On Sly's small beer ...

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

I had a dream ...

... 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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Greer (bbke)

Amazing the reactions to Ms Greer and her book, 'Shakespeare's Wife'.

It's obviously getting a push in the New World at the moment judging by the number of reviews - many by people who admit a degree of bemusement at the subject, most by people with little expertise in the area and some who don't actually seem to have read the book.

A great many of the reviews are more concerned with 'Shakespeare' rather than the 'wife' - and with Greer herself, than the subject of the book. What is frightening is that several of the commentators don't seem to be able to get beyond the Wiki biography of Greer - which underplays considerably her respectability as a 'Shakespeare Scholar' - not one of the reviews I've read has mentioned her book in the Oxford series - A Short Introduction to Shakespeare.

Don't get me wrong - there are some good reviews: I quite like this from 'thestar' - even though the writer is no Shakespeare expert - and doesn't always agree with my views; another I quite like is in the New York Times, Reclaiming the Shrew ...

... and some truly dreadful ones from people who really don't get the point of the book - The Times of London's is a classic silly man talking!

Greer is also getting a bit of personal exposure - again, I like some of it, especially when she is doing the talking.

So much for the 'professional' reaction.

If that were all, I don't think I'd bother about it - book reviews are all part of the entertainment business; but there is also a strong reaction in the blogosphere - especially the Shakespeare blogosphere.

I need to be careful here - most of the people blogging are good honest citizens with a passion for Shakespeare and a desire to put that into whatever they write.

What has surprised me is the closed minds shown to the book by several people - who openly claim they would never read the book. A couple of common reasons given are 'it is only speculation' and it is an attack on good honest scholarship - and good respectable biographers who know what they are talking about. A third reason, not so often stated but implied, is the book is seen as an attack on Shakespeare.

The 'speculation' is interesting - especially as the whole point of the book is to point out how much of the accepted view of Shakespeare's relationship not only to his wife, but women and marriage in general is based on little if any evidence - and that much of the evidence there is is open to alternative interpretation. The book is aimed at revealing the degree of speculation, not claiming any 'correctness' in Greer's own speculations. Some of the views expressed by Greer are obviously slightly 'tongue in cheek

What Greer does give is a very clear, detailed and documented picture of domestic life for women like Ann Hathaway in towns like Stratford - a much firmer base for speculation than any supposed autobiographical element in the either the plays or the poems.

Interesting is the way such information gives a new set of parameters to view the plays through - and Shakespeare himself.

Far from being an attack on Shakespeare - he comes out of the biography very well - as a much more sympathetic human.

As for the attack on the the critics - well, maybe they deserve all they get?


Technorati Tags: Shakespeare. Greer, Ann Hathaway, Shakespeare's Wife

On Sonnet (the first) 145:

To Ann, a wyff of StratFord

Throu the Avon

By the time I’ve done with this little poem, I’ll have recorded it three times – one, the first (already in the public domain) - expresses, I think, my true feelings for it as a work and it’s potential place in the ‘Canon’. The second I’ll attempt as an authentic pronunciation performance – something I noticed when playing around with the text is a distinctly different feel when the sounds are said in a sort of re-constructed pronunciation … I am not claiming it is right – treat it more as an archaeological experiment than authentic (and I’ve something to say on that issue over on my music review blog, pretty soon). The final is a straight reading – well, sort of, complete with introduction and after-word – that’s the ‘Introduction to the Sonnets for no-lifers’ performance. All will be You-Tubed in the ever fleeting chase after fame and fortune.

Gurr’s argument for this being an early poem (and consequently the first thing we have of Shakespeare’s writing) I find quite convincing … Greer (bbke) doubts, but nods in the direction of possibility and makes a very interesting observation … if this is written for Ann – then other sonnets were most likely also.

I have to admit that I rarely read ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds …’ without thinking it was for her – separated, rarely seeing each other, married – and producing, what 8 (?) children: Love does not ‘bend with the remover to remove’; ‘it IS an ever fixed mark’; it’s ‘not times fool’.

Sonnet 145 is a rough teenagers attempt to capture this ‘true’ mind – Ann. To accept that, we have to dump hundreds of years of misogyny and presumption: We also have to accept a review of the concept of genius – of what this genius saw as a domestic ideal - marriage as the base and foundation of contentment and as a real passage to salvation: Marriage is a source of the deepest peace man can find on earth.

I find this a fascinating idea – especially as I’ll soon be moving on to two ‘comedies’ which deal with these subjects.

Another thing that has been washing around in my head is Brook’s little talk.

Shakespeare’s value lies partly in his ability to turn out poetry – and this poem really isn’t very good poetry – but it does have something about it.

Are we here seeing the moment when Shakespeare first connected his natural gifts to experience?

And a final thought – if Shakespeare is such a good portrayer of character – and he is (remember his is stage writing) – he must have understood people fairly well – why then marry Ann? Why, if this is about her, pursue her this way, why keep and include the text many years later in the published collection of sonnets (shut up – I know all about the ‘was he involved’ arguments over the printing)?

Whatever Ann Hataway was, this touching little attempt, if for and to her, is a clue to a very different Shaksper to the one male piggery and the combined-Bardolatories is fond of exhibiting.

A note of caution ...

...for all potential bloggers - the world is full of can't-see-the-wood-for-the-trees idiots all too willing to criticise your insights and efforts without either understanding or even bothering to read what you write and do.

There is a classic case over on Shakespeare Geek at the moment.

The little 'tongue in cheek', 'over the top' performance of Sonnet 145 I did as a birthday present and as a start to my Odyssey through the complete works attracted an 'I can't stand ....' comment: No surprise.

Well - if the person had actually watched the images and thought about them [if capable of recognising them, their sources, their significance ... etc], had read this blog and noticed what I said about Greensleeves (and realised the choice was carefully made), if listened to my other performances on You Tube of two more famous sonnets, and noticed this was somewhat odd compared to them ... read the Greer (bbke) reference I gave (where the sainted Ms is distincly ambiguous to the claim of this being what is claimed); if checked the Gurr paper I quote below and re-referenced, then maybe, just a very big, maybe ....

Well, this is my blog and I'll cry if I want to!

Dramatic I run from me.


Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Sonnets, Idiocy

First Step ...

All journeys start with a first step - and this is mine:




Not the sound quality or video quality I hoped for - but I think you get the idea.

Enjoy.

Always need to prepare ...

It is looking very much like I'll be starting with a sonnet!

Andrew Gurr suggested it some time ago - sonnet 145 is likely to have been written early on - possibly when Shakespeare was still in his teens.

There is the serious possibility it was written to Anne, his soon to be wife - which makes it sort of 'sweet' and "Ahhhhhhh"-able.

This would certainly be the earliest of his writings.

I am having not-much-fun trying to sort out the dates of the sonnets - they were collected together and published in 1609 - and arranged in an order that makes a sort of narrative - but they were written in a different order.

Possibly the first 17 were in fact written a little later than the next sequence; and the dark lady poems earlier than the ones before!

What a life!

I am also doing all my preparation with a little programme available from the OU called Compendium: If I ever find a way to do it I'll publish the 'map' I make to go with the journey.

(Just think all journeys should be mapped.)

Shakespeare's Wife

Reviewed Ms Greer's Book over on Books Reflected:

http://bookreflect.blogspot.com/2008/03/honest-witness.html

I suspect points from the book are going to keep making an appearance here for some time to come.

In whose likeness?

Just recovering from a serious shock - Greer bbke has stuck the boot into one of my most cherished beliefs - Shakespeare was a rich man - he was, wasn't he?

Serious doubts, seriously expressed by the blessed Greer bbke !

Rather a lot of comparative evidence indicating that money is not the main reward for being the greatest playwright in England - and some serious 'looking into the finances' of 'er indoors'.

One of those naughty little thoughts instantly bounced into my head - all those biographers before who were convinced of Shakespeare's wealth - monetary, rather than linguistic - were they reflecting a material comfort of their own? And is 'The Greer' bbke doing the same - could her Ann really be a mere reflection of the self regressed?

If it is - it is very convincing - and, as I return to plough through more of the 'biography, a dread creeps around the outer extremities of further shattering illusions.