peter Quince, Bush to Dick Cheney, who was the most menacing wheelchair occupant of all time today. And that hat!
Now, how about a non-partisan analogy between the fairies and the government as a whole? You know, the love thing bungled, Puck as director of FEMA?
Eh, it's too strained. The real point here is that the love the lovers supposedly have is nothing. It can be so easily overturned. Flower, schmower. Would either of these guys be willing to sit through ten hours of an America's Next Top Model marathon, even knowing that there's not much hope of a reward? I have my doubts.

A Midsummer Night's Dream--1

Last night I began A Midsummer Night's Dream. One of the problems here is that the plays that I know and really like go really fast. I mean, a Shakespeare play takes what, two and half hours to play, even if it's uncut (the great tragedies excepted)? So, reading them goes by really fast. Last night I started Midsummer, today I broke into Act III, mostly just reading on the bus.
The first three scenes open with three very different sets of people. First, we get the court of Theseus, who is a few days away from marrying Hippolyta, the queen of the Amazons, who is maybe a spoil of war. She certainly doesn't show his impatience to get married, at least. A subset, almost a different set, within the court of Theseus is the lovers: Lysander and Hermia are in love, their friend Helena loves Demetrius, who used to love her but is now in love with Hermia. The lovers are famously interchangeable. We don't know why Hermia should prefer Lysander to Demetrius. They look the same in the text. They, of course, have a problem: Hermia's dad wants her to marry Demetrius and Theseus says the law backs up that claim. So, Lysander and Hermia decide to flee through the wood to marry. They tell Helena, who tells Demetrius, in a very bad ploy to get him to love her.
The second set is the mechanicals, a group of commoners planning to perform a play for Theseus' wedding. They're all clowns, but the highlight is Bottom, who is the human foundation of the play. He is wonderful.
The third set is the fairies. King Oberon and Queen Titania are fighting over custodial rights of an Indian boy. This is making the weather suck. Oberon has a henchman called Puck, alternatively Robin Goodfellow. You may remember what's his name playing Puck in Dead Poets' Society. Geez, that was tragic.
The lovers flee, get lost in the forest, the fairies get rather incompetently involved, hilarity and heartbreak ensue.
It's worth remembering that Bottom is the only one in this play who really crosses borders between the groups.
Also, though this is getting long, I was in this play once. Played Theseus and was totally sold on the sexual politics angle. It was community theater, I was in college, doing a favor for a friend by being in the play with a bunch of young high schoolers. At some point I said something ridiculous. The girl playing Hippolyta responded: "I hope my husband is as wise as you."

The Winter's Tale--2 (spoilers)

I have finished The Winter's Tale. I think that where we left off, Antigonus had just been eaten by a bear. Shakespeare follows this awesome scene with a sixteen year gap. The next scene, a narrator, called Time, suddenly appears and announces that sixteen years have passed.
What follows next is almost a different play. We're in Bohemia, where the focus is on the abandoned daughter of Leontes (Perdita) and the son of Polixenes (Florizel). Perdita has been raised by a shepherd, but Florizel has fallen in love with her. There's also a brilliant trickster/pedlar, named Autolycus, who is going around cheating people and singing. Here's the highlight: When you dance, I wish you a wave of the sea, that you might ever do nothing but that.
Look, it's great, but it really does feel almost like a different play. Shakespeare is kind of just riffing, I think. It's like he can do whatever he wants, sure, but it's still a little jarring. I wonder if it would flow more smoothly if Polixenes isn't such an ass about Florizel loving an apparent peasant. If he could hold onto the victim with integrity thing, our pathos could continue flowing smoothly, even across the sudden sixteen year gap. Instead, it's bouncing around a lot.
And then we're back in Sicilia, where Leontes has been doing penance for killing his wife with the false accusation sixteen years ago. Paulina (Hermione's friend and Antigonus' widow) follows him around, making snide comments about how he killed a goddess and all this stuff. Okay, some stuff happens. And then they all make up and go to see a statue of Hermione, but it turns out that it's really Hermione, not dead, just a little bit older. Weird, but very good. The representation, the reality, stagecraft built into the plot, it's a lot of stuff that happens earlier in Shakespeare, but here he has it so built into just what he does, it's more subtle. God, it's good.

On more pressing matters, Thursday I'm walking around the top floor of work (it's a used bookstore) when I hear from the front: "Sodomy is fun! It is fun and legal! That's why we do it! Because sodomy is so much fun! It's fun! Sodomy! It's fun!" Now, I work downtown, I mean really downtown. Crazies come in everyday. Every single day. So, this was a crazy, right? No, this was my co-worker. He is my favorite co-worker and was on the phone to this ultra-conservative Christian radio station he listens to while at work. Got on the air and spent almost an entire minute yelling about how much fun sodomy is. I'm going to avoid trying to make any forced connections between The Winter's Tale and my job.
Tomorrow it's A Midsummer's Night Dream, for two reasons. First, I think the blog needs something lots of people have read and probably liked. Second, I'm about to try to do King John, which is a bad play. So, I need to brace myself with something familiar and very very good.

The Winter's Tale--1 (cuckoldry and bears)

It never got over 0 degrees here in Milwaukee today. Wind chills were around -30 most of the day. So, as promised, The Winter's Tale. I'm willing to bet, I don't know, ten bucks (a sizable sum for me, believe me) that none of you have read this play. I don't remember it, though I think that I at least tried to read it a few years ago. It wasn't what broke me last time I tried to do the complete works, I know that. The play doesn't get much attention, as far as I can tell, but I'm not sure why. So far, it's really good.
We've picked up pretty much where we left off: mistaken accusations of infidelity. Now, Shakespeare married this lady twice his age when he was like 18 or 20 or something, then a few years later took off to London and left her in Stratford. Meanwhile, he was writing love sonnets to at least two people, a man and a woman. And he is obsessed with cuckoldry. All he can think about is wives cheating on their husbands. I'm not sure about the biographical connection.
Leontes is the king of Sicilia, he was childhood friends with this guy, Polixenes, who grew up to be the king of Bohemia. Apparently they grew up in some kind of prince-land, I don't know. So, they're running around in all their innocence and stuff, doing I don't know, innocent kid stuff. Then they go their separate ways to be kings, marry queens, have kids, and so on. Leontes is married to Hermione.
So, eventually, Polixenes comes to visit his old buddy, and Leontes, the first time we see him, decides that Polixenes has slept with Hermione. This really comes out of nowhere, immediately grips him completely, and sets the action of the play into motion. Leontes bribes/threatens one of his lords, Camillo, to poison Polixenes. Same scene as when we meet him, by the way. He uh, he moves fast. Same scene, Camillo decides not to poison Polixenes, but to warn him and flee back to Bohemia with him.
Things proceed apace, Hermione is imprisoned, where she gives birth to a little girl. Leontes sends another lord, Antigonus, to dump the baby in a desert. He also sends to the oracle at Delphos to get confirmation of Hermione's treachery. At the trial, the folks from the oracle say that she's innocent, but they get word that the king's first son has died. The queen faints and everyone is told that she has died. Meanwhile, Antigonus drops the baby off at Bohemia and leaves the stage with Shakespeare's greatest stage direction:
"Exit, pursued by a bear."
That serves as the transition between tragedy and comedy. Immediately a Bohemian shepherd (insert joke about Greenwich Village and berets) shows up with a funny speech about how teenagers don't do anything but get girls pregnant and scare off his sheep.
Shakespeare is strange. Maybe tomorrow I'll hook you up with a strange thing that happened to me today, but this is too long, and will to the barber with my beard.

Much Ado--2

Well, Much Ado About Nothing is kind of a short play. I finished it today, after starting it yesterday.
It was great, and a great relief to read it. First, it is genuinely, really funny. Not all of Shakespeare's comedies are actually funny. Not in a way that will make you laugh. They have witty heroines and jokes about cuckoldry (your wife cheating on you, which for some reason makes you grow horns; I don't know, don't ask, but you can't understand Shakespeare without knowing that), and sometimes a clown. But, really, they're comedies because people get married at the end. Much Ado is a little different. The Benedick--Beatrice jousts are really funny, as are the scenes in which each is tricked into thinking that the other loves him/her. Second, there's only one anti-semitic joke in the whole play.
There is no character in Much Ado with the force of Shylock. No one who gets under your skin and feels quite that real and powerful. There is cruelty, though. Claudio and Don Pedro are cruel, and the most jarring parts of the play stem from the really weird jumps from love talk to killer talk. Claudio and Don Pedro, gulled by Don John, walk down the aisle for Claudio to marry Hero, then condemn her strongly enough that it is plausible that she might die. Benedick and Beatrice finally come together over an agreement to kill Claudio.
The way these conversations happen is remarkable. Love love love, KILL. We owe the books we read the most charitable reading we can muster, I think. The best way that I can make sense of these jumps in Much Ado is to guess that, in this play, love and violence/war are very, very close. The main guy characters (Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, et al) come directly from war to Leonato's house, where the wooing immediately begins. Benedick and Beatrice court through a war of wit, even all the way through the friar agreeing to wed them. The stronger example, though, is surely Benedick proving his love to Beatrice by promising to kill Claudio. Love is discovered, performed, and confirmed through violence.
And here's the thing: it is all much ado about nothing. I don't think either of these two things, love or war, lies particularly heavily on the minds of the folks in this play. Harold Bloom calls Benedick and Beatrice "splendid nihilists." There may be something in that.
There's a lot more to say about Much Ado, but I've finished it, you know? Maybe when I'm deep in Titus Andronicus I'll reach back to Much Ado for comfort. God, that'll be a slog.
Tomorrow I start Winter's Tale. I was going to do something different, but the high in Milwaukee tomorrow is 0. Yes, that's a zero. Wind chills reaching -30. So, I'm going to read A Winter's Tale.

Much Ado About Nothing--1

Well, I've finished Merchant and begun Much Ado About Nothing. I'm very happy to be reading this play, for two reasons. First, there are no Venetians in it, though the Italian setting persists. Second, Much Ado was the great comeback in my now defunct acting career.
I had made a stunning debut, to great critical acclaim, as the title character in Sharktooth Sam the Sailor Man. I think that I successfully conveyed Sharktooth Sam's conversion from die-hard sailor to cowboy. There followed about an eight-year hiatus, Bill Murray-like, until my freshman year in high school when I took on Borachio in Much Ado.
This was a really good time. Wes was Benedick, Chuck was both sane and Benedick, Brian was my co-henchman, John Lithgow was Leonato. Ah, the days.
The main part of being Borachio is pretending to have sex with a girl who is pretending to be Hero. The second most important part is pretending to be drunk.
I was fourteen, deeply Christian, very virgin, had never had a drink. But, you know, it was fine.
Until we performed for the campus. So, there's this scene where I have sex with a girl in a window, and we pretend like she's Hero, who is supposed to marry Claudio. To spoil their marriage, my boss, Don John the bastard, brings Claudio to see us in the window. Then someone brought all of the students to the auditorium, mandatory culture.
They were yelling, and clapping, and whistling. The guys onstage dropped character and just stood around. Fake-Hero and I, however, maintained our composure, stayed in character, and continued having fake sex for about six minutes, just extremely extremely soft core, done by and for high schoolers.

Merchant of Venice--5

Finally almost done with this play. I have to admit that I'm getting a little tired of it, especially now that Shylock has (SPOILER ALERT!!!!:) been forced to convert and has left the stage for the duration of the play. No other characters are particularly compelling to me and the bacchanal at Belmont... eh, you know.
I think this mostly gives me a chance to clear the air about two things. First, about what these posts will involve. There will be plenty of spoilers. I'm not going to try to summarize the action I'm reading, but I'm also not going to say "Well, you'll just have to read it for yourself." If anyone is reading this, maybe I can work out a system where I give fair warning, but you'll have to let me know, because I'd rather not do it. Second, I'm not going to pretend that I love everything about all of these plays. Yes, Shakespeare is unparalleled. Yes, he was a genius and is immediately under Jesus for general badassity. But, I hate Gratiano, and I will hate every character in Henry VI Parts One, Two, and Three!!! I think that things will be easier if we all just assume that Shakespeare is better than everyone else. The standard is unreachably high. Within that, I'm going to talk junk about the stuff I just don't like.
I'm finishing Merchant and starting Much Ado About Nothing Tuesday.

Merchant of Venice--4

Jackie wants us to start eating organic. I have two problems with this. First, organic food is gross. Nature is gross, and being closer to it isn't at all appealing to me, especially when it comes to eating. Second, to do it, you have to go to Whole Foods and get judged by all the hippies because your clothes weren't made from wool volunteered by a willing, free, happy sheep or made from recycled Coke cans. I hate rich, judgy hippies.
So, I'm writing this at Whole Foods, with hate in my heart.
I've got a new measuring stick for judging characters in Merchant: how annoyingly verbose they are. Act One, Scene One, Bassanio says: "Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice."
In a play full of windy declamations on love, justice, fortune, etc., this short line is the most profound, within the context of the play. Some of these Venetians are the wordiest, most tedious idiots imaginable. And the thing is, they're not going on and on about important matters. They're really talking a great deal of nothing. Shylock is not a nice guy, but his lines are packed with interest (get it?). Yes, when his daughter elopes with a Christian and steals a bunch of his money and jewelry, he's more upset about the money than the girl (Antonio's involvement in her absconding seems to be part of what really gets Shylock determined against him, even more than the spitting and stuff).
But when he hears that his daughter traded a ring his dead wife had given him, so that she could buy a monkey, he says "I would not have given it for a world of monkeys." This line is so strange and wonderful that I really don't know what to do with it. Shylock also has this curious habit of making a pun or using metaphor, and then breaking off to explain what he means. He says "There be land rats and water rats--I mean pirates." His language isn't any more difficult than much of Shakespeare. This language is symptomatic of someone used to being misunderstood. In short, it's symptomatic of someone used to talking to dolts, but who actually bothers to try to make himself clear to them.
I like Shylock, despite the fact that he is not kind or good, because he is good with words. His appeal foreshadows that of Humbert Humbert. Anybody else?

Merchant of Venice--3

Everybody's sad at the start of this comedy. Antonio, the merchant of Venice, is sad but he doesn't know why. He probably is sad because he's in love with Bassanio, but the play isn't about Antonio coming out, or even about Antonio, so his sexual orientation is only interesting if you need, for political or personal reasons, to find gay characters in Shakespeare. Scene One basically covers Antonio's sadness, and then he meets up with Bassanio, who is a loser, but might come good if Antonio will loan him enough money to get to Belmont, where he can marry a rich orphan, who incidentally is also virtuous and beautiful (this is Portia). All of Antonio's money is at sea, so he tells Bassanio to borrow the money on his (Antonio's) credit.
For Scene Two we jump to Belmont to meet Portia, who is also sad. She's sad because when her dad died, he set up this crazy lottery to pick her husband. Guys get to pick one of three boxes: gold, silver, or lead. One of them has her picture in it. If you pick that one, you get to marry Portia and take all her money. If you pick the wrong one, you have to swear never to get married. You may remember this scenario from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
So, Portia's sad because her dad was a freaking lunatic. She must not be too sad, though, because pretty soon she's making fun of all the suitors on pure, racist terms. Each suitor is described as having all the stereotypical faults of his native country. Basically, it's Count Kraut of Germany, Duke Frog of France, and Earl Beer of England.
I think this is the central tension in dealing with this play--for some reason, Shakespeare, who really did understand individuality better than anyone else, uses a lot of stereotypes to shape his characters, here. But at times, at least in Shylock, he also transcends these, without really abandoning them.
This is too much analysis, not enought blogging. Um, I wrote this at the Milwaukee Public Market, while Jackie got her hair cut. Insert utterly banal thought about how life is both painful and beautiful and maybe those two are connected? Oh, and some pop psychology.
*Please see, in the comments, a correction to a grievous error made in this post, and thanks to Amber for the correction.

Merchant of Venice--2

So, I'm starting with The Merchant of Venice. I've read it a few times and I like it, but like everyone, I'm conflicted about it. Merchant is a good starting place because it is a good play (it's not Timon of Athens or Henry VI Part One), but it's also not one of the plays that makes you think "Oh God, I'm blogging about this? Why not put together a production of Faust starring Ron Jeremy?"
Still, though, it's a tough play. There's a lot of anti-Semitism in it, whether or not you can ascribe those views to Shakespeare. Officially, it's a comedy, probably because people get married at the end and no one dies. But it feels tragic and it's difficult to like any of the characters by the end. Maybe you like Portia okay, and Launcelot's pretty safe, and you pity Shylock. But the whole Venetian Christian posse comes off pretty poorly. And the only way to like Antonio, the titular character, is through an extremely interested queer criticism.
I had originally thought it might be fun to start with A Comedy of Errors, in homage to the departing Bush administration. I hope to avoid awkward political metaphors here, despite the fact that I'm reading Shakespeare's only important Jewish character while Israel and Hamas are attacking each other. Crap, I was also planning to read Othello next. Well, maybe I'm more concerned than I realized.

Merchant of Venice--1

An auspicious start--Friday I got on the city bus to go to work and saw an ad that just had the final stanza of an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem on it. Someone paid money so that we poor of Milwaukee can ride downtown and back with a placard about two feet over our heads that describes the sun as a bucket dripping gold. There's something beautiful about this gesture, but I'm not totally sure what it is. It reminds me of this alley wall in Cleveland, TN, where someone has hand-painted about half of a Shakespeare sonnet. It's in an alley, I imagine that few people see it. I doubt that many more people see this Millay poem. So I wonder, what is this poem doing on this bus? I mean that literally--what function is it performing up there?
Well, feel free to comment, but I just remembered the answer, from Auden:
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
. . . it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.