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OK found Pericles printing history in a document full of strange typos talking about a text with strange typos.
But that got me thinking about our Shakespeare process week and memorising lines and how do actors do it. I know for me there’s a slavish adherence to the exact words on the paper.
Followed by the doing it with text in hand, wherein the text in hand becomes a safety blanket. Finally there is that horrible moment of release of paper support and into full fledged vocalising the text from memory.
Once the initial fear is conquered and the text is fully in place and use, and all the extra little bits between text and performance have been played with, I wonder what all the fuss was about. Then a new piece of text has to be learned and poof! the fear returns. It’s a bizarre ritual and one that working actors know and deal with constantly.
Believe me some texts I’ve memorised were forgotten as soon as the director said, OK it’s a wrap. If not as soon as said and take 1 up to 20 was captured. As recently happened on a 2 minute continuous non-editable take with many bits of business, spitting farmer and spewing market woman and a very well behaved chicken.
At the Sh process week I asked other actors about this and they agreed about the weirdness of that moment as you pass from not knowing to knowing your lines.
After all we were watching one another do it. The feeling seems to be the same, the methods of memorising radically different. But is their any real fail-proof method that eliminates that fear of letting go of the paper?
And again your lines aren’t just delivered alone. The other actors on the stage need your lines to deliver their own. Depending on your fellow actor for the correct cue is vital to the whole show. Play can only move forward if you fully know your lines.
It can be done without fully knowing your lines, or approximately knowing them. For example a member of our comedy cover group (not a professional actor) always has his lines secreted about his person: a crib sheet of what follows what. Invariably it fails him as fool-proof method. But they are always there.
Of course it’s a fear I so understand. I’m not alone in hating to learn text. It’s great once you know it but that learning and letting go thing gets me every time. Sir Laurence Olivier always had a prompter in the wings when he was on. Marlon Brando used to have his text stuck all over the set.
The prompter has existed since Shakespeare’s time. Would we could know more about this most inscrutable and immutable person. It might put an end to that old canard of Elizabethan acting and the actors with their prodigious memories.
A running argument between Ben and myself is what I consider to be the impossibility of putting on a show like Lear or Cymbeline overnight or even within 3 days. Lines slotted in like the Players in Hamlet, no problem. But a whole new play? They had fines in place for coming drunk to rehearsals!
And yet this faith is defended. Patrick Tucker’s OSC made it clear that this is possible, but only to the level of amateur theatre at least in Mark Rylance’s eyes. And in this argument I’ll take the thesps word for a thousand.
Which is a non-sequitur, as Ben is an actor. Last night I did another gig with the CCG. Three of the four other players are amateur players and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense. But professional actors have had the necessary training that allows them to work together in telling a story. Actors always need fellow players. Yet they’re in it for themselves.
An actor always lies. And if they’re good they are honest and truthful in the telling of those lies. The Puritan preachers weren’t wrong about the world in and around the theatre. Drugs, drinking and wild times are the way many actors work out the silly energy that arrives after a show. I re-stress, it cannot have been different for an Elizabethan actor. (No Betty Ford clinics then though).
And yet many of them were church going types as well. The Actors Church in London dates from the mid 17thC. The Actor’s Church at Covent Garden is one of those little enclaves in London City, where for a moment 21stC time stops and history comes rushing in.
Back to the future, Dan our director in the process runs a theatre group out of there. His normal working process was being, in this new for him too process, disturbed. Nine voices chiming in on the text and interpretation and meaning, trying to coax out ways of dealing with these words, stresses and pauses. Sorry I keep regurgitating impressions of this process but I guess that’s part of it.
On a side and end note I live in Amsterdam and daily I’m reminded of the history of Europe back to the 17thC when Dutchman and Englishman supped together in the Mermaid Tavern. The Humanist thinking of then lives still. We’ve had Spinoza since our Will, who had his Montaigne.
Sh’s plays reek of humanism. In the sense of we’re human and will collapse under the right kind of pressure, even if in the face of all certainty, we’ll win. Or think we will. Opposition is the key.
Today in class:
Scene- Virgin 17 year old girl about to give it up to her boyfriend she saw kissing another girl.
the exercise:
If he makes you smile, slap him.
Why?
Just do it. See what happens.
Instantly 2 actors start to work a scene that before was hackneyed and cliched. Presence arrives and a doorway to a final performance is opened. At least one hopes that’s the case. They might forget everything and jolly themselves off with their old bag o tricks.
Obviously an exercise like this only works in a rehearsal situation. And I’m not advocating Californification jaw punch or Jersey Shore bitch slap either. The actors agree to the level of abuse that’s happening to them, if they accept it all. Young actors are usually in good physical shape and can take a beating and literally throw themselves into their parts and the exercises leading up to that part.
That’s the other thing about theatre. It’s all fake. The poisoned, stabbed, eye-gouged actor undergoes the exact same ritual the next night, afternoon, whenever. What qualifies a person to speak of something is the having done it. These are my observations from repeatedly doing it. Ergo actors are liars and fakes. But that’s not a bad thing.
And some of them are really good looking and others are really charismatic, charming and coool. Most aren’t. They just do. They can be depended on to do it as necessary. Ride a horse. Of course. Fly a plane. Open hearts. I do it all for the part.
…Passion in Pieces: a Shakesperger sufferer’s review of the last week.
To get to 3 Mills in East London, (where the Thames tidal waters have ebbed and flowed for centuries) from Primrose Hill in North London, (a hilly vantage point overseeing London City), is a pleasant commute at 8am whether in weekday crush or weekend alternative service. If passion lies at journey’s end.
The week long, 2 zone Oyster card allows travel underground in a tube from Chalk Farm to Bank, where you switch to the Hammersmith line alighting refreshed at Bromley on Bow.
A short walk past Tesco’s (Iconic British supermarket) brings you to the bridge over the tidal water that fed England’s oldest tidal Mills. The swans have been bobbing up and down on it for centuries.
Nowadays it’s a studio complex for TV Film and Musicals. You approach the security gate through a cobbled lane and all week some set builders were slowly recreating a turn of the 20thC burnt-out betting-shop. It was a process we observed arriving at 9:30 and leaving anywhere between 6-8pm, whilst on our way to embattle ourselves in our own processes.
We few, we lucky few, nine actors (6 boys and 3 girls) varying in age and experience re-approaching the plays of 2 gents and Makkers chiefly, through the First Folio, specifying Act 2: Scenes 2-4. At least that was the original plan.
First day as you can imagine we got to know and started to grow together. The morning was spent doing games, lots of fun games, that demand listening and spatial awareness and contact with your fellow player. There are photos here of our stick walking game.
And in the afternoon we toyed with extracts from Macbeth: ‘I have done the deed’ to ‘a foolish thought’ (act 2 sc 2) and from Hamlet ‘Who’s there?’ to ‘Well good night’ (act 1 sc 1), which showed everyone capable of the task of acting.
The second day we did our sonnets guided by Ben. OK we, some of us, indulged in tears in our sonnet session, but they were honest tears. And as I often say, ‘Catharsis is our business.’
Just like the tears of Launce over his dog, which was the prose piece I wanted to work on. I had sonnet 81 btw. The others chosen were sonnets 153, two times 116, a 130, 98, 29, and 2 others I shame facedly don’t remember.
Dan our director took over from Ben introducing metrical structure and close text analysis. Complete turn around from the emo-fest of the sonnet discoveries. Suddenly we were discussing stress in Folio lines.
Counting syllables. Deciding if the last syllable was stressed or unstressed. Assigning +1’s or +2’s with a circle for stressed, without for unstressed. Alternatively the line could be short, as in -4 or -6. Then what do you do with the pause? Maybe the line is joined to the next person’s line to make up a regular verse line?
If you’ve never encountered close textual analysis (and there is no safe-text with Sh) and the terminology that goes with it it can be confusing, as Jazz our youngest member was finding out.
SO didactic moment, with dum being stressed, let’s review here:
iambic = da dum
trochee = dum da
spondee = dum dum
phyrric = da da
anapest = da da dum
dactylic = dum da da
Dan then assigned roles and we all thought to be playing them on day 6. At least the program told us so. The speed we were working and the connections we were making made me think anyway it’d be a piece o’ piss. As much so I told Ben that night when he was reviewing the day.
Fuelled by the necessary smoke and alcohol the question of ELizabethan actors supposedly prodigious memories and lightning speed at putting on new plays was struggled with.
I believe human nature hasn’t changed that much and don’t believe in this magical overnight learning of say Othello and staging it with actors only knowing three words of the line before they speak. Blocking and prop handling alone requires some form of rehearsal.
For example there was a system of fines in place for Elizabethan actors for being late or showing up drunk. Ergo thesps just like their modern counterparts. The human urge to get blottoed is relevant to history. The idealistic cant of religion and politics dealing with the body politic is the stuff of stuffed shirts; like Polonius precepts to Laertes.
The third day we set to the scenes in earnest, en masse, en groupe. Don’t believe the reading? Get in and do it better. Show us how we might do it. The group mind quickly starts to work together and readings were found and discoveries made, without all the business being added which is irrelevant to the text.
Business is often clearly meant to stroke the performers ego in some unconscious way. The added breaths and sighs that need to colour the word instead of start the action. The emo-wash of lurv when talking of love. Or the antithetical laughter when direst cruelty’s being talked of. All from the purpose of playing.
Processes never run how you want them to. A plan is good, preparation is essential, both were seemingly in place, at least all the pieces were. Any process, like the building of the set, takes teamwork to accomplish. Each has their role, each must do their work to the orders given.
BTW the chief set builder and set designer isn’t normally considered a genius by the crew. They do their job and get paid for it. Their own individual passion for set building is subordinate to the process. It is unspoken except among set buidlers who presumably understand the heart-ache and back-break their job entails.
But actors are not set builders. Our craft lay locked in lines published in a Folio in 1623. We were attempting to find out if there is a truth and honesty of delivery that lies hidden within the metrical structure. Not a fixed methodical unearthing of a definitive reading, but places where the actor reading those words had space for choices, be they physical, emotional, or psychological.
Day 4 we worked on Launce’s speech for about 3 hours in our by now trusted forum method. Finally cracking it’s weird syntax and punctuation. SH’s early experimentation with metre is no less intriguing than his later verse. Julia and Proteus were next, the SIlvia, Valentine, Speed and Thurio scene followed. And the day ended with the Porter speech from Makkers.
Day 5 The shit hit the fan when Ben realised the whole process going to the dogs with actors focusing on lines and worrying about costumes for the next day’s performance.
Day 6 back on track afternoon day before. who knows what speech may be done? Audience wandered and participated in our close analysis of each other’s speehes. Michael Dobson a costume maker another sh thesp who’d auditioned for Hamlet that week. The RED camera. The recordings of speeches and sonnets.
The camera crew following us the entire time. The diary cam. The process ended. The maroccan restaurant and a 237 pound bill. Buying Don receiving Ian WIlson and the ginger twat behind me on the plane. Followed home by a Ginge. Wanted to spaff him.
Finally I must mention two books that accompanied my process. Don Paterson’s Reading Sh’s Sonnets. Donny Donny Donny we so need to talk… Feckin brilliantly combative book. Very Scottish, very refreshing, like Iron Bru burps, or salt and vinegar sniffed from a bag of chips. (Scottish chips from a cormer chippy, big bag o spuds in your paw) Like sherry and blue cheese are his explanations of his craft, poetry and the actual writing of it.
Don is by admission not an Oxfordian, which made him a perfect antidote to the other book, Sh & the Rigidniks. Bobby G’s sparring partners have let their bile on him for some 10 years now and Bob has a self-developed psychology when looking at their arguments. Whereas the only blood in Don’s book drips from the Sonnets, in Bob’s it’s coagulate gore of a thousand internet battles in heatedly contested forums. Playing virtual assassination and annihilation with the Anti-Sh zombies who haunt them.
I’m reading Don’s book like he wrote it, so I’m not finished yet. I now own a copy and gave Ben back his advance copy’s ownership The get to it any moment I can in any state I’m in ethos is how Don, and me too, imagines Sh worked on his sonnets. Btw as Don reminds us Sh’s time was his own in which to suffer, if his sonnets are indeed autobiographical and his own.
Don takes them as poems written by a poet. Therefore ripe for his criticism, because after all who reads them but him, a fellow poet . And Shakespeare is the only gay in the village and obviously queer as folk.Tthough Don to his credit has gay friends and also mates he wouldn’t dream of writing 126 love sonnets to.
Let us acknowledge in Don’s defence, he knows from practical experience; the spark of inspiration, the felicitous phrase sent from above, the sheer solipsism of the task and most importantly the tricks of the trade.
Don assumes the mantle of Will’s historically distant colleague and the poor beleaguered sonnet is scorned and mocked in argument, tenor, and vehicle.
He poo-poos scholars and acdemics and equally praises them if he thinks they have done right or kinda agree with him. He’s an equal opportunity hater, dourie rather.
And he’s not just confined to Sh. His knowledge of poetry far outwieghs my own. But there is no reason to be dismayed at his attitude. Don claims it as his own; admitting it in his introduction’s concluding sentences.
Don sparked new levels of debate between Ben and I each evening after the process. He was my’ let off steam’ pipe for better or for worse. Only Shakesperger’s actors will talk Sh after performing his words all day. Precious comes to mind. (I see my love and syndrome).
This last week I’ve been laughing out loud, rotflmao, giggling, gasping, even hmmm-ing at things learned and hawing ‘see i told ya’s’ when we on occasion agreed. (Sonnet 145, 153 and 154. 3 second rule, golden ratio, numerical ingrained punnery in ordering. light touch for reading stresses) to name some of our overlapping convictions.
But a real review of Don requires an own post, when it were done. Still got that Sh Secret novel dealing with the North American Frontier Sh going on somewhere.
Bob Grumman’s excellent book outlines the Rigidnik (his word) Anti-Stratfordian view and highlights evidence for Sh wet supposedly sane minds admit, and the arguments against the same.Then the Anit-Sh claims and counter claims are dealt with in the same manner. Each listed, combatted and commented upon. It too deserves it’s own post, and a fair reading of all its argument, so peace. This is vanity press at its best.
….time to take stock.
I think when it comes to Shakespeare I may suffer from a mild fom of Aspergers syndrome.
All I seek is companionship in appreciating Will, but people get really weird when this subject arises. They either know too much. Or not enough. And I always intend to find out which.
My reaction is to treat them as an equal in knowledge, both trivial and weighty. That is when discussing Sh in social situations I tend to ignore others’ desperate attempts and true desire to escape, and/or run away scooping out their own eyeballs. (I’ll pluck thee out vile jellies)!
Where Sh is the subject, I lack empathy to allow them to bow out gracefully. Ignore their attempts to steer the conversation elsewhere. Once you get me started on Shakespeare. Ba da bing! Billy knows best.
And I want worthy opponents too. I don’t care if they’re bloggers, world famous actors or scholars. My take is as good as theirs. So what they have directed movies of his plays, or played the lead parts, or published the length of my arm.
I’ll sound the depths of yours and my ignorance. I love all the processes of Sh. So I hunt the sources down and question wherever I can. Like the barnyard dog, Brendan Behan described in Borstal Boy, ‘I’ll run a stretch of the road with anyone’.
That said i like to talk Sh with people who by their own admission, know nothing. To talk about the dangers of becoming too identified with the biography question first off. Trying to rely on a middle path, a ‘let’s keep it real’ quotient, when we’re dealing with authorship theories.
The Other candidates will live on as all conspiracies live on: shrouded in mysterious suggestion and that confused gut instinct that something really is rotten in the state of Denmark. (‘Back and to the left’ is stil unresolved for my taste).
But they will live on further, as mere conspiracies, not proofs. Theirs’ is yet to be proven. And likely never will be. And yes I’ll admit I’m wrong flat out, if it be so. The readiness is all. I’m ready, bring it on.
If you follow my scribblings you’ll know I also have ‘small Lacan and less Foucault’. That is I don’t like the other theories either, the scholarly ones. (the link takes you to Graham the Good’s ‘The Hegemony of Theory’ essay you must needs read).
I don’t deny them, or ignore them. Unfortunately you have to be versed in them, or you’d miss out on understanding many papers given at lecture, symposium, or colloquum. And you wouldn’t want that.
Mine is not a pretentious Bardolatry. It’s a blood, sweat and tears reality Shakespeare. That he cried is certain, how-when-where-why he cried is uncertain, and certainly unknowable.
I’m looking for a real person, despite the whole construct that is “Shakespeare” surrounding him. How do i know my construct is real and not mere fiction? I don’t, but it suits me fine.
The fine threads of life that flow through the verse and prose are purposely wrought to hide the author’s hand and emphasise th character’s needs. And that in Tragedy or Comedy.
Today’s post started whilst making a welcome message to new members on the FB blog group page.
That FB page is where I am every day like a little Shakespergeran mini-Reuters; passing on little tidbits about W. Sh. via alert, tweet, newspaper, radio, cinema, TV, or blog.
It deals with everything related to him from the early modern to the post modern. Some of it is real, some of it fake. All of it is open for discussion.
The next few weeks we will switch servers and consolidate the website, blog, and FB page into one whole, so you can navigate freely between them all.
The FB page serves as an outlet for the quotidian SH stuff. (We intend to database and categorise what we have until now too).
The blog remains the repository for my squelchings and squealings. (Heaven only knows why you would still be reading at this point).
The website focuses on the Sonnets. (both to read and to hear).
So we generate a wee shakespeare portal, doon which ye may go a-sliding and a-porting!
Welcome to all the new members. We’re now at 231 according to the mildly fluctuating FB counter.
I wanted then to add: Some of you I know, and love talking with on occasion one on one. Others I don’t know. No matter, welcome one and all.
The first 154 of you are officers of the blog and as such are required to record and upload your sonnet to the FB page at some point before you die.
The 15 or so who have done so have permission to die anytime they choose. But may I say I hope each of you outlive olive trees.
The people I know are real. We’ve kept in touch and visited and dined and wined and talked and hugged our hellos and goodbyes. And I love my friends because they are the first to tell me if I’m being a donk. (You can vary the vowel and consonant in the last word to form other words).
FB, or any of the plethora of alternatives, are great aggregator’s for companions past and present. Before that technology made young Zuckerberg a trazillionaire, we had i-chat and email, fax for funky drawings, telephone if needs be, carrier pigeon if absolutely necessary, postcard for wishing you were here, cassette tape with fave music for that one special love, telegram for weddings and obits, and morse code for that really secret thing we had at sea.
All these have allowed us to keep our friendships alive across continents in my lifetime. I have 250-ish friends on FB. We have one thing in common: we’re friends on FB. Paradoxically some of them are complete strangers in real life.
FB is the tool. We are the content. I met a dutch comic a month or so ago in Amsterdam and he commented, (what else)
‘We zijn FB matties.
We’re FB buddies.’
High five and that’s it.
Ja leuk. as the Dutch might say.
No film or scan or jpeg or appropriation of such in any of the media used in this medium can ever duplicate or replicate the original drawing, song, play, sonnet. And so it is with Shakespeare.
And his works work like an encyclopaedia of life because he causes the reader to reflect back on his or herself, so perpetuating his art by creating anew through you.
Shakespeare lived. The contents of his mind however it worked are in his works; and they deal with the extremes of emotions and passions and the executions of those.
The sick horror of real life execution by beheading for example, has until now in History remained a constant. Ergo personal fear at the thought or sight of beheading. Both now as in Sh’s time a real, unsubstantiated until it happens, human fear.
‘Take this (points to head) from this (points to body), if this be not so.’
Oppressed and imprisoned man lives today as in the past. Each has embraced Shakespeare: the one in post-colonial theory, the other in Prison drama programs.
And it’s all real yet unsubstantial thought kept in electronic numerical packages. One wicked electrical intergalactic storm and it’s game over internet. Extinguishing the voice primed by the medium.
The first Global community of minds in History, silenced by Nature. Is space nature btw?
Fake and genuine are relative terms here in cyberspace. The web is the mirror held up to the nature of man’s mind. As violent and sexual as the outside world has always been; an inner world has always nurtured it. Nature may well outlive it.
‘What a piece of work is a man?’
What I do love about the peeps that I know, is being able to pick up where we last left off, when we (big smile) meet again. Some people in life seem to function like plug-ins for your blog. Only for your personality then. Oh Lord, the moderator is gushing Shakespergerically.
He hasn’t noticed your blank stare, the fact that you clicked away, way before this foolish line. Hi my name is WIlliam and I’m a Shakespergeran…
….I can safely say is an Oxfordian. And his authorship Truth is in the Sonnets. Reason enough to profile him and see what he has to say. This blog has a FB group page and this last few day’s pastime has been chasing Mr H.S. around the web seeing what he is up to. I just added a loong comment under one of the links and realised it would be better as a post.
I get my news through Google alerts and whenever i follow the link to any scholarship or popular film, there is H. First in the comments list. Not exactly soliciting followers, as much as admonishing those who accept the historical record, as we know it. After having studied and questioned it. Damned if my studies weren’t wrong, or unimaginably prejudiced by the scholarly voices i cared to hear.
Occasionally another sort of slippery shark appears to tag-team their proselytising, and bloody the waters as much as they can. Chum dispersed and finished with the list of unanswerable questions, they move on to the next fool who dares to question the truth that is to be revealed and accepted.
I’m unsure of the ethics of this post in that H.will of course read this and i don’t mean this personally. I take it merely as a topic to be poked and prodded until it reveals its true nature. The authorship question has an essential nature. It’s disbelief in our natural candidate.
For that reason I will offer no evidence for my beliefs, outside the already oft stated few I can muster. And I will provide no evidence for H. candidate, whom I shall call the Master.
Whatever way you look on it the stars shone favourably on Shakespeare, even if he is beyond proof or spoof shown not to be shakespeare.
Imagine the headlines:
Glover’s boy from Stratford CONS University, Historical, Literary, and Theatrical Worlds for Centuries.
‘ I was an utter Muppet,’ said Will in a quote from a weegie board this week in a thick cockney accent.
‘Total numbnuts. i could barely tie my own shoes is how thick i was. But look at what i accomplished eh? Property owner, Landed Gentleman, Every one at Court thinking I could write. Fooled the lot!
Not bad for a Glover’s lad from Stratford. ‘Course Dickie Field help me keep up the pretense on the wordy bits and was an excellent frontman for the 2 poems. Bit racy and sold way better than I expected.
The Burbages arranged everyfink Fee-atrical of course. Emphasis on the fee. I was a perfect foil and they knew it. They ‘ad good connections with the Earl of Leicester, and he loved the Master.
I look back on my life and i think who needs Posterity, gimme Prosperity!
Oi Ben, make mine a double and put a brolly in it!’
But back to H. I find H. to be true and consistent in his arguings.
To me he represents the attitude of a learned opponent, in that H. seems to have done some reading. This reading is his alone and the fruits thereof are filtered through a prism, which H. spent many years arriving at.
If we present a fact. H. necessarily has to twist that fact in his interpretation. And present what seems to be a contradictory example, which in turn pans out to be fool’s gold. It glitters and is attractive but turns out to be worthless metal.
If agument is jewellery, we show different taste. His naturally the Crown jewels, Ours a simple thick gold earring.
We question the conclusions that H. draws.
H. responds with vigour, venom, and vituperation to our arguments.
H. suggests we haven’t read enough, have misread what we’ve read, or have ignored obvious biographical clues in literary works.
H. rhetorical flourishes are indeed like reading biographical criticism (a new genre methinks) by flashes of lightning. One moment he towers above, the next insidiously holds hands, like Richard 3rd begging Lady Anne to go kill herself.
H. is kinda the Jesuit missionary of Oxfordianism. (if i offend any Jesuits i thought it an apt comparison) H. goes forth unto the new media frontiers of the internet and searches every single site that mentions Shakespeare.
Then H. judges whether it is sinning in the true story and prepares his poison to pollute the well. Always the same poison; dosages vary according to his humour. Mostly it ends in a list of questions that we need to answer. We question his questions. H. elicits a rhetorical emo-surge on how perverted the argument has become.
H. is not alone. Despite small numbers, Globally they can be found in schools or groups. But the variation and difference there means they and future students graduate with degrees that vary from slightly to hugely, in the degree of acceptance as to who of the 100+ candidates it actually is. Quo Vadis Shakespeare?
The mantra falls like a shroud and the scriptwriter (what’s his name again)? and the real glory winning Emmerichs of the world make (we hope) a kick-ass movie, and suddenly everywhere and forever after the MANTRA sounds:
The Stratford Man it ain’t, cain’t possibly be.
See, there the room for a reasonable doubt!
Ok 2 clunking feminine lines in the motto to show the disturbed and emotional nature of the argument. But to throw in a cliche of our day when all’s said and done, the neck shot to the acclaimed Stratford Man has NOT yet been given. All evidence is circumstantial and circular, for thine and mine. But mine is given as the one.
Conspiracy theories are actually, Why Shakspere can’t be Shakespeare theories.
BUT why should your candidate be Sh?
Where was the benefit to him?
Why should Oxford have wished to write for anonymity?
It makes no sense given his personality. Some esoteric conspiracy about the birth of English literature is unacceptable as evidence why. Same goes for theories positing Rosy cheeked Bacon and Poor Kit Marlowe..
Does this make me smug? Who calls me smug? Ha? Superior? to what? My knowledge trumps your knowledge? We’re right, You’re wrong?
There is nothing i can say. Nothing I can prove. SO i have to ridicule and laugh. Or go insane.
BTW H. and others the comments for this blog are turned off. Too many cialis etc type comments. Not out of cowardice for a response. Besides we’ve argued those responses to no avail elsewhere. A couple of links if you’re interested:
Calit Review of Contested Will
and this one at Time Out London.
…says the blurb on the back of the book. And I have to agree. Mamet-ian in his no-nonsense approach to the Bard’s writings. Louis Fantasia (what a great name) wastes very little time on versification, poetic devices and rhetorical terms and mentions Iambic Pentameter twice! That’s it.
Taking as contrast Peter Hall’s book ‘ Sh’s Advice to the players’ we are given a historical portrayal of verse through the centuries. Hall himself was taught by William Poel, who in turn taught Granville Barker, who traces back to Betterton, and the Republican Interregnum and Restoration kills the direct line to the man himself.
Louis is a lot looser with canonizing Shakespeare. He wasn’t impressed by Sh until he had seen Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood. For him, the Sh. acting tradition had become the ‘banging of swords’. That’s the moment stage combat starts, and all suspension of disbelief is out the window.
But then he met Sam Wanamaker, way back when the Globe was still a dream. Sam enlisted Louis to the cause and Louis took to his brief.
His technique he tells us fits on 2 index cards:
The first card had two columns:
Nouns
Verbs
I/Thou
adj./adv.
rep. for breath
I. About
II. Tune
III. Texture
IV. End
and a line of code- “u-/u-/u-/u-/u-/” -at the bottom, while the second card said:
why, etc.??
followed by a long squiggly line, and below that:
order/disorder/rebellion-yes? no?-2nd order.
And that is Instant Shakespeare!
Obviously each note gets a chapter and Louis quickly sucks you into bringing a 2 dimensional set of words on a page into a 3 dimensional onstage presence.
The Shakespeare paradigm is this:
Why does this particular character say these particular words, in this particular order, at this particular moment?
He states that four levels of discovery are necessary for the blueprint of performance:
1. Know what the individual words really mean (dialogue).
2. Know where the play is going (structure).
3. Know the rhythm and sense of the line (character).
4. Know what the play is about (the central event).
The first section of this book gives you the tools and techniques needed to acquire these four levels of knowledge. The second section teaches you how to apply them to performance.
He introduces the idea of 5 frog overlays, like dissection sheets in biology class. Applying each layer will lead you to successful verse speaking.
1. Make the nouns sound like what they mean.
2. Push the verbs.
3. Leave the adjectives and adverbs alone.
4. Play the I/Thou and I/It relationships
5. Repunctuate for breath.
Obviously this last point shows Louis’ non-affinity towards editors. Like Peter Hall, he suggests you strip a speech of punctuation and using the stress system he’s laid out you re-punctuate for your sense of the line.
He’s also an adherent of the idea that Sh’s audience came to hear a play not see it. Unlike Sir Peter Hall he doesn’t believe Sh’s language will be unintelligible in fifty years.
He also believes impulse precedes language; and is the heartbeat of a performance. (Talking with a 3D modeller friend yesterday, he said too that preparation of an action, e.g. jumping, is one of the 12 basic principles of animation).
Louis’ take on the authorship question is two-fold: the first concerns the identity (he’s a default Stratfordian, but essentially agnostic on the issue). The second is more politically sensitive, i.e. late 20thC theories (basically he considers them to be non-essential to his method and beware actors don’t limit themselves).
His final chapters deal with his philosophy of Training and Perfomance. Here he opposes
the realism of the past, with its assumptions about the beauty and universal meaning of Shakespearean language and style.
With essentialism of the present, which holds that a being’s ultimate reality, its essence, lies only in what is perceptible to the senses. Here, image, body language, and movement take precedence over speech.
Essentialist Shakespeare is physical and sensory; a Sh of athletics, “empty spaces”, and unifying images. It is often political, with a Marxist or populist bent. It is intent on liberating Sh from the assumed tyranny of the British upper classes.
His plea results in a new nominalism.
First, my neo-nominalism means that “Shakespeare,” “tragedy,” “comedy,” “Hamlet,” “Desdemona,”- or their essential qualities- do not preexist in some pure state; that a real or essential Shakespeare cannot be inferred. If the words are to be more than just sound without meaning (flatus vocis), their agreed-upon meaning must be made concrete only at the moment they come into existence.
And indeed as he says his neo-nominalism logically extended would lead to the death of the Shakespeare industry. Which would mean he’d be out of a job! Except for those productions he himself felt required to do to say something urgent and immediate.
His final foray into philosophy invokes George Steiner’s work about Real Presences and the ontological sensibility.
Presence is the elusive ability of people, places, and things to imprint our lives and leave us transformed.
Is the audience simply observing the actions of the character, or speculating about the whys and wherefores of the character? Create characters that leave a lingering imprint on your audience.
To do this an ontological sensibility is needed.
Ontology is the study of being. An actor on a stage exists on one level of being; the character that actor portrays is a second level; the author behind that character is a third level. The purpose is to fill the plays with beings who linger. It cannot be commanded, ordered up, or even taught. It can be valued, invoked, and wished for.
There are 3 prerequisite levels of presence:
1. The presence of the self.
2. The presence of the character.
3. The presence of the author.
And the prequisite conditions of presence in performance:
1. The text must be significant.
2. The characters must be touched.
3. The actor must be available.
Presence in performance resonates with the audience only when the actor stands with their character and faces the abyss of conditionality, the abyss of “as if.”
As Louis says at the begininng of his book there are no experts, including him. That said there are passionate people with a gift for bringing understanding to an actor or student. It’s also helpful that they are comprehensive in their subject matter.
There’s an underlying sense that Louis Fantasia doesn’t really think the Globe experiment worked. Partly because the Globe measurements don’t match the mathematical precision of the Byrom templates. And partly because of architectural requirements of the 21stC don’t match those of the 16thC. (e.g. handicap access, public restrooms, fireproofing and crowd control).
He also sees the philosophical difference: with Elizabethans being metaphysical and linguistic and us post-moderns as literal and visual.
In closing he stresses that
there are no experts in Shakespeare. Each of us, if we read intelligently and without fear, has the right to our own Shakespeare. There is no authority that can place the seal of authenticity on Shakespeare. Each of the many institutions and individuals who produce, edit, and play Shakespeare offers only an interpretation of a constantly challenging and changing text.
His first ‘unfortunate encounters’ are changed to ‘happy accidents’ and ‘success is not always an accurate barometer of authenticity.’
Louis Fantasia’s Instant Shakespeare is besides being an instant methodology, almost a cautionary tale of getting in too deep into Shakespeare studies. The central message seems to be: stick with the plays and that line by line, and you’ll be alright. Hopefully.
…first impressions.
The Bellot Mountjoy suit research he did kicks butt! Loads of little insights into everyday events that may or may not have been transformed into imagery and conceit.
i looked for the way the Jacobean lawyers who wrote the depositions spelled Shakespeare, and it was in each case Shakespeare; though others and SH himself spelt his name differently.
Meaning others thought of him as a Theatre practioner (writer and actor). Nobody questioned how he spelled his name. They knew who he was. He was treated with respect, one of only two Gentlemen that were deposed.
The information on George Wilkins, minor playwright and big time pimp daddy, co-authored Pericles with Sh, was priceless. The chapter on how one could co-exist with the other: Sh with gentle and noble mind, Wilkins kicker of pregnant women, illustrates the utter oneness of the Theatre and the criminal world. And their difference as well as sameness.
SO maybe Oxford was like the Don Corleone of the Elizabethan Theatre scene? And further up the social scale is where the bigger ciminals were sitting composing in their spare time and playing the people like pawns in their play?
The depositions refer to Sh. as being of Stratford, and of his being a Gentleman. This whole Bellott Mountjoy case should be on line for everyone to read. Might be an idea for Nicholl’s publisher to sponsor. Now that’s scholarship and appropriate use of the medium. They’d sell more books that way!
SO, if you’ve read the book, do you think the writers hated the printers? He deals with that whole pirate publications and how the first quartos out were usually rip-offs before a better version got published, as with Q2 Hamlet. He also deals with how SH dealt with pirate publications and bad press. Others said, Leave it! He’s alright our WIll.
The apprentices hated the Foreigners that’s for sure. Racism hasn’t changed much. Sh’s stance on the French language and people, and being a stranger in a strange land is still haunting me. The fate of the Huguenots under constant threat for taking English jobs is much explored.
He was from Warwickshire and chose to be in London for 25-30 years. His brother Edmund is dealt with briefly. Edmund came to London to act, got bit parts, had a baby son who died and died himself in 1607. Edmund is buried at Southwark Cathedral in the morning with an extra tolling of the bells at a cost of 20 shillings or some such. Assumed is that WIll paid for it.
Cripplegate the area he lived in, whether due to a desire to escape the limelight or avoid the plague, was close to other writers just outside the city walls. Also he overlooked an Herbalists garden. Good choice WIll. We’ll post the link to the parish in which Silver Street was situated.
Really really impressed with Mr Nicholl’s depth of scholarship . I’ll take archival speculation over idle speculation anyday.
I’ll definitely get his book on Christopher Marlowe now. Hope he does a book about Vautrollier, Richard Field’s printer master.
Lost and Found in Translation:
A cultural history of translators and translating in Early Modern Europe. Peter Burke. Koninklijke Bibliotheek Lecture.
This post is based around the original and just goes to show how I interacted with it. Well worth reading only 22 pages long. Brilliant piece of scholarship and appreciation of the many questions raised by translation.
Shakespeare in the Bush is an anthropologist’s take on Hamlet. And Hamlet is the best SHakespeare play to follow in terms of its impact on the early modern audience that was Sh’s audience.
The Otherists in identifying Shakes seem to take one big slice of the Historical Elizabethan gateau and subject it to a microhistorical reading incorporating a whole lot of icing, which is sweet yet insubstantial. The raw ingredients for SHakespeare demand a full and intellectually stimulating curiousity for words and language.
He would have been aware that in his time English was at least 5th in ranking as a language to speak in, let alone compose poetry in. The diss about the English language applied to all true Englishmen (and Wimmin) no matter their placement on the social scale. If they had English hearts they felt it. The French knew us at Agincourt as ‘les fuck offs’.
Shakespeare knew French and not just un petit peu. La coude c’est quoi? ah oui, le Bilbo! Shakespeare knew accents and dialects. I know he heard Dutch and knew Dutch people. Archive scholar Leslie Hotson found him in a deal between Dutch, Lancashire and London men with the owner of the Mermaid Tavern. I think it was Sh’s friday nights that grew into the assembly of wits recorded many years later by Beaumont.
The French people he knew early on when he was a newbie to London worked for Thomas Vautrollier, the printer where Stratford neighbour and friend Richard Field worked for and then took over. This printing house printed works in classical and early modern languages. The people who worked there had to be multi-lingual. Language acquisition from this standpoint where all interests are more or less equal is a piece o.
But some say he could never have learned another language without having set foot in another country. But then explain how the Sovereign herself spoke 7 or 8 classical and early modern foreign languages without ever having set foot in Europe. Yes, she knew people of the language being taught either expert in the dead ones, or sprightly in the living. In a case of Latin being a living language like at the Vatican, Elizabeth met once Grainne O Malley, the Irish Pirate Queen, and they conversed in Latin.
So that rant on the non-impossibility of Sh’s gaining a second or third or heavens even a fourth other language over. Today’s blog is nicked (as noted above) in the form of notes i made before handing it back. This, I’ve top and tailed with my usual ramblings and voila, Viola, a shipwreck of a blog.
Language learning, and translation of any language to any other, demands making choices. The sonnet form had hit England through 2 of Henry VIII’s diplomats. So since then until Shakespeare arrived in London, many French sonnets had been translated and re- negotiated as poetic goods to be bartered and sold on the ear’s marketplace…
A negotiation of ideas and meanings.
De-contextualisation and re-contextualisation.
Svetlana Boym Untranslateable terms. Dictionary of?
eg Jesuits in China, Japan, India, Brazil and Paraguay.
(what is it about this country? Why Paraguay)?
5 questions:
What was being translated?
#1 the Bible into 51 languages.
#2 Imitatio Christi into 12 languages over 52 translations.
#3 Classics from Antiquity over 1000+ before 1600.
Plutarch was popularly translated into French by Jacques Amyot
Tacitus translated into Dutch by P.C. Hooft.
Some popular modern translations of the Early Modern Era were the Euchiridion of Erasmus, Luther, Calvin.
The Catechism by Italian jesuit Roberto Bellarmino translated into 40 languages, 17 of which lay outside Europe.
A play about the fall of the Ming Dynasty, ‘Zungchin’ by Vondel.
Books on Natural Philosophy by Gallileo, Newton, Robert Boyle.
Shakespeare was rarely translated before the middle of the 18thC.
What remained untranslated is also interesting. eg P.C. Hooft did a European history book up to the 17thC.
From which language into which language?
Ancient Greek to Latin composed many translations.
Greek and Latin into several vernaculars were more translated.
On the flip side many works were translated from European languages to Latin (the lingua france of European scholars and therefore the HTML of the time).
Religious and scientific books, histories, travel books, poems, plays and stories.
Other works of the imagination were translated into Latin.
eg Ariosto, della Porta, de Rojas, Dante, Spenser, Tasso, Brant, Dryden.
There was a relation between linguistic imports and exports.
Italy both exported and imported works from Spanish and French.
Scandinavia imported works from French, Italian, German.
Germans from Italian, Spanish, French and English.
Spain had very few imports.
The Czechs, Polish, Hungarian and Swedish all imported books in translation.
By whom were they being translated?
By collectives, teams and committees who worked by consensus on interpretation of the texts.
Especially where the Bible was concerned.
Eg Staten Bijbel NL
Authorised King James in Britain.
Gustav Vasa Bible in Sweden.
Kralicy Bible in Bohemia.
FInnish and Swedish translators took their translators from all over the country to ensure it was understood by all.
Most translators were amateurs and not professionals. They cover the gamut of occupations and interests with the majority being Clergy. Also lawyers, physicians, artists, connoisseurs, diplomats, nobility, women, emigres, Italian protestants, and Huguenots.
What were the intentions of the translators?
Obviously religious converts were the goal of many translations
Calvinist Internationals.
The Jesuits, (the fast growing militant missionary and educational arm of the Catholic Church), had a translation policy they adhered to.
The major publishing centres were Venice, Paris, Antwerp, and Amsterdam
Naturally 17thC governments kept a close watch on what was being published. Prominently Gustav Adolf of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia.
In what manner were the works translated?
This refers to the tactics and regime the translators used. There are different sets of rules and conventions for the 3 broadly defined periods:
Middle Ages Pre-1500
We don’t know much about this period when translation would have been confined to manuscript, and the reproduction a matter of copying by hand.
Early Modern 1500-1799
The advent of the printing press meant translations could be put into print runs and therefore made into a commodity. Translations were aimed at domesticating the text making it intelligible and relevant to the reader at the expense of its foreign qualities.
There was also a translating incidence from works not in their original language re-translated into another language.
eg Thomas North’s Plutarch (used by SHakespeare and his contemporaries printed by Vautrollier) was translated from the French by Jacques Amyot.
Jan Glazenmaker translated the Koran into Dutch from the French.
Translators often considered themselves as co-authors who abridged, amplified, and improved the texts. Or they would bowdlerize them, or tranpose events. Fidelity to the original was not high on their list of criteria.
Modern 1800-NOW
Translators emphasis now switched to ‘foreignizing’ or allowing the alien to be seen, or as Schleiermacher put it, ‘bringing the reader to the text’.
See Foucault’s model of Intellectual History.
CONCLUSIONS:
There were few translations from English prior to 1650.
The most popularly translated Early Modern languages were Italian, Spanish and French with German, Dutch and English trailing far behind. When foreigners did translate from English there were usually mitigating circumstances.
eg Genevieve Chappelain lived at the English Court.
She did a translation of Sidney’s Arcadia.
Jean Badouin translated Sidney and Bacon.
Jean Verneuilh wasat Magdalen College, Oxford.
Pierre de Mareuil who translated Milton was a Jesuit.
There is only one language that did make translations of English works prior to 1650- DUTCH!
Cornelis Sconeveld lists 641 works between 1600-1700.
The Dutch Short title catalogue lists 2000+ works in the 17thC.
Mostly these were of a religious nature.
Puritans such as William Perkins, Richard Baxter, Joseph Hall.
Quakers such as George Fox, William Penn.
Baptists such as John Bunyan.
Other secular works such as Sir Walter Raleigh’s Discovery of Guiana, Sidney’s Arcadia, Bacon’s Essays, Sir Thomas Browne’s meditations.
Shakespeare’s play ‘The Taming of a Shrew’ was translated into Dutch as De Dolle Bruyloft around 1640.
A known German prose translation of ‘Titus Andronicus’ appeared around 1620 and was probably creatively copied by the Dutch working class poet and playwright Jan Vos, aka de dichtende Glazenmaker (the poetry writing glass maker). The success of his play Aaron and Titus (1661) took the reigning Dutch rederijkers of the moment by surprise and they fell about weeping praise at his play.
It is also known that Hamlet was played on board an East India Company’s ship whilst anchored off Sierra Leone in 1607. By that time we had 2 published Quartos of Hamlet, with Q1 in 1603 and Q2 in 1604 . Which one got played?
Captin Keeling’s ship hosted the first recorded amateur performance of a Shakespearean play! JSTOR has a first page account here, and for those lucky enough to have a subscription, a whole account.
Hamlet also lived a life on the German Danish and Dutch stages but in another form by another author. But here our story ends.
I mean really. as Prince might say. You know what I’m talking about?
Stratford upon Avon was as remote from London as Canada is from Europe. He had a singular personality, a massive talent for renewing the old in his chosen field, he neither sought nor craved the limelight. All qualities POSSIBLY shared by Oor Wullie.
But the biggest factor for me is that he influenced the generation that followed him just as he broke away from the generation before him. Knowing some would not like what he did. Knowing some would and run with it.
Listen to him on the Art of the Piano.
If only we had this for Shakes on the Art of Verse Writing, hmmm?
Or this?
Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould.
Directed by Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont.
Now Playing in Canadian Theatres
Bravo! broadcast on March 29, 2010
“A must see film” – Variety
“Genius Within is the most complete portrait yet of this complex artist.”
– Peter Howell, Toronto Star
Intimately revealing the man behind the myth, Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould casts a fresh light on the mysterious artist whose ideas were as controversial, and his private life as passionate, as his music.
The film features never-before seen footage of Gould, photographs and excerpts from his private home recordings and diaries, plus personal memories from Gould’s most intimate friends and lovers, some who have never spoken about him publicly before.
Click here for updates: GG movie
…we seem to track the same columns. I can’t help myself. Must reply!
The last column I was at was a frenzied deniers’ fest of Baconians and Marlovians and Oxfordians all scrambling for the attention their cause can get. More power to ya.
But one of you please come up with some convincing proof. BTW there are other scholars and biographers that have written on Bacon, Marlowe and Oxford that don’t speculate their authorship of Shakespeare.
Heward et al (and that guy who keeps trying to sell the sonnet book by the Globe actor) You sell the Orksfordian schlock and me rudely contradicts, in favour of the true, acknowledged and veritable author (which word as you know was unknown in his day) one William Shagsbirds of Stratters on Avon.
First off it ain’t personal. I rebutt you so as to reach those others whose minds are undecided. To whom I say, Before they suck you in to clicking that link, buyer beware. Caveat emptor!
They have slick sellers of merchandise designed to convince. There is their own rhetoric and historically incorrect shorthand you must believe to fully be accepted into the fold. Their mantra is Shakespeare of Stratford was a dupe.
Doubt him, doubt him, Doubt!
(LONG RAMBLING REPLY follows, which they’ve learned to keep short, unless you ire them. Orksfordians bite, SHakespeareans hug).
History verifies Stratford Billy as having contact with the worlds of Patrons, Print, Public, Private, and Court theatre.
The only bit we don’t have proven to your satisfaction is writing. That could be because it was a private thing. But scholars have found evidence of collaboration with other playwrights. But I assume his Sonnets and narrative poems and epitaphs are his alone.
We can indeed only conjecture that a guy who worked for the leading theatre company of the day, who saw his 2 best selling narrative poems to and through the press (largely because of a schoolmate from Stratford that helped him) was actually selling his own works.
He also worked alongside the popular star of Eliza’s twilight years, Richard Burbage, son of James, founder the first PUBLIC theatre. To you, all these people are Liars all.
Patrons (of which your guy is the uber-patron, as you well know) were found at Court, which as in Timon of Athens was a cut-throat place. But still poets and painters and musicians flourished. To get noticed you had to be good. Or one of the in-crowd, which we know you will be very happy to tell us of how your man was into Elizabeth the Virgin Queen.
(Or not, as your dirty laundry will be aired after some 400 odd years of polite silence. And that in a film to be released next year. The force grows strong within them).
See, I actually like Oxford as prototype for many of these characters, which you too have correctly identified as distinct from Snug and Snout and Francis, and again identified as emanating from your man’s emotional DNA, which latterly are your Lord’s creations too. How well he knew and understood and captured the Elizabethan middle classes in The Merry Wives of Windsor!
Now why should my man not have the same capacity for empathy and insight that yours does?
Ah but our man travelled! And look at how many of his plays are set in Italy! And how little of that country’s flora and fauna is in the imagination of Shakespeare.
Your man was no stranger to gossip. And Elizabethan London loved to gossip. Your man is of the right station and right character to be Shakespeare. We want him to be for your sake. And the smug factor of being right!
This Shakespeare of Stratford is a man for whom there is absolutely nothing to discredit him in favour of authorship except for him being in the right place at the right time.
For you as Oxenforde’s foil (and yes that’s how Teddy spelt his name most of the time. And yes, names as you know were subject to many varied spellings).
Shakespeare is the true author; if you accept neither he nor his friends and fellowes of 25 years standing on the same stage and wings lied when they quoted about him in his First Folio (Just how did Oxford manage that publication, having been dead some 19 years). A why should they lie?
You deny the man from Stratford his wit, for which he is famed. Just what difference does it make to read Shakespeare’s words, be he Oxford or Stratfrodian slip. None. Lear is no less powerful. Nor Timon so unforgiving. Nor Macduff’s anguish any less real. If that’s what the product of reading is? Reality.
I read to escape and expand myself beyond and away from my self. I assume Shakespeare did the same thing. Schoenbaum noted this phenomenon in his book SH’s Lives.
Your man was being watched a lot of the time. His peers, his servants, his men and boys, his enemies; of which he made more than a few.
My man lived a life where no one saw him but who he choose to see and hear. No man had his allegiance and I can imagine there to be quite a bit of freedom in that.
Time and freedom enough to write maybe 2 to 3 plays a year given time to research and follow the whims of the stage and the public’s desire as well as his own instinct. Time to act on the stage too. There were many that vied for those roles.
The reality that it’s your guy so does not impress me and you know too that your guy is as much a composite as my Shakespeare is. At least my Shakespeare is built up of evidence that historians use for all people.
The answer to the meagre historical evidence we have for Shakespeare is given. We know. We all know. Why do you have to nullify the Stratford guy?
Because he is the mainstay for your argument. Without him, no way those plays would have been played on the stage. All conspiracists (look it up in the dictionary it is the right word) need William Shakspere of Stratford.
But does he need them? Not really. If you admit he may have, probably did have, some wit.
…lowing en masse towards the plaats delict. An evening home alone, twittering birds for company. Twitter too if I wanted it to be.
I’ll be facebooking this post later when it’s done, but for now the synapses snap to deciding what indeed to write. So much to tell, not enough of the material read, so many inferences to be drawn in defence of Early Modern England’s development from the bottom-up.
The secondary source I’m using is a book called ‘All the world is a bear baiting das Hetztheater in England im 16 und 17 Jahrhundert’, which is in German with primary source quotes in English and German from the lowest to the highest of social status either solid english citizen or European traveller.
The Bear and Bull baiting arenas (one and the same)? on the South Bank were directly responsible for the rise of the Theatres, which also in several cases doubled as both Theatre and bear baiting establishments.
Philip Henslowe with his son in law Edward Alleyne owned and operated a theatre and a bear baiting establishment. Henslowe was also warder of the bears. And dogs and bulls and cocks, that were the bloody symbols exploited, for this popular aspect of the entertainment industry. We have more accounts from contemporaries, whether english or european, on visiting these places than we do for early modern theatre.
These mini-amphitheatres coz let’s face it that’s what the Globe and they were. Albeit the animal baiting arenas were of inferior strucure they did the job. A penny gets you in; another another level; another the top level.
A microcosm of society from pickpockets and thieves literally up to lords and ladies. For a laugh from a lower perspective, with any luck a wounded dog tossed by an infuriated bull might land on miladies lap, as is severally reported.
Gambling on such bloody pastimes was (and is) huge. And the ideas of Tarantino and Scorsese are not too far fetched from the truth of Elizabethan times. Each culture has its underworld and indeed it caters to the desires of the upper world; where history is writ in less penitential themes.
Robert Greene must have had a hell of a self-confidence. He wrote pamphlets, books really, about conny-catching. He exposed the tricks of the Elizabethan underworld in a series of exposes. The thieves in true and honest piss take fashion replied with their own attacks on writers and layabout creative types.
In fact you could say (it might not be true) self-confidence was a trademark of the Early Modern thinking. For the first time in hundreds of years the individual was starting to have some degree of self-determination.
The times were Humanist versus Puritan times. But religion was splintering into the Protestant Catholic rift and Puritans were opposed to any fleshly pleasures, whether of mind or body.
I’m not saying Shakespeare was a made guy. But, through the Burbages, he was definitely connected. Early Modern Security firm on the door. Lattley Fattfoy and his lads.
So what do you think Elizabethan London must have been like with no police force outside of the authority of the Queen and her Earls, who like Lear would have had their own men. Many of these people carried swords and knives and daggers.
And would use them for honour’s sake if need be. There was a hierarchy and that would have to be obeyed in dress and manner. Unless you were a player where all fashions and genders can be yours.
Late friday night in Elizbethan London would be natural dark (ever been in the jungle or deep woods) and the lighting would have been minimal. Some people like the dark and can function in it. The night time is right time to do nefarious deeds. Unseen equals not caught. Most people had lives to attend to and rose with the sun and slept as it slept.
Hanging was a popular method of punishment and hanged men’s corpses were left at crossroads as a warning to the populus. The population of the City of London tripled in size during Sh’s lifetime.
The public theatre was the showbusiness of the time. English actors were for the first time in demand for their abilities. For musicians it was probably the only time they got paid more than actors! Though an actor who could play music and dance? Elizabethan triple-threat.
Old Europe was in a state of renewal, especially with the Protestant/Catholic divide. New ideas were being exchanged with those in London from all over europe, on all levels of society.
Ships were coming and going up and down the Thames bringng new cargoes, new people, new ideas. And then of course there were the old ideas. And all the institutions they represented composed of ideas from Antiquity.
But the new generation wanted to re-interpret those texts from antiquity. And they could thanks to the printing press. There were plenty of other scholars of Sh’s time translating works and seeing it into print. These are the people I’d expect Sh to be talking to and exchanging ideas with.
That we realise this was all done with the stench and stink of death and refuse all around we take as a given and plague and epidemic can break out at any time. No vaccines, cept herbal remedies.
That we can accept that all levels of society, both Elizabeth and James loved what we PC or just plain sensitive would call blood sports and cruelty to animals. Hang, drawing and quartering was a popular pastime too.
People were inured to violent acts but sensible enough to feel them. Some condemned them outright and held out God’s shield to defend themselves and others under their care from the morally fallen that visit plays and lewd and bloody spectacles.
Both sides of the hunting game were already in place as they are today. Last night CNN had a special dealing with the 12 year old matador popular in Spain right now. And from Bull-fighting to Hunting with hounds and the ban current in our Liza’s time, that Elizabeth nor James could have deamed of passing.
I’m of two minds on this one being a gamekeeper’s and poacher’s son. My dad could skin a rabbit in less than a minute. He didn’t enjoy killing or culling but executed swiftly when necessary. I never really took to the killing thing. I shot a bird which simply toppled over backwards into the gutter with an air rifle when i was 12 and I was devestated.
I was a beater as a boy on a couple of shoots on a large 20,000 acre estate King George had hunted on. The beater is one of a line of poeple moving through the brush and undergrowth driving the animals towards the line of fire.
Rabbits, pheasants, ducks, anything edible or that could be made into a fine pate was aimed at and shot. There was a trailer littered with game, a brace of this, a thrice of that. And now i write it down I feel a little hungry…
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