Richard: Good or Bad... The Verdict

The class discussion veered toward if we ever felt any pity for dear ol’ Richard the other day. Originally, I was thinking, how could you? I mean from the very beginning the man is putting on a show. He actually says, “I am determined to be a villain,” (I.i.30). It is as if Shakespeare wanted to create the outrageously devilish villain and to have the audience hate him. It is so much more entertaining to hate the villain.
Wait, let’s take a step back though. I want to present a different point of view. How did Richard actually get this way. The beginning of the play starts off with him plotting his evil deeds. However, how did he get this way? The audience is presented with the misshapen man who is no where near getting to having any sort of substantial power and whose mother seems to have hated him before the play even began. Does no one feel bad for him? Yes, he does take it a bit far. Killing everyone that attempts to get in the way, not even stopping at killing his own family for gain. He also kills a girl’s father and brother, proceeds to marry her and then kills her when she is of no use anymore.
Why did Richard want to marry Ann anyway? She didn’t seem to do anything to help out his plot really. It seems like he just wants to be able to woe and hurt a beautiful woman to get back at every women who ever rejected him. There is a flaw in Shakespeare’s play though, why would any woman ever want to marry a deformed old man? I guess this falls into the suspension of disbelief.
So he murders his brothers? What if they were really mean to him but we, the audience, never saw this? His one brother, the current King, is on his deathbed. He could have been a real jerk to his brother. And Clarence? Clarence seems kind of dumb in this play. He has no idea what so ever that his brother could be evil, even when the murders tell him that it was Richard who paid them to kill him? Maybe Richard hated that his brother would be given the chance to be king when he was so stupid? Or he just resented him for being born first?
There is no reason he needed to kill the kids though. That is where Richard becomes the true villain. No one can even justify the killing of children, innocents. Children are symbols of all that is good and hopeful. This is the point where Richard takes it too far. And he receives what was coming to him in a sudden death scene where he is stabbed. Poor Richard, maybe I would have taken his side if he didn’t kill off the children…

Titus: The Film

If you thought that Titus was hard to read, try seeing the film! Director Julie Taymor (also director of Across the Universe) took the play and put a whole new spin on it. The film starts with a young boy playing with toy soldiers during his meal. It ends up with the kitchen being bombed and we are taken to a coliseum looking arena with Titus. The viewer figures out that the boy is Lucius’ son. Taymor also adds a spin on the film by mixing what is modern with ancient Rome, such as the tanks beside the men in Roman armor.
Besides the apparent oddity in the scenery and the wardrobes of the film, it was don’t quite well. In class we saw another film, a BBC version, which was rather boring. There was no action but rather the long drawn out monologues and actors standing still. It was mentioned in class that the audience of Shakespeare’s time enjoy the poetry of the plays and were not always able to see the players, so the audience relied on the words of the actors. However, in today’s society, the plots fit right in but the word don’t. Taymor took the liberty of cutting down some of the speeches and instead use the visual aspect to communicate the play.
One such scene that the whole class talked about and enjoyed was the scene where Lavinia was found by her uncle. Marcus’ speech was cut drastically but his actions revealed so much of what the speech communicated. I personally think that I would be speechless if I came upon a family member who was ravished and had her hands and tongue cut off. The visual aspect of Lavinia after the incident was so much better as well. She was stood up on a stump in a swamp area. The brothers had placed twigs on the stumps where her hands were and when Marcus asked her to speech, blood came shooting out of her mouth. I found this to communicate the horror of the act much more than words spoken. I think that it works in todays society because we do depend so much on visual stimulation (i.e. TV shows, films, the internet, video games). Taymor tapped into the visual aspect and brought what was modern into the Shakespearean play. I guess audiences still enjoy blood, sex, and war.

Shakespeare: The Original Danielle Steel?

I have finally reached the part of Titus where Aaron says the first ever your mom joke (see first post). I watched the movie as I read the text and found the movie version to be like I pictured it. (Personally, I love Shakespeare but I hate to have to read it so I try to find versions of the plays online.) In this movie version, Aaron was quite spiteful, laughing at Chiron, when telling Chiron that he had been sleeping with his mom and impregnated her. I find it funny that Shakespeare chooses to add these little jokes to his tragedy. Does he give Aaron the jokes to further his portrayal of him as an uncivilized Moore? Or does he want to somewhat lighten a very dark play?
In fact, Shakespeare’s play left me with a lot of unanswered questions. In the play, everyone seems to be double-crossing and putting on a mask (oh how Shakespeare loved masks) but how much of this is planned. Did Tamora jump on the idea of ruining the Roman Empire when Saturninus decided to marry her? And how much did Aaron plan? Did Titus loose his mind? At many points in the play he switches from a grieving man to a composed one with a plan. On point, he even goes so far as to make Tamora believe he has lost his mind in order to kill her sons and then bake them into a pie. Has he lost it on some level or is it all a plot to get back for the death of his sons?
I like that this play pushed me to rethink all of the characters from the beginning, how it forced me to pick apart their previous lines to dig up their true intentions. However, I found this play to be a lot like Hamlet. Both plays have the themes of masks and characters that appear insane or sane. Also, the endings are quite similar in that most of the characters died and a seemingly pure character manage to live and take over the country. Did Shakespeare just run out of ideas? Or was he the olden Danielle Steel?

The origins of Holla

Let it be known that not only has Shakespeare come up with the “Your Mom” joke but that he also he came up with the word “Holla.” When I thought that the reading of Shakespeare could not get any better I stumbled upon act 2 scene 1 of Titus Andronicus.
Moving beyond the origins of the word “holla”….
Titus… what a play? In the beginning of the play in my anthology T.S. Eliot is quoted as having said that the play was, “one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written.”
Harsh Eliot. Harsh.
Although, I must agree with him to some extent. Forcing myself through the first two acts I found the play read like an Elizabethan version of Saw. It was bloody and the scenes were just horrifying. I would not recommend reading this before you go to bed. In fact, I wonder how Shakespeare managed to sleep at all during the writing of this play?! Maybe the cutting of tongues was more commonplace then? Even so, it just seems that (at two acts in) anyone who is remotely good is being mutilated, killed, or thrown in jail.
Can I just say that Titus is stupid. I mean, why wouldn’t he just take the role as the king? Why did he think that Saturninus was such a good idea? Especially for the fact that right after he crowned him, Saturninus was asking for Titus’ daughter to marry when she was with Bassianus, Saturninus’ brother! Wasn’t this a clue that Titus shouldn’t run after his sons and daughter, who were fleeing from the wrath of Saturninus, only to kill his youngest son? Come on Titus! Plus, what is up with them talking about themselves in third person?
The only character that I really like in this play is Marcus. He tries to split up Bassianus and Saturnius when they were fighting in the beginning. And he tries to take care of his brother, Titus. He also has an amazing speech at the end of act 2 when he happens upon his niece after she has been raped and her tongue and hands are cut off. It is a bit horrifying when you think of his speaking in his reaction to her because I can’t imagine having words when seeing something so horrible. However, I imagine that the costumes and makeup of the time were not the best forcing the audience to rely on the speeches to know what was going on. Marcus’ speech is moving. He love for his niece and the fact that he carries her mourning as well makes him the most human of the characters. I wonder how Titus will react? Perhaps he will blame his daughter for this misfortune or perhaps he will open his eyes to what is truly happening when he sees his daughter’s current state.

Might I also add that when reading Titus, watch the movie as well. It skips some of the lines but I think that it does it justice by allowing you to see the horror visually as well as hearing it in the lines!

Let them eat.... comedy?!

Anyone who has read enough Shakespeare will laugh at the jokes, puns, and slapstick that Shakespeare threw into his comedies. Shakespeare was after all writing for his audience, selling tickets meant money, and comedy was a way to draw people into the theater.
M.M. Bakhtin’s essay, Rabelias and His World, talks about laughter and the middle ages. He states that laughter was something that was excluded from “proper life” (i.e. anything religious, ceremonial) but that it was inserted into the festivals (73, 82). The use of comedy in this way is much like the use of films during WWII, it becomes escapism.
The theater was positioned outside of London’s city limits for legal reasons. But this positioning of the city fits the description of the audience being able to leave this bustling, economic world for just a bit to escape into theater. Many apprentices would play hooky and see a play in the afternoon. The theater also had the reputation of having women who sold oranges and other things there as well. It became a place of pleasure, something that I am sure that most people needed without the luxuries of running water or sewers!
The theater was not just for the poor or the rich. In fact, the globe was set up to accommodate everyone who came to see the plays. The rich would often sit up in the balconies and the poor would crowd into the space in front of the stage. Comedy helped Shakespeare draw in the large crowd. Bakhtin also wrote of the universality of comedy, laughter. Every human laughs and most people laugh at similar things. Bergson says, “…the comic foes not exist out the pale of what is strictly human,” (Bergson 62). Laughter is something was created for and by humans. Both Bakhtin and Henri Bergson, in his essay Laughter, wrote about how comedy is often dependent on the body. The body is something universal (as we all have one) and unites the crowd. As long as the person we are laughing at on stage is not in any real harm, we will laugh at him.
Bergson’s view on laughter is a bit more rigid than just every person laughing at someone when they fall down. He says that humans laugh at someone else who is unaware of their surroundings and who is ultimately socially unacceptable, (156). However, Shakespeare seems to take normal people and place them in extraordinary situations, such as the brothers and servants in Comedy of Errors. Twin brothers are normal. Siblings who are separated is normal. What is not normal is the act of the separation and how they are reunited. The brothers are laughed at for having the same body and for being unaware of their surroundings, that the other brother is in the same city. Shakespeare plays on this humor and creates a snowball of situations where people are talking to someone who they think is someone else. The brothers are being rather social in the city; they are not unsociable just unaware. Also, the play ends in the normal happily ever after that Shakespeare loves so much.
Shakespeare saw how comedy brought an audience to the theater. He capitalized on it. He wrote what they wanted to see. For two to three hours he let the audience escape into the show and laugh at the characters on the stage until a happy ending. Even if he didn’t write the plays on his own, he was good at seeing what the people wanted and supplying them with it. It just so happens that the people wanted comedy.