That's What He Said

I don't remember exactly when it was, but I was directing an Off-Broadway production of Shakespeare's Life of Henry V (which really should be called Henry V's Wars and Courtship since it doesn't have much to do with any part of his life other than those) at the time.  I was puzzling over modern figures who would be analogous to Henry and was summarizing his personality and achievements in my head.  I thought this process might help lead me to a production approach that would bring the audience closer to the play in performance.  So Henry was a young leader, thrust into the limelight when his father died relatively early in his reign.  His father was beloved by some and derided by others and a great warrior.  Henry was a bit of a dark horse as Prince--he hung out with low-life drinkers and thieves and other entertaining figures who are prominent in the Henry IV plays and whose lives diminish in Henry V in ways that are engaging but less funny as time goes by.  Henry also has this strange speech in Henry IV where as Prince Hal, he explains to the audience that the reason he is behaving so badly is that when he does take over as King, he will be that much more impressive for having come such a long way in his journey toward leadership.  Kind of Machiavellian, if you ask me, and I don't mean that in a good way.  Sadly, we can't ask Shakespeare if he thought that was a positive or a negative trait in Henry, all we have to go on is what portrayal we get in Henry V.

I have often said that I think the role of Henry is the most challenging of all of Shakespeare's leading man, in that we see so many aspects of his psychology as the play goes on.  Besides that the role is epic in the sheer amount of words he speaks, Henry's called upon to handle such a variety of situations in the play--private and public, as a diplomat and a warrior, and even a fairly broadly comic scene at the end of the play where he courts his future Queen in spite of a severe language barrier between them.  But one of the most notable traits of Henry's is not that he won a war over insane odds on foreign turf, but that he was the first English King to bring together forces from all of the British nations to do so.  Shakespeare makes caricatures of the Welsh, Irish, and Scottish soldiers who join in with Henry for comic purposes, but he also shows how valuable these forces were to Henry, and Henry's gratitude for their presence.  In point of fact, Henry must be quite a diplomat back in the homeland, to have those soldiers go with him against the French, rather than have them take over England while he's gone, as his predecessors experienced.

I was thinking about the diplomatic side of Henry when I walked through Central Park one day to hear the Dalai Llama speak in public.  In perfect Buddhist fashion, he said something that addressed my Henry conversation quite directly.  I'm going to paraphrase, since I wasn't taking notes at the time, but he said something like, "Our enemy is our best teacher; from him we learn the most difficult lessons: patience and understanding."

This Saturday I was invited along with Bruce Wayne to a football game and due to my love of the sport, I jumped at the chance.  The challenge presented to me was that our hosts and most of their guests, none of whom I knew, were all politically about as far from me as they could have been.  From them I learned patience and understanding, at least for the day.  I didn't succumb to their views, but I did try very hard to understand their perspective.  I don't agree with the premise, nor the conclusion, but I continued to find common ground with them throughout the long day, and I came away with an appreciation of a branch of humankind of which I have had little contact in my sheltered academic left-wing socialist Jewish intellectual life.  But now I live in Virginia, where people love guns and cigarettes and tractors and Jesus in a way that feels to me more like a cudgel than a helping hand.  I'm sure they think of me as a radical Communist Jew lesbian-loving minority-supporting nut trying to take over this great nation which they think was founded for them and not for me.  But we cheered the home team, ate super tasty onion dip together, and talked about our memories of music from our youth and hopes for our grown children and for large blocks of time, you never would have known that I was a fly in their ointment, or they one in mine.