Shaking the Shibboleths of Shakespeare

Trish Lindström and Sarah Afful, as a variety of characters

Indeed, Peter Sellars’s production busts many myths that have been built up around the plays of William Shakespeare and how they are best done – myths that Stratford, you would think, has an institutional interest in maintaining.

So this is great news, because any artistic organization that doesn’t allow its shibboleths to be shaken from time to time will atrophy.

Get this: Sellars disperses a condensed text among just four actors, who take on the colorful cast of characters that define this magical, romantic play.

But Sellars’ production is not just a Dream – it’s a dream, and one that follows its own nocturnal logic. If you let it, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Chamber Play does not flatten, but layer – creating a pleasing puzzle that allows audience members familiar with Shakespeare’s text to at once watch a production of the comedy that plays out in their memory, and a brand-new story dramatized before their eyes.

Reference: A Dream fulfilled: You have to see Stratford’s radical rethink of Shakespeare (emphasis, mine).

There may be an economic reason for the truncated cast, and if so, Sellars seems to have done a bang-up job of making it all work.

`Hamlet Set in the Kashmiri Conflict of India

Natalie Portman, as Evey Hammond, in the breathtaking dystopia `V for Vendetta

My father was a writer. You would've liked him. He used to say that artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.

Evey said to V.

Shraddha Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor, as Arsha (Ophelia) and Haider (Hamlet)

[Screenwriter Basharat] Peer said he hoped the film would challenge the narrative constructed by previous mainstream cinema about the Kashmir conflict and give an alternative point of view. 

"Kashmiris have always been portrayed as crazy fanatics or Kashmir simply seen as a picturesque tourist destination. This is a very different view," he said.

Reference: Bollywood Hamlet set in Kashmir likely to cause controversy in India.

Both Peer and Director Vishal Bhardwaj took liberties with `Hamlet, in order to exercise their creative license and tell their story.  I think that's perfectly fine.  More than perfectly fine, `Haider is a tour de force interpretation of a renowned play in English literature and theater.  In so doing, they remind me (us) of that wise bit from Evey about the power of art to tell the truth and the irony of how it does so via imagination.

Modern First Folio Edition of `Macbeth

Lady Macbeth and Macbeth

Players Shakespeare offers us the Modern First Folio Edition of `Macbeth (in PDF), plus plot and production notes which I found intriguing:

A key issue for the director of a modern production of the play is how to re-balance the two halves of the play so they both maintain the audience’s interest. 

Our own approach has been to see the two halves of the play as separate stories. The first half explores the temptation of Macbeth and his wife; their succumbing to that temptation; and their descent into evil and despair. The second half of the play shows the bonding of the opposition to Macbeth into a force that can and does overthrow the evil king. 

For this approach to work, we have to persuade the audience to change focus from Macbeth in the first half, to the liberating forces of Malcolm, Macduff, and Ross. We can encourage the audience to do this with a number of ploys: 

• Play the murder of Lady Macduff and her children as horrifically as possible so the audience are shocked into rejecting Macbeth.
• Follow this up by majoring on Macduff’s suffering when he learns of the murder of his family, which bonds the three men (Malcolm, Macduff, and Ross) to try to overthrow Macbeth. This probably requires some serious cutting of the scene (A4S3), particularly Malcolm’s pretence of being evil, and the discussion of the English king’s ability to cure scrofula
• Play Act 5 with the audience in ‘opposition’ to Macbeth. In a promenade performance of the play, we achieved this by co-opting the audience as members of the English army, complete with pine branches, so they became Birnam wood on its way to Dunsinane. They saw Macbeth‘s scenes in Act 5 from within the English army, and could listen to his exquisite poetry of despair in opposition to him.

Shakespeare employed a character "sea change" in plays, such as this and `Hamlet, too.  The tragic hero slides out for several scenes, then comes back in a wholly changed demeanor.  I hadn't quite viewed `Macbeth as two separate stories.  Instead the play progresses to, and dramatizes, the hell that both husband and wife created.  Shakespeare needed to develop Malcolm et al., as part of this process.

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust knows fun!

(image credit)

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has 44 Things to Discover this Summer, coming up, from July 19th to August 31st.  Dressing up and acting on stage, picking a scene for actors to play, finding hidden characters and more are on a PDF list of activities.  Enjoy!

Which Shakespeare characters speak these lines?

William Shakespeare

Give this quiz a go - Which Shakespeare characters speak these lines?  I did terribly, and apparently need to brush up on my Shakespeare.  It's been ages since I've read a play in its entirety.  Mostly it's excerpts, clips, articles and posts.  While I still have a decent grasp of themes, and a decent recall of broad actions, my precision for actual dialogue or soliloquy is off.

Unpacking `Romeo and Juliet Sonnets (3)

Olivia Hussey as Juliet and Leonard Whiting as Romeo, in Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 production

Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie,
And young affection gapes to be his heir;
That fair for which love groan'd for and would die,
With tender Juliet match'd, is now not fair.
Now Romeo is beloved and loves again,
Alike bewitched by the charm of looks,
But to his foe supposed he must complain,
And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks:
Being held a foe, he may not have access
To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear;
And she as much in love, her means much less
To meet her new-beloved any where:
But passion lends them power, time means, to meet
Tempering extremities with extreme sweet.

Act II, Prologue

1. If you're ever in a literary cocktail party, ask your new friends whom Romeo was pining after, at the start of the play.  Some may not even know that he was in love with anyone else but Juliet.  Actually it was Rosaline, who in an abstracted way Shakespeare refers to as "old desire."
2. How quickly romantic love twists and turns is the import of this opening quatrain.  Unlike the play's opening, this prologue refers to "death-bed" and "die" as inevitable shifts (fickleness) in love.  The language is clever and song-like, for instance, "That fair" and "is now not fair." 
3. Shakespeare introduces the tension, that is, the so-called fly in the ointment, in the second quatrain.  "Alike bewitched" echoes "alike in dignity" from the first prologue, and in so doing reminds us that there is a veritable civil war between their families.
4. It is the inherent conflict of their love affair that "charm of looks" is paired with "fearful hooks" in the rhyme scheme of this second quatrain.  The pair "loves again" and "must complain" is similar, though a bit more demure.
5. Shakespeare builds up that conflict further in the third quatrain, and in powerful poetry tells us that Romeo and Juliet face a rather tough dilemma.  "He may not have access" and "her means much less" speak to a practical roadblock, but "breathe such vows" means it's literally a matter of necessity.  
6. The final, resolving couplet is yet another example of Shakespeare tour de force skills as both poet and playwright.  Love will win the day, and not just love, but extreme love, for the two of them.  "Tempering extremities" may refer their arms and legs, sensuously speaking, but more likely it means the entrenched polarity between the Capulets and Montagues.

So it takes Shakespeare all of Act I, and the beginning of Act II, to lay out those "two hours' traffic of our stage." The beatific romance unfolds, and marches steadily to a tragic denouement.  

Unpacking `Romeo and Juliet Sonnets (2)

Olivia Hussey as Juliet and Leonard Whiting as Romeo, in Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 production

ROMEO

[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET

Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO

O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

ROMEO

Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

JULIET

Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

ROMEO

Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

JULIET

You kiss by the book.

From Act I, scene v

This first meeting between the two star-crossed lovers quietly moved heaven and earth, and I am utterly enthralled with it.  The vast lot of directors seem not to comprehend or appreciate the import of this first meeting, Zeffirelli being the best as the exception.

1. For one, Romeo and Juliet speak in a sonnet to one another.  Let me rephrase that: They create a sonnet together.  In fact, of course, it is Shakespeare who creates that sonnet.  But in so doing, he resorts to his poetic and dramatic prowess to speak to their romantic collision and inevitability
2. It is not easy to write a sonnet.  It took me years to find my stride with it, and then once I did, it came more easily.  In a way, perhaps, this lovers' sonnet suggests that there may have been generations of love before them, but they alone make it as natural and as exalted as a sonnet.
3. In the staging I will do at some point, I have Romeo prowling around the dance floor, eyes dead center in the radar where Juliet is.  In his sly way, he finds a circuitous route to her, and takes her hand.  That's the first quatrain: It's formal and respectful, it's chivalrous and Romantic.
4. Juliet is immediately charmed by him, just as he was immediately taken by her moments before.  She responds with her own poetry, that is, the second quatrain, in which she echoes "hand" and "pilgrim" from Romeo's opening gambit.  
5. Amazingly, though, Juliet doesn't just echo words, but also mirrors the very rhyme he uses "this" and "kiss." Moreover, while he is romanticizing her, she takes it all in stride and sanctifies whatever might be in his mind by referencing saints and the palm-to-palm manner of their kissing.  
6. But, oh, Romeo is a clever, flirtatious boy.  So after the formality and politeness of the first two quatrains, all bets are off.  He knows he's got her, endearingly of course, and maneuvers to play up his scheme to steal a real kiss from her.  
7. Not so fast, though, Juliet seems to say in the third quatrain.  She demures once again, re-invokes the sanctity of saints, and makes another call for him to behave.
8. But Romeo is a persistent boy.  He cleverly installs her as the saint she has been alluding to.  Except that: Just as hands come together for prayer, lips also come together for prayer.  Just as saints grant pilgrims a prayer, still him as a pilgrim - actually his lips - so must Juliet grant him a "prayer."    
9. The final couplet of this sonnet is perfectly created by Romeo and Juliet: Each shares a superb iambic pentameter line, which rhyme beautifully with one another.  The line "Saints do not move" actually begins with a trochaic foot, and the accents literally have to move to fall in iambic step.  
10. Which is such a beautiful irony for what is happening to Juliet: She stops trying to hold him back, and lets him kiss her.  But the little metric move, plus the thematic meaning of "move" (i.e., aroused), all suggest is not at all stationary but is literally and romantically coming around.

The romantic collision between Romeo and Juliet is so heaven- and earth-shaking that a single sonnet cannot quite speak to it.  He manages to steal yet another kiss from her, his flirtation clearly an unrelenting sort.  It takes another quatrain to close what is obviously just the first chapter in their love.