Shakespearean adaptations became a whole lot better once directors & dramaturges started allowing the possibility that most of these roles are contemptuous — that the merchants, nobles, & machiavells they depict are fooling no one. They're role models for an empire developing around his ears: gauche, unprincipled, power-hungry, amoral but also so hungry for justifcation they'd see Shakes or Jonson or Webster & say "that guy gets it, give him an endowment."
Curses upon the tribe of English teachers for making us read these plays straight, patter-faced & plither'd...
I could recommend two very fun Jacobean comedies: Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fayre & Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Bizarre & strangely contemporary
Spanish Tragedy FTW. I’ve only seen it performed once, at Augustana College. Quite a lot of risqué material for a Lutheran college! (And more tongues bitten out on stage than in your usual play.)
So who exactly did Shakespeare write for? What kind of people made up the Globe audience? Was he writing entertainment for the masses? Curious but not motivated to do the research, GM, sorry.
No exactly about it -- and not simply answered. The acting companies were sponsored by powerful aristocrats, & the theaters were private ventures that sold high-end tix in boxes & balconies to rich folx & ground-level seats to poorer types ("the groundlings"). I have a colleague who believes Sh's plays are political code to those poorer audiences ("yeah, I hear your concerns" mostly, which is not impossible, though prof x is a bit of crank).
What I'm getting at is the strain in the writing itself (which we mostly have only third hand for most playwrights) — by guys who were middle-class in origin, educated enough to feel good about it, locked in the arbitrary & vexed business of theater, & needing to show off to each other.
To ask "who exactly" is a strange demand, something we put on the more ancient world — like those answers can only be one single "right" answer? Or by having that answer we can pin down the meaning. Or that a work of art never escapes intention into a life of its own in public reception.
"Or that a work of art never escapes intention into a life of its own in public reception." Ooh, this. I have phrased this feeling more like "Shut up, you released it and it's mine now" but yours is more elegant and accurate.
This is as good a short answer as I've ever heard. Theater artists get a faceful of polling data every night. They are the abstract and brief chronicle of their time -- someone said.
So tl;dr is that he was writing to both the elite, such as it was, as well as the (somewhat?) little people? My qualification, so to speak, is that I’m not so sure that the elite were necessarily particularly well educated and/or of sophisticated tastes. Some of them were undoubtedly, just not sure that it was, like, universal among the upper classes.
An excellent review both of the play and the interpretation of the play. The Harold Bloom I knew (sitting in the auditorium while he labored to make us hippies appreciate Elizabethan theater) would approve - he wanted engagement, damn it, with ancient works! But now you get back to the news of the day: what will headliner Victor Orban say at CPAC and how will Dreher contain himself?
I was thankful there was a review this morning. I am about to the point where current events are off limits unless I'm willing to switch from green tea and Marijuana to
" Not really my cuppa. You know? Shylock and Portia were decent. There"'s some good laughs. The rest of the characters were stupid and racist as fuck. Mostly dogshit to be honest. "
In a pub just up from the Globe Theatre
April 1605 -
" What did you think.?"
"I'll be honest. I kept waiting for someone to take a pound of flesh. I almost fell asleep in the second act.
That Portia was a bad bitch though ."
" Shylock was pretty cool considering his -uh- background.If jew know what I mean .( hearty laughter) I'll tell you what. No way that Antonio guy wasn't queer for that clown Bassanio.".
I really enjoyed the street level Shakespeare review! There have been way too many 4 dollar words applied to the subject over the centurys , when phrases like "bad ass," or : Funny as fuck," do a better job describing the plays.
The first Shakespeare I saw live was Two Gentlemen of Verona and I thought it was funny AF.
My date was a theater major she thought it was funny I was so surprised it was so enjoyably accessible. She figured Shakespeare's plays were the Dynasty/Dallas entertainments of their day . That's why somebody gets knifed every 3 and a half minutes.
That's why we love Harold Bloom. We can understand what he's talking about. Bloom on" Blood Meridian "changed my life.
Craig could be fantastic. I loved Toshiro Mifune in the role with his brawling physicality. I could see Craig going the same way.
(Fun Fact ,- auto- complete changed " Toshiro " to " T-shirt" so for the rest of my life I will think of the beloved Japanese actor as " T - shirt Mifune,")(Goddamn Auto- complete)
"We can understand what he's talking about." Yeah. For years I didn't read Bloom because, as described in the press, he sounded precious and bloviant. Imagine my surprise when I did read him!
This—“it is an earned inversion — it applies the putative morality of the play to destroy it. I mean, fuck these people, they don’t deserve a happy ending, and our time is entitled to talk back to theirs”—is as insightful and as radical a claim as anything Bloom ever wrote.
I'd say more so! Bloom has his moments but he did not typically manage to go past the "oh! yeah!" point of his epiphanies and out the other side, as Roy does here (and routinely). This is a stunning review, thank you Roy!
And yes, you have put your finger on precisely what makes the play tick -- the people running the Venetian economy (and thus the state) are the dumbassiest bros who ever dumbassed, Portia's intelligence is wasted on quibbling about the surface expressions of the dumbass system instead of tearing it to shreds, and the only one even capable of appreciating her wit is Shylock, who as an outcast from the benefits of the system sees through the whole sorry thing. It could also be played, maybe in repertory with The Tempest, as a sarcastic Austenian indictment of colonialism -- why is everything you own invested in fucking SHIPS anyway?
My favorite line in the whole thing, and the one I quote the most, is Antonio's in Act V: "I am dumb." Which comments simultaneously on the core mechanism you've noted -- YES, you dumbass, you are dumb as a fucking rock, why in god's name are you the one everyone is falling over themselves to protect and hero-ize -- and on the (dumbfounding!!) deus ex machina effect SHakespeare doesn't even bother to disguise, when the ships are fine after all, and J.R. is still alive, or something. It's like he is simultaneously holding up two signs, both addressed to the audience: "APPLAUSE NAO" and "KICK ME."
(While writing that last paragraph I got curious about whether my, I assumed anachronistic, reading of "dumb" as containing a silent "-ass" was actually available to Shakespeare, and it turns out it was!: "Old English DUMB, of persons, "mute, silent, refraining from speaking or unable to speak," from Proto-Germanic *DUMBAZ "dumb, dull," which is perhaps from PIE *DHEUBH- "confusion, stupefaction, dizziness," from root *DHEU- (1) "dust, mist, vapor, smoke," also expressing related notions of "defective perception or wits." The -b has probably been silent since 13c. Related: Dumbly; dumber; dumbest. Of animals, "lacking in speech," hence "without intellect" (c. 1200).....[The m]eaning "foolish, ignorant" was occasional in Middle English" <https://www.etymonline.com/word/dumb> I REST MY CASE, DUMBASSES)
"It could also be played, maybe in repertory with The Tempest, as a sarcastic Austenian indictment of colonialism -- why is everything you own invested in fucking SHIPS anyway?"
'Cause, like England, Venice was a seafaring bunch of thieving colonizers in competition with another seafaring bunch of thieving colonizers on the other end of the peninsula/continent (Genoa/Spain).
Great stuff as always, Roy. You neatly summed up an argument I heard Jim Shapiro make years ago for why we should still see or read MoV, hateful warts and all.
I dipped briefly into the comments of that one review Roy referenced—the “cancel” one—and skimming three comments was enough. The amount of throat-clearing and shirt-tucking was off-putting. And the reflexive, vapid use of “WOKE” to mean “criticism of anything I like” is so damn stupid and childish, the minute I hear it I know it’s time to leave. (“But I *like* anti-semitism! How dare you bring your woke criticism of it here!”)
I looked at that too, and the comments were awful, but comments everywhere are awful. I don't know what Roy puts in the water supply that makes this place different, I just hope supply-chain issues don't force him to lower our dosage.
Even good sites tend to have at least a handful of awful commenters—at the very least Centrists who exult in punching left and being condescending and/or abusive. It’s nice to have a haven!
On the plus side, at least RW Americans haven't gotten around to calling anything they dislike (i.e. that very "woke-ism," or what my old mum used to call "manners") "Nazism" yet. Knowing their dedication to following the Russian trends, though, it can't be far off.
Goddammit, Edroso, why has nobody hired you to write criticism for the New Yorker?
And I don’t mean the diminished realexistierender New Yorker of the Tina-Brown-and-After era, I mean the full-on Harold Ross platonic-ideal New Yorker.
Although I’ve never seen it produced, I studied Marlowe’s 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘑𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘢 in school half a century ago, and boy-howdy, compared to its derangedly villainous protagonist, Shakespeare’s Shylock could have stepped out of the pages of a glossy B’nai B’rith brochure.
Bloom wrote about Barabas the Jew, too, who bothered him less than Shylock because he was so ridiculous, whereas WS was inspired to outdo him by making a human version -- "I'll show you a Jew!" as Bloom puts it.
We had a long conversation last night with a friend of ours who is a theater expert and scholar of English lit. (retired head of the English Dept. of a nearby university). He saw the production about a week ago and while he was a bit put off by the thematic reset he finished by saying "I have to admit I was never bored."
We were forced to read that dreck Jr. High School, and I refused. Mostly because nobody could give me an answer when I asked, “What’s so GREAT about him?”
I explained that I didn’t relate to it, and that I’d rather read something by a Black woman. Thankfully, this was during the progressive ‘70s, and I was getting the best suburban education possible, thanks to the high taxes my parents were paying.
When in High School we were assigned the same standard works, and again i refused.
My fabulous English teacher, Mr. Porambo, who I loved, asked me why I would deny myself so much greatness.
I asked him if he read Iceberg Slim. He said no, then I asked him the same thing.
“Touché Durant - you get an automatic A for the class!”
I gave him my copy of the book. He read it, and while giving it back he said, “Thank you for the privilege of that education.”
He died a few year ago, and I was asked by his son to write and read a eulogy at his funeral, because he put that in his will. Needless to say, his family and assorted Klan member friends were gobsmacked…his son LOVED IT.
He was a cool dude, for a cranky, Preppy, uptight old White guy.
Shakespearean adaptations became a whole lot better once directors & dramaturges started allowing the possibility that most of these roles are contemptuous — that the merchants, nobles, & machiavells they depict are fooling no one. They're role models for an empire developing around his ears: gauche, unprincipled, power-hungry, amoral but also so hungry for justifcation they'd see Shakes or Jonson or Webster & say "that guy gets it, give him an endowment."
Curses upon the tribe of English teachers for making us read these plays straight, patter-faced & plither'd...
I could recommend two very fun Jacobean comedies: Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fayre & Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Bizarre & strangely contemporary
Bartholomew Fair is one of the greatest early modern plays—or maybe “pre-postmodern”. And don’t forget The Spanish Tragedy…
Damn skippy
Spanish Tragedy FTW. I’ve only seen it performed once, at Augustana College. Quite a lot of risqué material for a Lutheran college! (And more tongues bitten out on stage than in your usual play.)
The Missus, a doctor of letters, is high on Jonson, whom I only know from Volpone. And this is Beaumont from Fletcher &? I'll look in, thanks!
The same — and it's wild. Members of the audience are part of the drama & change its course of action. Very much ahead of its time.
So who exactly did Shakespeare write for? What kind of people made up the Globe audience? Was he writing entertainment for the masses? Curious but not motivated to do the research, GM, sorry.
No exactly about it -- and not simply answered. The acting companies were sponsored by powerful aristocrats, & the theaters were private ventures that sold high-end tix in boxes & balconies to rich folx & ground-level seats to poorer types ("the groundlings"). I have a colleague who believes Sh's plays are political code to those poorer audiences ("yeah, I hear your concerns" mostly, which is not impossible, though prof x is a bit of crank).
What I'm getting at is the strain in the writing itself (which we mostly have only third hand for most playwrights) — by guys who were middle-class in origin, educated enough to feel good about it, locked in the arbitrary & vexed business of theater, & needing to show off to each other.
To ask "who exactly" is a strange demand, something we put on the more ancient world — like those answers can only be one single "right" answer? Or by having that answer we can pin down the meaning. Or that a work of art never escapes intention into a life of its own in public reception.
"Or that a work of art never escapes intention into a life of its own in public reception." Ooh, this. I have phrased this feeling more like "Shut up, you released it and it's mine now" but yours is more elegant and accurate.
I don't know that it is.
Elegant doesn't always mean pretty or publishable. I like the blunt just as much.
This is as good a short answer as I've ever heard. Theater artists get a faceful of polling data every night. They are the abstract and brief chronicle of their time -- someone said.
So tl;dr is that he was writing to both the elite, such as it was, as well as the (somewhat?) little people? My qualification, so to speak, is that I’m not so sure that the elite were necessarily particularly well educated and/or of sophisticated tastes. Some of them were undoubtedly, just not sure that it was, like, universal among the upper classes.
And on top of that, they never tell us about all the porn that Shakespeare hid in his sonnets! Buncha fucking prudes, you ask me.
Had to be treated respectfully for the Great Works of Western Civilization cultural propaganda thing.
An excellent review both of the play and the interpretation of the play. The Harold Bloom I knew (sitting in the auditorium while he labored to make us hippies appreciate Elizabethan theater) would approve - he wanted engagement, damn it, with ancient works! But now you get back to the news of the day: what will headliner Victor Orban say at CPAC and how will Dreher contain himself?
I was thankful there was a review this morning. I am about to the point where current events are off limits unless I'm willing to switch from green tea and Marijuana to
Black Tar heroin and cheap gin .
There's willing, and there's able...
"how will Dreher contain himself?"
I believe it's called a cilice?
Outside a theatre in Washington, April 2022-
"How did you enjoy the play, Mr.Rosso?"
" Not really my cuppa. You know? Shylock and Portia were decent. There"'s some good laughs. The rest of the characters were stupid and racist as fuck. Mostly dogshit to be honest. "
In a pub just up from the Globe Theatre
April 1605 -
" What did you think.?"
"I'll be honest. I kept waiting for someone to take a pound of flesh. I almost fell asleep in the second act.
That Portia was a bad bitch though ."
" Shylock was pretty cool considering his -uh- background.If jew know what I mean .( hearty laughter) I'll tell you what. No way that Antonio guy wasn't queer for that clown Bassanio.".
I really enjoyed the street level Shakespeare review! There have been way too many 4 dollar words applied to the subject over the centurys , when phrases like "bad ass," or : Funny as fuck," do a better job describing the plays.
The first Shakespeare I saw live was Two Gentlemen of Verona and I thought it was funny AF.
My date was a theater major she thought it was funny I was so surprised it was so enjoyably accessible. She figured Shakespeare's plays were the Dynasty/Dallas entertainments of their day . That's why somebody gets knifed every 3 and a half minutes.
That's why we love Harold Bloom. We can understand what he's talking about. Bloom on" Blood Meridian "changed my life.
Man, good luck, let us know.
Craig could be fantastic. I loved Toshiro Mifune in the role with his brawling physicality. I could see Craig going the same way.
(Fun Fact ,- auto- complete changed " Toshiro " to " T-shirt" so for the rest of my life I will think of the beloved Japanese actor as " T - shirt Mifune,")(Goddamn Auto- complete)
I hope that works out!
I’m interested for Negga, Craig I’m not expecting anything so it’s possible I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Autocomplete just earned 2 marks!
We’re seeing it next month. Saw Negga in and as Hamlet just before Covid. Great performance, great production (not that I’d know).
"We can understand what he's talking about." Yeah. For years I didn't read Bloom because, as described in the press, he sounded precious and bloviant. Imagine my surprise when I did read him!
This—“it is an earned inversion — it applies the putative morality of the play to destroy it. I mean, fuck these people, they don’t deserve a happy ending, and our time is entitled to talk back to theirs”—is as insightful and as radical a claim as anything Bloom ever wrote.
Going a little far, but I'll take it, thanks!
I'd say more so! Bloom has his moments but he did not typically manage to go past the "oh! yeah!" point of his epiphanies and out the other side, as Roy does here (and routinely). This is a stunning review, thank you Roy!
And yes, you have put your finger on precisely what makes the play tick -- the people running the Venetian economy (and thus the state) are the dumbassiest bros who ever dumbassed, Portia's intelligence is wasted on quibbling about the surface expressions of the dumbass system instead of tearing it to shreds, and the only one even capable of appreciating her wit is Shylock, who as an outcast from the benefits of the system sees through the whole sorry thing. It could also be played, maybe in repertory with The Tempest, as a sarcastic Austenian indictment of colonialism -- why is everything you own invested in fucking SHIPS anyway?
My favorite line in the whole thing, and the one I quote the most, is Antonio's in Act V: "I am dumb." Which comments simultaneously on the core mechanism you've noted -- YES, you dumbass, you are dumb as a fucking rock, why in god's name are you the one everyone is falling over themselves to protect and hero-ize -- and on the (dumbfounding!!) deus ex machina effect SHakespeare doesn't even bother to disguise, when the ships are fine after all, and J.R. is still alive, or something. It's like he is simultaneously holding up two signs, both addressed to the audience: "APPLAUSE NAO" and "KICK ME."
(While writing that last paragraph I got curious about whether my, I assumed anachronistic, reading of "dumb" as containing a silent "-ass" was actually available to Shakespeare, and it turns out it was!: "Old English DUMB, of persons, "mute, silent, refraining from speaking or unable to speak," from Proto-Germanic *DUMBAZ "dumb, dull," which is perhaps from PIE *DHEUBH- "confusion, stupefaction, dizziness," from root *DHEU- (1) "dust, mist, vapor, smoke," also expressing related notions of "defective perception or wits." The -b has probably been silent since 13c. Related: Dumbly; dumber; dumbest. Of animals, "lacking in speech," hence "without intellect" (c. 1200).....[The m]eaning "foolish, ignorant" was occasional in Middle English" <https://www.etymonline.com/word/dumb> I REST MY CASE, DUMBASSES)
"It could also be played, maybe in repertory with The Tempest, as a sarcastic Austenian indictment of colonialism -- why is everything you own invested in fucking SHIPS anyway?"
'Cause, like England, Venice was a seafaring bunch of thieving colonizers in competition with another seafaring bunch of thieving colonizers on the other end of the peninsula/continent (Genoa/Spain).
Austen's Merchant with Cesaire's Tempest. A knockout double feature.
Right, exactly.
Incredibly wealthy & influential dumbasses. But yes, the rest checks out...
Great stuff as always, Roy. You neatly summed up an argument I heard Jim Shapiro make years ago for why we should still see or read MoV, hateful warts and all.
Now I want to read that!
I’m sure he’s published something on it somewhere, but this was a talk he gave in NYC back in 1991. I’ll see what I can find.
I dipped briefly into the comments of that one review Roy referenced—the “cancel” one—and skimming three comments was enough. The amount of throat-clearing and shirt-tucking was off-putting. And the reflexive, vapid use of “WOKE” to mean “criticism of anything I like” is so damn stupid and childish, the minute I hear it I know it’s time to leave. (“But I *like* anti-semitism! How dare you bring your woke criticism of it here!”)
I looked at that too, and the comments were awful, but comments everywhere are awful. I don't know what Roy puts in the water supply that makes this place different, I just hope supply-chain issues don't force him to lower our dosage.
Even good sites tend to have at least a handful of awful commenters—at the very least Centrists who exult in punching left and being condescending and/or abusive. It’s nice to have a haven!
On the plus side, at least RW Americans haven't gotten around to calling anything they dislike (i.e. that very "woke-ism," or what my old mum used to call "manners") "Nazism" yet. Knowing their dedication to following the Russian trends, though, it can't be far off.
Goddammit, Edroso, why has nobody hired you to write criticism for the New Yorker?
And I don’t mean the diminished realexistierender New Yorker of the Tina-Brown-and-After era, I mean the full-on Harold Ross platonic-ideal New Yorker.
Accidents of history, both theirs and mine, sir. Thank you!
I, contratemporaly, intend to be an accident of the future!
Although I’ve never seen it produced, I studied Marlowe’s 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘑𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘢 in school half a century ago, and boy-howdy, compared to its derangedly villainous protagonist, Shakespeare’s Shylock could have stepped out of the pages of a glossy B’nai B’rith brochure.
Bloom wrote about Barabas the Jew, too, who bothered him less than Shylock because he was so ridiculous, whereas WS was inspired to outdo him by making a human version -- "I'll show you a Jew!" as Bloom puts it.
Well, you certainly said a bardful in this!
Thanks for this, I was very curious about the production and really appreciate your insights!
Hey all –
We had a long conversation last night with a friend of ours who is a theater expert and scholar of English lit. (retired head of the English Dept. of a nearby university). He saw the production about a week ago and while he was a bit put off by the thematic reset he finished by saying "I have to admit I was never bored."
Wow, reruns already?!?! It's not even May!
Roy--somehow the Venetians piece got emailed again!
Shakespeare, oh barf.
We were forced to read that dreck Jr. High School, and I refused. Mostly because nobody could give me an answer when I asked, “What’s so GREAT about him?”
I explained that I didn’t relate to it, and that I’d rather read something by a Black woman. Thankfully, this was during the progressive ‘70s, and I was getting the best suburban education possible, thanks to the high taxes my parents were paying.
When in High School we were assigned the same standard works, and again i refused.
My fabulous English teacher, Mr. Porambo, who I loved, asked me why I would deny myself so much greatness.
I asked him if he read Iceberg Slim. He said no, then I asked him the same thing.
“Touché Durant - you get an automatic A for the class!”
I gave him my copy of the book. He read it, and while giving it back he said, “Thank you for the privilege of that education.”
He died a few year ago, and I was asked by his son to write and read a eulogy at his funeral, because he put that in his will. Needless to say, his family and assorted Klan member friends were gobsmacked…his son LOVED IT.
He was a cool dude, for a cranky, Preppy, uptight old White guy.