"Knowing I lov'd my books,
he furnish'd me . . ." (The Tempest 1.2.167)
Are You
Shakespearienced?
Previously-Run
Fun Trivia
In 1940,
Russian poet Anna Akhmatova wrote the following poem entitled "To the
Londoners":
Shakespeare's play, his twenty-fourth--
Time is writing it impassively.
By the leaden river what can we,
Who know what such feasts are,
Do, except read Hamlet, Caesar, Lear?
Or escort Juliet to her bed, and christen
Her death, poor dove, with torches and singing;
Or peep through the window at Macbeth,
Trembling with the one who kills from greed--
Only not this one, not this one, not this one,
This one we do not have the strength to read.
What do you think this poem may mean? Give it your best shot and e-mail me at TitaBaumlin@missouristate.edu
with an analysis of the poem or at least a stab at what she meant by the first
two lines.
Now,
HERE's a kid who ain't no dummy: when she was a college freshman, Elizabeth
Blair wrote in to enlighten us about the mysterious poem by Anna Akhmatova,
"To the Londoners." Here's what Liz has to say:
"I'm writing in reference to the poem 'To the Londoners' you included in
your page. I'm going to give it a stab. According to the Encyclopedia
Britannica, Shakespeare's twenty-fourth play was Troilus and Cressida,
which is about the chaos and destruction of the Trojan War. When this poem was
written, England was engulfed in the Second World War, which must have seemed
eerily similar, perhaps even prophesied by Shakespeare's play. 'Time is writing
is impassively' refers to the fact that the events described in Troilus and
Cressida were coming to pass in reality as time went by. It can be assumed
that, since the title of the poem is 'To the Londoners,' the 'leaden river'
refers to the grey Thames. The Londoners 'know what such feasts [the horror of
war] are,' because at this time, they were experiencing first-hand the tragedy
of war. They read only tragedies that don't apply directly to them; for
example, Hamlet, Caesar, Lear, Romeo and Juliet,
and Macbeth. 'Only not this one, not this one, not this one. / This one
we do not have the strength to read.' The author cannot bring herself to read
Shakespeare's twenty-fourth play; it strikes too close to home."
Brava, Liz Blair! Brava! (Now THERE'S a budding Shakespearean scholar if ever I
saw one!)
Roy White of St. Paul, Minnesota wrote to me some
interesting observations about Anna Akhmatova's poem: "The explanation I
have seen, and one that makes sense to me, is that the Russian word 'drama'
('dramu' in the accusative) refers to plays that are not comedies. Shakespeare
wrote 23 such plays, and now time is writing the twenty-fourth, which she has
not the strength to read. As for the suggestion that the 'leaden river' is the
Thames [see Previously-Run Trivia page] ... who knows? but when she writes that
we should read Hamlet by the 'leaden river,' surely the obvious
reverence is to Akhmatova's own leaden river, the Neva."
Hey, kids!
Guess what? The Shakespeare Guild of Washington, DC had its annual Gielgud
Award Celebration in Middle Temple Hall in London on Sunday, 16 January 2000.
Middle Temple Hall, by the way, is one of the places still extant in England
where Shakespeare's company performed. (A gorgeous place to visit! You can see
not only the spot where they likely performed but also a tabletop made from an
actual piece of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hind.) That year's Gielgud
Award goes to our good bud Kenneth Branagh, who was even then completing
another Shakespearean offering, Love's Labour's Lost. A hearty
congratulations to Ken, and also to the previous year's winner, Dame Judi Dench,
one of my favorite actors of all times.
Okay, they
gave me a brand new copy of Shakespeare for Dummies for my review for
this page. It's.... interesting. I guess that's the word. I'd have written it
differently, had they asked me. They might have gotten a little
more info in there, I should imagine. My basic response: C+. It's fun, but you
won't be any more than a dummy after reading it.
I know you
guys are just dying to hear what I think of 1999's Academy Award for Best
Picture, right?
Well, it was certainly loads of fun. The witty, smart dialogue alone was worth
the price of admission, and I've always loved Stoppard. (Go read Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead if you don't know Tom Stoppard: do not pass Go,
do not collect $200.) I don't mind all the speculation about Shakespeare's
possible bad marriage; it could have happened. Oddly enough, you have to know
Shakespeare pretty well to get all the jokes in Shakespeare in Love, and
yet if you do know a lot about Shakespeare, there are maddening errors in this
movie that will make you want to wrest that Oscar away from them toute suite.
For example, they fundamentally misrepresented the entire process of writing
plays in Shakespeare's age. The whole point was not to write from one's own
experiences (as in modern writing) but to do dazzling things with sources that
audiences knew well. The plot of Romeo and Juliet did not spring fresh
from the fertile brain of the Bard but rather had a specific source in a poem
that EVERYONE was quite familiar with. Nobody would have been waiting with mega
suspense to see if the lovers survive; they would have been waiting with
suspense to see what touches of genius this playwright could inject into
a famous story.
Furthermore, they managed to mangle all manner of historical details. R&J
was likely not played at The Curtain or The Rose but at The Theatre, and
Shakespeare would not have played Romeo on the stage; that role was no doubt
played by Richard Burbage (who was Shakespeare's friend and fellow player by
this time. Edward Alleyn-- the "Ned" character cheesily represented
by Ben Affleck-- was an older actor associated with their rival company). (In
fact, it seems to me that they simply reversed the names in the script---- they
could have called Affleck "Burbage" and the other guy "Ned"
and been accurate. What a silly, needless error!) And a woman on the stage?
Trust me, it didn't happen. Boys played women's roles, consistently. (And there
weren't older men playing older women, either. Jeez.) Well, I could go on, but
I think I will stop with the simple observation that I will likely spend the
rest of my academic career explaining to students that Twelfth Night did
not come immediately after Romeo and Juliet. There were about a dozen
plays in between them, in fact. Sigh.
Though the
film visited Springfield, MO, only about ten days, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet
was a joy that a few of us, at least, were able to behold on the wide screen
here. In my own humble opinion, Branagh's portrayal of Hamlet is not the
greatest ever done, but his film version of Hamlet is, without doubt,
THE definitive Hamlet to date.
The Fall, 1996, volume of The Shakespeare Newsletter contained some
wonderful news and notes about Branagh and the film, along with discussions and
reviews that properly highlighted Branagh's directing. Perhaps the most unusual
aspect of the film's visual impact is Branagh's set dominated wholly by
mirrors, lending an atmosphere of opulence, vanity, narcissism, and above all,
"an atmosphere of incipient paranoia" in Branagh's words (SN
46:3 [1996]:62). Asked (in a panel discussion at the Smithsonian in December,
1996) what the set "meant," Branagh replied, "A bloody technical
nightmare, that's what it all meant" (SN 46:3 [1996]:62). Indeed,
the camera angles had to be carefully crafted so as to avoid reflection of the
technicians or equipment, and I heard that the camera crew had to wear period
costumes in case an elbow or knee managed to be seen in a shot or two. If you
watch carefully, you can find that the mirrors (mounted on doors that swing in
and out in the Great Hall) are sometimes "open" in some places and
other times "shut." The most breathtaking scene in the film, from
this technical aspect, must be the "Get thee to a nunnery" scene,
shot in this Great Hall, with the camera literally circling at high
speeds around the principals (can you imagine how difficult that must have been
in a room of mirrors?). And the brilliance of Branagh's staging of "To be
or not to be?" simply cannot be overstated, in my opinion, where Hamlet
delivers the soliloquy into what turns out to be a two-way mirror, on the other
side of which are Claudius and Polonius.
Hamlet and his bare bodkin
My
personal favorite aspect of the film is Sir Derek Jacobi, who in my opinion
gives us the finest King Claudius ever realized on stage or screen. He is,
well, astounding. Through his interpretation and performance of this villainous
character, the film gives us a story that is as much Claudius' journey from
ignorance to insight as it is Hamlet's. With the subtlest nuances of voice and
gesture, Jacobi's Claudius reveals to us a sad story of a stupidly naive man
who actually thought he could commit a murder and remain untouched by it in his
heart and soul, nay, even in his relationship with his beloved Gertrude! His
"O, my offense is rank" scene--shot, in this version, appropriately
enough, in the claustrophobic space of a confessional booth--shows us an
ordinarily cerebral man brought to the point of emotional desperation by a deed
that is, much to his own utter surprise, eating away at his deepest sense of
self. One wonders if, in the final analysis, Claudius himself isn't the naive
and spiritually-youthful-- if not "innocent"--tragic hero who is
ultimately crushed by the convergeance of his own naivete and the consequences
of a deed willfully though ignorantly chosen. During the promotionals for the
film, I heard an NPR broadcast of "Fresh Air" in which Kenneth
Branagh was interviewed about various aspects of his making this epic film. One
of his statements has remained in my mind, especially after I later saw Jacobi's
stunning performance. Asked if Jacobi (who, himself, had directed Branagh as
Hamlet on stage in the Renaissance Theatre Company's 1988 production of the
play) had given Branagh any "pointers" as he was directing the film,
Branagh replied, "Well, no, not really. He was so immersed in preparing
his own performance that I don't suppose it occurred to him to discuss with me
my direction of the play." Now, THAT, my friends, is an Actor. Or maybe an
Actor's Actor. Or an Actor's Actor's Actor. Perhaps the supreme evidence of
Branagh's generosity is that he allowed his own performance as Hamlet to be so
eclipsed by Jacobi's Claudius, for so it is.
Here is a humorous little anecdote: at the panel discussion in the Smithsonian
in December, 1996, Sir Derek Jacobi discussed his work as Claudius and fielded
questions. Someone remarked that Shakespeare's Claudius was not the only
Claudius that Jacobi has attempted (referring, of course, to his early work on
the BBC's I, Claudius), and, in reply, "Jacobi quipped that, yes,
he had pretty well managed to 'corner the market on Claudii'" (SN
46:3 [1996]:62).]
Jacobi as Claudius, Branagh as Hamlet, and Julie Christie as
Gertrude
If you're
interested in more information about the making of this film, check out W. W.
Norton's edition of the Screenplay, Introduction and Film Diary for the
movie. With illustrations and even Branagh commentary, the book gives us the
text and also a daily diary by Russell Jackson that takes us through each step
of the process. SN quotes one of Jackson's more humorous asides:
"Question: How do you address a screen legend? Answer from camera crew, a
mixture of deference and familiarity: 'A bit to the left, please, Chuck,
sir'" (SN 46:3 [1996]: 53). But, speaking of The Legend, I thought
he did a pretty durned good job, himself, giving us a Player King whose
war-torn actor's face shows the deep sadness and fatigue of having suffered
literally decades of abuse from audiences (and, one would think, tabloids) who
find their amusement in treating actors as if they are subhuman and
"dirty." Hamlet, alone, seems to understand them and treat them with dignity,
something I found to be a touching aspect of Branagh's interpretation of the
character.
The
New Yorker
(May 13, 1995) reported that Salman Rushdie is a maven of Shakespeare trivia:
"Once, in the course of a literary word game, Rushdie was challenged to
rename a Shakespeare play as if it had been written by Robert Ludlum."
What followed was a rush of Rushdie-"Ludlumese," including The
Elsinore Vacillation and The Dunsinane Deforestation (that's Hamlet
and Macbeth, don'cha know) and (now, take your turn at figuring these
out!) The Kerchief Implication, The Rialto Forfeit, and The
Capulet Infatuation (36).
Okay, two can play
this game. Let's rename Shakespeare plays as Hollywood might be doing them. How
about Twister in My Hands or A Time to Kill the French? Or maybe Boyz
N the Meat Pies?
The
so-called "New" Globe Theatre is open in London on the south bank of
the Thames (but not on the site of the real Globe, as people often mistakenly
assume). This structure is the latest in a string of replicas of Shakespeare's
Globe around the world (one of them, oddly enough, in Odessa, Texas, where I
grew up and once saw a nice production of The Merchant of Venice). This
London Globe was the dream-child of the American actor/director Sam Wanamaker,
who began in 1970 passionately garnering funding for the thing but passed away
in 1993 just after construction began. Unlike the other replicas that are only
reminiscent of the actual Globe, this 20-sided outdoor theatre (click here to
go to my England page for some photos of the structure) --meaning that the
audience is exposed to the elements!-- (they sell plastic raincoats at
the gate for 2 pounds) is made of English oak with walls made of lime plaster
and animal hair and with a thatched roof for the hut of the stage proper. To
achieve his goal, Wanamaker not only had to raise the funding for the
construction ($36 million) but also had to fend off the companies and even the
British government who thought they could make better commercial use of the
land he proposed for the site.
Wanamaker's ideal was to create something as close to the original as possible,
even including housing therein a repertory company that would play to the
masses, as Shakespeare's own Lord Chamberlain's Men (later renamed as the
King's Men) did. For a glimpse into the popularity of the theatre at the time,
consider that in the late sixteenth century, the population of London was about
160,000; a full 20,000 Londoners went to the theatre every week! This new Globe
does not fully replicate the original, however, for the excavation of the
actual Globe did not occur until after construction of the new Globe was
underway: the new Globe seats 1,394 patrons, while the latest estimates of the
actual Globe indicate seating at around 3,000.
Following Wanamaker's death, Mark Rylance took up the cause as artistic
director. Rylance began the first season of plays with Two Gentlemen of
Verona in August, 1996. London theatre critics were outraged that Rylance
insisted that they pay for their tickets, rather than receive freebies as they
had become accustomed. But, no doubt, if there had been such an establishment
as theatre critics in Shakespeare's day, the Bard would probably have detested
them as much as he obviously did scholars and teachers, so Rylance's gesture is
probably quite in keeping with the re-creation theme of the original Globe.
What is widely complained about as being not in keeping is Rylance's commitment
to modernizing the Shakespearean productions: "I don't see that there's
any authenticity in going back to doing Shakespeare's plays as if we had an
Elizabethan audience dressed in Elizabethan clothes with no reference to what's
happening today," he says. From the standpoint of the purist, this may be
a strange approach, but when you think about it, you have to admit that the most
authentic Shakespearean production would have to be a modernized one, since audience
members in his day saw actors on stage who were wearing clothes remarkably
similar to their own and making various references to current events of their
own times.
If you want something truly trivial, look for the cover article of the Life
and Times section of the Springfield News-Leader on Saturday,
January 19, 1997. Therein will you find yours truly and some other local
educators discussing the relative merits of requiring a Shakespeare course for
English majors. This article was done in response to a 31-page national report
released in December from the National Alumni Forum that complained about the
fact that two-thirds of the nation's top colleges and universities have no
Shakespeare requirement for the English major. Not only that, the report
sniffed, but rather than taking Shakespeare, students may choose courses on pop
culture and sex and stuff like that. As I stated in the interview, I would love
to see more students choosing Shakespearean courses, but the interesting if not
totally ironic thing to me is that in his own day, Shakespeare WAS the
pop culture. Sex, violence, and the contemporary equivalent of rock 'n' roll
abounded in his plays. In fact, when scholars went about amassing books for the
great libraries of the seventeenth century (about a hundred years after
Shakespeare's death), they did not want to include his plays which were
considered too "pop" to stand next to the "great" books of
the past. I think Shakespeare may be watching us and laughing himself silly,
seeing all these stuffed-shirts running around in a heat, complaining about the
"dumbing down" of education, especially since he himself apparently
disapproved of the intellectual snobbery in his culture. The fact that the
National Alumni Forum complains about all this probably shows that they,
themselves, haven't read Shakespeare. What a hoot.
Now, lest you get the idea that I am not in favor of Shakespearean study, let
me encourage one and all to sign up for a course, or join a local study group
(the Springfield Literary Society has a local Shakespeare Reading Group that
meets once a month-- ask me for details, if you are interested), or go see a
Shakespearean movie or theatrical production. I believe that if you are
concerned about our culture's losing sight of Shakespeare, you are as
responsible as I or anybody else for insuring that he remain a foundation of
our culture. It's not up to the handful of Shakespearean scholars or English
majors to insure this; if it were, Shakespeare's works would have faded away
long ago, because there are too few of us to keep his works alive. Get
involved! Do your part! Support financially every Shakespearean venture that
you come into contact with, so that Shakespeare will become profitable rather
than a losing venture, as it too often is in the theatre.
