Henry IV, Part One

What joys does this play offer an actor?  The personal and political relationships are complex, subtle--there are infinite ways to play most of these characters.  The shades of meaning, the ambiguity of purpose--so many of the characters offer the chance for original interpretation (particularly if the actor shows some bravery--most of the characters could be played dully, too).  The language is evocative: most of the characters are capable of creative imagery, clever turns of speech.  Falstaff did not meet my expectations in print, but alive on stage, he must be something altogether new.

My favorite passage:

Glendower:  I cannot blame him. At my nativity

The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes

Of burning cressets, and at my birth

The frame and huge foundation of the earth

Shaked like a coward.

Hotspur:  Why, so it would have done at the same season if your mother's cat had but kittened, though yourself had never been born.

Glendower: I say the earth did shake when I was born.

A close second:

Falstaff: 'Tis not due yet: I would be loath to pay him before his day.  What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me?  Well, 'tis no matter; honor pricks me on.  Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on?  How then?  Can honor set to a leg?  Or an arm?  No.  Or take away the grief of a wound? No.  Honor hath no skill in surgery then?  No.  What is honor?  A word.  What is in that word honor?  What is honor?  Air--a trim reckoning!  Who hath it?  He that died a Wednesday.  Doth he feel it?  No.  Doth he hear it?  No. 'Tis insensible then?  Yea, to the dead.  But will it not live with the living?  No.  Why?  Detraction will not suffer it.  Therefore I'll none of it.  Honor is a mere scutcheon--and so ends my catechism.

The Merchant of Venice

A Reader-response tour through Shakespeare's plays continues.

In acts four and five, I found myself more riveted to the text than I can ever recall being while reading Shakespeare.

If the world is a stage, what matter is the role we choose to play. 

Antonio: I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,

A stage, where every man must play a part,

And mine a sad one.

Gratiano: Let me play the fool, (I.i. 80-83)

Though the world as stage is a common expression in Shakespeare, this particular passage uniquely hits me.  The emphasis is on the characters acting their roles--and if the world is a stage, we the players must consider our roles upon it.

I have a recurring dream in which I am an actor, but while on stage I struggle to remember my lines, my blocking, the scene I'm in, even the play I'm in.  I sometimes think this dream is where I play out my tension in life, where I may feel like I am acting a part, and I fear that soon an audience will discover that I really don't know what I'm doing.  And I'm also a recovering existentialist, so I do find this focus on the roles we choose to play interesting.   So there are reasons a passage like this draws me.

But it also makes me think about the importance of character in drama.  In fiction or poetry, there are many elements of the work that can be ascendant.  But in performed drama, character must be ascendant--it is the actors upon the stage which must command our attention.  If 20th century dramatists like Beckett, Pinter, or Stoppard worked toward abolishing the traditional conventions of drama, perhaps their greatest challenge was smashing consistent characters.

Shylock

Is any racism in the play offset by the playwright's giving to Shylock this, as poignant a passage as any in Shakespeare?

"I am a Jew.  Hath not a Jew eyes?  Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?  fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?  If you prick us, do we not bleed?  If you tickle us, do we not laugh?  If you poison us, do we not die?" (III.i)

I have trouble believing it was an anti-Semite that wrote these lines.  Furthermore, when Shylock is accused of cruelty, he counters the accusation by referencing the cruelty of the Christian world.  In Act 3, scene 1:

"And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?  If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.  If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?  Revenge.  If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?  Why, revenge.  The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

And in Act 4, scene 1, lines 90-100:

"Duke: How shalt thou hope for mercy, rend'ring none?

Shylock: What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?

You have among you many a purchased slave,

Which, like your asses and your dogs and your mules,

You use in abject and in slavish parts,

Because you bought them.  Shall I say to you,

'Let them be free, marry them to your heirs!

Why sweat they under burdens?  Let their beds

Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates

Be seasoned with such viands'?  You will answer,

'The slaves are ours.'"

Appearances and Disguise

In Act 3, scene 2, Bassanio has a lengthy speech on distrusting appearances, and later in the play Portia and Nerissa disguise themselves as men.  I've noted before that the disconnect between appearance and reality is a common theme in literature and in my lit course.  It goes further: in the composition class I teach this semester, our first unit is on Fairy Tales with an emphasis on Cinderella.  A common theme we find in Fairy Tales is deceit, disguise, and the importance of distrusting appearances.  This is theme is runs deep--it is old and ubiquitous, appearing in stories from many ages and told for many audiences.

Antonio's Nonresistance

I often read books on religious pacifism (notably works by Yoder and Tolstoy) which emphasize the Christian command not to return evil with evil, to respond to threat of violence with internal and external peace.  Antonio's words as he prepares to face his own violent death strike me as an expression in the Christian pacifist vein:

                               "I do oppose

My patience to his fury, and am armed

To suffer with a quietness of spirit

The very tyranny and rage of his." (IV.i.11-14)

Mercy and Justice

I might also here reference one of the firmest lessons I took from the religion of my youth--because you are forgiven your sins, you must forgive others their sins against you.  Says a disguised Portia:

"Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That, in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation.  We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy." (IV.i.203-207)

Jesus tells a parable about a servant being forgiven a large debt, then demanding immediate payment from another servant for a small debt; when the master who forgave the large debt hears about that, he gets angry and punishes the servant.  This theme is shown in the treatment (or is it cheating?) of Shylock--he cruelly withheld mercy, and is thus treated with no mercy.   Yet I see a contradiction.  Isn't it a form of "justice" to withhold mercy from Shylock because he withheld mercy?  And didn't Portia just tout mercy over justice?  To follow the standard Portia asked of Shylock, they should now mercifully forgive Shylock, letting him go on his way without punishing him.  Though the Duke and Antonio grant him some leniency, they still do punish Shylock (pretty severely, I would think).  Shylock gets his "just" reward because he demanded justice instead of mercy--and the very people who asked him to show mercy are not now willing to show him terribly much mercy at all.

The theme of mercy gets a more light-hearted treatment in Act 5, when Portia and Nerissa forgive their husbands for giving away their rings.

Sprigs on a Barrel Organ

Dostoevsky's underground man insists on irrational motivations driving human behavior, and that furthermore, these irrational drives are directly tied to free will.  Here's what Shylock has to say:

"Some men there are love not a gaping pig,

Some that are mad if they behold a cat,

And others, when the bagpipe sings i' th' nose,

Cannot contain their urine; for affection,

Master of passion, sways it to the mood

Of what it likes or loathes.  Now for your answer:

As there is no firm reason to be rend'red

Why he cannot abide a gaping pig,

Why he a harmless necessary cat,

Why he a woolen bagpipe, but of force

Must yield to such inevitable shame

As to offend, himself being offended,

So can I give no reason, nor I will not." (IV.i.48-60)

This passage perhaps makes us sprigs on a barrel organ: though we don't know the psychological reasons we loathe certain things, nonetheless we do, and are compelled beyond our will to respond in certain ways to those things we loathe.  It is not a free unreason--there are many schools of psychology that could try take us beyond "there is no firm reason."

Playing the Joker

I've learned that being a parent means you still get to watch all the movies, you just have to wait about six months.

I was extremely excited to see The Dark Knight for one reason: Heath Ledger playing the Joker. I love to watch Jack Nicholson, and appreciated his Joker in Batman, and I loved Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain (the film left me in uncontrolled, sobbing, hide-in-the-bathroom tears). So after months of know people were raving about Ledger's performance (while taking deliberate care not to read about why they were raving), I spent much of the movie just waiting for the Joker's scenes (in Slings & Arrows, Geoffrey Tennant tells the young actor playing Hamlet that it's all about the soliloquies: it's what people are there to see, and if he can nail those, the dialogue is easy. And indeed, it was just before a soliloquy that the critic in the audience grins and readies his pen). So if I say the Joker's scenes stole the movie, that may be a slanted perspective (or it may be the white, purple, red, and green contrasted so much with the black and orange that dominated the rest of the film).

I think both Ledger and Nicholson played the part with restraint, but a very different type of restraint. Nicholson's Joker is cool, smooth, his movements controlled. Ledger's Joker is twitchy. A twitchy restrained chaos: head hunched and twisted, hands in motion, halting spasms, a voice almost whiny even as it is both comical and frightening. Both played a character that could make any movements at any moment, that could perform any sort of chaotic, irrational, senseless action--but that for the most part didn't. Ledger's Joker is more unhinged. I don't know which I enjoyed more--Ledger's Joker is a little more fun, but Nicholson's Joker is...well...Nicholson. I don't know--I should probably rewatch Batman before commenting more.

There's just a chance that neither was actually as good as Cesar Romero. The problem for Romero is that he was a Joker stuck in a Gotham just as colorful and silly as him, a foil to a campy Batman. Imagine taking Romero's Joker out of the campy Gotham, and sticking him in Tim Burton's Batman or Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. Romero's Joker would have been the real chaotic contrast to Michael Keaton's or Christian Bale's Batman.

Acting and the Creative Act

A contrapuntal essay

In "The Existential Clown" in The Atlantic, James Parker writes about actor Jim Carrey as an artist, whose films show a consistency of vision:

"Jim Carrey will loom large in our shattered posterity, I believe, because his filmography amounts to a uniquely sustained engagement with the problem of the self."

I might take this in a few different directions. In emails with my friend Rob (a writer and proponent of Auteur Theory) we have discussed whether an actor can really be an auteur, who really controls the vision of a film or films, who should, differences in stage and film, that sort of thing. But there are other directions, including artistic intent. If Carrey did not play roles in these films as part of a larger artistic vision, if indeed his primary goal is to make people laugh and he doesn't bother with anything remotely approaching "a uniquely sustained engagement with the problem of the self," then can his filmography really amount to this? Can we the viewers (or just Parker) examine the ouevre for its results, without bothering with the intentions of the comic actor? Or maybe we could look about and find other actors who, in their acting alone separate from writing or directing, show a consistency of character, theme, explorative subject (John Wayne comes to mind). Or we could be more subjective: are there certain actors you follow in the same way you might follow a writer, a director, a musician? Does having a "favorite actor" mean quite the same thing as having a "favorite writer"? And how is it different?

I like all these lines of inquiry, but I'm interested in reflecting on acting as a creative act. When I speak of a Shakespearean production, I would tend to refer to "Actor A's Character" rather than "Director B's Play" (for example, to me this is "Gibson's Hamlet," not "Zeffirelli's Hamlet"). It is the actor who interprets and creates the character. If I see a film or stage version, it is not the choices of the director I will relish, but the choices of the actor. Of course the actor is not independent: he/she relies on the initial creation of character and words by Shakespeare, as well as the vision and support of a director. But what artist can work in isolation with total freedom from interference or influence? A writer does not invent the language he/she works in, even if he/she invents his/her own version of it.

But let's move to television. David Chase created The Sopranos, but I think it was really Tony Gandolfini who created Tony Soprano. Certainly Chase invented him, but it was Gandolfini who gave him life, who gave him shape, who thrusts Tony Soprano into my consciousness. Gandolfini is a creative agent. Gandolfini is the artist who passed a character from the realm of imagination into...well, my imagination (when I started watching the DVDs I did have dreams about him). Could another actor have done so? Maybe. Maybe not. But I want to credit the actor for making the character what he is, and I do believe it is the actor as creative agent that reached me.

That's not to say that's always the case. Larry David is probably more responsible than Jason Alexander for the genius of George Costanza, but Michael Richards is largely the creator of Kramer.

And maybe we get back to the old problem of Jack Nicholson's Randle Patrick McMurphy against Ken Kesey's Randle Patrick McMurphy. They're not quite the same McMurphy, are they? I don't think Milos Forman made a different McMurphy. And while I can have serious discussion about the differences between the film and novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I cannot really articulate why Nicholson's portrayal of McMurphy is not quite the McMurphy of the book. I can only say that Nicholson is a great actor, an artist, a dominant presence that makes a character his own. Simply by having Nicholas play McMurphy, McMurphy becomes something other than what he was in the text (of course, right? He's an aesthetic creation, and so that aesthetic in words on a page is different than an actor on a screen. That's not what I want to address here; I'm still asserting that Nicholson created a character).

So maybe I'm only thinking of the brilliant actors here (but, in the same way proponents of Auteur Theory mainly think of the brilliant directors). What of the average actors? What of the lousy actors?

But let me raise a problem (and suggest this whole line of inquiry is either pointless or impossible). I love the film The Aviator for its portrayal of character; I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was brilliant (I'm rather interested in OCD). One scene in particular lingers with me: Hughes is in a restroom, and he doesn't want to touch the door to get out, so he quietly waits until somebody else enters the restroom so that he can leave without touching the door.

The scene is wonderful: I recall the quiet and the focus. But whom do I really credit for the scene? Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, director Martin Scorcese, or writer John Logan? And this may also get at why I can't quite accept Auteur Theory. I think it likely the scene worked so well because actor, director, writer, and even a host of others contributing to the creation of the scene made it work. A singular, controlling vision? That doesn't matter; what matters is the resulting scene, a scene with many contributors to its brilliance (though perhaps Auteur Theory is a way to understand an ouevre, not a particular film or a particular scene).

I'm interested in the ways that an actor creates. I'm interested in the way an actor can be an artist. I'm interested in why different people watch things and what they're looking for when they watch. And I'm interested in how we talk about these things.

Let me finish by noting that in some ways, the subject of acting and the theater haunts my dreams. I have recurring dreams (nightmares, I suppose) about somehow making a mistake and ruining a stage show. In particular, I sometimes dream that I'm in a play, and perhaps I don't know my lines, perhaps I don't know the blocking, or often it's more serious: I don't know what character I'm playing, or I don't even know what play I'm in. In my dreams, I often find myself on stage in front of people with other performers, not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing and aware that I'm ruining everything. Please, try that on Freud.

(These contrapuntal essays are taking a distinct shape toward a) rambling directionlessly and b) asking a bunch of questions I'm not bothering to answer (I really hate the latter trend in my writing and will work toward toning it down). What I'm finding in these essays, however, is that it is not the result that makes it contrapuntal, but my mindset whiile writing. I'm willing to ramble and raise questions and lose focus. It's a method, a way of thinking, and thus the writing and thinking goes where I don't expect when I begin)