who gives anything to poor Tom?
Day #3: Your favorite hero
Oh, man, this is a tough one, largely because hero is such a loaded word when it comes to Shakespeare. Heroine, which is tomorrow's topic, doesn't, which I think is because it doesn't come with all the baggage and is easier to interpret as "female lead," which is probably exactly what I'll be doing when I write tomorrow's post -- the whole notion of heroism has always been heavily gendered, whether we are talking about an Aristotelian type of hero or a Campbellesque one.
So this got me thinking about heroism in Shakespeare, and what it means -- there are surprisingly few characters who really qualify as "heroic" by contemporary standards, and even fewer who aren't horribly doomed, and there is in fact an entire play (Troilus and Cressida) devoted to deconstructing the notion of the hero -- and the play that I kept coming back to was King Lear. There's a play which is borderline apocalyptic -- "the promised end, or image of that horror," as the characters say -- and yet it is filled with people who stand up nevertheless, even in the face of their own destruction: Kent and Cordelia's insistence on telling their truths; the Fool's unblinking loyalty; Albany's moral awakening; even the unnamed servant who stands up to Regan and Cornwall at the cost of his life.
So I think I am going to have to give this one, on behalf of his play, to Edgar, and this is largely for reasons outlined by likeadeuce in her post on King Lear a couple of days ago. In a lot of ways, he is the person who most exemplifies that kind of awkward grasping at rightness that so many people in the play do -- he doesn't entirely know what's really going on; he sticks around and wants to help and fucks up, and in the end he is there to undo buttons and to insist that "the gods are just." And it's not enough, but it's something.
Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line
Oh, man, this is a tough one, largely because hero is such a loaded word when it comes to Shakespeare. Heroine, which is tomorrow's topic, doesn't, which I think is because it doesn't come with all the baggage and is easier to interpret as "female lead," which is probably exactly what I'll be doing when I write tomorrow's post -- the whole notion of heroism has always been heavily gendered, whether we are talking about an Aristotelian type of hero or a Campbellesque one.
So this got me thinking about heroism in Shakespeare, and what it means -- there are surprisingly few characters who really qualify as "heroic" by contemporary standards, and even fewer who aren't horribly doomed, and there is in fact an entire play (Troilus and Cressida) devoted to deconstructing the notion of the hero -- and the play that I kept coming back to was King Lear. There's a play which is borderline apocalyptic -- "the promised end, or image of that horror," as the characters say -- and yet it is filled with people who stand up nevertheless, even in the face of their own destruction: Kent and Cordelia's insistence on telling their truths; the Fool's unblinking loyalty; Albany's moral awakening; even the unnamed servant who stands up to Regan and Cornwall at the cost of his life.
So I think I am going to have to give this one, on behalf of his play, to Edgar, and this is largely for reasons outlined by likeadeuce in her post on King Lear a couple of days ago. In a lot of ways, he is the person who most exemplifies that kind of awkward grasping at rightness that so many people in the play do -- he doesn't entirely know what's really going on; he sticks around and wants to help and fucks up, and in the end he is there to undo buttons and to insist that "the gods are just." And it's not enough, but it's something.
Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line