Month: March 2017

…the infernal Atë in good apparel… – MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, II i

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I’m evermore intrigued by the accidental overlaps among these plays that make up our seasons. Any plays, any seasons, any company really. And it isn’t the obvious big “well clearly the girl-in-boy-clothes plot element is worth it again” or “usurpers are doomed from the get-go” overlaps. I like the tiny ones.

Atë, for example.

Atë is the Greek goddess of (depending on your sources) mischief, delusion, ruin, folly, blind folly, infatuation, rash action and reckless impulse. Her m.o.is talking people (and gods) into doing dumb things without thinking about them first, which is clearly how Mischief (not as strong a word to us as it was for Shakespeare, or even Sondheim) and Ruin work.

I’m very fond of Atë’s literal way of achieving this, according to Homer: after she was banished from Olympus for talking Zeus into doing something stupid – because he really needed her help on that front – “her feet are delicate* and they step not on the firm earth, but she walks the air above men’s heads and leads them astray”, addling their brains with her occasional footfalls on their brainpans. For the gods, she has to smooth-talk. For mortals, a noggin jostle is all she needs, though in other non-Homeric versions, there’s always smooth talk.

Atë could for this reason very well be the patron goddess of nearly every worthwhile character in Shakespeare. My constant argument for picking up the pace when acting Shakespeare, besides my trust in the human ear’s ability to get what’s going on when it’s provided with something worth hearing, is that if these people stopped to think about what they were saying/doing, they’d never do it. They spend most of their time dealing with repercussions caused by sudden, thoughtless, impulsive behavior.

The nice thing about this is that it makes them easier to forgive. When dealing with a Lear, a Leontes, several of the historical kings, anyone in a comedy, we have to like them or at least forgive them for their rashness at some point. If they go getting all pause-y and deliberate in the awful stuff they spit out during Act I (and as an actor, it can be very tempting to bite off some of these words with cold-blooded Sam-Jacksonorousness), we don’t care if they’re sad or if they’re dead in Act V. If Leonato or Lord Capulet slow down to make hateful pronouncements about their daughters, we close the iron door on them forever and label them as terrible parents and terrible human beings; if they fly off the handle in a weak moment, well, we, too, have flown off the handle now and then. We’re given some space to empathize with their regret.

The main difference, for a person hearing it all happen, is pacing. Both in the sense of speed, and in the sense of Atë walking back and forth on your head.

I bring her up at all because when preparing the summer editions, I noticed she came up twice: once when Benedicke, as quoted above, says of Beatrice (not present at the time):

          come, talke not of her, you shall find her the infernall Atë in good apparell…

And then up she pops again as Mark Antony predicts to Caesar’s corpse, that bleeding piece of former boss, that:

          Caesar’s Spirit, ranging for Revenge,

          With Atë by his side, come hot from Hell,

          Shall in these Confines, with a Monarke’s voyce,

          Cry ‘Havocke’, and let slip the Dogges of Warre,

          That this foule deede, shall smell above the earth

          With Carrion men, groaning for Buriall.

Tony is a little more vehement about things than Benedicke, which, considering the context, I’ll allow. Though I suppose since our audience this summer will have seen Much Ado a few weeks before Caesar, he could easily complete the transference and say “With Beatrice by his side, come hot from Hell”. Except she doesn’t go to Hell – just stops off there to deliver her apes.

But that’s another footnote.

 

 

*elsewhere Homer says she “is strong and sound on her feet”, which is probably because she’s so delicate with them, not touching the ground and all.

…but not gone – JULIUS CAESAR, III i

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I don’t know what kind of self-respecting Shakespeare blog doesn’t manage a post on the Ides of March, but then I don’t know what sensible actor/dramaturg of Shakespeare schedules a minor medical test on the Ides of March either (all is well).

 

In all my excitement about the whole Benedicke thing I get to enjoy this summer, I’ve only begun to get excited about Caska. Also to notice the historical Servilius Caska had a kind of young-Chris Elliott vibe going.

Caska is the cranky-ass conspirator who, by leaping forth with his dagger (“Speak hands for me!”) and getting the ball rolling by getting Caesar in the neck*, enacts the political assassination equivalent of being the online commenter who types “FIRST!!!1!” (He also joined the civil war and is believed to have died in the wave of good ol’ Roman soldier ritual honor suicides that was going around toward the end of that same war. No big scene for Caska, though – it’s the so-called Stoic who gets a big emotional dramatic moment. But no hard feelings.)

With all due apologies and promise of safety to the fellow actor playing Caesar this summer (he’s also Bullingbrooke; perhaps a “you win some, you lose some” tattoo is in order for him), I am really looking forward to taking part in the mild therapy of that moment, in no small part because I, like you, have had my share of terrible bosses.

The one who groused when I asked to leave my mall retail shift early when I got a call asking me to go to my grandmother’s deathbed…and then asked if I had an estimation of when I’d be back.

A couple of college professors who would frankly be lucky to meet with a Pompey’s Porch ending and not the Suddenly, Last Summer situation likely after any reasonable polling of their students.

A director of Shakespeare I may have mentioned in this space before.

The person(s) responsible for the geographic placement of an arena which sits now in one of if not the worst possible site for that purpose here in Louisville.

I’m sure there are more I just can’t think of right now or for legal reasons should not speak of. More or less all the usual suspects as described in The Frantics’ 80’s comedy classic, “Boot to the Head”.

*It is generally believed that “to get it in the neck” didn’t appear until the mid-1800’s as a slang term for being the victim of literal or figurative mayhem, but I like to think it started with Caska. Though it was best framed by one of my personal favorites among the Classical philosophers, Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, ca. 1923:

It seemed to me that everything was absolutely for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But have you ever noticed a rummy thing about life? I mean the way something always comes along to give it to you in the neck at the very moment when you’re feeling the most braced about things in general. No sooner had I dried the old limbs and shoved on the suiting and toddled into the sitting-room than the blow fell.

My grief lies onward and my joy behind* – SONNET 50

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*

Because the scripts are finished at last.

I mean, they’re not printed or hole-punched or anything; that’s not my department.

But all the punctuation is bolded so as to be unavoidable and therefore dealt with. Period spelling is retained except where it was guaranteed to cause more harm than help. Judicious trimming has been done out of respect for our airplane-, siren-, darkness-, beersale-heavy urban surroundings, as well as the basic health of a group of actors who will have to do all three shows consecutively one afternoon/night in July (the racist parts are gone too – “Ethiope” hasn’t aged well, Mr. S.). Every expurgated “God” has been reinstated where the Folio was legally forced put “Heaven” in Richard II. Tiny histories of the individuals Shakespeare adhered to the biographies of when it was dramatically expedient. Every i dotted, and in some cases turned into a j.

And, this year, notes. So many notes. Notes that shouldn’t be overwhelming to have on hand, but were a little overwhelming to compile. Notes that I hope no one takes as insulting because you never know what words a person has come across or never had to say aloud or what a definition or paraphrase for clarity is going to trigger when learning lines and seeking to grok the situations in which the lines are spoken. And some are just thoughts about the bigger WTF moments: the “Leonato had a silent wife?” (solution: cut); the “who the hell is Woodstock, exactly” issue hanging over our heads (solution: prologue); and that whole thing with Portia’s “voluntary wound” in the thigh (solution: hope for the best).

Plus a few of those fancy “circles” from Ben & David Crystal’s Shakespeare’s Words book/site. I love those.

Which all means I can at last stop poring over every single line in three plays and start working on just those for which I’m responsible, lest I be embarrassingly bad on stage.

Always a concern. And if you’ve seen me on stage, a legitimate one.

 

 

 

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Woe is forerun with woe – RICHARD II, III, iv

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I didn’t sit down to write this because of International Women’s Day or the attached Day Without a Woman, but it’s at the very least standing in the corner of this post, arms crossed, tapping its toe.

I’ve finally hit roughly the midpoint of annotating Richard II for this summer’s Kentucky Shakespeare production. This one is a little denser than some, probably because of it’s being 100% verse and all. We’re up to the Gardener Scene.

But it’s not really his scene – it’s also the closest thing to a tiny almost-Bechdel moment we have, and even it’s a definite almost-. It opens with two Ladies and the Queen.

Now, there are those who call her Isabel because that’s who Richard was married to in 1399, but the stage directions only ever call her “Queene”.

You see, Isabel was his second wife, about ten years old at the time. (Before you get creeped out, I should note that Richard, in his early thirties, married her to secure a peace with France. Still sketchy to us, but in the 1390s, not particularly shocking.)  His relationship with his late first wife, Anne of Bohemia, was famously (in Holinshed, at least, as well as Woodstock, the anonymous play to which this one is a sort-of sequel) happy and romantic and devoted and such. At least so it is said.

This is why I’m resistant calling her Isabel. A lot of characters and places and time-spans are conflated in the Shakespeare’s histories. What’s one more?

Anyway, the Queen is a lovely role, but is unsurprisingly tiny – her husband has 758 lines, she has about 115. But pound for pound, she holds her own.

I should admit to a professional sexism here: it’s my job to trim these plays judiciously for our summer seasons, but in the interests of parity when paring, the men often get sliced without mercy and if possible I don’t touch the women’s lines at all. I don’t know that that’s a uniformly good thing (I’m still worried that leaving Hermione almost entirely intact last year despite everyone else’s trims gave her more social power than she evidently had and skewed a play that already literally idolized her, but I’m going to screw this up one way or another so it might as well be that way). But there it is.

So this summer we’ll be hearing from the Queen(e) and attendant Ladies about bowling and whatnot because dammit they barely have a scene, let’s let them have their whole scene. III iv is already so concise that to cut the distractions her waiting-gentlewomen attempt before she gives in (well, again, almost-) to grief would be lumpy anyway.

So, bowling, dancing, singing, grief:

          Lady:       Madame, I’ll sing.

          Queene:  ‘Tis well that thou hast cause:

                          But thou should’st please me better, would’st thou weepe.

          Lady:      I could weepe, Madame, would it doe you good.

          Queene:  And I could sing, would weeping doe me good,

                          And never borrow any Teare of thee.

(See? Lovely.) And then Men approach. A Gardener and his two assistants. And out rang the lines that like so much of this play resonated as if sung by the Heavenly Choir of Weighty Current Events. For our Queen sayeth:

          But stay, here comes the Gardiners,

                      (alright not that line so much; wait for it)

          Let’s step into the shadow of these Trees.

          My wretchednesse, unto a Rowe of Pins,  

                      (a little obscure, but I love this: roughly translates as “I’ll bet my sorry state against a row of (proverbially worthless) sewing pins”)

          They’le talke of State:

                      (of COURSE she wants to hide in the trees – no sane person really looks forward to talking politics with strangers, internet be damned.)

                                                    for every one doth so,

          Against a Change;

                      (again, she hits it on the head: the day’s big story is the day’s big story and it takes some skill to distract people from it coughcough. Then comes the kicker.)

                                           Woe is fore-runne with Woe.

Now, I was peeking through the Arden edition’s notes, usually reliable and always plentiful, and it suggests this could be restated “Gloomy happenings (in politics) are heralded by gloomy predictions.” Which works in a way, I suppose, but seems so specific, especially when coming from a person who has been discussing her reasons for woefulness just before. And, yes, she’s queen, so her woes will always have politics attached to them, but they’ll always be personal, too.

It’s that “fore-runne” that does it for me. “When it rains, it pours” is all very well, but the image of one Woe running in front of another, either as herald to something worse or just because these Woes of hers are racing and one is a bit faster than the other (the OED backs up both of these options) is a far piece stronger than any handy clichés. The Queen can talk, is what I’m saying, and talk well.

So while absolutely nothing happens in this scene that is essential to the plot, you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.*

Enough ravings. On to Act Four.

 

*no one has for a moment suggested I should cut any of the scene; whether this is because all right-thinking people agree or they fear the twitchy eye I might get from it is anybody’s guess.

…changes… – MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, I i

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I love Folio spelling and punctuation.

          CLAUDIO: Leonato, stand I here?

          Is this the Prince? is this the Princes brother?

          Is this face Heroes? are our eies our owne?

No, Claudio – this face is Heroes:

But while you’re slowed down anyway, careful with the diction. “Are our eyes our own” is going to be a mouthful – good thing it’s all monosyllables.

Never came trouble to my house… – MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, I i

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After two solid weeks of travel which involved no small amount of crashing in the houses of kind friends and family, and weather fluctuations from blizzard to unpleasantly warm 75 degrees (in February? In Massachusetts?! We broke it; sorry, kids), I’m at last in the range of 66-75% done with annotating the summer scripts for Kentucky Shakespeare and, as always, primed for self-distraction. My mind is a wanderer. This time I can at least trace the path:

– The Wife and I are thrilled to be able to say out loud now that we’re taking on Beatrice and Benedick this summer (come on down; we guarantee a good time);

-the only time we’ve approached these roles before was in a reading of Davenant’s The Law Against Lovers, his 1662 adaptation/squishing-together of Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing, a weird little thing that I can see the reasons for, MfM being such a dark piece except for the randy people, who quickly became socially inappropriate for squeamish theatregoers. There’s a company in Louisville, Savage Rose, that alongside its regular season hosts readings of such under-heard classics as this and has for years now. Lots of fun to partake of.

-this squishing-together of Much Ado and some other thing popped into my head during the Much Ado editorial process (which I’m still during-ing and instead of finishing, writing this) when I came across two exchanges, one spurring a notion, the other cementing it. Hear me out…

Act One, Scene One. Soldiers show up looking to crash on the abundant sofa of Leonato and the Prince who leads them enters and says to his host:

          Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

To which Leonato replies:

          Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your grace.

Innocuous host-/guest- flattery. But it reminded me of a similar situation in a slightly less wacky play in which royalty shows up at a crashpad to declaim:

          The Love that followes us, sometime is our trouble,

          Which still we thank as Love. Herein I teach you,

          How you shall bid God-eyld us for your paines,

          And thanke us for your trouble.

And the hostess (Lady M., if you haven’t recognized Duncan’s howdy by now) responds:         

          All our service,

          In every point twice done, and then done double,

          Were poore, and single Businesse, to contend

          Against those Honors deepe, and broad,

          Wherewith your Majestie loades our House…

…and so on, fancier and more versified than Leonato (King vs. Prince and acquaintance vs. spouse’s boss certainly comes into play here), but substantially the same thing. So what happens…

…if we replace Don Pedro with Duncan…

…and leave in Leonato’s silent wife. I should explain.

In the Folio/Quarto, Leonato has a wife, Innogen, mentioned only in two stage directions in the first part of the play that call for her to enter. She has no lines and is only referred to barely in one of those “Is this your kid?” “Well, her mother says she’s mine, heh heh” bits of banter that reappear with variations in a couple of the plays. In almost all productions, she’s taken as a “ghost character” (one who is named in stage directions or Dramatis Personae but never speaks) and just written out, seeing as how actors expect to be paid and all. What if she stuck around, this silent hostess, and…

“But”, I thought, “that’s silly. Get back to work.” Which I did.

So on I went, annotating this for understanding and slightly modernizing the spelling of that for clarity and removing the odd anti-Semitic remark for crying out loud. And on another pass of the same scene, but a few dozen lines later, the Prince returned with:

          …in the meane time, good Signior Benedicke, repaire to Leonatoe’s, commend me to him, and tell him I will not faile him at supper, for indeede he hath made great preparation.

And thought I had heard such an oath to be there in time for supper before; that’s right:

          To night we hold a solemne Supper sir,

          And I’ll request your presence.

To which Banquo replies:

          Let your Highnesse

          Command upon me, to the which my duties

          Are with a most indissoluble tye

          For ever knit.

That dinner ends even worse than Hero’s first wedding, but there’s a history of thrift in Shakespeare when it comes to using funeral food for weddings, so vice versa seems legit, non?

Which brought me back to Innogen. What if we gave her some lines…made her a more complicated hostess…

…assume the comedy is either simultaneous to the tragedy or – no, wait…

…is a backstory for it…they’re soldiers after all…

…squeeze Benedick/Beatrice together with the title couple of That Other One…

…ditto the younger lovers and the Macduffs…

“But”, I thought, “that’s silly. Get back to work.” Which I did.

…as magnanimous as Agamemnon… – HENRY V, III vi

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The first of March is St. Davy’s Day, and my Monmouth cap is ready for a leek.

I made it myself – the cap, not the leek – out of New Hampshire sheep’s wool from a pattern someone retrofigured from a several-hundred-year-old knit Monmouth hat that still exists in a museum somewhere. It’s sort of bell-shaped and has a nifty little lanyard loop meant, I’m led to understand, to allow for hanging on the hilt of one’s sword when the situation requires or permits an exposed pate.

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It’s also a perfect mechanism from which to dangle a huge leek.

I’m not Welsh in any way I’m aware of, though I do think dragons and Tom Jones are neat. And Kentucky is coal country, too – it’s in the water here, which doesn’t seem to upset as many people as it should. But a few years ago a director (with a cruel streak I hadn’t suspected in her) decided to cast me as Captain Fluellen in Henry V.

He quickly became one of my favorite Surprise Roles, that is to say a role I had no particular opinion of one way or another before taking it on. I was playing Bottom that summer, which had been a dream for some time, as well as Polonius (too young, really, but if the baldness broadens my casting possibilities, then bald I shall be), who was fun, but requires some tricky juggling, what with the oafish-yet-controlling-yet-relatable-enough-that-you-don’t-necessarily-want-him-dead notes to be hit.

Fluellen was just…the thing I had to do in the other play of the repertory season. The slight relaxation between two larger roles. No one told me he was the best part in the show (in that people are always happy to see you arrive, but you don’t have to memorize/put over any famous speeches). I suppose I should have, as should we all, listened to the wisdom of Good Tickle Brain whose favorite male Shakespeare character is none other than Our Mighty Welshman. He’s steadfast, well-read, a dedicated Harry P(lantagenet) fanboy. Perhaps a little too by-the-book, but in wartime that’s maybe a good thing. No, he can’t answer a simple question with brevity, but neither can I. I mean, I’m writing this and exactly zero people have even asked for it. I suspect that number will drop once this is posted.

Now, I’m an American, so I don’t have any particular grip on Welsh-ness, whether typical or stereotypical, beyond those few I may have encountered via Harry Secombe on my beloved Goon Show. (Though I understand even Disney partakes of Welsh festivities nowadays…)

But ignorance is no excuse for not doing your acting homework, so I set out on the steep uphill journey that was figuring out a Welsh accent. And I can now hear and identify the active sounds and cadences that make for a Welsh accent. Whether I managed to issue any forth from my mouth in an effective way is another story.

The important thing, though, was that my attempts at that accent at least gave me a glimpse into something important about the role that an American not attempting the accent might not have given me: the role is the accent. By which I mean, if you’re writing for Elmer Fudd, you throw in as many r-laden words as you can; for Sylvester the Cat, it’s s-words.

And for a bombastic Welsh captain, you deliberately write something like:

          The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon, and a man that I love and honour with my soule, and my heart, and my dutie, and my life, and my living, and my uttermost power.

          He is not, God be praysed and blessed, any hurt in the World, but keepes the Bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline.

And the poor sap who has to say it all has to establish him as a bit of a blatherer right away (Bottom, Fluellen, and Polonius in one summer; talk about typecasting) while also making sure to say Dook while everyone else says Dyook, hisses the esses a bit, adds an extra schwa-ish vowel between double consonants like gn, mn, tt, and makes that lovelee Welsh long ee sound even within diphthongs. So it comes out something like:

          The Dook of Ek-seh-teh iss …(lag while he chooses a word, which also makes Gower and the audience think he might simply answer the question “Is the Duke of Exeter safe?”)…ass magananimous ass Agamemenon, and a man that I luff and on-nuh with my soul, and my haat, and my doo-tee, and my laeef, and my lif-fing and my ut-tah-most pah-weh.

Oy. Or rather, Cod pee praissed and plesst. The entire text of the role reads like a oral exam of a “recognizing the signature sounds of a Welsh accent” course, down to the very phonetic spelling of “Llewellyn”. Which, it being primarily a comic role, though not really a foolish one, isn’t a worry. Finding the jokes is a vital part of Fluellen, and the language and how you say it is Where the Jokes Are. Plus spitting all the hell over my Gower, which was a hoot, for me anyway. I don’t think she caught anything communicable from me.

There’s also the cadence, which is, again, to American ears, not far off from a broad Subcontinental accent, which made me wonder what similarities between the Hindi and Welsh languages would make native speakers sing so similarly when speaking English. I never found an answer.

Somehow I doubt anyone noticed any of this homework, though, because the note Fluellen leaves on is all anyone remembers – being, of course, the scene in which I forced a man to eat a raw leek onstage, which in our production was doubled down on when I a) obeyed the stage direction “strikes him” by doing so with the flappy green bits of said leek, b) leaned into the bawdy fun of getting uncomfortably close to his face with my crotch when saying “or I have another leek in my pocket which you shall eat” and c) took a giant and spiteful bite of the thing myself just before exiting – “…and heal your pate.” [crunch]. Me and my big dumb comedy notions. I swear I can still taste it sometimes when the wind is right.

But the crux of this wonderful, loquacious fellow was, for me, in his little exchange with Gower the night before the battle, quoted in full:

          Gower: Captaine Fluellen.

          Fluellen: ‘So, in the Name of Jesu Christ, speake fewer: it is the greatest admiration in the universall World, when

          the true and aunchient Prerogatifes and Lawes of the Warres is not kept: if you would take the paines but to

          examine the Warres of Pompey the Great, you shall finde, I warrant you, that there is no tiddle tadle nor pibble ba-

          ble in Pompeye’s Campe: I warrant you, you shall finde the Ceremonies of the Warres, and the Cares of it, and

          the Formes of it, and the Sobrietie of it, and the Modestie of it, to be otherwise.

          Gower: Why the Enemie is lowd, you heare him all Night.

          Fluellen: If the Enemie is an Asse and a Foole, and a prating Coxcombe; is it meet, thinke you, that wee should

          also, looke you, be an Asse and a Foole, and a prating Coxcombe, in your owne conscience now?

          Gower: I will speake lower.

          Fluellen: I pray you, and beseech you, that you will.

There he is. Don’t doubt for a minute he salivates all over Gower as he stage-whispers this warning, and yes, the obvious joke is the long-winded admonition not to talk, along with the singular opportunity to say “tit-tle tat-tle and pip-ple pap-ple” onstage, but the matter contained in that long-windedness is everything I love about the guy. Gower has, to Fluellen, not only shown a lack of basic and sensible self-preservation but has insulted his own training and the very tradition of soldiering, its ceremonies/cares/forms/sobrieties/modesties. If the French army jumped off a pridge, would you? He loves his job in every detail, and what with there being no standing army back then, he has to relish every moment of it.

But enough of this. Back to your happy St. Davy’s Day. Wear the leek in your Monmouth with pride and if mocked by swelling turkey-cocks, let them eat it.