Reflections on Shakespeare

I was thinking earlier about my experience with Shakespeare. It has been a long and interesting road. I first encountered Shakespeare at the high school level. I was home schooled and back in the eighties there wasn't a lot to choose from. In order to have a curriculum my parents used the A Beka program. It is a horrid program that my Dad hated, but was all that was out there. By the age of 15 I had developed a life-long hatred for their "history" material. I loved literature, but their English books were quite bad. Understand that by the time I was doing high school material my reading level was far beyond my years. Yes I was reading Agatha Christie and Louis L'Amour, but I also had discovered on my parent's shelves The Inferno, The Iliad, The Odyssey, and others. I also read all of the history I could find.

I remember my first Shakespeare text was The Merchant of Venice. Later I discovered how much those hacks at A Beka had edited the text. Miserable. I didn't like it at all. So you can imagine how much I dreaded my next experience. The play Julius Caesar was my next experience. It was edited and a bit boring. At least until I reached Marc Antony's speech. I was captivated with how he manipulated the crowd. It just so happened that our little library in Ringgold, Louisiana had a video of a production of Julius Caesar starring Charlton Heston as Antony. I checked it out and watched it on a little portable TV/VCR unit in my room. I learned two things that day. Shakespeare was amazing and the censors that edited the texts for A Beka Books were illiterate morons. The next day my mother took me back to the library. There I found Orson Welles' production of MacBeth. I was hooked again. Before the next year was my aunt had loaned my a copy of Kenneth Branaugh's Henry V that she had recorded on HBO. It was a new production at that time. I also saw Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.

Now jump forward to college. My freshman English class was another life changing experience.  I was lucky enough to have a professor who knew how to teach and also had an infectious passion for literature. There was a traveling Shakespeare company known as the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express that came to visit during my first semester. They put on a minimalist production of three plays every tour. That season it was MacBeth, Merchant of Venice, and Comedy of Errors. I went to see Comedy of Errors on my own. I also took my aunt and her husband. I was hooked again. In our English class we read Merchant of Venice and went as a class to see the performance. I was astounded. I loved this play. The morons at A Beka had cut the very heart out of the play (pun intended). I saw that troupe many times over the coming years. Such memories. MacBeth, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It and so many more.

In that same freshman English class I wrote a film review of Zeffirelli's Hamlet starring Mel Gibson (fascinating, but weird). We read Hamlet and also saw a production of the play by the college theater. It was a pretty good production as I remember. By this time I was forever hooked on Shakespeare.

In the summer of '94 I did a study program hosted at Oxford University. One of my classes was Shakespeare: Page and Stage. We went every week to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform. I saw Coriolanus, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry V, and King Lear. It was an interesting experience. It was my first time to see Shakespeare done by a large professional company. At the time, and to this day, I still prefer the minimalist approach, but it was a fascinating experience. I loved Coriolanus. I remember that the actor who played the title character was quite good. The actor's name was Toby Stephens. Later he would appear as the villain in the James Bond film Die Another Day. Henry V was very disappointing. I had loved Branaugh's production. The actor playing Henry seemed confused and unsure. I remember during an intermission telling one of my professors that I wouldn't follow him down the street much less "once more into the breach." She laughed and agreed. Of course that actor Iain Glenn has gone on in recent years to star in Season 2 of Downton Abbey and now as Jorah Mormont in the HBO series Game of Thrones.

The production of Lear at the Barbican in London was weird. At the time I knew none of the actors So all I could judge was the performance that I saw. As I went online to see the names of the actors I saw so many years ago I was astonished to learn what I had seen. The actor playing Lear was none other than the great Robert Stephens. He didn't seem great to me. I remember commenting later that he played Lear like he was stoned. Two weeks later I learned in a conversation on the trip home that he had indeed left the production and checked himself into rehab. I may have seen his last performance as an actor. He died the following year. The highlight of the performance was the actor who played Edgar: Simon Russell Beale. He was performance was one of the greatest I have ever seen from an actor on the stage.

Since those college days I have seen other performances on stage and film. I loved Ian McKellan's Richard III and saw Brannaugh's Hamlet. I first learned to loathe Baz Luhrman after watching the travesty that he had the nerve to call Romeo and Juliet (and I don't even like that play). The first summer out of college all of my friends were out of town so I spent my weekends in my new apartment watching the BBC productions of Shakespeare and putting together jigsaw puzzles. My alma mater (where I work) put on an excellent production of The Tempest. I also helped my aunt out as "technical director" for her middle school and high school productions of Much Ado About Nothing, Comedy of Errors, and Midsummer Night's Dream. (By technical director I mean I ran sound, hammered nails, and spent a lot of time yelling at teenagers to behave and to enunciate.) It was a a great experience.

Of course once my kids came along it has not been possible to go to the theater. When you have two autistic sons you spend a lot more time at home. I often wonder what would have happened if our little library in Ringgold had not carried that video. What if I had gone to Ringgold High School (shudder)? I was fortunate that my parents always encouraged my reading so I was free to experience the wonders of the classics while others were taught by poor teachers and came to dislike reading. It has been a number of years since I last encountered Shakespeare. Perhaps I need to get my hands on those classic recordings made by the BBC. There are a lot of great film production available. Some good radio productions as well.

This has been a lot longer than I usually like to go on, but it was a fun trip down memory lane. If you stuck around thanks for sharing. No go see some Shakespeare.

What can you do?

Doesn't look like much does it? It's only 32 cents. If you spend four times that amount you can get a single soft drink or bottle of water. What can you do with 32 cents? Well, if you were to put that aside every day you could donate $10 a month. That would mean $120 a year. Maybe you think that the needs out there are too big and that your little $120 doesn't help. That's where you are wrong. It does when you work with others. See, 1,000 people doing the same thing would bring in $120,000. That's big money to some places. For the cost of one Starbucks regular coffee a week you could help make a difference. Did you graduate from college? Give to your college. Maybe give to a food bank, or a fund for homeless children. Don't just throw it around, be wise with your giving. The truth is that all of us can do a lot with a little if we work together.

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