Titus Andronicus

My experience reading Titus was full of starts and sudden stops. I traveled abroad in the middle of the month and the kindle I took to continue reading lost its charge soon after I arrived. I was also sick for several weeks. Really sick: doctor, antibiotics, corticoids, bed. In the context of the mutilations and beheadings on the play, my Titus problems appear quite minimal. And regardless of my interrupted reading, Andronicus grabbed me and did not let go. 

I have not seen the Julie Taymor movie, although Anthony Hopkins's blue face has haunted me for years. I will watch it when I find it, especially since now I know that Marjorie Garber became a vegetarian after watching the pie scene. 

I have also refused to read Bloom's chapter on Titus. My recollection is that he believes Titus is a satire, that is how much outside the cannon he considers this play. I, on the other hand, shared the anguished and cried with Titus. I saw Lear in Titus. I saw all the disfunctional shakespearean families in the Andronicus and Tamora's clan. I did not care for the mutilated limbs or the flesh pies, but they were powerful on the page.

Titus grief was epic. I was there all the way. 

I also adored finding in this play all the seeds that blossom on the great tragedies. I believe that reading Titus is a must for all Shakespeare students. Recommended!

Two Gentlemen of Verona? Check!

I could not be any happier: it is only the 13th of the month and I finished reading this month's play and read Garber, Nuttall, Bloom and even Bate! 

I have actually enjoyed reading this play. I was eager to go back to the early plays and find out what themes and characters were swimming around in Will's head that would come out more fleshed out in later plays. 

Bate (page 92) includes a lovely quotation of a source for this play. He thinks Will must have seen it or even acted in it in his youth. 

I see where Bloom is coming from when he ranks this play as second to last only to Merry Wives of Windsor. But there is no denial that it is a comedy, and funny. I was impressed with Speed's puns and enjoyed the two Launce highlights: the description of his beloved and the Crab story. (Crab has climbed to the top of my list of dog names).

The chapters are now becoming entangled, but I believe it was Nuttall who declared his preference for the aspect of the play that leaves all other scholars scratching their heads: the part at the end where Valentine forgives Proteus and even offers to give Silvia to him, right after Proteus tried to rape her! Nuttall points out that the two young men's relationship could find a parallel in the love for the youth of the Sonnets! I am glad I have read a small chunk of the sonnets and will pick up the series starting tomorrow for the rest of the month. The sonnets have enhanced my understanding of the poetry in Shakespeare's plays. I now find it easier to read them, well, just a bit. I believe I am now aware of a different type of relationship between people of the same gender, which was common in Shakespeare's time. Valentine and Proteus: the lover and the inconstant. 

By far the best characters in this play are Julia and Silvia. They are bright and beautiful and cunning and perseverant. Loved that Julia dresses as a boy. Wills will use that in Taming of the Shrew and Merchant of Venice, among the plays I have already read. Bloom states that Launce was too big a character to be wasted on this play. Well, I think both Julia and Silvia are even bigger. Shakespeare had to practically gag them so they would not take over the show, slap the two youths silly and march on to Rome to take the papacy on behalf of women power. Silvia in particular, smart, confident Silvia, does not open her mouth as events pertaining are decided without her consent or input. Just so not Silvia-like. Proteus, the biggest cad in the history of literature does not deserve Julia at all. I hope she left her beau standing at the altar and skipped town!

So, in a nutshell, I enjoyed spending time with characters and themes and looking into Will's creative mind and development. 

Any other things you's like to talk about, my fellow pseudo WS scholar?
  

Nuttall Trivia Question

"Who in the plays of Shakespeare binds a woman, strikes her and makes her cry? The chances are that you will get the answer, 'Petrucchio.' The correct answer is 'Katherina.' She does all this to Bianca in Act II, Scene i, lines 1-24... Petrucchio never strikes Katherina."

A.D. Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker, page 71.

Chris

On this day, when we remember the murder of Martin Luther King, I think of Christopher Marlowe, murdered at 29. By the time if his death, both Chris and Wills had written 7 plays each. The Shrew is one of them. We can only imagine how many more and better plays could Chris have written had he lived longer. On the other hand, would Shakespeare be celebrated universally had he only written the three Henry VI, the Two Gentleman of Verona, the Comedy of Errors, Richard III and the Shrew? Probably not. Perhaps Marlowe was not as preternaturaly gifted as Wills, and nobody would even mention him except as a character in Shakespeare in Love.

Taming (Day 1)

I was feeling a bit blasé about this Shrew business, but Shakespeare is like Christmas every day! I have read La Garber, Jonathan Bate (with whom I am now obsessed) and Nuttall. I skipped Bloom for now because I read him last Spring and I did not find anything of interest then.

It is amazing how these companion books enhance the reading experience. I am so grateful that I have them and hope to keep them by my side forever. Bate has such a beautiful mind, I love his finds. For example, he made me re-read the induction to find Wills in Christopher Sly's description of himself, with all the references to Warwickshire and the life path Shakespeare had trodden. (Pages 37-38) 

One Nuttall reference that excited me was that Petruchio uses falconry training methods to "tame" Katharina, an example of this is the sleep deprivation, which, however, requires that the tamer also does not sleep until his will prevails. 

Review of the Shrew

As Kate's submission is the oldest among our four plays assigned for these two months, I shall begin with the Taming of the Shrew. Let's see whether I discover anything new about this play, which has been done to exhaustion!

Thanks, Guys!

It is almost the end of the month and I am letting go of Julius Caesar. I am in love with this play. It seems so timeless and so current. Genius. 

I am haunted by Caesar, and I sense that my uneasiness with him is akin to Brutus's: power concentrated in one person is frightful. What happens when the rule of law becomes the rule of one? Decisions become arbitrary and capricious, justice disappears, liberties are curtailed. For Brutus, the idealist, this prospect is unacceptable and that moves him into action. I sense the same indignation laced with fear that prompts thousands of people to recklessly take to the streets to protest against their government. 

I was also convinced that Wills decided not to exploit the historical rumor that Brutus may have been Caesar's son, and these artistic choices fascinate me. Perhaps it is because we are reading all of Shakespeare, I am overall interested in Shakespeare's development as an artist, his influences, his context and especially the choices he makes as a writer, more than I am trying to catch every detail of every play. I believe that going back to his first plays will be very productive, as well as continuing reading the different biographical studies we have at hand.

I was captivated by Marjorie Garber's articulation of the central conundrum in the play: the conspirators go out to kill Caesar the public figure, the symbol, but they end up killing Caesar the man only. 

Although Cassius is drawn even with less detail than Caesar in this play, I feel very drawn to him: he is the obsessive compulsive, the skinny bundle of anxious energy, the smarty pants who drives the story. I'll agree with Bloom that he is a precursor for Iago, although Iago is the meanest son of a gun, while Cassius is just a disgruntled roman nobleman (noblesse obligue?)

I am still at odds with this young Mark Antony, although I admire how Shakespeare shows us his highs and lows in a very transparent way. He still has to grow into his toga to become the flawed tragic hero in Antony and Cleopatra.

One last tidbit before I say goodbye to this crew of romans: How awesome is it that Shakespeare killed Cinna de poet "for his bad poems" in an homage to his buddy Chris Marlowe? 

So bye for now, guys! I will get back to you as soon as I can!