Easy Tibetan Logic
I went to see Kenneth Branagh’s Winter’s Tale at the Sedona Film Festival over my break. Potentially a lot of hype around this one: Branagh plays the lead (obviously), but also managed to get Judi Dench to tread the boards in a fairly minor role in the opening season of the refurbished Garrick Theatre in the West End.
I’ve thought a lot about The Winter’s Tale , because one of my favorite academic books on Shakespeare, Bridget Escolme ‘s Talking to the Audience , discusses Antony Sher’s performance of Leontes by way of introducing the importance of audience interaction during Shakespeare plays. Basically, in lieu of directly addressing the audience to explain why Leontes suddenly gets jealous, Sher discovers the psychological explanation of “morbid jealousy.” Escolme finds his performance disaffecting, since this Leontes
Branagh similarly never addresses the audience, so, according to Michael Billington’s Guardian review at any rate, the reason Branagh supplies for Leontes’ sudden jealousy is that he is “a man still haunted by an idyllic boyhood attachment.” In other words, he’s more jealous of Polixenes than he is of Hermione.
Easy Tibetan Logic