Primrose Road

Edward deVere: known comedy writer

2008-07-02T15:07:51-04:00

Eddie deVere and I keep running into each other.

I was doing some research on the advent of blank verse as a new medium in English in the late 16th century, and came across two short accounts that at least take a good swipe at the ahistorical idea that a nobleman would have necessarily had to write plays anonymously:

In 1589, George Puttenham (or possibly a writer with the first name Richard), wrote a treatise on English poetry in which he praised the Earl of Oxford for his comedy writing. In another essay, Francis Meres describes Oxford as one of the better comedy writers of his time.

What's that again about the Earl of Oxford having to write plays in secret?

Yes, it would have likely been far more acceptable for a nobleman to write poetry than to write plays, but Puttenham's and Meres' references suggest that Oxford was a known comedy writer by 1589, the year before Shakespeare first appears on the scene, and at least five years before any of Shakespeare's plays is printed.

There is also the far more significant fact that the Earl of Oxford died in 1604 and Shakespeare wrote until at least 1611.

HyperHamlet

2008-07-03T22:38:40-04:00

HyperHamlet is up and running. I saw an early version of this project presented at a conference in 2006, and its aims remain the same: it doesn't attempt to supply an edition in the sense of an editorial reconstruction, and it doesn't want to work backwards from the text. Instead, the project seeks to map the text forward, cataloguing references to Hamlet from all walks of life and culture.

When I first heard about the project, I asked myself what cataloguing every reference to Hamlet ever could do for us. Interestingly, the project page now explains that such an endeavor can serve as not only a research database but also as a means of questioning the point of bookish editorial reconstructions.

* Hattip to Shakespeare Geek, who found this before I did. *

Best search phrase ever.

2008-07-02T15:40:03-04:00

At some point during the last three days, someone arrived at Primrose Road via a search for the phrase

"prostate squib"

, which I believe resulted from someone looking up prostate cancer treatments produced by the Bristol-Meyers-Squib pharmaceutical company, but still.

High school math versus phys ed ...

2008-07-02T15:07:09-04:00

During the summer, I teach SAT prep for the high school kiddies. When I told a class that the SAT is a reasoning test and that content-wise, there's nothing above Sequential I Math, they laughed and told me that there has been no such thing as Sequential I for years. There are now two Regents exams -- Math A and Math B -- in place of the three that I had to take when I was in high school.

What this means: the required terms of math / required terms of gym ratio in most New York State high schools is now more ridiculous than ever.

To this day, I live in fear that someday the Dept. of Ed is going to come after me for the term of high school gym I'm "technically" missing and threaten to revoke all of my degrees unless I go back and pass one gym class. Of course, I'm nearly 100% sure that that won't -- and can't happen -- but the concept could rake in some cash as a Drew Barrymore movie, no? ;)

Hamlet at the Delacorte (Shakespeare in the Park)

2008-06-26T22:47:12-04:00

Note: Very early in this review, I "give away" this production's ending. I've waited until the after the last performance (June 29th) to post my review, but I'm giving fair warning because I know how much Internetters viciously eschew "spoilers." (Yes, spoilerphobics, I *am* making fun of you.)

For the most part, there was little if anything that was utterly new-and-exciting about this Shakespeare in the Park production directed by Oskar Eustis.. (Then again, it is difficult-to-impossible to do anything new-and-exciting with Hamlet.) The Wooster Group's production at the Public last fall was, in my view, far more thought-provoking. Here at the Delacorte, we saw an early-to-mid-twentieth century military-based monarchy in which the older generation often wore military costumes from the previous century. Eustis, who told a Playbill interviewer that the character Hamlet faces "a nation run by a corrupt leadership at a time of generalized paranoia," seemed to want remind audiences that Hamlet is not simply Shakespeare's most character-driven play but also an important political drama.

The decision to give the production a dual focus -- Hamlet as grieving son and Hamlet as potential political figure -- likely contributed to the three-and-a-half-hour runtime. (Perhaps Eustis also did not want to cut any of onetime-Hamlet Sam Waterston's lines as Polonius.) The politics of Hamlet were most strikingly highlighted in the blocking of the play's very last line: Fortinbras' command, "Go, bid the soldiers shoot." In the playtext (though not in the First Quarto, which omits Fortinbras' last line altogether), the stage direction indicates that the soldiers should shoot a "peal of ordnance."

Here, one of Fortinbras' soldiers shoots Horatio, the character who is supposed to survive his friend Hamlet and tell his story.

This Fortinbras is not Hamlet's double; he is not the young man who also lost a father but chose to take action rather than brood. When he commands his soldier to shoot Horatio (has this possibility ever been addressed in the academic literature, I wonder?), it becomes clear that in this production, Hamlet's dying command to "give [his] voice" to Fortinbras is a mistake on Hamlet's part. In 4.4, when the Norwegian Captain tells Hamlet about Fortinbras' invasion of Poland, we hear bombs and realize that we are witnessing an air raid. Perhaps at this point, Hamlet -- quite confused, as his subsequent "what is a man" soliloquy suggests -- mistakenly decides that he needs to be more like Fortinbras.

I'm basically in full agreement with the New York Times' assessment of the Polonius family: Sam Waterston played a Polonius who was far more complicated than the doddering old man and protective father types that his character does indeed encompass. Often foolish and sometimes sadly lost in his own mind, Polonius loves his children but doesn't know how to help them. After a "get thee to a nunnery" scene in which Hamlet doesn't know that Ophelia's lying (it's refreshing to see it staged this way after a string of movie adaptations in which Hamlet's anger is definitively triggered by her lie) but continues to feign madness and anger in order to push her away, Ophelia reaches up to her father, who is way up on the "ramparts"; all he can do is reach back down. Later, when Ophelia's sanity is almost entirely gone, she reaches up to heaven in the same way, unable to connect with her out-of-reach father.

Lauren Ambrose played Ophelia's mad scenes with a surprising, intelligent aesthetic beauty. She could have easily gone with a sort of chemical-psychological-realism here, given that she spent some years with the mental-illness-fest television show Six Feet Under, but managed to play a sorrowful, regretful Ophelia rather than an uncomfortably terrifying Ophelia. I only wish that, because of the sometimes-political nature of this production, Ambrose and Eustis would have seen Ophelia as more of an astute political commentator. (After all, if she understands what Hamlet means when he tells her that all who are married "but one" will die, then she is the only character who knows that Hamlet is planning to kill Claudius.)

Michael Stuhlbarg plays Hamlet as a realistically grief-stricken thirty-year-old man (realism actually worked for his character much better than it would have worked for Ophelia's) who has a sense of humor and regularly makes a variety of groaning noises to express a range of emotions (and not only when he's feigning madness). This Hamlet is a good man who makes some awful decisions under the pressures forced on him by his mother, uncle, and dead father. I wondered, then, why the director made the decision to go the Zefferelli route with the scene in Gertrude's bedroom (i.e. suggesting that Hamlet might have raped his mother had Polonius not stirred behind the arras) when he'd otherwise sketched out a Hamlet who is not crazy or sexually problematized but rather simply overwhelmingly saddened by grief. This simplistically Freudian route offers, for me, very little payoff.

Stuhlbarg seems to have a very good sense of rhythm and how the Shakespearean line works. This became especially clear when the actor had to handle two unexpected situations, an overhead helicopter and a coughing fit. After Hamlet told Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he could be bounded in a nutshell, a helicopter passed over us; instead of trying to finish the line over the sound of the helicopter, Stuhlbarg instead paused and followed the helicopter with his eyes, eliciting laughter from the audience. Of course, the crazed "oh-my-god-it's-a-flying-machine" look was an easy way out, but the break itself seemed to be exactly on rhythm, as if the iambic pentameter beat had kept going on regardless of the pause in speech. Later (I believe during the "what is a man" soliloquy), he handled a slight coughing fit well, even keeping his coughing on rhythm to some degree.

(NB: the above observations on rhythm may simply be the result of the fact that I'm currently working on a dissertation chapter about blank verse ...)

With the exception of the giant moths flying at our heads (perhaps the reason for Stuhlbarg's coughing?), the 5 1/2 hours of sitting on woodchips while waiting for tickets, and the 3 1/2 hours of sitting on rather uncomfortable seats, Shakespeare in the Park offered a lovely night and an entertaining -- and occasionally surprising -- Hamlet.

(Apparent) Honor Society Scam

2008-06-28T09:40:19-04:00

On May 17th, I received a postcard from something called "The National Scholars Honor Society" inviting me to apply for membership via http://www.magnacumlaude.org. Listen closely and you'll hear the scam sirens:

The fact that they give out a handful of $5000 scholarships is what probably keeps them on the right side of legal, but technical legality doesn't mean it's not a scam (i.e. Poetry.com, PublishAmerica, and blogosphere favorite DirectBuy). Naturally, I decided to apply for membership, since I was "cordially invited," after all.

The online application requested my address and phone number, the name of my college/university (shouldn't they already know that?), my "current scholastic level" (fascinating how the application is identical for undergrads and grad students), and an optional section for "personal information," including "awards, honors, memberships, personal attributes, accomplishments, experiences." It said that the section was optional but would be used for "initial evaluation," so of course, I left it blank.

This morning, I received a -- what do you know? -- letter of acceptance from the National Honor Society! (Incidentally, or perhaps not, I also received a notice that I am being "considered for inclusion" in the Cambridge Who's Who Among Executive and Professional Women.) The National Honor Society writes:

It is my honor and privilege to extend congratulations on your acceptance into The National Scholars Honor Society. Our membership of over 90,000 university scholars and students welcomes you.

Hmm, this doesn't sound like an uberselect group, does it?

And naturally, the next step is for me to "complete my membership" with a Visa, Mastercard, or Discover; their "lifetime membership fee" is $85.00.

College students and their parents should be aware that "The National Scholars Honor Society" most likely operates along the same lines as publishing scams: every student is accepted, and every student must pay a membership fee. (Yes, most legitimate honor societies do charge a yearly fee, but they don't send unsolicited application requests and have a much more rigorous application process than an online form that asks for your name, address, email, and the name of your school.) I'd warn students and parents to avoid any unsolicited invitations to join honors societies or be listed in a directory, and of course, to be wary of "scholarship search services" that charge exorbitant fees merely to do what you could do with Google and a printer.

I need a puppy, an SUV, and magic supplements

2008-06-24T22:39:25-04:00

According to Oprahdoctor Michael Roizen (an MD who, like Mehmet Oz, seems a bit too friendly towards alternative medicine), my "RealAge" is 24.9, younger than my real age, because I take my medications as directed, wear my seatbelt, don't talk on my cell phone while driving, eat fruit, and ... because my parents are still married. While Roizen's test can be a useful tool for encouraging people to start exercising, eat better, and quit smoking, I am not pleased with the implications that the children of divorce, those who do not attend a place of worship at least once a week, and those who don't buy into the vitamin supplement business are somehow in worse health than others.

The site recommends that I manage my allergies better, get a larger car (!!!!!), take vitamin E and omega-3 supplements, and get a dog.

In the test-prep classes I teach during the summer, we advise students to avoid the "1/2 right, 1/2 wrong" answer trap ... I think we may also need to advise Internetters and TV-watchers against the "1/2 good medical advice, 1/2 woo" answer trap as well.

Another disembodied post

2008-06-22T18:33:21-04:00

I am waiting on line. Please keep your fingers crossed that I can get through five hours without needing to make use of restroom facilities.

You know you've got issues when you're willing to sacrifice your bladder for Hamlet.

Private detectives with impeccable grammar?

2008-06-23T21:01:12-04:00

Yesterday, as a result of boredom and a yearly-doctor-checkup day off of work (him, not me; I'm a dirty hippie grad student who is teaching evenings and weekends this summer), el SigOther and I went to see Don't Mess With the Zohan, a movie which included both an allegorical look at British colonization of the Middle East and Adam Sandler catching a fish with his ass.

When we left the movie theater, there was a bright green flyer on my windshield for a service called "New York Trackers," which purports to help suspicious spouses and girlfriends/boyfriends catch their other halves in the act of cheating. Here is the first paragraph of the flyer, reprinted here as written (for your enjoyment):

Being unfaithful or having an affair, whatever you call it; it is likely to be one of the most painful And devastating things that can happen to you. Not knowing if your spouse is cheating on you or Not is equally as painful. Let us find the truth with out spending hundreds or thousands on private Investigators. Let us help you at New York Trackers; here we are able to get you the truth with out Costing you a fortune:

One service is offered is GPS vehicle tracking, where a car can be "equipped" with a tracking device. Also,

we have software that can run totally in stealth; that is, it is virtually undetectable to the user it will NOT show up in the task manager ... These programs monitor Keystroke's, Emails Sent and Received, Internet Chat Conversations, Website Activity, Screenshot Capturing and much more.

All legality issues aside, style and usage DO function in advertising, kiddies.

+1 for using an unlisted phone number, though.

An iamb for your thoughts

2008-06-23T20:41:04-04:00

Reading Timothy Steele's All The Fun's In How You Say A Thing, I'm convinced that what's makes English verse so captivating is not its "naturalness" but rather the near-total disjunction between meter and meaning in English, which occurs because ever since 1066 or so, English meaning has been conveyed more by word order than declension (as in Latin and German) or synthesis/agglutination.