Shakespearean Selfies, part 1

Oh, if only they had had Instagram back in Shakespeare's day.  

Hamlet: Dramatis Personae

I put this together ahead of a planned project to render the entirety of Hamlet  (or at least an extremely distilled entirety) in stick-figure form. It's a handy-dandy reference guide to all the characters in Hamlet , including the ones nobody remembers. Nobody ever remembers Voltemand and Cornelius. Cornelius doesn't even have a line of his own - he just says "In that and all things will we show our duty" along with Voletmand. Voltemand has all the longer solo bits about Norway. Poor Cornelius.

Lobster Shakespeare, part 1

This is labeled "part 1" because I cannot help but think that there will be a sequel at some point in time. Sometimes I worry about me.

Shakespeare's Spooks

Poor old Banquo. He gets killed, comes back as a ghost, and doesn't even get to say anything spectral. He just sits there at the table, shaking his gory locks. (Pardon the pun - I could never resist a bad pun.)

Anyways, happy Halloween! Curl up on the couch with a bowl of candy and watch some Macbeth. 

Jon Finch's Macbeth

Ian McKellen's Macbeth

Patrick Stewart's Macbeth

Not Quite Normal

I saw the National Theater not-quite-Live broadcast of Kenneth Branagh's Macbeth  last night, and realized that, for some unfathomable reason, when I think "three witches in Macbeth", the first line that pops into my head isn't any of the good ones that rhyme or sound awesomely spooky; it's this stupid line in 1.3 where the first witch is telling the others how she tried to bum some chestnuts of some woman, who told her to get lost. My only explanation is that I must have really liked the sound of the word "aroint" when I first heard it, and it stuck in my brain. Try it! Arooooooint aroint aroint aroint aroint.

Anyways, I enjoyed Branagh's Macbeth  a lot, even though they cut the whole "aroint" bit. The staging (basically involving people churning through a long pit of mud running down the nave of a deconsecrated church) was really fun to watch, and the performances of Branagh and Alex Kingston as Lady Macbeth, while not as bone-chilling as those of other filmed Macbeths, were very engaging in their vulnerability and brittleness.

Happy St. Crispin's Day!

It's October 25th, which means it's the feast day of Saints Crispin and Cripsian, and, more importantly, the 598th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, the thrilling set-piece around which Shakespeare's Henry V  is constructed. Of course, today St. Crispin's Day is mostly remembered for the famous speech Shakespeare gives Henry in order to inspire his bedraggled troops before the great battle begins. It goes something like this:

For some proper Crispin's Day speeches, check out the following: 

Laurence Olivier (Film, 1944)

Richard Burton (1951)

Mark Rylance (Globe Theater, 1997)

Jamie Parker (Globe Theater, 2012)

Kenneth Branagh (Film, 1989)

Hm. Can't seem to find a clip of Tom Hiddleston's version from the recent Hollow Crown  series. If anyone finds it, drop me a comment and I'll put it up. 

 Edit:  Some Hiddleston, courtesy of vigilant readers! Not the complete speech, sadly, but better than nothing!

Tom Hiddlestone (The Hollow Crown, 2012)

Expensive Educations

I am probably being slightly unfair to Fellowes. I have not yet seen his new Romeo and Juliet , but he has reportedly taken pains to preserve the most quotable lines, so Juliet apparently does say "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" and not the more comprehensible "Why are you Romeo?" However, the great remainder of less-quotable lines appear to have been twisted out of all recognizable shape, and the overall implications of Fellowes's flippant remarks are a bit distressing.

Far be it from me to claim that Shakespeare's 400-year-old language is easy to understand. It's not. However, the language barrier isn't nearly as substantial as certain expensively educated people might think. Take a ten-year-old kid to a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream  and she'll be able to tell you exactly what is going on, even if she thinks an eglantine is a sort of pastry. Anyone can appreciate Shakespeare. The language may seem foreign at first, but the story, the characters and - crucially - the way everything comes together in performance make it comprehensible. 

I am of the opinion that adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, even apparent hatchet-jobs such as Fellowes's (and an upcoming biker-gang-themed take on Cymbeline, the premise of which has left me entirely baffled) should be embraced and encouraged. The Globe's education advisor, Fiona Banks, summed it up nicely when she said that "[adaptations] have the potential to help us re-imagine and re-discover a wealth of wonderful literature. But they are not a prerequisite for their enjoyment by the non-Oxbridge educated members of the population."

The figo for thy expensive education, Mr. Fellowes.