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1000 results for “thane_macbeth”
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Christina Livingood
Christina Wilcoxon
Mary Anne -
I think they thought they were doing a proper #dramatic performance, not #satire or #farce. It was in one of the tiniest theatres I've ever seen; there were only 3 rows of about 8 seats each. The front row was only a meter from the stage, just enough room for people to people to walk in.
The #stage was tiny, a meter deep with nothing but a curtain as their backdrop and just a couple of props, like the chair. The performers were at the edge of the stage, within arm's reach of the audience. We were in the first row, but thankfully we were at one end of the row, so there was about 3 meters between me and Lady MacBeth. I was barely able to contain my laughter; if I had been in the center, with Lady MacBeth looking directly into my eyes while MacBeth was engaging in his business and she was delivering her monologue, I never could have kept it together.
It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen. I suppose that's why it was part of a Fringe festival.
I don't remember the name of the company that performed it, or if they called their performance something other than #MacBeth. I don't remember what bits they cut and what they performed. But Lady MacBeth giving it her all, with her #rump raised to her husband and he keeping time with it, will remain burned in my #memory until the end of my days.
If anyone else out there saw this #performance, please speak up. Sometimes I wonder if it was all just a fever #dream.
3/3
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Reflections on Deep Space 9
I’ve been (re)watching all of Star Trek in approximate stardate order (approximate because apart from anything else stardates are inconsistent across the series). I’ve just watched the final episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, so of course I have some extremely strong opinions about it.
Historical background
Star Trek: Deep Space 9 began broadcasting while its predecessor Star Trek: The Next Generation was still on the air. It is almost invariably discussed in terms of its various firsts: first Star Trek show made without Gene Roddenberry’s involvement; first to air simultaneously with another Star Trek, first with a black lead, first where the lead was a commander, not a captain (at first, anyway), first set on a space station, first where not all the main characters were in Starfleet, and so on.
I think it’s somewhat notable that, creatively anyway, at least one of these firsts was also a last: there’s never been another stationary Star Trek. Indeed, alert readers may have noticed this is a contradiction in terms. The showrunners eventually realised they really needed a proper ship and introduced the USS Defiant to serve as as a means of getting off the station from time to time. Similarly, perhaps aware of the optics of having the various white leads explicitly outrank the only main black lead on Trek, they eventually promoted Benjamin Sisko. Twenty years later, a different set of showrunners gave themselves a near-identical problem on Star Trek: Discovery and likewise solved it by making Michael Burnham, the first black female lead on Star Trek, a captain (although she was, oddly, a ‘co-captain’).
Space: The Final… Outpost, I suppose
Overall, DS9 is probably the most consistent of all the Star Trek shows. The Original Series was notoriously all over the place, The Next Generation was, just as notoriously, pretty poor for the first two seasons and also experienced a significant drop in quality in season 7, likely because the producers had stretched themselves too thin with TNG and DS9 airing simultaneously, and Star Trek: Voyager and the first TNG film, Star Trek Generations, also in production. DS9, by contrast, starts pretty strong and is mostly good to very good all the way through (although I do think that, like TNG, the middle seasons are the strongest). Unlike Voyager, there aren’t any characters that feel oddly pointless (Harry Kim) or just plain annoying (Neelix1). It has a much stronger sense of self than the later, strangely messy shows2, and that carries it through the odd rough patch.
The acting is also generally better than it had been on Trek up to that point. I have a theory that the overall quality of mainstream film and TV acting started to get a hell of a lot better in the ’90s but no theory as to why this is. Just look at how good someone like Michael B. Jordan is3 compared to the people we got starring in blockbuster films in the ’80s, for example; he absolutely blows away Stallone or Schwarzenegger or anyone else you care to name. DS9 may be an early example of that, bar a couple of performances which I’ll come to in a moment. Right from the start, Nana Visitor, René Auberjonois, Armin Shimerman and Colm Meaney4 (returning from TNG) are all excellent, as are recurring guest stars Andrew Robinson, Marc Alaimo, Louise Fletcher (who was, after all, an Oscar winning actress), Aron Eisenberg and Max Grodénchik5. Siddig el Fadil and Terry Farrell wobble early on, but both find their feet eventually, as the writers work out what they want to do with the characters and learn how to play to the actors’ strengths. Both also benefit later from being paired up with actors with whom they have great chemistry (respectively, Meaney and Michael Dorn, likewise returning from TNG, as Worf, from season 4 on), eventually getting some of the best episodes in the whole thing. Where the space station concept works well is in allowing them to have that strong recurring cast, who slowly build relationships with many of the regulars. The recurring guests introduced later on are also all fantastic: Casey Biggs, Jeffrey Combs and JG Hertzler6, in particular, are perfectly cast and routinely excellent.
The only major fly in the ointment as far as acting goes is Avery Brooks. I find him to be an utterly baffling actor, not least because I know that many people absolutely love him, whereas my view of him is that he cannot act at all.
Now, look, I could hardly enjoy Star Trek if I couldn’t put up with the odd wooden performance. The problems with Brooks come not when he’s wooden, though he often is, but that almost every time he does emote, he’s bizarre. People often say he got better when he shaved his head and grew a beard and this is true – but we’re coming from a low base here. And his fundamental issues never went away. Look at his performance in the first episode, ‘Emissary’, where he over-reads the line ‘We just can’t leave her!’7 so much – and so badly – that it’s unintentionally hilarious. Compare this to his climatic scene with Gul Dukat in the very last episode, where he also overdoes the line ‘I am!‘ to similar effect. His much-vaunted performances in ‘Far Beyond the Stars’ and ‘In the Pale Moonlight’ have the exact same problems: whenever he tries to show a strong emotion, it’s overdone (as in ‘Stars’); when he tries to just get through a scene without a single strong emotion, whether that’s because it’s a paint by numbers scene or one where there’s meant to be an ambiguity, he’s wooden (as in ‘Moonlight’). All he really has going for him is a beautiful voice8, but this really isn’t enough. His performance in DS9 does not encourage me to seek out his other work, but perhaps he’s just woefully miscast as Sisko, or poorly directed, and really shines elsewhere.
No Gods, No Masters
I think some of the issues with Sisko are the fault of the writing, particularly his plot arc as the Emissary to the Prophets (Bajoran gods/wormhole aliens). Trying to examine religion in Star Trek was a good idea. After all, most of the world and most of the USA is still very religious. It’s long-established in the Trek universe that alien cultures have their own religious beliefs, even the hyper-logical Vulcans, including various prophets, gods and ceremonies. In our own culture, where it’s been obvious for centuries that an interventionist god doesn’t – indeed, cannot – exist, there are still a great many religious people, and it’s not at all clear that that should change by the time the 24th century rolls around9. Additionally, there have always been plenty of godlike beings in Star Trek, from Trelaine, to that thing that can’t explain what it wants with a starship, to Q. It makes sense to explore this aspect of humanity more deeply than can be done with a single episode or recurring character.
But is it well-handled in DS9? I don’t think so. The Bajorans see the Prophets as gods and their home, the wormhole to the Gamma quadrant, as the Celestial Temple. However… they’re wrong, aren’t they? The wormhole is a wormhole, not a temple, and the things that live in it really are just aliens without a linear sense of time. Kai Winn, Louise Fletcher’s character, is not wrong to argue in the final few episodes that the Prophets don’t seem actually to care very much (or at all) about Bajor, Bajorans or even their Emissary, Sisko, who they arbitrarily whisk away to live with them, he having apparently served his purpose on this corporeal plain by pushing Gul Dukat off a cliff10, forcing him to abandon his friends and family forever, for no reason.
The concept of a species that doesn’t experience or understand linear time is really interesting and also a very Star Trek kind of idea. There’s genuine interest and bathos in the idea that the Bajorans have been worshipping these entities that not only do not but cannot understand them at all; the Prophets don’t seem to know what time is until they meet Sisko and he explains it to them, which storngly suggests they’ve never seriously interacted with the Bajorans at all. But this interesting idea gradually falls away and the writers, out of nothing more than inertia, turn the Prophets into traditional ‘good’ gods, complete with some opposite, ‘evil’ fallen angel/fire demon types in the form of the Pah Wraiths (who want to set the entire universe on fire, for some reason, but can’t, for some reason).11 This of course sticks the writers with a fictional version of the problem of evil12. In the real world, the solution to the problem of evil is that God isn’t real. In Deep Space 9, the gods/Prophets are real, and so the problem of evil cannot be solved. They’re just totally useless as gods.
The interesting notion of the uncaring not-actually-gods is undermined further whenever the Prophets act more like ‘traditional’ gods with an interest in Bajor, which they do more and more as the series goes on, culminating in the revelation that ‘the Sisko’ is a Jesus analogue who the Prophets actually created in order to fulfill the destined destruction of Gul Dukat and the Kosst Amojan13, both of which again, just fall off a cliff. Why do they need a special magic man to do the job of pushing a book and a person off a cliff? Anyone can push someone off a cliff. And why didn’t they just tell Sisko – or, again, anyone, really – to destroy the book at any given time in history? This book, the origins of which are never explained, is totally useless. Literally all it can do is release the Pah Wraiths (and thus destroy the universe14) and make Gul Dukat go blind, so why can’t an immortal, non-linear race of aliens who can speak to anyone at any time using psychic alien powers just tell someone to chuck it into a warp engine or out of an airlock? Or not write it?
Because gods move in mysterious ways!
This is not actually an acceptable argument in real life. It’s a clever-sounding way of saying ‘I don’t know’ and also a major reason we know that this type of god doesn’t exist: history unfolds in a way completely indistinguishable from random chance because that is, in fact, what is happening. You don’t need a guiding intelligence to the universe to make statistical chance happen15. However, this is a still more unsatisfying answer in narrative fiction. ‘Things just happen all the time for no particular reason’ is not a story.
The end result is that the conclusion to Sisko’s arc is unsatisfying. We’re presented with this guy who is a dedicated family man, who feels a bit ambivalent about his career in Starfleet and is considering the possibility that he may have to drop his career to be a good father to his son. He then has a third role, of Emissary to some annoying aliens, thrust upon him. He gradually comes to embrace all three of these identities and find some sort of peace and equilibrium within himself – only to then very suddenly abandon both career and family because a not very competent god told him to, for no reason that we’re ever given. This is annoying writing. It might even have been better to leave it totally ambiguous as to whether he died in the Fire Caves rather than insisting there was some reason that he just can’t tell Kassidy (or us). And he doesn’t speak to poor old Jake at all!
So, I find it difficult to sing unqualified praise for a series where the main character and his arc are both flawed as written and executed badly onscreen.
Moral grey areas
DS9 has also been much-praised for introducing moral ambiguity into the Star Trek universe. This is very welcome in the character of Kira Nerys, a former terrorist who now finds herself in a position of authority as chief representative on DS9 of the Bajoran provisional government. She’s gone from leader of a terrorist cell, carrying out bombings, sabotage and assassinations, to an army major. This outsider to insider journey makes her different from previous Trek characters. She’s the first really good female role the series had16 and provides a fascinating point of contrast to the upstanding citizens of the Federation, most of them male, that we’d seen up to this point. She’s deeply religious, a warrior, frequently (and understandably) angry about both the past and the present. The show neither blames her for having been a terrorist but nor does it ever entirely let her off the hook. Right up to the end, she’s explaining to people who would quite like to kill her that they are going to have to kill their own people if they want to win a revolution. It’s intense and difficult, but also difficult to argue with: after all, she’s right and it largely works (and, in a neat twist, the person who most objects to the idea of killing his own people in the name of the revolution is later killed, in the name of the revolution, by one of his own). Kira never apologises for her actions in the Resistance and never forgives the Cardassians as a group, although she works with them when she has to. Her arc works through never entirely resolving the ambiguity of her position. By series’ end, she’s had one last successful go as a terrorist, ironically fighting for the people who oppressed her planet for so many years, before she returns to Deep Space 9 as the commanding officer, but still outside of Starfleet and the Federation.
Kira really hits the ground running as a character. The first really stunning episode of the show is episode 19, ‘Duet’, which I don’t think the show topped till ‘The Visitor’ (more on which later). Kira meets a man she thinks is a war criminal, but who insists he isn’t. I don’t actually want to spoil the plot of this episode. You really should just watch it. It’s really impressive that DS9 delivers an all-time great episode so early on in its run.
Likewise, Odo is a great character. He’s a variation on a key Trek trope, the alien outsider who doesn’t fully understand the human (and Bajoran, Ferengi and Cardassian) people he lives among, but wishes to understand them better, and to be like them in key ways. In TOS and TNG, this role was taken by Spock and Data, who became the most beloved characters on their shows,17 so Auberjonois has some big Beatles boots to fill. The variation the writers came up with is of an alien who is not only living among aliens, but also not in his ‘natural’ state physically: he’s a shapeshifter, a species that doesn’t have a single form and spends most of its time linked to some indeterminately massive number of its fellows in a gigantic ocean of sapient goo, known as ‘the Great Link’, located on the other side of the Galaxy. Just as Spock and Data relied on abstract non-emotional frameworks to guide them (logic and a broadly defined positivism), Odo relies on justice. When he finally meets his fellow Changelings, he soon discovers they’re a race of imperialistic genocidaires, so that his sense of justice forces him to reject them. Again, the series maintains this ambiguity throughout: he recognises both that he can never truly be himself on Deep Space 9, among ‘solids’, out of his natural state, but that he also cannot be himself if he joins the Great Link while they’re still pursuing a war, because that would violate his sense of justice.
Like Kira, Odo came of age in the show’s ‘past’ during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. He likewise had a morally ambiguous role as a sort of police officer on the station, trying to find some balance between the violent, oppressive ‘justice’ of the Cardassians and his own still-evolving ideas of what justice should involve. As we see in various flashbacks, he didn’t always succeed but, as the show also makes clear, it would’ve been impossible for him to achieve justice while working with the Cardassians. As with Kira, the show makes it clear that he could have behaved differently, but never comes down on one side or the other as to whether or what he should have done.
In Odo’s case, his arc ends in a satisfying way, because the contradiction that animates him isn’t actually internal or inherent to him; once the external issue of the war goes away, he’s able to rejoin the Link. It’s still a wrench for him, because he has to leave Kira, but it makes sense: the idea of romantic love was something he’d learned from the Solids, so it’s something he’s able to leave behind.
Shades of… black? Evil? What do you call this colour? War crime grey?
Where the moral grey areas don’t work is when the writers try to create them within the Federation itself. At their absolute worst, major characters are simply allowed to commit crimes – serious crimes – that they get away with when the status quo is restored at the end of the episode. There are three particularly egregious examples of this.
The first is with Jadzia Dax, during one of her early pre-Worf episodes in which Farrell very much fails to give the impression that she’s several hundred years old. Dax goes on a mission of vengeance with a group of Klingons, so she’s party to what, in the Federation, is clearly murder, but to the Klingons is justified as part of a blood feud. Sisko explicitly warns her not to do it. She does it anyway. It’s obviously murder, but her entire comeuppance is that Sisko gives her an annoyed look when she comes back to the station. That’s it. Is this really Starfleet’s attitude to officers violating a direct order in order to take part in a – successful! – conspiracy to murder someone?
Apparently it is! Because, much later, Worf and Dax go on holiday to Risa, the sex pleasure planet. Worf decides that he doesn’t like sex pleasure, so he joins a group of terrorists for the weekend. Again, he is simply allowed to get away with this. Perhaps remembering that she also went on a terrorism-themed jolly once, Dax doesn’t even break up with him. Nobody ever raises the time Worf joined a terrorist organisation for a bit.
Starfleet’s shockingly lax attitude to criminality in its officers continues, however. in ‘For the Uniform’, when Sisko is faced with a (different) terrorist group, the Maquis, he responds by, I’m not kidding, committing an act of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing, by poisoning a planet’s atmosphere in such a way that it won’t be able to support humans (or similar) for fifty years. This is, unambiguously, a war crime and a crime against humanity. Having done this, with scarcely a single objection from the crew, he threatens to do it several more times unless the Maquis surrender. By the end of the episode, everyone’s laughing about it.
In a lot of the writing about DS9, it seems to be assumed that the society depicted in the earlier series was a morally unambiguous utopia. However, this is not the case at all and it’s honestly quite odd that anyone thinks so. Apart from the many times the Federation is nearly destroyed by conspiracy or invasion, some of the most celebrated episodes in TOS and TNG depict the Federation, Starfleet and the people within it as deeply flawed characters, who force our heroes into uncomfortable situations. ‘The Doomsday Machine’ sees the crew having to survive when they’re given suicidal orders by a revenge-obsessed captain, for example, and Kirk frequently cheats, bluffs and lies when he has to, including to his superior officers. His senior staff spend the entire time bickering and McCoy is kind of a racist. Utopia?
‘The Measure of a Man’, one of the most celebrated TNG episodes sees the Federation threatening to dismantle Data, potentially killing him in the process, because they think it might be useful to do so. Data has to go through an entire trial to prove to the Federation that he exists. Riker’s forced to act as the prosecution for his friend. Okay, Data and Picard win in the end, but ‘proving you have the right not to be dismantled simply because it seems like it might be convenient to dismantle you’ is hardly the stuff of utopia, is it?
‘The Measure of a Man’ is a perfect example of what makes for a good exploration of ethics in Star Trek (and sci-fi more broadly). It needs to take a moral issue that is not a solved issue, then add a sci-fi element. So, the questions in ‘The Measure of a Man’ are, What does society owe to the individual (and vice-versa)? (A moral issue we haven’t solved, hence the existence of democratic politics); and, Do androids count as individuals with rights? (which is, of course, the sci-fi element). In the episode, we as the audience naturally side with Data, because we know him. But the points made by Bruce Maddox (and by Riker, acting for the prosecution), are valid. Data is a machine. It would be really useful to have a Data on every ship in Starfleet. Where they collapse is in the fact that Data is a machine who can express real views about himself, and he does not want to be dismantled.
In Star Trek: Insurrection, there’s a similar situation in that Starfleet wants to do something and the crew of the Enterprise want to stop them. The reason it works much less well than ‘The Measure of the Man’ is that, while it has the sci-fi element (a mysterious anti-aging energy), the thing Starfleet wants to do is just wrong and it is a solved moral question: it is never okay to forcibly displace an entire population18 (are you listening, Captain Sisko?). We know this is the case, and so we know there’s absolutely no question that Picard and co. will refuse to help the Federation do such a thing once they know that’s what’s happening and, indeed, that they will turn against Starfleet if they have to, in order to prevent it, which they duly do.
Back to ‘For the Uniform’: Sisko decides that he’s going to poison a planet in order to commit ethnic cleansing (displacing the humans and Bajorans so that Cardassians, who aren’t susceptible to that posion, can move in). This is a crime. The sci-fi element isn’t really interesting. It’s not significantly different from using a hypothetical dirty bomb to make an area radioactive. So this episode fails both tests: a solved ethical problem and a sci-fi element that’s not different or interesting enough from what we have in the present, non-fictional world.
It also demonstrates what’s wrong with much of the ‘grey’ morality of DS9. Committing a crime against humanity isn’t morally ambiguous, it’s evil! There isn’t any question about this, that’s just what those words mean. People like to go on about how Janeway murders Tuvix in Voyager, but for some reason Sisko is let completely off the hook here by the fanbase and, indeed, by Starfleet and the Federation, when in fact he should’ve been tried at whatever the Federation’s version of the Hague is.
Another area where DS9 had a negative impact on the series was the introduction of Section 31,19 which is a branch of the Federation that does ‘morally ambiguous’ (again, read: evil) things, apparently without any kind of oversight or approval from the government. This kind of organisation is a dreadful, nonsensical fictional trope. Invariably it’s an excuse for writers to have a group of villains who just do whatever they like with no restrictions whether physical or logical, until the writers get bored and suddenly it turns out they can be stopped20. In the case of DS9, the writers team once again use Section 31 to make what they consider to be an ambiguous argument which in fact boils down to ‘Atrocities are okay when the good guys do them’ and, again, there’s no sense in which this is ambiguous, it’s just false and wrong.
Worse, with Section 31 in particular, it’s just lazy writing. The organisation is absurdly overpowered, with its agents able to walk into rooms without anyone seeing them (until the plot deems that it’s time for them to magically appear) or, equally, to spirit people away without their noticing. Even in a universe with near-infinite resources, it’s impossible not to wonder just how Section 31 gets so many, e.g., spaceships, without anyone questioning what’s going on. Plus, the main characters frequently plaintively ask each other how they can finally ‘reveal’ what Section 31 is up to, without ever considering that the sworn testimony of numerous high-ranking Starfleet Officers, not to mention the evidence of all the corpses lying all over the place or the fact that they’ve literally caught Luther Sloan, he’s right there! – might actually be enough to reveal everything.
But apart from all that…
Despite silly elements like Section 31 and the Pah Wraiths, the show is generally good or even great. Those things are in few enough episodes that I can mostly ignore them and there’s just so much to like that even the regrettable choice of Brooks doesn’t wreck the show.
One episode, in particular, is not only one of the best Star Trek stories but I think one of the greatest works of SFF ever written: ‘The Visitor’ from season 4. I strongly advise you to go and watch this if you haven’t but, in brief, the plot is that Sisko is killed in an accident, leaving Jake an orphan. However, Sisko begins to reappear at brief intervals, first weeks and then years apart, throughout Jake’s life, as a sort of ghost. For Sisko, time doesn’t pass at all between the intervals: he remains the same age while Jake gets older. Thus, eventually, Sisko sees his son as an adult, then an old man – older than Sisko himself. After several failed attempts to bring Sisko back, Jake realises the only way to save him is to commit suicide at the right moment; that this will allow Sisko to return to the time of the accident, and avoid it. The right moment, of course, turns out to be a time when Sisko is there, with Jake, so that Sisko cradles an old man who is also his son in his arms as he dies in order to save him. It’s absolutely stunning.
Brooks, for once, doesn’t overdo it, completely selling this impossible situation. Tony Todd21, as the older Jake, is also fantastic, as is Cirroc Lofton in his regular role as the Jake we know. The reason, though, that it’s such great SFF is that it creates a real, human story that could only be told with some sort of fantastic element (in this case the ‘temporal displacement’ that takes Sisko out of time). You could achieve the broad outline in a couple of ways, but never in a ‘realistic’ plot. Yet, you feel the entire thing as a real human being: Jake’s bereavement at losing his father, the impossible hope when he apparently returns, only to devastatingly vanish again, then Sisko’s sense of loss at his son’s death (even though he understands that this will allow him to live, with his son, again). It’s brilliantly, brilliantly done. You don’t often get a piece of fiction that not only works in itself but singlehandedly justifies22 the existence of an entire genre.
Deep Space 9 is mostly good and, when everything comes together, very good. It proved that you could do Star Trek without a ship called the Enterprise and that you could almost do it without having a ship at all. It increased the alien quotient in the show, finally delivered some really good roles for women and even had a kid in it who wasn’t annoying. I think overall it’s not quite as good as TNG was when it really got going, although you could persuasively argue that it’s average was better. I also think I still prefer the generally under-rated Star Trek: Voyager, though I’ll get back to you about that when I’ve finished watching it.
Book reviews
Queen Macbeth, by Val McDermid
This is a reasonably workmanlike book. It’s not really a re-telling of Shakespeare’s play; rather, it goes back to the source materal and re-tells that. I’m not sure I find Gruoch more compelling or even necessarily more sympathetic than Lady Macbeth, though. Fun fact of the day: While we all call her ‘Lady Macbeth’ and most modern editions of the play give this name in the stage directions, she’s never referred to as such in the First Folio, the only authentic text of Macbeth: she’s referred to simply as ‘His Lady’ and then just ‘Lady’. So, McDermid does her some justice by giving her her name back.
The Malcontent, by John Marston
One of the first tragicomedies, an entertainingly twisty turny play with a fun bit of metatheatre at the beginning, featuring Shakespeare’s pals Richard Burbage (‘Burbadge’ here), Henry Condell (co-editor of the First Folio) and William Sly arguing with each other and the audience. Still, oddly, feels pleasantly surprising when the tragic-seeming play ends happily. I imagine the first audiences were blown away.
Utopia, by Thomas More
Speaking of utopias (utopiae?), I also read the original this month. As David Wittenberg argues in The Philosophy of Time Travel, it’s to later utopian fiction that we owe the concept of time travel. Once there were no new lands to discover, utopian authors had to locate their societies elsewhere in time not, as More and later Swift, parodying the genre, did, on far-flung islands. Being both a hit in Shakespeare’s day and a predecessor to the time travel story, this ticks a lot of boxes for me.
What I found most interesting about it is that More’s Utopia is so similar to the various socialist/communist utopias people have come up with afterwards and also quite similar, mostly knowingly, to Plato’s Republic. I can’t tell if this is because we’re all so collectively unimaginative we can’t come up with anything new or if it just is the case that ‘some sort of communism [that works (somehow)]’ really would be the best way for humans to live. Anyway, it’s an interesting, fairly brief read, well worth the little time it takes to read it.
- With apologies to Ethan Phillips, who I think is a fine actor working with mostly terrible material. My strongest evidence for this is the episode ‘Mortal Coil’ (S4E12), where he gives a fantastic performance making one of Voyager‘s best episodes. ↩︎
- The strongest of which are Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Lower Decks knows that it’s a funny show about Star Trek and Strange New Worlds knows it’s a straight-ahead Star Trek about exploring. Discovery, however, starts off thinking it’s an anthology show, then becomes a show about Michael Burnham, then a show about found family (where we never get to know most of the family), then a show about a dystopian version of the Federation, etc. Star Trek: Picard thinks it’s a nostalgia show but spends season 1 stamping on everyone’s nostalgia (Hugh’s back! Okay, he’s dead now. Also, everyone hates Jean-Luc Picard, now, implausibly. And I bet you thought Riker and Troi would live happily ever after, right? Well, they did until their kid died, fuck you). In season 2 it gets even weirder before, finally, in season 3, giving everyone what they wanted in the first place and doing a nostalgia show but with an incredibly nonsensical plotline in which, at one point, someone gets assimilated by the Borg until someone talks them out of it. It’s a mess, is what I’m saying. Still, at least they brought back the theme music (eventually). ↩︎
- I wrote this sentence before he won the Academy Award the other day, but it does help my point. ↩︎
- As Major (later Colonel) Kira Nerys, ‘Constable’ Odo, Quark and Chief Miles O’Brien. ↩︎
- As Garak, Gul Dukat, Vedek (later Kai) Winn Adami, Nog and Rom. ↩︎
- As Damar, Weyon and Brunt, and General (later Chancellor) Martok. ↩︎
- Another oddity of either the actor or the character is that he always partially reverses the word order in this form of sentence, saying ‘we just can’t’ instead of ‘we can’t just’ every time. ↩︎
- I read somewhere that they planned to have an opening narration in the style of the famous ‘Space: the final frontier’ speech(es), but couldn’t come up with anything good enough in time. It’s kind of a shame because there’s no doubt that Brooks would’ve sounded fantastic doing this. ↩︎
- Out of scope, but I’m inclined to think we’re trending that way. However, trends don’t necessarily continue. ↩︎
- This kind of thing happens all the time in SFF, but it still annoys me: Gul Dukat in this scene has telekinetic powers and is able to kill Winn by waving at her, but then he dies because Sisko pushes him. Come on. Okay, he pushes him into a big fire, but he’s a fire demon who has already been shown to come back from the dead in this scene. Why does this kill him? ↩︎
- The reason we know the Pah Wraiths are baddies is that when they possess people, their eyes go all red and scary. It’s just so lazy. Why not at least make them ice demons or something? ↩︎
- Simply: if God is real and good, why did He create a world with evil in it? ↩︎
- It’s a magic book, don’t worry about it. ↩︎
- Of course, once they are released, instead of immediately destroying the universe they just spend several minutes hanging around in a cave, waiting for Sisko to show up so he can shove them. ↩︎
- I’m phrasing this carefully because strictly speaking it’s possible to argue that some sort of intelligence set up the universe from outside it and to argue that said intelligence may therefore have had some sort of aim in mind. However, that is all you can say about it and you’re already saying ‘may’. ↩︎
- Role, note, not actor. Nichelle Nichols, Denise Crosby, Marina Sirtis and Gates McFadden were never given very much to do or, as especially in Sirtis’ case, the stuff they were given to do was just silly (‘Captain, I feel this alien, the one screaming at us, is upset about something’). ↩︎
- Well, probably. We all love Kirk and Picard, too, obviously, and most of both casts have their fans. They’re great shows! They have lots of great chaacters! ↩︎
- That such things still occur isn’t relevant to my point. The people who do these things know it’s wrong, which is why they variously pretend they’re not doing it, or that they’re not doing it by force, or that those other people have it coming, or they, the perpetrators, were there first, so it’s self-defence, or some other such nonsense. You don’t need to invent justifications like this for things that are morally right, so if you are saying such things, that’s a clue that you’re doing something wrong. ↩︎
- Which was already a bad idea before the terrible Star Trek: Section 31 film, though I’d like to thank the producers of that film for helping me prosecute this argument. ↩︎
- The worst/best of these is in the show Scandal where there turns out to be some secret government agency that goes around murdering people and making speeches about how unstoppable they are. Eventually, the main characters go, ‘Hey, what if we just shoot them?’ and it works. ↩︎
- In an odd, sad coincidence, Todd died the day after I watched this episode. He also played Worf’s brother, Kurn. ↩︎
- I don’t think it needs justifying and, if you’ve read this far, nor do you do; but you and me ain’t everyone. ↩︎
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When Macbeth asks for his assessment, the Doctor does not hedge. He has watched carefully and arrived at a clear conclusion—not about the diagnosis, but about its implications for treatment. "More needs she the divine than the physician..."
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When Macbeth asks for his assessment, the Doctor does not hedge. He has watched carefully and arrived at a clear conclusion—not about the diagnosis, but about its implications for treatment. "More needs she the divine than the physician..."
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When Macbeth asks for his assessment, the Doctor does not hedge. He has watched carefully and arrived at a clear conclusion—not about the diagnosis, but about its implications for treatment. "More needs she the divine than the physician..."
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Some of our super team performing excerpts of Macbeth plus a Q&A at Torquay Library today ahead of the main show tour. Thank you so much to the library for making us so welcome!
#devontheatre #brixhamtheatre #devonactors #macbeth #devon #torbay #theater #acting #stage #rehearsal #britishtheatre #regionaltheatre #touringtheatre #torquay #torquaylibrary #shakespeare #brixhamdevon #theatrearts #DevonActors -
Holy shit Brian Blessed is better than Brando as a head of a Mediterranean crime family. He's a jovial politician and friendly uncle who will as soon slit your throat as offer you a fig. Damn.
and Siân Philips? It's like Lady Macbeth and Daria had a love child. Livia is smarter than Augustus but regularly fools him into forgetting it, and Philips practically winks at the audience as she cons him into doing what she wants. Fucking amazing.
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Autonomies: **Dietrich Bonhoeffer: On Stupidity**
https://autonomies.org/2026/05/dietrich-bonhoeffer-on-stupidity/
Eichmann was not lago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III “to prove a villain.” Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had … Continue reading →
#Commentary #DietrichBonhoeffer #HannahArendt -
Modernizing Shakespeare can be bold or just awkward. Keeping the original verse while dropping it into a world of helicopters, firearms, and contemporary politics often creates more distraction than insight. Some adaptations embrace the theatrical roots and soar; others land in a strange middle ground where nothing quite fits.
#Shakespeare #FilmCriticism #KingLear #Macbeth #Othello #Theatre #Film #Adaptations #Cinema #Literature #MovieReview
https://pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2026/02/18/the-architecture-of-fidelity-narrative-dissonance-and-aesthetic-unity-in-contemporary-shakespearean-cinema/ -
Finished #WyrdSisters by #TerryPrachett. Only Terry could make a satire of #Macbeth and have a play in the book. The books really seem to be finding the voice he uses throughout the rest of the series. The Disc is becoming more fully formed. I really enjoyed this one, even if it took me a couple more weeks than expected.
...Don't know what I want to read next though...
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A quotation from Hannah Arendt
When I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III “to prove a villain.” Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Postscript (1963)More about this quote: wist.info/arendt-hannah/80707/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #hannaharendt #arendt #accountability #banalityofevil #consequences #crime #evil #evilperson #evildoer #Holocaust #intent #moralityplay #motivation #villain #willfulignorance
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A quotation from Hannah Arendt
When I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III “to prove a villain.” Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Postscript (1963)More about this quote: wist.info/arendt-hannah/80707/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #hannaharendt #arendt #accountability #banalityofevil #consequences #crime #evil #evilperson #evildoer #Holocaust #intent #moralityplay #motivation #villain #willfulignorance
-
A quotation from Hannah Arendt
When I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III “to prove a villain.” Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Postscript (1963)More about this quote: wist.info/arendt-hannah/80707/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #hannaharendt #arendt #accountability #banalityofevil #consequences #crime #evil #evilperson #evildoer #Holocaust #intent #moralityplay #motivation #villain #willfulignorance
-
A quotation from Hannah Arendt
When I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III “to prove a villain.” Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Postscript (1963)More about this quote: wist.info/arendt-hannah/80707/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #hannaharendt #arendt #accountability #banalityofevil #consequences #crime #evil #evilperson #evildoer #Holocaust #intent #moralityplay #motivation #villain #willfulignorance
-
A quotation from Hannah Arendt
When I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III “to prove a villain.” Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Postscript (1963)More about this quote: wist.info/arendt-hannah/80707/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #hannaharendt #arendt #accountability #banalityofevil #consequences #crime #evil #evilperson #evildoer #Holocaust #intent #moralityplay #motivation #villain #willfulignorance
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What I witnessed on that stage didn’t just tick a box. It cracked me open.
I went to the RSC’s Macbeth expecting a memorable night of theatre. I came away wanting to act again.
This is about more than one performance, or one actor — it’s about what happens when theatre transforms us.
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I think it had a cast of only 3 or 4 performers. They were using actual #Shakespeare #dialogue; it wasn't written in modern English or anything like that. I don't remember a lot about the performance other than what I'm about to relate. Either it wasn't that memorable, or this bit was simply burned into my brain and left no room for anything else.
Lady MacBeth was played by a young woman - probably not older than 18 - and the others were young as well. Lady MacBeth performed one of her monologues in an ... #unusual fashion.
While she was #monologuing, she and MacBeth were, to put not too fine a point on it, dry-humping. Doggy-style. So fully #clothed, but doing the, uh, motion of the real thing. Lady MacBeth was leaning forward over a chair, facing directly out into the #audience, while MacBeth was behind her, hands on her hips, #thrusting away #rhythmically through her whole #speech.
He wasn't just faking, so her lines were interrupted every couple of seconds with a #slapping sound and a hitch in her voice. I don't remember which soliloquy it was, but it would have gone something like:
We fail! (slap)
But screw your courage (slap) to the sticking-place (slap),
And we'll not fail (slap). When Duncan is asleep (slap) -
Whereto the rather (slap) shall his day's hard journey (slap) ...But they were playing it deadly serious.
2/3
#DryHump #DryHumping #DoggyStyle #monologue #performance #laugh #laughing #slap
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I think it had a cast of only 3 or 4 performers. They were using actual #Shakespeare #dialogue; it wasn't written in modern English or anything like that. I don't remember a lot about the performance other than what I'm about to relate. Either it wasn't that memorable, or this bit was simply burned into my brain and left no room for anything else.
Lady MacBeth was played by a young woman - probably not older than 18 - and the others were young as well. Lady MacBeth performed one of her monologues in an ... #unusual fashion.
While she was #monologuing, she and MacBeth were, to put not too fine a point on it, dry-humping. Doggy-style. So fully #clothed, but doing the, uh, motion of the real thing. Lady MacBeth was leaning forward over a chair, facing directly out into the #audience, while MacBeth was behind her, hands on her hips, #thrusting away #rhythmically through her whole #speech.
He wasn't just faking, so her lines were interrupted every couple of seconds with a #slapping sound and a hitch in her voice. I don't remember which soliloquy it was, but it would have gone something like:
We fail! (slap)
But screw your courage (slap) to the sticking-place (slap),
And we'll not fail (slap). When Duncan is asleep (slap) -
Whereto the rather (slap) shall his day's hard journey (slap) ...But they were playing it deadly serious.
2/3
#DryHump #DryHumping #DoggyStyle #monologue #performance #laugh #laughing #slap
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I think it had a cast of only 3 or 4 performers. They were using actual #Shakespeare #dialogue; it wasn't written in modern English or anything like that. I don't remember a lot about the performance other than what I'm about to relate. Either it wasn't that memorable, or this bit was simply burned into my brain and left no room for anything else.
Lady MacBeth was played by a young woman - probably not older than 18 - and the others were young as well. Lady MacBeth performed one of her monologues in an ... #unusual fashion.
While she was #monologuing, she and MacBeth were, to put not too fine a point on it, dry-humping. Doggy-style. So fully #clothed, but doing the, uh, motion of the real thing. Lady MacBeth was leaning forward over a chair, facing directly out into the #audience, while MacBeth was behind her, hands on her hips, #thrusting away #rhythmically through her whole #speech.
He wasn't just faking, so her lines were interrupted every couple of seconds with a #slapping sound and a hitch in her voice. I don't remember which soliloquy it was, but it would have gone something like:
We fail! (slap)
But screw your courage (slap) to the sticking-place (slap),
And we'll not fail (slap). When Duncan is asleep (slap) -
Whereto the rather (slap) shall his day's hard journey (slap) ...But they were playing it deadly serious.
2/3
#DryHump #DryHumping #DoggyStyle #monologue #performance #laugh #laughing #slap
-
I think it had a cast of only 3 or 4 performers. They were using actual #Shakespeare #dialogue; it wasn't written in modern English or anything like that. I don't remember a lot about the performance other than what I'm about to relate. Either it wasn't that memorable, or this bit was simply burned into my brain and left no room for anything else.
Lady MacBeth was played by a young woman - probably not older than 18 - and the others were young as well. Lady MacBeth performed one of her monologues in an ... #unusual fashion.
While she was #monologuing, she and MacBeth were, to put not too fine a point on it, dry-humping. Doggy-style. So fully #clothed, but doing the, uh, motion of the real thing. Lady MacBeth was leaning forward over a chair, facing directly out into the #audience, while MacBeth was behind her, hands on her hips, #thrusting away #rhythmically through her whole #speech.
He wasn't just faking, so her lines were interrupted every couple of seconds with a #slapping sound and a hitch in her voice. I don't remember which soliloquy it was, but it would have gone something like:
We fail! (slap)
But screw your courage (slap) to the sticking-place (slap),
And we'll not fail (slap). When Duncan is asleep (slap) -
Whereto the rather (slap) shall his day's hard journey (slap) ...But they were playing it deadly serious.
2/3
#DryHump #DryHumping #DoggyStyle #monologue #performance #laugh #laughing #slap
-
I think it had a cast of only 3 or 4 performers. They were using actual #Shakespeare #dialogue; it wasn't written in modern English or anything like that. I don't remember a lot about the performance other than what I'm about to relate. Either it wasn't that memorable, or this bit was simply burned into my brain and left no room for anything else.
Lady MacBeth was played by a young woman - probably not older than 18 - and the others were young as well. Lady MacBeth performed one of her monologues in an ... #unusual fashion.
While she was #monologuing, she and MacBeth were, to put not too fine a point on it, dry-humping. Doggy-style. So fully #clothed, but doing the, uh, motion of the real thing. Lady MacBeth was leaning forward over a chair, facing directly out into the #audience, while MacBeth was behind her, hands on her hips, #thrusting away #rhythmically through her whole #speech.
He wasn't just faking, so her lines were interrupted every couple of seconds with a #slapping sound and a hitch in her voice. I don't remember which soliloquy it was, but it would have gone something like:
We fail! (slap)
But screw your courage (slap) to the sticking-place (slap),
And we'll not fail (slap). When Duncan is asleep (slap) -
Whereto the rather (slap) shall his day's hard journey (slap) ...But they were playing it deadly serious.
2/3
#DryHump #DryHumping #DoggyStyle #monologue #performance #laugh #laughing #slap
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Episode 12 of the #RetroAdventurers is out, wherein I was brought on to review a couple of #InteractiveFiction #TextAdventures inspired by #Shakespeare plays with Jason Compton. I managed not to finish either game to completion this time, but absolutely enjoyed one far more than the other. Tune in for connections to #StarTrek 2, Graham Nelson's Inform rendition of The Tempest, and one American explaining a pun that only works with a non-rhotic accent to another American.
https://retroadventurers.podbean.com/e/episode-12-avon-and-macbeth/
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Down Shakespearean Halls
When you step into Shakespeare’s world, it’s not just old words and dusty candlelight. The place feels alive. You can hear the tension, the emotional fireworks, and you see all kinds of human mess practically laid out on stage. Even after four hundred years, writers still roam those halls, trying to capture some of that magic for themselves. Whether they’re writing the next bestselling novel, a screenplay, poems, or just clever posts for social media.
Shakespeare gets people. His characters aren’t stuck in distant history with fancy language; they have ambitions that spiral out of control, jealousy that eats them up, love that happens way too fast, and fears that sneak up on them. Macbeth wants power so badly it destroys him, Hamlet can’t make up his mind, Juliet falls in love in a blink and pays the price. Modern stories do the same thing, just in different settings. The heart-thumping emotions — those are pure Shakespeare.
Then there’s his dialogue. Shakespeare had this knack for writing lines that sound poetic and real at the same time. You remember his words because they took ordinary speech and made it sing, but without losing the grit. Writers today are still chasing that balance. They want conversations to feel true, but with a little extra snap or style. Every time you hear a line in a TV drama or read a passage in a novel that sticks with you, there’s a bit of Shakespeare lurking underneath.
He also made his characters complicated — not just cardboard heroes or villains. Almost nobody in his plays is all good or all bad. That mix is key in modern writing. Readers and viewers want characters who struggle, who make mistakes, who aren’t squeaky clean. The antihero? Shakespeare had it figured out ages ago.
What really made him stand out was his willingness to take risks. He blended genres, messed with structure, made up words, and just did whatever felt right for the story. Now, writers working in digital platforms, streaming series, interactive games face the same kind of wild territory. Shakespeare’s lesson? Don’t play it safe. Push the borders and see what happens.
Following in Shakespeare’s footsteps doesn’t mean copying his style. Nobody needs to write in verse or dream up speeches about castles and ghosts. What matters is the guts he had, that urge to tell the truth about people. That’s what sticks, no matter how much the world changes, or how many trends come and go.
Those old halls are still open — anyone trying to say something real about people and imagination can walk right in.
Okay all of you bards and bardettes…Get back to those darn keys! Thank you so much for your continued readership and support. Until next week…Blessings and Peace!
© Rhema International 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rhema Internation
#WritingFormulas #WritingInspirations #academicWriting #Books #ChristianAuthors #DowmShakespereanHalls #Editing #education #fiction #Hamlet #Macbeth #publishing #reativeWriting #TipsForWriters #VanGogh #Writer #WriterSTips #writers #Writing #WritingTips -
Down Shakespearean Halls
When you step into Shakespeare’s world, it’s not just old words and dusty candlelight. The place feels alive. You can hear the tension, the emotional fireworks, and you see all kinds of human mess practically laid out on stage. Even after four hundred years, writers still roam those halls, trying to capture some of that magic for themselves. Whether they’re writing the next bestselling novel, a screenplay, poems, or just clever posts for social media.
Shakespeare gets people. His characters aren’t stuck in distant history with fancy language; they have ambitions that spiral out of control, jealousy that eats them up, love that happens way too fast, and fears that sneak up on them. Macbeth wants power so badly it destroys him, Hamlet can’t make up his mind, Juliet falls in love in a blink and pays the price. Modern stories do the same thing, just in different settings. The heart-thumping emotions — those are pure Shakespeare.
Then there’s his dialogue. Shakespeare had this knack for writing lines that sound poetic and real at the same time. You remember his words because they took ordinary speech and made it sing, but without losing the grit. Writers today are still chasing that balance. They want conversations to feel true, but with a little extra snap or style. Every time you hear a line in a TV drama or read a passage in a novel that sticks with you, there’s a bit of Shakespeare lurking underneath.
He also made his characters complicated — not just cardboard heroes or villains. Almost nobody in his plays is all good or all bad. That mix is key in modern writing. Readers and viewers want characters who struggle, who make mistakes, who aren’t squeaky clean. The antihero? Shakespeare had it figured out ages ago.
What really made him stand out was his willingness to take risks. He blended genres, messed with structure, made up words, and just did whatever felt right for the story. Now, writers working in digital platforms, streaming series, interactive games face the same kind of wild territory. Shakespeare’s lesson? Don’t play it safe. Push the borders and see what happens.
Following in Shakespeare’s footsteps doesn’t mean copying his style. Nobody needs to write in verse or dream up speeches about castles and ghosts. What matters is the guts he had, that urge to tell the truth about people. That’s what sticks, no matter how much the world changes, or how many trends come and go.
Those old halls are still open — anyone trying to say something real about people and imagination can walk right in.
Okay all of you bards and bardettes…Get back to those darn keys! Thank you so much for your continued readership and support. Until next week…Blessings and Peace!
© Rhema International 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rhema Internation
#WritingFormulas #WritingInspirations #academicWriting #Books #ChristianAuthors #DowmShakespereanHalls #Editing #education #fiction #Hamlet #Macbeth #publishing #reativeWriting #TipsForWriters #VanGogh #Writer #WriterSTips #writers #Writing #WritingTips -
Down Shakespearean Halls
When you step into Shakespeare’s world, it’s not just old words and dusty candlelight. The place feels alive. You can hear the tension, the emotional fireworks, and you see all kinds of human mess practically laid out on stage. Even after four hundred years, writers still roam those halls, trying to capture some of that magic for themselves. Whether they’re writing the next bestselling novel, a screenplay, poems, or just clever posts for social media.
Shakespeare gets people. His characters aren’t stuck in distant history with fancy language; they have ambitions that spiral out of control, jealousy that eats them up, love that happens way too fast, and fears that sneak up on them. Macbeth wants power so badly it destroys him, Hamlet can’t make up his mind, Juliet falls in love in a blink and pays the price. Modern stories do the same thing, just in different settings. The heart-thumping emotions — those are pure Shakespeare.
Then there’s his dialogue. Shakespeare had this knack for writing lines that sound poetic and real at the same time. You remember his words because they took ordinary speech and made it sing, but without losing the grit. Writers today are still chasing that balance. They want conversations to feel true, but with a little extra snap or style. Every time you hear a line in a TV drama or read a passage in a novel that sticks with you, there’s a bit of Shakespeare lurking underneath.
He also made his characters complicated — not just cardboard heroes or villains. Almost nobody in his plays is all good or all bad. That mix is key in modern writing. Readers and viewers want characters who struggle, who make mistakes, who aren’t squeaky clean. The antihero? Shakespeare had it figured out ages ago.
What really made him stand out was his willingness to take risks. He blended genres, messed with structure, made up words, and just did whatever felt right for the story. Now, writers working in digital platforms, streaming series, interactive games face the same kind of wild territory. Shakespeare’s lesson? Don’t play it safe. Push the borders and see what happens.
Following in Shakespeare’s footsteps doesn’t mean copying his style. Nobody needs to write in verse or dream up speeches about castles and ghosts. What matters is the guts he had, that urge to tell the truth about people. That’s what sticks, no matter how much the world changes, or how many trends come and go.
Those old halls are still open — anyone trying to say something real about people and imagination can walk right in.
Okay all of you bards and bardettes…Get back to those darn keys! Thank you so much for your continued readership and support. Until next week…Blessings and Peace!
© Rhema International 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rhema Internation
#WritingFormulas #WritingInspirations #academicWriting #Books #ChristianAuthors #DowmShakespereanHalls #Editing #education #fiction #Hamlet #Macbeth #publishing #reativeWriting #TipsForWriters #VanGogh #Writer #WriterSTips #writers #Writing #WritingTips -
Down Shakespearean Halls
When you step into Shakespeare’s world, it’s not just old words and dusty candlelight. The place feels alive. You can hear the tension, the emotional fireworks, and you see all kinds of human mess practically laid out on stage. Even after four hundred years, writers still roam those halls, trying to capture some of that magic for themselves. Whether they’re writing the next bestselling novel, a screenplay, poems, or just clever posts for social media.
Shakespeare gets people. His characters aren’t stuck in distant history with fancy language; they have ambitions that spiral out of control, jealousy that eats them up, love that happens way too fast, and fears that sneak up on them. Macbeth wants power so badly it destroys him, Hamlet can’t make up his mind, Juliet falls in love in a blink and pays the price. Modern stories do the same thing, just in different settings. The heart-thumping emotions — those are pure Shakespeare.
Then there’s his dialogue. Shakespeare had this knack for writing lines that sound poetic and real at the same time. You remember his words because they took ordinary speech and made it sing, but without losing the grit. Writers today are still chasing that balance. They want conversations to feel true, but with a little extra snap or style. Every time you hear a line in a TV drama or read a passage in a novel that sticks with you, there’s a bit of Shakespeare lurking underneath.
He also made his characters complicated — not just cardboard heroes or villains. Almost nobody in his plays is all good or all bad. That mix is key in modern writing. Readers and viewers want characters who struggle, who make mistakes, who aren’t squeaky clean. The antihero? Shakespeare had it figured out ages ago.
What really made him stand out was his willingness to take risks. He blended genres, messed with structure, made up words, and just did whatever felt right for the story. Now, writers working in digital platforms, streaming series, interactive games face the same kind of wild territory. Shakespeare’s lesson? Don’t play it safe. Push the borders and see what happens.
Following in Shakespeare’s footsteps doesn’t mean copying his style. Nobody needs to write in verse or dream up speeches about castles and ghosts. What matters is the guts he had, that urge to tell the truth about people. That’s what sticks, no matter how much the world changes, or how many trends come and go.
Those old halls are still open — anyone trying to say something real about people and imagination can walk right in.
Okay all of you bards and bardettes…Get back to those darn keys! Thank you so much for your continued readership and support. Until next week…Blessings and Peace!
© Rhema International 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rhema Internation
#WritingFormulas #WritingInspirations #academicWriting #Books #ChristianAuthors #DowmShakespereanHalls #Editing #education #fiction #Hamlet #Macbeth #publishing #reativeWriting #TipsForWriters #VanGogh #Writer #WriterSTips #writers #Writing #WritingTips -
Down Shakespearean Halls
When you step into Shakespeare’s world, it’s not just old words and dusty candlelight. The place feels alive. You can hear the tension, the emotional fireworks, and you see all kinds of human mess practically laid out on stage. Even after four hundred years, writers still roam those halls, trying to capture some of that magic for themselves. Whether they’re writing the next bestselling novel, a screenplay, poems, or just clever posts for social media.
Shakespeare gets people. His characters aren’t stuck in distant history with fancy language; they have ambitions that spiral out of control, jealousy that eats them up, love that happens way too fast, and fears that sneak up on them. Macbeth wants power so badly it destroys him, Hamlet can’t make up his mind, Juliet falls in love in a blink and pays the price. Modern stories do the same thing, just in different settings. The heart-thumping emotions — those are pure Shakespeare.
Then there’s his dialogue. Shakespeare had this knack for writing lines that sound poetic and real at the same time. You remember his words because they took ordinary speech and made it sing, but without losing the grit. Writers today are still chasing that balance. They want conversations to feel true, but with a little extra snap or style. Every time you hear a line in a TV drama or read a passage in a novel that sticks with you, there’s a bit of Shakespeare lurking underneath.
He also made his characters complicated — not just cardboard heroes or villains. Almost nobody in his plays is all good or all bad. That mix is key in modern writing. Readers and viewers want characters who struggle, who make mistakes, who aren’t squeaky clean. The antihero? Shakespeare had it figured out ages ago.
What really made him stand out was his willingness to take risks. He blended genres, messed with structure, made up words, and just did whatever felt right for the story. Now, writers working in digital platforms, streaming series, interactive games face the same kind of wild territory. Shakespeare’s lesson? Don’t play it safe. Push the borders and see what happens.
Following in Shakespeare’s footsteps doesn’t mean copying his style. Nobody needs to write in verse or dream up speeches about castles and ghosts. What matters is the guts he had, that urge to tell the truth about people. That’s what sticks, no matter how much the world changes, or how many trends come and go.
Those old halls are still open — anyone trying to say something real about people and imagination can walk right in.
Okay all of you bards and bardettes…Get back to those darn keys! Thank you so much for your continued readership and support. Until next week…Blessings and Peace!
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Author Spotlight: Gothic Weird Fiction author Nikoline Kaiser
Nikoline Kaiser (she/her) resides in Denmark, and writes short stories, novels and poetry. She has published several pieces in both English and Danish, and been longlisted for the Lee Smith Novel Prize. She writes about grief, love, horror, sexuality and one time about a woman turning into a tree.
AUTHOR LINKS:
Website: nikolinekaiser.dk
Social Media: @nikolinekaiser on Instagram, bluesky and redditRead a free sample:
The Dreaming of Man (Amazon Look Inside feature)Book Club/Reader pitch for The Dreaming of Man:
Get The Dreaming of Man from Neon HemlockA queer spin on Lovecraft meets Shakespeare’s Macbeth in a historical crime-turned-horror novella.
Cover art by J.J. Epping.Your novella, The Dreaming of Man, was released in 2025. What was the writing journey like from first idea to query-ready?
I wrote the novella all the way back in 2019, and I actually wrote the first draft – which hasn’t changed a whole lot, aside from being cleaned up – all in one afternoon. I don’t think I took any breaks. It was one of those stories that had to come out all at once, or I feared I wouldn’t finish it.
It received a lot of rejections over the next couple of years, until it landed with dave at Neon Hemlock Press.
It sounds tacky, but I truly believe it found it’s right home with Neon, and the experience I had with the press has been wonderful. I had huge input in the final version, including getting to pick the artist to make the cover — J.J. Epping, a dear friend and someone I knew could nail the creepy feeling I wanted the cover to convey.
What are the pros and cons of being a Danish author writing in English, and what advice would you give others writing for an Anglophonic market?
The biggest con is definitely my own insecurities about playing with the language; I feel I can’t get away with as much, because publishers and readers might perceive it as a mistake instead of a deliberate bending of the language rules.
And then there’s the time differences for events, and not being as physically close to the market, particularly for events.
For anyone else in the same position, I would recommend familiarizing yourself as much as possible with both the Anglophonic and your local publishing world. Some works might fit better in one cultural context than the other.
What are your main Weird Fiction and Gothic Horror influences, and what are your favourite themes and elements from these genres? Which can readers expect to find in your novella (if you can let us know in a non-spoilery way)?
I am actually fairly new to these genres; I used to avoid horror at all costs, until I fell over some video essays on how much queer exploration there often is in horror. And then we started reading gothic fiction at university, and I fell in love with the genre.
Ann Radcliffe’s works – especially “The Italian” – are amazing and show so much of what still works in horror today. And for anyone writing in these genres, I recommend reading “The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole, the first every Gothic horror. It reads as fairly silly now, but it is basically one long checklist of what to include in a classic Gothic story.
“The Dreaming of Man” contains a bit of body horror, which has always fascinated me. People’s relationship with their bodies, the things we think of as “horror” about bodies across history and cultures, can vary so much.
And then I’m just a big fan of the eerie, which is something Radcliffe nails, and which always unsettles me more than some big, scary monster. Not that a big, scary monster isn’t fun, too. I’m a big Godzilla fan.
How did the title come to be, and were there any alternatives you considered?
The title was inspired by a passage in Macbeth, which is also included as a prelude to the beginning of my book. The last part reads: “… Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse / The curtained sleep.”
There’s a lot of layers to this quote, starting from the top: nature is dead, and sleep often seems like death to the casual observer. And then of course we dream in our sleep, and that’s both an obscuring and a revelation of the real world. And then “curtained sleep” which can be taken quite literally as a bed curtained off, creating another barrier against the real world, even on top of the barrier of sleep.
Basically, the characters have done everything they can to cut themselves off from the horribleness of the real world, but it still comes back to haunt them in their dreams.
I think that’s ultimately what horror is: not just “what if your nightmares were real?” but also “and what if you couldn’t shield yourself from them?” Not physically or mentally. And then there’s also a double-layered meaning in the title, but I’ll let the text reveal that on its own.
The working title was “Lovecraft goes Queer, Shakespeare goes Queerer”. I’m not sure that would have gone down for publishing.
The town of Osmund has been compared with Innsmouth (The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft) and Dunsinane (Macbeth, Shakespeare) – were these conscious influences, and were there any others that inspired the setting?
Definitely very deliberate influences, especially Innsmouth. The style and feel of the town is one that permeates modern Weird Fiction and Gothic Horror, so even without reading Lovecraft, I think it can latch onto you. But there were a lot of inspirations from real life as well.
I’ve always lived in port cities, and I grew up sailing with my family, so sometimes you would arrive at some really small places, with old boats and older buildings. Thankfully never as scary as those places in fiction, but then again, we mostly went there during the summer. Things look very different in the dark, or during Fall and Winter when everything’s gray and only a few plants are still blooming.
What queer representation can readers expect in this novella, and also in your other available work?
There will almost always be at least one stray lesbian somewhere — though not always! And I try to be broad in my understanding and love for the whole queer community. I figure out myself a lot through the stories I write, even when the characters and settings have very little to do with my personal life. Fiction is both exploration and understanding, and like a dream, I think it can reflect both the reality we live in and the reality we hope to see one day. So, the answer is: mostly lesbians! Or bi women! I love women of all kinds, so I’m biased. There’s technically no lesbians confirmed in “The Dreaming of Man”, but just because I didn’t write it in the text doesn’t mean the women aren’t kissing behind-the-scenes!
Do you have anything else to plug here that is currently out or coming soon? What should readers look out for?
I have two short stories coming out, one called “Puppet Show” with Estrella Publishing, in their publication “Celestial Glossary”. It’s an introspective piece about re-defining yourself after an accident and following your stranger impulses despite what the world around you is telling you to do. It’s out January 30th.
And then later this year – date still unconfirmed – I am part of a sci-fi anthology, with a short story about people living in huge, moving, mechanical animals after the end of the world. I try to post more on my socials as we get closer to publication, so keep an eye out.
Get it now!Like This? Try These:
Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: Paranormal Ecohorror author S.M. Mack
Meet S.M. Mack (she/her), author of DEATH VALLEY BLOOMS. Find out more about this queer ecohorror novella and how it came about!
Keep reading April 8, 2026February 16, 2026 Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: British Gothic Horror author Laura Clarke Walker
Discover a new seaside town of Gothic secrets – COLDHARBOUR, by Laura Clarke Walker (she/they). Meet this British author and find out more about her work.
Keep reading April 1, 2026February 16, 2026 Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: Queer Cyberpunk author A.E. Bross
Meet A.E. Bross (they/them or xe/xem), a nonbinary author of queer cyberpunk Snow White retelling, CyberSnow. Find out more about their latest novella!
Keep reading March 25, 2026March 15, 2026 Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: Queer Cyberpunk Author Stefanie Carter (AKA Wayward Sparx/Fox N. Locke)
Meet author Stefanie Carter (they/them) who writes as Fox N. Locke and Wayward Sparx. They are a UK-based English Sci-Fi author, working on a nonfiction book about cyberpunk, and here to talk about their Trans+ collection of stories, TRANS_LUCENT.
Keep reading March 18, 2026March 15, 2026 Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: Gothic SFF Author Morgan Dante
Meet Morgan Dante (they/them) and their body of work – Gothic, queer, and deliciously unsettling.
Keep reading September 17, 2025February 5, 2026 Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: Queer Dark Fantasy Author Ezra Arndt
Meet Ezra Arndt and their novel Awakened Darkness. We chat about queerness, monstrosity, and dark fantasy.
Keep reading September 10, 2025January 7, 2026 Subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated! I send newsletters around once a month. You can also subscribe to my site so you don't miss a post, but I also do a post round-up in my monthly newsletters, along with what I've been working on, what I've been reading, and what I've been watching. I will often update newsletter subscribers first with news, so stay ahead of the game with my announcements and discount codes, etc! #AuthorInterview #AuthorSpotlight #queerAuthor #WomenInHorror -
Author Spotlight: Gothic Weird Fiction author Nikoline Kaiser
Nikoline Kaiser (she/her) resides in Denmark, and writes short stories, novels and poetry. She has published several pieces in both English and Danish, and been longlisted for the Lee Smith Novel Prize. She writes about grief, love, horror, sexuality and one time about a woman turning into a tree.
AUTHOR LINKS:
Website: nikolinekaiser.dk
Social Media: @nikolinekaiser on Instagram, bluesky and redditRead a free sample:
The Dreaming of Man (Amazon Look Inside feature)Book Club/Reader pitch for The Dreaming of Man:
Get The Dreaming of Man from Neon HemlockA queer spin on Lovecraft meets Shakespeare’s Macbeth in a historical crime-turned-horror novella.
Cover art by J.J. Epping.Your novella, The Dreaming of Man, was released in 2025. What was the writing journey like from first idea to query-ready?
I wrote the novella all the way back in 2019, and I actually wrote the first draft – which hasn’t changed a whole lot, aside from being cleaned up – all in one afternoon. I don’t think I took any breaks. It was one of those stories that had to come out all at once, or I feared I wouldn’t finish it.
It received a lot of rejections over the next couple of years, until it landed with dave at Neon Hemlock Press.
It sounds tacky, but I truly believe it found it’s right home with Neon, and the experience I had with the press has been wonderful. I had huge input in the final version, including getting to pick the artist to make the cover — J.J. Epping, a dear friend and someone I knew could nail the creepy feeling I wanted the cover to convey.
What are the pros and cons of being a Danish author writing in English, and what advice would you give others writing for an Anglophonic market?
The biggest con is definitely my own insecurities about playing with the language; I feel I can’t get away with as much, because publishers and readers might perceive it as a mistake instead of a deliberate bending of the language rules.
And then there’s the time differences for events, and not being as physically close to the market, particularly for events.
For anyone else in the same position, I would recommend familiarizing yourself as much as possible with both the Anglophonic and your local publishing world. Some works might fit better in one cultural context than the other.
What are your main Weird Fiction and Gothic Horror influences, and what are your favourite themes and elements from these genres? Which can readers expect to find in your novella (if you can let us know in a non-spoilery way)?
I am actually fairly new to these genres; I used to avoid horror at all costs, until I fell over some video essays on how much queer exploration there often is in horror. And then we started reading gothic fiction at university, and I fell in love with the genre.
Ann Radcliffe’s works – especially “The Italian” – are amazing and show so much of what still works in horror today. And for anyone writing in these genres, I recommend reading “The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole, the first every Gothic horror. It reads as fairly silly now, but it is basically one long checklist of what to include in a classic Gothic story.
“The Dreaming of Man” contains a bit of body horror, which has always fascinated me. People’s relationship with their bodies, the things we think of as “horror” about bodies across history and cultures, can vary so much.
And then I’m just a big fan of the eerie, which is something Radcliffe nails, and which always unsettles me more than some big, scary monster. Not that a big, scary monster isn’t fun, too. I’m a big Godzilla fan.
How did the title come to be, and were there any alternatives you considered?
The title was inspired by a passage in Macbeth, which is also included as a prelude to the beginning of my book. The last part reads: “… Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse / The curtained sleep.”
There’s a lot of layers to this quote, starting from the top: nature is dead, and sleep often seems like death to the casual observer. And then of course we dream in our sleep, and that’s both an obscuring and a revelation of the real world. And then “curtained sleep” which can be taken quite literally as a bed curtained off, creating another barrier against the real world, even on top of the barrier of sleep.
Basically, the characters have done everything they can to cut themselves off from the horribleness of the real world, but it still comes back to haunt them in their dreams.
I think that’s ultimately what horror is: not just “what if your nightmares were real?” but also “and what if you couldn’t shield yourself from them?” Not physically or mentally. And then there’s also a double-layered meaning in the title, but I’ll let the text reveal that on its own.
The working title was “Lovecraft goes Queer, Shakespeare goes Queerer”. I’m not sure that would have gone down for publishing.
The town of Osmund has been compared with Innsmouth (The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft) and Dunsinane (Macbeth, Shakespeare) – were these conscious influences, and were there any others that inspired the setting?
Definitely very deliberate influences, especially Innsmouth. The style and feel of the town is one that permeates modern Weird Fiction and Gothic Horror, so even without reading Lovecraft, I think it can latch onto you. But there were a lot of inspirations from real life as well.
I’ve always lived in port cities, and I grew up sailing with my family, so sometimes you would arrive at some really small places, with old boats and older buildings. Thankfully never as scary as those places in fiction, but then again, we mostly went there during the summer. Things look very different in the dark, or during Fall and Winter when everything’s gray and only a few plants are still blooming.
What queer representation can readers expect in this novella, and also in your other available work?
There will almost always be at least one stray lesbian somewhere — though not always! And I try to be broad in my understanding and love for the whole queer community. I figure out myself a lot through the stories I write, even when the characters and settings have very little to do with my personal life. Fiction is both exploration and understanding, and like a dream, I think it can reflect both the reality we live in and the reality we hope to see one day. So, the answer is: mostly lesbians! Or bi women! I love women of all kinds, so I’m biased. There’s technically no lesbians confirmed in “The Dreaming of Man”, but just because I didn’t write it in the text doesn’t mean the women aren’t kissing behind-the-scenes!
Do you have anything else to plug here that is currently out or coming soon? What should readers look out for?
I have two short stories coming out, one called “Puppet Show” with Estrella Publishing, in their publication “Celestial Glossary”. It’s an introspective piece about re-defining yourself after an accident and following your stranger impulses despite what the world around you is telling you to do. It’s out January 30th.
And then later this year – date still unconfirmed – I am part of a sci-fi anthology, with a short story about people living in huge, moving, mechanical animals after the end of the world. I try to post more on my socials as we get closer to publication, so keep an eye out.
Get it now!Like This? Try These:
Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: Paranormal Ecohorror author S.M. Mack
Meet S.M. Mack (she/her), author of DEATH VALLEY BLOOMS. Find out more about this queer ecohorror novella and how it came about!
Keep reading April 8, 2026February 16, 2026 Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: British Gothic Horror author Laura Clarke Walker
Discover a new seaside town of Gothic secrets – COLDHARBOUR, by Laura Clarke Walker (she/they). Meet this British author and find out more about her work.
Keep reading April 1, 2026February 16, 2026 Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: Queer Cyberpunk author A.E. Bross
Meet A.E. Bross (they/them or xe/xem), a nonbinary author of queer cyberpunk Snow White retelling, CyberSnow. Find out more about their latest novella!
Keep reading March 25, 2026March 15, 2026 Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: Queer Cyberpunk Author Stefanie Carter (AKA Wayward Sparx/Fox N. Locke)
Meet author Stefanie Carter (they/them) who writes as Fox N. Locke and Wayward Sparx. They are a UK-based English Sci-Fi author, working on a nonfiction book about cyberpunk, and here to talk about their Trans+ collection of stories, TRANS_LUCENT.
Keep reading March 18, 2026March 15, 2026 Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: Gothic SFF Author Morgan Dante
Meet Morgan Dante (they/them) and their body of work – Gothic, queer, and deliciously unsettling.
Keep reading September 17, 2025February 5, 2026 Author InterviewAuthor Spotlight: Queer Dark Fantasy Author Ezra Arndt
Meet Ezra Arndt and their novel Awakened Darkness. We chat about queerness, monstrosity, and dark fantasy.
Keep reading September 10, 2025January 7, 2026 Subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated! I send newsletters around once a month. You can also subscribe to my site so you don't miss a post, but I also do a post round-up in my monthly newsletters, along with what I've been working on, what I've been reading, and what I've been watching. I will often update newsletter subscribers first with news, so stay ahead of the game with my announcements and discount codes, etc! #AuthorInterview #AuthorSpotlight #queerAuthor #WomenInHorror