{"id":8734,"date":"2008-12-30T18:43:53","date_gmt":"2008-12-30T23:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8734"},"modified":"2022-10-16T13:10:30","modified_gmt":"2022-10-16T17:10:30","slug":"the-bards-meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8734","title":{"rendered":"The Bard’s Meme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Got this from Ted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What was your first introduction to William Shakespeare? Was it love or hate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I honestly can’t remember. Since I’ve always been obsessed with acting, I imagine my introduction was quite early. It wasn’t a literary<\/i> introduction so much – it was a performance<\/em> introduction. He was a man of the theatre. I read his stuff looking for monologues, because he counted as “classical”. I have always loved Shakespeare. I love the challenge of performing it (it can bring me to my knees!), and I also love reading it out loud, to this day. Other people do yoga. And I suppose I should do some yoga too. But to relax, I read the sonnets out loud. When I was about 12 years old, my parents took me to a production of Twelfth Night<\/i> at the local university (where I ended up going) and I was transported. Malvolio was such a buffoon! When he descended the stairs wearing the yellow stockings with the blue ribbons, thinking that was what was wanted of him, I almost died laughing. What a pompous ass! The production was marvelous – funny, sexy, and clear as a bell to me, the tween in the audience. When you see a production like that, it makes you want to try to say the words yourself, and make them come as much to life as those actors did.<\/p>\n

Which Shakespeare plays have you been required to read?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my career, I would imagine all of them. I took a couple of Shakespeare courses in college, and we read most of the plays – and the rest were covered by my various acting classes. And now, like I mentioned, I just read them for fun. There isn’t one of his plays I haven’t read, but I honestly can’t remember what I read for class, and what was just for pleasure or preparation. I started this whole Shakespeare project on my blog (here’s the Two Gentlemen of Verona piece<\/a>) and … well, I would love to get back to it. I had a ton of fun putting that piece together. One thing that I have never done (which was the original point of the Shakespeare project) was read the plays in chronological order.<\/p>\n

Do you think Shakespeare is important? Do you feel you are a \u00e2\u0080\u009cbetter\u00e2\u0080\u009d person for having read the bard?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course Shakespeare is important. To say he’s “not important” is like dismissing our heritage. That would be idiotic. Of course he’s important. And to the second question – I already think it’s funny that “better” shows up in the question in quotation marks, which already betrays the bias or insecurity of the person who wrote the quiz. To just blatantly say, sans<\/i> quotes, “Yeah, I think I’m a better person” is far too assholic to be borne, and so the protective quotation marks are there to keep us all safe. No, I don’t think I’m a “better” person. But I do feel grateful and blessed that Shakespeare is in my life, and also that I know him well enough to refer back to him in my mind, in moments of stress or conflict, that I can call upon his plays to provide context to the messes of MY life … I feel really enriched because I know him. But better? Or, oops, should I say “better”? No. Some of the kindest most loving people I know have never read a play of Shakespeare’s. Big whoop. Or should that be “big” whoop? Or big “whoop”? But in all seriousness, I love that I can see a random act of kindness from somebody and immediately go to that line in Merchant of Venice<\/i> in my head (“how far that little candle throws his beams … so shines a good deed in a naughty world”). Other people have said things about random acts of kindness … but no one has said it as well as Shakespeare did in that line.<\/p>\n

Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am partial to As You Like It<\/i>, Hamlet<\/i> and Much Ado About Nothing<\/i>.<\/p>\n

How do you feel about contemporary takes on Shakespeare? Adaptations of Shakespeare\u00e2\u0080\u0099s works with a more modern feel? (For example, the new line of Manga Shakespeare graphic novels, or novels like Something Rotten, Something Wicked, Enter Three Witches, Ophelia, etc.) Do you have a favorite you\u00e2\u0080\u0099d recommend?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love adaptations! I am not a purist. Sometimes, in stage productions, a director has a concept – and it just doesn’t work all the way through … but when the concept really hits<\/i> it can be exhilarating. I LOVED the recent Macbeth I saw with Patrick Stewart. I didn’t think there was possibly a way to make those witches frightening – I’ve seen the play so many times, I have been a witch myself … It’s usually silly. The Macbeth stuff is gripping, but it’s hard to make those witches scary. But this production? Those witches were fucking SCARY. Bra-VO. That probably had a lot to do with the Stalinist concept – and the sense that the witches were the agents of the KGB, or something omniscent … creatures that could be everywhere at once … those girls were TERRIFYING. When a concept doesn’t work, you can feel the play collapse. I liked Baz Luhrman’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet<\/i> but he did not deal, sufficiently, with the fact that modern-day gangs would use guns, they would not have sword fights. It was tongue-in-cheek, how he handled it – and I know lots of people liked it, but I didn’t. You can’t be tongue-in-cheek with Romeo and Juliet<\/i>. Gangs use guns nowadays. They would not have long-drawn-out fights with swords or knives. I’m not saying you can’t transplant the play into a modernday era, but I think you need to deal with that pesky issue in a more honest fashion than he did. The MTV inspired filming is also perfect for that young-teens-in-love story … but I thought his way of dealing with the fact that there are no guns in the play was a copout. Shakespeare’s plays must be dealt with on their own terms. If you try to make Taming of the Shrew<\/i> into a feminist manifesto (as nearly every production now does), it WILL COLLAPSE. The script does not support your academic and politically correct reading of it. So please, directors, I beg of you. Stop trying. The best “adaptation” of Taming of the Shrew<\/i> that I ever saw was that one episode of Moonlighting<\/i> with Cybill Shepard and Bruce Willis sparring around the table in Elizabethan costume. (my favorite clip below) Yes, yes, yes, that is exactly how that text needs to be handled. Taming of the Shrew<\/i> not only can handle the tongue-in-cheek, but it needs it desperately. If you play it straight, the audience of today will not stand for it. So the asides and snarks are just marvelous in that Moonlighting<\/i> episode (“If you’re a man, you gotta love the 16th century”) … and it makes the play (which is, in actuality, already a play within a play – it is already something totally artificial) perfectly realized. It was absolutely brilliant, a highwater mark in television as far as I’m concerned. Your best bet with that material is to go with a 1930s\/40s-era screwball comedy vibe – something that predates the modern gender-definitions (which was also the hot-and-heavy intellectual-and-sexual-sparring vibe captured in the Raul Julia \/ Meryl Streep version in Central Park – I saw a video of that production, which made Streep a star, and it is, to date, one of the most exhilarating things I have ever seen in my LIFE). But seriously: if you try to make that play into “I am woman, hear me roar” – the text will not support you. So STOP TRYING, GODDAMMIT. The play is good enough on its own. Stop imposing. It doesn’t work. Also: the parts that DON’T fit into our modern-day concept of gender are the best parts, the most troubling parts … don’t avoid them, or try to iron them out … PLAY them for all they are worth.<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n

I know no directors are listening to me, because Taming of the Shrew<\/i> continues to be a pesky problem, and that’s a shame. I really feel that any director who wants to put up that play needs only watch, oh, The Big Sleep<\/i> or Only Angels Have Wings<\/i>, or Bringing Up Baby<\/i> – hell, just watch ANY Howard Hawks movie – and you will be halfway there.<\/p>\n

The last exchange in The Big Sleep<\/i> goes like this:<\/p>\n

She: And what about me?
\nHe: You? What’s wrong with you?
\nShe: Nothing you can’t fix.<\/p>\n

I can hear the heads explode in women’s studies departments around the country, but that’s the whole point. If you watch The Big Sleep<\/i> and feel that Lauren Bacall is in any way oppressed or victimized, you need to have your head examined.<\/p>\n

What\u00e2\u0080\u0099s your favorite movie version of a Shakespeare play?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I loooooooooove the Much Ado About Nothing<\/i> with Emma Thompson and Branagh and all the rest. More than any other production I have seen of that glorious piece of playwriting – that adaptation captured the sheer joy of the thing. It is a delight.<\/p>\n


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Got this from Ted. What was your first introduction to William Shakespeare? Was it love or hate? I honestly can’t remember. Since I’ve always been obsessed with acting, I imagine my introduction was quite early. It wasn’t a literary introduction … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8734"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182006,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8734\/revisions\/182006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}