ceebeegee | More Shakespeare in love--Dreaming and Waking

Tired.

More Shakespeare in Love insights: I watched the director's commentary track last night and he talked about the theme of sleeping and dreaming in the movie. I hadn't noticed that and I love that theme (in general, I mean). "I would sleep forever if I could dream myself into a company of players..." I've always been interested in people who are said to be dreaming their lives away--it's always been presented as a bad thing, as behavior to be avoided--but what if that's their reality (i.e., it feels more real)? What is real? One of Madeleine L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time books (the first sequel, I believe, A Wind in the Door) asks that question. I feel more real on stage sometimes than in some "real" situations.

None of the commentary tracks mentions a couple of inside takes I noticed. Will's fascination with the actor Thomas Kent (before he knows who s/he really is) and then when he does know--that could be a reference to Shakespeare's suggested homosexuality. Also, when Will first enters Viola's room she asks him "Are you the author of the plays of William Shakespeare?" I believe that's a nod to the tempest regarding whether or not S-peare actually wrote his plays.

One of my new favorite moments in that movie is when the guy playing the Chorus goes out at the top of the show and can't get the lines out (because he has a terrible stutter). Will is dying backstage, the audience is sweating, all seems lost--and then he finds his stride, intoning those well-known words. "Two households, both alike in dignity..." It's just...wonderful. It brings tears to my eyes, it sends chills down my spine because yes, theater is about transformation; I felt the frisson of "oh God, yes. It happened."

I'd never noticed how Shakespeareanly deux ex machina (what a wildly awkward phrase!) Queen Elizabeth's appearance at the end is, but yeah, there it is. "How does this end?" Her appearances are also so symmetrical--her scenes are in the beginning, the middle and the end of the movie.

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What struck me most about this movie and made me love it so is the way one important message slips by you, the transformative power of art and, well, I hate to say it---but love, as well. Shakespeare's play is transformed by his life, and his life is transformed by his play. There's a wonderful scene where the moneylender is becoming more and more enthralled at what's going on before him, and there's some interuption. Enraged at the interupption---it's not about his investment any longer---he shouts, "Silence!" Earlier, having dismissed Will, now he deferentially bows to him to continue.

Dammit, Cee, now I've got to go watch the bloody thing again. It's all your fault.

Muahaha! My plan is working.

I love the moneylender. The way he starts off as such a ballbreaker (or bootburner) and then falls under the spell of Will's poetry. When Will is recounting to the cast the final acts of R&J and he mentions the apothecary, and hearing Fennyman's reverential whisper, "That's me!" And his utter conviction on stage--yes, it's funny when he jumps on Will's lines, but he's also quite convincing. A testament to the power of theater, of writing, of art.

I also love how they didn't tack on a completely unlikely happy ending, for the sake of convention. I love the way the movie gradually shifted from romantic comedy to tragedy. As awful as it was, Will and Viola could not end up together--it was both right and heartbreaking that she leave him behind.

I love Elizabeth's scenes, too, and I believe they actually incorperated somet things that she actually said. "Have a care with my name, you'll wear it out." What I love, too, are the shifting allegiances, the way nobility and practicality motivates these people. When, after the big brawl, Geoffrey Rush's theatre owner is confronted by Burbage, it's not to resume the fight; it's to pay allegiance to a higher duty. "The Master of the revels despises us all for vagrants and peddlers of bombast, but my father, James Burbage had the first license from Her Majesty to form a company of players, and he drew from poets the literature of the age. We must show them that we are men of parts. Will Shakespeare have a play. I have a theater. The Curtain is yours."

I still get chills reading it. Dammit, Cee, you cow.

And don't get me started on the repressed little priest who is blowing kisses by the end of the play. Don't even go near the magnificence of Judy Dench's Elizabeth. I'm watching the bloody thing now, dammit.

Yes! Love the repressed priest! (Although I believe he's actually more of a repressed gay Puritan--he swans those kisses to the actors. He's only missing a boa.) And "But I know something about a woman in a man's profession. Yes, by God, I do know about that." And the way she keeps up the illusion that Viola is actually Thomas Kent, so the Curtain management doesn't get in trouble.

In the director track, John Madden calls the Burbage speech the first Actor's Equity meeting.

There's a folk tale from Japan about a man who dreams he is a butterfly, but then the butterfly dreams that he is a man. The question arises as to which is the reality and which is a dream.

It's also a lot prettier when I don't paraphrase so quickly.

-Chris "When reality is dismissed?" Combs

I'm going to be a total geek here and reference the original pilot for Star Trek: TOS--I loved that idea that they lived in a world made entirely of dreams. Of course, then there's the Dark Island in the third Chronicle of Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader--the island where dreams come true. Not daydreams--dreams.

If art is heightened reality, then Romeo and Juliet, and Shakespeare in Love, stolen seasons though they are, are more real than "formal" reality.

A perfect example of when having a little bit of knowledge messes you up:

The story is from China, not Japan. I'm certain its elements found their way to Japan, but it seems not to be in the Konjaku Monogatari (or Tales Of A Time Now Past).

And, it seems my paraphrase was not so paraphrasical after all:

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a f1uttering butterfly. What fun he had, doing as he pleased! He did not know he was Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and found himself to be Zhou. He did not know whether Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly had dreamed he was Zhou. Between Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is what is meant by the transformation of things.

-Chris "those crazy Taoists" Combs

More Shakespeare in love--Dreaming and Waking

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When Does A Dream Begin?

Re: When Does A Dream Begin?

Aha!