Pah, just missed midnight, and I'm still a post behind if I want to average one a day (there was no post on Wednesday the 29th) but anyway, Act Two of the definitiver Richard II is now uploading, and will be posted below once done. There were ninety minutes of recording to cut down this time, but I'm glad I'm having another run, now I'm clearer what's going on: Richard having no idea actually how hard he's pushing people's buttons is a lot more interesting to play longterm, Bolingbroke feels like someone people might now be genuinely happy to meet, and – upping the Celtic quotient – York's more fun to play now he's not so stiff-jawed and uptight and sounds like Titus Andronicus, another ill-starred old soldier whose loyalty to the state turns him against his own son – that's all in the future though; right now, it's just a more enjoyable voice to complain in. York should bark. Its partly his overestimation of the power of that bark that loses him so many allies. And it's nice to recast a voice. If you're following these videos, I think that's Mark Antony's voice as Mowbray, and possibly Cassius' as Harry Percy, but his part's going to be built up.
That's John Wilkes Booth above left playing Mark Antony, ironically perhaps given he was the Booth who'd actually go on to assassinate someone, and that's his initially more famous brother Edwin as Brutus to his right with their brother Junius Jr. as Cassius. Maybe of all the big roles in Julius Caesar, Antony was just considered the most actor-proof. Has any other single play proved so historically significant? Assassination's played such a disproportionate part in the history of America, a country so influenced by an idea of Rome, that idea so influenced by Julius Caesar. Here's the full story:
And, again according to wikipedia, as early as 1937 Orson Welles was reframing the play as a parable of Fascism, a political phenomenon Shakespeare documents with astonishing acuity given he was writing over three hundred years before it happened, but maybe it all seemed so familiar because in providing us with the warning Shakespeare was also writing the handbook. And what could we do with that warning, anyway? Cassius' contempt in Act One for the people he's proposing to "liberate" seems just as prescient, although not necessarily unjustified given Shakespeare's depiction of the mob. It's almost a trademark of Shakespearean
tragedy that it's always the wrong people who are right.
Here's the whole thing:
And here's "Titus" again, showing just how bad things would get. The opening victory of the chaotic but ruthless tyrant Saturninus over the principled but patronising democrat Bassianus is almost Julius Caesar in microcosm:
And here's "Shrew", doing for the institution of marriage what "Two Gents" did for courtly love:
And here's "Two Gents". We get to call them these now that we're experts:
And finally here's Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year:
So that's over fifteen hours now of me talking out of the side of my mouth, something I had no idea I did until I made these. No, I like it. Shows a lack of training. Adds character. Thanks again to all who've supported me, and this, and here's a rattling cup for anyone who wants to be in that number.
(Titus' sleevelessness seems a bold costume choice, given what's coming.)
I've not much more to say: Shakespeare never stopped having fun with meta-theatrical villains, but Aarons' successors would concentrate more on the mechanics of a convincing performance, rather than just seeing what they could get away with. As indeed would Shakespeare.
Concerning the play's many classical allusions, Natalie Haynes
Stands Up for the Classics – now on its sixth series – is more than just a great show, it's an education, and here's her episode on Ovid, whose Metamorphoses was such a huge influence on not just this play but every character in it. Natalie doesn't mention the story of Philomel – and who can blame her – but she does talk about
Actaeon (whose fate Tamora threatens Bassianus with) thus: "It's a recurring theme in the Metamorphoses that when people lose their power, they lose their voice."
In a reading, losing one's voice can mean complete disappearance; but turning the pages, and writing in the sand, Lavinia gains her voice again, and that's why I thought we should hear it. It's why I also wanted us to hear the rustling of Titus' letters, and why I didn't want Chiron and Demetrius to scream, because they too should vanish as soon as their mouths are stopped. Performing a reading, rather than a staging, one notices far more the absences resulting from violence – such as Lavinia's voice, or Titus'
hand – rather than the resultant gore. So I got lucky there.
When first staged, I think they used real blood, purchased from the butchers, but does
anyone knows how what they did for the scene with Titus' cousins firing arrows up to
Heaven? Elizabethan theatres had open rooves, of course, so maybe the actors
just fired arrows into the air and out into the street. That must have
been fun.
Finally, while shedding tears over Titus' corpse, and
deciding the fates of Aaron and the bodies of Saturninus and Tamora, I don't think anybody in the last scene ever mentions Lavinia, even in passing.
Long before I read or saw Titus Andronicus I'd known how it ended, because of Brian Cox's Acting in Tragedy posted above, whose standalone quote – "One of the myths I'd like to dispel* is that tragedy cannot be funny" – became a guiding principle for me, and something I felt the play itself really seemed to be leaning into when I finally got round to reading it at university. As I said in my introduction on Monday though (okay, Tuesday,) the tone of Titus isn't a mystery, it's Horror, so I tried to give it the full Tobe Hooper, which helped me realise I'll probably need to take a break soon.
Knackering.
However smudgy some of this week's work might be, though, at 3:48am on this Saturday morning I can honestly I say I'm really proud of how this turned out. Last Sunday I noted some of the decisions I'd already made (containing spoilers if you haven't already seen the video below):
"The Andronici will probably be Welsh: Titus deep
and exhausted, Marcus level, Lucius bordering on the shrill... Aaron will be a cockerney villain, and cry uncontrollably with laughter recounting his evils in Act 5.... The eating
of the pies will bring Titus no solace at all though, there's no such thing as revenge, and the murder of his daugher will be a
last ditch attempt to find solace in the precedents of mythlogy."
That last decision wasn't necessarily what I ended up playing, which probably comes across as more premeditated, but I knew I had to decide whether or not Lavinia was consenting to her own death, and since in this presentation she'd have no presence, because she had no lines, there was no way to signal that consent, so it would have to be without. And since I didn't fancy playing "hey, it's an honour killing, they were different times, potato potarto" – and there's nothing in the text to suggest that I should – the whole story had to be secretly heading towards this moment, a far darker ending than the more famous serving up of Chiron and Demetrius in pasties, and so tradition had to be monstered, and especially the folly of Titus' even small-c conservatism. The extensive classical references made more sense here too; people were trying to understand their horrible lives through the stories that mirror them. All that, I realised on Sunday. Here are some things I only realised today:
I probably had to decide in what state Aaron's child was presented in the final scene, as there's no clue in the actual text whether they're alive or dead. I went with Lucius keeping his oath (that's me mewling in the background, you can probably tell,) and I really enjoy how it affects Aaron's final line... Aaron's mocking pronunciation of "god" felt like maybe one quirk too many, until I came to Lucius having to say the word immediately afterwards, and then it felt like a good and useful gag, speaking of which... I hadn't been paying nearly enough attention to
Tamora this week. I'd decided she would be Scottish but that was
kind of it (at least I'd decided Bassianus would be boring). So I finally put more work into her today, and that "yeah, maybe reel it in a touch?" glance she gives Chiron was my favourite thing to look back and watch... After editing the video, I realised I'd unconsciously used rain again as a shorthand
for exile. I just thought the scene could do
with some thunder... Having decribed the Emperor as a villian yesterday, I love the intimation that if Titus had actually just come to him with Lavinia's accusations, he would have got justice.
Here's act five, lovelies, and a playlist of all five acts is here.
Has this whole "play every single character in Shakespeare" project just been a cover for me wanting to play Aaron the Moor? It feels a bit like that at the moment. Act Four contains one my favourite scenes in drama and I've always loved how un-Machiavellian a villain Aaron is, but the Emperor, Aaron's opposite in many ways, is an interesting villain too, and this play really nails how many appalling human traits and weaknesses can become frustrating strengths if you're already at the top. Not positives. Strengths. Like acid blood. Saturninus' paranoia certainly seems a more useful superpower than Tamora's cunning. I did toy with providing a voice for the tongueless Lavinia but it just sounded like Chewbacca, or even worse, when I tried dialling down the distress, like Sammy the Crab. Anyway I'm off now to sleep and perform extensive checks on my privilege but in the meantime here's the fourth act of Titus Andronicus, containing racism, rape, and murder, so be warned, and also me trying to do Jim from Friday Night Dinner - actually maybe this whole project has been so I could do that.
Features two deaths, a birth, and many people's favourite Shakespearean comeback.
Words by Alan Moore (again) who hates this now. Art by Brian Bolland, who doesn't.
Appropriately, Simon goes Full Shakespeare's thirteenth episode is Titus Andronicus' Act Three, featuring heaps of wailing and gnashing of teeth lightened only by a quick appearance from the most committedly evil character in English literature. There's no way it wasn't going to be knackering but still, I'm sorry my reading's not a bit more lucid, screaming iambic pentameter isn't much fun to watch. "Going mad" is such a staple of literature, and especially horror, you'd be forgiven for thinking it actually happened. Trauma can make a person feel more removed from reality but that's not the same as "going mad", and to his credit "madness" in Shakespeare was, or at last became, a quite specific idea, a liminal place whose inhabitants - those suddenly hit by trauma or depression - would react as if they've suddenly realised they're characters in a play, physically present in a work of fiction, unrecoverable by reality. So Shakespeare found the stage a useful machine for exploring grief, and even the famous tea-towel-adorning "All the World's A Stage" is spoken by a character called "the melancholy Jacques". In Elizabethan medicine, "melancholy" means "manic". It's no more a celebration than "Born In the USA".
Trigger Warnings: More mutilation, a lot of crying, and the death of a fly.
Catching up on the classics, if not on sleep, and still on the subject of sound effects in iMovie, the single cue above is all that came up when I searched for "horns". It is also a peculiarly accurate six-second summary of the entirety of Titus Andronicus' absolutely pitiless Act Two, presented below with some relief but, after unusually little deliberation for me at least, ultimately no comedy horns.
Trigger Warnings: Rape, Murder, Mutilation, Racism, Hunting and Falling Down Holes.
At midnight last night there was a cut of Act One of Titus Andronicus
all finished and ready to be uploaded to youtube, but it had no
"flourishes" - the trumpets and drums repeatedly referenced in the
stage directions. It had no sound design at all in fact, and that was fine, obviously, these were just meant to be readings. But I had really begun to enjoy how much scene-setting, even world-building, could be done with the right effect (as I said here) and ideally I wanted to give something similar to Titus, especially given how different it was to what had come before and how much the play's version of Rome bordered
on Fantasy (like all Horror). The thing is, though, I'm very indecisive, and
choosing what to add, and whether or not to keep it, takes up at least a third, maybe a half of the total time I'll spend on these videos, and that seems mad. An earlier edit of
Act One (about nine in the evening) was plastered in iMovie's "Suspense" cue in place of the flourishes, a simple electronic chord nothing like a flourish, but an abstraction
which set a mood and didn't sound too ridiculous, yet ultimately had too little going for it beyond just being tolerable (and even that was questionable given how often I was using it - there's only so many times you can hear a "Suspense" chord before it goes from foreboding to dithering). So I dropped all the cues, uploaded the act without flourishes, went for a night walk, and began to think more and more about the "Vintage News" march that I'd earlier dismissed as too wacky.
Material is limited on a night walk.
I did love how un-alien the march had suddenly made Rome, by
which I don't mean that it stopped Rome seeming weird, but that it made
Rome's weirdness far less easy to write off as alien. It meant I wouldn't be presenting the story as a trip to a faraway, savage time, but as a nightmare just a couple of wrong decisions away, in which duty, tradition, processions, seeking for comfort in precedent, the celebration of war and just the very concept of "victory" were all complicit, and fair targets. And so by the time I'd got back from my walk, sticking an old newsreel march with no inkling of tragedy through a "Cathedral" effect to lose the crackle and then playing that over a human sacrifice felt like getting a lot off my chest, which seemed a valid feeling to have when presenting Titus Andronicus. So I re-edited the act (thre's always tweaks) re-downloaded it in place of the original edit, managed to render only about ten minutes before it crashed my laptop, crashed my laptop trying to fix it, crashed my laptop again, crashed my laptop, went to bed, didn't sleep much, woke, had an idea, thought I'd fixed it, uploaded it onto youtube, found out I'd fixed it but hadn't actually finished the edit before uploading it - huge thanks to @Christelle_C for the head-sup - took it down again and had another tinker and so that's why it's only going up now. And why it has the tune for Adam and Joe's "Big British Castle" plastered all over it. Sorry. I know I said I'd keep my youtube and blog more separate form now but, guys, really, this is all I have to show right now so Ta - as I say - daaa:
