Elettaria's Book Log

Shakespeare, Henry V

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 15:03:57 GMT

Currently about half-way through, peacefully making notes and trying to get it finished before Shabbat comes in. The plot summary is going well, it's all making much more sense now, but the relationship diagram is probably going to turn nightmarish. There are just too many people in it, I'm praying they don't start having complicated relationships with each other.

Shakespeare, Richard II

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 02:17:39 GMT

See, I'm being a good girl. I'm still on the first scene. Arden editions scare me. There were five pages of footnotes on the dramatis personae alone.

Films: Miller, The Taming of the Shrew, Timon of Athens; Giles, Henry V;

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:50:03 GMT

Shrew was excellent. They cut the Induction as per usual, but were very true indeed to the spirit and social mores of the text. It was a sharply-done version, and the comedy worked all the better for it. John Cleese was a fabulous Petrucchio, serious for quite a lot of the time but still putting his gifts for comedy to excellent use. Moments that stood out were when he turned up for his wedding bare-chested, in a shabby brown jacket (jerkin?) with a huge sunflower pinned to it, and a preposterous three-cornered hat with narrow feathers several feet long attached. He was already taller than the rest of the cast, and well over a foot taller than Sarah Badel as Katherina, which just increased the effect. Another lovely moment was when he's finally producing food after she's been starving all day, spends ages praying silently and supposedly piously, and then the servants nervously produce some meat. They cut his portion first, and while they were cutting Katherina's he was bending down and sniffing it in imitable Cleese style, just before he rejected it. The violence wasn't nearly as overplayed as in the Zefirelli version, though both showed that they had a nasty temper. You got the impression that Petrucchio had outsmarted Katherina, although of course he's doing most of it through male privilege. She seemed to like him by the end, they had a couple of tender kisses, which I wasn't sure about, but it's almost impossible, that side of things. Her submission speech was suitably ambiguous, delivered fairly calmly and while sitting at the table at his side, and delivered deadpan and smiling as if she were giving a talk. When she offered to put her hand under his foot, she smiled and gave him her hand to hold. The thing about that relationship, once it gets to the scene where they encounter Vincentio, is that you never know how far they're putting on the submissive wife act in public, as Petrucchio says they are doing of fighting earlier on, or whether she's really knuckled under and if so, how she feels about it.

Next I watched Henry V, which wasn't as bad as I'd feared, although Gwillim was indeed rather bland. Hotspur had been resurrected, cunningly changed his hair, and betrayed the King as Cambridge. I attempted to watch Timon of Athens but gave up 2/3 of the way through out of unutterable boredom. They could possibly have filmed it in a more interesting way, but generally I blame Shakespeare for that one.

Films: Burge, Much Ado About Nothing; Giles, Henry IV, Part 1

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 19:21:47 GMT

Much Ado partially suffered from the dreadful type of outdoor set used in Two Gentlemen, though the indoor sets were fine. The orchard didn't look quite as bad in the evening scenes. I was eager to see Robert Lindsay as Benedick, but they seem to be playing the comedies quite dark and he played Benedick as a miserable sod, to be frank. The chemistry with Cherie Lunghi's moderately charming Beatrice didn't really warm up until the end. Jon Finch looked very stylish - and gay - as Don Pedro; I'm not sure how far the gay bit is supported by the text, but it certainly makes sense of the way Beatrice mock-flirts with him. Robert Reynolds was a darkly cute and convincing Claudio, and Vernon Dobtcheff a calmly sinister Don John.

I then got some bloody work done with Henry IV. Sort of work: I'm not studying it, but I'm studying Richard II and Henry V, so I really need to know what's happening in between. Yes, the Middle Ages really was an awful time for men's haircuts. I particularly liked Tim Pigott-Smith's hot-tempered yet charming Hotspur, with a rumpled curly red wig (noticeably bad around the moustache area, but I tried to ignore that), though I was puzzled by the way his eyes changed from brown to blue near the end of the film. The duel with Hal was badly shot but nicely choregraphed. It's the only time the two men meet, though everyone has been commenting throughout the play on how they ought to, and there was a fair bit of grinning at each other across the swords. No, not in a gay way, in fact this might be the only film of the lot so far that wasn't Very Very Gay. Hal was rather chilling in the scene when he and Falstaff stage a mock-interview between Hal and his father, where it went from everyone in the pub laughing away to you realising that he really is going to drop Falstaff like a hot potato later on. The relationship with Falstaff was charming yet edgy, stealing from and lying to each other and still comrades.

Manning, ed., Libertine plays of the Restoration; Leviticus

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 14:29:43 GMT

I'm skipping the ones I've read before (Marriage a la Mode, The Rover), but so far I've read Shadwell's The Libertine. It's the most brutal version of the Don Juan myth I've encountered, with rapes and murders all over the place. You can tell that da Ponte was borrowing from this one, certain parts are almost verbatim Don Giovanni.

After a bit of a blip, the early-morning (i.e. while I'm perched in front of the lightbox with my eyes on matchsticks) Bible-reading project is back on. I had no idea that locusts and grasshoppers were kosher.

Opera: [Glyndebourne production], Le Nozze di Figaro; Rubens, The Waiting Game

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 14:26:27 GMT

Mozart. *sigh* There werea few snags with this production, namely that the orchestra tended to drown the singers and the conductor took some terrible liberties with the tempo (Deh Vieni was much too fast, although nicely sung, and I bristled when he suddenly hoiked up the speed in the middle of Per tutti contenti, saremo cosi), plus the performances in general weren't exactly spectacular, but it was still lovely. It's actually the first time I've seen the entire opera, though I've been a chorus wench, listened to the CD, and sung from the vocal score for years. A lot of things dropped into place, and apart from anything else, how have I missed just how queer this opera is? Probably because I hadn't studied theories about cuckoldry plots and such last time I was paying attention to what happens in the opera.

Cherubino was adorable, I wanted to steal her away home with me. It's funny, you know perfectly well that it's a woman in the part, but you do believe the costume, so that when the Count accidentally snogged Cherubino in Act IV, it seemed more transgressive than when Cherubino was rolling around with the women. They kept putting her into boxes, and the scenes where Susanna makes her up as a woman and where Figaro tells her about life in the army were hilarious.

CM was with me, his first ever opera. We met up with catnip_junkie, who gave me a beautiful red scarf for my birthday, and her mother at the interval. We also ran into four people from synagogue and a tutor from the Eng Lit department a few rows ahead of us, who was wrapped around his lady companion in a way that suggested that I should get hold of mutual friends and find out the gossip.

Then I came home, pootled around briefly, and read the Rubens before going to sleep. Not quite the style of dark comedy I was in the mood for, it's set in an old people's home, but I've been reading so many plays recently, I just needed to read a modern novel for once.

Shakespeare, Hamlet; Film: Zefirelli, Hamlet

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:28:53 GMT

Someone needs to shoot Mel Gibson. Now. Blandest Hamlet I've seen in my life. He almost managed a creepy smirk at one point, but stifled it and went back to wide-eyed boringness. At moments of great emotion, his mouth hung open. Glenn Close wasn't too bad, it didn't show what she was capable of (probably due to cutting). Bonham Carter was fabulous. Poor Ophelia, she's such a dim creature as well as being torn apart by being unable to choose between her lover and her husband. Stephen Dillane was a nice Horatio, didn't get to say much. I remember him being a fabulous Hamlet on stage about twelve years ago. Something which annoyed me in Shrew the other day and which reappeared here was inconsistency about the length of the women's hair. You can't have hair which is thigh length when plaited in one scene, and waist length when loose in the next, at least not on the same woman. At Ophelia's funeral, she was wearing the same hairstyle she had worn in early scenes, which meant that after her death her hair had been beautifully combed (death by drowning after madness, it'd have been pretty tangled) and put into the kind of style which takes a bit of work and which has to be done on someone who is sitting or standing up. What was even more ridiculous with Shrew was that Liz Taylor's eye make-up was immaculate throughout, despite being dunked in a pond and left out in the snow and then sleeping in it, and at no point was said make-up remotely appropriate anyway.

Film: Giles, Richard II

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:21:49 GMT

Three hours long, and that was with what seemed to be quite a bit of cutting, judging from when I dived into my Arden to see where we'd got to (very much an "are we nearly there yet?" thing, I kept promising myself, "One more act and then I can get some chocolate from the student union shop"). Rather bewildering as I've not read the play before and my knowledge of history is nil, but it'll probably make the reading much easier. Derek Jacobi was fab and rather queeny. It's one of the BBC productions where it's filmed on a stage, but made as a film rather than taken from a stage production, so it's clearer than some other filmed stage versions of Shakespeare I've seen. The camerawork is decent, no music, not as visually interesting as a film proper but then you get the highest proportion of original text plus a chance to see what it looks like in a theatre.

The Middle Ages really wasn't a high point for men's haircuts.

Film: Jarman, The Tempest

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 18:23:06 GMT

Now that is one strange adaptation. I rather liked it.

Peake, Titus Groan

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:46:05 GMT

I originally went into the local bookshop (the shop-formerly-known-as-McFeely's) to find something relaxing as a break from all that Jacobean gore, and this is what I came out with. I also found the latest Arden of Richard II, very good condition and only £3, and I think that was the only set text left to buy, so I'm very proud of that find.

Wiggins, ed., Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies; Shakespeare, Cymbeline; Exodus

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 01:39:58 GMT

I've now read the first of the Jacobean collection, great fun and there's some fascinating same-sex stuff surrounding a cuckoldry plot. The editor teaches at the Shakespeare Institute, he's the one who apparently keeps a skull in his office and leads the Thursday evening play readings.

I'm only a few scenes into Cymbeline, and rather apprehensive about its length and the likely complexity of the plot diagram. Though at least we don't have two sets of identical twins roaming about here! ETA: I've now got to the wager and am absolutely hooked. Small wonder, considering that one of my main interests is sexual politics, and that I've been obsessed with the Lucretia story for years (largely due to Britten's opera version). What else is lurking in Shakespeare that I'm not aware of, or read years ago and have forgotten as in this case? I think I might have to pursue my plan of attempting to read the complete works before too long. It'd be invaluable to have a set of plot summaries and relationship diagrams, especially the latter for quick comparison of patterns. One nice thing about plays is that the character list tends to be shorter with novels, and at least you know that very few extra characters will appear in the middle (it's usually the odd in-law or dead parent, apart from the great offstage characters like The Chater in Arcadia), though that doesn't necessarily stop the relationships from getting ridiculously tangled. Still, nothing can be worse than Clarissa. I actually gave up on that in the end, partly because the links got too complex, partly because I couldn't fit it on one page any longer. I got most of it done, and I am very peeved that it seems to have got lost in the computer move.

Now that I've finished the first book, I feel that the Bible project is making actual headway. I still know I'll get bogged down once I get to the books which are mostly genealogies and/or battles, but it's enjoyable and highly informative so far.

Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 20:34:35 GMT

Set text for next term, when I will no doubt be immensely grateful for the plot summary and relationship diagram I am now composing. The diagram is getting rather complex, all those blasted mistaken identities.

Middleton, Women Beware Women

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 21:25:36 GMT

Er. I was meant to read The Golden Notebook when I finished the Joyce, in accordance with my one-unread-book-per-shelf project, but I couldn't face it. I've just been raiding Blackwells and came home with lots of Shakespeare for uni as well as some other early modern drama, so I was in that mood. It's great fun. I should really start working on the next Shakepseare, though.

Shakespeare, The Tempest; Genesis

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:33:12 GMT

I haven't read the intro or appendices yet, but judging from the main text: Grr, those Ardens are annoying. Give me the Oxfords any day. Anyway, it was just a quick reread, I want to get the plot summaries and relationship diagrams done for all of next term's set texts first. I'd never noticed just how much ridiculous harping on about Miranda's virginity there is.

It's high time I tried to read through the whole Bible, so let's see how far I get. At the moment I've just read the introductions so far, and I must say that I'm very impressed with the New Oxford Annotated Edition. This was inspired partly by the sermon the rabbi gave the other week, where he was comparing the two versions of the flood story from Genesis, and by the exploration of religion in Portrait, which I'm enjoying a lot more than I'd expected.

Audiobook: Mortimer, Hamlet; Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:03:26 GMT

The audiobook is one of the BBC recordings, and I'm very impressed. I got four free from Audible.com, I'll try the others later, but so far audiobooks do seem like a good way for me to explore texts further, providing I have a decent knowledge of ht etexts to begin with since my auditory processing is dreadful.

I'm only a few pages into the Joyce, but so far it's not as scary as I remember its being from when I last attempted it at the age of seventeen.

Film: Hallstrom, My Life as a Dog (Mitt Liv som Hund)

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 21:04:19 GMT

Sweet and touching.

Hesse, Steppenwolf; Film: Singer, The Usual Suspects

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 18:24:32 GMT

Film as lent to me by catnip_junkie. Um. Nicely done, but not really my sort of thing. Though it was nice to see the master-criminal telling the cops all about it, but instead of being promptly killed straight afterwards, managing not to let them realise it was him until he'd just escaped.

Hopefully I'll finish the Hesse this time, last time I got halfway through. I started it last night when I was half-asleep, not much went in.

Film: Jeuent, Amelie

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:43:07 GMT

Slightly creepy but also rather beautiful. It's about the only thing I can watch right now, the new laptop has such appalling sound that I can barely hear a word, and following subtitles throws me if it's in the same language, so foreign-language films will be the way to go until I get speakers.

Bronte, Anne, Agnes Grey

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 01:14:08 GMT

Goodness, I'm glad I wasn't an impoverished middle-class girl in the nineteenth century, governessing sounds absolutely horrible.

Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 18:22:20 GMT

Um, I've read this one before, though I don't remember it much. eye_of_a_cat has been promising me all sorts of strange gender and incesty stuff; I've not got to that yet, but there's a nice little rivalry brewing, and the ideas about how a mother should bring up her son are most revealing.

Ovid, The Erotic Poems

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:54:24 GMT

Er, it's not quite the next shelf, but at least I'm reading something I've not read before (probably because the next few shelves aren't looking appealing). I'm half-way through the Amores at the moment and enjoying them immensely. You learn a lot more about actual life in Rome through reading the more domestic writing, as opposed to epic.

Calvino, Difficult Loves

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 21:18:02 GMT

This is a collection of a handful of very short stories, which I've read before, and two longer ones, which I'm reading now. I'm going to have to start doing some serious Shakespeare reading soon, assuming the SI lets me in, but now that I'm into the twentieth century this one-book-per-shelf thing is going much faster.

Anouilh, Five Plays

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 07:43:19 GMT

Namely Leocadia, Antigone, The Waltz of the Toreadors, The Lark, Poor Bitos. I've only the last left to read, and the only one I'd read before was Antigone (plus I studied Becket for French A-level, not that I can remember a word of it). How did I not know how funny Anouilh is?

Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 21:02:16 GMT

If I go ahead with the OU course, which is looking fairly unlikely now that I've found the Shakespeare Institute, this will be one of the first year set texts. Nothing terribly exciting so far, although I'm so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open and thus not much of a judge. The blurb promises cross-dressed wooing later on, which I'm looking forward to. I suspect it's going to be one of those weird texts which is anti-racist in some ways but terribly racist in others.

Hardy, Wessex Tales; Ibsen, Plays

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 21:00:13 GMT

There is something very strange in reading an Eliot novel which keeps feeling like Hardy, and then moving straight on to actual Hardy. Anyway, 'twas nice readable Hardy, not too grim for once, I saved that for the Ibsen in which someone's youngish child commits suicide as a reaction to the parents' stressed marriage. At least there were no other children for her to take with, as in Jude the Obscure. What I want to know is, what happened to the duck?