Tag Archives: William Shakespeare

Autofiction: Interpretation

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This Is Not A Work Related Post

Interpretation

Just wanted to be clear about that. Apparently it’s important. Perhaps to be even clearer, this is a fictionalised account of the sort of thing that might happen to a person. When I reach out for a name, perhaps when I can’t quite remember someone’s name, or when I allocate a default, it’s usually Dave for a man and Julia for a girl. I don’t really know why. Maybe in my head they are everyman names – certainly they’re fairly common, but more importantly they don’t conjure any specific connotations for me. That makes them useful, I can project what I fancy for characterisation when on stage and since they are average-type names I find them empathetic and sympathetic – they are just like everyone else.

 

Of course, that doesn’t stop other people from having different assumptions. It’s possible that a reader or audience member might think that I thought all Daves were insane skin harvesters or that all Julias enjoyed knitting during stockbroker meetings. They might even assume that since they themselves share a common name that this is in fact a judgement upon them, and respond to it as if they themselves were the focus of the scene. The question, I guess, is which of these opinions is the more important or accurate, and whether we ought to grant the audience member the right to make those assumptions?

Impractical Criticism

I fondly remember the enjoyable pointlessness of GCSE and A Level English Literature in which we were told about the various interpretations there are of characters and themes in Shakespeare, Chaucer, Webster, Austen and many others. We were encouraged to root into those works and dredge up whatever connotations and assumptions we could justify, using the flimsiest or most complex interpretations we could. While we could easily present a case of racism (or whatever) against the author we could equally easily cry post-modern bollockisms and reinterpret the work in the light of the death of a fishing village in Portugal.

Were any of those ideas true? We found evidence, sure, and chose to interpret it along a set of assumptions. Were they what the author intended? We had no way of knowing as the author had not been thoughtful enough to provide a full justification of their work. Even if they had, we were still encouraged to disregard it, interpret their own explanation in the context of the war, the incipient homoeroticism of the age, a letter inn a newspaper that criticised their love of daffodils. So the author’s intent became the least important aspect of their work.

Their Shoes Are The Wrong Size

I personally think that is total bollocks. Sure, you can partly understand a piece of prose in the context that it was written, but ultimately unless you can get into the author’s head (which you can’t) or ask them about it (you probably can’t because they’re usually safely dead before we rip into them), you either like or dislike the piece of art. That’s it. “I like this book because it reminds me of a sheep in a river”. Fine. But “the sheep, stranded in the river represents Nazism stranded at the end of WWII in the faster flowing ideological tide of communism” is just a load of wank.

Incredible Credulity

It gets worse of course. If one abstracts a sentence or two from its natural context and submits it, anonymously (for fear of prejudicing the reading, one can only assume), to some critical body with powers to act upon the content of the phrase – what would we expect to happen? Undated, timeless, free of context and reference – what is the sensible course to take with such a quote? In GCSE history we were taught to analyse the sources of information. Highly prized was the motive in supplying information. Anonymity makes something impossible to check for accuracy (was the phrase written by the named author?), context. Anonymity itself makes the item suspect. Especially if it is possible, or even likely that a remark taken out of context and handed to a prejudiced observer, might seem to imply a criticism or abuse.

Judge. You Must Judge. At Once.

On receipt of such an item what should that reader do? Ignore it? Well, someone has taken the time to draw one’s attention to it. We shall assume the earnestness of that someone – that they are merely trying to be helpful. Without context it would be difficult to judge malice, surely. So this ‘thing’ – with no context, history or evidence of its source, what can we do but assume, assume like banshees shrieking in the wind. It is obvious therefore that the cited phrase is in breach of some agreement, that the unnamed, unreferenced person or organisation that we assume (from the hidden prejudices of our our mind) is in someway ourself, or the organisation that we represent. Therefore the phrase is offensive, and the author (of whom we yet have no proof) must be both blamed and reprimanded.

Our first move must be to censor (admittedly without cause or certainty), to enforce our rules (which we may not have yet read through, to be certain that the quoted offence does indeed transgress those rules, and to thereby attain the moral highground), and to reprimand the individual identified by an anonymous source for an action whose date, context and existence are as yet undetermined.

It doesn’t sound like a great plan does it?

A Polly Oggy

Is it just barely possible that we might have acted inappropriately in our presumption of guilt, of thoughtless credulity at the offered evidence, of ignorance of our own rules, of prejudice in our assumptions about the intentions and meanings of another’s thoughts expressed in ambiguous and non-referential terms. Might we even be considered foolish for such an action, for colluding with the (more likely) malicious intent behind such an action as lifting a phrase out of context and sending it anonymously to one with the power to punish the author (apparently without proof or investigation), for harrassing, bullying and attempting to impinge on the freedom of an individual to express themselves without fear of censure or censorship when they do in fact comply entirely with the rules we failed to check before acting blindly?

Yeah, maybe. Hope that person isn’t really pissed off…

This is a fictional account of something that might have happened somewhen to somebody.

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Franklyn de Gashe ~ The Theatrical Entertainment

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Space convulsed. Flames of black snaked around me as I warped in and out of existence before being squeezed out of the temporal effluvium. I stuffed the time hamster back into its velvet pouch. The poor thing was shaking and clearly needed the sunflower seeds I tapped its face with. I’d been hard at work before the peelers had disturbed the Duke and I, prompting my chrono-rodential translation into this musty hole. My escape through the rodent’s portal had been as rough as ever. My cuffs were quite disarrayed although the time hole had apparently scraped clean my jacket and taken the bloodstains from my favourite strangling gloves. I’d just have to re-sanguinate them.

With the feel of the hamster stuffing its cheeks against my liver I mustered an interest in our surroundings. The stench of failure squatted in the air like a fetid whore in the gutter. The room, dark; dimly lit by dangling brass orbs. The floor boarded and scuffed, obscured by a vulgar rug depicting nothing but the weaver’s limited imagination. The chairs had been wisely bolted to the floor (how I loathe the habit of guests rearranging furniture), the table in the centre bore manacles, straps and a curious patchwork pigmentation. Promising. I’d marbled a slab or two myself. I was reminded of the lair of the Mire people on whom I’d preyed whilst dwelling amongst the shark giraffes in the Afric valleys. Of course their torturous habits were as nothing to the agony of their conversation, which marked them as victims for any philanthropically inclined assassin.

The damp aggravated my asthma so I prepared a pipe of ‘Victor Shartbritches’ Finest Health Shag’ which happily displaced both the lung clag and my general dismay. Pipe in teeth I browsed the ground floor which had been curiously carpeted with a littering of springs, bolts and metallic detritus. The pantry was a tumble of limbs and assorted torso bits; hardly appetising. The kitchen sink was stacked with skull caps and liquefying brain matter. There were no vittles to fill my growling belly. I did find tea, which I enhanced with the phials and vials of tonics I carry constantly. I resumed my rifling revived and twitchy.

I received no gentlemanly warning before I was hurled across the drawing room to demolish a bookcase and vase with the force of my en-lobment. With a grin I drew my twin gutting blades from their ingenious homes in my sleeves. Across the room, hunched in a mockery of manhood was a fabulous fellow, who whilst largely comprising a grisly mass of ill-stitched meat owned a gleaming skull and glass piston limbs which belied his organic naissance. The thing’s arms pumped hard, winding strength for further blows. I pressed my advantage, pirouetting through the air in a whirlwind of flashing blades, gashing the concertinaed bellows in his shoulders and hip. I landed some feet away, leisurely tooting on my medicine which I retained in my toothy embrace.

The automaton cocked its clockwork head as I lectured it on the proper treatment of guests. But at length I concluded that it was either dumb or damaged, for it offered neither retort nor explanation for its behaviour. A tedious affair. I sipped my tea and regarded it over my crossed knees. The house was clearly abandoned and this tin headed ogre left as a guard dog. I took up a screwdriver and playfully tinkered at the robot’s skull. The convulsive twitching gave it the semblance of pain but it wasn’t until I’d triggered a speaker function that I was prepared to regard it useful. At first I could scarcely tease it through jabbing and soft words to sing me a nursery rhyme. In time though he mastered Baa Baa Black Sheep and we moved on to Daisy. The metallic gnarl of his voice grated against my delicate aesthetics but I persevered.

By the third day he could declaim Shakespeare; I cast him in the role of Juliet. I hauled him upstairs and balanced him across the banister while I beseeched him from below. My eyes fairly fizzled as I eagerly constructed a rude stage at the foot of the staircase and dragged out the brass orbs to be our footlights. Having need of further players I plundered the cadaver cast-offs in the cupboards, and while brewing yet more tinctured tea, copied the mechanisms that operated my Juliet with the cutlery and sinew I found strewn about the kitchen. Soon I had a fine cast with whom to enact Shakespeare’s tragic romance in full.

Despite the corpsey plenitude there was something missing. My tea-induced frenzy abated, the mists of glory de-clouding my eyes. Before me stood my animated zombie players and Juliet, all powered by the field of concocted fire I’d electrified the stage with. With a flick of my toe act one would commence, lead of course with the fabulous “Two houses” speech of which we’re all so fond. I was about to engage the whole affair when I realised that I could not watch this art alone – I was the director, twas only fitting that I have an audience fit to receive it.

The gloom was seizing me – what use these decrepit actors and my machinations if I’d no audience to gasp and lavish their praise upon me? It was then that the doorbell rang. A quandary dear sirs: when one has supplanted the perhaps proper denizen, how should one answer their bell? It tickled my conscience for all of a moment before flinging the door open, puppeting the corpse of my Benvolio (whose gaping face I fancied likely fit the bill of the bell-owner) through the gap. It seems my attempts at make-up were in vain. Perhaps I’d made him too orange (to compensate for the stage luminance), perhaps it was his skeletal throat or my rude stitching. Perhaps both, for with a gasp and eyeball stretching the poor milk wench fainted away on the step. I cast Benvolio to one side and drew her in, settling her in a chair with bonds and cushion.

 Over the next three days I drank tea, ground my teeth and made adjustments to the animatronic controls of my cadaverous troupe. At regular intervals some other spectator would knock on the door with concern for the last to join my dainty auditoria. And so I achieved three ranks of restless eyewitnesses to my creative opus.

 It was precisely six days since I’d emerged in this creatively fertile time when I ordered the curtains open before my wide-eyed audience. They looked thrilled, and were hungry for theatre, and a meal. The careless former owner had made no allowance for the belly needs of is guests and I’d been able only to nurture their spirits with the backstage excitement of a play in progress. There were a number I had to slap awake lest they miss the third act, but most sat rigidly to attention, the sweat of anticipation dribbling down their faces. I was proud of my puppet players, from little Benvolio to Nursie (whom I’d constructed largely with an armchair), they played their parts while I provided their voices from falsetto to tenor; except for the scenes with my beloved Juliet. The wig I’d pasted onto his shiny pate quite deceived me and I truly believed our love would last forever, despite our families’ rancour.

 Alas, my spectacle was cut short by a hammering at the door. Though we tried to ignore it (my audience gamely blocking it out by the stamp of their feet) it was more than I (or any other artiste) could endure. Deeply affronted I hurled the door wide and bellowed for peace in the faces of the constables crowding the door. They fell back in surprise and I slammed the door once more. Their tiresome noise resumed at once. Is there to be no calm for a theatre director?

 We achieved act four before they pounded the door to pieces. I’d blocked the windows thoroughly to attain the darkness and suspension of disbelief my crowd deserved. Clearly I had no choice but to turn my thespians upon the interlopers. As the animated bodies attacked I realised I should have undertaken one of the histories, perhaps Henry V. “Once more, dear friends,” I cried as the tenuously twined torsos burst upon the bobbies, “unto the breach”. The rabble had no appreciation of the work and had the temerity to adopt expressions of anger, as if their interruption were not the travesty at hand. With a sigh I set the android to ‘kill’ and withdrew my time hamster from his pouch. I tickled him in that special way and he squealed forth the temporal orifice. With luck our next stop would be a more cultural realm.

Captain Pigheart Lost at Sea

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Gaaargh. Twas a dark stormy night, two men sat upon the waves. Not lit’rally like, we did but sit in a boat.

Little Bo Pete and meself had been cast adrift by that treacherous swine, whose name be like a stinking tobacco-soaked hairball I cannot bring meself to retch forth afore ye good folks. The mere though of ‘is name brings me ter convulse with rage. Aye, last time I thought it I near tore meself a new orifice. Gaargh. I begins to rant – ‘tis a tale for another time.

For now ye must know that me loyal crew an’ I, that is meself an’ Little Bo Pete, we’d been cut loose in the spare dinghy at the mercy of Madame Mer. I ne’er saw me good ship Lollipop again. Gaaargh. But I did see that traitor scum one final time – yahar!

We drifted lonesome upon the open sea. ‘Twas gentle with us at first and we passed the time with ye game of ‘Eye Spy’, ‘til Pete grew maddened and violent.

Y’see, ye no bein’ sailors ye prob’ly think that bein’ ‘pon the seas there be no shortage o’ water. And ye be not wrong, but ye may not have heard ye ancient sailor’s plaint, ‘water water everywhere, but gaaargh, there be not a drop to drink’. Young Pete’d no more knowin’ of the sea than a sheep tossed off a cliff.

We got frightful thirsty, an’ for a laugh, I bet Pete that he’d die within a day if he drank of the sea. Being’ a gamblin’ man (which had led ‘im to me crew from ‘is promisin’ Oxford schoolin’), he upped the stakes, reckonin’ on two days o’ sanity before ‘im. An inveterate gambler, I could not dissuade him from his course, the fool. I meself drank only at night, while Pete slept, from the pigskin I always have strapped to me good leg in case of suchlike occurrences.

By the fourth day we was blistered red, or rather Pete were lobstered since ‘e’d left ‘is bonnet upon the Lollipop. I had me fine captain’s crown with its broad, shady brim, which I’d borrowed from the noble Admiral Kneehorn some months before.

By noon that day I adjudged that Pete had won the bet indeed, for he lived still, though he were reduced to the level of the beasts. Gaargh, for the brine’d made ‘im frothy ‘bout the lips as he hollered his nonsense at the gulls. ‘Is ‘igh education came through ‘is madness as ’e explained ter me the jommetry of Euclid and waxed lunatic Shakespearean speeches at the fishies. Gaargh. He was becomin’ a pain to me ears so I clubbed ‘im with me peg leg and got a few hours o’ peace.

As ‘e slept a’twitchin’ the sea began to seethe about us, an’ I caught glimpses of a vast beast flashin’ round and round the boat. Its scaly humps pierced the waves and sank out o’ sight again and again. I must confess ter bein’ somewhat afeard, for the Baltic Straits into which we’d veered have many tales o’ terror about ‘em.

Arrrr! A great tail rose up out o’ the water, studded wi’ spikes like the great pointy spikes of a Caribbean Sea-Mongoose. It dripped salt water upon us for a mo’, and then fell and smashed the dinghy in ‘twain. Bo Pete an’ I was tossed into the sea, naked to the beast circlin’ below. I clung to a plank like a desperate limpet, Pete danglin’ from me shoulder as I slapped him to wake.

The creature reared up before us, revealin’ its brilliant green an’ crimson crest an’ blazin’ eyes with evil feline pupils. Its nostrils were agape wi’ rage and ‘is jaws open to show two dozen rows o’ teeth the size of cutlasses wielded by a Prussian giant. Gaargh! ‘Twere terrible! Me guts turned to dribblin’ jelly and me face were numb with fear.

Not so poor brave, brine-berserk Little Bo Pete. ‘E lashed out at the brute, splashin’ water int’ its demon eyes. The beastie struck at ‘im, engulfin’ Pete with ‘is fearsome maw. Poor Pete – the monster vanished undersea with ‘im, leavin’ me floating cold and alone.

Stunned I was but a moment later (though it felt a lifetime), the beast’s head appeared again, gazin’ at me, its mouth a-bubblin’ wrathful-like. Its jaws slowly opened – prised apart by Pete, who stood upright, a-bracin’ its gob as ‘e stood proud on the brute’s gums. For a moment I though ‘im victorious, and made as if to cheer… an’ then there were a sickenin’ crack, the likes of which I never wish to hear from me own bones, as the beast bit down. Gaaargh.

Now, through some quirk or other – per’aps it were great Neptune ‘imself, seekin’ to lay blessin’ upon an honest pirate – it seemed Pete’s floppin’ corpse ‘ad somehow become lodged an’ the creature could no more close its mouth than I can snap the fingers o’ me left hand. I wasted no time and courageously plunged me plank into its gills and hauled meself astride the beast. Gaaargh. With the wood on me right and me hook in ‘is eye, I turned the beast toward land and urged it onwards.

Whenever I’m adrift on the open sea, followin’ some mutiny or other I often wish I ‘ad Little Bo Pete fer comp’ny. No doubt he be somewhere ‘pon the ocean-wide, a grisly portcullis to the Baltic Beast’s belly. A scholar and a gentleman – I drinks to ye.