also, other shakespeare ramblings
Today I was kind of a flake: I have a lot of school reading and dissertation reading that needs...er, reading, but instead I flaked out and read something for fun during lunch and after office hours were over: the first two chapters of Carol Chillington Rutter's book Enter the Body: Women and Representation on Shakespeare's Stage. I can't remember exactly when I checked this book out (again), but I had plans to read the relevant parts of it over Thanksgiving weekend, but someone has requested it, so. A couple of years ago now I read the chapter on Cleopatra, which I'm still divided about: I think half of it is great, and half of it is totally wrong and actually kind of unnecessary. And I can't remember why I read that chapter instead of the ones that are more relevant to me pretty much all the time, the ones on Cordelia and Ophelia, but I didn't then, so I read them today.
And--you guys. I'm not sure why, exactly, her books make me so happy: it's something to do with performance, and possibility, and the possibility of a criticism that isn't bogged down in demonstrating its own learning to the point of tedium. It's not that I always agree with her points, because I don't. But I read her work and come away energized, reminded of why criticism is supposed to be a good idea, and moved by possibility. And after the Ophelia chapter, I just want to think about the graveyard scene, which is the most unstable part of the play for me, probably: I change my mind about it all the time.
(Also, it reminds me of my recurring dream to teach a class on Hamlet and Hamlet-related stuff. *wants*)
I likely won't have a chance to read the chapter on Troilus and Cressida (which was probably the reason I checked the book out the first time, it occurs to me now: that chapter is about clothing and costume, so it would have possibly been relevant to my vanished dissertation topic), but I do want to read the chapter on Othello now, after rereading the play, because the chapter focuses largely on Zoe Wanamaker's Emilia (in Trevor Nunn's RSC production; I still haven't seen it because I keep forgetting the video exists!). And I adore Emilia. She breaks my heart, more than anything else about that whole play. There's a line that she has, that conjures up whole worlds of suffering worn like a badge, a refusal to break that is always vulnerable, that has nothing in common with stoicism:
Thou hast not half that power to do me harm / As I have to be hurt.
It knocks the wind out of me, you guys. I can only flail about it helplessly in front of my students and look like an idiot. What is her life like, that she can say such things?
So anyway, I'll probably read that tonight instead of something useful, like Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique.
And--you guys. I'm not sure why, exactly, her books make me so happy: it's something to do with performance, and possibility, and the possibility of a criticism that isn't bogged down in demonstrating its own learning to the point of tedium. It's not that I always agree with her points, because I don't. But I read her work and come away energized, reminded of why criticism is supposed to be a good idea, and moved by possibility. And after the Ophelia chapter, I just want to think about the graveyard scene, which is the most unstable part of the play for me, probably: I change my mind about it all the time.
(Also, it reminds me of my recurring dream to teach a class on Hamlet and Hamlet-related stuff. *wants*)
I likely won't have a chance to read the chapter on Troilus and Cressida (which was probably the reason I checked the book out the first time, it occurs to me now: that chapter is about clothing and costume, so it would have possibly been relevant to my vanished dissertation topic), but I do want to read the chapter on Othello now, after rereading the play, because the chapter focuses largely on Zoe Wanamaker's Emilia (in Trevor Nunn's RSC production; I still haven't seen it because I keep forgetting the video exists!). And I adore Emilia. She breaks my heart, more than anything else about that whole play. There's a line that she has, that conjures up whole worlds of suffering worn like a badge, a refusal to break that is always vulnerable, that has nothing in common with stoicism:
Thou hast not half that power to do me harm / As I have to be hurt.
It knocks the wind out of me, you guys. I can only flail about it helplessly in front of my students and look like an idiot. What is her life like, that she can say such things?
So anyway, I'll probably read that tonight instead of something useful, like Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique.