You know Pound (& maybe Celia Zukovsky? I've just purchased *Bottom*
after years making do with the excerpts in *Origin* & am pretty
non-plussed by that "opera") affected (at least) to value *Pericles*
above anything else of the Bard's. Me, I enjoy reading it & find it very
intriguing for various reasons, but I've never had to sit through a bad
production. - About *The Merchant* - has anyone else seen the film with
Al Pacino? It messed up the text in the interest of linear suspense,
made you feel *awfu* sorry for Jeremy Irons not being able to speak the
Love that Dares Not Tell its Name 'cause he's in the wrong century,
right ( mind you, it's probably the same in Ohio now), but I found
Pacino's performance right on the ball - like Ken says, "a shit who
commands our sympathies". I felt very angry about anti-Semitism
afterwards - and the film piles that on too, with some extra material,
but without attempting to explain or justify (nor does the play, of
course) how Jessica can rob her father & whiz off without a word but
somehow come over as one of the OK winning lovey dovey Bassiano party.
Re *Macbeth* - do you know Welles's version, with Scottish accents an'
all? Now that's barbaric gloom for you.
mj
Alison Croggon wrote:
>
>I hope, like Mark, that Creeley worked out how to read Shakespeare at some
>point. One thing he isn't is slow; he gets the dynamic moving straight
>away. As I get older he is more and more a touchstone for me - like Keats
>said, inexhaustible; and for me always a source of energy and inspiration.
>I reckon it's really difficult to pin WS in any of his plays, hence the
>endless arguments about what he really thought; though I venture the
>playwright speaks a fair bit about what he thinks of theatre in Hamlet. But
>I don't really care who he was; whoever he was, he wrote these amazing
>plays.
>
>Though Ken, my introduction at school to WS less than inspiring. It was The
>Merchant of Venice, and I loathed it (looking back, I think that particular
>teacher didn't like Shakespeare much - and I still think the play is
>problematic). It took Polanski's now rather embarrassing film of Macbeth to
>open my eyes to the fact that this was language that was meant to be
>_spoken_, and that when I heard it spoken well it was the most exciting
>language I had encountered. Then I studied Lear, and I was hooked. (I come
>from a family of three daughters, which might explain my psychological
>attachment to this play...maybe...) After that there was no stopping me.
>But I still am not especially fond of The Merchant, which to my mind really
>is a potboiler with a couple of nice speeches; aside from being permanently
>scarred by a really really really boring production of that awful play
>Pericles, which seemed to go for about 15 hours.
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
>
>
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