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."