or, What You Will

[tempestsarekind]

One other random thought based on the previous post (and the fact that someone was just asking me whether I recommended the Trevor Nunn film of Twelfth Night, which started a conversation about Toby Stephens). Plus I have to get my Shakespeare squee in somewhere, since I'm not teaching it this term:

Comments

[skirmish_of_wit]

I have a kind of exasperated fondness for Orsino; he's self-indulgent but not fundamentally a bad person. I remember first reading the play as an undergrad and our professor carefully pointed out every point during the play where we see Orsino falling in love with Cesario, so that by the time we reached the end it seemed more justified -- so when I forgot to do the same that first day I was teaching the play, it surprised me that my students had taken such a dislike to him.

[tempestsarekind]

Yes, exactly--he's exasperating, but there's decent material there.

And I'm always surprised by the amount of dislike Orsino gets. My students have often forgiven Othello and Lear quite readily (oooh, that Desdemona/Cordelia, she's such a tool; she should have kept the handkerchief/just gone along with the love-test. Everything is all her fault!), but Orsino, Romeo, and Richard II are *hated*.

I often wonder if it might be that they have a distrust of elaborate language, especially coming from male mouths. They tend to believe Henry V is 'telling the truth' or 'revealing his true self' when he tells Katherine he can only speak plain soldier, too. (And I'd go, "yes, but isn't there an irony in declaring how poorly you speak while going on for pages?" And they'd go, "Yeah, but it's so lonely being the king, I think he really loves her...") It's puzzling.