" Why he's a regular Prince Myshkin"

Hamlet is Ivan, Ivan is Hamlet.

Should I chose a sacred text, my personal scripture, a text which inspires in me the true depth of emotion that literature (and myth) ought to provoke,  I would chose The Brothers Karamzov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Not for nothing does Vonnegut's Mr. Rosewater say that everything one needs to know about life can be found within its pages. Ivan, Alyosha, Mitya and Smerdyakov evoke emotions and motivations so terrifyingly real that they strike a bitter chord with all that is human within each of us (or, at very least, within me). Freud and Nietsche felt that bite, felt it and reveled in it, for Dostoevsky's great gift, much like Shakespeare's, was his ability to portray emotions so deep and so ingrained in mankind that they seem almost timeless, almost mythical.

So, it should come as no surprise (though it often does) that the Shakespeare and Dostoevsky often seem to express the same myth, the same deeply entrancing emotion. In fact, as I read A Midsummer Night's Dream I heard echoes of Brothers K., most notably Mitya as he said "God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man." Titania and Oberon, in being "the parents and the original" elevate to a supernatural plain the struggles of Love. Similarly, Dmitri, Alyosha, Ivan and Smerdyakov elucidate in their quarrels the titanic battle between human rationality and spirituality. In each, supernatural occurrences define and describe the troubles of humanity.

Take for example three of Dostoevsky's most noted characters: Alyosha Karamazov, Prince Myshkin the Idiot and the depraved underground man. Each in his own right parallels Tarquin or Adonis. Each spurns a women, often the best of the breed, for different reasons: the underground man for his own depravity, Myshkin out of selfless naivette and Alyosha in his search for higher meaning. Each is hunting his own personal boar, and each, with the possible exception of Alyosha, is gored.

It's odd, almost, this comparison, for although Myshkin is the best man of the three, he ends up in the worst position. A moments hesitation, caused by the deep goodness in his nature and his pity for Nastasya, robbed him of happiness with Aglaia and condemns him to a life of insanity. In many ways Myshkin is the christ child in a society that can no longer tolerate him or the mother goddess. As with the Grand Inquisitor of the Brothers Karamazov, the Russia Myshkin finds may profess a love of simple goodness, but in its essence it spurns such perfection.

In the Underground Man we find a stunning reversal of this situation. Liza, who at once represents Russia, womankind and humanity, is taken in and then betrayed by the Underground Man, who openly displays what the rest of society tries to hide: the underlying depravity of the modern human condition. "As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves."  The Underground Man is Tarquin without a conscience, but he is also a reflection of his society. Liza, the downtrodden modern version of the Mother Goddess, is disgraced not by disinterested naievette, as is Venus, or by the blinding pangs of passion, as Lucrece, but rather by the malice of the modern man attempting to come to terms with modernity.

Alyosha, youngest of the sordid, sensual Karamazovs, is the last of Dostoevsky's characters to spurn a woman. He choses the religious life over that of love, but is saved, in a sense, by Father Zosima, who tells him to enter the world. Alyosha ends his story, after surviving the travails of modern life and keeping his sense of self amidst the nihilism of Ivan, sensuality of Dimitri and depravity of Smerdyakov, by walking down the street with a gaggle of school children. It seems he is saying after the wasteland "let us at least put our lands in order."

Hopefully I'll have some time to expand on this later, but this should do for now.

Initial thoughts on the bard

I have only ever kissed one man.

I assure you, it was for a good reason, though my fiance remains skeptical. The vaunted kiss took place at a Lutheran bible camp as I performed, with my best friend Mark, a two man version of Romeo and Juliet (with some humerous alterations).

Whether through misquotation ("a nose by any other name would still smell"), hyperbole ("SWEAR NOT BY THE MOON!") or outright slander ("by yonder blessed virgin I swear") Mark and I managed to slay the typical conventions of Shakespearean acting. My point in this blog, however, is that we also managed to slay the audience.

 Perhaps performance adds a vital component to the concept of "mything shakespeare". Shakespeare, you see, apart from his stunning ability to add to our lexicon and vividly describe and orchestrate the human condition in his works also seems to have set the eternal standard for acting. Playing Richard III or Henry V seems to be an appropriate Everest for any budding actor, and to attempt the part of Hamlet is often described as akin to attempting the part of God.

So why is Shakespeare even today considered the pinnacle of an actor's repertoire?  I'd argue that it has something to do with the myth of Shakespeare, the ever present pressure his plays retain on our collective consciousness. Shakespeare was not great merely because he wrote beautifully. His plays speak so deeply because they effectively address a deep part of human nature. Hamlet's existential angst, Romeo's ill-fated love, Hermia's jealousy--all reflect basic passions that oft inflict the human soul. To act Shakespeare is to act human, all too human. And so, in playing these parts, modern actors, though they come from a different age, must attach themselves at the roots of human emotion and participate deeply with the characters on the page in order to make them truly appear on the stage.

Mark and I, in our little production, managed only the most basic rendition of Shakespeare's mastery of human emotion. We were able to use the myth he has passed down to inspire some laughter, a few snickers and a couple of horrified camp director's. Even this marginal accomplishment, however, showed me that often, to truly understand the power of the bard, one must play the part.


Videos from the Reduced Shakespeare Company's performance of Romeo and Juliet