William Shakespeare is peerless in literature, drama and poetry. His plays are often a difficult read, though, even for native English speakers. This has contributed, I feel, to an oversight and under-appreciation for the wisdom he has offered for centuries. So in ST! I endeavor to engage, entertain and educate a modern day audience.
Pauline Montagna posted this campaign on the Shakespeare community on Google+:
If you have some spare money and want to see the Globe's Hamlet in a theatre near you, maybe you should get behind this.
I commented: Every country, eh... what a terrific, bold idea! £200K must be just a pittance for some billionaire. Still, if the Globe falls short of its target, an alternative idea is this: The directors, actors et al. can work remotely with local theater groups to stage "Hamlet." They can teach, encourage and direct via Hangout or Skype, then arrange to film and edit the staging. In this collaboration, they'd bring into the staging something of the local culture, costume and language. There's no reason let a tight budget be a showstopper!
“But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?” The hallways of Clear Springs High School were recently filled with the sounds of one of William Shakespeare’s most famous scenes.
To honor Shakespeare’s 450th birthday, pre-AP English I students took part in a choral reading of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Using a staircase as their balcony, Juliets gathered to call down to their Romeos. Cameras rolled as 120 students uttered the famous words.
This nation-wide challenge was organized by the Folger Shakespeare Library, who asked schools and theaters to stage a flash mob of the beloved balcony scene. Groups from across the country obliged and submitted videos of their performances, which were then included on the Folger Shakespeare Library’s blog.
“The students had an opportunity to view the other submissions and see how important and relevant Shakespeare still is in our culture,” said Jenna Zucha of Clear Springs High School’s English Department. “We are definitely planning to do something like this again and I will continue to challenge my students to step-up to Shakespeare.”
There is no record of William Shakespeare's birth, but the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon shows that he was baptized on April 26th 1564. From this, scholars set his birthdate on April 23rd. So it was that high school students gave it a delightful go with the balcony scene from `Romeo & Juliet, at the wonderful behest of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.
With more preparation on how to enact the text, memorizing it in the preparation, and more direction in the filmmaking and editing, and this idea has a load of possibility.
Mine eye hath played the painter and hath steeled,
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
And perspective that is best painter's art.
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictured lies,
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
It is about how the eyes are an instrument of desire, fashioning a lover and infusing oneself with that very lover. Not just her image, but also her body. Shakespeare weaves a rather rich tapestry, that is about what art does. What imagination, and fantasy, and dream are. The desire is so strong that what we see looks, and feels, positively real. Alas, though, it is not. Actor Colin Ryan plays it all well.
Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;
All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.
Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd;
But those same tongues, that give thee so thine own,
In other accents do this praise confound
By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
They look into the beauty of thy mind,
And that in guess they measure by thy deeds;
Then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,
To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:
But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.
It's a cute move to make the subject of the sonnet a dog. But this reminds of Prince Hal, in Henry IV (Part 1 and Part 2), who belies, and defies, his royal upbringing by frequenting the neighboring taverns with Falstaff & Co. I imagine King Henry, the Prince's father, chiding his son for his behavior and company. I imagine the King referring to Falstaff, in particular, who knows who Prince Hal actually is, but who leads his royal friend into "the rank smell of weeds" and the common soil of villagers. If I recall correctly, Falstaff bitterly complains of Prince Hal, now King Henry V after the death of Henry IV, treating him like a dog.
O! call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue:
Use power with power, and slay me not by art,
Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:
What need'st thou wound with cunning, when thy might
Is more than my o'erpressed defence can bide?
Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies;
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.
It's a brilliant capture of the agonizing, ambivalent nature of Romantic love. The speaker would prefer to be rejected with words, rather than outright with looks. But in the end we can imagine him or her finding means to meet the lover one last time and demanding to finish off the rejection, straightaway face-to-face. Drawing on kinetic poetry is also a brilliant move by the Shakespeare Exchange, as it portrays perfectly the theme of the sonnet (i.e., words, not looks). Actress Lauren Sowa stumbles upon the letter, and the kinetic poetry conveys the emotion behind the words rather well.
In St. Louis Shakespeare's rendition of Coriolanus offers modern-day metaphors, writer Paul Friswold speaks to the eerie relevance of this production to our sociopolitical tensions (rf. Arab Spring). In a similar vein, Ralph Fiennes produces, directs and stars in a take of the Roman general, which is fast-forwarded to the present. Financially, to date, it is off its $7.7 million budget with just a $1.1 million in the box office.
Times are tough in the big city these days. The common folk congregate in the streets agitating for more food and better care from the state, but the wealthy elite offer only platitudes and patronizing lectures on trickle-down economics. The ruling class has more important things to worry about than some sickly, starving commoners; there's a big election coming up, and they have power bases to consolidate so that the status quo remains comfortably quo.
It's eerie how Shakespeare could so accurately predict the socioeconomic doldrums and all-for-nothing political situation of the early 21st century while botching the setting by placing his story in pre-imperial Rome rather than America — fortunately, Donna Northcott covers ably for Shakespeare by modernizing the dress and keeping the Eternal City as backdrop in her bracing staging of Coriolanus. It's a show that suffers slightly from a fitful first act but overall is an artistic triumph.
Reginald Pierre, as Coriolanus
Along with Reginald Pierre, Betsy Bowman, as Virgilia
Actors Tara Fitzgerald, Jo Stone-Fewings and Adam Levy talk about rehearsing for our new production of The Winter's Tale, directed by Lucy Bailey.
Some critics deem `The Winter's Tale a problem play, because it defies neat-and-clean categories. Frankly, what's problematic isn't the play itself, but the categorization, instead.
Art isn't just the work itself, but also the whole of it that we work at and experience. I've always loved a behind-the-scenes visit with the actors and audience.
Now, for conspiracy,
I know not how it tastes; though it be dish'd
For me to try how: all I know of it
Is that Camillo was an honest man;
And why he left your court, the gods themselves,
Wotting no more than I, are ignorant.
LEONTES
You knew of his departure, as you know
What you have underta'en to do in's absence...
As you were past all shame,--
Those of your fact are so--so past all truth:
Which to deny concerns more than avails; for as
Thy brat hath been cast out, like to itself,
No father owning it,--which is, indeed,
More criminal in thee than it,--so thou
Shalt feel our justice, in whose easiest passage
Look for no less than death.
HERMIONE
Sir, spare your threats:
The bug which you would fright me with I seek.
To me can life be no commodity:
The crown and comfort of my life, your favour,
I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,
But know not how it went. My second joy
And first-fruits of my body, from his presence
I am barr'd, like one infectious. My third comfort
Starr'd most unluckily, is from my breast,
The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth,
Haled out to murder: myself on every post
Proclaimed a strumpet: with immodest hatred
The child-bed privilege denied, which 'longs
To women of all fashion; lastly, hurried
Here to this place, i' the open air, before
I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,
Tell me what blessings I have here alive,
That I should fear to die? Therefore proceed.
