When I first reviewed Sourcebooks Shakespeare I had not ripped into the accompanying audio CD because I wanted to give them away to my readers.  Well, now that we are giving away copies to TWO readers I am free to dig in. Umm…wow.  Or maybe, holy cow!  Or fill in your own word for “cow”.  To think I almost missed this. Let me take a moment to explain how I listen to stuff on CD these days.  Regardless of the matter, I rip it into MP3, compile it all up into a single file, turn it into audiobook format, and then put it on my ipod where I most typically listen while driving.  I got into this habit specifically because the ipod lets you put audiobooks (and not just any random MP3) on “faster” mode, allowing you to effectively speed read your way through a book on CD.  It was with this approach that I began the King Lear CD. …and it took me about 10 seconds to turn off “faster” mode, for starters.  I want to enjoy this, not merely say that I completed it. The CD ends up being something that is half lesson, half sampler, and all wonderful.  There’s a very simple structure – Derek Jacobi narrates, introducing a scene from the play followed by two different versions of that same scene.  At least I think it is always two, I’m not quite done yet.  By description I don’t just mean he says “Ok, here’s the Scofield versus the Olivier” – that would be the sampler.  It is a lesson because he explains what to listen for in each, how in the first you might hear Edgar doing a manic Poor Tom who barely prevents breaking character when he realizes he is speaking to the king, while in the second you get an Edgar who always looks to be in control of himself and is merely spouting a steady stream of gibberish. (That is my paraphrase, that is not part of the narration). I could listen to that all day.  There is no confusion, none at all, with this snipping of a scene here and a scene there, without context.  The narration provides perfect context, telling you what’s led up to this point, and walking you through the action that will happen.  It is where he says what to listen for that the real hardcore fans in the audience might find fault, as they’d like to listen for themselves first.  Not me.  I’m perfectly happy to be told the differences to watch for, and then see if I can hear it in the performance.  Quite honestly sometimes I agree, sometimes I don’t.  Jacobi may tell me that this Lear is going to speak to the storm like it’s a person standing next to him, but then when I hear that performance that’s not the thought I get at all. Walking through the scenes like this is also a great way to get a taste of productions you might not otherwise get to witness.  The first Fool I ever saw was John Hurt, playing to Olivier’s Lear.  Samples from that version are included, sometimes up against none other than Kenneth Branagh, playing the Fool vs Paul Scofield’s Lear.  You know what?  To my ear, Branagh never stood a chance. 🙂 It is easy to get confused, I have to say that.  One long stream of various people doing various scenes from the play makes it hard to connect the two and say “Ok, I remember how Olivier played Lear in the first scene, now I want to compare it to the scene on the heath…”  That might be easier with the original CD and the book for reference, rather than how I am doing it. [Funny aside, a coworker just came by as we wrap up our lunch hour and we got into a discussion about source material and multiple versions, and how there are some folks that will only ever love the first “version” they see, while others will seek out multiple versions and find their enjoyment in the intricate differences between the two.  I played a sample of this very audio for her, explaining that even though it is an analysis of King Lear, “This is the sort of thing I listen to for fun.”  You know what?  It sounds 1000x better on my headphones than in the car, I may have to switch my listening style…] Anyway, wrapping it up.  This is just wonderful, wonderful stuff.  I’d like the entire canon like this, please.  I want more than 2 examples of each, I want half a dozen.  I want a web site where they’re all indexed so I can pick and choose, a virtual Build-a-Lear Workshop (I just thought of that! :)) where I can piece together some Olivier, some Scofield, some McKellen… Don’t forget, we’re giving away two copies, so what are you waiting for?

The Sourcebooks Shakespeare I stumbled backwards into this fine resource when I saw a Twitter reference that mentioned both iPhone and Shakespeare.  So I wrote to Marie asking if she was doing some sort of software development related to Shakespeare. Long story short, I’ve got books to review :).  Marie was nice enough to send me review copies of King Lear and Macbeth (which I will be giving away next week in some sort of contest). I am very pleasantly surprised by how cool these are.  Let me see if I can break down the layout for you.  First and foremost, each book has a traditional script of the play – on the right hand pages.  Nicely laid out, lots of whitespace, which I like.  It looks visually like the kind of thing that might be read by an actor, rather than something out of an academic textbook with microscopic print. The left-hand pages are where you find all the good stuff.  Not only is there the traditional glossary of odd words, but actual trivia, anecdotes, images, and links to the accompanying audio CD where that particular part of the scene is being read aloud, so you can follow. Think about how cool that is.  We read about Lear and the Fool stumbling across Poor Tom’s hovel, while we flip through images of other people’s interpretations of that scene.  Where we don’t get images we get descriptions, like the story about a Cordelia who plays guitar through the opening scene, showing either that she was completely not paying attention to what was going on around her and thus completely taken off guard, or else that she knew exactly and was deliberately being rude.  I couldn’t get enough of that sort of thing, and only wish there was a way that they could imbed video right in there with everything else. Also strewn throughout are editorial comments that aren’t afraid to say things as they should be, like “Lear might be referring to _____ here, or possibly ______.”  I worry for textbooks that make factual statements to impressionable students, when another book might say something different with equal confidence that their answer is the only one.  Some of the editorial choices are interesting as well, and those too are called out in the comments.  I saw several times “Some editors place a scene break here, but Kent stays on stage the whole time so we chose not to.”  Cool – explanation of editor’s decisions, and not buried someplace in an appendix that I’ll never read. The book opens with a lengthy description of Shakespeare in performance, including stories about some of the more popular interpretations (like Kurosawa’s Ran, obviously).  It ends with a lesson on how to perform Shakespeare, and the importance of the spoken presentation.  This makes sense, of course because the books each come with an audio CD containing selections of well known Shakespearean actors performing key scenes from the play.  (I am deliberately not tearing into the book to listen to those, as I want to reward some of my readers with pristine copies.) I think this is a great idea.  From the web site we see that these are clearly intended for classroom use, and I’m glad to see it.  Personally as someone long out of school I think I’d boil down all the stories and images into a single volume, leaving only key passages from the play, and do it like “King Lear in Performance” or something.  After all, I already have many copies of the play and don’t need the book to be twice as long just so I know what scene they’re talking about when they talk about Gloucester’s eyes.  But maybe that’s just me? Excellent resource, fun to read.  It’s not often I get to say this about a Shakespeare book, but this is one that you can pick up just to look at the pictures!

When I heard on Twitter that somebody’d rewritten King Lear from the Fool’s point of view, I was interested.  I don’t know anything about the author, Christopher Moore – but I know King Lear.  Actually I read someone else’s review where he said the opposite, he knew Moore’s work but nothing of King Lear itself.  You might be asking yourself the same thing I did – how do you have the Fool narrate, when we Shakespeare geeks know what happens to him at the end of the story? Thanks to my friends at Harper Collins I was able to find out.  My review copy arrived wrapped in a plain brown wrapper with a warning label letting me know just what I was in for: This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as nontraditional grammar, split infinitives, and the odd wank . . . Ok then! The story does jump right in exactly as I was expecting, a comic novelization of the general plot, picked up right at Act I, Scene I with Gloucester talking about his bastard son.   Only now we get running commentary from the foul-mouthed Fool, who is given the name Pocket for the sake of the story.  I have to say, I found it hysterical.  As I said, I’m not familiar with Moore’s work – but if he writes like this all the time, I’m going to go and get more of it. It doesn’t take long, however, for the story to lose a few points with me.  New characters are introduced, who are not in the story at all.  Sure there’s a ghost and the witches of Birnam Wood, but I appreciate that those were more like cameo appearances for the benefit of the Shakespeare geeks.  Instead I’m talking about the “other” fool, the apprentice to Pocket, named Drool.  Drool also happens to have several traits that are crucial to advancing the plot – he’s monstrously strong, incredibly dimwitted, and has an unnatural gift of speaking in other people’s voices.  He’s also the source of much of the more bawdy humor, as he’s pretty much willing to shag anything that will stand still, including an oak tree with a knothole. Anyway, back to the story.  The plot progresses while staying surprisingly true to the Shakespeare’s version (and, I learned, often dipping into Shakespeare’s own source material).  We learn many things about the backstory that we’ve always wondered, like the deal with Cordelia’s mother, and more history on Lear’s temper.  We also get lots and lots (and lots) of detail that perhaps we didn’t need, like the fact that Pocket was sleeping with both Regan and Goneril.  Although the trial that Lear puts him through upon finding this out had one line so funny it had me laughing so hard for so long my wife asked what was wrong with me.   I wish I could tell it, but I’ll just say it involves Lear’s dinner and leave it at that, see if you spot it when you get to that part. I can’t spoil the story for you, but I will say this because I think it could be a deal breaker for some folks : Moore changes the story.  He stayed true for so long it actually came as a surprise to me, but near the end things start happening differently, and I realize that rather being “backstage” like something out of a Stoppard play, I was in an alternate universe version of Lear where things did not play out as I knew they did.  It’s an interesting moment in a story like this, because either you’re going to be curious to see how things resolve since now anything goes, or you’re going to lose interest because it’s not Shakespeare anymore.  I think I was in the latter group. I highly recommend this book to anybody who, like me, has a  sense of humor regarding their Shakespeare.    Yes, he adds characters and changes the story.  Yes, it’s twelve kinds of filthy and offensive.  It’s also very, very funny.  And, better, it still remains a tribute to its source material.   There’s even an author’s note at the end where, amidst all the apologizing, Moore essentially says what we here at Shakespeare Geek know already – whatever you think you’re about to say, just accept that Shakespeare said it first, and he said it better.  A book like this only serves to echo that sentiment.  But that doesn’t stop Moore from adding creative suggestions for managing the Shakespeare empire :  “Amid all the attractions at Stratford-upon-Avon, I think they should add one where participants are allowed to push King Lears off a high precipice.  Rage, wind, blow! Crack your cheeks! AHHHHHhhhhhhhh*splat*.”

I had to go to Amazon’s UK site to get this, but I am the proud owner of Ian McKellen’s masterful King Lear on DVD. When I was in college and just blossoming into the Shakespeare Geek I am today, I got Sir Laurence Olivier’s Lear on VHS.  Truthfully, it was over my head.  I don’t think I ever finished it.  Partly because I didn’t understand it, to be sure, but also because Olivier was nothing to me but a name.  He was a good actor because I was told he was a good actor. McKellen, on the other hand, might well be one of today’s greatest living actors.  He’s Gandalf, for heaven’s sake.  And if that’s not the particular style of geek you follow, he was Magneto as well.  But check his Shakespeare resume:  Richard III, Richard II, Hamlet, Iago, Macbeth…the list goes on.  So it’s only reasonable that he finally tackle King Lear, and boy does he deliver. I’m tempted to say this should be a one man show, Sir Ian McKellen Does Selections from King Lear – but that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the cast, who are superb.  It’s just that he is so very very good whenever he’s on stage, that he’s hard to see anything else. When he’s not, you hope the plot will move forward until he comes back. Some of the directorial choices were interesting to me, right off the bat.  For instance, Cordelia.  The first word out of Cordelia’s mouth is when she says “Nothing, my lord.”  But the thing is, she doesn’t say it with any sort of fear or concern, she says it in a very patronizing way, like “You silly little man, of course I have nothing to say, don’t you realize that my sisters just fed you a giant load of bull?”  I was a bit surprised at that.  But it quickly turns around as she realizes that she’s incurred the dragon’s wrath, and in no time she’s got more that “What have I done?” look like she should have. McKellen does a great angry Lear.  He screams at people, and while doing it he manages to mock them, letting us well know that he’s well in control of what he is yelling, to whom, and why.  The way he turns on Kent, particularly as he delivers the “this shall not be revoked” line, you fully believe that you have pissed off the king, and you’re going to pay for it.  Let’s take a moment to talk about Goneril.  If we were giving out Oscars for this sort of production she’s a shoe-in for Best Supporting Actress.  I am not kidding when I told people on Twitter that whenever Goneril’s on the scream I kept screaming “YOU EFFING B*TCH!”, my wife can vouch for that.   She gets this Lady Macbeth sort of scheming look on her face, like she’s got the whole thing planned from the very beginning.  During the big confrontation where both sisters are on stage and they’ve driven their father into the beginnings of madness by taking away his soldiers and kicking him out of their houses, there’s an agonizing scene where Regan, who shows tremendous guilt in the early scenes, goes to comfort her father – and behind his back, Goneril puts her arm between the two, so no one touches Lear at all.  All the while with that “all going to plan” look on her face, the effing b*tch. Back to McKellen.  As he starts to lose it, Sir Ian brings some interesting mannerisms to the old king.  He carries a handkerchief and periodically wipes his nose.  I guess that’s to show that he’s not well?  And he tends to do this thing with his index finger, sometimes rubbing his nose, sometimes twitching it in front of him like he’s pointing at something that nobody sees but him.  They are minor things, but they stuck out to me in a sort of “Why did he choose to do that?” way, which breaks suspension of disbelief for me, so I felt the need to point it out. In general, though, the man is an acting god.  Whenever he’s on stage, it’s like “Ok, everybody else sit down and watch, the master is at work.”  The storm?  Come on.  I remember when I saw a live Lear, with a timid king who bargained with the elements not to hurt him.  I came back disappointed, that’s not what I thought.  I wanted someone screaming at the heavens, and that’s exactly what this production delivered.  I could watch that over and over. I’m trying to think of the defining moments in the show, but it’s so hard to pick.  It’s all good, when he’s on stage.  There are some bits I did not love.  When Gloucester loses his eyes, in particular, was a bit of a bloodbath.  I mean, sure, it has to be a gross scene.  But the way Regan cackled with glee was a little over the top for me. The ending was actually a disappointment for me.  This was not a movie version of a play – this was a play on film.  Even though there was scenery, and outside really was outside with real rain, you never forget that you are progressing scene by scene, with character entrances and exits as expected.  So the final scene, just before Lear’s “Howl, howl!” entrance, just does this theatre thing that made me feel like I was sitting in an audience watching people on stage, because only actor, not real people, would do something like that. On that note, I have to say that I don’t find Lear’s final entrance, carrying Cordelia’s body, to be the most gutwrenching scene in the play.  Maybe I haven’t seen it done enough.  Sure, true, I almost lost it when he curls her lifeless face up to his ear and asks her “What?  what’s that?” and tells the others that she was always a very quiet child.   But I guess because I know what is coming, it’s not as painful as it could be. No, to me the agonizing parts came prior – his first reunion with Cordelia, the “No cause” moment.  Then later, after they are captured, and he’s willing to go peacefully to prison, where he will spend his remaining days laughing and telling stories with her.  He is back with her, she has forgiven him, he is happy.  Knowing what comes next?  That, that is the agonizing part.  That is where you get the briefest glimpse that the story could still have a happy ending.  I can only imagine what it must be like for someone who has never seen the story and does not know what comes next.   What can I say?  It makes me want to see more King Lear, it makes me want to see more Shakespeare, it makes me want to see more Sir Ian.  I’m tempted to start it up and watch it again, but I’ve got a boatload of other stuff I have to do, too.  Maybe I’ll keep it as a treat for myself. 😉