Day 24: I know I'm supposed to be reading Macbeth, but...

I was just thinking about the last two plays I read, Twelfth Night and The Winter's Tale, and I was thinking how they are sort of opposites in some respects. Specifically, the theme of "clothes making the man" is approached from opposite angles in the two plays.

In Twelfth Night, or What You Will, the idea is that a character is nearly completely transformed simply by changing their costume. When Viola dresses as a man, everyone accepts that she is a man (except a notably hairless and young-looking one). When Malvolio receives a letter from Maria signed as Olivia, he completely accepts that it is from Olivia because it looks like her handwriting. Later, when Malvolio is visited by the "priest" he accepts that it is an actual priest because he's wearing priest's robes even though Malvolio is in complete darkness and couldn't have seen what his visitor was wearing. In other words, appearance is EVERYTHING. All of the characters in the play support this premise. 

In The Winter's Tale, on the other hand, appearances are challenged at every turn. Everyone (including the audience) is certain that Hermione is faithful and her children are fathered by the king, but Leontes challenges it relentlessly. Even though Perdita is raised by a shepherd in the wilderness, the other characters remark frequently on her "other quality" which suggests that she may be of noble blood. When the rogue Autolycus dons the prince's robes, no one fully believes that he is an aristocrat, despite his courtly appearance. Both Hermione's death and reappearance as a statue are questioned (and rightly so...she was neither dead nor a statue). In other words, appearances are not to be believed.

I don't have a further scholarly opinion on the meaning of the theme of appearance versus reality in these two plays. It's just an observation. 

"I'm a belly dancer!" "I'm the Bloggess!" "I'm Hamlet!" No, guys, you're just dead mice.

(photo from Jenny Lawson's blog,  The Bloggess, which I cannot recommend highly enough)

Day 21: What I Learned: The Winter's Tale

I love this image from a Berkshire production of The Winter's Tale.

I've read a fair bit of literary criticism of The Winter's Tale this past week (and not all of it on Wikipedia!) but I'm just going to tell you what I personally thought of it. Don't cite me in your essays, kids. I'm not a good source.

First of all, I loved this play. It was one of my favourites as a teenager (back when I read a lot of Shakespeare) and even though I didn't remember anything about it until I re-read it this week, I can still see why. It's still one of my favourites. It's sad, it's messy, it's a tad unresolved, and in its surrealism it's actually quite real.

King Leontes is a moody, jealous asshole who has way too much power to act on his moods. Most jealous boyfriends and abusive husbands don't have the power of an entire court and army behind them but if they did, I can imagine quite a few of them behaving like Leontes does. He casts out his wife and children on the flimsiest of suspicions (mostly because he's grumpy and paranoid) and there's nothing she can do to reason with him. Although everyone agrees that he's paranoid, irrational and just plain wrong, the only one who stands up to him with any vigour is Paulina, another woman. There's a lot that's relatable about this. Women may have more power in society now than we did in Shakespeare's day, but some things never change. There are a lot of irrational Leonteses out there.

What I particularly love about this play is that Leontes never becomes sympathetic. Sure, he's repentant (sort of) and sure, he gets his wife back (sort of) in the end, but it's not like we're rooting for him. We're just glad that Hermione and Perdita are both alive and well. And let's face it, that had nothing to do with Leontes.

I also noticed that almost every male character in the play (except for Florizel and maybe Camillo) at some point threatens to kill, maim or abandon a woman. In most cases it was rhetorical, or to prove some point (like "if the queen can't be trusted, no woman can...therefore I'm going to kill my wife and daughters"...WTH??) but it's still striking, especially considering how dramatically King Leontes himself acted on those sentiments. For me, it makes me think about the relationship between the violent words said in passing and the violence that people actually commit, particularly against women. Again, the least violent characters are the most sympathetic, so I feel Shakespeare may have been making a point about the power men have over women and how unjust that can be. Am I projecting? Maybe. But he also included a scene in which the shepherdesses are offered dildos to buy, so maybe he was making a point about the need for female empowerment after all.

Okay, I'll leave it there. Once the discussion starts going into "dildos" it's hard to keep focus.

Day 20: So, uh, they talk about dildos in this play, y'all

I really don't understand why The Winter's Tale isn't more popular. It's one of my favourites, plus it has the AWESOME stage direction "Exit, pursued by a bear" AND (as if that weren't enough) it contains one of the earliest written usages of the word "dildos." 

Yup. You just read that. 

In the play, the character of Autolycus (pictured above in a painting by Thomas Charles Wageman, thanks to Wikipedia) is a travelling salesman (as well as a thief, a huckster, a con artist and all-around entertaining asshole) who sells, among other things, gloves and dildos. And no, it didn't have a different meaning then.

In this painting by Charles Robert Leslie, Autolycus is seen selling his wares. BUT WHERE ARE THE DILDOS? WHERE? I'm guessing he sold those first.

One of the shepherdesses, Mopsa (real name) asks her boyfriend to buy her some gloves. I guess she didn't know about the other things. 

Day 17: Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Possibly the greatest stage direction of all time. After Antigonus has safely delivered King Leontes' banished infant to Bohemia (where she will ultimately be found and raised by a passing shepherd) he exits, saying "I am gone forever." Then the stage direction is "Exit, pursued by a bear." A motherfucking bear! Did Shakespeare intend to use a real bear for this one second scene? Was there someone in a bear costume? Was it just a growly noise and a furry shape? THERE'S NOT EVEN A BEAR MENTIONED IN THE CAST LIST! He just sort of throws it in there. CRAZY!

It has understandably become one of Shakespeare's most famous stage directions, and has inspired blogs, novels and even a band name. 

One thing's for sure: If I'm ever in a production of The Winter's Tale, I'm going to demand to play the bear.

Day 16: Bohemia, or I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

One thing that I learned from Ben Crystal is that, though Shakespeare's plays were often set in far off lands, neither Will nor his audience had necessarily been to any of those places. They'd heard stories--oh the stories!--but more often than not, that was it. And sometimes that caught up to old Will.

Case in point:

In The Winter's Tale, some of the scenes take place in "Bohemia, a desert country near the sea." Except it's not! Bohemia corresponds roughly to the Czech Republic, which is land-locked, nowhere near the sea, and definitely not a desert. Could he have meant Persia?

via

The reasons behind Shakespeare's Bohemian sea coast blunder are numerous and, ultimately, unsatisfying. He was apparently ridiculed for the error by Ben Johnson. Some sources say he was referencing an earlier story that also took place on the coast of Bohemia (and Ben Johnson hadn't made fun of THAT guy, so why was he teasing Shakespeare about it?). Others suggest he was referring to 13th-century Bohemia, whose empire did extend to the coast. Some suggested that the settings of Sicilia and Bohemia were originally reversed but he switched them due to political circumstances at the time (if that were true, Sicilia would have been the coastal country, but it wouldn't have explained calling it a desert). Some even say that Shakespeare deliberately made a fanciful version of Bohemia to add to the fairy tale quality of the story.

Personally, I think he simply hadn't been to Bohemia and wasn't that bothered about the geographical details when he had a play to put on.

Day 15: New Play Tuesday! The Winter's Tale

So this week I feel like I need a little catch-up time (already!) so I'm choosing a play I know I've already read, The Winter's Tale. I know I've read it because once, in college, I went to see a production of it and I remember saying, "Oh I've read this one! This'll be great!" Having said that, I remember nothing about the play, on page or on stage. If I had to guess, I'd say it was a manor house mystery? Like Gosford Park or something? That's probably not right. I'll look into it later.

In the meantime, check out this awesome word cloud of The Winter's Tale, courtesy of SCCEnglish!