Excellent Dumb Discourse

Great Author Mad Libs

2004-11-16T18:57:00.000-05:00

As I flatter myself that you have noticed, I've taken quite an extended break from An Excellent Dumb Discourse. In brief, this is because my best buddy (aside from The Spouse), The Cat, became very ill and finally died, after an extended illness. While he was alive, I was busy looking after him. Once he died, I frankly haven't had the heart to sit at the computer and write. I am home alone most of the day, and The Cat was my constant companion, just as he was all through my adolescence and early adulthood. Working on my blog, he would always sit on my lap and purr away, for quite literally many hours at a time. I'd always end up getting leg cramps in my attempt to both type and provide him with a level sleeping surface, but I didn't mind. When an animal loves you that much and is that demonstrably affectionate, you hardly notice the leg cramps. Anyway, I realize that I have to get back to writing again, so I've just thrown together something brief and hopefully amusing to start. Sort of like the stretches you're supposed to do before vigorous exercise. Before I close the blogging chapter on The Cat, however, I'd like to send a special Thank You to the Spouse, who was great dealing with me and The Cat during The Cat's illness, and even held him as he breathed his last. So long, Nero. You were the best.

The Cat. Aka "Nero". 1990-2004. Requiescat in pace, Buddy.
Now I present my little amuse-tete for your consumption. But first, two caveats: I'm afraid my limited knowledge of html coding is on display, since what I've done requires a lot of formatting, and, while I've tried to make it format properly for all monitor resolutions, it ain't perfect. I will continue to try and get better. Second, my premise relies on the fact that the reader is familiar with the pen-and-paper party game "Mad-Libs". If you have heretofore managed to exist without knowledge of this parlor game delight, click here to learn about it.

As for the amuse-tete, I've been revisitng a lot of the classics we were all forced at red-pen-point to read in High School, and I'm afraid I'm still left with the same opinion of an awful lot of these Great Dead Men. Geniuses; total assholes. Find one person who would like to be best friends with Ernest Hemmingway, and you've found some pathetic sap of a man pining for the good old misogynistic days. In terms of respect for the sexes, Shakespeare was many centuries ahead of Papa Hemmingway. I'm not a genius, but I'm not an asshole, either. So I've used this sliver of superiority to take a bit of a smack at Ernest. Here it is:

Great Author Mad Libs

Title:
_______________ like _________ ___________
(Sexually Suggestive Noun) (Depressing Adjective/Noun Combination)

by ____________ Hemingway
(Paternal nickname)

I led the girl to the _____________. She looked up at me. The light
(highly symbolic type
of waterway)

______________ through the _____________, casting shadows.
(short, significant verb)(flora)

“Oh _________,” she said. “Will you always love me like this?"
(Macho, WASP male name)

I kissed her. The _____________ bowed in the breeze. I lifted her into
(flora)

the ___________________. “Why not?” I said. The girl sighed and cut
(small water-going vessel)

off her __________. “Why not?” she answered. We _______________
(body part)(irresolute verb,
past tense)
out towards the West.

Hemingway - Genius. Me - Hack. But a nice hack.

Hath Not Old Custom Made this Life More Sweet?

2004-09-16T02:34:00.000-04:00

~As You Like It, act 2, scene 1

***WARNING: This entry is long. Over 2000 entire words are used. I know that's longer than the average Joe's average blog entry, but I have faith that you can do it. You don't have to read it all at once, you know. You can take breaks. Go for a walk. Do some crunches. Enjoy a frosty beverage. Or two. And then come back and finish up. Think of it as a really short book, without the risk of papercuts.***

A great cleaning convenience? Or a sucker purchase for tidy-challenged types?

The Spouse is a funny sort of bird. I'm not complaining, mind you. I can think of no worse purgatory than a lifetime shared with an average, unimaginative and completely normal sort of mate. Not that imagination is particularly The Spouse's strong suit, of course. The Spouse does not come home from work bursting with ideas about how to make a crazy Rube Goldberg device that will turn on the shower, toast the bread, make the bed and start the MINI when the alarm goes off. Nor is The Spouse the sort to come up with outrageous surprises that leave me gob-smacked and speechless when my birthday rolls around. But The Spouse is anything but average, and, I suspect, scores well above the mean even when it comes to creativity, if television sitcoms and grocery checkout magazines have any truth in them. (Admittedly a big if...)

The reason I mention The Spouse's oddness this week is because I'm the sort of person who likes to find patterns. Recognizing patterns is a way to order and understand the universe; and analyzing patterns (and deciding how to change, if necessary) is a way to improve the universe. "Know thy traditions, but be not wedded to them." If some profound sage of the Ancient World didn't say that, they should have.

Anyhoo, The Spouse's special oddness has been defying patterns lately, and so I write this in the hopes that the creative process will help me sort it out a bit better. The oddness surrounds household tasks in general, and cleaning in particular.

For your consideration I present you with the following scenarios:

#1 Tooltime Triage
This first scenario is not particularly noteworthy, except in combination with the others bellow. The Spouse and I own a house - at least, as long as the four outer walls and roof stay up I'm going to continue to call it so. Suffice it to say that our house requires a wee bit o' repair work before we make the House Beautiful centerfold. But the neighborhood and the location are great, and damn it, not only do we boast a sizable back yard (by DC standards), but we have a DRIVEWAY! Sure, our kitchen lights only go on after about 30 tries (and they're those long rectangular fluorescent ceiling numbers with pull strings that lend the kitchen all the warmth and cheer of a fish-gutting facility), but not having to grapple with the meter maids - that, my Mastercard-toting friends, really is priceless.

I'm afraid I digress, but the point is that many a DIY opportunity presents itself in our current abode. The Spouse and I work together on most of these opportunities, and lately I've noticed a disturbing trend. I'll usually go down to the basement and get all the tools we think we need. Inevitably, The Spouse will look at the tools, look at the project, look at the tools again and sigh. "This probably isn't going to work," The Spouse will declare. "We need a --- to do this properly." Now, what we need is generally right back down in the basement - I picked the wrong sized wrench, the not-quite-right bit for the power drill, etc. "Would you like me to go down and get it?" I'll ask, as I start to move towards the basement door. "Naw. We can probably make this work okay," The Spouse will shrug. "Don't bother. Let's make this work."

I am all for being flexible and 'making it work.' But some things can not be improvised all that well. Needless to say, about 75% of the time, it would have been much easier, cheaper, and more effective for me to go get the appropriate tool.

Why does this happen over and over? Why does The Spouse refuse to approve the second basement trip? Is it the challenge? The overwhelming ennui of always failing to anticipate the right tool requirements? The displeasure at one of us having to make an extra trip? And why the hell don't I just go down again anyway despite Spousely disapproval? Do I dislike the walk down to the basement that much? Am I overwhelmed by the likelihood that the second round at the toolbench will be no more successful that the first? Have I resigned myself to this ritual as part of The Spouse's and my 'together time'? Man, I hope not.

Now, consider if you please,
#2 The Clorox Wipe Imbroglio
The Spouse and I are at Costco; this is another one of the things we like to do together. People will say we are a boring old married couple, but I can proudly assert that we enjoyed our grocery store 'dates' well before we were married. Thus making us simply boring. But those of you who have not accompanied us, in an observational capacity of course (actively shopping with a third person throws us off our groove), don't know what you are missing. We generally have fun grocery shopping together, and at Costco, especially if we're not in a hurry, we frequently have a ball. I don't know why; that's just the way it is. So work with me here and go with it for a moment.

So, as I was saying, The Spouse and I are at Costco, having our usual thrill a minute, perusing the aisles. We try to contemplate a world where anyone needs that much nail polish remover, and how long it would take a determined person to work through the entire super-duper jumbo-sized box of fish-sticks (and what the doctors would be thinking as they worked the stomach pump). I move on while The Spouse stops to do a series of calculations aimed at determining how the bulk discount on really big packs of fresh meat compares to the unit cost of weekly specials on similar fresh meat at our local, unSuper-Sized supermarket. (This is one of The Spouse's favorite grocery shopping sports, and one I find incredibly tedious. The end result is generally a lot of pork chops and boneless chicken breasts in the freezer, just in case you're thinking of stopping by for a bite to eat.) While The Spouse is still muttering something about 80%-lean ground beef versus 90%, I arrive in the cleaning supplies aisle. Here I find Clorox pre-moistened disinfecting wipes ("Why just wipe when you can Clean and Disinfect!"). The price seems good; and they are sold in a three pack instead of one He-man sized box (our house isn't particularly tiny, but it's no Castle Greyskull). I think to myself, this is great. We can keep one in the car, one in the kitchen, and one in the upstairs bathroom. How convenient!

But when The Spouse catches up with the mandatory HUGE pack of pork chops, I get nothing but scoffs. "That" The Spouse proclaims, pointing an accusatory finger at my disinfecting wipes, "is a sucker's purchase!" Seems The Spouse thinks these new-fangled pre-moistened cleaning implements are just designed to make you lazy and drain the exchequer. "Just get a sponge and some cleaning fluid!" I am so taken aback I can barely defend my selection. "But... sometimes you have a germ emergency! We can keep some in the car! Don't you get it - they clean AND disinfect! Are you some kind of Communist?" My retorts fall on deaf ears. I invoke the handiness of the post-BBQ dinner moistened towlette packs in restaurants. I refer to the delights of instant gratification. I mention the incredible clutter under the kitchen sink, where our 'cleaning fluids' are kept. Since anyone being serious and saying the word 'fluids' always reminds me of General Jack "Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water" Ripper, I make a few Dr. Strangelove jokes. The Spouse continues to mutter "sucker purchase".

Now, in the Tooltime Triage scenario, The Spouse seemed to prefer us not wasting time with a second trip to the basement for the proper tools. Yet in The Clorox Wipe Imbroglio, The Spouse clearly puts a higher price on money than time, demanding trips to the cleaning supply area whenever a need for disinfecting arises. As for the whole "sucker purchase" thing, I'm not even going to bother to directly deal with that. Hello! "Why just wipe?!?" 'Nuff said.

Which brings us to item #3, The Incident of the Bathroom that Cried Out in the Night. In the Bathroom incident, The Spouse and I have gotten into bed. It is 1am. The Spouse decides some allergy medication is in order, gets out of bed and goes to the adjoining bathroom. I hear the medicine cabinet open, a pause. "Wow. It's really dirty behind the tub," The Spouse calls out. I agree - it is really dirty - the tub is an old claw foot model that doesn't fit into the corners precisely, and it is almost impossible to reach back there easily. Furthermore, the bathroom has no vent, and so the window is frequently left open, which lets in more dust and dirt. I am about to comment how odd it is that The Spouse chose 1am when we are both in bedtime mode to look behind the tub, when something even odder happens. The Spouse goes downstairs and comes back with the Swiffer Wet. (Yes, you are right - the Swiffer Wet is the mop version of the Clorox Disinfecting Wipes of the previous tale, but I've been taking the moral high ground and not pointing it out. The only likely outcome is a rejection of the ways of the Swiffer, and a return to the mop and bucket as the un-sucker-like thing to do.) The Spouse then proceeds to Swiffer the bathroom at 1 in the morning; I have no idea how The Spouse manages to get in the corners behind the claw foot tub (I suspect by taking off the premoistened Swiffer cloth and using it by hand - thus creating an EXACT equivalent to my much-maligned Clorox wipes!), but the fact is, when I get up the next day, it is clean.

I just don't know what to make of this. We were tired; The Spouse had to get up early in the morning. And while it was dirty behind the tub, it was just dirt. There was no mold, or dust bunnies or mildew or anything all that unsanitary. And the dirt wasn't in piles like an overflowing sugar bowl. It was just really dirty in the normal sort of way. And the person who won't bother to invest the time to get the right tools, who feels that Clorox Wipes are a thing of decadence, decides not just to clean, but to Swiffer-Wet at 1 am in the morning. Kinda weird, am I right? Not a complete refutation of The Spouse's belief system heretofore expressed, just kinda weird.

Finally, we have #4, The Service Contract-covered Dryer of Despair. The Spouse broke the dryer. Many months ago - June, I think. The dryer came with the house, and is a delightful bit of nostalgia from the 1960s. The previous owner left us the original operating manual, which included sketches of apron and high-heel-wearing housewives puzzling over the dryer controls. The manual included such sparkling gems as, "We women don't want to worry ourselves over complicated mechanics and such, but there are a few basics we should understand about our new dryer to make the wash-day easier," and "If [these incredibly basic troubleshooting tips] don't work, thank goodness the [dryer-vendor] Man is just a telephone call away!" Clearly, we own a piece of pre-sexual revolution history, in addition to an appliance. So it was with some sadness that I learned that The Spouse - for the second time, no less - had broken our vintage electronic by taking the barrel thingy of its track, so the dryer no longer works its tumble drying magic. (I'd be more technical about it, but I don't want to worry anyone over complicated mechanics and such.) The previous time this had happened, I called the dryer company, because, believe it or not, the previous owner had been paying for a service contract on the dryer since the Kennedy administration. The night the dryer died again, we were tossing our laundry into the hamper, basketball-style. I told The Spouse I bet the next shot - a particularly difficult one The Spouse was lining up for from behind the imaginary 3-point line, wouldn't go in. If it did, I'd be the one to call the dryer repair guy. "Agreed," said The Spouse, and promptly missed the shot.

Now, I'm not trying to be petty here; The Spouse handles the laundry duties, more or less, and so it isn't a Costco-sized deal to me. But that was over a fiscal quarter ago, and The Spouse never called anyone about the dryer. It remains broken in our basement, along with all the proper tools I never manage to bring up, and copious clotheslines. And now our service contract - our last direct link to Jack and Jackie's Camelot - has expired. And I just don't get it. The dryer guy came for free. Could The Spouse just not bear the thought of dialing a 1-800 number? Too busy to spend 3 mintues on the phone? Is The Spouse just a no-good welcher, who decided to wait me out until I was fed up with the lack of tumble-dried fluffy towels and called myself? The Spouse never mentioned it directly. Now we've started looking at new dryers, which is nobody's idea of a fun way to blow at least a few hundred dollars.

So there you have it. Around the house, where's the pattern? Not convenience all the time, nor economy, nor efficiency. It's not that I've been thrown a loop after only one-and-a-half years of marriage and must suddenly question whom it is I've married. I've known The Spouse over 10 years: The Spouse is the picture of reliability in most other aspects of our lives. Maybe The Spouse is just getting weird as age 30 creeps closer. Maybe this is just something I'll never find a pattern for, and I'll have to grow to be content with the wacko habits of that crazy Spouse of mine, sans explanation. Not that I should really complain. Usually, it's pretty easy being the spouse of The Spouse. If I can just find a way to consider these little quirks endearing, I'll be in the clear. Until I can, I'll be puzzling over things, Clorox Wipe in hand. Because really, when your Spouse is acting like a weirdo, why just wipe when you can Clean and Disinfect?

It Ain't Over 'til the BardBlogger Sings

2004-09-01T16:31:00.000-04:00

Fa la la la la!
Hey - who called me fat?!?

Summer is officially over. This may come as news to you; you look at the calendar and note the autumnal equinox does not occur until September 23rd. You also see that Labor Day, the holiday that used to celebrate the hard work, unity and integrity of blue-collar working people but has been somehow co-opted by The Man into simply representing the final day of summer and its affiliated Big Box Sales Events, does not occur for five more days yet. You glance at the thermometer and, if you live somewhere climatically similar to Washington, DC, you observe the pseudo-mercury nuzzling up to the 83 degrees Fahrenheit mark. If, like me, you actually live in Washington, DC (poor soul) you know summer can't be over yet because the politicians are still on something called "Summer Recess" and surely the politicians wouldn't engage in any sort of lie, obfuscation or misleading behavior, right? So I am wrong, you think. Summer's still on, kids!

And yet, no. Summer is officially over, and I can prove it to you. In one particular fantasy I have, I download this nifty software from Google, and the BardBlogger controls the seasons. The Spouse is deeply impressed with my prowess over Mother Nature and information technology, and the forecast is decidedly steamy...[Insert your own obnoxious whistles and catcalls]

But sadly, this is not the reason why summer is over. (However, I've sent an email to Google about developing some Excellent Dumb Weather Algorithems for me, and I'm sure they'll get back to me soon. They are always so responsive.) Rather than living the BardBlogger Climate Code fantasy, I am instead facing the reality that all my summer vacations, trips and influx of guests are over. And thus it is time to resume my regular bardblog publishing schedule. And thus Summer is ended. QED. Bring on the foliage, the cider, and Henry VI, Part II!

As I wrap up the summer, I of course feel the need to share my final thoughts on Henry VI, Part I. Is it worthy of hoopla? Does it have a Point? And is it any fun to read/see for modern twenty-first century folk such as your chic, bardblog-reading selves?

If you dimly recall what I have written on HVIPI up to this point, you realize that I consider it to be a pretty flawed piece of drama. The characters are completely static. Take Uncle Winchester - Currently portrayed as a haughty, over-ambitious cleric with greedy eyes on the crown, from his scheming aside to the audience in Act I, next to the corpse of Henry V, to his pompous, corrupt promotion to Cardinal in Act V. Anybody out there think he's going to turn it around and become the great defender and humble servant of our Young King in the next two plays? Me neither.

The verse is frequently cheap and undermines the dramatic quality of the scenes. This is particularly true when Sir Talbot and Young Talbot are preparing to face the enemy and die together. This should be touching. It makes me want to roll my eyes instead. The simple, rhyming couplets are ridiculous to my ear, distracting from and diffusing all the dramatic tension. I don't think Will would have done this later in his career. But I don't blame him that much; he was only an apprentice playwright at this point, and almost certainly working with a group of other, more experienced and less brilliant writers.

But genius tends to be difficult to stifle, and I feel it certainly puts in an appearance for poor Henry VI. To little old me, the enduring greatness of Henry VI, Part I, is that in this play Will Boldly Goes where Very Few had Gone Before.

"Boldly going where Very Few had Gone Before." Cheap dialogue. Thin characters. An innovative idea. Never underestimate the power of an idea. (And sequels - that's where the real money is.)

Henry VI is a chronicle play, laying out history for the masses. This had definitely been done plenty of times before, from the Greeks through to the Elizabethans. But Shakespeare does it differently. If you think about all those Greek and Renaissance plays you had to read in high school, you will recall a lot of guff throughout about the Fates, the Goddess Fortune, the will of the God(s) and the like. Things happen as foreseen by Oracles, or because it is God's will. Usually, the individuals have some sort of romance or melodrama or moral quandary while we all wait for the playwright to tell us whether or not the good old Goddess Fortune is ever going to turn that frown upside down.

Not so with this chronicle. Our boy the bard steps up and makes some big time changes to how these plays are written, and the message they convey. Henry VI Part I lays the individual right out there and points to his/her role in the making of history and the fortunes of the country. Nobody wins or loses because the Fortuna smiles. They win and lose because Talbot is the ideal chivalrous badass, because Joan is in League with the Devil, because Henry VI lacks the age, gravitas and force of character to whip his subjects into shape, because the eternal order of things is all balled up, ever since Henry IV dethroned the York king, mucking up the line to the throne (respecting the line to the throne is also know as respecting 'degree,' and the Elizabethans were obsessed with preserving it the way Americans talk about preserving the Constitution). And because in this vacuum of leadership (Henry VI is a wet noodle) and order (Yorks, Lancasters, and the degree stuff) all the sniveling servants who should put King and Country first feel free to be corrupt, ambitious and self-aggrandizing.

The Bard is taking a stand, and putting the focus on the people and their role in their own destiny. Try to imagine a society in which we had no concept of the individual's ability to make a impact on the larger world. I'm not saying that Shakespeare actually came up with the idea, of course, but in choosing to focus Henry VI, Part I the way he did, and since he continued this idea throughout this chronicles, more or less, he popularized this way of thinking to an entire nation; once his work became popular, all classes had access to these concepts, and by weaving these themes into what was thought of as an account of history, Shakespeare's point of view is all the more readily accepted and inculcated into our psyche. How many of us would know diddly squat about Henry V, for example, if not for the "Band of Brothers" St. Crispin's Day speech that Shakespeare popularized? The general public knows a lot of British history through the lens of Shakespeare's words. Absorbing his ideas is implicit in learning the history

Of course, as previously mentioned, we're stuck in Henry VI, Part I with unchanging, static characters of so-so eloquence. So the only way Will can get his point across is a rather heavy-handed one; through formal plot structure. England's descent - through the failure of individuals - to the corrupt anarchy similar to the one suffered in France is demonstrated through rather monotonous parrallelism. For example, we have essentially the same battle refought three time, and each time one of the three Good Chivalrous Knights (Salisbury, Bedford, and Talbot) fall. Each time their death is precipitated more and more directly by the shortcomings of the British. Each time the failure of the English in France and at home becomes more inescapable.

The parallels extend further, of course. To name just a few: we have the 3 British ideal knights. We have the 3 inappropriately ambitious dudes, Uncle Winchester, the Duke of Somerset and Plantagenant/York. We have three French females out to doom the English. The Countess of Auvergne, is bested by the virtuous and masculine Talbot and then treated with honor. Joan's demons abandon her, and York burns her at the stake. Then Margaret of Anjou rises out of Joan's ashes (in the very same scene, no less) and is taken on by the sleazeball Suffolk, who sets her on course to wreak le havoc francais on England and her males .

The French will never be the bold British ideal of chivalry, masculinity and respect for order (that degree thing again). But as the French become progressively more unified, the English foibles and dissention weaken the British camp. Thus we have in one scene the Duke of Burgundy coming over to unite the French, and Charles hearing that the Parisians are calling for him to be king. In the next, Henry is a weak nonentity being crowned in Paris. His coronation ceremony is rapidly followed by 1) the de-knighting of Sir John Fastolfe (he who runs away in battle) by Talbot 2) news of Burgundy's defection 3) the demand that the king allow the York/Somerset battle to fight itself out. Hey! Is that three things hammering home a theme (disunity/lack of order and degree) again? Anyone sensing a pattern?

So, while Henry VI, Part I doesn't exactly sparkle with brilliant lines and other signs of luminous genius, it does give some hint that Apprentice Will might someday blossom into The Bard. As for whether or not the casual twenty-first century playgoer should spend hard-earned lucre to see the Bard's maiden effort in drama, I would hesitatingly suggest the play doesn't really pass the test. If you are more than a casual student of plays, history or Shakespeare, then it offers quite a bit of interest. But as a stand alone production, Will's focus on the individual in history is of a bit less interest in a society such as ours that has so thoroughly absorbed this message that we take it for granted. Such is the fate of many great innovations - the electric typewriter, the audio cassette, and Max Headroom to name just a few. And while the play does have merit as a historical chronicle, Shakespeare distorts the accurate course of events tremendously in order to set up all his parallelism and other plot constructions that allow him to make his broader point. If one pays attention, one comes away from this 'history' believing in a great many factual errors.

So from that perspective I guess it's about the same as watching Fox News or CNN.

And with that parting cheap shot at an even cheaper Big Media (basis of economic valuation: they have a price; I don't), I bring my thoughts on Henry VI, Part I to a close. Hope everyone had a great summer! Time to get back to school, work and obsessively checking your humble servant's web log.

La la la la!

(Okay, maybe I could lose a little weight...)

Hiatus Interruptus

2004-08-04T06:34:00.000-04:00

Washington Monument. Courtesy of Rachel at photo.intensify.org

My goodness! Where has all the blogging gone? Mea culpa for such a long break in my entries. Events sort of got ahead of me. You see, this is the Spouse and my first summer as homeowners in Washington, DC. I realized DC was a popular summer destination with tourists; I just didn't realize that they'd all be staying at my house. And for some reason which escapes me in hindsight, I felt the need to try and redo our ancient, cabinet-free 1920s kitchen before everybody arrived. Sadly, writing, reading and blogging were forced down my list of priorities. Like somewhere well below lead-paint abatement, somewhat below sleeping and only slightly ahead of grooming (the Spouse says the smell is not too bad if the wind is blowing right).

Lest you think I exaggerate, allow me to enumerate for you my visits to the more popular cultural, historical, and altogether significant venues since I last wrote (or thereabouts) in this here excellent dumb bardblog:

World War II Memorial: Five times
Lincoln Memorial: Four times
Washington Memorial: Zero (they are renovating it so you can't get very close, and getting inside and up it is complicated)
Jefferson Memorial: Two times
FDR Memorial: Three times
Vietnam Memorial: Two times
Vietnam Women's Memorial: One time
Korean War Memorial: Three times
Educational IMAX films: Five times
The Smithsonian Natural History Museum: Five times
The Smithsonian American History Museum: Three times
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum: One time
The Smithsonian National Zoo: Three times
The National Archives: One time
The Smithsonian Hirshhorn Sculpture Gallery: Two times
The National Gallery of Art: One time
The International Spy Museum: One time
The Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Asian Art: Three times
The Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building: One time
The United States Holocaust Museum: One time
The Library of Congress (temporary exhibit on Winston Churchill): Two times
The Smithsonian American Indian Museum: Not open yet, but I have timed-entry tickets for myself and nine of my closest friends come September...
Total - 49!!! (This may possibly be over one visit for everyday so far of summer. I don't feel like doing the math at the moment, but please feel free to calculate on my behalf and let me know.)

Something happens to you when you visit that many memorials, museums and attractions that many times. You begin to see things differently. Things aren't distorted, exactly. More magnified. Or skewed. Or you begin to see things like Rachel, who took the photograph I include at the top of this entry. The above photo is the post-card representation of how I feel now walking amongst the tourist destinations of DC. They are big and grand. And I know their shades and contours by heart without feeling emotionally close to them, somehow.

I have developed my own little tour, replete with witticisms, sly allusions, broad humor and fascinating DC-insider anecdotes. Next year I might publish brochures, and loiter about Reagan National Airport's baggage claim to pick up fresh-looking, befuddled tourist families from the heartland. Probably one of my favorite stops this summer was with 3 of the Spouse's 7 year old cousins and their aunt (aka, my mother-in-law). I took them to the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden on the National Mall, and told them to find the sculpture that most reminded them (physically or spiritually) of my mother-in-law. The cousins ran themselves ragged while we sat on a bench in the central courtyard. I'm not sure what Rodin would have to say, but I found the whole thing pretty darned amusing. (see photos in "Is that You, Auntie?" below.) And by the end the kids were so tired they had almost no energy for a good hour and a half afterwards. This is the tour-guide's definition of "respite".

Anyway, I'm back. Refreshed, revitalized, and intimately familiar with the tourist destinations in Washington, DC. With a renewed appreciation for the free-entry to the Smithsonian venues. And ready to kick some Shakespearean butt!!!

I have one more essay to write about King Henry VI, Part I, and then it is on to Part II. Today, I leave for Detroit for visits with the same cousins and many more relatives of the Spouse. So this is not a sure end to the bardblog hiatus; it might just be a brief pause before the DC interruptions are replaced with Michigan ones. But you never know. I'll take the laptop and the Bard-tome with me, and we'll see what happens between all the carousing and cousins. Needless to say, I am scouring the web to find a sculpture garden in metro Detroit. Wish me luck!

Is that you, Auntie?

2004-08-04T06:16:00.000-04:00

This is Action in Chains: Monument to Louis-Auguste Blanqui, by Aristide Maillol, done in 1905 or so, found in the Hirshhorn Sculpture Gallery on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Thus, since it is Louise-August Blanqui, this is NOT my mother-in-law. But one of The Spouse's 7 year-old cousins thought the hair bore a passing resemblance. (See Hiatus Interruptus, for an explanation of why I asked The Spouse's 7-year old cousins to find a sculpture that looked like their aunt (my mother-in-law).) This is Nymph done in 1937, and also by Aristide Maillol. Again, this is NOT my mother-in-law. However, The Spouse's young cousins all thought it looked like her, for one reason or another. One said it was like her because the statue evoked peace, and he thinks my mother-in-law is peaceful. Another thought Nymph looked like my mother-in-law because "[My mother-in-law] holds her hands like that sometimes."

Nymph doesn't really remind me of The Spouse's mom, but I am beginning to think she might have been famed sculptor Aristide Maillol in a previous life.

The great thing about Henry VI, Part I

2004-07-09T05:36:00.000-04:00

Will have to wait!

Okay. I was going to write today about the brilliant thing in Henry VI, Part I. It was going to be incredibly insightful, and everyone who read it would say something along the lines of, "Wow! I never realized that!" I was planning on exploring the grand theme of unity and disunity, and maybe throw is a few mindblowing thoughts about leadership.

However, I am instead going to a viewing (or whatever the hoity-toity call it) at the National Gallery of Art. I've been invited to see a visiting exhibit about the Hudson River School, which is nice, only I plan to sneak out while everyone is studying the vastness of an Albert Bierstat landscape, or whatever, and go in search of my favorite painter, Eugene Delecroix, who is French and never went anywhere near the Hudson or even the United States as far as I know. The Spouse and I are taking this non-credit course at our alma mater called "The Romantic Age in Art, Literature and Music". The Hudson River School is generally considered part of the Romantic movement, if you like to categorize things, but for me this period is all about the Europeans, and Delecroix is my fave. I bet he could have licked all the Hudson River artists with both hands tied behind his back. I am particularly fond of his The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace. I know they have War here in DC at the National Gallery, but I think Peace is located elsewhere. Go ahead and insert your own joke.

After the Gallery gala, we're going to see a performance of Beethoven's 9th symphony at Wolftrap, the National Symphony Orchestra's summer home. Of course, Beethoven was a big inspiration to those artist like Chopin who would go on to be labeled "Romantics". So all in all, a very Romantic day, which of course is nothing like a romantic day. A Romantic day involves the tortured, dreamlike introspection of the creative soul. Sturm und Drang and all that. A romantic day involves introspective lazying about with breakfast in bed and soulful, moonlit drives up the coast. (Hello Spouse! Are you reading this?!?) If you don't know anything about the Romantics and are one of the few slubberdegullions left on this planet with an ounce of curiosity in you, here are a few links I dug up in under 50 seconds: An introduction to Romanticism from Brooklyn College is a pretty uninspiring overview, and Art History:Romanticism is so-so. The good old Wikipedia comes through with a pretty good bit on the music, though.

Anyway, if you like Wordsworth or Goethe or Impressionist painters, or Lord Byron, or Rousseau, or Victor Hugo, or Flaubert, or Chopin or Liszt or Bizet or Schumann or crazy kids like that, then you might really dig learning more about the Romantic Movement. If you don't like any of those things even a little bit, you are a Philistine, and should pay more attention to how much cool stuff there is out in the world, and how much of it you are missing while you pick lint from your belly button, waiting around for the day you die.

It is worth mentioning, given the gist of this here blog, that it was the "Romantic" artists who rediscovered Shakespeare. He had quite fallen out of fashion, when folks like Coleridge started championing him. If you hear about a performance of an opera based on a Shakespearean play, chances are a Romantic (or a later composer influenced by the Romantics) wrote it. I could tell you why the Romantic artists thought Shakespeare was positively the caterpillar's boots, but I'm saving that for a time when I can't thing of anything else to say about the Bard.

I could have, of course, written this entry earlier in the week, but I was busy doing things, many of which were only slightly more productive than picking link from my belly button. I visited with my mom who just had Tommy John reconstructive knee surgery. I made her lots of cookies and played with her giant black dog, Monk. Then I planned a week-long vacation for some friends, The Spouse, and me. This was an incredibly complicated procedure, although a pleasant one, due to a variety of competing desires, constraints and interests. That effort, as one of my friends put it, was "more like constructing a Logic Puzzle than an itinerary". Little do they know how much more complicated I plan on making it! My secret plan right now is to strap a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare to everyone's camping packs, and force them to read and analyze plays by the campfire every night. They will, of course, comply, as I intend to keep all the maps to myself. Through hiking is all about who controls the maps and the water, a fact I don't plan to forget... Naturally, only the friends who are loyal readers of this blog will know enough to check their pack for tomes before heading out, and thus receive a special dispensation, as well as 10 pounds less to trudge over hill and under dale.

But no, that little devious plan of mine is not all I accomplished whilst not writing this blog. I mustn't forget my recent epic painting sessions with the furniture we inherited from The Senator For Whom The Spouse Works. ("For whom doth The Spouse work? He works for Thee..." This has been a Public Service Annoucement brought to you by the United States Congress. God Bless.) My quest to make the wooden office furniture look like it was designed to live in a kitchen has only just begun. And I also whiled away the hours sanding the walls of the lead-paint-encrusted kitchen that will eventually receive the painted office furniture. Life is short, and we all need to seize the opportunity to inhale toxic chemicals while we can.

Also, it has been intolerably hot, in my opinion. Many people who, Godforbid, grew up in DC might disagree, because I suspect the heat will be getting Much Worse. However, The Cat confirms my assessment, insofar as he has begun laying NEXT TO his heating pad, instead of DIRECTLY ON it. This is a major concession from The Cat, aka the Perpetual Endothermic Machine. He deigns his heating pad unpleasantly warm, which means my brain is on fire and the only time I can think straight is in a tub full of cool water.

But The Spouse and I did manage to attend our Romantic Age class this week, even if I didn't manage to hammer out a respectable blog entry. One interesting item from our class: our professor is from Lorraine, in France, and she mentioned how silly it is that people come to Lorraine to see the place where Joan of Arc was burned. Why silly, you ask? Because she was never burned at all! She was a relation to the Dauphin, not a shepherd, and she survived the war and married some rich dude. Both Pucelle and hubby died pretty young of disease, with no surviving children, and are buried in the church in the town in which she was supposedly burnt. It seems everybody in the village knows this, but the burnt-up-martyr routine is good for business, so no one bothers fussing over historical accuracy. In the 19th century when the French and the Church* needed a heroine, someone tried to break up her gravestone so no one could read it, but you can still see "Joan 'La Pucelle'" if you look closely or make a careful rubbing. I have not, of course, been able to verify these facts, but can offer that our professor seems a trustworthy sort. If anyone would like to underwrite my trip to Alsace-Lorraine, I'd be happy to personally investigate further.

So Joan of Arc was not a martyr at all. I can almost hear you now: "Wow! I never realized that!"

*Note - The Church didn't canonize Joan for being burnt; It canonized her for coming to French nuns in visions during the 19th and/or 20th centuries and curing them of terrible diseases, like cancer and such, so It doesn't have to worry about the whole myth or martyr issue. The local tourism business however - that's another story.

How to Avoid Tedium

2004-06-29T18:04:00.000-04:00

Eschew Politics, the Affiliated Yahoos, and any associated Html Coding

Most informed people in the United States agree things could be going a whole lot better in Iraq. If you are not one of these people, you may want to lay off the Fox News Kool Aid, 'cause your brain is clearly being washed by Murdoch MindControl Inc.

In the 1400s, Merry Old England had not yet got around to peopling Australia with their criminal and multi-media megalomaniac elements, so there was no Fox News to make people think the Hundred Years' War was going well for Henry VI and company. And just in case folks did see some glimmer of good news in the offing, the trusty Duke of Exeter always seemed to show up just in time to share a gloomy little prophesy, sufficiently dashing hope once again. Some in my hometown of Washington, DC would probably view National Public Radio as the modern Exeter.

Given this train of thought in this intellectual train wreck of a town, it seemed natural to look for some Insightful Parallels between Henry VI, Part One, and The Current War in Iraq. Which just goes to show you that what seems natural isn't always a good idea. Like unprotected teenage sex or American "cheese". The former is natural and very rarely a good idea. The latter seems natural only to those who haven't thought about it, and is only a good idea on Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.

It's not that I haven't thought of a few amusing links between the two situations. It is just that I can't write them without being very political. And damnitall! I'm the last remaining non-political blog in DC! It is a point of pride for me, a badge of honor in a city that is generally pretty indifferent to honor, if not badges.

It isn't as if I couldn't be political if I wanted. But, you see, I'm an all-or-nothing sort of person, and if I went political, I'd have to go all the way. I'd have to write about the Politics of Shakespeare, and make sly allusions to Halliburton, Al Sharpton's hair and Senate Pages all the time. The very thought of it makes me incredibly weary, like a too-sleek sophisticate bored with gay Paree. I'd have to cultivate bon mots like Noel Coward and start drinking gin and tonics and champagne cocktails (possibly at the same time). My liver would suffer.

Plus, my personal politics are not particularly mainstream (insofar as they are not captured by the planks of either major party's political platform). This means all my regular readers would be replaced by insane yahoos who agreed or disagreed violently with me. They would leave long, tedious comments replete with spelling errors and naïveté. I probably couldn't tolerate the spelling errors, and would want to correct the more egregious ones. But that in turn would require a radical revamping of the comment system, which would in turn require many, many hours of studying html coding, which would be almost as tedious as the comments themselves.

And forget what they tell you about mean people. Tedium - now that sucks. What's more, I'm pretty sure tediousness is contagious. You can't just be tedious in one aspect of your life and expect it not to spread, weed-like, choking out the interesting bits of your personality. Take Ralph Nader. When he had that Unsafe at Any Speed thing going, he was not a 100% tedious individual. We were interested in him; perhaps even intrigued. But now, just look at him: a self-righteous megalomaniac with all the dynamism of a Soviet bean-counter.*

But enough about our great Green Party-reject presidential self-nominee. As I was saying, tediousness is the great infectious disease of the early twenty-first century. I just can't give in to it. If I do, next thing you know I'll be IRONING (gasp), the world's most tedious household act. I'll start off just pressing shirts, but slowly gravitate to underwear and sheets and The Spouse's prolific collection of hankies. Then it will get worse; my mind will rot and I'll start watching - worse, actually listening to - the talking head windbags on Sunday political gab shows. And my life will be composed purely of the boring and the pointless. The Spouse (who relies on me to keep the household lively) will forget what carefree joy is, and resort to reckless, daredevil driving in our MINI Cooper in an attempt to recapture any sense of exuberance. The Cat will be disappointed, and look at me accusingly from his perch on the heating pad.

Besides, what good can possibly come of pointing out similarities between the 1400s debacle in France and the US's current travails in Iraq? What good for me, that is. I am no Michael Moore; I am not full of that indignant, self-righteous sort of ardor that requires a noisy public outlet. More importantly, my blog entry won't rake in $21 million dollars in its opening weekend. My blog entries don't even get opening weekends. Maybe if I could create some red carpet buzz for each new essay, the Bardblog might become a wee bit more profitable. Frankly, my ping email feature isn't getting it done, from an income-generation point of view. And poverty is almost as tedious as ironing.

Shakespeare seemed to get by pretty well with his kiss-up-to-the-monarch routine. Maybe I should try a spot of mindless Bush Administration sycophancy in my blog, since I can't compete with Moore on self-promoting outrage. Then, if I can just get W's attention, I'll receive used manila envelopes full of unmarked $100 bills, dropped off by mysterious messengers.

Naturally these messengers will arrive in threes, and distract all onlookers from our little exchange with proclamations containing really bad news, thus generating an insightful parallel between Henry VI, Part I and the current war in Iraq without any sort of creative intervention from me. I can almost hear them now: "Vice President Cheney called Senator Leahy a 'Base Walloon' on the floor of the Senate!" "Karl Rove's fiends aren't talking to him any more, and he's afraid the quality of his political advice is starting to suffer." "Dude, were we looking for some guy named Bin Laden? Cause if we're not looking for him anymore, I guess you don't need me coming to tell you we still haven't found him".

Yeah. I could be a sycophant. I hear there's nothing like a little dirty money to take the tedium out of ass-kissing. I could tell you who told me that, but then I would be getting political.

*(Note the subtle political balance I strike in my blog, making fun of a megalomaniac from the right AND the left in the same entry. What objectivity! I bet I could singlehandedly write those 'Point and Counterpoint' opinion pieces. Just like they do it in The Washington Times.)

Care to Juggle?

2004-06-17T05:33:00.000-04:00

~or~
Henry VI, Part I, part four

Living in the swirl of power and incompetence that is Washington, DC gearing up for a Presidential Election, it is understandable that I fixated on the following thought while reviewing the last two acts of King Henry VI, Part I:

We need Better-than-mediocre People doing Important Jobs.
(And it would be great if we had NO Worse-than-corrupt-and-incompetent Buffoons doing Anything. But let's not get carried away, dreaming big dreams.)

Why doesn't this happen more often? My days as a Management Consultant taught me few things, but one was this: Need Exceptional People? Give them perks, pay, and prestige. In a word: incentives. Now, even having brought you through only the first three acts of Henry VI, part I, it should be clear that 1400s England may not have had the Greatest of the Great staffing the national interest's most important executive functions. Bickering, scheming and manipulation abound, as you might have noticed. For every great badass knight/general and well-intended counselor, there are many self-serving fools, cowards and, yes, evil-doers. Not to mention the king himself, who is only a lad and can't really be expected to preside with much wisdom, given he's still working on mastering his multiplication tables.

HOWEVER, this is not to say some mighty fine incentives didn't exist to attract people to public service. English politicians enjoyed SOME great perks back in The Day; and I believe if these perks still existed, it would create a much larger incentive to dedicate one's life to public service and the great weal. One of these perks is enjoyed in Act IV, scene i of King Henry VI, Part I. During a pow-wow with the King in Paris right after the incredibly anti-climactic coronation, Sir John Fastolfe arrives to inform everyone of Burgundy's defection. Naturally everybody is chagrined. However, Lord Talbot, who has been twice abandoned in battle by the cowardly Fastolfe, is not distracted enough to forget about revenge. And so, begging the indulgence of the court, Talbot reaches over and plucks Sir John's garter from his leg. De-knighting him. Given the code of chivalry, I suppose this is a sort of a paradoxical cross between castration and de-flowering. Fastolfe is then exiled by the king and retires the only way he knows how - in shame.

Now that's a great perk. If I could have done the modern equivalent of plucking a lousy knight's garter off every time a boss, co-worker, or client proved their dishonorableness, unworthiness or just assholic-ness, my career would have gained a whole new level of satisfaction. I would have slept much sounder at night. Obviously, practical challenges existed. For example, people don't really wear garters any more. At least, none that co-workers know about in an ideal skank-free world. But I'm sure we could come up with something. Cutting a male's tie off, for example. This doesn't address the women or business casual wearers, but it's a start. Smashing their Palm Pilots to a million bits with a tiny hammer is another option. And as long as things ended in exile (at my old company, this would have meant being sent to the Providence, RI office), you could consider me incentivized. (Ugh. I just wrote 'incentivized' - We had to make up and use lots of stupid works like that as management consultants.) But the garter thing - there's a real opportunity for pure, visceral satisfaction that Human Resources departments should look into. The ultimate non-financial reward for much-tried employees.

Sadly, I never got to pluck garter, cut tie, or smash PDA while suffering in Corporate America. Ah well. What's past is past. No need for the hair of the dog that bit me when the hangover has already gone away. I'm much happier now making nothing and doing something I love instead of making the vaunted six-figure salary everybody gets so worked up about and doing something that constantly made me want to take a shower. Worrying about the mortgage is a small price to pay, especially when that price compounds at record-low interest rates.

After the inspirational garter-plucking incident, scene i of Act IV wraps up with Henry sending Talbot to win back Burgundy or punish him appropriately. Then a Toady of York and a Toady of Somerset ask Henry for permission to beat each other to a pulp (re: plot #4, The War of the Roses). Henry rattles off another "why can't we all just get along" speech, forbidding them to fight. The king says it makes no difference which rose anyone wears, they should love both aristocrats equally. As a demonstration, Henry picks a red rose and puts it on, while expressing devotion to both Somerset and York. This upsets York, the White Rose guy, a bit. Finally, Great-Uncle Exeter dooms, glooms and prophesizes us out of the scene.

In scene ii, we have Talbot at Bordeaux, demanding the French open the city gates. Unsurprisingly, they opt to keep the gates shut. In fact, the French general goes so far as to call Talbot "a fearful owl of death," which, to my mind, is a pretty lame insult. It is, for example, preferable to being called "a tedious duck of futility," or "a noxious sparrow of venereal disease," in my opinion. Guess that's the twenty-first century for you. Owls of death just don't hold much potency anymore.

The general makes up for his less-than-Shakespeare-worthy insult by letting Talbot know he is surrounded in one big way. The Dauphin is moving in behind him with all the rest of the French troops. Talbot realizes he is very, very, VERY outnumbered. He manages to give a brief, blustering speech of the inspirational variety. However he is clearly inspiring his troops to die with him, not to eek out an improbable victory with him. Uh-oh.

In scene iii, we find York in charge of forces in Gascony. There he learns of Talbot's troubles through his scouts. However he can't rush to Talbot's rescue because that red-rose-wearing weasel, Somerset, hasn't delivered York's requisite horsemen yet.

York and we also learn, (tug at the old heart strings) that Talbot's young son John is arriving at Talbot's army shortly, marching straight into the slaughter. The father and son haven't seen each other in 7 years. To his credit (I suppose} York is very upset about all this, and curses Somerset thoroughly. To the modern audience who has seen one-too-many cheesy formulaic action movie, all this is the clear signal that the English are going to lose the battle at Bordeaux, and both Talbot and son and going to take a dirt nap.

Therefore, most of scene iv is not particularly necessary these days, except to confirm what a dickweed Somerset is. (I know that phrase is crude, but this weasel definitely earns it.) Talbot has sent a man, Sir William Lucy, to seek aid from Somerset's forces in another part of Gascony. Somerset tells Talbot's man that he can't send anything. He mentions that the Talbot/York plan was "too rashly plotted," and there is no point in sending his troops. Lucy mentions that Talbot REALLY needs Somerset to dispatch his horsemen. Somerset says he'll get around to it in six hours, and vaguely calls York a liar. Lucy suggests that horses arriving in six hours will be too late. Their final exchange is a good summing up of Talbot and Somerset's characters:

Lucy: Too late comes rescue; he is ta'en or slain:
For fly he could not, if he would have fled;
And fly would Talbot never, though he might.

Somerset: If he be dead, brave Talbot, then, adieu!

Lucy: His fame lives in the world, his shame in you.

Me: Take that rhyme, you callous cad!

Scene v and vi concern the touching reunion and mutual slaughter of Talbot and his son, young John Talbot. John arrives just in time for the massacre. Before the fight begins, Old and Young Talbot have an Honor Duel, where they try to out Chivalrous each other. Talbot tells him to escape, so that the name of Talbot might be revived. Only son, I take it. (Cue violins.) John replies that leaving would dishonor same name ("The world will say, he is not Talbot's blood/That basely fled when noble Talbot stood"). They argue about it a while, all in rhyme, which to me dilutes some of the drama and tragedy of the thing. Finally, John sways Talbot. Talbot observes:

Then here I take my leave of thee, fair son,
Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon.
Come, side by side together live and die;
And soul with soul from France to heaven fly.

Again, I'm touched, but the rhyming (which I realize was a required part of plays of the day) ruins the sentiment to these twenty-first century ears.

The rhyming continues in scene vi, as Talbot save John's life in battle. John rhymes in gratitude. Talbot tries to get John to leave again. No dice. They decide to fight side by side, and... die in pride. (I hope this whole rhyming thing isn't contagious. The Spouse might find it quite outrageous.)

In scene vii, Talbot, wounded, reflects on how proud he is of his son. Naturally, his son is killed immediately. Talbot says nice words, and dies too. And a Talbot lived to rhyme a rhyme no more. This is ill shit indeed, when your country's only badass knight/general dies rhyming, and the Dukes are too busy sniveling at each other to send reinforcements.

And so the French win the battle, and tumble upon the bodies of the Talbot clan. Bastard wants to hack them up, but the Dauphin prevents him. Maybe that's why they call him Bastard.

Talbot's aide Lucy arrive to collect bodies and prisoners from the French. Worried as to the fate of his boss, he talks for a really long time about Talbot's names and accolades. La Pucelle is a bit less than lady-like about the whole thing, I'm afraid. This is how she interrupts Lucy to tell him that Talbot is dead:

The Turk, that two-and-fifty kingdoms hath,
Writes not so tedious a style as this. -
Him that thou magnifies with all these titles,
Stinking and fly-blown, lies here at our feet.

Classy. Very classy.

Thus ends Act IV.

Act V is the final act. Hooray! But since it is only the first of three plays in a cycle, Will feels at liberty to throw in a few more plots and whatnot at the end. Scene i finds us back in London, where Gloster tells Henry of a proposal from the French Earl of Armagnac. The Earl, who is a close relation of Charles, offers his daughter in matrimony to Henry, with a large dowry. Henry thinks he is too young to marry, and would rather study, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. He agrees to close his eyes and think of England.

Uncle Winchester appears, promoted to Cardinal, to make sure his plot (#2, Gloster versus Winchester) gets its fair share of stage time this act. Exeter serves his usual dismal function, telling the audience of Henry V's prophesy, "If once he comes to be a cardinal/ He'll make his cap co-equal with the crown".

Henry sends Winchester to France, with a peace treaty for Charles and a big honkin' jewel for the future Mrs. VI. After the king and Gloster leave, Winchester has another evil aside with the audience. He tells the Ambassador to wait a moment while he gets the gold he promised the Pope for making him a Cardinal. Then he says,

Now Winchester will not submit, I trow,
Or be inferior to the proudest peer.
Humphrey of Gloster, thou shalt well perceive
That neither in birth or from authority
The bishop will be overborne by thee:
I'll either make thee stoop and bend thy knee,
Or sack this country with a mutiny.

Man. Another downer. With all these horrendous oracles and divisive backstabs cropping up, it's a miracle England managed to survive this period at all. You practically expect it to sink into the sea, drowned under the weight of the tons of bad karma.

Meanwhile, on another good note for the British, in scene ii Paris is revolting, and calling for the Dauphin. However, the divided English army is now united too late to save the family Talbot, but coming to battle Charles' forces.

Joan of Arc appears in scene iii and calls forth her fiends from hell to give her signs about the future. They show up and are silent. She offers blood sacrifices, her body and soul, but still they seem uninterested in helping her anymore. Joan assumes this is bad news for France, not just her:

See! They forsake me. Now the time is come
That France must vail her lofty-plumed crest
And let her head fall into England's lap.
My ancient incantations are too weak,
And hell too strong for me to buckle with:
Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust.

This seems like a rather egotistical interpretation. But then again, Will isn't writing this thing to sell "I LUV LA PUCELLE" T-shirts.

York captures Joan in the battle and the French run away as quickly as possible. She curses him and everybody else, including Charles. Frankly, she seems quite pissed about being captured, and not in the least saint, virgin or maid-like.

Just as we are settling in to resolve at least a few of the plots (the peace treaty has been sent to Charles, Joan and Talbot's sparring is at an end), Suffolk, an Earl who has existed to this point for no particular reason whatsoever, (banal rhyming back-chat and the like), enters, leading a hostage, one Lady Margaret, daughter of Reignier (the King of Naples and member of Charles's entourage). During some clever repartee, Suffolk falls madly in love with Margaret, remembering too late that he is already married. Troubled by this inconvenience, he decides to win her for Henry instead, whom he assumes, being a young 'un, can be easily manipulated. The only problem is that Reignier is poor, so kiss the big dowry to replenish the old English war chest good-bye. Suffolk is nice enough to check how Margaret feels about the whole arrangement. Happily for him and Plot # 5, Suffolk and Margaret, Margaret is cool with the deal, as long as Daddy is, too. So off to see Daddy!

The apple-of-Suffolk's eye doesn't fall far from l'arbre. Daddy is cool with it, too, although he is acting under the impression that Henry already a) knows about and b)desires his precious pumpkin (pardon the mixed fruit salad of a metaphor). Margaret seems to be of the puritanical school; when asked by Suffolk if she has a token to send to his majesty, she offers "a pure unspotted heart, never yet taint with love". Oh - I hope it doesn't clash with the royal robes.

Then Suffolk sneaks a kiss from her. Margaret responds: "That for thyself - I will not so presume to send such peevish tokens to a king."

Ahh, flirtations. This bodes well for the royal-couple-to-be. But don't worry. I'm sure the young kids are gonna be just fine, with a long happy marriage in front of them. What else could the next two plays possibly be about?

Scene iv is a more good clean fun, if you don't mind a little witch burning. York and co. are in Anjou, proceeding with the Joan condemnation. A shepherd appears, claiming Joan is his daughter and swearing he'll die with her; he's been looking for her for a while, and is beside himself to find her like this.

Could Shakespeare be stirring pangs of sympathy for Joan in his audience at last? Nah - Joan denies the shepherd is her father, claiming she came from noble parentage, and calls her dad a peasant. Dad offers her a blessing before her death, but she won't kneel down to receive it. Dad is incredibly ticked off, and suggests that they burn her, as hanging is too good. Exit Shepherd, and the last shred of hope for some love for Joan.

York is eager to get on with the witch burning. The English are about to light Joan's fire, but first,...
1) Joan insists she's been guided by Christ, not the devil, and as an immaculate virgin warns she'll "cry for vengeance at the gates of heaven"
Warwick: Well, since she's a maid, add more faggots to the fire to shorten the torture.

2)Has Joan mentioned she's pregnant? They wouldn't kill an innocent child-to-be, now would they?
York: "She and the Dauphin have been juggling...."
(I include this line verbatim only because it is my new favorite euphemism for sexual intercourse, and I wanted to share it with everyone.)
Warwick: We don't need any bastards, anyway, especially the Dauphin's. Burn her!

3) No, no. Not by Charles, but by Alencon!
York: "That notorious machiavel!" (Aka: no dice. Burn her.)

4) Did Joan say Alencon? She meant Reignier, King of Naples.
Warwick/York: A married man! You should be ashamed of yourself. This lady sure sleeps around, especially for a virgin. Strumpet, with or without child, to the fires with you.

5)Fine. But Joan is SO cursing ALL of you!
York: WHATEVER!

Well then, I guess you know what happens next.

Do I even need to tell you?

That's right.

French Toast.

(Sorry; that line is for The Spouse; The Spouse loves puns).

After the Feu d'Arc, the un-burnt French contingent arrives at York's camp to listen to the peace deal Henry has sent through Winchester. The offer is that the English will stop fighting if Charles swears to submit to him and pay tribute. Then Henry will make Charles a viceroy under the English crown, to enjoy 'regal dignity'.

Since the French control half of France, this is insulting, and Charles says so. Reignier (aka, Margaret's dad) tells him the opportunity for peace may not come again soon, and Alencon points out the deal will at least save the French subjects from being pillaged, massacred and the like, until it is convenient to attack Henry again. Thus fortified, Charles agrees to the deal.

Wrapping it all up in London in scene v, Suffolk has successfully hissed into the young ear of the king, and convinced him that Margaret is The One. Gloster is not happy, since word has already been sent that Henry accepted a previous offer. Gloster and Suffolk argue. Henry says to fetch Margaret and stop the quibbling. Everybody leaves the stage in a huff but Suffolk, who gets the last word:

Thus Suffolk hath prevail'd; and thus he goes;
...[to get Margaret]...
Margaret shall now be queen, and rule the king;
But I will rule both her, the king, and realm.

And it's Suffolk out of nowhere, from way back in the pack! He moves ahead of Somerset, passing the ashes of La Pucelle on the rails! He's neck and neck with Uncle Winchester down the stretch! Oh! And Suffolk is pulling away! It's Suffolk by a nose at the finish line! Suffolk wins, and it looks like we have a new bad guy to crown in this play!!!

And so ends King Henry VI, Part I. Nothing is resolved, and it all looks to be a doomed, miserable ride to the finish of Part III, with no joy, much evil and few surprises.

Living in the swirl of power and incompetence that is Washington, DC gearing up for a Presidential Election, it is understandable that I fixated on the following thought while reviewing the last two acts of King Henry VI, Part I: Competent villains are never in short supply.

Done like a Frenchman

2004-06-04T08:13:00.000-04:00

~or~
Henry VI Part One, part three

Before I begin, I would like to encourage all my regular reader(s) to sign up for my email services discussed in my previous entry on June 1rst, Are you an Over-Eager Bardblog Reader?. If you sign up, you will receive a brief, small email letting you know there is a new post to read at An Excellent Dumb Discourse. Just send me an email at Bardblog@writeme.com, with the subject "Ping Me!" Include your day and month of birth if you'd like to receive an e-card from the Bardblogger on your birthday.

And now Back to Business with Hank and the gang. Scene i of Act III finds us deep within Plot #2, Gloster versus Winchester, with Henry's Uncle Lord Protector vying with his Great-Uncle Bishop for sway over the young King. Everybody is meeting in Parliament, including King Henry VI. It is unclear how much time has passed since Act II, but at most it should be a year based on context clues. Thus, by rights, Henry should be two years old, max, but he isn't. Unless you know any two year olds who might declaim:

Uncles of Gloster and of Winchester,
The special watchmen of our English weal,
I would prevail, if prayers might prevail,
To join your hearts in love and amity.
O, what a scandal is it to our crown
That two such noble peers as ye should jar!
Believe me, lords, my tender years can tell
Civil dissension is a viperous worm
That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth

Yeah. I don't know any, either. I can't tell how old Henry is supposed to be, but I suppose the statist parasitic potty reference (viperous worm? Yuck!), could indicate an early adolescent.

Anyway, about three things happen in this scene: 1. Gloster and Winchester call each other a lot of names, and I mean A LOT of names. 2. King Henry VI demonstrates a lack of control over things, pleading with everybody to just get along, and getting very little respect for his troubles. 3. Richard Plantagenet is restored to his 'blood', i.e., the House of York, and his inheritance, i.e., the moolah and estates. Plantagenet vows obedience and humble service till the point of death to Henry VI. The good news is, this means Richard is now a Duke (the mighty Duke of York, in fact), so he can fit in with everybody else who is also a Duke. If he was an Uncle to the king he'd be practically indistinguishable from the rest of the English cast. (Don't worry, he and Henry ARE related distantly.) The bad news is Somerset (of Plot #4, The War of the Roses), is having none of it, so the civil war is still on track to explode at some point.

Naturally, you will be most eager for details about event #1, the name calling. In true Shakespearean style, they let some good ones fly. First Winchester starts things off by tearing to pieces a bill Gloster is trying to offer up, a move I am pretty sure is not in compliance with Robert's Rules. Then the really mature stuff begins. To whit, Gloster calls Winchester, in rapid succession, a:

Presumptuous priest,
Pernicious usurer,
Froward by nature,
Enemy to peace,
Bastard of my grandfather,
Saucy priest,
Lascivious, wanton, and audaciously wicked [guy],
[who is behind] lewd, pestiferous, and dissentious pranks.

(And no, he doesn't mean any of that in a nice way.)

Winchester gets few words in edge-wise, and has to be satisfied with accusing Gloster of being "imperious in another's throne" and "unreverent". The two are just getting going when that stick in the mud baby Henry tells them to kiss and make up, which they do, although Winchester makes it clear that he's just biding his time in one of his secret asides to the audience in front of all the other actors that he seems to specialize in.

Then everybody leaves, ensconced in barely hidden mutual distrust and ill-will, for France to crown Henry king in Paris and thus inspire French people to love him as much as they do. So ends the least productive session of Parliament ever.

Scene ii takes us to Rouen, where the British are again holed up in the city and the French are outside trying to figure out how to kick the British out. Sort of EXACTLY like the entire Orleans situation in Acts I and II. In fact, all the action around Rouen is pretty much the same as Orleans, so if the sets aren't well differentiated, you might watch this scene at a theater convinced the players had decided re-do the Orleans battle just for kicks. Rest assured, Rouen and Orleans are totally different places, despite the identical action. I looked at a map and everything.

Here are a few easy ways to distinguish the two places, courtesy of the Bardblogger. Rouen is in Normandy (cold) and famous for its 100+ steeples. Orleans is in the Loire Valley (warm) and famous for being near lots of castles (and for being near the birthplace of La Pucelle, but let's not get tautological here). So you see they are COMPLETELY different places. Don't let Shakespeare fool you.*

Anyway, Joan pulls a peasants-come-to-market-cum-Trojan-Horse stunt, and the French take Rouen. During the battle, Sir John Fastolfe, England's weenie knight/general we heard of turning tail at Orleans in Act I, turns tail again, and Uncle Bedford is killed, which should make me sad, but instead makes me relieved to have one less crusty old Uncle/Duke to keep track of. Naturally, Lord Talbot is thoroughly pissed off, and pledges everybody's honor to taking back Rouen and avenging Uncle Bedford, just like he did with Salisbury at Orleans. And, like Salisbury, Bedford takes about 3 speeches and a filibuster before he finally breathes his last.

Naturally, Joan and Talbot parley a bit, and then Talbot and the English (and Burgundy) retake Rouen. Just like Orleans, only this time he manages it all in one scene. Talbot then leaves Burgundy to hold down the fortified city while England's #1 badass knight/general departs to meet King Henry VI (remember him?) in Paris.

Scene iii: Bad move, Talbot. Joan reassures everybody that the rapid victory-turned-loss in Rouen is just all part of her/God's brilliant strategy. As soon as Talbot has decamped to Paris, Joan sidles up to the walls of Rouen and exerts her saintly and/or witchy wiles (Query: Are Saints allowed to have wiles? Must ask JPII next time I drop by the Vatican) and wins over Burgundy. In one of my favorite lines of the play, Burgundy agrees to abandon Lord Talbot and join the cause of Charles the Dauphin. Happy, Joan exclaims:

Done like a Frenchman, - turn, and turn again!

I'm not sure which is sillier, the fact that Will has Joan of Arc, arguably one of the first French Proto-Nationalists, saying this, or the obviousness with which Will is pandering to audience sentiment.

Either way, what a missed opportunity! If only I had known about this line back in the heyday of "Freedom Fries" and "Liberty Roast" java! The Spouse works in the U.S. Senate; I could have bribed my jolly mate to eat in the Senate dining room, and demand a steak prepared "Done like a Frenchman!" in as loud a voice as possible, just to see what would happen. And if the wait staff asked what that meant, we could have just explained we wanted the steak very rare, just seared quickly on one side, then on the other (Thus "turn, and turn again!").

This is the sort of nonsense that could have gotten The Spouse another mention in Roll Call (that's the official newspaper of Congress, sort of like a college paper with marginally better grammar and fewer editorials on legalizing marijuana). Who knows, given the bizzaro, creepy political climate at that time (as opposed to now, when the political climate is equally bizzaro and creepy, just in a different way), the phrase might have caught on! Years later when someone scratched their head and asked why on earth we say "like a Frenchman" when we want a steak very rare, reasonable people would have speculated it was a variation on the term "bleu". How wrong they would have been. Ah well. Yet another chance gone to assure my place in surreal etymological history.

Right. Anyway, in the end (of scene iii at least), Joan is right: the Dauphin wins both Rouen and the Burgundian forces at the end of the day. All the French people are very excited and start talking about how much they'll homage Joan just as soon as she is dead.

Scene iv is a much ado about you know what. Talbot meets Henry VI in Paris and they each pat each other on the back. The scene and Act ends with a nod to Plot #4, as a Somerset supporter and a York (formerly known as Plantagenet) supporter mix it up and vow to take their spat to the king.

Well, that wraps up Act III. Not exactly the most scintillating, I realize. Unlike my next meal at the U.S. Senate...

*With a nod to historical accuracy, Will had to include the two separate locations of Orleans and Rouen, so it's not fair to tease him on this point.

Are you an Over-Eager Bardblog Reader?

2004-06-01T19:11:00.000-04:00

(Go ahead. Say it 10 times fast.)

If you'd like to be informed every time I post a new essay on An Excellent Dumb Discourse, just send an email to:

Bardblog@writeme.com

Please write "Ping me!" in your subject line.

Naturally, I will under no circumstance sell, rent, share, or otherwise divulge your email address to any outside party.
(I may, however, send you a Shakespearean Happy Birthday card if you tell me your day and month of birth...)

Days of (a fine Burgundy) Wine and Roses

2004-05-27T06:51:00.000-04:00

~or~
King Henry VI, Part I, part two.

Here we are again, surrounded on all sides by King Henry VI, Part I. In case you missed last week's exciting installment, we've journeyed through Act I, uncovering two plots thus far: Plot #1: England versus France, played out through the Hundred Years War, and Plot #2: Gloster versus Winchester, a battle for influence over the young King Henry VI between the wary, pro-war, blue-coated Lord Protector Uncle and the scheming, anti-war, tawny-coated Cardinal Great-Uncle, respectively. In addition, we unearthed Sub-plot A to Plot #1:Talbot versus La Pucelle, Lord Talbot being the epitome of the chivalrous, knightly British ideal, and La Pucelle being Joan of Arc, Savior and Martyr of France if you believe the history books, which Shakespeare clearly doesn't, preferring instead to play up Joan's witchy side for his partisan audience.

Now that everyone is all caught up, we can forge ahead through Act II. It seems silly to spend so much time wading through each act in this play, which is itself only one third of the Henry VI trilogy. However, with so many plots and sub-plots floating around (with new ones surfacing as late as Act V), it is hard to rush through anything.

Act II finds us in Orleans, again. Talbot and the British have just been driven out of the city by Joan, Charles the French Dauphin, and the rest of the French camp. Talbot is joined by the Duke of Burgundy. Students of French geography and/or wine will know that Burgundy is a region of France, and therefore may be surprised that its Duke is paling around with the English. Burgundy is part of the dwindling French contingent who recognize the legitimacy of Henry V's claim to the French throne, either due to his respect for the rule of international law, or in anticipation of future considerations from England, or for some other reason (see my entry of a few weeks ago for more details on the history behind the play).

Regardless of the reasons, Burgundy is there with Talbot, and they storm Orleans' walls under cover of darkness. The French contingent is taken very much unawares, to whit Shakespeare has the leaders appear - as I interpret the stage direction - in their pyjammies. Charles is angry that Joan didn't foresee this whole counterattack development; is she a prophet or not? Joan vaguely mentions something about not wearing her God-antennae when she is sleeping, and quickly deflects the criticism to the French nobles (Alencon, Reigner, and Bastard, our buddies from Act I), who were in charge of the defenses. As the curtain falls on Act II, scene i, the French flee Orleans sporting only their nightwear, a scene which surely played well with patriotic English audiences in Shakespeare's day, and no doubt continues to do so with lascivious audiences in our day, assuming Joan's legs are anything to look at.

Scenes ii and iii are totally pointless, as far as I can tell. Maybe it will all come together for me in Act IV, scene iii of Henry VI part III, but I'm not holding my breath. Welcome to (Side)-Plot #3: The Countess and the Knight. Basically all that happens is this: Talbot and company are standing around Orleans, beating their breastplates and boasting about re-taking the city and chasing the French away in their skivvies. Suddenly, a messenger appears for Talbot with an invitation from the Countess of Auvergne; she'd like to personally entertain England's one and only badass knight chez elle. Naturally, Talbot is suspicious, because everybody knows messengers are only heralds of trouble in this play. Talbot whispers something to his captain (Gee! What on earth could they be up to!?) before consenting to visit the Countess.

In scene iii, the Countess predictably tries to imprison Talbot and become a French hero. At first, she is very disappointed that Talbot doesn't look studlier, but decides to take him prisoner anyway. Talbot laughs and informs her that she only has part of him; he left the studly part outside. The lady is perplexed, unlike the modern audience, who has seen this sort of thing in a million buddy action movies. Talbot signals, and his trusty captain and soldiers come storming in the gates. Talbot says something nice and metaphysical about the troops being the physical representation of his spiritual studliness. For some reason that doesn't really come across just reading the text, the Countess is swept off her feet by Talbot's words and mean-looking troops. The entire thing denigrates into a cheesy love song from the 1980s. The imprisoner swiftly becomes the imprisoned, as Talbot has stolen the Countess's heart. Talbot, being the Shakespearean personification of perfect, is magnanimous about the entrapment. The Countess promptly opens up her whole castle to the English for carousing, feasting and who knows what else. Thus ends senseless (Side)-Plot #3.

In scene iv, however, we come to the big enchilada, plot-wise. Oddly, the whole thing has nothing to do with the Hundred Years War, The Gloster-Winchester competition, or even Henry VI, at first glance. Back in London in a garden outside Parliament, Richard Plantagenet, the Earl of Somerset and a swirl of less significant characters (including, most importantly, the Earl of Suffolk), seem to be debating some legal matter. But it is no esoteric dispute. (Speaking of Plantagenet, by the way, Burgundy isn't the only guy with his own wine to hawk in this play. I hear Plantagenet Wines are some of Western Australia's finest. Why not get into the spirit of this blog and try some today? I know I'm going to. Perhaps it will help to drown out the more tedious bits of parsing this trilogy and the related Shakespearean histories to come. I suppose we could also count Charles the Dauphin as related to La Dauphin Château Guiraud, which sounds a lot like a wine to me. That brings us to three wines. With a little more research, I might be able to fill and entire wine cellar with Shakespearean references. Hey - maybe I could invent a really great Shakespearean drinking game while I'm reading this stuff! Maybe my game would be really fun, and not involve chugging nasty cheap beer or suspicious shots of tequila! Maybe my game would catch on like wildfire, and replace Asshole as the most popular alcoholic pastime amongst Humanities students! Maybe I'd become a legend at brainy fraternities and sororities everywhere! And then I could die happy...

Oh well. No use dreaming crazy dreams. Better get down to earth and back to Shakespeare....)

Anyway, these guys in the garden are arguing about Plantagenet's father, who, it seems, was stripped of his title at some point, and hanged for treason. With his father dead, Plantagenet seeks to restore his family to their title and estates. He claims the treason charge was unjust. Somerset tells him 'no way, you're nothing but a yeoman!' (Or words to that effect.) Ouch!

None of the other characters seem interested in weighing in verbally on the matter, so in order to settle the dispute, Richard plucks a white rose from a nearby shrub, and asks all who agree with his position to do the same. Somerset in turn plucks a red rose from a different shrub, and makes the same appeal. One of the onlookers makes them promise to be satisfied with the outcome of the floral ballot, and everybody picks a rose.

The results are straightforward - no recounts, no hanging chads, and no accidental elderly Jewish votes for Patrick Buchanan. Just a blowout for Plantagenet. Somerset is incensed, and vows to spill the blood of the Plantagenet supporters on their white roses to turn them red. So much for that abiding by the vote idea. Respecting the expressed will of the people would have to wait a few more years, it seems. Harsh words are exchanged, and each side vows to keep wearing their roses until they prevail. Thus, tucked away in scene iv of Act II, is Plot #4: The War of the Roses.

Scene v just gives the back history for the War of the Roses. Old Edmund Mortimer, Richard Plantagenet's uncle, lies dying in the Tower of London. Richard has stopped by at Mortimer's request, to hear the history of his family for the benefit of the audience. Suffice it to say that the Plantagenets, aka the House of York, really were next in line for the throne. King Henry IV, of the House of Lancaster (the same House as Somerset, in a stunning coincidence), usurped the lot of them, and rekindled the war with France (remember Plot #1?) in part to distract everybody from the usurping. It worked. IV discredited and killed Richard's dad, and imprisoned Richard's uncle in The Tower. After delivering the genealogy report, Mortimer warns Richard to be careful; those Lancastrians are a "strong-fixed" lot, and "not to be remov'd". Then Mortimer, having provided the necessary exposition, dies, and Richard vows to go to Parliament and get his father's honor and his House restored. At this point, Richard is not clearly set on usurping the throne back, by the way, just getting his family's titles and estates back. And so ends Act II.

I would point out that we still have not encountered any sort of King Henry VI yet, for whom rumor has it the play is named. Oh well. Since in real life VI was about one year old at this stage, I guess I really can't blame him for a little stage-fright. Plus, who would want to show up in a play, even an eponymous one, with all these yahoos and knights and blossom-wearing blowhards bustling about?

Or maybe Henry is just too busy somewhere else, trying to invent the world's greatest drinking game. Beer Pong anyone?

United We Stand. Divided We Make an Ass of Ourselves

2004-05-21T07:57:00.000-04:00

~or
Henry VI, Part I, part one

Well, here we are at the beginning of Henry VI, Part I again. Now that we are clear on our history (see last week's entry), I'll lay out the action for you. Only, due to finger-muscle constraints, I'm only going to sketch out the action for Act I. Since there is no real pretense of this being a stand-alone sort of work, an estimated 59,430 plots and subplots are provided for the audience in this play, to be resolved in subsequent Henry VIs. If we can get through Act I, we will meet 2 of the 3 major plots for this play, as well as one of the major sub-plots. It will help if you take notes with color-coded pens, by the way, to keep everything straight. I recommend red, blue and black, but crayons will work too. Oh, and a ruler might be useful.

Materials in hand? Okay, here we go.

The story, Act I, scene i:
At the opening of the first scene, we see a bunch of men in fancy clothes standing around a coffin. That's no ordinary coffin, though. We've secretly replaced today's corpse with Henry V, who is (conveniently) dead. Let's see the mourners reactions!

Everybody agrees that Henry V was a great king. In fact, they agree that he was the greatest of all kings, guided by the King of Kings, yadda yadda. This is worth noting, since it is the only thing everybody can agree on in the entire play. There can be no doubt of V's popularity, since the corpse is attended by one heck of a lot of Dukes, all of whom seem to be related to each other, Henry V and, of course, Henry VI, in one way or another. (Basically, every Englishman in the play is a Duke unless another title is given. Since this play is supposed to be about King Henry VI and almost everybody is related to him, I'll refer to people as Uncle, Great-Uncle, etc., instead of all as Dukes, which is just confusing.)

The next thing we learn is that two of these relatives, Uncle Gloster and Great-Uncle Winchester, hate each other. Gloster distrusts the church (Winchester is a cardinal), and thinks Win is only interested in Henry VI because he is so young and can be led on. Win is jealous of Gloster's title of Lord Protector, which makes Gloster the effective monarch until Henry VI comes of age.

No sooner is this bit of dissension is revealed, (in front of dead Henry and all- illustrating a sad lack of respect for corpses in this play), than Messenger 1 comes trotting into the funeral. He's just dropping by to let everyone knows they've just lost Guienne, Champaigne, Rheims, Orleans, Paris, Guysors, Poictiers. (These are Shakespeare's spellings, by the way, not France's.) I'm no military expert (probably one of only a handful of DC residents to admit this), but I suspect this is bad news. But hey! At least now we have a time period firmly established for those not intimately familiar with Henry V's year of death: we are in the 100 Years War, at about the last part of it where the manure starts to hit the servants waving big palm leaves (or are they fronds?) for the British.

Now that we've had half a mo' to digest that bit of unsavory battlefield news, Messenger 2 arrives. He lets everyone know that Charles, the Dauphin (for those of you who don't speak the language of love, 'Dauphin' is French for 'the French guy who is not king but really wants to be, maybe should be, and has about a 50/50 shot of being crowned at some point') has crowned himself king, and all the big guns in the French leadership have united under him.

I lied earlier, because everybody agrees again; this time they agree that this crowning stuff is really bad news (except Henry V, who is still lying dead in his casket, but we can probably assume he's not too happy, either). It's all very awkward, since Henry VI also claims to be king of France, and Uncle Bedford (one of the Dukes around the corpse) is supposed to be the British regent of France. Clearly, we are facing some senior management redundancy. Just then - you guessed it! Messenger 3 arrives. He lets everybody know all those other messages were just an April Fool's joke. Everybody laughs and the play is over.

Just kidding of course. Trouble comes in threes. Messenger 3 informs the funereal throng that England's badass knight/general, Lord Talbot, got into a bit of difficulty during the siege of Orleans. His brave band of 6000 was fending off the newly united French force of 23,000 (trusting that Messenger 3 is better at crowd count than the National Park Service), when Sir John Fastolfe (England's weenie knight/general) turned tail and ran. Lord Talbot was struck by a spear by "a base Walloon" in the back, (how embarrassing!) and taken prisoner. Now the Earl of Salisbury, with an English army "grown weak and faint," and down one badass knight/general and one weenie knight/general, leads the defense of the besieged city. Finally, Messenger 3 stops talking. This ends the introduction of Plot #1: "England versus France".

It appears that no more Messengers are coming, so everybody rushes about to do something, declaiming as they go. Uncle Gloster, as Protector, is going to check on munitions in the Tower and proclaim the young Henry to be King Henry VI. Uncle Bedford as Regent of France and Great-Uncle Exeter as special governor to Henry VI, are going to go rush to relieve the Earl of Salisbury and meet Henry VI to provide for his safety respectively. Both these guys have been there the entire time, but have done nothing important yet; a harbinger of things to come in their character development.

After they clear out, Great-Uncle Winchester tips off the audience; he doesn't seem to have much to do at the moment, but just you wait. He's going to steal the confidence of King Henry VI, thus undercutting Gloster, and become the real Big Man on Britain. Welcome to Plot #2: "Gloster versus Winchester". End Act I, scene i.

Act I, scene ii finds us back in plot #1, with the Frenchies getting some stage-time. Outside Orleans, Charles the Dauphin waits with his forces and talks things over with the Duke of Alencon and Reignier, the Duke of Anjou. Alencon wants to starve the English out of Orleans, and Reignier wants to seize the offensive. He figures the English will be push-overs without Talbot to inspire them. Charles decides to go on the offensive.

Next comes a lot of noises, and everybody charges off stage to take back Orleans. A lot more noises, and everybody charges back on stage, having taking, not Orleans, but a butt-whuping. Charles complains that all his soldiers are dogs, cowards, and dastards, in that order. Charles, Alencon, and Reignier marvel at the Englishmen's reckless abandon and determination (know thy audience). His forces cowering around him, Charles decides to give that whole starve-them-out thing a try.

Enter the Bastard of Orleans. This is the only name given to this character throughout the entire play. I have to assume that the French did not refer to their own boy as the Bastard of anything, and he's probably the Duc d'Orleans, or something like that. Will calls him Bastard, so I do too (perhaps he's related Henry VI, too?). Anyway, Bastard assures Charles that he's brought the solution to all their problems; a 'holy maid' whose infallible visions will lead France to glory, and the English back to Dover. Meet Subplot A of Plot #1, aka La Pucelle, aka the savior of France, aka Joan of Arc (La Pucelle is French for maid or virigin, and is apparently Joan's French 'handle', like they call the Mona Lisa 'La Joconde' and we call Jerry Mathers 'the Beave'.).

Naturally, everyone is a bit skeptical about a shepherdess-turned-divinely-inspired savior. Charles test Joan by having Alencon pretend to be the Dauphin, but Joan is not fooled, for she has seen all this in her visions before. Then Charles takes Joan into a private room, and declares that if she can beat him in a duel, he'll believe she is the chosen one. (If only this would have worked for Neo in The Matrix, we could have been spared at least one of those stupid sequels.) Joan bests Charles, explaining that Christ's mother helps her. Charles avoids the saint/witch issue by declaring "whoe'er helps thee, 'tis thou that must help me: Impatiently I burn with thou desire; My heart and hands thou host at once subdu'd. Let me thy servant and not sovereign be:..." Joan tells him to ask her again after the English are chased from France, and she doesn't have to be holy anymore. Charles makes it clear he doesn't care if she's guided by God or the Devil, so long as the result is favorable. (In my mind, this sort of thinking strengthens the legitmacy of Charles's claim to the crown.) Joan tells him to re-attack Orleans. Everybody is excited and united and ready to retake France. End scene ii.

And now for something completely different, to whit, Act I, scene iii. Back in London, at the Tower thereof, Uncle Gloster wants in to check on things and develop Plot #2. (He fears "conveyance" since Henry V's death. At first I thought this just meant "a transfer" of something unspecified in the scene, but according to the 1913 edition of Webster's dictionary, "conveyance" has an obsolete usage meaning "dishonest management or artifice." This knowledge is going to come in very handy to me living in Washington, DC.) Even though Gloster's the Lord Protector, ruling in Henry VI's stead, the Tower guards won't let him in because Great-Uncle Winchester said not too. (Gloster may be Lord Protector, but Winchester is a Cardinal; I figure he threatened the guards with excommunication or making them permanent altar boys, or some such thing.)

Unsurprisingly, Gloster is not happy about any of this. Then Great-Uncle Winchester arrives with his serving men, in tawny coats. They make a nice contrast to Uncle Gloster's serving men in blue coats. Uncle and Great-Uncle exchange words, accusing one another of being ambitious. Big tawny-blue coat scuffle.

The Mayor of London arrives and tells everybody to cut it out. All are forbidden to use or carry weapons. The scene breaks up amidst threats and grumbling.

The internal strife brings us to the end of Act I, scene iii. However, some of the suspense of Plot #2 is destroyed for modern readers. Clearly neither Gloster nor Winchester carry the day, since every American school child knows that the English wind up with RED coats. (So glad they finally settled on one color. It makes the Revolutionary War so much easier to portray in film and TV. Not to mention the fact that they seem so silly, wearing bright red, like targets, compared to the frontier togs of Francis Marion and the other rag-tag rebels.)

Now is probably a good time to point out that Shakespeare makes it clear to us, given Win's evil aside by the corpse at the end of scene i, who the Bard thinks the worse of these two guys are. History gives a more complicated version. Funny how history always seems to be more complicated than the infotainment dramatization of events. Take, for example, the evening network news. (A pause in the action as the Bardblogger makes a mental note to destroy the television set, takes a deep breath, and refocuses on Shakespeare.)

Anyway, back to Act I, scene iv, and Plot #1, across the channel in France. The mighty Lord Talbot is back with the British in a tower around Orleans, having participated in a prisoner exchange. Talbot would have been back sooner, only he disapproved of the studliness of the first guy the French wanted to trade for. Instead of agreeing to the trade, Talbot, in his own words, "craved death rather than I would be so vile-esteem'd." Happily the French came up with an alternate, the Lord Ponton de Santrailles, whom Talbot deemed an acceptable warrior-for-warrior swap. This is not a major plot point, but tells you all you need to know about Lord Talbot. He is uber-chivalrous; the epitome of the haughty, noble knight type that everybody but Cervantes seemed to admire back in Shakespeare's day. (Click here to learn about an interesting Cervantes parallel in the "no, but who really wrote Shakespeare's stuff?" debate. Talk about swiss-cheese analysis. But that Francis Bacon sure was a prolific SOB.)

Anyway, we are supposed to like and admire Talbot and consider him the hero of the play. If Shakespeare wrote this for today's audience, Lord Talbot would be a self-deprecating Everyman knight, which tells you a bit about the evolution of the popular conception of the 'hero' from the Elizabethan age to today. (Feel free to expand on this brilliant insight for your English Lit PhD dissertation; all I require is the standard mention in the dedication.) Talbot's more-honourable-than-thou schtick will be a nice foil to Joan's holier-than-thou, is she or isn't she, saint-or-Satan routine in Plot #1, Subplot A.

Talbot and the Earl of Salisbury shoot the breeze for awhile, with Talbot giving an account of his treatment as a prisoner at the hands of the French. His description is clearly meant to horrify the audience and turn our hearts against those nefarious Gauls. Sadly, these trials seem more like acts of mercy or light-hearted jokes compared to the horrors of prisoner abuse currently shaking the world.

Eventually, Talbot finishes yaking, and Salisbury tells him they can plan their attack on the French by peeking out a special nook in the tower which affords a view of everybody's positions. Salisbury and a lesser knight take a look first. Bang!

The French, who have caught on to the peeking-nook thing, shoot and mortally wound Salisbury and the lesser knight. I'm not sure how these things are measured, technically, but they seem to take about forever and a soliloquy to kick the bucket. The soliloquy is Talbot's; it consists of poking at Salisbury to see if he's dead yet and the Shakespearean equivalent of the "Okay. Now it's personal." speech that every good action hero gives in movies these days. Crazy old Will; what a trend-setter! Suffice it to say that Talbot is extremely put out and vows vengeance on the French in a big, bad-ass knight sort of way.

Enter a messenger. Uh-oh! As we learned in scene i, messengers bring only bad news. This one is true to form, and tells Talbot about the Dauphin allying with la Pucelle, "a holy prophetess," to raise the siege. At this news, Salisbury, who is apparently not quite dead yet, groans, and Talbot shouts a more eloquent version of "Bring 'em on!":

Hear, hear how dying Salisbury doth groan!
It irks his heart he cannot be reveng'd. -
Frenchmen, I'll be a Salisbury to you: -
Pucelle or puzzle, dolphin or dogfish,
Your hearts I'll stamp out with my horse's heels,
And make a quagmire of you mingled brains. - [Bardblogger's note: ewww.]

I include the above excerpt because it gives a brief glimpse into Shakespeare's clever word-play-to-be. He's not quite there yet in this play. But I'll save the analysis for a later entry. Right now I'm having enough trouble getting through Act I!
End of Act I, scene iv.

Act I, scene v. Also known as the last scene in act I, also known as the point at which I call it quits for this entry.

In brief, the French attack the English, and the English soldiers flee at the sight of Joan, driven off by her holy or hellish powers, as you choose. Naturally, this mystical stuff doesn't work on Talbot himself. Joan bests him at swords and retires with taunts. Talbot concludes she is a witch, since God doesn't make lady sword-fighters (at least, not good ones). The English run away and proud Talbot is Extremely Put Out, wishing he'd died with Salisbury rather than be driven out by the lady-led French. He longs for death instead of the shame and all that guff.

Next the French march triumphantly through Orleans and ring bells and call for feasts, et cetera, et cetera. Charles graciously announces the whole thing is Joan's doing, and immediately begins saying how amazingly Joan will be revered as soon as she is dead. Why, what a odd thing to mention at a time like this! Could this be a portent of things to come? Stay tuned (or consult any encyclopedia) to find out!!

Note for the Aesthete

2004-05-12T00:33:00.000-04:00

As loyal readers will observe, An Excellent Dumb Discourse just received the on-line equivalent of a nose job. No, not because of a horrendous deviated septum. Rather, blogger.com, the bardblog's mommy, just went through a dramatic relauch, and now offers a ton of more templates (in blogspeak, templates are referred to as 'skins'). The reason I refer to it as plastic surgery and not just a change of clothes is that the new skin offers many subtle changes in the way it deals with text and coding.

This is the bardblog's third skin. I like a lot of things about this skin better, but my heart is not altogether content. The big things I like about my new skin:

1. The listing in the sidebar by title.
2. Less orange.
3. More gray.
4. Way, WAAAAY easier to create block quotes, like this list. This will save me approximately a gazillion hours when I want to incorporate sections of text from plays.
5. Probably will be a lot easier to add photos and pictures, should I ever figure that whole deal out.

The big things I do NOT like about the new skin:

1. SOOOOOOOO narrow! My entries looked wordy enough when they extended across three-quarters of the screen. Now the text is confined to less than half the width of the page.
2. The placement of the Comments (too near the start of the previous entry).

To fix the narrowness, I will I either have to change to an entirely new skin, or learn how to do graphical editing to widen things out without perverting the pleasant rounded nature of the bardblog's new corners. It will be very complicated, and significantly cut into the gazillion hours of time-saving I recently realized due to the block quote feature.

And so I expand the debate from inside my own allergy-laden head to the broader bardblog community. (Not much broader, but I like to imagine it is growing. This is one of the ways I lull myself to sleep at night; counting hypothetical new Excellent Dumb Discourse followers. I would install a counter into the blog to settle the question, but I'm afraid I'll never fall asleep again.)

Please share your thoughts, either through the Comment feature below, or by emailing me at bardblog@writeme.com. Just remember, this is about style, not substance. It is not like critiquing the quality of the jokes and awards at the Oscar show. It is like kibbitzing about how everyone is dressed and what a freak Joan Rivers is on the red carpet. Kibbitz away!

Those who do not study History are Doomed to get Really Confused Reading Henry VI, Part I

2004-05-07T17:54:00.000-04:00

~or~
Henry VI, Part I, part minus one.

Here I am to do the weekly update of the Bardblog. I know most people read this not for a little chuckle or an insight into the works of the greatest playwright ever. No, they are just fascinated with the little details of my life. Well, the week so far has not been particularly noteworthy. (A pause for all my groupies to shed a quiet tear.) We went to see a baseball game at Camden Yards. We sat in the bleachers, which is always a risk. The line between the cool, die-hard fan, and the annoying, drunken fan is a fine one. We had cool, die-hard fans in front of us, and annoying, drunken fans behind us. The annoying, drunken fans kept taunting the opposing team with the following razz: "Hey (opposing team player)! You've got a little-boy hair cut!! Look at (opposing team player)'s little-boy hair cut!"

What a jibe, huh? It's amazing that the opposing team (the Blue Jays), managed to pull off a 15-3 win, "with scoffs, and scorns, and contumelious taunts" like that.

That last quote is from King Henry VI, Part I, act 1, scene vi. And that, my friends, is as close as we'll be coming to a seamless transition today.

King Henry VI. Poor sot. The boy king who pretty much blew it, as near as I can tell. He also made for one darn convoluted play. It is going to be challenging to lay out the action for you. Clearly, the corner Ye Olde PlotsandMore! Shoppe was having a buy one, get three free sale (hurry on in whilst supplies last!) when poor old Will set quill to scroll for this one.

Before we get into the play, there is something you should know. I am having a devil of a time figuring out how to deal with this puppy. It covers an intense time in British history; lots of plot, intrigue and the fate of great families being tossed about. People's names keep changing, as their family fortunes rise and fall (e.g., Lord Whatsis becomes Duke Whosis, flirts with the Church and becomes Cardinal Howsis, etc.). Not only that, but Shakespeare dealt somewhat fast and loose with the historical details, God bless 'em. Partly to improve the entertainment value of the work, partly to stay in the ruling house's good graces, and partly just because of the limitations of the medium. And on top of all that, the play does not appear to be much about Henry VI at first glance, but more about the Ways of History, Power and Fortune, in general. Although I can't be sure, because I haven't read King Henry VI part II yet, let alone the no-doubt rip-roaring and intellectually illuminating part III. The whole thing is barely comprehensible as a play; near impossible to make sense of in a blog. (A medium whose entries generally run their course in the matter of a few paragraphs, much as I may struggle to push the quantitative boundaries of the medium. 'I'm not long-winded, I'm just different.'-the self-affirming mantra with which the author must begin and end each writing session.)

That said, I do tip my hat to Shakespeare. I think dealing with historical chronology is a challenging but clever way to cut one's teeth as a playwright. Challenging, of course, because unless you're Oliver Stone, facts are facts, and they don't necessarily lend themselves to a compelling story, let alone an intelligible story arc. Characters show up in Act I, scene i who I suspect don't contribute a thing to plot or meaning until the last act of the third play. (By which time their titles and allegiences have changed about 7 times, unlike (I hope) their costumes. If these guys are not color-coded, the audience doesn't stand a chance without the text in front of them.)

(Overheard at my imaginary viewing of King Henry VI, Part I:
'Wait- Bedford's the one in the blue velvet pantaloons, right? And Plantagenet - I mean York - they're the same anyway, right? But anyway York is the one in the golden culottes? That's what you call those funny little pants, right? Or is that Gloster in the gold? And which one was that guy in the one scene before intermission in the red. You know, with the puffy hat. I think he had a speech, but I can't remember what it was. Is he French or English?'

'Shhhhh! We can talk about it on the way home. I need to concentrate on which one is helping the Lancastrians right now!! And I have no idea what culottes are.')

Grappling with historical events is clever, too, I suspect, because it forces one to learn the inner-workings of your trade. The severe plot and character development constraints restrict the author's ability to create something new, but also leaves him free to focus on what he can do. Will finds few opportunities for great speechifying and soliloquies here. The story is clunky and almost none of the characters are lovable. He must make do with what he has, and play with plot devises, timing, exposition and character development within strict boundaries. He can learn the art of the theatrical possible. King Henry VI, Part I is sort of like Shakespeare's Apprenticeship. Happily, he did not have Donald Trump there to fire him off the show.

Okay, here we go:
First, you need to know, as I assume most of the audience knew back in 1591 when this puppy was first performed, some of the back history. The English crown had legitimate claims to at least part of the French realm, and possibly to the French crown itself, when the whole mess began in 1337. The English ruling house at that time was the Plantagenets, and the claim can be traced back to Eleanor of Acquitaine marrying Henry II of the Plantagenent dynasty (Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole in A Lion in Winter, you may recall.) Eventually, the Plantagenent house has the only direct claim to the French throne. The French sort of decide to change the inheritence laws (and no doubt debated getting rid of the death-tax for well-born nobles), so that the English can't claim the crown. Shockingly, the English are not down with this sniveling legal move. Of equal importance, France is rich in resources, and the English rich in greedy nobles. Care for a spot of pillaging, anyone? The Hundred Years War begins. (As a side note, the French have now screwed up their dynastic inheritance laws, which will cause whole heaps of mess and unrest for them in the future unrelated to the English and the Hundred Years War. Everyone starts claiming everything. What a pain.)

The war plods on; the French have a lot more manpower (something like a 4:1 advantage), and much greater natural resources. The English have the experienced soldiers, having practiced on themselves (in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland) in recent years. The French get their butts whuped several times, but the English don't seem to make much progress in actually settling anything. (The Plague isn't helping anyone, either.) Things sort of fall into an uncomfortable ceasefire for a while. Most are happy about this except many of the English nobles. They seem to have found their inner-pirate, and have grown to really enjoy pillaging all the gold, wine, cheese and other glories of the French countryside.

The awkward ceasefire comes to an end when Richard II, and the Plantagenet dynasty, is usurped by he who shall become Henry IV of the house of Lancaster. It is now 1399, and the on-again, off-again Hundred Years War has been chugging along for 62 years or so. Partly due to French raids on the British coast, partly to distract the English nobles from the fact that he usurped the throne, Henry VI heats up the fight in France. The inner-pirate nobles are happy about this, and no one puts up too much of a fuss about the usurping thing. Little "progress" is made by either side in the war, until VI's son, Henry V, comes to power. Henry V whups butt and takes names. In fact, he doesn't just take names, he takes swathes of French territory. Things are not going well for the French.

Then Henry V suddenly dies, worn out by war. He is only 35. More importantly, his son, Henry VI, is only 1. The play begins at the casket of Henry V.

That's the important back story. Believe me or believe me not, but I left out a ton (especially about all the marriages and politicking and military technology etc.). If you want to learn more, I never found one single good source online, but you can start at at this Hundred Years groupie site.

You can't say you don't learn something when you read this here bardblog.

I'm going to call it quits for today. I'm already over 1500 words, and I've grown weary of fielding comments like, "I love your blog, but it is SOO long! It must take you forever to write - it sure takes forever to read." Ahh, constructive criticism.

Repeat the blog-matra with me: 'I'm not long-winded, I'm just different.'

Delays have Dangerous Ends~King Henry VI. Part I. Act iii. Sc. 2

2004-04-22T05:31:00.000-04:00

(especially if you're Houston)

The past few weeks have seen me attaining some pretty significant accomplishments, if I do say so myself. I returned from Texas a second time. More on this in a moment. Along with a team of impressed labor (aka, The Spouse and friends), I succeeded in painting my dining room green. Frog Pad green, to be exact. The Spouse and I joined Costco, where we bought enough cheap underwear and chocolate chips to clothe and feed an entire flotilla of naked, starving, diabetic waifs. Why the waifs are all on a flotilla, I have no idea. Bad-dum-bum. The Spouse and I also did all the Sunday crosswords together. We taught people contract bridge. We filed our taxes like good, honest, hardworking Americans. I re-re-revised the third chapter in my children's book (still not satisfied). I made a damn fine meatloaf. I fertilized all the rose bushes. I raked things. I added a link on the blog to support my fellow DC Bloggers. (The link is over in the right-hand column. I encourage you to check them out. Obviously they can't all be at the same BardBlog level you, the discerning reader, know and love. But some of them are really good, and you might just find a new DC-based web author to enjoy. I promise they're not ALL politically obsessed, obtuse blowhards.) I lowered my bad-carb in-take. Am I something or what?

And yes, I read Henry VI, Part I.

Believe me, I just can't wait to tell you about it. But here's the deal. I have bad allergies. Now, I know that sounds like a cop-out, but bear with me. Most of the year, it is all about The Spouse's allergies. The Spouse has year-round allergies of truly humongous proportions. The sort of thing ancient men of letters composed vast and timeless epics about. But once a year during a time most people call Spring but I call 'Hell is Other Pollens', my allergies make The Spouse's seem like a tribute to health and vitality. We're talking big time congestion and unprecedented mucus/phlegm production. If I could save up all my springtime allergy phlegm and then climb to the top of the Empire State Building, I'm pretty sure I could hawk a loogie big enough to encase the entirety of Rockefeller Plaza in a sticky, oozy, disgusting mucus wrap. (If only I could spit that far through midtown.) Like that artist Christo, only without the NEA grants*. Sound gross? Welcome to my life.

This is my first summer back in DC since college, and if pollen count has anything to do with Global Warming, consider the case proven. My allergies were slightly better than average during my university days; this year they are the worst ever. It is 80 degrees all the time in April, and everything is blooming at once; things that bloom now, as well as things that normally don't bloom until June or even July (according to the helpful expert at my local gardening center). Yes, Mom, I'm taking all the drugs I'm supposed to. I'm wearing a mask when I'm in the garden. I'm staying indoors as much as possible, which is easy since it is difficult to find the door through my watering eyes. It feels like I'm hosting a pillow factory inside my head. So stuffy! So heavy! Send sympathetic comments to bardblog@writeme.com.

Coupled with my traditional aliment, insomnia, the allergies are making me a total mess. The Spouse and I generally go to bed at the same time. Normally, we talk for about twenty minutes or so, and then I get to listen to The Spouse's slumbering sighs with envy in my heart. About a million hours later, I fall asleep. The Spouse gets up at 8am and leaves for Work. I wake up at 10am and feel rested enough to make myself some tea and bumble through the day. Now in pollen season, I still have the same trouble falling asleep, but I don't wake up before noon unless I set an alarm. When I do wake up it is an effort to pry my eyes open. My performance throughout the day could fairly be termed 'zombie-like', if zombies generally sniffled and sneezed all day, and had bright red noses chafed by chronic tissue use. The best word to describe my quality of sleep is probably 'commodious', in so far as it is absolutely in the toilet.

So basically what I'm saying is that I'm not really conscious enough right now to write coherently on Henry VI, Part I, or any of his other parts, either. This might count as ironic, since coherency isn't exactly the hallmark of Henry VI, Part I. Maybe the Bard was in desperate need of some Benadryl while he was writing it. Anyway, I am shirking my duties, and I am sorry. I hope you will pardon the delay. But I'll post on poor old Hank just as soon as my head clears. I promise.

In the meantime, I do feel an obligation to gratify my clamoring public with some Shakespeare-related entertainment. So I did an extensive online search for Shakespeare jokes. This was a challenging search, because I also wanted the jokes to be funny. There are no jokes about Henry VI, Part I. Surprise, surprise. After many long, sneezy hours of research, here are the best non-play specific Shakespeare jokes I could find:

Joke Number One:
I found a lot of puns of differing sorts but with the same punchline: "There's no holes, Bard!" Feel free to make up your own joke. I'm sure you can do better than the ones I saw. They mostly involved Will and a Tailor.

Joke Number Two:
I found a top-ten list used by David Letterman entitled "Top Ten Things Shakespeare would say if He Were Alive Today". It was probably written in about 1998, judging from the Shakespeare in Love joke. It is a bit dated, but here it is, anyway:

10.	"Now that I've had 400 years to think about it, tights are kind of fruity."

9.	"What's Gore talking about? I invented the internet."

8.	"I got ideas for three new plays just by watching Jerry Springer." (I found number 8 particularly unfunny, but maybe it's just me.)

7.	"Even I think 'Saving Private Ryan' is a much better movie than 'Shakespeare In Love.'"

6.	"I'm gonna go hang out at Barnes & Noble and pick up chicks in the theater section."

5.	"'Cats'? Good Lord, is that still playing?"

4.	"What's something good that rhymes with 'Hooters'?"

3.	"I just got a 'Welcome Back Kotter' lunch box on e-bay."

2.	"The guys in high school English were right -- I'm gay."

1.	"Dave, wherefore is thy number one never funny?"

Overall, not Letterman's best effort, I'm afraid.

Joke Number Three:
A woman was out shopping one day with her son. The boy spotted a man who was bowlegged. The boy pulled on Mom's hand and said, "Momma, look at the bowlegged man."

Mom was mortified and told her son that it was not polite to point to a person and make that sort of comment. As a punishment, the boy had to read a play by Shakespeare. He couldn't go shopping again until he finished reading the play.

Finally he finished and his mom took him once again to the mall. Again he spied a bowlegged man, but remembered what happened the last time.

So he pulled on his mother's hand and said, "Lo, what manner of man are these, who wear their balls in parentheses?"

(I thought this one was pretty cute. It's authorship was not attributed.)

Joke Number Four:
The final joke has nothing to do with Shakespeare, but I include it because I found it pretty funny and, more importantly, it makes fun of Houston. If you've read my previous entry, you know I visited Houston and came away with a deeply mixed impression of Houston in particular, and Texas in general. I thought I made it pretty clear in that essay that I thought Texas had an issue in the way it pushed its image; moreover, I did not think Texas had a problem with its substance. Well, let me tell you. Boy did I get an earful when I returned to Texas a few weeks ago. How dare I, I just don't get it, I'm a pigheaded Northeasterner who sees what I want to see, Texas wouldn't worry about its image if it wasn't always being slandered by Hollywood and the Far Left, 'Don't Mess with Texas' is just an anti-litter campaign, yadda yadda yadda. And not a single soul wanted to talk about The Tempest at all. Sigh. I had a nice time anyway. But when I saw this (lengthy) joke posted at LaughZone.com, I thought I would use it to take one last swipe at cranky old Houston. So here it is:

Generic Disaster Movie Script

(The movie opens in a suburban home, where, the heroine is having breakfast with her adorable son.)

HEROINE :

Well, it's a peaceful day! No sign of any disasters!

SON :

Mom, do you have a husband or romance interest?

HEROINE :

No, Bobby, although I am a top scientist and very attractive.

(The phone rings.)

HEROINE :

Uh-oh! I hope that's not a worker from the lab, calling to tell me about an impending disaster!

LAB WORKER :

Trish, a disaster is impending!

HEROINE :

I'll be right there!
(To her son:) Bobby, you stay here and be vulnerable.

SON :

Mom, will the disaster end up striking this exact house and placing me in grave danger?

HEROINE :

Of course!

(We see an exterior shot of the White House. Inside, the president, looking grim, is holding an emergency Cabinet meeting.)

PRESIDENT :

Haven't I seen that exterior shot before?

VICE PRESIDENT :

It's the same one they use in the Tom Clancy movies.

PRESIDENT :

OK, somebody set up the plot.

SCIENCE ADVISER :

Mr. President, unless something is done, a disaster is going to strike in 90 minutes, sending miniature cars flying in all directions.

PRESIDENT :

Ninety minutes! Why so long?

SCIENCE ADVISER :

We need to build up the suspense.

GENERAL :

Sir, we must launch a nuclear strike against Houston!

PRESIDENT :

Why?

GENERAL :

I hate Houston.

PRESIDENT (To the hero) :

Jake, you're incredibly good-looking.
I want you to take your minority sidekick and get over to the laboratory immediately and develop a romance interest with the heroine.
If this movie is rated 'R', she can show her breasts.

HERO :

I'll do what I can, sir.

(The next scene is in the laboratory. The hero and heroine are staring intently at a computer screen.)

HEROINE :

... and so by using the mouse pointer, you can drag the three of clubs over onto the four of diamonds.

(A lab worker rushes up.)

LAB WORKER :

Trish, the pantograph is giving us a vector plasma reading in the cosine range!

HERO :

What does that mean?

HEROINE :

Nothing. It's movie science gibberish. But it's time for the disaster! And my son is home alone!

(The scene shifts to the heroine's neighborhood. People are screaming; miniature cars are flying everywhere.)

HEROINE :

This is terrible! Thousands of people are being killed!

HERO :

It's OK! They're extras!

SON :

Help! Help!

HEROINE :

My God! It's Billy!

SON :

No, it's Bobby!

HEROINE :

Oh, right.

HERO :

I'll save him!

HEROINE :

Watch out for the special effects!

(The hero, dodging miniature flying cars, saves the son.)

HEROINE :

Now we can be a family unit!

SON :

With Val Kilmer? I thought the hero was going to be Tom Cruise.

HERO :

He wasn't available.

(The final scene takes place back to the White House, where everybody is relieved.)

PRESIDENT :

Whew! Although we lost 124 million people, all the main characters survived except the minority sidekick!

(The Cabinet applauds.)

GENERAL :

So now can we attack Houston?

PRESIDENT :

OK by me.

(THE END)

I couldn't have said it better myself.

*You learn a lot writing a blog. For instance, while searching for a Christo link to use in this essay, I learned that Christo and his artistic collaborator/wife, Jeanne-Claude, actually never accept any outside financing or sponsorship. Hope I didn't offend any Christo fanatics with my NEA crack.

I Yam what I Yam

2004-04-08T05:23:00.000-04:00

-or-
My Yam is Bigger than Your Yam....Scared?

Well, I am thoroughly back from my trip to Texas, The Lone Star State. Now that I am back, I will be turning around again to return tomorrow- this time to Austin for Easter/Passover instead of Houston. Due to the fact that I have been busy entertaining waves of visitors to DC since my return (the last one leaves today, if he catches his flight), I will not be telling you anything about Henry VI, or any other enumerated British monarch for that matter. Instead, I thought I'd share my thoughts and impressions of Texas, which will probably boil down to a harangue about the hubris of human nature, but maybe not. As the lady said to the sailor as she grabbed her make-up bag before abandoning the S.S. Titanic, you never know.

I wish I could say Texas was a place of riddles and contradictions, but I can't. Image-wise, Texas might be the nearest thing to black and white since The Jazz Singer. The closest thing I witnessed to a contradiction on my recent trip to Houston was both a Waffle House AND an IHOP in the same city. This is of course unheard of on the East Coast, where the IHOP-Waffle House divide is the 'Breakfast-Anytime' equivalent to the Mason-Dixon line.

Before I get too deep in the Big Muddy by offending the heavily-armed 2.3% of the US population who reside in those 261,914 square miles of a state, I must assure all up front that I had a Very Nice Time in Texas. Houston, as an example of post-World War II Boomsprawl, (appearing as it does to be the detritus from some nasty city zoning vomitorium), may visually represent the closest America gets to a decent argument for the gamma bomb, urban-development-wise. HOWEVER, I had a fun time, the people were nice, the weather was a-okay, the restaurants were excellent and plentiful, and the art museum was fantastic (and free on Thursdays!).

That said, I absorbed an unprecedented amount of marketing material in, by, and about Texas. Given the oh-so insightfully observant nature of the true blogger, I naturally analyzed all this material and now have humorous and searingly perceptive things to say about the state. So here goes:

Texas, more than anything else, is Texas. (I'll give you all a moment to let the profoundness of that statement sink in.....Ok. Ready?) I mean it. Texas really wants you to remember it is Texas. Specifically, everywhere we went, I was bombarded with reminders that:

a) I was in Texas.

b) Texas is big.

c) Very big.

d) Texas' flag is a work of art that should be viewed several times a day, and NEVER confused with the flag of Chile, particularly if your confusion occurs out-loud, in public, amid dozens of irate Texans, without a gratified Chilean in sight.

e) Texas used to be a country, is very independent in some vague indeterminate way that seems to involve spittoons and getting one's testicles knocked about astride an irate bovine, and only condescends to be a state in order to give the rest of the country easier access to Texas and Texans.

f) The geographical shape of Texas is very important, and it's aspect should preferably be in view at all times, via bumper sticker, key chain, cooking cutter, statue, T-shirt, screen saver, mouse pad, sun catcher, etc. (A careful study of the shape of Texas - inevitable during a visit - reveals some motivation behind their fascination with the outline of this increasingly Republican state. If you transform your beloved Texas cookie cutter into a Texas country-cutter and cut, you lose all those 'undesirable' elements: Texas is the shape of the United States, minus those grubby, leftist Northwesterners, progressive northern Midwesterners, decadent, high-fallutin Democrat New Yorkers, and Independent, liberal New Englanders. Coincidence or conspiracy? I merely report. You decide.)

g) Non-Texans are, under no circumstances, to 'mess' with Texas. This last reminder is so frequently proclaimed that the innocent tourist begins to wonder. What is Texas so afraid of? How could I mess with it? Why do they fear me?

If I was going to mess with a state, I would definitely mess with Ohio. I don't think much good has come out of Ohio since the Frosty, and Wendy's is probably so irreversibly a national chain by now that we could lose Ohio and still enjoy our frosty-cold, super-thick chocolate shakes. Other than that, what has Ohio given us lately? The Wright Brothers? The first flight was over one-hundred years ago, occurred in a different state altogether, and would have been achieved by someone else in no time at all, to say nothing of the nasty rumor that others got there first but were smothered by the Wrights' superior PR. Other than that, the only things I associate with Ohio are a great amusement park with kick-ass roller coasters (eminently reproducible outside the state), and tires. I went to the Ohio Tourism site just to make sure, and I couldn't find one interesting, unique thing about the Buckeye State (like we've ever figured out anything good to do with a Buckeye, anyway).

So fear not, Texas. It's all about Ohio.

My basic point is this: the Powers that Be are so busy letting you know how much you are in Texas, that you are not left to easily discover what that means. They shout at you from every corner: "We are large. Big! Texas is Texas-sized! Don't mess with us! Ohio is that-a-way!" What does it mean to be big? An empty message, all sound and fury, signifying nothing. (<-- Please note token Shakespeare reference for this week's entry.) I saw a particularly obnoxious (albeit entertaining) IMAX movie about Texas by the Texas tourism board. (Of course, it had to be an IMAX, in Huge-o-vision; this point was not lost on me.) The film bloodied my eardrums and pierced my eyeballs with Texas's image: it is bigger than France and Britain combined!; they sold land the size of 3 Rhode Islands to finance the building of their capitol, which is, naturally, the largest something or other in North America!; their big Texas phallic monument thingy (aka the San Jacinto Monument) is bigger than the US's big phallic monument thingy (aka, the Washington Monument)!; at any given time, EVERY CONCEIVABLE KIND OF WEATHER is occurring at once in the state! (Cool! I always wanted to see a tsunami!) This last claim made a few in my audience laugh. When the lights went up, a heard at least three people utter variations on: "Is Texas trying to - ahem -compensate for something?" And truth be told, I confess that I was at that moment thinking, "Wow! Texas must be the least well-hung state in the nation." Pardon the crudity; it was merely the logical thing to think after watching the film.

Before I begin my long, painful attempt to avoid death threats from those millions of Texans who read my blog each week, I will indulge in one more anecdote in Texas being somewhat obnoxious about the fact that it is black-and-white Texas. I was recently listening to a Spring Training game between the Houston Astros and the San Francisco Giants through the miracles of modern technology and MLB.com. I tuned in to the Astros' broadcast, since I am a fan of several of their players. During the break, a commercial came on encouraging fans to attend Astros' home games. It was then that I discovered the most enraging, offensive, and un-baseball like slogan I could conceive of. To whit, an announcer exhorted me to "come on down to Minute Maid Park to cheer on the home team. The Houston Astros: Root for the Good Guys!"

'Root for the Good Guys?' If you're not a baseball fan, you may not understand my outrage. But if you are, you know that baseball is not a game of good and bad guys. They are all good guys, playing day in and day out, and may the best team win. Even the most storied rivalries are all about love-hate relationships, not good and evil. In that most extreme of rivalries, New York - Boston, you could easily get a Red Sox fan to refer to the New York Yankees as the "bad guys". But that's about it. No real Red Sox fan or Yankees fan would seriously suggest that they are the good guys and the rest of the competition, like, say, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, are actually Bad. You love your team, you may hate your rival (but this is by no means necessary), but there is no good-bad team-chotomy in baseball. Baseball is a game of inches, statistics, might-have-beens and possibilities, and it is also a game of dignity, fair play and honor. If it wasn't, Congress wouldn't be so up-in-arms about this steroid stuff. And besides, the closest the National League Central Division (where the Astros live) comes to a big, bad, dominating team that fans love to hate like the New York Yankees is MAYBE the Saint Louis Cardinals. The Cards are Evil? Pretty pathetic. Not only that, the Astros face off against the Brewers all the time. The Brewers are the Bad Guys? Have you seen that Sausage Race thing they do during the seventh inning stretch? And that beer barrel-cannon gimmick? Come on. Terrorists are bad guys. Baseball is a game.

Okay, I'm done with the baseball harangue. The slogan is probably no reflection on the people of Houston at all, just yet another Dumb Marketing Idea, but we all need outlets and this is mine.

Back to Texas. The marketing of Texas is too much of a hard sell; and the sell makes it too hard to get at the substance I know is there. My Texan friend (at least, he was a friend until he read this) told me that all the noise exists because Texans still believe and take pride in their individual, distinctive regional character. I buy this argument only somewhat. Texas is not the only state that feels this way. I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia for a year, home of Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia. While there, I was inundated by a pervasive marketing presence and local pride about what Virginia was and what it was to be a Virginian. The local public radio station played analyses of Virginian Civil War battles frequently. I saw a few disturbing bumper stickers about what the Virginian driver would like to do to my "Northern ass," but by and large the marketing campaign and regional preening did not bother me. Some of it I enjoyed, because I learned about the state and its riches, or gained insight into the mentality associated with the proud local Virginian. Just as much hoopla existed about Virginian-ness as I saw in Texas, but it had more substance and it wasn't slapped in your face every time you stepped onto the street.

I think many other areas of the country feel this way as well. I don't take much pride in being from Connecticut, but I'm proud to be a New Englander; I know what it means and what value it has. I've known people to take great pride in coming from Washington state, northern California, Idaho and Alaska. Each one could identify an individual, distinctive regional character they were proud of. So why does the Texas identity ring so hollow?

My previous trip to Texas occurred a few years ago over Thanksgiving. The Spouse and I were supposed to be going to Greece, but we wound up in Texas instead. (I won't go into the details here; I'm saving that story for my gripping autobiographical made-for-TV movie, starring Anthony Michael Hall, Minnie Driver, and (back from the dead) Morris in a cameo as The Cat.) We were lucky enough to wind up at our friend's house in the countryside of Texas. We shot things (targets, skeet, and theoretically at deer, although none of us ever fired), drank a bit, and generally caroused. Compared with my most recent trip, this first Thanksgiving trip felt much more like Texas. There was no marketing. No image, no hype. Just living, being, doing. It was certainly uniquely Texan. I can't imagine doing those things and feeling that way while doing them - feeling just right in one's skin, as the French say - anywhere but Texas. Texas, like so many of the world's great and fascinating locales, is place that needs to be discovered to be appreciated.

This time, I was in a city for my visit; an urban center with little cohesive identity and structure. Perhaps it was Houston that was compensating, and not Texas. But either way, the PR blitz does Texas a disservice. It annoys and numbs visitors until all they associate with Texas is vapid slogans and empty images. Someone in the Texas tourism industry take a memo. Stop diluting Texas' image by trying to put it on a bumper sticker! You're not a cheap date or a one-night stand, so stop acting like one. Cut out that leering, 'have I got something big to show you' self-promotion if you want us to appreciate you for the fine and beautiful state that you are. Let us discover you. You should take a lesson from Popeye: "I yam what I yam", with no apologies, explanations or justifications. We'll figure out the rest, and like you all the more for it. Here are some new slogans to try out: Less talk, more rock! Less tell, more show! Less navel gazing proclamations, more living by rough and tumble doing! (Catchy. If you tourism guys want to use that last one, we can discuss my cut.) And hey! We know you're big! Enough already. Take your electoral votes and zip it.

Texas' marketing strategy for success? In the words of one who no doubt loved everything about Texas and all things that we would today consider truly Texan (and, in fact, may have had a horse named Texas - I'm not sure and am too sleepy right now to research it properly), "Walk softly and carry a big stick."

Ohio should be so lucky.

I'd Give it a Seventy-Three

2004-03-25T03:03:00.000-05:00

~or~
"It's Got a Good Beat and You Can Dance to It"

If The Tempest were a new song being showcased by Dick Clark on American Bandstand, and I were one of those goopy teenage dancers on the show that they asked to grade the music, the title above is what I'd give it. When I was little - say five-ish, American Bandstand was busy dying a slow death on ABC. I remember being dumbfounded and appalled at its spectacle all at once. If the teens on the show with their headbands, tight pants and feathered hair had been getting down to a Shakespearean performance, I'm sure I would have found the thing a whole lot more entertaining.

Who knows? Maybe they tried it once, and, despite the mediocre ratings, modern interpretative dance was born!

An Aside: Did you know that B.B. King is the only performer to never lip-sync on American Bandstand? Oh the disillusionment! Next they'll be telling us that that's not Michael Jackson's real nose. But how heartening to know there is still one Musical Icon out there who puts his real self on the line for his public - even those that might be watching American Bandstand - day in and day out. Now that's integrity, friends.

Okay, so we've established that I feel The Tempest is a perfectly decent work, but no masterpiece. Given how I've lambasted the plot and action previously, it's time to make clear why it's still better than most of the junk playwrights churn out today. So, drumroll please! It's the moment you've all been waiting for! Here are:

The Top Ten Great Things about The Tempest

1. The courting of Ferdinand and Miranda
2. The juxtaposition of Caliban and Ariel
3. The use of language
4. Gonzalo's utopian scheme
5. Caliban as a creative character
6. The muddle of the meaning
7. Prospero's farewell speech
8. "An Excellent Dumb Discourse"
9. Did I say ten?
10. I must have meant eight.
11. Eight is such a nice number, I always think.
12. Yogi Berra wore number eight.
13. So did Willie Stargell.
14. Bill Dickey too, which I've never understood.
15. The Yankees retired the number 8 twice in the same year.
16. For Berra and Dickey.
17. What's up with that?
18. Gary Carter also wore 8 - apparently a good number for catchers.
19. Perhaps because they frequently bat eighth?
20. Cal Ripken had eight on his jersey, too.
21. Carl Yastrzemski donned the great 8.
22. And Joe Morgan.
23. The Good old Big Red Machine.
24. Pete Rose did NOT wear number 8.
25. Clearly, as a baseball fan, I must have meant 8.
26. I can't even think of a famous number 10 ballplayer.
27. Anyone? (This is what the "Comments" function is really for, people...)
28. Plus, if there were no eight, you couldn't have that joke about how 7 ate 9.
29. That's right, eight is a homophone.
30. Unlike a certain number I could mention between 9 and 11.
31. Eight rocks! Woo-hoo! Yay eight!
32. (Don't feel bad, ten. We can't all be eight.)

1. The courting of Ferdinand and Miranda
In one of my previous entries, I mentioned the absurd "insta-love" vibes between Miranda and Ferdinand. This is not just a matter of me questioning the potential for Love at First Sight. This is me questioning the potential for a woman who has been raised on a island where she's never known any man but her father and the deformed slave who's always trying to sexually assault her, never seen any females, nor witnessed any exchange of human affection between man and woman suddenly, apropos to nothing, getting instantly crazy with the love bug for an unkempt young man (at least, I assume surviving a storm at sea, being thrown from your ship and washing ashore on an almost deserted island would lead to a bit of hair ruffling and robe marring, even if you're the Prince of Naples) who shows up at her cave. He's just gone through a harrowing physical experience, and is certain he's just lost his beloved father to Davy Jones Locker. But without exchanging a word, one look at each other and Shazam! Cue Bolero, put the champagne on ice and get out the raw oysters. Time to kick off Improbablooza: Lovefest 2004. 'Cuz these kids dig each other in a big way.

The whole thing is obviously more than absurd. But what is not absurd is their courting scene, which takes up Act III, Scene I. In this scene, Ferd is moving thousands of logs to and fro; this is the task Prospero has given him for no real reason (see February 19th entry). Ferdinand doesn't mind too much; the vision of his new-found angel Miranda lightens his labors. Miranda shows up and tries to take over the pointless log shuffling duties so Ferd, who's probably pretty tired at this point given his busy day, can rest. Ferd gallantly refuses, and the exchange that follows is, well, sweet. In yet another of his pointless tyrannical moves, Prospero has ordered Miranda not to reveal her name to Ferd. When Ferd asks, Miranda unhesitatingly fills him in, disobeying her father for the first time. The touching sweetness takes off from there:

Ferd:

I am, in my condition,
A prince Miranda; I do think, a king, -
I would, not so! - and would no more endure
This wooden slavery than I would suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth.
Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service; there resides,
To make me slave to it; and for your sake
Am I this patient log man.

Not only is the sentiment a fine one, but notice the clever word play: the use of would/wood, flesh/heart. There's probably even some brilliant Elizabethan pun involved with "log man" that I don't know about. Next, Miranda asks if Ferdinand loves her. You have to admire these straightforward, no-nonsense women.

Ferd:

Oh heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,
And crown what I profess with kind event,
If I speak true! If hollowly, inert
What best is boded me to mischief! I,
Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
Do love, prize honor you.

Miranda also gets to put her love into eloquent words (in response to Ferdinand’s question about why she is crying):

Miranda:

At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give; and much less take
What I shall die to want. But this is trifling;
And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning;
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
I am your wife, if you will marry me; to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant
Whether you will it or no.

Good stuff. Sweet, pure, and real. Like high-quality maple syrup from Vermont. Man, I sure could go for a waffle right about now.

Miranda's not the most completely drawn female character in history, but she is more real and eloquent than many of her contemporaries. While their insta-love seems hollow to any audience demanding some credibility, the Ferdinand-Miranda courtship rings true.

2. The juxtaposition of Caliban and Ariel
Caliban and Ariel, the two servants of Prospero - neither really willing - are a great demonstration of the principle of yin and yang. At least, if you consider Earth and Air oppositions. Ariel clearly represents the Air. Even his name is a reference to it. A spirit, he flits about on the wind, raising storm and other mischief from his realm above. He is gentle, untamed, ethereal, powerful, and sweetly lyrical.

Caliban is a thing of the Earth. Described as deformed, he probably does not come very far off the ground, and likely is hunched so his head inclines downward. A visceral being of base, primitive flesh, he's concerned with the land- this is his island, and he should be its king. His unwanted sexual advances on Miranda aim to people the island with little Calibans. He knows the secrets of the earth, and worships crude, physical things. He is violent, untamed, crude and strong. Caliban is, surprisingly, lyrical, in that he speaks in free verse, but he is bitter where Ariel is sweet.

Air and Earth - and Prospero is the master of both. Having not read the rest of the Shakespeare's plays yet, I don't know if this juxtaposition is something he did frequently, or if this is an exceptionally fine rendering. I do not recall this sort of thing being done - at least with this artistry - by the ancient Greeks. But it is something that has been imitated often. Our popular culture is rife with examples. Let me know your favorites. Mine is Bert (pigeon-lover) and Ernie (rubber duckie aficionado). Ed McMahon (Publishers' Clearing House Sweepstakes) and Dick Clark ($100,000 Pyramid) also comes to mind.

Ed McMahon and Dick Clark give me the creeps. But I love Bert and Ernie almost as much as I love waffles and maple syrup. I bet Shakespeare never even got to taste a waffle, let alone one drizzled with pure Vermont maple syrup. What a sad, sad life.

3. Use of language
The Tempest's plot may creak and wheeze to a conclusion more predictable than Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve, AND contain absolutely not a single reference to waffles in any form, but the use of the English language is still waffle-like in its sublimity. If I had read the plays in order I would be able to judge if this is Will at the height of his powers, or just something a man with his talents can toss off to meet a deadline. In the speech below, probably the most famous in The Tempest, the pointless spirit pageant celebrating Ferd and Miranda's betrothal is over, and Ferdinand is worried that Propsero looks worried. (Prospero is worried, in fact, about the laughable Caliban-Trinoculo-Stephano plot on his life, which is patently absurd, given how powerful Prospero, Almighty-Bestower-of-Pinches-and-Cramps, is.)

Prospero:

You do you look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismayed; Be cheerful, sir;
Our revels now are ended: These are actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind; We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity;
If you be pleased, retire into my cell,
And there repose; a turn or two I’ll walk
To still my beating mind.
And tasty waffle find.

Or something like that. This is my nomination for the most memorization-worthy dialogue in The Tempest. I could write an entire essay on it by itself (don't worry; I won't). Suffice it to say that in the process of Prospero telling Ferdinand to chill out and take a nap, Will treats us to beautiful visual imagery, tremendous use of puns and double meanings - as if English is just Will's personal plaything -, expert use of meter, rhythm and all that jazz, and a many-leveled philosophical statement. Not bad for an old British guy on the verge of retirement with limited formal schooling and horrendous dental hygiene.

4. Gonzalo's utopian scheme
Here it is:

Gonzalo:

Had I a plantation of this isle, my lord, – […]
And were the king of it, what would I do?
I’ the commonwealth, I would by contraries
Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; no use of service,
Of riches, or of poverty; no contracts,
Successions; bound of land, tilth, vineyards, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too; but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty: -[…]
All things in common nature should produce
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.

Sebastian:

No marrying ‘mong his subjects?

Antonio:

None, man; all idle; whores and knaves.

Gonzalo:

I would such perfection govern, sir.
To excel the golden age.

Gonzalo seems to exist in this play almost solely to deliver this speech. Since any form of political protest by playwrights was severely punished by The Crown in Shakespeare's day, the message here must have been important and personal for Will. It may not seem like much here, but it is something. He was not one to lightly defy the law, the social order, and/or his patrons. But here he is, engaging in a spot of political critiquing. Sticking it to The Man, like those crazy kids on American Bandstand with their long hair, funky clothes, and crazy dance moves. You think it's art, but there's scathing social criticism just teeming beneath the surface!

Utopianism was quite popular during the Elizabethan age. Thinking folk were into Plato and More, and more utopian thought was on the way. Shakespeare apparently anticipated almost all the key elements of contemporary utopian thought in that one speech. I read that on a professor's website somewhere out in the ether, but I can't find the reference now. I don't think political philosophers and Shakepearean scholars spend much time chatting over iced chai lattes these days about the tremendous intersection of their work. Maybe it is because I always enjoyed utopian philosophy when I studied it in school. Maybe it is because I live in Washington, DC, which feels at many times (right now, for example) like the dark corner of the earth most remotely located away from any sort of honorable utopian ideal. But this might be a side of Will worth further exploration. I will keep my eyes open as I read all his other stuff.

5. Caliban as a creative character
Caliban is a bit of a mystery. He is a cad, trying to rape Miranda. He is somewhat comical, worshiping the liquor that has washed ashore with the king's servants. He is defiant, never wavering in his claim to rightful lordship over the island. He is a creature of the earth (see above). He is lyrical; base without being disgusting. It would be nonsense to suggest he anticipates Rousseau's Noble Savage in light of a variety of his characteristics, but he nevertheless carries a sort of dignity about him that the "civilized" drunken butler and court jester, his co-conspirators, entirely lack. Some critics contend that his unrighteous subjugation and maltreatment is Shakespeare's critique of Britain's colonial policy. Given the date and all the other things happening in the play, I find this to be a stretch. But all evidence seems to indicate that Caliban is a unique creation without many parallels in the arts of the day.

6. The muddle of the meaning
Is it Shakespeare's farewell play?

There is nothing to indicate Will knew this might be his last play, although it was clear that his career was winding down.

Is it Shakespeare's American Colonization Critique?

The date seems a bit early to me (1612ish). Or maybe even a lot early to me. But this play undeniably contains reference to the Brave New World, Gonzalo's utopian speech, and the strength and failings of colonizer and colonized.

Is it a Comedy?

Comedies in Shakespeare's day didn't have to be funny, but they generally concerned common sorts of people, and had a happy ending with a moral (like Aesop's fables, with peasants subbing for the animals). Maybe lords and ladies, but not Dukes and Kings.

Is it a Tragedy?

Well, no. Nothing tragic happens. And is sure isn't a History. It's an Ambiguity. Like Dick Clark's age.

So, no one really seems to agree on much about The Tempest. (Except that nothing goes with this play quite like a crisp golden, waffle with Grade A dark amber Vermont Maple Syrup. Mmmmmmm good.) But I take pleasure in the confusion. I respect artists who master and then break artistic forms and structures. Even if they have to include idiotic log-toting scenes to do it.

7. Prospero's farewell speech
Prospero's farewell speech at the end of the play addresses the audience directly, breaking the fourth wall of the theater. He specifically requests hand clapping to release him from the island. So under the guise of a 'do you believe in fairies' Tinker Bell type lecture, he suckers the audience into applauding the end of the play, an act of chutzpah that you probably wouldn't see pulled off in a modern play. Peter Pan would blush. While I don't really believe the speech is Shakespeare's farewell to the stage, I do think it is clever enough to get on my top eight list.

8. 'An Excellent Dumb Discourse'
The Tempest contains the source for the name of this blog. As the king and company are ooh-ing at one of Ariel's mystical light shows, Alonso exclaims (or declaims, or whatever it is they do in highbrow theater), "I cannot too much muse, Such shapes, such gesture, and such sound, expressing,— Although they want the use of tongue,—a kind Of excellent dumb discourse." Since this is my blog, a bit of self-referential promotion seems appropriate.

There you have it friends. My eight nice things to say about The Tempest, with ten coherent and relevant references to Dick Clark and American Bandstand (well, references, anyway) thrown in to the mix to appease those rabid ten fans out there.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go start Henry VI, Part I over a stack of fresh, wonderful waffles. Farewell, Tempest. Hello, Hank.

This essay has been brought to you by The National Federation of Waffles and Waffle-Allied Products, and Dick Clark Productions.

Ciao, Y'all

2004-03-12T01:35:00.000-05:00

The BardBlogger (that's me) is going to Texas today. Strictly for, umm, groundbreaking Shakespearian research purposes. I hear there's a long lost last sestet to one of the unfinished sonnets hidden in the basement of the Alamo.

I will try to post during the week, but my options might be limited. In the meantime, everyone should be sure to feel a tremendous void in their lives in the absence of fresh musings from your humble literary servant.

~M.A. Baker

Meta-Comments

2004-03-09T00:11:00.000-05:00

I'm publishing an additional posting this week in order to respond to some of the comments I have received recently. I should warn you now, only one of these comments has anything to do with Shakespeare. But hey, when the people who regularly follow your work are few enough to fit inside a VW Bug without any sort of clown school training whatsoever, it is wise to nourish your fan base in every way possible. Plus I'm pretty sure, despite the pseudonym, that I am closely related to one of the comment writers. Never leave your relatives hanging when all they seek from you a straightforward answer, I say. Think of all the trouble this would have saved King Lear and Cordelia.

Comment #1:
"There [is] no need to be defensive. And those that criticize because you do not bow down and worship before the holy altar of a [deified Shakespeare] are clearly trying to cover up their own literary inadequacies. Shakespeare may have been one of the greatest literary figures of the english language, but he was still human (or multiple humans if you subscribe to that particular theory). He had great works, good works, average works, and even poor works (lets not forget Timon of Athens). The Tempest is hardly viewed as one of his great works. Whether it is good, average, or merely poor is open to some debate. A quick question though...you call The Tempest his last work...but I thought it was written in 1611 whereas Henry VIII was in 1613. Do I have this wrong?"

~ Touchstone

Me:
I'd hoped not to come off as defensive in my previous posting. Drat this slippery, sublime English language of ours (at least in the hands of yours truly). I don't feel like my opinions are under attack, or even give two-hoots if they are. (One hoot, maybe. We all have our insecurities.) However, given some of the responses I received, I did feel it was necessary to clarify why I was not an unqualified Tempest fanatic, as some readers seemed to have missed my point. As well as the point of my overall effort. That's all.

Regarding the chronology of Shakespeare's last plays, my lackadaiscal research indicates that the whole thing is just a big mess. The Tempest was likely first performed in 1611 or 1612, and Henry VIII was likely first performed in 1612 or 1613. However, some scholarship indicates that Henry VIII was written entirely - or, more likely begun - before The Tempest. But many disagree. Some believe it was a collaboration between Shakespeare and a playwright named John Fletcher. But many disagree. Others think Fletcher finished it. Many disagree with this, too. And let's not even get into The Two Noble Kinsmen, which was probably performed after both of the other two. Any way you look at it, though, it seems certain that Henry was first performed several months after The Tempest, so The Tempest is likely not Shakespeare's last play, ceteris paribus and all that. The Tempest is considered by many to be Shakespeare's farewell play, (although I question this interpretation), and in that mindset I slipped and referred to it as his last play. Given the confusion around when what was written by whom, I might have been right by accident, but probably not. My bad.

Comment #2:
Didn't [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge have a serious opium problem?

~ Bakir

Me:

Hell yes! In fact, all of the Romantic poets (except Wordsworth) are known to have used opium. And personally, I'm not too sure about Wordsworth. I mean, have you read Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood? You don't even need to read it; just check out the name. Clearly, only a person doped up on some sort of smack would ever think that was a good title. ('Hmmm.... maybe I'll just add a fourth prepositional phrase here and... Hey! Far out! Perfectomundo!')

Basically, anyone who could afford any medical attention at all in the 1800s took opium. Doctors seemed to prescribe it for everything; a panacea whose chief allure was that nobody had any @#$%ing clue what it did. At all. This seemed to be a trend in medicine for centuries. I just finished reading The Pope's Ceiling, about Michelangelo, Pope Julius II and the painting of the Sistine Chapel, by Ross King. It's a pretty good read, and includes some darn interesting facts. Like, for example, Pope Julius II fell ill several times during his papal reign, and only survived by steadfastly refusing to follow doctors' orders. He lucked out a bit; known as il papa terribile, his staff and medicos were too terrified of him to overrule his insistence on wine, fruit and fresh meats instead of the prescribed water, stale bread and deadly metals. He recovered from 'deadly' diseases four or five times; he rallied a bit during his final illness, until in a weak moment he accepted a drink from his doctors containing the 'miracle cure-all' we know as powdered gold. He died the next morning.

I don't know what turned things around for the Western World, diagnostically speaking, but I'm going to go ahead and give some of the props Antoine Lavoisier for no real reason other than I think he's cool.

ANYWAY, Coleridge used opium only occasionally and almost always for health reasons - for 'neuralgic and rheumatic pains', whatever those are - from 1791 to 1800. After 1800, he had a serious and prolonged illness while visiting Britain's Lake District, which led to an increased dependence on the drug. By the time he delivered his critiques of Shakespeare, he was completely addicted. Contrary to much opinion, Coleridge hated his addiction, once he realized he had one, and fought it with everything he had. He consulted tons of physicians, who weren't prepared to help him since they couldn't very well prescribe opium to cure an opium addiction, and that was about all they kept in their trusty medical bags. Our boy Sammy T. almost killed himself several times trying to go cold turkey. At the end of his life he was able to wean himself a bit and control his cravings better, although he could never stopped taking entirely.

Coleridge devoted himself in part to preventing others from falling into the same quack-medical trap. "If I entirely recover", he wrote in 1808, "I shall deem it a sacred Duty to publish my Case, tho' without my name -- for the practice of taking Opium is dreadfully spread. -- Throughout Lancashire & Yorkshire it is the common Dram of the lower orders of People -- in the small Town of Thorpe the Druggist informed me, that he commonly sold on market days two or three Pound of Opium, & a Gallon of Laudanum [the simple alcoholic tincture of opium] -- all among the labouring Classes. Surely, this demands legislative Interference . . . . "

You can find out a ton more about it by clicking here:
"Opium and the 'Dream' of Kubla Khan, by John Spencer Hill

For those scratching their heads, wondering why anyone commented here on Coleridge at all, I mentioned his critique of The Tempest in my last entry. I don't know what his opium habit has to do with what he said about The Tempest, but hey, never let it be said I don't respond to readers' questions.

In closing, Just Say No, Kids. Skip the destruction of body and soul. Read Kubla Khan instead.

An interesting thought I will probably never follow up on: Did the perception of opium as a panacea continue to persist in 1844, the year (I think) in which Karl Marx mentioned it in association with religion and the masses? And if so, how should this change our understanding of his aphorism? In a quick Google search, I found at least one person who thinks poor Marx is misunderstood: "Jesus Challenging Marx for soul of China" by G. York in the Feb. 21, 2004 edition of The Globe and Mail

Right. Back to Shakespeare.

Comment #3

what kind of bull**** comment system do you have you arrogant *****? I'm just trying to download a url and am using your site and what do you know? Pretentious BS master doesn't have HTML tags enabled. Eat a ****, you'll always be poor.
~ (No name provided)

Me:

I include this comment only for one reason. To apologize to the world that I can't delete or edit it. Apparently the guy is right, I do use a bull**** comment system, or at least a cheap (free) one. It gives me no control over the content of comments, so I'm sorry I have to leave this up. If anyone knows of a cheap (free) comment system that does let me delete obscene comments, please leave me a comment about it on my current bull**** cheap (free) comment system, and I will switch.

I don't know what the commenter was trying to download for sure, but if I have any control over HTML labels, they are not enabled because of trouble I've been having with formatting on the blog. Very sorry to inconvenience any and all e-miscreants.

This comment has also generated some speculation about my net worth ("you'll always be poor". And from other comments "...Is it because you're poor?" "I heard you are poor, that's tough"). In response to this all I have to say is, umm, yeah, sure - I am poor. SOOOOO poor. Positively destitute. Haven't I told you I'm an out of work writer, for goodness sake? If you are reading this, you are obviously a patron of the arts, so shouldn't you be sending me some of your hard earned luchre, so you can support this effort to beautify the web for all humanity? (Soupy Sales, wherever you are, God Bless you.)

Don't Delay! Patronize My Art! To Save a Poor, Starving Writer, Click Here!

Many thanks in advance for all your generous donations. On Behalf of The Cat, The Spouse, The Bard, and myself, I salute you. If you're generous I'll work to make sure you go down in history as the internet's Lorenzo 'the Magnificent' de Medici. If you're VERY generous, perhaps I'll leave you my second-best bed, just like Will left to his questionably-beloved wife, Anne. Deal?

Why I think I'm Righter than You Think I Am

2004-03-06T17:01:00.000-05:00

A Hopefully Not-Too-Defensive Defense of my lack of Huzzahs for The Tempest

I've received flak from a few quarters for my less than glowing assessment of The Tempest. This is only surprising to me because it means somebody (other than The Spouse) is actually reading my screed. The flak manifests itself in a gentle, chiding form, which was not surprising. We generally save the searing, indignant rudeness for things we actually take seriously and/or find threatening.

The chiding is focuses on two things. First, that maybe if I saw The Tempest acted out on stage I'd be able to -ahem- better appreciate it, and two, that since I'm clearly more comfortable writing about boilers and bum necks, maybe I'm Just Not Getting the magnificence of the final play by one of the greatest writers to ever grace the English language.

As I think I mentioned in my previous entry, The Tempest as a theatrical is undoubtedly a feast for the senses. Great crashing waves, thunder claps, whipping winds and the like make for a scintillating experience. Lots of fun. Some experts speculate that the reason John and Henry stuck The Tempest in as the first play in their Folio was because it was so darn popular with the theatre-going crowd. However, with this blog I'm trying to figure out if I feel the Bard deserves all the accolades. You know- the fame, the groupies, the miserable high-school students forced to commit bits of Macbeth to memory. And for me, the Big Deal about the Bard needs to be more than that he puts on a fun show. All the pieces need to fit: the production, the story, the language, the characters, the subtext and message. I'm not expecting every play I read or see to rock my world. I'm just looking to develop a deep appreciation and the occasional epiphany. Stir my spirits, Bard baby. Surely that's not too much to ask of a guy who's been dead for 388 years.

And The Tempest just ain't all that, my friends. It's a good time, it's got some great things going on, but the plot is instantly predictable and some of the action is just plain silly. If you don't believe me, just ask Samuel Taylor Coleridge - you know, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner guy, who brought us Kubla Khan. Responsible for reviving interest in Shakespeare in Britain, he thinks Prospero's decision to come between Ferdinand and Miranda's mutual swoonfest is lame, too. In his famous lecture on the play, he says, "Prospero's interruption of the courtship has often seemed to me to have no sufficient motive". Another contemporaneous Shakespearean expert also backs me up to a certain extent:

"The Tempest has little of action or progressive movement; the union of Ferdinand and Miranda is settled at their first interview, and Prospero merely throws apparent obstacles in their way; the shipwrecked band go leisurely about the island; the attempts of Sebastian and Antonio on the life of the king of Naples, and the plot of Caliban and the drunken sailors against Prospero are nothing but a feint, for we foresee that they will be completely frustrated by the magical skill of the latter; nothing remains, therefore, but the punishment of the guilty by dreadful sights which harrow up their consciences, and then the discovery and final reconciliation."

Now this critic did NOT manage to write the Rime of the Ancient Mariner OR Kubla Kahn, which means 1) you are allowed to discount his opinion almost as much as you are allowed to discount mine, and 2) my source, an online edition of The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, Alfred Bates, editor, did not bother to let me in on the name of the critic. But I think we can all agree that the important point here is that two learned guys concur with me (to a certain extent). So everybody just back off, okay? You can take exception with me, but don't mess with Sammy T. Because you just might find yourselves with a dead, rotting albatross around your neck. Or worse.

I should add that both of these critics go on to praise many aspects of The Tempest, as will I. But wowed I was not. I'm sure there are many things about The Tempest I am not grasping. But I shouldn't have to look for reasons to say a play is amazing when so many things seem lacking. If Shakespeare's greatness is timeless, no doubt I'll be amazed in due course.

The Storm Within

2004-02-25T16:23:00.000-05:00

(My Neck)

Well, here we are. It is Wednesday; time for me to bare all about the Bard. Only problem this week is, I am practically immobile. That's right folks; Mayday, mayday, Blogger down! If I was a soldier I'd be wounded; a racehorse I'd be coming up lame; a ballplayer I'd be on the DL; a Victorian aristocrat I'd be in need of a rest cure; a politician I'd be suffering a setback, bowed but unbroken. Being none of these things, my neck is just plain killing me, and the pain is shooting into my shoulders like a gatling gun on Valentine's Day. It is very difficult for me to read, and writing on paper is hell. Using the computer can be accomplished with moderate ease, about 15 minutes at a time. Yeah, I know, we've all got problems. But I've got a weblog to pour mine into, and you don't. So be sympathetic or get your own damn blog.

The Spouse, in an outburst of productive concern, consulted with some public domain online medical diagnostic program and decided I have "Wry Neck." Insert your own predictable joke here. You can get Wry Neck by sleeping funny, or being in a big cold wind. Since my cat enjoys surreptitiously taking over my pillow every night, AND no Mom, of course I never go out without a scarf, I'm going with 'sleeping funny' as the cause of my agony. One seems to cure Wry Neck through judicious application of heat, and gentle moving of the neck "within the boundaries of pain."

The advantages of Wry Neck appear to be limited, at least in my case. Being forced to lie in bed all day with a heating pad sounds nice, to the uninitiated, but begins to lose its appeal when:

a) The Cat, aka the Wry Neck Causal Agent, manages to co-opt my heating pad, as well as my pillow. You probably think I'm being too nice to the cat by permitting him to move in on my heating pad, but let me assure you, with this cat, resistance is futile. He would have been worth his weight in Vichy Government bonds to Laval, Petain and company during World War II.

Seriously. I finally had to invest in a second heating pad.

b) We are looking forward to company on Friday. Hopefully the company will be looking forward to meeting our new house in its present state - which could most kindly be described as au natural; less kindly as a study in dust and dirty dishes.

c) You've about had it with The Spouse leaving you cranky comments on your blog about missing your Wednesday deadlines. The Spouse has witnessed my four-thirty am crash courses in html code to prevent the blog from formatting like a kaleidoscope on acid, the late nights with my trusty Shakespeare tome after company has left. How about a little empathy here? Hath not a Blogger eyes? Hath not a Blogger hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same wry neck, subject to the same diseases (let's just see how you fare with Wry Neck, Old Spouse of Mine), healed by the same heating pad (only now we have two, so if the Cat permits, we won't have to share anymore), warmed and cooled by the same scary, dangerously old oil boiler, as The Spouse is? If you prick us, do we not get blood all over the clean laundry we just folded? If you tickle us, do we not laugh until we accidentally punch you in the jaw? If you poison us, do we not puke on your shoes, and remind you we said eating at that shady Chinese place was a bad idea? And if you wrong us in The Comments section, shall we not seek revenge by sneaking into the bathroom during your shower and dumping a glass of ice-cold water on you?

That's right, toots. Beware of chilly liquids when you least expect them. There is much wisdom in Shakespeare.

So, basically, I'm not having any fun here, and you won't be learning much about Shakespeare from me this week. My plan was to discuss the language of The Tempest this Wednesday. Only it was going to be fun, and super interesting. Really. I have some of the lines picked out, but it hurts too much to really do the full job of it. So it will have to wait.

This week's entry, which exists, as I think I've made clear, so no one can claim I didn't give fair warning to The Spouse about the icy future that awaits, will just have to be full of aimless rambling on stuff I don't need to look up, read, or otherwise lend any substance to in any way, which I think I've also made clear. This brings me, naturally, to my newest pet peeve. Pet peeves are super material for someone in my condition, I think, because a 'peeve' is a beef about which you are obsessed but no one else gives a rat's fanny. Having looked into the whole amateur blog scene a bit since I began this enterprise, I feel confident in saying that obsessions of interest to no one other that the author are the essence of most blogs. Plus, the use of the term 'pet' makes clear that what you are about to complain obsessively about is a purely subjective matter, needing - and holding out - no prospect of rational justification, substantive analysis, or coherence. When you have almost no ability to do any research, your resources are all - literally - out of reach, and half your mind is occupied with staying the cat's attempts to commandeer heating pad number two, pet peeves are just what the public domain online medical diagnostic program ordered.

Having thus set, I hope, your expectations lower than below deck on the Titanic, I should hasten to add that I think my newest pet peeve is actually a Serious Issue. You see, I was wondering if anybody out there in the world of Real Scholarship shared my poor opinion of the action in The Tempest. So I did a quick online search and lo and behold! I found several sites just filled to the Gigabytes with essays on different aspects of The Tempest. At first when I saw the list of essay titles I was a bit disheartened. They all sounded so positive and complimentary and otherwise enraptured with The Tempest's amazingness that it did not look like any real experts agreed with me in the least. And then I noticed that while I could read some of the essays gratis, most of them would cost me something for a peak. At least $29.95 a pop. And THEN I noticed that each essay was color-coded by quality. The quality ratings were: Free (red), A Good Essay (aqua), A Very Good Essay (green), An Excellent Essay (blue), Outstanding (purple). On the sidebar of the website were testimonials, all of which pretty much said the same thing, 'My grade went up, like, 5000 percent or something once I started copying stuff -whoops, I mean learning from your site. Since I managed to steal my Dad's credit card one night when he was passed out in a pile of tortilla chips and gin, your pay-to-plagarize (did I spell that right ;) ?) offerings have meant honor roll for me! I only wish you you could do my math, too!'

On the one hand, I was relieved. This explained the sycophantic tenor of the essays. Did you ever try to really tear apart something you had to read in high school? Well, I did and let me tell you, criticism was not well received. The teachers picked the books they shoved down your throat for a reason, and that reason did not seem to be because they thought the books sucked. Oh how vividly I can recall the paper I wrote for high school Sophomore English, which could have been titled, "The Same Damn Ridiculous Thing Happens in Every Freaking Charles Dickens Story You Make Us Read, and I For One Am Sick of Pretending I Think it is Good." Sub-titled, "'The Absurd, Well-Intentioned Mishap on Page Two that Causes Everyone Tremendous Confusion and Heart-Ache Until it is Happily Resolved by the Family Solicitor in the Last Chapter' Plot Devise is Wearing a Little Thin". The teacher was not happy. He kept me after class and explained to me that I was an arrogant nobody, and that Dombey and Son was a thing of pure genius. Later I found out that Dickens didn't think Dombey and Son was all that hot, either, but hey, the family had to eat. I have grown in my affection for Dickens, but not for the English teacher, poor mutt.

But this clouds the central issue. Which is: you can buy school essays online, and you can get crappy ones for free. I don't know which one bothers me more; the general access, or the economic discrimination. The poor, underprivileged kids are stuck with the red essays, which, having read several, I must agree are priced correctly. I suppose a ludicrous few would say this is a way to teach kids the meaning of hard work. If you kill yourself on your paper route, you can shell out the $49.95 for a purple essay and impress the parents. The Spouse, who has a PhD and the puffy hat to prove it, was a student more recently than innocent me, and was not shocked. 'Oh yes,' The Spouse nodded knowingly, 'graduate students can supplement their stipends nicely writing those. They pretend it's no worse than writing for Cliffs Notes, but obviously...' The Spouse's head wagged sadly.

It is a whole different universe than Cliff's Notes, let me assure you. Here are some essay titles I found while visiting a single website:
~Essay on Duality Between Nature and Society in The Tempest
~Magic in Shakespeare's Tempest
~Importance of Dialogue in The Tempest
~The Theatre Metaphor in The Tempest
~Essay on the Exploration of Values in Robinson Crusoe, Odyssey, Tempest and Gulliver's Travels
~Relevance of The Tempest Today
~Opposition between Art and Reality in The Tempest
~Four Sides of The Tempest
~Discrimination Exposed in The Tempest
~Essay on Social Hierarchy in The Tempest
~Essay on Vengeance and Forgiveness in The Tempest
~Art and Nature in The Tempest

And that is just a handful from page one. This single site offers 138 essays about The Tempest. Is there an essay topic a teacher could potentially assign that is not covered here? Not for long, I'm guessing. Does this encourage original thought? Intellectual exploration? ANY EFFORT IN THE LEAST?!?!? The essays come complete with helpful copy and paste instructions for the 3 high school or college students who haven't mastered this procedure yet. They also carefully explain that paying for the essay gives the buyer the right to copy it. Now, if you are a college student, you (or your parents) are probably paying for your education, so if you want to cheat yourself by plagiarizing a $49.95 purple color-coded paper on your way out the door to class because you couldn't tear yourself away from that frat party last night, hey, that's your business. Maybe it was a really good party. But high school students? We were all high school students once, and as high school students you may recall how we were basically hormonally-programmed to be morons. Most days, there was just nothing to be done about it. Judgment was out; swaggering about how wasted you got in your friend's parents' basement last weekend was in. Do we really need to give obnoxious upper-middle class teens another way to be stupid? (Obnoxious upper-middle class teens who accidentally find themselves reading this entry (no doubt misled in their search for an online Tempest essay to "study"): This is a rhetorical question.)

Will the beleaguered teachers be reduced to giving up actual teaching time in order in watch their students actually write their own essays in class? Between that and preparing students for dumb standardized tests that will somehow determine everyone's future, there can't be very much actual teaching time left. Why not just use chimps as teachers, and release this valuable asset of real teachers back out into the private sector where they can directly contribute to GDP growth like good Americans?

I know, worse things exist to be outraged at than the future capacity of our youth to sustain a compelling argument, or independently analyze intelligent work. But hey, the outrage is real, and it's mine, dammit.

And I have Wry Neck. So leave me alone.

Get This Damn Tempest out of my Teapot

2004-02-19T18:24:00.000-05:00

Okay, enough of the post-modern theatrics. Time to get back to the task at hand: letting the world know what humble, skeptical I make of the complete works of The Bard, aka, The Greatest Playwright to Ever Grace the English Language, aka Gentle Master William, aka William Shakespeare, aka My Big Mean Patootie (Anne Hathaway only). The central question being, "Is Shakespeare really All That?" Has he survived into the Deconstructionist Age of Irony, continuing to inspire, amuse and stimulate the mid-cult masses like little ol' me?
The first data point for our study is The Tempest. (See, now there's a sentence Shakespeare would never have contemplated, let alone written. Even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell would shudder at that odious conglomeration of words. Maybe if I determine that The Bard has not stood the test of time, the fault will be with the time, not The Bard.) Anyway, I have read The Tempest, and it is (drum roll).................. Dysfunctional. (So I suppose it should fit right in to our Deconstructionist Age of Irony.)

To my decidedly non-expert mind, The Tempest as a plot-driven vehicle for the purposes of drama is absurd. I know because I looked 'drama' up. Webster's 1913 Dictionary defines drama as, "A composition, in prose or poetry, accommodated to action, and intended to exhibit a picture of human life, or to depict a series of grave or humorous actions of more than ordinary interest, tending toward some striking result. It is commonly designed to be spoken and represented by actors on the stage." Well, this composition, in prose, accommodated to a very vague idea or action, does most decidedly NOT exhibit a picture of human life as any real human being knows it, the series of actions are utterly lacking in humor and gravity, and the result would be a lot more striking if it wasn't completely obvious from the end of Act I, Scene II. So there.

This is not to say, however, that The Tempest is bad. As a series of events it is inane. But clearly, many Big Things are bubbling below the surface. The characters and their actions seem entirely secondary to the Big Things. But first, I should tell you what The Tempest is about. Well, it is really about these Big Things I keep alluding to in a vague and annoying manner. But as for what happens, all that can be easily explained.

In Act I, a ship is stuck in a storm. The Boatswain is really concerned about it, and yells "yare" and "yarely" a lot. "Yare" is an obsolete term which means, in the nautical context, 'Put your backs into [doing your difficult sailor task, like pulling ropes, or hoisting and heaving stuff, or swabbing the ship's naughty bits] you no good scuvydogs, or we be storing our bones in Davy Jones locker.' (Although I believe Davy Jones postdates Shakespeare, but you know what I mean.) Amidst all this yaring, there appears 4 men: Gonzalo, Sebastian, Ferdinand and Antonio. Each one is in turn either nice, mean or demeaning to the Boatswain, who is, after all, just trying to save everyone from two lungs full of saltwater. These exchanges let us know who the decent guy is (Gonzalo), and who the louts and/or bad guys are (Antonio and Sebastian). We also learn that the King of Naples in on board, and that Ferdinand is his son. The storm picks up, and the nice guy comports himself with some grace, and the louts/bad guys act cowardly and mean, and then the Boatswain lets everybody know that the ship is going to break up.

End Scene I of Act I.

I must admit, at this point I had high hopes. The idea of being in the audience, watching this terrible storm, hearing the alluded to crashing waves; it all has its appeal. Assuming the actors don't just throw themselves about the stage to denote tumult, Star Trek-style, this is damn exciting stuff. Sure, some annoying guys had appeared, but maybe they'd be dead in the shipwreck by the next scene. But lo! Hope not! Scene II lays it all out for us, and the rest of the play is just one big anticlimax.

In Scene II, we meet Prospero and his daughter, the fair and nubile (of course) Miranda. They seem to be existing in a dank cave on some dinky island all by themselves. This could be interesting. And then, they open their mouths.

Miranda's seen the storm and asks her dad to cut it out with the magic business, because someone might get hurt. Right away he fills her in that nobody is going to get hurt, and everything is going to work out great. So much for my suspense-filled curiosity about the ship's passengers (although it is nice to know that the Boatswain, by far my favorite character, will live to yarely sail again). Miranda wants to know what the hell is going on, so Dad asks her if she remembers life before they were stranded on this bizzaro island. All Miranda remembers is that she used to have women who brushed her hair and smoothed her pinafore and otherwise tended to her every whim. They've been on the island for twelve years, and the now 15 year-old Miranda has never been able to find out where the women went, why she has to attend to her own toilette now, or how the hell they got there in the first place. Either Prospero is a VERY tight-lipped sort of father, or he's a sadist, or both.

Today's Miranda's lucky day; Dad is going to spill all. Prospero explains at GREAT length how he used to be the Duke of Milan, but he turned over the running of his Dukedom to his brother (that would be Uncle Antonio, whom we last saw being pissy on board the ship), so Prospero could focus on studying the magical arts and sciences in his library. Long story short, Brother Antonio digs the power trip, and conspires with Prospero's enemy, the King of Naples, to boot Propero's bookwormy behind. At night, Antonio opens the gates and lets the host from Naples in. Now Antonio rules Milan and is loyal to the King of Naples, while Prospero's library access is revoked. Not fair!

Prospero and Miranda are not killed, Propsero explains, because the Milanese people love him too much. (A note to you politicians; if you just holed yourself up in your libraries and left the leading/governing to your toadies, your popularity would skyrocket. The Ronald Reagan method, except for the libraries part.)

Apparently, however, the people are down with dad and daughter being shunted onto a rickety old boat with no food or water and lots of rats, because that's what Antonio and the King, aka Alonso, decide to do. The honest advisor Gonzalo is given the shunting task and, like the Queen's woodman from Snow White after him and so many henchmen to come, he blows it. Only those pure in mind, heart and intention should delegate. Gonzalo sticks our friends on the rickety old boat, but gives them food, water, books, clothes AND rats. Included among the clothes is Prospero's technicolor scheme cloak; these are his robes he wears whenever he's being magical. What luck!

Eventually, dad and daughter and their rotten boat wash up on a remote island. The island was ruled by Sycorax, an evil hag-witch (is there any other kind?), but she conveniently died before Prospero and Miranda wade ashore. 'Ruled' is a bit of an exaggeration, because no one else lives on the island except Sycorax's son, Caliban, and a spirit named Ariel. Anyway, Propsero took over where Sycorax left off, and the island got a benevolent, wise wizard (at least in his own mind) for a 'ruler' in place of the evil hag-witch.

Is that enough exposition for you? Shakespeare must have felt a little bad about tossing all this out there at once, because Propsero keeps pausing in the middle of his story to check and make sure Miranda (his audience) and by extension, we (The Audience), are still awake. Here's a sample:

Prospero:	The government I cast upon my brother... [blah, blah, I studied secret stuff...blah, blah...] Dost thou attend me?
Miranda:	Sir, most heedfully.
Prospero:	[Blah, blah, blah, back-story, righteous indignation, perfidious plots] Thou attend'st me not; I pray thee, mark me.
Miranda:	O good sir, I do.
Prospero:	[Blah, blah, blah, your uncle's a slimy bastard, none of this is my fault, blah] Dost hear?
Miranda:	Your tale would cure deafness.
Me:	SHE'S BEEN ASKING YOU FOR OVER A DECADE WHY THE HELL YOU ARE STUCK ALONE ON THIS GODFORSAKEN ISLAND!! DO YOU REALLY THINK SHE'S DAYDREAMING ABOUT THE CRAB STEW YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE FOR DINNER TONIGHT FOR THE 4383rd TIME INSTEAD OF PAYING ATTENTION?!? FOR THE LOVE OF SYCORAX GET ON WITH IT!!!

(I like to think I speak for all of us in The Audience, sometimes.)

Well, that's just a sample. The whole one-sided conversation thing goes on for quite some time. QUITE some time. Prospero pauses for air, and Miranda gets to mention that they had started off talking about that storm he'd started... Prospero lets her know that, using his dark magic and cool coat, he's figured out that now is the time for him to right their wrongs, and that the shipwreck he's caused has brought all his foes together to the island. And then, no doubt impatient with her listening skills which he's questioned so many times already, Prospero informs Miranda that she's tired now, are he flicks his hand or something, and she falls asleep.

I wish I could do that.

With Miranda comatose, Prospero calls forth Ariel, the spirit and - in my mind - the real magicmaker. Ariel went and made the storm and all that, and made sure everyone washed ashore in a strategically placed manner according to Prospero's designs. It seems Ariel is a spirit-slave to Prospero. Sycorax asked Ariel to do some yucky stuff back during her reign, and he (Ariel) was so disgusted that he refused, so Sycorax imprisoned him in some way that is left hazy in the play but might be inside a tree or rock. Then she died and Ariel was stuck for all eternity. Except Prospero found him and free him. Prospero did not then say to Ariel, "My! What an ordeal. Poor thing. Well, at least you're free now!" Instead, Prospero decided that Ariel works for him now, and under the terms of the contract Ariel will only be free if he does what his Master tells him and helps him get his Dukedom back.

Everybody got all that? Good. Prospero wakes Miranda and gives Ariel secret, whispered instructions. Ariel gets off the stage and we all breathe a sigh of relief. There couldn't possibly be any more exposition coming our way, now, right?

Wrong. Enter Caliban, Sycorax's son, whom the Dramatis Personae describes as "a savage and deformed slave". Which brings the tally on the island to 2 slaves and 2 free people. A nice comfortable ratio, if you're one of the free people. But don't think too badly of Prospero. He didn't always treat Caliban like a slave, as we are about to find out through a heap more of reminiscence, back-story and exposition.

When they arrived at the island, Caliban was all alone (except for Ariel, stuck in his tree or rock). He couldn't talk (apparently Ma Sycorax was not much of a proponent of home schooling), and was thoroughly uncouth. His table manners were atrocious. Prospero raised Caliban like a son, and gave him speech. And let me tell you, Caliban has the foulest, meanest, tongue imaginable. If the part were written today, Caliban would be bluer than Andrew Dice Clay. As it is, it's enough to make an ale-wench blush. What was Prospero thinking?

Anyway, the whole Prospero-Caliban love-in came to an end when Caliban tried to rape Miranda. I have to imagine that it was at this point that Caliban picked up most of his choicer phrases from the lips of our man Prospero. Of course, none of this actually happens during the play. This is all just more- you guessed it- Exposition. So now Caliban is a very begrudging slave (is there any other kind?). If Caliban doesn't do what Prospero tells him, Prospero sics his magic on Caliban. Caliban is very scared of this punishment. What form of pain and torture does Prospero's magic take on the unworthy Caliban? If I gave you three guesses, do you think you'd come up with...

...Pinches and cramps?

You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. See-

Prospero:
(to
Caliban)

For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch'd more stinging
As thick as honey-combs, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made them.

That's right, pinches and cramps plague Caliban if he displeases his master. (No doubt about it; Prospero may be able to see the future and stuff, but Ariel's the guy with the real sorcery. I mean, pinches and cramps? Admittedly, it doesn't sound that pleasant the way Prospero describes it, but come on! Good thing Caliban's not female, or his menstrual cycle would have driven him to suicide.) Caliban clearly deserves what he gets, however; he is most distinctly and unpleasantly unrepentant.

Well, now that we have yet another back-story established, Caliban can leave for the moment. Next enters Ariel- again- this time leading an entranced Ferdinand with him. We met Ferdinand earlier, on the ship (remember the ship? In the storm? That tempest thing this play is named after?), although he didn't say much. He's the son of the King of Naples.

It is at this point that Things actually Start to Happen. And boy! Are they predictable! Ferdinand becomes unentranced in front of Prospero and Miranda. Ferd naturally falls instantly in love with Miranda, and she with him (after all, he's the only thing with a Y chromosome she can remember seeing besides her dad and Caliban). Once Ferd has established that Miranda is a virgin, they're ready to tie the knot (and all in one conversation during one scene, just like real life!). Prospero, who has obviously planned the entire thing, is pleased as punch, but he acts cranky about the entire thing. 'Why' you may ask? Can't they just end it now and skip Acts II-V? (That's right, we're still just chugging along in Act I, Scene II, here.) No, Prospero lucidly explains as an aside to The Audience:

Prospero: ...They [Ferd and Miranda] are both in either's powers; but this swift business I must uneasy make, lest too light winning Make the prize light....

Riiiight. And that, my friends, is one heck of a lesson of love. Ya gotta earn it, people. Miranda's task is Worry, since her father lets on to her that he's not a fan of Ferd. Ferd, now, he's got a heftier assignment. Apparently there are no dragons to slay or iron to make into gold or anything of your more classic quests available, so Prospero comes up with the next best thing. Ferdinand is going to have to bring in some firewood. A lot of it. Prospero probably gives him a heap of instructions offstage about how exactly to pile it up, too. You know, keep the oak separate from the maple, arrange the kindling in pentagrams, with the widest diameter pieces on the bottom; that sort of thing. So Ferd goes off to pick up sticks and thus make the prize not be light.

End Act I!!!

Well, that's really all that happens. Acts II-V you can pretty much guess for yourselves. In the rest of the play, the King and his peeps search for Ferd, although the King thinks he's probably drowned. Ariel arrives, and puts everyone but Antonio, Prospero's Milanese usurping brother, and Sebastian, the king's brother, to sleep. Apparently Prospero wants to give Antonio the change to convince Sebastian to kill the king and seize the crown. Antonio obligingly does so. Brother Tony seems to really be into usurping, and must not want his skills to get rusty, because he gives no other reason. You might think I do the play an injustice by assuming you'd predict this all from Act I, but the point is that it doesn't matter. Ariel wakes everybody up just as Sebastian has agreed to be a usurper too, and the it all comes to nothing. Now Prospero, having divined the entire thing, has dirt on both Antonio and Sebastian, should either of them cause him trouble in the future. Other than that, the whole subplot is just filler so we can count all the way up to an Act V eventually.

The other thing that happens that has no bearing on anything involves the king's butler, the drunkard Stephano, and his jester, Trinculo. (They were on the boat, too, apparently, and washed ashore in a different spot, per Prospero's and Ariel's designs.) They come across Caliban skulking in the forest, bemoaning his cramps and pinches. Stephano and Trinculo give Caliban some booze that has also magically washed ashore. Caliban becomes and instant alcoholic and pours out his troubles about Prospero and the pinches and cramps. Stephano convinces Caliban to kill Prospero so that butler and jester can rule the island. Caliban is really excited at this idea, and begins to worship Stephano, Trinculo and Stephano's booze in an interesting twist on the Trinity. Since Prospero has once again arranged for everyone to meet, there's no need to worry. As with the two usurping brother, all this plotting comes to nothing.

Back in cave, aka Prospero and Miranda's home sweet home, Prospero eventually wearies of watching Ferdinand move wood, and tells the couple they can get married. In the most annoying sequence in the play, Prospero calls in a bunch of spirits and they put on a little song and dance number for the betrothed. Prospero mercifully has to cut the show short so he can foil the Caliban/Stephano/Trinculo plot by brushing lint off his magic coat, waving his hands and looking cranky. Prospero gives the lot of them an inconceivable amount of pinches and cramps, and had Ariel stick them in the middle of some sort of swampy place to suffer.

Prospero then has Ariel go fetch the king and the remaining shipwreckees. While waiting, Prospero swears to the audience that when this is all over, he and magic are through. What? And lose those snazzy robes? Shudder the thought!

Ariel brings Alonso and his entourage (including Gonzalo and the naughty brothers) to the cave, and Prospero gives them an earful. Everyone feels really bad (except for Antonio, who is obviously scared but regrets nothing). Alonso and Prospero make peace, but the king is still bummed because he's sure Ferd is dead. Prospero sympathizes, saying how he's just lost his daughter. Ha ha ha!

Finally, with a flick of his robes, Prospero lights up the back of the cave, where Ferd and Miranda are chilling out over a game of chess. Ahh! What is it to be romantic and royalty! Everyone is soooo happy (except the guys being pinched and cramped in the swamp, and the brothers, who try to put a good face on things anyway). They all get ready to go back to Italy on the ship, which is totally fine. All the sailors are waking up from their magic slumbers about now, and are pleased that they are not dead. My hero, the Boatswain, tells everybody to yare this and yarely do that.

Just before they leave, Prospero gives Ariel his freedom. Prospero then ends the play with a self-serving little epilogue to The Audience, about what a good, benevolent - although no longer magical - guy he is.

Curtain.

So much for The Tempest. Now we all know what happens. Did you like it? I've been pretty flippant in describing this play, but the plot is so silly I couldn't help myself. I assure you, I am much more serious and respectful of the underlying themes and the poetry of the language. But I've prattled on for over 3,000 words, I'm sure, so I'll end it here for now. My next will be filled with what I think it all means, and other deep, analytical thoughts like that.

There's a Tempest in my Teapot (again)

2004-02-04T22:12:00.000-05:00

-or-
Prospero's Technicolor Scheme Cloak,
Take II
Ahh!! Early February! The grey Ghost of Christmas Malingering. The snow, the mud, the damp, the heating bills. I did hope to get back to dissecting The Tempest before my weekly Wednesday post, but I was too busy shivering. Our new house I mentioned in an earlier post is actually a pretty old house (1920s), with old, tall radiators like your grandmother might have had, and an ANCIENT oil boiler (referred to affectionately as 'The Dragon') which sort of looks like what would happen if Robby the Robot mated with a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. While I'm sure you find these details fascinating, the point is that we ran out of oil last week after I published my most recent blog posting. I woke up and it was 52 degrees in the warmest nooks of the house; I called the oil company. They informed me that it looked like I was about out of oil according to their records. I relayed our thermostatic data and politely agreed with this assessment. I opted not to demand why they hadn't brought more oil, if they knew we were 'about out'; instead I serenely enquired as to how quickly they could bring one of their delightful vehicles over to replenish the belly of The Dragon. We have a '24/7 contract' with the oil company, so I figured I wouldn't have to wait all that long; heat by suppertime, I reckoned. The oil company cheerfully informed me that none of their trucks were out that day, so sometime the next day would have to do. Oh- and was I interested in upgrading to their Platinum Elite Supreme Max Service? This is when our oil company ceased to be our oil company and became The Man in my mind.

The day wore on, the thermostat dropped and I added and a third, then a fourth, sweater to my long underwear, fleece-lined jeans, thermal socks, winter coat, hat, and wool gloves. The next morning the needle of the thermostat was buried as low as it could go; it was probably digging in for warmth. I could see my breathe after every gulp of hot tea, and I lost contact with my toes and fingertips. I entertained myself by composing powerful and indignant speeches to spew at The Man when our pipes froze. At 5pm, The Man rolled by and hooked us up with our overdue oil. When He brought the bill to the door, I intercepted it personally so He could see my poor, freezing bundled self.

Appeals for pity never work with The Man.

He glanced at me, 'Hey, this happens again, just go to the gas station and get some diesel. That's all it is, anyway.' He shrugged. He left. I got on the phone with The Man to give him a piece of my freezer-burned mind. Naturally, I was put on hold. Now, it might be amusing to guess what sort of entertainment The Man's oil company cues up for his holding customers. Here, take our not-about Shakespeare quiz-

Is it:
a) 'Hot, Hot, Hot' by Buster Poindexter'?
b) 'Keep it Warm' by Black Sabath?
c) A selection from Midnight Oil's greatest hits of the 70s and 80s?

Haha! None of the above! No, The Man's oil customers are instead serenaded by a 'public service announcement' which runs like this: 'To insure the proper functioning of all your heating equipment, it is important to remember to keep your thermostat set to a minimum of 70 degrees both day and night.' I kid you not. After about five minutes of listening to this message over and over again, I had to hang up. ANYWAY, the point is I tried typing an entry, but it was hard to type in wool gloves. By the time the heat was back on, I was a little insane and not in a suitable frame of mind to grapple coherently with the Bard or anything else. I spent the rest of the time doing my taxes til body and soul defrosted.

So I kept the fidgety public waiting an entire extra week to find out all about The Tempest (assuming they have settled on my blog as the one and only source for feeding their Shakespeare habit), and I am Really Sorry About It, for more than one reason. I know, I know, you thought about just going out and reading the thing yourself- or maybe seeing if you could rent the Hollywood-ization. But you stopped yourself. 'That poor person goes to all that trouble to enlighten me; I shouldn't peek ahead and spoil all the fun,' you chided yourself. That was very noble of you. Besides, I haven't heard of any good Tempest: The Movie versions in wide release, and you probably should be deciding whom to vote for in a primary or something, like the good citizen you are, instead of getting ahead of me in the quest to read all the works that Will wrote.

Well, your long wait is over. I've read The Tempest and I'm going to tell you all about it. First off, though, as I mentioned last week, I want to read the plays in the order Shakespeare conceived them. For reasons that seemed clear at the time but are now hazy to me, I assumed that when our buddies John Heminge and Henry Condell slapped together this here compilation back in 1623, they catalogued them in the order written. The Tempest is the first in the book, so it must be THE first, right? I started The Tempest all alert and curious about what might be Shakespeare's maiden voyage into the art form he would later master. But as I read, the whole thing felt wrong. It didn't really seem like a comedy, it didn't really seem like a tragedy. Some of the dialogue was extremely sophisticated, at least as far as I could tell, but not much seemed to happen. And what did happen was so obvious, for the most part. Each scene felt to me like a caricature of a Shakespearean device. All these different issues and themes swirled around under the surface, but after all, as that Danish prince guy who's name escapes me for the moment so aptly put it, "The play's the thing," and the actual moving parts of the play seemed so trite and silly (without in anyway being amusing) despite what seemed like a sophisticated underbelly. Was this the work of a wunderkind who lacked the subtly and depth of a mature craftsman? Did Will churn this one out at the age of 5-and-a-half, spelling it out in his play-pen with Elizabethan Tinker Tots? Something was awry.

So I did some research. Well, 'research' may be a bit strong. I poked around a bit on the web. And it turns out that those wacky guys, John and Henry, grouped all the "comedies" together first, followed by all the "tragedies". Not only that, but they didn't list the comedies in any sort of order that I could tell, either. Not only that, but they put The Tempest FIRST even though it was very nearly one of Shakespeare's LAST plays, to the extent anybody is sure of anything about William Shakespeare. Instead of fighting through a nasty sea squall, it turns out I should have been living it up with (The First Part of) King Henry VI .

Nothing with this Shakespeare stuff seems to be easy and straightforward. But, if I do say so myself, big pat on the back to yours truly for figuring something seemed rotten in the state of, uh, well, you know....

I'm resolved to start using a proper chronology for my next play. That means I shall have to look forward to this King Henry VI fellow next instead of the Two Gentlemen of Verona; don't know any of the three personally, but anonymous Italian gents tend to be more reliable fun than a big, fat, wife-decapitating Defender/Abolisher/Reinventor of the Faith. Oh wait, that was Henry VIII, not-so doting dad of the Shakespeare's reigning monarch. He's the LAST play I'll be reading, I think. Well, Henry VI must be something special, because the first THREE Shakespeare plays ever performed were ALL about him. I know about Henry II, who was married to Katharine Hepburn in A Lion in Winter and had Edward the Lionheart and John-of-Robin-hood-and-magna-carta-fame. I know of Henry V, who got angry and ran about France during the Hundred Years War and is solely responsible for any average person knowing anything about Saint Crispin's Day (well, maybe not solely responsible; big assists from our Bard and Kenneth Branagh, who I wish would make more movies because I don't think I've ever seen a bad one he'd had a major hand in, which is saying something, although I didn't see The Gingerbread Man. And a film like the Wild Wild West might happen to anyone. Oh- and I'm afraid I didn't enjoy The Theory of Flight at all, but that could just be me. But how about Conspiracy, Dead Again, A Month in the Country, Fortunes of War, not to mention all the Shakespeare he's guided to the silver screen? Not too shabby, I say.). ANYWAY, I also know something of Henry VIII. But Henry VI is an unknown to me; I can approach him with a refreshing objectivity.

Oh wait- I still haven't let you in on the world that is The Tempest yet. How amusing would you or I find it if I put off telling you all about it yet again? A little bit of "what's past is prologue" for the Bardblog. Will I get insight into Samuel Beckett's bemused feelings as he watched his audience watch the unfolding of Waiting For Godot at the Grand Premiere Gala Opening? I fear I'm sinning above my station here, but hey, only one way to find out. But let me assure you, now that I have this entire chronology thing straightened out, it should be smooth sailing from here on it. Well, smooth sailing after I finish/start telling you about The Tempest. Which I PROMISE to do in my next....

There's a Tempest in my Teapot

2004-01-28T22:32:00.000-05:00

-or-
Prospero's Technicolor Scheme Cloak

Per my previous entry, I am underway with my project to examine The Bard. I have muddled through The Tempest. I read The Tempest first because it is the first play in my Complete Works of William Shakespeare book, and with a touching faith in the logic of humanity, I assumed that it was somehow considered his first play. I soon discovered my mistake; more on this later. Before I took the plunge, as it were, I perused the dedication and note to readers, both inserted by John Heminge and Henry Condell in the Folio of 1632 (that being, I think, the first complete compilation of Shakespeare). The dedication is to William Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain to the King and Philip Earl of Montgomery, Gentleman of his Majesty's Bedchamber. Both Bill and Phil were knights, with a heap of letters after their names, although one of them clearly had the more desirable portfolio. The dedication, written after Shakespeare died, is the usual bum-sucking nonsense, 'we hope you like this offering even though it's not worthy of wiping your chamber pot' type stuff. (This is an awkward thing for John and Henry to say, since they didn't write the contents, and they struggle to find a way to kiss up to Bill and Phil without really debasing the Bard's goods. Thank goodness we live in a post-polite age, (sorry Miss Manners) where ridiculous situations of this kind are cavalierly replaced with straightforward presumptuousness or belittlement.)

The second message is "To the Great Variety of Readers from the most able, to him that can but spell...", and from the vibe here, it seems the Great Variety isn't worthy of licking out good ol' John and Henry's chamber pots with a rusty spoon. The note is largely an impassioned appeal to these readers to actually dole out the shillings for their Shakespeare compilation. 'Buy this book even though you are a total twit' is the overall gist. In fact, the message is a 1600's version of the hard sell, and John and Henry seem to think that insults, mocking and jibes are the best way to inspire would-be buyers. This is a marketing strategy worthy of a case study of two at Harvard Business School and other such institution of dissipation.

Poor John and Henry anticipate a good deal of criticism from the Great Variety, and although they did not write anything in the book besides the kiss-ass dedication and this anti-reader message to the reader, they clearly despise the critics. I don't know who John and Henry are when they're at home, but it is nice to see them taking a personal interest in their (presumably) friend's work. Assuming the Great Variety has but a poor notion of what makes prose good or bad in and of itself, John and Henry urge the work to be judged by how much it cost, e.g., 'Well, it's not exactly the bee's knees, but I guess I got my five shillings worth'. (Cleverly, John and Henry realize that this entails the readers BUYING the work,thus realizing their main objective. In what other way readers are to gain access to the compilation is not made clear. Were lending libraries all the rage back then? Was book-theft a major crime which remained unchecked until the merciful founding of Scotland Yard some 200 years later allowed people to once again move freely about the great Metropolis, displaying their calf-skin tomes in public with confidence and pride?) If you don't think the work measures up to whatever you've shelled out for it; no matter, John and Henry have you covered there, too. Your opinion doesn't matter anyway, since "though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage... to arraign plays daily, know that these plays have had their trial already, and stood out all appeals; and do now come forth quitted rather by a degree of court, than any purchased letter of commendation." As a critic, you are irrelevant.

Ending their note, John and Henry apologize for the crappy, incomplete Shakespeare rip-offs currently circulating as a way of assuring the unworthy public that their edition is neither crappy nor incomplete. Maybe they figure their rudeness will go a long way to assure prospective purchasers that this is not like the previous "frauds and... injurious impostors." Impostors would be more respectful and well-mannered, in a beguiling sort of way. Nothing like a straightforward insult to assure everybody of your bona fides. In closing, John and Henry entreat the witlings they've conned into buying the book to "Read... and again and again: and if then you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him." So there, moron. Look sharp, keep your opinions to yourself and memorize a few soliloquies while your at it.

As a member of the Great Variety, I was in a somewhat defiant mood as I turned the page to begin, at long last, The Tempest. However, I'm afraid I spent an unconscionable number of words yammering on about a simple introduction. Unfortunately, duty calls, the telephone is ringing, and I'm afraid the cat's about to be sick. What I found within the following pages of my "Folio" will have to wait until my next entry, soon to be published.

Introduction: My Blog and its Story

2004-01-23T15:18:00.000-05:00

Okay, so here is my idea. I am on a mission; a mission to conquer The Bard. My goal within these virtual pages is to chronicle my journey through the entire, collected works of one William Shakespeare. Well, at least that is the plan right now. First, I'm going to tackle the plays. Then if 1) my friends don't hate me because I only speak in iambic pentameter and 2) I am still sane enough to recognize that slim-legged pageboys are invariably disguised females pursuing/testing or otherwise befuddling would-be suitors ONLY in Elizabethan drama and thus 3) refrain from assaulting my friendly, epicene delivery man, Richard, with suspicious stares and double-edged language, THEN I shall proceed to the poems. As I wade through said works, I will be sharing what no doubt will be my deluge of insights, thoughts and absurdities with the indifferent public via this happy blog. Hopefully this will be entertaining; at the very least blog-readers will be spared mucking about with Troilus and Cressida or Pericles, Prince of Tyre themselves, while still being able to wow 'em at cocktail parties, water coolers, book club meetings, and other fetes absurdes as needed. Also, I shall be very careful to catalogue all the antiquated curses, insults and put-downs that I come across; this will no doubt provide a deep and worthy well for all to draw from to better their vocabulary of scorn and vitriol.

Is everybody with me???

In a spirit of full disclosure, I should let everyone know that I am a Blog novice, both as a consumer and a producer. I am sure I shall make many errors of blogging etiquette and I know absolutely no blogging terms of art. I should also add that I am uninterested in acquiring insight into either the etiquette or the terms, so I will not improve as time goes on. I am not, at heart, a true blogger and I hope you can forgive me. I am just someone who enjoys writing. And the major reason that I have started a blog is so I can stop looking blank when people ask me if I have one. My decision came about in this way: I decided just over a year ago to live off my savings, not look for another desk job, and write a book. I have been writing my book and am almost done. Recently, however, I got married and moved to a new town. This town happens to be Washington, DC. In Washington, DC, I have met many, many new people. These people all seem to regard themselves as incredibly hip and in the know and ravishingly intelligent. When I meet these people, several things inevitably happen. The first thing that happens is that they ask what I do (occupation is a major path to power here, and power is status, so this is everybody's first question; like asking on the West Coast what car you drive, or in the Northeast what school you graduated from). When I respond, in timid tones, that I am a writer - or at least trying to be - the second thing happens: each one in turn looks brightly at me and says a variation of, "Oh, and do you have a blog?" When I say no, the third things happens: these people condescend to educate me.

They prattle on about all the wonderful writers/bloggers out there (who's names and websites they can never remember) and how anybody can do it (not that these people actually are doing it) and how everybody is doing it (these people will no doubt be getting around to doing it soon) and how it is sooo WONDERFUL that we ALL can be writers, now. Unless I am able to make a tactful escape at this point I am well and truly stuck; they are just getting started, having taken me for a simpleton who thinks an icon is something found in a Greek Orthodox church. As I rue the day I married someone who chose a career where I have to be polite, I am serenaded with an hour-and-a-half lecture on the Wonders of Technology, which transitions easily from blogs to global information sharing and the mixing of cultures and ideas, but generally ends with a detailed accounting of how much Christmas shopping my would-be educators did online. Now, I love computers, I am a gamer, I enjoy the internet, but this is all very wearing. After about the seventh "conversation" I endured like this, I determined that either I would develop sympathies for the Unabomber, or I needed to start a blog myself. Then I could just say, "Why, yes, of course. But don't we all?" and move on so I could be condescended to on an entirely different subject. (And I hold out the dream that someday at one of these parties where I meet lots of new people I will meet an actual, active blogger who will be kind and amusing and hate these people as much as I do.)

Having resolved to create a blog, I still felt the need to do it well, or at the very least, make it interesting. I recently moved into a new house in my new town, and was unpacking the flotsam and jetsam of my new spouse's and my life as I mulled over my blog. Several social functions were looming, and I would no doubt be meeting many more Bright Young Know-it-alls. Opening up the 134th box of books, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare floated up to me from pile. We had bought it seven years ago while we were a-courting, and toyed with the idea of reading the plays aloud to one another. In the end, we settled on The Lord of the Rings (which I must add is a truly wonderful set of books to read aloud, especially as a couple; we took a self-guided bicycling tour up the West Coast of Ireland with the tome strapped to one of our bikes, and whenever we were exhausted or just saw an idyllic spot, we stopped and read a bit. One of my favorite memories.), and poor old Will got sent to the bottom of the 134th pile. As I stood there, eyeing the massive volume, I reflected, "what is the big deal about Shakespeare, anyway?" I have experienced a decent amount of Shakespeare one way or another, especially while I was getting my master's degree in London. I have enjoyed Shakespeare very much, but I've certainly never felt intellectually stimulated by his work. Is it just that he was the First to come up with some many plots, devices and characters? (Well, second, perhaps, after the ancient Greeks, but first in English, I guess.)

There must be something more; something I am missing, right? We had to read it in school, and even memorize a bit of it, and when we go to plays at any of the unavoidable Shakespeare festivals throughout the English speaking world, I have always found there to be a reverent atmosphere that puts the worshipers at most churches to shame. Why don't we make such a big fuss about Chaucer, or Sophocles or Tennessee Williams or O'Neill? And we DO make a big fuss about these guys; it just doesn't compare- in quantity, anyway- to the fuss we make about the dear old Bard (I don't think anyone's ever bastardized the ending of Romeo and Juliet the way they did in the Brando version of A Streetcar Named Desire, for example. And I bet you can count the Sophocles festivals you've picnicked at on the right hand of Captain Hook.)

Well, that vague curiosity I felt as I fingered the perfect spine of the book was good enough for me. I may have experienced an above average amount of Shakespeare compared to Joe American of Peoria, Illinois (although I'm now told that Oklahoma City is the new standard in the averagest of the average for polling and advertising purposes, but Peoria sounds cooler, I think), but my understanding is but a teardrop in the ocean compared with those true experts out there, who murmur lines along with the actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and argue for hours about the significance of the syntax at the start of Act III, Scene I in Second Part of King Henry IV.

So I'm going to launch my not virginal, but certainly still inexperienced self into the world that's really all stage, and chart my journey as I do. At best, it will be a revelation to me and an interesting, entertaining time to those who chose to peruse it. (By the way, I plan to post at least once a week, and always on Wednesdays.) At worst, people will have to think of something else to say to me at social gatherings.

Either way, man the sails as we take to the high seas! Coming up, our first port of call, The Tempest.

Something on Your Mind?

2003-10-31T20:48:00.001-05:00

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