My dear lover, body and soul, has of late importuned me with love in Shakespearean fashion... meaning, he's sent me emails full of poetry. Appropriately, a few of them have been Elizabethan sonnets, which, as all the boys should know, are still a surefire means of winning any girl's heart. Or at least a girl whose hobby is memorizing Hamlet and King Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing and what-not.
But he has also been bugging me (in the most delicate and nerdy ways possible) to join him in memorizing some more Romeo and Juliet. The first fourteen lines the titular characters speak to each other form a sonnet, and represent a most romantic (if not ultimately auspicious) meeting of souls. It's a semi-cheeky dance of phrasing and it speaks to both of these kids' abilities to charm and evade with nought but words. Comparing Juliet to a holy shrine, Romeo implores she grace his "unworthy" lips with a touch of hers, so that he, the pilgrim, be blessed. She is convinced, eventually, and sin is purged by their pure kisses.
So yeah, OF COURSE I'd love to add this to my repertoire! If only because it would be our repertoire in the end, which will probably grow as time progresses. Given our mutual adoration of all things Shakespeare (and many other beautifully geeky things), I anticipate the day we recite this to each other will be exciting enough that it will inspire us to continue the tradition. Possibly with some Macbeth, and definitely some Benedick and Beatrice banter. Oh, the possibilities.
Romeo and Juliet, Act I Sc. V
ROMEO
[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. (kisses her)
It's all Shakespeare and all romance this week in my special edition commemorative post. I've returned from my multi-flight overseas journeys a changed woman, and Shakespeare had a fairly specific influence on events.
First off, I got my ass to a screening of Joss Whedon's pet project Much Ado About Nothing while I was Manhattan. It was the eve before the heat wave, and we headed to the cool Landmark Sunshine Cinema in the Lower East Side. My friends who tagged along aren't Shakespeare types, but they know me, and stuck with me, knowing molecular mixology would ensue as the evening pressed on.
Of course, I enjoyed the film overall. It was, if nothing else, a bold and creative take on the classic play. The casting was great. The Beatrice and Benedick were the heart of the story, but I found the Hero and Claudio had a slightly more engaging presence than those in Sir Ken's film version. The highlight was Nathan Fillion as Dogberry, who, having admitted to no Shakespeare experience, floated along perfectly using all his comedic skill and proved a treat to watch on screen.
I really loved the treatment of the songs in the film. Joss produced a very charming jazzy rendition of "Sigh No More" that tweaks the heart and makes you wish you had a light summery cocktail in your hand.
I'm still not sure if the choice to film in black and white helped or hindered the atmosphere of the film. It certainly gave a classy sheen to the imagery, but the modern Los Angeles setting (at Joss' home, no less) was too obvious to lend any actual sense of timelessness we like to associate with Shakespeare.
While all the actors definitely understood their lines (which is more than can be said about even one of my personal favorite Branagh films, Love's Labour's Lost), the language still felt out of time and place. That probably has more to do with the delivery than the present-day setting. All the actors were essentially shoehorning grand, flowery soliloquies and dialogues into casual, everyday cocktail-hour conversations. The acting was naturalistic, and to a fault. This film made me realize that without a certain level of pure theatricality, Shakespeare feels forced--in this case, constrained by the not-so-epic dramas of normal human beings.
This is where I both respect and disdain Joss' vision: he clearly adores the material and wants to show us that Shakespeare is relevant and current in its themes and characters, but I think it's more difficult to "modernize" comedies than most of the tragedies and histories. With something like Coriolanus or Henry V, you could easily set them in present-day war-room situations involving the already elevated theatricality of politics and issues of state and the language and reactions to events wouldn't feel too overdone. That's what politicians do anyway, so it feels truly naturalistic.
The slapstick comedies almost always feature contrivances that would never prove believable obstacles and salient plot points today. For example, in Joss' film, the idea that Claudio would mistake the maid in Hero's window for Hero herself is completely cancelled out by the fact that we were previously shown that there are security cameras all over the household. No way a modern Claudio would fall for such a transparent ploy as Don John's. If the scene didn't have such an enormous influence on the remainder of the story, it may have been easier to ignore.
In the end, there are more moments in Joss' Much Ado that entertain and seduce than there are ones that remind us of the fragility of suspended disbelief. It is definitely a pleasure for fans of Shakespeare and romance and I recommend such folks give it a go.
On that note, I would like to make a personal announcement :)
Of all the unforgettable experiences I had in the UK and Ireland with my dear friends this time around, the most unexpected (and I shall say Shakespearean) was meeting Jamie, my new favorite person in existence. In the heady midst of my first "pub crawl" with new friends in downtown Newcastle, some of the first words exchanged between us was a general SQUEE about Shakespeare. It took me 30 years and a spanning of the Atlantic Ocean to finally fall in love. Our first real date involved recitations of Hamlet and Richard III to each other, and in the back of my head, I kept thinking of Benedick and Beatrice.
I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants
of wit broken on me because I have railed so long against
marriage, but doth not the appetite alter?
What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu!
No glory lives behind the back of such.
And Benedick, love on; I will requite thee,
Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand.
Shakespeare is extremely relevant to us. It's one of many (super geeky) things that bonds me and my beau across the sea that sunders us from physical proximity, and enriches the way we experience our far-flung romance. As Helena says in "All's Well That Ends Well:"
The mightiest space in fortune nature brings To join like likes, and kiss like native things.
I've had a lot of fake "boyfriends" in my time, but Douglas Fairbanks and his son, Doug Jr., are the only father-son team to steal my heart. A biographical report I did on Charlie Chaplin in high school English class seeded my love of Classic Hollywood history. Doug, "The Great Swashbuckler," was bound to sweep me off my feet. I adore Douglas Fairbanks for many things: his charm, his smile, his breathtaking acrobatic feats (he did all his own stunts), and his epic films. But there's also a very special tidbit of history involving this dashing figure--he's the first to bring an all-talking Shakespeare production to the silver screen.
It took a silent film star--THE silent film star of his time, to be perfectly honest--to present Shakespeare with actual spoken dialogue to theatre audiences. The Taming of the Shrew also marked the first time Doug and his equally famous wife, Mary Pickford ("America's Sweetheart"), appeared together in a film. Apparently, the tension and chaos created by Petruchio and Kate's characters did not stop when the cameras did.
Doug and Mary were very different animals. He was classically trained and a very astute student of Shakespeare, so he wanted his first big "talkie" to be Shakespeare, of course! Mary never had Shakespearean experience. He was comfortable with the archaic dialogue; she was so uncomfortable that she re-dubbed all her speaking parts in the film decades later. The public was surprised at their choice of The Taming of the Shrew for this beloved "idyllic" pairing. In a 1929 New York Times interview, Doug was quoted as explaining the decision thusly:
"There is no story that we have ever read--modern or otherwise--with leading parts that so exactly fit us."
Ah, romance.
It's a short and cheeky production (only about an hour long), and while it's not the most faithful screenplay to the original text ever written, it's definitely worth a watch.
Petruchio and Katharina are essentially more juvenile precursors to Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado. Their banter is more jagged and angry than pointed and urbane, and the marriage is born of monetary desire and not the eventual realization of their deep adoration. In the end, irony prevails, and Petruchio and Kate tame each other. The speech I chose represents Kate's post-wedding distress at being treated the same way she had treated so many herself.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act IV, Sc. III
Katharina: The more my wrong, the more his spite appears:
What, did he marry me to famish me? Beggars, that come unto my father's door, Upon entreaty have a present aims; If not, elsewhere they meet with charity: But I, who never knew how to entreat, Nor never needed that I should entreat, Am starved for meat, giddy for lack of sleep, With oath kept waking and with brawling fed: And that which spites me more than all these wants, He does it under name of perfect love; As who should say, if I should sleep or eat, 'Twere deadly sickness or else present death. I prithee go and get me some repast; I care not what, so it be wholesome food.
It's a tale worthy of Jerry Springer: a virtuous girl falls for a rich dude, he doesn't take notice until she cures the King, who insists the young man marries this wonderful physician, but the boy coldly yields and runs off to fight in the war, the girl goes after him, tricks him into sleeping with her, and the springe he set for himself--he said unless she wore his ring and got pregnant, he wouldn't call her his wife--ensnares him in the end.
The wanker in question is Bertram, Count of Roussillion. The very determined lady is Helena, the orphaned daughter of a great doctor who is under the care of the dowager Countess of Roussillion. It's not just that Bertram is young, dumb, and horny (he thinks he's bedding a whore when it's actually Helena disguised in the dark bedroom), but that this poor girl actually cherishes the shit out of him, which rankles my modern-day sensibilities to no end. Sure, Helena proves herself very witty, educated, and clever in her quest to get this jag-off to call her his wife, but it smacks of just the kind of rom-com I would avoid if it were made into a film. Sans the benefit of the passionate banter and underlying adoration of Benedick and Beatrice, the concluding promise Bertram makes to love her completely lacks a truly enjoyable resolution. The titular sentiment of the play declares itself with a bemused shrug of the shoulders rather than a snarky "I told you so" grin.
Despite all this, I cheer Helena's resilience in the face of terrible odds. Her speech poeticizes the species of inexplicable infatuation that is the mark of proper fangirling, as well as outlines a general self-proclaimed call-to-arms when it comes to getting shit done on your own... even though that project deceived you, you did it your way, Helena. Girl power!
I won't promise this won't melt into an infatuative drivel about Sir Ken, because my heart did just that when I first saw his film version of Much Ado About Nothing. I had always adored the antics of Benedick and Beatrice on the page, so imagine the ovarian explosions that occurred when I heard that he had, of course, taken the best male role in the play. Indeed, the film is Sir Ken in fine form, at the top of his game, as a most dashing mofo riding horses and getting baths and wearing tight pants...*ahem*... and this film represents perhaps his most successful achievement in making Shakespeare accessible to modern audiences.
Much Ado being the original romantic comedy, and a quintessential one at that, it was a perfect choice for adaptation to the screen. And even considering Sir Ken's often... eccentric... casting decisions, this film's actors and actresses actually turned out more or less perfect for their roles. It's a grand delight and I don't believe I have to heap on any more praise than it already has to convince any lover of Shakespeare (or beautifully executed romcoms, which I usually distrust) to watch it for themselves.
The song featured within the text has a naturally lilting quality that makes it so easy to memorize that I actually made myself memorize a second passage in a week. I chose one of Beatrice's shrewd rants against marriage, which suits my personal tongue-in-cheek position quite nicely. She and her antagonizing lover Benedick spend the entire play railing about love and the differences between men and women. Their war-like wooing is immediately a more passionate and emotional foreplay than the sweet, kind, and honest couple--Hero and Claudio--could ever muster. Their spiteful, witty, verbal thrusts and parries represent the most satisfying love story in all of Shakespeare, IMHO. They are the most intelligent individuals in the story, and the surface tension of their cynycism breaks with the catalyst of dishonor laid upon Hero and Claudio at their doomed wedding. Some things are sacred to these two, and as they eventually find out, they find each other more sacred than anything else.
As Benedick says, "Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably." In that small statement, using the formal "thou" instead of "you," he betrays the deep respect he has always had for Beatrice. They may ride off into the proverbial sunset knocking each other's heads with frying pans, but when they join forces, all is well... and fantastically entertaining.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Sc. III
Balthasar: Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey, nonny nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no mo
Of dumps so dull and heavy.
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so, but let them go
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey, nonny nonny. Act II, Sc. I Beatrice: Just, if he send me no husband, for the which blessing I am
at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I
could not endure a husband with a beard on his face! I had
rather lie in the woollen...
What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and
make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard
is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than
a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and
he that is less than a man, I am not for him. Therefore I will
even take sixpence in earnest of the bearherd, and lead his
apes into hell...
No, but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me like an
old cuckold with horns on his head, and say, “Get you to
heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here’s no place for you
maids.” So deliver I up my apes and away to Saint Peter. For
the heavens, he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there
