Missy - As You Like It ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

 As You Like it was another comedy and as light and fluffy as you could wish for. Its the story of lovers and disguises and an evil duke and good wins the day.

We saw the 2006 Branagh version. 

It was well cast and very well acted. It had some of my favorite Shakespearean actors in it and was filmed in a cozy and pretty landscape. I do wish that they had tried this in Japan if they wanted to pursue that vibe though.

I wonder, a lot, about Branagh's choice to set it in Japan. Mostly it wasn’t Japanese enough to justify that decision, although my vote is still out on the Sumo.

It felt a little too British colonial orientalist for my comfort. Very Mikado vibes.

Also the camera filters were bad or maybe they were shooting on video? This was an HBO production. I wished for less grainy golden and more crisp HD or at least more clarity.

I wound up with one very strange highlight of the viewing.

My dog was riveted by this production.

It was bizarre. She couldn’t keep her eyes off of it. When I started it she ran into the room and fixated on the screen.

At one point she walked out to check something then turned right around and trotted back in. She got sleepy halfway through and laid down on her bed and watched the rest with one eye open.

I was slightly less enthralled.

There were some real strengths here though.

I found it impressive how straight they played it. The Rosalind as a boy trope was particularly jarring. She looked even less like a boy than Viola in Twelfth Night, but they were committed.

It was a little like watching a Superman movie where the pretense of glasses is all it takes for our suspension of disbelief. It’s fun and I’m glad they stuck to their guns on the interpretation. I do enjoy, but feel a little let down by, the modern camera winking of a lot of productions. If a thing is preposterous let it be that. You don’t need to draw attention to the fact that you the production company are also aware that it’s preposterous.

This entire play, like most comedies, is fully preposterous and it’s fun that way.

Kevin Klein was the highlight for me, close runner ups go to both Bryce Dallas and David Oyelowo for their Rosalind and Orlando  they were really enjoyable and I don’t know either of them from other works.

The play is not thought provoking in and of itself but it’s fun and this was a very well done version  

As You Like It - 3.5 stars for high watchability

Mom score- 0 no moms here this is another father daughter play

Missy - Supplemental Music

William Shakespeare1564 - 1616

Full Fathom Five (1623)

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange:

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.

Ding-dong!

Hark! now I hear them,

Ding-dong, bell!

But then

Song Full Fathom Five, Ben Whishaw
Artist Elliot Goldenthal
Album The Tempest (Music from the Motion Picture)

Come unto these yellow sands And then take hands Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd The wild waves whist Foot it featly here and thereAnd, sweet sprites, the burthen bearHark, hark! The watch-dogs bark

Full fathom five thy father lies Of his bones are coral made Those are pearls that were his eyes Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange, rich and strange Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell Hark, now I hear them... 

All of which is to say there is a lot of variety with Shakespearean music, even for the music for which we have good records. 

I went to a concert yesterday. It was a lovely concert and free.

There is a church in Frederick (Calvaryu United Methodist) that holds free concerts for the public.

A friend told me they were doing lute music and I was excited and blocked in my calendar with great anticipation. 

Not exceptionally surprisingly there was some Shakespearean music performed. 

They did The Willow Song from Othello and Full Fathom Five (the song at the top here) from The Tempest.  

They talked about how they were using the Robert Johnson music because he was a Shakespeare contemporary so they knew what the songs sounded like for lute. 

I had no idea this was the case. I thought all Shakespeare music was speculative. 

Robert Johnson was a court composer in the court of James I and later of his son Charles I. 

He worked with the Kings Men (The name of Shakespeares company at that time) and is closely associated with Shakespeare. He set songs from The Tempest and Cymbeline and The Winters Tale to music. 

It is not recorded that his music was  played during the plays, to his tunes and accompaniment, but there is a fair shot. 

It’s not actually recorded what any of the music in the plays sounded like and lots of people have tried lots of things to make feasible examples. Lots more people have just taken the lyrics and themes and treated Shakespeare as a librettists of sorts. 

I only recorded small snippets of the concert to keep in fair use but here is what I heard. 

Full Fathom Five

The Willow Song

Here is a very pretty and complete version of that song. 

The Willow song is a little different in history because it’s not really a Shakespeare song, in that he didn’t write it. It was a well known sad song about a man who was betrayed by his love and then lost all appetite for life. It’s reworked beautifully by Shakespeare in Othello where both Desdémona and Emilia sing it before their deaths. 

Shakespeare swaps the He in the song for a She and uses only the first few verses. 

For me, this moment in the play always makes me tear up. A good soundtrack will do that. 

The audience would have gotten it instantly. 

I’m so happy to have gotten to hear live music and especially this type of live music. 

I quite liked Ayreheart and bring your attention to this piece with a different lead singer. 

Beyond that, it’s clear that Shakespeare had music in his bones. 

According to google Shakespeare included approximately 100 vocal songs in his work and made over 400 references to music or things musical. 

I will leave you here with a few of my favorite Shakespeare music tunes but bear in mind they may or may not be Shakespeare. Like most else with the Bard it’s all speculation. So here are some songs I like that are Shakespeare adjacent. 

And this one because I sang it most recently. 

Hopefully someday I will have permission to post our version. 

Mariam-Twelfth Night ⭐⭐⭐ .5

It was the last night of my holidays, the very twelfth night for which this play was named. I was in the mood for a last bit of celebration and this play was it. 

And for that purpose it worked great. 

The style and setting was much the same as Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream, all filmed in the 90's, with that very warm lighting and heavy on the flora. Vines climbing buildings, vast gardens, very similar architecture, and bikes. Actually, somehow I had convinced myself that all three of these films were made by the same person, but in fact, each one is directed by someone different. 

The plot is that a twin brother and sister believe they have each lost each other in a ship sinking. The sister dresses up as a man to become the manservant of a local duke. She falls in love with him but he enlists her to court a local lady named Olivia. Olivia swears she'll mourn her recently dead brother for seven years. (I never figured out if this was real or she was just trying to get rid of the duke.) Sister-dressed-as-man tries to convince Olivia to marry the duke. Olivia falls in love with sister-dressed-as-man. Hijinks ensue. Fortunately brother turns up and marries Olivia and duke marries sister and all is well. 

Helena Bonham Carter was Olivia and I just can't get into her being a fragile female protagonist. I first saw her as Bellatrix Lestrange and I'll always get slightly creepy, slightly insane vibes from her. I do think she leans into a little batty in all her roles.

The funniest part was when brother and sister-dressed-as-man finally appear together and for a second, before it is explained, Olivia thinks she's looking at two men that look like the one she loves.

She gasps, "Most wonderful!" I cracked up.

There was a side plot in which various staff of Olivia's estate and her uncle were involved in various ploys. One ploy was that the uncle was pumping a rich guy, Sir Andrew for money while convincing him that Olivia would marry him. Sure, he was an unattractive character, but he was actually quite hurt at the end and it was awful. 

Another ploy was that they decided to gang up on one old manservant, Malvolio because he was stuffy and pompous and asked them not to cause a ruckus all night. They trick him into thinking Olivia is in love with him and when he pursues Olivia, he is made to look ridiculous and thoughtless Olivia has him thrown into a cell for being insane.

Neither of these people are given so much as an apology in the end and I think it was supposed to be funny but it was mean. 

Finally, there was Feste the Fool who was played by Ben Kingsley. He played the role a little too dark and Missy and I have been talking after the Hollow Crown Falstaff fiasco and now this Feste, the perils of believing that darkness gives depth/seriousness to a role. Everyone wants to be that serious actor who does Shakespeare. But I think Shakespeare did really well making good points in jest and that is lost when you get too caught up in making Shakespeare proud of you. 

But! All I need is 90s foliage climbing up old stone buildings and warm, warm colors and I feel cozy and happy. 

I agree with Missy that this is not a strong play. But it whiled the evening away pleasantly and that's all one really wants from a celebratory entertainment piece. 

We're going for another comedy next. As You Like It. More women dressed as men and romantic hijinks. Shakespeare had a limited number of tricks in his bag but oh, did he use the heck out of him. Respect. 

Mariam-Henry IV Part II-⭐⭐.5

So this is the play I have rated the lowest out of all the plays so far and I wonder if I'm being too harsh because we have a lot of poorly filmed stage plays to get through. Of course the cinematography is not the issue at all. As all of the Hollow Crowns so far, the sets and costuming are fantastic. 

I was just...bored. 

Remember, I was scared of the Henriad when we started this project? Well, it was not so bad especially watching it. I imagine reading it would have been torture. Additionally, it seems I've gotten through the worst of it and they get better from here. 

Chronologically, some lists put the Henriad as Shakespeare's first. The literary critic Harold Bloom makes the argument that the Henriad is some of Shakespeare's best work, but I, some sort of critic, argue that if you have a huge literary career it's unlikely that your first work is your best work. That is, I say Shakespeare gets a pass.

This story briefly is the continuation from the last. Hotspur's contingent is upset and make a little bit of noise and then kind of settle on their own with some machinations of the other prince. (Eh? Yes, four other princes just sprout from somewhere, most of them teenagers.)

Henry IV and Hal (V) are still having father-son spats that are not nearly as royal as you think. The concerns are: does my son just want me to die so he can have the crown? Does my dad really not see the genius of my plan to (pretend to but kind of also really) frivolously spend my princehood so then I can do an AWESOME reveal of my reformation when I am king?? (Umm if that sentence doesn't make sense, it's not supposed to, what mental gymnastics he must have gone through to come to that conclusion, my goodness gracious.)

Then Henry IV tells Hal that the best way to keep a country united is to attack foreign countries. He dies. Hal does a magnificent reformation which mostly consists of him publicly rejecting Falstaff in a really awful way. The end. 

I agree with Missy this Falstaff was just pitiful. That made it clear that Hal's plan had been mean and nasty the whole time. All of the noble class hated Falstaff and this rejection of him probably made Hal instantly part of the nobles' club. So Hal got to spend his youth having fun and then got to be a respectable king too all at the expense of pathetic old man. Less genius and more underhanded.

I don't know that a funny Falstaff would have made this less true. 

The three storylines of the dissatisfied nobles, Falstaff, and Henry IV and Hal either barely overlapped or never did. This made the Falstaff story feel forcibly injected into the whole plot. Again, I feel this is an issue with the writing rather than this particular version.

There's nothing even that interesting to screenshot...

I'm falling asleep just writing this. I'm sorry Shakespeare, I was bored.

Twelfth Night next, watched on actual twelfth night!

Missy - Twelfth Night ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

 

We stepped a little out of order so that we could watch Twelfth Night on Twelfth night. 

It is light and silly and this is a sweet version of the play. This is also the last Shakespeare play that I saw live. 

Given all that you’d think I’d remember it better. I conflated Merry Wives of Windsor with Twelfth Night and kept waiting for Falstaff to appear and try to woo some ladies. It occurred to me about 10 minutes in that in my head Sir Toby is Falstaff. 

Oh dear. 

Nevertheless, I watched the right play at the right time and enjoyed it. 

I’ve seen this version before and feel like it was well cast and well acted and overall very well done for a play I consider somewhat weak. 

I mean the twins even look like twins!

And it’s all pretty, apparently, forgettable. 

Even while I was watching it I was reimagining it as a modern LGBTQ flick where a woman who falls in love with another woman (in drag) just stays in love with her

and a man who pursues unattainable women just goes off with the dudes he’s been denying himself. 

That Freddy Mercury mustache was not helping. 

Then I had another one where Sir Toby and Falstaff are the twins and they cavort around drunkenly lead on by Feste. 

Then I realized I was doing Shakespeare fanfic and put a brake on it and tried to pay attention. 

That I forgot the play and had to drag my attention back is a good indicator that I was a bit bored by the it all. 

It really is well done but I always have a hard time with the twins comedies. They just don’t grab me. 

The real stand out here for me is Ben Kingsley who played the most intense and interesting Feste I’ve ever seen.

My best friend used to quote Feste a good bit and I have a special fondness for him.  I often imagine him while thinking of Hamlets poor Yoric. It’s the strangest and most inspired bit of casting here where all the cast is good  

I sometimes have a hard time with this play because of Malvolio’d treatment. In the play it goes from funny to cringe to abusive, real quick, and I don’t like it. This is 100% due to difference in humor and acceptable behavior from then to now, but at best it reminds me of a sitcom (I find sitcoms to be very uncomfortable and don’t watch them) and at worst it’s just cruel.

Is Malvolio an irritating ass? Yes, of course. Does he deserve his treatment? To me? Absolutely not.

In an only slightly earlier time Sir Toby and Malvolio would have been one dimensional parts in a morality play,  they work like that. There is the gluttonous rich man and here is the upright steward. You could put them into Punch and Judy and they would work, but Shakespeare gave us gray areas and humanity. The pious man is insufferable in his inflexibility, the libertine is repulsive in his revenge. 

This is Shakespeare doing The Great Shakespeare Thing in a play that to me is only mediocre. All hail Shakespeare.

Anyway…

Happy end, happy end, happy end.

*Here is your unsolicited advice to watch P.D.Q.Bachs The Stoned Guest which satirizes many of these comedy tropes in operatic form.

Twelfth Night - 3.5 stars for cinematography and casting

Mom score - 0 no moms  

Mariam-Supplemental: Mince Pies

Continuing on Shakespeare cooking themes, I decided to make mince pies for the holidays. I've had an almost gross fascination with the dish ever since I found out a few years ago from Missy that they are traditionally made of meat mixed with fruit. Since I had imagined that they were more like a gooey nut pie, something like a pecan pie, I was horrified by this vision of a beefy apple pie. 

Naturally, when we started thinking about Shakespeare cooking, I decided if I wanted to do something truly Shakespearean, I'd have to make the traditional mince pie. 

I prepared a lot. In modern times, we associate Elizabethan cooking often with feasting, so there was much holiday themed material available. I listened to the conveniently timed podcast episode from the Folger Shakespeare Library about Elizabethan cooking. 

I also watched/listened to this Youtube episode of The Tudors' Bizarre 12 Days Of Christmas Ritual shared by Missy. Tudor times are a tad bit before Shakespeare but were still close. One fun thing was that people back then used to fast leading up to the 12 days of feasting, both to save up resources for the feast but also to be nice and hungry so you could fill up on the good foods. There's also footage of a pig head being sort of deboned and then re-stuffed with edibles, sewn up and cooked.

I started to better understand the flavor profile of a mince pie. Our friend Kathryn pointed me in the right direction. Think orange chicken. My mind went to raisins in pulao/pilaf and suddenly I was starting to get it. It wasn't beefy apple pie. It was just...beef pie. 

I decided to use the Folger recipe also nicely timed in release and began to acquire ingredients. I couldn't find orange peel. After a short and exciting stint of anesthesia-fueled shoplifting, (the doctor said I could drive but forgot to mention that I may have gaps in memory such as forgetting you have to pay for goods and only remembering one hour later that such legal norms exist), I had acquired (and paid for) candied citron. 

This led me to listen to another podcast about whether citron was an appropriate Shakespearean substitute for orange peel. (It is. Also, I learned that an archaeobotanist is a real job and now I think I didn't dream big enough when I was deciding my career.)

You would think, after all this, I could start cooking. No. Because every recipe says to start with cooked beef. It doesn't say HOW to cook the beef and I myself only cook beef every five years or so and have little experience. Someone on Reddit said just do a pot roast. I was planning on making 4 cupcake sized pies so that was too much beef. Eventually I came across a note in the cookbook Missy gave me about parboiling it.

I'm not sure if I could have just parboiled it with just salt. The thought is only now occurring to me. Pakistani meat must be cooked with garlic so after searching whether Shakespeare had garlic (he did) I parboiled the meat with garlic, salt, black pepper, and ground cumin (they had that too.) Only now do I think, I really should have used the long pepper Missy gave me. I forgot.

It looked as grey as any recipe video I'd watched, once I took it out and chopped it up:

I edited the photo to look more appealing and less grey:

The fruits were supposed to be 7 parts to 10 parts beef. I decided to use citron and raisins. I skipped the prunes suggested after conferring with my stomach. I also used butter instead of beef suet.  

Our spice grinder broke so I had the authentic experience of grinding my spices with a mortar and pestle. 

Cloves:

Mace:

I did a thing not in the recipe in which I mixed all the ingredients together with the stock and then simmered it to meld the flavors together. I think it was a good decision.

I had scaled down the recipe so much that I was eyeballing some of the ingredients. THAT is a tad too much sugar. 

Shakespeare had puff pastry which is great because I don't like pie crust usually:

Filled them up. So it turns out I had enough to make 9 instead of 4. I had done a little tasting so I was feeling ok about this:

Sealed them up and cut vents:

While they baked, I decided to look up what was served with mince pie. Tea? It turns out tea came to England later and celebrations would have mulled wine, beer, mulled cider, etc. So I made up a quick mulled drink made of juice, a slice of orange and cinnamon. It was great.

The pies came out great:

And then I had some:

It was...good!

The criticisms are towards my own cooking. I knew I had added too much sugar but it was too late. I think I could have added more cloves and mace and maybe a little more salt would have balanced out the sugar. 

Far from wanting to puke, having to explain to the family why they shouldn't consume them, or having to throw them out, we went through them in two days. Huge success!

They're heavy. Puff pastry full of meat and butter is not the snack that cupcake portion is implying. These are a savory dish and definitely not a dessert. Traditionally, the sugar was meant to help preserve the dish longer, in times without a refrigerator and now that we have such high levels of sugar in all of our processed foods, I don't think the sweetness really registered as dessert to me. 

One of the reasons I haven't cooked more Shakespeare food is that Shakespearean recipes feel so alien to me and I cook very instinctively, so I need to know what flavors I'm aiming for at the end. This experience made me think, it may not be as difficult as I thought. 

On to more serious Henry thoughts. 

Missy - Henry IV pt 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

A reminder about where we are in the Henriad. 

Richard II is deposed, his cousin Henry Bolingbrook is now King Henry IV and his son Hal is a profligate and idle prince. 

Henry IV pt 2 has even less going on than Henry IV pt 1. 

This play see Hal’s transformation completed. He leaves his frivolity behind him and become, what the Teaching Company lecture pointed out, the ideal Protestant King. He is now full of honor and justice and upright daring do. 

But, we don’t really get to see any of that until the last 5 minutes of the play. 

This is, once again, a play about Falstaff. The problem for me with that is that Simon Russell Beal who plays him here, does not play him funny. 

He has 3 modes: mercurial and semi charming, grasping and desperate, pitiful and repulsive.

I concede that all of those traits exist fully in Falstaff but without the humor for which this part is famous, he is not, to me, lovable. 

Beal got a BAFTA for this performance so clearly other people found this interpretation moving. Not I. 

His vulgarity was without redemption and I found myself not minding when “I know you not old man.” hit.

That’s the strongest line in the play. 

It’s an iconic Shakespeare moment. 

I’m a little mad about it actually. 

Without a compelling reason to care for Falstaff his banishment is nearly meaningless. 

I’ve seen some Falstaff that were 100% clown and those aren’t better but this version left me a little bored and a little annoyed. 

I hope Mariam enjoys it more. 

We went back and forth on which version to watch. The list we are working from recommended My Own Private Idaho and I love that version but it’s not as true to the text as all that. 

In point of fact if you don’t know you are watching a Shakespeare play here it would blow right by you. 

I’m putting it on the, let’s watch this one later list with Ran. 

I am glad we are skipping over to 12th Night next. It will polish off the Falstaff and clear the pallet. 

I’m super looking forward to the Branagh Henry V though. It’s one of the very best. 

Henry IV pt 2 - 3 stars for getting up to Henry V and for cinematography. 

Mom score - 0 for no moms