The Paranoid Style in Shakespeare

Plus: A Macbeth Video Game, a Brawl Crawl, and Batman as "an essentially Shakespearean character."

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The Paranoid Style in Shakespeare

Usually when I get a text from my brother it is a variation on, “I’ll be there in ten” so, “trivial fact: Curtis Yarvin,² the monarchist with too much influence in Silicon Valley, is also an Oxfordian” made me sit up.

Not because Oxfordians in general make me sit up. On the contrary, they make me want to lie in a semi-recumbent position with a cold compress and a hefty supply of Excedrin while I contemplate the waste of time and human potential on something so devastatingly boring.

I do not recommend spending your one wild and precious life reading cranks on the internet. But James made this one sound so interesting!

He was best known for his programming project called Urbit. The best attempt to explain Urbit I have seen was ‘imagine if Bitcoin was also Facebook and the Holy Roman Empire.’ Among its features are reversing the usual programming convention that 0 means false and 1 means true basically just because he wanted it to be harder to learn.

My ears prick up when these conversations braid into larger discussions about institutional distrust and why people like Yarvin believe that:

…the Shakespeare debate offered a gateway to get people doubting much bigger social constructs—like democracy. “Once you find these holes in the fabric of what you thought was reality,” says Yarvin, “you don’t take anything for granted.”

Now we’re approaching the border between “ha ha” and “oh god.” From “yeah, yeah” to “hey, why are you bringing a gun to a pizza shop?” (Or to X-Files fandom. Please pick that door. Much more fun, fewer federal charges, and 100% more Gillian Anderson.³)

Do I think that every tedious, elitist, abusive Oxfordian does or will embrace other conspiracy theories, some of which have been Very Bad for democracy and other things I’m fond of? I do not. Are there a whole lot more conspiracy-minded folks not-in-jail today than there were last week? There are. Most of the news today is versions of “don’t believe what they are telling you” and Oxfordianism (and its weird cousins⁴) is where conspiracy and Shakespeare intersect.

Part of me thinks that if I could only figure out how to have a reasonable conversation with Oxfordians, I could figure out how to have a conversation with anyone.⁵ Despite their strong guy-at-a-party-who-just-read-Ayn-Rand energy, anything is possible!⁶

Those who are older and wiser than I are doing amazing work towards making this happen. I’m off to re-read Hofstadter and Bunk. Please enjoy my brother’s very funny review of an entirely unrelated book.⁷

This book collects Nick Land's writings from when he was immersed in academic philosophy and amphetamines…his critique of Derrida for not being a werewolf is worth the price of admission.

Quick Links

• The Royal Shakespeare Company is turning Macbeth into a video game.

Titled Lili, the game is a modern "screen-life thriller" in which players experience Shakespeare's bloodiest story through Lady MacBeth's personal devices. According to a press release, Lili is set in a "stylised, neo-noir version" of modern-day Iran. Blending live-action footage with interactive elements, it reimagines MacBeth's witches as hackers who break into Lady MacBeth's phone, computer etc…

• Emily Wilson, poetry, and sonnets.

She shared that she lost her mother, a Shakespeare scholar, two years prior after a painful struggle with Alzheimer's in a care home. Long after her mother lost the ability to speak she would still respond when hearing Shakespearean sonnets aloud.

• Maumbury Rings: Neolithic henge → Roman amphitheatre → Parliamentary artillery fort → Public gallows → Outdoor Shakespeare theater.

• Cutting Shakespeare with Sara Holdren.

• Young Monet saw this Macbeth painting.

• “Will I play Prospero again?” Ralph Fiennes ponders performing the Duke in Measure, Leontes, and Lear.

• A jazz adaptation of Twelfth Night.

• A Valentine’s Day “Brawl Crawl.”

• A touring opera with a Shakespeare theme.

• “My only question for him was 'How Hey Nonny Nonny' is it going to be.”⁸

• Emoji Shakespeare with Hiddles/Atwell.

• Mona Acts Out is a new novel about “a veteran actress reconnecting with her deposed mentor while facing the challenge of playing Cleopatra.”

• Shakespeare in Detroit uses arts to promote STEAM.

• “‘We are the Wimps’ – Women In Men’s Parts.” -Harriet Walter

• “Sure ‘Lear’ was hard, but it was crafted by Shakespeare to get through.” -Paul Gross

• Front-of-House at Shakespeare in the Park.

• Hear the voice of Batman talk about how he (Batman) is “an essentially Shakespearean character.”⁹

• I’ve been curious whether any of Shakespeare plays pass the Bechdel Test and was delighted to find that someone’s checked.¹⁰

• Evren Odcikin on Macbeth on Dawn Monique Williams’ podcast

• US-based / VPN-possessing folks have until the end of the month to watch the Public Theater’s Richard III and Hamlet.

Recommendations

• The Royal Armories Leeds has issued a “Crossbow Challenge.” Bolts cost £1 each, children under 16 must be an accompanied by an adult, arrive at 10am to avoid a queue.

• I’m generally a fan of cocktail-and-theater pairings. However when the play is *about alcoholism* maybe hold off.

• Calling something “an old chestnut” comes from a 19th c. play called The Broken Sword.

• Robert Caro literally has books on books.

• During Our Town’s out-of-town try out, the wife of the Massachusetts governor called the box office to complain that the last act was “too upsetting.”

• “The builders initially thought it was a bottle of rum and were planning to drink it.”

• You will be shocked to learn that and who is making a sequel to what?

1. Like this one.

2. This is a gift link but remember: life is short. Think about your life, think about your choices.

3. Kate McKinnon agrees. (Clip in question)

4. I will take every opportunity to cite the Friedmans and their magnificent book The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined. A very accessible “here’s why you are wrong (with math)” deconstruction of the “hidden codes in Shakespeare” theory by a pair of married cryptologists who turned their attention from “fighting Nazis” to “futzing with Baconians” after the war. They show that the ciphers can be massaged to say anything by surfacing “Dear Reader: Theodore Roosevelt is the true author of this play but I, Bacon, stole it from him and have the credit.” out of Julius Caesar.

5. And save the Republic! (please imagine this said with “try to take over the world!” energy. Too much? Let’s start with bringing back Revolutionary coffee house culture for the modern world and go from there. (Starbucks you aren’t helping dammit.)

6. Please note: wrapping a napkin around the stem of your glass is the universal sign for “This man been talking about krav maga at me for 15 minutes and is becoming rapidly more animated / showing signs of wanting to demonstrate COME GET ME NOW.” Alternatively, you could try blinking “SOS” in Morse code. If you do it hard enough your contacts will fall out and you won’t be able to see when he puts a waiter (or you) into a headlock.

7. Mostly unrelated. “Briefly returning to the topic of dumb and bad people who influenced Silicon Valley, here is my review of a book by the only remotely readable neoreactionary from before he became a neoreactionary.”

8. “Hey nonny nonny” is literally in the script.

9. Relevant. (Replica)

10. For my money, Henry V and Richard II may be technical passes but aren’t really in the spirit of things. Kate is only learning English because of her likely marriage to a guy, and the Queen is sad because of the whole “husband likely to be deposed” business. So even if they aren’t directly talking about men, they are trying to learn English/cheer up because of them.