Eccentric Flower:199903/shakespeare soup part one
From Eccentric Flower
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sixteen march shakespeare soup (part one) Gee, tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, isn't it? If Clio gets off her Grecian rear and writes the "Three Minor Saints" article tonight, it'll actually be semi-timely. I don't know if that's permitted. I didn't sleep well again last night - or, to be more precise, I slept well enough, but I did it from four to ten a.m., which is the wrong way to do it. Whilst staring at the darkened ceiling, one of the many threads running through my mind had to do with Shakespeare's plays. Dear Aussie sent my classics rant to a relation of hers who knows a great deal about such things. Said relation quickly picked up that I'm greatly opinionated - I enter no plea on that one! She also pointed out (in response to my disdain for certain Shakespeare plays) that if one is to love Shakespeare, one should not read the plays first - one should see them. That they are meant to be performed. I'm willing to give this idea a chance. I have never seen the history plays performed. Nonelvis has been trying to get me to see the Ian McKellen version where the settings are done so as to cast a dictatorial layer of meaning over the words - see, I can't even remember which king it is. And therein lies the rub. Although, as I say, I am willing to give this approach a try, the larger problem is that before Henry VIII, the British succession just does not interest me. (Yes, me, the history advocate - we all have our weaknesses, right?) Around Henry's time this interesting religion thing comes in - Henry goes Catholic, then Elizabeth takes the throne and the Protestants win for a while, starting a trend which eventually ends with Cromwell, who is so little fun that the citizens eventually ditch that too. And Elizabeth is one of the most interesting historical characters around. (Elizabeth and Victoria both fascinate me because they are two monarchs who, for all outward appearances, gave up sex for the vast majority of their reign. Did they really? Why would they do something horrid like that? If this were on mouth organ, I'd get nasty letters from the celibacy camp for suggesting that celibacy is unnatural, so I'll drop it there. I will say that one reason Cate Blanchett's portrayal worked is that she's enough of an ice queen to make this idea believable. If her older near-lookalike Tilda Swinton had played the part, you'd think Elizabeth was having all kinds of sex on the sly until the end of her days. Maybe she was. History loves enigmas.) Anyway: The truth of the matter is that I abandoned the history plays early on and have never really given them a fair shake. If I can make another attempt at Moby Dick (Nonelvis still thinks I'm insane), then I can try the histories again. I'm sure I can find a version of each of them on film somewhere that doesn't have either Kenneth Branagh or Lawrence Olivier. (What is it about Shakespeare that attracts men with bloated egos?) I got an interesting email this morning about my Shakespeare comments, by the by, from someone new to these pages. There's a point in it that I want to discuss, because it overlaps with something else that occurred to me last night. But this version of Netscape is the one that sometimes eats long postcards, so I'm going to split this in two. I offer the "next" link for your viewing convenience.
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