Like Shakespeare and Soap-Operas

Hey folks.  So we all know that I started this Cedar Falls venture with no roadmap, no plan, no real goal in mind other than to have fun, tell stories, explore characters and experiment.

And I have done that.  I am still doing that.  I get an idea for a vignette, or a scene, and I try it out.  See how it goes.  I'm having fun.

However I have oticed that storylines are starting to pool and coalesce around major events which is interesting to me since I had no fucking plan to do this.  But planned or not a storm is coming and I can almost feel it building like the sucking vacuum of a huge wave, building momentum and getting ready crash into shore.

Like Shakespeare and Soaps the biggest of the big events seems to be the wedding.  High drama.  And on the road to Avalon's wedding (and the aftershock wedding that I have planned), there are all these other milestones and events that successfully gather folks together, force plot lines to mingle and character's lives to overlap.  Plus people dress pretty.

And this realization is still sort of hitting me, because the story began for me at the wedding party of Velvet and Vaughan where she finds him fucking another woman in the hottub, so... damn.  Or, as shakespeare might day: Damn.  (Damn's a word that doesn't really go out of fashion...)  Plus there's all the marriage drama with Maggie & Grey and the other quintessential plot happening for soaps (more than billy shakes) which is MAMA DRAMA or baby controversies.  I haz sum.

So far we, the reader, knows the paternity of all the babies... but the town doesn't... and maybe we need a mystery baby that we don't even know the paternity of?!?!?!?  We shall see.  Then the DNA evidence can get mixed up and hearts will get broken and... ahhh soaps.

My very favorite Shakepeare play actually centers around a Mamma Drama.  The Winter's Tale opens up on a seemingly happy domestic scene-- King Leontes and his Beautiful Queen Hermione are entertaining their good friend the neighboring King Polixenes  (Great names right?  So leave me alone about Velvet). 

Now Leo and Polix are like BROTHERS!  They've been besties since they were kids, being neighboring royalty and all I guess, and the play opens and the atmosphere is very like "Oh hahahahah, funny funny, jokey-jokey, so good to have you visiting, yay us."  So then Hermione, (who is like 9 months pregnant and a little sassy) and Polix are like "Let's all go in to dinner My Lord"  and Leo's like: "Yeah, be right there, you two go on ahead, I'll catch up!" Smile, wave, smile wave and then...


WHAM!  He wanted to hang back a mo just to talk to US the AUDIENCE about the fact that he suspects his wife is a cheating whore.  YUP.  First five minutes of the show he turns to us and is all like:  My wife is prolly sleeping with my best friend, I have no PROOF but I just bet she's sucking his cock, He's been sluicing her sewers behind my back (there's some great fucking imagery.  He calls his wife, the QUEEN a fucking 'hobby horse', eyebrow raising shit.  I'll post one of his disgusting asides down the bottom so you can see what I mean.), and guess what?  I don't even think the kid she's preggers with is my baby!

Ok, so scholars and theatre folk have long debated about this cold open.  Like, WTF?  Who are we to believe?  The queen seems nice, maybe a teensy bit flirty, but she just seems like a great gal we'd all like to be friends with.  And Polixenes doesn't say or do anything at all untoward- he seems like he's just a great guy, but who is our protagonist?  Who's the one we get to talk to, who's side of things do we hear?  Fucking Leontes.  And he is SO CONVINCED of her treachery, he is like CERTAIN that she's a slutbag, and he's really flippin convincing to listen to.  As an audience member you're sitting there second guessing and feeling all embarrassed like:  "Whoaaaah.  Holy shit, are you sure?  Hermione?  I've met her, she seems nice... are you sure?  Ohhhhhmannnnnnn.  well, maybe I hate her now.  Tramp."

Anyway now we're looking at her and everything she does with a stink-eye and Leontes tells his servant to go fucking POISON his besty, but luckily that guy has an attack of conscience about regicide and spills the beans to Polix who is like "I'm audi 5000" and books it back to his country where his wife has had a baby and no one can poison him.  Like 'ghouls' in tag I guess.

So the sudden and hasty departure of King P seems to solidify the treachery in King L's mind and he has his wife thrown in fucking jail (or 'gaol' as it is written in shakespeare's day) for adultery and condemned to death as soon as she drops the baby.  It's bad PR to execute a preggo I guess.

So she had the baby, stands trial, professes over and over her absolute innocence, but he's like "Nah"  and sentences her to death, but she collapses and 'dies' before she can be killed anyway.

My favorite Shakespeare lady of all time PAULINA, she's sort of a royal advisor, she brings the baby to Leontes and tries to get him to admit that the kid is his.  "The very copy" of him, but even though everyone is like: Dude, she totally looks like you, King Leo is like "FUCK THAT NOISE" and he condemns the baby to death on foreign soil.  He's like, "Bring the kid to her real father's country and maybe he'll take her in" wah.

In the midst of all this hubbub his first born son, who's like five, dies because of all this stress.  So now we're maybe 30 minutes into the play and we've got attempted regicide, defacto infanticide, sudden-child-death-syndrome and the "death" of queen hermione.

At this point these two royal messengers run in and are like "Oh, My Lord, we've returned from the Oracle, we've got the answer to the question you sent us with..."  Yup.  If King Leontes had just WAITED A FUCKING MINUTE for KGB to text him back, he'd have realized that he was a total fucking toolbag.

What'd the oracle have to say?  Hermione was a true and faithful wife.  Polixenes was a true and honest friend.  The paternity test came back positive for Leontes and leontes is a crazy fucktard.  Oh, and the country is going to suck it hard core until the 'daughter that was lost, again is found'.

Hmmm.  Where can this play go, one wonders.  Leontes immediately feels like a total douche and vows to mourn his wife an daughter for the rest of his life and Paulina's like "Good.  I'mma stick around and MAKE SURE YOU DO THAT."  She basically becomes like the daily reminder of his terrible, greivous mistakes and crimes and he keeps her around because he seems to get-off on self flagellation.

Fast forward 16-18 years and we are in Bohemia, where Polixenes is king.  His son has fallen in love with a beautiful peasant girl.  Awww.  Love.  But Polixenes finds out and he's like:  "No fucking way, no son of mine will ever marry a peasant, you can only marry a princess!"  

Of course the girl he's fallen for is the little lost baby that was left to die, but she was taken in by a peasant farmer so viola, she lives!  And she's a smart cookie too because she refuses to give it up to the prince unless he marries her, and as history has taught us, men do crazy shit for unattainable poon, so he decides they must flee the country and go beg the help of the neighboring king LEONTES.

So They get there and Paulina KNOWS, she takes one look at the girl and KNOWS, which is fortunate because LEONTES takes one look at the girl and is like: "Whoa, she's fucking gorgeous... She's like perfectly beautiful... I've kinda got a semi in my kingly britches right now..."  And Paulin'as all:  She's too young for you and besides you don't deserve her because you are a douche who killed his whole family over nothing.

Then, in one of the most bizarre shakespeare endings of all time Polixenes comes over to collect his son and he's still pretty pissed about Leontes' trying to have him poisoned so that's an AWKWARD meeting after all these years and Paulina is like:  Hey, before you all figure this shit out let's go look at my new statue that I have.

What?  Yeah, that's most people's reaction.  Even in the play.  But for whatever reason everyone's like: "Sure, we'll go check out your awesome statue (crazy lady)" and they do.

So Paulina has ostensibly had the sculptor make her a life-sized statue of queen Hermione, but not how she was at the time of her "death", but how she might look if she were alive today.  Yeah.  So she's aged beautifully, about 16-18 years, right?

And Leontes is transfixed!  He's like we all are at Madame Tussaude's.  He's like: "It looks so REAL!  I can't believe it isn't REAL!  I mean it looks ALIVE!  I feel like I can even see her BREATHING..."

Marvelous.  So Paulina, being THE SHIT, is like- "Well if you promise not to fuck things up ever again, and if you promise not to ask me how or think too hard about it, I will make my statue come to life for you." 

So Leontes, after having atoned for 16-18 years is like :Yeah, OK, do that... (remember that Paulina has been essentially cock-blocking him for two decades, no whores, no pleasure, nothing, so a life-sized blow up doll is looking like the fucking golden ticket right about now.. He wanted to put the moves on his long lost daughter not three scenes ago...)

So Paulina whispers some magic words and the statue, um, begins to breathe, and is Hermione as if she'd never, um, 'died'.  And They realize the girl is their long lost daughter so Polixenes is like, "oh, ok, then if she's a princess, fine, my son can marry her."  And they all lived happily ever after (except for the guy who got killed by a bear, but that's not relevent here I think).

Yeah.  So scholars debate whether or not we are supposed to believe in magic there at the end or if we are to believe that Paulina is one clever bitch who hid the queen away and preventd the king from ever moving on until they found the daughter that was lost, and once they had her back Paulina was like, "ok Hermy, get your statue clothes on and let's do this thing!" and thus the big 'come up and look at my statue' scene.

Being a feminist I tend to lean toward the wisdom and power of women rather than the fantastical "I had a statue made and can also make it come to life if I try real hard..."

But what evs.  I'm not sure where I was going with that, other than maybe to promise myself not to end Cedar Falls in such a ridiculous way.  But that begs the question: will there be an end?  I honestly don't know.  I kind of enjoy the perpetuity of the world we've set up, the open-ended sand-box nature of the thing.  I want to see Maggie & Grey's kid as a grown up, uou know?  I want to see if Vaughan Grey really raises Jonah's incest baby and how that all turns out, so I'm not sure about any specific ending, though I obviously see certain story arch coming to natural closure along the way.  And that's how it is with Soaps.  Storylines come and go but the town remains and there are always new intrigues to be delved into, new charachters to stir the proverbial pot, new avenues to explore.

I just don't anticipate I'll end with a statue coming to life.  Though that is my very favorite Shakespeare play.

I think I should mention, for the record, let the record reflect, if you will, that I very nearly decided to go for my master's degree in Shakespeare Studies.  I don't regret not doing so, specifically, because I loved my entire emerson expreience, but I kinda wish I had gotten to spend two-three years living, breathing and easting the bard.  I would very likely be the smartest shakespeare person you know.  Lol.  Maybe someday I'll persue that degree afterall.

So look forward to events coalescing and converging in the near future!  YAY!

************

Leontes to the audience:

There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm, (He's talking to you kid!)
That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence (Sluiced is a wet, yucky, slimy word for sexy stuff)
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by  (hope he wore his rubbers...)
Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't  (Sir Smile, I love it. Hey Mr. Smiley ou fuck my wife?)
Whiles other men have gates and those gates open'd,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair  (Wow.  his wife's Vajayjay is his gate that has been opened against his will... yikes a roni)
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for't there is none;  (Don't feel bad guys, most wives are cheating whores.  what can you do? am I right?  You feel me?)
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,
No barricado for a belly; know't; ("No barricado for a belly" roughly translates as: nothing you can do if your wife decides to let guys be spermin' up in her...)(also, I like this original use of "Know it!" priceless.)
It will let in and out the enemy (In and out and in and out-- the actor should definitely play up the sexual rhythm of this line.  It should sound like what in and out means.)
With bag and baggage: many thousand on's  ("Bag and baggage" can really only mean the guy's balls and his bastard seed.  Graphic right???)
Have the disease, and feel't not. 

Awesome sauce right?  Leontes definitely has his mind in the gutter folks!  And I love how he baically looks at all the men in the audience and is like:  You see it right?  My wife's a whore, right?  But I'm not the only cuckold here- look at your lady, I bet she fucks other dudes.  Yeah, she prolly does.  Women are sluts and they'll open their cunts for any tom dick or Sir Smile.

So, thanks Bill, for the soap opera!