Geraldine Braun

We were saddened to learn of the passing earlier this month of one of the Shakespeare Readers' charter members, Geraldine "Gerry" Braun.

Gerry was a great fan of all things Shakespeare, a lover of the arts, and a kind-hearted friend. She will be greatly missed.

Gerry Braun, at the Kennedy Center.

A memorial will be held Thursday, April 3, at 11 a.m. at the Church of the Annunciation, 3810 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20016. 

To sing a requiem and such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls.

Update April 3 ~ a beautiful service. Goodbye, Gerry!

"Good Night, Sweet Prince"

Peter F. Warker





The Shakespeare Readers have lost one of our finest voices. A friend writes:

I bear sad tidings. Our dear friend and reader, Peter Warker, passed away on March 30. His death notice was in today's POST. Fortunately, I was able to get over and visit with him for an hour on March 13 at his assisted living facility, Bartholomew House, in Potomac. Joann Dann was there at the time; how wonderful to see her again too.
...
Peter was a prince of a fellow. He preceded even me at the Palisades so he must have been attending for a pretty long time. His death was peaceful, he had had his morphine shot, a favorite helper was with him, he made a sound and then drifted off. Good night, sweet prince.

... and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Villain or Anti-Hero? Richard III

The Shakespeare Readers will next take on the Bard's second-longest work, Richard III, on April 15. (See full schedule here.)

Wikipedia isn't necessarily my favorite go-to resource for research, but the post on Richard III makes an interesting point about Richard, one of Shakespeare's leading villains, as an "anti-hero": Even while behaving villainously and admitting his intentions, "Richard immediately establishes a connection with the audience with his opening monologue. In the soliloquy he admits his amorality to the audience but at the same time treats them as if they were co-conspirators in his plotting."

While he is shown to be evil, Richard is not reduced to the kind of conveniently plot-moving villain that we get, for instance, from Don John in Much Ado.Even Iago's hatred of Othello is taken for granted, and his psychoanalysis left to future generations of scholars. (If Shakespeare needed us to understand Iago, he would have named the play after him, right?)

With Richard, we follow his thoughts into actions. It makes his behavior no less repugnant, but we see the humanity beneath "that bottled spider, ... that poisonous bunchback'd toad" so reviled by Queen Margaret.

In real life, those whom most of society perceive as villains never perceive themselves as villains. They justify, they rationalize, they blame. And empathy is right out. So it is (or should be) in drama. Richard is not an antagonist, working against a focal hero. But he is protagonist only in the sense that he is the focus of the play; a villain, only in the sense of his evil behavior.

Still, I'm not completely satisfied with the Wikipedia description of Richard as "anti-hero." To me, anti-heroes are like Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield--characters whose moral compasses may be calibrated in ways that society does not accept. There is nothing acceptable in Richard's murderous path across the stage.

So we are left with Richard as villain--evil, vile, vicious. Whether he was simply reviled for his deformity or became deformed by depravity--again, something for the modern psychoanalysts to ponder.

"Now is the winter of our discontent" speech (Act I, scene 1) performed by Sir Ian McKellen

What
Richard III: Read the full play aloud with a few of your fellow Shakespeare fans! Please bring your own copy of the play.

When
Sunday, April 15, 2012 - 1 to 4 p.m.

Where
Washington, D.C.: American University's Bender Library, Room 306

Links
Richard III full text (MIT Shakespeare project)

Shakespeare Readers 2011-2012 Season schedule (first post of this blog)

American University directions and campus map

RSVP Cindy Wagner: hosaajoy 'at' gmail.com

Incomplete Works!!

Warning! Warning!

I'm taking back any recommendations I might have made for Kindle. Argh!! My "Complete Plays" unabridged and what-not is missing FOUR plays.

What I bought is this:

The Complete Plays of Shakespeare, special Kindle edition

The table of contents listed at Amazon divides the plays into:

* The Complete Tragedies

* The Complete Histories

* The Complete Comedies

* The Complete Romances

It is the four romances that are missing from my download:

Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Cymbeline
The Winter’s Tale
The Tempest

Unfortunately, I only noticed this lapse today because the Shakespeare Readers are scheduled to read "The Tempest" this afternoon.

Picture me screaming down the halls of American University Library with my hair on fire.

... Or, blithely sliding into room 306 with a beautifully bound hardback edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

A Tempestuous Last Laugh

The Shakespeare Readers will next read The Tempest (complete text available online from MIT)

When: Sunday, March 18, 1-4 p.m.

Where: American University's Bender Library, Room 306 (parking in the lot at Nebraska and New Mexico avenues is free on Sundays)

Directions | Campus Map

RSVP: Cindy Wagner, hosaajoy 'at' gmail.com

Complete Shakespeare Readers schedule

~~~

The winds of late February are roaring outside my window as I now consider The Tempest, Shakespeare's final comedy--composed in late 1610 for King James I.

Scholar Harold Bloom describes The Tempest (along with A Midsummer Night's Dream) as being the most visionary of Shakespeare's comedies but also "the worst interpreted and performed." (Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, page 662).

But as my mind gusts back to the one staging I have experienced, I can only agree to disagree. The late Sir John Wood's humanistic 1988 Prospero was powerful and poignant, the Royal Shakespeare Company's staging was athletic and breathtaking.

In The Guardian's obituary for Wood, Michael Coveney wrote:

Wood's Prospero, in The Tempest directed by Nicholas Hytner (making his RSC debut) in 1988, struck me as the best I had ever seen – and I had seen Gielgud in the role, twice. His Prospero was a demented stage manager on a theatrical island, suspended between smouldering rage at his usurpation and unbridled glee at his alternative ethereal power. He bound the entire play to his wrecked view of experience and had no qualms about playing up and down the vocal register – in the dark backward and abysm of time we did indeed plummet several throaty fathoms deep. The critic Irving Wardle said that Wood lit up the text like an electric storm, and simply had no rival as a source of nervous energy on a stage.

John Wood:1983 Photograph Allstar-Cinetext

In any case, it was a thrill for this Bardophile to experience that lit-up text.

My favorite line:

TRINCULO

Servant-monster! the folly of this island! They
say there's but five upon this isle: we are three
of them; if th' other two be brained like us, the
state totters.

Hee!

In Bard we trust,

Cindy

Romeo, Juliet, and the Punk Rampant

Next on the Shakespeare Readers schedule is "Romeo and Juliet," just in time for Valentine's Day.

But it is not of love or romance that I write today. I bring you a mystery... and an answer!

If your only exposure to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film version, then you have been deceived! The language in the film is not 100% Shakespearean. I give you the case of the "punk rampant."

... (with apologies: the video has been removed) ....

As I wrote in my blog three years ago, I did a little research and discovered that the phrase is actually from The Dutch Courtesan by John Marston, 1605:

Freevill (to Franceschina): Go; y'are grown a punk rampant!

Great phrase, though, and very apt for the likes of Mercutio and Tybalt, the restless punks whose passions are the real culprit in this tragedy. Romeo and Juliet themselves are passionate, but their blood burns for love, not aggression; for reconciliation of families, not revenge for perceived slights.

Actually, Mercutio (portrayed by John McEnery in the above clip) and Tybalt are two of my favorite characters in all of Shakespeare, no doubt because the actors who portray them are always so much more compelling than the various Romeos. (Okay, I'll give you Leonardo di Caprio, best Romeo ever.) Michael York's distinctive voice gave the Zeffirelli Tybalt a heavy helping of sexiness that rocketed the actor to superstardom.

And, incidentally, York co-wrote (with Adrian Brine) a nifty book full of advice and gossip, called A Shakespearean Actor Prepares. He writes:

Cast in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, as the cocky, libidinous Tybalt, I was originally introduced in the very act of proving my reputation as the King of Cats between the thighs of a Veronese maiden. This was perhaps too obvious an image and it was cut, but I still make my entrance a trifle more subtly, from the codpiece upwards!

It may also have been a bit too rampant for the movie ratings board and in 1968, I highly doubt my mother would have permitted this view of such a punk.

Shakespeare Readers, prepare to read Romeo and Juliet using an authorized edition (i.e., one that does not contain this errant phrase).

Folger Shakespeare Library edition (paperback)
Penguin edition (Kindle)

In Bard We Trust,
Cindy

RSVP for the February 12 reading at American University's Bender Library (1-4 p.m. in room 306) to hosaajoy 'at' gmail.com

Twelfth Night, and other Epiphanies

When: Sunday, January 22, 2012, 1-4 p.m.

Where: American University's Bender Library, Room 306

Contact: (see below)

Next on the Shakespeare Readers' schedule is Twelfth Night (which I inexplicably want to spell with a ph, perhaps because it was written to celebrate the Eve of the Epiphany and all).

The Epiphany is the realization that the Christmas holiday is over and it's time to take down the Christmas lights. However, as modern times have lengthened the Christmas holiday forwards and backwards, we now celebrate at least through Super Bowl Sunday, which this season falls on February 5, 2012, certainly within the Twelfth Night reading-relevancy parameters.

But I digress.

Harold Bloom writes of Twelfth Night, or, What You Will that "everyone except the superb clown Feste is a zany." The duke, Orsino, is "loony," and heroines Viola and Olivia are "charming screwballs" (p. 205). And yet, he observes, "Wild with laughter, Twelfth Night is nevertheless almost always on the edge of violence" (p. 211).

But of course there are a lot of great lines to be read, like:

If music be the food of love, play on!

...

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

and

God give them wisdom that have it, and those that are fools, let them use their talents.

Let There Be Links:

* Shakespeare Readers complete 2011-2012 schedule is the first post of this Blog.

* Paperback and Kindle editions of Twelfth Night from Folger are available from Amazon.com.

* Complete text of the Arden edition is available from MIT's Shakespeare project.

* Harold Bloom's insightful text Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (in cloth or paperback) is available from Amazon.com.

* Tickets for the Super Bowl (to be held in Indianapolis) are available from StubHub. I understand it is also televised and will be streamed online for the first time, on February 5, a full month after the real Twelfth Night and two weeks after our reading. I hope you are as relieved as I am that we won't have a scheduling conflict!

* And apparently you can also stream at least one full-length film version of Twelfth Night on YouTube.

In Bard We Trust,

Cindy

To RSVP for this reading, please send me an e-mail at hosaajoy 'at' gmail.com

ETA, Please note that the readings for Richard III (April 8) and Taking of the Shrew (May 13) will be rescheduled ASAP to avoid conflicts with Easter Sunday and Mother's Day. Oops! Please check back later at Shakespeare Readers 2011-2012 Season.

Henry VIII

Whether your introduction to King Henry VIII was courtesy of Herman's Hermits ("I am 'enery the Eighth, I am, I am") or PBS's Masterpiece Theater (The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth), it seems that his history is the best known among the Kings of Shakespeare.

Playlist, Six Wives of Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon

For the Shakespeare Readers attending the December 11 reading at American University library, if you haven't already purchased a copy of the text, there are plenty of online resources. Your best bet would be to download a free copy to your Kindle from Project Gutenberg, or just read it online.

Truth in Shakespeare: The authorship of this late play is believed (by Wikipedia, among others) to be shared with John Fletcher (who apparently was not Anonymous). Among other deviations, the script of the Shakespeare-Fletcher Henry VIII contains significantly more stage directions than any solo work by the fair bard.

What Fletcher really wanted to do, it seems, was direct.

In Bard We Trust,

Cindy

Shakespeare Readers 2011-2012 Schedule

The Comedy Stylings of "Anonymous"

Okay, as promised, I went to see Anonymous today and can report that this film could not have been more hilarious if it had been animated.

With magical movie special effects, the name of William Shakespeare is erased from the parchment.

The Queen really loves plays, especially by guys like Ben Jonson, but noble people like Devere aren't supposed to be playwrights. Nevertheless, Devere hears the muse, like Jonson and Marlowe do (he also apparently hears sirens such as the Queen herself), and so write he must.

So he gets a "beard" to claim authorship on his manuscripts. He wants Jonson first, but Ben is too ethical to do it.

So the plays go on being anonymous for awhile until Shakespeare, the inarticulate drunken actor, seizes the chance to take the bow when the screaming groundlings call for the author.

Here we see William Shakespeare leaping into the mosh pit and crowd surfing over the groundlings' heads. Yay Willie!

Shakespeare's notoriety makes both Jonson and Devere a bit annoyed, so Jonson scowls his way through the rest of the movie, including accusing Shakespeare of killing Marlowe.

And Devere, in the rest of the movie, uncovers a series of unfortunate alternative historical scenarios, among which he fathers his own grandson by bedding his mother, the Queen.

Well, most of the movie was just plain confusing to me. My favorite parts were when actual plays were shown being performed. Shakespeare (the work) comes to life.

Anonymous actually opens and closes exactly the same way Branagh's Henry V does, with Derek Jacobi entering (in this case in modern dress) to Greek chorus a prologue (in this case suggesting that we've all been duped for these many centuries).

The film ended up taking itself so seriously that it was impossible for me to do so. Honestly, I need to go watch Shakespeare in Love again. It did a much more plausible job of tracing the origins of genius back to its proper source: the inexplicable depths of a human soul.

Non-Anonymous Readers

For the record, we will not be renaming this group "The Anonymous Readers."

But because I like to have an open mind (and because I LOVE Derek Jacobi), I'll take the hit and go ahead and see this movie. Will report back.

Cheers!

In Bard We Trust,
Cindy

A Note about Henry VIII

We do have a rarely read history play on the schedule, Henry VIII, which is believed to be only partially written by Shakespeare. I chose it because the story is well known and I am interested in seeing Shakespeare (et al.)'s treatment of it.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find copies of it at my local Barnes & Noble, so I'm afraid its lack of availability may deter Readers from attending the scheduled event (December 11).

So, if you think you would like to read this with us (please!!), consider ordering a copy now from Amazon.

Of course, it would be included in any Complete Works edition, as well as digitally from sites such as Online Literature.

So, be prepared to use your voice!

In Bard We Trust,
Cindy

The Scottish Play, aka Mackers

The Readers will next be reading Shakespeare's great tragedy of witches and ghosts, so let's prepare by learning how not to say "M------," and what to do if we slip up.

A demonstration video, courtesy of Blackadder:



So, if you think you can refrain from saying "M------" until we read, please join the Shakespeare Readers at American University's Bender Library, Room 306, on Sunday, October 9, at 1 p.m.

2011-2012 Shakespeare Readers Schedule

ETA (9-26-11) The Washington Post's Celia Wren has reviewed the production now playing at Synetic Theatre: "Spooky, Silent Shakespeare."

I love her descriptions of the actors portraying Mr. and Mrs. M: "Irakli Kavsadze as a pugnacious but hapless Macbeth; Irina Tsikurishvili as his seductive and near-demonic wife...."

How to Read Shakespeare (and a Little Bit of Why)

First, let's get the "why" out of the way. Why read Shakespeare?

I can't answer for anyone but myself. I read Shakespeare because I need to focus my mind on just one thing after being cognitively pulled in skeighty-nine different directions all week. And after listening to everyone else, it's nice to be able to use my own voice.

Why Shakespeare in particular? I just have great affection for thoughts that are well constructed and distinctly delivered (though a young, uninitiated reader may wonder why there are so many cliches in Shakespeare. Heh).

Shakespeare's principal characters are fully human, even when they merely exist to advance a plot. Why was Don John, the Bastard Brother in Much Ado about Nothing, so irrationally villainous? Because Shakespeare needed him to create obstacles for a couple of too-perfectly perfect sweethearts.

Anyway, I read Shakespeare for fun. And you can, too! Here's how.

First, find your text.

(click image to enlarge)








Many of the members of Shakespeare Readers use large, beautifully bound volumes of the collected works, treasured and tended as lovingly as a family Bible over the course of a lifetime. Others bring along a cheap or even used paperback of whatever play is scheduled for our monthly reading. Some editions include helpful notes that put plots in context or offer clearer definitions for ancient terms.

So far, I am the first member to go the e-book route for our readings. Amazon offers free Kindle apps for PCs and it was very easy to install the app on my Acer Netbook. The ability to enlarge the type was a very welcome bonus for me.

In the Kindle store, search for your selected play or the collected works. There are many free editions, but the Complete Plays that I purchased was only three bucks.

Here is what a page looks like, from Much Ado About Nothing. (I highlighted a couple of my favorite lines. And I drew on the picture, not on my computer. *g*)

(click image to enlarge)









You do, of course, have the option of purchasing a recording. My voice certainly can't compare with those of great actors and actresses like Vanessa Redgrave or John Gielgud.

But being read to isn't the same as reading. It's also more dangerous, because if you are read to in your car, Shakespeare will have transported you to another time and place. Your fellow travelers sharing the road may not be so tolerant of your distraction.

If you wish to have Shakespeare read to you, I recommend getting the full treatment in a theater, whether live and in 3-D or on a nice big high-def screen.

You can certainly read Shakespeare the way you read any book, but Shakespeare intended his words to be spoken aloud. If you read aloud by yourself, I recommend using the Kindle app on a device that lets you to pretend you are talking on a phone. *g*

Alternatively, find a nice group of friendly people (like us!) to read along with you. Even a small group can work very well. At Shakespeare Readers, we have tried assigning parts when we have big groups, or just reading around the table with small groups (we had just four readers yesterday).

I admit I sometimes read too quickly. For a play that is as close to my heart as Much Ado is, I know the feelings that are behind the words and feel very comfortable acting a little bit. With a forgiving group of fellow readers, I'll muff up my share of words, but we all sally forth and read on. It is an afternoon well spent.

Next up, The Scottish Play!

love, hosaa
a little mirth, a little matter

assorted links:
Much Ado About Nothing on screen
Folger Shakespeare Library
The Shakespeare Theatre Company (Washington, D.C.)
Plot Summaries, Shakespeare Online
Maryland Shakespeare (Jamie's site)
Shakespeare Explorers (Meetup group, membership required)

And, because I have a few other interesting interests:
Hosaa's Blog

Shakespeare Readers 2011-2012 Season

Continuing in the proud tradition of the Washington Shakespeare Reading Group, the SHAKESPEARE READERS of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region will meet once a month to read aloud one entire play. No memorization required; simply bring your own standard copy of the scheduled play and use your voice! All players take turns reading, so no one is left out.

Where: American University’s Bender Library, Room 306 (parking in the lot at Nebraska and New Mexico avenues is free on Sundays)
-- Directions
-- Campus Map

When: 1-5 p.m., on “second Sundays” (exceptions noted)

Coordinator: Cindy Wagner, hosaajoy 'at' gmail.com

Schedule:

September 11, 2011: Much Ado About Nothing
October 9, 2011: Macbeth
November 13, 2011: Two Gentlemen of Verona
December 11, 2011: Henry VIII
January 22, 2012: Twelfth Night
February 12, 2012: Romeo and Juliet
March 18, 2012: The Tempest
April 15, 2012: Richard III
May 6, 2012: Taming of the Shrew
* June 10, 2012: Love’s Labour’s Lost canceled

Please RSVP to Cindy at your soonest convenience (e-mail preferred). I will also e-mail reminders before each scheduled reading.

In Bard We Trust!