Northern Aggression

I, like many of you, spent the day yesterday at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah. We took a field trip down to see The Winter's Tale. It was really great to see the play so soon after reading the play, it was a lot easier to compare the two and learn from the story. For example, while reading the play I was having some trouble understanding the role and purpose of Autolycus, but after seeing him it made a lot more sense (and was a lot more entertaining).

Here are some of the big observations I made while watching the play:

- Probably the most striking feature of this Shakespeare play was that the costumes were from the 20th century, not the 16th or 17th. But they didn't change anything else or modernize anything else about the play. The characters' names were the same, two lords of Sicilia were still sent to the Oracle at Delphi, etc. But I think the costumes really added another dimension and was a very insightful decision made by the director Brian Vaughn (who also played Leontes).

The whole first half of the play, I was thinking "This is Winter's Tale meets The Great Gatsby," because that's what the costumes reminded me of. Very urban, very high society.

But then, when the second half of the play began in Bohemia, and it was very rural and country. That distinction of course could be made from Shakespeare's original play. But what added to it was the costumes. It was especially notable when Polixenes and Camillo came to the sheep-shearing festival dressed as Colonel Sanders.

That's when it hit me: Sicilia was the north and Bohemia was the south.

Here are some other images that sort of evoke the north and the south in the early 20th century.

North:

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

Citizen Kane

The Philadelphia Story

South:

To Kill a Mockingbird

Gone With the Wind

Forrest Gump

O Brother Where Art Thou?

- The other really cool thing about this performance of The Winter's Tale was who they chose to play Time, to open the play after the intermission. The actor who played Time was the same actor who played Antigonus. And it wasn't just to double-dip and save on personnel. The actor came out on stage in his whole Antigonus costume and make-up, beard and everything. But as he began to speak, he took off his suit jacket and beard.

I wonder what this was trying to say. Here's my theory: maybe all along, Antigonus was Time, or Fate, and through that capacity he was able to take Perdita to a place where eventually her true identity would be discovered. Sort of like how we Mormons sometimes think of The Three Nephites. Time/Fate is all-knowing, and somehow knew that by taking Perdita to Bohemia that night, she would be discovered by the shepherd and eventually reunited with her family. And after the intermission, Time comes to reveal that, 16 years later, his plan has been realized.

Bookend Brothers

Check out these two passages:

Act I, Scene I

Camillo:  

Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia.

They were trained together in their childhoods; and 

there rooted betwixt them then such an affection, 

which cannot choose but branch now. Since their 

more mature dignities and royal necessities made 

separation of their society, their encounters,

though not personal, have been royally attorneyed

with interchange of gifts, letters, loving 

embassies; that they have seemed to be together,

though absent, shook hands, as over a vast, and

embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed

winds. The heavens continue their loves

Archidamus:

I think there is not in the world either malice or
matter to alter it.

... and ...

Act V, Scene II

Third Gentleman: Did you see
the meeting of the two kings? 

Second Gentleman: No. 

Third Gentleman: Then have you lost a sight, which was to be seen, 

cannot be spoken of. There might you have beheld one 

joy crown another, so and in such manner that it 

seemed sorrow wept to take leave of them, for their 

joy waded in tears. There was casting up of eyes,

holding up of hands, with countenances of such 

distraction that they were to be known by garment, 

not by favour. Our king, being ready to leap out of 

himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that 

joy were now become a loss, cries 'O, thy mother,

thy mother!' then asks Bohemia forgiveness; then 

embraces his son-in-law; then again worries he his 

daughter with clipping her; now he thanks the old 

shepherd, which stands by like a weather-bitten 

conduit of many kings' reigns. I never heard of such

another encounter, which lames report to follow it 

and undoes description to do it."

So, the play begins and ends the same way, with a conversation between two less-than-secondary characters describing the brotherly love Leontes and Polixenes have for each other.

For good measure, here's me and my brother, who is 19 months younger than me (with two of our younger sisters):

By the way, why do you think it is that Act V, Scene II is a conversation between three characters, who aren't even named, about the climax of the story? Why didn't Shakespeare write out that scene? Did he just get lazy?

I have one theory. Maybe Shakespeare intended to describe the scene rather than display it, tell instead of show. He does use some beautiful language in describing how happy everyone is now. Maybe he wanted to put together a few well-crafted words, and leave the rest to imagination.

Sit right back and you'll hear a Winter's Tale

Here's a sort of hodgepodge of thoughts I've had while reading Acts II through IV of The Winter's Tale:

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- I found three instances of characters comparing their characteristics as if they are measurable.

Paulina, talking about Hermione: "... a gracious innocent soul, More free than he is jealous."

Paulina, talking about herself: "... no less honest Than you are mad ..."

Hermione, in her testimony for the court: "You, my lord, best know, Who least will seem to do so, my past life Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true, As I am now unhappy."

It looks as though Hermione and Paulina should be understood as the opposite of Leontes. Where Leontes is the nadir, Hermione and Paulina are the zenith.

Also, do we do this in real life? Do we say "I'm as good at" something "as he or she is bad at" something? Do we compare ourselves to others with exact quantities?

Another way to think of it: Does the worst day of your life counterbalance the best day of your life? Does one unit of happiness equal one unit of unhappiness? Or does a little bit of happiness outweigh a lot of unhappiness? Or is it vice versa?

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- I noticed two references very close to each other to shoulders.

Clown, when describing the bear attack he just saw: "And then for the land-service, to see how the bear tore out his shoulder-bone; how he cried to me for help and said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman."

Autolycus, when he is faking an injury to take advantage of the Clown: "O, good sir, softly, good sir! I fear, sir, my shoulder-blade is out."

The two events are 16 years apart in the story, and on either side of an intermission while watching the play. But when you read it, they seem like they are right next to each other. So I guess it might be a way that Shakespeare is playing with the fast-forward through time. Or, is it a foreshadowing of what is to come? Should this injured traveler's shoulder remind the Clown of Antigonus' shoulder being eaten by a bear? Should he be anticipating the story coming full circle? Should we?

Huh, I don't know, maybe I have a thing with the symbolism of body parts.

Speaking of bears, here's Jim and Dwight having an academic discussion on what bear is best:  

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http://images.askmen.com/celebs/men/entertainment_200/230_james_bondlarge_image-1.jpg

- A pretty obvious connection with Polixenes spying on his son and Polonius wanting to spy on his, right? One thing that is different to me is that Polixenes is doing it himself, instead of sending someone else with instructions of how to spy. What does that say about Polixenes? Is he more paranoid than Polonius? Or more of a "do-it-yourselfer" than Polonius?

Throne of Lies

(Our class took a brief pause during our reading of Hamlet in order to read The Winter's Tale, before we go on our field trip to see it at the Utah Shakespeare Festival.)

It is just amazing to see how far King Leontes is willing to go. First, he sees Polixenes and Hermione acting friendly, and assumes the worst. Then, he immediately assumes Hermione is pregnant not with his baby, but with Polixenes'. After he sends Camillo to kill Polixenes and they both disappear, he is certain that Camillo is in on this whole thing too. And, when his son Mamillius falls ill, there is no question in his mind that it is because his son is so distraught by his horrible mother.

Isn't that the way it goes with lies? We probably all have personal experience with an initial lie, that we have to expound upon further and further until our story exposes itself as false and ridiculous. Along those same lines, I think of David from the Bible. Not only did he advance a lie further and further, but also a sin. He started with lustful thoughts and before he knew it he had committed murder.

What's funny in King Leontes' case is that he has no need to one-up himself or anybody else. He's not competing with anybody, and no one is paying much attention to his lies from the very beginning. His only audience is himself. So why does he perpetuate his senseless jealousy?

I suppose it could be similar to what often happens when we feel mad or sad. We have a tendency to want to stay mad or sad, and resist any efforts to cheer ourselves up. For some reason, it's like we want to be mad or sad. It's ridiculous, of course, but for some reason we do it.

Speaking of trying to one-up everybody...