All posts by Dashachka

The Performance of Time

The Winter's Tale
Jorge Luis Morejon in The Winter's Tale as Time.
Jorge Luis Morejon in The Winter’s Tale as Time.

Making Time a character seems fitting for a ‘winter’s tale” that captures aspects of fantasy such as man-eating bears. The character of TIme bridges the 16-year-gap, which is necessary because such time lapses are not common in plays. One of the sources for Shakespeare’s play,  Robert Greene’s Pandosto, is a much more tragic tale that lacks any of these fable aspects. What’s most interesting about this omnipresent character that is Time with the capital T is that it apologizes to the audience for the time gap. Most people would identify time as a relentless entity, yet Shakespeare’s version seems to be much more conscious of its effect on people.

Even though Time is referred to as “the Chorus”, which to me implies a group of performers, the more recent depiction of Time that I’ve found via the great wide Web all seem to be a single performer. Folger’s Theater goes takes Time as a character to a whole different level by having the Oracle serve as Father and Time as son to reinforce “the omniscient quality of the Storyteller.” This is fitting with the Greek roots for the dramatic role that a chorus would perform as a guide for the audience. This guidance would come in the form of background information, commentary and even insight on what the characters on stage were unwilling to say. Perhaps it is this last action that made me think of the similarities and differences that Time had with the other soliloquies we’ve read this semester. Nevertheless, the reinterpretation of TIme by Folger seems to be an adjustment to the modern audience that would not be  overly familiar with the chorus performances of the ancient Greeks.

There’s even an important prop given and associate with time referred to with the line, ” I turn my glass” that invokes the image of an hourglass. It complements the symbolism present on stage that comes from the earlier references to time. This theme is brought to life and I think was written by Shakespeare with the audience very much in mind. This is perhaps why there’s so much variety present with how it can be performed and to what end.

Group Five Reflection: Getting to know the Fool

Character types, King Lear, Rhyme and pattern, The Fool, Tragic hero, Verbal texture

We ended the day of taping with the yearning to have had actual costumes to perform instead of what a student usually undergoes when completing a project: relief. As a group, we had been hooked by the performance that had just occurred at the Baruch Honors lounge. The details became apparent of what it took to stage a scene: the positions of the characters, furniture and even lighting all became factors that resulted in a different performance every time.

Having the lines read out loud showed the possibilities for the portrayal of the Fool, Kent and King Lear. The stage directions that seem meager at first became eye opening. For example, with the beginning of the Fool’s dialogue on stage directed at Kent, the questions of how much does this figure of comedy and honesty know? Getting the physicals of the performance right became as significant as the dialogue.

In each of our respective roles, we as group members got to find a new sense of recognition. Dariya, as the Fool, got particularly hung on the word coxcomb, but also saw how the Fool could be played exceedingly crazy, passionate or simply jovial. Trying to perfect just one is impossible; a range of emotion is necessary. Christopher, the King of all Lears, showed great power and the dedication necessary to fill the shoes of Lear. Chiffon, as Kent, served as a bridge of finesse who physically and spiritually occupied the ground between the two.

Christopher provided the best run-down of all the factors and quirks that came together in the formulation of the group five project:

“As a critique, I believe that with more time and practice we could have increased our level of dialogue and remembering of our lines, which is without a doubt the most challenging task of acting in general. Overall the time spent with the group was a wonderful experience and it would be nice to do another filming project with them in the near future.”

Included below are links to some familiar faces taking on the roles of King Lear and the Fool.

The first has Sam Waterson take on the role of the maddening monarch.

The second video grants the Fool a monologue to the scene performed by this humble group. Joe Powers, alone with Shakespeare’s lines, was able to capture the mastery and emotive powers necessary to do the role justice.

KING LEAR PLAYBILL

THE FOOL MONOLOGE

Violence in King Lear

Death and dying, King Lear, Tragedy

As one of the key terms mentioned in class is man, the acts of violence present in King Lear (though there are much more violent plays in Shakespeare’s repertoire) are key to understanding not only our similarities to Shakespeare’s audience in the attraction to graphic displays but also how violence reflects the nature of man.

In all fairness, the play wasn’t always as received well for the violence and suffering it depicts as it is presently. The tide turned for King Lear after the English Civil War (1642- 1651). Hence, a much more palatable version emerged by playwright Nahum Tate that occupied its own moment of popularity in history. Interestingly enough, in Tate’s adaptation The History of King Lear the character of the Fool is completely omitted.

Not only does violence play out in the form of a storm, but in Act 3 scene 7 we see the plucking of Gloucester’s eyes at the hands of Cornwall and Regan. The violence of nature contrasts to that of man. In Cornwall’s pursuit of authority, he is willing to perform the most violent of means against someone much older than him who has provided shelter. His actions beget more violence, and as we will find further on, lead to a devastating fate for Cornwall.

The violence that nature shows brings characters like Lear, Edgar, Kent and the Fool together, while the violence of man unites the more wicked of them all: Cornwall, Goneril, Regan and Edmund. In this grouping, we also see another way that the characters of the play are divided. There are those who act and those who suffer. In this division, there is *seemingly* some justice in that those who act become the source of their own ill-fate, but judging by the sentence passed down on Kent for honesty and Gloucester for naivety, suffering can come to those who do not deserve it as well. The conclusion that emerges in the following two acts will reflect how justice doesn’t always come to only those who deserve it, which is perhaps one of the most difficult points for the audience to come to terms with.The good guy doesn’t always win and the suffering that the bad guy gets in no way makes right that wrong.

The Spectacle of Executions

Class and status, Death and dying, Measure for Measure

Since more than one character in the play Measure for Measure  has a brush with death, a deeper inquiry into the code of conduct that went into the job of executioner provides worthwhile insight for the reaction the audience would have about said topic.

Though the play takes place in Vienna, the audience would be familiar with the great symbol of power that stood during their time: The Tower of London. This site, in itself, offers pages and pages of history on how power is exhibited. Drownings, tortures, marriages, imprisonments and executions all took place there.

Executions had their own code of conducts, one of which was the class divide for the process of how an individual would be “dealt with”. The question of how was resolved through class: The upper class were deemed worthy of beheading, as apparently it was considered the least brutal ( accounts of beheadings gone wrong prove otherwise. The source for this information.

Other factors that sealed the fate of the accused included (of course) gender and the nature of the crime. Traitors were deemed especially malicious and had a list of execution methods set all to themselves.

What I found particularly interesting in the executions presented up till now (Act 3) of the play is that almost all the characters had some form of say in their ill fate. Claudio, for example, was handed a reprieve at the hands of his sister’s maiden status. In some way, he had a choice in his death sentence. Barnardine, another example, got to push off his quickened beheading with pure luck, even though his death was long coming and he seemed ready.

With the continuous mentions of birth, pregnancy and life, it’s worthy to pay attention to how death is presented in the play. While pregnancy, or giving life, seems to be met with harsh consequences (for man and woman) and great dispute, death becomes an answer and even a greater indicator of character in the play.

Acting lessons in Shakespeare

Hamlet, Uncategorized

In Act 3, sc. 2 of Hamlet, the young Hamlet offers acting lessons to the Player of  the “Mousetrap” performance that shed light  on much more than the theater prowess of the prince.  These directions reflect the different acting that goes on in the play, whether it is Hamlet “acting” crazy, the Queen “acting” like a good wife or Ophelia “acting” on her father’s behalf. These varieties of acting fall into the repeating idea that truth can be bated with lies and doing kindness with pain.  The duplicity of acting is reflected in such plans as Hamlet’s concocted play and his utter blunt reveal to his mother of the wrong committed against her  first husband, his father.

The lines

” Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor…For anything so o’erdone is from the purpose of playing whose end, both at the first and now, was an is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her (own) feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and nature” (3.2  17- 26)

shed light on the purpose and pattern that Hamlet himself applies to his performance of lunacy. In his acting, he reveals not only the crime of his uncle, but the nature of his two friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,  the acting of Ophelia upon her father’s wishes, and the performance of his mother as the widowed Queen. It is to his madness that each of these relationships and actings respond and almost seem to bring an extreme that would not have been otherwise unearthed if it was not for Hamlet.

It is especially significant when considering that ideas like truth/lies and pain/kindness are opposites. Yet they are necessary to bring out the other within the play.  These opposites are necessary for the other to exist and can actually bring out each other, like the opposite characters of the play and the different forms of acting that thread the play.

Shakespeare Fashion Craze: Royalty

1 Henry IV, Costumes and props, Imagery, Stage techniques, Verbal texture

The repetition of a particular metaphor type in a William Shakespeare play can signify and complement a theme of the play.  In Henry IV Part 1, the repeating metaphors that stand out to me relate to dress and wardrobe.  In a play that is concerned with the crown and the role of royalty, dress metaphors are especially appropriate when considering that a king can simply “wear” the crown or be the crown.  Specifically, does the occupation of the throne automatically make every action of a king royal or does the content, the spirit or the motive of the act define royalty?

This observation is why I liked Prince Henry at the end of the Act I. The idea that, “when  this loose behavior I throw off,”  is like him suggesting that he can change his roles like his clothes and throw off that tattered jacket of adolescence for a more appropriate garb. ( Act 1, Sc. 2, 213) Instead of taking the title or royalty and the responsibility that comes with it, Henry shows his understanding of what royalty is by doing the exact opposite. Rather than take it for granted that all of his actions are seen under the guise of the crown, he does the dastardly and goes in cahoots with thieves. He’s taking to defining royalty on his own terms rather than adhering to the expectations of others.

In a plot line where the occupation of the throne seems to be on the mind of anyone with any relation or claim to the throne, it is interesting to see a character who is not crazy about the responsibility of the crown rather than be dazed by the glory of the title and instead opts to con everyone into accepting whatever he wills to deliver as long as it is not thievery. It’s almost like a plot of a Guy Richie movie.

The eyes have it.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Imagery

Something that caught my eye (har-har) about A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the repeating motif of the eyes. Whether they are being magically corrupted by fairies, tricked the moon or referred to in a great and concise image, the eyes are subject to a formidable amount of literary experimenting on behalf of Shakespeare. Spoiler alert, eyes take on a significant meaning in King Lear too, so it is interesting to see how his earlier treatment of the visual organs is much more…gentle.

We’ve heard the trite line that the eyes represent the window to a human’s soul, so perhaps it is this easy opening that allows transformation to take place for the love-struck visitors and occupants of the woods. Eyes are also organs that take in light, which means they would be the most susceptible to the change from day to night. This fits with the repeating underlining of the difference between night and day in the play. There would have not been the same effect to the magic if say Puck spoke a magic word and knocked Demetrius over the head with a rock. The selection of the eyes is significant in more than one way.

One of the things that love transforms in the play is perception. To indulge my response with another well-known cliché: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Not only do the eyes leave humans vulnerable by opening up the soul, they are themselves known to function differently when “love” becomes a factor.

A very popular line from the play, spoken by Helena, is:

“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.” (Act 1, scene 1 line 234)

What I can take away from this is that the surge of emotions that come from looking at a person is not love; it might feel like it, it might sound like it, but it is not love. When the bewitched Lysander gazed upon Helena affectionately or Titania doted upon the ass that is Bottom, it was not from love or from the mind. The eyes opened them to affection and passion, to the guise of love.  As seen from the comical situation that the couples in the play find themselves in, there’s much more to love that what can be perceived through eyes.  Sometimes, only magic can explain why a powerful female would fall in love for a character like Bottom.