StSA–The Tempest

Ah, The Tempest. It’s actually tied for the the first Shakespeare play I ever read, back at the very beginning of 6th grade (about 11y.o.; the other was A Comedy of Errors). It one of Shakespeare’s best comedies, detailing the story of a duke (Prospero) wrongfully kicked out of power by his treacherous brother, forced to raise his only child (Miranda) on a deserted island, with the “help” of an air spirit, Ariel. Through a system of convolutions, Ariel ends up freed, Miranda gets together with Ferdinand, and the merry party (with a few exceptions) desert the island, all as it should be.

This play is really fascinating for Prospero, the ex- (and future) duke. Through his will (and the powers of Ariel), he manages to shipwreck his enemies, find a husband for his daughter, and restore himself to his dukedom, with extraordinarily little trouble to himself. He both opens the play (through the titular tempest) and closes it (with a sweeping, gorgeous soliloquy). He’s also the master of delayed gratification, rivaling even the dastardly Iago — he’s been on that island for 14 years, after all, with the power to return home the entire time. He waits (out of 90% brilliance and 10% pettiness) for his enemies to come by the island, so that he can get them to apologize and restore him to his rightful dukedom — not to mention ensure a happy (and well-born) marriage for Miranda.

Miranda, though without the supernatural help of Ariel, is not without cleverness — she’s smart enough to get Ferdinand to take a break with her, she plays chess — with a father like Prospero, it’d be hard for her to be dumb, really. But she does get this line in the play:

O brave new world, that has such people in’t!

It’s a very charming moment from a character who has never seen another human besides her father (Caliban doesn’t count; neither does Sycorax). It’s from this line that many dystopian ideas have been born (I’m shaking my fist at Huxley), and the phrase is now more famous than the play itself, with many having heard it but not knowing that it came from Shakespeare. Yes, Miranda’s seeing the dregs of humanity, but it’s still humanity. She still sees something she recognizes, and wants to celebrate it.

And I think that’s something to scream about.

StSA–Titus Andronicus

Land sakes, man. This one was a slog to get through. It’s possibly also the only Shakespeare play where I felt mildly sick reading it, due to the graphicness of the violence.

Titus Andronicus is basically the tale of a Roman general (Titus) and the Queen of the Goths (Tamora) and how they do a bunch of horrible things to each other (mostly through family members) until at last everyone is dead except for Marcus, Lucius, and Young Lucius, with Lucius becoming the new general.

It’s kind of a downer, honestly. And possibly partially because this is the semester from Hell (I very literally have had a test every week from the 3rd week of February, and will continue to through the end of the semester in April), I actually can’t bring myself to scream about this one at all.

And perhaps that’s my takeaway from Titus; it’s not a play I hate, it’s not a play I love, it’s not a play I’ll read again if I can help it. But there was nothing in it that incensed me, that made me stand up and say “here is what is wrong”; there was nothing in it that I wanted to stand up and say “this is really good”, either. And ‘meh’ is the death knell of books — if I care, it’s because you did something right, whether it’s because it was good or bad.

This play is a catalogue of the horrible things people can do to each other. And I just — I don’t find that appealing. I love history — i’m minoring in it — but this play isn’t like the weird stories in history, where Xerxes attempts to whip and brand the Hellespont into submission, or the army of Liechtenstein, which set out with 80 men for a battle and somehow came back with 81. This isn’t a cool, interesting, or funny tale at all. It’s a record of atrocities, couched in five acts and iambic pentameter.

And I can honestly say I don’t think that’s something to scream about.

StSA–Twelfth Night (A Redux)

This is (I think) the only Shakespeare play that I approached from the model of an adaptation; given my age, it’s not surprising that She’s the Man happened upon me before I had a chance to read Twelfth Night. But I think there’s value in adaptations, so bear with me as I tackle this play a bit differently.

Adaptations do a lot to distill Shakespeare’s plays; as a matter of necessity, they cram a play with hours and hours of dialogue and pacing and situational humor into about an hour and a half in the modern day. Inevitably, things get left out — and those things which get left out generally make or break the adaptation.

Twelfth Night applies itself more generously to adaptation than, say, The Merchant of Venice, because of its broad application of tropes. Think about it — a crossdressing girl, identical twins, love-wet members of a higher social strata, etc etc — there’s not a lot that depends on the Elizabethan mores for the play to make sense, and this particular story is better for its evergreen qualities. Julius Caesar (and even Taming of the Shrew) does not operate outside itself without some heavy lifting — too integral to the structure of the play is the sphere in which it takes play. And while excellent adaptations can be made of these plays (see 10 Things I Hate About You), it is not without a complete facelift.

Twelfth Night doesn’t need this; it is both a blank slate and an intensely relatable experience. While we may not be a crossdressing twin working for a duke we’ve fallen in love with, most of us have felt the almost extravagant hopelessness (and pseudo-masochism) of keeping oneself in close proximity to one we love who loves someone else. We’ve all stood back, like Molovio, and watched the world descend into what must be lunacy, only to be accused of madness ourselves. And we’ve all, like Sebastian, walked into a situation where everyone was intimately familiar with us but we had no knowledge of them — and thus are forced by social niceties (and possible greed) to play along and say “Yeah…I remember you! Of course!”, even as we reach for another cup of punch at our high school reunion.

These are intensely relatable circumstances, and these situations are where the strength of Twelfth Night stands.

And, as for me, I think that’s something to scream about.

StSA–Julius Caesar

The other play in the running for my favorite Shakespeare play (and certainly the best of his tragedies), Julius Caesar is a masterpiece for many reasons, but the one I’m interested in is its rhetoric. Thus, even though we have the great Caesar, the ‘honorable’ Brutus, and the ‘lean and hungry’ Cassuis, my favorite bits of the play always include Antony and his speeches.

Antony manages to turn the public’s opinion with possibly the most sarcastic speech in the history of sarcastic speeches, to bring about the death of those who killed Caesar, and to still make me root for him throughout all his political machinations. Even though he expresses contempt and ridicule for those who killed Caesar, he is still able to recognize virtue in Brutus (whom he previously derided as an “honorable man”) and gives us my favorite Shakespeare quote of all time:

This was the noblest Roman of all

All the conspirators, save only he,

Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;

He only, in a general honest though,

And common good to all, made one of them.

His life was gentle; and the elements

So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world, This was a man!

Beautifully written, and electrifying to hear if you’re lucky enough to have a capable actor playing Antony.

Of all Shakespeare’s tragedies, Julius Caesar is one of two that doesn’t attempt to cloak itself (to great effect, 9 times out of 10) in a veil of utmost misery; to make you feel that nothing could ever be right again. Instead, it produces a feeling that the errors of men drive the world, for better or for worse. We don’t know how Rome would have turned out if Caesar had indeed been crowned king; we don’t know what tornadoes that butterfly might have created. But Shakespeare’s job isn’t to explore that; it’s to lend an air of humanity to an event (and its subsequent events) that achieved an almost mystical quality by the time we got to the 1600s.

Julius Caesar is breathtaking in its clear-cut, realistic portrayal of humanity and of the nature of man. We still have politicians like Cassius, a few like Brutus, and perhaps one or two in a century like Caesar. We have Rhetoricians like Antony, able to sway the public at will while still being admirable people in and of themselves, and we have opportunists like Octavius, who can be great, provided they’re pointed in the right direction.

Shakespeare is often dismissed as arcane, impossible to read and even harder to comprehend. But his writings are just as pertinent today as they were over 400 years ago.

And I think that’s something to scream about.

StSA–The Taming? of the Shrew

To be honest, The Taming of the Shrew is my absolute favorite Shakespeare play. It’s hilarious, well plotted, and contains one of the most interesting relationships between a couple that has ever been written.

And no one dies pointlessly, which is always a bonus.

However, in professing this opinion, I often get odd looks and the occasional insult. People ask how I can support a so obviously vicious and sexist play.

To this, I answer: either you didn’t read with even half your brain engaged, or you need to brush up on comprehension before reading Shakespeare.

And I can back it up.

The two main schools of thought towards the “taming” of Katherina is that either she’s tamed or she’s not; either that she means her speech at the end or she doesn’t. These two interpretations are generally how the character is played on film and on stage — which is a shame. Because I don’t think either are right.

And while I realize the enormous amount of hubris in declaring 90% of scholarship on this play null and void, I’d ask you hear me out. Because at the end of it, this play invokes Occam’s Razor — the simplest explanation is the best.

Those who take offense at Katherina’s “taming” start with the false assumption that there was nothing in her that needed changing in the first place. For heaven’s sake, this is a woman who ties up her sister when she suspects her of lying, who throws things and screams abuse is and is not just rude, but abusive herself.

So the first claim of “sexism” because a female character is changed is already no good — Katherina definitely needs a personality shift. Not a reversal, you see — but neither the play nor Petruchio call for that.

And here we come to Petruchio — the much-maligned other main character in the story. Yes, he marries Katherina for money. Boo hoo. Who is he putting out by doing so? Baptista was going to marry Katherina off — the question was only who and how fast could it happen. It might as well be to someone who actually liked Katherina.

Yes, I posit that he did. Because no one would marry someone — no matter what the dowry — as physically violent as Katherina if they didn’t actually think that they could stand being around her. This idea is cemented in their verbal sparring match in Act 2, where they are shown to be each other’s equals, both in general intellect and in quick-witted tongues (and a slightly bawdy sense of humor/way of speaking).

Petruchio proceeds to embarrass her. This is fact. But the question is why? Why make a fool out of himself (other than the simple fact that he didn’t care what people think of him)?

Answer? He’s showing her what she does. He does it a bit differently, but Katherina has been acting just as poorly in society as he is, and he’s showing her, possibly for the first time in her life, how she appears to others. Not the fierce person she sees herself as, but as someone who does not have the wits to belong in society.

Social niceties are a thing for a reason. They allow to the world to function. By acting so ridiculously abrasively and despotically, Katherina is truly positing herself as the most selfish person in the world.

Tl;dr? He’s showing her that she has flaws. Not quirks, but flaws. And while everyone does, she makes a point of imposing her flaws on others and tantruming when everything doesn’t go her way. So Petruchio does the same thing.

After the marriage, he shows her how obnoxious it is when someone dominates the terms of an argument, eventually wearing her down to the point where she agrees with whatever she says. And it’s after this that I’d argue that she finally gets the point. She finally understands exactly what Petruchio is trying to tell her — albeit in a roundabout way, because that’s just how Petruchio rolls (and because if he’d told her this outright, she wouldn’t have listened nor believed him).

And then, the natural conclusion is in the famous (and much derided) speech. And here’s the answer:

Katherine’s not tamed, in the awful sexist way that professors often want to point out as a way of devaluing this play (and often Shakespeare as a whole). What she has learned is how to be herself and be socially appropriate.

Look at the speech — it’s absolutely just as harsh and ‘shrewish’ as her speech to Bianca at the beginning of the play. So what’s the difference?

She’s learned how to discipline (and really, how to yell at) her sister while being socially appropriate. What names to use, what accusations to level, etc. It doesn’t matter if they’re true or not — some were true and some were false before. What’s important is that she’s learned that she can behave however she wants if she twists it slightly and puts forth the appearance of behaving as a polite lady should (such as coming when Petruchio asked her to — which, really, is simple politeness, not any sort of sexism).

She didn’t stop expressing herself. She learned to do it just a bit differently.

I adore Katherina. She’s my favorite character in the play — though the blustery, clever Petruchio is a close second. And so watching her change, and learn, is a phenomenal experience. It’s one of the reasons I love this play so much, and why I feel the need to correct people when they don’t get it.

Because the simplest answer here is that Katherina is the protagonist. As the protagonist, she needs to have an arc of character growth. And it’s a positive one.

And I think that’s something to scream about.

StSA–The Problem With Lear

To make up for the fact that I didn’t have a Shakespeare post last week, you get two this week — one tragedy (from last week) and one comedy (this week’s play).

King Lear is my father’s favorite Shakespeare play, which was enough to give me pause before even starting it, as my father and I tend to get along like oil and water on a good day. But I pushed on with an open mind, thinking that there are a few different books my father and I agree on (generally anything by David McCullough), so this might be one of them.

I, just like Lear in the play, should have gone with my first thought when dividing the kingdom of my time. It would have saved a lot of problems.

My main issue with King Lear is that, in the end, there is no one for me to root for. I may feel bad for Lear, but I also feel bad for Edmund — who, after all, couldn’t help the circumstances of his birth. Cordelia is too passive (and then too stupid) for me to get behind, and her sisters are even worse. The final scene where Lear carries in the corpse of the only daughter who actually gave two figs about him was supposed to be heart wrenching in the senselessness of her death, but instead led me to banging my head on the wall at the senselessness of the tale.

Everyone who could have learned is dead, and everyone alive did not need the lesson in the first place. And to top it all off, there’s no hero for me to root for.

In every type of media, we need a hero — Lord Byron documented this at the beginning of his epic Don Juan (though he called it an “uncommon want”).  The hero doesn’t have to be moral (Walter White isn’t), or sensible (Ted Mosby isn’t) — they don’t even have to be nice (Gregory House certainly isn’t). But we need someone who has enough humanity for us to root for them.

And that’s where King Lear as a story falls down.

There are no moments where we see Lear’s eldest daughters or Edmund as even close to human. And yet, at least they are not disgustingly passive in the way that the rest of the characters are. Even Edgar, possibly the only character I wouldn’t smack soundly, doesn’t make me want to root for him.

I don’t know these characters. I don’t have any frame of reference for these characters, even at the most basic level — that they are recognizable as human. And thus I cannot love these characters — I cannot root for them.

They’re not kind nor competent. Nothing that would lead me to cock my head to the side and muse “Yes, I have met someone like this character. They could be real”.

The heroes that we root for are people that we know. They’re not paragons — because people aren’t perfect. As amazing as Shawn Spencer’s detective abilities are, he would not be half as likable if we all hadn’t met the slightly spastic kid who was far smarter than they let on. More than that, we’ve all had moments where we didn’t let on exactly how much we knew, or how much we saw.

We’ve known Shawns. We, at certain points, have been Shawn. But none of us know a Lear, and none of us have been Lear. Heck, I have a very senile grandpa and I still don’t associate Lear with him. Because my grandfather is a real person, and Lear (and the rest of his court) isn’t.

I’ll be honest, it kind of kills me that this play was such a let down, that it relies on a thin thread of plot where it could have featured great and nuanced characters.

And that’s something to scream about.