Happy July everyone! The days are getting hotter for me and places with air conditioning are very appealing. So is staying inside and reading, but I’m much too busy for that. I’ve noticed that I haven’t been setting enough time aside to post here as often as I’d like so I’ll try to be more diligent about that and keep you entertained at least every couple days. In this fourth edition of the Blog Carnival there are a few posts that I will be sharing with you that will hopefully educate or entertain you in some fashion. So here it is!

nandita shares the post, Justice, Scalia and The Merchant of Venice. It’s a law blog (say that 5 times fast) but it ties it in to certain legal actions taken in one of Shakespeare’s plays. Think about the questions it raises. Discussion welcome in the comments.

Hannah discusses some interesting casting decisions in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in her blog post, When I a Fat and Bean-Fed Horse Beguile.

Did Shakespeare’s plays originally use horses on stage? Craig Bryant explores the possibility in “A horse! A horse! My kingdom…”. Who knows for sure? It may have been a big crowd pleaser to ride through the groundlings…

Duane Morin wonders What Exactly Is A Collier?. This simple question sparks an interesting discussion on Shakespeare bawdy wordplay and intentions.

That concludes this edition. Stay tuned for more Bardy Bawdy fun here and elsewhere in the ShakesBlogosphere. And now Feste the clown will wrap it up with a [slightly edited] song…
A great while ago this post began
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one — the carnival’s done;
And we’ll strive to please you every day.

William Shakespeare is quite possibly the most quoted author on the subjects of love, life, death, words of wisdom, and clever insults. When naming a baby, a new product, a group, or other we may hear Juliet’s words, “What’s in a name?” And perhaps later in the evening, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” When washing my clothes you may hear me say “Out, damned spot!” and in reply to when I’ll take out the garbage: “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.”

Some phrases have found their way into our every day lives; more importantly, some have found their way into our hearts. When reading a work of the Bard it isn’t too difficult to find a line or short passage that has immense meaning to you at that moment in your life. Maybe it expresses the way you are feeling or is very good advice for something pertinent in your life.

Now it’s time for show and tell! What are those phrases you use regularly (and for what?) and are there any passages that you have found apply directly to your life now, or maybe some that you connected with some time ago?

One that seems to keep me semi-optimistic through life (especially in hellish situations) is “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” - Hamlet (II.ii). And Feste’s words in Twelfth Night seem to ring true for the way I am in public… “Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.” I think of more soon to post in the comments…

Now it’s your turn!

I just had to post this. If you haven’t seen this before, shame on you. If you have, it’s time to see it again.

I really enjoy all the singing that Shakespeare writes into so many of his plays. It can do so much for a production: Give time for a costume change, give an audience a break from so much speaking they might not understand, lets an actor or two show off their musical skills, maybe even allows an audience to connect more to the current action. Music has a way of affecting people in some cases that words alone just can’t.

The Willow song in the Emilia/Desdemona scene near the end of Othello has such gravity to it. Most of us know what’s going to happen to Desdemona and hearing this words with mellow music could provide a very cathartic experience.

The songs in As You Like It can easily transport us away from the court to the more relaxed, more harmonious Forest of Arden. Feste’s songs in Twelfth Night have the potential to be very entertaining as well as moving. Orsino seems to be deeply moved by a song he sings. Folk songs are sung by very merry (or drunk) characters, just like merry (or drunk) people in real life do of course.

Some of the music of these songs still exist — a few were actual popular songs from Shakespeare’s day. In performance however, most theatre’s don’t search for the original tune. It usually doesn’t fit their concept. In fact, many directors will cut songs out of the plays. Saving time is always an issue when producing one of these works, but so much can be lost when cutting a song. It’d be much better to cut out a passage of banter with humor or very old references that no one will understand than to cut something that could be much more entertaining.

When a production chooses to keep the songs and has some really good music to accompany the words, the effect can be really fun. Even magical. The inverse is also true. Really bad music or a horrible singer can really kill the moment. Who wants to listen to Titania being sung to sleep with a song and a voice that would make the dogs of the neighborhood howl?

The music is another wonderful piece of the wonder of Shakespearean performance. Music is another element that can be different in every production of a play. Composers will always be able to come up with new music to go with the words and fit the play’s concept - just as new actors and new directors will continuously be able to bring their own unique work to Shakespeare’s text.

Play on, give me excess of it…

I’m currently involved in a production of Twelfth Night, not too far into rehearsals. During a recent discussion of the text involving the director the question of “who is protagonist and the antagonist” was raised. There didn’t seem to be a happy answer. Before the conversation took a turn to something else, the last view that was pressed upon us was that Viola was the protagonist, and Malvolio (although he does not strongly hold this position) is the antagonist.

Malvolio is really less a part of Viola’s story and more a strong figure in the sub plot involving Maria, Toby, Andrew, etc. who play a really nasty trick on Malvolio. I heard some interesting thoughts on who Viola’s real antagonist is… what are your thoughts?

A few of us could have kept the discussion going for quite some time, but we had things to do. We also compared the characters to Commedia dell’Arte stock characters, which is somewhat part of the concept. I was having trouble with a lot of what was going on…

Shakespeare’s characters and stories are not simple. They usually don’t have one easy plot with a clear single protagonist and antagonist. These are not stock characters. Some fall into categories nicely while others are a little harder to pin down.

You might think this is all obvious but I think it’s something that shouldn’t be taken for granted. As I re-examine the primary and secondary plots in the plays and think about the complex characters it’s all rather exciting, wouldn’t you agree? Clean cut and simple can be boring sometimes. The Bard gives us many complex stories with twists and turns with plenty of ambiguity… but the possibilities created from the unanswered questions are what keeps the plays alive. New works of art are created every day that use one of Will’s scripts. It’s truly awesome.

In case you were wondering what my involvement with this production is (and I know you’re so curious about my activities): I’m playing Feste, the clown. I need to brush up on my juggling skills.

To use a comma, or not to use a comma? That is the question editors of Mr. Shakespeare’s text must answer many, many times while working. A similar question may occur for periods, semi-colons, question marks, and exclamation points as well.

For those who don’t already know, the edition of a play that you pick up at your local bookstore does not reflect the punctuation that Shakespeare wrote. If you compare editions you will find that they are punctuated differently, some might look nothing alike; they could even create different meanings.

To students new to Renaissance texts this might seem rather odd. “What’s wrong with the punctuation Shakespeare wrote?” The answer depends on who you ask. One issue is that the surviving texts we have today in the form of Folios and Quartos may not necessarily reflect the punctuation Shakespeare wrote, but rather what the typesetter thought was best. So scholars sometimes try to “correct” the texts to make them as Shakespeare intended. A bigger reason is that the punctuation isn’t really how we normally have it in modern times. Capitalization was even different on a few words that aren’t at the beginning of a line or sentece. What’s all that about?

Scholars take it upon themselves to re-punctuate the text in order to make it comprehendible to the reader of their edition… to create a more familiar format of text.

That may be well and good for the English student, but what about the actor? Are the editors helping thespians too? Let’s explore that, shall we?

On numerous occasions I have been reading an edition of one of Shakespeare’s plays and come across an unfamiliar word. I find the corresponding footnote, and lo and behold! the unfamiliar word is defined with an other unfamiliar, albeit more modern, word. If I didn’t have internet access or my healthy library of research materials on my bookshelf I would be very very very peeved. With all the aforementioned at my disposal, I usually am only just peeved.

All of the “standard” editions of Shakespeare (Arden, Penguin, etc) have a few of these in there. I should call them scholarly editions. There is another type of Shakespeare edition out there where this does not occur. I call these the “for dummies” editions. But these editions attempt to translate Shakespeare’s words, and I have already discussed how I feel about that. One of the problems with this type of editions is that Shakespeare seems inaccessible without of one these editions. To the student (or perhaps the average adult) who picks up a scholarly edition may find Shakespeare completely inaccessible and the book they have may not help at all. Some of them are packed so full of definitions that one can easily read the definition of every word and not understand the story at all. So the published edition may be partly to blame for the common assumption that Shakespeare is only accessible to the intellectual snob. If you had little to no Shakespeare experience wouldn’t you be frustrated too? Maybe give up halfway and read the sparknotes summary and try your luck on the quiz at school, if you happen to still be in school.

So where is the marriage between the intellectual and the creative parts of the Shakespeare’s plays? I don’t really have a good answer for that. It seems to be a zig-zag or roundabout way to find it — and it’s unique to every person I’ve talked to — and some do give up along the way before getting too far. If you’re reading this and have any recommendations please share. I’d love to let the masses know, “This is what you need to read,” and end the Bardophobic pandemic.

I’m almost inspired to create my own edition of a Shakespeare play to see if I can do a good one. One that is readable by the young student, actor, and “smartie.” Might be fun! I’ll find the time some day… some year.

Happy June, everyone! The month of May brought in quite a few interesting posts from around the ShakesBlogosphere. Not many of them were on this blog; a lack of internet prevented me from posting too often (that horribly problem has been corrected, thank goodness). And there are lots of posts elsewhere that were not submitted to me, so feel free to follow links everywhere you find something Shakespeare related. And without further ado about nothing… the blog carnival begins!

In the post, SHAKESPEARE IS IN DA HOUSE! about Martin Baum’s book, To Be or Not to Be, Innit, A Yoof-Speak Guide to Shakespeare, Naomi shares her thoughts about this satirical “translation” of some of Shakespeare’s plays into modern slang.

Craig Bryant shows us that something wicked this way comes in the post By the pricking of my thumbs… His blog is mainly about Thomas Middleton, but Middleton happened to edit Macbeth so, as he said, that makes this post “fair game” for this carnival.

Duane “Shakespeare Geek” Morin presents an interesting bit (and comments) about interpretation of Shakespeare’s text and the different words used in different versions. The post is When I Shall Die? When *I* Shall Die? Duane says, “I liked this post because the conversation made the leap from Shakespeare on film (Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet) to choices in interpreting the text, and even motivated me to go start doing side by side comparisons of the speech in question, Folio v. Quarto. Always good to learn new things!”

Stephen Evans, uthor of the comic novel The Marriage of True Minds, has a short post on Directing Shakespeare. It’s very brief but still gives some good advice. I might expand upon these ideas sometime soon.

That concludes this edition! Remember to submit your blog article to the next edition of shakespeare blog carnival using our carnival submission form. I’d like to include more posts in the future, but I won’t unless you submit them! Speaking of submissions, I’ll be updating the rules slightly of what I will include. I’m changing the rule from “Shakespeare related” to “about Shakespeare.” I don’t want to link to a post that’s about something of a different genre entirely but happens to include a Shakespearean quote that sort of applies, or just a post of some of Shakespeare’s text without any comments. Past posts and the submission guidelines can be found on the blog carnival page. Submit those posts! Let’s have a big one next month.

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