They Said and Thought What?!

So in my last post about my plan for my analysis I mentioned going over some themes in Antony and Cleopatra. However if I go over all of those this post would be huge, so I'm just going to touch on two topics that I have hit in previous posts. The first will be nature references and the second with be, of course, reality perception.

Earthiness

Like I've said before, I've noticed that Shakespeare loves the nature references, and I personally find them very effective. Now the movie Cleopatra wasn't in Shakespeare's words. This is because they actually base the movie off of the fantastical perception of Cleopatra's mortal life. However, the second half is about her relationship with Antony, which Shakespeare wrote the play about! So it works. But since they don't use the actual play lines I had to just look at how they might decide to incorporate the natural world into the film.

Sadly there is only one point that stands out to me in how they used the natural world to make a point. See there is a part of the movie where a dead body is thrown over the wall as a warning to Cleopatra. So as the body is removed and Cleopatra fears for her and her son's life, the sky turns dark, the wind picks up, and it begins to rain. As with in many movies, they used nature to set the gloomy and ominous mood.

BUT don't worry! As mentioned before the play is loaded with nature references! Here are a few of my favorites that I think just really pack the punch.

"When my good stars, that were my former guides,/Have empty left their orbs, and shot their fires/Into the abysm of hell."


"His legs bestrid the ocean: he rear;d arm/Crested the world: his voice was propertied/As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;/But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder."


"Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish;/A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,/A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,/A forked mountain, or blue promontory/With trees upon't that nod unto the world,/And mock our eyes with air."





Is this real life?

Antony and Cleopatra is full of people believing what they want to and choosing to ignore the blatant and obvious truth. Mainly it is between the two main characters themselves, and this was actually very apparent in the movie.

So there's a soothslayer in the movie who predicts that Julius Cesear will become Emperor and reign with Cleopatra at his side. Of course, this doesn't happen and Cesear is killed by the Senate and Cleopatra sent running back to Egypt. However they both obviously wanted to believe it, so they did despite obvious signs indicating otherwise.

Also, an interesting note about the movie, both Cleopatra and Cesear believe they are gods, and thus they cannot be killed by mortal hands. Cesear is so convinced that he is untouchable that even when Cleopatra expresses some of her fears about a potential assassination, he blows her off telling her she is silly. But at the same time Cleopatra constantly brags of her divinity! Neither want to admit to their weaknesses and just claim they are right because they are divine. It's crazy!

(Just as a side note, Cleopatra believes she is Isis and destined to rule the world.)

Now I'm sorry this is getting long so here are just few lines from the play how people have chosen to reconstruct their reality so they can justify their actions or get what they want. (Cleopatra is a pro at this.)

"If you find him sad,/Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report/That I am sudden sick"

"You praise yourself/By laying defects of judgement to me"

"All is lost;/This foul Eqyptian hath betrayed me." - This is actually Antony! He feels guilty about desterting his men in battle and running after Cleopatra like a dog, so he decides to find some way to be angry at her instead of himself!


You're at the end!

There are so many other great manipulations of reality, but I'm sure by this time this post is so long you don't want to read anymore! So I'll leave you with this. I just think it is so interesting that so many of Shakespeare's characters seem to have problems answering for their actions, so they feel the need to alter reality so they can feel better about themselves.

It makes me wonder how much I do this in my own life...Think about it. Do you do this is your life? I'm sure we all do in someway, because after all Shakespeare is the master and showing our human flaws in his characters.

Fuzzy Memories and Cast-off Dreams

Once again in the first act of The Tempest, I ran into the idea of reality and how our perception of it can be altered by others (see my previous post about it and dreams). Miranda has lived on an island with her wizard father all her life, and yet she finds nothing odd about it. She never questions their solitude or the sheltered and strange life she lives. However when her father, Prospero, begins to tell her about their past she seems to remember part of it. But it is a bit hazy.

"'Tis far off
And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants"

The normal life of any other person seems like a dream to her because her perception of "real life" has been so altered. At the same time, I believe she is saying the memory is so dim that it seems as though it couldn't have happened. I guess this is applicable to my own life though. Sometimes things seem so long ago that I can't seem to recall if they ever happened or if I simply dreamed them or made them up! Sometimes when I wake from sleeping I have to remind myself what is real and what is not.

In fact this all reminds me of Inception. In case you haven't seen it you should it's a fantastic movie with a thrilling plot. Anyways, in the movie there is a line that I think applies to what Miranda is describing. When Cobbs go to get Saito out of limbo, Saito doesn't quite realize that he isn't in the real world. He has been trapped in limbo for so long that it has become his reality.

Saito: Have you come to kill me? I've been waiting for someone...
Cobb: Someone from a half remembered dream.
Saito: Cobb? Impossible. We were young men together. I'm an old man.
Cobb: I've come back for you... to remind you of something. Something you once knew...That this world is not real.

Miranda is much like this! She has been living in the "world" her father created out of necessity, that she doesn't know what the real "world" is like. Her sense of reality and normalcy is different, so much so that the outside, normal world seems to be a dream. I'm sure that as we read on however that the other characters may feel as if they are in a dream, or if the life they left was one. I think it will be interesting to see.

And once again I wonder what sort of things I may be forgetting in my life that are real but I think to be a dream. Or what have I dreamed or wanted to be real, so I convince myself that it is? I guess there could be a whole slew of things, but I'd have to go back and analyze my life more closely to determine what my reality really is. And are there maybe some things that are just better to believe to be reality?

Initial Reaction....WHEW!!!

Can I just say that Antony and Cleopatra was way more complicated, and a lot longer than I thought it would be?! There were so many subplots in the reading of the play that I was so thankful for online scene by scene summaries so I could make sure I was reading the play correctly!

Let's just say that in the midst of their complicated and blossoming love, Antony and Cleopatra have to deal with war! I'm not gonna lie I was often confused by motivations of characters and I think I will have to go back and examine more of why they do what they do.

While I was reading I also found themes that I would like to go back and examine. These include the following:

~Poison references
~Manipulation of others
~How the characters choose to perceive their reality
~Nature references
~Ambition versus Passion

I actually didn't find in my initial reading as many reality crisis as I thought I would find but I want to go back and examine those. I didn't see too much of this is in the movie either actually. What really interested me why how quickly the characters are to believe things that may or may not be there.

A quick thought on the movie Cleopatra is simply, wow. It was four hours long and the first two hours actually portray a plot that happens before the play even begins! In face it is more a movie about Julius Cesar and Cleopatra at first! Not only that but Cleopatra at first had such ambitious motivations and she didn't seem as cruel or cold as the play seems to make her out to be. I just thought that was such an interesting choice to do those things. In some ways it really added to the dynamics of the relationship Antony and Cleopatra had, but it also took away. I was ready to get to the point and have the movie end after the first two hours.

Yep, those are just my first thoughts after looking at the two versions of the story so just wait for the in depth analysis to come next week!!

Ghostly Manifestations

Earlier on my blog I discussed the nature of the dead king's ghost. I would like to return to that, but compare it to the portrayal of the ghost inThe Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

As a quick recap the ghost in Hamlet first appears to the night guard of the castle. Since other people see him we assume the ghost is real (but also begin to question that later). We are told that the ghost is "In the same figure like the King that's dead.". But that is all we know, and so a director really has a lot of room to play with what to do with the ghost.




However in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, the portrayal is very set in stone, and I believe to be quite elegant in the way David Wrobleski decided to portray him.

And for a second time that night something moved in front of the double doors. It took a moment to makde sense of it. A change in the falling of the rain. Something about the way it fell....He squeezed his eyes shut....When he opened his eyes again, the way to see them all together had clicked into place.
Instead of raindrops he saw a man.

That's right the ghost is made of rain. Not only this but Gar only appears to Edgar. Trudy never sees her husband's form. However the dogs do and they obey the signed commands the figure gives them to prove his reality.

I just think this whole new way of portrayal is so effective and it adds to the story because whenever it rains Edgar goes rushing outside to try to see his father's form. It also adds the element of trying to discern if the ghost is real or just something Edgar has concocted to get through tragedy.

Personally, I believe the ghost is there.

Wintry Blasts and Thawing Rays

I've been thinking about the theme of winter and spring in a Winter's Tale. You know the play starts out in winter and the second half is in the spring but I think that for Leontes the majority of the play is in fact spent in the winter time.

Now I don't mean this in the literal sense, Leontes doesn't have himself in a room with a snow-maker on 24/7 while catching hypothermia and drinking hot cocoa. Nope, I think that he is in "winter" in his soul. His mind is frozen in the moment 16 years ago, his heart gone cold and hope shoveled from his soul. He is in "winter" because he believes there is no way he can ever come back from his crimes. (Especially since Paulina keeps blasting him with icy stares and bitter guilt trips.)

But in Act V scene 1, I believe he begins to see the sun's rays in the distance. He slowly begins to thaw out when his long lost daughter appears and finally bursts through the ice when Hermione is revealed to be alive! His winter had ended and he has found hope, and springtime, once again.


(Just a side note, I think that if I were in charge of costuming for this play, I would keep Leontes in dull colors until the final scene. I would then choose to put him in a more earthy or spring-time color to show that vibrant hope that is returning to his soul and the new happy reality he has found.)

I Dreamed......

Dreams are toys

Not only are dreams toys, as Antiogonus so elegantly states, but sometimes "dreams" determine how we see the world. (And I'm not just referring to the types of dreams that occur in our sleep.) Dreams can be the way we wish the world was, and when we start to over think it we start to believe the fantasy and live in the dream. Sometimes we want something so bad that we strive to make it the reality so that we can be happier. For example, sometimes we think the cute boy down the hall has a crush on us because he comes over, when in reality he is infatuated with your roommate.

But these dreams aren't always good. Sometimes it seems we live in a nightmare. All of the world seems to conspire against us. In the same day we wake up late, fail a test and get caught in a downpour on the way home. So naturally as you walk into your apartment and hear laughter you automatically assume its about you, because hey, the world hates you. But it doesn't really. It's all a dream that is toying with you instead of the other way around. This is the situation that Leontes finds himself in. He is stuck in a dream, but not one he has developed for his own fanatasy, rather one that seems to have caught him.

Your actions are my dreams/You had a bastard by Polexines

He let his dream toy with him, just as sometimes ours toy with us. The real challenge then seems to be to try to find a dream that we can catch hold of and toy with, but not let it determine our lives.

Spectral Encounters

Why does Hamlet alone see the Ghost in Act Three and not Gertrude who is in the same room? I've been thinking about this since class and I have another idea. Perhaps the Ghost appears in Act Three not as an actual spirit, but as a projection of Hamlet's conscience.

Ever since Hamlet discovered the cause of the late Hamlet's death, and came to acquire the charge for revenge from the ghost, he has been conflicted. He wants to kill Claudius but when the opportune moment presents itself he refrains from doing so. This had to make him feel guilty, and once again like coward hiding behind his words. So in order to get rid of some of this guilt he begins to berate Gertrude in her chambers. But Hamlet is not an evil character, he is a young man who is in turmoil over what life has handed him. When he realizes the effect his sharp words are having on his mother, indeed cutting her to the core, I think he begins to feel guilty. But since he is so passionate he can't just apologize. So his conscience brings forth an excuse to restrain himself, something that had morally led him before, the ghost of his departed father. The ghost tells him that

This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But look, amazement on thy mother sits.
O, step between her and her fighting soul

By projecting the ghost from his mind, Hamlet finds a reason to reel back his attack without once again appearing to be a coward. Since the ghost is in fact in his head this time, Gertrude is unable to see it.

Again this is just another thought that I had. There are of course also the possibilities that the Ghost chooses to appear to certain people, Gertrude's feelings of guilt prevent her from seeing the Ghost and of course, the idea that Hamlet has finally completely snapped and is simply hallucinating for no apparent reason.

We will never know why, unless of course Shakespeare's ghost is kind enough to appear and tell us...