Coriolanus

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Why This Play?:

BECAUSE AFTER A TEN MONTH BREAK FROM THE BLOG I HAD TO PICK A PLAY, ANY PLAY!

I’m one of the three people on the planet who have a Netflix account that still includes DVD borrowing. For about seven months, I had a Netflix copy of Coriolanus sitting in my to-do pile [Everyone has a physical to-do pile, right? Mine consists of jury duty summons and PTA flyers and resides in a corner of my kitchen counters.]. When I finally read the play, I sat on it for another two months before actually writing this post. Count on me to be so close to the end of this project to read the entire canon and to get distracted by something new and shiny in the final round.

That “new and shiny” thing I’ve been distracted with for the past few months? Oh, just grad school to reboot my career. A new leap, a new set of skills and goals and work that have sort of rearranged my entire family’s life. But we’ll pause on that for a bit…on the prideful downfall of a Roman warrior and his loose connection to my little life!

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Titus Andronicus

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I originally planned on covering this play last October – something fitting about reading Shakespeare’s bloodiest play during the Halloween season.  I read one act and then abandoned it.  The US presidential election happened in the middle of my reading.  My news feed, my friends, my own head, were all filled with such dread, quoting so many voices of violence and anger as well as despair…I just couldn’t take the evil revenge fantasy of this play at the same time (I picked up a copy of the sonnets instead). 

Ugh, this play, y’all.  Titus Andronicus can be pretty revolting (it’s especially hard to watch/read Lavinia’s arc), even for a lover of horror films like me. Not to mention, it’s downright clunky.  It is considered one of Shakespeare’s earliest works, one that tends to be viewed through a lens of knowledge on his later plays.  The younger Shakespeare gives us a shocking, gory, thrill-ride plot with juvenile characters that focus on action rather than self-analysis.  The mature playwright dove inward with his characters as his writing progressed, sometimes to the degree that analysis outweighed action.  It makes sense that his writing would grow and become more refined and nuanced as the man himself sharpened his skills…and just grew older and lived more life.  As we all get older and gain more experience, don’t we do the exact same thing?

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Hamlet

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Why This Play?:

Here we are, tackling one of the most important and recognized works in the history of the English language.  Nothing to be intimidated by, right?  I first read Hamlet when I was 15 years old, in my 10th grade Honors English class.  My teacher, Mr. Birrer, either had high expectations of his class and/or he just really loved getting to teach this play.  That same year, I saw Branagh’s movie (unabridged text; hold on to your hats!) in the theatre.  I think an early introduction to the work really mitigated some of the trepidation I probably would have felt if I had first explored this play in college.  I got the chance to really enjoy it from a plot/characterization standpoint before I had developed my finely honed, pretentious, English major critical thinking skills.  I could just absorb the story for what it essentially is: a punk kid, depressed about his messed-up family situation, argues with himself on how to change his circumstances.

I was very pleased to see a free, 1-hour long production of Hamlet a couple of weeks ago at my local library.  There’s something refreshing about seeing such a dense work (Shakespeare’s longest) stripped to its essence.  It brought to mind my long-ago first reaction to the play – that many teenagers could identify with this confused, angry, sad protagonist, who’s been let down by some of the people he loved most.  I like most to imagine a youthful Hamlet, because I think he struggles with his own capability in making adult decisions.  This guy has a difficult time choosing a course of action and actually pursuing it.  Hamlet as the ultimate stereotype of a hipster philosophy student.  What makes this guy so relatable and famous for so long?  Because like him, at some point, we’ve all been our own worst enemy.

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Antony & Cleopatra

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Why This Play?:

It was the penultimate play that my FutureLearn class tackled.  I’m still trying to stick to the reading schedule for that course, despite the fact that it ended earlier this month (luckily, the lesson material is still online, so I’m slowly but surely going to finish the course!).  The holidays and other recent events have thrown my schedule for reading/writing off course, and my alone time has greatly diminished the past few weeks.  I have firm plans to get back on track in 2016!

Antony & Cleopatra is like Romeo & Juliet, all grown up.  Because they’re grown-ups, the stakes of their doomed love are much higher -- they’ve built much bigger lives and have a broader scope of influence than a couple of teenagers.  They manage to screw up entire empires over each other.  And throughout the whole ordeal, Antony has a friend who’s watching helplessly as it all unfolds.  It’s an epic love story, and an epic disaster story.  So what happens when you’re the one who’s trying to keep everything from burning to the ground?  It’s a Type-A’s nightmare, y’all.

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Othello

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Why This Play?:

Oh, y’all.  I’ve been so very, very behind.  And I have swell excuses.  First off, my years-ago brush with the Macbeth curse reared its ugly head in the exact same manner after just writing about the play – I came down with laryngitis a couple of days after that last blog post.  Cursed, cursed play!  And then here in the States, I hosted our Thanksgiving meal and spent all my free time for a few days refining the menu and prepping dishes.  Then we decorated the house for the holidays, and the kids were constantly under my feet, I’m volunteering at the school…the list of excuses that I have for not writing goes on and on.  But if I’m honest, I’ve been stalling.

I think the real reason I put off writing about Othello is that it is a very disturbing play.  For all my love of horror movies and the gore of other plays, it’s this domestic drama that really scares me.  This blog encompasses my own personal view of Shakespeare – how I interpret and relate to the Bard’s works through events/feelings in my own little life.  No one wants to think Othello’s themes of jealousy, racism, gender issues, domestic violence, or manipulation are represented in her own life.  I’ve been skirting around my thoughts of Desdemona in particular and how she’s the worst-case scenario of what happens when women are viewed as prizes rather than partners.  And let’s face it – every woman has been there to some degree.

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Macbeth

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Why This Play?:

I just finished this week’s FutureLearn lesson on Macbeth.  It was easily the most interesting yet.  We examined Elizabethean attitudes about witchcraft, the idea of frenzy versus actual madness, and medical practices of the time.  We asked ourselves about the nature of evil and Shakespeare’s radical idea that in Macbeth, evil comes from within a man himself rather than through divine/demonic intervention. 

We all see glimpses of evil every day.  Simply turn on your phone, scroll through some daily headlines, and read about horrible things that people do to each other.  I thought upon reading this play that I’d probably end up writing about the supernatural (it’s fun and interesting!) in this post.  Last weekend’s news out of Lebanon and France shifted my thoughts to this question: how do we deal with everyday evil?

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King Lear

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Why This Play?:

I just saw a very interesting production of Lear this past weekend at California Shakespeare Festival.  I was so excited to see one of the most intense, densest plays I’d ever studied, just to see how that level of drama would be staged (and I’m always curious to see what text gets cut along the way).  Plus, literature-challenged Hubs decided to join me! 

The Tragedy of King Lear would best bear the subtitle “How Not to Be a Family, in Every Possible Way”.  We see here examples on how not to parent, how not to act towards a spouse, how not to treat your siblings, and how not to carry out filial duty.  Generational power struggles abound!  And when is it ever a bad time to dive headfirst into an insanely dark tragedy that studies the cruelties of man as determined through free will rather than a pre-destined course?

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Julius Caesar

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Why This Play?:

Behold, the play that everyone studied in high school except for yours truly (my lone wolf teacher pressed Hamlet upon us instead).  For the life of me, I had trouble seeing why this one is so prevalent among tenth grade English classes.  Most kids have studied Romeo and Juliet the year before – how about switching in one of the comedies instead of Caesar?  I mean, let’s grant the youth of America a respite from the suicide motif.  Perhaps teachers spin this play as a cautionary tale against hanging with the wrong crowd?  Not being wrongly influenced by dumbass friends? I searched the Internet for teaching guides on this play, and found my hypothesis to be pretty spot on. Julius Caesar, warning kids of the dangers of peer pressure for decades.  Don’t let your friends talk you into killing a potential tyrant, kids – you may end up causing a civil war and killing yourself over it!

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Romeo & Juliet

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In which the “Mama” part of the Dreadpiratemama moniker comes into play.  In other words, I took a 5 year old to see one of the most famous love stories of all time…and it happened to be her very first live theatre experience. 

Why This Play?:

So far, I’ve written on plays that were new to me, so it’s time to dive into a play that I already know well.  Admittedly, it’s weirdly intimidating writing about something that everyone else also knows pretty well.  What new points could possibly be made that haven’t already been beaten to death? 

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