The National Theater Live King Lear, presented on February 3 from London's Donmar Theater, which I saw on February 3 was apparently not live after all. It was a tape delay version rather (and of course If I'd thought about it for a moment it would've been obvious - a 7 pm start here would've meant a midnight one in London), because apparently there was a technical difficulty that resulted in a hold-up of seven minutes, of which we, in Montreal, were unaware. Finding out about it only increased my admiration for the splendid cast - they certainly didn't let it throw them off. Among the many terrific performances, one that stands out in my memory was Ashley Zhangazha as the King of France. It's a small part (he only appears in the first scene), but a very important one thematically, and the young actor delivered his lines with great power (Zhangazha also doubled in the role of the captain who is given the directive to hang Cordelia by Edmund in the final scene - which created an interesting juxtaposition). In fact, one of the character's statements not only strikes one of the central chords in the complex symphony of themes that make up the play, but is to me one of the most profound moments in all of Shakespeare. It comes as a consequence of his discovering that Cordelia, having offended Lear through a perceived slight in not answering his question in concert with her older sisters, has fallen in Lear's estimation from the heights to the depths in a matter of moments. The Duke of Burgundy, Cordelia's other suitor, is equally astonished by the developments, and the King of France asks him the following (and the middle sentence is the one that I was referring to above):

My Lord of Burgundy,

What say you to the lady? Love's not love

When it is mingled with regards that stands

Aloof from th'entire point. Will you have her?

She is herself a dowry.

After spending the day in the library of one of our downtown universities yesterday, and having a look at some books that intend to summarize what is current in Shakespeare criticism at the collegiate level, with two of the most common approaches being new historicism and cultural materialism (here's the Wikipedia link to the latter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_materialism_(cultural_studies), from which you can reach the former), I just want to say the following: I would be more impressed if the contentions showed a greater knowledge of Shakespeare. For one thing, it seems like it's the same handful of plays that keep getting discussed (Othello, Measure for Measure, Henry V, and a few others). I'm not even convinced that the writers have read them all. So here's my statement on the matter: Shakespeare scholarship must be based on the study and elucidation of Shakespeare, not on anyone or anything else. And the first step is to read and understand his works in their entirety.

I've had the good fortune of seeing some excellent performances of King Lear over the years, but the best was the most recent: the National Theatre Live production from the Donmar theater in London starring the great Derek Jacobi, which I saw on Thursday. And I must admit that it was the first time that I had seen a live broadcast of a play from another location in a movie theater, though I know that they've become very popular. And it certainly won't be the last. Nearly all the excitement felt in attending an in-person performance was there. In fact, I was surprised.

Of course, it helped that the production was superb: it emphasized the action in the story through swift pacing and intense, physically active performances. I'm going to write another post on it this week, at which point I'll go into a little more detail, but for today, I just want to discuss the astonishing performance given by Jacobi in the title role. Even by his standards, it's a tour de force. When I think of him, the first things that come to mind are his great performances in the BBC Richard II, the BBC Hamlet, and Branagh's Henry V. But this performance displayed abilities that I hadn't seen from him before, largely due to the performance's aforementioned physicality. Not only was he at home in it, he seemed to be leading the way. Apparently, this production may be coming to Broadway (after a short tour of England, if I'm not mistaken): If you have any chance of seeing it, do so. It's the greatest version I've seen of the world's greatest play.

In response to the eloquent comment that my February 1 post received, I would posit the following in support of its position: Falstaff's self-interest grows relentlessly throughout the two plays, until there is virtually not a moral fiber left in him. It's all very funny, but equally disturbing. The trajectory finally reaches a crescendo in the Gloucerstershire scene in Shallow's orchard, when Pistol comes to tell the news of the death of Henry IV and the impending coronation of Prince Hal as Henry V. Falstaff, who has no other intention than to leverage his friendship with the young king toward all kinds of profiteering, reaches his apex of anarchy by saying: "I know the young king is sick for me. Let us take any man's horses: the laws of England are at my commandment." Looking at the statement objectively, it seems clear that his thinking couldn't be allowed to continue. And it isn't.

I'm always interested in thinking about the forces that drove Shakespeare to accomplish what he did. Clearly, there would have to have been several of them. First, it's obvious that he was endowed with the entrepreneurial spirit and was not averse to earning money. It's also clear that he was a believer in the powers of drama and poetry (not necessarily in that order, in my opinion), and that he wrote in such a way as to propagate thought in as many ways as possible. But it's starting to occur to me more and more that one of his great motivators was a desire to learn. His reading, research and use of sources indicate a strong belief in scholarship, certainly, but it's not often stated as one of the primary objectives of his writing. The meticulousness of detail in his work shows it. And even though it's impossible to prove anything of this nature, the evidence certainly points that way. I also believe that his career is unmatched as a success story, and we should be influenced by his entrepreneurial spirit, his altruism, his thirst for knowledge, and the use he made of them through his creativity. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that his example is the best one we have.

February 2 is James Joyce's birthday. So as a tribute to the great writer (one of the few who can keep the field with Shakespeare, in my opinion), I'll mention the fascinating episode of Ulysses that has come to be known as "Scylla and Charibdis", which deals with Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego) presenting his theories on the influence of Shakespeare's family life, along with some other factors, on his creative process and output. It begins in medea res, as they say, and is written in the stream-of-consciousness style for which the writer became famous, even though it was only one of his many innovations. It also employs two Shakespearean attributes, wordplay and dialectic, to great effect: A Shakespeare fan can have a lot of fun finding the numerous allusions. It also stands very well on its own, and can be read that way (http://www.columbia.edu/~fms5/ulys.htm), not that I would ever want to dissuade anyone from reading the whole thing.

I have mixed feelings about Chimes at Midnight (a.k.a. Falstaff), Orson Welles' cinematic re-assembling of the story of Sir John from 1965, which uses lines from no less than five Shakespeare plays (Richard II, Henry IV, Parts One and Two, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor), as well as Holinshed's Chronicles to do so. I would certainly recommend it, but with some reservations regarding decisions made in terms of story-telling and interpretation. As you may know from previous posts, I'm not a fan of productions that make cuts in Shakespeare texts, and this movie partakes of that approach in an extreme way. Also Welles' portrayal of Falstaff is odd, in that he looks for pathos rather than humour at every turn. That being said, the movie has many strengths. It is amazing visually, for one thing. The camera work, the lighting and the use of the sets, in particular, are dazzling, despite the fact that the dialogue, recorded separately from the filming, doesn't sync up very well with the actors' speeches. (The same was done in his version of Othello, by the way, which I'll write about on another occasion.)

But what I most admire is the stand that Welles takes in defense of Falstaff (which goes a long way toward explaining his decisions in regard to his own performance). And though the knight does have many defenders (Harold Bloom is a mighty one, for example), I had never seen it put quite the way Welles did when he called Falstaff "the greatest conception of a good man, the most completely good man, in all drama". This might seem like a shocking statement at first, considering the common view of Falstaff as a completely amoral character who is only redeemed by his incomparable wit, but what I think Welles was getting at is that before making such a judgement, we must consider the medieval mind-set of gloryfying injustice, brutality and war that Falstaff opposes with any means he can find.