why is it that
...women I really admire keep saying stupid things about cross-casting in Shakespeare?
A couple of points that are particularly irksome:
1. The suggestion, common to both sets of comments, that the only way to cross-cast in Shakespeare is to change characters from male to female, when performed reality -- especially onstage -- is more flexible than that? I mean, yes, cross-casting always gets stupid reviews that invoke Peter Pan and girls' boarding schools -- the very first paragraph of my dissertation includes a collection of awful things people said about Fiona Shaw's Richard II -- but other people's sexism is their own damn problem.
2. The argument LeGuin makes also suggests that Shakespearean character is a fairly immutable thing, that "Prospero" is always the same entity and to make him into Prospera is to make the play not!Shakespeare. Because that sort of thing suggests that a) any particular interp can "be Shakespeare," and b) that we should care. (I mean. For a non-gendered example, I really don't think that Shakespeare wrote Richard II as a kind of savant -- granted it doesn't say he's not but I think that reading does require some fighting the text -- but Mark Rylance did it that way and was brilliant.)
Point being, there's room for everything in Shakespeareland.* It's not like anyone's going to stop doing traditionally-cast productions.
*I realize that as the aesthetically prudish, small-minded maintainer of the Evil Shakespeare Overlord List, I am an enormous hypocrite, since IN ACTUALITY I obviously disapprove of having women in Shakespeare EVEN IN FEMALE ROLES. ;)
ETA: LeGuin also gives the non-gendered example of Richard III:
For example, Richard III played by a blond, blue-eyed, six-foot, gorgeous young hunk, to show that the Tudor myth about his being a monster was a bunch of lies... The problem is that everything Richard says and does in the play is magnificently, mythically monstrous. He is the Tudor myth. He is Shakespeare's Richard. He can and should be fascinating, but to make him pretty would be idiotic.
Because we all know that NOBODY ATTRACTIVE has ever played Richard III, right? Examples of hot Richard IIIs are also welcome in the comments. ;)
A couple of points that are particularly irksome:
1. The suggestion, common to both sets of comments, that the only way to cross-cast in Shakespeare is to change characters from male to female, when performed reality -- especially onstage -- is more flexible than that? I mean, yes, cross-casting always gets stupid reviews that invoke Peter Pan and girls' boarding schools -- the very first paragraph of my dissertation includes a collection of awful things people said about Fiona Shaw's Richard II -- but other people's sexism is their own damn problem.
2. The argument LeGuin makes also suggests that Shakespearean character is a fairly immutable thing, that "Prospero" is always the same entity and to make him into Prospera is to make the play not!Shakespeare. Because that sort of thing suggests that a) any particular interp can "be Shakespeare," and b) that we should care. (I mean. For a non-gendered example, I really don't think that Shakespeare wrote Richard II as a kind of savant -- granted it doesn't say he's not but I think that reading does require some fighting the text -- but Mark Rylance did it that way and was brilliant.)
Point being, there's room for everything in Shakespeareland.* It's not like anyone's going to stop doing traditionally-cast productions.
*I realize that as the aesthetically prudish, small-minded maintainer of the Evil Shakespeare Overlord List, I am an enormous hypocrite, since IN ACTUALITY I obviously disapprove of having women in Shakespeare EVEN IN FEMALE ROLES. ;)
ETA: LeGuin also gives the non-gendered example of Richard III:
For example, Richard III played by a blond, blue-eyed, six-foot, gorgeous young hunk, to show that the Tudor myth about his being a monster was a bunch of lies... The problem is that everything Richard says and does in the play is magnificently, mythically monstrous. He is the Tudor myth. He is Shakespeare's Richard. He can and should be fascinating, but to make him pretty would be idiotic.
Because we all know that NOBODY ATTRACTIVE has ever played Richard III, right? Examples of hot Richard IIIs are also welcome in the comments. ;)