Das Wintermärchen

After rereading Hermione's trial scene from The Winter's Tale, I tried to apply my focus (Germanic) to it.  It was hard.  I read that scene in German, and didn't learn anything new (that applied to the play, I did notice some very interesting things about the text of the play, but that is more historical linguistics, and probably uninteresting to anyone but myself)

Then I started researching the history of this play in Germany.  In addition to finding the following clip, of a fun student version of the play from the Universität Bielefeld,


Angriff des Bären aus Shakespeares Wintermärchen

Compagnie Charivari | Myspace Video

A Sad Tale's Best for Winter

I have finished the play The Winter's Tale, and I rather enjoyed it.

It seems to me that Shakespeare is continuing themes he addressed in Othello, with jealousy and irrationally reacting to perceived wrongs.  I feel sorry for poor Leontes, but in this play he has no Iago to blame, his jealousy is all his own.  His reaction to what he sees is all his own.

I found an interesting thin on Wikipedia when doing some cursory research.  I will have to look up the source that is cited and follow up on this, but on Wikipedia it says :

Eric Ives, the biographer of Anne Boleyn (1986),^[4] believes that the play is really a parallel of the fall of the queen, who was beheaded on false charges of adultery on the orders of her husband Henry VIII in 1536. There are numerous parallels between the two stories – including the fact that one of Henry's closest friends, Sir Henry Norreys, was beheaded as one of Anne's supposed lovers and he refused to confess in order to save his life – claiming that everyone knew the Queen was innocent. If this theory is followed then Perdita becomes a dramatic presentation of Anne's only daughter, Queen Elizabeth I.

( Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn 2004:421: in spite of other scholars' rejection of any parallels between Henry VIII and Leontes, asserts "the parallels are there", noting his article "Shakespeare and History: divergencies and agreements", in Shakespeare Survey38 (1985:19–35), p 24f.)

King Lear / König Lear

Once again I am reading this play in both English and German, but this time it's a little easier.  I have a copy of this play that has the original English text on the left side of the page and a German translation (from Raimund Borgmeier, Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz, Bernd Santesson, and Dieter Wessels).  This makes it easier to go back and forth and see just how the German text compares to the English.

The first thing I noticed is that the German translation abandoned the poetic structure of the English text, not even attempting to have a meter or a rhyme.  This is most evident in Lear's opening speech, which looks organized and separated by lines on the left hand of my book, but is a big, long paragraph of text on the right.

The other thing I noticed is the many footnotes in my German text.  Most of these, especially in the opening scene with Gloucester and Kent, explain the wordplay and puns which do not translate well, as anybody who has tried to tell a joke in a foreign language knows.   One of my favorite German jokes makes absolutely no sense in English.

Zwei Jäger treffen sich im Wald.  Beide sind tot.

The joke here is in the double meaning of 'sich treffen' which can mean either to meet or to hit (as in with ammunition). Thus the joke is that two hunters meet or hit each other in the forest.  Both are dead.  As I said, it doesn't work well in English, but there you go.

Taming of the Shrew Act 1 / Erste Akt

I have read the first act of the play, including the induction.  I really like the induction, and I'm sad that it's cut out of most productions as unnecessary.  Partly this is because, when my high school did this I played the part of Christopher Sly, but mostly because I think it sheds light on one of the main themes of the play:  Identity and how  people act when they are treated a certain way.  
Sly is a drunkard found asleep in the streets, and a passing Lord decides to have some fun and dress him up and pretend that he's noble.  The servants take him and dress him and serve him as if he were a Lord, until Christopher Sly believes he is a lord.  The line is "Would not the beggar then forget himself?", "Würde der Bettler nicht sein selbst vergessen?" and the servant says, "he shall think by our true diligence he is no less than what we say he is."  "er soll es glauben daß er nichts anders ist, als wir ihn nennen".


I see the same theme played out in the play, with Katherina.  She is a shrew and as others keep calling her a shrew she continues to be a shrew. But when Petruchio treats her like a lady, like a respectable wife, she begins to believe that she can be that.  For me, the play is not about "taming" a woman, making her subservient. but allowing her to be something more than others allow her to be.  It's the medieval version of Johnny Lingo -- he calls her an 8-cow wife so she begins to believe that she is worth 8 cows.  More on this as I continue to read the play and find lines that speak to this point.

Kate and Petruchio in the Polynesian islands?

Taming of the Shrew: An Overview

This week we are taking a look at Shakespeare's comedies.  I originally signed up for Twelfth Night, but after today's class discussion, and talking about Taming of the Shrew, I am thinking that I will read this play.
I have read this play before, but not really all that well.  I was in this play in High School, but I just memorized my part and was done with it.  I am looking forward to a more involved reading of this play, especially looking at the ideas of feminism and gender roles and family relationships in the play.  I will also be reading this play in English and German, comparing the language and the phrases used to see if there are any distinct differences in the play in these two languages.

First: The title in German is Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung, which is Taming of the Unruly, Rebellious, Wayward, Stubborn.
I don't know if that changes the meaning or interpretation of the play at all, but it at least makes it a little more understandable.  I remember the first time I heard about the Taming of the Shrew I thought it was about an actual shrew, the little vole-like animal.

Wouldn't be hard to tame, honestly.

Well, we'll see what else I find as I study this play in depth.  Stay tuned.

An Apology for Richard

I have been reading and writing about Richard II lately, but today in class I sat in on a small group discussion about Richard III, a play and a character that I am very familiar with.
First, there is no relation between the two Richards, who ruled England nearly 80 years apart.  Just the briefest of history lessons: Richard II was deposed by Henry IV, whose grandson Henry VI was deposed by Edward IV, who died leaving the throne empty for his brother Richard III.  


As I mentioned, I have study Richard III quite a bit,  two years ago I wrote a 6 page paper in defense of Richard, and last year I wrote a 16 page paper defending him and comparing him to a character in a German novel who I saw as very similar.  Let me set up my defense of Richard, but with one caveat: I do not condone Richard for what he did.  He is a villain, a devil, an evil, evil man who committed many atrocities.  But, I can begin to understand him and where he came from.


The question is asked again and again, "Why is Richard the way he is?"  And for me, part of the answer has to be, That is the way society made him.

Shakespeare's history plays: War and Kings

Shakespeare's history plays are generally split among two tetrologies, the first comprising of Henry VI, Part 1; Henry VI, Part 2; Henry VI, Part 3; and Richard III  and the second being the plays Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V, though the events detailed in the second tetrology happened chronologically before the events of the first.  And it all comes down to wars and kings.  


To understand fully the background of these plays, one needs to understand English history, specifically the events of the Hundred Years' War and the War of the Roses.  I have studied this part of English history a bit, so let me attempt to give a little of the historical background.


Let's start with Richard II, who was king from 1367 - 1400.  (To remember the different Richards in English history, just remember your Clint Eastwood: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  Richard I = the Good. He was Richard the Lionhearted who led the crusades, you'll see him at the end of Robin Hood coming home.  Richard II= the Bad, generally considered a bad king, did not govern very well.  And Richard III is the Ugly, he's the hunchback, evil king who killed his brothers and his nephews to get the throne.)

The three Richards, Hollywood style.

Wilhelm Shakespeare -- Shakespeare in Germany

William Shakespeare is loved the world over, but nowhere near as much as in Germany.  From some simple Google searches on Shakespeare and Germany, I have learned that the oldest Shakespeare Society in the world is German: Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, founded in 1864, English acting troops brought the Bard to Germany in the early 1700s with performances translated into German, and there have been so many translations of Shakespeare's plays into German that most Germans actually believe that Wilhelm Shakespeare was a German!

As a student of German, who has loved this language and this culture for over a decade now,  I find this fascinating.  I have found several translations of these plays online and they have evolved as the modern German language has evolved.  Shakespeare is very much alive in German, because he is allowed to be translated and retranslated, where in English there are always those purists who frown on anything but the actual, authentic, original text.  But Shakespeare has been allowed to thrive in Germany precisely because he is a foreigner.  And yet, he is very much a German.  A poem from the German Shakespeare Society reads,

Seht, heut' gesellt, im heil'gen Bund der Dritte,
Zu Deutschlands Dioskuren sich der Brite,
Auch er ist unser...

(See, today in the holy bond joins as the third, to Germany's dioscuri (referring to Schiller and Goethe), the Brit.  He, too, is ours.)