#MyPlayToday ... Hamlet

First impressions of the draw: 'Right then, it's time to have that talk with the blog'

Had I read the play before? Yes

Had I seen the play before? Yes

Could we have gone from a lesser known play to a more well known one? Whether we are talking Shakespeare, defining roles for actors and actresses, or even theatre itself, Hamlet is perhaps the play. It certainly was the play for me, the play that I consider my first encounter with Shakespeare. What an introduction that was. 

This is neither the time nor the place to bring some academia-demolishing insight into the play's depths, so I'll save all that glimmering, innovative analysis for my MA (SWEATS NERVOUSLY). Rather, let's instead talk Hamlet and my day. Let's talk Hamlet and all my days, because I can say with slightly bashful sincerity that reading this play changed me. 

'who still hath cried,
From the first cor[p]se till he that died to-day,
"This must be so."'Ham 1.2

When you're annotating Hamlet but you have a flair for the dramatic

For all it's generic shaping of a revenge tragedy, Hamlet wears the trappings and the suits of a intellectual's bildungsroman. Hamlet has returned home from university, a personal and geographical shift I too have been navigating recently, and is initially desperate to go back. The Royal Shakespeare Company's latest production wore this fact on its sleeve, emphasising Hamlet's youth and even featuring a prologue which gave us the young Prince's graduation. He's desperate to learn, but the effect of this knowledge begins to fester inside him when his rationality is challenged by the irrationality of life.  

I'm in a classroom at seventeen years old, in my element studying for my A levels in a subject I adore. While discussion centres on the most familiar line of the play, 'To be or not to be...', I'm hit by an overwhelming feeling of unfamiliarity. I look around as if the voices reverberating around me can't really be there, this can't really be happening. I'm in a room with people who I talk to, people I laugh with, people I look in the eye every day and we are talking about the most terrifying, unspeakable inevitability - death. '"This must be so."' 

When people ask me why I love Shakespeare, I find it hard not to regress and mentally sit myself down in that classroom. Of course I was, and I am, afraid reading those words. Isn't Hamlet's fear all of ours, too? But to read them and to speak them felt like an honesty I had never encountered. In my opinion, that honesty exists wherever Shakespeare is read and if that honesty speaks to you as a male or a female actor, as a teenager or when you're past your dancing days, in a different language or without words at all then you are entitled to it. 

'many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills'
Ham, 2.2

Does this make Hamlet my favourite play? Yes and no. I have been fortunate beyond my deserving to have seen some incredible actors in the role (I'm looking at you Cumberbatch and Tennant) and each time the connection between Hamlet and the audience that is woven so beautifully into the text sets my world on fire. When I read the play the lines chime with the devotion I felt for the text as a seventeen year old (and not just because my exam was closed-book). Every time I read it or see a new production is like polishing an old vase and feeling like the design has shifted when I turn my back. Because this most lauded of plays was my introduction to Shakespeare, I will always greet it like an old friend. 

It's ancient but it's fluid and for this, I love the play. But perhaps because Hamlet is the play, my attention is always being caught by the quirks and tricks of other plays in Shakespeare's cannon. Moreover, I know I can never come back to this play and polish away that mark that shows the complete beauty of the design, because people far greater than me have been trying to do that for 400 years. There will be a time for my thoughts to piece together amongst all the others on this play and although my 'random thought' can't help but indulge my inner critic, that time is not right now (and if it be not now, yet it will come etc, etc.).

#yayhamlet 

One entirely random thought/question the play inspired of me today: All Polonius's espionage behind-the-arras antics has got me thinking of the value of eavesdropping as a generically malleable trope - contrast, for example, the comedy afforded by the eavesdropping scenes with Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado against the tragedy-tinged-with-slapstick-comedy of Polonius' death in Hamlet. 

#MyPlayToday... The Second Part of King Henry VI

First impressions of the draw: 'Will I love you to death but did you have to make this thing in 3 parts?'

Had I read the play before? Yes

Had I seen the play before? No

Back to the histories as my luck of the draw so far heavily favours the Wars of the Roses narrative. Perhaps my jar full of Shakespeare plays is suddenly sentient and can gauge my deep affection for my university town of York, from which I write this late blog post. It is, in fact, the evening before I graduate. Just as the 'bookish' King Henry shakes of his Lord protector in this, the second part of the triad but possibly the first play (ever? Scholars disagree but this one is a strong contender...) that Shakespeare wrote, so too I'll be asserting a new level of adult bookishness tomorrow. And hopefully not falling while I do it. 

I find the history plays generally tough to access without a prominent dramatic figure (Falstaff for the Henry IV plays, Richard in Richard III for example) to anchor all the overflow of spewing plot and the sheer volume of characters. Not only is Henry VI2 no exception to this, it pretty much makes the rule. Last week, I attempted a plot summary of the late and narratologically complex Cymbeline. If you were to ask me what happens in Henry VI2, I'd have to look at you blankly and answer 'A lot'. What I noticed structurally was how much the recent Hollow Crown adaptation for the BBC had chopped and changed. They fearlessly dismembered the neglected body made of these three plays and, with some big names to galvanise the creation, made a coherent narrative creature. Perhaps in this (I hesitate to say) the may have gotten one up on the original. 

The closest I felt character whom I attuned with as almost was the slightly ridiculous Cade. The workman-with-nobility-delusions launches a starkly relevant assault on the educated classes within the play, including the monarchy, which resonates with the toxic culture of anti-intellectualism that is festering in the air of British politics at the moment. But, it's midnight in a Premier Inn which is simply no time for my soapbox. Although he has a soliloquy, a few contemptuous but hilarious asides and a dramatic exit, Cade does not manage to elude the play's structural flaws; being mentioned fleetingly and then completely dropped for a few acts before his spell of narrative action. 

What I loved and hadn't expected to find (I have read this play before in my chronological cycle of reading the plays but I honestly remembered almost nothing) was a vignette in 3.2, where Warwick and a few lords examine the body of the recently murdered Duke of Gloucester. They are unaware he has been murdered, but Warwick considers the body of the nobleman with a depth that borders on medical ekphrasis. Highlighting the signs that Gloucester's death could not have been natural (including distension of the eyes and blood pooling in the face associated with strangulation, self defensive injuries etc.), this scene is the makings of CSI Shakespeare. I know I shouldn't be, but I was pretty impressed that these Dexter-style postmortem methods had developed by the early 1590s (and, if we accept Shakespeare's dating of the historical narrative, the 15th century).

My day had no thrilling forensic investigation but was certainly not short on plot - nor on reading locations. In the hairdressers, at home in front of the fire, in the car, in a Premier Inn; as it happens its always a good idea to whip out the ancient copy of the Complete Works. 

One random thought/question the play inspired of me today: Well, it's going to be two. 1) 'alderliefest'? Are you serious Margaret? 
2) Interesting to see Gloucester's power figured through his 
staff as a limb which is then 'lopp'd off', Titus Andronicus style (that exact phrase references both Lavinia and Alarbus respectively within that early tragedy). The comparison is particularly interesting when approached with a cautious eye to chronology. 



P.s. I didn't fall. 

#MyPlayToday... Cymbeline

First impressions of the draw: I had hoped for something a little more politically alive... In truth the current political climate had my fingers crossed for Coriolanus or Julius Caesar. But, the Gods of the Draw have decreed we won't mention that hideous B word today. 

Had I read the play before? Yes

Had I seen the play before? Yes

From one oddball play to another - with a brief transatlantic adventure and a 21st birthday in between. Today's reading was the late, great, generic pick and mix, 'fantasy-come-romance-come-history with a Roman play trying to elbow its way in', Cymbeline. I realise I haven't really sold the play very well. Let me explain. 

A few years ago, I was deep in the midst of what I term my 'Shakespeare Hipster' phase - that is, swearing adoration for lesser known plays in an attempt to forge some sense of originality in a thoroughly ploughed field of scholarship. Hell, I'm still in that phase and if my dissertation on Titus Andronicus doesn't prove that, I don't know what will. In tribute to my adolescent devotion to Cymbeline and with a bashful acknowledgement that little of this blog will make sense to readers who are entirely unfamiliar with the plot (of which there will be many), I here offer an attempt at a plot summary. It's as brief as I could keep it but still really rather hefty so feel free to jump over the next few paragraphs. 

[Three main story lines dominate and intersect within Cymbeline; that of the eponymous king of England and a threat to the country from Roman dictatorship, Cymbeline's daughter Imogen (or Innogen) whose banished husband Posthumus bargains a wager on her chastity with an Italian named Iachimo (or Jachimo), and two young princes who were unknowingly stolen from Cymbeline at birth and have since been living as mountaineers with their kidnapper/adopted father/disgraced courtier. 

Against a backdrop of political tensions between England and Rome, the princess Imogen has upset her father by marrying the lowly but worthy Posthumus instead of the Queen's god-awful son, Cloten. Posthumus is banished and meets up with a band of greasy misogynists in Italy, including the slimiest of them all, Iachimo. Placing a bet on her chastity, Iachimo uses deceptive and downright intrusive methods to trick Posthumus into thinking he has slept with Imogen. Posthumus orders Imogen's servant Pisanio to murder her, when Pisanio (convinced of Imogen's innocence) instead advises Imogen to dress as a boy and stick it out in the woods, safe within the trusty Shakespearean trope of cross-dressing heroines. She is promptly picked up by her mountaineer birth-brothers who take the 'young boy', 'Fidele' into their 'household' (it's really a cave) as a page. Meanwhile, Imogen's hopeless suitor, Cloten, has fled with the intention of raping Imogen in Posthumus' clothes but instead meets with the aforementioned mountaineers. Brother-with-a-name-impossible-to-pronounce Number 1 kills Cloten and chops of his head for being a little bitch. 'Fidele' has since taken a potion concocted by the evil Queen which she thinks to be restorative. It in fact pulls a Juliet on her and convinces her devastated mountaineer birth-brothers that she is dead. They bury 'Fidele' next to Cloten's headless body who, if you remember, was wearing Posthumus' clothes. Imogen wakes and assumes the dead body next to her is her husband's and is then picked up as a page by the invading Roman forces. Turns out the most employable asset to have on your CV is part time cross dressed boy. 

TAKE A LEFT TURN, IT'S TIME FOR SOME BATTLE SCENES. The Roman invasion and Cymbeline's consequent victory brings all the characters together into a huge final scene. NB: Except for the Queen, who has died and hilariously confessed she never loved Cymbeline, along with a monstrous list of crimes, on her death bed. Recognitions, reparations and reunions follow in abundance as essentially every plot twist and disguise I have weaved above unravels like a jumper caught on a nail. It's all very emotional - that is, after Posthumus mistakenly beats a still-disguised Imogen, which is quite disturbing.]

TL,DR: Everyone lies to each other for five acts until the final scene where everyone tells the truth. Oh, and Jupiter rides in on an eagle at one point which is pretty cool. 

And, exhale. Despite its spaghetti junction of a plot, Cymbeline truly did hold its own amongst my favourite plays for years because I find it gripping to read. This is an odd sensation with Shakespeare plays - largely I am enthralled by productions. I am equally captivated by reading the plays for the beauty of the language and the depth of the characters, but not necessarily for the plot convulsions. Cymbeline is the reverse of this. Many of the characters are painfully two-dimensional. The Queen, for example, is ripped straight from fairy tales as the stock-type of an evil step mother. The play's demanding plot takes precedence largely over character development or motive; the explanation for Rome's invasion is tenuous and the scene where this is established seems pulled from a different play, we don't really know what motivated Belarius to steal the two princes beyond a strangely vague explanation, Posthumus wildly switches sides in the battle scenes with almost no justification for doing so. The play itself admits that the strange things that happen are beyond the comprehension of the characters; 'Howso'er it is strange ... / Yet it is true, sir' one Lord tells another in the play's opening scene. If there was a line to capture the tone of the play, it ought to be this. 

Reading today, an odd thematic parallel occurred to me that hadn't in my previous few readings of the play. Cymbeline shares a number of themes with it's supposed near-contemporary play, John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. Webster's most famous tragedy shares with this play a marriage whose potential for social mobility discomforts many of the characters, it shares a disdainful and toxic court environment which is seemingly purged by the play's conclusion, a language which dances the boundary between servitude and romantic love (watch out for Iachimo particularly here - as in below). I hadn't expected to find the gory and bleak Malfi as a bedfellow to Cymbeline. 

'Let me tender my service on your lips'
Cym. 1.6.136

There is a world of things I'd love to unpack within this weird play - not least the trunk scene (2.2), which I was so devoted to as a tangential parallel in my dissertation that I was damn close to holding a memorial service when I had to edit it out. For that scene, so deliciously uncharacteristic of Shakespeare and so brimming as a dramatic spectacle, I refer you to the 1982 BBC production with Helen Mirren as Imogen and Robert Lindsay as Iachimo. It is spectacularly worth a watch. 

My day, not unlike the play, was busy. A get together with a best friend and a very interesting screening of Branagh Theatre Company's Romeo and Juliet, perhaps more to come on the latter. This being perhaps my longest post to date, I feel a very abridged summary of the day is needed. 

One entirely random thought/question the play inspired of me today: The parallel between Pisanio and 'Fidele' is a very interesting one. Pisanio gets a mistakenly terrible reputation in the play for truly faithful service and 'Fidele', who famously doesn't give a toss about her Roman master at the play's conclusion, is largely renowned as a devoted page. 

(If you've made it this far, damn. Thanks.)