All The World's A Stage - the Shakespeare thread

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by JozefK, Apr 23, 2016.

  1. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    The Taming Of The Shrew (1929)

    A truncated version of the early, somewhat creaky talkie with Pickford and Fairbanks. This print was apparently recut by Mary Pickford (or her people) around 1966. Thus it is missing perhaps the most infamous screen credit in Hollywood history, "Additional Dialogue by Samuel Taylor", which provided a popular joke among highbrows of the day,



    Of all the directors, Sam Taylor was the most valuable man I ever had. He was a tremendous help to me. He had a brilliant mind. He parted from me, amicably, because I had stopped producing for a while, and he went off and directed Pickford, Fairbanks, Bea Lillie, John Barrymore. He was an academic type, and was one of the biggest helps I ever had. -- Harold Lloyd to Kevin Brownlow​

    [​IMG]
     
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  2. Steve Minkin

    Steve Minkin Senior Member

    Location:
    Healdsburg CA
    Thanks for the heads-up on The Shrew, JozefK! Evidently the first Shakespeare talkie on film.

    The opera maven in our group posts this heads-up on The Met doing Shakespeare this week:
    >> the Metropolitan Opera (Metopera.org) is showing a different HD broadcast online for free for about 24 hours every day, each available starting around 6 pm Eastern time. Today’s was/is Verdi’s Macbeth, in an excellent production with superstar Anna Netrebko, which will be available till about 3 pm our time tomorrow (Sunday). One of Verdi’s earliest Big Hits, very well directed here with a marvelously creepy chorus of suburban witches and three stellar solo scenes for Lady M., plus a powerful Banquo and Macduff. Mac himself is good but others have made more of the role.

    More Shakespeare-based operas upcoming:

    On Wednesday, April 8, Verdi’s Falstaff, which many consider his masterpiece. The production is stylish and often amusing, with a very good Falstaff and Quickly, an utterly enchanting Nanetta (Anne Ford, the daughter), but an amateurishly acted Alice Ford and an OK but undistinguished Ford. Musically strong, acting good but not great. Something you can still catch Thursday morning after M4M if you’re up for it.

    On Friday, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, a very tuneful treatment with an engaging cast but a somewhat prosaic (albeit lavish) production.

    Personal recommendations: Macbeth is a must-see, Falstaff has good moments but not the ultimate realization, Roméo is more for the tunefully minded.<<
     
  3. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    A book I recently purchased is the Manga Classics version of Hamlet by William Shakespeare and is the full original text edition. I've been interested in reading Shakespeare due to seeing the TV movie King Of Texas starring Patrick Stewart (which is King Lear set in Texas at the time before it became part of the United States).

    The artwork looks very interesting (it is done in a less-detailed style that works well), and it features a cast listing to make it easy to tell who is who right off. It also features notes that cover the choices made when adapting the play as a manga. The play Romeo & Juliet has also been released as a manga adaption in the same series of books.
     
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  4. Steve Minkin

    Steve Minkin Senior Member

    Location:
    Healdsburg CA
    Solitaire1 -- These are original stories rather than adaptations, but both are outstanding, part of the classic Sandman series by Neil Gaiman, very knowledgeable about the Shakespeare he's riffing on. The first includes a Midsummer Night's Dream themed story, and the second a Tempest themed tale.

    [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
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  5. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    I've heard a great deal about Gaiman's work in Vertigo titles and his work is supposed to be excellent. As an example, my understanding is that he took Sandman (a DC character who has been around in various forms since the 1940s, including one created by Jack Kirby) and linked them all together with his version of Sandman, who is the true Sandman but was sealed away for a time.

    Like Jack Kirby (who created The New Gods, which has had a long-lasting effect in the DC Universe), he created his own mythos in the DC Universe in the form of The Endless (Sandman/Dream/Morpheus is one of them, and so is Death). His characters tend to pop up in unexpected places (in issue #36 of Legion Of Super-Heroes when Earth is destroyed in the 30th Century, Death is there to witness its demise and the demise of all those who perished [2,000,000,000 people] with the planet).
     
  6. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    A treat for me tonight (hope it's one for you)...

    [​IMG]
    Hamlet (2018) Globe Theater


    full show
     
    Last edited: Apr 7, 2020
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  7. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    Actually, the country boy question/reference to Shakespeare is not a legitimate one as Statford-upon-Avon in the 16th century was one of the largest municipalities (towns) in England, and Shakespeare attended its best primary school. My rebuttal is not meant to stir rancor but merely to point out a fact. The teaching of Latin and Greek classics was a crucial foundation for boys attending the school (presumably, the King Edward VI Grammar School) where the vey young Shakespeare would have studied.
     
    Last edited: Apr 7, 2020
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  8. Steve Minkin

    Steve Minkin Senior Member

    Location:
    Healdsburg CA
    Yes! Greenblatt's excellent "Will In The World" details the rigorous education Will was likely to have received locally.
     
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  9. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    His father was the major of Stratford! What public servant of that stature would be willing to send his son to a hick town school? :) Plus, Will's obvious love of Ovid is evident all through some of the early plays, not to mention the extended poems. All you really need to do is read Shakespeare to glean many of his sources (and errors - especially about Venice!).
     
    Last edited: Apr 7, 2020
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  10. Steve Minkin

    Steve Minkin Senior Member

    Location:
    Healdsburg CA

    This production has a female Hamlet, Horatio, Laertes . . . and a male Ophelia!
     
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  11. Steve Minkin

    Steve Minkin Senior Member

    Location:
    Healdsburg CA
    Cheers!

    Well we successfully completed our first ZOOM reading. I think most of us missed the real-life dimensions of our regular readings, and the intermissions filled with treats and lively conversations, but we all agreed it was better than not meeting at all.

    Measure For Measure is a great play which is decidedly unpleasant and cynical. Although The Duke strives to control the play's actions as thoroughly as Prospero and Rosalind do their plays, and to make all right in the end, the play finishes with a odd feeling of loose ends and unsatisfactory closures. One of the strongest and oddest plays in the canon, I think.

    Next up, mid-summer, late July or early August, our second look at Cymbeline, probably Will's most convoluted plot(s) and some of his lushest pastoral poetry.

    The film version to get is the BBC version (part of their complete plays series) from 1982 with Helen Mirren, available and inexpensive on ebay.

    Other film versions include a silent film from 1913, a a generally poorly received RSC production from 2017, and another poorly regarded Hollywood contemporary gangster version from 2014 (Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris).

    Thanks to Peter for hosting tonight's event, and great seeing you (such as it was) all again!
     
  12. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

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  13. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    Re-up again:



    [​IMG]
     
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  14. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    [​IMG]
    Tempest
    (1984, Paul Mazursky)
    streamer


    Muzursky on the making the film.
     
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2020
  15. Steve Minkin

    Steve Minkin Senior Member

    Location:
    Healdsburg CA
    [here's a condensed version of my notes on Lucrece, full version here:

    PlayShakespeare.com Forum: notes on Lucrece (1/1) ]

    Lucrece is the second long poem Shakespeare had published during the plague years of 1592-4, during which the theaters, bear-baiting arenas, etc., were shuttered. . .

    The poem is unfamiliar enough to most of us that I'm going to emphasize the main arc of the story here, with selections from the text primarily designed to illustrate the narrative sequence. And yet that approach will necessarily neglect the multi-narrative nature of the poem, whose storyline often eddies in place and explores the scene from various viewpoints. Oxford edition editor Colin Burrow discusses this simultaneous multiplicity of narratives: “Lucrece works off a variety of discourses, of ownership, of self-determination, of material enclosure, of liberty and tyranny. And it darkly pinions its heroine and readers within the indeterminate areas of overlap between those different discourses. The poem is not confused in doing this: it is asking dark and profound questions of the way in which the individual will intersects with circumstances, about how our bodies are both public objects and receptacles of hidden emotions. If it does not resolve these questions it is because they are irresolvable. What the poem does achieve, however, is to make those questions matter.”

    Keep this complexity in mind even as I try to simplify the narration. . .

    . . . warriors of the royal families of ancient Rome were arguing among themselves about who had the most desirable wife. Each extolled the best qualities of his wife. Collatinus praised the 'incomparable chastity of his wife Lucretia,' which had the effect of igniting the passions of the king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (aka Tarquin the Proud). When the warriors returned to camp, the other wives were all found to be dancing and partying while Lucretia was found 'spinning amongst her maids,' so Collatinus wins the contest of wives, further inflaming Tarquin's lust for Lucrece. . .

    Tarquin leaves the others and finds Lucrece, who feels duty-bound to entertain the king, never suspecting his intentions:

    This earthly saint, adored by this devil,
    Little suspecteth the false worshipper;
    For unstain'd thoughts do seldom dream on evil;
    Birds never limed no secret bushes fear

    The last two lines of that passage are enclosed with quotation marks in the First Quarto of the poem, signifying (Oxford notes) “memorable sententiae , which a reader might learn by heart or transcribe into a commonplace book.” Venus and Adonis, same publisher, had no such marked passages. There are fourteen passages of one or two lines scattered throughout the text which are highlighted like that. A couple of my favorites are:

    The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours
    Even in the moment that we call them ours.

    For fleet-winged duty with thought's feathers flies.


    Tarquin waits for night, to steal into Lucrece's bedroom, but he wrestles with his conscience:

    'What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?
    A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
    Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
    Or sells eternity to get a toy?
    For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?

    But in the end he resolves to go through with it:

    'Then, childish fear, avaunt! debating, die!
    Respect and reason, wait on wrinkled age!
    My heart shall never countermand mine eye:
    Sad pause and deep regard beseem the sage;
    My part is youth, and beats these from the stage:
    Desire my pilot is, beauty my prize;
    Then who fears sinking where such treasure lies?'

    He wakes her, demands that she yield to him or he will rape her anyway, and then kill her and one of her slaves and put them together in her bed and claim that he found the two of them making love, which would disgrace her as well as leave her raped and murdered. . .

    Tarquin . . . rapes her, leaves her. And she bemoans her fate:

    My honour lost, and I, a drone-like bee,
    Have no perfection of my summer left,
    But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft:
    In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept,
    And suck'd the honey which thy chaste bee kept.

    She decides she must kills herself . . .

    The remedy indeed to do me good
    Is to let forth my foul-defiled blood . . .'

    But she also resolves that she will tell her tale and be avenged:

    I am the mistress of my fate,
    And with my trespass never will dispense,
    Till life to death acquit my forced offence . . .

    The Romans are so enraged at Tarquin over the rape that the kings are expelled from Rome and the beginnings of representational government are put into effect. . .

    Lee Konitz, R.I.P.
     
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  16. jlocke08

    jlocke08 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington
  17. Steve Minkin

    Steve Minkin Senior Member

    Location:
    Healdsburg CA

    Did you like this Ando? I've never heard of it, seems like it was poorly received and has little to do with Shakespeare. I'm something of a completist on Shakespeare films, but may pass on this one, What's your take?
     
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  18. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    PASS :laugh:

    I remembered liking it got some reason. Among the many things that The Tempest is about, mid life angst ain't really one of 'em. Too bad. Nice photography! Heh
     
  19. Steve Minkin

    Steve Minkin Senior Member

    Location:
    Healdsburg CA
    Probably my favorite play (As You Like It two days a week), but I still haven't found a version -- live or on screen -- that bowled me over. Unlike Lear, Richard III, the Henrys, etc., which often have several great versions.
    There's a Derek Jarman version from 1979 I keep meaning to track down.
     
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  20. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    Oh, it's Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books for me. Gielgud, of course, recites all the parts - with characteristic elan. :)

    But it's a Coriolanus afternoon. Finally getting around to watching this one in full. One of the more promising free YouTube titles.


    Coriolanus (2011, Ralph Fiennes)

    [​IMG]
     
  21. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    I say China must pay for spreading this around the world and forcing lockdowns.
     
  22. Steve Minkin

    Steve Minkin Senior Member

    Location:
    Healdsburg CA
    Thanks for the reminder! I need to watch Prospero's Books!

    That Coriolanus is great! Volumnia is one of Shakespeare's great women, probably the most powerful since Queen Margaret way back in the first plays he wrote.

    Not sure if you've ever seen the Brooks/ Scofield Lear, but that's my favorite of them all, stark black and white, filmed in the wilderness of Jutland, searing performances!
     
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  23. Steve Minkin

    Steve Minkin Senior Member

    Location:
    Healdsburg CA
    There is a scene in Brooks' Lear that almost pried me out of my seat when I saw it in the theater. The loyal Duke of Kent is on his back, chained to a circular stone, and the camera slowly rotates and pans back toward the ceiling while Kent closes the scene: "Fortune good night. Smile once more. Turn thy wheel."

    Here's a famous speech from the same film:

     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2020
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  24. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    "Most of us, if we are not careful, are members of the crowd."

    - W.H. Auden on Coriolanus
     
  25. ando here

    ando here Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Pole
    King Smear? :winkgrin: My favorite Lear. Scofield is marvelous.
     
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