Music and metre

I'm interested in this discussion that seems to be coming up about comparing the use of language in Shakespeare to the music in West Side Story. We looked at the beginning scene in class last Wednesday, and talked about how what is described through language in Romeo in Juliet is done all through music (with no lyrics) and dance in the Broadway musical. This really gives a sense both of how language itself can do so much work in defining setting, mood, tone and character, but also how Broadway musicals, especially beginning with Rodgers and Hammerstein and the advent of the "integrated musical," use song and dance to do much the same thing.

Just so you don't think I'm crazy with regards to Juliet's speech we've been discussing, here's part of the text, followed by how it's discussed in The Actor and the Text:

Gallop apace, you firety-footed steeds,
towards Phoebus' lodging! Such a waggoner as Phaeton would whip you to the West
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms untalked of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rights
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to win a losing match,
Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.
Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle till strange love grow bold,
think true love acted simple modestly.
Come, night. Come, Romeo. come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow upon a raven's back.

"The first word breaks the rhythm immediately: the first syllable of 'Gallop' has to be stressed.

This then sets up a kind of gallop in the rhythm of the whole, which is related to the racing of her blood, and the whole speech alternates between being quite violent and calm.

In quite a few other lines the first stress is inverted, thus making the first word remarkable.

This happens notably on 'Hood my unmanned blood' where the stress of the whole line is inverted until the last beat, so that the rhythm is underpinning her sexual arousal, and 'unmanned' becomes very specific (Berry 60-61).

Whether you understand the metrical and linguistic changes in the text to show Juliet's sexuality or simply her anxiety and impatience, the language itself says a lot about her character in that moment-that she wants it to be nighttime sooner, that she's appealing to the night itself to take over the day rather than talking herself into having more patience, etc.

Now consider that Richard Kislan, in his book The Musical, suggests that one should analyze the lyrical content of songs for their poetic value (meter, image, etc.) to understand how musicals are put together, and that this along with the musical qualities of songs reveals important information about character, situation and event. Here's the ensemble version of "Tonight" that happens just before the rumble. Like the opening scene, this is a "musical scene" that gives a lot of information about what's going on between the characters and what is about to happen. It reveals conflict and builds tension. But note Maria's part very closely:



So: what can you tell about Juliet from Shakespeare's text, and what can you tell about Maria from the lyrics and music she performs? Also think about Alberto Sandoval Sanchez's analysis of the character of Maria in terms of stereotypical ideas about Puerto Rican women. Does the music reinforce the conception of her as sweet and virginal as opposed to Anita's fiery Latina? And how does this compare to Shakespeare's illustration of Juliet's character? Are there ways to undermine the stereotypes that emerge in West Side Story in a contemporary interpretation of that musical for the stage? Just a few things to think about ...

West Side Story Vs. Romeo and Juliet

I know that West Side Story was based on Romeo and Juliet, but to compare the two just doesn't seem fair. I say fair because while the language and songs of West Side Story are fun and catchy, they don't compare to the rhythm and importance of Shakespeare's Iambic Pentameter. After delving into that style, I began to understand why it was written the way it was and what Shakespeare was trying to do with the style. I like Musical Theatre, don't get me wrong, but three is something more tragic in Rome and Juliet in that they both take their lives for one another. They make the ultimate sacrifice so that their families can live in peace for the years to come. Maria lives after watching Tony get shot, no one wants to see that! The songs are what keep people coming back to West Side Story. If gangs today were run like they are there, then I don't thing we'd be having any problems. I guess "gang wars" would turn into "dance off's" and everyone would go home happy. Also the way that people die in R&J is much better. You have your stabbing with Rapier's, secret death/love potions, and happy daggers. Now, if Maria had capped a few gang members after taking the gun near the end, I may have a different opinion about the show, but instead she doesn't and everyone becomes friends.   This is a bit of Iambic Pentameter (I think) I wrote comparing the two:

Compare the two, R and J, West Side Story.

Romeo Died, and then did Juliet.

Tony Died, but Maria was like "nope."

One had songs and cheer, the other erry'one dies. 

Musical Theatre is about Cash.

West Side Story

I wanted to comment on Romeo and Juliet, before we moved on to West Side story but didn't get the chance. But I will Comment on West Side Story it being a play derived from Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet. Having played the role of Tony is West side story I got to know the play up close and personal. I love this play not just because I got to play the leading male, but because the music helps tell their story; the dancing keeps it alive, and all three (acting, singing, and dancing) Kept the audiences attention. The ending was better only because the love birds didn't commit suicide. Although Tony was killed, Maria didn't kill herself. She very well could have with the gun firmly in her hands, but she didn't. That makes for a better ending. Not everybody has to die to make it a tear jerking love story. Ending still sad but not a total lost. When two people love each other as fast and as hard as they did there are bound to be some speed bumps; unexpected speedbumps. Their un-expected speedbump was the fact that Tony was killed. I guess thats a bit of a burnt bridge instead of speedbump.

Cicely Berry's chapter on "Structures, Energy, Imagery and Sound"

I'll post a document with my notes on Blackboard, but I want to draw everybody's attention to Obadiah's post about his lines from Hamlet. I'm going to use those as an example with the list of elements to look for in the text from Cicely Berry's chapter.

He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laborsome petition, and at last
Upon his will I sealed my hard consent.
I do beseech you give him leave to go.

1. Energy through the text: one thought leads to another, word to word, line to line, speech to speech; and the speeches always build. Look for ladders!

• In this text, look how "wrung" sets up what kind of leave Polonius gave to Laertes? Quick leave? Nope. Slooooooowwwww Leeeeaaaaaave.
• And the ladders from one thought leading to the next: slow leave (it took a long time), laborsome petition (and a lot of work), at last (did i mention how long it took?), upon his will (not because i wanted to) ... etc.
  

2. Antithesis: two ideas using words of opposite meaning in consecutive clauses; antithesis can come late in a speech and can happen between two characters.

• Seems like the antithesis doesn't really happen until the end of the third line with the words "hard consent." Even then, it is complicated consent because of all the pain it caused to give it. So antithesis allows for words and phrases to carry a lot of nuance and complexity.
  

3. Substance of the word—the energy of the word in relation to its meaning.

• see above: sloooooowwwww leeeeeavvvve; contrast this with: hard consent. The word beseech takes on some weight, also, because of all the long vowels. Seems like he's saying "pleeeeease give him leave to go so he will leave me the heck alone."
  

4. Discovery and movement of thought

• Try the exercise moving on punctuation, commas and all. This is where you see how long it takes him to get the sentence out. It almost seems like he's still debating whether or not to admit that he's decided to let Laertes go to France up until the moment I said seemed like antithesis--hard consent.
  

5. Nature of the image: the characters live where they find their images; images are extravagant and arise out of need.

• See Obadiah's post--the word "wrung" makes Polonius seem like a used washcloth, and "laborsome" makes him seem weary to me.

6. Argument and Emotion in Elizabethan thought

• Shakespeare was pre-Cartesian split! -- bodies and brains are not separate, but are often in conflict; the choice to let Laertes go despite the desire to make him stay creates a conflict in Polonius that affects him physically
  
• Everything fitted into a hierarchy -- note that the King is following the supposed hierarchy: the son is supposed to answer to the father; but the plays act out disorder in the great chain of being: here, the son has manipulated the father into giving him what he wants. But also: Polonius' need to make a choice in this moment comes from the fact that the King has asked him a question.
• Feelings are expressed in terms of argument, and are about something outside of the personal--you can tell how he feels about this choice, even though he doesn't say it. But also: this is almost more about his son than it is about him. "Look how badly Laertes wants to go to France! He must have a good reason for it, even if I can't figure out what it is ...
  

7. Word games and patterns-double meanings/puns, forms and patterns of words, repetition: there is delight in thoughts well-expressed.

• I don't know if this is intentional (who does?), but "upon his will i sealed my hard consent" could have double meaning. "Will" meaning Laertes' desire, but also meaning the document one puts together before one's death--and one might put a seal on a document with wax. By letting his son go to France, he feels like he is sealing his doom.
  

8. Structure of speeches

• argument is given at the beginning -- he hath wrung from me my slow leave

• thought is pursued with diversions into metaphor until the end -- all that hedging sort of re-enacts the wringing: on "and at last" you think he's done, but there's another twist "upon his will", etc.
  

• resolution ties in with the beginning -- i gave him my leave through all this labor, so please give him yours: i'm doing to you what he did to me.

• each individual thought refers back to the beginning and takes us closer to the end; the end refers back to the beginning. again, "he hath wrung from me my slow leave" and "i do beseech you give him leave"

So there's all that work being done even in just four brief lines!

Baz Luhrmann vs. Zeffirelli

We talked in class last Wednesday and today about how iambic pentameter in Shakespeare can itself be a useful tool of interpretation and analysis simply because it exists. I would suggest that even if you choose to stray from the meter really drastically to make the language seem more conversational and possibly more accessible to a contemporary audience, you've made a definite interpretive choice. The same is true if you choose to adhere to the meter really strictly. I wouldn't go as far as Cecily Berry does to call one way "fascist" and the other "populist," but one might seem to come across as more conservative and the other more resistant.

Also, as I mentioned in class, it's easiest to notice how the departure from meter shows what happens with a character when you actually speak the text several times through. You can feel the tension in your body between what the meter is "supposed" to be and what you have to do to make sense of the text. And it's important to remember, as Berry suggests, that once you are aware of all the linguistic rules of form in Shakespeare, and have recognized how they work in the text you are studying, you don't need to emphasize them. The awareness will stick with you, and that's usually enough.

Here are two different film interpretations of Romeo and Juliet. The first is from Baz Luhrmann's version, the second is from the 1968 Zeffirelli version. I chose clips that contain Mercutio's Queen Mab speech and the scene that leads up to it. Notice how differently they approach the language.





Also (since we're moving ahead to talk about a musical next) if you think of the language as being musical, you can imagine that speaking the words is akin to phrasing for a singer or musician. Here, for example, are two versions of "My Favorite Things" to show how varying rhythm can completely change tone and interpretation, and can be used to comment on the knowledge of how something is supposedly intended to sound:

Julie Andrews --



and John Coltrane --



There is of course pitch and tone and everything else to work with, but just changing where the notes fall in relation to the percussive elements changes everything about the song. There's that much room for playing around with the meter of Shakespeare, as well.

A new outlook

Alright Romeo and Juliet has never been one of my favorite plays , i could never get over the fact that they had to go and kill themselves in the end. However i really enjoyed going over the iambic pentameter with the different scenes in class. I've never done some thing like that before and it was an interesting experience for me. It was just a novel way for me to reread key areas in the script i also really liked the reading the play backwards. It really does help to see how everything is put together and how the play is going when you actually sit down and try to determine what cause in the play had what effect or vice versa.
Looking at the Romeo and Juliet in that way has helped me out a lot with resurrecting a little of my interest in one of the most famous of Shakespeare's plays.

This stuff really works!!!

So, I’m in the first blocking rehearsal for Hamlet. We’re doing what’s called “feeding lines” where an ASM or other actor stands behind you and quietly says your line to you before you say it out loud (this enables you to look at and respond more naturally to your environment and unencumberedly act on impulses). I have all of four lines in this particular scene so I’m just taking in words and repeating them, looking for relationships to manifest.
When I get the time I pull out my script and look at the lines I have. I’m speaking to the king about my son who is standing just behind me:
He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laborsome petition, and at last
Upon his will I sealed my hard consent.
I do beseech you give him leave to go.
I take a pencil and mark the iambic beats. I find every word follows a straight weak/strong pattern except for “wrung” and that screws up the regular rhythm for the remainder of the line.
This tells me I was pretty much beat down verbally by my son until I gave in. The regularity of all else leads me to think I keep a quite formal and proper reserve for the king but, as is a Dad’s way, I put a small guilt trip on my son for how far he was willing to go to get his way. (I’m good at that, as well)
Finding this pattern also helped immensely in getting the lines memorized. Even though it’s a very short passage, it’s a challenge for me to get Shakespeare’s lines down quickly. I pretty much had this by the end of that run through (don’t contradict me, Rocky).

Walking Backward in Another Man's Shoes

I have to say, I am blown away by how my initial ideas about a script can evolve and even leap off their original track after one of these classes. I think if I were to stage The Trojan Women now I would probably be most interested in- and even sympathetic for- Talthybius.
I keep driving home to my section students “all you have is the words on the page in front of you” when I ask about particulars in a script. Given that- and how the murder of a child is horrendous, obscene, and in no way forgivable- I feel pulled towards the struggle that must be going on in Talthybius’ mind. The idea of “choice” in our discussions is always tainted with a very modern sense of the word. I’ll again say he had a choice but his two options were horrid: 1) sell his soul, do his duty, and watch an infant be crushed or 2) try to hide or in some other way defend the baby and be killed in some wonderfully painful way and the baby still dies and the Greeks still enslave the women.
What would I do? I’d like to say I’d die rather than be an accomplice to a baby being made the brunt of such bigotry and hatred…but I might be as much as a coward as Talthybius.
As for today’s class, I went into it ready to throw the Friar to the wolves. He did perform a secret marriage and when he had the chance and opportunity to let it be known he lied by omission (and commission as well!). His speech in the final scene fell pathetically short in my mind to excusing his complicity.
Then we start going backwards and my sense of vengeance get turned inside out! In allowing Juliet to be alone, not forcing her out of the tomb, the Friar truly- and finally- gave Juliet her chance to be “all grown up” – even for a minute. Its more consideration than she would have received from her own family. I submit he very well may have absolved himself by this act and later confessing the whole train of events, but we didn’t finish analyzing the entire play. Who knows…its probably all Peter’s fault. :-)

Charles Mee's Trojan Women 2.0

Here is a link to Charles Mee's take on The Trojan Women. The first act is based mostly on Euripides, but he also uses Berlioz's opera Les Troyens. Notice that at the end of Act I, Hecuba sends Aeneas off to build a new Empire and get revenge on the Greeks. In the second act, Aeneas ends up getting sidetracked in Carthage and falls in love with Dido. An interesting side note: at the end of the story, usually Aeneas leaves to found Rome and Dido commits suicide. Charles Mee leaves the ending up to people producing the play.

Which leads me to another plot-related thought: how one chooses to end a play really influences its meaning. And another way to determine what the significant events of a play are is to look at its ending. How are things different in the end of Euripides' play than they were at the beginning? Initially, we know that Troy has been sacked and the men all killed. If you divide the play into three sections--let's call them Cassandra, Andromache, and Helen--you can identify what happens more easily. Cassandra is given to Agamemnon, Astyanax is taken and killed, Helen is not killed within the scenes of the play (and Greek audiences would have known the eventual outcome of that), the Citadel collapses, Hecuba goes off to be enslaved by Odysseus. How is it that those things come about? Are they inevitable? And what situation do they set in place at the end of the play? (There have been quite a few productions of this play over the past several years, and many of them raise the question of what invading a country and wreaking havoc on its people leaves in its wake. Can you see any way of staging it that might have an opposite effect and argue for the necessity of war?)

Also, I proposed this one reading based on the idea of a balanced argument existing in the play that examines questions of determinism and free will: who can choose to do what in this play? But, as Obadiah pointed out in his letter and Jeremy suggested in his comments about what choice the characters have--there are of course many other interpretations. Considering the fact that this was performed for an Athenian audience during the war with Sparta over who would control Greece, and Talthybius and Menelaus are not just Greeks but Spartans, a somewhat different reading of the events is also possible. It may be a critique of the Athenian act of invading a neutral island during the war, but it also might be suggesting that Athens was acting more like Sparta at that point in the war. How are Athenian values different than those of Sparta? One might imagine that--at a festival celebrating the city-state of Athens--Euripides was celebrating the values of democracy and reason over militarism and violence (remember Hecuba's line "Greeks! Greeks! You love war more than you love being human."). The play could be arguing that traditional Athenian values are better for the future of Greece than Spartan values are.

This information might lead you to stage an interpretation that sets up a parallel with the conflict in the United States between red states and blue states. What if this was a play staged by and for Democrats in which Talthybius and Menelaus were Democratic politicians visiting present-day Iraq and condoning violence and torture? What if it was warning Democrats against acting like Republicans when it comes to war, because the United States under Republican rule is akin to Greece under the control of Spartans? How would this influence your interpretation of the play's structure, events and outcome? And, again, how could you stage it to suggest the opposite interpretation: have the men's actions seem necessary and inevitable and be sympathetic to the audience?

The Trojan Women in a contemporary context

While reading this play, I had no idea how one would stage this tragedy in a contemporary context. With a directing background, I always try to think about how I would stage whatever play I am reading. This play stumped me though; probably because I was not quite sure what I was reading (yes, I'll admit it). After class the other day, I felt like I had a better grasp on what the play was about, and the background of Euripides definitely helped me get there. I wondered if there were any contemporary events that could parallel with the events of the play.
I knew nothing of sophism (with the exception of a Seinfeld episode, I think?) before class the other day. It reminded me a lot of Existentialism and the school of Sartre and the like. I went back to my contemporary philosophy notes to find some information that might help me out with this potential similarity. It just so happened that Sartre adapted a version of The Trojan Women. His version focused on the philosophy of Existentialism along with colonization and imperialism in Southern Asia.
I thought about Africa. After spending a month there this summer I find it hard not to do so. The countless civil wars and imperialism ran through my head as I thought about staging this Ancient Greek play in DR Congo, or Rwanda, or Sudan. I think these contemporary conflicts have a lot of similarities to the plot of The Trojan Women. The continent is overrun with the consequences of war, as is the setting in Euripide's play.

The Trojan War, etc.

I had a lot of thoughts after today's class. First of all, it occurred to me that if I am going to leave so little time to discuss certain elements of each play, I should give you as much background information as possible well before we discuss the play. So thanks to Jeremy for an excellent presentation on Euripedes and his role in Athenian drama, which gave us a lot to work with when approaching The Trojan Women. Here's some more stuff that might help you. First, this website is a very useful encyclopedia of mythology that will give you some background information about the play's characters. Second, here is some information about the Trojan War.

Here is what we discussed about the play's character lineages today, and what has happened before the play begins: Hecuba was the wife of Priam, King of Troy. Before the play begins, Priam and all of the men of Troy have been killed after the Greeks entered the city in a big wooden horse. This includes Hecuba's son Hector, husband of Andromache and brother to Paris, whose relationship with Helen angered Menelaos and instigated the Trojan War. Given that Euripides was using familiar Greek mythology, here, it is interesting to see how he deals with the re-telling of the story of the burning of Troy.

A couple of things that stood out to me as Jeremy was speaking today: this play was performed at the City Dionysia after a particularly contentious act by the Greeks. In Nicholas Rudall's introduction, he writes that

One year before the performance of The Trojan Women, Athens had invaded the island of Melos, which was greek but determinedly neutral in the war between Athens and Sparta, the Peloponnesian war. Athenian forces captured the island, put its men to death, and enslaved it s women and children. This barbaric act provoked the people of Athens. (3)

With that context in mind, and also considering that (as Jeremy pointed out) Euripides was influenced by sophist thinking that was skeptical about the possibility of knowing any complete truth, what meaning can we attribute to the plot of the play (or lack thereof) and how it is constructed? Also, what do you make of the fact that the location of the play was in a non-Greek country that had been invaded and its people enslaved? How does that knowledge influence your understanding of Talthybius and his entrance into the world of these mourning women?

Before class on Wednesday, try to outline in your mind (or on paper!) what the significant events in the text are. Make a list of what actually happens. Does each event seem inevitable, given the circumstances that precede it? Does it lead to other events that come after? Or do these things just happen to conveniently fall where they do in the plot?

Also, look closely at the Prologue between Poseidon and Athena. Then read from where Menelaos enters until his exit, focusing on the conflict between Helen and Hecuba in the middle of the scene. What does this argument represent? What is its outcome?

One other important thing that came out of today's class: there was a brief dispute about whether or not the major event of the play could be Hecuba's fall from queen to slave. This is a really productive debate to have, because it could determine how you might stage the play. When reading the play for production, if you decide that the story you want to tell is that of Hecuba's enslavement, the weight you give each scene and the outcome of each would be slightly different than if you think the most important event of the play is that Menelaus decides to take Helen with him to receive her punishment back in Greece. Does that make sense? I guess what I'm getting at here is: ultimately, what difference does it make how a plot fits together? And how can a theatre artist's analysis of a script influence its meaning?

Does this play build to a climactic moment, do you think? Are there a lot of complications? What would the point be after which everything changes? And does the ending offer any resolution?

Finally, how might you stage this play in a contemporary context? If you were going to direct it, where would you choose to set it, and why?

Okay, I think that's all I have to say for now. Please feel free to respond to any of these questions in comment form, or in the form of a longer blog entry! See you on Wednesday.

Euripedes' The Trojan Women

I have never been one for reading things written during the BC times without some sort of translation to “dumb it down.” The language is always so elaborate and extensive. The writers can go on and on for pages and only accomplish making one or two points. After a while of reading, I realize that I’ve been sitting here with my eyes going back and forth over the sentences and have absolutely no clue what it is that I just read and what I’m supposed to get from it. This is how Euripedes’ play, The Trojan Women, read for me. I found myself after a while having no real clue as to what they were talking about and only getting a broad sense of the fact that their city has been destroyed, families killed and that life was, simply, miserable and would be until the day they died. I glanced over to see how much more I had to read, and my heart sank just a bit.

I realize that I sound extremely pessimistic and whiny—my apologies. I do have an appreciation for where they are coming from and that theatre has been around a lot longer than just the past 100 or so years. I did some looking up for information about this play and found some translations and even some video clips of groups doing both Euripedes’ words and the translations which definitely helped in my reading of the play. Using these other sources helped me to follow along with the general idea of what was going on even without the specifics. Reading these words off the page does not give me anything emotionally. I understand that, “Ah me! ah me! What else but tears is now my hapless lot…” (Hecuba) is said out of her depressed state, but having to dissect those words so thoroughly eventually leads to a loss of emotion for the reader.

Reading it and watching it would convey two completely different ideas of this text. I’m certain that if I had the opportunity to sit down and watch it acted out in front of me by a talented performer who had done the research and had really delved into the character that my heart would be breaking.

I wrote this entry, obviously, before we have even had the opportunity to discuss the play in class. I have every intention of going into class with an open mind and hope that the presentations and discussions will open my eyes a little bit to what I’m missing while I just read it. I wanted to share my initial reactions.