Thane of Washington D.C.

Ribs! Ribs! My kingdom for some ribs!

While working on my crowning speech-collecting achievement, I have realized something that I never would have unless I had endeavored to recite Shakespeare everyday: I... love... Richard III. That most splendidly devious and tragically ambitious figure in all of Shakespeare has come heart-wrenchingly close to surpassing young Hamlet as my long-time favorite. Ever since I learned his "Now's the winter of our discontent" soliloquy, I've been happily haunted by how much fun it is to channel him through his words. It's no wonder so many actors have relished this role throughout history.

Enter Netflix's House of Cards.

Some very good friends of mine love it, and one pointed out that some reviewer compared the main character to Richard III. The articles I found revealed that House of Cards is essentially the story of a modern-day Richard III set in Washington D.C. with a little Macbeth thrown in for even more spice. How could I resist?

Kevin Spacey (who has been playing Richard on stage for the past few years) plays Francis Underwood--an outwardly charming southern gentleman of a politician who is inwardly as clever and manipulating as is humanly possible. His wife Claire (a perfectly cast Robin Wright) runs a non-profit organization in town. Together, they strike me as two predatory animals born from and perfectly adapted to the slime of the Washington cesspool in which they swim.  

The first time I watched, it appeared to me as if the Macbeths had read Richard III's playbook, had seen counseling, been reincarnated, and came out of the experience ready to take on American politics. At first, they appear to be a cynical, scheming team. But the more you watch, you begin to realize that they don't actually have pure evil in their hearts; they're just REALLY good at politics. The use of the Shakespearean aside by Spacey's character is superb, and serves to endear his outwardly stoic character to the audience. On a personal note, Frank's penchant for a lunch of barbeque ribs brought him even closer to my heart. As a GRITS (Girl Raised In The South) who has her own favorite little mom-and-pop dive that specializes in heavenly pork dishes, I can certainly empathize. 

House of Cards is wonderfully written, engaging, and feels realistic, especially if you're the type who watches Jon Stewart on a  regular basis (like myself). It serves as yet another example of how Shakespeare continuously influences art and pop culture every day. Give it a go. 

If music be the food of love, play on

Duke Orsino is in love with being in love. He's so hopelessly in love with it that he opines as he opens the play with his famous speech. It waxes with as apt a metaphor as any for that most coveted of emotional states, comparing love to plant life that must be fed--almost Audrey II-like--with so much nourishing music that it would rather die of being gorged than go without.

At the start of Twelfth Night, the Duke adores countess Olivia so much that he likens himself to a hart in the wood, passively and happily pursued by the "cruel hounds" of his desires. He lies back, awaiting Valentine, the messenger, to give him word of his beloved's condition. Unfortunately, she is so overwhelmed with grief over her brother's death that she swears to cloister herself in her chamber for seven years. Orsino, understanding and even exalting the depth of her passion expressed thusly, imagines how orgasmic things will be when she comes out of her funk and decides to focus all her affections on Orsino himself. 

For the Duke, the melancholy associated with spurned love is as exciting as love itself and he wallows in it for his own appetite's sake. He can't even get off his ass to woo this sad Olivia; he sends messengers--and even the cross-dressed Viola (calling herself Cesario)--to woo Olivia in his stead. He's so obsessed with being rejected and being in sickly sweet despair that he doesn't even notice that his boy Cesario is actually a woman who has fallen in love with him. Needless to say, all is well in the end, just as soon as the breeches and yellow cross-garters are set aside and everyone reveals their true selves.

Orsino would LOVE fandom culture if he were around today. Set him in front of a Netflix-connected TV and put on Downton Abbey or Sherlock or Doctor Who and he'll likely swoon with all the unrequited romances before him. Give him an iPad with fanfiction on it, and he'll definitely implode... or start a tumblr blog. Because being in a serious fandom is much like standing in a packed theatre watching a stirring play--they both give us an intimately shared emotional joyride. Smiles or tears, the feels alone are high fantastical.

Twelfth Night, Act I, Sc. I

Duke Orsino: If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

Yea, from the table of my memory

Sir Kenneth Branagh working with John Gielgud on the set of Hamlet (1996)

Not long ago, I made up my mind that I would read EVERYTHING SHAKESPEARE EVER WROTE. After years of on-off studiousness and a final flourish of reading Sonnet 154, I celebrated my achievement by having a few pumpkin ales and reciting every Shakespeare speech I knew from memory to an empty house. This was made possible because several weeks before, as an amendment to my resolution, I had passed a personal law to learn a new speech from Shakespeare every week until I knew at least one from every play.

Halfway to my goal (and still going strong), I realized that there's not a whole lot of Suzy Q, non-theatre/non-lit scholar folks who take up memorizing tracts of Shakespeare for fun (or at least they don't blog about it). This disappointed me. I thought for sure someone would have the same idea and felt it was worthy of rumination... but not so much. This had to be amended.

All my inspiration for this can be traced thusly:

In my studies, the name Kenneth Branagh came with the wheat separated from the chaff. He was mentioned so often that I could come to one of two conclusions: this guy is a genius or a total dick. Outside of a random viewing of As You Like It and Thor, I was tragically unconscious of his extensive  work.

But then came Henry V. I thank Netflix everyday for streaming this masterwork. Sir Ken's wooing of Catherine of Valois rendered me a puddle of sighs. Then his Hamlet entered my Blu-Ray player, and I beheld this ballsy, epic undertaking of recording the entirety of my favorite on film for the first time. I was done. I was nuclear-reactor-level smitten with this man. It was inevitable, I suppose, given his passionate grasp of the material and my recent re-upped love of the plays. I floated on an inexplicably delirious intellectual high for days, nursing the brand of fawning, explosive fangirl crush that has become my trademark since I first posted on LiveJournal ten years ago.

The second time I watched Hamlet, I listened to the director's commentary. It was the most edifying four hours of movie commentary I had encountered since The Lord of the Rings. Sir Ken lit up the movie with insights. Along the way, I found myself envious of his ability to rattle off quotes to make his points. I came away thinking: "I want to be the person who can quote Shakespeare."

I was going to seriously memorize some shite.

Having already undertaken memorizing the Periodic Table from hydrogen to americium, I felt it was entirely achievable and sufficiently challenging. Memorization is a parlour trick in the end. Humans are capable of memorization feats that boggle human minds. People have long set themselves to committing holy scriptures to heart in the hopes that it will enrich their souls. Shakespeare's words are so essential to and ingrained in the English language and culture that they command no less respect than divine inspiration. That's why I've not only resolved to memorize these speeches, but to deeply analyze them within their contexts to discover clues as to how to properly recite and ruminate over them and gain understanding of the characters' thoughts.

These selected speeches have become, for me, a living canon--the soul's scripture--as accessible to me as my thoughts, and as important to me as my journey through life. It's as serious as it is comic at times, but always enriching, always nourishing, and completely worth enduring the wide-eyed looks of bemusement I get when I tell people what I'm doing.