On having read and then watched “Twelfth Night”. January 20, 2013

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think Twelfth Night was the first story of Shakespeare I had ever read. I say story because it was just that. A prescribed paraphrase of Shakespeare’s play that I read for the first time at the end of December 2012.

The story is about disguises, mixed identities and love lorn lovers.

Viola and her twin brother, Sebastian, are parted from each other during a ship wreck. Viola is rescued and brought ashore onto a strange land. She believes her brother is dead, and as they had no parents she decides to seek her fortune in this foreign land. However, her plans are not particularly long term. She thinks of survival and Illya is a policed place lorded over by Duke Orsino. So Viola decides to become a man, and serve the duke. She becomes something of his court musician and his confidante. She learns that he is pining away for a beautiful woman called Olivia, but his love is unrequited. Loathe to give up, Orsino charges Viola (posing as one called Cesario) to makes his pleas to Olivia. But when Olivia sees Cesario is falls in love with him. Hers also becomes a love unrequited as quite naturally Viola is a woman and, in her turn, hopelessly in love with Orsino. The rest is for you folk to read.

There is a sub-plot as well. Olivia’s uncle, his friend and Olivia’s woman-in-waiting are all quite put off with the butler, Malvolio . They are annoyed with his superior airs and decide to teach him a lesson. They drop, in his path, a letter supposedly to have been written by Olivia. On reading it, Malvolio becomes convinced that she is in love with him and he makes a fool of himself with her. She is puzzled and think that perhaps her dear butler has gone insane. With concern she asks Maria to take care of him, and he is put into a dark room. The rest of the story pans itself out at the end of the play.

I must admit, I did not care much for the play as I read it. It left me cold and wondering if it had been worth it. It didn’t even give me, at the end, a sense of satisfaction of my having read yet another Shakespearean play . I was terribly disappointed with it, thinking that in many places it had been unbelievable, in others it had been to slap-stick for my taste, and there wasn’t a single character I had liked.

Then, I recalled having started reading Romeo and Juliet with much dislike. But once I had watched a couple of clips of the 1960s move with Olivia Hussey as Juliet, I realised how the play ought to be read — with the stage in my mind’s eye. Thus, the rest of my reading had become quite pleasurably. Sadly, though, I was not able to work with this reading concept while tackling Twelfth Night. However, I recalled mom having mentioned the 1996 movie version of Twelfth Night and decided to watch it.

Again and again, watching Shakespeare proves more and more profitable to reading Shakespeare. I loved this movie. The plots were no longer unbelievable. Imogen Stubbs (many Austen fans might remember her as the conniving Lucy Steele from the 1995 movie version of Sense and Sensibility) is an amazing Cesario (a.k.a. Viola), and somehow the make-up artists contrived to make her and Steven Mackintosh (playing Sebastian) look absolutely identical. Feste the clown is played by Ben Kingsley, and oh I just loved him! He portrays Feste in a way I simply could not imagine on merely reading the play. Orsino is played satisfactorily by Toby Stephens and Helena Bonham Carter makes for a passionate Olivia. While I cannot say that this play (as watched NOT read) did not send me into whoops like Much Ado About Nothing (1993) did, I thought it was beautifully made. I enjoyed the music, especially the pieces sung by Feste, and on the whole Twelfth Night back a very pleasurable experience.

Allow me to tell you that if you, at any time, find any of Shakespeare’s plays dry, boring, hard or incomprehensible, watch his plays in performance, either on stage or as a movie; you’ll understand them perfectly. Then, I suppose, going back to reading the play will make everything different, and allow you to comprehend other nuances of Shakespeare’s art.

Below is a video of the scene where Viola comes to plead Orsino’s case with Olivia for the first time.

On a side note: I watched a wee bit of a stage performance of this play on youtube with Helen Hunt playing Viola/Cesario. This version made the above scene a lot more comical. But I preferred this one a great deal more.

This play is the second one read for the Let’s Read Plays challenge.

Posted with Blogsy

Related articles

• Twelfth Night – November 2012 (ilovetheatre.me)
• [Review] Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare (surgabukuku.wordpress.com)
• Lisa Bee’s #CBR5 Review #04: Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (cannonballread5.wordpress.com)

 

The Man Behind Shakespeare (Part 2/4): Could it be Christopher Marlowe? January 14, 2012

[This post is the second in a series of posts about "The Man Behind Shakespeare". Part 1 can be found HERE.]

There are a pretty good number of Shakespeare skeptics who firmly believe that Christopher Marlowe is the real Shakespeare behind the plays. At the outset this does not sound plausible. Why? Because during the time Shakespeare’s plays were being churned out Marlowe was dead. Word had it that he died in a tavern brawl — a rather pathetic way for such a brilliant playwright of the time, to go. So, how can it be that a dead man wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare?

To believe that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare we need to assume that Marlowe never really died in “a tavern brawl”. Apparenly, historians have been puzzled by the fact that this young man would have died in a quarrel over a bill. Scholars feel that there shouldn’t even have been a quarrel over a bill simply because Marlowe had a patron and patrons took care of such expenses. So this reason was rather a flimsy excuse to fight. What about the three men with him? — Ingram Frizer, Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres? They were all established “professional liars”. In other words, they were spies — all four of them. Marlowe and Poley were working for Lord Burghley, the Queen’s right hand man, and Frizer and Skeres were working under Thomas Walsingham who was a very close friend of Marlowe. One would wonder what all these spies were doing together on the night of Marlowe’s ‘death’. Surely, it was ‘business’ while most accounts of Marlowe’s death declare he was out with ‘friends’.

The truth is, Marlowe was on the threshold of possible torture and a definite death sentence. He had been proclaimed an atheist (a huge crime in those days) and was charged for heresy and promoting atheism. He, basically, had only a few days more to live. Does the ‘meeting’ begin to make sense? Marlovians (scholars who support the theory of Marlowe’s authorship to Shakespeare’s plays) believe that these four men had got together to fake Marlowe’s death and help him flee the country. In fact, these men didn’t meet at some common tavern. They really got together at a safe house run by a friend (Eleanor Bull). Research into the matter states that the coroner’s inquest was also very fishy. Things didn’t go according to regulations, which meant a death had been ‘staged’.

Marlowe’s death has become quite the mystery now. But, what has all of this to do with Shakespeare? All this proves, or is evidence that works to prove that Marlowe did not die on 30 May 1593. So what?

If you are not aware of it, it might amaze you to learn that Shakespeare’s works have often been compared to Marlowe. Shakespearean scholars (I’m not talking of the skeptics here) have long wondered at Shakespeare’s constant echoes of Marlowe. Some said it would seem that he was almost haunted by by Marlowe’s ghost. There are, apparently, constant references to Marlowe’s works and similar idiomatic phrases. For many decades it never occurred to Shakespearean scholars to question the authorship of William Shakespeare. And in the end of the the nineteenth century the theory that Marlowe was likely the playwright behind these plays, was put forth for the first time. (Before this there was skepticism regarding the true authorship of the plays as proved by Mark Twain’s long essay a few decades before this.) Recently, scholars worked on some sort of textual data gathering project where they compared word count, syntax and various features of Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s plays, coming to the conclusion that these were plays written by the same man. Marlovians say, that when comparing the chronological order of the plays from Marlowe to Shakespeare, Henry VI Part I (Shakespeare’s first play) is very close in structure, characterisation and style to Marlowe’s last play, Edward II. In other words, they look like they’ve been written by the same playwright.

I watched an excerpt of Much Ado About Something, a well-researched documentary on the Marlowe-Shakespeare Controversy (the excerpt is embedded at the end of this post). In it, interviewees talk about how many of initial themes deal with exile, about a person longing to come back home. Sonnet 50 is quoted in this excerpt as an example of a man in exiled torment:

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek (my weary travel’s end)
Doth teach that case and that repose to say
‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.’
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed being made from thee:
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side,
For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

My thoughts:
It all sounds rather excitingly mysterious. I am quite convinced that Marlowe never died. You should read the reports into the investigations made. They’re convincing! Whether Marlowe wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare, I do not know. I do agree, however, that Shakespeare’s authorship is worthy of inspection. What puzzles me about the case for Marlowe:

1. It would seem that ‘Shakespeare’ wrote his plays with his actors in mind. Often I have had it spoken about in school that plays such as Twelfth Night and As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice were written for you the boy actors in the theatre. Later, there was a powerful actor to play the roles of Hamlet and Lear and Prospero, etc.. How could Marlowe have known of this in exile? I suppose, he could have had someone report to him. But it seems strange that Marlowe should seek to have his plays smuggled into England when he could have been writing for another stage in another country. What satisfaction could he have derived from this?
2. In Shakespeare on Toast, Ben Crystal talks of how Shakespeare is famous for his inaccuracy in geography. This would then state that whoever had written these plays had never been to the likes of Italy. However, in Much Ado About Something, the interviewees talk of how amazingly accurate the geography in Shakespeare’s plays is. Who is right? I suspect if this answer can be answered, and should it lean towards the latter, then Marlowe’s case has a chance.
3. Of Marlowe’s seven plays, I’ve read three. I cannot recall Edward II much, but I do recall that I was quite affected by both Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta. To me, these plays were spiritually dark. Spirituality seems to be the blood of these plays. I cannot recall this being the case with any of Shakespeare’s plays.

It should be interesting should anyone have answers to these puzzling thoughts.

Let me close with the excerpt from Much Ado About Something and links to my resources. I would suggest you check those links out, if you’re interested. They are extremely detailed. I have barely scratched the surface with this post!

 

Resources:

• The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society
• The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection
• Marlowe’s Sudden and Fearful End: Self-Defence, Murder or Fake? by Peter Farey

——————————————————————————————

Note: This is not a scholarly post and is not intended to be one. I am not trying to propagate anything. I am just a reader interested in the whole theory behind Shakespeare’s identity. What you find in this post are simply things that I have come across in my meagre research. Please understand that this is a family friendly blog. Abusive language will not be entertained. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion as long as they do it politely. Thank you.

The Man Behind Shakespeare (Part 1/4): “Is Shakespeare Dead?” January 5, 2012

A note to readers: This topic is regarded as quite controversial. As a result I have seen comments made elsewhere that have been derogatory or abusive in tone and/or words simply because one faction does not believe or even want to acknowledge the theory that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare. My request is that if you cannot respect another’s views and cannot be polite even while disagreeing (you are welcome to disagree), then please do not read further. All abusive posts will be summarily dealt with. Also, if the only comment you can make is along the lines of “so what?” and “who cares?” then I suggest you do not comment at all. Thank you.

——————————————————————————————

I’m sitting here, in front of this screen, desperately trying to organise my thoughts. I’ve just had a bout full of information overload, and I haven’t even scratched the surface yet!

What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been doing a wee bit of research on the whole authorship question of the works attributed to Shakespeare. To make it easier for me to relate to you what I have learnt, my thoughts and my feeling regarding this whole controversy, I shall start at the very beginning.

My very first play by Christopher Marlowe was The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. Since I’d missed the days this play was read and discussed in university class, I ended up reading for myself in preparation for our exam — and I loved it. It stayed with me for so long, especially the final hours of Faustus’ life before the devil comes to claim his soul.

Now, it happened that after I read it, I went to my mom to gush over it. Mom was amused and pleased. Then she told me something that got me completely excited. She told me that it was believed, among many contenders, that Marlowe was the one who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Believe me, I didn’t disbelieve her. I thought I understood how this could be. Not only does Marlowe make very good use of the blank verse which Shakespeare is supposed to have perfected, but he was a learned man, unlike any educational evidence known about Shakespeare. You can say, I was intrigued. But then, mom had read a book about this a long time ago, and at the time, the internet was not our source for information. So I let sleeping dogs lie until last year when I re-read Doctor Faustus*.

I found myself doing a lot of reading up on the topic and I was all geared up to write about what I had discovered and how very sure I was that I was a Marlovian (those who believe that Marlowe was the real Shakespeare), when I read Shakespeare on Toast* by Ben Crystal. I must admit that reading this confused me a wee bit, and I wondered if perhaps the Stratford Shakespeare wasn’t the real author after all. Crystal is an actor who talks about the acting relevance of Shakespeare’s plays, never really going into the whole authorship question. But a couple of things he said had me second-guessing myself. I finally wrote this post* writing the few facts I had come across, and also noting my confusion over it all. In the post you will find a few links leading to various articles regarding why it is believed Marlowe was actually Shakespeare.

Then, yesterday, while I was reading the introduction to my Penguin copy of the Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe, I found myself wondering at the raw passion and dark spirituality in Marlowe’s works that don’t really find themselves in Shakespeare — at least, I haven’t seen those things in the few works of Shakespeare that I have read. I decided to do a bit more research before I said anything about it on my blog, and I finally ended up reading Is Shakespeare Dead? by Mark Twain.

Is Shakespeare Dead? by Mark Twain

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In this piece Twain questions the legitimacy of William Shakespeare, the man. He says there has never been a writer of whom so little is known. In fact, there has never been a writer who has left absolutely no evidence that he was a writer at all. Historians and scholars are in possession of only four or five signatures that belonged to Shakespeare of Stratford, and the only written document known to exist is that of this Shakespeare’s will, which again refers to absolutely nothing of books, plays and poetry.

Twain sums up the facts known of this Shakespeare thus:

I will make a list, now, of those details of Shakespeare’s history which are FACTS–verified facts, established facts, undisputed facts.
FACTS
He was born on the 23d of April, 1564.
Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could not sign their names.
At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the nineteen important men charged with the government of the town, thirteen had to “make their mark” in attesting important documents, because they could not write their names.
Of the first eighteen years of his life NOTHING is known. They are a blank.
On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Whateley.
Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway. She was eight years his senior.
William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a reluctantly-granted dispensation there was but one publication of the banns.
Within six months the first child was born.
About two (blank) years followed, during which period NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENED TO SHAKESPEARE, so far as anybody knows.
Then came twins–1585. February.
Two blank years follow.
Then — 1587 — makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the family behind.
Five blank years follow. During this period NOTHING HAPPENED TO HIM, as far as anybody actually knows.
Then–1592–there is mention of him as an actor.
Next year–1593–his name appears in the official list of players.
Next year–1594–he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence: other obscurities did it every year of the forty-five of her reign. And remained obscure.
Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting.
Then In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford.
Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated money, and also reputation as actor and manager.

Is Shakespeare Dead? (Kindle Locations 222-236).

Then follows the content of his will in which he bequeath’s his wife the “second-best bed” and mentions nothing of books or plays or manuscripts. In fact, nothing to do with writing.

Chapters that follow these little known facts about Shakespeare, dwell on the innumerable assumptions that Stratfordians (scholars who believe that Shakespeare of Stratford is William Shakespeare of the best known works in literature) have made to fill in the many gaps.

Personally, I suspect, that Stratfordians have been ‘filling in the gaps’ only because it did not initially occur to them that the writer behind the Shakespearean plays could have been a()n alias for someone else. Twain refutes every other claim made about Shakespeare simply because they have only been assumptions and have absolutely no evidence to back them up. To name a few I will list some of the unproved ‘facts’ about Shakespeare that was taught to me in college:

• He went to grammar school (can you believe that there is absolutely no proof of this!!).
• He handled horses outside of theatres.
• He was well versed in Latin because he attended grammar school.
• He hung around law courts from where he picked up a great deal of law-jargon (this I wasn’t taught).

I dare say, if you are to name anything else that you ‘know’ of Shakespeare that isn’t a fact in the quote from Twain, it is 99.9% unproved.

Twain then moves on to talk about all the law terms and metaphors that keep coming into Shakespeare’s plays (hence the assumption that Shakespeare spent many hours in the courts), saying how lawyers have been astounded by how accurate these terms and usages are. He quotes many high-ranking lawmen who state that only another lawman or someone who expressly studied and practiced law could have used it so spot-on in the plays. Hence, there is a party that believes that Sir Francis Bacon, a brilliant lawyer in his day, was the man behind Shakespeare.

Twain goes into detail as to why Bacon is a likely candidate. Twain himself is not a Baconian, but is fully appreciative of the facts that lend weight to the theory that Francis Bacon wrote the plays popularly attributed to a nobody from Stratford.

I admit that I am mighty curious after reading the facts surrounding Bacon. I have read a few of Bacon’s essays before, and I was very disbelieving of him. But he definitely sounds plausible unlike the Shakespeare of Stratford.

Until a few months ago, I’d have been rooting for Marlowe. In fact, briefly, I considered myself a Marlovean. However, I have decided to do a bit of research into the theories surrounding the candidate-ship of Bacon and another strong contender, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.

You will have noticed that heading to this post reading “Part 1/4″. I intend for “The Man Behind Shakespeare” to be a four part series dealing with the authorship question of Shakespeare’s plays. The other three posts will each look at each of the three main contenders, mapping out their biography, education and claims to these amazing plays.

If you would like to know more about why Shakespeare the man is not believed to be Shakespeare the playwright then head on over to this site that holds the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare. It explains, in detail the reasons for doubt, and is an appeal that scholarly pursuit in this assumption be made legitimately academic.

Links with an (*) lead to my previous posts.

Reading Shakespeare: A Play a Month in 2012 November 1, 2011

Sometimes, good intentions never see the light of day. I’d bought myself the complete works of Shakespeare a few months ago with the intention of taking part in a challenge that was being hosted this year. Unfortunately, the times has never been right to pick up a play. I’ve been so intent on whittling down my to-read novel list, that plays have completely been neglected (save for one) this year.

So, I’ve decided to run a Shakespearean Group Read, of sorts, in 2012. The idea is to read, with others who might be interested, one play a month. At the end of each month a discussion post will be posted along with a link-up for fellow readers to add their posts. A schedule of the plays being read in 2012  will be put up in a sign-up post towards the middle of December. For now, though, we need to decide on the plays.

I didn’t want to just pick them out on my own and selfishly expect others to join in. So I’ve decided to hold a poll – rather 3 polls. I will be dividing Shakespeare’s works into comedies, tragedies and histories. Considering we have 12 months, therefore 12 plays to read next year, I figured four plays from each of these categories should work well. Each person will be allowed to choose four plays from each category. The polls will be up until December 10, 2011. I hope to consolidate the highest votes from each category and announce the list along with a sign-up post by December 15, 2011.

Please do pass the word around so that we might have a lovely reading experience of Shakespeare together!

Oh, and as I have been asked – you are not obligated to join in on every play group read if you don’t want to or can’t.

So then, here goes!

I’m really looking forward to seeing what we’ll be reading next year.

Feature: Shakespeare? Or Marlowe? Which One Do We Choose? June 30, 2011

The first play I ever read by Christopher Marlowe was The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. I found it to be so powerful and moving that I was quite in love with Marlowe. Later, while discussing this particular play with my mother, she told me all about the authorship question regarding Shakespeare’s plays. It was from her I first learnt that Shakespeare was believed not to be Shakespeare, the playwright. Apparently, there were several contending candidates said to have written Shakespeare’s plays; among them being Sir Francis Bacon, The Earl of Sussex and Christopher Marlowe.

I was quite intrigued by the case for Marlowe. It sounded so plausible, especially as Shakespeare is said to have been so greatly influenced by the former that it would seem almost like he was haunted by Marlowe’s Ghost. Of all the playwrights and writers of the time, Marlowe and Shakespeare’s style were incredibly similar. In fact, scholars have scientifically sought to deduce the similarity in their writing (in terms of syllabic words used, idioms, phrases and the like) to prove that Marlowe and Shakespeare were one and the same person. And if the results are to be believed, it would strongly appear to be so. Marlovians (scholars who support the theory of Marlowe being the real Shakespeare) say that the progression from Marlowe’s plays to that of Shakespeare could be of a natural strain – of an artist growing gradually and surely in his art. Some other points that the Marlovians make in favour of their candidate is that 

1. many of the plays are about exiles, and if Marlowe survived he most certainly was an exile, 
2. in exile Marlowe would have travelled all over Europe thus being familiar with the places that pop up in Shakespeare’s various plays; this as opposed to Shakespeare not having been anywhere further than London,
3. Marlowe’s immense education, especially his scholarly interests in the Classics with special attention to Ovid; this as opposed to Shakespeare’s mere education in a public grammar school.

To believe that Marlowe was in exile it had to be assumed that he did not really die in the reported tavern brawl. Research and investigation into the matter have brought up some interesting information. For instance, the fact that the three men with Marlowe were, in someway or the other, connected to the Walsinghams; (this bit is important as Marlowe was one of Walsingham’s spies); that the whole coroner’s inquest was suspect; that they were not even in a tavern but in a safe house run by a widow called Eleanor Bull; and most importantly the fact that Marlowe was on the threshold of coming under a death sentence. The details are quite astonishing and fascinating. However, while all of this might prove that Marlowe did not die, that the brawl was really part of a plan to get Marlowe out of the country, none of this proves that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

I found my faith in Marlowe begin to waver as I read Ben Crystal’s Shakespeare on Toast. While he does not deal at all with the authorship question, there were a few things  that seemed completely out of place with the Marlowe-is-Shakespeare theory. 

1. Shakespeare wrote plays meant for his actors to perform. His plays were fashioned to suit the abilities of his actors or the availability of kinds of actors. During the time he wrote plays like As You Like It and Twelfth Night it is said that Shakespeare has some good youthful actors in his company who fitted the constant gender-role changes of these plays. And apparently plays like Hamlet and King Lear were written with one of his rather powerful and oratorical actors in mind. (This information does not come from Crystal’s book but from my recollection of tid-bits offered out in university classes.)
2. Shakespeare wrote for his stage. He knew the pros and cons of his theatre.
3. Shakespeare wrote for occasions. Macbeth being a case in point, having been written during the time of political unrest when James VI of Scotland became James I of England after the death of Elizabeth I.
4. The two years of the black plague saw absolutely no plays as theatres were shut down. However, these are the two years in which it is said that Shakespeare wrote his 154 sonnets.
5. While there are no documents or manuscripts by Shakespeare’s hand, to prove that he wrote his plays, apparently there are documents by his actors that refer to the plays that Shakespeare had staged at The Globe. (Recently got this off reviews regarding this book.)
6. For all the places that Shakespeare has mentioned in Europe, he seems to get his geographical locations all wrong, according to Crystal, almost as if he had heard about these places rather than seen them.

All of this really makes one wonder if Shakespeare did write Shakespeare after all! Disbelievers have been accused of academic snobbery in their inability to believe that a man of Shakespeare’s meagre education and lack of ‘experience’ could have written such works of absolute genius. But, isn’t the mark of a genius that his ability springs from a brilliance of mind, thought and natural talent rather than from his education and experience? I don’t really know, but right now I am strongly inclined toward giving Shakespeare the benefit of the doubt.