William Shakespeare is widely regarded as one of the most influential playwrights in history, and his plays have been performed and studied for centuries. From the timeless tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to the hilarious antics of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s plays continue to captivate audiences around the world. Whether you’re a fan of tragedy, comedy, or romance, there’s a Shakespeare play for everyone. So why not revisit these timeless classics and discover the magic of Shakespeare for yourself?
Back in November, I had a bit of a reality distortion moment as I found evidence that a story I’d always told as having happened in 2008 actually happened in 2004. Specifically, we’re talking about a production of The Tempest that I took my kids to see. Their first one, in fact. The one I use as the foundation when I tell people about my kids’ relationship with Shakespeare. Only, if it happened in 2004, I only had one kid.
But I was right after all! Looking through old pictures this weekend I found more from that production, with my other two kids clearly included. I knew I wasn’t losing my mind. These pictures were, in fact, dated 2008. That gave me an idea I should have thought of in the first place. I used my own darned search function…
And look what I found. August 2008. I actually posted about it several times both before and after the show, it was quite a milestone event for me.
I had to get in on the fun, even if I don’t totally understand it. But be warned, this egg isn’t throwing down his warlike shield.
I have several different filters that collect Shakespeare references across various sites – Google, Reddit, etc… The signal/noise ratio is about what you’d expect, but I do find some good stuff often enough to keep doing it. Most of it lately is memes. Typically bad ones (hint – if you think your meme is funny, take two seconds to check your spelling rather than rushing to post it for karma? It’ll be that much funnier when you can include in your audience all the people who don’t think you’re an idiot.)
But lately, it seems like two quotes in particular have taken over the world:
“You are a saucy boy” – Lord Capulet in Romeo and Juliet
and
“What, you egg!” – Murderer in Macbeth (stabbing optional)
No, seriously. Just looking at the front page of my Pocket queue today, here’s the links I found:
Using “egg” as an insult has always been one of those amusing things about Shakespeare that was a little off. But these days it’s become clear that saucy boy and egg have teamed up (usually with some stabbing at the end) and I’m just wondering where this came from? Was it a reference to a show I’m not watching? It’s getting pretty tiresome.
I haven’t been around much lately, and for that I apologize. I’ve missed a few big stories that I hope to come back around to as part of the year end.
One of those is finally getting to watch The King, an adaptation (?) of Henry V now playing on Netflix and starring Timothée Chalamet as Henry and Robert Pattinson as a psychotic Dauphin, among others.
My ability to watch and appreciate these movies for review is limited. The only time I’ll get to watch is when the family is safely stowed away for the night, because they don’t want to watch, and I can’t concentrate when I’m getting pulled in various homework directions. But then during those limited hours I’m typically trying to do several other important things, so the best that I’m going to be able to spare for a movie I don’t really care to watch is “put it on in the background while I sit at the laptop.” For bonus points I’ll use closed captions so I don’t have to keep saying “What did he say?” (Compare to Branagh’s All Is True, which the whole family sat and watched through, uninterrupted.)
So, on to our story. I’ll admit to not knowing the Henriad story as much as some of Shakespeare’s other plays, so I really have no idea where this one just invents stuff out of whole cloth (for the most part — you’ll see). We open with Hotspur doing his rebellion thing, leading to the king chosing Hal’s brother Thomas to be the next king and do something about it. Cut to the battlefield where Hal challenges Hotspur to one-on-one battle instead, beating him, and causing a hissy fit from Thomas who screams that his brother stole this victory from him. This doesn’t last long, as Thomas goes off and gets killed and Hal ends up king anyway.
What of Falstaff? Of course there’s a Falstaff. But here’s the thing right away – Falstaff looks like he’s maybe ten years older than Hal? He doesn’t look remotely like a father figure, he looks like one of those guys that graduated college right as you got there and then just kind of hangs around with the young people because he’s got no ambition to do otherwise. Falstaff roams around doing his Falstaff thing, not paying his bar bill and whatnot, until he hears that Hal has been appointed king.
And then we get my favorite scene, the wonderfully sad “I know thee not, old man…” scene…..only no wait, we don’t. At all. Falstaff is appointed to join Hal’s council as one of his trusted war tacticians. Huh?
Cut to France. It’s complicated, but we all know the story ends up in France. That’s where we meet Robert Pattinson’s psychotic Dauphin, who has literally come to meet Hal and tell him that he’s basically going to torture him until he goes home. There’s even a scene right out of a horror movie where Dauphin and his men, skulking about in the woods around Hal’s camp, send one of the children (why did he bring children??) back to camp with a sign for Hal — the head of one of the other children. Charming.
Everything builds to Agincourt. We knew it would. The most entertaining part to me was a nod to the expectation of a big speech moment where Hal basically screams at the men, “You’re probably expecting a big speech right now!” And then goes on to give a reasonably modern version of “We’re all going to die someday.”
There’s more to it, but I don’t want to spoil the whole movie in case people want to watch. I found it reasonably violent, but not in a Fassbender’s Macbeth way. There’s a beheading (in a god awful special effects scene), and one poor dude gets stabbed in the *top* of the head in a scene that made me cringe. Aim for the soft bits, man! Ouch!
As with most of these movies the bits of dialogue where people are trying to sound like Shakespeare are painful to the ear. The battles are brutal, muddy and bloody. I don’t know that I can say it was bad. It’s more like, ok, somebody made a movie that used Henry as a structure and then kind of did their own thing with it. That’s not a sin. If you swapped it for Romeo and Juliet that’s basically the plot of many, many movies. I think Falstaff probably had the best character arc. There’s one particular scene, and one particular expression on his face, that makes me wish I was paying closer attention (see opening notes) and maybe want to go back and follow his arc closer. Just because they gave him a new story doesn’t mean we can’t imagine he’s the same character.
Gloucester and King Lear. Image courtesy Alexander Barnett
We don’t often pay attention to the very opening of King Lear. The “good stuff” starts with Lear dividing up his kingdom between his daughters, and that hasn’t happened yet. All we really get is Gloucester introducing Edmund to Kent.
But I was in that part of the text again today and man, Gloucester, not really cool!
KENT
Is not this your son, my lord?
GLOUCESTER
His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: I have
so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am
brazed to it.
So right off the bat, “I’m embarrassed to admit this is my son.” Lovely. It gets worse.
KENT
I cannot conceive you.
GLOUCESTER
Sir, this young fellow’s mother could: whereupon
she grew round-wombed, and had, indeed, sir, a son
for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed.
Do you smell a fault?
“Son, just sit there quietly while I explain to the nice man that your mother was a whore.”
KENT
I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it
being so proper.
Kent, for his part, is trying to make the best of the awkward situation. “Regardless of how he came into the world, that’s a fine looking boy you’ve got there!”
GLOUCESTER
But I have, sir, a son by order of law, some year
elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account:
though this knave came something saucily into the
world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the
whoreson must be acknowledged. Do you know this
noble gentleman, Edmund?
Emphasis mine of course, but what son doesn’t love to hear “Well, at least his mom was hot, and great in bed.” Sure Edmund’s the villain of this story but you pay close attention to a scene like this and think, can you blame him?
I never really noticed the line above about how he holds his other, lawful son (Edgar) “no dearer in my account”. Does Gloucester have a problem with Edgar right from the start, that is then what Edmund feeds on to set his plan in motion? Man, Shakespeare thought of everything!
For years, whenever I brag about my kids’ connection to Shakespeare, I’ve said that my son saw his first production of The Tempest while he was still in his stroller.
This weekend my daughter was going through a box of pictures and held one up, asking, “Who is this?” I recognized the picture immediately as she had it tucked into her dressing table mirror for years.
Sorry for the quality, it’s literally a picture of a picture. The guy in the nylon mask in the background isn’t about to rob us all, he was one of the spirits roaming the set and making noises. This outdoor production was literally in the middle of a strip mall and people occasionally just walked right through the set. Who cares, I loved it. Practically guerilla Shakespeare.
“That’s…”
“…Caliban,” I hear my wife’s voice behind me.
I was momentarily speechless. “…Caliban. Yes. Really? You remember that?”
My wife seems to think it’s no big deal. “The Tempest. We went down the Cape.” For my part, whenever a beautiful woman gets one of my Shakespeare references my first reaction is almost always, “Oh, I’ve got to marry you.” Lucky for me this time! 🙂
“Sorry,” I say to my daughter, regaining my composure. “Just falling in love with your mother all over again. That was the first production that we were invited to. One of my social media followers invited me to come and we hung out with the cast afterward. Your brother kept freaking out about Caliban, pointing and yelling, “Monster!”” I flip the picture over. It is dated 2004 — two years before my son was born “Whoa. Your brother wasn’t even born when we went? I’ve been telling that story wrong all these years? I guess it was you in the stroller.”
My daughter considers the picture. She notes the month. “My birthday’s in August. I wasn’t born yet for this picture either.”
I was completely flabbergasted. All these years my memory was of taking three children to this production, and I only had one child at the time? Unbelievable.
