RIP, Easy Shakespeare Rider

Sad days lately, with the death first of Gary Coleman and now Dennis Hopper.  I had no idea that Hopper was originally trained in Shakespeare, did you?

The Hollywood Reporter: You trained in Shakespeare, and then went to work with James Dean in 1955's "Rebel Without a Cause."
Dennis Hopper: I thought I was the best young actor around, you know? That came out of Shakespeare. (But) I had never seen anyone improvise before Dean and I asked him if he would help me. So he advised me on various things, and it was difficult in the beginning. Then I went and studied with Lee Strasberg for five years, to solidify.

[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i68c9747cd968ca8d4d23f712c3b9ae6a]

 

In Francis Coppola’s monster he played the Puck-like maniac with the cameras, at the end of the river.

As Kurtz's disciple and p.r. front-man in Francis Coppola's "Apocalypse Now."

Who knows? Maybe he modeled the character on Shakespeare’s Puck. When he was a classically trained upstart Hopper took a meeting in 1955 with Columbia Pictures’ Harry Cohn, who suggested that an aide take Hopper away for six months in order to “take all the Shakespeare out of him.” Hopper told Cohn to scram.

[http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/talking_pictures/2010/05/dennis-hopper-nobodys-candycolored-clown-.html]

I can’t find any references to specific works he was in, though.  Anybody got more history on the man?

What You Talkin’ About, Shakespeare?

Gary Coleman died recently at the age of 42.  Although he was most famous as the little black kid on the tv show “Diff’rent Strokes” back in the 1970’s, that doesn’t stop me from pondering whether the gentleman had any Shakespeare connection.

Who’da thought?

Callback Jokes?

So I'm digging through the texts recently, and I always enjoy this because it gets my brain working on a different way, focusing on individual lines instead of entire scenes. When I do this I tend to spot things I'd never noticed before.

Like, for example, in Midsummer:

THESEUS I wonder if the lion be to speak.

DEMETRIUS No wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many asses do.

Despite the fact that Demetrius would have known nothing of Bottom's transformation, I expect this line would have garnered raucous laughter from the audience, no? Surely deliberate on Shakespeare's part.

Or, this one: (speaking presumably about actors)

THESEUS
The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst
are no worse, if imagination amend them.
...
PUCK
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.

Once I spotted that I could just picture Puck delivering his "shadows" in quotes as if to say, "Yeah, actors, that's us that Theseus was talking about a minute ago."

Am I imagining these? What about the epilogue from As You Like It, delivered by Rosalind?

ROSALIND
It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue;
...
If I were a woman I
would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased
me, complexions that liked me and breaths that I
defied not: and, I am sure, as many as have good
beards or good faces or sweet breaths will, for my
kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.

If she were a woman?  If? So, basically, this is a written acknowledgement that Rosalind is speaking as the male actor who'd been performing a female role?