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ShakespeareAndMore uploaded a new video
(1 week ago)
These are the only video clips I have of this play
from an anonymous tran...
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These are the only video clips I have of this play
from an anonymous translation (rumored to be Oscar Wilde), Athenian Society, London 1912
performed by Bretton Hall School of Dance and Theatre, UK
Lysistrata - Claire Naylor
Lampito - Naomi Everett
Calonice - Elanor Aldous
Myrhine - Lara Bradban
Cinesias - Brian Bullaman
directed by John Northcote and Linda Taylor. Produced by Arthur Pritchard. Directed for televison by Duncan Foster
Only a few months after this play was first performed, democracy in Aristophanes' Athens was overthrown and dictators took hold. Democracy did return later, but those regimes (such as Cleophon's) were marred by the very sort of deficiencies Aristophanes mocks in his plays. Aristophanes would have loved many aspects of American democracy, particulariy it's Constitution protecting minority rights, and especially the carefully designed checks and balances that promote sluggish policy change--very different from the radical and rash actions characteristic of Athenian democracy.
This play was performed not long after the disatrous Syracuse expedition, where many of these women lost their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands--futile rotting deaths in a stone pit far away from home. Radical action needed to stop this madness.
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ShakespeareAndMore uploaded a new video
(1 week ago)
Shakespeare's 'Now is the winter of our discontent' soliloquy performed ...
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Shakespeare's 'Now is the winter of our discontent' soliloquy performed by Andrew Jarvis in this filming of 'Richard III', before a live audience, from 1990...this extract continues to the end of the scene.
Andrew Jarvis ... Richard III
John Dougall ... George, Duke of Clarence
Roger Booth ... Lord Hastings
Director Michael Bogdanov
compare to this soliloquy performed by Laurence Olivier
http://youtube.co...
go here to view 3 different actors traversing this opening soliliquy:
http://www.youtub...
Blinkie explains the soliloquy here in very plain English:
http://www.quicks...
Notes from "The tragedy of Richard the Third" By William Shakespeare, Horace Howard Furness editor:
Warner (p. 208): The soliloquies in "Richard the Third" are a dramatic necessity. We could not get at the real man without them. But in the mouth of Richard the soliloquies are far more than instruments of dramatic art: they are in keeping with the character Shakespeare seeks to lay before us. There was absolutely no soul in whom Richard could confide. He loves no one, trusts no one, strange to say, hates no one, but uses all. Now such a man must, as it were, think aloud . . . Here we have, then, a self-revelation, not only as a rhetorical ornament and dramatic necessity, but as a psychological truth
22. ambling] Wright: Mincing, walking affectedly, with a dancing gait. Compare "Hamlet", III, i, 151: 'You jig, you amble, and you lisp.' Also "1 Henry IV": III, ii, 60: 'The skipping king he ambled up and down.'
24. Feature] Wright: 'Feature' was used by Shakespeare and the writers of his time in a larger sense than at present. It denoted the whole exterior personal appearance, and was not confined, as now, to the face. ' Feature' was applied to the body as favour to the face.
24. dissembling] Warburton: By dissembling is here meant, nature that puts together things of a dissimilar kind, as a brave soul and a deformed body.— Johnson: 'Dissembling' is here put very licentiously for fraudfnl, deceilful....Wright considers Johnson's interpretation as probably more nearly correct, wherewith the present editor agrees. 'Dissemble' in the sense of fraudulent, deceitful, is used in three other psasages in this play: I, ii, 261, 262: 'And I, no friend to back my suit withal But the plain devil and dissembling looks'; II, i, 13: 'Dissemble not your hatred, swear your love'; II, ii, 34: 'Think you my uncle did dissemble Grandam?' wherefore may it not be reasonably supposed that, in this present line, it is used in this same sense also?—Ed.
28. halt] Wright: In Genesis xxxii, 31, it is said that Jacob 'halted upon his thigh.'
29. weake piping time] Wright: Compare "Much Ado", II, iii, 13-15, 'I have known when there was no music with him but the drum and the fife, and now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe.'—Marshall offers as an explanation alternative to that given by Wright that ' weak piping time' may refer to the feeble, shrill-voiced women or old men.
32. descant] Nares: To make division or variation, in music, on any particular subject. Originally accented like the noun from which it was formed; but now mixed with the class of verbs regularly accented on the last syllable, and in that form not obsolete.
33. since I ... Louer] Johnson: Shakespeare very diligently inculcates that the wickedness of Richard proceeded from his deformity, from the envy that rose from the comparison of his own person with others, and which incited him to disturb the pleasures that he could not partake.—Hudson (Life, etc., ii, 145): Richard's sense of personal disgrace begets a most hateful and malignant form of pride— the pride of intellectual force and mastery. Hence he comes to glory in the matter of his shame, and magnify his strength of fertility and wit. . . . On much the same principle he nurses to the highest pitch his consciousness of moral deformities. To succeed by wrong, to rise by crime, to grow great by inverting the moral order of things is, in his view, the highest proof of genius and skill.
37. Inductions] Johnson: Preparations for mischief. The 'induction' is preparatory to the action of the play.
38. drunken Prophesies] Compare II, i, 132: 'a drunken slaughter'
43. mew'd vp] Skeat (Diet.): In English, the sense of a cage is the oldest, whence the verb mew, to enclose. At a later date the verb mew also meant, to moult, which is the original sense in French.
44, 45. Prophesie,.. . be] 'Some haue reported that the cause of this nobleman's death rose of a foolish prophesie, which was, that, after K. Edward, one should reigne, whose first letter of his name should be G. Wherewith the king and queene were sore troubled, and began to conceiue a greeuous grudge against this duke, and could not be in quiet till they had brought him to his end.'—Holinshed, "Edward IV"
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ShakespeareAndMore uploaded a new video
(2 weeks ago)
link below to a playlist of 'The Oresteia' in it's entirety:
http://www.y...
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link below to a playlist of 'The Oresteia' in it's entirety:
http://www.youtub...
Aeschylus' "Eumenides" (also known as "The Furies") is performed here in the ancient style--all males under masks with singing voices, music and limited motion.
The National Theatre of Great Britain Oresteia Company in masks by Jenny West. Translated by Tony Harrison.
Chorus (in alphabetical order):
Sean Baker (also Priestess)
David Bamber
James Carter
Timothy Davies (also Pylates)
Peter Dawson
Philip Donaghy (also Clytemnestra)
Roger Gartland (also Electra)
James Hayes (also Nurse)
Greg Hicks (also Orestes)
Kenny Ireland (also Apollo)
Alfred Lynch (also Aegisthus)
John Normington (also Cassandra)
Tony Robinson (also Servant)
David Roper (also watchman)
Barrie Rutter (also Herald)
Michael Thomas (also Athena)
Director: Peter Hall
Human beings think about justice as a rational concept, institutionalized in their communities, but they also have strong emotions about justice, both within the family and the community. The revenge ethic harnessed to those powerful feelings in Aechylus's play stands exposed as something that finally violates our deepest sense of any possibility for enduring justice in our community, for it commits us a never-ending cycle of retributive killing and over-killing.
The Oresteia ends with a profound and very emotionally charged hope that the community can move beyond such a personally powerful emotional basis for justice and, with the sanction of the divine forces of the world, establish a system based on group discussion, consensus, juries (through what Athena calls persuasion)--in a word, can unite a conceptual, reasonable understanding of justice with our most powerful feelings about it. This work is, as Swinburne observed, one of the most optimistic visions of human life ever written, for it celebrates a dream we have that human beings in their communities can rule themselves justly, without recourse to blood vengeance, satisfying mind and heart in the process.
At the same time, however, Aeschylus is no shallow liberal thinker telling us to move beyond our brutal and unworkable traditions. For he understands that we cannot by some sleight of hand remove the Furies from our lives. They are ancient goddesses, eternally present. Hence, in the conclusion of the play the Furies, traditional goddesses of vengeance, are incorporated into the justice system, not excluded. And the powers they are given are significant: no city can thrive without them. Symbolically, the inclusion of the Furies in the final celebration, their new name (meaning "The Kindly Ones"), and their agreement fuse in a great theatrical display elements which were in open conflict only a few moments before.
It's as if the final image of this play stresses for us that in our justice we must strive to move beyond merely personal emotion (the basis of personal revenge) towards some group deliberations, but in the new process we must not violate our personal feelings or forget they have their role to play. If justice is to be a matter of persuasion, it cannot violate the deepest feelings we have (and have always had) about justice. If such violation takes place, the city will not thrive.
Every time I read the conclusion of this great trilogy, I think of how we nowadays may well have lost touch with that great insight: that justice is not just a matter of reasonable process and debate but also a matter of feeling. For a city to thrive justice must not only be reasonably done but must be felt to be done. Once our system starts to violate our feelings for justice, our city does not thrive. The Furies will see to that.
-- from a lecture prepared by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College
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ShakespeareAndMore uploaded a new video
(2 weeks ago)
Aeschylus' "Eumenides" (also known as "The Furies") ...
more
Aeschylus' "Eumenides" (also known as "The Furies") is performed here in the ancient style--all males under masks with singing voices, music and limited motion.
link below to a playlist of 'The Oresteia' in it's entirety:
http://www.youtub...
The National Theatre of Great Britain Oresteia Company in masks by Jenny West. Translated by Tony Harrison.
Chorus (in alphabetical order):
Sean Baker (also Priestess)
David Bamber
James Carter
Timothy Davies (also Pylates)
Peter Dawson
Philip Donaghy (also Clytemnestra)
Roger Gartland (also Electra)
James Hayes (also Nurse)
Greg Hicks (also Orestes)
Kenny Ireland (also Apollo)
Alfred Lynch (also Aegisthus)
John Normington (also Cassandra)
Tony Robinson (also Servant)
David Roper (also watchman)
Barrie Rutter (also Herald)
Michael Thomas (also Athena)
Director: Peter Hall
Robert Fagles and W.B Stanford, from their essay "The Serpent and The Eagle"
Then why does Athena cast her ballot for Orestes? Her critics will argue that she yields to religious pressures and sexual politics, and her judgement is not only biased but predetermined. 'Even if the vote is equal, Orestes wins'. Yet her ability to sense an equality in this case, plus her firm independence of her fellow-jurors, may also point to her judiciousness and rigour.
She may have decided on Orestes less from bias, we suggest, that to ememplify - with great precision - the origin of the Athenian practice that acquitted all defendants who recieved an equally divided vote. Whereas a later age would ascribe Athena's action to mercy pure and simple, however, Aeschyluls would have her act according to the mercy of her means, her strict sense of equity. For the blanket pardon that Apollo orders would contravene the facts, painstainking gathered throughout the trial, and the facts are what compel Athena's decision now.
...And Athena will uphold Orestes' crime as justifiable homicide, but not innocence outright. Even in her statement of acquittal - 'The man goes free/cleared of the charge of blood. The lots are equal' - her words reveal that, despite Orestes' innocence, Orestes' guilt remains.
That is a contradiction as arbitrary as the will of Zeus himself, and perhaps the very point Athena wants to make. By maintaining the moral ambiguity of Orestes' action, she maintains the gods' continuing involvement in its consequences. 'With all my heart I am my Father's child.'
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ShakespeareAndMore uploaded a new video
(2 weeks ago)
Aeschylus' "Eumenides" (also known as "The Furies") ...
more
Aeschylus' "Eumenides" (also known as "The Furies") is performed here in the ancient style--all males under masks with singing voices, music and limited motion.
link below to a playlist of 'The Oresteia' in it's entirety:
http://www.youtub...
The National Theatre of Great Britain Oresteia Company in masks by Jenny West. Translated by Tony Harrison.
Chorus (in alphabetical order):
Sean Baker (also Priestess)
David Bamber
James Carter
Timothy Davies (also Pylates)
Peter Dawson
Philip Donaghy (also Clytemnestra)
Roger Gartland (also Electra)
James Hayes (also Nurse)
Greg Hicks (also Orestes)
Kenny Ireland (also Apollo)
Alfred Lynch (also Aegisthus)
John Normington (also Cassandra)
Tony Robinson (also Servant)
David Roper (also watchman)
Barrie Rutter (also Herald)
Michael Thomas (also Athena)
Director: Peter Hall
As Apollo uses the story here [Zeus,Metis and Athena's birth], it becomes, in Jane Harrison's words, 'a desperate theological expedient to rid [Athena] of her matriarchal conditions'. Worst of all, in the context of her trial it is a kind of blackmail - you are Olympian, Apollo thunders, you will vote for us.
Athena cuts him short before he makes a mockery of the proceedigs. Some have acctually found the trial comic; and,like all great comedy, it threatens us with disorder so that we may cherish order all the more. The trial is a constructive parody, a re-creation of court procedure which reminds us of its flaws and flexibility; it can be poked but it regains its powers of control.
Apollo's intrusion, in fact,only serves to make the trial more momentous. He 'Olympianizes' the issues, forcing Athena to assume a new Olympian role. Her tragic choice expands into cosmic terms - now she musst mediate between the Titans and the gods. And as she resumes the declaration of her law, it resolves the conflicts of this new "Theogony" in a lasting human institution, Athena's high tribunal on the Areopagus.
-- Robert Fagles and W.B Stanford, from their essay "The Serpent and The Eagle"
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