Patrick Stewart, MacBeth

Patrick Stewart's MacBeth is now available. I personally preferred Ian McKellen's performance but hey it's awesome nonetheless.

• very creative use of mysteriously fanatical nurses as the witches
• 'reality' show-like camera movements lend a never-before-seen ambience to this play
• instead of floating heads we've got corpses talking
• Banquo walks on the table! (see pic)

"Who else would soar above the view of men..."

I love it when some lines 'hit' home. And you know you're encountering literary brilliance because even the non-literary seems more special as a result. I'm talking about particular Shakespearean lines which stand out, come at you and, well, 'stick'.

Today I've been reading Julius Caesar and that cryptic verse, "Who else would soar above the view of men / And keep us all in servile fearfulness" is awesome-ic.

In these words the colours and overtones of majesty, illicit authority, success, pseudo-divinity, totalitarianism, oppression fall upon my mental framing. Any surprise I'm now thinking about Malaysian political leaders?

Shakespeare Now!

Simon Palfrey and Ewan Fernie started a series of small books on Shakespeare entitled Shakespeare Now! Check out the blog here.

I'm also delighted to know that two my fav philosophers, John Caputo and Richard Kearney have also contributed to one a book called Spiritual Shakespeare (ed. Ewan Fernie).

Not a Poem guy

I realised I don't enjoy the poetry-heavy plays (e.g. Midsummer Night's) as much as I do the prose-oriented ones (e.g. Hamlet). Somehow reading pages and pages of poems turns me off - but a sexy rhyme inserted here and there? Now that's magic.

My next NoFear purchases:

• Julius Caesar
• Othello
• Merchant of Venice (though I'm rewatching the movie)

Hath not a Jew dimensions?!

I loved Al Pacino's rendition of Shylock; made me almost think of him as the 'hero' of the play. A top-quality scene of course was the one with the dark bluish background, where he was screaming:

Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,

dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with

the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject

to the same diseases, healed by the same means,

warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as

a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?

if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison

us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not

revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will

resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,

what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian

wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by

Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you

teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I

will better the instruction.

Titania's Inconvenient (but very articulate) Truth

Shakespeare on climate problems?:

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which falling in the land

Have every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents:

The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;

The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green

For lack of tread are undistinguishable:

The human mortals want their winter here;

No night is now with hymn or carol blest:

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

That rheumatic diseases do abound:

And thorough this distemperature we see

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,

And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which:

To Be or Not to Be

I wanted to quote Hamlet's famous soliloquy today in a mass email whilst hyper-linking key words to some postings on my department's blog.

Seriously, why isn't Shakespeare used more often in Malaysian speeches and formal communication?

Shakespeare on political darkness?

In light of recent political repression in Malaysia, is there anything the good Bard can say to us? I recall some activists warning the incumbent government to, "Beware the tides of March"! What other plays can help give voice to the present political plight in the country?

Beginner's Resources

1. A parallel text (e.g. No Fear Shakespeare)


2. CliffNotes - love the explanations at the end of each scene and the exercises at the back


3. Cambridge School - great pics and lots of ideas if you're planning a performance
   
4. Arden Shakespeare - good scholastic introductions
   
5. A contemporary movie! To get the full passionate flavour out!

Ariel's words

I used 'flamed amazement' in an 'official' email today. How cool is that? :)

Prospero's Farewell

I've finally ordered them: No Fear Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer's Night Dream". Can't wait to dig in.

My interest in Tempest was peaked when an ex-colleague gave me a hard-copy of Prospero's 'farewell' in Act V:

 Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,  And ye that on the sands with printless foot  Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him  When he comes back; you demi-puppets that  By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,  Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime  Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice  To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,  Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd  The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,  And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault  Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder  Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak  With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory  Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up  The pine and cedar: graves at my command  Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth  By my so potent art. But this rough magic  I here abjure, and, when I have required  Some heavenly music, which even now I do,  To work mine end upon their senses that  This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,  Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,  And deeper than did ever plummet sound  I'll drown my book.

Sandwiches

There's something that Shakespeare does to one's writing. I'm not saying it necessarily improves it, but it sure as hell spins it quite a ways.

E.g. today I wanted to tell a group of colleagues that there're plenty leftover from the tea break. This is what I wrote: "As I write, there is a huge plate of sandwiches left unvisited..."

That last word was inspired by Hamlet's, "winds of heaven visit her face too gently."

What other word could be used?

Fav lines

Some of my favourite lines:

"I love with all my heart that none is left to protest!" (Much Ado About Nothing)

"I love you...more than eyesight and liberty" (King Lear)

"Then let our lips do what our palms something-something" (Romeo & Juliet)

"I have thee not but I see thee still..." (MacBeth)

Gilbert and Shakespeare

Always like it when books have all their chapters start with Shakespearean quotes. Dan Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness - a great work on how our minds 'process' happiness - does.

What's Needed in Commentaries: Emotion!

It makes a huge difference if you read scenes like a character would do it on stage i.e. with emotion, passion, feeling.

I doubt I'm the only one who's looked at pages and pages of script and felt they were lifeless - until I read it like I was the character. (E.g. try watching Ian McKellen as MacBeth, then read the Banquet scene again)

This is why I need to watch the movies to get the emotional gist of the play prior to reading the original text.

To Buy or Not To Buy

That is the question.

Whether it's nobler in mind to :

1. read CliffNotes No Fear Shakespeare online (save cost, but tough on the eyes and impractical for travel), or

2. buy the SGD11 books (most practical, should sput greater interest and speed up reading, but it costs money), or

3. buy other parallel translation books (better than option 2as there's more variety, but costs higher)

Hendiadys

MacBeth's 'bank and shoal of time', Hamlet's 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' (and many more) - hendiadys. A motley pair not merely repeating each other but providing different takes and angles to that deed which they flavour.

Lear's Fool

Only this morning my colleague mentioned in passing that his favorite character in King Lear was the Fool. As I had only reached Sc.iii of the first Act, I had no clue who was being referred to.

But now, after reading Sc.iv, I'm intrigued. The Fool is no fool but an revealer of fools. He speaks wisely, because indirectly and in riddle (or shall we say parables?). Almost a prophet, the Fool is bold, daring, forthright, sparing none in his sharp gaze.

My thoughts float to the likes of RPK, the OT Prophets, and other public subversives. And yet the Fool also offers scintillating advice, akin to Polonius':

Have more than thou showest,   

Speak less than thou knowest,  
Lend less than thou owest,  
Ride more than thou goest,  
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest,  
Leave thy drink and thy whore  
And keep in-a-door,  
And thou shalt have more  
Than two tens to a score.

Does the world need more of Lear's fools?

"Fool" (by Christopher Moore)

A certain Christopher Moore has a new book out, Fool, based on King Lear...Tom Dodge reports:

The Tragedy of King Lear is William Shakespeare's most complex play. Its arcane, archaic vocabulary is out of the reach of most educated readers today, and its theme is dismal enough to counteract a year's dosage of Wellbutrin.

Its comic relief, represented by the court jester, a.k.a. the fool, is not comic and not relief.

The fool and Lear seem fixated on the word "nothing," a comment on the nature of life.

Lear says, "That way madness lies," then goes that way.

The Earl of Gloucester, an important and sympathetic character (though like Lear, discernment-challenged) gets his eyes gouged out by Lord Cornwall, who says, "Out, vile jelly!" Gloucester's comment on life: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods / They kill us for their sport." At the end, all the major characters die violent deaths.

After 600 years of dreary old addled Lear and his doomed daughters, associates and enemies, Christopher Moore comes to the rescue with this retelling of Lear in modern prose and mostly invented slang. (Moore is the author of You Suck, The Stupidest Angel, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.)

This one takes us into the comic world of sibling rivalry, poor estate planning, elder abuse and the blood bath that results when brothers and sisters go to war over a demented parent's leftover stuff. It's a raunchy saga motivated by two intertwined family struggles, narrated by the libidinous fool, a.k.a. Pocket, a punning, manipulative mastermind of perversity. It's what Richard Armour tried to do a few decades ago but lacked the demonic mind to carry off. In style, it's like Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' retelling of Mary Shelley's classic novel.

There's even an Igor-like character: Drool, Pocket's apprentice fool, who has the gift of mimicry, as well as a way with the fair ladies of the court, including Lear's insatiable daughters, Regan and Goneril. Drool sleeps on a dung heap for warmth, the aroma of which apparently does not diminish his sex appeal. This novel is chock full of such uplifting information.

There are also many of the familiar Shakespearean contrivances we have come to love, such as witches, wenches, ghosts, forged letters, incarcerated nuns, love potions, poofters, crones, mistaken identities, anachronisms, coincidences and swordplay.

And also wordplay. Lots of wordplay. As for anachronisms, we have a reference to a ruler named George who governs a land called Merica and ruins the world. We have a sour breakfast item called Green Eggs and Hamlet. And, oh yeah, the three witches are named Parsley, Sage and Rosemary. "What, no Thyme?" says the Earl of Kent. Ha, ha.

And, like the Sweet Swan of Avon, this Weird Wankster of Logophilia is a lover of the labyrinthine plot. No move, no twitch of any character goes unrecorded. A mercifully brief example:

"Edmund will dispatch your Lord Albany, thus releasing your lady to other affections, only then will we reveal to Cornwall that Edmund has cuckolded him with Regan, and the Duke will dispatch the bastard, at which time, I will cast the love spell on Goneril, sending her into your own ferrety arms."

Thus spake Pocket, the fool. And thus speaketh the fool throughout, parceling out his limitless planning, plotting and manipulating, most examples of which are suitable to read only in secret.

Often funny, sometimes hilarious, always inventive, this is a book for all, especially uptight English teachers, bardolaters and ministerial students of the kind who come to our doorstep on Saturday mornings.

Difficult!

I got almost completely lost with Goneril's chiding of the king:

I had thought by making this well known unto you
To have found a safe redress, but now grow fearful
By what yourself too late have spoke and done
That you protect this course and put it on
By your allowance—which if you should, the fault
195 Would not 'scape censure, nor the redresses sleep
Which in the tender of a wholesome weal
Might in their working do you that offense,
Which else were shame, that then necessity
Will call discreet proceeding. (King Lear, Act I, Sc.iv)