Oh Shakespeare, I both like and loathe thee

I was for a long time someone who proclaimed to the skies that she didn't not like Shakespeare’s plays, but that is no longer the case.  I haven’t seen all of them, but I’ve seen enough of each sort (comedies, tragedies, and histories) to make a reasonable judgment on his writing in general.  Of the ones I remember well enough to judge:

 

Like:

Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh)

Richard II (The Hollow Crown)

Henry IV Part 1 (The Hollow Crown)

Henry IV Part 2 (The Hollow Crown)

 

Okay:

Much Ado About Nothing (Kenneth Branagh)

Twelfth Night (1996)

 

Disliked

The Tempest (I was in a school production)

 

Loathe:

The Merchant of Venice (Lawrence Olivier)

Othello (both the play and Verdi’s opera)

Romeo and Juliet (many different versions, including one I was in)

 

*Note: I’ve only seen Verdi’s opera of MacBeth, but I don’t remember it that well.  I’d like to see it.

 

That’s quite a variety.  For most authors, if I like their writing, I like all or nearly everything they wrote.  So what is it about Shakespeare that produces such a vast array of responses in me?  I really do like (although not adore) the plays I like, but I can hardly describe the depths of my loathing for the ones I loathe.  Are there any patterns to the ones I dislike?

 

Production

Well, I certainly tend to prefer versions I’ve seen that are fabulously well produced.  For example, the acting in the Hollow Crown series (which includes Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V, the last of which I haven’t yet seen but soon will) is exemplary.  It’s very well shot and directed.  The film makers use the film medium to its full advantage instead of simply shooting straight at whoever is talking.  The actors don’t simply stand and face the camera while soliloquizing; they use their bodies and the sets.  The cinematographer keeps his filming varied and interesting.  Even when some of his choices are a little strange (some close close-ups, for example, occasionally with a wide angle lens), they are purposeful, reasonable, and have the intended effect.  So yes, that’s important.  Also important to me is that they stay close to the source material and history.  They don’t fall into the fad that MacBeth has, wherein the Scottish play never takes place in Scotland.

 

Comedy

Even in the plays I like, there are invariably a couple of detestable characters who are meant to pass for comic relief.  I think that that’s part of my problem: there are few things more miserable to watch than something that’s supposed to be funny but isn’t.  What people view as funny is widely varied, of course.  I highly disliked the much adored Despicable Me for much that reason: I laughed maybe once through the entire film, and spent the rest of it thinking, “That isn’t funny.”  How miserable!  And yet none of my really loathed Shakespeare plays are comedies; all three are tragedies.  And of my favorites, all are either histories or tragedies; Shakespeare’s comedies fall right in the middle.  So although I dislike much of his comedy, it’s nowhere near offensive enough to make me loathe a play.

 

Characters and Plot

I think what it really comes down to are characters and the plots they drive.  Are the characters a) believable human beings who are neither heroes nor villains but simply people being people (such as in Richard II or Henry IV) or are they b) horrible, hypocritical, vile, venomous, vengeful selfish morons (such as The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and the Tempest) or are the c) simply too stupid to be believed (Romeo and Juliet, the Tempest, and Twelfth Night)?*

 

Food for Thought

Possibly the most interesting thing is . . . why am I ranting about this?  If I thought I hated Shakespeare (before last week, Hamlet would have been the *only* play on my like list), why do I keep watching his plays?  Why does it matter?  Usually if I don’t like an author, I simply avoid his work.  Of the above, I studied only Romeo and Juliet (about five times, alas, alas) and the Tempest in school—so why have I watched a dozen of his plays?

I’m not sure I’m Coloradan enough for this weather. . . .

I grew up in Montana.  Growing up in Montana, I figured that I could handle just about anything the weather could throw at me, as long as it wasn’t humid.  I’ve shoveled three feet of snow in sub-zero temperatures on Christmas morning.  I’ve baked under the August sun when it’s well over a hundred degrees.  I’ve endured rain and sleet and fog and mist and rain.  Later, when I moved to Texas, I endured scorching heat and endless humidity.  After that, in Scotland, I discovered that yes, it can rain every single day for weeks and weeks on end.

But none of that prepared me for Colorado.

Colorado isn’t wet like Scotland or hot and humid like Texas or a mix of extreme seasons like Montana.  Colorado is all of the above all at once.  (Except it’s never humid.)

Allow me to explain.  Where I live in Colorado, the elevation is about 6500 feet.  Aside from meaning that some recipes need to be altered when I cook, and that water boils at a lower temperature so I have to let the kettle scream for a bit before I make tea, this means that the sun is comparatively hotter here than elsewhere.  There is a very significant temperature difference between shade and sun, and when it’s above freezing even for only a day or two, all the snow will melt.

Montana is hot in the summer and cold in the winter.  In Colorado . . . last week, it was sixty degrees out.  The week below that, it was below zero.  Rinse and repeat.  Welcome to Colorado.  You’ll never get tired of the weather, because it never stays the same for more than a couple of days in a row.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t hate the weather.  I view the weather in the same way as one views funny old so-and-so who lives down the street and never did anyone any harm, but is a bit odd.  Dear Coloradan weather: you are deeply bizarre, but I am fond of you anyway.

My little sister has a cat.

Growing up, we had a variety of pets in our family.  When I was very young, barely young enough to remember at all, we had two cats, both then elderly.  My parents never got another cat, because it turns out both my elder sister and my father are allergic to them.  The first real pet I remember us having was my elder sister’s iguana, Spice.  Then my parents announced to me that what I really wanted wasn’t a boa constrictor (to this day, part of me still wants one, whatever they say), but a dog.

I had never had a dog.  I knew nothing about dogs.  None of my friends had dogs.  I’d seen them run around the neighborhood, but that was it.

In any case, they got me Lucia from the pound: part Husky, part Golden Retriever, part Rottweiler.  Then my elder sister’s iguana was unhappy, so my parents gave Spice away and got her a German Shepherd/Australian Cattle-Dog: Holly.  Then my dog was given away and my father told me that what I really wanted was a purebred German Shepherd.

I disagreed strongly, but my parents got me the dog anyway: Jenny. I had her until the first year I went away to college, when she was six years old.  Cancer got her.

Throughout these last few years, my younger sister had a succession of five hamsters and then a guinea pig.  They lived in her room, so I was only vaguely aware of them.

Holly, by the way, lived to be fourteen.  She was an extremely intelligent dog and knew it.

Now, as an adult, I don’t have any pets at all.  I hope to again someday.  Maybe I’ll even get a boa constrictor (although I rather doubt it).

But the fact remains: my little sister has a cat.  He’s a Balinese mix and is currently curled up about five feet away from me.  My little sister and I are both staying at our parents’ house for a few days for Christmas, so I have every opportunity to observe this cat up close (the first cat with whom I’ve had this chance since I was about four).  In this time, I have come to the following conclusion:

He acts a lot like a dog.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, he does give me long superior cat stares . . . but so did Holly.

He curls up the way our dogs did, follows us around the same way, begs to be played with, long-sufferingly puts up with being picked up, loves to have his belly rubbed, sits and guards the door, and plays (gentle) tug-of-war. . . .  

This is not what I expected in a cat!  He hardly ever walks through walls, never sits normally on my lap (he likes to be held belly-up, for some reason), only purrs when he’s getting annoyed, and so on.

I think I’ll go pet him some more.

Holly

Christmas Mornings of Childhood

Happy Christmas, one and all.

When I was young, my elder sister and I (and sometimes my younger sister as well) would get up ridiculously early on Christmas morning: often three or four a.m.  We were permitted to go through our stockings as soon as we got up, but had to wait for our parents (and possibly until after breakfast was eaten and snow shoveled) before opening the presents under the tree.

This situation suited us just fine.  Our stockings always had something to interest us, yes, but there was a more compelling draw: the gentle colored lights of the Christmas tree against the silence and stillness of a cold winter’s morning far before the sun.

I hardly remember anything I got in my stocking.  A little money usually, I think: a quarter or, in later years, a dollar.  Perhaps some candy and a fun small trinket that would amuse me until the parents arose.  Another thing I do not remember is speaking much with my sisters.  If my memory is to be believed, we spent most of that very early morning sitting on the floor with our stockings and gazing at the Christmas tree or the fireplace—which, in my memory, is lit, improbable though that sounds.  Perhaps some lingering embers from the night before?

That, to me, is what Christmas is: those early hours of dark and peace and contentment.  Everything after that—arguments, discussions, opening presents, and the endless drive to see our relatives (made more endless by my habitual car sickness) were simply the necessary titbits one had to put up with for the good parts.

It Begins

In honor of The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter coming out in paperback, I have decided to start a blog.

Good heavens, what have I done?

It’s not too late to turn back.

. . .

Like all the children I knew, when I was young, people tended to buy me journals.  These journals were almost never the extremely nice sort of notebook with beautiful thick paper and plenty of space in which to write novels.  They were instead small, stiff, brightly colored contraptions with thin paper and thick lines and occasionally even a pen attached.

I once kept an ordinary diary for a whole week.  It was then that I realized how supremely dull my life was.  Fear not, however—I have no intention of using this blog to regale you the details of my breakfast, lunch, and dinner (although you can freely assume that all of these meals are accompanied by a self-satisfied snug pot of tea).

Possibly the best thing about these little journals was that many of them came with a lock and key set, the key to which I usually lost before I ever got around to opening the journal.  Then, when the time came for me to settle down in an armchair and grind my teeth and try to find something interesting to write about, I discovered that the journal was locked and I had no key.

I did not, to my dubious credit, use this as an excuse not to write.  Oh, no.  I used this as an excuse to learn how to pick locks—as long as the lock was extremely cheap and could be jimmied in one easy step with a paperclip.

I am certain that breaking into those journals gave me far more satisfaction than anything else about them.  I have to wonder if I’m the only child who felt that way.

On reflection, probably not.