This day...

... is call'd the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, 'Tomorrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, 
But he'll remember with advantages
What feast he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words –
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloster, –
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered, –
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs't they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Telegraph | The first Shakespearean scholar?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/02/notebook-written-unknown-17th-century-william-shakespeare-scholar/

Non Nobis

Non nobis Domine, Domine, 
Non nobis Domine,
Sed nomine,
Sed nomine,
Tuo da gloriam.

This old Latin hymn of thanksgiving, originally associated with the Knights Templar, was according to legend ordered by Henry to be sung after victory at the Battle of Agincourt:

Do we all holy rites.
Let there be sung Non Nobis and Te Deum,
The dead with charity enclos'd in clay,
And then to Calais, and to England then,
Where ne'er from France arriv'd more happy men.
~ Henry V IV.8.117-21.

Get thee hence down to the Pop-up Globe for a rousing performance of this and indeed of the whole play. Blood! Mud!! Canon!!! Flaming arrows!!!! Sword fights in full armour!!!!! Glorious poetry!!!!!

Wall paintings in Stratford's Guild Chapel

Recently I came across this article, which describes (and pictures) the wall paintings in the Guild chapel of Stratford-upon-Avon. Like most medieval churches, the chapel's walls were originally covered with murals depicting life, death, heaven, hell, and everything in between. At the Reformation the murals were destroyed, or, as was the case at Stratford, painted over. Recent restoration work in the Guild chapel has uncovered the wall paintings, which, depending on whom you read, are either "some of the finest in Europe" (Daily Mail) or "far from masterpieces, but... show[ing]... medieval England in thrall to devils and death" (The Guardian).

(The Daily Mail gets further carried away, proclaiming that the murals were personally painted over by John Shakespeare, father of the famous William - on the grounds that he was bailiff of Stratford in 1563, when Henry VIII ordered the paintings removed. William Shakespeare was born the following year, 1564, so sadly he never saw the paintings.)

The Daily Mail article has the best images, but here are a few more pages commenting on the wall paintings:

The Shakespeare Blog | Medieval Decorations in Stratford's Guild Chapel

Tudorstuff | Guild Chapel Stratford

Guardian | Shakespeare's Stratford and a morbid, fascinating England

Telegraph | Authenticity and the Globe

Interesting opinion piece from the Telegraph's Dominic Cavendish about the London Globe theatre:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/26/

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their entrances and their exits; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

This day is called the feast of Crispian

Today, 25th October, is the feast day of St Crispin, forever beloved by Shakespeare fans because it provides them with an excellent excuse to chant the famous eve-of-battle speech in Shakespeare's Henry V.

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a-tip toe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

However, St Crispin's day this year was by many Aucklanders eagerly awaited for a different reason, albeit one connected with Shakespeare...

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say, 'Tomorrow is St Crispian.'

The Pop-Up Globe is returning this summer (glory hallelujah!) and the season dates and performances were released today, St Crispin's Day.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

The season runs from 23rd February to the 14th May; the plays are Othello, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and (appropriately, given the day of the announcement) Henry V. Full details here:

 http://www.popupglobe.co.nz/

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks

That fought with us upon St Crispin's Day.

I cannot decide whether 25th October was deliberately chosen for the season launch, or whether it was (very) happy coincidence. (I suspect the latter as there is no mention of St Crispin anywhere in the website, or on Facebook). Oh well... it doesn't matter.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

 The main thing is - the Pop-Up Globe is coming back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shylock with Guy Masterton

Hogarth Shakespeare & Nutshell

Today I came across the Hogarth Shakespeare Initiative, which, in its own words, "sees Shakespeare’s works retold by acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today." Some of the plays have already been 'done' - Howard Jacoboson's Shylock is My Name (The Merchant of Venice) and Jeanette Winterson's The Gap of Time (The Winter's Tale.) Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed (The Tempest) is due out next month.

A good idea? Not sure... but certainly an interesting one. You can read more about it, and see scheduled books in the series, here: http://crownpublishing.com/hogarth-shakespeare/.

Not part of this initiative, but in a similar vein, is Ian McEwan's Nutshell. This is a modern-day retelling of Hamlet, with rather a neat and original twist: the story is told by Hamlet while still inside his mother's womb, privy to the murderous plotting of his mother and uncle. This highly unusual point of view, combined with the fact that I have a weakness for all things Hamlet, was what made me buy the book.

Gertrude becomes Trudy and Claudius Claude, but apart from this the book is less faithful to the plot of the play than to its language and occasional rambling bouts of philosophy. Hunting these down was, for me, half the pleasure of this book, but it is well-told and well-written (though sometimes almost unnecessarily graphically) in its own right. Some reviewers have described the book as a 'thriller,' which seems to me something of an overstatement, but it is genuinely suspenseful.

A great deal of the play's language is neatly worked into the fabric of the novel. This is sometimes bold (the re-working of the "What a piece of work is a man" speech), more often subtle (Hamlet's descriptions of his mother, father and uncle), occasionally defiant (the last line of the book is "The rest is chaos"). The book's title, of course, comes from Hamlet's "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

Richard III, the HandleBards, and Shakeshafte

This was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I haven't laughed so much since Twelfth Night at the Pop-Up Globe.

The HandleBards tour the UK on bicycles, playing Shakespeare (usually outdoors) at various points along the route. They carry with them whatever props, costume and scenery they can squeeze onto their bikes (i.e. not much). There is a girls' group and a boys' group, each only four strong, and it was 'The Boys' we saw, performing Richard III in the grass courtyard of Lancashire's Hoghton Tower.

Richard III has a cast of forty-two. One of the HandleBards played Richard, and the other three took the remaining forty-one between them. As they helpfully pointed out, that is an average of 13.6 characters each. Needless to say, delightful chaos ensued; The Tragedy of King Richard III became The Farce of Richard and III Other Actors. What Shakespeare would have thought one can only guess, but one has a sneaking suspicion he might approve. It was fast, rowdy and fun.

Paring Shakespeare back to this extent, and treating the text and characters with a cheerful and reckless abandon, is brave, but it clearly paid off with a vengeance. The endless character swapping (done mostly by donning and doffing different hats) meant that the audience (and quite possibly the actors) was never quite sure who was playing whom at any given moment, and for those not familiar with the original play it probably boarded on the completely confusing (I know it reasonably well, and it was confusing enough to me). The whole thing was quite barmy and yet utterly hilarious. Only in England!

Richard III is Shakespeare's second-longest play (only Hamlet is longer) but they managed to squeeze it into about two hours. This was something of a mercy because it was open-air, and Lancashire's evening air, even in the height of summer, is apt to be rather parky. However, at least it didn't rain.

Hoghton Tower, via

Seeing Shakespeare at Hoghton Tower was particularly special because there is a local story that Shakespeare's so-called 'lost years' were spent in Lancashire, and that he lived for a while at Hoghton Tower as well as the homes of other prominent local families. The reasoning behind begins with the premise that Shakespeare was a Catholic and runs thus: several of the teachers at Shakespeare's Stratford school were Jesuit priests from Lancashire, which was a recusant stronghold during the Reformation; since he had connections in the area or at the very least people of his own faith, Shakespeare may therefore have headed up there when facing trouble at home (there is a story that he poached Thomas Lucy's deer, earning the wrath of that local lord). Once oop north, the story is that he lay low (Lancashire, surrounded by hills, is sometimes known as the 'hidden county;' the difficulty of passing the hills made the county a relatively safe one for Catholics during the Reformation) and tutored the children of the local Catholic gentry. 

The 1581 will of Alexander de Hoghton mentions a William Shakeshafte 'now dwelling with me,' requiring a Sir Thomas Hesketh either to take Shakeshafte into his service or to find him another 'master.' What kind of master is not specified, but the mention of Shakeshafte comes just after one of players, 'play clothes' [presumably costumes] and musical instruments, so the theory is that de Hoghton was seeking for the young actor Shakespeare the security of a patron. Shakespeare, the story goes, began his acting career in Lancashire, performing in the halls of the great houses there (apart from Hoghton Tower, Rufford Old Hall, the home of Sir Thomas Hesketh, also lays claim to harbouring Shakespeare). And the Shakeshafte bit? That was an alias, of course, because Thomas Lucy was still thirsting for William's blood. (It has been suggested that Shakeshafte was a variant of the family name used by William's grandfather.)

As with so many of the stories surrounding Shakespeare, this one is impossible to prove or disprove (many Shakespearean scholars would pooh-pooh it), but it makes for a jolly good yarn. One rather surprising subscriber to the story is the ex-Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who has concluded that Shakespeare 'probably was Catholic!' (Wonders will never cease.) Furthermore, Dr Williams has actually written a play based on an imagined meeting between the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion, who is known to have spent time in Lancashire, and William Shakespeare. If Shakespeare is Shakeshafte, then it is indeed possible that they may have met.

The historian Michael Wood also believes that Shakespeare spent time in Lancashire. The second episode of his series In Search of Shakespeare, which you can view here, examines the Lancashire connection and Alexander de Hoghton's will.

Other useful links:

HandleBards website 

Hoghton Tower website 

Rufford Old Hall website 

Shakeshafte at the Dylan Thomas Theatre

BBC article on Shakespeare and Rufford Old Hall 

English Historical Fiction Authors | Shakespeare in Lancashire 

 

Is this Shakespeare country?

Shakespeare at the George | The Tempest

This, which was the opening night of the run, took place, literally, in a tempest! But as forlorn theatre-goers huddled in the George dining room, hoping the inclement weather would pass over, one lady cheerfully said, "If we always waited for the rain to stop, we'd never do anything at all." Quite so - this is the only attitude with which one can approach any outdoor event in England, even at the height of summer. When the rain calmly and relentlessly pours down, the only thing that one can do is keep calm and carry on.

The stage crew delayed the start by about fifteen minutes, which allowed for the worst of the rain to pass off but ensured that the seats were still very wet. However, no true Englishwoman was ever deterred by a little damp:

All rugged up and ready to go at The Tempest*

The courtyard of the George is a brilliant place for Shakespeare; it dates back to the 1600s and still has the upper gallery across the far end. It is thought that the touring companies of players would perform in such inns when they were on the road; they could knock up a trestle stage on one side of the yard and make use of the gallery above. The plebs stood in the yard and the well-heeled could watch from the bedroom windows opening onto the courtyard:

Somebody did watch from one of these windows (presumably in dry and toasty comfort), but about a third of the way through they got bored and disappeared!

I will always have a soft spot for the George, however hard it rains, because this was where I saw my very first Shakespeare play, way back when I was a little twinkie of eight. In a pleasing symmetry, that production was also The Tempest; and no, it didn't rain then - in fact it was a perfect evening, thankyou for asking.

I still have the bookmark which my parents bought for me at that first Tempest (left). Sadly, they are no longer sold, so my souvenir this time was a Shakespeare at the George keyfob (right).

But the play, you ask? Well, it was colourful, lively, good humoured, and the scenes with Trinculo and Stephano were genuinely funny. Prospero was very strong, Miranda soldiered bravely on after acquring a wet derrière early on in the piece (she had to perch decoratively on a green bank which was, of course, soaking wet), and Ariel was peculiarly annoying. She tried to turn her role into a ballet dance, which should not have annoyed me so much as she was no doubt trying to capture Ariel's intangible airiness. But the fact remains that it did annoy me! The musicians were excellent and the gallery, festooned with flowers and leaves, looked very pretty - and a nice contrast to the grey sky and lowering clouds above!

The gallery. NB the clock is wrong.

But the crowning glory of The Tempest will always be the language:

Be not afeared, the isle is full of noises, 

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices

That, if then I had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open** and show riches***

Ready to drop upon me**** that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.

All in all - I wouldn't have missed it for the world :D Thankyou, Grandma!

Website for Shakespeare at the George: http://satg.org.uk/

* Photos from my phone so please excuse the poor quality.

** Too right!

*** rain 

**** this is why we have raincoats nowadays

Farewell to the Pop-Up Globe

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,                   
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

- The Tempest IV.1.148-58.

With a full house, a standing ovation, deafening cheers and quite a few misty eyes, the Pop-Up Globe season came to an end last night. Deconstruction begins this morning and many people will be very sad to see their happy home disappear into air, into thin air.

I am not usually a huge fan of Dr Seuss (too glib for my taste) but one of his oft-quoted proverbs seems fitting here: Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. The three months of the Globe season have been magical. I will always remember them, and always feel privileged to have been a part of them.

 

As Miles Gregory said in his speech last night, that it happened at all is really quite amazing. Dumping a hundred tons of scaffolding in a car park is a crazy idea... but what a brilliant one!

The Globe may be coming down, but - at the risk of sounding clichéd - the memories remain. For me Twelfth Night will always stand out, for its infectious mirth, its light touch, its joy and its poignancy. By the end of the run I knew it by heart.

Over the course of the Globe journey, yours truly has

* seen 17 performances - Twelfth Night 9 times; Romeo and Juliet 5 times; Hamlet, Antony & Cleo, and The Tempest once each

* ushered for 12 of those - Twelfth Night x 6, Romeo and Juliet x 4, Hamlet x 1, Antony & Cleo x1

* sold about 40 programmes, which also meant

* learning how to operate an Eftpos machine - from the vendor's end!

* scanned about 250 tickets (very stressful, because I did it for the first time at the very last public performance and my machine kept jamming) 

* assisted four fainting groundlings

* broken one pane of glass in one of the Gentleman's Rooms, tidying up late one night after the performance (the picture frame was balanced precariously on the scaffolding and, whisking out the rubbish a little too efficiently, I caught it with my sleeve)

* handed out about 200 bars of chocolate as part of a Cadbury promotion 

* earned four complementary tickets, one Pop-Up Globe T-shirt, and one sketched portrait

* met many lovely people

* dealt with several people complaining about their seats, the stairs, scaffolding in their sight line, or Shakespeare generally (happily these were far outweighed by the hundreds of people who came out with beaming smiles saying, 'Thankyou, it was wonderful!')

* taken dozens of photographs (most of them terrible)

* by hook and by crook, persuaded all of my brothers to experience the Globe (sorry, Peter :P)

* written one letter to the NZ Herald

* published 22 blog posts with the label 'Pop-Up Globe' (sorry, dear readers)

* sung the praises of the Globe far and wide to anyone who would listen (sorry, folks)

* achieved fleeting fame by being the only person to toss a ball into a bucket wedged on the middle tier of the actors' tower (long story) on their first attempt (needless to say this was a complete fluke)

* sweltered in the heat of summer and shivered in the rain and wind of late autumn

* seen hundreds - thousands - of people having the time of their lives

So many memories... 

Farewell. Parting is such sweet sorrow...

Publication... of a kind...

Heresy! Dr Paul Moon argues in the NZ Herald that we should no longer bother with Shakespeare.

Today sees my first post-Master's 'publication,' in the form of a letter to the NZ Herald. Admittedly, not quite the Past and Present journal, and the Herald's impact factor is precisely nil, but still... young fledgling academics must start somewhere!

(Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them... and Master's students waiting for their exam results know that greatness is not for them.)

This article appeared in the paper on Monday: Dr Paul Moon | Is Shakespeare now irrelevant?

... prompting this response:

"Words, words, words..."

Since NZ is half a day ahead of England, over there it is still April 23rd, so what better excuse to begin today with some of my favourite Shakespearean speeches (as promised in yesterday's post).

So, without more ado, here we go (in no particular order):

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,

And call upon my soul within the house;

Write loyal cantons of contemnéd love,

And sing them loud even in the dead of night;

Hallow your name to the reverberate hills,

And make the babbling gossip of the air

Cry out 'Olivia!' O you should not rest 

Between the elements of air and earth

But you should pity me!

Twelfth Night I.5.223-32

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Hamlet V.2.352-3 

ORSINO: And what's her history?

VIOLA: A blank, my lord. She never told her love,

But let concealment like a worm i'th'bud

Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy

She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

We men may say more, swear more, but indeed

Our shows are more than will: for still we prove

Much in our vows, but little in our love.

Twelfth Night II.4.105-14

What is he whose grief

Bears such an emphasis, whose phrase of sorrow

Conjures the wand'ring stars and makes them stand

Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,

Hamlet the Dane.

Hamlet V.1.238-42

His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm

Crested the world; his voice was propertied

As all the tunéd spheres, and that to friends;

But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,

He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,

There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas

That grew the more by reaping. His delights 

Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above

The element they lived in. In his livery

Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were

As plates dropped from his pocket.

Antony and Cleopatra V.2.81-91

Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come,

Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,

For Cassius is a-weary of the world:

Hated by one he loves, brav'd by his brother,

Check'd like a bondman, all his faults observ'd,

Set in a notebook, learn'd, and conn'd by rote,

To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep

My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger

And here my naked breast; within, a heart

Dearer than Pluto's mine, richer than gold.

If that thou beest a Roman take it forth,

I that denied thee gold will give my heart:

Strike as thou didst at Caesar. For I know

When thou didst hate him worst thou loved'st him better

Then ever thou lov'd'st Cassius. 

Julius Caesar IV.3.93-107 

Fight, gentlemen of England! Fight, bold yeomen!

Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head!

Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood!

Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!

Richard III V.4.339-42

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,

And ye that on the sands with printless foot

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him

When he comes back; you demi-puppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime 

Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice

To hear the solemn curfew, by whose aid - 

Weak masters though ye be - I have bedimm'd

The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,

And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault

Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder

Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's sout oak

With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory 

Have I made shake, and by the spurts pluck'd up

The pine and cedar. Graves at my command

Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth

By my so potent art. But this rough magic

I here abjure; and when I have requir'd

Some heavenly music - which even now I do - 

To work mine end upon their sense that

This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And deeper than did ever plummet sound

I'll drown my book. 

The Tempest V.1 33-57

Not a whit. We defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. 

Hamlet V.2.204-7 

Shakespeare and I

He was not of an age, but for all time!

~

 Ben Jonson

Frontispiece to the First Folio

Unless you live under a rock, you are probably aware that today is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. It is also, according to folklore, the 452nd anniversary of his birth. His actual birth date is, like so much of his life, a mystery, but we do know he was baptised on the 26th April; in the sixteenth century children were usually baptised around three days after birth, so by counting backwards we arrive at the 23rd. 

The 23rd April also happens to be St George's Day - despite never having set foot on English soil, St George is the country's patron saint. As with Shakespeare's life, the details of St George's are murky, comprised chiefly of folklore, myth and legend. Shakespeare, however, was at least English, and his plays - despite their huge variety of settings, from ancient Rome to the fictional Illyria - are saturated with the sights, scents and sounds of Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

I was introduced to Shakespeare at the age of eight, at a production of The Tempest at Huntingdon's George Inn. The George is a seventeenth-century coaching inn, with the four walls surrounding an inner courtyard:

via

It is thought that touring play companies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries used such courtyards as performance spaces, and the George still stages a play in this manner every summer:

via

This year, fifteen years after I first saw the play, it is the turn of The Tempest again, and I just happen to be visiting England in late June/early July, so... watch this space!

I understood very little (if any) of that first Tempest, but I remember three things very clearly: the shipwreck (which was rigged up - pardon the pun - at the back of the raked seating, so that the sailors came down through the audience onto the stage); Ariel's singing; and Caliban, who emerged from under a piece of sacking munching on a huge slice of watermelon. Even now, whenever I think of The Tempest that image of Caliban and watermelon is the first thing that comes into my head.

Similarly, The Merchant of Venice, which I saw at the George a couple of years after The Tempest, also left me with one over-riding image: Shylock approaching a bare-chested Antonio with a knife and a set of weighing scales to extract his pound of flesh, which frankly terrified me.

After that I could never garner much fondness of The Merchant of Venice, but "going to see Shakespeare" remained very much a part of my life. It has become a family tradition to go at least once a year to open-air summer productions, either at the Pumphouse or at Auckland University (or both!). I also remember going to see A Midsummer Night's Dream on a very cold and wet winter's night at the Dolphin Theatre, and The Winter's Tale on a similarly dreary winter's night at a tiny little theatre in Ellerslie.

Although I visited the London Globe in both 2002 and 2015, actually seeing a play there has so far eluded me (I will one day!). But this summer Auckland has hosted the Pop-Up Globe - a scaffolding replica, claimed to be accurate to within about an inch, of Shakespeare's second Globe. It is a good deal smaller than the London Globe, and sixteen-sided rather than twenty. Scholars have been arguing about the dimensions of the Globe for decades. The Pop-Up Globe boffins argue that theirs is the correct size (well, they would say that, wouldn't they!) and that the London Globe is too big. Needless to say, the scholars behind the London Globe are not too happy about this, but recent archeological excavations there do seem to suggest that it was built too large.

My scrapbook from 2002: visit to the London Globe

Me as a ten-year-old twinkie at the London Globe

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have spent many happy hours at the Pop-Up Globe as an usher, managing to see Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra and (as a paying audience member) The Tempest. Twelfth Night is by far my favourite. So far I have seen it four times, and tonight will be the fifth :D

The Pop-Up Globe has been an enormous success in terms of tickets sold (most performances have been sold out or nearly so), but also (and arguably more importantly) in making Shakespeare accessible and enjoyable. One of the best things about working there has been watching the school children watch the plays. Very, very few of them have been bored or disinterested; most of them look as if they are having the time of their lives. 

Maria and Sir Toby Belch entertain school children at the Pop-Up Globe

So Shakespeare has certainly come to life for me this summer. As I overhead one small girl saying after a school matinee of Twelfth Night, "my life has been enriched!"  But although the plays are meant to be watched, not merely read, years of studying the plays, and working very closely with their language and text, has made watching them now even more enjoyable. I spent the three years of my high school exams working on Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and Hamlet. 

My school copies of Hamlet and Twelfth Night. Yes, I like to scribble in my books.

Because I know them so well, these plays are among my favourites. At university I studied many more of the plays, but in too much of a hurry; in three 12-week courses we got through  Richard III, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, All's Well That Ends Well, and The Comedy of Errors, mixed in with several other Elizabethan/Jacobean plays - the result being that I have a passing acquaintance with each of these texts but know none of them nearly as well as I would like. For what it's worth, I do think that university undergraduate English courses should teach fewer texts in more detail.

The Shakespeare section of my bookshelf

My favourite Shakespeare play? For years it was Hamlet, with Twelfth Night a close second... but the Pop-Up Globe has reminded me how much I love Twelfth Night, with the result that Hamlet is perilously close to being knocked off the top spot!

I love Shakespeare's works for their power, beauty and truth, and for the never-failing charm of the language's poetry and rhythm. I meant to include some of my favourite Shakespearean speeches, but this post is already far too long, so I will put them in another post.

My Shakespeare at the George bookmark - a souvenir of that first Tempest which has been with me all over the world.

We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows aught, what is't to leave betimes. Let be. 

 ~

Hamlet V.2.204-8

Thoughts on Hamlet

Now cracks a noble heart...

Though the Lord Lackbeards' all-female version of Hamlet at the Pop-Up Globe was not my favourite version of the play, there were still many good things about it and much food for thought.

It was (mostly) a swift, clean production - some judicious cutting of the text reduced the play to just under three hours (including a fifteen minute interval). As is often the case, the whole Fortinbras sub-plot was cut, but they kept Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern (famously cut by Olivier in his 1948 film) and the Second Gravedigger, another character who is very often dispatched with. The cast was small, numbering only eight, but some clever doubling meant that I never really noticed this until they took their bows at the end. They did a good job of using the huge stage, relying mainly on the language and movement to fill the space rather than going overboard with props and non-diegetic music - which, after the musical overload of Antony and Cleopatra, was something of a relief and quite refreshing.

The performance dragged a little at the beginning but picked up speed after Act I - they suddenly appeared to realise that actors finishing a scene could exit by one stage door as those beginning the next entered via the opposite side of the stage. Doing this, rather leaving the stage bare between each scene, keeps the action moving along nicely (Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night have both got this down to a fine art). There was a very awkward pause in the action in the middle of the ghost scene - at "Go on, I'll follow thee," Hamlet and the ghost exited the theatre through the groundlings and then took a long while to re-appear! As I was right at the back of the upper gallery, where admittedly the view is not great, perhaps I missed something, but the rest of the audience seemed a bit bemused too.

The actor playing Hamlet, clad appropriately in inky black, looked to be about seven months' pregnant - which, predictably, drew quite a snigger at "How pregnant sometimes his replies are!" As previously mentioned, the doubling was neatly done - Claudius doubled as the ghost, which brought out nicely what Hamlet calls "The counterfeit presentment of two brothers." Horatio doubled as Guildenstern (or was it Rosenkrantz?) - one Hamlet's faithful friend, the other a faithless one. A pipe-smoking, newspaper-reading Polonius who rather stole the show re-appeared (sans pipe and newspaper) after his untimely demise as the priest who buries Ophelia. Since Polonius arguably helps drive Ophelia to madness and death, this seemed fitting too.

One problem with this production was that several of the actors were not very audible. This was probably partly because I was right at the top of the playhouse, in the upper gallery, but also because some of the actors' voices just did not carry as well as men's tend to. Nobody had any trouble hearing Polonius, and Hamlet was fine too, but some of the other characters were less than distinct.

Someone once said that Hamlet is actually a very funny play, and this is to some extent true - especially with Polonius, who in this production drew many a laugh. But, as with Romeo and Juliet, I did feel that the actors and director had chosen to emphasise the comedy at the expense of the tragedy. (One reason I like the production of Twelfth Night so much is that the poignancy of Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Malvolio is well brought out, confronted rather than glossed over. The first time I saw the production it did appear to be played more as a straight comedy, but now they seem to have found a good balance between the comedy and the pathos. At the school matinee yesterday the children seemed especially receptive to this and there was real sympathy for both characters. But I digress.)

The two gravediggers in Act V Scene I made a valiant effort to involve the groundlings during the argument over whether Ophelia drowned herself willingly or not. "Here lies the water," said the Second Gravedigger, pointing at one of the groundlings and gesticulating for her to mime 'water;' "here stands the man," pointing to another. The speech continues, "If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes, mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself." Unfortunately it backfired somewhat, because, though the lady mimed water drowning the man with enthusiasm, he just stood there, refusing either to drown himself or to be drowned!

The fencing scene at the end of Act V, which is surely supposed to be the climax of the entire play, seemed oddly tame - possibly because it is not advisable to fence with gusto when one is in the last trimester of pregnancy...? Once everybody had died and then got up again, I did not really like the closing dance - I have read somewhere that this was common practice at the original Globe after all plays, including tragedies, but it just felt wrong for Hamlet... the crowning insult, however, was the stream of bubbles floating down from the playhouse roof to the stage and yard below. Bubbles! For Hamlet!! I think not.

Still, I am glad to have seen the play performed in a space similar to that in which it was originally staged. Although there was a brilliant stage version of Hamlet at the Musgrove theatre a few years ago (and, of course, the recent Benedict Cumberbatch production at the Barbican), it seems to be a play that tends to be filmed more often than staged, meaning that we are often presented with celebrity actors, sweeping vistas of Elsinor and an array of special effects for the ghost. Often - as with the Kenneth Branagh and Mel Gibson film versions (and perhaps also with the Barbican one*) - these become the focus and the play becomes too 'busy,' with the beauty of the language swamped or simply overlooked. (I like Olivier's film because he does not lose the language.) So it was good to see how, on a huge bare stage, the language has to be the driving force behind the play, and - even better - how it is entirely capable of doing so.

Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

* Being in NZ, I could not see this live, but I did see a filmed version of a live performance. From what I heard and read of the production, a huge part of its success (in terms of tickets sold) was the simple fact that Cumberbatch was in it.

What next for the Pop-Up Globe?

The Globe's last performances are on April 24th and the theatre is set to be demolished after that. I for one will be very sorry to see it go! Apparently other people will be too - see

Pop-Up Poll - what should happen to the Globe?

and

Petition to Auckland Council to keep the Globe

And here is an article by the Herald detailing just how much fake blood was spilt during Romeo and Juliet:

Herald | Final curtain due at the Globe

Today's ushering session is Hamlet, performed by the Lord Lackbeards Touring Company with an all-female cast, so that should be interesting... 

via

Telegraph | Shakespeare First Folio discovery

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/07/shakespeare-first-folio-discovered-on-isle-of-bute/

Frontispiece to the First Folio

Antony and Cleopatra

O, Antony!

The Pop-Up Globe continues to sweep all before it with all remaining shows almost completely sold out (groundling tickets are still available though, except for Twelfth Night on Friday 22nd when these tickets are sold out too). So it turns out ushering is not only an economic way to see the plays, but almost the only way...

That said, I probably saw less of yesterday's performance - Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Vanessa Byrnes - than any of the previous ones. It was the first time I had ushered for a performance open to the general public (all the others had been school matinees). Turns out adults need more babysitting than school children... there was a good deal of debate (even dispute) over allocated seats and several people were very late, so I missed most of the play's opening.

Probably because of this, the play seemed quite disjointed and even confusing in places. Also it had been heavily cut (both in length - to just over 2 hours - and in the number of characters), and as the director's programme notes admitted, they had "taken huge liberties with the text; characters are split into two, merged together, introduced as completely new personalites, and completely cut from the text." This did not help my comprehension either, although admittedly my working knowledge of Antony and Cleo is not nearly as good as some of the other plays... Then there was the scene where Octavia confronts Cleopatra. I had no recollection of this being in the play at all and was mighty relieved to read in the programme notes afterwards that this was actually inserted from another play (All For Love [1677], by John Dryden) and that my memory was not quite so sieve-like as I had feared! Throughout the play there was a good deal of music and singing - I suspect intended to hold the text together, but often just vaguely confusing.

As to the cast: Cleopatra was good, and seemed to get better as the play progressed. Antony I felt was not as noble as he should have been, though the director's notes did say that she had chosen to approach the characters "as real people who are flawed and fallible," so maybe this was deliberate. Still... O, Antony! Caesar managed to be both funny and creepy, often at the same time (he also reminded me of Charles Grey's  Blofeld, and once that image had got into my head I couldn't get it out again). Pompey was quite frankly perplexing. He (or rather she, since he was played by a she) and his piratical henchman (Menas and Menacrates) were played with very, very thick Scottish accents, for no reason on earth that I could think of... as Pompey was also dressed in greeny-brown and swathed around the head with loose scarves ("all tentacle-y") the effect reminded me of nothing so much as Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean films!

My photos from this show are very bad, partly because I was busy for much of the time, and partly because I was on the middle gallery again, where the scaffolding is not conducive to good photo-taking. Still, I managed to snatch one of Davy Jones. You will have to imagine the Scottish accent. 

Davy Jones, aka Pompey

Davy Jones almost stole the show (for me anyway), but the best bit was this part (Antony's death; Cleopatra is taking refuge in her 'monument'):

CLEO: ... But come, come, Antony - 

Help me, my women - we must draw thee up.

Assist, good friends.

[...]

[They begin lifting].

The question of how to make this stage business work - just how to 'draw up' Antony to the 'monument' - is a tricky one. Years ago I read somewhere that at the original Globe Cleopatra's 'monument' could have been one of the boxes or balconies above the stage, with the dying Antony somehow hoisted aloft by means of ropes - which sounds both difficult and dangerous. Yesterday at the Pop-Up Globe Cleopatra said her speech from the main stage floor, with Antony 'dying' at her feet in the yard, among the groundlings. This of course meant that at "assist, good friends," there were half-a-dozen groundlings ready and willing to bear a hand, lifting up Antony and rolling him onto the stage!

There are many deaths in the play (basically he dies, she dies, they all die, while poor old Pompey is dispatched by the end of Act III), but after the bloodbath of Romeo and Juliet they seemed a little tame; no fake blood and the 'dead' merely got up and walked off the stage - a lot quicker and easier than having them hauled off, but still, they were supposed to be dead...

Overall - an interesting production; rather hodge-podge, a little perplexing, but (despite the lack of gore) suitably dramatic, and the poetry was as superb as ever:

His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm

Crested the world; his voice was propertied

As all the tunéd spheres, and that to friends;

But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,

He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,

There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas

That grew the more by reaping. His delights 

Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above

The element they lived in. In his livery

Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were

As plates dropped from his pockets.

~

I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life.

Drama at Romeo and Juliet

Juliet getting into the dramatic swing of things

As if the plot of Romeo and Juliet wasn't dramatic enough already, yesterday's school matinee performance was full of extra drama, starting with a very sick Romeo who very nearly did not make it on stage (he did though, and lasted the whole performance - no mean feat!). Then they got a little over-enthusiastic with the fake blood, which was sprayed not only all over the stage but over a fair proportion of the groundlings too. One boy had his crisp white school shirt covered in it (wonder how he explained that to his mother...). Then another schoolboy, apparently prompted by the gory happenings on stage, went into an epileptic fit and had to be carried away in an ambulance!

Yesterday I was stationed on the middle gallery, which, although safe from spraying blood, is a good deal more restricted in view than the yard or lower gallery:

The view would have been better from the seats (I was standing at the back of the gallery, behind all the seating). They have tried to ensure that the scaffolding doesn't run across in front of the seated sightline, but I still think you get a much better view (and much more involved with the action) from the yard. From the galleries you miss any action that goes on directly underneath (the actors make several entrances and exits through the groundlings in the yard) as well as anything happening directly above you (at one point in the play the Prince speaks from one of the bays in the upper gallery).

The school children yesterday were even more appreciative than those at the performance I saw a few weeks ago. This time, however, the loudest cheers were reserved not for Romeo and Juliet's kiss, but for the entrance of a shirtless Mercutio lusting for blood!

"Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy, and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved."