Shakespeare the Player

Well, here's a blessing.  I'd call it an unbought grace, except that I bought it, in a used bookstore, on impulse.  That is: Shakespeare the Player, subtitled "A Life in the Theatre," a book by one John Southworth, hitherto unknown to me who, if I have the right IMDb  page, hoofed it out through a lifetime of mostly second-tier assignments as stage and screen actor (IMDb says he died in 2004).   The career context is important because what we have here is a man with a message, or a mission: arraying himself against a formidable (albeit not unanimous) phalanx of contrary critics, Southworth wants to put the theatre at the center of Shakespeare's universe, and to put the Shakespeare at the center of the theatre--to make him a working actor who got into playwrighting because the company needed a material, not merely a playwright who traded pen for buskin just to fill up an idle hour.

This book must have been a labor of love, perhaps not unlike his acting career. So far as I can tell, the academics never took him seriously (returning his own favor) and I don't suppose many of his fellow actors were willing to give much time to what is, at the end of the day, a pretty dense book.  Southworth may not be a scholar but he has done a scholar's job of combing the record for any forgotten bauble that might adorn his argument.  He does what he can to demonstrate not merely that Shakespeare was an actor, but rather also to to identify the parts he played and (sometime) why.  Most of this is near-bald speculation which any anonymous reviewer would have savaged on his first read.  But most of the guesses strike me as pretty shrewd and I am delighted to take them in default of a better.  He also offers up 10 pages of excerpts to show how the young Shakespeare early in his career echoed so many of the playwrights around him. Not plagiarism: precisely not. Southworth's point is rather more that if you live in that world (memorizing whole globs of stuff and playing a different play every night), you were bound to riff on habits of speech that you heard from those around you.

All of which builds up to the takeaway argument at the center of the book. The question is the old favorite: what was Shakespeare doing in the "lost 80s," when the trail goes cold in Stratford, years before it warms up again in London.   Southworth's answer: no, not that Shakespeare was a sailor, a soldier, a spy a servant in a great house.  No: Southworth argues that he was right there in the theatre, learning his own trade.

I have to confess this suits my own prejudice nicely.  I never thought to make the point as strongly as Southworth. But it has long struck me that Shakespeare almost from the beginning--in Henry Vii, say--seems to know stuff that an outsider wouldn't know.  He might not have reached full maturity as a poet (though Southworth thinks a lot of this stuff is better than it gets credit for). But he knows theatre stuff: he knows how to do theatre stuff: how to shape a scene how to get characters on or off stage.  So far, so good. Southworth's point is that he cannot have learned that kind of stuff on the fly in a few months. It's the kind of skill you build up only through long experience under careful tutelage.  Southworth argues that Shakespeare's situation suggests exactly that: entirety plausible (uh oh) that he  honed his skill by the tedious practice of stuff that actors do

I guess I can understand why this book wasn't a natural hit, not even among the enthusiasts: too jaunty for the academics, too dense for those who have to go rehearse their lines.  But it's a compelling story, carefully documented which goes far to make Shakespeare's world even more three-dimensional than it might have been already.

Department of New Old News: Falstaff

This one just came over the mountains by pony express, a couple of years late.  The subject is "The Hollow Crown," BBC-2's rendition of Shakespeare's "second trilogy"*--the Henry plays from the late 1590s, which (among other blessings) give us Mistress Quickly, Doll Tearsheet, the stews of Eastcheap and their presiding genius, Falstaff himself.    I paid no attention at the time--I'm not sure I ever heard of them--but Mrs. Buce churned them to the top of the Netflix crew and I must say that (in the words of the Michelin man) they are definitely worth a detour.  A scan of the reviews shows that they received plenty of praise on their first showing, not least for their place in a larger context.  That is: apparently fans still remember--and smart from--the all-of-Shakespeare series from the 70s.  Over time that series has developed a reputation (not entirely deserved, in my view) as the great clinker in the highway of dramatic evolution; the new ones are hailed as retrieving the Bard from the clutches of mediocrity (or worse).

I do think they are good, though I wouldn't crown them with the laurel of perfection.  One or more reviewers also remark on the degree to which they are "faithful" to the original, but that doesn't seem quite right to me either.  For one thing, I don't see how you can be entirely "faithful" to a play originally  produced in a closed theatre when your television landscape extends to the entire British Isles.  More: it's clear that director Richard Eyre, however respectful he may be of the script (and he is respectful) still wants to put his own reading on the original material.

Which brings me to my particular point here--Falstaff, as rendered by Simon Russell Beale.  The Brits practically hold their breath at the mention of Beale's name and may even deserve his reputation.  Falstaff is usually remembered as the world's great comic part, and Beale has played Spamalot.

And here's the thing: Beale's (Eyre's) Falstaff is not the least way comic: Beale throws away or sits on (with his massive girth) virtually every memorable comic line in the play. This may not be exactly revolutionary but I suspect for most viewers, it is eye-opening. We usually see Falstaff as a scam: Beale's Falstaff is a scoundrel: a dark and disturbing presence fit not merely to make mischief among his friends but serious trouble for the whole realm.

But here's another funny thing: this darker interpretation--every bit of it is supported by the script.  We do see Falstaff in raucous merrymaking at the tavern. We also see him as a highwayman on the road from Rochester.  We see him as a "false honor"soldier, claiming credit for the Prince's own kill.  Worst: we see him taking payoffs to excuse recruits from service in the military.  This Falstaff is not at all a pleasant man.  When Doll Tearsheet says:

Well, fare thee well: I have known thee thesetwenty-nine years, come peascod-time; but anhonester and truer-hearted man,--well, fare thee well.

…all you can think is "boy, she sure knows how to pick 'em."  It's a startling performance.  I'm not sure it is entirely right but I can see why he/they chose to play it this way, and for (I suspect) almost any viewer, it will make the understanding of Falstaff richer and more nuanced than it was before.` 


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*Oh. Right.  Plus Richard II.  Yes, that one was good, too.

Shakespeare's Gentlemen

The unfailingly interesting Harold C. Goddard offers a typically provocative insight  inspired by what may be Shakespeare's least interesting play:

From The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Tempest, without any deviation, he drew one portrait after another of the fashionable gentleman, either Italian or after the Italian model, and there is no possible mistaking what he thought of them, no matter how good their tailors or how "spacious" they themselves "in the possession of dirt" (as Hamlet remarked of Osric's real estate).  Boyer, Don Armando, Gratiano, Tybalt, the Claudio of Much Ado, Bertram, Parrolles, Si Andrew Aguecheek, the "popinjay" whom Hotspur scorned, Roderigo, Iachomo; these are just a few of the more striking examples, to whom should be added in spit of the anachronisms, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Osric, Paris (in Troilus and Cressida) and even, in some respects, men like Bassanio and Mercutio, not to mention many of the anonymous "gentlemen" and "lords" scattered throughout the plays.  Let anyone who doubts trace the word "gentleman" with the help of a concordance in the texts of Shakespeare's works as a whole. He will be surprised, I think, to find how often the situation or context shows it to be used with ironical intent.' 

There is a story that Abraham Lincoln, on being told that in England no gentleman ever blacks his own boots, asked in his quiet manner, "Whose boots does he black?"  If I am not mistaken, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, even more quietly, makes the same point.

So Goddard in The Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 1, 47 (1951).  Yes.  Well.  But where exactly does that leave the most remarkable of young gentlemen, Hamlet himself, not to say Hamlet's staunch companion, Horatio?  One might object that that they are not "after the Italian model," but this is to confuse effect with cause.  The problem is not that Italians are popinjays; it is that popinjays adopt the Italian manner. And this is precisely what Hamlet and Horatio did not do. What saved them, I wonder, from so dismal a fate?

Afterthought:  And cf.:

    And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
    Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

So Henry V on the eve of Agincourt, in the play of his name, Act IV, Scene 3.   But then, where else would you expect to find a "gentleman?" when there is work to be done?

The New British Richard II

Chez Underbelly (or is it Chez Buce? I forget) rounded off its evening after the New Year's Cantatas last night with acts four and five of Shakespeare's Richard II, as presented in The Hollow Crown, the new British rendering of the playwright's "Lancaster" trilogy.   It's a creditable job on what I've long thought a fascinating play.  A bit ham-handed in its attenuation of Christian symbols (does he really need to spread his arms out as if crucified?  Does he really need to ride in on the mule?).  The selection of geographic locales was imaginatively done--amazing what you can do when you are freed from the theatre, if you don't screw it up, which often enough they do.

What has long fascinated me about Richard II is not that it is Shakespeare at the top of his game--it's not--but that it is Shakespeare trying to figure out who he is, trying to negotiate a fully mature identity out of his newly-discovered (and no doubt hitherto unsuspected) talent for writing world-class verse.  Recall the chronology: this is 1595, when the the theaters reopened after an extended closure due to plague.  It was probably during the closure that Shakespeare discovered his power as a sonneteer, but that's the thing: Shakespeare's honeyed sonnets, somebody called them, and it is not quite a compliment.  Few if any of the sonnets are awful; not many are really bad and a few are brilliant. But a lot, however fluent, are a bit too cute, too clever--one might almost say "too honeyed," if somebody hadn't said it before.

Back in the theatre, Shakespeare has to figure out what to do with his new-found power.  I think it was Peter Saccio who said that when he first read some of Richard's set-piece speeches, they almost blew the top of his head off.  But it was when he saw them in context, he saw them in a whole new dimension: here is Richard, a fine poet in his way, but precisely because he is so fine a poet, thus fatally  ill-equipped to be a good king.  King, hah: Richard is the original drama queen, who dazzles with his eloquence, all the time disclosing that he won't be able to get out of this mess alive.  It's an amazing piece of work and enough to convince you, despite its imperfections, that here is a still-young man of whom great things can be expected. 

As an aside, he plays another version of the same game in Romeo and Juliet, apparently written the same year.  Few can versify with such eloquence as young Montague (well, perhaps Richard can). But again, that's his curse:  For Romeo it's all about words, and his tragedy that he doesn't know it is all about words.  So in both plays, it is Shakespeare's peculiar gift to explore, to exhibit, and yet to criticize, almost to mock, the very gift that obviously so astonishes him.

Re Saccio's point, I can relate: I first heard the Richard set-pieces in an old vinyl recording of John Gielgud's one-man presentation, "Ages of Man." It was only a few years later that I actually got round to reading the play (I didn't actually see it until much later still).   And I learned only recently how his early casting as Richard was a breakthrough role for Gielgud, and also for the king himself: how Gielgud's performance restored the play to the conversation after long periods of neglect.

I can believe it.  One reason why I can believe it is that last night watching the new production--worthy though it was--the voice I kept hearing was that of the old man himself.