Who were Shakespeare’s friends? The men in the company? Did he get friendly with patrons? Did nobles treat him in the way Hamlet does the first player? Did they see him as an intimate without any real exchanging of intimacy or names? Or was there intimacy? The Sonnets might suggest a complicated relationship between patronage and friendship.

Maybe friendships back in Stratford were a little less complicated. Maybe just saying hello to your neighbor on the way to church was less fraught with layers of status and power and need.

When did the language shift from hearing a play to seeing one? And how?

I understand that as a culture, there was a shift of the primacy of one sense over the other. We became a seeing people more than a hearing people at some point and of course the language must reflect that. But when? How? Did it happen on stage first? Did plays become more and more visual, demanding to be seen before being heard? Or is it about being seen at the play?

Even in the Elizabethan theatre, being seen there might well be a major part of the experience. Lights on, everywhere, watching one another as much as the play, the play compelled to be interesting so as to be more interesting than the people watching. Perhaps one went to hear a play because one really didn’t see it, one mostly listened while watching the crowd.

Maybe the switch happened when people started actually watching what was on the stage. Maybe it happened when they turned the lights off on the crowd and the lights on the stage and the work had to be something to see.

At the office holiday party last night, one employee asked another for tips on how to negotiate twitter. I too could use some tips so I listened closely to their conversation. All I managed to glean was that it was a good idea to follow Neal de Grasse Tyson. That was the solitary tip. I will go ahead and do that, sure. I already follow one Neil (@Neilhimself) and will happily follow another. Especially one so awesome. But still I only managed to dip my toes in the Twitterverse occasionally and it seems as vast and incomprehensible as the ocean. But with more celebrities.

After seeing the Magritte exhibit, we read more about him. According to one site, the English collector who commissioned three of his works, also gave him a place to work and live as he painted. This is a whole other brand of support for the arts. To invite an artist to live and work in your home?

It’s really wholehearted, this approach. And did he invite his wife as well? Did they see one another at breakfast before the days painting? Was there a stuff that tended to all? Was there an artist’s entrance, like the staff’s? I’m curious about the details, for sure. And also intrigued this month, in particular, the notion of not having to pay any rent is particularly piquant. To have a space to work and not to worry about how I’ll raise the money to live, well, that’s something.

In teaching young people, I have often had occasion to try and encourage this sort of behavior. I have never quoted this line but I think I might next time I’m engaged in this conversation.

In the past, I’ve taught scads of children the word “magnanimous.” I do this when they are inevitably injured by some other kid’s injustice and are determined to make everyone understand who the wronged party is. This is when I pull out “magnanimous” because the only way to get past check and balance, eye for an eye, social situations is for someone to choose to be magnanimous, to rise above the perceived wrong done to him and be the better person.

Sometimes students understand this and can really get behind the practice of magnanimity. But sometimes they need a little more convincing. That’s when I might pull out this line.

And truthfully, I’d love to live in a world where more people practiced being magnanimous. Sure, it can create a feeling of being a LITTLE bit too righteous, being a LITTLE bit more deserving than everyone else. But I’d take it over the sulky alternative.
And truthfully, I could probably afford to take a little of my own magnanimous medicine.

I quit a bunch of jobs recently and started truly freelancing out on my own. This month that means I have next to nothing in the bank and no idea how I will be paying the rent. And I just realized today how much better that feels than the months I was okay financially.

Is this because I enjoy poverty? Nope. I hate it. But what I have now, along with the poverty, is my honor. And my dignity. The last flush of years has meant swallowing one indignity after another, it has meant pretending some new ridiculous bit of paperwork didn’t bother me, pretending to be grateful for the crumbs of work handed out by Arts Education. I’m so much happier wondering where my next dollar is coming from than I was agreeing to another unpaid meeting.

But of course that’s just today. Tomorrow, when I’ve run out of rice, I might be singing another song.

That is as much to say as we are all sinners.
A view consistent with Hamlet’s point of view.
It would seem. What with the “We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us.”
But also, also at odds with his point of view, there is his “What a piece of work is a man” stuff.
I wonder if, perhaps, even this worldview is on a pendulum for Hamlet, swinging from, “We’re all the worst” to “We’re all the best.”
He is, after all, a man who has seen someone he loved, and perhaps idolized, emerge from the mouth of hell. (See “sulphorous and tormenting flames” )
A sense that even the best are doomed to the worst must trickle in to the character’s thought processes. He knows his father to have been a sinner but does he know his sins?

People who advocate for other people’s better treatment are some of my favorite people. I am particularly fond of those who have done this for me. After years of working at this one Arts organization, picking up whatever crumbs of work that fell to us, it was stunning to hear that one of our managers had stood up and insisted that we get a raise. I remember that she was outraged that we’d never had one before. And in that case, it was just what we deserved but we’d been trained not to expect anything. To imagine circumstances better than our own was almost impossible in that moment. But now I find myself attempting to imagine being used much better.

I’ve not given much thought to my epitaph lately. There was a period, when I was doing a lot of “work on myself” where I thought about it quite a lot. I examined bits of my behavior and wondered if that was really my goal. In other words, did I want my epitaph to read things like, “She was very appropriate.” Or “She was always nice.” Or “She never got into trouble.” Or “She didn’t ask for much.”? Nope.

And I couldn’t be credited for any of these things anymore – probably because I adjusted what I wanted for myself. i.e. I wanted my epitaph to read more like, “She achieved more than anyone thought possible.” Or “She made the impossible possible.” Or “She fought for the good stuff.” OR “She made good art.” Nay, “She made Great art.”
Still working on making some of those true.

Theatre has become so peripheral to the culture that I’m not sure this can be said anymore. It’s more Hollywood that chronicles our times these days. Which is a shame because the way theatre chronicles is different than film. In film, the filmed reality can almost supplant the reality reality – that is, it becomes almost MORE real. In theatre, we can tell truths that are perhaps not as realistic on the outside but are somehow more authentic on the inside – in the way that Mythic stories are not technically true but are almost more true for their structure.

I’m assuming Hamlet means abstract in the sense of a summary here but what if it were abstract in the sense of art. Theatre has the ability to abstract the truth, to distance us from it enough to see it.

But we are certainly not so well used at the moment. Or, rather, only a privileged few find themselves well used.

I noticed a guy in the credits of a Shakespeare play I know because he went to acting school with some women I know. He’s not playing a great part, sure – he’s still, like, I don’t know, Vernon or Angus or something but he’s working. And he’s working all the time in little Lord roles like this, messengers and such.

Meanwhile, there are no women’s roles that fill the background in this way. None of his female classmates can step into the minor female roles, because there’s only a handful of them and they get filled with a particular kind of beauty. So this guy, a white dude, finds himself well used or at least, adequately used – simply because the times are such that his type is much in demand while the women and/or people of color are not.

But perhaps, this little bit was Shakespeare trying to give his profession a little boost, trying to let people know his people should get a little bit of respect. And he was right, the people he wrote about, no matter what they ACTUALLY did, are remembered as he wrote them. Exhibit A: Richard the Third.