Another 12th Night — Friday the 13th
But first? Besides watching this on BBC and the Trevor Nunn movie version? Folger’s (Folger’s great Shakespeare Library, &c.) Instagram feed?
Amused me mightily.
“Prithee hold thy peace, this is not the way.” Sir Toby 3.4
The set-up is Viola disguises herself as a boy, plays manservant to the duke, and wins his affection. Wait, think about it, he marries her when the boy is revealed as a courtly, age and station-in-life appropriate mate for the duke.
Modern pundits insert all kinds of weird, homophobic crap. It’s a silly play. They didn’t worry about one’s sexual orientation, back then. Non-issue, non-starter.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Another 12th Night
There’s a professional fool, named Feste. That surely gave rise to one author’s series, cf., Shakespeare for Squirrels. The joy, part of the joy, of seeing each play in production is the interpretation of the elements, the text. Eventually, it all comes down to the text. How that is done?
Previously, in this summer’s plays, the kid play Mercutio had a show-stopping, chart-topping version of the Queen Mab speech (Romeo + Juliet).
The UT Winedale Shakespeare production of 12th Night had a Feste that was at once a fool, silly, filled with mirth, witty, and mocking. It was a voice I’ve never heard for Feste, not bad, just different — and new, in a good way. Which shows the strength of the production, the values used on that stage.
Viola mimed and aped the best parts, teasing out the sexual question of prowess, and I feel like I always need to point out, at the end?
The two alpha males agree to marriage, to be ruled by women.
“I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you.”
- Malvolio (5.1.310)
Poor Malvolio, never catches a break.
High comedy, don’t think too much about it.
The stage at Winedale is no more than a few feet across, there’s no stage lighting, no audio, and I heartily recommend staying off the front row for the audience — it’s the splash zone. Other than mixed male and female, the actors are close to what a professional acting company looked like, in size and number, in the play’s publication era. That noted? It is the perfect way to enjoy live Shakespeare. So glad the plague partially contained so the show can go on.
While to entirely true to form, the plays are universally good, some bits, some actors, obviously better than others. I don’t know, but it would seem to me, the professor, the director, whatever his title? He seems to take time to understand the inner-workings of the play, teasing the meaning out, and letting the words dictate the action.
Not unlike Shakespeare’s note to the actors?
Another 12th Night
Previously — link | link | link.
Romeo + Juliet | Richard 3
Motto
“Non sanz droict.”
A cursory search revealed nothing, but someplace, I’m pretty sure I read this online, the heraldic crest for Shakespeare’s family, was set on a yellow background, or whatever, and the intimation was that is was a humorous nod to Malvolio, and his cross-gartered yellow stockings — obviously, 12th Night.
Think about it, a four-hundred year-old running gag.
400 years or more, and it’s still funny?