‘Coriolanus’: Nothing Plebeian About Him

• The good news here is that Coriolanus (following the brilliant Ralph Fiennes film last year) is now being produced on stage, and we agree that it’s a powerful political statement. But note how, in this Wall Street Journal review, scant attention is paid to Volumnia, Corlianus’s tiger mother who created him in every sense of the word.

• Coriolanus’: Nothing Plebeian About Him | Shakespeare Theatre Company – WSJ.com

  • Why has “Coriolanus” never been popular? It’s been mounted on Broadway only once—in 1938. The last time that I reviewed a production in this space was eight years ago. Yet connoisseurs need no reminding of the immense stature of Shakespeare’s most explicitly political play. T.S. Eliot ranked “Coriolanus” above “Hamlet,” calling it “Shakespeare’s most assured artistic success.” A man I know who used to work for one of America’s best-known politicians claims that it’s one of only two pieces of literary art that tells the whole truth about politics (the other, he says, is “All the King’s Men”). And if you should be lucky enough to see Shakespeare Theatre Company’s new production, directed by David Muse and featuring a towering performance by Patrick Page, you’ll come away wondering why it doesn’t get done regularly by every drama company in America.
  • Enter Coriolanus (Mr. Page), a paragon of the military virtues who more or less single-handedly defeats the enemy. Physically fearless and noble without limit, he has only one flaw: He knows that he is a great man, and refuses to pretend otherwise. Indifferent to the praise of “the common people,” he will not “flatter them for their love,”
  • He understands that “Coriolanus” is not about any particular politician, or any particular war: Its real subject is pride. Is there room in a democracy for an aristocrat like Coriolanus who refuses to play the popularity game? Or is it his duty to don the hypocrite’s mask in order to serve the greater good?
  • You’ll be paralyzed by the hideous, red-faced howl of horror that he wrenches from his depths when his terrified mother (Diane d’Aquila) begs him not to renounce his family and his country.

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The Hub Review: A post-mortem on Pericles: lost and found at sea

• This review of a Boston production of Pericles is revealing about the current state of the authorship debate, circa 2013. While authorship is mentioned dismissively (with collaboration vs. the lone genius cited as a reason, not snobbery, etc.), it still seems that overlooking the significance of incest to the plot vis-a-vis the current state of the debate within the Oxfordian movement about the significance of incest as the reason there was an authorship coverup (with the 2011 film Anonymous being a prime example) is a big mistake. It’s true the reviewer is contemptuous of the debate, but to bring it up in his review and —apparently— not be aware of the larger implications of what he is saying is a disservice to his readers.

• The Hub Review: A post-mortem on Pericles: lost and found at sea

  • “But anyway, back to Pericles, Prince of Tyre (the play’s full title) – which intrigues because it is so important in the canon while being a strange jumble of a play. Much of it probably isn’t by Shakespeare, in fact; these days the latest software tells us that the first two acts (or more) may be by one George Wilkins (who published his own account of the legend prior to the play’s quarto edition; it didn’t make it into the First Folio).”
  • “Now to many observers, the mixed (or contested) authorship of the play somehow makes it of lesser artistic interest than the rest of the canon. But to my mind, the reverse is actually true. Indeed, Pericles fascinates me precisely because, like Timon of Athens, it seems half-finished, so viewing it is like viewing a cross-section cut out of the Bard’s work process.”
  • “But let’s back up a bit and ponder the whole Shakespearean authorship question. No, not that authorship question – the whole Earl-of-Oxford boondoggle is an utter waste of time. I mean the question of what Shakespearean “authorship” actually means – for I certainly don’t think Shakespeare was an author in the Romantic sense of being the “onlie begetter” of his plays, the lone genius who forged our conscience in the smithy of his soul. Not that educated people quite believe that; even schoolboys know the Bard borrowed his plots – but few seem to grasp what this means, that it makes Shakespeare something of a critic of his own raw material, a re-shaper and re-caster rather than, well, an “original,” for lack of a better word.  Indeed, you could argue (to paraphrase a famous quip about musicals) that a Shakespearean text isn’t written – it’s re-written.”
  • “But why did George Wilkins’ Prince of Tyre capture the imagination of the Bard?  Part of its appeal perhaps lay in its timing: Shakespeare began working on Pericles just as the birth of a granddaughter no doubt inspired a sense of rapprochement with his semi-abandoned wife and family.  But as Celia comments in As You Like It, “There is more in it.” I have little doubt that as Shakespeare surveyed the “rough cut” of Pericles he began to perceive in it an amazing coincidence (rather like the many in the play itself): its stripped-down, cartoonish tropes paralleled and even extended many of the deep themes that had been moving beneath the surface of his own oeuvre.  Storms and shipwrecks, identities lost and found, families broken and healed, societies rejuvenated; twins and doubles and hints of magic; he had been trading in these (in more sophisticated form) since The Comedy of Errors, that is for his entire artistic life.”
  • “Even more artistic wobbles I’m afraid dominated the first two “Wilkins” acts. The opening presentation of incest (Pericles discovers his intended bride has already been bedded by her father) had little threatening force, and director Allyn Burrows played the ensuing pursuit of his hero largely for laughs – as many a misguided production does, even though curious stage directions such as “Enter Pericles, wet” clearly indicate that rebirth is the business at hand.  Real evil is afoot in the action, too (as well as genuine good), but all this seemed lost in broader-than-broad antics… “

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“Henry VIII” Reborn in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Fiery Production

• A glowing review for a production of the little seen Henry VIII in Chicago. Interesting to note that the play is dissed on the one hand for possibly being a collaboration with John Fletcher, and then admired for its Shakespearean qualities as “awash in political intrigue, chicanery, hypocrisy, betrayal and dissembling … and the competing powers of the church and state.”

• “Henry VIII” Reborn in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Fiery Production – The Daily Sizzle

  • “So why has this play been so neglected? Perhaps it is because some scholars believe it to be a work of joint authorship — written late in Shakespeare’s career in collaboration with his successor, John Fletcher. Some might be superstitious knowing that during a performance of the play at the Globe in 1613, a cannon shot used for special effects ignited the theatre’s thatched roof and beams, resulting in a fire that burned the original building to the ground.”
  • “As with many of Shakespeare’s plays about the monarchs of England, this one is awash in political intrigue, chicanery, hypocrisy, betrayal and dissembling, all shot through with a particularly strident battle between the competing (and often overlapping) powers of the church and state.”
  • “Although King Henry is obsessed with securing a male heir to the throne, Ann Boleyn gives birth to a daughter. She will be the future Queen Elizabeth I — the woman who just happened to be Shakespeare’s great patron.”

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Will the real Shakespeare please stand up | Illawarra Mercury

It’s a subject that divides a lot of people and everyone has an opinion on it.

Did William Shakespeare write Shakespeare? And if he didn’t, then who did?

These knotty questions are wrestled with, in Workshop Theatre’s latest production, the Australian premiere of Mark Rylance’s I Am Shakespeare.

The debate over the Shakespeare authorship question has been going since the middle of the 19th century, driven in part by how little we know about the man, William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, outside of his plays and sonnets.

In the play, philosopher Sir Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, are presented as alternative authors of the works.

http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1426241/will-the-real-shakespeare-please-stand-up/?cs=2387

‘Being Shakespeare’ With Simon Callow at BAM – NYTimes.com

COMMENT: Here is a New York Times review of Simon Callow’s one-man show in support of Will Shaksper of Stratford as the author “Shake-speare.” Not surprisingly the review is a big, wet kiss for Callow’s shallow rendition of how much Stratford biography can be found throughout all the works, blended in with such artful New York Times-isms as, “The near miss when a commissioned performance of “Richard II” drew the attention of a bloody-minded Queen Elizabeth.” It is amazing how one little sentence can mis-represent so much, but then again, that’s why the Times exists. Note also that the review manages to mention Marlowe by name, but only alludes to other “hign-born types” when they could have mentioned Edward de Vere by name, the 2011 movie Anonymous, and all the uproar of the past year. But gee, why do that and steal the limelight from Mr. Callow?

• ‘Being Shakespeare’ With Simon Callow at BAM – NYTimes.com

  • In the invigorating “Being Shakespeare,” now playing at the BAM Harvey Theater, Mr. Callow testifies in support of the playwright. His collaborator, the Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, has supplied all sorts of contextualizing facts, figures, segues and suppositions, allowing Mr. Callow to point his finger unwaveringly at the title character: He did it.
  • Shakespeare’s authorship has come under increasing fire in recent decades, with challengers disputing that a man of his relatively humble background could have amassed the knowledge — the book smarts, street smarts and existential smarts — to write the way he did. Various high-born types have been suggested instead, as well as the comparably middle-class but Cambridge-educated Christopher Marlowe.
  • Other writers may have presented the ties between Shakespeare’s life and work more thoroughly and insightfully (Garry Wills on the rhetorical flourishes of “Julius Caesar,” Stephen Greenblatt on the transformation of Shakespeare’s deceased son Hamnet into Hamlet). Still, “Being Shakespeare” has the propulsive energy of a particularly juicy membership-drive PBS special.

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Stage Voices: SHAKESPEARE: ‘RICHARD II’

COMMENT: Well, here’s some more Richard II commentary, just in, complete with some accurate and appropriate commentary on why this play seems to be in vogue at this moment in history. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If only Roland Emmerich had stayed with Richard II as the backbone of Anonymous, what a movie he could have made!

• Stage Voices: SHAKESPEARE: ‘RICHARD II’ (ONLY THROUGH DEC. 24–REVIEW)

  • Playgoers may be wondering why, out of all of Shakespeare’s works, Richard II has captured the imaginations of two theatre companies on both sides of the Atlantic (at the same time). 

  • In New York, it’s difficult to watch the play without thinking of contemporary American politics.

  • The Pearl Theatre Company, which is producing Richard II at New York City Center Stage II, presents work with political reverberations, as need be (if you aren’t already convinced that putting on a play isn’t a political act in itself). A case in point would be Ibsen’s Rosmersholm, whose director Elinor Renfield saw a parallel between partisan sniping in Norway in the 1880s and our own ideological wars in the U.S. in 2010. In Richard II, director J. R. Sullivan works more stealthily: you’ll either see the play as a cautionary tale for the 2012 election or you won’t.  You’ll either see Richard as a stand-in for the 1% or you won’t.  You won’t think that it’s reflecting nothing back. 

  • Richard II ends, of course, the way it begins with a king pretending that he doesn’t have any blood on his hands

  • May Shakespeare be wrong in only predicting more politics as usual.

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Richard II – A Cautionary Tale of Improper Forms of Kingship

COMMENT: Any time there is some thoughtful commentary on the role of Shakespeare’s Richard II in the Elizabethan endgame of the 1590s, we are interested. This essay (even though posted at the commercial site Round Sunglasses) is definitely worth the read. And we will say it again … Roland Emmerich should have found a way to use Richard II in his film, and not Richard III. It would have been a whole different film, and it could have been done (we believe) in a manner that would not have been over the heads of most film goers, which is a concern that Emmerich expressed during the panel discussion following the film’s American premiere at Concordia University (Portland, OR) last September.

• Richard II – A Cautionary Tale of Improper Forms of Kingship | Round Sunglasses

  • The diverse theories which delineate the dialectical nature of the work are both informative and well-reasoned. Rather than viewing the play as a series of dichotomies, I will argue that the play views both Richard and Bolingbroke as essentially failed rulers for having limited the liberty of their subjects and exposed the state to unnecessary questions relating to the legitimate uses of power and of monarchical succession. Finally, I will argue that the play, presented in this light, would serve as a warning to Elizabeth regarding the use of her power and her inability to provide a successor to the throne.
  • According to Stubbs) ‘There can be little doubt that the proceedings of 1397 and 1398 were the real causes of Richard’s ruin.he had resolutely and without subterfuge or palliation, challenged the constitution.’ this ‘grand stroke of policy,’ continues Stubbs, ‘has remarkable significance. It was a resolute attempt not to evade but destroy the limitations which for nearly two centuries the nation, first through the baronage alone and latterly through the united parliament, had been laboring to impose upon the king.’ (608-9) (1)
  • Considerations that the play may, in fact, be a commentary on the reign of Elizabeth I are supported by the acknowledgement, made by the queen herself, that aspects of her reign were similar to those of Richard. Samuel Schoenbaum, in his paper Richard II and the Realities of Power, notes that the queen remarked to one of her courtiers, Thomas Lamberde:
  • Such considerations (that they play may have served as a commentary on Elizabeth’s reign) serve only to whet pursuit and the trail, in truth, is not an utter blank. ‘I am Richard II, know ye not that?’ the Queen declared in Lamberde’s presence, and she was not the first to make the comparison. (49)(Schoenbaum)
  • But history is also presented in Richard II as a current action, a living process that directly involves and implicates the audience in the theatre. Queen Elizabeth’s often-quoted comment, ‘I am Richard II, know ye not that?’; the suppression of the deposition scene during her lifetime; the fact that Essex’s followers saw fit to sponsor a performance of Richard II on the afternoon before their rebellion – all these things indicate that for Shakespeare’s contemporaries this play was not simply an exercise in historical recreation or nostalgia. (262)(Rackin)

  • The concept of rights or privileges is central to the main theme of the play. It is after all, Richard’s seizure of Bolingbroke’s lands after the death of John of Gaunt, which precipitates Bolingbroke’s return to England and ultimately forces Richard’s deposition. The granting and inheritance of property rights was one of the cornerstones of the Magna Carta, and had been honored by all monarchs for several hundred years until the time of Richard. As York admonishes Richard:

    Take Hereford’s rights away, and take from time
    

    His charters and customary rights;
    

    Let not tomorrow then ensue today;
    

    Be not thyself; for how art thou a king
    

    But by fair sequence and succession? (II.i.195-99) (Shakespeare)

  • A gloss of these lines reveals the magnitude of Richard’s unlawful act. If Bolingbroke is not entitled to his lawful possession of land through the inheritance of his father, then how is Richard entitled to the possession of the throne through inheritance from his father? Indeed, the act is so unnatural that tomorrow will not ensue today, i.e., the natural order of events will be violated.
  • Richard then, violated the rights of his subjects in seizing Bolingbroke’s property. But his failings were greater than this: he was also complicit in the murder of Gloucester, a point which is emphasized in the opening of the play, and is the motive behind the banishment of Mowbray and Hereford. Finally, Richard left no legitimate heir in the form of a son or daughter, which allowed Bolingbroke to sweep aside the weak claim of the Earl of March as Richard’s successor.
  • The central issue for Bolingbroke’s rule, and one to which every play in the rest of the second tetralogy will return, is the threat to the realm when the king is not legally titled. .nevertheless, because the deposition is an interruption of the tradition of legal succession, Bolingbroke’s power exists without the clear sanction of either the law or God
  • In this speech, the usurpation of the throne by Bolingbroke is seen as the proximate cause of the War; but more than that, it is seen as a violation of the natural order of things. The king, as the chosen representative of God on earth, held his office through succession and by upholding God’s laws. Bolingbroke was neither the rightful successor of Richard, nor did he uphold the laws: in point of fact, he broke with law in seizing the throne.
  • That the play dealt with the loss of liberty and freedom has hopefully been demonstrated. The applicability to Elizabeth’s reign can be seen in the following ways: at the time of the writing of the plays, Elizabeth had not produced a lawful heir (nor would she at the time of her death). Elizabeth’s right to rule through lawful succession was affected by her illegitimate birth; a fact which obtruded itself in her consciousness in the person of her half sister, Mary Queen of Scots. The suppression of Catholicism during Elizabeth’s reign was another manifestation of the challenge of certain freedoms in the Tudor era. Finally, Elizabeth’s censure of publication of any writing concerning her succession (not to mention possible censorship of other writings which, as has been previously noted, cannot be conclusively proven) points to a curtailment of freedom which was acknowledged by Elizabeth’s subjects. Elizabeth’s comment I am Richard II, know ye not that? is more than mere rhetoric. For a monarch who walked a tightrope between the granting and taking of liberties to her nobles, and the suppression of freedom to the commons, the lessons of Richard and Bolingbroke would seem ominous, indeed.

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Review: Elizabeth Rex (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre) | Chicago Theater Beat

COMMENT: Here’s a review of the play Elizabeth Rex in Chicago. The play, which premiered in 2000 in Stratford (Ontario), has been a hit for 10 years, what with its intriguing interplay of Queen Elizabeth, the Essex Rebellion and the execution of Essex, and Shakespeare. But of course what really distinguishes it —and makes it OK to play with anywhere, anytime — is that it threatens no one. At a time when Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous tackles the same subject matter in a direct assault on history, such a story as Elizabeth Rex is really exposed for the “politically correct” fluff that it is.

• Review: Elizabeth Rex (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre) | Chicago Theater Beat

  • Findley’s character-driven drama riffs on two historical facts: Queen Elizabeth I sentenced her former lover to death for treason, and the night before his execution, the Virgin Queen attended a Shakespeare play. In Elizabeth Rex, Findley imagines said play as Much Ado About Nothing, and that Shakespeare (Kevin Gudahl) and his rogue band of actors are forced to take shelter in the royal stables due to rioting and an imposed curfew. In great need of distraction, the Queen herself (Diane D’Aquila) visits the actors – and ends up in an all-night battle of wits with Ned (Steven Sutcliffe), who plays the role of Beatrice in Much Ado and whose own looming death of syphilis has liberated him from the filters demanded by polite society.
  • The art of acting is all-consuming, with a constant dichotomy of connection (absorbing the audience in a moment) and distance (you’re not really your character – or are you?). No wonder the Queen seeks out Shakespeare’s troupe: she’s ultimately connected to the nation as she controls everyone’s fate, yet literally no one can touch her without permission. When one gives everything – in politics, in love or in art – what is left? As the smart and all-around superb Elizabeth Rex proves, the answer can be found in one word: more.

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