(SQUEEEEEE!)

[ricardienne]

So thanks to thynk2much, I have now seen the Globe Richard II (anyone needing references for good karma on her behalf can apply to me). By rights, then, this should be a long post, but, fortunately for you all, I think it might not be. I am not sure why. For one thing, I am still feeling the effects of post-good-Shakespeare-meltiness. But also, I don't find that I have lots of burning things to say. I don't actually know the play incredibly well. It isn't like Measure for Measure, where I've been spordically obsessed since seventh grade, but it isn't one I've studied in school either (which, granted, isn't very many) or, more the point, one that I've even read in an edition that had notes and critical essays at the back.

I was thinking about Richard today -- I watched the first half last night, and decided that I had really better hold off on the second half as it was already past midnight and I had a piano rehearsal/coaching in the fairly early morning. (It's odd to be thinking about II instead of III.) Or rather, I was thinking about Shakespeare's Richard. It was a very basic question I was asking myself, with an obvious answer perhaps, but I needed to think it out: why isn't he a villain? He's a bad king: not only weak but wasteful, arbitrary, and not incredibly scrupulous, in fact. He's had his uncle murdered; he thinks nothing of wishing his other uncle dead so he can seize his lands and revenues. But that's the important thing, I think. He doesn't think. Richard (at the beginning of the play) isn't even aware that what he's doing and has done might be wrong. Villainous villains always know, whether they know and dismiss it, know and feel (a little or a lot) guilty, or know and revel in it. Richard, if you pointed it out, would just get indignant; he wouldn't understand. And so while it's a realization of his mistakes that he comes to, and maybe even an acceptance of death, it isn't really repentance, and, consequently there isn't a sense that he got his just deserts, even that he really deserved to be deposed and murdered. Henry Bolingbrook isn't a villain either, but he isn't the hero of the play. I wonder, though, if this is just moral reduction, to say that because Richard does not realize that he is acting immorally, he is somewhat exonerated. At some point, ignorance can't equate down to innocence. Innocence, however, is not what I'm talking about, is it? If he doesn't realize that he's guilty, then he isn't guilty. For guilt is really an interior emotion that must be felt. And I think that this last may be a logical fallacy, whereby I am using two senses of a word commutatively. But there's the connection to Measure for Measure, in fact. In what Harold Bloom extolls as the nihilist and comedic center of the play, Barnardine is so "unfit" to die that he can't even be executed -- because he won't acknowledge that he can be executed, i.e. that he's guilty. Actually, the connection is not nearly so strong as it seemed in my head. Never mind.

It was a little odd, watching Richard II with Measure for Measure still so much in my mind. (I think I'm on to what I saw, now, and not the play in general). Essentially the same company of actors wearing many of the same costumes, even (although different people were wearing different costumes -- I know, I know: I get great drama and I sit here drooling over the needle-lace), and very distinctive costumes (as well as sets, music, etc.) at that, was really very nice, in many ways. It all felt so familiar. But then, it made Rylance and Brennan's (and others', actually, but those were the main two) characters seem oddly parallel -- the inept, frivolous ruler vs. the efficient, serious ruler; bright and ornate costume vs. black and severe.

I shall probably have more thoughts about this later.

EDIT
Indeed, I have been. The parallels I was seeing are for the most part specious. It's the result of the same actors playing in the same kind (most broadly speaking) of play. In fact, it's happened to me before. Good actors do make you believe they are who they portray, and someone with a very distinctive mannerisms (e.g. Mark Rylance) is going to really get that effect. It might be compounded in Shakespeare because the language is just that much removed from my normal one, and that, combined with the non-contemporary setting and the fact that it's all part of the Shakespeare Canon makes any play seem like part of some greater, meaningful whole, where there would be grand hidden patterns. I mean, I think you could do this legitimately with some plays: a lot of the comedies could have giant parallel lines drawn through them all in certain characters. You know what? It's 1:15 a.m., and I'm really not able to even explain what I'm thinking coherently. Time to stop


Total comments: 289

1	achyvi		63
2	voglia_di_notte		58
3	kaskait		33
4	flyinghouse		11
5	angevin2		6
6	silverfyshxin		5
7	ea14spk68weeper		3
8	executrix		2
9	tif123		2
10	anonshadow		2
11	arriterre		2
12	thynk2much		2
13	queenxii		2
14	grapeyquoter		2
15	wyldlittlepoet		2
16	joshwriting		1
17	hobbit_em		1
18	deathandglitter		1
19	camlina		1
20	macmauve		1
21	perulovesyou		1
22	decollete		1
23	saraken		1
24	cretey		1

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So maybe this will make some of you feel a little guilty and start commenting? Or maybe this means that I have exceptionally boring entries. Alas, I doubt that this one helped.

Comments

this icon is from that production

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

I think the self-knowledge theme is so key to the play, it's his character arc and it's what makes us care about him in the end.

Absolutely, yes, and it's one of the things that kills me about the Pomfret scene especially, because you can just see Richard hovering around the edges of something, and then he's killed and you just get this feeling of, I don't know, emptiness. Which might just be me. And, I mean, you have self-knowledge becoming an issue with Bolingbroke, too, who spends a lot of the play refusing to acknowledge the inevitable end of the course he's on (although Richard does his level best to shatter his illusions -- if he can't keep his own illusions, nobody else gets to do so either!) So there's that parallel again -- opposites but also the same.

Though I'm not sure, come to that, I necessarily agree with Barton's "Meet the new boss" interp either -- his point was that either man, in the other's place, would have acted precisely as the other did, and I think that de-emphasizes the role of individuals more than I'm really comfortable with -- it's sort of like a variant on the "providentialist" view of the histories except instead of providence we have a merciless political system, which leads me to:

And in a way I think the plays are as much (or more?) about political patterns as they are about individuals.

Perhaps, but then, my dictum for getting the histories right onstage is "Get the people right and the politics will follow" -- we see how the political patterns work by the way in which they operate on people, usually by tearing them to pieces, and it's this sort of concreteness that makes them so effective. Like -- okay, modern-dress productions of Richard II always bend my brain a little, because the notion of divine-right monarchy is so central to the play yet so foreign to us, but yet the play speaks to us anyway, even on a political level, so it works anyway, and that confuses the hell out of me. ;)

Oh, also, I reread Caesar recently, as I've mentioned on my lj, and agree with you about the parallels with Richard II, but then, I would. Brutus and Bolingbroke especially seem to have a lot in common. (Also Antony's act of theatrical submission where he goes and shakes the bloody hands of the conspirators gave me serious RII-vibes when I reread it -- "that I have given here my soul's consent / T'undeck the pompous body of a king" and so forth -- but part of that may have been the influence of That Fic. ;) )

[thynk2much.livejournal.com]

I can't handle the "meet the new boss" philosophy when taken to that extreme (literal twins) because it's too depressing! too fatalistic!

I'm with you that the stories are told through the individuals who are tremendously important in the dramatic sense, or in the narrative sense. Message-wise, I think the politics are perhaps more important but we take away lots of personal stuff also. Re the commenter who found the play futile and the characters unimpressive, I think sometimes this can happen when reading it rather than seeing/hearing it performed. I find the characters terribly compelling.

Modern-dress in Spacey's RII worked fine for me because, hmm I dunno!, I guess I just psychologically filled in the divine right bit for myself! because it seemed very clear to me. Perhaps other audience members would have missed that if they didn't know the play. Spacey was incredibly kingly, I have to say, even in his suit... he really had the air of someone anointed and well aware of it.

Both JC and RII tend to leave me feeling that one regime isn't much better than the other (although not literally interchangeable, as I said above). Yes yes yes Brutus and Bolingbroke both kindof seem like they want to think of themselves as above all the sordidness but in the end have to face that they really aren't. [Oh mannnn Ralph Fiennes really worked that bloody-hand shaking business, you know he did!]

Err sorry for spamming your LJ, Ricardienne! :)

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

Message-wise, I think the politics are perhaps more important but we take away lots of personal stuff also.

Part of it is, though, that the political and the personal aren't separate. (cf Angevin2's comment above (or possibly below, I'm not sure) about the possible sameness of the king and the country) You have all these very powerful men, and the politics they make are pretty bound up in their personal feelings. Although that may be principally Richard's problem: he's a king, but he kings it like a private person.

(That definitely does not count as spamming!)

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Re the commenter who found the play futile and the characters unimpressive, I think sometimes this can happen when reading it rather than seeing/hearing it performed.

Confession time: I felt a bit like this first time I read it. Obviously I've since come around! The bloody thing just crawled under my skin -- this is probably because I expected going in that I'd love it and didn't, and (in English-major fashion) felt I needed to work through my issues with it by writing my BA thesis on it.

Spacey was incredibly kingly, I have to say, even in his suit... he really had the air of someone anointed and well aware of it.

Sure. And, I mean, the play's examination of the effects of power on people and the way people respond to power is very relevant still, and very true. Some of the specifics translate oddly -- not even as much the divine-right thing as, e.g., the trial by combat (which Stephen Pimlott, in the production Sam West was in for the RSC, dealt with by giving the combatants fire axes to underscore the absurd brutality of it all).

Agreed too about JC and RII -- it's like there's no good answer really.