Shakespeare

[NikF]

Early into this RSC production of Cymbeline, I found myself thinking of performances by various companies at the now absent Glasgow Mayfest or perhaps even the outer limits of the Edinburgh Fringe. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, because when a play is as wide and sprawling as this one there needs to be (amongst other things) an element of enthusiasm. And if in this case there were moments when it felt like that's all that was driving it forward, they were soon forgotten due to a number of good, spirited performances, including those by a couple of actors in their debut season.

Although I'm a relative newcomer to Shakespeare it was clear that this isn't the traditional fare and so maybe that's why I could enjoy it for what it was. However, during the interval there were clearly a number of those who being more informed donned furrowed brows as the impact of gender change to characters set in, along with the decision to portray European sophistication by including a musical number set in a disco.

Would I recommend it? It depends. I don't want to reduce any aspect of it to novelty, but there are definitely moments when the feeling of 'everything but the kitchen sink' was present. And I can imagine one or two too many liberties taken for some. But we were both glad we went to see it.

[Ken B]

The one one of the "big" plays I have neither read nor seen is Henry IV. I keep getting close to reading it! but I am told that Prince Hal is a perfectly implausible character.

[kishnevi]

The one one of the "big" plays I have neither read nor seen is Henry IV. I keep getting close to reading it! but I am told that Prince Hal is a perfectly implausible character.

Been some time since I read Hen.IV, but I never found Hal implausible.  He's  a young man who tries to both have his cake and eat it, too.  Plus he can't get on a stable footing with his father until it's too late.

People don't like Hal because of how rude he is to Falstaff at the end.  But that is because he knows he has to be king now.  A good actor can bring out things in that scene which Shakespeare left unsaid.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Ken: The one one of the "big" plays I have neither read nor seen is Henry IV. I keep getting close to reading it! but I am told that Prince Hal is a perfectly implausible character.

Jeff: Been some time since I read Hen.IV, but I never found Hal implausible.  He's  a young man who tries to both have his cake and eat it, too.  Plus he can't get on a stable footing with his father until it's too late.

People don't like Hal because of how rude he is to Falstaff at the end.  But that is because he knows he has to be king now.  A good actor can bring out things in that scene which Shakespeare left unsaid.

=
There was a folklore tradition that Hal was a young wastrel who acquired maturity when he actually ascended the throne and had to take responsibility for the fate of his nation. (This, I submit, is what Donald Trump's followers would like to believe of him should disaster strike and he should actually ascend the throne; I fear they will be gravely disappointed should that be the case. After all, there are tweets about Miss Universe that have to be issued at 3 in the morning.)

But Hal makes abundantly clear from the beginning of Part I that he is putting on an act in consorting with Falstaff and his gang:

"I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at."

The play, however, also makes abundantly clear that he hugely enjoys the fat knight's company. He's a big kid; he wants to sow a few wild oats before assuming grave responsibility. Not so implausible. In fact a pretty common state of affairs among today's college kids who enjoy their share of parties and drinking before settling down to the drudgery of jobs and family. As for the banishment of Falstaff, it is inevitable and the fat knight's belief otherwise is only a symptom of Falstaff's blindness. In Henry V, the newly crowned king even goes so far as to execute one of Falstaff's followers, the red-nosed Bardolph, for robbing a French church. But there are strong hints even in the first part of Henry IV that Hal already has every intention of breaking with Falstaff once he is crowned king:

"FALSTAFF No, my good lord; banish Peto,
banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff,
valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, 1460
being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him
thy Harry's company, banish not him thy Harry's
company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.

HAL. I do, I will."

So much for alleged implausibility. But Henry IV is major, major Shakespeare, easily one of his top dozen achievements with the greatest clown in all literature and other superb characterizations like Glendower and Hotspur, and to miss it just because of an imperceptive comment would be almost as much a shame as electing Donald Trump.

I highly recommend the Globe Theater DVDs starring Jamie Parker and Roger Allam.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Are you going to go see it, Simon?  I have cinema tickets for it next week.
It's a play I know nothing about. Would anyone (poco?) like to offer any insight into it or point out anything I should be aware of?

Sorry for the belated response. In my area I tend to get the Globe Theater and Branagh, the RSC not so often. Cymbeline as you no doubt sensed is (like the other late romances The Winter's Tale and Pericles) a strange and sprawling tale that always feels overlong and fell completely flat in one of the two live performances I have seen - while coming marvelously to life in a deeply cut, 6-character version by a little theater company in New York that was so good I saw it twice. Unfortunately for Actors' Equity reasons that production was never preserved, but it treated the play in a light, tongue-in-cheek manner that rather miraculously did away with all the play's longueurs and deficiencies. I think that out of those late romances (and I add the almost never performed Two Noble Kinsmen), the only total success is The Tempest, which succeeds in being beautiful, concise, strange, and in all the recent productions I've seen rather dreadfully performed. The biggest problem these days seems to be in trying to make Prospero an out-and-out villain because he owns a slave. (A pretty good version, while severely cut, can be found on YouTube from the 1960s before we all started being politically correct, and stars Maurice Evans as Prospero and Richard Burton of all people as Caliban.)

I keep trying with Shakespearean productions, and so often I am disappointed. My last was a Merchant of Venice from the Globe Theater with Jonathan Pryce as Shylock. I am convinced with this play in particular that directors when mounting it can't help asking "how can I fuck it up this time?" The politically correct crowd, unwilling to accept that Shylock is a villain who happens to be a Jew, not a Jew whose villainy can be excused away because of his Judaism, apparently can't believe that when Shylock says he is content to be converted at the end to Christianity he means just that - Judaism in Shylock's case not going very deep for a man whose real religions are vengeance and greed. In this Globe version we had Shylock's daughter Jessica at the end bawling Boruch atah Adonai (this despite her joyous eagerness earlier to become Christian in order to marry Lorenzo), and Shylock being baptized for a full five minutes of stage time to show us how badly the usurer has been treated - when in fact in Shakespeare's time the offer of conversion would be understood as a sign of generosity. None of this baptism crap is in the play of course, but why should any of that matter when it's much more fun to fuck the play up and suggest implications that have no basis whatsoever in the text?

[Jaakko Keskinen]

None of this baptism crap is in the play of course, but why should any of that matter when it's much more fun to fuck the play up and suggest implications that have no basis whatsoever in the text?

Well, in stage works there is always room for interpretation. And somehow I have gotten an impression of you being of the opinion that text should not necessarily be taken at face value, in our conversations about what Shakespeare may have intended. For all we know he could have secretly wanted an hour long baptism scene added with no dialogue and may have sympathized enormously with Shylock, even though he probably wouldn't have talked about his sympathies out loud in late 1500s England. Personally, while I am more on Shylock's side than Antonio's, I acknowledge that Shylock is a villain but that it is not all what his character is about, that there are mitigating factors about his actions and redeeming aspects in his character, for ex. the ring that he got from his wife and which Jessica stole, seems to have more value to Shylock in the sense that it is a memento from his wife, not because of how many ducats it may be worth. I have hard time rooting 100 % for anyone in that play, the cast is so unpleasant altogether. Shylock has his positive qualities but the reason I am on his side may also have something to do with him having most of the best lines in the work.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Well, in stage works there is always room for interpretation. And somehow I have gotten an impression of you being of the opinion that text should not necessarily be taken at face value, in our conversations about what Shakespeare may have intended. For all we know he could have secretly wanted an hour long baptism scene added with no dialogue and may have sympathized enormously with Shylock, even though he probably wouldn't have talked about his sympathies out loud in late 1500s England. Personally, while I am more on Shylock's side than Antonio's, I acknowledge that Shylock is a villain but that it is not all what his character is about, that there are mitigating factors about his actions and redeeming aspects in his character, for ex. the ring that he got from his wife and which Jessica stole, seems to have more value to Shylock in the sense that it is a memento from his wife, not because of how many ducats it may be worth. I have hard time rooting 100 % for anyone in that play, the cast is so unpleasant altogether. Shylock has his positive qualities but the reason I am on his side may also have something to do with him having most of the best lines in the work.

Your last sentence reminds me of Blake's comment about Paradise Lost: 'The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it'. True, the villain often gets the best lines: Iago. Edmund. Goneril. Regan. Richard III. That doesn't make them any less a villain. No doubt there are some mitigating factors to Shylock's behavior: yes, he was robbed; yes, apparently he cared for that ring and his remembrances of Leah. But let's not forget that he also sought Antonio's life, knowing full well that to exact his pound of flesh would be murder. That seems even of a different and more villainous order than Antonio's spitting at him (the details of which we never see).

As for your comment, "For all we know he could have secretly wanted an hour long baptism scene added with no dialogue and may have sympathized enormously with Shylock, even though he probably wouldn't have talked about his sympathies out loud in late 1500s England," that is made up purely from whole cloth. We don't know Shakespeare's "intentions," if by intentions we mean how he would have explained his ideas for the play, and even if he had stated those ideas they wouldn't necessarily be the last word on the subject, however interesting. But in interpreting a text, we have to remain within the boundaries of the text, and not just make up things like a baptism scene that have no basis in the text. Surely Shakespeare could have added such a scene had he thought it justified or necessary.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Your last sentence reminds me of Blake's comment about Paradise Lost: 'The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it'. True, the villain often gets the best lines: Iago. Edmund. Goneril. Regan. Richard III. That doesn't make them any less a villain. No doubt there are some mitigating factors to Shylock's behavior: yes, he was robbed; yes, apparently he cared for that ring and his remembrances of Leah. But let's not forget that he also sought Antonio's life, knowing full well that to exact his pound of flesh would be murder. That seems even of a different and more villainous order than Antonio's spitting at him (the details of which we never see).

As for your comment, "For all we know he could have secretly wanted an hour long baptism scene added with no dialogue and may have sympathized enormously with Shylock, even though he probably wouldn't have talked about his sympathies out loud in late 1500s England," that is made up purely from whole cloth. We don't know Shakespeare's "intentions," if by intentions we mean how he would have explained his ideas for the play, and even if he had stated those ideas they wouldn't necessarily be the last word on the subject, however interesting. But in interpreting a text, we have to remain within the boundaries of the text, and not just make up things like a baptism scene that have no basis in the text. Surely Shakespeare could have added such a scene had he thought it justified or necessary.

I didn't mean that having the best lines lessens the villainy in any way. Also I am not sure if in this case Shylock's action could even be classified as murder since Shylock clearly does it through the law. No, doesn't make it less bad but quite frankly, I do despise Antonio more and I blame at least as much the idiots who allowed extracting a pound of flesh from a human being be legal in the first place. Maybe they were happy with extracting pounds of flesh from men as long as it wasn't a Jew who did it to a Christian. I'm perfectly fine with adding something that has no basis in the text, at least as long as it doesn't completely mutilate the play unrecognizable. From what I gather about your telling about this drawn out baptism, it doesn't sound like anything that would do that. You may think anything that doesn't "remain within the boundaries of the text" is instant no-no. I don't, and judging from many productions like that, I am not the only one. And no, considering Shakespeare lived in very anti-semitic time period, he would have in worst case lost his head or some crap if he would have made explicit his possible sympathies towards Shylock so he couldn't have done that.

[Ken B]

Your last sentence reminds me of Blake's comment about Paradise Lost: 'The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it'. True, the villain often gets the best lines: Iago. Edmund. Goneril. Regan. Richard III. That doesn't make them any less a villain. No doubt there are some mitigating factors to Shylock's behavior: yes, he was robbed; yes, apparently he cared for that ring and his remembrances of Leah. But let's not forget that he also sought Antonio's life, knowing full well that to exact his pound of flesh would be murder. That seems even of a different and more villainous order than Antonio's spitting at him (the details of which we never see).

As for your comment, "For all we know he could have secretly wanted an hour long baptism scene added with no dialogue and may have sympathized enormously with Shylock, even though he probably wouldn't have talked about his sympathies out loud in late 1500s England," that is made up purely from whole cloth. We don't know Shakespeare's "intentions," if by intentions we mean how he would have explained his ideas for the play, and even if he had stated those ideas they wouldn't necessarily be the last word on the subject, however interesting. But in interpreting a text, we have to remain within the boundaries of the text, and not just make up things like a baptism scene that have no basis in the text. Surely Shakespeare could have added such a scene had he thought it justified or necessary.

+1

I too despair of most productions. Stratford for decades had what I call the "Stratford shouting disease". It's getting better, but still suffers from "we must be transgressive" disease, where being "transgressive" really means repeating the shibboleths and nostrums of your class. I usually prefer to read Shakespeare.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I didn't mean that having the best lines lessens the villainy in any way. Also I am not sure if in this case Shylock's action could even be classified as murder since Shylock clearly does it through the law.

No, he doesn't, and the play is quite clear about that:

PORTIA
Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more
But just a pound of flesh: if thou cut'st more
Or less than a just pound, be it but so much
As makes it light or heavy in the substance,
Or the division of the twentieth part
Of one poor scruple, nay, if the scale do turn
But in the estimation of a hair,
Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate.

PORTIA
Tarry, Jew:
The law hath yet another hold on you.
It is enacted in the laws of Venice,
If it be proved against an alien [presumably Shylock as a Jew is not a Venetian citizen]
That by direct or indirect attempts
He seek the life of any citizen,
The party 'gainst the which he doth contrive
Shall seize one half his goods; the other half
Comes to the privy coffer of the state;
And the offender's life lies in the mercy
Of the duke only, 'gainst all other voice.
In which predicament, I say, thou stand'st;
For it appears, by manifest proceeding,
That indirectly and directly too
Thou hast contrived against the very life
Of the defendant; and thou hast incurr'd
The danger formerly by me rehearsed.

IOW: Unquestionably Shylock intends murder. Exactly why you despise Antonio more is beyond me, as you provide no reasons. Nor do you provide any basis for Shakespeare's alleged sympathies towards Shylock. Anti-Semitism was not in fact a highly charged matter in Elizabethan England, as the Jews had been banned from that country in 1290 and were not allowed to return until after Shakespeare's death during the Puritan Insurrection. It's nothing like the anti-Semitism found in Nazi Germany. And I submit that the manufactured baptism scene is indeed a mutilation, designed to give unknowing audiences the feeling that something like that is present in Shakespeare. It isn't.

[SimonNZ]

Poco: Not really arguing, just curious:

What do you think of something like the child burial scene at the start of the recent film of Macbeth, and the way its made to colour the motivations of the two leads?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Poco: Not really arguing, just curious:

What do you think of something like the child burial scene at the start of the recent film of Macbeth, and the way its made to colour the motivations of the two leads?

Haven't seen the film, but I question the relevance. Lady M says she has given suck, and later in the play we are told MacB has no children. Don't know if that means a little MacB died along the way, but I tend to think that if that were important, Shakespeare would have made more of it (rather than a fleeting reference that is glossed over so quickly as to barely register on the audience). Isn't it enough to find ambition and a desire to reign as motivation for their actions?

[SimonNZ]

I better warn you then that that probably wouldn't even make the top 5 of "liberties taken" in that film, though its interesting in a number of other ways, and I'd be interested in your take if and when you see it. Ordinarily I'd be suspicious of these devices, but the dead child bit at the start was I thought well handled in the context of what follows, especially as I usually find the leap to power-lust over hasty in the play (almost instantaneous in most productions), and having it appear as more hollowed-out apathy and a grief-addled morality and resentment for those with still-living children went in this instance some way to tempering that.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I better warn you then that that probably wouldn't even make the top 5 of "liberties taken" in that film, though its interesting in a number of other ways, and I'd be interested in your take if and when you see it. Ordinarily I'd be suspicious of these devices, but the dead child bit at the start was I thought well handled in the context of what follows, especially as I usually find the leap to power-lust over hasty in the play (almost instantaneous in most productions), and having it appear as more hollowed-out apathy and a grief-addled morality and resentment for those with still-living children went in this instance some way to tempering that.

I would be more impressed if the few references to children by MacB and Lady bore more relevance to that argument. As for Lady M's speech, it refers not to grief over a dead child but to her shocking claim that she would sooner commit violent infanticide than display the kind of cowardice she perceives in Macbeth at that moment:

I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

Otherwise the only allusion to children may be Macbeth's jealousy over Banquo's surviving issue, but on the whole the idea seems to me to be clutching at straws.

Part of the problem with your sense of the pacing may well be that the surviving text (which only comes down to us in the First Folio) may be a shorter acting version of what Shakespeare actually wrote. There's a very interesting (and I believe persuasive) theory by Lukas Erne that the plays were both presented in shorter acting versions of about 2.5 hours maximum, and published in longer reading editions that opened up all cuts made for performance. This might account for the shorter quartos of Hamlet, Romeo, and Henry V, as well as the brevity of Macbeth - and also for the great length of "uncut" plays like Richard III and Hamlet.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Poco, you do realize you give an impression of having unbearably smug attitude in trying to force your opinions down my throat and almost implying that I am insane in thinking the way I do? This isn't the first time you've done so, either. It is useless to argue about this till the end of the world. Shylock INTENDED to carry it through the law. The instant he is told that you can only extract flesh and not blood, otherwise it is a crime, Shylock tries to back down, but then they tell him he has already committed a crime even though he thought he was doing it through the law. Until that point is mentioned, no-one suggested Shylock's action was against the law or they would not have allowed Shylock to try take Antonio's flesh in the first place. I despise Antonio more because I find him more unpleasant, though not necessarily more "evil". Considering the abuse Shylock takes in the play, I am surprised why he didn't do anything worse than trying to kill Antonio.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Poco, you do realize you give an impression of having unbearably smug attitude in trying to force your opinions down my throat and almost implying that I am insane in thinking the way I do?

If you want to make this a personal attack rather than a discussion of the evidence, then I don't wish to answer you.

[NikF]

Sorry for the belated response. In my area I tend to get the Globe Theater and Branagh, the RSC not so often. Cymbeline as you no doubt sensed is (like the other late romances The Winter's Tale and Pericles) a strange and sprawling tale that always feels overlong and fell completely flat in one of the two live performances I have seen - while coming marvelously to life in a deeply cut, 6-character version by a little theater company in New York that was so good I saw it twice. Unfortunately for Actors' Equity reasons that production was never preserved, but it treated the play in a light, tongue-in-cheek manner that rather miraculously did away with all the play's longueurs and deficiencies. I think that out of those late romances (and I add the almost never performed Two Noble Kinsmen), the only total success is The Tempest, which succeeds in being beautiful, concise, strange, and in all the recent productions I've seen rather dreadfully performed. The biggest problem these days seems to be in trying to make Prospero an out-and-out villain because he owns a slave. (A pretty good version, while severely cut, can be found on YouTube from the 1960s before we all started being politically correct, and stars Maurice Evans as Prospero and Richard Burton of all people as Caliban.)

I keep trying with Shakespearean productions, and so often I am disappointed. My last was a Merchant of Venice from the Globe Theater with Jonathan Pryce as Shylock. I am convinced with this play in particular that directors when mounting it can't help asking "how can I fuck it up this time?" The politically correct crowd, unwilling to accept that Shylock is a villain who happens to be a Jew, not a Jew whose villainy can be excused away because of his Judaism, apparently can't believe that when Shylock says he is content to be converted at the end to Christianity he means just that - Judaism in Shylock's case not going very deep for a man whose real religions are vengeance and greed. In this Globe version we had Shylock's daughter Jessica at the end bawling Boruch atah Adonai (this despite her joyous eagerness earlier to become Christian in order to marry Lorenzo), and Shylock being baptized for a full five minutes of stage time to show us how badly the usurer has been treated - when in fact in Shakespeare's time the offer of conversion would be understood as a sign of generosity. None of this baptism crap is in the play of course, but why should any of that matter when it's much more fun to fuck the play up and suggest implications that have no basis whatsoever in the text?

No problem.
Yeah, with hindsight Cymbeline was indeed sprawling. Perhaps the interpretation by the director hid that a little from me. Or maybe it's simply down to my lack of knowledge of Shakespeare. Still, every production I see expands my frame of reference a little, which I'm sure will serve me well in the future. And on that note, thanks for your thoughts and insights. All of it is useful and interesting for me.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

What do you guys think of Timon of Athens? I regard it as one of Bill's hidden gems. Sure there is much of what is unfinished but it doesn't really bother me. I actually prefer it to King Lear, which it resembles in many aspects. Of course there is much in Lear too that I enjoy but I would also call it the only one of the four major tragedies that I don't unconditionally worship, unlike the other three.

IIRC, Timon was Karl Marx's favorite work by Shakespeare.

[(poco) Sforzando]

What do you guys think of Timon of Athens? I regard it as one of Bill's hidden gems. Sure there is much of what is unfinished but it doesn't really bother me. I actually prefer it to King Lear, which it resembles in many aspects. Of course there is much in Lear too that I enjoy but I would also call it the only one of the four major tragedies that I don't unconditionally worship, unlike the other three.

IIRC, Timon was Karl Marx's favorite work by Shakespeare.

I have seen Timon only once and read it but a few times. Although "unfinished" is a term often applied to the play, just what that means is hard to say: it is a coherent whole, but not in my opinion a very nuanced one: basically Timon spends the first half of the play as a total altruist; then he becomes disillusioned by his "friends" and turns into a total misanthrope. During this latter half he takes refuge in a cave and is visited by several people, ranting against humankind in a manner that would make Lear look like a pussycat, but nothing actually happens in the play otherwise. It feels dramatically very static, and does not play well on stage. I would call it less an "unfinished" work than one where Shakespeare had written himself into a corner and couldn't develop a promising tragic plot.

What Marx saw in it I don't know, but apparently he was relating to it more in terms of Timon's rants about the power of money than dealing with it as a dramatic work. That said, there was one major Shakespearean critic, G. Wilson Knight, saw it as having "universal tragic significance," perhaps as an expression of man's inhumanity to man, though I don't have his essay at hand right now. For me, the problem remains that in this play I never feel (as I do with Lear, Macbeth, or Othello) what Wilson Knight himself says in a statement that Camille Paglia considers the "most brilliant thing ever said about Shakespeare's plays": "In such poetry we are aware less of any surface than of a turbulent power, a heave and swell, from deeps beyond verbal definition; and, as the thing progresses, a gathering of power, a ninth wave of passion, an increase in tempo and intensity."

I'm sure my buddy Alberich has noted his objections to King Lear before, but I don't share them; even in somewhat less than great productions (and I've seen the play easily a dozen times), I still feel its overwhelming power. But however the Big Four (H, O, KL, and MB) are customarily grouped, I would unquestionably add Antony and Cleopatra as their equal, and if I had to nominate a "hidden gem," it would have to be that rarely staged, strange, and austere political play Coriolanus – which actually is getting a production in New York this fall.

[Brian]

"Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;
Filths savour but themselves..."