Shakespeare in and on Love
Introit: excerpt from Shakespeare In Love theme by Stephen Warbeck (under fair/religious use)
https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/shakespeare-in-and-on-love
Welcome to Between The Stools on 28th April 2024. This week is the 460th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth, and the 408th of his death. He may have been born and died on the same day – 23rd April, which is the festival of England’s patron saint. Although George was Persian and didn’t visit this country, Shakespeare’s being connected to the dragonslayer’s day is significant because Will has become a national secular saint and our key cultural export, wound into patriotism. But we don’t know Shakespeare’s birthday for certain: one of the few facts that is established is his christening on 26th April, from whence his birth is deduced.
Last autumn was the 400th anniversary of his first portfolio’s publication (after his death).
This year is the 25th anniversary of the film Shakespeare In Love being released in Britain.
And it’ll be Queen Dench’s 90th, who starred in the film (and many Shakespeare productions).
Shakespeare in Love is a fictional fun romp through late Elizabethan London. Broodingly handsome Shakespeare is established as a writer, but he’s lost his mojo. His employer badly needs a good finished play to placate his money lenders. Will finds a muse in a disguised thespian who is betrothed to a rich, unpleasant stranger. The film is the writing and performing of Romeo and Juliet, where life and art converge in the manner of another play – Twelfth Night.
I clearly recall seeing it – and my reaction. It may surprise you – or not. This will be a no holds Bard look at the esteemed poet through the lens of film, our focus for this Year of Wonders.
Prayer
I’ve not chosen Shakespeare today because I think that we cannot look at story without him. (Shakespeare was a poet and playwright, and this is a year for screen). I’m not choosing him because he is my favourite, or that the movie Shakespeare In Love is a favourite. I’ve felt guided towards some films and television for this year that I don’t like, and I have always struggled with Shakespeare. I even wrote a provocative blog post some years ago, decrying him. I entitled it “Shakespeare Is Stupid”. And my reaction to a friend, wallowing in the sad end of Shakespeare In Love, was my first use of the f word: “He shouldn’t have fucked her in the first place!” I snapped impatiently, causing her to step in a puddle in shock at my language.
Some might already be shocked and ill-inclined to continue listening, or toward me. The first thing I would like us to consider is why we feel that there is only one opinion allowed on Shakespeare – at least to be aired publicly, if you want to be considered intelligent or cultural or taken seriously. (I am an author with 3 literary degrees). Why has this one man who died over four centuries ago become a god, the god, of literature, and put on such a pedestal? His writing spanned only about 20 years – are we to say that English writing reached its zenith in a score?
When people – usually actors and academics – say that Shakespeare is the greatest writer ever, at least in English, can they really claim to know all the writers that have been, before or since?
I’d like us to consider that. If any listeners are from another culture, and you have a Shakespeare equivalent (or one you consider greater), I would love to hear about him or her.
Not all writers are given equal airing for us to be able to discover and compare, and few come with such a train of gravitas and glory as this one.
Shakespeare is hard not to know about. I’m wondering how his rise came about. (Some of it does seem connected to empire and export, and Victorian poets). Why is he better known than contemporaries Christopher Marlowe or Ben Johnson? Why is he better known to the general public than the classical authors, or sometimes even the biblical ones?
We’ll pause to note that the best known English language Bible was issued during his lifetime, in 1611. Both are called wonderful literature which has influenced our language. I am not a proponent of the King James Bible, which wasn’t ‘authorised’, especially by God. I wonder about the extent of royal support and sense of ‘authorisation’ of Shakespeare’s work and status.
Considering there are few established facts on William Shakespeare, like many we considered in our History Year, quite a tourist industry has been created about him on pseudo truths.
Stratford Upon Avon in the west midlands is a town given to Shakespeare. I wonder what it’s like to live there? I read my guidebook thoughtfully, noting that the town’s many fine buildings are all spoken of in regard to the Bard. It’s called essential England, but I can think of many Tudor or older towns here (to be essential something, it cannot be unique). There are five 16th C houses to visit, all with Shakespearean connections – I still have my ticket. But the associations are not certain. Is his birthplace really such? They claim the guildhall as his grammar school, although we’ve no record of Shakespeare’s education, which has given rise to some theories I’ll come to. Stratford has a particularly fine late mediaeval parish church, but I had only seen his monument in it; I was shocked that its West country style roof and unusual carved stone arcades are left out of guides, yes even church books. It has become a mausoleum to him and stop on a secular ‘pilgrimage’. The town is dominated by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and its live arts seem to be predominantly if not exclusively the 38* plays of He Who Died in 1616. [*There seems to be argument over authorship and thus number]
It is convenient that this pretty town has nothing and no-one else to vie with the Bard – not like nearby Warwick and Kenilworth who have significant castles and tales of long established throne-steering families; it isn’t the administrative or industrial centre like cathedral city Coventry (with the earlier Godiva legend); at around 30,000 inhabitants, Stratford is controllable, and thus ensurable that this market and river town remains an example of what we like to export as Middle England. Its chief product: William.
A place for Shakespeare has been carved out in central London, a huge old city with many alumni jostling for public attention. Shakespeare has regained a waterside and thus ringside seat in the area known for its world class-reaching arts institutions. Since 1997, the rebuilt Globe Theatre has joined the dozens of London’s theatreland, along the well-walked walkway that tourists and locals alike promenade. A second, year round, venue in late 17th century style complements the Globe and its exhibition. The timber and thatch almost circle is easily the most recognisable and appealing building on South Bank. If it was for anyone else, would our safety conscious fire service and council allow such a structure again, when they were banned after the Fire of [do note the number] 1666?
Shakespeare benefits from constant repetition, a further ploy of his marketing campaign. I think I can assert that he’s an annual fixture for most theatres, not only in Britain but on other English speaking stages. He has long been compulsory on school curricula, from GCSE/O level (England’s 16 year old exams) for all students, and on A level (18 year old) and first degree English Literature courses. Thus one has to wait until masters or more to study literature without him.
Shakespeare in Love made a 40 minute featurette for schools. The key cast read their pre-set lines about how important Shakespeare is and how he is manageable to read. The film had twenty-odd year old leads – generally considered attractive; some characters were middle aged, yet there’s attempt to involve teens in a story that over here got a 15 rating for the sex and language. In short, it wasn’t school material but they tried to bring in school pupils anyway, and made the broad headed 50 year into a doe-eyed sensitive hunk of not yet 30. Think of how making it available to schools would enhance sales and lend to further marketing materials.
If you make a Shakespeare movie, you have definite possibilities.
—-Music from Stephen Warbeck’s original score – you may wish to ponder the below —-
I want us to pause and think about how we met Shakespeare – assuming we do have some kind of acquaintance. Were you, like me, made to study him in your teens? I wonder about our lessons, and wish we’d seen a performance before struggling to read him aloud to our bashful nascent peers. I was traumatised – as was family, we still recall it – by Roman Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth. Speaking of films unsuitable for young people and class viewing, this was too gory and upsetting to show us, and I dislike this notion that such content is cool and appealing. I note too that Roman has been the subject of abuse charges, and wonder if wonder if he’d still be shown in today’s Me Too cancel climate. Abuse comes up again in our considering Shakespeare in Love.
The first performance I saw of Shakespeare was Ray Fearon and Juliet Aubrey in The Tempest; this was the third Shakespeare play I studied but the first that I saw on stage. What I recall from night that is not something to put in an essay (I’m not sure it’s right here – I tell you in the audio).
Let me know your first Shakespeare encounter.
I tried to understand how other people like Shakespeare, if they genuinely do, and looked up stories of early and seminal encounter. I noted that noted Shakespeare actors Kenneth Branagh and Juliet Stevenson both had early powerful teen theatre experiences. In 2022, Juliet wrote for The Sunday Times that we should cancel two of his plays and update others. Her reasoning for the first was misogyny and anti-Semitism. I wasn’t able to read the whole article since the Times website makes you sign up and pay to read, which is their loss. But the next year, she was narrating a BBC mini series extolling Shakespeare!
Let’s think for a moment on that: that the British cultural export (other than the Royals) would be propounded by the official and original British Broadcasting Corporation.
Before considering this film and briefly some others, I want to consider how intimidating Shakespeare is: in dense verse, he is from another time that we (most of us) are not used to. There is a promise of greatness for you if you obtain this part (or the right to perform it), but you join the ghostly voices, like Hamlet’s father, of all those esteemed actors and directors whose very greatness is predicated on their superlative interpretations. Like quantum physics, there’s a sense that if you think it’s easy, you’re not understanding it. Like enlightenment, only a few attain mastery in this world. [Hear my snort]
–Excerpt from Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet: Introduction to Romeo by Craig Armstrong–
Researching this, I sampled as many Shakespeare adaptations as I could: Prospero’s Books by Peter Greenaway, the naked experimental meditation; Julie Tamar’s 2010 female Prospero (Helen Mirren); Toyah in punky arty Derek Jarman’s take on The Tempest. I’ve seen the 90s Branagh canon and those American high school updates as well as the animated Lion King. Shakespeare has been converted to an alternative Third Reich Britain, a modern police station, the 1960s jazz scene, outer space, and homoerotic road trip. Several of these I had seen already; some I knew quite well. I enjoyed best those versions that did something innovative; perhaps Looking For Richard stands out (which I described last year) as a three in one commentary, making of documentary, and the abridged actual play (Richard III).
What interested me most was the line used by Derek Jarman to bring Toyah Willcox into his very unusual 1979 Tempest. He said that he saw this late Shakespearean work as having secret knowledge which the masses weren’t meant to know. I have been trying to find out what! If you know, please tell me as the BFI (Globe neighbour and keeper of the film) isn’t revealing it. Jarman was interested in John Dee, the Elizabethan astrologer and alchemist and (like others) believed that the character of Prospero related to him.
I also asked for the opinion of those I spoke to during this period. A published writer and lover of classics openly stated she dislikes Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet especially. I liked one friend’s take: Romeo and Juliet is not a love story, but shows how feuds can kill what you love. These typically passionate young teens may have soon moved on with their love if is controversy hadn’t egged them into tragedy. Yet I repeatedly hear Romeo and Juliet called our greatest love story by He Who Understood Humans Best.
For me, the greatest love story involves a man 2000 years ago – we thought about him last time. (How inappropriate that this service has ended up being almost twice the length!)
Like The Tempest and other plays, the love in Romeo and Juliet is rather daft. You see someone you are drawn to, you spout sonnets at or about them, you lose some sleep…and perhaps you dance or the other kind of tango. And then, they are somehow unobtainable. You mop brows, whine and opine, and depending what sort of play it is, you either get back together or you die/part. The latter is seen as deliciously, movingly tragic and thus more romantic and worthy.
I think that whether or not Shakespeare himself believed in such love, his work has been used to perpetuate what I see as a travesty and fallacy of it. It was what I was warned against as a young teen: this heady stuff isn’t what lasting relationships are based on. David Hawkins wrote of the energetic frequencies of our emotions in his Map of Consciousness; the kind of romantic love that Shakespeare depicts is extremely low… [more in audio] It is aiming for higher states and ways of communicating that has made me especially critical of Shakespeare.
He also delineates our darkest emotions, such as hate, rage and the desire for revenge; you might argue that these are deliberately exaggerated for the stage, but statements about Shakespeare’s superlative understanding of the human condition suggest that consuming jealousy and plots to avenge are normative, even if more suppressed in real life. I see the work of Shakespeare that I know as demonstrating base and coarse human feeling and behaviour. Much of his work contains horror and violence – Macbeth and Titus Andronicus especially – which has been freely shown in film adaptations; he may be supposedly universal but is not a universal rating.
There is also abuse in his work: Prospero is controlling of his spirit-slave, his ‘monster’ slave, his daughter and her suitor; and in Branagh’s Hamlet, he grabs Kate Winslet’s face and slams her against mirrors. Their friendship has lasted thirty years, but I wonder why such misogynistic violence is seen as part of a great performance and why it is considered part of love or even a tolerable facet of melt down. (Was this added by Branagh to his adaptation?…)
Then there’s the whole concept of The Taming of The Shrew, which Juliet Stevenson objected to, the ‘shrew’ being a certain kind of woman, subjugated and manipulated for entertainment.
The stories present as normative unpleasant and negligent activities. The priest in Romeo and Juliet is incredibly irresponsible with his sleeping draft plan; the apothecary is immoral because his wish for a fuller purse allows him to be the instrument of the death of two young people. In Shakespeare in Love, the person playing the apothecary (how hilarious, he can’t say it when drunk, not) is the torturing money lender, Mr Fennyman. This act opens the film; torturing for debts is held up to be funny and by implication, acceptable. This same character is seemingly moved, and thus redeemed, by theatre. It also presents as amusing that a person is publicly physically exposed by the Master of the Revels to humiliate and inculpate him/her. Again, there is no critique or punishment in the film for a major offence and trauma… [More in audio]
Then there is the offence and trauma in the making of this film, regarding Gwyneth Paltrow and the Oscars (not for the several famous male actors; not Mr-Triple-Surname titular lead).
A YouTube video by Cody of “Be Kind Rewind” (and a 2017 Vanity Fair article) shows how the now disgraced Weinsteins marketed heavily to ensure awards for their film company Miramax; how the voters (members of academy) were flooded and feted to ensure nominations (invited to parties, sent lots of mailshots and films clips). Note how these brothers were always thanked in speeches. Then Harvey’s abuse was made public. I look at Gwyneth’s emotional Oscar speech differently now we know what she endured to get it; it is known that she was one of his many victims. Weinstein made her a swift to rise poster girl in the latter 90s. Shakespeare in Love was set against Elizabeth (and created a 2 horse race for best actress) and the gory war film (focussed on US troops) Saving Private Ryan. Now why would that be an Oscar favourite, and seen by some as more worthy? I’ve commented before on there being themes and ideas to promote via the glory of receiving a little statuette. It creates a tier of extra worthy films and film makers.
I wonder if Shakespeare’s legacy began in a similar way?
00 (Another snatch of Craig Armstrong, also under fair use) 00
Shakespeare has been the means of obscuring our history. It isn’t just Ricardians who are upset with his influential depiction. I also see Richard III as being very negative about ‘deformity’. Shakespeare really has not only demonised this king, but put into our heads that physical disfigurement is an outer sign of moral depravity and an evil heart; and early on, Richard says that he doesn’t expect romantic love due to his ailments. It’s implied that he’s ugly to behold (‘not courting an amorous looking glass’) and thus gives the idea that ‘hunchbacks’ and people with cricked spines don’t get or can’t expect passion – only arranged political marriages. [No!!]
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I really resented Shakespeare In Love because I was told it was full of clever in-jokes that most of us won’t get. Listening to the DVD extras, I actually think that the filmmakers wished to make an inclusive and accessible Shakespearean story.
One aspect of Shakespeare’s myth that I do approve of is that he seemingly didn’t go to university and perhaps even not grammar school. He was not from a titled family. Good. But this has led to speculation that the person we esteem as genius cannot be William of Stratford; some blue blooded suitably educated person must be the real author, and there was a cover or mix up. I hate the snobbery and prejudice behind that supposition…[More in audio]. If we know few facts about Shakespeare, and there are 7 mystery years of his life, doesn’t this weaken the argument that he cannot have known things or been places?
One critic, with blue blood, sees Shakespeare as secretly against the establishment. I had read him as being part of it, which is another reason to dislike and reject him, but the notion that his works are subversive is far more interesting, and are perhaps actually against the very monarch commissioning his plays. One sees Queen Dench in Shakespeare In Love quite differently if Claire Asquith’s work is right. She is not alone in positing such a theory.
(After I recorded this, I watched more about that queen and what her, and certain earls, role might have been in using the stage for propaganda. I’m still not convinced by the 17th Earl of Oxford theory but something rings true about ‘Shakespeare’ being a secretive steering device).
If you’re wondering why I say Queen Dench, it is because of Adam and Joe’s brilliant toy take off. At the turn of the millennium in their Channel 4 comedy series, Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish used cuddly toys to recreate mini versions of current films – their Toytanic is another favourite. Shakesbeare in Love casts a duck in Gwyneth’s role – “Gwyneth Spinneth” as she removes the bandages to hide her bosoms – and she stars in Romeo and Juliet Bravo. This 1980s police drama about women in the force brilliantly captures the women in a man’s world theme of the film. Adam and Joe laugh at the poetry and sex – basically, writing and the other verb are one and the same. They write lines about thy walkie talkie and ungloved hands, and leave Gwyneth getting her beak stuck in the Sliding Doors of a London tube train – another recent role. Queen Dench is what they call Dame Judi’s Elizabeth I. I’ve referred to her as such since, affectionately. I consider Judi a national treasure. (I intend to honour her on December 9th).
https://www.youtube.com › watch?v=3lkvX7Um7ww
—-More music from Warbeck’s score—-
Concluding thoughts on Shakespeare in and on Love (read, fornication)
At the heart of this film, which some feel is of its time, is a wager: could a play show real love? Despite Queen Dench’s verdict, the answer resoundingly for me regarding this one is NO.
Gwyneth’s Viola is in love with poetry; she’s fetishizing it. The poetry she quotes is moon verse (ie, mooning) – not especially deep or romantic. She spouts about 4 lines before Shakespeare chases her as a boy all the way home. They have 3 weeks shagging time before mum and dad get back and the arranged Wessex wedding takes place. It’s a quite immature love, more suitable for teens…just what I was warned against as a pubescent. Shakespeare’s love (like in The Tempest) has a test, but there’s no real communication or living together. Unlike others, I do not see Romeo and Juliet as twin flames (although their death did stop a family feud) – there’s just not the spiritual calling and inner work or mission – not that all love has to be compared to this notion…which I am also wary of. Romeo and Juliet die after days: for me, love endures over time and possibly place, with many challenges, including forgiveness.
I think that Juliet’s nurse shows greater love than the star-crossed fornicators.
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I think that like the Beatles, a champion was raised early in the genre. Pop music really only began in the 1950s and 60s, and we’ve looked at Elvis and Lennon being chosen from those decades as already the best of all time. Although plays are centuries older than Shakespeare – the ancient Greeks wrote them and there were mediaeval mystery plays – professional play making and theatres were just being established in the late Elizabethan era. Again, an early champion was chosen from that first harvest.
Shakespeare is much like our popular movies and Shakespeare In Love is no exception. Cameron’s Titanic was pitched as ‘Romeo and Juliet on a boat’; and the sweeping attempt to include almost all emotions and facets of entertainment was very Shakespearean – just without the ponderous poetry. I was researching another sermon just before I switched gear for this one, and felt that teen spirit, rivalry, jealously, plotting and regular fights and jokes were present in a contemporary American story as much as the circa 1600 stage.
What is different about Shakespeare is that his language is opaque. There seems to be a line between the adepts who claim to understand him, and the plebs of the mosh pit who weren’t offered seats. This division also applies to those who read code into his pentameter.
Thinking about the Plague and its affect on theatre, having lived through the covid period [which I critique], I wonder about what the authorities really worried about regarding theatre, and why they wanted to close them down. We’re told that the puritans especially didn’t approve of these iniquitous places, but I wonder if that is spin. Theatre took workers from their stations; there was a reason for employers to want the theatres shut. Theatre allowed people to mingle and to hear new ideas, different from the pulpit.
I note how little God and Christian office(r)s are mentioned in Shakespeare. Was he in fact secular (All Is True depicts mature Shakespeare as being in danger of church non attendance fines) or trying to please the widening spiritual landscape of his audience? It’s assumed he, like the establishment, was Protestant, but I’ve also read that his work had code for Catholics. In his era, Nonconformists began rising – he mentions the followers of Robert Browne (rudely) but the first Baptists had met by the time he died. There were also some Arabs and Jews possibly.
Did Shakespeare feel it safer to largely keep religion out of his work?
Conclusion: Is Shakespeare still relevant to an ascending world?
I’m wondering if we will start to seek very different stories as we mature. Shakespeare’s tales seem to be so full of darker, lower emotions, but the language and honours given him presents them as higher. How often would we say that Shakespearean characters have congruent conversations, or achieve deep and profound personal growth? He has famously obsessive loves on world stages, in all senses – “the triple pillar transformed into a strumpet’s fool”, who ends with sword falling and his partner by my favourite stage direction: “Applies asp to bosom”. Antony and Cleopatra are another set of famous suicides.
I realise that many people do enjoy Shakespeare and tell me that playing him makes him enjoyable and fun. I realise that some people see great depth in his work – and I’ve not mentioned his sonnets – and have found engaging with him a transformative experience that deeply chimes with how they feel. But I’m aware that many of his plots are not original – he took from Plutarch, for example; that there is a story to his fame and that he is presented as unquestioningably a, the, genius. I think that playing him can be a vehicle for awards and acclaim and quite egotistical. I like the thought that he might be subversive. I realise that Shakespeare In Love is different to Shakespeare’s own works. But the exaggerated whispers and gestures rankle me; and I don’t see the human truths and understanding in the works that others so praise it for. (Do you think I’ve missed something?). As I’ll be saying throughout the year, I’m questioning the veracity and depth of high brow depictions of humanity, and see them as oft set against the quest for a spiritual journey.
Apart from Stephen Warbeck’s score, the aspect I do like of Shakespeare In Love is the ending.
It wasn’t the tragedy of their being parted, but that the parting brings newness and opportunity for both. I like best Viola’s walking at Holkham beach in Norfolk – near where I lived at the time – seeking a new life, informed by the brief affair she’d just experienced; how a disaster (how Titanic of the year before) saved her and gave her a fresh start. (In fact, Shakespeare In Love is Titanic in breeches). Here’s me impersonating Gwyneth, thinking on new starts, the wideness of an empty landscape, thrilling and daunting at once, finding liberation in writing and imagination. Maturity and true love comes from that beach and the unwritten next act…
Next month, we meet on Sunday 26th May…and its theme is TBC…
There are two likely contenders at the moment (probably not the promised biblical epics)
and then it’s 23rd June (see my last post above) for an anniversary
Thanks for joining me, blessings, and goodnight
Do reach out to me, Elspeth, on BetweenTheStools@hotmail.co.uk if you want to tell me who and how you are, and if you wish to share a different way to understand Shakespeare
Closing music: Stephen Warbeck’s “The End” from that scene of the film
(Yes, the swell makes it feel epic, romantic and worthy)
Elspeth R - A skewed world view 