The Merchant of Venice for Kids

Last Tuesday I turned 20. Making me, according to my husband "an official adult." With this adulthood I felt a new responsibility to find joy in sophisticated, non-childish things. This weekend, however, I'll admit that I loved the children's production of "The Merchant of Venice." This is a rough explanation but here's how I put it for my husband, "it's kind of like Shrek, the kids love it but they're not sure why. And the adults are  pleased to find that it is clever and witty and has a lot of humor the kids don't necessarily understand."

As far as casting goes, I felt that Portia and the story teller were very well casted. Portia had the air of a smart but pretty woman with a little bift of a rich-girl sass in her. I felt like she had the perfect amount of impatience to portray that she hadn't had to wait on many things but not too much that she was obnoxious. I was very impressed with the story-teller, I liked how they took the approach of having her be capable of playing both male and female roles effectively. She made a wonderful Prince of Morocco, a great Judge, and she became a confidant - you trusted her to tell you what's going on in the play. Before the play began I overheard her talking to many o the children almost gaining their trust so they'd listen to her throughout the play, which I thought was brilliant.

As for Shylock, I got chills during his "if you prick us, do we not bleed" speech. I'm just not sure if it was because who was saying it our because of the words themselves. I thought Shylock's lines were delivered well and his stature pegged him as an older man. I got the feeling that he was a father being picked on by his daughter's friends. Even though he was physically superior he was still demeaned.

I felt like Bassanio was a very lively character and that he was well-casted in that he seemed childish, immature and like he was just going along for the ride. I felt like he was a teenager torn between his friends. His stature, compared to Shylock, showed (I felt) an age difference between them where there was no other means to show the difference.

Antonio. Antonio was the character that I felt was the most poorly-casted. I don't mean to be harsh, it was just something about her presentation that seemed too forced and unnatural. I felt that having Antonio (Antonia) cast as a woman did help to relieve some of the awkward bromance feelings between Antonio and Bassanio. Maybe they intended for me not to like Antonia. I felt like she was trying to steal Bassanio from Portia, and it bothered me. Because Antonio was Antonia I felt that it lessened the strong friendship presented in the original play and hyped the romantic factor, which I wasn't in love with.

A brief word on costuming...I didn't understand Bassanio's blue hair except to entertain the children. I loved that Portia's dress had keys all strung across the back, alluding to the keys used to unlock the boxes. I felt like the keys surrounding her portrayed the idea effectively that she is a prize and a mystery to be unlocked. I thought it was helpful to have all the Tharians identified by their matching necklaces, I felt it made Shylock's forced conversion very clear to the children. I'm not sure I loved Antonia's sort of luck-of-the-irish get up.

Shakespeare in India

Alright, last semester I spent 4 months in India researching the westernization of Jalari (a fishing caste) women who worked outside of their village. Side note: it also happens to be where my husband and I fell in love so India is pretty close to my heart for that reason alone. Anyway, when Professor Burton started talking about Bollywood and Shakespeare I realized that I would love to study Shakespeare Cross-Culturally....and what better place to start than India?

So for starters, I found a Bollywood film adaptation of Othello called Omkara....which I am totally set on watching. There, I said it, now I've got to. This also suggests that I should probably read Othello, so I'll do that too.

But it gets cooler than that. I found a sweet article called "William Shakespeare is our heritage too" which said the following " A fine piece of filmmaking that should win its director Vishal Bhardwaj more than just a Filmfare Aware. What Bhardwaj has done deserves bigger accolades -- he has convinced more friends and countrymen to lend Shakespeare their ears."

Moving on, I also found a Shakespeare Society of Eastern India and while the site isn't extremely well developed it is crazy to me to think that somebody went to such great effort to form the society, to develop the website AND organize a World Shakespeare Conference in 2000 in Calcutta.

What does this tell me about Shakespeare? India is one of the most culturally diverse place I've been. I wanted pancakes for breakfast, India gave me spicy noodles, I wanted a mint after dinner, they gave me a leaf that tasted like toothpaste, I wanted a sweet pork salad, they gave me vegetarian potato curry. I said things one way, they said it another. I thought one think was polite, they took offense. And somehow they always thought it a compliment to tell me I looked homely. I told them to keep a secret, they threw flower petals at me because they were so excited. I wanted cold cereal they gave me cornflakes drowned in boiling buffalo milk. I wanted a Jack Daniels burger from TGI Fridays, they gave me rice. You get it. And I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. India is not America, nor is it England. But somehow, regardless of all the cultural differences, Shakespeare still manages to captivate and enchant any audience. It tells me that his words just may be universally applicable. I just need to figure out why.

Here's just a couple little India snippets...couldn't resist...

The Merchant of Venice

Before I start any play what's most important for me is to understand the characters, if I don't have it all straight from the get-go I'm completely lost the whole play. This is just my little attempt to get a visual on the characters, yes it's dorky, yes it's childish but it helps me keep it all together.

Shakespeare Bibliography Findings

Did you know there's a bunch of different works that might be by Shakespeare but we don't know for sure if they are or not? Because that was news to me. They're called "Apocrypha" according to the World Shakespeare Bibliography. It's  interesting to think that I had never known about these poems/plays but had they been confirmed as works of Shakespeare we'd be studying them intensely (maybe).  It is crazy to think that sometimes all it takes to validate a poem is putting the author's name underneath it. Not every work speaks for itself but if we knew it was by Shakespeare we might think so. In one of my classes we talked about an experiment done in Cambridge in the 1920's in which students were given several poems to rate/grade without knowing who authored them. They were presented with some of Shakespeare's lesser known poems and not every poem received high marks. I would argue that had the student's known the author of the works they wouldn't dare give him poor marks. I found this hopeful because in my mind (and with good reason) the guy's a genius. It's hard to fathom anybody being able to build on his work but sometimes I think when we step back and think of it less like Shakespeare and more like writing we'll see that his works can be more approachable.

A Day Without Knowledge

Starting January 18th at midnight Wikipedia shut down for a full 24 hours. If you visit Wikipedia this is what you will find...

Imagine a World
Without Free Knowledge

For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.

I originally found out about the problem due to the massive amount of students complaining via Facebook that their main source of information is disabled. For a full 24 hours. I have found this blackout very revealing because of the large response it has conjured up. It seems that everybody is upset about the black out but not at Wikipedia, at the legislation that pushed them to do this. In my Shakespeare readings Wikipedia has become a useful source for background information...life history of Shakespeare, dates that different plays were written, etc. and I'm welcoming this opportunity to find other sources that are equally as useful.

Shakespeare and Beowulf

As Professor Burton as urged us to look to sources outside of the text to further our learning about Shakespeare I was lucky enough to have so pretty cool stuff just fall in my lap. In The Tempest Caliban is described as a demi-devil, being the son of Sycorax and the devil and it is said that he was "littered", making his birth seem very animalistic. While simultaneously reading The Tempest and Beowulf I discovered a line that immediately made me think of Caliban. It is the part of the poem where Beowulf has just begun fighting the beat Grendel. The line describes Grendel and says "He was desperate to flee to his den and hide with the devil's litter..." It is estimated that Beowulf was written somewhere between 700 and 1000 AD, in England, and The Tempest was believed to have been written between 1610-1611, presumably in England. I don't know if this phrasing is coincidental, if it was common practice in England to say that someone was "littered" as an insult, but I found it interesting that Caliban is "littered" and a devilish figure and that Grendel is also referenced as part of the devil's litter. The roles that Caliban and Grendel play in their respective works are fairly similar, that of a dark, monstrous character that threaten moral standing and virtue. They represent a sort of devilish fear that needs to be overcome. In The Tempest it seems the moral counterpart to Caliban would be Miranda or Ariel and in Grendel it is clearly Beowulf. While The Tempest may not be considered a heroic epic I find the thought that it could be alluding to one interesting.  Shakespeare is seen as a creator in the literary world...the first to use this word or the first to successfully utilize that form but I had never thought that maybe he liked to read too. Maybe he had favorite authors, maybe he was inspired, maybe he knows who wrote Beowulf? Probably not. I know that the likelihood that Shakespeare read Beowulf isn't high, but it isn't impossible. Whether great minds think alike or the phrasing for the Tempest was implanted by Beowulf it's just kind of comforting to know that Shakespeare wasn't the first in everything, that the guy probably read a bit, and that the fact that he didn't get to everything first means there's more to say, more to write, more to discover.

The Tempest.

I will do all of my reading this semester. No questions asked.

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The Mötley Crüe and Shakespeare

 

If you care to listen to a less-intense blue grass version of the song...click here, and then proceed to click on the little play button next to "Looks that Kill"

http://itunes.apple.com/se/album/the-bluegrass-tribute-to-motley/id268970011

"I'm not going to be an English major"

As a kid, I found a copy of The Tempest and brought it with me to school everyday. I kept it in my desk. Brought it home in my backpack. I carried it everywhere. I didn't read it. I don't think I even flipped through the pages but I loved the idea of loving Shakespeare. Something about carrying around this book made me feel more intelligent. I must have been 10 years old when I started telling people that I love Shakespeare. I hadn't read a single thing he had written, but I knew I would love it if I did. Romeo and Juliet came first, I read it for a high school English class, Hamlet came next...same class, and I still said I loved Shakespeare. But it wasn't until I took Dr. Kramer's 232 class my first semester that I actually started to love Shakespeare. He knew everything about Shakespeare, about the Globe Theatre about London at the time, about the Kings and Queens during Shakespeare's life. He taught us about the political implications of the plays, and we started to feel like we knew something. And whatever that something was, it told each of the students in that class that Shakespeare needed to stick around.

"Shakespeare for non-English majors." I knew I liked Shakespeare, I didn't think I would ever become an English major, so I just ran with it. Professor Kramer had us read King Lear, Winter's Tale, Some Like it Hot and The Merchant of Venice. Those in addition to Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and a few others. I was awful at finishing our readings. I hated reading plays that I didn't know the story line of (ridiculous, I know). Yet I so badly wanted to understand Shakespeare, wanted to love Shakespeare.We watched the Leonardo DiCaprio adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, we watched mob-themed adaptations of the Merchant of Venice and we watched Mel Gibson play Hamlet. We acted out scenes from King Lear. We memorized sonnets and had dramatic readings. We loved Shakespeare. I loved Shakespeare. We wrote Commonplace books picking apart the lines that we loved from each play, analyzing fragments of the most quotable lines, and of those lines that we had never cared for.  We discussed the "Ophelia syndrome". We read and read until our minds thought rhythmically.We loved Shakespeare.

After our class ended I felt a crutch had been pulled out from under me.  The course was set up to teach us to think for ourselves, to help us develop our own thoughts and opinions about each play, but it was set up in such a way that none of us realized any of this was happening. After the initial shock of feeling alone in my Shakespeare reading I realized that Dr. Kramer had not told me what to think about Shakespeare but rather, how to think about Shakespeare. An idea that was both invigorating and intimidating. I am entering this class fully recognizing that I don't know much about Shakespeare but at the same time completely willing to work towards a better knowledge. I'm excited to reread some of the plays that were difficult for me to sit through. I'm excited to hear the perspectives of others, and I'm particularly excited to study Shakespeare in a new medium that will put me completely out of my element and hopefully give me some insight.

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