The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Does the writing demonstrate empathy for all of the characters?

When you get started, writing can be really fun. There’s nothing like that moment when the rush first hits you: You can do anything. This is your world. You can rewrite your high school years, but this time your crush abandons the in crowd and insists on going out with you! But, hey, why stop there? You can create your own kingdom! You can rewrite the laws of physics! You are a god.

But you soon realize that there’s one big drawback to being a god: It’s a lot of work, especially if you want to be a good god.

It’s not enough to be all-powerful; a good god is expected to be all-knowing. That’s a whole lot harder, and a lot less fun, but you haven’t gotten to the worst part yet: The great gods tend to be all-loving. That’s where the really hard work begins.

Try to love your villain as much as your hero. Try to love the messenger boy as much as the main character. Try to love not only your geeky heroine but also the snide cheerleader who picks on her. Think about how much Shakespeare loves Hamlet’s lowly gravedigger and pompous Polonius.

As you walk down the street, practice loving everybody. That Wall Streeter with slicked-back hair? Love him. That skulking drug dealer? Love him. That lovey-dovey mom cheering on her toddler’s tantrum? Love her.

Ask yourself, How did they end up here? Is this what they wanted to be? Like you and everybody else, these people probably had hopes and dreams that were quashed long ago. Look at what is lacking in these people and ask, Who took it away from them? What would they do if they could have it back?

Rulebook Casefile: Generating Empathy in Modern Family (as Opposed to Trophy Wife)

“Modern Family” has been a big mainstream hit for a long time, so it can be hard to remember that it did seem quite daring when it first came out. Most obviously because it featured gay parents, but also because it contained a sympathetic portrayal of a “trophy wife”.

Sophia Vergara’s Gloria quickly became one of the most beloved characters on the show, so that stopped seeming odd very quickly...so much so that ABC decided that it was no longer something to worry about. They’ve always struggled to find a good time-slot partner for the show, so eventually they decided to create a new show simply called “Trophy Wife”. But the show was a flop, folding after one season.

ABC forgot that most audience members love Gloria despite the fact that she’s a trophy wife, not because of it. The show actually does a lot of subtle work to undermine our ingrained cultural aversion to this situation. 

First let’s look at “Trophy Wife,” because Malin Ackerman’s character embodies many of our misgivings about such an arrangement:

• The husband’s two ex-wives are still in the picture, and they’re presented as caricatures. This should make us prefer Ackerman, but instead it offends us, because we feel that we’re being nudged to prefer the young and beautiful one, against our natural inclination.
• She has young stepkids who need her help, but she doesn’t really care, and she actually endangers them, passing one off to her rotten friend, who goes to a bar while the son is locked in a car outside. Hilarious!
• Most importantly, Malin Ackerman is just not a warm performer. Casting goes a long way.

Gloria, on the other hand, is carefully crafted to short-circuit our instinctive judgments. Most obviously because Vergara is so delightful, but the script also helps her out a lot:

• Jay’s unseen ex-wife has moved away, so no one is being shoved aside or getting offended by Gloria’s presence.
• Jay’s kids are grown and don’t need a mother around.
• Gloria brings her own adorable son into the marriage. If she really did marry Jay for money (and that possibility is kept open), it was so that her kid could have financial security, not herself.
• Jay is defensive about the arrangement, but Gloria isn’t. Defense invites offense. As a result, we are somewhat judgmental of Jay, but not Gloria.

Every time a show “breaks all the rules”, it actually becomes the exception that proves that rule.  Woe betide any show that thinks it can take advantage of that supposedly broken barrier.

Rulebook Casefile: Empathy in "Humans of New York"

Why am I spending time on Humans of New York? (After all, it’s not as if this material isn’t already widely shared on the internet) Because I think that what site creator Brandon Stanton does has many good lessons for writers.

Ideally, every writer would do what Stanton is doing: for at least an hour a day, walk around talking to people on the street, collecting unique language, unique life details, and compelling real life ironies. Unfortunately most of us lack the time and/or temperament, but the good news is that we live in the golden age of information, so we now have sites like this that provide treasure troves of perfectly chosen character moments.

As writers, we have two nearly impossible jobs to do: first we must create a great unique-but-universal character, then we must succinctly convey that greatness, that uniqueness, and that universality, in a flash, so that the character will swiftly blossom to life in the mind of the audience, allowing our stories to really begin.

And that’s what truly wonderful about Stanton’s work. It’s easy to credit the site’s success to his skill as a photographer and an interviewer, but there’s a third element that’s equally important: he’s a great editor. He asks several questions designed to create emotional and unique responses, gets a chunk of material to work with from each person, and then he cuts all of that down to just the right snippet to instantly make these people fascinating. That’s a lot harder than it looks, and it’s a big part of our job.

Let’s look at some of the ways he makes certain subjects instantly likeable. The trick, of course, is empathy, and one thing he’s good at is making opposite types of people equally likeable.

This guy’s humility is instantly appealing:

Whereas this lady wins us over with her swagger:

We love this guy’s humble appreciation of his job:

And this guy’s yearning to escape his, expressed with such telling specificity: 

 

We sympathize with this man’s poverty:

But we’re also sympathetic to the problems caused by this man’s wealth:

Fiction writers have to be all three types of god: All-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving.  Journalists such as Stanton, on the other hand, are denied the first because they cannot create their subjects, so they have to make up for it by focusing even more on the other two.  They can’t let their confirmation bias get in their way when they approach people, molding their subjects to fit their prejudices.  Instead, they must remember that everyone has some personal detail that will earn our empathy, if only we can find it. This is true in real life, and so it must also be true in our fiction.

Rulebook Casefile: Empathy for All in Bridesmaids

One question on the checklist asks if the dialogue shows empathy for every character and this is something Bridesmaids excels at, as shown by the scene where Annie has an awkward lunch with her “nemesis”, Helen.

Many writers think that their hero has to “save the cat” in the first scene and continually save the cat throughout the entire story, but this just isn’t true. The scary truth is that your audience will give you about ten pages before they decide whether or not they like your hero.  If they haven’t identified with the hero by then, they never will, but the upside is that once they’re onboard they will follow your hero anywhere.

Especially in a comedy, this is the point where you want to stop writing scenes that play up your heroes’ rightness and start yanking their certainties out from underneath them. This will test their self-image, and since we’ve chosen to identify with the hero, it will also test our own self-image, causing us to sweat along with the hero.

This is why you need to demonstrate empathy for all. Sacrificing the other characters, turning them into hypocrites or sniveling caricatures, does your hero no favors. If the initial certainties that your hero and audience formed turn out to be true, then they can both coast through the story smugly, untouched by events. But you do want to touch them: not all comedies need to touch our hearts, but they do at least have to poke us in the ribs. We laugh when we feel vulnerable.

Showing empathy for villains will always make your story more meaningful. This scene is funny, but it also makes Helen into a much stronger antagonist, because it makes it harder for Annie, and the audience, to dismiss her. Seeing this side of Helen also makes us understand more why Lillian would like both of these women, and might genuinely choose Helen over Annie, which amps up the jeopardy.

Instead of saying, “Ugh, we hate trophy wives, so we’ll show the world how terrible they are,” the writers of this movies said, “Sure, Helen’s terrible, but have you ever thought how much it would suck to be a trophy wife, attempting to be at-least-somewhat-maternal to kids who see you as an interloping vamp?”

Rulebook Casefile: Empathy Lost and Regained on “Breaking Bad”

Previously, I talked about the need to understand the hero’s goal and primary motivation, early on, even if the hero is withholding other secrets from us.  One reason for this is so that we can empathize with the hero.  We don’t have to sympathize with their actions as long as we empathize with their motivation.  

The TV show “Breaking Bad” however, did something interesting this season.  They tested the audience’s patience by intentionally creating an empathy gap by removing the hero’s primary motivation for several episodes, just so that it would be more powerful when they finally revealed the emotionally-wrenching secondary motivation. 

When the show first began, Walt had a lot of reasons for dealing drugs: he was a low-paid teacher, he had cancer, he couldn’t afford the treatments, and he had no nest-egg to leave behind for his family if it killed him.  More than that, he was emasculated by his wife, his DEA-agent brother-in-law, and even his car-wash boss.

As the show progressed, however, all of these reasons fell away.  He beat cancer; he made millions from dealing and quit both his jobs; after briefly gaining more respect as a result of his new assertiveness, his family found out about the drug dealing and hated him for it, etc. So why did he keep doing it?  Why cook meth for no good reason, especially when he had to become more and more violent to secure his position?  None of the other characters understood it and neither did the audience. 

And yet we kept watching.  This is the exception that proves the rule.  Though everything had stopped making sense, most of the audience stayed on, simply because we trusted the show.  We knew that they would find a way for the character to make sense again.  

Sure enough, just when we thought we would never understand Walt again, they finally hit us with the big secret of the show: Walt’s real motivation for all five seasons, which had been subtly planted a long time ago.  The low-paid job, the cancer, all of it, was just a smokescreen.  His real reason was that, long ago, he got kicked-out of a start-up company that made its other founders into billionaires.  Now it all made sense: what kind of man isn’t content to be a millionaire?  One who feels that he was cheated out of billions, and that the billionaires who did it are still mocking him. 

We were right to trust to show.  They still had an ace card to play, one that could explain the unexplainable.  But they didn’t start with no explanation.  For the first few seasons, we understood Walt’s thought process, though we disagreed with his judgment.  Only once everybody loved the show did they start toying with us, stripping away the surface motivations, leaving us baffled, until they finally hit us with the truth. 

And here’s how the 30 movies I did checklists for answered this question: 

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES.
Alien	YES, everybody is treated humanely, and gets to hold their own.
An Education	YES.  Very much so. We feel a different type of empathy for each of the three crooks, for instance.
The Babadook	YES.
Blazing Saddles	Yes and no.  The villains are cartoonish, but they’re all charming and they all have moments of weakness, such as Hedly worrying about his missing froggie toy.
Blue Velvet	YES. in its own way.  Lynch’s style is cold, but everybody, even Frank, is vulnerable.
The Bourne Identity	YES. most.  There could be a little more for Cooper, but he’s a good enough actor to help his character hold his own.
Bridesmaids	YES. Very much so, even Helen, when we wince to see how her stepkids treat her.
Casablanca	YES. (except Strasser, but that’s okay).  Victor or Ilsa, despite being obstacle characters, are particularly well-handled, allowed to hold their own even in scenes where we get frustrated by them.
Chinatown	YES, even Cross, who gets to defend himself.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  We feel intensely for most of these people.
Do the Right Thing	YES. Very much so.  Each individual viewpoint is so strongly and empathetically stated that we have no idea where the author’s ultimate sympathies lie.
The Farewell	YES.
The Fighter	YES. Not as much for the sisters, but they’re still pretty lovable.
Frozen	YES.
The Fugitive	YES. Very much so.
Get Out	NO. Not really.  We’re only supposed to empathize with Chris and Rod.  Even when we think Rose isn’t in on it, we don’t emotionally bond with her.
Groundhog Day	YES. The townspeople are caricatures at first, but as he gains empathy for them so do we.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. We empathize with every person on each side and with each dragon, except the last one, and even his actions are understandable.
In a Lonely Place	YES. Very much so.  The novel was written by a woman from Laurel’s point of view and the screenplay is written by a man from Dix’s point of view, but it retains a tremendous amount of empathy towards Laurel, and everyone else.
Iron Man	YES. Very much so. The army guys who are about to be killed are nicely humanized. The air force guys aren’t buffoons just because they oppose Tony. When Tony sleeps with the reporter and Pepper sneers at her, we’re on Pepper’s side, but the reporter gets to come back and prove herself right all along! We actually agree with Stane for most of the movie. We see how the terrorists feel justified.
Lady Bird	YES. Very much so.
Raising Arizona	YES. Very much so.  Jr. brings out everybody’s vulnerabilities.
Rushmore	YES.
Selma	YES. Very much so, even George Wallace gets a little.
The Shining	NO. The movie takes the shocking step of showing little empathy for its main character (and little empathy for Wendy, for that matter).  Kubrick is cold!
Sideways	YES. Very much so.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Even the small town officials who annoy the FBI. Even Lecter’s guards.
Star Wars	YES. Even Darth Vader deals with disrespect in this movie, in the interrogations, we understand the stakes and worries on both sides, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru both have strong and independent points to make, etc.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. even Norma, even Max, even DeMille.

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 12: Hamlet

Okay folks, this play marked the end of the BBC’s second season and I think it’s a good time to take a hiatus. I’ve done a third of the plays and I’m Shakespeare’d out for the time being. I’ll do the next 12 in a few months when I’m up to it. In the meantime, we’ll continue the Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist. Okay, so let’s jump into…

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, first broadcast May 25th, 1980

• When was it written? Sometime between 1599 and 1601, possibly his 22nd play
• What’s it about? College student Hamlet is called home because his dad died, and also because his mom Gertrude is immediately marrying his dad’s brother, Claudius. When the ghost of his dad tells him that Claudius killed him, Hamlet decides to pretend to be mad while he considers doing something about it. He finally kills Claudius, but not before several more people end up dead, including Gertrude, Hamlet’s girlfriend Ophelia, her dad Polonius, her brother Laertes, and Hamlet’s college chums Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
• Most famous dialogue: Dozens of oft-quoted lines, but I gotta go with “To be or not to be”
• Sources: Wikipedia lists many sources that have many similar plot elements, then says: “Shakespeare’s main source may be an earlier play—now lost—known today as the Ur-Hamlet. Possibly written by Thomas Kyd or by Shakespeare himself.”
• Interesting fact about the play: Shakespeare’s 11 year old song Hamnet had recently died. They had named him after a neighbor named Hamnet, but that Hamnet was also occasionally called Hamlet, indicating that the names were used interchangeably at the time.
• Best insult: The first of our 12 plays without any good insults! The best I could find was “What devil was’t that thus has conzened you” Even when Hamlet is yelling at his mother he never really resorts to invective.
• Best word: “Marry, this is miching mallecho. It means mischief” Again, context clues fail me.
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I’ve only seen it once, in a fairly lame production in Atlanta called Hamlet, Godfather of Brooklyn. Of the Olivier, Gibson and Brannagh films, I actually prefer the Gibson, as Olivier is too neurotic and Brannagh too manly.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Derek Jacobi returns as Hamlet, Claire Bloom returns as Gertrude, and Patrick Stewart (with an almost full head of hair!) makes his debut as Claudius.

How’s the cast?

• Jacobi at first seemed not that different from his Richard II, playing the part a little fey, but he gradually won me over. Lalla Ward as a desperate-for-love Ophelia is heartbreaking. Bloom is effective as a much-distressed Gertrude. Stewart’s performance is fascinating. His Claudius is oddly affable and unflappable: When he realizes Hamlet’s play is about him and says “Give me some light!”, he does not yell it. Instead, he’s calmly asking for a torch which he uses to examine Hamlet’s face. He doesn’t even yell “Do not drink!” Ultimately, it’s a fascinating way to play the character. Eric Porter as Polonius almost but not quite has us wanting to see him stabbed, which is just right.

How’s the direction by Rodney Bennett?

• Apparently Bennet wanted to shoot on location, and when he was denied, he decided to go radically in the other direction, often shooting scenes on just a bare flat soundstage, calling attention to theatricality in a way that no other production has done. I thought that this didn’t work, and just seemed petulant on Bennett’s part (and I spent too much time trying to figure out why some scenes had some stagecraft while others had none at all) He does a fine job with the performances, which is the most important part of a director’s craft, but his avant garde approach to the imagery ultimately does not work.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: The Character’s Strategy Can Greatly Change How Sympathetic He Is.

In both comedies and tragedies, Shakespeare frequently has characters decide to stage overly-elaborate tricks to accomplish their ends, when direct action would have solved things much more easily. In the tragedies, this often leads to unnecessary deaths. In this play, why does Hamlet feign madness? His goal during this section of the play seems to be to find out if his father’s ghost was actually a demon trying to trick him. He seems to think that feigning madness will put him in a position to find out, but his logic is hard to follow.

Of course, one way to play it is that Hamlet has actually been driven mad by seeing his father’s ghost, and only pretends to be pretending it. Jacobi seems far more genuinely mad than Olivier, Gibson or Brannagh and that works well. It’s easy to see him as bipolar, and the business with the ghost triggers a manic episode.

One big difference in the way this was played than what I was used to is Act III, scene i, where Ophelia walks in on the “to be or not to be” soliloquy, and he acts quite insane with her, shouting “Get thee to a nunnery” over and over. Shakespeare reveals at the end of this speech that Polonius and Claudius have been listening in the whole time, but he leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not Hamlet knew that.

I feel like, in most of the versions I’ve seen, Hamlet clearly knows they’re there. At one point, he suddenly asks Ophelia, out of nowhere “Where’s your father?” and she says he’s at home.  This often happens after Polonius has made some noise in his hiding place, and Hamlet knows exactly where he is.

But in this production, neither Hamlet nor Ophelia seem to have any idea that anybody is listening in. This is a huge difference, because if Hamlet knows they’re there, then there’s a method in his madness: He has to torment Ophelia to pull off his deception of her father and king. But if he doesn’t know, then he’s just being needlessly sadistic, pushing his masquerade way too far …or he’s genuinely mad.

Jacobi and Bennet have crafted a fairly unsympathetic Hamlet, which is a brave choice. The staging takes away Hamlet’s cunning and presents him as something far worse. Jacobi could not be more volatile, which makes his performance riveting (which is good, because the full-text production is almost four hours long.) I would say this is the strongest of the four filmed Hamlet performances I’ve seen.

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 11: The Tempest

The Tempest, first broadcast February 27th, 1980

• When was it written? 1610 or 1611, probably his 36th play and the final one he wrote without a co-writer. When Prospero says “Our revels are now ended” this seems to be Shakespeare saying good-bye
• What’s it about? Wizard Prospero lives exiled on an island with his teenage daughter Miranda, but when his old political enemies happen to pass by on a boat, he summons a storm to wreck their ship, then has his two slaves, magical Ariel and bestial Caliban, mess with them for a while. He sets his daughter up to marry the son of the king, then confronts everyone, settles all scores, and agrees to return home with them.
• Most famous dialogue: Many to choose from:
• Hell is empty and all the devils are here
• Our revels now are ended.
• We are such stuff as dreams are made on.
• O brave new world that has such people in’t.
• Sources: Is it possible—A play where Shakespeare actually just made up the plot? Quoth Wikipedia: “There is no obvious single origin for the plot of The Tempest; it appears to have been created with several sources contributing, chiefly William Strachey’s “Letter to an Excellent Lady”. Since source scholarship began in the eighteenth century, researchers have suggested passages from “Naufragium” (“The Shipwreck”), one of the colloquies in Erasmus’s Colloquia Familiaria (1518), and Richard Eden's 1555 translation of Peter Martyr’s De orbo novo (1530).”
• Interesting fact about the play: Shakespeare seems to be giving a cheeky shout-out to the audience at his Globe theater when he has Prospero say “The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,” but was he? Of all the plays in the First Folio, this has the most stage directions, seemingly from Shakespeare himself, and the stage directions indicate it was staged at Blackfriars, not the Globe.
• Best insult:
• A pox o’ your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog!
• Though deboshed fish thou
• Most wicked sir, whom to call brother would infect my mouth
• Best word: chirurgeonly
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I saw an excellent production at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, about which I’ll say more below. Peter Greenaway’s bizarre Prospero’s Books is excellent. I’ve never seen the other film versions, though I love Paul Mazursky and am very interested in seeing his version (with young Molly Ringwald as Miranda!)
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Nigel Hawthorne plays Stephano. John Gielgud was supposed to play Prospero but they couldn’t work it out. He went on to play the part in Prospero’s Books.

How’s the cast?

• Michael Horden is excellent as a cruel-but-tired Prospero. Pippa Guard as Miranda doesn’t look 15, but she’s fine as a naïve romantic lead. Warren Clarke wears an ape-like (furry, naked) costume as Caliban (which is common, though the dialogue describes him as more fish-like) and doesn’t do much to imbue the character with the righteous dignity that other productions grant him. David Dixon is nicely odd as Ariel (very golden and homoerotic.)

How’s the direction by John Gorrie?

• Again, it would have been wonderful to shoot this on real beaches, but the bleak and expressionistic sets are excellent. For the first time in this series, we have a ton of special effects, which, of course, have not aged exceptionally well, but they do make for a lively production. As with Twelfth Night, there’s lots of music, but this one also has lots of dance, well choreographed.

Rulebook Casefile: Reckon with Real Life National Pain

As Shakespeare was writing this play, the greatest crime in human history, the transatlantic slave trade, was well underway, and Shakespeare had had little to say about it. The only play where he mentions America, bizarrely, is Comedy of Errors, which is set in Roman times. Of course, he had written Othello which dealt with racism, but this is the only play where he (finally) reckons with slavery.

As with so many other political subjects, the surface reading of the play implies that Shakespeare was a man of his time, with views on the subject that have not aged well. Ariel is the good slave, persistently asking for his freedom, but determined to win it by being a perfect servant. He proves the value of this approach and is freed. Caliban (a near anagram of Cannibal) is the bad slave, rebellious, given to drink, attempting to rape his master’s daughter, and desirous of armed rebellion. (Miranda regrets teaching him to read, which only made him worse) He is last seen being led away, seemingly still enslaved.

But, as with all of his plays, the subtext is so rich and the characters so thoroughly humanized that each age can find fertile ground to bring entirely new interpretations. In the Marcus Garvey Park production I saw, Caliban was clearly the long-suffering anti-hero of the play. When all the Europeans leave at the end, Caliban put on Prospero’s cloak, took up his staff, and finally got to rule, to much applause.

Shakespeare remains the world’s greatest playwright, all these years later, because his plays contain so many multitudes. He had a lot to say about good and evil, men and women, master and slave, and every other dichotomy, but he’s always ambiguous in how he says it. There’s a wonderful text and even more wonderful subtext that gives director and cast endless space to play.

Rulebook Casefile: All Stories Must Climax

The big problem with “The Tempest” is that it’s so anticlimactic. Prospero has a genuine beef and has desired nothing but revenge for years, but when he finally gets a chance to confront everyone in Act V, he instantly forgives everyone and they make buddy-buddy with him.

If something unexpected had happened to Prospero to have melted his heart sometime in the first four Acts, then his final Act fizzle might have seemed like growth as a character, but everything so far seems to have gone exactly according to his plan. Since his expectations have not been upset by events, what has changed him? I think it would be a stronger play if Miranda and Francisco got together against Prospero’s wishes and their love unexpectedly softened and transformed him. As it is, he plots to bring them together, so that clearly does not upset his initial plans for revenge.

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 10: Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night, or What You Will, originally broadcast January 6th, 1980

• When was it written? 1601 or 1602, possibly his 21st play
• What’s it about? Twins Viola and Sebastian each survive a shipwreck but assume the other has not. Olivia dresses as a eunuch and ends up working for Duke Orsino, who has her send his love to Olivia, but Olivia falls in love with Viola, and Viola with Orsino. When Sebastian shows up, Olivia happily settles for him and Orsino for Viola. Meanwhile Olivia’s servants play a mean trick on her officious steward, Malvolio.
• Most famous dialogue: Either “If music be the food of love, play on,” or “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”
• Sources: It’s believed to have drawn extensively on the Italian production Gl’ingannati (or The Deceived Ones), collectively written by the Accademia degli Intronati in 1531. Another source story, “Of Apollonius and Silla”, appeared in Barnabe Riche’s collection, Riche his Farewell to Militarie Profession conteining verie pleasaunt discourses fit for a peaceable tyme (1581), which in turn is derived from a story by Matteo Bandello.
• Interesting fact about the play: In some productions, they have the same performer play Viola and Sebastian (I don’t know what they do when the two finally meet up and have a conversation at the end). They don’t do that here, and it’s totally unbelievable that anybody (and in fact everybody) would mistake them for each other. (One should note that there’s no such thing as identical male/female twins.)
• Best insult: Go hang yourselves all. You are idle, shallow things. I am not of your element.
• Best word: Once again, context clues fail me on both “How will this fadge?” and “Sneck up!”
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I saw an excellent music-filled production in Stratford, Ontario about ten years ago.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: The wonderful Felicity Kendal (The Good Life / Good Neighbors) plays Viola

How’s the cast?

• Kendal is as delightful as always, and has a certain boyishness that almost makes it believable she could pass for a eunuch (but only a eunuch, which makes it odd that Olivia wants to marry her). Clive Arrindell as Orsino is maybe too glum. Everybody else does a fine job.

How’s the direction by John Gorrie?

• If I had to describe it in one word, it would be “boisterous”, which is a good tone to set, but sometimes they talk a little too quickly, letting some lines get mangled: “But if he had not been in drink he would have tickled you othergates than he did,” is a mouthful if said at a normal pace, but is impossible to understand if it’s all said as one syllable. Gorrie oddly sets it not in a fairytale kingdom, but in puritan England. The costumes and sets convey that time ably and the staging is deft (Eavesdropping scenes are always hard to stage believably, but they’re done well here.) He gets great comedic business out of the swordfight.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: If You Can’t Put It in the Text, Feel Free to Load Up the Subtext

I again find myself wishing I’d done the plays in the order they were (maybe) written, so I could chart the progression of the queerness of them. As You Like It had an actor and an actress playing love scenes where the male character thought the female character was a man pretending to be a woman. This play has two actresses playing love scenes where one of the women supposedly thinks the other is a man (and doesn’t know that the man is pretending to be castrated? That’s not clear). The actors and actresses of each scene could be sued for negligence if they failed to acknowledge that at least some of these people are somewhat less than totally straight.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Let the Women Be Funny!

My wife always says that she can tell whether something was written by a man or a woman by whether or not the women are allowed to be funny. That’s certainly not always true –All About Eve wasn’t written by a woman—but she’s got a point about too often male authors giving all the laughs to the men and not letting women be funny.

This play has one of Shakespeare’s funniest women, in the character of Maria, who pranks Malvolio. She gives and she gets just as well as the guys, and turns the crank of the subplot (which gets almost as much stage time as the main plot) almost single-handedly. Usually the comedies trot out all the characters to get paired up, often randomly, in the final scene and all get married. In this case, Maria, who has been so pivotal and funny, doesn’t even appear at the end, but one character does mention in passing that she has married Sir Toby, despite having no hint of attraction before this. Shakespeare clearly doesn’t know what he has with her and doesn’t give her her due. At least let her come out onstage at the end, especially if you’re going to hastily marry her off!

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 9: Henry V

The Life of Henry the Fift [sic], first broadcast December 23rd, 1979

• When was it written? 1599, maybe his 18th play
• What’s it about? The callow Prince Hal is now the ambitious King Henry V and decides to invade France on a flimsy pretext. He beats the French at Agincourt despite bad odds, then marries a French princess.
• Most famous dialogue: Hard call between “Once more unto the breach, dear friends” and “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”
• Sources: Holinshed, of course, and a previous play that we don’t know the author of called “The Famous Victories of Henry V”
• Interesting fact about the play: The play has a man named Chorus who keeps apologizing to us that it’s just a play and he can’t show us the armies he wants to show us, so you’d think an adaptation would just do away with all that and actually show us all that stuff, but every adaptation has included at least some of the chorus.
• Best insult:
• “A vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth”
• “Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal, I remember him now: a bawd, a cutpurse”
• “The rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, bragging knave, Pistol, which you and yourself and all the world know to be a man of no merits”
• Best words: Theoric, bawcock, scambling, “Shall we shog?”
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I saw an excellent production in Stratford, Ontario during the Iraq War that painted Henry as a villain fighting a bogus war. For the scene where his advisor makes the case that he has a right to the French throne, the adaptors made it clear that he was stitching together several dubious accounts into one narrative, and it was impossible not to think of Dick Cheney. I haven’t seen Branagh’s film since it came out in the 80s, so I really can’t speak to it, and I’ve never seen Olivier’s. If I remember correctly, I saw Hiddleston in The Hollow Crown as Hal in the Henry IV plays but never made it to his Henry V.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Nobody much. Julian Glover shows up again in a tiny role

How’s the cast?

• David Gwillim, returning from the two Henry IV adaptations, continues to do an excellent job. He is almost completely transformed from Prince Hal to Henry V, but when he hears that Bardolph has been hanged for looting, just a twinge of pain from his old self flits across his face.

How’s the direction by David Giles?

• The chorus keeps apologizing for what he can’t show us, and he’s right to in this case because the production is quite limited, but Giles makes the most of his small budget and at least the war feels properly muddy. There are some tone problems, as I’ll note below.

Rulebook Casefile: Give the Audience What they Want

Falstaff dies off-stage during the first act without ever being seen in this play, which seems odd. Shakespeare likes him so much that he wrote him another sequel set hundreds of years later (Merry Wives of Windsor), but didn’t use him here, where he actually had a role to play? Brannagh disagreed, and included Falstaff, played by Robbie Coltrane, one of many reasons I’d love to see that film again.

Rulebook Casefile: Crafting Happy Endings

As with Henry VIII, this is another case of creating a happy ending by choosing a convenient place to end the play. In truth, the war dragged on and got bogged down in the mud until Henry died of dysentery and then everybody quickly forgot about his whole crazy scheme.

Rulebook Casefile: The Ultimate Deus Ex Machina

It’s silly that the word “archer” never appears in the play. The English victory (which is vastly overstated) is credited simply to God’s preference for the English, not superior tactics, which is unlike Shakespeare, who, in the rest of the Henriad, shows that God helps those that help themselves.

Rulebook Casefile: Read the Room, Dude

Shakespeare was justly famous for his deft juggling of tones, having at least some hint of humor and tragedy in almost every play, no matter how otherwise serious or comedic they were. But occasionally, even he could badly misfire. This play has the most ghoulishly misjudged moment we’ve seen so far. At one point, all of the boys who have come along on the campaign are slaughtered by the French, and two characters come across the bloody corpse, right there on stage, of a boy we’ve come to love, but then, while waiting for Henry to arrive, engage in an unrelated comedic conversation over the boy’s remains.

I forget how they handled this in the Stratford production, or how Brannagh handled it. I suspect that they both just cut it. The BBC productions are admirable is their attempt to show most of the plays totally uncut, even this atrocious mistake on Shakespeare’s part.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Let Them Wonder If It’s Worth It

More than any play we’ve seen so far, this one gives the director the most latitude to stage the play with wildly different interpretations. 

When in disguise as a commoner, Henry gets an earful from his soldiers about the king’s burden: “But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it, whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.”

That speech makes this a great play. Shakespeare himself seems to approve of Henry, but he was too great a playwright not to leave open another interpretation. In the previous two plays Hal engaged in petty theft, and was made to greatly apologize for it. Here he engages in mass slaughter and wins nothing but praise for it, but that speech reminds us to compare Hal with Henry, and wonder if the world would not have been better off if he stuck to petty crime.

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 8: Henry IV, Part 2

The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth containing his Death: And the Coronation of King Henry the Fift [sic], first broadcast December 16th, 1979

• When was it written? Somewhere between 1596 and 1599, possibly his 16th play.
• What’s it about? Prince Hal and Falstaff continue to pal around but King Henry is getting sicker. More lords rebel and Falstaff is called into duty again, but this time Hal’s brother puts them down easily. Henry IV eventually dies and Hal, now Henry V, denounces Falstaff and banishes him.
• Most famous dialogue: Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown
• Sources: Same as Part 1
• Interesting fact about the play: Falstaff was originally called Oldcastle, but the actual man’s descendants weren’t happy, so it was changed, possibly after a few performances, to Falstaff. There was a real Falstaff, but he had no descendants so that name was safe.
• Best insult: Once again, too many good ones to choose from:
• that errant malmsey-nose knave
• Why, thou honeysuckle villain!
• Poor, base, mean, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate! Away, you mouldy rogue, away!
• You basket-hilt stale juggler, you!
• He, a good wit? Hang him, baboon! His wit’s as thick as Tewksbury mustard.
• Best word: Sortance
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I haven’t seen this one on stage either. See my comment last time regarding Chimes at Midnight and The Hollow Crown
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: The same cast is mostly back, but some new faces I don’t recognize.

How’s the cast?

• Quayle and Gwillim get to have their falling out and make the most out of it. Finch has even less to do in this play, barely counting as a supporting role. The expanded roles, for Hal’s brothers, don’t stand out.

How’s the direction by David Giles?

• Once again, it would have greatly helped to be able to go outdoors. Giles sense of cinema does not impress, but he does what he needs to do, which is to get fine performances out of Quayle and Gwillim. I will point out that this has the worst costumes of the eight I’ve seen so far.

Rulebook Casefile: Once You’ve Set Up That Something Can Happen, You Can Get Lots of Drama Out of the Possibility of It Happening Again

This is a fairly lame play for the first two hours, until Henry finally dies and Hal and Falstaff get to have their falling out. There are new rebels, but they aren’t anywhere as near as fun as Hotspur was in Part 1, and it’s a bizarre choice to have Hal’s heretofore unseen brothers put down the rebellion instead of Hal himself (though Falstaff does briefly get in on the action.)

Ultimately, we, and Shakespeare’s original audience, know the history and know that these rebellions aren’t going to get very far, but it helps that this eight-play cycle begins with a successful overthrow of a king by a lord. That sets up that it is possible, which helps juice the next six plays where it threatens to happen again, but the king holds on to power. Then those six plays build us up to the final of the eight plays, Richard III, when a king is finally again successfully overthrown, completing the cycle.

Rulebook Casefile: Always Get Their Hopes Up

By the time Henry dies, we’ve seen enough of Hal’s transformation to know that he’s no longer going to suffer fools gladly, but Falstaff and Hal don’t actually have much time together in this play, so Falstaff hasn’t seen the gradual change we’ve seen. Thus, when he hears that the old king is dead, Falstaff is overjoyed, thinking that Hal will set him up in luxury and he’ll finally have it made.  He’s in for a rude awakening in the next scene.

We always love scenes where characters get their hopes up, especially if we have reason to suspect that they’re actually doomed. We love to see potential energy built up, knowing it will be released in a devastating manner.

(Flashing forward, there’s a great line in the next play when the French overconfidently speak of the upcoming battle at Agincourt and say “If we but blow on them, the vapour of our valour will o’erturn them.” Oh, how we long for that overconfidence to get punished.)

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 7: King Henry IV, Part One

The First Part of KING HENRY THE FOURTH with the life and death of HENRY surnamed HOTSPUR, first broadcast December 9th, 1979

• Possibly written: No later than 1597, possibly his 15th play
• What’s it about? In this sequel to Richard II, Henry IV quickly breaks his promise to go to the Holy Land, blaming rebellions at home. Meanwhile, his no good son Hal pals around with drunken robbers, including Falstaff. When Henry has to go to war with a rebel named Harry “Hotspur” Percy (Yes, there are three Harrys), Hal and Falstaff step up and join in the effort, winning the day.
• Most famous dialogue: Hard to say, either it’s “What is in that word ‘honour’? What is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o’Wednesday.” Or it’s “The better part of valor is discretion.”
• Sources: As with all the Histories, it’s mostly drawn from Holinshed’s Chronicles.
• Interesting fact about the play: This was Shakespeare’s most popular printed text, with four editions released in his lifetime.
• Best insults:
• What a wasp-stung and impatient fool art thou to break into this woman’s mood
• None of your mad mustacio’d purple-hued malt-worms
• Out, you mad-headed ape! A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are toss’d with
• There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune
• Certainly Shakespeare’s longest insult: That trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that gray iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years
• Best word: So many! Can’t choose between Vizards, Corrival, Pismires, Paraquito, Sarcenet, and Enfeoff’d.
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I’ve never seen it on stage. There have been several excellent adaptations, but I prefer this one, partially because it’s the only one that preserves the two parts. Orson Welles combines them and just uses the Falstaff scenes for Chimes at Midnight (the public domain VHS print I saw was so bad that it didn’t make much impression on me). The Hollow Crown, also combined parts 1 and 2 into one episode, and I had other issues with it, but Tom Hiddleston was excellent as Hal. My Own Private Idaho is an excellent modernization of the play.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Jon Finch reprises the role of Henry IV from the BBC’s Richard II. Tim Pigott-Smith this time plays Hotspur. Anthony Quayle (Lawrence of Arabia) plays Falstaff.

How’s the cast?

• They’re all excellent. Finch, despite being the title character, doesn’t have much to do but continues his tightly coiled performance. David Gwillim as Hal already contains the elements he’ll need for both feckless Hal and brave Henry V in his complex characterization. Quayle evokes both great laughs and great pathos (as opposed to Simon Russell Beale in The Hollow Crown, who’s just a sad sack)

How’s the direction by David Giles?

• Unfortunately, we’re back indoors for the rest of the series. Since the only two filmed outside were As You Like It and Henry VIII, that means we’ll never get any proper battle scenes, but of course they probably couldn’t have afforded that. Giles does the best he can with his stagey sets and things don’t feel too cramped. Of course, the real job of the director is getting great performances, and, in that, Giles might be the best director we’ve had. He also makes the wisest choice yet seen in this series of gong against the text, as well see below…

Storyteller’s Rulebook: No Matter What’s in the Script, the Director (and Cast) Can Decide When It’s Not Funny Anymore

In the play’s best scene, Falstaff and Hal are engaged in their typical baudy fun in an inn when they decide to pretend that King Henry has arrived to judge them. At first, Falstaff puts a cushion on his head and pretends to be the king, chiding Hal for his wicked ways but praising his friend Falstaff. Then Hal insists they switch places. When Hal plays the king, he is much harsher in his judgement of Falstaff, but it all still seems to be a rich jest on both their parts.

If you just stick to Shakespeare’s text (Remember, Shakespeare never wrote anything but dialogue) you could play the scene in such a way that the mood stays light both ways. But Giles, Gwillim and Quayle are up to a whole lot more here. The entire play, indeed the entire Henriad, is played out in this scene, as, when Hal-as-the-king is lambasting Fastaff, his jibes get a bit too pointed and the laughter of the room slowly dies away. Gwillim still maintains just enough mirth in his voice to play it off as a joke, but he’s clearly rehearsing for his actual turn against Falstaff, and Falstaff, sensing this, begins to seriously try to defend himself, though he has to pretend that he’s only pretending to do so. Finally, Falstaff ends by protesting: “banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.” Hal responds, “I do, I will.” This could have been played in jest, but Gwillim is 10% joking and 90% ice-cold. Just then, the king’s men actually burst upon them and Hal is truly called to face his father.

Things aren’t over between Hal and Falstaff in this play, and there’s still a sequel play to come, but this one scene, though seemingly written as a merry jest, has been played by the director and the actors in such a way as to convey so much more. It’s a brilliant piece of directing and acting and shows how Shakespeare’s rich texts can be twisted into all sorts of new shapes, which is one reason he has remained so popular.

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Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed Saturday’s Webinar if you had a chance to check it out! Meanwhile, here’s yet more content for you: I was a guest of the excellent podcast “Suit Up!” hosted by Terrance Layhew. We discuss my books for a bit, but then I spot a Bond poster behind him and we end up getting sucked into a side discussion about that, including my exceedingly unpopular assertion that Die Another Day is a top-10 Bond film. Check it out!

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 6: Henry VIII

The Famous History of the Life of King Henry VIII, first broadcast February 25th, 1979

• When was it written? 1613, making it the 37th play Shakespeare had a hand in (and the latest the BBC adapts)
• What’s it about? Henry VIII divorces his wife Catherine of Aragon, arrests his no good Cardinal Wolsey, marries Anne Bolyn (called Bullen here), and has a daughter named Elizabeth. Seemingly, he and Anne and Elizabeth live happily ever after.
• Most famous dialogue: Not much, but Wolsey, when lamenting his downfall, gives us the phrase “a killing frost”:
• Sources: This play is sometimes described as a History, sometimes as just a Tragedy, and sometimes left out of Shakespeare’s canon altogether. Like the Histories it’s based on Holinshed’s Chronicles and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
• Interesting fact about the play: Shakespeare had seemingly retired with The Tempest, and indeed that’s the last play for which he has solo writing credit, but a year later, his successor as the principle playwright of The King’s Men, John Fletcher, convinced him to come out of retirement long enough to co-write this play. Oddly, the BBC decided that this counted as a Shakespeare play and ended their first season with it, but declined to adapt the second play credited to both Shakespeare and Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen, decreeing that to not be real Shakespeare. This play is most infamous for being the one that burned down the original Globe theater, when a cannon set the thatched roof on fire.
• Best insult: (after listing many condemnations against Wolsey) Many more there are, which, since they are of you, and odious, I will not taint my mouth with.
• Best word: None stood out to me.
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I have never seen or read this play before now.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Julian Glover (The only man to play the main villain in a Bond movie, an Indiana Jones movie, and a Doctor Who serial) as Buckingham, Claire Bloom as Catherine of Aragon, John Rhys-Davies in a small role as Capucius.

How’s the cast?

• Bloom is excellent and totally steals the play, making this a play about Catherine’s mistreatment by both Wolsey and Henry. Timothy West is great at both Wolsey’s arrogance and his bitter regret when he gets his comeuppance. John Stride plays Henry as a total cypher. He seems to have no opinion about the rightness or wrongness of Henry’s actions, which greatly harms the production.

How’s the direction by Kevin Billington?

• Obviously, we have to blame Billington for not coaxing more out of Stride, but other than that this is excellent. As with As You Like It, we leave the studio again and shoot in actual castles. Billington tried to shoot in as many of the actual historical locations as possible, which is very cool. The result is a gorgeous production. We’re reminded how drafty those medieval castles were, because we can see their breath both in outdoor wintry scenes and in indoor scenes in the old halls. The bad news: This was the production that convinced the BBC that it wasn’t worth it shooting on location, so the entire rest of the series will be studio-bound, greatly upsetting some future directors.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Any Story Can Have a Happy Ending If You End It in the Right Spot

We have good evidence that the play was written in 1613, but 19th century scholars were sure the play must have been written before 1602, because it’s so ridiculously complimentary towards Elizabeth, so surely, they figured, it must have been written while she was alive. The play ends with baby Elizabeth’s christening, and the Archbishop suddenly divines that she will be a great queen one day (and even divines that she will die a virgin). Don’t worry though, he also can see so far ahead that he knows she’ll have a great successor, too, so James (no great fan of Elizabeth), need not feel too threatened.

Of course, this brings us to the ridiculousness of the ending. It is shown that Wolsey was behind the ousting of Catherine. He is eventually revealed to be plotting with Rome and exiled (Both he and Catherine die of natural causes very quickly after being shunned). In the end, Henry, Anne, and Elizabeth live happily ever after.

“But… but…” the audience splutters, “the story doesn’t end there!” Henry has Anne beheaded and Elizabeth banished! And he marries three more times (one more divorced, one more beheaded, one survived). If you know the full story, it’s ridiculous to end the story here, but Shakespeare and Fletcher’s goal seems to be simply to legitimize Elizabeth. (One way they did this was to rearrange history to have Catherine die before she was born) Having Elizabeth was, in the playwrights’ view, the one good thing Henry did, so with her birth, his story ends, happily. Never mind what came next.

Is real life a tragedy or a comedy? Well, every life ends tragically, in that the hero always dies in the end, but every life also has some spot where things seem to be going well, so any story, true or fiction, can have a happy ending if you just pick that spot.

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 5: Measure for Measure

Measure for Measure, first broadcast February 18th, 1979

• When was it written? Possibly in 1603, perhaps his 26th play
• What’s it about? Duke Vincentio of Vienna decides to go incognito among his people and leaves Angelo in charge, who starts executing people for begetting out-of-wedlock children. When nun Isabella tries to intercede for her brother, Angelo demands she sleep with him. The Duke plays an elaborate trick on Angelo to make sure that justice prevails.
• Most famous dialogue: Well, heaven forgive him, and forgive us all, some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
• Sources: One source is “The Story of Epitia”, a story from Cinthio’s Gli Hecatommithi, first published in 1565. The original story is an unmitigated tragedy in that Isabella’s counterpart is forced to sleep with Angelo’s counterpart, and her brother is still killed. (Shades of Dylan’s “Seven Curses” or Led Zepplin’s “Gallow’s Pole”) The other source is George Whetstone’s 1578 drama Promos and Cassandra, which itself is sourced from Cinthio. Whetstone adapted Cinthio’s story by adding the comic elements and the bed and head tricks.
• Interesting fact about the play: There is much debate as to whether it was substantially revised after Shakespeare’s death by Thomas Middleton, including changing the setting from Italy to Vienna (which is an odd place for Shakespeare to set a play)
• Best insults: Two this time
• A man whose blood is very snow-broth, one who never feels the wanton stings and motions of the sense, but doth rebate and blunt his natural edge with profits of the mind.
• This outward-sainted deputy whose settled visage and deliberate word nips youth i’ the head and follies does emmew as falcon doth the fowl is yet a devil. His filth within being cast, he would appear a pond as deep as hell.
• Best word: Circummured
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I have never seen or read this play before (as will be true with 16 of the 37 plays I cover in this series). I considered reading a plot synopsis first, since it was not uncommon for Shakespeare’s theatergoers to already know his reused plots, but decided that no, I would actually learn the story in real time. I was able to follow along just fine and enjoyed not knowing how it was going to end until I got there.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Nobody’s a household name in America, but I knew some of them. Kate Nelligan (Isabella) was great in The Eye of the Needle and Tim Pigott-Smith (Angelo) was great in Bloody Sunday.

How’s the cast?

• Nobody told Nelligan or Pigott-Smith that this was supposedly a comedy, and the play is all the better for it. They wring great drama from their deadly-serious storyline, though it creates quite a bit of friction with the more comedic storylines surrounding them. Only Kenneth Colley (Admiral Piett in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) as the duke has to go back and forth between the dramatic and comedic stories and he handles that ably.

How’s the direction by Desmond Davis?

• Once again, it’s all indoors and stagey, but he manages to get some good walk-and-talks by building a 360 degree set surrounded by a cyclorama. The dungeon scenes are properly grimy (including a gruesome severed head) and the bawdy house scenes are properly bawdy. Similar to “As You Like It,” Davis makes no attempt to disguise Colley for either of his two roles, despite the fact that the character is interacting with the same people who fail to recognize it’s the same person. Perhaps a pair of silly glasses would have helped?

Rulebook Casefile: It’s Okay to Have a Happy Ending If You Earn It

Wikipedia says, “The tension in the play is eventually resolved through Duke Vincentio's intervention, which is considered an early use of the deus ex machina in English literature.” This is nonsense. First of all, it’s hardly early, as Aristotle was already complaining about how common they were in 335 BCE, but, more importantly, it completely debases the term to call this a deus ex machina.

“As You Like It,” by contrast, clearly ends in a deus ex machina. We find out that the bad guy, entirely off stage, has repented of his evil and restored everyone to their lost stations. Good fortune lands in the heroes’ laps, entirely unearned, just to tack on a happy ending that Shakespeare couldn’t bother to work into the plot.

“Measure for Measure” could not be more different. Vincentio already suspects that Angelo is evil when the play begins and plans his entire masquerade as an elaborate trap to catch him. He works hard to counter every move of Angelo’s and brings all the players together at the end to spring his trap with cunning and precision. Nothing lands in anybody’s lap.

Another issue with “As You Like It” was that it twisted its characters out of shape to tack on a ludicrous number of simultaneous marriages at the end. This one also ends in four sort-of marriages, but they’re all set up better. One man is allowed to marry the mother of his child, one is forced to marry the mother of his, one is forced to marry a woman he once said he’d marry and has been tricked into bedding. That just leaves one problematic pairing: Vincentio and Isabella.

Though she’s a would-be nun who has spent the entire play trying to maintain her virtue (presumably forever), the play ends with the Duke proposing marriage and her not verbally answering. A couple of pages later, the play ends. As with another play later identified as a “problem play”, “All’s Well That Ends Well“, directors are forced to decide what to do with a rather unhappy event that Shakespeare seems to define as a happy ending. Does Isabella silently consent (whether because of love, obedience to power, or self-interest) or silently decline? It all depends on how you stage it.

Shakespeare knew that the rules of comedy dictated that everybody end up together, but he couldn’t convince his entirely non-comedic character to verbally consent. He was too good of a writer to force words into his characters’ mouths, so he let her stay silent and dumped the problem in the lap of the directors and actresses (though the actresses were actors back in his day). This director has her take his hand with a half-smile, but it’s not at all clear what’s going to happen next, and that’s probably the best way. The result is neither comedically satisfying (to achieve that, he would have had to convince us they were in love) nor dramatically satisfying (as it would have been if she’d stayed true to her nature and taken up her vows). It is, instead, a problem. The problem plays are in vogue recently because we live in a problematic age, and the play’s ambiguous ending is considered an asset now. Modern audiences don’t like being told how to feel.

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37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 4: Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar, first broadcast February 11th, 1979

• When was it written? It was first performed in 1599, possibly his 19th play
• What’s it about? Brutus joins a conspiracy led by Cassius to assassinate Julius Caesar, to prevent him from becoming a tyrant. Caesar's right-hand man Marc Antony stirs up hostility against the conspirators and Rome becomes embroiled in a dramatic civil war.
• Most famous dialogue: Either “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!” or “Et Tu Brute”.
• Sources: The main source is Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives. Ben Jonson famously carped that Shakespeare had “small Latin and less Greek.” Instead, he was among the first generation of English speakers to have the classics available in translation, and it turned out that democratizing those works meant that little-educated men of genius could now find them and make more great art out of them.
• Interesting fact about the play: Shakespeare was never very faithful to history, but he’s a bit too faithful here, because one of the jobs of a writer is to make sure that not too many characters have names that begin with the same letter. This play, however, has an astonishing thirteen characters with “C” names: Julius Caesar, Cinna, Casca, Caius Cassius, Cicero, Caius Ligarius, Calpurnia, Matellus Cimber, Publius Cimber, Cinna the poet, Claudius, Octavian Caesar and Clitus!
• Best insults: Once again, I can’t do just one:
• “He’s a tried and valiant soldier.” “So is my horse, Octavius”
• “A barren-spirited fellow”
• I am completely baffled by the first half of this insult but I like the second: “He loves to hear that unicorns can be betrayed with trees, and bears with glasses, elephants with holes, lions with toils, and men with flatterers, but when I tell him he hates flatterers, he says he does, being then most flattered.”
• Best word: Accoutered
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: The Marlon Brando movie is good, but I have never seen a good production on stage. The worst production I’ve ever seen of any play was a post-apocalyptic version of this one, which included, among other highlights, an interpretive dance to Oasis’s Wonderwall.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Once again, we have Charles Gray (Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever, Rocky Horror Picture Show), this time as Caesar. None of the other actors were familiar to me.

How’s the cast?

• Gray seems too old and out-of-shape to be a dangerous tyrant, and he’s kind of blank, but Caesar himself is kind of a blank in the play, as I’ll discuss later. Richard Pasco as Brutus and David Collings as Cassius both deliver nicely complex characterizations. Keith Mitchell as Marc Antony seems to lack the cunning the part requires (and that Brando conveyed well).

How’s the direction from Herbert Wise?

• Alas, after a splendid outdoor production of “As You Like It”, we’re very much back indoors here, with an interminable number of scenes set on every side of a huge Styrofoam rock. Wise doesn’t do a good job making it feel like a real war is going on in the second half, but in the first half, I liked how volatile and chaotic his crowd scenes were. I liked how he wasn’t shy about all the blood, with a very long scene (pictured above) in which the actors are basically slipping around in pools of it. The long night of thunder and lightning was well-conjured and properly portentous. It’s always a lame choice, however, to have the soliloquies done as voiceover, since the poor actor is left with nothing to do.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Always Let Your Audience Decide

I was surprised to discover that this felt like the weakest of the four plays I’ve looked at so far. It’s certainly far more famous and quotable than Richard II, but that one seemed more morally and emotionally complex, because Richard, unlike Caesar, was a three-dimensional character, a complex construction of flaws and virtues tightly enmeshed together, and we were invited to judge for ourselves whether or not he should be overthrown (which turns out to be a hard decision to make). In this play, we just don’t get enough of the title character.

I think the decision not to show us the scene where Caesar refuses the crown three times is a baffling one. Instead, we just overhear the huzzahs, and then we have Casca arrive and sum up what happened though his own jaundiced POV. The whole rest of the play turns on whether Caesar was being genuinely humble by refusing the crown or just feigning humility to seize power. Let us see the scene and decide that ourselves, as we got to do with Richard. Let us see why Brutus and Cassius would see it one way and Marc Antony would see it the other, and let us contrast that with our own independent opinion on the scene.

I will say that the strongest element of the play is its examination of the volatile madness of crowds, and the masterful scene in which Antony plays the crazed crowd like a fiddle is the play’s peak. Ultimately, nobody comes off very well in this play, neither the conspirators nor those who would avenge Caesar. The most sympathetic character is poor Cinna the poet, killed by a mob because he has the same first name as one of the conspirators.

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 3: As You Like It

As You Like It, first broadcast December 17th, 1978

• When was it written? Sometime around 1599 or 1600, possibly Shakespeare’s 20th play, so later than the first two we covered.
• What’s it about? Rosalind is reluctantly living under her uncle Frederick, who overthrew her father, but when he gets pissed at her she runs off to the forest of Arden, followed by Orlando, who loves her and is in trouble because he won a wrestling match vs. Frederick’s favorite wrestler. Rosalind dresses up as a man, Orlando doesn’t recognize her but flirts with her/him anyway, and eventually Rosalind’s father is restored, and everything turns out okay.
• Most famous dialogue: The “All the world’s a stage” speech.
• Sources: Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie, first published in 1590. Lodge’s story is based on “The Tale of Gamelyn”.
• Interesting fact about the play: Maybe we’re in England, maybe in France (They both have forests of Arden). There are wild lions about. Shakespeare set very few non-histories in England, for some reason, causing some to foolishly speculate that the plays were written by a non-Englishman.
• Best insult: Too many good ones to limit myself to just one:
• A world too wide for his shrunk shank
• Truly, thou art damned like an ill roasted egg all on one side
• God help thee, shallow man, god make an incision in thee, thou are raw.
• To cast away honesty upon a foul slut [like you] were to put good meat into an unclean dish.
• For I must tell you friendly in your ear, sell when you can, you are not for all markets
• Best word: The word “physic” gets used a lot, as in “I will physic your rankness”. Context clues weren’t helping me there.
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: Last year the Chicago Shakespeare Theater did a wonderful production that worked in lots of songs by the Beatles. I liked it so much I went twice, once with my wife and then again with my daughter.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Helen Mirren as Rosalind. David “Darth Vader” Prowse as Frederick’s preferred wrestler!

How’s the cast?

• Mirren is delightful and does a great job with the language, but makes no real attempt to impersonate a man. Couldn’t she have drawn on a pencil mustache or something? And tried a deeper voice? Of course, if she had, all involved would have had to admit that this is a really gay play, filled with scene after scene of a guy getting really sexy with someone he thinks is another guy. By having her just half-heartedly put on pants, everything feels far more heterosexual. As for Prowse, it’s nice to finally hear his voice and fun to see him in a different role. Brian Stirner as Orlando is a little moody, but ultimately fun to watch, and surprisingly convincing in his throws against the much larger Prowse.

How’s the direction by Basil Coleman?

• We finally go outside, for by far the best production yet. The opening scenes are shot on the grounds of Glamis Castle in Scotland and the forests scenes are shot in actual forests. It all looks gorgeous and feels airy and real. This is what this series should have been: Shooting the plays in actual real-life settings. Instead, most productions were only a little less stagebound than they would have been in the theater. I’ll also give props to the combat, which feels very real and harrowing. The costumes are a little tacky, though.

Rulebook Casefile: Mastering Tone is More Important Than Every Other Aspect of Writing

The plotting of this play is very clunky. Shakespeare is so devoted to his formula for comedies that he has to betray the work he’s done on characterization. Putting Orlando’s brother and Rosalind’s friend together at the last moment just so that everyone can be paired up on stage is totally unjustified and unnecessary. The ludicrous deus ex machina where Frederick has an offstage religious conversion and abdicates is totally unconvincing.

And yet, the play is delightful. Almost every scene is fun. The language is zesty, as shown by the cascade of insults above. The sprightly verbal sparring of the various pairs of lovers prefigures 20th century screwball comedy. The best scenes are those in which the characters just conjecture with each other about the meaning of life and love.

After starting things off with a rousing onstage David-vs-Goliath wrestling match, we get a play chock full of songs, and so many internal rhymes, even when they’re not singing, that it feels like a Moliere play. It’s just a lot of fun. The play sings, literally and figuratively.

If you can master tone, the audience is remarkably willing to ignore all other writing fundamentals. The characters are having fun, the cast is having fun playing them, and the audience is having fun watching them. Who cares how clunky it is?

Episode 43: Writing Every Day with Brock Swinson

The Secrets of Story Podcast · Writing Every Day with Brock Swinson

Oh my gosh, it’s four weeks in a row of the Secrets of Story Podcast! In this episode, James and I sit down with Brock Swinson to discuss his excellent new book of writing advice Ink By the Barrel! We all agree that writers should write every day and then sheepishly agree that we don’t actually do that. After hearing James and me sing the praises of the book, you can download a free copy of the print OR audio here! There’s no better deal than that!  And check out Brock’s podcast Creative Principles here, where he interviews 436 people about their creative process! 

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 2: Richard II

King Richard the Second, First broadcast December 10th, 1978

• When was it written? 1595. Chambers has it as his 11th play.
• What’s it about? King Richard II keeps pissing off Lancasters John of Gaunt and his son Henry Bolingbroke. John dies and Harry gets banished, but comes back and overthrows and imprisons the king, making himself Henry IV. Richard is killed in prison in sketchy circumstances and Henry seemingly feels bad.
• Most famous dialogue: The “this sceptre’d isle” speech.
• Sources: Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York and Samuel Daniel’s poem on the civil wars.
• Interesting fact about the play: Richard actually just starved to death in prison, but that’s not very dramatic, so Shakespeare contrives a big fight and a stab in the back. Basically Shakespeare is stealing the story of Henry II and Thomas Becket from 200 years earlier, having Henry muse aloud that it would be great if Richard were dead, and then feigning horror when one of his supporters decides to make that wish come true.
• Best insult: Of the Irish: We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns which live like venom where no venom else
• Best word: No unfamiliar words in this one.
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I’ve never seen it on stage, but the TV version with Ben Whishaw from 2012 that aired as part of The Hollow Crown is excellent. I’ll see it on stage in Stratford, Ontario later this year.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Unlike most of the BBC adaptations, this one has a big name cast: Derek Jacobi as King Richard, John Gielgud as John of Gaunt, Jon Finch (Macbeth, Frenzy) as Henry Bolingbroke, Charles Gray (Blowfeld in Diamonds are Forever, the Narrator in Rocky Horror Picture Show) as Duke of York

How’s the cast?

• Jacobi and Grey are broad, but still excellent. Their performances would be fine onstage, but are a little much for television. Finch and Gielgud, both of whom had worked more onscreen, are more restrained, and come off the better for it. The question with this play is whether or not Richard should be indicated to be gay, and Jacobi has decided to definitely indicate it, but subtly, similar to what Wishaw did many years later.

How’s the direction by David Giles?

• One should always blame the director when the performances are pitched at different levels. Neither the cast nor the camera move very much, making for a fairly leaden show. The sets and costumes are great. It would have been great to see armies ranged on the field, instead of shooting the war party scenes on sets, but, given the restraints of the BBC’s all-stage ethos, Giles does what he can and creates some sense of scope.

Rulebook Casefile: Every Character Should Pursue Their Self-Interest

This is a play with no one to root for. Richard is feckless, avaricious and arbitrary, and we understand why he would inspire a revolt, but Henry quickly proves himself to be just as much a villain. In the scene where Richard very reluctantly hands over the crown, we feel Henry’s frustration at having to deal with this agonizingly overwrought king, but when Henry then immediately abuses his power against the newly abdicated king we seethe with hatred for him and feel intensely for Richard, who then keeps us reluctantly on his side until the end.

Both men simply pursue their self interest. They are both entirely believable and thus compelling. We tend to empathize (but not entirely sympathize) with each one when he’s on stage, and feel torn in the few scenes they have together. It helps that both are surrounded, when the other is not around, by men who lack their strength of will, so they are able to dominate those scenes, creating anticipation for the scenes in which they will collide.

It’s a great play because it understands the demands of power, and how power can turn you more vicious than you set out to be. It’s a remarkable play for someone to stage who was at the mercy of a fickle queen. The play concludes that monarchs can be replaced when they no longer have the consent of the governed, and they’re fools if they think divine right will protect them. Richard, like Elizabeth, refers to himself in the plural, and we know he’s given up when he finally refers to himself in the singular. Elizabeth never had to do that, but this play indicates that she had a sword of Damocles above her head.

The Tudors did not consider themselves to be Tudors, they considered themselves to be Lancasters. It’s only historians who concluded that they were a different family altogether. These plays support the legitimacy of the Lancasters but not their nobility. Shakespeare called it as he saw it, and let the chips fall where they may.

I talked yesterday about my decision to do the plays in the BBC’s order, but watching this, I found myself wishing I had gone in the order they were possibly written, not caring so much as to whether the histories were in historical order and more caring about the progression of Shakespeare’s views on kingship throughout this career. I’ve never read nor seen the Henry VI plays (possibly the first three plays Shakespeare wrote) and I found myself wishing I had, so that I could see how that first stab at history-writing contrasted with this follow-up, though this was the prequel.

37 Days of Shakespeare: Introduction and Romeo and Juliet

Let’s start a new series!

I have two podcasts, but I’ve been tempted to start a third, because I’ve wanted to do a watch-through podcast for the BBC Complete Works of Shakespeare that aired from 1978 to 1985, possibly with a Shakespeare scholar of my acquaintance. But ultimately, I decided that three podcasts is just too many, and I would really be using the podcast as an excuse to watch all of them myself, but I need no such excuse. So, I figured, why not just watch them all and write a blog post about each one?

These plays are long (they’re mostly full text, so almost three hours each) so it’ll take much more than 37 days to get through these 37 days. The current plan is to post episodes every Monday, Wednesday or Friday unless I have something else to post like a podcast episode, in which case I’ll post only two Shakespeare write-ups that week.

So starting today, and continuing for the next several weeks, I’ll examine the complete works of Shakespeare, how the BBC did adapting them, and what writers can learn from them.

Note: I had a hard time deciding in what order to do the plays. Nobody knows for sure what order the plays were written but there are several guesses. Ultimately I decided to do them in the order the BBC presented them, figuring that wiser heads at the Beeb should be trusted to have chosen a lively order. Besides, that way the history plays would be in chronological sequence (but spread out over the course of the series), and I certainly didn’t want to begin this series with Henry VI parts 1, 2, and 3, which may have been Shakespeare’s first three plays. So let’s begin with the series’ first season premiere: Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet, first broadcast December 3rd, 1978

• When was it written? 1594-1595. Scholar E. K. Chambers puts it 10th in his chronology of the plays.
• What’s it about? Two teenagers from rival families fall in love, which leads to the death of six people, including each other.
• Most famous dialogue: Too many to count! Let’s go with “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”
• Source: Based on an Italian tale written by Matteo Bandello and translated into verse as “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet” by Arthur Brooke in 1562, then retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567.
• Interesting fact about the play: It’s a myth that the balcony was a later addition to the play. Shakespeare himself included no description of how to stage the scene, of course (he never did), but in Shakespeare’s sources, Romeo was climbing up to Juliet’s window, and it would have made sense to replicate that on the stage. The word balcony was coined after Shakespeare’s death, but he was probably picturing something similar to how it’s currently staged.
• Best insult: Juliet’s dad says to her, “Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage! You tallow-face!”
• Best word: Behooffull
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I saw an all-black production in Marcus Garvey park in Harlem that was excellent.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Alan Rickman as Tybalt, John Gielgud as chorus (just a brief cameo), Anthony Andrews (Brideshead Revisited) as Mercutio

How’s the cast?

• The only way to play it is to have both Romeo and Juliet be almost comically overwrought in their emotions, but the stars sell their emotions admirably and keep us rooting for them, even as we lament their foolishness. Patrick Ryecart as Romeo looks and sometimes acts like a British Michael Cera, so it’s as if Scott Pilgrim turned a little more bloodthirsty. Rebecca Saire as Juliet is really fourteen (in the play the character is on the eve of her fourteenth birthday) and looks it, which shuts down any attempt to sexualize the character and makes it clear what a tragedy this is, caused by the fact that everybody wants to sexualize this young girl, and then she gets wrapped up in that herself. Andrews is great as always and Rickman is already going full Snape at this very young age.

How’s the direction by Alan Rakoff?

• I thought it was an excellent introduction to the series. It would have been nice to haul the cast over to Italy for some actual outdoor shooting, but this is the Beeb, so it’s all shot indoors in London. But there’s a variety of good-but-minimalist sets that “open up” the material and give a sense of Verona as a full city. The occasionally-mobile video camera keeps it from feeling too stagy. This is one of Shakespeare’s most emotional plays, and those fiery emotions are not smothered by the BBC classiness.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Have Them Have Another Plan That Gets Upset By the New Opportunity

We’ll start with a tip that made it into my latest book: Romeo doesn’t go to the party looking for a new girl, he goes to win his old girlfriend back. Scenes are always stronger if one or both of the scene partners have something else they’re rather be doing, then get wrenched in a new direction by the events of this scene. We prefer heroes who want something passionately to those who are aimless or passive, even if they want the wrong things and we can see they want it for all the wrong reasons.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Heroes Should Be Volatile

We want volatile heroes. In actor David Garrick’s 18th century staging of the play, he took out Rosaline because including her made Romeo look fickle and reckless. But that’s the whole point. Romeo isn’t in love with Rosaline or Juliet, he’s just in love with love itself, or rather the thrill of obsession. One can only imagine how quickly he would have thrown over Juliet if he had actually attained her for a longer period of time, probably staying with her just long enough to leave her pregnant before losing interest. His volatile mania, which dangerously resonates with Juliet’s violent rejection of her forced betrothal to Paris, is the heart of the play.

I like the play even though I find neither hero nor heroine remotely sympathetic. Instead, I find them compelling as anti-heroes, Bonnie and Clyde-type psychopaths that are thrilling to watch as they self-destruct and cause the deaths of many around them. The most sympathy I felt in the play was for Juliet’s family when they find her supposedly dead in the morning after she takes poison to simulate death. The cruelty of subjecting her family to that in pursuit of a dude is chilling. Romeo and Juliet are both bad news.

Okay, folks, that’s Day 1! Let me know what you think and come back in two days for Richard II!

Episode 42: Mackendrick's Rules, the Epic Conclusion

The Secrets of Story Podcast · Episode 43: Mackendrick's Rules, the Epic Conclusion

Alexander Mackendrick summed up the wisdom that film schools (and MFA programs in general) hand down to writers. Is it helpful or poisonous? In this episode, we finish examining and questioning his 41 rules.

Episode 41: Mackendrick's Rules, Part 2

The Secrets of Story Podcast · Mackendrick's Rules, Part 2

Yes, it’s another episode just a week after our previous episode! And there’ll be another episode next week and maybe another after that! In part 2 of 3, we continue to explore the storytelling rules of Alexander Mackendrick and use them as a springboard to discuss story in general. Bonus: I posit what’s in the case in Pulp Fiction and completely convince James! (Check out my original breakdown of the list here.)

Episode 40: Mackendrick's Rules, Part 1

The Secrets of Story Podcast · Mackendrick's Rules, Part 1

We’re back! After a long hiatus, James and I return with a new episode per week for the next three weeks at least! The great Alexander Mackendrick (The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers, Sweet Smell of Success) finished out his career teaching at Cal Arts and his advice was famously boiled down to 41 rules for storytellers. A while ago, I gave my thoughts on those rules, and now, many years later, I give James a chance to respond, which leads to a rollicking discussion. There was a ton of great material here, so we ended up with our first three-part episode! Enjoy Part 1 this week.

Updated to add: And hey, here’s two videos we mentioned. First is the video James and his kids made, Hat-Chet:
And here’s that one-second film festival I loved, which is, amazingly, still on the internet:  

(Click the V to play it larger on Vimeo.)

Talking Story with the SPA Girls!

Hi guys! Sorry I’ve gone so long without new material. New material has seemed days away for months now but keeps getting delayed. But here’s something very cool: I was a guest on the SPA Girls Podcast. It’s a general interest podcast for every type of writer, but the women involved are specifically New Zealand self-published romance authors, and they were a blast to talk with. We cover a lot of advice I’ve never gotten to on The Secrets of Story Podcast. Check it out here!