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Last Updated: Nov 14, 2008 - 12:49:26 PM |
When I was a kid at Thomas Dale, I didn’t much care for Shakespeare. I remember editing the cover of my paperback Othello by blacking out the second and last letters of the title – the better to convey my feelings about trying to make sense of Elizabethan English.
Graduating from high school might well have ended my association with the Bard, but for an unexpected gift. During my first year of law school, my sister – an English major at William & Mary – sent me an LP recording of Henry IV, part 1.
Hearing to the words of Shakespeare spoken by gifted actors – rather than my pimply self and my somewhat less pimply high school classmates – came as a revelation. It would be seventeen years before I first performed in a Shakespeare play – twenty before I did so professionally – but those old Caedmon LPs marked the beginning of a long love affair.
This summer – for the seventh time in a sporadic acting career – I’m at it again. The Virginia Shakespeare Festival has cast me to play two irate fathers – in The Taming of the Shrew and my old favorite, Othello.
Taming opens this week and promises to be great fun – spirited, often hilarious, well worth the drive to Williamsburg.
Othello, still in early rehearsals, should be interesting. Our director has decided to locate the play in 1990s South Africa, which will heighten its racial tensions. This just might work, though Othello is not primarily a play about race.
But setting the play in South Africa requires that we actors learn their lines in dialect – distinctly different dialects for whites and blacks. Lately, I’ve been working on my dialect by watching films featuring mature men from South Africa.
One of these films, Gandhi, has long been in my personal Top Ten – a stirring biography of one of history’s greatest and most significant human beings. As a teacher, I often showed Gandhi to my world history classes – not at the end of the year – but as an invaluable component in our study of India.
I’ve seldom seen anything excite students more.
The other day, after replaying the South Africa scenes several times, I let the DVD run on – revisiting the part of the film where Gandhi compels British officials to recognize the futility of trying to hold onto India. In one scene, a British judge, whose duty it is to sentence Gandhi for sedition, stands when the defendant enters the courtroom – forcing everyone else to do the same.
The judge, as played by Trevor Howard, recognized what many Britons – including the redoubtable Winston Churchill – could not. Exhausted by two great wars, Britain could no longer govern a vast and restless empire. Her only real choice was to decide how to deal with the inevitable.
The scene always strikes me. Of all the world’s empires, the British was perhaps the most benign – yet its end became inescapable. All great powers must, in time, recede – the more rapidly when they overextend themselves.
It’s useful to consider that fact, now that the United States has – for the third time in less than sixty years – come face to face with the limitations of its own power. The evidence is everywhere to see.
While our costly efforts in Iraq may have turned a corner, Afghanistan remains endangered. And, with our military tied down, we’re beginning to realize how little we can influence Iran’s nuclear ambitions, genocide in Darfur, or the brutal suppression of democracy in Zimbabwe.
In Virginia, Democratic governor Tim Kaine continues to battle a Republican-led House of Delegates over funding for transportation. Yet Virginia’s leaders – no doubt influenced by the generous contributions of big road builders – still tend to think of “transportation” in terms of bridge and highway projects, not mass transit.
In Chesterfield, the Board of Supervisors continues to authorize vast new developments featuring oversized houses and long commuting distances. They don’t ask whether – in a future of high energy prices – there will still be a market for suburban McMansions. Or what happens if such homes – the main source of county revenues – continue to decline in value as younger families opt for city life.
In our families, we’re beginning to realize that many things we’ve long taken for granted may no longer be sustainable. How long do we hold onto that gas-guzzling truck or SUV when its resale value is plummeting? What about the power boat?
Has our home gone from investment to white elephant – too large, too energy-inefficient, and too far from work? Will its price recover, or should we unload it now in favor of something smaller and closer to town?
At turning points in history, answers often elude the wisest – while many, if not most, refuse even to face the questions. Writing at such a time, Shakespeare understood this – which is one reason his plays are still read, studied and performed.
I wonder if we will be as wise.
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