tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69782850738965123852024-03-13T21:35:32.577-07:00An Experiment in ParrhesiaWhits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-62148131453929551162020-06-25T15:23:00.001-07:002020-06-25T15:23:43.054-07:00This Is My AutismLots of people don't understand what autism IS. <br /><br />That's okay, I didn't either.<div><br /></div><div>I just thought everything I went through was normal. I thought everybody was like this, that everybody experienced things the same way I did. Because when you hear "you're fine, don't be so dramatic" enough times, eventually you just figure those people are right, and you stop trusting your own perceptions of reality.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's only been in the last year that I've started to discover that many of the ways in which I process the world are very different from the norm. </div><div><br /></div><div>As far as touch is concerned, I've always known that I'm very sensitive to textures and to irritation of the skin. I sunburn even with high SPF sunblock on. As I mentioned in my previous post, tags on clothing drive me bonkers, and autumn is my favorite time of year for clothing because everything is soft and I can snuggle into scarves and sweaters and soft, heavy socks. My first requirement for new clothes is texture; if they don't immediately feel soothing to the touch, I move on. I am soothed by touching soft fabrics or my cats' fur, and I often carry a worry stone in my pocket because it calms me. But bad textures or touches can set my teeth on edge; if I get the edges of my long sleeves wet when I wash my hands, those little damp spots on my wrists will drive me up a wall and distract me from whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't have a ton of issues with smell or taste, though I do tend to prefer my food a bit blander than the average person, and if a food's texture is "off," I can't eat it. I actually like the taste of mushrooms, but can only eat them fried or this one way my mom stuffed them, because otherwise they feel slimy in my mouth and I gag. I do have a visceral reaction to that "fishy" flavor that anything but super-fresh fish tastes and smells like, though I like shrimp and scallops and stuff that comes in shells, because it doesn't get that flavor as much. But I can't typically make myself swallow food that once had fins. Sushi is right out, and the texture of eel nearly made me cough my brains out once upon a time, because I couldn't get the image and feel out of my head that I had chewed on a severed human tongue. </div><div><br /></div><div>I DO have major issues with sound and sight. ADHD and autism share similarities in sound processing, so some of you might recognize some of yourself in this, but with sound, everything around me just blends together in terms of importance and priority. You know how, when you're driving and trying to find a new place, or listening to directions, or looking for a parking spot, and you turn your radio down? Why do you do that? Theoretically you shouldn't need your ears to look for your destination, but the sound pulls at your attention and requires processing power in your brain. For me, it's like that all the time, except I can</div><div>never turn the world's noise down. The air conditioning kicking on is just as loud and important to my brain in terms of input as the important message you've just imparted to me; I don't WANT that to be the case, and I'm TRYING to mute everything else, but my brain doesn't have as much capability in that area as most people's.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is why my phone is on silent all the time. </div><div><br /></div><div>I started a new job this week, and I wear a headset, and when I'm talking to a customer at the same time that someone requests something on the headset, they cancel each other out and I have no idea what either one said. It's like someone does a hard reset on my brain and I forget the last 10 seconds or so of what I was just doing. It's very distressing. A year ago I would have gotten cranky and upset without knowing why. Now I know why and am trying to be gentle with myself and figure out ways to accommodate this (Can I turn the volume way down and hope that others at the counter will catch a request, or that I'll hear if they ask for me by name? Are there positions in the store that allow me to work without the headset?) </div><div><br /></div><div>I bought my first set of noise-cancelling headphones this week, and it was an experience. Wearing them, suddenly I'm no longer aware of the dog barking three doors down, or the weed eater next door, or my next-door neighbor's A/C kicking on, or the bird chirping right near the window. I felt tension in my body ease. My shoulders came down. My breath slowed noticeably. My brow unfurrowed a little; I genuinely felt that happen. I wondered how much of the body tension I've spent so much money to tackle is due to my mechanisms for defending against all the input around me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sight is also weird for me. When I was young, up through my teenage years, I can remember that when I was tired, my eyes would "lock" onto something unmoving in the distance, and I really couldn't look away. When this happened, I couldn't hear anything, either. It was a weird sensation that was mildly distressing because I knew I needed to look somewhere else, do something else, but it was also relaxing, because I couldn't, and so I didn't have to process as much. Other times, especially when I was little and living at the farm, I would stare off into the distance, and when my eyes relaxed, whatever I was looking at would seem to "zoom" in close to me, like a close-in movie shot. I've since learned that this is a trait of something called "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome," which is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Wonderland_syndrome#Visual_distortions" target="_blank">a real thing</a> and linked to autism and migraines, which I've suffered from my whole life! </div><div><br /></div><div>Besides the visual distortions, Alice in Wonderland Syndrome and autism can also manifest in terms of your body feeling or looking larger or smaller or yourself or objects being in strange spaces in space. I bump into things. A lot. When I was younger I was told that I just needed to slow down and pay more attention to where I was going, but that doesn't work when your brain tells you the chair is THERE, when it's actually two inches to the right. That's something that neurotypical people really don't understand. "Just look and see where the chair is!" Well, theoretically, yeah. But the chair is in a different spot in my brain than in real life, and now I'm bruised.</div><div><br /></div><div>Speaking of seeing things differently, things move in my vision, particularly if I'm relaxed. Spots on a wall will shift slowly or double. Stripes wiggle. Ceiling fan blades move, even though they are still. Lights stick around after their source moves, like when you're in a dark room and someone suddenly turns on a light and then turns it off again, and the image of the room is imprinted on your eyes for a minute, except very faintly and all the time unless I work hard at ignoring it. Still light also moves even when it shouldn't, crawling towards and away from its source like a slow candle flame. Colors jump out at me, so it's important that things "go together." I can make it go away, make everything be still and quiet. But it takes effort and attention that I never knew I was using until a pandemic made it so I didn't have to.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgDR_gYk_a8">This video</a> is a pretty good metaphor. If you find it intense, well, 98.3% of you are neurotypical. The only thing about this video that feels abnormal or bothersome to me is the breathing, because my empathy for someone in that much distress goes haywire. And I don't meltdown or shutdown to the extent that my vision goes dark around the edges very often at all, because I remove myself from situations before it gets to that point. But otherwise, yeah, that's pretty close to what living is like for me, especially sound-wise, unless I work really, REALLY hard ALL the time to tune it all out. And that takes energy, lots and lots of energy, energy that I have burned and burned and burned until my reserves are completely gone. </div><div><br /></div><div>And like I said, I had no idea this wasn't normal. No idea at all. Because I was told so many times to stop making a big deal about things that wouldn't bother a neurotypical person. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8Wbpye0GSPg/XvUjI4hwoNI/AAAAAAAAAgw/etLNO_xvYF0Ct--rn0empsV0HqHB0BTIQCK4BGAsYHg/s699/Masking%2BUntil%2BShe%2BCan%2527t.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Image of little girl covering face with her hands. Text says "She will mask the impact of sensory and social demands until she can't." border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="699" height="301" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8Wbpye0GSPg/XvUjI4hwoNI/AAAAAAAAAgw/etLNO_xvYF0Ct--rn0empsV0HqHB0BTIQCK4BGAsYHg/w500-h301/Masking%2BUntil%2BShe%2BCan%2527t.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><div><br /></div> <script async="" src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-7657402751929862922020-06-18T12:14:00.000-07:002020-06-18T12:14:18.904-07:00Happy Autistic Pride Day!<div>So, uh…Happy Autistic Pride Day, y’all.</div><div><br /></div><div>I’ve been holding on to this one for a while, because it just wasn’t the right time to share it, what with the spotlight needing to be on some other folks for a while. </div><div><br /></div><div>I’ve shared this with a small group of people, but it’s time for the larger world to know.</div><div><br /></div><div>I am autistic. </div><div><br /></div><div>I had suspected it for a couple of years, and then this spring I finally found the wherewithal to start searching for answers, and my 39th birthday present was indeed a diagnosis of autism by my therapist. </div><div><br /></div><div>I get that I probably don’t look or seem like your impression of autism, especially if you don’t know any other autistic folks. So I’m going to try to tackle just the top FAQ’s or misconceptions/questions/protestations I can here:</div><div><br /></div><div><b>1. “But you don’t seem autistic! Autistic people are (insert stereotype here)!”</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Actually, autism is a spectrum condition, which means that it presents in a variety of methods which affect each autistic person in a different way. For decades, it was thought that autistic people also always had intellectual disabilities or problems with communication, but we have known for a couple of decades now that that is simply false - in fact, the majority of autistic folks have average or above-average intelligence, though communication styles may differ, as autism does affect some folks’ ability to speak, particularly in times of stress. That doesn’t mean they are not intelligent or capable of understanding, though. For more on what the autism diagnosis covers, check out <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yva4RZW_s0&feature=em-lsp&fbclid=IwAR3wp-HWokXd97wo-hbd7Jl8ARVgkPWqkZR8f8hk9sCOianZ5u5wYtHV5os" target="_blank">this video</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>In fact, autistic people are all around you - current estimates are that 1 in every 59 people is autistic, or 1.6% of the population, and that number is probably low due to the difficult in women and girls securing a diagnosis. </div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>2. “But you just seem normal!”</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This one has a two-part answer. </div><div><br /></div><div>First of all, you need to understand something called “masking.” This is when autistic folks, more often women and girls than those who are male, cover up and hide their autistic traits in order to fit in with society’s expectations. This is often subconscious, but can also be semi-conscious when an autistic person knows that they feel “different” and struggle to fit in, but don’t understand why. Often autistic people who mask hide or change their stimming, natural facial expressions, body language, and conversational tactics to appear socially acceptable. Some autistic people struggle more with this than others; I learned socialization very well because I was hyperlexic as a child and constantly read fiction, which is proven to improve empathy and recognition of others’ emotional states as well as reading facial expressions and body language. In short, I am very good at appearing “normal,” but I didn’t learn this the way neurotypical people do - I had to actively study it, though I didn’t understand I was doing it until much later in life.</div><div><br /></div><div>Second, LOLOLOLOL, I am NOT normal. (I mean, if you’re here, you know that already, but still.) I absolutely have challenges that you can’t see, and that greatly affect my life. More on this under the section about functioning labels (next section, #3). </div><div><br /></div><div><b>3. “So are you Asperger’s or high functioning or something?”</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Nope. Because there is no such thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Asperger’s Syndrome is an old diagnosis that was thrown out in 2013 and replaced with the generalized “autism spectrum disorder” in the DSM-V. Partly this is because Asperger was a Nazi, but this is largely because functioning labels are not only harmful, but false.</div><div><br /></div><div>The idea of functioning labels is primarily based on how my autism affects those around me. Someone who is considered “low functioning” is considered someone who needs tangible help and support from those around them, while those who are considered “high functioning” are those who seem independent of those supports. But the problem is that I don’t LOOK like I need support, but I absolutely do. I’ll get to this in a minute (#6, Burnout.) Just because someone’s condition isn’t affecting YOU doesn’t mean it’s not affecting THEM. And just because someone’s condition means they need visible support does not mean that they aren’t an intelligent adult who is capable of advocating for themselves. Many people infantilize those who are considered “low functioning,” assuming that they are child-like, which denies them agency and opportunity.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>4. “So what makes you autistic, then? Aren’t we all just a little bit autistic?”</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This misconception often comes from the concept of autism as a spectrum, where people think of it like a color spectrum that travels from pale to dark, less to more. But that’s not it at all. It’s more like a color wheel, or like the image below. In it, you can see a variety of traits that an autistic person might struggle with (though this illustration definitely does not cover them all.) Being autistic means that you have several of these traits, to an extent that it affects your life in some large way. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-grrtB5RdDKo/Xuu8cPJ7yoI/AAAAAAAAAgA/WaAbAoZQoXwFqLxa4ncQoV04h12Q30cIgCK4BGAsYHg/s960/Autism%2BSpectrum%2BSliders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="712" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-grrtB5RdDKo/Xuu8cPJ7yoI/AAAAAAAAAgA/WaAbAoZQoXwFqLxa4ncQoV04h12Q30cIgCK4BGAsYHg/s320/Autism%2BSpectrum%2BSliders.jpg" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>For me, I struggle with sensory issues. I am extremely sound sensitive and bothered by noise. I nearly went mad for the first month of quarantine, when every neighbor I had was outside every day, mowing and weed eating and leaf blowing and chainsawing. I actually wore earplugs around my own house, inside, for several hours a day sometimes. I wear earplugs every night when I sleep. I cannot sleep unless it is pitch black, semi-cold, with super heavy blankets (god bless the weighted blanket trend,) and there is no air blowing on my face. I can wake myself up just by breathing on my own arm. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have sensory processing issues as well. I can’t understand what someone is saying when there is background noise at all (yes, this is an ADHD thing as well.) Many of you have told me things in crowded spaces, and I have asked “what?” three times, until I am embarrassed and just nod along to make it seem like I wasn’t completely lost, and most of you probably never noticed. </div><div><br /></div><div>I can’t stand tags in my clothes and immediately cut them out, and when I was a little girl, I cried when my mother brushed my hair. </div><div><br /></div><div>I also have terrible proprioception, which is basically knowing where your body is located in the world. I can dance, because I practice those movements ahead of time. But I bump into walls and doorways and furniture every single day and am hopeless at sports. I can’t ride a bicycle. I have no idea at all what the appropriate amount of distance is supposed to be between me and another person when we are socializing.</div><div><br /></div><div>I struggle with interoception - I never know when my body is hungry or thirsty or if I need to use the bathroom or if I’m tired until it’s so bad that it overwhelms me. I have to set reminders in my phone to do many of these things. </div><div><br /></div><div>The grocery store is a nightmare for me with all its fluorescent lights and noise and visual clutter and things that have to be remembered. I’m grateful every day for Kroger ClickList. </div><div><br /></div><div>I can’t lie. Can’t. I also can’t tell when someone else is lying unless it follows a pattern.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, yeah - I’m a MASTER at pattern recognition. That’s the trait that’s gotten me as far as I have gotten. If it repeats, I’ll learn it. Especially history or human behavior. </div><div><br /></div><div>I don’t make eye contact nearly as often as you think I do - I look at the spot between your brows. And if you MAKE me make eye contact while we talk, I’ll be so focused on that intensity and making sure I’m appropriately responding that I will have no real idea what it is you are saying. I’m a great listener if you let me look at the floor or a wall and especially if you let me stim by picking at something.</div><div><br /></div><div>I lined up my toys as a child and now I compulsively line up my books on their shelves, which soothes me. </div><div><br /></div><div>My executive function is crap, but I’m hopefully getting a handle on that thanks to some ADHD meds. It’s early yet, but cross your fingers. But for most tasks, the time I spend on transitioning between things takes more time than the task itself.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, yeah - if you interrupt me in a task, or request that I switch gears before I’m finished with something, even though you’ll probably never know, I’ll be incredibly distressed and most likely rage-filled. But I’ll never show how close I am to bursting into tears, because that’s not “normal.”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>5. “Don’t autistic people lack empathy?”</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Last one for now - this is a hard NO. This is absolutely a myth, and probably somewhat created by the whole “lack of eye contact” thing combined with how autistic folks show compassion in different ways than neurotypical folks. But in truth, autistic folks are often shown to have much, much greater empathy than the average population - in fact, we can be so empathetic that it can be debilitating.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the case for me - I’ve never been able to let go of a stuffed animal because I knew that no other person would ever understand the life and personality that exists inside that cotton batting. I anthropomorphize inanimate objects and feel so hurt when anyone calls an object “stupid” - it’s not the object’s fault, it’s trying.</div><div><br /></div><div>It’s also why so many autistic folks, myself included, have such a strong and unyielding sense of justice. We relate to and understand marginalized and oppressed folks, and our analytical powers allow us to penetrate to how injustice makes those people feel, and we fight with everything in us to end that injustice. We also hyperfocus on things, and for many of us, social justice becomes a special interest in which we devote much of our time and attention as we try to create a world that is better for all of us.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>6. Autistic Burnout - “But you did X for so long - how were you able to do it if all these things bothered you so much?”</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Well, I didn’t KNOW I was autistic, and the world kind of demanded it of me, so I just did it, anyway. And I thought it was this hard for everybody, because I heard a lot of people telling me I just needed “grit” or some other synonym for “just do the thing and stop asking questions.” And I actually chose an occupation for a long time that in many ways fit with my autism. In education, there is a strict daily routine, and I didn’t have to adjust to change very much, which is incredibly difficult for me. School and academia is where I had always thrived, so I stuck with it. And there is some benefit in being able to notice every conversation in a room with teenagers; I could hone in on the “hot spots” in a room pretty quickly. Unfortunately, it also completely drained me over time, and created something that is gaining increasing attention in psychology circles: autistic burnout.</div><div><br /></div><div>Autistic burnout is when an autistic person has masked their autism or sought to function so long in an environment unsuitable for them that their brain just gets overloaded and kind of…fries. It’s often initiated by some sort of trauma, but not always (hey, 2018.) This is where I am now. I’m struggling to complete tasks that a year ago I tackled with…not ease, it was never easy, but at least without much delay. I nap a lot. I’m exhausted to the bone, and everything makes me cry. (Seriously, even TV commercials, it’s ridiculous.) There’s no known cure for burnout, but rest is supposed to help. Except we live in a society where I can only survive and pay my mortgage if I am productive, so there is no rest, only pivoting to something different. I am currently trying to build a life that will allow me to work from home next year. We’ll see.</div><div><br /></div><div>So there it is. If you’re still here and still reading, thanks. It means more than you know. If you have questions, ask’em. I plan on writing a lot about this, and lots of stuff is in the works, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out.</div><div><br /></div><div>Happy Autistic Pride Day!</div>Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-79861003973390364022020-05-08T13:57:00.000-07:002020-05-09T16:12:27.102-07:00"When most unseen, then most doth tyrannize" (On "The Rape of Lucrece")Shakespeare's "The Rape of Lucrece" is based on a pre-Christian Roman legend from Livy, later romanticized in poetry form by Ovid in 8 AD. Shakespeare sticks to the basics of the story: Roman general Collatine brags about his wife's fidelity and beauty, leading the other Roman generals to check in on their own wives, of which Lucretia/Lucrece is the only wife worthy of such praise. Unfortunately, this exposure of her worth causes the son of the king, Tarquin, to fall madly in lust with her, and plot her rape.<br />
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Tarquin steals into her bedchamber at night, and wakes her, threatening her with a choice: she can submit to his sexual advances willingly, or he will kill her and place her body in an embrace with that of a dead slave, allowing him to claim that he caught them in the carnal act and slew them, thence destroying both her own and her husband's honor forever.<br />
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She begs him not to throw away a lifetime of honor and glory for a few moments of pleasure, but Tarquin is unmoved. He blames Collatine for showing him Lucrece and not protecting her well enough, and blames Lucrece for being just so darn pretty. In Shakespeare's version, he then stuffs some sheets in her mouth and goes to work.<br />
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Second-wave feminist Germaine Greer describes the act thusly: "<i>Rape has no duration and no narrative content. It is a catastrophe, and as such can only function as the end of one story and the beginning of another. Of itself it can have no motivation and no psychology. That does not mean some playwright or other has not written a spectacle of prolonged sexual assault, in which characters are repeatedly raped and sodomised. But it could hardly be done in a way that would make such criminal behaviour explicable. To assist at such a spectacle would be at least as degrading as - and no more informative than - watching a dogfight. Evil is chaos. To render it in any other way, as if it had some kind of internal logic, would be to deny its essential character. Rape cannot make sense but narratives must." (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jun/01/classics.arts" target="_blank">The Guardian, 2001</a>.) </i><br />
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By now, with years of "Game of Thrones" behind us, surely we are immured to the thought of a woman's rape as being necessary for plot advancement, rather than the plot itself. But my heart still aches when Lucrece's response to Tarquin's ravishment is not despair for the hurt placed upon her, but for how Tarquin's act has despoiled her, as a possession and holder of her husband's honor. A few dozen stanzas explore her grief, compared to that of Hecuba of Troy, not in her own pain and fear and trauma, but in how the rape will ruin Collatine's position. She plans her own suicide in an effort to spare him the knowledge.<br />
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Yes. She (and the silent audience reading along with her) believe in some way that death is the only option for dealing with a body and soul soiled by the ravishment of another. She's compared, stanza after stanza, to a castle that has been invaded, and is therefore polluted. She cannot be saved; she must therefore be destroyed.<br />
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She finally decides on another course of action, and in Shakespeare, as in Livy and Ovid, she tells her husband and father of Tarquin's rape immediately before killing herself with a dagger. In Shakespeare, as proof of her now-polluted nature, the blood that spills out from her breast is both red and black, the black evidence of how Tarquin was able to spoil her at an inner, body and soul level.<br />
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The end is triumphant - Lucrece's death leads to the Roman men banding together to drive out the evil kings of Tarquin and founding the first Republic (but not before first, fighting over who has more right to own the grief over Lucrece's death.) Hurray for Roman Republicanism! Down with tyranny!<br />
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Not finished with Lucrece's poor body yet, though, the Romans first parade her through the streets as a bizarre anti-monarchic propaganda. Only in death could she escape her despoilment and be honored again.<br />
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The problem is, art is not only descriptive, it is prescriptive. Shakespeare has been one of our most prolific, most taught artists for hundreds of years now. Yes, there is a positive message about driving out tyrannical kings here, but what other messages are underneath? Of course, in the English Renaissance, there were ideas about a woman's honor, and who it belonged to, and "purity" and how a man isn't to blame for his own lust, it's the woman's fault for being so beautiful that he can't help himself. Those ideas existed then, for sure. But when a piece like this is read, and taught, uncritically, and the rape becomes just part of the narrative, a plot piece to drive forward another message and not examined for itself...what other messages are we reinforcing in our own worlds?<br />
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When we talk about "rape culture," this is what we are talking about. Not a world in which people rape each other as a matter of culture, but a world in which our culture excuses rape, and finds excuses for it - he couldn't help himself, he's just a man, she should have been more protected, she should have hidden her beauty, she is defiled now that another man who isn't her husband has protected her. And being aware and critical of these things doesn't mean censoring them - I'm still here, still reading Shakespeare, still loving his work (and eventually, when we get to "Measure for Measure," we'll see him start to question these assumptions more and more.) But it DOES mean looking with a critical eye and noticing how these monoliths of our culture contribute to the ideals of today.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zeMBDfmUlbc/XrXGPgj7UZI/AAAAAAAAAd4/HVktNIAp9oI_Gutgxejb9_AilZlHVtsywCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Lacy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="671" data-original-width="1012" height="212" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zeMBDfmUlbc/XrXGPgj7UZI/AAAAAAAAAd4/HVktNIAp9oI_Gutgxejb9_AilZlHVtsywCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Lacy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art installation by Suzanne Lacy, <i><a href="https://www.suzannelacy.com/three-weeks-in-may" target="_blank">Three Weeks in May (1977)</a></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Xa-opsqMtNM/XrXGyB2hZgI/AAAAAAAAAeM/bzfZv1Q7SV82nvB0twuEZluQy735W_95ACEwYBhgL/s1600/Freshmen.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="430" data-original-width="800" height="215" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Xa-opsqMtNM/XrXGyB2hZgI/AAAAAAAAAeM/bzfZv1Q7SV82nvB0twuEZluQy735W_95ACEwYBhgL/s400/Freshmen.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old Dominion University (ODU) in Virginia, 2015.</td></tr>
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<br />Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-87288105268740112422020-05-05T16:16:00.000-07:002020-05-05T16:16:57.111-07:00Words, words, words! (On "Hamlet")<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
What could I possibly say about "Hamlet" that hasn't been said before? It's likely the most discussed, most studied play in history. There are some really interesting theories out there, my favorite being that <a href="http://impossiblekisses.blogspot.com/2007/11/did-gertrude-murder-ophelia.html" target="_blank">Gertrude actually killed Ophelia</a>, or that Claudius isn't really a bad guy, and that old King Hamlet was a pretty crappy husband, as Patrick Stewart's version of Claudius seems to predict. </div>
<br />
After all, if old King Hamlet was such a paragon of virtue, why is his spirit in hell? The ghost claims that he is trapped there due to dying without last rites (murder will do that to a person,) but if he lived such a sinless life as everyone else in the play claims, why is his spirit shipped straight to damnation? And would a virtuous spirit encourage his son to commit murder, which would lead to the very same fate for that son?<br />
<br />
This, of course, is part of Hamlet's procrastination in the pursuit of revenge for his father - how can he be sure that the ghost he has seen is truly that of his father, and not some devil come to tempt him to sin? The play-within-a-play, "The Mouse-Trap," is set to catch Claudius out in his reaction, and that serves as proof enough for Hamlet, but is it truly proof?<br />
<br />
We, as the audience, learn via a monologue in prayer that Claudius did indeed murder his brother, but the monologue itself is curious. It's repentant - he writhes in fear and agony over his past actions, but like Marlowe's Faustus, denies himself God's grace because he refuses to deny himself the rewards of those actions. He does not believe he can be forgiven, because he refuses to give up the crown and queen he has gained from the murder. But he does feel remorse, a feeling that Hamlet does not possess after the killing of Polonius, and then of course after Polonius's murder, Claudius dispatches Hamlet to England, to be murdered as well, which in turn leads to the murders of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.<br />
<br />
In the end, everyone who dies in the play dies without last rites, and Ophelia is even refused proper burial due to her suicide. But last rites as a passage to heaven is a curiously Catholic idea for a Protestant nation under Queen Elizabeth I. Of course, the people of Elizabeth's England had undergone several iterations of Christianity within their own lifetimes by the time "Hamlet" was written, so it's entirely possible that this confusion - "how do we know what lies on the other side of death, or the proper road to get there?" was one well lodged within the hearts and minds of the English.<br />
<br />
There is evidence to suggest that Shakespeare's father was a private, hidden Catholic, and that he might have been an alcoholic, and that he died right around the time "Hamlet" was written. Scholars suggest that Hamlet's description of how love of ale leads to a man's downfall in Act I.iv. may have been inspired by John Shakespeare:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"So, oft it chances in particular men,<br />
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,<br />
As, in their birth--wherein they are not guilty,<br />
Since nature cannot choose his origin--<br />
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,<br />
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,<br />
Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens<br />
The form of plausive manners, that these men,<br />
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,<br />
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,--<br />
Their virtues else--be they as pure as grace,<br />
As infinite as man may undergo--<br />
Shall in the general censure take corruption<br />
From that particular fault: the dram of ale<br />
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt<br />
To his own scandal."</blockquote>
Was "Hamlet" inspired by Shakespeare's musings on death, religion, the afterlife, and his father? Critics of course remark on the main character's name, and its similarity to Shakespeare's son, Hamnet, who died in 1596, at least four years before "Hamlet" was written and performed. But the death of Shakespeare's father would have been much more recent, and much closer to the themes of the play. Did Shakespeare worry about his own father's fate after death? Clearly, he was coming to grips with how death affected the body - the jesting with Yorick's skull is proof of that. But what of the soul?<br />
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<div>
Perhaps this brings us to the play's end, where Hamlet begs his friend Horatio to tell his story. Memento mori were popular items at the time, symbols of death to remind wearers of their mortality, often in the shape of rings or found in sculpture or paintings. One of the earliest textual memento mori is a 13th century Icelandic poem, the Hávamál, supposedly written by Odin, goes as follows: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Deyr fé, </i> Animals die,<br />
<i>deyja frændur, </i> friends die,<br />
<i>deyr sjálfur ið sama; </i> and thyself, too, shall die;<br />
<i>ek veit einn at aldri deyr, </i> but one thing I know that never dies<br />
<i>dómr um dauðan hvern.</i> the tales of the one who died.</blockquote>
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<br />
People die, and what happens after their death is unknown. But the stories of their lives live forever. Something worth remembering.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DH9RnR-KCAs/XqsilMvdtKI/AAAAAAAAAcw/pADNpqJ1KocPFJSz-Lm9cTPuvgGtzNf0QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/MM02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1199" data-original-width="1594" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DH9RnR-KCAs/XqsilMvdtKI/AAAAAAAAAcw/pADNpqJ1KocPFJSz-Lm9cTPuvgGtzNf0QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/MM02.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Edinburgh. St. Cuthbert's Churchyard. Grave of James Bailie (died 1746). </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d_hQMIbh85M/XqsilNXL0gI/AAAAAAAAAc0/XT767RcjztgVGscF_RnOseAxsT2P5-QMgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/MM03.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d_hQMIbh85M/XqsilNXL0gI/AAAAAAAAAc0/XT767RcjztgVGscF_RnOseAxsT2P5-QMgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/MM03.jpeg" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tomb of Pope Alexander VII, St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, Bernini, 1678.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mtaYpU7oIsk/Xqsilr_LZwI/AAAAAAAAAc4/lCMk7GDgP-gbOpzt0YNEq_w6vfqpGgLDACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/MM04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1500" height="256" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mtaYpU7oIsk/Xqsilr_LZwI/AAAAAAAAAc4/lCMk7GDgP-gbOpzt0YNEq_w6vfqpGgLDACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/MM04.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St Nicholas' Church in the village of Ash, in the Dover District of Kent, England, <br />
sometime between mid-17th century and mid-18th century.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QS_NcGph-yU/Xqsimsgx_xI/AAAAAAAAAdA/zcAZ7NRqVvwDbMP2TgLn95Fg01eWD8HiACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/MM06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1196" data-original-width="628" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QS_NcGph-yU/Xqsimsgx_xI/AAAAAAAAAdA/zcAZ7NRqVvwDbMP2TgLn95Fg01eWD8HiACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/MM06.jpg" width="168" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mourning ring dating to 1727, inscribed in the inside with "Mary Normandy ob 9 Jan 1727 cet 55." <br />
The ring features a skeleton, crossed shovel and pick, and an hourglass. <br />
It also includes a book with the words "MEMENTO MORI X" written on it. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Eo8M7vZhUEU/XqsilF2knMI/AAAAAAAAAdE/QIkC9KLpj3U7OY1fLlyw2r7SlptHJYRcACEwYBhgL/s1600/MM01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="589" data-original-width="900" height="209" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Eo8M7vZhUEU/XqsilF2knMI/AAAAAAAAAdE/QIkC9KLpj3U7OY1fLlyw2r7SlptHJYRcACEwYBhgL/s320/MM01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sign for shop outside of Haunted Mansion attraction, Walt Disney World, FL.</td></tr>
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Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-86853219483903290472020-04-22T16:43:00.000-07:002020-04-22T16:43:47.543-07:00"Thus he that overruled I overswayed..." (On "Venus and Adonis")Oof.<br />
<br />
Where do I start?<br />
<br />
"Venus and Adonis" is a VERY pretty poem. So pretty, in fact, that it was the most popular of all of Shakespeare's works during his actual lifetime.<br />
<br />
I mean, it's about the goddess of love and the most beautiful boy in the world. How could it not be?<br />
<br />
Well, it's sort of about them.<br />
<br />
Maybe I'll start there. A history lesson. Okay.<br />
<br />
First up, the poem was written while the theatres were shut down due to plague, coincidentally. Shakespeare had to turn to another way of making money.<br />
<br />
So you know all of those theories out there about Shakespeare being gay? This poem is a central piece to them. "Venus and Adonis" is dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, who would have been about 18 years old at the time. It is thought that Southampton is also the youth featured in Shakespeare's sonnets, but I'm getting ahead of myself.<br />
<br />
See, Southampton was a young noble sort-of orphan (he had a mother, but was a ward of the state due to his father's death,) whose fortune was tied up in an interesting dilemma: in order to receive his fortune, he had to marry by age 21, or else be fined a HUGE sum of money, something like five thousand pounds, basically enough to significantly damage his prospects forever.<br />
<br />
But he REFUSED. Said it wasn't the woman they put forward to him, it was the concept of marriage altogether. And the result could ruin some of his family, so they pressed the issue, and he refused even more sternly.<br />
<br />
Enter Shakespeare.<br />
<br />
Somewhere around Southampton's 18th year, it is thought that someone hired the playwright (who would have been 28 by this point,) to write a poem to Southampton in order to attempt to convince him to marry. And it might have worked, had not Shakespeare seemingly fallen in love with the object of his inspiration and possibly put forth his own suit instead.<br />
<br />
Which brings us to the poem. Here's the dedication. Some say it's not out of character for works of this time in its flowery nature; others say that in its singular uncertainty about the reception of the poem, it stands out for its honesty. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo<br />Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.* </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>To the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Titchfield. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Right Honourable, </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden, only if your Honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather: and never after ear [plough] so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your Honourable survey, and your Honour to your heart’s content, which I wish may always answer your own wish, and the world’s hopeful expectation. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Your Honour’s in all duty,<br />William Shakespeare.</i></blockquote>
And now to the poem. "Venus and Adonis" is worthy of a read on its own; it's not long (199 6-line stanzas,) so I'll spare you a detailed explication. What you need to know is that Venus, the goddess of love, plays the role of pursuer of Adonis, most beautiful boy in the world, who staunchly refuses her embrace, because he has better things to do, like...go hunt. The first half of the poem is highly erotically charged as Venus attempts everything in her power to seduce him, while Adonis remains pouty and uninterested:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"[He] blushed and pouted in a dull disdain,<br />With leaden appetite, unapt to toy—<br />She red and hot as coals of glowing fire,<br />He red for shame but frosty in desire." (33-36)</blockquote>
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What's of particular interest here is the reversal of gender roles - Venus the hot-blooded pursuer who plucks Adonis off his horse and carries him under his arm, while Adonis blushes and wilts under her ardor. She begs him for kisses and he refuses, turning away, until night finally descends, and he grants her one kiss, which she then turns into a passionate riot of kisses, until he complains that she has taken advantage of him. </div>
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<br /></div>
So what does this have to do with Shakespeare and Southampton? In parts, the poem is a plea for Adonis, in his beauty, to couple with Venus in order to breed more like him, to duplicate his beauty so that it may not disappear with his death:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse;<br />Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty;<br />Thou wast begot; to get, it is thy duty. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
'Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed,<br />Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?<br />By law of nature thou art bound to breed,<br />That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;<br />And so in spite of death thou dost survive,<br />In that thy likeness still is left alive.'" (166-174)</blockquote>
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Here, then, is what Shakespeare's patrons paid him to do: beg Southampton to marry, to breed, to have children, and pass his estate along after his death.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
For die Adonis does, and brutally (and erotically.) Venus fears the boar, and with good measure: the next morning, Adonis is gored to death in the groin (*AHEM*) and Venus admits that if she had been the boar, she would have done the same in her attempts to kiss him there (*DOUBLE AHEM*)</div>
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Do we know for sure that Shakespeare and Southampton were lovers, or even shared a special relationship beyond the norm? No, we can't know that. Beyond the mists of time, Shakespeare himself was an intently private man, and left no private correspondence behind for us to peruse, unlike many of his contemporaries. But his first round of sonnets, written around this same time, also feature his passionate love for a golden young man.**</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--xK-akSu2aw/XqDWAfzKajI/AAAAAAAAAb8/8jDd-59sy2kH08Df1a16-sPps8wEgpyiQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Southampton%2Bat%2B21.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="387" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--xK-akSu2aw/XqDWAfzKajI/AAAAAAAAAb8/8jDd-59sy2kH08Df1a16-sPps8wEgpyiQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Southampton%2Bat%2B21.png" width="323" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, age 21, 1594. <br />By the incomparable Nicholas Hilliard.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*“Let the common man admire trash or vile things; may golden Apollo serve me full cups of Castalian waters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">**History lesson and the beauty of the poem aside, it is yet another example of a toxic trope, where the message is "just wear a woman down long enough, and she'll eventually cave in to your sexual advances." Remember that Shakespeare's works are both descriptive of their time and prescriptive for the times that come after them. In their popularity, they offer a model for how love "should" be. But we live in a time where we can question this, and the poem, as glittering as it is, left me a bit queasy with Venus's persistence in the light of rejection. No means no.</span></div>
Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-11793271344634267352020-04-15T14:34:00.001-07:002020-04-15T14:34:44.010-07:00"A woeful pageant have we here beheld." (On "Richard II")I read "Richard II" in college, but to be honest, I didn't remember a thing about it, even once I re-read my notes in the margins. I'm glad that was the case, because it felt like coming into this play as a blank canvas for me, which was pretty perfect, because I darn well loved it.<br />
<br />
There's a metaphor in the play that sums up the plot pretty succinctly: Richard describes how the kingship is like two buckets in a well; as one rises, the other falls, and the play mirrors that device. But it's not just Bolingbroke's kingship that rises: as he ascends, so does our respect for Richard. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown;<br />
Here cousin:<br />
On this side my hand, and on that side yours.<br />
Now is this golden crown like a deep well<br />
That owes two buckets, filling one another,<br />
The emptier ever dancing in the air,<br />
The other down, unseen and full of water:<br />
That bucket down and full of tears am I,<br />
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high." (IV.i.)</blockquote>
Reading the plays in as close to a chronological order as we can figure, it's possible to watch as Shakespeare's playwriting skills develop. In "Richard II," there is a vast leap forward in the portrayal of what feels like real humanity in the plays. The intro in my Riverside Shakespeare describes how the previous plays' characters are not really developed people in their own right, but still somewhat allegorical, and I was prepared to argue that point until after I'd read "Richard II." <br />
<br />
At the start of the play, Richard is the typical ineffectual king bent on personal pleasure and obeisances from his court. Out of jealousy and pettiness, however, he makes a fatal mistake: upon the death of his uncle, John of Gaunt, Richard seizes John's assets and thereby the inheritance of his first cousin, Henry Bolingbroke. <br />
<br />
But here is the great paradox of the piece: Richard's kingship is based on divine right, and the belief that God has placed him and the nobility in their positions, that "Not all the water in the rough rude sea / Can wash the balm off from an anointed king" (III.ii.) But if the nobility and monarchy are granted their positions by God, then how can Richard remove the inheritance of Bolingbroke? How omnipotent is the king? Can he upend God's order? And if he can, then why can't another man?<br />
<br />
In the end, much like Anne Boleyn seals her own fate by upending queenship and marriage laws just a little over 100 years later, Richard's downfall is caused by his own hand. In denying Bolingbroke's divine right, he denies his own sacred right to kingship, and Bolingbroke takes first his land and then his crown, and then his life. <br />
<br />
Which brings me to Richard's humanity. As his kingship, and the royal rights and privileges afford to him by it, slip away from him, his human side comes more and more to the front. The scene in which he hands his crown - literally - to Bolingbroke brought me quite truthfully to tears, sitting at my dinner table, trying to keep the big, fat, wet drops from gumming up my precious Riverside. <br />
<br />
The scene is, at its core, about the loss of identity. Richard was born to be king, and his kingship has taken up his entire self. Without it, who is he? When Northumberland addresses him as "My lord - ," Richard interrupts him:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man,<br />
Nor no man's lord; I have no name, no title,<br />
No, not that name was given me at the font,<br />
But 'tis usurp'd: alack the heavy day,<br />
That I have worn so many winters out,<br />
And know not now what name to call myself!" (IV.i.)</blockquote>
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He has lost his very self, and next calls for a mirror to check to see if he is indeed still himself, and not completely altered on the outside, as he feels himself to be on the inside. When he sees his outward face to be the same as it ever was, he smashes the mirror. And when Bolingbroke disdains to minimize his grief, claiming it is only a shadow, Richard speaks with the kind of sarcasm and bite we all might wish for when someone gaslights us:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The shadow of my sorrow! Ha! Let's see:<br />
'Tis very true, my grief lies all within;<br />
And these external manners of laments<br />
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief<br />
That swells with silence in the tortured soul;<br />
There lies the substance: and I thank thee, king,<br />
For thy great bounty, that not only givest<br />
Me cause to wail but teachest me the way<br />
How to lament the cause." (IV.i.)</blockquote>
Richard's lament in IV.i. is the cry of a man whose entire identity has been wiped away - is he the shadow himself now? Who are we, when all of the structures that have held us up are stripped away? Without his kingship, is Richard no one? Without the identities we have built for ourselves, are we still... someone? What if all of the things we have believed in - the divine right of kings, the honesty or power of our leadership, faith in an institution - is stripped away? How do we find meaning without it? <br />
<br />
I don't have answers. But Shakespeare's depiction of a man grieving his identity and previous life brought me to tears in a way none of his other plays had yet done, just with the power of the words on the page. I know what it's like to struggle to find your identity after much of it is swept away, so perhaps that explains my reaction. Regardless, if you haven't yet read "Richard II" or seen a production, do so, when you can. It's a gem.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Sean Leonard in the title role, San Diego’s Old Globe, July 2017.</td></tr>
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Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-62272084696120940262020-04-10T13:01:00.004-07:002020-04-10T13:01:38.828-07:00"Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition!" (On "King John")So, "King John!"<br />
<br />
What an odd little play.<br />
<br />
First up, we'll need to address how John was held in the imagination of the Elizabethan era, which is somewhat different from how we view him today. Thanks to Scott's <i>Ivanhoe</i> and Disney's thumb-sucking, scrawny lion whose stolen crown doesn't fit on his head, we picture John as a whiny and ineffectual regent for Richard the Lionheart, who was all things bold and courageous and who came home to support the hero Robin Hood.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NflBSxxlr0U/XpDPStS-TII/AAAAAAAAAag/GhXuZ4ClQ9MW7i5JHMWPFP_tq-Pbm5bTQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/King%2BJohn%2B01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="231" data-original-width="340" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NflBSxxlr0U/XpDPStS-TII/AAAAAAAAAag/GhXuZ4ClQ9MW7i5JHMWPFP_tq-Pbm5bTQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/King%2BJohn%2B01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Not so - there's no connection with John and Robin Hood until the literature of the 19th century, and Richard I was, frankly, a terrible king. He would have sold his own liver for a chance at a battle, any battle, and certainly would have auctioned off anyone else's. He butchered his own people in France (remember he was king of both England AND half of what we now know as France,) and he spent most of his reign leaving the administration of his affairs to others, among them his little brother John.<br />
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It's hard to say why Richard was viewed, even in Shakespeare's time, with such adoration. But John wasn't hated nearly as much, except by many of the nobility, who resented his taxation and his attempt at curtailing their powers (hence the Magna Carta, which is completely ignored in the play.) And yet John is certainly viewed with distaste, as a man who can't quite come out and say what he means. He can't bring himself to tell Hubert directly to murder young Arthur, his brother Geffrey's son and a threat to his crown, so he hints around it, later berating Hubert for taking his hints when Arthur's death is taken so ill by his nobles that they abandon him. And he promises much advancement to the Bastard Faulconbridge, though never in concrete terms, which prove illusory by the end of the play.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lQ0Fbfwn0SE/XpDPTITvvoI/AAAAAAAAAa4/--wpkq4AjF4YuYDDDQRdQuevVzNniPZbwCEwYBhgLKs0DAMBZVoDsDN4SgIKD3vkINSAkUdvbaTisnzOMPcxfQtG7VVv1SSu0AhoW6kEStLofOBqB5CJJM-bfeyYCqqjrdkIi5JGmRo1Jxi_vbvyI6AvLm6P3tcCRT1JbYVX9l2zPDoHmgigFdIfU9D2E5-ifEmVAk8nCnbwLllK95B9H_SfpEtIva5dizgvu_n65GzbMUzbOoFudZpmZ_uiLc_OxPQeJv599ln2lYYLCeTemWmYz2U8erBa7Yt17ohShjblYLE9zc5PkbpSLQEHThFvtcwm4NkWm6j6j03m64i-pCBAU7Rh-OySEXPB7_PV9yHWQOBDPNcqGTxtIXLY6DVJ05bqrc7DL2Je9huxDo3hzQQpCxm-Wpu0sia9YmIMsGHsU871TH5b8RBEukBL2ha1POTQzQTJ2VwczvOGN45xcl-qgM20ztgFCwkyWTCNYh-QFILgNaTbaikozOQfvTCZVzBcItp-ny0VUusnMS8eS5WGax5Qi22ovUSQJBIGQUOOeT1DSqHeDuG7HTT_dPc-Bmse8Dsaytu6IPOS-raQTnxoGO9ejuwgqPqjPCBEJro5VC4QgQ2nMXWddBdREM272gCQZpkPsQP2-8VpCGBIwjqXD9AU/s1600/King%2BJohn%2B05.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="1280" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lQ0Fbfwn0SE/XpDPTITvvoI/AAAAAAAAAa4/--wpkq4AjF4YuYDDDQRdQuevVzNniPZbwCEwYBhgLKs0DAMBZVoDsDN4SgIKD3vkINSAkUdvbaTisnzOMPcxfQtG7VVv1SSu0AhoW6kEStLofOBqB5CJJM-bfeyYCqqjrdkIi5JGmRo1Jxi_vbvyI6AvLm6P3tcCRT1JbYVX9l2zPDoHmgigFdIfU9D2E5-ifEmVAk8nCnbwLllK95B9H_SfpEtIva5dizgvu_n65GzbMUzbOoFudZpmZ_uiLc_OxPQeJv599ln2lYYLCeTemWmYz2U8erBa7Yt17ohShjblYLE9zc5PkbpSLQEHThFvtcwm4NkWm6j6j03m64i-pCBAU7Rh-OySEXPB7_PV9yHWQOBDPNcqGTxtIXLY6DVJ05bqrc7DL2Je9huxDo3hzQQpCxm-Wpu0sia9YmIMsGHsU871TH5b8RBEukBL2ha1POTQzQTJ2VwczvOGN45xcl-qgM20ztgFCwkyWTCNYh-QFILgNaTbaikozOQfvTCZVzBcItp-ny0VUusnMS8eS5WGax5Qi22ovUSQJBIGQUOOeT1DSqHeDuG7HTT_dPc-Bmse8Dsaytu6IPOS-raQTnxoGO9ejuwgqPqjPCBEJro5VC4QgQ2nMXWddBdREM272gCQZpkPsQP2-8VpCGBIwjqXD9AU/s400/King%2BJohn%2B05.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Corey Jones in the title role at the 2013 Utah Shakespeare Festival.</td></tr>
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And yet the nobles love him, and grieve his wasting death at the end of the play. They acknowledge his nobility and right to kingship in view of the threat from France, but it turns out to be the church's intervention that saves John, not his own strength.<br />
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John was the youngest of four brothers to survive to adulthood, and was unlikely to ever become king, except he was born into the most warlike family known to man. His mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was married to two kings, and makes an appearance as a sly, manipulative, yet powerful granddam in Shakespeare's play. His father was known for his temper tantrums and refusal to bow to the power of the church, ending in the murder of Thomas a Becket at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c6Iy6IbM6A0/XpDPSv4EoBI/AAAAAAAAAa4/sugvszGafPANVTSOXzCTOJ6_BNmLBL7tgCEwYBhgLKs0DAMBZVoDk0OIosbkduryGW-0QgWA-WsYcdmbvHT9kIch5htWwrSOauDo0urmnRCYdBdRXy2Ba5buz4C0RaPIIH4ymhvL8OLGbObEH8zBCi3Y2o7KBCUMc3mTPS4bdQaQZ8Y5QpydCdRg2OV3XRrShtcoj9yDck0qF62wCTayBzAKTfvCt97l-bqDX16G0TiS7zkrpbTDgLPPQ_xxOy0twuuJC67an155xEL7jh5sFfNs_MPupS8FgrKJsWVJ10oZViGQi7TGny3-ugz_PjFN8-4BVB9LprU7eL450XsOhfGRKgWhy35cf472R7Du5AeVfUVGU4c7l53sTPusWEWpcEKFnV8ypJy1gt2ZUelXCxgekLkyfwCvbflCEohzuumhXr073O1Qb820peskYrtwv6MfjHRzoQtET3IYfC5lTiZcoYVO73_oRWuvo9Z3uqNed5ijxGOJa998GEISCYLfiRpCMbUsUKLfh_uKO2j7_uWeZRz3bGwWQ5SKwh5PnqqBKK9TN6PeDHgDtQTpTxUMYzVija02S6p1Ho5xmSbq3vHnfb5y1Y1ve5ZgtJ17TnSkyG_8l-rB_1jRr-ExkZJV9eRGnuOXqcYLy6aqhjIMw_KPD9AU/s1600/King%2BJohn%2B02.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1550" data-original-width="1600" height="309" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c6Iy6IbM6A0/XpDPSv4EoBI/AAAAAAAAAa4/sugvszGafPANVTSOXzCTOJ6_BNmLBL7tgCEwYBhgLKs0DAMBZVoDk0OIosbkduryGW-0QgWA-WsYcdmbvHT9kIch5htWwrSOauDo0urmnRCYdBdRXy2Ba5buz4C0RaPIIH4ymhvL8OLGbObEH8zBCi3Y2o7KBCUMc3mTPS4bdQaQZ8Y5QpydCdRg2OV3XRrShtcoj9yDck0qF62wCTayBzAKTfvCt97l-bqDX16G0TiS7zkrpbTDgLPPQ_xxOy0twuuJC67an155xEL7jh5sFfNs_MPupS8FgrKJsWVJ10oZViGQi7TGny3-ugz_PjFN8-4BVB9LprU7eL450XsOhfGRKgWhy35cf472R7Du5AeVfUVGU4c7l53sTPusWEWpcEKFnV8ypJy1gt2ZUelXCxgekLkyfwCvbflCEohzuumhXr073O1Qb820peskYrtwv6MfjHRzoQtET3IYfC5lTiZcoYVO73_oRWuvo9Z3uqNed5ijxGOJa998GEISCYLfiRpCMbUsUKLfh_uKO2j7_uWeZRz3bGwWQ5SKwh5PnqqBKK9TN6PeDHgDtQTpTxUMYzVija02S6p1Ho5xmSbq3vHnfb5y1Y1ve5ZgtJ17TnSkyG_8l-rB_1jRr-ExkZJV9eRGnuOXqcYLy6aqhjIMw_KPD9AU/s320/King%2BJohn%2B02.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 1597 portrait of King John by an unknown artist.<br />While the portrait was completed many years after John's<br />death, it shows how an artist in Shakespeare's era would<br />have pictured him.</td></tr>
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The truth is, the more that you read about medieval monarchies, the more you realize that the myth of primogeniture is just that - a myth. It was rare for more than two or three generations to remain stable on the throne based on inheritance of the eldest son. So what do you do? You marry your daughter to another prince of a nearby territory and hope their oldest son, your grandchild, will inherit both.<br />
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And this is where we end up early on in "King John" - England's king makes a deal with France's to combine their forces against Arthur's, using marriage between their youth to strike a deal. But the deal itself is not just against Arthur - both kings are thwarted in their attempts to enter the city of Angiers, which is barred against all comers and refuses to open to any but the true king.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--PYvrhAjsmM/XpDPTLVvLtI/AAAAAAAAAaw/DQiQOW9uciwPSd88bbtl5Tn0KpMdNSnSQCEwYBhgLKs0DAMBZVoCyTWGPDWG9x89tVfRfmCUpbS6u42vOFdgI9I7bTA-tKH-eza-_6F7JVJ6QmX17tF1r-00kK-HExO4MnTtAglzn_wUott3w0_D80MobF59ZWfrpYsr30-2U-_9QpZ0reUF9omSvORNddfcsjh3cHMNYwtiVgldSMcIc7Qr-9H2MWmUgiZsRl9SGL4uOst7jAV2fVL6Np4Uc0EVNFE4y-_9-lM1cuRh4l3hXK7Wuguh4v3A2VRlCU-LmEYRvNAlKoaw-LjI10xZk7V_YC7k4qPoh1xCsGEAuOOol-oTsXO_cAZR2Wcb66I77s0jlHp3jmswjEl36QdVU64zpVDjdpuLjxZ09LEE7cZkUhcrXuKDAVds4MrukMnhswCRLIrgkZPvJ_I3w5pseWsq4YwxUSYV3rof4pvlzqXfTItF88fzL7lY86IKkEjmh1OVmQBO73k_tPfoVppcO68Hv0QNGhO1yj_zEgRPVebBjiXdk3gD3suBX0oixhaLHxpp8ykA0Srqci_GtozZLLHLvnU8-ZgtOJHSsUuMQzojyc3w9sWE6yB4Ys8CfLZwV0QZBa-pDThKCBJianu3D5dlfNcAHgVxMw8Z7PWH2uNYwwKPD9AU/s1600/King%2BJohn%2B04.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="750" height="128" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--PYvrhAjsmM/XpDPTLVvLtI/AAAAAAAAAaw/DQiQOW9uciwPSd88bbtl5Tn0KpMdNSnSQCEwYBhgLKs0DAMBZVoCyTWGPDWG9x89tVfRfmCUpbS6u42vOFdgI9I7bTA-tKH-eza-_6F7JVJ6QmX17tF1r-00kK-HExO4MnTtAglzn_wUott3w0_D80MobF59ZWfrpYsr30-2U-_9QpZ0reUF9omSvORNddfcsjh3cHMNYwtiVgldSMcIc7Qr-9H2MWmUgiZsRl9SGL4uOst7jAV2fVL6Np4Uc0EVNFE4y-_9-lM1cuRh4l3hXK7Wuguh4v3A2VRlCU-LmEYRvNAlKoaw-LjI10xZk7V_YC7k4qPoh1xCsGEAuOOol-oTsXO_cAZR2Wcb66I77s0jlHp3jmswjEl36QdVU64zpVDjdpuLjxZ09LEE7cZkUhcrXuKDAVds4MrukMnhswCRLIrgkZPvJ_I3w5pseWsq4YwxUSYV3rof4pvlzqXfTItF88fzL7lY86IKkEjmh1OVmQBO73k_tPfoVppcO68Hv0QNGhO1yj_zEgRPVebBjiXdk3gD3suBX0oixhaLHxpp8ykA0Srqci_GtozZLLHLvnU8-ZgtOJHSsUuMQzojyc3w9sWE6yB4Ys8CfLZwV0QZBa-pDThKCBJianu3D5dlfNcAHgVxMw8Z7PWH2uNYwwKPD9AU/s320/King%2BJohn%2B04.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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But who is the true king? Both King John and King Philip of France claim it for themselves. When asked "Speak, citizens, for England; who's your king?" the citizens reply with "The king of England; when we know the king." When both kings try to claim the crown, the reply from the citizenry is:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"A greater power then we denies all this;<br />And till it be undoubted, we do lock<br />Our former scruple in our strong-barr'd gates;<br />King'd of our fears, until our fears, resolved,<br />Be by some certain king purged and deposed." (II.i.)</blockquote>
The citizens await the decision to be made before they will open their gates. They have the ability to add their power to one claim or another, and thereby strengthen that claim, but abstain instead. They want certainty, to only open their gates to whoever God (and brute force) claims as king. But by abdicating responsibility, they leave themselves open to the whims of fate. Who is to say that the winning king will be a good one? Could they not have assured the victory of a better king by getting involved? And yet they seem stymied by the choice, unable to decide, and so refuse to engage at all. <div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pu1Exb2bwEg/XpDPSodI2GI/AAAAAAAAAa4/Vs9hRuDCuQI4FINPs0DAvEEXFC-a3MXuQCEwYBhgLKs0DAMBZVoBXygicxqhU09RE1pd6Xj2iv3RGbbXT_SntKMQiXhWBvW8Rp3YmBwt-y4J4V7j0-h55MtbqDmZg3YoQXlGAlu1645M385LkzbjBAZUWaIjCqynRLzXfhrjkziiODQHq8W7mWWbt6Uz4qNr0gm1OAMlN3sK0qFkNAsqwLdklWxSBPX8e-9AUuIRLHVWx8iJ-Gl3rja4Sk5tjLtrHLSa0f7NnKhiue8Kw1qKxHnmJe_f4Vxz40pzM8ZBIpslbqY6JsZ89w8rBIQzWb7pM5OTUEaFaU1y5Fn0vXA02AE6EWDXSp7RTHehUpSd6l3j1ZBCZSQ6F9GrzYqyWqo8k-bjPkqNpLDszEDo6WeARIQpVkhY3kEqiY_Uz_rcg39XkwSC7YWsEgAd3pNtdqTP5_ikZmLv7S3jh1QITssRZ964NBU83OSmJ-mQLjkGQuJg_uXD7ejTuKMzt11Hx2L3f_gX2s1597vAM4ls1pSvTmau7xCmqRh_-rY_z9cISD1aFzKnEEh7k9N43UVrVX32F46Bee6bCWaycjOgI33z01raO_pDAnijNEgzRGMj_wvR-HW9_fRneYOmnL5lfqilDfcKYyNuq1SmWFmdaebMw2aTD9AU/s1600/King%2BJohn%2B03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="720" height="272" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pu1Exb2bwEg/XpDPSodI2GI/AAAAAAAAAa4/Vs9hRuDCuQI4FINPs0DAvEEXFC-a3MXuQCEwYBhgLKs0DAMBZVoBXygicxqhU09RE1pd6Xj2iv3RGbbXT_SntKMQiXhWBvW8Rp3YmBwt-y4J4V7j0-h55MtbqDmZg3YoQXlGAlu1645M385LkzbjBAZUWaIjCqynRLzXfhrjkziiODQHq8W7mWWbt6Uz4qNr0gm1OAMlN3sK0qFkNAsqwLdklWxSBPX8e-9AUuIRLHVWx8iJ-Gl3rja4Sk5tjLtrHLSa0f7NnKhiue8Kw1qKxHnmJe_f4Vxz40pzM8ZBIpslbqY6JsZ89w8rBIQzWb7pM5OTUEaFaU1y5Fn0vXA02AE6EWDXSp7RTHehUpSd6l3j1ZBCZSQ6F9GrzYqyWqo8k-bjPkqNpLDszEDo6WeARIQpVkhY3kEqiY_Uz_rcg39XkwSC7YWsEgAd3pNtdqTP5_ikZmLv7S3jh1QITssRZ964NBU83OSmJ-mQLjkGQuJg_uXD7ejTuKMzt11Hx2L3f_gX2s1597vAM4ls1pSvTmau7xCmqRh_-rY_z9cISD1aFzKnEEh7k9N43UVrVX32F46Bee6bCWaycjOgI33z01raO_pDAnijNEgzRGMj_wvR-HW9_fRneYOmnL5lfqilDfcKYyNuq1SmWFmdaebMw2aTD9AU/s400/King%2BJohn%2B03.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tim Sailer plays the title character in Texas Shakespeare Festival’s “King John," 2018.</td></tr>
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Eventually, the citizenry are the ones who make the suggestion for the two kings to join their forces by marriage of the next generation (Blanche and Lewis.) They solve the problem through negotiation rather than force. And this seems to be the new paradigm - war by commerce and parley rather than sword and cannon. The Bastard in particular seems disgusted by the <i>realpolitik</i> of it all, but he is the illegitimate son of the Lionheart, after all, so battle is in his blood. </div>
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From the balcony, the play seems to be about indecision and uncertainty, and what happens when no strong, legitimate hand emerges to rule. In that case, do we sit back and wait to see who is victorious, as do the citizens of Angiers? Or are we right to try to find new answers when the old ways no longer serve us? </div>
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Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-59210689566942797112020-04-06T11:48:00.000-07:002020-04-06T18:20:25.841-07:00Yes, You Are Allowed to Wear a Blanket Today.<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KL5qRUzSQ58/XotusoYL_PI/AAAAAAAAAZg/G-pLczyT5V0LlrarZALm7lgW5VE_rmlCwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/New%2BSkill%2BNO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="458" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KL5qRUzSQ58/XotusoYL_PI/AAAAAAAAAZg/G-pLczyT5V0LlrarZALm7lgW5VE_rmlCwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/New%2BSkill%2BNO.jpg" width="236" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(Vulnerable moment.) <br /><br /> What's been really interesting to me about all of these very valid posts I've been seeing, like this one, about how it's okay to hunker down and just get through this, just survive, just deal with all of your emotions during this time, is that I realized that this is what I have been doing for two years now. <br /><br /> I had a meltdown a couple of weeks ago when the uncertainty of it all hit me, but then I realized the familiarity of that uncertainty and the frustration I felt with it. It's the same thing I've been processing since my whole world blew up two years ago, and so many things kept happening, one thing after another, so that it felt like there was no control over anything. In truth, there WAS no control over anything.* <br /><br /> Here's the thing about trauma: PTSD is caused (as far as science and doctors can tell) when you cannot escape a traumatic situation. Our bodies are designed to run away or fight a threat. When they cannot do that - when they are forced to just endure it - it causes deep-seated neurological issues that often manifest in anxiety, depression, lack of energy, jitteriness, lack of concentration, etc. When this goes on for a long period of time, or is repeated many times over a period, it becomes complex PTSD, which is lesser-known because it doesn't usually feature the flashbacks or nightmares so well known in regular PTSD. <br /><br /> Complex PTSD, or C-PTSD, is often exacerbated when people dismiss one's traumatic experiences as being simply normal. But just because something is widespread doesn't make it normal for our human bodies to cope with. This pandemic is a fantastic example - we're all dealing with it in some form (even the idiot 24-year-old next-door-neighbor who chose to have an ACTUAL party in her backyard last night until 2 am on a Sunday.) So because everyone is dealing with it, many people have a tendency to describe what is "normal" to them as the right answer for everyone. <br /><br /> But this is traumatic - for many people, they are watching in horror as their livelihoods slip away. Will they be able to pay their mortgages? Eviction relief is one thing, but if you are paycheck-to-paycheck, and suddenly three months' worth of rent comes due when the emergency order is lifted, and you haven't HAD a paycheck for that whole time, what do you do? We always knew that a day would come that there wouldn't be enough jobs to go around, but suddenly that day is here; what do you do when you've worked in retail for 20 years, and now there is no retail work to be had? What do you do if you are a nurse who has to face the reality of the risk of not just getting infected yourself, but bringing it home to vulnerable family members? What about plans for career movement or weddings or long-awaited vacations? These are all things we are losing and collectively grieving. <br /><br /> I read <a href="https://gay.medium.com/notes-on-power-in-a-pandemic-b43996c3e03">a piece by Roxane Gay in Medium</a> where she sums up how I've really been feeling: "Will any of what I have to say even matter when this is all over?" <br /><br /> But this feeling is not unfamiliar to me in a strange way. And I can see how, repeatedly over the past two years, I have tried (and failed, miserably,) to try and establish some control over the waves of change that have just washed over me and knocked me down and filled my mouth and soul with fear and uncertainty. And I tried it again a couple of weeks ago. But this, like so many other things that happened to me in the past two years, is uncontrollable, and our world will be different in so many ways when it is all over, and it won't be all over at once, but in jolts and shudders and long, drawn-out sighs, and it is OKAY to let your body feel afraid, and to sit with those feelings and acknowledge them and pull your warm cup of coffee to your chest and get out your fuzziest blanket and ignore the call of your to-do list.** Because I'm speaking from experience when I tell you that if you run from it, it will still be there whenever you turn around, so you'll have to keep running forever. You don't have control over your future right now. All you can control is the one thing right in front of you, and sometime's that's simply your breathing. <br /><br /> So if that's all you can do right now, in this moment, because everything else is too scary, I'm giving you permission to just breathe. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"> *For those just joining me, here's the rundown: </span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Jan. 2018: grandfather died </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Feb. 2018: end of 6-year relationship </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Feb. 2018: (just a handful of days later) hospitalized with flu, peeing blood from dehydration </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Feb. 2018: traumatized me seeks comfort in new relationship (like an idiot) </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">May 2018: gets engaged to new relationship (like an idiot) </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">May 31 2018: buys house with fiance (like an idiot) </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">June 1 2018: sprains ankle moving in to house, spends three hours in urgent care, fiance DOES NOT CARE and makes me keep moving, grocery shop, and make dinner that night </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">June 7 2018: break it off with jerk fiance, spend next 3.5 months living downstairs of new house in increasingly hostile environment, scared every day that something bad would happen to my cats </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Summer 2018 (not sure what month): stepdad diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Sept. 2018: finally close on both old house and new house, move in to fabulous new house </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Nov. 1 2018: stepfather succumbs to cancer </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Nov. 2018: (two weeks later) abnormal pap smear </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Nov. 2018: (two weeks later) attempted biopsy reveals growth in uterus, 6-18% chance it's cancer </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Dec. 21 2018: surgery, no cancer, random growth the size of a man's pinky finger removed </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">There was peace for a while; spring of 2019 went well. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">But then in July of 2019 I had to end a long-standing and close friendship when I discovered the deep dishonesty that underlay it. It hurts to lose one of your support systems, even though you've discovered that support is rotten to the core. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Fall, 2019: workplace culture becomes untenable. Not ready to discuss that yet, but I rage quit without regret right before Christmas. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Jan. 2020: completely change careers after a decade in education </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Late Jan. 2020: biological father dies. Even though we haven't had a relationship in almost 15 years, still a shock to the system.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Feb/Mar. 2020: COVID-19 crisis hits</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">** (Yes, I know some people find comfort in creation; you do you, boo.) </span></div>
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Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-83062707269399562002020-03-30T17:43:00.000-07:002020-03-31T12:13:51.452-07:00To "love you 'gainst the nature of love" (On "The Two Gentlemen of Verona")The big thing that everyone always wants to discuss in "The Two Gentleman of Verona" is its misogyny. And it's there, hoo buddy is it there! How many times can one play express that when women say "no," they really mean "yes?" We should make a drinking game out of it. Take a shot whenever a man says that women never say what they really mean, or whenever Proteus betrays somebody new. We'd all be drunk by the end of Act 2. (But really, doesn't Valentine perform the worst betrayal in the entire play when he gives his own beloved to Proteus after Proteus just tried to rape the poor woman? I can't smack my forehead hard enough.) <br />
<br />
There is the question, of course, of whether or not this is Shakespeare's very first play, or at least his first comedy. It would go a long ways towards explaining its clunkiness, and the many stereotypes it relies on for its gags. Many scholars use that explanation to excuse the Bard's dreadful mining of stock character types and strong-arming of characters into marriages with distasteful matches. He was a man of his time, regardless of those who would claim him a proto-feminist. He did reserve his highest praise and most erotic poetry for men, after all.<br />
<br />
So it's a difficult play to perform for an audience, because it's just so difficult to justify the ending. (Anybody else just want either Silvia or Julia to end up with Sir Eglamour? Just me?) But in a way, that's unfortunate, because some of Shakespeare's poetry in "Two Gentlemen" positively glitters. <br />
<br />
When Valentine discovers the joys and penances of love, he both groans and delights in telling his friend:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Ay, Proteus, but that life is alter'd now:<br />
I have done penance for contemning Love,<br />
Whose high imperious thoughts have punish'd me<br />
With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,<br />
With nightly tears and daily heart-sore sighs;<br />
For in revenge of my contempt of love,<br />
Love hath chased sleep from my enthralled eyes<br />
And made them watchers of mine own heart's sorrow.<br />
O gentle Proteus, Love's a mighty lord,<br />
And hath so humbled me, as, I confess,<br />
There is no woe to his correction,<br />
Nor to his service no such joy on earth.<br />
Now no discourse, except it be of love;<br />
Now can I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep,<br />
Upon the very naked name of love." (II.iv.)</blockquote>
Who has loved that has not felt that all-consuming need that devours your attention, keeps you from sleep and food, and tosses you from joy to sorrow and back again in an instant? And Valentine's love is requited, so his pains are not those of a rejected suitor, but simply those of a man in love, who can think of nothing other than his beloved. Early though it may be, Shakespeare's verse here shows his talent for slicing right to the truth of earthy emotions and simultaneously exalting them.<br />
<br />
<div>
In a prose line, earlier, Valentine had mocked Proteus for his own lovelorn behavior, with as clear a portrait of a lovesick youth as any I've ever read:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a malecontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money: and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, that, when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master." (II.i.)</blockquote>
The women, too, know love's whip. Julia describes how the more you seek to ignore love, to dampen it, the more it rages:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow<br />
As seek to quench the fire of love with words...<br />
The more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns." (II.vii.)</blockquote>
And I think my favorite scene in the entire play is near the beginning, when Julia chases the torn pieces of Proteus' love letter about her windswept courtyard, after ripping it to shreds in a fit of pique. Shakespeare's imagery combines comedy and pathos to create something that we laugh at while all the while we feel the twinge of sweetness as Julia makes her name and Proteus' kiss on the pages:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey<br />
And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!<br />
I'll kiss each several paper for amends.<br />
Look, here is writ 'kind Julia.' Unkind Julia!<br />
As in revenge of thy ingratitude,<br />
I throw thy name against the bruising stones,<br />
Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.<br />
And here is writ 'love-wounded Proteus.'<br />
Poor wounded name! my bosom as a bed<br />
Shall lodge thee till thy wound be thoroughly heal'd;<br />
And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.<br />
But twice or thrice was 'Proteus' written down.<br />
Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away<br />
Till I have found each letter in the letter,<br />
Except mine own name: that some whirlwind bear<br />
Unto a ragged fearful-hanging rock<br />
And throw it thence into the raging sea!<br />
Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ,<br />
'Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,<br />
To the sweet Julia:' that I'll tear away.<br />
And yet I will not, sith so prettily<br />
He couples it to his complaining names.<br />
Thus will I fold them one on another:<br />
Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will." (I.ii.)</blockquote>
<div>
This is one of the plays where you can't help but marvel at the combination of events that brought the Bard into being. His roots in his world are evident - the stock characters, the neatly wrapped up parallel marriages, the deeply rooted misogyny. But his ebullient verse exists already as well, shining through the traditional English Renaissance plot like stars in the night sky. His humanity is clear - how else could he write so irrefutably about the feeling of being in love? But his verse reaches so far beyond humankind as to make us marvel. It is perhaps, "a sufficient ransom for offence" (V.iv.).</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lindsey Wochley as Julia in the Utah Shakespearean Festival's 2008 production of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona."</td></tr>
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Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-44785738015215246212020-03-24T20:23:00.000-07:002020-03-24T20:23:33.888-07:00"The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins Remorse from power" (On "Julius Caesar")For this play, I'm always struck by the struggle between the face Caesar shows to the people of Rome, the one he shows to his friends, and the one he only shows to his most private self. Does he truly want to be a king? Or does he just want everyone to want him to be king? <div>
<br /><div>
There is a difference: nowhere does Caesar or any of the other Romans discuss the duties that would fall to him, should he be crowned. In fact, there is not truly any deep discussion of him desiring any powers in particular, though that is the fear that underlies his murder. Brutus simply says that Caesar "when he once attains the upmost round. / He then unto the ladder turns his back, / Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees / By which he did ascend. So Caesar may." (II.i). But he isn't certain; he only knows that Caesar <i>may</i> turn his back on his friends and become a tyrant. But what is it that Brutus fears Caesar will do with his powers?</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
The people, too, seem torn. They clearly love Caesar. They cheer for him when Antony hands him a coronet, but they cheer even louder when Caesar refuses it (in a show of humility that he immediately regrets in a fainting spell.) Casca claims that "before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his throat to cut." And yet, immediately afterward, states that "if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less" (I.ii).<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Later, right before his assassination, Caesar briefly bows to the exhortations of Calpurnia to stay home after her nightmare, but the conspirators draw him out with the lie that the senate hopes to crown him that day. He did not venture out on his own to be crowned, but the possibility that others would grant the crown to him leads him to his doom.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
As I mentioned, there is a difference between wanting to be king and wanting others to want you to be king. Perhaps it's simply taken for granted that the audience would understand Caesar's ambition, but if so, why does Antony harp on the falseness of that accusation in his funeral speech? Does Caesar truly have ambitions to be king? Or does he simply want the accolades, the lauds, the coronets and applause and fawning of the crowd?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
"If Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less." </div>
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What if he had stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot someone? </div>
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(By the way, I'm two years behind schedule on this thought. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jun/12/donald-trump-shakespeare-play-julius-caesar-new-york" target="_blank">Bravo to New York's Public Theater</a>.) </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GuT_DcxVOOY/XnrOFGX-PwI/AAAAAAAAAYo/pcsRvGSdRGYAIAEkxDcoYSTQ6ED1HF6hwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Caesar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="361" data-original-width="541" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GuT_DcxVOOY/XnrOFGX-PwI/AAAAAAAAAYo/pcsRvGSdRGYAIAEkxDcoYSTQ6ED1HF6hwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Caesar.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paterson Joseph as Brutus and Theo Ogundipe as the Soothsayer in the 2012 Royal Shakespeare Company's production of <i>Julius Caesar</i>, which is on my most list of most coveted productions to have ever seen. *sigh*</td></tr>
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Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-61416754441511534172020-03-21T20:34:00.000-07:002020-03-21T20:34:46.245-07:00"If heaven have any grievous plague in store..." (On "Richard III")It's really hard right now to feel up to blogging about Shakespeare, even with as great a play as "Richard III."<br />
<br />
After all, our federal leadership must be pretty bad to make Richard III look like a better alternative. Richard is conniving, bloody, scheming, and ruthless...but at least he's intelligent and witty. He makes us laugh <i>with</i> him instead of at him. He craves power and the crown for its own sake, but he recognizes that urge within himself and smiles wryly at his own evil. As evil as he is, he's not a narcissist, because he can admit to himself what he is. A narcissist has no sense of self and constantly requires validation from others; Richard requires none of that. Just give him the crown and the throne. (In truth, the real Richard most likely was a fairly pious man who donated money to religious and educational institutions. One wonders what kind of leader he would have made had not Henry Tudor arrived on England's shores. What would history say then?)<br />
<br />
I can't tell if it's comforting to read this play and realize once again that jockeying for leadership and power looks much the same now as it ever has. But there are fewer curses today, which seems a shame. So for this entry, brief as it is, I'll leave you with one of the greatest curses in the English language, the old Queen Margaret's maledictions towards those who led to her downfall:<br />
<blockquote>
<b>QUEEN MARGARET</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<b></b>What were you snarling all before I came,<br />
Ready to catch each other by the throat,<br />
And turn you all your hatred now on me?<br />
Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven?<br />
That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,<br />
Their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment,<br />
Could all but answer for that peevish brat?<br />
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?<br />
Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!<br />
If not by war, by surfeit die your king,<br />
As ours by murder, to make him a king!<br />
Edward thy son, which now is Prince of Wales,<br />
For Edward my son, which was Prince of Wales,<br />
Die in his youth by like untimely violence!<br />
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,<br />
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!<br />
Long mayst thou live to wail thy children's loss;<br />
And see another, as I see thee now,<br />
Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine!<br />
Long die thy happy days before thy death;<br />
And, after many lengthen'd hours of grief,<br />
Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen!<br />
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by,<br />
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son<br />
Was stabb'd with bloody daggers: God, I pray him,<br />
That none of you may live your natural age,<br />
But by some unlook'd accident cut off! </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<b>RICHARD</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<b></b>Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag! </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<b>QUEEN MARGARET</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<b></b>And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.<br />
If heaven have any grievous plague in store<br />
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,<br />
O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,<br />
And then hurl down their indignation<br />
On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!<br />
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul!<br />
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest,<br />
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!<br />
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,<br />
Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream<br />
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!<br />
Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!<br />
Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity<br />
The slave of nature and the son of hell!<br />
Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb!<br />
Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!<br />
Thou rag of honour! thou detested-- </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<b>RICHARD</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<b></b>Margaret. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<b>QUEEN MARGARET</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<b></b>Richard! (I.iii.)</blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seattle Shakespeare Company, Kate Wisniewski as Queen Margaret in an all-female production, 2018.</td></tr>
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<br />Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-59729395857487013552020-03-17T19:21:00.001-07:002020-03-17T19:24:45.000-07:00"Some consequence yet hanging in the stars..." (On "Romeo and Juliet" and COVID-19)<div class="tr_bq">
Well.</div>
<br />
As a friend pointed out, it is quite in keeping when discussing Shakespeare to have all the theaters close for fear of plague.<br />
<br />
And while there is no plague in "Romeo and Juliet," it seems strangely suited to our current time. I had been planning to write about my frustrations with how current "cooler than thou" culture sneers at the lovers' age and impulsiveness, ignoring how the adults around the central couple act with even more haste and emotion, (and how that may have been Shakespeare's subtle jibe at the way the nobility married off their children at such young ages,) or about the effect of fate and the stars and the humors underlies the action, leading to conjecture that perhaps the lovers and their families have no control over their destinies at all.<br />
<br />
But instead, with the thread of COVID-19 hanging over our heads, I'm increasingly drawn to the play's double sense of time. The play feels both hectic and racing, and yet simultaneously like it's gelid, slow-motion, moving glacially from one inexorable moment to another.<br />
<br />
Scholars debate the amount of time the play covers, but typically land on somewhere around 4-6 days, with the first day (Romeo's lamentations over Rosaline, and the fateful party meeting) happening on a Sunday, and the planned wedding morning (and faked death of Juliet) on a Wednesday, with debate about how many hours or days go by between Juliet's "death" and Romeo's arrival at the tomb. And much criticism has been lobbed at the two lovers and at the plot of the play itself for the events crammed into so little time.<br />
<br />
But in between all of these events, the two lovers and the adults around them seem to discuss more about events that may come or will come, or have happened in the past, than participating in the events currently happening around them. Juliet begs her nurse for news, while the nurse spends line after line putting off the happy announcement of Romeo's marriage plans. The parents discuss their past days of violent fury, while either refusing the young's turn to engage in the feud, as when Capulet rages at Tybalt with his "Go to, boy!" (I.v.) or when Lady Montague castigates her husband with "Thou shalt not stir a foot to seek a foe" (I.i.). We never see Romeo and Juliet's reunification after their marriage, or their words to each other to smooth over the death of Tybalt, just their parting in the morning. Juliet's parents reprimand her for her ongoing grief over that selfsame death of her beloved cousin, but it has been merely hours before they arrange a marriage with Paris to soothe it.<br />
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In fact, the only character who seems to live in the moment and not attempt to escape it is Mercutio, who begs Romeo to "Come, we burn daylight, ho!...I mean, sir, in delay / We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day" (I.iv). And it is with Mercutio's death that the play's inertia grows inexorably, his murder the axis on which the chances of a happy ending turn and the wheel of fortune groans toward tragedy.<br />
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Which leads me to wondering about our own fate now. The world seems to hold its collective breath, suspended in time, held in slow motion between the time when the virus felt like a far away news story and the time when we shelter in place in our homes for an unknown period and words like "rations" and "ventilator shortages" hang in the balance, peeping through a hazy horizon over which extends a new time. <br />
<br />
Moment by moment, the tragic events of "Romeo and Juliet" feel preventable, as if we could just reach through the verse and warn the characters, get the message to Romeo quicker, halt Tybalt's rage, have Juliet drink the poison five minutes earlier. I wonder, in the coming years, what events will we look back on and think "if only we could have...? If only someone had said...?" <br />
<blockquote>
"PRINCE: A glooming peace this morning with it brings;<br />
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:<br />
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;<br />
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished..." (V.iii)</blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dmlJEZkZ3Rw/XnGFeJMgagI/AAAAAAAAAXk/6zgZAAIJRikXG8Y_T19b9apzq_DLNd34gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/dali_romeoandjuliet4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="751" data-original-width="562" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dmlJEZkZ3Rw/XnGFeJMgagI/AAAAAAAAAXk/6zgZAAIJRikXG8Y_T19b9apzq_DLNd34gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/dali_romeoandjuliet4.jpg" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 1975 illustration of "Romeo and Juliet" by Salvador Dali.</td></tr>
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<br />Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-86313510193060356522020-03-09T17:13:00.000-07:002020-03-09T17:17:03.970-07:00From the "Chief architect and plotter of these woes" (On "Titus Andronicus")<br />
I LOVE THIS PLAY.<br />
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This play got such a bad rep for so long. But seriously, it almost completely redeems "Shrew." <br />
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I read this play for the first time in college, and then was lucky enough to get to teach it once, and and I've seen a couple of filmed versions, and it just boggles my mind that T.S. Eliot, who I also adore, ever once thought that Titus was "one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written, a play in which it is incredible that Shakespeare had any hand at all." But he did think that, because Titus is a bloody mess, an operatic abattoir of revenge and rape and cannibalism AND I LOVE IT.<br />
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I love it because in it, Shakespeare does what he does best: entertain the masses on top, and say something really important underneath. <br />
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For those who haven't seen or read it yet (GO. FIND A PRODUCTION SOMEWHERE AND WATCH IT!), Titus Andronicus is the story of the triumphant return of the aforementioned General Andronicus to Rome from war, bearing as booty Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her sons (Alarbus, Chiron, and Demetrius,) and her Moorish lover Aaron. They arrive home and Titus promptly sacrifices Alarbus to the Roman gods, despite Tamora's pleading for his life. This sets off a chain of revenge, but first there is the election of the new Roman emperor: the commonfolk want Titus, but he abdicates in favor of the former emperor's eldest son, Saturninus. He also promises his daughter Lavinia to Saturninus in marriage but SURPRISE she's in love with Bassianus, Saturninus' younger brother, and they run off together. Saturninus gets a bit cranky, Tamora whispers in his ear, and voila, Tamora becomes Empress of Rome. <br />
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Oops.<br />
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The next day, a panther hunt is held, and everybody wanders around the dark and scary forest, where chaos and murder ensues. Aaron and Tamora are surprised mid-tryst, two of Titus' other sons are framed for murder, and Chiron and Demetrius rape Lavinia atop her dead husband's body, and then proceed to lop off her hands and cut out her tongue in order to prevent her from snitching on them.<br />
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Yes, I'm deliberately making light of the situation, because the play does as well. It delights in its goriness, in how close it steps to genuine madness. <br />
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Titus, of course, gets his revenge. Lavinia manages to communicate the name of her ravishers. Titus holds a dinner at his home and tricks the Emperor and Tamora into attending, where he serves them both pies made from the flesh and bones of Chiron and Demetrius before killing both of them. But not before also killing Lavinia, whose shame cannot be born.<br />
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Whose shame cannot be born. Think about that. "The girl should not survive her shame, / And by her presence still renew his sorrows." (V.iii). <br />
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The most horrifying thing in the entire play is not Lavinia's rape and maiming; it is the way the men around her turn her agony into their own pain. Stripped of any way of expressing her pain, from the moment they discover her, they treat her as one dead, a lifeless trunk, a shambling shadow. They grieve for themselves, not for her: "he that wounded her / Hath hurt me more than had he killed me dead" (III.i). They have no empathy for her pain, only anger that her honor (which belongs to them) has been stolen and grief that their daughter and niece is dead to them and can no longer sing or play the lute or embroider or comfort them. It's monstrous.<br />
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And then there's Aaron.<br />
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Shakespeare does something really beautiful here. Titus is a terrible father, but a virtuous Roman in all other ways. Aaron is a self-professed villain, but he risks everything to save the baby born to him and Tamora. He sacrifices himself for that child, confessing to every evil deed he has ever done and trying to come up with more, in order to ensure the child's safety. His honor is worth nothing next to the child's life, whereas Titus kills his own son when that son went against his orders in the first scene. And Shakespeare is brave enough to call out the racism that marks Aaron: "Why, there's the privilege your beauty bears" (IV.ii) and when asked if he can't blush for his deeds, answers Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is" (V.i.). Except a black dog may blush, but no one would ever see it for the darkness of his skin, and this is exactly the kind of joke that Shakespeare's audience loved; one where you could not be sure if the speaker intended it or not. <br />
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I love Titus Andronicus because it's a giant middle finger to questions of the worth of honor when honor means things like social hierarchy and the possession of women's sexuality. I love it for Titus' grief as he begs the stones of the Roman streets for mercy. I love it for Tamora's fierceness and for "make them know what 'tis to let a queen / Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain" (I.i). I love it for the glee in Titus when he serves the Empress a pie made from her sons: "'Tis true, 'tis true; witness my knife's sharp point" (V.i). Shakespeare was almost certainly slyly referring to himself in the line from Act V: "Chief architect and plotter of these woes." An excellent architect and plotter here, indeed, to slip under the radar for so many decades.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Are you gonna eat that? </i>The Globe Theater, 2014<br />
(L-R) Matthew Needham as Saturninus, William Houston as Titus Andronicus, and Indira Varma as Tamora</td></tr>
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Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-9499107162264020302020-02-24T20:25:00.001-08:002020-02-24T20:25:36.696-08:00"My heart concealing it will break, and rather than it shall, I will be free" (On "The Taming of the Shrew"Hynnhrnnnggggghhhh...<br />
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I'm behind on the Shakespeare bit, due to some personal stuff going on last week combined with the fact that I have SO MUCH TO SAY about "Taming of the Shrew" and couldn't figure out how to condense it to a readable entry. So I'm going to try something a little different, and just put out the evidence first, and then my conclusions, in somewhat of a bullet-point fashion rather than essay format. Shall we begin? (There will be LOTS of caps lock.)<br />
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<b>Point #1:</b> The Christopher Sly frame story is just SO AWKWARD. The Lord literally has his page dress as a woman and pretend to be the drunken Sly's wife, the page GETS GROPED and has to giggle about it and fake being THRILLED about this, and the assumption is that after the play is over, they are going to BOWCHICKAWOWOW, but of course we never return to the frame narrative to see that nasty little business play out. What are we supposed to feel about this? The whole thing is just icky. I don't care that it's a joke on Sly. The page has no power in the situation and is forced to do his master's bidding in this.<br />
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<b>Point #2:</b> Lucentio falls in love with Bianca at first sight, but not only that, he literally FALLS IN LOVE WITH HER SILENCE. "...in the other's silence do I see / Maid's mild behavior and sobriety" (I.i.70-1). Not only that, he's so struck by her silent beauty that he fails to notice anything else going on in the scene. In fact, when Katherine DOES speak, he doesn't hear a word she says. "I saw her coral lips to move, / And with her breath she did perfume the air. / Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her" (I.i.174-6). So he falls in love with a woman specifically for her silence, and can't be bothered to hear a woman who DOES speak.<br />
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<b>Point #3: </b>Why are we just to accept that Katherine is a shrew, on the word of her father and Bianca's suitors? The evidence points to otherwise. She is in fact loud, demanding, and even violent, but at no point does she ever point her ire at anyone that hasn't earned it. She is angry at her father for clearly attempting to foist her off onto the greedy, grasping, elderly, and slimy suitors of Padua. When we see her strike Bianca (and perhaps she has Bianca tied up, though it's not actually in the stage directions, which means it might just be metaphorical,) she is interrogating her sister, and accuses her of lying. At this stage in the play it seems drastic and tyrannical, but we discover late in the play that Bianca actually IS lying and scheming, and that her submissive front is just that - a front. Later in the same scene, Katherine flies at her father: "Nay, now I see / She is your treasure, she must have a husband; / I must dance barefoot on her wedding-day, / And for your love to her lead apes in hell. / Talk not to me, I will go sit and weep" (II.i.31-4).<br />
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<b>Point #4: </b>Her father replies to this outburst by focusing on his own feelings, rather than the daughter he will force into an abusive marriage just to get her out of the way: "Was ever gentleman thus griev'd as I?" (II.i.37). Is man's grief over being inconvenienced worse than a woman's grief over being used as an object?<br />
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<b>Point #5: </b>Petruchio is a nasty bit of business. When we first meet him, he's beating his loyal servant. He's excited at the prospect of marrying a shrew - why? And when he first meets her, he pretends to misunderstand everything she says, or not hear her at all. He then proceeds to sexually assault her, and the audience is expected to find this funny and titillating. Ha ha. Look at the funny double entendre. Lots of productions love this bit, because they can make Kate seem attracted to Petruchio regardless of his boorishness and cruelty - "see, look? It's okay because she likes it!" But I can't think of a single woman I know who likes to be groped and have sexual remarks made to her on the first meeting. Not to mention he tells her that she's been sold into marriage to him.<br />
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<b>Point #6: </b>Kate breaks Hortensio's lute, and it is held up as evidence of her shrewishness. However, later we discover that he knows nothing about teaching music. Could it be that she just knew that and was angry at the deception and being treated like an idiot? Did she see through his ruse to get to Bianca?<br />
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<b>Point #7: </b>Baptista literally tries to sell his daughter Bianca to the highest bidder once Katherine is out of the way. Just, ick.<br />
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<b>Point #8: </b>Act III, scene i is literally just a bunch of men yelling at each other, acting, truly, like a bunch of shrews. Why are men allowed to yell and snipe at each other with impunity, but not women?<br />
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<b>Point #9: </b>Many scholars apologize for Petruchio's abuse of the servants and people around him by saying that it's meant to be an example to Kate, to embarrass her by showing her how her previous behavior appeared. However, Kate knows the difference. Kate's shrewishness was ALWAYS directed to those who abused their power over her, or made her life miserable, or attempted to deceive her. By contrast, Petruchio abuses those who are doing their best to please him, such as his servants, and Kate defends them: "Patience, I pray you, 'twas a fault unwilling" (IV.i.156, in response to Petruchio's striking of a servant bringing him water.)<br />
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<b>Point #10: </b>Act IV is just one giant trigger warning. Petruchio literally starves Kate, deprives her of sleep, and gaslights her in nearly every line. He forces her to say that it's night when it's day, and vice versa. And then he creates a genuine trauma bond by being the only person that can feed her or allow her to sleep. It's a nightmare of emotional abuse. He forces her to be grateful for the barest of necessities, and to thank him for them.<br />
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<b>Point #11: </b>Petruchio forces Kate to kiss him in the street, against her will, before he will allow her to see her family at Bianca's wedding.<br />
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<b>Point #12: </b>When the women leave the room at the wedding celebration, the men immediately begin describing them as animals: greyhounds, curs, deer, birds, horned beasts (referring to their sex drives.) It's "locker room talk," I guess.<br />
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<b>Point #13: </b>The women are played off of each other in a competition. Bianca is scornful, the widow (who I adore,) is honest but firm, and Kate...is broken.<br />
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I am grateful to the theatre professor in college who told me about a production he saw in which the play ended with Katherine very clearly destroyed in spirit, abused into obedience. He said it was the only version that ever made sense to him. I have to agree. I wonder if Shakespeare truly understood how close he came to depicting the truth of emotional abuse, and its cruelty. I wonder if the audiences of the time came away from the play roaring with laughter, if they went home and used these methods on their wives, or if the abrupt and uneasy exit of the actors at the end of the play was meant to drive home the problematic nature of the show. I don't have answers. I just don't want to read this play again, or risk seeing a production which depicts Petruchio in a positive light, or that implies that any woman needs to be tamed.<br />
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The next play is "Titus Andronicus," and for all its cannibalism, rape, and murder, is far less disturbing. <br />
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<br />Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-32827252575877946502020-02-12T18:44:00.000-08:002020-02-12T19:42:28.779-08:00"There's none but asses will be bridled so." (On "The Comedy of Errors")I think I have to say this ahead of time: I love Shakespeare. I love his works, his words, his themes, the way he questions the world around him. I don't care how basic of an English major it makes me to wallow in his blank verse like a drunken harlequin at Carnevale. <br />
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But I also know that you can criticize something and still love it.<br />
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In his early years, Shakespeare was writing for a particular audience, with particular expectations about what they would see upon the stage, and was borrowing from ancient traditions, just as writers of sitcoms do today. They are shortcuts that allow viewers to skip to the interesting bits, because everyone already knows what is expected. <br />
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"A Comedy of Errors," like "The Tempest," is a rarity in Shakespeare's canon in that it follows the unities of time, place, and action. (Ben Jonson wrote scathingly that Shakespeare lacked art, though not nature, implying that his failure to follow the traditional unities was just that - a failure.) "Comedy" is also based heavily on the Roman playwright Plautus' Menaechmi, and follows the plot fairly closely, with the exception of adding the twin servants as further comic relief, and the reunion and frame story of the parents. This is important because Shakespeare is both working within and playing with the idea of tradition and stock characters.<br />
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The problem is, as with so many of the Bard's early plays, what his stock characters tell us. Unlike the Henriad, there are several female characters in "Comedy." Unfortunately, I wouldn't want to be any of them.<br />
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The cast list for women characters is as follows:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Adriana:</b> Wife to Antipholus of Ephesus. She is depicted as materialistic (in her pursuit of the golden chain, described before we meet her,) scolding, possessive, and domineering (the "venom clamours of a jealous woman.../Have scared thy husband from the use of wits." V.i.). She is the stock wife character, still evident in sitcoms today, always suspicious, always talking, where the husband ducks away from her nagging. Her name brings to mind the Adriatic Sea, and there is much imagery of fishing and oceans. But the "fishwife" is the most common stereotypical nagging wife of the time, and Shakespeare names nothing by accident. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Luciana: </b>Adriana's sister, as yet unwed, but beloved by Antipholus of Syracuse. She is the epitome of virginal and meek, waiting for a husband who will master her, who claims that "headstrong liberty is lash'd with woe" (II.i). Her name means "light." (But hm. Shakespeare uses "light" otherwise in the play in its vernacular, mocking term, meaning "a loose woman." Is he making a point?) </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Nell:</b> Also called "Luce," to some confusion, Nell is the servant of the Ephesian Antipholus family, and is never seen onstage. Here we see the most brutal tactics of relying on the stock character tropes: one can almost picture the Elizabethan crowd roaring on its benches at Dromio of Syracuse's description of Nell as fat ("spherical like a globe,") dark ([s]wart, like my shoe,) sweaty, grimy, balding, with a runny nose, stinking breath, and with an acne-covered nose, "all o'er embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires" (III.ii). She is also sexually deviant and seeks to make the Syracusan Dromio her sexual slave and husband, regardless of his wishes. (I'm reminded<br />
of the old version of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride, where the pirates yelled out "We wants the redhead!" while the fat woman in blue chased her own pirate.) </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Aemilia: </b>Abbess and (surprise!) mother to the twins and wife to Aegeon. She's the most <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NLOG" target="_blank">NLOG</a> character I've experienced so far in the <a href="https://iandoescher.com/shakespeare/" target="_blank">Shakespeare 2020 Project</a>, but I guarantee she won't be the last. She protects her precious Antipholus(es) from the pesky wives and other women who would seek to hold them accountable for their cheating and street fighting and otherwise mad behavior, blaming Adriana's (legitimately held) jealousy for Antipholus' (it doesn't matter which one's) angry behavior. </blockquote>
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<b>The Courtezan: </b>Sexy, has a great big gold ring that she pawns for a later chance at a larger gold chain, there just for the entertainment and general sexytimes aspect. </blockquote>
Anyone else see the problem here? Would any woman I know actually want to be any of these women? Are these the only options available to us? And before you say a word, the rest of the men, particularly our two heroines, are typically considered "Of very reverend reputation, sir, / Of credit infinite, highly beloved, / Second to none that lives here in the city: / His word might bear my wealth at any time" (V.i). <br />
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When we talk about "the media" and "stereotypes," we are not just talking about the wealth of information available to us in the 21st century. We are talking about centuries of stock characters played for laughs, where women are played as objects with singular desires; a menu of undesirable options from which to choose, while the male characters are shown as the default, fully-fledged characters robust with humanity, forgiven for their cheating and their stupidity (really, Antipholus of Syracuse? You come to Ephesus specifically to look for your twin, and then are surprised when you are mistaken for him?) </div>
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Shakespeare does push back a bit against the establishment. Luciana defends her sister against the stalwart Aemilia's criticism's with "She never reprehended him but mildly, / When he demean'd himself rough, rude and wildly" (V.i). But it seems that reprehending him at all for cheating, despite the fact that he did, in fact, attempt to cheat on her, is worse than the actual cheating. </div>
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After all, it's <i>nagging</i>.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Laura Rook as Luciana and Melisa Pereyra as Adriana in the 2016 American Players Theatre Production of "The Comedy of Errors," Spring Green, WI. </td></tr>
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Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-44742633659122343172020-02-05T09:59:00.000-08:002020-02-05T09:59:12.660-08:00"Keep our course, though the rough wind say no..." (On "Henry VI, Part 3")Much as in Part 2, I found myself somewhat at a loss to find an entry point to discuss my thoughts on "Henry VI, Part 3." Not for lack of thoughts, mind you - those were legion - but for lack of time and clarity, I struggled to hone in on one particular theme that I could wrap around a single coherent blog entry.<div>
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And then last night's State of the Union address occurred.</div>
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And I thought...WORDS.</div>
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What weight do words hold? </div>
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"Henry VI, Part 3" is, at its core, a play about a king who is all words, and the opposing side, who are all action. </div>
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<br />The scene opens with the son of aspiring king, Richard (who would later become King Richard III, of crooked back and "winter of our discontent" fame,) bringing a severed head onstage and instructing it to "[s]peak thou for me and tell them what I did."</div>
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Of course, a severed head can speak to no one, but its very existence attests to the existence of action - in this case bloody, brutal action. </div>
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The ensuing scene is one in which the Duke of York (the aspiring king) challenges King Henry for his throne, and involves the negotiations therein. Eventually, Henry agrees to give up his throne to York at the end of his natural life, essentially disinheriting his own son in favor of York, enraging Queen Margaret on behalf of their son. </div>
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But throughout the negotiations, the question of the value of words repeats. Henry appeals to York's sense of duty to the previous king, the nearly-sacred Henry V, by bringing up his victories in France. Warwick, the "Kingmaker," in support of York, caustically bites, "Talk not of France, sith thou hast lost it all." The contrast between speech and action is clear; Henry speaks of victory in France, but the reality is that his own inaction and choices have lost all of the lands that his father gained.</div>
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The following are just a few snippets of Act I.i:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>KING HENRY VI: </b>Peace, thou! and give King Henry leave to speak. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>WARWICK:</b> [York] shall speak first: hear him, lords;<br />And be you silent and attentive too,<br />For he that interrupts him shall not live. </blockquote>
Here, Warwick admits the power of words to sway, as he importunes the nobles to ignore Henry's words in favor of York's.</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>KING HENRY VI:</b> <i>[Aside]</i> I know not what to say; my title's weak.--</blockquote>
Here we see a connection between how, as Henry's words falter, so does his claim to the throne.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>KING HENRY VI: </b>O Clifford, how thy words revive my heart! </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>YORK: </b>Henry of Lancaster, resign thy crown.<br />What mutter you, or what conspire you, lords?</blockquote>
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King Henry is revived by words; they bring him hope, and can therefore inspire. However, York is annoyed by words, as his frustration over the muttering and conspiring of the nobles shows. </div>
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<b>YORK: </b>This oath I willingly take and will perform.</blockquote>
Here we see the marriage of words and deeds: York agrees, via an oath, to wed his future actions (to avoid conflict with Henry VI until the king's death) to his word. <br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>WESTMORELAND:</b> I cannot stay to hear these articles. </blockquote>
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<b>NORTHUMBERLAND: </b>Nor I.</blockquote>
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Here again, we have words, we have actions tied to words. The king's words of abdication to York are so loathsome to some of his supporters that they leave the scene and the play entirely, never to be seen again onstage.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>QUEEN MARGARET:</b> Enforced thee! art thou king, and wilt be forced?<br />I shame to hear thee speak.<br /> <br /><b>KING HENRY VI: </b>Stay, gentle Margaret, and hear me speak. </blockquote>
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<b>QUEEN MARGARET: </b>Thou hast spoke too much already: get thee gone.</blockquote>
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And Queen Margaret enters the fray! Despite one later scene (the brutal and humiliating murder of York,) Margaret comes across as rather a rare gal in this play, particularly in comparison to Part 2. Her speeches to Henry are full of fire and dismay as she fights for her son's inheritance. Towards the end of the play, it is clear that the opposing side considers her the real usurper of Henry's power, while Margaret blames Henry for his lack of backbone. <br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>QUEEN MARGARET:</b> <i>(To her son) </i>Ah, that thy father had been so resolved! </blockquote>
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<b>[RICHARD]: </b>That you might still have worn the petticoat,<br />And ne'er have stol'n the breech from Lancaster. <i>(Act V.v) </i></blockquote>
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But Margaret, unlike Henry, weds action with words. She rages in speeches, and then gathers her troops and attacks. York (and after his death, his son Edward,) with one exception (at his son Rutland's murder,) avoids stirring speeches about his rights or intentions. Henry, by contrast, is ALL speech, and when he briefly re-attains the crown in Act IV, he immediately abdicates all responsibility for it, and places two protectors (Warwick and Clarence, both of whom had only recently been his enemies,) in charge of the kingdom's affairs. His speeches are often beautiful, and you can really get behind his wish to leave the squabbling of nobles and brutality of war behind. (It's not even clear whether he really believes in his own right to the crown.) But his speeches are just words - there is no threat or action behind them.</div>
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There are dozens of other quotes I could pull, in which Richard speaks aside to the audience of his own intentions to smile now while plotting the deaths of his brothers and nephew in his own reach for the crown, in the York brothers' convincing of their father that an oath not given before a magistrate is ineffectual, in the constant flip-flopping of allegiances between Clarence and Warwick and others, or of King Edward's marriage to Lady Grey after first betrothing himself to the sister of the King of France. The examples fill the pages.</div>
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The play ends as it began - first with a brutal, violent act by Richard. He murders the captive King Henry in the Tower of London, interrupting him in mid-speech:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>[RICHARD]:</b> I'll hear no more: die, prophet in thy speech:</blockquote>
The following scene is one that should be a celebration of Edward's coronation and the birth of the prince. But it feels ominous, with the spectre of Richard's coming betrayal hanging in the sidelines. And there is no one the audience can truly feel good about supporting in the last scene. The king has betrayed oaths and looked aside at the murder of innocents to achieve his throne. Clarence has switched sides twice, and will again. Richard lurks, waiting for his chance to steal the crown. Even Queen Elizabeth has been shown to be scheming for the benefit of her brothers and sons rather than for the good of her country. King Henry may have been weak and ineffectual, but with his death, it feels as if the last light of true morality in England has died. </div>
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Which brings me to the State of the Union address. Anyone who's been paying attention for five seconds knows that most of its contents were not only false, but dangerous in the way that they chose to spin the president as some sort of moral leader who has the ability to raise up followers and cast down opponents. Seeing a man like Rush Limbaugh given the Medal of Honor while simultaneously degrading immigrants and Muslims sends a message about who Trump believes belongs in this country and who doesn't. </div>
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But then we saw the power move of the night: Nancy Pelosi shredded her copy of the address. It was a striking statement that expressed without words her opinion of HIS words: that they were nothing. </div>
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Not all of the morality in America has died, though I'm betting after today's impeachment vote, it will probably feel like it for a bit. We might do well to remember Queen Margaret's speech from Act I.i in thinking about the shameful deeds of the Republican party:</div>
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I shame to hear thee speak. Ah, timorous wretch!<br />Thou hast undone thyself, thy son and me;<br />And given unto the house of York such head<br />As thou shalt reign but by their sufferance.<br />To entail him and his heirs unto the crown,<br />What is it, but to make thy sepulchre<br />And creep into it far before thy time?</blockquote>
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Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-28893627942654503242020-01-30T09:35:00.000-08:002020-01-30T09:35:27.986-08:00"...Then are we in order when we are most out of order" (On "Henry VI, Part 2)I've struggled to find an entry point to discuss this play. In truth, it feels more like three plays than one coherent whole, even more tangled than its predecessor in the mix of history and legend surrounding the near-mythic figures of the early years of the Wars of the Roses. In it, we see the meteoric treachery and rise of the Duke of York, who would not see the crown on his own head, but whose two sons would eventually wear it before being struck down in turn by the Tudors. But I have more questions than answers.<br />
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The first play-within-a-play concerns the actions of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, as she seeks the aid and advice of the unholy in her quest to unseat Henry and Margaret and place the crown upon hers and Gloucester's heads. Her witchcraft within the play is based in fact; Eleanor was convicted of witchcraft (really, consulting astrologers for news of the future, but a trumped-up charge benefited enemies of her husband) in 1441, along with Margery Jourdemayne, Roger Bolingbroke, and Thomas Southwell. Her three accomplices were executed, and the duchess was exiled.<br />
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There are only two women in the play, and they are pitted against each other from their first lines; both are viewed as evil, deceptive, conniving, and scheming to control the throne. I love Shakespeare, but I am tired and I cannot help but point out how influential he has been in our culture. When one of our most important cultural sources repeatedly reinforces the idea that women are full of deceit, jealous of each other, and constantly hounding their husbands for more power, what does this do to our collective imagination?<br />
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The third section of the play concerns the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cade%27s_Rebellion" target="_blank">rebellion of Jack Cade</a>, which took place in 1450 (the events of the play are highly condensed. In reality, the rebellion was one of many over hundreds of years in which the common folk of England sought redress against the crown for abuses of power, particularly in this case those of the Duke of Suffolk. Little is known about the historical Jack Cade, but the play presents him as a figure of menace and mirth, full of lies about his background and lineage.<br />
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Most striking at first is how Cade's promises morph and change as his power grows. At first, he promises the commonfolk "reformation": "seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass...there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score..." He promises satisfaction for all their small wants, but with no plan for how that shall occur, and at first he only claims that he wants to be king. <br /><br />But then, a more ominous note appears. A clerk walks by, and Cade and friends waylay him. When told that the clerk can "can write and read and cast accompt" (do math,) Cade responds with "O monstrous!" The clerk's crime is then compounded by the fact that he teaches young boys to also read and write, to which the rebellious tribe decides to "hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck." Later, Cade mentions that the Lord Say "can speak French; and therefore he is a traitor." His argument is that anyone who speaks with the tongue of the enemy must therefore be an enemy, and that knowledge of the enemy cannot make one a good counsellor; ignorance is king.<div>
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In the play, Cade's rebellion nearly succeeds. He takes London town and bridge, and is only brought up short when Clifford begs the commoners to relent, invoking the name of the beloved and late King Henry V, and suggesting that they save their ire for their true enemy, France. It takes little, then, for the crowd to turn on Cade and drive him out, and he is later slain in a garden.<br />
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In the middle of all of this, we have the pious and gentle young King Henry VI and his Lord Protector Humphrey of Gloucester. Gloucester is brought up on flimsy charges by the pack of lords who hate him for his influence over the young king, but Henry seems powerless to stop them. And smack dab in the middle of the play, Act III, scene i, there is one of the most heartbreaking monologues in all of Shakespeare, as Henry mourns the downfall of his friend and father figure, but is impotent to stop it.<br />
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Ay, Margaret; my heart is drown'd with grief,<br />Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes,<br />My body round engirt with misery,<br />For what's more miserable than discontent?<br />Ah, uncle Humphrey! in thy face I see<br />The map of honour, truth and loyalty:<br />And yet, good Humphrey, is the hour to come<br />That e'er I proved thee false or fear'd thy faith.<br />What louring star now envies thy estate,<br />That these great lords and Margaret our queen<br />Do seek subversion of thy harmless life?<br />Thou never didst them wrong, nor no man wrong;<br />And as the butcher takes away the calf<br />And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays,<br />Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house,<br />Even so remorseless have they borne him hence;<br />And as the dam runs lowing up and down,<br />Looking the way her harmless young one went,<br />And can do nought but wail her darling's loss,<br />Even so myself bewails good Gloucester's case<br />With sad unhelpful tears, and with dimm'd eyes<br />Look after him and cannot do him good,<br />So mighty are his vowed enemies.<br />His fortunes I will weep; and, 'twixt each groan<br />Say 'Who's a traitor? Gloucester he is none.'</blockquote>
Shakespeare's imagery here, of the cow running up and down crying for her calf, tears at the heart. But it frustrates, as well. Why is Henry so ineffectual? What is it that keeps him from exerting his power as king to stop the proceedings in their tracks? Shakespeare is still a young playwright at this point (1591,) so it's possible he lacked the ability, time, or support in the theatre to fully flesh out a reason here, but it's frustrating.<br />
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So what is the message of Part 2? What can we make of this combination? All falls apart for Henry and his followers when they kill Gloucester. Was he Lord Protector of more than just Henry? Perhaps all of England? Is this a warning? Ha ha, this is what happens when you DON'T have a Protector! But what about an audience watching who DOESN'T have one? There is unease that sits in the pit of the stomach as we watch the villains come first for the women, then the most morally upright, then the educated among us. Who will protect us? </div>
Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-15813207120549791482020-01-29T20:52:00.000-08:002020-01-29T20:52:50.671-08:00Life UpdateYes, I know, I got a tad behind on the Shakespeare. I have been told that I have at least one dedicated reader, so I promise the Henry VI Pt. 2 post is coming! I hope this post will explain why I'm a little behind schedule.<br />
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First up, something to celebrate - I got accepted into graduate school (again!) Thanks to the hard work and fast turnaround time of some wonderfully supportive people on their recommendation letters, last week I was formally accepted into the <a href="https://graduateschool.colostate.edu/programs/arts-leadership-and-cultural-management-malcm/" target="_blank">Master's in Arts Leadership and Cultural Management at Colorado State University</a>! It's an online program, so I'm not going anywhere. It's designed specifically for people looking to switch careers towards or move upwards in the arts, and my hope is that by the end of it (2 years,) I'll be prepared to move into an administrative or leadership position in a theatre, museum, or other cultural center somewhere. I was officially admitted on Wednesday, because there was an issue on their end with a transcript getting lost, and classes started the previous Tuesday, which means I got registered on Thursday and promptly had six assignments due. But I am off and rolling!<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mIPV84kO_N8/XjJglUYsNeI/AAAAAAAAATM/1dXl5ndSHKISho1fjC0bsmB3W9ifuRJkQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_7562.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mIPV84kO_N8/XjJglUYsNeI/AAAAAAAAATM/1dXl5ndSHKISho1fjC0bsmB3W9ifuRJkQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_7562.HEIC" width="240" /></a>Which brings me to celebration #2 - dance! Over the weekend, I competed for the first time in a dance competition at <a href="https://derbycityswing.com/" target="_blank">Derby City Swing</a>, and I won first place in my division! It's just a baby step, and I have a hugely long way to go in the next division (Novice,) but it was so gratifying to see some of the work I've put in over the years finally pay off. Dance has been a complicated beast for me for a few years. I love doing it, but for a long time there was pressure to make no mistakes, and because of the situation I was in, I wasn't really encouraged to improvise or play in my dance, only follow and stick to basic patterns. Now that I'm doing it for myself, and not for anyone else, there is joy and play in dance again, so I am trying to remember that the fun part is the important part, not the competition. (But let's admit it, getting a trophy was AWESOME.)<br />
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Then there was some other, not so great stuff, that happened. Some of it is not my story to tell, and is just part of the fact that I am lucky to have people I love who turn to me when their lives hit speed bumps. One of the things about having people in your life that support you is that occasionally the time comes when you repay the favor, and there was some of that this week as well. But it's all worth it to see someone I love come out of a bad situation and remember the awesome person she really is.<br />
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And last is the fact that my biological dad died last week. This is a complicated situation that involves years of emotional abuse, so I haven't had a relationship with him in over a decade. But he was buried (or at least a memorial service was had) on Sunday (I didn't go;) which was the same day we got the news about Kobe Bryant's death. I've had an extremely visceral reaction to the Bryant death, because there is this whole debate about how much respect we owe the dead. (For those who don't remember, he <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Bryant_sexual_assault_case" target="_blank">raped a 19-year-old in 2003</a> and never really atoned for it.) What about the respect we owe to people who are still alive, who have been hurt by abusers? I've been silenced several times on facebook threads by both men and women who are just so ANGRY that I'm bringing up the fact that he raped someone, calling me "disrespectful," "a horrible human," "just mean," etc. They are far angrier about my mentioning the rape than they are over the fact that he raped someone.<br />
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And so this is connected very closely to how I feel about my own life right now. I've buried this last paragraph in a blog entry that almost no one reads, and it features no details about my dad's abuse, and yet I am terrified about the outcome of speaking up. Who, tomorrow, will tell me that I'm a horrible human for saying that my father abused me in emotional and other ways? Will it be a family member? Why is his reputation more important than the fact that my brain will <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327080.php#risk-factors" target="_blank">literally carry the scars of that abuse forever</a>? There is "taking the high road," and then there is just plain self-flagellation. I've said nothing to anyone that would carry that news back to him for 25 years. When does the silence end? And what will I do when someone accuses me of lying? What purpose would there even be to me lying about this? <i>"Why didn't you bring this up when it first happened?"</i> "Uh, because I was 11, and he was my dad, and I thought this was all normal, and I kind of did tell the family therapist, but it didn't change anything, which further reinforced the idea that it was all normal." <i>"Why can't you remember the happy times with him?" "</i>Uh, because there weren't any. All I remember of him is the control, the anger, the manipulation, the walking on eggshells and constantly feeling like I had to perform in just the right way or rage would break loose and sweep us all away."<br />
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I am 38 years old, and I am just now breaking free of the need to seek approval before making decisions. I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of disapproval for this post, for daring to speak up against the legacy of man who was on a school board, and worked on the Saturn rockets, has seven patents to his name, raced for NASCAR, and dealt in antiques, had two grandkids, on and on and on. But he was <i>mean</i>. And he made me feel worthless every time I spoke to him for 25 years, until I refused to speak to him anymore. And then he continued to send me mean letters until I moved last year and he didn't have my address anymore.<br />
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Maybe people will be mad at me for speaking up. Probably. But it can't hurt him anymore, just his reputation. And I'm just done thinking that any man's reputation is worth my silence any more. If he wanted to rest in peace, he should have tried living in peace. And if it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed.<br />
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Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-6571652236524377872020-01-22T08:14:00.002-08:002020-01-22T08:14:55.762-08:00"Give me leave to curse awhile..." (On "Henry VI, Part I")I'm somewhat obsessed with Joan of Arc currently, having recently finished Marina Warner's <i>Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism</i>. Despite all my medieval scholarship, somehow the details of the Maid of Orleans' life had heretofore escaped me. Coincidentally, <i>Henry VI</i> features Joan, including many of the actual historical details of her life and trial, in combination with the propaganda that colored the English public perception of her character, providing a fascinating and conflicting portrait of her role in the war between France and England in the post-Henry V era.<br />
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First up, a little background on the play: there is much debate as to Shakespeare's role in its production, with some scholars claiming he had no hand in it whatsoever, to others staunchly defending his authorship. The current wave of thought seems to be that he did indeed write it, but as a collaboration with other authors, which fits with the somewhat (to me) clunky effect of the plot. In addition, there is confusion about when, exactly, the play was written. There is evidence that a play about the particular subject matter was performed in 1592, but other scholars claim that the text as we know it is rather a prequel, written to capitalize on the popularity of the second and third plays, already in existence. It's also possible that Shakespeare (or another playwright, or a combination of the two,) wrote the earlier version of the play, which was then improved for later production, which happens to be my own opinion. There are just too many late-medieval holdovers in the text for it to be a completely original (not necessarily in dialogue, but in scenes and characterization.)<br />
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The scenes with Joan of Arc in particular illustrate this fact. When she first appears onstage in Act I, scene ii, the scene corresponds with what we know from history and urban legend. She claims divine guidance from Saints Katherine and Deborah, as well as from Christ and Mary themselves. She identifies the king of France, Charles, though his courtiers sought to beguile her, as history claims occurred in fact at Chinon. In all aspects, Shakespeare depicts her here as Joan la Pucelle, the Maid of France, inspired by God to lead France to victory. Nowhere in this scene are we given any indication of villainy or deviousness on her part, much less evil-doing.<br />
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As the play proceeds, while Shakespeare deviates heavily from historical accounts of battles, until Act V, most of Joan's scenes continue in this vein. It is unlikely that Joan ever fought hand-to-hand, as shown here, and her later trial partly hinged on her unwillingness to ever commit violence against anyone. Nevertheless, her character remains consistent throughout the first four acts of the play; she fights for France and her king, while using both strength of arms and her wiles for her country's benefit. She speaks of purity and courage, and is by all accounts a noble and superior knight.<br />
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By contrast, the English lords scrap and squabble amongst themselves for power and privilege, while the adolescent, impotent, and easily-led King Henry VI looks on in dismay. Shakespeare's scenes involving the English lords are acknowledged for their confusion. With the exception of the soldier and general Talbot, who leads the English forces in France, audience members most likely find it difficult to support any on the English side; many old grudges resurface, dividing into factions that inevitably lead to the downfall of the English cause in France altogether.<br />
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In France, though, until Act V, all of the French lords and generals, including Joan, are always seen together, as a single unit. They fight and infiltrate together, even when using disguises and secrecy, as when they sneak into Rouen as peasants.<br />
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The later <i>Henry VI </i>plays feature this theme heavily: that it is the English penchant for factionalism and infighting that leads to their losses in France. Whether the first play is a prequel written after the success of the second and third plays, or was an earlier production later enhanced, this very visual evidence underscores the same theme. The French work together, as a unit, and remain successful, while the English undermine each other for personal gain, or fail to work together for the common good, as when they argue about whose responsibility it was to send more troops to relieve Talbot, and it ruins their cause.<br />
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And then we get to Act V. And for the first time, we see Joan la Pucelle alone.<br />
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It is this scene, in particular, that lends weight for me to the theory that Shakespeare both wrote the play in collaboration with others, and that it retains holdovers from an older, previous version. This scene undoes Joan's character completely. In it, we see her renege on all of her earlier Christian imagery to call on devils and demons to aid the French cause. The scene contains very specific, dramatic stage directions from the devils, including them "walking, and speak not," hanging their heads, shaking their heads in denial, etc. It's a curiously medieval form of pantomime that recalls the morality plays of earlier decades, and is probably the scene that leads some scholars to claim Marlowe's hand in the play, as it is reminiscent of his work on <i>Doctor Faustus</i>. But <i>Faustus</i> hardly stands alone; it is part of a long tradition of plays wherein devils and fiends make appearance onstage amidst smoke and noise.<br />
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But this scene, along with the following scene for Joan in which she claims pregnancy (unsuccessfully) to avoid burning at the stake, provides us with an abrupt about-face for her character. Of course, the popular opinion of Joan within the English imagination of the time was that she was a witch and a harlot, so these scenes are not out of character for the audience of the time. However, they are inconsistent with the very heroic character we have seen so far, who claims such devotion to her cause and Christ that when<br />
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"In complete glory [Mary] reveal'd herself;<br />And, whereas I was black and swart before,<br />With those clear rays which she infused on me<br />That beauty am I bless'd with which you see." (I.ii.280-3)</blockquote>
Shakespeare, even in his early works, also never shied away from creating complex female characters. Why the oversimplification of Joan?*<br />
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Within a few short lines after Joan is hastened offstage, the only other woman in the play appears, Margaret of Anjou, who will become one of Shakespeare's most villainous of female characters. She, too, appears innocent and virginal at first. Is this a remark on Joan? If not, it's certainly an awkward moment for her to appear, right after the only other woman in the play is burned at the stake.<br />
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Frankly, the entirety of Act V feels like a combination of pandering to an audience who wants a violent finish to a play filled with discussion and intrigue, combined with a need to complete a few necessary plot points. Is this the ending Shakespeare intended? Or was this the result of several minds working together, with separate priorities? The last few episodes of <i>Game of Thrones</i> comes to mind. Why are we still falling back on women's duplicity or madness as an easy plot point that just explains everything? Ugh.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">* Ironically, since the English burn her anyway, refusing to believe that she is indeed pregnant, doesn't this mean that they believe that she was, indeed, a virgin?</span>Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-33240752144001337572020-01-09T09:44:00.000-08:002020-01-09T13:03:40.665-08:00"Conceal me what I am..." (On "Twelfth Night")<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Conceal me what I am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent. </i></div>
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- Twelfth Night, I.ii</div>
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As I mentioned above, I am participating in Ian Doescher's <a href="https://iandoescher.com/shakespeare/">Shakespeare 2020 Project</a>, and the first play was <a href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/twelfth_night/full.html">Twelfth Night</a>. Written somewhere around 1601 or 1602, the play is largely considered the last of Shakespeare's real comedies before he moves into his more mature "problem play" era.* It relies heavily upon established tropes of the time - mistaken identities, master/servant protocols, marriage as a happy ending, and - most notably - cross-dressing and gender confusion.<br />
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The play begins, of course, with the shipwreck of Viola and Sebastian upon the foreign shore of Illyria, a country which seems to be undergoing some sort of revel for the three-month period over which the play is set. The twins are separated, and both assume the other dead. Immediately Viola begins dressing as a man and feigns the name "Cesario" to take up employment under the local duke, Orsino. <br />
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Viola has been played by a host of actresses in our modern era, with directors setting the stage from Regency England to the Edwardian era, to fantasy scenery, and beyond. Costuming-wise, however, almost all productions feature Viola's "Cesario" scenes with her in some type of uniform. Take the most famous recent film production from 1996. Here, Imogen Stubbs plays Viola, in a version set in what appears to be turn-of-the-century England. Stubbs' Viola/Cesario is dressed in military costume. <br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0huHkeCJNmc/XhdXyieFOXI/AAAAAAAAAP4/8LeJtC06jlc-OwjPNhC0hI3dE9TEiCa4QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Stubbs%2BViola.png"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0huHkeCJNmc/XhdXyieFOXI/AAAAAAAAAP4/8LeJtC06jlc-OwjPNhC0hI3dE9TEiCa4QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Stubbs%2BViola.png" /></a></div>
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In 2009, similarly, Anne Hathaway played Viola in New York's Shakespeare in the Park, with similar effect, this time as a Regency-era soldier, seen here with Raúl Esparza. <br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A7oCYtH0B-E/XhdYpfg8dHI/AAAAAAAAAQE/lSOxg2jOnIYKLHb1K_QvDuAdDSacosMCgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Hathaway%2BViola.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A7oCYtH0B-E/XhdYpfg8dHI/AAAAAAAAAQE/lSOxg2jOnIYKLHb1K_QvDuAdDSacosMCgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Hathaway%2BViola.jpg" /></a></div>
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Even the 2006 modernization of the play, "<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454945/?ref_=ttmi_tt">She's the Man</a>," has Amanda Bynes in a private school dress jacket (left.)<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xdfdWb57Or0/XhdZG8NxNYI/AAAAAAAAAQM/C5d4qi8f3ycg122885paSa1G2R2IICSNACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Bynes%2BViola.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xdfdWb57Or0/XhdZG8NxNYI/AAAAAAAAAQM/C5d4qi8f3ycg122885paSa1G2R2IICSNACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Bynes%2BViola.jpg" /></a></div>
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Lest you think this is merely a modern affectation, even the earlier versions of the play feature its actresses in the uniform of servant's livery. See below, with Vivien Leigh as Viola (with Trader Faulkner as Sebastian) in 1955 at Stratford, or Judi Dench in 1969 at the Royal Shakespeare Company (those boots with the crenellated tops!! *dies*)<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GEjf8kcbXnI/XhdeGlAw4FI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/erfIO9TkNBQxnnCaWp4sbw_RXZToINhTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/V%2BLeigh%2BViola.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GEjf8kcbXnI/XhdeGlAw4FI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/erfIO9TkNBQxnnCaWp4sbw_RXZToINhTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/V%2BLeigh%2BViola.jpg" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j98igTKgCxo/XhdeHWVCTVI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/cknzB7rascYfduUTcTK91ovsV_SwsXv_QCEwYBhgL/s1600/Dench%2BViola.png"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j98igTKgCxo/XhdeHWVCTVI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/cknzB7rascYfduUTcTK91ovsV_SwsXv_QCEwYBhgL/s320/Dench%2BViola.png" /></a></div>
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What does it say about us as a society that the most "masculine" form of dress, or the one that most clearly indicates "male-ness," is that of a standardized uniform? The very word implies "sameness." Of course, the audience does need some sort of visual indication of the difference between Viola-as-woman and Viola-as-Cesario. But why no other options than that of a uniform? <br />
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At first glance, in a modern play setting, this seems sort of straightforward - young woman disguises herself as young man. But any historian knows that women were not allowed upon the stage in Shakespeare's day, which means that Viola would have been played by a man; in fact, most likely she would have been played by a boy old enough to appear like a young woman, but young enough for his voice not to have dropped yet. This means that Viola would have actually been a young man playing a woman playing a young man. Modern productions often skip over this difficulty altogether. <br />
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One does not, however. A production I would sacrifice my left kneecap to have seen live is the 2012 Globe Theatre's version, directed by Tim Carroll and and starring Mark Rylance as Olivia and Johnny Flynn as Viola. Costume designer Jenny Tiramani won a Tony award for her designs, as she strove to create the most historically-accurate costumes possible for the production. Star Mark Rylance wore period-correct stays which he claimed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/theater/how-mark-rylance-became-olivia-onstage.html">limited his range of motion</a>** and developed a particular floating walk which emphasized the almost legless, alien quality of the character of Olivia. You can see Tiramini's designs and Rylance's movement within them <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDPT2e26SgY">here</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcSNTspXGYk">here</a>.*** Her designs were not the only historical accuracy: as in Shakespeare's day, director Carroll chose to cast all male actors, forcing his audience to avoid the mental shortcuts available to other productions. What does this do to us as we consider gender within the contexts of the play?<br />
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What is most immediately striking is how the costuming highlights the ambivalence of gender in the 2012 production. If we allow our modern perceptions of masculinity to intrude upon them, the dress of the male characters of "Twelfth Night" seem downright effeminate. The lace and frills of Liam Brennan's Orsino and the powder and gilt of Flynn's Viola/Cesario leap out at us as surely belonging to more feminine characters, while Olivia's stark black mourning and stillness fall more in line with the (male) uniform of modern productions.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-73PFucGQfUg/XhdhfaSlDMI/AAAAAAAAARY/OZ6UToF8-as33vVPcHLTTnZy_YyKM79nwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Globe%2BOrsino.jpg"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-73PFucGQfUg/XhdhfaSlDMI/AAAAAAAAARY/OZ6UToF8-as33vVPcHLTTnZy_YyKM79nwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Globe%2BOrsino.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yvvHTIHFgjw/XhdhftErwtI/AAAAAAAAARc/OTblzaMrTxg0FOL0JdpisU336JBhJdgEgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Rylance%2BOlivia.jpg"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yvvHTIHFgjw/XhdhftErwtI/AAAAAAAAARc/OTblzaMrTxg0FOL0JdpisU336JBhJdgEgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Rylance%2BOlivia.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Without our modern sensibilities getting in the way, the production is forced to rely on the words of the playwright, the skills of the actors, and the range of historical knowledge of the audience. By all accounts, it was an immensely successful performance, and a tribute to how close attention to historical detail does not need to be pedantic or peevish - it can, indeed, contribute to the themes of a play.<br />
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Not to leave out our other two ladies, let's just check in with Maria, the scheming, petite little "firago" servant of Olivia's. She, too, would have been played by a young boy, and lines in the play suggest that she would have been depicted by a younger one than Viola or Olivia, since she is often described as petite or small. Paul Chahidi played her on the Globe's stage in 2012.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oaBED7Ze-V4/XhdlMKP9aTI/AAAAAAAAAR8/pwy2a3moiPwJ6CQmIqcgY2J2m6jfL9eugCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Maria.jpeg"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oaBED7Ze-V4/XhdlMKP9aTI/AAAAAAAAAR8/pwy2a3moiPwJ6CQmIqcgY2J2m6jfL9eugCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Maria.jpeg" /></a></div>
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Other versions of Olivia are more typical of the "leading lady," but this blog post wouldn't be complete without mentioning Bonham-Carter's lustrous fragility, or Kara Tointon's 2017 RSC version, set in Victorian England, which allows it to use all those carefully-coded messages involved in corsetry and bustles and hair all bound up or loosely flowing.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B3kMCskiIq8/XhdlMQZzg1I/AAAAAAAAASA/fUrxBvTHOlUgWBJY87P1IXyae0uCGU7zwCEwYBhgL/s1600/Bonham%2BOlivia.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B3kMCskiIq8/XhdlMQZzg1I/AAAAAAAAASA/fUrxBvTHOlUgWBJY87P1IXyae0uCGU7zwCEwYBhgL/s320/Bonham%2BOlivia.jpg" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-taHP3yhIHHM/XhdlMfPBkkI/AAAAAAAAASE/rCgYxhKVvLsSs6fcVFKEkza96NyOqGYNACEwYBhgL/s1600/Tointon%2BOlivia.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-taHP3yhIHHM/XhdlMfPBkkI/AAAAAAAAASE/rCgYxhKVvLsSs6fcVFKEkza96NyOqGYNACEwYBhgL/s320/Tointon%2BOlivia.jpg" /></a></div>
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Next up: Henry VI, Part 1!<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
* Doescher scheduled it first, despite its late date, so that it would coincide with the actual date of the twelfth night of Christmas, January 6. Nevertheless, the play itself doesn't seem to refer to any Christmastide activities, and takes place over a period of three months. Anne Barton's excellent introduction in the Riverside Shakespeare provides an overview of the best scholarship we currently have regarding the title's intent, as well as the play's first performance date.<br />
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** To this, I add a bit of a "harrumph," as they, frankly, shouldn't. Stays and corsets, properly fitted, shouldn't limit movement or breathe in any way. However, as an actor who is accustomed to breathing in a particular fashion, or who wishes to add drama to an interview, I'll allow it. <br />
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*** I have to admit, my first experience with this costume was actually costumer Zack Pinsent's interpretation of it from earlier this year. I came across this video, which initially was mistakenly labeled by its sharer as being a costumer on a hoverboard. While a unique concept, and one I would be interested in seeing, it's not what's happening here, though it's easy to see why a casual viewer would believe it. Neither Rylance nor Pinsent are on hoverboards - they are just immensely talented body movement artists: <a href="https://twitter.com/zackpinsent/status/1129168346849656832?lang=en">Zack Pinsent as Olivia</a>.</div>
Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-50315956712787348442020-01-07T12:39:00.002-08:002020-01-07T12:39:28.500-08:00New Insta!Oh hey! I had someone ask about my costuming. I've never put it all in one place before, and sadly it seems that I'm lacking some documentation for some pieces, but I thought Instagram might be the best place for it. So if you're interested in following along as I update my skills in that arena (and perhaps others,) here it is!<br />
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/at_whits_end_here/" target="_blank">At_Whits_End_Here</a>Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6978285073896512385.post-13609615863995944732020-01-05T12:40:00.000-08:002020-01-05T12:49:47.515-08:002020: Ready Is a LieI don't like the concept of resolutions. They imply that the past version of you wasn't "enough" somehow. Not working hard enough, didn't have enough willpower, wasn't smart enough, not making enough of the right decisions... To resolve to be different in the new year means that Past You wasn't good enough. But really, Past You made the best decisions that she could with the resources and knowledge that she had at the time.<br />
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But goals? That's something I can get behind. And since I'm hitting the "restart" button on my life, I have been given the rare gift of time and opportunity to set goals that are truly meaningful to me. For the next two years, I hope to grow into myself in ways that were never allowed until now, for various reasons ranging from the expectations and needs of others, to my own perfectionist inner narrative. This blog will hopefully serve as a form of accountability to these goals, and a way to communicate progress towards them. It will also serve as a journal of sorts, a semi-regular dialogue of one woman's journey towards rediscovering herself and her talents and abilities in an effort to unlearn what does not serve and share that growth with the world.<br />
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Without further ado, those goals are:<br />
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<li><u style="font-weight: bold;">Scholarship and Career Change:</u> I've already submitted my application for my second master's degree, this time in Arts Leadership. I hope to move from education into the world of the arts, and use my skillset to help make the arts accessible and inviting to all. (It's a two-year program, hence my two-year plan here.)</li>
<li><b><u>Write:</u></b> Everyday, write something of substance. (The blog doesn't count, as it's personal reflection.) My intent is to hopefully create some sort of funding out of my writing skills, which have been developed over a decade of secondary humanities studies (and, admittedly, the intermittent internet argument.) Whether this be writing nonfiction articles for Medium or other outlets, or adding pages to my first novel, my intent is to produce 500 words a day, 5 days a week, for the first few months, and then hopefully raise it to 1000 if that is working for me.</li>
<li><b><u>Sew:</u></b> I've done a fair share of historical costuming since 2009, but almost everything I've created has been completed with restrictions as to time period, needs of a specific event, etc. I hope to begin sewing again with two distinct goals in mind:</li>
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<li>Learn more techniques: So far, I've acquired information on the fly, learning how to sew specific methods as they became necessary for that particular project. While I expect to continue in this way somewhat, I plan to choose projects that stretch my skills and allow me to learn a range of techniques that raise my overall level of craft.</li>
<li>Create art: I hope to create not just copies or interpretations of existing or historical garments, but to meld art and costume and create new designs that express ideas.</li>
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<li><b><u>Read:</u></b> I've always read a ton, so this isn't a change, but rather a commitment to making sure that I am not just picking up the next book that looks interesting, but ensuring that my reading shelf remains broad and deep. </li>
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<li>Additionally, I intend to follow along with Ian Doescher's <a href="https://iandoescher.com/shakespeare/about/" target="_blank">2020 Shakespeare Project</a>, which reads through every work of Shakespeare's throughout the 2020 year. Every work takes from four to eight days to complete, so it's a brisk pace until you've got free time, but I read Renaissance era writings pretty quickly (yay humanities master's degree!) and I want to brush up on some of my Shakespeare. I've read probably two thirds of his plays at some point or another, but never in order, and I've missed too many along the way. If you're interested in joining me, let me know! I'd love to share thoughts about the plays.</li>
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<li><b><u>Body Work:</u></b> I'm covering a few things under this heading, but this mostly includes a deeper commitment to dance, particularly West Coast Swing, as well as a daily commitment to yoga and meditation. This is for two reasons:</li>
<ol>
<li>First, to keep my body healthy, I will need to just plain get off my butt. I don't think I need to elaborate on the host of health benefits to regular exercise.</li>
<li>Second, yoga and meditation in particular have clinically shown benefits to PTSD survivors in calming the nervous system. As a survivor of emotional abuse from multiple points in my life, I am working to overcome my body's trained reaction to triggers, and this is one method of doing so. </li>
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</ul>
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This doesn't include work on my personal life, as I'm not quite sure how to set goals for that other than "keep being honest" and "show up for your people." It also doesn't include work around my house, though I have some distinct goals there, and progress on that might show up here, too.</div>
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My first struggle will, I am sure, be an intense battle with ADHD and the fact that there are a million fun things to do around my house that don't involve thought or work. I mean, my bed alone is the warmest, comfiest thing on the planet, and that's <i>before</i> I get three kitties piled on top of me. So dealing with being accountable to myself is somewhat of a goal all on its own, but it's one where I just have to to show up and do the work. (Ha! Just show up and do the work, she says!)<br />
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Which brings me to my title: "Ready is a lie."<br />
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I was never going to be ready for this. 2018 ground me down to dust, I thought, but it made me stronger than I ever thought I could be. I learned to stand up for myself. Learning that, in turn, meant that I had to break some more things in 2019, things that weren't happy for this newer, stronger version of me. Nobody's ever ready for change. Change is <i>hard</i>. But ready is a lie. If you wait until you or someone else is ready, you will moulder in the ground before you ever enact any kind of change. So I'm not ready for this. But I'm going to do it anyway.Whits_Endhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07396761666758572263noreply@blogger.com0