I Love Shakespeare

AIM IM ALL”S WELL

AIM IM with WS and LJ on 12/13/08

8:12 PM
WS: still away?

8:56 PM
LJ: here

9:29 PM
WS: col now too?

LJ: ameaning what

WS: it meant cool not col

LJ: whats a happenin muskat

WS: i replied to the uvic mail
quite an honour man
it’s the number one site on shakes in my mind

LJ: is it now
well get em to let you do some lecturing

WS: i’m hoping something might come from it
it’s also posted on the shakespeare post site which has got a few readers.

LJ: what did ya post
you still blogging

WS: about to do a blog on all’s well that ends well. the blog is posted.
yep starte again i was blogstipated
weird fuckin play man

LJ: yeah just saw it last night
very wierd woman manipulation
cowardly soldiers
lost kings

WS: the fuck

LJ: great chambermaids

WS: ill bet
now i’m reading from a woman’s perspective
if the guys are such dorks and the femmes manipulating the situation
plus the religious shit that’s in there
proddy versus catholic. fuckin saint jaques
who the fuck is he?
where did you see it

LJ: dont know
fraire jagues of nursery rhymes?

WS: lol

LJ: new school / actors studio

WS: good point
so a youthful cast?

LJ: too youthful & a bad mix of method & non method director
very few performances of note
the chaimbermaids were good

WS: fuck that tell me concept
modern dress

LJ: turn of the century – france
just pre ww1

WS: and Florence
cool

LJ: bare stage
no design – minimum props

WS: accent on the words

LJ: not even

WS: really dense fuckin language btw

LJ: theyre trained method
and the director is an old shakespeare director
with no method training

WS: so lots of lust and rejection and pomposity

LJ: it was boring except for the writing
fortunately it wasn’t over mugged or over played
it felt like a cover-band performance, each one awaiting their turn to speak
non of the give & take one expects in regular conversation

WS: that’s the respeck for shakespeare thing

LJ: lots of bodies standing idly on the stage

WS: but the chambermaids were hot?

LJ: not reacting to the goings on in the dialog
they interacted well with each other & surroundings
though they spoke a paltry 10 lines tween them
but set the mood & character reaction
think of it as the 2 hapless pirates in pirates of the carib, who keep getting swept up in the action
yet their expressions cue in the audience

WS: betram and Parolles
Bertram

LJ: as to how to react to events
is it outrageous or merely another day in the park

WS: exactly

LJ: the maids provided that with their interaction
and facial expressions

WS: what the fuck is going on at the heart of this story?

LJ: if women treated men as men treat them in manipulation

WS: Bertram’s a knob. Parolles on the page sounds believable. helena a bit to Reese witherspoon connivy
explain further that last point

LJ: ok
role reversal in the sexes
think of all those great stories where the ‘man’ ugly as sin etc… manages to win the heart of the fair maiden through some conniving & mischief
now here is helena wanting the learned doctor son who gets called to court
he is a bit naive & under the influence of the scalliwag captain
looking to make a name & a life for himself
all this is cut short when marriage is thrust upon him with one he considers not his equall (she was a maid or such in the household)
there is the lecture of the value of the virginity & weathered pears
besides the point

WS: this where the text is better
it is the point

LJ: way better

WS: he’s a Count btw
his mther is the Countess

LJ: the rest of the characters manipulate just as much as helena

WS: exactly

LJ: on;y her quest is manlove&child

WS: Helena is the physicians daughter

LJ: while others is social status

WS: she cures the French King who grants this wish she has

LJ: yes but bertam is also a physician

WS: No he’s a Courtier going to the Court of France to advance his ambitions

LJ: hes the son of a lady who was married to helena’s pop?
the beginning is unclear

WS: the king of France is sick and thinks he’s gonna die and his best physicians have told they can do nothing more for him.
I agree
on the page it’s a lot of deep character work and interelationships and dense mannered language
But then bertrams mum the countess who employed helena’s father as a physician sees helena’s cow-sickness
and sends her after Bertram

LJ: the maids let it slip, they are the catalists

WS: she arrives at Court and makes this weird deal with the king
i’m gonna look at that

LJ: yeah its a wierd play

WS: it’s a reversal of the commoner getting up into the noble’s affairs

LJ: it gives her the power of the king to back up her wants

WS: coz frankly it could never have happened you’d think. Social snobbery has a long history.
exactly his word is god’s word
bertram backs down like the neo-phyte he is
sets up his escape plan with Parolles help and encouragement
and then becomes a hero
all the while unsuspecting of his companion’s utter incompetence until some one tells him and they set the trap for Parolles
the pirates of the carib comparison was spot on
it doesn’t fit genre either
it’s one of the problem plays
the fashion of the time of writing was satire
but i could see it working as a romcom
adam sandler and reese witherspoon and Johnny Depp
a dark romcom with all sexual puns exploited etc
the vrgin quibble is excellent
first view of the roguish cap’n

LJ: bertram’s lament is basically this: i have come of age, i want to venture forth and earn my manhood rites including earn a woman & here he is given one at court

WS: so it’s a coming of age story

LJ: he is governed 7 ruled by women (his mother) till the point he runs & joins the army
yes & part of that is the whole virginity thing

WS: which was shown forgive the pun to be nothing

LJ: which both he & helena are obsessed by

WS: which remains a fair thought to lie between a lady’s legs
so he’s a virgin too?

LJ: sure

WS: american pie kind of gags
40 year old virgin

LJ: look how he woes the other girl when an army of whores is camped by the army

WS: woes or woos?

LJ: nope me thinks he is a lad

WS: he becomes a lad or is one already
did court life corrupt him immediately and entirely?

LJ: hence the power of ‘captain’ parolles over him with stories & deeds

WS: zackly

LJ: the old lord sees strait through parolles in the first day of court

WS: i love that guy

LJ: yep – seen – done – dealt with it all, an elder statesman

WS: those lines about parolles are wc fields incorporated

LJ: why would he want to flog off his daughter on bertram in the end?

WS: there can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is in his clothes.
yeppers totally freakin weird
dynastic and political continuity?

LJ: not really mentioned, perhaps he is such a hero that his daughter is smitten by him too

WS: maybe bertram has gathered street cred

LJ: but funny that he just ‘lost ‘his wife & has another woman thrust upon him

WS: girls love the bad guy too
weired

LJ: yay nay – the florentine girl he woes – then denies in court, the whole business with the rings & the letter

WS: Lafew the old guy also says to Parolles:Methinkst thou art a general offense, and every man should beat thee. You are not worth another word, else i’ll call you knave
that fuckin ring thing and bed-trick thing is classic too.
and the letters
all used indivdually in earlier plays but now fashion dictates bring in one bring in em all for that plush effect
the clown is an equivocal bastard that’s for sure
he talks in paradoxes and antitheses
it’s a mind workout reading this stuff
seeing should be easier

LJ: yes, the basic plot points are easy to follow

WS: but the density and stupidity of what is said and what is done and how is mind-boggling
knaves and fools sir
virtue and virginity sir
ooh suits you
is your virtuous sir
wife
ill bet she is
In every thing i’ll wait upon his will, Helena says at the end of act 2 scene 4
Pure filth sir
what? will?
her wait ing on it sir
how heavy is she sir?
try these
The History Channel – Podcast
Military History Podcast
i downloaded some on to mypod
you got a nyphone?
if not why not?
it’s an extension of your computer and then some at least for the snack users

LJ: yep got an iphone

WS: cool huh?

LJ: handy thing

WS: lol
hey can i use this chat as a blog?

LJ: sure

WS: we basically covered the play in a very weird way over this equally weird medium

LJ: yep, fielding a call right now

WS: ok over and out

LJ: got to go over some work shite for the next half hour or so

WS: laters

Controlling your Destiny…

…the idea of being a self-made man (or woman). Writing solely as the whim arises. feeding off an inner radar of word conduced to word in finite sequence.

pause, breath, sip of coffee, groove on a tune, real, recorded, or imagined. No fight just flow. with nowhere to go but cyberspace. blink and you’ll miss it. what’s the point?

content condemned to chance. the banner, the sale, the grab, the cash. or what’s the point?

an edifice exists to support the argument, cohesion not its game anyway, like veiled ads in spam, pushing xanax or bestiality, you choose.

“if music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it that in surfeit i may sicken and so die.”
if you can’t name the play it doesn’t matter, but if you knew that Orsino who says it, is like a love-sick cow…hurumph and moo-moo.

The ‘don’t ever give away this ring’ thing happens in this play as it does in others. like the ‘i’ll switch places with someone else in bed-trick’ it was a popular device to further the comedy or tragedy.

damn if i’d been a Roman i’d ‘ve had musicians playing during my nightlies. Dying fall, curling toes, hedonistic heaven! who needs devices one might ask?

The intersextualisation and intersexuality follow intellectual and intertextual mirrors. It’s all truth and smoke screens and lies and deceits mixed as honestly as one can to justify the lie. A conundrum meant to delight and confuse and amuse. ta guele!

amuse ma bouche cherie. brain drain on caffeine and nicotine and very lean slices o venison. rhe-yaersing for shiekhsbare is bad bad thing. munch munch mushy mushy.

Made it thus far? very well, much musing sincetimes i can state. jobs a-plenty and life a-buzzin with change. obamabedamned! change isn’t a political necessity it’s an actuarial need. The downslides into madness that self can make are calculated into existence by insurance companies and banks. gullibility sells.

Flawed masterpieces piece-mealed together. The story of my life, if i make it so, succeeding without effort. Assisted by nonchalance and nonsense equally igniting the flame within cliche’s bonfire. The awareness of awareness and other levels of madness and paranoia identifying with the dark within. Circles and spirals.

So now, so near. Sentic cycles anyone?

Notes from a PALM PILOT…

…made back in 2001.

GK Knight- The Mutual Flame.

‘every person or thing in shakespeare is expressed as a being of eternal rights: the soul-life of each is touched,…every least person…enjoys this royalty… shares in this elixir, is known by the atman, or divine spark within’.

Creating every bad a perfect best…114.8

What more perfect description could you find to characterise Shakespeare’s human delineation, surveying as it does, both good and evil with inhuman clarity and charity, as though from a consciousness itself looking down on them from some eternal dimension?

The quality of the sonnets is such that every critic trying to evaluate their content can only see what he is capable of seeing and no more. and those who see moral perversions, or a complete conventional association of the poet with this or that nobleman of the day simply reveal their own level of consciousness.

if anyone has gone deeper and penetrated beneath the surface, he has found an unnameable something that invokes intuitions, suggestions that cannot harden into opinions, intimations rather than statements.

The content of the sonnets is something you cannot be dogmatic about. moreover no allegory can be dissected for hidden symbolic meaning.

the rich imagery, the incomparable language adorn and complement the truth they embody.

No matter what the mental pattern of a civilisation may be and its sophistication, the inner interplay of light and dark must go on.

This is the individual’s struggle towards the realisation of the Soul’s intention.
The importance of distilling from our lives something of essential value while we live.

Rather than die leaving no ‘progeny’. i.e. No worthwhile accomplishment for the general good,
– or for the perpetuation of our own individual character,
a basis for future good fortune and strength and growth.
Yet what future?
If death is the end of all?
The explanation seems to lie in 59, which presupposes a former as well as a future life.

AT LEAST 7 OTHER SONNETS HAVE VEILED HINTS OF THIS DOCTRINE.

This human everyman entity is old , even was old to antiquity, and at the same time prevails on into years of posterity.

Shakespeare’s use of Time with all its allusions to its passage, and what it does to humans; it’s relation to endless age and by implication immortality.

The theme of antiquity and futurity existing as ONE is found in several sonnets along with the idea of the eternity of Nature, of the Cosmos, and of man.

Giordano Bruno, following Pythagoras:

of the broad sweep of CYCLES, of the World itself as a living being
ensouled by the Divine Presence: man and atom
and all other entities existing
only as parts of the One LIFE.

Was Shakespeare a part of Raleigh’s School of Night?
and did he meet Bruno there? i.e. to be influenced by his thinking and writings.
alongside the Oxford Dons and other cultured schooled in life men.

Are the Sonnets echoing a COSMIC philosophy which envisions the Metaphysical nature of Man as part of the Universe.

Man himself has an individual identity in his deepest aspect:
For example:

No I am that I am…121.9,
affirms this realisation in spite of any untoward appearances.

In the same way the loved one is addressed:

that you alone are you…84.2,

Yet in:

Let me confess that we two must be twain, although our undivided loves are one…36.1,2,

and

even for this let us divided live and our dear love lose name of single one…39.5,6,

and

My bonds in thee are all determinate, for how do i hold thee but by thy granting…87.4,5,

and

O how thy worth with manners may I sing, when thou art all the better part of me… 39.1,2,

and

My spirit is thine, the better part of me…74.8,

and

for all that beauty that cover thee is but the seemly raiment of my heart, which in thy breast doth live as thine in me…22.5,6,7,

and

But here’s the joy, my friend and I are one. Sweet flattery then she loves but me alone…42 final couplet.

these lines express the boundless reverence for and gratitude towards what could not be called anything other than the inner companion of every other human being:

call it,

conscience,
guardian angel,
inner monitor,
super ego,
or the divine self in the world.

This other self seems to be only at times a friendly and sustaining support (in the sonnets and life).
at other times it is a silent monitor, receding when the lesser self becomes wayward and untrue,

and

withdrawing altogether for indeterminate periods when neglected for too long by its pupil, the consistent human ‘I’.

eg 110, 112, 121,

Is this a humble return to the great central loyalty after a period of inattentiveness, or trifling , or meaner pursuits?

Has the lesser ‘I’ lost sight of the august and patient Self?

yet in this mood can admit:

O give thyself the thanks, if aught in me, worthy perusal stand against thy sight…38.1, 2,

W=V

George W. Bush as Henry V?

shoulda been posted a month ago! follow the link to the full paper! Jack Lynch’s blog Dull in a New Way is linked under the lang/lit section.

Apparently i’ve been blogstipated for a month or two.

Mnema of things past…

Memory and remembrance, what parts do they play in Shakespeare?

A veteran of the recent Iraq or Afghani wars may return home with prologues and speeches of Henry the Fifth at his rapping beck and call and recall. Hell one soldier I know of set up OSS while on his tour of duty.

is this because Rumsfeld did a workshop on Corporate Shakespeare? President Bush yes double-ya, who professed to having Sh on his nightstand is fashioning himself (or being fashioned like henry the sixth) as afore-mentioned, Harry 5.

So does that make Presidential candidate McCain and his choice for VP Sarah Palin into Prospero and Miranda? Or King Lear and his daughter Regan? Macbeth and Lady Macbeth?

An afterthought, maybe she’s Lady MacDuff and McCain is old Duncan. Or how about Leontes and Hermione? Exit ideas, pursued by a bear.

None of these so far fits the profile of Sarah Palin, that hitherto unknown Alaskan Mom and Huntress and Republican protector of Alaskan Oil interests. Yup Yup, we can agree on that, you betcha.

maybe she’s like Nursie, in Romeo and Julyut (disyllabic not trisyllabic). perhaps his Titus has met her Tamora? Anyone for pie? Or is it a clear case of Coriolanus and Volumnia, the wounded psyche looking to Mom for some direction?

A Comedy of Errors? She, Aemilia the abbess tucked away, while her twin boys search for each other with their idiot-savant twin Dromios beside them.

Forget about it. Why can’t Obama drop Biden and take Sarah on his ticket? then we’d have the View in the Whitehouse. Reality TV don’t get much better than that.

The dissemination of sh news in the online community is starting to accept we have a myriad of shakespeares. How this happened i easily blame on theory. (as payback for sitting through a zillion stultifying jargonised papers).

The text itself means nothing anymore. Schoolkids, i love this bit, don’t even have time to engage with the text itself, but do have to fit that text into a theory about that text.

So the situation with Shakespeare is that it means whatever you interpret it to mean. The text is yours to respond to as you like it.

Hey maybe it’s the banished Duke in the Forest of Arden who sees a very capable looking Audrey?!?

Let’s get some linkage happening here.

The THEATRE by James Burbage 1576-1596

Here is a post from Shaksper by the inimitable Dave Kathman including a link to a gooogle earth portrayal of the newly found foundations of the THEATRE, the very first in England built for public consumption.

Re: SHK 19.0454 The Theatre at Shoreditch Discovered

The site of the excavations are visible in a satellite photograph on Google
Earth, which one can see at the following URL I created:

The building at the corner of Curtain Road and New Inn Yard,

visible in this photograph as a white square with a bit taken out of its upper left corner
(there was a Foxtons store on the ground floor when I was there two years ago),
has two plaques on it. One says “The site of this building forms part of what
was once the precinct of the Priory of S. John the Baptist, Holywell. Within a
few yards stood from 1577 to 1598, the first London building specially devoted
to the performance of plays, and known as “The Theatre.” The other plaque says
“London Borough of Hackney. William Shakespeare Acted at The Theatre. Built by
James Burbage. Plays by Shakespeare were performed here.” The excavations
mentioned in the press articles are visible as a construction area to the north
and east of this building in the Google Earth photo, with a red crane rising
above it. I’m not sure when the satellite photo was taken. Julian Bowsher, the
Museum of London archeologist quoted in one of Hardy’s articles, told me last
week that they’re not 100% certain that the remains they found are of the
Theatre, but they’re the right type of remains in the right place. A few years
ago they found part of the Long Barn that was just to the south of the Theatre,
and it was to the south of these new remains.

Dave Kathman

Grand Rapids, Minnesota…

WS will be performing his Why Love Shakespeare? Sonnet show

…at the coffeshop, Brewed Awakenings

on Saturday 16th August 2008

at 6:30pm.

SO all you Minnesotans or North Dakotans or Wisconsin Shakespeare lovers

treat yourselves to an evening in the birthplace of Judy Garland!

Entrance is FREE.

This was a very interesting performance for the family and friends who showed up. Plus the six or seven high school seniors who happened to be sitting there. My parents joined us live from Toronto via i-chat.

Further shakespeare news can be had from the Sharpest pen of them all at the shakespeare book shop in Startford on Avon.

Julius Caesar…

…this has to be the best speech in Shakespeare:

Click the link and scroll down to see how to make friends and influence Roman people!

great scott!

…a blog beginning with g. Now I’m no Richard crookback but G has some serious portent in Shakespeare. Let’s put it to use as an exclamatory, Gee-up and this post can begin anew.

I’m a reader, and a writer, and a speaker. You too i’m guessing. Early on in life i’d ponder why some words could be words and others not, convinced I was that ‘seme” and ‘sume’ were words like ‘same’ and ‘some’ .

I dipped into my dad’s french book and learned ‘qui’ and ‘oui’ and mixed them up. I remember age 8 or 9 arguing with a teenage girl on the roundabout in Whittaker park that I was right and she, receiving actual lessons in french at BRGS, was wrong.

Stubborn is part of my make-up, determined one of the meanings of William. What’s in a name? And so back to examining language. My dad learned Russian from Exiled emigres and used it to scare the bejaysus out of unsuspecting former communists trying to start a new life away from the KGB.

Through language comes culture and me da’ would oft return from his lessons ladened with rye bread and kielbassa and assorted rough delicacies. As a northern lad inedible foreign muck. Ahh, the pride of prejudice, another language driven attribute!

When in my teens we emigrated to Canada, I switched accent from broad northern to rough and ready Ontario lilts and ehs, eh? Boats and about were never the same and probably the hardest part of the Canadian twang.

Everybody loves a Newfie joke and all Canucks have their own version, which drives the Newfoundlanders into hysterics, if not apoplexy at such accentuated abuse.

When does an accent become a dialect? When does a dialect become a language? Apparently for linguists the joke is when a dialect gets an army and navy then it’s a language!

And with an army and navy you can expand the language pool forcibly by pidgins and creoles. Or make an others language subservient to your own.

My own idiolect is steeped in others languages now. I’m a code switcher, which means i can start in english and end in dutch with ease. Bilingualism is the dominant global trend so get used to it!

According to Danish linguist Otto Jespersen there are five theories for how language began:

The ‘bow-wow’ theory- ie people imitated the sounds of the environment, especially animal calls.

The ‘pooh-pooh’ theory- ie people making instinctive sounds, caused by pain, anger or other emotions.

The ‘ding-dong’ theory- ie people reacted to the stimuli in the world around them, producing sounds reflected in their environment.

The ‘yo-he-ho’ theory- ie people worked together producing communal, rhythmical grunts, chants, language.

The ‘la-la’ theory- ie people associated the romantic side of life like love, play, poetic feeling and song into language.

If you’re interested in knowing more of How Language Works try this title by David Crystal. Damn this guy’s good.

ever write a post for each letter…

…of the alphabet. My mindless blogging quest fulfilled quite soon. Focus and fulfillment, now where would a Sh stand on that subject ya think? Use of intellect in creating distraction of the intellect is the purpose of theatre in it’s basic form. Or is there a higher purpose, ya think?

You make a decision to do something. you do it in incremental phases until everything is replete for the showing of it. That process too requires its own incremental efforts up to and during performance. Then you start again. If you sit around thinking of your brilliance and basking in the reflected glory of success or failure, you are subject to the spinning of fortune’s wheel.

I Love Shakespeare

Sonnet Book

Blog Pages

Archives

Categories

AIM IM ALL”S WELL

Controlling your Destiny…

Notes from a PALM PILOT…

W=V

Mnema of things past…

The THEATRE by James Burbage 1576-1596

Grand Rapids, Minnesota…

Julius Caesar…

great scott!

ever write a post for each letter…

Recent Posts

Elizabethan Grammar School

LANG/LIT School

Look and Listen to Others

Online Works of Shakespeare

Play School

Renaissance School

Scholarly Renaissance-related blogs

Shakespeare Blogs

Shakespeare Institutions

Shakespeare or SOMEONE ELSE?

Sonnet School

Meta