Antiquitopia

I confess I never really thought of Hamlet's last words until I watched the PBS production of the recent Royal Shakespeare Company's performance . They take out the aftermath of Fortinbras picking up the shattered pieces of Denmark, and end simply with Horatio's words: "Good night, sweet prince, / and fights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Yet just before this, Hamlet's final words just before death are quite strange, eerie, interesting: "The rest is silence" (V.ii). The rest is silence. As in the interview for the PBS special, the actor who plays Hamlet says he is going off into oblivion. It is as if he has gotten his answer to the problem in the "to be or not to be" speech. For, indeed, it is the fear of things to come, the "undiscover'd country" that makes cowards of us all--that is, if living is cowardly. I am struck, as a specialist in the study of religion, in this particular phrasing--"the rest is silenc...

I am excited about the new filmed version of Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company that premiered this evening on PBS. It has Sir Patrick Stewart as Claudius. Here is the info on the Great Performances site where it will soon be available in its entirety. I really liked the use of mirrors in the production, particularly broken mirrors (a broken self?).

I have been tagged by Daniel and Tonya at Hebrew and Greek Reader . In this meme, I will give the five books or authors who have shaped my thought the most, whether I like them or not, whether through agreement or opposition, etc. And they can be enduringly or immediately influential. This meme started not too long ago with Ken Brown at COrthodoxy . So, here are my five. For those who read my blog regularly, there probably will not be too many surprises. 1. M.M. Bakhtin . Most immediately, this Russian has profoundly influenced not only the way I approach my work--although he does that--but how I view day-to-day interactions. I was introduced to his thought through his essay on the "Chronotope" in the collected volume, The Dialogic Imagination . I use the Chronotope extensively in my dissertation. Since then, I have branched out to his other works and others' use of him. But even his concepts of the "utterance" from simple day-to-day speech-units to co...

Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell. (Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2)

We receive a great gift from storytellers like Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and many others: freedom from mythic rigidities, a vision of a life that fires the imagination, and truths about the civic world and about ourselves. In return, we must open ourselves to truths that often shock and frighten us. (Richard Kuhns, Decameron and the Philosophy of Storytelling: Author as Midwife and Pimp , 139)

From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him; Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odor and in hue, Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seemed it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow I with these did play. (Shakespeare, Sonnet 98) "Nor with praise the deep vermilion in the rose," she read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on to the top, on to the summit. How satisfying! How restful! All the odds and ends of the day stuck to this magnet; her mind felt swept, felt clean. And then there it was, suddently entire; she held it in her hands, beautiful ...

Memorization is something that is quickly flying out the window. Growing up, we were encouraged to memorize swaths of the Bible, something I should probably do more of (but now in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek). If that's not your ticket, how about modern poetry? An article in the NYTimes talks about reasons for and gives tips how to memorize some Auden, Yeats, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc., in tiny increments each day. With just a few lines each day, over time you'll have a vast collection of poems at your memory's disposal. There have been a few times I have pulled a few lines out of Shakespeare when relevant for my class (and not just when I was teaching Shakespeare). And I've actually been wanting to read some W.H. Auden, but haven't had the chance. The best reason beyond any cultural literacy, etc., is just for your own pleasure. Why not give a short poem a shot? Here is a poem by W.H. Auden : The Fall of Rome The piers are pummelled by the waves; In a lonel...

I will be teaching Shakespeare's King Lear in a few weeks, and I am always looking for ways to show my students how the literature they read was meant to be experienced, whether Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides (Columbia Stages just did a production of Medea ). And Shakespeare is particularly wonderful to see. I saw a nice low-budget production of MacBeth here a couple summers ago. And so I was happy to see a very highly rated production of one of Shakespeare's most controversial plays showing right now in the city-- OTHELLO . It is showing at the Duke at 42nd St. Theatre. If you are in NYC, it is only running through March 7th! So, the rest of this week and next week! For tickets and info, see here . Here is the raving review from the NYTimes : February 24, 2009 THEATER REVIEW | 'OTHELLO' Love Curdled Through a Malevolent Scheme By CHARLES ISHERWOOD The spring theater season this year is enticingly rich, both on Broadway and off. But I suspect it will not brin...

The end of comedy is self-parody, and its wisdom is self-understanding. (Mark van Doren, Shakespeare 67) With this line, Mark van Doren writes about the play within a play, "Pyramus and Thisbe" within A Midsummer Night's Dream . "Pyramus and Thisbe," however, does not really parody A Midsummer Night's Dream so much as it does his slightly earlier play, Romeo and Juliet . Parodying his highly successful early tragedy on love within the hall-of-mirrors comedy, van Doren claims, Shakespeare has reached a new level of self-awareness as a poet, seeing that the whole is greater than the parts. This whole is not just the play itself with the parts being the various characters, the various soliloquies or exchanges and poetic reflections, but the play itself is the part within the whole of plays; one play as a single entity interacting with all other possible plays, latent or actualized, by the poet himself, who is just one part of another greater whole: Never ag...

Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it. Perhaps Schopenhauer was right: I am all other men, any man is all men. Shakespeare is in some manner the miserable John Vincent Moon. (Jorge Luis Borges, "The Shape of the Sword," trans. Donald A. Yates)