Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare: Othello

The Play: Othello
Edition: Signet Classics, Edited by Alvin Karnan, 1963.

Genre & Setting: Tragedy in Venice and one of its military outposts.

Previous Contact: This was my first reading. I saw a movie version almost 20 years ago that I don’t remember very well; other than that, my only contact was with a ballet version, which was understandably less successful at exposition than at artsy dancin’.

The Gist, which will obviously involve spoilers: Iago, a career officer in the Venetian army, is developing a bad attitude towards his friends. He owes money to the thick-witted Rodrigo, and he is seething with envy because General Othello has appointed Michael Cassio (no relation) as his second in command, a promotion that Iago was expecting for himself.

Rodrigo is smitten with the fair Desdemona, but the fair Desdemona is smitten with General Othello and has, in fact, secretly married him. As the play begins, Rodrigo has only just found out about this and is pissed off at Iago for not having kept him in the loop. In order to get him off his back, Iago talks Rodrigo into waking up Desdemona’s dad and telling him about the secret wedding. Iago is in fact hoping to kill two birds with one stone: to sidetrack Rodrigo, and also to cause trouble for Othello. It almost works – Desdemona’s dad’s entourage goes out to confront Othello’s entourage in the streets – but suddenly the army needs to mobilize, Othello is called up, and dad is forced to accept the marriage.

Having enjoyed this taste of manipulating people, Iago ups his ante. Using Rodrigo as his pawn, he tricks Cassio into drinking too much and brawling at a party. Othello, who runs a tight ship, immediately strips Cassio of his rank.

Now at this point, if Iago was only after solving his practical problems, he would be smart to hold up and see if he gets that big promotion after all now that Cassio is out of the way. But he doesn’t. Instead, he immediately determines to keep up the mischief and destroy Othello. Generations of scholars have debated whether Shakespeare intended by this to represent Iago as a malignant psychopath, or to show that once you start down the path of evil you tend to keep going, or what.  On a pragmatic level, Shakespeare might not have thought too hard about these theoreticals, since he was working pretty closely from an Italian short story, and also because if he stopped after Cassio’s demotion the play would be way too short.

Iago destroys Othello, and re-destroys Cassio, by convincing the former that Desdemona is sleeping with the latter. This is a nicely depicted piece of scheming. Iago starts with a faux-reluctant confession of his "suspicions," then tricks Cassio into some compromising man-talk about his girlfriend while Othello, eavesdropping, thinks they are talking about Desdemona, and, as a final touch, plants the fancy handkerchief that Othello gave Desdemona on their first date in Cassio’s room. Othello, consumed with envy and rage – golly! just like Iago! – overreacts a bit, if you ask me. Lovingly, and feeling really conflicted about it, he strangles Desdemona.

Iago’s tricks have worked the way he hoped, but he hasn't set himself up for sustainable gloating.  If any two people compare notes, it’s going to be patently obvious what he’s done. This happens almost immediately, with Iago’s wife Emelia the first to put two and two together. Iago kills Emelia, Othello kills himself, Iago is condemned to be tortured to death, and everyone lives happily ever after.

The Edition: The Signet is a cheap paperback, but it’s generously fitted out with interpretive material. It’s past half a century old, however, so the critical stuff is a bit stiff and so not exactly reflective of current concerns and bleeding-edge scholarship. Line-by-line notes are fine, but packed together in fine print at the bottom of the page, making them hard to access without interrupting the flow.

Adaptation: I think a gritty, film-noir approach would be my choice, in the unlikely event I was asked to direct Othello. The character that I’d want to develop would be Emelia, Iago’s wife, probably the smartest character in the play -- depending on what you make of Iago's IQ, anyway. She is a tool in the plot, then comes within a hair’s breadth of figuring it out in time to stop it (IV:ii), then is the first to figure it out once it’s all too late. She’s a real tragic figure, until she gets stabbed, and then's she's even more of a tragic figure.

Othello is interesting for a English play of its era in that its title character is black. Now, as a “Moor,” a North African, he wouldn’t necessarily have to be, and in the nineteenth century it was apparently considered obvious that he was a bronzed but basically white Moroccan dude. But, no, the text is pretty clear that Shakespeare is imagining a black Othello. What surprised me most, though, was that it doesn’t seem to matter much, at least not to the mechanics of the plot, that Othello is black. It is so external to the action that the Victorians could have him be a white North African dude, and the play still made sense.

Now, I’ve read (though not in this edition, obviously) that until the 1980s – the 1980s! – that in Britain particularly, it was widely considered a bad idea to cast a black actor as Othello, because it would confuse audiences into making them think that Othello is a play about race. That's pretty absurd.  But, the fact that it's absurd doesn’t mean that Othello is essentially about race. It seems to me – after, mind you, this single first reading – that the text could support anything from an adaptation that was very much “about race” to one that was hardly “about race” at all.

Prognosis: If Othello was a novel, it wouldn’t have quite enough plot to hold its own weight. Plenty of plotting, but not enough plot, because Iago is essentially a one-man show. He puts a scheme in motion, and it either succeeds or not because of circumstantial factors. In a novel, we would need to have someone acting against him – I’m imagining Emilia gradually getting suspicious, discovering his terrible secret, and then trying to foil the plot in a desperate race against time! But then I probably read too much detective fiction.

What makes the play “work,” I think, is the pleasure of watching the plotting unfold. Iago’s schemes aren’t that complicated, but they’re complicated enough that we feel clever every time we figure out what he’s up to. Secondarily, Iago is oddly careful about treading the line between truth and lies. Although his every effort is to get people to believe things that aren’t true, he is oddly squeamish about openly stating a falsehood. Again, we feel kind of clever when we recognize that something he says is technically true but intended to deceive. We’ve all done it ourselves! Although, perhaps not quite to this extent.

All in all, it’s an intellectually satisfying play on the page, and offers lots of room for actors to make tragedy and dark comedy on the stage. I can definitely see why it’s one of the big hits.

Nabil Kanso, Othello, My Warrior.  Oil, 1985.

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor

---

In February, I used a "Reread Something Before Goodreads" in The Game of Reading to read Snow Falling on Cedars.  I drew Card #514, “Shakespeare.” I played it a few weeks ago to read Merry Wives of Windsor.  (I drew Card #326, Middlesex) 

---

The Play: The Merry Wives of Windsor
Edition: The Folger Shakespeare Library, Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, 2004.

Genre & Setting: Comedy set, for practical purposes, in the present-day England of Shakespeare's time, the only of his plays so situated.

The Gist, which will obviously involve spoilers: Sir John Falstaff, last seen in the Henry IV plays, wants to have sex with two nice women he has noticed while staying in Windsor, both for the sake of the thing itself and also in hopes that it might be used as a lever for financial gain.  The women are not even a little tiny bit interested, but enjoy contriving a series of tricks to punish and humiliate him.  A jealous husband gets a lighter comeuppance, and a genial daughter manages to avoid her parents' competing matrimonial plans for her and end up with the husband she actually wants.  And then they all hang out companionably.



The Edition: The Folger Library is a terrifically prestigious collection of Shakepeare material.  The Folger Editions, at least the ones I've seen, are throwaway paperbacks with pretty good interpretive material and a lot more attention paid to textual matters than most other paperback printings.  My particular copy has about 20% of the words and phrases underlined in very thick pencil, according to no logic that I was able to puzzle out.  I enjoyed pretending that it was used as the text for a book code in some sort of unsavory skullduggery.

I thought that in a set of Shakespeare editions, you had one scholar (or duet) per play, but in the case of the Folger series it looks like Mowat and Werstine have edited most or all of the whole dang canon.  The blog Shakespearean tells me that they are big cheeses.  I guess that, plus the cheapo format, means that the Folger is trying to bring good interpretation to the masses, or something.  I'm in favor of that.

Prognosis: They say ^{[citation needed]} that comedy doesn't age well, a point my high school English teacher ^{[there's a citation for you]} illustrated by referring to the then already-old, already-puzzling Saturday Night Live parodies of Gerald Ford's once legendary clumsiness.  The more topical and contemporary the humor, the more difficulty it has in the aging process.  For instance, to fully appreciate the significance of Mr. Ford's physical ineptitude, you really need to be aware that he was the stopgap President of the United States in the mid-1970s, something that may have escaped the attention of many of the Youth of Today, or for that matter the Youth of Yesterday.  But I digress.

The point is, since Merry Wives is a possibly hip, sly contemporary comedy, it is chockablock with clever references that no longer carry any meaning.   There are footnotes along the lines of "this line might be riffing on the name of a coffeehouse or brothel or something."  At one point a character mentions a famous bear that was regularly baited just down the street from the Globe Theater!  This kind of thing was probably a real laugh riot for those in the know, but nobody's been in the know since around the time of the Guy Fawkes execution.

There are some broader comic elements -- it's Shakespeare, after all.  There's a guy with a crazy Welsh accent, and a guy with a crazy French accent, and a woman who says lots of crazy nonsense, and a guy who might be an early pioneer of camp.  None of this is at all funny to read, but good comic actors could almost certainly squeeze good laughs out of it, particularly if you'd been drinking before the show.

It's not a particularly important point, but I was bothered that Falstaff has to fire two of his servants in Act I because they are outraged by his plans to get inside the corsets of the two married women.  How could such a thing come as a surprise to people who work for Sir John Falstaff?  Hadn't they read the Henry IVs?  You'd think that assisting in seductions would be right there in the job description.

All in all?  As a text, it's hard to read and not terribly rewarding for the effort involved.  You'd get a better payoff from reading three or four of the naughty bits from The Decameron.

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare at the Movies: Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

The Play: A mashup of Henry IV part 1 and Henry IV part 2, with borrowings from a few others as well.
Directed by: Orson Welles, 1965.

imdb: 8.0
Ebert: 4 Stars
Rotten Tomatoes: 97%

Genre & Setting: The Henry IVs are history plays set in the late Middle Ages -- about 200 years ago, from Shakespeare's perspective, or a bit over 600 years ago from ours.

Orson Welles, working without much in the way of a budget, filmed his version in down-at-heels 1960s Spain, and captured a landscape that looks reasonably late-Middle-Agesish.

The Gist, which will obviously involve spoilers: The young heir to the king goofs off with a bunch of nogoodniks, but says he'll take on his responsibilities of state when the time comes.  Then, by gum, he does!  Chimes at Midnight focuses on the lead nogoodnick, stately, plump Sir John Falstaff.

The Adaptation: No matter what you say about Chimes of Midnight, you're an iconoclast.  It was released to near-universal critical and popular indifference, and then sank like a stone, and for many years it apparently could not be seen in any format in North America.  After resurfacing on various media, it was both restored and rehabilitated, and now is widely considered one of Orson Welles' core masterpieces.  If you think it's fabulous, you get to make an implicit dig at the ignorant original audiences who were too slackjawed to recognize its genius.  If you think it stinks, then you are pretty much shooting the bird at the film-loving community of today.

Predictably, I thought it was so-so.

Well, not really.  I thought it was brilliant in some ways, dull in others.  The brilliant parts are, basically, everything visual.  The costumes are pretty good, the battle choreography is impressive, and the locations and interiors are fabulous.  And the photography, geez, the black and white photography is often downright spectacular.  This is evident right from the opening scenes, in which I found the sharp-focus contrast between brilliant brights and deep blacks just in Falstaff's beard to be well-nigh hypnotic.  

So at that point, I was poised to fall in love with the thing.  But then, people started talking.  And for as much as they sounded pretty good, it was immediately apparent that this is a film in the "early" period of Shakespeare screen adaptations.  What I mean is that here, as in other older and beloved Shakespeare movies, there doesn't really seem to be too much effort put into helping you interpret the language.  Everybody knows, for instance, that Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet was the best thing since sliced bread, but if you've ever tried to actually watch the damn thing, you'll see that it consists mostly of Olivier staring moodily behind the camera and reciting his lines.  The assumption seems to be that if you're watching this thing, you probably know the whole script more or less by rote from school, and that you just want to hear the actors voice it in mellifluous tones.  Orson Welles and his fine cast are far more mobile and emotive than Olivier, of course, but the many tricks that actors, directors, and cinematographers can employ to help you navigate Shakespearean dialog are surprising in their absence.

Then too, the whole plan of the adaptation is clunky.  Henry IV part 1 and Henry IV part 2 are both good plays, but they are to a certain degree the same play twice.  Young Prince Hal, in both iterations, hangs around with riff-raff, but then rises to the hour when England needs him most.  If you watch them back to back, the first half of part 2 is baffling: Prince Hal, having assumed the mantle of responsibility, has apparently taken it right back off, and no one seems to find this odd.  But Welles, in order to extract all of the bits with Falstaff, runs the two plays straight together.  Instead of a single satisfying dramatic arc there is what seems like a satisfying dramatic arc, and you get ready to put your coat on, except now you're at the beginning of a second dramatic arc.  The second arc, moreover, feels rushed, as if Welles was trying to get the movie to finish up within a commercially viable length.  Even if you yourself are willing to stick it out, the film seems impatient with itself.  And then, rather suddenly, there is a visually magnificent final scene, with a bit of script imported in from Henry V if I'm not mistaken.  At that the great flawed sprawling film, like its focal character, trundles off to Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom.

Clocks in at: 119 minutes

Prognosis: It's lovely to look at, but not nearly as fun or as funny as you would expect a film centering on Falstaff to be.  It shows flashes of being a great film, without every managing to coalesce into an especially good film.

Michael5000's imdb rating: 6.

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare: As You Like It

---

My third ever draw in The Game of Reading was Card #438, “Shakespeare.” This is how I played it.

---

The Play: As You Like It
Edition: The Arden Shakespeare, Edited by Agnes Latham, 1975.

Genre & Setting: Light comedy in the bucolic woodlands and pastures of the Arden Forest.

The Gist, which will obviously involve spoilers: Orlando and Rosalind have crushes on each other. Meanwhile, Orlando’s older brother wants to kill him, and Rosalind’s uncle is kicking her out of the castle because she reminds people of how he usurped his own brother’s Duchy. Both of them end up in the Arden Forest, but since Rosalind has dressed up as a man as a safety precaution, Orlando doesn’t recognize her. Hijinx ensue. Will they get together at the end? Of course they will.

There are of course other characters and complications, but perhaps not as many as you might expect. As You Like It is a simple play, and it is a quick read. It has several songs, and although it’s tricky to imagine how songs were supposed to “work” in context, these have the feeling of good-natured, light-hearted, faux-rustic tunes designed to please the crowd. Further, it has a couple of witty monologues that are essentially stand-alone performance pieces; they don’t advance the action except by marking the passing of time (during the famous “All the world’s a stage” speech, for instance, the play is just treading water between Orlando leaving to find his buddy and the two of them returning. But that’s OK, because in the right hands that speech should be a pretty good stand-up routine.)

Put all this together, and I think what we have here is some good old-fashioned musical comedy. There’s enough plot to keep us engaged, and a few twists to keep us on our toes, but the story is also the scaffolding for a modest variety show, singing, dancing, comedy, and a talking dog! Except, there’s not really a talking dog.

The Edition: The Arden Editions are, as I understand it, top drawer. I didn’t read all of the critical material, but what I did read was clear, lucid, and I assume well-informed. It’s also 41 years old, and is missing some of the critical approaches that a more recent edition would cover; this is perhaps both a blessing and a curse.

Adaptation: I have for all intents and purposes never seen a production of As You Like It. Mrs.5000 thinks we saw it together at one point, but if we did it went right through my brain without leaving any impression of itself. Well, if it happened with a year of college Calculus, I suppose it could happen with a staging of As You Like It.

I’d think that the most interesting decision you’d make in putting on this play would be just how comic you want it to be. Is it a fairly serious story about young lovers overcoming the dark machinations of their elders, or is it just going to be a zany farce from curtain to curtain? I suspect you could start it pretty seriously and have it get lighter and more fun as it went; I think that given the text you could also have it start as farce and then end more seriously, except that the audience would not thank you for your pains.

Prognosis: As one of the Shakespeare plays that is pretty easy to read and understand, As You Like It has the virtue of making you feel pretty smart. It has entertaining comic passages, and it’s a fun play to cast, design, and direct in your head while you’re watching it. The only real downside is that it isn’t going to offer the veteran reader many surprises, but then this is light comedy. It doesn’t need surprises.

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare at the Movies: Much Ado About Nothing (Whedon, 2012)

The Play: Much Ado About Nothing.
Directed by: Joss Whedon, 2012.

Ebert: Roger Ebert, as you probably know, died earlier this year.  I am not usually the kind of person who feels a lot of sadness at the passing of people I do not know personally, but Ebert is an exception.  For many years, he was someone I turned to for a well-expressed intelligent opinion on every movie I saw, and with him gone it feels like I've lost one of those people between acquaintances and friends who you only do one thing with, like a racquetball partner or a running buddy or something.  I've lost the guy who I used to talk with about movies, or rather who used to talk to me about movies.  He never listened to what I had to say, but that was OK; it was just the way we got along.  

Anyway, that's my eulogy for Roger Ebert.  He never registered an opinion on this movie because he died before he could see it.  Sheila O'Malley, minding the store at the rogerebert.com website, says "Much Ado About Nothing" is one of the best films of the year, for what that's worth.
 
Rotten Tomatoes: 84% and, interestingly, the only Shakespeare adaptation where I have noticed a higher audience score (86%) than a critical score.  I believe the audience score for Shakespeare movies is usually abysmal.

Previous Much Ado About Nothing on Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare:

• 1993 Film Adaptation (Kenneth Branaugh).  January, 2011.
• from the leaden BBC Adaptations, 1981.  April, 2011.
• Portland Actors Ensemble Production.  October, 2011.

Genre & Setting: Comedy with dark bits. Set by Shakespeare on a Sicilian nobleman’s estate. Whedon films this adaptation in L.A. – in his house, apparently – and although he doesn’t explicitly situate the action geographically, the wardrobe and manners are all affluent Los Angeles.

The Gist, which will obviously involve spoilers: This is the one with Beatrice and Benedic, the witty frenemies who need to be helped to realize that they are in love with each other, and Hero and Claudio, who are going to have the world’s most awkward wedding because of the scheming of John the Bastard. Also, the nutty constables.

The Adaptation: Joss Whedon is an incredibly successful Hollywood guy with enough pull that he could film a Shakespeare production with his pals and coerce it into distribution. Hurrah! It is filmed in beautiful low-budget black and white with a cast of extremely talented actors who simply ooze charisma.

Clocks In At: 108 minutes.


OK, listen, I loved this adaptation. I can’t think of a filmed Shakespeare comedy I’ve enjoyed more. A lot of this had to do with the critical intangibles: attractive actors who can deliver lines impeccably and whom, like the architecture and the landscaping, are pleasant just to look at. My guess is, this creative team could make another movie – ANY other movie – and it would be great. Raw craftsmanship: not very interesting to talk about, but lovely to witness.

But when you bring your Shakespeare to the screen, there are a lot of important directorial decisions involved as well. And Whedon very consistently, I felt, made decisions that strengthened Much Ado for a 2010s audience, retaining and amplifying Shakespeare’s comedy, taking some of the edge off of the disturbing bits, and helping some of the less coherent parts of the story make a little more sense. For instance!

• Problem: Claudio behaves appallingly to Hero, yet we are clearly supposed to like him. Solution: Claudio is really dim. Not a drooling, unkempt idiot, of course, but just the kind of dim bulb who muddles along in life because people like him. We recognize this from his first moments on screen, because he is well acted as such. He’s very easily led, so he falls for John’s duplicity like six tons of bricks, and although we can’t really endorse his behavior, we can recognize that it’s not his fault that he’s dumb. This aspect of his character is there in the play, but this is the first time I’ve seen it really developed.
  
  
• Problem: Damn, that wedding scene is hard to watch. Solution: As Claudio starts making his scene, there is a very short shot of someone in the household entourage directing all the guests away from the action with a determined “move along, folks, nothing to see here” smile. It’s a note of much-needed comic relief, and by removing the in-play audience it also has the effect of mitigating Hero’s humiliation a little, making it less painful for us in the out-of-play audience. Very helpful.
  
  
• Problem: Those wacky constables really muck up the play. Solution: Don’t have the actors play them as clowns. Instead, just have them be normal humans with slightly exaggerated stupidity. Dogberry is nicely rendered here as the incompetent boss that everyone has had at least once in their life, and because he is more-or-less human normal, the other actors can make their own reactions to him make sense. One of the golden lines in this adaptation, for my money, is Leonato to Dogberry and his assistant: “Drink some wine ere you go.” It’s all in the delivery: an exasperated but determined courtesy to the guy from the security company who is making such a pest of himself while the household is trying to put on a wedding, for crying out loud.
  
  
• Problem: The line "I'll hold my mind, were she an Ethiope" sure isn't funny. Solution: Have Claudio blurt it out right in front of an African-American (African-Sicilian?) woman in the wedding party.  Remember, we've already established that he's kind of an idiot; this little vignette both confirms that for us and lets us get in a laugh at his expense, which we want to do after the way he's behaved.

Then too, there are also some aspects of this particular production that aren’t so much problem-solvers as simply choices of interpretation. A few of my favorites:

• Who are these people, anyway? In the script, the men are soldiers home from some Italian war or other. But in their suits and California leisure wear, Whelan’s characters have nothing of a military air. They seem very wealthy and very powerful, they are able to hold people prisoner fairly openly in their private residences, and they banter charmingly in the kitchen about how many people they have killed. Are they Mafia? We don’t really know, but the subtle notion that all of these nice people might really not be very nice at all gives the film an interesting edge.
  
  
• Conrade is a chick! Who’s Conrade? Eh, minor male character, usually. Played here as a young, bored Beatnikish woman whose reactions to other characters, often a kind of bored incredulity, are pretty damned amusing. She also contributes to the sexification of the film, which I more or less applaud.
  
  
• Beatrice and Benedic have a past! Turns out there's a reason that they make such a point of not getting along, in this telling at least. This idea is developed in about 45 seconds of non-dialog action before the opening credits, and as flashback over four lines of Beatrice’s dialog. This idea is problem-solving in a way, but I don’t think the question of why B & B are the way they are really qualified as a "problem," so I’m filing it under “interesting directorial interpretation.”
  
  
• My Goodness these people drink a lot: I’m not sure what to think of this, although it is certainly an intentional aspect of the movie. Maybe it is intended to invoke an atmosphere of carnival, maybe it is parody of the affluent L.A. social scene, or maybe it’s intended to help explain why the characters act a little irrationally. But damn!
  
  
• Much ado about noting: For Shakespearean audiences, the title of this play was apparently a pun referring to the overhearings and eavesdroppings that are at the heart of the Beatrice and Benedic story. Building on this, perhaps, Whelan brings our collective contemporary nervousness about surveillance to the table. Characters are “noted” not just by each other but by CCT cameras, cell phone video, and, for much of the back half of the film, an omnipresent wedding photographer who, in one quiet non-dialog moment, turns her huge lens on us – the real audience – and takes a picture. Smile!

Prognosis: I could talk all day about this one, but I've probably already overstayed my welcome. I loved it. I haven’t had so much fun in a movie theater in a long time. Maybe you’d like it too!

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare at the Movies: Coriolanus (Fiennes, 2011)

The Play: Coriolanus.
Directed by: Ralph Fiennes, 2011.

Ebert: 3 1/2 Stars
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%

Previous Coriolanus on Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare:

• The Text

Genre & Setting: Shakespeare’s political/military drama is played as a, well, a political/military drama. Locations in Serbia and in Montenegro gave this adaptation an extra dose of gritty sobriety.

If you want a taste of the look and feel of the thing, check out this trailer -- which obscures the fact that the movie is a Shakespeare adaptation, and might have bits that you would have to work at understanding, with hilarious thoroughness.

The Gist, which will obviously involve spoilers: As discussed a few weeks back, Coriolanus is the one about the Roman general who is unbeatable on the battlefield but an abject failure in politics due to his complete inability to court the commoners. Lured into fiasco by his political opponents, he joins with Rome’s enemies and leads an army against the city. Finally, he allows himself to fall into the most abject fate a man could possibly face: being yelled at by his mom in front of the guys.

The Adaptation: This is a modern-dress production of Coriolanus, and by “modern-dress” I don’t mean the sort of thing where the actors dress up like Hapsburgs. No, this is modern in the sense of RIGHT NOW, with up-to-the-decade technology, semiotics of wardrobe and hairstyle, and tactics of urban warfare. I will admit – I think this counts as an admission – that I’m always a little skeptical of attempts to weld Shakespearean language onto present-day scenery. And this is not just because of the fact that, as my brother has observed, with Shakespeare you sometimes just want to see some awesome ruffs, although this is certainly true. Rather, I think I’m afraid that the juxtaposition of 1610s language and 2010s props will come off as unnatural.

In his adaptation of Coriolanus, famous actor but first-time director Ralph Fiennes does a pretty credible job with the modern-dress approach. Indeed, this is a thoughtful adaptation that integrates setting and script to draw out particular themes from the Shakespearean text, and perhaps to smuggle a few new ones in. It’s downright intellectual! Who knew such a movie could still be made?

Here’s a for instance of what I’m talking about. When they see a celebrity or an event that might count as news, the Roman plebeians of Fiennes’ Coriolanus do like us and start taking video with their cell phones. The first time this happened, I thought “How cute, they’re acting all modern.” But as I thought about it some more, it struck me that Coriolanus is in large part about what it is acceptable to say in public, and what it is not. In our day, of course, pretty much any event where two or more are gathered together is “in public,” and the rash, ill-tempered remark that slips out of your mouth at your worst moment is, like Coriolanus’ gaffes, liable to be exposed to the scrutiny and contempt of the masses. Like, on YouTube.

The contemporary setting also allows some innovative solutions to what would otherwise be tricky staging problems. A lot of the dialog in the Coriolanus text is pure exposition, as various citizens and messengers gab about the political and military context in order to bring us up to speed. I confess that when I read the play a few weeks back, I imagined all of these conversations taking place between guys in togas standing among columns, which would not exactly be riveting theater. Fiennes moves a lot of this stuff to a Roman version of CNN, which works great. After all, isn’t a continuous stream of exposition what the pundits and talking heads of news television offer in real life? Some of the Shakespearean dialog works wondrous well as bad TV; of course there’s good acting at work here, plus my home-court advantage of having read the script a few days before, but still.

Another advantage Fiennes grabs from his contemporary setting is the use of very precisely situated stock characters. The plebeians distinguished by Shakespeare as “First Citizen” through “Seventh Citizen” are, in this film, exactly drawn social types who will be instantly recognizable to, to… well, to the kind of people who watch film adaptations of obscure Shakespeare plays. First Citizen and Second Citizen, for instance, are intellectual Marxists, the first male, professorial, world-weary; the second female, combative, carelessly stylish. You will feel you know them immediately, not from life but from a lifetime of movies. The two tribunes who are Coriolanus’ bane are the very image of successful opposition politicos, enjoying the game and the exercise of power, glorying in their ability to manipulate and bend the will of the people, slick with professional charisma but very probably hiding, in their hearts of hearts, a core of real conviction. You know them well as soon as you see them, because they are creatures of our times; whether such people really exist is beside the point.

The very-possibly-historical Coriolanus merits a panel in
Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe. 

The biggest puzzle in staging an adaptation of Coriolanus, I decided when I read it, would be “What do we make of the hero?” Is he a monster, or is he just deeply flawed? An interpretation I hadn’t considered was to make him post-traumatic. Fiennes’ Coriolanus, a soldier who can only escape his torments of fear and anger by returning to the violence of combat from whence they come, is probably not a Coriolanus that Shakespeare would recognize. But that’s all right. It is a psychology for the protagonist that is perfectly compatible with the text. Fiennes tells Shakespeare’s story with reasonable faithfulness – the lines are read, the plot is followed – but he also uses Shakespeare to tell a story of his own, one about the corrosive power of violence on the lives of the soldiers responsible for carrying it out. It’s a little didactic, perhaps, but then the best literature so often is.

Clocks in at: 123 minutes.

Pros: A profusion of talent and clever use of resources conjure a viable, entertaining art film from a budget of peanuts and one of Shakespeare’s less well-known plays. Intelligent reframing in contemporary setting.

Cons: No ruffs. A few scenes that I liked on the page were cut from the screenplay, and the final scene is – heh – violently truncated. …dumbed down? …rendered more emotionally taut? You make the call! Mrs.5000: “Not a great first-date movie.”

Prognosis: Next time you’re in the mood for a pessimistic but stylish political drama with dialog in an archaic form of the language, this film adaptation of Coriolanus is a good choice for you!

Michael5000 v. Shakespeare: Coriolanus

The Play: Coriolanus
Edition: The Pelican Shakespeare, Edited by Jonathan Crewe, 1999.

Genre & Setting: Political tragedy on the Italian Penninula in classical times.

The Gist, which will obviously involve spoilers: Rome’s got problems. Inside the city, there’s strife between the patricians and the plebeians, and outside the Volscian army is rampaging through the countryside. Caius Martius, a Roman general, leads the troops out and, through dazzling acts of leadership and personal valor, produces a Roman victory and captures the Volscian city of Corioles, thus earning the honorary title of “Coriolanus.” His family and friends suggest that he do what so many successful military leaders have done, and make the jump to civilian office. Coriolanus runs for consul.

Alas, Caius Martius is not what you would call a “smooth” man. The kindest way to put it is that he is incapable of flattery and completely unwilling to tell even the most conventional polite fibs in order to advance his political career. The unkindest way of all to put it is that he is a fascist, manifestly contemptuous of the lower classes and unable to even speak with them except to command or berate. (Don’t roll your eyes at “fascist,” either; this play was designated as a school text by the Nazi regime.) In any event, he has a real anger-management problem, and a mere word that can be construed as insulting can completely unhinge him.

People who can’t control their anger are scary, but they are also easily made tools of. Coriolanus’ political opponents don't have too much trouble manipulating him into making statements that not only cost him the consulship, but get him banished. Nursing his anger like a favorite child, he switches to the Volscian side and leads a destroying army to the gates of Rome. The city must surely perish!  But why, then, is Christianity still so successful while Volscian-religion has fallen by the wayside? Because Coriolanus’ mom, a ferocious battleaxe whom we’ve met earlier in the play, comes out and gives him a stern talking-to, after which he agrees to set up a Roman-Volscian alliance.

Here comes the ending: Does he live happily ever after? No. The same political opponents as before Whoopsie, no. A new set of political opponents immediately push his very, very vulnerable buttons again, and he whips himself into enough of a froth that they are able to cry self-defense and publically stab him to death with no one even questioning their motives.

The Edition: The notes to the text are rudimentary, no more than the usual synonyms for difficult words that you find in the most bare-bones editions. The introductory materials provide a good textual and historical context for the play, and a lucid discussion of the main areas of interest in Coriolanus for the various schools of Shakespeare criticism (although, nota bene, you Shakespeare editors out there can probably start cutting back on the psychoanalytical readings at this point in history. They are starting to sound a bit antique and cultish). What we have here, all in all, is a fine mid-range edition.

Michele da Verona.  Tournament non-participant.
Coriolanus persuaded by his Family to spare Rome, c. 1500.

Adaptation: The more I play with Shakespeare, the more it’s interesting to read a play without ever having seen it performed. In the theater of my brain (which is to be honest really a movie screen) I [get to / have to] make the directorial decisions, which means first and foremost trying to figure out what the directorial decisions are.

The biggest one in Coriolanus has to be “What do we make of the hero?” I think a successful production would have to emphasize his strengths of courage, sincerity, and spirit of public service in order to make his tragic flaws of arrogance, inflexibility, and wrath more interesting. If he’s a monster from the get-go, there’s no emotional entrance point for the audience; if he’s a hero through to the end, you are basically agreeing with him that the garlic-eaters should just shut the hell up and do what their betters tell them (see “fascist,” above).

Secondarily, what to do with his mom? You could tone down her militarism a bit and make her a moral center of the play, or you could play her as half-mad with bloodlust. You could – and might almost have to – imply that Coriolanus is her fault. Although there’s not a ton of stage time, she gets to make a helluva speech; it must be a juicy role for any given company’s grand dame.

Another decision would be whether to play certain scenes involving minor characters as broad comedy or to take them seriously. As almost always, I would want to take them seriously.

Prognosis: T.S. Eliot apparently thought that Coriolanus was Shakespeare’s best play, much better than that Hamlet business. Well, T.S. Eliot thought a lot of things, some of them pretty daffy. But whereas I’ve looked at other minor-league Shakespeare plays (Troilus and Cressida, Henry VIII, Timon of Athens) and had an immediate sense that, yeah, I can see why these aren’t amongst the greatest hits, Coriolanus is going to go on the opposite list. Along with action-adventure summer play Titus Andronicus and Rube Goldberg Romp Cymbeline, I’m going to do like T.S. and put Coriolanus on my list of underrated Shakespeare.

The Shakespeare Plays, Famous and Obscure -- Part III

A version of this post was published on my now-defunct blog "Renaissance Man" on September 1, 2009.

Having created seven indexes of Shakespearean Prominence/Obscurity in the last two postings, we are now in a position to create a defensible index of relative play fameitude. We shall do this in a variant the time-honored scientific system pioneered by the Associated Press football polls. To wit, for each first-place ranking in an index, a play shall be awarded 10 points, for each second-place ranking 9 points, and so on to 10th place, which will be worth 1 point. Got it? Good.

The Obscurest!

So, keeping in mind that the Henry IVs and Henry VIs are probably totally underrated in this category -- what can you do? -- the most obscure plays in the Shakespeare canon are:

Tied for 10th: 2 Henry VI and Love's Labours Lost (20 points)

8th: Troilus and Cressida (21 points)

Tied for 6th: Cymbeline and The Two Gentlemen of Verona (26 points)

5th: Henry VIII (31 points)

4th: Titus Andronicus (33 points)

3rd: Timon of Athens (34 points)

2nd: Pericles (40 points)

And the runaway winner of Most Obscure Play in the Shakespeare Canon, coming in first place on each and every index:

1rst: The Two Noble Kinsmen (70 points)


The Famousest!

Tied for 12th, and just one point out of tenth, we've got The Taming of the Shrew and As You Like It (16 points)

Then:

Tied for 10th: The Tempest and Twelfth Night, or (although never, really) What You Will (17 points)

8th: The Merchant of Venice (20 points)

7th: Julius Caesar (21 points)

6th: King Lear (23 points)

5th: Othello (24 points)

After which, the top four plays really start to break away from the pack...

4th: A Midsummer Night's Dream (38 points)

3rd: Romeo and Juliet (46 points)

2nd: Macbeth (52 points)

And the decisive if unsurprising winner of Most Famous Play in the Shakespeare Canon, coming in first place on five indices, second on a sixth, and third on the seventh:

1st: Hamlet (67 points)

So there you have it! This should settle once and for all the question of which is the most important and prominent Shakespeare play. And least! No arguing now; it was all very scientific.

The Shakespeare Plays, Famous and Obscure -- Part II

A version of this post was published on my now-defunct blog "Renaissance Man" on September 1, 2009.

Continuing our groundbreaking analysis of how some Shakespeare plays are arguably more popular than others....

The Sporcle Index
The results of a "Sporcle" Quiz on the Plays of Shakespeare

The "Sporcle" Quiz site offers a quiz in which you are given three blank lists labelled "Comedies", "Tragedies", and "Histories", and your goal is to remember as many of the plays as you can in ten minutes. Once you've taken the quiz, you have the option of seeing everyone's aggregate score, which is a useful and unusually direct measure of how well-known each play is among the general public. Or at least among the general Sporcle quiz-taking public. The quiz does not distinguish among the Henry IVs and the Henry VIs, and insists on proper spelling, which may act to the detriment of tricky-to-spell plays like Cymbeline, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus and Cresseda.

The ten most prominent plays in the Sporcle index are:

1. Romeo and Juliet (listed by 95% of quiz takers)
2. Hamlet (89.6%)
3. Macbeth (84.8%)
4. A Midsummer Night's Dream (80.6%)
5. Othello (75.7%)
6. Henry V (69.7%)
7. King Lear (67.5%)
8. Taming of the Shrew (62.2%)
9. Henry VIs (62%)
10. The Tempest (61.5%)

And the most obscure....

1. (wait for it!) The Two Noble Kinsmen (15.3% of quiz takers)
2. Pericles (21.3%)
3. Timon of Athens (21.8%)
4. Coriolanus (22.6%)
5. Cymbeline (23.3%)
6. Measure for Measure (25.5%)
7. Troilus and Cressida (26.1%)
8. Love's Labours Lost (27.2%)
9. King John (31.5%)
10. The Winter's Tale (32.5%)

The Powell's Index
The number of copies of each play available on the shelves of Powell's on Hawthorne on Sunday a few weeks back

This index harnesses the relentless power of the invisible hand of market forces! It is based on the assumption that the good people at the City of Books have a pretty fine sense of what sells and what doesn't, and stock their shelves -- the three shelves devoted to individual Shakespeare plays at the Hawthorne location, in this case -- accordingly. A theoretical weakness, as Mrs.5000 gleefully pointed out, is that a run on editions of Timon of Athens, say, would work against the prominence of that play. If Powell's literally can not keep Coriolanus on the shelf, because people buy it up faster than they can stock it, that won't show up in this index. But I think we can let common sense prevail.

The ten most prominent plays according to the Powell's Index

1. Hamlet (a whopping 23 books)
2. Macbeth (13 books)
3. A Midsummer Night's Dream (10)
3. King Lear (10)
5. The Taming of the Shrew (9)
6. Romeo and Juliet (6)
6. Othello (6)
6. Henry V (6)
6. As You Like It (6)
10. The Tempest (5)
10. Richard III (5)
10. All's Well That Ends Well (5)

The ten least prominent plays according to the Powells Index

1. Henry VIII (no books available)
1. The Two Gentlemen of Verona (0)
1. Titus Andronicus (0)
1. Love's Labours Lost (0)
1. Cymbeline (0)
1. Pericles (0)
1. The Two Noble Kinsmen (0)
1. 2 Henry VI (0)
1. 3 Henry VI (0)
10. 2 Henry IV (1)
10. 1 Henry VI (1)
10. Richard II (1)
10. Much Ado About Nothing (1)
10. The Comedy of Errors (1)
10. Timon of Athens (1)
10. Troilus and Cressida (1)
10. Coriolanus (1)

The OSF Index
The number of times each play has been produced by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

On one hand, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has right there in its mission statement that it's going to put on the whole canon of Shakespeare plays. On the other hand, they are no fools, and are surely cognizant that 3 Henry VI is not going to bring vast crowds flocking to remote little Ashland, Oregon, excellent restaurants and boutique shopping notwithstanding. They might put on the whole canon, but they're going to rotate Othello on a tighter turnaround than they are Two Gentlemen of Verona.

In the early days of the festival, before they got all professional, productions of some of the plays would extend over two or three years. I counted those as single productions for our current purposes. Oh, and I counted up through the 2010 season.

The ten most prominent plays according to the OSF Index

1. Hamlet (a whopping 20 performances)
2. As You Like It (13)
2. Twelfth Night (13)
4. A Midsummer Night's Dream (11)
4. The Taming of the Shrew (11)
4. Romeo and Juliet (11)
4. The Merchant of Venice (11)
4. Much Ado About Nothing (11)
9. The Comedy of Errors (10)
10. Macbeth (9)
10. Othello (9)
10. The Tempest (9)

What we notice here, relative to other indicies, is the surprising strength of the CDDFOCs (Comedies Difficult to Distinguish From the Other Comedies). It's almost like the Festival is privileging light, funny plays that make people laugh over difficult downers about children abusing their fathers, friends turning against each other, and so on. Well, I'm sure they know which side their bread is buttered on.

The ten most obscure plays according to the OSF Index

1. The Two Noble Kinsmen (with only 1 performance. The OSF apparently finds this play only semi-canonical.)
2. Timon of Athens (3 performances)
3. Pericles (4)
3. Titus Andronicus (4)
3. Henry VIII (4)
3. Troilus and Cressada (4)
7. 3 Henry VI (5)
7. Cymbeline (5)
7. Coriolanus (5)
7. 1 Henry VI (5)
7. 2 Henry IV (5)
7. King John (5)
7. Measure for Measure (5)

The Quotations Index
The number of quotations each play has yielded in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3rd Edition.

Now, this index is a bit indirect, but is a reasonable measure of the cultural impact of a play. If King John, for instance, had introduced more well-known quotations into the culture than had Hamlet, we could safely assume that King John was the more influential play. Let's find out!

The ten most prominent plays according to the Quotations Index

1. Hamlet (257 quotations)
2. Macbeth (125)
3. Othello (115)
4. Julius Caesar (112)
5. The Merchant of Venice (110)
6. 1 Henry IV (104)
7. Antony and Cleopatra (94)
8. Twelfth Night (91)
8. King Lear (91)
10. As You Like It (74)

And, the ten most obscure plays according to the Quotations Index

1. The Two Noble Kinsmen (0 quotations. Ouch!)
1. The Merry Wives of Windsor (0)
3. The Comedy of Errors (1)
4. Pericles (4)
4. Titus Andronicus (4)
6. 1 Henry VI (6)
6. 3 Henry VI (6)
8. All's Well That Ends Well (10)
9. The Two Gentlemen of Verona (13)
10. 2 Henry VI (14)

Next Time: The Exciting Final Analysis!

The Shakespeare Plays, Famous and Obscure -- Part I

A version of this post was published on my now-defunct blog "Renaissance Man" on September 1, 2009.


I've always been kind of fascinated with the relative prominence and obscurity of the plays in the Shakespeare canon. At one end, you've got your Hamlet and your Romeo and Juliet.  At the other is your Pericles and your Two Gentlemen of Verona. All Shakespeare, obviously, is not created equal.

Now, we could sit around here all day and argue about which plays are more or less "significant."  It would probably be kind of fun.  But we don't have to, because in 2009 I conducted a highly rigorous bit of original research that unambiguously resolves the issue.  I will share my findings with you here over the course of this week, instead of dealing with all the hassle of peer review. Institutions wishing to confer honorary doctorates may leave contact information in the comments.

The Indicies

In looking at the relative prominence of the plays, I looked at seven different cultural indicators. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but then that's why I came up with seven instead of just doing one.  As a whole I think they give us a pretty good feel for the weight of the plays in the popular consciousness. They are as follows:

• The number of hits yielded by a Google search of (Shakespeare "[title]")
• The number of books titles on amazon.com yielded by a (Shakespeare "[title]") search.
• The number of titles in the Multnomah County Library collection yielded by a (author:Shakespeare + title:[title]) search
• The results of a "Sporcle" Quiz on the Plays of Shakespeare
• The number of copies of each play available on the shelves of Powells on Hawthorne on a given Sunday when I was doing the research 
• The number of times each play has been produced by the Oregon Shakespearian Festival
• The number of quotations each play has yielded in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3rd Edition

The biggest practical problem was with the Henry IVs and Henry VIs in the first four indices, where they didn't separate out very well. The other practical problem was that the number-crunching was sometimes a little boring. But I persevered!

In the rest of this post, we'll cover the first three indices. We'll do the other four on Wednesday, and the summary on Friday.

The Google Search 
The number of hits yielded by a Google search of (Shakespeare "[title]") 

This search has quite a bit of fuzziness built into it, but is not bad as a brute-force method of gauging a play's relative presence in that bottomless repository of human knowledge and what-not, the internet. I was afraid that the numbers would be contaminated by lots of lists of all the plays, but a few searches along the lines of (Shakespeare Tempest Coriolanus Twelfth Night Pericles) made me pretty confident this would not be a major factor.

What DOES end up screwing up this index is that a lot of Shakespeare plays are named after real or legendary people who have quite a bit of information of their own on the internet. And all those pages on Henry VIII and Henry V and, hell, even Cymbeline tend to mention that, hey, Shakespeare wrote a play about this person! So when using this index, it is reasonable to keep an open mind about whether Henry VIII is really Shakespeare's second most beloved play.

So, according to the Google Index, the most prominent Shakespeare plays are:

1. Hamlet (9470 thousand hits)
2. Henry VIII (5960) **
3. Julius Caesar (5030) **
4. Romeo and Juliet (4850)
5. Macbeth (4380)
6. The Tempest (4050)
7. 1 Henry IV (3220) **
8. Henry V (2690) **
9. A Midsummer Night's Dream (2510)
10. Cymbeline (2440) **

Or, if we got rid of the (**) "real people" factor, the top ten would be rounded out by King Lear, Othello,Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and Taming of the Shrew.

The most obscure plays, in this index, are:

1. The Two Noble Kinsmen (136 thousand hits)
2. Timon of Athens (337)
3. The Two Gentlemen of Verona (378)
4. Troilus and Cressida (468)
5. All's Well That Ends Well (565)
6. The Merry Wives of Windsor (578)
7. Titus Andronicus (646)
8. Antony and Cleopatra (729)
9. Measure for Measure (759)
10. Pericles (929)

Note that Pericles couldn't drag himself out of the bottom ten even with the "real person" factor going for him. That's gotta hurt!

The Amazon Search 
The number of book titles on amazon.com yielded by a (Shakespeare "[title]") search.

To see what books a broad cross-section of the English-speaking world buys, you can do worse than to peruse the merchandise of the online retailer amazon.com. The important thing here was to limit the selection to books, as that filters out the various musical pieces, operas, film adaptations, etc., that would clutter things up. Or maybe I shouldn't have filtered them out; maybe they really represent true cultural impact of a play. Nobody said this kind of work was easy. Anyway, what's left over might include the various grades of critical and student editions, children's and young adult adaptations, graphic novels versions, novelizations, etc.

The Most Prominent Shakespeare Plays, according to the Amazon Index:

1. Hamlet (1294 titles)
2. Macbeth (1106)
3. Romeo and Juliet (900)
4. A Midsummer Night's Dream (832)
5. Julius Caesar (776)
6. King Lear (748)
7. The Merchant of Venice (718)
8. The Tempest (677)
9. Twelfth Night (639)
10. As You Like It (638)

...and we're already starting to see some good correlation with the real-person adjusted Google Index, above.

The Most Obscure Shakespeare Plays, according to the Amazon Index:

1. The Two Noble Kinsmen (59 Titles)
2. Henry VIII (157)
3. All's Well That Ends Well (207)
4. Love Labour's Lost (209)
5. Cymbeline (211)
6. Pericles (216)
7. Titus Andronicus (224)
8. Timon of Athens (234)
9. The Two Gentlemen of Verona (235)
10. Troilus and Cressida (252)

Ouch! Quite a tumble for Henry VIII and Cymbeline.


The Multnomah County Library Collection 
The number of titles in the Multnomah County Library collection yielded by a (author:Shakespeare + title:[title]) search

I set out to count the number of actual books in the collection that met the criteria, but that turned out to be a HUGE pain. So, I went with the number of titles. As in the Amazon index, we're looking at how many different editions and adaptations are owned by the finest public library system in the United States, leaving aside that there will be only a single copy of many editions in the collection, but perhaps as many as 15 or 20 of some others.

Whereas the two previous indexes simply didn't work for the Henry IVs and Henry VIs, the Library Index seemed to. But I'm not 100% sure. It returned numbers for them which are mighty low, and this seems right, but I don't know if they should be THIS low. Well, courage:

The Most Prominent Shakespeare Plays, according to the Library Index:

1. Macbeth (51)
2. Romeo and Juliet (45)
3. Hamlet (44)
4. A Midsummer Night's Dream (41)
5. The Tempest (32)
5. The Comedy of Errors (32)
7. Othello (27)
8. King Lear (24)
8. The Merchant of Venice (24)
8. Twelfth Night (24)

The Most Obscure Shakespeare Plays, according to the Library Index:

1. The Two Noble Kinsmen (3)
1. 2 Henry IV (3)
3. 2 Henry VI (4)
3. 3 Henry VI (4)
3. 1 Henry VI (4)
3. Richard II (4)
7. 1 Henry IV (5)
8. Henry VIII (6)
9. Cymbeline (8)
9. Two Gentlemen of Verona (8)
9. Timon of Athens (8)
9. Coriolanus (8)

The Halftime Analysis

We're definitely starting to see some patterns taking shape. Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet are dominating -- they must be really famous plays! -- and Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest aren't far behind. Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and King Lear are other heavy hitters.

At the other end of the spectrum, it's been positively brutal for The Two Noble Kinsmen, barely still in the race after anchoring the tail end of all three indicies. The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Timon of Athens were also in the bottom ten of every index, with grim signs in the air as well for Titus, Cymbeline, Pericles, All's Well That Ends Well, and most of the Henry plays. Will they make a miraculous recovery in the other four indices? Will Pericles turn out to be more prominent than Hamlet after all? Stay tuned.

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare: Timon of Athens (New Cambridge, 2001)

A version of this post was published on my now-defunct blog "Renaissance Man" on February 7 and 14, 2010.

The Play: Timon of Athens (Very possibly 1607 or 1608)
The Edition: The New Cambridge Shakespeare, Edited by Karl Klein, 2001.

The Plot: These were notes on the action written scene by scene as I read the play.  There are plenty of spoilers.  If you are a college student looking for a shortcut around the bothersome learning process, these will be great, because they are unpolished enough that your professor won't be able to tell that you copped them from the internet.

ACT I

Scene 1: I am quite frankly confused by the opening of the play, a dialog between a Poet and a Painter among a few other artisans. I have no doubt that their conversation must constitute Important Commentary about what is to come, but it is difficult going for this lay reader. I'm not 100% sure what they're talking about, even after extensive recourse to the footnotes.

The reading gets much easier when Timon shows up. He is a person of some wealth or authority, and immediately begins a virtuoso show of being a good guy. He gives money to a guy who's been imprisoned for debt, makes a problematic marriage arrangement go away by throwing money at it, and implies to the artisans we met at the beginning that he will buy their wares.

Then Apemantus shows up. He is a big grouch, and in this scene mostly goes around insulting everybody.  Alcibiades, a military captain, shows up, and Apemantus insults him too.

Scene 2: A big banquet is held! Various lords all tell Timon how great he is, but Apemantus has snuck in and continues being a jackass. Timon lets him stay, but he has to sit at a table by himself. From this perch, he keeps up a running commentary about how Timon is just a big naive oaf, who is being used by the untrustworthy flatterers around him.

Some dancing girls come in and provide entertainment. Afterwards, Timon gives away a valuable jewel, and then receives some gifts -- horses and hounds -- but makes clear that he intends to give as well as he gets. Everything seems grand until Flavius, Timon's steward, frets in an aside that He command us to provide, and give great gifts, And all out of an empty coffer. It appears that Timon might have a bit of a cash-flow problem in the works; maybe Apemantus knows something we don't.

ACT II

Scene 1: Uh-oh. A Senator notes that Timon is deeply leveraged in high risk mortgage-based securities, and... wait, no. But he notes that Timon is determined to outgift everyone in Athens; If I want gold, steal but a beggar's dog And give it Timon, why, the dog coins gold. This behavior is disturbing to the Senator because Timon owes him money, and he instructs his servant to go call in this debt.

Scene 2: The Senator's servant shows up at Timon's house, to find that two other servants of high-ranking Athenians are there on the same errand. They badger Timon as he's trying to go to dinner with some friends, but Flavius gets them to at least wait until after dinner. While they wait, Apemantus wanders by with a "Fool," and there is some verbal sparring.

In what you might expect to be a scene 3, Flavius finally gets Timon to hear what he's been trying to tell him for month: he's broke. Flavius gets great speeches as he protests that he's been as good as a steward as possible under the circumstances, and that Timon has just refused to listen to him.

"Don't be so glum," Timon eventually says (not an actual quote). "I've been very generous to all my friends, now I'm sure they'll be generous to me." He dispatches various servants out to ask for loans. Flavius is skeptical; he has already tried to get loans from these guys, and was stonewalled. Timon begins to worry.

ACT III

Scene 1: One of Timon's servants calls on Lucullus, who is initially excited by the prospect of a gift. When he realizes that Timon needs to loan money, he tells the servant that this is out of the question, and Timon should have known better than to get in debt in the first place. He offers the servant a tip to pretend that he never saw him, but the servant is loyal and throws the money back at him.

Scene 2: Lucius is chatting with some strangers about how shamefully Timon has been treated when, inconveniently, another of Timon's servants comes up to ask for a loan. Oh, there's no way I could do that, he says. I'm totally strapped! The strangers remark on Lucius' bad behavior, and say that they would never treat a friend so shabbily, if they were ever in such a position.

Scene 3: This time it's Sempronius. He complains that Timon is coming to beg of HIM, of all people, when there are so many other people he could have asked. The servant tells him that all of those people have already been asked, and they all turned Timon down. Sempronius is now offended that Timon, whom he always thought was his friend, asked all of those other people before he turned to him. This offends him so much, in fact, that he can not in good conscience loan Timon the money.

Scene 4: A bunch of creditors slouch outside Timon's house. They see Flavius the steward leaving, but he's actually resigning his post -- Timon has nothing left to steward. Timon finally comes out, raging and raving a little, and hot words are exchanged. He runs off.

Somewhere -- back at Timon's house? in the street? -- Timon and Flavius run into each other. Timon accepts Flavius' loyalty, and instructs him to invite all of the no-good friends to one last feast. Flavius points out that there's nothing left to feast on, and Timon tells him not to worry about it, just invite them for the feast.

One half expects him to do a Titus at this point, but I bet he won't.

Scene 5: Out of the blue, we have Alcibiades at the Senate, where the Senators have just concurred on the death sentence for... whom? we're not really told, as far as I can tell. Alcibiades vigorously pleads on, um, the defendant's behalf, but the Senators are resolute. Alcie is angry to be dismissed, and sasses the Senators. In response, they banish him from Athens. They leave, and he vows to go gather his army and march on the city.

Scene 6: Timon's pals gather for his last feast, making hypocritical conversation about why they couldn't help him. He shows up, acts magnanimous, and calls them to the table. He says a Grace that is increasingly vindictive, then -- with the line Uncover, dogs, and lap -- reveals that the meal is actually dishes of warm water. He yells at the guests a little, splashing them with the water and chasing them out of the room. Then he curses the city and runs off. In a scene that could be played nicely as comedy, but probably isn't meant as such, the lords come back in and look for the hats and coats they left behind in the rush, and exchange thoughts to the effect of "whoa, that was weird."

ACT IV

Scene 1: Outside of town, Timon lays a forty-line curse on Athens.

Scene 2: Flavius the Steward commiserates with the rest of Timon's household -- they all thought he was a great boss -- and then they go their separate ways. Flavius heads off to see if he can find Timon.

Scene 3: Timon, embracing his new life-style, digs for roots to eat, but instead hits what turns out to be quite a bit of gold. Then Alcibiades shows up with his posse and a few girlfriends. Timon is horrid to all of them, in particular abusing the girlfriends as prostitutes -- clearly, he is feeling a hangover from years of purchasing the affection of his friends. He gives them a lot of money, because they are going to go kill Athenians. (Timon is, as far as I can tell, pretty much off his nut by this point.)

Apemantus happens by. He suggests that Timon could get back into the social game by flattering others, just as they flattered him. Timon is horrid to him too, and they bluster back and forth for a long while before Apemantus runs off.

Then some bandits come by, looking for Timon's gold. All but frothing at the mouth, now, he gives them gold to encourage them to go plunder and murder in Athens; H'as almost charmed me from my profession, by persuading me to it, remarks one of the bandits.

Flavius the Steward shows up next -- I love a parade -- and in a highly noble fashion offers to share his former master's life of poverty. Timon is slightly less horrid to him, offering him some money to go live rich and happy, but only on the condition that he agree to Hate all, curse all, show charity to none, But let the famished flash slide from the bone Ere thou relieve the beggar.

ACT V

Scene 1: The parade continues -- scene divisions seem really arbitrary in this play -- and the painter and poet (remember them, from the trippy beginning?) show up, hearing rumors that Timon has gold again. They don't have any completed work to sell, but they hope to get an advance; however, Timon overhears them planning this, and mocks them before tossing them out on their ears.

Now, Flavius comes back with a couple of Senators. With Alcibiades marching on the city, the Senators have come to implore Timon back to govern the city; however, they are likely thinking of the civil, benevolent Timon of yesterday, not the barking mad hermit he has quickly become. He abuses them for a while, and tells them that he hopes Alcibiades kills them all. Then he relents, and offers a "kindness," which is actually the best line in the play and an indicator of just how, shall we say, disappointed in his former society Timon has become.

I have a tree, which grows here in my close,
That mine own use invites me to cut down,
And shortly must I fell it: tell my friends,
Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree
From high to low throughout, that whoso please
To stop affliction, let him take his haste,
Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe,
And hang himself. I pray you, do my greeting.

Scene 2: A throwaway scene -- the two Senators from the last scene meet two other Senators, and tell them that Timon won't be any help.

Scene 3: A soldier discovers Timon's grave. (Grave? He died?  Who buried him?) He can't read the whole inscription on the monument (monument?), but takes a wax impression so that Alcibiades can read it with great gravitas in Scene 4.

Scene 4: Alcibiades prepares to sack Athens. But then there is a lengthy conversation with several Senators who... talk him out of it. No, really! They agree that the troops can enter the city, but have to stay in quarters, and the towns laws will all remain exactly the same. This surprising agreement having been reached, a messenger brings the wax pressing from Scene 3 in, and Alcibiades closes the play with a far-fetched speech about how Timon's fate clearly suggests that peace is good, but war is important too, or something.

---

Prognosis: Heavens, it isn't exactly Hamlet, is it. This is a play with some real problems:

• Plot. Overly generous man is betrayed by his friends, goes nuts. Where's the drama?
• Plausibility. He digs for roots and hits a cache of gold? Oh come on. It might be forgivable if it threw things into the realm of the allegorical, but I don't see that it does.
• For the "Good Man Lain Low" plot to work... you've got to have a good man. Timon's clearly a nice guy, but he's also clearly an idiot. He spends the front third of the play digging himself an awfully deep hole, so it's hard to see the perversity of humankind when he falls into it.
• Alcibiades. Why is he hanging out with Timon early on? Who is the friend about whom he is arguing with the Senators?
• Apemantus. Who is he? What's he up to?
• Pacing. The back third of the play is a long series of visits to a hermit in the woods, one after another, in which he is unpleasant and uncivil, peevish and a bit unhinged, to all. It's kind of hard to see how actors would make this long stretch interesting.  (Here in 2013, I've softened on this point.  I bet a good actor could have a field day with mad Timon.  But he'd have to be really damn good.)

There's an obvious parallel to King Lear in the plot of a man let down and laid low, and a Titus Andronicus aspect to Timon's angry madness. The weird opening might be compared to the opening of MacBeth, I suppose. Timon is nowhere as good as these plays, though. Which reminds me:

• Opening. The opening scene is frankly weird, very difficult to read and pretty tangential to everything else that happens.
• Ending. The ending is not satisfying, plausible, or a natural outgrowth of what has come before.

There is a short list of positives. The satire of how people avoid duties of charity hits home pretty nicely, and the feast of warm water is a nice touch. And, and... um... that bit about how the Athenians can use his tree to hang themselves, if they hurry, is a nice malicious touch. That's about it.

Apparently -- I haven't read much of the critical material yet ("yet"?  That hasn't changed in the last three years) -- there's a theory that this is an unfinished work, or a draft. There's no evidence that it was performed while the Big Guy was alive. Some people think it might have been a work in progress when he died, and others think maybe he gave up on it as being too much like King Lear. The idea that it's unfinished makes intuitive sense to me -- I feel like ~I~ could clean it up by cutting a few superfluous scenes and characters and dividing the scenes properly, and that Shakespeare certainly could have beefed it up with a subplot, an opening, a conclusion, and all those things that make for a good play. As it stands, it definitely deserves its ranking as among Shakespeare's most obscure work.

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare

This is just to say
That I've got a fully functional index for my blog-related Shakespeare activity now.  It's accessible over there to your right, under "A User's Guide to the Infinite Art Tournament."  My ultimate goal here is to have, like any educated Victorian gentleman, read my Shakespeare.  Also to have watched the better movie adaptations.  And to have checked out a handful of plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries, for a little bit of context.  Generally, to know Hamlet from a handsaw.

To this end, I'll finish porting in the out-of-print material from my short-lived Renascence Man blog project over the next few months, including the bit where I determined which plays are the most famous and which are the most obscure.  That one's pretty good.

Other Inconsequential Changes

• There's been a minor change to the rules of the Play-In Artist Sub-Tournament that will make the Second Flights more compact, more fun, and more likely to turn out strong artists.  I thought you should know.  The details are also over there in the sidebar.

• The so-called "Fabulous Prizes" have been withdrawn due to them turning out to be more burdensome to the winners than fabulous.  However, if you want a fabulous prize on principle, just ask.

• I  decided I was going to scrap "The Wednesday Post."  But then I got talked out of it.  It's got fans!  Who knew?

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare at the Movies: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Hoffman, 1999)

The Play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Directed by: Michael Hoffman, 1999.

Ebert: 3 Stars
Rotten Tomatoes: 67%

Previous MSND on Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare:

• The Text
• The 1935 Reinhardt Film Adaptation

Genre & Setting: MSND is played here as gentle, genteel comedy, and although the effects are well done it is less of a visual spectacular than what you might call a boutique film. The production is set in Italy, or perhaps a tourist brochure of Italy, and placed in the late 19th century in order that they can use awesome costumes and have fun with bicycles. The script remains in Athens, but no matter.

The Adaptation: Casting a Shakespeare adaptation with brand-name actors, some of them best known for television even, is to hang out a pretty big target. You have to expect that many of the star’s fans will be turned off by the Shakespeare, and you certainly have to expect that the Shakespeare fans will show up just itching to make catty remarks about the difference between movie stars and real actors. Or maybe that’s just me. Unfortunately, I found the whole thing rather charming.

The way I see it is, you’ve got four bases to touch if MSND is going to work:

1. The young lover quadrilateral has to be comprehensible. This is handled nicely, with each of the four kids exhibiting enough of an individual personality that we can always tell who is chasing whom and why.

2. The world of the fairies needs to be cool. Check. The world of the fairies in this production is a sort of running sylvan house party, and the emphasis is firmly on mischief, not malice. The three principles – Puck, Oberon, and Titania – all inhabit their roles nicely, conveying an impression that they might have an independent existence before and after their appearance in this story.

3. The tradesmen and their struggle to put on a play needs to transcend slapstick. This is perhaps where this MSND best shines. The players here aren’t the traditional Shakespearean doltish rustics, but a group of well-meaning working stiffs in over their heads. Their initial conversation is shot in a public square, and the response of good-natured passers-by makes it almost believable that these guys could delude themselves into putting on a show for the Duke.

4. The actual play-within-a-play, which is such a long epilogue to the real action of MSND, needs to be amusing. In keeping with (3), this is pretty successful. There’s the usual miscues, awkward pauses, roaring lion, and even a bit with a dog. But then there’s a really neat and unexpected bit.

For most of the production, Francis Flute, the Thisbe (or basically Juliet) character, has been hamming it up in falsetto. But as the play-within-a-play draws to an end, he gets discouraged with the falsetto and renders the final soliloquy in a normal voice, and really well. This is followed by a shot of the Duke’s court, who up until now have been chortling and jeering, staring in rapt surprise. It’s a nice moment.

Clocks In At: A brisk 116 Minutes.

Pros: Genial, relaxed, and fun.

Cons: I liked everything about this production, but found nothing in it that was truly great. But then, A Midsummer Night’s Dream isn’t really supposed to be great. It’s supposed to be entertaining and charming. Success!

Prognosis: If you enjoy some occasional filmed Shakespearean entertainment, this is a pretty good bet.

My two favorite comments from the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes:

“It's captivatingly modest.” – from New York Magazine. I like this one because it’s such an odd thing to say – and yet I am in complete agreement with it.

“This Midsummer Night's Dream shows how high the bar has been raised by Shakespeare in Love.” – from the New York Times.  This one is just funny because it’s so dumb, complaining that Hoffman’s MSND didn’t, as a Shakespeare adaptation, do as well as the 1998 romantic comedy written by Marc Norman and fixed, apparently, by Tom Stoppard. Unfortunately, the reviewer fails to assess how well MSND did, as a Shakespeare adaptation, compared with the same year’s Saving Private Ryan.

Renaissance Man: The Debrief

Back in 2009, I started a blog -- a fourth blog at the time -- called Renaissance Man.  The plan was that I was going to read all of Shakespeare and talk about it in excruciating detail.  It never really took, despite having a pretty good title, and I finally pulled the plug on it a few months ago.  The only remnant is the "Michael5000 v. Shakespeare" feature here on IAT, which has proven to be a real conversation-stopper.

Still, I've upped my Shakespeare intake over the last three years, and so I thought it would be interesting to revisit a list of preconceptions that I made when I started Renaissance Man, and see if I've learned anything in the meantime.  Probably more interesting to me than to you, of course, but then that's often the I'm case on Monday morning.  I'm curious about what Shakespearean conceptions other people have on tap, if anybody feels like jumping in, but there are limits to how far I'll ask you to indulge me.

A Midsummer Night's Dream -- The cute one. I know the plot in outline, and could name many of the characters and themes. There was a movie version about 10 years ago that I saw.  Update: I've read it and watched an older movie version within the last few months, and could reconstruct it in outline if all extant copies were somehow destroyed. 

All's Well That Ends Well -- This one falls into the category of Comedy Difficult to Distinguish From Other Comedies (CDDFOC).* I might have seen a performance of this one, or maybe it was one of those other ones.  The CDDFOCs remain problematic.  I'm not sure I've learned anything about this one.

Antony and Cleopatra -- I know almost nothing about this play beyond the basic plot, yet have a preconception that it is kind of frou-frou and lite.  I think I've heard that this play is unusual for having a million scenes.  But, I haven't learned anything much new about it.

As You Like It -- A CDDFOC.  A CDDFOC.

The Comedy of Errors -- CDDFOC.  A CDDFOC.  It is about mistaken identities, but aren't they all?  It features estranged twins, and I have seen it performed in the park, but I think it was quite some time ago.

Coriolanus -- I really have no idea.  I have an idea now: it's the one about the conflicted Roman general.  I learned this more from looking at art and from writing a quiz question back when we did quizzes then from directly Shakespeare experience, though.  There's a recent movie version that I'm going to watch soon.

Cymbeline -- I have read this one, and read a certain amount about it, and have good reason to try to keep it fresh in my head. Yet I have trouble keeping track of it. There are two reasons for this, I think; that it has relatively little cultural footprint, and that its plot is so odd as to make you doubt that you are remembering it correctly.  I have read and seen a live performance of Cymbeline in the last year, and have a pretty good sense of its plot.  I also kind of like it; it's a quirky beast.

Hamlet -- Hamlet, on the other hand, has a whopping big cultural footprint. I've read it, read about it, and seen five or six cinema adaptations. I've also read and seen a film version of Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead, an important riff on Hamlet. I've never seen a live performance, though.  I've seen a live performance now!

Julius Caesar -- I read this one in college.  No particular change here.  I haven't done much with it because I don't have the sense that it is very interesting, outside of the well known speeches, which can stand on their own.

King Lear -- I must have seen a movie version of this; I have a recollection of, if you will, eye-popping special effects. I have deep prejudices against Lear, which I -- wait! it's coming back! William Hurt as the Fool, yes? -- anyway, deep prejudices, because it has about the saddest and most depressing plot possible. Bums me out.  No particular change here.  I haven't done much with it because of the deep prejudices.

Love's Labour's Lost -- CDDFOC!  This is the Four Brides for Four Dudes of the Navarrean Ruling Class one, with the goofy oath of chastity and the masque and what-not.  I saw the truly weird Ken Branaugh adaptation.

Macbeth -- OK, everybody knows Macbeth. This is the one we read in high school.  No particular change here.  I haven't done much with it because, oddly perhaps, I don't have the sense that it is very interesting.

Measure for Measure -- Another CDDFOC! Heavens, I didn't realize I had quite so many in this category. This is the one about whether or not you ought to sleep with the Assistant Duke when he threatens to kill your brother if you won't, and about how if you are the Duke it is interesting to leave your country's administration in the hands of an unreliable assistant, just for the hell of it.  It needs work.

The Merchant of Venice -- I saw a performance of this one in college, but I feel like I know it quite well. Maybe I saw a film adaptation at some point or something?  No particular change here.  I haven't done much with it because, despite my sense that it is very interesting.

The Merry Wives of Windsor -- I know nothing about this one, not even enough to throw it on the CDDFOC heap.  I haven't read or seen this play, but I have assimilated the information that it features Falstaff of Henry IV fame, except in a different context.  And century.

Much Ado About Nothing -- This one, however, goes on the CDDFOC heap.  I have seen this one live and in two adaptations -- it's the one with Beatrice and Benedick (Hector Berlioz called his opera version Beatrice and Benedick, which was a real titling coup) that is really funny in the first half and kind of grim and distasteful in the second. 

Othello -- I saw a film version about 10 years ago, but know little except the bare outline.  I saw a ballet (!) version of this one.  It turns out it's about people dancing.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre -- We saw a Shakespeare-in-the-Park version of Pericles.  It turns out that it's a comic farce that has nothing to do with, like, Pericles, and is all about shipwrecks and mistaken identities and  ludicrous coincidences.  Deserves to be a CDDFOC, and probably would be if it had a vaguer title, and didn't sound like an educational play about a Greek statesman and political theorist.

Romeo and Juliet -- Well, duh. I know this one pretty well, of course.  I even think it's pretty good.

The Taming of the Shrew -- I know the basic plot outline here.  No particular change here.  I haven't done much with it because, despite my sense that it is very interesting.

The Tempest -- I've read this one, and twice watched Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books in the mistaken notion that something on which so much care and expense has been lavished must have some kind of redeeming value. I like it a lot; along with Hamlet and Titus it makes up my Shakespeare "Big Three" going into the project.  I read this one recently, and have watched two film adaptations,including the new one that nobody likes except me.  It turns out that there's a lot more ambiguity in there than I thought there was in The Tempest, which makes it more interesting but perhaps a little less fun.

Timon of Athens -- [stares blankly]  I've read it.  There's a good reason it's not a greatest hit.

Titus Andronicus -- I have read, seen a live performance of, and twice watched the movie adaptation of Shakespeare's allegedly worst play. If that oft-cited critical consensus turns out to be true, this is going to be one awesome project.  I haven't revisited it, because it's probably the play I knew best coming in.

Troilus and Cressida -- Haven't a clue.  I've watched an adaptation.  It was every bit as good as Timon of Athens.

Twelfth Night or What You Will -- This would be a CDDFOC, except I've had a few conversations lately to remind me that this is the one about the cross-dressing girl, and the brother who turns out to have survived the shipwreck, and if music is the food of love, play on! I've seen a couple of filmed versions. It's a good'un.  Saw a live performance last summer.   It was full of comic hijinx.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona -- No idea.  Still no idea.

The Two Noble Kinsmen -- Also, no idea.  Still no idea.

The Winter's Tale -- I saw a staging of this one the year before last. It is rather marred by an excess of arbitrary occurances, methought.  In retrospect, complaining about arbitrary occurances at the theater seems a bit dim of me.  I haven't revisited Winter's Tale, though.

King John -- Oh right, there's a "King John"! For some reason, I know that in Victorian times this one was popular as an excuse to throw a patriotic Magna Carta pageant in the middle. And isn't it traditional to put it on when the British monarchy rotates over, or rather wasn't it so before Elizabeth the Immortal took the throne? Anyway.  Still no idea.

Richard II / Henry IV, part 1/ Henry IV, part 2/ Henry V -- Two of these are an old Kenneth Brannaugh movie!  I've had the opportunity to see IV-1 and IV-2 live, and found that their most remarkable feature is that they are essentially the same play twice.  It's a pretty good play.  In the same way that Promethius is pretty good if you want to see Aliens again, but different, IV-2 is good if you want to see IV-1 again, but different..

Henry VI, part 1/Henry VI, part 2/Henry VI, part 3/Richard III -- I've seen Richard III both live and in an excellent film version!  No progress here.

Henry VIII -- Oh right, there's a "Henry VIII"!  I got to see Henry VIII in performance, too.  It's a bit of a mess.

So, this is sobering: I'd say I'm quite familiar with three plays, somewhat familiar with an additional four, know the basics of ten more, and let my jaw hang open like the rustic yokel I am when confronted with the remaining fourteen (six of which are CDDFOCs). I actually thought I was considerably further along than all that.  It looks like I've more than doubled the "Quite Familiar" category, to seven; vastly improved the "Somewhat Familiar" category, from four to eleven; have the basics of nine; and only gape at eleven.  The reason that there are six more Shakespeare plays than there used to be is that I'm counting the four-parters individually this time, which seems like a good sign.

In summary, it looks like you really can learn more about the plays of Shakespeare simply by applying yourself, neglecting your household duties, and foregoing more obvious entertainment options!  I only wonder where I'd be today if I had been able to avoid "Angry Birds."