Cymbeline

None of the main characters in Cymbeline qualify for my team in the zombie apocalypse. The two minor roles of the king's kidnapped and Welsh-raised sons just might, though. That beheading is a nice piece of sword-work and is exactly what is required against the undead.

Imogen is wonderful, but otherwise I'm not so sure about this play. It kind of feels like Shakespeare is beginning to realize that he can do whatever he wants, completely free of restrictions, but he hasn't yet figured out what to do with that ability. This is the end of his career, we're in the Late Romances. He figures out what to do with his complete freedom in The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.

If you read this play, it starts slowly, but stick with it because everything goes crazy starting in Act Three. It's almost as if Shakespeare realized halfway through that no one would still be interested, and so threw in every plot device he ever used in the past. We have reunion scenes, a woman dressed as a man, a man in disguise, a potion that simulates death and all of the usual consequences, long-lost princes discovered, love put back on the rails after being temporarily derailed by slanderous lies, etc, etc. He throws it all in.

Sticking with the star-crossed lovers and near-death potion theme, I'm reading Romeo and Juliet next. Not too thrilled about it, but then I also still have the Phoenix and the Turtle to come, so, you know.

Measure for Measure--2

A few years ago I met a guy who had played trombone in high school. One night a man comes into this guy's room, waking him up. This dark man asks "Do you know who I am?" The guy I knew, thinking the stranger to be the devil, says "Yes." The dark man then says "Stop playing music" and leaves.

There are a number of improbabilities in the interpretation the guy I knew offered for this story. First, the guy had very short arms. I can't imagine that he could even reach the farthest notes on his trombone. So, why would the devil trouble with a doomed musician, even if the musician had an instinct and was a Christian? What threat can a high schooler with access to two-thirds of a trombone's range pose to Satan? Isn't it more likely that a neighbor or always locked-away brother broke into the house or out of the basement to plead for quiet?

I want to believe the story, because the devil is such a fun literary character. But surely he has more important things to do than break up a high school marching band?

This does connect to Measure for Measure, because the Duke and his deputy are so persistently getting involved in matters (sex) that are none of their business--to the apparent exclusion of all other state obligations. The best part of Measure for Measure is the prisoner Barnardine. The crazy duke hatches a plan that will involve Barnardine being executed. He calls to him, to tell him to get ready to die. Barnardine just says no. He has a hangover and isn't interested in dying today. The duke and his co-idiots say "Well, you have to, it's scheduled and we need your head so that we can trick the duke's deputy into thinking that another prisoner has been killed." Barnardine says: no, I won't die today. He then goes back to bed.

The long last scene of the play is some of the craziest stuff in Shakespeare, I think, with the duke making basically everyone get married. It was a strange play, but good. Tomorrow I start Cymbeline.

Measure for Measure--1 (an after-dinner's sleep, dreaming on both)

I have to face the very real possibility that blogging actually makes my life more boring. I took a post-Hamlet break and things exploded. The store where I work has the big store where people come in and shop, but then also a storage building where some of the books we sell online are stored. This second building is a block away and also serves as my boss's apartment, where he lives in semi-squalor with two cats.

So, when the boss is on vacation, as he has been for the past two weeks, my first job in the morning is to go to this other store and collect whatever books we've sold online the night before. So one day this week I go over there, notice the lights are off and won't turn on. No big deal, must have blown a fuse. I start walking around, looking for the fuse box, notice the computer is missing. Hmmm--I think--why have they moved the computer into another room, and why have they thrown books all over the floor? Finally, why have my coworkers busted in a window, thrown couch cushions everywhere, and smeared their blood all over the place? At this point, the realization that something was wrong slowly started trickling into my consciousness.

So, the place was robbed. The geniuses broke in through a window, stole a mediocre computer, left a lot of money in books on the shelf, left credit cards on a table, smeared their blood all over the place, and, most strange: took the television, VCR, and DVD player onto the roof and left them there.

So I called the owner, eventually called the cops, and went back to work to wait for the cops. While we (others have come into work by now) are waiting for the cops, a pedestrian gets hit by a car in front of the store. He's just broken an arm, but we cart him into the store and call 911. So, while we're waiting for the cops to come for our burglary, we get firemen and paramedics in the store for something completely different. It was a crazy, Shakespeare and blogging free day.

Then Jackie's parents came to town and I saw Lebron James score 55 points against the poor Bucks. And I started Measure for Measure. Measure for Measure is a really strange play. You could say that it's about an unjust, totalitarian society. Not sure about that. The play's Vienna has a law against fornication. The Duke pretends to leave town (he really disguises himself as a friar and sticks around giving everyone bad advice) so that his deputy can start enforcing the law against fornication for the first time. Of course the law is broken by lots of people. The third act is a kind of parade of minor characters being sentenced to death for sex.

Many of the characters are insane. Isabella, the nun and sister of the doomed Claudio, is a chastity-fundamentalist. The Duke is just plain old fashioned nuts. Angelo (the duke's deputy) is the dangerous kind of crazy, sentencing everyone to death for a bad law, even as he breaks the law himself.

I don't want to interpret it as a moral or a political play, though you could certainly do both. What's so strange about it is that the dominant theme of the play is varieties of destructive, negative, almost-nihilistic madness, and yet it is a kind of comedy and a few of the characters are even very funny. The classic designation of "Problem Play" certainly makes sense.

Hamlet--12 (the rest is silence)

I got off work three hours today. It was really nice and I finished Hamlet. In sum, everybody dies. Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Reading this play like this, in a way very different from how I've read those prior to it, has been wonderful and exhausting. Of course I could have done twenty more posts on it. To do so, I think, would have driven me pretty close to insanity.

In Act Four, Hamlet takes a little trip to England (though he never gets there). I have decided that I, too, will take a little break to England and read a good old fashioned English mystery novel. Then I'll return to Shakespeare. Yes, I realize that Shakespeare is also English, but most of his stuff, besides the histories, is set in other places.

Speaking of the England trip, did anyone else notice the vital role that pirates play in this play? Pirates! I really don't think that people pay enough attention to this aspect of Hamlet.

Hamlet 11--(I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died)

Warning, major spoilers here.

After killing Polonius, Hamlet is sent off to England. How sad Elsinore is in Act Four! Polonius, the de facto clown, is dead. Hamlet is gone. The players are gone. Gertrude's spirit (previously not much in evidence) is broken by Hamlet's inmost-mirror work. And, worst of all, Ophelia is mad.

People talk a bit about Laertes or Fortinbras as foil to Hamlet (no, really, they do). But you hear little about Ophelia as foil to him. The parallels are pretty strong: father murdered, love rejected (hers an enforced rejection, his genuine), madness (hers real, his feigned), and suicidal tendencies (hers probably realized, his not).

While Hamlet is out on the heath being spurred to action by Fortinbras's passing army and proclaiming "From this day forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!," Ophelia is breaking our hearts in Elsinore. Hamlet talks about the pain of losing his father, but it's just nowhere near as believable or effective as Ophelia's mad songs. Hamlet is (and has been called by others) a free artist of himself, always creating himself and his world. Ophelia is an artist of loss.

Horatio's brief eulogy for Hamlet is one of the most moving lines in English. But, it is rather brief. Gertrude's eventual description of Ophelia's death is a coherent poem unto itself. If you cannot feel her loss, and then our loss of her. . . well, you must be Hamlet, who constantly needs someone--the players, the ghost, Fortinbras, Laertes, the gravedigger--to remind him to feel

Who wrote that poem--The Art of Losing? No, One Art. But Ophelia:
And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead,
Go to thy deathbed;
He never will come again.

Tonight, I'm thinking about loss, and what it leads us to. Ophelia responds with madness and eventual suicide. Laertes responds with violence. Gertrude, generally pretty dull, is inspired to poetry:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

Hamlet--10 (the play's the thing)

I played Claudius once. For some reason when I was acting in high school (and briefly/ill-advisedly in college), I always was cast as the king. If there was no king, I was cast as the dad. I played Claudius in Hamlet, Theseus in Midsummer, Mr. Magoo in Rebel Without and Cause, the dad in Cheaper by the Dozen, and I don't know, a bunch of other dads and kings. I also was cast as Oberon in a college production of Midsummer.

This is how the first rehearsal went:
Director: okay, uh--what was your name?--Eric, now, you're going to do Oberon like Elvis.
Me: What?
Director: Well, we're doing this thing where the fairy land is like Hollywood.
Me: Who's Titania supposed to be?
Director: Madonna.

I quit that night. I realize it was poor form, but, um. Elvis? Madonna?

I think that the reason I was always either the king or the dad was because I had facial hair pretty early and once I got it it was my pride and joy. I've probably only shaved it a couple of times since. Ah, beard.

I talk about this here for two reasons. First, the end of Act Two through Act Three is all about acting/playing. Hamlet puts the entire integrity of his revenge in the hands of an acting troupe. He acts crazy. Blah blah blah, I've already talked about it. Second, the way I've done this play is so exhausting. It's actually a relief to think back at stuff that is just humiliating and isn't so demanding. I played Claudius at sixteen. Sort of.

They should warn kids about what will happen if they grow facial hair at a really young age. I mean, the stuff besides being totally badass.

To be or not to be. The Mousetrap. The closet scene with Hamlet and Gertrude. The Oedipal stuff just isn't there, I'll say that. But, for the sake of my own sanity, I'm not going too deeply into this stuff.

Let me say that the closet scene is not Gertrude's biggest scene. I know it's big, yes, but Hamlet runs all over her. Her big scene is describing Ophelia's death, to me. That's the best.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hamlet--9 (bounded in a nutshell)

Second half of Act 2, Scene 2. I know that I said that I'd be faster. It's just so hard to brush past some of this stuff. The business here is all about acting/performing.

First, Hamlet performs for Polonius, turning him around, making fun of him, throwing in a little craziness... Then he's with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and acts pretty normal. Then the players/actors show up. Hamlet performs a speech, gets the first player to finish it. Then, finally, we get him alone for the magnificent soliloquy that begins "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I."

It's the first time that we see him alone after he announces that he's going to start acting crazy. Here's the thing though: he's upset because the first player acted so upset about Hecuba, and Hamlet hasn't acted all that upset about all the stuff that he should be upset about. So, even when we see him alone, where he shouldn't be acting, he's using an actor to whip himself up into a passion that he isn't just naturally feeling.

From now on, we always have to think about which layer of reality we're looking at. Hamlet's going to have the players perform a play that shows something very similar to how Claudius killed Old Hamlet. Hamlet is writing one of the scenes of this play. At the same time, Hamlet is acting crazy.

Just think about it.