Happy Birthday, Mr Swan of Avon: And Now Some Completely Uneccessary Lists About Shakespeare

Bringing the month of 450th anniversary celebrations to a close (because we all celebrated Shakespeare's birthday for a full month, with balloons and cake and don't lie to me), today we bring you Lists of Stuff You Didn't Know You Needed To Know But Definitely Do.  About Shakespeare Characters.

Now lists of this kind are ten a farthing: Best Villains, Best Monarchs, Best Women etc (because belonging to a group that comprises 50% of the population is obviously its own genre) but we at Jane Shakespeare pride ourselves on offering you a little more Bard for your buck (not sorry).  From now on, when someone turns to you on the street, cornering you with a look that betokens literary malice aforethought, and snarls, "Quick! Name Shakespeare's five biggest hipsters or I'll slice you up so thin I could print the First Folio on you", your days of gibbering in confusion and idiocy are over.  Really, I am almost too good to you, but the general festivity and several large bumpers of wine I have been consuming daily to mark the occasion mellow my usually tyrannical mood.  "Oh, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains." - indeed, Bill, and Happy Birthday.

(A/N: I was originally going to include a 'Top 5 Characters Most in Need of an Intervention' list but a) I had trouble limiting it to five and b) most of my notes* were "ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL" written in increasingly manic handwriting.)


Top Five BFFs
There's nothing a Shakespearian protagonist needs more than a trusty second in command, someone to wipe away the tears when everyone just won't stop trying to kill you, and provide wise words of comfort when the incestuous overtones start getting a bit much.  I would personally be very grateful to have any of these at my side, and probably more than a little aroused.

5) Enobarbus (Antony and Cleopatra)
Who's BFF? Mark Antony
Why? Sometimes you just need someone to describe in fulsome terms why your girlfriend is awesome. Antony, bless him, is not the most loquacious tool in the shed, and much of his dialogue could be replaced with "totes", "STFU" and "soz babes" and you'd still very much be in reception of the gist.  Enobarbus, however, comes out with one of the most famous speeches in the canon (you know, barges, burnished thrones, that one) about his best pal's lady friend, bringing the entire Roman Empire perilously close to going "actually yeah, I'd totes provoke a civil war for her too, let's just have an amphora and call it a day". Points deducted for the fact that he eventually jumps ship for Team Octavius, who has terrible hair and his parties are lame, but he has a great speech while he makes the decision.

 4) Cassius (Julius Caesar)
Who's BFF? Brutus
Why? Every hero of a regime turned renegade needs a power behind the throne to topple that regime.  Cassius is the ideal Second in Command, the manipulator who sticks to the shadows in order to let you shine.  He's a Pete Campbell, a Littlefinger, redeemed by his totes-no-homo love for Brutus - and seriously, imagine if either Pete or Littlefinger decided to truly and deeply love another human being. Terrifying.  My version of Julius Caesar is basically called "Brutus and Cassius' Excellent Adventure", and it ends when Cassius turns to Brutus with tears in his eyes and says, "you love me not" in Act 4 Scene 3, and Brutus gives his angstful reply, "I do not like your faults", voice cracking with emotion, presumably while manfully clasping the back of Cassius' neck and peering deep into his soul. Cue Snow Patrol.

3) Poins (Henry IV Parts 1 and 2)
Who's BFF? Prince Hal
Why? Poins is kind of a weird anomaly in the Henry IV tavern scenes - he appears to belong to some kind of aristocracy but, like Hal, spends his time hanging around with lowlives and drunks.  He and Hal seem to have a closeness to rival Hal and Falstaff, tag-teaming each other for a series of hilarious public-schoolboy-style practical jokes (public humiliation of the elderly, torment of minimum wage service workers etc), and Poins is never around when Hal isn't, leading to the inevitable conclusion that Poins is desperately in love with Hal and follows him everywhere trying to pluck up the courage to tell him.  (This is a recurring theme in the selection of this list.)  Hal also unburdens himself to Poins in Part 2, when everything is going a bit mopey and minor key, and Poins gives him a sharp "suck it up, Crown Prince of all England" talking to, which is only slightly undercut by the revelation that Poins has been telling all and sundry that Hal is going to marry his sister, but I won't insult your intelligence by pointing out how obviously that's a displacement tactic for unrequited homoerotic yearning. Like Cassius, the relationship breaks down with Poins' armour-piercing line, "My honey sweet lord, you love me not." Not in a gay way though. (Totally in a gay way.)

2) Celia (As You Like It)
Who's BFF? Rosalind
Why? Celia wants to jump Rosalind's bones. Yes, I know they're cousins, and yes, I know she ends up married to a man, but these are minor details on the road to pastoral sapphic bliss.  There is no way Oliver is anything other than a beard, and perhaps a way to spite Orlando-obsessed Rosalind by stealing her thunder for continuously and concertedly ignoring the woman who has been at her side from Scene 1. Celia loves Rosalind more than her own father.  More than she loves sleeping in a soft bed, or having nice things to wear, or not smelling like sheep all the time. When people point out that Rosalind overshadows her, she does not give a single solitary fuck. She dreams of being overshadowed by Rosalind, ifyouknowwhatImean, andIthinkyoudo.  She is her friend, her constant companion, her support, her conscience and, admirably, survives the extreme sexual confusion of seeing Rosalind dressed as a boy.  When asked to perform the marriage vows for Rosalind and Orlando, she says simply, "I cannot speak the words." I will brook no other interpretations, though I admit it is entirely possible that I should have called this list 'Top 5 Cases of Unrequited Homoerotic Longing'.

1) Horatio (Hamlet)
Who's BFF? Hamlet
Why? Oh, everything.  Everything about Horatio is precious and understated and we should celebrate him like the special sunflower that he is.  It cannot be easy being the best friend of an emotionally fragile bereaved philosophy student, but somehow he manages. As with the best of Shakespeare's supporting characters, he has his own quiet arc happening in the background of the play, going from enlightened man of reason who politely exposits on Denmark's political situation to Captain of Team Hamlet, supporting him through shipwrecks, funerals and sword fights alike. He is the Agent Coulson of the Shakespeare universe. He is not afraid to call Hamlet out on his bullshit ('no, buddy, you just murdered two of our best friends, that's totally what you did') or express uncharacteristically instinctive concern for his wellbeing ('I just have a really bad feeling about this duel thing'), and even tries to die with his friend but ultimately agrees to live and honour his memory by telling his story, when, like, literally everyone he knows is dead.  And I hope you appreciate that I made it this far without pointing out, once again, that Hamlet and Horatio are totally gay bones for each other.



Top 5 Hipsters
Whilst we tend to think of hipsters as a modern invention, along with selfies and emoticons and all the loud music the kids listen to these days, Shakespeare is, as always, ahead of the game.  These five would not be out of place sporting ironically nostalgic t-shirts featuring 8-bit video game characters whilst shuffling through the Shoreditch night as the music of plastic-framed glasses clacking sounds in the background, the mating call of the hipster.

5) Edmund (King Lear)
There is no doubt in my mind that Edmund spent his school days carving the anarchy symbol all over the desks and going to detention for wearing non-regulation skinny jeans rather than school trousers.  Do not talk to Edmund about legitimacy because legitimacy is, like, so mainstream.  Edgar is legitimate and Edgar probably listens to Coldplay.  Give Edmund half a joint and ten minutes and he will be expounding his complex socio-political theories about why the system is totally fucked, man, and the only thing to do is tear it down and start again.  Later though, because there's this band playing but you haven't heard of them and you wouldn't know where.

4) Apemantus (Timon of Athens)
Timon of Athens is not performed often because it is, essentially, not a very good play.  Timon is a man who has lots of nice things and then gives them all away and then is very surprised when this leaves him with no nice things.  Timon is not very good at maths.  In the second half of the play, mostly spent wandering a wasteland that is conveniently near Athens, the only character who joins him is Apemantus.  Apemantus feels the same towards Timon now that he's poor as he did when he was rich, because he hated Timon when he was rich and he still hates him now he's poor because he hates everybody because fuck society man.  It is one of Nick Hytner's greatest failings as artistic director of the National Theatre that in his production last year, Apemantus did not sport a deep vee and unimpressive moustache. And that is all there is to be said on the matter.

3) Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing)
One cannot deny that there is more than a touch of the black-rimmed specs about Beatrice.  She definitely has a moleskin journal, and she definitely uses it to write performance poetry about why the patriarchy means the institution of marriage is inherently corrupt and also stopping her from getting a boyfriend.  She has many impressively insensitive speeches about why everyone around her is stupid and tedious and marriage is for mainstream idiots, which she then follows up with various weakly delivered lines that amount to, "Not you though, Hero.  I just meant people exactly like you."  As with most hipsters, her presence is politely tolerated by family and friends until she can be foisted off onto another of her kind.  After that, she and Benedick write each other ironic love poetry on their typewriters.

2) Hamlet (Hamlet)
Prince of Denmark, Prince of the Hipsters.  An interesting case, this one, because almost every generation has given forth a production of Hamlet in which he embodies a predominant teen stereotype of the day - grunge, emo, public school, and now hipster.  Perhaps this is because there is a certain type of studenty pretentiousness that never really dies (it just comes at the cost of crippling debt now), but nor would we want it to.  Hamlet scores pretty high on this list because he is quite a loveable hipster, really, and also has somewhat more cause than most other entries here.  Having said that, I do not want to think about how many scarves he and Horatio had in their shared student flat in Wittenberg.  Also, they definitely used to invite Rosencrantz and Guildenstern round for ironic board game night and then always pick Articulate and always win.

1) Jaques (As You Like It)
If Hamlet is Prince of the Hipsters, then Jaques is their king.  Jaques is such a hipster, any production that does not costume him in red trousers and have him entering the Forest of Arden on a fixie bike is…well, probably making the right decision, but you know.  Jaques is so hipster that laughing is too mainstream for him, unless it's laughing ironically with hollow, detached hauteur at the accidental poignancy of the hilarious peasant who probably eats fast food and likes reality television.  Jaques claims the top spot because all his problems are First World Problems in the Firstiest Worldiest way possible.  He has enough money to travel around at leisure, spending an indeterminate period of time hanging with a banished duke and ordering buskers to play weird genre mash-up music that he wrote.  He is, essentially, on a perpetual gap year, forever seeking solace in his own misery, pointing out doomed couples at their own wedding, and refusing to stick around for the disco.  Jaques, he would have you know, does not do disco.

(Honourable mention: Prince Hal. Rich kid, hangs around in East London to annoy his father. Case closed.)


Top 5 Badasses
Joss Whedon once pointed out that Shakespeare kills his characters off all the time and he gets way less flak for it (but then again, Shakespeare didn't kill off Wash). It's a dark, dark universe out there, and only the fittest/least conventionally Tragic survive.

5) Achilles (Troilus and Cressida)
For the greatest warrior ever born, Achilles sure spends a lot of his time avoiding doing any actual warrior-ing, choosing instead to lounge upon silk sheets with snarky boytoy Patroclus (this one is canon, guys, I swear), encouraging him to do impressions of his bosses.  Occasionally his bosses turn up at his tent to ask him to fight and he says something like,"Hey. Hey. How's that war going without me? Never mind, I can't hear you over the sound of me not giving a single embattled fuck." Achilles is essentially every teenage douchebag ever, but with the ability to kill a man with his little finger. Then again, such is the force of his warrior-ing that a little bit of it actually ends the play so maybe he was just being considerate.

4) Lady Macbeth (Macbeth)
Lady M scores low on the list because, despite being indisputably terrifying, she is very much all talk.  We can blame this on Ye Misogynistic Olden Dayes, of course, but we still cannot place her any higher until she actually does some killing, rather than just saying repeatedly, "I TOTALLY WOULD BUT YOU ARE THE ONE WITH THE PENIS HERE". I don't make the rules.** Also you get the impression that maybe if she'd had an actual career, she wouldn't have turned to murder and treason as a funtime hobby.  Despite this, she's still a force to be reckoned with, and thus deserves her spot (hee) for being a badass by proxy.

3) Coriolanus (Coriolanus)
Coriolanus is kind of the explicit badass of the Shakespeare food chain. He captures a town single-handedly and spends most of the first two acts wandering around wearing clothes made of blood (and then, according to some interpretations, takes a sexy shower of angst while ripping his shirt off manfully in a moment that totally contradicts every single other aspect of his character contained in the rest of the play but hey, you got to sell tickets somehow).  He doesn't score much higher though because he is the easiest unstoppable killer to manipulate in history.  The majority of the play is people telling him what to do and him saying "that sounds legit", whether the instruction in question is to don sackcloth and humble himself before the proletariat, or turn around and march on said proletariat.  Unsurprisingly, this ends with arch-nemesis/make-out buddy*** Aufidius getting so pissed off he stabs him in the heart.  Which is maybe overkill, but he was being super flaky.

2) Portia (The Merchant of Venice)
Let's change it up a bit here.  Portia might not fight any physical battles but she is scarier than everyone else in the entire play put together.  The Victorians loved her because she's wise and virtuous and blah blah blah, forget all that, she's a hideous racist bitch, basically.  She's casually xenophobic about nearly everyone who tries to hit on her who isn't the colour of cottage cheese, and completely destroys Shylock's life because JEW (this may also be why the Victorians loved her).  But what makes her most terrifying is her sheer balls.  I don't know if you've noticed, but even by the standards of Shakespeare's day, everything she does in the courtroom scene is hideously illegal.  Impersonating a lawyer, pointing out loopholes that aren't really loopholes, turning the proceedings back against Shylock (who is not, after all, the one being tried) - at the very least, he would be a due a re-trial.  Perhaps this is the point - the court is already so inherently biased against Shylock that they'll allow Portia's shenanigans, but I like to think it's also because she stared the Doge in the eye while running a knife along her teeth.

1) Henry V (Henry V)
As with Portia, there's a lot of bollocks going around when it comes to Henry V.  And as with Portia, he claims the top spot amongst Shakespearean badasses for having pure unqualified moxy.  Where guys like Achilles and Coriolanus know they are top of their game, King Harry plays russian roulette with not only his own life but the lives of an entire army.  He marches a pitifully small force over to France and plays the underdog-iest away game in the history of ever, and all because the French did some French sneering, because they are French (Shakespeare is a balanced and objective historian). At Harfleur, he never has to make good on his threats to let his soldiers rape the women and murder the children of the town if it doesn't surrender, but the jury's out on whether he would or not, had push come to naked infants spitted upon pikes.    At Agincourt, the moment that tips the battle in his favour comes just after he orders the execution of his prisoners of war (straight up war crime, in case you weren't sure).  All in all, Henry wins against extraordinary odds through a combination of fierce chat, strategic ruthlessness and a willingness to play dice with a whole lot of lives.  But I don't know, actually, maybe that doesn't make him a badass.  Maybe that just makes him a dick.



Top 5 Sexiest Characters
I once had a dream that my job was to describe attractive celebrities in entertaining ways.  Until I work out how to monetise this skill and make my dream a reality, I'm just going to write more about which fictional characters I would totally do.

5) Hector (Troilus and Cressida)
Troilus and Cressida takes place in a terrible world full of terrible people.  Shit is just constantly going down over there.  But in the midst of the carnage and betrayal and venereal disease and fedora-wearing Trojans, there stands a beacon of honourable hotness, a bright spot of old-fashioned hunkitude, one DILF to rule them all.  Go thy way, Hector, go thy way, indeed.  Hector will fight your morally dubious war and put up your shelves just because you asked nicely, probably with his baby son in his arms at the same time.  It is but one illustration of how soul-destroying Shakespeare wished this play to be that Hector meets his end at the ignoble hands of Achilles' Myrmidons hiding in ambush.  Let us take comfort, friends, in the fact that even Achilles required back-up to kill Hector, such is the force of his unadulteratedly righteous bodaciousness. Here endeth the lesson.

4) Prince Hal (Henry IV Parts 1 and 2)
I am aware that people do not always share my high opinion of Prince Hal, but then again, people are not always as naturally blessed with such inherent and unwavering rightness as I, and also people can suck it.  Moral ambiguity.  Quick wit.  Desperate craving for fatherly approval complicated by deep love for a surrogate father figure he knows he will ultimately have to reject. Symbolic defeat of his foil in single combat, complete with knicker-dropping Shakespearian smack talk ("I am the Prince of Wales, and think not, Percy,/ To share with me in glory any more./ Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere,/ Nor can one England brook a double reign/ Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales." PHWOAR.)  Hal is a sexy little bundle of angst and quips.  He is, essentially, a Joss Whedon character.  And I can give no higher praise than that.

3) Rosalind (As You Like It)
I think I can best sum this up with a line from The Mighty Boosh: "They call me the Confuser. Is it a man? Is it a woman? Ooh, I'm not sure I mind." But before there was Noel Fielding, there was Rosalind.  Rosalind, let us be clear, will mess you up in the head.  She is a magical fantasy androgynous wizard coquette, and she waltzes through the Forest of Arden like she owns it, leaving a trail of sexually confused hysteria in her wake.  The worst one can say of her, perhaps, is that she bestows herself upon a man not worth her time and who can bring little to the relationship besides some terrible poetry and light vandalism of trees, and perhaps also that she fails to notice Celia waiting patiently at her side (see above).  Whilst in Twelfth Night, Orsino has a visible moment of heterosexual relief upon the revelation of Viola's identity, Orlando - one suspects - is easy either way.  And so, undoubtedly, is the audience.

2) Edmund (King Lear)
If there's one thing we love here at Jane Shakespeare, it's a rebel with a cause.  And Edmund is the rebel-iest cause-iest rebel with a cause that ever did rebel, with a cause. As with the best of his kind, he flits back and forth across the line of the redeemable, not so much immoral as twistedly amoral, but (BE STILL MY HEART) in the end, just wants to be loved.  In a play full of world-beating lines, his dying words - "Yet Edmund was beloved" - go straight to the below stairs area as a simple statement of fact from someone who still can't quite believe it.  And when the Marvel films wheel out their Loki version during his inevitable redemption via death (for nothing is truer than the fact that Thor is King Lear In Space), I will cheer out loud in the cinema.  Edmund beat out Hamlet for this list for several reasons (see here for details), but mostly because you get all of the moody introspection coupled with the remarkable ability to get shit done (shit, in this case, is usurpation and eye-gouging by proxy).  Brooding and motivated? Get it, Edmund. Get. It.

1) Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra)
There is only one character in the canon whose sex drive starts an actual war (shut up yes also Helen of Troy) and only one character who can justly wear the crown of Shakespearian Bangability. Cleo is not only one of the greatest roles maybe ever, she's also an indisputable MILF.  Part of her appeal is her capriciousness - imperious and coquettish by turns, all throwing shade about Antony's boring wife one minute, and threatening to stab up unfortunate messengers the next.  If 30 Rock's 'MILF Island' was an actual thing, she would win by a landslide.  (New idea. MILF Island: Shakespeare Edition.  NO WAIT - THE HUNGER GAMES: SHAKESPEARE EDITION.****)  But Cleopatra wins mostly because, while she is undoubtedly slammin' of mind and body, all the descriptions of her seem to revolve around the aura of awesomeness she carries with her into the room.  Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Cleopatra has sexy in her soul and that, ladies and gentlemen, is something to which we can all aspire.


And that's it. Much as I tried to keep it to one entry per character, Edmund wangled two (he's like that) and looking it over, some of my favourite plays are glaringly, painfully apparent (haha screw you Othello).  All that remains to be said is that, of course, these are only a matter of personal opinion and completely open to debate so feel free to put your own suggestions in the comments.  No, go on.  Really, I would love that.  Disagree with me.  I dare you.

*Yes, I make notes.  These poorly-structured over-emotional outbursts don't just spring into being fully-formed.  (Actually they mostly do, but sometimes I need to procrastinate.)
**Lies.
***No seriously, Aufidius has this whole speech when the two enemies join forces that basically says, "I have such a hate-boner for you.  No seriously, I have dreams about this. Sweaty dreams."
****It cannot be just me that routinely assesses the room they are in by determining the order in which its inhabitants would die in the Hunger Games.

Happy Birthday, Mr Swan of Avon: An Unnecessary and Rambling Defence of William Shakespeare

It was going on four years ago that, casting about for a name for the blog I had decided to start so that I might make the option of engaging with my Doctor Who rants voluntary rather than inescapable, I settled on Jane Shakespeare.  ‘Shakespeare’ is, natch, my favourite writer, which seemed appropriate for a blog that was sure to be devoted to vital and pressing literary journalism and not at all discussions of which fictional characters I’d most like to bang, and ‘Jane’ had a pleasantly anonymous feel to it, making it suitable for my sophisticated and mysterious alter ego.

I shall allow you a moment to finish mirthfully wiping your eyes.

‘Jane’ is also, of course, a reference to my favourite novelist and, as such, she has already been made the subject of a celebratory post.  Shakespeare, though, not so much. There were my reviews of The Hollow Crown, which remains to this day my post with the highest hit count, teaching me the valuable lesson that if you want traffic to your blog, include pictures of Tom Hiddleston in a sauna (I’d love it if there was just an insatiable hunger for over-enthusiastic dissection of televised Shakespeare but I am, occasionally, a realist).  I’ve started Shakespeare-centric posts a couple of times – my top ten characters, the five greatest performances I’ve seen, and so on and so forth.  Shakespeare has featured in several other posts.  But for one reason or another, having his own has never quite happened.  Until now. The man turns 450 this year and by god, I’m going to acknowledge it.

Let’s be clear: much of the 450 celebrations are tourism.  Shakespeare  the ‘national poet’ is an export, a cartoon guy in a ruff with a bald head and maybe he’s like holding a skull or something because that’s from one of the plays right? No snobbery or denigration is intended here (well, not much) because Stratford as a town basically runs off of Shakespeare tourism, despite the irony that he spent much of his life trying to objectively not be in Stratford.  Shakespeare also gets caught up in nationalism debates a lot – when Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem (essentially a treatise on the whole notion of Englishness) was in the theatres, one of the most frequent name-drops in reviews was Shakespeare, with the play being received as a kind of mixture of Henry V and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (like, so many feelings about that but the margin being too narrow for my purposes etc etc). Keats has a right old fanboy squee about the “Chief Poet!” and his work: “The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit” (but I can’t stay mad at Keats for long, bless him).  It’s natural, in a way – there is no more famous writer in the English language, no other playwright who has their own company, their own theatre, their own place on every syllabus at every age. Shakespeare is inextricably part of the make-up, the DNA of Britain – if you don’t believe me, then Hugh Grant says it in Love Actually too (but frankly I’m quite offended that you believe Hugh Grant over me, especially in Love Actually).

But. But. But. That is not a good enough reason to make such a song and dance about it.  Of course it isn’t. Tradition on its own never is. And tradition is not why every single person ever should be acquainted with Shakespeare in some way.  Because I do believe that, I really do.  The first thing to say here is that I’m not saying it should be compulsory in schools (although I think it already is). Schools, for the most part, make kids hate Shakespeare. And no wonder. I get bored reading it sometimes and he is my very favourite playwright ever. But it should be seen and it should be heard and it should be spoken and it should be talked about.  That’s what he wrote it for – entertainment.  To make people laugh and cry and throw up in their mouths a little bit (Titus Andronicus). It’s silly enough to make stupid jokes and high school comedy adaptations of (not an insult, 10 Things I Hate About You was perhaps the peak of artistic endeavour in the early 2000s), and it’s serious enough to bring hope and solace to those in need (personal experience applies but also the Robben Island Bible and so many, many other instances).  I like arguing, and most Shakespeare plays could be argued about forever.  It’s a natural partnership, you might say.

But one of the most common complaints I hear about Shakespeare is that he’s irrelevant.  Who cares what a Dead White Guy has to say about stuff four hundred odd years ago?  And yes, it bothers me sometimes that as both a feminist and a literary person, my favourite writers are pretty much all of the Dead White Male persuasion (notable exceptions included).  I couldn’t say why but early on in my education, Shakespeare, Keats and Austen formed a triumvirate that retains its empire over my heart to this day.  One thing they have in common is that they’re all writers who are passionately misunderstood by their most passionate fans.* Allow me to put on my hipster glasses for a moment.  Keats is thrillingly romantic but he’s first and foremost Romantic, in a small, angry, dying man kind of way.  Austen gives her characters happy endings but I wouldn’t have wanted to sit next to her at a dinner party (actually I totes would, if only because I’d feel more out of the line of fire there than opposite her, and we could bitch behind our fans). Shakespeare...yeah. I say Shakespeare is misunderstood by his fans, because I think to some extent he’s misunderstood by everybody.  Misunderstood isn’t even the right word really – ungraspable would be a better adjective, or unknowable, or subversive. Contemporary accounts of the man himself are rare, and those that exist aren’t always reliable, but they all seem to say the same thing: a quiet man, an observer. From his will, we know he wasn’t especially generous – not so much the second best bed furore, but the fact that his bequeathments to the Stratford poor are negligible compared to what other writers of similar financial status left behind. Then there’s also the fact that, as mentioned, he skipped town to London pretty quickly after his shotgun marriage to Anne Hathaway (although again, debate continues over how loving or unloving this marriage was).

From very little evidence and completely unscientific instinct, the picture painted seems to me more writer than man, someone not entirely engaged in the business of living his own life and much more concerned with recording others. But he was a man, and that – I think – is where we go so wrong.  Milton, as a young poet, wrote a sonnet about reading Shakespeare and being helplessly paralysed in the wake of it – what would be the point of writing, when you knew you would never be as good? And that was from the guy who wrote Paradise Lost. But Shakespeare was just a man, and he was a lucky one – he lived at a time when theatre was the dominant form of entertainment, and a form of entertainment that was about hearing, about language, which he was, y’know, pretty good at. The vocabulary of English as a whole was rapidly expanding, he lived through the turn of a century and a crisis of succession, not to mention the aftermath of a hundred or so years of religious wrangling, and the end of a dynasty. It’s all so much more complicated than I can ever fully explain, but something shifted during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and he was the right man in the right place at the right time.  Jonson famously wrote that he was “not of an age but for all time” – true, but it’s the first bit that we tend to forget about. He was completely of his age, and it was the age that he happened to belong to that allowed him to be ‘of all time’.

All this means – confusingly, as someone who obviously loves Shakespeare a lot – that I think we could stand to knock him off the pedestal a little.  Sometimes as a director I get asked why I keep doing Shakespeare plays (of the eleven full length plays I have directed, seven are Shakespeare plays, and that’s not counting workshops) and the answer is always the same: within the Complete Works is every story I could ever want to tell. I believe that it is directors, rather than writers, who are the descendants of storytellers, travelling bards – we don’t make up our own stories, but we take ones that already exist and embellish, alter, bring elements in and out of focus.  Basically, if a play has too many stage directions, I go “nope” and get out the Complete Works again because those plays are robust. They withstand a lot of loving dicking about. Age shall not wither them etc. They don’t endure because Shakespeare is some mysterious dude up on a monument, but because they’re low down and dirty plays, quick and living and breathing and painful. Bad Shakespeare happens when people approach with too much reverence – of course, it also happens when people approach without actually having a single clue about the play they’re doing, which is kind of the opposite end of the spectrum. But at least those disasters tend to be fascinating car crashes that you can’t look away from – the greatest sin, born of too much veneration, is to make it boring.  You can do kind of anything with these plays.  I’m not saying every idea is gold but theoretically, you can.

And to purists who insist that Shakespeare should be performed in tights and ruffs, or have all male casts because ‘original practice’ (yet curiously displaying a casual disregard for ‘original practice’ in, oh, every other area of the production, Propellor, I mean you and your huge amount of Arts Council funding**), to you I say this: he’s been dead for four hundred years. He doesn’t care.  In fact, what with the way Renaissance playwrights rewrote each others’ work to keep it up to date, he’d probably just shrug and be all, “Whatevs, forsooth” if you told him you were relocating A Midsummer Night’s Dream to a secondary school and replacing the fairy music with Miley Cyrus.*** And while ‘original practice’ is actually very interesting and can provide hugely valuable insights into the way the plays work (for example, knowing that The Winter’s Tale was written for the Blackfriars indoor theatre tells you a lot about why the pacing of it is so much statelier and more intimate than, say, Henry V which is a Globe play and involves lots of rushing about to cover all the entrances and exits), that doesn’t mean we have to slavishly reproduce those practices for an audience that has changed a lot in the four intervening centuries.  The fact is, these plays can and do adapt beautifully because they are about people, and people do not change all that much, whether they are in medieval Verona or 1920s Berlin or present day Afghanistan (also Will was not exactly historically accurate himself, cf chiming clocks in Ancient Rome). Furthermore, it is people who are going to see your play, and you have a duty to share your story with them because selfish theatre that doesn’t care about its audience is just no good to anyone, and I could be doing stuff with your funding.

The exception to all of this is that I am an absolute devotee to understanding iambic pentameter and verse – but Picasso did not jump straight in with the eyes on the sides of heads, he learnt how to draw from life first.  It astonishes me the number of Shakespeare productions I see where the director has jumped straight to the concept and ignored the fundamentals of actually speaking the goddamn script – and that, really, is what makes a great production.  One of the best I’ve seen was Thea Sharrock’s As You Like It at the Globe.  I don’t even like As You Like It (ha).  Plus, it was in period dress.  But every single moment was clear and golden and the play just swept you along and Rosalind was a sexy butch lesbian type and Orlando looked like a goddamn rock star and Celia and Oliver**** were real, proper characters, and gah, my heart.  Verse is also something that I hear a lot of uncertainty about.  I won’t lie, it takes some getting used to, and there are rules to it that take some time to learn – but once you do, it unlocks a whole new, extraordinary level of meaning and, from a dramatic point of view, basically tells you how to do the play. Another young director once said to me that she would find Shakespeare too difficult to direct because it was this unbreachable, alien fortress of a thing– I wanted to shout, “No! I’m a fraud! It’s so easy! It’s the easiest thing in the world! The director of every Shakespeare play is Shakespeare! You just have to learn how to listen!” But I did not. But I wish I had. Because you should know that understanding it has absolutely nothing to do with schooling and everything to do with listening and instinct. Anyway.

In the end, the point I wish to make is this.  To end where I began, the episode of Doctor Who that has Shakespeare in it describes him as “the most human human”.  I can’t really get much closer than that.  He is the least Dead, White or Male of any of the DWMs I know and love – his perspective, that quiet, observer’s perspective, is always that of the outsider.  His plays are full of people trying to get in, always excluded from something, no matter what their social status.  His characters are creatures of want, of desire, and their happiness is predicated on getting that thing – I’m not sure Hamlet is a tragedy, and I’m not sure All’s Well That Ends Well is a comedy (ok, well, it’s definitely not a comedy, but I’m not going to get into why ‘problem play’ is too easy a cop-out now).  He takes the part of the dispossessed, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free – there is compassion and sorrow running through and through the veins of Shakespeare, not least in the plays that take place in crappy universes where everything is terrible always (King Lear, Troilus and Cressida). That’s why he’s relevant, that’s why he goes on.  Not always, of course, there are areas that are hugely problematic – Coriolanus’ whole “give political power to the poor? That is ridiculous” stance, the minefield that is the gender politics of The Taming of the Shrew*****, the casual racism of The Merchant of Venice’s deceptively awesome heroine Portia, and so on and so forth forever. But that’s part of the deal. That’s the package of being human, and no production will ever make a definitive discovery on any of this.

I want to direct Shakespeare because, as I said, travelling storyteller. There is not just one Hamlet to tell, there are as many Hamlets as there are actors. I have at least three different ways of doing King Lear, and everything I’ve already directed only makes me want to do it again. It will never stop being new to me, which is exciting and beneficently humbling. With other writers I may direct one of their plays and feel it has been exorcised from me – with Shakespeare it’s just a Zen matter of waiting for the wheel to come full circle, and feeling out when the time is right for a particular story in a particular way.  I am sceptical of the books and talks and teachers who say, “The thing you need to know about Richard III is...” because if you are a sufficiently good storyteller, I believe that in the end the only manual you need is the text itself. By being you, an individual reading it at your place in your time, it becomes a new play again – perhaps this is true of any good writer, but it is Shakespeare, who finds time for every walk of life and every strain of feeling, who lends himself to it most.

And just to prove that I learn from past experience:

You’re welcome.

*Also in this category: Byron.  I’m told that Byron conventions are full of men who think they are Byron, and women who want to go back in time and sleep with Byron, to which I say, ladies, please. Think of the syphilis. Yes, he was a rake and a cad and a brooding, wandering, tortured soul but he was also an absolutely on the ball, incisive and keenly-minded genius and his greatest work is basically a sex tour of Europe, in rhyme.

**I do know Propeller are not in any way purists, and I really enjoy their productions but also I cannot really get on board with the idea of a company being funded to take jobs away from women, especially when there are so few in the first place.

***Not actually being facetious, I would probably enjoy this production a lot.

****Massively helped by Oliver being played by Jamie Parker, who can get it. More Jamie Parker doing Shakespeare, for it is what the people want.

*****I will never stop saying this: it is not a sparky tale of two social misfits playing a sexy sex game, it is a tale of a woman being systematically abused until she gives up her desire to speak her own thoughts, at which point she is rewarded with the opportunity to speak her husband’s thoughts. However, 10 Things I Hate About You will never not be excellent, so maybe let’s all just watch that instead.

Drop Everything, I'm Here to Fix Your Love Life (If You Fancy Dudes): The Jane Shakespeare Guide to Dating Fictional Men

Valentines Day. Boom. Just dropping that bombshell out there for all of you sad, lonely people too repulsive to find another warm body willing to let you lean against it for the 24 hours it takes not to feel like the unicorn that couldn't find its moving buddy for the Ark. And if you're a couple, go ahead and congratulate yourself on being candidates for contributing to the earth's overcrowding problem, and if you're not planning on having children any time soon, then everyone probably hates you two together anyway and you have to reasonably assess whether you can withstand that kind of debilitating social pressure.

Gosh, Valentine's Day. You thought it was over (this post is so late in the day, I might as well say it's in honour of next Valentine's Day) but I'm raking up those painful memories again because I want you all to feel shame about your life choices.

Not me though, because my life choices are and have always been beyond question or reproach. And you are all very lucky, because I am about to share with you one of those life choices. I was like you once. Lonely. Pathetic. Unable to hold down a good job and a stable relationship at the same time because being a fierce career-driven lady is hard work.* But then I found a light. A path. I started only fancying men who were fictional.

I know what you're thinking. Fucking genius.

A fictional man has never, let us say, forgotten a birthday or, to give another random example that has definitely never happened to me, squeezed your thigh and declared you to be “not that fat”. A fictional man has never seen you walk into a room visibly upset, ask if you're ok, then return to playing iPhone Scrabble when you say, “Sort of, I guess” in a tone that conveys broadly the opposite and when you point this out offers the rebuttal "You said you were fine".

Yes, fictional men have the decided advantage of being fictional. But wait. There are rules to this thing. You can't just make them do whatever you want heedless of the universe from whence they came and inherent traits with which they were gifted.** You must be accepting of your fictional man's flaws. You must love them because of their flaws, not in spite of them. Detractors of the Fictional Man System may say that this is akin to 'real life' relationships, that one must work also at relationships with actual breathing people, but to them I say shut up and you smell. My way is both quicker and easier and therefore correct.

It's important to know the territory, is what I'm saying. Each fictional man carries their own baggage with them. To help you on the first steps to a stress-free world of romance and talking to yourself on public transport, here are the pros and cons of ten of the best:

The Top Ten Most Eligible Fictional Males (from literature)***

A/N: To anyone shouting for Rochester or Heathcliffe: was your favourite film as a child Beauty and the Beast?

10) Satan (Paradise Lost, John Milton).

Why? Everyone loves a rebel with a cause, not least Jonnie Milton himself, who at several points of Paradise Lost clearly panics and throws in some shit about original sin and being the root of all the evil in the world to throw off any delicate female brains that may have been affected by this shape-shifting orator with cunning oral skills. Satan is the thinking ladies' crumpet. He ponders. He broods. Also, have you read the description of Adam and Eve's grown-up make-out fun post-apple? Good times, courtesy of Satan.

Why not? Approximately halfway through the poem, Milton realises everyone's rooting for the fallen angel and turns him into an underwhelming snake-thing. (Calm down, Freudians.) Also there's some minor stuff about raping his daughter Sin to produce his son/grandson Death and Death then raping his mother to produce hell-hounds that live inside her womb. But everyone has baggage.

9) Draco Malfoy (Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling).

Why? Blond. Mainly, blond. And again, blond. Probably more of a fling than anything else but if anyone in Hogwarts is making the most of their common room by installing a hot tub and hiring house elves as the wizarding equivalent of monkey butlers, it is the Slytherins. Malfoy also comes equipped with severe daddy issues, which makes him a shoo in for this list (to new readers, I apologise; to regular readers, you really should just expect this by now). Is willing to commit murder for the sake of family honour or some bullshit like that so presumably easy to manipulate. (What?) Also, blond.

Why not? Cries in bathrooms. Requires henchmen as living security blanket. Daddy issues go hand in hand with definite unresolved Oedipal yearnings: would probably still have been breastfeeding at an uncomfortably late age.

8) Eros (Greek mythology).

Why? Quite literally a love god. Forget all those fluffy little Cupids, before the Romans came along and enacted their subtle foreign policy of killing everything and stealing what was left, the Greek god Eros was all wings and abs.  And if you get bored, he has a twin brother called Anteros who avenges slighted lovers and is the deity actually portrayed in statue form at Piccadilly Circus (Eros has been getting the credit for over a hundred years now, it's time to set the record straight.  OPEN YOUR EYES.  SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE.)

Why not? Lack of experience – in the whole of Greek mythology, is only shown getting it on once, despite being aforementioned God of Love. Will also insist on having the lights off in case you realise the identity of your lover and his mother tries to kill you. And also was regarded as the protector of homosexual love between men.  So the takeaway here is that Greek mythology is not a great place for women.

7) Casanova (Histoire de ma Vie, Giacomo Casanova)(yes I know he was a real guy)(I'm examining his literary persona)(shut up)

Why? Come on now. Self-explanatory. Admittedly this is not for the lady looking for something long-term but I bet you'd have a good time along the way. As well as being world's first lad, he was also a spy, conman, linguist and librarian and spent most of his life rubbing elbows with royalty, popes, writers and musicians like Goethe, Mozart and Voltaire (and rubbing something else with literally all of the ladies).**** Factor in a slamming dress sense, a preference for eloquent woman, and an ability to make money out of basically everyone, including people who fired him, and that's a recipe for a fun weekend that you'll only remember as occasional flashbacks.

Why not? Have fun with all the venereal disease. Allegedly also had a threeway with his illigitimate daughter and her mother. (I must apologise, this list contains a significantly higher degree of incest than I had originally envisaged.) Also, as I said before, fidelity was not his strong suit. That was comic understatement. He had all the sex.

6) Peter Pan (Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie).

Why? Has three women after him for the duration of play/novel and, in most representations, clothes seem to be optional. He would be terribly exciting and there would be a large number of gap year style escapades and you would definitely probably have some kind of journey of self-discovery.  Also, property-owner. Peter has his own island, replete with mermaid lagoon (which must be better than a hot tub) and pirate ship (frankly, 'owns own pirate ship' should be a must on any self-respecting woman's list).  

Why not? Oh, where to begin.  Aside from the obvious fact that liaisons with ‘The Boy Who Never Grew Up’ have bad connotations in this day and age, Peter would be the ultimate bait-and-switch date.  "Come to my magical island where we'll fly into the night together holding hands and ultimately defy death itself and you will never feel so free or young or alive and I'll tell you how you fill this empty aching hole in my life but like would you be a total doll and do the boys' laundry first? Shit, I need to pay the delivery guy, have you got a tenner?" This is a short-term option. Wendy knew it, and you need to know it too – think of it as the best holiday romance ever. Enjoy the mermaid lagoon and get out before he starts encouraging his friends to call you 'mum'.

5) Victor Frankenstein (Frankenstein, Mary Shelley).

Why? It's easy to forget Mary Shelley was 18 when she wrote Frankenstein but I swear, somewhere in her notes is a scrap of paper that reads, “and btdubs, Victor is like totally hot.” Within the first ten pages, the manly and (I imagine) waxed-mustachioed explorer Captain Walton is waxing lyrical about his new bff Victor and the lustrous melancholy of his eyes, amongst other attractions. If you can manage to mentally strip away a few decades of Hollywood-distorted mad scientists cackling in castles, you'll find that Shelley's protagonist is a tender twenty-one years old when he stitches together a bunch of corpses and creates an abomination in the eyes of God. Plus, there's significant textual evidence that suggests Mary was basing some elements of Victor on her boo Percy Bysshe, so I think it's safe to say that in her eyes at least, Victor Frankenstein is one fine piece of grave-robbing ass. You heard it here first. Also Percy Shelley might have been a Romantic proto-douche (and there's a whole other blog post there) but his portraits can confirm that he was, indeed, totally hot.

Why not? Well, he stitches together a bunch of corpses and creates an abomination in the eyes of God for a start. Also, the whole Gothic-Romantic hero thing turns out to be something of a double edged sword because, as a direct result of his 'Fun With Cadavers' science kit, Victor spends significant portions of the novel proving his dedication to being sensitive and shit by fainting, and at the same time blaming, variously, dead authors, living authors, dead scientists, living scientists, fate, destiny, chance, his father, his mother, his best friend and, not kidding, a tree. So a) he probably wouldn't remember to do the washing up and b) when you get home and ask him to do it, he'll tell you all about how it totally wasn't his fault because someone made an offhand remark about Percy Shelley's poetry and that reminded him of sleep and he had to go and do that instead. (Meta-burn. Thank you very much.)

4) Bertie Wooster (many books, P.G. Wodehouse)

Why? Bertie Wooster is a magical human being who attracts charming happenings full of whimsy and gentle confusion into his life, and you could be a part of that.  Whether making off with Aunt Dahlia's cow creamer or concealing the music hall origins of your chum's latest squeeze from the uncle upon whom he is financially dependent, your existence could only be improved by having this man around.  Tell me you wouldn't want to be in a P.G. Wodehouse novel and I'll tell you your soul has withered beyond the point of redemption, you sick, sad bastard.  You would get to be a member of the idle rich.  Your job would be having escapades.  Also Bertie is just, like, the nicest guy. Like, actually.  Not in a Nice Guy way.  He genuinely is a nice guy.

Why not? Here be actually-quite-terrifying-when-you-really-think-about-it-properly valets.  A few women have threatened to intrude upon the domestic equilibrium enjoyed by one boy and his manservant and none were ever heard from again.  And as totes adorbs as Bertie is, things might get a little wearing once you realise that you are being woken up for the hundred and twelfth day in a row by an argument between your significant other and his significant other over his polka dot spats or whatever it is now in the name of christ I'm invisible in my own home help me god please.

3) Odysseus (The Iliad, The Odyssey, Homer). Why? Epic. Hero. Not just any epic hero either, but a smart epic hero. Odysseus is the Batman of the Bronxe Age: ain't no invulnerability or flying sandals here (take that Achilles. And you, Perseus.) Just a really really determined dude. So if he says he's going to put those shelves up, he's damn well going to put those shelves up, but he's probably going to Tom Sawyer someone into doing it for him by, once again, being really smart. And then taking all the credit. Like smart people do. Let's not forget either that there's a slough of goddesses, nymphs and princesses queueing up for their turn at The Odyssey: Boardgame Edition (there are two rules: 1) Abduct hero. 2) Bone.) Foremost amongst these is the goddess Calypso, who keeps the Big O (see what I did there?) on her island as a sex slave for seven years. Got to be a reason. All I'm saying.

Why not? Man, he really wants to get home to his wife. Have some fun by all means, but know you're just a pitstop along the way to an epic book deal and twenty years' worth of reunion sex. If Olympian goddesses couldn't keep Odysseus tied down, you probably won't fare much better. He'll give you some stuff about needing his space and being a free spirit and before you even get a chance to turn his men into pigs again, he'll jump ship (literally) and you'll be left looking for the next epic hero to fix that dripping tap you never got round to.

2) Mr Darcy (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen).

Why? Self-evident. The ruder you get, the more he likes you in a tortured, brooding sort of way that doesn't involve murdering puppies (Heathcliffe, I am looking at you). Also a self-improving hero – Darcy walks the fine line between sociopath-god-help-you-restraining-order (Lovelace, Rochester, Heathcliffe again) and 'he's just shy' (literally any rom-com based on comic misinterpretation of character) meaning that he's genuinely the sneery hipster in the corner initially, but he works on not saying douchey things like “your family sucks and you're poor” and gets the girl eventually. The girl, incidentally, is too busy repeatedly saying things like, “Wow, I am a horrible judge of character” to fix his faults for him (Jane Eyre, you could learn something here), so just be chill. He'll get there. Also the whole book is basically about him trying and failing to repress his libido.

Why not? I have to say, I don't have much here , assuming you can get past the initial insults to your appearance, family, manners, class, financial status and pretty floral bonnet (probably). Maybe if you like loud music or immoderate drinking or the drugs that all the young people use these days, then he's not the man for you? But then again, Austen says that Lizzie makes him more fun. Damn, she's good.

1) Hamlet (Hamlet, William Shakespeare).

Why? The prince (sorry) of the fictional men. Because, contrary to what I began this list by saying, Hamlet is kind of whatever you want him to be, while also definitely being in possession of cheekbones so sharp they refract light (science). Seriously, the Victorians even thought he might have been a woman, so if you are looking for a receptacle into which, Pygmalion-like, you may pour every quality you have ever desired in a lover, then start with the one who fundamentally embodies the pain and joy of the human condition, and also fights off some pirates.

Why not? Where do you want to start? His in-universe track record isn't great, breaking up with his girlfriend by stabbing her dad through a curtain, which ranks only slightly above dumping via text. There's also some astonishingly good (bad, I mean bad) work going on in the daddy issues department with him being the only one on this list taking orders from a Ghost Dad who may or may not be a fractured remnant of his own tortured psyche. On the plus side, he loves his mother very much. A little too much? Perhaps. Also, in brief: gets touchy when his best friend calls him out on murdering-by-proxy two of their old uni mates, hipster-postures about how poor people totally don't understand art, talks during the theatre, is generally a self-pitying, solipsistic, intellectually superior, emotionally anguished, sexually repressed, arrogant, moody philosophy student. And now I've totally lost my train of thought. I'm sure I was supposed to be listing bad things.

(See also: Constantine from The Seagull, Edmund from King Lear, Prince Hal from Henry IV, Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, any other character that could feasibly be played by Ben Whishaw.)

(It's possible I may have a type.)

*Was in university, watching Horrible Histories.

**If you find yourself doing this then congratulations, you are a writer of bad fanfiction. Now burn your laptop, you are banned from the internet.

***None of this TV or film bullshit. Characters represented in a visual medium are played by actors and, as we all know, actors are raging whirlpools of neurosis, insecurity and heart-breakingly blind optimism, plus when you Wikipedia them they're always married and at least, like, ten years older than you thought they were.

****Imagine how disappointed he'd be with his present-day descendents. Casanova never had to descend to thinly-veiled homophobia and misogyny. He had books.

Death of/to the Author: Nine and Three Quarter Thoughts on the JK Rowling Shitstorm

A quick disclaimer here: I know most of you have lives.  I know most of you don't care.  I know the extent to which this story has been reported as 'news' is the most trifling bollocks ever.  However, I feel something along the lines of "oh god hold me my world is crumbling".

For those of you who don't have Harry Potter as a Google Alert (like what are you, some kind of nerd) the furore is thus: Emma Watson has guest edited Wonderland magazine and interviewed J.K. Rowling*.  Quel horror, you gasp in sarcastic French.  Wait a minute, judgey, because there's more.  A sneak preview of this interview has been splashing about all over the shop because in it - buckle up - JKR says she should never have put Hermione and Ron together as a couple, apparently also stating Hermione should have ended up with Harry instead. (I have marked the crazy parts in italics for your convenience.)

Naturally, I have some thoughts.

1) UGH FUCK YOUUUUUUUU JK ROWLING LIKE WHAT DO YOU KNOW YOU ONLY WROTE THE BOOKS - oh my god, down Fifteen Year Old Me, get down - WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO RUIN MY LIIIIIIIIFE - like seriously shut the fuck up, you have an undergrad degree, you are doing a masters - IT'S SO UNFAIR - GET BACK IN THE BOX.

2) Rowling states that she wrote the relationship as a form of "wish fulfilment fantasy"and "for reasons that have very little to do with literature".  Rowling has perhaps revealed more about herself than she anticipated here, given that she has previously stated how much she identifies with Hermione, for I look askance at the woman who looks at the sulky, immature, petty, ginger sidekick and goes "sigh I guess that was just wish fulfilment" and then at the dark, brooding, angsty hero and goes "yeah, much more realistic".** But then I shrug because, whatever, I guess it takes all sorts to make a world.  However, if literally all that is going on here is that JKR's tastes have changed in the last seven years and she no longer craves the flesh of red-haired men, then bad form, madam, that is not worth my heartbreak.

3) Buried within this flippancy is a sort of serious point: I bet a sizeable chunk of the female readership identified with Hermione.  I did.  I was a school girl and I liked books and I had bad hair and I located my self-worth in my intelligence and not my terminally disappointing appearance so I obviously did.   This is important for two reasons: a) most of the time, fans who didn't want Hermione to end up with Ron meant "I don't want to end up with Ron" and b) most of those fans didn't want to end up with Ron because he was (apparently) stupid and poor. (What I am giving you here is a précis of the internet in 2006.) No book should have a duty to send a message of any kind, but in a series that was all about fighting arbitrary elitism, I find the union of muggle-born go-getter Granger and pure blood dependable Weasley much more positive than heroine-marries-lost-prince-of-fantasy-kingdom.  And by the way, self-insertion is a completely legitimate teenage response to fiction (hello Twilight) because it helps you figure out how you feel about the world.  Odds on, those Harry/Hermione shippers*** will go on to have a lifetime of polite, slightly boring relationships where they die a little inside each day and the Ron/Hermione shippers will have sparky, challenging, often difficult but also passionate relationships.  (Look, I never said I wasn't biased.)

4) Having said that, I cannot actually find a quotation suggesting that JK thinks she should have hooked up Harry and Hermione instead but since that's the headline everyone is leading with, I am forced to accept it due to the infallible integrity of the press (oh, just make up your own punchline).  This is what I find most upsetting (if you are not on board with me using the word 'upsetting' to legitimately describe my feelings towards a fictional relationship between fictional people, I feel this blog is not for you).  After calming down from my initial shuddering nausea, I was able to hear the small voice in my head saying, "Do you really mind if Rowling thinks Ron and Hermione shouldn't have ended up together? Maybe she just means they probably realistically wouldn't have got married and Christ knows, we all regret the Epilogue." Which, actually, is fair enough.  I'm not a huge fan of the Young Adult Fantasy trope of meeting your spouse at the age of twelve or whatever, and it's particularly egregious in the Harry Potter series.  There are so many teenage marriages I wouldn't be surprised if the next 'revelation' is that Hogwarts is located somewhere in the Bible Belt.  Also I hear if you don't get hitched literally right on graduation day you immediately become a spinster and have to live with Mrs Figg in a state of quasi-Sapphic tension.

5) Anyway, what I'm saying is that there was a part of me that was always expecting Hermione to pack up her bags at the end of the series and go and study History or Law at Oxbridge because settling for wizard A Levels wouldn't be nearly enough of a challenge.  (And how much do you want to read the spin-off series 'Hermione Granger and the Cambridge Law Degree'? She battles Finals.)  And maybe while she's there she meets a nice muggle boy and they have two children, and one is magic and one isn't but they are both excellent at referencing and their footnotes are divine.  What I don't buy is that if you take Ron out of the picture then there is literally only one other option for Hermione, and that is Harry "Stop Trying To Help Me Hermione Oh No Wait I Really Need You To Help Me" Potter.  Harry, who always complained about Hermione being "shrill" and "bossy" and "dull as shit to hang out with" (one of these quotes is not real).  Who, every time he was forced to spend time alone with her, spent the whole time going WHERE IS MY MANLY MAN FRIEND RON OH I WISH RON WERE HERE I LANGUISH I PINE.  Like, if we're rewriting history here, maybe it's Harry/Ron we should be focussing on, if you know what I'm saying.  And I think you do.

6) Actually I could probably get my head around Hermione ending up with literally almost any other character in the series.  Any of the other Weasley children, including Ginny.  Pansy Parkinson.  Ernie Macmillan. Mad-Eye Moody, for frick's sake (it would be like Dorothea and Casaubon in Middlemarch).**** Just... not Harry.   From the ages of seven to seventeen I enjoyed Harry and Hermione's friendship immensely, and I enjoyed it all the more because it was safe and loving and uncomplicated and without bullshit, and because it was different to the usual female-lead-hooks-up-with-male-lead-and-sometimes-there's-some-other-comic-relief-guy trope.  Which is something that His Dark Materials (a far superior series in many respects) did not do, to my eleven-year-old chagrin.  I don't know who Ron would end up with though.  Oh wait.  I forgot.  Harry.

7) On that note, let us face it, there are other relationships we could be regretting in the series.  If Rowling really wants to revisit the past then let's embrace this opportunity to find out what in the holy fuck was Harry and Ginny about? She pretty much decided to marry him the first time she saw him when she was a child.  She wanted to be a child bride.  Run, Harry, run.  Then come back and try to explain to me how vaguely Oedipal thoughts about sunlight glinting off red hair constitutes the basis for a marriage.  And let's not even start on Remus "Totally Heterosexual" Lupin, shall we?  (Except to say Professor Lupin, teach me about grindylows, I will be your best student ever, you patchwork, chocolate-eating hero.) All this is ironic because, of course, Ron and Hermione's relationship does work and, as someone who has never quite given up on the tactic of saying "I find your arguments unconvincing and you smell" instead of "I fancy you", I also always found it to be by far the most realistic. (Having said that, there is no greater turn-off than a poorly conceived argument.  I have standards.) It's mostly comprised of huffy silences and irritable jealousy, which is exactly how polite British teenagers who are attracted to each other behave, with the occasional outburst of sniping and just a few moments that, though simple, are unbelievably tender.  Brainy, overly intense self-starter with a propensity towards merciless observation of the rules seeks combative, insecure but quietly selfless funny man for argumentative but mutually supportive relationship.  It doesn't have to work, but you know that it really really does.

(I'll leave it there because Fifteen Year Old Me is clamouring for me to write another four pages about how Hermione constantly expects more of Ron than anyone else does, and how Ron makes Hermione laugh even when she's at her most disapproving, and how Hermione goes pink around him like a million times and how Ron's compliments are always a bit adorably too extravagant and also how Harry and Luna Lovegood were meant to be together in a holy union of weirdo outsiderdom and caps lock rage and - BACK. IN. THE. BOX.)

8) I've see a quite a few comments on various articles talking about Rowling's 'right' to say what she said.  Let's be clear: of course J.K. Rowling has the right to say she would do some things differently if she could.  She wrote the series, I think she is allowed.  As a writer, it would be strange if she hadn't developed in the intervening years.  Even Shakespeare re-wrote King Lear, y'know? Dickens gave Great Expectations a whole new (sappier but better written) ending.  Rowling is invested in her work as  - I'm gonna say it - an artist, and I'm sure wanted to discuss her writing as an artist in that magazine interview.  BUT (because you knew it was coming), should she have?  I spent most of the Literary Theory sections of my degree drawing cartoons of Tony Harrison from The Mighty Boosh but I'm pretty sure some guy (was it Derrida? It's usually Derrida) said that once you put your work out there you cease to have agency over it.  It exists only in the minds of your readership.  The author ceases to have a say.  In other words, sorry JKR but you wrote Ron/Hermione so shut up and deal.  But that doesn't take into account the relationship Rowling has always had with her readers, which is to say she's active, she engages, and it's not the first time she's revealed information about the world of the series after the fact.  She knows that she can't comment on any part of the books without it having significance to the readership (in the interview she says she can "hear the rage and fury") - in the wake of 'Dumbledore is gay', Pottermore and the attendant books, Rowling has a track record of expanding her universe in interviews and more, building herself up as the divine (and perhaps only) authority on the series, and ultimately that just picks the pocket of the reader's own imagination.  So, knowing that anything she said about the series would have its own kind of truth to it, and knowing how loved her characters and their relationships are, I think yeah, it was a bit of a dick move.

9) And that's the big takeaway from all of this.  The word to describe the series that has come up most frequently in all the articles I've read is "beloved".  Harry Potter mattered to a hell of a lot of kids (and continues to matter to a hell of a lot of young adults).  I fell in love with those books not because they are perfect (spoilers: they are not) but because my reading experience of them was treasured and brilliant and intense.  I fell in love with them as they were, and though I may have grumbled about things here and there, it was with the affection that one uses to complain about a sibling.  I never really wished anything to be different - even the things I would have changed were part of my deeply unique relationship with the series.  For the same reason that I never wanted to see it on film, I don't want that world to shift.  And if Rowling says it, some part of me will take it as gospel, and it will change the characters and relationships I grew up with.  So I hope Rowling does not, in future, choose to share her doubts with us - or at least phrases them in a more equivocal way.  I hope she acknowledges that, whether she meant to or not, she has created something that has a life of its own, that means a lot to its readers, that was always so much more than a franchise, and that, in all its imperfection, is perfect to me, and to so many others.  And that, if you're looking for tips, Jo, is true love.


Three Quarters)
*I am lucky Internal Feminist Me has powerful slapping hands to beat down Jealous Bitch Me who frequently screams "GODDAMMIT WATSON GIVE ME BACK MY LIFE".
**Ron is one of my favourite characters, FYI.  Don't be all up in my grill.  I'm just saying it's whack, is all.
***Shipper = internet slang for a fan who is a proponent of two characters entering into a sexual or romantic relationship (the internet is clever this way).  Can also be used as a verb, as in "I kind of ship the Tenth Doctor and the Eleventh Doctor but don't tell anyone because I think that might technically be either incest or masturbation". Or "I very much ship Me/Ice Cream." Use it in a sentence today.  It'll make you feel better.
****I originally put a whole spiel here about how Dorothea and Casaubon's relationship plays out and then I realised that was major spoilers for Middlemarch, so if you have read it then high five, you know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't then now you'll have to in order to understand that joke, and I will have done a little bit of good today.  (Fred Vincy/Mary Garth = OTP.  You can look that one up on your own.)

Ancestral Voices Prophesying War: 'Cold War' (Doctor Who) and 'Walk of Punishment' (Game of Thrones) Reviews

War is in the air on both shows this week.  I can't think of a better linking factor than that, so let's plunge in.

Doctor Who Series 7, Part 2, Episode 3: Cold War

Well, that was cracking.  That was like Das Boot collided with Alien* via The Thing.  Captained by Davos Seaworth.**

In a continuation of what I have been saying about the show getting all nostalgic about itself, what with the anniversary coming up, we got a revisiting of a classic Who monster this week, the Ice Warrior(s).  And boy, is it working.  Not just the resurrection of an old foe, but the return to 'Monster of the Week' done right - dark corridors, increasing body count, tense stand-off, obvious yet well-conceived metaphor.  This episode also embraced the best of New Who as well by delivering a couple of twists on the old formula - instead of the West, we land on a Russian sub (cue lots of fun with actors shouting "DAMMIT, ONEGIN" and "PIOTR IS IN THE HOLD, COMRADE" at each other), and instead of a suited and booted Ice Warrior, we get a pair of disembodied and touchingly non-CGI claws dangling from the ceiling like the crane in an arcade game.  It was both scary and fun, serious and tongue-in-cheek - in beverage terms, it was a lovely cuppa.

Last week's 'Warm Respect' on the Clara-o-meter is rising swiftly towards 'Soppy Adolescent Puppy Love'.  Is it just me, or is she the first companion in a good long while to actually react like a person?  Her anxieties over negotiating the peace treaty (it was a test, we all know it was a test, Doctor, you have failed at subtlety***), being struck by the realness of the eviscerated bodies as the Doctor dashes off to do something sonic-y because bodies are ten a penny to him, her agreement to actually stay put when told, her tentative mention of Skaldak's daughter - it was all beautifully conceived and acted.  Mad props to Jenna-Louise Coleman, and mad props to Mark Gatiss for knowing how to write Watson right (I guess he's had practice).  Of course, if I am being really and truly honest (and what better place for that than the internet, right?) I know the real reason I like Clara is because she behaves the way I would behave.  The way I suspect most of us would behave, in fact - scared and stupid and making jokes to deflect the mindfuck of the whole TIME-TRAVELLING SPACE ALIEN thing, and just occasionally sharp enough or human enough to spot something important, save the day and comment on it - who wouldn't want to say the words "We save the world" as much as humanly possible? And then hug it out afterwords.  Naturally.****  The whole 'impossible' parallel lives thing is incidental - Clara is good enough to watch on her own merit, and that really is special.

I can't quite work out her relationship with The Doctor yet though.  Most Doctor-Companion dynamics are played as analogies for romantic relationships, if not out and out cases of sexual tension, and while he seems very keen to impress her, there's a sense in which she's something of a specimen because of her time-and-space-and-death-defying tendencies.  That hug at the end was a little bit fatherly, a little bit grandfatherly, and a little bit something else that makes this a very bloody interesting dynamic to watch unfold.  Long may it continue, I say, and drive us all mad with the ambiguity.

The supporting cast was equally excellent.  Tobias Menzies on excellent cheekbone-sharp form as dour, trigger-happy Stepashin - my only complaint is that he copped it too soon, I would have liked to see him team up with Skaldak for some good old-fashioned murder funtimes.  David Warner was likewise underused, I felt, which is only testament to how excellent he was when he got the chance.  I did keep waiting for him to turn into the villain, though, which is maybe Hollywood's fault.  Liam Cunningham is now no longer allowed to play anything except gruff yet ultimately trustworthy sea captains, and long may he reign.  Props, too, to the rest of the sub's suspiciously young, nubile seamen (tee hee hee).

Menzies and Warner's lack of resolution is a symptom of Gatiss episodes in general though: the pay-off is never quite good enough to live up to the excellent situations he creates.  All three of his episodes in the Moffat era have now ended with the villain essentially being talked down and told to be a nicer person ('Victory of the Daleks', Amy convinces Bill Paterson that it's much nicer to be a human than a Dalek robot, and 'Night Terrors', the Doctor tells Daniel Mays to tell his alien son not to be scared).  Gatiss writes people and dialogue excellently, with warmth and heart, and has an excellent eye/nose/ear for the grotesque and absurd but his plotting leaves something to be desired and there's always a point at which his episodes become Scooby-Doo-scary rather than Moffat-scary.  He's been named as a potential successor to the Blessed St Stephen, but I don't see it.  I'm just not sure his imagination is Doctor Who-shaped - it's all a bit too clever sometimes, but without the flare for spectacle that lets Moffat get away with it.  All a bit too grown up, in other words.

But this is a general reflection, and the oddly prescient eighties setting (heaven knows what they would have done with any Thatcher references) coupled with the chilling motif of mutually assured destruction worked on Gatiss' terms.  I do wonder how many seven year olds were nodding along going, "Yes, of course, because the SALT talks failed in 1979 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan" but hey ho (yes, I know actual history, not just fictional history).  It was a beautiful analogy for how we relate to the unknown, and I suspect Clara's central role in the episode - despite spending much of it waiting backstage, as it were - was due to this.  Lots of funny jokes about Ultravox too.

This may well have been Gatiss' best effort yet, though I'll always harbour a soft spot for Series 1's 'The Unquiet Dead' (Chris Eccleston telling Simon Callow's Dickens that he's a huge fan while in a hansom cab fleeing walking corpses).  He seems to be on a winning streak, actually, after ending Sherlock on such a flawless, ovary-destroying high.  Thus far the series continues to shine in its embrace of its own Glorious History (a mention of Susan last week, and I've just confirmed my suspicion that the HADS was an Old Who concept via the magic of Google).  We know there are Gaiman-retooled Cybermen coming up in a few weeks' time, and an exploration of the TARDIS interior even sooner than that.  Best of all, I've just found out that River Song will be dropping by for snogs and adventure in the series finale, also including a new Moffat villain called the Whispermen.  I'm expecting a barnstormer here, and for once I don't feel over-optimistic about hoping.


Game of Thrones Series 3, Episode 3: Walk of Punishment

And punishment was very much our theme this week with the episode ending on an event I've been strenuously and determinedly not spoiling for anyone who hasn't read the books: Jaime bids a sudden farewell to his right hand.  How great are Jaime and Brienne? Very bloody great is the answer, with their sulky bickering sitting back to back on a horse turning inch by inch towards a mutual respect so grudging it leaves skid marks.  They're finding each other's sensitive spots too, with Brienne asserting that Jaime's best days are behind him (boy, is she prescient) and Jaime suggesting getting raped might go over easier if she imagines it's her Dead Gay King.  Jaime rides in with the most casual rescue imaginable later on (metaphorically, he's chained to a tree), preventing said rape by pointing out she could be ransomed for a hefty sum, then hedging his bets and playing for his own release too, which comes off considerably less well.  Don't worry, it's all character development.  They're Not So Different After All.

Elsewhere in Westeros, the worlds of Doctor Who and Game of Thrones continue to collide with Tobias Menzies showing up again as family fuck-up Edmure Tully.  I don't think the Tullys are really anyone's favourite (their sigil is a fish) but Menzies manages to make the family trait of self-righteousness-in-the-face-of-overwhelming-evidence-of-just-being-wrong sort of endearing, especially as he faces a double dressing down by both his nephew King Robb (what happened to you, man? You used to be cool) and his uncle Brynden Blackfish (an excellently cast Clive Russell - but then, they're all excellently cast).  Actually, Robb recovered a little of his equilibrium this week, without Robb's Non-Canonical Wife to weigh him down - even GRR Martin himself, a man who, after all, is not known for his restraint, kept Jeyne Westerling (Robb's Canonical Wife) largely off the page, knowing that we want to see the King in the North being...well, a king.  One of the successes of that storyline in the books is that what might play out as a tale of love defying fate elsewhere becomes a rash and foolhardy act when viewed in the context of Westeros' special brand of pointy-stick-orientated politics.  The television series' greatest misstep so far has been to take the first view of it, and it sticks out like a chopped off hand.

We're back with Dany again this week, who I'm guessing is cooking up some punishments of her own and developing some much-needed steel ("All men must die.  But we are not men.") as Ser Jorah "Friendzoned" Mormont and Ser Barristan "Obi Wan" Selmy vie for first dibs on the advising.  We get Jorah's pragmatism v Barristan's romanticism; which one will Dany choose?  Well, I already know because I've read the books.  But it's really good.  Anyway, one of the few moments when knowing the series came at a disadvantage as I was desperately hoping we'd get to see Dany's next actions in the same episode but no dice.  Instead, dragon-selling.

Negotiations and machinations took centre stage actually, despite the highest-thus-far injury count (dead slaves, dead horses, dead soldiers, near-rape, Jaime's hand) as we returned to King's Landing for some more Government 101 - this week, finance!  Always good news as it means my pal Littlefinger will be smarming about somewhere (sounding this week like he's lost his voice, but smarming really takes its toll on a person); we get him and Tyrion expounding two very salient views on how to manage a country's finances, it's either "make the numbers dance, fuck the consequences" (Littlefinger) or "really really don't borrow money you know you can't pay back" (Tyrion).  Topical.  Anyone else automatically assume Littlefinger had paid off Podrick Payne's frighteningly flexible prostitutes himself as a means of transferring the debt and being owed a favour? Or was it actually just an opportunity for Peter Dinklage to show us how good he is at being wry and Pod really is a sex wizard?  Anyway, Littlefinger's off to the Vale to woo Lysa "Thousand Yard Stare" Arryn and put his own nefarious plots into practice.  Personally, I hope he gets a spin off.*****

A quick round-up of the rest then.  Stephen Dillane continues to be excellent as Stannis Baratheon, who - next to Daenerys Targaryen - probably has the best actual claim to the Iron Throne yet is a proper hardline bastard, like.  "I want to see Joffrey dead," he says, to the ringing sound of no-one anywhere arguing.  Maybe if he just put a wall up around Dragonstone and took a few days off with Davos and Melisandre, he'd be a bit happier.  Certainly happier than pondering whether he's ready to spill his child's blood for the throne, after Melisandre rejects his advances. ("It would kill you," she says.  Now that's body confidence.)  Not much over the Wall, just more opportunities for Jon Snow to look conflicted and adorable as everyone continues to want to either hug him or slap him or maybe both at the same time, as Ciaran Hinds orders the Wildings off to war against the Night's Watch.  Aforementioned Night's Watch continue to bully Sam Tarly as they return to the home of the monstrous Craster (blimey, it's a good thing I've read the books or it would be really hard keeping all these bearded old white guys straight - I don't want to sound racist but they all look the same).  I spotted Burn Gorman amongst them today too, aka Owen from Torchwood, for whom I have always had a soft spot despite his propensity for playing unpleasant little squits.  No Davos or Joffrey or Margaery this week (boo) and no Sansa or Bran either (some kind of noise that is like shrugging, only noise), with only the briefest of Greyjoys (have a drink on me, show), but really I only notice who wasn't there when I'm writing these blogs and cannot make inappropriate comments about them - another testament to how well balanced this show is.

What really made this episode stand out, though, was the little moments.  There must have always been a temptation to hurtle through the books at breakneck speed, cramming in as many events as possible (including quite a few broken necks), but the series has now fully established itself as an entity in its own right, going at its own pace.  The fact that it can afford to lie back and toss us a delightful scene about Podrick Payne being a sex genius or Hot Pie baking unconvincing wolf bread for Arya (reminding me that Gendry is one of my many favouritest characters ever in the process) is fantastic.  It also brings an actual sense of suspense to a series where, largely, I know what happens: these characters are different, and stand on their own two feet quite apart from their book counterparts.  Because of slight but clever deviations from the source material, I'm genuinely not sure where the whole Theon and Simon from Misfits thing is going, though I have grave (and gruesome) suspicions - likewise Arya and Gendry's jaunt through Sherwood Forest with the Merry Men.  Sorry, Brotherhood Without Banners (but really now).  All in all, another great episode that displays a consummate skill for storytelling.  Is it next week yet?

This week's winner: Argh.  I am starting to see the flaw in trying to compare an episodic piece of new writing with a serialisation of familiar source material, but let it never be said that I don't commit to my bad ideas.  'Cold War' was certainly some of Gatiss' best work yet, and a great showcase for Clara, but with some plot and pacing problems.  'Walk of Punishment' wasn't quite as entertaining as last week's episode, but contained some things I've been desperately hanging on to see and some lovely added bonuses too.  Really difficult, but I'm going to say 'Cold War' just pips it - we already know Game of Thrones is excellent television but I'm still waiting for it to blow me out the water, whereas Doctor Who reached a rare level of sophistication.  Beautiful work on both sides.


*I've just checked and the Guardian's Doctor Who blog has used the exact same comparison minus The Thing, which is a) unsurprising as it's a very good comparison but b) extremely annoying so you'll have to take it on faith that I got there first, and the The Thing reference is all my own work.
**I can only assume his absence from this week's Game of Thrones can be explained by the note he left on Stannis' pillow saying "Gon 2 cptn sub.  BRB.  Miss u.  Davs. xoxo"
***Also a callback to the Christmas episode dialogue on the roof - this is the second occasion that Our Clara has echoed something one of Other Claras has said.
****Totally called that Skaldak's daughter thing, btdubs.  In fact, it's what I would have done.  I definitely would not have, say, whimpered in a corner and then propositioned Matt Smith in light of our impending deaths.
*****With Pete Campbell.  You would definitely watch that gameshow.