Category: Shakespeare Geek

When You Have No Mind’s Eye

~ duane ~ Leave a comment
Not how I would have pictured him, but that’s not saying much.

I’ve long been fascinated with “visualization,” mostly because I discovered that I can’t do it. You know that thing when someone says, “Close your eyes. Picture yourself standing on a beach. A woman approaches, carrying a box…?” I have no picture in my mind. I can’t tell you whether there’s other people in the scene, or how old the woman is or what she looks like, or the color or size of the box. It’s more like my brain just establishes the connected concepts and says, “Ok, yup, on the beach, woman carrying a box. Next?”

I learned in college that people actually *do* see a picture in their head. Maybe you, dear reader, are one of them (you probably are). Consider the scene I described. What does the woman look like? What color is the box? Are there other people around? What’s the sky like? You probably have answers to all of those things.

My kids recently taught me the word “aphantasia” to describe this. They’re fascinated with it. “You have no mind’s eye!” they’ll tell me, astonished. Whether they realize they’re borrowing from Hamlet, I’m not sure, but I’ll take it. When we talk about math I’m astonished that they tell me they literally visualize numbers lining up in columns, and when they say things like “carry the 1” they really see the 1 moving over to the next column. I get none of that. Numbers to me are just quantities, they have no visual component. They can’t imagine it working like that.

This isn’t just a random rant about the inner workings on my brain. I’m wondering whether or not it’s precisely because of aphantasia that I’m interested in theatre, and Shakespeare specifically. See, I don’t know or care about how anything looks. I have no picture of Hamlet or Ophelia or Gertrude. People talk about “a director’s vision” and I think, “Nope, I could never be a director.” All I have, and all I care about, is the words. So the words are 99% of the experience for me, and the fact that every production of the play brings forth a new visual interpretation just adds to it.

Audio is excellent, too, by the way. This is not a “read only” type of thing. I’m perfectly happy to have the words acted out for me, to put all the emphasis in the right place. But literally at no point do I picture a snivelly little hunched Claudius or a big fat Claudius. He is entirely defined for me by the words that come out of his mouth, which are what define him in relation to the other characters. So when someone else puts a visual to him and I get to see Claudius? I never, ever think, “That’s not how I pictured him.” I almost always think, “Ok, interesting, let’s see how well the visual connects to the words.”

Ok, that’s it for a Sunday night. Just something I’m thinking about, with no pictures.

What Are Your Top Five Shakespeare Plays?

~ duane ~ 3 Comments

Yeah, that’s right, I’m doing one of these. But, there’s a twist!

I think it’s impossible to take a list of 38 plays spanning tragedy, comedy and history and compare them equally. It’s like asking your favorite food, or song. You need some sort of context. Favorite for what? Relative to what?

Here’s mine:

Hollywood called. There’s a new rule that nobody can make any more Shakespeare movies without the approval of actual Shakespeare fans, so it’s up to us. We’ve got to make a list of the most desired “Please make a modern movie version of <play>” plays, and they get to choose from that list.

Go. Everybody gets 5, in order of preference. Feel free to elaborate whether you want to see a particular kind of adaptation / interpretation, but it’s not required. If I get enough people to play I’ll crunch the numbers and post the final list. Who knows, maybe there really are some movie producers out there looking for a new project? You have to put it out there in the universe if you want to see it exist!

My Selections

5) Much Ado About Nothing

I think the two most well-known movies we’ve got, Kenneth Branagh’s and Joss Whedon’s, are excellent. But I’ll take more. I think Much Ado is as close to the modern “romantic comedy” as any of Shakespeare’s plays might get, and it’s a perfect date night introduction to an audience that might not otherwise think about going to see Shakespeare.

4) Twelfth Night

I think the time is right for someone to really get in there and explore all the issues of gender and sexuality found in this one.

3) Hamlet

What can I say, I’m a bit of a purist. I don’t really need to see another Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth, but I can pick apart Hamlets all day. Look what David Tennant did, look what Benedict Cumberbatch did, look what Kevin Kline or Derek Jacobi or Laurence Olivier or Mel Gibson did. Where does it work, where does it fail, and why? Does this Hamlet love his father or fear him? Does this Gertrude know about Claudius’ guilt or not? There’s nearly infinite variety. As I write that I’m imagining some sort of “express Hamlet“, like a one-man show version, that all young up-and-coming actors must tackle so we have a baseline for how they do it.

2) King Lear

I want a modern retelling of Lear. This play is as much a challenge for the audience as it is for the actors. While I consider it a masterpiece and a true honor to witness a production, I am still hesitant to say to any friends and family, “Hey, come see King Lear with me.” Hamlet has been approachable enough for so long that it’s been stripped down to its elements and built back up. I want that for Lear, so more people can experience even a part of it. I hesitate to say it, but yes since people are no doubt thinking it, I’m open to a “Lion King for King Lear.” (And yes, for those others thinking it, I’ve seen A Thousand Acres)

1) The Tempest

So I’m predictable, sue me. I’ve loved The Tempest since my children were little. You can tell it as a fairy tale, as a romance, as a comedy, as a revenge (forgiveness?) story. I’ve written for years that I think Disney could do a version. I understand that it’s got some issues around “colonialism” but I’ve just never really chosen to look at the play that way. For me, it will always be primarily about a father literally positioning himself as a god over the bubble universe that he created for his daughter’s well-being and his realization and acceptance that he has to relinquish that power and let her go. I think we’re still waiting for a definitive version of this one.

How Out Was Kit Marlowe?

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

I asked a variation of this question a few weeks ago on Twitter and Facebook but nobody took me up on it. Since those two channels are very time-sensitive (if you’re not there when it’s posted you’ll usually miss it forever), I thought I’d post it here as well. I still get traffic on posts from ten years ago.

The question is this. We love to debate whether Shakespeare was gay. But from everything I’ve read we all seem to be in agreement that Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, Shakespeare’s popular contemporary, definitely was. Can somebody who is expert in this area elaborate a little bit?

Do we have actual evidence in Marlowe’s words? Or just an interpretation of his work that’s a little more on the nose than Shakespeare’s?

If it is somehow obvious now, was it also obvious then? What would it have meant to be a gay man in Elizabethan England?

And the most interesting question to me, would Shakespeare (and Marlowe’s other fellow writers) have known? How exactly would that play out? Maybe it’s one of those “poorly kept secrets,” where he was never really “out” to the world, but only his inner circle?

Of course, this is all based on my assumption that Shakespeare and Marlowe knew each other quite well. Marlowe didn’t die until Shakespeare was something like 29 years old. Aren’t there parts of Henry VI that are direct homages to Marlowe? I could be entirely wrong here.

I hope somebody out there knows what I’m trying to say. It feels like what we “know” about Marlowe must open up more questions than it answers. But I’ve never really seen much discussion about the answers to those questions.

Review : David Zwirner’s Dream, with Marcel Dzama

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

I realize that’s an awkward title, but there’s a lot of relevant information to impart and I wanted to hit the important bits. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a very long play title. This is the second review of books I received from David Zwirner. For the first, Othello, see here.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an interesting play to me, the casual fan. Often thought of simply as “the one with the fairies”, the one that’s safe (and adorable!) to have five year olds perform, running around in their sparkly wings, reciting famous lines they don’t understand. But it’s got that darker side, too. It’s also the story of a husband whose wife is not sufficiently obedient, so he drugs her and takes what he wants. But then there’s also the overarching theme of dreams and reality and telling the difference between them, of putting on masks and presenting yourself to the world as someone or something that you’re not, voluntarily or not.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s a whole lot of room when it comes to interpreting A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Which brings me to our review. I gave the back story in the previous Othello blog post, but David Zwirner is an art gallery. These books are not new academic treatments of Shakespeare. The text, though well laid out and visually appealing, is the same text we’ve all seen before – line numbers, glossary terms, and so on. No extra commentary.

These books are about the art. It’s like walking through a museum, where Dream is the theme. You turn a corner and you see a painting, and next to it, the relevant scene from the play. (That’s not an entirely accurate analogy as this is the full text of the play, not just excerpts). And you admire the portrait and you examine the text and you discuss and interpret their connection. What is the artist trying to say here?

https://www.davidzwirnerbooks.com/product/william-shakespeare–marcel-dzama-a-midsummer-nights-dream
What do you think? The color palette and repetitive geometric patterns are pretty consistent throughout all the images. The moon makes many appearances, as do the fairies and the classic Pan-like satyr Puck. Anybody else getting like an Audrey Hepburn vibe off that first one, the way she’s got the thing wrapped around her head? Is that who I’m thinking of?

I feel a little bad, because I’m not completely sure how to usefully review a book like this where it’s all about the art. Art is something you want to see and experience for yourself. I run a blog specifically, and about Shakespeare specifically, because that universe is almost entirely about the words. I can copy and paste and type new words all day long. But I don’t have the experience or education in art to adequately describe this book. Hence, the best I can do is present my own opinion and maybe some badly framed images.

Schitt’s Creek Shakespeare

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Normally spotting Shakespeare references in TV shows is Bardfilm’s territory, but it’s late on Shakespeare’s birthday and I’m in the mood 😉

Schitt’s Creek took the tv world by storm last year, right as it was wrapping up its final season. I’m not going to go into why the show is so good, because I don’t think I could do it justice. It’s not, however, a show in which you expect to hear any Shakespeare. Unless you listen very closely, that is.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7u6ou6

Unlike YouTube I can’t link directly to the timestamp I want, unfortunately. And this episode is near the end of season 4, so there’s going to be hefty spoilers if you’re not already watching the show. But! With that all out of the way, when two characters announce that they’re going to bestow a particular honor on Catherine O’Hara’s Moira Rose (near the very end of the episode), she responds by declaring, “An honor that I dream not of!”

Anybody? That’s Juliet’s response when her mother asks her how she feels about getting married.

Having caught that (after watching the whole series several times), I’m now left wondering if I should go back and listen more carefully for other references. It is not a show that feels the need to bog itself down with Shakespeare. Given that O’Hara’s character is a former actress there’s a handful of Shakespeare jokes, but as far as I can tell this is the only actual quote I’ve heard.