More Shakespeare in love--Dreaming and Waking

[ceebeegee]

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.

Comments

Re: When Does A Dream Begin?

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

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.

Aha!

[planga.livejournal.com]

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