I’m a little airplane, I fly high,
I’m a little airplane, I fly high,
I fly high, up in the sky,
I’m a little airplane, I fly high.
Destination: holiday.
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The stock characters are a group of seven around whom you can build a play at any moment. They are widely used for the standard reactions they elicit: 1) A young lover…A young person in love for the very first time. 2) An old miser…a niggard in youth, a miser in old age. 3) A jealous husband…a man whose wife is idol and whore and whom he can`t control which its going to be, but his wife knows! 4) An intriguing servant. … a man of all places whose ingenious ear is always warping the known truth. 5) A blustering soldier … a has-been warrior whose melodramatic flair for the real horrors of war makes them seem somehow wondrous and contrived with humanity and honour. 6) An ageing beauty … She, definitely not a he, though it could conceiveably be, is a femme fatale gone to the dogs and no she won`t admit it. 7) A pedantic official … A bilious bureaucrat whose appliance to every single comma or letter of the law is sacred, profane and irreversible. John Downes in 1708 wrote of his experiences in the 17th Century theatre in his book Roscius Anglicanus. He was old and no longer accurate but his jottings are full of details which otherwise would be lost. One such detail is the tradition of actors handing down a part.
The Sir William is Davenant who claimed in his cups to be the bastard child of Shakespeare. Here is another anecdote on a different role.
This post explores the theatrical language of mask and image and show its shifting nature, defying concrete definition. A recent mask workshop I took in Amsterdam ties in with study on theatrical development and archetypes. My starting point is Caroline Spurgeon’s theory of Shakespeare’s imagery designed to explore his personality, temperament and thought process. Image then is the stuff of language. Its component parts are rhetorical and poetical convention. Spurgeon spurns any discussion of their constituent parts such as simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and personification for fear of losing sight of the forest for the trees. There is a distinction that must be made here between spoken and written imagery. The poet, the seer and the prophet all move us in a way impossible to account for rationally and logically. A play is not rational, nor is it logical except in that it chooses to be. The dramatist is deliberately trying to awaken conflict in the viewer. More basically, without conflict there would be no drama. Drama though is required to be true to life to be truly effective. Thomas Heywood in his ‘Apology for Actors’ called it, In other words the acting was informal and the language was formal. The discourse of themes and characters are partly blueprinted in the original text and this blueprint is repeatedly given life by the actor and his constructs. The actor is the filter of our mutual humanity. Bernard Beckerman says, Shakespeare imbues Hamlet with knowledge of this dichotomy in his speech to the players in Hamlet: 2.2. 540- Richard Flecknoe in his ‘A Short Discourse on the English Stage‘ reiterates it,
The actor ‘realises’ the literary quality of the lines and the shaping of the plot and through him it becomes apparent to the viewer. Beckerman again,
The conclusion appears to be that the subjectivity of performance and performer can only bridge the gap between the subjective objectivity of the observer and writer if there is a semblance of life and reality. Their absence provides a vocabulary of ‘bad’ acting and an unacceptable representation. Spurgeon is convinced that the function of imagery being fixed in the text means the characters’ interpretation is restricted also by the text. The consequence is that each actor has the same character image of the same role, although an individual method of embodying it in performance. At the same time she sees the likes and dislikes of the author, plus his observations and interests, associations of thought, attitudes of mind and his beliefs. Her idea of imagery is actually a cumulative process. It is from the accumulation of particular images to the idea of ‘running’ or ‘dominating’ images through all the plays that she makes her distinctions of the man Shakespeare. There are then different forces at work in any presentation. Each force is also determined to a partial degree. I started this paper with a list of stock characters derived from the typology of Commedia del Arte. Shakespearean drama is often considered superior to this lowly form, quite wrongly I believe. The Elizabethan actor certainly owed a great debt to oratory whose substance of external action was natural, lively and familiar. Oratory was an intellectually revisionist process stimulated by a Renaissance embodiment of Classical ideals. The grammar school education taught voice, countenance, life and spirit (vox, vultus, vita and animus) as the basis for oratorical splendour. The well-known story of Demosthenes illustrates the next step. When asked ‘What was the chief part of an orator? he answered, Action; what next? Action; what next again? Action’. Thomas Wright wrote in ‘The Passions of the Mind’ in 1604.
Wright saw that the passion in our breast is the fountain and origin of all external actions. A humoral psychology dominated the passions of the time, in which there are four humours corresponding to the four elements. They are melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine and choleric matched with earth, water, air and fire. These humours were used to determine a person’s temperament or complexion, with one usually dominant. These humours are the life-giving moisture of the body and they generate the life-principle of vital heat. Vital heat passes into the body through the liver, i.e. natural heat; through the heart acted on by air from the lungs; and animal spirit acted on through the arteries to the brain, the seat of both the rational and the immortal. A humour could also be putrefied or burnt with excessive heat, which would make it abnormal. Physiologically the diaphragm is the muscle that separates the lower and upper torso. The heart nestles between the lungs and rests on top of the diaphragm; the stomach, the liver and the kidneys lie just below it. The liver was thought to convert food into liquids known as the humours. The diaphragm in Greek is called phrenos which means emotion. The diaphragm is a trampoline-like muscle with far reaching consequences. It assists in deep breathing, soft sighing, heaving guffaws and sobs of laughter or tears, as well as projecting the voice at whatever level is deemed necessary. ‘Love everything that breathes.’ G.I. Gurdjieff. *Love is suffering… Do you know this one-sided event? But I love you. Ah-ahahahahahaaaaaaaa! Wail, moan, woe, grieve, pain-pleasure, pleasure pain. *Love is fear… He may fear rumours of his love, or if he is poor that the woman may scorn him. If he is ugly that she may despise him, or seek some more handsome man. He may fear that he will offend his loved one in some way. In fact the lover can fear so many things it’s impossible to count them. This fear is a tyrant. It leads to inferiority complex, paranoia and neuroses. *Love is lust… When a man sees a woman fit to his taste he begins to lust after her in his heart. The more he thinks of her the more he burns with love, moving to a fuller meditation. He differentiates her limbs, thinks about what she does prys into the secrets of her body and desires to put each part to its fullest use. Then he proceeds to action and finds an intermediary. He plans how he can win her favour and seeks to find a time and place to speak with her. Time drags and nothing moves fast enough to soothe his troubled mind. So to speak. This one is for the players. Lust is their number one: be they male or female. Precaution! Lust can lead to perversion, disease and death by jealous rival. *Love is madness. When a man comes to poverty he moves along with his face downcast, tortured by many thoughts and all joyousness leaves him. When joy leaves, melancholy arrives and wrath claims a place in him. Slowly he begins to act in a changed manner to his beloved and appears frightful to her. All the things that cause love to increase begin to fail and love grows less. Love is always increasing or decreasing. The word ‘love’ comes from the latin `amor` which comes from the latin word `amus` which means ‘hook’. The lover therefore is either capturing, or being captured. This madness is to be avoided at all cost. It can swallow years and even decades of your life, and you’re in the end not one step closer to love. To be mad is to be alone. *Love is magical… it can endow a man of humble birth with nobility of character; it can bless the proud with humility; and the man in love becomes accustomed to performing many services gracefully for everyone. This one is to be cherished and nurtured. This one is the real one. Do yourself a favour and love yourself first and foremost. Find out about your self/shadow-self and know yourself out of best interest. Do not do this to the exclusion of loving others, but being and acting in combination with others’ love for you. *So then it is with these oppositions of love that rules the Shakespearean creative mind and that is probably the most important thing to remember when studying Shakespeare. The frontline of fusion holds the open secret all along its surface. Go too deeply toward either end of the scale, and all becomes dull and academic, or gossipy and libelous. `Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnets`. (L.L.L.) *The following explanation of the Religious Institutions and Events may help to clear up some confusing terms and titles you will encounter whilst studying Sh. The info is cribbed from English Institutions by Aug. Western PhD. Oslo 1938. p.33-39. The Reformation really started with a Catholic priest called Martin Luther. Luther refused to follow a direct order from the Pope in Rome and nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church, The Pope ex-communicated him for refusing to believe that people need the priest as a buffer between them and God. *The Reformation happened not only for the Protestants but the Catholics as well culminating in new theological decisions made at the Council of Trent, 1545-1563. The biggest difference for the Protestants was the ability to read and interpret the Bible on their own. People were slowly moving away from church and religion to concentrate on making money, building businesses and raising families. *The biggest fear shared by both Protestants and Catholics at this time was the Devil and witchcraft. They both used the Devil as propaganda: to the Protestant pastors the Pope was the Antichrist; and in Catholic exorcisms the demons screamed Protestant doctrines as they fled from the bodies of their victims. *The Jesuits, a Catholic order founded by Ignatius Loyola, 1491-1556, echoed the new introspective character of religion. You were alone with your bible and faith to fight any devils you may be exposed to in your meditations. Isolation provokes terror and terror creates an exaggerated view of the Devil’s power. *Loyola had systematic rules for spiritual training. He insisted that no-one is free from the temptations of the Evil one who seeks to persuade man that worldly pleasures and sensual delights are the key to happiness. He felt that the action of a good spirit in our hearts would promote peace, joy, hope, faith, charity and elevation of mind. The action of an evil spirit will bring upset, depression, concern with worldly things, and dryness of the soul. The way to defeat the devil is through undying faith. *There was at the same time an intellectual movement that promoted scepticism, which proved an intense reaction against any belief in the powers of evil. Johan Wier in 1563 wrote a book called ‘On Magic’. The famous humanist philosopher, Michel de Montaigne, 1533-1592, argued that the evidence for witchcraft was too shaky to justify putting people to death. This intellectual scepticism lead some people to the subjective view that there is neither a God nor a Devil and a belief only in things that they can experience. *Now the Catholic Church was still very much an institution in the workaday calendar year lives of the Common people. The Saints days and Holy days offered many forms of Entertainment and Celebration. The Catholic Church was a charitable institution, despite its corrupt state the closer you got to Rome. Daily meals were served to the poor, sick and destitute who asked for charity. These charitable practices were abolished after Henry 8th divorced his first wife and made himself head of the Church of England. *The ‘new’ religious beliefs adopted in favour of Catholicism was Protestantism, which took a stricter and more sober line. There are 39 Articles of Religion, drawn up in the reign of Elizabeth 1st and sanctioned by parliament, which are the test of Orthodox churchmanship subscribed to by the clergy. *The 37th Article states that the Sovereign is supreme over all persons and all causes, ecclesiastical and civil. The power of the Pope in Rome was hereby completely smashed. This belief of the divine right of kings is strong in Shakespeare. *The Church of England doctrine was not that radically different from the Roman Catholic Church doctrine at this point. The C.of E. occupies a middle position in Protestant belief between the Church of Rome and the Reformed Church of Geneva. *However there are several parties one can distinguish within the C.of E. -The High Church gives place to those points of Doctrine and ritual that distinguishes it from the Calvinistic churches of the Continent and the Protestant Nonconformists of England and gives high place to the claims of the Episcopate. -The Low Church places little emphasis on the Episcopate and therefore differs marginally from the Protestant Nonconformists. -The Broad church refers to those members who believe the Church of England should be comprehensive and tolerant, and admit variety of opinion in matters of doctrine and ritual. *There are three orders of ministers in the Church of England: Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. *The Crown nominates the highest positions in the Church. -The Archbishop of Canterbury is the Lord Primate of All England. His residence is Lambeth Palace in London. -The Archbishop of York is the Lord Primate of England. * In total there are 38 Bishops and each has a Bishopric or Diocese. Each Diocese has a Cathedral Church with an ecclesiastical council or Chapter. Bishops are addressed as Right Reverend. The larger Bishoprics usually have assisting bishops, known as Suffragan. * The Chapter has a president, the Dean. The Dean is addressed as Very Reverend. Four clergymen known as Canons assist him. Dioceses are further split into 2 or more Archdeaconries each with an Archdeacon. The churches in the district of the diocese are Parish Churches. The Archdeacon supervises the Clergy in his district’s parishes. *Deacons are clergymen in the first year after their ordination. Deacons are not allowed to administer the Holy Communion. *A Chaplain is a clergyman who conducts divine service in some special chapel, e.g. of the King, Queen or private person, a college, prison, hospital in the army and navy and the like. *The Parish priest is known as: -A Tithe is a tenth of what a person makes or produces in a year and was given to the Church. Traditionally Greater Tithes consisted of corn and Lesser Tithes were fruit. *The Rector and Vicar are called the Incumbents of the Parish. *Each parish must take care of its church property and buildings. The Vestry is organised from volunteer members of the Parish church. The vicar or rector is then their chairman. Two Churchwardens are appointed for tasks around the church property, and two Overseers were appointed to have charge of the poor. The expenses necessary for the maintenance of the church and to pay for the Clergy were taken out of Tithes. Well, I hate to say it but someone finally beat me to the punch in podcasting these sonnets. My name is William and I’m a procrastinator… Some guy is offering sonnets with his cribbed explanations all podcasted from here . If you like your sonnets with the sound of recovery written all over them, some guy is your guy. He’s honest and open and true to his experience of these poems. An absolute jewel, and something my dad is gonna love, is a blog devoted to the birds of Shakespeare. My dad is a gardener and outdoorsman with 80 years on the planet. His pictures of bugs, boyds and beasties , orchidae and wild flowers are worthy of National Geographic magazine. My auto-didactic leanings are from him. He learned French and Russian, climbed Alpine ridges, and still canoes in sub-zero and sub-tropical surroundings. His zest for life is an inspiration for all who know and love him. Let’s not forget my mum, the woman who stood by him these last 60 odd years of marriage. ‘Let me not to marriage of true minds O no!’ Q116. Here are 8 drunken stereotypes by Thomas Nashe from the Elizabethan era. I wonder what type of drunk our WIll would have been. In the poem ‘Pete the Parrot and Shakespeare’, found under the Sh. poems page on this site, he is a maudlin drunk:
Nashe also wrote a poem about a dildo! As well as other works which can be found at Luminarium here. * Shakespeare wrote fast. Ben Jonson wrote ‘His mind and hand went together and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers’. Ben also wrote ‘Ease and relaxation are profitable to all studies. The mind is like a bow, the stronger by being unbent. But the temper in spirits is all, when to command a man’s wit, when to favour it. I have known a man vehement on both sides; that knew no mean either to intermit his studies or call upon them again. When he hath set himself to writing, he would join night to day; press upon himself without release, not minding it till he fainted: and when he left off, resolve himself into all sports and looseness again; that it was almost despair to draw him to his book: but once he got to it, he grew stronger and more earnest by the ease’. * Phonetics does make you wonder if voiceless bilabial plosives and fricatives are really the most satisfactory expression of emotional release. *Aubrey’s anecdote on De Vere who on farting in front of Elizabeth was so embarassed he travelled the continent for seven years. When he returned Elizabeth said ‘ Welcome my Lord, I had forgott the farte!’ *Elizabeth loved to swear. ‘ S’wounds ‘ was her favourite. Swearing and poetry are similar. They are both highly charged and metaphorical ( you stupid plonker ), both are extreme with pointed effects created by alliteration ( fuckfuck fuckfuck FUCK), both play off different registers in the word-hoard ( you slimy pillock), and lastly both are dependent on rhythm, ( Don’t you slag me off, you plummy old pudding ). *The use of the word ‘hours’ in the S. can be almost exclusively taken as bawdy with a play on whores. For more insults try the Shakespearean Insult Generator. *The difference between Thou and you. Elizabeth once said to a forward courtier, Essex I think, ‘Don’t thou thou me, thou dog!’ * Patronage was linked to Espionage. Organized Crime was linked to the Theatres and Bull and Bear fighting places. The Acting Companies were emblems and conceits for the Noble patrons. But they outgrew their idealist masters to start their own practical ideal in the realm of entertainment. *Numerology: * Sh. as a writer/director vs. the jack of all trades theatreman. * Sh. was a doggerel spewing heretic and deer-hunter. * Sh. was an uneducated misogynist hick with a ready wit, a huge talent for words and a smile that wouldn’t quit. * He had a bad memory. Q23. * He was a gimp. Q89. * He was a bisexual. Q90. * He was a homosexual. Q20. * He was an adulterer. Q130. * He was a jerk-off. Q62. * He was a bad thinker. Q85. * He had a lisp. Q116. * He was a heterosexual. Q138. * He was a drinker. Q43. * He was a drug user. Q118. * He was a blusher. Q128. * His birth and death dates are the same. * His dad married up-market. * His marriage parallels his parents. Both father-in-laws died a year before the wedding took place. * His dad loaned money to his future father in law, Richard Hathawey. Probably met his older, future wife Anne at this time. he would have been about 8 yrs. *He likely sat around a fireside with Raphael Holinshed, who was steward of Packwood Manor some 15 miles from Stratford. * Almost all his teachers were Jesuits i.e. first class knee benders to the Holy Church of Rome. * He was distantly related to his young Patron Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. * His brother Gilbert was a haberdasher and for some reason credited with being a homosexual. * His other brother Richard was a stay-at-homer reputed by some to have been in love with Anne Hathwey on the sly. Presumably he was in-loco-parentis while Will was in London. May have poisoned Sh. son Hamnet. This being the reason for Sh. Madness! Lol. * His baby brother Edmund, probably much to Sh’s embarrassment, became an actor in London. Edmund died a year after his baby son in 1603. Edmund is buried in Southwark Cathedral under a gravestone bearing the family name Shakespeare. Note the spelling, done in the 19thC! William arranged the funeral no doubt and the Cathedral bells were rung at additional cost. * Sh. dad was probably a Catholic. His father’s Borromeo-styled Last Will and Testament was found hidden in the attic roof of the Henley street residence a century after their deaths. * Sir William Davenant, Poet Laureate, used to claim when he was drunk that he was the bastard son of Sh. Davenant was also Poet Laureate as well as an actor. * No letters, diaries, notes, direct anecdotes or anything of a personal nature about the living breathing man Sh. are extant! If you can do this quiz, good for you, you obviously know your sonnets! If you can’t, don’t worry. Remember you don’t have to be a genius to appreciate one. 1. In the dedication to the sonnets is it: Mr W. H. all happiness or Mr W. Hall’s a penis? because they aaarrrrrree! And so to Revenge-Tragedy. The villain is the villain and the virtuous get tried, tested and worked over. It’s almost pantomime with its colourful caricatures of good and evil. It cries out for actors to ham it up a little and to relish in the reactions of the audience. And so with Titus at the Globe. Obviously my first reaction is to the verse and whether or not I can hear it. The yard is a great place to be but other spectators eager to keep their minds on the plot, inquiring of their knowledgable friends, when some matter of the argument is at hand. Annoying but to be expected. What bothers me is when the actors colour their verse with their emotional play. And in this play as in many other revenge-tragedies, this distraction is in abundance and over-plus. The role of Titus and his entire family demands they follow the built-in register. Just when you think the worst has happened, worse happens. Titus needs to pace his emotional ladder’s descent to despair for 3 Acts and then turn to thoughts of Revenge, a much lighter and more pro-active pleasure. He is a cartoon character: from his 21 of 25 sons killed in the service of Rome. To the 22nd whom he murders himself in his slighted rage, and the 23rd and 24th whose severed heads are delivered back to him with his own ransom hand. (read the play to find out about the 25th)! A wonderful evening of nastiness thus with the nature of the material. His daughter Lavinia is raped and mutilated; hands to stumps and tongue cut out. I see an ingenue actress asking her agent, ‘Is it a speaking part?’ Shakespeare must have hated the boy-actor who played it originally. A total humiliation is what’s demanded by the actor. Thankfully played by a girl this time around. I personally believe Shakespeare was aware of the fact that women would eventually play the roles he wrote. Spain, Italy and France had women performers on Public stages. ‘And for a woman wert thou first created, Oh yeah, Ben was mah-vellous! Genius! I particularly liked the way he played the severed head. And his transformation into the young Lucius! Wow! I’m off to see Ben in Titus Andronicus at the Globe. Apparently it’s a cover up. What she must be thinking as he goes on for ten to twelve lines about ‘why dost not speak to me?…’ Call a frickin ambulance presumably! Tomorrow and tomorrow and i’ll make a report. |
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