Score one for androgyny and desire. Twelfth Night is like if She’s The Man with Amanda Bynes started off with a shipwreck and instead of being a soccerScore one for androgyny and desire. Twelfth Night is like if She’s The Man with Amanda Bynes started off with a shipwreck and instead of being a soccer captain named Duke, Channing Tatum was an actual damn Duke. Just kidding, of course the film is a modern retelling of the Big Bad Bard’s romantic comedy. For the uninitiated, it is the story of siblings Sebastian and Viola who are separated by a storm. Viola disguises herself as a page boy in the service Duke Orsino, who is in love with Olivia, but Viola loves Orsino and Olivia loves Casario except Casario is actually Viola. Pretty simple right? Now throw in some comical subplots about making Malvolio believe she too is in love with Orsino and we got a proper sexy story and, ‘If music be the food of love, play on,’ lets proceed onward!
‘Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?’
Bring on the cakes and don’t spare the ales because this is a pretty riotous play that plays with the concept of gender as much as it plays with the concept of disguises and the roles we play. Shakespeare uses the act of disguising oneself for multiple purposes here, with Viola in disguise as Casario and others in disguise as scholars to trick Malvolio, and while the latter is more an act of deception, Viola serves as a pretty excellent look that, particularly to a modern audience, can be an interesting look at gender fluidity and queer desires. Vita Sackville-West, who would dress in men’s clothing and go by the name Julian in order to escort her lover, Violet, around Paris and is often remembered for her relationship with Virginia Woolf, named the protagonists of her novel The Edwardians Sebastian and Viola after this play for that very reason.
‘If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.”
The act of taking on a disguise, however, also functions on several layers, from acknowledging ones self in the form of a role all the way to a rather metafictional level acknowledging that these are in fact characters in a play. Viola, for instance, when asked if she is a comedian responds ‘I am not that I play,’ as a sort of witty nod to her role as Casario. The idea of Viola taking on the role of a man can also be thought of as subversive to the notion that roles of women characters were commonly filled by men and thus Viola playing a man is comical as it nudges the idea of a man playing a woman who is then playing a man. Which is pretty great. We also have Shakespeare showing us characters who are even unwittingly playing a role, such as Orsino’s lofty language of love being viewed as fairly farcical–Orsino is in love with the idea of loving Olivia more than actually in love with Olivia and playing a role of lover rather than being an “authentic” lover. As often with Shakespeare there is a “play-within-a-play” and whole one isn’t necessarily stated as such we can view Fabian, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew as a sort of audience to the “performance” of Malvolio. Neat!
‘Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.’
A romcom of gender bending and love triangles as only Shakespeare could deliver, Twelfth Night is a total delight....more
Crashing onto a mysterious island where things seem amiss and visions and isolation might just be orchestrated by a magical being to use the shipwreckCrashing onto a mysterious island where things seem amiss and visions and isolation might just be orchestrated by a magical being to use the shipwrecked crew as pawns in his epic game of power. No this isn’t 1600s LOST this is Shakespeare’s The Tempest and it is a maelstrom of monsters and men full of magic, manipulation, and, ultimately, forgiveness. Written around 1610 and considered to be the final play the Bard wrote alone, The Tempest is a tale of revenge as well as romance, a story of a deposed Duke who has become a hermetic island sorcerer commanding spirits and storms to seek justice like a game of chess where he is always one step ahead with even the flash-of-lightning romance between his daughter, Miranda, and the King’s son, Ferdinand, all part of Prospero’s plan. Witty and wildly fun with plenty of laughs and a repertoire of quotable lines that have become book titles and common sayings, Shakespeare’s line ‘all the world’s a stage’ becomes true on the island itself as much of the play reads like a metaphor of artistic creation and narrative crafting itself with Prospero at the helm of his own story.
‘What's past is prologue.’
Okay, confession time: I’ve only recently come to approach Shakespeare outside of a classroom and now I finally get what the fuss is all about. I feel like I just never had the capacity to really appreciate him when, say, reading Romeo and Juliet at age 14 but now I can revisit that play and realize its actually pretty funny and delightfully unhinged. I mean, I also recently enjoyed The Winter’s Tale as a pre-read for Jeanette Winterson’s wonderful modern retelling, The Gap of Time, and so I figured I should read this so I can launch into Margaret Atwood’s retelling of it in Hag-Seed. I’m glad I did because this play is fascinating and, well, kind of bonkers. I love the magical island setting and perhaps it could be joked that The Tempest walked so LOST could run (itself into the ground–I mean, I loved that show but let’s be real). Though for as cool and mysterious as the Man in Black was, Prospero is even more intensely interesting as he manipulates the people, dodges assassinations and tries to write his own sense of justice (though like, not a good guy for the record and is basically a slave owner of magical beings…not awesome) Also he’s been played by some really great folks:
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Ralph Fiennes
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Christopher Plummer
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Patrick Stewart
A lot has been written on this and I’m no Shakespeare scholar by a million miles, but I did enjoy reading up about this one over the past few days. I was particularly charmed by the ways the play itself seems to read like a commentary on…well, writing a play. Prospero manipulates the tempest as well as The Tempest and all the people inside it towards achieving his own aims and even when they think they are in control of their own destinies, they are just following the path he laid out for them. Miranda, who is a gem by the way, feels her love for Ferdinand is an act of rebellion, yet Prospero has carefully rigged it so his cruelty towards Ferdinand and his claims of not wanting Miranda to see him will only push them together( I’ve always wondered if it were not for the high-stakes blood-feud drama of Romeo and Juliet’s taboo pairing would they have been all that intensely interested in each other after a day?). Which is also what Vonnegut is up to in Cat’s Cradle with Bokononism being outlawed to ensure people will want to believe in it. There is the chef’s kiss moment here too when Miranda and the Ferdster are playing chess together—an apt game of careful plotting and manipulating the pawns for the aim of king slaying not unlike the going on of this story—and Miranda playfully accuses him of cheating. Its a direct nod to the “cheating” done by Antonio to take power.
But back to the idea of the play as playwriting, something that becomes extra meta with Prospero’s play-within-the-play, we have Prospero come across as the all-knowing bard of the tale able to know what other characters are doing due to the forced-labor of the invisible Ariel and always steering the narrative towards the conclusion he seeks. The story is rife with ideas on using illusion, imagination and constructed narrative to produce a desired effect in the “audience” (the shipwrecked crew). There have been arguments made that Prospero is representative of Shakespeare himself, something Samuel Taylor Coleridge puts forth in an 1836 eassy on The Tempest writing that Prospero is ‘the very Shakespeare himself, as it were.’ Adding to this theory is the conclusion with Prospero giving up magic and quitting the island—‘As you from crimes would pardoned be, Let your indulgence set me free’—being a direct message from Shakespeare himself to his audience. As Emma Smith write in This Is Shakespeare, ‘for readers eager for biographical interpretations, the idea that Prospero articulates Shakespeare’s own farewell to his art has been irresistible,’ though there are many others who would assert that this is exactly that: an overeagerness leading to biographical fallacy. Plus, adds Smith, ‘ideas of Shakespeare’s decisive retirement from the stage may have been exaggerated’ and in 1613 Shakespeare purchased property next to the theater in Blackfriars which is incongruous with the romanticized idea that he was retiring away from the city. Or maybe this is just Shakespeare pre-empting Zeno’s ‘last cigarette!’ He wanted to, he just didn’t.
‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here.’
Whatever your interpretation may be, this is a fun play with some great lines. One will find the origin of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World title, for instance with ‘How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!’ or even Into Thin Air from Jon Krakauer. Though I found the famous Ariel’s Song to be particularly intriguing as a lasting reference source. First, we have the epitaph on Percy Bysshe Shelley’s tombstone taken from the second stanza:
‘ Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.’
Which alludes to his death at sea on a boat he had named Ariel. But I discovered just today that the term ‘sea change’ has its origin here in The Tempest, which sort of blew my mind a bit because it is also the title of the very sad Beck album I listened to far too much in high school when I had my heart broken by a girl who bears the same name as Shakespeare’s invisible spirit. It was quite the paper tiger to my emotions at the time long after I should have realized it was a lost cause and this youthful love was already dead, but at the end of the day I guess I’m doing fine and can poke fun at myself in the golden age nostalgia of youth. But damn, Shakespeare, you set me up for that one.
All jokes and Beck songs aside, The Tempest is pretty fascinating late play from Shakespeare and is a great early example of the now classic trope of (space)ship crashes on a mysterious island (planet) and some magical asshole is going to manipulate you to escape. Now I can’t wait to read Atwood’s version.
4.5/5
‘Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.’...more
Going to start saying “Exit pursued by bear” every time I leave a room so if you never see me again you’ll always wonder…
This is a delightfully bonkerGoing to start saying “Exit pursued by bear” every time I leave a room so if you never see me again you’ll always wonder…
This is a delightfully bonkers little tale of the late Shakespeare era and forgiveness becomes a large and lovely theme. Which like, this is quite the act of forgiveness as Leontes is so insecure it practically ends his entire bloodline. Don’t be like Leontes, friends. But perhaps do be a whimsically weird fella like my guy Autolycus! Because apparently you can be a ‘roguish peddler’ and pickpocket as long as you are a cool and charismatic one. And sort of save the day? What a guy.
Read this as it is the favorite Shakespearean work by my favorite writer, Jeanette Winterson, and in preparation to read The Gap of Time (will review later). Fun, quirky, and kind of all over the place, this is a charming play....more
I’ve always been quite fond of the tale of Antigone, the daughter of tragic hero Oedipus and his moth‘Watch out I see the future plunging toward you.’
I’ve always been quite fond of the tale of Antigone, the daughter of tragic hero Oedipus and his mother Jocasta who stands up in defiance of the State and her own Uncle. It is a tale much pondered over by great thinkers and artists, reconfigured on the stage as political statements addressing a current moment many times through history, and here exists in the always inventive Anne Carson’s “translation” Antigonick. Translation seems loosely applied, as it is more of a metatextual retelling in minimalism, often humorous, beautifully bizarre and explosively emotional. Though it is not just the story that is delightful but this is a gorgeously crafted physical book as well, with handwritten dialogue and abstract art pieces by Bianca Stone (I adored her poetry collection What is Otherwise Infinite) on thin translucent sheets between the text. Carson gives Antigone the Badass Revolutionary Girl Summer she deserves, and I love it. Meant to be read in a single sitting but certainly thought provoking far beyond a single reading, Antigonick is another exquisite example of Carson’s inexhaustible creativity and craft.
‘you want us to listen to the sound of what happens when everything normal musical careful conventional or pious is taken away … dear Antigone I take it as the task of the translator to forbid that you should ever lose your screams.’
Following one of Carson’s most personal and emotional works, Nox, which is a recreation of her scrapbook dealing with the death of her brother, Carson released Antigonick which revisits the grief over the death of a brother. Like Nox, the hardcover volume here also has a nearly handmade appearance and is notable for the strange surreal drawings that appear almost jarringly against the text and make this a dynamic work of art beyond just the text. With the translucent pages, the art and words nearly obfuscate one another, juxtaposing the tale with nearly incongruous symbols superimposed, much like the way various symbolic interpretations of the text and characters have existed almost independently of the original story. The visuals also often appears completely independent of the story, though also occasionally reference the original text, such as the wild horses seem to nudge the metaphor Kreon uses about breaking women that does not appear in Carson’s telling. It is all rather odd and seemingly random, which I find rather charming simply for the oddity of it all and how lovely it is as a book that is also a functional piece of art.
The story itself moves at a fast pace—especially considering major events happen in passing of character dialogue I suspect this is one you’d want some general familiarity with the original tale before reading—and constantly cuts directly to the heart of matters with little adornment. It is as if the tale itself is heeding Antigone’s snarky request ‘can we just get this over with?’ But Carson is a poet and extracting vast meaning from the most minimal of linguistic space is something she excels at, building characters with mere lines and bypassing anything that doesn’t feel like it is bestowing climactic-like energy to each scene. Antigone especially is brimming with passion and fury. ‘You are a person in love with the impossible,’ Ismene admonishes Antigone, pleading with her ‘don’t cross the line…girls can’t force their way against men.’ Carson shortcuts right to characterization with choice words, such as how Kreon—cruising around in his “powerboat” as a play on his phrase “ship of State”—is quickly constructed through his list of the day’s verbs (Legislate and Scandalize among them) and nouns (Treason, Death and Mine for instance) like a quick profile. Other fun plays on words is Antigone mentioning she is lonely inside herself, poking at her fate of being sealed alone inside a cave.
Antigone is sharp and direct with Kreon, creating a strong rebuke of authoritarian rule where she notes ‘they all think like me / but you’ve nailed their tongues to the floor.’ When the blind prophet, Teiresias, enters he looks to the Chorus instead of Kreon to declare ‘Hail, King of Thebes’ as a reminder the power is in the people and not the King, lest he is a tyrant. Antigone, well aware of her position in history as a figure of rebellion, or as a terrorist, or a feminist symbol, riffs on the uses of herself, such as the play adaptation by Bertolt Brecht set in World War II where Antigone goes ‘the whole play with a door strapped to [her] back’, one she cannot enter, or Jean Anouilh’s 1944 adaptation staged as a symbol of the French resistance. Antigone will quote Hegel via Samuel Beckett, observe Jacques Lacan’s idea of Antigone as ‘between two deaths’, or Judith Butler who finds her ‘the occasion for a new field of the human’ and wrote Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death where she observes that Antigone upsets gender traditions through her role that would traditionally be expected to be a man and, with Eurydike’s mention of finding Antigone a therapist, questions if we had taken Antigone instead of Oedipus as the departure of psychoanalysis. It is a rather academic text at heart, and rather playful with its allusions, something the Chorus enjoys as it jokes about Greek Myths and their use as precedent in storytelling: ‘Chorus: how is a Greek chorus like a lawyer they’re both in the business of searching for a precedent finding an analogy locating a prior example so as to be able to say this terrible thing we’re witnessing now is not unique you know it happened before or something much like it’
In a way, this becomes sort of a commentary on translation in general. While one certainly wouldn’t mistake this as a direct translation, much of the aspects, such as the aforementioned historical critiques on the original tale, remind us of things a translator would inevitably be aware of in translating the work. It shows how the book fits into the world and speaks to the society of the time, and how translating requires deciding on word choices that must navigate how you feel best respects the work while still acknowledging it as a piece being told in the present but written long in the past. Carson updates the language to current times, with Antigone feeling rather modern herself with snarky responses such as when Kreon asks if she is the one who touched the body, Antigone spits out ‘BINGO.’ Surely this is not something Sophocles’ Antigone would or could say, but this single word establishes a lot about her character and attitude in a modern context. I suspect level of enjoyment of classics refigured with modern aesthetics (it is clear electricity exists in this version, so it is presumably more modern times) will be something a readers experience will hinge on.
Most curious of all the cast is Nick, a silent part that spends the entire play on stage measuring things. Nick comes to bear many meanings, such as a broken off piece of statue or the phrase ‘nick of time,’ and Carson observes the story of Antigone as one very much about timing. Particularly of the timing being too late and Kreon coming to ‘wisdom’ just too late once everyone has died. It is better to learn too late, she implies, than never at all, yet the body count is now high, Kreon has abandoned himself entirely (‘he no more exists than someone who does not exist’) and yet Nick--or time--goes on unbothered, always measuring.
‘I am born for love not hatred.’
Always inventive and unique, Anne Carson yet again dazzles in her playfulness with Antigonick. A dizzying little play that Carson directs towards maximum effect with minimal space, it is one to read again and again.
4.5/5
'But of course there is hope look here comes hope / wandering in / to tickle your feet // Then you notice the soles are on fire.'...more
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales comes to life in the modern day London borough of Brent with Zadie Smith’s uproariously fun The Wife of Willesden, her Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales comes to life in the modern day London borough of Brent with Zadie Smith’s uproariously fun The Wife of Willesden, her debut play and retelling of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. Here Alyson becomes Alvita, an outspoken Jamaican-born English woman in her 50s full of life and wit, with her tale set during the time of Queen Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica. A surprisingly faithful adaptation that feels at home in the modern world and while Smith herself says she is merely ‘hiding in the folds of [Chaucer’s] garment,’ her work here is extraordinary and this is just as exciting for those unfamiliar with the tale as those who have studied it at length. And, for the lucky few, it is even being performed on stage, having done a sold-out run at the Kiln—a theater Smith grew up with—and now making a U.S. premiere.
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Alvita (played by Clare Perkins) w/ 3 of her former husbands
I’ve not read many plays but this was an absolute delightful way to spend an evening reading it with a drink (in keeping with the play itself, a boozy experience is certainly recommended). Much like the way the Wife’s Prologue—which, in keeping with the original, is much longer than the Tale and serves as wonderful character study of Alvira who ‘has been that bitch since 1986’—the story behind the play is just as interesting as the play itself. According to Smith, this came about when a miscommunication with the press announced to the world that she had written a play (she intended at most a monologue for the London Borough of Culture’s 2020 program celebrating Brent), with Smith finding out the whole of the internet was eagerly anticipating it when she got off a plane to a slew of congratulatory emails. Not wanting to disappoint, she actually did it and, honestly, it’s amazing. She was even awarded the 2022 Critics Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright for the play.
This is just so much fun though. She writes entirely in ten syllable lines delivered in rhymed couplets, like Chaucer, and I enjoyed the way speakers will blend into each other to complete the 10-syllable lines. While it is written in modern English, the language is sprinkled with diction and colloquialisms, with the variety of accents intended to create a ‘tapestry’ of international sisterhood of women. This is full of fantastic word-play and lots of puns, most of them sexual ('You don't get something for nutting' ba-dum, ching). It's really lyrical and flows so well ‘and sing without ever actually becoming music.’
The message is primarily the same here, with an emphasis on not being ruled by men, and there are some laugh-out-loud moments here. I was amused by her update that the abusive, fifth husband becomes a raging misogynist who collects stories about women being “evil” after reading Jordan Peterson (Alvira tears up his copy). Though many of the examples given remain the same, such as Ovid’s tale of King Midas. Smith’s stage direction is wonderful and makes for a very visual read—I imagine this is fantastic on stage. It is set in a bar, with Smith herself a character, and the patrons all play the various roles in Alivra’s prologue and tale, from the husbands, to a church service going on ‘in a separate reality,’ to characters like Nelson Mandela, Black Jesus and Socrates. The whole this is hilarious and punchy, though as Smith says, Alvira isn’t written to be a mouthpiece for modern feminist issues, she is existing on her own while not caring what other people think and remains quite true to Alyson.
A quick but joyful read, The Wife of Willesden is a fantastic retelling of The Wife of Bath that keeps Chaucer’s spirit alive in modern day London. I really want to see this on stage, though Smith’s writing is so engaging I feel like I’ve already seen it as her words danced through my head. This edition contains both Smith's play and the Chaucer original text so you can compare the two. Highly recommended, even if you are not a theater-type person. The story is familiar with a few surprises, and overall it is a really fun time.
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That the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry is something John Steinbeck is very familiar with, making this idea thematically central to manThat the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry is something John Steinbeck is very familiar with, making this idea thematically central to many of his works, yet in Burning Bright we see this idea befalling his own book. It is a ‘play-novelette’ as he called it, not unlike The Moon Is Down, though here the mixture of prose and play-format dialogue swings heavily towards the dialogue. It tells the story of a couple, Joe Saul—one of Steinbeck’s signature ‘everyman’ characters—and his with Mordeen who, wanting to give a child to her husband but fearing he is sterile, gets pregnant with Joe’s arrogant assistant, Victor. Rounding out the cast is Ed, Joe’s best and most loyal friend, and across four different settings the characters discuss their situation and muse about life in typical Steinbeck fashion. Unfortunately, this comes across rather stilted and while the dialogue has some beautiful moments it is also a tad overwrought. This would perhaps work much better as a radio play or on the stage, but feels rather lifeless upon the page. Still a worthwhile read with glimmers of what makes Steinbeck such a beloved classic writer, Burning Bright is a rather dim light in his impressive oeuvre.
There is much to enjoy in Burning Bright, however. The play breaks into four scenes with a different setting for each: a circus, a farm, a boat and a hospital. While their personalities and present drama remains the same, each setting has the characters with different backgrounds to fit the setting (they all live in nearby farms in one, or are all sailors in another). Steinbeck tries to make the story a universal one, a story that fits over any social circle or setting, which is a really cool concept and while it is a bit jarring I think it would look cool in a play. It also plays into the idea that Joe is the ‘everyman,’ a concept that Steinbeck often worked into his novels and characters like Joe, or, say, Ethan from The Winter of Our Discontent, become a bit of a barometer of the soul and social values of mid-century United States.
The whole plotline with his Mordeen sleeping with the completely despicable Victor, who is portrayed as an usurper, has some Biblical seeming vibes but is also just a bit not great. It makes her function almost solely for her role in upholding the emotional states and legacies of the two men and serving mostly for her childbearing abilities than as a person with her own agency. Nobody has ever called Steinbeck a feminist writer for sure, but this felt a little egregious here.
I do enjoy Ed, however, and his name recalls Steinbeck’s good friend Ed Ricketts who is the inspiration for many Steinbeck characters such as Doc in Cannery Row. Ed is quite likeable here and helps Joe through his existential crises once he realizes he is, in fact, infertile and there is no way the baby can be his.
It does all lead up to a satisfying conclusion, with an large idea that ‘every man is father to all children and every child must have all men as father.’ This is classic Steinbeck, the idea that we are all one family and must care for each other and raise the human race together. I just feel like he did this more effectively in other books. Burning Bright is a curious and interesting experiment in the lengthy list of Steinbeck books, and it is nice to see him playing with his own craft. While it didn’t fully work here, there are some lovely moments and at least Steinbeck was pushing himself to create in fresh and dynamic ways. A worthwhile read, though one that will likely most interest long-time fans while I would caution newcomers to try some of his other books first.
We are not wholly bad or good, who live our lives under Milk Wood.
The voices of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood rise and fall, crashing into each other We are not wholly bad or good, who live our lives under Milk Wood.
The voices of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood rise and fall, crashing into each other like waves under a milky moon, their sweet prose an effervescence of sounds and syllables to intoxicate the soul. This ‘play for voices’ follows the lives of the citizens of Milk Wood across a full day, bookmarked by the surrealistically sensational dream sequences of the two nights. The play simply engulfs you in its beautiful embrace, like the warm encompassing feeling of sleep overtaking you under the coziest of blankets with the redolence of summer majesty breezing through an open window. Under Milk Wood offers a unique voyeuristic vantage-point for the reader—or listener—as they see all the hopes and dreams swimming in the hearts of these simple folks and watch them interact with one another. From dark and somber to hilarious and cynical, the spectrum of emotions and existence swings and sways to the vocal rhythm of Thomas’ sharp pen and wit. There is the aging sea captain haunted in dreams by pallid corpses speaking from their watery grave, the wife intent on poisoning her husband, the innocent cruelty of children, the lust of the village strumpet and the condescending remarks of those around her; all walks of life exist in the boundaries of this quiet village that could be any village. It satisfied my thirst for something similar to Woolf’s masterpiece The Waves and filled me with joy during the brief sitting it takes to read this play. Charged by the power of Thomas’ prose, sharpened over a distinguished career as a masterful poet, and alive with the madness and love of life, this ‘play for voices’ is an entertaining and exquisite event to read or listen to. 4.5/5
The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs. ...more
‘He is converting his philosophy into corpses and—unfortunately for us—it’s a philosophy that’s logical from start to finish.’
Rome’s third emperor, Ca‘He is converting his philosophy into corpses and—unfortunately for us—it’s a philosophy that’s logical from start to finish.’
Rome’s third emperor, Caligula, had a short rule (A.D. 37-41) yet left a lasting legacy of carnage and brutality. Born Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus but nicknamed Caligula meaning “little boot” in reference to his military uniform, his tyrannical reign of terror and fiscal irresponsibility led to his assassination when he was 28 years old. While surviving sources are few, there is reason to believe his first few months as emperor were noble and tame and many believed mental illness may have contributed to his sadism. Albert Camus’ first play, Caligula, harnesses the story of the tyrant emperor in four acts that examine Camus’ ideas of absurdity, reinterpreting the historical figure through 20th century philosophical discourse (though Camus claimed it was not a philosophical play). Through a rather Nietzschean “will to power,” Camus depicts Caligula embracing absurdity through calculated logic, exemplifying the ideas that anything is possible and man must replace God as Caligula attempts to recreate the randomness of death and the arbitrariness of life while seeking to create meaning out of meaninglessness. An eminently readable work, Caligula interrogates heady ideas and thrives on drawing discomfort from the audience in a violent saga of absurdity, power and revolt.
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The assassination of Caligula, depicted by Giuseppe Mochetti
Camus began writing Caligula in 1937, and though he finished in 1939 it underwent several revisions before it was finally staged in Paris after the war. As he writes in his introduction, Camus intended himself to strut and fret his hour upon the stage as Caligula, and what a role it is with on stage murders and plenty of shouting and emotion. Camus adapted the play—primarily Cherea’s role—to fit his changing views on absurdity, though also, as Oliver Gloag argues in his book on Camus, in response to Hitler and the occupation of France. Lines were cut to ensure it didn’t seem apologetic for tyrants, and added Cherea’s line about fighting ideas ‘whose triumph would mean the end of the world’ as a direct callout against the Nazis. Gloag argue’s Cherea exists to tone down the absurd as ‘nihilistic purity was no longer defensible’ In the essay Camus and the Theater, Christine Margerrison writes that Camus expressed frustrations that the play was often misunderstood, being mistaken as an existentialist work (he adamantly refused the label, and considered existentialism ‘philosophical suicide’), being mistaken as a critique of Jean-Paul Sartre (he wrote it before the rise of Sartrean existentialism), or being a critique against tyrants or communism. Many of these elements are justifiable interpretations (or present in other works) though Camus stressed they overlooked the main purpose of the dilemas of freedom and violence, a revolt of the powerful against society, and an expression of living in absurdity through logic.
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French production of Caligula, 1945
This is an excellent play, and Camus launches us into the start of Caligula’s reign of violence by first showing the emperor in a moment of vulnerability. Following the death of his sister, Drusilla, Caligula contemplates that ‘life is quite intolerable,’ existence is absurd, and regrets being unable to obtain the literal moon to have something absurd, something ‘which isn’t of this world.’ What use is power if one can’t have the moon? It is a pivotal moment, one that hardens into a sadism where he has ‘resolved to be logical’ and seeks freedom at the expense of others.
‘I’m surrounded by lies and self-deception. But I’ve had enough of that; I wish men to live by the light of truth. And I’ve the power to make them do so. For I know what they need and haven’t got. They're without understanding and they need a teacher…’
The tyrannical ruler can, arguably, be seen as a tyranny of the academics and philosophers of the time as well, which Camus delves into more critically in The Fall. He seeks to punish his subjects, to become a god of sorts in the absence of one as he sees it. As Camus wrote in his notebooks ‘. If this world is meaningless then …it is on us to create God...we have only one way to create God and that is to become God.’ He first has everyone make a will to the State and decides he will execute people at random, like the arbitrariness of death (‘It has dawned on you that a man needn’t have done anything for him to die.’), and thus fund the empire. ‘If the Treasury has paramount importance, human life has none,’ he says (feels a critique on government and capitalism in general there), and preaches that ‘this world has no importance; once a man realizes that, he wins his freedom.’ This is a very different revolt than the sort he would be noteworthy for discussing in books like The Rebel, though Camus also implies the teachings of Caligula are not his own (another aspect that frustrated him when viewers assumed that was his aim). Though years of senseless and random murder does not make the people happy, and Caligula knows he is backing them into a corner that can only lead to his own murder at their hands.
‘Other artists create to compensate for their lack of power. I don’t need to make a work of art; I live it.’
Camus delivers a fascinating dichotomy with Caligula embracing the absurdity of existence and believing ‘freedom has no frontier,’ or ‘one is always free at someone else’s expense’ with the people who tend to avoid metaphysical thoughts of existence. We are disquieted by the action, with on stage murders, sexual assaults and constant humiliation. There is a counter-balance, however, in Cherea who on one hand understands Caligula’s quest for the absurd (and perhaps shares it) but cannot abide by the violence. He, in turn, also does not wish to commit it and struggles despite organizing an assassination. As Colin Davis argues in his essay Violence and Ethics in Camus, Cherea is an expression of what Camus wrote in his essays Neither Victims Nor Executioners that violence is ‘at the same time inevitable and unjustifiable’ as well the teachings in The Rebel of ‘conceding the existence of an ethical dilemma but endeavoring to overcome it.’
We also have Scipio who also seems a foil to Caligula, ‘perhaps because the same eternal truths appeal to us both,’ as Caligula observes, and is frustrated with Caligula’s rejection of beauty through his brutality. Though Caligula is not a hero, he is still an expression of Camus’ idea of revolting against the absurdity of existence, and Scipio rejects Caligula raging against the heavens and predicts ‘god-men’ will rise against him. As Alba della Fazia Amoia writes in her book of Camus criticism, ‘[Caligula’s] deliberate irrationality makes him a dadaistic figure, hihilitic in character and inevitably self-destroying’ and compares his body count to a plague—which caught my attention as Camus’ The Plague also features a group of men not conspiring but organizing to fight back the irrationality and arbitrariness of death in a sort of personified form. Though there the response is one that is more clearly “good” and justifiable (I love the line by Cherea here that ‘some actions are…more praiseworthy,’ though Davis says 'more beautiful' is a more accurate translation, and gets at what I'm attempting to say here) and not actually violent where here the revolt is one of bloodshed. As Caligula’s dying words are ‘I’m still alive’ we see that, though his body may have succumbed to death, his spirit of violence is very much alive in the new “will to power” (as Friedrich Nietzsche discussed, something Camus toned down in the play due to the Nazi’s embrace of his philosophy) enacted by the conspirators who have slain him. The moral dilemma of violence and freedom speaks loudly in the silence after the curtain falls.
‘All I need is for the impossible to be. The impossible!’
Caligula is part of what Camus termed the “Cycle of the Absurd” along with The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, but of all of them it seems to most leave us in a ponderous state as it asks us how people can apply meaning to meaninglessness, either by challenging the gods or becoming a god oneself, and then justify our actions for freedom in the face of violence or without causing harm to others. This is a subject of ethical living Simone de Beauvoir would address in The Ethics of Ambiguity and here we have Camus directly confronting the audience with that question to take home and grapple with. Caligula is an interesting play that works well as an exciting look at Caligula as a historical figure through modern philosophical inquiry while also functioning as another critical expression of Camus’ canon of ideas. I also enjoy seeing how his ideas morph over time, both in conjunction with his other works but also in response to the history that was happening in real time during the 30’s and 40’s. A problematic figure, but a brilliant one nonetheless, Albert Camus is a wonderful mind to see at work, especially one that can fret about the stage as it does here in Caligula. Also huge shoutout to Kushagri for inviting me to read this together, you should definitely check out her review here too!
4.5/5
‘Yet, really, it’s quite simple. If I’d had the moon, if love were enough, all might have been different.’...more
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark and, like Oscar the Grouch, I love it. And I love Hamlet. He can’t shut up, he’s a moody as hell bisexual Something is rotten in the state of Denmark and, like Oscar the Grouch, I love it. And I love Hamlet. He can’t shut up, he’s a moody as hell bisexual and gets all philosophical while wanting everyone to think he’s losing his mind triggering a self-fulfilling prophecy of his mental health actually spiraling… okay so maybe I relate a bit too much. But this play rules and it has survived as a classic for a reason even if its characters don’t survive the play. Plus who doesn’t love a good revenge story? Especially one that has become a staple plot that has also led to great retellings like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead or even The Lion King and has so many elements that would later be revitalized as gothic tropes in literature and film.
This whole play is steeped in the interrogative mood that situates us in constant contemplation of ‘what a piece of work is man’ through a cavalcade of philosophical inquiries that move from sophism to existentialism. Of course ‘to be or not to be,’—one of the most quoted and recognizable lines of the play—is often considered to probe existentialist ideas long before Kierkegaard and Sartre would take up their pens and opens the play up as an investigation of identity and purpose that is, arguably, very existentially thematic. Much of the play asks ‘what is a man’ but is also Hamlet asking “who am I?” of himself as he schemes and stumbles through the ‘rotten’ state of the world. He also seems to express ideas of relativism central to the Sophists in lines such as ‘there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,’ and this moral relativism coupled with a thirst for revenge adds a rather edgy and engaging texture to the narrative as it plunges forward into destruction and death.
It is also a coveted role on the stage and there is such an incredible list of people who have played Hamlet. Peter O'Toole, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Fiennes, Richard Burton, David Tennant, Kenneth Branagh, Christopher Plummer, Daniel Day-Lewis, Alan Cumming and many more. Even Ian McKellen played him in a recent age-blind cast production. Who wouldn't want to play Hamlet? But Ophelia as well, one of the more interesting characters who has certainly had a life of her own across literature.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet lives on, like many of his plays, for having a rather universal quality to them that appeals to the times no matter when in history it is revisited or performed. Themes of being trapped by circumstance, themes of betrayal, themes of the in-fighting of the ruling class dooming a nation under them, and themes of struggling with identity continue to trouble people in every era and Hamlet always offers an avenue for confronting these ideas. A fantastic play that stands out even in Shakespeare’s impressive canon of works....more
Hot Shakespeare Summer continues with this tale of a King that should have internalized the phrase “flattery gets you nowhere.” Flattery gets you a piHot Shakespeare Summer continues with this tale of a King that should have internalized the phrase “flattery gets you nowhere.” Flattery gets you a pile of dead bodies and a collapsed kingdom now, Pops, but hey I guess thats why they call these “tragedies.” Brush the bodies aside for a moment because King Lear is an absolutely stunning story and play. Is it one of the greatest stories ever told? MAYBE! Ask Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his A Defence of Poetry he called it ‘the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world.’ And this is a guy who loved Shakespeare so much he named his boat after a character from The Tempest and had said character’s song engraved on his tombstone when the boat capsized and killed him. So that sounds like a strong argument if I’ve ever heard one. Okay roll the bodies back in because this is a play of political turmoil wrought by hubris and familial fighting that has relevance long beyond the Bard’s lifetime, and its brilliantly bleak ending that shoves the audience’s faces directly in the muck as warning against such hubris was so harsh that the play was given a happier ending (Nahum Tate’s The History of King Lear was performed instead until reverting to the original ending in the mid 19th century). And so fall the mighty, and the rest of us crushed in their collapse, in this tale where speaking truth to power often lands on in a shallow grave yet far worse the fates of those who fail to see their own folly before all they know and love is eviscerated in it. This is a tale with teeth, one John Keats described in a poem (read it HERE) as a ‘fierce dispute, / Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay.’ So join me and ‘we'll live / And pray, and sing, and tell old tales’ as we take a look at Shakespeare’s phenomenal King Lear
‘How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!’
I first encountered the tale of King Lear in the Akira Kurosawa’s cinematic masterpiece, Ran, a film where they built an entire castle set only to burn it to the ground for effect. Such is the nature of King Lear: a family, a kingdom, a legacy all dramatically burned to the ground for the audience's pleasure. Okay, fine, it’s bleak but I happen to like bleak, okay?! And this play hits with fists of fury, swinging lines that sting even as they lay flat on the page. ‘Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise,’ ouch, damn Shakespeare…hit me again. ‘Get thee glass eyes, / And like a scurvy politician seem / To see the things thou dost not,’ haha, got ‘em! And a good one to log away in your repertoire is ‘I am a man more sinned against than sinning,’ for when something negative comes up in a performance review. Just jokes, but then again ‘Many a true word hath been spoken in jest.’ I’ve been going through Shakespeare’s works in order to read retellings, this one in preparation for Julia Armfield’s Private Rites, and finding that I absolutely love them all. And so far, this one takes the crown. Suck it Lear, it’s Shakespeare’s crown now.
‘Who is it that can tell me who I am?’
Have I mentioned this story has a body count? Because it’s big. And brutal. For newcomers to this work, it is based on the myth Leir of Britain and tells the tale of King Lear as he doles out his kingdom to his children. His eldest two, Goneril and Regan, flatter him with praise to stoke his ego and they get some sweet inheritance from the bargain. Cordelia—a character Sigmund Freud said is symbolic of death, or at least force Lear and us all to ‘make friends with the necessity of dying’—does not flatter him and says she loves him enough as a father but reserves half her love for a husband. She gets nothing. Yet when the sisters don’t house Lear, and Cordelia’s husband launches war on the Britons, and when another family feud between an illegitimate and a disinherited all come together in rage and bloodshed, shit hits the proverbial fan. And all because, as Regan is quick to point out, ‘He hath ever but slenderly known himself.’ It should come as no surprise that the concept of blindness figures prominently into the play both literally and figuratively. Sorry about them eyes, Gloucester.
‘Now, gods, stand up for bastards!’
Part of the lasting legacy of Shakespeare is that his stories are malleable for the changing of the times and still smack with power even 400 years beyond his death. We are blessed with reincarnations of his work that have also become cultural touchstones for the moment, just look at how beloved The Taming of the Shrew is redressed for the 90s in 10 Things I Hate About You, or Hamlet still being a household name as he rules from Pride Rock in The Lion King. While in Lear we read the famous line ‘we that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long,’ we still see many of the same issues reincarnated in political squabbling and struggles through the ages. This play doesn’t feel so distant, this play where a quid pro quo can gone sour can turn into war, where the feuds of the rich and powerful lead to the deaths of the poor and soldiers sent off to die. ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,’ Shakespeare writes, ‘They kill us for their sport.’ Yet for the rich the working class are but pawns with deaths they hardly register beyond statistics, and only bemoan when it means their lines have broken and death encroaches their territory like Birnam Wood on Dusinane.
Yet too we have King Lear more concerned with The Fool and the entertainment he provides as all descends to rot and ruin around him. How quick we are to look away from atrocities, block out the bad with entertainment, allow a major sporting event to take the spectacle of news and social media overriding the news of mass killings and sorrows. King Lear lives on because it captures the state of being human, being in a society, being under the rule of those for whom feuds can erupt into warfare. It is too late for the characters in Lear but it is not to late for us if we recognize and strive to correct it. Hopefully. A fantastic play, a story that lasts and lasts, King Lear is an absolute masterpiece. Pop 5 stars into the goodreads sky.
This play always holds a place in my heart and the top spot of most embarassing moments in my life. To be fair it was probably my fault as I’d never hThis play always holds a place in my heart and the top spot of most embarassing moments in my life. To be fair it was probably my fault as I’d never heard the superstition about not calling the “Scottish play” by name, and since it was my role I’d been shouting Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth all day. In fifth grade we did a full production of this as our class play and I was honored to be cast as Macbeth (I went to a weird school). I still have many of my monologues memorized. Because memory loves embarrassing moments. And since embarrassing photographic evidence seems necessary, embarrassing photographic evidence is precisely what you shall receive:
[image]
Get a load of this asshole
Anyways, after months of rehersal the big day comes and they invite every 4th and 5th grade class to come watch along with all our parents and grandparents who wanted to be proud of me for a moment. When we get to the murder scene, the fake blood bottle exploded all over my hands and costume like I'd just murdered a whole army and not one little king.
So picture very sensitive, 9 year old me in an oversized medieval cloak my mom made with blood just dripping off my hands like a waterfall as you can also see an equal amount of blood draining from my face because I am very much overthinking it. This play is getting dark and it's all going dark for me because somewhere mid-monolouge I both passed out and threw up allllllll over my fancy cloak (choose-your-own-adventure which came first).
I'm sure other things happened that year but this pretty much occupies my entire headspace for 5th grade. Oh, and this play rules. I’m particularly fond of Kurosawa’s adaptation of it as Throne of Blood, because who amongst us doesn’t have a slight crush of Mifune and him and I have shared a role. Put that on my tombstone.
In a way, one could view this play as the predictable fall-out from men having what is essentially a dick measuring contest and trying to be all most masculine man of the manor. Or castle. Whatever. But challenging ones “manhood” is the fuel to the fire throughout the play. Lady Macbeth just needs to question his masculinity in order to manipulate him, and Macbeth calls the masculinity of his murderers into question to provoke them into offing Banquo. ‘Dispute it like a man,’ Malcolm challenges, to which Macduff replies, ‘I shall do so. But I must also feel it as a man.’ There is a direct line drawn between the cruel violence and this unhinged necessity to ‘feel it as a man,’ and an entire kingdom hangs under the knife–it is also a reminder that being a king is about putting a kingdom first, the pull of proving ones masculinity centers insecurities of the self and tumbles into tyranny.
Its a tale as old as time that still brings about political chaos when the flexing of oneself as a “strongman” throws everyone in a temper to prove they are “man enough” or whatever weird toxic notions they want to project. One might recall politicians in their own day who used the same notion around masculinity in place of a personality. It also shows the threat of ambition for power can have violent consequences if it is not kept in check. As usual, Shakespeare’s legacy lives on from the ways his themes seem to remain relevant hundreds of years later....more
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