WHAT needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones,
The labour of an age in pilèd stones?
Or that his hollowed relics should be hid
Under a stary-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble, with too much conceiving;
And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
-- On Shakespeare, by John Milton
Friday, April 23, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
"A man may write of love, and not be in love"
There have been many thoughts rattling around in my brain since SAA (Shakespeare Association of America) 2010. Some of them finally coalesced into something perhaps coherent after attending James Shapiro’s lecture at the Folger this past Friday. Shapiro was lecturing on his new book, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? I was already part way through the book, as I was able to pick up an advanced reader copy at SAA.
Despite the second part of the title, Shapiro isn’t actually interested in who. He’s interested in why and when. Why people believe in different authorship theories, and when it came to be that people started to believe that Shakespeare didn’t write the plays ascribed to him, as this wasn’t questioned until after 1850. So it’s a more recent phenomenon.
Shapiro points out that every non-Stratfordian argument is based on an autobiographical reading of the plays and poems. So and so had this happen in his life which is just like what happens in that play, etc. This frustrates Shapiro because it a specifically modern notion of authorship – literature as self-exploration. Early modern writing was not autobiographical, and therefore it is ridiculous to try and find clues about who Shakespeare was in his plays.
Shapiro made me and the rest of the audience laugh when he said that this view always made him think about an Elizabethan School of Writing. Kit Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Kyd are sitting in a classroom. The teacher asks, “What have you got for us this week, Kit?” Marlowe responds, “Oh it’s this play called Tamburlaine about this Scythian shepherd who conquers the world.” “Hmm,” says the teacher, “Are you from Scythia? Ever been there? Know any shepherds?” Shapiro’s point is that literature does not have to be “Write What You Know.”
Shapiro quoted the 1593 poem Licia to illustrate this point: "A man may write of love, and not be in love, as well as of husbandry, and not go to plough, or of witches and be none."
One other point I found interested was Shapiro characterizing Shakespeare as a man of “unparalleled imagination.” He said that even though he wrote his thesis on Marlowe, he got bored pretty quickly. And yet, after teaching Shakespeare for years, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get bored with Shakespeare.
I was left thinking a lot about acting. How? Well there seemed to be a question coming up in a lot of the seminars I attended at SAA this year. Sometimes this question was asked outright, but sometimes it just seemed to be underlying what was said. It seemed to have a part in three seminars. Two that I observed: "Shakespeare and Theatrical Reconstructions" (much about the Globe and the Blackfriars Playhouse) and "Emotional Realism on the Stage", and of course the one I participated in: "Shakespeare and Systems of Rehearsal". In my seminar in fact, I was actually asked this question, and I’m not sure at that point I gave a very clear answer, because I didn’t have one until now. The question was How does studying Shakespeare and the early modern theatrical conditions help an actor today? Or even, does it at all? Is there a point to learning about this history? My answer was yes it helps, but I didn’t really have a complete answer to how it helps. But now I have two thoughts about it. The first is more something to throw out there, and a thought that I wished had been fully formulated during the conference so I could have brought it up during the Emotional Realism seminar:
A lot of the criticism and talk seems to have a Shakespeare vs. Stanislavsky feel, and I don’t think the two are incompatible or diametrically opposed. In fact, I’m curious about ways they connect. Is there a link between Patrick Tucker’s work with the Original Shakespeare Company and emotional realism/emotional memory? Tucker, in his book Secrets of Acting Shakespeare, argues that Shakespeare would put the actor in the same situation as the character in order to give the actor a shorthand for performance. This was necessary due to the lack of rehearsal, and the fact that actors were not given the full script to study (just cue scripts with only their lines on it). One specific example Tucker gives is Isabella in Measure for Measure. The actor playing Isabella would have had a script that ended with her (his) last line, so the actor would not know that the Duke was going to propose marriage. So when the Duke did propose marriage this actor would have been surprised and confused, and therefore, according to Tucker, Isabella was supposed to be surprised and confused. Presumably, this would only really work the first time an actor encountered a text. So the next time, the actor would use the memory of that first time and know how to play the scene? If Tucker’s theory is correct, is this not a sort of early modern version of emotional memory? Or is Tucker’s theory flawed because he is looking at it from a modern conception of acting?
My second thought was a more specific answer to the question of How does studying Shakespeare’s theatre help a modern actor? and it came to me while listening to Shapiro speak. Just like modern writers are taught to “write what you know”, so to are modern actors taught to use themselves in performance. I remember one actor friend telling me the motto of a prominent American acting school was “you are enough.” It seems to me that for writers to learn that writing was not always a self-exploration only opens the door for more possibilities, just as it would for actors to learn that there was performance before and beyond Stanisklavsky’s (or Strasberg's) methods. Shakespeare was a writer of “unparalleled imagination” and other writers can learn from that. So to can it help actors to learn that acting wasn’t always about looking on the inside, that they can also strive to be performers of “unparalleled imagination.” If a man may write of love, and not be in love, so too should a man be able to act in love, without ever having been in love. In one of the seminars someone quoted someone else, "Acting doesn't get better, it gets different." Learning about former/other notions of acting and personality can only give a modern actor more ideas, approaches, tools.
This also ties into a paper session I attended, "Shakespeare and the Extended Mind". There were three papers and they had to do with changing notions of cognition and how that is dramatized. Today we understand cognition neurologically. In the early modern period they thought that cognition was humoral. This obviously affects the way playwright wrote then versus how they wrote now. Then emotions were felt, expressed through the whole body. Today we understand them as occurring in the brain. An actor absolutely needs to understand conditions like this in order to understand how to approach an early modern text and an early modern character.
Despite the second part of the title, Shapiro isn’t actually interested in who. He’s interested in why and when. Why people believe in different authorship theories, and when it came to be that people started to believe that Shakespeare didn’t write the plays ascribed to him, as this wasn’t questioned until after 1850. So it’s a more recent phenomenon.
Shapiro points out that every non-Stratfordian argument is based on an autobiographical reading of the plays and poems. So and so had this happen in his life which is just like what happens in that play, etc. This frustrates Shapiro because it a specifically modern notion of authorship – literature as self-exploration. Early modern writing was not autobiographical, and therefore it is ridiculous to try and find clues about who Shakespeare was in his plays.
Shapiro made me and the rest of the audience laugh when he said that this view always made him think about an Elizabethan School of Writing. Kit Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Kyd are sitting in a classroom. The teacher asks, “What have you got for us this week, Kit?” Marlowe responds, “Oh it’s this play called Tamburlaine about this Scythian shepherd who conquers the world.” “Hmm,” says the teacher, “Are you from Scythia? Ever been there? Know any shepherds?” Shapiro’s point is that literature does not have to be “Write What You Know.”
Shapiro quoted the 1593 poem Licia to illustrate this point: "A man may write of love, and not be in love, as well as of husbandry, and not go to plough, or of witches and be none."
One other point I found interested was Shapiro characterizing Shakespeare as a man of “unparalleled imagination.” He said that even though he wrote his thesis on Marlowe, he got bored pretty quickly. And yet, after teaching Shakespeare for years, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get bored with Shakespeare.
I was left thinking a lot about acting. How? Well there seemed to be a question coming up in a lot of the seminars I attended at SAA this year. Sometimes this question was asked outright, but sometimes it just seemed to be underlying what was said. It seemed to have a part in three seminars. Two that I observed: "Shakespeare and Theatrical Reconstructions" (much about the Globe and the Blackfriars Playhouse) and "Emotional Realism on the Stage", and of course the one I participated in: "Shakespeare and Systems of Rehearsal". In my seminar in fact, I was actually asked this question, and I’m not sure at that point I gave a very clear answer, because I didn’t have one until now. The question was How does studying Shakespeare and the early modern theatrical conditions help an actor today? Or even, does it at all? Is there a point to learning about this history? My answer was yes it helps, but I didn’t really have a complete answer to how it helps. But now I have two thoughts about it. The first is more something to throw out there, and a thought that I wished had been fully formulated during the conference so I could have brought it up during the Emotional Realism seminar:
A lot of the criticism and talk seems to have a Shakespeare vs. Stanislavsky feel, and I don’t think the two are incompatible or diametrically opposed. In fact, I’m curious about ways they connect. Is there a link between Patrick Tucker’s work with the Original Shakespeare Company and emotional realism/emotional memory? Tucker, in his book Secrets of Acting Shakespeare, argues that Shakespeare would put the actor in the same situation as the character in order to give the actor a shorthand for performance. This was necessary due to the lack of rehearsal, and the fact that actors were not given the full script to study (just cue scripts with only their lines on it). One specific example Tucker gives is Isabella in Measure for Measure. The actor playing Isabella would have had a script that ended with her (his) last line, so the actor would not know that the Duke was going to propose marriage. So when the Duke did propose marriage this actor would have been surprised and confused, and therefore, according to Tucker, Isabella was supposed to be surprised and confused. Presumably, this would only really work the first time an actor encountered a text. So the next time, the actor would use the memory of that first time and know how to play the scene? If Tucker’s theory is correct, is this not a sort of early modern version of emotional memory? Or is Tucker’s theory flawed because he is looking at it from a modern conception of acting?
My second thought was a more specific answer to the question of How does studying Shakespeare’s theatre help a modern actor? and it came to me while listening to Shapiro speak. Just like modern writers are taught to “write what you know”, so to are modern actors taught to use themselves in performance. I remember one actor friend telling me the motto of a prominent American acting school was “you are enough.” It seems to me that for writers to learn that writing was not always a self-exploration only opens the door for more possibilities, just as it would for actors to learn that there was performance before and beyond Stanisklavsky’s (or Strasberg's) methods. Shakespeare was a writer of “unparalleled imagination” and other writers can learn from that. So to can it help actors to learn that acting wasn’t always about looking on the inside, that they can also strive to be performers of “unparalleled imagination.” If a man may write of love, and not be in love, so too should a man be able to act in love, without ever having been in love. In one of the seminars someone quoted someone else, "Acting doesn't get better, it gets different." Learning about former/other notions of acting and personality can only give a modern actor more ideas, approaches, tools.
This also ties into a paper session I attended, "Shakespeare and the Extended Mind". There were three papers and they had to do with changing notions of cognition and how that is dramatized. Today we understand cognition neurologically. In the early modern period they thought that cognition was humoral. This obviously affects the way playwright wrote then versus how they wrote now. Then emotions were felt, expressed through the whole body. Today we understand them as occurring in the brain. An actor absolutely needs to understand conditions like this in order to understand how to approach an early modern text and an early modern character.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
39:38 Edward III
Day 39 of 38:38
BONUS DAY!
Edward III
So after completing the 38 plays of Shakespeare in 38 days, I have fallen behind on the bonus days. Well, that's life, I suppose. I might move on to one of these a week. More probable to be one of these whenever I have time. And thanks to SAA, I've got a brand new copy of Thomas Middleton's Collected Works to work my way through as well. But, one play at a time.
Surprisingly, I actually have both read and seen Edward III before. Chesapeake Shakespeare in MD did a reading of it for one of their Pub Night events, and then about a year after that I saw a fine production of the play at Washington Shakespeare Company. In performance, it's a viable play, and one that depends on the main actor to carry it off. WSC's lead was quite good and fittingly charismatic.
Prevailing opinion is that Shakespeare had a hand in writing Edward III, but that it was a collaboration. I think the notion of collaboration is obvious from the two completely separate actions of the play. The first half of the play is taken up with Edward's wooing of the Countess of Salisbury. But this story line is completely forgotten in the second half of the play, which deals entirely with war with France, a war in which the English are strong and victorious.
As for whether Shakespeare had a hand in it? Well, thou the verse is at times mundane, there were several echoes for me. First the play starts off like a poor man's Henry V. There is a conversation about whether the English monarch has a right to rule in France, even though he makes that claim through a woman. Then a snarky French ambassador enters, and the English King is defiant.
Countess and will your sacred self
Commit high treason against the King of heaven,
To stamp his Image in forbidden metal,
Forgetting your allegiance and your oath?
remember Measure for Measure?
Angelo It were as good
To pardon him that hath from nature stolen
A man already made, as to remit
Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made
As to put metal in restrained means
To make a false one.
King John For what's this Edward but a belly god,
A tender and lascivious wantoness,
That t'other day was almost dead for love?
This scene and it's rah! rah! speeches remind me of Richard's and Richmond's speeches to their troops in Richard III.
Richmond For what is he they follow? truly, gentlemen,
A bloody tyrant and a homicide.
-----------------------------
Favorite Female Character:
Countess
Favorite Male Character:
The Scots, David and Douglass are quite fun.
Laugh out loud:
Douglas Jemmy, my man, saddle my black horse.
King David Meanst thou to fight, Douglas? We are too weak.
Douglass I know it well, my liege, and therefore fly.
"That's what she said!":
Douglass Why then, my liege, let me enjoy her jewels.
How insulting:
King John those ever-bibbing Epicures,
Those frothy Dutch men, puft with double beer
Shakey loves his meta:
Countess No, let me die, if his too boistrous will
Will have it so, before I will consent
To be an actor in his graceless lust.
(we should note that 'will' is slang for 'penis,' and whether the Countess intends this double entendre or not is up to interpretation.)
Oh, misogyny:
Boys are silly:
Edward Ignoble David! hast thou none to grieve
But silly ladies with thy threatening arms?
Favorite Moment/Line:
BONUS DAY!
Edward III
So after completing the 38 plays of Shakespeare in 38 days, I have fallen behind on the bonus days. Well, that's life, I suppose. I might move on to one of these a week. More probable to be one of these whenever I have time. And thanks to SAA, I've got a brand new copy of Thomas Middleton's Collected Works to work my way through as well. But, one play at a time.
Surprisingly, I actually have both read and seen Edward III before. Chesapeake Shakespeare in MD did a reading of it for one of their Pub Night events, and then about a year after that I saw a fine production of the play at Washington Shakespeare Company. In performance, it's a viable play, and one that depends on the main actor to carry it off. WSC's lead was quite good and fittingly charismatic.
Prevailing opinion is that Shakespeare had a hand in writing Edward III, but that it was a collaboration. I think the notion of collaboration is obvious from the two completely separate actions of the play. The first half of the play is taken up with Edward's wooing of the Countess of Salisbury. But this story line is completely forgotten in the second half of the play, which deals entirely with war with France, a war in which the English are strong and victorious.
As for whether Shakespeare had a hand in it? Well, thou the verse is at times mundane, there were several echoes for me. First the play starts off like a poor man's Henry V. There is a conversation about whether the English monarch has a right to rule in France, even though he makes that claim through a woman. Then a snarky French ambassador enters, and the English King is defiant.
Countess and will your sacred self
Commit high treason against the King of heaven,
To stamp his Image in forbidden metal,
Forgetting your allegiance and your oath?
remember Measure for Measure?
Angelo It were as good
To pardon him that hath from nature stolen
A man already made, as to remit
Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made
As to put metal in restrained means
To make a false one.
King John For what's this Edward but a belly god,
A tender and lascivious wantoness,
That t'other day was almost dead for love?
This scene and it's rah! rah! speeches remind me of Richard's and Richmond's speeches to their troops in Richard III.
Richmond For what is he they follow? truly, gentlemen,
A bloody tyrant and a homicide.
-----------------------------
Favorite Female Character:
Countess
Favorite Male Character:
The Scots, David and Douglass are quite fun.
Laugh out loud:
Douglas Jemmy, my man, saddle my black horse.
King David Meanst thou to fight, Douglas? We are too weak.
Douglass I know it well, my liege, and therefore fly.
"That's what she said!":
Douglass Why then, my liege, let me enjoy her jewels.
How insulting:
King John those ever-bibbing Epicures,
Those frothy Dutch men, puft with double beer
Shakey loves his meta:
Countess No, let me die, if his too boistrous will
Will have it so, before I will consent
To be an actor in his graceless lust.
(we should note that 'will' is slang for 'penis,' and whether the Countess intends this double entendre or not is up to interpretation.)
Oh, misogyny:
Boys are silly:
Edward Ignoble David! hast thou none to grieve
But silly ladies with thy threatening arms?
Favorite Moment/Line:
Monday, April 12, 2010
Two Staged Readings with Charlene
Posting about 38:38 has taken up all my time lately, to the detriment of other subjects. I still need to blog about SAA last weekend, and I had a great trip to New York this weekend, but first I need to announce my current projects!
At the end of the month I will be appearing in two staged readings, and I'm quite excited about both of them.
ABSOLUTE AMY
Saturday, April 24
1:00pm
Jackie's Restaurant
8081 Georgia Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20910
I will be playing Amy in a staged reading of John Morogiello's Absolute Amy. The reading is being presented as part of Amnesty International's Human Rights Arts Festival. It is about a young woman who, on the eve of her wedding, discovers that her fiance was a black site torturer. Catherine Aselford directs. The cast also includes Rebecca Herron, Nick Greek, Jeremy Brown, and John Morogiello. Morogiello's play Engaging Shaw is currently in production off-off-Broadway at the Abingdon Theatre!
THE TROJAN WOMEN
Thursday, April 29
7:30pm
Howard County Center for the Arts
8510 High Ridge Road
Ellicott City, Maryland 21043
I'll be playing Kassandra in a new adaptation of The Trojan Women by Patricia Montley. Cast also includes Sarah Levin, Melissa O'Brien, Alex Hewett, Ty Hallmark, and James Jager.
Artists are subject to change.
At the end of the month I will be appearing in two staged readings, and I'm quite excited about both of them.
ABSOLUTE AMY
Saturday, April 24
1:00pm
Jackie's Restaurant
8081 Georgia Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20910
I will be playing Amy in a staged reading of John Morogiello's Absolute Amy. The reading is being presented as part of Amnesty International's Human Rights Arts Festival. It is about a young woman who, on the eve of her wedding, discovers that her fiance was a black site torturer. Catherine Aselford directs. The cast also includes Rebecca Herron, Nick Greek, Jeremy Brown, and John Morogiello. Morogiello's play Engaging Shaw is currently in production off-off-Broadway at the Abingdon Theatre!
THE TROJAN WOMEN
Thursday, April 29
7:30pm
Howard County Center for the Arts
8510 High Ridge Road
Ellicott City, Maryland 21043
I'll be playing Kassandra in a new adaptation of The Trojan Women by Patricia Montley. Cast also includes Sarah Levin, Melissa O'Brien, Alex Hewett, Ty Hallmark, and James Jager.
Artists are subject to change.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
38:38 The Two Noble Kinsmen
Day 38 of 38:38
The Two Noble Kinsmen
Will I make it by midnight??? Yes, play finished at 11:39 PM. Two Noble Kinsmen felt similar to me with the other plays we have been reading recently. There is a sort of randomness and almost ridiculousness to the plot that we also see in Winter's Tale and Cymbeline and Pericles. But I did like Two Noble Kinsmen better than Henry VIII or The Tempest.
The one thing that really reveals to me the fact that this is a collaboration (and same with Henry) is the sudden appearance of massive amounts of stage directions. I mean, it's certainly not Shavian, but compared to the dearth of stage directions Shakespeare normally uses, it certainly sticks out.
I wonder how much Shakespeare was hearkening back to Midsummer as he was working on this play (presumably with Fletcher). We've got Theseus and Hippolyta, but I don't think we are supposed to think of them as the same characters. But we do have this silly men fighting over women plot, which echoes both Midsummer and Two Gents. The difference being that in this play someone actually dies.
So there it is. I made it through the challenge. 38 Shakespeare plays in 38 days. I'm going to extend this challenge for myself and over the next couple of days read Edward III, Sir Thomas Moore, and Double Falsehood (though for the record, let me state that I think the advertising of Double Falsehood as by William Shakespeare is more than a little questionable). I feel like I should have some deep over-arching thoughts, but I will save those for another post.
-----------------------------
Favorite Female Character:
Jailer's Daughter (at least until she goes all Ophelia on us)
Favorite Male Character:
Palamon (simply for the "I saw her first!" line)
Laugh out loud:
Jailer's Daughter I can tell your fortune.
You are a fool.
Famous Last Words
Palamon I do not think it possible our friendship
Should ever leave us.
"That's what she said!":
Jailer's Daughter My Palamon, I hope, will grow too, finely,
Now he's at liberty. Alas, poor chicken,
He was kept down with hard meat and ill lodging,
But I'll kiss him up again.
How insulting:
Shakey loves his meta:
There is a prologue and epilogue directly stating that the audience is about to see a play
Oh, misogyny:
Boys are silly:
Emilia Men are mad things.
Favorite Moment/Line:
Palamon Were I at liberty I would do things
Of such virtuous greatness that this lady,
This blushing virgin, should take manhood to her
And seek to ravish me.
The Two Noble Kinsmen
Will I make it by midnight??? Yes, play finished at 11:39 PM. Two Noble Kinsmen felt similar to me with the other plays we have been reading recently. There is a sort of randomness and almost ridiculousness to the plot that we also see in Winter's Tale and Cymbeline and Pericles. But I did like Two Noble Kinsmen better than Henry VIII or The Tempest.
The one thing that really reveals to me the fact that this is a collaboration (and same with Henry) is the sudden appearance of massive amounts of stage directions. I mean, it's certainly not Shavian, but compared to the dearth of stage directions Shakespeare normally uses, it certainly sticks out.
I wonder how much Shakespeare was hearkening back to Midsummer as he was working on this play (presumably with Fletcher). We've got Theseus and Hippolyta, but I don't think we are supposed to think of them as the same characters. But we do have this silly men fighting over women plot, which echoes both Midsummer and Two Gents. The difference being that in this play someone actually dies.
So there it is. I made it through the challenge. 38 Shakespeare plays in 38 days. I'm going to extend this challenge for myself and over the next couple of days read Edward III, Sir Thomas Moore, and Double Falsehood (though for the record, let me state that I think the advertising of Double Falsehood as by William Shakespeare is more than a little questionable). I feel like I should have some deep over-arching thoughts, but I will save those for another post.
-----------------------------
Favorite Female Character:
Jailer's Daughter (at least until she goes all Ophelia on us)
Favorite Male Character:
Palamon (simply for the "I saw her first!" line)
Laugh out loud:
Jailer's Daughter I can tell your fortune.
You are a fool.
Famous Last Words
Palamon I do not think it possible our friendship
Should ever leave us.
"That's what she said!":
Jailer's Daughter My Palamon, I hope, will grow too, finely,
Now he's at liberty. Alas, poor chicken,
He was kept down with hard meat and ill lodging,
But I'll kiss him up again.
How insulting:
Shakey loves his meta:
There is a prologue and epilogue directly stating that the audience is about to see a play
Oh, misogyny:
Boys are silly:
Emilia Men are mad things.
Favorite Moment/Line:
Palamon Were I at liberty I would do things
Of such virtuous greatness that this lady,
This blushing virgin, should take manhood to her
And seek to ravish me.
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