What Will?
Shakespeare's death-day, and by tradition, his birthday as well. I find it impossible to declare one film version of his plays my favourite, and at any rate, I've already written about several. But my favourite fictional representation of the bard himself? That I can do.
Let's eliminate the suspects:
- "Shakespeare in Love": I thought the film was great fun and Tom Stoppard had a great go at writing something that on the one hand works for newbies and on the other is a riot if you know your Elizabethan theatre (John Webster the bloodthirsty little boy is probably my favourite detail). But Joseph Fiennes is way too good looking for the man from Stratford (and incidentally, I defy you, Baconites and Edward-de-Vere-snobs, it was Will and none other!), plus he's too generic "young writer" to come across as a specific character.
- "The Shakespeare Code" (Doctor Who episode): also a riot, aside from two lines which I hold mostly responsible for the "The Doctor keeps mentioning Rose in season 3") idea in fandom; actually, he doesn't (though the show, via other people, does it a lot), but the way he brings her up in this particular episode is so spectacularly headdesk-inducing that it did cast its evil spell through the rest of the season. Back to Shakespeare: I loved the whole "Love's Labour's Won" conceit, the line-feeding, the hitting on Martha, the flirting with the Doctor which results in "53 critics just punched the air"... but alas, playwrights really weren't stars in those days. Also, if you make Martha the Dark Lady, there is really no reason not to use a line from one of the Dark Lady sonnets, instead of one from the Fair Youth sonnets. So, no: not my favourite, either.
- Shakes versus Shav: aka the puppet play G.B. Shaw wrote for the Malvern festival. Always leaves me with a wide grin, but not more than that
...and the winnner is:
- Shakespeare in Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Shakespeare shows up as a frustrated young playwright in the background of a scene in Doll's House, where he's talking with Christopher Marlowe and laments his lousy first efforts. (Someone didn't like Henry VI. and Titus Andronicus, eh, Mr. Gaiman?) Later, we find out he made some kind of deal with Dream and became Shakespeare As We Know him, but that's only via report. The next time we see him is in the Dream Country story about the first performance of "A Midsummer Night's Deam", one of two plays Shakespeare, as his part of the deal, writes especially for Morpheus. While as opposed to his earlier cameo he's one of the key characters here - so preoccupied with creating and with what he created that he does not notice he's about to lose his son Hamnet - he's still one of many, and this story isn't yet my favourite take. No, that comes in the very last Sandman story, at the end of the very last Sandman volume, The Wake. Said story takes on the other play Shakespeare wrote for the King of Dreams, which is, inevitably, The Tempest. Now The Tempest, while not actually the last thing Shakespeare ever wrote, is usually seen as his poetic farewell, with Prospero's final speech standing in for Shakespeare's. What Neil Gaiman pulls off are so many things at once: William Shakespeare as a believable character (he and his wife have come to some sort of peace with each other, though their exchanges remain somewhat barbed, the conversation he has with fellow playwright and visitor Ben Jonson contains my absolutely favourite refutation of the "write only about what you know and have personally experienced" argument they usually throw at you, and is a great odd couple act, with the deceptively mild-mannered Shakespeare being great at subtle sarcasm, while Jonson is a great bombastic (in a substantial way) foil. A farewell to the main character the Sandman saga and great meta about the main storyarc, which comes via Shakespeare's conversation with Morpheus (which also offers another treat for fans, i.e. the Jacobean versions of various Dreaming inhabitants). And something I don't think another writer has dared and done well enough to get away with: the Shakespeare/Prospero double act in the final speech becomes Prospero/Shakespeare/Neil Gaiman as our author says farewell to the Sandman readers as well.
Now that is an exit.
Let's eliminate the suspects:
- "Shakespeare in Love": I thought the film was great fun and Tom Stoppard had a great go at writing something that on the one hand works for newbies and on the other is a riot if you know your Elizabethan theatre (John Webster the bloodthirsty little boy is probably my favourite detail). But Joseph Fiennes is way too good looking for the man from Stratford (and incidentally, I defy you, Baconites and Edward-de-Vere-snobs, it was Will and none other!), plus he's too generic "young writer" to come across as a specific character.
- "The Shakespeare Code" (Doctor Who episode): also a riot, aside from two lines which I hold mostly responsible for the "The Doctor keeps mentioning Rose in season 3") idea in fandom; actually, he doesn't (though the show, via other people, does it a lot), but the way he brings her up in this particular episode is so spectacularly headdesk-inducing that it did cast its evil spell through the rest of the season. Back to Shakespeare: I loved the whole "Love's Labour's Won" conceit, the line-feeding, the hitting on Martha, the flirting with the Doctor which results in "53 critics just punched the air"... but alas, playwrights really weren't stars in those days. Also, if you make Martha the Dark Lady, there is really no reason not to use a line from one of the Dark Lady sonnets, instead of one from the Fair Youth sonnets. So, no: not my favourite, either.
- Shakes versus Shav: aka the puppet play G.B. Shaw wrote for the Malvern festival. Always leaves me with a wide grin, but not more than that
...and the winnner is:
- Shakespeare in Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Shakespeare shows up as a frustrated young playwright in the background of a scene in Doll's House, where he's talking with Christopher Marlowe and laments his lousy first efforts. (Someone didn't like Henry VI. and Titus Andronicus, eh, Mr. Gaiman?) Later, we find out he made some kind of deal with Dream and became Shakespeare As We Know him, but that's only via report. The next time we see him is in the Dream Country story about the first performance of "A Midsummer Night's Deam", one of two plays Shakespeare, as his part of the deal, writes especially for Morpheus. While as opposed to his earlier cameo he's one of the key characters here - so preoccupied with creating and with what he created that he does not notice he's about to lose his son Hamnet - he's still one of many, and this story isn't yet my favourite take. No, that comes in the very last Sandman story, at the end of the very last Sandman volume, The Wake. Said story takes on the other play Shakespeare wrote for the King of Dreams, which is, inevitably, The Tempest. Now The Tempest, while not actually the last thing Shakespeare ever wrote, is usually seen as his poetic farewell, with Prospero's final speech standing in for Shakespeare's. What Neil Gaiman pulls off are so many things at once: William Shakespeare as a believable character (he and his wife have come to some sort of peace with each other, though their exchanges remain somewhat barbed, the conversation he has with fellow playwright and visitor Ben Jonson contains my absolutely favourite refutation of the "write only about what you know and have personally experienced" argument they usually throw at you, and is a great odd couple act, with the deceptively mild-mannered Shakespeare being great at subtle sarcasm, while Jonson is a great bombastic (in a substantial way) foil. A farewell to the main character the Sandman saga and great meta about the main storyarc, which comes via Shakespeare's conversation with Morpheus (which also offers another treat for fans, i.e. the Jacobean versions of various Dreaming inhabitants). And something I don't think another writer has dared and done well enough to get away with: the Shakespeare/Prospero double act in the final speech becomes Prospero/Shakespeare/Neil Gaiman as our author says farewell to the Sandman readers as well.
Now that is an exit.