37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 20: Troilus and Cressida

Troilus and Cressida, first broadcast November 7th, 1981

• Possibly written: 1602, possibly his 24th play
• What’s it about? During the Trojan War, Achilles sulks in his tent on the Greek side while Ajax prepares to fight Hector in his place. Meanwhile, over on the Trojan side, Prince Troilus loves a young woman named Cressida, but when her father defects to the Greeks, he insists that Cressida be forced to follow him. Troilus spies on her seemingly being untrue to him. There’s a battle, Achilles kills Hector while he’s unarmed, but the Troilus and Cressida story is forgotten and never concluded.
• Most famous dialogue: None, but we do take the phrase “good riddance” from this.
• Sources: Combines Homer’s Iliad with Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, and many others.
• Best insult: This play rivals Henry IV Part 1 for number of insults. There’s a character (Ajax’s slave Thersites) who does nothing but exchange insults. Some of the best:
• “Dog, thou bitch-wolf’s son”
• “Thou mongrel beef-witted lord”
• “Thou vinewedst leaven”
• “You whoreson cur”
• “Thou stool for a witch”
• “Thou has no more brain than I have in mine elbows”
• “Thou thing of no bowels, thou!”
• Best word: Orgulous? Frautage? Vinewedst? No, this is the best word we’ve encountered in all 20 plays: oppugnancy
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: This was my first exposure to the play
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Charles Gray (Diamonds are Forever, Rocky Horror Picture Show) returns to the series (after playing Julius Caesar and others) as Pandarus, who gets Troilus and Cressida together in a leering way, thus giving us the word panderer. I don’t recognize anyone else.

How’s the cast? 

• Terrible. Anton Lesser as Troilus and Suzanne Burden as Cressida are both forgettable and I kept losing track of each one. Benjamin Whitrow as Ulysses is too old and not wily enough. Then there’s the issue of the three parts that are played as gay, which I’ll discuss below.

How’s the direction by Jonathan Miller?

• Terrible. Miller stages the play as if it was a comedy and the actors keep waiting for laughs that never come, because none of it is remotely funny. Yet again, he dresses them up in Elizabethan dress for no reason, which feels ridiculous in the Trojan War. This is the same director who just cast Anthony Hopkins as Othello in the previous production, but somehow this one is even more offensive as I’ll talk about below.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: How to Avoid Causing Offense

In the original Homer, Patroclus and Achilles seem, at least to modern readers, to be having a gay romance. Shakespeare also portrays them this way. Thersites says to Patroclus, “Thou art said to be Achilles’ male varlet.” Patroclus responds, “Male varlet, you rogue! What’s that?” and Thersites says, “Why, his masculine whore.”

So this is a play with gay content and that has to be dealt with. Miller, however makes odd choices. He has Simon Cutter play Patroclus as fairly effeminate, which is not inherently offensive, but has Kenneth Haigh seemingly play Achilles as straight, which loses out on a chance to positively portray a gay relationship. Oddly, Miller also has Charles Gray (who was good in his other productions) play Pandarus as a fey caricature of a gay man, though there’s no indication of that in the text, and it’s tremendously grating.

But Miller then codes a third character as gay, and here's where he really wrecks the production. For Thersites he cast an actor named Jack Birkett, who chose to be billed here as “The Incredible Orlando,” which is an odd billing to see in the BBC font. Wikipedia describes Birkett/Orlando as “flamboyantly gay.” As Thersites, he wears dresses, acts very swishy and speaks with a greatly exaggerated lisp. I was tremendously offended as I watched it, even more so than I had been by watching Anthony Hopkins play Othello, but I tempered my opinion of the character somewhat afterwards when I found out that Birkett/Orlando might not have been that far off from how he seemed in real life.

Is it inherently offensive to have three gay-coded characters in the time of the Trojan War? No, of course not. It’s somewhat progressive to not have “the single example.” Is it preferable to cast a flamboyant gay man in a part you have chosen to code as flamboyantly gay? Yes, it is. But something just tips into offense here, even knowing the circumstances.

Two years earlier, in 1979, the out-and-proud gay film director Derek Jarman cast Birkett/Orlando as Caliban in his version of “The Tempest” and I checked out his performance there to see how different it was. The performance was similar, and there was also a bit of a lisp there, but Birkett/Orlando was far less grating there that he is here. Jarman, being gay, seems to have a respect for Birkett/Orlando’s flamboyance that Miller, being straight, does not have. Thersites seems like a very cruel mockery of gay people, in a way that the same actor’s not-entirely dissimilar portrayal of Caliban did not.

Birkett/Orlando has a tremendous amount of fun with the part. He is simultaneously the best thing and the worst thing about this production. His insults and crudity are delightful, but the part is ruined by the fact that, though this was probably the farthest thing from the actor’s intention (and may not even have been the director’s intention), it feels like a hateful caricature.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: The Difference Between Ambiguity and Just Not Finishing the Damn Thing

What is this thing?

Embarking on this project, I was unfamiliar with several Shakespeare plays. I haven’t finished the project, so there are still six more coming up I am unfamiliar with, but, according to my research, this is the play that people are most confused about whether it is supposed to be a comedy or tragedy (or even a history play!)

Usually, you can tell from the ending. “The Winter’s Tale” and “Cymbeline” aren’t funny, but they end with scenes where everybody comes together to resolve mix-ups, lovers are reconciled, and everything works out for most characters, so we have to conclude that Shakespeare intended them to be comedies. This play has no such scene at the end. The entire final act is dark and heavy and nobody ends up happy, so it was surely intended to be a tragedy.

The problem is that the main story doesn’t end at all. The lovers pledge loyalty to each other but are separated, at which point she is dragged into what she considers to be an enemy camp, where she is immediately ordered by a general to kiss every man there. She then has an encounter with one where she may or may not be capable of consenting. Troilus spies on this and comes to hate her, and swears to kill the man she’s with. Indeed the next day in the war, he chases that man off stage, but we never find out if he killed him, and he returns back to his camp without ever confronting Cressida who is never seen or mentioned again! In the original Chaucer, Troilus dies in battle, but here he’s talking to Pandarus in the last scene, still quite alive. And Cressida? Who knows.

Surely the play is unfinished, but that would make more sense if it were published posthumously. Rather, this was one of the plays that Shakespeare published in his lifetime, so he seemingly okayed it being published in this form.

Bizarrely, when it was first sorted into a category, in the first Quarto, it was classified as a History Play! (Very odd since all of the plays that are classified today as History Plays took place in medieval England.) The First Folio then reclassified it as a Tragedy, but Miller seems to believe it’s a Comedy, and plays it as if it’s funny. Everybody seems vaguely amused by most events for no reason.

Ultimately, whether the story of the two lovers ended in death or reconciliation would have determined if it were tragedy or comedy, but since their story has no conclusion, we’ll never know. Given that it is possible that this was a complete play, should we assume that Shakespeare was being intentionally ambiguous here?

If so, this is the worst type of ambiguity. Even today, stories must climax. This non-climax is not intriguing or meaningful in any way, it’s just unsatisfying and bizarre. Maybe if either one had announced that they never wanted to see the other again, that might have given us some sort of finality, but no, we get the feeling that neither of them feels any closure here, and there would be ample opportunity to gain it if the story didn’t just end where it does. This might have been a chance to discover a third way other than reconciliation or death, and if Shakespeare had attempted something new, it could have been a great play, but the way it is, it just feels like it was unfinished or something went very wrong.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Consent is Tricky

One of Shakespeare’s favorite tropes is the woman who is falsely accused of infidelity. Women in Othello, Much Ado About Nothing and Cymbeline are framed for committing infidelity by a villainous third party, whereas in the Winter’s Tale, the husband just imagines the infidelity with nobody tricking him into it. In each case, it’s presented as the ultimate nightmare for these blameless women to face the most grave accusation a woman can face, one that makes the love of their life want to kill them.

I had begun to come to the conclusion that no Shakespearean women actually cheated, until I saw this play.* This play complicates that conclusion, but does not entirely overturn it. This situation is just really fucked up. Cressida is in love with a Trojan and loyal to Troy, but her father is not and bargains to have her seized in Troy and taken over to him in the Greek camp. Ulysses takes an immediate dislike to her, orders every Greek man to kiss her, then refuses to do so himself because he says she’s clearly a slut. She then has an assignation with one of the men that night, which Troilus spies on and condemns, but it’s hard for me to really see this as cheating. She’s in an enemy camp and cannot meaningfully give or refuse consent.

The question is, am I just misapplying messy 21st century morality to a situation that would have been clear at the time, or is Shakespeare intentionally allowing this messy interpretation? Ultimately, Cressida is an underwritten, unconvincing character either way. When everybody kisses her, she says some things to them that could be considered either flirtatious or just desperate to survive, and Shakespeare wrote the character well enough that an actress could play it either way, but Shakespeare doesn’t give her enough three-dimensionality to help us (or the poor actress) feel strongly either way. The play is just a mess, and has no ending, so we can choose how we feel, but god help the student who has to use this text to write a term paper defending his or her point of view. There’s a reason this play is never assigned.

(*Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream is under a love spell, and is basically in an open marriage, so I don’t count her.)

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 19: Othello

Yup, that’s Anthony Hopkins in (light) blackface as Othello!  The most infamous episode.  (Okay, folks, this series has taken way too long.  I now plan to do one every Friday until we’re done.)  

Othello, first broadcast October 4th, 1981

• Possibly written: Sometime around 1604 or 1605, possibly his 27th play.
• What’s it about? Othello, a Black Moor, has earned a place in the Venetian military, marries Desdemona the daughter of a senator, and appoints Cassio to an office that another officer named Iago wanted. Iago gets his revenge by convincing Othello that Desdemona cheated on him with Cassio. Othello kills Desdemona, then himself. Iago’s role is exposed but he lives, being dragged off in chains.
• Most famous dialogue: Many candidates:
• “Your daughter and the moor are now making the beast with two backs”
• A line I often say about my empty wallet: “Who steals my purse, steals trash.”
• “Tis the green-eyed monster”
• “Then you must speak of one that loved not wisely, but too well.”
• Sources: A tale in the story collection “Gli Ecatommiti” by Giovanni Battista Giraldi, better known as Cinthio
• Best insult: Not a lot of great insults! Surprisingly, Othello never really lets go on Desdemona when he believes he is deceived. The best one is when Iago’s wife sums up men: “They are all but stomachs and we all but food”
• Best word: exsufflicate
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I studied the play in college but I’ve just seen the Larry Fishburne film before this. I’d like to make it to Broadway next year to see Denzel Washington and Jack Gyllenhaal as Othello and Iago.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Bob Hoskins is Iago. It took me a long time to recognize Desdemona: She’s Penelope Wilton from Doctor Who and Downton Abbey. I finally realized I’d seen her before from recognizing the way she pursed her lips. Othello, tragically, is played by Anthony Hopkins. Cedric Messina, director of the first two seasons, originally wanted to bring over James Earl Jones from America, but the British film unions (famous for being assholes) threatened to strike if any non-British actors were brought in, so the production was cancelled. Instead, it launches the fourth season, the second with Jonathan Miller as showrunner, and Miller declared the play had nothing to do with race, and so cast Hopkins.

How’s the cast?

• Hopkins is, of course, one of the greatest actors of all time. It’s shameful that he was given this part rather than a Black actor, and I desperately wish they had recorded Jones in the part, but it’s undeniable that Hopkins does an amazing job. (If he’s wearing any blackface, it’s just a little bronzer, but still inexcusable) Hoskins as Iago is even better. His Iago is constantly bitterly amused by himself, and his uncontrollable laughter (the last thing we hear in the play) is truly terrifying. Wilton, who I’m used to in much older roles, is heartbreaking as a pessimistic young Desdemona.

How’s the direction by Jonathan Miller?

• Miller, in addition to his deplorable decision to cast Hopkins, makes other bizarre decisions. Much of the dialogue is inaudible, including Desdemona’s final speech. The dress, as we’ve seen in his other productions, is nonsensically Elizabethan. The whole thing runs too long at three hours and twenty-four minutes. But Miller is great with the actors and the staging and lighting are excellent.

Rulebook Casefile: Speak to the National Pain of 400 Years Later

Modern productions of “The Merchant of Venice” try to rescue the mildly-sympathetic character of Shylock, but I found him to be a vicious racial caricature, reeking of Shakespeare’s ignorant prejudice towards Jewish people. And I found “The Taming of the Shrew” to be unforgivably misogynist. So why does “Othello”, which is also about a group that was despised at the time, work so well? Why does it, unlike those two plays, get no protestations when it is produced today? Why are they about to do it on Broadway with Denzel Washington?

Because it’s a brilliant play, and Shakespeare, astoundingly, creates a fully human portrait of a Black man despite the fact that he’s writing in 1603. It’s a part every Black actor considers himself lucky to get to play today. He’s truly noble at times, though he does eventually prove to be a menace.

Of course, one of the reasons he’s so great is that he can be played many different ways. As with all of Shakespeare’s greatest characters, directors and actors have a tremendous amount of leeway when deciding how sympathetic to make him. He can be played as either a violent man whose true nature comes out, or a non-violent man who gets pushed to violence that is totally against his nature. (But even if you play him as having a violent nature, it somehow never feels like that would be an example of a prejudice Shakespeare has against Black men.)

I had the misfortune of taking my college Shakespeare course with a professor who flat-out didn’t like Shakespeare and was teaching the course under duress. She made many bizarre pronouncements, but the oddest was when we were studying this play in 1995 and she said that it had nothing to say about our modern world. 

I was gobsmacked. 

I said, “Oh yes, a Black man succeeds in the martial arena, earns a place among his white masters, marries a white woman, becomes convinced she’s cheating on him, beats her in front of everybody which they all choose to ignore, finally kills her and attempts to kill the man he falsely thinks she’s cheating with, then attempts suicide. Yes, that has nothing to do with anything that’s going on right now.”

Of course, the big difference between Othello and O.J. Simpson is that Othello is meant to maintain our sympathy, whereas, aside from 12 jurors, O.J. largely did not. But does Othello deserve our sympathy? Unlike O.J., Othello is the victim of a vicious, brilliant, overwhelming deception engineered by one man, and that makes him more sympathetic, but does that really excuse Othello’s actions?  Every wife killer, in his own mind, has his reasons.

It’s interesting that racial prejudice is not a prime motivating factor in the play, though it’s always, of course, bubbling under the surface. Iago tells Roderigo that his primary motivation is that he was passed up for promotion, not a hatred of the idea of interracial marriage, and even Desdemona’s father says he’s more upset at being deceived than the possibility of miscegenation, but Miller’s contention that the play has nothing to do with race is absurd. Right at the beginning, Iago and Roderigo are mocking Desdemona’s father with racial language: “What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe If he can carry ’t thus!” and “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe.” Racial hatred is everywhere under the surface, but Othello, like O.J., has earned such a place of esteem in the white world that no one speaks openly of it.

Rulebook Casefile: Not the Way the World Works

Let’s talk about the most bizarre aspect of this play. Desdemona is choked to death in her bed, not once but twice. Othello wanders off and leaves her there. Iago’s wife Emilia finds her. Desdemona then utters some final words to Emilia before she dies. That’s not how choking works! If someone tries to choke you, then leaves, then you can still speak five minutes later, you’re going to be fine! Choking kills you off while you’re being choked or not at all. There’s no lingering death. The only way this would make sense is if he stabs her, and I think that it could be staged that way, but it seemingly never is. It totally takes me out of the play! Directors must find a way to fix it.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: The Promise and Peril of Downtime

As I say above, the production runs way too long at 3 hours and 24 minutes, but, if you’re going to bother to produce all 37 plays for posterity, there’s a case to be made for cutting nothing. One of the most fascinating scenes is one that I’m sure most productions cut, where Desdemona and Emilia somewhat idly prepare for bed and Desdemona, like Nicole Simpson to Faye Resnick 400 years later, makes clear to her friend that she knows she will be killed before long. 

It’s a languidly paced scene: Desdemona has a song stuck in her head and keeps murmuring it as she goes about her nighttime routine, then it occurs to her to mention something else and continue the conversation. It’s a momentum killer, but it’s a brilliantly written scene in its own rite. Downtime is one of the hardest things to write because it kills storytelling momentum, but, if you’ve got a very indulgent director who’s in no hurry, it can make for beautifully written, heartbreaking scenes.

Episode 48, Our First Live Show: Capturing the Voices of Children with Betsy Bird

The Secrets of Story Podcast · Live Show: Capturing the Nature of Children with Betsy Bird

Recorded Live at The Book Stall in Winnetka, IL, hosted by The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, James and I welcome the legendary Betsy Bird (my wife) to tackle a topic all three of us know something about: Capturing the Voices of Children in Your Writing. I argue that novels that feature truly authentic kids are by definition not children’s books, and James and Betsy debate me on that.

Thanks to those who came out on Wednesday!

James, Betsy and I had a great time recording the first ever live episode of The Secrets of Story Podcast at The Book Stall in Winnetka, IL last Wednesday.  (And thanks to my brother-in-law Andrew Atienza, who you can see in the back doing the sound!)  We’ll post the episode soon.

Come Out On Wednesday to Our First Secrets of Story Podcast Live Recording!

Please come out to Winnetka's bookstore The Book Stall on Wednesday (September 4th) from 6:30pm to 8pm to hear the first ever live recording of The Secrets of Story Podcast featuring usual co-host James Kennedy and special guest Elizabeth Bird, where we'll discuss the ways authors capture the voices of children. The Book Stall would love it if you could register in advance so they can get a headcount, but you can just show up, too! It's free!