Nov 26– From “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare” by Charles Lamb (1811)

 God he hates (staging) Shakespeare

Nov 26– From “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare” by Charles Lamb (1811)

Summary: Staging Shakespeare is bad because his words are so pretty, and actors are all hacks.

Commentary: It's kind of weird reading an essay with a frame story that I had to research. Apparently there's a statue of an actor named David Garrick in the Westminster Abbey cemetery. Garrick was an actor who (based on my skimming of Wikipedia) really liked Shakespeare. He helped organize Shakespeare festivals, revivals, etc. in the 1700s when Willy wasn't as recognized as he was today. He also was apparently influential in refining acting (LESS OVERACTING). For context, Garrick was dead for about 30 years before Lamb wrote this essay. Lamb seems to think all actors still overact badly. It's hard to say if he has poor taste, only saw bad actors, or what. Anyway, Lamb is walking through the cemetary one day, sees the statue with this poem:

To paint fair Nature, by divine command,

Her magic pencil in his glowing hand,

A Shakespeare rose: then, to expand his fame

Wide o’er this breathing world, a Garrick came.

Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew,

The Actor’s genius made them breathe anew;

Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay,

Immortal Garrick call’d them back to day:

And till Eternity with power sublime

Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time,

Shakespeare and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine,

And earth irradiate with a beam divine.

and gets all butt-hurt that people like actors and have the gall to compare one of them to Shakespeare. He rambles like an ass for a while, "It would be an insult to my readers’ understandings to attempt anything like a criticism on this farrago of false thoughts and nonsense" and, "he actor can give no more idea by his face or gesture than the [...] the muscles utter intelligible sounds. I checked, Morse Code hadn't been invented yet, but I feel like there had to be some precedent for intelligible tapping (to say nothing of the fact that you use your muscles when you talk.)

By volume, I think "actors are dumb" is probably the main thesis of this essay, but he eventually makes his way to his supposed point with:

It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion that the plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for performance on a stage than those of almost any other dramatist whatever. Their distinguished excellence is a reason that they should be so. There is so much in them, which comes not under the province of acting, with which eye, and tone, and gesture, have nothing to do.

It does seem like a paradox. And he never gets around to proving it. Instead he spends most of his time whining about how much he hates actors. Just before that, he has this great quote:

 I confess myself utterly unable to appreciate that celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet, beginning “To be, or not to be,” or to tell whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, it has been so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity in the play, till it is become to me a perfect dead member.

"I can't tell what's good or not," is a choice when your entire essay is ranting about how to properly perform something, but Lamb is here for it.

Also, Hamlet is good because it's didactic. Poe was like three years old at the time, so he wasn't able to rise from his grave to slap Lamb around, unfortunately.

"All the passions and changes of passion might remain; for those are much less difficult to write or act than is thought; it is a trick easy to be attained." Acting is easy, everyone. Lamb would be that guy who whines about theatre majors, says actors are overpaid, and then says waiting tables is unskilled labor and it should be paid $1 an hour with no tips.

"It is common for people to talk of Shakespeare’s plays being so natural, that everybody can understand him." I'm curious if this is just Lamb (still) being an idiot, or if Shakespeare was considered easier 200 odd years ago. It'd be closer to when the plays were written, so I guess it makes sense.

He rags on actors for a couple more paragraphs before he starts trying to interpret the sonnets to also be anti-actor. I disagree with his interpretation of Sonnet 111 being against acting in general, but just against acting it crappy productions. "That did not better for my life provide/Than public means which public manners breeds—/Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;"

I feel like Lamb would have a job as a shouty right wing TV-host today. "ACTORS ARE TURNING THE KIDS TRANSGAY! THEY NEED SOME GOOD WHOLESOME SUPER CISHET SHAKESPEARE! BUT NOT ACTED!"