Cromwell closed the theatres in 1642, and no-one since then has attempted a play in the true manner of Shakespeare, and it is hard to see why.
This is not to say that it’s easy. But Shakespeare’s mixture of ghosts, soliloquies, revenges, plays-within-plays, songs, narrations, shipwrecks, adulterous lovers, demented monarchs, prison cells, hangmen, sword-play and meditative sonnets, is there for the taking; and not until this week, when our play Shakespeare In Italy opens at the Holden Street Theatres, Hindmarsh, on Thursday at 8, has it been essayed.
Elements of his method are in Game of Thrones, Deadwood, Rome, Les Mis, Cloudstreet and The Sopranos, but the full Shakespearian weaponry, which Hamlet had, and Twelfth Night and King Lear, has not yet occupied for two hours in a live theatre an audience newly experiencing it.
This week will show I think that it can be done, and if two writers of Number 96 can do it, others can.
But this then raises the question of how good Shakespeare is. If Denny and I can do it, and the authors of Les Mis can presumably do it, and the adaptors of Nicholas Nickleby and Cloudstreet, is this awed worship and repeated production of the Stratford Man justified? Many more evenings are spent watching Shakespeare than watching, say, Nick Enright, whose talent was huge and in Cloudstreet, Country Music, Blackrock and Mongrels, comparable.
Should a new production of Troilus and Cressida go on instead of A Hard God or Too Young For Ghosts or Hotel Sorrento? Why?
Why, exactly, are we doing this? The myth of the unsurpassable Bard has overwhelmed all cultural sense, and in Melbourne Queen Lear is occurring instead of, say, Angels In America, a far greater experience and in my view a better play. Or Black Watch. Or Gatz.
It is said we stand on Shakespeare’s shoulders but he too stood in his time on greater shoulders — Malory, Tyndale, North’s Plutarch, Montaigne, Boccaccio — as our other evening of theatre, The Word Before Shakespeare, opening on August 28, likewise demonstrates. It is hard to find in Shakespeare a passage better than Sir Bors’ lament for Lancelot in Morte D’Arthur, or Tyndale’s lament for Jonathan in Tyndale’s Bible, or Lancelot Andrewe’s Ecclesiastes 12.
Worship of anyone is nearly always a silly option, and few who have sunk to their knees have done so to any good effect. Twelve of Shakespeare’s plays are very good, and about eight rubbish, and several comparable modern plays — The Crucible and Man For All Seasons, Paul, and Victory, are better than thirty-three of his, and Shakespeare In Love — and Shakespeare In Italy — at least as good as, well, Much Ado or Measure For Measure.
We should think on these things. It may be time for a Shakespeare Sabbatical, when for a year no Shakespeare plays are put on anywhere, and other writers in his style and his attempted grandeur given a go.
See Shakespeare In Italy and its Oscar-worthy performances, and see what you think.
Bookings at venue*tix. www.venuetix.com.au
Name:
If you could see your way Bob, I have a dozen to sixteen lines that I could set down and you could perhaps insert, I’m just checking if the words “Pussy Riot” had currency in 17th Century Italy.
A picture of one of the original Renaissance members of Pussy Riot can be seen at the following link:
http://www.artbible.info/art/large/782.html
The radically foreshortened gentleman is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
Excellent, I have superimposed vertical black stripe cell bars over the picture to give it a more contemporary feel Polybius, Cranach knew a thing or two.
You will be wondering why de Vere’s head had to be removed.
Apparently, his aristocratic bunghole was so clogged by the tangled and decomposing tongues of generations of Oxfordians, that Pussy Riot had no option but to slice off the head, reach down through the gullet and clear the blockage by hand.
A nasty business.
“Nasty business”? nah, it’s something even for the kiddies. That cheeky smile of PR’s is a good deed done grin.
set ‘em up allthumbs!
knock ‘em down Polybius!
Very funny stuff!
Looks a little like Julia Gillard, with Abbott on a bad day . . .
Angels in America Pt 1 is being revived in Melbourne from 17 August for two weeks at Chapel Off Chapel, Prahran, which doesn’t nullify your point by any means.
“ghosts, soliloquies. revenges etc. etc,” is all fine for those who look to theatre as an entertainment like a circus.
Shakespeare provides a few memorable words and phrases here and there.
They are what have travelled thru time and entrenched his name.
Some of the very best F.I.Kendall,
some of the very best.
To Untitled 1966 : I have just read your story/account from August 6.
I may have misread you; your story was compelling. Perhaps we can start again?
Life is too short to have enemies.
Well said, DQ.
Sebastien Haffner:”..the honour one does to an opponent by deigning to hate him.”
Well said, F.I. Kendall.
indeed. and welcome, most finally, to the club untitled.
i will take your coat.
would you care for a drink?
F.I. Kendall, your quote is a puzzle to me. I can’t settle on a meaning.
Help me.
Do you see it as beneath the dignity of Quixote to hate someone, in this case me?
Or do you see it as a general human principle; that hate is beneath us all?
Or do you see that Quixote and I, in terms of honour, stand on different platforms, each at its own elevation?
Or do you see that Quixote’s olive branch bestows an honour upon him thus far threatened or maligned by my antagonism or pugnacious temperament?
Or do you see that my honour is not a result of my words but from Quixote’s bestowal of hate?
Can you see my confusion?
Untitled, 1966: I admire your interpretations, and notice that confusion is evidently contagious, as I have caught it.
After posting, I did think that the quote was not particularly apt, in fact might be particularly inapt. What was in my mind was that where DougQ could have disagreed with you, he had evidently constructed a person from your words, whom he appeared to ferociously hate. Thereby he had elevated and honoured this illusion, this creation of his own imagination: (an action worthy of DonQ one might think.) He has now found that he was fighting a windmill. A cautionary tale, in fact.
In no way was any negative attitude to you intended, and I regret and reject that possible interpretation.
F.I.Kendall, thanks for that. I took no offense, I was just after clarification.
As for “cautionary tales” – there are many to be had here.
If its author really did put that much of a fright in you, then be sure to reconcile with Fedallah, Eleanor of Aquitaine, J.G Cole, Aint Misbehavin, et al, while you’re at it. Who else have I missed there, Amanda ?
And this coming from you?
You!?
You who has posted only 3 times on the blog ever and only then to provoke?!
Do you understand what you’ve just done?
You haven’t just engaged hypocrisy, you maggot of torn orifice and bowed hindquarters, you have bent over, greased up and taken it hard from behind!
Get the fuck out of my face!
Refrain from commenting as you previously undertook. Prove that you can.
If not, seek help.
“Undertook”?!
I undertook nothing to you!
But I will “undertake” this: if I see you, seek help.
Would that be art with a capital A or pathological narcissism with a capital PN? Trace files on your mainframe would suggest the latter.
Reader 1!!!!
Now you’ve gone and spoiled all of my fun!
Couldn’t you have stayed “literarydelusions” for just a bit longer?
Oh well…
I have never gone by another name once. I have never felt the need. And I am not a liar. None of this has to do with morality and principle, of course, it’s just my nature. I have a perfectly attuned brain chemistry in the same way I have perfectly straight teeth. I don’t know what it is to go through life with a hideously engorged amygdala in lieu of self awareness, but there you go. From my internet experience I can now observe psycho’s in the same way I might observe a sulfar-crested freckled robin. It just is, they just are. Identify the psychotic one percent, the eight or nine percent who are liable to being under their influence at any one time, and leave the rest to get on with the business of being human, or more precisely, animal.
You’re not Amazonia, are you? That would make a lot of sense.
Oh, and maybe literary delusions is Doug, did you ever think of that? Dumb arse.
Phew! You’re right I am so sensitive, I’m gonna get that seen to.
Reader, I’ve just picked myself up off of the floor to write this.
Please, tell me, please, how is it you can spot things that “just are”, that “just exist”, like that “sulfar crested freckled robin” of yours, and still ask whether I’m that sheep herder that intimidated you so easily???
And then to drop Quixote in it!!
With friends like you who needs……?
Oh dear me Reader,
I’m off to the loo, this could get messy!
Thank you, thank you soooo much!
I typed ‘Rolf Harris Hokey Pokey’ into youtube and this is what it gave me. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LOMsAs24co
As Helen Keller said, you feel it.
And you also notice how while trying to submit a brief comment, familiar faces keep crop up in ebulliant support one immediately after the other, so that you have to keep refreshing the page over and over in order to get your own comment through. Almost as if the messages are being typed concurrently by the one person, or else an uncanny coincidence of timing.
Ta Fedallah, you beat me to it!
Damn!
What the fuck is wrong with you??
What the fuck has happened to you??
Who have you missed?
Why you silly sausage, you’ve missed them all!!
Do you think that me signing my name “Amanda” after a post to allthumbs was a….”clue”!
A clue, Goddamnit!!
Whoa!
Slow down there Sherlock!
You’re way too quick for me.
Untitled 66 has you nailed. I could drive a bus through your hypocrisy.
Literarydelusions.
Nice name.
Is it yours?
I wonder – will Patrick Dignam appear to defend your Untitled avatar ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBVD4PjEUd0
and repeat, and repeat…
Patrick ?! Patrick Dignam?!?
Molly Bloom’s Patrick?
The Patrick that left you at the altar?
Oh dear, you are a bumbling Watson aren’t you?
I stand corrected: make that two buses.
Would you care to try for three?
Go on, you know you want to.
Well, you know I want you to.
To William, you are a gem!
That was hilarious and perfect.
Lean in and give me a peck on the cheek!
Doug Quixote, I’m going to reply to you now in the same spirit in which I imagine you wrote to me.
In order to answer your question I need to ask one of my own.
Be as honest as you can. I don’t care if it’s nasty, I just want it to be honest.
“I may have misread you”
Who/what did you think I was before you read that Aug 6 entry, and who do you think I am now?
What was the change?
Where did it occur?
I don’t care if you answer in one line or in 50. As long as it’s honest.
It looks like your fan club is on shift tonight – not F.I. or NEEllis, but the bystanders.
It’s a tricky business, isn’t it?
I was fascinated to read your account. I had dismissed you as a troll, based upon one or two comments, and it appears I was wrong in that.
As for who you really are, can any of us know who the person blogging/commenting actually is?
I am prepared to start afresh. Thank you for taking this in the spirit in which it was offered.
You have regularly dismissed her as insane, which the recent addition to her body of fiction only serves to prove. You are understandably anxious at the thought of actually encountering her at a performance of Shakespeare in Italy, which is primarily motivating your gesture. That much is transparent.
a gift horse my dear untitled for a most exemplary jockey.
do not squander it.
Of course.
Thanks for that.
Tell me about this maggot below.
literarydelusions, I mean.
a gift horse my dear untitled for a most exemplary jockey.
do not squander or fritter it away.
And who might you be, my little sweet fly, buzzing about, newly arrived, landing here, landing there?
What flavour’s are in you?
1000 apologies my dear untitled. i forgot to switch the lamp on!
there we are. i have been quite the absent minded one today
and of course it is just I, your humble servant. here, as i always am, to help you.
now. let me light the fire.
if it needs further tending in due course be sure to let me know.
You don’t happen to have by any chance, a hunchback and a gammy leg you have to drag behind you in the snow do you?
e.e. cummings?
Is that you?
chin chin!
Doug Quixote, you have surprised me.
Somnambulamp.
There was a platformed lamp in Somnambula, with a braided ivory stem on a base of sorts. They say that once it produced a brilliantly blinding light that coloured all and cast beautiful shadows that danced, but in modernity; it was only at night when its true form was visible. T’was a form that emerged from twilight, the end to a long drawn out renaissance, remembered daily on commutes between shifts and roles. To stand and see the passersby, queued and queuing to have a shot at pulling the sword from the rock; just flicking the switch; once, twice or repeatedly; just to be the one to make the bulb sing, was for me, a sight to behold. Watching the almost magnetically affected always produced in me a severe sense of wonderment. I would sit on the steps outside the cool old bank to sit and stare, often I would miss my train and sometimes, I will admit, when the queue was at its shortest, I might have been seen having a click or two of my own. T
hough, darkness was perpetual in its victory, laughing silently in the way that darkness does and for years the lamp stood; an ominous obelisk; and queues formed; rush hour was peak hour, until the day some genius invented the flicking switch watch. And so it went; the daily queue of switch flickers transformed into this incessant symphony of crickets. Why; I would never know but as the oceans rose, the crickets became more and more omniscient and the queues became shorter and shorter. I tried to get a photo of the lamp last week; a soldier stopped me with the butt of his death machine and reminded me of the war with the Illuminati.
“I see”, I said.
“NO, you don’t”, said the soldier, rifling though my memory card.
“See what”, I stated.
“Exactly”, he confirmed, handing back the camera and nodding distinctly in the direction of the course that I had taken.
I slinked away with the image of the deranged moth emblazoned on the soldier’s sleeve concreted in my mind and thanked my lucky stars for the fifteen extra seconds I resisted the urge to click.
and then rued for hours the bad grammar. Oh well
Break a leg Bob.
Here’s one for you Bob, better than Shakespeare, in 1977 or 78 I saw Steven Berkoff’s “East”. That opened my eyes, as to the possibilities of Theatre. Les’ “cunt speech” outdoes 85% of Shakespeare’s soliloquies.
It looks like “Shakespeare in Italy” is going to require a massive security presence. I might hold out for the dvd and instead attend the opening night of “LBJ – Blood on his Hands”. I would especially like to see Nicholas Hope in the role of William Soil, Judy Prisk’s main love interest. Initially a subsidiary character, the attractive and business-like Judy Prisk joins the mafia out of frustration born of her unrequited love for the burly sailor. Then one day, LBJ shows up to the mafia HQ in New Orleans to give a talk on whether or not information can ever be destroyed on a theoretical physical level and how this relates to event horizons. LBJ also touches on how what is often swept up under the term “violence” is not just a crucial part of being, but is that very being. “To deny what you loosely tag violence is to deny life itself”, he says. The mafia dons demand their speaker’s fee back but Judy Prisk is intrigued. Intrigued, a little aroused and later on… obsessed.
Where did you get the event horizon from? Have you hacked my computer? Did I post something about a naked man covered in Vaseline mounting a bull?
‘The bull strides to event horizon.
Crossing the pool table, into the corner pocket’
ASIOSHENANIGANS.
Yes Reader1, I have noticed “ebullient support” – I just wish you and literarydelusions would stop it!
I mean, I just wish that you would stop “typing concurrently”.
It’s my turn now Fedallah to use that bathroom – it’s not “observe” anymore, it’s now “feel”!
I know, I know, she pulled out the blind woman to move the goalposts. She couldn’t push them herself but dragged a blind and deaf woman now some 40 odd years in the grave to do her dirty work.
Nice move Reader,
Nice move you fucking caricature!
Fedallah – bring the fleet of buses!
We drivin’ through this sombitch!
By god you’re pathetic. We know each and everyone of these pseudos is you, you fucking whack job. If you’re going to pretend to be more than one person, at least strive be good at it. Pucker up, Doug – that’s a lot of arse for you to kiss. Hope the play washes that taste of crazy out of your mouth.
Dear Typing Concurrently,
What happened to you?
What in God’s name happened to you?
You were once my Cafe Girl – Gina McKee, form Leigh’s “Naked”.
Now, now you’re just Sophie.
Sincerely,
I don’t lie, I am not a liar, I have no history of lying. It is very much Amazonia’s metier to accuse me of such, though.
You are missing the crucial factor entirely. The bulk of understanding comes out of feeling. It can’t be manufactured. You cleave so devotedly to these ineffable but oft-cited principles because you are mimicking others in their passions and commitments but you don’t actually feel what is the authentic basis of these things. You assume your self-interested conviction like a disposable poncho, it never ventures beyond defense and aggrandisement despite the proclaimed gravitas. There is no giant moral textbook in the sky to which you only have to refer in order to win an argument. It is not a competition as to who tries the hardest and ticks off the most principled ethics boxes, while hopefully elbowing others off further down the scale in a great cosmic roller derby. Values are supposed to come out of yourself, they are supposed to be alive and they are supposed to be unique. They are there to facilitate the functional capabilities of their host. Others don’t exist purely to suit your agenda. But what am I saying. Remember who I’m talking to. There is no getting through to someone with no reason at their core.
Well put, R1. Understanding does indeed arise from the bed of feeling, and other components of the neural stew such as knowledge and opinion are shadow players by contrast. A man with knowledge but lacking the full bloom of feeling-based understanding is an incomplete being. Sort of a fate worse than death in a certain way, because we can go through our whole life unaware that the element of understanding is missing from our repertoire.
Damn you and your senseless fumblings Reader1 – each bloody sentence a meaningless singularity.
You don’t “feel” Reader, you squash “feeling” pancake flat; you pulverize it under the weight of your cultural studies trash talk; all contemporary references, 1 liners when 5 are needed, mish mash strung together by a mind too old for texting and twitter but in a desperate hurry to catch up to what has already past.
Where did you learn to write where every sentence is either an assumption or so full of Self that it has no meaning to the recipient??
Where did you learn that??
Every fucking sentence!
I’ve moved from a world where language was “action”; where it was constructed from things that actually meant something, like effect and affect, pain, consequence, loyalty, honour and truth, to a world where language was was built on abstraction, polemic and rhetoric. It’s this world that your soulless words come from – they are just the clothes, ill-fitting and shabby, there’s no life there, no meaning, no correlation, they don’t wrap any pulsing body, there’s no heart pumping, no blood coursing, no nerves tingling. Nothing.
Do you really presume, I mean really believe, that any of what you’ve written speaks to me, about me, about my life???
Do you? Does your absurdity stretch that far??
I’ve spent enough time in that latter world I mentioned above but it was the former one that held the true meaning of language, not as some side alley game of semantics, rhetoric, structuralism, deconstruction or any other strategy your first year cultural studies course cares to throw at me.
I learnt more,and gave more, “truth” as a young man than your precious Foucault’s gave in their entire careers.
They could speak, reason, and communicate at a solely abstract level.
We could not.
Their lives intersect and trade in contradictions that carry no consequence.
We never had that luxury.
Nothing was without consequence.
I’ve seen things that would freeze your blood.
I’ve done things that can only be done when you stand on the razor blade, when you know that any sudden movement or whimsy of an atom will be enough to send you through some unknown portal.
Don’t speak to me of feeling, passions, commitments and values.
To you they’re just words, clumsily thrown together, a false register of ‘substance’, a pretense of signification, an ersatz Force.
But to me they are lives and experiences.
Don’t ever speak to me of these things again.
Don’t dilute them in your 1st year word salad again.
Damn you and your poseur speak!
Don’t fucking point it in my direction again!
Do we understand each other?
Good on you, champ. That’s great.
When spitting turns to drool.
Of course mention of spitting will always conjure an association with violence, whereas drooling seems to invoke a sense of helplessness (As a fuck is to say, a wank). All humour aside, I’m just trying to say that I’m not drooling, I’m trying to spit. I’m only human. There is a finite amount of blind china-men that one can handle if one is situated in a dark corridor without walls and asked to grope a way out of the corridor. In the end no matter how dignified we may hope to end up, dying is a downer and we all descend; swearing, spitting and shitting.
Point being, I don’t know why I am so kind ( I mean so selfish reader, so utterly contemptible), as if the foot was in the other shoe we would be reduced to opportunist mice sleeping with one eye open, scurrying through closing gaps always, chasing the whiff of some morsel or another; however imagined. Spitting gives release, like swearing it provides a ticket to tolerance; a token to prolonged endurance and perhaps, I do enjoy boasting. Drooling will only come to one’s attention when its receptacle has reached its peak capacity; usually resulting in cold shoulders and saliva pools. I’ve seen this happen to entire institutions, the whole place turns into cold shoulders and everyone’s mouth juice ends up entrapping itself into an immense indecipherable slush of no more consequence than several mingled farts in the dark, spilling over.