Quick Notes on Shakespeare and (Re)interpretations

A few thoughts I had on rewatching the famed dramaturge. These aren't Cliff Notes, but maybe there's an idea for an essay in here.

MacBeth

I looked up Lady MacBeth to find an actress and got "Movies about marriage." Hmm. I don't recall the MacBeths being marriage role models. They are very devoted to each other in terms of their careers.

Strangely, I have always loved and hated MacBeth. So many wonderful things marred by the MacBeths' too quick surrender to insanity.

King Henry V

• Great lines
• moving and intriguingly devised scenes (king moves disguised to hear what his troops think)
• yet an amazingly dull play. That doesn't seem possible, but it is so. Seems likely a large-scale structural issue. Basically a guy goes to war and wins. Hmm.
• There's a "meta" frame story where it talks about itself as a play. Methinks this is merely to set the stage. I don't see how it adds to the story to talk about itself as a play. Change my mind.
• You can woo a stranger to marry within a day? Maybe it helps if you're a conquering king

Much Ado about Nothing

• Fantastically well constructed
• Re: the Title few today would find the lack of virginity an impediment (although the night before a marriage is poor timing), but really, even just a 100 years ago, wouldn't it have been an impediment still for many?
• As such, with changing mores, will this story be outdated one day soon? viewers unable to connect?

Taming the Shrew 

Shakespeare isn't progressive and no progressive should read him. Clearly he should be kicked out of the cannon. He writes about the 1% and favors the subjugation of women. Fie on him! Hopefully, word about this criminal will spread so we can stop reading him and watching this no-talent word-smythe.

I suspect he isn't racist although it's hard to say. He often sets plays in different countries and not as a mockery.

Where do people in England come from when they pronounce "nothing" as "nuffin"? They are exceedingly difficult to understand. I canna unnerstan nuffin dey say. We non-Englanders need translators.

Cymbeline

A tragedy where the main characters don't die? Maybe Shakespeare was rebelling against form. Nice change. Surely, I read it before as I thought I'd read all of Shakespeare's tragedies. Surely, I'd seen the movie as well. Somehow I didn't remember them.

Good line: "Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered."

The movie takes liberties. One line I misheard at first was "Of God we ask one favor that we may be forgiven from what we presumed to know," which fits the movie. The line is actually Emily Dickinson's, which fits her poem better than Shakespeare. I have no idea why it's in the movie as it doesn't seem to be questioning God as Dickinson is. Here's Dickinson's poem:

Of God we ask one favor,
That we may be forgiven --
For what, he is presumed to know --
The Crime, from us, is hidden --
Immured the whole of Life
Within a magic Prison
We reprimand the Happiness
That too competes with Heaven.

Hamlet

One thing I didn't remember was that Hamlet didn't want his uncle to go to heaven, so he waited to kill him. It seems strange to ponder. Today people want to kill people in church. Does that send them to heaven? Is the murderer trying to do the victims a favor, or does that make today's murderers nonbelievers? On the other hand, how strange to think that if we die one moment one might make it to heaven and in another moment, not. Actually, I don't think most believers think that, do they?

Maybe I read this passage and didn't fully understand what the big deal was--just Hamlet being wishy-washy about whether he was going to do it or not. Fascinating quandary though. I can't recall a similar concern in the literary arts.

Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead  (Tom Stoppard)

Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead is so closely related to Hamlet that I think you'd have to watch the latter then the former. In fact, to be played well, you'd have to have Hamlet actors who'd just done Hamlet do Stoppard's RAGAD for it to feel the most natural since there'd be a tendency to play the characters as if the formerly primary characters as if they were secondary, but they can't be if we are to intrude upon Rose and Guild in the Hamlet play as they do. I expected to love Stoppard's play more than I did. But there are some good lines. My favorite is this:

"There must have been a moment at the beginning where we could have said no. But somehow we missed it."