for the best reading experience: click the post’s title to open in a new page which allows you to hover over the numbered footnotes to read them. i like footnotes. i don’t know why.
During my senior year of high school my drama teacher1 assigned Shakespearean monologues that were to be performed for an audience. I don’t remember if these were specially assigned or if we chose them, but in any case mine was Portia’s speech from The Merchant of Venice:
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown
We also got to borrow costumes from the Opera House2 which was thrilling. I thought I had grown out of my playing dress up phase but alas, I was still giddy at this prospect. Though Portia is dressed as a man in this scene, I insisted on wearing a dress anyway. When else was I going to wear a big gown from the opera house!?
I don’t remember being privileged enough to watch any Shakespearean plays in person so, like many of us, I settled for the filmed versions. Much Ado’s delightful enemies to lovers trope lives large in my memory; mostly the bombastic and overflowing with talent Emma Thompson version though Joss Whedon’s black and white, home movie version has its minimalist merits3. My aunt4 was an actress when I was a teen and I just remembered she showed us a recorded play version of Twelfth Night starring Helen Hunt5 and an almost unrecognizable Paul Rudd. I love that there are so many varieties of setting for these adaptations and especially enjoyed As You Like It starring Bryce Dallas Howard in feudal Japan, Kenneth Branagh’s Love Labour’s Lost as a pre-war musical and Apple’s gorgeously stark Macbeth starring the riveting Denzel and Frances. I’m a minor fan but by no means fanatic about the teen adaptions like Ten Things I Hate About You and Romeo + Juliet. I wasn’t allowed to watch them growing up so I only saw them once I left home which dampened some of the nostalgia factor. Definitely wasn’t allowed to watch Shakespeare in Love6, so I immediately watched it when I got to college. It was…underwhelming.
Wash your hands, grab a skull or a crown and pull up a throne on the nearest balcony as you settle into one of these Bard inspired works.
STATION ELEVEN by Emily St. John Mandel
During a performance of King Lear, an actor dies suddenly onstage observed by the young actress Kirsten. That same night is the beginning of the end as a world ending pandemic begins to spread. Twenty years later Kirsten is a member of The Traveling Symphony, an old school theater/musical troupe that attempts to keep the stories of the old world alive for the remainder of humanity. They encounter a dangerously fanatical Prophet who threatens the tenuous existence these survivors have cobbled together and past and present collide in surprising ways.
Published in 2014, this post-apocalyptic novel follows a few different characters, time periods and narrative threads as it explores the enduring power, strength and comfort of stories. Very mood and feeling focused, this could feel frustratingly meandering to some in its time/character/setting fluidity. It isn’t usually my thing to follow so many different characters and seemingly disparate events, but it helps to suspend the search for the literal and the expected. Instead, for this one, follow feeling and tone, letting go of the usual expectations. Be open to the ways it weaves humanity’s search for hope, meaning and connection in the darkest of times- most especially through myth making. At times brutal and stark, the language and writing is compelling, engrossing and beautiful. Mandel is a truly gifted writer and I connected most with the intense way the characters cling to stories; finding hope, meaning, connection, inspiration, power, escape and truth inside of them. This book is in turns deeply depressing and sweetly hopeful, and isn’t that life?
I had waited quite a while for this book from the library and then, after only a few chapters, left it7 and my laptop in my fancy leather tote in the car when I went to watch the last Hunger Games movie. Upon leaving the theater, I found a smashed car window and an empty space where my tote had been before it was purloined. I then had to reenter the bottom of the queue for this book8. -_-
Extra Credit: The HBO miniseries based off the novel is terrific; beautiful, horrifying, well cast9 and moving.
WHAT WAS LOST IN THE COLLAPSE: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a parking lot in the mysteriously named town of St. Deborah by the Water, Lake Michigan shining a half mile away.
IF WE WERE VILLAINS by M.L. RIO
Oliver attends a prestigious arts college and becomes enmeshed with a group of fellow students studying Shakespeare. They become an intensely co-dependent sort of family, each occupying their specific archetypal role and obsess over the bard’s plays until expectations shift, the casting changes and tragedy moves beyond the stage. Ten years later Oliver is released from prison and the detective who put him there wants to know what really happened.
A dark academia novel that pays homage to The Secret History, I loved that the author “… ransacked Shakespeare’s entire oeuvre with giddy abandon”10 so easter eggs, trivia and quotations litter the book. There’s a great idea here within a supremely pretentious world which is fun to observe in all its over the top snobbery. It has some truly thrilling scenes, especially the Macbeth performance, and I have a soft spot for a dark and mysterious academic setting. This genre has a literary and romantic atmosphere built in which feels both cozy and scary.11
However, I did have some scruples, primarily with setup/pay off and characters. I felt the characters here were pretty flat and basic without much to flesh them out and, most disappointingly, the female characters were especially one note and underdeveloped. Maybe this is in keeping with the Shakespeare vibe of characterization but it did leave me wanting. There was good tension build up but the landing wasn’t equally powerful. I don’t think the mystery was as rich or freaky as it could have been; it felt obvious then a bit silly. But the narrative broad strokes, setting and almost hyperactive Shakespeare references make it a fun ride even if I don’t really buy its twists.
Extra Credit: This episode of the podcast I edit, On the Write Track, interviews M.L. Rio about her writing journey.
“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough”
PRACTICE by Rosalind Brown
Annabel is a college student on a deadline. She’s got an essay on Shakespeare’s sonnets to write and is setting herself up for success. She’s going to wake up early and follow a strict routine in an optimal setting to ensure the right conditions are in place for inspiration to strike. No distractions or socializing will impede her genius. During the course of this day, Annabel is consistently stymied in her goal as her imagination, memories, worries and thoughts will not be brought under control and even her own physical body work against her finishing her homework.
Not a book for everyone, this is bit divisive because its format is almost completely stream of consciousness as Annabel mulls over beauty and banality; finding the profound in the mundane and the mundane in the profound and the oddness of intrusive thoughts and creative pursuits alongside relational. At just over 200 pages, this novella seems almost like a writing exercise itself: write about someone trying to write and all the mind wandering procrastination, genius and non-genius thoughts that will happen just as someone puts fingers to keyboard. Annabel internally and externally flails about for inspiration and thematic connections, determined to produce an essay of genius but as the day fades and her focus continues to lapse, she tries to just settle with getting anything on the page. Her thoughts are all over the place; basic, gross, weird, insipid, mysterious, fascinating, droll, stupid and poignant all tangled up together. In this way I’m sure its relatable to most, if not all, of us.
I loved the over-romanticizing of a writing practice, as I’m sure anyone else who geeks out over successful author’s writing habits will. Annabel’s thought progressions were funny and clever in their normalcy yet specificity which kept me interested the entire time, though I would not want it to be any longer. I have barely any knowledge of Shakespeare’s sonnets12 so this was a nice invitation into that realm as they were taken seriously and absurdly in turn as Annabel attempts again and again to unveil something deep and esoteric within their depths so allowing us readers to witness some of the absurd self-serious silliness inherent in the endeavor. Bullshitting your way through a paper while simultaneously wondering if the bullshitting is actually genius; haven’t we all been there? I also immensely enjoyed the meandering narratives she creates about the Scholar and the Seducer and the ride she takes them on showcasing the ever present habit we have of creating stories and meaning everywhere.
Anyway so she is spending time with these poems: which are better company than people, they take your shape willingly, but still lightly, like a duvet does. She lets them work on her mind, entering wholeheartedly into the spirit of them, hardly writing anything down: just reading.
On another Post-it is written Find the edges and breathe into them, but that was from a yoga teacher.
Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid
I enjoyed this author’s first book and thought a story all about one of the great villainesses of literature would be dark and thrilling fun. However, this was disappointing as it turned out to be a generic YA fantasy novel with limited Macbeth connections. Weirdly the Lady Macbeth character here has none of the bloodthirsty ambition and ruthless manipulations that the play’s Lady has. She is also very young, like 19, which was an odd choice and her arc was more about just surviving than a power grab. Why diminish and defang one of the juiciest female villains in literature? I read Macbeth adaptations for the villainy! I enjoyed some of the witchy elements, but why oh why were there shapeshifting dragons13!? I wanted more of the play woven throughout, more diabolical agency for main character and less YA romantasy . It had a terrifically chilling, atmospheric setting and Reid has a skillful way with words but this book ultimately did not do it for me. Thoughts?
husbands: to have, to hold and to read
What are your favorite Shakespeare inspired books?
also known as my aunt
this was in budapest hungary which has a real opera house
and later drama/english teacher
maybe you remember her from the cinematic masterpiece that is twister?
i think because there were boobs?!
like an idiot
and get a new laptop
oh hellooo himesh patel
as her author’s note says
could an upcoming post be brewing!?
being a poetry avoider
i’m very much over this dragon trend. they are rarely done well.