The Play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Edition: Bedford/St. Martin’s “Texts and Contexts,” Edited by Gail Kern Paster and Skiles Howard, 1999. Genre & Setting: Comedy. Also, fantasy: the supernatural element gives MND a somewhat different feel from, say, Much Ado About Nothing or Twelfth Night, and gives it a factor in common with quote-Romance-unquote The Tempest. It is a play that invites spectacular production, too, so depending on the production it may be in the genre of “Big-Budget Spectacular.” The Wiki article on Shakespearean comedy (as of May 26, 2012) has an list of Shakespeare-comedy characteristics that I found kind of interesting.

• A greater emphasis on situations than characters (this numbs the audience's connection to the characters, so that when characters experience misfortune, the audience still finds it laughable) – Check. MND’s engine is the who-loves-whom adventures of four attractive young people who are, as far as the script goes, completely interchangeable.
• A struggle of young lovers to overcome difficulty, often presented by elders – Check. The kids get in trouble when they run off to the woods to elope.
• Separation and re-unification – Check. I hope that’s not a spoiler.
• Deception among characters (especially mistaken identity) – Check. The hijinx in MND really take off when Love Potion #9 is administered to the wrong Athenian youth.
• A clever servant – He’s not only clever, he’s Puckish!
• Disputes between characters, often within a family – Titania and Oberon are feuding over who gets to have the beautiful South Asian little boy as their chamber servant. Obviously, the less said about this the better.
• Multiple, intertwining plots – Check. Three and a half multiple, somewhat intertwining plots!
• Use of all styles of comedy (slapstick, puns, dry humour, earthy humour, witty banter, practical jokes) – Check!
• Pastoral element (courtly people living an idealized, rural life) – This is a play about the sons and the daughters of the wealthy frolicking in the greenwoods with faeries, for crying out loud.
• Happy Ending – Well, I wouldn’t want to give anything away.

The setting is technically in Athens and the surrounding forest, but this really means that some scenes are in town and some are in a tricksy but ultimately benign magical wood. The Gist, which will obviously involve spoilers: Three and a half story lines! 1) Titania and Oberon are having their unseemly tiff. This thread is largely an excuse to have Puck running around, using magic carelessly to mess with people. 2) Youth A loves Youth B, who however loves Youth C, who however loves Youth D. Puck will first disrupt this chain of attraction, but ultimately bring it back better than ever. 3) Local tradesmen want to put on a play. Puck gives one of them the head of a donkey and then causes Titania to fall in love with him. It is implied that the Queen of the Fairies thereupon commits frisky acts of bestiality and, shockingly, inter-class sexuality offstage, in a play that is frequently put on by high school students. Obviously, the less said about this the better. 3½) This all happens in the context of a festival marking the marriage of the Duke of Athens to the Queen of the Amazons, whom he fell for after defeating him in combat. Students of Gender Studies might well love this play, or love to hate it, for the symmetrical humiliation of every significant female character. This is especially interesting with the two female monarchs: one is a prisoner of war who is marrying her captor, and did I mention that the Queen of the Fairies is tricked into having sex with a donkey? Since this was written near the end of the long, successful reign of one of the great English monarchs, who happened to be a chick, it’s hard to figure whether Shakespeare was just indulging in garden-variety comedic misogyny or whether there was something more to it. The Edition: The notes in this edition are dreadful. Despite an unusually transparent text – it is not a complicated play, and the plot engine is set up very carefully – the pages are thick with unneeded explanatory notes, about half of which are definitions of not-especially-obscure words whose meanings have not materially changed since they were written. In points where the text is puzzling or could use some supporting context, however, the edition gives you no help at all. The value-added of this edition is supposed to be the supporting period documents related to the play and some of its themes, which comprise more than half of the book. These might be useful, I suppose, if you were teaching Shakespeare and these particular documents happened to relate to a point you planned to harp on. They seem rather randomly chosen to me, though, and I didn’t spend more than fifteen minutes skimming through them. Adaptation: I don’t know that I've ever seen MND in performance. I am however already pained by the way that the scenes involving the tradesmen must usually be staged. Doubtless they are usually made to be the elaborately idiotic clowns in the tradition of most Shakespeare “rustics.” But you know, it would be a lot funnier if they were played with some realism, as slightly dim but reasonably dignified average Joes increasingly over their head with the business of trying to put on a play. The tradition of playing the Shakespeare rustics as slapstick buffoons seems to go back centuries, perhaps all the way to the original productions, but I think that is a long, long tradition of directors missing a bet. The structure of MND is a little weird. The central action with Youths A, B, C, and D is set up very efficiently in the first inning, and then plays out like well-oiled clockwork. All is made well quite a bit sooner then we expect, however, and everybody is ready to live happily ever after with quite a bit of play left to go. Then, the tradesmen present their play in kind of an extended coda after everything else has been wrapped up. Maybe a clever director could make their tale of Pyramis and Thisbe somehow reflect back on the various relationship problems of the four couples – Titania/Oberon, Duke/Amazon Queen, Youths A & B, and Youths C & D – but it’s not a tidy fit, and he or she would probably have to have some Profound Insights to make a really meaningful connection. Prognosis: Good stuff. This is the first time I have found a Shakespeare play an easy, fun read. This might mean I’m just getting used to reading Shakespeare, but I think it’s also a play without a lot of complexity or baggage. It is, with the above provisos, a lot of fun. There are wacky situations, and some good lines, and who doesn’t want to be Puck, with all his superhuman abilities and mischief? Plus, there’s a happy ending.

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing (Portland Actors Ensemble)

This post appeared in Infinite Art Tournament on October 10, 2011.


The Play: Much Ado about Nothing.
Directed by: Asae Dean, for the Portland Actors Ensemble

Genre & Setting: We have already encountered Much Ado About Nothing twice before, once in Ken Branaugh’s exuberant funfest and again in a typically drab BBC adaptation. This time it was an in-the-park performance on a lovely summer day. More exactly, it was performed on the campus green of Reed College, with that intellectual institution’s stately Eliot Hall forming an appropriately old-worldy background. The genre is “one of the comedies that are hard to remember the title to,” with some distasteful unpleasantness toward the end.

The Gist, which will obviously involve spoilers: This is the one where everybody has to stage an intervention to get Beatrice and Benedick hooked up, and where poor little Hero gets humiliated at the alter after that bastard Don John slanders her, because her fiancé Claudio is dumber than dirt and insufficiently imaginative to ask even the simplest of questions.

The Adaptation: The Portland Actors Ensemble puts on a good show, so there was a large crowd. We were stuck a long ways from the stage at a right angle to the action, but got our fair share of entertainment just the same. The “stage” was just a patch of the lawn with a few trellises set up as entry and exit points. You had to pretend you didn’t see the “offstage” actors, which was no problem whatsoever and added a kind of spontaneous charm to the proceedings.

In these circumstances, I pretty much focused on and enjoyed the jolly first half, and then kind of let myself drift and enjoy being out for the afternoon in the second half. It was nice.

I’m used to finding the musical intervals in Shakespeare pretty embarrassing, but a highlight of this performance was the songs. The “Hey Nonny Nonny” business that the play starts was especially great, belted out by a glorious alto singer whose name I wish I had caught, as she isn’t identified in the program. Man, she had pipes.

Oh, the other exciting moment came when I read in the program that the title of the play is to be read as a pun that could mean much ado about “noting,” which is to say overhearing, of which there is a great deal in this play. This discovery yields the exciting possibility that I may eventually be able to associate the action of this play correctly with its name!

Prognosis: Isn't Summer great?

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing (BBC, 1984)

A version of this post first appeared on the Infinite Art Tournament on April 11, 2011

The Play: Much Ado About Nothing
Directed by: Stuart Burge (1984), for the BBC series.

Genre & Setting: A comedy, about three parts ha-ha comedy to two parts nasty-stuff-that-turns-out-OK-in-the-end comedy. The setting is an Italian villa, and in this production you’ve got pretty much exactly the costume and sets you would expect in a traditional Shakespeare staging.

The Gist: This is the first Shakespeare I’m watched in a second production (within this project, anyhoo) so I may be repeating what I gleaned as the gist in the far more boisterous, spectacular, and moneyed Kenneth Branaugh production (which was reposted here in Renaissance Man last week).

So: you’ve got this pair of smart, funny aristocrats, Beatrice and Benedic(t?), who are nuts about each other but have been bantering so long that they’ve become, as people were saying a few years ago, “frenemies.” Both have sworn they’ll never marry. They need to be cajoled into realizing they love each other, and all of this business is of course quite jolly.

Then there’s this other pair, Claudio and Hero (I may not have the names exactly right, because I’m watching rather than reading, right?), not especially smart or funny but also nuts about each other. Unfortunately, Claudio has (if I understood it right) a villainous illegitimate half-brother who desires to undo his happiness! An initial plot to sabotage Claudio’s wooing-by-proxy (and by the way, wooing-by-proxy? WTF?) fails despite Claudio’s dimness, but a second plot to make him think Hero has been unfaithful succeeds spectacularly. Due to his dimness. This plot line is not only improbable but a little distasteful, and the ickiness of its climax and even its “happy” resolution really drag down the mood.

There’s also a bit with a small posse of dim constables, which is not bad. Unfortunately – this is the part where I tell Shakespeare how to write – these characters are introduced so late in the play that they do more to interrupt the flow than they do to advance the plot.

The Adaptation: This was one of a number of BBC productions I watched in 2011.  These seem to be the standard go-to Shakespeare-on-film, and they make up the bulk of the non-incredibly-famous plays available in my library’s collection.  These productions kind of suck. Having said that, this is easily the best of the ones I’ve watched. The funny parts were actually funny, although you miss having an audience to laugh with, and although it does not begin to compete with the big Big BIG Branaugh production, it seemed a pretty solid, workmanlike translation to film.

Clocks In At: around two and a quarter hours. There were a modest number of scenes in this presumably complete or near-complete performance that were not in the Branaugh, but these mostly served to show that ol’ Ken and/or his screenwriting team had pretty solid judgment.

Pros: The only major value-added of the BBC production over the Branaugh is that this one lacks Michael Keaton’s excruciating turn as Dogberry the Constable. The constables in the BBC production are competent, but I still think that these scenes have the potential to be hilarious in the right hands, and we haven’t seen that yet.

Cons: There is a character – I don’t know his name – who is a buddy of Benedic(t?) and Claudio, a major speaking part. In this production, he is more than a little campy, which creates an odd edge and sets up a number of unintentionally funny moments. Otherwise, the usual BBC soap-opera production values are a shame, but not a deal-breaker.

Prognosis: The back half of this play – particularly the humiliation of Hero – is unpleasant enough to discourage repeated viewings. And since the Branaugh is available, and lots of fun, why not use it for your initial watching?

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing (Branagh, 1993)

This review first appeared in Infinite Art Tournament on January 10, 2011.

The Play: Much Ado About Nothing
Directed by: Kenneth Branagh, 1998.

Genre and Setting: Comedy with a dramatic edge, set on a Sicilian nobleman’s estate. Branaugh places the play in a idealized Italy of no particular era.

The Gist: A pair of sharp-tongued, witty frenemies need to be helped to realize that they are in love with each other. At the same time, a wedding is broken up through the treachery of a Bad Guy, and the estranged pair needs to be brought back together through an uncovering of the truth and some mild repentance.

The Adaptation: A big-budget feature movie produced by Kenneth Branagh, starring such household names as Ken himself (competent but sometimes a bit hammy), Emma Thompson and Denzel Washington (fabulous of course), Keanu Reeves (about what you’d expect), and Michael Keaton (a minor disaster).

Clocks In At: 111 minutes, quite a few of which are mostly scenery and spectacle. Judging it against my Pocket Guide to Shakespeare's Plays -- this is my first exposure to Much Ado, can you believe? -- it looks like the central plots were faithfully followed while some sub-plots were pruned and a few secondary characters were enhanced to make them a little more charismatic on the big screen.

Pros: Branagh makes this popular comedy a grand visual spectacle with the help of an all-star cast, a zillion enthusiastic extras, and a spectacular filming location in Tuscany. Emma Thompson is to die for. The craftsmanship of the film is exquisite (almost to the point of showing off, at times), and everyone seems to be having a good time. This is a movie that makes you want to move to Italy and go to lots of fabulous parties, because life is good and everything will work out in the end.

Cons: When spectacle goes too far you get bombast, and Branagh, who is not famous for restraint, sometimes presses right up against that line. The only really serious problem, though, is Keaton’s presence in the role Dogberry, the local constable. Given some of Shakespeare’s funniest comic dialog, he reprises his weird physical-comedy schtick from Beetlejuice. Also, nobody should try to do the “pretending to ride horses that aren’t really there” gag until at least a hundred years have passed since Monty Python took ownership of it. Seriously.

Prognosis: A fun, lively, and upbeat Shakespeare movie, easy to watch and easy on the eyes.

"Timon of Athens" -- Initial Reaction

Heavens, it isn't exactly Hamlet, is it. This is a play with some real problems:

• Plot. Overly generous man is betrayed by his friends, goes nuts. Where's the drama?
• Plausibility. He digs for roots and hits a cache of gold? Oh come on. It might be forgivable if it threw things into the realm of the allegorical, but I don't see that it does.
• For the "Good Man Lain Low" plot to work... you've got to have a good man. Timon's clearly a nice guy, but he's also clearly an idiot. He spends the front third of the play digging himself an awfully deep hole, so it's hard to see the perversity of humankind when he falls into it.
• Alcibiades. Why is he hanging out with Timon early on? Who is the friend about whom he is arguing with the Senators?
• Apemantus. Who is he? What's he up to?
• Pacing. The back third of the play is a long series of visits to a hermit in the woods, one after another, in which he is unpleasant and uncivil, peevish and a bit unhinged, to all. It's kind of hard to see how actors would make this long stretch interesting.

There's an obvious parallel to King Lear in the plot of a man let down and laid low, and a Titus Andronicus aspect to Timon's angry madness. The weird opening might be compared to the opening of MacBeth, I suppose. Timon is nowhere as good as these plays, though. Which reminds me:

• Opening. The opening scene is frankly weird, very difficult to read and pretty tangential to everything else that happens.
• Ending. The ending is not satisfying, plausible, or a natural outgrowth of what has come before.

There is a short list of positives. The satire of how people avoid duties of charity hits home pretty nicely, and the feast of warm water is a nice touch. And, and... um... that bit about how the Athenians can use his tree to hang themselves, if they hurry, is a nice malicious touch. That's about it.

Apparently -- I haven't read much of the critical material yet -- there's a theory that this is an unfinished work, or a draft. There's no evidence that it was performed while the Big Guy was alive. Some people think it might have been a work in progress when he died, and others think maybe he gave up on it as being too much like King Lear. The idea that it's unfinished makes intuitive sense to me -- I feel like ~I~ could clean it up by cutting a few superfluous scenes and characters and dividing the scenes properly, and that Shakespeare certainly could have beefed it up with a subplot, an opening, a conclusion, and all those things that make for a good play. As it stands, it definitely deserves its ranking as among Shakespeare's most obscure work.

"Timon of Athens" -- Plot Summary

Timon of Athens
Very possibly 1607 or 1608

Edition: The New Cambridge Shakespeare, Edited by Karl Klein, 2001.

Note: This is simply a plot summary for my own reference, written as I go. No effort is made to avoid spoilers.

ACT I

Scene 1: I am quite frankly confused by the opening of the play, a dialog between a Poet and a Painter among a few other artisans. I have no doubt that their conversation must constitute Important Commentary about what is to come, but it is difficult going for this lay reader. I'm not 100% sure what they're talking about, even after extensive recourse to the footnotes.

The reading gets much easier when Timon shows up. He is a person of some wealth or authority, and immediately begins a virtuoso show of being a good guy. He gives money to a guy who's been imprisoned for debt, makes a problematic marriage arrangement go away by throwing money at it, and implies to the artisans we met at the beginning that he will buy their wares.

Then Apemantus shows up. He is a big grouch, and in this scene mostly goes around insulting everybody. Alcibiades, a military captain, shows up, and Apemantus insults him too.

Scene 2: A big banquet is held! Various lords all tell Timon how great he is, but Apemantus has snuck in and continues being a jackass. Timon lets him stay, but he has to sit at a table by himself. From this perch, he keeps up a running commentary about how Timon is just a big naive oaf, who is being used by the untrustworthy flatterers around him.

Some dancing girls come in and provide entertainment. Afterwards, Timon gives away a valuable jewel, and then receives some gifts -- horses and hounds -- but makes clear that he intends to give as well as he gets. Everything seems grand until Flavius, Timon's steward, frets in an aside that He command us to provide, and give great gifts, And all out of an empty coffer. It appears that Timon might have a bit of a cash-flow problem in the works; maybe Apemantus knows something we don't.

ACT II

Scene 1: Uh-oh. A Senator notes that Timon is deeply leveraged in high risk mortgage-based securities, and... wait, no. But he notes that Timon is determined to outgift everyone in Athens; If I want gold, steal but a beggar's dog And give it Timon, why, the dog coins gold. This behavior is disturbing to the Senator because Timon owes him money, and he instructs his servant to go call in this debt.

Scene 2: The Senator's servant shows up at Timon's house, to find that two other servants of high-ranking Athenians are there on the same errand. They badger Timon as he's trying to go to dinner with some friends, but Flavius gets them to at least wait until after dinner. While they wait, Apemantus wanders by with a "Fool," and there is some verbal sparring.

In what you might expect to be a scene 3, Flavius finally gets Timon to hear what he's been trying to tell him for month: he's broke. Flavius gets great speeches as he protests that he's been as good as a steward as possible under the circumstances, and that Timon has just refused to listen to him.

"Don't be so glum," Timon eventually says (not an actual quote). "I've been very generous to all my friends, now I'm sure they'll be generous to me." He dispatches various servants out to ask for loans. Flavius is skeptical; he has already tried to get loans from these guys, and was stonewalled. Timon begins to worry.

ACT III

Scene 1: One of Timon's servants calls on Lucullus, who is initially excited by the prospect of a gift. When he realizes that Timon needs to loan money, he tells the servant that this is out of the question, and Timon should have known better than to get in debt in the first place. He offers the servant a tip to pretend that he never saw him, but the servant is loyal and throws the money back at him.

Scene 2: Lucius is chatting with some strangers about how shamefully Timon has been treated when, inconveniently, another of Timon's servants comes up to ask for a loan. Oh, there's no way I could do that, he says. I'm totally strapped! The strangers remark on Lucius' bad behavior, and say that they would never treat a friend so shabbily, if they were ever in such a position.

Scene 3: This time it's Sempronius. He complains that Timon is coming to beg of HIM, of all people, when there are so many other people he could have asked. The servant tells him that all of those people have already been asked, and they all turned Timon down. Sempronius is now offended that Timon, whom he always thought was his friend, asked all of those other people before he turned to him. This offends him so much, in fact, that he can not in good conscience loan Timon the money.

Scene 4: A bunch of creditors slouch outside Timon's house. They see Flavius the steward leaving, but he's actually resigning his post -- Timon has nothing left to steward. Timon finally comes out, raging and raving a little, and hot words are exchanged. He runs off.

Somewhere -- back at Timon's house? in the street? -- Timon and Flavius run into each other. Timon accepts Flavius' loyalty, and instructs him to invite all of the no-good friends to one last feast. Flavius points out that there's nothing left to feast on, and Timon tells him not to worry about it, just invite them for the feast.

One half expects him to do a Titus at this point, but I bet he won't.

Scene 5: Out of the blue, we have Alcibiades at the Senate, where the Senators have just concurred on the death sentence for... whom? we're not really told, as far as I can tell. Alcibiades vigorously pleads on, um, the defendant's behalf, but the Senators are resolute. Alcie is angry to be dismissed, and sasses the Senators. In response, they banish him from Athens. They leave, and he vows to go gather his army and march on the city.

Scene 6: Timon's pals gather for his last feast, making hypocritical conversation about why they couldn't help him. He shows up, acts magnanimous, and calls them to the table. He says a Grace that is increasingly vindictive, then -- with the line Uncover, dogs, and lap -- reveals that the meal is actually dishes of warm water. He yells at the guests a little, splashing them with the water and chasing them out of the room. Then he curses the city and runs off. In a scene that could be played nicely as comedy, but probably isn't meant as such, the lords come back in and look for the hats and coats they left behind in the rush, and exchange thoughts to the effect of "whoa, that was weird."

ACT IV

Scene 1: Outside of town, Timon lays a forty-line curse on Athens.

Scene 2: Flavius the Steward commiserates with the rest of Timon's household -- they all thought he was a great boss -- and then they go their separate ways. Flavius heads off to see if he can find Timon.

Scene 3: Timon, embracing his new life-style, digs for roots to eat, but instead hits what turns out to be quite a bit of gold. Then Alcibiades shows up with his posse and a few girlfriends. Timon is horrid to all of them, in particular abusing the girlfriends as prostitutes -- clearly, he is feeling a hangover from years of purchasing the affection of his friends. He gives them a lot of money, because they are going to go kill Athenians. (Timon is, as far as I can tell, pretty much off his nut by this point.)

Apemantus happens by. He suggests that Timon could get back into the social game by flattering others, just as they flattered him. Timon is horrid to him too, and they bluster back and forth for a long while before Apemantus runs off.

Then some bandits come by, looking for Timon's gold. All but frothing at the mouth, now, he gives them gold to encourage them to go plunder and murder in Athens; H'as almost charmed me from my profession, by persuading me to it, remarks one of the bandits.

Flavius the Steward shows up next -- I love a parade -- and in a highly noble fashion offers to share his former master's life of poverty. Timon is slightly less horrid to him, offering him some money to go live rich and happy, but only on the condition that he agree to Hate all, curse all, show charity to none, But let the famished flash slide from the bone Ere thou relieve the beggar.

ACT V

Scene 1: The parade continues -- scene divisions seem really arbitrary in this play -- and the painter and poet (remember them, from the trippy beginning) show up, hearing rumors that Timon has gold again. They don't have any completed work to sell, but they hope to get an advance; however, Timon overhears them planning this, and mocks them before tossing them out on their ears.

Now, Flavius comes back with a couple of Senators. With Alcibiades marching on the city, the Senators have come to implore Timon back to govern the city; however, they are likely thinking of the civil, benevolent Timon of yesterday, not the barking mad hermit he has quickly become. He abuses them for a while, and tells them that he hopes Alcibiades kills them all. Then he relents, and offers a "kindness," which is actually the best line in the play and an indicator of just how, shall we say, disappointed in his former society Timon has become.

I have a tree, which grows here in my close,
That mine own use invites me to cut down,
And shortly must I fell it: tell my friends,
Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree
From high to low throughout, that whoso please
To stop affliction, let him take his haste,
Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe,
And hang himself. I pray you, do my greeting.

Scene 2: A throwaway scene -- the two Senators from the last scene meet two other Senators, and tell them that Timon won't be any help.

Scene 3: A soldier discovers Timon's grave. (Grave? Who buried him?) He can't read the whole inscription on the monument (Monument?), but takes a wax impression so that Alcibiades can read it with great gravitas in Scene 4.

Scene 4: Alcibiades prepares to sack Athens. But then there is a lengthy conversation with several Senators who... talk him out of it. No, really! They agree that the troops can enter the city, but have to stay in quarters, and the towns laws will all remain exactly the same. This surprising agreement having been reached, a messenger brings the wax pressing from Scene 3 in, and Alcibiades closes the play with a far-fetched speech about how Timon's fate clearly suggests that peace is good, but war is important too, or something.

The Opening Ceremony

Well, "what’s past is prologue," as someone once said, and we are drifting pretty close now to the official kickoff of the Rennaissance Man project. The symbolic starting point is 7:30 PST this Friday, November 20: the "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" concert of the Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

If you happen to live here in the City of Roses, you may want to join me. I can't say enough about the terrific sound of the semi-pro PCSO, which puts on a reliably great classical music performance for an embarassingly low price. Here's the program for this Friday:

Weber -- Overture to Oberon

Vaughan-Williams -- Serenade to Music

Verdi -- Scene & Aria from Act IV of Otello
Coral Walterman, soprano

Elgar -- Falstaff, study in C minor, Op. 68

So come on out and get your late-romantic on in Goose Hollow. Or there's a Sunday matinee out Gresham way if you're of the Mid-County persuasion.


So Then What Happens?

Then, I start reading Shakespeare. I wouldn't expect too much from Week I, however, as it turns out to coincide with an intensive week-long home-repair "staycation," Thanksgiving, and my first week as chair of the Membership Committee of blah blah blah, and so on.... Sometime soon, though, I'll be reading my first play -- it's going to be everybody's favorite, Timon of Athens -- and reporting back with my refreshingly uninformed summary, analysis, and points to ponder. It's gonna be great!