Background ... forever background

As I lay in bed this morning, instead of music, I Sunday-morning-indulged and listened to an 'In Our Time' podcast I had downloaded a week or so ago - on The Dissolution of the Monasteries. It is still 'listenable-on-line' by clicking on the link - it is a showcase of clarity and excellence in discussion.

Not quite Shakespeare's time - although much closer than people realise: Counting history in terms of Kings and Queens sometimes lends a distance which shouldn't be there: The time between Fat Henry's theft and Shakespeare's Elizabethan birth is much shorter than one would think.

What I found fascinating at first were the parallels with modern Romania and the 'Dissolution of Communism'.

The monasteries had an apparent function associated with belief - they percolated into all aspects of community and into many people's individual lives. Economically they had a powerful control over vast resources (up to one third of the land of England was theirs).

No surprise then that there was a sense of loss at the dismemberment of the system resulting in a public outcry from one section of the community (The Pilgrimage of Grace). This was echoed after the fall of communism in Romania, not least amongst those economic elements which had been subsidised and supported under the old system.

Importantly, there was a lot of support for the change - not least from within the system itself - Erasmus was a good Catholic - and, however later historians and partisan fighters might colour the change, it seems there was already a movement away from monasticism - it was a system waiting to fall.

But I don't want to focus on the causes - it is the aftershocks and their immediate consequences which interest me.

Education changed - schools became more significant: Habergham High, Burnley, where I worked when Romania had its recent revolution, was founded as a small town grammar school in this period; The Shakespeare School, Timisoara where I first worked in Romania, was founded immediately after communism fell.

Shakespeare himself most likely benefited from this educational boom - his wife not.

What has come with the loss of the certainties of communism is an open questioning and the growth of alternatives - something similar must have occurred after the monasteries fell. Prayer and 'the certainty of salvation' proved rather ineffective against the legality of Cromwell (Fat Henry's man); Relics proved to be just that - old and dated.

Surely we find this questioning in the plays? Not, I suggest, as a direct link - but as the ripple still travelling across the pond minutes after the fish jumped in the evening twilight.

And the economic shifts that occurred - the enrichment of the middle sort, the need for poor laws, issues of land ownership - all colour the texts acted in the globe.

It makes me hopeful for Romania - although I doubt whether we will produce another Shakespeare (sorry Tudor).




Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, BBC, Timisoara

Departures

The play of departures!

Just finished the second half of the BBC Henry the Eighth: Jolly good too!

What struck me most was the number of departures - and no one given a bad end.

Written well after the events - in a Protestant country - out of the Tudor reign; and no blame to be seen.

Wolsey dies an honest Christian; Catholic Catherine dies a saint's death; Cranmer - to die at the stake under Catherine's daughter's yoke - is deeply holy and prophesies, at the christening of baby Elizabeth, nothing but glory - and virginity and death.

What was Shakey thinking?

Surely it was written for a court performance under James? It is a chamber piece - so much 'internal' - so protagonist free.

What vice there is, is that of ambition and court pettiness. There is no evil here.

It is the fall of angels. Foreshadows of Milton – Wolsey’s words at his end especially.

And what a production – as close to where it should be as the Beeb could get – genuine Tudor locations (so right for this chamber piece).

But still something missing?

Maybe the theatrical.

How intriguing that the original Globe burnt down during a performance of this play – the theatre itself rebelling at so strange a play?

'enery de aiff!

What a reputation the man has!

(Not Shakespeare this time - Good old 'King Henry'.)

Tudor playboy, musician, sportsman, passionate lover, wife killer, church destroyer, (and saviour) in one.

American WASPs are 'P' because of he.

And Shakespeare has a play with the title, 'Henry VIII'.

Well, it is also known as ‘The Famous History if King Henry the Eight’ but that’s far too long for the playbill and we already know the man is famous.

Not so the play.

I’ve just watched the first half of it in fact – from the BBC complete works.

Surprising really – intelligent matter. You don’t notice that when you read it – and I have only a vague remembrance of watching this performance back in 1979 so I only know it through a dutiful, once only, read.

You expect a different treatment of the characters – and much more vitriol against the Spanish (so far it is the French who have had to suffer a jolly good dose of Great English Xenophobia – can’t keep a respected enemy out of it). Catherine, Henry’s first wife, seems a most sympathetic character.

There is an ambiguity with Wolsey – everyone kicking at his common ancestry and ambition – but he is effective and another not exactly unsympathetic ‘representation’ (especially, one suspects, to a working class chap like Shakey).

And at this point there is a dreadful sense of fate weaving – a dark thread slipping into the cloth of gold.

Is there anything anyone could have done?

Which brings up the parallel with Romeo and Juliet: Several times there are little stage actions and theatrical moments that remind one of the earlier play. There is the masquers interrupting a feast, for example, and a man singling out a young woman – with talk of hands; there is the old worldly wise woman talking to the young girl who pretends an innocence not entirely believable, but not hypocritical.

But with R&J you know it didn’t have to be like that – here there is no escape – and it is not just a personal tragedy, it is National History.

(Image at the top is the 18 year old, newly crowned king: You start to think the poor bugger could have been manipulated into a marriage when you look at that!)