AV Club

Quick Note on the Final Project: I've been listening to a number of audio representations of Hamlet.  I've been looking at cut versions of Hamlet. There's not much online, but I'm trying to track down my script from when I was involved in a short production. I'm going to try to have some audio samples up on Friday, if I can figure out how Garage Band actually works.

Now, on to King Lear:

Edmund has been quite the hot topic lately, and I love it. He's such a deliciously complex character. Lear is a senile old bag, as well as kind of a jerk. In fact, I think that Lear is one of the worst literary parents I've ever read. If the majority of his kids grew up to be mean, selfish twits, it's probably because the he messed up somewhere. Gloucester is better, but not by much. He picked and chose which of his children to give affection to. However, his poor parenting gave rise to this amazing character. (Amazing from a literary standpoint. I wouldn't want to have lunch with him.)  I feel like I can relate to him more so than any other Shakespearean character we've read. I mean, he does some horrible things, and I know he's supposed to be the villain, but I find him incredibly sympathetic. I'd like to share his speech from Act I:


Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!


I love this speech. This speech is a banner for people who feel unwanted or disliked to rally around. I feel like everyone in the world can relate to this at some point in their lives. We all get rejected by people we want to love us. We all try to find legitimacy in who we are. Edmund claimss that he is a more legitimate son than Edgar, because there was love and passion present when Edmund was conceived. Edgar was the product of a passionless, but legal, marriage. Then there's this idea of custom. People do horrible, horrible things in the name of custom. Edmund was cast off and reviled from childhood because of custom. I say: Shame on everyone.

I hate the idea that some people deserve less than others because of factors they cannot control. I mean, in the 16th Century, there was this idea of divine right. Kings were kings because God appointed them to be so. There was the idea that you were born into the role that God appointed to you. I hate that idea. I think it's awful. Kids deserve to be loved by their parents, period the end. Gloucester might not have been an inherently bad guy, but he was not the ideal parent.

I tend to think that Lear was a terrible father. I mean, two of his three children turned out to be horrible, and one of them he banished for not sufficiently kissing up. I feel like good parents can turn out a bad seed or two, but if two out of three children grew up to be jerks (and the third is a boring Christ archetype introduced for the sake of the plot), it's probably because of less-than-satisfactory parenting.

Intro To King Lear

I completely forgot about needing to blog today. Usually I try to write my posts the night before, but I was so excited about my last post (of which there will be more similar posts), that I forgot.

King Lear. I have not had the best of experiences with King Lear. I once saw a live production of King Lear in Cedar City. My mom and I had driven up from Phoenix, which is about an eight hour drive. That part was fine. I like roadtrips and my mom and I have gone on several together throughout the course of my time living with her. We saw several other plays before we saw King Lear (my favorite being Bernard Shaw's Candida. Love the Shaw).

Anyway. King Lear. It was in an amphitheater, which, under normal circumstances is fine. Unfortunately, in this case it was raining pretty heavily. It was also extremely cold. I also had to pee really, really badly, and I couldn't go anywhere until intermission, which they saved until after Act III. It. Was. Awful. But almost none of my bad experiences were the fault of the production. The actors were fine, as I recall. Lear was suitably senile, which is a quality I like in my Lears. I mean, he does so many asinine things throughout the course of the play that it's hard for me to imagine him not completely senile. He's like somebody's great-grandpa who isn't allowed to drive or use the toilet by himself, but for some reason, he's been tasked with running a kingdom. Questions all around.

Costumes, Costumes, Costumes

One of the things Professor Burton and I talked about in my self-assessment was finding more ways to explore Shakespeare creatively. Fun fact about me, I would love to move to LA right now and be a costume designer for a television show. Costume design, as you know, is really dictated by the needs of a production - you can't just walk into Neiman Marcus and buy six Nazi uniforms off the rack. So, for period costumes, or alternate world costumes, you have two choices: go to a costume house (and the quality can vary greatly), or design and make the costumes yourself. For modern productions, the costume designer will often go out and purchase a bunch of individual pieces of clothing to turn into outfits. Especially on TV (in movies as well, but not as consistently), characters often have signature pieces that they wear over and over again. Buffy had a necklace and Spike had his duster. Rick Castle has purple shirts. Detective Stabler has sleeveless undershirts. These are constant motifs that the costume designer chooses to include to say something about the character.

What am I getting at with this? Two things. One, I would like to be a costume designer, so if anyone knows anyone, let me know. Secondly, I've taken the initiative to design some costumes for some dream productions. I've put together costumes for The Winter's Tale, and for The Taming of the Shrew. I only did two key characters from each (I'm not made of time and no one is paying me for this - YET), but if you guys will bear with me, I'll walk you through the concepts for each show. This is kind of long (AGAIN), so I'm sorry, but I think it's at least one of my more interesting posts. Oh, and I should mention, these are my dream productions where I have no budgetary constraints whatsoever.

If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

For my individual play, I'm reading The Taming of the Shrew. I'm pretty excited, if only because it inspired one of my favorite movies of all time.

The Plot: A Paduan lord, Baptista, decrees that his younger, more attractive, more likable, more airheaded daughter Bianca cannot get married to one of her many suitors until her older, angrier, presumably less-attractive, but also less airheaded daughter Katherina gets married. Unfortunately, no one wants to marry her. Some Italian guy named Petruchio comes to town and is immediately recruited by not one, but two of Bianca's suitors to please, for the love of God, take Katherina off the market. Naturally, hilarity and possible gender discrimination ensue.

My question for the duration of the play, and upon which I will be focusing: The Taming of the Shrew is incredibly sexist. True or False?

Now, as of this moment, I think the answer is very obviously and overwhelmingly true. However, I've already had one discussion about it with someone who disagrees (and a female someone, no less), so I will try to consider both sides of the argument.

I'm seriously considering hosting a viewing party for two fantastic film adaptations. One stars the lovely and glamorous Elizabeth Taylor (I still get sad when I remember she's dead), and the other, the somewhat forgettable Julia Stiles. I think that Julia Stiles is so basic, and I don't understand why she was cast in not one, but TWO Shakespearean adaptations. But I digress.

I expect that we'll be dealing with themes of power, namely, who holds the power in a romantic relationship and why it's important, as well as themes of love. Based on what I know at this point, I have a hard time believing that the relationship between Katherina and Petruchio could be legitimate or long-lasting. As I delve deeper into the characters, I hope to find out.

I'm very excited to look at this from a performance perspective as well. I plan on utilizing the book Speak the Speech!, a book of Shakespearean monologues put in context of the events of the play and possible character motivation. I feel I will be able to easily identify with Katherina, but I question how well I'll be able to understand Bianca or most (if not all) of the male characters. 

I See How This Is Going

I'll be honest. I'm having trouble deciding what I want to blog about at this juncture. I confess, I'm not gripped by Love's Labour's Lost quite yet.

We talked about the tradition of monasticism that may have inspired some of the introductory events in Love's Labour's Lost. People sequester themselves away from the world for a period of time and focus on God and learning. My understanding, however, was that joining a monastery was generally optional.

I find myself wondering what motivated Ferdinand to decide that he didn't want any women near his court for a three year period. Like, none at all. No one in his court is even allowed to talk to women. This seems so mind-bogglingly stupid that I can't understand why he would do this. Bad breakup? I've heard that you should take at least fifty percent of the time you were in the relationship to get over it. Maybe he was in a six-year relationship that went south, and he wants to spend the next three years eating ice cream and watching Beaches (that's what guys do after breakups, right?). Maybe he's not sure he likes women and he doesn't want people asking him why he isn't dating. Maybe his ex was super clingy and now he just wants some bro-time, and plans on spending the next three years eating the 16th century equivalent of buffalo wings and watching the 16th century equivalent of Anchorman (Turkey legs and bear baiting?). Who can say?

From Left To Right: Biron, Ferdinand, Longaville, Dumain

Quite frankly, I can't really think of any reason a straight guy would choose to only hang out with dudes.   This may have preceded the era of cross-gender platonic friendships, but it seems like it would get rull lame, rull fast.

The Magical Qualities of Music

We spent a good deal of class discussing the role music plays in a staged production. I didn't see The Winter's Tale this weekend, so I can't say whether that particular production used music well. I can, however, cite an example of music NOT being used well.

I once saw a high school production of Romeo and Juliet. They decided to modernize it, which is fine. I think they were going for a Leo Dicaprio/ Claire Danes kind of vibe, and it didn't quite get there. I mean, everyone on stage was like sixteen and had no idea what they were saying. They used music pretty extensively throughout the show, which, in theory, is fine. Unfortunately, they only used one song.

This was the ONLY song they used. Literally the only one. Capulet's Party? Crawling. Marriage scene? Crawling. Mercutio got killed? Crawling. They also played it over their horribly long scene changes, and it was almost never appropriate for what was happening.

I love ambient music for a stage play, and I think it can add a lot. Unfortunately, it can also be terribly, terribly distracting if not done well.

Will It Last?

My question for today is: Will Perdita and Florizel's relationship last beyond the play? When the play closes, they're happy and married and everyone is alive and everything is wonderful, but can it stay that way?

 OR 

I tend to think...probably not. Firstly, their entire courtship was based on a lie. Florizel spent the whole time pretending to be someone he wasn't. Regardless of how much he purported to care for her, Florizel still spent their entire relationship lying to Perdita about who he was. How legitimate a relationship can it be if one party doesn't feel the need to be truthful with the other? How long until they realize they don't trust each other?

Secondly, how is Perdita going to adjust to life as royalty? As far as she knew, she was just some country girl who had to shear sheep and make butter. Living as a princess probably entails a greater degree of socioeconomic comfort, but there are a huge number of other responsibilities. It's been speculated that that's what ultimately got to Princess Diana - she was a lovely, intelligent girl, but she hadn't been brought up to know how a princess and future Queen of England should act, and she was crushed by the pressure.

Thirdly, how much is their relationship based on physical attraction and idealization of one another's characters? I didn't spend a ton of time looking, but I didn't see anything about how much they enjoy each other's personalities. Florizel spends a decent amont of time calling Perdita "fair" and "queenly," but that doesn't mean that he'll want to hang out with her when she gets old and fat. Which she will. Or she'll get pregnant and have stretch marks and be too tired to want to have sex. Or he'll see her in the morning without her makeup and realize she's not as young as she was. Or she'll move in with him only to find that he leaves his dirty underwear on the floor and wet towels on the bed and he lets himself go because there's no one to impress.

Fun fact: My husband has gained about thirty pounds in the fourteen months we've been married. It happens. He was horribly underweight when we first got together, but still. He walks around in his underwear and flosses his teeth while we're watching TV, and it is kind of off-putting. If I had just married him because I thought he was attractive and I thought he was some fantasy man, we would probably be divorced by now. I know it's a cliche, but my husband really is my best friend. If we weren't married, we'd still hang out all the time. We like being around each other even when we're not at our best.

When you get married, you have to be able to make a life. A life is not a fantasy. Bad things happen. Your spouse, who you love regardless, does gross or annoying things. Work and school and life get stressful, and you are crabby sometimes. Sometimes you don't handle things well. You'll both be sick but have to go to work anyway. You'll have financial problems. Your spouse should be there to pick up the slack and creatively problem-solve and deal with your personal brand of crazy. I don't believe that Perdita and Florizel are prepared for what married life is really like.

Comedy and Kids Will be Kids

I know there's been a lot of upheaval about the genre of The Winter's Tale. I don't necessarily want to get into that right now, except to say that I think it is, at it's heart, basically a comedy. Comedy didn't always mean humorous - it's traditional theatrical meaning was simply "it has a happy ending." Which The Winter's Tale does. So, I'm using it as an excuse to post this video.

This is from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged. I used to own it, but I lent my copy to someone else and he never gave it back.

Now, I want to switch gears briefly and talk about Florizel. One of my group members raised the question "Why didn't he just tell his dad about Perdita? His dad would have been cool with it." I don't know what Shakespeare was thinking, but it seems so obvious to me because I was Florizel.

When I was a teenager, it was a time. I was always having these big dramatic problems and everything was the end of the world. Some things were actually very serious - I struggled with depression for about three years before I told my mother and got help for it. It seems really obvious now for someone to say "Well, why didn't you just tell her? She was cool with it." In my crazy, emotional teenage mind, I thought that there was no way she'd understand what I was going through. I thought she'd be disappointed. I thought she'd be angry. I thought she'd think I was stupid or weak.

It seems likely to me that Florizel had thought his entire life that he was going to marry a princess and be king of the country, which is huge, burdensome responsibility. In some ways, he may have felt that any element of choice about his life had been taken away from him. Then, he meets this girl and she's awesome and he loves her immediately, but she's not a princess. As far as he knows, she's just some girl. By choosing her, he may have felt like he was ruining all the plans. When you're young, everything is heightened, and fear of losing something important drives people to do crazy things all the time. It seems to me that he didn't tell his dad because Florizel didn't want to risk anyone getting in the way and messing it up.

Elements of Production

I was a little torn about what to blog about today. I think I want to focus on aspects of production - what I would do with The Winter's Tale if I were the director. I'll happily admit that The Winter's Tale wouldn't be my first choice, but I like to think that I could be creative. 

I'm aware that this is an image from Spamalot,
but that's more or less where this is going.

The first aspect to consider is, of course, the setting. I don't think The Winter's Tale lends itself to interesting adaptations as much as some of Shakespeare's other plays, but I think I would go with an Arthurian England motif. Not quite on the nose, but not so far removed that things wouldn't make sense. I love the idea of green, rolling hills and thatched cottages. It might be hard to execute, but we're just brainstorming.

The second thing I thought about was costuming. Actually, to be honest, I thought about costumes first because, in my opinion, the costumes are the best thing about any show. For a long time, I dreamed of becoming a professional costume designer for stage and film, so it's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

In an ideal world, I would have sat down and drawn out all of my costume ideas for the major characters, but unfortunately, this isn't my only class. So, instead, for the men's costumes I will point you toward the picture above, and I've found a Butterick pattern that more or less exemplifies what I would do for the ladies. I was originally thinking that I wanted Perdita in kind of a German Oktoberfest kind of dress with tons of cleavage, but I don't know if that fits the setting. But in my mind, shepherdesses are all dressed like they've come from Oktoberfest.

The third thing I considered was the lighting, but that's too boring and technical for me to want to discuss here. In a nutshell, darker lighting when things are going bad, and brighter lighting when things are going good. The first three acts would be pretty dark, and then the lights would come up slowly as Time gives his/her big speech.

I really love Time as a character, even though his/her part is so brief. I think, in my own production, I would try to expand Time's role somewhat and try to make the impression that Time is present for everything that's happening. I don't know how I would do that without it being hokey, but it's something I would try to work out. I think, perhaps, I would cast Time as a woman and have her in the background in as many scenes as I could sneak her into. I don't want her to be overt, I just want her to be there.

Sir, Spare Your Threats

I'm still on a pro-Hermione kick, and, to be honest, probably will continue to be. It's probably partly because she's so easy to sympathize with - she did nothing wrong, but her name is dragged through the mud

I think it's interesting, in contrast to Hamlet, how there's so little ambiguity in the character's motivations. In Hamlet, it was almost impossible to tell who was being sincere and who wasn't at any given time. That's not the case here. It seems like almost everyone is being sincere almost all the time. Leontes sincerely thinks that Hermione cheated on him with Polixenes. Hermione is sincere in her denial and her grief. There's a pureness to the characters that I don't think existed in Hamlet.

It makes for a very interesting dynamic. In Hamlet, everyone was running around deceiving everyone else. You, as the reader or the audience member, knew that you couldn't trust anyone. In The Winter's Tale, you know that people are going to act on their convictions, but their convictions might be crazy.

Hermione, Hermione

Hermione from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale is one of my favorite characters in all of literary history. Shakespeare doesn't often create fully fleshed-out female characters, but Hermione is awesome. She's amazingly steadfast and strong. I think it's fascinating when she's contrasted with Leontes. Leontes is her perfect foil: the second a seed of doubt was planted in his head, he turned on his wife.

The question is often raised as to whether Shakespeare was a misogynist. I don't know whether he was or not. It's true that there are few female characters in his work, but we have to consider the fact that women weren't legally allowed to act on stage. The lack of female characters could have been logistical, as much as anything else.

Then, of course, there's the issue of the culture of the time. It's true that England had a female monarch ruling single-handedly, but there was quite a bit of turmoil on that subject. Most people, including most women, still genuinely believed that women were inferior and subordinate to men, and that men were set above women by God. Misogyny is a disgusting and horrible thing, but that was the world at the time. I don't think it was right, but that was the culture Shakespeare lived in.

In general, I think that most writers have trouble writing about their opposite gender. Men can write about men, and women can write about women, but I think that things tend to get dicey when men try to write female characters or women try to write male characters. Shakespeare wasn't a woman. He could only guess what being a woman is actually like. He knew women, and he probably liked some women, but that doesn't mean that he understood why women of his age did the things they did.

On the other hand, there are some amazing women in Shakespeare's writing. Some of them, like Catherine from the Taming of the Shrew, got a bad rap of being un-womanish, but others, like Hermione, were fascinating and complex portraits of life as a woman. Interestingly, Hermione embodies some traditionally "masculine" characteristics - she's brave, she's tough, and she's insanely loyal. I think her characterization adds so much to the play as a whole.



Also, The Winter's Tale has the distinction of having a man eaten by a bear for no discernable reason, so that's exciting.

This is Hamlet We're Talking About Here, Hamlet!

I love Hamlet. I know it's cliche, but I really, really love Hamlet.

As previously mentioned, I tend to look at Shakespeare through an actor's lens. With that in mind, I'm going to share a theory that a friend of mine put forward as her PhD thesis in theatre acting:

Hamlet should never be performed. Hamlet should be bound up and venerated and kept forever, but it should never be performed. The idea is that Hamlet has so much inner turmoil that no actor would be able to adequately perform it without losing his mind. I don't completely agree, but I can certainly see her point. I never got to read her thesis, but I can come up with several arguments that support it.

It was brought up in class today where the character separates from the actor. In my mind, There isn't much of a distinction. The characters we play are parts of us, or we would not be able to play them. The best actors do one of two things: they use who they are to play the character, or they turn the character into who they are.

In the first case, there is almost no one who has enough negative life experience to adequately play Hamlet in the Meisner technique. Most people simply do not have enough to draw on to manufacture the emotions that Hamlet experiences. I mean, let's examine this for a second: His father has been murdered, probably by his uncle. His mother is in an incestuous relationship with said uncle. He is having spectres appear to him, leading him to wonder if he's being led down the right path, whether he's being deceived by a devil, or whether he's losing his mind altogether. His love life is completely messed up, and he makes it worse by accidentally killing his girlfriend's dad. That girlfriend then goes on to kill herself as a direct result of his actions. Also, he's inheriting a country that is at risk of war. He's not sure whether to kill himself, kill his uncle, or whether to kill anyone at all.

And these are only the issues explicitly brought up in the text. Never mind subtext, the actor's life-blood. I mean, what if Hamlet was also in love with his mother? Or Laertes? What if Hamlet knew that his mother's affair with his uncle started before his father was dead? What if Hamlet secretly hated his dad, adding even more confusion to his father's post-mortem cry for vengeance? There is not a person alive who has had a wall of crap like that fall upon him. I'd be pretty surprised if there was anyone who even came close.

Then, of course, there's the issue of whether Hamlet is actually saying what he means. Shakespeare uses verbal irony pretty extensively - there are any number of places where Hamlet could be sarcastic. Here's a passage from act I. What if Hamlet hated his father?

O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? Hold, hold, my heart!
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter. Yes, by Heaven!

If Hamlet is saying this sarcastically, it takes on a completely different meaning. Rather than telling his father how he plans to take on the task of vengeance out of love and respect, he is telling his father how much he hates him. He might seek revenge strictly out of sonly obligation (although hating your father and hating your uncle aren't mutually exclusive). I think we all know how much it sucks to do something for a parent that we don't want to do. I think most people are familiar with being guilt-tripped into something. If we look at this passage as sarcastic, the entire play takes on a completely different tone.

Is it really possible that one person is carrying around enough emotional baggage to really do Hamlet justice? If not, acting by experience is probably out.

If the actor were to embody Hamlet, he could end up dead or psychologically broken. One of the best examples of the danger of deep method acting is Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger was, by all accounts, a nice normal guy. He had a kid and friends and a life. In order to play the Joker successfully, he became the unhinged, sadistic, amoral character. He played the character beautifully, but I wonder if anyone thinks it was worth the consequences. In order to become the character, method actors bring upon themselves the traumas of their character's lives. They wear their character's clothes and sleep in their character's beds and speak in the character's voices. Rather than becoming the character, the character becomes them. By all accounts, that takes an enormous psychological toll.

I'm not saying that I agree that Hamlet should never be performed. I think most of us can relate to having a messed-up family or a messed-up love life. I don't think that the character needs to be taken as far as it's written. I can, however, see the potential danger in performing the role of Hamlet.

You could probably make the case that Hamlet is the most conflicted character in literary history. Usually, Shakespeare spreads the issues out among everybody, but it seems like all of the other characters in Hamlet have pretty clear motives and ambitions. They're surprisingly one-dimensional, if we adhere strictly to the text. Polonius is a nosy old man who wants to be actively involved in his children's lives. Ophelia does what she's told until she loses her mind. Gertrude is a slave to her desires. Claudius is a competent king, but an evil and ambitious man. It seems like Shakespeare reserved all the complexity in the play for Hamlet himself, and he may have gone somewhat overboard. It's certainly his magnum opus, but it makes for an extremely difficult performance.