"does not play well with others"
Apr. 8th, 2005 12:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wordinistaActually, the subject line is a lie. I do play well with others, normally. And sometimes I get a wild hair.
For anyone who knows me, even a little bit, it's no surprise that I'm a big literature geek. And one of my all-time favorite pieces is Othello. One of my all-time favorite Shakespearean characters is Iago, made evident by my icon.
Allow me to recap my history with this play. It started innocently enough with a Shakespeare Studies course, which was required for my English BA. I'd never read Othello before, and after one reading, fell instantly in love with it. No other tragedy had ensnared me so completely. I remember reading it, hoping against hope that SOMEONE would tell Othello what Iago was doing. But, as is the nature of the Shakespearean tragedy, revelation comes too late.
I also recall that this play -- just reading it, mind you -- brought tears to my eyes. Behind the cut is one of my favorite moments in the play. In fact, it was this bit that brought tears to my eyes.
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,--
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!--
It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood;
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd the rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again.
It must needs wither: I'll smell it on the tree.
Kissing her
Ah balmy breath, that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword! One more, one more.
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And love thee after. One more, and this the last:
So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep,
But they are cruel tears: this sorrow's heavenly;
It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.
After reading it once for class, I read it a second time, slower, so I could ... I don't know... enjoy it more.
Not long after this -- about a year or two -- I was accepted into the UMass Oxford Summer Seminar Program. A part of the program included four plays performed at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and Jonson's Volpone. I read the play again in preparation for the performance, and it was possibly the most amazing night of the entire six-week stay. I remember sitting in the RSC Theatre, watching the performance, trying to remember every detail, soak up every nuance. Unfortunately, when I go back to the travel journal I was keeping at the time, the only entry I made was: "Saw Othello: KICKED ASS." *sigh* This would be one of those moments I would like very much to go back to my past-self and slap her.
Anyway, flash forward two or three years. By this point, I'm in my second year of graduate school, soaking it up in DC. I'd heard a great deal about a modern film adaptation of Othello, entitled "O." I, in my infinite folly, gave it a try.
Oh my GOD, I have yet to forgive myself. I remember sitting on the couch with George, pausing the film every fifteen minutes or so, just to yell at it. It was that bad. And since I couldn't possibly let that travesty on celluloid be George's introduction to Othello, I promptly went online to see if the Folger Shakespeare Theatre would be playing Othello in the near future.
Imagine my surprise when I saw that it WAS playing. I bought a pair of tickets -- excellent seats, too. And then, a few weeks later, George got his proper introduction to my favorite Shakespeare play.
Once I started teaching, I incorporated Othello into the syllabus. That's six semesters, give or take.
I know the play pretty well, I'm not shy to admit. So when you stick me in a room full of English undergrads, I guess... I guess I have a hard time playing nicely. Because I'm finding that, for early-twentysomethings, they're pretty damned arrogant (I know, it takes arrogance to recognize it).
So... I started having a little fun with them. You know, it's entirely possible to propose ideas you don't hold any stock in, especially with Shakespeare. There are so many different interpretations, because of the lack of stage direction -- it all depends on how it's played. I didn't really believe any of what I was suggesting, but it was fun hearing them all disagree with me.
See, the general idea that I ran with came after we looked at the following monologue:
OTHELLO
That is a fault. That handkerchief
Did an Egyptian to my mother give;
She was a charmer, and could almost read
The thoughts of people: she told her, while she kept it,
'Twould make her amiable and subdue my father
Entirely to her love, but if she lost it
Or made gift of it, my father's eye
Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt
After new fancies: she, dying, gave it me;
And bid me, when my fate would have me wive,
To give it her. I did so: and take heed on't;
Make it a darling like your precious eye;
To lose't or give't away were such perdition
As nothing else could match.
DESDEMONA
Is't possible?
OTHELLO
'Tis true: there's magic in the web of it:
A sibyl, that had number'd in the world
The sun to course two hundred compasses,
In her prophetic fury sew'd the work;
The worms were hallow'd that did breed the silk;
And it was dyed in mummy which the skilful
Conserved of maidens' hearts.
My basic argument stemmed from a scene in Act I, where Brabantio accuses Othello of witchcraft ("...what spells, what charms, what conjurations...") to gain Desdemona's love. Othello denies using any aids at all -- he won her on his own. Now this, to me, suggests that Othello is denying having anything at all to do with magic. However, the description of the handkerchief clearly suggests otherwise. So either Othello was fibbing about not using magical aids, or he's fibbing ABOUT using them.
I suggested that Othello is embroidering the truth to frighten Desdemona into telling him that she gave the handkerchief away to Cassio.
The class disagreed. Shock! However, one student suggested that Othello was too honest to lie like that. At which point I asked whether or not -- if the handkerchief was in fact magic -- it was a lie of omission for him to neglect to mention the magical properties.
By this point, I was so entertained with the class' reaction that I would dare suggest Othello capable of LYING, I thought better of continuing. I have to wonder though -- was I so easily flustered and irritated when I was an undergrad?
Harrumph! Of course not! ;)
For anyone who knows me, even a little bit, it's no surprise that I'm a big literature geek. And one of my all-time favorite pieces is Othello. One of my all-time favorite Shakespearean characters is Iago, made evident by my icon.
Allow me to recap my history with this play. It started innocently enough with a Shakespeare Studies course, which was required for my English BA. I'd never read Othello before, and after one reading, fell instantly in love with it. No other tragedy had ensnared me so completely. I remember reading it, hoping against hope that SOMEONE would tell Othello what Iago was doing. But, as is the nature of the Shakespearean tragedy, revelation comes too late.
I also recall that this play -- just reading it, mind you -- brought tears to my eyes. Behind the cut is one of my favorite moments in the play. In fact, it was this bit that brought tears to my eyes.
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,--
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!--
It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood;
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd the rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again.
It must needs wither: I'll smell it on the tree.
Kissing her
Ah balmy breath, that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword! One more, one more.
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And love thee after. One more, and this the last:
So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep,
But they are cruel tears: this sorrow's heavenly;
It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.
After reading it once for class, I read it a second time, slower, so I could ... I don't know... enjoy it more.
Not long after this -- about a year or two -- I was accepted into the UMass Oxford Summer Seminar Program. A part of the program included four plays performed at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and Jonson's Volpone. I read the play again in preparation for the performance, and it was possibly the most amazing night of the entire six-week stay. I remember sitting in the RSC Theatre, watching the performance, trying to remember every detail, soak up every nuance. Unfortunately, when I go back to the travel journal I was keeping at the time, the only entry I made was: "Saw Othello: KICKED ASS." *sigh* This would be one of those moments I would like very much to go back to my past-self and slap her.
Anyway, flash forward two or three years. By this point, I'm in my second year of graduate school, soaking it up in DC. I'd heard a great deal about a modern film adaptation of Othello, entitled "O." I, in my infinite folly, gave it a try.
Oh my GOD, I have yet to forgive myself. I remember sitting on the couch with George, pausing the film every fifteen minutes or so, just to yell at it. It was that bad. And since I couldn't possibly let that travesty on celluloid be George's introduction to Othello, I promptly went online to see if the Folger Shakespeare Theatre would be playing Othello in the near future.
Imagine my surprise when I saw that it WAS playing. I bought a pair of tickets -- excellent seats, too. And then, a few weeks later, George got his proper introduction to my favorite Shakespeare play.
Once I started teaching, I incorporated Othello into the syllabus. That's six semesters, give or take.
I know the play pretty well, I'm not shy to admit. So when you stick me in a room full of English undergrads, I guess... I guess I have a hard time playing nicely. Because I'm finding that, for early-twentysomethings, they're pretty damned arrogant (I know, it takes arrogance to recognize it).
So... I started having a little fun with them. You know, it's entirely possible to propose ideas you don't hold any stock in, especially with Shakespeare. There are so many different interpretations, because of the lack of stage direction -- it all depends on how it's played. I didn't really believe any of what I was suggesting, but it was fun hearing them all disagree with me.
See, the general idea that I ran with came after we looked at the following monologue:
OTHELLO
That is a fault. That handkerchief
Did an Egyptian to my mother give;
She was a charmer, and could almost read
The thoughts of people: she told her, while she kept it,
'Twould make her amiable and subdue my father
Entirely to her love, but if she lost it
Or made gift of it, my father's eye
Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt
After new fancies: she, dying, gave it me;
And bid me, when my fate would have me wive,
To give it her. I did so: and take heed on't;
Make it a darling like your precious eye;
To lose't or give't away were such perdition
As nothing else could match.
DESDEMONA
Is't possible?
OTHELLO
'Tis true: there's magic in the web of it:
A sibyl, that had number'd in the world
The sun to course two hundred compasses,
In her prophetic fury sew'd the work;
The worms were hallow'd that did breed the silk;
And it was dyed in mummy which the skilful
Conserved of maidens' hearts.
My basic argument stemmed from a scene in Act I, where Brabantio accuses Othello of witchcraft ("...what spells, what charms, what conjurations...") to gain Desdemona's love. Othello denies using any aids at all -- he won her on his own. Now this, to me, suggests that Othello is denying having anything at all to do with magic. However, the description of the handkerchief clearly suggests otherwise. So either Othello was fibbing about not using magical aids, or he's fibbing ABOUT using them.
I suggested that Othello is embroidering the truth to frighten Desdemona into telling him that she gave the handkerchief away to Cassio.
The class disagreed. Shock! However, one student suggested that Othello was too honest to lie like that. At which point I asked whether or not -- if the handkerchief was in fact magic -- it was a lie of omission for him to neglect to mention the magical properties.
By this point, I was so entertained with the class' reaction that I would dare suggest Othello capable of LYING, I thought better of continuing. I have to wonder though -- was I so easily flustered and irritated when I was an undergrad?
Harrumph! Of course not! ;)
