Shakespeare, French, and a miscellany

[maeve66]

I am reading a book I am liking enormously. It's pretty mainstream lit crit, if it can even be called that. Literary biography, really. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt. The method -- of weighing both the hard archival evidence, which is scanty, and piecing it out with likely might-have-beens based on other contemporary archival evidence of people Shakespeare very likely knew, and then measuring both against textual evidence and especially metaphor in his plays -- I like very, very well.

And as for the language -- OH, I like the language. I always have. The first time I ever read a word of Shakespeare, which was when I was 10, on a family vacation and most likely in Québec, having another life-changing experience, that of encountering French, I was immediately drawn in. I read The Tempest, which is now not a play I like very much at all, but at age ten it gripped me, and I drew pictures of Ariel and Miranda and Prospero in my journal, the first diary I ever owned, or wrote in, the summer after I'd first found it.

Then, I must have loved the imagery, to draw it... but I can't believe I didn't also read it aloud to myself in the car, tasting the words. They're so amazing, spoken aloud. They're the verbal equivalent of physical drunkenness. Dizzying wordplay and delight in metaphor, oh, man, I love it.

One of the stranger experiences I had in that regard was when those two verbal worlds -- my desire for French and my love of well-made and fashioned English -- collided: when I worked in the Northwestern University Library, shelving ("Stack Control", we were called) on all my high school vacations, I found a whole shelf of French translations of Shakespeare. God, they were awful. Awful. Leaden and plodding and bereft of everything that makes Shakespeare amazing. The strange thing -- and maybe this only speaks of my hard-to-eradicate linguistic chauvinism... -- is that I've read English translations of, for example, Molière, and thought they were excellent. And they were verse translations of drama written in verse. I can't explain it. I tend to feel like French verse can be enjoyed for itself best in French, but to be able to enjoy it in English if it is a good translation. Not in terms of how it SOUNDS, no, but in terms of its sentiment and ideas. Not its imagery. But I've rarely seen English transformed into French that I liked very well at all. Maybe it's just also an indicator of the fact that English is my native language, however good my French has gotten.

So, this biography is really enjoyable. I like textual readings anyway, trying to imagine what elements of a life make it into fiction, or to extrapolate from fiction, biography. I am also utterly enamored of the Elizabethan period, the late Tudor period. Greenblatt does a good job of analyzing what makes it compelling and also alien, of looking at the material basis for the rise of capitalism, and also the interweaving of religion and politics. I had never considered the Catholic/Protestant struggle as a context for Shakespeare before, but it makes good sense, particularly as Greenblatt describes Shakespeare's possible brush with those politics, and quick evolution away from a personal engagement with either of them.

In other news... ugh, I have a cold, a horrible head-stuffing head cold that is making me feel cloudy and tired and out of it. Yechh.

I love this job still, by the way. Love it. It is so strange to feel pleased to be on my way to work every morning. I made the disastrous mistake of trying to teach stuff that is too coneptually difficult for elementary students last week... I reasoned that yeah, *I* hadn't been exposed to verbs in their rote-memorized form until I'd had a year of the ephemera under my belt -- colors and numbers and letters and days of the week and months of the year, etc... but that these kids are being really good at that, and quick, so why couldn't we just start with être, avoir, and aller? Ummm, no. I can't wait until the East Bay Foreign Language Project starts, this year, so I can get some ideas for how to begin incorporating grammar other than simple memorized sentences that use one form of a verb...

Is there any other news? I haven't been writing much, I know. And this is hardly a scintillating entry, though I excuse myself on account of my head. Hmmm. I'm also enjoying my college history survey class -- the section of US History to 1865 that I'm teaching online. I manage to keep up with it, week by week, and sometimes the discussions are interesting. I set them a question for a journal entry two weeks ago (when we were on the reasons for the American Revolution) that asked them to read not only their chapter but the text of the Declaration of Independence, and to consider both sides of the colonists' protests -- how was their destruction of private property (the Boston Tea Party) and violence (treatment of various tax collectors etc) viewed by the lawful authorities, as well as by the patriots? How would people who wanted political change NOW, and used similar tactics, be treated under the Patriot Act? Could such actions -- could revolution -- be justified NOW, as it was then, and as it is a right declared by Jefferson in the Declaration (which, for that reason alone is not part of the legal framework of the United States)? I got answers as varied as "this country has fallen away from God, and as Jefferson clearly invokes God all the time in the Declaration, obviously he wasn't in favor of the separation of church and state, and neither should we be... right now the United States is engaging in leading a new revolution, in Iraq" to "a revolution today in the United States would be stamped on ruthlessly just as the British attempted to crush the American rebellion, but a revolution in the United States seems more and more necessary when we look at how the government has acted in invading Iraq and in business corruption." Both of those answers have been paraphrased slightly. Both come from rural Missouri.

Comments

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

I've been wanting to read that. Need to add it to the list. God knows when I'll get around to it, however.

Also:

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

Had a spirited debate with one of my editors about "Merchant of Venice." I think Shakespeare mostly wrote it to please the anti-semites in Elizabeth's court -- they had hanged her personal physician, a Portuguese convert from Judaism, just three years before that play was first done. Bill argued that the forced conversion of Shylock would have been seen as proof of how awful the Catholics are, given that the Venetians were certainly Popish.

But still -- I think the play is pretty cynical. Even the "hath not a Jew eyes" speech seems like something Shakespeare crafted so that the final destruction of Shylock could be relished even more. Not that the Christians come out well, either. But the biggest problem? Sitting through productions of that play today with the typical liberal audience, all of them nodding knowingly during the "eyes" speech. As if the essential humanity of the Jews was something that just occurred to them, or (even worse) they are congratulating themselves for being more enlightened than Tudor-era audiences.

Ugh. I told Bill that those productions should be called "Yids Are People, Too." He said "Why not, 'The Yids Are All Right?'"

This is why he's the big chief, y'see.

So...what does Greenblatt say about Shylock? I'm not saying that Shakespeare was anti-semitic, per se -- but I think he was a shrewd enough businessman to realize that making a cartoonish Jewish figure the butt of everyone's contempt in "Merchant" wasn't gonna get him in trouble. I think we tend to forget that Shakespeare, timeless though he may be, wasn't writing for anyone but his audience.

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[oblomova.livejournal.com]

"As if the essential humanity of the Jews was something that just occurred to them, or (even worse) they are congratulating themselves for being more enlightened than Tudor-era audiences."

I meant to reverse the phrases in this section. Obviously, just realizing Jews are people is the more horrible thing. But honestly ... I think that's why people insist on doing the play today. They want to make the case for religious tolerance. And that ain't what the play is about.

Re: Also:

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, I think, about modern self-congratulation, but I am not to the section yet where Greenblatt deals with Shylock -- the whole thing is organized in terms of Shakespeare's life and periods in his life, so the plays come in more for what different imagery and metaphors might have to say about his influences and what they can tell us about his mental makeup and cultural influences, as well as where this imagery is potentially drawn from in his life. There was one mention, so far, in Greenblatt's pretty damning indictment of Shakespeare's view of marriage as inherently fucked up -- even Jessica and her suitor in The Merchant of Venice end up as highly venal figures, having ripped off this old usurer and basically become usurers, themselves, and have no likelihood of a successful union. Greenblatt argues that the only intimately observed and tightly knit marital couples in all of Shakespeare are, horribly, the Macbeths and Claudius and Gertrude. I think he's right, there. Greenblatt also supports the "second bed" bit as a telling indicator of Shakespeare's estrangement from the wife he lived almost wholly apart from.

I've skipped ahead to look at the main piece of writing about the character of Shylock, and Greenblatt seems to have a fairly liberal understanding of Shakespeare here, seeing Shylock's figure as standing far apart in individuality and roundedness from other stock figures of the Jew as usurer, especially in, apparently, a play by Marlowe called The Jew of Malta. Greenblatt discusses how Shakespeare's father and Shakespeare himself were both involved in what would have been defined as illegal usury in making loans at above 10 percent simple interest.

You should read it. It's a quick read, seriously.

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[oblomova.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that Harold Bloom believes that Marlowe's Jew should be Shylock. I think that would be interesting -- have the stereotype of the comic villain played to the hilt with all the added anti-semitic accoutrements, and then, with the handful of speeches of Shylock's that work against the stereotype, you could truly make a contemporary audience uncomfortable. wanderingaengus saw the Chicago Shakes production with me, and said the closest contemporary thing to "Merchant" he can think of is Spike Lee's film about a contemporary televised minstrel show, "Bamboozled," which I haven't seen.

I also haven't seen Pacino's film version of "Merchant," which a reader arguing against my recent review of the Chicago Shakes production said I should, because Pacino made Shylock "deeply wounded and deeply angry." Frankly, I think those qualities are part of the operational definition of a comic villain.

And yes, Greenblatt is right about the marriages in "Merchant." Not even the unions in "Measure for Measure" creep me out as much.

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[maeve66.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to reading the sexuality section, presumably about Shakespeare's long infatuation with the Earl of Southampton and with some "dark lady". I... I know he's not magically and mysteriously "universal" and out of his time... but I guess I do think he thought much more reflectively and with nuance about the social and political mores of his time, and different social locations, from race to gender to religion, than many of his contemporaries. No?

I don't know much more than the mythos of Marlowe -- have you read any of his works? What do you think of him?

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[oblomova.livejournal.com]

I do think there are many ways in which Shakespeare stepped out of his time, but what's fascinating to me is how he was still very much of his time, in terms of playing politics, etc. More obvious in the history plays than the other parts of the canon, though.

I think Marlowe is cruder in many respects than Shakespeare. I saw a production of "Edward II" at ACT a few years go that didn't do much for me, and I've read his Faustus, though I haven't read "The Jew of Malta." To paraphrase Bloom again (who really isn't my favorite critic by a long shot, but I do think he has good insights on "Merchant"), Shakespeare was, in some ways, trying to outdo Marlowe's Jew of Malta in Merchant. It's interesting that he found ways to do it that both reinforce the worst stereotypes (Shylock sharpening the knife on his shoe), and that also allow for the possibility of the Jew's humanity. But for me, finally, it's not a successful synthesis.

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[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, now I've read much more of the book -- including the whole chapter on Shylock and The Merchant of Venice, which is titled "Laughter at the Scaffold" in direct reference to the execution of the Queen's Marrano physician. You have to read this book. I think Greenblatt is somewhere in between you and your big chief. I'm enjoying SO much of this book. I'll be sad when it's done. He's taking apart Hamlet now. There is SO fucking much in that play. I don't like King Lear at all, but I fucking love Hamlet.

In an only slightly related tangent, do you see the movie versions of Shakespeare? I've seen quite a few, and am always interested by how they differ. I saw the Brando Julius Caesar with rootlesscosmo, for instance -- what an amazing textbook on the uses of political rhetoric. And I hated that when we read it in high school. For other highlights... I'm a sucker for Branagh's Henry V, and (with even more embarrassment) for Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, though I feel like stopping my ears every time I hear that maudlin sickly sweet love song sung at the banquet. I hated Much Ado about Nothing, I think, even though Branagh and Thompson were good as Benedick and Beatrice. Not least because of the blue leather trous that Denzil Washington wore. And I saw Polanski's Macbeth at a young and impressionable age, and was amazed that they showed it to us in high school. That was incredible. I want to see that again. I just missed an opportunity to see it performed live with a good friend of my brother-in-law's in the title role. Boo. Now that I think of it, I think the play company was a joke on one of Shakespeare's contemporary's low associates -- Cutting Ball? Hmm.

Do you have movies of the plays you like? Ones you hate? Or should it strictly be performed on stage for you? And did you see the Ethan Hawke Hamlet? I liked the To be or not to be soliloquy, in the video rental store, with him walking up and down surrounded by ACTION videos.

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[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I'm done with the book. I think it was excellent until the very end, but that may be because I don't like the late stage plays, except for Macbeth. Autumnal elegy is not my favorite trope. And the tossed off idea that Shakespeare was fucked up about his daughter Susanna at the end? Hm. It all just kind of ends abruptly, as did his life.

The stuff on witchcraft and King James was pretty queasy-making, too.

Still, overall, a fucking great book.

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[oblomova.livejournal.com]

I could live without another Hamlet for a while, but this may be the result of knowing too many privileged, tortured dauphins who can't make up their minds.

Lear is in the top three of my favorite plays. The others being Uncle Vanya and YOu Can't Take It With You.

The film versions of Shakespeare I've seen are limited. I liked Zeffirelli's R and J. For that matter, I liked Baz Luhrman's version with Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Mostly because Pete Postlewaite's Friar Lawrence was so damn creepy. I fell asleep watching Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing."

I saw Orson Welles's Macbeth long ago, and would like to see it again. But first I need to see Ran, Kurosawa's take on Lear. I'm way behind cinematically, I must say.

I never saw Cutting Ball when I lived in the Bay Area. I think they were just getting started before I moved back home.

[microbie.livejournal.com]

I don't have anything of depth to contribute, but I wanted to comment that I thought the entry was interesting. I'm just starting on a paper at work that deals with the neurobiology of language acquisition. I'm looking forward to learning more about the "grammar center."

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

God, I'd be fascinated by that. If Northwestern had had minors, mine would have been linguistics, because I took a lot of courses in it, from "Applied Linguistics", which just meant teaching foreign language, and was a great class, some of whose precepts I still use, to Psycholinguistics, which is as close to neurolinguistics as they got. That class drove me crazy -- the ideas were fascinating, but the prof was abysmally boring, and I figured out that I could quite easily pass it just by reading the textbook. So I stopped attending lectures. A shame. The structural linguistics class was amazing; sort of Chomsky and beyond. I loved transformational grammar, though I don't know whether its brilliance accurately depicts this "grammar center" or not. Tell us all more, via your LJ.

[filoufelipe.livejournal.com]

You came to quebec at the age of 10? Coming from California? Gosh are your parents cool! ;))))

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Mais non, c'était des vacances familiales -- je t'assure, j'étais AVEC mes parents la première fois que j'ai visité Montréal. Néanmoins, un instant, tout simple, de la magie: tout ce que j'ai vu était familier, mais changé: arrêt/STOP; tirez/PULL; poussez/PUSH; rue/STREET; banque/BANK, etc. Il me semblait une code complexe mais en quelque sens facile à pénétrer. Pour mon père, cependent, une code presque parfaite. Il n'a jamais aimé la langue quand il l'a étudié à l'école, et maintenant, à Québec, il se sentait à la fois attiré et aliené, surtout parce que, pour lui, les injures et les imprécations sont absolument nécessaires. Alors il a crée un monstruosité pour crier de notre vieux char aux autres conducteurs. Une traduction directe. "You merde-tête!" Même à l'âge de dix ans, la phrase m'a parue un peu bizarre.

Je suis venue à Montréal seule, la première fois, à l'âge de quatorze ans, comme un cadeau de "graduation" et pour améliorer mon français. Et j'ai passé mon temps là avec des nationalistes et séparatistes franchement à gauche, ce qui m'a beaucoup marqué -- c'était en 1980.

[filoufelipe.livejournal.com]

Oh, j'avais compris, mais moi, mes parents ne m'ont jamais emmené en Californie... En Floride, si, mais pas en Californie... Je trouvais qu'il étaient cool de l'avoir fait...

Ah ouais, en 1980... Mince! Tu étais là en 1995? Tu seras là pour le prochain référendum?

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Pas en 1995. Mais dis moi quand il aura lieu, le prochain référendum et j'y serais, hein? En fait, je viens passer un petit séjour à Montréal cette été avec une amie.

Quant à ma famille, ouais, c'était ben ce que voulait mon père, de nous emmener à peu près partout dans le monde, parce que lui, il a grandi en Wisconsin dans un tout petit village, Lake Geneva. Mais nous habitons à l'époque à Chicago (ou, pour plus préciser, Evanston), non pas la Californie. Moi, je me suis déplacée vers la Californie il y a sept ans. Je l'aime bien, mais le Midwest me manque toujours, un peu, et je me tiens fort à voyager un peu, bientôt.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the relations of English and French verse translations. In contrast, I've seen some remarkable German translation of English verse. At the risk of overgeneralizing, perhaps it's that the best of English verse requires, at times, a forceful and direct voice, and French verse just can't pull that off.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

I wondered what you would think about my linguistic temerity here. And I wondered about German verse and prose, too, not that I know German, just that they're related much more closely, which I would imagine would help as far as prosody goes, and because, say, Brecht sounds excellent in English, as does Marx. A friend and I used to read The Communist Manifesto aloud at the same time, her in German, me in English. It made a weird blend, but, as I said, the rhythm sounded fine.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

In terms of prosody, German and English have some tough compatibility issues. As a rule, any German sentence needs to be diagrammed and pulled apart before it can be put back together and make sense in English. By the time one is done, the rhythms are completely off, I think. The problems in converse are different but related. When I think about the difficulties, it occurs to me that English and German have each been gifted with some brilliant mutual translators.