Shakespeare, Medieval India, and the Lotus Sutra.

[icarus]

I'm taking Shakespeare because:

1) I'm nine classes away from finishing my English degree.
2) No one, in my opinion, deserves an English degree without studying Shakespeare.
3) Three of my classes need to be pre-1800 literature.
4) Hey, Shakespeare. Cooooool.

One thing I forgot: I love Shakespeare.

I've never read Othello and I'm sure that the close-reading at some point is going to kill me, but Shakespeare has already, in the first Act, made me want to string up Iago (yon bad guy, the worst most ESE character he's ever written), and within pages the situation is so inutterably complicated. Oh yes, yes, I loathe Shakespeare's Sonnets, they're so pure and holier-than-thou, but his plays -- blood, guts, and mayhem! Treachery. Sex. Puns. Silliness. Madness.

I really ought to have gone to see Michael Shanks play Hamlet, even if the reviews were iffy. Speaking of madness.

And Romeo still cracks me up. "Oh woe is me, the beautiful girl won't have me -- oh wow, man. Check out Juliet, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! And I've got such a hard-on I took the skin off my nose!"

Although I've jaw-crackingly hard reading assignments. I'm leaping from medieval Muslim historians (with their casual and highly biased treatment of bloodthirsty raids "we swept to glorious victory with our heavily-armed calvary against the Buddhist monk idolaters") to classical Indian text language ("Thus have I heard. We are now going to repeat 90 names in a row, with diacritics, that you can barely imagine pronouncing...") to Shakespeare.

I can't believe it. Shakespeare's my light reading this quarter. Though probably the history's going to get a little easier as we approach more modern times.

Comments

[thalia]

Michael Shanks played Hamlet? *boggles*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yep! He's still active in Shakespeare, though he very honestly admits he got mixed reviews.

Icarus

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Didn't he do Shakespeare for a few years after college? Or something like that? **needs to go read his bio again**

Okay, according to MS Online, he was with the Stratford Festival for two years. I looked that up, the description was this: repertory theatre festival producing, to the highest standards possible, the best works of theatre in the classical and contemporary repertoire, with special emphasis on the works of William Shakespeare.

Interesting. I've seen pictures and playbills from some of his performances. He looked awfully young, but I guess he was back then. :-)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Actually, he did Hamlet (in Vancouver I think it was...) about a year or two ago, not as part of the Stratford Festival.

I've been to the Stratford Festival. It's first-class. They do the period costumes and very true-to-the-time productions. It's an impressive accomplishment to have been part of it for two years.

Icarus

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Oh, I knew that. He did Hamlet between seasons 2 & 3--hence the "Hamlet hair" in Out of Mind/Into the Fire. I was just thinking to myself (and ended up writing it in your LJ) about the fact that I thought he'd actually studied Shakespeare for a while and...I tend to get caught up in details--obviously. hehe So...not studied so much as was just with that theater group for a couple of years, mostly in small roles.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Stratford Festival is big. Really big.

It's the... Harvard... of Shakespeare festivals in North America. Really. Doing Shakespeare at that level is very impressive. That's top rung. I think the other big Shakespeare venue is Ashland, Oregon, but they are less devoted to authenticity, the original form.

Icarus

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Really? So it's cooler than I originally thought. I had no idea.

[wenelda.livejournal.com]

*shudders* i can't stand shakespeare. i'm getting away with not taking a shakespeare class and i can't say i'm sorry about it. but i had to take chaucer, and reading middle english for an entire semester was a challenge. still, i'd rather take a hundred chaucer classes than have to read othello again. or worse, romeo and juliet. *shudders again* therapy... i need therapy!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

People are still shocked that I loathe Joyce, so I think I can give Shakespeare-haters room.

I do believe that Shakespeare should be performed first before you ever study it. It's a lot more fun that way, because you start to understand the puns and the plays on word and the off-colour comments as you say them -- without having to dust off the books and be tested on finding them. And nothing livens up a class than a good sword fight.

Also, always study the comedies first. Muuuuch more fun.

Icarus

[miladyhawke.livejournal.com]

You should try reading Shakespeare's sonnets from the perspective that the first 130 or so of them are written to a barely legal young man he was buggering, or attempting to ;) Especially the three "Will" sonnets. So slashy, LoL.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh great idea. I find the Sonnets to be beautifully crafted and so pretentious, but yes, slashy sonnets? I can dig it.

Icarus

[cheshyre]

Not one of the slashy ones, but if it'll help you get in the mood, I've got an audio of Alan Rickman reading Sonnet 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun...")

[cyanei.livejournal.com]

We did Othello this year, and I thought it was weak as far as Shakespeare goes. Othello is the most annoying character ever. I liked Cassio, though. And Roderigo.

Romeo cracks me up, too. I've played him... twice? Three times? I can't even remember how many times I've been in Romeo & Juliet! *L* I've also played Mercutio, Tybalt, Abraham, and (of course) Juliet. It's my favourite Shakespearian play to be in.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I got typecast. I did a blow-the-walls-off bitchy and Indignant Adriana from The Comedy of Errors (yes, I know, not his best, but it suited our slapstick-loving crew) and ever after I found myself saddled with pissy roles as domineering women.

But it was such fun to throw a chair across the stage at Dromio, it truly was. :D

Icarus

[cyanei.livejournal.com]

Our troupe was small, so I got the roles I asked for, mostly. Well, except when I played Ophelia, but that was a rare instance of gender-casting. I don't really like playing women, particularly in tragedies, but I auditioned for Juliet once because the only guy up for Romeo was hot.

[quilt-stitcher.livejournal.com]

I took two Shakespeare course on my way to a comparative literature degree. Elizabethan and Jacobean. And I will tell you... I love Shakespeare now, but I didn't back then. I really didn't love it until years later, when I saw Branagh's "Henry V" and found it actually comprehensible. What I learned from that was that.... (hold on for amazing epiphany, lol).... that these are plays, and meant to be SEEN. Seeing it really helped it come alive for me, and after that I could read it and enjoy it ever so much more.

I really love Shakespeare now... in fact, when I got my master's degree, my thesis was an analysis of Henry V as presented in film and how different versions reflect the propaganda of the filmmaker's particular historical era. (Read: Laurence Olivier -- WWII issues, war as gloroius endeavour; Kenneth Branagh -- Vietnam issues, war as evil horror).

But man, Shakespeare is your light reading.

That is amazing.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm so grateful I both saw and performed Shakespeare before I had to study it. It's so much alive for me because of the Waldorf approach.

I really have got to see Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. I've been putting it off since I know I've got to put up with WG's whinging. Gah. He was bad enough during Romeo and Juliet, and that had naked boy hiney.

But man, Shakespeare is your light reading.

Let me give you a sample:

Contemporaneous with the conquest of the sind were the Arab victories over the eastern Turks of Transoxiana by Hajjaj's equally enterprising general Qutayba bin Muslim. In the north Qutayba's armies reached Shash (Tashkend) and in the south-east they penetrated deep into Kashghar, at that time part of the Chinese empire. Arab governors were appointed to administer the conquered provinces. When the Umayyad Caliph Sulayman (715-17) assumed power, Qutayba (like Muhammad bin Qasim) was disgraced, but he rebelled against his recall. He was eventually killed by his own army in 715. Proselytization in Transoxiana was more successful than in Sind. The spearhead of the proselytization movement were the sufi mystics, while the dihqans, hereditary aristocratic landholders who lived in fortified castles, responded to the call of Islam enthusiastically. The revenues remitted to the caliphate from this region were enormous, but from the ninth century their most valued contribution was the supply of Turkic slaves. Armed Turkic slaves supplanted not only the Iranians but also the Arab contingents as bodyguards and crack troops. They were loyal to none but their masters and were transferred by them like any other chattel.

From the ninth century onwards, certain enterprising leaders, backed by the Turkic slaves, began to carve out independent ruling dynasties in the eastern regions of the caliphate, paying only nominal obedience to the 'Abbasid caliphs. In Khurasan (the eastern province of Iran) and Transoxiana, Saman-Khuda, a dihqan in the Balkh district who had been converted to Islam, founded the Samanid dynasty, which ruled from 819 to 1005. Under them, Alptigin, a Turkic slave, rose to the rank of commander-in-chief of the guard (hajibu'l-hujjab) and, in the reign of the Samanid 'Abdu'l-Malik I (954-61), became the governor of Khurasan. When he was dismissed by 'Abdu'l-Malik's successor, he withdrew to Balkh, where he defeated the Samanid army in 963....

Not so bad, until you realize that every syllable has to be taken with a grain of salt. There is no proof that the sufis were all that responsible for spreading Islam, or whether they were "Hinduized" Muslims, for example, and this particular history was written in Pakistan with a particular very political spin.

Now for the Buddhists:

Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was dwelling in the city of the King's House (Rajagrha), on Grdhrakuta mountain, together with twelve hundred great bhiksus [mendicant monks]. All were arhants [men enlightened but not Buddhas], their outflows already exhausted, never again subject to anguish (klesa); they had achieved their own advantage and annihilated the bonds of existence, and their minds had achieved self-mastery. Their names were Ajnatakaundinya, Mahaksyapa, Uruvilvakasyapa, Gayakasyapa, Nadikasyapa, Sariputra, Great Maudgalyayana, Mahaktyayana, Aniduddha, Kapphina, Gavampati, Revata, Pilingavatsa (Pilindavatsa), Bakkula, Mahakausthila, Nanda, Sundarananda, Purno Maitrayaniputrah, Subhuti, Ananda, and Rahula -- such great arhants as these, known to the multitude. There were also another two thousand persons, including those who had more to learn and those who had not. There were Mahaprajapati, the bhiksuni [mendicant nun], together with six thousand followers. Rahula's mother Ysodhara, the bhiksuni, was also there together with her follwers. There were eighty-thousand bodhisattva-mahasattvas, all nonbacksliders in anuttarasamyaksambodhi [perfect enlightenment, that of a Buddha], all having mastered the dharanis....

Great stuff, but a trifle overwhelming. After this, Shakespeare's plays are rather direct and down-to-earth.

Icarus

[stentoriansista.livejournal.com]

Ow. Yep, the Bard's gonna be a breeze, enjoy it. I had the most appallingly awful professor for the comedies and later tragedies, and *still* adored it. Iago is so deliciously ebil.
Othello is one of my favorites, possibly just because my girlfriend was in the hospital when I had to be reading it for class, so I'd sit in the emergency room and read it aloud to her. It made the freaky hospital lighting and beeps and smells all go away.

[quilt-stitcher.livejournal.com]

LOL.

*Definitely* see Branagh's Henry V. It is by far the best adaptation of the play. He edits it rather ruthlessly -- I think only 40% of the text survives, but what is left is really easy to follow and *such* an indictment of war.

[a-linz.livejournal.com]

Othello is awesome. I mean the play, not the character--I agree that he's annoying.

But Iago--he's the most interesting villain, just beyond fabulous (I have a lot of love...)

At some point I recommend watching the BBC version with Anthony Hopkins as 'boot polish' Othello, it's so amusing :P

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I've heard Olivier's "boot polish" Othello is brilliant and powerful, and he manages to give some depths to the soldier.

Iago is the ESE-est of the ESEs. *g*

Icarus

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

I really ought to have gone to see Michael Shanks play Hamlet, even if the reviews were iffy. Speaking of madness.

You had a chance to see him? Oh, I'd have loved to have seen him in that. I only read that play a few months ago. My son had to read it for a literature class so we bought extra copies and he and I read it aloud (badly *g*), but it was so much fun. The more I read it, the more I wished I'd seen MS in the play, though I didn't even know who he was back then.

Have fun with your class! :-)

This is my favorite "Daniel with the Hamlet haircut" icon.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I missed it by six months, but I was close enough that it was actually conceivable that I could have gone. I'm keeping my open for other performances by him, as I suspect he'll do more to keep in touch with his roots. I'd like to see it.

Icarus

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

That's too bad. Has he done any other theater recently? The Hamlet thing was...gee? I can't count. LOL I'm unsure when they filmed the other seasons. I hadn't heard of him doing any theater since Hamlet. I wish he would--not that I could afford to fly up there and see him. hehe I think I was probably living in Alaska when he was doing Hamlet in Vancouver, though--and with airline miles, gee! Maybe I could have gone to see him, too. Too bad I'd never heard of him back then. ;-)

[hilarita.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you're having fun.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*grins and laughs* Thank you. Remind me when I start whinging about homework and deadlines and grades, eh?

Icarus

[sarka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this semester, I'm reading Emmanuel Kant for fun, so I kind of get where you're coming from.

But... Michael Shanks in Hamlet? AAaagh you break my brain! I'm about halfway into the second season (and I love it so far) but I can't imagine him as Hamlet.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh Kant is great. I love his clean philosophy. He reminds me so much of my dad in his absolutes.

But... Michael Shanks in Hamlet? AAaagh you break my brain! I'm about halfway into the second season (and I love it so far) but I can't imagine him as Hamlet.

Wait till you get to season four. Watch "Absolute Power." Then tell me what you think of Michael Shanks as Hamlet.

Icarus

[cheshyre]

Shakespeare, particularly the comedies, are so much fun!

I finally really got into Shakespeare a few years back, after I'd been reading more history and fiction in the period. I went to see As You Like It and was floored by just how bawdy it is. [And by how many parents brought small children, thinking it was innocent family entertainment.]

I agree that it needs to be seen in performace first; jokes don't always translate to print. Otherwise, Shakespeare for Dummies is an impresively good and friendly reference work, with play summaries and a helpful guide in the beginning to the language (geared to helping folks get the jokes)

BTW, have you seen shaksper_random? It's for fannish appreciation of da'Bard. Currently playing Hamlet "in my pants"

[guest-age.livejournal.com]

I like Shakespeare too. I think my favorite of his plays was Midsummer Nights' Dream. We read that in 12 grade honors English at school and every student had a part. I was Puck. :-D

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, Puck's the best part. My brother performed it and I think he was Oberon.

Icarus

[ncp.livejournal.com]

I, er, burned out on Shakespeare by the time I was 18. Translating "The Comedy of Errors" into modern language at the age of 11 will do that to you.

classical Indian text language ("Thus have I heard. We are now going to repeat 90 names in a row, with diacritics, that you can barely imagine pronouncing...")

Bwah!!!!

[gyutto.livejournal.com]

I'm a big "Much Ado About Nothing" fan. As for the sonnets, I used to like them back when I was 15 and into fluffy romance love. #145 especially (about a woman who rejects her lover, said lover goes into a depression, woman takes lover back). Initially, I took the side of the narrator, but now I'm seeing the other side to it--why should she have taken him back anyway? It was just as likely that he did her wrong, or had syphilis, or whatever.

But anyway, I digress. Back to work!