Oops

Hey guys, so I actually meant to post this on time on Monday, but I guess I didn't actually publish it. I found it today among my drafts after I realized that it hadn't been posted. So without further ado, Mondays post.

So reading through The Tempest, I decided to take our professor's advice and take special note of who is in power and whether or not Prospero has control of the situation. Power is a fairly consistent theme throughout the play thus far, manifesting itself in just about every character.

One particular scene illustrating the balance of power is act II scene I after the party falls asleep, leaving Antonio and Sebastian to converse by themselves. The two agree to kill Alonso and Gonzago, the first so that they may both increase their political power, the second because they dislike him and believe that they have the power to get away with it. However, despite how confident they are in their power, Prospero, through Ariel, is the one really controlling the situation. Ariel causes Gonzalo to awaken, therefore foiling the plot of the two power-hungry jerk-wads.

Ariel herself is an enigma and contradiction of power. Without Ariel, Prospero would essentially be powerless, since everything he does is through his command of Ariel. Ironically, Ariel is arguably the most naturally powerful person in the play, yet is tethered down to Prospero's whim and decree, completely powerless for all of Ariel's magic. And yet, despite Ariel being the source of Prospero's power, he bullies her into submission to do his will. At the first sign of resistance from Ariel, Prospero reminds him/her of the debt owed to Prospero, claiming that he/she is ungrateful and has forgotten the pain and torment of Sycorax's spells. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And Prospero is certainly going through a power trip. Which brings us to Prospero's other slave, Caliban.

Despite his strength and physical superiority to Prospero, the misshapen native grudgingly serves Prospero simply because to do so is less painful than outright defiance. Prospero uses his magic to torment Caliban when he doesn't yield to Prospero's commands. Starting to see the corruption yet?

Another major scene that contributes to the overall theme of power is act III scene II where Caliban defects to serve a drunkard that offers him wine. It is fairly obvious that Stephano, the man that Caliban has chosen to serve, is below Prospero in station and power, yet Caliban chooses him over Prospero because he offers reward instead of punishment. This furthers out understanding of the relationship between Prospero and Calban. From my point of view, Caliban gains absolutely nothing from serving Prospero besides relief from punishment.

Masks and mistaken identities

Bonus points if you can guess the identity of
this beautifully mysterious woman!

So the themes of masks and mistaken identities come up a LOT in Shakespeare's work, but in Much Ado About Nothing, the plot hinges upon it. The main conflict of the play is when Margret is mistaken for Hero when Borachio seduces Margret. Claudio then assumes that his beloved Hero is impure and rejects her at the altar and Hero's family spreads the rumor that Hero died of shame. Later the mixup is revealed and Claudio swears to marry "Hero's cousin" who arrives at the wedding masked. When Hero's mask is removed, there is much rejoicing and they all dance in celebration.

But that isn't the only time we see people hiding behind masks. In the beginning of the play, we have a masquerade, during which Beatrice and Benedick meet, Benedick bemasked and hiding his identity while Beatrice expresses her disdain for Benedick, seemingly to a random stranger.

I was rather amused by the choice of masks in the Kenneth Branagh film. Benedick has kind of a creepy, clownish mask that rather fit his sense of humor and his ability to make amusement out of almost anything. It's rather fitting.

Claudio's mask also rather intrigued me. It's quite cherubic in appearance, characterizing him as the young, naive, innocent babe. This could suggest that he truly was innocent in Hero's disgrace and that he was not truly at fault. It also suggests purity and youthfulness, making Claudio the archetypal young lover. The cherubic baby face could also be a type of Cupid, which brings up completely different characterizations and could foreshadow the trickery involved with getting Benedick and Beatrice together.

Don Pedro, the prince, wears a lion's head, which symbolizes his power and royalty. For some reason, Don Pedro, Spanish royalty, is played by Denzel Washington, which plays off of the lion mask in a totally weirder way, seeing as the actor is African-American.

One thing, however, that somewhat disappointed me was the final scene where Claudio marries "Hero's cousin." When I read the play, I expected Hero to be wearing a full on mask, not just a bridal veil over her face. So what I think I would like to do is design and make a wedding mask for Hero as my final project, since I was so unsatisfied with Kenneth Branagh's portrayal.




Be on the lookout for updates on how the mask is going, a few friends and I are making Halloween masks tomorrow, so, while I'm at it, I'll make the base for my Hero mask. I'll probably post pictures of how it's going on Monday! If any of you want to try your hand at mask making, I'll be following the directions on this website and I'll let you all know how well this stuff works.

Caliban, the corrupted cannibal

So yeah, sorry I'm late again guys, things have been busy lately but I'm going to try really hard to be on time on Friday.

I don't know about you, but I'm WAY excited for The Tempest. It's so ridiculously archetypal, much like The Winter's Tale, that it's difficult not to connect it to other things. For example,

Caliban

is like

Gollum

and

Grendel

because each character illustrates the corruption of dark magic upon the natural world. Grendel, much like Caliban, was born of a dark witch, deformed and twisted by the magic within her, more like a tumor than a man. Gollum was born whole, but, through exposure to dark magic and evil after a period of years, he too became deformed and grotesque--much like getting cancer after being exposed to too much nuclear waste. Then there's Caliban, the spawn of a hag and Satan himself, born with inhuman form and evil so deep within him that, despite the efforts of Prospero the civilizer, he can only take what he is given and twist it into something crude, like when he was taught to speak only that he would curse Prospero for keeping Caliban away from Miranda.

                                               

That said, we can compare Prospero with Beowulf, the tamer and purger of corruption, the civilizer. Much like Beowulf, Prospero comes to a place beseiged with corruption and danger and immediately makes it safe for the inhabitants, namely his little girl, Miranda. He seeks to purify the corruption, to teach it manners and rhetoric, and subdues it to create a safe place. Good thing for Prospero that Caliban's mother is already dead, otherwise he might find himself creating new corruption.

Ash and Misty: another unlikely couple

That's right peeps, I'm taking you back to the 90s! Remember that show we all watched in elementary school? Remember how we would trade the cards like children swapping gushers for teddy grahams. Yeah, those were the days... And of course, the favorite pairing was Ash and Misty. The two were always bickering and arguing, Misty harping on Ash for trashing her bike, Ash getting on Misty's case for being so obnoxious. Yet we all knew they would get together, despite their professed dislike for each other. Deep within their bickering rivalry, they really care for each other, perhaps as more than just friends. Unfortunately, the video I wanted to show you has had its embedding disabled, but if you click on the link, you'll see that it contains the first pokemon battle between Ash and Misty, filled with banter and rivalry. Can't you just feel the romantic tension building?

Similar to their relationship is the romance between Beatrice and Benedick. The first we see of their relationship is their arguing and bickering, their rhetorical rivalry. But as time goes on, we see their feelings for each other blossom into love. At first they keep it hidden, too stubborn and unwilling to share their intimate feelings for each other, but eventually, they confess their affections and end up getting married. 

I just wish we had had such closure with Ash and Misty. Maybe not as far as them getting married, but perhaps some sort of acknowledgement of the romance building between them.

Holofernes: bumbling scholar or ruthless general?

I apologize for how long it took me to finally post something this week, it's been pretty busy and I just haven't seemed to have the time. Without further ado, the post that should have been on Monday!

So when I first saw the name Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost, the first image I got was the picture to the left: Judith Beheading Holofernes by Gentileschi. This play has so much girl power in it, it wouldn't be terribly surprising if Shakespeare was making an allusion to the book of Judith.

You can imagine the meeting between Judith and
Holofernes looking something like this.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Biblical Apocrypha, Holofernes, one of Nebuchadnezzar's more stupid generals, was warned not to attack the Hebrew people, but, like all archetypal idiots, he simply told the poor guy to buzz off. Holofernes laid siege to the Hebrew city and cut off the water supply, which sucked for all the dehydrated people trapped within the gates, who nearly surrendered before a bravely promiscuous woman named Judith stepped forward and volunteered her feminine assets to save the city. So when Judith and Holofernes were alone in his tent, he fell asleep, and Judith, seeing her opportunity, totally chopped his head off with his own sword! Afterwards, she stuffed his head into a sack and waltzed right out of the camp with it. In the morning, the Hebrews marched out of their city, bearing Holofernes' head like a banner, so completely demoralizing Holofernes' army that they are easily defeated.

However, this picture is much more similar to the Holofernes that Shakespeare was referencing. Many scholars believe that Shakespeare was taking Rabelais' character Holofernes, the absurd parody of medieval scholars, and how ineffective they were at teaching. Rabelais' character is a "Sophist in Latin Letters" and focuses primarily on memorization instead of analysis. Reblais illustrates just how impotent he is as a teacher to the the main character of the narrative, completely unable to teach his young pupil anything. Fairly quickly, the main character's father finds a new, much more intelligent scholar to tutor his son, simply because Holofernes has no true merit in his studies. It isn't difficult to see the connection with Shakespeare's Holofernes, the equally impotent scholar, quoting his Latin phrases. More details on Reblais' work here.



However, this doesn't mean we can't draw parallels with Judith's arch-enemy. Holofernes, with his criticisms and tiring pedantry can be seen almost attacking wit and language, imposing his harsh rules on them and scoffing at anyone who isn't so scholarly as to make you fall asleep. However, the ever clever women of the play are putting the wit back in witticisms, launching a counterattack against the pompous air the men put on. Unfortunately, there is no gory beheading at the end.

Much Ado About Nothing

When I first made my blog, I posted a link to it on facebook so some of my friends could follow it. I don't think anyone really has, but my aunt commented on my first post, saying that I should read Much Ado About Nothing. Then lo and behold, it was the play I was assigned! It was meant to be...

I'm rather excited to read this play for multiple reasons, the first being the fact that it's a comedy. I am very fond of Shakespeare's comedies and I've heard really good things about this one. I'm also rather excited to see how some of the major themes play out. One such theme is deception and masks. Masks are used throughout the play to hide the identities of some key characters. Although the audience knows the face behind the mask, not all the other characters do, which makes for some very comedic and plot-essential moments. As you can tell by my picture, I rather like masks and masquerades. If you've never seen The Phantom of the Opera, they're pretty awesome and are fairly archetypal as far as identity concealment goes. So this is a theme I'll probably be blogging about a lot.

I'm also rather excited to see how Beatrice and Benedick interact. They are the fairly archetypal unlikely lovers kind of pair, which should make for some fun comparisons. I'm also intrigues by Hero's name and may blog about Shakespeare's use of it to characterize her. I may also compare her with Hiro from Heroes if I see enough of a connection.

There's a lot of films for this play out and I plan to watch more than one of them. I'm at the very least going to watch the Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh version and the BBC version. What I would really like to see is Berlioz's opera Beatrice et Benedict. And maybe if I have the time, I'll even read the play in the "original" Klingon!

Hercules and Samson: Don Adriano de Armado as a tragic lover

Today's post is brought to you by Love's Labour's Lost and the tragic lover archetype. When we first meet our humorous Armado and Moth (no relation to the insect), we learn that Armado is in love with a woman quite below his social class and he is immediately compared to both a biblical and mythological tragic lover.

Look at the stars. The great tragic lovers of the past look down on us.  So although things might suck, stick it out, if you hang in long enough, you might get your own constellation.

This immediately sets the poor guy up to eventually be either incorporated into religion or catasterized. Or possibly both. But either way, things are probably not going to turn out well for him in a way that the audience will somehow find rather amusing.

The first character Armado is compared to is Hercules, the strong, indestructible God. Many people know the story of Hercules from the Disney version, but in the original Greek myth (much more likely to be the version Shakespeare aludes to), Hercules goes crazy and murders his wife. Twice. It isn't until he has obtained God-status through hardship and trials that he is given a goddess for his third wife, an immortal, and therefore impossible for him to kill. Unfortunately for Armado, I doubt that he's going to obtain God-status by the end of the play.

The second tragic lover Armado is compared to is Samson, blessed with infatigable strength as long as his hair remained unshorn. Unfortunately, Samson put his faith in the wrong woman who cut his hair while he was sleeping and turned him over to his enemies. He momentarily regained his strength after repenting for breaking God's commandment and marrying outside the covenant and died destroying the house of his captors.

Then we come to Armado himself. He is obviously a trained swordsman of great skill and has great strength, if not in his arm, in his blade. His mistake is falling in love with a woman during a period of time when consorting with women is forbidden. It can only be assumed that at some point his love for Jaquenetta is punished by fate, Ferdinand, or Jaquenetta herself. And, knowing Shakespeare's comedies, it'll be in some terribly amusing way that turns out to be okay in the end. But hey, if that doesn't work out, there's always the stars. 

I'm a psych major, it had to happen

Today's blog post is brought to you by Hamlet and the complex Oedipal. That's right everyone, we're examining Hamlet's attraction (or lack thereof) to his mother.

So let's start by assuming that Hamlet does have an Oedipal complex that has been stewing in the back of his mind since he was a child. It would certainly explain his anger towards both his mother and Claudius. His father's death was his first opportunity to get closer to his mother and the chance was ripped away from him by his uncle, a man that, assuming Hamlet does have an Oedipal complex, is living out Hamlet's dream. There's a lot of jealousy going on here. His anger towards his mother is more than just anger for her betrayal of his father, but is because by choosing Claudius, she rejected Hamlet. So almost in order to get back at his mother, he's flaunting Ophelia in his mother's face. When no one else is around, he doesn't treat her well at all, essentially calling her a whore when no one's looking. But when his mother is around, he says that Ophelia is more attractive than his mother and lies at her feet instead of sitting by his mother. Then in a lot of ways, Ophelia becomes his outlet for his feelings towards Gertrude. His accusations of Ophelia being unfaithful are really Hamlet chastising his mother. If we follow the logical conclusion to this theory, it's easy to say that Hamlet's sexual desires for Ophelia can also be applied to Gertrude.

Then there's the scene in Gertrude's bedroom where Hamlet chastises her, which is really only overtly creepy if you watch the Mel Gibson version of Hamlet.

(Note: the first kiss in the video is with Ophelia, the rest is footage of Hamlet and Gertrude.)

Nevertheless, Hamlet's major criticism of his mother is her choice in bedfellows and seems to be harping on her for taking a new husband that was not as attractive as the first, more than he is actually upset about her betraying his father. He focuses on her poor choice, almost as if to say that he himself would have made a better husband.

I think a problem we have in identifying Hamlet's Oedipal complex is how revolted we are by the idea. Yeah, incest is pretty gross, but nevertheless, it could very well be one of Hamlet's subconscious drives pushing him towards insanity. It certainly would explain some of his behaviors. For a more detailed and scholarly exploration of the subject, read Ernest Jones' paper titled Hamlet and Oedipus.