As You Like It: I Like Adam

I’ve read As you Like It before, but this time I was had to force myself to pick up the play, and it took me weeks to get through. The characters seem so insipid, and the plot’s not my favorite. (Why does Touchstone get Audrey, tearing her away from some poor sap who loves her, when Silvius gets stuck with Phebe, whom he loves but who completely ignores him to run after Rosalind? And what is up with Orlando agreeing to pretend-woo this random shepherd boy, who is Rosalind pretending to be Ganymede pretending to be Rosalind?) If it weren’t for the melancholy Jacque, and occasionally Celia making fun of Rosalind, the love-struck stupidity would be too much.

But I do love Adam. He’s Alfred to Orlando’s Bruce Wayne. He’s grandfatherly, he’s dear, and he’s so loyal. He’s too old to be of much help around the estate anymore, but he insists on giving Orlando his life’s savings (which he needs to live on, mind you) when Orlando is banished. And he pleads to go along. He knows he won’t be any help, but he swears not to be a hindrance, and together they march off into the sunset.

Awhile later, after a troublesome journey, Adam is practically perishing from hunger and fatigue. Orlando manages to secure some food for them when he meets the Duke’s forest court, and Adam is saved. But that’s the last we hear of him! I want more Adam! At the very least, I want him to have a line at the wedding to verify that he’s still alive.

 

Anti-Seminitism in MOV?

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

I saw The Merchant of Venice performed in the courtyard of one of the Cambridge colleges a few years ago, and this speech was gripping. Why does everyone hate Shylock–because he’s a Jew or because he’s a mean old curmudgeon? Or did he evolve into a cold, impossible miser because of the hatred? Did the persecution (see III.i.51-55, just before this speech) drive him to become miserly, to take comfort in money because it wouldn’t mistreat him?

I found an interesting blog post about the anti-Jew attitude in MOV, in response to some high school girls recently boycotting the play. Be sure you check out the comments below the post; they capture more breadth of the discussion, and some hit it right on.

The anti-Jewish sentiment makes me want to rebel and cheer for Shylock–but he’s so impossible, it’s a love-hate relationship at best, and most of the time it veers into the hate territory. I can’t believe his response when Jessica runs away.

 

Falstaff

Last night, I missed a Trivial Pursuit question about Falstaff: who is the jester in Shakespeare’s Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor? I could picture the fat, bald Falstaff from a production of Merry Wives that I saw a few years ago, but could not come up with his name–so annoying. So when I finally finish As You Like It, which I’ve been ignoring for two weeks, I guess it’s time for Henry IV and/or Merry Wives.

 

The Winter’s Tale: What the heck?

Act 5, Scene 3 still totally baffles me. Is Hermione a statue that comes to life, or has she been hiding, pretending to be dead, for 16 years?

Support for the statue theory:

• Shakespeare’s romance plays have lots of weird magic…just look at The Tempest
• Leontes’ response: he doesn’t threaten to kill Paulina, who’s whipped him into 16 years of constant mourning (had she been part of hiding Hermione, it can’t have been above reprimand, no matter how overjoyed Leontes was at the restoration)

Faking death theory:

• The faked death is a common plot line for women in Shakespeare: Hero in Much Ado, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet
• The statue’s words: “I, knowing by Paulina that the oracle gave hope [Perdita] wast in being, have preserved myself to see the issue” (5.3.125-138) (But why did she know by Paulina? Hermione heard the oracle herself.)
• My version of the play includes a stage direction that says “Hermione like a statue”

I’m also wondering if this play is possibly to blame for the horrible made-for-TV movies where a mannequin comes to life and becomes a “Mom for Christmas.”

 

The Winter’s Tale: Exit, pursued by a bear

Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction–exit, pursued by a bear–seals the fates of just about every character in The Winter’s Tale:

• Antigonus, who is gobbled up
• Perdita, left in a strange place with no human connection to her birth
• Leontes, who already regrets abandoning Perdita but now has no way to find her
• the shepherd and clown, who are enriched by finding and raising her
• Florizel, who later falls in love with her
• Polixenes, who disinherits him for it but later reconciles with Leontes on account of it

Exit, pursued by a bear–it sets up for tragedy, but it also sets up for comedy. In what other genre can a man being chased by a bear eventually bring about resolution to a 16-year breach of trust?

 

The Merchant of Venice: Ring Fiasco

I’m in a hospital in Denver, where my husband is recovering from having his appendix out. (So much for our ski vacation.) I was reading The Merchant of Venice in the hospital waiting room, so when Andrew handed me his wedding ring (it had to come off before surgery), I thought of MOV’s ring fiasco and Portia’s ultimatum to Bassanio:

This house, these servants, this same myself are yours–my lord’s!–I give them with this ring, which when you part from, lose, or give away, let it presage the ruin of your love, and be my vantage to exclaim on you.

 Obviously, Bassanio takes off the ring before the play is over…but I haven’t gotten that far yet this time around. I think I’ll have more sympathy for him, though.

 p.s. I finished The Winter’s Tale on the plane out here, so I’ll have some posts about that coming up.

 

On to The Winter’s Tale

Two weeks ago I went snowshoeing with my husband, and later this week we’re off to Colorado for some skiing! Between that and all the snow we’ve been bombarded with, I’m thinking it’s time to grab The Winter’s Tale. I remember being in total disbelief at the ending last time I read it–we’ll see if it strikes me any differently this time around.

 

Juliet, the patron saint of lovers?

Thousands of letters pour into Verona every year addressed to Juliet. People ask for her blessing, her guidance, her help. Sometimes they’re just sharing the good news of their own love stories. Some of the writers address Juliet like she’s Santa Claus, but others honestly pour out their hearts.

You can learn more about this (and read some of the actual letters) in Letters to Juliet by Lise and Ceil Friedman.)

Here’s one of my favorites from the book:

Dear Juliet,
I am in a bunker. Outside I hear missiles exploding, bullets being fired. I am twenty-two years old and I’m scared. Our commander has told us that soon we must come out. A hand-to-hand battle awaits us. I feel I will die. I leave life with this brief note. I am entrusting it to you, symbol of universal love. I delude myself by thinking it will make people understand the futility of hate.
–Brian L., Vietnam, 1972

 

Romeo and Juliet: The priest sums it up

If you need to brush up on the plot of Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence conveniently sums it up at the end of Act 5. Bodies are strewn across the stage–Paris, Juliet, Romeo, Tybalt, even Romeo’s mom has died–and, called to the graveyard in the middle of the night, the prince demands an explanation. Friar Laurence is the only survivor who actually knows all the details, so he recaps:

Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife:
I married them; and their stol’n marriage-day
Was Tybalt’s dooms-day, whose untimely death
Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from the city,
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth’d and would have married her perforce
To County Paris: then comes she to me,
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some mean
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor’d by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow’d grave,
Being the time the potion’s force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay’d by accident, and yesternight
Return’d my letter back. Then all alone
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But when I came, some minute ere the time
Of her awaking, here untimely lay
The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
And bear this work of heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But, as it seems, did violence on herself.
All this I know; and to the marriage
Her nurse is privy: and, if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,
Unto the rigour of severest law.

 

Romeo and Juliet: Best Pickup Lines

It seemed appropriate to read Romeo and Juliet during the week of Valentine’s Day (to pay homage to St. Valentine’s violent death and the eventual association of romantic love). Partake of some of the romantic, solemnly-breathed gushing in the early acts:

•  She doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night as a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear.
• Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.
• Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, having some business, do entreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return.
• Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.