The First Folio (1623) delineates Shakespeare’s plays into three genres: Comedy, Tragedy, and History. More recent scholars added the category of Romance to describe some of his later plays, and there is also a fifth, more nebulous, category that goes by several different names, which describes plays like Troilus and Cressida that seem to defy genre.

How meaningful are these genres? Certainly, a play like King Lear has a very different tenor than, say, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s not just a question of mood, but even the rules are different. These are plays in different genres. But does this distinction hold up across the canon? Or does each play speak for itself? This is the Question of the Week.

How much stock should we put in Shakespearean genres?

And if you say that these genres are correct, I have a few follow-up questions. Perhaps you’d like to tackle one of these as well:

• Why is Macbeth a Tragedy while Richard III is a History?
• Why is As You Like It a Comedy, while The Winter’s Tale is a Romance?
• Why is Much Ado About Nothing a Comedy, while Romeo and Juliet is a Tragedy? (Is it just the ending? Is that enough to consider it a different genre?)

From Richard III:

Enrich the time to come with smooth-fac’d peace,
With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days!

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Oh, a mosaic of midnight paeans to this worthy president-elect cried mirthful pomp.

“Yes, we can!”

I just got back from seeing Oliver Stone’s W and, since I’m writing again, I wanted to share my thoughts about it with you. But since it’s Saturday, I thought I’d do it as an anagram.

I chose a speech where Shakespeare apologizes for the inadequacies of the stage to depict the lives of kings. Perhaps it will mitigate the anagrammed review to follow.

From Henry V:

O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention;
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
Then should the war-like Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that hath dar’d
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confin’d two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

After seeing Oliver Stone’s W, I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of it.

A humdrum bio-pic? How do you paint an intimate portrait of a person who isn’t reflective?

A thorough historical piece? No. They skip the key moments of his presidency and hop through the punchlines and nicknames (Guru, Genius, etc.). And his happy-hour past? Chugs, not drugs.

A dark comedy? Man, it’s too soon for humor. The joke’s on us.

A peek at the decision to take out Iraq? Hardly. Those scenes were as fluffy as my popcorn. I was hungry for more.

A high political drama? Primary Colors offers insight into Clinton. This limited film provides only a caricature of W.

Furthermore, I thought Newton and even Brolin got lost in the karaoke impressions they used. On the other hand, Scott Glenn as grumpy thug Rumsfeld and Jeffrey Wright as thoughtful gent Powell were not credible in their characters.

Mr. Dreyfuss as warmonger Cheney and Ms. Banks as earthier Laura threaded that tough needle handily; they brought forth people in accordance with their characters.

The standout of the group was patriarchal James Cromwell as Bush Sr., his dad. The tricky father/son relationship (fights, in lieu of hugs) is the human heart of the film. But nothing is ever resolved.

The film W tried to eke out too many things without doing any of them particularly well. It had many inaccurate facts, had no clear direction, and lasted too long. In short, it was W.

From Henry VIII:

[H]ow may I deserve it
That am a poor and humble subject to you?

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

What did Obama say to Joe the Plumber?

“You have income. Trust.”

From Macbeth:

If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Who will win the hard race for the high honor of President of our United States: Obama or McCain?

Anyway, I know I’ll forgo any wonky eleventh-hour guess.

Tie?

From Henry IV, Part Two:

Come hither, Harry: sit thou by my bed;
And hear, I think, the very latest counsel
That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son,
By what by-paths and indirect crook’d ways
I met this crown; and I myself know well
How troublesome it sat upon my head:
To thee it shall descend with better quiet,
Better opinion, better confirmation;
For all the soil of the achievement goes
With me into the earth.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Two weeks back, Ms. Christiane Amanpour hobnobbed live with five former secretaries of state.

They told her why their instinct is for the new president to talk to both allies and enemies.

They told her in synch why we must both close Guantanamo and end torture.

They told her why it is time to move on climate change.

They told her why they think Iraq’s a hot potato.

Dumb liberal bile!

You can read a transcript of the interview here.

Via the Shakespeare Geek we learn that Kenneth Branagh is to direct Thor:

In a departure from his normal cerebral choices for directing, it seems British actor and film-maker Kenneth Branagh has decided to take on something a little less complex, the Marvel Studios version of “Thor”. “Thor” is based on the well known German/Norse God of Thunder, but in the Marvel Universe and prospective film, he has an alter-ego, a disabled medical student called Donald Blake, which makes the god have a more human/vulnerable side than some superheroes. The film has a scheduled released date of 2010.

We all have to eat. On to the Question of the Week!

Which Shakespearean role would you cast with which superhero (or super villain) and why?

I’ll get the ball rolling by casting The Flash as Puck. Who else could “put a girdle round about the earth/ In forty minutes”?

Enjoy!

From Henry VI, Part Three:

Nay, stay, Sir John, awhile; and we’ll debate
By what safe means the crown may be recover’d.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

McCain wanted to bail. He’s shy!

Obama wanted fresh eyes. Joy!

Lehrer wanted a brawl. Envy!

I did this one already, but I wanted to respond to a search that brought a reader here yesterday:

“how did queen elizabeth feel about shakespeare play king henry the 8th”

It’s a good question, since Henry was Queen Elizabeth’s father, and it would be interesting to get her reaction to the play that bears his name. But Elizabeth died in 1603, and it is believed that the play was first performed in 1613, so we can only speculate as to how she might have felt about it.

The play retains the pro-Tudor slant on history that characterized Shakespeare’s earlier history plays, and whitewashes some of the uglier aspects of Henry’s story. As for Elizabeth, her birth is depicted at the very end of the play, and the happy father swells with pride at the event.

From Henry VIII:

O lord archbishop!
Thou hast made me now a man: never, before
This happy child, did I get any thing.
This oracle of comfort has so pleas’d me,
That when I am in heaven, I shall desire
To see what this child does, and praise my Maker.

But if you shift around the letters, you probably get much closer to what he actually would have said:

O lord archbishop!

Fact: I wanted to have a son.

So I, cross Henry the Eighth, must kill this wife, Madam Anne Boleyn, with promptest speed.

So I shall, in a flash, remove and discard her doomed head apace!

I am Henry the Eighth, I am!