Shakespeare makes life better.
Marginal Revolution offers a glimpse into Rosenbaum’s “Shakespeare Wars” with this post on how to appreciate Shakespeare. More specifically he examines Rosenbaum’s list of the best Shakespeare performances, including Orson Welles Chimes at Midnight which I’d never even heard of. And it does not go unnoticed that Kenneth Brannagh is not even on the list.
I don’t know about you all, but probably the most pitiful part in all of Hamlet comes when Ophelia enters to pass out the flowers to her family, and we get to see what’s happened to the poor girl:
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts,” said Ophelia to her brother Laertes. “There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.“
Anyway, the San Francisco Chronicle has a lengthy article detailing what each individual herb meant. It’s quite a detailed article, explaining what each one means, how Shakespeare referenced it, and a guess at why Ophelia speaks of it. But I’m not sure of all the leaps it makes. For instance, rosemary is for remembrance, repelling witches, and chasing away bad dreams. But for Ophelia, “distraught and depressed over her father’s death and Hamlet’s odd behavior, the mention..indicates…her brittle self-image and lack of confidence.” What? Huh? I suppose maybe there’s some sort of “This is all a bad dream I’m having, and I want the rosemary to protect me from it”, but that’s a stretch.
I’ve posted about computer animated Shakespeare videos before, but this is the first time I’ve seen a computer-generated creation try to actually act. Pendulum Studios put together this scene of Marc Anthony doing the “All is lost…” speech (“triple turn’d whore!”). Pretty intriguing stuff. There’s an actor doing the voice, that’s not computer generated. But it’s interesting to see how far the movements and facial expressions have come. The graphics purists are already picking on things like the rendering of the hands, but I’m more interested in the face.
Ed Friedlander, M.D. is a doctor who writes about Shakespeare. I’ve linked to his stuff before. Recently his page on Enjoying Macbeth came up (which I don’t think I’ve linked before) and it’s worth a look for it’s brutal description of the violence, if nothing else. He comes right out in the first page and warns people that it’s not family entertainment, and goes on to not only point out every scene of violence, but to put them in proper historical context. Yet he still keeps it very accessible, even pointing to oddities like why no one suspects Lady Macbeth, even when she comes out with her “What, in our house?” line. Methinks the lady doth protest too much! Wait, wrong play. Anyway, lots of great info on that page, far more than most I’ve scene. Worth checking out.