don’t speak…

…that moment in conversation and interaction when a lot is being said, though nothing is being said. Pause and silence. There, where being and empathy begins and the acting is done.

The razor’s edge that cuts through the play as known narrative to the play as it re-creates itself again. The players their text memorised, prepared and ready, seemingly freshly minting words anew, for you sweet love. if so inclined.

The sonnets and the Folio are like a da vinci code substitute. So much blood and no holy grail.

i’d love to see Shakespeare, a vampire. This prompted by holiday reading, The Historian. Elizabeth Kostova, the scholarly Dan Brown posited in her research a lost vampire play by Shakespeare. She’s a Yale alumnus so maybe they’re hiding something at the Elizabethan Club there?!

The book was entertainingish after page 340 odd and a tad less obvious than Dan’s attempt at ‘symbology’, which tosh i scorned and predicted from chapter to chapter, as I sped-read it in 3 hours. This book at 600 odd pages took longer.

I tend to plough through books, sucking its marrow leaving it as a vampire leaves his/her victim. There are several threads in this book, tied together with 3 generations experiencing the love of their lives whilst dealing with the undead! Harlequin romance meets book loving Vampire, the original historical and uncategorical Vlad ‘the impaler’ Chepesh!

The mildest most Ophelia-ish of the love stories is the motherless daughter brought up by diplomatic historian papa. The tales set in 1930’s, 1950’s and 1970’s neatly tie up in a bow when mama, Hermione-like is re-introduced into her daughter’s life, when Dracula himself appears.

To give an example of how little i cared about the characters in this book. I had picked it up in Walker, Minnesota and read about 100 pages by the time we got to Grand Rapids, Minn. That evening after dinner and child to bed i started in again and read continuously from about 9- 12pm.

At the midnight hour a large black bat flew into the living room from the kitchen and flapped around like a bat in a B movie. I called S. who sleepily acknowledged a bat in the house and went back to bed.

Now it should have been a scare, considering my reading matter and intense entering into the story for another 250 pages. Boo hoo it wasn’t. But if you like long reads that take you travelling all over eastern europe and Oxford and US east coast academia it’s the book for you.

However it seems no esoteric historically based novel can do without Shakespeare to give it added legitimacy. If you remember, Dan puts Shakespeare in the spurious list of Heads of the Freemasons. For my taste Dr Who had the best offering herein with the alien witches and Love’s Labours Won.

Or how about making Aaron, his chief and most evil of Sh’s characters, a black vampire and his bitten crew of Tamora and her Goth sons about to show Rome what it means to rule. From Dusk til Dawn meets Webster’s speed and knowledge of the Revenge tragedy genre version of Titus Andronicus.

Tarantino or Rodriguez directing, kickass make-up and costumes department with fx sfx dolby dibbly dobbly, cast of your favourite international A listers: from our dear beloved mumbling Brits, to the cream of the screaming yanks and the cheekiest Kiwis from Australia. Then raid the European acting larder for the foreigners and extras.

Every actor will want to be a part of it. Throw ’em all through a phonetic course approximating EME usage and let Babble-on loose.

Imagine a truly international representation of Shakespeare’s London career from the mid-1580’s to the early and late 90’s. Blossoming into the symphonic early and late 1600’s to 1609. Closing with the retirement and death of the artist in 1616.

Then the sequel, another movie about the narrative ‘tween times. Stop me! I’M FOR WHOLE QUIRES OF SONNETS.

The edge or area between spoken and unspoken: that inside ear thrumming with the heart’s counsel, debating with the mind how best to express what must be said.

Or from inside to outside, shifting into listening, feeling and acting mode; whether poised for more thought and speech, or attentive to the gross and subtle influences of scene and other actors involved.

To read Shakespeare is to be intensely alone and yet in a space densely populated with the imagination’s touch. Stillness and noise within one another, quietened by the suppression of the vocal into the expression of the silence.

The critic and the theorist joining the cacaphony surrounding the core: the attributed Poems, Plays, Histories, Comedies, and Tragedies. This world of theatre shoe-horned into books so gulls can caw and peck at its bibliophallic remnants.

Any student needs a working knowledge of the Early Modern Period, its tides and currents, from Tavern, Theatre, and Printing, to Court, Government, and Executions. If he wants to understand Shakespeare.

But to know Shakespeare is as simple as memorising several lines. Once that is done, if it were done quickly, is to own Shakespeare. Absorbed and appropriated to your own.

I need but think to be with something Shakespeare wrote. Pick a number between 1-154. Go on try it if it we ever meet. I will fulfill thy will’s desire.

Shakespeare was about suggestion, of a mood or thought or feeling. Piling meaning on top of meaning, often ad absurdum for logic to encompass. So all that’s left is the unspoken unwritten message for us to discover again and again.

Or get cynical and larf. coz you gotta larf incha?