ShakespeareFlix

The second most common question I get asked when people find out that I taught Shakespeare is, “Did he write the plays?” which is like asking a biology professor if she believes in evolution. I usually respond with the old joke that Shakespeare’s plays weren’t written by Shakespeare, but by a man with the same name. If people are really interested, I provide a short history of authorship conspiracy theories, cribbing from Schoenbaum’s brilliant Shakespeare’s Lives . A more common question is, “What’s your favorite play?” Choosing a single play is impossible for me, but, on any given day, I can provide a favorite comedy, history, tragedy, and romance. (Today those are Twelfth Night, 1 Henry IV, Hamlet , and The Winter’s Tale —I might have different favorites tomorrow.) I’m also sometimes asked, “Who’s your favorite character?” which is also an impossible question, but if we can narrow it, I’m willing to give it a go. One of my tweeps, Andy McLean, is compiling a list of “Sha...

Sunday's big astronomical event made me wonder how many times Shakespeare refers to lunar eclipses. I can think of six. 1-2. In Sonnet 35, the speaker forgives his beloved by saying that everything has a bad side—"Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun"—and in Sonnet 107, he says that, like his love, some things last: "The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured." 3. In Hamlet 's first scene, speculating about the Ghost, Horatio describes the portents that presaged the fall of Julius Caesar, one of which was a lunar eclipse: "the moist star / Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands / Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse" (106.11-13).

Lucian Msamati, who plays the pirate Salladhor Saan on Game of Thrones , won't be the first black actor to play Iago. In the early nineteenth century, an African American played the part in New York's African Grove theater, where the first internationally famous black Shakespearean actor, Ira Aldridge, got his start. In recent decades, other black actors have played Shakespeare's creepy Machiavel. But Msamati will be the first to play him for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Independent   reports that Msamati will play the role opposite Hugh Quarshie's Othello during the RSC's summer season.

Gloucester's enhanced interrogation. Image from S hakespeare's Staging . Shakespeare would have agreed with the Senate Intelligence Committee's conclusion that torture doesn't produce useful information . At the end of Othello , Gratiano says that "torments" will make Iago explain his villainy (5.2.312), but we don't see this, and Ludovico orders Cassio to torture Iago (5.2.377-79) for the same reason that Lucius orders that Aaron be tortured in Titus Andronicus (5.3.178-82) and Benedick proposes torturing Don John in Much Ado About Nothing (5.4.121-22)—as a punishment. In the only play in which we see torture used in an attempt at gaining intelligence, it gains nothing. King Lear 's Cornwall, Regan, and Goneril tie Gloucester to a chair and pull his beard to get him to tell them why he sent the king to Dover. But Gloucester doesn't reveal that Cordelia and French army are there, and even if he had, the villains knew this already. Having ...

A few weeks ago, I posted Jerry Lee Lewis's rendering of Iago's first and second soliloquies  from the rock musical Catch My Soul.  Bill Walthall  asked if there were more such tunes on the web. Alas, there's very little. We have Lance LeGault singing as Iago in Patrick McGoohan's 1974 film version and Lewis singing the first of Iago's drinking songs: And let me the canakin clink, clink, And let me the canakin clink. A soldier's a man, O, man's life's but a span. Why then, let a soldier drink. (2.3.60-64) Lewis includes a couple of Iago's earlier, bawdy remarks to Desdemona: e.g., "If she be black [haired], and thereto have a wit, / She'll find a white [a "wight" or person] that shall her blackness fit [sexually]" (2.1.135-36). When he's done singing we hear some of his dialogue with William Jordan's Cassio.  

CNN recently broadcast some short clips of Jennifer Lawrence playing Desdemona in a high-school production of Othello . She describes Othello's command that she dismiss Emilia (4.3.11-13) and sings a bit of the "Willow" song (4.3.38-51).  

The first stage production of Catch My Soul , a musical version of Othello , featured Blacula star William Marshall as the Moor and rock-and-roll wild man Jerry Lee Lewis as Iago. Here's a sample of Lewis's Iago:    The relevant lines come from Iago's telling Roderigo that love is "a lust of the blood and a permission of the will" (1.3.329) and from two soliloquies: I hate the Moor : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cassio's a proper man. Let me see now To get his place and to plume up my will In double knavery— how, how? Let's see After some time, to abuse Othello's ears That he is too familiar with his wife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

Complete Movie Orson Welles's 1952 film with Welles as Othello, Michael MacLiammoir as Iago, and Suzanne Cloutier as Desdemona.  1.3 Oliver Parker's 1995 film with Laurence Fishburne as Othello, Kenneth Branagh as Iago, and Irène Jacob as Desdemona . Branagh manipulates Michael Maloney (Roderigo) and delivers Iago's first soliloquy. Bob Hoskins  does the same in Jonathan Jonathan Miller's 1981 television production with Anthony Hopkins as Othello, Penelope Wilton as Desdemona, and Rosemary Leach as Emilia. (Cuts off early.) 2.1 Bob Hoskins  delivers Iago's second soliloquy. 2.3 Kenneth Branagh's Iago soliloquizes  after destroying Cassio's reputation. 3.3 Fishburne and Branagh .  4.3 Irène Jacob sings the willow song and gets advice from Anna Patrick (Emilia).

Click here  to link to a complete transcription of  Filming Othello, Welles's documentary about the trials of making his 1952 film.

On Thursday, April 12, at 4:00 in the Chico State Humanities Center (Trinity 100) Shakespeare professor Robert O'Brien will give a talk on "Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Why Creative People Shouldn't Try to Make Movies." This  thirty-minute   talk will be followed by a discussion of Welles's Shakespeare movies, especially his 1952 Othello and 1948 Macbeth .

Orson Welles's Othello will be shown as part of Chico State's University Film Series on Tuesday, April 10, at 7:30 p.m. in Ayres 106. This extraordinary film was shot in Italy and Morocco over the course of three years and won the Palme d'Or at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival. It was out of circulation for decades, but in 1987 film buffs discovered the negatives in a New Jersey warehouse and began a complicated, million-dollar restoration. Rereleased in 1992, the film employs shadows and camera angles more radical than anything in Citizen Kane to convey the web of envy, deceit, and jealousy that enmeshes the characters.

I surveyed the students in my upper-division college Shakespeare course to find out which plays they had read in high school. Most had read Romeo and Juliet (70%) and Hamlet (68%); fewer than half had read Macbeth (39%) or Julius Caesar (36%) . Three plays brought up the rear: Othello (31%), A Midsummer Night's Dream (24%), and—surprisingly— The Taming of the Shrew (21%). The other thirty canonical plays were untouched or had been read by one or two students.