The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660-1769 Book

It's About the Money
16 September 2017

I have to admit that I hate it when I go to all the trouble to write a review and then proceed to lose it. One of the main reasons is that I write it in a word processor, and then read through it before posting it up on Goodreads. Anyway, I went to all the trouble of writing it while I was on the train heading down for an exploration of Kew, and when I get home I suddenly discover that it has disappeared, which means that everything that I had written had suddenly gone and I now have to sit down and write it all again. Oh well, I guess that is life, and maybe I should make sure that I save it properly next time.

Anyway, it baffles me with all of the Hollywood rubbish that they have been producing of late that they don't dig into some of these older plays, tweak them, and turn them into a movie. From what I gathered from Wikipedia, The School for Scandal had been made into a couple of movies in the past, though one is lost and the other is a silent movie (I believe that there is a third which is a BBC production, though that could be the lost one due to the BBC having a habit of making movies and then getting rid of them for some unknown reason).

The thing is that there are actually some really good stories, such as this one, that could easily be made into a rather engaging movie. However, it seems that Hollywood simply sticks with things that it believes to be tried and true - remakes, rom-coms, and mindless action flicks. Okay, you do get some directors, such as Guy Ritchie, that do push the boundaries, but in the end once they become famous they end up simply falling into the tried and true category (which I've noticed that of late hasn't actually been working all that well, if the monumental flops of 2017 are anything to go by). Maybe I could create some Youtube videos in that regard, but then again I would need a crew, and a half decent camera that isn't my mobile phone, for that to work.

So, the School for Scandal is a pretty complex story, one so complex that the synopsis on Wikipedia goes into so much detail that I found myself getting lost in that in the same way that I became lost in the play. This is probably why I would like to see Hollywood (or other filmakers) take some risks with these plays because they are actually pretty good, and unfortunately because they aren't Shakespeare they don't get performed all that much. Okay, I did find a website that has a heap of videos of plays on it, but unfortunately the only way you can access it is if you are studying at a University that happens to have an account with the site - if you are just an individual mug like me then unfortunately you don't get the chance. Sure, I can understand the reluctance of the theatre from filming and releasing their plays on video because it would have the effect of lowering audience numbers, and there isn't a huge amount of money in theatre as it is (though obviously enough to keep it as a going concern). Actually, I should have done some research before writing this because there is a film from 1976 (currently on Youtube), of this play.

In short this is a play about money. It's about people who have money, who owe money, and who want money and will stoop to whatever means to get their hands on it (and marriage seems to be the main way that some of them will go about it). Okay, while it is a bit off putting that the scandalous people are all female, and the rather innocent (and stupid) characters are men, due to its age I am willing to put that aside. Anyway, it still works well since the scheming women do tend to be a stereotypical type of character from plays of the period. Anyway, most of the men are stupid so I guess that balances it out somewhat.

In a way it is a bit like Merchant of Venice, though it is somewhat grittier, to an extent. The male characters do tend to be of aristocratic origin, which is probably why they are stupid - well, not all of them because the men that have money have the money because they are smart. However, one of them seems to be continually in debt, but that probably has a lot to do with him being aristocratic - a lot of them paid for a lifestyle that they simply could not afford, and basically didn't have an income that justified such extravagant living. Okay, while they did manage to get money, that money rarely went to paying off debts, but rather continuing the extravagant lifestyle and putting them further into debt. Oh, there is even a Jew moneylender, but once again he's pretty smart in that he refuses to lend money to somebody who simply cannot pay for it.

I guess it is why images of the early modern period creates images of dirty cities and horrid infrastructure - the rulers were more interesting in waging wars and maintaining their lifestyle as opposed to actually developing the economy of their countries. Note that when the countries began to transition to democracies the infrastructure became much better. On the eve of the revolution, the infrastructure of France was dreadful, and was getting worse, simply because the people who could do something about it were too busy building palaces and having parties, and everybody else was basically paying taxes to support that lifestyle.

I guess I'll finish this review off with saying something about debt - it is insidious. I am quite fortunate that I never got caught up in the debt trap, though I came pretty close. Actually, I am still quite surprised that I was able to live the lifestyle that I did when I was a student on government handouts. However, that probably has a lot to do with things being much cheaper back then, and also that my bank let me overdraw my account to ridiculous levels because they kept on hitting me with overdraft fees everytime I did so. However, the funny thing with debt is that people have this habit of preferring to spend money than pay down debt, so when they get money they spend it on things as opposed to paying off their debt. Okay, I'm hardly one to criticise people on that because I still have a student debt that I have managed to get out of paying off, but then again I'm hardly the only one that has managed to wiggle their way out of it. I guess that in the end we just don't like going without.