The Master of Verona

EVE OF IDES on the eve of Ides!

The first of many, many exciting announcements:

MARCH 14th at 7pm at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey!

St. Nicholas

shanghai low theatricals and the seanachai theatre company 
are proud to host the sep production of a play by the 
olivier award-winning author of the seafarer: 

at chicago's irish american heritage center
for advance tickets please click here 
for the seanachai theatre website 
or simply call (866) 811-4111 
click the above image for show information 

 

S H A N G H A I   L O W   T H E A T R I C A L S

being a non-profit arts organization developing
literary adaptations of vigor and distinction

MS AUSTEN - MR BLIXT - MR PICKERING and MR THEIS

Holiday, Holy Day

As I return to my desk after the long holiday weekend, I'm thinking of holidays - specifically, about a very significant one. Good Friday, 1327. On that day, an hour after dawn, Francesco Petrarcha first laid eyes on his Laura, sparking a poetic love that would last the rest of his life. 

Which is the scene I'm writing today. Or rather, the other events of that fateful day. 

Pietro and Petrarch. Cesco and the Emperor Ludwig. Death, and love. Even a fateful engagement. Jousts and melees. Chases - and the inevitable recipe. 

FORTUNE'S FOOL. Coming in 2012.

GUEST POST - No Sweat Shakespeare

My friends over at nosweatshakespeare and I are trading posts today. Read Warren's truly fantastic look at the life of a Shakespearean actor back when these plays were hot off the quill, then head over there to read my nonsensical ramblings about OTHELLO. Personally, I love this post, as it bears a great deal of importance for an upcoming novel of mine. So please give a warm Verona welcome to Warren King:

Performing Shakespeare in Elizabethan Times

In his book The Empty Space, the English theatre director, Peter Brook suggests that if professional musicians were to perform to the same standard as professional actors, they would be booed off the stage. It’s not uncommon, he says, for actors with little training and experience to perform on the stage, whereas musicians undergo years of training and learning about their craft. We don’t expect that kind of expertise, accuracy and precision from actors, although we can be drawn in by them and have a satisfactory theatrical experience as they give a naturalistic performance, interpreting their characters and exploiting the language for the meaning they wish to bring out.

Modern actors are given a part to play, they’re provided with a printed copy of the text, they get to know the play as a whole, and the parts of the other actors; they have substantial rehearsal periods and they are encouraged to interpret their role. Their performance is supported by a team of designers, voice trainers, directors and all the other off-stage personnel that modern performances require. It was very different for Shakespeare and Elizabethan actors.

The Elizabethan theatre was big business and those actors fortunate enough to be employed by the most popular London theatres became rich. They worked very hard though. There were usually six performances every week and the actors would perform in all of them, week after week, learning their parts and going on to the stage with minimal rehearsal time, sometimes none at all. Each actor would often have to perform more than one part playing, for example, Banquo in Macbeth and then Macduff later. He may also play some character like the doctor, and a serving man as well.

None of that could be done in our theatres today. So how was it done in Shakespeare’s time? Perhaps the greatest skill required of an actor was to learn his lines quickly. Most of his training involved that, and mastering stock movements and positions, which were used by all the characters, so unless there were special circumstances he knew exactly how to move and where to stand without being instructed every time. He was given strips containing his lines, cut out of a fair copy of the text, sometimes with one or two-word cues and he had to set about learning them, sometimes two or three roles in a play and another handful of roles in the play he had to perform the next day.

The authors also worked very fast, which we can see by glancing at the long lists of surviving plays by Elizabethan playwrights. Their actual scripts were known as ‘foul papers’ and they sold them to the theatre owners who had two ‘fair copies’ made by scribes. One was cut into strips for the actors and the other was given to the ‘book-holder,’ who was the Elizabethan equivalent of the modern director. He was a combination of stage manager and director. His fair copy was also known as the ‘prompt book.’ And he would annotate it with rough stage directions and special movements that he may want to use. He would sometimes come on to the stage before the performance and deliver a prologue such as the one in Romeo and Juliet. He would sit somewhere where the actors could hear him and prompt them if they forgot their lines, and he would also tell actors where to stand if they didn’t know. The plays were never printed because there was the danger that another theatre company would steal a play and perform it. So there was only that one carefully guarded copy. The foul papers and the fair copies were all the property of the theatre. That is why we have very few fair copies today, and very few foul papers have survived – certainly none of Shakespeare’s

The actor’s job was to deliver the lines: the language was the main interest. If we consider the language of one of Shakespeare’s plays it’s evident that all the meaning and emotions are contained there, as well as the descriptions of the settings. The actor had to speak the lines clearly and loudly and the audience would do the rest. The movements were all conventions and the audience knew them too. The words ‘audience’ and ‘auditorium’ refer to hearing: seeing was not as important. The theatre-goers with the best view, the goundlings, paid the least: the most expensive seats were actually at the back of the stage behind the actors, where those wealthy patrons could not see as well as the groundlings but they had the best access to the sound.

So there was no such thing as ‘acting’ in the sense that we understand it today. The actors were called ‘players,’ which indicates that they were the operators of the play. We have some insight into what it was like in Hamlet, where Hamlet instructs the visiting players to play it straight, without trying to interpret the words with individual gestures and egocentric attention seeking. Audiences were more sophisticated in the reception of plays than we are today. That may sound strange, given the four centuries of development between then and now, but they were in tune with such things as multiple meanings in poetry, puns, in-jokes, satire and so on. They were listening for all those things and didn’t need the distraction of the antics of actors. The language of Elizabethan plays is rich, and packed with conventions that we are not even aware of but that Elizabethan audiences expected when they attended a play. Shakespeare knew that and that’s one of the reasons that his plays were particularly popular and why he made so much money out of his craft. During the period in which he was working the population of London was about twenty thousand and there were twenty-two theatres, all packed every day. London had none of the innumerable other spectator events that we enjoy today (apart from bear baiting, which was also very popular), and many of London’s inhabitants attended the theatre several times a week. Playwrights and players were among the hardest-working people in London.

Shakespeare gives us a picture of a rehearsal for a play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The rustics are gathered in a clearing in the wood. It is something of a spoof, where Shakespeare is sending the process up. But certain things are clear. Peter Quince is the book-holder. He’s dealing with a group of inexperienced amateurs and he spends most of the time trying to curb the egotism of Bottom, who wants to play all the parts and act them out in an inappropriate dramatic way. Quince is concerned throughout with the language, how the text will be written, and that it should be spoken clearly. Flute has difficulty in speaking his lines and Quince lectures him about it.

If we could go back in time and attend a performance of, shall we say, King Lear, we would be disappointed because we would think the acting is terrible, and there would be very little of what we expect today. If an Elizabethan theatre enthusiast were to attend a modern performance he would not make much of it. Although the actors would be speaking in Elizabethan English he would not be able to make head or tail of it as the actors strove to interpret it for the audience. And he would be distracted by all the action and the theatrical devices without which we would find the production inadequate.

By Warren King, Nosweatshakespeare.com

 

 

Rules of the Road

For those who know me, it will come as no surprise that I am a huge fan of the Looney Tunes. So I've been watching this new Looney Tunes Show with hope. Alas, whoever has created it doesn't understand the very specific rules that made Bugs Bunny et al. so very great. So many good ideas executed poorly! The idea of Daffy moving in with Bugs is funny. But why does Bugs live in a house? Bugs Bunny lives in a hole in the ground. Always. And Bugs doesn't instigate trouble. Trouble finds him. And so on. 

The greatest example of a failure to understand the rule is the new Road Runner-Coyote short. It starts out with a very funny premise: the Coyote is in a ninja outfit, sneaking and leaping across the desert towards a mesa where the Road Runner is sitting, meditating under a full moon. Funny! Then the Coyote leaps and kicks the Road Runner - only it's not the Road Runner, it's a dummy!

Wait - something's already off. Since when did the Road Runner participate in the Coyote's downfall?

Then the cartoon goes completely off the rails. The Road Runner appears, also dressed in a ninja suit, and attacks the Coyote. With razor sharp talons. And slices him to pieces. 

It didn't make me laugh. It made me uncomfortable. Do you see the problem here? Everyone I've told about this says, "No! That's wrong! The Road Runner never engages the Coyote!!" That's my reaction too, and I'm glad to hear so many people feel the same way. 

But even more clearly, the rules for Road Runner/Coyote cartoons were laid out a long, long time ago by the man who created them - the inimitable Chuck Jones. He even shared those rules with the public in his autobiography, CHUCK AMUCK. An excerpt: 

RULE 1. THE ROAD RUNNER CANNOT HARM THE COYOTE EXCEPT BY GOING "BEEP-BEEP!"

RULE 2. NO OUTSIDE FORCE CAN HARM THE COYOTE - ONLY HIS OWN INEPTITUDE OR THE FAILURE OF THE ACME PRODUCTS. 

RULE 3. THE COYOTE COULD STOP ANYTIME - IF HE WERE NOT A FANATIC.

RULE 4. NO DIALOGUE EVER, EXCEPT "BEEP-BEEP!"

RULE 5. THE ROAD RUNNER MUST STAY ON THE ROAD - OTHERWISE, LOGICALLY, HE WOULD NOT BE CALLED THE ROAD RUNNER.

RULE 6. ALL ACTION MUST BE CONFINED TO THE NATURAL ENVIORMENT OF THE TWO CHARACTERS - THE SOUTHWEST AMERICAN DESERT.

RULE 7. ALL MATERIALS, TOOLS, WEAPONS, OR MECHANICAL COVENIENCES MUST BE OBTAINED FROM THE ACME CORPORATION.

RULE 8. WHENEVER POSSIBLE, MAKE GRAVITY THE COYOTE'S GREATEST ENEMY.

RULE 9. THE COYOTE IS ALWAYS MORE HUMILIATED THAN HARMED BY HIS FAILURES.

These are the nine basic rules that defined the success of these cartoons over the last 60-odd years. Note that Rule #1 - the first rule! - prohibits just what the new short does. If the Road Runner engages, he sinks to the Coyote's level. By breaking rules 1, 2, 5, and 9, the makers of these new cartoons have diminished the Road Runner.

There are a few hard and fast rules in life. One of them is this: the Road Runner runs. On the road. 

SINCERITY - A Halloween Short Story

Sincerity
A Halloween Short
By David Blixt

    “So. You finally show up.”
    It was a tick past the witching hour, and the thing had risen from the field, blinking and staring about in confusion. In its powerful, vibrating basso it said, “Where?”
    “This is my field.”
    The thing bent down, squinting through its giant hollow eyes, peering at the man with the rat’s nest hair. “Oh. You.”
    “Me,” said the man, voice shaking with horror and fear and exultation. “Me. A thousand times, me!”
    “You should not haunt me so.”
    “Haunt you? Haunt you?!” The slight hysteria in his laugh was mirrored in his eyes. “My family thinks I’m mad. My church has cast me out. My political career, destroyed. And for what? For you! For this moment. Years spent cultivating acres upon acres of your pathetic fruit. It is a fruit, you know. The seeds are on the inside.”
    “I never claimed otherwise.”
    “No.” The man clutched a holey rag closer to his chest. Once, it had been a pristine blue. Now it showed more of the black night through its many gaping tears. Yet it was obviously precious. “That was my mother. Eat it, she’d say. It’s a vegetable.”
    “You blame me.”
    “For that? No. For everything else – why did you wait so long?!”
    “I never felt that you were sincere.”
    “And now you’re satisfied?”
    “I am here,” was the creature’s only reply. 
    There was a prolonged silence as the man struggled with his feelings, and the creature examined the night. 
    “Well,” said the man at last, “do I at least get my share?”
    “Your share?”
    “Of the toys.”
    “Ah. The toys. They are for children.”
    The man shook his fists, waving the tattered cloth in his hand like a flag. “No! Unfair! I’ve waited too long for you to deny me now!”
    “It is too late. Besides, you would not want these toys.”
    The creature gestured, and the man noticed sacks of bulky objects that lay scattered all through the viney field. Opening the nearest, he saw devilish toys with sticky handles and sharpened ends.
    “You give these to children?”
    “Sincere children do not see them for what they are.”
    “I am sincere!”
    “Even so, you are too old.”
    “But I still have the heart of a child!”
    “Truly?” said the creature, wild whippy limbs sliding it inevitably forward. “Let me see it, then.”

*    *    *    *    *    *

    Dawn, a red autumnal light against the darkness. In the small house beside the vast field, a woman stirred. Rising, she checked the clock, then peeked into her brother’s room. The bed was empty. She grunted derisively. 
    Stomping down the stairs, she decided to make herself some coffee before she went out into the fields to retrieve him. But the coffee can was empty. She threw it across the room, and with a lip curled in disgust she made herself some of her brother’s herbal tea.
    Since her divorce from the musician – she refused to even say his name! – she had been reduced to living here. The judge had not only stripped her of every conceivable asset, he had also questioned her right to practice! ‘Emotional cruelty’ indeed! And the blockheads on the state board had agreed, suspending her license. Oh, when her lawyer got through with them…
    There was a creak and the backdoor opened. “Finally found your own way back?”
    But it was not her brother. “It’s me,” said the bald man. 
    “Oh. I was just thinking of your sister. Has she talked about my case?”
    “No.” The bald man shrugged. “We don’t talk much.”
    “Oh.” She tried to make small-talk, a thing she hated. “How did the team do? I didn’t watch.”
    He shrugged. “It’s a rebuilding year.”
    “Of course it is,” she snorted. 
    The bald man looked around the kitchen. “He’s out there?”
    “Where else would he be?”
    “I usually go get him.”
    “Well, I’m here this year,” she said haughtily, pulling a coat on over her robe. “I’ll do it. He’s my responsibility.”
    “I’ll go with you,” said the bald man. 
    “Whatever.” She opened the back door and lead the way out into the field. 
    Thus they were together when they found him. He was lying still, and at first they thought he was sleeping. But the frost on his cheek had not melted. 
    She was stricken, and kicked his lifeless body several times, screaming at him for his stupidity. The bald man looked like he wanted to stop her, but waited until she was through before he went and looked his old friend over. “There’s not a mark on him.”
    “What, did you think he was bit by a snake? You blockhead.” She suddenly sagged. “It’s never been the same since that stupid dog died.”
    “I know,” said the bald man. He pried the tattered old blanket out of his friend’s hand and, fittingly, laid it over him. 
    As it unfurled, three trapped white teardrops fell to the ground, all unnoticed. For it was no great thing to miss three little seeds in this grand pumpkin patch. Standing in its center, one had to admit there was nothing but sincerity as far as the eye could see.

Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare

I don't have much time for this, but with the movie opening today I feel the need to dive in to the ANONYMOUS business, if briefly. Let me say at the outset that I have enjoyed Roland Emmerich's early films, though I haven't seen any of his recent ones. And there are many, many wonderfully talented actors who appear in the film, putting in ferociously nuanced performances. 

But the premise is bunk. 

First, let's all agree the important thing is that these plays exist at all. The character and life history of the author is interesting, but not relevant to the work. We don't know anything of Homer but for his writing, nor even the name of the author of Beowulf. It's the work that matters. 

However, since we have more information on the Renaissance than we do from ancient Greece or the Middle Ages, we have just enough pieces and clues to cast doubt on the facts, and lack enough facts to obliterate the doubts.

200 years ago, with the rise of Bardolotry and the Romantic poets, it became fashionable to guess who "really" wrote Shakespeare's plays. Today it's a cottage industry, culminating in this film. What I find interesting, though, is that the conspiracy theorists always choose somebody that's already famous - it's never a misunderstood genius with syphillus hiding in a brothel. Just like people who talk about reincarnation were always princesses or great men, never three-dollar hookers or cruel slave-drivers. And invariably the candidates are from the nobility. Sir Francis Bacon. The Earl of Oxford. Even Elizabeth herself!   

Why? Here's a relevant quote from the NYTimes review of the film:

"No argument could ever possibly sway the Oxfordian crowd. They are the prophets of truthiness. “It couldn’t have been Shakespeare,” they say. “How could a semiliterate country boy have composed works of such power?” Their snobbery is the surest sign of their ignorance. Many of the greatest English writers emerged from the middle or lower classes. Dickens worked in a shoe-polish factory as a child. Keats was attacked for belonging to the 'cockney school.'"

This is what I most object to in the anti-Stratfordian argument. It's all based on classism. It's like 200 years from now somebody saying "Four poor lads from Liverpool couldn't have composed all that music. It had to be someone with conservatory training! They must have been a front!"

Yes, we don't have the plays in Shakespeare's own hand. Nor do we have a copy of Dante's Inferno in his. Yes, Shakespeare's father was a glover. But he had applied for a coat-of-arms, hardly the pretension of an ignorant nobody. And while we have no written evidence of Shakespeare's creative process, we have plenty of testimonials of people who saw his plays and talked about him. Ben Johnson is featured in the film as being part of the conspiracy. But that's a convenient way to get around the fact that Johnson wrote about Shakespeare himself! Like all conspiracy theories, it takes an unbelievable number of people working in concert to hide something so utterly mundane and ridiculous. You know how we know that Oxford wasn't hiding his identity in order to publish his writing? Because he published his own writing openly!!

The film is, sadly, nonsense. MIDSUMMER wasn't written before the form was created, R&J was hardly the first play in verse, and Marlowe couldn't have been part of the plot in 1598 as he was stabbed to death several years earlier. Of course, none of these facts would have bothered Shakespeare himself, who paid no attention to history when he was out to tell a good story. Alas, the film's story is rather, shall we say, lacking.

We can all agree that, whoever wrote Shakespeare's plays, he was a genius. So why oh why is it so difficult to imagine that the genius rose from Stratford, not London? Why create elaborate birther-esque conspiracies? Is it a longing for elitism? A need to bring an "upstart crow" back to earth? I genuinely don't understand. 

Here are some links to different reviews. Enjoy. 

Let me sum up by quoting my wife: "The world is round, climate change is real, evolution happens, and Shakespeare wrote his plays."

One down. Just finished the final edits to VOICE OF THE FALCONER. It was fun going back to a novel I wrote five years ago and see how my writing style has changed. I managed to take out 11,000 words, bringing the manuscript down to 174,000 (by comparison, THE MASTER OF VERONA was 220,000 words). So FALCONER is leaner, faster, and crueler. It covers only five months, but never fear, it's jam-packed with battles, betrayals, lies, secrets, murders, races, prisons, poisons, revelations, and a lovely recipe for an Italian appetizer.

Next up - FORTUNE'S FOOL.

Quick update

On page 500 of the final edits to VOICE OF THE FALCONER. 200 to go! (it won't be that long when published, this is just my copy for mark-ups). Next up, finish the edits to the first Jewish/Roman war novel (still looking for the perfect title), then write the four missing chapters to FORTUNE'S FOOL while I wait for edits on HER MAJESTY'S WILL.

4 new books next year! Woot!

Twitter!

Until now I've only ever used Twitter to post funny things my kids have said. But now that 2012 looks like the year of Blixt Books, I've started a new Twitter account (funny how that's twice I've typed Twister instead. Shows where my mind's at).

You can follow me on TwiTter here and follow my updates. Or you can like my Facebook fan page here. But stay here at www.davidblixt.com for all the deets on new stuff!

 

Cheers,

DB