Assistance Request
Having a problem coming up with a podcast topic for this week?
Any ideas? (preferably Two Gents - related ... )
Thanks in advance....
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The Bill / Shakespeare Project [dot] com: Assistance Request
Off the subject of podcast… But…
Ok, so my career, from high school 40 years ago to now, has been in the sciences.
My exposure to the humanities is minimal, and academic experience with Shakespeare has been less and less-than-ideal: Maybe R&J in high school and a few days with Hamlet in college. All the time, I hear this refrain from those in the literary circles: Shakespeare's the best. So, as I wind down my scientific professional life, I pick up the Compleat Works to see what all this fuss is about.
It is fascinating to go though a literary artist's life's creation: such all of Doyle's Holmes, all of Fleming's Bond, or all of Forester's Hornblower (I should add all of Hitchcock's cinema, and would love to go though all of E.A. Poe ) -- but time is limited, and I am a slow reader. Several years ago, I figured on going through the Shakespeare canon; but where to start?… I reckoned on starting with his earliest and proceeding to his latest. Soon, I hit "THE HISTORIES" and supposed it proper to do those in chronological order, starting with King John. In time, I found your web site, and it so happens if you have attained the year 1594, I arrive there also, just that we came a different route.
Now, what do I like about the Bard, and what do I have objections toward.
The positive: his words. Not only is the vocabulary immense and his choice spot-on, but also the combination of words is often genius. I am a fan of your website, but in particular, I revel when you expound upon his words and his poetic techniques. Thank you.
What do I not like about him? His penchant for cross-dressing females. Not that I really mind cross-dressing females, only how so many of his plays appear redundant. I mean, William: get off this kick, please. An aside: so far, his female characters are so much more perceptive and expressive and interesting than us males counterparts.
But here following is the purpose of this communication.
What is the major thing I don't like about Shakespeare? His words.
Over half the time, I don't know what he is talking about. This is not to say that I can't find a word in a dictionary, or that I bog in antiquated expressions, or that the allusions trip me up. No, I don't know what he is trying to say -- I am ever so appreciative when you express to me what (you think) the man is trying to say. But then… if can't understand his words on paper, you can bet that I can't understand the spoken word from the stage. On stage, so often, even from a bodily expressive actor, the words jammble on like foreign babble, and I am left as per confused confound. What is a poor soul to do?
I must be off to work this morning, and do not have the time to render example, but such could be found, 50:50, by throwing book on the floor, slinging dart on opened page, and pointing: voici.
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Great to hear from another reader...
It's interesting that you find what's best and worst about him are the same: the words (we'll get to the whole cross-dressing thing a little later this month, as Two Gents has the first instance of the woman disguising herself as a man to travel).
The words.
Positive AND Negative.
You're right on the money. One of the best discussions of Shakespeare I've ever seen is John Barton's Playing Shakespeare . Though it's primarily about acting, he dives DEEP into the language, as delivering that language is the goal of the actor.
One of Barton's suppositions is that to find what Shakespeare is trying to say, a reader needs to be on the lookout for dichotomies, divisions of meaning, at times almost oxymorons or ideas in opposition...
To be or NOT to be...
so FOUL and FAIR a day...
WINTER of our discontent made glorious SUMMER...
So your finding of the words as both the thing you like best and the thing you don't like puts you in the right mental space. Now dive deep.
Grab a major speech ... from this play, I'd choose Proteus' soliloquy of Act Two, Scene Six... and look at how he sets up the oppositional thinking... and have fun with it.
And though you say you're off topic regarding the podcast... but maybe this is what I'll attack in this week's podcast... maybe...
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My suggestion would be, first, do not read the plays, unless you have an ear for verse and dialog.
I would buy, rent, or borrow good video productions. They don't have to be landmark productions, just competent. Try the BBC complete Shakespeare series, none I've seen are bad, and a few are very good.
If you decide to see live performances, try to find a company that has a reputation for putting on at least competent shows. I have seen a few live performances that made my skin crawl.
By seeing performances, you will hear the words, and be able to match them up to faces and action. That will help establish your inner voice, which will make reading the plays much easier. Also, if they are well done, you'll see many of the little extra bits that really make the plays great: Things like asides, puns, dirty jokes, actions that are stage directed in the script. These are easy to miss when you read the plays.
Another approach is through audio recordings. I took this path because of the amount of driving I do in my job. Arkangel has released a complete set of the plays, and the more popular plays have been released by other publishers, some with stellar casts. Because you can't see the actors or the action, you'll have to listen carefully to follow the play. Until you develop an ear, I would stay away from the history plays, MacBeth, Troilus and Cressida, and anything you are not familiar. The history plays have too many characters, and MacBeth, and Troilus and Cressida don't have enough highly distinct characters (they're all Scots, or Greeks and Trojans). Later, you can tackle all the plays.
After you develop your ear, you can then read the plays easily, and make your own discoveries.
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Oh, the cross dressing female comment.
Remember, in Shakespeare's time, women could not perform on stage, so he had to use boy actors for women. Cross dressing reduced the amount of time the boy would have to be a "woman." Of course, having the "woman" cross-dress as a boy allows Shakespeare to raise topics that might have got him in trouble if they were raised by a "woman."
Shakespeare could, of course, write parts for non cross-dressing women characters, but he would have needed boys who could measure up. If I could go back in time and see one play put on by Shakespeare's company, it would be Antony and Cleopatra. I would love to see the boy actor who could pull off the role of Cleopatra. He must have been amazing. Few actresses today can to do part justice.
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