Elizabethan

Is Percy Jackson Hamlet?

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I’m really excited about the Disney Plus release of the Percy Jackson TV show. My family and I are really enjoying it and I think it’s a very good adaptation, (much more faithful than the previous movie versions). The tone is darker, the characters are better fleshed out, and also there’s a much more nuanced take on Percy’s character, which I believe is at the core of the series. The movie is essentially just a fetch quest where Percy is going from location A to location B looking for various magic items and fighting monsters. Movie Percy is a very static character but in the books and the show, they keep all of those journeys but also delve into his complicated relationship with the gods, his own insecurities growing up without a father, and his overwhelming feeling that this world of gods and mortals is fundamentally flawed and that he is the one to fix it.

“Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we’re related for better or for worse…and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.”

-Percy Jackson, The Sea of Monsters


In short, what makes the show great is that it emphasizes the elements of the book that make it a classic story of a young man who is trying to find his place in the world and complete the quest that his father set for him. Of course, once I started watching it, my Shakespeare Brain activated, and I immediately compared him to Shakespeare’s ultimate example of a hero trying to complete a quest given to him by an absent father- Hamlet.
So today I’ll Talk about why I think Percy Jackson is actually a descendant of Hamlet or rather that Hamlet and Percy Jackson are both descendants of the same common ancestor in Greek mythology and touch on what these classic stories can say to us today.

1. The Plot

AI Art I created of Percy Jackson. Nightcreator.com.

As I touched on earlier, there are some glaring similarities between the plots of Percy Jackson and Hamlet- we have a young man who has who hates his stepfather, who is deeply protective of his mother, who goes on a magical quest given to him by his father, (who cannot directly aid him because he’s not physically there). In Percy Jackson, his father is a god- the ancient Greek water god Poseidon, while Hamlet’s father is a ghost. Both heroes have to deal with treachery, uncover a plot, avert potential wars, and get caught up in great military and political power schemes. While Hamlet is trying to restore the rightful heir to the throne (himself), Percy is trying to avoid a war between the gods. Both heroes have stoic sidekicks- Hamlet has Horatio whereas Percy has Annabeth and his friend Grover the Satyr. Hamlet’s friend l Horatio is kind of like a combination of Annabeth’s intelligence and Grover’s kindness and empathy. Finally, both stories conclude in a duel (spoiler alert) where they fight against a near-impossible adversary, and in the end, succeed in their quest, although in Hamlet’s case, he does so at the cost of his own life.

The main difference between these stories is connected to tone and genre- Hamlet is a revenge play, and most Revenge tragedies end in the death of the avenger. Percy Jackson is an adventure quest so based on the conventions, he can succeed, survive, and go off to fight another day. Nevertheless, in terms of the broad outline, the plots are very similar. I would argue this is probably because Hamlet has its roots in many ancient mythological stories like Oedipus, Orestes, and of course, the Danish Viking myth of Amleth. I would argue that both Percy Jackson and Hamlet have a very clear direct common ancestor: the ancient Greek myth of …

2. A Common Ancestor- Perseus

https://prezi.com/btk3m_bamkmh/hamlets-monomyth/

As this funny cartoon illustrates, the plots of Percy Jackson and Hamlet can be seen as a modern incarnation of the Perseus myth, from the villainous stepfather to the hero’s protective feelings to the mother to the magical quest to get rid of a stepfather who takes away his birthright. These plot elements follow a very similar formula; as Jake also alluded to, all three of these stories are part of what writers and scholars like to call the monomyth or the “Hero’s journey,” a concept in mythology and storytelling that has inspired works such as Percy Jackson, Star Wars, and many others.

What Is the Monomyth?

Crash Course Mythology- The Monomyth

In 1949, scholar Joseph Campbell wrote a book called “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” which posited that every culture has stories that fit into universal archetypes- that essentially all human cultures have unique stories, but also call to mind universal truths about humanity. He then distilled the common archetypes and plot tropes of these myths into something called “The monomyth” or “The Hero’s Journey,” a 17-step process that is at the core of many ancient myths, modern adventure stories, or revenge stories such as Hamlet. Below are some of the common tropes of the Hero’s Journey. When you see it spelled out like this, it is very clear that both Hamlet, Percy Jackson, and Perseus follow the Monomyth formula:

Infographic of the Monomyth from David R. Jolly.com

Part I: The Call To Adventure:

Where’s the glory in repeating what others have done?

The Lightining Thief

Every Greek hero starts with a call to adventure- Theseus finds his father’s sword and sets out to find him. Oedipus needs to lift the plague on Thebes, and Hamlet needs to find out why his father’s ghost has returned.

A Half-Blood of the eldest gods, Shall reach sixteen against all odds
And see the world in endless sleep
The Hero’s soul, cursed blade shall reap
A single choice shall end his days
Olympus to preserve or raze.

The Oracle- Sea of Mosters

Part II: Refusing the Call

If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.

The Lighting Thief

I won’t go looking for trouble. I usually don’t have to

Neither Hamlet nor Percy outright refuse to go on their quests, but both experience doubts. Percy, looking at how the gods have cursed and fought and betrayed each other, wonders whether or not they deserve his help:

Percy watches the story of the gods in the Tunnel of Love (Episode 5, Disney Plus 2024.)

Hamlet on the other hand, is so worried that the ghost is trying to deceive him into killing an innocent man, that he nearly kills himself in the most famous speech in all of Shakespeare.

Part III: Supernatural Aide

Supernatural Aid – A magical helper appears or becomes known

Go on with what your heart tells you, or you will lose all.

The Nereiads, Lighting Thief Chapter 17

Both Percy and Perseus get help from the gods- magical weapons, advice, etc. Hamlet gets the revelation from his father that his uncle killed him and how. What sets Hamlet apart from any number of myths is that, since there’s no tangible evidence that his father was there, Hamlet is not sure if his father helped him, or if he is going insane.

Suspecting and knowing are not the same.

-The Lighting Thief

Crossing the first threshold

In Perseus, the first threshold would be when he leaves Acrisius’ palace and sails to the island of Cerebos. In Percy Jackson, this would be when he leaves Yancy Academy and goes to Camp Half-Blood, and in Hamlet, it would be when he meets the ghost.

My fate cries out, and makes each petty artery in this body as hardy as the Nemian Lion’s mane. Still am I called!

Hamlet, Act I, Scene iii.

Belly of THe BEast

There’s always a part of the story when a character feels they are in too deep. Sometimes it’s a literal belly of the beast- Pinocchio and the whale, Luke Skywalker and the Sarlaac pit, Frodo when he reaches Mordor, and Agent K in Men In Black when he literally gets eaten by the Bug. In Percy Jackson, it would definitely be when he journeys to Hades, like many Greek heroes like Orpheus or Hercules.

I’d love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera.

The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!.

Usually, the belly of the beast occurs near the climax of the story- the ultimate test of the hero’s courage and resolve. For Hamlet, this would be the duel with Laertes- he’s in a situation where Claudius has total control of what he does.

“You weren’t able to talk sense into him?”
“Well, we kind of tried to kill each other in a duel to the death.”
“I see. You tried the diplomatic approach.” (The Sea of Monsters)

I’ll get into a deeper summary of the steps of the Hero’s journey on my podcast later this month, but to summarize, the Hero’s Journey is essentially a story of growth, maturity, and enlightenment. It’s not a coincidence that all three of these heroes are young men who leave home and then return to confront an evil stepfather or uncle. Campbell regarded the Hero’s journey as a metaphor for young men growing up, learning about themselves, gaining confidence in themselves and their abilities, and taking their rightful place in society by displacing a corrupt older authority figure. This is also why these stories often resonate with young people, and why storytellers like Disney often use the Hero’s Journey as a template for children’s movies.

These universal stories of growing up, maturity, and a life worth living have always inspired people and even though the stories have different purposes and the plots take different forms, the core of what makes them universal remains the same.

Book Review: William Shakespeare and the Globe

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Video Book Review:

Content: 

This is a story of two boys, centuries apart, but united by their love of theater in general, and the Globe Theater in particular. The first is William Shakespeare, whose story Aliki tells from his birth, to his boyhood days, to his rise to prominence in the theater. The second is Sam Wannamaker, the man who spearheaded the project of re-building the Globe Theater from 1949 to the first performance of the Globe in June of 1997. 

Aliki tells this story in the format of an Elizabethan play, dividing it into five acts. Acts I-4 tell the story of Shakespeare’s life while Act V focuses on Sam Wannamaker pursuing his dream. The book concludes with a chronology of Shakespeare’s plays, and a table of his most famous words and expressions, illustrated with adorable characters.

Illustrations: Medium and Style of Illustration

Like many of her books, Aliki’s illustrations are layered and detailed. She uses ink pen outlines to draw her characters, but then fills them in with bright, vibrant colors. She then painstakingly shades them using the crosshatching technique, to create textures that are complex but have a hand-drawn almost impressionistic feel. The characters aren’t ultra-realistic, and the color palette is limited mainly to bright primaries and warm browns, making it look like a child’s box of crayons or colored pencils. This book is designed to appeal to children with its hand-drawn quality. 

Format:

Cover- The cover makes the subject of the book clear to the audience. We see Shakespeare and Globe Theater, but also illustrated moments from his plays. This helps establish that this is not only a biography, it is an introduction to Shakespeare’s plays and poems as well.

Front Matter: The book opens with four pages of quotes from Shakespeare’s plays illustrated with fairies, pipers, and Elizabethan men and women. There is no half-title, no frontispiece and no Half title verso.

Title page verso (copyright page) In the center of the copyright page is an Illustration of Shakespeare standing atop a globe, over the famous lines: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”  Below the quote in very small letters is the copyright date, a short summary, the ISBN data, card catalog information, and the typography information.

Title Page The title is laid out on a white background with a thin black border. Below the title is an image of a boy (presumably Sam Wanamaker), assembling a paper model of Shakespeare’s globe, with a portrait of Shakespeare in the background. This helps establish that this biography focuses on both Shakespeare and Wanamaker, and makes the reader excited to see the real Globe brought to life in full illustration.

Table of Contents As stated before, the book is organized like an Elizabethan play, so rather than Chapter 1, etc. the book has five Acts with 1-4 scenes in them. Each chapter in the table of contents is labeled with a description that sets the scene; either a location (like London, Stratford, The Globe), or what will happen in the scene (such as “Building” or “Uncovering”). The table then details four appendices that are part of the back matter. 

Preface:  The Preface is referred in the book as an aside, (an Elizabethan theater term meaning something spoken between a character and the audience). This preface acknowledges that, because of the lack of surviving historical information on William Shakespeare, Aliki, like many Shakespearean biographers, has to use some guesswork to fill out the narrative of his life. A second preface (referred to as a Prologue), introduces the story of the book, (namely the lives of Will Shakespeare and Sam Wanamaker). This preface mimics how in Shakespeare’s plays, a prologue would tell the audience what would happen before the narrative started.

Back Matter/ Appendices: There are four appendices in the back matter- A table of Shakespeare’s collected works, a timeline of the book’s events from 1564-1999,  an illustrated list of Shakespearean words and expressions, and finally a list of Shakespearean sites to visit in London and Shakespeare’s home town of Stratford Upon Avon. These appendices show the reader that Shakespeare has an important role in history and in the English language, and encourage the reader to learn more about him. 

Value As an Educational Tool

This story not only tells Shakespeare’s life, it also introduces the reader to his plays and his influence on the English language through the illustrations and frequent Shakespearean quotations. The reader also gains an insight into Elizabethan life and culture by following Will’s journey from Stratford to London. Finally, by juxtaposing Shakespeare’s life with Sam Wannamaker’s, the reader sees Shakespeare through Sam’s eyes as he works his whole life to restore Shakespeare’s Globe to its former glory. The reader develops a love of Shakespeare, (or at least an empathetic respect), and may feel empowered to read more about Shakespeare, see his plays or maybe even become a Shakespearean artist in the future. In short, Aliki’s book brings the world of Shakespeare to young readers in a way that is beautiful to look at, full of insight, and with enough supplemental materials to encourage them to learn more.

Overall Impression:

Like Prospero’s magic in The Tempest, this story is magically told- it is not intended to create a totally realistic representation of Elizabethan life, but to give an exciting, colorful impression of Will’s life and work to the reader. Due to the scant historical details of Will’s life, Aliki chose not to do a standard biography, but, like Shakespeare’s own history plays, to tell a historically authentic story, rooted in truth that brings a time and a place to life, while portraying it an exciting and visually appealing way.

Citation:

Aliki. (2000). William Shakespeare & the Globe. HarperCollins Publishers. 

Spirit Halloween and Shakespeare

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I’ve written before that Shakespeare helped influence Halloween as we know it- the images of holding skulls, witches chanting over a cauldron, and even ghosts coming back to plague their murderers all have Shakespearean roots. Exhibit A is how these images and tropes can even be found in beloved Halloween costume stores like Spirit Halloween!

If you like creepy Halloween activities and Shakespeare, please sign up for my fully online, fully asynchronous class: “An Immersive Guide To Shakespeare’s Macbeth!” The class features a digital escape room, an interactive quiz, and a special, undead guest!

Get $10 off my class “An Interactive Guide to Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” ” with coupon code HTHES4NHCN10 until Nov 3, 2023. Get started at https://outschool.com/classes/an-interactive-guide-to-shakespeares-macbeth-jp7TIh9B and enter the coupon code at checkout.

Review: Romeow and Drooliet by Nina Laden

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The whole book, read by me!

As you probably know, I love to review children’s adaptations of Shakespeare (whether direct or indirect). “The Lion King,” (Hamlet), “Encanto” (King Lear), and of course, the many adaptations of “Romeo and Juliet,” are mainstays on this website: Gnomio and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss, even Disney’s Pocahontas have their basic plot and characters firmly rooted in Verona Italy.

Then one day by chance, I found this book in a local park, and I knew I had to review it!

The Premise

This is a simple re-telling of the story of Shakespeare’s play that focuses on just the young lovers. You feel for these cute little animals and in a way, making them a kitty and a dog smitten with puppy love, makes them more understandable and sympathetic than Shakespeare’s youthful teenagers, who indulge in violent delights without using their human reason.

What It Keeps

The Story

The book keeps the feud between the two families, has the young lovers meet in disguise at a ball, fall in love on a balcony, get married, and amazingly, DIE! Laden still manages to tell the story in a kid-friendly way, though giving it tragic weight.

The Language

The book opens with a rhyming prologue, which, although it isn’t in sonnet form, has the same function as Shakespeare’s prologue- to explain the plot before we see it played out in the book, thus giving the whole story a sense of dramatic irony. Plus, as you can see, Laden also imitates Shakespeare’s love of wordplay with metaphors and puns, (a tale of tails), and alliteration to give the dialogue some wit and effervescence. Reading it gave me giggles like I’d just popped open some champagne.

What it changes: Spoiler alert

All throughout, Laden makes small changes to simplify the plot and remove characters that don’t directly impact the main plot. The characters of Lord/Lady Capulet and Lord/Lady Montegue, The Nurse, Paris, Peter, the servants, and the friars are completely absent, turning an already brief play into an even more compressed story.

Like a lot of animal retellings I’ve seen of this story, the author recasts the human leads as animals that are natural enemies- in this case, cats and dogs. This makes the story easier for kids to understand. As I’ve said before, it’s often difficult to keep track of who belongs to which house in Shakespeare’s version. All you need to know is that Romeo and his brothers are cats and Juliet’s family are dogs.

Funnily enough, my daughter actually complained that the story would’ve been better if Juliet were a cat instead of Romeo, which I agree with for very specific reasons. The character of Tybalt is named after a character from a prose story called “Reynard the Fox,” who had the epithet, Prince of CATS. Mercutio annoys Tybalt by taunting him with this title before challenging him to a duel:

Tybalt: What would you with me?
Mercutio: Good Prince of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives! Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene i.

It would’ve been a funny Shakespeare easter egg to have Juliet and Tybalt be portrayed as cats, but I understand why they went with dogs- Drooliet is a hilarious pun, and having Tybalt be a vicious, rabid dog helps set him up as a fearsome antagonist.

I suppose you’re wondering, how the author keeps Shakespeare’s tragic ending in a children’s book? Well, like Shroedinger’s cat, she manages to make Romeow die and not die at the same time. He gives Drooliet one of his 9 lives, allowing them both to ‘die’ and then come back for a happy ending. It’s a brilliant way to nod at the original, while also keeping the kid-friendly tone.

My Reaction

This book is really fun and very enjoyable for kids, parents, and teachers who want to introduce kids to Shakespeare at an early age!

Free teaching guide from the SAG-Aftra Foundation

romeowanddrooliet_teacheractivityguideDownload

Review: Ye Try Guys Try Romeo and Juliet

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I was excited from the beginning to hear that the Try guys were going to bring Shakespeare to YouTube in a way that was fun and accessible. My expectations were that they would make fun of the play with care; I was hoping that they wouldn’t mock Shakespeare, (or mock people who like Shakespeare). I was also hoping that they would critique the characters without outright mocking them and find ways to make the play connect to modern audiences. I think they achieved all those things and more!

Zach Kornfield, Eugene Yang, and Keith Habersberger known collectively as “The Try Guys” are a group of friends who seek out new experiences and share them with the world. They thrive on taking themselves out of their comfort zone and learning about the world through experiencing it firsthand in a funny, lighthearted way. As I said before, what could be more adventurous, daring, informative, and out of YouTube’s comfort zone than doing Shakespeare?

In a series of videos they explored Elizabethan clothing, stage combat, learning how to speak Shakespearean verse, and finally on August 10th, 2023, they performed “Romeo and Juliet” live on Youtube, with suggestions from the audience! With this post, I will discuss the evolution from these three videos, to the final show, which I got to see live on YouTube. I will discuss what I think worked, what didn’t, and how this production might influence future Shakespeare productions going forward!

Podcast About the SHow:

My Top Ten Moments:

Background on the Show

The original pitch for the play made it sound like a live YouTube event, but they made it even better by including a voting option where viewers could change some of the action and chose for instance, if they fought with swords or some other object, thus engaging the audience the whole time. This is what made this experience unique, (perhaps more than any other production), and I think in many ways this production could be an inspiration to educators and theater practitioners! My main critcism of the show is that, though it can be enjoyed by almost anybody, it is definitely not suitable for children, and nobody could get away with showing it in a classroom environment.

Costumes and Sets

The set for “Romeo and Juliet,” seems like an ordinary YouTube TV studio, in that it’s fairly small and it does not suggest any particular period. It kind of suggests somewhat of a dream-like environment; there are cardboard cut outs with some clouds, the lighting is warm with a few pink colors . Most of all it reminds me of a fractured fairytale more than classic tragedy, (which I suppose is clever in itself because it sets up that the Try Guys are going to fracture Shakespeare the same way people like the Muppets fractured fairy tales.

The costumes don’t seem as elaborate or historically accurate as the ones in the previous video, which is a shame because it would’ve been really nice to see the Try Guys walk, fight, and dance in the same costumes that they experimented with in the previous video. That said, the costumes certainly are functional within the story. Eugene as Mercutio has a stylish striking black outfit that certainly suggests somebody you don’t want to mess with. Zach as Romeo has an amusing long wig (romantically disheveled of course) and a blue doublet (though I miss the pumpkin pants in the previous video). As in other productions, the Montegues wear blue and the Capulets mostly wear red. I would be surprised if the director had seen the famous Franco Zephirelli film (or at least Gnomio and Juliet).

The director Keith Habersberger also keeps the best costumes for himself both as the Prince and Juliet; he’s wearing a beautiful ordinate gold costume as the Prince and Juliet herself has lovely rose-colored gowns. Even her shift in Act Four is it’s tasteful. I’ll talk more about Keith’s portrayal of Juliet later, but let’s just say that the clothes do not make him look like a man in women’s garb, they make him look like Juliet.

Stage Combat

The stage combat episode is great, and as a Stage Combat junkie myself, I watch a lot of channels like Skalgrim, Forged In Fire, HEMA videos, and of course my own stage combat videos. Consuming this combat content, I know that there are lots of avenues for education and for entertainment watching these 3 guys who have never done sage combat before, try out swords. I was very delighted to see them putter around with swords and then learn a short stage combat scene in which they then put on put their own spin on by improvising a scene where Romeo & Juliet sword fight with a guy who cut the cut in front of them while they were trying to get ice Cream. The video is fun, ludicrous, but also it’s just as informative as videos from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Unfortunately, The Try Guys didn’t make much use of the swordplay they learned in this video during the final performance. Imagine my disappointment when, during the climactic duel between Tybalt and Mercutio, the audience voted to replace the swords with…something that was definitely NSFW. I’ll discuss this choice in depth later on my podcast but let’s just say it made the training they did in the previous episode seem like a waste of time.

The Cameos

Did you hear about this guy Romeo? He’s the talk of the town

Link Neal from Good Mythical Morning

One aspect of the production that I deeply loved was that instead of doing the whole play, The Try Guys did a 90-minute abridged version using multiple narrators to fill in with bits of exposition and commentary. The Reduced Shakespeare Company did this before in their show, but since The Try Guys are very popular in the YouTube Community, they got a bunch of their fellow Youtubers to be their narrators like Rhett and Link, Smosh Games, Rosario Pansino from Nerdy Nummies, and Mat Pat from Game Theory. It was absolutely delightful to hear more of my favorite YouTubers talk about my favorite writer, each one telling the story with their own brand of humor!

Romeo runs to Friar Laurence, mascara all smeared!

Manny Mua

The Performances:

Finally, let’s talk about the acting in the final performance and how the Try Guys succeded in bringing Shakespeare to You Tube.

Keith Habensburger as Juliet

Keith carries the show as Juliet. As he mentions in the video above, he has performed in Shakespeare before, and his passion for performing shines. It’s actually a bit shocking to see him drop his usual persona as an easy-going funny guy and become a tragic heroine! In addition, he has a clear vision for the character- I suspected that he would probably exploit the comedy of him being a man playing a woman and being taller than Zach and he does in the earlier scenes, but once Tybalt dies, Keith plays Juliet absolutely straight- he is absolutely committed to playing Juliet’s anguish and desperation and it’s really moving to watch!

Eugene As The Nurse/ Mercutio

Eugene was a natural choice for Mercutio- his Try Guys persona is very much the wild card, sometimes friendly and sometimes fierce and he clearly loves Shakespearean language as you can see in the earlier video where he plays Edmund from “King Lear.” Honestly, though, I think his performances in the final play are a bit under-dramatized- I don’t quite know what he was going for as either The Nurse or Mercutio, which might be a result of limited time or lack of direction. That said, he does a good job for having never done Shakespeare professionally before.

Zach as Romeo or “A Bro wearing Hose”

Zach admits in the Shakespeare Acadamy video that he doesn’t “get Shakespeare,” and I get the sense that he doesn’t really like Romeo, so his performance seems like an intentional parody of romantic leading men. Honestly, this is fine. Romeo isn’t my favorite Shakespearean character either, and yes, The Try Guys are treating this as a real show, but at the same time it is still an experiment; they are trying something they wouldn’t normally do, so Zach is dealing with the awkwardness of playing Romeo with the same self-deprecating sense of humor that he uses when baking without a recipe or trying ballet. He knows that he would never get cast as Romeo in real life, so he’s having a laugh while he does it onstage, all the while being the best Romeo he can be.

The Format

One of the biggest challenges any Shakespeare practitioner has to face with a modern audience is the problem of engagement. The age of social media has changed how we consume content- we don’t passively watch anymore, we engage with it, comment on it, share it, and sometimes even manipulate it for ourselves. In Shakespeare’s day, there was no division between actors and audiences so in a way, his plays work well for this kind of live choose-the-outcome YouTube Event and I’m interested to see if it influences future performances going forward. In any case, I’m grateful that I was able to see this fun-frenetic, once-in-a-lifetime evening of live theater!

If you would like to learn Shakespeare like the Try Guys, I have a series of online clases in acting, stage combat, Shakespearean comedies, tragedies, and of course, “Romeo and Juliet.” You can enroll in one of these classes now or schedule one with me by visiting my Outschool.com page:

Crafting a Character: Puck

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“Welcome Spirit, How Camest Thou hither?” The sources for Puck

Puck, in medieval English folklore, a malicious fairy or demon. In Old and Middle English the word meant simply “demon.” In Elizabethan lore he was a mischievous, brownielike fairy also called Robin Goodfellow, or Hobgoblin. As one of the leading characters in William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck boasts of his pranks of changing shapes, misleading travelers at night, spoiling milk, frightening young girls, and tripping venerable old dames. The Irish pooka, or púca, and the Welsh pwcca are similar household spirits.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “puck”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 21 Apr. 2016, https://www.britannica.com/topic/puck-fairy. Accessed 18 July 2023.

Shakespeare also took inspiration from English poet Edmund Spencer, who visited Ireland in the 1590s and adapted the folklore he picked up into his opera The Fairy Queen, which Shakespeare adapted into A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Types of fairies you can “spot” at the Lullymore Park in Ireland:

Puck/Robin’s Dual Nature

The old stories tell that Fairies are magical creatures who live in hollow places in the earth. Some are benevolent and help give rain and pleasant weather to the Earth, Like the king and Queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania:

And the mazed world,
By their [the tides] increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.

— Titania, (Queen of the Faries), A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act II, Scene i.

Titania in this speech shows great concern for nature, humanity, and the planet. She believes it is the responsibility of fairies, particularly herself and her husband Oberon, to control the elements and keep humans and fairies safe. Some fairies, however, are cruel and enjoy playing tricks on mortals, just like Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Queen Mab in Romeo and Juliet.

  • Close reading of Puck’s speech (MND II, i)
  • Close reading of Puck’s speech (MND II, i)
  • Close reading of Puck’s speech (MND II, i)
  • Close reading of Puck’s speech (MND II, i)
  • Close reading of Puck’s speech (MND II, i)

.

This is a short analysis I created of the tricks Puck plays on people in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as part of my acting course on Ouschool.com. Note the different ways Puck is portrayed in photos as a satyr, a rotund elf, and sometimes as an almost- demon like figure.

Punishments or contracts with fairies formed a significant part of Goodfellow’s purpose on earth. While he could issue good fortune and support, this was always at the cost of those involved. As Reginald Scot commented, Goodfellow had a ‘standing fee’ of a ‘mess of white bread and milk’, which he expected after supporting housewives with their chores. If his payment was forgotten, Goodfellow was believed to steal from the home that owed him, often stealing grain and milk from the dairy.

Abigail Sparkes, Historic UK.com

Performing Puck

Because Puck is not human, and somewhat ambiguous in the text, an actor can play Puck in many different ways. Generally speaking, actors tend to explore Puck’s attitude toward humans, their love of mischief, and how to translate that physically and vocally

Puck. My mistress with a monster is in love.
Near to her close and consecrated bower,
While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,
A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
Were met together to rehearse a play
The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort,
Who Pyramus presented, in their sport
Forsook his scene and enter’d in a brake
When I did him at this advantage take,
An ass’s nole I fixed on his head:

Anon his Thisbe must be answered,
And forth my mimic comes.
So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;
And, at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls;
He murder cries and help from Athens calls.
I led them on in this distracted fear,
And left sweet Pyramus translated there:
When in that moment, so it came to pass,
Titania waked and straightway loved an ass!

slideshare id=52829293&doc=randj-150916030030-lva1-app6891]

References:

Shapiro, James. A Year In the Life Of William Shakespeare, 1599. Chapter 6: Things Dying and Things Reborn.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3fLDRSY7r9rJhrVFWy99Mly/transcript-shakespeares-restless-world-programme-7

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/theatre-arts/is-shakespeare-responsible-for-the-stage-irishman-34638347.html

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/stage/what-ish-my-nation-shakespeare-s-irish-connections-1.2619173

Richard the Third and Toxic Masculinity

| astronut1

This past month, there was a free production of Richard III in New York’s Shakespeare In the Park, starring Danai Gurira as the title character. I have not seen this production, though I wish I had. I enjoyed the actress Ms. Gurrira in such films as “Black Panther,” and would love to see her do Shakespeare. What is more, the concept intrigues me. This project explores themes of toxic masculinity, racial identity, inferiority, and misogyny.

Danai Gurira as Richard III, Shakespeare in the Park, 2024

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/10/1110359040/why-it-matters-that-danai-gurira-is-taking-on-richard-iii

Unsurprisingly, with so many heady topics in the production, this Richard III is still somewhat controversial. Some right-wing critics dismissed the whole production as a piece of ‘woke propaganda,’ but I feel this is unfair.

When Danai Gurira of Marvel’s “Black Panther” first takes the stage in the title role, the actress has no perceivable hunchback or arm trouble. And yet the dialogue suggesting Richard suffers from a lifelong physical issue (“rudely stamped”) has been kept in. Perhaps we are to use our imaginations. Who knows? We are certainly tempted to close our eyes.

By Johnny Oleksinski

I will not judge this production based on the acting because I haven’t been able to see it. What I will do is take a stance on the validity of the concept. Specifically, I want to ask if this play is a good examination of toxic masculinity and if it would it be worthwhile to see it portrayed by a black woman, as opposed to a white man. The short answer is an emphatical “Yes.”

https://variety.com/2022/legit/features/danai-gurira-richard-iii-toxic-masculinity-central-park-1235318196/

Richard’s Toxic Masculity

Richard III is definately an example of toxic masculinity. He is violent, full of hatred, vengeance, and mysogeny. He is constantly insulting women from Lady Anne, Jane Shore, Queen Elizabeth, and even his own mother. In fact, the source of Richard’s toxic attitude is that he blames his mother for his disability and deformity:

Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard;1635
What other pleasure can the world afford?
I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap,
And deck my body in gay ornaments,
And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.
O miserable thought! and more unlikely1640
Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns!
Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb:
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe,
To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;1645
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an unequal size;
To disproportion me in every part,
Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp1650
That carries no impression like the dam.
And am I then a man to be beloved?
O monstrous fault, to harbour such a thought!. 3H6, Act III, Scene i, lines 1635-1653.

Now I should clarify the difference between deformity and disability, which are characteristics that Richard III has as part of his character makeup. According to the Americans With Disabilities Act, a disability is defined as: “A physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.” This could include paralysis, autism, or any number of congenital or acquired conditions. Richard’s disability is primarily his limp (caused by his unequally shaped limbs), and his withered arm. What’s interesting in this production is that while the title role is played by an able-bodied woman, most of the rest of the cast have actual disabilites. Watch this clip of the famous courtship scene between Richard and Lady Anne, who plays her role in a wheel-chair.

While a disability is a legal term that is recognized by lawyers and governments alike, the term “deformity” is more subjective; it generally refers to any kind of cosmetic imperfection. In Richard III, this applies to Richard’s hump and withered arm. 

The Elizabethans thought that deformity was a sign of disfavor from God, and that deformed people were constantly at odds with God and nature, as Francis Bacon puts it in his essay, “On Deformity.”

As deformed people are physically impaired by nature; they, in turn, devoid themselves of ‘natural affection’ by being unmerciful and lacking emotions for others. By doing so, they get their revenge on nature and hence achieve stability.

Richard III has this drive for revenge in spades and I believe it manifests itself as a particularly terrible form of toxic masculinity. Richard definitely wants the crown to make up for his lack of ‘natural affection,’ but he is also especially malevolent towards women.

I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days

Seeing a woman play this kind of misogynist dialogue forces the audience to take it out of context and question Richard’s point of view. We see casual misogyny every day, and seeing a woman deliver it is quite illuminating.

Richard’s deformity and Blackness

Another provocative choice by Danai Gurira’s portrayal of Richard is the fact that she plays the role of Richard without the hump or withered arm. She herself explains that for her production, Richard’s perceived deformity, is actually represented by her being a black woman:

He’s dealing with the otherness compared to his family, in terms of not being Caucasian and fair like them.” The word ‘fair’, is used a lot in the play.

Danai Gurira’s

Shakespeare writes Richard as constantly striving to compensate for his deformities by being clever, violent, and eventually, by becoming king. As I wrote before in my review of Othello, for centuries black people have been portrayed as inferior; aberrations of the ‘ideal fair-skinned form’. So, to the Elizabethans, blackness itself was a form of deformity, and the rawness of addressing this uncomfortable fact in this production should be commended.

English people are already trained—and we have scholars like Anthony Barthelemy has talked about this in his book Black Face, Maligned Race, where the image of blackness, as associated with sin, with the devil, all of these things, makes it quite easy to map onto then Black people these kinds of characteristics. Then, those kinds of characteristics allow for the argument that these people are fit to be enslaved. – Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy, Race and Blackness in Elizabethan England Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 168

https://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unlimited/elizabethan-race-blackness-dadabhoy

So while I can’t speak to the production’s acting or staging, I will emphatically defend the notion that this production’s concept is valid. Richard III is an example of toxic masculinity through his self-hatred, violence, misogyny, and narcissism. In addition, as I’ve written before, in the Early Modern Period, blackness was considered an aberration or deformity, and seeing it in the person of Richard, with the implicit understanding that black people still face this kind of prejudice today, opens a much-needed dialogue that any production of Shakespeare shouldn’t be afraid to open.

In short, by re-contextualizing Richard’s deformity and disabilities, this production gets to the heart of the play’s moral for our times. The early modern period’s toxic attitudes towards deformity and disability created the Renaissance monster of Richard III. We in the 21st century must examine our own societal prejudices and toxic attitudes so this monster does not come to haunt us in real life.

The Awesome World of “Six” Part II: Full Review Of the Show

| astronut1

I am just ecstatic to talk about this year’s hit Broadway Musical Six. It swept the Tonys, and has opened up touring productions across the country, and I JUST GOT TO SEE IT!

Part I: The Concept: A Historemix.

Welcome to the show, to the histo-remix
Switching up the flow as we add the prefix
Everybody knows that we used to be six wives

The cast of Six “Ex Wives”

This vibrant, clever retelling of Tudor her-story was created by TOBY MARLOW & LUCY MOSS in association with the Chicago Shakespeare Festival. The show is incredibly smart, and creative, and delves into the lives of some fascinating women, re-told as a singing contest with the characters singing their lives for you to judge what it was like being the queen of England and living with the turbulent and fickle Henry VIII.

What really appeals to me in this show is that like Hamilton, the musical takes these six semi-mythical women and tells their story in a way that is fresh and exciting. It bridges the gap between Tudor History and the modern-day by equating being a queen with being a celebrity, with all the drama of ambitious parents, romantic drama, public opinion, and even being exploited and sexualized by a male-dominated society. This comes across in the music, the costumes, the lyrics, and even the lighting!

Why “Six” Slaps

The costumes are brilliant and iconic. Catherine Of Aragon is like a cross between Beyonce, a saint, and a medieval knight. The lighting is incredible! You could tell the whole story using the lighting design as it pulsates, dances, changes into different colors, turns into different shapes, and finally flashes the name of the show in triumphant gold letters.

One particularly brilliant way the music works in “Six” is the fact that it uses the song “Greensleeves” as a motif both musically and thematically. One big theme of the show is how, unlike Henry VIII, most of the history of his six queens is lost and replaced by legends and even songs. The first line of the show is the famous rhyme about their fates: “Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.” As the video above helps illustrate, Marlowe and Moss know that most people only know the rhyme about their deaths and the myth that Henry wrote a song about one of them; that their lives are overshadowed by their deaths and the misconceptions that people have written over the years. Howard Ho points out how the song musically forces itself into the first number, “Ex Wives,” but by the end of the show, the six queens break free from these musical bars! You can hear the change of key and notes during this performance at the Tonys, which puts the opening number and closing reprise together.

The Cast of “Six” perform live at the 2021 Tony Awards.

But how do the queens go from “one word in a stupid rhyme,” to a group of powerful, individual queens singing in harmony, without the man who made them famous? That’s what the solo numbers in “Six” do so incredibly well- tell each queen’s solo stories as rocking ballads, hilarious dis-tracks, soulful love songs, and… well stay tuned.

Part II: The Women and Their Queenspirations

1. Catherine of Aragon

Catherine of Aragon was Henry’s first wife and is still universally beloved, even though Henry decided to divorce her. As the epitome of a stand-alone power queen, it makes sense that Six modeled her character, costume, and songs after Beyonce, with a Shakira-inspired Spanish beat for good measure:

My favorite thing about her solo, “No Way” is how the writers paraphrase her real-life speech during the divorce trial in 1529. Below are the lyrics and the real speech:

You’ve got me down on my knees
Please tell me what you think I’ve done wrong
Been humble, been loyal, I’ve tried
To swallow my pride all along
If you can just explain
A single thing I’ve done to cause you pain, I’ll go

(spoken)
No?

[sung]
You’ve got nothing to say
I’m not going away
There’s no way

Alas, Sir, where have I offended you? Or what occasion have you of displeasure, that you intend to put me from you? I take God and all the world to witness that I have been to you a true, humble and obedient wife, ever conformable to your will and pleasure. This twenty years and more I have been your true wife, and whether it be true or no, I put it to your conscience.

— Katherine of Aragon, 1529

2. Anne Boleyn

In some ways, the version of Anne Boleyn in “Six” is less a pop version of the real queen and more of a commentary on the nature of celebrity. If you watch the video, you can see how in life she was admired for her beauty and fashion but hated for her comments on Queen Katherine, her scandalous love affairs, and her brash nature. This explains the spiky pop-punk princess look they gave her, (which evidently resonates with many audiences since I saw at least two girls cosplaying as Anne in the audience). Sort of like a celebrity who gets canceled on Twitter or Princess Diana, Anne shows how a person can be undone when they dare challenge an established order, especially the Royal Family.

After the show, I found it a bit weird that they portrayed Anne Boleyn as a jetsetting airhead, but then again she is one of the best-known queens in history, so they can get away with it. In reality, Anne Boleyn was highly educated and a member of an ambitious and social climbing family who basically pushed her to woo Henry. As you can see in this clip from “Anne Of A Thousand Days,” Henry and Anne’s family bullied her constantly to become the King’s mistress after HE ALREADY GOT HER SISTER PREGNANT, so Anne knew that the only way to keep Henry from ruining her life was to convince him to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry her.

Of course, this strategy didn’t save Anne in the end, which says more about how cruel Henry VIII was, chewing up women and spitting them out in his ravenous quest for a son. So is this an accurate portrayal of Anne’s life? No. Is it fun, ABSOLUTELY!

III. Jane Seymore

I’m more than I seem, or am I?

“Six” The Musical.

This version of Jane Seymore was inspired by Adele, so appropriately, she has a heart-wrenching power ballad about her turbulent relationship with Henry. Sadly, we don’t know much about Jane’s real life, so the song takes some liberties. If you go to the Hampton Court Website, you can actually vote as to whether Jane was a devoted wife or a social climbing gold-digger. Probably the real woman was something even more complicated, though we’ll never know for sure.

IV. Anne of Cleaves

Anne of Cleaves is the funniest part of the show! Many of us have heard the story that Henry divorced Anne after he found her ‘ugly.’ What “Six The Musical” does is amend the story, by pointing out that after he divorced her, Henry gave her a castle and a huge retainer, allowing her to live like a queen, without being married to a king! Accordingly, her song is a Rhianna-style dis track that shows off her awesome lifestyle, and spits in Henry’s stupid face!

As fun as this, rags-to-riches story is, the truth is less fun- Anne was the sister of a German duke, so Henry’s lord Chancellor Thomas Cromwell probably forced Henry to marry her for diplomatic reasons (source: Hampton Court: “Anne of Cleaves”). Naturally, Henry didn’t like being told what to do- I suspect he resented Anne before even meeting her because he didn’t get to pick her himself.

As for whether Anne was actually ugly, the truth is really surprising- Henry actually disguised himself as a peasant during a masked ball when he first courted Anne, and she found him repulsive. At the time, Henry was 49 years old, and in very poor health. As such, he was intermittently impotent and blamed his inability to conceive a child with her on her supposed ugliness to save face.

Even though Anne in the show hates Henry, in reality, once the marriage was annulled, Anne and Henry remained good friends for years! She attended his next wedding to Katherine Howard, and, just like in the show, Henry treated her much better after the divorce:

‘YOU SHALL FIND US A PERFECT FRIEND, CONTENT TO REPUTE YOU AS OUR DEAREST SISTER. WE SHALL, WITHIN FIVE OR SIX DAYS …DETERMINE YOUR STATE MINDING TO ENDOW YOU WITH £4000 OF YEARLY REVENUE…YOUR LOVING BROTHER AND FRIEND.’

Henry VIII, 1548, six months after their wedding, when the annullment went through.

V. Katherine Howard

Without question, Katherine Howard is portrayed as the most tragic of Henry’s six wives and her song is a huge sucker punch. The writers never let you forget that Katherine’s first affair was when she was 13, and she died at age 19. Like Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymore, Henry picked Katherine for his queen among his ladies in waiting and her song “All You Wanna Do” satirizes his and many other men’s lustful appetites. The song begins as a raunchy, sexy pop ballad in the vein of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and “Womanizer” about Katherine Howard’s love affairs, but then devolves into a cry for help, as Katherine confesses how she was abused, used, and manipulated by the men in her life, (including her own cousin Thomas Culpepper) until she was beheaded in 1542. It masterfully satires both Henry’s cruelty and the hypersexualization of teenage pop stars which certainly took its toll on Britney Spears and Ariana Grande, Katherine’s major ‘Queenspirations.’

VI. Katherine Parr

Historically, Katherine Parr had to turn away her fiancee Thomas Seymore (just like Anne Boleyn was previously engaged to Henry Percy) once the king set his eyes on her for his wife, so her song is a sad, soulful Alicia Keys-inspired bittersweet song where she tearfully says goodbye to Thomas to spare his feelings and probably his life.

Not only does this song once again show how Henry’s selfishness and his lust ruined the lives of the women he married, (as well as the men who already wanted to marry them), but it also sets up the main idea of the show:

His-Story overthrown

In the final number, the wives turn the tables on Henry- they have spent centuries being defined by him, but in reality, he is just as much defined by them! Going forward, history should not define these great women as just, “The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth,” but to celebrate their individual lives and contributions to history. Katherine Parr mentions this when she points out that in life, she fought to allow women to be educated, she wrote books, and was a scholar of theology. Historically, Henry and Katherine would argue about religion and he nearly executed her after she disagreed on points of theology, but Katherine kept her life by claiming she was “Not disagreeing with [him], but simply learning from [him].”

Remember that I was a writer
I wrote books and psalms and meditations
Fought for female education
So all my women can independently study scripture
I even got a woman to paint my picture
Why can’t I tell that story?
‘Cause in history
I’m fixed as one of six
And without him
I disappear
We all disappear

Genius Annotation2 contributors

I Don’t Need Your Love is sung by Catherine Parr in SIX: The Musical. The first part of the song refers to her love of Thomas Seymour, whom she probably wanted to marry rather than Henry (and did marry after Henry’s death). However, the song also protests at the fact that women are often defined by their relationship with men, rather than as people in their own right. Catherine wants to be remembered for what she did, rather than the men she married or loved.

Katherine Parr, Six.

The final number completes the idea of the ‘historemix’ by having the Six queens/pop stars come up with a re-imagined happy ending for themselves, one that doesn’t include the pain that Henry inflicted on them: Katherine A becomes a singing nun, (like Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act), while Anne Boleyn starts writing lyrics for Shakespeare (which is a fun idea since he does mention “Greensleeves” twice). Jane Seymore forms a band with her many surviving children, Katherine Howard goes solo, and Katherine Parr joins the other queens in a supergroup. It’s not at all historical, but it is a fun and sweet way to put an epilogue on these (mostly) tragic lives.

It’s odd, however, that the show invents an epilogue instead of talking about the six queen’s greatest legacy- Queens Elizabeth and Mary I. For a show that wants to highlight the often-forgotten legacy of these queens, it is an odd oversight. Remember Catherine and Anne gave birth to queens who eventually ruled England without a king. Jane Seymore gave birth to a king, and Catherine Parr helped raise them and restored them to the line of succession- She’s the reason her stepdaughters were able to become queens in the first place.

My issues with the epilogue aside, it is great to see history be recontextualized and shared in such an accessible way. We all know that European history is dominated by the names of white guys- king whoever, duke what’s-his name. To see important women in history be given a voice by a multi-ethnic cast is a great way to make it resonate, and using the metaphor of pop stars works extremely well in this context- these women mostly didn’t choose stardom, but they deserve it for what they went through.

Brava.

Educational links related to the six wives of Henry VIII:

Books

TV:

Web:
https://www.history.com/news/henry-viii-wives

https://sixonbroadway.com/about.php

https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/history-and-stories/anne-of-cleves/

Resources on Shakespeare’s History Plays:

Books

  1. Shakespeare English Kings by Peter Saccio. Published Apr. 2000. Preview available: https://books.google.com/books?id=ATHBz3aaGn4C
  2. Shakespeare, Our Contemporary by Jan Kott. Available online at https://books.google.com/books/about/Shakespeare_Our_Contemporary.html?id=QIrdQfCMnfQC
  3. The Essential Shakespeare Handbook
  4. The Essential Shakespeare Handbook by Leslie Dunton-Downer and Alan Riding Published: 16 Jan 2013.
    77ace26dfdee4259bf48d6eed1a59d57
  6. Will In the World by Prof. Steven Greenblatt, Harvard University. September 17, 2004. Preview available https://www.amazon.com/Will-World-How-Shakespeare-Became/dp/1847922961

TV:

The Tudors (TV Show- HBO 2007)

“The Six Wives of Henry VIII” (BBC, 1970)

Websites