Yu Jin Ko on Shakespeare's greatest lovers

Shakespeare scholar Yu Jin Ko didn't blink when I asked him to drive up from Wellesley College in Massachusetts to see the Stonington Opera House production of "Antony and Cleopatra." He said: "Yes! It's one of my favorite plays." This will be Ko's third year joining the Opera House Arts Shakespeare festival to participate in post-show audience conversations with the audience. You can read his thoughts from past years on "Much Ado about Nothing" and "Measure for Measure."  Ko, members of the creative team and I will talk with the audience after the performance of "Antony and Cleopatra" 7 p.m. Friday, July 13 at the Burnt Cove Church in Stonington, Maine. The show opens Thursday July 12 and runs through July 22. The following is an excerpt from an e-mail exchange with Ko. 

The Stonington Opera House production of "Antony and Cleopatra" is very intentionally set in a church, and many of the scenes make use of the church as "pulpit" -- even though there is no pulpit in the church. Is "A&C" a good "church" play? 

 It's not a "good" church play -- it's a great church play. The main characters continually assert a spiritual, transcendent dimension to their love, even as they heap disdain on Roman moral attitudes that befit a "pulpit." 

You wrote this about Antony and Cleopatra: "The heart of their world is the world of their hearts." Tell us more about this idea. Are they the greatest lovers in all of Shakespeare? 

Yes, they are the greatest lovers in Shakespeare. (They make Romeo and Juliet look like the young kids that they are.) They love to use the world as their stage, but the world that ultimately matters to them -- the "new heaven, new earth" that they seek -- is the one they create together through their unruly but sublime romance.  

You once mentioned to me that "A&C" is one of your favorite Shakespeare plays. Why?

It's the ultimate fantasy of sorts -- if you can be delinquent on an epic scale, you can achieve sublimity and redemption.   

What scene or character will you most be watching for in this production? Is there a place in the play that has to be highlighted, heightened or done perfectly for the rest of the play to fly?

I love every part of this play, but I'll of course watch Cleopatra most closely.  I like to joke with my students that either they're in love with Cleopatra or they're wrong.

Who is more powerful: Antony or Cleopatra? 

 Cleopatra. He always succumbs to her in the end, and it's Cleopatra who ultimately determines how we view Antony.  

Shakespeare's rom-com

By Alicia Anstead

Where did the romantic-comedy film genre begin? Look no further than Much Ado About Nothing, which Shakespeare scholar Yu Jin Ko, a professor at Wellesley College, calls, at heart, a rom-com. Consider this year's popular film Bridesmaids or classics such as Bringing Up Baby, both of which have themes of wacky love affairs that begin antagonistically and resolve in romance. Sound familiar? Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedick are a study not only in the age-old chaos of falling in love but they are also characters to whom so many in our of own times are indebted. Ko, who spoke about Measure for Measure last summer, will join me for a free audience-wide post-show discussion, including members of the creative team, after the performance of Much Ado 7 p.m. Friday, July 8 at the Stonington Opera House. Here's a preview of Ko's thoughts on the play.

There's a lot going on in this story. What do you see as the main theme?
I want to heed the warning of the title and not make too much ado about nothing, but it's no secret that one of the Elizabethan meanings of "nothing" is bawdy and refers to a female body part. And that bawdy meaning of "nothing" represents what a woman is to many of the men in this play -- not only an anatomical invitation, but a blank slate that they make make much ado about, shaping and scripting (or "noting," another homonym of "nothing") it in accordance with their desires, anxieties and fantasies. To me, the romance plots in the play turn on whether the men involved make much ado about nothing in this aggressive way or discover alternative ways of treating women.

If you had to compare this play to a contemporary movie, which one would you choose?
There are so many very sweet romances that still have emotional substance. Even soupy ones can reveal something very truthful or insightful about romance and get to you. Maybe it's hard to think of one in particular since the story of Much Ado has become something of a Hollywood formula -- the story of a romance that develops between two strong, funny and engaging characters who can't stand each other at the beginning.

What character do you like best in this play?
How about characters instead? Since they form a pair -- Benedick and Beatrice. They do get set up, but they find their own way to romance -- by having fun, battling, taking a huge risk and rewriting the rules about how men and women relate to each other.

Is Shakespeare really saying that love is "much ado about nothing?" I'm confused!
I know that the Claudio-Hero romance can be compelling and a delight to watch, but for me that is much ado about nothing in the darker sense, while the Benedick-Beatrice romance illustrates what genuine love can be like.

We sometimes think of love as one of the most prevailing themes of literature. And yet I'm not sure I see it as one of Shakespeare's pervasive themes. What do you think?
Romance is at the heart of many of Shakespeare's plays, but I would add, to echo what I think is the sense you have, that with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter's Tale), the plays that deal with love tend to show the process of people falling in love and pursuing each other rather than the much longer journey of a relationship. When the plays do dramatize the period after the initial coming together of lovers (e.g., Troilus and Cressida and Othello), it all tends to end in disaster. Still, I think that love -- more broadly defined in its many different manifestations -- remains central to the vision of many of Shakespeare's great plays, like King Lear and Pericles.

PHOTOS:

Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing at the Stonington Opera House. By Linda Nelson/OHA
Professor Yu Jin Ko, guest scholar for this year's Shakespeare post-show conversation on July 8.

A compromising situation

Yu Jin Ko is a Shakespeare scholar at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and our guest conversationalist for the Talk Back after the production of "Measure for Measure" 7 p.m. Saturday Aug. 21 at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle in Maine. He will be joined onstage by director Jeffrey Frace and Opera House artistic director Judith Jerome to talk about the play, the production and Shakespeare's life and times. Recently, I asked Yu Jin (whose name is pronounced Yoo Gin) to answer three questions. You can read the first here; the second (Is this a play about mercy, justice or power?) is below and the third (Is "Measure for Measure" a love story?) will be posted soon. Check back -- and also buy tickets to join us Aug. 21 and bring your own questions!

AA: Is this a play about mercy, justice or power?

YJK: The title sets it up to be a simple morality play about the limitations of absolute justice – about dispatching justice measure for measure. So you expect mercy to be the antithesis that wins the day. But everything is so compromised in this play – the vision of absolute justice embodied in Angelo and then the counter weight of mercy that Isabella and the others give voice to. In the end, you can’t say one element wins out over the other.

Who's got the power?

Yu Jin Ko is a Shakespeare scholar at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and our guest conversationalist for the Talk Back after the production of "Measure for Measure" 7 p.m. Saturday Aug. 21 at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle in Maine. He will be joined onstage by director Jeffrey Frace and Opera House artistic director Judith Jerome to talk about the play, the production and Shakespeare's life and times. Recently, I asked Yu Jin (whose name is pronounced Yoo Gin) to answer three questions. The first is below; the second is here and the third is here. You can buy tickets to join us Saturday, Aug. 21 (TONIGHT!) after the show. Bring your own questions!

AA: Who is the most powerful person in this play?

YJK: You have so many centers of power and the source of power is so different for each in this play. Harold Bloom [the literary scholar] suggests that the most captivating character in the play is Barnadine, the prisoner who refuses death because he has been out drinking the night before. He presents a kind of irrepressible vitality that escapes the whole moral system of the entire play. He embodies that superfluidity of artistic energy that Shakespeare always displays in his plays. In some sense, he is the most powerful character. But more conventionally, you’d have to choose among Angelo, the Duke and Isabella. For me, it’s Isabella. She might come across to some as prissy and puritanical. But beyond all of that, the value she puts on her chastity, which she values above her brother’s life, is a value that is integral to her sense of self and takes her out of circulation – erotic and commercial – defining Vienna, a very corrupt and sordid society into which the Taliban in the form of Angelo has moved. Curiously, Isabella is the most powerful character because she tries the hardest and with the most force to define herself away from the categories of selfhood available to her.