Sunday, May 16, 2004

Words
Shakespeare didn't write any of his plays as we see them now. This isn't as controversial a statement as it might at first seem. When we go to the theatre now to see Romeo & Juliet or Hamlet are 'edited' versions of the plays, cobbled together by contemporary editors from a number of sources which we know are mostly acurate. Mostly. I was amazed when I read about all this while studying for my A-Levels. There are many versions of the plays and roughly fall into two camps, the Quartos and the Folios. Now at the time, bootlegging was rife and so these printings were often from not entirely trustworthy sources -- we have the editing together of the recollection of actors; a written copy of the script sold afterwards by a minor actor looking for some fast cash to supplement their pitiful actors earnings (the issue with this being that this not be Shakespeares final version of the play); a stage hand's version full of directions; a non-contemporary version of the play which has appeared a hundred years after Shakespeare's death. Different camps will argue endlessly about which can stake the greater claim for accuracy. This article tracks the history of the First Folio, one of the original collected works, now considered to well -- not too good really, and how a cult has developed around it's inception.

posted 4:08 PM | link | (4) comments

Music
Will in concert: "I've always loved Shakespeare," said Paul Dorgan, the Salt Lake City pianist who devised the concert's program. "He's such a musical poet. And there are references to music all through the plays. A lot of them use music, too -- some of it quite elaborate." ... Decker's recitations in the concert include Caliban's speech from "The Tempest" -- describing the sounds of a mystic island; Sonnets 8 and 128; a speech from "The Merchant of Venice" beginning "I am never merry when I hear sweet music . . ."; and "If music be the food of love, play on . . . etc" from "Twelfth Night."

posted 4:06 PM | link | (0) comments

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Books
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film is a string of essays describing the problems involved in adapting what is essentially a thearical form to cinema. It's an academic work and so the writing is quite dry at times and because we have essays we have repetition - how many times you can write about Olivier's 'Richard III'?

There are three essays of note. 'Videos and its paradoxes' looks at the use of video as a study aid, and how the prouctions on show can colour the student's view of the play - so Anthony Hopkins characterisation of Othello in the BBC production is wildly different to Lawrence Fishburne's in the recent film - neither is necessarily correct, but the student might not make that connection.

'Filming Shakespeare;s history: three films of Richard III' offers the best and most honest review of Paccino's 'Looking for Richard' I've read, treating the film on its own merits and not as a version of the actual play. Finally, 'Flambiyant realist: Kenneth Branagh' again tries to re-dress the critical mauling his films have been subjected to - there really isn't anything like the four hour 'Hamlet'. The one disappointment is 'Shakespeare's cinematic offshoots' which looks at adaptations which are re-imaginings of the text. It's cursary, anodine and misses out 'In The Bleak Midwinter' and 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'. Why?

posted 6:39 PM | link | (0) comments

Henry IV
Fascinating interview with Kevin Klein regarding his Tony nominated performance as Falstaff.

posted 6:35 PM | link | (0) comments

The Scottish Play
Macbeth test silly, say irate teachers: "The 14-year-olds taking the compulsory exam on the Bard were asked in the paper on Macbeth to write as if they were agony aunts for a teenage magazine. The question, in the paper devised by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, told the pupils: "In Macbeth, Banquo warns Macbeth about the witches' influence. You give advice in a magazine for young people. "You receive this request: 'Please advise me. I have recently moved school and made some new friends. I like spending time with them but my form tutor thinks my work is suffering. What should I do? Sam.' "Write your advice to be published in the magazine."

posted 6:28 PM | link | (1) comments

Romeo and Juliet
Multi-lingual performance celebrating diversity: "Students auditioned for the parts, and 28 were selected to narrate and perform scenes from Act 2 and recite sonnets. Each scene — including that with Juliet perched at her balcony calling for Romeo and that with tragic duo's secret marriage — was performed in all three languages by different pairs of Romeos and Juliets."

posted 6:25 PM | link | (0) comments

People
Paltrow gives birth to baby Apple: "The baby weighed 9 pounds 11 ounces and both mother and baby were said to be doing well."

posted 6:23 PM | link | (0) comments

The Saturday Sonnet



Two

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

[translation, analysis]

posted 4:33 PM | link | (0) comments

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

A Midsummer Night's Dream
An intriguing production in which the characters from the real play find themselves taking part in the making of a film: "In the new comedy, Puck and Oberon are returning to a wood near Athens, as directed at the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Puck mistakenly follows a sign that says 'A Wood Near Athens.' That sign is on a 1934 Hollywood sound stage at Warner Bros. 'They become engulfed in this movie that's being made around them,' Ludwig told Playbill On-Line. 'Oberon falls in love with one of the actresses, and Puck falls in love with just being there and getting treated like a star.' People at the studio think the fantasy figures are studio actors. When Victor Jory and Mickey Rooney have to unexpectedly leave the project, Oberon and Puck get cast as Oberon and Puck. (Jory and Rooney both did the movie.)"

posted 10:13 PM | link | (0) comments

Hamlet
Basically, imagine the film School of Rock if a man playing Shakespeare had turned up instead of Jack Black. Getting kids to relate to the play: "'How did your son die?' Shakespeare, surprised and somewhat saddened at an old, still painful memory, said his boy caught a fever and died; as if to reassure his audience, he added that medicine wasn't very good in those old days. And then another student jumped up and said the boy's fever was caused by rats, and the rats gave it to flies, and the flies bit the people, and the old playwright allowed that there was some truth to that."

posted 10:12 PM | link | (0) comments

Attribution
New film uncovers the mystery of Edward De Vere, yet another possible author of the canon: "Roland Emmerich has committed to direct an intense 16th Century drama, exploring a theory about the true authorship of Shakespeare's works. No, no, it's all right, you're not dreaming, nor has that suspicious guy by the copier slipped ketamine in your coffee again. Ladies and gentlemen Roland Emmerich is back, and this time... he's serious."

posted 10:06 PM | link | (0) comments

Biography
Mouthwatering selection of quotations about food:
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O! it came oer my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.
"Twelfth Night" (1.1.1-7)

posted 9:47 PM | link | (1) comments

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

People
Extensive interview Adrian Noble, the former artistic director of The Royal Shakespeare Company: "Of course, there were things that went dreadfully wrong at the RSC, and I deeply regret them. The principal mistake was announcing everything at the same time. We should have got the company's structure sorted out first, and moved on to the redevelopment later. As it was, opposition to one aspect of the project rebounded on to the others, so that nothing got considered on its own terms. People wanted a scapegoat, and as I'd been based at the RSC for 23 years, I was an easy person to pick on. But now I'm out of it, I'm not bitter. [French actor/director] Jean-Louis Barrault said, 'You must feel passion for everything but cling to nothing' - quite right. Festering is not in my nature. I have to move on."

posted 6:52 PM | link | (0) comments

Much Ado About Nothing
Is still not colour blind, as eyebrows raised over the casting of a black African-American as the villainous Don John in new production: "Bob Devin Jones thinks questions he has gotten about being the only black actor in the cast and playing Don John are perhaps more telling about the general state of theater casting than they might seem. "In a way, even the most informed people, by saying, "Why are you playing the villain?' tacitly are referencing that it would be an automatic choice that the African-American would play the villain," he said. "If you scattered us throughout any particular play, it wouldn't come up."

posted 6:48 PM | link | (0) comments

The Merry Wives of Windsor
New performance appears as matinee at the Shakespeare on Avon Festival.

posted 6:44 PM | link | (0) comments

People
Some notable performances in productions of Will's plays crop up in the new Tony nominations: "As expected, one of the toughest categories to predict will be that of leading actor in a play. Kevin Kline and Christopher Plummer, who respectively played Shakespeare's Falstaff and King Lear, are competing against Frank Langella's bravura performance in Match, Simon Russell Beale's triumph in the National Theatre's production of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers and Jefferson Mays' juggling of 35 roles in Doug Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife."

posted 6:37 PM | link | (0) comments

A Midsummer Night's Dream
In Korean: "It takes place in a world of Korean fairies such as Kyunwoo (herding boy) and Jiknyo (weaving girl) in ancient times in Korea. It is a love story that takes place one summer night in which reality and illusion are mixed together."

posted 6:33 PM | link | (0) comments

Much Ado About Nothing
Don Pedro hits the streets: "And I'm pretty sure there wasn't any hip-hop trio called Super Dope Posse in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing." This would be Shakespeare's loss. There is such an aggregation in Mosaic Youth Theatre's "Everybody's Talkin,' " an original musical based on "Much Ado," and its members nearly steal the show as they wax poetic on subjects like potato chips (crunch! crunch!) and SpongeBob SquarePants."

posted 6:31 PM | link | (0) comments

Monday, May 10, 2004

Measure For Measure
for no reason I can write about here I thought I'd offer this bit of four hundred year old poetry which is a perfect examples of why men know nothing about women. It's the final speech from The Duke at the end of the play.

For those not familiar, in brief, The Duke has spent much of the thing running around in disguise tidying up after he left his deputy in charge of his city in an attempt to clean up the city -- while The Duke wants to tidy up the people's attitude Angelo brings in some far more draconian laws than he was expecting. In one sub-plot Isabella, a nun, watches as her brother Claudio is condemned to death for making his girlfriend pregnant out of wedlock. The deputy, Angelo, offers to set the brother free if Isabella will sleep with him. The Duke manipulates the action so that Angelo sleeps with one of his ex-girlfriends and the brother is freed. Now see what he does here:

THE DUKE:
She, Claudio, that you wrong'd, look you restore.
Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo:
I have confess'd her and I know her virtue.
Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness:
There's more behind that is more gratulate.
Thanks, provost, for thy care and secrecy:
We shill employ thee in a worthier place.
Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home
The head of Ragozine for Claudio's:
The offence pardons itself. Dear Isabel,
I have a motion much imports your good;
Whereto if you'll a willing ear incline,
What's mine is yours and what is yours is mine.
So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show
What's yet behind, that's meet you all should know.

So basically, The Duke having saved Isabella from sleeping with Angelo and breaking her holy orders and beliefs (the real issue at hand) offers her the same thing, grinning as he does so. In no production that I've seen has he had his way with her. At least she dashed off the stage. The best reaction was a slap across the face and a push of the throne, which is about what he deserves.

posted 11:22 PM | link | (1) comments

Sunday, May 09, 2004

Edition
The Charles Knight version of the canon rendered online: "This website presents 38 engravings from the Imperial Edition of William Shakespeare's Complete Works by the Victorian publisher Charles Knight. You can view accompanying texts in English and in Dutch, and, for thirteen texts, hear them enacted in English."

posted 1:31 PM | link | (0) comments

Hamlet
"'To buy?' not the question...": "Wealthy Shakespeare fans had a rare opportunity April 14, when Christie's New York offered at auction a third-quarto edition of Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Published in 1611, it was expected to sell for $2 million. In 2001, a first-folio edition sold for $6.2 million, more than double Christie's highest estimate. The price set a record for Shakespeare at auction, as well as a world auction record for a 17th-century book."
[Later: Hamlet fails to sell at auction]

posted 1:02 PM | link | (0) comments

World
More on Will's food, this time what he might have been eating at dinner time: "It is impossible to say exactly what Shakespeare ate, but one can make educated guesses. Excavations around the site of the old Globe have uncovered mounds of oyster shells, Ms. Segan said. Oysters were served both at taverns as a pretheater snack and inside the theater itself, the Elizabethan equivalent of ballpark franks. Shakespeare's frequent mention of them ("love may transform me to an oyster," says Benedict in "Much Ado About Nothing") makes it all but certain that he slurped on oysters or ate oyster pie during long days at the theater."
[Related: Francine Segan, Shakespeare's Kitchen: Renaissance Recipes for the Contemporary Cook]

posted 12:45 PM | link | (0) comments

People
With RADA celebrating its centenery this year, BBC News provide an overview of some of its most famous sons and daughters: "Steve McFadden is best known as bad boy Phil Mitchell in BBC One soap EastEnders. He attended Rada in his mid-20s for two years. Previous jobs before joining the Academy ranged from carrot picking and street trading to plumbing and working with the disabled."

posted 12:09 PM | link | (0) comments

Performance
An overview of Ontario's forthcoming Stratford Festival: "The perfect selection to open the season in summer is "A Midsummer Night's Dream," one of three plays this season rated G, great for families. Instead of an English wood, the scene is Brazil, where Hippolyta, Amazon queen, reigns. Mischievous Puck plays court jester while other spirits toy with the emotions of Man, tradesmen try to master acting, and the magic of a summer's eve in the Amazon rain forest plays tricks on lovers who chase each other by night. All's well that ends well, so to speak."

posted 12:06 PM | link | (0) comments

Hamlet
Or in fact Hamlet! The Musical: "The show includes a slew of Nashville stage veterans and is done, mind you, with ''full respect'' for the original Shakespearean work. Its cast of characters has everything from an all-too-egotistical thespian to a Ted Nugent-like rock singer, with a theater co-owner who ''hawks beauty products at the ticket counter'' in between."

posted 12:02 PM | link | (0) comments

Biography
Shakespeare - the Musical: "a play about the Bard with excerpts from his plays and poems, with words and music by Cenarth Fox, proved to be a memorable spectacle. Under the able guidance of Ms Caroline Pullicino and Ms Clarissa Fleri Soler, who produced and directed the play, over 100 fourth form students gave an excellent performance of music, dance, song and drama. It was a joy to watch these beaming teenage girls on stage as they were obviously enjoying themselves. Maybe it was the subject matter, very dear to my own sensibility, but surely the verve and confidence which all and sundry showed on stage, that made me wish the spectacle would never come to a close."

posted 11:51 AM | link | (0) comments

Saturday, May 08, 2004

The Saturday Sonnet



One

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

[Translation, Analysis]

posted 3:47 PM | link | (0) comments

Words
Collection of food terms used throughout the canon presented in their original context: "This informal survey of Shakespeare's use of food in his writings reveals much, I think, about Renaissance literary convention, about the Elizabethan table, and about Shakespeare himself. Mostly "low" characters express themselves in terms of appetite."

posted 12:00 AM | link | (0) comments

Interactive
The William Shakespeare Weblog is looking for contributions. If you want to comment or follow-up on something which has been mentioned or you have something which you think might of interest to readers please get in touch. We would particularly like to hear from anyone connected with a production of one of Will's plays for a prospective diary feature. Above all else Shakespeare's words are as relevant now as then and its important for this weblog to reflect that.
posted 09/05/2004 | link | email

(c) Stuart Ian Burns 2004
contributors welcome
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