shakespeare

[Corpsey]

What these history plays allow Shakey to do, which I'm sure he does in many other plays butnevermind, is juxtapose the high heroic iambics of nobility with the slangy prose of the commoners. Which is one way in which Joyce is Shakesperean, too.

 

[Corpsey]

Craner’s Shakespeare Scorecard

(Including plays written in collaboration but excluding those of seriously dubious authorship and the poems. Even though he had magnificent contemporaries, the collaborations are among those with the weakest marks.)

Two Gentleman of Verona – Not read

Taming of the Shrew – C

Henry VI (3) – C

Henry VI (1) – D

Henry VI (2) – B

Titus Andronicus - D

Richard III – B

Edward III – Not read

Comedy of Errors – C

Love’s Labour’s Lost – B (just missed out on an A)

Richard II – A

Romeo and Juliet – A

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – A*

King John – Not read

Merchant of Venice – A

Henry IV (1) – A*

Merry Wives of Windsor – C (saved from being a D because I quite like the fact it was designed as a cynical vehicle for the popular Falstaff, and I enjoyed the silly
bawdiness, like a crap 70s Italian sex comedy starring Edwige Fenech!)

Henry IV (2) – A*

Much Ado About Nothing – B

Henry V – A

Julius Caesar – A

As You Like It – A

Hamlet – A*

Twelfth Night – A (this play used to irritate the crap out of me until I saw a stunning RSC production that lit up the text, not often you can really say that about
contemporary theatrical performances.)

Measure for Measure – A

Othello – A

All’s Well That End’s Well – C

King Lear – A*

Timon of Athens – C

Macbeth – A*

Antony and Cleopatra – A

Pericles – D

Coriolanus – A

Winter’s Tale – A

Cymbeline – Not read

Tempest – A

Henry VIII – Not read

 

[Corpsey]

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished unto brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.

 

[...]

I have no recollection of writing that post.

 

[version]

Watched Welles' film about making Othello last night. It's similar to F for Fake but with less of the trickery. You get him telling stories then discussing the film and the play with one of his actors and a friend followed by a clip of him taking questions from an audience after a screening. It's really good.

 

[luka]

its his birthday today. i wanted to post it on the 23 thread but couldnt find the 23 thread. impossible to search for.

 

[0bleak]

"School in Shakespeare's day and age was vastly different to our own. In fact, it was far easier because you didn't have to study Shakespeare."

 

[Corpsey]

Benny did me the great service of linking to a PDF of helen vendler's sonnets book and now, searching for a venerable opinion on 'julius caesar' which i'm reading, i've come across a PDF of Bloom's 'Invention of the Human'

https://www.district205.net/cms/lib/IL01001003/Centricity/Domain/118/kupdf.net_shakespeare-the-invention-of-the-human-harold-bloompdf.pdf

 

[Corpsey]

this is quite funny, from his essay on 'the tempest'

"In a ghastly Peter Brook version of the 1 960s, which I gaped at unbelievingly, Caliban was Java Man, a ferocious primitive who accomplished the rape of Miranda, took over the island, and celebrated his triumph by bumbuggering Prospero."

 

[jenks]

Shapiro’s 1599 does a good job on JC. I know not everyone here is a fan of him.

 

[Corpsey]

Apparently Bradley is a controversial figure in post-Theory academia, dismissed by many for treating shakespeare's characters as if they were real people etcera. Well, perhaps he does infer too much from the text (although he usually backs up his arguments with quite convincing evidence), but his analysis of Iago, below, is fascinating to me, and reveals Bradley to be, at the least, a penetrating psychologist, a potential great novelist.

I semi stumbled into reading this via a goodreads review and wound up devouring the whole lecture on Iago, and now intend to read the rest of the famous lectures by and by

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Shakespearean Tragedy, by A.C. Bradley.

What then were the real moving forces of Iago's action? Are we to fall back on the idea of a 'motiveless malignity;' that is to say, a disinterested love of evil, or a delight in the pain of others as simple and direct as the delight in one's own pleasure? Surely not. I will not insist that this thing or these things are inconceivable, mere phrases, not ideas; for, even so, it would remain possible that Shakespeare had tried to represent an inconceivability. But there is not the slightest reason to suppose that he did so. Iago's action is intelligible; and indeed the popular view contains enough truth to refute this desperate theory. It greatly exaggerates his desire for advancement, and the ill-will caused by his disappointment, and it ignores other forces more important than these; but it is right in insisting on the presence of this desire and this ill-will, and their presence is enough to destroy Iago's claims to be more than a demi-devil. For love of the evil that advances my interest and hurts a person I dislike, is a very different thing from love of evil simply as evil; and pleasure in the pain of a person disliked or regarded as a competitor is quite distinct from pleasure in the pain of others simply as others. The first is intelligible, and we find it in Iago. The second, even if it were intelligible, we do not find in Iago.

Still, desire of advancement and resentment about the lieutenancy, though factors and indispensable factors in the cause of Iago's action, are neither the principal nor the most characteristic factors. To find these, let us return to our half-completed analysis of the character. Let us remember especially the keen sense of superiority, the contempt of others, the sensitiveness to everything which wounds these feelings, the spite against goodness in men as a thing not only stupid but, both in its nature and by its success, contrary to Iago's nature and irritating to his pride. Let us remember in addition the annoyance of having always to play a part, the consciousness of exceptional but unused ingenuity and address, the enjoyment of action, and the absence of fear. And let us ask what would be the greatest pleasure of such a man, and what the situation which might tempt him to abandon his habitual prudence and pursue this pleasure. Hazlitt and Mr. Swinburne do not put this question, but the answer I proceed to give to it is in principle theirs.

The most delightful thing to such a man would be something that gave an extreme satisfaction to his sense of power and superiority; and if it involved, secondly, the triumphant exertion of his abilities, and, thirdly, the excitement of danger, his delight would be consummated. And the moment most dangerous to such a man would be one when his sense of superiority had met with an affront, so that its habitual craving was reinforced by resentment, while at the same time he saw an opportunity of satisfying it by subjecting to his will the very persons who had affronted it. Now, this is the temptation that comes to Iago. Othello's eminence, Othello's goodness, and his own dependence on Othello, must have been a perpetual annoyance to him. At any time he would have enjoyed befooling and tormenting Othello. Under ordinary circumstances he was restrained, chiefly by self-interest, in some slight degree perhaps by the faint pulsations of conscience or humanity. But disappointment at the loss of the lieutenancy supplied the touch of lively resentment that was required to overcome these obstacles; and the prospect of satisfying the sense of power by mastering Othello through an intricate and hazardous intrigue now became irresistible. Iago did not clearly understand what was moving his desire; though he tried to give himself reasons for his action, even those that had some reality made but a small part of the motive force; one may almost say they were no more than the turning of the handle which admits the driving power into the machine. Only once does he appear to see something of the truth. It is when he uses the phrase 'to plume up my will in double knavery.'

To 'plume up the will,' to heighten the sense of power or superiority—this seems to be the unconscious motive of many acts of cruelty which evidently do not spring chiefly from ill-will, and which therefore puzzle and sometimes horrify us most. It is often this that makes a man bully the wife or children of whom he is fond. The boy who torments another boy, as we say, 'for no reason,' or who without any hatred for frogs tortures a frog, is pleased with his victim's pain, not from any disinterested love of evil or pleasure in pain, but mainly because this pain is the unmistakable proof of his own power over his victim. So it is with Iago. His thwarted sense of superiority wants satisfaction. What fuller satisfaction could it find than the consciousness that he is the master of the General who has undervalued him and of the rival who has been preferred to him; that these worthy people, who are so successful and popular and stupid, are mere puppets in his hands, but living puppets, who at the motion of his finger must contort themselves in agony, while all the time they believe that he is their one true friend and comforter? It must have been an ecstasy of bliss to him. And this, granted a most abnormal deadness of human feeling, is, however horrible, perfectly intelligible. There is no mystery in the psychology of Iago; the mystery lies in a further question, which the drama has not to answer, the question why such a being should exist.

 

[Corpsey]

I've re-read 'The Tempest' and 'Julius Caesar' in the last month, I'm now thinking either 'Othello' or (and I don't think I've read this one) 'King Lear'.

 

[Corpsey]

Bradley says he doesn't think Iago could have provided an explanation for his actions to Othello even if he had wanted to, but to extend his analysis, which seems remarkably prescient to me in describing the mind and behavior of a psychopath, I reckon you could see Iago's refusal to explain himself as an Ian Brady-like final exertion of power, over Othello, but also (more disturbingly) over the play's audience, who he's already confounded with contradictory soliloquys assigning this and that motive to his mischief.

 

[version]

I reckon you could see Iago's refusal to explain himself as an Ian Brady-like final exertion of power,

Did you get this from the interview with Brady's psychiatrist on YouTube? Stumbled across that recently.

 

[okzharp]

Bradley says he doesn't think Iago could have provided an explanation for his actions to Othello even if he had wanted to, but to extend his analysis, which seems remarkably prescient to me in describing the mind and behavior of a psychopath, I reckon you could see Iago's refusal to explain himself as an Ian Brady-like final exertion of power, over Othello, but also (more disturbingly) over the play's audience, who he's already confounded with contradictory soliloquys assigning this and that motive to his mischief.

Yes, nice one. Coleridge would have agreed with you, I think. He called it Iago's "motiveless malignity".

 

[Corpsey]

Bradley talks about that quite a bit in his lecture.

"Coleridge's view is not materially different, though less complete. When he speaks of 'the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity,' he does not mean by the last two words that 'disinterested love of evil' or 'love of evil for evil's sake' of which I spoke just now, and which other critics attribute to Iago. He means really that Iago's malignity does not spring from the causes to which Iago himself refers it, nor from any 'motive' in the sense of an idea present to consciousness. But unfortunately his phrase suggests the theory which has been criticised above. On the question whether there is such a thing as this supposed pure malignity, the reader may refer to a discussion between Professor Bain and F.H. Bradley in Mind, vol. viii."

 

[Corpsey]

Did you get this from the interview with Brady's psychiatrist on YouTube? Stumbled across that recently.

I have watched this actually although I think I'd read that Brady was withholding the location of the victim's body as a power-play before that.

This is probably one of the reasons psychopaths lie all the time, I suppose. We've probably all dabbled in it from time to time. Lying to someone just to get one over on them, knowing that you're manipulating them, as Bradley says it "plumes up" your sense of ego.

Or does it? Perhaps I've been lying all this time.

 

[version]

 

[Benny Bunter]

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit:
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,
But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it:
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tottered loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;
Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I by lacking have supposed dead,
And there reigns love, and all love’s loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things remov’d that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:
Their images I lov’d I view in thee,
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.