A-Z Characters & Transformation: Is the Transforming Royal Fact or Fiction?

In my latest A-Z list--Characters who Transform--I've reached Prince and Princesses. 

A remarkable number of fictional prince and princesses have transformed, from bad people to good ones; from being in disguise to being revealed. 

Prince Hal is supposedly one of the former. In reality, he never went through a dissolute phase and even in Henry IV, Parts 1 & 11, Shakespeare remarkably has him confess, in monologue, that he is mostly playacting. He is quite clear with Falstaff, even as prince, that Falstaff's influence on him is negligible and will eventually die. 

But the IDEA of a playboy reforming to be a good king is too good to pass up. It's the underlying character evolution of Gilgamesh! So the oldest tale on record has a prince (he is actually a king when the tale begins) acting like a playboy and annoying his citizens--until Enkidu comes along. It is Enkidu's death that propels Gilgamesh to hunt for answers to something larger than "hey, yo, how drunk should we get today?" Upon his return to the city, he retakes his place as a wise and productive sovereign. 

The manga and anime, Royal Tutor, presents a back story of a not-exactly-playboy prince but a prince who doesn't seem to be all that aware of his citizens' needs...until he begins to sneak out at night and pal around with Heine. Likewise, Mark Twain uses growth with his prince whose disguise allows him to learn about real life. 

In C.S. Lewis's quest tale, The Silver Chair, the prince is enchanted (disguised) as a kind of blithe, unthinking playboy (with a mommy complex). When he is chained to the silver chair, his underlying nature is revealed: he is, in fact, a prince in captivity. I think it would be quite easy to back-write a playboy attitude into the prince's character development. He is ensnared by the enchantress when his mother dies but, seriously, what was he doing rushing off to act all angsty around the first smooth-talking fae who crossed his path...rather than sticking by his dad and assuming more responsibilities? 

In the above cases, trials hone the prince into someone who CAN be a good king. 

I'm not sure that outside of narratives, this type of honing is a given: Prince Harry doesn't seem to have imbibed the American idea that work = virtue. I suspect that politicians and celebrities are so cushioned by sycophants, they require a certain amount of chutzpah to see through the fawning to begin with.  

A-Z Characters & Transformation: Does Kate of Taming of the Shrew Transform?

I questioned whether I should include Katherine from Taming of the Shrew on my A-Z Characters Who Transform List. Does she transform? She gets married. She remains married. She defends her husband in the play's climatic ending. But is she truly "tamed"?

First, I see Petruchio and Kate as distinct people. They aren't representative of men and women. They are Petruchio and Kate.  

A great many people, however, feel that the relationship must be explained or justified in some way. One common interpretation is to argue that Petruchio is trying to "help" Katherine by teaching her social rules. The version I saw during my Theatre in London program used this interpretation (and was one of the few to use the frame story). It is the same interpretation used by the BBC version, John Cleese as Petruchio. 

It is unbelievably sexist. 

It is far more sexist than Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton behaving like...Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Elizabeth Taylor's Kate hasn't been trained (like a poodle) to play a social game (join the right clique, flatter the correct people, use the proper vocabulary). She is a force of nature who comes up against another force of nature and finds she is willing to fight it out. At the end, she is still able to leave him guessing.   

My absolute favorite version, however, is Shakespeare Retold's with Shirley Henderson and Rufus Sewell. Sewell's Petruchio is frankly kind of nuts. Henderson's Kate is this tiny bundle of super-intelligent political acerbity. They adore each other. At the end, she tells off her bratty sister. She is willing to give up everything for Petruchio. He is willing to give up everything for her. What's the problem?

This Katherine isn't tamed. If anything, her true self--what has always been her true self--gets concentrated and distilled. 

Fantastic couple! 

As for the initial question--I use "transform" throughout this list from its narrowest to its broadest sense. That is, a character may transform internally or externally, for good or for bad, slightly or to an extreme, beneath a mask or without a mask. 

At the end of the play, the character of Kate is no longer single and she is happier. 

So, yes, in that sense, she does transform!  

The Dysfunctional MacBeths

The dysfunction in MacBeth's primary relationship isn't that Lady MacBeth talks MacBeth into killing the king. That's bad. But from a relationship point of view, it isn't automatically the thing that destroys the relationship. 

What destroys the relationship is that Lady MacBeth can't control what she has inspired. 

In Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers's characters discuss what happens when one spouse limits or pulls down the other, either intentionally or unintentionally. The problem with MacBeth entails the opposite behavior (one spouse pushes rather than limits the other) but it relates to the first: one couple is trying to design or fix or otherwise manufacture a "perfect" spouse. In Lady MacBeth's case, that perfect spouse is a king. In another case, a perfect spouse might be one who doesn't do that type of work or write that type of stuff or spend time on those kinds of causes. 

The ambitions are different but the intent and subsequent behavior is the same: organizing someone else's life to make one's own life feel organized. 

Lady MacBeth fails in the long run and she fails before it is clear that MacBeth is doomed. She fails because actions have consequences. The act of assassination didn't occur on paper. It occurred in real life. MacBeth didn't turn into a nicely ambitious bloke. He turned into a nut-case. 

I suggest, as have others, that even if MacBeth hadn't turned into a nut-case, he still would have failed Lady MacBeth. Again, actions don't have tidy consequences. Eventually, she would have become another enemy, another person standing in his way. It was only a matter of time. 

Better, truly, for people to know what they are marrying than to try to force a spouse towards what they imagine they are marrying. 

*MacBeth is one of those plays that works at the narrative level, no matter what its trappings--like Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast. A number of mystery shows have "done" Lady MacBeth, including Jake & the Fatman, Season 1, "Rhapsody in Blue." Strong parts for many actors!

Shakespeare Characters: Never Quite What One Expects

I've lately come to appreciate how good Shakespeare truly is. I've always been a fan--but not because of his Great Genius or all the other labels people throw at approved-of writers. 

"Nothing new under the sun" applies to Shakespeare. I don't think Shakespeare is so great because he broke boundaries or transcended expectations blah blah blah. I think he is so great because he used archetypes and tropes in a way that captured human experience and human interest. He was the Agatha Christie of the playwright's world. He put things in the best order. He distilled a fundamental attitude or experience within a single character or scene. His writing is energetic and layered because he allowed it to be--likely, to allow for different actors to play various parts. 

(In some future post, I would point out the potential creativity and discipline of writing for money.) 

Here, I will point out that Shakespeare created lasting characters. They are archetypes, many times, but they are something more because they so exactly capture an archetype and then offer something on top of the archetype. 

Nuttiest play you will ever see.

Kate isn't just a shrew. She has her own personality and wit and ways of looking at the universe. Petruchio is her match, not her overlord. Likewise, Shylock and Falstaff have their own individualized and personalized backgrounds. The twins in Comedy of Errors are distinct. The relationships in Hamlet are believably dysfunctional because the characters come across as recognizable and real people. 

Even characters that I have ignored in the past--such as Henry VI--have something-extra that makes them not simply labels who stand on the stage and react to things. They have usable substance. 

Take Cymbeline, a play Shakespeare may not have written but obviously borrowed from him. Cymbeline feels like Shakespeare (or someone) took all his prior characters--including husbands and wives who feel jealousy--and threw them into a play alongside a bunch of his prior tropes. The play includes (I'm not kidding) kidnapped brothers grown to manhood living in the wilderness (Wales), Roman senators wandering around Briton trying to get tribute, an evil stepmother and an evil prince, and people continually running off to (again, I'm serious) Milford Haven (in Wales). The whole thing sounds like a Greek tragedy set in Swansea or Staten Island. 

I can't help but wonder if Shakespeare was badgered by his shareholders into writing a play and said, "Fine! You want a play?! Here's all my ideas in a single script--I'll trot them out one after another."

Or, since Shakespeare wasn't adverse to making money, he said, "Sure! Let's trot out all my best ideas and make a bundle!" 

The point here: only someone that good in the first place could do what Shakespeare or someone else did: use what they already had to make something that doesn't totally fall apart. 

Spoofs Allow for More Possibilities: Thank You, Shakespeare!

One of the positive of "spoofs" is that they allows the givens to remain givens, so the writers don't have to keep excusing themselves.

I came upon this thought when I considered the problem of updating/modernizing/making superheroes supposedly more progressive. Literature Devil does a thorough job proving that Stan Lee was always more interested in story than in politics. However, writers run the risk of being criticized no matter what they do--hence, growing reader interest in manga, which still focuses primarily on story. 

My suggested solution is to "pay tribute to" a classic, which is code for, Use the classic characters and plots but switch people around.

In a recent viewing of The Hollow Crown, I realized, Shakespeare allows for such tributes! Shakespeare is the preeminent example of using and reusing basic plots-- which Shakespeare somehow encapsulated better than everyone else--to achieve numerous ends. 

So one of the main characters of Henry VI is Margaret, the bulldozer of a political powerhouse who marries the inept Henry VI. Some critics believe that the three plays that make up Henry VI are really about her, rather like how huge chunks of Henry IV are mostly about Falstaff and his cronies. (The plays are named for their kings, not necessarily their plots.) 

And I realized that Sophie Okonedo is able to play Margaret--and play her magnificently--without automatically being labeled misogynistic BECAUSE the play is Shakespeare. 

Shakespeare is endlessly usable--one reason, perhaps, that he has remained such a seminal figure in literature. His plays can be modernized or spoofed (see Trevor Nun's spoof of, and tribute to, the itself-a-spoof-play Comedy of Errors). Shakespeare's plays can be cut to focus on different plots and characters. They can be set in different countries and even in space--or animation! 

Okonedo becomes the powerful and complex Margaret and excels--without apology.

Thank you, Shakespeare!  

St. Crispin's Day Speech

Speaking of Shakespeare, about the same time that I saw Kenneth Branagh in Henry V, I came across David Gwillim's performances as Prince Hal and Henry V for the BBC Shakespeare productions. 

I watched and rewatched the films multiple times, which, back then, meant going to the university audiovisual department and "renting" a room with a television and VCR. 

I'm a fan!

More recently, I got a kick out of a compilation of Saint Crispin's Day speeches at Pinterest. 

For the speech AND Patrick Doyle's fantastic music, check out Branagh's version.

Interview with the Translator: Hills of Silver Ruins, Shakespeare

Kate: From Chapter 33 of Book IV of Hills of Silver Ruins, Risai's attitude reminds me of Hamlet at the end of the play, when he finally accepts his fate: 

"Not a whit, we defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all."

Shakespeare is ubiquitous in manga and Asian live-action series/films! In a recent Thai live-action series, the two characters act out a scene from Romeo & Juliet. They begin to argue about which character is supposed to say, "Wherefore art thou...?" until one uses the line to get back at the other: "Wherefore art thou a jerk?"

I own a manga series in which an art gallery is titled “The Nutshell” as a deliberate reference to “though I am bound in a nutshell” from Hamlet. And when I was a teenager, I saw a fantastic version of Shogun MacBeth live!

Shakespeare strikes a cord of high romance, related to knights, chivalry, and King Arthur's court. Is Shakespeare somewhat more "translatable" than the very Western, if popular, King Arthur and his knights? After all, King Arthur got turned into Camelot while Shakespeare retains that medieval bite--alongside the War of the Roses mess.  

Eugene: Thanks to men like Thomas Blake Glover, the enterprising Scotsman who armed the burgeoning rebellion against the disintegrating Tokugawa regime in the mid-19th century, the Meiji government closely aligned itself with Great Britain. The strictures of Victorian society certainly would have struck a familiar note at the time.

Well into the 20th century, many of Japan's political elites were full-blown Anglophiles, down to the clothes they wore. This may explain why the preferred formal western attire for Japanese men is the English morning coat.

It is not difficult to find events from the Sengoku period and the earlier Genpei War that match up with the kind of historical events that Shakespeare was mining for material. Akira Kurosawa adapted MacBeth in Throne of Blood and King Lear in Ran, both of which take place during the late Sengoku period.

The Heike Story, a recent adaptation of Heike Monogatari (the classic account of the Genpei War and the decline and fall of the Taira clan), has the feel of a grand Shakespearian tragedy.

Especially in Showa period dramas, it can seem that every girl's school in Japan has to put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet. In Hanako and Anne, an entire story arc is devoted to Hanako translating Romeo and Juliet for her BFF Renko to star in. (Though I've noticed of late that anime high school romcoms have taken a liking to fractured fairy tale versions of Cinderella.)

The Worth of Taming of the Shrew

Re-post from 2005

* * *

In one of my undergrad classes, the issue of sexism in Shakespeare came up. We had just gone to see Taming of The Shrew, and the class was divided into those who thought it might be sexist but hey, women can be jerks too; those who thought it was totally sexist; and those (the professor mainly) who thought that it wasn't sexist at all. (He basically saw Shakespeare as a modern, thoroughly unspoiled liberal writer who could do no wrong—no sexism, no racism, no "isms" at all. He was kind of daft.)

I thought everyone was nuts, which may be typical for an undergrad but not very helpful. I can articulate better now what I thought then, so I will.

What I thought was (1) the play we had just seen stank; (2) so, it's sexist--so what are you going to do about it?

Concerning (2), I don't think anyone in the course (at that time) was gunning for censorship. I think, if the issue had been pressed, education would have been promoted as an answer. That is: every production of Taming of the Shrew should begin with an apology from the director and actors; it should end with a discussion led by a women's group, and the program should be embellished with essays by concerned professors who are afraid that the audience will, by watching the play, assume that wife-beating is okay.

I'm not particularly opposed to apologies, discussions or essays, but they all so miss the point.

The most classic version of Taming of the Shrew [not necessarily my favorite; my favorite is Shakespeare Retold's version with Henderson and Sewell] is Zeffirelli's Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor production, and [although not my favorite] it is magnificent. 

It is magnificent for several reasons. First, the play is allowed to speak for itself. I don't mean that interpretation isn't involved--Zeffirelli's hand is omnipresent--but there's no attempt to create an application to our modern day.

The play that I saw as an undergrad, the one that stank, made such an attempt. Instead of being a beer-guzzling, larger than life, obnoxious, funny and ultimately chauvinistic nutcase, Petruchio was portrayed as a mild-mannered, sweet, well-meaning bleeding heart. Yeah, right. The relationship between Petruchio and Catarina was mended when Catarina realized that Petruchio was just trying to save her cultural embarrassment; it's all a game, honey, play along.

Elizabeth Taylor was criticized for not

being a true Shakespearean actor. Whatever.

She turns this scene into a demand rather than

supplication through sheer force of personality.

In the Zeffirelli version, Petruchio and Catarina have got so much chutzpah, sexual come hitherness and physical energy, they would probably kill anybody else they married (this was also true of Burton and Taylor). This Petruchio, unlike the appallingly chauvinistic Petruchio of the "modern interpretation," is never sure of Catarina. They will keep fighting until the day they die, and they will love every minute of it. And yeah, it freaks out most of us but as Joan Armatrading pointed out (possibly also ironically), some people are into that sort of thing.

The second reason Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew is amazing is the last scene. I'm not a huge Elizabeth Taylor fan, but when she sweeps into the banquet hall, hauling her sister by one ear and the newly married widow by the other, she takes the room and the screen by storm. And then she gives the speech—THE speech—the speech about a woman's place. And it is a thing of beauty. It is gorgeous. You sit there, thinking, "An ordinary, mortal, money-making playwright wrote this." Not a word wrong. The speech flows.

Which is the final wonderful thing about Zeffirelli's production: it lets Shakespeare sing. The cinematography is plush and colorful; the scenes are full of extras; the pace is hyperactive and alongside all this are the words, those stunning words that explain Shakespeare's reputation down the ages. Yeah, the man could descend to bad writing, but when his verse was good, oh my.

[2020 tangent:] What is so sad about all the social justice people who kill art--even my readily offended classmates from many years ago--is that they are so busy focusing on message, they miss not only content but the sheer exuberance of caring about something for the sake of its beauty or wittiness or poetry. I recently watched Ford v. Ferrari. It was way too long for me and seemed a tad uneven. The thing that struck me most, however, was the power of hobby. It's the element that underscores Last Man Standing and makes it more than about politics--and it is the element that literal-minded "let's expurgate everything!" types will never understand as they embroil themselves more and more in the mindset of petty politics.

Car guys have fun.

Zeffirelli's Kate and Petruchio have fun.

Great Shakespeare & Hathaway Moment

In the episode "Exit, Pursued by a Bear", the firm's current client is an actress who likes to rewrite Romeo & Juliet. Instead of classically perishing at the end of the play, her Juliet will suddenly rouse and proclaim her intention to defy social expectations. These moments in the episode are absolutely hilarious.

 The best line of the episode, however, comes from Luella Shakespeare (Jo Joyner), who queries if the villain, the person threatening the client, might be "a kind of aggressive Shakespeare traditionalist."

"Which," she adds cheerfully, "is not something you get to say everyday."

Of course, aggressive Shakespeare traditionalists would be having a tough time these days.

Shakespeare, Alun Armstrong, and Accents

Totally fascinating video about how Shakespeare originally sounded.

For your Alun Armstrong fans, this video explains why Brian Lane's Shakespeare monologue in New Tricks' "Final Curtain"--in his broad North East Londoner accent--is so fantastic!

Alun Armstrong is in fact a renowned Shakespearean actor AND he played Thénardier in Les Miserables 10th Anniversary Concert.

Much Ado About . . . What?!

Clark Gregg as sincere father

and straight man--one of

the better aspects of the movie.

I finally got around to watching Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing.

Considering its origins (its writer, producer, director), it is bizarrely--bizarrely--humorless.

Clark Gregg does a fine job. Amy Acker is a natural. The first (but not last) mistake comes in casting Alexis Denisof as Benedick when he should have been cast as Don John or the Prince. (Denisof does "Mr. Dangerous" exceedingly well.)

When I first heard that Nathan Fillion was in the movie, I assumed he would play Benedick. After all, Castle could easily be sub-titled, "The Continuing Adventures of Benedick and Beatrice" with no great stretch of the imagination.

More on Fillion later--suffice it to say for now that he exhibits the perfect blend of wit and exuberance that has, in my experience at least, been the hallmark of great Benedicks, such as Branagh and Damian Lewis.

Damian Lewis and his Beatrice, Sarah Parish, cracking up

at their own wedding!

Alexis Denisof, an actor of no mean skill, plays (and was, as far as I can tell, instructed to play) Benedick as angry and morose. His quips in the opening scenes don't come across as funny; they come across as peevish. The quick repartee is lost in angsty self-indulgence.

Maybe it's a Mafia thing.

Although I quite like Whedon's film noir Mafia look, it is all wrong for Much Ado About Nothing. Only guileless people with innocent souls would fall for Don John's guff. Much Ado About Nothing is about happy people doing dumb things when an unhappy guy tries to take revenge. It is NOT about unhappy, dumb people becoming even more unhappy and dumb when an unhappy guy tries to take revenge. (It would be interesting to watch Whedon's Much Ado with the sound off; if I didn't know I was watching a great Shakespearean comedy, would I think I was watching Hamlet? Or King Lear?)

The only scenes in the movie where I laughed out loud were Nathan Fillion's. As far as I can tell (and it is hard to tell), Whedon was aiming for a kind of film noir comedy with a Double Indemnity double entendre flavor. Maybe it's all that Castle work but Nathan Fillion is the only one who actually pulls it off. He delivers Dogberry's pompous political police lines straight-faced with just a hint of something off-kilter. Tom Lenk offers excellent back-up.

Actually, I think Nathan Fillion is quite simply a very fine actor.

In any case, there's a reason Branagh--not Whedon--did Thor. Leave Shakespeare to the people who speak it as plainly as they discuss laundry. All the cleverness in the world can't make up for a lack of natural dialog--as Whedon well knows.