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Title: Timon of Athens (Arkangel Complete Shakespeare Series) by William Shakespeare, Norman Rodway, Damian Lewis ISBN: 0140868925 Publisher: Penguin Audiobooks Pub. Date: March, 1900 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 2 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4
Rating: 5
Summary: Disorder
Comment: Timon of Athens has often been thought the work of a madman. Disjointed, polemical, irrational, and downright inelegant, many have thought that Shakespeare (or whosoever it may be) suffered a mental breakdown. This and more surrounds what I believe to be a tragic under-appreciation of this play. This play is NOT the story of a naively generous soul who eventually "faces reality". This is instead the story of a glorious Dionysian self-expender, who, upon realizing the cowardly conservatism of his so-called "peers", runs off to the wilds, to continue expending himself in body and soul. He dies on a curse, the climax of all the "evil wind" he has been sending out, the ultimate self-expension, his ultimate glory. The "tragedy" is the stone cold tablet that lies atop his corpse at the end, and the message of frugality it seems to send out, which is all too easily accepted by fatally declining cultures.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not Bad, But Not Great Either
Comment: This is a good play, but it does not match Shakespeare's other history plays. In my opinion too much of the play revolves around a doting mother who wants to see her underage son on the throne even though he is very incapable of ruling. Furthermore, any intelligent observer can see that the King of France only wants Arthur on the crown because a child would be a lot easier to manipulate than the shrewd King John. Remember, John WAS NOT a usurper. Richard the Lionhearted named John as the heir to the crown! On the positive side, Richard I's illegitimate son is a powerful and convincing character. John is an interesting 3 dimensional character. At times he comes off as harsh and cruel. But he also shows himself at times to be to be a strong and competent king. And at times we can feel sorry for him. Shakespeare also manages to squeeze some comical touches in. I feel that to appreciate this play as much as possible, you must realize that Richard I named John the heir to the crown. I also feel you must understand that John did prove himself to be a competent king. (Unlike his unfairly blackened reputation in "Robin Hood.")
Rating: 3
Summary: One of Shakespeare's statelier plays.
Comment: the Oxford Shakespeare has been touted as 'a new conception' of Shakespeare, but is in fact merely an update of the cumbersome old Arden editions. Like these, 'King John' begins with a 100-page introduction, divided into 'Dates and Sources' (full of what even the editor admits is 'tedious' nit-picking of documentary evidence); 'The Text' (the usual patronising conjecture about misprints in the Folio edition and illiterate copyists); 'A Critical Introduction', giving a conventional, but illuminating guide to the drama, its status as a political play dealing with the thorny problem of royal succession, the contemporary legal ambiguities surrounding inheritance, the patterning of characters, the use of language (by characters as political manoeuvring, by Shakespeare to subvert them); and an account of 'King John' 'In the Theatre', its former popularity in the 18th and 19th century as a spectacular pageant, the play distorted for patriotic purposes, and its subsequent decline, presumably for the same reasons. The text itself is full of stumbling, often unhelpful endnotes - what students surely want are explanations of difficult words and figures, not a history of scholarly pedantry. The edition concludes with textual appendices.
The play itself, as with most of Shakespeare's histories, is verbose, static and often dull. Too many scenes feature characters standing in a rigid tableau debating, with infinite hair-cavilling, issues such as the legitimacy to rule, the conjunction between the monarch's person and the country he rules; the finer points of loyalty. Most of the action takes place off stage, and the two reasons we remember King John (Robin Hood and the Magna Carta) don't feature at all. This doesn't usually matter in Shakespeare, the movement and interest arising from the development of the figurative language; but too often in 'King John', this is more bound up with sterile ideas of politics and history, than actual human truths. Characterisation and motivation are minimal; the conflations of history results in a choppy narrative. There are some startling moments, such as the description of a potential blood wedding, or the account of England's populace 'strangely fantasied/Possessed with rumours, full of idle dreams/Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear'. The decline of the king himself, from self-confident warrior to hallucinating madman, anticipates 'King Lear', while the scene where John's henchman sets out to brand the eyes of the pubescent Pretender, is is full of awful tension.
P.S. Maybe I'm missing something, but could someone tell me why this page on 'King John' has three reviews of 'Timon of Athens'? Is somebody having a laugh?
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Title: HENRY IV PART 1 by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722638 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: Antony and Cleopatra (New Folger Library Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowatt, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. Mowat ISBN: 0671039164 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: RICHARD III by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine ISBN: 0671722840 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: The Life of Henry V (New Folger Library Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine ISBN: 0671722654 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: Othello by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine ISBN: 0671722816 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1993 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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