Another vocal

The intro to Tone Deaf's home page kicks off - inexplicably, even hysterically - with reference to a passage in Shakespeare, where Lady Percy's love for her now dead husband, Harry Hotspur, keeps bursting through her attempts to dissuade her father-in-law from going to war.

Given I was bumptious enough to record my progress in singing, a recent mania, I decided I might now resurrect earlier feelings for this passionate, richly feminine declamation. However whenever I read this passage aloud my voice always cracks at a certain line. But, I reasoned, this surely wouldn't happen if I was reading for the microphone.

It did. But I've left the sob in because it's authentic and it seems to work.

LADY PERCY'S LAMENT.

More - fervent - bardolatry

Why would one consider Hamlet in Russian? Pared down from a maximum 4 hr 15 min to 2 hr 20 min? With English subtitles (translated by Boris Pasternak - remember him?) arriving so thick and quick one hardly has time to watch the action. Starting at 23.00 BST.

VR and I had one flimsy reason. We dimly remember the movie got good UK reviews when launched in 1964. Also we're both committed to watching any and all Hamlets as they crop up.

It happened last night on BBC 4, the channel those wretched Tories want to close down. Reluctance was gone in five minutes. We were silent and riveted. This Hamlet is in my Top Five whatever the language. Here's to director Grigori Kozintsev.

I know, I know. If you've got this far you've got questions. Russian translated into English? For what reason? Didn't WS write Hamlet in English? I'll get to that.

Envisage Hamlet set by a raging sea. In a huge castle that justifies the Prince's wandering. Scenes as inventive as any in Citizen Kane (The Ghost’s long cloak streaming like a dragon's tail). A Hamlet who, while being cruel to Ophelia, evokes an earlier tenderer version of himself. Hamlet, dying, stumbling from the blood-boltered fencing scene out into daylight, where Fortinbras's final judgement ("For he was likely, had he been put on, To have prov'd most royally...") becomes more poignant, makes more sense. A Gertrude whose incestuousness may have had other outlets. Music by Shostakovich.

And those subtitles? Many speeches have been cut but what remains is rendered in Russian poetry. Which Pasternak then renders in - sort of - English poetry. Vandalism? Ah, no. If you care for WS or poems in a foreign tongue please see it. This is true Hamlet, I promise.

Bardolatry

Courtesy The New Yorker

Shakespeare was four-hundred years dead yesterday. But you know that.

Why bother? Most of the stuff’s in verse, difficult metaphors abound, word meanings have changed, toffs have confusing multi-titles and too many plays kick off with impenetrable and dullish background material. Not everyone’s keen on the cross-dressing either.

Modern-day WS poncers contrive to make you feel small. You’re better off watching cake-baking on telly. Cake-baking, forsooth! I never thought I’d say that.

Already you’re reaching for the mouse, convinced I'm a poncer. Perhaps I am but there’s fun to be had.

Working-class chat; hence a' instead of he:
A' saw a flea stick upon Bardolph's nose, and a' said it was a black soul burning in hell-fire

Boozing isn’t despised:
This same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh; but that's no marvel, he drinks no wine. There's never none of these demure boys come to any proof.

Singing’s important:
More, I prithee, more. I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs.

And prescience:
This dear, dear land (ie, England)
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out.

Most fellas would respond to the lady’s offer:
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep.

Middle-aged man recalls Glastonbury:
I had rather be a kitten and cry mew
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers;

Sex again:
I' faith, his hair is of a good colour... and his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread.

There's more but no doubt your mind’s made up. People say that chap Grisham does a rollicking tale.

Shakespeare vs. my grey cells

Perhaps I'm seeing too much Shakespeare these days and my poor old 300 kb memory isn't up to the job.

Last night it was the streamed Kenneth Branagh/Judi Dench Winter's Tale and for some time I realised I'd been confusing it with Twelfth Night. Both seasonal you could say but bad cess given the former is primarily a tragedy and the latter a comedy.

VR reminded me the last time we saw Winter's Tale was with Travelling Shakespeare at Malvern where twelve actors, all male, stretched their capacities to the limit and Hermione effected a blonde wig. Before that, perhaps ten years ago, we saw it for the first time on a DVD from our Shakespeare boxed set.

And boy did I need reminding. From both of those versions the main impression I carried away was that of Autolycus (The snapper-up of unconsidered trifles) a nomadic con-man whose role is more decorative than structural. My apologies for poncing as if I were a Shakespeare expert.

Anyway Branagh/Dench were terrific. The first half is about the evolution of Leontes' (ie, Branagh's) jealousy and its awful consequences. I know it's pretty silly to say this but Branagh was so good at minute and continuous detail that the words could have been dispensed with. Well, almost. Did you know he's a "Sir"? I wasn't even sure because he never seems to flaunt it. If a knighthood means anything then he deserves it.

But it was Judi (who's a Dame - the rather dodgy female equivalent of a Sir) who got to my heart. The final scene involves magic which risks staginess. Yet with Judi controlling the transformation (Spoiler alert, etc), the effect reduced me to tears, my second time in one week (see No Longer Just a Listener).

Rheumy eyes an advantage?

In politics, "knocking" isn't enough; you must persuade. FDR knew this, so did Churchill and de Gaulle, even Hitler and Mao did initially. Stalin alone didn't need to.

In WS's Julius Caesar, Brutus and others kill Caesar "for love of Rome". At the funeral Brutus explains Caesar was ambitious.

Mark Anthony, Caesar's friend, speaks under severe restraint. In a speech most of us find almost too familiar traditional Antonys (eg, Brando in the movie) seize the oft-repeated line that the killers are "all honourable men" and speak the adjective sneeringly. It isn't enough.

The speech is only 28 lines and in my revelatory Caesar from the BBC's complete boxed set, actor (Keith Michel; never better) and director, Herbert Wise, break it into innumerable - but logical - fragments, with Michel plausibly pausing, speaking “honourable” normally, moving within the crowd. The scene lasts ten well-spent minutes; we watch the crowd, pro-Brutus at first, changing with time - being persuaded.

I've seen several Caesars and last night recognised this difference for the first time. Two points: no one with literary pretensions should lack this boxed set. Second, old age brings rheumy eyes but they may work better than clearer youthful eyes.

Hardline Hope, a novel (6310 words)
Lindsay followed her own instructions (about getting into the car).... The movements were continuous, slightly erotic and self-evidently efficient.

“See that, Jenson,” said Gayle. “Now you could say I’m at the tipping point. I could very well place an order. No promises but it’s in the balance. You’re a smart larrikin, Jenson. What’s your next step?”

Jenson’s smile was rueful. “Steal away. Like the Arabs with their tents.”

“Good on yuh, J. Hope I haven’t been too hard.”

He even managed to walk to the showroom with some dignity.

You knew him well, Horatio

Let's see, in roughly chronological order:

Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer (radio), John Gielgud (radio), a clever sixth-former at my old school, Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Ethan Hawke, Mel Gibson (I can't be sure), Maxine Peake and, last Saturday, Benedict Cumberbatch. There may be others because I've always grabbed the chance and now regret refusing, laughingly, to book a well-regarded version in Russian at the British Film Institute. I'd see it now in a flash if I had the opportunity; perhaps there's a DVD,

Hamlet, of course, for what else could withstand so much repetition? Only music, and both Cosi and Figaro must be creeping up to parity with the crazy Dane.

Poncy, you say. Showing off. Well then, what's new? You've always known I'm a ponce and a show-off. TD has lost readers because of it.

The best Hamlet? The radio versions, both four hours, followed by Kenneth Branagh, also full. Train schedules and baby-sitters mean we rarely see the full play. And that’s a shame. To qualify for "the best" Hamlet must, first and foremost, be complete. It wasn't written to be cut. Hamlet himself explains:

The play's the thing.

I don’t know it word for word nor can I resolve its contradictions. I often dwell on what I haven't seen. Cumberbatch passes through a Polish army camp (referring to the soldiers as Polacks) and I wondered whether I'd previously seen that.

Polonius is often the litmus paper. Sometimes he’s dismissed as a fussy bumbler but it’s only familiarity that makes us slide over:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

It’s not even wholly true. But Hamlet’s a play not an encyclopedia and the lines stick.

To shout or not to...

I take every opportunity possible to watch Hamlet. Last night we saw "a radical re-imagining" modern-dress movie of the play starring Maxine Peake in the title role. I thought she was 18 it turns out she's forty. I set aside any preconceptions but I was disappointed. For the full 3 hr 30 min (inc 15 min for ice cream) she shouted, seemingly going hoarse in the process. Yes, even in that soliloquoy. And on the rare occasions she wasn't shouting she spat out words with unpleasant meanings such as "incestuous" and "whore". There was so little modulation. And because she'd shouted so much she'd nothing left when scenes arrived that might have demanded shouting.

Two worthwhile changes: Polonius was also played by a woman (as Polonius's wife), power-dressed and doing it in business-speak. This worked when she was being teased by her son, Laertes. One normally assumes P doesn't realise he's being teased; here, replies in board-room talk seem entirely legitimate.

Also, Claudius the king and The Ghost (Hamlet's dead father) are played by the same actor. Since they are supposed to be brothers it's OK.

However, long as it was it wasn't long enough. The more persuasive versions of Hamlet I've seen (Kenneth Branagh) and heard (John Gielgud, Christopher Plummer) have all gone the full 4 hr 30 min. Once you get to know the play, all cuts seem to diminish the sense.

Mind you, I'm not sure Professional Bleeder's bum would have survived the full version.

The Bard embroidered

Do musical settings of Shakespeare risk gilding the lily  (or the gingerbread, if that's your preferred cliché)? In one instance at least it's the other way round; surely Finzi's tune for It Was A Lover And His Lass is dragged down by the words. The four verses contain one good line - How that life was but a flower - with the rest encumbered by hey-nonny and ding-a-ding.

Here's an unnamed, no-frills soprano doing her best after being parachuted into a GRAIN SILO. And what about that piano made exclusively from Heinz baked beans tins? They at least deserve A for effort; the sound recordist deserves the treatment accorded to Hamlet's father.

What YouTube takes away, it may also bestow in large measure, and Finzi's reputation gets an out-of-this-world propulsion with this magnificent, definitive version of Fear No More The Heat O' The Sun (Cymbeline) sung by peerless BRYN TERFEL accompanied by Malcolm Martineau. I tell you, boyo, Wales is just down the road from where I live and listening to this inclined me to rush over the border and embrace everyone individually. That voice is beef stroganoff, followed by Christmas pudding, followed by half a stone of bleu d'Auvergne. Rich? It could pay off Greece's debt.

Finally another singer who really deserves the over-used adjective "beloved", jazz-singer CLEO LAINE (pictured) who is eight years older than me. Like Janet Baker she got a damehood not least for the fact that she was Grammy-nominated in three categories: jazz, pop and classical. Here she is singing Our Revels Now Are Ended (The Tempest), arranged by someone or something called Cantabile, and which brings tears to my eyes.

So was the lily or the gingerbread gilded? I was only joking. Most of the time Shakespeare's lyrics can up a composer's game.

Gilding the gingerbread?

Shakespeare set to music: success or failure?

One notable success for my money is Feste’s song from Twelfth Night:







O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.

The trouble is I’m not alone. Apart from Quilter, Finzi, Arne, Arne (arr, Grainger), Morley and Stanford every high school in the US has helped choke out YouTube with its own setting, some not too dusty. But not alas the version pinging round my head, recorded by Janet Baker aeons ago and unamenable directly via Google Video.

The technique is to Google the song title conventionally, linked to Janet Baker. Time after time I came so close only to be forestalled by lack of composer attribution. Eventually the door opened on Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, a great tunesmith if nothing else, author of Jerusalem and the hymn, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. A Janet Baker confirmation was unavailable but there are specialist CD retailers who offer downloads of individual tracks, supported by a browsing function.

And there – Oh bliss! – churned out by a nondescript tenor, I had it. As a reward to you all here’s the rest of Feste:

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter…
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies not plenty;
Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

In effect Donne’s lady going to bed, but without the sweat and twisted sheets. More on musical Shakespeare (with examples) in the future. Not least the bit that inspired Uberliedmeister Schubert. Click here for Dame Janet (then Download followed by Run). Can recommend The Well-Digger's Daughter, a first-rate French feel-good movie.