Book Recommendation: Reduced Shakespeare by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor

It is summer and I finally get a chance to read for pleasure. So what do I do? Buy another book about Shakespeare, of course. But not just any Shakespeare book, but Reduced Shakespeare, by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, heads of the Reduced Shakespeare Company.

Everyone knows and loves the Reduced Shakespeare Company, creators of the The Compleat Wrks of Wlm Shkspr (abridged). Having skewered Shakespearean performance, they now set their sights on Shakespearean scholarship with this. The book's thesis is explained in this quote from the book jacket:

So what do you need to know about Shakespeare? Just this: The entire Shakespeare industry consists of people simply guessing about who Shakespeare was and what he wrote. Not knowing much about Shakespeare’s life hasn’t stopped everyone from cashing in, filling in the blanks with scholarly supposition when they can, and simply making it up when they can’t. It’s a shocking record, and we’re proud to be part of it.

While they destroy the Greenblattian school of Shakespearean biography and criticism with their typical style, they also cut through the bardolatry to provide a good deal of information, both on the plays and the biography (having hashed through the biographical details, they sum up Shakespeare's three primary preoccupations as "money, social standing, and money"). They also skewer bardolatry in their criticism of the plays. Explaining that some critics interpret Kate's speech at the end of the extremely misogynistic Taming of the Shrew as ironic, they ask, in an "Essay Question", "How much in denial are they?"

For all of their humor, anyone who has seen an RSC production know that they are seriously in love with the theatre, and the chapters on Shakespeare in performance are more serious (relatively speaking). The book's best chapter is the overview of Shakespearean films. It is in fact one of the best run-downs of Shakespearean film available for the casual viewer. Going play by play, they review and rate all of the classics, and also give serious consideration to offshoots ranging from 10 Things I Hate About You to Vincent Price's Theatre of Blood. If you are a Shakespeare fan looking for a rental, it's the best guide you can buy.

Shakespeare Illustrated: From 19th-Century England to 22nd-Century Tokyo

Another Kismet moment: Killing time in the bookstore today, I came across one of those ideas that is both surprising and inevitable: Manga Shakespeare. Needless to say, I snapped up copies of both volumes, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Then, after having already finished the R&J volume, I am checking in at The Valve and discover a link to this site.

Let's talk about the Manga Shakespeare first. One one level, this is just an update of the old Classics Illustrated comic books from the '50s. However, it has the potential, at least in theory, to be something much better. When the Classics Illustrated books were published, no one, including the people producing them, considered comic books a legitimate art form. Classics Illustrated was a form of atonement for their usual corrupting of young minds. Today, of course, the "graphic novel" has taken on respectability, and the rise of Japanese manga was largely responsible for this.

Manga Shakespeare is not true manga in a strict sense. The line is produced by a British press and illustrated by English artists working in the manga style. Both volumes take what could be called the "Luhrman approach", using Shakespeare's original text (albeit heavily edited to fit in the word balloons) but setting the story in a hip, modern context. The R&J volume, in fact, should probaby pay some type of royalty to Luhrman. Set in modern Japan, it takes much of its updates straight from Luhrman's film: the Capulets and Montagues are rival crime families (since it is set in Tokyo, they are yakuza), Escalus is a police captain, and Paris is a successful business man. According to the Dramatis Personae, Romeo is also a rock star and Juliet is Sibuya girl, but we see no evidence of this in the actual story.

Manga Hamlet, meanwhile, owes a debt to The Matrix, as it is set in 2107 in a cyberworld created after the environmental destruction of earth. Again, this is all told in the extra-textual prologue and Dramatis Personae and does not have any bearing on the story. In the end, both volumes are not masterpieces of either Manga or Shakespearean adaptation, but they do find a connection between manga's frequent tales of youthful alienation and Shakespeare's moody young protagonists. Having exhausted the two stories that most lend themselves to the Manga form, it will be interesting to see where they go from here. Though this seems to be a PG-version of Manga intended to be an educational tool for teenagers, it would be interesting to see what a true Manga artist could do with something like Titus Andronicus.

After reading these books, it was great to come across the Shakespeare Illustrated website and ponder where they fit in the long history of illustrating Shakespeare. Perusing the images after having recently reread a large selection of the plays, one is struck once again by how much of what we know as "Shakespeare" is not in Shakespeare. Theatre is an inherently visual medium, and Shakespeare left so much of that visual information up to our imaginations that the work of artists and directors in shaping what we know of the plays has been such an integral part of keeping the works alive as living things. That is why I am always excited by projects like Manga Shakespeare, even when they are not masterpieces. They are all a part of the great tradition and cultural conversation.

Stage 5

Sorry to keep harping on Titus, but he just seems to keep popping up, so I'm going to give him the floor to kick off this week's discussion of The Sopranos:

A better head her glorious body fits
Than his that shakes for age and feebleness.
(T.A., 1.1.190-191)

Mafia dons, both the real ones and the much more interesting fictional ones, have long liked to link themselves with their Roman ancestors, none more so than History Channel fan Tony Soprano, who once used the reign of Augustus to attempt to tutor Uncle Junior on being a benevolent dictator. And as The Sopranos winds down, it appears that Tony and his colleagues are learning the lesson of their fictional ancestor Titus.

In declining to be named Emperor, Titus argues that he is an old man, soon to die, which would only lead to them having to find a new emperor sooner rather than later. He is man that has achieved success through brute force and physical strength. He has survived 40 years on the battle field seeing many younger men, including his 21 sons, fall, and that has added up to . . .what? His physical strength is rapidly dissipating, his body is betraying him, he is too old to be emperor. What is waiting for him at the end of the road? If the play has a redeeming quality, it is this affecting portrayal of a man out of time, who only knows one thing and can't do it anymore, who is a stranger in the land in the fought to protect, in many ways more of an foreigner than his Goth prisoners.

It is a drama modern sports fans are intimately familiar with. Like the ancient epics and mythologies handed down over generations of oral storytelling, sports deals in similar master narratives retold for every generation with new actors in the lead roles. One of our favorites is the star past his prime who refuses to hang it up. It is superb tragicomic tale. Elite pro athletes are made up of two things: a natural athletic ability combined with an unhealthy competitive streak. From puberty (at the latest), their entire existence revolves around perfecting a very specific skills and using it to destroy their competitors. Then, in their late-30s, just as their peers in almost every other profession are just starting to hit their professional stride, that natural athletic ability starts to disappear, though the competitive streak is still there. So they hang around until they have been embarrassed by younger versions of themselves enough times that they finally are forced to give up the only thing they have ever know how to do. And they are only 40, with close to half their life left to live. Like Titus, their fortune is made by their bodies, which then betray them.

Which brings us to Tony and his pals. Let's take a look at the last three episodes, going back to last season's finale:

"Kaisha": Phil Leotardo, acting boss of the New York family and Tony's chief rival, suffers a heart attack and has quadruple bypass surgery.

"Soprano Home Movies": Tony, boss of the New Jersey family, celebrates his 47th birthday and gets his ass kicked by his creampuff, model-railroading brother-in-law Bobby, and spends the rest of the episode lamenting his lost manhood and worrying that Carmella will no longer be attracted to him.

"Stage 5": Johnny Sack, currently-incarcerated boss of the New York family, is diagnosed with terminal cancer and dead by episode's end. At the beginning of the episode, he is told that it is Stage 4 lung cancer, and fills in the blank himself "And there's no stage 5, is there?" Later, Phil, still recovering from his heart surgery, tells Tony he does not want to be boss: "Being a boss is young man's game."

Tony, Phil and Johnny Sack, the three most powerful men on the show in terms of mob hierarchy, are all being betrayed by their bodies. A mob boss's power is not embued by sovereignty or rule of law, but physical strength. However, having spent possibly all of that strength getting to the top, they no longer have the strength to hold on to it.

All of this takes us back to show's first season. Forty-something acting boss Jackie Aprile dies of cancer, creating an opening at the top. Mob bosses, like Roman emperors, always have trouble with succession because it is neither strictly heritary or strictly meritocratic. In this case, the captains want Tony, but Uncle Junior thinks the title is rightfully his. Tony creates a compromise by giving Junior the title, but running things behind his back. Junior, like Titus, has fought his way to the top, only to be too old to rule once he got there. Tony is now facing the same problem.


A quick off-topic note: Radio Open Source, a public radio show from Boston, excerpted my "Batshit Crazy" post on their website in conjunction with an episode entitled "Entertaining Violence", dedicated to a Boston of production of Titus. It is a great listen, and very relevant in light of the Virginia Tech incident on Monday.

Speaking of Virginia Tech, I feel like I should say something in light of Monday's comments on Grindhouse and Paglia's Mozart/Jack the Ripper comparison, and I will eventually, but I just don't think I can right now.

Severed Limbs

This post is going to be all over the place, but I promise you that it makes sense in my head, if nowhere else. Do you ever have one of those stretches when everything you come into contact with—movies, TV, books read for pleasure, books read for class, class discussion, casual conversation with friends—seems to have some underlying connection? Over the past few days, the same ideas have kept popping up and I am going to try to draw them together here.

Let’s start with Titus Andronicus, the subject of my last post and of an ever-growing obsession with me. I first became aware of the play when the film came out but have only recently become intrigued with it. I don’t think people truly appreciate the magnitude of its importance. Shakespeare, the revered bard, the secular saint, really wrote something this messed up. It’s truly mind-boggling.

I had Titus on my mind when I went to see Grindhouse this weekend and I couldn’t have found a better movie to feed my obsession with. The Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double-feature inhabits the same grey category between art and trash, exploitation and satire, that Titus does, and features even more severed limbs. Severed limbs are a recurring motif in Grindhouse, much as they are in Titus. In Planet Terror, Rodriguez’s film, we have, most famously, lead actress Rose McGowan’s severed leg, which is outfitted with a machine gun in the film’s climax and plays a decisive role and saving the heroes. But there is also Marley Shelton as another heroine, a doctor whose hands are anesthetized by her deranged husband and spends a good portion of the film groping, Lavinia-like, without them.

Both McGowan and Shelton are postmodern, postfeminist takes on the Lavinia motif of the mutilated woman. Both overcome their mutilation to kick zombie ass and, in McGowan’s case, turn it into an asset. Shelton’s character, pointedly, regains use of her hands just in time to help save McGowan from a rapist.

But we can’t read too much into Planet Terror. Not surprisingly, Rodriguez’s film never rises above the B-movie gimmickry of the Grindhouse idea. His much more intelligent and talented friend, however, uses the guise of this gimmick to make what is perhaps his most personal film yet. Death Proof, Tarantino’s half of the double-feature is, on its surface, a B-movie homage just like Planet Terror. While Rodriguez covered the sci-fi/zombie movie, Tarantino took two other grindhouse staples: the slasher film and the car chase film. But Death Proof, the story of Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), a deranged former stuntman who kills women with his reinforced, “death proof” stunt car is both much more and much less.

While Rodriguez fulfills your expectations with his film (that is meant both positively and negatively), Tarantino confounds them. He uses the Grindhouse label to make an art film disguised as a genre film, in the mode of past B-movie auteurs such as Sam Fuller. The film is, with one notable exception, surprisingly gore-free and spends most of its time focusing on the nine women Stuntman Mike is stalking. Tarantino says his favorite slasher films were the ones that let you get to know and care about the victims before the violence began, and we get that here, with long scenes of typically Tarantino-esque dialogue as the characters shoot the shit in cars and diners. The difference is that this time the characters spitting the dialogue are women, and Tarantino obviously exhibits a fascination with how women talk when men aren’t around. He is also mesmerized by their bodies and uses the guise of the exploitation film to let his camera linger longer than it should on their curves, but they are shot in such in loving way, just as women in his films always are, that it never even reaches exploitation. All of the women in the film, especially Sydney Tamilia Poitier, Vanessa Furlito and real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell, join Uma Thurman, Pam Grier and Lucy Liu in the Tarantino Goddess pantheon.

Which brings us to Stuntman Mike, who shares with Tarantino a voyeuristic fascination with these women and a nostalgia for old-fashioned, non-CGI stuntwork. The difference is that, while Quentin channels these notions into a film, Mike releases them by crashing his car into the women and killing them. It’s an almost perfect illustration of Camille Paglia’s famous and controversial formulation that there is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.

I have much more to say on this, including a discussion of last week’s episode of The Sopranos which ties into all of this, but I have to wake up in five hours so that will have to be put on hold.

Batshit Crazy

There is a great article over at Inside Higher Ed by Scott McLemee about Titus Andronicus and the current production at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington. He gives perhaps the greatest critical judgment of the play ever, describing it at "Shakespeare's batshit crazy play". I have been really interested in Titus recently. My Shakespeare playreading group recently read the play as a part of a series on his controversial plays along with Taming of the Shrew and Merchant of Venice. I have also been reading Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae", in which she described Titus as a satire on Spenser's pageant of rape and torture in the Fairie Queene and suggests that it should be performed by drag queens. Like many of Paglia's opinions, it is out there, but frankly, do you have anything better? In the family that is the Shakespearean canon, Titus is the meth-addicted, thrice incarcerated cousin that no one likes to talk about and you watch your wallet and your kids around when you see them at Christmas. But, just like that cousin, it can't simply be ignored and forgotten about, it has to be dealt with. It potentially blows a hole in the entire business of bardolatry, which all people in the Shakespeare industry, whether they admit it or not, take part in.

Titus' profile has risen greatly in the last several years, and has picked up since Julie Taymor's film version, and I think it is only going to increase. It both speaks to modern tastes (look at last week's big movie release, Grindhouse) and is reminds us that Shakespeare, for all of his genius, was an extremely weird guy. We can gloss over the weirdness of the other plays because of their brilliance but Titus doesn't let us escape from it. When thinking of Titus, I am always reminded of the poster for famed B-movie house Troma Pictures' infamous parody "Tromeo and Juliet". The tagline reads "Body Piercing, Kinky Sex, Dismemberment. All the Things that Made Shakespeare Great." Replace body piercing with cannibalism and kinky sex with gang rape and you have an accurate description of Titus. In other words, even the creators of the Toxic Avenger and Sgt. Kabukiman didn't go as far into dark as Shakespeare did.

McLemee stumbled on to something interesting when he compared Titus' moral universe to that of professional wrestling. Pro wrestling good guys, like Titus the play's ostensible hero, are violent oafs who lack any sense of introspection or self-awareness. The only thing that separates them from the bad guys is the code of honor they live by. This has especially been true over the past 10 years, as pro wrestling has taken a darker turn and good guys have become just as likely as bad guys to torture opponents with foreign objects or abuse women.

Which leads us into the big question about Titus: is it simply A) morally repugnant violence for the sake of entertainment on the scale of pro wrestling or pseudo-snuff films like "Saw", or is it B) a more knowing comment on the culture of violence, and violence as entertainment, such as the work of Tarantino or "The Sopranos"? The bardolater in us all wants to say option B, and that may very well be so, but, unlike any of Shakespeare's other violent works, we have to at least entertain option A as a possibility. Its a disconcerting thought, but I think ultimately an enlightening one, especially in today's world when violence permeates our art and entertainment and the line between option A and option B becomes ever more blurred.

The Shakespeare Film Series: Whole Lotta Laurence Part III: Richard III

Richard III (1955)

I have been struggling to come up with something intelligent to say about this film. I even had to watch it again to see if I was missing something. It is generally well-liked and judging by the Criterion Collection scale of excellence I mentioned last time, even viewed by some as the best of the three. I frankly don’t see it. It is a mediocre adaptation propped up by a great performance. Unlike the other two films, everything good and bad about Richard begins and ends with Olivier. Though he has perhaps the most star-studded supporting cast of any of his films (John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Claire Bloom), Olivier dominates the film and, for the most part, wastes this talented cast. His did much more with his less well-known casts in the other two films.

The good and the bad of the film can be summed up in the division between Olivier the actor and Olivier the director. As an actor, this is Olivier’s filmic tour-de-force. Freed of the cultural baggage of Hamlet and Henry, he cuts loose here with a classic interpretation of Richard the charming sociopath.

However, the film falls flat because Olivier the director takes a back seat to the actor. Both of his previous films stood out from other Shakespeare adaptations of their time for their visual daring, from the beautifully oversaturated Henry V to the stark black-and-white of Hamlet. The first two films are held together by the tension between Olivier’s theatrical acting style and the self-consciously filmic aspects of his direction. Some of the most memorable moments in those films are not his soliloquies, but wordless shots such the survey of the British camp after the French attack or the long, ominous tracking shot of Ophelia entering the castle before her “flowers” speech. In Richard, he falls into the classic trap of simply capturing a great performance instead of making a great film.

Well, I guess that wraps up the Olivier series. Welles is up next, but that may be awhile, since finding good copies of all three of his Shakespeare films apparently requires the services of Robert Langdon. I will be back next week with some other non-literature stuff, including a new country song of the week and some thoughts on The Office and the NBA.

The Shakespeare Film Series: Whole Lotta Laurence Part II: Hamlet

Hamlet (1948)

I have become convinced that making a film version of Hamlet is less an artistic project than a form of theatrical sadomasochism that certain actors and directors inexplicably feel compelled to put themselves through. Having now seen this version, I have seen all four of the most notable versions (the others being Branagh’s, Zeffirelli’s and Almereyda’s). More than any other Shakespeare play, the directors and lead actors seem to never overcome their sense of intimidation in the face of the text. I believe that is why I have always liked Almereyda’s version, as he and his lead actor Ethan Hawke fall victim to this less than the others.

There’s a lot more to say in comparison of these four versions, but we will save that for another day. Today its about Olivier. This stark black-and-white version could not be more different in tone and style than Henry V and Richard III and is often treated as the Jan Brady (forgotten middle child) of the Olivier-Shakespeare trilogy. Even the Criterion Collection, which released the DVDs of all three films, gives Hamlet the short shrift. Henry V gets a commentary track and the illuminating illustrations from the “Book of Hours” that I mentioned in my earlier post. Richard III gets the full-on 2-disc special edition treatment. The Hamlet disc doesn’t even include the trailer. (Digression: Will the way films are presented on DVD affect our formulation of the film canon? It seems like it is already happening to some degree. We’ll take this up another day as well.) This reputation is somewhat justified as it doesn’t measure up to the other films either as Shakespearean adaptations or films unto themselves.

However, the film does raise several questions about the play and methods of adaptation that are worth exploring. The first I want to talk about is Olivier’s famous voice-over prologue in which he declares it “A story about a man who could not make up his mind”. Shakespearean scholars groan at this ridiculous oversimplification of perhaps the most complex drama in the Western canon, but is this really such a bad thing? Scholars and theatrical people (actors, filmmakers and theatrical directors) are not doing the same job, only working on the same material. Though many think of Olivier as some type of Shakespearean scholar, he is not, he is an actor. In the lecture by Marjorie Garber that I mentioned last time, she argued that the disciplines involved in the production of art (theatre, painting, sculpture, etc) should not be in the humanities at all. They have more in common with engineers and other experimental sciences than they do with scholars of literature or art history. When filmmakers or theatrical directors get too scholarly, they lose the life of the work and you end up with something like Branagh’s Hamlet, which everyone more or less admires but rarely watches. Olivier has the guts to make a specific interpretation of Hamlet, even if that interpretation is not entirely successful.

The reason for this failure is what I mentioned in the opening paragraph. Olivier can never overcome his intimidation in the face of the text to fully go with a quirky interpretation. He was definitely weighed down withe burden of being "Laurence Olivier: Greatest Shakespearean Actor of Generation; Heir to Garrick and Kean" to go all the way. He would be much freer in Richard III, a play with much less cultural baggage than Hamlet.

The other issue is one that I have always been fascinated by: actors’ age-appropriateness. Olivier was 40 when he played Hamlet opposite a 27-year-old Gertrude (Eileen Herlie) and an 18-year-old Ophelia (Jean Simmons, who spends the movie looking like she hopped off a Swiss Miss package). The years 1944 to 1948 were apparently rough on Olivier, as he looks at least a decade older than he did as Henry V, and believing that he just returned from college really stretches the old suspension of disbelief. What is better, a great reading by an actor of inappropriate age, or a less-technically precise performance from an actor who actually looks like their character (a la Ethan Hawke in Almereyda’s film)? It is of course an endless debate, but where you fall says a lot about the lens through which you view Shakespeare.

The Shakespeare Films Series: Whole Lotta Laurence Part I: Henry V

So, here it is finally: the first in our series on Shakespeare’s films. For those of you just joining us, I have recently been compelled to undertake a serious study of Shakespeare’s films after reading Michael Anderegg’s Cinematic Shakespeare. I am starting with mini-marathons of the three great Shakespearean actor-directors: Olivier, Welles and Branagh. These posts are not serious scholarly work in any sense of the word, or even necessarily very good movie reviews. Instead, they are simply a forum for recording my impressions as I view the films and encouraging feedback.

Today, we are talking Olivier. The three Shakespeare films Olivier directed and starred in remain a gold standard for what a “faithful” and “traditional” Shakespearean adaptation should look like. Since it is taking longer to write these than I planned and because I don’t want to make an ungodly long post, I am splitting my Olivier evaluation up by film, with a final post to come comparing the three.

Henry V (1944)

Famously financed by the British government to boost morale during WWII, this film remains the most celebrated of Olivier’s adaptations, and rightfully so. It is a truly breathtaking film on many levels. First and foremost is the fact that Olivier the actor, despite giving a tremendous performance, does not dominate the film. Rather, it is primarily an achievement for Olivier the director, one he would never again come close to matching.

Much has been made of the film’s unusual structure and reading about it in Anderegg’s book and other places, I did not know how he could possibly pull it off and still make anything resembling a realistic film, but he does. The film starts out as a performance at the Globe, with a rowdy audience in full view and slapstick backstage antics. Olivier then answers the Prologue’s plea for a “muse of fire” as each succeeding act moves us farther from the world of the theatre to the world of film. First, the audience disappears and then, eventually, Henry and his men are outside, on the shores of France. It is hard to capture in words how effective this potentially corny device is, but it is rather astounding.

The second great accomplishment by Olivier the director is the production design. The Criterion DVD has some great reproductions from a medieval “Book of Hours” that illustrates where Olivier drew his inspiration from. The oversaturated colors show the glories of “merry old England” without dropping off the precipice into kitsch.

As for the main attraction, Olivier gives the most energetic and compelling performance of any of his Shakespeare films. Even his scenery-chewing turn in Richard III does not command your attention the way young Henry does. Anyone who grew up with the grumpy old man Olivier of Boys from Brazil and Clash of Titans will be shocked at his striking good looks and sexual magnetism in this role (and this is coming from a straight man). He of course nails the big spots (the St. Crispin’s Day speech, the wooing of Katherine) but it is the smaller moments, such his nervous cough before going on stage for the first time and the campfire scene, that make this by far his most affecting Shakespearean film performance. This propagandistic version obviously gives us a cleaned-up Henry (no threats to rape and pillage, no hanging of former tavern mates), but Olivier still manages to give him a human frailty to keep him from becoming a caricature.

Negatives? Just one major one that’s not entirely Olivier’s fault. The low comic characters – Bardolph, Pistol and Nym – are more insufferable in Henry V than in pretty much any other Shakespeare play. Olivier is often criticized for his willingness to cut the plays to make the lead characters more prominent (we will get into this more with Hamlet) so why he felt the need to not cut more of the comic scenes, I do not know.

All in all, Henry V is far and away Olivier’s best Shakespeare film and possibly the best example of a “traditional” Shakespearean adaptation. It has set a high standard for the rest of the films.

Michael Anderegg

A big thank you to Scott Newstock who, out of a conversation we were having relating to my last post, recommended a great book by Michael AndereggOrson Welles, Shakespeare and Popular Culture. I have quickly consumed this book along with another book by Anderegg, Cinematic Shakespeare. These are both excellent explorations of Shakespeare's role in 20th-century popular culture, a subject that has long interested me.

Cinematic Shakespeare approaches the Shakespeare film as a genre, examing the generic elements that mark it, especially as a specific subgenre of the literary adaptation and the star vehicle. It is wide-ranging and open-minded, covering familiar ground such as Olivier's films and Luhrman's R&J but also lesser-known TV adaptations such as the 50's Hallmark Hall of Fame teledramas and the 80s BBC Complete Plays series (the bane of many a high schooler's existence). Alderegg is generous to controversial adaptations such as Luhrman's, but does not acquit any film entirely, finally leading to the conclusion that while every adaption ultimately falls short of the original play, every film also has something to teach us about Shakespeare.

Inspired by Anderegg, I have committed to a more serious study of Shakespearean film adaptations. I am going to start by viewing the groups of films by the three great Shakespearean actor-directors (Olivier, Welles and Branagh). I am starting with Olivier and going in chronological order, meaning that I am starting, appropriately enough, with Henry V, the play that first led me down this path.

Where the parallel ends

As a follow-up to my earlier post, here is a clip of Henry V's St. Crispin's Day speech from Branagh's film. As I briefly mentioned in the earlier post, any similarities between Prince Hal and W. end when Hal becomes king. Compare this speech with any of Bush's oratory.

Henry IV, Dubya and the Myth of the Prodigal Son

I have been reading through Shakespeare's Henriad plays (Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V). One of the things that stuck out on this reading is how the prodigal son myth has been integral in politics for a long time. Read in the context of the sequence, Hal's transformation from drunken lout to leader of men is contrasted with the disastrous reign of the all-too-human Richard II. Richard is the king who is not able to overcome his human foibles. Meanwhile, Hotspur's moral defect is his apparent lack of any human weakness, which also makes him incapable of human emotion.

I am not usually the type to draw modern political parallels in literature, but I couldn't help but be reminded of George W. when reading about Hal. Were Bush's drunken fratboy days a calculated political move meant to humanize him, much as Hal's seems to be? One thing blue staters have never been able to understand about W is his ability to connect with religious voters. More than his stand on gay rights and abortion, Bush the candidate was able to connect with the religious because he speaks the language of sin and redemption. It seems a particularly American idea to give people a second chance, but the Henriad shows that even the British like their monarchs to have human side. The difference is that Shakespeare's monarchs are expected to to resolutely look sin in the face and, when the time comes, reject it, as Hal symbolically does to Falstaff. Americans, on the other hand, require public confession, atonement and begging for forgiveness.

Beatles - Shakespeare Skit

I am going to try to start posting some Shakespeare-related YouTube videos here. This is a great one to start with, bringing together England's two greatest cultural exports: Shakespeare and the Beatles.

This is apparently from some early-60s British comedy show. They are performing a section of Act V Scene I of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which the rude mechanicals present their play of Pyramus and Thisbe at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta.