"A breath thou art,/ Servile to all the skyey influences" - Measure for Measure III.i

"Skyey influences."  What a wonderful phrase.  Good writers are people who know a lot of words and have an aptitude for arranging them.  Great writers are people who aren't afraid to make words up when the perfect ones are not yet in existence.

Or at least, make existing words into really great adjectives.

I didn't post on Titus yet because there's a version with Trevor Peacock and Eileen Atkins that I want to see first, as well as the Anthony Hopkins version.  That, and I got busy.  So... someday, perhaps...

I should be posting more regularly, however, because I am currently enrolled in a seminar on Hamlet as well as auditing Shakespeare: The Jacobean Years for the next semester, which means I'll be reading a ton of plays.  Final semester undergrad.  Don't want it to end.  So I've got to pack in as much as I can in the next few months.

We're starting off Jac Shak (oh yes, I will be using that abbreviation) with Measure for Measure, a play which I have never read before or was even remotely familiar with.  I've got to be honest, folks: not my favorite.  That said, let's elaborate.

First, I want to focus on the female protagonist, Isabella.  She's a fabulous woman, with a virtuous character completely above reproach.  She's got one foot in a convent when she learns that, because of a new harsh crackdown on the law, her brother is going to be executed for the petty crime of knocking up the prostitute that he was seriously planning on marrying.  Excessive, right?  It's all because the Duke decided to run off and let his pal Angelo toughen up the law in his absence so the Duke wouldn't look like the bad guy; aside from being a pretty pansy cop-out, the Duke wasn't aware just how large of a stick Angelo has up his ass.  Sure, the sex was premarital and the girl was disreputable, but it was consensual and based on an understanding.  Chill out, frosty-knickers.  So Isabella's told this, and urged to plead with Angelo to let her bro off.  Well, she makes a beautiful argument, interwoven with elements of pathos, logos, and ethos that is truly admirable, a strong clear voice rising to a great occasion.  And all Angelo notices is her rack.  He agrees to let Claudio off if she'll sleep with him (so much for being the moral compass for the city).  She thinks it's a horrible idea that she'll never agree to, because unlike Angelo, she sticks to her principles no matter what.  She tells her brother, who agrees it's horrible, but then decides he'd rather live even if it means his almost-nun sister has to give it up.  Isabella yells at him for trying to persuade her to become a whore.  Luckily, the Duke (who is disguised as a friar, because he's eccentric and wants to spy on everyone when they think he's away) comes up with a plan to swap Isabella out for Mariana, an ex-fiance of Angelo whom he dumped when her dowry got lost at sea (what a guy, right? His list of good qualities dwindles further).  So Angelo boinks Mariana, thinking it's Isabella, and doesn't pardon Claudio like he said he would but orders his head lopped off.  They find a way to delay this order and give Angelo another guy's head.  Finally the Duke decides to reveal himself and his device, but not before he fucks with everyone's mind in the weirdest informal hearing of all time.  Isabella tries to condemn Angelo, whom the Duke knows is guilty, but he pretends to think Isabella is a raving madwoman and also tells her that her brother is dead, causing her immeasurable grief, anger, injustice, and disrespect.  But hey!  Just kidding!  All is revealed, her brother's alive, Angelo makes a really lame apology that is immediately brushed over, and the Duke tells Isabella that she will marry him.  Isabella has absolutely no lines after this declaration.  None.  I guess it's assumed that she accepts joyfully.  Which is insane!  If I was Isabella, I'd be absolute irate.  The Duke has made her a little pawn that he's psychologically tugged and slung around for his own weird and fairly sick whim, and thinks that marrying her is reward enough for all the pain and suffering his scheme has caused.  If I were her, I'd say thanks for saving my brother but besides that you can shove it where the sun don't shine; I'm going back to the motherfucking nunnery where I never have to deal with any of you ever again and where I wanted to be in the first place.

This isn't the first time we've seen a final wrap-it-all-up scene that is extremely unsatisfactory, especially with respect to the women.  Three summers ago I played Viola in Twelfth Night and I remember looking at my script and thinking, the Duke asks me to marry him, which admittedly is what I've been desiring, but I don't get to say anything else!  Not even my heartfelt and resounding acceptance!  I mean, I suppose it's kind of assumed, but seriously, no say whatsoever?  Viola's gotten so much of a voice for the bulk of the play, soliloquies and monologues galore when she's dressed in drag, but once she becomes a girl again, bam!  NO MORE TALKIE-TALKIE FOR THE WOMAN!

I actually think Shakespeare's one of the less misogynist playwrights of the period, but that said, he kinda screwed the pooch on this one.

So Isabella gets the shaft even by the guy who's going to marry her, the Duke treats the good and bad alike like a careless puppetmaster, Angelo just sucks and no internal turmoil infused speeches can remedy that... What characters do we have left?  Claudio - not terrible, but still guilty of whoring, and not upstanding when his sister's virtue was on the line.  Escalus - a well-meaning guy, but he could have stood up a little harder for what he believed in instead of continually saying "Gosh, killing Claudio's wrong.  Angelo likes the idea, though, so c'est la vie!"  You know who I like?  Lucio.  He's an absolute scalawag who throws everyone under the bus at the slightest chance, but hey, he's nondiscriminatory about it and it's an accepted fact about him.  One could suggest I value consistency in my characters over goodness.  I'd say that's fairly accurate.  But Lucio likes to focus on the flaws in people, and considers that they enhance a person rather than detracting from them.  Furthermore, he's damn funny about it.  I was worried they were going to hang him, but luckily they're only forcing him to marry whatever whore he's knocked up in his day (a punishment which he considers tantamount to torture, however).

You know what everyone in Measure for Measure could benefit from?  A SENSE OF HUMOR.  I've always found mine to be indispensable, especially in regard to getting from one day to the next without succumbing to insanity.

So there's my initial take.  I'll be interested to see what my professor focuses on in class, how we approach it there.  I'm sure it has many redeeming qualities that haven't been able to shine through the fog of my immediate scorn yet.

I can't lie, I'm completely geeked out about my classes and all the Shakespeare-y delighfulness that awaits.  Might be too soon to tell, but... I think it's gonna be a good term.

"For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" - Hamlet II.ii

This post title is one of the many lines in Hamlet that ring so true to me that I want to cry.  Going through a really rough patch right now…  Need to find a way to tweak my thinking.

I promised you all Hamlet.  Well, I have been absolutely saturated with it this past month, so even though the post might be a bit tardy, you are about to get a very large dose.  I will warn you all, too much Hamlet can be dangerous to one's health.  Side effects may include depression, suicidal thoughts, madness, mania, and other sundries like verbally abusing your mother and jumping into graves.  Not to mention murder.  Hooray literature!  Someday I may make an argument that few other fields of study wreak quite as much havoc on the psyche.  I'm also in the process of reading Titus Andronicus for the first time, which makes this play seem like a warm and fuzzy lullaby to put your kids to sleep to.  Yeesh.

Where does one even begin with Hamlet?  How can one even make a dent in the topic?  After the Bible, Hamlet is the work of literature most studied, written about, and published on.  It's HUGE.  There are tons of versions, not to mention a Disney film based off of it (why couldn't someone in Denmark tell Hamlet about "Hakuna matata"?).  It doesn't always translate perfectly... There's a great ethnography called "Shakespeare in the Bush" where a woman tells the Tiv of Africa the story of Hamlet and, due to the values and expectations in their culture, they completely reinterpreted it.  They didn't credit the ghost at all, and they thought Hamlet was messed up since it's only proper in their society for the brother of a dead husband to marry his widow.  Claudius became the good guy, Hamlet the freak.  But even for all its interpretations, there is still something about Hamlet that affects many people, that has stuck with them for centuries and is still an alluring topic of mystery, speculation, and inquiry today.  If you ask me, that's pretty fucking cool.

My fabulous, absent-minded professor for my revenge plays class mentioned a great theory of Greenblatt’s that provides one explanation for the centuries-enduring allure of Hamlet.  Basically, Shakespeare strips away all the explanations, rationalizations, whats and wherefores surrounding why Hamlet does what he does.  He creates a grand mystery, a complex situation and character that is nonetheless open to interpretation.  His gift to his audience is the mystery that haunts, puzzles, and enchants us even to this day.  In this day and age so much of the old magic of mystery is being lost.  Science is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but there are sacrifices made as we accumulate more knowledge, more explanations.  Hamlet is the perpetual mystery, comforting in its ambiguity, something we can try to solve as much as we like as we delight in knowing that we never will.

I was interested to hear my classmates’ opinions on Hamlet, and very surprised to find that most of them didn’t like the character of Hamlet very much.  They said they found him annoying – lots of whining, musing, flipfloping, hesitating, and all for no good reason.  I found myself getting extremely defensive over him.  First of all, we’re talking regicide here; while it may not be the “primal eldest curse,” it’s up there with one of the worst crimes/murders you can commit.  If it were me, I’d want to be damn sure that I had evidence to back my case up, more than the word of my dead dad (who, if I went to school in Protestant Wittenberg, I wouldn’t believe could exist since purgatory doesn’t exist in my religion… but I digress!).  Second of all, one doesn’t just stab a king.  There’s a protocol to be followed, which I agree doesn’t involve killing him in secret while he appears to be praying.  It’s hard enough to say you can justify regicide; it’s quite another to explain why you felt it necessary to off him sneakily in the house of God.  NOT cool.  Moreover, there’s something beautiful in the way Hamlet contemplates and plans everything.  It would not be much of a play if the ghost said “Whack your incestuous uncle” and Hamlet said “Right-o, Pops” and ran Claudius through.  It’s like people get annoyed at Hamlet acting human.  Humans procrastinate.  They hem and haw, weigh options, worry and fret, are at a loss for what to do, question what they really know…  If Hamlet were decisive, he would lose all depth.  I love watching his journey… from hurting, to afraid, to manic, to resolved, to depressed, to rejuvenated, to aggressive, to accepting, and finally to a kind of peace.  What’s more, this progression can change depending on what version you use.  There’s the “bad Quarto,” where the “To be or not to be” soliloquy happens before the “catch the conscience of the king” idea, which has a pretty linear progression from inaction and depression to acting and committing to a concrete plan.  However, in the other version Hamlet gets the idea of the play-within-a-play and seems to be resolved, but then “to be or not to be” comes after and reveals his vulnerability, how he’s still on shaky ground, with fears and doubts.  I think the former version seems more logical, but the latter is more of a challenge for a richer, more complex character arc that is wonderful to explore.  Some people might find this annoying; for me, it sounds like FUN.

Even though I enjoy the open interpretation, I have been asked by more than one assignment to develop my own argument about why Hamlet procrastinates the way he does.  Is he just a melancholy Dane?  Is he a perfectionist?  Is he a coward that secretly resents his dear departed daddy for putting this on him?  There are tons of possibilities, all with evidence to back them up.  So here’s my notion to add to all the others.  Maybe I have a bias for drama, being so passionate about acting, but I think the key to Hamlet is understanding his theatricality.  All the stuff with the madness is a grand performance that he revels in.  I believe his character is illuminated by his reactions to and interactions with the Players.  He comes alive when they visit, more so than he has been in a very long time.  He obviously loved watching them, and is very knowledgeable about theatre, giving them all sorts of nit-picky (and most likely unwanted) advice about acting, and even attempting a performance himself.  He thrives in the role of director, and I believe he craves the same power and product from his revenge.  He wants the grand reveal, the confession of guilt, the witnesses to validate him.  It might not be what he’s explicitly planning, but I think that’s his fantasy.  I believe he does get it in the end with the fencing scene, and so contrary to some people claiming that he never really achieves his revenge, I think he gets his quintessential revenge fantasy, which even his own death sickly strengthens.  I know that there are issues with this; for example, he’s ready to kill Claudius in the bedchamber, away from the public, “dead for a ducat” and all that, which isn’t very open and theatrical.  I kind of think it’s because he’s carried away in the surprise of it all; however, I will often cite this as well as the execution of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as evidence that Hamlet does have the cajones to kill.  So that’s my Hamlet; manic, dramatic, striving for the ultimate scene combining confession of guilt and exaction of justice.  Who wouldn’t want that?

My favorite versions have had theatrical Hamlets, like the Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant versions.  I recently saw the Tennant/Stewart version for the first time and LOVED IT.  Not only is Tennant wonderful at showing emotional depth and variation, Patrick Stewart is the strongest Claudius I have ever seen.  His portrayal is… well, almost revolutionary.  He manages to make Hamlet look like a petulant child at the end of the play-within-a-play scene when he calmly walks away, shaking his head.  He has great calm and poise; even in the face of death and guilt, he grabs the tip of the sword, shrugs and drinks voluntarily when Hamlet commands him too.  He’s nothing short of impressive, which makes a lot of sense for Claudius.  This is a man who knows what he is, what he wants, and what he’s done; it can only plague his conscience so much when he’s willingly, and actively, instigated it all.  An amazing job well done, Captain Picard.


Because this is the technological age and I'm supposed to know something about this, I want to leave you with two youtube videos that really capture the essence of common opinions on Hamlet.   Enjoy:
The Hamlet that many people wish for: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCVc5TaPpe8
And you thought I'd forgotten about Ophelia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnvgq8STMGM&ob=av3n

Alright, I’ve packed enough Hamlet into one post.  Next up, similar in vengeful theme, I’ll tackle Titus and let the mindfuckery commence.  As commence it will.  YEEEEEESH.

"I am sent with broom before to sweep the dust behind the door" - A Midsummer Night's Dream V.i

I have spoken this line said by Puck in two different productions.  The first was set in ancient Baghdad, and our director changed many things besides the location like names, dialog, even the play within a play.  I was "Div," and I believe the line got translated to "And we Djinn sweep away all that the day has been."  In the other production I was one part of a three-person Puck and we whispered the sweeping part as if it were the end of a lullaby.  I loved both productions and my part in them, but in neither one did I pay enough attention to this line.

I've been thinking about this since one of my professors brought it up in class last week.  He used it as a metaphor for things left unresolved.  In Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, things seem to tie up fairly nicely in the end - Hermia and Lysander get to marry, Helena gets her Demetrius, Hippolyta and Theseus are getting along better, and Oberon and Titania have stopped fighting.  However, all is not really well.  Demetrius is still tricked into loving Helena due to the flower's charm.  Titania was duped into having sex with a demi-donkey, and due to that false guilt submits to her husband's will to give up the boy she promised her late kinswoman she would raise and protect.  Not exactly wrapped up in the nicest and neatest of bows.  So Puck, the most mischievous of all, is responsible for sweeping all this dust behind the door, out of sight, out of mind, and we can all continue to live in a bit of a dream world.  The dust is hidden, but not gone.

Hits a chord with me.  My life seems much too dusty these days.

I am an expertly efficient, routinized machine.  I wake up, go to my classes, go to work, eat, do, perform, and sleep (somewhat).  I show up on time, I keep my schedule, I do the work that is required of me.  I've even gotten better at having fun, having a social life, keeping up with friends and family as best I can.  Nobody can deny that I am completely functional.  But then I have all these worries, doubts, and fears that I don't know what to do with.  They settle quietly on surfaces or nestle in the cracks but they never leave.  Yes, I do well in school and I'm graduating in the spring but I have no idea what comes next.  I don't know what I want to do, what career I'd like to go into, even what I'm qualified for.  I don't even have a pipe dream anymore, no "I wish I could be" or "My dream job is."  I've always been in school and I have no idea what I'll do with myself outside of it.  I don't even know where I'll be living, or how I'll occupy myself, even go about looking for a job when I have no goals in my head.  All this work, and the whole point of the entire operation has yet to assert itself, to clue me in on its essence.   I have always enjoyed existentialism and I'm beginning to understand it better than I ever have.  Everyday I'm occupied with the means, the means, the means, and no end emerges.  I work, I execute, but I do not make or create.  Most days I don't notice but some days something happens to disturb the whole operation and all these things are remembered.  The dust is kicked up again and gets into my nose and my lungs and it almost chokes me.  Maybe that's being too melodramatic, but I can't deny that the anxiety and the panic is there, that my heart races and breathing gets harder and I worry that if I don't find an anchor soon I'll get swept away with it all.

There wouldn't be a problem if the dust would just stay behind the door, stay settled, but it has a way of getting out into the air.  A few days ago I experienced a big disturbance when I saw someone I thought and hoped that I would never see again.  It has been a fairly long time, but the memories are still unpleasant.  More evidence that you can put things out of the way but you can never eradicate them.  I have many memories that behave similarly, pop up when I least want them, bothering me, infecting me.  Memories of people, people I've loved, people who have left, people who hurt and whom I cannot fix, things that have happened, things that recur, feelings that are so intense as to be surreal.  Sometimes the effect of all this is so dissociating that I feel I cannot even recognize my own life.  I've lived 21 years, long to some and short to others, and I would have thought I'd be more at peace with things, that they'd seem more familiar.  But that does not seem to be the case.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who wonders these things, like how much dust can be tolerated before it clogs the machine and stops all functioning.  I know most people have similar dust in their lives, pushed into dark corners and crevices and left to be undisturbed and forgotten for as long as possible.  And I know people's tolerances for it surely differ.  It's just that for me, at this stage in my life, I find it to be a very prominent and fairly upsetting presence that, sweep as I might, does not hide for long.

"Your mind is tossing on the ocean" - The Merchant of Venice I.i

This blog title is dedicated to my drinking compadres from last night who most likely woke up hungover this morning.  I don't know what you might remember... I'll just say that eventually we put the llama back, and there's an end.

Right now I'm at one of my workplaces.  There have been no customers since I got here at what my father calls "the ass-crack of dawn" (he has such a way with words).  To pass at least one of the next four hours I have to sit here, I think I'll rant a bit about Shylock.  As you do.

First of all, Shylock is not a caricature of a Jew like Barabas in The Jew of Malta.  He's portrayed like a real person/character, with nuance and depth and ambiguity.  Some people think this is anti-Semitic, since Shakespeare doesn't just go to the evil stock character.  Sorry, this is a difficult viewpoint to articulate.  I think it's kind of like, if you make someone an over-the-top stereotype then people don't really take the message seriously because they know it's a stock character; however, if you make a more realistic character then people are more apt to take things seriously.  Which is probably why people don't get fussy about Marlowe's Jew; it was an obvious caricature and there's no reason to bother with it.  But Shakespeare took great pains, in my opinion, to make Shylock realistic, and then people start to wonder if that means there's a deeper, more serious bias and discrimination at work.  Personally, I think that's incorrect; I think Shylock better shows the hypocrisy of Christians than the maliciousness of Jews.  Antonio tries to paint Shylock as so very different from him, but I think there are a lot of parallels that he doesn't want to acknowledge.  In a way Portia acknowledges them very publicly, when she comes into the court disguised as Balthasar and asks, "Which is the merchant, and which the Jew?" as if they were indistinguishable from one another.  The mistake confuses me further when I think that Jews had to wear red caps outside their ghetto so Shylock should have been wearing one in court and Antonio wouldn't have been.  I'd have to check more historical background about that, but again, I think there's a deliberate point being made that Antonio and Shylock are not so different as Antonio would have them be.

But I get ahead of myself.  Let's get some historical context.  Venice was huge into mercantilism at the time; their economy depended on seafaring ventures.  At the same time, it was also heavily dependent on moneylending, since people needed cash to keep the circulation going while waiting for their ships to come in.  Now, here's where things get dicey.  There is a verse in Deuteronomy that outlines the practice of usury (charging any interest on loans) and when it is or isn't okay.  Here it is: "Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury."  Seems straightforward enough, but religious matters never really are, are they?  Those of the Jewish faith interpreted this as sinful to lend money with interest to other Jews, but with Christians it was absolutely fine.  Christians, however, interpret "thy brother" as everyone, Christians and Jews alike (because you know, Jews were just mistaken in their faith; everyone's a Christian who eventually will or won't come around to that knowledge).  So Christians weren't allowed to lend with interest, but Jews were.  Usury was one of the very few avenues open for Jews to do business, and that's how a great number of them made their living.

Back to the play.  In the third scene of Act 1 Bassanio is trying to get Shylock to loan Antonio money so Antonio can give Bassanio the money to buy pretty things and impress Portia.  Shylock reveals in an aside that he doesn't like Christians.  This is a typical thing for Jewish characters in plays to say; they're all supposed to hate Christians on principal because Jews are devils and fiends.  But see how he qualifies his opinion: "I hate him for he is a Christian, but morefor that in low simplicity he lends out money gratis and brings down the rate of usance here with us in Venice."
It's an economic issue!  Antonio lends money to his friends without interest which takes away from Shylock's business and messes up the usurance rates.  Naturally he would be pissed!  More than that, Antonio spits on him and spurns him like a dog.  Doesn't Shylock have every reason to think ill of Antonio?  Antonio despises him for his usury, yet he is full willing to borrow money from him.  It's totally hypocritical.  Shylock's doing him a favor and he claims that he will continue to spit and strike him as his enemy anyway. 

So what does Shylock do?  He offers to lend Antonio money without interest, which is the CHRISTIAN form of moneylending.  There's great language play with the word "kind, " which can mean "nice" but also mean being of your category, your kind, which in this Antonio and Bassanio's case is Christian.  By agreeing not to charge interest but instead putting a pound of flesh down as collateral, Shylock is actually doing the Christian thing!  I think Shakespeare's power of satire here is absolutely beautiful.  Shylock mocks them by saying it's more Christian to offer up human flesh rather than have interest.  By Antonio's reply, I think he kind of recognizes this farce, and is full willing to go along with it.  Shylock is smartly saying that he act of their kind, but at the same time respecting Antonio's desire that they remain enemies with the whole pound of flesh thing.  Honestly, I think it's some kind of genius.

For those who argue that it was Shylock's plan all along to murder Antonio, let me point out a couple things.  One, Antonio is not prone to going to Jewish moneylenders, so there's no reason that Shylock would expect to have any kind of opportunity to harm/kill Antonio.  Two, it is by INCREDIBLE and odds-defying coincidence that Antonio was unable to pay back the money on time.  Antonio says that he expects "thrice three times" (nine times for those with math troubles) the value of 3,000 ducats (bonus points for calculating how many ducats he expects!) in two months, which is a full month before the bond is due.  He has a number of ships in a number of different places; it might be worrisome if they were all together and could all get wrecked together, but they're not.  Shylock himself describes Antonio's prospects:
"He hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies. I understand moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath squandered abroad."
Yes, mercantilism is risky, but with that many ships out in that many different locations, you'd expect at least one of them to make it back on time to pay the bond.  But SHOCKINGLY, they all wreck separately.  I'm sure Shylock did not expect that the pound of flesh thing would ever really pay out; in fact, when he hears of Antonio's ships being wrecked he says "There I have another bad match" as if he is upset that Antonio can't pay him back.  He only begins to really go after the pound of flesh when his daughter robs him and leaves him and Antonio's friends all help her get away with it.  He's emotionally grieved, and he wants some kind of revenge, so then yeah, he goes a little crazy and bloodthirsty.  I'm not saying that he's right in continuing to insist on killing Antonio rather than taking the money, or even 20 times the money (ughhhh, the math, it hurts), I'm just saying that I understand where that comes from.  People do stupid things when they're grieving, and take it out on the wrong people.  And then of course it bites them in the ass.

Other things of note: Shylock went about the pound of flesh thing completely lawfully.  He could have tried to murder Antonio in secret; instead, he goes to the justice of the courts and procedes perfectly in accordance with the law.  There's nothing technically wrong in that.  In fact, the legality of the final sentencing of Shylock is what is questionable.  The law stipulates that half his lands go to the wronged party (Antonio) and half go to the state, but the ruling that he must leave Lorenzo and Jessica his money in a will and convert to Christianity is entirely subjective.  The law requires nothing of the sort; it's honestly just a really low-blow from Antonio.  They set Antonio up to be the Job-like sufferer, but at the very end it is Shylock who is left destitute and suffering.  He could scream and wail and spout his hate for Christians, but instead he merely says "I am not well" and leaves.  It's a moment of profound sympathy for him.  There are a number of other sympathetic moments as well, like the "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech.  Shakespeare did not need to include any of that, but he purposely chooses to give Shylock a sympathetic voice.  And it isn't a hate-filled soliloquy when Shylock is alone and secretly plotting his revenge; it is delivered openly and honestly to Antonio's kinsmen, which is something everyone can respect.

Alright, I think I've made a good case for now.  If any of my readers (if I have any readers, that is) wish to debate this point or bring up any evidence I haven't addressed, please do so.  Those are the kind of conversations I enjoy.

P.S.  Sorry if this post is a bit scattered or linguistically sub-par; I'm not having a very eloquent day.  I blame the llama.

"By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world." - The Merchant of Venice I.ii

I shall make no excuses for my absence from this blog, except that many Shakespearean characters share my lack of commitment, and so I must consider myself in good company with a rich literary history of inconstancy.

Quick update on my life: final year of undergrad at the university, no clue as to what I'm doing after graduation.  Seriously.  No clue.  Most days I'm screaming on the inside; the other days my neighbors call the police about a noise violation.  Books and plays are still a refuge, though; not a lot of time to read on my own, but my Elizabethan Revenge Plays course provides me with some opportunities.  We're currently in the middle of The Merchant of Venice.

I have an interesting history with this play.  The first time I read it I hated it because I hated everyone in it.  They all seemed to be massive bitches to one another, all highly hypocritical, occasionally inciting my sympathy only to have me withdraw it when they did something ridiculous like forcing someone to convert or choosing flesh over thousands of ducats or setting their husband up to look like an ass.  All their actions seemed back-biting, nasty, and largely unnecessary.

Now that's kinda why I like it.

Not that I like hypocritical people.  But we can't really castigate anyone in the play in particular because EVERYONE is hypocritical.  No one's wholly evil or wholly pure.  It's a realist play, in a way.  No one is free of flaws, and as much as you get annoyed with them you cannot judge them too harshly because there's always something you can relate to: the petty side of you, the side that isn't always magnanimous, the side that's woken up on the wrong side and doesn't care who you piss off during your bad mood.  We're all bitches, to some extent.  Even if we don't act like it, we certainly think it.  And thank goodness, because purity is boring.  Shades of gray give things depth.

Take Portia, for example.  Holy shit is she judgmental, even racist to a point.  But she's spunky and cheeky, and we kinda like that.  While she harshly critiques all her suitors, we giggle.  She's bound by her father's will and cannot choose her husband for herself, but funny how the song she plays before Bassanio chooses the casket has endrhymes that all sound like "LEAD."  Hint-hint-wink-wink-say-no-more, Bassanio.  One is reminded of all the subtlety of Steve Martin's bird call signal in The Three Amigos.  Again, can we blame her?  Sure, she wants to be a good lovely subservient dutiful daughter, but doesn't want to be hitched to and under obligation to procreate with a complete git.  Close your eyes and think of Belmont... *shudder*

Then, we're all pleased as punch with Portia when she cross-dresses and saves Antonio's life, but because of one little remark by Bassanio about Portia being dead to save Antonio she pulls the whole ring bullshit and I personally question how much I like her at all.  Alright, I'd be jealous too if my husband-to-be clearly had some homoerotic goings-on that I wasn't previously aware of, but come on, people say hyperbolic things when someone's about to have their heart bloodthirstily excised in the middle of a public court.  IT HAPPENS.  No need to pretend you've cuckolded them out of revenge for losing a piece of jewelry that you demanded they give up when you were disguised as a man.  All you're going to do by using jealousy as an aphrodisiac is create fidelity problems down the road.  Trust me on this one.  Also, as a friend of mine observed, Antonio's speech at the play's opening, saying "In sooth, I know not why I am so sad," clearly demonstrates that Bassanio's not putting out like he used to, so Portia doesn't have too much competition there to worry about.  Appreciate that your man's a bit of a limp-wrist and therefore a great shopping buddy, and move on.  Portia's ego is plenty healthy enough to believe she has the feminine power to make Bassanio bat for her team.

So far my discussion has been very Portia based, but I have a bunch to say on the other characters, particularly Antonio vs. Shylock.  In my course we're doing a debate on the play, examining Shakespeare's use of the English Christian name "Shylock" for his Jewish character and whether that could be called defamatory.  Luckily, I'm on the defense, so no burden of proof for me.  Honestly, for every accusation that Shylock is evil there is a counter-argument that he is not evil but understandable, or that Antonio and other characters are at least as evil as he is.  I will leave a full discussion of this point until the next post, which I am determined will be sometime in the next week.

Skeptics, don't look at me in that tone of voice.

"An ever-fixed mark" - Sonnet 116

Thinking that my next play to tackle will be The Taming of the Shrew, but not quite decided on that.  Also, my complete works (well, all three of my complete works, because one complete works obviously isn't enough) is currently at my old house, so I'll need to pick that up before anything else.  In lieu of a post on a play, I'm looking at a sonnet today.

Not sure if sonnets are included in the Shakespeare in a Year challenge.  I suppose they're a major part of his work... It's probably just my general wariness of poetry.  Most of it is too artsy and figurative for me to grasp.  I like it when I can just let it wash over me, get the general emotional sense from it, but too often as an English major I'm required to analyze it, and I'm simply not up to that task.  So please, lower all expectations, because goodness knows when it comes to poetry I have no idea what I'm doing.

This sonnet came up as I've been thinking a lot about Jane Austen, perhaps my second-favorite author behind the Bard (competing with Kurt Vonnegut, Road Dahl, and Isaac Asimov, most likely).  My mum and I first watched the five hour A&E version of Pride and Prejudice (with the incomparable Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy) when I was five, and since then I've been raised on the literature of Austen, forming my romantic notions around her stories.  This, of course, is always very dangerous; how many women have cursed Disney for giving them unrealistic expectations about love?  Superficially, Austen's message about love could be taken badly - "Poor, nice girls get rich husbands" (or, in one specific case, a rich girl gets an equally rich husband; rich husbands, however, are always involved).  This, however, is not the conclusion I draw from her work (even though no one minds a rich husband, now do they...); instead, I learn a lot more from her heroines that only through an understanding of yourself and a sense of personal dignity and integrity can you ever be happy; to be in a relationship, you must be able to stand alone.

Forgive the digression.  Sonnet 116 comes up in a movie version of Sense and Sensibility (with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Hugh Grant among others... it's Ang Lee, and it's divine) where it's Marianne's favorite.  She recites it two different times; the first, when she has just met Willoughby who will become her love, and once in the rain outside his estate after he has cruelly deserted her for a richer woman.  Here's the text:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

What I argue that Marianne learns is that love is no such thing; although you may love someone, things don't necessarily work out.  Love doesn't withstand all problems, it doesn't conquer all, and it isn't all you need (sorry, Beatles). 

I suppose some will argue that if love doesn't meet this criteria, an unshakeable thing, then it isn't really love, or true love, or whatever.  This just seems silly to me.  People are in love all the time; sometimes, when it doesn't work out, they might so "Oh, I guess I wasn't REALLY in love with them.  I just THOUGHT I was."  However, I think most of the time people were in love, they were feeling something special; we just have to admit that sometimes love, no matter how wonderful it feels, doesn't last.

What's so wrong, after all, with having more than one love?  Why does there have to be a one true love?  It seems stingy to me, to limit our feelings like that; why would we deny ourselves one of the greatest emotions that we human beings can possibly feel?  I'd feel much more gyped to say "Oh, that person I spent the last three years of my life with I didn't really love;" jeez, I hope I loved them to stay with them for so long, to give them my time and energy.  If it isn't about love, then what's it all for?

Not that everything is always about love.  If I'm attracted to someone, if I go out with someone, it's not because I immediately love them and want to be with them forever and have their babies.  There's a lot more that goes into the mix - desires, intimacy, passion, friendship, adventure, etc.  And I don't know about other people, but I personally find it damn hard to separate these things out from one another.  You can't fractionally distill emotions.  Sorry Shakespeare, but love is less like the ever-fixed mark in the sky that never changes than the tempest you claim it looks upon and is unmoved by.

At first I was skeptical of the "love is a raging sea" metaphor as well.  Surely it should be steadier than that; all this chaotic, confusing mixing of emotions and hormones was something else that I just didn't get out in adolescence, and I need to suck it up and be mature about these things.  Maybe there's some truth; goodness knows I'm a late bloomer, and have less experience with these matters than many other people.  But I still don't believe it's that easy to say this is exactly how I feel, I'm conscious of it, and it isn't going to change.

Love, and all other emotions, DO alter with time.  Even if they don't change in presence, they change in quality; ask any married couple and I'm sure they'll tell you that the kind of love they felt at the beginning of their relationship is different for the love they have now, and who's to say which is better or worse.  A sex buddy can turn into a boyfriend; a once-great love can become nothing more than a good friend.

I don't believe that love, emotions, and people are fickle; rather, I think they are dynamic.  Those who claim to be stoic and unmoving are often boring, or just kidding themselves.  Perfection is not something achieved once and held the same, but pursued, a journey with no set destination.  In the same Austen vein, I cite Mr. Darcy, every woman's fantasy of the perfect man.  The thing is, he isn't.  What makes him so amazing is his change, and the complement of Elizabeth that brings about that change.  Elizabeth and Darcy are not perfect by themselves, but as Austen writes, Elizabeth first "began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance."  I consider this to perhaps be the best description of a perfect union that exists in literature or anywhere.  Two people, wonderful in themselves, realize that by being mutable they can grow both separately and together.

So as lovely as the Bard's verse is, I must contend the message, even if the consequences are that Shakespeare "never writ, nor no man ever loved."  Love is dynamic, freeform, altering, mixing, elating, maddening... all the best things in life. 

"What is this? Sport?" - The Winter's Tale II.i

Last post I discussed Leontes and jealousy.  Today, I want to focus on Hermione and shock.

The title for this post is Hermione's first response to her husband's accusations of her falsehood.  She's playing with her child, thinking everything is fine just as it has always been, and suddenly Leontes storms in and has the child taken away, denouncing it as a bastard and her as an adulteress.  Hermione cannot comprehend it; she's shocked, confused about what has gotten into him, angered about such a slander, and already pitying him for the anguish he will feel once he recognizes his "mistake."  Eventually, she is given a trial that states her alleged crimes, and she gives a heart-wrenching speech about her innocence.  Leontes is unmoved; even the Oracle at Delphi's report of her innocence fails to move him.  His resistance to such logical and emotional appeals is inconceivable.  The only thing that finally gets him is when Hermione and their son Mamillius dies from the grief.

Hermione's situation is a nightmare, but I envy her in this: she got to hear the accusations against her and give her own response.  Of all the things Leontes denies her, at least she is given some voice.

I got dumped last week.  I say dumped because I had absolutely no input in the matter.  It was a bolt from the blue; I thought that we were doing wonderfully.  There was no discussion, no explanation given other than vague suggestions about "different places in our lives" and "feeling distant."  Like Hermione, I was consumed by the shock of it all.  You feel stupid, like you should have seen it coming, like there were signs you missed.  You analyze every action of your past week, wondering what could have been the trigger.  But in awhile you realize you aren't stupid, you didn't miss anything, it's nothing horrible that you did; the other person was just scared, and instead of talking about it, had a knee-jerk reaction to cut you out of their world.  A friend of mine said that it was better this way, that I could use the anger of being dumped, hate him, and get over it sooner.  I disagree.  I've had one other long (and agonizing) relationship before, and even though breaking up sucked we at least talked about it together for awhile and made the decision mutually.  There was transition and acceptance.  Even though I felt completely disrespected and discounted in this break-up, no matter how much of a dick someone is acting like it still takes awhile to stop loving them.

Another thing people will tell you is that the person was an asshole, so you can stop caring about them.  Well, I certainly hope I'm not the kind of girl to consciously date an asshole for nearly a year, and I fancy myself I'm a little better judge of character than that.  So what's the deal?  Should Hermione have seen how much of a jealous jerk Leontes could be?  Does his behavior signal that he's had this in him all along, that she's loved a man who is a heartless prick in disguise?  I can't believe that.  People make mistakes.  In the end he's sorry and it takes 16 years for them to come back together.  I'm not saying I believe that my ex will realize his mistake and come back to me; I'm too much of a realist.  Though he's acted in the poorest way, I cannot believe that this is who he has always been.  I believe he has made some kind of mistake, in dumping me or perhaps just the manner of dumping me, which he may or may not come to see in time.  But I can't hate him, can't say I was wrong in feeling the way I did.  I know I'm young, but... when it came to emotional investment, I was in, and I was all in.  The time, the effort, future plans... it was all there, and he knew it was there for him, because I genuinely felt that it was something worthwhile, something I could live on, thrive on.  So much for that.

Thankfully, I think I'm doing better than Hermione, who became frozen statue-like for the next 16 years.  After a day crying and a day getting drunk, I'm taking it as easy as I can.  Thank whatever deity you prefer for the Camillos and Paulinas of the world that help you out in these situations, be it giving you a place to stay or going out dancing with you.  I still believe, I must believe, that even a tale about winter ends with the promise of spring.