Fear you his tyrannous passion more, alas, Than the queen's life?

I've finished The Winter's Tale.  Man, Leontes is a dick.  I now have a least favorite Shakespeare character.  See below:

 London.  The GLOBE theatre.
(Enter LEONTES, HERMIONE, POLIXINES, various OTHERS)

Leontes:  I'm a whiny little baby.  Please don't go, Polixines, you're my best friend and I don't know what I would do without you, even though my wife is awesome, gorgeous and fertile and I'm a king.
Polixines: Nah.  I'm leaving.  Nice to see you though.
Leontes: Really, really pregnant wife, please make him stay!
Hermione: Polixines, if you don't stay, I'll throw you in jail.  Which I can do because I'm the Queen.
Polixines: Ummm... Okay.  I guess.
Leontes: What?!  You guys are fucking, aren't you!  I'll kill you Polixines!
(Exit POLIXINES, fleeing)
Leontes: Cheating bitch!  I'll throw you in jail!
Various Others:  Dude, chill!  You've flipped your lid, she's faithful and he's your best friend.  Also, she's hella pregnant!
Leontes: Fuck all a'y'all!  Anybody who disagrees will be executed.  I can do this because I'm the king!
Various Others: Ummm.  Okay.  I guess.  But you're nuts.

LATER
(Enter LEONTES, PAULINA)
Paulina: Hey, asshole.  Here's your daughter.  Your wife died giving birth to her in a filthy jail cell.
Leontes: Good!  Cheating bitch.  Get rid of that thing.
Paulina: Notice how she looks just like you?
Leontes: Whatever.  Burn it.  Or like, hit it with a hammer or something.  Just get rid of it.
Paulina: I ummm... guess I'll take it away now.
Leontes: God, but it's good to be king!

STILL LATER
Leontes: Oh, hey!  The prophecy I sent for arrived!  This'll show everyone I'm right!
Officer: The prophecy says (reading) Leontes is wrong, and also an asshole.  If he doesn't believe me, his son will die right away to prove that I'm a real prophecy.
Leontes: I don't believe it.  I'm still right.
(Enter SERVANT)
Servant: Hey, asshole.  Your son just died.
Leontes: What?  You mean the prophecy is right and everyone else is right and I am wrong?  Oh woe!
Everyone: Fuck you.

The treasure of her honour. No more. To what end?

London.  The GLOBE theatre.
(Enter IACHIMO and POSTHUMUS)

Iachimo: Sup?
Posthumus: What? You? I hate you.
Iachimo: Yeah. Bet I can bang your old lady.
Posthumus: What? No.
Iachimo: Totally! And if I win, let’s be friends.
Posthumus: Yeah, okay. But if you lose, I’ll kill you.

LATER
Iachimo: Sup?
Posthumus: What? You?
Iachimo: Yeah. I totally banged your old lady.
Posthumus: What? No.
...Iachimo: Totally! The beast with two backs, you know?
Posthumus: Seriously?
Iachimo: Yep! 

(Shows “proof”)
Posthumus: Crap. Here’s your money.
Iachimo: Yep! Now we can be friends!
Posthumus: Yeah. I guess. Well, I suppose I’ll have her murdered then.
(Exit IACHIMO)
Posthumus: (To audience) Man. Bitches, am I right?
Audience: WTF?

Trouble him not, his wits are gone.

Oh man.  King Lear, Act III, Scene VI is so much better when you can see it.  The lines are all delivered by that holy trinity of crazy, Lear, his fool and Edgar/Tom O'Bedlam, but it's their near-silent witness who makes the scene.  Kent stands by helpless; as his lord shows him just how far gone he is.  In audio, the scene mostly just demonstrates this fact to the audience.  When you can see Kent's look of sadness and just... the dude's heart is breaking.  It's pretty amazing, especially contrasted with the three men cavorting around him.

I need, need, need to explore the characters and write a post comparing Iago and Kent.  Oh yes.

And know not now what name to call myself

A quick note on the current status before I get into today’s play.  Since the starting point described in the introductory post I’ve listened to audiorecordings of King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cymbeline, Hamlet and now Richard II.  I’ll be posting about them in catch up entries periodically.

Now on to Richard II, which I just finished up.

This was my first foray into the Histories and it really wasn’t terribly exciting.  The tale of Richard II is comparatively simple, no mistaken identities, no secret brothers, no ghosts, no clever bets as to the fidelity of anyone’s wife.  Richard banishes a dude (Henry Bolingbroke), and annexes his father’s lands upon his death.  Bolingbroke returns, musters a PO’d gentry against Richard and… Richard just sort of rolls over for them, is imprisoned and, eventually murdered.  Pretty straight story.

Honestly, a little disappointing.  It’s probably that I’m simply not understanding the play very deeply – that’s pretty characteristic, but whatever – there is a body of criticism and analysis on this play just like all the others.  There are a few good turns of the phrase, my favorite is this, spoken by Richard to his usurper, Henry IV (Bolingbroke): 

…I am greater than a king:
For when I was a king, my flatterers
Were then but subjects; being now a subject,
I have a king here to my flatterer.

While Richard himself is something of a whiner, his Queen has a good bit of backbone.  I’m starting to notice that that’s a thing.  Queens, wives, fiancés, those who are true in their love are given strength thereby.  I’ll be studying this pattern as I go, now that I’ve identified it.  For contrast, consider Burgundy from King Lear, who’s like “What’s that?  Cordelia has no dowry?  Maybe I could get one of those Russian mail-order brides…”

Last observation for the wrapup – Names.  Oh man, I hope all the histories aren’t like this.  Bolingbroke, Hereford, Henry IV… it’s hard to keep these guys all straight.  Oh, wait, those are all the same guy!  In England in 1595, they were, no doubt, more accustomed to referring to noblemen with various titles, but it’s pretty hard to track for a commoner here in the colonies in 2011.  Especially since I'm doing this without visual cues and have to match the name to the voice the first time a character is introduced or be forever confounded.  Ah well.

There will likely be one more post on Richard II, about John of Gaunt’s death bed scene.  Look forward!

That way lies madness

One thing that had me thinking about Shakesepeare was an analogy that I'd made a while back.  A year or two ago, I got into the Delta Blues (if you want the story of that, here's an abbreviated version: White Stripes - It Might Get Loud - Son House - Blues).  The first major purchase I made was a copy of the complete recordings of Robert Johnson, to which I listened carefully.  I had to listen carefully.  That stuff isn't as accessible as... well, most anything else you might find yourself listening to.  So, my analogy, "This stuff is like Shakespeare.  It takes a lot of work to understand and enjoy, but once you do you realize that it is really amazing."

As mentioned in the comments previously, I slept through my viewing of King Lear.  It was a class trip and I had foolishly stayed up pretty much the whole night before doing whatever foolish high schoolers do on these trips.  The result was that I dozed off repeatedly during King Lear the next night, despite that I was rapt while I was awake.

A project I was working on (in which I've since mostly lost interest) had me thinking about King Lear and how much I liked it.  That, coupled with an enjoyable viewing of Much Ado About Nothing a month or so earlier, convinced me that I should dig up a copy.  Thus, I wanted to start with King Lear.

We've got a copy of the Complete Works; a big hardbound monster of a book.  Not terribly practical and, given my schedule with the little one and such, I didn't feel like reading was the best course of action for this.  I tracked down a public domain audiorecording of King Lear at www.librivox.org (which has become my go-to site) and set to't.  Listening to Lear, and with that analogy rattling about my head, really that was what birthed the whole project.

Introduction

A quick intro for you.  Circumstances recently have convinced me that it’s time to experience more Shakespeare.  I’m pretty much just interested in the plays and not the poetry, so I’m seeking to read, watch or listen to each and every one of them.  And, of course, I’m blogging about it because it’s 2011 and this is the internet.

Here’s the official list from Wikipedia.  I've annotated it to give us a starting point:

Comedies

• All's Well That Ends Well  -  No knowledge
• As You Like It  -  No knowledge
• The Comedy of Errors  -  Performed in as Antipholus of Syracuse.
• Love's Labour's Lost  -  No knowledge
• Measure for Measure  -  No knowledge
• The Merchant of Venice  -  Saw a performance at Stratford, Ontario.  So good.
• The Merry Wives of Windsor  -  No knowledge
• A Midsummer Night's Dream  -  No knowledge
• Much Ado About Nothing  -  Have seen the movie.  Yeah, with Keanu Reeves.
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre  -  Never even heard of it!
• The Taming of the Shrew  -  I’m pretty sure I watched a movie in class, but will have to revisit.
• The Tempest  -  No knowledge
• Twelfth Night  -  Perfomed in as “Officer”.
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona  -  No knowledge
• The Two Noble Kinsmen  -  No knowledge
• The Winter's Tale  -  Never even heard of it!

Histories  -  Lets make this easy.  I’ve no knowledge of any of the histories except I watched Looking for Richard

• King John
• Richard II
• Henry IV, Part 1
• Henry IV, Part 2
• Henry V
• Henry VI, Part 1
• Henry VI, Part 2
• Henry VI, Part 3
• Richard III
• Henry VIII

Tragedies

• Romeo and Juliet  -  Saw the Baz Luhrmann movie.  Yeah, I know.
• Coriolanus  -  Never heard of it
• Titus Andronicus  -  No knowledge
• Timon of Athens  -  Never heard of it
• Julius Caesar  -  Listened to an audiorecording in class.  Need to revisit.
• Macbeth  -  Read
• Hamlet  -  No knowledge, aside from knowing half of the play as figures of speech.
• Troilus and Cressida  -  No knowledge
• King Lear  -  Saw a performance at Stratford Ontario.  The great William Hutt was Lear.
• Othello  -  Read and watched the movie.  Yeah, the one with Lawrence Fishburn.
• Antony and Cleopatra  -  No knowledge
• Cymbeline  -  Never heard of it

So that’s where I am going into this.  I’m actually a bit into the project, but this is an “as of the beginning” post, so I’ll catch up as I go.  There’s a lot of work to do, 30 plays.  Yikes!

This post is pretty much an infodump.  I'll try to get a bit more interesting next time.  Feel free to ignore or use as reference point or whatever.