Family Values ...

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.

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

Books Reflected: Nuclear Shakespeare

Each line in Shakespeare is an atom. The energy that can be released is infinite – if we can split it open.

Books Reflected: Nuclear Shakespeare


I am going to be viewing the Complete Works with this work very fresh in my head!

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Theatre

Empty Spaces

(Or: Shakespeare, Everyone’s Contemporary)

I am not interested in repeating the old ‘A’ Level arguments; the grade 12/13 and equivalent essay: Is Shakespeare relevant?

The answer is, "Yes."

If you don't like it: Go away and grow up!

My question is this:

Why are Shakespeare's plays so contemporary?

How can we find ‘Post-Holocaust Landscapes’ in Lear? How does Richard the Third become subversive in the Muslim World (and in communist Romania before the fall of the Soviet Block)?

He’s Shaikh Al-Zubair, the Bard of Basra (aka Shakespeare).

What is in Romeo and Juliet to make modern film audiences go and watch - and black and white adaptations of Macbeth into Japanese film classics?

Young starlets wanting to make a name for themselves, and tired old thespians, willingly tackle the language of 400 hundred years ago, and Egyptian academics fight over the correct way to translate it - into modern or classical Arabic.

Why do the Turks - and Kurds - value the work of this very dead, very white (when he washed), very Christian, English Man?

I think a very large part of it is not what he wrote, but what he didn’t write.

It’s the empty spaces left to be filled by the actors, designers, directors (and the audience’s) imaginations.

People forget that Shakespeare was a man of ‘The Theatre’ (and afterwards, ‘The Globe’, and ‘The Blackfriars’). Many don’t like to be reminded that the building of ‘The Theatre’ was not only cutting edge art, but also great commerce.

No one knew how to write plays for this building – but they knew they wanted to write plays that made a lot of money.

As a jobbing playwright Shakespeare was the craftsman who produced words that were the starting point of these money-making productions. He had no concept of their being works of literature to be preserved – like Bach and Mozart in music, he was expecting his works to have a very limited period of use – disappearing, sometimes before his own life was ended.

The script was incomplete – in the very real sense of Shakespeare bringing into the rehearsal rough manuscripts, which he would work on and adapt during the rehearsals as he directed.

A contemporary reference to Elizabethan Theatre mentions the fact that the playwright directing the plays was one of the more distinctive features – and one of the main reasons the standards were so good in England when compared to continental Europe.

The words were also written in the knowledge that they had to be adaptable: Different spaces and different audiences required different versions – think what happens in Hamlet to ‘The Murder of Gonzago’ – how the play is added to, and changed, at very short notice.

The complete Hamlet, in the printed text academics are now so addicted to, was never performed in Shakespeare’s theatres: It is far too long – Shakespeare would have sliced it to pieces, ruthlessly cutting much of what is now thought to be essential.

There is no way, for starters, the groundlings would have ‘stood’ for the long hours needed to go through the whole text (a six hour Hamlet!). It would have got dark anyway and no one would have seen the stage. And why waste that much energy on performing when the punters would pay for less?

Unfortunately, when it was printed, it looks like someone used the unedited rough version – not the final stage version. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the drastic cuts needed to produce a filmable script, make Hamlet much more bearable and popular (with audiences) as a film than as a stage production: Hamlet in the cinema is entertainment, at ‘The Royal Exchange Theatre’ in Manchester, a religious observance.

A lot of the stage action couldn’t be fixed in the manuscript – it would change according to which actors (and how many) were available. How many people were available to represent an army? How much space was there? Was there a pair of good swordsmen? What was popular with the audience at the time – ‘shall we slip in a favourite visual joke this time?’

The playwright needed to make minimal commitment and leave it to the rehearsals to fill in the details. Shakespeare as the writer/director, was happy to do this – after all, no one else was going to mess up his text. It is a very different world from Sam Beckett who tried to control ever detail in the script – and to achieve a minimalism on stage, not only in the script. Although he did sometimes resort to directing, he usually relied on others to ‘see through’ his text and produce the play.

Bertolt Brecht, on the other hand, was very similar to Shakespeare in the way he wrote and directed. Interestingly, he did what Shakespeare never managed, he changed the way the world produced plays: So much of what we take for granted in theatre productions today, comes from Brecht that it is mind-blowing.

Shakespeare’s outdoor ‘Theatre’ blossomed. It fruited when it turned into ‘The Globe’, but then atrophied and went to the indoor Blackfriars. And that is when Shakespeare retired to the life of an English Country Gentleman: He’d lost the stand in the cold, groundlings, and their taste for the ‘Big Issue’, and got the seat loving rich, who didn’t want the tastes of the ‘poor populace’ thrust down their throats.

Mind you, they paid well.

Where Shakespeare is more like Beckett than Brecht is in the limitation of the resources available and the great use made of that limitation.

Shakespeare had a limited number of actors, all male - in various stages of life. He could either, like Beckett, limit the number of characters, or like himself – as writer, director, actor, promoter, and profit taker - have the same actor play many parts.

The consequences of taking the latter route have contributed to his remaining contemporary.

The same man playing different parts requires the audience to be flexible – they have to accept the deceit – the man stops being a real human and becomes a cipher –a representation of something in humans rather than a real person.

How do we know who or what he is (or represents)?

Shakespeare tells us. He frequently names the person and gives us, in Picaso-like brevity, the essence of the character.

With a Picaso, you, the spectator, have to work – to fill in the blanks. A two dimensional line on the page is ‘filled’ into a three dimensional face. So with Shakespeare – you fill in from your own (contemporary) experience the characters – and the wholeness of the characters cannot be formed without your contemporanianity.

The actor playing that character is wearing costume (or not) – and in Shakespeare more than any other English writer I can think of, the costume is pregnant with meaning.

As every school child knows (!), in Elizabethan England, the actors wore Elizabethan costume – and that is all the ‘justification’ needed to ‘dress’ modern productions in the most outlandish ways imaginable – sometimes, it seems, the wilder the better.

What is lost when we do that is the very remarkable and instant effect the costume had in a production in Shakespeare’s time.

A character’s rank and standing, psychological state and religious views, as well as gender, were defined the moment an actor stepped onto the stage by the costume he was wearing. Clothes then carried meaning in a way that only a few uniforms (official, like police, or unofficial, like businessman) do nowadays.

One reason it was so easy for an actor to change roles is this defining function of clothing – just as a crown made a king, and only a true king should wear the crown – think of the disputes over the crown in Richard the Second – so every costume said something about who the character was – and a change from servant to lord required no explanation and led to no confusion; the audience ‘saw’ the role change.

You wore what you were.

The paradox is that the very effectiveness of the costumes meant that Shakespeare didn’t waste time over clarifying many of his characters – the Costume defined them for him – Now, we have to add what the visual reference contained in whatever way we can.

But this ‘emptiness’ does give us the ability, in the theatre, and in the rare cases of designers who have grasped the import of their role, to bring in what is definitive in our own societies and sub-cultures.

That does not mean ‘modern dress’! Living where I do in Eastern Europe, 1956 is a more defining moment than 2006, and setting a Shakespeare History play, say Henry the Sixth, Part Two, in Revolutionary Hungary would most likely resonate with ordinary Hungarians much more than setting it today.

However, there is a danger of superficiality in this: Too often designers mix and match leading to questionings and confusions where the Elizabethan’s had clarity.

It is also a danger in the academic world where the expectation is that the written words carry far more meaning than was originally intended. Unintentionally we give characters characteristics and motivations to fill in the gaps, not always aware of the modernity of our in-fills.

The classic case for me is Romeo and Juliet, where the idiocy and sinfulness of the joint suicide has been turned ‘arse over tit’ into beauty and divine love.

Interestingly, this re-evaluation came to me teaching Muslim students in England and North Cyprus who added their own ‘contemporariness’ and relevance to Shakespeare’s words and came up with a very different reading from the post-Romantic standard unforgivably droned out in a thousand classrooms and lecture theatres across the United Kingdom, and beyond.

(To be continued)

Shakespeare stealing again

One of those frequently misunderstood problems with Shakespeare is his propensity to lift material from other people - nowadays we would call it plagiarism.

One of the most fascinating, I think, is the meeting of Faustus and Helen:

FAUSTUS. Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium--
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.--
[Kisses her.]
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!--
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sack'd;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear'd to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!
[Exeunt.]

Now, do you remember Romeo seeing Juliet for the first time?

Something like

- Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright. -

Do I smell the smoke of Jupiter in this?

And what are we to make of the stage action - Kiss and Kiss again?

ROMEO If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

ROMEO Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

JULIET Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

ROMEO Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

Now, if that isn't a direct copy of the Faustus scene, I am a Dutchman.

What is amazing is the way this connection is frequenltly ignored.

Why has Shakespeare chosen to lift a scene where a man very close to death and on his way to hell is instantly struck by a beautiful illusion and plays a word game of passing sins and souls in kisses?

He knew his audience - and they knew Marlow's play.

Modern interpretations of the Shakespeare scene all seem to focus on the beauty of the young lovers, the magnificent of the sentiments, the way Romeo has suddenly matured into a warm feeling adult (hours before he was an unfeeling teenager).

Put it next to Marlow though and a rather darker image emerges - a fool heading for death and hell, blinded by the devil's false beauty.

And because of the mindset, it is beautiful, interpreters tend to ignore the blasphamy too. Romeo, in order to impress Juliet, uses religous images - compares himself to a pilgrim and links prayer to his base wish for her body.
That would not go down well with the strongly held religous views of Shakespeare's audience.

It is the lark . . .

. . . or, "Those bloody birds are singing again."

Few people who have not lived in the wilder parts of a country (possibly Temperate zones only) can have experienced a true Morning Chorus.

It is starting to get Spring here (Hungary) and I was woken a couple of days ago by a rather weak effort on behalf of the local bird population - I suppose it has the excuse of being more or less urbanised and so deplete of the true masters of song that it was a little shy of giving it full throttle. The slothful 'cooing-doves' did there usual late entry and continued long into the morning.

I lay in bed thinking - Now, if this were back in the village, the noise would be so loud that I would be fully awake and not half and half.

And, off went the thoughts on walkabout to Shakespeare, morning chorus and dawn.

First to mind for me is always A Midsummer Nights Dream.

Puck warns Oberon of the approach of daylight with, "Fairy King, attend and mark, I do hear the morning lark."

Which I find strange, as it is rarely the lark I hear first: But I don't live in England.

Certainly the chorus starts with a few tentative voices - quite high (and very unlike the Nightingale - so yar-boo-sucks to Juliet). Then builds to a most impressive mix and volume.

This happens in darkness (which most townies don't know because they are still asleep) several minutes before the first light creeps into the sky. And that gives the lie, by the way, to the idea that Oberon and his Kingdom can play in the sunlight: Earlier, Puck has mentioned the rise into the sky of Venus, the morning (and evening) star. This happens a good time before the sky gets light, and it is the signal for the Dark Spirits to disappear into their graves - the remaining Spirits can still hang around, but not face full sunlight. As soon as the grey sky shows sign of the sun rising, off they jolly well go.

Which brings me to the idea of dawn.

There are distinct stages to the morning awaking of the Sun and arrival of the day.

The first sign is Venus. The star appears as the Sun approches (it is a planet close to the sun so is always associated with it). It is a very bright star and has a mixed reputation in a number of cultures - the Romanians call it Lucaferul (bit of a strong sex drive with him) and of course the planet is the goddess of love, Venus in other western cultures. It disappears last from the lightening sky as the other 'candles' burn down a little more quickly.

The star is though, silent. No one can hear it - so you only know about it if you are awake in the night - it is a sign to lovers and shepherds (it is always so cold in the morning that the Shepherd wakes early). Romeo is familiar with it.

Around the same time, the temperature drops (if it is a clear sky - and if you are seeing the stars, it is). The dew drops with it. Everything gets wet (I'll go on about this another time).

Then the birds join in - the chickens (and village dogs) are regular noise makers throughtout the night and their use as a clock is quite inexplicable to me. Maybe it is their regularity of their noise that has them marking the hours rather than signals of change.

It is still dark but the length of time left in darkness is now marked- barely half an hour and the sky will have lightened enough for people to get up and start work.

“And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks.” [Love’s Labour’s Lost – V, 2]

Too damn right - get out of bed, get some breakfast and get to work.

The human country side starts with the light, and ends with it too.

By the time the lazy sun heaves itself over the horizon, a good period of light has gone by. When I am back in the village, it is a time to work - not too hot and the flies haven't got up yet. I will see the local cowherd go by with all the village cows, and many of the foresters will be up and on their way long before the Sun rises.

Ever must it have been, until Industrialisation.