Some Thoughts on again seeing "OTHELLO"

This evening I finished watching the Lawrence Olivier filmed version of Othello. I had seen it during it’s theatrical run back in 1965, but the decades have not diminished either the power of the performance or of the words themselves penned even centuries earlier. The story is so full of close calls, of times when tragedy could have been averted, and yet it was not. How many times have we been on the brink ourselves and could have avoided even lesser calamities if we had learned shake off the power of wrong things in our lives.

Othello depicts the power of a lie in the mouth of a particularly persuasive villain. Even though he is evil we cannot, like the master of the unjust steward in Jesus’ parable, shake our heads in a small measure of admiration. Still, his lies cost the lives and reputations of almost every major character in the play.

Romeo and Juliet is not, at heart, a love story, but a story of hatred dominating a city to the point of throwing a priest into a conniving lie and others into constant duels and deaths and suicides. Each bore their own responsibility in the story, but still the hatred did its work in paving the way for all the evil to follow.

Hamlet focuses on revenge rather than justice. It is a false way of balancing the scales. Though there be some ground for it in the prior murder of his father, the revenge itself set no one free. The ghost, whether hallucinatory or real, destroyed a family and a kingdom. There are things in heaven and earth which should be left alone.

Julius Caesar deals with the devastation of peer pressure. The conspirators talked one another into doing what none would have done on his own. Caesar may have been ambitious, but they paved the way for Augustus and the empire which crushed and persecuted the Western World for centuries.

Richard III exposes the fallacy of trusting in self. The real king of history may not have been as evil as the one painted on stage, but the character set forth in the play trusted in himself until he ended up wanting to trust in a horse.

King Lear trusted in human beings. He thought others carry out his responsibility better than he could. Again, a family and kingdom are plunged into ruin.

Then there is Macbeth, listening to occult voices, fulfilling prophecies which did not need to be fulfilled, following the wishes of a stronger wife and laughing at true prophecies before his destruction.

We may not play upon such large stages, but every one of these wrong things confronts us in our own lives. In many of Shakespeare’s plays the only thing which turns a tragedy into a comedy is the abandonment of the wrong and the holding to the right. Let us turn whatever is set before us into a true comedy in which, rather than being crushed, the protagonist triumphs.

Do You Need To Laugh?

Humor is more specific to cultures, individuals and ages than drama or tragedy is. That’s why the comedies of Shakespeare have not fared as well over the centuries as the tragedies and histories have. Some things always make us aware of pain, but not everything seems funny to everyone.

Having stated the foregoing analysis, when I need to laugh “Father Was A Fullback” makes me laugh out loud every time. I don’t football, but I love this movie.

It starts off with a great mix of comedy people who are truly funny unlike those today who just think they’re funny: Fred Mac Murray, Maureen O’Hara, Natalie Wood, Betty Lynn (you may have known her best as Thelma Lou on Andy Griffith), Jim Backus (Mr. Howell on Gilligan’s Island), and the queen of character comediennes, Thelma Ritter (she is worth her weight in laughter in every movie I’ve seen her in with the exception of her role as Robert Stroud’s embittered mother in “Birdman of Alcatraz”). The interaction between these people is the main ingredient in this comedy. Every one of them has that absolute sense of timing that is so needed in comedy.

The film has two story lines: the first is State U’s losing football season; the second is the seemingly losing battle of wits between parents and children in the coach’s home. It was a simpler age, so the story line doesn’t involve drugs, smoking, drinking or overt rebellion. I won’t reveal what happens to State at the end of the season, but all the complications in the home are resolved in one remarkable turn of events which brings about good.

In a backhanded sort of way, too, this film is about character. The coach continues on with the team, the family learns to support one another. They all have to learn that honesty is the best policy (deception is the main stumbling block in the home), and not to give up on their dreams. The parents find that the problems of adolescence come to every child, but they also pass on when maturity and fulfillment arrives.

TRAGEDY OR GRACE

I had wanted to see the 1936 version of “Romeo and Juliet” for years even though I knew it would not match the Zeffirelli version of 1968. I finally saw it this week. In looking at the play again I saw a spiritual truth. The roots of tragedy are always in something small; the roots of grace have to be in something big.

If only Mercutio had been more patient he would not have fought Tybalt and been killed. If only Romeo had gone for the police instead of taking matters into his own hands he would not have killed Tybalt and thus been banished. If Friar Lawrence’s emissary had reached Romeo in Mantua there would have been no suicide. If Romeo had come to the tomb ten minutes later he’d have seen Juliet alive. If Juliet had woken up even three minutes earlier she could have prevented Romeo’s suicide. The play, as so many of Shakespeare’s, turns on these small short coincidences which lead to tragedy. Even though we may not experience so much woe, we are tempted to the same expressions of anger and impatience which lead to tragedy every day. Tragedy does not stop on a dime. In the play it took five deaths (Mercutio, Tybalt, Count Paris, Romeo, Juliet) to bring the tragedy of this play to its end.

Grace, too, is brought to an end by death, a single death. While not a suicide, it was a voluntary death. It was larger than the result of someone’s impatience. It was designed to draw off and satisfy the entire wrath of God against all sin for all time. Only the sacrifice of an entire blood supply, a body broken beyond recognition enabled us to receive grace. Jesus Himself told us that laying down the life is the greatest act of love anyone can express.

Tragedy or grace are the only two prospects we have to look forward to. Let us not be moved by small things, but stand on the solid one.