Culture Shock 10.03.13: Much ado about Shakespeare

Roger Allam, left, as Sir John Falstaff and Jamie Parker as Prince Hal
in William Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Part 1."

The future is difficult to predict. Will there be interstellar travel? Will robots learn to think?

So many unanswerable questions. But one thing no one questions is whether William Shakespeare will still be relevant. "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," set 300 years in our future, which puts it 700 years after Shakespeare, takes its title from "Hamlet" (Act 3, Scene 1) and features a wonderful scene in which a Klingon portrayed by David Warner, no stranger to playing Shakespeare on the stage, says, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon."

The joke is itself a callback to novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who has a character say Shakespeare is better in the "original Russian." Everyone wants to appropriate the man so synonymous with the English language that we call him "the Bard." After 400 years, he hasn't lost a step.

Indeed, he seems more with us than ever. PBS is airing "The Hollow Crown," a four-part series that adapts one of Shakespeare's most neglected histories, "Richard II," and three of his best, "Henry IV, Part 1," "Henry IV, Part 2" and "Henry V." "The Hollow Crown" stars Ben Whishaw ("Skyfall"), Jeremy Irons ("The Borgias") and Tom Hiddleston ("The Avengers").

A restored Globe Theatre in London, called Shakespeare's Globe, stages Shakespeare's plays, and those of some of his contemporaries such as Christopher Marlowe, in the original style, including musical interludes. The performances are both thrilling and enlightening, and they are — educators take note — available on DVD from Kultur International Films (kultur.com).

Shakespeare boring? Well you just haven't seen Falstaff performed with Olivier Award-winning panache by Roger Allam ("The Thick of It") in "Henry IV, Part 1" and "Part 2."

Still, the real proof of Shakespeare's vitality isn't found in historically accurate costume dramas, but in the way his works continue to inform contemporary arts and artists.

As soon as he wrapped production on "The Avengers," Joss Whedon got together at his house with his actor friends and shot "Much Ado About Nothing," a glossy, sexy adaptation of Shakespeare's greatest comedy, transported to present day. Shakespeare not hip? The creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" begs to differ. The Bard is hip, relevant and everywhere, whether you've noticed or not.

As the literary critic Harold Bloom argues, Shakespeare invented our conception of human nature. He also invented much of our language. We quote him without even thinking about it.

So why does reading Shakespeare remain, for most of us, such a chore? Equal to his power to inspire is his power to intimidate, and intimidate not just students, but teachers, too. Speaking from experience, there are few things sadder than a classroom full of high school sophomores stumbling aloud through "Julius Caesar" and wondering how much of it will be on the test.

That's no way to experience Shakespeare.

Watching the movie version of a classic literary work is usually a cheat, but with Shakespeare it's the next best thing to seeing him performed live. Shakespeare wrote plays, not novels. He isn't meant to be read, although that has its own pleasures. He's meant to be experienced.

The recent book "Living with Shakespeare," edited by Susannah Carson, collects essays by actors, writers and directors explaining how they have approached Shakespeare and what they have learned from him. (Another note for educators: This book is an excellent secondary text for your class.)

All these trained professionals struggle with Shakespeare just as we do. Yet as actor Ben Kingsley ("Iron Man 3") writes, "A lot of Shakespeare's audience were illiterate. Now the plays have become quartered into some kind of elitist literature exercise. It's stupid."

It's a fair warning. Shakespeare is important, but we lose something by treating him as above us, rather than as one of us. The expounder of human nature was only human.

Culture Shock 02.07.13: Alas, poor Richard III, do we know him?

Richard III is finally getting his second act.

The last English king to die on the battlefield, Richard was disinterred last year from his resting place beneath a car park in Leicester, England. (Still no sign of Jimmy Hoffa.) This week, scientists revealed the results of a DNA comparison and proclaimed the 527-year-old remains those of of the last Plantagenet king, killed on Bosworth Field, some 20 miles away, on Aug. 22, 1485.

If his bones could talk, they'd shout, "A hearse! A hearse! My kingdom for a hearse!"

Even his enemies admit his courage. He died fighting and he died badly, sustaining multiple fatal wounds to the skull, along with postmortem injuries for good measure. He played the game of thrones and lost.

The archaeologists who found him haven't said if there was any good interred with his bones, not that one would expect it given his reputation as the most villainous of English monarchs, a Machiavellian schemer who likely — but it is disputed — had his nephews murdered to secure his throne, and who was cursed with a twisted, deformed body matching his dark, twisted soul.

Turns out Richard III did indeed have a twisted spine, likely from scoliosis.

The results of CSI: Leicester's investigation may yet embolden revisionists and Yorkist dead-enders bent on rehabilitating the king, but history is written by the victors, and plays are written by the victors' bards. In this case, the Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare.

Richard's death ended the War of the Roses, the House of York's dynasty and the entire Medieval period. It ushered in modernity and the Tudors, beginning with the coronation of Henry Tudor as Henry VII. Henry VII begat Henry VIII, who begat Elizabeth I, who reigned over the age of Shakespeare, as those of you who have seen "Shakespeare in Love" no doubt recall.

Judi Dench won an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth I in that film, but I'm partial to Miranda Richardson's daffy and bloodthirsty portrayal of the queen in "Blackadder II." Richardson's capricious Elizabeth is always threatening to chop off people's heads, which is a good summation of what happened to those who offended monarchs back in the day.

So, when it comes to Shakespeare's portrayal of the House of Tudor's old foe, he doesn't spare the cheap seats. Building on other contemporary portrayals of Richard III, Shakespeare's version is a hunchback with a limp and a withered arm, all outward symbols of his villainy. (The recovered skeleton shows no sign of a withered arm.) It is Shakespeare's Richard that has, through intervening centuries, entered the public consciousness and devolved into caricature. (See, for example, the Richard III ward in Monty Python's "Royal Hospital for Overacting" sketch.)

History is a moving target. Even the exact location of the Battle of Bosworth Field wasn't settled until three years ago, when archaeologists put the location a mile southwest of what had been taken as fact for 500 years. Bosworth Field tourists have been getting lost since Columbus got lost.

Shakespeare may have been a Tudor propagandist, but Richard III's remains on their own won't improve the king's image. Mostly, they confirm what history and drama have said, from the hunchback to the brutality of his death. His shallow, forgotten grave hints at just how disliked he was — at least by the Tudors and Lancasters.

Whether he really did in his nephews or whether he was a good and fair administrator, when not vying with his rivals, will remain matters of debate. No amount of forensic detective work, apart from finding the nephews walled up in the Tower of London, will change that.

Without a doubt, Richard III was a nasty piece of work, but so were the Tudors and Lancasters.

For what it's worth, Vlad the Impaler has his revisionist admirers, too.