Entertainment For Lively Minds
Happy Birthday, dear Shakespeare
Posted by David Hepworth on 23 April 2010 - 6:56am.
Today we celebrate the birthday of the man who gave us more than most. I read yesterday that Dickens said on one previous anniversary:
“We meet on this day to celebrate the birthday of a vast army of living men and women who will live for ever with an actuality greater than that of the men and women whose external forms we see around us.”
Don't think I can add much to that.
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A tribute of sorts.
Always worth seeing again.
The Hardest Read
Dreams of doing my A Levels and learning Twelfth Night still haunt me, although this was I believe, considered one of his easier reads.
Can't imagine anymore thing challenging than an actor having to learn lines for a Shakespeare production.
Being made to read Shakespeare at school instead of watching it
There's the rub.
And, actually, Shakespeare's lines are a darned sight easier to learn than many. He was, among other things, an actor; and he knew that blank verse is much easier to learn than prose.
I also studied Twelfth Night as part of my English A Level...
...We were a small class. Our teacher cast us in the roles that he thought best suited our personalities (I was Feste) and then we read the play out loud.
None of us were particularly theatrical and our attempt at breathing life into Shakspearean english was graceless and arythmnic.
Despite our shortcomings as actors I thouroughly enjoyed the experience of interacting with a piece of writing as opposed to just studying it. I have seen several TV adaptations of Twelfth Night over the years. One day I would like to see the play performed live.
Twelfth Night
Peter Hall's doing it at the National next year, with Rebecca Hall as Viola. It should be a good one.
I love Twelfth Night. Done well, it can be very funny and deeply moving.
Glad your teacher got you reading it out loud, backwards. I think Shakespeare would be horrified if he knew about the relentless literary analysis that his work is subjected to. This, after all, is the man who wrote the phrase "art made tongue tied by authority"...
"Reading it out aloud, backwards"
Blimey - even Larry and dear, dear Johnny weren't that good :-)
My favourite Shakespearean phrases:
"The thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to"
I can think of no better way to articulate the awful, and yet natural, way in which human beings are subjected to grief.
And is there a better way to say, as Olivia does in Twelfth Night, "Fuck off: I'm on my period"?
"If you have reason, be brief: 'tis not that time of moon with me to make one in so skipping a dialogue"
Shakespeare
It's wonderful that England's greatest playwright was born (and died) on England's national day. Perfect.
woops
soz didn't see you had already mentioned his death!
April 23rd
We don't know for sure that he was born on the 23rd. We do know that he was baptised on the 26th, so people have made an educated guess about his birth date. The fact that the 23rd is St. Georges Day probably helped the choice of that date, rather than the 22nd or 24th.
He also
died on St Georges day. In fact, on the VERY same day (23/04/1616) the giant of Spanish Literature Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote, died.
Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5
"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions"
I've always liked that one.
Some years ago...
I used to go down to the bank of the Thames by Festival Pier to photograph the flotsam and jetsam that had been washed up out of the river. One day someone told me that this spot was supposed to have been a favourite haunt of Shakespeare's. I used to imagine him walking along, thinking to himself...
"To exist or not to exist... nah... to live or not to live... fookin' rubbish... to be or not to be... THAT"S IT! William, old son, you've done it again..."
Then rubbing his hands together, chuckling to himself
as he quickens his pace toward the Globe to tell Francis Bacon of his killer new line :-)
If you're ever up that way
It's worth doing the five family houses in and around Stratford. The only let down is the pedestranised shopping precinct built next his birthplace.
PS it's also my youngest's birthday. Ten today.
Book recommendation
"The Lodger: Shakespeare On Silver Street" by Charles Nicholl. One of the very few traces that Shakespeare left behind apart from his work (and they're still arguing about that) was his evidence in a legal case involving the landlord of some London lodgings that he spent a year living in. On the basis of this Charles Nicholl is able to put together the most compelling account of the kind of life he would have lived and the things he would have seen through his window as he was chewing the end of his quill.
I did enjoy the Lodger...
...but lots of it felt quite speculative, extrapolating quite dense material from a tiny germ of evidence. Lots wasn't, obviously, and it's a bloody good read. There were a definite few moments where I found myself saying "how'd you work that out?" aloud, though.
But, as I say, mostly a very satisfying read.
Boys Keep Swinging never seemed to fit in though...
(coat)
I hate it...
..when somebody gets to write the Dame gag before me! Damn you stimpy! :-)
Can I recommend 1599 by James Shapiro?
That was the year that The Globe was built (using timber stolen from the site of their old theatre) and Shakespeare wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and Hamlet. The book covers all of this as well as a lot of the politics, intrigue and events which happened at the same time and extrapolates how they fed into the plays. It is completely brilliant in every way and I can't praise it enough.
worth a trip
If you visit Anne Hathaway's cottage, you can sit in the 'courting seat' - which is ye olde solid oak - where the young Shakey wooed his missus. I sat there with my girlfriend a year ago, and now it's over, sob. I think I probably quoted too much Shakespeare.
Was that before
she made Princess Diaries? She IS looking good for her age.
I hate it...
..when somebody gets to write the Anne Hathaway gag before me! Damn you BigJimBob! :-)
One of My Favourite Anecdotes
Robert Lindsay had to say the line "now is the winter of our discontent", but was worried about getting it wrong becuase there was a sale on at the camping shop in Stratford Upon Avon and they had a sign in the window "now is the discount of our winter tents"
Can there be many Shakespearean moments in pop music?
There can't be that many samples...
This does it very well
using a very well known sonnet by Will:
O untimely Death! Death!
Tasty snippets of Lear in HJH's I Am the Walrus. Which just goes to show you that the walrus was really... Oswald?
Check out Sonnet 147
Could be off Blood On The Tracks...
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill -
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me; and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Job's a good 'un, Lucas.
Have an up-arrow.
I've always loved 65:
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
Nah, Sonnet bleedin 60, innit?
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
I'd never read that one before
What gets me about Shakespeare is not the staggering skill of his writing. It's the intellect capable of marshalling those concepts in the first place before translating them into verse.
This is it.
He's the most human genius, and his genius is all about being human. I bloody love Shakespeare.
Indeed.
What fascinates me about him, though, is that he was so much a product of his times, background and education. He drew on and distilled all the brilliance that had gone before and created something new and unique. The idea of a sonnet-cycle published in praise of another - an object of desire - wasn't a new one, of course; and the sonnet form itself was well-established, as was the type of language found within it. But none of that matters because Shakespeare took it, played with it, reinvented it and made it utterly timeless.
He wrote poetry as a matter of necessity when the theatres were closed for a time, and there was no call for drama - he approached the form as a jobbing writer, trying to earn a crust - but look what he did with it. Incredible.
I hesitate to say this, but there is a definite parallel with the Beatles. They didn't really do anything 'new' - three minute beat-songs existed when they emerged. But boy, did they do something new. And timeless.
Reminds me of what Bob Dylan said about Woody Guthrie:
That you could listen to his stuff and know how to live.
I've always wished
that I could be as brilliantly concise as Bob!
Macbeth
My first experience of theatre was an O-Level inspired trip to Cardiff to see Philip Madoc as Macbeth back in the early 80s. It was a matinee performance for kids from a variety of local schools so pre-curtain it was all a bit a bit rowdy but soon settled once the lights went down.
All was going well until Witch #3 opened her mouth for the first time. It was a bloke - am guessing a very inappropriate understudy - speaking in what can only be described as a Monty Python-esque voice. Think the opening scene of the Life Of Brian and you'll get the picture. Every time this poor sod took to the stage he had about 500 sixteen year olds guffawing and sniggering and then howling with laughter - and that was before he even uttered a line. When he did, the place erupted.
I've seen that play many times since but never has it been so enjoyable.
This, however, remains his finest achievement...
The Fleshtones (of course) and Ian McKellen
Shakespeare's my guy...
Julie and Romeo.
Given the inexact nature of the date, I'm celebrating Shakespeare's birthday today, the day after St. George's day, with a song by a Scotsman.
Quality.
"Darling, have you caught his Dicky Two?"
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me
The most haunting thing I've ever read - and the epitaph for us all.
And he did it all the time
He went through periods where his output was more and less distinguished but the point was he kept at it, never succumbed to writer's block, "difficult second play syndrome", incapacitating dalliances with drugs or women; throughout his life he was getting up every morning and knocking out stuff which might be rehearsed later the same day, always for money, always mindful of the hard practicalities of his trade and never once writing anything self piteous about his lot.
Well I would laugh, if I could find the energy,
I wasted time, and now time's wasting me...
The Wrong Time by Adman
Not actually by me, I hasten to add. But by a friend of mine, who was also a big fan of that line. Your quote reminded me of this song, which is pretty good I think. Hope you don't mind me sharing. It isn't Shakespeare, of course, but it is sort-of relevant.