The Shakespeare Wars, by Ron Rosenbaum
Aug. 18th, 2010 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacA great joy of public libraries is coming across books you heard about when new, didn't get around to reading then, and which subsequently slipped to the back of your mind. This is one, and I found it compelling reading but oddly mixed in quality.
Rosenbaum's "wars" are scholarly disputes over the reading, editing, meaning, and interpretation of Shakespeare's works. He robustly declares that Shakespeare's biography does not interest him: we don't know enough about him to write one meaningfully, and our only interest in the man is that he wrote the works, so why not study the works instead? That's where the genius lies. I am with him all the way when he says that Shakespeare's life (or even an alternative author's life, if one believes that rot, which Rosenbaum has no time for) doesn't explain the genius.
Unfortunately Rosenbaum fails to follow his own advice, and spends one of his long chapters desperately trying to find echoes of Shakespearian dramatic ambiguity in Shakespeare's personal testimony as a witness in a lawsuit. A very dull and confusing lawsuit, by the way.
Nor is Rosenbaum capable of explaining a stage-directorial controversy over the proper speaking of Shakespeare's lines without an audio recording showing what the different approaches sound like.
He is better in discussing Shakespeare editing, especially the textual divergences in Hamlet and Lear and the recent revolution in how to present them, but that may have been clear to me because I already knew all that stuff.
It was cheering to read Rosenbaum's thorough demolition of foolish and over-rated Shakespeare scholars like Harold Bloom (who, if you take Rosenbaum's word for it, argues that Falstaff was the first and possibly greatest rounded human being in literary history) and Donald Foster (who, having raised a legitimate question as to whether an obscure anonymous poem might have been by Shakespeare, then fell into his own trap and declared it was definitely so, and then had to crawl back and admit it definitely wasn't).
But my confidence in Rosenbaum's charaterizations of contrary positions was shaken by two other chapters where his arguments seemed to me seriously deficient. Rosenbaum considers recent trends to portray Shylock sympathetically to be completely misguided. He says that if Shylock is portrayed as a pure villain, the malignancy of his quest for the pound of flesh can be attributed just to him; but if Shylock is sympathetic, then it's even more anti-Semitic because it implies that any Jew, even a supposedly kindly one, could be that evil.
Well, yes, you could view it that way. Rosenbaum, though, considers it so obvious that that's the only way to view it that he condemns all other interpretations as dunderheaded. It doesn't seem to occur to him, though, that if the play is anti-Semitic, then you can't exactly save it by making Shylock as nasty as possible.
And it's not the way I view it, after numerous viewings of productions of Merchant. As I see it, Shylock as a pure villain is a litigious crank. You can't even be sure if his charges against Antonio's behavior are legitimate. But Shylock as a sympathetic character comes across as a reasonable, fair-minded man who has been driven to the last extremity by abuse and calumny.
In another chapter, Rosenbaum argues that watching Shakespearean film is superior to attending the theatre. He knows this is a counter-intuitive view, but he says that most stage productions of Shakespeare are so bad, he walks out on them. (He must not be seeing very good Shakespeare. Only once have I ever wished I'd walked out on a Shakespeare performance.) True, films lack the special quality of live theatre, but Rosenbaum says that's a minor consideration next to the fact that they can present finer performances than you're ever likely to see on stage in a normal play-going life.
He points to Richard Burton's 1964 Hamlet film in particular, a film that is not a dramatization at all but a simple film recording of an actual performance of a legendary production. Burton, he says, was one of the greatest Hamlets, and better than almost any you're likely to see on stage. And you'll never see this one on stage, because it was in 1964. So how fortunate we are to have it on film.
I'd never seen the Burton Hamlet film, but I was able to find it and rent it, and, um, my conclusion is the opposite of Rosenbaum's. Sure, there are some excellent things in Burton's performance. His reading of the lines in Act 4 scene 3 where Hamlet calls Claudius his mother, for instance, was quite extraordinary. But otherwise I was less impressed. Burton's Hamlet is too turbo-charged: he rants excessively for a guy who claims to be paralyzed by doubt, and he's also excessively misogynist. ("Frailty, thy name is ... woman," with an audible sneer.) And it's not otherwise a good production. Except for Hume Cronyn as Polonius and Barnard Hughes in the tiny roles of Marcellus and the priest, the other actors were markedly deficient. Alfred Drake has no character as Claudius (Alfred Drake, no character? but it's true), Laertes rants like Hamlet, neither Gertrude nor Ophelia is particularly interesting, and Horatio, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern are nearly inert. If this is the best Hamlet Rosenbaum has ever seen, no wonder he rarely goes to the theatre.
Maybe you had to be there - in the theatre in 1964, I mean - but that's the point, isn't it? Rosenbaum says great acting trumps stage presence, but as far as plays go, I'd say it's very much the other way around. I've seen Hamlet four or five times on stage, and have always been captivated. The actors didn't have to be famous or even overwhelmingly good, because they were there in every possible sense. I've mentioned before being struck to the gut by a simple summer workshop performance of Hamlet at the University of Oklahoma, of all places: one of the most powerful theatrical experiences I've ever had. I was breathless with suspense, even though I knew the whole plot. But I doubt a film recording of that would have the same effect.
On the Hamlet DVD is a promotional film in which Burton extols his revolutionary "Theatrovision". See great New York stage productions in your local movie theatre! What a great way to bring culture to the masses! But it never took off, did you notice that? There are stage productions on television, yes, but if were an adequate substitute for the theatre, there'd be a lot more.
Of course, there are great Shakespeare films, though I think the best are recent re-imaginings of Shakespeare made in the advanced vocabulary of modern film: Ian McKellen's Richard III or Julie Taymor's Titus Andronicus. (Both tragedies, note: Shakespeare comedies tend to fall flat on film.) Rosenbaum praises both of these in passing, but he's not as interested in them as in some older films which are perhaps not as striking, to me at least.
One other advantage film has, Rosenbaum says, is that actors can speak more intimately than they can on stage. Of course that doesn't apply to Burton's Hamlet. One instance Rosenbaum cites is Olivier's 1948 Hamlet, in which the soliloquies are presented as Hamlet's inner thoughts. Olivier is seen on screen, but he isn't speaking: he does the texts as voice-overs. It's an interesting experiment, but it doesn't work. Voice-overs of such length just seem ridiculous, and the Olivier on-screen doesn't do anything in particular to show he's having those particular thoughts at those particular moments; if he did, it'd look pantomime.
At one point, Rosenbaum recounts himself saying to someone that some Shakespeare monologues have to be presented boomingly, and he instances the Player's speech in Hamlet. But the person he's talking to replies that he's seen it done effectively, quietly, on stage. Effectively and quietly while on stage. Rosenbaum's entire argument that film is necessary for intimacy flies out the window, and if he'd ever seen any good Shakespeare in a small theatre, he'd already know that.
Rosenbaum's "wars" are scholarly disputes over the reading, editing, meaning, and interpretation of Shakespeare's works. He robustly declares that Shakespeare's biography does not interest him: we don't know enough about him to write one meaningfully, and our only interest in the man is that he wrote the works, so why not study the works instead? That's where the genius lies. I am with him all the way when he says that Shakespeare's life (or even an alternative author's life, if one believes that rot, which Rosenbaum has no time for) doesn't explain the genius.
Unfortunately Rosenbaum fails to follow his own advice, and spends one of his long chapters desperately trying to find echoes of Shakespearian dramatic ambiguity in Shakespeare's personal testimony as a witness in a lawsuit. A very dull and confusing lawsuit, by the way.
Nor is Rosenbaum capable of explaining a stage-directorial controversy over the proper speaking of Shakespeare's lines without an audio recording showing what the different approaches sound like.
He is better in discussing Shakespeare editing, especially the textual divergences in Hamlet and Lear and the recent revolution in how to present them, but that may have been clear to me because I already knew all that stuff.
It was cheering to read Rosenbaum's thorough demolition of foolish and over-rated Shakespeare scholars like Harold Bloom (who, if you take Rosenbaum's word for it, argues that Falstaff was the first and possibly greatest rounded human being in literary history) and Donald Foster (who, having raised a legitimate question as to whether an obscure anonymous poem might have been by Shakespeare, then fell into his own trap and declared it was definitely so, and then had to crawl back and admit it definitely wasn't).
But my confidence in Rosenbaum's charaterizations of contrary positions was shaken by two other chapters where his arguments seemed to me seriously deficient. Rosenbaum considers recent trends to portray Shylock sympathetically to be completely misguided. He says that if Shylock is portrayed as a pure villain, the malignancy of his quest for the pound of flesh can be attributed just to him; but if Shylock is sympathetic, then it's even more anti-Semitic because it implies that any Jew, even a supposedly kindly one, could be that evil.
Well, yes, you could view it that way. Rosenbaum, though, considers it so obvious that that's the only way to view it that he condemns all other interpretations as dunderheaded. It doesn't seem to occur to him, though, that if the play is anti-Semitic, then you can't exactly save it by making Shylock as nasty as possible.
And it's not the way I view it, after numerous viewings of productions of Merchant. As I see it, Shylock as a pure villain is a litigious crank. You can't even be sure if his charges against Antonio's behavior are legitimate. But Shylock as a sympathetic character comes across as a reasonable, fair-minded man who has been driven to the last extremity by abuse and calumny.
In another chapter, Rosenbaum argues that watching Shakespearean film is superior to attending the theatre. He knows this is a counter-intuitive view, but he says that most stage productions of Shakespeare are so bad, he walks out on them. (He must not be seeing very good Shakespeare. Only once have I ever wished I'd walked out on a Shakespeare performance.) True, films lack the special quality of live theatre, but Rosenbaum says that's a minor consideration next to the fact that they can present finer performances than you're ever likely to see on stage in a normal play-going life.
He points to Richard Burton's 1964 Hamlet film in particular, a film that is not a dramatization at all but a simple film recording of an actual performance of a legendary production. Burton, he says, was one of the greatest Hamlets, and better than almost any you're likely to see on stage. And you'll never see this one on stage, because it was in 1964. So how fortunate we are to have it on film.
I'd never seen the Burton Hamlet film, but I was able to find it and rent it, and, um, my conclusion is the opposite of Rosenbaum's. Sure, there are some excellent things in Burton's performance. His reading of the lines in Act 4 scene 3 where Hamlet calls Claudius his mother, for instance, was quite extraordinary. But otherwise I was less impressed. Burton's Hamlet is too turbo-charged: he rants excessively for a guy who claims to be paralyzed by doubt, and he's also excessively misogynist. ("Frailty, thy name is ... woman," with an audible sneer.) And it's not otherwise a good production. Except for Hume Cronyn as Polonius and Barnard Hughes in the tiny roles of Marcellus and the priest, the other actors were markedly deficient. Alfred Drake has no character as Claudius (Alfred Drake, no character? but it's true), Laertes rants like Hamlet, neither Gertrude nor Ophelia is particularly interesting, and Horatio, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern are nearly inert. If this is the best Hamlet Rosenbaum has ever seen, no wonder he rarely goes to the theatre.
Maybe you had to be there - in the theatre in 1964, I mean - but that's the point, isn't it? Rosenbaum says great acting trumps stage presence, but as far as plays go, I'd say it's very much the other way around. I've seen Hamlet four or five times on stage, and have always been captivated. The actors didn't have to be famous or even overwhelmingly good, because they were there in every possible sense. I've mentioned before being struck to the gut by a simple summer workshop performance of Hamlet at the University of Oklahoma, of all places: one of the most powerful theatrical experiences I've ever had. I was breathless with suspense, even though I knew the whole plot. But I doubt a film recording of that would have the same effect.
On the Hamlet DVD is a promotional film in which Burton extols his revolutionary "Theatrovision". See great New York stage productions in your local movie theatre! What a great way to bring culture to the masses! But it never took off, did you notice that? There are stage productions on television, yes, but if were an adequate substitute for the theatre, there'd be a lot more.
Of course, there are great Shakespeare films, though I think the best are recent re-imaginings of Shakespeare made in the advanced vocabulary of modern film: Ian McKellen's Richard III or Julie Taymor's Titus Andronicus. (Both tragedies, note: Shakespeare comedies tend to fall flat on film.) Rosenbaum praises both of these in passing, but he's not as interested in them as in some older films which are perhaps not as striking, to me at least.
One other advantage film has, Rosenbaum says, is that actors can speak more intimately than they can on stage. Of course that doesn't apply to Burton's Hamlet. One instance Rosenbaum cites is Olivier's 1948 Hamlet, in which the soliloquies are presented as Hamlet's inner thoughts. Olivier is seen on screen, but he isn't speaking: he does the texts as voice-overs. It's an interesting experiment, but it doesn't work. Voice-overs of such length just seem ridiculous, and the Olivier on-screen doesn't do anything in particular to show he's having those particular thoughts at those particular moments; if he did, it'd look pantomime.
At one point, Rosenbaum recounts himself saying to someone that some Shakespeare monologues have to be presented boomingly, and he instances the Player's speech in Hamlet. But the person he's talking to replies that he's seen it done effectively, quietly, on stage. Effectively and quietly while on stage. Rosenbaum's entire argument that film is necessary for intimacy flies out the window, and if he'd ever seen any good Shakespeare in a small theatre, he'd already know that.
