It's our first IDES, y'all! BEWARE and stuff. Onto the Non-Fiction!
This was the very first non-fiction book I ever read for pleasure, and the only one I've replaced several times after lending it out. I am also the only person (so far) to have reviewed this book on Amazon. For these reasons, and MORE, it is the featured star of our first IDES.
As I read it through this time, I folded over pages and made asterisks next to lines I wanted to remember for the review. Before I was half way through the 329 page book, I had almost 20 folds. And no gasps about dog-earring books or writing in them. This is my book! And I want to be able to turn to a page and see what I wrote in the margins! I feel like this is doubly acceptable because of a recent exhibit at the Folger which was all ABOUT what people did to their books. I'M PRESERVING MY LEGACY!
Ahem. So. What John O'Connor is interested in is how culturally significant a handful of Shakespeare's characters have become. We can refer to a couple as a "Romeo and Juliet" and everyone will understand that it means they're a tragic pair. Or to a "Lady Macbeth" and she will most likely be the powerful wife of a less-powerful man (though he's the one with the position of political power). These characters have grown beyond their play, beyond even the stage to take a place in our collective imagination as a reference point for certain archetypes. O'Connor explores these growths by speaking with scholars and actors of today, and referencing the known performance history of each character. How Shylock was performed pre-mid-and-post-WWII will surprise you.
And he does it in a way that is incredibly readable and engaging - taking you through the characters' major scenes and applying performance descriptions and cultural observations throughout in a way that sparks a need for discussion and also validates everything I hold dear.
For upon this, my most recent reading, I came across what could be the basis for a mission statement for this blog (emphasis mine):
What I love, though, and what I really appreciate that has been accomplished with this book, is showing that it's through performance that we really get to know these characters. That's not to say that my love for Shakespeare-based fiction is unfounded because it's not performance, but - to me - it is another way of getting inside the characters' heads in your own head. In a performance, the character lives again. How each character is approached by new actors and directors and audiences is how they grow and change and stay relevant to us. And how we continue to learn about ourselves through them.
Yes. I would lend you my copy. But you should definitely get one of your own, especially if you're into talking about how these characters live in your imagination. (And if you're curious about which characters are in the book, I'm sure the first 9 you'd list would be the ones. There's one wild card. Spoilers.)
This was the very first non-fiction book I ever read for pleasure, and the only one I've replaced several times after lending it out. I am also the only person (so far) to have reviewed this book on Amazon. For these reasons, and MORE, it is the featured star of our first IDES.
As I read it through this time, I folded over pages and made asterisks next to lines I wanted to remember for the review. Before I was half way through the 329 page book, I had almost 20 folds. And no gasps about dog-earring books or writing in them. This is my book! And I want to be able to turn to a page and see what I wrote in the margins! I feel like this is doubly acceptable because of a recent exhibit at the Folger which was all ABOUT what people did to their books. I'M PRESERVING MY LEGACY!
Ahem. So. What John O'Connor is interested in is how culturally significant a handful of Shakespeare's characters have become. We can refer to a couple as a "Romeo and Juliet" and everyone will understand that it means they're a tragic pair. Or to a "Lady Macbeth" and she will most likely be the powerful wife of a less-powerful man (though he's the one with the position of political power). These characters have grown beyond their play, beyond even the stage to take a place in our collective imagination as a reference point for certain archetypes. O'Connor explores these growths by speaking with scholars and actors of today, and referencing the known performance history of each character. How Shylock was performed pre-mid-and-post-WWII will surprise you.
And he does it in a way that is incredibly readable and engaging - taking you through the characters' major scenes and applying performance descriptions and cultural observations throughout in a way that sparks a need for discussion and also validates everything I hold dear.
For upon this, my most recent reading, I came across what could be the basis for a mission statement for this blog (emphasis mine):
"...we are not Elizabethans or Jacobeans and don't have their mind-sets... Whatever we do with Shakespeare will, by definition, be an adaptation. Rather a period adaptation which gives the audience new insights into the story, than an attempt at Elizabethan 'authenticity' which doesn't."In the following chapter, he uses the term "polychronism" to describe what Shakespeare does when adding modern items to his "history" plays - a chiming clock in Caesar, spectacles in Lear:
"A positive ingredient which, rather than jarring us out of the moment, has the effect of creating a bridge between the world of the story... and the world of Shakespeare. A bridge, which, in turn, links the playwright's world to our own."I could quote whole pages of the book and still I don't think I would do it justice.
What I love, though, and what I really appreciate that has been accomplished with this book, is showing that it's through performance that we really get to know these characters. That's not to say that my love for Shakespeare-based fiction is unfounded because it's not performance, but - to me - it is another way of getting inside the characters' heads in your own head. In a performance, the character lives again. How each character is approached by new actors and directors and audiences is how they grow and change and stay relevant to us. And how we continue to learn about ourselves through them.
Yes. I would lend you my copy. But you should definitely get one of your own, especially if you're into talking about how these characters live in your imagination. (And if you're curious about which characters are in the book, I'm sure the first 9 you'd list would be the ones. There's one wild card. Spoilers.)
- Shakespearean Afterlives: Ten Characters with a Life of their Own
- Paperback:368 pages
- Publisher: Totem Books (April 11, 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 184046643X
- ISBN-13: 978-1840466430
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