tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
This weekend I'm going to New York to see Alan Cumming's one-man play of Macbeth on Broadway. I'm really excited! But I also realized that I knew absolutely nothing about Macbeth, so I decided that I should probably, ya know, actually read the play before going to see it. So I got it out of the library and developed a strategy for tackling it.
Most (but not all) of the Shakespeare that I've read has been in high school or college classes where I had someone to actually guide me through it. I did go through a bit of a Shakespeare phase after I was in the pit orchestra for Kiss Me, Kate during my freshman year of college, so I read Taming of the Shrew and a couple other plays on my own, but that was a while ago.
So when I sat down to read Macbeth, I first read through the entire play, without reading any of the text notes, intro, Cliff's Notes, etc. THEN I read the Wikipedia entry so I could see how close my comprehension was to the actual plot. THEN I went back and read the whole introduction in the version of the play that I had (Arden), then read the entire play again along with the notes. So now I'm pretty much an expert on Macbeth ;-)
Going into it, literally all I knew about the play was "out damned spot" and that there were some witches in it (maybe I knew that "double double, toil and trouble" came from it, but I don't know if I could have said that for sure). But as I was reading, there were all these quotes that I recognized from various cultural contexts, which was a pleasant surprise. Like "the sound and the fury" and "something wicked this way comes". And "Dagger of the Mind" (Star Trek episode) and "All Our Yesterdays" (Star Trek episode that I also appropriated for Trekkies in Love).
And then there was this quote "Who could refrain, that had a heart to love, and in that heart, Courage to make love known." And I was like "where the hell do I know that quote from" because it sounded so familiar, and I was like "I feel like it's from a movie that I've seen a million times...like a teen movie? Mean Girls? No." And then I realized it's from 10 Things I Hate About You (of course...since that's based on Taming of the Shrew.) And then I was a little concerned that I know so much Shakespeare from Star Trek and teen movies, but I'll go with it :-)
And then I found this awesome link with ALL of the Shakespeare references in Star Trek...of which there are MANY! Here's the link, in case you're interested - http://bardfilm.blogspot.com/2009/06/shakespeare-and-star-trek-complete.html
I'll be back with an update on the play after the weekend!
Most (but not all) of the Shakespeare that I've read has been in high school or college classes where I had someone to actually guide me through it. I did go through a bit of a Shakespeare phase after I was in the pit orchestra for Kiss Me, Kate during my freshman year of college, so I read Taming of the Shrew and a couple other plays on my own, but that was a while ago.
So when I sat down to read Macbeth, I first read through the entire play, without reading any of the text notes, intro, Cliff's Notes, etc. THEN I read the Wikipedia entry so I could see how close my comprehension was to the actual plot. THEN I went back and read the whole introduction in the version of the play that I had (Arden), then read the entire play again along with the notes. So now I'm pretty much an expert on Macbeth ;-)
Going into it, literally all I knew about the play was "out damned spot" and that there were some witches in it (maybe I knew that "double double, toil and trouble" came from it, but I don't know if I could have said that for sure). But as I was reading, there were all these quotes that I recognized from various cultural contexts, which was a pleasant surprise. Like "the sound and the fury" and "something wicked this way comes". And "Dagger of the Mind" (Star Trek episode) and "All Our Yesterdays" (Star Trek episode that I also appropriated for Trekkies in Love).
And then there was this quote "Who could refrain, that had a heart to love, and in that heart, Courage to make love known." And I was like "where the hell do I know that quote from" because it sounded so familiar, and I was like "I feel like it's from a movie that I've seen a million times...like a teen movie? Mean Girls? No." And then I realized it's from 10 Things I Hate About You (of course...since that's based on Taming of the Shrew.) And then I was a little concerned that I know so much Shakespeare from Star Trek and teen movies, but I'll go with it :-)
And then I found this awesome link with ALL of the Shakespeare references in Star Trek...of which there are MANY! Here's the link, in case you're interested - http://bardfilm.blogspot.com/2009/06/shakespeare-and-star-trek-complete.html
I'll be back with an update on the play after the weekend!