The Unwritten Invisible Character in Every Story

The subject of this picture isn't what you see,
but the lens through which this is seen.

The other day in my Shakespeare class we watched a bunch of clips of the "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy by Hamlet. We observed differences in how the directors or actors gave their own interpretation and what they were trying to say or get across. It made me think about how in every play or movie there is a person that the writer or director has in mind, but cannot directly influence like he does his actors. He has to influence this character through his actors, words, lighting etc. It is a person who is in every movie, who is in every play, who gets to see everything that the characters don't, and who that characters can't see. This unwritten invisible character is the viewer, the spectator of the spectacle.

No one writes a play just to have a bunch of people say lines and move around. The play is written for the audience. Everything that happens in a production is calculated to get an anticipated response out of the viewer. While we, as spectators, have no lines to memorize, or places to stand, there is a part for us to play. It isn't written down and rehearsed, but it is implied and anticipated for us to be taken in and to feel involved in the play or movie. 

When we watch a play production, like A Winters Tale, that I had the opportunity to view recently, the audience and viewers can interact with the actors, and can influence the production. by the responses we give, laughter or booing and so on. The actors can even interact with the audience, say hello to us, throw things at us, grab us and dance with  us, whatever. 

When we view a movie, we play an incredible character. A role that the director forces on the viewer. One that he tries to manipulate to feel certain things and think a certain way. We don't say anything, we can't influence the story in any way, but we are given the role of a powerful avatar that can be anywhere, that is invisible, sees everything, can hear thoughts, can hear music that isn't really there, won't die (what if someone made a movie where the viewer died?). The viewer can be right up in the face of a character (which in real life or a play production would be really awkward and would not produce the same effect) and really see the nuances of their facial expressions and hear the quiet whispers they speak. 

In every production we have a part to play, in a movie, a play, or a book even, we get to be a fly on the wall, we get to become someone else in a story that is not ours, and play a part that is written somewhere, but not on the script.

A Fallacy inspired Soapbox Rant

The other day I was walking around campus and I saw a very misinformed boy with a shirt that said "Shakespeare Hates Your Emo Poems." While, I'm not emo myself nor an advocate for emo kids, this shirt made me feel somewhat irate (Maybe because I posted an emo poem earlier). I like to write poetry, and I believe the occasional emo poem is healthy.

Now, in honor of the fact that I just finished reading Hamlet again (a very emo character (WHO DIES!! Maybe he does hate emo things, no, just kidding) This post is dedicated to emo poetry and I'm sure my room mate is going to judge me.

First will be one of Hamlet's Soliloquies "To be or not to be", which is all about the contemplation of suicide, how much more emo can you get.

Then will be a poem of my own, once again inspired by Hamlet, about how his despair consumed him completely until everything around him, including himself, was destroyed by it. Very sad.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Cypress Tree

There is a cypress tree

that grows inside of me

Parasitically eating

my hearts final beating

the living of my being

As all of my fears

made manifest in tears

all my soul's pain

is it's life giving rain

The agonized bleating

of my hearts bleeding beating

is it's sun softly beaming

on its leaves slowly feeding

My decomposing soul

it's dark soft rich soul

and I scream bloody murder 

as it's roots push on deeper

This tree that needs felling

to me it is telling

Like a dark Van Gogh painting

of yet another failing

and what there is waiting

when my heart stops it's beating

As I breath my last breath 

and give in now to death

this dark tree

takes the last of me

as I cease to be

nothing more that the

symbol you see

in a dark cypress tree.

Shakespeare loves my Emo poems (but I promise I'm a happy person)

Shakespeare and Jackson Pollock

Today I just wanted to post one of my favorite paintings, which, ironically enough, is connected to Shakespeare (although you would never guess by looking at it.

BEHOLD...

FULL FATHOM FIVE

Oddly enough this goes along with the play The Tempest, which I am looking forward to seeing in the next few weeks., and here I connect two of my loves, Art, and Shakespeare.

This painting is from a song by Ariel (no, not the red-headed mermaid girl, but a sprite (and not the drink either, a fairy)) as he convinces another character that his father is drowned and lost at sea. If the feeling of drowning was visual, this painting would be it.

Full fathom five thy Father lies,

Of his bones are coral made:

Those are pearls that were his eyes

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a Sea-change

Into something rich & strange

Sea-Nymphs hourly ring his knell.

Hark now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.

Shakespeare looks down on you.

When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

King Lear Scene VI

Fools and foolish deeds seem to be very common in Shakespeare. Nobody really seems to be that intelligent. Many of Will's plays tell a story of a noble or royal family, someone of the upper crust of society, and how silly they are. The Hamlet family is the most dysfunctional family I've ever seen. From fratricide to incest, murder, deceit. They are in serious need of a therapist. This is not just one example. In A Winters Tale there are two royal families who do all sorts of stupid things, who are full of irrational thinking and silly impulses. Was Shakespeare making commentary about his contemporary royalty? Was he showing the world just how stupid and foolish the upper class was?

I thought this might be the case until I saw how Shakespeare depicted normal people. The lower classes. They aren't too bright either. At times they seem even more foolish or vice-ridden than the upper classes. Shakespeare even takes their speech out of poetry and makes it common prose. 

O, I am fortune's fool!

It seems to me that Shakespeare just thinks everyone is an idiot, and his plays were his way of telling everyone to shape up. He may have exaggerated the idiocy of people in his works to help get his point across, but it seems that his works were his commentary on society.

True, a story wouldn't be fun if everyone did the right thing, and everyone was a rational calm individual. In As You Like It its says "I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad: and to travel for it too!" Perhaps Shakespaere thinks it is better to learn from the mistakes and silly antics of the fake characters in the play (and be amused at the same time), than for society to make these mistakes themselves and regret it.  

Shakespeare looks at society as a stage of fools, and he uses his own stage to try and educate people to a higher way.

I look down on you all...

Women in Shakespeare...and a tangent

Ophelia....dead.

The other day in class we were talking about the variety of women in Shakespeare. How, despite the time period he lived in, many of his female characters (who were still played by men) are strong characters, with great value. Sure we have characters like Ophelia and Desdemona who are spineless "doormats" (and who both end up dying...coincidence?) but we have stronger characters like Paulina who isn't afraid to say anything, really anything, to a crazy king. We have characters like Hermione who have a quiet and admirable dignity. I really think she is amazing for the way she handles everything, accused of adultery and plotting to murder, her newborn baby being banished. It's not until she finally sees that her husband won't listen and her little boy dies that she can’t take it anymore. In Julius Caesar I like Brutus' wife, Portia, and what he says of her,"O ye gods, render me worthy of this noble wife!". Shakespeare shows the value of valuing ones wife (if only Brutus had been equally honorable and honest with his wife.)

Basically, it seems in Shakespeare plays that although, mostly for the point of a story, bad things happen to all characters, it seems to turn out better for the stronger figures. Let's take Beatrice and Hero from Much Ado About Nothing. Hero seems to me to be another "doormat" while Beatrice is sassy and strong. Beatrice only has to go through a lot of teasing to have her "happily ever after". Hero on the other hand is accused of infidelity (this seems to be a common theme…Desdemona, Hermione?) and has to be verbally, and emotionally abused (Ophelia parallel?) and then fake her death (another common theme, Juliet...anyone?) to get Leonato to feel sorry enough, and then she gets her happily ever after.

Not only do things seem to work out better for the stronger characters, but they are also a lot more fun to read about. I would rather be friends with people like Beatrice or Paulina, than empty people like Hero and Ophelia.

Heck, if I’m going to wish a fictional character to reality to be their friend I’m going to step outside the realm of Shakespeare and into Disney’s Tangled. Sure Rapunzel starts off as a “doormat” never leaving home for 18 years just cause her “mom” said no, but at the end she is a stronger frying pan wielding beauty, who would be lots of fun to hang out with cause she’s always ready to let her hair down (ha…ha…).

Sorry Will, modern computer animated Disney beats you here.

Shakespeare and Me

Shakespeare first entered my life, with real power, in the seventh grade. Our poor, patient, and worthy of pity English teacher, Ms. Rose, introduced us to "Midsummer Night's Dream". It really touched me. The rhythm of the words, the clever play with language, the story. I liked it a lot but I was a too cool for Shakespeare, just like every other young teenage boy my age. It ended there.

Not to be averted, Shakespeare tried once again to come into my life in the ninth and tenth grades through the plays of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Julius Ceasar". I loved them once again. Unfortunately, I was still to cool for it. I could only have a closet love for this iambic pentameter prose. It wasn't until eleventh grade that Shakespeare was able to really become a comfortable part of my life.

In the eleventh grade I developed a transitory twitterpation, a crush, on a girl in my ward. She loved Shakespeare, and I thought she was wonderful, so Shakespeare must be wonderful too. I promptly went out and bought a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare and began to read religiously. Yes...I started reading Shakespeare to meet girls... Nothing developed out of this crush i had, except for a deep deep love and relationship for all things Shakespeare. I devoured his plays and tried to understand them as best I could. I developed an admiration for his way of saying things and revered dear Will as almost a minor prophet, penning scripture.

Since then I have loved Shakespeare. I love reading the plays, I love seeing them performed in the theater, I love the movie renditions, (Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet...anyone? yes?) My favorite play is "Hamlet" the original emo. I think it's fantastic.

Shakespeare and Mason...are friends.

Simon, Garfunkel, and Shakespeare

This morning I was musing on the play A Winters Tale, and in my head started to play the song "I am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel. At first I thought the sadness of the song would connect it to Leontes. After thinking I realized that it connects much better to his wife, Hermione. With no disrespect to S and G and their great music, Here is "I am a Rock", Winters Tale style.

(Words in red are changed by me)

A winter's day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I'm behind walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain. 

Because of laughter and loving I'm disdained.
I am a rock,
I am an island. 

Hermione: I am a Rock

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor, 

Locked within my room, a child's left my womb.

Leontes can't you see
I've touched no one and no one has touched me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

For "I am not prone to weeping, as our sex commonly are."