Day 39: Sock Monkey Othello and more!

Sock Monkey Othello, by David Jones (fineartamerica)

I love these Sock Monkey Shakespeare designs by David Jones! He has a whole bunch of them (I previously posted his Sock Monkey Merchant of Venice, which is beyond awesome). I'll post more very soon, but in the meantime you can check them out at FineArtAmerica.com.


And as promised, here are two more Sock Monkey Shakespeare pictures from David Jones (check out his other work at FineArtAmerica.com). Look at the scene from Macbeth above. SMM (Sock Monkey Macbeth) is so scandalized by the sock monkey witches! Sooooo good! Hit the jump to see them.

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 19: Another awesome word cloud!

Here's another amazing word cloud from SCCEnglish, this time of Twelfth Night. They say "sir" A LOT!

Day 14: What I Learned: Twelfth's Night, or What You Will

What did I learn? I learned that the stupid "identical twin brother and sister" premise has been going on for centuries. Why would everyone in Twelfth Night meet Sebastian and think he was his sister Viola, who has been posing as a man the whole play? Because they're twins. And in the popular imagination that means that they look EXACTLY alike. No exceptions. 

Sigh.

This is particularly annoying to me because my brother and sister ARE twins (and no, they're not identical because THAT DOESN'T EXIST) and trust me, no amount of wigs would make them look alike. No amount.

So I guess I learned nothing from Twelfth Night because that one plot point was so distracting that it's all I can think about.

Oh, but I did watch a lot more Downton Abbey after reading it. But I probably would have anyway.

Wait, I did learn one thing! The quotes, "If music be the food of love, play on" (which sounds smarmy in any context) and "some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them" are from this play. That second quote I was sure was from Oscar Wilde. So yes, I learned something!

Day 13: Random and uninspired...you're welcome

Source: itv.com

I'm feeling a little uninspired at the moment. I know that Twelfth Night is filled with frivolity and hijinks, but I'm just not feeling it. It's not that I dislike it, I just find it doesn't read well on the page. It's like reading a book of jokes. It's just not the same as going to a comedy club, is it? 

I thought about blogging about some of the "condensed Shakespeare" videos I had come across, but most of them weren't very good and still felt FAR too long. Surely there's a "Complete Works in 2 minutes" out there? If not, I set the challenge!

The above image is--yes, you guessed it--not from Shakespeare but from Downton Abbey. I was a little confused why Twelfth Night has a line about "what midsummer madness is this" and I wondered if the play even took place during the twelfth day of Christmas, or the day before the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6th). Turns out, in England the Eve of the Epiphany (or "twelfth night") was long considered a night of revelry, particularly for servants, fools and courtiers, which totally fits with the theme of the play. All of the really interesting stuff goes on in the side stories with Olivia's maids, footmen and house guests and is much funnier (and bawdier) than the main story about the love triangle and the gender confusion.

Then it got me thinking, is the Servants' Ball on Downton Abbey actually a reference to this tradition of pre-Epiphany revelry? It's featured in the Christmas Special at the end of Season 2 and then again in the Christmas Special at the end of Season 3 (I don't want to say too much for those who haven't watched Season 3 yet, but the Christmas Special takes place in Scotland and that ball is actually called the Gillies' Ball).

Instead of doing further research, I decided to just slap on a picture of Maggie Smith and Rob James-Collier and go re-watch Downton Abbey instead. I'll read Shakespeare tomorrow!

Day 11: Hey! Twelfth Night has a teen comedy version! Like all of Shakespeare, apparently..

Did you know that Twelfth Night was the basis of the movie She's the Man? You did, didn't you? Okay, whatever. For some of us this is new information. If I get stuck, I could always just do a year of watching teen comedy films about Shakespeare. Remember when there was a new one out every few months?

Clearly I'll have to do a whole post about all of these film adaptations. Fun!

Day 8: New Play Tuesday: Twelfth Night

So 37 plays in a year seemed like nothing. NOTHING! I could do that in my sleep, I thought. Then I realized that a year is only 365 days (Shut up. I didn't JUST realize it. I just...I don't know...just REALIZED it. Shut up.) So that means I need to read each play in less than 10 days. Even less than that if I want to have time to read all the poems and the sonnets at the end.

Right. So here's the new plan. A play a week. That'll take me about nine months (like having a baby!) and it'll give me plenty of time to read the poems and stuff at the end, or to catch up if I'm hopelessly behind. 

So since 2013 started on a Tuesday, I figure every Tuesday will be a new play. I shall call it New Play Tuesday. I should really come up with a schedule for the year.

For now, though, the second play I'll be reading (which I should have read first and I'm still mad about) is Twelfth Night, which takes place the night before the Feast of the Epiphany (so January 5th, I believe?). I think I'm going to like it, it has gender confusion and romantic farce and everything.


Also, I should do some sort of review or "Things I Learned" post about The Tempest, now that I've finally finished it. Aggh! It's like being in school except that the mean teacher and the lazy student ARE BOTH ME!

Day 7: Dammit! Why didn't I think of this sooner??

via

So if I was going to do a Shakespeare-in-a-Year project, you'd think that I would have had the foresight to start with The Twelfth Night, which takes place on the Twelfth Day of Christmas, or January 5th, which was two days ago. Dammit! And I can't do it next January, because I'm supposed to have been done by then. 

I'm only one week in and I'm already messing this project up. CURSES! DAMN! AND BLAST!