Killing Shakespeare

Killing Shakespeare

(c) Copyright (2016) by Kathleen Spaltro

All Rights Reserved

 

Having taught Shakespeare's plays to adult students, I feel saddened by the aversion that many adults retain from their exposure to Shakespeare in high school and college.  Far from being the dreaded poison pill that many adults remember ingesting, Shakespeare's plays amuse, delight, entertain, and edify.  But his plays can amuse, delight, entertain, and edify only people who remain open to the possibility that Shakespeare has something to offer them.   

Perhaps adolescents and young adults are simply too young to appreciate Shakespeare; perhaps the classroom practice of reading plays written only for performance is at fault.  Watching Shakespeare is like drinking a fine whiskey or a wine of rare vintage—a bracing and adult experience best restricted to viewers who bring to the viewing their perceptions and insights about their own lives.  Every time that I watch a Shakespearean play, I see something else, something more—because I am different.

Of course, Shakespeare's 17th-century language challenges 21st-century Americans, but patience, determination, and interest can bury that difficulty.  When watching televised or recorded productions, I find Shakespeare's language much easier to follow and much more enjoyable when I turn on the closed captions or the subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired.  Suggesting this strategy to my students, I told them to use the captions or subtitles to gain their footing within the ebb and flow of the plays' prose and poetry.  Do not worry if you do not understand everything; anyone has to live with great poetry for a while to comprehend it.

Among great recent film adaptations of Shakespeare is Ralph Fiennes's "Coriolanus."  Caius Martius is an angry, proud veteran who has killed and suffered much for his country; his service in Corioles has won him the honorary surname "Coriolanus." Offered high office, he resists flattering the people to acquire their love and instead demonstrates his contempt for them.  Driven from the city by an enraged populace, he joins his former enemies to invade his own country.  Relocating Shakespeare's Roman tragedy to late 20th-century Eastern Europe, Fiennes with extreme care and imagination employs TV news and other devices of modern communication.  This stunning film includes great performances by Fiennes as Coriolanus and by Vanessa Redgrave as his lioness mother.  It portrays both the culture of military families and the pretense by politicians to esteem the populace that they manipulate for votes.  Anyone who is interested in military culture, the debasement of democracy, or the study of character would find it fascinating.

   

An extraordinary Italian film, "Caesar Must Die," depicts a production of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" in a Roman high-security prison performed by inmates jailed for murder, drug trafficking, and other very serious offenses.  This film would interest people who enjoy Shakespeare, people who feel intrigued by offbeat theatrical productions, and people who are knowledgeable about the psychology of prisoners.

Joss Whedon's contemporary, New York City-based version of "Much Ado about Nothing" is very clever and entertaining. "Much Ado" contains many witty lines, like "paper bullets of the brain" and "man is a giddy thing." Both this version, and Kenneth Branagh's wonderful film of a few decades ago, set in Sicily, are a joy to watch.  Surely, there has never been a sunnier, more pleasurable adaptation of Shakespeare than Branagh's "Much Ado."

Julie Taymor adapted and directed "The Tempest," a stunning version of Shakespeare's last masterpiece, with Helen Mirren assuming the role of the deposed ruler of Milan who practices sorcery on a deserted island and exacts revenge on her deposers by raising a tempest that shipwrecks them on her island.  In Taymor's imaginative adaptation, I particularly admired Prospera's sprite, Ariel, rendered very impressive by the film's special effects.

Among older films of Shakespeare, I value "Richard III" (1995), with Ian McKellan as a fascist Richard scheming to take power in 1930s England. I also like Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "Julius Caesar" (1953)—a very competent, straightforward, well-acted version, with James Mason as Brutus, John Gielgud as Cassius, and Marlon Brando as Marc Antony.   

Mentioning "Julius Caesar" calls to my mind the actor John Wilkes Booth, who played Marc Antony before Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln was not a widely read man, but he was a deeply read man, and one of his well-plumbed authors was Shakespeare.  I caught six quotes from Shakespeare during our viewings of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln."  "Macbeth" was Lincoln's favorite.  The Shakespearean echoes in Lincoln's death are eerie—from his dreaming repeatedly of his own murder, to his assassin's being a Shakespearean actor who had recently appeared in "Julius Caesar," to Lincoln's being shot in the fifth and final act of the great tragedy of our Civil War--after hard-won victory and in a theatre.

first published in The Woodstock Independent