I could use a muse of fire. Or any kind of muse, at all. Feeling plenty stalled on the writing front, which of course leads to doing Other Things instead of writing.

     Because my life isn't quite full enough, I'm taking an online, non-credit class called Shakespeare for Writers. It's taught by Heidi Cullinan, who has a master's degree in teaching, so she knows what she's doing. Heidi's also the one who organized the LGBT Authors table at Capital City Pride in Des Moines this past weekend, where I met and spent some quality time with other authors of gay and lesbian literature, specifically Marie Sexton, M.L. Rhodes, and Catherine Lundoff, along with Heidi, of course. Lovely people, all of them, and a good time was had by all. I'd never been to a Pride event before, and it just made me so happy to see so many people—young, old, gay, straight, whatever—just having fun and hanging out. I'm looking forward to going to the Chicago one in a couple of weeks so I can compare them—I have the feeling, though, that the Chicago one is going to be huge and scary (for me) so I'm glad I got my feet wet at the Des Moines one.

     The quote above is the opening line of Henry V, also known as TGMEM (The Greatest Movie Ever Made). That distinction is not mine, but that of my friends Henry and Philippa, who go about quoting from it willy-nilly. Specifically, they are referring to Branagh's version of the play. I'm very fond of Branagh's Shakespearean plays myself, even taking into consideration Love's Labour's Lost. On second thought, let's just forget that one altogether.

     I like Shakespeare, a lot. I never took a class on the subject before; everything I know about the plays is simply what I've read or seen. When I was a kid my family had a copy of Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, which were simplified prose versions of some of the plays, and I loved that book. It had elegant line drawings illustrating it in the style of maybe Blake or Beardsley—something Art Deco-ish, anyway—and I just absorbed the stories. (For some reason, one of the less-performed ones sticks in my head: The Winter's Tale. I just adored that story, and still remember the drawing of the betrayed wife, Hermione, pretending to be a statue in front of the husband, Leontes.) The high drama of the tales really did a number on me, and I credit that little book with triggering my over-the-top imagination.

     We didn't cover the Bard in high school—mine was a very progressive one, and in English classes we studied things like Magazines and Newspapers, and Song-Writing, and Myths and Legends. The latter, actually, helped a lot later when I finally did get into reading the plays, because Shakespeare flung poetic references to mythology around like a parader flinging beads at Mardi Gras. In college, though, my brother Jay discovered Oak Park's Shakespeare in the Park, and it was there that I really discovered the best way to experience the plays. The way they were meant to be experienced—live.

     Now generally, if I'm given a choice between a performance and a book, I'll go with the book most times. The book lets me cast the story and set the settings and arrange the pacing in my own head, and I live most happily in my own head. But Shakespeare needs to be heard. It needs to be seen. And it needs to be felt. It doesn't require extensive, elaborate sets; it doesn't require props. In most cases, you don't even get stage directions ("Exit, pursued by a bear" is about as detailed as it gets). But you get the language and the faces and the passion behind it all.

If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb? in your own conscience, now?  – Henry V

    That's kind of a run-on sentence in print. Read it aloud, and it's damning. More passion: Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She's just found out that her cousin has died for love of Claudio, who has rejected her: "Oh, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place!" Sounds kind of over the top. Watch Emma Thompson in Branagh's film version of that play and it will give you chills. (A shorter, but just as chilling line from her: "Kill Claudio." Brr!)

    I really had intended this blog to be about James Joyce and Ulysses (speaking of mythology) in celebration of Bloomsday, but I had to download some of the plays for the class and started thinking about Shakespeare, and you know, once that happens, it's all downhill from there.