Psychoanalytic Criticism and the Creative Writer
The following is the principal lecture of a seminar on psychoanalytic criticism delivered remotely to students at the National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan. It was hosted by the Department of English and arranged by Dr. Amina Ghazanfar. The seminar was held November 19, 2024.
My plan is to speak to you about psychoanalytic criticism along four axes: one set stretching from the past to the future; and the other set running from reader to writer. Even though these two sets exist on different planes of thought, their data points will no doubt cross paths and even bump into one another at times. Mixed in with all the theorizing, I hope to impart some actual useful information now and again. And let us start with that (just in case there is no more to be had).
When asked to discuss psychoanalytic criticism, the immediate response is to focus on the adjective, psychoanalytic, and to regard the noun as a given. But let’s not. Criticism and especially its related word critic tend to have bad connotations, especially in everyday English. One definition of criticism, in fact the most prominent one, means to offer an unfavorable opinion about someone or something. A fed-up spouse may say to their partner (or child to their parent, employee to their employer), “I’m tired of your constant criticism!” Or the person who finds themselves surrounded by people who feel free to judge them may say, “Sure, everyone’s a critic!”
These negative connotations associated with criticism and with the critic have drifted over to the words as they’re used in the arts, meaning to evaluate a work of art, and the one doing the evaluation. In fact, there seems to be a natural antagonistic, even adversarial, relationship between the artist and the critic, perhaps because so much of an artist’s reputation (and possibly, in turn, their livelihood) depends on the critic’s opinion. A good or bad review, in a prominent place, could make or break an artist’s standing.
In the academy, criticism has managed to avoid the most negative associations and survives more on par with the neutral critique, which is less about passing judgment and more about asking interesting questions and stimulating interesting discussion. Criticism is about opening up possibilities regarding a work of art; it’s about multiplying potential interpretations. It’s not about identifying truths regarding the art; it’s not about solving the art, as a mathematician may solve a complicated equation.
This may be the first important thing I’ve said: Budding critics must guard against the sense that they’ve said something definitive about the work under consideration. Everything is speculative, and they should manage their rhetoric to make that clear. When writing criticism, there should be a lot of hedging. Not “Shakespeare clearly had a troubled relationship with his mother”; rather, “Shakespeare may have had a troubled relationship with his mother.” In the sciences, they strive for declarative statements. In the humanities, we almost always avoid them. We happily traffic in ambiguity.
All of this brings me round (finally) to the adjective, psychoanalytic, which is an especially intriguing critical approach because it is a kind of hybrid school of criticism, marrying science with humanism (although it may be an unhappy or at least unequal marriage). The term of course means that we, psychoanalytic critics, are about analyzing (examining, testing, dissecting) the psyche. That seems straightforward enough. But since we love ambiguity, let’s ask “What do we mean by the psyche?” Are we examining the mind? The soul? The personality? The spirit? These are all synonyms for psyche. If this were a question on a multiple-choice exam, and we could only choose one answer, nearly all of us would probably choose A) The mind. But I think each of the choices is potentially correct, depending on factors like the work being critiqued and the working thesis of the critic. For example, my first monograph—The “Beowulf” Poet and His Real Monsters—was, yes, an examination of the poet’s mind, but also (equally) an examination of the poet’s culture and community, its zeitgeist, which comes closer to psyche as “spirit,” as geist is German for “ghost” or “spirit.” (Zeit, if you’re curious, means “time.”)
So, upon a closer look, psychoanalytic has a broader sense than just an examination of the mind. “Whose mind?” we of course need to ask—and we will.
Before going there, though, let’s spend some time on the origins of psychoanalysis itself. Note the plural: origins. Returning to that simplistic multiple-choice exam, if there were a question about the origin of psychoanalysis, being brilliant students, we would look for “Sigmund Freud.” But in truth it’s not that simple. I do want to talk about Freud—because he was a crucial theorist, a foundational theorist—but he wasn’t the first human being to notice that people have a lot of complicated things happening under the hood. Ancient storytellers had a sense of multi-faceted personalities, of “good” versus “evil,” of twins (Romulus and Remus, for example), of trios forged into a single entity (the Fates); in more contemporary times, of doppelgangers, of Jekyll-and-Hyde personas.
Freud’s masterstroke was to take the sense of an unconscious part of the mind to a much further point, theorizing that people’s behavior is chiefly due to their unconscious. They may believe, consciously, that their decisions and their subsequent actions are due to a, b and c. But in reality their actions are, unconsciously, due to x, y and z. Nearly all of the time, said Freud, people are unaware—oblivious even—to their own true motivations, their own true reasoning. Moreover, Freud said the dominance of the unconscious mind is completely natural. Finally, in his theorizing (and in his prolific publishing) Freud provided a vocabulary for discussing the workings of the unconscious mind: terms like Id, Ego and Superego, as well as processes drawn from literature like Oedipal complex, Electra complex, and narcissism.
In essence, Freud theorized that the unconscious drivers of human behavior are our unexpressed fears and our unacknowledged wishes. Our fears and wishes find expression in four ways: neurotic behaviors (like anger, anxiety, depression, paranoia); dreams and nightmares; accidental vocalization and diction (so-called “Freudian slips”); and the creative arts. It is of course this last kind of expression that is our main interest. In other words, when artists create (when writers write, painters paint, music composers compose, dance choreographers choreograph), they are accessing their hidden fears and wishes, usually unwittingly.
I don’t want to be overly technical, but Freud used the concepts of condensation and displacement to describe the processes by which the mind obfuscates its fears and wishes. With condensation, the writer, let’s say, brings together several ideas or personas into a single representation. With displacement, a fear or wish may be moved from its true origin to become associated with someone or something else. It must be underscored that the mind conceals its fears and wishes because it would be unbecoming or downright taboo to discuss them openly, that is, consciously.
Just as Freud did not develop his theories in isolation, other psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts either accepted them, modified them, or rejected them in favor of competing theories, during Freud’s lifetime (he died in 1939) and up to the present. It is a cast of thousands, and even the most significant are too numerous to mention even in the briefest summary. Nevertheless, I want to mention one psychoanalyst who, for our purposes, provided the most useful clarifications and extensions of Freud: Frenchman Jacques Lacan.
Like Freud, with whom he was somewhat of a contemporary (Lacan, 1901-1981), the Frenchman was a prolific writer and lecturer; therefore, his discussion of Freud’s theories takes up many volumes, and he was oftentimes at odds with Freud, tinkering, extending, or frequently outright disagreeing. From my perspective, there are two Lacanian concepts that are crucial to our effectiveness as psychoanalytic critics. First, while Freud certainly believed in the significance of language, Lacan took that belief further to the point of making careful attention to language paramount. In fact, he believed that psychoanalysts must work with language just as literary critics do, microscopically and all-encompassingly. No word-choice, no word-order-choice can be taken for granted. Each has significant bearing on interpretation. (I suppose one could go further and say that each word-omission and word-order-not-taken is worthy of attention, too.)
Second, a major criticism (there’s that word) of Freud had to do with causation. Lacan felt that Freud tended to oversimplify the relationship between cause and effect. What appears to be the cause is not the real cause at all. Or it may be more accurate to say that anything attributed to a single cause is misleading because for everything there are multiple causes, with some causes being more significant than others. The analyst—and by extension, the critic—who is satisfied with a one-to-one causal relationship is almost certainly overlooking important facets of cause.
These two Lacanian concepts are so crucial I want to repeat them. Let’s call them important points two and three: The psychoanalytic critic must consider every aspect of the text’s language as significant—diction, syntax, rhetorical posture, everything. Also, psychoanalytic critics must approach each effect as having multiple causes, and therefore they must be dissatisfied with analyses that suggest a facile, single cause, no matter how logical, no matter how well supported by the critique. Causes are always multiple and/or multilayered.
By stopping with Lacan I don’t want to imply that he represents the last word in psychoanalysis. Far from it. Advances in psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and perhaps especially neuropsychology have continued apace for the last half century. Consequently, literary critics inclined toward psychoanalytic interpretation should be aware of the latest advances in our study of the mind. I was recently asked to peer-review an article using trauma theory (a branch of psychoanalytic critique), and the writer only cited pioneers in the field, as if there has been no advancement in our understanding of the mind in decades. I recommended against publication without significant revision to include the work of contemporary (living and practicing) psychologists and psychological theorists. I was gratified to read a later draft that made good use of some of the names I suggested. I was happy to greenlight publication as a useful contribution to the field (and not just a well-written rehash of what has come before).
Let’s call that important point number four: Our understanding of the human psyche and how it relates to behavior is constantly evolving and improving. Psychoanalytic critics must make an effort to stay abreast of new knowledge, at least new knowledge that is directly relevant to the critique they have in mind.
It is also worth noting that we sometimes hear “psychoanalytic criticism” and “Freudian criticism” as synonymous terms, but it’s probably best to think of them as somewhat different. Psychoanalytic criticism is any critique that deals with the unconscious, whereas Freudian criticism makes use specifically of terms and concepts developed by Freud. By the same measure, we may employ Lacanian criticism or Jungian criticism, which are types of psychoanalytic criticism, but as one may imagine they make use of Lacan’s or Jung’s theories and terminologies.
So, then, what is the mission of psychoanalytic criticism? I want to suggest that psychoanalytic criticism has two broad agendas. Through careful examination the critic seeks to find at work the author’s unconscious fears and wishes as they are represented in a literary text. Or (and/or) the critic seeks to find at work a character’s unconscious fears and wishes. With some texts, we can do one or the other or both because we know the author; that is, we have access to their biographies and therefore, to a degree, their personalities. With other texts we are limited to the analysis of the fictional characters (or other literary elements) because we do not have access to the author’s personality. Either the author is unknown, or there is so little known about them that nothing of use can be definitively said. A third approach would be to critique a text psychoanalytically in an effort to reconstruct an unknown or little-known author’s persona. What fears and wishes may be operating in the text, and what may they tell us about the person who created the text? Referencing again my Beowulf monograph, my objective was this last one: I attempt to reconstruct the persona of the anonymous poet by psychoanalyzing the text of the poem.
What does it matter? Why bother to critique a text psychoanalytically, or any other way? T. S. Eliot, considered one of the most astute critics of the twentieth century, put it simply (I paraphrase): The ultimate goal of criticism is to understand a work of art better. We psychoanalytic critics may say our goal is to better understand the relationship between the artist and their art, and in so doing understand the work of art better. Is criticism, then, simply an academic pastime, using academic in both its meanings? Is criticism a behavior of the academy, something done by scholars as a function of their scholarship? And is criticism of no practical value?
Regarding the first meaning of academic, I would say yes, probably: It primarily happens in the academy. That is, it is primarily scholars who engage in criticism as we are thinking of it here, psychoanalytic and otherwise. Regarding the second meaning, I hope and believe the answer is no. Criticism does have practical value. Since art is a product of human beings, and a reflection of all that it means to be human, then I think we can modify Eliot’s assessment to say that the ultimate goal of criticism is to understand ourselves better: ourselves as a species, ourselves as a society, and our each individual selves. Important point number five. What could be of greater value? We hardly have time here for a meaningful discussion of whether or not the value is practical. Going back to Plato at least, we have debated the usefulness of knowledge—and if there is a difference between knowledge and understanding. In a contemporary, real-world sense of practicality, understanding human beings is essential to modifying human behavior, whether individually or en masse, including behaviors that are either constructive or destructive.
My literary idol William Gass believed that art (including literature) could impact consciousness, that it could assemble ethical paradigms that would lead individuals and societies to behave more humanely, more empathically. I would direct you in particular to his essay “The Artist and Society,” which I know is not easily available. There is an insightful discussion of the essay, with several block quotes, available online. (here) I am beginning to stray far afield, so I will end this line of thought by simply reiterating that if art has value, practical or ethereal, then criticism of that art is at least equally valuable.
Let me return to psychoanalytic criticism’s mission and restate how we may use it: Through careful examination the critic seeks to find at work the author’s unconscious fears and wishes as they are represented in a literary text. Or (and/or) the critic seeks to find at work a character’s unconscious fears and wishes. With some texts, we can do one or the other or both because we know the author; that is, we have access to their biographies and therefore, to a degree, their personalities. With other texts we are limited to analysis of the fictional characters (or other literary elements) because we do not have access to the author’s personality. Either the author is unknown, or there is so little known about them that nothing of use can be definitively said. A third approach would be to critique a text psychoanalytically in an effort to reconstruct an unknown or little-known author’s persona. What fears and wishes may be operating in the text, and what may they tell us about the person who created the text?
Of the first order would be a text like Henry James’s novella “The Turn of the Screw” (1898). In brief, it is the first-person account of an English governess who comes to believe that her two young charges, a brother and sister, are being harassed or even possessed by the ghosts of two adults who worked at the estate before their deaths. The employees, who were lovers, had an oddly close relationship with the children in life, and are perhaps continuing the relationships as ghosts. In fact, they may have had inappropriate relationships with the children. In the novella, Henry James is always highly suggestive and lightly clear. His vagueness has left a great deal to our imaginations, and to the ingenuity of critics. Via plot details, via characterization, and via a host of symbols (some rather heavy-handed), critics have penned copious readings over the past 125 years. Many of those critiques are based on our understanding of the author, who was a lifelong bachelor. It is believed that James was attracted to men at a time when that would have been an impossible situation in England: perhaps this is reflected in the same-sex relationships between the adults and the children in the story—the wholly inappropriate same-sex relationships. Some critics have speculated that James was a victim of sexual abuse as a child, and that fact has found its way into the novella. What is more, the vagueness of the novella, James’s seeming inability to state anything plainly and directly, may represent his inability to discuss his sexuality and (possibly) the abuse he experienced as a child. “The Turn of the Screw” (with the suggestive imagery of its title) is, above all, a story of psychological repression.
Another interesting example from the same time period is the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes mysteries, of which he ultimately wrote four novels and sixty short stories. The apparently platonic relationship of Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson has of course been the subject of countless critiques. The fictional character Holmes, like the real Henry James, never marries. Perhaps of greater interest is the fact that the danger in the Holmes stories is always associated with British colonization. Conan Doyle was writing during an expansionary period of the Empire. Britain’s global influence was steadily increasing from about 1815 to 1915, adding 10 million square miles of territory and subjugating as many as 400 million people. Conan Doyle’s first Holmes story appeared in 1886, the last in 1927—all but the final twelve were published during the height of British colonial expansion prior to the First World War. Again, the antagonist or antagonistic element consistently comes from one of the colonies. In the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, the murders are connected to Mormonism, a religion that originated in the United States. In the second story, The Sign of Four, the murder is provoked by treasure brought back from India. In the third, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” again it is an American, an opera singer, who is at the root of an extortion plot. In the fourth, “The Red-Headed League,” an American millionaire is behind a robbery that is to unfold in the heart of London. Plot after plot hinges on someone or something that has returned to England from a colony or former colony: The U.S., Canada, South America, Asia, Africa. Critics have suggested that the guilt associated with the subjugation and exploitation of millions led Conan Doyle to enact revenge on British citizens at the hands of the colonized. The guilt, as well as the fear of retribution. Conan Doyle was staunchly and outspokenly pro-Queen Victoria, pro-King Edward VII, and pro-Empire, which contributed greatly to his being knighted in 1901.
At the most fundamental Freudian level, we can see that both Henry James and Arthur Conan Doyle were motivated, on some level, by fear and/or inappropriate wish fulfillment.
This time period—around 1900, which we also associate with the writings of Sigmund Freud—is important to our interests, but for now let me go back a bit further.
Of course all of Shakespeare’s plays have been fertile ground for a wide variety of critical analyses. In terms of psychological criticism, his most famous play, Hamlet, has lent itself to discussions of the Oedipal complex: young Hamlet fosters a desire to kill his uncle and stepfather, Claudius, upon marrying Gertrude after what may appear an inappropriately short period of mourning the death of King Hamlet. Young Hamlet had been in love with Ophelia, but he rejects her after developing his obsession to kill Claudius, who has usurped King Hamlet’s status.
William Shakespeare, as a person, is much more of a mystery than authors like Henry James and Arthur Conan Doyle, for whom we have extensive biographical accounts as well as diaries, letters, and other documents directly attached to their lives. It is difficult to say anything with certainty when it comes to the life of Shakespeare. There are no letters, no diaries, and scant official documentation. We have the texts of the plays and the poems, and we have a great deal of documentary evidence from the time period. We can’t say for certain what may have motivated Shakespeare based on his personal history, but we do know about the outbreaks of plague, the assassinations and attempted assassinations of monarchs, and we know about the fear of invasion by Spain, France and other European powers. Psychoanalytic critics can make educated guesses about how this cultural milieu may have impacted Shakespeare’s writing.
I have done similar guesswork when it comes to the Old English poem Beowulf and its anonymous poet, composed around AD 725. We know nothing of the poet himself (assuming a male poet), not even his name, but we know quite a lot about his time period. It isn’t nearly as well documented as Shakespeare’s day, almost a thousand years later, but there is a considerable record, including numerous firsthand, eyewitness accounts. Drawing from this material, I theorized in The “Beowulf” Poet and His Real Monsters that the three monsters in the poem may have represented specific sources of anxiety for the poet and his audience: continual armed violence, the dangers of reproduction, and illnesses that were caused by agents beyond people’s comprehension—manifested in Grendel, Grendel’s Mother, and the dragon.
I want to return to the year 1900. It has been noted that creative writers in the twentieth century and beyond have been more concerned with character motivation than writers in the past. Let’s take as one example a writer I’ve already alluded to—considered by many the greatest writer in the English language, Shakespeare. As great as Shakespeare was, his treatment of character motivation was consistently cursory. Why is Hamlet so quick to turn against his mother and his girlfriend, based on the urgings of a ghost? In The Winter’s Tale, why does Leontes turn against his wife, Hermione, based solely on the friendly hospitality she shows her husband’s oldest friend? How can Othello move so easily from adoring Desdemona to murdering her? The examples are abundant. We could explore any number of explanations, but the important point is that Shakespeare’s audience didn’t seem to care much about character motivation, a token effort is all they required of their playwrights. Said differently, the early modern audiences appeared to have little interest in the psychology of their fictional characters. Of course, Shakespeare was interested in his characters’ psychology. It was often the element he added to his revisions of previously existing plays: a focus on his characters’ tendency toward introspection. Yet it was still minimal compared to the psychological novels and plays (and films) as they developed in the twentieth century. One theory is that the wide dissemination of Freud’s theories—which began in the 1890s, but not until the 1920s were his works widely translated and read—made twentieth-century readers and theatergoers much more interested in the psychology (i.e. the motivation) of the fictional characters they were seeing on the page, the stage, and ultimately the screen. Important point number six.
It may be worth noting that in the United States the first college to establish a course in “psychology” was Harvard, in 1873, taught by Henry James’s older brother William, who eventually wrote the first psychology textbook, The Principles of Psychology, published in 1890. It was the primary college psychology textbook for decades, and greatly influenced thought in other disciplines as well.
I want to turn now from one side of the page to the other, from psychoanalytic critic to writer of fiction, which has been my chief interest since childhood. As a writer, I’m not mindful of my characters’ psychology—and certainly not of my own. It sounds like a simple goal, but when I put pen to paper I’m trying to tell an interesting story in an interesting way. I know there are elements at work beneath the surface of my awareness, but when I’m writing a story or a novel or a poem (my poetry tends to be strongly narrative), I’m not thinking about what those influential elements may be. Similarly, I’m not even thinking about what the text I’m writing may mean. Long ago I decided that meaning was the reader’s purview. In fact, when I let go of my concern for meaning in my stories, my stories became much, much better—more interesting and probably more meaningful.
William Gass said it well: “You hope that the amount of meaning you can pack into a book will always be more than you are capable of consciously understanding…. You have to trick your medium into doing far better than you, as a conscious and clearheaded person, might manage” (my italics).
That is, Gass understood that while he was writing consciously—making deliberate choices about plot, characterization, setting, word choice, and so on—his unconscious mind was at work as well, perhaps operating on a more symbolic level; and because of the influence of his unconscious thoughts, the work would turn out more complex, more engaging, and more interesting than it would if just his consciousness was directing the narrative.
When I write, I deliberately (i.e. consciously) put what I think of as “constellations of images” into the work: repeated words, phrases, ideas (much as we do in poetry, even when I’m writing prose), as well as allusions to the great, classical repositories of narrative. In the west, writers have tended to allude to four narrative sources: the Bible, classical mythology, history, and Shakespeare. I don’t limit myself to these sources for allusions, but I do draw from them copiously. These techniques are not done at random. I have intentions, but I also know that each reader is going to bring their own perspective, their own experiences to my text, and therefore read it and interpret it idiosyncratically. By using these “constellations of images” I’m feeding their imaginations as readers, giving them a lot of handholds for scaling their own personal understanding of the text (and perhaps their own personal understanding of me as the author of the text).
I have experienced two phenomena as a writer that I want to share because they relate directly to our interest in psychology and the unconscious mind. For more than thirty years my process has been to write in the morning, Monday through Friday. When I taught full-time, I would only manage about 30 minutes per morning writing session (now it’s somewhat more). Some mornings I sat down to write knowing precisely where I was in the narrative I was working on. That is, I’d left off the previous morning with a clear sense of what to write next (I’d just run out of time). On those mornings, the writing tended to produce a fine enough first draft. The writing session was satisfactory. Other mornings, I wasn’t sure where to take the narrative. I would sit with my coffee and a blank sheet of paper staring at me. Some writers, I knew, would say at that point “Well, I don’t have anything today. I’ll try again tomorrow.” I, on the other hand, had learned that if I just start writing—put pen to paper and begin producing text—the ideas would come. Not only that, the writing tended to be much, much better on those days that began so aimlessly. More interesting, more creative, more linguistically complex. I have a theory as to why.
On the mornings when I had a clear sense of what I wanted to write, the composing of text was directed primarily by my conscious mind, whereas on the mornings when I had a fuzzy sense or no sense at all, the composing of text was directed by my unconscious mind. And, lo and behold, it turns out my unconscious mind is a much better writer than my conscious mind. Said differently, my conscious mind operates in the real, and my unconscious mind operates in the surreal. And most of us would agree that surrealistic images are more engaging, more captivating than realistic ones.
The other phenomenon has to do with not writing. I’m dedicated to my creative writing, but I will have stretches when I’m not writing for several days—generally this happens when I’m traveling or on vacation. I have had a few occasions where a significant illness or injury has prevented me from writing for several days. I notice that I begin to get anxious, I have difficulty concentrating, I become impatient, and generally I just feel uneasy. These symptoms of my not-writing correspond precisely with sleep deprivation. Returning to Freud, he compared creative writing to daytime dreaming. He theorized that the mind of the creative writer is functioning in much the same way as the brain does when we’re sleeping and dreaming. I feel that my experience gives credence to Freud’s theory. By not writing for several days I’m depriving my mind of its process for analyzing and interpreting my world. I’ve often said that my writing is a kind of meditation. It keeps me centered. It may also be keeping me mentally healthy.
I will end on a note about a possible future for psychoanalytic criticism. As we know, a dominant topic in the academy is artificial intelligence: how is it reshaping society, how is it reshaping education, how is it reshaping us? It is a broad and constantly changing subject, so I want to focus on a very narrow sliver: AI’s production of narrative text. I have no doubt that commercial publishers in the U.S. and elsewhere will start marketing books written by artificial-intelligence “authors.” There will be no need for royalty payments, no authorial egos for editors to bruise (really, no need for editors), no missed deadlines by unpredictable human writers, who become sick, who become distracted, who become blocked.
If you follow developments in artificial intelligence, you’re probably familiar with the “black box problem.” AI is autodidactic, gathering data and “learning” from that data of its own mysterious volition. When AI begins doing things that its programmers didn’t program it to do, demonstrating processes and outcomes the programmers themselves don’t understand, the AI is operating in a so-called black box. AI that is composing narratives—telling stories, writing novels, etc.—is essentially drawing from its unconscious, its impenetrable black box. At that point, computer scientists are unable to untangle and understand the AI author’s complex programming, but perhaps psychoanalytic critics can employ their skill sets, analyzing the language of the narrative itself to perceive the artificial author’s unconscious mind. Such a process was predicted by science fiction writers. In Robert Heinlein’s novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), computer technicians are essentially psychoanalysts who diagnose and fix problems by talking to the computer, asking it questions, and analyzing its responses. Similarly, in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the computer, HAL, has what amounts to a nervous breakdown when faced with an ethical dilemma.
As the new generation of critics, you may well be at the forefront of working with artificial intelligences, reading their output, analyzing their language, and assessing their unconscious programming. If so, I encourage you not to ignore the old, human-produced texts, for they are the gateway to comprehending the artificial authors of the very near future, and humanity will likely depend on that comprehension. Humanity will likely depend on you. Vitally important point number seven.
Illinois Shakespeare Festival’s Measure for Measure a must-see production
Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure is a comedy, but comedy meant something different in the seventeenth century, as did tragedy. Rooted in the traditions of Greek theater, the labels had to do with structure and the elements each sort of play was expected to have, not whether the plots were tragic or comic, as we use the terms today. The endings of each sort tend to be a telltale sign. Tragedies end in death (maybe lots of them . . . think Hamlet); comedies end in marriage (which is a polite metaphor for what is presumed to happen on the wedding night, let’s call it procreation, the opposite of death . . . think Much Ado About Nothing).
So, yes, Measure for Measure is a comedy, but the issues it raises are quite serious. Likely written and first performed in 1604, it was Shakespeare’s twelfth and final comedy (as far as we can say), and the scholarly consensus is that Will had done all he cared to with the comedic form and was ready to take on more serious subjects, subjects which fit more easily into the tragic mode. Soon to follow, then, were Othello (probably the same year, 1604), Macbeth, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra (all, let’s say, 1605-1606 – definitive dating is tricky).
This summer the Illinois Shakespeare Festival has accepted the challenge of presenting this most serious of comedies – and, as one would expect, given the Festival’s tradition of excellence, director Jenny McKnight, cast and crew have created a production that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. Due to Covid restrictions, it is a lean cast of only ten players, making their achievement with such a complex text even more impressive. My wife and I saw the July 14 production on an absolutely ideal night for the Globe-like open-air theater.
Set in Vienna, the city-state’s Duke, Vincentio, places his Deputy, Angelo, in charge while he goes on a long journey. Vincentio has been lax in enforcing the laws of Vienna, and the city has become rife with corruption and debauchery. Bordellos and monasteries stand side by side. Angelo, in the duke’s absence, decides to exercise his power and set Vienna in order. The first person to be caught in Angelo’s legal snare is Claudio, who has gotten his intended one, Juliet, with child before their marriage. Claudio is sentenced to death by the overzealous Angelo. Claudio’s sister, Isabella, who is on the verge of taking her vows to become a nun, goes to Angelo to plead for her brother’s life. In actuality, the Duke does not leave the city, but disguises himself as a friar.
Much of the play’s action involves Vincentio (disguised as a friar usually), Angelo, and Isabella (played by Grant Goodman, Chauncy Thomas, and Isa Guitian, respectively). It is mainly through their impassioned exchanges that Measure for Measure explores issues of morality, legality, mercy, and salvation (among other weighty topics). Isabella is the dramatic focal point, as both Vincentio and Angelo desire her and use their positions of authority to claim her (or her body at least) for their own. In this regard, Guitian manages most of the play’s heavy lifting, and she does so with admirable flair. Goodman and Thomas prove worthy sparring partners.
From our contemporary perspective, there is definitely a #MeToo aspect to the play. Given events over the last several months in particular, involving George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner (and, sadly, so on and so on), I also found myself keenly focused on what the play says about the authority of the state to enact and enforce laws without accountability. In her Director’s Note, McKnight writes, “The world of Measure for Measure is a world out of balance, particularly where gender and power are concerned. Women have little agency, Men become intoxicated with the authority and status that they possess. Characters who represent the state, characters who represent the church, characters who represent the citizenry, and characters who represent the marginalized all seek – as Isabella demands – ‘justice, justice, justice, justice’.”
The director’s description of the world being “out of balance” is communicated in myriad ways, including particularly subtle and clever ones. I noted, for example, that Vincentio and Angelo (representatives of the state) wear tunics that appear almost metallic (suggesting the state’s power and rigidity), but their cut is asymmetrical (literally, from a sartorial perspective, out of balance). Susie L. High is credited with costume design for the production. I offer only this one costume-related example, but costuming is an especially important element in the Festival production, and I would encourage paying special attention to it.
On a related note, McKnight has devised an interesting framing device involving the costuming of the players. Shakespeare is fond of using clothing metaphors as a way of suggesting characters’ deceptive natures: they appear one thing, but in truth are something quite different. Nearly every character in Measure for Measure is hypocritical to a greater or lesser degree, and McKnight’s framing device seems to play with this Shakespearean conceit.
Measure for Measure is a serious comedy, but there are definitely funny bits. Several are expertly provided by the roguish characters of Lucio (Dan Matisa) and Pompey (Nathan Stark, who also plays the condemned, Claudio). The best comic material falls to Elbow, a “simple constable” (cut from a similar cloth as Much Ado’s Dogberry), and Rondale Gray plays the part to perfection.
All the Festival players deliver strong performances, several with dual roles: Lisa Gaye Dixon (Escalus/Francisca), Christian Castro (Froth/Friar Thomas, as well as fight captain), Nora McKirdle (Juliet), and Erica Cruz Hernández (Overdone/Marina).
Measure for Measure, along with The Winter’s Tale, is playing throughout July and into the first week of August. Both are must-see productions.
Illinois Shakespeare Festival delivers an endearing performance of The Winter’s Tale
Even among Shakespeare enthusiasts, The Winter’s Tale may be something of an acquired taste. It is a strange play. The contrast in tone between the opening acts’ heart-wrenching tragedy and the closing acts’ rollicking comedy has made it seem to many that Shakespeare fused together two very different plays, and perhaps not wholly successfully. In the eighteenth century, many saw The Winter’s Tale as a blemish on Shakespeare’s legacy. Alexander Pope included it among a handful of plays that were so poorly crafted they couldn’t have been the work of the Bard, who may have only contributed a few lines here and there to a flawed play that mistakenly bears his name. In 1756, the legendary Shakespearean David Garrick rescued the play by essentially amputating its first half and titling his revision Florizel and Perdita. A Dramatic Pastoral in Three Acts, Altered from The Winter’s Tale of Shakespeare.
Appreciation for the play grew over the centuries, but even in contemporary times it has been known as a problematic play to produce. There are those starkly contrasted halves, for one thing. Also, it is almost entirely a play of effect with very little attention devoted to cause. And, frankly, what are we going to do about the bear?
Always attracted to the odd literary duck, I fell in love with The Winter’s Tale on my first reading, more than forty years ago. My 18-year-old self probably couldn’t have articulated very well just why I found it so appealing, but my 58-year-old self can say without question it is, in fact, the play’s strangeness that I find so engaging. Shakespeare was taking a risk (actually several risks), which was nothing new, but these specific risks were unusual, even for him. There is evidence that his star had faded toward the end of his career; even his own King’s Men were inclined to perform other playwrights’ work. He must have been tempted to return to a style that packed houses just a few years before, or to mimic the plots of his colleagues who were now shining more brightly. Instead, he gives us The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest (both, probably, 1611)—plays that are so unusual they do not fit nicely into the three canonical categories of tragedies, comedies, and histories; instead, becoming known as romances.
I teach a graduate course in Shakespeare, and I always make sure to include The Winter’s Tale (in recent iterations, the other two plays are The Tempest and Othello, with The Taming of the Shrew on standby and sometimes getting the nod). I am so enamored of The Winter’s Tale it is difficult to imagine a production causing me to love it even more—but the Illinois Shakespeare Festival production, directed by Rebekah Scallet, has done just that. Apollo held back the rains long enough for my wife and me to attend the July 11 performance, and we are in his divine debt.
The Festival was not in production last year, of course, because of the pandemic, a pandemic that we are still very much in the throes of; therefore, Covid-19 impacted the current production. Shakespearean theater is minimalist by its very nature, but Scallet managed to create an even more scaled-down performance. Most notably, the play is performed by a skeleton crew of just twelve actors, each of whom has at least two parts, some three. Doubling and tripling, etc., of roles in Shakespeare is not unusual, but generally it doesn’t involve actors handling two or three major roles in the same production. What is more, there are no ensemble actors who could add to the production’s energy onstage.
According to Scallet’s note in the program (online), the smaller cast was an effort to observe social distancing as much as possible, to create space between the actors. The strategy certainly tests the players’ mettle—and each meets the challenge with aplomb. Because of the strange nature of the play—its fusion of tragedy and comedy—the actors have to assume both kinds of roles, resonating at both ends of the spectrum, darkly serious and raucously comedic, at times turning on a dime (a sixpence?).
Dan Matisa, for example, takes on the lead role of King Leontes, who inexplicably comes up with the deranged notion that his very pregnant wife, Hermione (Erica Cruz Hernández), and dearest friend, Polixenes (Christian Castro), have been having an affair, and that the soon-to-arrive baby isn’t his. Leontes is positively venomous, ordering Hermione to be imprisoned and wanting the newborn baby girl to be burned alive. Matisa also plays Autolycus, the roguish prankster who is the source of much of the final acts’ merrymaking. The characters are diametrically opposed, yet Matisa manages both convincingly, with his Autolycus, especially, being among the best performances of that part I’ve seen.
Another standout for me is Grant Goodman, carrying the roles of Antigonus and the Shepherd who finds Leontes’ abandoned baby girl, Perdita (played delightfully by Isa Guitian, once she grows up). Antigonus convinces the enraged Leontes to spare the girl’s life, but as a compromise he must deliver her to the wilds of Bohemia and abandon her there. Again turning on that sixpence, Goodman’s Shepherd ushers in the transition from tragedy to comedy and is responsible for some of the biggest laughs in the second half of the play. Goodman’s chemistry with his Shepherd’s Son (Nathan Stark) is worth the price of admission by itself. Their comic timing is flawless.
Perhaps the best example of how the pared-down casting has led to some of the play’s most memorable moments comes in Act 5, scene 2, when Shakespeare compresses the action into a series of reports by three passing Gentlemen, updating Autolycus regarding what has transpired in King Leontes’ palace. In the Festival production, Autolycus is replaced by a Sicilian Attendant at Court (Ben Matthew), and the three Gentlemen’s reports are delivered via a positively protean performance from Chauncy Thomas, becoming The Gossips, inhabiting three distinct personas, one after another, much to the audience’s delight. Thanks to Matthew and Thomas (along with Scallet’s creativity), a scene which largely serves the function of hastening the plot in the original becomes a high point in the Festival production.
One of the alterations that Scallet makes is adding a prologue to the play, delivered from the upper tier of the stage by personified Time, played by Lisa Gaye Dixon (also Paulina). The personification of Time was one of the play’s features that turned early critics, like Pope, against it; and even in modern performances, directors often delete the character. Instead, Scallet leans into the narrative device, even adding, as I said, a new speech to open the play. The prologue puts the production in context, identifying that the pandemic has affected the production and in what ways, all in language worthy of Shakespeare’s original. Dixon’s stage presence, especially as Paulina, is commanding; and one senses that her fellow actors know they must achieve their best performances to keep from being overshadowed.
I must also underscore the performance of Rondale Gray (Cleomenes, Mariner, Florizel), whose energy and athleticism seem a throwback to the King’s Men themselves. The entire cast is wonderful, even those players not mentioned here in the interest of brevity.
I know I’ve experienced a great production when I begin to see a play I already know well in new ways. The ISF production of The Winter’s Tale definitely accomplished that. As mentioned earlier, we believe the play was first performed in 1611, and Shakespeare may have written it after an especially deadly outbreak of the plague which closed the London theaters for most of 1609 and 1610. The Festival’s staging of The Winter’s Tale seemed like history repeating itself. I felt great joy at being back in the Festival’s Globe-like theater after nearly two years, but I couldn’t help thinking of the half million Americans who lost their lives to Covid in the meantime (a half million and counting). In this context, the two distinct moods of the play seem exactly right: the fear and the darkness attached to the years of pestilence, contrasted with the pure joy of having survived when so many others did not. The theatergoers who saw the earliest performances of The Winter’s Tale must have felt a similar relief to what my wife and I experienced last night: the delight of returning to something close to normal, after so much fear and anxiety.
Moreover, in the play’s presentation of an out-of-control king who insists on a reality he has created from his own deluded imagination, I thought of what the country has experienced for the last five years (and continues to experience). I felt the desperation of Leontes’ councilors as they tried to bring him to his senses before destroying everything in the wake of his ego-driven fury. But no logic can alter his absurd ideas, not even a proclamation from Apollo’s oracle.
Finally, what about the bear? Those familiar with The Winter’s Tale know it has one of the oddest stage directions in the Shakespeare canon (presumably written by the Bard himself, and not a later editor). From Act 3, scene 3: “Exit, pursued by a bear.” We don’t know what Shakespeare had in mind. Some like to believe the King’s Men brought a live bear onstage to pursue Antigonus. Thanks to the popularity of bear-baiting in Shakespeare’s day and the popularity of performing bears, there were plenty of bears to be had in London, both wild and tamed. There were bear-baiting pits near the Globe in fact. Some believe Shakespeare had an actor dress in a bear costume, or maybe it was a special effect (a sound made offstage perhaps).
When I saw the Festival’s production in 2011, the director went with an enormous silhouette of a bear projected onto the stage’s backdrop along with a terrifying series of roars amplified via the sound system. It was neat. So when one attends a performance of The Winter’s Tale, there’s always the intriguing issue of how they will handle the bear.
You wish . . . you’ll just have to go see for yourself. Performances of The Winter’s Tale, along with Measure for Measure, will run throughout July into the first week of August. Go. You deserve it.
Austen’s successful debut at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival
Every summer central Illinoisans are treated to the pleasures of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in Bloomington, now in its 42nd season. The tradition has been to offer two works by Shakespeare and one of another sort. For the 2019 season, the non-Shakespeare offering is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice (1813), marking the first time Austen has been adapted for the ISF stage. I will cut to the chase: Go see it.
I attended the preview performance July 5. The evening’s sultriness did not discourage Festival fans from attending. The players, managing in their Regency garb, played to a sold-out house. In back, the artistic crew took a last look before finalizing the production for the summer. Among those taking notes was Deanna Jent, who adapted and directed Pride and Prejudice. Jent, a professor at Fontbonne University, also directed last summer’s performance of Merry Wives of Windsor. Those Regency costumes, which effectively broadcast the Austen vibe, were designed by Misti Bradford.
The central figure of the novel, strong-willed Elizabeth Bennet (second born of five daughters, all in search of husbands), was played by Aidaa Peerzada, who shone especially brightly when clashing on stage with prideful Mr. Darcy (Fred Geyer), but downright radiantly when on stage with the imperious Lady De Bourgh (Lisa Gaye Dixon). Peerzada and Geyer had a tall order to fill, almost as tall as a Regency gentleman’s hat, to capture the chemistry of one of literature’s most famous couples, and they have risen to the challenge admirably.
However, I must especially commend Dixon’s performance as the meddling Lady De Bourgh. The part has limited stage time, but Dixon commanded the space, just as the role required, and De Bourgh’s verbal sparring with Elizabeth brought out Peerzada’s best. Fourth of July fireworks fizzled compared to Dixon and Peerzada’s pyrotechnics.
All of the performers added to the delightful adaptation, including Kevin McKillip (Mr. Bennet), Nisi Sturgis (Mrs. Bennet), Ashley Hart Adams (Jane Bennet, the eldest sister and Elizbeth’s special confidant), and Chauncy Thomas (the always affable Mr. Bingley). I especially appreciate McKillip’s sense of comedic timing. The veteran actor perhaps captures Jane Austen’s dry wit best of all the talented players in the cast — at times eliciting a roar from the audience merely by the perfect look.
The highlight of the production — for me, and it would seem the audience as a whole — was Jordan Coughtry’s interpretation of Mr. Collins, a cousin of Mr. Bennet who arrives to assess the Bennet property that he will one day inherit and to select which Bennet daughter he will marry (at least, that is his design). Coughtry is a remarkable Mr. Collins, sculpting Austen’s clownish clergyman into a character who is both true to the novelist’s original vision but also unique among the many actors who have portrayed him on the screen. Coughtry’s Collins is pompous, over-confident, insensitive — and yet wholly endearing . . . to the audience, that is, but not so much to the Bennets.
Coughtry is almost too good. He owns the stage in the first half of the play, which could be seen as problematic since Mr. Collins is a secondary character in Pride and Prejudice — important certainly, but normally one thinks of Elizabeth and Jane as dominating the reader’s attention. Perhaps fortunately, Mr. Collins’s stage time is lessened in the second half of the play, which allows Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy, and other characters more central to the plot to shine a bit brighter.
Nevertheless, Coughtry’s Collins commands the largest laughs, and the audience always perked up when he stepped on stage.
My only concern regarding the production is that it closely resembles the Joe Wright-directed film version of 2005 (starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth and Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy; screenplay by Deborah Moggach). Rather than an adaptation of the novel, at times the Festival play seems more like a pastiche of the Joe Wright film. I recognize, however, that this is an idiosyncratic concern. Besides having taught the novel in college courses a few times, I have watched the film many, many times. It is one of my favorites, and I’ve shown it to classes more times than I can count. The typical Festival-goer would not be burdened with such familiarity.
To be clear: I’m not suggesting something like plagiarism or even mimicry, not at all. The unfolding of the play definitely adheres to Austen’s original work in ways that the Wright/Moggach film does not. In fact, one of the things I admire most about Deanna Jent’s adaptation is that she oftentimes advances the plot via characters’ narrating the action in third-person snippets taken from the pages of the novel, or nearly so. It is a clever way to compress the time span of the original and bring into the script some of Austen’s narrative voice — a treat for actors and audience alike.
Speaking of treats, Jent’s adaptation also makes terrific use of dance, as does Austen’s novel. In straitlaced Regency England, dancing was critical to courtship, and Austen’s Netherfield Ball scene is one of the greats in all of English-language literature. Likewise, Jent masterfully employs dance in the service of plot advancement, characterization, and mood-setting. (Sarah West is credited as dance captain for the ISF production, and Gregory Merriman as choreographer — kudos to both.)
It’s difficult to imagine a central Illinois summer without the Shakespeare Festival, and this production of Pride and Prejudice is yet another triumph in its proud history. I repeat: Go see it while you have the opportunity.
(As You Like It and Caesar are the Bardic offerings this summer.)
A truly delightful Romeo and Juliet
Second only to Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet is the Shakespeare play I’ve seen staged most — only because the famous love story is staged so frequently — and there’s no question that the production I saw last evening at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in Bloomington, Illinois, was by the far the most imaginative (while staying true to the text) and most emotionally engaging I’ve experienced. Directed by Doug Finlayson, the Festival production was truly delightful.
As one would expect, the portrayals of the title characters (played by Dylan Paul and Laura Rook) were at the heart (ha) of the production’s success — and I want to speak to these portrayals in some detail in a moment — but Finlayson took a number of creative risks in his treatment of what could be the best-known and most-read of Shakespeare’s plays (I’m basing my statement on the fact that so many high school freshmen read the play), and every roll of the creative dice was a winner. Moreover, judging from audience reactions, I know I’m not alone in labeling the production a triumph.
In the interest of time and reader attention span, I won’t try to speak to every risky choice made in the Festival production, but I do want to underscore a few. One was in the production’s costuming (designed by Linda Pisano). Often directors set Shakespeare plays in more contemporary settings (for example, a couple of years ago I saw another marvelous production of Romeo and Juliet, by the famed Acting Company, situated in 1920s Mississippi), and the costuming of course is instrumental in communicating and selling that setting choice. For the Festival production, however, the costuming was all over the map — with some characters dressing in Renaissance-style wardrobe, others looking more like extras in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and still others appearing as if they’d just come from shooting a Gap commercial, in jeans and trendy jackets … to name just a few apparent influences, and these influences were often mixed together for individual costumes.
I’ve seen some productions of Romeo and Juliet in which the costuming was designed to delineate between the feuding Capulets and Montagues, almost as if they were sports teams wearing home and away colors; but the costuming in the Festival production was no help whatsoever in figuring out family loyalties — especially when the fight choreographer (D. C. Wright) had the combatants moving in intersecting chaotic circles, thus further confusing the audience as to who was opposing who, especially early in the production.
The “confusion” of costumes — mixing and matching across centuries and geographies — and the chaotic fight scenes worked to emphasize the absurdity of the feud in the first place. That is to say, even a careful perusal yields a sameness about the Capulets and Montagues — any differences which were so profound that they should result in a bloodfeud either never existed or have long since disappeared. This point is emphasized in the play’s final scene, in the Capulet vault, when the Prince asks, “Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague, / See what a scourge is laid upon your hate …” (5.3.290-91). In other words, here, among these dead, there appear no family distinctions whatsoever.
Another artistic risk in the play is the use of contemporary top-40 music interspersed with more traditional compositions — perhaps most notably Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” when Romeo and Juliet first meet and instantly fall in love at the Capulet masquerade ball. In fact, the Katy Perry song plays for the first time as the teenagers ascend a platform at the front of the stage, creating an almost cinematic (or TV) effect of focusing the audience’s attention on the pair to the exclusion of everything else happening on stage, the way that a framing close-up would work on the screen, silver or plasma.
Let’s talk about the portrayals of the leads for a moment. Both young actors, Dylan Paul and Laura Rook, are quite wonderful as they embrace the youthfulness and immaturity of the title characters. After all, we often forget that Juliet is only thirteen and Romeo not much older, fifteen or sixteen. As such, the famous garden scene is touching and romantic, but also very funny as the characters’ awkwardness is underscored in a way I haven’t seen before — giving a new dimension to a scene that is arguably the most famous in all of literature.
By far, though, the most interesting and complex character in the play is Juliet — and with whom the most risk is taken in the Festival production. She is played as downright childish in the beginning, tomboyishly roughhousing with her little brother and cousins, carrying around a stuffed animal (a lion — symbol of power, especially masculine power, even though it’s the lionesses who hunt and supply food to the pride). When Juliet enters the masquerade ball, her status as thirteen-year-old beams forth thanks to her costume, and the way the actor carries herself of course. Juliet wears a colorful and fun dress that ends above the knee, along with equally colorful butterfly wings. We at first see her from only the waist up, and when she walks into full view, we see that she has “topped off” her ensemble with pink high-top Chucks — a marvelous touch that takes the audience completely by surprise. She could be any adorable thirteen-year-old going to a junior high Halloween party.
In the famous garden scene, Juliet carries her stuffed lion toy onto the balcony. She is wearing a cloak and hood of pale green. After Romeo, awkwardly, makes his presence known, Juliet ultimately loses the toy and cloak, thus revealing an alluring bare-shouldered nightgown beneath. It seems that in this brief scene Juliet transforms from a toy-carrying tomboy to a sensual young woman. This transformation is also communicated via the butterfly emblem that we associate with Juliet throughout. Besides her butterfly costume, she wears a small butterfly barrette in her hair in several scenes, and there is a large cotton sheet with a picture of a butterfly that serves several purposes: banner, bridal bedsheet, and ultimately funeral shroud. The butterfly is appropriately juvenile (how many teenage girls festoon their lockers, notebooks, bedrooms, and body parts! with butterflies?), but it also represents dramatic transformation in nature, maturing from caterpillar to butterfly, or from girl- to womanhood. It’s also worth noting that Juliet refers to Romeo, in 3.2, as “[s]ole monarch of the universal earth” (94, my emphasis), perhaps stressing, in the context of the Festival production, the kindredness of the newlyweds.
I was especially delighted that the Festival was doing Romeo and Juliet this year because the play is one of several subtexts I tinker with in my recently completed novel, “An Untimely Frost” — the title of which is taken from 4.4 when Capulet says of his daughter (prematurely) that “Death lies on her like an untimely frost” (55). In a later chapter in my novel, the protagonist attends an oddball production of Romeo and Juliet, so I spent several weeks studying the play to write that chapter in particular.
All in all, it was a typically terrific evening at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival (in spite of the heat and humidity), where I enjoyed a production of The Winter’s Tale just last Saturday.
The Winter’s Tale and other literary happenings
I had the pleasure of attending a production of The Winter’s Tale at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival last evening in Bloomington, Illinois. I’ve been attending the Festival for years and am always impressed and pleased with its productions, some of which are risk-taking, like 2008’s Titus Andronicus, which channeled a kind of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome motif while employing a heavy-metal soundtrack (and, for my money, it worked), or last season’s The Tempest, which suggested that the entirety of the play was taking place in some sort of ethereal space and not on solid ground (I liked it) — while other productions are much more conservative in their staging. This Winter’s Tale, directed by Deb Alley, tended toward the conservative.
The most obvious manifestation of this conservatism was the deletion of Time, personified, from the text. Sometimes an actual character, sometimes a chorus, Time opens the fourth act by emphasizing the swift passage of time (in the context of The Winter’s Tale, sixteen years evaporate in an instant) and transitioning into the spring/summer section of the play. The Festival production eliminates this first scene of Act IV altogether, and 4.2’s exchange between Polixenes and Camillo serves as the transitional device. In more traditional readings of the play, time stands still in the nation of Sicilia, where the action opens (and closes), but the sixteen years have progressed in Bohemia, the site of 4.2 through 4.4, and thus the characters have aged. However, with the excision of Time and 4.1 in the Festival production, time’s passage has not been arrested in Sicilia, evidenced by the graying of hair and faltering of vision among the characters when we return to Sicilia for Act V.
The removal of this whimsical element in the play (that is, Time’s appearance and his freezing of time in the winter section of the play) lays the groundwork for a more conservative climax, which virtually eliminates Shakespeare’s ambiguity from the climactic event, and in my mind simplifies and makes less interesting the event. In the beginning of the play, Sicilia’s Queen Hermione is unfairly accused of adultery and is imprisoned by her suddenly insane (with jealousy?) husband, King Leontes; and we are told that because of the ordeal, Hermione perishes. In the final scene, 5.3, after Leontes has been reunited with his daughter Perdita (it’s a long story — go see the play), he is presented with a statue of Hermione — a statue which shortly comes to life. It is unclear in the text of the play if we are witnessing a supernatural event (a la the freezing of time) or if Hermione has merely been in hiding somewhere for sixteen years and is reintroduced as a “statue” for dramatic effect (dramatic within the context of the action of the play).
The Festival’s production definitely privileges the more conservative interpretation; through the actions of the characters, especially Paulina, the alleged maker of the statue, and through the graying of Hermione’s hair, it seems clear that the flesh-and-blood Hermione has only been playing at being a statue. The whimsical, the supernatural has been expunged from the scene, which is an extension of its being expunged from the play as a whole. The conservatism of the Festival’s interpretation shows up in other, more subtle ways. For instance, the contrast between the winter-Sicilia-tragedy half of the play and the summer-Bohemia-comedy half is evident in the costuming (especially the palette’s shift from largely monochromic to widely colorful) and the set (especially the lighting’s shift from blue spectrum to orange spectrum). While costuming and set/lighting do suggest the contrast, one has to look closely to see it. Another conservative choice would be the physical absence of the bear that famously chases Antigonus from the stage in 3.3. According to the Norton Shakespeare’s footnotes, in the Bard’s day an actual bear very well may have been brought onto the stage to “chase” Antigonus, but
[m]odern productions vary significantly in their representation of the bear. Some strive for realism, having a bearskin-clad actor or a mechanical likeness of a bear pass across a darkened stage illuminated only by the occasional lightning bolt. Other productions are more stylized, suggesting a bear by the obvious artifice of a mask or symbol.
The Festival removes a step or two further, and the bear is represented merely by its roaring and the terrorized expression of Antigonus as he runs (unsuccessfully) for his life.
One may argue that by eliminating elements like personified Time and an actor in a bear-suit, the Festival production is being the opposite of conservative — that it’s straying from more traditional, more textbound versions of The Winter’s Tale; and, on the one hand, that’s true, but I guess what I’m suggesting is that the Festival’s interpretation is more conservative (that is, less fanciful) than Shakespeare’s vision of the story. I have some ideas as to why these choices were made, and how they affect our overarching reading of the play — but that sounds like the stuff of an academic paper.
To be clear, I enjoyed the Festival production very much, and I encourage directors to stray from traditional staging choices and to play with the text, even if those choices and those edits seem, to me, less whimsical than what the playwright had in mind in the first place.
Anyway, the Festival is also doing Romeo and Juliet, and I plan to see that within the next week or so.
In June, I happily participated in the Poets & Painters event at the H. D. Smith Gallery in the Hoogland Center for the Arts in Springfield, Illinois. The event was a joint venture between the Prairie Art Alliance and Springfield Poets and Writers (of which I’m a proud member). I was planning on providing a link to the poems and artwork that were presented that evening (including my poem “Anima”), but the page seems to be missing in action at the moment. If it rematerializes, I’ll update this post.
This month I’ve been participating in a poetry workshop organized by Lisa Higgs and Tracy Zeman (a link to Tracy’s poem “Grass for Bone” in Beloit Poetry Journal) at the Vachel Lindsay Home. Unfortunately I had to miss the second of four sessions, but I’ve been enjoying them very much and getting a lot out of them. I’ve mainly been focusing on writing some new short stories and putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of my newest novel, “An Untimely Frost,” but I did write a poem for the workshop; and in general Lisa and Tracy have had me thinking about language in ways I wouldn’t have been if not for the workshop this summer.
The workshop session I missed was time well spent nonetheless as I met with the Friends of Sherman Library book club July 12 to discuss my novel Men of Winter. It was great fun to talk with avid and enthusiastic readers, and they indulged me to read my brand-new short story “Crowsong for the Stricken,” which was also fun (for me at least). In addition to “Crowsong” I’ve also written a story titled “Primitive Scent,” and I’m at work on a third new story. I have in mind the next novel I want to begin writing, but now I’m thinking of postponing that project to write a collection of stories all set in the same weird little Midwestern village, the setting of these three new stories. We’ll see.
On the reading front, I continue to make my way through War and Peace (on page about 840 out of 1,200), and also Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain (for my nightstand read) — but I did take a few days away from Tolstoy to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novella Memories of My Melancholy Whores (translated by Edith Grossman), and liked it very much: funny, haunting, touching — all the things one would expect from a Nobel Laureate.
12 Winters Blog 
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