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As you Like it: A Frankly Annotated First Folio Edition (Old English Edition)

von William Shakespeare

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1881,184,506 (3.83)1
"This annotated version of As you Like It provides a detailed guide to its Elizabethan language and its references. It restores the drama to the language of the First Folio of 1623, including the original spelling, capitalization and punctuation. Practical annotation provides insights into the puns, allusions and world-play that characterize all of Shakespeare's dramas"--Provided by publisher.… (mehr)
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Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
I received this as a LibraryThing Early Reader book, in exchange for an honest review.

(Warning – pretty much all the language I generally avoid in reviews up to now shows up here, en masse.)

Now, see, they teach this stuff in school. In high school. And the kids sit there bored out of their minds in class. Little do they know.

The idea behind this edition of Shakespeare's comedy – and, it appears, also Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet in the series so far – is to undo some of the "cleaning up" that the plays have suffered over the centuries. Papadinis has gone back to the earliest printed versions of the work (for this, to the First Folio) to suss out what the original punctuation looked like, trying to undo layer after layer of standardization and "correction". Also, she combs through the text word by word with a few dozen reference books to hand trying to determine any and all alternate meanings for words and phrases. One of the first examples, given in the introduction, is the phrase Shakespeare used fairly often and probably most memorably in Hamlet, "country matters". This is fairly commonly known, I think (I knew, so therefore I tend to assume anyone knows), to be a euphemism for sex; I always sort of assumed it was some sort of reference to the highjinks lads and lasses get up to in the meadow. Not quite. "Country" was pronounced as it is now, so for Hamlet to say this as he lays his head in Ophelia's lap – emphasize the first syllable of the phrase, now … Get it, wink wink nudge nudge? That's what I expect from wordplay in Shakespeare.

I'm a little dubious about the extent to which this idea is developed in this edition, though. It feels like a drastic overcompensation for bowdlerism. While I fully agree with the precept that the plays had to compete with bawdy houses and bear baitings and cockfights and executions to sell tickets, and that Shakespeare was more than capable of not only double but triple and quadruple entendres, and that, in brief, it was all much dirtier than we really understand it to be now (as in "country matters") … I don't think it was necessarily as steeped in sex and excrement as this annotation suggests. I do believe that there were an absolutely gob-smacking number of words which stood for sex acts and various body parts; if nothing else, plays had to be gotten past the censors. But – well, take Act one, scene one of this play as presented here.

On the surface, and as it is probably staged 99.9% of the time, this is a scene in which a younger brother, Orlando, complains bitterly about his lot, first to the audience and then to his oppressive older brother. It's clear and straightforward, and easy to understand. Now, to be sure, it benefits from the idea of multiple meanings of words, with the end result that by the end of the scene it is clear that Orlando has been, as the editor says, "treated like shit" and has been, figuratively at least (I hope figuratively) pretty thoroughly buggered. (I sincerely hope this wasn't in any way meant to hint that there actually was a forced incestuous relationship there; that would put a slightly different spin on what after all is a comedy…) But does this add anything to what a straight and straightforward reading brings? I don't think so. Orlando has been treated like shit, and has been screwed out of his rights; I don't think it's really necessary to use that big a hammer to make sure the point goes home.

They say that to a man with a hammer everything begins to look like a nail; to a woman with a shelf full of Elizabethan reference books everything begins to look X-rated?

This annotated edition goes back to the First Folio for spelling and punctuation, for reasons she makes clear and which make good sense. I, however, am using text as found online, to make my life easier. So. In this first scene, there are:

- At least ten words and phrases which are defined as also meaning "buggers" or "fucks" or "screws": grieves, shake me up, be naught, pezant/peasant; trained; "it" means "sex"; foil; give him the payment; go; search (to search is to probe, so there you go)
- At least five words and phrases which are defined as also meaning sodomy/sodomize/be sodomized: endure; villaine (eunuch, or pathic, which I now know is the passive participant in sodomy); offend; be patient; old dog (as in "be used like an")
- At least six words and phrases which are defined as also meaning penis: (spirit; that; part; grace (with disgrace meaning castration); thing; life)
- There is a "shit" theme, too: "It", besides meaning sex, also means "chamberpot"; somehow "nearer to his reverence" relates to turds in some way; "elder", as in "elder brother", is a purgative (a derivative of the elder tree); rankness; "clear all" is the equivalent to a purging; Kindle = candle = suppository = Orlando is a piece of shit. (I'm not tempted to change the name of my Kindle.)

"His horses are bred better" - "Horses" is a homonym for "whores", of course.

"He lets me feed with his hinds" – with a little acrobatic definition of "hinds" it means that Oliver makes an ass of Orlando.

Take the line "I will no longer endure it". Rather than meaning simply that he's mad as hell and not gonna take this any more, it becomes something else entirely: He will no longer endure it = he will no longer be a "patient", or "sodomite", and suffer – allow himself to be buggered, as "it" is (as aforementioned) the sexual act.

Oliver asks Orlando if, having been given a pittance, he will beg when that is spent – and "spent" is made to refer to ejaculation, because "that" means penis.

Orlando says he will "buy my fortunes" – which refers to Lady Fortune, and Lady Fortune's buy or bay = vagina.

"Some part of your will" = "On the other hand, perhaps Oliver means to fulfill his own will (lust, libido…) by giving Orlando's part ('division in the buttocks'…) his part (penis, testicles, and semen…) – i.e., to 'fuck' him."

"Her cousin so loves her, being ever from their cradles bred together": cousins = harlots; together = mutually engaged, as lovers; and that they "bred" (cherish, foster) each other's cradles (vaginas): therefore Rosalind and Celia are lovers.

"Either you might stay him from his intendment or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into" = If Orlando "persists in his intendment" ("a purpose, an intent"…), he will suffer intendment (i.e. "be screwed"). "Tent" is "the penis" … to "tent" is "to probe"… Orlando will brook (bear or suffer) disgrace (sexual violation…) in the such ("pubic-anal area"…)…

"Entrap thee by some treacherous device": entrap = screw; trap = female pudendum; device = emasculate (vice = penis
All – the whole – hole – arse hole
Nothing remains = nothing is left to do but ensure Orlando gets his remain = balance of sum of money = payment = fucked.

In case it wasn't clear, many words do double duty, adding layers of profanity to the thing. (Not that kind of thing. The book. Get your mind out of the gutter. Well, no, don't bother till this is over….)

Bang, bang, bang goes the hammer.

To me this is all a little like reinterpreting Dickens this way:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" = "It", as we've seen, means "penis", which leads naturally to "worst" as a homonym for "wurst" = sausage = penis. To "best" is to overcome – clearly = sodomy; "times" = rhythm of metronome or beating heart = rhythm = copulation.

Obviously this is not remotely a subtext of Tale of Two Cities – Dickens was a Victorian writing for Victorians, after all – whereas there certainly is a bawdy undertone (and, often, overtone) to Shakespeare. But to pick each word apart from the rest in its sentence and then reconstruct the line with alternate meanings … I don’t buy it. For one thing, it's exhausting for nearly every line to have hidden significance. For another, context is so completely discounted that I find it hard to credit such verbal calisthenics to Shakespeare, who was, after all, first and foremost a writer.

There is no denying this is a lovely edition; it's nice to have the play spread out luxuriously over a well-made thick trade paperback, with lots of room to breathe and such thorough annotation. So many paperbacks of the plays seem hell-bent on conserving space, squishing notes on the text into space dictated by the setting of the text itself. If scene ii takes up six pages, then the notes have to fit into whatever room is allotted over those six pages, no matter what. This edition goes in the opposite direction, fitting the play around the notes, and there's plenty of elbow room for extensive background on allusion and quote. It's fascinating to read the text as it was printed in the First Folio – and surprising to me how comprehensible it is. (YMMV: I'm a freak, remember.) And I'm impressed to the point of awe at the sheer scope of research that went into this project. I just wish the reverse-bowdlerism hadn't been taken to quite this extreme. It puts me in mind of the two opposing images of Elizabeth I: the Virgin Queen, and the story certain anti-Stratfordians favor – that not only was she not literally a Virgin Queen, she slept with just about everyone and had secret bastards littering the landscape. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: that's Newton's Third Law writ simple. This annotation is far beyond equal and opposite.

So: do I agree with this book completely? Obviously not. But c'est la guerre – and Shakepearean scholarship, from my little observation post, really does on occasion resemble warfare. Do I recommend this? Absolutely. The research is impressive and valuable. I look forward to getting hold of the other plays Ms. Papadinis has worked on. ( )
  Stewartry | Feb 28, 2013 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
Papadinis is an experienced and articulate Shakespeare producer and director. In this book (and series) she is arguing two points: first, that any serious production should start from the First Folio, and not from a modern edited version of the play; and second, that Shakespeare was much bawdier than he is normally given credit for. Both arguments are sound but pushed too far. It should not be the case, for example, that only the First Folio should serve as the source for a modern production; a modern director/dramaturg would sensibly start there, but would feel free to look at other quartos and folios for alternate views, and at the history of editorial comments on the subject play.

By far the larger part of Papadinis's argument is that Shakespeare's plays are deeply and constantly layered with bawdy references, and that these must be made clear to a modern audience. Best line from the introduction: "Shakespearean editors abide eternally in the Never-Never-Land of the seventh-grade classroom." Papadinis then goes on to make the valid point that the Globe and other theaters were banned from London for a reason, and were out in the suburbs with brothels and bear-baiting arenas. She also notes that some of the theatrical entrepreneurs of the day had other interests, including brothels. So far, so good, particularly for Shakespeare writing in the Elizabethan period, in romantic comedy, at the Globe.

But one striking attribute of Shakespeare is that he can drive otherwise intelligent people to extremes, and perhaps Papadinis has fallen into this trap. It seems pretty clearly the case that Shakespeare's plays would vary with circumstance; what might work well in an afternoon performance at the Globe might not go so well when the King's Men put on the same play at the Blackfriars in front of a royal audience.

More substantively, Papadinis provides annotation that gives the maximally smutty interpretation to each line of the play. It is sensible at this point to remember that any reasonably competent actor can give a smutty reading of a grocery list, and a really good actor can do the same with random selections from a phone book. The English language lends itself to sex: consider that the verbs "have", "go", "do", "take", "give", and on and on ad infinitum can all be used in a sexual context. Or not.

In "As You Like It", we are looking at a play which is about love, and ends in four marriages. There is plenty of room for lust along the way, and Shakespeare clearly took advantage of these opportunities. But constant smut isn't funny or interesting, as anybody who has sat through more than one pornographic film can attest. It beggars belief that the greatest dramatic poet in history spent his time loading sexual innuendo into every other line of his plays--they simply wouldn't have been much good in the theater. Interested readers may pass the time by counting the number of words that Papadinis asserts actually mean "penis", "vagina", or various forms of copulation and defecation. The instances likely run into the hundreds. But sometimes a reference to wine really is to wine, not to semen; and a reference to a man's chin is really to his chin, not his penis; and a shepherd's reference to the moon means the moon, not a vagina. To borrow from a more modern reference, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

This book is an excellent resource for anybody looking to stage "As You Like It", or otherwise seriously study the play. In addition to the extended sexual referencing, Papadinis provides a great many notes on non-sexual matters, which would assist any modern reader in better understanding Shakespeare's language. The book is not set up for an easy read, and as noted in other reviews is not meant for your average seventh grader. I should think that reasonably mature readers from late in high school would benefit from this edition.

In summary: a really useful book, particularly if the reader exercises his or her own editorial judgement when moving from this version to an actual staged play. ( )
  charles.littrell | Aug 26, 2012 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
Although this wasn't entirely what I expected, I found the result fascinating. As a longtime fan of Shakespeare, I appreciated the opportunity to put this play in context and gain insight into some of the more obscure references present in the text.
  sstaheli | Jul 28, 2012 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
Editions of Shakespeare are 2 cents a dozen, so it is refreshing to find one which has some real meat. The introduction justifiying this line of editions (and one which could be applied generally to other plays) was truly intresting, particularly detailing the evolution of Shakespeare's text. The detailed listing of alternate words and spellings along with the endnotes detailing how exactly the play's text was constructed was particularly helpful to. I think this would be an excellent resource for a student, even with the baudy bits.
  parelle | Jul 25, 2012 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
Though As You Like It is a wonderfully fun play - and NYC's Shakespeare in the Park is currently performing it to great applause -it would and will be greatly enhanced as this"frankly annoatated" edition begins to find a readership among both directors and actors as well as playgoers. I actually found the notes very helpful - and not just the sexually charged ones. This is serious scholarship and deserves great attention. I hope many more volumes are in the works so that the whole Shakespearean canon will be treated with this fresh playful and "frank" approach. Brava Demitra Papadinis! ( )
  michaelg16 | Jul 8, 2012 |
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"This annotated version of As you Like It provides a detailed guide to its Elizabethan language and its references. It restores the drama to the language of the First Folio of 1623, including the original spelling, capitalization and punctuation. Practical annotation provides insights into the puns, allusions and world-play that characterize all of Shakespeare's dramas"--Provided by publisher.

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