Ugly Sisters

Richard II was a sea-change play for Shakespeare.  He just let the character go, follow what will.  I do that, when I allow it.  I'm aware of it, but I try to keep these things, if you'll allow it, short.  I have to pull the plug.  

That's what Shakespeare did with Mercutio, killed him off, or he would have taken over — Romeo and Juliet and Mercutio.  He's a hard character to get right.  Lot's a bad performances.  Same with Leontes, the weird king in A Winter's Tale -- probably hard to act, because the actor has to go deep, deep.  These are characters who take over their own writing.  Shylock.  Hamlet.  

Richard II is like me.  Not so much in love with words -- him more than me, because I'm more self-aware -- but self-dramatizing.  Psychic fluidity, not gender.  I like my dick, no slack there, but, who will we pretend to be today, now, in this particular moment.  Peekaboo.  Catch me if you can.  But you can't.  

Richard is a poet who wants to be a victim.  A deeply unlikable character.  But he is the hero.  He shows this in the end, in his death.  Was he weak, before?  He deserves to die.  But he dies like a man.  And all his false words come true, drawn together by the integrity of his death.  Bear that in mind, when you watch any of the many Richard II production I have made available to you.  He, like myself, is the hero.  

And then there's Falstaff, John Falstaff, sweet Jack Falstaff, kind true valiant Jack Falstaff -- he is absolutely a villain.  Cowardly, lying greedy corrupt selfish whoring thieving and without conscience.  But brilliantly likable.  They say it, and it's true, that he is a genuinely great literary invention -- infinite in his faculties, like Hamlet -- infinite in his variety, like Cleopatra.  Almost impossible to play the role badly.  

Simon Russell Beale did that, though.  Blows.  P U.  I've be rewatching the BBC Hollow Crown from some years back.  I'd liked it when it was new.  The Henry VIs are good.  Richard II is good.  I don't really like Henry V, the play or the character.  But the Henry IVs.  Awful.  Terrible.  It's the direction, the director.  Moronic.  Because of Falstaff. 

In every instance, Falstaff is, should be a comic character.  The IVs are comedies.  The moronic director milked them for pathos, as if it were drama.  It's not drama, moron.  It's entertainment, historical and comical.  There is drama in it, for the entertainment value.  It is not, under any circumstances, Shakespeare ... in the sense of, We're Doing Shakespeare!!!  

They did the nearly impossible -- made Falstaff unlikable, fumbling and stupid.  That takes a sort of talent, the way Heisenberg made the best meth.  Take Aaron the Moor, or Barabas the Jew, or Tamburlaine or Iago or Richard III -- so evil that you almost like them.  This is not that.  Falstaff is a bad man that you have to like.  Countless ways to play him, and all of them work.  Except if he's played stupid, and mean-spirited, like this one, Beale's, via, I have to think, the director.  But maybe it's Beale.  I didn't like his King Lear either. 

Orson Welles.  The Chimes at Midnight.  He was the greatest artistic genius of the 20th Century. 

Like Charles Bronson: was he a handsome ugly man, or an ugly handsome man.  Is Beale's Falstaff a stupid smart man, or a smart stupid man.  The former, but it's not worth the thought to figure that out, except it's obvious.  

Conceived, constructed, growing.  Manufactured, self-creating.

Personality is a construct.  It's not who we are.  It's what we show, as a coping mechanism, and a deep deep habit.  It can change.  Gender too is a construct, roles that we play because it's how we were taught. 

But biology, anatomy, sex is not a construct, any more than hormones are concepts.  It is undeniable that we are constructed, in the womb -- if we are allowed to finish that process.  I'm a real boy.

And sexual behavior is not a construct, because instinct is not a construct.  Neuroses, compulsions, fetishes, perversions are constructed -- the way molestation constructs childhood emotional development, the way female circumcision contributes to moslem social stability,  the way foot-binding contributed to old-time Chinese female beauty. 

But, of course, of course, I am being equivocal.  What do I mean by behavior, and by sexual.  Sex as in sexual reproduction is clear.  Male and female, yoni and lingam.  Sperm, womb, egg.  Very linear, and circular.  Then there's all that other crap, beyond biology.  Spiritual, theological, societal, familial, propagandical, molestational, political.  Can't argue with that.  It's real.  Just secondary.  Evolution doesn't care about homosexuals, or castrati.  

Sexual intercourse is like gravity.  Down down down.  Is there an escape velocity?  Castration just makes you weigh less.  

Sex determines gender, the way foot size determines shoe size.  The ugly sisters in the Grimms' Cinderella got their big toes cut off, to make the slipper fit.  If you're a toeless princess, you can be carried by footmen, or lackies rather -- men who are lacking.  But the ugly sisters were not princesses.  They were crippled, ugly women ... and ugly, crippled women.  If that's not clear, and it is, cutting off body parts does not make anyone a princess.  

I've been wanting to get that off my chest, about Falstaff, about Richard.  Princesses are easy: it's a natural fit.  But it's hard sometimes to see who the villains are, and the heroes.  

J