(DK image library, uploaded by Onomastic)
Sonnet 64
When I have seen by time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometimes lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry Ocean gain
Advantage on the Kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep, to have that which it fears to lose.
.
.
Sonnet 65
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth,
nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
Oh, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but that decays?
Oh, fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
Oh, none, unless this miracle have might:
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
.
Say what you will about the old white dude -- on love and death, he had it down.
Today,
admirers of that ever-living poet and touchstone of English literature, William Shakespeare, celebrate the 460th anniversary of this great (by some called greatest) writer's birth, in the then-obscure country town of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in 1564.
Today is also the 408th anniversary of the same man's death, claiming him in the same small town, on his 52nd birthday, in 1616.
How weird a councidence is that? Apparently, not as weird as it might seem: the birthday effect. (Warning: anyone with a birthday in the offing might want to consider before reading.)
Also, well actually, tbh, er...the April 23 birthdate is only a guess. Official records at the time hardly concerned themselves with anything so mundane as getting born.
Baptism was what counted. William Shakespeare's took place on April 26. Three days might be a typical interval between birth and baptism. So.
Fittingly, April 23 is also the traditional feast day of St. George, dragon-slayer and patron saint of England.
So the choice of this day to celebrate William Shakespeare's birth is essentially a matter of neatness and convenience. His death day is more certain.
No matter. We're stuck with the historical records we have, and after all, every saint's day in the calendar is a matter of convention. :-)
After those poems, what is there to add, about love and death, or time and change, and survival?
Not much: perhaps a note of the irony, that the poet's emotion of love still shines, while the lover's name has disappeared in darkness. Yet that blank where a name might have stood, is what has made those verses universal.
But enough maundering.
Shakespeare's own name is never out of the news.
So a bit of
The latest on his most famous rumination on love and death...
...in London
Roughly 425 years after first hitting the boards, Romeo and Juliet is still raising passions and seems as if it may continue to do so, until the curtain drops on the human species.
Earlier this month, London's Jamie Lloyd Company suffered "a barrage of deplorable racist abuse" online after casting Black actor/composer Francesca Ameduwah-Rivers opposite Tom Holland (Billy Elliott: The Musical/Spiderman) in their forthcoming Romeo & Juliet. The company isn't backing down and has announced that any further abuse will be reported.
(Another Black British actor, Nina Bowers, on what it's like to land the Shakespearean "role of a lifetime and then find yourself thrown into a media frenzy of vitriol.")
The Guardian:
Lloyd is known for mounting bold, megastar-led versions of classic plays…Romeo & Juliet is billed as “a pulsating new vision of Shakespeare’s immortal tale of wordsmiths, rhymers, lovers and fighters”....Shakespeare’s text will be edited by Nima Taleghani, an actor who has worked with Lloyd’s company and played Mr Farouk in Netflix’s Heartstopper.
Further to his credit,
The director, who runs the Jamie Lloyd Company, is also known for a commitment to making theatre more affordable for younger audiences. For Romeo & Juliet, 10,000 tickets will be priced at £25 and under, with 5,000 of these exclusively reserved for those under the age of 30, key workers and those receiving government benefits.
...in New York
In some kind of synchronicity:
"Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler to lead 'brutal' Romeo + Juliet on Broadway."
Zegler is best known for her film debut as Maria in Steven Spielberg's 2021 film, West Side Story, which was a remake of the 1961 film, which was based on the 1957 Broadway musical, which was -- of course -- itself a revisioning of Romeo and Juliet.
Connor plays a leading character in the extremely popular, multi-award winning Netflix teen LGBTQ comedy-drama serial, Heartstopper (based on a graphic novel by Alice Oseman), whose third season airs later this year.
Director, Sam Gold, has racked up a catalogue of accomplishments far too numerous even to summarize.
“With the presidential election coming up in November, I felt like making a show this fall that celebrates youth and hope, and unleashes the anger young people feel about the world they are inheriting,” Gold said in a statement.…
The official synopsis reads: “The youth are fucked. Left to their own devices in their parents’ world of violent ends, an impulsive pair of star-crossed lovers hurtle towards their inescapable fate. The intoxicating high of passion quickly descends into a brutal chaos that can only end one way.”
The Guardian adds:
New music will come from Grammy winner Jack Antonoff, the singer and musician known for his many collaborations with Taylor Swift.
To be, or not to be....?
...in Chicago
Now this, last month, was something different. Albeit, again…
PrideArts’ production is actually an adaptation of an adaptation. Shakespeare’s R&J is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s original written in 1999 by Joe Calarco, who set the play in an exclusive boys-only prep school. Amber Mandley, who directed PrideArts’ version...changed the story to revolve around an all-female cast instead. The four protagonists are girls at a boarding school who sneak out of their dormitories at night to act out Shakespeare’s play.
A review in University of Chicago's student newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, is more about what the performance does than the invividual actors or their performances.
R&J opens with the bedtime prayer routines at a Catholic boarding school. The real story begins only after the lights flicker out. The girls leap out of bed and race each other up and down the stairs to find a place to rehearse in.…
The first lines of Shakespeare’s play are delivered with such vigor and energy that...[t]ragedy is reduced to comedy.
....this is not meant to be a faithful recreation of the play, but a group of adolescents’ exploration of their identities through the medium of the play. There are no fixed positions or identities in this production; every girl takes on an assortment of roles, and we are expected to fill in the blanks ourselves. Tybalt is the Nurse, Mercutio is Friar Lawrence, and the transitions between these roles are jarring at times. Yet the fluidity of roles—made necessary by the deliberately small cast of four—perfectly encapsulates the timelessness of the play: you do not have to be a Montague or a Capulet to experience the agony of unrequited love.
...They tackle the initial scenes with comical exaggeration and slapstick, but as the play progresses, they become consumed by the fervor of the romance and the tragedy....[T]he consummation of Juliet and Romeo’s marriage is also delightfully subtle and tasteful. In stark contrast to the suggestive play-fighting staged during the earlier acts, the two lovers share a kiss under a red veil that symbolizes their desire for each other....But then the red veil takes on a double meaning as it gradually descends over the lovers: its redness is suggestive of their love, yet it covers them, shielding their lovemaking—and their love—from the audience. It reminded me of the dark velvet curtains that protects the actors standing in the wings of a stage from the scrutiny of their audiences. In this world, the girls choose Romeo and Juliet as their cover, hiding themselves from the judgment and shame of adolescence with a veil of fiction.
Tbh this sounds potentially even more interesting, conceptually, if far less polished, than even London or Broadway -- the distinguished casting apart. If anyone here gets to see either, it would be nice to hear.
....and in Baltimore
Right now the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is puttin on a version set "in gritty 1975 Baltimore."
Shakespeare Company and Director Gerrad Alex Taylor have funkdafied this classic. It’s a hit with more soul than you can control.
In this Romeo and Juliet, soulful hit songs like “Fight the Power” and “Get Down Tonight” blast from a jukebox. In this Romeo and Juliet, it’s soon after the Vietnam War, and the women’s and gay rights are in dispute.
That one I might even have a chance to see.
While reviewer William Powell reminds (or informs) us:
The story can be traced back as far as a 1476 tale by Masuccio Salernitano. Luigi da Porto wrote a version of Salernitano’s tale in 1525, and Matteo Bandello adapted that version in 1554. Then there was Pierre Boaistuau’s 1559 version and Arthur Brooke’s 1562 version.
Coincidentally and by the bye, here on DK, Angmar last Friday led a discussion about the nature of time, more scientific and philosophical than poetic, which led to some interesting discussion. And The Conversation carried a piece suggesting that "logic alone" could prove Time doesn't exist.
Which might prove all Shakespeare's angst about time either illusory or trivial, if -- but I leave that to you. ;-)
Meanwhile, Happy Birth/Deathday to the deathless dead poet par excellence, and to the works, which carry on, ever taken up by other minds and other hands.
Not nearly enough room for all the candles. May there be many more. (DK image library)
