William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright and poet, gave us an immortal body of work. He was born in Stratford-on-Avon to a Catholic family (an outlawed affiliation at the time), married Anne Hathaway in 1582 and had three children, and wrote 38 plays, 124 sonnets, and some odd bits between 1589 and 1613. We don't know much more about him, and of some of what I have said we are not certain.
Historical criticism, a movement with its beginnings in the Protestant Reformation, gave us the tools to study the Bible not so much as if it were the literal truth, but as if it were the truest document human beings could write, edit, and collect. The idea of studying texts this way was eventually applied to secular works. So, by the mid-1800s, the question arose: did Shakespeare write these plays and poems? Or did somebody else?
Instead of assuming that Shakespeare, among the most creative geniuses the world has ever known, revised his manuscripts on the fly and did not necessarily keep track of all of his emendations as well as he might, Joseph C. Hart, in the Romance of Yachting, 1848, put forth the notion that several authors had worked on the manuscripts we have. I am belittling his case by my language, but the idea gained ground and a group of scholars still believes we should look at Shakespeare's authorship this way.
We have even had a movie about this lately, Anonymous (directed by Roland Emmerich, performed by Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, and others, Columbia Pictures, 2011, Film), in which Edward De Vere, one of the top contenders for Shakespeare's slot in the alternate-Shakespeare view, is proposed.
What do I think about all this? Well, of course, I have already given you a hint, but my idea is that we have no real evidence to support this theory. For introducing this problem, the alternate-Shakespeare scholars should be locked up in their offices all day with nothing to read but gossip magazines.
As far as I am concerned, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet (The Oxford Shakespeare: Hamlet, William Shakespeare, edited by G. R. Hibbard [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008]), and this and his other works will continue to delight us from opening night to the present day to the "Conscience of the King" (Season 1, Episode 13, Star Trek, Desilu Productions, December 8, 1966, Television), star date 2817.6, and beyond.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Perry Mason
I love a hero, and my favorite hero of all time is Perry Mason.
Perry Mason has a long and honorable run. Created by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) and introduced in his first pulp-fiction novel, the Case of the Velvet Claw (Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, 1933), Perry stars in murder mysteries, radio serials, television shows, and made-for-tv movies from the first book until the last movie in 1993.
Perry is a fictional defense attorney in the Los Angeles of his day. (You can sometimes tell which year by the car he drives.) He defends his usually wealthy clients against murder charges by discovering the real killer and by using whatever legal, if unorthodox, means are available to him in the courtroom. He relies on his own wits and the help of his bright and loyal secretary, Della Street, and his man-about-town private investigator, Paul Drake.
Let me remark at this point that Perry is not the classic tragic hero with a fatal flaw; he is the good-guy hero of melodrama. For melodrama is story set to music, with the sound track cuing our feelings, whether joyful or fearful, like the organist at the silent-movie theater.
Aside from the fact that I love him (Oh! too much sharing?), there are numerous signs that Perry Mason is the good guy. Among them, I mention a repeated motif: His client is never guilty, no matter how bad things look in terms of motive, means, and opportunity. And another: When Perry confronts the bad guy in his home or office, the bad guy mixes himself a drink and offers one to his guest, but Perry never accepts. Perry is not a tee-totaller and often has a shot of whiskey or a glass of wine (after dark, of course) once a case is won. Even now, these details play out in modern television shows about crime.
Perry Mason is a man of strength, courage, and integrity. In short, a man after my own heart.
Well, how about a little dose of real life? Raymond Burr, who played Perry Mason on television, was gay, but, for fear of American public reaction, did not reveal his sexuality until late in his life. Apparently, a publicist made up a sad but phony story about a lost wife and son that stuck to him and helped camouflage his 35-year relationship to the love of his life, Robert Benevides. Burr did not outright deny the story about the wife and child; he just refused to discuss it.
But I'll take my heroes where I can get them, and Perry Mason, conflated with Raymond Burr, is still my hero, for his loyalty and steadfastness to his partner and his other great qualities.
Perry Mason has a long and honorable run. Created by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) and introduced in his first pulp-fiction novel, the Case of the Velvet Claw (Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, 1933), Perry stars in murder mysteries, radio serials, television shows, and made-for-tv movies from the first book until the last movie in 1993.
Perry is a fictional defense attorney in the Los Angeles of his day. (You can sometimes tell which year by the car he drives.) He defends his usually wealthy clients against murder charges by discovering the real killer and by using whatever legal, if unorthodox, means are available to him in the courtroom. He relies on his own wits and the help of his bright and loyal secretary, Della Street, and his man-about-town private investigator, Paul Drake.
Let me remark at this point that Perry is not the classic tragic hero with a fatal flaw; he is the good-guy hero of melodrama. For melodrama is story set to music, with the sound track cuing our feelings, whether joyful or fearful, like the organist at the silent-movie theater.
Aside from the fact that I love him (Oh! too much sharing?), there are numerous signs that Perry Mason is the good guy. Among them, I mention a repeated motif: His client is never guilty, no matter how bad things look in terms of motive, means, and opportunity. And another: When Perry confronts the bad guy in his home or office, the bad guy mixes himself a drink and offers one to his guest, but Perry never accepts. Perry is not a tee-totaller and often has a shot of whiskey or a glass of wine (after dark, of course) once a case is won. Even now, these details play out in modern television shows about crime.
Perry Mason is a man of strength, courage, and integrity. In short, a man after my own heart.
Well, how about a little dose of real life? Raymond Burr, who played Perry Mason on television, was gay, but, for fear of American public reaction, did not reveal his sexuality until late in his life. Apparently, a publicist made up a sad but phony story about a lost wife and son that stuck to him and helped camouflage his 35-year relationship to the love of his life, Robert Benevides. Burr did not outright deny the story about the wife and child; he just refused to discuss it.
But I'll take my heroes where I can get them, and Perry Mason, conflated with Raymond Burr, is still my hero, for his loyalty and steadfastness to his partner and his other great qualities.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Chinoiserie
My dear soul-mate friend gave me my own little piece of chinoiserie, the rice bowl her great-aunt carried with her on missions to 1890s China. Miss Nellie (her name, as far as I can recollect) hoped to convert to Christianity those whom she thought of as heathen. What courage! what faith! what a sense of righteousness! to head off to an unknown land hoping that foreigners will fill up your rice bowl.
Chinoiserie, French for "Chinese in design or evocative of Chinese design," became fashionable in seventeenth-century Europe and has been in vogue ever since. Although there are similar allusions to other exotic cultures in the decorative arts, Moroccan, for instance, or Persian, there is no all-encompassing word that I know of for these other influences.
Like the travelogue in literature, chinoiserie (and other decorative allusions) give Westerners a peek into another culture, so that, by momentarily becoming outsiders, we gain insight into our own foibles and proclivities and see the other as ourselves.
Amazingly, when Miss Nellie is carrying her rice bowl among the unsaved, it is not chinoiserie. It becomes chinoiserie when it takes up residence in a Western home like mine.
Chinoiserie, French for "Chinese in design or evocative of Chinese design," became fashionable in seventeenth-century Europe and has been in vogue ever since. Although there are similar allusions to other exotic cultures in the decorative arts, Moroccan, for instance, or Persian, there is no all-encompassing word that I know of for these other influences.
Like the travelogue in literature, chinoiserie (and other decorative allusions) give Westerners a peek into another culture, so that, by momentarily becoming outsiders, we gain insight into our own foibles and proclivities and see the other as ourselves.
Amazingly, when Miss Nellie is carrying her rice bowl among the unsaved, it is not chinoiserie. It becomes chinoiserie when it takes up residence in a Western home like mine.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Notre-Dame Cathedral
I love words.
The word cathedral is from the Greek καθέδρα, transliterated kathedra and meaning seat, in this case denoting the church where the bishop or archbishop has his throne. The Romans borrowed the word from the Greek and made it into cathedra, because there is no k in the Latin alphabet. Hence, cathedral.
When I was in Paris (me! I was in Paris!), we went to Notre-Dame de Paris. Even though I was over sixty, I climbed all 387 stairs to the roof. If you've done the climb, you know that this is the only way to see the gargoyles up close and you can guess that, yes, even though I am in pretty good shape, I had to rest a few minutes on the way up and was winded when I got there.
Turns out the gargoyles are part of the run-off system; troughs cut in their backs and mouths like spouts drain rainwater off the roof and away from the walls. The English borrowed gargoyle from the French gargouille, in turn from the Latin word for throat, gula (an onomatapoeic--or "sounds like"--word). Believers may have seen the gargoyles as grotesque beings who scared evil spirits away.
833 years later, in the feature-length cartoon Hunchback of Notre Dame (Walt Disney Animated Classics, 1996, Film) we find that gargoyles are like any other scary creature from the past, kind of funny and a carrier of cultural knowledge of sorts, with the gargoyles Victor and Hugo paying homage to the author of the 1831 novel of the same name.
While gargoyles were part of the original design, flying buttresses (arched exterior supports) were not. Some time between ground-breaking in 1163 and the turn of that century, the choir walls began to show stress fractures and the flying buttresses provided an elegant solution to an inelegant problem. The phrase flying buttress dates from this time and may have had a Frankish, and ultimately proto-Germanic, origin in bouter, to push against.
NOVA recently aired "Building the Great Cathedrals," PBS, December 26, 2012, Television. We are still adding flying buttresses today to shore up Gothic cathedrals with stress fractures in walls that are too tall for the weight they must bear.
The word cathedral is from the Greek καθέδρα, transliterated kathedra and meaning seat, in this case denoting the church where the bishop or archbishop has his throne. The Romans borrowed the word from the Greek and made it into cathedra, because there is no k in the Latin alphabet. Hence, cathedral.
When I was in Paris (me! I was in Paris!), we went to Notre-Dame de Paris. Even though I was over sixty, I climbed all 387 stairs to the roof. If you've done the climb, you know that this is the only way to see the gargoyles up close and you can guess that, yes, even though I am in pretty good shape, I had to rest a few minutes on the way up and was winded when I got there.
Turns out the gargoyles are part of the run-off system; troughs cut in their backs and mouths like spouts drain rainwater off the roof and away from the walls. The English borrowed gargoyle from the French gargouille, in turn from the Latin word for throat, gula (an onomatapoeic--or "sounds like"--word). Believers may have seen the gargoyles as grotesque beings who scared evil spirits away.
833 years later, in the feature-length cartoon Hunchback of Notre Dame (Walt Disney Animated Classics, 1996, Film) we find that gargoyles are like any other scary creature from the past, kind of funny and a carrier of cultural knowledge of sorts, with the gargoyles Victor and Hugo paying homage to the author of the 1831 novel of the same name.
While gargoyles were part of the original design, flying buttresses (arched exterior supports) were not. Some time between ground-breaking in 1163 and the turn of that century, the choir walls began to show stress fractures and the flying buttresses provided an elegant solution to an inelegant problem. The phrase flying buttress dates from this time and may have had a Frankish, and ultimately proto-Germanic, origin in bouter, to push against.
NOVA recently aired "Building the Great Cathedrals," PBS, December 26, 2012, Television. We are still adding flying buttresses today to shore up Gothic cathedrals with stress fractures in walls that are too tall for the weight they must bear.
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