Monthly Archives: December 2011

I really enjoyed reading through the Winter’s Tale. It had a lot
of elements in it that I would not have expected in a Shakespearean play – primarily
the time skip, as well as the transition in the play from a tragedy to almost a
comedy. I really didn’t expect the play to have a happy ending after the way it
started. I figured Leontes would end up repenting the rest of his life for
destroying his family, but it was almost like a reunion after a long journey at
the end of the play. It was really surprising as well – I did not expect
Hermione to be alive.

The play gave off a lot of interesting takeaways as well. Everyone makes mistakes
in relationships and with their families, and time really can heal bonds that
are broken in them. It’s unbelievable at first that Hermione is able to forgive
her husband after everything she was put through; but after you start reflecting
on how long sixteen years actually is, the fight seems almost petty (although
it was sixteen years in hiding where everyone assumed she was dead). I thought this
play was a great one to end the semester with.

After rereading Troilus and Cressida for the paper and final, I
still find the play to be atrocious. I completely understand why critics say it
is one of Shakespeare’s worst plays, and is hardly ever acted out. I understand
that Shakespeare used the play as a satire for love and war, but I cant imagine
it being that enjoyable to watch on stage. There’s no real noticeable climax in
the play. Maybe it would be different to watch it, but after reading it I feel
the story is incomplete. It was not satisfying like the rest of Shakespeare’s
play which tend to wrap themselves up.

Also, I think Shakespeare tried a little bit to hard to make the Iliad’s
characters more realistic. I can understand making Achilles a bit pompous and a
narcissist, but he was also made out to be a coward. How do you go from
depicting Achilles as a mighty force racing down to the gates of Troy to face
Hector with the earth trembling in his wake to having him gang up on an unarmed
Hector with a bunch of men to kill him? It’s stretching the character too far.
Achilles was still a proud warrior in Troilus and Cressida – I don’t think it
makes sense for him to allow his reputation to be tarnished by ganging up to
kill Hector. The Greeks would celebrate the Trojans death, but they would also
whisper how he was so great that Achilles couldn’t beat him in a legitimate
duel.

I did enjoy the play’s take on love, however. I think most relationships boiled
down to lust in those days, and it was a refreshing change from the tales of
true love at first sight. Overall I still found the play to be disappointing
though

Here is some more trivia on one of the plays we recently finished. When
this play was performed at a theater, saying the name Macbeth inside the
theater was believed to bring bad luck to the play and anyone that was acting
in it. There was an exception though when the word is spoken as a line within
the play. In order to reverse the bad luck from saying the name Macbeth, the
actor who said it would have to spin around three times, spouting profanity as
they do so. They then have to ask for permission to come back inside.

Some variations of this superstition say that the person
would have to repeat the words “Thrice around the circle bound, evil sink into
the ground”. To avoid the curse in the first place, many actors would refer to
Macbeth commonly as “The Scottish Play”, which was actually broadly based on
the real life King Macbeth of Scotland. I myself wonder how this whole
superstition started. Why was saying Macbeth considered bad luck…is it due to
the nature of the play? Why wasn’t saying Hamlet bad luck or why wasn’t Hamlet
referred to by actors as “The Danish Play”?

There is a lot of interesting background on this play. First of
all it was not even performed for almost 300 years after he wrote it. I find
this strange because it seems perfect for the stage. Having had done a small
section of it with my group for the scene study really made me appreciate it
more than simply reading it in class. Reading and interpreting the lines, and
then acting them out convincingly makes you understand the characters, the
setting, and the point of everything much more. It really drives home the point
that Shakespeare’s work is best appreciated on the stage, by good actors,
performers, sound, design, and music, than simply reading the lines, act by act, in your head.

It was also considered Shakespeare’s least successful and most
unpopular play until the last few decades. The story focuses on Troilus and
Cressida, two characters that never existed in Homer’s Iliad, which Shakespeare
drew inspiration for from Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. One of the things
that bothered me, or at least made me a little disappointed, is that none of
the gods found in Homer’s poems are present here. It would have been
interesting to see Shakespeare’s take on the supernatural in terms of Greek
gods than having grounded the play much more heavily in realism.

I couldn’t help but notice that Shakespear must have been influenced by Niccolo Machiavelli and The Prince or else he must have had his own hand in at courtiership.

The Prince mentions that the only way to truely hear what people think about you is never directly. A subject will never openly tell thier liege how they feel about certain things.

This being said Henry V took a peek into Machiavelli’s play book and he was disguised when he talked to his men. When he was revealed the soldier said that he would have never said any of the things he said if the King was not there. That was the exact reason why Henry V had to do this. There was no circumventing it and there is nothing like hearing things for yourself.

One scene in this play that I found joyful was the scene with the drunk porter that decides to play the porter of hell. He does this after the big celebration and after Macbeth had killed the King.
When he hears knocking at the gate he begins to play his little game and allows different people in. Shakespeare did something with this scene without even doing it. A line that he could have used was something like
“A highly praised lord that rose up in rank,
With delusions of grandeur picks his blade
And kills his king in the night with distain
If you didn’t regret it then, you will
Satan has a spot on his rack for you”
he didn’t need to say it to inply it and I think it was an amazing thing he did there.

In the Final scene of Winter’s Tale. Hermione is a stone statue. For me this relates to the idea of time that is a reuccuring throughout the play. A statue like a painting is a moment caught in time and unable to move. The Idea of it moving is a living part of the play that shows that something in life are not set in stone like a statue but things do change and things do get better with work.
When she comes back it creates a complete picture of a happy ending. I found that it was very moving and a very uplifting message that Shakespeare was getting across in his play to his audience. Even though there was tragedy in the begining, the ending made it feel like a disney movie where the characters overcame all of thier obstacles.

The scene study was a very interesting idea to put Shakespeare into our real lives. We were able to take a character and try to play their part. I found it very difficult to play Act 5 Scene 2, although I had three lines total. I played the role of Alice, Katherine’s attendant, who spoke only in French. Of course, I don’t know an ounce of French so it was uncomfortable reading those three lines.

It was also difficult to find a place that captured the intimacy between King Henry and Katherine. I tried to have fun during this experience and made an attempt to be the best Alice I could be!

The Winter’s Tale

At the end of this play, Hermione’s return to life seemed extremely suspicious. Was she really dead? Or was she really a stone statue for 16 years? Her absence from the majority of the play also ties into the idea of disguise discussed in earlier posts. Hermione’s disguise for 16 years led to Leontes’ suffering for the false accusations that he made earlier on. At the end, she is seen by Leontes as a statue, a figure of what he lost.

At the end of the play, we also come to see Paulina’s acceptance of the death of her husband, Antigonus, and she’s given to Camillo. I think it’s ironic that Paulina was so against Leontes remarrying but yet she accepted her replacement so quickly.