Hi, this is Eliot Cohen and I want to welcome
you back to Rough Magic: Shakespeare on Power.
This lecture begins the second part of this
course in which we'll be talking about the
acquisition of power.
The next section will deal with the exercise
of power and the final section will deal with
the relinquishment, or the loss of power.
We're going to begin with in some ways the
most straightforward way in which people acquire
power.
And that is it's given to them.
They inherited it in some sense and the case
that we'll be looking at is Richard II.
Richard II is a legitimate king.
He has a set of very strong uncles.
He's portrayed in the plays, a very, very
young man, which is probably not entirely
accurate.
The play opens a duel that's about to take
place between his first cousin Henry Bolingbroke
and Thomas Mowbray, another gentleman at the
court.
Richard stops the duel and then exiles both
of them in a somewhat whimsical way.
His uncle, John of Gaunt, is the father of
Henry Bolingbrook, who's a major statesman.
And just so you know what the rest of the
story is: after Richard II confiscates John
of Gaunt's land, Bolingbrook returns from
France, nominally to get his own inheritance
back.
But actually what's happening is he's there
to overthrow Richard and eventually does and
indeed he kills Richard.
So this is very consequential.
This launches the War of the Roses.
It's a big deal.
Now you might say, well, people don't really
inherit power.
The way that's portrayed in the play, where
just because you're the son of the king, you
get to be king.
Maybe not.
But I think we all know in any organization,
there are people who have risen to the top
and it may not be by their own efforts.
It may be because of somebody they knew or
because of seniority or because there was
nobody else to be put in place.
And what Shakespeare has to teach us here
is about what's the result when that kind
of thing happens and the person who has acquired
power really has no judgment.
And in this case, it's Richard II who was
a brilliant man who is extremely gifted in
the use of the English language, who's very
clever, and in some ways quite insightful.
The scene that we'll be looking at his uncle
John of Gaunt is on his deathbed, and on his
deathbed, he's delivering an indictment, in
a way, of Richard.
Now, we don't have time to actually go through
Gaunt's speech in detail.
The one thing I would point out to you is
that he's offering a number of criticisms
of Richard as king.
They're not personal; it's not about his resentment
of the exile of his son, but they are substantive
criticisms of him as a king.
And I think each of the metaphors of "rash
fierce blazes.," another is "fire," or "showers"
and "storms," or the "cormorant," and that's
a bird of prey -- they actually all suggest
different criticisms of Richard as king.
John of Gaunt then launches onto one of the
most famous of all Shakespearian speeches,
probably the most powerful of all his patriotic
speeches, "this royal throne of kings," culminating
in the wonderful line, "this blessed plot,
this earth, this realm, this England."
And the speech goes on to say that England's
in pretty sad shape because of the things
that have happened to it.
And he says "this England that was wanting
to conquer others hath made a shameful conquest
of itself," not criticizing Richard by name,
interestingly.
Richard now shows up and he has-- he begins
with this somewhat absurd byplay with John
of Gaunt, in which John of Gaunt describes
himself in Richard II, describes him as looking
gaunt.
So there's a play on his last name.
They used to looking haggard, hence gaunt,
and so on.
And so there's this banter back and forth.
And then John of Gaunt presumes to criticize
Richard and offer him some advice from his
deathbed.
Well, Richard responds very badly to that,
beginning by calling him a "lunatic lean-witted
fool."
So lean-witted, it basically means foolish,
but it's also again a play on gaunt.
So it's the same idea.
Gaunt, haggard, lean-witted.
And what's interesting here is, what is it
that's making Richard so angry?
It's the insult to himself and it's not an
injury.
It's that his cheek has been made pale because
of what John of Gaunt has to say.
And he says, you know, by golly, if you weren't
my uncle, I'd have your head cut off for this,
which is clearly an overreaction.
So there's no respect to this man who's dying.
It's all about him.
One of the things that's striking to me is
Richard II is not in the room when Gaunt gives
his great patriotic speech.
And I think the reason is he would have had
no idea what to do with it.
And for sure he never would have delivered
it.
Because for Richard, it's all about Richard.
It's all about his own power.
And I think that's quite characteristic of
people who have inherited power.
Well, John of Gaunt dies and this is Richard's
reaction: "so much for that."
The short brutal sentence, which Shakespeare
periodically gives us.
And then he confiscates of Gaunt's properties,
that gives Bolingbrook the excuse to come
back and eventually seizes the throne.
Now, when things are going well for Richard,
he's intolerably arrogant.
When things go badly for him, he begins to
fall apart.
So here what he's saying is you can't depose
me, not because I'm actually a capable king,
not because there are people who will prevent
you from doing that.
It's because "not all the water in the rough
rude sea can wash the balm off from an anointed
king."
And then, you know, it gets crazier than that:
"God for His Richard hath in heavenly pay,
a glorious angel.
Then, if angels fight, weak men must fall,
for heaven guards the right."
And he actually, there's another speech in
which he talks about armies of angels getting
ready to fight for him.
Well, the angels don't show up, of course.
But here again, it is striking that he is,
all he's got is his authority.
He has nothing else to fall back on.
And of course when those things fall apart,
well what then happens is he is lost.
And it's not just that he loses the crown
and ultimately his life; he doesn't even know
who he is.
This is from the extraordinary speech that
he gives him Palmford Castle where he's been
imprisoned and where he will be murdered.
And he's basically talking to himself: "Thus
play I in one person many people, and none
contented.
Sometimes am I king; then treasons make me
wish myself a beggar.
And so I am.
Then crushing penury persuades me I was better
when a king; but whate'er I be, nor I nor
any man that but man is with nothing shall
be pleased til he be eased with being nothing?
I wasted time, and now doth Time wasted me."
Even at the end, he can't help but juggle
words because he is a very clever fellow.
But, the point is, his sense of identity is
not the man Richard.
It's the king.
And when the kingship has gone away, when
the authority has gone away, there is nothing.
There's a brief redeeming moment at the end.
And interestingly, it has nothing to do with
eloquence.
It's when the murderers rush in; and then
what happens is Richard grabs the sword from
one of them, "a villain thy own hand yields
thy death's instrument."
He runs them through and then he turns on
the other and says, "go thou, and fill another
room in hell!"
And then of course he is killed himself.
So a pretty, pretty sad ending there for Richard
II.
What I'd like you to do for the next lecture
is, and reflecting on this one, is read his
famous soliloquy when it first really hits
him that he's about to be deposed.
And one of the questions, the fascinating
questions, about Richard's character I think
is, has he become wise too late or is he just
filled with self-pity?
And is that essentially the nature of somebody
who has inherited power but never really earned
it.
And I would urge you to read it aloud.
It makes a big difference when you do that.
And we'll be talking more about it in a later
lecture.
For the next lecture, we're going to be talking
about a very different kind of king.
It'll be Prince Hal.
Prince Hal is the son of Bolingbrook who becomes
Henry IV, and he is having a rip-roaring in
good time in Eastcheap, kind of down at the
hills part of London, and he's hanging around
with John Falstaff, who of course one of the
greatest of all Shakespearian figures.
And the question I'd like you to think about
is, why is Falstaff -- why is Hal, rather,
spending time with Falstaff?
Why is this young Prince wasting time with
somebody who is admittedly very funny but
completely dissolute, dishonest, really has
most of the milder vices that you could have
imagined?
And I think if you, if you think about that
and you think about what the answers might
be it'll really help set us up for this next
discussion.
Look forward to seeing you then.
Hello again, this is Eliot Cohen and welcome
to Rough Magic: Shakespeare on Power.
Today, what I'd like to discuss with you is
a very different kind of royal than Richard
II.
This is Prince Hal, who will eventually become
one of the most famous of Shakespearian kings,
Henry V. Hal is the son of Henry IV, who was
originally Henry Bolingbroke, who deposed
Richard II.
He himself is worth several lectures as well.
He's a brilliant intriguer.
He knows how to keep his counsel.
He's really a Machiavellian prince in many
ways.
He's very cunning.
He's not particularly lovable, however, and
he is terribly disappointed in his son, Prince
Hal, who will inherit the throne because Hal's
wasting all of his time in Eastcheap, this
section of London filled with taverns and
brothels.
He's hanging around with Jack Falstaff and
a bunch of other low life friends and everybody's
talking about it.
Everybody knows what's going on and what's
particularly painful for Henry IV is the contrast
with Harry Hotspur, who is this young nobleman
who is actually going to lead a revolt against
Henry IV.
And who is the soul of honor, who is a valiant
warrior, who is everything, honestly, that
he wishes his son would be.
And instead look at what Hal is doing.
So the question that I want to ask is, what
is the education of a prince?
Is Hal getting, deliberately acquiring for
himself, a certain kind of education precisely
by hanging around with the likes of Jack Falstaff?
Now there are a lot of wonderful scenes in
this play, but one of the most amusing is
where Hal and Falstaff, who delight in coming
up with the most wonderfully inventive insults
directed at each other, stage of mock play
in which Falstaff plays Hal, and Hal plays
his father.
And Hal playing his father says, you really
need to get rid of this guy Falstaff, and
Falstaff gives this long speech in which he's
basically making these excuses.
And it culminates in that wonderful line:
"But for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff,
true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff,
and therefore more valiant being as he is
old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry's
company.
Banish plump Jack and banish all the world."
And that last line is really a beautiful line
because I think we, anybody who sees the play
thinks in a certain way, you banish Jack Falstaff,
rogue that he is, and the world is a much
less bright and enjoyable place.
And that's true.
Now, one of the things that's most striking
about this scene is what Hal says at the very
end.
And once again, this is one of those really
brief sentences that says it all: "I do; I
will."
For just a fraction of a moment.
We get a sense of that cold core, which you'll
see, I believe is really at the heart of who,
Hal, Henry V, really is.
That this has been done for show.
It's not being done for play, but there's
a serious purpose in mind.
And we see that in fact in a speech that Hal
gives, it's a soliloquy: "I know you all,
and will awhile uphold, the unyoked humor
of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun, who doth
permit the base contagious clouds to smother
up his beauty from the world, that, when he
please again to be himself, being wanted,
he may be more wondered apt.
So when this loose behavior I throw off and
pay the debt I never promised, by how much
better than my word I am, by so much shall
I falsify men's hopes...
I'll so offend to make offence a skill, redeeming
time when men think least I will."
This is at the very beginning of the play
and what it suggests to us, or at least what
it suggests to me, is Hal knows exactly what
he is doing.
He is actually extraordinarily cunning.
He is concealing himself in many ways.
This is a ploy so that when he finally becomes
king, people will think extraordinarily highly
of him.
Because Hal is very much aware, and this comes
through actually in Henry V, that his father
got the throne illegitimately.
He knows he has to win legitimacy on his own.
One of the ways in which he will win it is
by showing that he's actually a magnificent
king who you never would have expected to
be that.
In many ways Hal is the master director of
the political play that Shakespeare describes.
He is going to orchestrate all of this.
And we see furthermore that what, the reason
why, well, the reason why he's doing is not
just to fool people, but because of something
else.
By spending all that time in Eastcheap, by
hanging around with the likes of Falstaff
and Bardolph and Poins and the others, he
knows what average people are like.
Henry IV never really has that.
Henry IV could not deliver the famous St.
Crispin's Day speech: "We few, we happy few,
we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile.
This day shall gentle his condition."
And the speech goes on and we'll be talking
about it actually in a later lecture.
It's a brilliant speech.
It is not the speech that Henry IV could ever
have delivered because nobody would ever think
that Henry IV would look at one of his soldiers
and say, you're my brother.
Hal, Henry, can say that.
And he can be believed.
Now it's pretty doubtful that actually Henry
V really thinks of any of his soldiers as
his brothers, but he sure can fake it really,
really well.
At least again, that's how it, that's how
it seems to me.
Still though.
So, he needs Falstaff and he learns from Falstaff.
Falstaff is in a certain sense his teacher,
but then there's a point where he needs to
get rid of Falstaff.
And we see why in a later scene in the play,
on the eve of a great battle where there's
a lot of daring do being done on the battlefield
and then there's Falstaff.
And Falstaff is doing his best to stay out
of the fight.
He's feigns playing dead.
And why?
Well, Falstaff has a pretty unromantic view
of honor: "Can honor set to a leg?
No.
Or an arm?
No.
Or take away the grief of a wound?
No....
What is honor?
A word....
What is that honor?
Air.
A trim reckoning.
Who hath it?
He that died o' Wednesday.
Doth he feel it?
No.
Doth he heart it?
No."
So Falstaff has every man's view of these
things.
That's one of the reasons why we find him
such an attractive figure.
He touches some part of all of us.
This is just all nonsense, but you can't be
a king and believe that or let other people
think that you believe that.
And so he has to break with him.
And there's a heartbreaking scene at the end
of Henry IV, Part II, when Hal has finally
become King Henry.
And Falstaff approaches him, hoping that he
can finally cash in on his friendship with
Prince Hal, now that Hal is the king, and
ask him for a favor.
And you get what I believe is really the cruelest
line in Shakespeare where Henry V looks at
Falstaff and he says, "I know thee not old
man."
I've always thought those are the words that
would most terrify an old teacher, when one
of your students comes in and you know, you
have something to say to them and they look
at you and say, "I know thee not old man."
And it's done publicly, too.
This is not a private break.
And it has to be done that way.
And so there is in Henry V a very deliberate
education that he has created for himself,
which actually stands in good stead, as we
will see, as King Henry V.
What I'd like you to do, and now thinking
about this lecture is actually, there's a
somewhat similar kind of a speech that Henry
IV gives in Henry IV, Part I, where he describes
how he got the throne also by dissembling.
But it's a very different kind of dissembling,
by hiding things, by pretending to be certain
things that he wasn't.
But, look at how different it is from the
approach that his son took.
You'll find it very interesting.
The thing I'd like you to do to get ready
for our next session, where I'm going to actually
be talking more about technique, is to go
look at some performances of "For God's sake,
let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories
of the death of kings."
If you go to YouTube, and you either look
up either the URL or that title that I've
given you, you'll see very, very different
renditions of that speech.
And it'd be useful to you if you thought about
those before our next lecture.
Hi, this is Eliot Cohen again.
Welcome again to Rough Magic: Shakespeare
on Power.
With this lecture, what I would like to do
is dip once again into the issue of technique,
and talk a bit about how actors and directors
can interpret Shakespeare can do, and how
that can enrich our understanding of some
of the themes that we're discussing in this
course.
Now, I should say at the outset that of course
there are many different ways into Shakespeare.
One of the more durable disagreements about
how we approach Shakespeare is that between
people who really view Shakespeare's literature
as a literature to be read and processed that
way and carefully and sometimes quite minutely
examined, and those who really think of it
first and foremost is theater.
And there are other views to that.
This is all poetry and he just approached
it as poetry, not as studies of a character
for example, as the way we're doing it here.
But, for sure there is a big difference between
thinking of this as a piece of literature
to dissect and pull apart and examine, and
as something that was actually performed.
And what I would like to show you in this
lecture, is that if you think about Shakespeare
in performance, you can actually gain additional
insights and it can enrich your own reading
of it, because you can either read it as literature
or you can imagine what it'd be like if you
were actually the director staging play or
who knows, maybe even an actor yourself.
Let's start a little bit with where Shakespeare
performed and what kind of stages these plays
were written for.
So, this is the American Shakespeare Center
in Staunton, Virginia.
This is a replica of the so-called Blackfriars,
which was the indoor theater that Shakespeare's
company performed in.
You'll notice a couple of things.
There is no curtain, no proscenium, as they
call it, which is that fourth wall between
the actors and the audience.
Here you see, it's a pretty plain stage.
There are two floors; there are a couple of
doors on the first floor and a kind of a main
area that people come in and out of.
And then there's a balcony with, again, several
doors and it either natural light or candle
light.
But you see, it's very different from a modern
stage.
Second stage is the Globe Theater, which has
recently been recreated in London.
And you'll see it is very much like the Blackfriars.
Again, there's no curtain, it is really surrounded
on three sides.
There's that-- there's really two stories
here, and it's pretty straight forward.
Now, what did all this mean?
Well, the smith that Shakespeare actors were
focused on the word, and they were focused
on the action.
They were not supported by scenery.
Their costumes were quite gorgeous because
they were usually the second hand cast offs
of aristocratic sponsors and benefactors.
They had relatively few props.
They might have had tables and chairs and
cups and of course swords and things of that
kind, but not the elaborate props and certainly
not the elaborate stage effects that we now
think of as being characteristic of performances.
Although there might've been music and fake
thunder and things of that kind.
The actors themselves didn't really have a
director who had gotten-- would frequently
be the author who would walk you through it.
And of course, Shakespeare was part, as we've
pointed out, of a major company, the Lord
Chamberlain's Men.
And he was writing plays for them, so he'd
probably help walk people through it, but
they sort of figured it out in a way on their
own.
And they didn't even have the full script.
What would happen would be you would get your,
your roles with a que line before, so you
would know when to come in and we'd all kind
of come together on the stage and you'd have
a, be rather rare that you'd actually have
to complete text of the play to work with.
So a very, very different kind of acting environment
than the one that we are now used to.
I think what this meant is that, and what
it means for us, is that the language of Shakespeare
and the way it was presented should lead us
to think a lot about how the lines are delivered.
And I think that's really the key.
Staging is very important.
And you might ask yourself, you know, who
should be standing next to whom, how isolated
should somebody be on the stage?
What difference does it make if somebody is
forward and center stage, which is the most
powerful position to be in.
If they're in the wings or further upstage,
in other words behind everybody else, who
shows up in that balcony area and who doesn't.
And you might think about what impact that
has.
But the main thing I believe is really the
way in which actors voice the words.
And that can really have enormous consequences.
One thing to bear in mind about Shakespeare's
speech, of course, is he uses several different
forms.
I'll talk a little bit more about this when
we discuss rhetoric.
He is, of course, particularly famous for
the use of iambic pentameter, which is a somewhat
scary term, but it really shouldn't be.
And what iambic pentameter is, is just sort
of an unstressed syllable and then a stress
syllable, think I AM.
Pentameter means five of those.
So it's de dum, de dum, de dum, de dum, de
dum: 10 syllables.
The power of that is-- the rhythm is really
that of your heartbeat: de dum, de dum, de
dum.
And that was conducive to the kind of heightened
speech that we associate with Shakespeare.
It probably made it easier to remember the
lines.
That may have been one of the reasons to use
it, but there are all kinds of other forms
that Shakespeare uses, including prose.
And sometimes the actors can use the language
to signal changes.
Prose is often, but by no means always, a
sign that something is more prosaic, more
boring, as sometimes it's associated with
some of the more minor figures, although not
always as we'll see in Julius Caesar.
And then there are other devices he can use.
So you can use something called a trochee,
where actually you kind of reverse things.
You start with the stress and then you have
the unstressed, unstressed and you think of
the witches in Macbeth and go "boil, boil,
toil and trouble" "boil, boil, toil and trouble."
And that it's used for things like incantations
and chants and things of that kind.
So there's, there's a lot in the rhythm of
the language that an actor can use.
But above all, it's the words themselves.
And I thought what we might do is use that
speech, which I asked you to take a look at,
at the end of the previous lecture, which
can be delivered, as you will hopefully have
seen, in multiple ways.
I mean, think about those four clips that
I hope you all saw on YouTube with the first
actor giving it, I think, in a fairly conventional
theatrical way.
You have Derek Jacobi playing a sort of another
worldly Richard, who's just kind of hopelessly
lost.
There's Richard Pasco who was giving a very
strong performance of a, almost as a philosopher
who is come to see the reality.
And then Mark Rylan, who is a unique.
And I think that's so marvelous about the
Mark Rylan's performance of this speech is,
it's unlike anything else you've ever seen.
And it's that he actually, I think manages
to combine the fecklessness of Richard that
Derek Jacobi saw in the role with in a different
way, some of the seriousness that Richard
Pasco saw in the role.
But just think about those different renditions.
And you know, would you render them darkly?
Would you render them lightly?
You could do it different ways.
And of course that speech culminates in that
line, "As if this flesh which walls about
our life were brass impregnable; and humored
thus, comes at the last and with a little
pin bores through his castle wall, and farewell
king!"
And that can be done in many, many different
ways and it can convey very different meanings
and it can convey different interpretations
of character.
This can be a Richard who is essentially tragic,
who has finally come to see the limitations
of royalty.
It can be Richard who is now just sort of
amused at the foibles of human beings, himself
included.
And I would urge you, whenever you encounter
a speech you're not quite sure about, try
reading it aloud.
It may drive your roommate or a meaningful
other crazy, in which case I would suggest
you close the door.
But I think when you're, when you wonder about,
how should I interpret a character, particularly
a powerful character, have some fun with it
and read the speech to yourself with different
kinds of intention, different kinds of characterization
behind it.
Here's another example of this, where Richard
II once again is, knows he's been betrayed
by Northumberland.
And he tells him, this is what's going to
happen.
"Thou shall think though that he divide the
realm and give thee half it is too little,
helping him to all.
He shall think that thou, which knowst the
way to plant unrightful kings, wilt now again
being ne'er so little urged, another way to
pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.
The love of wicked men converts to fear that
fear, that fear to hate, and hate turns one
or both to worthy danger and deserved death."
Well, you could read this either once again
with a Richard who is wise, who now sees through
people.
It could be a Richard who's just sort of spiteful,
who happens to be right, but he's just right
because he's angry and spiteful, and he happens
to have hit on something that's true.
It really does make a difference for how you
understand that character.
And that in turn, I think, makes a difference
for how we understand the insights that powerful
people do have.
Because even Richard II, who is a thoroughly
incompetent ruler, who did nothing to earn
his throne, by virtue of having been powerful
and by virtue of having observed the behavior
of the people around him, understands some
things about them.
And so, how you choose to play that speech
can really shed a certain kind of insight.
Now, of course, there are other ways in which
Shakespeare can be staged as it were.
And I just wanted to mention that a couple
of them, and give you two examples in particular.
So the play Coriolanus is, it's one of my
favorites.
It's about a great Roman warrior whom eventually
turns on Rome, is exiled, comes to a tragic
end.
This was a movie version made by Ralph Fiennes
in the leading role of Coriolanus and he's
a great actor.
I will tell you personally, I hated the movie
because it was clearly a movie about Iraq.
If you look at, they decide-- you can play
Shakespeare, of course, in contemporary dress.
So clearly what they've decided to do here
is they've made Coriolanus out to be essentially
an American soldier.
Those are more or less an American fatigue
patterns.
And the opening sequences of the film version,
it's basically fighting in a place like Fallujah
or something like that.
Now the truth is, as I mentioned, Shakespearian
actors wore castoff clothing.
They, so they didn't, weren't necessarily
running around wearing togas if they were
doing a Roman play, or something like that.
So, there's warrant for saying, you know,
you're not tied to any particular form of
costume.
But what you can do is you can use costume
to try to interpret a play.
And the way this film version of Coriolanus
works is the interpretation is basically of
Coriolanus as suffering from what we would
call posttraumatic stress disorder.
And that's supposed to explain who he is,
what he, how he behaves, what he does.
It strikes me as a completely unconvincing
interpretation of Coriolanus I have to say,
but, but it is suggestive of how you can take
exactly the same words, and by staging it
in a certain way, putting people in different
period costume, you can interpret character
and therefore interpret, offer a larger interpretation
about its meaning for the theme of this course,
which is power in this case, military and
to some extent, political power.
To my mind, a more charming and a useful use
of that was from a staging, is from a performance
of The Tempest that occurred at the Shakespeare
Theater here in Washington D.C.
And of course, one of the characters in The
Tempest is Ariel.
The spirit who serves Prospero the Magician
who rules this island, and Ariel can be portrayed
in many different ways in this kind of weird,
other worldly character as a somewhat androgynous
figure.
Here it's pretty evidently a young woman;
sometimes it's a boy.
The thing that really struck me when my wife
and I saw this performance was this harness
that Ariel had to fly.
Now in a modern theater, you can effectively
have somebody fly using a wire kind of harness,
which is almost invisible.
So, it really does look as if somebody is
flying around the stage.
They very deliberately didn't do that.
She is suspended from a rope and when she's
flying around, she's suspended from that rope
and it only came together at the very end
when Prospero releases Ariel, frees her or
him -- depending, it's this somewhat androgynous
figure -- and with very famous scene in the
play, and which we'll be talking about later
on.
But the thing that was striking to me is when
Prospero released Ariel, they very cleverly
let that rope fall and that harness was, there
must have been a quick release, just kind
of falls off of Ariel, and Ariel walked off
the stage.
And what was going on there was, yes, Prospero
was now willing to free Ariel.
But the implicit result of that is Ariel could
no longer fly.
And there's, I think a deeper metaphor there
that was really interesting, really worth
thinking about.
And so you saw that some creative staging
could affect your interpretation of the whole
play.
Well, this is a vast subject.
There's mass literature on it.
We can talk more about that if you like.
But with that, I'd like to just move us to
the next week.
First, just to finish up on this week, you
might want to play with some of the ideas
that I've suggested here.
Look at some performances by different actors.
You can find those pretty easily and see which
ones are most convincing to you.
The next lecture is going to deal with people
acquiring power by a coup.
And that what we're going to be looking at
is two scenes where you have the conspirators
getting ready to kill Julius Caesar.
They're trying to persuade Brutus.
Brutus is trying to make up his mind.
The question is a question of motivation.
Why are they doing this?
Now at the very end, Mark Antony says, "a
rudeness his body, all the conspirators save
only he, did that they did an envy of Great
Caesar."
Really?
We'll discuss that next time.
Until then, see you later.
