Brando, Collins and El Prat

Just about the most irritating film version of Julius Caesar (out of a pretty poor bunch) is the one (ill)staring Marlon Brando.

The deadly thing is his accent - his "British" accent. Sensibly, most of the Americans in the film keep their accents over the other side of the Atlantic leaving the genuine Brits to this side.

Not Brando - the method gets hold, the real Antony is to be found in a British Accent, so a British Accent he has to have!

It is a faultless British Accent too - not a sound out of place - as rigidly coiffured as Brando's greasy black hair.

And as false and dead.

It is too real - too correct - faultless and, so, faulty.

Real living Brits don't sound like that - the idiosyncrasies and foibles of the individual are missing. It tries so hard to be British it ends up an unintentional caricature. Not 'Allo Allo' caricature - that's funny because it is intentional - and is as much the English laughing at their own inability with languages as anything else. More a bad Elvis impersonator caricature – the costume white and sparkling, the gyrations all there, the exact copy of the voice – all lifeless.

I get the same feeling about 'Woman in White'. I'm up to the end of the lawyer's narrative.

It's very worthy, very realistic - checked for factual accuracy by a genuine lawyer - and as dead as the proverbial extinct bird.

Take Sir Percival Glyde, for example. We’re given lots of little details intended to bring a roundness and verisimilitude to the character – his balding head, his worn face, his tender, affectionate behaviour with Laura, his directness over the business of the letter – every sort of detail you would wish!

What’s the mantra of junior school teachers about character?

“You know a character by what he says, what others say about him, how he dresses, what he does and what he doesn’t do.”

It’s all there for Glyde. Nothing, so far, though really brings his character life. It’s just too correct.

And what is his character? The bad-man; the impostor: The beautiful, attractive gentleman everyone is in love with – he’s an Elf from ‘Lords and Ladies’!

In that book you don’t have to ask the question why people fall for the ‘Fair Ones’ – it is magic, they just do – and it takes a coven of exceptional “old prunes” to see through to the reality behind the mask. All the other characters fall for the attraction.

In Woman in White, the problem seems to be that in attempting to be realistic you have to give realistic reasons for people’s belief and faith in the ‘Attractive One’. No magic allowed (unlike in ‘Gothic’).

But Collins has spent a lot of his energies making sure none of his characters is actually attracted to Glyde. They all see through him – even the couldn’t-care-less uncle is aware of a problem.

And he doesn’t give the reader anything to say I understand why people fall for this man’s charms.

He’s wearing a black cowboy hat for goodness sake!

Little Grey Cells

I was watching an Agatha Christy DVD - one of the Poirot stories Granada filmed with the excellent David Suchet playing the pear-shaped, little detective - when one of the characters read out the description of the death of Socrates from Plato.

Suddenly the similarity of Mistress Quickly's description of the Death of Falstaff struck.

I'd never registered the similarities before (although I possibly had read about it).

Why now?

I suspect it had something to do with the performance - the fact that I had heard an actor deliver the description, and that Dame Judy Dench's delivery of the Shakespeare had lodged very firmly in 'd' little grey cells'.

Was it tone of voice, or manner of delivery?

I don't know - but if it struck me, sat in front of a t.v. in provincial Hungary, how much more quickly it would have struck the audience in Shakespeare's London - not just used to listening more carefully, but primed in the classics.

What was Shakespeare up to with the connection?

Two diametrically opposed possibilities pop into my mind.

Either:

Shakespeare is suggesting that Falstaff, like Socrates, has to be 'killed-off' for perverting the youth of the nation - that it is a judicial action on behalf of the authorities (not to mention the playwright) to rid itself of a rotten apple before the whole basket is useless;

Or:

Shakespeare is making it very clear that Falstaff has died a death undeserved and the authorities really should be elevating him to the pantheon of greats for the service he has done in educating the young of the nation in the realities of the world - just like Socrates.

And then that really irritating habit of thought Shakespeare had of 'negative capability' kicks in - you just know he meant both at the same time.

Both Socrates and Falstaff will be remembered long into the future - and the youth of nations not yet formed will admire the disgraceful lack of respect for constituted authority they both have in abundance.

And the rediculousness of comparing the 'great philosopher' with the 'tub of lard' will stick in the minds of the older and wiser.

Framed Again

" Theseus and Hippolyta are, as it were, a splendid frame for the picture; they take no part in the action, but surround it with a stately pomp."


That Shakespeare knew Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, especially the Knight's Tale, is certain; after all, The Two Noble Kinsmen is a reworking of that tale.

But there are echoes of the opening of the same tale in the opening of A Midsummer Nights Dream - Theseus wedding Hippolyta, "with muchel glory and greet solempnitee." (The 'stately pomp' of our Victorian commentator's 'splendid frame'.)

There is also talk of the battle they fought.

The names of certain characters, Theseus, Hippolyta, Philostrate come from the Knight's Tale and all appear and are named in the first few moments of the play.

If the Duke and his Amazon 'frame' the action of the play, they do so in a way which connects with a wider world - it is a frame which links to other frames and the pictures they contain. We have a gallery of images Shakespeare is willing to make reference to.

Shakespeare is invoking the Knight's Tale.

To do this, he must have been certain that at least some of his audience knew the work of Chaucer - and knew it well enough to recognise it quickly from the brief sketch he draws in the opening 24 lines.

But the connections seem to stop there: A Midsummer Nights Dream is a comedy with a happy ending; The Knight's Tale and The Two Noble Kinsmen are much darker, some would say tragic, stories with death and blighted love much to the forefront.

So, what is Shakespeare up to?

One thing I think he is doing is reminding his audience, from the outset, of this darker alternative to his happy ending - a sort of momento mori.

In The Knight's Tale, two friends end up loving the same woman and fight to the death for love of her: In A Midsummer Nights Dream, two friends almost end up doing the same thing. Without the alternative of The Knight's Tale ending, the Dream's ending is blunted.

If the border between Comedy and Tragedy is a knife edge, then this knife has been hoisted in the air and there is a dirty great chasm below it ready for someone to fall into.

When Theseus returns and finds the sleeping lovers, we are again reminded of Chaucer's Tale. Chaucer has Theseus and Ipolyta out hunting (and delighting in his hounds) when he comes across the two 'Noble Kinsmen' preparing to fight to the death; Shakespeare has the two lovers, who have spent the last part of the night before trying to fight each other, asleep. They will wake to a resolution worked by the 'magic' of the flower, but it is a resolution - the two kinsmen go on to fight until one is killed.

To know the Chaucer is to give an added depth to the Shakespeare who is framing his own Dream in the Knight's Tale.

But he doesn't stop there - he sticks another 'picture reference' into this frame - Ovid's Love Story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Remember, it is a gallery we are working in!

And here the twist is to bring 'Death' onto the stage and laugh at it. We cannot do this until we have finished with the 'action' contained within the picture, it can only be done in the frame.

There is a lot of milage in thinking about Theseus and Hipolyta as a frame to the action of the play, but it is a frame which does a lot more than provide a decorative container - it is the the conection with the outside world, it is the introduction to themes worked within the picture and it is the 'frame' on which the picture is stretched.

Framed

Another idea of merit from the Victorian article, at least at first glance, is the use of the metaphor of Theseus and Hippolyta as a 'splendid frame'.

Normally we seperate the play into the world of the wood and the city - and that has merit too - but Hippolyta and Theseus, like all the human characters, move out of the city into the wood. Theseus and his soon-to-be bride have gone into the wood to do 'observance' prior to their marriage. They then intended 'to get in a bit of hunting'. The speration of town and country is not quite so rigid as is frequently made out.

The idea of a frame, something which contains and limits (the idea here is of a rather ornate, Victorian picture frame), beautiful in itself, but which 'sets off' the contents, is interesting.

What is it that Theseus and Hippolyta have, are or represent that makes them suitable as a framework? One concept given to us is that of 'stately pomp': The frame is obviously covered in gold leaf.

Certainly the opening of the play would suggest such pomp - costumes in the Globe would be sumptuous for such figures as the hero and his 'Amazon', and the lovers and Egeus are aristocrates. Strict Elizabethan dress conventions would establish instantly for the audience exacly who and where these people were - courtiers in an urban, public place. Music would accompany the progress.

The After-the-wedding celebrations fit this pattern too - up to a point.

Conspicuous wealth on conspicuous show, something the Victorians understood.

However, this splendid frame gets a little disjointed - the mechanicals work their way into the wedding celebrations bringing with them a distincly tarnished patina and a danger of ugliness and ignorance. Almost a gargoyl on the cathedral wall (to crash quickly into another metaphor - the same way Shakespeare does by putting the mechanical's performance where he does).

And there are other twinges of doubt about the integrity of the frame - Hippolyta and Theseus don't quite seem to see eye-to-eye on a couple of issues: Her silence at the start of the play, after Egeus enters, 'speaks volumes' - so much so that Theseus has to ask, "What cheer my love?"

Their discussion of the role of imagination before the newly weds enter also smacks of disagreement, however civilized.

It is almost as if the frame also carries the themes of the contained picture, in a much more constrained way, but still complementary - not a neutral plain wood, but an active ornate, shallow carved but distinct piece of arabesque work?

So far I have concentrated on the constraining effect of the frame, but a frame also acts as a transition from the outside to the inside.

But more of that next post.

Once Upon A Time . . .

... this is how people thought about and responded to Shakespeare's plays.

Reading some of the 'out of copyright' criticism increasingly available on the web can be rewarding, in a perverse sort of way. I find the Historical Perspective fascinating as much as for what it reveals about the thoughts and ideas of the time of writing as for what it says about the plays themselves. That is not to say that the best of them is without insight - good criticism lasts through the ages as well as good play texts.

However, most of the reviews and opinions I have read from the past function more as a goad to stimulate my own response - and as a warning that contemporary views are as 'time-embedded' as those of previous generations.

This extract on A Midsummer Nights Dream from "The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol 13' of 1906, for example:

http://playshakespeare.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=146#146

Reading the first two paragraphs reminds us that this now very popular and respected play was held in less regard in Times Past. The author felt the need to justify giving the same dignity to The Dream as was given to The Tempest.

He (I assume, given the date, a he) links the two plays as, 'both under the influence of a wonderful world of spirits' - which is in itself, quite telling.

Would I describe the likes of Oberon and Titania as spirits?

I think not.

To me it seems the compounding of the (Super) Natural world of The Dream with the artifice-book-magic world of The Tempest is to make a fundamental mistake.

Oberon and Titania are powerful embodiments of forces in Nature - their arguments lead to massive shifts in the balance of the seasons, causing untold (if hinted at) harm to the lives of ordinary people. Their 'stage' is the whole world - shifting from India to Ancient Athens, and then on around the Globe. They are under the control of no man - but condescend to bless the mortal marriage beds. Part of Titania's punishment is to be enthralled to that basest of creatures, the common working man.

In contrast, the spirits (and here I think the word is appropriate) in The Tempest , principally Ariel, are much weaker, superficial stuff. They create illusions through theatrical trickery requiring the use of book, props and costume - much more ciphers from an allegory than characters. They are bound to a human magician of dubious morality whose 'art' is barely strong enough to control a small Mediterranean island.

Shakespeare was not revisiting 'the wonderful world of spirits' when he wrote The Tempest, he was creating something very different from the elemental forces let loose in the earlier play.

The Dream is about imagination, a human talent: For the Elizabethans, God given.

The Tempest is about illusion - theatrical illusion principally, but also deceit and double dealing in the very real world, where it becomes a human failing.

In the third paragraph we really see what is, to my eyes, limiting our Victorian commentator.

Here, he uses some very interesting words to conjure up the 'fairy world'. His talk is of 'colours...of clear transparency'; 'variegated fabric...blown away with a breath'; elegant pieces of arabesque'; 'little genii'. The stuff of wallpaper and interior decoration.

This is the sweet cloying vision of 'Tinkerbelle' from Peter Pan, of photographs of lace winged fairies at the bottom of the garden, the Romantic Fairies of Celtic Revival, and modern garden furniture - Only one step away from moony pulling garden gnomes.

Sentimental, not fearsome. Amusing, but without any depth.

At worst, these are naughty children, with the innocent jealousies of those 'tender' in years.

After all, they 'sport childishly,' don't they?

Their passions are only, 'ideal dreams,' aren't they?

And this vision of spirits and naughty innocence is taken on wholeheartedly - to the extent that the very structure of the play becomes an 'ingenious and lucky accident'. and everything is, 'lightly and happily interwoven'.

Make no mistake, it is a potent vision: In countless junior school classrooms all over England, A Midsummer Nights Dream is still given this 'light' treatment, and is used to introduce Shakespeare to children far too inexperienced to see through it.

I am tempted to say it is the worst crime perpetrated against any piece of literature in the whole sorry history of the well intentioned ignorance we call, 'Getting an Education'.


Another part of the problem originates in the standards, expectations and limitations of theatrical productions of the time.

In the popular theatre, the Proscenium Arch dominated; design was driven by the two dimensional, framed, stage picture - and realism was 'God'. No wonder then that The Tempest found favour - thriving on illusion - whilst The Dream was relegated to a sub-sublime, if not standard, entertainment - the play requires an audience to use its imagination, and that is not the audience's prerogative any longer.

To give 'life' to Victorian fairies, you needed small people - children, preferably female, and able to do a few steps of ballet - in pretty dresses, with lace wings on wire frames. Whole forests needed to appear on stage, real rabbits needed to hop between the trees.

It is The Dream with Mendelssohn's music, and all imagination stripped away.

Fantasy as entertainment and distraction. Look at the illusion, forget the words.

How different from the bare stage, all male productions of the Globe Theatre: Words create here; the texts 'work on your imaginary forces' to bring the forest, the city, the magic itself into that home of dreams, your own mind.

And it is a text which, to the Elizabethan audience, in this most entertaining of plays, raises serious issues: What is the importance of harmony in marriage, in society, in life? What role does our imagination play in the search for truth? If we 'sleep on it', how do our dreams operate to make the morning, 'wiser than the night'?

But this is not our theatrical Fairy World either - bare stages have returned, via Brecht, and the 'serious' theatrical is once again more word orientated.

Our dreams though are constructed in a post-Freudian, post-Jungian mish-mash of sub-consciousness and symbolism. Sex is once more released, and Shakespeare has become our contemporary.

Fairies are no more real to us than to the Victorians - they are a theatrical device. And marriages are not expected to last, divorce is the norm, and extra-marital relations mere entertainments.

But our fairies have regained and are regaining more of their power - climate change and balance in Nature is an issue.

Thrown Snake Skins and Lords and Ladies

Hot as it was last week (back home in Romania), I was doing some digging, preparing a bed for sowing over-wintering broad beans, when I came across a thrown snake skin.

That in itself is not unusual (we have lots of snakes on the small-holding and I am quite happy about that - they keep the rodent population down and do no harm to the plants - and it is always thrilling when one comes gliding up onto the balcony to give a quick once over to the outdoor kitchen), but this was a complete skin rather than a fragment.

I suspect it was recently cast.

Looking at it I thought of the lines Oberon delivers in A Midsummer Nights Dream.

And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

It was beautifully 'enamalled', the reflecting sheen of light suggesting rainbows and brittle glazes: I could easily imagine a rare and expensive cloak made of this material wrapped around some not-so-delicate beauty parading the cat walks of Milan or London.

But however beautiful, it is still a strange item to choose to wrap anything in. Humans generally regard snakes, at best, with suspicion, if not downright hostility. They have associations with evil (certainly in Christian/Muslim/Judaic based cultures). Hypnotic maybe, but to deceive - the snake in the grass. "All the joy of the worm."

The reptilian head and the dragonish scales, all still visible on this thrown skin.

Why does Shakespeare give Oberon this particular image to say?

Whatever the Victorian Romantics and children's book writers have done to fairy myths, 'The Fair Ones' (sorry, stealing a Pratchett construction there) must have been a potent force in the lives of ordinary, country dwelling people at one time.

And that force was not benign innocence: Look at Puck, at his "jolly" antics - leading people off the road at night to get them lost; pulling people through briars (most modern town dwellers really have no idea of how awful it is to find yourself in a briar patch); getting a horse sexually excited to laugh at its enormous errection and frustration; making an old woman fall over by shifting the stool from under her (again, no National Health Service, or hospitals - a broken bone could leave you crippled and in pain, for life).

Fairies are part of the natural world, and the 'Natural World' is not governed by systems of morality.

Oberon's snake skin is a beautiful thing - and a dark reminder of the true nature of the world in which he lived.

One of the things Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies catches for me is this world of cruelty hidden behind the glamour and excitement of what was once called 'the high life' - a world most ordinary people read about through rose coloured glasses on the pages of daily papers, glossy magazines (snake skin enamal?) and the never ending chain of chat shows.

Degas and the Wax Dancer

Sleepless, hot and bothered, somewhere around 2 am, I got up and caught a BBC "Educational".

Broadcast when no one is awake - and almost certainly unwatched apart from the occasional insomniac - these programmes are frequently the best things shown in any 24 hour period. A few months ago I discovered David Hockney talking about how the Rennaisance artists used the 'camara obscurer' to create their ever increasing realism. Goodness, mechanical reproduction and not genius draftsmanship!

Last night there was a programme on Degas and his "14 year old Ballet Dancer".

Like most people who "know " and have seen the sculpture, I assumed the bronze images were authentic. After all, the last one sold went for millions (highest ever price paid in Europe for a piece of sculpture at the time).

How wrong.

Degas never wanted a bronze making of the work - it was his heirs who made a very quick buck by turning over the wax original to a German foundary and getting bronzes cast.

Not only that, the original wax then went through a period of unloved obscurity - stuck in some basement and not heard of until the late 1990's.

Now, considering this was the first sculpture Degas ever made - the first he exhibited, - a piece he refused to sell and kept with him in his studio for the rest of his life, rather a shock really.

Not only that, but the interpretation we now put on the work is very different from the original response of critics at the time.

She's young, she's ugly (made deliberately more ape-like by Degas) she has low morals, (the real dancer probably ended up a thief and a prostitute - as her older sister did, although unlike her younger sister who went on to become a respected teacher at the Ballet School).

She was exhibited originally in a glass case, among portraits of criminals - including two teenage murderers (who also got the atavistic treatment by Degas).

The place she worked as a dancer (The Paris Opera) furnished a special, luxurious gallery where older, respectable, middle-class, married men could meet the girls - and remember she is only 14 - and gave them the opportunity to watch the dancers in rehearsal (remember all those men watching the female form in Degas's paintings and chalks!).

Nowadays she has been bronzed over, postcarded and turned into something quite different - as the programme showed, aspiring young balletrinas now regullarly get sent postcards of Degas's dancer as an inspiration - no hint of the original in it.

Her look of ugly boredom has become intense concentration: No longer a sex object, she has become a female form: The real, preserved in wax, clothing has been half bronzed over, polished art.

The glass case and original companions have gone too, as has the story of the real model.

The shock has simply become sweet.

I am reminded of another 14 year old creation, Juliet. She too has undergone a transition in the minds of the observer - she too has been turned respectable. The emotionally uncontrolled, suicide, neglected by her parents, an object for sale to the most respectable bidder, has become the symbol of true love.

Sheakespeare, like Degas, created something "we" find too unpalatable - so we twist his intentions, make the meaning different and stuff the original in some dusty, damp cellar hoping it stays there and doesn't raise too many questions.

Shakespeare and the Whales

The Sainted Greer (bbke) in her SHAKESPEARE, A Very Short Introduction, makes a couple of very interesting points (actually, more big, round, black circles than points). The recent debate over the rights and wrongs of Whaling - and the reaction of both the public and media (or at least the media I have access to) brought these points quite strongly into focus for me.

King Lear is a play very much about the relationship between (wo)Man and Nature. Lear, in the arrogance of his some-time-power, at first attempts to control and give orders to the goddess, Nature. He is "ignored" and experiences a sharp descent through madness to a realisation of Humankind's true position in the natural world.

Three quotes summerise, quite nicely, the point:

1) While human beings use the word (nature) to indicate a loose bundle of properties of which they are in favour, and characterize the abhorent as 'unnatural', they in fact invoke a power which is profoundly indifferent to them.

2) (re: Edmund and Edgar) Both are aware that the realm of nature is profoundly indifferent to the fate of any single species, let alone any individual.

3) The goddess Nature is an amoral pagan personification, her laws harsh and ineluctable. Disabused human nature, on the other hand, is our best resource,our best corrective for the cruelty and inequality of the human condition.

Where does this leave us - human beings?

Well, there is a suggestion that our assumptions about the preservation of species and the environment - our arrogant convictions of our own importance (as guardians of the planet) are as futile as Lear's - in reality we do nothing of significance. We might think what we do is 'destroy' or 'preserve' "Nature" - but we simply play with individual species and give inflated value to individuals which are in reality of no signifficance.

The classification of Whale hunting as immoral is an example of an 'abhorent' practice many people fall into the trap of judging as against Nature. Too many are unwilling to contemplate the realities of life in the sea - although they occassionaly get glimpses, as in the David Attenborough (bbbs) Natural History series: Remember the Killer Whale pod hunting and killing the Whale calf? It was painful to watch, and difficult to accept. The time frame was hours - and the only reason for hunting and killing was to eat a small part of the animal. Can we define such an action as either unnatural of immoral? Or what of the Killer Whales hunting seals for sport?

And David Attenborough (bbbs) himself admits that the full horrors (and impact) of chimps hunting, ripping apart, and eating another monkey were left on the cuttingroom floor - the television audience wouldn't like to see the truth. Yet it is many of the same people who will condemn hunting Whales as unnatural and immoral: Their eyes and minds remain closed to Nature's indifference.

Few would argue that the extinction of the aids virus, or smallpox,or bird flu would be immoral on the grounds of decreasing the variety of life forms on the earth. We give money in order to promote the extinction of these life forms, and criticise our governments when they don't do enough to remove them from the face of the earth.

But, to Nature, what is the difference between Smallpox and Blue Whales?

And what if no species ever became extinct? The romantics I am sure would love the dinosaurs to be still roaming (in suitable reserves) - but what would have happened to the mammals if the dinosaurs hadn't become extinct?

Surely it is time to disabuse ourselves of our true position in Nature - and accept that there is no importance with regard to "Nature" in anything we do?

Shylock and Fagin

So much of what we think Shakespeare "means" is locked in 19th Century interpretations and culture, that we sometimes take it as truth.

Perhaps the biggest problem of The Merchant of Venice is the percieved anti-semitism of the play.

There are certainly anti-jewish feelings expressed by characters in the play, but does this make the play anti-semitic?


I think not - and it is something that has had me puzzled for a number of years - ever since I first read the play back in the 1970's. I read it as an attack on anti-semitism much more than an attack on Jewishness: I found Antonio a very unsympathetic character, and Jessica a dishonest and wasteful child.

Then I started reading about the play and watching performances which set up a tension with my initial view.

Recently I have become more convinced that my initial reaction is closer to that of Shakespeare's time (see the post below on Shylock and Shakespeare's Dad).

What if Shakespeare's England was a lot less anti-semitic than it is given credit for? How could this be and how could its reputation be tarnished? And what about the term itself: Anti-semitic?

We cannot (nor should we) forget events of the last century - this has stained our view of anti-semitism: But it is not the sort of anti-jewish feelings expressed or even felt in Elizabethan England. The Queen, Elizabeth, had a Portugese Jewish doctor (thinking about the idea of Hitler having a German Jewish doctor puts this into perspective).

The very concept of race has far less relevance too: Nationality and Religion were far more important. 'Semitic' is a race - it carries biological and time consequences -you cannot change your race. You can both choose and change your religion, and national alligences change too.

Hebrew was a respected language - the language of the Old Testament and taught in Oxford and Cambridge: The Church in England read, every Sunday, from the Old Testament. The Kings of the Jews were held up as examples of virtue and strength.

A world very far from the deep anti-semitism frequently credited to Elizabethan England.

If we turn to the Victorian period we find a very different situation. (Race has been faught over in parliament, Evolution is an issue - and Darwin is about to deliver On the Origin of Species.)

Fagin, as rabid an anti-semitic portrait as you will find in serious literature, exposes just how the world has changed.

It is the picture published of Fagin we think of when we turn to Shylock: And the writings and performances of the play of this time which have coloured our view of the play.

What are the consequences for the play's meaning if Elizabethan England were more as I picture it?

Most important for me is the character of Shylock. He is not a hero (is anybody in this play?). He has faults - but these faults lie not in what he is but what he does.

For me, Shylock's biggest fault is the thirst for revenge: Like Hamlet.

I have a Dream

Queen Mab

Over on "Such Shakespeare Stuff" Mr D. points out that he knows of a High School Teacher who misses out the Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet.

After the resultant apoplectic fit, resource to alchol abuse was made and I am now 'Ready to Rant'.

Size is everything

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
(1.4.54-5)

A couple of points here - she is small (and, consequently, one thinks insignificant). But she is a Midwife - a bringer-in of new life, an agent - and one frequently associated in Shakespeare's time with traditional healing and magic (Old Women are all witches).

Her effect is significant.

Why does Shakespeare introduce this idea just before Romeo and Juliet meet?

Well, how does Queen Mab work - and what does she work on? What is the nature of the things that she delivers into the world?

And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;

O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies straight,

O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,

O’er ladies ‘ lips, who straight on kisses dream,

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,

Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:

etc

Notice that she provokes people to produce dreams of things that they are already concerned with.

The first reference has to be directly aimed at Romeo - and the audience I am sure would pick this up quickly. he is the 'lover' (think of his behaviour earlier in the play).

Then Mercutio moves on to other 'types'.

It is as if Mab delivers into their dreams their wishes: The courtsies of the courtier are to do with power and influence; The lawyer with money; the ladies with kisses

(BOING! - what do R&J do soon after this?).

But they are all venial - very much of the Real World: With money, with fighting, with sex. And there is a great sense of corruption - the blisters on the lips of the beauties, and their bad breath.

Shakespeare is giving us a context in which to view what happens next. The ideals and dreams of Romeo and Juliet have been given an underpinning by this speech - what they do is 'unreal' and consequently doomed to fail. This failure is not induced by malevolent stars - it comes from their own desires. Mab, like the witches in Macbeth, can not harm the pure: She can only work on the already corrupt.

Her State

Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders’ legs,

The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,

The traces of the smallest spider’s web,

The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,

Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,

Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,

Not so big as a round little worm

Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;

Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut

Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,

Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.

And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers’ brains, . . .

(If for no other reason than the beauty of these lines, this speech should be taught.)

And now we enter the world of the fairies - spiders and grasshoppers, worms and grubs.

Notice the yuk factor? Spiders weaving webs, grasshoppers eating harvests, worms and grubs feasting on dead meat (including human bodies). There is the good old foreshadowing going on - but that is to belittle the power of this - much like the worm in Blake's 'Oh Rose'.

A momento mori if ever I saw one - and after death, you must face your maker - what shape will Romeo and Juliet be in I wonder?

It also links us to A Midsummer Night's Dream. There there are elements of equal power given equal illustration - I naturally go to Titania's Speech (see earlier entries of mine) - another one cut in modern productions.

And Hamlet's father's ghost - presaging disaster and possibly sent by dark powers to corrupt Hamlet.

Even the RSC http://www.rsc.org.uk/romeo/learning/mab.html fail to give appropriate weight to this much misunderstood, but essential part of the play.

Romantic Reversals

The trouble with Romeo and Juliet is that no one understands it.

(Apart from me of course.)

I blame Goethe.

That little exercise in putting Faust back into the meeting of Romeo and Juliet prodded me to think about what happened to Faust when the nasty, Romantic German got his hands on the story: He gave it a happy ending.

Because of Faust's love of a woman, he is saved from hell.

They then did the same to Shakespeare - Romeo, well down in the hottest pit of Hell, gets yanked up to heaven - just because he loved Juliet and she loved him.

From being a good educational tool warning the youth of Shakespeare's day to keep a grip on their urges, Goethe and his like turn the whole thing "arse over tit" and killing yourself comes into fashion.

And that led onto to Wagner!

Shakespeare, why couldn't you stay a nice English provincial?

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.

and One woMan Plays Many Parts

I was watching 'As Time Goes By' on the Beeb last night and dear old Dame Judy set me thinking about the connection between Actors (notice the big A) and their roles.

I've been in the audience for a number of Judy Dench's live performances and seen countless filmed performances both on the big and small screens. I can't think of a single one I have not enjoyed. The fact that she is in something is enough of a recommendation for me to watch it. I am not the only one: She is perhaps the biggest draw on the West End stage.

Last week I got my hands on Henry V, where she plays Mistress Quickly (stunningly well, by the way). Her Lady Macbeth was definitive. There were other great Shakespeare performances and a magnificent Lady Bracknell (on stage).

What do we experience when we see her perform?

How much is her, and how much the script?

I suspect her justifiable fame is due to an ability to be 'Everywoman'. There is something within her which allows her to access those elements of personality and character which are constants and then to communicate these elements to an audience. She manages to make us social creatures - to care for another human, to think about their actions and to respond to the situation s/he finds him/herself in.

But there is a division to be found in these characters.

We talk of Judy Dench's Lady Macbeth or of her Sally Bowles (Yes, long before Lisa made the role hers, Judy did it on stage). There are alternative interpretations, not from the same actress, but from other people. It gives a certain flexibility to our view of the character - it allows us to seperate the character out from the human being in a way.

When we watch her in something like As Time Goes By, she is the character, Jane - our image is of the character as a part of the human, as in some way a part of her, Judy Dench. There is no alternative. If we watch it again, it is still the same person.

Not only that, the character, Jane, becomes a part of her which is in contrast with other parts which are her: Like in A Fine Romance where she plays another character in a situation comedy.

Which brings me to an interesting point.

One of the great shifts in audience perceptions must have happened shortly after Shakespeare left the King's Men and his death. Up 'til then, all the great roles had been written for a single actor to play - and a great many of the minor roles for specific actors too.

When you saw Macbeth on stage, he was always played by the actor who played Macbeth: Lady Macbeth would be the same boy, Banquo, the same, etc. These characters were aspects of a real man.

Not only that, Macbeth would be played by the same actor as Hamlet. And possibly the same actor as Shylock. These characters were aspects of one man - not alternative possible interpretations - but actual elements of a real human.

Lady Macbeth was Ophelia, was Cleopatra. These characters are elements of Everywoman.

We lost something when other actors started to take on the roles - something I think is key to understanding Shakespeare's scripts:

Each man in his time plays many parts.

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.

Shylock and Shakespeare's Dad

When Shakespeare was a child, his father (John) was taken to court and had to pay a fine for money lending. (He had leant 100 pounds at 20 percent interest - and made a whopping 20 pounds profit: Remember, you could buy a good house for 50 pounds in those days. The fine was only 40 shillings - that still left Mr John S. with 18 pounds profit. That is usury to the uniformed.)

Shylock is a money lender.

The arguement is frequently made that, because Shylock lends money, he is un-Christian and bad: The reality of the times was frequent (if not essential) use of money lenders: Is Shakespeare's play really condemning Shylock for money lending?

In the London of his day, Shakespeare must have been in daily contact with merchants and money lenders (most would have been English and Christian, like his father - some could have been Jewish) - what were they saying?

Because something is offically 'illegal' it doesn't mean people don't do it - one only had to leave the door of The Globe to bump into a prostitute (in fact, you didn't even need to leave the theatre but there might be delicate minds reading this and I don't want to upset them).

Shakespeare's father was also an elected member of his town council - an alderman - and this made him a Magistrate - someone handing out justice. (I'll return to this in another post.)

And a further law case against John Shakespeare involves him buying and selling wool illegaly. So he was a Merchant too. (And made an awful lot of money at it.)

Makes me think how positive a character Antonio really is - and how negative is Shylock?

Could there be a lot of Shakespeare's dad in the old Jew?

He Plays A Good Part . . .

My mother used to say that about people she'd seen on the television (early days when they had real live plays in wonderful black and white on one or other of the only two English t.v. channels).

Being a sophisticated young individual, I, of course, dismissed the idea of her ability to have a valid point of view as nonsense and out of the window went the comment. The play, after all, is the thing.

To reduce the art of acting to 'playing' and the serious work and effort that goes into the creation of a character - a believable, living entity - as a 'good part' revealed much more about my mother's limited education and sensibilites than critical insight.

Mistake, it came to haunt me latter on - and is still echoing.

Some years later, and rather a lot of years ago, I went to watch the film version of Hamlet, the one with Mel Gibson in it, in Manchester shortly after it was released. It was not the greatest of cinemas, but there was a bit of a queue: All young women there to watch Mel in HIS new film.

Women just like my mother - Mel plays a good part so we will go and watch him in his new film.

My intellectual arrogance bristled. Shakespeare's character, Hamlet, his great play, Hamlet, were all more to the forefront of my mature world view than a mere Australian/American actor.

It turned out that they were a much better audience than most I have been in for Hamlet.

First, they didn't know the story (believe me, they did not know the ending). As the rapid sequence of deaths at the end of the play occured - there were gasps of shock, and squeals. All the way through the audience had been very attentive - following events for the first time. (Incidentally, a complement to the film - the language was not a barrier.)

Second, they had no respect for Shakespeare (if anything, the opposite had been ingrained by years of enduring the poor bugger's 'easier' texts thrust down their throats in not too good schools). No preconceptions about great art; no need to sit in respectful silence as the immortal words washed over them.

In effect, they actually 'enjoyed' the film. Mel, of course, played a good part!

Few members of the audience in modern Britain can come out of a production of Hamlet and say they enjoyed it - that they didn't find parts of it boring, if not the whole of it. For the most part they will be students studying the text, or older people who have studied it. The freshness has staled.

I suspect we go to the theatre (serious theatre that is) far too often with the idea of cutting another notch in our cultural record - it is good, so we are good.

It is a pity there aren't a lot more Mel Gibson fans out there.

An interesting thought came to mind on the way to work this morning:

What about a production of the Merchant of Venice, set in Jerusalem, with Shylock as a Muslim and the Christians as Jews? This I hope would play to a mixed audience, and preferably tour and play in several 'hot spots'.

Certainly that would give a perspective on the play which could be closer to the original than many more recent productuions which attempt to excuse rather than understand the play.

Public Performances

So much of the debate about Shakespeare (who he was, what he thought, what he meant) would disappear in a cloud of smelly smoke if people would only remember he was writing plays for Public Performance in Elizabethan/Jacobean England.

The words would have been said in front of a live audience – so what do we think the audience was like?

Well, it was mixed: socially, gender, and almost certainly, religiously: Shakespeare knew he had some Catholics in the audience – he quite possibly had Jews too. Race? Recent research suggests there was a black community in London – some of whom were free servants – the sort of people quite likely to be seen amongst the groundlings. But their being in the audience is pushing what we know a little. Foreigners – we know they were there –a number of pieces of evidence for the theatre’s very existence is from documents provided by foreigners.

His plays were performed at court – in front of the Queen/King – the Protestant King/Queen of England – and an audience of courtiers, ambassadors and servants – who undoubtedly were mixed to varying degrees (for goodness sake, politics is a lot more pragmatic than we like to believe).

In the audience, both at court and in public, would have been the ’thought police’ of the time – Walsingham’s spies in Elizabeth’s reign – looking for evidence of subversion and attempts to undermine the state.

There would have been ’serious’ Protestants – very sensitive (and knowledgeable) to the inclusion of Catholic doctrine. Some of these would have been converts from Catholicism – so knew Catholic doctrine inside out.

It was an audience that was used to listening to serious issues debated – to the rhetoric of the Protestant pulpit, to the debates, for those who went to school, over the meanings of words and actions, of the application of thoughts from the Latin and Greek masters: Above all else, to plays which presented issues and ideas for thought and contemplation – and arguement – and which expected an actively thinking audience.

This is in stark contrast to what we find today in the usual audiences in cinemas and theatres, or in front of the television.

So, how the (beep, beep, beep) could Shakespeare have hoped to ’hide’ in the plays anything like secret Catholic – or any other - sentiments?

The unsaintly Greer (bbke): The propoganda possibilities of the theatre were enormous, as both secular and religious authorities were aware. (pg. 26, SHAKESPEARE A Very Short Introduction).

There had been a long line of anti-catholic propoganda plays – which, of course, contain Catholic doctrine and elements: This does not make them secret supports of the Catholic church – they are included to ’put down’ the very things they show.

By Shakespeare’s time, the more blatent use of the theatre for propoganda purposes had shifted – partly because the plays had done their job, partly because the threat of a Spanish/Catholic invasion had faded.

Now, let us think about the ghost in Hamlet.

I have seen, several times, the arguement that this proves Shakespeare and his audience believed in purgatory: Therefore he was a Catholic.

No, Shakespeare expects most of his audience to think – this is a ghost – it says it has come from purgatory – there is no purgatory – therefore it is not telling the truth about itself.

Ah, I hear, but it does tell the truth, Hamlet’s father was killed by his uncle – the witches in Macbeth also tell the truth – for evil purposes. The truth is told by the ghost to lead Hamlet into damnation.

Modern audiences are doubtful about the ghost and it’s meaning: Greer (bbke) again: We no longer feel, as Shakespeare’s contemporaries did, the ubiquity of Satan, . . . (pg 56).

I am not a Christian and so have no personal ’axe to grind’ in this – but I do think an awful lot of hot air and wasted ink is generated, (and twisted meanings) by people trying to claim Shakespeare as supporters of their frequently limited views.

On being in the audience.

Bardseye did it again - dropped an aside which set my mind going - woke up at 2am this time with 'thoughts'.

In the far distant past, when I pretended to be a teacher, I used to try to get the idea of Shakespeare's audience across by comparing it to the average football crowd in the UK.
Just like the football crowd, most people stood. They could get unruly (or bloody riotus in fact) and were quite likely to throw things on the pitch, sorry, stage if they didn't like what they saw. Beer bottles and fruit.

All of this is sort of true - and certainly has become an orthodoxy amongst secondary school teachers.

Then, the New Globe opened.

I was very lucky to be amongst the first paying, public audience to stand and watch a performance in the almost completed theatre.

Yes, we stood - but it wasn't like watchig a football match. In the football game you are just watching - and at a distance too. The communication is physical gesture (like watching Ballet at the Bolshoi more than theatre). Your mind and emotions are engaged - but I am certain it is a different part of the brain from that used when listening to and watching a play.

The football is distinctly tribal - pack communication. In the theatre there is more a sense of variety - still of community but not the monolithic focus on one objective.

You don't sense the passing of time in the theatre, whereas, in football, time is essential - two halves, and 45min to 'kill' the enemy.

In the theatre you react with the actors - and in the Globe this is a very strong reaction - I stood at the front of the stage and caught the eyes of the actors many times - there is no darkness, it is played in daylight. The actors play to the audience, 'timing' is audience dependent. In football, the team can be lifted by cheers and supported by chants - but this is a very marked distance from what is happening in the globe.

Having been in that audience I fee lI know the importance of it to Shakespeare.

It is an equal partner in creating the meaning of the play. Shakespeare wrote to his audience - not in the way some modern soap opera writer would indulge them - but being very aware of what they knew, what they thought, of their diversity, rather than their uniformity.

Were there Jews in the audience for, The Merchant? Quite possibly. And black people amongst the groundlings for Othello? Modern historical research has located a number of black residents of Elizabethan London - so again, possible.

When a character 'addresses' the audience - what reaction is the actor expecting? The football crowd would not respond the same way, despite what I used to say, as the Globe audience.

This is not an issue of class, or even education - it is expectations and, I suggest, a different part of the brain in operation and focus.

I think differently when I look at a picture in an art gallery from looking at a stage set:

Have a look at this http://www.english.ltsn.ac.uk/designshake/design/audience.htm

A piece of dance constructs its meaning differently - I don't think of the dancer as a character, I focus on the movement/gesture. I am always aware of the falseness in the job of the actor - yes disbelief is sort of suspended - or rather, immitation is accepted.

Hamlet constantly breaks down the falseness - he reminds you of the theatre, he tells you he is only an actor. He talks to ME when I am in the audience.

Which links back to bardseye's blog: http://bardseyeviewblog.blogspot.com/

Errrr tea time, and a strong one coming up.

bardseyeview: Shakespeare and Judaism

bardseyeview: Shakespeare and Judaism

Another view on Shylock well worth taking into consideration.