The sun is danger and invective. The moon is hope and narcissism. We turn our eyes to the moon, and we see a man staring back; we turn our heads to the sun and are blinded by the daring. The moon soothes. The sun punishes. The moon beams and becomes us. The sun burns and loathes us. We have dipped a human toe in moon dust. We have now, finally, eyed the fiery sun, up close, but through a glass darkly.
We live in The Age of Ophelia and of the sticky transom, and neither of those things are good, or worthy, when day is done. Ophelia is one of the most insipidly sad characters in all of Shakespeare’s greatest works — and in Hamlet, she not only dies a coward’s death — she also deeply burns disappointment into every reader of the play and observer of her character in performance.
Continue reading → The Age of Ophelia and the Sticky Transom
The “Rude Mechanicals” play a major role in Shakespeare’s beloved A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
I think we’re on pretty safe ground in saying that the only purpose the Rude Mechanicals serve is a comedic one. The question is what kind of humour is being elicited, and is it possible for us to ‘get’ all of the comedy of the play today?
Well, some of it’s plain and ageless enough: Their repeated oxymorons, “most lamentable comedy”; Bottom’s diva-like behaviour, “That will ask some tears in the true performing of it”; and the complete hash that is the product of their attempts at amateur dramatics.
Today, I argue we have a whole new class of “Rude Mechanicals” in real society — but they’re Millennials, not Mechanicals — and they’re new, and rude, and play the same role in the drama of our lives as the Shakespearean mechs before them.
Ask a random current student if he or she has read something by William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, or Mark Twain, and the answer will almost certainly be a yes— whether that “yes” is voiced with fondness, indifference, or bitterness. Ask that student’s parents or grandparents the same question, and despite generational gaps, the answer likely will not change.
Continue reading → Does the Western Literary Canon Need Fewer White Men?
The good name of Shakespeare has suffered through numerous slings and arrows over the years. He has been accused of anti-Semitism through the various interpretations of his play The Merchant of Venice. Then there is the actual authorship itself — was it Shakespeare’s hand that wrote all of the plays and sonnets, or were there multiple writers that wrote under the common name of Shakespeare — or was it all Sir Francis Bacon? Some would even point to poor quality interpretations of his works as being grave insults themselves — Gnomeo and Juliet, anyone?
Continue reading → Did Shakespeare Smoke Pot? Does it Matter?
We all work to try to keep out brains alive through our eyes, and there’s a new way of creating fresh pathways of understanding — and it is delivered to us from afar via our old friend, William Shakespeare using language and “Functional Shifts” found in his plays.
Let us consider the following scenario. Next week, after hundreds of years of relative easy rest, William Shakespeare’s good name is disturbed when someone discovers that he spent much of his life sleeping with married women and occasionally burning down the homes of the men whose wives he wished to bed. Do we need to really ask what sort of impact this would have on our perception of the works of Shakespeare? Would people stop producing the plays or going to productions of the plays?
Continue reading → The Personal Lives of Celebrities Must Not Detract From their Artistry
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