Winter's Tale

So...was Hermione dead and brought back to life? or was she gone like her daughter and by the power of fairy-tales came back just in time for the happy ending? And why does she come back other than to fulfill the reunion special theme of the romances? I really don't think her husband learned his lesson.  The whole dwelling-near-the-churchyard thing seems more like an outward display of penance meant for the benefit of those judging him rather than the purification of his own soul that we've said comes only from suffering.  In the end, I really don't care because I'm so excited that the magician was a woman.  I love these strong female characters...maybe a term paper idea?

I'm liking these Romances and the way they mix the gory violence of tragedy with the happy endings of comedies.  I don't know if this is because they were written at the end of Shakespeare's career and are a part of the logical evolution of the play to the way we know the novel to be now, mixing a little suffering with the happy endings or if it is just coincidence.  But something tells me there are no coincidences with Shakespeare. Especially when you look at the intertextuality of the plays, making allusions to one another in line with the mythological allusions. 

Cymbeline, Mythology, and the Unwashed Masses

We asked the question of why plays like Cymbeline, and frankly, anything other than the holy trinity of Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and The Tempest are not taught in schools, and I think it has to do with an unsubstantial foundation in Mythology despite the fact that reading more Shakespeare would remedy this problem.  Yes, Cymbeline is violent and overtly sexual and perverse, but what Shakespeare play isn't? I think it is because students (or teachers) lack the background knowledge or willingness to develop a background knowledge of the less popular plays due to how much you have to have read beforehand to get the inside-joke nature of these allusions.  I personally think that introducing a play as outrageous as Cybeline or Measure for Measure (which is pretty dang violent/sexual as well) to a classroom with the effort made to get the kids to understand what's going on would only make the kids (a few at least) more excited about the Bard. 

In regards to the last 4 plays, I feel like you almost need to read them first to understand some of the earlier ones.  There are several mythological allusions in Cymbeline that would help a reader better understand the archetypes that are in all of the other plays such as the goddess of love and the leo = lion stuff. 

I Will Give thee Bloody Teeth

The introduction to Antony & Cleopatra has a picture of Vivian Leigh (Scarlett O'Hara!) as Cleo so naturally I couldn't help but think of Scarlett (and Elizabeth Taylor) when reading Cleopatra's lines.  It seems as though the female characters are getting increasingly bold as we read these plays.  We saw a hint of it in Rosalind's wit but we haven't seen anything like Cleopatra's love games she plays on poor but not so innocent Antony:

"If you find him sad

Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report

That I am sudden sick." 

Even with the news of his wife's death she mocks Antony for his faithfulness but it only makes him want her more.  She is sexually explicit, pining for Antony and envying the horse he rides while away for "bearing the weight of Antony" and uses her beauty as a weapon to manipulate Antony and to get her way. My favorite line of hers is when Charmian has compared Antony to Caesar, and she basically tells him she's going to punch him in the mouth: 

"By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth,

If thou with Caesar paragon again

My man of men." 

She's cool, calm, sexy, but if you talk about her man she'll bust your teeth. 

Too bad Antony hasn't turned around yet on some grand staircase and told her "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." 

Shakespeare really had a firm understanding of manipulative women.  It makes perfect sense today to have these strong female actors playing the feisty Cleopatra, but how did the male actor play her at the time of its publication?  Did he overact like the mechanics in MSND to exaggerate the wiles of a woman, or did he understand like Shakespeare that coolness and subtlety are the tools of a woman's cruelty?

Cordelia and The Fool

After my initial fascination borne from a high school performance of the play, I have read King Lear a few time and each time I find something new or at least a new way of looking at the same words.  I am particularly interested in the characters of Cordelia and the Fool, as well as the suspicion I have heard mentioned that they are in fact the same actor, and who is Lear talking about when he says "my poor fool is hanged" anyway? 

Even though all of the good characters (King of France, The Fool, etc) of the play like her, it is hard to read her motives or to discern how good she is at all. The same can be said about the Fool.  With all of his riddles and songs it is nigh impossible to tell who he is directing his criticism towards or why he is saying it.   Did Cordelia refuse to flatter Lear out of honesty and to put herself apart from the obviously contrived praise of her sisters or is she truly unable to tell him she loves him.  You can't really blame her if this is the case as he is a kind of pompous guy anyway.  Maybe she's just keeping him down to earth the way the fool does.  Like Cordelia, the Fool does not flatter Lear but because he does it indirectly and uses doublespeak he is not faced with any serious wrath.  However, Cordelia remains loyal to the King even after he disowns her, reinforcing the idea that she is his only true ally, but is she doing this out of love for a father or out of being generally virtuous as the King of France sees her.Perhaps by using the same actor for both roles is a way to indicate that each character possesses similar traits and deficiencies.  Both characters see and speak the truth, and are punished for it despite their loyalty. 

Prelapsarian Myth/ Cowboys in the Green World

I was excited to hear the term "prelapsarian" in class today (even more so to hear the word 'cowboy') as it was one of the first things I learned about in another Lit class this semester, Regional/Western Lit.  In that context, the Western is all about returning to the purity and savagery of the unsettled West before it is destroyed by the industrialization and domesticity of the East (a symbolic Eden separate from the knowledge that followed the fall). The western hero knows that nature is the best teacher for how to be a man rather than "book learning." This got me thinking about the "green world" and how Shakespeare uses the woods/edenic scenery as a mode for restoration for his characters as well as a place of mystery (and danger if you are a maid traveling alone).  The woods in MSND caused all of the lover's problems but ended up solving them too, acting as a Puck-esque mischievous role in the story.  So far in As You Like It, the woods have served to reveal to Duke Senior that the pastoral (maybe Western?) life is what he prefers, reminding me of how the Western myth insists that nature is where one must return to be pure and to escape the wrongs he has been dealt or has committed outside of the woods. 

As far as other mythical references go, James mentioned Cain and Abel but I was thinking more of the story of Jacob and Esaul in which Rebecca tricks her husband Isaac into giving the wrong son the birthright. No, Duke Senior was not tricked out of his position, but you get the idea.  Celia reminds me of Ruth, in that she is a faithful friend who goes with Rosalind to her exile like Ruth followed Naomi: "And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, [or] to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people [shall be] my people, and thy God my God."

The moral of the story is that the story is all that matters.

Act five to me is an epilogue. It's a chance to catch up with characters you had forgotten about until that point because they vanished from the plot. Like the extra scenes that appear during the credits of a movie, the end of MSND continues the story of the mechanics where it left off, the preparations for the play.  This play within a play acted out by Bottom and his merry men acts as a foil with which the audience can reflect upon the inverse story of the four lovers and the role that magical interference and coincidence play in the making of their happy ending. 

But why go to all of that trouble to tie up loose ends when you could simply have someone from Theseus and Hippolyta's court come out and tell you that they all lived happily ever after?I think that Shakespeare saw this as a chance to address his audience (us) directly; especially with Puck's final monologue.  The moral of the story is that the story is all that matters.  If you take away all of the myth, the fairies, the magical love potions, the Athenian Law, you are left with the same drama that saturates modern reality television.  It is the obsession with Myth that makes Shakespeare's treatment of the story  so that it needs to be seen both in the form of MSND AND Pyramus and Thisbe so that we can understand that it is all the same story. It is all part of the same myth, it has just been given different details. 

And like Puck says, if you didn't like it, just pretend it is a dream, because chances are you will see the same story again in a different form. 

The Nature of Immortality

I am an teaching option English major and despite the fact that they are "cynical  vermin," I strongly believe that the influence that I have on my future High School students will have a considerable impact on not only their immediate lives but to the impact they themselves will have on the future as well and if I instill in them an appreciation for language, a love for the written word, and desire to learn that they can then pass on to their own students or children, in a way, I will never die.

I know that we are supposed to write a sonnet about this, and I will, but at a later date. I just wanted to write this down before I forget what I wanted to say.