Teen Shakespeare

So we went to see Shakespeare in the Park today, even though it's not summer yet and that should have clued us in as to what to expect. First off, there was no lawn! Just two tiny strips of grass that sloped downhill from the stage, divided by a bike path. The show itself, A Midsummer Night's Dream, was recognizably a college production: mismatched costumes seemingly taken at random from the actors' closets (the velvet tracksuit, the low-rise jeans), and line readings cycling through the four basic types of Shakespearean over-enunciation--declamatory, angry, beseeching, and seductive--also seemingly at random. The whole production team consisted of one guy to the side of the stage hitting various things with sticks, and at one point he wandered off to take a cell phone call. As one friend said, the parodic play-within-a-play pretty accurately captured the spirit of the whole thing--a ridiculous but high-spirited amateurishness. It has a certain charm.

I hadn't thought about this play for a while, and--wow! First of all, it's obviously impervious to the vissicitudes of production, because if this version couldn't ruin it . . . The unmagical quality of the production also meant that you could see Shakespeare's brain more clearly than usual: the incredible efficiency of the storytelling, the tension between rigid structure and inventiveness, the orderly interweaving of the different plots always just managing to contain their centrifugal force . . .

But what I'd really forgotten is how cynical the play is about love. Maybe all of Shakespeare's marriage comedies are, because the fairy potions, the disguises, the mistaken identities all seem like ways of talking about the same thing, which is love's cruelty. In this play, love is an arbitrary, miserable compulsion, an open wound. Love meets with scorn; love turns into scorn; love is about vulnerability and vulnerability is about contempt.

To illustrate: two friends, Helena and Hermia, each love a different man, but both men love Hermia. Helena's scorned love has the purity of desperation. She completely debases herself: she says, "I am your spaniel." But neither her devotion nor her being generally considered a pretty good catch has any effect on her man, who is willing to say to her face, "I am sick when I do look on thee." A fairy prince tries to fix this unfair situation magically, but his assistant mixes things up. Suddenly, both men love Helena. The scene is chilling: neither woman understands what has happened. When Hermia reaches out for her lover, he says, "Out, loated medicine! Hated potion, hence!" He says he hates her, that he never wants to see her again. Bewildered, she reaches out again. Meanwhile, Helena doesn't buy the sudden reversal and begs the men not to mock her. This scene is not funny, and it is not about the supernatural; it is about the door between two people slamming shut. In the end Helena gets her man, but only because the fairy spell stays on him; their love is not real or permanent. The wall can always come down between them, and in that condition, trust is for fools. It's no accident that in the play-within-a-play Pyramus and Thisbe kiss through a wall; the truest and tenderest love, maybe, is the one that is already destroyed.

Or the truest and tenderest love in the play may actually be for the players themselves. Flawed and ridiculous as they are, they inspire and seem to be created out of a deep fondness that seems more genuine than anything the lovers feel for each other. This thought has been formulated many ways: agape versus eros, bros before hos. There's a mixture in it of disillusionment, renunciation, consolation, and hope. I don't know if I'm glad or not to see it here, in one of Shakespeare's sunniest plays (despite its nighttime setting). I appreciate the wisdom, but romantic that I am, I guess I just want to think that the Bard was happy with someone.

Pithy

Next to one line of my poem: "This is the dynamite." Next to the next line: "This is the tender swaddling." Isn't that a nice way for my latest poetry-professor-hero to put it? I'd like all of my poems to contain both dynamite and tender swaddling. It's a side benefit of studying with poets that they say really pithy things about your work. My favorite, though it wasn't exactly a compliment, is still that my poems have an "I was raised by wolves" clarity. The point was that this quality is trying on the nerves. I mean, of course it's trying! What do you think it's like to live with it?!

(I was not really raised by wolves, though I was raised in a cave and therefore don't know anything about the 80s.)

Life, ungrammatically

Anne Carson is a genius with the comma splice, she makes me want to use it to excess.


I loved the train today, I was thrillingly unconscious the whole way to Boston.

It was probably eighty degrees, the sun was shining, the North End is fancier now, luckily the binnoculars are exactly the same.

Josh is a year older, so are Shakespeare and Nabokov.

The sea of people looked sad, I guess the Red Sox lost.

I still don't know what you do with being sad, I guess you talk about other things.

My grandfather died last night.

I was on my way and I didn't make it in time, but I'm here now (Connecticut).

Bloggie

I don't know why I've been having so much trouble getting back on and staying on the horse. I guess . . . well, sometimes I feel like I need to get out of my own head, not give freer rein to my interior monologue. I mean, look at all these "I"s. Sometimes they just kind of gross me out. (Other times, not.)

Tomorrow at midnight I leave for NYC, for a sad reason. What do you do with being sad?

Business

The presentation of my witty essay on Totem and Taboo went well. It was a funny discussion about Freud; all the men were like "this is so sexist, it's nothing but offensive bullshit," and the women were all like "duh, now let's talk about what we can take from it." But there was a kind of sizzle in the room that was nice; the professor (whom I adore) referred to it as a classroom moment in which "something happened."

Now onto business. It's blog season! This means that friends who have not been updating, please start updating. Friends who are thinking of starting blogs, it's time to start them now. I mean it! (Note that this is purely selfish. I need stuff to read.)

Hi Blogland

I just wanted to say hi. I do miss you.

Tonight J, B, D and I had Indonesian food and then this irresistible energy took hold and turned into a spontaneous trip to the suburbs to find a Dairy Queen. Last night a few afterschool beers turned into a spontaneous dinner party--with moules frites! Which you may know represent the height of festiveness for me (or a height, at least). So on the culinary front, things have been good. Also, Columbia University has been proved to have good judgment, which makes me very pleased.

This is my campus.

Happy Easter

Kingdom of daylight's dorphin

Sorry, Hopkins, but I always think of your line when I get that rare unpredictable endorphin high from running.

I might start this up again for real soon. In my head I have been mulling over posts about being an academic and about ant invasions. I think you will enjoy them if they ever come to fruition, fulfillment, or even a very good dinner.

You might be interested to know, I now have bangs.

One year ago

Thanks to Tia for the photo.