You kiss by the book

Sonnets are a girl's best friend

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)
	Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
JULIET	Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO	Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
	Give me my sin again. (they kiss)
JULIET	You kiss by the book.

One foot in sea and one on shore

                            "Sigh No More" as a modern pop song

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.

Full of sound and fury

Macbeth hath murdered my sleep

Newcastle. Evening. Tyneside Cinema.
The tiny lobby is packed with folks of all ages, all politely awaiting the cue to queue into the theatre for the sold-out broadcast. When the time comes, my friends and I file past the signs for upcoming films ("The World's End is playing in the UK already? We have to go see it next week!") and find our seats in the front row. Refreshments are being sold in the theatre proper--pop and beer and "cinema-sized" ice creams. I get a Blue Moon and have a seat.

The room is packed, but far more calm than I would expect from a similar screening back in the states. The program is filled with future Shakespearean fare: a modern-day interpretation of Othello, Tom Hiddleston as Coriolanus, encore screenings of Rory Kinnear's Hamlet. I sip my beer and settle in.

An NT representative lady appears on the screen and says it's ok to clap after the showing, because even though the stage actors in Manchester cannot hear us, they can feel the spirit of our appreciation. This gets a laugh from most of the audience behind me, which I find strange; back home, I've seen several plain old film screenings like The Avengers or The Hobbit where people would clap prompted by nothing more than their profound enjoyment.

After the lady interviews the co-director, Rob Ashford, and he fawns over Sir Ken's prowess, the production begins. There are unseen cameras positioned everywhere in the deconsecrated church where the play is housed--it seems as many as you tend to see floating and angling around stadiums during major American football games on ESPN. It affords a very intimate and satisfying view of all the proceedings.

The weird sisters appear, and a rainy, muddy battle begins. All the scenes play out in the slippery grime, staining clothes and shoes and robbing the actors of perfectly graceful strides. The mud enhances the visceral, earthy feel of Macbeth, showcasing the truly ancient and pagan nature of this play's dark and violent themes.

Sir Ken's Macbeth is clearly good-hearted and humble at the start. He and Banquo are genuinely startled by the sister's prophecies. When Alex Kingston's Lady Macbeth reads her husband's letter, she is joyous and enthusiastic on every level, and the dark starts to creep in. After seeing Macbeth in battle, and seeing his wife declare her ambitions, you eagerly anticipate the moment he reappears and they embrace for the first time. The reunion scene is crackling with sexual tension.

The scenes fly by quickly, with no pause between them whatsoever. The overall feeling of the production is one of the "vaulting ambition" o'erleaping itself, but it never falters and falls. It sprints forward, and while you feel Macbeth's sense of being rushed, you as the onlooker can still keep up just fine. The soliloquies that are traditionally slowed so the audience can rubberneck would be almost glossed over if it weren't for the gravitas the actors give them.

The following scenes struck me the most:

1) When Macbeth sees the dagger before him, at first, it is simply light from the cross-shaped window falling on the ground, stretched and distorted by its sharp angle, throwing a giant bright sword on the mud.
2) After Macbeth is crowned, he presents himself as confident and regal, and sends Banquo off with all the friendliness their relationship deserves. But as soon as everyone leaves the stage but Macbeth, he goes through his "barren sceptre" speech with paranoia and urgency, then curls up in the throne under his cape, childlike and fearful.
3) In the sleepwalking scene, Alex Kingston appears to be channelling the weird sisters in flashes and starts, lending an especially disturbing supernatural possession to her condition.
4) Macduff's "All my pretty chickens" scene is heartbreakingly delivered by Ray Fearon, with an intensity that approaches, if not equals, even Sir Ken's performance.
5) Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech always seems to read with a catatonic shock, and I've seen some movies and clips where it's delivered with a steady low affect and monotone voice. Sir Ken begins it that way, but halfway through, he breaks down entirely, weeping and dripping with tears and snot. He is barely able to finish the last line with any kind of audible voice, and you completely believe that he's still a good man deep inside, simply and tragically grieving for his beloved wife.

Some other fascinating points include:

1) The weird sisters appear even when they have no lines or don't normally show up in a scene, and their presence imparts the not-so-weird idea that they have a lot more control of the entire drama than expected.
2) The same actor who plays Duncan later plays Seyton, Macbeth's assistant/military officer.
3) The "cauldron" that Macbeth sees when he revisits the sisters is made up of actors on the ground, shaking a giant round sheet, out of which the sons of Banquo emerge and walk past Macbeth in zombie-like fashion.
4) Alex Vlahos, who deftly plays Malcolm, was the same actor who played Mordred on the BBC's series Merlin. It was fun to see him pop up!
5) Patrick Doyle's score, as usual, sneaks in and heightens the mood of every scene with that skillful subtlety that you barely know the music is there. Awesome.

In the end, you get a very highly anticipated Macbeth/Macduff battle. When Macduff reveals the truth about his birth, Macbeth visibly loses his shit, and musters all the remaining energy he has toward going down with a fight.

Clocking in at just over two hours, this Macbeth was a whirlwind of solidly magnetic characters and fierce action. The eerie setting as well as several intriguing individual performance choices at key moments made the play feel as fresh as if it were written yesterday... as it should be with Shakespeare. It should never feel static and dry, which is something that even Joss Whedon's lovingly re-imagined Much Ado About Nothing suffered from at times. More on that next week, though.

If you get the chance to see an encore screening of Macbeth (or if this NT Live production gets released on DVD) definitely treat yourself to some high quality Shakespeare!

Now I am alone

Well, I tested myself yesterday with all my speeches and I'm happy to report I knew every one with minimal to no prompting; a definite improvement from the last time I quizzed myself. I promise to keep reciting them everyday, but before that, I shall embark upon a new speech this week. It's been a long while since I've memorized something from scratch.

The decision was a no-brainer. I want to complete my set of the four major Hamlet soliloquies. There are other, less prominent ones, but if you want a cross section of Hamlet's psyche throughout the play, the big four will provide you with it. Weighing in at ~55 lines (depending on your edition of the play), the Act II, Scene II speech is the longest of his soliloquies, but no where near as long as the one with which Richard Gloucester has blessed me.

It has been nearly a year since I turned my well-honed fangirling instrument toward Sir Kenneth Branagh. I started with realizing that Thor was directed by him, then moved on to seeing the screen graced with his countenance and voice through King Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing and finally, the movie that changed my life, his complete and epic 4-hour masterpiece of Hamlet. On July 10th, not halfway through my first viewing of that glorious film, I clearly recall my heart o'erflowing with love and inspiration. So of course, to cap off my unlocked achievements, I shall embark upon this emotional thrill ride of a speech. It still makes me melt and my ovaries quiver to hear it.

A week from now, I hope to have some more insight into what it's like to occupy and live through these enthralling words.


Hamlet, Act II, Sc. II
Hamlet: Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, an' his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie

Helena, why do you love this jerk?

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!

All's Well That Ends Well, Act I, Sc. I

Helena: Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie

Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky

Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull 

Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. 

What power is it which mounts my love so high; 

That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye? 

The mightiest space in fortune nature brings 

To join like likes, and kiss like native things. 

Impossible be strange attempts to those 

That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose 

What hath been cannot be: who ever strove 

To show her merit, that did miss her love?

The king's disease, --my project may deceive me, 

But my intents are fix'd and will not leave me.

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more

A sight that has many ladies sighing.

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

live we as merry as the day is long.