![]() ![]() In addition to directing, Keaton plays the eldest sister Georgia, a celebrity magazine editor, and Lisa Kudrow is kid sister Maddy, a soap-opera actress who's nearly as self-absorbed as Georgia. In exploring the foibles of family, Keaton fared better with her earlier film Unstrung Heroes. Despite a sharp focus on Meg Ryan as the middle sister Eve-a capable Los Angeles event planner-the movie never quite seems to know where it's going, and you feel like the best scenes are merely happy accidents. But you've also got to lament this botched "dramedy" from screenwriting sisters Nora and Delia Ephron (adapting the latter's novel) and director Diane Keaton, who lack a coherent plan for illuminating their trio of female siblings. Share your favorites in the comments section below.Hanging Up You've got to admire a movie that embraces womanhood as so few mainstream movies do, and Hanging Up deserves credit for combining issues of sisterhood and elderly parent care while relying on neuroses to carry its unconventional plot. These are just a few of the many lines in Shakespeare’s plays about politics and power. King Lear, directed by Alfred Preisser, Folger Theatre in a co-production with The Classical Theatre of Harlem, 2007. ![]() ![]() The Elizabethans were very much aware of this danger in their great men, and the dangers of flatterers are a common theme.” Andre De Shields (King Lear) threatens Jerome Preston Bates (Kent). “As with modern heads of state,” says Paster, “the danger comes when their subjects fear to speak truth to power, when they are surrounded by flatterers. He pays the price for his boldness when King Lear banishes him on pain of death. Kent is King Lear’s loyal subject and friend, so he attempts to intercede when he sees the king making rash decisions and casting off the youngest princess, Cordelia. “Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak when power to flattery bows? To plainness honor’s bound when majesty falls to folly.” “He asks himself here whether Caesar would in fact be one who-if he got power-would abuse it this way,” says Paster. “Th’ abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”īrutus is mulling over Caesar’s rise to power and the calls to crown him, which Brutus views as extremely dangerous. Paster points out that Escalus-Angelo’s fellow deputy-puts the case for mercy: “Let us be keen, and rather cut a little / Than fall and bruise to death.”Īngelo doesn’t listen, and he ultimately fails to meet the law’s standards, revealing himself as a hypocrite. “We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, and let it keep one shape till custom make it their perch and not their terror.”įrom his position of power, Angelo is arguing for strict application of the law and harsh punishment for lawbreakers. The speech may remind some of the speech ‘Hath a Jew eyes’ in The Merchant of Venice, though the context is utterly different.” 4. He wants not only to insist on the common humanity but to do so because they are skeptical about the king’s motives. “The context is their cynicism, too,” says Paster, “since they expect he will let himself be taken for ransom, and they are too low to be eligible. It’s the night before a big battle, and in talking with the men in his army, he’s reminding them that the king is not immune to the fears they feel. King Henry is in disguise when he speaks these words. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man.” All his senses have but human conditions. The element shows to him as it doth to me. The violet smells to him as it doth to me. Watch Ben Whishaw and Rory Kinnear perform this emotional scene scene in a clip from The Hollow Crown: Richard II. He may be relinquishing his power and position, but his griefs and cares remain. You may my glories and my state depose but not my griefs still am I king of those.”Īs Richard II speaks these words, he is handing his crown over to Bolingbroke. “My crown I am, but still my griefs are mine. “The sleep which is so important (they felt and we feel) to health is not for him, alas.” 2. “Maybe more suffering from insomnia – really sleepless, feeling guilty,” says Paster. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”Īt a time of night when most of his subjects are asleep, the king is up and busy about his affairs. These six quotes touch on what it means to be a king, the power of the law, what separates royal from common, and speaking truth to authority.įolger Director Emerita Gail Kern Paster provides some additional insight into the context of each quote. Shakespeare has a lot to say about power and politics in his plays.
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