The Many Faces of Nick Bottom

Scott Wentworth, as Nick Bottom

Kevin Klein, as Bottom, The Weaver

James Cagney, turned ass

Nick Bottom, The Weaver, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" may be annoying to his fellow actors, but his character must be one of the most winsome personalities in Shakespeare.  He is so enthused about performing at the royal court, that he wants to play every single part.  In fact, he steps on Peter Quince's toes frequently, because he is keen as well to direct the show.  Turned into an ass, he is even more a belly full of laughs.  It is Shakespeare at his comedic best.

Shakespeare as Playwright, not Wordsmith

William Shakespeare

Rachael Scarborough King sets the literary record straight:  Coined by Shakespeare? Think again.

New research indicates he didn’t make up all those words - he just used them better.

One effect of digital research in the humanities, it seems, could be to reframe the debate over what makes writers such as Shakespeare so original. By dissolving the myth that his great contribution was to invent English words out of thin air, we are left with a clearer focus on qualities of his work that are less reducible to numbers: namely, the beauty of his writing and the richness of his cultural milieu.

Thankfully, I was delighted by, but didn't concern myself much with, all these new English words Shakespeare was thought to have originated. I just marveled and reveled in his plays!

Will(iam) the Real Shakespeare Please Stand Up?

Cobbe Portait, compelling albeit controversial

Shakespearean scholar Stanley Wells posed proudly with this portrait in March 2009, which after three years of research, some experts apparently deemed to be a genuine rendering of Shakespeare's likeness (i.e., a live portrait).

Professor Stanley Wells

Not so fast, of course.  Other scholars are wont to be skeptical, as the New York Times reported.

David Scott Kastan, a Yale Shakespeare expert, said by telephone that there were reasons to question the Cobbe portrait’s provenance - it was in fact once owned by the Earl of Southampton or commissioned by him, as the trust representatives believe - to doubt whether the richly dressed man in the portrait was Shakespeare. 

“If I had to bet I would say it’s not Shakespeare,” Mr. Kastan said. But even if it was, he said, the traditions of Elizabethan portraiture meant that it would be unwise to conclude that Shakespeare actually looked like the figure depicted in the portrait. “It might be a portrait of Shakespeare, but not a likeness, because the conventions of portraiture at the time were often to idealize the subject,” he said.

Kastan makes a good point.  Rembrandt, the Dutch master, painted in the decades soon after Shakespeare's death, and built his artistic reputation on painting the newly wealthy merchants of Amsterdam.  For the sake of posterity, I imagine, he was expected to render, and no doubt did render, a flattering (i.e., idealized) portrait of his proud subjects.  Indeed the Cobbe Shakespeare is princely handsome and young and suffused with the wealth that, according to Wells, came from the wider success Shakespeare garnered in his later years.

From what little was reported of the research of this portrait, the evidence established that the wood and paint were from Shakespeare's time (i.e., late 1500s and early 1600s).  But I don't know if the evidence suggested that the man in the portrait was in fact Shakespeare.

Chandos portrait, considered to be his likeness

It was Tarnya Cooper, of the National Portrait Gallery, who concluded that the Chandos portrait was authentic after her own three-and-a-year research.

Droeshout engraving, on the First Folio

Janssen portrait, at the Folger Shakespeare Library

You see, the Janssen portrait and the Droeshout engraving bear a much more striking resemblance to the Cobbe portrait, than does the the Droeshout engraving to the Chandos portrait.  This may not mean much, if artists were working off of the same portrait.  But one question is, How wealthy was Shakespeare at different stages in his life?  Another one is, Even if he weren't actually wealthy at all, did any of his patrons, formal or informal, have a stake in portraying him as wealthy?  

References

Art Collector Finds The "Real" Shakespeare

Portrait of Shakespeare Unveiled, 399 Years Late

Is This a Shakespeare Which I See Before Me?

Drawn to Shakespeare for Centuries

(image credit)

More than 400 years on, why do audiences and readers the world over still seem drawn to Shakespeare?  In her book, Susannah Carson assembled a host of luminaries in drama and academia to speak to this:

We hear from James Earl Jones on reclaiming Othello as a tragic hero, Julie Taymor on turning Prospero into Prospera, Camille Paglia on teaching the plays to actors, F. Murray Abraham on gaining an audience’s sympathy for Shylock, Sir Ben Kingsley on communicating Shakespeare’s ideas through performance, Germaine Greer on the playwright’s home life, Dame Harriet Walter on the complexity of his heroines, Brian Cox on social conflict in his time and ours, Jane Smiley on transposing "King Lear" to Iowa in "A Thousand Acres," and Sir Antony Sher on feeling at home in Shakespeare’s language. Together these essays provide a fresh appreciation of Shakespeare’s works as a living legacy to be read, seen, performed, adapted, revised, wrestled with, and embraced by creative professionals and lay enthusiasts alike.

Shakespeare understood human nature like no other.  I studied psychology thoroughly for my undergraduate and graduate work, and my mates and I learned boatloads from the giants in the field - BF Skinner, Carl Rogers and Sigmund Freud, among many.  But Shakespeare predated them all by centuries with his knowledge and wisdom.

• We learn about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in "Macbeth," and the radically different impact it had on the murderous Scottish King and her unsex-me-now Lady Macbeth.  
• We learn about grief in its breathtaking, tragic complexity in "Hamlet," from the ghostly visitations, to the Oedipal Complex, to the nihilistic denouement.
• We learn about the fantasy-riddled world of an aging mind, in the Romance Plays such as "The Tempest," no less about Prospero than about Shakespeare himself in the twilight of his life.

This, in the end, is what Shakespeare Talks! is all about:  drawing modern day lessons for all of us.  

Musical Staging is no Labour's Lost

It seems so easy: take a play with engaging characters whose motivations and contradictions are quickly comprehensible. Add a gifted composer and an incredibly talented director who also writes delicious dialogue. Add to this a group of performers, mostly quite young, who are so versatile and likable that we audience members instantly love them and want them to do well. Then add production values that are solid and professional but do not scream “Concept!” Blend well, rehearse for a few weeks, and then—presto!—you have a magical night of musical theater.

Such was the case with Love’s Labour’s Lost, the early Shakespeare play that has been transformed into a musical enchantment presented by the Public Theater as part of its annual summer season at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The show only runs through Sunday [which is tomorrow] but merits another life in an indoor space. It won’t have quite the sense of idyll that a beautiful night in the park provides, but that will be compensated for by the intimacy that a theater can offer.

So writes Fred Plotkin in Shakespeare, Musical Muse.  I enjoyed his writing thoroughly, not only for the unapologetic passion he experienced from this musical staging of "Love's Labour's Lost," but also for the context and background he offered on Shakespeare-cum-opera.

Shakespeare’s plays, with their gorgeous language, are not always congenial for musical adaptation. The music of the words sometimes overwhelms the music itself. The text also asks the performers to not only sing well but recite the words in meaningful ways. The words also pose challenges for composers whose melodies are forced to conform to (or go against) the meter of the original Shakespearean text.

And yet, the stories and characters in Shakespeare are among the most suitable of all for adapting to musical theater because they are so vivid and, yes, human. To me, the best musical adaptations of Shakespeare plays are the ones that draw from the essences of the characters and the strong points of the dramatic plotting to create a new work. Think of how "Romeo and Juliet" became a wonderful template for "West Side Story," even though Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim did not slavishly imitate the Shakespeare play. I think this worked at least as well as Bellini’s "I Capuleti e i Montecchi" and Gounod’s "Roméo et Juliette."

Below was a sneak peek of the performers singing pieces from the musical.  They were very much still in rehearsal, back in May, but I love their public display of it.  The age of social media makes it such a curiosity and delight to have this behind-the-scenes look.  Clearly the performers enjoyed what they did and even how the audience teased them.

Finally, it's been such a long time since I read "Love's Labour's Lost."  It wasn't part of the curriculum for any of my Shakespeare classes at Northwestern University.  I read it on the side, so it didn't have the kind of thorough study I had with "Hamlet" or "The Tempest."  I therefore appreciate this audiobook of the entire play, plus the synopsis, on YouTube.

The play opens with the King of Navarre and three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, taking an oath to devote themselves to three years of study, promising not to give in to the company of women -- Berowne somewhat more hesitantly than the others. Berowne reminds the king that the princess and her three ladies are coming to the kingdom and it would be suicidal for the King to agree to this law. The King denies what Berowne says, insisting that the ladies make their camp in the field outside of his court. The King and his men meet the princess and her ladies. Instantly, they all fall comically in love. 

The main story is assisted by many other humorous sub-plots. A rather heavily-accented Spanish swordsman, Don Adriano de Armado, tries and fails to woo a country wench, Jaquenetta, helped by Moth, his page, and rivalled by Costard, a country idiot. We are also introduced to two scholars, Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel, and we see them converse with each other in schoolboy Latin. In the final act, the comic characters perform a play to entertain the nobles, an idea conceived by Holofernes, where they represent the Nine Worthies. The four Lords -- as well as the Ladies' courtier Boyet -- mock the play, and Armado and Costard almost come to blows. 

At the end of this 'play' within the play, there is a bitter twist in the story. News arrives that the Princess's father has died and she must leave to take the throne. The king and his nobles swear to remain faithful to their ladies, but the ladies, unconvinced that their love is that strong, claim that the men must wait a whole year and a day to prove what they say is true. This is an unusual ending for Shakespeare and Elizabethan comedy. A play mentioned by Francis Meres, Love's Labour's Won, is believed by some to be a sequel to this play.

Visit to the Folger Shakespeare Library

distinguished, immortal

$5 million text I'd love to own

How You Ought To hold your Pen

Henry Clay Folger (1857-1930)

A Rose by any Other Name

would smell as sweet

would [sound] as sweet

would [look] as sweet

would [taste] as sweet

would [feel] as sweet

Juliet:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.