shakespearean magicforest Before we talk I have all of these gory Portia-and-Bassanio Shakespearean things that I so want to say to you, but then we have so many grounded things to talk about like Monet and pineapple and American politics that I never do say them, or else I almost say them but then I just fall away into listening to your voice as you ramble on pleasantly and interestedly, oblivious to the fact that I am hearing nothing but your sounds and not your words, smiling away like an idiot as I pull my blankets over me and curl against my wall. So maybe it won't be until we run out of things to say and nothing is left but silence that I can finally say all of these Shakespearean things that I hate, but want for you to hear. 031019 ... imposter is silent 031019 ... magicforest god_its_when_you_say_things_like_that_that_I_love_you_most it is so hard to pretend it is soon so easy to remember so much better to delude myself so horrible swoons contentedly 031027 ... User24 Romeo and Juliet was the first play I read by Bill, I thought it was great at the time, but now I see that, actually, I just had a great English Teacher (thankyou Adrian Smith), and, in fact, Shakespear sucks donkeyballs. 031028 ... endless desire oh 031115 ... Klaudius So, I, suppose, that, his, almost, entirely, unanimous, good, reputation, is, due, to, amazing, english, teachers, around, the, world, who, strive, to, perpetuate, the, myth? I doubt it. There are more things in heaven and earth, Whoreatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 031116 ... magicforest Oh. My. God. I. Laughed. So. Hard. 031117 ... magicforest U24 and Klaudius would be an amazing pair if they aren't one already. 031117 ... magicforest Keep your Keats and your bard. Yonder deadfromtheneckup graduate. laughs 031117 ... oldephebe Shakespeare weaves a world in one breath Am i correct in assuming you are not being ironic or simply trying illicit a range of responses from the ire of all us word nerds who would see any declamation of willy with shakes as hereticsl to the ostensibly ambiguous silence of the resident reptilian fossils who would regard your antics with barely breathed amusement? Are my shimmering orbs blinding staring into the dim light, or the endless night? oops! i'm being disjointed and disingenuous again..But seriously i think shakespear weaves so eloquently, so masterfully all the strands that sutures these supperating sacks of slow rotting flesh. How can one not regard him without awe? His words, his portraiture of human fallibility and mercurial gyrations have an efficasy, profundity, a circumferance or radius that rivals the holy books of various faiths. Some would even assert that he exceeds them in his prodigious genious of ostensibly effortlessly painting the polarities and all points in between of the range of what it is to be human. We (and by "We" I am not referring to a universalist we, but those legions of fawning souls who have conferred upon him the secular approximation of a crown of deity, myself included)all aspire to his aesthetic. He traversed so many disparate worlds with equal mastery. Maybe I am misconstruing what is merely a mischievous tweaking at the base of this pillar, this exemplar of excellence. He is my hearth fire in the fist of winter. I never studied him in college, in fact i only began to get in to him a few years ago. Oh to be stained with the stigmata of his splendor. He did not merely represent what is human he imbued his characters with the entirety of the human soul. Critics have cast their envious embers at his resplendant verse for centuries and he still exceeds even in his failings the best efforts of most of us. He has painted every possible permutation of the human condition. I often come back to a few of my favorites shimmering jems just to bask in the sheer music and heft of his verse. ... 031117 ... oldephebe Romeo and Juliet the quintessential literary embodiment of romantic trajedy - she was 14 and he not much older - these are our secular scripture, our tutors to the muse, our high quixotic ambition, poised ever on that premonitory, one breath and we'll fall - that's it how the hell else could i sustain one love beyond all others for decades, after marraige and death and divorce windfall and woe there is still that implacable yearning that unequaled rapture of those few months, still unmet unchallenged and i will carry this down through the decades juliet with her eloquence and hyperbolic heart.. there is on those occassions something wrong written in the sky and we the pawns of that churlish cherubic misbegotten miscreant fated to play out these parts cupid's ever errant arrow and loves roaring sighs well..look at that..me being all maudlin and sentimental so much for gathering unto myself the stringent architectures of reason and descartesian implacability (really use the word implacable way too much..where's that thesaurus?) how about the detachment of descartesian desriptive Phenomenology..well yes that's a mighty impressively egg headed term that just means erecting our own cognitive filters to apprehend a world sheathed in the pristine prophylactic of mastabatory philosophic and really rigorous reasoning..who's got time to feel, or peel or whine after all that? Okay so that path has petered out..maybe.. but I will say something for the distraction of it's compelling discipline it exacts from the diligent practitioner..but romantic absolutism? yea more of my treacle and treatises..blah can reason and logic be the countervailing agent against the intoxication of romantic absolutism to see her gleaming angelic in the first and endlessly reverberating glowing moment - can these sophisticated mechanisms of discernment avail, stand against the quintessential sensory experience? can it hold you hard in your place when your hearts one true love is irrevocably severed? does the prospect of that perceived agony obliterate reason? i will subordinate myslef to love's usaries - over and over again.. denoument and demise..i saw it aching at the edges of her remarkable oceanic eyes - i will fall back roaring into my recidivism to the romantic - the quixotic - this is my realm - the sycophantic romantic.. i want the truth the truth you won't speak my love is this infinite thing i could unfurl its flag and wrap around the world several times my love it is this staff that extends legaues beneath the oceans floor and out unto the bottom of the world and beyond..your are the god of my idolatry i have made you my religion nothing EVER in my life will surpass that first night..NOTHING!! will you be for me as i am so for you? we had these incandescent exhanges! and sometimes i really feel like screaming this "Oh that heaven should practise such practice such stratagems upon such a subject so soft as myself" (or something like that) those are juliet's words and yet is not that every one's howl, when writhing in the agony of loss of your hearts truest flame? Oh how ever will I endure this, this passion this rage this loss, oh and i am dying, god, this is unendurable and time drags its teeth over our entire being slowly.. not trying to say well let's pose, a professional pop pyche moment here..just fortifying my temple of babble maybe if i say it out loud enough these things maybe it can stitch that superating seam in my soul..maybe.. "she was my love before i fell at first glance" i thank god though that she did not ultimatley let her young heart abdicate reason and the chastening of the patriarchal bridle..she reined in her passion, her fairytale romantic fantasies - when i could not would not - she saw this day afar off years later.. as I did and yet she was the more sober and wiser..and knew me almost better than i knew myself.. O! what an epic catastrophe! how does one instruct a soul in these things? a magical mingling of Oneness of beingness, and there at the corner of the eyes dard shadow crossing in the eye of the sky, something so inscrutably awry this is the price to pay for such fleeting rhapsodies of Being enough of all the treacle and canted columns of regurgitated reams ... that was me a few months back nibbling upon the few crumbs i am able to grasp from shakespears larder table..groaning under the sumptouse (sp) whieght of his verse and human creation 031117 ... oldephebe I think hamlet equisitely encapsulates the fragility and primeval force of humanity in the face a complesly shades series of betrayals..his entire life becomes renovated..hisinterior is forced to apprehend these vying emotions battling for his soul..what appears below was me masticating on the subject of our finite span upon this plane..and the whispers our frailties are subject to..it falls far short of Hamlets to be or not to be sermon/soliloquy..most of what i write is in some way or another inspired by the few shakespearean plays i've read yes yes the thousand shocks and such that flesh is heir to okay that those incessant renovations and reverbeations are the essential and ineluctably defining quality of humanity the poignancy the power, the possibility the pain, our soul water stains, bathing in the afterbirth of a loved ones secret harrow, oh god these fractured breaths are all i have sometimes - this is the house of man/woman - god we must be real, take me shake me - tear me up so i know that i'm not dead - life its devestations are endless are as varied as the shades of a womans soul, and even the broken glass that rattles in the back of my throat little archipelegos of shredded things rupturing every time i breath welcome to the world to be real - it ties us up and tears us down when i or we read Hamlet in all his fearsom apprehensions and gyrations and as he encapsulates a world a world in a way that only he can speak it - his humanity his authentic uncanny apprehension and the things it impels Him to say Hamlet is perfectly human - the love of a parent dying slowly on the vine the warm breath between our thighs the taste of a lovers ambrosia kiss the kick in the ass of that train we just missed i mean it all about sculpting and shaping humanity (if any one feels like it see oldephebe on despair) and the third person thing is .. but any way sometimes we shine the brightest the most brilliantly when we're cut (not self immolation or anything though)and (sigh) i guess we've got no choice but to be real or run away from our own lives be real and deal what was it Sarah Mcglauphlin said - the ravages of spirit wrote out this contemptuous rage or something like that get down so you can look up and see the sky and Sarah says a glowing ember burning hot and burning slow (Sarah Mcglauphlin from some song on "Surface") Hamlet went bounding out of his throttled heart, out of his throe and don't forget Anne Iversons inimitable imperial ire can we be for real for real for real for real i would like to be weightless on the surface of water and be unbroken and sometimes i say i'm tired of bein' sober and i can't wait till all this shit is over ... if we can be real and yet still hope ... brightness falling on the Child of Blight well thats my wordsmear out of Willie's madly spinning wheel God! these glittering dead breathes! It's all I've got sometmes. No snow days for me please. Because if there were mandatory snow days from these thousand shocks that we're heir to then I might not ever come back from its silent alabaster beauty. Okay so now I'm being equivocal, ah another indicia of humanities essential incongruity. We're just protean patches of living light. ... 031117 ... nomme http://www.shakespeareauthorship.org 031117 ... oldephebe right the whole contention of whether a struggling actor of barely secondary school education is the actually the shakespeare who wrote such brilliant verse..or was it the dark lady of the sonnets or the eith earl of something..i forget. Since i don't bother to proof read or plan these things out, i also don't bother to check the accuracy of some of my assertions..it's all crammed into the crowded attic of my distracted mind..anywhoo that was what you were referring to right?..i didn't go to the url you cited..slacker that i am. it definately wasn't marlowe though. Whoever shakespeare really was he or she has given birth to countless genrations of aspirants to his or her awe inspiring body of work. Yeah i aspire to his aesthetic, his cognitive reach..all that yeah.. ... ... 031117 ... mon why 'definatey not marlowe'? 031118 ... nom *definately 031118 ... oldephebe he was offed for being a spy against the crown well before willy wid da shakes finally completely shed marlows one dimentional histrionics..fearsome prodigy but if you juxatpose marlows later works against willy's post richard the third stuff you begin to see much more rounded portraitures..ah sorry i can't be more specific..i'm just writin' off da cuff. you know you are free however to completely challenge and or disagree with me..it's all gravy in the ground to me *blurp* 031118 ... mon well.. although i do not claim to have a solid opinion myself, i am interested in hearing all sides of the debate i do believe there is a great deal of mystery involved here i asked you 'why definately not marlowe' because i have yet to hear any concrete proof from anyone that definitivly states who exactly the man/men in question was/were one of my favourite books- Many P. Hall's the_secret_teachings_of_all_the_ages An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy -has an excellent chapter on the subject with a leaning towards Bacon. if you haven't already investigated this book i highly recommend it. have you seen the PBS Frontline show?: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muchado/ i watched it when it first aired and from what i remember it was quite a well done show. the following pages from go into further detail if interested please read: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muchado/fine/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muchado/fine/bios.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muchado/fine/react.html and for further reading: http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/title.htm http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/sudden.htm http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/inquest.htm there is a lot more but i will stop here, for now. 031118 ... oldephebe well i ah appreciate your elucidation and interest and the sources you've provided but here's my approach..whoever shakespeare really was is not that important to me..i just prefer to spend my limited time soaking up the rich music of his or her verse. peace.. 031118 ... oldephebe though i think i will check out that book you cited..thanx 031118 ... nom it is a good book i've enjoyed for years i am/have always been keen on hearing anyone's persepective, hence all the links i was directing my orininal link http://www.shakespeareauthorship.org towards anybody/everbody here/there/everywhere as it was the first thing to pop from my keyboard upon seeing the title of this blathe to be honest i didn't actually think you seemed all that interested in going over the whole 'who was shakepeare' thing oldephebe.. so no prob if you have nothing more to add to the jumble so yeah,..while i was kinda interested by your 'i didn't go to the url but marlowe wasn't the man' comment,.. seeing as how there is so much controversy,..i don't expect/ wasn't expecting you/anyone to go into any great depth of research or elaborate recitation as to your/their own stance on the matter,... so no worries if that is all you have to say for now about the identity of shakespeare, thanks for your input anyway i enjoy reading a lot of your contributions to blather actually i think this is all i have to say on the subject as well.. seeing as how i am rambling and i really should probably eat today or at least get some water. hopefully somebody will find the addies i posted here lookable, that is why i added them :.) myself, i feel it is all beautiful work whoever wrote it,... and that ultimately it is the message not the messenger which is more important in most hearts. 031118 ... notme the typothoughtamess frig you know what? that should be the_secret_teachings_of_all_ages not the_secret_teachings_of_all_the_ages 031118 ... oldephebe nah i haven't had the pleasure of seeing the pbs frontline show..i didn't even know one existed..i learned of the debate years before i even started getting into Bill shake&bake. i definately would like to get my hands on that book though.. thanx mon 031118 ... klaudiuskat What else can be said, after oldphebe's record breaking long blathe? Shakespeare is a perfect blend of poetry, philosophy, and tragic drama. Anybody who think he sucks donkeyballs hasn't really read it. Only one more thing to say about the matter, in respose to oldphebe's blathe: words,words,words.. ; ) 031119 ... oldephebe In the voice of an old college buddies aged jewish dad.."Maybe you could talk a liddle less, and gedda hair cut..your head looks like an untrimmed shrub! (i had a low afro in the early 80's and my friend was the only person i knew more voluble than me..he dad was cool but kinda stern) "Maybe you could get me a liddle something to eat?" You got some speckle on your collah dere. Wipe it off!" If we got too carried away he'd just say,,"Enough wid all the talking already." He was an aged but still feisty lawyer and through his gruffness i learned to apreciate his soft heart. Good times, yeah good times..but enough wid all the maudlin already! Yeah i'm word glutted. But verbosity doesn't neccessarily confer upon me any kind of virtue except that maybe i could take a breath every now and then..eh? later 031119 ... u24 oh please, Klaudius, look at the plot of 12th night. it's worse than daytime TV. the only reason it's fascinated people is because it provides an interesting study on the people of Shakespear's time, just like jerry springer will be fascinating as a social study in years to come. however as far as actual content, storyline, timelessness and believability goes, it sucks bigtime, compare macbeth to paradise lost, now tell me he's great. His historical works are wildy inaccurate, engineered to please the public, but most of all the monarchy (hence keep the wonderous Bard with his head intact), his comedies consist of mainly of sexist stereotypes, and his tragedies are disgustingly romanticised and unbeleivable. imho, so there. 031231 ... oldephebe it is true shakespeare borrowed and embellished plutarch and other scribes of antiquity as well as some of his contemporaries..and yes some of his plots seemed sutured together shoddily..but for his sheer command of language and his ability to plumb the depths of the human interior universe..the words no one before him or hardly since except maybe for charles dickens or silas mariner and a few others who approach his verbal prodigies...that is his singular gift..he taught us what it is to be human. His characters are a template in wich he housed the whole sordid and contentious..diurnal house of more. His character, the seminal figurants are more than just a clever juxtaposition of linguistic, rhetorical artifacts. Hamlet would say to us .."I am made up of more than just words. Inert characters idly painted upon the page." To read shakespeare is to recieve a transformation..to recover ones own lost being. but hey..like i always say..do your thing..sling pigs blood upon the sacrsanct..shoot spears into the eyes of icons..right?..that is the imperative of every new..generation..shakespeare will still be here after modernities usurpations. later, 031231 ... oE i meant to say dickens and fitzgerald, melville among others approach his verbal virtuosities..painting character that encompass a world in a few breaths. ... 031231 ... Souless Wanderer given the ultimatum, melissa would choose you, ben, rob, joy, todd, alicia, curtis, green earth boy, attracive chapters employees, jake gyllenhall, seabiscuits, her dog sammy, and, on some occasions, her mother over me 040104 ... newme http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/ http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/events/ i really like michael wood for some reason, and i think the show was good...but could've been better. 040714 ... unhinged i don't know what it is; whether it is the satire i've seen or the fact that the character ophelia pisses me off so goddamn much, but hamlet has always seemed somewhat inferior to king lear as far as i'm concerned. hamlet the character aside from the beautifully crafted prose and poetry that makes the story is an arrogant mysogonist (sp) who likes young girls swooning all over him, self_indulgent and whiny in his own fucking self_pity. blah blah, my mom was sleeping with my uncle so i don't know who my dad is. blah blah. i guess maybe i read plays more on the surface than at a allegorical or whatever kind of deeper level, but.... until you read kind lear, i guess you could think that hamlet is good. but when you read king lear, it exposes hamlet for the whiny brat he really is. king lear was probably one of shakespeare's most finally crafted plays EVER. and that is my opinion and i will stick by it even though the only shakespeare i've read since high school was some stupid henry the something history play and some of the sonnets. the end of king lear 'why should a dog, a rat, a...have life' (sic) as the cosmic irony of his stupidity and blindess hits king lear as he is dragging his dead daughter's body through the rain on his back.... that is the climax of all shakespearean tragedy. *shuddersigh* (and both plays i wrote extra scenes/solilquies for in high school. i think the one i wrote for hamlet is on the ophelia page.) 040714 ... birdmad Hamlet is pissed not simply beause his mom is banging his uncle but because at first it is because of how quickly his uncle moved to seize the throne by marrying Gertrude and then learning from the ghost that his uncle killed his father. If someone killed your dad and you had to sit tight and play nice until you could prove it, it might make you a little nutty too, and while it may be of-putting in the context of the prwesent day, Hamlet's misogyny isn't necessarily out of place but it also isn't as obvious as it seems. when Hamlet's Soliloquy becomes a bit of a tirade at Ophelia he is (most likely if you examine the nuances of the situation) trying to save her from what will be his own bad ending. His "frailty, thy name is Woman" critique of his mother stems from the rapid transition from burying her husband to marrying his brother, suggesting that Claudius either manipulated her grief really well or that there was some collusion between them (I wouldn't have had a problem with my mom re-marrying after my dad died, but if it had been one of my uncles and she only waited until a month after the funeral, it might have made me distrustful of them) it's all about the context. 040714 ... unhinged yeah, which i'm sorely lacking since i haven't read hamlet in over five years :-) but i still hold to the belief that king lear is the better work. while i haven't read either since my senior year in high school, my impressions of both then left me thinking that. maybe i should re-read them now when i have the time. 040714 ... birdmad no sweat. my favourites are Othello, Titus Andronicus, Richard III and, to a lesser exent, The Tempest and A Midsumer Night's Dream Interestingly, having re-read them recently, There is a weird mirror/parallel going on between certain aspects of "A Midsummer..." and "Titus Andronicus" I won't spoil it by telling. 040714 ... unhinged verdi wrote an opera 'otello' with a libretto by boito that was as accurate as a musical italian translation of shakespeare could be and the music is WONDERFUL. you should check it since i know the bird has a tendency towards the classical sometimes; while it's usually the primitive end like bartok, verdi is a master. and the masters have a way of slipping in whether you want them to or not. he was gonna do king lear with boito too and then he died. drat. i think king lear is my favorite because i myself am one of three sisters and at one point have been alienated by other members of my family; not my dad, but close enough. i guess we pick our favorites based on how they speak to our lives. 040715 ... pete My writing was called this once, especially the oral piece, "Job to God." I merely laughed, saying "oh sara, you are so modern." Or atleast I think I said that, if not that was the thought. 040716 ... oldephebe the first time i heard otello..god..to say that it was an epiphany or that i was enraptured..wouldn't quite capture it..the libretto is brilliant..brilliant! in some cases the native italian augments the fire and thunder and passion of shakespeare's words..verdi is of course the master. To listen to cecelia bartoli sing verdi is..my god! ... 040716 ... Wheres Cornel West to say something is shakesperian is not merely to pay homage to ones rhetorical flourishes, but it is to tip your hat, or give props to someone who has seemingly faciley...uh..searching, floundering in a sea of opacity here.. Shakesperean - To say shakesperean, to ascribe to it to another writers words is to say...there you have done it, you have out of that primordial furnace of imagination and heart throes painted an equisite existential construction. Did that make any sense? when you need 'im? 050703 what's it to you? who go blather from