Gulliver’s Travels: the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos

Gulliver’s Travels is such a rich book. I’ve been thinking about Part 4—there are so many different ways of interpreting it.

On the most basic level, it’s a reverse of the horse-human relationship in real life: on this island, horses (Houyhnhnms) are the ones with reason and language, humans (Yahoos) are bestial; horses subjugate and use humans for draught and carriage, and later decide to castrate them; Swift makes one think about how we treat horses, and animals in general.

If you think about it in terms of politics, especially racial politics, the Houyhnhnms are slaveowners and the Yahoos are slaves—Gulliver, being in the house, getting taught language, and receiving different treatment, is an equivalent of a “house Negro”. 

Among themselves, the Houyhnhnms also have a caste system that is racial in character: 

“… that among the Houyhnhnms, the white, the sorrel, and the iron-grey, were not so exactly shaped as the bay, the dapple-grey, and the black; nor born with equal talents of mind, or a capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the condition of servants, without ever aspiring to match out of their own race, which in that country would be reckoned monstrous and unnatural.” (P.4, ch.6) 

This sounds like anti-miscegenation and eugenics: 

“In their marriages, they are exactly careful to choose such colours as will not make any disagreeable mixture in the breed. Strength is chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the female; not upon the account of love, but to preserve the race from degenerating; for where a female happens to excel in strength, a consort is chosen, with regard to comeliness.” (P.4, ch.8) 

The book goes further. Having no word for “opinion” because they are ruled by reason, the Houyhnhnms have no disagreements, and they hold an assembly for one debate, the only debate in their country: “whether the Yahoos should be exterminated from the face of the earth?” (P.4, ch.9). 

Does that not make you think of Nazis, the Final Solution, and extermination camps? 

But if you look at it from a different angle, the Houyhnhnms that Gulliver idealises sound very much like the concept of noble savage: 

“The Houyhnhnms have no letters, and consequently their knowledge is all traditional. […]

They calculate the year by the revolution of the sun and moon, but use no subdivisions into weeks. They are well enough acquainted with the motions of those two luminaries, and understand the nature of eclipses; and this is the utmost progress of their astronomy.

[…] Their buildings, although very rude and simple, are not inconvenient, but well contrived to defend them from all injuries of cold and heat. They have a kind of tree, which at forty years old loosens in the root, and falls with the first storm: it grows very straight, and being pointed like stakes with a sharp stone (for the Houyhnhnms know not the use of iron), they stick them erect in the ground, about ten inches asunder, and then weave in oat straw, or sometimes wattles, between them. 

[…] They have a kind of hard flints, which, by grinding against other stones, they form into instruments, that serve instead of wedges, axes, and hammers.” (P.4, ch.9) 

Primitive, unsophisticated, incurious, oblivious of the world and the universe, but happy, morally good, uncorrupted by civilisation—does that not sound like the myth of the noble savage?  

If you think of it in terms of philosophy, Part 4 raises some uncomfortable questions about humanity: the Yahoos are essentially human beings without clothes, without language, without the veneers of civilisation—stripped of all the lendings, is man no more than this? Greedy, lecherous, filthy, depraved, vicious brutes?  

The King of the Houyhnhnms, whom Gulliver calls his master, thinks: 

“That our institutions of government and law were plainly owing to our gross defects in reason, and by consequence in virtue; because reason alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature…” (P.4, ch.7) 

At the same time, the Houyhnhnms show the other extreme—ruled by reason, they have no love, no family bonding, no joy, no grief—they also have no concept of opinions—this utopia is a totalitarian society where everyone conforms and submits. Does anyone want such a dreary society? Gulliver does, but I doubt the same for Swift. 

Such a rich, complex novel. 

Gulliver’s Travels: “I never saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts”

One thing readers of Gulliver’s Travels must all notice is that the novel becomes darker and darker as the story progresses, especially in the final section. In Part 1, when Gulliver ends up at Lilliput and meets its tiny inhabitants, the book feels like an adventure story, a fairytale. Part 2 takes a dark turn when Gulliver gets to Brobdingnag, and becomes not only a money-making curiosity but also a sex toy by the giants of the island. 

This is Gulliver watching a nurse—a giant—breastfeeding:  

“I must confess no object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous breast […]. This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass; where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse, and ill-coloured.” (P.2, ch.1) 

Is that how Swift sees human beings? Gross like the nudes of Lucian Freud? 

In one chapter, Gulliver tells the King of Brobdingnag about his world—England in particular—and these are the words from the King that end the chapter: 

“‘… But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.’” (P.2, ch.6) 

Jeez, take it easy. 

Part 3 could be read for amusement, as Gulliver travels to the Floating Island of Laputa and its kingdom Barnibarbi, and Jonathan Swifts satirises the pointless experiments of his day, but the sense of mockery and annoyance is there. The tone becomes darker when Gulliver learns about the existence of struldbrugs, people who live forever—how wonderful! Gulliver thinks, talking excitedly about all the things he would do, were he also immortal—only to realise with disappointment that his vision of immortal life supposes “a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour”, which is not the case with the struldbrugs. They “pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it”. 

“‘If a struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.’” (P.3, ch.10) 

Isn’t that such a bitter view of life and marriage? 

(No, do not be mistaken—I love life but do not wish for immortality—even with youth, health, and vigour, a life forever is my idea of hell).

But Part 4 is where it gets especially dark—there is an overwhelming sense of disgust with humanity. Here Gulliver is in a utopia of the Houyhnhnms, intelligent horses ruled by reason. The island is also inhabited by Yahoos—brutes very much like human beings, but without clothes, culture, and civilisation—they are filthy, stinky, and repulsive savages, driven by greed, cruelty, and other vices. Gulliver tries to distinguish himself from the Yahoos, wearing clothes, keeping himself clean, learning the language of the Houyhnhnms and communicating with them, but the Houyhnhnms nevertheless see him as a Yahoo, just with “some rudiments of reason”, and it’s clear that Jonathan Swift—or at least Gulliver—feels a strong disgust with humanity and sees human beings as greedy, irrational, vicious brutes. Just look at how Gulliver talks about his countrymen: 

“I replied ‘that England (the dear place of my nativity) was computed to produce three times the quantity of food more than its inhabitants are able to consume […]. But, in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, whence, in return, we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, flattering, suborning, forswearing, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, freethinking, and the like occupations:’ every one of which terms I was at much pains to make him understand.” (P.4, ch.6) 

Not only so, Gulliver later says: 

“When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or the human race in general, I considered them, as they really were, Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift of speech; but making no other use of reason, than to improve and multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them. When I happened to behold the reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my face in horror and detestation of myself, and could better endure the sight of a common Yahoo than of my own person.” (P.4, ch.10) 

One can of course argue that the misanthropy is Gulliver’s, not Swift’s—Gulliver has clearly gone mad at the end, and Swift includes a kind man, Pedro de Mendez, who rescues and helps Gulliver after his expulsion from the land of the Houyhnhnms—but there is such harshness, such a strong sense of revulsion and repugnance, and so much mention of “gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos; […] fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores…” and so on that I can’t help thinking that Swift partly shares the loathing for (much of) humanity, that he shares the horror for the human body and diseases. 

But do I think that Swift sees the land of Houyhnhnms as an ideal? Most likely not. As George Orwell points out in his essay “Politics v. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travels”, it is a dreary world, a backward country, a totalitarian society—but unlike Orwell, I don’t think that Swift doesn’t know it—he surely knows that the Houyhnhnms are not as lovely and virtuous as Gulliver keeps saying they are—the Houyhnhnms subjugate and later decide to castrate the Yahoos, and even among themselves, they have a caste system that is racial in character. Gulliver in Part 4 is unreliable. 

Gulliver’s Travels is a brilliant novel, inventive, and full of interesting ideas. 

The 10 best films of every decade from the 1940s to the 2010s (2025 list)

My personal list, maybe idiosyncratic. Some are firm choices, some may be different tomorrow.

- The 40s:

The Great Dictator (1940)

Citizen Kane (1941)

Casablanca (1942)

To Be or Not to Be (1942) 

Gaslight (1944)

Brief Encounter (1945)

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

The Heiress (1949)

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) 

- The 50s:

All about Eve (1950)

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

In a Lonely Place (1950)

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Ace in the Hole (1951) 

The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (1952) 

A Star Is Born (1954) 

12 Angry Men (1957)

Wild Strawberries (1957)

Room at the Top (1959)

- The 60s:

The Apartment (1960)

The Innocents (1961) 

Yojimbo (1961)

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

8 ½ (1963)

Woman in the Dunes (1964) 

Charulata (1964) 

Kwaidan (1965) 

Persona (1966)

La piscine (1969) 

- The 70s:

Cries and Whispers (1972) 

The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974) 

Love in the Afternoon (1972) 

Amarcord (1973) 

The Conversation (1974)

Chinatown (1974) 

The Phantom of Liberty (1974) 

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Taxi Driver (1976)

Stalker (1979) 

- The 80s:

The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

Fanny and Alexander (1982) 

Ran (1985)

My Girlfriend's Boyfriend (1987)

Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Alice (1988)  

A Fish Called Wanda (1988) 

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) 

Cinema Paradiso (1989) 

- The 90s:

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)

Raise the Red Lantern (1991)

The Double Life of Veronique (1991)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Thelma & Louise (1991)

Farewell my Concubine (1993) 

To Live (1994)

Happy Together (1997)

L. A. Confidential (1997) 

Run Lola Run (1998)

- The 2000s:

Memento (2000)

The Pianist (2002)

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003)

Memories of Murder (2003) 

The Aviator (2004)

Sideways (2004) 

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Babel (2006) 

The Lives of Others (2006) 

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)

- The 2010s:

The Dance of Reality (2013) 

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) 

Our Little Sister (2015) 

The Handmaiden (2016) 

Phantom Thread (2017) 

The Square (2017) 

Shoplifters (2018) 

Parasite (2019) 

Pain and Glory (2019) 

Little Women (2019) 

Shakespeare and the culture war

The left and the right both get on my nerves. 

In The Telegraph’s article about the danger of Shakespeare’s birthplace getting “decolonised” (whatever that means), they mentioned “a 2022 collaborative research project between the trust and Dr Helen Hopkins, an academic at the University of Birmingham”, and said: 

“This idea of Shakespeare’s universal genius “benefits the ideology of white European supremacy”, it was claimed.

[…] Veneration of Shakespeare is therefore part of a “white Anglo-centric, Eurocentric, and increasingly ‘West-centric’ worldviews that continue to do harm in the world today”.

The project recommended that Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust recognise that “the narrative of Shakespeare’s greatness has caused harm – through the epistemic violence”.”

Somebody should read Jonathan Bate’s The Genius of Shakespeare. 

“The project also recommended that the trust present Shakespeare not as the “greatest”, but as “part of a community of equal and different writers and artists from around the world”.” 

Equal? Very funny. 

I looked up Helen Hopkins. The profile on the university’s website says: 

“Helen’s publications focus on how material objects can both challenge and perpetuate existing power structures, particularly through commemorative practices in a range of cultural institutions around the world. Her research highlights the ways in which these practices shape historical narratives, aiming to subvert dominant power dynamics and identify an inclusive, anti- and de-colonial form of cultural diplomacy that challenges Shakespeare's historical usage as a tool of cultural supremacy.” 

Buzzwords, buzzwords, buzzwords. And: 

“Helen is currently working on her monograph on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s international collections as well as two book chapters and one article on Shakespeare, soft power, and material culture - forthcoming in 2024/25.” 

Why does the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust work with someone who clearly hates Shakespeare? Look at the list of publications. Look at the list of conferences. This is someone who takes zero interest in the plays and the sonnets, and has zero insight to offer about them.

But this is nothing new. Nor is it unusual. Museums in the West are so often poisoned by ideology and hatred of the West, filled with shame and guilt and sanctimony. Such attitudes—dismissive and resentful of Shakespeare, condescending towards the audience—I also saw when visiting the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC last month.

But when Shakespeare is dragged into the stupid culture war, it also attracts philistines on the right who don’t know anything about Shakespeare and don’t care. 

For instance, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust had a Twitter thread about compelling female characters in the plays, for 8/3.  

The last tweet of the thread says: 

“You can learn more about these compelling female figures explored at our upcoming exhibition at Shakespeare's New Place, opening this spring…”

Some guy (clearly a sock account) replies: 

“You're the Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust - not the Random Female Figure Trust.” 

What? 

Another example is the controversy not long ago about Romeo and Juliet. I don’t think Francesca Amewudah-Rivers is right for Juliet because Juliet is meant to be strikingly beautiful (the same way I think Lily Collins has the looks for Snow White but Kristen Stewart and Rachel Zegler do not), but the uproar was over Juliet being black—you can tell by the comments that these are people who have no interest in Shakespeare, they neither read nor watch the plays, they know nothing about the history of playing Shakespeare, nor do they care—this, to them, is just another part of the culture war. It is true that modern Shakespeare productions often mess with the plays, either to create something “bold” and “subversive”, or to make them “accessible to modern audiences”—I have often complained about them—but some race-bending or gender-swapping can work perfectly fine if done thoughtfully or if not drawing attention to itself. My favourite King Lear is the Don Warrington production. My favourite Coriolanus is the David Oyelowo. And as I wrote in a recent blog post about Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar, a contemporary production of Julius Caesar in which Cassius, Casca, and a few other conspirators are changed into women works very well—just look at social media, look at all the women embracing violence and revolution—and Michelle Fairley is very good at Cassius. These changes are very different from the ones in the upcoming Cymbeline at the Globe, in which Imogen is now black, Cymbeline is black and a woman, Posthumus is a woman—choices that scream “look at me, see how subversive I am”. 

The philistines on both sides get on my nerves. Just leave Shakespeare to people who love and have deep understanding of the plays. 

People have always been the same—random thoughts on Gulliver’s Travels

Lately I’ve been reading Gulliver’s Travels, another major novel of the 18th century, and enjoying it a lot. 

The book is divided into four parts. In the first part, Gulliver gets shipwrecked and finds himself in Lilliput, an island of tiny people just about 6 inches (or 15cm) tall. Their tiny stature mirrors their small-mindedness, as they divide into factions and wage wars over small and trivial differences—a satire of petty differences in religion, I guess. 

In the second part, he has another misadventure and gets to Brobdingnag, an island of giants. The farmer who finds him treats him as a curiosity, exhibits him around the country for money—we all know about the freak shows in the past, but my Penguin notes also tell me that in the 18th century, “it was a normal amusement to visit Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam) to watch the lunatics” (what?). 

In the third part, which I’m currently reading, Gulliver is attacked by pirates and gets to the Floating Island of Laputa, where people know nothing but music, mathematics, and astronomy, but they don’t use them for any practical ends. 

“These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minute’s peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes which very little affect the rest of mortals. Their apprehensions arise from several changes they dread in the celestial bodies: for instance, that the earth, by the continual approaches of the sun towards it, must, in course of time, be absorbed, or swallowed up; that the face of the sun, will, by degrees, be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give no more light to the world; that the earth very narrowly escaped a brush from the tail of the last comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to ashes; and that the next, which they have calculated for one-and-thirty years hence, will probably destroy us. […] 

They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and the like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and amusements of life. When they meet an acquaintance in the morning, the first question is about the sun’s health, how he looked at his setting and rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the approaching comet.” (P.3, ch.2) 

Doesn’t that sound like the environmentalists today—not the people who care about the Earth and seek to protect it in a moderate and sensible way—but the doomers and the alarmists?

Bored with Laputa, Gulliver visits Balnibarbi, the kingdom underneath and ruled by the Floating Island of Laputa. Houses are strangely built, fields are badly cultivated, people are in rags, everything is in disrepair. 

“… about forty years ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the management of everything below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot. […] The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the meantime, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair: that as for himself, being not of an enterprising spirit, [Lord Munodi] was content to go on in the old forms, to live in the houses his ancestors had built, and act as they did, in every part of life, without innovation: that some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art, ignorant, and ill common-wealth’s men, preferring their own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their country.” (P.3, ch.4) 

Jonathan Swift satirises the pointless experiments of the 18th century, but doesn’t that sound similar to the people today who want to destroy civilisation and tear down everything good, in the name of radicalism and progressivism? Or the people who continue and insist on “gender-affirming care” as the only option for gender dysphoria even now, despite side effects, despite the impact on orgasms and fertility, despite a myriad other health problems, despite the testimonies of detransitioners, and above all, despite the weak evidence to support these practices? It’s the same spirit. 

Now look at this: 

“His employment, from his first coming into the academy, was an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and scumming off the saliva.” (P.3, ch.5) 

Doesn’t that make you think of Bill Gates’s project to turn sewage into clean and drinkable water? 

“Another professor showed me a large paper of instructions for discovering plots and conspiracies against the government. He advised great statesmen to examine into the diet of all suspected persons; their times of eating; upon which side they lay in bed; with which hand they wipe their posteriors; take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool, which he found by frequent experiment…” (P.3, ch.6) 

Absurd, isn’t it? And yet, a BBC article from 2016 says: 

“A former Soviet agent says he has found evidence that Joseph Stalin spied on Mao Zedong, among others, by analysing excrement to construct psychological portraits.” 

Gulliver’s Travels is brilliant. 

A letter to Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Me at Shakespeare’s Birthplace Museum in 2023. 

On 16/3/2025, The Telegraph reported: 

“William Shakespeare’s birthplace is being “decolonised” following concerns about the playwright being used to promote “white supremacy”.

Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust owns buildings linked to the Bard in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. The trust also owns archival material including parish records of the playwright’s birth and baptism.

It is now “decolonising” its vast collection to “create a more inclusive museum experience”.” 

Here is the full email I have just sent to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust: 

Dear Sir/Madam, 

My name is Hai-Di Nguyen. 

I’m contacting you regarding the recent report in the Telegraph that Shakespeare’s birthplace is going to be “decolonised”, over concerns that the idea of Shakespeare’s genius “benefits the ideology of white European supremacy”. 

I’m sure I’m not the only person reaching out to you about this subject. I myself come from Vietnam (a country never colonised by Britain) and lived for several years in Norway (also never colonised by Britain) before moving to the UK—English is not even my first language—but Shakespeare speaks to me. And I always say (perhaps to the annoyance of my friends) that Shakespeare is the greatest writer of all time, because of the language, the poetry, the imagery, the characterisation, the psychological depth, the ideas, the range of characters and perspectives, and so on. 

You don’t have to apologise for Shakespeare’s status and reputation because of some discomfort over history and colonialism. You don’t have to look at Shakespeare through the lens of identity politics, intersectionality, or Critical Race Theory. Colonialism may have spread the English language and introduced the world to Shakespeare, but couldn’t make people love his plays and create new works based on them. Colonialism alone couldn’t explain his influence on the English language, on literature, on painting, on opera, on cinema, on other arts. Colonialism alone couldn’t explain his reputation as the greatest writer of all time, and his popularity through the ages. Colonialism definitely couldn’t explain the reason 400 years later, Shakespeare’s words sometimes come to my head, a Vietnamese woman, such as “Is man no more than this?” or “Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?” or “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world”.

It is true that nationalists and colonisers have promoted Shakespeare’s works, but it is also true that colonised people, people post-colonial, and people from countries never colonised by Britain (such as me) have loved and cherished these plays and poems. They resonate with us all. And they don’t need to be “decolonised”.

Kind regards, 

Hai-Di Nguyen 

I blog about Shakespeare and literature at https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com.  

On David Oyelowo’s Coriolanus and Ben Whishaw’s Julius Caesar

Coriolanus (2024, dir. Lyndsey Turner and ft. David Oyelowo): 

The entire production is excellent, and David Oyelowo has an electrifying performance. He and Ralph Fiennes approach the role rather differently—Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus is colder and more contemptuous, David Oyelowo’s is proud, hard, inflexible, unable to be false to his nature, unable to do anything but play the man he is—the pride is still there, but he is more sympathetic—he is a great soldier, not a great politician; a great fighter, not a great orator. The line “There is a world elsewhere” is also different in their performances—Ralph Fiennes says it quietly, it’s a sad line, a bitter line; David Oyelowo shouts the line with ferocity, it’s a defiance and a threat, it’s terrifying—both work very well. 

The scene where Volumnia comes to persuade Coriolanus to lay down his arms and stop destroying Rome is so good, especially when he says “O Mother, Mother, what have you done?”. This, I have always thought, is the most fascinating mother-son relationship in Shakespeare. 

Great play, great production. 

Julius Caesar (2018, dir. Nicholas Hytner and ft. Ben Whishaw): 

Like his Othello production (with Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear), Nicholas Hytner also has the cast of Julius Caesar in modern dress. The difference is that here he emphasises his contemporary approach—a few choices are rather questionable, such as the songs or the political slogan “Do this!” or the appearance of Julius Caesar wearing a red cap with white letters—but overall, it is a very good production. A large part of it is thanks to Ben Whishaw. His Brutus is a bookish intellectual, who speaks of ideals and thinks in abstract terms, persuading himself that he must kill Caesar to save Rome but not thinking about the next step—Shakespeare’s Brutus, of course, is not just an idealistic man, he is proud and hypocritical and conceited—and we can see all that in Ben Whishaw’s performance, especially in the scene where he chastises Cassius (here female) for her “itching palm” and corruption.  

I also like Michelle Fairley as Cassius, who plays the role with intensity and persuasiveness. It doesn’t bother me that Cassius, Casca, and a few others are changed into women—look at social media, look at all the women today embracing violence and yearning for revolution—I would say it works rather well that in this contemporary production, a few of the conspirators are women, that Cassius, the one that manipulates Brutus into killing Caesar, is a woman. Cassius is calculating and manipulative and dishonest, but at the same time, Cassius’s love for Brutus is genuine—I do think Michelle Fairley conveys very well the contradictions in Cassius’s character. 

I didn’t realise it was the Ides of March when I decided to watch Julius Caesar! 

Both productions are available on National Theatre at Home, and you all should watch them. 

On watching Shakespeare

1/ The more Shakespeare I watch, the more convinced I am that it’s essential to both read and watch Shakespeare. 

Read, to savour the poetry and have our own interpretations. Watch, to see different interpretations and approaches and perhaps gain a deeper understanding of the plays. 

For instance, the Ian McKellen – Judi Dench production shaped my interpretation of the Macbeths. The Winter’s Tale I have always loved, but I didn’t quite see the point of Autolycus and thought the play lacked harmony until watching the Antony Sher production (with Ian Hughes playing Autolycus). The Taming of the Shrew appears misogynistic when performed as serious drama like the BBC production with John Cleese, but it is a romp when the ACT goes for commedia dell’arte and casts Marc Singer and Fredi Olster, a great match in wit, energy, and magnetism (also, Marc Singer is hot). And so on. 

2/ One fun thing about watching different productions is that you can enjoy different aspects of them. 

Not counting Ran and the Kozintsev film, I have seen 5 different versions of King Lear: he 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 the Jonathan Munby one from 2018 (ft. Ian McKellen). 

Don Warrington, Michael Hordern, and Ian McKellen are all wonderful as Lear.

The best Goneril? Rakie Ayola (2016). 

The best Regan? Diana Rigg (1983). 

The best Edgar? Anton Lesser (1982). 

The best Edmund? Robert Lindsay (1983). 

The best Fool? Miltos Yerolemou (2016). 

The best Cordelia? Brenda Blethyn (1982). 

The best Oswald? Thomas Coombes (2016). 

In the 2018 production, next to the magnificent Ian McKellen, the cast is lacklustre and uninspired, but I like that Kirsty Bushell does something different—she explicitly portrays Regan as sexually aroused by violence. 

3/ You know what, now that I have seen 4 different productions of Othello and see 3 very different but all brilliant Iagos (Ian McKellen, Bob Hoskins, and Rory Kinnear), I would say that Shakespeare doesn’t need to be updated or subverted or made “accessible to modern audiences”. Race-bending or gender-swapping is not necessarily a problem: Don Warrington and David Oyelowo are excellent as Lear and Coriolanus respectively, the productions respect the texts and don’t make a point about the actors being black; an Othello in which Othello is white and the rest is black is an interesting idea; an Othello in which Iago is black also sounds like an interesting idea, as it brings the two characters closer to each other and the plot even more disturbing… But too often, you can tell the directors make certain choices only for the sake of being “modern” or “bold” or “subversive”, you can tell they do certain things because they want to be “inclusive” or impose their ideology or make a political statement, you can tell they have no respect for and most likely no deep understanding of Shakespeare. 

Take the upcoming production of Cymbeline at the Globe: Imogen is now black, Cymbeline is turned into a black woman, Posthumus becomes an Arab woman—what’s the point?—you can tell there’s no thinking behind this, nothing but an urge to be “subversive” and to mess with the play, something irritating enough with oft-performed plays and much worse with a lesser-known work such as Cymbeline.

4/ Some theatre people seem to think they need to “update” Shakespeare, they need to change the race or swap the gender or add sign language or bring in deaf actors or cut half the text or add some hip hop or just do anything different, because a straight production would be boring and say nothing new. But that’s wrong! There’s nothing like the pleasure of watching a great, serious Shakespeare production, like the David Oyelowo Coriolanus or the Adrian Lester Othello. It’s exhilarating! And we cannot assume that everyone knows the plays and has all seen straight productions before—some people’s first encounter with Shakespeare may be a production that messes with Shakespeare and it ruins the play for them.  

5/ Having expected the 2022 Othello (ft. Giles Terera) to be bad, I watched a few important scenes in it, out of morbid curiosity perhaps, and it’s so much worse than I thought. From the beginning, when images of past productions of Othello are projected onto the stage (with Orson Welles, Anthony Hopkins, etc. in blackface), you can tell that the director Clint Dyer’s only interested in making a political statement. Giles Terera as Othello and Paul Hilton as Iago are both awful—it’s the most amateurish, laughable Shakespeare production I have ever seen—in the murder scene for instance, Giles Tererea and Rosy McEwen (as Desdemona) both stood there speaking their lines, like two awkward amateurs not knowing what to do with their bodies, that I couldn’t care less when that Desdemona was getting killed. 

Shocking. 

And that is why, folks, we must read the plays—don’t judge Shakespeare by modern productions. 

On the 2013 Othello, dir. Nicholas Hytner and ft. Adrian Lester

 

Othello is the Shakespeare play I have seen the most after King Lear: the 2019 production by Nigel Shawn Williams (with Michael Blake as Othello and Gordon S. Miller as Iago), the 1990 production by Trevor Nunn (with Willard White and Ian McKellen), the BBC production from 1981 by Jonathan Miller (with Anthony Hopkins and Bob Hoskins), and now this one. 

What is it about Othello that fascinates me so? Let me think. Some people reduce it to a play about jealousy. Some, to domestic violence and honour killing. Some, to race and racism. Of course it’s not so simple. I suppose I’m obsessed with the play partly because of my fascination with Iago’s malignity and manipulation, partly because of the character of Emilia and her transfiguration at the end of the play, and partly because I have grappled for years with the character of Othello and he still eludes me. What a play! 

I think I would say that the Nicholas Hytner production is my favourite version so far. At first, I didn’t particularly like Rory Kinnear as Iago. Ian McKellen is the one who most matches the Iago I had in my head reading the text: in front of others, he speaks softly and listens sympathetically, thus appearing trustworthy; alone, he’s cold, calculating, consumed with hatred for Othello. Bob Hoskins plays a very different Iago and that also works excellently: he has a matey persona, fun, genial, but sometimes chuckles to himself like a psychopath. Rory Kinnear is yet another Iago: a dull fellow who doesn’t stand out in the crowd but who in his dullness appears honest and trustworthy. When he poisons Othello’s ear, he plays so well the part of one who gains nothing from it, who doesn’t even want to say it. It is a different approach, and it works. 

The reason it is my favourite version so far is that the entire production—and the entire cast—is excellent. In the BBC production, Penelope Wilton doesn’t quite have the childlike qualities of Desdemona—the character is saintlike and at the same time childlike. The Trevor Nunn production has a perfect Desdemona (Imogen Stubbs) and a perfect Iago, but tilts too much towards Iago—the play is not about Iago but about Othello, about the destruction of his soul. It also messes up the killing scene, as I have written a few times before—the tension rises and rises and Othello must kill Desdemona when it gets to the highest pitch—there cannot be any pause, any interruption, any lingering—Othello kills her at the height of madness—the way Willard White and Imogen Stubbs play the scene not only destroy the climax of the play but ruin the entire tragedy. 

The production I have just seen doesn’t have this problem. Nicholas Hytner and his cast get perfectly right the pacing, tension, and pitch. The scene of Othello murdering Desdemona brought tears to my eyes, and when it got to the moment of Emilia screaming “Thou hast not half that power to do me harm/ As I have to be hurt”, I was crying. To look at the lifeless body of sweet, innocent Desdemona (Olivia Vinall), to hear the agony, the passionate anger of Emilia (Lyndsey Marshal), to see the horror on Othello’s face as he realises what he has done to his love and to his own soul—the play tore my heart to pieces. 

Excellent production.

PS: You can find both this one and the David Oyelowo Coriolanus on National Theatre at Home, which is available worldwide. Start with a month subscription. 

Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved

I have been reading The Drowned and the Saved. Quite different from If This Is a Man, The Truce, and Moments of Reprieve. The other books are narratives, this one is analytical. And it is, as people say, Primo Levi’s angriest book. 

He writes about the hatred, cruelty, sadism, and “useless violence” of the Nazis; about the degradation, humiliation, and dehumanisation in the camps; about the things the inmates had to do to survive and the compromises they had to make; about the insurmountable gap between what people think it was like in Auschwitz and what it was actually like; about moral judgement and “the grey zone”; about the shame of Holocaust survivors; about memory; about bearing witness… 

Just so you get an idea of the writing, here’s an excerpt from the chapter “Useless Violence”: 

“You entered the Lager naked: more than naked, in fact, deprived not only of your clothing and shoes (which were confiscated) but also of all the hair on your head and body. […] A man who is naked and barefoot feels as if his nerves and tendons had been severed: he is defenceless prey. Clothing, even the filthy clothes that were handed out, even the shoddy wooden-soled clogs, is a tenuous but indispensable defence. Without it, a man no longer feels like a human being. He feels like a worm: naked, slow, ignoble, prostrate on the ground. He knows that he might be crushed at any moment.” 

(translated by Raymond Rosenthal) 

Lucid, sharp, unsentimental. Makes me think of that passage in King Lear: “unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art.” 

There are so many great passages, so many haunting passages that it’s impossible to quote them all, so I’m just going to pick another one from the same chapter:

“Until September 1944, there were no children in Auschwitz: they were killed with gas upon arrival. After this date, entire Polish families began to arrive, families who had been arrested at random during the Warsaw uprising: all of them were tattooed, including newborns.

The procedure was relatively painless and lasted less than a minute. Its symbolic meaning was clear to everyone: this is an indelible sign that you will never get out of here alive; this is the mark branded on slaves and on livestock being sent to the slaughter, which is what you have become. You no longer have a name; this is your new name. The violence of the tattoo was gratuitous, an end in itself, a pure insult: wasn’t it enough to have three cloth numbers sewn on your pants, jacket, and winter coat? No, something more was needed, a nonverbal message, so the innocent would feel their sentence inscribed in their flesh. The tattoo also constituted a return to barbarism that was particularly upsetting to Orthodox Jews, since it is precisely in order to distinguish the Jews from the barbarians that tattooing is forbidden by Mosaic law (Leviticus 19:28).” 

I don’t think many people today—I’m especially thinking of those who compare other things to the Holocaust—are fully aware of its horrors. Not only so, Primo Levi says a few times throughout the book that the survivors cannot convey the worst of the camps—they did not touch bottom:  

“Let me repeat that we, the survivors, are not the true witnesses. This is a troublesome notion that I became aware of gradually by reading other people’s memoirs and rereading my own years later. We survivors are an anomalous and negligible minority. We are the ones who, because of our transgressions, ability, or luck, did not touch bottom. The ones who did, who saw the Gorgon, did not come back to tell, or they came back mute. But it is they, the “Muselmänner,” the drowned, the witnesses to everything—they are the ones whose testimony would have had a comprehensive meaning. They are the rule, we are the exception.” (from the chapter “Shame”) 

It is an intense book, one of the most powerful books I have ever read. The great thing about Primo Levi is that he doesn’t only describe his experiences, he ponders and makes one think about evil, about tyranny, about degradation, about hopelessness, about senseless violence, about senseless kindness (to use Vasily Grossman’s phrase in Life and Fate), about moral judgement, about outsiders’ inability to understand, about what it means to be human, and so on. It is a book everyone should read.