I’m sorry, Maia, for having taken your thread so horribly off-track. Feel free to lay the smackdown on me if you disapprove :)

I have all the videotapes, but without a vcr or television, they can only be so useful. Fortunately…laptops :)

LAUGH! Oh man, the videotapes!

I have a set that I bought back in 1995 or something, so now the sound is all distorted in places, the opening theme sounds like it was done on a faulty synthesizer, and the picture quality is . . . not.

We’ve had some good times, those tapes and I.

(defenestrated, excited that the DVD of TP season two is finally coming out?)

Pretty off topic, but woah nelly, am I ever ready for this. I’ve had it ordered for about a month now. It’s nice to see that other folks here are TP fans.

Actually, I saw the Moonlighting version long before I read the original, and was really excited and pleased by it. Imagine my disappointment when I finally read the play in school.

I thought Maia meant the future husband throwing Hero across the room when she spoke of the horror of the situation.

/theater geekery

Same thing with his depiction of Shylock. Compare it to Christopher Marlowe’s characterization of the Jew of Malta - Marlowe’s Jew was an evil, Christian-hating, homicidal stereotype. Shakespeare’s Shylock certainly doesn’t escape the period’s anti-Semitic stereotyping, but there are moments in “The Merchant of Venice” where it’s impossible not to feel for him. He, too, is infused with Shakespeare’s deep feeling for the marginalized sections of humanity.

I feel the same way about Taming of the Shrew, from what I’ve read a feminist version of the play is usually one where Katherine implies she has some sort of power. I disagree, a feminist version would be one that played those events absolutely straight. Taming of the Shrew is a tragedy;

I saw Taming of the Shrew for the first time last summer, and that’s exactly the feeling I came away with. I want to see it done as a tragedy.

One of the least feminist Shakespeare plays I can think of is Winter’s Tale - what with the murdering one’s wife on suspicion of adultery and the whole statue-as-woman thing

Yes, but Leontes is mentally flagellated by Paulina for sixteen years before Hermione is restored to him, so he doesn’t exactly get off scot-free. The later tragedies and romances that deal with potentially unchaste women don’t take an uncritical stance towards the male obsession with female chastity; Emilia gets in some wonderfully bitter lines about the unfairness of sexual double standards in Othello, for example.

Hamlet might be one to look at if you want feminist-ish Shakespeare. Some good morals in it.

In the time when the play was set, the fact that Hero is assumed to have lost her virginity would not only have made her unsuitable for marriage to Claudio, but to anyone at all. In an era when women were not allowed to make their own living in any societally acceptable fashion and could easily be banished from their homes for such an offense, the alternative was often prostitution. In other words, to have pretended otherwise would have been beyond Shakespeare (or any other author in his time period and general geographic location). In fact, without being able to re-convince Claudio to marry her, she’d be essentially a marked woman. it would be unlikely that with such a stain on her character she would ever find a suitable match again. Even if the allegation was proven false, it would be much like being accused of a horrific crime like child molestation in today’s world — people would always wonder, and wondering would be enough to make her unsuitable for marriage.

The fact that Claudio instantly believes hearsay against Hero is another story, but remember: at this stage in the play, Claudio and Hero haven’t actually known each other very long, nor have they even conversed particularly much. This, too, is in keeping with the general timeframe of the play. Courtship wasn’t a months-long process involving finding out each other’s interests and establishing a basis of mutual trust and intimacy for a long-term relationship. It was based on finding a suitable match in terms of economic equality and maybe, if the two were lucky, some sexual attraction.

This means that at the date of the wedding, Claudio doesn’t trust Hero. Nor does he have any particular reason to. Hero pretends to be dead for a very simple reason: she banks on the fact that Claudio is incredibly powerfully attracted to her, and assumes that if he feels guilty, the feelings of guilt will overcome his anger and he will return to her.

It’s true that, perhaps, their wedding shouldn’t be as joyful as it’s often portrayed. But that’s a matter that can be arranged depending on the production and director. In the end, though, the lesson is a very interesting one: the couple that falls “in love” (read: in lust) at first sight without bothering to really talk to one another except to blush at each other’s beauty ends up in a really problematic relationship that is almost ended by a cruel rumor, while the couple who bicker and argue things out — in other words, the ones who communicate themselves to each other — are the ones who actually end up happier in the end. That’s about as nice a lesson as you’ll get from any literature of that time period.

Shakespeare had big B.O. ~~~ he appealed to the highest and lowest common denomiantors, would be called a sell-out today but be the guy churning out the blockbusters. He was his era’s Tabloid King, was crazy about the cult of celebrity/royalty, loved the trash people talked and exposing human behavior at its worst and at its best, loved intrigue as much as humor, figures with bipolar disorder as well as figures with major depression solely or mania on its own, and went Weekly World News on his audiences quite often having an affection for fairies, witches, and ghosts, etc. That’s primarily of how I think of him; I think it’d be a mistake to try to peg him as pro-anything or anti-anything in particular.

Ew, but not whatever law show it was that had Lara Flynn Boyle. She scares me, and the Donna from Fire Walk With Me was way better. OK, I’m stopping now.

One of the least feminist Shakespeare plays I can think of is Winter’s Tale - what with the murdering one’s wife on suspicion of adultery and the whole statue-as-woman thing - but I do love the stage direction [Exit, pursued by a bear].

because his other works paint very believable portraits of brilliant and capable women…even if most of them are evil. lady macbeth, etc. i feel reluctant to come to the conclusion that all the smart, strong, disobedient women in his plays had to come to bad ends, and that the ones who fared best were the most subservient to men. there has to be more. there has to.

Viola in Twelfth Night is smart, strong, and disobedient. She fares pretty well, although she is technically a man’s servant for much of the play. Granted, having to pretend to be a man in order to be safe isn’t exactly overthrowing the patriarchy, but it does at least subvert it a little.