THE YEAR IN REHASH: MAY - How Antony found the Goddess and what he did to her when he found her.

Continuing the review of my favourite or at least more conspicuous posts from the last twelve months: I barely left the flat in May. I was getting money from the Government and had no complaints. Everyone was pretty much keeping indoors, but over on the blog Mark Antony was about to rally a mob that would turn Brutus' dream of a Rule of the People to flaming shit. Here in other words is me doing "Friends, Romans, Countrymen". From May the 20th...

 

Nyan Eris

 I'm glad I looked up Atë, mentioned in Antony's curse below. Daughter of the goddess Discordia (above) whose golden apple sparked the Trojan War, Atë is the goddess of ruinous mistakes. According to wikipedia she walks upon the heads of men rather than the earth, possibly another mistake, and like the goddess Brigid she also appears a lot online in paintings by artists who like to use all the colours. No spoilers for Act Three, but I enjoy thinking of Mark Antony as a secret Discordian, a nihilist hedonist, like Charles Manson. There was a time I would have tried to play him less nakedly phoney, but people don't really need to believe a man to follow him, they just need him to give them a role, and it's still astonishing to me how good Shakespeare was at nailing this. The inventor of Rory's Story Cubes might also be a secret Discordian, by the way, given the cubes bear not one but both of the goddess' symbols - the apple and the wheel of chaos - handy for today's opening title anyway.

Alternative titles: The Reading of the Will, or "Pardon me, Julius"

How Antony found the Goddess and what he did to her when he found her.

Nyan Eris

 

 I'm glad I looked up Atë, mentioned in Antony's curse below. Daughter of the goddess Discordia (above) whose golden apple sparked the Trojan War, Atë is the goddess of ruinous mistakes. According to wikipedia, she walks upon the heads of men, rather than the earth, possibly another mistake, and like the goddess Brigid she also appears a lot online in paintings by artists who like to use all the colours. No spoilers for Act Three, but I enjoy thinking of Mark Antony as a secret Discordian, a nihilist hedonist, like Charles Manson. There was a time I would have tried to play him less nakedly phoney, but people don't really need to believe a man to follow him, they just need him to give them a role. And it's still astonishing to me how well Shakespeare nailed this. 

 By the way, the inventor of Rory's Story Cubes might also be a secret Discordian, given the cubes bear not one but both of the goddess' symbols: the apple and the wheel of chaos Handy for today's opening title, anyway.

 

 

Alternative titles: The Reading of the Will, or "Pardon me, Julius"

Julius Caesar: A Final Banging On About (+ the works)

 That's John Wilkes Booth above left, playing Mark Antony – ironic 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 has played such a disproportionate part in the history of America, a country so very influenced by the idea of Rome, an idea so very 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.

"Poor Remains of Friends"

Theatre's Second Lousiest Birthday

 Just when I think I couldn't love Gaius Cassius Longinus any more, in Act Five he turns out to "hold Epicurus strong and his opinion" – which I did have to look up – but which puts him squarely on Team Cosmos, as opposed to the Chaos summoned by Mark Antony. Reading Epicurus' wikipedia entry, it's hard to find anything to disagree with: "He advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends" and it's not until I came to perfom the play that I realised this is exactly how Brutus doesn't spend his final scene. Instead, he's surrounded by people we've never met – presumably all that's left – which makes his embarrassed whispering in their ears even more pitiful (we have to assume the whispering is embarrassed, don't we?) SPOILERS: Like Cassius, of course, Shakespeare would also die on his birthday,* but we have to assume he didn't know that when he was writing. Here's Act Five.

*  

 

* UPDATE: This, I've since learned, is probably untrue, as we don't actually have a date for Shakespeare's birth, just the day it was registered.

Titus Bemoan (York's from Wales now. And Lancaster's from York.)

 

I looked up what a "gorget" is (source).

 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.