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?
Here’s a thought that came to me over the weekend. What if the “ghost of Hamlet’s father” really was an evil spirit that was just trying to cause trouble? What if Claudius didn’t really kill Hamlet’s father? How would the play change?
Other than Claudius’ actual words (“a brother’s murder”), how much evidence is there that he admits to his crime? If we snipped that bit out could he just as easily be dealing with guilt over the “crime” of marrying his brother’s wife?
More importantly, what does this do to the character of Hamlet? We go through the entire play assuming that Hamlet is doing the right thing, and Claudius is the bad guy. What if it was reversed? What if we really didn’t know? Or, even better, what if we knew (somehow) that Claudius was innocent, and that Hamlet spends the play chasing the wrong guy?
So you’re putting together the Motion Picture Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony, and you need a big name to host. Why not geek cultural icon, Professor Xavier and Jean Luc Picard himself, Sir Patrick Stewart? A match made in heaven. Sir Patrick, who seems to always be in the mood for such sport, is game for the event.
And what does he do? He brings the Shakespeare.
I love it. It’s a small thing (he ad-libs Puck’s “If we shadows have offended…”) that many people probably saw as a throwaway line. But we know better. We know that over four hundred years ago, before CGI and special effects were a thing, Shakespeare was in the business of putting dreams on stage.
A rehearsal room, dark. Enter JACK through the curtains, directly from outside as we see cars driving past. He rolls a single, lit incandescent lamp to center, and opens the curtains. We see folding tables on which sit copies of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. JACK picks one up and starts swearing.
Enter a younger man, STEPHEN, on the phone and holding a neck brace. He’s clearly been looking for JACK and is relieved to find him.
Thus opens Lear’s Shadow, written and directed by Brian Elerding, which I had the pleasure of watching yesterday at Mr. Elerding’s invitation.
We quickly learn that something bad has happened, though what we do not yet know. Jack is bruised, Stephen is trying to get him back into the neck brace, so those are some obvious clues. More telling, however, is that Jack – our director – seems to have no real idea where or when he is. He doesn’t know what play they’re rehearsing (hence his anger at seeing Romeo and Juliet scripts) or why no one else has shown up for rehearsal.
Stephen’s job is to keep Jack talking until Rachel (who Stephen was speaking with on the phone) can bring the car around. They reminisce about other plays they’ve done together, before landing on King Lear. Jack keeps re-realizing that the scripts are wrong, and doesn’t know the date. Stephen takes it upon himself to walk through the play with Jack.
For the next hour the two debate the finer details of Lear – what scenes and lines can be cut, how to deliver certain lines, where to “start” so you have “somewhere to go”. If you love being a fly on the wall during conversations like this (as I do) you’re going to greatly enjoy this. I do not fancy myself an actor, never have, so I like to watch them work at their craft without trying to put myself in their place.
Of course none of this is random, we’ve got a man who has lost his memory and has clearly had some tragedy befall him doing what amounts to a one man show about a man who has lost his memory upon which many tragedies fall. It’s a reminder that while King Lear may have been written five hundred years ago it could also have happened yesterday.
Though I’m watching this as a movie it reminds me of going to theatre back when I was a younger man. It’s a bare stage two man show, just dialogue, no real plot to speak of other than toward the ultimate answer to the “What happened?” question (which we may or may not receive).
If you believe that Shakespeare makes life better, even when it brings tears rather than laughter, then of course you’re going to like this. It’s very reminiscent of when Slings & Arrows did Lear, a connection the director and I already spoke of. “There’s no way I wasn’t influenced by Slings & Arrows,” he wrote. That’s intended as high praise. I’m not saying “This is trying to be Slings & Arrows,” I’m saying, “I’d watch an entire season of this like I’d watch a season of Slings & Arrows.”
I’m in the middle of a book right now, The Idiot by Elif Batuman, and while I can agree that it’s a very well-written book that deserves that praise it’s getting … I’m not enjoying it. It feels like homework. If I was back in college and this was required reading? Fine. I can read some chapters and then come to class ready to discuss the relationship between Selin and Ivan. But I’ve been out of college twenty plus years, I read things because I want to, not because I get a letter grade.
I was thinking about what to say to my book club at work and my first thought was, “I’m not about to go reading War and Peace for fun, either.” Then I thought about that for a second and realized, “But for me, King Lear is pleasure reading.”
We often talk about the difficulties of reading Shakespeare and trot out the old “see the play!” cliche. But what about actually sitting down to study a play? How many of us get the chance to do that once we’ve left school? I suppose if you’re active in a theatre group you can do that, but I’m certainly not. Most of my friends (barring my online following) barely get my references, let alone have interest in discussing the symbolism in The Tempest. I feel that once you’ve missed your window to study certain pieces of literature, you’re unlikely to get another shot at it. (In my adult life I also went back to read Catcher in the Rye and, more recently, The Great Gatsby. Both had that same feeling of, “Ok, I can see why this is good, but … I don’t love it.”)
Most of us probably have easy access to all the plays (the text, at least) and can read them at will. But which did you *study*? Where a group of students sat with a teacher and went through the deeper intricacies of the play? More interestingly, which *didn’t* you get a chance to study, that you wish you did?
For me, it’s Richard III. Never seen it live, and can only say that I’ve read it in the sense that twenty-five years ago I read all the plays. Never “studied” it, and certainly never had anybody walk me through the finer points. I feel a gap in my understanding of Shakespeare’s works as a whole, because of that.
Who else? Tell us in the comments which play you want to go back and study like somebody was going to quiz you on it.
If I scheduled it properly and my software behaved, you should be reading this while I’m sitting up in New England under about a foot of snow.
How often does Shakespeare make a storm of some sort a major plot point?
The Tempest, duh.
Twelfth Night needs to deposit Viola in Illyria to get started, so a shipwreck seems as good a reason as any. But does the description of how they went down count as a storm, or was it just bad luck at sea?
Poor Antonio’s ships in The Merchant of Venice. Or am I misremembering that? Do we get much of an explanation about how all of his ships go down? I think I’ve always just assumed a storm but not sure my evidence.
Macbeth opens with thunder and lightning. And then there’s Macduff’s description of the night before he arrives at Macbeth’s castle, where it all hits the fan.
King Lear on the heath. I didn’t realize the power of stage directions until I went back and looked and saw how many scenes say, “Storm still.” That is a huge storm.
Here’s a thought that came to me over the weekend. What if the “ghost of Hamlet’s father” really was an evil spirit that was just trying to cause trouble? What if Claudius didn’t really kill Hamlet’s father? How would the play change?
