From the archives: Fall 2004
In fall of 2004, I took a Shakespeare class with beloved, zany Dr. LeRoy "Party to the edge of" Panek. In light of having a whole new group of Shakespeare appreciating friends, I present to you:
Dr. Panek's Thoughts on Shakespeare.
Re: Henry V:: "To be a legitimate king in England, all you have to do is beat the snot out of France."
Re: As You Like It:: "Assume that the person you're in love with is the only person right for you in all the world-- well, you haven't met everyone in the world! It's an egregious bowl of crap!"
Re: Henry IV, Pt. 1:: "He can choose not to be king. He can choose to say, 'Screw you guys, I'm going home!'"
Re: pre-Shakespearean sonnets:: "In essence, Petrarch's sonnets are kinda like country-western music..." "So, sadistic women, machochistic men. It's kinda like porn."
Re: Pre-and-early Shakesperean comedy:: "They're attacked by pirates. They throw the guy into the Agean sea because they're not those kinds of pirates, but they do keep the girl. And then in the deep forest, you have satyrs dragging women off to do it horsey-style."
Re: the Black Plague and the advent of Shakespearean comedy:: "Shakespeare's all like, 'Yay, I made it! I'm not dead! Now I'm going to write comedies where people turn into birds and aardvarks and shit!'"
Re: A Midsummer Night's Dream:: "The play kind of begins with a Mickey & Sylvia theme between Theseus and Hippolyta. Anybody seen Dirty Dancing?"
Re: Shakespearean tragic heroes:: "Othello's tragic flaw is jealousy. Macbeth's tragic flaw is ambition. King Lear's tragic flaw is that he's frikkin' old. Who is the hero of Julius Caesar? Certainly not the title character-- he gets turned into an Italian colander halfway through the play."
And of course, the final exam.
Question:: What changes would be necessary to make The Tempest into a a tragedy?
Answer::
To make the Tempest into a tragedy would require many changes, even though it does include three hallmarks of a tragedy: it is centered on royalty, it involves a revenge plot, and Prospero, the hero, has many boring soliloquies wherein the audience can see the sooper-deep nature of his troubled thoughts. Let's start with the ending. The new ending to a tragic Tempest-- everybody dies. Some people kill themselves, some people kill each other, some people are killed by another tempest, and only one wise character (Gonzalo) lives to tell the tale. A tragedy simply cannot end in reconciliation, a love match, and/or forgiveness. In the world of tragedy, Prospero, driven by a desire for revenge against the brother who betrayed him and usurped his throne, would kill Antonio before succumbing to a wound he himself had received as a result of a climactic duel. Woe! He would not have made any positive changes involving his tendency to be as long-winded and controlling as possible until approximately 1 ½ pages before his last words, in which he briefly acknowledges the tragic flaw that led to his eventual downfall.
Miranda and Ferdinand would not stay a couple, obviously. Miranda would either die trying to protect her father, be raped and her tongue cut out by a bestial Caliban, or go throw herself in a river because Ferdinand is too busy brooding about suicide and wearing black to notice her. ("To be... or not to be?" asked the emo kid.) She would not reconcile with Prosepero. Possibly, there would be some momentous Act of God (storm, etc.) wherein the lovers are irrevocably parted by death or distance. There masque scene would probably be deleted, Ceres replaced by three old crones invoking Hecate around a rank pot of split-pea soup with extra eyeballs and tongue of newt. Instead of a spritely trickster, Ariel would portend doom with every appearance. In addition, the play would have to be more firmly rooted in a tale of historical or mythological basis, and there would be no doubt at the end of the play that the island is a dystopia that acts as a microcosm to show the abject misery of the world at large. Above all else, catharsis is key.
Question:: What changes would be necessary to make King Lear into a comedy?
Answer::
In order to make the play King Lear into a comedy, there would have to be many key changes made to the plot of the play as well. The most obvious change is a complete revision of the play’s ending. Shakespeare’s comedies almost always end happily, or at least the promise of a brighter future to come (Love’s Labours Lost, for instance). Central to the comedy is that flawed or villainous characters are not killed, but instead reformed, having seen the error of their ways. Shakespeare’s comedies operate under the very Christian assertion that if something is wrong with your life, obviously some inherent flaw in character is to blame, and that fault must be remedied before a character can be reformed-- and example of this is the jealousy and hatred of the elder brother, Oliver, in As You Like It. Therefore, instead of Goneril’s murder-suicide of her sister at the end of the play for the sake of acquiring more power (and, well, Edmund), both sisters would have to come to terms with their faults and instead pledge a more righteous life filled with dandelions and rosepetals and wee fluffy bunnies. Lear would have to confront his rashness and learn to temper his angry tendencies with wisdom, as well as deflate his ego some. Because whoa, does he have an ego.
Though King Lear does include some stock characters, there would have to be several more added to achieve the effect of low comedy. Only the fool is of traditional stock character, and even so, his thought-provoking riddles are much more elevated than the humor of low comic characters often found in Shakespeare’s comedies. Throw in an actor or three. Also, though the play does include a case of disguise/mistaken identity, it is not for comedic purposes. Let's get some cross-dressers in the mix!
Also, to be a successful comedy, the play would probably need a successful love plot resulting in engagement or marriage, most likely between Edgar and Cordelia, the two “good” characters who show more purity of intent. On a more general level, there would have to be much less gore (“out, vile jelly” would have to be a donut reference), the heath would have to be turned into a forest or more pastoral scene and made less violent to distinguish it from the corruption of court, and there would probably be a masque tossed in to lighten the mood, as well. Voila! Instant comedy!
I got an A. I was pretty pleased.
Dr. Panek's Thoughts on Shakespeare.
Re: Henry V:: "To be a legitimate king in England, all you have to do is beat the snot out of France."
Re: As You Like It:: "Assume that the person you're in love with is the only person right for you in all the world-- well, you haven't met everyone in the world! It's an egregious bowl of crap!"
Re: Henry IV, Pt. 1:: "He can choose not to be king. He can choose to say, 'Screw you guys, I'm going home!'"
Re: pre-Shakespearean sonnets:: "In essence, Petrarch's sonnets are kinda like country-western music..." "So, sadistic women, machochistic men. It's kinda like porn."
Re: Pre-and-early Shakesperean comedy:: "They're attacked by pirates. They throw the guy into the Agean sea because they're not those kinds of pirates, but they do keep the girl. And then in the deep forest, you have satyrs dragging women off to do it horsey-style."
Re: the Black Plague and the advent of Shakespearean comedy:: "Shakespeare's all like, 'Yay, I made it! I'm not dead! Now I'm going to write comedies where people turn into birds and aardvarks and shit!'"
Re: A Midsummer Night's Dream:: "The play kind of begins with a Mickey & Sylvia theme between Theseus and Hippolyta. Anybody seen Dirty Dancing?"
Re: Shakespearean tragic heroes:: "Othello's tragic flaw is jealousy. Macbeth's tragic flaw is ambition. King Lear's tragic flaw is that he's frikkin' old. Who is the hero of Julius Caesar? Certainly not the title character-- he gets turned into an Italian colander halfway through the play."
And of course, the final exam.
Question:: What changes would be necessary to make The Tempest into a a tragedy?
Answer::
To make the Tempest into a tragedy would require many changes, even though it does include three hallmarks of a tragedy: it is centered on royalty, it involves a revenge plot, and Prospero, the hero, has many boring soliloquies wherein the audience can see the sooper-deep nature of his troubled thoughts. Let's start with the ending. The new ending to a tragic Tempest-- everybody dies. Some people kill themselves, some people kill each other, some people are killed by another tempest, and only one wise character (Gonzalo) lives to tell the tale. A tragedy simply cannot end in reconciliation, a love match, and/or forgiveness. In the world of tragedy, Prospero, driven by a desire for revenge against the brother who betrayed him and usurped his throne, would kill Antonio before succumbing to a wound he himself had received as a result of a climactic duel. Woe! He would not have made any positive changes involving his tendency to be as long-winded and controlling as possible until approximately 1 ½ pages before his last words, in which he briefly acknowledges the tragic flaw that led to his eventual downfall.
Miranda and Ferdinand would not stay a couple, obviously. Miranda would either die trying to protect her father, be raped and her tongue cut out by a bestial Caliban, or go throw herself in a river because Ferdinand is too busy brooding about suicide and wearing black to notice her. ("To be... or not to be?" asked the emo kid.) She would not reconcile with Prosepero. Possibly, there would be some momentous Act of God (storm, etc.) wherein the lovers are irrevocably parted by death or distance. There masque scene would probably be deleted, Ceres replaced by three old crones invoking Hecate around a rank pot of split-pea soup with extra eyeballs and tongue of newt. Instead of a spritely trickster, Ariel would portend doom with every appearance. In addition, the play would have to be more firmly rooted in a tale of historical or mythological basis, and there would be no doubt at the end of the play that the island is a dystopia that acts as a microcosm to show the abject misery of the world at large. Above all else, catharsis is key.
Question:: What changes would be necessary to make King Lear into a comedy?
Answer::
In order to make the play King Lear into a comedy, there would have to be many key changes made to the plot of the play as well. The most obvious change is a complete revision of the play’s ending. Shakespeare’s comedies almost always end happily, or at least the promise of a brighter future to come (Love’s Labours Lost, for instance). Central to the comedy is that flawed or villainous characters are not killed, but instead reformed, having seen the error of their ways. Shakespeare’s comedies operate under the very Christian assertion that if something is wrong with your life, obviously some inherent flaw in character is to blame, and that fault must be remedied before a character can be reformed-- and example of this is the jealousy and hatred of the elder brother, Oliver, in As You Like It. Therefore, instead of Goneril’s murder-suicide of her sister at the end of the play for the sake of acquiring more power (and, well, Edmund), both sisters would have to come to terms with their faults and instead pledge a more righteous life filled with dandelions and rosepetals and wee fluffy bunnies. Lear would have to confront his rashness and learn to temper his angry tendencies with wisdom, as well as deflate his ego some. Because whoa, does he have an ego.
Though King Lear does include some stock characters, there would have to be several more added to achieve the effect of low comedy. Only the fool is of traditional stock character, and even so, his thought-provoking riddles are much more elevated than the humor of low comic characters often found in Shakespeare’s comedies. Throw in an actor or three. Also, though the play does include a case of disguise/mistaken identity, it is not for comedic purposes. Let's get some cross-dressers in the mix!
Also, to be a successful comedy, the play would probably need a successful love plot resulting in engagement or marriage, most likely between Edgar and Cordelia, the two “good” characters who show more purity of intent. On a more general level, there would have to be much less gore (“out, vile jelly” would have to be a donut reference), the heath would have to be turned into a forest or more pastoral scene and made less violent to distinguish it from the corruption of court, and there would probably be a masque tossed in to lighten the mood, as well. Voila! Instant comedy!
I got an A. I was pretty pleased.