Appendix on “Antony & Cleopatra”, part one: “Love and other important things”

It is a long time now since I did appendices, but there is a good reason for it. When they decided to show the play in the “Cinema” after all I instantly bought tickets for Claudia and me, and this became the beginning of an e-mail exchange which developed a life of its own. I loved it how the characters of Antony and Cleopatra raised irritation from the start because this is how I initially felt about the play. It nagged me in a way that I felt might become interesting should I finally proceed to close reading (- which it did!). I loved the irritation, and I loved how it quite suddenly becomes personal (- which might of course become a problem as to publishing it …) And I also loved the way other things we were reading/watching at the same time came into it. This is the first part of the exchange:

Thursday, January 17^th 2019

Subject: new post

Hi Claudia,

I posted new content about “Antony and Cleopatra” and I will get the tickets today.

Have a nice day!

Barbara

Friday, January 18th 2019
Subject: answer new post

Good morning Barbara!

I read your post yesterday and think there is an accurate description of what Ralph Fiennes is like on the stage. As if he had just learned his text, and it is obvious that he is merely playing the adhering emotions. One doesn’t buy it that he has them for real. To be able to do this in a way the audience doesn’t notice  it is great acting. But, strangely, the missing “dimension” is added when he appears on screen. Of course it is possible that he just switched to autopilot  in the performance you saw, and that he had been better in the beginning  – as, hopefully, he was when they recorded the show for the cinema.

(footnote: this was almost exactly the opposite of what I wrote. I remember to have taken it up in some way but, obviously, not by e-mail!?)

I am debating with myself if I should read the play before seeing it. I heard a lecture years ago on A+C, and the lecturer  totally loved the play because it is about a mature love affair, not juvenile (first) love as in most plays by Shakespeare. The quote you used indicates something different. This made me curious!

Reading your post reminded me of the TV series “Rome”. I think it might complement A+C.

Have a nice weekend!

Claudia

Tuesday, January 22nd 2019

Subject: answer new post

Hi Claudia,

I was thinking about what you wrote over the weekend, and I agree with your lecturer though he might have understood it differently. In my opinion, the play is dealing with a mature love affair, not juvenile, “romantic” love, but not the “usual” kind - where people have learned to love and understand each other being married for twenty years or more (as in one of my favourite films: “Another Year”). Instead it is about falling in love at a mature age. From my own experience – platonic, of course! – I can tell that it is great because you know who you are at that age, and what you want and need, and then it is kind of “coming your way”! Unbelievable, really. And I think this is what a big part of the play is about. Juvenile love is mostly steered by hormones (see “Romeo and Juliet”). Of course it is an important step on the long, often rather difficult path towards finding oneself. If the hormones just “stop”, or if we realize that another person might do equally well – or better! – we get distressed and disconcerted (see “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”). A “violent” love affair at a mature age, of course, generates different problems and challenges, and it might not agree with the way we have come to live our lives. Antony is married after all. He gets lucky and his wife dies, but he remarries instantly for political reasons. Where he is concerned his love doesn’t really “fit in”, but it is probably so good that he wouldn’t dream of giving it up. In A+C it is not the usual horror with families, children, separation and divorce, instead there is an enormous political impact. No less for Cleopatra, for whom the independence of Egypt has to take priority even though she finds life without Antony deadly boring. And this is the kind of matter which I think Shakespeare found totally fascinating – what happens when these predicaments and this kind of passion get entangled.

By the way, I just finished the novel about Shakespeare’s theatre (“Fools and Mortals” by Bernard Cornwell) and hit on something we already discussed. I remember that I realized then that I always thought of Shakespeare as being some kind of director for his own plays but never thought about how exactly this might have worked at the time. I mean, there was no official “slot” for a director in the theatre at the time. Reading the novel, I realized that I imagined it exactly the way Bernard Cornwell did. The “sharers” – who owned the business – usually were actors as well, so they were always “in” on the process of producing plays. Those who ran the business automatically had a say which plays should be produced, and how. And everybody would have taken the job he was best qualified for. Bernard Cornwell came up with a good argument for his view in the epilogue – that there had been in fact some kind of director (who had to be one of the actors at the same time). This is how the production process is described in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Basically, everybody delivers his ideas, and then Peter Quince (alias William Shakespeare) says: No – this is the way we’ll do it! (And I suppose he was always right …) What was interesting as well is that FOR THE FIRST TIME I had a feeling about who Shakespeare might have been as a person even though – or maybe because – he is shown as remote and partially disagreeable from his brother’s perspective. Maybe this was the kind of “authenticity” I needed? (The brother, Richard Shakespeare, existed, of course, but we don’t know anything about him. Which indicates that he probably wasn’t an actor who lived in London but that he stayed in Stratford to run the family business. But as we don’t know anything for sure we are allowed to speculate …)

Cheers

Barbara

Friday, February 8th 2019
Subject: love and other important things

Dear Barbara,

After what you wrote I am totally thrilled about the play. I decided against reading it or reading anything about it. With “Julius Caesar” this worked great.

(…)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream! I never came upon the play being quoted as an example for making theatre at Shakespeare’s time, only upon Hamlet’s advice for the actors. You are right, this is how it might have been. What I would be most interested to know, though, is what the acting was really like at the time, not just the producing. I think, “Stage Beauty”, the film with Claire Danes and Billy Cudrup as an actor who played female parts, probably comes close. There were mostly “stock figures”: the woman, the clown, the young hero, the villain … Right, Shakespeare almost always crossed these expectations with his text, but we don’t know what the audience got out of it. The typical “stock figures” with kind of contradictory text. Must have been really interesting at the time! I think we still love it when our expectations are crossed, for example in films. Another reason to wish for a time machine: just to see the “technical” aspects of a certain period.

(…)

Cheers

Claudia

(Footnote for Claudia: I loved the bit about “stock figures” and crossed expectations which you wrote you didn’t understand anymore. So I left it in and just tried to make the translation more literal.)

Friday, February 8th 2019
Subject: answer love and other important things

Hi Claudia,

As to A+C – I imagine that the show might come across rather different if you didn’t have that much input as I had in this case. Probably better. I had a feeling that they made it quite transparent and that most people found it entertaining, whereas reading it had been rather tedious at first. We’ll see! I am looking forward to it. Now I am going on a trip with my mother and sisters over the weekend, and then Shakespeare on Monday – what can beat this!

By the way: I suddenly got a bunch of DVDs I ordered with Christopher Eccleston, and – FINALLY! – “Berlin Station” with Richard Armitage in a leading role. Not that it is THAT great, but after such a long time I am just enjoying it.

I think if we could see theatre at Shakespeare’s time we would just find it strange and it wouldn’t really work for us. Nonetheless I think that these plays triggered very similar feelings in people at the time, and that this is the reason for this “timelessness”: a feeling that Shakespeare (unlike other authors of his time) still speaks to us. Independently of what actors did at the time or are doing today, the main thing is that they can convey EXACTLY what the audience has to feel. (Which appears like a truism, but I fully understood what this means only when I saw “Macbeth” in Stratford.) In this respect, Shakespeare text on the stage still is the “gold standard”, in my experience. And I am convinced that this was the same at the time as it is today – as, in fact, “Stage Beauty” suggests. Bernard Cornwell had good ideas about acting as well. You can borrow the book if you want to.

Cheers, and have a nice weekend!

Barbara

Friday, February 8th 2019
Subject: answer love and other important things

Hi Barbara,

Berlin Station is not good? Pity … Richard Armitage promoted it a lot on twitter. (…)

Have a nice trip!

Claudia

Friday, February 8^th 2019

Subject: answer love and other important things

“Good” is relative, as always. I usually find it awkward when British actors speak American (or German!!!***). (He is playing an American who grew up in Berlin, and there are whole conversations in German. Funny!) Apart from that it is one of these series about Secret Services – not as “fashionable” as “The Spooks” but maybe more realistic instead. (Berlin automatically adds this element of reality which London hasn’t for me.) The dialogue is not that inspired either, which, in my opinion, limits the actors. On the other hand, we see him as somebody who is basically “nice”, for a change, at least not evil! Very good kissing in the first episode (Must have!).

Cheers

Barbara

To be continued …

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