Two Noble Kinsmen

Since not a lot of folks realize it, the Elizabethan and Jacobean London Theatre scene was closed by the plague. Not a new experience, theatre shut down by health risks. So the various theatres have continued to mount and stage plays, or recycle recorded versions.

A critically acclaimed version of Two Noble Kinsmen came up this week, on the Shakespeare Globe. Worth two hours of my time? According to critics?

I know I’ve read the play, and I know, by now, I’ve listened to it at least twice, commuting.

Two Noble Kinsmen

Watching the YouTube version from Shakespeare’s Globe was — I’m not sure. I read the play as a rewrite, adapted for stage, of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale. Not that Shakespeare was above blatant theft, and watching that one version? I remembered reading Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, both of which strike me as black comedy versions of the original, and to put in more post-modern terms, Made for TV.

I watched, mostly listened, but I was enthralled by the actors at times, the camera work alone, the editing of the show? Pretty amazing way to capture action, speeches. But the show itself?

Both of Shakespeare’s plays like this, Troilus and Cressida and now, The Two Noble Kinsmen are from the same root source, Chaucer.

Two Noble Kinsmen

In Chaucer’s text, the way I read both those, and it’s been a few years, but the way I read both of the stories, in the original Middle English, the stories were sad. Tragic, as in classical tragedy, the fall of royal personages from on high. Seemed to me, Shakespeare’s Globe version of Kinsmen teased out campy, occasionally dank humor where I didn’t read it.

What’s that called? A tragicomedy? I don’t know, but I’ve seen several versions of Troilus that was not a box-office success because it is problematic. Watching Kinsmen, I couldn’t help but reflect, the two are so closely tied in nature. Same source, same handling of the material, and for me, seeing it on stage, albeit a really nicely edited version with some of the best camera work I’ve witnessed for a theatre-only version, seeing The Two Noble Kinsmen done mostly as comedy?

A live audience, not laugh tracks, and then, the interpretation, clearly Elizabethan costumes flavors with the nod towards the “Ancient Greece” setting? All worked in its favor.

It’s a couple of hours long, it’s funny, it’s sad. There’s dancing, slapstick, sword fights, all the staples. Love, romance, you know, the usual.

While I was first taught Shakespeare is literature, and studied it thusly, I’ve long-discovered that Shakespeare is best as live theatre, and the next best way to get that experience, even watching it on a small screen like I did?

Seeing a good performance, a good stage performance like that? Adds depth and meaning, and helps round out a person’s soul.

Two Noble Kinsmen

On the web, now.

from All’s Well

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.

• Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well (1.1.119)

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Pink Cake: The Quote Collection – Kramer Wetzel

Pink Cake: A Commonplace Book

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Bookmark

Some of Shakespeare’s play especially a little later in the canon, and later in his life, some them are, at best, “problem” plays. Timons of Athens is the example I’m thinking of. I had an old, hardbound copy of the play’s text, and there was a mark, margin notes from me, to me, from some time distant. I’m not sure when. Sometime, in the last decade I was going to read that play. Meant something at the time, a bit of bother, Timons as a bitter guy just gets more bitter?

So while in voluntary house arrest, or whatever this is? I cleaned out some old books, stuff that I read and wanted to recycle, or material that will never get read, or read once, and don’t need anymore.

Timons of Athens, I don’t recall much, he gets rich, then gets poor. Lives in a cave, ends badly. Not much redeeming material, not on the surface. That’s straight up from memory.

Letting the copy go? I’ve got two printed “Complete Works of Shakespeare,” one right behind me on the shelf, another in the bedroom, although neither copy sees much use; both are more ornamental and sentimental than any other quality.

However, that’s two copies of that play, in print, at hand. Then, I’ve got “The Complete Plays of Shakespeare” on my phone as an app, plus on both my work tablet and my other work tablet. There’s, possibly, I haven’t checked recently, a digital copy of text files of all the plays on the computer. So, yeah, don’t really need, can’t justify the reason to hold onto a single copy of that play.

Bookmark

The bookmark was a note, on a receipt, for gas that, ten years ago, I don’t know, some of it is faded — almost $3 a gallon?

What’s more interesting, flip the receipt over. On the back, there was handwritten note, a list, to myself. I can tell I was going shopping for an upcoming fishing trip. At first glance? I thought it was “Belt. Pole. Holder. Fish. Net” The last two, a reference to some website, I supposed — perhaps an abbreviation for my own, weaving off the astrofish.net.

Looking and thinking, then trying to piece it together with time, early May, 2010, I was headed out to wade fish, and I didn’t have a good “belt pole holder.” Nor did I have a belt-style fishing net, one that I could clip to the same belt that had a pole holder, and probably a small tackle collection. Don’t need much.

This isn’t the first receipt bookmark in current memory.

Not that unusual, for me to use a receipt as a bookmark.

Bookmark

I glanced at the pages, noted the pencil marks, one was a single passage underlined, already used that as an introductory quote, and then, something about an analysis of the text of the play.

So that’s Shakespeare in textual analysis, astrology, horoscopes, and some coastal wade fishing. Plus? A mention of the price gas. All from a receipt.

If a close Half-Price Books starts accepting books on trade again, that text, with my notes, will be in the stack I drop off.

8. “Be not disquieted about the future. If thou must come thither, thou wilt come armed with the same reason which thou appliest now to the present.”

Excerpt From Works of Marcus Aurelius Book VII

Forget the future. When and if it comes, you’ll have the same resources to draw on—the same logos.

Always like the twin interpretations, but older suits me more today.

Marcus Aurelius

Delphi Complete Works of Marcus Aurelius – Marcus Aurelius

Meditations – Marcus Aurelius & Gregory Hays

As always a free version is hosted on astrofish.net right here.

#meditation

Real Tigers

• Real Tigers

“Water under the bridge.” But he said this with the air of one who spent a lot of time on bridges, waiting for the bodies of his enemies to float past. Page 15.

Sets a tone, no? Very British. London that I remember, too. Kind of gritty, and then, part of the setting is London in a heat wave.

A British heat wave usually means I might still need a sweater. I’m just sayin’, no disrespect.

“And with the internet, you can have a paranoid fantasy at breakfast and a cult following by teatime.” Page 185.

True dat.

Recurring epithet? Gospel of John, 11.35, KJV

The King James Version allusion didn’t come up until the third book. That was funny.

I read the books, at once, as a satire and pure thriller fiction. Both elements, a somewhat ironic, and then somewhat realistic look at what the intelligence community might look like, based in jolly old London.

The novels I’ve read, so far, the first three? Each has a slow burn, deeply atmospheric beginning. There’s also been a framing device, at the beginning of each novel where the author “circles backs” to that exact frame at the end. This third one? Nice little kick at the end.

Fun reading, and a hat tip to Davenport.

• Slow Horses
• DeadLions

When I’m busy working on upcoming horoscopes, I write less on the weblog.

Worlds of wonder.

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Pink Cake: The Quote Collection – Kramer Wetzel

Pink Cake: A Commonplace Book

• ISBN-10: 1434805751
• ISBN-13: 978-1434805751

San Pedro Creek (temporarily free e-book)

#HashTagsSuck