Love leads to
emulation. When I first started playing the guitar, I learned exclusively from
a guitar/piano/vocal book of Dave Matthews Band's Under the Table and Dreaming. It gave me the rudiments of barre
chords, open chords, and rhythm. I pored over that book with obsessive focus,
breaking the G-string on my dad's guitar a couple of times in a single week
with my enthusiastic strumming.
Soon I became
proficient at the simple things, moving on to more advanced fingerings,
different genres of music, and--eventually--my own compositions. Those early
ones, so heavily engrained in my brain, still can spring to my fingertips with
precious little coaxing. And almost all of those original tunes are heavily
Dave Matthews Band derivatives. The strumming patterns, the chord voicings, the
tempos--they all branched out from beneath the leaves of that first book.
While
Shakespeare was by no means the first of my writing that became emulative (I
had written my fair share of Spider-Man fan-fic; my earliest short story that I
can remember, typewritered when I was seven or eight, was called "Dickensian"
by my grandmother when she read it, though that's more her niceness than my
ability), it was the first one that I wrote as a stageplay. I've never put a
lot of effort into drama. It's easy enough to read, I suppose, though there are
some limitations to the written version as opposed to the actual stage
presentations, but it never struck me as something to actively pursue. I think
part of my own reluctance to write drama is that I have a penchant for purple
prose, which doesn't translate into the pure dialogue that is the play.
Of course,
purple prose can turn into purple poetry. Shakespeare introduced me to the
choices a dramatist must face.
It started
out because of a lesson in my methods of teaching English class at UVU. The
teacher had taken a blank piece of paper, folded it into eighths, split it
partway down the middle, and created a small, pocket-sized booklet. Intrigued by
the possibility, I snagged a piece of printer paper before heading out to
church one Sunday. I folded it appropriately and then began dropping pentameter
onto it. Conveniently, I could cramp my handwriting just enough to fit ten
syllables onto almost every line; stopping at the end of the page let me know I
had written enough feet. Soon, I was looking for a subject.
Because I
have a robust sense of guilt, I assuaged it (a little) by using a religious
story as inspiration. I considered the tale of David and Jonathan from 1
Samuel, as some of the verbiage is already more poetic than other parts of the
Bible. As I was looking at it, however, the nuances of the story didn't strike
me as easily adapted. Plus, to be honest, I try to think of who'd actually want
to watch/read my work, and the story of David and Jonathan didn't seem
well-enough known to want to attempt.
So I shifted
my focus to a story from the Book of Mormon: The end of the Nephite nation. I
figured that wholesale genocide, two men standing alone in their faith against
those who were their brothers while fighting a war would provide an interesting
dynamic.
I set about
writing Cumorah, named after the hill
on which the Nephites ended their entire existence. As the battle would provide
the climax of the story, I decided to walk back to an earlier moment. Mormonic
(I don't think that's a word) scripture is quiet on the spouses of any of the
major players, so I inferred that Mormon had a wife, since he had a son named
Moroni. I also took a guess that Moroni would be married, as that seems like a
thing that people do, so I created an extrascriptural character in the form of
his wife, Anna. I took from the nine chapters of Mormon, with a little from
Moroni 1 and 10, plucking characters as their names struck me. Characters that
act only as captains in the final battle are given new jobs, while others
mentioned in passing are given lines and purposes and motivations. I invented a
son to the King of the Lamanites, as well as extrapolated subterfuge as a large
force moving the plot forward.
I centered
the conflict on the gathering of Nephites to Cumorah in order to fight to the death
against their hated enemies, the Lamanites. Mormon, as the lead commander of
all the Nephite forces, has only his son, Moroni, as his confidant and
religious prop. Moroni struggles a little with his faith, as does his wife,
though more out of despair for the future than because of genuine doubt. Moroni
also has a friend, Timothy, who helps as a spy in some of the scenes.
To enhance
the drama, I created two threats: One at home and one abroad. The one at home
came in the form of Jeneum, who is mentioned only as a captain of ten thousand
men in the Book of Mormon. Jeneum, in my story, is a convert to the gospel, but
has--along with almost everyone else--apostatized. His falling away from the
church hurts Mormon, but he's enough of a professional to keep him close as an
advisor and captain.
Jeneum and
his coconspirator, Gidgiddonah, realize that their culture and people are
doomed and wish to desert. They know, however, that it's dangerous to approach
the Lamanites. They decide that Jeneum will feign another change of heart, get
close to Mormon as a friend, and then assassinate him as a proof of their
commitment to the new, Lamanite regime.
Meanwhile,
the King of the Lamanites and his son, Lahmanha, are devising a way to extinct
the Nephites. They pull in deserters, create alliances with other evil people,
and lastly invite Mormon to a final battle at Cumorah. He provides a parallel
to Mormon, as the King has a son for whom he's fighting, too. Lahmanha, as a
contrast to Moroni, is eager to establish himself as ruler over the Nephites.
I threw in a
couple of subplots, too: Anna--in the robust Shakespearean tradition--has a
handmaid, Sarah, with whom she could converse. Some of my best-=and that is in
comparison to the work as a whole--monologues came from Anna. She provides a
voice of the struggle it can be to accept the crushing reality of the world, as
well as a feminine presence in a very masculine story (and source material).
She dies off stage, which, were I to rewrite this, I would change.
Now, I go through
this lengthy description to show the lengths to which I went to emulate
Shakespeare. I made every major choice in that play by asking myself (somewhat
ironically, considering the inspiration for my story), "What would
Shakespeare do?" Should I include a lot of direction? No: Shakespeare is
parsimonious with his stage directions. Should I deviate from the source
material? Yes: Shakespeare notoriously did so, though at that time I didn't
know how. Can I have a character change from the beginning to end? Obviously:
Shakespeare made his characters grow and morph throughout the course of his
stories. Anna was added because I felt like there should be a heroine of
sorts--much as Shakespeare had done. The fact that I alternated--sometimes
within the same scene--between prose and poetry came because of the Bard. Even
line breaks, when one character's thoughts bleed from one character to another
and then back, came from my studies. I (erroneously) added an "-n"
ending to any article or possessive that preceded a plural (it should've been
for a vowel, instead) just because it gave it a more Shakespearean feeling.
One thing I
did not do--and still can't--was put it into iambic pentameter. Yes, almost every line was ten syllables long.
But the emphases never remain useful. Sometimes I went into prose just because
I was tired of having to deal with scansion. In the end, it was too much for my
feeble brain to handle. I could put in similes, metaphors, and allusions. I
could muddle up the meter. I could even create subplots, puns, and lovers'
dialogue. But I couldn't do that all while at the same time getting the de-dum de-dum de-dum de-dum de-dum the
way I was supposed to.
So far as
this writing is concerned, I've never again approached the stage. I wouldn't
say that I'm like Milton in remaining aloof of drama--and, let's be honest: His
Comus is so far beyond anyone (save
Shakespeare and some of his contemporaries) that it's really not much of a
comparison. And maybe Milton knew something intuitively about Shakespeare that
I could only discover by bashing my head against the form of the Bard's oeuvre:
Shakespeare is too large to encapsulate. John Milton wrote a fawning poem about
the Bard--it's from that poem that this series of posts gains its name--in
which he considers how those of us who must use "long-endeavoring
art" are awestruck at his ability to make his "easy numbers
flow". There's an effortlessness that Shakespeare has that none else does.
We're "made marble" at the Sweet Swan of Avon's incredible capacity
to draft characters, plots, and inwardness. Even four hundred years down the
road, no one can really approach human representation in the same way he
does--especially an over-reaching aspirant in Utah Valley.
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