The 6 Most WTF Moments From Shakespeare Plays
Shakespeare. The Bard. His name evokes poetry, love and the terror of memorizing 10 whole lines of "To be, or not to be" for your high school English class. Sure, his plays have some action, but it's mostly tragic romance like Romeo and Juliet, or boring history like Henry VI, right?
Wrong. In addition to being the "greatest English writer in history," Billy Shakes was also one of the most insane, violent, out of left-field wackos who ever picked up a pen. For example ...
#6.
Out of Nowhere, a Bear Eats a Guy
The Setup:
In A Winter's Tale, King Leontes orders the death of his own wife Hermione and the couple's two children. His subject, Antigonus, is given the unsavory job of taking the King's infant to the beach to leave her there to die. Seems like typical Shakespeare so far.
Via myeugene
"Wait, so do I get brutally disemboweled now, or do a soliloquy?"
While Antigonus is standing on the shore, wishing he'd put his resume up on Monster.com sooner, he is dispatched with Shakespeare's most famous stage direction:
"Antigonus exits, pursued by a bear"
-- The Winter's Tale, Act III Scene iii, Line 58
Wait, WTF?
Seriously, that's all we get in the way of setup or explanation. One second, our buddy Antigonus is giving a soliloquy; the next, he's chased into the wings by a gigantic ursine beast, never to be heard from again. Shakespeare abandons his minor characters without explanation all the time, but for whatever reason, Antigonus went out with a little more of a bang.
Via dulwichonview
Shakespeare's Mad Libs period.
It also makes one wonder how exactly they accomplished the whole "get a bear to pursue someone off the stage" thing back in Shakespearean times. Maybe they just put out a casting call for "really hairy guy." It's not like they had CGI they could whip up, and we're assuming that even back then, you could be sued if a real-life bear ran loose in your venue and ate the audience. That's just not the sort of thing that happened back in Elizabethan England. Well, unless you count Queen Elizabeth's favorite form of entertainment: bear baiting.
Probably not The Winter's Tale, Act III Scene iii, Line 58. Probably.
#5.
Shakespeare Goes Full Hostel
The Setup:
Titus Andronicus revolves around a revenge cycle between Titus and Tamora, who decide to take turns killing each other's children.
Getty
Throw a six to start!
In the second act, Tamora surprises Titus' daughter Lavinia and her fiance, Bassianus, in the forest. Tamora has her sons kill the fiance and throw him in a pit. Then they drag Lavinia offstage to violently rape her. And that's when the mutilation starts.
Wait WTF?
Tamora only wants to kill Bassianus to get back at Titus and has nothing against Lavinia -- but, hey, she's a professed virgin, so she figures, "As long as she's around, why not encourage my sons to gang-rape and mutilate her too? It's early in the day."
Lavinia: O, keep me from their worse than killing lust
And tumble me into some loathsome pit,
Where never man's eye may behold my body:
Do this, and be a charitable murderer.
Tamora: So should I rob my sweet sons of their fee?
No, let them satisfy their lust on thee.
-- Titus Andronicus, Act II Scene ii, Lines 175-180
Via Wikipedia
"Bye now! Don't be a stranger!"
To be clear, Lavinia begs Tamora to kill her and keep her much-valued chastity intact -- but Tamora doesn't want to gyp her sons for the great job they just did of stabbing her fiance to death and throwing him in a pit, so she gives them the OK to rape her. Remind us not to hire Tamora and Sons Contractors anytime soon.
Getty
"OK, so the total comes out to the flayed corpse of your first-born, and a three way with your mother."
And that's just the beginning. The sons (Demetrius and Chiron) drag her offstage to her horrendous fate, and in the next scene they reveal how they're going to keep her quiet. If you guessed "cut off her hands and tongue and leave her alone in the middle of the woods, then engage in a pun-battle about what they just did to her," you guessed right!
Demetrius: So, now go tell, an if thy tongue can speak,
Who 'twas that cut thy tongue and ravish'd thee.
Chiron: Write down thy mind, betray thy meaning so,
An if thy stumps will let thee play the scribe.
Demetrius: See, how with signs and tokens she can scrowl.
Chiron: Go home, call for sweet water, wash thy hands.
Demetrius: She hath no tongue to call, nor hands to wash;
And so let's leave her to her silent walks.
Chiron: An 'twere my cause, I should go hang myself.
Demetrius: If thou hadst hands to help thee knit the cord.
-- Titus Andronicus, Act II, Scene iii, Lines 1-10
Via The Guardian
Shakespeare's gift lay in pointing out the humor in everyday life.
But it turns out the Bard had a thing for mutilation ...
#4.
Cornwall Goes Reservoir Dogs on Gloucester
The Setup:
The title character in King Lear is a man who has grown senile in his old age, and splits his kingdom amongst his two oldest daughters, Goneril and Regan. But corrupted by power, the two daughters decide to go after the old man.
Via Wikipedia
"I'm a terrible father! Woo!"
At this point, Regan's husband (Cornwall) gets a hold of one of Lear's friends (Gloucester). He then ties Gloucester to a chair and plucks out his eyes with his bare hands.
Via worldandi
Later productions would do it with a ballpoint pen, as hands are so old fashioned.
Wait, WTF?
As if this wasn't bad enough, Cornwall and Regan are guests in Gloucester's house when they do this, making every time your brother crashed on your couch and ate all your Hot Pockets seem like Christmas morning.
Though Cornwall might not have even gone this far if his wife and her sister weren't standing on the sidelines egging him on like a couple of deranged cheerleaders:
Regan: Hang him instantly!
Goneril: Pluck out his eyes!
-- King Lear, Act III Scene vii, Lines 4-5
Cornwall takes one out, but this is only half a job for Regan.
Regan: One side will mock another, t'other too!
-- King Lear, Act III Scene vii, Line 70
Via actorsshakespeareproject
"Well thank God they took both out, Lear, or I'd really regret what I was seeing right now."
In the end, Cornwall finishes Gloucester's amateur optometry session by plucking out his other eye, untying him and sending him out into the English countryside where a huge storm is brewing, effectively ending Gloucester's plans of opening a bed and breakfast in the East Wing.
"We were going to have a CHAMPAGNE BRUUuuunnnch ..."
Actually, there's a pretty widespread theory that Shakespeare wasn't the only author of Titus Andronicus, and that he worked with others or acted as an editor. There's no author listed on the Quarto editions, and the writing is, well, pretty awful. Not just bad for the most brilliant person to ever write in the English language, but bad for anyone. Harold Bloom, one of the most prominent Shakespeare scholars, has said that it's so over the top that contemporary audiences usually just find it amusing. Basically saying that it's "so bad it's good." It was one of his earliest plays though, and it's at least fun, and the way that the plot piles up and accelerates is like a farcical tragedy. It's become pretty popular for college theater groups to stage it as a dark comedy, which usually turns out pretty bad.
ReplyThis stuff might seem harsh, but the world was simply far more harsh hundreds of years ago than it is today. Not nearly as politically correct either.
ReplyThere's nothing WTF about Merchant of Venice, everyone in Europe hated the Jews at that time, and they kept on hating them right up until the German anti-semites formed a club and got their asses handed to them by the entire English speaking world. Then it stopped being cool.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesGoing Titus on nuance there buddy.
Actually you are spot on. Jews were never looked upon favorably and esepcially in Catholic dominated Europe. Religion has been a force of oppression, violence, and lunacy for thousands of years. I don't think most people realize how fracked up the world really was as far as religion goes compared to the last couple hundred years or so.
The russian speaking world did a fine job as well.
Shylock's ending in A Merchant In Venice was actually considered a happy ending for him as well, given that he gets to live and keep all his pieces, and not be boiled alive in oil or whatever.
I think it's a testament to the timelessness of Shakespeare's writing that as our society grows more aware of prejudice, instead of seeing his works as instantly dated by prejudice, we can easily realign our sympathies with a different character and have it still be consistent. Reading Shylock sympathetically is very common in contemporary academic circles, and Shakespeare seemed to enjoy making the "hero" of the play not its title character/main protagonist. Macbeth does that too; it's a tragedy, but the actual tragic character is Macduff, a minor one.
Let's be honest, Titus Andronicus in its entirety is one big WTF moment.
ReplyAlso, say whaaaaat, there's gonna be a movie of Coriolanus starring Ralph Fiennes????? That is epic!!!
"FISTING EACH OTHER'S... throats" The way that was built up was just perfect!
ReplyMight have been mentioned already but Julie Taymor also did Freida and Across the Universe. both very....odd movies.
ReplyYeah, despite all this the one thing I won't forgive Shakespeare for is using the plot of Taming of the Shrew's Induction as just that: the Induction. Frankly, I disliked the rest of the play and I couldn't stand any of the characters (it wasn't even that I didn't like their personalities, but I didn't find them amusing either). He could have pulled off something really great if he had just stuck with it and not had the servants pointlessly perform a play for the drunkard. Does anyone know if someone has expanded on that plot? To the extent of my knowledge Shakespeare never touched it again, even though it had way more potential to be entertaining than the main plot.
ReplyMy favorite Shakespeare play is "Hamlet," but only because of its much more contemporary sequel: "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead." My second favorite is "Much Ado About Nothing," because it's hilarious.
ReplyAnd Shakespeare was much LESS anti-Semitic than most of his contemporaries.
ReplyWhen does Mel Gibson direct? Seriously, this makes his s**t look normal max
ReplyFirst picture for Titus Andronicus... Looks like The Amazing Jonathan. Did I just date myself?
ReplyClearly Shakespeare had a raging hard-on when he was writing all of these plays.
ReplySome scholars contend that Titus Andronicus was a spoof of Marlowe's extremely bloody plays, sort of the same concept as the Scream movies today. It is full of WTF scenes. . .my favorite is when Titus's daughter walks around with her father's severed hand in her mouth.
ReplyHow else was she supposed to carry it, with no hands?
Actually, it was following in the footsteps of Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy", a hugely popular Elizabethan drama that was ridiculously popular with the audiences of the times due to its insane amount of violence.
The Elizabethans went ape-shit for violence. Shakespeare knew this. Titus was Shakespeare's first tragedy, so he decided to start his career off with a bang by taking the central themes in Kyd's play and pumping them up to roughly ten times what they were in Spanish Tragedy.
As for the actual story, it's roughly based on the Greek myth of The Rape of Philomela, Princess of Athens. Or the Rape of Lucrece, which is basically the same thing.
So one sentence, Shylock is shown to be perfectly reasonable because he charges interest, and then right after that we are supposed to retain our sympathies when he demands a pound of flesh as a late fee? The "ridiculous" technicality was nothing more than convincing an insane person to stop his murder attempt by turning his insane logic against him! No sane judge would force anyone to abide by a contract that required body parts being carved off in a lethal manner, and aside from the forced conversion to Christianity, I can hardly see a modern court being much more lenient to a guy who brings a suit claiming his rights to murder the business rival who undercuts his prices! How about we get over the Holocaust already and stop being so hypersensitive to antisemitism that people get so ridiculously critical about a play that may have been partly a satire of anti-semitism.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesWell, then we'd have to get over black slavery and the Rape of Nanking and the Rwandan Genocide and other gruesome periods in past, near-recent and recent history, which would be like throwing away continued learning and possible human progression so as to revert back to s**ttier ages where we more regularly oppress and maul each other instead of getting stuff done (creating telephones, computers, Internet, video games, iPhones, toasters, scented soaps, Cheetos, Junior Mints, robots, etc.)
Well, then we'd have to get over black slavery, the Rape of Nanking, the Rwandan genocide, and other recent and past periods of gruesome human history, which would mean throwing away continued learning and possible human progress so as to revert back to s**ttier ages where people mainly mauled each other instead of focusing on creating stuff like telephones, TV, computers, Internet, penicillin, actual medicines, iWhatever, comics, video games, scented soaps, Cheetos, Junior Mints, robots, rockets, etc...
the "using his logic against him" was a copout that took advantage of severe anti-semitism during elizabethan england. it's not like shakespeare was an a*****e, he was just reflecting the times, where jews were looked down upon. and usury was frowned upon because it had been outlawed by the pope. you can't look at old-time literature with our present day world-view, it just doesn't make sense.
Shylock was acting within the bounds of the law, and the Venetian court was going to let him do it (III, iii, 29 - 34). What Portia did to stop him was the very definition of a technicality, and Shylock's arrest, the seizure of his property, and his forced conversion were just extra cruelties piled on top for fun.
Actually it is a critic of anti-semitism, the "are jews not human also" speech is 460 years ahead of it's time (not just about jews but in the sense of people perciving humanity as a single race instead of the vision it used to have), and as moltovcokroch pointed out, Shakespeare states that there was nothing wrong with the contract, but the penalty was for who the contract benefited...
I love how Cracked can get people interested in Shakespeare.
ReplyAnd the Julie Taymor version of Titus is completely insane, and also pretty amazing. It's kinda like it's set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
Sounds... interesting. "You killed my daughter! Feel my chainsword!"
#6 f**king Gamestop!
ReplyLOL. Believe it or not, I am actually IN Titus Andronicus this summer. We are presenting it at the NTS with the Montreal Shakespeare Theatre Company. I play one of the Goths. It is kind of awesomely sadistic and the stab-fest at the end is so ridiculous and far-fetched that I can only giggle... I think someone should serve meat pies at concessions and see what happens...
ReplyAnyways, 'Titus Andronicus' also has an excellent line from the Moor character Aaron:
CHIRON: Thou hast undone our mother.
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
- Titus Andronicus, Act IV scene ii.
Yup, you guessed it, Aaron got Tamora pregnant... and then he makes a very modern sounding joke about it.
Just goes to show that "yo mama" jokes will never go out of style, I guess. They'll continue on in some form or another, for all eternity. Somebody kill me now.
With Coriolanus, after I read about it, I was like "WHY HAVEN'T I HEARD OF THIS PLAY BEFORE?"
ReplyI saw King Lear with Ian McKellen playing the title character, meaning I essentially saw Gandalf dancing naked on the stage while a jester, named Fool, tried to put his dick away. It was way, way bigger than is necessary for a gay wizard.
ReplyOh, God... The mental images... God damn you, Captain_Jake!
Haahhaaha this article made me so happy! One of my favorite messed up moments from Shakespeare was the awkward innuendo contest that Mercutio and Romeo have in R and J, also taking into account that Mercutio is in love with Romeo.... :)
ReplyDude, do you even know what you're talking about?
I mean, no offense, but...