Shakespeare Experience

Gift horse in the mouth

2008-12-27T11:06:00.002+02:00

I have been thinking about gift giving in Shakespeare.

There doesn't seem to be too much of it if I remember rightly.

What there is tends to be more insult or cupboard love ... which is interesting.

Timon goes over the top with gifts - which in this 'Christmas' season might not seem a bad thing. I am not so sure.

I don't celebrate Christmas and I don't give (or take if I can avoid it) gifts. I've got around to a feeling of superficiality in both the giving and the taking - and there is certainly nothing spiritual in it.

So what is Timon doing? Is he weak in the mind?

I did give a gift this week though - and shall give another on Sunday.

Because of the state of my health and the severe possibility that I shall be leaving Romania for a long time, I passed on to one of my young friends my complete DVD collection of Shakespeare and my precious Oxford Complete Works - I hope it gives much pleasure and starts him on a path of adventure and exploration.

What I don't feel I've given is anything material. There was an intellectual gift there - and not a definitive one - it is more like a dowry, a source of future riches, a foundation

Wood within a wood ...

2008-12-24T09:52:00.005+02:00

Although the play has no evidence for it, I like to think of Macbeth looking out over the castle walls at Birnam wood and reflecting.

Much in the way I have been reflecting on my tumour.

I can actually see it - the doctor cut a 'vent' so he could take the biopsy and has left me a nice view of the problem. For those morbid enough (or with the stomach) it looks a little like a walnut - or half a walnut (the doctor, struggling for the correct English comparison, described it as a cauliflower - which is much too floral). It reminds me of my time in school when we dissected things - and the vengeance of the mouse is upon me - very mouse brain with alcohol dripped on it.

Anyway, when you look at 'Birnam Wood' you see your fate - you have to face that fate, there is no alternative. You are looking into the probable end. Macbeth's initial reaction has to turn cold. It is not depression, it is not even depressing, there is a satisfaction as you look and reflect - a knowingness - of being tricked into a false security and of smiling at your own gulability.

There is a determination too - OK, you've got me, but I'm going down strong. Not necessarily fighting (although in Macbeth it is that), not necessarily raging - but with whatever strength you can muster and with at least an attempt at dignity.

There is a certainty of defeat - and this is possibly an English thing - fighting the game to take part, not to win. The battle will be the final one, and Macbeth has no illusions as to silly schoolboy ideals of glory - he has fought before and knows the hacking of limbs, the bathing in blood the agonies and screams - as I know the fight against pain of cancer - I've seen enough of my family fall to it not to have any illusions: There will be no dignity in the end, just the coughing up of blood,the manual evacuation and the balance between enough pain killer and not extinguishing life.

There is no bravery possible, you have a choice of illusion or facing the fight - bravery is when you choose to fight when you do not have to - Macbeth has to, I have to.

I am aware though of Macduff - Macbeth as he looks at Birnam knows nothing of him. I know there will come an energy sapping moment when defeat stares me very closely in the face. Macbeth, ever the soldier, 'lays on': I hope to goodness sake I can do the same.

Nothing serious in mortality

2008-12-22T12:13:00.002+02:00

It is strange when Shakespeare pops into one's head.

I was flat on my back in hospital last week coming out of a spinal block and several quotes and ideas popped into my head.

Macbeth, of course - with an inevitability only to be expected -

There's nothing serious in mortality ...

- but I'm concentrating on the lack of serious.

Being recently diagnosed with a tumour, my sense of humour has been considerably sharpened. So too is Fate's - both the initial 'revelation' under local anesthetic, with the sound of 'jingle bells' (you need to think where the growth is spreading to get the full implication of that one) on the radio (strange music for the urologist I'd say) and then, recovering from the spinal block used for a more adventurous cutting expedition, to have to endure flat on my back without resistance more 'Christmas Cheer' - Angels are apparently singing - not about my plight I hope.

No, there is nothing serious in mortality.

The spinal block though was another Shakespeare moment.

I couldn't help but think of Titus and limb chopping. To have the sensation of legs but no feeling and no possible movement ... it is a weird, frustrating incomprehensibility of a sensation - I'll be coming to the play not too far from now and hope to explore a little that moment.

As regular readers of this blog will now understand ... my absence is fortold, but I do hope to get a bit further into the journey before the old antic pops his pin through brass.

And I promise to try not to be as self-pitying as Richard.

It's a miracle ...

2008-09-29T09:52:00.003+03:00

In Our Time (link) is back - and serendipitously hit on a related topic ... Miracles. You can go and download the programme this week or listen on line in the future.

What struck me with regard to 'The First Part of the Contention' was the difference between the Protestant and the Catholic attitude to miracles - apparently the miracles of the Elizabethan age would be regarded by the stronger sort of protestant as works of the devil rather than of God - the age of miracles was past - with the ascension of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels.

The scene in St Albans then shows two interesting things - one, Gloucester's skepticism is very modern and links him to the right religion on Elizabethan England. Two, the King is stuck in the old dispensation ... he is a Catholic King dupped by a false religion - which accounts for the failure of his religiousness to produce.

Much is made in productin of Henry's religious bent - perhaps Shakespeare's Henry was more ambiguously religious than we take him for ... he is not so much an innocent lamb as a fool (if holy one) like Gloucester's Duchess?

Animal Magic!

2008-09-28T09:24:00.007+03:00

Lions and Lambs, Foxes and Chickens, Doves, Snakes, Wolves, Eagles, Crocodiles, Porcupines and Dogs … oh yes, and Caterpillars ... and a Calf and his dam.

Not a list of creatures you can see in a zoo, but the menagerie invoked in the first Scene of Act 3 of The First Part of the Contention … (Henry VI, Part 2).

It is quite a list – deliberately extending earlier references to both the domesticated and wild and linking them to the Duke of Gloucester (most are used with reference to him) the King and the realm of England itself.

Some carry a weight of obvious symbolism – the Lion, as king of the jungle is also the animal seen ‘rampant’ as representation of England itself (even Willy was a lion – the first ‘mascot in any Soccer World cup – now copied ad nausea and sub-intellect into every sporting event). Ravenous lions are a powerful image – but incorporate a residual (at least for the ‘true’ Englishman – and if you saw the mustache and leg hair on the average English beauty you’d know that was not sexist) jingoism and a degree of pride (sorry for the pun) in strength.

Lambs take on the inevitable representation of sacrifice and the christian association with Christ – as well as provoking the sentimental in urban dwelling moderns: Not an ‘original’ Elizabethan sentiment perhaps.

And of course – the lion shall lie down with the lamb – not exactly a threat in the long term.

A careful look at the list of animals reveals several ‘double edged’ and consequently ‘interpretable’ linkages.

If the fox is a predator on chickens he is also respected for his cunning – and as long as that cunning is used for good purposes it can be an appellation of respect ( it should be remembered that Shakespeare used ‘Foxes’ Book of Martyrs as a source) – chickens are silly, ‘headless’ creatures which make a lot of noise – begging the question, ‘Who, in this play, are the chickens?’

The King – who in this scene loses all the respect gained during his last appearance and is revealed as weak and ‘empty headed’- could certainly be seen as the chicken – but if the king is the head, then the dukes and the Kingdom are in fact the fowl so foolish. There plots and counter-plots, their clucking complaints and their single-minded stupidities are the very reflection of a bunch of farmyard hens.

Doves and snakes seem less ambiguous but both reference back to the ‘Book of Genesis’.

The Dove – as a symbol of love and peace – is the superficial reference made by most commentators … but in the play it is the King who first uses it in this scene – and his religiosity suggests the need to dig a little deeper: The dove is the bird that brings the leaf to Noah in his ark – a pointer to a future on dry land and final ‘saving’ after turbulent times.

The Snake – with its definite reference to Aesop and with a proverbial linkage - is also inescapably knee-jerk linked to the Satan/serpent of the Garden of Eden. For the Queen, daughter of Eve as she is (and French daughter of Eve at that), to raise the devil is an inevitable ‘back-fire’ with an audience schooled each Sunday in the sins of our progenitors.

The wolf is a pack animal – the Eagle is a noble bird: Not the intended meaning given by York as he hypocritically works against Gloucester and the King under the guise of legality.

Crocodiles and Porcupines are a touch exotic – and hence suspicious …weakening in this English context any power they might have and more suggestive of flights of fancy and trivial image making than serious insight.

At which point I go back to my last post –

and show itself, attire me how I can

the Duchess’s exiting lines and reminder that the truth will out in the end.

Having been both a writer of references for people applying for higher education and employment, and a reader of references written, one thing is certain – bad comments say more about the writer than the subject. The instant you read a negative comment you ask – why have you put that? – you don’t say, ‘really, that’s not a nice thing’.

Shakespeare’s loading of the negative comments here with the animal images is a fascinating exploitation of this phenomenon and a delicious insight (in our post-subconscious world) into the slip from domestic husbandry to vicious wildness that the country is making as it removes the final good shepherd from his post.

Diptych; Triptych

2008-09-26T11:38:00.005+03:00

Key pointer to change in a stage performance is the passage of people – an empty stage is a far greater marker of end/beginning than the written word ‘exaunt’ (with or without a new scene or act number).

The flow of people onto the stage – sometimes with a musical accompaniment, sometimes silently or with the clashing of weapons, the marching of feet and waving of banners – is an important stimulus to pay attention – something new is going to happen; the draining away of all, leaving a bare wooden platform, is a sure fire kick-start to the question, ‘Well, what was all that about then?’

Part of the difficulty of ‘reading’ a play like The First Part of the Contention … is this lack of definition – I am tempted to say it is the difference between seeing a postcard of Nelson on his column and being in Trafalgar Square, pigeons, traffic, tourists and all.

Paradoxically, a greater clarity of the individuality of scenes also leads to a sense of cohesiveness: Humans love to sum the parts.

It is a mistake to over emphasis the narrative as sole foundation upon which Shakespeare is building. It is a mistake easy to make – especially with the History Plays which are based on a national narrative, pre-written and only adapted by the word-play-forger.

The director in me (small, sniveling, unfulfilled, deflated, vestigial lump that it is) never lets go of Shakespeare’s love of juxtaposition. Examine any two scenes he placed next to each other and you will usually find a wealth of links – frequently, but not exclusively, in the form of a contrast. Put three scenes side by side and the sum becomes greater than the parts.

Act 2 of The First Part of the Contention (Henry VI, Part 2) provides an example in scenes 2,3 and 4.

Quite frankly, they are not a good read.

We have a complicated spoken genealogy guaranteed to confuse, even when re-read; a scene that seems to be taking place in a court – possibly a public execution place – with a short announcement and bit of a fight; then a scene in a street with more talk and next to no action: Nothing happens twice with a bit of physical distraction in-between.

Overtly scene 2 is York’s explanation of why he is the rightful heir to the throne and why Henry is an usurper. It is possible to dig out a genealogical table and follow his argument (although beware – Shakespeare, copying his source closely, gets a bit of it confused) – and come to the conclusion, ‘he has a point’.

Legally then, York should be King – but Shakespeare doesn’t leave it there – he adds a coda. When Salisbury and Warwick have knelt and declared him King, York goes on to suggest the need for all three to be deceitful and pretend to be what they are not – with the purpose of disposing of Gloucester, ‘the shepherd’.

At which point Mr Shakespeare empties the stage.

So – what was that all about?

We have a justified legal claim which sounds like ‘words, words, words’, and an intended illegal action in promotion of that claim. Do actions subvert rights? If York gets the crown this way is he in rightful possession?

By which time the trumpets are sounding and in walks the un-rightful king – in full splendour (complete with the crown) and power. He gives judgment in a court case – sentences, in full public view and with assurance (and a glimpse of god’s anointed majesty) to death evil-doers and, with rightful distinction, to internal exile their silly dupe (Gloucester’s wife). The language used is clear, straight and unambiguous.

The criminals go off to ‘execution’ and in come the master and apprentice for the trial by combat. One is drunk and getting drunker – the other almost insensible with fear. The drunk has pro-claimed York true King and is assured victory by both experience and physical size; the apprentice – and that meant boy – has no chance, even though right is on his side.

But a ‘miracle’ happens – the excessive drink confounds the man and the boy wins.

Watching this is Henry, the ‘young’ King, York, Warwick, and the rest of the court … including all of those mentioned in the previous scene as subverters of the state and its laws.

York, in two quick lines, sees not the actions of God, but the wine as cause of the victory; Henry, closing the scene in 6 lines (looking always for the interventions of God) heaven’s intent to punish and bring low the unrighteous, reward those true.

And the stage empties again … with trumpets and display, cheering and the dragging off of a dead body.

Clearly there is a demonstration of ‘right over might’ – but York was on stage – and all those lords he was talking about … is Henry falsely secure?

And where were the combatants standing? Was Henry ‘above’ and the fight below? Where was York (and his friends) standing in the scene before? If York, then the witch and Gloucester’s wife, then the fight are all seen on the same spot – they are linked.

Why the drink? The previous scene took place after the Lords had dined together – were any of them slightly drunk? (It would make for a more entertaining scene if Warwick was slightly tipsy). Excessiveness in drink is a metaphor for other excessiveness – and the armorer was the one who supported York’s claim to the throne – is there truth in wine or is it just oil for the wheels on the tumbrel?

In silence, Gloucester enters. He is here to watch his wife’s punishment and penance – was he ordered to?

Eleanor Cobham enters – dressed in a simple white sheet (a shroud? Memento mori? Gloucester and his servants are is mourning black).

Gloucester refuses to break the law and rescue her – but she, apparently learning nothing from her experience, berates him for allowing her public disgrace. She invokes the image of Gloucester as a bird when she says a bush is being limed for his capture. Gloucester gently rebukes her and tells her to keep faith with the laws of the land – she is being rightly punished for a crime she did commit. She warns him that he will not live long – he is next in line for the chop.

She is taken off to the Isle of Man and Gloucester leaving earlier to go to the King’s parliament. Eleanor’s words close the scene – no matter how well dressed, she will always bear the ‘shame’ of the shroud.

The biggest contrast between scenes 3 & 4– and surely the one with the initial impact – is the costume: Scene 3 is all colour, all state, all heraldic splendor – Eleanor Cobham is still ‘Duchess’ and is in her finery, the King in his robes of state, and the peers of England resplendent; Scene 4 is plain black and then white – the black of mourning and the white of the dead. There is the martial uniform and weapons of the Sheriff and his men encasing the woman ‘caught in sin’ … and a brief reminder, in the person of the herald, of the previous colourful scene.

Eleanor’s closing words force us to think back to the previous scenes – and point to the future – we cannot hide our guilt in our surface appearances. It is a common enough theme in Shakespeare – no less significant for its ubiquity.

These juxtapositions reveal interesting aspects of the play which might not be noticed as so significant if analysis is restricted to any individual scene (or the play ‘as a whole’) – but what happens if we look at the three of them as a triptych?

One element that strikes me is the intensity with which the relationship between legality and right is put under the spot light.

It is clear that York has a legal claim to the throne – but has he any ‘right’? The first doubt to his claim is found within the scene where he expounds that right – he is willing to cheat, lie and play false in order to win. This is immediately brought into contrast with the Kingly Henry – for the first time (and possibly last) behaving as a true king – and with the condemnation of those who plot against the rule of God and the state. The fight then emphasises the ultimate exposure of such falsity even when supported by might. The drunkenness suggests an excessive intoxication as a cause of ultimate failure, which is a point acknowledged by York – but not absorbed.

The failure to act moderately results in death – both the physical death of the man (as the body carried off at the end of the third scene clearly indicates) and the spiritual death of Eleanor Cobham – who goes to her exile not repenting her sin, but repenting her fall.

Eleanor Cobham and York are paired in these three scenes – both have been driven by ambition, both are playing the Devil’s game, both wish to abuse the laws of the land for personal gain.

Henry appears in the central scene as a right acting rock standing against a battering sea of false aristocracy – he is ‘Peter’ – the name given to the winning apprentice – and the true rock on which the foundations of Christianity are laid. He has a blind faith in right winning out in the end. But we mustn’t forget - true justice is blind!

Which pairs him with Gloucester – the ‘Good Duke Humphrey’ of the plays original, full title. For in the fourth scene Gloucester makes the claim that he cannot be harmed because he has committed no crime.

The second scene has prepared us to hear these words with a dramatically ironic ear – we know the plots and traps being laid for the old man, the limed twigs that will snare him – but we have also just seen right winning in the end. If York and Gloucester’s wife are linked – then the ultimate fate of both is also linked and no matter what deceptions York contrives, in the end he will be made to do penance for his crimes – and go to punishment after that penance.

It is worth remembering that Shakespeare’s play, despite its verisimilitude, has taken a great liberty at this point – it has moved the events of 1442 when Gloucester’s wife and the others were tried and condemned forward to 1448 when York and his two friends met in the garden. This is not the accidental juxtapositioning of chronology – it is the deliberate artistic mixing of disparate events in a unified space.

Wind and fair weather friends… ?

2008-09-20T15:12:00.007+03:00

After several days of wet miserable (English-style) weather, the rain dropped away and left a cool, billowy day yesterday.

I sat in the Park. Wet drips from the trees and grey clouds canvas out the sky; I listened to/read the first scene in Act 2 (The First Part of the Contention).

There were similarities – none more so than the difficulty the birds were having flying. Most of the ground level, tree flitting birds were OK – it was the cross the sky birds – the crows, the occasional adventurous pidgin and the Kestrel I usually see circling behind the cathedral tower that were having difficulties. They were there, they were getting on with their ‘birdie lives’, but it was difficult.

Wind is exciting – ask any school teacher on playground supervision (do teachers do that sort of thing now?). Great childhood battles brew under Aeolia’s influence …; Juno bribed and browbeat the original in an attempt to destroy Aeneas; Chicago, the windy city, is famed for its gangs and violent crime.

The Queen is under the influence of the wind – she enters the stage on a high. And if the behaviour of the Lords is anything to go by, they too have their schoolboy spirits stirred: Gloucester and the Cardinal plot, the others bicker. The King ignores, to his cost.

It is marvellous how Shakespeare, in a few moments of dialogue, can sum up the basic human experience of exposure to nature. And the wind will be back …

We are out in the wind with our ‘falcons’ – well, Taming the Shrew was an act of falconry and here, in the next play, the we are reminded again of that early marriage comedy – the King tells his wife to shut up – and she apparently does.

Behind the dialogue, spurring it on, one might say, is Gloucester’s Heraldic crest. This included a hawk – so the jokes which follow are bound in with the identity of the Gloucester family in a way which modern audiences have no real way of grasping.

Nowadays we are familiar with the Logo of sports teams and manufacturers of sports wear … a few people might recognise the heraldic devices of a few countries, some still carry them on their flags – but for most, the shield and the livery are quaint ideas, symbols of decadence or mere decoration.

Not so to Shakespeare – he after all, went to get his own coat of arms drawn up. It is worth noting that Shakespeare was not the only stage professional who did this – Augustine Phillips also applied … which would suggest that the heraldic was something of meaning and worth at least to the theatre people. One of the written pieces of evidence for Shakespeare as a writer is in the account books of the Earl of Rutland – payment to Burbage (a carpenter who could act and paint!) and Shakespeare for making/painting/writing a heraldic device and accompanying poem to be used at a ‘joust’ celebrating a visit of James I/VI .

Punning on the meaning of such devices must have been a very powerful ‘weapon’ in the political armoury of the play … giving the right ‘nickname’ to an opponent can be very revealing – children may shout out, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me’ – but they will go home and cry about it in the secrecy of their own bedrooms.

And the fact that the jokes about towering and raising above don’t reflect the person of Gloucester doesn’t negate the fact they do reflect his ‘family’ in the person of his wife – who we have just seen arrested and the news of whose arrest brings the scene to an end.

Which brings us to the second part of the scene – the revelation of false miracle and reminder of the ever-present ‘low-life’ undertow to the play.

What interests me at this point is plums (testicles) and climbing plum trees (sexual intercourse). We have some overt punning going on here. Again, likely to be lost to modern audiences – and to have been crystal clear to the early watchers of the play.

When ‘the wife’ says:

…, and bought his climbing very dear

a set of levels of meaning are activated – which resonates through all on stage.

Simpcox must surely be regarded as ‘driven’ by his wife – or led through his lust for her. His wife has possibly led him on using his uncontrolled passions.

On stage, we see Gloucester – he is about to fall, like Simpcox, because of his wife – although it is not Gloucester’s fault – but his wife’s blindness to god which will make her husband lame.

The Queen, who is still playing a virtuous game (Henry VI Part I, has not yet been written) is going to go the way of ‘The Wife’ and use a man’s lust to bring down the Lancastrian family fortunes.

The lustful man is surely William de la Pole – Suffolk: He, like Simpcox, will defy God and, attempting to climb into the Queen’s Plum Tree, fall and break his head.

Finally, another, easy to miss element is the onlookers – the crowd who will accompany Simpcox and his wife in the direction of fortune, cheering them on – and then join as heartily in the jeers as they are whipped through the towns – the playground crowd watching the for any excitement and excuse to coagulate.

Black Marks, on Skin of Calf ...

2008-09-13T15:21:00.004+03:00

Ambivalent Writes, Certain Deaths

A little ‘sub-text’ developing in the play is concerned with writing.

The written word has made a number of appearances so far – too many to be accidental?

Each of the occasions has also shown a degree of falsehood and/or innate disaster.

The play starts with a written contract – the marriage contract; the petitioners try to present written petitions; Eleanor’s questions and the spirits answers are inscribed and recorded.

It is not hard to see the reaction of Cade to lawyers (hang all of them) and writing as potentially justified in the light of these documents.

The marriage contract is seen as disastrous – Gloucester has a fainting fit when he first reads it and it sets off the whole chain of events of the play. As I mentioned earlier, it is a contract binding unequal partners in a ‘til-death-do-us-part’ union.

The petitioners rightful grievances, once written, are either taken and used as a weapon against someone not concerned in the original petition (York) or are simply ripped up and prove impotent – although costly, for a scribe will have had to have been paid, and a lawyer consulted. Can we say it is the written word that ultimately causes the battle between the apprentice and his master – and the death of one of them?

In this last scene of the first act we have the written word associated with evil – it is used to write down the words of a Devil, and York, even though he knows the seriously ambivalent nature of what is written, still holds on to it. Again, the written words will be used in a court to condemn people – and whilst Eleanor gets sent to the Isle of Man (a living death) the others are killed. It is noticeable that the one person really responsible for the getting together of the condemned ( Hume – truly a devil’s advocate) escapes the power of the words to entrap.

For a playwright, written words are ambivalent – she or he puts into the written form meaning and intent - but the performance of any play will never equal the intent.

Shakespeare, as an actor and playwright was well aware of this. Indeed, all three of the plays he has so far written have shown considerable propensity to ‘interpretation’ – the words do not pin down to a single meaning, the actor has scope to interpret and almost completely invert the meanings.

There is a strong belief held by many (meaning me) that Shakespeare didn’t want his play texts published – that he didn’t want them read – precisely because they are not complete on the page – that as writing they are open to the evil of distortion and misjudgment – used to make a trap for fools – and, until in the mouth of the actor, they are incomplete.

Did Shakespeare play Cade? Did he want all the lawyers and dealers in written words, the teachers and those who can read, executed – Academics and readers of Shakespeare as literature, beware!

Devil in t' tale ...

2008-09-12T12:33:00.007+03:00

Nothing separates me further from the average Elizabethan than belief in the supernatural.

There not only was a God, but a Devil – that personification of Evil was a physical reality which was capable of manifesting itself and which had servants, both human and other.

It is quite ‘remarkable on’, that, in this first of the History plays, Shakespeare brings on to stage one such ‘servant’ and several human exploiters of Evil – and provides what must have been a sensational end to the first act (if he was thinking in acts at the time).

When I say sensational, I am using the term in a way that indicates the stimulation of the senses rather than ‘original’ – because it is not very original - it is one of the older tricks in the book – for what is raised for the Duchess is very much a Mediaeval Mystery Play deceiving devil – the chase-through-the-crowd with horns and pitchfork devil which must have been a mix between clown at the circus and horror movie thrill.

There is not a great deal of subtlety in it – and Marlowe and Greene, both write around the same time plays which include spirit raising.

What is the supernatural doing in a retelling of History?

The obvious answer is that it was in the history books – the characters named and the events portrayed on stage were, more or less, in the chronicles. This, more than anything else, should hammer home the way the spiritual was ingrained in the early modern mind’s perceptions of reality.

What Shakespeare does is shift the timing – moving the downfall of Eleanor Cobham forwards into the time frame of the play – in reality she had committed her witchcraft (which included the making of a doll of the King for an ‘attempt on his life’ – things Shakespeare cuts) before Margaret came to England – they never actually met.

Why?

Two reasons fall into place for me – one to do with Shakespeare’s exploration of the metaphor of marriage and one to do with the ‘theatrical’.

In direct disobedience to her husband and all the warnings of religion, Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester consorts with evil spirits. She does so in order to promote her own status in search of the crown of England. This heady combination of ambition and disobedience is played out several times in the play – with consequences.

It is not only the female characters (for this is what Margaret does, and Simpcox’s wife) but, if we take the idea of husband equating with King, also the Cardinal and York – in fact, it is at the root of nearly every dispute and disagreement.

The only character who seems true to both king, country, religion and family is Gloucester … ironically enough. It is Gloucester who maintains the faith – as is shown in the previous scene where he sentences to trial by combat, despite the obvious physical disparity, York’s armourer and his apprentice. He is saying, ‘God’s will be done’.

This is not the passive Christianity of Henry – it is a forceful assertion.

Eleanor goes against her husband – showing as strongly as possible the doctrine of free will and independence of judgment. In Shakespeare’s previous play (The Shrew), Katherine submits to Petruccio not through force – but through realisation of the rightness of her submission. As a consequence, what will Petruccio not do for his wife?

So too with Gloucester – as long as it is within the bounds of morality, what will Gloucester not do for his wife – he has raised her to the status of second woman in the realm … but she wants more.

To get it she chose the summoning of spirits … and how could Shakespeare not exploit the theatrical possibilities of such an opportunity?

As I mentioned above, there is the thrill and excitement of such an enactment – sound effects and special effects (the stage directions of the time call for them) were possible – if the play is being performed on stage there is the chance to raise the devil through the trap on stage: The stage picture itself emblematic – a semi-circle of conjurers around the chalk marks on the platform, one man with pen – putting to paper the words spoken and on the upper platform, standing at the apex of a triangle, Eleanor.

Eleanor doesn’t speak – her words are transmitted – through writing: Later, in Macbeth, Shakespeare (or Middleton) dares go one further and have a direct between the questioner and the answerer.

In the theatre, you remember this scene – on the page it looks somewhat limp and silly.

There is another element which is worth comment.

Giotto, an Italian painter who looks somewhat dated to us (although with his frescoes nicely cleaned he has a great line in blue), has claim to be the first great modern man – certainly in the world of arts. Before Giotto, the visual representation of people was somewhat formulaic – and very one dimensional. With a few strokes of his brush he gave a reality to his people – three dimensional bodies. It was the start of a roller coaster leading to perspective, the portraits of the Renaissance and even the Sistine Chapel roof painting.

Shakespeare’s first ‘spirit’ manifestation has something of that renaissance makeover feel too.

If it is the child of the Medaeval Mystery Devil – gone is the flatness. This is a devil in torment. The language spoken, nodding in the direction of ritual and Latin (kick at the Catholic church?) is clearly a modern English – and the modernness of it is an extra source of fear … this is possible, this is real, this could be us.

Cutting edge or what?

Base Cullions ...

2008-09-06T12:44:00.004+03:00

The need to protest against a perceived injustice runs deep in all of us. It is an expression of faith in the power of those that hear to redress the injury.

A couple of days ago Romanian football threw up another occasion for spontaneous popular protest. The machinations of the footballing barons, the disputes over ‘territory’ and the helplessness of ordinary against the powerful, resulted in several hundreds of fans protesting publicly, a minor skirmish or two (complete with broken heads), the temporary blocking of traffic and a loud march to the centre of the town.

It was quite exciting – I followed the crowd in the hope of seeing some action but in the end was disappointed as it fizzled out – the protesters were leaderless and, by the time they’d made it to Opera Square, it was late.

Although this made the national press little has appeared outside of Romania - which is strange, because it was such a minor protest in the same city of Timisoara which caused the Revolution of 1989, which brought down Nicolae Ceausescu (I won’t say communism) to start.

The difference, I guess, is the comparative political stability now. The spark of a minor grievance is not enough to set a significant social blaze – but should be heeded as a warning by those in power.

Shakespeare gives us a similar ‘protest’ at the start of the third scene of ‘The First Part of the Conflict …’. The protesters are the petitioners – men with a grievance they wish to make public and have redressed by the powers that be (in their eyes, the Lord Protector: Gloucester).

They are not able to get access to the person who counts (much as the Timisoarian protesters, who really need UEFA and FIFA to listen don’t get their voices heard through international media indifference).

The Queen, showing a severe lack of insight, sends them off with an:

‘Away, base cullions.’

She might as well have said, ‘Let them eat cake’!

In less than 40 lines, shifting from the seriously dangerous devil-dabblings of Gloucester’s wife, to an ‘all is not well’ in the body politic Shakespeare has given the foundations for all that is to follow – here we have the rule (and importantly spirit) of right and justice being swept aside, earlier we had basics of ‘respect’ and ‘God-given authority’ being ignored.

The protesters in Timisoara appear to have been as unsuccessful as those in Shakespeare’s play … All they need is a Jack Cade though to feed on their genuine grievances.

Family Values ...

2008-09-04T12:53:00.005+03:00

The fun and games going on over the other side of the pond with regard to illegitimate babies, women in politics and ‘redneckidness’ might seem to be far removed from Shakespeare and Elizabethan Theatre, but I’m not so sure.

One of those constant metaphors (in western society at least) seems to be to view the body politic as a family. There is the head of the family, the family itself and, in earlier times at least, the servants. The very powerful combination of man and wife in harmony, with children growing under their protection, operating within a sometimes hostile world is a very strong idea – just look at the galvanizing effect the ‘Republican ticket’ has had.

Shakespeare starts his first History play (The First Part of the Contention) with this image.

Henry is united with Margaret and they go off to unite with the state in her coronation. But there is a degree of family disharmony – the elder statesman, Gloucester is not happy with the settlement – this is not a marriage of equals and too much has been spent – there is a danger to the stability of the family – his ‘uncle’ argues and goes behind his back, others do the same … just as in any normal family. Instead of looking to the family, each (perhaps with the exception of Gloucester) is looking to himself.

It is the job of the head of the family (and his wife) to control this natural sibling rivalry – and it is the responsibility of the children to follow the rules of the family … to the Elizabethan, this was a God-given responsibility: I suspect, to a number of dwellers across the seas, the same would apply.

We are so used these ideas we forget the element which was so exciting to the Elizabethan was the changing role of the woman in all this.

As I pointed out in an earlier post – the significant role of the junction of man and wife as a religious, moral and ideal unit was a consequence of Protestantism and Shakespeare’s promotion of this ideal could be considered almost revolutionary.

In his two previous plays he dealt with the issues directly in terms of comedy – of male uniting with female.

Here, in the first of a new genre of play for the writer, he deals with a more abstract, almost philosophical conception – the power of an ordered group over the disorder of chaos – the need for a natural balance with people fulfilling their roles, accepting both their strength and limitations. The play which follows from the union of Henry and Margaret is in a direct line to the speech of Katherine at the end of The Taming of the Shrew.

But what we get here is not Petruccio and Katherine’s story – it is that of the Widow and Hortensio, or of Bianca and Lucentio. The necessary submission for unity is not going to be made.

I think it is very telling that the first very public, very political scene is followed by the private domestic scene between Gloucester and ‘Nell’, his wife, the ‘Duchess’.

Central at this point is Gloucester – he is the only one in the previous scene who seems to have the needs of ‘King and Country’ foremost in his mind – he is rebelled against by everyone, behind his back … and when he is at home, his wife preaches rebellion and treachery – and (significantly) goes behind his back and disobeys his orders – for her own benefit rather than the countries or even her family.

But Shakespeare isn’t only drawing a parallel here, he pushes it one stage further – it involves consorting with the powers of evil, with a going against God and consulting the devil and his subordinates … and these actions are linked to a supposed holy man (the Cardinal Uncle) and others of the political commonweal.

Rebellion in the family, rebellion in the state and rebellion of the soul against the heavenly ordained.

The redneck Cade and his followers are merely and extension – the wild consequence of a breakdown in the values enshrined in the family.

What is playing out in the US of A at the moment is an echo of this first history play – and is an exploration in real life of the issues Shakespeare explored (based quite closely on real life) several centuries ago.

The Olympics, Democtatic Convention ...

2008-08-31T09:30:00.003+03:00

and Shakespeare’s first history play.

It’s a sort of weird brace of metaphor for:

‘THE FIRST PART OF THE CONTENTION BETWIXT THE TWO FAMOUS HOUSES OF YORK AND LANCASTER’.

During the Olympics I couldn’t help thinking of the way in which people were investing the participants with a sort of representative nationality – by this I mean they became like the ‘coronated’ king (yes, I know the word should be crowned but I wanted to ‘mark’ the idea); the sporting hero went out as a single champion (even if they were in a team) and fought not so much for a national pride as for that part of ‘me’ I had deposited in the symbol of ‘you’.

A bit abstract maybe ….

It was easy with Thorpe: Henry V if ever there was one. What a hero, what a fund of pride … and strangely, like Shakespeare’s Henry V, his magnificent success transcended any nationalism. By the end, all but the meanest minded wanted him to succeed … even if at the expense of ones own favourite. Bolt was more a Hal than a grown king – his antics not quite mature.

For Henry VI there were a number of contenders … we need a sportsman who shows a lot of early promise but who hasn’t quite lived up to them. The obvious contender is the British diver, young Mr Tom Daley: The build up he got, the press coverage and the general media attention lead a lot of people to expect … and what a flop (except, it wasn’t …) ! No medal, lost hopes, wasted investment.

No blame to the young man himself – it was our over expectation, our unsolicited demands, our unreasonable faith in a maturing boy … sound familiar? Henry VI is expected to perform in the same way … especially in competition with France. He doesn’t … and at the start of this play, we feel that disappointment. The magnificent ceremonial hype of trumpets and hautboys … and the immediate disaster of the loss of France.

But the Henry VI of this play is not Mr Daley - he is older … maybe Tom is the Henry of Henry VI Part 1. (And I want to make it very clear the boy done good – I am talking here of the expectations of others and the disappointment their wrong placed expectations result in.)

We need to look for an older, high expectation, low performance competitor … someone like Andy Murray?

Tennis got a bit of a rough ride from the English sporting press (well it might) for not really being an Olympic sport … there are much more important events for it than the Olympics (bet Mr Nadal and certainly Mr Federer would beg to differ). Murray wasn’t taking the competition seriously, he hadn’t prepared, he was focussed elsewhere. He thought he could swan in and get somewhere reasonable and people would be happy …

Now, that is more like the Henry VI of the ‘First Contention’. Henry is more focused on the Kingdom of Heaven than that of England … his paradise is not of this earth, he is not so interested in an Eden, although he doesn’t mind being there whilst he waits for a more important job of work over in the Flushing Meadows of … perdition.

But we are stuck with Murray – he’s the English number one, but there are obviously much better foreign princes and real monarchs out there … he is never going to perform, not even at home.

But, hold on, he’s not English … he’s really not entitled to the job of representing me … isn’t there someone else with a better right to do that?

Welcome to the American Political Conventions!

In the UK speechifying is about as important as … learning grammar: People nod in the direction but realise it is an outdated and impotent way of getting things done. The press conference and the sound bite are much more important (like genre and texting).

Not so in the quaint old US of A!

The conventions (origin: with talk although I had hoped it was with wind) are back to back speech making getting prime time coverage and swamping a nation already deaf to meaning with more meaningless but impassioned sounds.

And we are back to Shakespeare’s play.

As soon as Henry enters, his warm-up man, Suffolk, gives us a speech. It is one sentence long, lasts for around 15 lines and drops a lot of names. Great start to the convention. Set the ground, pull out all the supporters and place yourself at the centre of attention whilst nodding in the direction of the guy currently in power.

The new Queen throws in a similar but more fawning speech … great to be here, happy with the husband and the land (Mrs Obama or what? – God Bless America!). Then it’s the turn for the heavyweight contenders to way in … old powers first, Gloucester … (read Kennedy) and Cardinal Beaufort (read Clinton – which one I’ll lead you , and the results of this November’s election to decide).

But this is not the convention of today … this is a ‘certain loser’ convention. As soon as the candidate leaves the stage the speeches of descent start – each speaker jockeying for position.

I will watch the Republican convention with interest …

Playing Tag ...

2008-08-23T14:31:00.002+03:00

Strange game for grown people ...

However, seeing as El Geek has set the challenge I will go, so far, with it ... with a difference:

1) My first 'big' role in a school play (apart from doing 'all' the singing in earlier productions) was as Oberon - and Theseus ... and my costume was on hire from the RSC - as worn originally by ...Ian Richardson, I am not sure - but I think it was the one worn in the production Judy Dench played Titania and Helen Miren one of the lovers - so my costume 'big' resonance.

2) My mother, when she was at school, had stared in a performance of 'Midsummer Nights Dream' as Titania ... and was on her way to being a professional until struck down with TB. She always claimed to have been pushed in her pram by a young Charlie Chaplin and his brother Sid - but after she died we discovered it wasn't her but her older sister, Madge, who had that honour ... my grandmother, also invalided off the stage ran a 'guest house' for Music Hall performers in Manchester.

Her 'god father' was George Robey, the Prime Minister of Mirth which sort of compensates for her claiming more of a connection than she really had to greatness ... I of course would never dream of doing such a thing!

3) Willy Russell once described my acting as being, 'like that of Orson Welles' - he described me as a 'King Actor' ... and then added the somewhat deflationary, 'not necessarily good, but certainly big.' That was at a time he was casting his play, 'Blodd Brothers' first productin in Australia ... which eventually included Russel Crowe in the cast.

4) I attended the first ever public performance at the New London Globe - quite by accident. I was on holiday in London and had heard the place was opening ... went along with a friend to see it and they were selling tickets ... so, we bought a couple for the yard and that was it ... i was one of many, my friend, the first Romanian ever to see a production at the Globe!

5) When I was training to be a teacher I did my teaching practice in 'Mirfield', which is in Yorkshire - and many would regard it as the armpit of England. It is a town with two famous inhabitants .. one, the Yorkshire Ripper ... the other Patrick Stewart. He, as you may be aware, has gone on to greater things ... although I did teach at the school he attended, it was some time after he left - and no one knew in the school just what a star they had on their hands.

6) And a final Shakespeare (not spectacular) Farrar experience - Hamlet (above) is being played by Doctor Who ... the actor who played the Doctor before, Christopher Eccleston was taught drama by the boy (grown to man) who played Lysander in the production of The Dream I appeared in at school ... he also went on to teach the most recent 'Othello' at the RSC.

Small world isn't it ...

Wiving it at the Globe

2008-08-23T10:32:00.001+03:00

It was, to say the least, an interesting day.

National Gallery in the morning – complete with red dressed, blond-haired Virgin; Globe Theatre for the ‘Merry Wives’ in the afternoon; a quick dash to ‘The Sound of Music’ in the evening. We ended squeezed in the last tube to Victoria … tired and somewhat satiated.

Nothing was quite what was expected.

I like Shakespearean comedy – you might have noticed.

What I didn’t know (because you sometimes forget that it is the ‘experts’ that have told you – and you should always be cautious and careful of expert opinion) is how good a play The Merry Wives of Windsor is.

I don't understand why there are not more school productions ... it would make an excellent school play.

After the Globe production I can’t understand why it isn’t better known or better loved. Verdi chose it for his operatic masterpiece and he obviously realized something – it is very funny.

It is also remarkably ‘feminist’ – the only sensible and solid people are the two wives … merry, and virtuous. All the men seem to be missing something – usually restraint.

In this production the women got good solid performances: As with the Romeo and Juliet production which visited Timisoara last month, it is an ensemble production – although with a full cast. There were no star performances – but that is what makes these comedies … they are not vehicles for individuals.

Falstaff was a part – and only a part, but an excellent part. He is balanced in the play with a “bugger”ing French doctor; a jealous, knuckle biting, husband; a language crunching schoolteacher and a small cheeky boy. And the production did just that – balanced.

The Globe experience is partly the stage and staging – the speed of the production (not breakneck like Romeo and Juliet) and the closeness to the audience all contribute to make the play user friendly. However, I was a little uncomfortable with the set – it had been extended into the courtyard with a walkway which seemed one step too far, I also don’t really think there was any necessity to cover the back of the Globe’s stage with a ‘mock-Elizabethan’ house front. This forced a lot of the action forward and made it difficult at times to see (I chose to try standing at the side of the stage and was acutely aware of how little the back area of the stage was used - in a previous visit I’d noticed how well it was used).

Maybe a danger for the modern productions at the globe is the designer … maybe they should just have a costume wo/man and dump the superfluous modern element of design (which was, strangely enough, the big problem of ‘The Sound of Music’ – all very impressive technicals interrupting the music)?

But that was a mere niggle: On a rain-threatening afternoon I stood for a couple of hours and laughed rather a lot … at a witty play with a social conscience delivered by a group of excellent performers giving the audience exactly what they need – an uplifting theatrical experience.

Having travelled across most of Europe for the day to see it … I was not disappointed. In fact, I'm looking at a way of doing it again.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Globe Theatre, Merry Wives of Windsor, London

Now, I didn't know that ...

2008-08-16T10:30:00.002+03:00

When the Globe burnt down in 1613, there was a ballad written (knew that): On the Pitiful Burning of the Globe Play-house (link and link)

What I didn't know was that it mentions in it:

Then with swoll'n eyes, like drunken Flemings,
Distressed stood old stuttering Hemings.
Oh sorrow, pitiful sorrow, and yet all this is true.

Now, cast your mind back to 'Shakespeare in Love' and the character who delivers the prologue at the start of Romeo and Juliet (video).

Shakespeare in Love:prologue and aftlogue @ Yahoo! Video

He stutters ... and I thought it was all a directors or writers idea - in fact it is based on a real actor (although the character in the film is not Hemings).

The real stutterer was' of course, behind the printing of the folio! He also seems to have apprenticed as a grocer, become a freeman of London and died wealthy ... acting was as profitable then as now.

(Sorry about the size of the video - not Geek enough to make it smaller!)

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Shakespeare in Love, Actors

Play Shakespeare off my list

2008-08-16T06:21:00.001+03:00

Despite my having deleted all my entries to the play Shakespeare forum, I see they have been re-instated ...

I suggest anyone posting there be aware of the way the board management is willing to ignore the wishes of the people who post.

I, for one, will not be posting anything over on that site again.

Technorati Tags: Play Shakespeare

What the BBC did with it ...

2008-08-13T08:16:00.000+03:00

I have to start out by making it clear, it was the BBC production of the three Henry VI Plays which got me hooked on the History plays - yes I knew Henry V and Henry IV Part 1, I'd endured Richard the Second and seen Larry hamming up the Third for all it was worth. But it was the BBC that made me register 'History Play' as something different. And they still keep up the good work: How well did Shakespeare know history?

The BBC though took a path I am not taking - they did the three Henry VI plays in historical chronological order, I am looking at them in a reconstructed order of their writing.

The three plays as a sequence I will leave until later on - possibly when I have finished the three Henry VIs, possibly when I look at the whole of the history plays.

Here I want to take a look at what the opening of 'The First Part of the Contention ...' was like - taking into consideration what I posted last and those rather irritating Olympics which have me glued to the TV even as I write.

I've blogged on the opening ceremony of the Olympics over on Thoughts from the Edge and won't tread the same ground - I will say though that both Shakespeare and the BBC open this exploration of a national history in the same spirit - big loud and colourful.

Which is precisely what the BBC production gave us - well, not so big (as befits a stage play) but certainly loud and colourful.

Trumpets blared, drums rolled, crowds cheered and in marched the key agents to the play which will follow - each preceded by a flag, each marching in and nodding to the king, who we don't see as the camera is peeping over his shoulder, and each taking up his appointed place.

The colours are all there - mainly in the costume but also in the painted wood of the 'bear-pit' the production is placed in, and in all the fluttering flags and shiny clothes.

Then, with all the 'athletes' in place, in comes the 'torch' on the hand of an upstart - rose-petal like discs of coloured paper fluttering around Margaret and Suffolk just as after a wedding - but this is a bride who has not yet married although a 'troth' has been plighted.

This has the essence of an Olympic ceremony and is as much an attempt to claim national identity and significance as any such splendours played out nowadays.

You get a 'feel good factor' - there is pride and there is hope.

Suffolk, speaking as only the politician in front of a national audience can, declares, "... in sight of England and her lordly peers ..." to have fulfilled all that was requested of him.

And you just know, in the original production - that sight of England was accompanied by a gesture to the assembled theatre - already dragged in emotionally by the music and flag waving.

You didn't quite get that from the TV. Although the voice made clear its importance - we are watching you - the world is watching you; Cue camera and roll.

Henry, weak of voice, pale of colour (although with lively eyes) responds.

He thanks Suffolk, then kisses his bride - and, if you are expecting warmth and love, excitement and passion, forget it. In a triumphal theatrical moment, Henry kisses the hand of Margaret. She had moved to kiss cheeks or lips and is visibly surprised.

This is back to the question of the marriage relationship - Henry, as a devout man, as a Catholic King esteems the Platonic above the lustful. Whatever, union is about to be sanctified, it is not going to be carnal. Friendship before equality? And, after the three kisses of 'The Taming of the Shrew' what clearer indication could you have of all not being well?

There is a disappointment - it is as if you were to discover the fireworks opening the Beijing Olympics were a computer trick, or the cute girl singing the Chinese national anthem was miming to someone else's voice.
The difference, of course, being we do not discover 'til after the event, the slight of hand in China - here the BBC give us, in the middle of the ceremony, disappointment and unease.

And they haven't finished with us yet ...

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Henry VI, BBC Shakespeare, Olympics

And the trumpet shall sound

2008-08-06T17:23:00.001+03:00

The first thing to strike you as the play opens is the noise – as my new ‘Complete Works’ (2^nd edition) informs me,

trumpets flourish,

then hautboys

which is a pretty impressive, if loud, way to open.

You do notice it – there is a majesty, and a ceremony about it. A good trumpet ‘flourish’ – none of your wishy-washy blowing – this is a growing vigorously, a grand gesture, a flaunt, a boom! And then the hautboys follow – which is the signal for the stage to be processed (as in procession) on to … for a hautboy is to be processed to.

I like a good hautboy flourish almost as much as I like a good trumpet flourish.

Neither of Shakespeare’s previous plays even thought of opening like this – they both sort of … started: Which fitted their ‘domestic’ themes. Here we are in a different world – and, for the original Theatre audience, a more familiar world.

This is to be a play about England - this is to be a play about Dukes and Kings, about Duchesses and Queens, their lovers and rebellion – above all, rebellion: Overt, physical fighting and secret caterpillar creepings and crawlings; rebellion in the state, in the town, in the countryside and in the family.

And what colours and materials soon fill the stage! The royal velvety reds and rich shimmering blue silks, the sparkling cloth of golds, the lions and unicorns rampant, the full panoply of state laid out for both a royal wedding and a coronation.

For the young Henry VI, King of England is to meet for the first time his espoused bride and straight away lead her into Westminster Abbey for their wedding and her installation as Queen.

Which is when you notice that there is a link to both the previous plays – this is yet another play about marriage. Here the marriage is the actual union of man and woman, complete with all the associated ‘Shrew’ commands of mutuality and respect; but it is also the greater marriage of subject to state, for Henry is England; further, as God’s representative on Earth, wedding Henry is a holy marriage.

Now that is cause for the trumpets to flourish – and well might the hautboys ‘en-music’ the march to the alter.

How will Henry and Margaret measure up to the standards set by Petruccio and Katherine?

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, The First Part of the Contention, History Plays

Must reads

2008-08-05T08:52:00.001+03:00

... From the Shakespeare Post:

Gregory Doran Explains How He Picked David Tennant for Hamlet

and

Mary Rose Sank Because Crew Didn’t Speak English

The first because it is interesting, the second because it shows the international nature of the English navy and suggests all sorts of reasons why Shakespeare was so second-hand-knowledgeable about foreign climes (yes, I know Henry was before Shakey's time).

Natural pleasures and feathered friends

2008-08-05T08:34:00.001+03:00

To be honest, I'm not convinced too many of my readers will be able to make use of a communication I received this morning:

I write to ask whether you would be willing to include a link to (or even write a blog entry about) the WINGS tour “Birds and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival,” conducted each June by Rich Hoyer and Bryan Bland. This imaginative combination of birding and culture follows in the tradition of our popular “Birds and Music” and “Birds and Art” tours of Europe. After a delightful morning of birding that includes famously delicious picnic breakfasts and lunches in stunningly gorgeous surroundings, we return in time for a daily performance in the the Iaters just a block from our hotel.

But to me it looks a wonderful combination!

I suspect that the two people leading the tour have found a cheap way to indulge themselves ... If only I had the energy (and knowledge) to do the same.

As I've blogged before - many times - there is a very strong sympathy between Shakespeare and 'Natural intelligence' - in fact, as I was listening to 'The First Part of the Contention' I was again struck by the number of references to birds and animals.

Unless my dream last night has confused me (and it might have, it was bird filled) this chap, [to be seen on the tour]:

...is the American equivalent of one of the stars of Shakespeare's first History Play!

If anyone reading this blog does get to go on the tour - enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, WINGS, Oregan Shakespeare, Birdwatching

Shakespeare's Matrimony

2008-08-03T08:56:00.007+03:00

I wasn't going to post this here as it's a bit too 'school essay' - it was written for a different site. But, having just gone through a couple of performances of The First Part of the Contention (Henry VI, Part 2) I thought I better put down some markers -

Marriage has become such a common theme in Literature, and the works of Shakespeare so well known, that it is hard for us to realise that back in Elizabethan England ideas about marriage were very much up in the air.

Until the Reformation, the ideals of virginity, chastity and widowhood; of platonic relationships; of friendship - all rated higher than marriage.

With the coming of Protestantism, ideals changed.

Shakespeare was at the forefront of portraying these changes and many of his plays could be said to act as promotional tools for the act of marriage.

If Stanley Wells and his friends are right, Shakespeare's first two plays are both comedies - The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Taming of the Shrew.

It is interesting to see how Shakespeare tackles the themes of the marriage debate in these plays - and it reveals several interesting aspects of the plays, some of which are much misunderstood.

The Two Gentlemen is a play about friendship - Valentine and Proteus start the play off with a dialogue making it very clear these two are ideal, youthful friends. What happens during the play undermines this ideal - deliberately so.

The thing that weakens their love for each other is love for a female: Shakespeare seems to be asking us if this is inevitable - will inter-gender love overpower, necessarily, intra-gender love?

But nothing is as simple as that in Shakespeare - Valentine has a one-to-one relationship with Silvia; Proteus already had an attachment to Julia, and then switches to the (un-reciprocated) love of Silvia. This, despite the exchange of rings and other tokens.

One is reminded of the idea of the fickleness of love at this point - and in several plays Shakespeare has young men switching their attentions (Demetrias, don't forget; and Romeo). Love is a necessary condition for a relationship, but is not sufficient.

Another doubt is raised by the way in which Valentine 'loves' Silvia - I am not alone in thinking there is almost a 'Platonic' basis to it - he is in love with an ideal, not with a real human.

The 'clown' Lance with his letter has progressed a little further than either of the two 'Gentlemen': His contract itemising the qualities of a potential wife widens the conditions; thought ought to be given to issues such as money and temperament, to weaknesses as well as strengths - it is very much a dead end in this play, the youth of the main protagonists seems to exclude them from making a sensible decision.

But Shakespeare hasn't quite finished with his exploration of the theme of friendship - there is one horrendous moment, towards the end of the play, where, after Proteus has attempted to force himself on Silvia, been stopped, and repented his sins, Valentine 'gives' Silvia to him.

Julia faints at this point - and well she might.

We need to realise that, far from condoning this action, the audience is meant to be as outraged as Silvia must be, as shocked as Julia. Portraying such a gross act Shakespeare is again questioning the ideal of friendship.

The Two Gentlemen quickly resolves itself into marriage - but we are left with an empty feeling. There is something not quite right in the pairings and the anything-but-gentlemen seem to get off lightly.

Perhaps Shakespeare felt so too, because his next play, The Taming of the Shrew, shows the successful pairing of a well matched couple - and some less than satisfactory fringe partnerships.

I've already written about Katherine and Petruccio (in Katerina's Just Desserts) and don't want to go over the same ground, but I do think it is important to point out their relationship is about a mutual sharing and suitability. What isn't talked about much is love.

There is a 'love' relationship in the play though, Lucentio and Bianca. At the time of their marriage, their are still issues to resolve - Bianca's refusal to come at the request of her husband is meant to signify the incompleteness of the match-making.

So too is the widow's refusal - where the marriage is based on financial, rather than emotional, compatibility.

What Katherine and Petruccio have done before this point, is worked through all the conditions needed to secure a successful and fecund marriage.

But there are other marriages in the Shrew - Sly, who appears in the Induction, is "married" twice, once to the page boy, and once to a real wife.

We ignore the Induction at our peril.

Sly is a drunk who is so full-up he falls asleep in the street. He is married to a 'shrew' (if we accept 'A Shrew' as indicating further additions to the Folio text) and who can doubt they deserve each other? This is a funny version of the need for a mutual relationship in marriage. Worth noting about Sly's real marriage is the apparent 'respect' he has for his wife - she is not 'madam' but a name - he wants to keep her as Alice or whatever .... surely an indication of social difference and criticism of the aristocratic?

Sly's other marriage is a reminder to the audience that what you are watching is not real, there is a pretence going on here - you are being presented with a dramatic fiction. All of the marriages Shakespeare represents on stage need to be viewed in this light - none are real, all are explorations of limited aspects of the state of matrimony.

Just how all this fits with Shakespeare's first History play I'll let you know in the next post.

To begin, at the beginning ...

2008-08-01T15:37:00.001+03:00

We don't have any of the playbills which were posted to announce the performance of a Shakespeare play - although it has been suggested that the frontispieces of the early editions of the plays very much resembled them. With that in mind, I move on from the two early comedies to the first of the Histories ...

The announcement is up ... a new play by - well, it doesn't say. So, Mr Shksperd ain't yet well known enough - but the material is fairly extensively explained.

We start off with the announcement it is the first part - so this is like that Marlowe play - the one with Tamburlaine in it ... two parts.

And its about the fighting between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians ...

In fact - a lot of the plot is told - Humphry dies, Suffolk gets banished and dies, a Cardinal dies, tragically, and there's a rebellion - Jack Cade's.

Lot's of fighting and death then ... sounds a bit of an action movie to me ... just the sort of thing to fill in a cold winter's afternoon ...

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 2, The First Part of the Contention

Katerina's Just Desserts ....

2008-08-01T10:53:00.002+03:00

(Some notes on Gender Relations in Taming of the Shrew)

There is a tendency to portray Katherine as some sort of abused everywoman and Petruccio as a typical misogynist male. Indeed, this is the line taken in many classrooms and leads to a mistaken understanding both of the play and of Elizabethan society. Support for the stance can be found in the text – as long as you are selective in your reading - and is frequently supplemented by ‘common knowledge’ about the relationships between men and women in times past.

I would like to suggest that, far from being socially conservative in his views of male-female roles and promoting the status quo, Shakespeare is in fact questioning a centuries old acceptance of the inferior status of marriage (as opposed to virginity, celibacy and widowhood) and suggesting, in the words of Germaine Greer, the ‘complimentary couple’ as ‘the linchpin of the social structure’ (Greer, Shakespeare, A Short Introduction: pg 138).

Let me start with the abusive Katherine.

Few commentators dwell too long over the physical and emotional batterings Katherine doles out to all around her. She is clearly the most violent person in the play striking anyone she feels like: Three times she assaults men – Hortensio’s head is ‘broke’, Petruccio is slapped, and she beats Grumio: But her biggest abuse is reserved for her sister who she ties up, drags onto the stage and subjects to far worse treatment than anything she herself will suffer at the hands of Petruccio. It is worth noting that at no point (according to the script) does Petruccio strike Katherine.

If you add to this the ‘you don’t love me’; ‘you treat my sister better than me’; ‘you’re not a real man’ and other such jibes and comments which flow continuously from her mouth, she is not an attractive human being (although is great fun to watch on stage).

Presenting Katherine as ‘downtrodden victim’ is absurd. She is clearly out of control and her behaviour is causing misery to all around her. More importantly, in Elizabethan terms, she is also in danger of her soul – she is damaging not only her earthly marriage prospects, but her immortal ones too.

By the end of the play, Katherine has become a dignified, self-controlled rock; half of the foundation of what will become a strong family unit. Equally important is the fact she is now able to play a role in society (which includes lordship over the male servants) and is firmly on the path to a happy afterlife.

What brings on the metamorphosis is her pairing with a complementary force – Petruccio. The key word here is complementary – Petruccio balances Katherine, he is not the same and he is not ‘better’.

When he talks, early in the play, of ‘two raging fires’ burning themselves out, he admits his similarity to Katherine, with a difference – he is ‘pre-emptory’, she , ‘proud minded’. Together they will be in balance.

This is the point in the play at which the financial deal is done – again much misunderstood.

Both sides bring money – Petruccio, who has just inherited a considerable fortune, is sensibly seeking an equal amount: This will benefit both himself and his wife – and lay in a strong inheritance for any children. Marriage is all about family, it is an economic and social union – as much today as in Elizabethan days.

What people miss in this exchange is Petruccio’s leaving of everything to his ‘widow’ in the event of his early death: Katherine gets everything – she becomes an exceptionally wealthy woman. There is no need to bargain over this point – it is freely given. It shows Petruccio has complete faith in his wife-to-be’s sense and economic astuteness (hence the need for a female from an equal house). It also disproves the ‘goods and chattels’ view of the relationship regularly suggested – since when have goods and chattels inherited themselves?

Which brings me on to another frequently expressed view – Petruccio is only interested in the money. He certainly says such a thing when he is talking to Hortensio – but he uses an interesting expression to do so, he talks of finding a woman rich enough to be his wife, then he goes on to use the word wealth – “to wive it wealthily”.

The word wealth is suggestive of more than money – could it be that Petruccio is being deliberately ironic in his choice of word? Later in the play, when Katherine has been deprived of the expensive fashionable gown and hat, Petruccio says, “for ‘tis the mind that makes the body rich” and points out the jay and adder have earthly looking riches but inwardly are not better than other creatures.

Petruccio has seen Katherine’s potential – as an equal, not as an inferior. He has chosen her as a balance … and negotiated with her father for her hand.

And her father has given as much as he can of her – but he demands, before agreeing, that Katherine agree. He demands Petruccio win Katherine’s ‘love’.

We do not see the intervening days between the first encounter of Katherine and Petruccio and their wedding day – but there is ample opportunity for Katherine to stop the marriage – she doesn’t. She waits for Petruccio on the steps of the church – she would be asked in church if she accepts Petruccio, and she must have said, before God, she does.

All of this suggests, whatever public face she puts on it, Katherine has accepted Petruccio – it is a mutual not an enforced marriage.

Katherine’s last speech, rather than being an act of submission to oppression, is a recognition that the former firebrand Katherine was counter productive – there is always a stronger than you. It is a contract laying out the conditions needed for peace and prosperity, for right balance and mutual benefit.

But it is only half a contract – Petruccio is as bound by unspoken bonds which lay duties and commitments on him. He binds himself to her with a kiss – and physically they become one – not lord and servant, but a unity.

Shakespeare, in The Taming of the Shrew, is laying out, possibly for the first time on the English stage, a view of society where the mutual support of man and wife is the foundation of peace and contentment for society as a whole. It expresses not a view that women are subservient to men – but that only by mutual support can fulfilment be attained.

The battle of the sexes, shown at the start of the ‘Shrew’ play-within-a-play, is destructive and holds back both the individual and the community. Only by joining with the balancing power of a marriage partner of the right fit can life find a fuller, and more soul-fulfilling path.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew Gender Relations

Funny Shakespeare ?

2008-07-31T10:27:00.002+03:00

Geek is asking hard questions again – basically, “What is funny about the Shakespeare Comedies?”

Well, having just ‘done’ his first two plays – both of which (if Wells is right) were comedies, I suppose I ought to have something to say about it.

The first thing I notice when thinking about both Two Gentlemen and The Shrew is that they are marriage linked – and so too are all of the ‘comedies’ (hesitant, just a little, about that statement).

The comedies seem to be about union, about coming together and communal success – they ‘celebrate’ successful unions which are expected to be fruitful and, if not uneventful, at least lasting.

This pairing is more than an individual event – it is public and accepted as important for the common-weal – for the good of the community.

This in itself is not belly laugh material – but it is celebratory – it is inductive of happiness.

[This fits in with what is thought to have been the origin of the word comedy – which translates to something like song of the village – as opposed to tragedy which is goat song (don’t ask).]

The happy ending is rarely presented in Shakespeare as an ending though – After Two Gentlemen we feel a rough ride coming up … but don’t doubt an eventual satisfaction; The Shrew ends with a more conclusive union for the primary protagonists – but only a fool would imagine that these two madcaps have burnt out – that is going to be a hot marriage (and goodness knows what fun the children will bring!).

You do sometimes read that the comedy title given by the Elizabethans really just meant happy ending – which is basically a way of saying it isn’t a tragedy or a history.

There might be a reason for this – earlier than Shakespeare and into his career as a writer, the professional theatre was new, and only just defining itself. The idea of genre itself was not a comfortable thing for the actors – a play was something to be adapted to fit the audience – if it was one type of scholastic audience, pump up the poetic; lower-life pub crowds would need less poetry and more prat-fall.

With Two Gentlemen we have more of the former, The Shrew, more of the later … but both plays are sometimes regarded as ‘incomplete’ – the first has been called a touring script; the second has the irritating A Shrew rumbling away in the background – could that be the pub version?

Interesting at this point is the Hamlet instruction to actors – there are two points relevant here:

1. Hamlet and the actors both expect to be able to mess around with the story – to adapt it to suit a particular audience and to fit in contemporary material and thus make the play more relevant;

2. Hamlet specifies a type of acting – he wants this ‘aristocratic’ type of acting for this play with this audience – and he specifies, cut the comedy.

Too often this speech is assumed to be Shakespeare’s thoughts on how to act – it isn’t – it, like everything else in the plays, is from the mouth of a character and indicative of that character: But it is very revealing about the adaptability of all types of plays and also the way comedy and tragedy were more techniques than genres.

(Thanks also to The Bard Blog for reminding me to have a rant about the Hamlet instructions.)

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Shakespeare Comedies, Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Hamlet

One Step back - and then Two Steps forward:

2008-07-29T13:05:00.001+03:00

The Arkangel on Earth!

I’m fairly new and naïve in the world of mp3 and the like – I think I’ve said it before, I actually pay for my downloads: Rewards however, are earthly – The Arkangel Complete Works of Shakespeare is buyable for download, one play at a time, and I’ve been able to indulge.

On Sunday I ‘Shrewed’’ – and a fine performance it was too.

We use the word audience too lightly. Shakespeare’s, and his contemporaries’, plays were appreciated primarily through the ear. With a different play every day there was no time or need for elaborate staging and people went to hear a play anyway.

I suppose performances were more like staged readings than anything else; the sort of thing that gets done nowadays on the radio in front of a live audience.

One of the ‘insights’ gained from the touring Globe’s fast Romeo and Juliet (which visited Timisoara earlier this month) was the difference in what you pick up through the ear when things are taken at speed – and I’ll add to that now, what you pick up through the ear when it is unsupported by the visual.

Recently I’ve read a couple of editions of The Taming of the Shrew (The Oxford School edition and The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Second Edition, edition) and I’ve seen two performances on DVD – the BBC Shakespeare and the Zeffirelli; additionally I watched the Shakespeare, The Animated Tales version.

I gained something from all of these experiences (not the least being how essential it is to see the comedies – how the characters don’t read well, how the humour is essentially human and social).

Listening to the Arkangel ‘straight’ audio version gave an extra dimension (which is odd if you think about it – take away the images and gain something). I’ll have to use the word ‘connectivity’ – a nasty word; a technician’s stringy, sticky-old-cobweb of a word; a soulless word.

Nevertheless, use it I must, for it is the only one I can think of that describes the nexus created by the physical experience of certain sound repartitions.
Listening gave you connectivity – an awareness of links across the scenes and across the plays. I must have heard and seen and read, but never noticed the word ‘pink’ in ‘The Shrew’ several times – it took the audio version to make it register – and connect it to Romeo and Juliet – and shoes: It brought with it a degree of contempt for fashion and a memory of big loud Mercutio: Which is the wrong way round – it is Petruccio who is in Mercutio.

Sly, talking of dreams, echoed all the way to Bottom’s dream – for surely Sly is a proto-Bottom. And Petruccio also sent an echo to The Dream bouncing off the walls – his ‘poorest service is repaid with thanks’ is surely Theseus on taking kindly what is kindly meant. Biondello (why does that sound like bordello?) went back to Speed – now sidelined as we are dealing with a mature marriage as opposed to playful courtship.

Part of the reason is, unsurprisingly, the Arkangel version used the full text – both the BBC and the Film cut. The criminality of wrongful cutting shone out.
But it is something else too – an Elizabethan audience was more aural – when they went to church and listened to the sermon or the Homily for the day sound patterns were set down – Shakespeare and his kin exploit these patterns. I’ve argued before about the word wealth and the strange use of it made by Petruccio – what I’d not noticed ‘til I listened was his,

‘tis the mind that makes the body rich

– and

honour peereth in the meanest habit.

These are keys that open the vaults to a deeper concept of the play and tie it to a much wider and wealthier world of human bond-ship and bondage. It is the wealth of the homilies and Protestantism of his time. Looking at these words on the page doesn’t make them penetrate the way hearing them spoken does – even now, as I look back at this paragraph.

Another aural shift came with Katherina – she is as violent as Petruccio (if not more so) – and by taking away the stage business, you become aware of this. What is tied up in laughter and slapstick unravels to reveal not an innocent victim of male aggression, but a female aggressor equal to any man. She is remarkably nasty – and ‘deserves all she gets’ at the hands of Petruccio. Her treatment of her sister is far worse than anything Petruccio does to her. And she assaults at least two men in the play.

I’ve downloaded the next play – The First Part of the Contention (2 Henry VI) and will be listening to it soon. I’ll watch the BBC version first, and possibly read it.

But before that I’ll be going back a step – to The Two Gentlemen of Verona. I’m going to listen to that tonight – but I don’t intend blogging on it – it’s mine, and I’m gong to just enjoy the performance.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, Arkangel Shakespeare

Oxford School Shakespeare (3)

2008-07-28T16:20:00.001+03:00

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

The Text

With most of Shakespeare’s plays the basic text is not a problem – you can fiddle around with words and punctuation but in reality it makes very little difference, especially in performance.

With ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, there are difficulties – serious difficulties that affect the performance of the piece: The choices made can also seriously alter the meaning.

Key choice is about the ‘Induction’ and Sly additions: In the Folio, produced after Shakespeare’s death, Sly disappears never to return – in A Shrew (which is thought to be an ‘illegal’ copy done around the time of The Shrew’s first production) there are more Sly scenes – providing a constant reminder that this is a play you are watching, and forcing serious questioning of the reality of what you are watching.

The Oxford School Shakespeare edition has chosen to use (perversely, if you know the rivalry between the two universities) the New Cambridge Shakespeare: A safe choice.

The text basically follows the folio – with the extra Sly scenes printed in Appendix A. For the school classroom this is a sensible decision – at this stage in a student’s study of Shakespeare it is more important for him/her to get the accepted canonical view – whilst suggesting the idea of contention and endless academic bickering – than to engage fully in the ‘debate’ her/him-self.

Each page is split into two columns – on the right the play text split into the conventional Act and Scenes and with the lines numbered every 5 lines. Character names are given in full and bold at the head of the dialogue making it very easy to follow who is speaking. Stage directions are in italic. Half lines are indented when appropriate.

The overall effect is to produce a very easy-to-read text – an essential for classroom use. It is quick and simple to find specified points in the play and the layout and print size makes it a good text for reading out loud or acting with.

The left hand column is jam-packed full of ‘glosses’, pictures and helpful snippets. Printed slightly smaller, these are not obtrusive and don’t get in the way of the main text.

Each scene starts with a brief, but helpful summary of what is to follow – and sometimes an indication of what to look for: The second scene of the Induction, for example, we are informed, ‘Two lifestyles are contrasted …’.

Most of the notes are printed next to the lines they refer to – all are numbered. Some of the notes are accompanied by generally helpful line drawings. In Act 2, Scene 1, when Petruchio and Katherina are engaged in their quick fire ‘word-play’ fight, three sketches help explain the text – one of a coat of arms, one of a fools ‘coxcomb’ hat and a third of two cocks fighting (to go with line 224, ‘craven’ – the defeated cock in a cock fight). As this is potentially the first time students could have encountered not only the words but the implied images, these pictures are very useful. The third sketch of the birds fighting also acts as an indicator of what is happening on stage – Katherina and Petruchio are ‘cock fighting’.

The notes are not purely explanatory – they have the delightful habit of being opinionated – at line 205 of the same scene, we are informed that Petruchio makes a feeble pun; and at 204 Katherina is insisting she is honest. The sex is not ignored either (which is a good thing) – in line 200, when Katherina uses the word ‘jade’ we are informed it implies Petruchio lacks sexual stamina !

The notes demonstrate clearly an awareness of the needs of a modern reader in several places. My favourite is in Act 3 scene 2, when Biondello is delivering his all too easy to ignore speech about what Petruchio looks like on the way to his wedding and is going through a list of diseases of horses – we are asked to remember they would be as familiar to the Elizabethan audience as a list of mechanical failings of an old car would be to the ‘modern’ – and the tediousness of many a pub visit leaps into view!

Scattered throughout the text are additional, larger drawings and photographs of the play in stage performance. Not only do these illustrate particular points in the play they also help keep the theatrical context – another essential requirement not only for this play but for all Shakespeare in general, particularly when being given to teenage readers.

There is nothing so instinctively conservative as a teenager.

Asked to ‘image’ a part of the text they will go straight for ‘old’ costumes of the perceived time Shakespeare set the play and with naturalistic backgrounds.

Using the RSC 1995 production photographs, with ‘Italian’ scooters, commedia beards, and clearly mixed-date costumes set in a strongly theatrical space, the students can be introduced to a freer perception and induced to break open their fertile reserves of imagination.

I think it is the adaptability of the material presented in this edition which is its biggest selling point – I could easily use this in the classroom – and it would make my work a lot easier. There is plenty for me to work on, and I could be very flexible with my approach – the notes give all the explanations needed but can be ignored if not needed or wanted – there are images to support and stretch, there’s an introduction to ignore or use and stimulate.

Students could pick this up on their own and have a good chance of not only following the events but starting to interrogate and respond.

Stuck on the end, in addition to the Appendix A extra Sly scenes, there is an Appendix B with an extract from ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’ – explaining in a delightfully modern way just what ‘manning a hawk’ means (and with a teenage protagonist to boot); there is a very boring ‘what to do with the play’ if you really want to answer examination questions section; and a final extra background section – which is useful. To end this strange eventful comedy, is my second major niggle – a summary of Shakespeare’s life and work I don’t subscribe to – I’d go through it and then ‘rubbish it’ in class, so it isn’t going to stop me from using the book in the classroom.

The final point I think I need to make is that, although I have judged the text by its intentions – I hope I’ve also shown this is good general text too. If you are not an English School Child, don’t be put off by the ‘School Shakespeare’ title – if you want a clear, easy to read and follow edition – this should certainly be considered.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, Oxford School Shakespeare

Oxford School Shakespeare (2)

2008-07-26T10:35:00.001+03:00

Introduction to:

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

The Introduction starts with a couple of paragraphs, ‘About the Play’.

The first point made, and it is one well worth making, is that this is one of Shakespeare’s most successful and popular plays – in performance. What is dull and complicated on the page becomes lively and clear on the stage.

The second point tries to nail that complicated plot down – it describes the play as … ‘an-action-within-a-plot-within-a-deception’. This phrase is to form the backbone of what follows and, although I have doubts about some of the consequences of the phrase, it is quite a clever way of describing the play and I think it would work well with the teenage readership. I especially like the hyphens.
By restricting this section to two points Ms Gill (the editor) gives the readership every chance of forming a strong foundation of understanding, not only of this play, but of any other Shakespeare texts they will encounter: This is a play, it should be judged in the theatre and its reputation is based on theatre performance. In addition, this play has a theatrical dynamic – a play within a play which constitutes a part of the meaning and is not just a device … the words deception, plot and action resonate.
A final point I’d make here is the publishers have given a whole page to the text – which is remarkably sensitive to the needs of the students. You don’t ‘rush on’, you do stop and think – and there is time to absorb. There are no distractions so the teacher can focus and give full attention to these fundamental points safe in the knowledge that many of the class will be with him/her.

Next we are given the ‘Leading Characters in the Play’. These are split according to the three-part-phrase introduced on the previous page.

Again, the layout is significant – it reinforces the earlier idea of three levels, but also groups characters in a way which helps point to their interactions.
Part 1 and Part 3 both have two ‘principle’ characters – and you end up asking the question, are they in some way linked – why two? The first is a deception, the last an action – is there action in the first and deception in the last?
Part 2 and Part 3 have some characters in common – why? This list of characters is not a straight ‘shopping list’ – it is designed to introduce the main roles, the play components and the ‘chemistry’ between them. So Katherina is listed twice – first, in ‘The Plot’, with an emphasis on her temper; then, in ‘The Action’, with the addition of intelligence and independence. Again, you ask the question – why the addition, is it character development or something else – do we have a reflection of the insight Petruccio has in this addition?

As a teacher I could make a lot of use of this page – it allows me not only to point to a couple of upcoming themes but also gives me the opportunity to explore in embryo wider issues and ideas with the students – raising questions which can only be answered by reading the text and watching the play.

We move on to a ‘Synopsis’- this is organised by scene and is relatively straight forward.

But here we come to my first niggle – someone (if I am lucky) is going to ask me what the word synopsis means, and I am going to say, “It’s a fancy way to say ‘the plot’ – the events of the play, what happens, the story.”

“Do you mean it’s the story of the second part – ‘The Plot’?”

“No, Roma Gill, the editor is using the word ‘plot’ there to mean a plan, - they are plotting like criminals or terrorists to do something; here the word means the storyline.”

You, I am sure, get my point – by calling the second part, The Plot, confusion is going to be created … I’d, at this point, go back and get the kids to cross out the word ‘plot’ in the previous pages and replace it with some agreed term, like plan or trick …

The rest of the Synopsis is about as easy to read as any – although I think the vocabulary is a little rich in places and some of the sentences could have been simplified. However, I am not likely to use it in class – not until reading through the play text where each scene has a mini synopsis in the notes at the side anyway.

After the Synopsis comes, The Taming of the Shrew: commentary.

Firmly 1-2-3.d with the foundation phrase, each part is given a good scrubbing making it clean and shiny and easy to follow. We are given helpful (and essential) information – and pointed to obvious things which are far from obvious to the Shakespeare initiate.

For example, Part 1 is clearly stated to be in Shakespeare’s Warwickshire, and the comment is made that there could be reference to real people in the text (Marian Hacket): Great points for question raising in the classroom – why make this part so realistic?
Basic information about social stratification, its reflection in the language use of the play, theatre practise (such as touring productions and boy acting) and even an indication of a sexual innuendo all make great hooks for the student to attach their own thoughts and ideas to and compare what they see with what they read.

Part 2 points to the origins of the plot (and the ~~Plot~~ plan/trick) - the sort of thing that takes Shakespeare away from the ivory-tower isolation of the Bardolators; gives more indication of the need to ‘listen’ to how people are speaking, not just what they are saying; emphasises these are now actors acting being actors; and indicates the interpretation of Baptista’s given in Elizabethan England would possibly be significantly different from ‘modern’ western interpretations.

Twice as much space is given to Part 3 (as expected) and it combines much of the same sort of information as the previous two – social, historical and theatrical context – but going deeper. It also gives a clear line on the development of the wooing – highlighting the 3 kisses and the way they signal different things.

I disagree with the ‘weak ending’ Ms Gill claims, but then, the text I’d use is more complete than the one she has opted for.

Overall, this commentary does its job, and does it well – the attentive student will get a lot from it and will have started to develop a way of looking at the texts of the plays which recognises the theatrical nature of the material and the need to give thought to questions raised rather than look for answers.

The final two parts of the introduction are on Shakespeare’s Verse and Source, Date and Text.

Both can be considered necessary, but dull. I’ve yet to find the writing on Shakespeare’s verse that gives anywhere near the understanding listening to the lines said will – this is no different. What is given is a great chunk of text which is readable ‘out loud’ and will then quickly give all you do need to understand about blank verse.

Source date and Text does make a neat summary – and raises, ever so slightly, the issue of The Shrew vs A Shrew.

Both these sections I am likely to refer back to later on, during an exploration of the text itself … which is what I now need to move on to …

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Oxford School Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew

Oxford School Shakespeare

2008-07-24T12:58:00.001+03:00

THE TAMING

OF THE SHREW

(1)

Let’s nail the first point well and truly down – this is an edition of the play that is intended to be used in the classroom situation in an educational institution in the UK: It would be totally unfair to treat it as anything else.

That is not to say it is not usable (or indeed preferable) in other situations, but with the title ‘School Shakespeare’, the colours are firmly attached to the flagpole. Maybe I should clarify the use of the word ‘school’ for our transatlantic language speakers – a school is a place children go to learn – it is not a higher education institution – school children attend schools.

When you pick it up – and that is the first experience many people will have of the full text of any Shakespeare (this is, after all, mistakenly considered one of the easier and safer plays to do with young people) … as I was saying … when you pick it up, it feels good: Not too heavy; clear flexible binding (which state school in England could afford the hardback?); good colourful picture with suitably dramatic facial expressions; clean white paper – which falls open to give a tantalizing glimpse of lots of space and not too intimidating amounts of print. You also notice the pictures – black and white.

The blurb on the back is unhelpful in the classroom – just advertising promoting the series – although it does claim to deliver the full text and student notes. A missed educational opportunity based on a commercial decision?

On the title page we get two Oxfords, one Oxon, a Cantab., and an OBE – an M.A. and a B.Litt.: We also get the name of the woman many of these letters attach to: – oh, and a Title.

None of this will interest the schoolchildren – none of it really interests the teachers – the editors are giving as much ‘clout’ as they dare to support a supposed need for academic excellence attached to The National Poet’s works.

Most students at this point will be flicking through the book looking at the pictures and picking out bits of text and the notes.

Oxford have done a good job at this point – there are quite a few illustrations – some photographs taken from RSC productions – principally 1995; others line drawings illustrating and supporting particular points in the text or the notes.

You notice pictures of cards, cannons and puppets; men in silly trousers on a scooter, a woman in an off the shoulder dress, and one in a wedding dress – two women fighting and several young men … all will stimulate the interest in the majority of classrooms … and raise the first hooks for understanding the play. They also help reduce the ‘intimidation’ factor – this is not going to be as difficult as people say.

Most teachers will have introduced the play their own way – and would initially ignore the Introduction – “Turn to the characters on page xix,” is a very likely start to the lesson. However, I will go through the book in book order – just to make things easier ...

(To be continued)

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, Oxford School Shakespeare

The Animated Shrew

2008-07-22T14:00:00.003+03:00

I like ‘Shakespeare: The Animated Tales’ as a concept and, of the ones I’ve seen so far, (most of the time) in execution: The texts, superbly sliced by Leon Garfield, abridgements rather than rewrites; the animations various in style, all of the highest quality, filmed in the studios of Russia; the voices of actors from the ‘British tradition’ many of whom have performed Shakespeare on stage with organizations like the RSC and The National Theatre.

The idea is to provide short introductions to the plays which are accessible to a young audience but which don’t make sacrifices to the gods of patronization or oversimplification and which not only inform but entertain.

The Taming of the Shrew is not an exception – it is an intelligent romp through the basic story with some witty stop-gap animations and a perception of the original play worth thinking about.

Unlike many ‘full text’ productions, which cut the framing device, the film starts with the drunken Sly bouncing out of the ale house, and being picked up by the ‘lord’ and his retinue: Sly literally replaces the wild boar on the huntsmen’s pole. Although the words are cut, this makes clearer than the spoken words the line:

‘O monstrous beast, how like a swine he lies’

and illustrates nicely the subtlety this animated version attains – it is an image which fixes the metaphor, fixes it fast, and amuses.

The Sly scenes are kept, I think, to highlight the ‘play-within’ device – throughout the film there are curtains and stages, applause and a character crossing through the invisible wall. Leon Garfield (with the advice of Stanley Wells – who is credited?) has been true to his source and seems to be maintaining the necessity of remembering this is not real – this is only a tale – which, when added to the alienating effect of the characters being animated, really drives home the question of how ‘real’ the plot is meant to be taken.

Does the ‘Taming’ present a piece of advice (which Sly mistakenly takes it for at the end and ends up bouncing again) or is it an exploration of extremes?

Is this a cathartic experience – like Tom and Jerry?

These are not questions for the children who form the principle intended audience of the tale – but they do illustrate the way that the animations have been ‘intelligently’ constructed – they are planting seeds for later revisitings, providing strong images to connect to when you see the play live on stage.

And, because the audience is meant to be young, there is a strong narrative line given to the story which is, after all, a ‘Tale’. This has meant a degree of reorganisation – the Bianca story is separated out and tagged on to the end; after the initial Sly story, we move straight to Kate and Petruccio – and stay focused on the interchange between them.

This works remarkably well. I can imagine young people being able to follow the twists and turns of Shakespeare’s plotting much more easily after seeing this – more so than after reading the text: Inventive teaching would have to work pretty hard to do as good a job.

Katherine and Petruccio also illustrate nicely the clarity animated figures can bring to a production – both characters here are handsome – and young; both are lively and spirited – there is one point where the dialogue is supported by a ‘dance’ competition; both ‘express’ through pose - which would strike one as odd in the theatre. Facial expression is there – and unambiguous.

To go with the excellent animation the voices are clear, the dialogue paired down to essentials, and meaning consequently not difficult to follow. As indicated above, there are directorial insertions which support the words when necessary, sometimes obviously, sometimes less so: I could not tell you why, but I was very aware the morning after watching that there were three kisses.

The Director (Aida Ziablikova) and Designer (Olga Titova) are Russian – and demonstrate what I’ve known for some time, not only the English have the ability to turn out fantastic Shakespeare.

‘High Production Values’ is a term you sometimes here connected with expensive ‘artistic’ films, and less artistic blockbusters – well, it is also a term you can apply to smaller scale (if half-an-hour of animation is smaller scale) work – and I don’t think you’ll find higher production values than in this series of Animated Tales!

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, Animated Shakespeare

Link link link ...

2008-07-19T08:40:00.001+03:00

Funny old world -

The Shakespeare Post (Have I mentioned how GOOD that site is?) have an article on 'King Charles the Headless' - and his postheadless reputation as portrayed at the National Portrait Gallery.

One pops along to the site and discover lots of lovely new things - several linking to Shakey and his times ... Not least a John Donne who I'd sware was doing a pre-Hamlet pose ...

There was a recent 'In Our Time' talk on Donne and friends (well, linked by later generations).

It was supposed to be about sex and death ... good material for anyone interested in Shakespeare.

Stolen Fire

2008-07-17T08:10:00.002+03:00

Thanks to the Geek for the connection.

A lesson in not responding soon enough to blog ideas - a politician will come along and steal your fire! Johnson - odd looking Mayor of London - has connected a connection which is obvious to make. The Gruniad reports on his appearance before a House of Commons committee on Knife crime and he makes the Romeo and Juliet connection.

Unlike Mr Johnson, who had to explain his link (so much for the education of Members of Parliament - I'd love to know the political colour of the questioner) I'm sure readers of this blog will realise the 'gang' connection in the Capulet and Montague households, and get the poignancy of young life cut short.

Interestingly Mr Johnson then made the point my thoughts had been silently pointing to - the text is worth studying as illustrative of what is happening in places like London where there seems to be an increase in the knife carrying and fighting (although whether there is an actual increase or the media has just decided to bring it to the attention of the public is debatable).

Young people do 'gang' - young people do fight - carrying a weapon when you fight is going to cause more damage and death. Most fights are more about honour and macho-ness than any other lip-serviced reason, and there is great glamour in 'the kill'.

There is terrible social element to this too - the adults in Romeo and Juliet do nothing serious about the issue until the death of loved ones hits home - paralleled in some ways to the present media frenzy inspired by the death, not of any young person, but by the 'tragic' death (as if the others were not a tragedy) of 'respectable' youth.

There is a danger here of ghettoising the stabbers and innocent victimising the stabbed: If only it were that simple.
And, to his credit, I think this is partly what Mr Johnson was getting at -

It is worth studying the text because it does teach you something about the bogus atmosphere of glamour that can surround these gangs and the sort of romantic, sentimental feelings that can start to occur with knife crime and gang culture generally.
(As quoted in the Gruniad)

Emotional reaction is totally understandable (even Lady Capulet's) but not helpful (especially Lady Capulet's).

Where I do differ from Mr Johnson is his claim that Mercutio is actually a glamorous character ... but that will have to wait 'til I get on to Romeo and Juliet proper.

Technorati Tags: Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet, Knife Crime, Boris Johnson

Global Satisfaction

2008-07-12T10:15:00.003+03:00

I am not easily pleased in the theatre – especially with regard to Shakespeare and productions thereof. We’ve suffered (the text and I) more bad than good over the years, and few productions have left me either totally convinced or newly informed.

You will understand my hesitancy then about entering the open-to-the-elements courtyard of a local school to see a production of one of the more popular Shakespeare texts – on a night when the weather threatened and with an audience very few of whom were native speakers of English.

That night I went home more than satisfied: For the first time I’d seen a stimulating ‘Romeo and Juliet’ which I would unreservedly recommend to both novice and expert. I was both entertained (continuously) and learnt new things about the text, about Shakespeare production and the resourcefulness limited resources can impose.

The Globe Theatre, London sent out its touring team on a short European tour and landed up here in Timisoara, Romania – in the middle of what is turning out to be a hot summer: They brought the storm clouds with them (but thankfully not the rain).

As befits a company who aim to deliver Shakespeare productions for modern audiences informed by Elizabethan staging and practices, this touring company is reduced in numbers (a cast of 7: 3 females, 4 males) reduced in set (one battered van and two metal pillars) and great in energy.

Lines are taken at a ‘fiery footed’ pace – there is a serious attempt to make this a ‘two hours traffic’ of a performance, which has some pretty interesting consequences for both actors and audience. Principle amongst them is the reduction in what I can only call ‘emotiveness’ – no time in this production for dwelling on the luxury of romantic moments or the beautiful rolling of sounds.

Paradoxically, this doesn’t reduce the power of the words or the strength of feeling of the characters, or the demands placed on the actors: I’ve never before experienced the heady mixture of an awareness of character emotion, the separation of that emotion from the intelligence of the writing and an admiration for the verbal dexterity brought to the lines by the performer all at the same time. What was a shock was a realisation of this early on in the performance, Romeo’s first dialogue with Benvolio, as it happened. Many times I have been able to reflect back on a performance and separate out the fusion of these elements; this is the first time I’ve been made so aware of the elements and how well they have been fitted together, in real time. Multi-tasking!

Throughout the rest of the performance I never lost sight of this ‘keeping faith’ with the text. It is a keeping faith – surely this is the speed Shakespeare intended when writing, and the text benefits from performance at the speed.

A second consequence of the treatment of the lines in this way was the actors speaking for meaning before feeling – and a consequent clarity of text. I actually understood the ‘Friar’ talking about herbs, and believed the actor understood too! In the interval I spoke with a student whose English I’d describe as adequate-business and asked if he was following –

“Easily,” came the reply.

That is as strong a testament as I can give to the production.

By sticking to the ‘Elizabethan’, the company also had to deal with the issue of doubling.

I’ve long suspected Shakespeare’s plays need parts to be doubled to give a dimension of theatricality and an inter-textual frame of references which one person per part causes to evaporate. Here, with only seven actors, there was a need for extreme doubling and the potential for confusion.

Apart from the very end (where one actor shifts from the Friar to old Capulet and then to old Montague), there was no confusion - it was easy to follow which character the actors were playing.

Each role was clearly defined by the cast, who made apparently light work of what could have been a serious difficulty. The result was a series of significant connections usually lost in reading (and in most productions).

Romeo kills twice – both times here it was the same actor he ‘killed’ – the doubling of Paris and Tybalt begs the question of Romeo’s innocence and youth – OK, the first death is possibly excusable, but the second?

The Prince and Mercutio are the same actor – when the Prince talks of loosing family, you get an extra point when you have just seen him die on stage!

Old Montague, Old Capulet and the Friar are all the same actor – setting up a resonance which unites these characters – they are of equal dignity, could they also be equally tired of the dispute, be equally desirous of some means for settling and have been equally receptive to Romeo and Juliet uniting?

Old Capulet battles with Tybalt at the party, the Friar with Romeo later – a perennial theme of age versus youth; different youth, same age.

What was brilliant here was the actors’ and the production’s ability to suggest ‘type’ whilst differentiating individuals. A token cross and coat turned character – but the actor had to shift personality too: No doubt that the be-sandaled, trendy, socially aware, Anglican vicar was different from the ‘used to getting my own way’, businessman Capulet.

There was even room for a doubling joke – the servant Peter was played by all 5 of the cast who doubled parts. Which left Romeo and Juliet un-doubled (if I ignore the opening, ritualised, fight).

Around these two ‘pure’ characters an ensemble performed – Romeo and Juliet became the centre in a remarkable way, much as a piano might in a concerto, surrounded by orchestra.

The amount of work each and every actor had to do also neutralised the tendency to look for stars – this was real ensemble work. No person stood out –either above or below the others. Celebrity was subverted to the text, the production benefited.

The production also benefited from some serious directorial input.

There was a reassessment of several of the characters. Romeo, instead of the usual moony eyed wet, got a bit of guts (helped, I have to say, by the Mancunian accent). The scene with the Nurse and the Friar after Romeo’s banishment was turned on its head - this was an angry despair, this was a testosterone driven lament which overpowered both the Friar and the Nurse. Another first – I didn’t want to slap Romeo at this point, I actually felt he was being driven by forces outside his power to control.

There was also a remarkable attention to detail. In another Romeo scene, the one where he buys the poison, the Apothecary is usually played as something of an aside. Here, the director took the ‘need’ of the character and gave us a bit of stage business which really brought home the desperation of this character but also the import of Romeo’s lines – Romeo takes the drug and withholds the money – sheer desperation drives the Apothecary to scramble and fight and moan, frightened she’d been tricked. When Romeo finally passes over the money, his lines concerning the corruptible power of money had a significance.

The fact that the Apothecary was played by the actor who played Lady Capulet also left another hint of resonance – Lady Capulet seeks unadulterated revenge, slaughter, death, but is impotent to deliver it despite all her wealth and influence; the economically impotent Apothecary, desperate to help and sustain life, is forced to deliver the means for Romeo’s death. Theatrical (rather than dramatic) Irony at its most potent.

And theatrical was a watchword for the production..

Shakespeare uses the theatrical as a metaphor throughout all his stage works – at no point does he want you to forget these are actors playing the part, that this is a stage, not the real world, that these are ideas given flesh and, as human constructs, pale reflections of whatever truth is.

At the most serious moment, a joke can slip in – alienating the emotion. Towards the end, Peter pops up, played by yet another actor. The actors include elements of the real world into the false world of the play. Here in Timisoara, Romeo points at the real school building in whose courtyard the play is being performed, when he talks of love going to school; Capulet points to the church next to the school when he talks of Juliet going to church; Juliet’s talk of the lark in the morning is serendipitously accompanied by the evening chorus of local birds, all singing their hearts out; and, in the background, as the deaths are played out, a real bat flits above the stage catching the moths attracted by the stage lights.

There are many more things I could say of the production – the use of the van, the really great balcony scene, the humour – but I think the most important thing is I feel changed, just a little, by the production. I have been forced to reassess a play I thought I knew and to find in it a dignity which it had lost.

Thank You to the performers, the backstage crew and all who were responsible for giving me the chance to revive – it was a real ‘Shakespeareance’.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Globe Theatre, Romeo and Juliet

Double whammy coming up!

2008-06-29T16:52:00.001+03:00

Having been out in the wilderness for years, suddenly real theatre comes back into vision ...

July 10th, in Timisoara, The Globe touring production of Romeo and Juliet. I'd have preferred a different play, but to get the locals in to a performance of Shakespeare I can't think of a better play.

I'll be curious to see the size of the audience - remember it is going to be in English (well, Shakespearean) in a provincial town, with most of the teenagers and students (and teachers) on summer holiday away from the town and the heat. Not only that but the same night there is a performance of La Traviata in a production from the Mariinsky Theatre on at the Opera House.

Topping it off though is the trip planned to The Globe itself in London in August - I'm being dragged to see The Merry Wives of Windsor: Now that I am excited about.

(Along with my Romanian friend Cris) I attended the first ever afternoon public performance at The Globe many years ago - and it is something which has marked me for life.

Technorati Tags: The Globe, Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Timisoara

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Words, words, words ...

2008-06-27T07:59:00.002+03:00

Bit out of sorts at the moment so not up to posting too much, but

groundlings

That, as everyone knows is the bunch of garlic smelling hobbledehoys who are too tight to pay for a real ticket and we assume it was the name they were known by in Shakespeare's time - not true.

Hamlet does the dirty deed of naming them:

O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to totters, to very rags, to spleet the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise.
(Act 3, Scene 2)

... and that is the first usage we know of.

What he is doing is using the metaphor of a fish - something like the stone loach. Not a fish you'd normally think of unless you are mad about fish - but Shakespeare knew about them - he mentions fleas on a loach in one of the history plays.
What is significant about the fish is there habit of staying close to the ground - this particular loach is called stone because that's where you find it, under stones.
They are rubbish eaters - collectors and consumers of the detritus which falls to the bottom of the water it lives in - it's small and thin: You can see Shakespeare's idea of naming the apprentice full courtyard after the fish is something of a joke!

But the insult has become a mere, common name - and all assume it was the name given by the Elizabethans - whereas, in fact, it is one of the words that maybe gives a clue to Hamlet being a much less than sympathetic character.

Technorati Tags: groundlings, words, Hamlet, fish

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A 'Flagellation' and Shakespeare

2008-06-21T12:47:00.002+03:00

Some things are obvious.

Take this painting, for one - it is by Piero della Francesca, an Italian artist of the 15th Century. It is quite famous - was painted around 1459 and can be found in Urbino (one of the truly memorably named towns).

It shows a flagellation - a whipping ...

... and is quite disturbing and thought provoking when you look at it in detail - just what are those three men in the foreground? Who is the man sitting down with the silly hat on? Why is the guy with his back to us wearing a turban? What sort of whipping is this with such a bloodless and calm man on the end of it?

Therein lies the problem - the artist is asking the questions - is provoking thought and condensing ambiguity in the picture. This is in modern dress - why? There is a very rigid formal look to the picture - why? He has done things intended not to answer but to question.

This is a big problem for the critics - it is the job of a critic to disambiguate .. to make clear what is murky, to clean off the detritus and tell us the answers. Art critics delight in telling us what each and every symbol means, what each and every brush stroke was meant for; they expose and reveal the mystery.

Except there is a big problem with that - if the artist is truly great, and wanted there to be ambiguity and mystery, the work won't reveal what is not there - there is no answer, there is only a question.

The critic's supposition is that s/he is more intelligent, more refined, more knowledgeable than the artist. Arrogance at least - and not the sort based on a strong foundation.

So too with Shakespeare and his texts - countless generations of critics have revealed the 'true' meaning, only to be superseded by a better truth and a better 'critic'.

Reams of paper and reams of editions, with reams of answers to questions Shakespeare doesn't answer - and many to questions Shakespeare doesn't ask.

And the arrogance of the critics knows no bounds - they nod in the direction of Shakespeare's greatness, but then knock it by attempting to reveal what was hidden - for their capacity to reveal is greater than his to hide.

(Thanks to the unknown artist who pointed out the intelligence needed to have painted The Flagellation on a tv programme I saw last night.)

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, ambiguity, intelligence, Flagellation

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Wiving Wealthily

2008-06-16T12:20:00.001+03:00

Petruccio:
I come to wive it wealthily in Padua;
If wealthily, then happily in Padua.

Money? Or something else as well: From the root weal. Linked to the word commonweal - an implication of much wider usage than just goods and money (and that is still used in its wider sense, eg the Catholic Publication and the Commonweal Institute).

Wealth is a word that is used much in some of the Homilies preached every Sunday from the pulpit in Elizabethan England - on the one on good Order and obedience, for example, it is a word used 10 times - never once meaning money. In the homily against drunkeness it appears four times, including this -

so they haue worldly wealth and riches aboundant to satisfie their vnmeasurable lustes, they care not what they doe. They are not ashamed to shew their drunken faces, and to play the madde man openly.

where the 'worldly' is necessary to distinguish other types of wealth.

Does Petruccio, when he says he comes to 'wive it wealthily' mean this worldly wealth - or is he saying something else?

There was a saying in Elizabethan England about it not being possible to gain both a wife and wealth in the same year - is Petruccio out to prove it wrong?

There are other attempts at wealthy marriages and other talks of money in the play - don't forget, Kate's father is as anxious to find a rich suitor for Kate as Petruccio is for himself (which puts pay to the idea Petruccio doesn't have money); and he selects a partner for his other daughter on the same criteria; the widow at the end of the play is 'rich'.

Aren't we being faced with a dilemma - isn't Shakespeare asking the question - wherein lies true wealth?

Katherina and Petruccio make a 'rich' match - but they are also wealthily married - I'm not too sure about the other two couples.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, wealth, Taming of the Shrew

On Sly's small beer ...

2008-06-16T11:22:00.001+03:00

Few of us know (or would want to know) Small Beer.

Sly, when he wakes up calls for small beer -

SLY. For God's sake, a pot of small ale.

Benjamin Franklin drank it for breakfast, George Washington had a recipe for it, Ann Hathaway would have made it at home for the whole family to drink - and schoolboys at Elizabethan school were given it to drink at lunchtime.

When I visited a village in Oltenea (a part of Southern Romania) back in the last century (think about it) I found out exactly why people drank small beer:

The water is dangerous.

I arrived in a small village - the only road in being along a dried river bed - in winter there are times when you can't drive in.

There was no electricity - maybe there still isn't.

I was treated royally - good food, plenty of alcohol.

I stayed overnight there - sleeping in the same room as the family - hot and mosquito bitten.

In the morning I woke with a 'bit of a head' (much like Sly must have woken) and asked for water -

"Water is for animals."

I was given a glass of wine ... water just was not available. There was a well, there was 'water' but unfit for human consumption - experience had taught the villagers that it was better to drink the fermented juice of the grape - unfermented when available (as must but that is only available for part of the year).

The youngest children drank milk - the older ones wine. When it was available, and up in the mountains it was throughout the summer, you drank the liquid that comes off the top of the sheep cheese - the whey.

So too in England for most of its history - drink water and risk serious disease and death.

When you make very low alcohol beer (small beer) you will boil the water - it 'kills the germs' and so is much safer to drink than water from a well. There is alcohol in it - but not much.

Sly calls for small beer - not because he is in need of alcohol, but because he is in need of liquid - do the servants offer the upper-class wine - in the same spirit? Is it the equivalent of the red wine I got in Oltenea?

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Romania, Taming of the Shrew, Small Beer

HOMILY ON THE STATE OF MATRIMONY

2008-06-14T09:17:00.001+03:00

The Library of the University of Toronto has kindly made available to all the Elizabethan and Jacobean Homilies. The one I'm interested in at the moment is the one on the state marriage.

For this folly is euer from our tender age growne vp with vs, to haue a desire to rule, to thinke highly of our selfe, so that none thinketh it meet to giue place to another and to disseuer the loue of heart, then to preserue concord. That wicked vice of stubborne will and selfe loue, is more meet to breake

OK - that's a clear reference to Kate - and it is a danger to marriage - so Petruccio breaking her of it is good: Elizabethan view.

But surely Petruccio is aiming at ruling? I am not so sure - elsewhere in the Homily it says (about marriage):

It is instituted of GOD, to the intent that man and woman should liue lawfully in a perpetuall friendship

That's an interesting word - friendship - back to Two Gentlemen and their 'friendship'?

The friends in Two Gentlemen teased each other - Petruccio and Katherina haven't got to the stage where that teasing can happen -or have they? Does the moon/sun encounter on the road show a dawning in Katherina that Petruccio is moving on from tame to tease? When he calls her in at the end of the play - is she teasing him? (Which flies in the face all I've said before - or does it?)

And let's make clear - this Homily doesn't only set about women - it sets about men too:

For that is surely the singular gift of GOD, where the common example of the world declareth how the diuell hath their hearts bound and entangled in diuers snares, so that they in their wiuelesse state runne into open abominations, without any grudge of their conscience. Which sort of men that liue so desperately, and filthy,

Doesn't that sound a bit like Sly? The desperate and filthy life he leads ... the Lord calls him a swine ... he looks like a pig in mud.

But isn't it also what Petruccio is about - getting a wife? He has heard the Homily - and wants to avoid sin.

I have to admit - there are elements (well, whopping big chunks) of the Homily that are firmly in the male is best camp -

For the woman is a weake creature, not indued with like strength and constancie of minde, therefore they be the sooner disquieted, and they be the more prone to all weake affections & dispositions of mind, more then men bee, & lighter they bee, and more vaine in their fantasies & opinions.

Not exactly the modern view ... but notice something please - there is a 'hesitation' in that text ... the word 'prone'. All women are not like this - and women are 'sooner' likely to be disquieted - not that men will not be - both are in danger.

And the Homily goes on to say:

reasoning should be vsed, and not fighting. Yea hee saith more, that the woman ought to haue a certaine honour attributed to her, that is to say, shee must bee spared and borne with,

which, in a perverse sort of way, Petruccio is doing? He honours Katherina in seeing her as a fit partner for himself?

The homily is quite clearly against violence between husband and wife - so the A Shrew text doesn't follow where The Shrew leads ... Petruccio does not hit Kate - he refrains, although he clearly could.

And there is a piece of advice in the homily:

that first and before all things, a man doe his best endeuour to get him a good wife, endued with all honestie and vertue

which links to:

let vs doe all things, that we may haue the fellowship of our wiues, which is the factour of all our doings at home, in great quiet and rest. And by these meanes all things shall prosper quietly, and so shall we passe through the dangers of the troublous sea of this world.

and on to

For this state of life will bee more honourable and comfortable then our houses, then seruants, then money, then landes and possessions, then all things that can bee told.

As I've said before - this is a play not about lustful love .. but about the true deep 'in God' Love between man and women paired for life ... in sickness and in health, through flood, fire and ... well, an out of date concept?

The Book of Common Prayer and the Homilies were the linguistic and moral foundations on which Shakespeare and his contemporaries built their fantastic works. Every Sunday, unless for very good reason, the population of England was in church listening to these words, thinking about them and measuring their lives against them.

We might not be of the same religion (or shade of religion), we might have moved away from the concepts of harmony and order common at the time of writing - but if we want to take out of the works of Shakespeare some idea of the original intention, then we need to remember the deep faith they were written under.

We don't need to though to get great pleasure out of performances, or even the text when read.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Religion, Elizabethan Homily

Music and Shakespeare

2008-06-13T10:21:00.003+03:00

Just put the first of the Complete Works music connections over on my Music Reflected blog:

Singing Shakespeare.

Alfred Deller and the Deller Consort.

Fun Shakespeare

2008-06-12T08:33:00.001+03:00

The three plays will fun consecutively from December to March 2009.

Accidental? Typo? - or just damn true?

Over on Shakespeare Post a site all interested in Shakespeare should regularly dip in to, for news and views.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Shakespeare Post

'SOLEMPNIZACION OF MATRIMONYE'

2008-06-09T16:16:00.007+03:00

Today being the anniversary of the introduction of the Protestant Book of Common Prayer, I thought, 'What better time to think about marriage and The Taming of the Shrew?'

DEARELY beloved frendes, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of his congregacion, to joyne together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honorable state, instytuted of God in Paradise, in the time of manes innocencie, signiflyng unto us the mistical union that is betwixt Christ and his Churche:

That's the opening of the church service - notice the very public 'gathering' of friends - marriage is a social ritual;

therfore is not to be enterprised, nor taken in hande unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly, to satisfye mennes carnall lustes and appetytes, lyke brute beastes that have no understandyng ; but reverently, discretely, advisedly, soberly, and in the feare of God,

and that is part of the continuation - love the contrast (and think it connects with the final scene in 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona');

Followed by this:

One was the procreation of children, to be brought up in the feare and nurtoure of the Lorde, and praise of God. Secondly, it was ordeined for a remedy agaynste sinne and to avoide fornication, that suche persones as have not the gifte of continencie might mary, and kepe themselves undefiled membres of Christes body. Thirdly, for the mutual societie, helpe, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, bothe in prosperity and adversitye, into the whiche holy state these two persones present, come nowe to be joyned.

Which basically says ...You get married for children, to avoid sin and ... for mutual society!

That's the basis of marriage - that is the norm of Shakespeare's day, that is the background to Kate and Petruccio getting hitched.

It is a publicly performed ritual, in English so that everyone can understand it, even if you do not read or write.

There are several points we tend to loose sight of nowadays and in our changed times.

First, marriage is a way of avoiding sin.

When Kate behaves the way she does at the start of the play, it is seen as excessive, wild, uncontrolled - and would have been seen as sinful. At the end of the play, she has grown calm, more mature - and has joined in an enterprise (marriage) in the correct spirit: "reverently, discretely, advisedly, soberly, and in the feare of God."

I cannot emphasis the last five words enough for an Elizabethan audience - Petruccio's 'taming' has saved Kate (and himself) from Hell's flames.

The idea of original sin was strong - so too was the idea that salvation came through marriage and the family.

One of the significant changes in perception that the Protestant Reformation brought about was the elevation of marriage - and the rejection of necessarily unmarried priests (one of the first things Luther did was get married - and Archbishop Cranmer - the man behind the prayer book we are looking at - did too).

This 'sea change' is difficult to communicate nowadays, but the family has been shifted well and truly 'centre stage'.

Shakespeare is exploring that in this play. When Petruccio has taken the decision to marry, he has taken the decision to take the 'remedy against sin' - in a sober fashion.

Which is interesting if you consider his behaviour during the service - his clothes, his lateness, his throwing down and assault of the priest.

Unless you were meant to take 'the service' as being in Latin and meaningless. The throwing down of the Latin text, unintelligible to all but a few - consequently un-wittnessable.

Or unless you are meant to take the actions as a deliberately ironic comment.

Don't forget - we have a drunken 'Sly' with his pretend wife up above ... and Petruccio, in intent, is deadly serious about the marriage and the holy state they are both entering into.

The second point I'd emphasis is the 'mutual societie' - the church service makes no bones about this - both get and give, both contribute, both benefit. This is the only context we should read Katerina's submission in.

What both her sister and the widow have failed to grasp is the mutual - they are treating the marriages they have entered into as a battleground - I win this one, you win that one ... Katherina has learnt it is all about 'helpe, and comfort' - in prosperity and in adversity: It is, for her, a holy state - representing the union of man and god.

It is also the mistake made by the 'silly' feminist brigade (as opposed to the thinking feminists) and too many modern (usually male) directors who treat the text and their productions as a 'battle of the sexes'.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew

I had a dream ...

2008-06-08T08:11:00.001+03:00

... last night - very strange, flipping between seedy cellar flats in muddy London, Pet Shop Boys trying to pay me back for wood I'd bought on their behalf, a clamped delivery van and ever-lengthening queues to buy tickets for the London Underground whilst a woman I knew 'grilled' the ticket seller for information about times and place to for a Christian 'Timeout".

All irrelevant I hear you say, to the noble theme of Shakespeare - but from this melee of images and ideas I woke (the bloody Blackbird from Hades is back - 5.30 start this morning).

But I woke, once I'd shook the above from my head, with a thought - I bet the boy who played Speed in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, played Kate in 'Shrew'!

A bit of Brahms on the mp3, sink comfortably into the bed and work on it ...

It's the meeting of Kate and Petruccio ... the 'witty' exchange and battle of words: Speed does the same continuously in the earlier play.

But there is a difference - here, in The Shrew, it IS funny - or rather, is still funny.

In the former play, it is words words words - a bit of word-play, verbal fencing, wit for wit's sake; here there is something serious underneath.

In the former play it is intellectual; here it is emotional.

The former play needs a lot of support from the action to make the exchanges comprehensible - here most of the exchange is comprehensible as Kate attempts to bludgeon Petruccio - verbally and then physically.

But the comprehensibility comes not from understanding the words - it comes from understanding the intent.

The words really don't matter that much ... it is the play of emotion, the constant assault of Kate, the sidestepping, and deft pushing away of Petruccio, the resources and intellect shown by Kate, that matter.

Don't miss-take my meaning - if the words are understood, it is witty too - but the words are but a surface.

We've lost the full impact of the play on the word 'Kate' - we have to stretch our minds (or the audience's hearing) to make the pun work; we do not have to stretch anything to understand that 'teasing' a person about their name is a very, very irritating thing.

(Whilst we're at this point - does anyone else see the 'Hate-away' link?)

The exchange is earthy - intimations of sex (all but missing from Two Gentlemen) are here:

KATE.
Asses are made to beare, and so are you.
PET.
Women are made to beare, and so are you.

which is as clear as can be a reference to 'the getting of children'.

But there is also a great 'naturalism' in the exchange - they go on to talk of 'swaine' (don't forget the closeness of that word to swine - as in swine-herd); of buzzing bees and buzzards catching turtle doves that are too slow; of waspes with stings, wasps with tongues and tongues in "Taile' (which is too gross for the delicate sensibilities of this blog to explain).

To remind you:

PET.
Alas good Kate, I will not burthen thee,
For knowing thee to be but yong and light.
KATE.
Too light for such a swaine as you to catch,
And yet as heauie as my waight should be.
PET.
Shold be, should: buzze.
KATE.
Well tane, and like a buzzard.
PET.
Oh slow wing'd Turtle, shal a buzard take thee?
KAT.
I for a Turtle, as he takes a buzard.
PET.
Come, come you Waspe, y'faith you are too angrie.
KATE.
If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
PET.
My remedy is then to plucke it out.
KATE.
I, if the foole could finde it where it lies.
PET. Who knowes not where a Waspe does weare his sting? In his taile.
KATE.
In his tongue?
PET.
Whose tongue.
KATE.
Yours if you talke of tales, and so farewell.
PET.
What with my tongue in your taile. Nay, come againe,
good Kate, I am a Gentleman,

(Playshakespeare)

... and Petruccio claims no allegiance with courts, courtly love and such - he is a plain, honest Gentleman!

The speed of the movement of the images - sexual innuendo and the sheer energy needed to say these lines contrast remarkably from a similar early exchange in Two Gentlemen:

SP.
Twenty to one then, he is ship'd already,
And I haue plaid the Sheepe in loosing him.
PRO.
Indeede a Sheepe doth very often stray,
And if the Shepheard be awhile away.
SP. You conclude that my Master is a Shepheard then, and I Sheepe?
PRO. I doe.
SP. Why then my hornes are his hornes, whether I wake or sleepe.
PRO. A silly answere, and fitting well a Sheepe.
SP. This proues me still a Sheepe.
PRO. True: and thy Master a Shepheard.
SP. Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance.
PRO. It shall goe hard but ile proue it by another.
SP. The Shepheard seekes the Sheepe, and not the sheepe the Shepheard; but I seeke my Master, and my master seekes not me: therefore I am no Sheepe.
PRO. The Sheepe for fodder follow the Shepheard, the Shepheard for foode followes not the Sheepe: thou for wages followest thy Master, thy Master for wages followes not thee: therefore thou art a Sheepe.
SP. Such another proofe will make me cry baa.

The slowness of this, the teasing out of an intellectual thread, the silliness and the sound (all those s.s) suggest a very different approach ...

And yet ... if the same actor played Speed and Kate - do we get a deliberate contrast made, do we see Speed's wit behind Kate, and Kate as just another 'Act' on the World's Stage?

If she is - then it is the soldier she is playing rather than the lover. She is about to move on to the 'justice' - and that is where Petruccio is heading too. In the final act, Katerina does give judgement - on her sister and the widow ... but possibly on all mankind too.

But it flows both ways - Kate is in Speed too - he is the wild cat, who has been domesticated.

Speed is swinged into submission - in Shakespeare's Shrew, that doesn't happen to Kate; although the threat is there ... if she hits, he will hit back (so much for courtly love); Equal rights: Equal fights! I am not happy, by the way, with those productions where he does hit her - doesn't fit my view of him.

If the parts were played by the same 'boy', what a remarkable flexibility as an artist he must have had - and a strength in his personality, and an intellect?

Dare we suggest that Shakespeare was writing the part for the actor?

And, if Kate and Speed doubled - who did Petruccio double? Valentine or Proteus?

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Taming of the Shrew, Speed, Kate

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Tying the knot

2008-06-07T18:08:00.003+03:00

On how Kate Conquers:

The key point, I think, in Kate's transformation through submission into Katherina, is that she ties a knot - binding herself to Petruccio AND Petruccio to herself.

I am reminded of the knot garden - an Elizabethan fashion reflecting a harmonious complexity, man ruled, but natural. Originally planted with aromatic herbs used for cooking and in medicine, it had a domestic purpose - so too with 'tying the knot' (as we still say in England) - with marriage.

And marriage, not love, is the point of 'The Taming of the Shrew'.

Petruccio makes it very clear in his first appearance:

Antonio, my father, is deceas'd,
And I have thrust myself into this maze,
Happily to wive and thrive as best I may.
Crowns in my purse I have, and goods at home,
And so am come abroad to see the world.

Unlike the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' - who went not for love but education, and found love leading to marriage, Petruccio, as a consequence of his father's death, is now 'head' of the household - and in need of a wife. It is in a maze he seeks - indicating a complexity that belies the apparent rough crudity of the actual pursuit he undertakes. He is not poor (a point several critics and productions miss - although he seeks a wealth-bringing wife) - he has come to a place he knows and is known:

Verona, for a while I take my leave
To see my friends in Padua, but of all
My best beloved and approved friend,
Hortensio;

so with single-minded determination, and with a knowledge of his 'self' that is important to understanding Katherina's conquest:

for I tell you, father,
I am as peremptory as she proud-minded;
And where two raging fires meet together,
They do consume the thing that feeds their fury

he sets about winning Kate's 'love'.

Two things are important - he knows, if he is successful, he will be changed - his fire will burn out, just like hers; and secondly, he is seeking an equal - who he is willing to treat equally. If he wants a big dowry - he offers equal - and assures her father of her security in the event of Petruccio's death:

BAP.
After my death, the one half of my lands,
And in possession twenty thousand crowns.
PET.
And for that dowry, I'll assure her of
Her widowhood, be it that she survive me,
In all my lands and leases whatsoever.
Let specialties be therefore drawn between us,
That covenants may be kept on either hand.

If this sounds mercenary and loveless, it is not - it is the mechanics of arranged marriages. The 'covenants' bind both sides. A 'suitable' suitor is needed for a rich girl - a rich girl is needed for a rich husband - the knot tied with equal thicknesses of thread is stronger.

This knottedness, this interlocking is what Kate is signing up for when she submits at the end of the play.

Petruccio has said he will turn her from a wild Kate to a domestic Kate - but implied in that is a change in himself - he has come to wive it, after all.

Kate's speech of acceptance is not one sided - it lays duties on Petruccio.

When Katherina tells the widow:

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance; commits his body
To painful labor, both by sea and land;
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou li'st warm at home, secure and safe;

it is a double edged sword - these are responsibilities, these are duties more than privileges. They reflect the society in which they were written and a view of the hierarchical relationships thought to be needed for safety, comfort and love - but that doesn't take away the point that marriage is about wrapping yourself and your partner in the sort of knot that takes an Alexander with a sword to unravel. Kate 'ties the knot' and Petruccio willingly submits.

Technorati Tags: Taming of the Shrew, Marriage, Petruccio, Kate, Shakespeare

Jung, Donne and Kate ...

2008-06-07T13:53:00.001+03:00

or

Kate Stoops to Conquer

Bethinking me of the Shrew, Kate, as I walked into work this morning (Saturday note - ye great exploiters of the Farrar work ethic, alias m&m) a few things slipped around and into one of those patterns you always knew existed but couldn't quite see - if you don't plot them down, 'tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone.

Geek has been trying to find a quote to chain his spouse with - and is toying with Hotspur's words to another Kate - although he treat's her with apparent disdain, deep love lies under his words ... it's the sort of feeling and relationship which is so easy to miss when reading the text, but which leaps out at you when you see a pair of actors grappling with the words.

Hal, from the same play, as King Henry in Henry V has a conversation with 'Catherine' (yet another Kate!) which is also notoriously regarded as slight - until the actor gets it and unravels its complexities. Alan Howard, as reported in Martin White's Renaissance Drama in Action, had need to correct a critic who read only a light 'footnote' in the scene.

Which brings me to The Taming of the Shrew, and Katherina - and her 'submission' at the end of the play.

From what I remember of some Jungian reading I did once, part of the process of individuation - of becoming a complete human, a mature person, is the act of submission.

I have vague memories of knights and cleansing and Don Quixote in the courtyard moments.

Notice the idea is applicable across genders - it is not a woman submitting to a man, it is a human submitting to a greater thing.

That thing might be an idea, a society, a religion - it is a recognition though of a greater than ourself.

Until Kate submits, she cannot become Katherina - she remains unformed, incomplete as a human.

Kate must Stoop to Conquer - herself. Her submission allows her to see herself both as an individual and a part - a rounded personality.

I am wary of this pseudo-psychological explanation to the extent that, as Brook pointed out, it is a reduction of the text and the play - it is also an intellectualising of the emotions the actress (nowadays) must bring to the part. However, I can see a feasible sense of relief and release (with a deep sense of 'feeling completed' as the words are said) - working on the stage.

Brook also pointed out that the best thing to do is to Forget Shakespeare - so I'll hoist myself on a petard of my own creation, and ignore him (Brook, not Shakespeare).

There is a poem written around the time of Shakespeare, by John Donne: Batter my heart, three person'd God ...

It is a very remarkable, very disturbing and very powerful, some would say beautiful, poem. In it, Donne effectively asks to be 'ravished' - to be enslaved, abused and beaten, as the only way to become free, pure and saved.

Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

This wild paradox is also behind Katherina's submission - it remains a paradox, it remains disturbing, it remains mystical and ... dare I say it ... deeply satisfying and beautiful?

Technorati Tags: Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare, Doone, Kate, Katherina

Can you be induced ... ?

2008-06-05T14:08:00.002+03:00

Neither of the two 'filmed' versions I watched of The Taming of the Shrew used the Induction. Few people know it, fewer regard it, some even claim it ain't Shakespeare ... and yet!

The induction does add to the play - if you think about it.

Not only that - if you follow the Oxford 'Complete Works' you are reminded of the framing plot in several places.

Most striking for me is the theatricality of it - if you add the induction (and rest) you never loose track of The Taming of the Shrew as a play - it is the play being performed for 'Sly' - he is (presumably) 'above' - or possibly in the curtained alcove at the back - he may be visible all through the play - maybe he is doubling a role (could he be Petruccio?).

Notice, you need to think of the staging techniques of the Elizabethan theatre to get part of the meaning out ... just as Peter Brook indicates - the platform stage is an active ingredient of the play.

As a play there is a sense of make-believe, of imitation rather than reality - a distancing - which allows the antics of Petruccio and Kate to be seen less as realistic than symbolic - as deliberate 'over the top' for amusement's sake. This is the stuff of farce ... no one is meant to take it seriously as 'serious' ... although farce does play on basic errors of humanity.

The induction starts with Sly being thrown out of an 'alehouse' by a 'baggage' - the Hostess. He falls into a drunken slumber ... this is all extremely extreme. We see excess - we start with lack of control and alcohol induced sleep - surely, when we see both Petruccio and Kate we see a further pair of examples of this extremity? Without the induction there is a danger of taking both male and female character as 'real'?

If played right the 'throwing out' is also funny - knock-about funny. I can't believe, in the spirit of 'Commedia', there was not improvisation - possibly even spoken dialogue improvised - at this point.
I wouldn't like to suggest a full 'Italian treatment' - alla the picture - but we should remember the first folio refers to 'Gremio a Pantelowne' - suggesting knowledge of the stock characters ... and also linking nicely with the induction.

A bit of rough and tumble at the beginning would also set quite a tone for what follows - very un-serious - but then, it is a comedy ... and maybe you should be very cautious when you read the scripts with 'comedy scenes' - especially as later in his writing Shakespeare has a character moan about comedians adding lines.

A word of warning over this one - everyone takes the words against comedians to be a reflection of Shakespeare's own thoughts ... strange, when for most of the rest of the time the very same people are cautioning us about taking the words of any one character as being Shakespeare's ... I have also seen the suggestion that Shakespeare himself, in his role as an actor, was not averse to taking on the 'lighter' roles ... and with his linguistic inventiveness and quick wit, I bet he was a great improviser!

Back to the induction.

A second (and third?) theme introduced in the induction is the 'correct order of things' - as reflected in 'the world turned upside down, of the lord serving the beggar and the male dressing up as female.

Very clearly the first is seen as a source of humour - firmly in the control of the 'Lord'. In the Taming itself, the role Kate takes on as Shrew can be seen in the light of this - both as an 'un-natural' and humorous manifestation ... it is absurd.
Is it also to be seen as role playing? Is she concious of the absurdity herself?

When you add to this the next factor - the play starts with a boy dressing as a woman ... the issue of illusion, of the reality of Kate being played by a boy .. and consequently reflecting a boyish spirit ... only leads to 'complexicate' the whole process.

How is it possible, without the induction, to raise these guidelines and issues?

Well, as I said at the start ... both the versions I watched left them out. The Zefferelli film did nod in the direction of drunkeness - the opening shots include a drunk being punished in a cage (which suspiciously looks like the opening of Othello in Orson Welles's film).

Can the induction work outside the theatre?

I don't think it can .. and I suspect you need a Globe-like theatre for it to really work ... one with a balcony above ...

Technorati Tags: Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare, Petruccio, Kate

To the ESOL Brigade:

2008-06-02T10:42:00.000+03:00

Why are you teaching Shakespeare?

Surely it is only a hangover of the old imperialistic attitude to the language as ‘belonging’ to the British – as ‘real’ English being RP and home-counties middle class? (Shakespeare Wallah + Posh Shakespeare)

Cultural superiority and blind obedience to dogmas-out-of-date?

If you think Shakespeare needs to be taught because of the ‘impact’ he has had on ‘THE’ language – you should be teaching the ‘King James’ bible too – it had a far deeper, direct and more profound impact.

Do you actually know enough about the texts and the theatre to teach ‘Shakespeare’ at all? Are you going to do more damage than good? I spend a lot of time trying to un-do outdated, outmoded and culturally loaded views of the plays imparted to students.

Strong evidence suggests Shakespeare himself never wanted the plays to be read at all – they were meant to be watched, to be listened to, to be transient and ill-defined: Why then are you making your students read the words of the plays at all (another case to be made for the poor-selling sonnets)?

The language of the texts is not the language of today – if you want to ‘illustrate’ language change, an extract might be OK – but a whole play? Why – your students are learning English for communication, surely?

If a whole Shakespeare, why not a whole Milton, or a whole Chaucer? – why not Beowulf?

They are likely to encounter the plays only in their own languages or in dubbed or subtitled films – why do they need anything more than the story for that?

Should you be using film at all – the plays were meant for the stage? Any film is an adaptation – the best, with lots of cutting.

Technorati Tags: Learning Shakespeare, ESOL, EFL

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Knife Crime

2008-05-30T07:32:00.002+03:00

1593: Leading Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe is stabbed to death in a pub brawl in Deptford.

Tragic for the English Stage, not much fun, I imagine, for Mr Marlowe himself.

This is supposedly an 'unusual event': A cover-up story for re-branding Marlowe as Shakespeare; for removing a distinctly colourful young man with extreme views on a number of sensitive issues (religion, politics and sex) and turning him to a quiet, gentle scribe.

I think events in the UK at the moment might give a clue as to the very usualness of the events.

If the newspapers are to be believed (Independent, Economist, Guardian), violent crime in the UK is actually going down. What is rising is the number of young men being killed or seriously wounded through knife attacks.

Taking a knife, to a pub, and getting into an argument when you are drunk can easily cut off a very promising career.

That was as true for the first Elizabethans as it is for the second, modern generation.

(Also posted on Thoughts from the Edge)

Technorati Tags: Marlowe, Knife Crime, Stabbing, Shakespeare

Influence on History

2008-05-29T07:49:00.005+03:00

Some ramblings ...

I've been asked to give a few guidelines on Shakespeare and his influence on history - and feel a bit stumped.

It is very difficult to say - 'he (or his works) are directly influential here ....'

What does Shakespeare's influence mean anyway? (Folger has an answer.)

I suppose as good a place to start as any is his influence on 'the' language - whether I would go as far as some and claim his 'invention' of hundreds of words I don't know - certainly he is creditable with first recorded usage. And because the plays were such a part of the English Education system in latter years, they definitely became fixed as a result. I just know the way the human mind works with language and everyone 'invents' words all the time.

Not unexpectedly the written works had a big influence on other writers - not only in the UK, but internationally. Personally I blame the Germans for all that dark romantic nonsense that gets associated with Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.

As to influence on the theatre - surprising really, but not until the 20th Century did the plays really kick in as a factor of staging - it took the revolutions of Brecht et al to free the Shakespeare texts from picture frame production.

Whether I'd go as far as this:

After we have said our strong word of Shakespeare's powerful influence upon literature it yet must be said that it is difficult to lay finger on one single historical movement except the literary one which Shakespeare even remotely influenced.

...I'm not sure - it does raise the 'two books' issue - The King James Bible and Shakespeare Complete Works as the most influential books in the English Language. The above quote is from a source with an axe to grind, so overstates the case I suspect.

As a subject of historical research, Shakespeare has been well trodden ground - and the focus of so much scholarship has certainly given the Elizabethan/Jacobean period a focus it might not otherwise have had in terms of the English National Image (internal and external).

Countless books written with countless theories and countless reviews (Try this from International Socialism). The fact that Germaine Greer's book, Shakespeare's Wife is making a splash suggests something ... but what? That our perceptions of the world are visible in our histories .. Shakespeare as subject of History is frequently used as justification for our own beliefs, or for changing the world. Greer, for one, would not deny she is trying to break one perception of the relationship between men and women in Elizabethan England with the intention of pointing out a greater equality and role for women ... more in line with modern Western Societies.

Shakespeare has thus become not an agent so much as a catalyst.

This can be seen clearly in the controversies which surround his supposed anti-semitism: School girls refusing to take examinations in England because of a play they have never read. Debates and arguments, papers and books within the Jewish intelligencia.

But it isn't only amongst some of the Jewish faith that Shakespeare is controversial ... I love this one (and all the quotes promulgated in a public blog claiming to want to protect children!).

There is a big industry based on Shakespeare - with serious financial consequences to the English Economy (whoops - perhaps British ... or even international). Stratford is second most visited tourist site in the UK (thank you American dollars - but can you do something about your economy to make the thing worth more?). Verona sells 'Romeo and Juliet' - I still remember a visit there where I saw not only a 40 min cut down version of the play in Italian in the Capulet house, but The Two Gentlemen (in German).

As a cultural icon you are not considered educated in many parts of the world if you don't know your Shakespeare - partly as a consequence of the English education system exported to the colonies, but not only.

Romanian children, Russian children, Korean children, Canadian children - I guess - all need to 'brush up' their Shakespeare ... and start quoting him. How many projects in Schools have a Shakespeare theme? Suffer the little (American - not suggesting anyone buy that by the way) children!

I was surprised when I first left England to go walkabout how much Shakespeare there was in the world.

But it must be the 'colonies' that were affected most -

This colonial baggage of using Shakespeare as the ideal emblem of Western power and English imperial culture is one that began in the United States and Canada and persisted through India, Australia, and Africa.

(That's from Shakespeare in Canada)

The film, Shakespeare Wallah is,

a film of unexpected juxtapositions and cultural conflict; it is a look at changing values in art, and an examination of the question of what it means to be indigenous to a place.

India is a classic case.

So too is the film industry itself - try this and this.

You'll have noticed by now I can't get to a point in HISTORY when Shakespeare did 'this' ... or maybe I can.

There is the performance of Richard II which was supposed to be the signal for an uprising against Elizabeth.

And there are people who are Shakespeare influenced who go on to be significant 'actors' on the Domestic or World Stage: Carlyle, an 'influential Victorian writer, for one; and ...?

People have seen performances of the plays done in periods of dictatorship ... as a sign of liberty (I think here of Richard III performed in Romania in Caucescu's time) ... but nothing happened.

No, I suspect Shakespeare hasn't caused anything to happen.

Maybe he's created the climate though.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Influence, India, Canada, Education

Advert

2008-05-26T06:35:00.002+03:00

Got this little advert in my post box:

Hi,

I would like to suggest our website for including into your link list, as we make the card models of famous landmarks, including Globe Theater.

Paperlandmarks
www.paperlandmarks.com
Card model of the famous Shakespeare Globe Theater.

http://www.paperlandmarks.com/globe-theatre.htm




Thank you for your time!

-Andrew Visconti
Paperlandmarks.com

Now i wouldn't normally post such blatant commercial activity (especially when they can't spell THEATRE) but I have a very soft spot for paper models of the Globe - a great teaching tool and lots of fun making with students - including older teenagers, who sneer at such baby activities and then get fully absorbed.

It was also, in the days before the internet, a good way to get the basic difference of the Theatre across.

In the days when I had full use of my hands and eyes I used to love making such models - some good birds and castles out there too.

It is all, of course, part of the multi-million spin off of Words, Words, Words.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare Globe, Paper Models, Adverts

Shakespeare's Thoughtful Thug?

2008-05-25T12:47:00.002+03:00

Petruccio

I've done two 'Tamings' in the past week - the BBC with John Cleese in the role of Petruccio, and the 'classic' Burton-Zeffirelli film. Perhaps the most interesting character in the play is Petruccio:

The actor taking on the role, if these two productions are anything to go by, has a lot of choices to make.

And I mean choices - there is no one Petruccio: He is myriad. Both these Petruccios work, and work well. I have a preference, but it is not a judgement so much as life-style choice.

Burton plays him as 'one of the lads' - distinctly 'Tough Boyo from the Valleys'. He is using his own reputation as a hard drinking, woman loving, wife swapping film star as part of the character (and Taylor's Kate is tapping in to the same spring. This works - especially in a film which is so 'big' - almost operatic). There is (or rather, can be) a macho element to Petruccio. He can be seen as the beer lout - especially by other characters in the play, but it is a superficiality which Burton manages to go beyond.

There is an attraction for Kate - when Petruccio sees her, he 'falls' - reflecting in Zefferelli's film, the earlier moment when Lucentio sees Bianca. There is a difference: It is not a puppy dog fawning 'love at first sight'; it is a hit by love's dart, I've met my match.

And he has too - this Kate never really submits, she retreats: Petruccio knows it, and doubts his own strength. There is a vulnerability here - his final command is more wish than assertion.

The fight goes on - he will continue drinking, she will continue fighting.

All this reflects the 60s and liberation element - but it is found in the script (although, as with all film adaptations which have any chance of working in the cinema, there is heavy cutting and shifting of things about). What will hold this couple together (if anything does) is the physicality and 'good sex'. The animal magnetism is paramount. The fight is part of the love - this is consenting bondage.

Which contrasts somewhat with John Cleese as Petruccio.

We have here the 'thinking man's' Petruccio.

Very early on in the performance you are made aware that this is an intelligent man: He is very self aware - he knows his wildness is a weakness. He is logical - he works out how to win Katherine. He is human, and knows others are human too.

Like Burton, Cleese is attracted to his Katherine - but it is not the love dart, it is a realisation, and an admiration. The wildness he sees in her is damaging - it needs to be controlled - but he sees the same extreme in himself, and thinks this is the woman who will force him to become more temperate too. This is a woman worth giving up his 'freedom' for.

Love for this Petruccio is to be found in harmony, not discord.

If Burton is wildman, Cleese is 'Madman'. It is Hamlet mad, and 'Tom O'Bedlam mad: It is a Fool madness that has a cleansing and understanding behind it.

When Cleese says 'Cruel to be Kind' - he means it, and has the academic references to prove it.

The BBC script allowed all of the lines, so there is a natural depth to Cleese's performance which Burton had no chance to develop. It was also a production that played whole scenes in one take - again, allowing for a dynamic which the cut,cut,cut of film finds it hard to sustain.

There is an assurance at the end of this 'Taming' which lets you know they will remain together - this is a marriage which will produce children - and what children!

Technorati Tags: Taming of the Shrew, BBC, John Cleese, Richard Burton, Petruccio

Shakespeare: Onion or Garlic?

2008-05-24T16:01:00.001+03:00

... but definitely some type of Allium:

Now, some of you will finely think I've gone off my rocker, but hold in there:

(It's going to be a rough 'ne).

There is a scene in Peer Gynt when Peer eats an onion (raw) - one layer at a time. The onion is seen as a metaphor for Peer - by peeling off one layer at a time he should be able to get to the core.

I suspect that most people reading a Shakespeare play treat it in the same way - as a sequential thing, going deeper and deeper 'til you get to the core. For many readers, that core is encapsulated in the words and consequently (although not logically) the language and words become the core - you move from them to 'the' understanding.

I have never been happy with the metaphor.

Nor, the consequences - reducing a play to 'Literature'.

Taking up my theme of Multiple Intelligences, what the Onion represents is just one of the talents - at best, two (Language/Literature and Mathematical/Logic). It is an unsatisfactory and incomplete way of looking for both the text and the play.

Much better is another member of the Allium family, Garlic:

I think it is possible to view each play as a bulb of garlic - made up not of layers one outside the other going deeper to a central core, but of parts that are united at a root base, which can be peeled back but which have much less a core than a unity - the garlic smell, breath and flavour.

Each clove of garlic can be peeled - and there is a unifying outer skin, but it is a unity of parts rather than a sequence.

And the groundlings smelt of Garlic if Shakespeare is any judge!

(And an onion is only useful for making you cry - if the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew' is anything to go by.)

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Onion, Garlic

The Taming of the Shrew

2008-05-22T10:24:00.001+03:00

And we move on ...

(a few first reactions)

I watched the BBC production last night (two nights ago now). I have, of course, seen it before - several times in fact. I watched it the night of its first broadcast:

That, I discover (in dismay), was back in 1980.

I still like it. I think it the most intelligent 'Taming ...' I've ever seen - and it is also great television. But I'll talk about the production another day.

What has hit me strongly, and somewhat surprisingly, is the strength of the connections I saw with Two Gentlemen of Verona. Maybe it has something to do with the two productions being BBC and therefore joined in style and values - but I think that is only a minor factor.

Throughout last night I kept waking with a new 'idea', a new 'link'. There was a storm and perhaps I'd have forgotten them all if I'd been allowed to sleep tight - but I think not.

At this point, I'm almost prepared to say that the two plays form a pair - a concious pair.

There is a very deliberate contrast in the main characters of the two plays - here we have a remarkable woman and a remarkable man - strong, impulsive, live, determined: Not words I'd apply to either the male or the female characters of Two Gentlemen. It is almost as if Shakespeare took the milkmaid from Lance's letter and gave her both social status and a lead role. He found an equally strong male and set them together.

The wildness is unexpected when you think of the civilised, 'courtly', idealised love of the previous play. But lest you forget, he inserts 'Proteus' into this one - Lucentio he calls him, and he is as changeable and as devious as his prototype. That same proto-love is played out again here - only as a sub plot.

It thus forms a comment on the earlier play too - that teenageness (which he goes on to take to its tragic end in Romeo and Juliet) is anodyne - the love a game, superficial: Adding a repeat to this play shows the incompleteness of the event too - the final scene in 'The Taming of the Shrew' indicates that the lovers in 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' have a bumpy road ahead.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Shrew

2008-05-20T18:31:00.004+03:00

We're talking Common Shrew here - Sorex araneus.

The first thing to get clear is a shrew is not a mouse - you are very unlikely to come across one in the house, and unless you are something of a night hawk, not outside either. Mind you - if you have a cat, it could well have brought one in.

They are small - the UK's smallest mammal in fact (when it gets really small as the pygmy shrew) - and have a pointed nose. They don't look like mice.

Now, what on earth is Shakespeare doing naming one of his most feisty female characters after such a small harmless thing?

Well, they have a reputation - and what a reputation (and a deserved one to boot). Two shrews can't meet without a boxing match developing (they raise up on their back legs and wave the front ones about). They kick and they bite.

Try picking one up and see it go for you.

Shrews are also distinctly carnivorous - no use scattering a couple of grains of corn around and expecting a grateful shrew - give it meat - a big, juicy worm for preference - rare, not overdone - keep the blood flowing. They also take care of snails and slugs (although they have to get along on insects most of the time).

They are territorial - and active (they can't go more than a couple of hours without eating or they die).

Shakespeare seems to have been familiar with the little bugger. I can imagine him watching them in operation in the fields around Stratford - even in the garden of his own home.

Bit of a naturalist is old Shakey.

I'm about to turn to his second written play, The Taming of the Shrew - couldn't get there without at least a nod to the original.

Technorati Tags: Shrew, Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew

Shakespeare Intelligence

2008-05-20T10:18:00.002+03:00

No, I'm not about to launch a review of Shakespeare the Thinker (the very title, for some reason, sends shivers of distaste through my body), but muse about something that has been brewing for a week or so now -

Shakespeare

and

Multiple Intelligence

Multiple Intelligences has proved illuminating: It is an attempt to define "Intelligence" in a way that recognises the multitudinous and complex nature of the connections the human brain can make, and has provided a basis for explaining why some forms of education are just plain 'dumb-making'. What I really like about it is the fact that it is inclusive - it attempts to explain why there are differences in the way people think and why those differences result in a rich variety of human strengths.

Unfortunately, most Shakespearean scholars (of the old school) don't seem to have been raised in a Multiple Intelligence environment and certainly have never got to appreciate the differences between themselves and other, equally, but differently, 'intelligenced' people. Older, and less enlightened, educational systems - the ones which the 'Shakespeare Wallahs' were successful in - tend to emphasis language and numerical skills - they tend to call them 'standards'. What Multiple Intelligence theory suggests is that this is a very limiting (and ultimately counter-productive) educational endeavour.

Shakespeare's plays, and the massive dislike engendered in school for them, are a case in point. In the theatre, they are popular; in the 'linguistic' oriented, text based school, they are not. If you don't like School Shakespeare, it is your fault - generations have loved the plays - so there is something wrong with your Intelligence.

(I should at this point point out, Dr. Howard Gardner himself sometimes prefers the word talents rather than intelligence - which he sees as too limiting: I'm just being provocative sticking to the 'I' word.)

My main question could be framed, How does Shakespeare manage to survive in the hostile world of ivory towered scholarship and text based examination?

Well, the answer is glaring obvious - Shakespeare wrote plays. They survive in the theatre, on the screen (large and small) in the imaginings of a Multiple Intelligenced world.

What the plays in performance do is stimulate a whole range of 'intelligence' - in fact, there isn't one which a good production of a Shakespeare play touches on.

Shakespeare has 'coded' into his text a lot of the clues as to what to do - but the spaces are there for the actors, directors, and everyone else, to fill in the gaps - be it music or dance, movement across the stage, or a glance between characters.

There is nothing particularly revolutionary in what I have just said - but, rarely in the 'Literature' classroom is anything other than a nod given to these overwhelmingly powerful factors of the play.

Of course - there have always been teachers who have attempted to bring the plays to life and have treated the texts as a starting point (I was fortunate enough to have been taught by a couple of such teachers) - but the educational systems soon force the written exam and the 'language' focus on to the majority of students.

The Shakespeare 'experts' ,consequently, are selected from the people who perform well in 'Linguistic-Literary' intelligence area. These people define what is good and valuable, make decisions as to text and argue interminably over minute language details which are inconsequential in the extreme.

But the plays actually appeal and stimulate and entertain a much wider range of - Intelligenced - people.

One of the striking things about the Shakes(blogo)sphere is how wide a range of people contribute to it (and why are so many connected to the Logical-Mathematical realm of computers?).

There is another insight to be gained from thinking Multiple Intelligently - individual play popularity.

I happen to think that the best of Shakespeare's plays is 'A Midsummer Nights Dream'. I think Hamlet is a damp squib with a serious need for throwing away and forgetting about until it gets a make-over. I happen to like 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' - thinking it a better play than nearly every scholar who has commented has given it credit for.

Either I am a nut (and I don't come from Brazil) or something is going on here.

One thing worth noting is my Multiple Intelligence profile (as generated by the little quiz linked to at the start of this blog) - my strongest intelligence is Naturalist - no surprise the very 'green' 'The Dream' appeals. But also I notice the images to do with nature - the storms (I Like Lear) and talk of flowers; the cliffs of England, and worms.

The rest of my profile is fairly even - but the weakest area is interpersonal (I'm a Problem Play remember). Now, why don't I like Hamlet? Could it have something to do with all that uninteresting blah blah about relationships? Or maybe it is just that the interminable linguistic arguments and unsatisfactory performances generated from the incomplete final text?

It used to be put down to taste - with the suggestion that an 'educated' palate was more sophisticated and worthy than an uneducated one.

You can't do that in a Multi-Intelligent world - my tastes reflect my Intelligence - I AM right, 'A Midsummer Nights Dream' IS better than 'Hamlet' - you are just Naturalist-Intelligence deprived if you can't see it.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Multiple Intelligence, Taste, Hamlet, A Midsummer Nights Dream

Shakespeare predicted me!

2008-05-18T07:52:00.001+03:00

In the spirit of all Looneys and such like, it has been revealed to me that I am nothing but an anagram Shakespeare predicted.

I quibble with the idea I intend to delude, but, what ho, Move over Bacon, I wrote Shakespeare and hid my name in my final goodbye to the plays!

(Thanks to Shakespeare Teacher)

Penguin (3)

2008-05-17T19:05:00.001+03:00

After the introduction come two useful sections - The Play in Performance and Further Reading.

Considering its critical reception, it might be considered surprising that

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

has in fact enjoyed something of a revival in recent years.

Part of the explanation of this is the tendency to set the play in Modern Dress - so contemporary audiences can experience the play as relevant to themselves.

Also it seems to have taken a bit of a bashing in terms of conversions - most horrific sounding being the 'Two Gentlemen' 70's musical version.

There have been 'high heeled' dolce vita' productions, and Byronic late romantic productions; there have been traditional Italian Renaissance, and - a definite favourite sounding one to me - P.G. Wodehousian productions.

The inclusion of this sort of information about the play helps to give a context that is essential- the theatrical. It indicates the tremendous flexibility of the text and also gives an insight into changing attitudes not only to this play, but to the whole canon.

Mr Jackson's treatment of it is also intelligent. Several editions of Shakespeare now carry the 'In the Theatre' section - but too many are the product of 'cut and paste' scholasticism showing little sensitivity to either the theatrical times which produced them, or the theatrical nature of the texts. I would never accuse this edition of The Two Gentlemen of Verona of that.

The same too could be said of the Further Reading section. Curiously this is split into two sections - up to 1997, written by Michael Taylor, and an addenda, up to 2005, by Russell Jackson

Instead of a bibliography and listing, we have an introduction to various important texts related to the play. The two 'standard' editions are mentioned, Arden and New Cambridge - and a pencil sketch outline of the main thrust of their introductory essays given. I have to say there is even a wit at work in the finally selected item of reading - on Crab.

Finally we get to the TEXT itself - and a good, clean, clear text it is too - no clutter of notes, or distracting pictures setting one interpretation in the mind. It is great to just read - and allows for it. There are Act and Scene divisions, and line numbers, for those who want them - or who want to consult the notes at the back.

The edition was prepared back in 1968, by Norman Sanders - and he provides the notes and account of the text (basically, Folio - and nothing much to argue about) to be found at the back of the book.

As you'd expect, this is essentially a lexicon - defining words we now find obscure, making links between ideas and words throughout the play. Chameleon for example, is clearly explained, and anyone wanting to sort out what Speed and Proteus are talking about in the first scene won't be disappointed by a quick look at the back - prostitutes and all.

I didn't make much use of these - although I did find the excerpts from one possible source, La Diana, interesting, but far from essential, reading.

I have to say - I do like the Penguin Shakespeare. It gives me everything I need, essentially the text, and doesn't get in the way of my reading. The introductions are good, the format predictable.

It is going to take something really good to knock it off its 'My First Choice' pedestal.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Penguin Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona

Penguin Shakespeare (2)

2008-05-17T09:08:00.002+03:00

On the introduction to:

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona, an engaging comedy of love, ..."

And who am I to disagree?
(Meaning, I don't.)

The classic, and not often taken seriously enough, question -

What on earth do you need an introduction for?

I think Shakespeare Geek is touching on one possible answer to this in the post on Reading Shakespeare. If you are coming to the play on the page rather than in the theatre, you are missing a lot of essential material - material which will not only make the action clearer, but also point to possible interpretations and meanings, questions raised and relevance. One function (I'd say the most important) of the introduction is to help compensate for this lack of a theatre context.

If you are totally new to the play, the introduction might be essential in giving you a clear plot line: After all, Shakespeare has a wonderful tendency to knit together several stories and threads, and that can be very confusing.

If you are not so new, the introduction is more likely to be a reminder and orientation to a more performance-like interpretation.

If you are an old hand, the introduction is likely to be an irritation ... you'll have your own view and prickle at any divergence from it. But, 'By Gad's!' are Gadflies.

As I place myself in the latter category, I read the introduction after the play - other people might choose to do the same: I advise those new to the text to at least skim through the introduction in search of a plot before embarking on the real thing.

So, to Russell Jackson's Introduction.

The first thing I will say is that the writing is very clear - any reasonably literate (in English) person reading it is unlikely to go into the text without a very good idea of what will happen or of things to look for as they read.

After a quick overview, the play is examined in main plot order - starting with 'Friends and Lovers' - an examination of the early scenes.

As the sub-heading indicates, straight away we are led into the key conflict of the story, friendship versus love. There's a lot of use of words like amiable, eloquent and elegant; also truism, conventional and cliché; finally paradox and metamorphosis.

The musical metaphor of duets, solo, codas and base is explored - and whereas I favour the more modern game of table tennis (or football) for an image, shuttlecocks features here.

Emphasis is placed on Proteus as a plastic, mailable (and shape-shifting) entity which is indicated in his name, and Valentine as a more fixed, worthier and dutiful, if true to his name.

As long as things remain a game, the contradictions of love remain a sport - but Proteus has been metamorphosed, and things turn dark - necessitating an escape for all concerned to 'Law and Order in the Woods'.

Mr Jackson reminds us that the outlaws we are amongst here have all been exiled for the passionate crimes of youth - and although Valentine has not been totally honest with them in regards to his own crime, his good looks and, especially, his ability to speak foreign languages (which one can only assume indicates a traffic through the woods of various nationalities) allow for his taking over of the gang.

The events in the wood are frequently seen as problematical (enough so, we are told, for one English editor to withdraw the appellation 'Gentlemen' from the two title holders). Mr Jackson struggles with the problems and draws on a number of other Shakespeare plays in order to indicate possible resolutions and alternative solutions. One important suggestion is that Shakespeare is deliberately bringing in the 'real world' and connecting to his audience directly.

I must admit I find, in performance far fewer problems - and those that do occur seem to me to be a product of our interpretations rather than anything inherent in the text - a suggestion which is indicted by use of 'modern actresses' and Elizabethan audiences.

Once the main plot has been finished with, the Introduction turns its attention to 'The Servants View of Life'. Mention is made of their comedic potential, the social class difference, the reality versus the theatre presentation ... all very essential for the new reader, but nothing particularly new or stimulating, apart from the observation that the servants seem to have disappeared from the end of the play. I linked this with the idea of there being no longer a need for the 'realistic' servants as the two sets of lovers are now forced into a realistic situation of their own ... possibly an intended implication from Mr Jackson.

The Introduction finishes with three fairly conventional (and, again, necessary) sections: Love and Disguise; Characters and Conventions; Love, Sex and Language.

Here you find some originally phrased and easily followed slants on standard ideas - I like the idea of role-play turning into disguise, of the intelligent individual driven to follow the clichéd path knowing it's falsity, the pointing out that many of our problems with the play come from our conventions, especially theatre conventions prevalent in the USA, and the un-erotic nature of the language - yes, there is a bit of bawdy, but the deep sensuousness of some of the later plays is missing.

Mention is made (and several important ones listed) of the connections to later plays - and of the idea that this is a dry run for the comedies. I suspect that Mr Jackson is not totally convinced by this (I certainly am not) - there is a sudden dryness in the language at this point ... I wonder if it was an enforced addition, possibly self-enforced?

One very important idea mentioned with regard to the text is that of this not only being the first of Shakespeare's plays, but also that we might have a 'touring script' - hence the reduced number of characters and apparently missing material.

Something I really liked in the introduction was the awareness of the play as a text for performance. It is the sort of introduction that prepares you to see the play, even if you are only likely to read it. Indeed, it is partly the theatricality of the play which allows for the final summation of it:

... The Two Gentlemen of Verona, for all its relative simplicity, and despite the apparent foreshortening of its concluding scene, is a sophisticated comedy.

Enough said - I'll deal with the rest of the edition in my next post.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Penguin Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona

Penguin Shakespeare

2008-05-16T00:10:00.002+03:00

There are various, nay, multitudinous, editions of the writings of William Shakespeare available for purchase.

As part of my Complete Works tour, I intend to dip into some of the editions I know, some of the ones I don't know, and some I will not want to know ever again. Each edition I look at will be read with regard to a particular play - I'll have watched the play beforehand, most likely in the BBC production. I'll also have read through the The Oxford Shakespeare's The Complete Works (Compact Edition).

I start with a firm favourite of mine - The Penguin Shakespeare.

The Two

Gentlemen

of Verona

This is an attractive little book - small enough to slip into a pocket and carry off to read somewhere, like a park bench or beside the local river (two of my usual habitations). It is paperback, so won't last a lifetime of scholarly mutilation - but that's not what it's designed for - it is certainly sturdy enough to take multiple readings. And it has great illustrations on the cover. You'll find snuggling in the lower, right-hand corner on the back, an endorsement by the National Theatre - that's the British National Theatre, quite a prestigious body in its own sweet way.

There are also a couple of directional quotes on the cover - one on the front, one on the back. This is typical of the whole edition. On this front cover there is a quote from RALPH WALDO EMERSON (capitalisation courtesy of Penguin) pointing in the direction of lovers outloved and sages out saged; the back quote, from the play, puts us firmly in sight of Silvia, one of the characters.

Once inside we meet the 'Senate' - Founding Editor, General Editor, Supervising Editors - all very nice, all very important and all not worth stopping at - so, into contents, where we discover the Penguin Format.

A General Introduction (courtesy of Stanley Wells); The Chronology (their definite article) of Shakespeare's Works; Introduction; Play in Performance; and Further Reading.

Then we get the actual play text - Title, Characters, Play (split into Acts with scenes, and with line numbers - page number, play title and Act,scene numbers appear at the top of each page).

After the text there is An Account of the Text; then a Commentary - complete with notes and explanations split by Act/scene and linked clearly to line numbers.

That's the standard format of the whole series - and relatively successful it is too.

Let's look in a little more detail at some of the features: The General Introduction for starters:

All books in the edition carry the General Introduction written by Stanley Wells, General Editor. It starts with the statement that,

Every play by Shakespeare is unique.

... which is hard to disagree with, on a certain level.

It does however betray an attitude - an attitude increasingly seen as dated with regard to the 'value' to be found in Shakespeare. It values uniqueness in itself, which, with a little bit of thought, can be seen as not necessarily valuable, or good, or honourable. It also seeks to emphasise a distinctiveness from others as opposed to 'collectiveness' with others ... which is creepingly out of fashion - Shakespeare is increasingly seen as a collaborator, as a Theatre Professional (with all the interconnectivity that implies), as a part of a group.

The introduction goes on to discuss what is known of Shakespeare's life - with a degree of unavoidable supposition - to indicate some of the standard views of Shakespeare's greatness (such as the emotional range and depth of his characters) and to briefly outline the importance of Shakespeare to latter developments in theatre and language history.

I was struck by a certain sketchiness in this, as compared to Wells's excellent introduction to the Compact Oxford. Mind you, available space must certainly have had its effect - and it is not a bad introduction.

Next is the Chronology - based on the early Oxford Edition, and not the 'standard' one adopted by many other editors. It is a chronology which puts this play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as the first play in the canon, and upsets the apple cart in a number of other instances. There is no justification for the ordering here - but you are referred to the William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion in which it originates.

We then move on to the Introduction to the play itself.

(To be continued)

Technorati Tags: Two Gentlemen of Verona, Penguin Shakespeare, Shakespeare Editions

Two (not 3, or 1) Gentlemen ...

2008-05-14T08:17:00.002+03:00

Some insights flash upon one as in the Road to Damascus - others have a slow dawning... this is an example of the latter: Silly really, considering I posted on the importance of titles a couple of months ago.

Twoiness (or two-i-ness, or two-y-ness?) is quite noticeable in

The Two Gentleman of Verona.

Let me make it plain from the start - not just obvious (i.e. you see it) but noticeable ... in performance.

some things you get when you read over the text - very

un-Shakespeare-idea-ian

(and for a development of that I refer you to Brook, not me).

When watching the BBC production - Spaniels hit me twice ... and Chameleons. I thought it odd at the time, was Shakey being a bit 'shakey'? Was he repeating himself like a school child who gets an idea and can't let go? Then I realised, a couple of days later - I noticed those words and ended up posting on them ... erm, interesting.

Then another dawning - I mentioned Speed's 'swinging' when I reviewed the production - and he actually gets two of them in the play.

Walking to work through the park another development of the two-y-ness (settle for that I think - pun on the 'y') : Two men, two women to go with the men, two servants, two suitors, too many twos to be accidental?

And that led on to thinking about the idea of pairs and two-ness (don't want it to sound like chewiness this time).

What first popped out of the cogitation was, of course, the 'famous' pair play - The Comedy of Errors. And what struck me was the difference.

There the pairs are twins - here they are not. You get the pair of a master and a servant, a man and a woman, a man and a dog ... united in a difference.

In fact it is the differences that make the two 'individuals'. So what unites them as a pair?

Love and duty.

'To love, honour and obey'

Is this a play about the break needed for marriage - a play about sorting out the difference between the play friend and the partner for life?

If so, there is a very strong religious vein running through the play which, although treated lightly by the text, is implicit - and obvious to an Elizabethan audience in a way it isn't to us.

Take the two servants - Speed is a boy - an intelligent, lively, beer drinking boy who gets treated like a boy. He is the model of youth who stays just that throughout the play.

Lance is on a threshold - he is contemplating marriage - and a move out of one type of service into another? His 'lament' over leaving the family, and the excessive emotions, reflect not just the parting of a servant to go with his master - they suggest a ritualised weeping: Was this typical of Elizabethan marriages? I have seen weddings where the leaving of the girl from the mother's home is in fact linked to such wailing.

I am not suggesting this as fact - it is speculation ... and that is what thinking about the play after viewing does - makes one think and speculate.

Which brings me to the final scene - and A Midsummer Nights Dream has the quotes that help ...

"Begin these wood birds but to couple now?"

The first word is begin ... Two Gentlemen shows the ending of one phase, and the beginning of the next - but there is a touch of reality here ( in what can be seen as a very unreal play):

"The course of true love never did run smooth."

None of the participants in this scene is going to 'happy-ever-after-dom' ... it is marriage they head for.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Titles, Two Gentlemen of Verona

Puddings

2008-05-11T07:57:00.002+03:00

and proof thereof.

It never ceases to amaze me how some people judge plays.

I mentioned that I enjoyed 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' more than I've enjoyed 'Hamlet' for a long time - and someone suggested my wits were crumbling.

Then I remembered me - of course, his is a judgement based on the book, not the performance.

How many people actually sit through a performance of Hamlet and come out of it able to say, 'I enjoyed that'?

As an imaginary percentage, if one were to compare the 'enjoyment' in a a performance of 'A Midsummer Nights Dream' to 'Hamlet', which would win?

Puddings are judged in the mouth, not the recipe book - plays should be judged in the theatre, not the script.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Hamlet

A kind of Chameleon ... hyper-link

2008-05-10T08:53:00.002+03:00

This fascinating animal gets dragged up twice in Two Gentlemen:

SIL. What, angry, Sir Thurio? do you change colour?

VAL. Give him leave, madam, he is a kind of chameleon.

THU. That hath more mind to feed on your blood than live in your air.

II, 4

Usually associated with love ...

SPEED. Ay, but hearken, sir; though the chameleon Love can feed on the air, I am one that am nourish'd by my victuals, and would fain have meat.

II, 1

But, published around the time of the play's writing, I came across this fascinating little snippit:

But herein they rather disgrace than adorn their persons, as by their niceness in apparel, for which I say most nations do not unjustly deride us, as also for that we do seem to imitate all nations round about us, wherein we be like to the polypus or chameleon; and thereunto bestow most cost upon our arses, and much more than upon all the rest of our bodies,

It's in a description of England by one Mr William Harrison - part of Holinshed's Chronicles. What I like is the connection with clothes - which is the context it pops up in with Thurio ... killing two birds with one stone.

Do you also notice the 'polypus'? Now, searching high and low I eventually got a 'none-medical' connection ... the cuttlefish. What on earth is Proteus? Well a sea creature ...who changes shape in order not to be captured. I admit, I am stretching it a bit, but I can just hear this sort of conversation going on after the play - all very 'witty' all very 'intellectual' and schoolbookish.

We've also got the poor thing popping up in Lyly:

Love is a chameleon, which draweth nothing
into the mouth but air and nourisheth nothing in the body
but lungs.

(Endimion)

So linking in the theatrical hyperspace too.

Am I getting into tangled webs here? Most likely, but I get the impression that this is the way this play works ... sparks of ideas fly around and 'conceits' abound.

Technorati Tags: Chameleon, Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona

Dogs, Wives and Walnuts ...

2008-05-10T07:44:00.002+03:00

The woman, spaniel, the walnut tree,
The more you beat them, the better they be.

Stanley Wells digs this one up in his Shakespeare and Co (to be reviewed, not too soon). It's origins are 'folk wisdom' its particular form here, care of John Taylor, ferry-boat man - who was a published author.

It's the spaniel that gets me ... hyper-linking in Elizabethan England.

This particular case is after 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' but I think it illustrates nicely both an attitude (one assumable as common, if not provocative, even in Elizabethan England) and a process - the interlinking of images and ideas across the 'hyper-space' of the Elizabethan mindset.

nux, asinus, mulier verbere opus habent

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, John Taylor, Two Gentlemen of Verona

Shakespeare and football, again ...

2008-05-09T16:31:00.002+03:00

One of those strange things I thought about when I watched 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' was a football match.

No, don't stop reading ... there is a point to this.

(Oh, I better clarify again for the poor deprived Colonials over the water .. I'm talking "Soccer" - real soccer, with young enthusiastic, dedicated players in it for the glory as well as the cash - sorry, Mr Beckham.)

What struck me were the 'set pieces'.

In soccer, there are moments (usually when a foul has been committed or a corner given) when the game stops and everyone rushes around to position themselves for a pre-planned action: The set piece. Coaches spend hours working out exact moves and then attempt to get the players to do what they are told - in the hope of the all elusive goal. Football players tend to think they know better and don't do what they've been trained to do - so the move regularly fails to achieve the result.

There are a whole set of rituals associated with set pieces - eg attempting to put the ball closer to the net by spinning it forwards and dropping it - pleading innocence when the referee bothers to send you back.

And they are moments watched with increased intensity by the fans - of both sides. A good 'free-kick' can be a match winner, a great corner is a work of operatic scale splendour. They can provoke in the goalkeeper flights of balletic elegance, and regularly result in clashes of heads, in elbows in faces and, the ultimate in set pieces - the penalty.

There were several moments in 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' when I felt like I was watching just such a set piece - exchanges of 'wit' between Speed and Valentine; the verbal jousting between Valentine and Thurio; Speed in conversation with Lance, Julia with her maid, Lucetta.

There were aspects of each of these exchanges that suggested to me a 'spectator sport' - one where a partisan bunch of watchers would be 'rooting' for one participant, or just delighting in the idea of battle.

Technique is important - not just victory. You really need to 'Bend it, like Beckham' - in his glory days.

And this is where Speed shows his talent - and also where he becomes incomprehensible to the majority of people: It is a talent in a game whose rules have become incomprehensible to us - almost like an American watching Cricket.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Soccer

Shakespeare Hyperlinking!

2008-05-09T11:02:00.005+03:00

Protean Pre-echoes?

Did Shakespeare invent hyperlinking?

Look at this:

O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away.

(I, 2)

And ‘compare’ it to this, Summer’s Day:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,

(Sonnet 18)

I bet you know the second, but the first?

Both Shakespeare, both written in his early career – one a sonnet, the other from

The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

I’m reminded of what Brook said about how Shakespeare had a memory – and used everything that came his way. My only question is which came first – the play or the sonnet?

A couple more:

O, but I love his lady too too much,
And that's the reason I love him so little.
How shall I dote on her with more advice,

(II, 4)

And, Friar Laurence to Romeo:

And art thou chang'd? Pronounce this sentence then:
Women may fall, when there's no strength in men.
ROM.
Thou chidst me oft for loving Rosaline.
FRI. L.
For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

(Romeo and Juliet, II, 3)

And –

Yet (Spaniel like) the more she spurnes my loue,
The more it growes, and fawneth on her still;

(IV, 2)

with -

And even for that do I love you the more;
I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.
Use me but as your spaniel; spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love
(And yet a place of high respect with me)
Than to be used as you use your dog?

( A Midsummer Nights Dream, II, 1)

What is it that is going on here? Is Shakespeare just recycling a good idea – like the costumes and props of the Theatre Company? Or is it something else?

One thing I think worth mentioning at this point is that I ‘heard’ these connections when watching the BBC production – they are not the product of reading the play closely or searching – although I have since ‘confirmed’ by digging them out (and am in the process of a read through).

They are memorable images in terms of sound.

Shakespeare’s audience, much more tuned than I am to listening, must also have picked out connections – maybe not for the Sonnet, which circulated in writing privately, but for the other plays – and several other instances I could quote.

What Shakespeare seems to be doing here is ‘hypertexting’ – downright naughty of him so early in the history of the internet. These links do precisely what the little under-linings in this blog do – make you leap across a world of experiences to a specific point.

However, if ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ is the first play, then this implies something very interesting: It is a foundation other plays build on. The other plays are referencing this play.

Even if it isn’t the actual ‘first’, it is certainly early, so part of the foundations of the whole Shakespeare Experience.

This is recognized in the Oxford Shakespeare, where the play is printed first – and therein lies a problem: We read linear … first suggests earlier, suggests less mature, suggests less good.

I’ll say it again – I enjoyed watching this play last week – I enjoyed it more than I’ve enjoyed a Hamlet in many a year. For me, at this time, this is better than Hamlet.

Now, maybe I’m just stupid. And maybe not (chorus of assembled acolytes, “No, Enlightener of the World, never!”).

The fact that Shakespeare has deliberately linked to this play would suggest he had a degree of respect for it – and that the audience of his time would have seen enough performances to be able to make the connections. This is not saying the play is a prototype – something tried and discarded, but that is an active ingredient in the repertory.

Of course, strange things happen with hyperlinks – you can go back and change a text to add an extra reference or delete one (it’s called editing) – so, did Shakespeare – or anyone else, like Middleton – interfere with the text and add a link here, swap a link there?

Most likely: The text we have is from the first folio of 1623 – which Wells suggests is a snapshot of the version actually last performed. And that would suggest Shakespeare could and would have changed anything he didn’t like – and also that the other company members would have thrown in their three penny worth …

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Internet

Janus

2008-05-07T07:29:00.002+03:00

Down to business.

Janus is the God of doorways - and if Wells et al are right,

'The Two Gentlemen of Verona'

is the first play He wrote - in other words, my entrance into the Complete Works.

It is certainly a play which looks forward - there are countless points when reading and watching when you go - ah, that's in Romeo and Juliet, that's in A Midsummer Nights Dream, didn't that happen in The Merchant of Venice, or Othello ... that reminds me a little of the scene in Twelfth Night, or, surely that is a little like Hamlet's ....

But it's more than just action and incident, word and phrase - there is a usage of language and a usage of theatre that makes this a very Shakespearean play.

This is already Shakespeare the poet (in Brook's sense) - the resonance and reference looking back into experience and encounters.

This is Shakespeare digging into the works of other stage professionals - there is a strong link, I think, to Lyly - I couldn't stop thinking of the 'courtly' actions and the word play found in the older man's work and attempts to satisfy for Elizabeth's taste.

There is Greene, in the character and spirit of these two young men.

But it is not the 'borrowed clothes' plagiarism of A Groatsworth of Wit, which would suggest an insecurity - for this is quite a confident play - it is an early exploration of the power of the theatre to self reference - and to deepen and even create meaning through such reference. It is a shorthand - why waste time going over the same ground already covered. It is a playing with the audience - spot the quote (remember, education was mainly about quoting the right authority when you are debate).

Curiously enough - it is a play about leaving a woman you love to go to another city - and, to commit the sin of implied biography, I can't help linking this to the earlier sonnet (1 aka 145).

It is also very much a genre play, with a set of conventions to guide both the performance and the watching - and I suspect part of its unpopularity is due much more to the genre being out of fashion than with any quality of the play itself.

This is a play of wit - and therein lies another difficulty: Wit frequently requires a knowledge of and easy flexibility with language - and we are just too distant to take the 'set-piece' exchanges without a degree of study beforehand.

Above all else, this is an entertaining play - something doubted at times: I enjoyed watching it, I enjoyed reading it through.

Whether it is a play to be 'studied' is a different question - but then, I very much doubt whether any of the plays should really be studied - death by academia.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Janus