Hamlet

Shakespeare: the not especially funny bits

I’ve already made fun of Hamlet elsewhere in these pages, so here’s something else.

In a chamber at Elsinore

Byron! – he would be all forgotten to-day if he had lived to be a florid old gentleman with iron-grey whiskers, writing very long, very able letters to “The Times” about the Repeal of the Corn Laws. –Beerbohm, Zulieka Dobson

After all these years, I still miss Father.
My very bones are cold — another glass?
We old-timers have got to stick together.

The image of him is as clear as ever,
Although my memory’s not what it was.
After all these years, I still miss Father.

To think he died the same year as his brother,
The year I — yes, I know, the year I “lost”.
We old-timers have got to stick together.

Don’t fuss so. I’m your King, not some old duffer.
I have my funny turns; they always pass.
After all these years, I still miss Father.

And you were always there as Lord Protector.
That dream was horrible — I saw her face —
We old-timers have got to stick together.

Her face was blurred like something underwater.
What would I do without you, Fortinbras?
After all these years, I still miss Father.
We old-timers have got to stick together.

Two Sugars

We meet in Glebe in the winter wind
We hold each other tight.
I got you an adjective coffee:
A skinny large flat white.

Ute-ilitarianism

For this political dispute
Australia is going mad:
I think we just like saying “ute”.

In other lands they’ll up and shoot
You if you say the leader’s bad,
For this political dispute

Is seen as neither wise nor cute
In Tehran or Islamabad.
I think we just like saying “ute”.

There’s Berlusconi’s prostitute
(He’s old enough to be her dad!)
For this political dispute,

Or England’s, where they’ve got a beaut,
Would not fly here: too dull and sad.
I think we just like saying “ute”.

They say that Turnbull’s quite astute,
But I don’t give a hanging chad
For this political dispute;
I think we just like saying “ute”.

Orange

(Only a partial solution to Petey’s challenge. And it really needs a New York accent to work.)

The Sonnets

Shakespeare: the funny bits

Having now read all 154 of the sonnets, I can confidently say that you have probably already heard the good ones. You know, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ (18) or ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’ (116) or ‘Being your slave, what should I do but tend’ (57).

Not, for example, 143, wherein the Dark Lady is represented as running after the Fair Youth like a farmer’s wife chasing a goose around a yard:

Lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch
One of her feather’d creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe and makes an swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay,
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent;
So runn’st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind:
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy ‘Will,’
If thou turn back, and my loud crying still.

Note that Shakespeare is the baby left crying on the ground. Whoah, yeah, Will, bringin’ sexy back.

Auden makes much of the confessional frankness of the sonnets in order to argue that Shakespeare cannot have intended them to be published, and not just because of the matter of the Bard’s sexuality, which I think could best be described as queer as fuck.

He says, for instance, that no-one, having written sonnet 57 could bear to have others read it. There’s something to this argument, although, as always with Auden’s criticism, ‘no-one’ should be read as ‘no rather shy Englishman of the upper middle classes’. But even considered as private communications they are still very weird. How would you feel if someone had a crush on you and expressed it by writing you not one or two, but dozens upon dozens of sonnets? I found the following story in David Cecil’s biography of Max Beerbohm:

One afternoon sitting out with Elisabeth, he noticed a procession of coloured caterpillars wriggling along the sunlit balustrade. ‘They remind me of Shakespeare’s sonnets,’ Max said. ‘Each so beautiful and each a little unpleasant.’

Poet v Philosopher

Augustus De Morgan

Venus & Adonis

Sydney Theatre Company and Bell Shakespeare. Directed by Marion Potts, starring Melissa Madden Gray and Susan Prior

Venus is played by the two leads; her attempted seduction of Adonis is mostly addressed directly to the audience. This is a very effective dramatisation: sexy, funny and moving. The live music by Felicity Clark, Michael Sheridan, Bree van Reyk was great. It was so good it made me feel a bit bad about my lampoon of the poem last week. I read it to prepare for the play, not as part of the Auden on Shakespeare project. The Auden lectures don’t cover any of the long poems, which is a shame.

Best Picture

I think this is the first year I have ever seen four out of five of the Best Picture nominations. I can’t honestly say which one should win, except probably not Benjamin Button, which is the one I didn’t see and which looked downright foolish from the trailer.

A man dies and an opera is sung -
A boy who falls into some dung -
A political crook,
And a Nazi with books,
And a curious guy who grows young.

Venus and Adonis

Shakespeare: the funny bits

You sheilas never think of aught but rootin’.
Me and the mates are gunna go pig-shootin’.