My 50 favourite Shakespearean performances onscreen and onstage

The 30 list was first published on 29/12/2023. It is now updated. 

In chronological order. 

Robert Shaw as Claudius in Hamlet at Elsinor (1964)  

Michael Aldridge as Pistol in Chimes at Midnight (1965) 

Olivia Hussey as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1968) 

Leonard Whiting as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Diana Rigg as Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968) 

Laurence Olivier as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (1973) 

Jeremy Brett as Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost (1975) 

Marc Singer as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew (1976) 

Ian McKellen as Macbeth in Macbeth (1979) 

Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (1979)

David Gwillim as Hal/ Henry V in the Henry IV plays and Henry V (1979) 

Anthony Quayle as Falstaff in the Henry IV plays (1979) 

Jon Finch as Henry IV in the Henry IV plays (1979)  

Tim Pigott-Smith as Hotspur in Henry IV, Part 1 (1979) 

Kate Nelligan as Isabella in Measure for Measure (1979) 

Anthony Hopkins as Othello in Othello (1981) 

Bob Hoskins as Iago in Othello (1981) 

Michael Hordern as Lear in King Lear (1982) 

Anton Lesser as Edgar in King Lear (1982) 

Penelope Wilton as Regan in King Lear (1982) 

Michael Pennington as Posthumus in Cymbeline (1982) 

Robert Lindsay as Iachimo in Cymbeline (1982) 

Robert Lindsay as Edmund in King Lear (1983) 

Diana Rigg as Regan in King Lear (1983)

Cherie Lunghi as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (1984) 

Robert Lindsay as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (1984)

Richard Briers as Malvolio in Twelfth Night (1988) 

Frances Barber as Viola in Twelfth Night (1988)  

Kevin Kline as Hamlet in Hamlet (1990) 

Ian McKellen as Iago in Othello (1990) 

Imogen Stubbs as Desdemona in Othello (1990)

Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia in Twelfth Night (1990) 

Antony Sher as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (1999) 

Ian Hughes as Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale (1999) 

Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus in Coriolanus (2011) 

Vanessa Redgrave as Volumnia in Coriolanus (2011)

Amy Acker as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (2012) 

Don Warrington as Lear in King Lear (2016) 

Miltos Yerolemou as the Fool in King Lear (2016)

Thomas Coombes as Oswald in King Lear (2016)

Ian McKellen as Lear in King Lear (2018) 

Kathryn Hunter as the Witches in Macbeth (2021) 

David Oyelowo as Coriolanus in Coriolanus (2024) 

Mathew Baynton as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2024) 

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On the 2018 King Lear, dir. Jonathan Munby and ft. Ian McKellen

How many versions of King Lear have I seen? 

If we exclude Ran (a loose adaptation) and the Kozintsev film (in Russian), 5: the Michael Buffong production from 2016 (ft. Don Warrington), the Jonathan Miller one from 1982 for the BBC (ft. Michael Hordern), the Michael Elliott one from 1982 (ft. Laurence Olivier), the 1971 Peter Brook film (ft. Paul Scofield), and now this one. 

Ian McKellen is excellent as Lear—if Don Warrington’s Lear is a monumental character striving against cosmic forces, Ian McKellen’s Lear, like Michael Hordern’s, is a frail and feeble man in a domestic drama, betrayed by his ungrateful daughters—his performance emphasises the theme of old age and mortality in Shakespeare’s play. One of the finest scenes in the production is between the mad Lear and the blind Gloucester. Look at Lear—an old man, a frail man—as he says: 

“Ay, every inch a king!

When I do stare, see how the subject quakes....”

It is one of the greatest scenes in King Lear and also one of the hardest to play, because of the mix of tragedy and comedy. 

“LEAR […] We came crying hither;

Thou know’st, the first time that we smell the air

We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee. 

GLOUCESTER Alack, alack the day!

LEAR When we are born, we cry that we are come

To this great stage of fools…”  

The scene of Lear holding Cordelia’s body also brought tears to my eyes—“Why should a dog, a horse,”—Ian McKellen’s voice breaks—“a rat have life, and thou no breath at all?”.

It is a great performance. 

And yet, the production as a whole doesn’t quite work for me. I’m not sure why. Perhaps King Lear looks wrong in modern dress. Perhaps the problem is simply the rest of the cast—in the Michael Buffong production, I love Miltos Yerolemou as the Fool, Rakie Ayola as Goneril, Debbie Korley as Regan, Thomas Coombes as Oswald; in the Jonathan Miller version, I love Penelope Wilton as Regan, Brenda Blethyn as Cordelia, Anton Lesser as Edgar; in the Michael Elliott production, I love Robert Lindsay as Edmund and Diana Rigg as Regan (even if the whole thing fails because Laurence Olivier’s performance as Lear lacks power)—in this production, none of the rest of the cast delivers a strong, memorable performance, none leaves a lasting impression. Danny Webb as Gloucester, Claire Price as Goneril, Kirsty Bushell as Regan, Anita-Joy Uwajeh as Cordelia, Luke Thompson as Edgar, James Corrigan as Edmund, Lloyd Hutchinson as the Fool, and so on—they’re all pale, all weak, all forgettable. The only one who does something that could be interesting is Kirsty Bushell—more than other Regans I have seen, she explicitly portrays the character as sexually aroused by violence—it’s perhaps unfair for her that I have seen Diana Rigg and Penelope Wilton in the role, but at least she takes a different approach, at least she makes one think about Regan’s sadism. 

The rest are just bland. Not awful as such, just lacklustre and uninspired. 

Should you watch it? Perhaps, for Ian McKellen, but that’s all. 

Instead, watch Lyndsey Turner’s Coriolanus from 2024, with David Oyelowo in the titular role. Now that is a magnificent production, one that makes you feel exhilarated, one that makes you think great Shakespeare productions still exist, one that makes you realise that, despite ideology and all the other nonsense, Shakespeare will prevail.  

David Copperfield: some thoughts on characters (with mention of Tolstoy)

1/ Now that I’ve finished reading David Copperfield after about 6 weeks (though I did take a break and spent a few days reading The Sorrows of Young Werther) and so far mostly written about Dickens’s writing style, I should jot down some thoughts on the characters. 

The greatest character in David Copperfield is, without doubt, Uriah Heep. Repulsive Heep! Fawning, obsequious Heep! Scheming, villainous Heep! From his physical attributes to his voice, to his personality, to his evil—this is one of the most memorable villains in fiction.

After that, the most brilliant characters in the book are Betsey Trotwood, Miss Mowcher, and Rosa Dartle. The Murdstones and the Micawbers and Mr Dick are also very good—only Dickens could create such characters and give them so much life, so much presence—but I especially love these three. All those detractors who sneeringly say Dickens only creates caricatures, that he cannot write characters with depth—have they not seen Betsey Trotwood? And Miss Mowcher? As we often see in Dickens, Betsey Trotwood first appears as a caricature and gradually becomes a complex, multifaceted character: when we first see her, she’s an eccentric woman, an intimidating woman who terrifies everyone and keeps yelling “Donkeys!”, fighting donkeys off the little piece of green before her house; but she changes, she grows, she develops; the intimidating woman turns out to be a generous great aunt, a pitiful wife, a wonderful woman, and she is especially lovable in her gentleness towards Dora. 

Dickens does something similar with Miss Mowcher, except that it’s more extraordinary: Betsey Trotwood has lots of space to develop throughout the novel, whereas Miss Mowcher is a minor character who has about two big scenes. When we first see her, she’s a dwarf hairdresser and a friend of James Steerforth—she’s witty, she’s talking nonstop, she’s captivating David’s attention and also ours. 

“… ‘No,’ said Steerforth, before I could reply. ‘Nothing of the sort. On the contrary, Mr Copperfield used—or I am much mistaken—to have a great admiration for her.’

‘Why, hasn’t he now?’ returned Miss Mowcher. ‘Is he fickle? Oh, for shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his passion requited?—Is her name Polly?’

The Elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me with this question, and a searching look, quite disconcerted me for a moment.

‘No, Miss Mowcher,’ I replied. ‘Her name is Emily.’

‘Aha?’ she cried exactly as before. ‘Umph? What a rattle I am! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’

[…] ‘Very well: very well! Quite a long story. Ought to end “and they lived happy ever afterwards”; oughtn’t it? Ah! What’s that game at forfeits? I love my love with an E, because she’s enticing; I hate her with an E, because she’s engaged. I took her to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement, her name’s Emily, and she lives in the east? Ha! ha! ha! Mr Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’” (ch.22) 

She has such a vivid existence that I would be happy even if she stayed the same. But later, Dickens removes the layer and lets us see the real Miss Mowcher: 

“Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.

‘Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,’ she said, ‘that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can throw bubbles back. If I don’t brood over all I want, it is the better for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you giants, be gentle with me.’” (ch.32) 

A magnificent scene, an unforgettable character. 

But even with the characters called caricatures, the ones who don’t have another side and don’t change, Dickens makes them so individual and gives them such a vivid existence that they cease to be mere types. Just look at them. Mr Murdstone is not just a cold, hard man who breaks his wives and reduces them to a state of imbecility. Mr Micawber is not just a poor man who keeps getting into financial troubles. Dickens gives them all individual voices and phrases, and thickens his characterisation with such details, such “unnecessary” details that they feel full of life within the world of his book. 

Among those characters who don’t change, who don’t have another side is Rosa Dartle. Throughout the novel, she remains the same as a haughty, snobbish, and bitter woman who loves James Steerforth and has burning hatred in her heart for everyone else, especially for Emily but also for Steerforth. But she suffers, and that pain gives life to the character. 

Later in Little Dorrit, Dickens goes further as he creates several characters—mostly women—who nurse a grievance and destroy their own lives because of it, such as Miss Wade, Fanny Dorrit, Harriet Beadle, Mrs Clennam, and so on. They’re in a prison of their own making. 

2/ I have called Dora Spenlow insufferable, and she is, but she is redeemed in her last moments—she gains awareness at last, and it’s a moving scene.

In an earlier blog post, I wrote that the second half of the book was less enjoyable. I still think that way, despite Uriah Heep. There’s a magical quality, a fairytale-like quality to the childhood section of the book that is absent in the adulthood section. More importantly, I think the adulthood section suffers because of Dora and because of David Copperfield. 

Let’s compare Dickens and Tolstoy. Levin is Tolstoy’s self-insert in Anna Karenina—I know some readers don’t like Levin, but this is not a flattering portrayal of himself—Levin sometimes gets silenced in debates and cannot argue his points, he recoils at his brother’s suffering and becomes helpless, he’s hot-tempered, he keeps questioning everything and continues to question even after his conversion at the end of the book, he has many flaws… 

If Pierre, as some people say, is Tolstoy’s self-insert in War and Peace, that is also not a flattering portrait—Pierre may be a good man, a lovable man, but he initially engages in all sorts of debauchery; he is weak-willed, naïve, idealistic, and impressionable; he jumps from one idea to another… I think it’s better to say that Tolstoy puts himself into Pierre, Andrei, and Nikolai, and all these characters are flawed and full of weaknesses—Andrei can even be quite cold and cruel. 

I’d go even further: I’d say that there’s something of Tolstoy himself in the main character of The Kreutzer Sonata. Many people hate this novella because they see the similarities in some ideas between the two, because they see Tolstoy as a misogynist. But Tolstoy is obviously not Pozdnyshev: he’s not a (wife) murderer, and Pozdnyshev would never be able to write Anna Karenina. What Tolstoy does in The Kreutzer Sonata is that he examines his own ideas about love, sex, men and women, and pushes his own ideas to the extreme—to use Ibsen’s phrase, he sits in judgement on himself—and he is utterly brutal about it. 

Now if we go back to Dickens, David Copperfield is a semi-biography and I think we would all agree that David is a nice, tame, whitewashed version of Dickens. The adult David is so dull because he’s too good. Yes, he has some small flaws, he’s a helpless husband just as Dora’s a helpless wife, but it’s tame. The real Dickens was awful to his wife. 

I’m of course not dismissing David Copperfield because of Dickens’s personal life—it’s in many ways a wonderful novel—I’m also not wishing David Copperfield had been a different book, truer to life—I’m merely pointing out what I saw as a difference between Dickens and Tolstoy. 

David Copperfield: “like a convulsive fish”

One of the best things about Dickens is his imagery, especially the way he uses imagery for characterisation.

Sometimes it’s just an amusing image: 

“… the room door opened, and Mrs. Waterbrook, who was a large lady—or who wore a large dress: I don’t exactly know which, for I don’t know which was dress and which was lady—came sailing in.” (ch.25) 

Or: 

“I found Mr Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, with a short throat, and a good deal of shirt-collar, who only wanted a black nose to be the portrait of a pug-dog. He told me he was happy to have the honour of making my acquaintance; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs Waterbrook, presented me, with much ceremony, to a very awful lady in a black velvet dress, and a great black velvet hat, whom I remember as looking like a near relation of Hamlet’s—say his aunt.

Mrs Henry Spiker was this lady’s name; and her husband was there too: so cold a man, that his head, instead of being grey, seemed to be sprinkled with hoar-frost.” (ibid.) 

But sometimes, with some imagery, Dickens conveys everything you need to know about a character, like this sketch of Miss Murdstone, for example: 

“She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.” (ch.4) 

Miss Rosa Dartle: 

“She was a little dilapidated—like a house—with having been so long to let; yet had, as I have said, an appearance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be the effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt eyes.” (ch.20) 

Mr Waterbrook: 

“I was much impressed by the extremely comfortable and satisfied manner in which Mr Waterbrook delivered himself of this little word ‘Yes’, every now and then. There was wonderful expression in it. It completely conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches.” (ch.25) 

Is there a better way to convey the hardness of Miss Murdstone, the gaunt look of Miss Dartle, or the self-satisfaction of Mr Waterbrook? 

You don’t find passages like this in, say, Henry Fielding: 

“They both had little bright round twinkling eyes, by the way, which were like birds’ eyes. They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like canaries.” (ch.41) 

Those are the Misses Spenlow, Dora’s aunts. 

“… these little birds hopped out with great dignity; leaving me to receive the congratulations of Traddles, and to feel as if I were translated to regions of exquisite happiness. Exactly at the expiration of the quarter of an hour, they reappeared with no less dignity than they had disappeared. They had gone rustling away as if their little dresses were made of autumn-leaves: and they came rustling back, in like manner.” (ibid.) 

Especially good is the creation of Uriah Heep. Even the name is brilliant. Heep. Rhymes with creep. Dust heap. Cheap. Uriah Heep has a striking presence from the start, his face described a few times as “cadaverous”, his hands “skeleton hands”.   

“As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up the office; and feeling friendly towards everybody, went in and spoke to him, and at parting, gave him my hand. But oh, what a clammy hand his was! as ghostly to the touch as to the sight! I rubbed mine afterwards, to warm it, and to rub his off.

It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when I went to my room, it was still cold and wet upon my memory.” (ch.15) 

What disgust! The narrator describes the hand again later: 

“After shaking hands with me—his hand felt like a fish, in the dark—he opened the door into the street a very little, and crept out, and shut it, leaving me to grope my way back into the house…” (ch.16) 

He also compares Uriah Heep to a fish again later: 

“… he cried; and gave himself a jerk, like a convulsive fish.” (ch.25)  

The second half of David Copperfield is—I think most people would agree—less enjoyable because the adult David is lifeless and dull, and his love Dora Spenlow is one of the most insufferable characters on God’s green earth. But it is saved—again I think many would agree—by the brilliant characterisation of Uriah Heep, one of the most memorable characters in fiction, obsequious, dishonest, scheming, vile, and just repulsive. 

“… Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched him over the banisters.” (ibid.) 

The pair of Uriah and Mrs Heep together is even better—look at the imagery: 

“Presently they began to talk about aunts, and then I told them about mine; and about fathers and mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs Heep began to talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell her about mine—but stopped, because my aunt had advised me to observe a silence on that subject. A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I blush to think of, the more especially, as in my juvenile frankness, I took some credit to myself for being so confidential and felt that I was quite the patron of my two respectful entertainers.” (ch.17) 

Dickens is wonderful. 

(I am now back in London, having returned from the US).

On being ill, and comforted by classic Hollywood

There was a time when I, whenever ill, wondered if it’s some sort of divine punishment. Now that I’m sick the third time this winter, I see it as a reminder to count my blessings when I’m again in good health. The first time was a bad cold for a week or two in late November or early December, back in London. That led to a sinus infection just before Christmas, when I was in Edinburgh and then in Leeds—half of my upper teeth were in excruciating pain, made even worse by earache and headache—what torture!—I even thought another wisdom tooth was appearing. All that should have built me a strong armour against those invisible devils, but no, I’m now ill again—cold or flu, what’s the difference—and this is my first time in the US. 

But I refuse to be negative: at least the work events in Washington, DC are all done, with flying colours, and now I can indulge in resting my limbs and feeling sorry for myself. 

Anyway, having now got The Criterion Channel, I’ve been discovering and enjoying Claudette Colbert films. On Saturday: It Happened One Night and The Palm Beach Story. On Sunday: Midnight and Cleopatra. Why is she not better known today? I mean, compared to Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly? The first three films are delightful romantic comedies, with witty dialogue and the usual charm of classic Hollywood, proving Claudette Colbert a brilliant comic actress, effortlessly funny and sexy. In What Happened One Night, a spoilt heiress elopes and along the way falls in love with the impoverished reporter who helps her; in The Palm Beach Story, a woman runs away from her noble but non-resourceful husband and tries to catch a rich man to help them both, only to throw away everything as she still loves her impractical husband; in Midnight, a showgirl turns up in Paris and tries to capture a rich man, whilst being romantically pursued by a taxi driver, and in the end realises she wants the poor taxi driver. All these roles are similar and in some way variations of the same kind of character—at least in The Palm Beach Story and Midnight—but Claudette Colbert is always charming, always delightful, not at all stale or repetitive. 

Cleopatra is different. Claudette Colbert’s performance as the sensual, captivating queen of Egypt shows that she can do drama. When I started watching it, I thought it was a disadvantage for the film that my view of Caesar, Cleopatra, Antony… was informed entirely by Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra and those were wonderful plays, but by the end, I was no longer comparing—Cecil B. DeMille’s film stands on its own (even if I wish there were more chemistry between Claudette Colbert and Henry Wilcoxon as Antony), and she is sensual and utterly bewitching. 

If you haven’t seen these films, you should. 

Happy Lunar New Year, everyone!

Brief thoughts on The Sorrows of Young Werther

I don’t have a lot to say about The Sorrows of Young Werther, my first encounter with Goethe. I’m a Jane Austen girl; Werther—what can I say—is annoying. But I’d like to note that Goethe does something unusual and odd with the form. The epistolary novel can do different things: it could be personal letters depicting the characters’ different perspectives and contradictory accounts of the same things (Richardson, Dangerous Liaisons, Lady Susan…); it could be a series of documents and testimonies (Dracula, The Moonstone…). Unlike these novels, The Sorrows of Young Werther only has Werther’s letters—there is a correspondence but we never hear the other side—Werther’s letters, mostly to his friend Wilhelm, function as a journal like Pamela’s unsent letters to her parents during her imprisonment. We’re stuck in his over-sensitive and neurotic and obsessive mind the same way we’re stuck in the claustrophobic and exhausting mind of the narrator in In Search of Lost Time. It is only towards the end that we get some different perspectives, when the editor of the letters, from the beginning of the book, reappears and narrates Werther’s last days. But if Werther’s letters are a device for realism—these texts exist because Werther writes letters to his best friend and other people—the editor/ narrator at the end breaks that realism—how does he know not only the actions but also Lotte’s thoughts and feelings of guilt? In a way, it’s rather awkward. But at the same time, I can see what Goethe is doing: he does not let us see Lotte till the end, just a short while before Werther kills himself over her. And that is interesting. 

The foreignness in translated prose

As I was reading David Copperfield the other day, I was thinking that there’s a difference between prose originally written in English and prose translated from another language into English. I can’t quite explain. English prose may be elegant or may be clunky, depending on the writer, but I’ve always noticed something slightly different in a translation—something slightly unnatural, something foreign—as the translator seeks to retain ideas and meaning across two languages with different grammar and sentence structure. 

I’m reading The Sorrows of Young Werther (translated by David Constantine), let me grab a sentence: 

“She was no longer young, he said, and had been badly treated by her first husband, did not wish to marry again, and it shone forth so clearly from his account how beautiful she was to him, how attractive, and how much he desired her to choose him so that he might expunge the memory of the wrongs of her first husband—but to make this person’s pure affection, love, and loyalty palpable to you I should have to repeat everything he said, word for word.” (Letter dated 30/5) 

Or look at this one: 

“As we danced between the rows and I, with God knows what bliss, hung on her arm and gazed into her eyes in which the purest and frankest pleasure was expressed with all possible truth, we came to a woman whose sweet looks in a face no longer young I had already noticed and thought remarkable.” (16/6) 

Or: 

“A vast dawning entirety lies before the soul, our senses lose themselves in it as do our eyes and oh! we long to make the oblation of all our being and to be filled with the bliss of a single large and glorious feeling.” (21/6)

Or: 

“How glad I am that my heart can feel the simple and harmless joy of the man who brings a cabbage to his table that he grew himself and enjoys as he eats it the morning he planted it, the evenings he watered it, the delight he had in its thriving and growth, all that, all those good days, as he eats, he enjoys them again.” (ibid.) 

Do you know what I mean? I’m not criticising the translator—I’m saying that there is an awkwardness and oddness of phrase which I think is because these sentences are translated from German into English and the two languages have different syntax and their speakers have different ways of expressing themselves.

I know I’m being vague. Let’s see some Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett: 

“He was bewildered by the electric light, the loud music, the smell of powder, and the fact that the ladies he met looked at him.” (“Three Years”) 

That’s slightly awkward, yes? 

Or this: 

““…We were right, but we haven’t succeeded in properly accomplishing what we were right in. To begin with, our external methods themselves—aren’t they mistaken? You want to be of use to men, but by the very fact of your buying an estate, from the very start you cut yourself off from any possibility of doing anything useful for them. Then if you work, dress, eat like a peasant you sanctify, as it were, by your authority, their heavy, clumsy dress, their horrible huts, their stupid beards. . . . On the other hand, if we suppose that you work for long, long years, your whole life, that in the end some practical results are obtained, yet what are they, your results, what can they do against such elemental forces as wholesale ignorance, hunger, cold, degeneration?...”” (“My Life”) 

Shall we try Tolstoy? Here’s one sentence from Anna Karenina, translated by Rosamund Bartlett: 

“Once dressed, Stepan Arkadyich sprayed himself with cologne, straightened the sleeves of his shirt, distributed cigarettes, wallet, matches, and watch with two chains and seals amongst his pockets with a practised gesture, and, after shaking out his handkerchief and feeling clean, fragrant, healthy, and physically spry in spite of his misfortune, walked with a spring in every step into the dining room, where his coffee was ready waiting for him, and next to the coffee, letters and papers from the office.” (P.1, ch.3) 

There is nothing wrong with this sentence—it’s not at all a bad sentence—but again the sentence structure and phrasing clearly feel like a translation, not something originally written in English. It’s not the fact that these are complex sentences with multiple clauses—I’ve been reading Fielding and Dickens after all—it’s the clauses themselves. 

How about these sentences? 

“In spite of these words and the smile, which Varya found so alarming, when the inflammation stopped and he began to recover, he felt that he had completely liberated himself from one part of his grief. With this action it was as if he had somehow washed away the shame and humiliation he had felt before. […] The idea that he now, having atoned for his guilt before her husband, had to renounce her and never again stand between her and her remorse and her husband, had been firmly decided in his heart; but he could not tear from his heart his regrets about losing her love, nor could he erase from his memory those moments of happiness he had enjoyed with her, which he had so little valued at the time and which now haunted him in all their loveliness.” (P.4, ch.23) 

I know I’m not explaining myself very well. Let’s see this sentence from Tom Lathrop’s Don Quixote: 

“The husband whose wife is adulterous—even though he knows nothing about it, nor has he given any reason to be unfaithful, nor has it been in his power to prevent his humiliation by care and prudence—people will still consider him reproachable and vile, and to a certain extent he’s looked upon by those who know of his wife’s depravity with eyes of contempt rather than compassion, even though they see his misfortune is not his fault, but rather due to the lewdness of his guilty wife.” (ch.33) 

That’s an odd sentence, yes? 

“The old man was startled and so was Zoraida, because Moors have an ingrained dread of the Turks, especially the soldiers, who are so insolent with and contemptuous of the Moors, who are their subjects, and whom they treat worse than if they were their slaves.” (ch.41) 

I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong with translated fiction—many books I read and love are translated from another language. I’m just saying that I’ve noticed some difference between prose originally in English and translated prose, that a translation will once in a while have an odd sentence, that it’s the nature of translation as different languages have different sentence structure and grammar. 

What do you think? 

David Copperfield: “made me dream of thunder and the gods”

There’s a tenderness to David Copperfield that makes it feel quite different from some other Dickens novels I have read (Little Dorrit, Bleak House, A Christmas Carol, perhaps Great Expectations). The childhood section especially feels like a fairytale.

What else have I noticed? 

Sleep, sleepiness, dreams. 

“I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy; but having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home from spending the evening at a neighbour’s, I would rather have died upon my post (of course) than have gone to bed. I had reached that stage of sleepiness when Peggotty seemed to swell and grow immensely large.” (ch.2)

The childhood section has the perspective of a child and it’s through images like this that Dickens adds a magical and fairytale-like touch to these chapters. That the Peggottys live in a boat by the sea, for example, is nothing extraordinary, but in the eyes of little David, it’s fantastical. 

“As slumber gradually stole upon me, I heard the wind howling out at sea and coming on across the flat so fiercely, that I had a lazy apprehension of the great deep rising in the night. But I bethought myself that I was in a boat, after all; and that a man like Mr. Peggotty was not a bad person to have on board if anything did happen.” (ch.3) 

When little David visits the Peggottys the second time, things have changed and his mother has died and his future is unknown—in the same bed goes he to sleep, but with different fancies.  

“I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, and the wind came moaning on across the flat as it had done before. But I could not help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were gone; and instead of thinking that the sea might rise in the night and float the boat away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those sounds, and drowned my happy home. I recollect, as the wind and water began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em’ly, and so dropping lovingly asleep.” (ch.10) 

Here is little David sleeping under the open sky, having run away from the Murdstones and the factory: 

“Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, against whom house-doors were locked, and house-dogs barked, that night—and I dreamed of lying on my old school-bed, talking to the boys in my room; and found myself sitting upright, with Steerforth’s name upon my lips, looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and glimmering above me. […] But the fainter glimmering of the stars, and the pale light in the sky where the day was coming, reassured me: and my eyes being very heavy, I lay down again and slept—though with a knowledge in my sleep that it was cold—until the warm beams of the sun, and the ringing of the getting-up bell at Salem House, awoke me.” (ch.13) 

Contrast that with his sleep the night he arrives at Aunt Betsey Trotwood’s, tattered and exhausted and without money in his pockets: 

“I remember how I thought of all the solitary places under the night sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless. I remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.” (ibid.)

Dickens uses sleep—the moment before falling asleep—to depict and contrast David’s different frames of mind. 

Even when the adult David looks back at his time at Salem House, one of the images he recalls is little David fighting drowsiness. 

“Here I sit at the desk again, on a drowsy summer afternoon. […] A cloggy sensation of the lukewarm fat of meat is upon me (we dined an hour or two ago), and my head is as heavy as so much lead. I would give the world to go to sleep. I sit with my eye on Mr. Creakle, blinking at him like a young owl; when sleep overpowers me for a minute, he still looms through my slumber, ruling those ciphering-books, until he softly comes behind me and wakes me to plainer perception of him, with a red ridge across my back.” (ch.7) 

Here is the boy slowly falling asleep as he hears Mr Mell playing the flute: 

“Once more the little room, with its open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock’s feathers displayed over the mantelpiece—I remember wondering when I first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what his finery was doomed to come to—fades from before me, and I nod, and sleep. The flute becomes inaudible, the wheels of the coach are heard instead, and I am on my journey. The coach jolts, I wake with a start, and the flute has come back again, and the Master at Salem House is sitting with his legs crossed, playing it dolefully, while the old woman of the house looks on delighted. She fades in her turn, and he fades, and all fades, and there is no flute, no Master, no Salem House, no David Copperfield, no anything but heavy sleep.” (ch.5) 

Images, images. Now look at Mr Copperfield, no longer an innocent little boy, after a night of heavy drinking and dissipation: 

“How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying and doing all this over again, at cross purposes, in a feverish dream all night—the bed a rocking sea that was never still! How, as that somebody slowly settled down into myself, did I begin to parch, and feel as if my outer covering of skin were a hard board; my tongue the bottom of an empty kettle, furred with long service, and burning up over a slow fire; the palms of my hands, hot plates of metal which no ice could cool!” (ch.24) 

The sleep motif recurs throughout the novel. David as a child: his time at home with the Murdstones is described as a daymare. David as an adult: his awareness of the repulsive Uriah Heep sleeping in the next room sits “heavy on me like a waking nightmare.” 

One of the most enjoyable parts of reading Dickens is noticing the motifs. 

The headline comes from chapter 19, after David reunites with his old friend Steerforth: 

“Here, among pillows enough for six, I soon fell asleep in a blissful condition, and dreamed of ancient Rome, Steerforth, and friendship, until the early morning coaches, rumbling out of the archway underneath, made me dream of thunder and the gods.” 

David Copperfield: “Sometimes brighter visions rise before me”

Perhaps I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I can’t help thinking that chapter 18 of David Copperfield stands out as rather unusual. 

The first 17 chapters are a standard first-person narrative—chronological, in past tense, told in scenes and sequences—like Jane Eyre for instance. Then Dickens does something different in chapter 18. 

“The earthy smell, the sunless air, the sensation of the world being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the black and white arched galleries and aisles, are wings that take me back, and hold me hovering above those days, in a half-sleeping and half-waking dream.” 

Proustian?

A break from the narrative. David isn’t narrating his schooldays in a coherent, traditional way—he is in the world of memories and dreams, jumping from one image to another. 

“But who is this that breaks upon me? This is Miss Shepherd, whom I love.” 

From one image to another. From one memory to another. 

“The shade of a young butcher rises, like the apparition of an armed head in Macbeth. Who is this young butcher? He is the terror of the youth of Canterbury.” 

Then another jump. 

“Time has stolen on unobserved, for Adams is not the head-boy in the days that are come now, nor has he been this many and many a day. Adams has left the school so long, that when he comes back, on a visit to Doctor Strong, there are not many there, besides myself, who know him.” 

A chapter of memories. A chapter of images and impressions. 

I love this passage: 

“A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history march on in stately hosts that seem to have no end—and what comes next! I am the head-boy, now! I look down on the line of boys below me, with a condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was myself, when I first came there. That little fellow seems to be no part of me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life—as something I have passed, rather than have actually been—and almost think of him as of someone else.” 

And so it goes on—Miss Shepherd, Agnes, Miss Larkins, a waltz—David reminisces about the girls he adored in his schooldays, the girls who were the pervading themes and visions of his youth. A vision appears, then vanishes, replaced by another memory. 

Chapter 18 is unlike anything that comes before. This is wonderful.