Author: duane

Mystery Men of Shakespeare

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I discovered this weekend that the 1999 Ben Stiller movie Mystery Men was finally on Netflix. When my kids were younger I kept coming back around to it as something I wanted to show them, given the rise of superhero movies, but it was never available for streaming. This one’s weird, it’s more of a “super anti-hero” movie where a bunch of normal guys with arguably no powers at all wish they were heroes. You’ve got Paul Reubens as “the spleen”, who farts at people as a weapon, Hank Azaria as the fork flinging Blue Raja, William H Macy as the Shoveler (“God gave me a gift. I shovel well, I shovel very well”) … the list goes on, all easily recognizable character actors. Janeane Garofalo as “The Bowler”. Ben Stiller as “Mr. Furious”. You won’t necessarily like him when he’s angry, but you won’t have to worry too much about it.

Why are we talking about this? Because when we sat down to watch it I noticed something I hadn’t seen twenty years ago – William H Macy delivering his version of Henry V!

Stalin and TS Eliot, Man, I Tell You.

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I knew about the Nazis and Merchant of Venice. But I never knew about Stalin and Hamlet.

Apparently Stalin “disapproved” of Hamlet, he didn’t ban it. Which I’m gathering, though I’m not a student of this particular time in history, that Stalin was the kind of dude who, if you did something he disapproved of, you lived to regret it … but not very long.

The rest of the linked article, be warned, is about cancel culture – a very hot, very divisive topic these days. The Stalin story makes the point – you don’t have to enact a law to cancel something. Sometimes, just the right word from the right person can do the trick.

(*) How’s TS Eliot get dragged into this? The poet wrote an essay entitled, “Hamlet and his Problems“, where we get the infamous quote referring to the English language’s greatest play as “certainly an artistic failure.” Unlike Stalin, however, Eliot apparently did not have cancel powers – few people would say that they stopped producing Hamlet because TS Eliot said so.

What’s Your Status?

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Here’s something different. What exactly did class and status mean in Shakespeare’s time? Can we put it into a modern perspective?

Middling Culture has put together a status calculator to answer that question. You provide your answers for questions about your job, education, gender, and general position in the community (do you hold an office with the church?) Then it tells you how you would have fared back in Shakespeare’s day.

Elite Middling/New Gentry
You are of new gentry status! This means that you were born to a middling family, but you may have been granted a coat of arms in your lifetime, and that you became extraordinarily wealthy.

I think that’s good? Of course a number of the questions make no real modern sense (do you have a coat of arms? Were you gifted your accomodations by a wealthy noble?) so you’ll have to take some creative guesses. I actually ran through it twice and forgot what my first answers were.

They look very excited about the project, and there’s a number of requests for feedback as well as informative links about how the calculator works. I think it might be cool to see some of the answers side by side with your final result, you know? How much does gender play a role? What about the coat of arms, or your position in the church? Is there any individual answer that flips your status entirely?

Ethan Hawke on Shakespeare

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I joke about the Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet (2000) because, honestly, I never finished it. Maybe I was going through a cynical phase at the time, but I remember listening to his rendition of “To be or not to be” in … was it a laundromat? And thinking, he’s just rambling through this, this isn’t any kind of delivery, I’m not enjoying this. I think Bill Murray was his Polonius, and honestly I don’t even remember anything about his performance. I heard it was actually good.

I guess it was a video store.

But I’m coming back around, and think I should give him another chance. The man’s clearly a fan of our favorite subject. He’s got a new novel out, A Bright Ray of Darkness, about an actor whose marriage fails just as he’s starting out a run in Henry IV on Broadway. Hawke himself was Hotspur in a Broadway Henry IV, and his marriage (to Uma Thurman) also failed, so this seems a bit autobiographical.

I love reading about people playing Shakespeare. That this one seems to hold a mirror up to nature so clearly makes me want to read it that much more. And maybe I’ll tune in to Hawke’s Hamlet again while I’m at it.

Exit Through The Gift Shop, Please

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The play never mentions a balcony, I’m just saying.

Although I once took a train through Verona, I’ve never gotten to see Juliet’s balcony for real. Given that it’s an entirely fictional tourist location, I’m not in any hurry.

But apparently three million people a year are, and it’s a real problem. The local government has been trying everything under the sun to control the crowds, including security guards, tickets and turnstiles. The area under the balcony, where the famous statue resides, is only about 400 square meters, but a thousand people at a time will cram into it for a chance to take their selfies and get to second base with the bronze thirteen year old.

The real problem, though, seems to be the museum. The shop proprietors are against any plan to limit the amount of traffic into the space – because only a small percentage of them ever buy anything. Three million people come to see it, less than three hundred thousand check out the museum.

She’s too young for you, bro.

So the next time you’re on Capulet turf, do everybody a favor and swing by the gift shop, why don’t you. Maybe pick up some post cards or a refrigerator magnet. Keep everybody happy. 🙂