humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

On Feb 26, 8:47=C2=A0pm, Ann wrote:
> On Feb 25, 3:34=EF=BF=BDpm, Greg Reynolds wrote:
>
> > I was gonna bring my best girl but it was too cold for her
>
> What a lame excuse. Do you know where her strawberry handkerchief is?

Some place warm I'm sure.

> > so I brought my high school buddy who had never seen Shakespeare.
>
> That's what you get for hanging around with high schoolers.

I made movies with him 30 years ago, but we never were about plays
then.

on the way out of CST, he said, "that was a tragedy" as a joke to me
but others heard it and laughed.

We pretty much chalked it up to OJ and Nicole.

> > it is all about the failed loving and never about the successful warring=
.
>
> Interesting how Shakespeare goes through the entwined themes of love
> and war: in Troilus and Cressida, in the midst of a seeming-
> neverending war, the fight-weary Greeks lollygag about, and the
> Trojans begin to consider returning Helen, while we focus on two young
> kids trying on love in the midst of all that jadedness. In Antony and
> Cleopatra, an aging warrior is so besotted he loses his abilities as
> commander. In Titus Andronicus, a war-weary commander can't seem to
> return to civilian life, and sets out blundering (killing his own son)
> because of it, and his own "irreligious piety" is repaid several times
> over in a cycle of revenge and revenge.

Much Ado takes palce as R&R.

> > I always get bogged down in Othello, because it is hard to
> > find the character to love and enjoy.
>
> I think there's something to this. But what I find are the
> relationships between any two characters that makes this play
> interesting... the Othello-Iago dynamic, both as it seems to Othello
> and as it seems to Iago. And so on.

Othello depends on Iago as interpretor/frontman.
iago delights that he is so vital.

> > but this is better because you sense then how every character
> > could fully trust Iago almost all the time.
>
> That's very interesting. I like when you see two different Iagos --
> like Richard III, he shows the audience pure, laughing evil but hides
> that hue to everyone else, until the very end.

Curiously, that happens here but he is not two Iagos. His asides do
not seem revealing or insightful. They are just plain talk, same way
he speaks to everyone.

> > Our Emilia is the standout of this staging. This Emilia keeps open the
> > question of how tinged is she in the guilt of "unwittingly" providing
> > the found handkerchief.
>
> She is sometimes played as being physically intimidated by her
> husband; he beats her or it's obvious to the audience that he HAS
> beaten her. Do you mean you think she knows the purpose for the
> handkerchief's being sought by Iago?

Only that he has asked her to get it before many times.
[couldn't isolate the line but i will.]

> > Our Brabantio looked like he also has a day job as Robert E. Lee.
>
> Funny.
>
> > Our Desdemona was elegant, bejewelled, and ho-hum with her red eye
> > liner. Des-light.
>
> After seeing Othello done by five actors in drab unisex costumes
> (every actor playing multiple roles) I realized how much the play begs
> for Desdemona to be an emblem of beauty and delicacy. It missed a lot
> for her not being dressed elegantly.

Des misses a vitality because she erases her own family and enters
this deadly relationship.

She says that yes, her mother also abandoned her folks to marry her
father, and that is the thought that cools her dad down.

So she gets through the moment and nothing else works for her.

> > Othello was large and powerful. When he is ushering Desdemona to bed
> > he sounds like he won't need a Barry White album tonight. When he is
> > disciplining Michael Cassio he is James Earl Jones' Vader. Othello is
> > bold and magnificent. That is is the typecast, after all. And that is
> > the highlight of the evening.
>
> He sounds wonderful. I have yet to see a really GREAT Othello on
> stage.

I think the play is built only on the Othello.

> > It seems that the purpose of the trip, the all-important war that
> > calls for this larger than life general, WOULD have been the subplot.
> > But without one, the characters take over and Iago is bad enough to
> > run the show from there.
>
> Idle hands are the devil's workshop, no? Especially hands conditioned
> to fight, and hearts set on becoming heroes.
>
> > Othello: "Else, she'll betray more men," as though that is his true
> > concern/angle, that he even needs such a pitiful excuse. The "more
> > men" would only be Des' future suitors, not people Othello would
> > normally protect. (Ever laugh at the wrong parts?)
>
> It doesn't strike me as funny; it strikes me as Othello attempting to
> justify his action because he perceives himself as a 'hero.' Heroes to
> not act merely out of self-vengeance, they must serve some greater
> purpose. It's lame, but he needs something to push him to go through
> with it, and he reaches for that.

He does not think of himself as a hero. He is simply a driven man out
of his element and he knows he is feeble but does not recognize which
feebleness is fatal.

> Thanks for the review. Sounds like a great evening. I miss everything.

You're welcome (it wasn't that cold).

Greg Reynolds