Shakespeare is the Met Gala
Plus: King John, understatement, and energy-sucking butt magnets
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Happy Second Birthday Shakespeare News!2
Looking back, it may appear that I started this newsletter because I thought more people should know that if you dream big enough, silly string can be clothes.3 Today’s post embroiders that theme. Or at least shoots it out of a can.
Also, I love talking with people about Shakespeare and this is a great way to do that. Thank you for being part of the conversation. Special thanks to the folks who have donated, signed up for paid subscriptions, and bought Hamlet. Your support means I can do more longer posts, like the one below, in addition to link roundups.
Shakespeare is the Met Gala
I recently saw some un-excellent Shakespeare and have been trying to work out how it got that way.4 (Content warning for profanity and excess metaphor.)
The text was spoken casually. Not “I worked hard to make this look easy” but rather “I maybe actually think this is easy.”5 Perhaps the parties in question (who will remain nameless to protect the guilty) were aiming for Castiglione but hit Bartleby instead. They sprinted past “unforced” and stumbled into “indifference.” There were no stakes, nothing mattered, and I didn’t care about anyone. I made shopping lists in my head and wished that the characters would die faster.6 And I really like these plays!
What’s worse is, I think it was done for my benefit. The intent was to make Shakespeare more approachable/understandable. That is an admirable goal. But in attempting to achieve it, they made Shakespeare small.7
I kept thinking of this line:
Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.
The language just kind of…hung there. It didn’t move. It didn’t fit.8 The shoulders were all wrong. Instead of wearing the language, the actors let it wear them.9 It was too casual, like jeans at the Met Gala.10 Can you? Sure. But why would you? You are invited – nay, expected – to wear the world’s wildest scraps/acres of fabric designed by lunatic genius. Rouse yourself! Revel in excess! Luxuriate in possibility!
That’s Shakespeare. Shakespeare is the Met Gala. You could wear red or you could wear %@$#ing incarnadine. Step up, strap in, grab 14 kinds of tape and your scariest friend and take that intensely stupid dress for a ride. None of this slam-on-the-breaks-before-you-even-turn-the-key nonsense. If Shakespeare is not for you, that’s fine. There are so many other modes of transportation. But if you are going to sit in the driver’s seat – I sat there thinking to myself – fucking drive.11
Want something. Want something.12 People bought tickets and got babysitters and put on pants. Float on that full sea. Hug it in your arms. Speak the goddamn speech.
Quick Links
Reviews of Othello, a Britten Midsummer, and Hamlet (via Sara Holdren).
…the space works for the play’s early court scenes, but its profusion of chairs rapidly turns dangerous. They are energy-sucking butt magnets, and Hastie lets everyone yield to them…
I did not know there were so many terrible R&J adaptations.
To say that “Tromeo & Juliet” is in poor taste is an understatement of Shakespearean proportions…this only moderately original, no-budget Elizabethan-inflected film from newbie screenwriter James Gunn (yes, that James Gunn) gets some points…but loses all of them with the revelation that — spoiler alert! — Romeo and Juliet are brother and sister…
I love King John! …It is just people in political life behaving badly, from lights up to down—and maybe at the end there’s a little redemption, for the bastard anyway…
Recommendations
“The pain in Spain comes mainly from Elaine” via James Grissom.
© 2026 Kate Pitt. All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission.
Like this one.
It is also the five-year anniversary of the “Pocket Blogs” feature on Good Tickle Brain. May is a good month.
Warning: this link contains a semi-nude Doc Brown. Always check the footnotes!
Thank you to the folks who thought this through with me: Pamela Reichen and the brain trust of Mya Gosling, Aili Huber, Ariana Karp, Christine Schmidle, and Charlene V. Smith.
Aili introduced me to this Oliver Wendell Holmes quote: “For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn’t give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.”
Or be eaten by a tiger.
It is not, nor it cannot come to good. You cannot make Shakespeare small enough to drag into the bathroom and drown in the bathtub. It will fight you and you will lose.
It sounded like Ken Tynan’s review of Titus:
“[Vivien] Leigh receives the news that she is about to be ravished on her husband’s corpse with little more than the mild annoyance of one who would have preferred foam rubber.”
It literally wear-ied them.
Even really fancy ones that aren’t actually jeans but only look like them and took 250+ hours to make.
There are already too many metaphors, right? Fashion, cars, musicals… Other options:
#1: If you don’t put your shoulder under the language, it will put its shoulder under you. Put your shoulder under the language and lift – Atlas-stone-style – and you will have done a hard thing while looking like ye hero of olde. If language puts its shoulder under you and lifts, we’re in more of a rugby situation and it is going to hurt.
#2: These were wildly talented actors poking at Shakespeare with a stick from a safe distance. I get it. The plays are beasts. They will eat your face if you don’t give them enough blood.** We criticize Old Shakespeare for being Too Big, but this New Shakespeare is Too Small.
**To borrow one of my favorite Joe Haj phrases, they are works of “uncommon demand.”
#3: Can you go too big? Yes. Can you go too small? Yes. But if you turn the radio dial juuust right, the evangelical static will eventually resolve into Springsteen wailing “Born in the USA” and it will be awesome. You will chase that high your whole life. Welcome to the work.
Excellent commentary! The idea of making Shakespeare small also reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Barry Rutter. And of course I can’t find it on the internet, so I’ll have to reconstruct it from memory. It was basically about how he didn’t like ‘cup o’ tea’ plays, because while everyone in those plays is sitting around having a cup of tea, “Shakespeare’s gone to the moon and back."