Wednesday, July 31, 2024

A Little Shakespeare in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

“The House of Quark.” By Ronald D. Moore. Perf. Armin Shimerman, Max Grodénchik, and Mary Kay Adams. Dir. Les Landau. 
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Season 3, episode 3. Syndicated television. 10 October 1994. DVD. Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment, 2021.

One of my hobbies has been the collection and collation of Shakespeare references in Star Trek (yes, you'd better q.v. to see the vast expanse of allusions, quotations, and references that have been worked into the Star Trek universe). But I haven't ventured far from The Original Series and The Next Generation.

But I've been listening to Star Trek: The Next Conversation, an enjoyable Star Trek rewatch podcast, and I've caught up with their past episodes and am trekking with them through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

As is my wont, I've kept my eyes peeled for Shakespeare. This week, I spotted the first: a version of a speech from 1 Henry IV. Late in the play, Falstaff pretends to die in battle. When the danger is past, he revives himself, saying, "The better pat of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life" (V.iv.119-21). The phrase has most often been paraphrased as "Discretion is the better part of valour."

In "The House of Quark," Star Trek repurposes Shakespeare in the way it often does, having a non-earthling species claim a quotation as a bit of wisdom from their own culture. In this case, "Discretion is the better part of valour" is posited as an old Ferengi saying:


It's not much, but it's a start—and we'll see where the Star Trek / Shakespeare connections go from there.

Links: The Episode at IMDB.

For more connections between Star Trek and Shakespeare, head to Shakespeare and Star Trek Complete.

Click below to purchase the DVDs from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

Monday, July 29, 2024

What I Saw at the 2024 Great River Shakespeare Festival

Hamlet. Dir. Doug Scholz-Carlson. Perf. Tarah Flanagan, Melissa Maxwell, Will Sturdivant, Christopher Gerson, Michael Fitzpatrick, Emily Fury Daly, Benjamin Boucvalt, Daniel Ajak, and Diana Coates. Great River Shakespeare Festival. Winona, Minnesota. 2024.
Much Ado About Nothing. Dir. 
Gaby Rodriguez. Perf. Melissa Maxwell, Will Sturdivant, Tarah Flanagan, Christopher Gerson, Marina Narveaz, Izzy Heckman, Michael Fitzpatrick, Emily Fury Daly, Benjamin Boucvalt, Daniel Ajak, and Diana Coates. Great River Shakespeare Festival. Winona, Minnesota. 2024.

I was only able to get to the Great River Shakespeare Festival toward the very end. When that happens, I'm always sad. It means that I can't go back and see the plays again, and it means I'm limited in my ability to promote that season's plays.

But take this as an alert to set aside time, space, and funding to see all the plays in the Great River Shakespeare Festival's 2025 season!

Additionally, I'd like to share what I saw in each of this season's shows. I'll do that in my usual list of things that were, in one way or another, striking.

Hamlet

The Cast. First, Tarah Flanagan was a terrific Hamlet. She's an actress, but she played Hamlet as a male. There wasn't any Asia Neilsenesque backstory (for which, q.v.)—just a solid, multi-faceted performance of the deeply-troubled melancholy and manic Dane. I knew, more or less, the plot going in, but Flanagan's performance kept me wondering what she'd do next. I found that uncertainty refreshing; it helped us live through the actions of the play as if we didn't know what was coming next.

Chris Gerson's Horatio was played as an older mentor to Hamlet—as if, when Hamlet calls him "fellow student" (I.ii.177), he's making an ironic joke about a former university professor whose philosophy was that both he and his students are all in the business of being students together. Gerson played Hamlet as "that man / that is not passion's slave" (III.ii.71–72) through most of the play. The reading extended Horatio's declaration that "I am more an antique Roman than a Dane" (V.ii.341) back through the entire play, explaining both his skepticism and his stoicism.

The gravediggers (Michael Fitzpatrick and Emily Fury Daly) might have stepped right out of last's year's GRSF As You Like It with no questions asked. I enjoyed their over-the-top country-bumpkin comic relief.

Claudius (Will Sturdivant) and Gertrude (Melissa Maxwell) were very strong. Their performances (and other parts of this production) reminded me of Kevin Kline's Hamlet.

The Lighting. There wasn't any. 

Actually, that's the opposite of the truth. Hundreds of interesting lighting effects were worked in seamlessly throughout the production—which made the points where there wasn't much lighting that much more effective.

Many of those involved the appearance of "the ghost" (which I'm putting in air quotes because the production seems to question whether there is such a thing or not). In the opening scene, most of the lighting is delegated to a few flashlights held by Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio. No one was able to see much of anything. Indeed, I'm not yet certain whether Will Sturdivant (doubling as Claudius and Hamlet's Father's Ghost) was on stage for that scene or not.

When Hamlet confronts the Ghost in Act I, scene v, we see a bit more every now and that. What we see is mostly a shadowy figure—but the actor was wearing a shirt with luminous skeleton bones on it, and we glimpsed that when the lights came up. If that sounds a bit like a cheap Halloween costume or the Schoolhouse Rock song "Them Not-So-Dry Bones" to you, put the thought out of your mind. Mostly. 

The Pacing. This was a fast Hamlet. It started immediately after the house lights went down and ran at a very quick clip throughout. The pace added to the uncertainty principle of the production. Nothing seemed inevitable—it seemed more like split-second decisions that had to be made immediately and, if characters had only had a bit more time to think, they might have made other decisions.

Props. There weren't many, but, when Claudius realizes that Hamlet knows his secret (after the play-within-the-play), he comes on stage with a handgun. He sets this down to pray (always a good idea, even if you're not sincere in your repentance), and it's what Hamlet uses when he contemplates avenging his father's death then and there. Later, it's how Hamlet rashly and unthinkingly dispatches of Polonius, thereby fulfilling the "Checkhov's Gun" rule. This was a little bit of a missed opportunity, though. Claudius notices that his gun is missing, but he essentially just shrugs and exits. It might have been more effective if he had made a more thorough search for it and then realized that some madman might have taken it. He could then much more frantically run off to try to prevent a tragedy from occurring and have even more justification for exiling Hamlet to England.

Eavesdropping. This part, I'm genuinely sorry to say, is one of the only things that didn't work well in the production. Hamlet awkwardly conceals himself between the end of Act III, scenes ii and iii solely in order to hear Claudius' plan to send him to England. That does explain how he knows about the plan when he talks with Gertrude in the closet scene, but it's not really necessary. Or, if it proves necessary to have the audience know how Hamlet learns that, he should have deliberately eavesdropped through the rest of the exchange—and then been prevented from eavesdropping on Claudius' "O, my offense is rank" soliloquy in some way.

The Text. I love a production that invites its readers to return to the text to see something they've missed, and this one helped me notice things I hadn't seen before. Among the things I want to explore are the word "dew" (used twice by Horatio, once by Hamlet, and once by Laertes), the use of the word "passion" (used eleven times!—and I never clocked it until this production), the many places "ear" is used (I've noticed that before, but I'm called to re-examine its use now), and whether the Wittenberg connection can be found in a pun about the Diet of Worms in Hamlet's line "Your worm is your only emperor for diet" (IV.iii.21).  I also want to explore the words "murther" and "murder" and see when the text uses the one or the other—and why. 

Much Ado About Nothing

I don't have quite as much to say about the GRSF's Much Ado About Nothing, but that's not because it wasn't a solid production. I enjoyed it very much. It was also a fast-paced play with a lot of cuts that made its run time well under two hours.

Here are some things I appreciated about this production in particular.

Dogberry. Instead of having him deliver his instructions to the Watch in one fell swoop, they spaced out those lines throughout the play. Whenever the Watch would eavesdrop on some villainous plan of Don John et al., Dogberry would bring up another point about how the Watch doesn't have to do anything about it at that moment.

Don John. We're given a one-dimensional mustache-twiring (literally) villain, and that's fine. We know where we are with him from the beginning. And Gerson seemed to have a lot of fun knocking a picnic table over over and over.

Beatrice and Benedick.
 We saw lots of good chemistry between these two from the get-go. And we all rejoiced when they acknowledged their love for each other.

Leonato and Hero. The edits to this production enabled Leonato to be more empathetic toward Hero's plight. Indeed, he takes on the Friar's speeches, thereby coming up with the plan to restore Hero's name.

The Ending Scene. This production conflated the scene where Claudio offers a eulogy to Hero with the closing wedding scene. It sped things up considerably and avoided the awkwardness of a modern production trying to get us to believe that Claudio will marry anyone Leonato asks him to. 

Next Season

Whatever the GRSF decides to put on in the 2025 season (I'm hoping for Measure for Measure and Julius Caesar), plan on being there—I do and I will!







Friday, July 26, 2024

Shakespeare in FoxTrot's FoxTrot Sundaes

Amend, Bill. FoxTrot Sundaes. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2010.

It's been a very long time since Bill Amend stopped producing FoxTrots on a daily basis, but I still have a gnawing sense of emptiness in my weekdays.

For today's FoxTrot Friday, we turn to his first collection of Sunday-only strips. I'm certainly glad they exist since they mean we haven't had to go cold turkey, and they're often quite seriously funny.

In FoxTrot Sundaes, I found two tangentially-Shakespearean comics and one comic with a very solid set of Shakespearean puns.

We start with Paige's first day back at school:


I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that there's no Shakespeare in that one. But I think it's very likely that Paige's teacher assigned the Shakespeare-related post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven (for which, q.v.) for her summer reading.

Our next comic is a little later in the school year; it again involves Paige:


I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that there's no Shakespeare in that one. But in panel two, Paige is clearly late for English class. And that's where she studies Shakespeare!

All right. I sense that you're not fully convinced. If that's the case, read on. I imagine you'll see the Shakespeare more clearly in this next one:


And with that, we can cycle back to the first comic and use Paige's line as support for the claim that she's studying Shakespeare in her classes during this school year.

Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).


Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Henry Winkler Meets William Shakespeare in Henry Winkler Meets William Shakespeare

Henry Winkler Meets William Shakespeare
. Dir. Jeff Bleckner. Perf. Henry Winkler, Tom Aldredge, Bruce Bouchard, and Kevin Kline. 1977.

I wasn't a Shakespeare prodigy by any means, but this after-school special from 1977 would certainly have appealed to me when I was growing up. And it appeals to me now, though perhaps in different ways.

The plot of the show centers on Henry Winkler taking a group of schoolchildren to see one of the places he loves best: The Theatre.  More specifically, that's the American Shakespeare Theatre of Stratford, Connecticut. There, Shakespeare appears, together with some of his players, and they explore what the modern age thinks of Shakespeare's works.

Here's a quick sample that shows Shakespeare first appearing in 1977 in the United States of America and then goes on to show a well-acted scene from The Taming of the Shrew—with Bruce Bouchard as Kate and a very young version of the inimitable Kevin Kline as Petruchio.


Yes, it has a 1970s after-school special production vibe, but it's still an intriguing and educational resource. Should you need more, the link to the full video is below.

Links: The Film at IMDB. The Complete Film at YouTube.

Monday, July 22, 2024

Great River Shakespeare Festival 2024

Hamlet
. Dir. Doug Scholz-Carlson. Perf. Tarah Flanagan, Melissa Maxwell, Will Sturdivant, Christopher Gerson, Michael Fitzpatrick, Emily Fury Daly, Benjamin Boucvalt, Daniel Ajak, and Diana Coates. Great River Shakespeare Festival. Winona, Minnesota. 2024.
Much Ado About Nothing. Dir. 
Gaby Rodriguez. Perf. Melissa Maxwell, Will Sturdivant, Tarah Flanagan, Christopher Gerson, Marina Narveaz, Izzy Heckman, Michael Fitzpatrick, Emily Fury Daly, Benjamin Boucvalt, Daniel Ajak, and Diana Coates. Great River Shakespeare Festival. Winona, Minnesota. 2024.

I'm afraid I'm coming late to the GRSF party this year. I always promise myself to go early in the season so that I can (1) possibly go back for more and (2) personally promote the plays perpetually. But this summer got away from me somewhat.

But my FOMO will be alleviated this Friday when I go see both Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing.

I have never been anything but utterly delighted by a Great River Shakespeare Festival production. They do astonishing things every single time. From the Twin Cities, it's a two-hour drive, but it would be worth a much longer trip.

I'll be able to tell you more next week, but the plays only run through Sunday. So watch these trailers and get your tickets now!



Don't suffer from FOMO no mo. Go see these plays. 

Links: The Great River Shakespeare Festival. The Great River Shakespeare Festival on Instagram.






Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Star Trek: Picard and Julius Caesar

“The Last Generation.” By Terry Matalas. Perf. LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Marina SirtisPatrick Stewart, and Brent Spiner. Dir. Terry Matalas. Star Trek: Picard. Season 3, episode 10. Paramount+. 20 April 2023. DVD. Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment, 2023.

We conclude our search for Shakespeare in Star Trek: Picard with the very last scene from the very last episode.

Spoiler Alert: Everything gets wrapped up quite neatly in Season Three (which is probably the best of the not-so-great show), and a toast is requested. Admiral Jean-Luc Picard obliges with a speech from Julius Caesar:


The speech is taken from the second (and duller) half of the play. Julius Caesar has been assassinated, Mark Anthony has gathered his troops, Brutus and his forces are fighting for their survival, and Caesar's ghost has not yet appeared to Brutus to utter his foreboding prophecy. Brutus speaks to Cassius:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which[,] taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures. (IV.iii.218–24) 

The speech is appropriate, but it might have been more appropriate at any of a dozen other points in the season—points where a brave and daring decision actually needed to be made. Here, it seems to suggest that not taking the flood means heading off to bed after a long day (and a long season of battles and betrayal) and taking the flood means playing a few rounds of poker.

The line that immediately precedes the famous speech is "We, at the height, are ready to decline" (IV.iii.217). It's part of Brutus' overarching argument: Our army is only going to get weaker from here, so we must strike while we're at our strongest. It's hard for me not to apply that to, at the very least, Season One of Star Trek: Picard . . . or, rather, to the last season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Then, the stories with these characters were at their height; Seasons One and Two of Star Trek: Picard show everything in decline. 

But we also get Will Riker's anti-climactic addition to the speech: "We're grateful to have ridden the tide with you." It's a nice sentiment, but it takes the speech from a heroic determination to face the future come what may to a nostalgic reflection on the past when they were "at their height."

Still, Season Three catches the potential of the show more than the other two seasons. And it's great to hear noted Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart (who, I suspect, had something to do with the inclusion of Shakespeare here) wrap things up with a strong performance of a strong speech from Shakespeare.

The Episode at IMDB.

For more connections between Star Trek and Shakespeare, head to Shakespeare and Star Trek Complete.

Click below to purchase the complete series from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).


Monday, July 8, 2024

Book Note: The Shakespeare in the Catskills Mystery Series

Duncan, Elizabeth J. Untilmely Death. New York: Crooked Lane, 2015.

———.Ill Met by Murder. New York: Crooked Lane, 2016.
———. Much Ado About Murder. New York: Crooked Lane, 2017.
Because I was going to be away from the grid for a while, I searched my library's electronic book holdings for anything related to Shakespeare. That's how I came upon Ill Met by Murder, the second of three books in the "Shakespeare i' th' Catskills" mystery series.

I knew from the first that it was not going to be a good book, but I held out because of the Shakespeare.

But, honestly. A murder mystery where everyone ignores the murder and worries a lot more about a dognapping? And a murder mystery where no one goes about trying to solve the murder . . . But it just ends up solved? It seemed barely to fit the genre.

In addition, everyone spoke like they were reading from a script the entire time—whether they were in the play or not.

We were also give a lot of meticulous detail, which is often quite interesting; however, in this case, we got meticulous detail about things we can't possible care about.

Finally, there wasn't much Shakespeare—and what there was didn't integrate in any way with the plot of the novel.

Undaunted (well, honestly, a little bit daunted), I tried another. I mistakenly thought I had read the first in the series, and I hoped that they would get better. Instead, I took a step back to the first book, and it wasn't much better. But Untimely Death had a bit more Shakespeare in it. The plot involves a troupe of actors who are invited to do a special performance of Midsummer Night's Dream the day before the big society wedding. I'll give you a flavor of it:



Being either a glutton for punishment or having a moderate completeness disorder, I then turned to Much Ado About Murder to round things out.

I did get more Shakespeare—and more connections between the plot of the murder mystery and the plot of Shakespeare's play, but the way Much Ado About Nothing was employed strained credulity. The company has to bring in a new director, and he wants to set the play just after the Civil War. "Ah," I thought. "An interesting decision. I wonder how it will work out and we'll be able to notice about the play that we might not otherwise see."

Instead, everyone in the cast and crew absolutely freaks out—as if they'd never heard of changing Shakespeare's setting and are deeply offended and incensed at the mere idea. Here's chapter five, in which that decision is revealed and we see the initial reactions:










I'll let you read the rest of the novel to see if this directorial decision becomes the motive for murder or not.

The idea for the series had potential, but it certainly doesn't live up to it.

Click below, if you must, to purchase the books from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

  

Friday, July 5, 2024

Shakespeare in FoxTrot's And When She Opened The Closet, All The Clothes Were Polyester

Amend, Bill. And When She Opened The Closet, All The Clothes Were Polyester. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2007.

Subtle Shakespeare allusions were the rule for several of our most recent FoxTrot Fridays.

But And When She Opened The Closet, All The Clothes Were Polyester comes through with more direct Shakespeare.

Mostly.

Well, two out of three ain't bad!

First, Andy is going over Paige's essay on Romeo and Juliet:


I find that to be enjoyably clever.

Next up, the subtle one. See if you can spot the Shakespeare:


Well done! You saw that Andy is alluding to Hamlet's speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, scene ii: "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable!" Of course, she's using it a bit more ironically, but still.

Finally, Peter has a Hamlet essay due soon:


The joke may be a bit typical, but it's played out masterfully, with carefully-planned timing and a great look on Peter's face as he makes his final admission.

Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Star Trek: Picard and Macbeth

“Penance.” By Akiva Goldsman, Terry Matalas, and Christopher Monfette. Perf. Patrick Stewart and John de Lancie. Dir. Doug Aarniokoski. Star Trek: Picard. Season 2, episode 2. Paramount+. 10 March 2022. DVD. Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment, 2023.

Shakespeare doesn't appear often in Star Trek: Picard, but we just have to take what we can get.

In this episode, Q returns for yet another test—either of humanity in general or of Picard specifically. When he starts to allude to his plan (in his usual ambiguous manner), Q suggests that Picard is guilty of something and that his guilt is akin to Macbeth's. For Q, the answer to Macbeth's query "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?" is decidedly in the negative:


I've noted that Star Trek: Picard is, in general, all kinds of terrible, and Season Two seems to be the worst of the three. That applies to its use of Shakespeare. Instead of carrying this allusion forward, making oblique or direct reference to it during the rest of the season and wrapping the season up with some great Shakespeare-related insight, this is it.

Perhaps there will be something in Season Three that provides more Shakespeare. We can but hope.

The Episode at IMDB.

For more connections between Star Trek and Shakespeare, head to Shakespeare and Star Trek Complete.

Click below to purchase the complete series from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

Monday, July 1, 2024

Book Note: What Was Shakespeare Really Like?

Wells, Stanley. What Was Shakespeare Really Like?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Stanley Wells rarely disappoints, excelling as he does in both scholarship and communication. He's one of those authors (like Simon Winchester) whose works I'll always read, no matter the topic. Fortunately, Wells' topics are strongly centered in Shakespeare.

What was Shakespeare Really Like? is a brief, engaging look at Shakespeare and his works in four sections:
  1. What Manner of Man Was He?
  2. How Did Shakespeare Write a Play?
  3. What Do the Sonnets Tell Us about Their Author?
  4. What Made Shakespeare Laugh?
The sample I'll provide is from the first section, and it demonstrates the right balance between acknowledging what we don't know, what we do know, and reasonable speculation, and Wells mostly maintains that method. However, in the third section, like all Shakespeare scholars who work to find specific biographical elements in the sonnets, Wells goes off the rails a bit. But the exuberance of the book's prose makes that easy to overlook.

Here's part of Wells' "What Manner of Man Was He?" section (the nifty ribbon bookmark usefully crosses out sections you can skip). Note the proper tentative-yet-reasonable beats of the argument: "We can think . . . . We can deduce . . . . We can observe . . . ." 






If that doesn't convince you that you should seek out and read this book at your earliest convenience—and it really should!—then let me point you toward the epilogue. I was aware of most of the points that Wells made in the book (but thrilled to have them related in his compelling style), but the epilogue was mostly new to me. It's titled "Eight decades with Shakespeare—and More," and it provides a brief biographical sketch of Wells' career. The directions Shakespeare studies have taken over those decades (combined with Wells' various roles in its development) was utterly fascinating.

And, with that cliffhanger, I leave you, hoping to encourage you even more to track down Stanley Wells' What Was Shakespeare Really Like?

Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).





Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest