Mark Antony, the most Dramatic Actor of the Last Century BC

The Shakespeare Play that is named after Julius Caesar is primarily about Brutus and Cassius, yet in all its Hollywood movie adaptations top billing always seems to go to whoever plays Mark Antony.  He is also much more conventionally a main character of another Shakespeare Play.

And back in the Golden Age of Hollywood Historical Epics some of the biggest movies set during this century tended to be movies about Cleopatra where inevitably Mark Anthony becomes the male lead.

Something about Mark Antony, or the popular perception of the kind of person he was, makes him the character of this era Actors of a certain caliber most want to perform.  A compelling combination of Honor and Hedonism, Impulsiveness and Cunningness, Rage and Romance.

As someone who’s often very cynical about the more gritty and “realistic” approach usually taken by more modern fictionalizations of the Ancient World, Antony is a character I particularly fear would lose his appeal.  I can admit how a character like Caesar could benefit from a more three dimensional modern writer.  Antony however is a character I tend to cynically presume will just be turned into a caricature.

Not to mention my more complex feelings on how the art of acting has changed. I don’t consider any actors you commonly see in contemporary Movies and TV to be bad, but the style of acting I enjoy the most has gone out of fashion in Hollywood.  I can’t picture any MCU actor competing with Marlon Brando, Carleton Heston and Richard Burton.  In contemporary acting I'm most a fan of the Voice Acting you hear in English Dubs of Anime. So it's Crispin Freeman, John Michael Tatun and Dan Green who I’d love to hear play Mark Anthony.

So imagine my surprise when during this last week I almost 20 years late to the party finally watched HBO’s Rome TV series and James Purefoy completely blew me away.  Now I have to admit he kinda seemed like what I was cynically expecting early on, but by the end of episode 6 I was suddenly sold, but it’s in season 2 that he really gets to shine.  He’s distinct from the classic takes I referred to above, yet still inline with them in a way I didn’t expect from something so modern.

This show takes historical liberties already in season 1 but they become more significant in season 2.  But I don’t care about that when I’m being entertained by what I’m watching.  And this show was entertaining all around.  I’ve seen complaints about how Cleopatra is depicted but I found it refreshing, not how I’d write her but refreshing nonetheless.

But I made this post to talk about Mark Antony's fictionalizations.  I titled it “Dramatic Actor” rather than “leading Actor” because he’s never been the sole title character, he’s Cleopatra’s Lover and Caesar’s Avenger, and an Antagonist in the more rare works that portray this history with Octavian as the Protagonist.

And all this meaty dramatic material comes from still drawing on only select portions of his life and career.  HBO's Rome and the 80s BBC Cleopatras miniseries cover some stuff not usually covered but missed plenty of other opportunities. 

Only two of the five wives he had have ever been on screen characters. I’d really like to actually see Fulvia onscreen for a change, she sounds like a compelling potential Anime Girl, as does her first husband Clodius.

As a Christian who likes to look at at least all BC History through a lens of revolving around Israel and Jerusalem it’s notable that he had been in Judaea at least twice, as a young man under Gabinius in the 50s and then in 37 BC during the Triumvirate when he defeats the Parthians and Mattathias Antigonus.  Maybe there have been Israeli movies depicting at least the latter of those, I wouldn’t at this time know.

Since I have been a pretty vocal critic of the Great Man Theory of History I can imagine some who miss the point of that debate would find it weird for me to then make a long ramble about one of those titular great men.  The dispute between Great Man Theorists and Materialists is about what drives History.  And the story of someone viewed as a Great Man of History even though he ultimately lost in the end is a great opportunity to demonstrate how Material Conditions can doom anymore no matter how capable or “Heroic” they are.

It’s possible the real Marcus Antonius had little in common personality wise with the idea of Mark Antony I’ve been talking about.  Those who criticize the adage “History is written by the winners” are often taking it too literally, the point is to pay attention to the biases of who’s writing.  If it was 100% literally true all the time we’d still popularly view Antony and Cleopatra based on the utterly demonized portrait Octavian's propagandists tried to paint.  However the positive depictions however indirectly eventually go back through that propaganda.

However in my view Historical Fiction needs to be viewed the same as other adaptations, the desire of some people to moralize about getting history wrong in fiction I find annoying.  People shouldn't be using fiction to actually learn history in the first place.  Mark Antony the character I like watching so much should on some level be viewed as a Legend inspired by History just like King Arthur.

Film is not ONLY a Visual Medium

One thing I’m sick of seeing among those who critique films for being too dialogue or exposition heavy or not following their understanding of “show don’t tell” properly is the rather dogmatic declaration that “film is a visual medium”.

Film and Television and Animation are mixed mediums of storytelling designed to in different ways stimulate both sight and sound to convey whatever their artistic intent is.  A purely visual medium would be things like paintings, something way more visual than anything else would be Comic Books/Manga or the very modern artform of motion comics.  Something that’s not visual at all would be Audio Dramas and Music Records.

I make posts like this to defend allowing artists to make what they want and the audience to enjoy what they want.  I am not someone who devalues the visual aspects of film or opposes films that prioritize the visual elements over everything else.  Such films have less appeal to me personally but I absolutely respect them, and absolutely do appreciate the visual elements of the movies and shows I do like.

That said there are sometimes bad directorial decisions made because of this over prioritizing of the visuals that YouTube critics defend simply on the principle that they did “something” visually instead of “nothing”.  Take for example JustWrite’s video on Rise of Skywalker where he is very critical of that film (more than I am really) but still defends Abrams as a Director over Lucas by showing a scene from a non Star Wars Abrams film where the Camera is spinning around some characters talking as inherently more “interesting” than the Prequels' more muted directorial style where the camera is still while characters talk.  As someone who likes Dialogue I don’t appreciate the Camera trying to disorient me while I'm trying to follow a conversation.

But that doesn’t mean I'm always against having some motion going on during a dialogue scene.  As an Anime fan I love the scene in the first episode of Fate/Zero where Kirei’s father and Tosaka walk in a circle around him while recruiting him into their scheme.  But it’s not nearly as disorienting as that Abrams scene and more importantly serves an artistic purpose beyond just avoiding the accusation of being visually boring. ReplayValue has a video essay on the scene that explains it way better than I could.

The Irony of all this is how some visual aspects of film get disrespected by this dismissiveness towards anything not purely or primarily visual.  When a character is talking, more is going on than just the words themselves, are they being sincere or manipulative or is their trustworthiness ambiguous?  How do they feel about what they’re saying, are they talking about something that traumatized them or does it give them great Joy to talk about?  Is there maybe something else they are failing to say?  These ideas are in part conveyed by how they say it, their facial expressions and how they’re moving.  In Live Action that is pretty much entirely in how the Actor performs it, however in Animation the more visual aspects of Acting are done by the Animators, so no you're not respecting them by dismissing dialogue scenes, sometimes the visual performance of a character talking is the best work they’ve done.  Maybe none of these people intend to dismiss all that when they say “film is a visual medium” but when saying it in the contexts they do that’s the implication.

That’s why it offends me when Zero Woolfe says sarcastically “what a great way to use this VISUAL medium” about Andrew Garfield’s performance in No Way Home because he has some ideological problem with simply saying what was previously unspoken.  His praise of the Marc Webb films are good, it’s the looking down on everything else that bugs me.

But that’s just how this attitude towards film can unintentionally disrespect visuals when it comes to a single scene. When a film gets perceived as an overly talky film it can cause the things that counter that narrative to be willingly ignored.  Back when the IMDB forums existed, one forum I liked to spend time on was the 1963 Cleopatra film.  And there was such a strong narrative there about how much “overacting” Elizabeth Taylor did in that film that I feel like I’m the only one who noticed near the end when she sees the ring she gave to her son earlier on Octavian’s hand and realizes he’s lying and her son is already dead.  That is an understated moment not conveyed in dialogue at all, but because it goes against a common narrative no one talks about it.

Thing is these people know non Visual elements are important because no one would dismiss the value of Music in films and be taken seriously.  George Lucas can describe Star Wars as almost just a glorified Music Video for John Williams score and no one goes “um film is a visual medium so why are you putting so much emphasis on an audio element:.”

It’s just talking that seems to bother these people.  Maybe they’re Introverts who don’t talk much in real life, but the thing is, so am I.  I like watching fictional characters who can do what I can’t, from Flying to Changing Gender at will to talking good.

Maybe it’s just the opposite. Maybe they love talking in real life so much that they want the characters in films to just shut up so they can talk over them and not miss anything.

Update April 2nd: Once again I found a Video Essay that had already argued what I am here with different examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWdoqVkXcwo

Bowdlerization is Good Actually

The term Bowdlerization comes from the name of Thomas Bowdler who’s 1818 Edition of William Shakespeare changes the text in a lot of ways many deem to be “Censorship”.  Now in the sense that the term strictly speaking originally refers to the act of changing the text of an older work and presenting it as if that simply is what it is that I don’t want to defend.

However due to the drift of the word it is often used primarily of one particular change a lot of Bowdler’s versions made, changing the Tragedies to have a happy ending.  And as such is often applied to adaptations and reimaginings of prior stories, not merely edited editions.  

So it’s in the context that it's treating that act as fundamentally wrong that it bothers me.  Because retelling a story that originally had a Happy Ending to subvert that ending is often praised as a bold and brave artistic choice.

There is an attitude among a certain kind of Leftist that feels like Bad Endings are inherently more subversive, or at least endings that are not completely happy, where something is still lost, there is still some “consequence”.  That the first and foremost goal of Left Wing Art needs to be to show how bad things currently are.  However Karl Marx was a fundamentally optimistic person who believed a Communist future was inevitable, so there is plenty of room for Left Wing Art that plays into that optimism.  

But I also don’t need to agree with the politics of something to enjoy it.  I can artistically respect stories with bad endings, but as far as what I like personally I’d generally prefer a conservative story that makes me feel good to a fellow Leftist trying to depress me with all their cynical observations I already agree with.

So let’s go back to the Shakespearean context of the word’s origin.  It’s fairly well known that almost all of Shakespeare's plays were based on some older story, some even already had prior Elizabethan Stage Plays.  What’s relevant here however is that some of his Tragedies were a lot less Tragic in their original versions.

Even Hamlet, one of the top two most well known of them all.  The original Danish Legend of Prince Amleth does end with him taking the Throne rather than dying.

However no Legend is in my view more cursed by having its popular perception now entirely filtered through Shakespeare than that of King Lear and his daughter Cordelia.  Shakespeare probably got Lear from Holinshed's Chronicles but the oldest surviving account is from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain where Leir of Britain reigned in the 8th Century BC.  Now because it’s a chronicle of the entire history obviously they died eventually, but the sequence of events Shakespeare is dramatizing ends with Cordelia restoring Leir to the Throne and then succeeding him as Britain's first Ruling Queen.  That happy ending is maybe undermined by knowing that Cordelia’s sexist nephews are going to overthrow her in a few years but still it was something, could have even made great thematic propaganda for the recently passed Queen Elizabeth.

King Lear is among the plays that would get a changed up happier ending in the Bowlder era, but still not restoring the original ending since it has Cordelia marry Edgar (a character not in the original source at all, the whole Gloucester family stuff Shakespeare took from a different source) seemingly forgetting that she was married to the King of France/Gaul.  Now of course I’d be all for having Cordelia reign as a Polyandrous Queen but I don’t think that’s what these editors intended to go for.

I’d change the outcome of the Leir saga to make it even happier, have Cordelia reign longer and have her Nephew’s coup fail and have her usher in a Gender Egalitarian Communist Utopia.  Because one thing I disagree with Marx on is that we had to do Capitalism first, I think going right from Feudalism to Communism was theoretically possible and I’d love to see some Speculative Fiction explore that theoretical.

Thing is if I ever wrote my own version I’d still include some stuff from Shakespeare, Shakespearean Fools are always fun, and the complexity the Gloucester plotline adds is thematically useful, but I’d try to subvert the Bastard son being the bad one.

But let’s move the conversation to stories that were already Tragedies in Shakespeare’s source material.  The notion that it's sacrilege for any story calling itself “based on Romeo and Juliet” to let them live happily ever after I mostly just find boring and unimaginative. But I more so think any adaptation that also makes them the same gender is morally obligated to give them a happy ending, being doomed to only tragic endings is an old trope the Gay community doesn’t like being reminded of.

However Othello is the one that I really think needs to be allowed to end differently.  It is the one Shakespeare Play everyone wants to see as about Race, and Shakespeare's story was indeed more Anti-Racist then his source material.  But the nature of how Racism works has changed, so much so that some feel it’s anachronistic to even call anything that far back Racism.

I think a lot of modern people want to read the play more allegorically, they want Iago to represent systemic forces that push Black People into Crime.  But that doesn’t work. Bad Individuals make Bad allegories for Systemic Racism.  And Othello is in a more privileged position than a poor Black person living in a modern American inner city.

The fact is Conspiratorial White Supremacists never actually make Black People the Evil masterminds of their Conspiracy Theories, they refuse to see Black People as capable of that level of intelligence.  Their world view is built on seeing them as aggressive, easily manipulated pawns of Evil White People, or at least people who can pass as White like Ahskenazi Jews.  Iago is etymologically a form of the name Jacob so maybe it’s not a coincidence this play is set in the same city as the most explicitly Antisemitic one.

And then there’s how Race issues aside, modern people no longer think adultery justifies murder.  There was this movie in 2001 called O that was about remaking Othello as a High School Drama.  And its decision to end the same way is really jarring, Odin not realizing murdering his girlfriend was wrong till he learns she didn’t cheat on him yet still telling everyone they’re racist if they blame him for his own actions really doesn’t work.

So it would actually fight Racism more if the villain who thinks the Black Protagonist can be pushed into violence over such base emotions is proven wrong.

Shakespearean Anime

I’m going to list these by how Shakespearean they are, not how much I generally like them.  They are all stuff I recommend.

Romeo x Juliette

This Anime is not an animated staging of the Play, in fact it’s far from the only Shakespearean Play this Anime is drawing on.  It uses lots of random quotes and vaguely Shakespearean language.  But for the specifics of other plays it’s story could be compared to the first that comes to mind is Juliette being put in a Hamlet situation, however Romeo is arguably in a Prince Hal situation.  The presence of a Senate can remind one of the Roman Plays.

I’m not the biggest fan of how it ends, but that only affects the last 2 out of 24 episodes.

Requiem of The Rose King.

For this one I recommend the Manga more so then the Anime, in fact I was originally very harsh on it’s 2022 Anime but I gave it a second chance just recently and while the pacing of the early episodes still bugs me it eventually either gets better or I got used to it.

It’s based on the Henry VI plays and Richard III, but again not a direct adaptation.  Its starting premise is reimagining Richard’s deformity as being Intersex and deconstructing his popular demonization.  

The tells that it is still partly filtered through Shakespeare are things like William of Suffolk having been Margaret of Anjou’s Lover rather than Beaufort (the Beauforts aren’t mentioned at all).  And its use of Joan of Arc.

First of all the name itself, this is the only Anime that says “Joan of Arc” rather than ”Jeanne d’Arc”, there is a lot of Jeanne d'Arc in Anime and usually even the English Dubs keep that more properly French Pronunciation.

However, on the subject of Joan, there is one cut the Anime made from the manga I do still have to complain about.  Having Joan’s ghost haunt Richard feels a lot more random when they’ve removed the reference to it being Richard of York who burned her at the stake.  And that itself is a deviation from the history that comes directly from Shakespeare, every other fictionalization of Jeanne doesn’t mention York because they know he didn’t come to France till years later.

This is a Shoujo Anime, where Richard has a pretty large Pansexual Harem.

Now it is still Problematic, not by ever endorsing any Transphobia (or whatever you call Bigotry against Cis Intersex people) towards Richard, but in its Internalized Misogyny.  The only Female identifying characters who aren’t ever vilified are Anne Nevill and Elizabeth of York.

Now I really like this take on Margaret of Anjou, she can be read as a manifestation of Internalized Misogyny even more potent than Cersei Lannister.  I could take or leave its handling of Elizabeth Woodville.  But what bugs me is the decision to slander even Catherine of Valois to explain Henry VI’s trauma, I happen to really like the historical Catherine.

Code Geass: Lelouch of The Rebellion.

This show gives me Shakespearean vibes more so than any objective reason to say it was definitely influenced by the Bard.

Death Note is similar to Richard III in a very different way from Requiem, rather it’s like how House of Cards is compared to Richard III in how it kind of makes the audience an accomplice to Light.

Gundam The Witch from Mercury of course draws on The Tempest as much as it does Utena.

And that’s it, there’s kind of shockingly little of Shakespeare in Anime.

There are random references here and there, a movie with "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as it's subtitle but no actual connection to that play I could notice.  Shakespeare is himself is a character in Fate/Apocrypha but he doesn't amount to much.

It definitely gets me to thinking how I wish there was more.  What unique takes on Shakespeare could only Anime do?

Henry V should be adapted as a Mecha Anime since it is the Shakespeare Play most about War, and at least can be interpreted as Anti-War.  Other plays have battles but they're just plot points, in the Henry VI plays they only serve to explain why who's in control has changed.  In Troilus and Cressida the Trojan War is a framing device but what its actually about is Netorare.

I'm not even joking, I totally think PoRo should make an adaptation of Troilus and Cressida.  Of course it's not the only Shakespeare play with NTR, given the abstract nature of how NTR Hentai can work I'd say it would count to have Richard III seduce Anne Neville on her dead Husband's Coffin.

And remember I have in older posts quoted Much Ado About Nothing to demonstrate that the basic concept of the Tsundere is nothing new, (I suppose I should acknowledge that I got that from TVTropes before Hbomberguy comes after me).  So imagine having Beatrice played by an Anime Voice actress with experience voicing Tsunderes interpreting the character through that lens?

Update May 2024: I really should included Fate/Zero on the same grounds I did Code Geas but even stronger.  

Spoiler Alert

A particularly potent example would be how Lancer's dying words in episode 16 give off strong Mercutio vibes.

Update April 16th 2025: I just watched Mobile Suit Gundam The 08th MS Team and it has a Romeo and Juliet element to it.

Update March 2026: Mamoru Hosoda's newest film Scarlet is kind of a take on Hamlett. 

The 2000 Sci-Fi Miniseries is still the best Dune adaptation

This post is not about me bashing any of the others, the Lynch film had it's moments, Jorodowsky's Dune sounds like it could've been very interesting, and the new 2021 film was very good, I enjoyed it and will be giving it re-watches in the future, it is second best by far.

The new film has the best Special Effects of any Dune adaptation so far, and it's also the first time Paul in the early part of the story looks even close to as young as he should.  And the 2000 Miniseries may have created more not in the books original material.

But what I like about Dune is not Special Effects or Epic battles, I like it's Philosophical and Shakespearean qualities.  So it is what the Theatrically trained actors of the 2000 Ministeries bring to the table that makes Dune feel how I want it to feel in a dramatized medium.

In addition to the New Dune falling short of what I want from the Acting, it was also just simply too short.  I wanted more then 3 hours just to get to the end of the first part.  So this film went further into the book then I would have wanted a first film to go while having less runtime.

No cutaway to the Emperor is what I prefer for a film actually, but the lack of Feyd was really weird.  There was also no exploring of what a Mentat is, nor did Yueh's character get the time needed for his role in this part of the story.

I think part of why they did the first movie this way is they wanted Chani to be more then just dream cameos in the first film, after all they cast Zendaya and then made a big deal out of it.

Also book accurate or not I very much prefer the miniseries version of the Fear Mantra, their version is what my mind has firmly memorized and every time I hear it different in another version it just sounds wrong to me.

What bugs me is how all the YouTube videos on new Dune when comparing to prior versions only bring up the Lynch film or various failed to materialize projects.  They don't respect the 2000s Minisieres as even worthy of mention because it wasn't a big name Hollywood Director with big name Hollywood Actors.  But to me those actors all should be more famous then they are, whether "accurate" to a fanboy's imagination of these characters or not they all gave great compelling performances, similar to why I prefer Anime Dub Voice Actors over most Hollywood actors.

Ya know what I would like to see at Nerd Conventions more often?

People staging performances of Public Domain plays in Cosplay, making as many thematic and archetypal connections as they can.

For example I'd be quite amused by a performance of Richard III done by people cosplaying as Zelda characters.  Richard would be Ganon, (we already saw him take a Human-Pig like form in the Ian Mckellen film), both Elizabeths would be Zeldas and Richmond would be Link.

And more specifically for Anime conventions.  I love the episodes about a school doing an all female play (not exactly like Takarazuka because that's specifically Musical Theater) most often Romeo and Juliet.  But in a 20 minute episode of Anime we obviously don't get to see what the full production would look like.  So do it with the K-On cast for example.

This trope in Anime hasn't been limited to Shakespeare, in Strawberry Panic they debated between doing Alexandre Dumas Fils Camille or Carmen, they chose the latter.

I once attended a production of Hamlet where they had Hamlet be played by four different actors, it was a symbolic thing, he's still treated as a single character by everyone else.  Two were men and two were women.  Interestingly one of the women had all the scenes with Ophelia.  They also had a woman play Horatio.

Even doing Shaw plays could be interesting, there are a dozen different Anime versions of Joan of Arc to choose from.

Those are just my immediate ideas, try to also come up with ones even more creative.

Jeanne d'Arc in Manga is less Gender Normative

So I already commented on how the Anime about Jeanne d’Arc I’ve seen has disappointed me when it comes to Jeanne’s gender bending potential.  Well now I’m familiar with some Manga that actually does better.

First is Puella Magi Tart Magica, a Madoka Magica spin off.

In this one Jeanne does have shorter hair, and once she begins her mission dresses fairly masculine in her normal form. And even her Magical Girl form has a bit of a Knight quality to it.

But I would say the most Bifauxnen character in the Tart manga is Riz.  Even though her hair is long, in her normal form she has an Italian Cavelier look, which makes me think of characters like Regina in Paul Feval’s Bel Demonio (which I’ve so far only read in an abridged form called Woman of Mystery), and Nisida in George Reynolds Wagner the Werewolf.

I think it’s possibly over all the best Madoka spinoff Manga, I recommend it.

I also recently took an interest in the Requiem for the Rose King Manga, loosely based on Shakespeare’s plays about the War of the Roses.  I have however only been able to read the first 6 chapters.  It does quite a few interesting things, and Jeanne d’Arc’s crossdressing is a plot point in it. 

Sometimes looking back is part of moving forward

I've a done a post on Why I like Prequels, and one about how they've been part of Genre fiction as long as Sequels have been.

Today I want to address how sometimes the Anti-Prequel mentality is expressed in very Progressive terms, Progressive fans feeling that going backwards narratively is counter-intuitive to moving forward.  Like the BrosWatchPLLToo people in their opinions on Star Wars.

What they're forgetting is a lot of good liberal and leftist movies have been period pieces, the left looking back at our intellectual ancestors.  Showing how things have changed for the better and yet some problems still remain.

And sometimes societies do regress.  A Prequel is often the best opportunity to tell a cautionary tale of how that can happen.  And that's exactly what the Star Wars Prequels are.

In the post about Prequels having always been around, I decided not to go further back then Alexandre Dumas, since that's where modern Nerdy Genre fiction is born in my view.  But for the purposes of this post I think it shall be necessary to go back to Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's history plays were not written in chronological order.  Eight of them can be viewed as a consecutive chronicle of English history from the rise of the House of Lancaster to the fall of the House of York.  Those eight plays are commonly divided into two Tetralogies.

However the Tetralogy about the history of the War of the Roses was written first, in fact Henry VI Part 1 is often considered the birth of the History genre, the few arguable examples that might predate it are not Shakespeare.

Some question whether or not the plays within that Tetralogy were even written in order (the three Henry VI plays originally had different names, they weren't always numbered).  The way Henry VI Part 3 ends feels kind of like it's a Prequel to Richard III.  Though Richard III's negative reputation already existed by this time, and he was even the subject of one of those possible Pre-Shakespeare history plays I mentioned.  So the original viewers of the Henry VI trilogy might have viewed them as a Prequel to that play.

The point I'm going for here however is that the very first play where Shakespeare dealt with the subject of Henry V was Henry VI Part 1, where Henry V is already dead when the play starts, but his legacy is constantly mentioned, he's viewed as symbolic of a lost golden age, a theme of the play is the death of Chivalry.

So later when Shakespeare wrote the Henriad, it's interesting how he arguably deconstructed that very legacy as it was presented in his first History play.  Henry V is depicted as being a manipulative war criminal.  And that makes the Henriad just like the Star Wars Prequels, where the idealized memory of the Jedi is presented as being much more complicated, and even Yoda did not live by what he later taught Luke, that a Jedi should use his power only for defense, Yoda drew his Lightsaber first when he confronted Darth Sidious.

The Chronologically first of these eight plays was Richard II.  Most of Shakespeare's plays about monarchy really had no choice but to be written consistent with the Divine Right of Kings doctrine of Anglican England.  Thus bad Kings, whether outright evil or just incompetent, are usually usurpers, people who shouldn't have had the Throne in the first place.  From King John to Richard III to Macbeth to Claudius in Hamlet.  It is Richard II that is the odd one out, Richard II is depicted as a bad King even though there was no dispute he was ever the rightful one by birth.  But Henry IV taking the throne at the end doesn't solve things either, he quickly starts doing the same things.

So basically it is the Prequels of Shakespeare's history saga that allows them to be read as possibly anti-Royalist, or as close to being that as he would have been allowed to get away with.

George Bernard Shaw was not quite as hostile to Shakespeare as many make him sound.  His preface to Caesar and Cleopatra includes a lot of praise.  That play is the only play Shaw wrote specifically with the idea of addressing Shakespeare.  Shaw was also someone much more progressive then Shakespeare could ever have been allowed to be.  So it's interesting that in his attempt to take a more modern approach to a Shakespearean subject, he chose not to write a remake or a sequel, but something that would effectively serve as a Prequel to two of Shakespeare's plays, Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra.

Ya know, I think the most, intentionally or not, progressive book of The Chronicles of Narnia saga was A Horse and His Boy, a book written as a prequel, sort of.

One prequel I did briefly mention in my earlier post was Paul Feval's La Louve (The She Wolf) a prequel to his earlier Le Loup Blance (The White Wolf).  A novel that happens to be about the first female masked vigilante.

In the world of Anime, the most progressive, and praised by progressives, installment of the Lupin III franchise is The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, which was also a prequel set in the 60s.

Season 1 of Agent Carter was a pretty feminist show, and it was both a Prequel and a Period Piece.

The reason Prequels don't work out so well for Star Trek is because there is too much continuity.  Yes you could argue Star Wars has just as much, but Star Wars is mainly a series of movies, so not that much of it actually matters.  Star Trek was a TV franchise first and foremost, which means continuity was being added to on a weekly basis.  So with Star Trek the best way to free itself of the continuity shackles should be to leap forward a century, that's the best way to get a relatively clean slate.  But they keep refusing to do that.

Much of what The Last Jedi did (that progressives like) it couldn't have done without the Star Wars prequel trilogy having been told first.  It needs the Jedi's dramatized failure in order to work.  So it's an example of looking back being needed to move forward.

But I still think the Prequels are the most progressive Star Wars movies, the new Disney films may have more diverse casting, but they also often remind me of how in their own way the Rebellion was just as Fascist as the Empire in the OT.  Every Star Wars story that takes place after ROTS is ultimately a Pro-War story, and that hinders my enjoyment of them.

Visual Novels have a lot in common with Stage Plays

Another topic that comes up a lot in KyleKallgrenBHH's videos on Shakespeare is how suggestive Stage Plays are, especially of the Elizabethan era.  Just actors reciting dialogue and monologues in front of a backdrop that only slightly changes.

Visual Novels, which get accused of being pretty boring, are very similar.  The story is mostly told by just the text, which consists of dialogue and inner-monologues of the main character, and perhaps notes or such things the MC might read.  Visually the characters are represented by what look almost like Cardboard cut outs in front of a handful of stock background pictures.  But some key moments might have specially drawn images that get refereed to as CGs.

Because Visual Novels are one of the least respected mediums of story telling right now, my suggesting a parallel to one of the most respected can be written off as an attempt to defend them.  I personally have never played one yet, but I've spent a decent amount of time watching Let's Play footage of some.  Thing is, the Stage was not a respectable medium in Shakespeare's time, while he lived Shakespeare was probably viewed as the Zack Snyder of his day.

In my opinion Visual Novels ultimately shouldn't be classified as Video Games, they are their own medium of story telling that happens to typically use the same hardware as Video Games.  They have an interactive element, but still not exactly what I'd call a game.

There are however video games that incorporate Visual Novel elements, like the Neptunia games, as well as visual novels that are written with plot points and story elements that take advantage of the assumption that it's mostly gamers playing them.

Visual Novels sometimes have voice acting, it might be an optional feature that can be disabled.  But one factor that can tend to discourage that is if it wants the player to be able to name the player character.

However because the art of Acting is sometimes there, the most important difference between a Visual Novel and a Stage Play is the interactive nature.  Including the multiple routes and endings.

And that is why my mind has started thinking about the prospect of adapting famous plays to the Visual Novel format.  A lot of Visual Novel stories are already about trying to prevent a tragic outcome, from Higurashi to Steins;Gate.  So why not take the Tragedies that have come to define what a Tragedy is and present players with the challenge of averting them?

The ideal Good Ending for King Lear would be to end with Cordelia on the Throne, which is how the original myth ended in Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Brute Tysilo and I assume also Holinshed's Chronicles.  But you can also add the potential to screw up and make things even worse.  How could Hamlet's ending be made even worse?  Imagine if Denmark didn't even have Fortinbras to provide stability in the end?  Oh, wait, most movies leave him out anyway leaving the impression Denmark now has no government at the end.  As far as giving Hamlet a good ending goes, it could again return to the original myth Shakespeare adapted to have Hamlet take the throne at the end, the original story was more of a traditional Hero's Journey.

Marlowe's Edward The Second would make a great Fujoshi Bait visual novel.  But a few Shakespeare plays have Yaoi potential as well.

From there my mind wanders to ideas that had already been in my head about adapting Shakespeare to Anime or other Otaku centric media.  Like re-imagining Richard III in the context of the Student Council of an all girls Japanese High School.  Whatever setting you give it however, Richard III is definitely the best model for a visual novel where the villain is the player character.

So, yeah, I think this is a pretty meaty parallel to make.

Shakespeare vs Tolkien

In the last half a year or so my interest in Shakespeare has had a resurgence of sorts.  It's existed for years of course.

The thing is I tend to enjoy Shakespeare most when artists are being very experimental with his text.  I've heard Lawrence Oliver's Shakespeare films are the most by the book, the best for a purist.  And indeed my attempts to watch them have mostly bored me, even his Hamlet which did have a cool looking aesthetic.  Likewise with my attempts to watch the BBC Shakespeare productions from the 80s.  I like other BBC productions that are very theatrical in style, like The Caesars and The Count of Monte-Cristo, but their Shakespeare bored me.

However I really like the more experimental stuff.  This applies to pretty much all of what KyleKallgrenBHH has covered, most of which I haven't gotten to see yet but I plan too. Ones I have seen include Branagh's Hamlet, Coriolanus, Romeo + Juliette, and West Side Story.  And The Lion King which I already did a post on.

But even something like Marlon Brando's Julius Caesar which looks very by the book at first to a modern viewer, was notable at the time for Brando's unconventional approach.  I often refer to "Brando style acting" derogatorily when saying why I dislike modern acting compared to theatrical acting.  But that's a bit of a paradox since it doesn't apply much to Brando himself, Brando alone knew how to do Brando style acting well.  And my two favorite Brando performances are his Mark Anthony and The Mutiny on The Bounty, (not at all historically accurate, but a great film).

I also really enjoy the Anthony and Cleopatra film that Charlton Heston both directed and stared in.  It is unconventional in how he didn't change the text but rearranged it.

Only twice have I seen Shakespeare performed live.

Once was a production of Hamlet at Parkside, which did something interesting where they had four different actors playing Hamlet, two male and two female.  I really liked it.  Especially as a Yuri fanatic how one of the females got all the Ophelia scenes.

The other was a performance of Trolius and Cressida at Spring Green WI.  I really liked it also.  Nothing to blatantly unconventional about it, though the interview with the director I read hinted at an interest in how it's themes are applicable today.

With my increasing Otakudom, I've really enjoyed watching those episodes of Anime where the cast puts on an all female production of Romeo and Juliette.  I've seen it at least 4 times I believe, Pretty Cure season 1 (dubbed), K-On season 2 (dubbed), Akuma no Riddle (dubbed).  I'm trying to remember the 4th one which I saw most recently.

Anime more substantially inspired by Shakespeare is kind of rare, what does exist I haven't gotten to yet.  I've been thinking of making a blog post on Shakespearean themes in Anime that might be unintentional.

My relationship with Tolkien is kind of similar yet different.

Tolkien I think was a genius in his ability to come up with a deep and rich mythology.  On my other blogs where I talk about Religion and Mythology more often I'll regularly site stuff from Tolkien's made up mythology alongside ones people have actually believed in for centuries.  And everything I've said about Tolkien previously on this blog I still stand by because it's all about that mostly.

But I've lately come to realize that I don't actually like his writing, his Prose to be more exact.  I look at the complaints of people who wish things like the "I am no Man" line had been given in the Return of The King movie more exactly like it was written in the book. And I can't help but feel that would have been cringe worthy.

I'm not saying Tolkien is the worst writer, I suppose he's maybe better then Stephanie Meyer, maybe.  But I've read flawed English translations of French and Japanese prose and felt like they were more natural to the English language then Tolkien.  I've watched some of the most derided Anime Dubs and genuinely liked that Dialogue better then Tolkien's.

I realize that seems like the most bizarre thing one could possibly say about a writer who was an English Professor.  But the thing is Tolkien was coming from the place of someone who resented how the English language had changed, especially how it'd been influenced by French for centuries following the Norman Conquest.  Because of that the way he wrote winds up feeling alien to someone who likes the English language as it is, who embraces how it's developed.  A development that to some extend was partly shaped by Shakespeare, or at least seems that way since he wrote during a crucial period and overshadowed his contemporaries.

And so that leads me finally to the real point of this post.  Tolkien didn't like Shakespeare.  But not like Shaw who KyleKallgrenBHH likes defaulting to as an example of someone bashing Shakespeare to be contrarian.  I've read Shaw's forward for Caesar and Cleopatra and he was in fact quite willing to praise Shakespeare alongside his critiques.

Tolkien's hostility towards The Bard came from a place of to some extent being hostile to the theater in general.  Meaning he probably wouldn't like Marlowe or Shaw any better.  And it was reading this that began to cause me to realize everything I just talked about.  I realized that I had been in denial of the fact that I activity disliked Tolkien's writing, I knew on some level I was glad Jackson's films weren't word for wording his dialogue.  But I didn't want to conclude from that that I dislike how Tolkien wrote.  I'm a Nerd, I'm supposed to love Tolkien.

So it's a parallel really.   With Shakespeare I like the text but prefer it being played with in terms of context.  While with Tolkien I like his world but not the text itself.

And so, I feel like I want to write an Elizabethan style Iambic Pentameter stage play set in Arda just to stick it to Tolkien.  I'm thinking of setting it in the reign of Tar-Telperien and incorporating my Headcanon that she was a Lesbian.  That presents an interesting opportunity to also homage Marlowe's Edward The Second.

It was Macbeth specifically that Tolkien felt compelled to respond to.  It partly influenced the Trees going into battle at Helm's Deep which was cool.  But also Tolkien felt bothered by Macbeth's Prophecy loop hole, having "No man of Woman born" exclude a C-Section baby ignores the actual etymology of the word "Borne".   And that's fine and all.  But his own fake prophecy made in response and how he gave it a loop hole happens to play into a major linguistic pet peeve of mine.

Man was not originally a gender specific word.  In fact much of how Tolkien used it acknowledged that, "Elves and Men" does not mean elves and males.  Man means Human, Woman means Man with a Womb or something along those lines.  So excluding women from the word Man always bugs me.  But unfortunately how The Bible is often translated helps perpetuate this.  Zakar and Adam are not synonyms in Hebrew yet both get translated Man.

Eowyn killing The Witch-King while saying that line is a Bad@$$ moment that I still love as much as anyone else.  My point is, Tolkien should have been more careful if he wanted to predicate an entire plot-point on criticizing someone else for not knowing how broad a word's meaning can actually be.

Most critics of fiction seem to believe strongly in Nuture over Nature.

[Update March 2024: This is another old Post I regret making.  It conflicts with how much emphasis my current Philosophy puts on Materialism.]

The Lion King is more like Horus then Hamlet

First I recommend you watch this video on YouTube from KyleKallgrenBHH.

I have long felt that The Lion King's connection to Hamlet is overstated, and on that subject this is a great video.

He also laments how we commonly fail to look for African inspiration for the story.  The African legend he talks about, Sundiata, is pretty interesting and I think may well be relevant.  But there is another Nation in Africa who's mythology has long been what the story of The Lion King first makes me think of.

Egypt, which called itself Kemet.

Simba = Horus
Mufasa = Osiris
Scar = Set
BTW, Scar is depicted as arguably vaguely Homosexual and Set's stories also have some homoerotic undertones to them.

Now we should remember that Set wasn't so firmly vilified originally.  But because the Hyksos foreign occupiers favored him so heavily, Set's reputation took a nose dive during (most of) the New Kingdom.  And in The Lion King the Hyena's could perhaps be viewed as representing those foreign oppressors.

Of course Egypt being one of the most Ancient nations on Earth, and which had long periods of influence and contact with other regions, means that this pattern was mimicked elsewhere quite frequently.  And perhaps even Egypt didn't do it first, but from what we can verify their version was probably the first written down.

In Greek mythology there was Perseus who it seems may have originally been fathered by Proteus, the brother of Acrisius, not Zeus.  Which in turn influenced Herodotus's version of the biography of Cyrus.

Kyle talks in the video about how every work has many ancestors.  I feel like noting how a writer may not always be consciously aware of what's influencing them.  I know because of who I've spent my time with I've spent a lot of time seeing and hearing movies and TVshows I would never have chosen to watch on my own.  And I have vague memories of things I do not remember the name of, or maybe never knew.

Kyle chose Moses as a potential Biblical example.  I would have picked David as a future King who spent time in Exile, though there is also Hadad of Edom in 1 Kings 11.  And then Athaliah as a blatant Usurper. I also have a tendency to suspect Jehosheba and Athaliah are echoed in the tale of Snow White.

But also as a Christian I could compare this pattern to The Bible's overall depiction of Satan as the current Archon of the Kosmos and god of this Aion, having stolen the Dominion from Adam.  And Jesus as The Son of Adam who will restore everything.

While Shakespeare's Hamlet fails to be like The Lion King or the story of Horus due to how Hamlet never takes the Throne or cares to.  In the original Danish legend of Amleth he actually does become King.

Other plays of Shakespeare also echo this pattern.  You can see it somewhat in the Henriad as Kyle points out.  Macbeth, Richard III and King John are all plays where the title character is kind of the Set figure.

Paul Feval novels where this pattern is reflected include Revenants, and the DeClare story in The Blackcoats: Heart of Steele.

In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the original backstory we are given made Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader kind of surrogate brothers, students of the same master.  In which case Anakin becomes Osiris, Vader is Set and Luke is Horus.  Later when we learn the truth this analogy doesn't really change, Osiris and Set simply become two sides of the same person.  Even the Dismemberment theme may go back to Horus castrating Set.  So yes you can say that the voice of Mufasa had previously voiced Scar.

In Super Mario RPG The Legend of The Seven Stars, Mallow is a rightful prince in unknowing exile while Valentina is the usurper.

Recent takes on Snow White try to play up how she can be viewed as a female version of Horus, and the Evil Queen as a female Set.  I think there is a lot more potential to be had from taking that approach.  There is also Ashe in Final Fantasy XII.

So, those are my elaborations on Kyle's thoughts.