Status Updates From The Complete Works of Willi...

Antony & Cleopatra

Astute and disciplined Antony is presented as a reckless voluptuary in his later years--the complex historical process of the disintegration of the second triumvirate is stripped down to an interpersonal dispute based on his akrasia. Great meta-theater moment toward the end when Cleopatra rejects the impending spectacle of herself on stage payed by a 'squeaking boy.'

Shakespeare's take on the character of Brutus in Julius Caesar had me researching the real man's historical reputation, which is surprisingly ambiguous when you consider how unkindly people tend to look upon regicides throughout history. This is a very effective play about the way the logic of power drives people to extremes—it doesn't condone the assasination, but it does not ultimately condemn the assassin.

Macbeth

In the broadest strokes, we might describe the story here as the witches act ultra vires, against the will of Hecate, to engineer the destruction of the Scottish aristocracy and importation of English forms of governance. The play highlights the familiar problem of interpreting the interior of a person from their exterior--Macbeth is too paranoid, whereas Duncan is like Lear, too trusting.

Timon of Athens

Famous veteran is over generous and, like Lear, fails to recognize flattery--the same study as in Hamlet and regarding the attempt to read exterior signs on a person for their interior belief. His descent into hostis humani generis is contrasted with actual bandits and a Diogenean cynic philosopher. Here NB the wilderness does not cure the problems of the polis.

History of King Lear

This collection made the decision that the Q and F versions of Lear are not reconcilable and thus amount to two plays rather than variants of one. So here is the Q version; F follows later in the volume. I note that the comic multi-adultery of Falstaff in MWW is here played straight--the tragic result is emblematic of conflating oikos and polis, which is this text's focus.

Used as stand-in for Werewolf: The Reckoning - The Book of Hungry Names, same amount of pages.

Othello

Always marvelous. This time through, I'm seeing Iago as a prototype politics of ressentiment right populist figure. He resents an educated foreigner promoted over him by another foreigner who happens to be dark-complected and married to a local woman. It's the normal nihilistic recipe of Trump-voter concerns, with fears of other religions, miscegenation, purported elitism in expertise, and so on.

As You Like It
Finished 01/03/26 ☆☆☆½

Measure for Measure

Perhaps my favorite play of his, this one takes on anti-theatrical puritan writings and eviscerates them. We see it in the spectacle created out of sacrament in the duke's disguise but also in the stage-managed creation of Angelo's lust by means of a theater of chastity during an official court appeal. The defense of theater s a general institution couldn't be stronger.

Sir Thomas More

A collaboration, this play presents More's handling of the insurrection of 1517 (xenophobic riots) via cosmopolitan reasoning, then moves to his refusal to sign the king's articles, as a matter of conscience. It strikes a balance between the limits of popular sovereignty and royal prerogative. It's a mess, and wasn't licensed in its time for fear of inciting more nativist riots.