What happens
when a Duke is fed up with the debauchery in his city pretends to leave town,
leaving in charge an uptight moron? Shakespeare in neutral happens.
Angelo, Angelo,
the flesh is weak, I know. Sometimes we’re torn between whipping ourselves into
a frenzy for thinking unclean thoughts, but I’d never would have whipped
Isabella (or her brother) for trying to tempt me into ickiness.
Once a man with
a seriously distorted Weltanschauung
is convinced that sexual desire is absolutely evil, and he’d like to be the
righteous man by shunning such liberties that he admits are possibly only in
his head, but he also wants to get some action on the side, that's where and when Shakespeare's really is his usual self.
Only Shakespeare could have written such a nicely self-debate about characters' urges.
I’ve never been
very keen on this play’s ending, but I’m no Shakespeare. I find the ending
troublesome and unacceptable, because I’ve trouble separating the Duke’s views
from what I presumed to be Shakespeare’s, as though preserving Shakespeare’s
moral and religious centre is more important than having him write exclusively
good plays. On the other hand, the funny resolution seemed, in fact, something
that the audience can laugh at, but which makes them bad people if they laugh
at it, if you get my drift.
Imperfect and
perverse though it may be, stays nevertheless truer to itself. The conclusion
feels crazy, but the world of the play to that point has been intensely crazy
to say the least.
NB: I still have
to watch this play, either on the big screen or in the theatre to make up my
mind about it. Or re-read it for good measure. As a farcical comedy it seemed a
bit too much for my palate. A friend of mine would not hesitate to call it a
WTF comedy…Maybe reading this in translation will give me a different flavour. If
Shakespeare is read in a translation does that make the experience radically
different - is Shakespeare in modern Portuguese, German, etc. more easily
understood, i.e., less obscure and WTFuckable for the Portuguese and German
readers than the English would be for an English reader? Is any attempt made to
translate into outdated language to convey the same effect? Who gets the more
'authentic' reading - the modern English person reading a language 400 years
old or the modern Portuguese or German reader reading it in 21st century
Portuguese or German? At the end of the day, I suppose it's a case of the
reader either wanting to just read the story or to be as well transported to
16th/17th century London whilst doing so. The same in film. For example, an
American such as Gwyneth Paltrow perfected an English accent in the film, “Shakespeare
in Love”. As did Ben Affleck who appeared in the same film. Why? Not only to capture the
story but to greatly capture the story behind the story. I guess in the same
way a Zen Buddhist - no matter their nationality - will chant the chant in its
original form, be it Shinto or Sanskrit. I’ve definitely got to watch the play
in Elizabethan English first to make sure I’m reading it right…At times I
thought I was reading a play by a Frank Capra or a Howard Hawks…Screwball
comedy comes to mind.
