The Bard of Avon

[Elfhelm]

I guess Bloom never read Euripides. What utter tosh.

[Huan]

What's this about Euripides?
Continuing the unnecessary debunking of the Marlovian argument, the references to Italy are supposed to serve as "evidence" that the author of the plays spent time there, whether he was the "exiled" Marlowe or the Earl of Oxford. But if you read them (which the Marlovians and Oxfordians should consider doing), the plays display very little specific knowledge of Italian settings such as Verona or Venice. They're really just "play settings." Shakespeare placed his stories in Italy for the following reasons: 1: because the original source material took place there, as in Romeo and Juliet and Othello, 2: because Italy is removed from England, and therefore transports the audience further from the Globe, as would the evocation of Middle Earth, a Galaxy Far, Far Away, or Once Upon a Time, and 3: because the English inherited their dramatic conventions from the Italians, and so an Italian setting was already entirely conventional. But read Romeo and Juliet and point out one example that indicates that the plays' author had direct experience with Verona. And another puzzle for me about the Marlovian argument: why did whathisname and his disciples think they'd find the original drafts of the plays in Marlowe's grave? I mean, WHY? What evidence suggests that any such thing is to be found in the grave? Not a rhetorical question: I'm really curious.

[Fat middle]

I gree with what has been said about Bloom and his Invention.... Shakespeare is my fave author (apart of JRRT, of course ), but i cannot understand how can one write a whole thick book too say only that he loves Falstaff and that he loves Hamlet more and that they're more real than any other character in Shakespeare and in all literature and more real than Shakespeare himself, and even more real than you and me... too much.

[Elfhelm]

Just that Euripides has awesome characters, and the point was something about their humanity? They are not one dimensional at all. Hecuba, for instance. It just grips you inside when she makes her famous speech. And the Trojan Women, killing their own babies so they won't become slaves to the Greeks. It's just some very rich material and some very human characters. So if someone has the shallowness to say there weren't great characters before Shakespeare, well he needs to go back to school, I say. Never did like Bloom or any of the New Critics.

[Tanoliel]

Erp. Gosh. Just thought it was interesting...

What's this about people trying to find scripts in graves? WHY would anybody bury a perfectly good script? Geez. It's against tenet not to use rescources in theatre.
There isn't any reason to suppose the author had direct experience with Italy...it's perfectly possible to write about places without actually being there, especially if it's in a play, and not a novel with tons of detailed descriptions. Hey, take Cymbeline...Shakespeare sure wasn't there. Or then.

[WiseWizard]

Sorry to interrupt on this great discussion, but I have some news. I've just been cast as Macbeth in our school play! And what's really cool is that we're setting it in the near future in an "unspecified urban society" with the style of "heightened realism". the only part I'm unhappy about is that we might not get to use swords. I believe it's already been stated that the final fight is going to be fought with crowbars....but oh well.
Now please continue!

[Elfhelm]

A post-apochalyptic Macbeth? I can see that. Of course, you might want to replace the witches with Pre-cogs a la Minority Report. No, really, I wish people would set in Scotland for once.

[Tanoliel]

Seattle Shakespeare Company set it in Scotland, I believe. Bloody frightening, and also frighteningly bloody. There was a huge tub of fake blood backstage, and the costumes were all furry skirts. Okay, kilts...only not quite. Bizarre. But actually very good....
Congrats, WW!
tano

[Huan]

Fat Middle, yeah, that was something else that got tiresome about Bloom's book: he keeps harping in that same key, Falstaff is incredible, and Hamlet is an "artist of himself." How many times does he say THAT?
Elfhelm, as a student of Greek, I hate to admit it, but I have to take your word on Euripides. I have read him, but it's been a loooong time. Personally, though, I'm more a Sophocles fan, mainly because I look to Greek tragedy less for great drama and characterization than for the spiritual, ritualistic quality of it. Sophocles' philosophy is just incredible; he's kind of my personal Yoda. But back to the Bard, your comment on wishing they would set Macbeth in Scotland for once put me in mind of the Reduced Shakespeare Company: anyone heard of them? They're an American troupe playing in London; they give you the Complete Works in a two-hour show. It's hilarious. Anyhow, they comment on that current trend of re-setting all the plays in their handling of the Balcony Scene from R&J. They say something like, you can play it on the moon, or with Juliet sitting in a tree, or hanging from a fishing line, but UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES use an actual balcony.

[Tanoliel]

AH!
I saw Reduced Shakes when I was in London two years ago and it was the funniest thing ever! It was glorious! Loved it muchlies. It's great getting all the jokes...can't remember all of them at this point, but that was one of the funniest theatre evenings I've had.
tano

[Fat middle]

Huan: i also put Sophocles above Euripides. i can read Antigona again and again and i marvell each time i read Ajax (though it's been a time since i last read). but for "spiritual, ritualistic quality" i think none is above Esquilus (don´t know how do you spell it) although his characters development and dialogue are still archaic.

About Macbeth: in Spain there has been a recent performance that only was interested in cruelty and sex. i haven't seen it but i think that Macbeth is hard enough as not to be necssary to show an excessive dossis of sex and blood. if you do that, you're risking to transform Macbeth $ wife into too strange persons, making them too monstruous. what i like from this play is it that make me think that i could be like the Macbeth couple if certain circumstances (the witches) would mess in my way.

[Huan]

Fat Middle, you mean Aeschylus, who is also quite cool; Prometheus Bound I especially like because my favorite Olympian, Hermes, plays a big role. I disagree though. Sophocles is still my Yoda.
Apropos of nothing, one thing I love about Macbeth is that I think it is way ahead of its time in dramatic timing and story structure, by which I mean it's my opinion that Shakespeare was kind of writing a movie screenplay before there was such a thing. In this play he really trimmed all the "fat" and made a perfectly streamlined little number that moves from beginning to end without pausing for breath, just like a modern movie. You could make a movie of Macbeth for today's mass audience and barely cut a word of it. I feel that with this play Shakespeare kind of saw where the cultural attention span was headed.

[Khamûl]

We have just gotten done reading Macbeth in Lit class. It was cool. I got to read the part of Banquo. I was also Mercutio in 9th grade. It seems I always end up getting killed.

[Elfhelm]

Well, we may not all agree on which Greek playwright rocks our boat the best, but can we agree that some literary figures before Shakespeare were "truly human"?

[Huan]

Absolutely! Odysseus is one of the most "truly human" characters in history. Everyone in Homer, actually, including the gods. All the truly great literature has humanity, which I would have thought could go without saying. I actually think Bloom kind of just needed a thesis to hang his critiques of the plays on.

[Fat middle]

yep, i agree too. Don Quijote & Sancho Panza are no doubt "truly human". they were contemporaries to Shakespeare's works but weren't influenced by them.

[Huan]

ooo, good one! I have zeroed in on British and ancient Greek lit so much that I am way deficient in the literature of other countries.

[sun-star]

Because tomorrow's unofficially "Shakespeare Day" I thought I'd bring this back.

Do you have a favourite sonnet? There are so many great ones that it feels like sacrilege to pick just one, but I just learnt this:

Let those who are in favour with their stars,
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars
Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;
Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread,
But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:
Then happy I that love and am beloved
Where I may not remove nor be removed.

[Tanoliel]

Tomorrow's Bill Day? Oh...I'd forgotten! Yay!

I like a bunch of sonnets...this is one of my faves:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

I also like "My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun" and "those lips that love's own hand did make" (that one's funny...)

Yay....I shall go read Bill now.

[Mercutio]

Originally posted by sun-star
Because tomorrow's unofficially "Shakespeare Day" I thought I'd bring this back.

It is? Neato!

Do you all think what "Shakespeare" wrote was really by Shakespeare? I have no idea what to think.

Long live...Mercutio!