Shakespeare’s A SM...
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w Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet and Kate Winslet as Ophelia in the 1997 film Hamlet Laurence Fishburne as Othello (left) and Kenneth Branagh as Iago in the 1996 film Othello Series 11 thetelegraph.com.au/classmate Cl @ ss mate Email [email protected] Phone 9288 2542 EVERY TUESDAY FOR FREE TEACHER RESOURCES VISIT thetelegraph.com.au/classmate Editor: Troy Lennon Graphics: Paul Leigh and Will Pearce Richard III And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain C L A S S M A T E 1 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y SOURCES & FURTHER STUDY Books: Chambers Dictionary Of Literary Characters, edited by Una McGovern (Chambers) The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works (Bloomsbury) DVD: Royal Shakespeare Company Production of Hamlet (ABC DVD) Macbeth, starring Sam Worthington (Revolver DVD) Reference: Encyclopaedia Britannica On stage: Julius Caesar , Sydney Playhouse, until November 26 Richard III , Lyric Theatre, The Star, December 1-10 As You Like It, Belvoir Street Theatre, upstairs, November 19-December 24 Shakespeare’s T he great English Elizabethan playwright William Shakespeare is renowned for creating rich, complex characters in his plays. But some of his most interesting creations are his villains. Some are evil incarnate, cruel, vengeful and beyond redemption. Others seem to be victims of their own excessive desires. In some cases, Shakespeare redeems his villains; in others, they get what they deserve. Claudius There is “something rotten in the state of Denmark’’ in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. The Prince of Denmark, Hamlet, is told by the ghost of his father, Hamlet senior, that he was murdered by Hamlet’s uncle Claudius. The usurping uncle has then married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, to secure his claim to the throne. Hamlet wants revenge but cannot decide how it should be done. Claudius fears his plot has been discovered but never regrets what he has done. Even when he tries to repent in prayer, his repentance is insincere and he remarks that “words without thoughts never to heaven go’’. To cover his crime, he tries to have Hamlet poisoned while matching swords with Laertes, the son of Polonius whom Hamlet has accidentally slain, believing him to be Claudius. Gertrude drinks the poison intended for Hamlet. In the end, Hamlet slays Claudius but is himself killed by a poisoned blade. Did you know? n The real Macbeth was in most respects nothing like the bloodthirsty king of Shakespeare. He did not murder his cousin Duncan to take the throne, but defeated Duncan in battle in 1040. He then reigned for more than a decade before he was forced to cede the southern part of Scotland to Malcolm in 1054 and was killed by Duncan in battle in 1057. His stepson Lulach was placed on the throne but he was murdered in 1058 and Malcolm became king. n Macbeth has been reinterpreted many times, on stage and on film. In the film version Joe Macbeth he is portrayed as a gangster; in a BBC Shakespeare Retold TV version he is an ambitious chef. An Australian film version starred Sam Worthington as a drug lord, complete with a leather kilt for the final duel with Macduff. n Iago was based on a character known simply as the ensign from the 1564 Italian story Un Capitano Moro (The Moorish Captain) by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio. Supposedly based on a real incident in Venice in 1508, it tells how an ensign lusts after a character named Disdemona and is ordered to murder her by her Moorish husband who is also his captain. They make it look like an accident but the Moor is later arrested and executed for the murder while the ensign avoids prosecution. The Macbeths In the play Macbeth, the Thane (a Scottish nobleman) of Glamis is a general in the army of King Duncan. After a battle he is accosted by witches who call him Thane of Cawdor and tell him he will be “king hereafter’’. He doesn’t believe them until a messenger from the king arrives to say that the former Thane of Cawdor has been executed and Macbeth now has the title. He tells his wife, Lady Macbeth, who tells him to aspire to be king. Macbeth murders Duncan, becoming king. But the couple are soon tortured by their consciences and driven to other murders to cover their tracks and keep power. Lady Macbeth commits suicide and King Macbeth is killed in single combat. The play is a story of a man and his wife who are driven to dark deeds by their ambition, but who are troubled to the point of madness by what they have done to achieve power. Richard III One of Shakespeare’s most entertaining bad guys is Richard III, based on the actual King Richard. Shakespeare depicts him as a deformed, vengeful, yet often charming villain. In his opening speech Richard, initially Duke of Gloucester, reveals his feelings of ambition, jealousy and vengeance. He feels that since he is “rudely stamped’’ – hunchbacked and club-footed – he is unlikely to ever be a lover, so he is “determined to prove a villain’’. He plots to become king, by murdering those who stand between him and marrying Lady Anne, whose father and husband he has already murdered to improve his fortunes and his claim to the throne. He enjoys the quest for power. At one point he comments that he can “murder whiles I smile’’. But his time as king is short-lived. He makes too many enemies and is killed in the final battle, crying out that he will trade his “kingdom for a horse’’. The real Richard was neither deformed nor as heartless and ambitious as Shakespeare’s character, but may have been the victim of Tudor propaganda. Shakespeare lived under a Tudor monarch and it had been a Tudor prince who had defeated Richard to become the first of a new dynasty. Iago In the play Othello The Moor Of Venice, the Venetian general Othello, a “blackamoor’’ or dark-skinned person, finds an enemy in fellow officer Iago. Othello has passed over Iago for promotion to the position of his lieutenant and Iago’s prejudices against blacks come out. He plots to discredit Cassio, the man appointed Othello’s lieutenant, by making Othello think that his wife Desdemona has been having an affair with Cassio. On flimsy evidence, Othello believes that Desdemona has been cheating. Iago’s revenge has tragic consequences when Othello murders his wife and then commits suicide. Iago is arrested for his part in the murder but he refuses to explain the motives for his villainy. Iago is one of the most perplexing of Shakespeare’s evil-doers. Aaron the Moor In the play Titus Andronicus, the noble Roman Titus makes an enemy of Tamora, queen of the Goths, by sending her son to be sacrificed as revenge for the Romans who have died. Tamora’s lover, Aaron the Moor, devises methods of making Titus and the Romans suffer for Tamora’s loss. He spurs the Romans on to murder, rape and even self- mutilation, until Titus, Tamora and the emperor Saturninus are dead, leaving Titus’s son Lucius as emperor. As Aaron heads to his execution, he says: “I am no baby, I, that with base prayers I should repent the evils I have done: Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did would I perform, if I might have my will; If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul.’’ Cassius In Julius Caesar, Cassius is a manipulator who is the main instigator of a conspiracy against Caesar, but he urges others to do the dirty work. Caesar says: “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.’’ After the assassination he loses control of the plot he started, submitting to Brutus and failing to do anything about the ideologically driven bad decisions. There is some redemption when he believes his friend Titinius is dead, saying: “Come down, behold no more. O, coward that I am, to live so long, To see my best friend ta’en before my face!’’ He asks his servant to kill him, using the sword he used to kill Caesar. He dies saying: “Caesar, thou art revenged, Even with the sword that kill’d thee.” Evil siblings in Shakespeare Shakespeare has a theme of nastiness between brothers in many of his plays. In As You Like It, Frederick usurps his brother Duke Senior and has exiled his brother to a forest. In the same play, Orlando is persecuted by an older brother. By the play’s end, both brothers express regret for their actions and reconcile. In The Tempest, the duke Prospero has been overthrown and banished to an island by his brother Antonio. The island is enchanted and, using magic powers, Prospero causes the duke’s ship to be stranded on the island, eventually bringing about a reconciliation. In King Lear , Edmund, bastard son of the Duke of Gloucester, causes his brother Edgar to be disgraced and his father to be blinded. By the end of the play, Edmund, dying from a wound inflicted by Edgar, regrets his actions. But in Much Ado About Nothing, Don John, illegitimate brother of Don Pedro, never repents of the mischief he causes (see Don John), nor does Claudius ever really repent of murdering his brother King Hamlet (see Claudius). David James playing Don John (left) and James Wardlaw playing Borachio in a 1996 production of Much Ado About Nothing 34 Don John Much Ado About Nothing is mostly a comedy but one with a very dark streak. Don John, the younger “bastard’’ brother of Don Pedro, seethes about being the less-favoured brother but also seems to relish being sullen and nasty. He also says that is his nature and he will not change. He says: “Though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am plain-dealing villain.’’ He plots to tear apart the lovers Claudio and Hero, by putting about rumours that Hero has been seeing other men. His plan is eventually thwarted and he is arrested but to the end he is unrepentant. Tybalt Romeo And Juliet does not have a traditional villain, in that there is not an individual evil person keeping the two lovers apart and bringing about their tragic demise. However, Juliet’s cousin Tybalt revels in the violence between his family, the Capulets, and Romeo’s clan, the Montagues. In a confrontation with Romeo’s cousin Benvolio, he says: “What? Drawn and you talk of peace? I hate the word as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Have at thee, coward!’’ When Tybalt kills the duke’s son and Romeo’s best friend Mercutio, Romeo is prompted to an act of vengeance that dooms his love for Juliet. A scene from the 1996 film Romeo + Juliet Rosalind and Frederick (Alison Bell and Trevor Jamieson) in Belvoir’s new production of As You Like It Shakespeare Sam Worthington plays the lead in the 2006 film version of Macbeth Kevin Spacey performs a scene from William Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Old Vic Theatre in London’s West End
Transcript of Shakespeare’s A SM...
w
Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet and Kate Winslet as Ophelia in the 1997 film Hamlet
Laurence Fishburne as Othello (left) and Kenneth Branagh as Iago in the 1996 film Othello
Series 11
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Richard III
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
CLASSMATE
10th
ANNIVERS
ARY
SoURcES & FURThER STUDYBooks:Chambers Dictionary Of Literary Characters, edited by Una McGovern (Chambers)The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works (Bloomsbury)DVD:Royal Shakespeare Company Production of Hamlet (ABC DVD)Macbeth, starring Sam Worthington (Revolver DVD) Reference:Encyclopaedia BritannicaOn stage:Julius Caesar, Sydney Playhouse, until November 26Richard III, Lyric Theatre, The Star, December 1-10As You Like It, Belvoir Street Theatre, upstairs, November 19-December 24
Shakespeare’s
The great English Elizabethan playwright William Shakespeare is renowned for creating rich, complex characters in his plays. But some of his most interesting creations
are his villains. Some are evil incarnate, cruel, vengeful and beyond redemption. Others seem to be victims of their own excessive desires. In some cases, Shakespeare redeems his villains; in others, they get what they deserve.
ClaudiusThere is “something rotten in the state of Denmark’’ in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. The Prince of Denmark, Hamlet, is told by the ghost of his father, Hamlet senior, that he was murdered by Hamlet’s uncle Claudius. The usurping uncle has then married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, to secure his claim to the throne. Hamlet wants revenge but cannot decide how it should be done. Claudius fears his plot has been discovered but never regrets what he has done. Even when he tries to repent in prayer, his repentance is insincere and he remarks that “words without thoughts never to heaven go’’. To cover his crime, he tries to have Hamlet poisoned while matching swords with Laertes, the son of Polonius whom Hamlet has accidentally slain, believing him to be Claudius. Gertrude drinks the poison intended for Hamlet. In the end, Hamlet slays Claudius but is himself killed by a poisoned blade.
Did you know?n The real Macbeth was in most respects nothing like the bloodthirsty king of Shakespeare. He did not murder his cousin Duncan to take the throne, but defeated Duncan in battle in 1040. He then reigned for more than a decade before he was forced to cede the southern part of Scotland to Malcolm in 1054 and was killed by Duncan in battle in 1057. His stepson Lulach was placed on the throne but he was murdered in 1058 and Malcolm became king.
n Macbeth has been reinterpreted many times, on stage and on film. In the film version Joe Macbeth he is portrayed as a gangster; in a BBC Shakespeare Retold TV version he is an ambitious chef. An Australian film version starred Sam Worthington as a drug lord, complete with a leather kilt for the final duel with Macduff.
n Iago was based on a character known simply as the ensign from the 1564 Italian story Un Capitano Moro (The Moorish Captain) by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio. Supposedly based on a real incident in Venice in 1508, it tells how an ensign lusts after a character named Disdemona and is ordered to murder her by her Moorish husband who is also his
captain. They make it look like an accident but the Moor is later arrested and executed for the murder while the ensign avoids prosecution.
The MacbethsIn the play Macbeth, the Thane (a Scottish nobleman) of Glamis is a general in the army of King Duncan. After a battle he is accosted by witches who call him Thane of Cawdor and tell him he will be “king hereafter’’. He doesn’t believe them until a messenger from the king arrives to say that the former Thane of Cawdor has been executed and Macbeth now has the title. He tells his wife, Lady Macbeth, who tells him to aspire to be king. Macbeth murders Duncan, becoming king. But the couple are soon tortured by their consciences and driven to other murders to cover their tracks and keep power. Lady Macbeth commits suicide and King Macbeth is killed in single combat. The play is a story of a man and his wife who are driven to dark deeds by their ambition, but who are troubled to the point of madness by what they have done to achieve power.
Richard IIIOne of Shakespeare’s most entertaining bad guys is Richard III, based on the actual King Richard. Shakespeare depicts him as a deformed, vengeful, yet often
charming villain. In his opening speech Richard, initially Duke of Gloucester, reveals his feelings of ambition, jealousy and vengeance. He feels that since he is “rudely stamped’’ – hunchbacked and club-footed – he is unlikely to ever be a lover, so he is “determined to prove a villain’’. He plots to become king, by murdering those who stand between him and marrying Lady Anne, whose father and husband he has already murdered to improve his fortunes and his
claim to the throne. He enjoys the quest for power. At one point he comments that he can “murder whiles I smile’’. But his time as king is short-lived. He makes
too many enemies and is killed in the final battle, crying out that he will trade his “kingdom for a horse’’. The real Richard was neither deformed nor as heartless and ambitious as Shakespeare’s character, but may have been the victim of Tudor propaganda. Shakespeare lived under a Tudor monarch and it had been a Tudor prince who had defeated Richard to become the first of a new dynasty.
IagoIn the play Othello The Moor Of Venice, the Venetian general Othello, a “blackamoor’’ or dark-skinned person, finds an enemy in fellow officer Iago. Othello has passed over Iago for promotion to the position of his lieutenant and Iago’s prejudices against blacks come out. He plots to discredit Cassio, the man appointed Othello’s lieutenant, by making Othello think that his wife Desdemona has been having an affair with Cassio. On flimsy evidence, Othello believes that Desdemona has been cheating. Iago’s revenge has tragic consequences when Othello murders his wife and then commits suicide. Iago is arrested for his part in the murder but he refuses to explain the motives for his villainy. Iago is one of the most perplexing of Shakespeare’s evil-doers.
Aaron the MoorIn the play Titus Andronicus, the noble Roman Titus makes an enemy of Tamora, queen of the Goths, by sending her son to be sacrificed as revenge for the Romans who have died. Tamora’s lover, Aaron the Moor, devises methods of making Titus and the Romans suffer for Tamora’s loss. He spurs the Romans on to murder, rape and even self-mutilation, until Titus, Tamora and the emperor Saturninus are dead, leaving Titus’s son Lucius as emperor. As Aaron heads to his execution, he says: “I am no baby, I, that with base prayers I should repent the evils I have done: Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did would I perform, if I might have my will; If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul.’’
CassiusIn Julius Caesar, Cassius is a manipulator who is the main instigator of a conspiracy against Caesar, but he urges others to do the dirty work. Caesar says: “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.’’ After the assassination he loses control of the plot he started, submitting to Brutus and failing to do anything about the ideologically driven bad decisions. There is some redemption when he believes his friend Titinius is dead, saying: “Come down, behold no more. O, coward that I am, to live so long, To see my best friend ta’en before my face!’’ He asks his servant to kill him, using the sword he used to kill Caesar. He dies saying: “Caesar, thou art revenged, Even with the sword that kill’d thee.”
Evil siblings in ShakespeareShakespeare has a theme of nastiness between brothers in many of his plays. In As You Like It, Frederick usurps his brother Duke Senior and has exiled his brother to a forest. In the same play, Orlando is persecuted by an older brother. By the play’s end, both brothers express regret for their actions and reconcile. In The Tempest, the duke Prospero has been overthrown and banished to an island by his brother Antonio. The
island is enchanted and, using magic powers, Prospero causes
the duke’s ship to be stranded on the island, eventually bringing about a reconciliation. In King Lear, Edmund, bastard son of the Duke of Gloucester, causes his brother Edgar to be disgraced and his father to be blinded. By the end of the play, Edmund, dying from a wound inflicted by Edgar, regrets his actions. But in Much Ado About Nothing, Don John, illegitimate brother of Don Pedro, never repents of the mischief he causes (see Don John), nor does Claudius ever really repent of murdering his brother King Hamlet (see Claudius).
David James playing Don
John (left) and James Wardlaw
playing Borachio in a 1996
production of Much Ado About
Nothing
34
Don JohnMuch Ado About Nothing is mostly a comedy but one with a very dark streak. Don John, the younger “bastard’’ brother of Don Pedro, seethes about being the less-favoured brother but also seems to relish being sullen and nasty. He also says that is his nature and he will not change. He says: “Though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am plain-dealing villain.’’ He plots to tear apart the lovers Claudio and Hero, by putting about rumours that Hero has been seeing other men. His plan is eventually thwarted and he is arrested but to the end he is unrepentant.
TybaltRomeo And Juliet does not have a traditional villain, in that there is not an individual evil person keeping the two lovers apart and bringing about their tragic demise. However, Juliet’s cousin Tybalt revels in the violence between his family, the Capulets, and Romeo’s clan, the Montagues. In a confrontation with Romeo’s cousin Benvolio, he says: “What? Drawn and you talk of peace? I hate the word as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Have at thee, coward!’’ When Tybalt kills the duke’s son and Romeo’s best friend Mercutio, Romeo is prompted to an act of vengeance that dooms his love for Juliet.
A scene from the 1996 film Romeo + Juliet
Rosalind and Frederick (Alison Bell and Trevor Jamieson) in Belvoir’s new production of As You Like It
Shakespeare
Sam Worthington plays the lead in the 2006 film version of Macbeth
Kevin Spacey performs a scene from William
Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Old Vic Theatre in London’s West End
