Shakespeare Extravaganza!
We all know (or I hope we all know) that Shakespeare's language is good, occasionally bordering on the sublime, and that personally I think everyone should see at least one play at least once, right?
Okay, good, because I got hold of a Complete Works and I'm reading it in order and now I'm gonna talk about how weird these plays are at length.
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a play with two very loosely related plots and a whole lot of slapsticky nonsense. I also read it out of order, which is why it's not alphabetical. Sir John Falstaff, a former member of Prince Hal's court, is now hanging around Windsor trying to seduce two different married ladies at the same time. One of the married ladies has a daughter who has three different suitors, two of whom are ethnic stereotypes (Welsh and French) and the third of whom is the guy she actually marries. There are many sex jokes and very little good language and a lot of, well, slapsticky nonsense. This is the play you put on when you're bored and want to tell a lot of dick and fart jokes. Entertaining, but does not contain any of the sheer bizarre weirdness that makes a Shakespeare play memorable.
All's Well That Ends Well might be the only play of these five where someone doesn't get murderously jealous of someone else. Shakespeare, these are comedies. There's a lot of murder for these comedies.
I keep getting All's Well confused with As You Like It, so to be clear, this is the one where the male lead is a goddamn douchebag and the heroine is pretty much a stalker. Helena is in love with Bertram, the son of a count, and after she cures the king of France, she asks for Bertram's hand in marriage (creepy). The king gives it to her, but Bertram tells her he won't call her his wife until she has the ring off his finger and his baby in her belly, and runs off to fight in Italy (??) (dick). Helena goes on pilgrimage and then fakes her death (??) in order to play a bed trick on Bertram in which he sleeps with her instead of the hot girl he's been courting. Naturally, at the end of the play, she has the ring he gave the hot girl and is pregnant with his child, so Bertram does an about-face and falls in love with her, or claims to. Also, there's a long subplot about some friend of Bertram's being a traitor.
So, yeah, the play where everyone's unsympathetic and the ending's triumphant but not happy. Not enough dick jokes.
As You Like It is the one with the crossdressing! Also an excellent heroine and a lot of hoyay.
Our Heroine Rosalind is the daughter of a duke who got usurped by his brother and sent off to the Forest of Arden. On a scale of Duke Senior to Prospero, how well do you take being usurped by your brother? Anyway, Rosalind's uncle kicks her out, so she and her cousin also run away to the forest of Arden, although not before they meet Orlando, who has also been thrown out of his house by his older brother, who is now trying to kill him via wrestler. Yeah. Rosalind decides to pretend to be a boy named Ganymede (o rly) and her cousin Celia becomes her sister, the symbolically-named Aliena. Orlando, who has fallen in love with Rosalind at first sight, ALSO runs to the Forest of Arden, where he leaves love poetry on all the trees until Rosalind-as-Ganymede trips over him and makes him stop by telling him to woo her while pretending that she-as-Ganymede is his love Rosalind.
YEAH.
The play only gets more convoluted from there, but in the end there are no less than four (4) marriages, thanks to the clowns hooking up, a subplot about a girl who fell in love with Rosalind-as-Ganymede and her stalker shepherd boyfriend, and Celia at the last minute falling in love with Orlando's no-longer-murderous brother Oliver. Also the usurping duke found Jesus and became a monk so Rosalind's father can have his dukedom back. Oh, and the god Hymen appears. It's pretty nuts, but entertaining as hell, and while I can't say that anyone's actions necessarily make sense, the play is still really funny and definitely worth watching. Unlike, say, All's Well.
Me, I think that Oliver figured out what was up with "Ganymede" the moment he saw her, and spent the interact time going "??????" at Celia, who went "!!!!!!!!!!" back until they fell in love by sheer virtue of being the most done people in the play. But, you know, headcanons.
Comedy of Errors! The one where everyone's a douchebag and the two people who are explicitly searching for their long-lost twin brothers never once suspect that hey, maybe the reason everyone here recognizes us and is telling us we did things that we never did is BECAUSE THOSE BROTHERS ARE HERE.
Yeah, Comedy of Errors is founded on the premise that a man and his wife had twin sons, as did a poor woman in the same house, so the man bought the poor women's sons (as you do) and raised them to be his sons's servants. However, when they were young, he and his family got in a shipwreck and were separated. He ended up with one of each set of twins, and now is looking for the other two boys. They all have the same name, by the way. The sons are Antipholus and the servants are Dromio. And apparently they are dressed alike and sound exactly alike, because the entire play is people mistaking them for each other, one Antipholus hitting on the other one's sister-in-law, several people getting arrested, and a whole lot of just. Shenanigans. This play would be utterly irredeemable were it not for the pretty cool language. A lot of people speak in rhyming couplets with each other, which is just fun. Apart from that, it's confusing and short and just weird. Just... weird, guys.
THIS PLAY.
Okay, first of all, the play is called Cymbeline but it's not really about Cymbeline, it's about his daughter Imogen. Second of all, no one in this play is what they claim to be except Cloten. He's an evil fucker but at least he's honest about it? Finally, there is a TOTALLY RANDOM appearance of Jupiter (yes, the god). The play was semi-realistic if a bit full of crossdressing before that, and then ABRUPTLY JUPITER. Okay.
The play begins with an infodump, wherein we learn the identities of everyone involved, and that Imogen has married Posthumous (whose entire mostly irrelevant backstory we learn in the first scene) while her father wanted her to marry her stepbrother, Cloten. Posthumous has been banished and Imogen is getting pressured. Also, the king had two sons who disappeared a long time ago. Oh, and they might be at war with Rome.
So there's like, five plots here, that weave in and out of each other. First, there's Posthumous and his weird Roman friend who bets Posthumous that he can get Imogen to sleep with him. He can't, obviously, but he manages to convince Posthumous that he did, so Posthumous sends his servant to kill Imogen and then has a change of heart after he hears she's dead. He spends the rest of the play trying to get himself killed before running into a very much alive Imogen. Then there's Imogen herself, who fends off Cloten, runs away when Posthumous tells his servant to kill her, starts crossdressing, runs into her long-lost brothers, thinks Posthumous is dead, accidentally takes poison, and wakes up just in time to resolve the plot. Then there's Cymbeline himself, whose wife convinced him to go to war with Rome. Then there's Imogen's long-lost brothers and their adoptive father, who stole them when Cymbeline accused him of treachery like twenty years ago, because that's a good plan. Cloten starts running around trying to find the missing Imogen and eventually gets himself killed. And finally there's Cymbeline's wife, but I don't even know what she thinks she's doing. Trying to get her son on the throne, I gather, but there's way too much poison and goading people to go to Rome for that to be the only motive.
Anyway, at the end of the fourth act Posthumous has been arrested after he pretends to be Roman (for reasons) and is sleeping in his cell when the ghosts of his parents and dead brothers show up and call on Jupiter to protect him. For some reason Jupiter actually answers this call, and drops a random prophecy on Posthumous's chest that a random soothsayer interprets at the end of the play. It serves absolutely no point and does absolutely nothing to the plot, but hey. There's a god.
SHAKESPEARE IS WEIRD, Y'ALL.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 2--fascists have slight problems, because the women are usually right but the values are of four hundred years ago. The problems might be bigger but I don't think they'd understand the words.
This entry is crossposted at http://bookblather.dreamwidth.org/421351.html. Please comment over there if possible.
Okay, good, because I got hold of a Complete Works and I'm reading it in order and now I'm gonna talk about how weird these plays are at length.
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a play with two very loosely related plots and a whole lot of slapsticky nonsense. I also read it out of order, which is why it's not alphabetical. Sir John Falstaff, a former member of Prince Hal's court, is now hanging around Windsor trying to seduce two different married ladies at the same time. One of the married ladies has a daughter who has three different suitors, two of whom are ethnic stereotypes (Welsh and French) and the third of whom is the guy she actually marries. There are many sex jokes and very little good language and a lot of, well, slapsticky nonsense. This is the play you put on when you're bored and want to tell a lot of dick and fart jokes. Entertaining, but does not contain any of the sheer bizarre weirdness that makes a Shakespeare play memorable.
All's Well That Ends Well might be the only play of these five where someone doesn't get murderously jealous of someone else. Shakespeare, these are comedies. There's a lot of murder for these comedies.
I keep getting All's Well confused with As You Like It, so to be clear, this is the one where the male lead is a goddamn douchebag and the heroine is pretty much a stalker. Helena is in love with Bertram, the son of a count, and after she cures the king of France, she asks for Bertram's hand in marriage (creepy). The king gives it to her, but Bertram tells her he won't call her his wife until she has the ring off his finger and his baby in her belly, and runs off to fight in Italy (??) (dick). Helena goes on pilgrimage and then fakes her death (??) in order to play a bed trick on Bertram in which he sleeps with her instead of the hot girl he's been courting. Naturally, at the end of the play, she has the ring he gave the hot girl and is pregnant with his child, so Bertram does an about-face and falls in love with her, or claims to. Also, there's a long subplot about some friend of Bertram's being a traitor.
So, yeah, the play where everyone's unsympathetic and the ending's triumphant but not happy. Not enough dick jokes.
As You Like It is the one with the crossdressing! Also an excellent heroine and a lot of hoyay.
Our Heroine Rosalind is the daughter of a duke who got usurped by his brother and sent off to the Forest of Arden. On a scale of Duke Senior to Prospero, how well do you take being usurped by your brother? Anyway, Rosalind's uncle kicks her out, so she and her cousin also run away to the forest of Arden, although not before they meet Orlando, who has also been thrown out of his house by his older brother, who is now trying to kill him via wrestler. Yeah. Rosalind decides to pretend to be a boy named Ganymede (o rly) and her cousin Celia becomes her sister, the symbolically-named Aliena. Orlando, who has fallen in love with Rosalind at first sight, ALSO runs to the Forest of Arden, where he leaves love poetry on all the trees until Rosalind-as-Ganymede trips over him and makes him stop by telling him to woo her while pretending that she-as-Ganymede is his love Rosalind.
YEAH.
The play only gets more convoluted from there, but in the end there are no less than four (4) marriages, thanks to the clowns hooking up, a subplot about a girl who fell in love with Rosalind-as-Ganymede and her stalker shepherd boyfriend, and Celia at the last minute falling in love with Orlando's no-longer-murderous brother Oliver. Also the usurping duke found Jesus and became a monk so Rosalind's father can have his dukedom back. Oh, and the god Hymen appears. It's pretty nuts, but entertaining as hell, and while I can't say that anyone's actions necessarily make sense, the play is still really funny and definitely worth watching. Unlike, say, All's Well.
Me, I think that Oliver figured out what was up with "Ganymede" the moment he saw her, and spent the interact time going "??????" at Celia, who went "!!!!!!!!!!" back until they fell in love by sheer virtue of being the most done people in the play. But, you know, headcanons.
Comedy of Errors! The one where everyone's a douchebag and the two people who are explicitly searching for their long-lost twin brothers never once suspect that hey, maybe the reason everyone here recognizes us and is telling us we did things that we never did is BECAUSE THOSE BROTHERS ARE HERE.
Yeah, Comedy of Errors is founded on the premise that a man and his wife had twin sons, as did a poor woman in the same house, so the man bought the poor women's sons (as you do) and raised them to be his sons's servants. However, when they were young, he and his family got in a shipwreck and were separated. He ended up with one of each set of twins, and now is looking for the other two boys. They all have the same name, by the way. The sons are Antipholus and the servants are Dromio. And apparently they are dressed alike and sound exactly alike, because the entire play is people mistaking them for each other, one Antipholus hitting on the other one's sister-in-law, several people getting arrested, and a whole lot of just. Shenanigans. This play would be utterly irredeemable were it not for the pretty cool language. A lot of people speak in rhyming couplets with each other, which is just fun. Apart from that, it's confusing and short and just weird. Just... weird, guys.
THIS PLAY.
Okay, first of all, the play is called Cymbeline but it's not really about Cymbeline, it's about his daughter Imogen. Second of all, no one in this play is what they claim to be except Cloten. He's an evil fucker but at least he's honest about it? Finally, there is a TOTALLY RANDOM appearance of Jupiter (yes, the god). The play was semi-realistic if a bit full of crossdressing before that, and then ABRUPTLY JUPITER. Okay.
The play begins with an infodump, wherein we learn the identities of everyone involved, and that Imogen has married Posthumous (whose entire mostly irrelevant backstory we learn in the first scene) while her father wanted her to marry her stepbrother, Cloten. Posthumous has been banished and Imogen is getting pressured. Also, the king had two sons who disappeared a long time ago. Oh, and they might be at war with Rome.
So there's like, five plots here, that weave in and out of each other. First, there's Posthumous and his weird Roman friend who bets Posthumous that he can get Imogen to sleep with him. He can't, obviously, but he manages to convince Posthumous that he did, so Posthumous sends his servant to kill Imogen and then has a change of heart after he hears she's dead. He spends the rest of the play trying to get himself killed before running into a very much alive Imogen. Then there's Imogen herself, who fends off Cloten, runs away when Posthumous tells his servant to kill her, starts crossdressing, runs into her long-lost brothers, thinks Posthumous is dead, accidentally takes poison, and wakes up just in time to resolve the plot. Then there's Cymbeline himself, whose wife convinced him to go to war with Rome. Then there's Imogen's long-lost brothers and their adoptive father, who stole them when Cymbeline accused him of treachery like twenty years ago, because that's a good plan. Cloten starts running around trying to find the missing Imogen and eventually gets himself killed. And finally there's Cymbeline's wife, but I don't even know what she thinks she's doing. Trying to get her son on the throne, I gather, but there's way too much poison and goading people to go to Rome for that to be the only motive.
Anyway, at the end of the fourth act Posthumous has been arrested after he pretends to be Roman (for reasons) and is sleeping in his cell when the ghosts of his parents and dead brothers show up and call on Jupiter to protect him. For some reason Jupiter actually answers this call, and drops a random prophecy on Posthumous's chest that a random soothsayer interprets at the end of the play. It serves absolutely no point and does absolutely nothing to the plot, but hey. There's a god.
SHAKESPEARE IS WEIRD, Y'ALL.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 2--fascists have slight problems, because the women are usually right but the values are of four hundred years ago. The problems might be bigger but I don't think they'd understand the words.
This entry is crossposted at http://bookblather.dreamwidth.org/421351.html. Please comment over there if possible.