Category Archives: bardolatry

Respite

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Seen at Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

Most of the reasons I have been so busy since late April fall under the heading “Not necessarily my story to tell,” but the next few days should adhere to a more regular schedule of walking, studying, practicing, and reading. Of course, simply writing that sentence may ensure disruption. And so it goes.

Until the next alarum, then, I am finishing A Midsummer Night’s Dream today, having resumed my Shakespeare in a Year project, and I hope to finish Roxana Robinson’s biography of Georgia O’Keeffe over the next few days. My first music lesson since April is scheduled for next week, and maybe I’ll have time for my Latin studies, which have been too long neglected.

“I am Misanthropos and hate mankind.”

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The always excellent Christopher Prentice at the Newberry Library on Saturday.

On Saturday, the Shakespeare Project of Chicago (SPC) presented Timon of Athens at the Newberry Library — their first reading in that venue since February 2020.

Put up thy gold: go on, — here’s gold, — go on;
Be as a planetary plague, when Jove
Will o’er some high-viced city hang his poison
In the sick air: let not thy sword skip one….

— Timon of Athens, Act IV, Scene iii

Peter Garino in the titular role absolutely rocked, but the rest of the cast was excellent, too. What a return!

My affection for SPC’s work is long-lived. My son and I attended our first SPC production, The Merchant of Venice, twenty-one years ago. That fall, we saw The Two Gentlemen of Verona, directed by Jeff Christian, who also played Valentine; then, in 2005, we caught The Winter’s Tale. After that, the move from Chicago coupled with busy weekend schedules prevented us from attending the theatrical readings.

Nearly a decade later, though, in February 2014, I finally introduced my husband and daughters to the SPC, and in a neat “full circle” moment, the production was The Two Gentlemen of Verona, directed by Jeff Christian. For a few moments, it felt as if time were bending, folding in upon itself as I remembered encountering this play with my son while my husband took our then quite young daughters to play in a nearby park.

The four of us also saw All’s Well That Ends Well in 2014, and in 2016, we attended three SPC productions: The Winter’s Tale in January, Cymbeline in late February, and Cardenio in April. Excellent, all, but Tale featured Christopher Prentice and so provided the synchronicity / serendipity / synthesis I so appreciate. You see, Prentice was a standout at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival we attended in 2014 — an impressive Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing and a perfect Ned in Elizabeth Rex. At Much Ado, in another of those moments in which time bent, folded upon itself, and left me breathless, we read in the program that Prentice was a founding member of the now-defunct Signal Theatre Ensemble, and I remembered that in 2003 he played Benedick in Much Ado,a production my son and I saw at a studio of the Anthenaeum Theatre on the grounds of St. Alphonsus Church in Chicago. 

Time bends and folds.

After our daughters headed to university and beyond, my husband and I continued to attend SPC readings: Henry V in October 2016, King John and The Changeling in 2017; Coriolanus and Women Beware Women in 2018; Titus Andronicus in 2019; and Richard III in early 2020. Yesterday’s was the first we attended at the Newberry Library, and despite the wildly uncomfortable chairs, we think we may continue to see them there. (We saw the other readings at the Highland Park, Winnetka, and Vernon Area public libraries).

Speaking of time’s bends and folds, Christopher Prentice introduced yesterday’s program.

The material in today’s entry was culled from an earlier post
and the title comes from Timon of Athens, Act IV, Scene iii.

January in books

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For the first and only time, the forever home apparently qualifies as a “trend.”

■ All the Sinners Bleed (S.A. Crosby; 2023. Fiction.)
Read from the shelves. This was one of the few on President Obama’s 2023 list that I hadn’t already acquired or considered when the list was published. The reviews were so favorable that I was surprised by how thin I found it.

■ The Pallbearers Club (Paul Tremblay; 2022. Fiction.)
Read from the shelves. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that the success and originality of 2015’s A Head Full of Ghosts was singular.

■ The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov; 1967. Fiction.)
Read from shelves with Night School Bar. The Burgin and Tiernan translation is unmatched.

■ The Michigan Murders (Edward Keyes; 1976. Non-fiction.)
Read from the shelves. This is a true-crime classic.

■ God Is an Octopus: Love, Loss, and a Calling to Nature (Ben Goldsmith; 2023. Non-fiction.)
Read from the shelves. Again, I experienced a disconnect between the favorable reviews and my… indifference. Following the death of his teenaged daughter, Goldsmith explored numerous spiritual belief systems as he grieved and recommitted to environmental issues (e.g., rewilding). In every way, this is a book that seems written for me, but finishing it felt like an obligation.

■ An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (Ed Yong; 2022. Non-fiction.)
Read from the shelves with the Sci Fri Book Club.

■ Neon Paradise (G. —; 2024 (unpublished). Drama.)
A dear friend asked me to be an early reader. The material is original and compelling, and I am excited to see where this project goes.

■ Alexander’s Bridge (Willa Cather; 1912/1922. Fiction.)
(Re)read from the shelves. Cather penned twelve novels. I’ve decided to read (in some cases, reread) one each month in chronological order.

■ The Latinist (Mark Prins; 2022. Fiction.)
Read from the shelves. Who knew how riveting a book about a classics scholar finishing her doctoral studies could be?

■ The Penelopiad (Margaret Atwood; 2005. Fiction.)
(Re)read from the shelves in anticipation of seeing this.

■ Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood Bridge (Maureen Ryan; 2023. Fiction.)
Read from the shelves. What a terrific book! Related link.

■ Richard III (William Shakespeare; 1594. Drama.)
(Re)read from shelves. For the 2024 edition of “Shakespeare in a Year,” Marjorie Garber’s Shakespeare After All is my guide, but I began with Richard III in anticipation of this.

New books, a play, and some music

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A couple of new books.

Over the weekend, we saw The Comedy of Errors, the last production Barbara Gaines will direct as artistic director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. (Reviews here and here.) For the record, we didn’t mind the framing device, at all. Errors is a fairly ridiculous play; the frame gave it the support most contemporary audiences require. We also heard a short concert given by a small ensemble of Elgin Symphony Orchestra members — really delightful.

Pages remaining in journey: 364

By Posted in (re)reading Moby-Dick, annotated reading lists (2023), bardolatry, books, commonplace book, reading Don Quixote 4 Comments

 

“As for your grace’s valor, courtesy, deeds, and undertakings,” Sancho continued, “there are different opinions. Some say, ‘Crazy, but amusing’; others, ‘Brave, but unfortunate’; and others, ‘Courteous, but insolent’; and they go on and on so much in this vein that they don’t leave an untouched bone in your grace’s body or mine” (p. 472).

It sounds as if Sancho has overheard a few book discussions, doesn’t it?

Earlier this week, one of my reading groups finished Crime and Punishment. Despite ten weeks of engaged reading and discussion, we failed to build consensus around any single idea about the philosophy and/or psychology of Raskolnikov. Might he be a psychopath or, at the very least, disturbed? Did the extremities of hunger and poverty inform his disordered thinking? Do his thought patterns simply underscore the limits of nihilism? Some combination of all of this? None of this? In our eighth meeting, I posited that the compulsion to pin a character to a specimen tray and label each of his acts (or, as Sancho might say, bones) might represent a contemporary tendency, one fueled by popular psychology, legal dramas, and the assumption that everything we do can be ascribed a concrete motive and, by extension, a value judgment: He did [insert act] because [insert motive], and that is [insert moral value]. After all, I suggested, sometimes thoughts and acts follow no discernible logic. Shakespeare gives us a fabulous example of this in The Winter’s Tale. Leontes’ jealous rage occurs in one short speech after his departing friend acquiesces to the queen’s entreaties that he, the friend, remain — for her husband’s sake! Leontes’ inexplicable madness results in the deaths of his son and a courtier, as well as the apparent deaths of his newborn and his wife. In a move that can confound readers, audiences, actors, and directors, Shakespeare provides no explanation for Leontes’ unbridled jealousy. Nothing in the text points to a motive. Rather, the writer seems to say, Some people are like this; here is a story about one. And it works! Why? Because more often than anyone would like to admit, what we say, do, and believe defies both logic and diagnosis.

I reread The Winter’s Tale following that meeting and was struck again by how inessential Leontes’ motive is to the plot. In Shakespeare’s blend of tragedy (the first three acts, the fall of the king), comedy (the fourth act, the pastoral involving the shepherdess and the prince), and history (the fifth act, the kingdom in need of an heir), the why of Leontes’ behavior proves far less critical to the play than the fallout of that behavior. Similarly, the why of Raskolnikov’s behavior – in this reader’s opinion, anyway – proves far less critical to Crime and Punishment than the fallout of that behavior. Like Shakespeare, Dostoevsky refrains from defining a motive for the main character’s action. Yes, he draws readers into Raskolnikov’s head; in fact, many early paragraphs read like soliloquies; but the novel seems rooted in the effects of Raskolnikov’s act, on him and on the characters with whom he interacts. It is not, then, a story about why Raskolnikov kills, any more than The Winter’s Tale is a story about why Leontes spirals out of control. Crime and Punishment concerns what occurs in the aftermath of a brutal act.

Of course, because I am also reading Don Quixote, I have found myself wondering about the Knight of the Sorrowful Face. “[T]he common people think your grace is a madman, and that I’m just as great a simpleton” (p. 471), Sancho informs Don Quixote. The gentry suggest he has overstepped his bounds, and other knights want nothing to do with him. Crazy, amusing; brave, unfortunate; courteous, insolent. Maybe the compulsion to pin a character to a specimen tray and label each of his bones is not as contemporary as I thought, eh? Increasingly, however, I find myself drawn to the idea that we need to keep this character far, far away from tray and pins.

A participant in the tutorial has noted that some of us have been “cheating” on Don Quixote and wondered how that has affected our experience of other novels. I loved the use of “cheating” because I often refer to myself as a recklessly and unapologetically promiscuous reader, one who will leave books partially read to pursue others, only to return to books begun well before any of those, all with the cologne of new books clinging to my sweater. Seriously, though, it is not so much that I have been cheating on Don Quixote but rather that I have added Cervantes to a conversation occurring in one of the rooms of my imagination. While participating in the tutorial, I have also completed two courses on one of my favorite works of fiction, Moby-Dick, a short course on The Odyssey, and the reading group for Crime and Punishment. That puts Melville, Homer, Cervantes, Dostoevsky, and Shakespeare in the same mental living room; imagine my delight! Although I am still working out Dostoevsky’s relationship to the other writers, it is clear that Melville is indebted to both Cervantes and Shakespeare, and that these three have a running tab with the oral tradition that yielded the Homeric epics. In anticipation of another course, I began rereading Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, which begins, “Call me Jonah.” With that nod to Melville, Vonnegut entered the living room. (Speaking of Melville and specimen trays, has anyone yet satisfactorily explained Ahab? Of course not, although CLR James makes some insightful, if dated, points about who Ahab may have become to the collective American imagination.) These authors have a lot to talk about, and I am listening.

The other books I am reading have not been enveloped by Don Quixote; nor the reverse. Rather, each of the books amplifies the others.

Marginalia
“…I give you a Don Quixote who is, at the end, dead and buried, so that no one will dare tell more tales about him, for the ones told in the past are enough…” (p. 458).
Spoiler alert, right? Since January 2022, I have participated in one discussion group and two courses on Moby- Dick, and in each, participants were upset when the conclusion was referenced. And our Crime and Punishment group agreed to avoid spoilers, although privately I argued that the title is as much a spoiler as this quote from Don Quixote.

“…I only devote myself to making the world understand its error in not restoring that happiest of times when the order of knight errantry was in flower” (p. 464).
Don Quixote has a vision board.

“It seems to me,” said Don Quixote, “there is no human history in the world that does not have its ups and downs, especially those that deal with chivalry; they cannot be filled with nothing but successful exploits” (p. 476).
Given my reflection above, you will understand how the idea of Don Quixote saying this to Leontes or Ahab simply cracked me up.

“To say witty things and to write cleverly requires great intelligence: the most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton. History is like a sacred thing; it must be truthful, and wherever truth is, there God is; but despite this, there are some who write and toss off books as if they were fritters” (p. 478).
Elsewhere, while discussing Moby-Dick, I observed the parallels between Pip and Lear’s fool, which, naturally, ensured I added King Lear to my to-be-(re)read stack, but arriving at this passage, I wondered, Does Don Quixote have a fool? If so, is it Sancho? Or is the Knight of the Sorrowful Face the author’s fool? (And, yes, there is truth, my readerly kryptonite.)

O wonderful son

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“Your silence will not protect you.”

We have seen more than a few Hamlets, stage and screen. The incredible production at the Gift Theatre is the best we’ve experienced.

From the choice to portray the relationships between fathers and children as warm and affectionate to the decisions surrounding the expression of Ophelia’s madness, from the decaying set to the superlative performances — it’s simply riveting.

Notes from the last few weeks

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Baltimore Oriole.

The orioles arrived before May concluded, but we have not yet espied the indigo buntings — in the yards or on the bike trail. And now it is June. In fact, it is fiercely June: The rains abruptly concluded about ten days ago, and the grass, which has assumed a slightly o’ercooked tan-green hue, sighs, “More water, please,” as it crunches underfoot.

________________________________

We have enjoyed some terrific theater since I last wrote: Not about Nightingales at the Raven, Pass Over at Steppenwolf, and Great Expectations, a Remy Bumppo and Silk Road Rising collaboration.

We had not been to the Raven since All My Sons in 2014. The excellent performances in Nightingales, an early and uneven Tennessee Williams work, ensured that we will make returning a priority.

Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s Pass Over (which features ensemble member Jon Michael Hill — popularly recognizable for his Elementary gig) leans heavily but effectively on the structure of its chief influence, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and its leads, Hill and Julian Parker, deliver compelling, get-out-your-chair-and-applaud performances. (Added bonus: Hill and Parker are Illini!) If you’re in the area, you should see this one.

You should also see the collaboration of Remy Bumppo Theatre Company and Silk Road Rising, in which Pip’s “great expectations” take him from his small Indian village to colonized Calcutta. (More information here; review here.)

We also saw the National Theatre Live broadcast of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, featuring Daniel Radcliffe. Catch a rebroadcast, if you can.

Do you listen to podcasts? Our drive in and out of Chicago yesterday was punctuated by the first three episodes of S-Town. Fans of both seasons of Serial, we all agree Brian Reed’s narrative style outstrips that of Sarah Koenig: Hers were great stories adequately told; his is a good story well told.

That said, the spoiler-ish “Was the Art of S-Town Worth the Pain?” (The Atlantic, April 9) has made. me. think.

Evaluate the moral price of producing good art and what damage it might cause to those involved when their secrets are instantly available for the entertainment consumption of thousands or millions of listeners. ­­S-Town may be a groundbreaking new kind of podcast; it also, like many poems, memoirs, and articles before it, confesses other people’s pain in a public—and at times questionable—way.

Speaking of episodes, my husband and I must catch up on 8 and 9 of The Handmaid’s Tale before the finale this week. (I hope you’re all watching.)

When I’m not watching (or backyard birding or biking or writing or…), I am, of course, reading, and my participation in the “Shakespeare in a Year” project is going particularly well. In fact, finishing The Rape of Lucrece early last month put me ahead of schedule. My remarks on the poem:

Last year, I read Cymbeline in anticipation of seeing a Shakespeare Project of Chicago production; and more recently, I stumbled on a film that imagines Cymbeline as a conflict between a motorcycle gang and corrupt police. As I read The Rape of Lucrece, then, I was immediately reminded of the Posthumus, Iachimo, and Imogen storyline.

Fundamentally, the similarity between Imogen’s story and Lucrece’s, the origins of both of which are ancient, is that their husbands publicly rhapsodize on their beauty and chastity — and thus, embolden their listeners. The husbands’ lack of circumspection leads to the violation of their wives. What a theme, eh? The listener in Cymbeline is Iachimo, who spends an uncomfortable amount of time ogling Imogen as she sleeps before stealing a trinket. He later lies about enjoying her bed. In The Rape of Lucrece, the listener is Tarquin, who also leers at the slumbering wife before violating her.

On hearing Iachimo’s false claims, a jealous Posthumus arranges for Imogen’s death. Of course, when the duplicity is uncovered at the conclusion of the play, Posthumus and Imogen are reunited. Yes, I am aware that we are readers “out of time,” so to speak, but I remain as horrified by their rekindled relationship as I am by that of Hero and Claudio in Much Ado. (Would that Benedict had killed Claudio, but, then, that’s not a comedy, is it?) How does the idea that one’s partner wished her dead inform the union?

Shudder.

Unlike Imogen, who is initially unaware of the attack on her reputation, the raped Lucrece determines to tell her story and name her attacker. That she sees death as the only release from her shame resonates in this, a month in which many are talking about a television show that depicts the rape and suicide of a high school student who, with her recorded note, tells her story and names her attacker. Shame transcends time, apparently, as do jealousy, lechery, and sexual violence.

________________________________

In one of those moments of serendipity / synthesis / synchronicity, we visited the Art Institute not long after I had finished the poem and posted to the “Shakespeare in a Year” group. Now Tintoretto’s Tarquin and Lucretia, always unsettling, is forever stitched to my reading.

More soon.

Reading notes

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Here are some passages for the commonplace book:

From Before the Fall (Noah Hawley; 2016. Fiction.):

p. 95
The machine he believed himself to be broke down. and Gus found himself immersed in an experience he had witnessed for years in his job with the NTSB, but never truly understood. Grief. Death was not an intellectual conceit. It was an existential black hole, an animal riddle, both problem and solution, and the grief it inspired could not be fixed or bypassed like a faulty relay, but only endured.

p. 101
Convergence. It’s one of those things that feels meaningful, but isn’t. At least he doesn’t think it is. How could it be? A batter in Boston fouling pitches into the stands while a small plan struggles through low coastal fog. How many millions of other activities begin and end at the same time? How many other “facts” converge in just the right way, creating symbolic connectivity?

p. 251
He breaks off, thinking, aware that he is not giving them what they wanted, but concerned that their questions are too important to answer in the moment, to define in passing, simply to meet some kind of arbitrary deadline. What was the experience like? Why did it happen? What does it mean going forward? These are the subjects for books. They are questions you meditate for years — to find the right words, to identify all the critical factors, both subjective and objective.

It’s unsurprising that the flow of this “thumping good read” reminds me of great television; Hawley is a television writer and producer.

From The Last One (Alexandra Oliva; 2016. Fiction.):

p. 58
This adventure I asked for, it’s not what I was expecting, not what I wanted. I thought I would feel empowered, but I’m only exhausted.

p. 90
For all her love of animals, for all her work with animals, she feels little remorse. She is comfortable in her knowledge that humans are omnivores and that securing reliable sources of protein is what allowed the species to evolve its current intelligence. She will not kill to kill, but she will kill to eat, and she sees little difference between the eyes of a dead fish and a live one.

Some reviews mentioned that the book erred in revealing its “twist” in the opening pages. They miss the point. Completely. A central conceit of a “reality” survival show is that the audience has information the participants do not. Here, the reader has knowledge the protagonist does not, so The Last One delivers its gut-punch not in a twist but rather in Mae’s eventual comprehension that what she had thought was the fakery of television is actual her new reality.

From The Hard Problem (Tom Stoppard; 2015. Drama.):

From Scene Five:
Hilary (roused) Being wrong about human behaviour half the time is our guiding star, Leo! It’s what’s telling us the study of the mind is not a science. We’re dealing in mind stuff that doesn’t show up in a scan — accountability, duty freewill, language, all the stuff that makes behaviour unpredictable.

We saw Stoppard’s latest play at the Court Theatre this past weekend. If you’re in the area, both it and TimeLine Theatre’s A Disappearing Number are must-see theater. Both run through April 9.

In other reading…
Election Day (April 4) was a long slog made bearable by Lucinda Rosenfeld’s Class, a book light enough that I could regularly look away but meaty enough that I didn’t feel like I had consumed the mental equivalent of Yodels.

Brian Wood’s The Massive is a pretty terrific post-apocalyptic tale. My daughters, both artists and readers of graphic fiction, say that I should remark on the art when I talk about graphic fiction. It’s generally all about the story for me, but in these volumes, I realized that I do know when a different artist takes over. In a medium dependent on image, why would one change artists partway through the story? Different styles change the narrative in subtle ways. Is that the point? Or is it simpler than that? Is one artist available when one issue or arc is being prepared for publication but unavailable for another? Well, in any event, Danijel Zezelj’s work in the “Sahara” arc was particularly powerful.

For my “Shakespeare in a Year” project, I have read through Sonnet 45 and Line 936 of Venus and Adonis, the latter of which I find the more satisfying endeavor. (No pun, Shakespearean or otherwise, intended.) Don Paterson’s commentary, however, quite nearly makes slogging through the sonnets worth it. Irreverent and insightful and highly recommended.

Since my last bookish post, I’ve also (re)read Richard II, a favorite of mine…

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills….

… and Romeo and Juliet. Is it old(er) age that makes me increasingly immune to this story’s appeal? I must have muttered, “Overwrought,” two dozen or more times while reading and listening. Mercutio, though. What an invention! I think it was Bloom who posited that the Mercutio passages presage the verbal antics of Hamlet. I can believe it.

In advance of seeing the CST’s Tug of War: Foreign Fire last year, I read Edward III, which occurs in the reading plan between Richard III and The Comedy of Errors. I simply have not been able to bring myself to reread it. Since this admission does not appear to have gotten me booted from the group, I plan to move on to A Midsummer Night’s Dream this coming weekend.

A related aside: Over spring break I shared with my daughters my proposal for the CST’s 2017-18 season: Richard II with Scott Parkinson as the deposed king, Coriolanus with Timothy Edward Kane as the (to my mind) underappreciated noble, and Titus Andronicus with Larry Yando in the lead. You heard it here first, folks.

The Shakespeare Project of Chicago

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The Changeling
By Thomas Middleton and William Rowley
Directed by Steve Scott
February 24-28, 2017

She that in life and love refuses me,
In death and shame my partner she shall be.

From the Shakespeare Project of Chicago‘s performance announcement: Lady Beatrice has a problem: she is unhappy about the husband her father has selected for her to marry. With her wedding looming, she devises a solution with the help of DeFlores, her father’s servant. The price for murder is never cheap, and never higher than what is revealed in this Jacobean classic from Thomas Middleton (The Revenger’s Tragedy) and William Rowley. The Goodman Theatre’s Steve Scott makes his Shakespeare Project directing debut with a cast that includes Gary Alexander, Theo Allyn, Jordan Brodess, Tony Dobrowolski, Kurt Ehrmann, Jose Antonio Garcia, John Green, Torrey Hanson, Andrew Jessop, Patty Malaney, Jeff Parker, Matt Penn, Christopher Prentice, Rebecca Spence and Randy Steinmeyer. Music and sound design by George Zahora.

Friday, February 24, 2017 at 7 p.m.
The Niles Public Library*, 6960 W. Oakton Street, Niles, Illinois

Saturday, February 25, 2017 at 10 a.m.
The Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton Street, Chicago, Illinois

Saturday, February 25, 2017 at 2 p.m.
The Wilmette Public Library, 1242 Wilmette Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois

Sunday, February 26, 2017 at 2 p.m.
The Highland Park Public Library, 494 Laurel Avenue, Highland Park, Illinois

Monday, February 27, 2017 at 6:30 p.m.
Vernon Area Public Library*, 300 Olde Half Day Road, Lincolnshire, Illinois

Tuesday, February 28, 2017 at 7:15 p.m.
Mount Prospect Public Library*, 10 S. Emerson Street, Mount Prospect, Illinois

An introduction to the play commences 15 minutes prior to curtain.
Admission is free, but seating is limited.

* Pre-registration required; call the library.