The Bicks Pod

Episode 45 - Mental Health and Shakespeare

What do a bunch of 400 year old plays have to tell us about mental health? A surprising bit actually. This episode we're looking at four character - Jaques from As You Like It, Hamlet and Ophelia from Hamlet, and Lady Macbeth from Macbeth - to consider how Shakespeare handled issues of mental health, how his audience would have understood these characters' issues, and how we understand and talk about them today.
Ancient Bickerings: 
Which of our four characters selected today would most benefit from being transported to the modern day and receiving the full suite of mental health supports available today?
Notes:
We referred to a number of resources to help inform us about the understanding of mental health in Elizabethan & Jacobean England, including:
John Hall's (Shakespeare's son-in-law) casebook on physical and mental ailments and his (always) successful treatments
A quick summary of the four humours and how Shakespeare would have understood them
The Shakespeare Birth Place, British Library, and the Shakespeare Blog all had good resources for understanding mental health in Elizabethan times and within Shakespeare's plays
Shakespearances hosts the article speaking about personal experience with mental health issues and connecting them with Shakespeare, and also references the play Enter Ophelia, distracted

Episode 44 - Hamlet

Hamlet is arguably the first of Shakespeare's "Big Plays" -- the magnificent tragedies, the ones that everyone studies in their English classes, that hold a special place in the canon because of their thematic and dramatic importance. Oh, sure, we've covered Richard III and Romeo & Juliet and The Merchant of Venice already; no one is denying the importance and vibrancy of these and other earlier plays. But you have to admit that Hamlet (along with King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello) represents some of the grandest of Shakespeare's writing and thinking.
In today's episode, we've once again attempted to break down the play into the biggest umbrella themes. We ask a lot of questions, about the imp[act of grief on a person's mental state, the treatment of gender and sexuality, what does it mean to revenge your murdered father -- typical stuff. We make no pretenses that we have any of the answers to the questions we're raising, and we won't come to any novel understanding of the play or the themes found within (this is, after all, one of the most written about works of drama in the entirety of the English literary canon). But we hope that we are able to ignite a bit of curiosity
Ancient Bickerings: 
Is Hamlet truly mad? 
Notes:
Hammersmith, James P. “Hamlet and the Myth of Memory.” ELH, vol. 45, no. 4, 1978, pp. 597–605. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2872579. Accessed 27 Dec. 2020.
Also: "Bunghole" is definitely used in the play. Act 5, scene 1. Look it up. We'll wait.
Yes, Virginia, David Tennant did play Hamlet in a 2009 film. We are not able to find a copy of the film to double check the Gertrude-sees-the-Ghost-too bit, though -- if you know if this version does hint that the Ghost is visible to Hamlet's mother (or, if not, if you know where that scene happens) let us know!

Episode 43 - Shakespeare the Influencer

Preamble: As mentioned in the episode itself, we recorded this episode using Nvidia's Broadcast app for the first time to try and cut down on background noise. Our first tests went fine but this episode wound up coming across as a bit choppy and digitized. Our apologies - we'll be looking to smooth things out for future episodes!
Have you ever wished you (or someone else) could vanish into thin air? Ever refused to budge an inch? Ever thought the game was up? Then, whether you knew it or not, you've been influenced by Shakespeare.
Today's episode goes into the myriad ways Shakespeare still has an outsized influence on our lives, especially in the realms of the English language and literature. We're accompanied for this trip by Stephen Marche's book, How Shakespeare Changed Everything, and we hope you'll join us for the journey down the rabbit hole (not a Shakespearean phrase, to be fair) into how Shakespeare's words continue to change and shape the world today.
Notes:
A quick check in reveals that the English language now has nearly 200,000 words commonly accepted in it, and Shakespeare appears to have used about 32,000, including the 1,700 words he's credited with introducing.
Bernard Levin is the journalist whose quote about Shakespeare's phrase adequately sums up the Bard's influence on everyday speech and idioms. Also available in jpeg form in this handy little graphic.
The Chinese princess Aidan mentions is basically a footnote in the history of the Northern Zhou and Sui dynasties whose story has a bit of a Shakespearean feel to it - her name is Qianjin, and she was married off to the Turkic Khaganate in the sixth century.
Ancient Bickerings:
As we've mentioned many times on this podcast, we are both semi-pro writers who dabble primarily in fiction. So the question this week is: how has Shakespeare influenced you as a writer?
Related to this, we should give a shout out to Ian Doescher, who has done Shakespeare emulation better than anyone! We recently watched a Zoom performance of his Shakespearean adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and loved every minute of it. Most famously he turned Star Wars into Shakespearean plays, with great success.
 

Episode 42 - As You Like It

Sometimes, you really can judge a book by its cover, or even, just by its title. That's the case for this Shakespearean comedy, which tips it's hat in all sorts of directions without ever proceeding down any of them. It's a befuddling, funny, serious, ridiculous, gender-bending and gender-conforming play with a whole lot to say about nothing at all. As You Like It, is open to interpretation and not much else, but it can be a thoroughly enjoyable romp in the right hands.
We focused our discussion on the themes and motifs of the play - gender, love, court vs. country - and wound up circling round and round the same few points, including just how awesome Rosalind is as a character, how odd the structure of the plot is, and the confusing nature of Jaques. All in all, it was a very strange play.
Ancient Bickerings
For a strange play, we picked kind of a strange (and personal) question: if you had to live in one - court, or country - which would it be?
Additional Notes
The Folger Essay, "As You Like It: A Modern Perspective" gives a good overview of some of the difficulty of speaking about the play.

Episode 41 - Shakespeare and Politics

We live in a politically-charged age -- how can anyone deny that? But it's likely true that there has never been an age that hasn't been touched by politics at all, whether by the formal politics of our various governmental systems or the personal politics of our daily interactions; Aristotle himself claimed that human beings are inherently political creatures, and the wars and elections of the last two thousand years has yet to prove him wrong. So since our podcast is, in its current incarnation, focused on the world of William Shakespeare, and given the current climate in which we live, it makes sense that we would turn this political focus on the Early Modern period and the Bard himself. How does Shakespeare operate politically? How can we use his works to inform our views of the world today? And should we even bother?
Ancient Bickerings:
Shakespeare's theatre company, The Chamberlain's Men (later The King's Men), were not immune from the politics of their day. They famously found themselves caught up in scandalous treason when they were engaged to perform Richard II on the eve of the Essex Rebellion, all because the conspirators promised to pay a whopping 40 shillings above the normal engagement cost for the troupe to put on that particular play. (Greedy capitalists to the bitter end!) Considering this, what play would Shakespeare and The King’s Men put on to mark 2020?
Notes:
Encyclopedia Britannica entry on English Humanism: https://www.britannica.com/topic/humanism/The-English-humanists
The American Interest: "Shakespeare's Politics"
Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said
"Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality" from The West Wing (Season 2.16)
For all your Vine needs: "God and Anime" and other Vines that toast our buns. (Enjoy, and RIP Vine, we hardly knew ye)
Bustle: "14 Things Shakespeare Can Teach You About Politics"
The Guardian: "How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse"
"Shakespeare and the Tragedy of Politics"

Episode 40 - Julius Caesar

Power, politics, ambition, and honour. Four human facets set across the backdrop of a failing Republic. Is Julius Caesar the most topical play to talk about on November 3, 2020? Yes, but we swear we didn't plan it that way - sometimes the stars simply align.
We talked about the characters and their foibles, the historical factors that fed into the play, and Shakespeare's decision to avoid easy answers when talking about one of the most divisive figures in Ancient History. We circled round and round trying to find those answers, but wound up in mired in the midst of a play that continues to excite with its staging, its rhetoric, and the timeless lines that stride through history like so many colossi. Answers? Maybe not, but a play worth looking at in this day and age? Absolutely.
Notes:
Lindsay watched this Tony Robinson documentary about Julius Caesar and it was mentioned a few times in our discussion.
We also discussed this awesome feat of Caesar's at the battle of Alesia, which Buzzfeed took on to the joy of many (including your hosts).
Ancient Bickerings:
Our discussion this week was fitting for a play all about great men and their choices: is there an ideal leader anywhere in the play?

Episode 39 - Producing Shakespeare

What goes on behind the scenes to run a full-scale Shakespeare festival? How are the plays selected? How long does it take? How much does it cost? This episode we found out the answers to all these questions with the delightful help of Freewill Shakespeare Festival, the Bicks' very own local Shakespeare show that's been running for just over 30 years!
We were so very lucky to be joined this episode by Nikola Tonn, managing director of the festival, and David Horak, the artistic director for Freewill Shakespeare. We grilled them on the numerous steps involved in bringing a production to life, from play selection all the way through to opening night and the tallying of the receipts. We also cover a bit of the COVID blues because they're awfully hard to escape these days.
Notes:
Check out the Freewill Shakespeare website and maybe consider making a trip to Edmonton to take it in next year if you're at all capable! Macbeth and Much Ado are two of our faves!
If you've never been, check out these lovely photos provided to us by the team, showing off the truly stellar grounds that are simply perfect for outdoor theatre!
 

Episode 38 - Henry V

Henry V is one of Shakespeare's grandest and most legendary plays, partly because it depicts the stunning historical victories of one of England's greatest kings, but also because Shakespeare skillfully weaves so many universal themes into the events of this play. From masculinity and warfare and what makes a great king to death and the loyalty of friends, Shakespeare takes what is essentially nothing more than a grand war-filled saga and imbues it with depth and meaning that the siege of Harfleur or the Battle of Agincourt don't hold on their own. The end result is a complex story that glorifies war at the same time that it calls it into question, in that way that it seems only great literature can do.
** Mea culpa: It's not Emma Thompson but Kristen Scott Thomas in the episode of Fleabag referenced by Lindsay in this episode. Blame the cold medicine, and watch that scene here: Kristin Scott Thomas’s epic speech on Fleabag
Notes:
- Greek Chorus- Henry V history: Here are a few of the videos we watched and found interesting as we did our research and which we wanted to share with you: 
NETFLIX's "The King" vs The True Story of King Henry V via Flick Connection
Discovery Knowledge: Henry V arrowhead removal
Brows Held High: Shakespeare, Film and Kenneth Branagh
- Encyclopedia Britannica entry about Salic Law- "Simply Symbolic: First Words of Katherine of Valois"