\"To unpathed waters, undreamed shores.\"
Every story has a beginning a middle and an end. This chestnut is so ingrained into our psyche and from such an early age that we might wonder if it’s included with eyes, legs, arms and the rest under ‘stuff we’re born with’. Long before we learned how to write things down homo sapiens were telling stories through pictures and sounds to teach survival and morality.
The Odyssey is nearly 3,000 years old and yet still speaks to us as though very little has changed. If you’re wondering why this three-hours long film is proving such a hit among the attention-deprived smartphone scrolling public, the answer is that the odyssey is a journey we all take, one we’re all familiar with, a story of who we are now, where we’ve come from, and where we’re looking to go. It also gives them a new classic heroic story to tell their friends – \"I’ve just spent three hours in the cinema and I didn’t look at my phone once!\"
In this episode I spend a little bit of time looking at Shakespeare's own journey from Stratford to showbiz, although we know almost nothing about the first few years.
It makes more sense to look at the effect the Odyssey itself had on Shakespeare, and how he used the various stories of Homer and Ovid within his own plays. There's Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, who so beguiles the Roman Emperor that he'd rather hang out with her in Egypt than attend to his duties in Rome. I mean, wouldn't you do the same? I'm sure he was treated with great reverence in Rome but wouldn't you rahter be hanging out in Egypt with a fellow ruler, pretending you're conducting great affairs of state when really all you're conductin is affairs?
Then there's Titus Andronicus (look away now squeamish people), Troilus and Cressida, and of course The Tempest. Yes I always seem to come back to The Tempest don't I. Hard to avoid that play in this case, shipwrecks landing on desert island are all the rage in The Odyssey.
There's also my own personal journey story related to that play - in my valiant battle with Chiltern Railways, did I get to see it on time or had I upset the Gods of train travel so much that they conspired to keep me away? All is revealed at the end of the episode.