I have found it so difficult to call people on this sort of thing. Before I quit being a teaching artist, people were constantly revealing what an unworthy thing they made of me. It’s what drove me out of the profession. It was almost never personal – but my skills and thoughts and experience were never valued or recognized. It was clear how replaceable we all were. The system was becoming more systemized so that skill became less essential. It became about people who could execute a program, who could replace the widgets in the factory. It’s cookie cutter arts education and you know – even factory cookies are delicious and not entirely without value but sending a recipe innovator in to do the job of cutting out the cookies is a little cruel. It’s clear how unworthy a thing those innovators are in a cookie factory.
I have not the skill.
She said, “I’m not a great writer. I’m not Voltaire. I couldn’t write…” and here she quoted a real corker of a line from Voltaire, which I cannot remember.
She wants to be able to write something to incite the masses but finds that she is best able to write academically.
It isn’t self-deprecation, she says. It’s just knowing your skill set.
But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony.
Sometimes it feels like one of the goals of teaching theatre/Shakespeare/performance is a kind of harmony in the classroom. Not literal harmony, of course – and not unison. We’re not after everyone doing the same thing. But harmony – multiple voices working together to create a coherent whole – even if there are dissonant notes or the occasional wrong note.
Some groups take to the work like ducks take to water. I do not have to fight them and explain all the factors. I offer what I offer and they soak it up. Some groups take a while to buy in. They clunk along for a while until it becomes easier – like an old engine taking a while to get started but then they get running just fine to get the job done.
And then, there are the groups whose issues outside the classroom are so great, their brains so noisy with trouble, that it’s always a slog. These cannot I command to any utterance of harmony.
Look you, these are the stops.
The stops.
Of course the stops.
The breath goes through the people
Flowing out through all the holes –
Making the notes it was made to make –
But then with a finger
You stop the breath there,
Forcing it to exit elsewhere.
The action always is the breath
Covering the holes or ventages or stops
Is like massaging the breath
Moving it around, sending it to new places,
Shifting sound with breath
Through the stops and releases
Give it breath with your mouth; and it will discourse most eloquent music.
There’s nothing specifically erotic about this passage in the play but this sentence, out of context, has several erotic elements. Mouths, breath and music generally call to mind sensual pleasures. Eloquent music strokes the ear like a lover strokes the skin. In the right mouth, breath can be enough to stoke the amorous fires. Mouth, breath, music. Say this line right and it could be a seduction.
Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb;
It is funny when we distinguish the thumb from the fingers – I mean, it is one of the five. There isn’t always a good reason for it – but in this case – Hamlet’s right, when you play the recorder, your thumb does something quite different from the other fingers. Look at this – Hamlet and Shakespeare giving ACTUAL instruction on recorder playing.
Of course – if this were the only instruction you had for how to play the recorder, you probably wouldn’t get very far.
Ventages is a fun word for holes, though.
It is as easy as lying.
The This American Life story about a guy who’d been raised to be 100% honest ended up demonstrating what a lot of value there is in lying. This guy basically had to learn how to lie or perhaps even more importantly, to not tell the truth all the time.
I was struck by the way he learned that total honesty was essentially selfish – that it meant he was not considering how others might feel when he expressed himself. And that’s what it can be – expressing one’s self – without much attention on how one’s self might impact another. Every “honest” person I’ve ever met proves this theory. The people who regularly defend their cruelty with “I’m just being honest” are habitually unconcerned with other people’s feelings. It presumes a kind of moral high ground, a superiority over the poor thin skinned other who just can’t handle the truth.
And certainly at some point honesty is more important than feelings – but the reverse is also true – and this guy’s journey makes that clear.
For some lying is easy. For some honest is easier. Depends on your bias toward your own truth or other people’s feelings.
I know no touch of it, my lord.
The café I’m in is full of small clusters of high school students (or possibly community college students who are often hard to distinguish from high schoolers.) One cluster is three boys and two girls. Both clusters seem to be spending the bulk of their time and energy in taunting the girls. There have been multiple jokes about rape – and not just rape in general but specifically about raping those particular girls. It would seem that signing up to hang with these kids means signing up for teaching and taunting in the worst way – either as a giver or a receiver.
I can see now why I avoided both crowds and boys as a young person. There’s no escaping the misogyny – the only way to belong is to find these sorts of shenanigans amusing. And not only do I not find them amusing now, I did not find them amusing then. I couldn’t even pretend to laugh at stuff like this – I have no idea where one even finds the will to stay in such a crowd.
I do beseech you.
Origins of “beseech”?
This is one of those phrases that has, after so many years with Shakespeare, become to familiar to me, I barely notice it when it turns up in a play. I forget, sometimes, that its meaning might not be immediately obvious to a new Shakespeare reader. It’s one of those that most people can work out from context, with a little time and attention, but it can slow down some readers.
Sometimes in reading something with fresh readers, I’m called upon to explain things like this that have become so familiar to me, I ‘ve forgotten details I once knew about them.
This happened with the word “Marry” the other day – as in, “Marry, sir” as in. . .a word that doesn’t mean what we THINK it means in that context. I found myself struggling to find an appropriate paraphrase. I went with “By gum” and “By George” but after sleeping on it, I realized, “You see” would be a better equivalency.
In this case – beseech has a nice direct corollary in Beg or Implore – but it does make me curious about where it comes from.
Believe me, I cannot.
I can do a great many things. Sometimes it feels a little silly. Last night at my Shakespeare workshop for seniors, one of my students said, “Do you sing? You sing right?” Fact is, I do, yes.
“Did you ever sing with a group? Did you ever think of doing this?”
As a matter of fact, I did. Yes. I used to have a band.
“What did you play? Did you play something?”
Yes, actually. Guitar.
It felt like she was searching for something to suggest for me to do – but I had in fact, already done them.
I can perform. I can direct. I can write. I can teach. I can sing. I can dance. I can play guitar. I can make up songs. I can run a non-profit. I can manage our CMS website. I can quilt. I can bind a book. I can draw a little, paint a little. I could probably even make a print with a little refresher. I can make stuff out of tin. I can practice Feldenkrais. I can puppeteer. I can clown. I can blog. I can edit. The list is longer than I can possibly remember.
But it’s always the things that I cannot do that shock people. “You can’t ride a bike?” They’ll marvel. “I don’t believe it.”
The Hamlet Project 