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  #1  
Unread 01-23-2022, 08:24 AM
Jennifer Reeser's Avatar
Jennifer Reeser Jennifer Reeser is offline
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Default Cpt. Picard "Cancels" Shakespeare

Dark times, dark ages, when Captain Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise "cancels" Shakespeare's Dark Lady. The irony is that he gained fame portraying a character who adores the Bard:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/p...snub-2660dpmtr

I wrote some Dark Lady sonnets once. In a few more days, the San Diego Reader will run some of it, to celebrate Valentine's Day, alongside the Bard's sonnet to which my poem was responding.

Join me in peaceful protest, by reading them. It would seem I am now "controversial."

Jennifer
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  #2  
Unread 01-23-2022, 08:46 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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He gave me perhaps the peak Shakespeare experience of my life, so I forgive him. It was Shakespeare in the Park, New York City, and he was playing Prospero. By sheer luck I had scored first row, dead center seats, and he often stood eight or ten feet in front of me, seemingly looking me in the eyes, as he pronounced his lines. That final speeh, where Prospero addresses the audience directly, it was me and only me he was addressing. And his delivery was flawlessly horripilatingly wonderful. So I forgive him the current scandal.
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Unread 01-23-2022, 09:07 AM
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Jennifer Reeser Jennifer Reeser is offline
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I love this, Roger. Thank you, sir.

Because nothing ever really changes, Sir Patrick might also be forgiven for perpetuating the Old Boys' Club patriarchy, yet again pitted against the minority female

J
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Unread 01-23-2022, 10:13 AM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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I don't see the problem. He did give people the right to make up their own minds about the poems he skipped, by looking them up themselves. In fact, people are far more likely to pay attention to those poems now than if he hadn't drawn attention to the fact that he was omitting them for reasons of personal preference.

Frankly, I wouldn't have known he had recorded Shakespeare's sonnets at all if you hadn't posted about this controversy. I think you and others are doing exactly what he wanted you to do, and giving him free publicity for his project, Jennifer.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 01-23-2022 at 10:15 AM.
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Unread 01-23-2022, 10:15 AM
W T Clark W T Clark is offline
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It's a bad strategy to accuse Stewart of political correctness. A better, and more effective response, is to accuse him of obsessive careerism and a total lack of insight into the sonnets.
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Unread 01-23-2022, 11:15 AM
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Jennifer Reeser Jennifer Reeser is offline
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"Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughing with a sigh?—a note infallible
Of breaking honesty—horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;
My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing."

Leontes, A Winter's Tale, Act I Scene II
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Unread 01-23-2022, 02:05 PM
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Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
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Join me in peaceful protest, by reading them. It would seem I am now "controversial."

I look forward to reading them and would be proud to join you.

In terms of the wider conversation, I'm resorting to post-marxist cat memes (sorry).

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Unread 01-23-2022, 03:33 PM
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Jennifer Reeser Jennifer Reeser is offline
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W.T. -- indeed! The mind reels. Thank you for the sharp eye.

Sarah Jane, please don't apologize. Your posts are always such a joy. Thank you, both for the solidarity and for the post-marxist cat meme.

Kim Bridgford is turning over in her grave, let me tell you...
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Unread 01-23-2022, 05:48 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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The fact that Stewart seems to have finished this project in October 2020, and that it seems to have taken conservatives until January 2022 to get around to complaining about it, suggests that maybe, just maybe, this whole affair isn't the end of Western Civilization.

Quote:
Originally Posted by W T Clark View Post
It's a bad strategy to accuse Stewart of political correctness. A better, and more effective response,
Effective how? What effect should critics be going for? One of these?
  • Making Patrick Stewart regret he ever dared to express an opinion that sonnets 132-134 were too problematic for his purposes? (Is a chilling effect on free expression only cancelation when the left does it?)
  • Rallying fans of free expression to condemn Stewart for exercising his freedom of expression, by choosing what sonnets he wanted to include in this project? (Again--what? Fighting cancelation with cancelation doesn't make any sort of sense. Also, this kerfuffle is exceedingly unlikely to bother fans of Stewart's acting, even if they are also fans of Shakespeare. Sheesh, I sat through half of his thoroughly unenjoyable 1960s Romanian creepshow version of Macbeth, and I've managed to forgive him for that. I don't share Stewart's opinion of the Dark Lady sonnets, but it's not a dealbreaker for me.)
  • Preemptively silencing any other public figures who don't absolutely adore every single Shakespeare sonnet? (The list of celebrities who give a damn about Shakespeare's sonnets at all seems pretty short. Pillorying the most visible of them doesn't seem like a promising strategy to lengthen that list.)
  • Making fools like me waste time responding to this thread, even though I know that people who are determined to believe alarming headlines about the left's relentless destruction of Western Culture are going to keep right on believing those, no matter what anyone else says? (Okay, Cameron, I have to admit that your recommended strategy was 100% effective on that point, because here I am now, typing away....)
  • Simply registering displeasure and disagreement with Stewart's position? (That's fine. I approve. But I don't see why it's necessary to insult Stewart as a careerist and/or ignoramus in order to accomplish that "effectively." All human beings are wrong about stuff sometimes. It's not because we're terrible people. It's simply because we're people.)


Quote:
Originally Posted by W T Clark View Post
is to accuse him of obsessive careerism
Really? He left out those sonnets in order to advance his career? This 81-year-old is likely to stay employed until either his wits or his mortal frame fail him completely, no matter how he feels about a few sonnets by Shakespeare. Season Two of Picard will start broadcasting on March 3 and Season Three is now in production. (I'm probably the only one here who paid to watch Season One, but whatever.)

I don't see any upside, and quite a bit more (although still not much) downside, career-wise, to Stewart's skipping the sonnets that he couldn't be bothered with. A true careerist would just have read them all, without exception, and no one would still be talking about this. Instead, lots of people who had never paid much attention to those particular sonnets are now giving them the close reading that they (in my opinion) richly deserve.

Here's his description of why he did this sonnet project:

Quote:
In 2020 Sir Patrick, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, described how he started the daily sonnet readings to 'help people get through this terrible time'.

'I remember my mother cutting up fruit for me when I was a little boy saying 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away' - so I thought, 'why not a sonnet a day?' he said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...e-sonnets.html
Those don't sound the like words of an obsessive careerist to me. Then again, he is famous for his acting. Maybe he fooled me into thinking he was just trying to lift people's spirits during the pandemic, by lending his talents to promote literature that he loved. The rotten bastard!



Quote:
Originally Posted by W T Clark View Post
and a total lack of insight into the sonnets.
Well, Stewart openly admitted as much. Rather humbly, I thought, by keeping the focus on his own shortcomings. He didn't say the poems had shortcomings, just that he didn't think he could do justice to them:

Quote:
The actor, who is best known for his appearances in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men superhero films, justified his avoidance of the 'complex' sonnets from 133 to 136 saying he couldn't understand them.

He said: 'I've struggled and struggled and failed to make sense of them. I'm not going to pretend that I do make sense of them. I'm just going to leave them unsaid.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...e-sonnets.html
[Edited to add a link to the video of Patrick Stewart saying the above:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2275565249256153]

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 01-24-2022 at 12:44 AM. Reason: Added link to Patrick Stewart speaking for himself
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  #10  
Unread 01-23-2022, 07:26 PM
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Jennifer Reeser Jennifer Reeser is offline
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I have located another link to the controversy. This one, again, a U.K. paper, as previously:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...e-sonnets.html

Verily -- has he not been informed of the existence of CliffsNotes?
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