Quickly: 6 things about Beauty and the Beast

If you haven't seen it yet, go. I'm not saying Disney's new Beauty and the Beast film is perfect, or that you won't be disappointed at all, but overall it's a great film, and full of magic. I thought I'd mix things up a little with something that's not a straightforward review. Here's a {spoiler-free} list of 6 things you'll learn from the new Beauty and the Beast film:

1. Emma Watson and Dan Stevens are great actors and highly attractive people - they just can't sing.

Sound of Music much?

Yeah. We all saw it coming, and basically it was what we expected. Emma Watson makes a fantastic Belle, and who doesn't love Dan Stevens as the Beast? There's just one problem: it's a musical. 

Some of the supporting actors have pretty good voices: Luke Evans isn't bad as Gaston, and Kevin Kline's brief solo is surprisingly good. Emma Thompson can sing well enough to play Mrs. Potts, and Audra McDonald is great as Garderobe (because McDonald actually sings). 

But, sadly, Emma and Dan don't quite pull it off. A great orchestra helps them out in the big moments of the score, but it can't take them all the way. Do I wish Disney had cast better singers in the roles? I'm not sure. It's a trade-off, I guess. 

2. LeFou is more complicated than we thought, but not quite as funny.

Don't get me wrong - he's still funny. And I couldn't have picked a better actor than Josh Gad to play Gaston's buffoonish sidekick. But Gad takes the character in a different direction. He's not just an imbecile, and he has character development. Also, yes, he's gay. But I think the press has made that into a bigger deal than it actually is in the film.

3. Gaston is sort of likeable.

I mean until he ties Maurice up to a tree and leaves him to the wolves. I almost liked the guy. And I loved the "Gaston" scene in the tavern. It was one of the highlights of the film. Dancing on the table a la Newsies = yes.

4. We should all return to 18th century French fashions.

Also yes are every single one of Belle's dresses, Gaston's overcoat, and pretty much anything that anyone wears in the entire movie. The visuals are gorgeous, from the set and landscape shots to the costumes, camera angles, and lighting. As a piece of visual artistry, it's perfect. 

The ballroom scene - !!!

5. This isn't the Beauty and the Beast you think you know.

JK, it totally is. I mean they changed a few lines here and there, added a couple brief songs, and mixed some scenes up a little, but for the most part it's pretty much the original cartoon replayed with live actors. I was kind of hoping they'd throw in the song "If I Can't Love Her" from the Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast, but they didn't. They did give the Beast a new song, but in my opinion it was a little on the lame side. 

Overall, though, I loved what they did with the story. Of course I loved the courage and little personality touches that Emma Watson brought to Belle, making her an inventor like her father and emphasizing her love of Shakespeare and such (Shakespeare!). And the orchestral score was breathtaking. (Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum! [bum] Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum! [bum] Bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum....bbuummm...... OK I'm done.)

6. To love another person is to see the face of God.

So enough from me. Go see the movie.

Until tomorrow.

Shakespeare & Sons

A few years ago I discovered this really great group called Mumford & Sons. I was awed by the blue-grassy sound to their music and the fact that they were so popular; I love music that has a blue-grass/folk sound to it, but generally find that that isn't what gets played on the radio. Being the avid Shakespeare fanatic that I am, I immediately connected the title of their debut album Sigh No More with the song "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more" from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I wondered if the reference had been intentional, or if Mumford & Sons had just hit on the name themselves and the album had nothing to do with Shakespeare.

However, in a recent performance of Shakespeare's play that I attended, I recognized the line "man is a giddy thing" as being quoted in the title track of Sigh No More. After that I returned to the song, convinced now that Mumford & Sons had been fully intentional in quoting Much Ado. What I found this time around was very exciting for the English Major in me: The song "Sigh No More," after which their first album is named, quotes about six lines from Much Ado About Nothing. And it gets better. Mumford & Sons quotes lines from other Shakespeare plays in at least two other songs on the album. At this point, my literary analysis brain had gone into fifth gear and my esteem for Mumford & Sons had gone through the roof. It isn't everyday you find out one of your favorite bands quotes Shakespeare in three separate songs. I don't know how many people have noticed this; maybe I'm just a latecomer to the party and everyone is laughing at me right now because they all figured this out years ago. But I'm going to assume that the average casual listener hasn't noticed this trend in Mumford & Sons, so join me, if you feel inclined, as I delve a little more deeply into the content of Mumford & Sons' poetic masterpiece Sigh No More.

The opener: "Sigh No More"

Firstly, consider the first stanza of Shakespeare's poem of the same name, which appears as a song in his comedy Much Ado About Nothing:

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.

    Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

    To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

    And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

    Into hey nonny, nonny.

(As a side note, we might ask ourselves how the Mumford & Sons' song would have turned out differently if the band had decided that the line "hey nonny, nonny" was a must have.)

A little background

This is not the time or place for an in-depth summary of Much Ado About Nothing, but the play centers on two of Shakespeare's most beloved characters, Beatrice and Benedick, who have forsworn love and engage in witty and insulting repartee whenever they meet. At one point, Benedick exclaims that marriage is like "thrust[ing] thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away Sundays" (1.1.). As you've probably already guessed, the two end up falling madly in love and declare their intent to marry each other at the play's conclusion. When his friends tease him for entering into marriage after he has spent his whole life bashing it, Benedick protests that "man is a giddy thing" or rather, man is changeable, and his past opinions should not be held against him. (5.4.)

The song

Mumford & Sons' "Sigh No More" opens with the line "Serve God, love me, and mend," a direct quote from Much Ado About Nothing. About mid-play, when things are at their darkest, Benedick asks Beatrice how she is holding up. When she replies that she is "very ill," he replies, "serve God, love me, and mend" (5.2.). 

The rest of the verse proceeds:

This is not the end
Live unbruised we are friends
And I'm sorry
I'm sorry

 In the final scene of Much Ado, Benedick and his best friend, Claudio, make up after having been set at odds through a miscommunication. Benedick tells Claudio that he would have beaten him if the duel they previously scheduled had taken place, but as it is, he tells him to "live unbruised." The two have a bit of sporting repartee after which Benedick exclaims, "Come, come, we are friends" (5.4.).

Though I'm not sure that any of the characters in Much Ado ever utter directly the line "I'm sorry," it applies to at least half of them and is implicit in many of the things they say in the play's final scenes. This apology could be that of Claudio and Don Pedro, who suspected the innocent young Hero of being untrue to her fiance; or that of Benedick and Claudio to each other after a turn of events renders their previously scheduled duel irrelevant. Possibly Benedick and Beatrice speak it to each other when they agree to put their history of quarreling and insulting behind them. There are multiple other characters who stand in a position to apologize as well, but the point is that the line is very fitting where it stands in the song.

The second verse runs:

Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea, one on shore
My heart was never pure
You know me
You know me 

The first two lines may sound familiar, and if you take another look at the Shakespeare poem I've quoted above, you'll see why:

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
    Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
    To one thing constant never.

 Obviously, the first two lines of this verse borrow from Shakespeare's poem. But I think the lines that follow are also very apt in the context of Much Ado. I like to think they could be spoken by Benedick to Beatrice - she knows him well, and in knowing him perhaps knows that his heart was never pure. As Benedick says to Beatrice in the play, "Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably" (5.2.).

The song continues:

And man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing

Continuing the theme of the preceding verse, this line isolates and calls attention to the changeability of man and his opinions, "to one thing constant never." If the speaker is the same as that of the previous verse, he seems to be apologizing for his past behavior, citing his fallible nature - which was never wholly devoted to one thing - and man's tendency towards inconstancy. And, of course, this line comes directly from the play (Act 5. Scene 4.).

But the line "man is a giddy thing," standing as it does at the crux or turning point of the song, could also signify the speaker's changing attitudes towards love, especially since this line transitions us from a tragic apology to a more upbeat celebration of love. "Man is a giddy thing" might mean that man is capable of changing his behaviors and attitudes; hence this line moves us out of the speaker's apology for his past behavior and into a declaration that he is now putting all that behind him.

If you were wondering when the song was finally going to pick up - it's now. We have the characteristic Mumford & Sons decisive plucking of a chord followed by a slow upward swing in tempo, and that moves us into the chorus, or climax, of the song:

Love will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you
It will set you free
Be more like the man
You were made to be.
There is a design
And alignment to cry
Of my heart to see
The beauty of love
As it was made to be.

I think the subdued but heartfelt opening of this song followed by the exuberant climax makes this possibly Mumford & Sons' most rousing song. And by rousing I mean it takes the listener on a journey that begins in fallibility and regret and ends in jubilation and freedom. At least, it has that effect on me; call me melodramatic if you like, I don't care. If we return to Much Ado for one final moment of analysis, we might note that the song's climax mirrors Benedick's and Beatrice's transformation in the play. Though initially scorning marriage and fearing that it will "enslave" or "betray" them if they give it rein, the lovers find in the end that love, far from enslaving them, has set them free.

Other tracks on the album

Needless to say, I was pretty ecstatic when I figured all this out, but that's just a beginning. I'd long suspected that the title of the song "I Gave You All" on the same album was borrowed from Shakespeare's King Lear, but I couldn't find any other lines from the play in that song (I'm still hopeful - I just haven't found them yet). However, when I discovered a direct quotation from Macbeth in another song on the album, I figured I had proof enough to decide that "I Gave You All" was in fact a reference to Shakespeare.

"I Gave You All" is, with the exception of "Dust Bowl Dance" - which can be truly scary and always seems to come on whenever I'm in a particularly stressful situation, or maybe it's just that the song renders everything stressful (don't get me wrong I love it) - the most "angry" song on the album. But it's not just a screaming rant; it's a brilliantly crafted song that moves the listener through a series of emotions and leads her gradually up to the song's high point and then back down, and it ends with a low moan of loss and betrayal. The song's lyrics and structure seem to echo Shakespeare's great tragedy King Lear, in which the title character divides his kingdom up between his two older daughters, who proceed to misuse, abuse, and abandon him. Exasperated, Lear cries to his daughters, "I gave you all!" (2.4.) When his daughters refuse to invite him into the house in the wake of nightfall and a coming storm, Lear rages upon the heath in the midst of thunder, lightning, and rain. The scene upon the heath seems suggested by several lyrics in Mumford & Sons' song, such as the opening, "Rip the earth in two with your mind," which seems especially apt since Lear begins to lose his sanity at this point in the play. The song thus draws from the tragedy, anger, and bewilderment of King Lear in order to tap into the play's moments of darkness and tempest and achieve a deeper sense of loss. One final observation: the line "your tears feel warm as they fall on my forearms" from the song seems to echo the moment when Lear, towards the end of the play, awakes to find his young and faithful daughter Cordelia at his side. In the initial confusion of waking, Lear states, "mine own tears / do scald like molten lead" and when he recognizes his daughter Cordelia he asks, "be your tears wet?"

The quotation from Shakespeare's Macbeth appears in the song "Roll Away Your Stone" on the same album (Sigh No More). In Act 1, Scene 4, Macbeth, the title character, states, "Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires." Similarly, Mumford & Sons' song states, "Stars, hide your fires / These here are my desires / And I won't give them up to you this time around." The rest of the song, with its emphasis on darkness and man's inner character, or soul, seems particularly relevant to Macbeth.


The rest of the songs on the album are spectacular, but I have yet to discover any more Shakespeare lyrics in them, and I don't think there are any on the band's second album, Babel, which is, nevertheless, brilliant. I'll be on the lookout, however, and if you happen to find any, let me know! Their newest album, Wilder Mind, was just released earlier this week, so there's plenty more opportunity for analyzing Mumford and Sons' lyrics.

Thanks for taking this ride with me, and here's to lots more Mumford & Sons listening - and Shakespeare reading/watching - in the future!

Musings on Thanksgiving (with special appearances by C.S. Lewis, Victor Hugo, Thorin Oakenshield, and William Shakespeare)

(Wouldn't it be cool if we could change the background of this blog to match the seasons? Yeah, I don't know how to do that. Then again, the Wood between the Worlds probably doesn't have seasons. Anyway, here is a picture that looks like it could have been taken in the Wood between the Worlds in autumn, you know, if the Wood had an autumn.)

The weather is turning colder, the trees losing their leaves, and the stores displaying Christmas merchandise - which must mean that Thanksgiving is upon us.

I have nothing against listening to Christmas music once November hits, but let's make sure we don't rush over Thanksgiving in our excitement for Christmas to come; this holiday deserves its own time in the spotlight.

What's Thanksgiving about? Pilgrims and Indians? The Mayflower? The founding of America? Maybe, but if we want to find the true heart of Thanksgiving, all we need to do is remember the name of this holiday. Giving thanks is a sweet, joyous, and plentiful harvest in and of itself. C. S. Lewis, in Reflections on the Psalms, wrote:

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”

Are you ever struck by the incredible beauty of this world? Now is the time to express your delight, wonder, and gratitude for the glorious things around you. And our gratitude shouldn't be confined to the subject of the beauty of nature; there are so many things to be grateful for that it's staggering. Even in our darkest moments, there is something amazingly beautiful or wonderful or helpful for which we can express thanks. And this thanksgiving shouldn't be confined to Thanksgiving. We can express gratitude all year long. But this is the time to focus on our gratitude and reflect upon it. If you're unsure of how to express your gratitude and to whom, take a cue from the words of Victor Hugo:

"To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do."

Whether its in prayer to God, in conversation to your friends or family, or in complete solitude in your journal or private thoughts, find some time to give thanks this Thanksgiving.  

But also find some time to enjoy good food, because that too is an important part of this holiday, and, after all, as Thorin says to Bilbo in The Hobbit:

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

So from the depths of my heart I truly hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and find both something to be thankful for and some food to enjoy. And I pray, with William Shakespeare:
 

"O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness."
                                      (Henry VI, Part II)

Such stuff as books are made on: Shakespeare-inspired literature

I recently finished The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary L. Blackwood. It was a fun read, with likeable characters, good historical detail, and plenty of suspense and plot twists, though there was one twist that went too far, in my opinion. This prompted me to think about some of the other Shakespearean-inspired books I've read, and I decided to compile a list of them for you. (Yay!) Brevity is the soul of wit, so I'll try to briefly outline each book and give my opinion on it, but, judging from my previous posts, I have a tendency to go the Polonius route and write way more than I thought I would.

Historical Shakespeare

Title: Loving Will Shakespeare

Author: Carolyn Meyer

Date of Publication: October 1st 2006

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers

In all the stories told about William Shakespeare, there is usually one vitally important person who is either omitted or glossed over, and that is his wife, Anne Hathaway. Married to Will Shakespeare at an older age and because she was pregnant, Anne was left to raise their children in Stratford-upon-Avon while her husband went to London and became a famous playwright. How heartbreaking and lonely it must have been for her when their only son died and his father was absent. It's all but impossible for us to know what the relationship between Shakespeare and his wife was really like, but I like to think that the facts present a long-standing, long-suffering marriage with a passionate beginning and a serene ending, though there may have been some rocky patches in the middle. Loving Will Shakespeare tells Anne Hathaway's side of the story, focusing on her teenage and early-adult years up to the moment of her marriage with Will. It is a historically informative novel that tries to get at the heart of one of the most interesting and ambiguous romances in all of history. For Anne, Will is not the famous playwright; he is simply the kind, spirited childhood friend who makes her laugh. But to the rest of the world he is the famous playwright, and Anne will find that loving him is not always easy. I only have good things to say about this book. I enjoyed the characters, the story, and the setting, and I learned a lot about Shakespeare's childhood and his home, as well as about the girl who would eventually become his wife. Loving Will Shakespeare is a lively historical romance with a bittersweet ending.

Title: The Shakespeare Stealer

Author: Gary L. Blackwood

Series: The Shakespeare Stealer

Date of Publication: July 1st 2000

Publisher: Puffin

My review of Gary Blackwood's The Shakespeare Stealer is not quite as glowing as my review of Carolyn Meyer's novel. I felt that The Shakespeare Stealer had a very promising start; I was completely hooked for the first half of the book. When Widge, an orphan from the English countryside, is ordered by his owner to steal Shakespeare's play Hamlet, the stakes are high. His attempts continually foiled, he has to keep returning night after night to the Globe Theatre to try again, and if he fails, there's no knowing what his grim and violent owner will do to him. When Widge meets the members of Shakespeare's company and gets taken into their little "family," the stakes get even higher. If his owner finds him without the script of Hamlet in his possession, it could mean a beating or even death, but if his new-found friends find out that he's trying to steal their play, it will mean being cast out of the only family Widge has ever known. The stakes are indeed high, and Widge is caught squarely in the middle of two devastating decisions. But then, suddenly, somewhere around the middle leading into the second half of the book, a major plot twist threw me out of the action, and I just didn't care as much about the book after that. It may have been a twist in the story, but it was a cliché in the larger realm of Shakespearean retellings and similar stories, and it was an unreality in the historical Shakespeare's time period. So, while I appreciate the way that the author lead up to this particular twist and made the rest of the story consistent with it, I just found it so cliché and unrealistic that I couldn't get back into the story after it happened. However, it was still a fairly good story and it was definitely historically informative; I don't think I've read any other Shakespearean novel that dealt so much with the specific members of his acting company.

Title: The Fool's Girl

Author: Celia Rees

Date of Publication: July 20th 2010

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens

The Fool's Girl, by Celia Rees, is both a historical fiction about Shakespeare himself and a reimagining of one of his best-loved comedies, Twelfth Night. This novel picks up where the story of Twelfth Night leaves off, introducing Violetta, the daughter of Viola and Orsino, as the new heroine. When her home is destroyed, Violetta flees to London with her companion, Feste, and the two outcasts encounter William Shakespeare and his acting company, who agree to help the pair face off against their arch-nemesis, Malvolio. This book was doubly fun, because it gave me historical Shakespeare and a fantasy on one of his plays. The portrayal of Shakespeare in this novel is one of my favorite characterizations of the Bard; I found him likeable, clever, caring, and adventurous - in other words, everything that I like to think the real William Shakespeare actually was. And hey, Anne Hathaway was in this book! Not for very long, but still, I was excited! It's a fun adventure with sympathetic characters and plenty of historical detail.

More recent historical Shakespeare

Title: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Author: Kathleen F. Leary and Amy E. Richard
Series: Images of America

Date of Publication: September 9th 2009

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing (SC)

It may just be because I really love the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but I really enjoyed reading this book. It's not a novel, but a nonfiction compilation of the origins, development, and subsequent history of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival located in Ashland, Oregon. It's very informative and interesting, and it has great pictures, too.

Rewriting Shakespeare

Title: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Author: Tom Stoppard

Date of Publication: January 21st 1994

Publisher: Grove Press
Premiered: 24th August 1966, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Scotland

Tom Stoppard's tragicomic play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is the author's rewriting, from a slightly different viewpoint and in a different literary style, of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Stoppard uses the two tangential characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to raise questions about language, literature, intertextuality, and the secret lives of an author's characters. Goodreads says this about it: "Hamlet told from the worm's-eye view of two minor characters, bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, reality and illusion mix, and where fate leads heroes to a tragic but inevitable end." (Wait, did that make sense to you? Because it didn't to me.) Stoppard's play is witty, hilarious, dark, deep, and uncomfortable. And yes, they die at the end. Now don't you want to go read it?

Reimagining Shakespeare 

Title: Magic Street

Author: Orson Scott Card

Date of Publication: June 27th 2006

Publisher: Del Rey

Who ever thought that Shakespeare's classic comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream would be retold someday by a famous science-fiction writer who would set the story in a modern African American neighborhood in Los Angeles, California? I never would have thought it up. But it's great! The book is a lot of fun, and the story and characters interact with Shakespeare's original play in fun and interesting ways. It's a gripping story, well-told, with spunky, loveable characters. If you've ever wondered what a Shakespeare play told by Orson Scott Card would be like, here you go. A word of caution, though, there is a scene that's PG-13. You have been warned. If you end up liking Magic Street, you might want to check out Card's similar (but I think better) foray into the world of fantasy, Enchantment. It is also PG-13.

Random Fun Shakespeare

Title: To Be or Not To Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure

Author: Ryan North & William Shakespeare (and, apparently, YOU)

Date of Publication: September 10th 2013

Publisher: Breadpig (who the heck are they?)

I have not read this book, but it looks awesome. Apparently it's a cross between Hamlet and Choose Your Own Adventure. The title alone is the greatest thing ever.

 

Title: The Shakespeare Encyclopedia

Author: A.D. Cousins (Editor)

Date of Publication: September 17th 2009

Publisher: Firefly Books

This volume contains information about Shakespeare's life, each of his plays, and his poetry. It has beautiful full-color illustrations on just about every page. Basically it is the be-all and end-all of everything Shakespeare related.


If none of these works piqued your interest, there's a whole world of Shakespearean-related books that I haven't even touched on, because I haven't read them. Whether you want a non-fiction biography, a collection of Shakespeare's own writings, or a fantasy on some of his themes, there's something out there for you. Because, for William Shakespeare, all the world's a stage.