capriuni | Entries tagged with shakespeare

A playlist of 154 short videos, each roughly a minute in length, each nothing but one or two still images with voice-over (really?! that counts as "video?" pffft!)...

Except:

The images are photos of pages from one of the thirteen extant copies the first edition (1609) copy of Shake-speare's Sonnets; this particular volume now residing in the now residing in the British Library. And the voice-over is each sonnet being read aloud.

Dude's reading is a little bland, imnsho. But I still get a little thrill reading along with early seventeenth century poetry, in seventeenth century spelling, and seventeenth century typography, with the lay-out on the page, and all.

Here's the playlist link:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1C16CA27F7D0EF38

I still think sonnet 31:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWhu_wI30Yo&list=PL1C16CA27F7D0EF38&index=31&feature=plpp_video
has ALL THE SAD

( Sonnet 31 )
(Cheer up, Emo!Bard...) Ooh, I just want to hug him into a million tiny pieces ... (don't worry, I wouldn't, really. I might offer him cake).

Sonnet 44:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwM2A7F263Y&list=PL1C16CA27F7D0EF38&index=44&feature=plpp_video
still makes me wonder if Will didn't have the Internet in mind, after all (after all, the Doctor knew him...)

( Sonnet 44 )

I recited Sonnet 130
http://youtu.be/dFlzMqV0EUc
to Audrey, the other day, to illustrate the point how the sonnets are like mini-essays (of the sort we used to learn to write in school: Three paragraphs, each detailing one point in support of your thesis, and than a conclusion, which explains everything you just said: the three quatrains and the couplet). And her comment, when I'd finished, was: "Gee. I hope he had other skills as a lover, besides giving compliments! ha, ha!"

But I dunno: the more I think about it, the more I think 130 is more romantic than the famous: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" one. Because I'm always suspicious of love based on physical beauty (a. Because, yes, beauty fades, and I'd be scared my lover's affections would fade with it, but also, b. as a "monster," I've never fit that beauty script, anyway, and c. every guy who's tried to use that script on me has always turned out to be a sleaze). I'd rather have someone admit that yes, your breath smells bad, but I still love you more than anyone who gargles with perfume three times a day.

( Sonnet 130 )

The closing couplet is the money shot, folks!

(but I'm preaching to the choir, aren't I?)

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/658266.html

So yeah... the other day, I wrote this as a quickie post:

[Quote]
A proposal for a definition of "Geek," which can exist independent of any particular cultural trend (e.g. video-games, comics, or spec. fic):

Noun:

Someone to whom the sentence: "You're over-thinking this," is inherently nonsensical.
[Unquote]

This is the ultimate antithesis of a "quickie post" It has All the Words... But a bunch are under cuts, and I'll understand if you don't actually read them all (though it would be nifty if you read some). Basically, this is where a non-geek would say I'm over-thinking this...

That thought came to me in the middle of watching the newest music video from the YouTube Channel called "Geek and Sundry," which is provided under the cuts below for those who are curious. Go Watch / Read / Whatever. I'll wait 'till you get back.

( I'm the one that's cool -- video behind the cut for NSFW or kids visuals )

( I'm the one that's cool -- Song lyrics for those who can't watch vid, behind the cut for length )

The thing is, I've always considered myself a "geek,"* but I had to Google about two-thirds the cultural references in those lyrics before I understood them. And I really think "geek" is really more about: 1) A general attitude toward the world around you and 2) your favorite ways of solving problems than it ever was about which particular cultural tastes you have.

I mean, take this soliloquy from Hamlet, for example: if these aren't the words of a Geek-type wishing he could be more of a Jock-type, than I don't what is (whether these are words strictly specific to character and situation, or [as I suspect] the author getting a wee bit autobiographical)

( Video of he Soliloquy from the end Act 2, Scene 2 in *Hamlet* as acted by David Tennant )**

( Text of the Soliloquy )

( Here's where I stop quoting and start babbling my own words about everything above -- Starting with *Hamlet* and finishing with why I think 'Geekdom' is MORE than just science, math, computers, and science fiction, but even so, I understand why so many people think Geek=Science ... What do you mean, I'm 'over-thinking this?' )

*or rather, as someone of that personality type -- the year I ~~graduated~~ left high school, (I stayed an extra year after I was qualified to graduate so I could be in the new Advanced Placement History and English classes): 1982, the first definition of "Geek" in the dictionary was still "Someone who bites the heads off chickens," and I was never that.

**There's also a video that compares the performances of both Simm and Tennant, back-to-back, but of the two, David's version comes across to me as more frantically barely-out-of-adolescence in age, in terms of don't-know-what-to-do-with-my-feelings and resulting social awkwardness, so I think of this performance as one of the geekiest ever. Makes it easier to remember that Shakespeare wrote the character to be college student... Or it could just be because of that tee-shirt he's wearing in the scene ;-)

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/656482.html

I'm in the middle of writing a poem cycle in iambic pentameter; each poem is based on the Italian (or "Shakespearean") Sonnet, but is not -- I'm adding a six-line "prologue" to each, to set the scene, so the poems are all 20 lines in total.

But, I have been going back to read Shakespeare's pieces, to purge any lingering earworms, and get my inner metronome in working order. ...And that got me thinking about my changing taste, in having a "favorite."

During my late adolescence (late teens -- early twenties), my favorite was clearly Sonnet 29: that perfect anthem of Clinical Depression:

( When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes... ).

Recently, however, I've rediscovered sonnet #44. Now, that I feel myself surrounded by a circle of friends (love you guys -- you know that, right?), the emotional isolation of that previous favorite rings just a bit less true. However, the fact that I can't actually share tea and cake and hugs still stings to the bone, and I find myself wanting to memorize this sonnet next:

Sonnet 44

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But that, so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend time's leisure with my moan,
Receiving nought by elements so slow
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.

--

I think "But ah! thought kills me that I am not thought" is my new favorite line: that wonderful mix of melancholy and wry humor that I've loved Ol' Will for, all these years.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/649372.html

"They that went on Crutches" (the intersection of Disability and Old Age) (basically, I just expanded yesterday's DreamWidth post where I asked: "Should I include Old Age in discussions of Disability?" 'cause by the time I finished writing that, I realized I should, and, what's more, I could use that passage from The Winter's Tale as my example -- it is, after all, a classic literature text written in the form of a fairy tale. So it fits my blog in all 12 dimensions of known space.

Oh, and according to my Blogger dashboard, Plato's Nightmare / Aesop's Dream passed the 1,500 unique page-view mark sometime yesterday (not including my own checks, to see if anyone has replied).

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/619640.html

Should I include depictions of the Elderly as depictions of Disability, if the symbols of Disability (walks with a crutch or cane, has palsy in the hands or head, etc.) are serving a greater purpose as a symbol for Advanced Age?

For example: in the opening scene of The Winter's Tale there are these lines:

CAMILLO:
I very well agree with you in the hopes of him: it
is a gallant child; one that indeed physics the
subject, makes old hearts fresh: they that went on
crutches ere he was born desire yet their life to
see him a man.

ARCHIDAMUS:
Would they else be content to die?

CAMILLO:
Yes; if there were no other excuse why they should
desire to live.

ARCHIDAMUS
If the king had no son, they would desire to live
on crutches till he had one.
----

I've seen it argued that Shakespeare isn't really talking about the quality of life of "the Disabled," but is simply using "went on crutches" as a short-hand code for "very old," in the same way walkers (walking frames) are used as a gag reference to the elderly by modern comedians.

On the other hand, if part of the bias against the elderly (the reason to poke fun at them) is that they become disabled as they age, doesn't that count as depictions of the Big D "Disability" in folk tales?

And boy-howdy! if I included folktales that specifically mentioned an old woman's cane or crutch, the number of relevant stories would shoot through the roof (O Hai thar, nearly every depiction of fairy tale witches!).

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/619383.html

When did it become The accepted interpretation that Caliban = Native PoC, especially because "Caliban" sounds so much like "Cannibal" that that must be what Shakespeare meant?

I have a sneaking suspicion that that's a relatively modern assumption. But I'm not sure what keywords to use in Googling to verify or dispute that.

Any ideas?

Meanwhile, I'm rereading the last few chapters of Jane Austen's Persuasion, thanks to remembering that Mrs. Smith (nee Hamilton) -- the woman who reveals the truth to our heroine about the true character of her sleazy cousin -- is: "afflicted with a severe rheumatic fever, which, finally settling in her legs, had made her for the present a cripple." which gives me another entry topic for Plato's Nightmare / Aesop's Dream. ... Any afternoon I can spend with Jane Austen is a good afternoon, in my books. And furthermore, I have it as an etext, so I can copy and paste the passages I want to cite, instead of typing them in (*Gives the side-eye to the paperback volume that wouldn't stay open, and had no paragraph breaks on any of its pages*).

So it's all good... or -- mostly good.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/606328.html

Okay, to anyone who isn't me, this will be totally random. But I looked for it, and found it on YouTube, and it cheered me up. So:

According to the info provide with the vid, this was made by the Beeb in 1978; I think it was around 1980 that it first showed up on my television on PBS, one rainy Sunday afternoon. It doesn't hurt that that's a young and saucy Helen Mirren in the part of Rosalind, either.

( The text of the scene )

I love the line: "let us make an honorable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet scrip and scrippage."

The next scene, with cynical Jaques and the lover Orlando, is pretty snarky and fun, too. But this is the scene where I realized: a) I understood Shakespeare, b) Shakespeare was full of sex jokes, and c) I understood the sex jokes. Subversive and heady stuff for a sixteen year old who didn't follow the cultural trends of her high school peers.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/584899.html

I remembered what I wanted to ask, at the end of my previous entry:

When someone says to me, today:

"That Rosalind -- she's a sweet girl. But she's a nut!"

I kinda know what they mean (even if I might ask for clarification: "Nutty: silly or Nutty: scary?")

But is how I understand that anything like how Shakespeare understood that, when he wrote the jester teasing her, thusly:

"The sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
Such a nut is Rosalind!"

Or has the meaning of "nut" shifted, considerably, in the last 400-something years?

Just wondering.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/549784.html

Even with plays I already know well (maybe even more so, then), I always seem to notice different lines and passages each time. I mean I've always known they were there, but sometimes, the significance and nuance just hits me -- like a strobing LED out of the corner of my eye. And Mister Shakespeare often put these little lines of dialog between characters that have nothing to do with advancing the actual plot, but they do form a sort of tongue-in-cheek comment on the way of the world.

Right now, I'm rereading The Winter's Tale (Signet Classic Edition, 1988), and what with all the thinking I've been doing about disability and culture, lately, this little exchange, between a Lord of Bohemia (Camillo) and the visiting Lord of Sicilia (Archidamus) really blinked at me, and got me giggling:

CAMILLO (about the child prince):

ARCHIDAMUS

Would they else be content to die?

CAMILLO

ARCHIDAMUS

Translation:

Camillo: Our prince is so wonderful, his very existance even gives cripples the desire to live!!

Achidamus: Um ... yeah. About that: I think the cripples would find other excuses to keep on living, even without your wonderful prince.

That little exchange serves the plot by hinting at how tightly entertwined the kingdom's fortunes are with the life of one boy. But Shakespeare also uses that oportunity to aim some satire at the whole attitude of pity. That last bit is just cherry topping.

As an aside: Whoever decided which lines should be glossed in this edition should have been hung by their thumbs until they apologized. Of course, I think over-glossing is a near fatal flaw of most editions Shakespeare plays.

To celebrate, here is one of his sonnets. It's a favorite of many (including yours truly)

Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

And what's a birthday party without at least one party game? So I made a word search puzzle based on this little gem. Here it is (url fixed). Print it out, and have fun with it later today, maybe.

I also thought of a "Pin the flower on the jackass mortal" game. But in order to make that work, you'd have to use a lot of computer paper and ink, and was more trouble than it was worth... So you will all have to be content with a simple word-search.

Even as I was listening to this story on Morning Edition, today, I knew I'd be posting a link to it, partly as another excuse to use my new icon ;-)

Shakespeare had roses all wrong -- NPR

The main part of the piece was about how gendered languages (those which assign specific genders of male and female to inanimate objects) effect the way speakers of those languages perceive the objects around them. The primary example cited in the report was the the word "Bridge," which is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish. The experiment was designed to test whether that influenced the way native German and Spanish speakers saw and described photos of a bridge.

It turns out that it does, in fact.

(Does this result surprise any readers of this journal? It certainly does not surprise me in the least).

The second half of the report talked about an experiment where the same professor and her students tested Shakespeare's assertion* that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

They took two identical roses and put them in two identical paper bags.

They wrote "Rose" on one of the bags, and "Mowed Grass" on the other.

Then, they asked people to sniff the bags (without looking inside).

And, finally, they asked people to decide which bag smelled sweeter.

With only the actual scents and the visible names to help guide them, most people chose the bag labeled "Rose" as smelling sweeter.

Well....

Here's the comment I left on NPR's webpage for the story:

leading someone to believe that a rose is not a rose, is quite different than "calling a rose by any other name."

If, instead, someone had learned, from birth, that "mowed grass" meant the flower with thorny stems, and "rose" meant the green flat yard in front of a house, they might pick "mowed grass" as smelling sweeter. And *that's* the argument I think Shakespeare was trying to present.

I might also have picked "mowed grass" as being sweeter. I prefer that scent to those of roses, anyway.

If I'd been designing the experiment, I would have splurged and bought seven identical roses, one sprig of lavender, and eight identical paper bags.

I would put one rose each in the first two bags, and leave them completely unmarked, as the control.

I would do the same with the second and third roses, but I would put "rose" on only one bag, and leave the second one blank.

For the third pair of bags, I would invent two completly new names, but with contrasting sounds -- maybe I'd label one "Lajooya" and the other "Tokexquot" (soft vs. hard).

And for the final pair of bags, I would put lavender in one, and a rose in the other, and label them both "Rose"

What do you think? Does this sound like a reasonable experiment?

*Regarding "Shakespeare's assertion"-- Just because he strung those words together in that order doesn't mean that he, as a married man in his 30s (?), believed that. All we can say is that he thought it was something a twelve-year old girl, caught up in the hormonal rush of first love, might say.

So, since it had been quiet for over a week, I went ahead and made that post about Geordi La Forge in starbase_idic. I was originally going to post about how invisible his disability was, in terms of relevance, and how this is an extension of the Christain trope: "When the Kingdom of God is on Earth, the lame shall walk, the blind shall see, the deaf shall hear, and the lepers shall be made whole," especially since, in the Trek universe, the Future is Closer to Paradise than we are.

Then, I read his "Official Bio Page" on StarTrek.com, and realized that the invisible blindness was only the tip of the Iceberg of Fail, regarding Geordi La Forge. So the post kind of went in a different direction.

Had a weird dream this morning (when does anyone have a perfectly logical dream, anyway?), right before I woke up. In the dream, I came to consciousness in a hospital ward and the doctor congratulated me because I'd just given birth to a beautiful baby daughter, and that she was in another room, down the hall with the nurse/aide/wetnurse who was helping to take care of her, because I was not lactating. Then followed the usual wandering-down-the-maze-of-identical-corridors and getting lost as I tried to find my daughter.

Meanwhile, I was really confused, because I couldn't remember ever actually having sex in the last nine months (much less with whom), so how the hell did I get pregnant? When I finally found the room with my baby and my aide (who was, naturally [/sarcasm], a tall, willowy, athletic blonde), I discovered that the baby was at least already three months old, so maybe the reason I had absolutely no memory of the father was because my daughter had been in the womb longer than nine months, and my memory doesn't go back that far. So I studied the palms of my daughter's hands, to see if she'd inherited any line patterns different from mine that might remind me who the father was, so I could try to contact him.

I've given up trying to write a Christmas novel for my New Year's resolution, by the way. My heart and my ethics are no longer in it, since the author is now an atheist by virtue of disbelief, and at least one person on the gift list is an atheist by virtue of Hating God with a Passion. So Santa Claus story just seems to be made of wrong, somehow. I've not given up entirely on the idea of writing a book as a gift for the family, though. But I'm still flailing about trying to think of a substitute idea.

Instead of getting the exciting finale (Episode Six) of Seeds of Doom, last night, my PBS station aired Episode Five again. I hope we get episode six next week.

There are random moments when I want to write an LJ post gushing and squeeing about how The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's Greatest Plays, and how horrid it is that so many literary critics pan it as one of his worst. But then, I'm stuck because hardly anyone knows the play (because it's been panned by "experts," so it doesn't get taught or performed very often). So I get stuck wondering how much I can gush or squee without Spoilering it to High Heav'n. So it keeps rattling around in my head, and I never post it.

1) This icon is by

angevin2, who made it from the the cover art for the newest Penguin edition of The Winter's Tale (the post with all of the icons she made for this set [along with a key to the titles] is here). Now that I know there is a new edition of this play, I may buy it -- it's so much more fun reading single-volume plays than it is to try and haul out the Complete Works tome, trying to hold it on your lap, failing, and dropping it on your foot... I'm just saying.

Shakespeare's Wife

really

all

I'd

Anne

known

The Winter's Tale

happy

The Winter's Tale

4) On Sunday Night, I heard a loud boom. It shook my windows and the floor of my house, a bit. I thought it was one of my neighbors, doing a project outside, and maybe dropping a heavy piece of metal machinery into the bed of a truck. It turns out that it might have been Russian Space Junk.

3) YES, I KNOW I AM POSTING OUT OF ORDER. I'm feeling very surreal and non-linear today.

2) I have been slow to work up my summaries of Frontiers of Justice, and for that, I appologize to the people on that filter.

In the meantime, I want you all to think about this point, brought up by someone who's in the

gimp_vent community (who shall remain anonymous, because s/he is currently trying to outwit the insurance company), but I'm deciding to pass on this information and related thought, because there needs to be a change. And change will not happen until there is a massive shift in public consciousness. And there will be no shift in consciousness as long as the people who bear the brunt of these policies only talk about them in private.

( cut for length, RAGE-inducing triggers, and the resulting obscenity )

5) One reason I love watching the new educational programs on TV for learning how to read is that, every few years, there are new methods for teaching reading and understanding language, so that, every few years, I get a chance to look at words that I've come to take for granted in a new light, and notice again just how nifty they are. When I was in first grade (six years old), I was only told that "Y" had a bunch of different sounds, and it's so complicated that the only thing we could do is learn certain words by rote and drill.

Last night on The Electric Company there was a bit about the letter y, and it was pointed out that:

When y is the vowel at the end of a one-syllable word, it makes the "I" sound.

It makes the "EE" sound when it's at the end of two- (or more) syllable words

It makes the "ih" sound in the middle of words

and it makes the "yuh" sound only at the beginning of words.

Well, yeah. I thought that syllable pattern was nifty. Give it a try, yourself.

(of course, "gynocology" breaks a couple of Y's "rules". But that's Greek for you).

Shakespeare:*

CLAUDIO

(Much Ado About Nothing Act V, scene i)

I read MAAN after leaving college, because it was one that I had not read in the course of my academic studies. These lines (this line?) struck me even in small print from the page, and I knew I had to see the play acted out (This was years before KB's film adaptation... unfortunately, it was also a line he cut from his version)

I offer it up, with a virtual *HUG*, to all my friends who are feeling the weight of care, right now.

*I was going to do the Blackadder meme, except I'm not familiar enough with that series yet to quote from memory. And none of the lines I found on online archives, yesterday, struck me as particularly funny... They're far funnier in delivery than in print. So I was pleased when

angevin2 posted this version, instead.

[ETA: **Yes, I know I've mixed plural and singular pronouns in a single sentance, but I'm never sure which is more proper in writing an LJ post. Is it more like standing on a soapbox in the park, and proclaiming? Or is it a sort of missive sent to one person, sitting at her or his desk, in private?

Really, it's sort of both, isn't it?]

It all started when

alto2 infected me with this meme:

( Which Shakespeare Play are You? )

"Well, 'one of the Problem Plays' is all right," thought I, "as long as that includes The Winter's Tale. I quite like The Winter's Tale; All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure, not quite as much." (I mean, they're both fine plays, as thought-provoking dramas go, but I wouldn't like to have the personality of either).

So then, I hopped over to Wikipedia, just to see what someone(s) said about that ("Some" include The Winter's Tale in that group of plays, but it's not unanimous).

Then, from the article on Problem Plays, I hopped over to the Winter's Tale article. And down toward the bottom, in the section on notable productions, was this sentence: "In 1980, David Jones (director), former Associate Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company chose to launch his new theatre company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with The Winter's Tale starring Brian Murray supported by Jones' new company at BAM.[5]". And the more I think about it, the more certain I am that I was in the audience for one of those performances. That was the year I was 16, and that would have been the year I was in tenth grade, when Don Fried was my English teacher, and had us studying Shakespeare. We weren't reading Winter's Tale for class, but he thought it important that we see Shakespeare acted, live, and if we did, we'd understand it (mostly), so we had a field trip into The City to see a Matinee. And I am pretty sure it was at the BAM.

Anyway, that got me all squeeful, remembering sitting in the audience, and thinking about how The Winter's Tale needs more defending, especially against the charge that Shakespeare didn't change much at all from his main source, except for a few changes in the names, and a few new characters.

So, now, I've got it into my head to read the entire source novel for the play (Pandosto, by Robert Greene) -- 20,000 or so words of 1595 English, with efs for esses, and all, so I can be sure of my points -- for no other reason than research for an LJ post. See what I mean?

I'm mad. A real Jennet!

Hee-Haw!

There is, at the local Chrysler Museum, in Norfolk, a sculptural homage to Hamlet. It's eleven and a half feet tall, and is made up of thirteen old-fashioned-looking video screens that show fraction-of-a-second, silent, clips of filmed productions of the play (some from the movies, some from stageplays) that have been shuffled and randomized by computer, interspersed with photos of "Hamlet's Castle" in Denmark (It's not really. But it's still medieval and spooky, and it's nice to claim so, for the tourists).

Here is a photo of the piece (though, as you can imagine, a still photo doesn't do it justice).

It's featured in one of those between-the-shows fillers during the hours of children's programming on my local PBS station, that speculates on what he gets up to after the museum closes ("Does he call his friends on the telephone? Does he order a pizza?"), and talking about the allure of watching all those changing screens and falling into a hypnotic trance. And to break the spell, you must blink your eyes three times, and say: "I am!"

I was looking forward to being entranced by it, when I went to the museum as a birthday treat, back in January (there's a friends-locked post about it, January 24th), but I never really got the chance. First, there was my aide's discomfort around modern art, rising off her like a sort of invisible steam, that was pressuring me to hurry up. Second, was the museum's own arrangement of the art. Poor Hamlet Robot was crowded together with many, many other pieces, and the only unifying theme among them was that they were "modern." The other pieces don't show in the photo; either they deliberately cleared the walls before the photo was taken, or the photo was taken before the other pieces were acquired.

The galleries dedicated to 19th Century, and earlier, art are given a lot more space; the galleries dedicated to glass are given the entire first floor. That is what you get, I suppose, when a museum's collection is founded on the tastes of one or two influencial and wealthy people.

Maybe I'll get another chance to hang out with Hamlet with some friends who are a combination of technology/computer geeks and Shakespeare geeks, and modern art geeks.

Anyway:

Here is the museum's own webpage dedicated to the sculpture: Hamlet Robot: 1996.

I don't so much mind their discussion of the artist's ongoing themes, his biography, and how this one piece fits in with all his other pieces. But I feel my hackles rise when they describe how "the viewer" reacts to the piece, as if all people who stand before it are exactly the same. I mean -- really! Doesn't that kind of go against the whole point of art?!

You all may think this a bore and spam. But really, Shakespeare, dead white dude that he is, is perhaps the closest thing to a hero that I have, behind my Mother, Father and Elenor Roosevelt, and... Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Junior, and... No... I think that's it. Anyway, he's definitely up there in the list of people who make my heart strings thrum a bit, and bring a lump to my throat.

Whatever Shakespeare's genius as a playwright and poet, I am often struck by the real reason we study his words in high school, and not those of his contemporaries, so much: His works got collected and printed and sold, so we can just get our hands on Shakespeare's plays.

And the reason his plays got printed? Two actors in his company, John Hemminge and Henry Condell, got the patronage for the plays to be printed, and did the work of editing them together into the single volume, by which the authenticity of all of Shakespeare's work is now judged by scholars.

They'd worked for and with him for years, interpreting the characters he'd written, rehearsing the plays, and suffering the drunken royals during the Christmas season, with him. And they wanted to make sure he was remembered through the centuries. This is a bit of what they wrote in their dedication to William, Earl of Pembroke (etc.) and Philip, Earl of Montgomery (etc.):
We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, to procure his Orphanes, Guardians; without ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame: onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend, & Fellow alive, as was our SHAKESPEARE, by humble offer of his playes, to your most noble patronage.

And this is a bit of what they wrote in the introduction addressed to the general public:
It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have bene wished, that the Author himselfe had liv'd to have set forth, and overseen his owne writings ; But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to have collected & publish'd them
[...]

We have no similiar folios of George Chapman, or John Fletcher or Francis Beaumont. Hemminge's and Condell's "office of care and pain" was more than something expected of them, out of some politeness to the dead. Shakespeare, at least to them, was a great a friend as a writer. And that, in my not-so humble opinion, should count for at least 4/5ths of his miraculous genius.

This may be of interest to

pedanther, especially (et alia).

Continuing our brief chat here, regarding the Shakespeare marriage.

A blog entry on what we can, and cannot, actually know about the whole affair, including a brief speculation on the meaning of Sonnet 145:

Those lips that Love's own hand did make
Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate'
To me that languish'd for her sake;
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was used in giving gentle doom,
And taught it thus anew to greet:
'I hate' she alter'd with an end,
That follow'd it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From heaven to hell is flown away;
'I hate' from hate away she threw,
And saved my life, saying 'not you.'

Michael Wood, in his biography, Shakespeare: the book based on the TV documentary series "In Search of Shakespeare" (or maybe the TV show was based on the book; I have a feeling they were written together), speculates that this sonnet was perhaps the first one William wrote. He further speculates that William wrote it on the occassion of his wedding, noting that "Hathaway" and "hate away" were a homonyms, in his accent, and the last line sounds an awful lot like "Anne saved my life...".

Assuming for the moment that that speculation is correct (and acknowledging that it is a big assumption), and putting on my "Decoding Literature Hat," I would make the following points in the essay I'd hand into the teacher:

The sonnets, unlike his plays, were written in the first person, in his own voice, as opposed to the voice of another character, created to further the plot of a drama. Therefore the sonnets are the closest thing we have to Shakespeare's autobiography (and in the polished draft of my essay, I would cite specific sonnets and show their likely correlation with contemporary events in the historical record, such as King James I's Corronation).

This sonnet is a lot rougher in form and language than the other sonnets in the collection (the "turn" in the poem happens at line 5, instead of line 9, as is traditional in sonnets, for example), which is one reason why some scholars, in the past, didn't even believe it was written by Shakespeare at all. But this could also simply be one of Shakespeare's earliest poems-- if, in fact, it was written for his wedding, he would have been 18; how many teenaged young men do you know who write as well or as smoothly as they will in their 30s? That, and the pun on Hathaway (and without the pun to support it, line 13 is very clunky), supports the idea that this was, in fact, his "wedding poem."

So, what given all that, what is it that Young Willm. Shakespeare is saying about his own relationship to Anne?

That he is accustomed to hearing her say sweet things to him:
"...that tongue that ever sweet/Was used in giving gentle doom"

That he was deeply in love with her, and perhaps desperate to have her love him back:
"To me that languish'd for her sake;"
That, at least on the one occassion addressed in this verse, she was smack dab in the middle of spitting out: "I hate you!" when she saw the look in his face, took pity on him, and checked herself, mid-sentence, and what she said instead was: "I hate ... not you." And for that, he is eternally grateful to her.

What we cannot know from this poem, is whether that "I hate--" was spurred on by a real resentment that lingered through the years, or just an outburst of anger in the heat of an argument, and not really meant, or even if it was a made-up scene, just so he could end on the pun "hate away" (though, given the specificity of the scene, I find that least likely). In any case, it's hard to say, based on the evidence of this poem, that their relationship was cold, or without passion, at least at the time of their wedding...

I may do a post a bit later, illustrating how Shakespeare shows a deepening respect for his female characters, throughout his dramatic carreer... Which, imnsho, would not have happened if William did not respect the real women at the center of his life: his wife and daughters (and mother and mistress).

I love writing Shakespearean sonnets.

The iambic pentameter (de-Dum, de-Dum, de-Dum, de-Dum, de-Dum) and the rhyme scheme (ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG) are like the edge pieces and colored middle pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, respectively. It's easy for the ear to catch that rhythm, and pick the right words out of the thousands in our everyday English vocabulary. The rhyme scheme is like the colors on the pieces, so I can sort out the sky from the grass, from the red brick farmhouse in the background.

This lets my brain compose the poem while I'm tootling around doing laundry, or sorting bills. And then, an hour or so later, thanks to the fact that I can count the by the fingers on one hand, I can recall the exact words I'd chosen, using only the basic gist of each quatrain as a mnemonic; this also makes it easier to memorise, when it comes time to recite it on stage.

It's also nice that the dictionary definition of guilt:

To be responsible for an offense

Is a perfect line of iambic pentameter.

Now, I just have to find the right word (with the right accents) to rhyme with offense ("innocence" is close, but it's a dactyl, not an iamb).

If I could end a line on "clench," that might be a close enough near-rhyme...

Hm.

In the meantime, here is one of my favorite Shakespearean sonnets by Shakespeare, for your amusement:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

(Will was in love with a woman of color (back in the time when olive skin was considered "color")! And she was a "big-boned gal"! In short, Gwyneth Paltrow woefully miscast! Woefully, I say!)

Profile

Ann

May 2013

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

I found a playlist, which I would consider mediocre, as videos go, but for the geek appeal
More Geeking Out Over the Word "Geek" (video- and word-heavy, but those are behind cuts)
Favorites of Shakespeare sonnets, then and now:
My latest *Plato's Nightmare" post is now up:
One Question for my Disability in Folklore Blog
Crowd-sourcing question: Shakespeare Lit-Crit --
This -- This is the exact scene that made me fall in love with Shakespeare!
Semi-Gip... deleted and redid my previous default... Also:
God, I love rereading Shakespeare.
It's Shakespeare's Birthday!
Well, maybe. But I would have designed the experiment differently
Random post is random:
Various and Sundry, including a G.I.P of an icon *Not* by me:
When you see this in thy journal, quote...**
I should go shake my ears, shouldn't I?
More Hamlet, sort of... but mostly, an art (museum) critique...
Yet another posting in honor of Shakespeare's birth/deathday.
"Willie and Annie, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G"
More musings on my Art Garden sonnet on the subject of "Guilt"

Active Entries

Style Credit

Style:: timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated May. 21st, 2013 11:25 pm

Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

The songs that are stuck in my head

Entries tagged with shakespeare

I found a playlist, which I would consider mediocre, as videos go, but for the geek appeal

More Geeking Out Over the Word "Geek" (video- and word-heavy, but those are behind cuts)

Favorites of Shakespeare sonnets, then and now:

My latest *Plato's Nightmare" post is now up:

One Question for my Disability in Folklore Blog

Crowd-sourcing question: Shakespeare Lit-Crit --

This -- This is the exact scene that made me fall in love with Shakespeare!

Semi-Gip... deleted and redid my previous default... Also:

God, I love rereading Shakespeare.

It's Shakespeare's Birthday!

Well, maybe. But I would have designed the experiment differently

Random post is random:

Various and Sundry, including a G.I.P of an icon Not by me:

When you see this in thy journal, quote...**

I should go shake my ears, shouldn't I?

More Hamlet, sort of... but mostly, an art (museum) critique...

Yet another posting in honor of Shakespeare's birth/deathday.

"Willie and Annie, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G"

More musings on my Art Garden sonnet on the subject of "Guilt"