The Shrew was beyond me, as I could not stomach the way that it celebrated misogyny
Glad to hear I am not the only one. Thanks gents. That play makes my hackles rise. The breaking of a person’s spirit by a kidnapper is a well-known psychological effect. If the victim is sequestered long enough they can even come to believe that they love their captors. Sound familiar? You can bet your bottom dollar that if the play had been one involving the emotional breaking of a black person into slavery the play would have faded into obscurity long ago. I can’t imagine why it is o.k. to put on that play just because Shakespeare wrote it.
Anyway, it's the Venetians who come off looking bad, in my opinion.
Agreed. I can't cheer for the ruthless self-serving b'stards, as they gloat in their destruction of Shylock. Even Portia seems markedly short of that which droppeth as the gentle rain. [my-work-is-done emoticon]
Billy the Bard wrote it as he saw it. Mostly his plot devices are trivial (except for his historical plays). The canvas of language, the swoop and soar of the words, were what his audiences came to see and hear. They certainly weren't there for the magnificent sets or the authenticity of the actors' make-up. The plays caught their imaginations and took them out of their generally miserable existences for a space. The plots were simply devices on which to hang the oratory and it was the oratory which worked the magic. The better known the plot, the easier it was for Bill to grab the gray matter in the audience and stir it.
Oour Wullie was a child of his times. Why would he question something as self-evident as the low status of the Jews? He was a keen observer of events around him but he was not a trained anthropologist, nor was he any kind of a social evangelist. He wasn't trying to improve the human condition, he was commenting on it and even entertaining it. The hounding of Shylock may have struck him personally as vaguely unfair, but it made a good story; his audience evidently agreed. And even well-liked scribblers such as Master William got little in the way of money and had to eat.
To Elizabethan audiences, MoV was a comedy. To us, it appears prejudiced, unfair and to some (as has been stated above) just totally unacceptable. Nonetheless, as a story it MUST be judged in its historical context, in my opinion. If a modern playwright wrote it, I would think it was totally unacceptable myself, Nazi propaganda. Personally, however, even though I know that Henry V was basically a murderous brigand for whom fighting was the main object in life, and that Shakespeare was basically glorifying that, I can enjoy the play without assigning any real value to the message.
You've made some good points there. I could have expanded upon my earlier post to point out that, though the sentiments 'expressed' in MoV or the Shrew, seem abominable, the plays themselves have a great deal that is admirable in them too. Whilst I would not wish for anybody to apologise for the misogyny of the Shrew (and I have, alas, seen some critics try), I would equally not wish to ban the play either. That would be, IMO, similar to saying we should ban the Bible because of all the racism and misogyny permeating virtually every chapter/book in it.
Apart from the truly brutal scenes between Petruchio and Katharina, there is much that is wonderful about the Shrew - and I suspect it might make a great experimental play - with cross-dressing, or gender reversal amongst the characters.
Funnily enough, of course, Kate becomes one of my favourite Shakespearian characters precisely because of what she has to go through - and the fact that she has such sharpness of character, and retains some of it even at the end.
Similarly, MoV contains some great moments and speeches, and whilst I deplore some of the attitudes present in it, I don't mind seeing it performed on stage. Again, I suspect that a good director could subvert the anti-Jewish message by undercutting the dignity of the WASPs (judicious editing, costuming and acting should do it?)
So while I may rant and rail about certain antediluvian attitudes in Shakespeare, I would not wish to see any of the plays banned.
One of the things that amazes me when I read Shakespeare's plays is the ability of S to create characters representing themselves and not characters representing Shakespeare. While creating a character it does not seem like he ever thought "writing this character will reflect badly on me." The characters are themselves and in his dialogues too it apparent how beautifully he lets the characters speak for themselves. Such people existed in society and the fact that they entered his plays so untarnished by his own likes and dislikes I think is part of Shakespeare's greatness. It is very difficult to do. (I see a bits of GBS in all his characters) P.S I can well imagine Shakespeare as Shakespeare thinking "I hate this character" but not letting that affect Shakespeare as the character.
C.K. and shanks, good points, both. Avy, you said: While creating a character it does not seem like he ever thought "writing this character will reflect badly on me."
Actually, I was wondering if such a thought even occurred to him. Perhaps in those times, it was "known" by all in his culture that he was portraying events only, not making any kind of commentary. Though it's possible that people knew the characters were in some way representative of the author, but didn't care. Plus, I think at that time, with so little to compare them with (compare them to?), audiences would have been primarily focused on the product, not how or why it was created, as C.K. said.
My point is that things were different in that time and at that place, and when we observe things from a different background but judge them based on our own values, we often come up with a skewed result. As shanks pointed out, one of the things that runs throughout the Bible is that slavery was a commonly-accepted practice. Today we think it's horrible, but I try to keep in mind that I should not judge everything in the Bible as horrible because of that.
If these types of things can be looked at in context, I think we can get a much more objective view of their worth, or lack therof.
So while I may rant and rail about certain antediluvian attitudes in Shakespeare, I would not wish to see any of the plays banned.
Banns? We don' need no steenkin' banns! My reaction to those plays is visceral, not cerebral, but I would not wish to see either banned. I agree with BelM that just being written by the Bard does not make them acceptable, but I also acknowledge that that is my opinion, not objective fact. I have had this same discussion many times over the last twent years, and have come to recognise that I cannot impose 20th Century values on 16th Century art. Just don't ask me to like it, is all, except for the "hath not a Jew eyes" speech.
You may have belaboured the pun indeed! But no - no chance of it being seen as a typo! Myself, I prefer - "I say we shall have no mo marriage" (which last word, for some reason, I always pronounce in my mind as mari-yaaj, though only ever ion this context)!
Surely, however, you also like the quali"y of mercy speech - y'know - that bloomin' thing wot pisses down 'n is twoice blest? Because it 'elps the bleeder up there 'oo's relievin' himsel' and the poor sod down 'ere 'oo's sufferin' from the 'osepipe ban (there bein' a drought because we've only just gone and had the flippin' wettest year since records began, innit?)
Surely, however, you also like the quali"y of mercy speech
Great speech, though how a heartless bitch like Portia could have the chutzpah to lecture Shylock on mercy is beyond me. I guess it's a bit like an atheist vainly hoping for a false Messiah to save him and his from the Wenger boys.
I admire Shakespeare very much, but have never seen one of his plays, except the movie of Henry V (I think) with Sir Laurence Olivier. It was tremendous, though I have no understanding of the changes Olivier made. But it seems to me that a lot of the criticism here expressed does not take adequately into account the constraints imposed on Shakespeare by his audiences. If he had been "politically correct" by today's standards, not only would his plays never have been performed, he would have been lynched. Surely it is no accident that so many of the people best qualified to judge have admired him so very much for so many years.
Do you think political correctness is the death of art?
No, it isn't and it won't ever be. What is and isn't PC changes over time. Art remains art and can ride out the vicissitudes of changing opinion with no problems at all, thank you very much.
Last year, or the year before, an exhibition of work by British women artists was shown here in Wellington which included a small plastic Virgin Mary statuette encased in a condom called, prosaically enough I guess, "Virgin in a Condom". In the same exhibition there was a fifteen foot-long photo-montage mural called "Wrecked Last Supper" which portrayed Christ as a topless woman in a parody of da Vinci's "Last Supper". Instead of the adoring disciples, the "disciples" in this picture were all totally self-absorbed and disinterested in the fate of the central figure.
"Virgin in a Condom" had little direct artistic merit - it was a statement, of course. "Wrecked Last Supper" I would love to have on my wall as a conversation piece.
The thing was, the amount of controversy it stirred up was absolutely brilliant. The Christian Heritage Party (for whom a theocracy is not only a goal but an absolute pre-requisite - they're called "the Taliban" around here) went absolutely bonkers - well, more bonkers than usual, anyway, and they're a pretty sad lot under the best of circumstances. They said that we would all face eternal damnation if these works were displayed and that they should preferably be destroyed. Several of them tried to seize the virgin and oh, joy, the fun and games. Can you imagine security guards hovering over a small piece of moulded plastic covered in latex for 24 hours a day? Believe me, the irony didn't escape me!
And the most ridiculous part of it all was that the majority of the people who were arguing for and against the works had never seen them ! Graham Capill, the leader of the CHP, makes the Grand Wizard of the KKK look as offensive as Kermit the Frog. He's somewhere to the right of Ghengiz Khan (or Dubya, but I repeat myself). He was almost foaming at the mouth on TV when he was being interviewed about the exhibition. And, at that time, he hadn't seen them either.
As a result, thousands went to the exhibition who would probably never have bothered otherwise.
PC, the death of art? Nah! Don't make me laff - it's the staff of life to art!
What is art? And what is not art? Does the passage of time truly separate the good from the bad? Why is it that artists have to be dead before their work becomes high priced? The hospital I worked at had a patient who did murals in excrement which were more attractive than many modern paintings. But was it art? Alas, none of them would be preserved for examination by art critcs.
CapK, your story brings up something that has long bothered me. i have so much trouble understanding the uproar over the desecration of 'idols' and icons, including the American flag. i have no idea what the current status is on the legality of flag burning, but it's certainly always been an issue that garners much attention (a constitutional amendment, to the bill of rights of all things, was once narrowly avoided; the irony of this is almost humorous - adulterate a document that has remained unchanged for two centuries (an icon if there ever was one) with the hope of preserving the sanctity of another.)
while i find the concept of the Blessed Virgin wrapped in a condom more than a bit distasteful (incidently, i'm quite sure i don't agree that the painting you mention would bring me any pleasure as a dinner guest, or as a host, despite the assurance of it being a conversational catalyst) my feeling is that the icon or idol's very purpose is to take on meaning for those that believe in its sanctity. thus, the Blessed Virgin in question is nothing more than the plastic it is made of, having been defiled such. ditto for the thousands of Saint Joseph statues that so unceremoniously find themselves head-down in a mudpile under a For Sale sign, and likewise for the flags.
i suppose all this rhetoric is simply to say that i agree with your contention the negative attention afforded art of this nature serves only to buoy the public's interest, and is quite possibly the driving force behind the artists' efforts.
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) my feeling is that the icon or idol's very purpose is to take on meaning for those that believe in its sanctity. thus, the Blessed Virgin in question is nothing more than the plastic it is made of, having been defiled such. ditto for the thousands of Saint Joseph statues that so unceremoniously find themselves head-down in a mudpile under a For Sale sign, and likewise for the flags.
