Kingly Leer,
Cleopatra: Queen of Denial,
And
Other Deadly Shakespearean Delights
“He was not of an age but for all time.” Thus he could write brilliantly about young lovers (Juliet was only 14), but also about old lovers like Antony who described Cleopatra this way:
“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety (II. 2. 241-2).”
Unfortunately, Enobarbus’ delightful account of the first time Antony laid eyes on Cleopatra (II. 2. 197-210) contains a word whose meaning has so shifted in 500 years as to become risible to all but the most determined Shakespearean among whom I am contented to be counted.
At the Globe Theatre in London several years ago, we saw three plays in a single day (at noon, again at 4 PM, and again at 8 PM). Three plays in a single day is almost enough Shakespeare even for the most devoted Bardolater. A few days later on the ground at Stratford-upon-Avon, I found a rock that I decided, through an inspired process, that young Willy himself must have kicked with his right toe, leading to the famous line: “Toe be or not toe be. That is a question.”
Although for 60 years I have sought to see Shakespeare all over the world and in its original haunt, my most favorite Shakespearean moment occurred not at the Globe Theatre in London nor the Royal Shakespeare Society in Stratford-upon-Avon, but in Pittsburgh. The play was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Of course, Nick Bottom is the comedic actor’s Hamlet as Falstaff is his King Lear.
In my estimation, the thespian (John Ahlin) playing Bottom in this performance was the Tops. Unbeknownst to us, as Pyramus, he had received permission to take a long time dying. The lines read:
Thus, die I, thus, thus, thus
Now am I dead
Now am I fled.
The expanded moment of death created by this Pyramus went through all the great deaths that fire the imagination in the Canon. It commenced with Othello’s suicide recreated by a disemboweling dagger, followed by a few assorted sword deaths, among them Mercutio’s. Then a hanging as Henry V’s Bardolph, a hand chopped off and a tongue cut out from Titus Andronicus, along with the pilot’s severed thumb from the Scottish play. Next came slitting a wrist and falling on a sword based on Julius Caesar. After that, three Hamlet deaths : poison poured into an ear, a poisoned drink, and a poisoned rapier cut. The drowning, using fallen leaves on the stage, could have been Ophelia, but was actually Clarence from Richard III (I.4). A chopped off head represented Cloten from Cymbeline and the title character from the Scottish play. The smothering pillow was for Desdemona and the biting asp for Cleopatra. And from King Lear, Gloucester’s yanked out eyeball (“vile jelly”), which, with the flat of his sword, was launched, like a triumphant tennis ball, into the audience.
After all these deaths, Thisbe kills herself by stabbing and saying:
Come, blade, my breast imbrue:
And farewell, friends;
Thus Thisbe ends:
Adieu, adieu, adieu.
But, naturally, Nick Bottom as Pyramus must have the last word so he revived one more time, sat up, folded his hands across his chest, and with an audible crack, died the greatest death in all of Shakespeare–King Lear dying of a broken heart.
By giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel, on this day, my eight-year old granddaughter was sitting with her parents in the first row front of the O’Reilly Theater thrust stage. The audience, especially those who recognized some of the death references to other plays, was roaring with laughter. But audible high above them all was a little girl’s uncontrollable giggle. Sitting only a few feet from an accomplished and creative actor playing a wonderful part, she had understood enough to be thoroughly delighted. And a new generation of Bardolators was born that night.
Assuming that the UK and the USA continue to progress against COVID-19, “a planetary plague, when Jove / Will o’er some high-viced city hang his poison / In the sick air” (Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 3), that young woman, no longer a girl, will be joining me at the Globe Theatre on the banks of the Thames this Fall for six plays in six days. A Bardolater is not at all a bad thing toe be, if you can nail it.
charlesbpartee 