Rue du Caliban

[Totenkopf]

Shakespeare
(EP claimed the name
was from old french,
as in Jacque's Pere).
doesn't appeal to some of us;
tho' the Tempest was
sort of fun-- Gene Roddenberry
pulp for the hepcats of King James' time.
Jimmy I another corpulent
syphillis-infected English pederast,
so they say.
shit stuck to a throne. Jimmy
commissioned the Tempest
some old fop informed us.
One could go on ad nauseum
about the various intrigues.
Gonzalo as naive softie gauchiste.
Antonio seems fairly close to
John Giotti type.
Machiavelli, Inc.
But Prospero and Caliban
interaction fascinates a bit:
both derive from, that is to say
brought forth by the
same Daemon ultimately.

[Arcadia]

good bye to renacimiento perspective
continuum of space and time
isabeline scena
voices, voices, voices

(King Lear, Othello, McBeth, Mucho ruido y pocas nueces, Romeo and Juliet, Antonio & Cleopatra... Hamlet is still my favourite!! - I don´t remember if I read or not The Tempestad..mmm)

[Totenkopf]

Macbeth is one of my faves. Mucho ruido, si. Loud? or something. Sound and fury. But Shakespeare has been tamed down, neutered, had a lot of latex put on him. The comedies take precedence in Miss Marple land, and really Ss is not nice, not pleasant. Lady Macbeth is not jus another burb hausfrau. Macbeth reads about like Dante, if not Poe or HP Lovecraft. I think Macbeth and Othello were both meant to alarm people, and not simply entertainment as is conceived. The Tempest is not as "tragic" or dark as the tragedies, but in some ways weirder. Methnks Bill S. was on a way bad trip--sort of Poe-like, but more intense---and yet few modern readers pick up on the malevolence. Or akin to those old bizarre paintings by like Bosch or Brueghel.

[Lightning Rod]

thespians won't even utter the word
they call it The Scottish Play

I don't think Willie delved into the McCabre
that much, but he certainly did with this one

[Totenkopf]

Aye. Bad thezpians are perhaps the worst sort
in artiste hall. In ways actors have done much to
weaken Shakespeare. Polanski's Macbeth flick
was fairly dread tho (howze about those topless Weird sisters. Yeah). As was Orson W: start with shot
of heads on pikes.

There's a lot of McCabre in SS. Measure for measure as well. Hamlet too.

[Lightning Rod]

the Poe analogy was apt, tote

'out out damned spot'
is the same dramatic exchange as
the beating of the old man's heart in Poe's tale
blood guilt

[Totenkopf]

Perhaps. Or the narrator of Cask of Amontillado. Much of that first person narrator writing in Poe's stories seems a bit Shakespeare like: Iago-esque as well. Macbeth is a bit more soldier like, and indeed tragic than Iago tho.' Shakespeare like a great screenwriter knew how to create the sort of appealing and entertaining villain or criminal: tho' some actors go for the melodrama villain (whether Iago or Edmund, Antonio), when its' really a bit weirder. Macbeth not quite as Hannibal Lectorish as Iago. I wondered if Polanski was making some strange reference to the Manson spectacle with his odd soft-porn version of Macbeth. Charlie's not Macbeth tho. '

Welcome to Iagoville.

[Lightning Rod]

of course SSpeare has been endlessly mined
just as he mined others before him

how many movies and plays and musicals besides West Side Story have been re-writes of Romeo and Juliet? Ah, Lenny does Willie--dream made in heaven.

Let's keep stealing from each other. It's a sign of a good economy.

[Totenkopf]

It's not just his themes that have been mined, but his language. Again, as EP said, there are some who think merely by their intensity they will be Shakespeare or Shelley in like 6 months or so (you too can be a literary superstar!). After reading a bit of Pound, one sadly realizes that the great scribes are made, not hatched. But even Calibans may shriek something interesting every 1000 words or so.