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"[Posting] should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood." - William Shakespeare (speculative) "Villain, I have done thy mother." -Titus Andronicus, IV.ii. I know goons have a rep for being barbarous philistines who only like media about spaceships and incestuous dwarfs, but I think better of us! So let's talk Shakespeare-- favorite plays, favorite lines, favorite insults (mine is above, although "tread this unbolted villain into mortar and daub the walls of a jakes with him" is up there), in-depth smarty-pantsed textual analysis, historical speculation, nagging conundrums, good/bad adaptations, unorthodox character interpretations, &c. &c. If you saw a particularly rad production, post about it here! If you want to expound at length about how Iago really just wanted to gently caress Othello, then lay on, MacGoon! Just don't come in here with any authorship controversy nonsense, because that makes you a ridiculous person and the English major equivalent of a 9/11 truther. I'll start things off with my namesake: Falstaff. What do you make of him? The conventional interpretation is that he is a "lord of misrule," and that Hal's rejection of him represents an important and admirable step into adulthood and kingship. Other scholars (most notably Harold Bloom), see him as a vital symbol of joy and life, and that by rejecting him Hal throws away his own humanity in exchange for power. You can also see Falstaff as a historical symbol-- he represents Medieval England, and that by getting rid of him Hal ushers in the Early Modern Era and all the attendant machiavellianism of the nation-state. Personally, I'm sympathetic to the Bloomian interpretation, but I think his Falstaff-worship goes a bit far. The dude is unquestionably bad news, but Hal definitely loses something essential when he ditches the Eastcheap gang.
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Dec 1, 2014 04:15
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No worries! Not everybody shares my bizarre Falstaff fixation. Anyhow, I totally agree about the Baz Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet (I always call it "Romeo Plus Juliet" in conversation). It's visually incredible and I love how over-the-top and florid it is. Gotta say that DiCaprio doesn't seem to have much of a grasp on the verse, though-- Clare Danes acts rings around him. I was actually not a huge fan of Whedon's Much Ado, honestly. Something about it felt very high-school-productiony to me. Also, re: performance vs. reading, I think you're generally right. Some of his plays, though, seem nearly impossible to perform well (coughkinglearcoughcough), and so I have always enjoyed them more on the page. Does anybody know of any good adaptations of Measure for Measure? I've always thought that one was mad underrated. It's a comedy that feels like a tragedy-- everybody gets married at the end and its super depressing. Falstaff Infection fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Dec 1, 2014 |
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Dec 1, 2014 22:34
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Silver2195 posted:This quote is found in a lot of 19th- and early 20th-century books and some random websites, but none of them seem to list the play it's from. I can only assume it was made up out of whole cloth by a Victorian. Haha yeah, I couldn't find any info on that quote's origins either. I strongly suspect you're right and that its apocryphal. I was kinda hoping nobody would call me on it, but fair play either way. If it is authentic Shakespeare, its probably one of those fragments that gets quoted at complete face value even though its highly ironic in its original context (see also Polonious' "To thy own self be true" speech, Iago's two speeches about reputation, and "All the world's a stage.") And yeah, when I have more time I'll definitely give that Hamlet essay a look. Though I haven't given it a great deal of thought, my reading of his poem was always that it was deliberately banal doggerel, showing how perfunctory his relationship with Ophelia was. I dunno if Hamlet really loves anybody, with maaaaaaaaybe the exception of Horatio.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:36
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Oh and as far as Luhrmann's R + J goes, I always felt that the silliness was kinda the point. It is in fact hilarious, but I don't think that's unintentional. It's Shakespeare as comic opera, and I think it works for what it is. All those closeups of the handguns reading "DAGGER" or "SWORD 9MM" on the barrel crack me up to no end.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:38
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Anybody ever seen Slings and Arrows, the show about a Canadian Shakespeare troupe? Hella underrated.
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Dec 5, 2014 23:30
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Blind Sally posted:I also love Falstaff. And this thread reminds me that I had a Read Shakespeare Together thread I should get running again. You got a favorite "Falstaff moment?" Mine is either the role-play with Hal in IV i, or "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow" in IV ii. And I would totally be down for a Shakespeare reading thread.
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Dec 8, 2014 01:19
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Blind Sally posted:Favourite Falstaff moment: when he takes credit for Hotspur's death. Definitely a great scene. In Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (a must for any Falstaff fan), that scene is portrayed as kind of a turning point for Hal. Falstaff's trying to steal the credit genuinely wounds him, and right there he definitively decides to abandon plump Jack. It's an interesting interpretation, but I don't really buy it. Hal's basically a sociopath, in my opinion. Everything he does is coldly calculated, up to and including his marriage to Anne of France. He's basically a more successful Iago. That, and nobody would actually believe that Falstaff killed Hotspur in battle. Hotspur's a great character too, come to think of it. The Henriad is just full of these awesome side characters. Bardolph is great too, as are Pistol, Mistress Quickly, Doll Tearsheet, and Master Shallow. Oh, and Fluellen! Falstaff Infection fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Dec 8, 2014 |
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Dec 8, 2014 03:41
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kaworu posted:Even the sonnets deserve to be read aloud. I'll probably go on and on about the sonnets at, uh, some point in the thread unless I'm hopelessly shouted down. I've always found them beautiful and mysterious and fascinating all at once. I'd love to hear someone knowledgeable talk about the Sonnets. I'm shamefully ignorant of pretty much everything Shakespeare did that wasn't a play. I've never even tried to read the Rape of Lucrece, for example.
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Dec 8, 2014 04:28
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Beefeater1980 posted:Not that you're arguing it, but I'd put The Winter's Tale down there, sort of like "The Tempest, if The Tempest sucked." Although it's almost saved by "Exit [Antigonus], pursued by a bear." Fie upon thee! The Winter's Tale rules, you just have to get into its rhythms. It can be sorta boring if you're not on its wavelength. It's got some fantastic poetry, though, and I find the pastoral sequences really quite lovely. And more than "The Tempest, if the Tempest sucked," I think it's like "Othello, if Othello had a happy ending." As far as bad Shakespeare goes, though, I'd like to nominate The Merry Wives of Windsor as the worst work in his canon. It's a disgrace what he does to Falstaff in that one.
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Dec 8, 2014 18:32
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:One thing I had noticed since reading more of his work - The dude really really loved Shipwrecks and mistaken identities. Guy was crazy for that poo poo. Haha, I know what you mean. Shipwrecks: Twelfth Night, The Tempest, The Comedy of Errors (these three are sometimes referred to as the 'Shipwreck Trilogy'), Hamlet (sorta), The Merchant of Venice. Mistaken Identity: Whoof, this is gonna be long. Hamlet, Henry IV Part I, Twelfth Night, The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Much Ado about Nothing, Othello . . . I'm sure there are more.
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Dec 8, 2014 18:38
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You ever thought about the contrast between "Shall I compare thee to a Summers' Day?" and "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun?" One's written to the fair youth, the other to the dark lady, and they seem to express completely opposite poetic visions. In one, the author says that his lover outstrips all these beauteous natural images, in the other he basically says "yeah, I'm not gonna bullshit you by comparing you to all this stuff in nature. Obviously roses are sweeter than you, but that doesn't mean you're not awesome." I wonder if Shakespeare was thinking about one when he wrote the other, and if it reflects an evolution in his opinion of certain kinds of rhetoric, or if it is more a function of the difference in his feelings for the DL and the FY.
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Dec 8, 2014 22:29
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Trin Tragula posted:It's a great play for busting the idea that Shakespeare has to be stuffy and respectable and dull. It's a magnificent farce, and as long as it's played for what it is and not what people would like it to be, it's impossible not to have fun watching it. This is 100% true, although for my money Titus Andronicus is the funniest Shakespeare play.
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Dec 9, 2014 00:52
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AYC posted:How do you feel about the modern take on it with copious amounts of Leonardo DiCaprio? That's the Baz Luhrmann one. It's virtues were debated above. Basically, I think it's a travesty, but an awesome one. It's so crass and gaudy, but it's really fun and funny and I think a lot of the performances are really good (Pete Postlethwait, Clare Danes. Not Leo. He wasn't good yet).
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Dec 9, 2014 00:54
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I'm pretty sure it is. It's an insulting gesture, and I'm not aware of any other interpretation.
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Dec 9, 2014 01:09
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To continue the R+J discussion, I've found that it seems to be in vogue among hip young literary sorts these days to be totally down on that play. They'll say things like "Oh, it's just about a couple of stupid teenagers who kill themselves for no reason. Nothing romantic about that." This, in my opinion, is cynical, contrarian nonsense. It's like people who hate on Catcher in the Rye because "Holden is a brat" (no poo poo he is.) To expand: - The text is fully aware that Romeo and Juliet are somewhat foolish. The play is, at least on one level, a cautionary tale. - Cautionary tale aside, Juliet speaks some of the best, most sophisticated love poetry ever written. Fact. - If you don't think Mercutio is fun you're dead inside.
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Dec 9, 2014 18:47
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AYC posted:Isn't it generally agreed that we appreciate Shakespeare more for his language than his plots? R&J seems to be the prime example of this. Yes, that's generally correct I think. And R+J includes some spectacular examples of language. Juliet's speech in III,ii ("Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds[.]") for example, is pretty masterful. It's lush and erotic but also sort of philosophically pragmatic. So R & J haters are truly missing out, in my opinion.
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Dec 9, 2014 21:46
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Blind Sally posted:I dunno, man, it's the intermingling of both that appeal to me. The intrigue in the histories, the pathos in the tragedies--not all of his plays blow my mind, but those that do definitely are a combination of clever story-telling and clever use of language. The plot doesn't necessarily have to be deep, but it's well told. King Lear, for example. This is true as well, but you definitely have to approach his plots from a certain "theatre-logic" angle, or at the very least suspend some of your modern values. For all the talk of how "universal" WS' work is, something like, Lear, for example, depends heavily on the logic of monarchy in order to achieve its tragic oomph. I recently re-read the play, paying specific attention to the plot as opposed to the language (which of course is incredible), and came to the conclusion that Regan and Goneril, from a modern POV, weren't thaaaaaat bad. Like, Cordelia was leading an invading French army into England (and she was laying plans to do so even before Lear was tossed out into the heath.) And also its not like they actually *forced* Lear out onto the heath-- he just got pissy and threw a fit, and then went mad after one night in the rain. Sure, gouging out Gloucester's eyes was ugly, but do you think Lear himself was any more forgiving of treason or his subjects plotting with foreign powers? Again, I'm not saying that any of these elements really weaken the play. I was just reading it from a deliberately literal and obtuse point of view for larfs. Ultimately, you just have to embrace its internal logic in order for it to work as a tragedy (which it does.) Falstaff Infection fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Dec 13, 2014 |
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Dec 13, 2014 01:38
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:
Keep in mind that Shakespeare was what we would today call bisexual (although such categories did not really exist in Elizabethan times), so it's really not that hard to think that all the cross-dressing in his plays was actually meant to be a sly attack on mainstream beliefsa bout gender roles or sexuality. In the end, though, it doesn't matter if the author intended it or not-- if it's in the text it's in the text, and is therefore a perfectly valid interpretation. Authors don't have final say on what their works mean. In fact, I think it's almost impossible to put on a good production of Twelfth Night *without* addressing the queer subtext (actually, sub nothing, it's practically text. See also-- Antonio and Bassanio in Merchant of Venice.) This is also why I enjoy post-colonial readings of The Tempest.
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Dec 13, 2014 02:35
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Well, the fair young man sequence in the Sonnets seems to be fairly definitive, and if you couple it with the Dark Lady sonnets it points strongly an author who is sexually attracted to men and women. Then again, I guess that assumes that the Sonnets were autobiographical, which I guess is not necessarily the case. Still, the level of eroticism he pours into some of those poems makes it hard for me to see them as anything but frank and genuine expressions of desire.
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Dec 13, 2014 05:17
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I mean: A woman's face with nature's own hand painted, Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion; A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women's fashion: An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; A man in hue all hues in his controlling, Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created; Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
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Dec 13, 2014 05:19
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To put it another way: the speaker in the Sonnets is definitely bisexual.
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Dec 13, 2014 05:21
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kaworu posted:It's a tricky question; I try to sidestep it by saying that Shakespeare's sexuality is simply immaterial historical curiosity; the important thing is that he absolutely did write about what we would now consider to be "queer" issues, dealing heavily with the concept of gender in many of his plays. It is important not to read too too much into everything - after all, gender was hardly a fixed concept in the theater. Quite to the contrary, I've always felt that it was fairly significant to a play like Twelfth Night that at the time it was written, Viola (and all the other female parts) were being playing by androgynous young men. Given that context, I think Shakespeare's exploration of gender and its fluidity and artifice in so many plays makes a great deal more sense. I always viewed the sonnets (certain parts of them, at any rate) as a continuation of the same sorts of ideas and themes, and done so in a manner that wouldn't really have been possible via theater. He is very much playing with established conventions and cliches in love poetry (like his plays) and its dangerous to take anything at even close to face value. Yeah, it always blows my mind when I think about the Russian doll of gender bending that was Shakespearean Comedy. Like, you've got young men playing young women masquerading as young men.That's is probably one reason why the church was so down on theater at this point. And, yeah, I think the repeated puns on "Will" are pretty solid proof that the sonnets are at least to some extent autobiographical. I'm sticking by my guns-- Shakespeare was almost certainly attracted to both men and women.
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Dec 14, 2014 19:56
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