Pericles, Prince of Tyre

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that most people are capable of revelatory thoughts while bathing.  A few weeks ago, I was musing on the nature of Shakespeare’s romances while washing my hair.  I mean, who doesn’t do that on the regular?  I started to make connections between the three I’ve covered for this project already and the concept of forgiveness that pervades the romances.  But of course, my fledgling idea could be stronger if I actually read the other two romances to see if there are further connections.  So here we are, jumping right in!

Pericles is certainly a strange little fairy tale.  I loved the steadfast Marina, how she works at retaining her innocence despite all the evil circumstances that are thrown her way.  She still seeks to be good and to find and promote goodness in others.  This play got me wondering: is forgiveness a part of the process when we keep someone from doing us harm…and something that we know they’ll later regret?  We all need a conscience, after all.

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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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The Merchant of Venice

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Right now, the first months of 2017, is the strangest time in politics and government that I have ever witnessed.  I know, I know.  I already did a Trump comparison of a Shakespeare play.  I promise this isn’t going to focus on a specific person in power…more the idea of power itself. 

The Merchant of Venice is a love story, a friendship story.  But it’s equally a tale of power, prejudice, commerce (both monetary and emotional), and negotiation.  The plot hinges on laws and how to interpret them.  Oppressed Shylock tries to use the law to his advantage and fails.  As many laws are up for reinterpretation or change here in the States under a new administration, I wondered how fair Venice’s laws were to its people.  What happens when the law doesn’t exactly protect or serve the citizens?  What are we supposed to do then (i.e. now)? 

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The Sonnets

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I started a new reading while on a mini-vacation with some old girlfriends.  I rarely take time away from my family.  And I wanted to travel light.  So my Folger paperback copy of the sonnets got to accompany me.  It was a lovely break from the plays.  I decided to read them as a singular work (realizing full well that may not have been how they were intended to be read), and I’m writing about them as such.  It seemed a bit easier than 154 individual mini-posts for each sonnet (even my nerdy self doesn’t want to read that).  Besides, it makes for a juicy narrative!  These sonnets have now been my companions throughout the end of autumn, which seems oddly fitting.  Nights are getting longer as the poems get darker.  And it helped me work through a problem that's been nagging me for weeks.

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Henry VIII

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My choices in what to read are slowly but surely becoming more limited as I am now on my 26th play for this project!  I haven’t dabbled too much in Shakespeare’s collaborative efforts, so it felt time to take a peak at a shared work.  And I have to say, I was thoroughly unimpressed.  The problem with this play is that it lacks any cohesive tone or theme that follows the entire story.  The characters don’t have full arcs where the audience witnesses downfall or redemption.  I tried my best to separate my knowledge of these historical figures and to just appreciate them as characters within a single story.  Unfortunately, this play allows for very little complexity, layering, or humanity in these characters, aside from maybe Katherine. Of this play, I found myself asking, “What is the point of you, Craig?”

Seriously.  What is this play even trying to say?  It can’t decide what kind of story it is.  It's a history play about a narcisstic and volatile king who hardly has a strong political message beside following his whims.  It feels exactly as frustrating as the current US presidental election, with particular emphasis on a certain candidate.

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The Taming of the Shrew

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Oh, I have such a love/hate relationship with this work (as do many others long before me).  It was the first ever Shakespearean play in which I performed, back in my senior year of high school.  It inspired a classic, hilarious teen movie (to which I heavily related because I was 17 when it came out).  I’ve seen some great performances of this play.  Part of my love centers on the heightened theatricality of this play – more so than most, the text is determined by how it’s interpreted by a director and actors.

But the straight text, taken without the nuance and emotive direction of seeing it performed, is so troubling.  Modern audiences grapple with Petruchio's treatment of his new wife and of Kate's reasons for transformation.  Many attempt to explain why Kate is a shrew at the beginning.  I think this is a thoroughly modern issue -- since the 20th century, people have been preoccupied with examining past events to explain current behavior.  But where do we draw the line between learning from our pasts and being mired down in them? 

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Love's Labour's Lost

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Why This Play?: 

I wanted to try something new for this reading.  First, some backstory: about 10 years ago, I was living in Los Angeles and my parents were out in Scottsdale, AZ.  It’s a roughly 6-hour drive between the two cities, so I would road trip out on occasion to visit them.  During that period, I amassed a number of audio books on CD to help pass the solo drive.  One I picked up on the cheap happened to be the Arkangel dramatic reading of Love’s Labour’s Lost.  I listened to it once on a desert drive, tucked it away in my car, and promptly forgot about it for a decade. [I solemnly swear I’ve cleaned out my car multiple times in that decade, I just always kept hold of it in case I had another long solo drive.]  I stumbled upon it again in recent months, and I’ve been saving it for this blog post.

For this reading, I unearthed my old 2007 Macbook, popped in the CD, and followed along with my written copy.  What a fantastic way for the language in this one to come alive!  LLL is infamous for being heavy on the Elizabethan wordplay, and this really helped with my understanding far more than footnotes could.  I may have to dig up more of these at my local library!  This play is about what happens when four men desist their contact with women, but women happen into their lives anyway.  There’s a stupid, cliché adage that love only comes when you cease to look for it.  The thing is... that's actually what happened that led me to my husband.

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Troilus & Cressida

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Why This Play?:

I consulted the list of plays I have to finish reading to complete the canon.  I lifted my index finger.  I waved it around in circles over the list, my other hand held over my eyes.  I pushed said finger down to the page.  I saw that I was to read Troilus and Cressida.  I rejoiced that I was to tackle a play that I had never read nor seen.  I dig getting to dive into the unknown.

And it’s an intriguing play.  I’m surprised it’s not performed more.  It’s technically listed as a comedy under the folio, and academics later dubbed it one of the “problem plays.”  I think that’s what makes it feel so modern.  We have here a tale about the idiocy of war.  We have a tale of inconstant women (whose fate and circumstances are solely decided by men).  And we have some surprisingly fun, witty banter.  Then, an ending that has no resolution at all.  It’s all over the place, and there isn’t really a clear message aside from this: trust no one because people lie and/or change their minds, and war is crazy.  Is this right?  Should we take this Troilus and Cressida as a cautionary tale that the rug can be pulled out from us at any moment? 

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Measure for Measure

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Why This Play?:

I am chugging along on this project – this marks my 17th completed play in 6 months thus far.  Not quite the pace I originally hoped of 39 plays + poems done in a year (because, you know, life) so time to step it up!  I realized, just in the plays alone, remaining on my to-read list are 3 romances, 4 tragedies, 7 histories, and 9 comedies.  Well, on to a comedy then!  Measure for Measure won the selection as polled by my 2 Twitter followers.

And boy, did I discover something special with this play!  This is juicy and feels like cutting-edge satire even after 400 years.  We have characters who believe and live by their morality (Isabella), and we have characters who bend their morals to suit their actions (Claudio, Angelo…basically any character who offers an excuse as to why they engage in behavior that they know is not in accordance with the law).  The vast majority of us fall into the latter category in our daily lives.  Whether we break laws (speeding through traffic?) or go against our religious/moral ones (adultery?), what makes us still maintain that moral guidance even when we don’t exactly put it into practice?

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