King Lear--Act Three

This act goes well beyond blogging material. We've encountered this a few times before, but I think that in this act we have the most sublime piece of writing in the English tradition. With Hamlet, I could say some things because so many people before me haven't been bothered about adding their crap onto Hamlet, whose countrymen are now so out of favor here in Chicago. With Lear, it is different.

And so I turn to peripheral matters. Matters peripheral to the play. It's come with me a few times down to Hyde Park, where I now work at the Unitarian Universalist seminary, Meadville Lombard Theological School. To get there, I walk past this great bookstore on 57th street, I think it's called 57th street books or something. At street level they have these two display windows, both done out now for Halloween. So it full of books on vampires and zombies. Today there was a new addition not only to the window but to our pop culture's obsession with monsters: werewolves. This bothers me a little, because I was pretending to plan a book about a werewolf hunter. I think that it would have done quite well.

These gothic themes come and go in our culture. Right now, you have two possibly distinct movements. Young people are obsessed with vampires because of Ms. Meyer's not very good books (or, books not aimed to please me). I've heard it suggested that these are written to make teen sex seem dangerous again. I think that most of us already knew that teen sex was awkward and dangerous (pregnancy, parents coming home) and complicated. Most of us probably think not that we wouldn't do it again, but that we would change every single facet of how we did it. That's an interesting idea to me, though: the function these gothic stories are playing in our culture at large. I think of Anne Rice pumping out all those vampire books as AIDS was getting going and we were all becoming aware of the danger in blood and sex.

The other trend is the hipsters' love for zombie stuff. I think this one is pretty clear. They're scared of growing up. Especially, they're scared of growing up into the suit-wearing "zombies" they see out there. Shakespeare vs. Zombies regrets its association with this movement. It was done in ignorance. Kind of like how I have four pages of a story that turned out to be a crappier verson of HBO's Bored to Death. When is it first suggested to me that these things are cool? And then when do I realize that I've aligned myself with something much bigger? Kind of like Freedom. You start thinking about freedom, how great it is and everything--and then before you know it you're propping up banana republics in South America and invading countries in the Middle East. And then, mysteriously, winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Act three truly is as good as English gets. Lear is crazy and in the woods and eventually a cave. He's hanging out with Kent, who is there in disguise, and Edgar, who is disguised as a mad man but keeps breaking character to talk about how sad he is about Lear, and the Fool, who a few moments previously steps right the hell out of the play and tells us, directly, that he lives several hundred years before Merlin. It's wild. It's great. It's taken me way too long to blog about it.

These things are intimidating. And then it's been a week. And then two.

Hmmm,what do I have to say about King Lear that I think is interesting enough to put on the internet, where anyone could potentially see it and at least two family members and friends certainly will? I guess I remain old-fashioned that this thought even crosses my mind. I should be doing this in Twitter or something. But that name reminds me too much of certain lines the Fool coos into Lear's boiling brain. Lear gave me a mantra a few years ago: Not that way, that way madness lies.

King Lear--4 (Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter)

Small decisions have built up to wear me out today. This past weekend Jackie's parents were in town and we went to this breakfast place a little above Lincoln Park. As we drove through, I saw a lot of cool looking coffee places with outdoor seating, which is basically what I want in life. So, I decided today that I would break my usual routine and go out to Lincoln Park to read some King Lear.

That is a simple decision. No problem. Also, I tend to walk everywhere I go. I rarely take the train, have yet to take a bus here in Chicago, and try not to drive. So, I started off, figuring I'd walk for as long as I felt like it, then take a train if I wanted to. Lincoln Park is about three miles away from where we live. So I'm walking, but about the time that I had gone a mile and half or so and was getting sick of walking, it started to seem like a waste to pay several bucks to ride a train. So I kept walking. Eventually, I get to Lincoln Park but there was nothing really to do on the street I was on, so I turned left for a few blocks. Nothing. So I turned left to get a Coke from a Shell station I could see a few blocks away. And then I was lost and wanted to get back to a road I knew, so I turned left again. Well, that made more or less a square that added more or less a mile onto my walk. As I still hadn't found anything cool, I went back down, further away from downtown.

Eventually I was just tired and walked halfway home before catching a train. It was a huge and tiring waste of time. But, I did discover some interestingly named streets. I spent a bewildered while on Goethe street, which ran past a huge complex of homes called Sandburg Village, which included buildings named Eliot and Kilmer. I don't really know what neighborhood I was in at that point, but I think that it was gentrified stuff. Still kind of weird.

I'm loving Kent. He comes across this guy Oswald, a messenger for Goneril. Here's the speech of insults he gives:
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of thy addition.

Good stuff, right?

King Lear--3 (We have seen the best of our time)

This first act is packed with stuff that I think is really interesting. Scene two features Gloucester ruminating on all the crazy stuff that just happened at the court. Then, he is too easily fooled by Edmund, his bastard son, into thinking that Edgar, his "legitimate" son, is trying to take over. I want to skip on to scene four, because it has a lot to do with me, but these two characters, Edmund and Edgar, are really important, so I want at least to mention them. There's not much to say yet about Edgar. First Edmund easily tricks Gloucester about Edgar, then he easily tricks Edgar into acting in an incriminating way. So, not much strength for Edgar, but he grows. Edmund gives an interesting but ultimately unilluminating speech about nature being his goddess and about how bastardy shouldn't be considered base. It's a good speech and is illustrative of Edmund's character, but it does not hold the clue to why he is evil.

But enough. That scene ends with Edgar fleeing, Gloucester determined to punish him for a letter he never wrote. What I really want to talk about is unemployment. Yes, this is the soul-crushing reality in which I continue to live, but also it remains a key element in Lear. Kent was fired and banished as an adviser in scene one. In scene four, he's back in disguise, determined to get his old job back. Consider the following job interview:

KING LEAR

Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it ready.
Exit an Attendant
How now! what art thou?
KENT
A man, sir.
KING LEAR
What dost thou profess? what wouldst thou with us?
KENT
I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve
him truly that will put me in trust: to love him
that is honest; to converse with him that is wise,
and says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I
cannot choose; and to eat no fish.
KING LEAR
What art thou?
KENT
A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the king.
KING LEAR
If thou be as poor for a subject as he is for a
king, thou art poor enough. What wouldst thou?
KENT
Service.
KING LEAR
Who wouldst thou serve?
KENT
You.
KING LEAR
Dost thou know me, fellow?
KENT
No, sir; but you have that in your countenance
which I would fain call master.
KING LEAR
What's that?
KENT
Authority.
KING LEAR
What services canst thou do?
KENT
I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious
tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message
bluntly: that which ordinary men are fit for, I am
qualified in; and the best of me is diligence.
KING LEAR
How old art thou?
KENT
Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor
so old to dote on her for any thing: I have years
on my back forty eight.
KING LEAR
Follow me; thou shalt serve me: if I like thee no
worse after dinner, I will not part from thee yet.

Lear asks questions not too much unlike what some employers ask, but Kent gives the answers that I wish we could all give. Imagine if he'd answered: I'm a detail-oriented self-starter with personal ambition but a commitment to a team environment. These buzz-words! These cliches! They are gut-wrenching, soul-sucking. Of course, it's highly unlikely that I will come across a potential employer whom I will want to serve on the basis of their apparent authority.

King Lear--2 (Lots of summary)

For me, this is Shakespeare's saddest play. If we were to try to name rivals for it, we might think of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet. But we can't really pity Hamlet and Romeo is so annoying that it takes a bit of imagination for an adult to be moved to tears over him. No, I think this is the saddest and it is indisputably one of the best. I plan to stay with it for a while, though I may jump around a little. I've already finished the first two acts, but the first scene bears some dwelling on. It is a really strange scene.

The first line deals with politics, with which of his sons-in-law Lear favors. The next few lines, rather suddenly, are a joke. Gloucester, the king's chief adviser, says something about this bastard son, Edmund. Kent, another adviser, replies "I cannot conceive you, sir." Gloucester replies "Sir, his mother could." This is a good joke (even if it pales in the retelling) but a weird start to such a weighty and sad play. There is more humor later in the play, but it is either grotesque or has a real tinge of gallows humor.

Anyway, just after this Lear comes in and begins the game whereby he's dividing the kingdom. He has no son and so is dividing the kingdom between his daughters: Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. Cordelia is the youngest, the only good one, and Lear's favorite. The other two are already married and are bad, but no one know how bad just yet. The plan is for each daughter to tell Lear just how much they love him, and then he will apportion his kingdom accordingly. Then, keeping a retinue of 100 knights, he'll take turns staying with each of them.

A number of mysteries here. First, Lear has clearly already determined the divisions before the game. So why do the game? I don't know. Lear is a strange guy. Second, why divide the kingdom at all? Why not just let the eldest inherit it? I think he might be doing it so that he can be sure that Cordelia, his youngest, gets something. Lear says he's doing it to avoid future strife, but it doesn't take a Machiavelli to see that this plan won't achieve that.

Goneril and Regan play their parts and get their land, but Cordelia refuses to play along. Lear is enraged and disowns her, letting the King of France marry her without dowry. Kent tries to stop him, at which Kent is banished, but resolves to return in disguise to serve the king. This brings us to further mysteries. Third, we assume Cordelia knows her father pretty well and that this isn't the first stunt he's pulled. So why does she choose now to make her stand against his caprices? But the fourth and greatest mystery is Lear himself. What we see in this scene is a misguided, self-indulgent tyrant. And yet elsewhere in the play he is called "kind Lear" and all the characters we like are devoted to him: Cordelia, the Fool, Kent, Edgar, and Gloucester. This devotion shows strongest after Lear loses all his power, so it's not just the crown that these people love. It is the man. In the first two acts we can't imagine why, but by the end I, for one, love those who love Lear and hate those who don't. Kent talks about a native authority in Lear's aspect. Hmmm.

In the future, I'll summarize much less. Two concurrent plots, headed by Lear and Gloucester, respectively. Both choose their bad child(ren) and reject the good. Both are then abused by the bad ones, even unto death. Your villains are Edmund (Iago style), Goneril, and Regan. Your good guys are Edgar, Cordelia, France, the Fool. Don't let the numbers fool you, the good guys lose.

King Lear--1 (Every inch a king)

I've had three interviews in the past two weeks. Only one was directly for a job and it didn't turn out well. But at each interview I've been asked some variant of the question/command: "Tell me a little about yourself." This is an impossibly difficult question. What do they want to hear? Probably it's best to take the opportunity to explain my shoddy resume. But I don't have and never have had a job that explains much about "myself." Odd jobs, this and that.

What should I say to give an honest answer? That I have a wife, that I love her? Or something about my character? That would be most honest, I think. That my character was formed by the surprises I've had. That I learned anger, love, and humor helping my brother? That I learned compassion and shame and strength in Tennessee? That I relearned joy and light-heartedness and hope in Milwaukee? Or that my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are the best because I use absurd amounts of jelly. . .

I don't think that they want to know these things. They want to know the level of my skill with Microsoft Excel. But it becomes hard to talk about yourself when you don't have a vocation. After a while, parts of your personal story start to slip. King Lear is a tragedy of unemployment. Lear quits his job as king, divides the kingdom betwixt his three daughters according to how prettily they can say that they love him, and then loses his mind. He ends up wandering the wilderness, cursing at a storm.

But, when asked to describe himself, he knows what to say: "Every inch a king." I suppose that I am every inch a reader.

Henry VI, Part Two

The play: it is bad and I'd rather not talk about it.

The job search: it is bad and I'd rather not talk about it.

You could read these three plays as a kind of prelude to Richard III, but I'm not sure that Richard III is good enough to justify reading all three of these. Maybe if there were three poor plays that led up to Lear or Hamlet, okay. But this . . .

I've been putting off Lear, saving it for when it was needed. It's needed. I have several Histories left, some of them very good. But first, I need to read King Lear.

My mom is coming to visit us in Chicago this weekend. Should be awesome, but may make it a little difficult to read much Shakespeare.

Henry VI, Part One

Henry V is dead. If this does not induce wailing and gnashing of teeth for you, then you have never read the THREE parts of Henry VI. These are all pretty bad. Henry VI is a kid in this play, whose main character, I think, is this guy named Talbot.

The play is about two fights, one waning and one just getting started. As soon as Henry V dies, everything goes to hell (except brave Harry himself). During his funeral, the nobles start fighting. This fighting eventually grows into the War of the Roses. Part One has a scene in which the two sides spontaneously seize on their respective rose colors, thus setting up a catchy name for their civil war, which doesn't actually break out in this play.

The other fight is the war with France, which is winding up, breaking down, however you want to look at it. It's not going very well. Supplies are disrupted because the nobles are quarreling. Sir John Falstaff shows up. This is interesting. Shakespeare wrote Henry VI very early in his career, but as far as English history goes, it's after all the great histories. So, when we read this Falstaff we can't help but have in mind the brilliant stuff that historically has already happened but Shakespeare hasn't written yet. It's an interesting cameo, since in Henry V Shakespeare will kill off Falstaff before these wars. In a way, this gives us a means of resurrecting Falstaff and actuating Harold Bloom's biggest fantasy: that Falstaff takes off for the forest of Arden to hang with Rosalind, instead of dying of grief after Hal rejects him. The last we see him in this play, he's taking off, having been stripped of his knighthood--in France (where Arden is supposed to be).

We get another interesting cameo, too: Joan of Arc. Shakespeare for some reason calls her Joan la Pucelle. Joan the Virgin. She is a really crazy character: vulgar, inspiring, holy, evil, I don't know. Things come a little unhinged when Shakespeare has her conjure a bunch of devils. She asks them to help her. They won't. So she offers to have sex with them in exchange for helping her win the battle. They refuse. The English burn her at the stake.

I can't believe I have two more of these to go. Not sure if I can do all three consecutively. What's up with you?

As You Like It--4 (Men have died, from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love)

I have an alternate line for the title: 'Tis good to be sad and say nothing. And Rosalind's response, Then tis good to be a post.

Horrible heat, unbearable humidity. Today is a fine reminder of why it's good not to live in the South. Jackie is out of town for a baby shower and is missing this heat (rained all day in Michigan). She, crazy, wishes she could be here for it. That's crazy. It saps your energy, it kills everything good and true and beautiful in you and leaves only sweat. And to imagine, in the South it's like this everyday for three months! Please, give me Fall. Give me a crisp breeze and a cardigan. I assume it'll be just a few more weeks.

Okay, I judged too quickly on the weirdness of this play. Yes, it's weird. Deeply, profoundly weird. But Rosalind's ploy is good. We know for a while that Rosalind is superior to Orlando, that he cannot really deserve her. But Rosalind, as Ganymede, and, um, as Ganymede playing Rosalind, teaches Orlando how to be her husband. Granted, he's still not good enough for them to make great sense, but she builds herself a man. Not quite a Stepford husband. It's good.

Tonight I watched the Branagh As You Like It and finished the play. Here's what you can expect if you watch the movie: kung fu (yes, really), sumo wrestling (yes, really), seemingly meaningless shots of spider webs, tree tops, etc, a spontaneously miltantly vegetarian Jaques, a Hootie (you know, from the Blowfish) look-a-like, a farmer-turned-whiskey-priest-turned-normal-priest, and a gradually strengthening movie, despite some overacting. Sometimes, it's like they're trying to cram all of their acting into the very speech they're saying. But look, I'm no actor. Seriously. I couldn't even act, much less overact. And I don't really know anything about the practice, so I shouldn't criticize. But then, I've criticized Shakespeare's writing at times on this blog, so I guess I shouldn't blanch at being audacious now.

Okay, seriously, there's some strange stuff in this movie but as Rosalind gradually takes over it gets better and better. One very good choice that Branagh does make is that he cuts out the part where Hymen, god of marriage, comes out on stage and does a little dance and presents Rosalind to everyone.

Yes, the god of marriage is called Hymen and he has a speaking role in this play. If you get the BBC video tape, this poor guy comes out of the woods wrapped in this silky thing and prances around for a while. Can you imagine being cast as Hymen?!

As You Like It 3 (and I'll employ thee too. But do not look for further recompense than thine own gladness that thou art employed)

Act III gets stranger. We've already covered that Rosalind has dressed up like a boy and fled to the forest. There, she meets Orlando who fails to recognize her. Orlando is busy carving love verses to Rosalind into the tree bark. Rosalind says something Shakespearean that more or less means "Look, stop carving stuff into the trees. If you love this lady, come woo me as if I were her and I'll cure you of your goofy love for her."

Okay, we can understand why Rosalind is into this idea. She gets to maintain her disguise, hear this guy woo her, and respond however she wants without giving herself away. It's a crazy version of sending a note via a friend that says "Do you like anyone in our class? Because someone in our class likes you! Tee-hee!" So sure, we see why she likes this idea, but why does Orlando go along with it? And, even more interesting, why is Rosalind pleased by seeing the guy she loves wooing someone he thinks to be a man? This isn't a question of homosexuality or homoeroticism, it's something a lot more complicated. I don't know what it is, though, really. Just Shakespeare's native berserk.

Jackie and I went to Chinatown.

As You Like It--2 (I like this place/ and willingly could waste my time in it)

Jackie got a mysterious phone call tonight, asking her to meet in Grant Park, during something called "Movies in the Park." It was a friend of hers, with important info that couldn't be discussed on the phone. This is exactly my kind of thing. She did Woodward, I did Bernstein. Or, she did Smiley, I did Guillam. This was totally unjust because my temperament is way closer than Smiley's than hers. But, it had nothing to do with me, so I couldn't very well take the lead.

Instead, I took the opportunity to stroll through Grant and Millenium Parks. These are areas that I am badly under-utilizing. Grant Park is where Obama gave his speech on Election Night. If you're a Republican or just not that interested in Obama, it's basically our Central Park. It's also a great place to read As You Like It, becauset in Grant and Millenium Parks there are beautiful--and I mean really wonderful--gardens. Especially the one in Millenium. This is good because As You Like It is pastoral and it's tough to get into the pastoral mindset when you're totally surrounded by concrete.

Act One basically just gets his people on the move. The old Duke has already been kicked out into the forest by his usurping brother, Frederick. Old Duke's daughter, the sublime Rosalind, is kept behind because she's friends with Frederick's daughter, Celia. This doesn't last long. Shakespeare valiantly holds out for three scenes, but then he can't take it anymore and has his heroine start cross-dressing. This because Frederick has kicked her out and she and Celia are taking off to the forest to find Duke Senior. And everyone knows you can't take a road trip without binding your breasts and changing your name to the overtly masculine "Ganymede."

Meanwhile, a young man named Orlando is also hitting the road, accompanied by his old servant Adam. Orlando is younger brother to an asshole, who plans to burn down his house while he's asleep. So, time to go. Orlando can't hope for protection from Frederick, because earlier that day he was in this wrestling match with Charles, the new duke's pal, and seriously won. New Duke hated Orlando's dad (but loves his brother) and so isn't best pleased. Rosalind, however, is and strangely falls for the good-natured and apparently strong but essentially dull Orlando.

Got it?

And so off they go, separately, into the forest. The girls are accompanied by the fool, Touchstone.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I want to read As You Like It in the gardens.

As You Like It--1

Jackie and I just got back from two weeks in MI, in which we got married and took our honeymoon. I took Othello with me, but after two acts I realized this was a horrible play for nuptials. Read it, and I think you'll agree with me that the "murder-your-wife" theme is quite prominent.

I should have taken As You Like It, for several reasons: it has a ludicrously happy ending; it ends with a crazy, LSD wedding; it features several successful, if somewhat uneven, couples; most of it is set in a forest; all of it is set in France. For those last two I should explain that for our honeymoon we went camping at the very top of Michigan, in the woods. Oh, and the very top of Michigan is very close to Canada, which has some people who speak French.

The forest of Arden is, in a way, Quebec in reverse. As You Like It is supposed to be set in France, but the forest of Arden feels really English and they even talk about Robin Hood (nod to Bloom, who says the same thing). And we all know that Robin Hood was a fox who lived in England in a time when cartoons were still drawn by hand. Quebec, however, is officially Canadian which is kind of maybe English, but they speak a weird French and have all those fleur-de-lis everywhere.

Well, I think I've shed some real light on As You Like It and on our humorous neighbors to the North.

Kenneth Branagh deserves our thanks for continuing to make Shakespeare movies, even if they are getting weirder and less successful. Hamlet was set in some sort of Victorian or Georgian-looking Denmark. Love's Labour's Lost was baffingly turned into a musical and had that guy from Scream and Hackers in it. And now, I find out that he did an As You Like It, but set it in feudal Japan! As soon as I can trick Jackie into watching it, I'll fill you in.

Timon of Athens

We have a special opportunity, right now, to appreciate Timon of Athens, a play not even Shakespeare seems to have cared much about (I think it was never performed in his lifetime). The story is of a guy who spends all his money on gifts for friends and throwing lavish parties for people. When the creditors come calling, he's shocked to find out that he has no money left with which to pay them. He asks for help, but none of his "friends" offer it and he ends up skipping town and cursing Athens and Athenians from a cave until he dies.

No one cares about the play because Timon fails to be very interesting. His curses grow tiresome, like the Queen Mother in Richard III. In the end, his character is little more than an expletive, or a symbolic, negative curse. Like a sign in a forest, giving the world the finger. I quite like that analogy, actually. The play is never performed, so no one ever hears Timon's curses. If a crazy Athenian flips the bird in a forest with no one else around, does it make an offense?

So, it's a shame that the play isn't better. Shakespeare on bankruptcy and financial crisis? How much more topical can the guy get? But I don't think we'll see revivals of this play springing up. For that to happen, someone would have to read the play. I don't think they will, unless they're trying to blog the Complete Works.

Now, I was okay with it, because I can feel myself becoming a cliche similar to Timon. I went in serious debt for a humanities education that does not empower me to pay it back. Like crazy Timon and his treating of his friends. So, I'm holding out the possibility of retreating to a cave, cursing and waiting for Sallie Mae to die. Problem is, no one told Timon when his creditors died and he died an unmoving, lonely death in his suburban cave. Oh well.

The Taste of Chicago is going on. This is one of those things that is wildly famous in the Midwest, but completely unknown to Southerners, whose event calendars are too full of Civil War battle reenactments to notice a food party 800 miles away. So, let me summarize. The Taste, as it is called, is an opportunity for the largest people in the Midwest simultaneously to display and increase their girth. Last night I saw more sunburned, half-inflated-hot-air-balloon breasts than I expected to see in my entire lifetime. I am a big guy myself. Overweight, flabby, cumulus-white, and hairy. So, you know what I do? I clothe myself everyday, even when I'm joining a crowd of several hundred thousand to eat tacos or deep dish pizza in Grant Park. I do this out of modesty, yes, but also out of love for my fellow man/woman. Whenever I'm tempted to expose my midriff or every centimeter of skin above my nipple, I tell myself: think of the children. And, think of your chances of anyone agreeing to have children with you.

Jackie and I watched half of Othello last night and I think I'm going to read it next. The plan to do the Henriad uninterrupted has failed. Much like Shakespeare's plan to write a good play called The Merry Wives of Windsor.

All's Well that Ends Well (Mine eyes smell onions)

This play should have us on our guard from the start, because of the spurious, cynical philosophy of the title. Is all well that ends well? Clearly not. A more worthy statement might be: "A good ending is preferable to a bad ending." But I'm not even sure that we get that, here.

This play reminds me of Measure for Measure for several reasons. Obviously, they're both classified as "problem plays." Both probably deserve more attention than they get, but it's hard to like many of the characters. Helena is virtuous, kind, smart, etc, but her love for Bertram is so strange that we have to question her judgment. In fact, I think we have to question the stability of her character.

You probably don't know the plot of this play. Briefly, Helena, a kind of upper-middle class girl, loves an aristocrat, Bertram. Helena cures the king of an illness and he agrees to ennoble her and compel the man of her choice to marry her. She chooses Bertram, who wants nothing to do with her and takes off for a foreign war with his scoundrel follower, Parolles. There, he woos another lady, who turns out to be in cahoots with Helena, who has faked her own death and is scheming to get Bertram back. Bertram eventually abandons this lady, after having sex with her (though it's really Helena in the bed, in disguise) and goes back to France, thinking Helena dead. Bertram is about to be married to yet another woman, via the king, when everyone shows up to condemn him. The king puts him back together with Helena, whom he accidentally impregnated, thinking her to the lady Diana. And, all's well that end's well.

There are good things about this play. Helena is apparently crazy and possibly masochistic, but she has a lot of virtues. Parolles is a scoundrel, but is fun and ends up with some of the clearest sight in the play. This play isn't quite a moral vacuum, but it is a land without heroes or loyalties. Within that landscape, Parolles is harmless, blithely betraying people who deserve no loyalty and getting caught doing so. Everyone ends up happy without "deserving" it, but I don't think we should begrudge them that. As I said before, it's not a moral vacuum, but it is a place with no moral center or poles. All morality is relative here. If that is so, maybe Parolles, who shifts loyalties and betrays whomever with the wind, is wiser than Helena, who doggedly pursues a worthless husband and ends up pregnant by him, destined to life with a cad who accepted her only when neither war nor the civil law would kill him.

Two important notes about the conditions in which I read this play. First, I no longer have access to $2 copies of each individual play, so I'm reading out of a Complete Works that has truly tiny print. Second, I read the first two Acts with a terrible toothache and the last three on Vicodin, after having that tooth pulled. Let me tell you about how they pull an adult's tooth. They shoot you up with painkillers, take a metal stick, and push on your tooth until it breaks. Then they pull out the shards. I had made a joke when I got there about tying a string around the tooth, connecting it to a doorknob, and slamming the door. The method they use is actually more primitive.

USA beats Spain! Bring on Brazil or (please!) South Africa.

Henry IV, Part Two--2 (gravy, gravy, gravy)

My little sister got married this weekend in Georgia. We drove down. Yes, drove down from Chicago. She married a great guy named Derek and they're on an Alaskan cruise right now, which sounded pretty freaking good in the 90 degree heat with some kind of obscenely unmeasurable humidity. But then, Chicago's mid-70's isn't too bad, either.

There are no weddings in Henry IV, though there is one in Henry V. I started out liking this play even better than the first, but it tailed off for me. It's a kind of continuation from the first play, with no new elements introduced, but missing the two elements that made the first play so compelling. These are Falstaff's interactions with Hal (they barely see each other in this play) and Hotspur, whom I don't like, but who is at least interesting.

Falstaff is still good, still kind of an emblem and embodiment of life. He's like life come to life. His soliloquy in the first play on honor is unparalleled. All the court characters worship power, Hotspur comes pretty close to worshiping death. Falstaff unabashedly worships life and it's wonderful. The thing here is humor. I'm beginning to distrust anyone who fails to have a sense of humor. These people aren't just boring, they are dangerous. They are the fanatics, those who are willing to die for abstractions, those who are willing to kill for abstractions. They are the ones we have to fight, but fight through irony, through humor, through sheer love of life.

Boy, I'm turning preachy. But Shakespeare goes on and enshrines this Hal, in the rip-roaring patriotic rant Henry V. Don't get me wrong, the St. Crispin's Day speech is stirring. But it's only "Bring it on" done very very well. It's empire, in the name of what? For Harry, England, and St. George! Bullshit. As Falstaff says: "gravy, gravy, gravy."

Henry IV, Part One--3, Henry IV, Part Two--1

Prince Hal has me thinking about black sheep, particularly those of political families. Well, I say he has me thinking about them, but really he has me trying to think of some. We hear more about politicians themselves who should be black sheep, except that we've already elected them. Take, for instance, Ted Kennedy and the whole Chappaquidick (sp?) thing. Actually, we can probably put the entire Kennedy family in this group. You can divide them by should have been black sheep who ran the country and black sheep who didn't run the country. And then there's Mr. Bush, who makes such a good analogy with Hal that I'm going to break my ill-advised rule and do some straight up comparison.
I think that we can all say, now, that W was not a model political son as a kid. Whether he dodged the draft or not, he certainly was careful not to go to Vietnam. A coke head. A drunk. Owned a really terrible baseball team. This all matches Prince Hal's youth, minus the coke and plus wit. And, Hal took England into a long and costly war (with France) with no real prospect for a clean end. Another difference, though, is that the war went well while Harry was still alive.

Better black sheep, though, are folks like Billy Carter, who endorsed a beer that might have been named for him while his poor brother was in office. Now that is good stuff. But this political stuff isn't all that interesting to me, now I've written it. I'm more interested in what's going on this weekend and what has been going on this week. This weekend my little brother's coming into town and we're going to see the USA soccer team play a World Cup Qualifier against Honduras. I've never been to a game anything like that. Can't wait. Also, my neighborhood is having its annual book fair this weekend, now called The Printer's Row Lit Fest. Dave Eggers is going to be here. It's supposed to be the biggest book event in the Midwest. C-Span's Book TV is parked across the street right now. Seriously.

And, perhaps most importantly, my job search is deteriorating. Yesterday I found myself writing in a cover letter: I am applying to the position of copyeditor because I believe that the world will be a slightly better place when trade magazines are free of grammatical mistakes. AND: I will proofread with passion and discretion. I don't know how low this can go, but I have a bad feeling that I'm going to find out.

Henry IV, Part One--2

Now that I'm home all day, you might think that I'd be reading more Shakespeare, blogging more, also getting the stuff done that everyone always thinks they'd get done if they only had the time. Instead, I've mostly been watching Saved by the Bell, five episodes of which TBS plays every morning.

As a kid, my favorite character of course was Zack. Now, however, it's Mr. Belding. This change happened when I was in college near Chattanooga. You see, Dennis Haskins lives, or at least lived, near Chattanooga. At least, I heard that once. There's also a slight chance that I am the one who told myself that. So, I had this brilliant idea that I would meet Mr. Belding, impress him with my knowledge of his acting career (this assumed that he had no career outside of Saved by the Bell), and eventually convince him to hold a cast reunion barbecue, where I would chow down on burgers and hot dogs with Mark Paul Gosselaar, Dustin Diamond, Mario Lopez (this was well before Dancing with the Stars, back in the days of that bicycle cop show), Lark Voorhies, Tiffani Amber Thiessen, and Elizabeth Berkeley. It was a brilliant plan.

Three distinct societies in Henry IV. You have the court, centered around the usurper Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV. This group is pretty boring. Henry IV is contemplating a Crusade at the beginning of the play. First, he supplants the rightful tyrant of England, then decides in God's name to go supplant whoever the hell was in charge of Palestine (I assume it was the Moslem hordes, but I think it's important to state my ignorance upfront). Then you have the rebel camp, which is centered around Hotspur and is, appropriately enough, characterized by betrayal and so forth. And then the good group, centered on Falstaff and containing Prince Hal. Here you have drinking, cursing, highway robbery, light-hearted treason, a bunch of jokes I don't get because I neither live in the late sixteenth century nor read the footnotes, and some jokes that I do get.

When I'm not watching Saved by the Bell, I walk around Chicago, sometimes trying to squeeze people into this Henry IV schema, based on how they're dressed or what they're yelling on the street (either just yelling because they're crazy, or yelling into their cell phone head piece things). Along those lines, here are some thoughts about the class struggle in Chicago:

What's that Jackie? You need some cheese shredded? Alright. Sorry, folks, I'll have to hook you up with an in-depth study of the class system in Chicago some other time.

Henry IV, Part One--1

We now live between two crap presidents: Harrison and Polk. If memory serves me right, Harrison died very quickly, but otherwise neither of them is at all remarkable. Unlike Henry V, who is Prince Hal in this play. But wait, that's too quick.

Acid-wash jeans are popular in this building. Also, I saw someone today with a Sonic the Hedgehog tattoo. I mean, don't tattoo parlors have signs indicating that they're permanent? This new location has caused an identity crisis here at Shakespeare vs. Zombies. Our tagline has always been blogging Shakespeare and Milwaukee. But now, our chief Shakespeare reader and Milwaukee writer has moved to Chicago. How to continue as we were?

Well, however we resolve it, I owe at least one more Milwaukee story. My last week of work, I think my co-workers took extra care to be sure that I remembered the place for what it is. Wednesday, a nice old grandmother comes into the store. We start talking and it sounds like she's from the South.

There's a way a Southerner can talk to a woman who could be his grandmother. If you've got any raisin', you just absorb a certain brand of respect as you shovel pounds and pounds of grits into your mouth. So, I suppose that my accent got a little bit more pronounced as I helped this lady who could have been my grandmother, except that I am white and she is black.

She walks away a little, still within earshot, still within eyesight. And the manager comes over to me and, laughing, says "We-ell, you sho is goan be busy fo de rest a de time you's bein heah!"

This is not how Southerners talk. This is how racist caricatures of black people, done by Southern white racists, talk.

Brilliant. There's nothing better than having your boss trying to get you to join in a little racist mockery of a customer during your last week. I guess it was time to move on.

Although, now I'm unemployed and it's driving me crazy. Here's a little Shakespeare: Prince Hal is unemployed, as are Falstaff, Bardolph, Pistol, the whole crew. And one of them ended up as king! And two others of them ended up getting killed by that king.
Hmmm. Time to go to the Art Institute for free.

Troilus and Cressida--2 (Shakespeare's reputed birthday)

This is really a continuation of the lower post. Also, today is Shakespeare's reputed birthday (I think). So, I hope you celebrated. If you haven't read the lower post, you should start there. Also, I originally thought that this would be longer than it is, when I broke off the lower one.

I don't want to keep going for too long, so I'll just say that WS takes these "heroes" and really cuts them down. I neither admire nor like anyone in the play, though Hector comes closest (as always).

I didn't enjoy reading this play, but now that it's over, my opinion of it is really going up. It's dark and there's something kind of deconstructive about it. i recommend reading it twice, letting the second time count more.

Tomorrow Jackie and I are flying down to Georgia for two wedding showers. I am very worried about it, but everyone involved knows about this blog, so I'll so no more. I am also very excited about it.

Hey, have you ever seen the Beatles movie "Help!"? I love it when Paul is dancing around with that lady and she keeps saying "I can say no more" and he says "Say no more"? That's pretty good.

Troilus and Cressida--1 (and only) (all the argument is a whore and a cuckold)

I've read that this play was never performed in Shakespeare's lifetime, but that its popularity grew late in the 20th century. I'll talk about why this recent popularity makes sense to me, but first I want to discuss a strange phenomenon that this play exemplifies.

T & C is set in the Trojan War. Chances are you don't know much about the titular characters (unless you saw the flop movie that I think starred James Franco), but you do know Ulysses, Achilles, Agamemnon, Helen, Paris, Hector, Ajax, maybe even Priam and Hecuba and Nestor and Menelaus. These are the most famous characters Shakespeare ever worked with, and yet his play has done little to enhance our culture's understanding or appreciation of them. I think this holds for Shakespeare broadly: his plays on historical nobodies continue to grip us, his (few) plays on historical bigshots are culturally obscure.

How many Americans would even have heard of the semi-historical figures of the Scottish King, Hamlet, Richard III without Shakespeare? Which non-historian Americans would care about Henry IV, Henry V, Richard II, if not for Shakespeare? (Yes, the Brits might still care, but not as much as they care about football heroes Moore and Charlton).

And yet, the Trojan War and Henry VIII are important to us completely separate from Shakespeare. I'd wager that 90% of Americans don't even know that Shakespeare wrote a play on each of these subjects. Strange.

T & C's historical neglect and recent popularity makes sense to me, though. It is a ply that fits very well with our post-modern (cringe, I know, I'm cringing) sensibilities and that may not have fit well with those of earlier centuries. Geez, that previous sentence makes me uncomfortable. I'm cringing, alright? First, the structure and genre. The play, like the Iliad, starts in the middle of the action. Interestingly, though, it does not stop at the end. There is no real end to the play. Hector dies and then Pandarus comes out and gives a soliloquy about pimps and the play is over. Shakespeare's meditation on the Trojan War ends with a summation of pimping.

And why should Hector's death be the penultimate event in a play named for his younger brother? But this fits the entirety of the play, where Troilus and Cressida are ensemble parts. We spend every bit as much time in the Greek camp, worrying with Ulysses about why Achilles won't fight. The tepid affair of T & C hardly seems to be the central part of the play. There is no center, unless it's the empty speechifying of Ulysses or the rancorous ravings of Thersites.

Apparently people have long disagreed about the genre of this play. I don't really want to say much about it. If the play were called "Hector," it would be a tragedy. As T & C, however, it's either an unfinished dark comedy or an unfinished tragedy. It is almost completely open-ended.

Okay, too long, skipping to new post.

Twelfth Night--3, Sonnets

Malvolio is an upper-echelon servant to Olivia. He loves Olivia, but even more he loves himself and the idea of himself married to a big-shot. So, some of the clan around Sir Toby Belch drop an ambiguous letter in his path. It looks like Olivia's handwriting and says that she loves him and gives him instructions to dress and act certain crazy ways, without ever mentioning Olivia's or Malvolio's name.

He seizes on it and starts acting crazy. Now, eventually, Malvolio gets locked in a dark room and acts a little bit crazy, maybe he's going a little crazy for real. But at the beginning, he was the most sane, if officious, in this whole crazy bunch, except for Feste the Fool.

While everyone in this play acts crazy, and many of them even act with real cruelty, why is Malvolio, who is rude but a pretty easy foil, the only one who really suffers? I have this idea that it might be tied to him taking himself and his romantic aspirations pretty seriously, but I'm not sure that really works. At the end of the play it's revealed that his whole imprisonment was a hoax and he is set free. This take place in a scene in which Viola changes into a man and becomes betrothed to Orsino, who was about to kill her, Sebastian (Viola's brohter) is revealed to have married Olivia with the lady under the impression that he was his cross-dressing sister, and "Sir" Toby Belch has married Viola's servant Maria.

Malvolio responds to this by yelling "I will be revenged on you all!" and running off stage, not to be seen again. To me, that's a perfectly sensible response, though it'd make even more sense to bust out some R. Kelly "Alla yo ass is crazy" and be gone from madhouse Illyria for good.

Well, that concludes Twelfth Night. Today I started Troilus and Cressida. As usual, a play I loved went by too fast. T & C may take longer, as I don't know it as well and I do have some actual work to do this weekend.

Ah yes, and the Sonnets are going well. Let me summarize the first 20: Young man, you're beautiful, please get married and have kids.