The Bicks Pod

Another problem/romance play, Cymbeline is noteworthy most of all for its intricate, multi-layered plot, and one of the bard's most noteworthy heroines in Imogen. Unlike the famous tragedies or better known comedies (but very much like his other later plays), this one is marked by the refusal to commit to any grand sweeping statement of the human condition beyond, maybe, "It's complicated." Join us as we explore the plot, characters, and themes of this late Shakespearean play!

Notes:

• Lorenna McKennitt's Cymbeline is quite pretty and Lindsay's origin story for why she loves this play so much.

Ancient Bickerings:

• Which one of the many, many liars in the play, is the most dastardly?

Much like many of our modern stories, Shakespeare used the family as the core of many of his tales, so we dove into the many vagaries of families in Shakespeare's plays to see what made them tick. What was the family "supposed" to look like in Elizabethan times, and how did Shakespeare play with that idea? Which plays feature the most damaged families, and which ones, if any, feature the happy variety? Join us for a glance at the wide variety of familial creations in the Shakespeare ouvre.

Notes:

• Aidan was thinking of this little snippet of Back to the Future 2, for his speech about the lord of the manor, which is set in 2015 but is still vaguely futuristic (hence why he confused it with Fifth Element, set in the 23rd century, totally understandable of course).

Ancient Bickerings:

• Due to ongoing worries about heat exhaustion, we kept our Ancient Bickerings topic nice and simple: if you had to become a member of one of Shakespeare's families, which one would it be?

If you ever travel to England (or live there), you'll know there's a lot of Shakespeare places to go and see, in particular around his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. As far as tourist sites go, they're basically what you'd expect. But for a pair of English language/history/literature nerds, they're a bit more interesting. Visiting the Globe to see a Shakespeare play as it was written to be performed for yours truly wasn't just a cool part of a trip to London, it was a pilgrimage.

Notes:

• The picture of Shakespeare's birthplace with the working roads directly in front of it is available through Wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Shakespeare_-Birthplace_-England-8.jpg#/media/File:William_Shakespeare_-Birthplace_-England-8.jpg 

Ancient Bickerings:

• This episode we revisited our recurring "let's time travel Shakespeare to the modern day" idea, and asked: which Shakespeare site would you like to bring the bard to if you could?

What do you get when you combine three acts of a tragedy, two acts of a pastoral romantic comedy, and a sprinkle of the supernatural on top for good measure? A problem play for the ages: The Winter's Tale.

If it feels like we've been down this road before, it's because this late Romance borrows many of its themes from some of the great tragedies of Shakespeare's career, like Othello. Jealous husbands, chaste wives, and accusations of infidelity abound in the first half of the play. Then -- as we've seen very recently in Pericles -- we jump sixteen years into the future, following the fallout of Leontes' disastrous accusation of Hermione, the death of son Mamillius, and the banishment of the infant Perdita to discover that all may not be lost after all. This smash-cut tonal shift that leads us from wintry Sicilia to summer-time Bohemia and the introduction of a long-lost daughter and a marriage crisis that brings the destroyed family back together again, possibly with a little help from the gods, perhaps (shades of Macbeth, anyone?)

But unlike Othello, Leontes is given this second chance to prove himself to his family and friends after the damage has been done because, unlike hero Pericles, Leontes has a lot of prove. And despite the magical overtones of the final climactic reunion, there is no shade thrown on witches here, unlike the Weird Sisters that haunt Macbeth. So what is Shakespeare playing at, mixing these old tropes to new effect? That's the focus of today's episode -- we hope you'll enjoy!

Ancient Bickerings

Who is the worst husband in all of Shakespeare?

Notes:

• Reddit AITA post (which -- shockingly -- has been marked "No A-holes Here", which only goes to show that a) men are not okay and b) Reddit is the asshole of the internet.)

Religion is always a touchy subject, but for most of the world today it's not nearly as dangerous a point of discussion as it was during Shakespeare's lifetime. Protestant and Catholic debates hadn't just destroyed previously unassailable assumptions on articles of faith, they'd led to war, religious persecution to the point of murder, and constant political and religious upheaval. While Shakespeare's time was one of relatively steady Protestant rule, the crises of the past hundred years hadn't disappeared magically upon Shakespeare's birth, and his plays reflect a conflicted mixture of religious viewpoints in the shape of his characters and the stories they live through. This episode we looked at the history of religion in England, and then how that history manifested in the plays.

Notes:

• The video Lindsay references around anti-Judaism practices in Elizabethan England is a good watch!

• Ribner, Irving. “SHAKESPEARE, CHRISTIANITY, AND THE PROBLEM OF BELIEF.” The Centennial Review, vol. 8, no. 1, Michigan State University Press, 1964, pp. 99–108, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23737596.

Ancient Bickerings:

• Which of Shakespeare's plays is his most religious?

For a place almost synonymous with class distinctions, England was only occasionally the site of class confrontations in Shakespeare's plays. He saved the really juicy bits for his final Roman play - Coriolanus. Join us for a chat about the class distinctions, gender conflict, and (naturally for us) politics prevalent across one of Shakespeare's darker plays.

Notes:

• Despite Lindsay and Aidan's best guesses at history, the plebian voice in the Roman Republic were called tribunes, not praetors (who performed a different political function). Having the text nearby might help in the future, kids.

Ancient Bickering:

• For a play focused deeply on the past, we wanted to bring the topic back to the present: if Coriolanus were to run for political office today (in the United States), would he find success?

We are not Shakespeare scholars. We have neither the education, resources, or frankly the intelligence to engage with Shakespeare’s work the way anyone who’s actually published a paper about Shakespeare does.

We are amateurs.

But none of the names we’re talking about today are amateurs. All of them have left some sort of important imprint on the study of Shakespeare. And we've rounded up the highlights and put our own Bicks-ified spin on it for your listening pleasure. We hope you'll enjoy!

Links:

• A decent history summary (via Encyclopedia Britannica) 

• https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/palladis-tamia-one-earliest-printed-assessments-shakespeares-works-and-first

• https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/epigrams-oldest-cut-critical-responses-and-allusions-shakespeare-and-three-his

• https://literatureessaysamples.com/a-biting-elegy-ben-jonson-on-shakespeare/

• https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_97-01/973_dryden.html

• http://jacklynch.net/Texts/pope-shakespeare.html

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/24776308

• http://theshakespeareblog.com/2015/10/samuel-taylor-coleridge-and-shakespeare/

• https://frenchquest.com/2020/12/01/goethe-on-shakespeare-a-tribute-1771/

• https://whatapieceofwork.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/the-new-criticism/

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442689886

• https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/books/review/will-in-the-world-reinventing-shakespeare.html

• https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Shakespeare/Feminist-criticism-and-gender-studies

• http://ejournals.org.uk/bjll/%5Bpp3-pp12%5D_ARTICLE_1.pdf

• https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Shakespeare_in_Africa

• https://asiatimes.com/2016/12/asian-scholarship-william-shakespeare-second-none/

• https://www.wordtrade.com/literature/shakespeareR.htm

• https://fellowsblog.ted.com/why-shakespeare-deserves-a-native-american-perspective-fd5ab5ba556e

Ancient Bickerings

Which academic school (if any) would you describe the other one belonging to?

Getting into the late romances -- starting here with Pericles -- means we're nearing the end of our sojourn through William Shakespeare's career. But these are a fascinating quartet of plays, and Pericles is a fantastic introduction to the complicated morality and plot cues that we find Shakespeare playing with throughout these final plays, after years of creativity and success under his belt.

And because these are less well-known plays (with the exception of The Tempest), discussing them feels fresh and interesting. We hope you'll agree. Join us as we journey through the Mediterranean with Pericles, Prince of Tyre and his trials and triumphs on his search for family.

Notes

- John Gower's poem "The Tale of Apollonius of Tyre" from his Confessio Amantis, a 33,000 line poem from 1386-1390 

- Lindsay's confusion stems from this dude, who shares a name but not a life with the titular Pericles.

- The authorship of Pericles has always been questioned, and this New Yorker article illustrates the "confusing riddle" of it well.

Ancient Bickerings

Who is the villain of this play?

It's something we've talked about relentlessly on this podcast: teaching Shakespeare is hard. Between the dense language, historical context, and cultural weight of the name "Shakespeare" there are a ton of barriers to getting students invested in the words of Billy S.

So this episode we gathered together three teachers (including Lindsay) and talked all about the educational process. Resources, special techniques, success stories and challenges - all the topics we could think of to discuss with other educators. If you've ever wondered what goes into a teacher's plan for Shakespeare class, or considered sending your child off to a summer drama camp that's all about Shakespeare, take a listen in on our experts' discussion!

Notes:

• Huge shout out to our two guests, Francis and Rachel, who joined us from the UK and Oregon, respectively, to share their experiences and wisdom about teaching Shakespeare!

It's a play all about dualities that don't duel quite as much as we might think. Antony and Cleopatra - man and woman - Rome and Egypt - Love and War - every way you look at this play there are nice, clean delineations... until there aren't. We enjoyed reading and talking about this one because it refuses to be pinned down or defined, much like its titular characters. We hope you enjoy the conversation as well!

Notes:

• If you don't know anything about Ptolemaic Egypt (like Aidan, who spent a solid three minutes explaining it very poorly), check out the Wikipedia entry at the very least.

Ancient Bickerings:

• Which type of betrayal is more damaging in the play - the romantic, or the political?