A stick-figure Shakespeare comic by Mya Lixian Gosling
Well, it's the last scene of Act 3 and THEY'VE FINALLY MADE IT TO BED.
People never have good premonitions. No one ever says "I feel like someone is baking me a surprise cake for dessert and then I will get that dream job I've applied for". It's always "I FEEL LIKE SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS GOING TO HAPPEN."
Oh well, that's life.
It's generally believed that Romeo and Juliet could easily be a comedy IF ONLY Mercutio and Tybalt hadn't died, and that their duel is what turns the entire play from a comedy into a tragedy. However, it can effectively be argued that this is the scene that really removes any hope of a happy ending. And it's ALL CAPULET'S FAULT.
Side note: People today take months, even YEARS to plan a wedding, but the Capulets are just like... "three days, it's all good, let's do this". Granted, this is partially because they don't want to have a big lavish celebration in the wake of Tybalt's death, but still. THREE DAYS.
When we last left our hero, he was lying on the floor of Friar Laurence's cell, being overly melodramatic and self-indulgent. As usual.
ROMEO AND JULIET DRINKING GAME IDEA: Take a drink whenever Friar Laurence has to disarm a suicidal teenager. Because this isn't the last time.
Back to Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo is about to make a fool of himself. Again, I mean. It's not like this is the first time in the play that he's made a fool of himself.
Romeo: I demand to be treated like an adult and to have my feelings respected!
Also Romeo: *throws himself to the ground and refuses to get up or speak to anyone*
Spring is in the air, which means the Stratford Festival's season is getting underway, so it's about time for me to put together a handy guide to the plays that will be appearing on their myriad stages this year. This season the theme is "Questions of Identity".
We start with one of my all-time favorite musicals:
Then we have one of my all-time favorite piratical swashbucklers:
And then this play. I guess it's a classic of some sort, I dunno...
From Shakespearean classic to Gilbert and Sullivan classic:
I've written a theme song for this next play. It goes like this: "Who lives in a hole and acts quite beastly? SPONGETIMON ATHENSPANTS! Embittered and dirty and misanthropic is he. SPONGETIMON ATHENSPANTS!"
Then, for all your gender-bending needs, we have what is probably my favorite Shakespearean comedy:
It may seem like writing a three-panel summary of a play is a fairly straightforward endeavor. Unfortunately, this is only true when the play itself is relatively straightforward, unlike our next offering:
"After many confusions" is code for "too much stupid stuff happened for me to adequately distill in this format."
Then it's time for a play by one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Thomas Middleton:
There's a whole complicated subplot that I haven't even bothered to address here. Anyways. Keeping with the "bodies everywhere" theme, we have this classical offering:
Up next are a couple of new plays, so I may not be 100% accurate with these summaries. First is a follow-up to The Last Wife, Kate Hennig's play about the life of Katherine Parr. This one revolves around a young Elizabeth I and her highly-problematic relationship with Thomas Seymour:
The Breathing Hole is another new play by Colleen Murphy. I may not have all the details right, but the important thing to remember here is that it stars a polar bear.
These two new Canadian plays are followed by a pair of French plays, one classic:
...and one a bit more contemporary:
The final play of Stratford's season is The Komagata Maru Incident. It's framed in a very metatheatrical way, which I'm going to totally skip over here and just tell you what is being metatheatrically portrayed.
(Stick figures don't do "metatheatrical" very well....)
And that's the Stratford Festival's 2017 season! Speaking of which, I will be participating in the Festival's Forum this season as part of a panel entitled "Willy Shakes: Fanboy". Here are the details:
WHO: Me and the Kill Shakespeare guys (Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery)
WHAT: A panel discussion on Shakespeare, comics, graphic novels, and whatever else.
WHEN: Tuesday, September 6, 10:45am
WHERE: The Chalmers Lounge at the Avon Theatre, Stratford, ON
WHY: Because they asked me to and it sounded really cool.
HOW: You can check out the details and buy tickets online!
If you're in the Stratford area, I hope to see you there!
OK, we've had our overdose of testosterone, what with Mercutio and Tybalt and Romeo and all the mindless violence. Let's check back in with the feminine half of this story...
Juliet is SO DESPERATE to get laid, it's not even funny.
OK, let's wrap this whole messy marketplace thing up...
This is Benvolio's last appearance in the play. His subsequent absence is unexplained. I like to think that Benvolio left Verona and found a life of peace farming in the countryside, far away from self-destructively feuding families of any kind.
OK! Back to A Stick Figure Romeo & Juliet! In case you've forgotten where we left off, everything was going to hell in a handbasket.
Benvolio is your friend who, when you accidentally knock a jar of salsa onto the floor of the grorcey store, sticks around and tries to clean it up while you bolt for the exit.
