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. 

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. 

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.) 

Thankfully I haven't since been typecast as the disease-ridden whore... 
(L-R and with respect to my friends who may not wish to be named in full) Imogen (Timandra), Me (Phyrinia), Paul (Alcibiades) and John (Timon). Photo courtesy of Arts York, exact credits unknown. 

First impressions of the draw: General nostalgic, warm glow-ey feeling. Shucks. 

Had I read the play before? Yes

Had I seen the play before? In it's fractured entirety, no. But...

Nothing says 'Happy Father's Day' like a torrent of betrayal and misanthropy! It is, however, rather more fitting for me to do a play reading on Father's Day - it is my wonderful father via whom I first came to love Shakespeare. Perhaps not even to love his works: having been raised amidst the quotations, it is through my Dad predominantly that I grew knowing the world and my own emotions had a lens more beautiful and eloquent than anything I could struggle to comprehend them through. So, thank you, Dad! 

It's also worth a mention that this my first #MyPlayToday since leaving uni. There's something cruelly ironic in pulling the friendless, family-less Timon from the jar days after leaving my second home and the dear, dear friends who are my second family. So to the fates I raise a huge middle finger.

'Nothing brings me all things'
Tim. 5.1.207

But, to the play and to my day. My cryptic answer regarding whether or not I have previously seen Timon of Athens begs an explanation - I have not seen Timon but it is one of the Shakespeare plays I have acted in. That's right. One production amongst the play's performance track record (an illustrious record that I imagine you could count on one hand) featured yours truly. 

Hopefully talking about the play here will elucidate both why this complex tragedy is so difficult to translate to the stage and also why it holds such a high place in my affections. Let's first address the giant Athenian elephant in the room - Timon is a structural mess. Uniquely amongst Shakespeare's plays, it is thought to be both a (potentially unperformed) collaboration and an unfinished play. This poses the biggest challenge in staging the play and I have a big fat bias coming at the play having been in what was a coherent and very accomplished production (our director, Ruby, was a boss). 

I came to reading today with a major soft spot for Timon personally, but giving this troubled and troubling play a reread has given me a renewed interest in the work critically. Like a meringue that is dropped on the way to the table, Timon may be fractured and tragic but some of the fragments are still very tasty. For example, running through this otherwise messy play like a delicious gooey meringue centre (I'm cracking the wind of this poor analogy) is an image system of proto-capitalism as cannibalism that gives the play, quite literally, a distinct flavour. Consumption - monetary and dietary - threatens the play in a way which barbarically blurs the distinctions between the two. It's as if Timon and his wealth (though the two are crucially indistinguishable) is a rich wine, drunk by his flatterers who wake up to the hangover of their lives and that familiar feeling where you swear you will never touch alcohol again. 

'For mine own part,
I never tasted Timon in my life'

Tim. 3.2.78-9 

In this respect and as was highlighted by the recent National Theatre production, the play touches modern nerves on materialism and the human price of capitalism - topics Shakespeare rarely speaks to us upon. It has biting misanthropy and slagging matches that make Hermia and Helena's spat look tame. But it also has touching, defeated loyalty from Flavius. I truly feel Timon, Apemantus and Flavius are gems for any actor and more than this, gems that break the mould drastically on some Shakespearean stock-types of Patriarch, Fool/Cynic and Servant. 

Timon, who in my head will always have the voice of my wonderful friend John, has not only shades of the nakedness-inclined Lear but also has suicidal leanings reminiscent of Hamlet. The plotline is frankly weird and akin to a fairytale, which makes this play the sister to another Shakespearean oddball which is beginning to undergo theatrical rehabilitation, Cymbeline. But I mustn't argue the merits of this play for its resemblance to others: like its eponymous anti-hero, Timon is something of a difficult loner. It is perhaps too often read as a simplistic manifestation of the 'single tragic flaw' taken to its reductive limits. The play is this but it's also more. A study in recognisable greed and loyalty, a bitter purge of tragic/late play world-weariness (think Prospero's 'my charms are all o'erthrown' speech on steroids), an extenuated feast of human flesh, a moralistic take on the insecurities of loneliness. And, perhaps oddly enough, for me Timon is a catalogue of memories and good friends.  

To close up this blog post on a suitably sickly note in honour of Father's Day, 

'I'll have no father, if you be not he'
AYL. 5.4.117

One entirely random thought/question the play inspired of me today: 

Is there a bigger slap in the face of gender-diverse casting than Timon of Athens? I should know - I've been in it. 

First impressions of the draw: 'Blood. Kilts. Reading in an accent. Let's do this.'

Had I read the play before? No

Had I seen the play before? Yes

I should open with an astonishing fact not even the weird sisters might have prophesied: today was 25 degrees. TWENTY-FIVE. What a beautiful day to contemplate freezing Scottish moors and cold-blooded murder. Macbeth is one of the 'bigger' plays whose GCSE-tenure escaped me (if I remember rightly, we did The Merchant of Venice). I have seen productions professional and amateur; productions live and live-screened, filmed and revamped for the BBC. 

I promise this isn't the effect of post-dissertation and heat infused delirium, but I had never realised how sleepy the play is. Sleep is so alike to death in the imagination of the characters, which makes Lady Macbeth's somnambulistic episode and her subsequent absence from the stage until we hear the news of her death all the more poignant. Is sleep for Lady Macbeth, as she argues it is for the sleeping guards of Duncan's chamber, some transitional period towards death? But sleep is also deprived; as Macbeth professes, sleep is murdered when Duncan is. How does this, too, link the sovereignty of sleep with the comfort of a good monarch? And how, finally, does this work into the essential arse-kiss for James that underlies Macbeth? (Philomena Cunk's words, not mine.)

A moment of contemplation for the beauty that is my 1887 Victoria Shakespeare Tragedies. 

'He has no children. All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?'

Mac. 4.3. 222-6

A favourite scene (amidst a play, I realised today, that I have grossly undervalued) is when Macduff hears the news of his murdered family. Macduff's grief is reminiscent of Constance's in King John (particularly, above), which made me reflect on the biographical dating of that play based on Constance's spectacular speech in 3.4. 'All my pretty chickens' is a line, oddly enough, I have grown up hearing - it's one of my Dad's favourites. The rupture of genuine, raw and disbelieving grief from Macduff with the play's imposition of a 'masculine' ideal of mourning is the subtlest of dramatic tensions from Shakespeare. Gosh, he isn't half good sometimes. 

'Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, 
The death of each day's life'
Mac. 2.2.37-8

As for my day, nowhere in York could I find a way to incorporate haggis into my day. I did, however, have a tragically insular day reading on my own in the Dean's gardens (Can I use a very tenuous interpretation of Bamber to link my day to Macbeth? It seems I just did). Though the inevitable sunburn I received may have been better suited to Leontes' penchant for baby-burning in The Winter's Tale, my reading setting today was tranquil bliss. 

One entirely random thought/question the play inspired of me today: An unprecedented amount of the play's phrasing I found I could sing along to. I hadn't expected Macbeth to be quite so full of recognisable phrases.  

First impressions of the draw: Was a visual one - I have very vivid memories of the BDSM style set from the one time I have seen Measure in performance. 

Had I read the play before? No

Had I seen the play before? Yes

Vienna's seedy streets housed me for the day (actually, for yesterday on account of the late-finishing York Mystery plays, but more on those later). I had been an intrigued admirer of Measure for Measure from afar; having seen a wonderful production at the Swan which sparked my interest in this slinky, sly play. My fascination in the play was caught not least by the fact that Jodie McNee's Isabella was wearing the exact same shoes I had on (16 year old me felt oh-so metatheatrically complicit). More than this, however, the moral and sexual tensions of the play that were introduced to me by this production were as attractive and they were intimidating. 

Perhaps that's why I had never actually picked up the beast to read. I was not surprised that my favourite scenes of performance, those between Angelo and Isabella, retained that original gunpowder essence which makes them ignite on stage. One of my favourite lines comes from these scenes, not for it's poetic value but for it's dramatic potential and for it's spotlight into a dark corner of gendered power relations, Angelo's spine-chilling:

'Who will believe thee, Isabel?'
MM 2.4.156

Is there a more concise and biting snapshot of the play's moral landscape than that question? The theatre nut in me revels that that one line has the potential to be the pivotal joint of the whole play, where Isabella's moral framework begins to dismantle and Angelo's power grows increasingly heedless. 

A special segment of today's post, largely for my own remembrance, is going to be entitled: 'Times Angelo is Totally Comparable to Shakespeare's Other Male Characters'. It's like a 'Where's Wally' but with dramatic and canonic intertextuality: 

'What's this? What's this? Is this her fault or mine?' 
MM 2.2.163

Angelo adopts some of the frenzied (or should I say 'prenzie') syntax of Leontes' 'Too hot, too hot'. 

'heaven hath my empty words'
MM 2.4.2

Like Claudius in Hamlet, Angelo's efforts at praying sincerely are just not up to scratch. 

'They say this Angelo
was not made by man and woman after this
downright way of creation'

MM 3.2.113-5

Angelo and Coriolanus are chilling together in the super-human section of Shakespeare's characters. 

What did surprise me reading the play was the pretty painful comic scenes. The momentary and stifled effort to make Elbow seem a Dogberry-esque fool, the extenuation of comic material whose tone grows increasingly agitated and sour. Of course, we are used to the tone of comedy turning bitter in Shakespeare; Malvolio being the example which springs to mind. But, in Measure for Measure, the process of that turn from laughter to pity is simply underdeveloped and leaves the comic scenes relishing of neither. I realised when reading today that it's not only the comic 'structure' of Measure for Measure that sits so uncomfortably with the play's anti-comic content, but also it's tangible effort to squeeze some (really rather poor) comic content in there. 

'Well, heaven forgive him, and forgive us all!
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.'

MM 2.1.37-8

Just as the play tries to shift itself unconvincingly into generic conventions, so too my expectations of the play were challenged and some of the results left me a mixture of fulfilled and disappointed. My reading day happened to be the anecdote - reading in the beautiful Gatehouse Coffee, discussing Shakespeare and poetry with my wonderful friend Noor was a welcome removal from the play's atmosphere of overwhelmingly putrid morality. The play's implicit religious themes and morality ambiguity was also complemented and contrasted by my evening of theatre; watching the epic Mystery Plays in the York Minster. By 'epic', I mean almost four hours which is (albeit happily!) the reason for this delayed post.  

One entirely random thought/question the play inspired of me today: Is there a more bare-arsed deus ex machina than Ragozine's death? Come on, even the Duke points out that it's an unbelievably fortunate device. 

First impressions of the draw: *Mental image of Kenneth Branagh flouncing around in that fountain*

Had I read the play before? No

Had I seen the play before? Yes

IIt's been an absolute joy to spend the day with one of my favourite comedies. It slightly baffles me that, to my memory, I had never read Much Ado. Partly because I've listened to Ben Crystal's wonderful Original Pronunciation CD so many times that I can recite a particular scene by heart, albeit in a very dodgy part-Irish-part-West-Country impression of OP. Partly because Much Ado is, I would venture, my most frequently watched comedy. As my initial reaction to the draw betrays, Kenneth Branagh's joyous adaptation is a rainy day (and cloudy day and sunny day... heck, any day) favourite of mine. I also recently saw the play under the guise of Love's Labour's Won at the RSC alongside Love's Labour's Lost (which I reviewed here), a marriage of productions made in heaven. 

My appreciation of the play as a kind of generic muscle flex from Shakespeare is owed solely to Emma Smith's fantastic lecture on Much Ado, focusing on the wonderful question: 'Why does everyone believe Don John?' It's a real kick-yourself question when considering the play's plot development, particularly (in my opinion) in relation to Labour's. What Labour's lacks in its own narrative course are the generic stock-types of blocking figures; a role Don John embodies with Iago-esque motive opacity and which Leonato comes close to in his Lord Capulet-style rage against Hero. However, this didn't inhibit the Royal Shakespeare Company's pairing of these plays, which pivoted beautifully on the mirroring of Berowne/Rosaline and Benedick/Beatrice. Michelle Terry's and Edward Bennett's wonderful performances where very much alive in my head reading the play today. 

As productions consistently reminded me today, the play is fizzling with moments of inspired comic timing (which, to reproduce out of context here, I would necessarily butcher), not least Benedick's bitter expostulation on Beatrice just as she enters the stage. Much Ado is largely counted among my favourite comedies because the fact that Beatrice and Benedick's incessant banter is just about the sexiest thing in Shakespeare is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me. 

I have a little laugh in the hope that Shakespeare has intentionally made Hero and Claudio such plain characters to make Beatrice and Benedick ignite the page and the stage all the more vividly. Reading particularly the first three acts in one of my favourite cafes, I smiled to withstand a conveyor belt of couples on dates (some really rather sweet, some tangibly awkward) whilst engaged in the early courtship rituals of these acts. Beatrice and Benedick's organic, fiery banter of a 'date', like those couples in the cafe, is contrasted with Hero and Claudio's rigidly conventional courtship. 

I hesitate to say that today's reading environment lead me to reflect on Beatrice and Benedick as a 'couple for today', because that wickedly stubborn wit which veils both pride and affection is not commonplace for relationships of any era. Rather, it's something like today's rom-com ideal. Cafe couples, maybe next time will be the one. 

One entirely random thought/question the play inspired of me today: Having watched The Two Gentlemen of Verona the night before put a new spin on Claudio's lines 'Friendship is constant in all other things / Save in the office and affairs of love.' (2.1.184-5)