28 October 2020

Fortune & Men's Eyes


We have a mixed attitude toward history, and toward historical fiction, particularly fictionalized biography. I think the issues are compounded when the subject is familiar to us, through myth or received wisdom, and we take it personally. We can mislike having our habits of mind disturbed. Look at Shakespeare. He rests in a somewhat shallow grave; we know so little about him, the early years, certainly, that we’re each free to imagine him on our own image.

Which is what Kenneth Branagh does in his movie All Is True, not Shakespeare early on, but in old age. I don’t agree with much of Branagh’s speculation, but I don’t fault him for it. We can conjure up ownership out of affection for the plays, or the poetry, or fixed ideas, and resist a different interpretation. The difficulty I have with Branagh’s reconstruction isn’t that his Shakespeare is unconvincing personally, but his characterization of a working writer is inauthentic and reductive.


By contrast, Shakespeare in Love seems right to me, but probably because the filmmakers were less constrained by known quantities, and both convention and hard facts were elastic. They used playfulness to their advantage, and the picture lets in air and light.


My personal favorite is Anthony Burgess’ extraordinary Shakespeare novel, Nothing Like the Sun. He later published a straight-up biography, which I also devoured.

Burgess characterizes the late Elizabethan as a word-drunk age, and Nothing Like the Sun is profligate. Burgess was always drunk on words – Clockwork Orange, anybody? – but his Shakespeare book is written in a headlong Elizabethan stream-of-consciousness that bends the laws of physics. It was like nothing I’d ever read, and still is. It takes some balls to write Shakespeare in first-person, to imagine yourself into Will’s doublet and hose, and his voice.

That being said, All Is True has a lot of good stuff. The candlelit interiors were apparently shot by candlelight, for one, which is no small trick. The settings and the art direction are terrifically authentic. People were paying attention. The cast is wonderful: Branagh himself, Judi Dench, Kathryn Wilder as the older daughter, Ian McKellen’s cameo as Southampton. I think the picture suffers simply from being too earnest; I can’t buy the conceit that Shakespeare was treated like a monument in his own lifetime. He brought himself notoriety, and financial security, but how could he not still be, in his private and less secure moments, the upstart crow?


There’s one close to sublime moment in All Is True, a little past the halfway mark, when McKellen shows up as the Earl. It’s already been established in a conversation between Will and wife Anne that Southampton is widely thought to be the Dark Lady of the sonnets – they’re dedicated to him – and late at night, the two old boys slightly in their cups, Will reels off the whole of “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,” as a sort of swan song or even perhaps reprimand. And then, astonishingly, Southampton quotes it back to him, from memory. The scene is done in tight close-up, a long single take for each of them, with no reaction shots. Every seamed furrow of their age shows in the firelight. These are men in their waning years, and the bloom of youth is long past, yet, “Like to the lark arising at break of day/From sullen earth,” we see them lit from within, luminous and transparent.


This is the last piece I’ll be posting before November 3rd is upon us. I’d ask that each and every one of us exercise our responsibility to vote. Take care and be well.

5 comments:

  1. I have not seen that movie, although I enjoyed Shakespeare in Love. I can't resist adding this, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM-Y1ch4b5c

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    1. Ever seen the Britcom "Upstart Crow?" A nice riff on Shakespeare as struggling writer!

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  2. I admit that "All is True" didn't do much for me - except for the scene between Shakespeare and Southampton - for a number of reasons, including that Anne would be upset about Southampton's visit. For one thing, there's enough evidence in both plays and poetry that Shakespeare and his wife had had a genuine love affair, at least in the beginning. I really enjoyed "Shakespeare in Love" mainly because it was a fantasy, a wonderful fantasy, and a great portrait of a theatrical troupe.

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  3. I read Clockwork Orange, but I hadn't encountered Nothing Like the Sun.

    Shakespeare in Love was predictably fun, but near the end, the director couldn't resist a modern political comment, which jerked me out of the moment… and the movie. Probably a lesson for writers there– little subtlety could have gone a long way.

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  4. Great piece, David. My own reaction to "All is True" mirrored yours. I haven't read Burgess's take on the Bard. Sounds like I ought to. Have you read any of reknowned literary critic (and admitted arch-snob) Harold Bloom's ruminations on Shakespeare? His HOW TO READ AND WHY contains brief thoughts on him, as well as his towering SHAKESPEARE: THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN (which helped give me a deeper, more profound respect for the staggering work of genius which is the character of the "melancholy Dane" (and likely a love-letter of sorts to his recently-deceased young son Hamnet). Bloom is well worth your time. Thanks for posting this!

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