Saturday, January 26, 2019

saving history


CHAPTER 1
1912, Atlantic Ocean

'Anyone left here on deck E?' cried Liam O'Connor. His voice echoed down the narrow passageway, bouncing off the metal walls. 'Anyone down here?'

It was silent save for the muffled cries and clatter of hasty footsteps coming from the deck above and the deep mournful creak of the ship's hull, stressing and stretching as the bow end of the ship slowly dipped below the ocean's surface.

*

That's how it starts. Three teenagers from various places and times come together in New York/2001. Time travel technology was invented in 2056, but the effects are disastrous. The TimeRiders' mission is to police time, to detect attempts to interfere with it and to counteract them. To save history. They must do this even though by 2026 (Sal comes from Mumbai/2026) it's apparent that the world is in steep decline, its environment poisoned.

It's Kramer, the villain of volume 1 who tries to change this history of decline, by gifting 21st century technology to the Nazis in 1941 so that they win the war and impose an authoritarian world order, with the intention of reining in human self-harm. But of course the villain's hubris and paranoia undoes him, and in 1957 (now himself Fuhrer) he changes his mind and decides it's best to destroy the world instead.

Much of the book takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland peopled only by starving cannibals, while against all odds the TimeRiders seek a way to regroup and resurrect enough technology to travel to 1941 and roll back to History 1.0 .

*

I can't review TimeRiders. I've read hardly any other science fiction and hardly any other books aimed at teenage readers. But I did enjoy it and I have a lot of admiration for Alex Scarrow's creation.

These books are material-greedy and he draws it from a vast array of popular sources.  Some of them were recognizable even to me, for instance Cormac McCarthy's The Road in those post-apocalyptic cannibals. And in that opening scene, too, what's evoked isn't so much the historical as the cinematic Titanic. Scarrow is fascinated by the potential of time-travel into the past to utterly transform the present, a theme developed in Ray Bradbury's 1952 story "A Sound of Thunder".

Scarrow's aims require breakneck functional writing for the most part, but every so often he stuns us with a graphic image, in the best traditions of noir and Marvel comics.

(A winter evening in Nazi Washington DC/1957) Dull vanilla lights flickered beyond drawn curtains... a wet handful of mushed cardboard...soft pattering of sleet...

(After an attack) Then silence except for the rasping sound of her and Maddy's breath, the distant repetitive drip of moisture from somewhere above and the sound of an enamel mug rolling back and forth across the floor. 'Oh my God,' exhaled Maddy...

(About to be liberated from prison camp) A row of jagged holes suddenly stitched its way across the thin plywood walls of his hut, sending a shower of wood splinters on to the floor and leaving a line of pale sunbeams lancing through the air.

*

Teenage fiction seeks both to represent and to engage in the debates of its readers. From the fresh perspective of adolescence this is usually a debate about values.

The values of TimeRiders are a mix. Anyone who reads it will be confronted with an eye-opening global perspective on global problems. It's right-minded in a progressive sense, so far as it promotes gender and race equality and laments environmental loss (though of course poisoned dystopias make great settings for action). Nationalism and religion are viewed as somewhat comical preoccupations that are strange to our heroes.

Yet TimeRiders is profoundly anti-revolutionary. It's the villain, not the heroes, who wants radical change, and the message is clear that such idealistic people are unconsciously driven by their own egos and display an inhuman lack of respect for the lives, opinions and cultures of other individuals.

 In contrast, the TimeRiders respect what is. There's a strong emotional pull towards the comforting normality of double cheeseburger and fries in New York (even Liam doesn't take long to adapt to this normality, though its details are new to him).

Of course it makes a difference that the TimeRiders are children while Kramer is a forty-ish adult. In this first volume the TimeRiders have their own adult sage/lore-giver/teacher (Foster) who is passing on the baton to them [an idea that goes at least as far back as the vampire-hunters in Bram Stoker's Dracula]. The team are notably compliant, even though Foster is refreshingly pictured as a quite fallible leader. At some level the TimeRiders have an emotional need for a parent and for a narrative that gives meaning to their existence. (Although, as usual in adventure stories, the heroes are liberated from the encumbrance of real families.)

And it's no surprise that self-realizing local emotional attachment (loyalty, love) is presented as the deepest value of all. I haven't so far mentioned that the team also includes a "meat robot" called Bob. Bob's brain is an AI supercomputer and is meant to be rigorously logical. The result is often comic. Bob, recalling Spock in Star Trek, has a small human component and occasionally observes mysterious influences on his thinking: "Is this what they call friendship?"  But of course it's usually the human heroes who, at crucial stages of the plot, stand up for emotional attachment in preference to logic and its utilitarian weighing of probabilities ("I'm not leaving without him!"). And this stand on attachment is always validated in the end. Abstract considerations are always trumped by human warmth, by the conviction that your mates come first.

It's a conviction that has been key to the marvellous and terrible success of our species, even though it often leads us to kill other humans who are not our mates. It may yet lead to us drowning in our own sludge.

*

[By the end of the excellent fifth volume, Gates of Rome, the TimeRiders are seriously questioning  whether they are on the right side. It seems apparent that History 1.0, having trashed the planet, will end with the destruction of the human race (by man-made virus) in 2070. Why battle to preserve that outcome?

There's at least four more volumes after that, but of these I have, in Bob's phrase, No Information.]

Labels:

Friday, January 25, 2019

William Shakespeare: Henry VI, Part 2

Queen Margaret, Cardinal Beaufort, the Earl of Suffolk

[Image source: https://www.scottkaisershakespeare.com/directing/henry_2_3.shtml . From the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production, directed by Scott Kaiser and Libby Appel.]

GLOUCESTER
My Lord of Winchester, I know your mind;
'Tis not my speeches that you do mislike,
But 'tis my presence that doth trouble ye.
Rancour will out: proud prelate, in thy face
I see thy fury: if I longer stay,
We shall begin our ancient bickerings....

Just give me a company and I'll direct it myself! I thought as I read on. There's nothing a director needs to do, really; the play speaks so directly to the rancour and intransigence of our Brexit days.

That was from the first scene, a virtuoso disintegration of the formal concord with which the play begins: Henry, Margaret and Suffolk sweep from the stage, and one by one we meet the court's other variously discontented and opposed parties: Gloucester, Beaufort, then Buckingham and Somerset, then the Nevills (Salisbury and Warwick) and finally York. (It's a great way to grab our interest. Marlowe copied the main idea in The Massacre at Paris.)


KING HENRY VI
For my part, noble lords, I care not which;
Or Somerset or York, all's one to me.
YORK
If York have ill demean'd himself in France,
Then let him be denay'd the regentship.
SOMERSET
If Somerset be unworthy of the place,
Let York be regent; I will yield to him.
WARWICK
Whether your grace be worthy, yea or no,
Dispute not that: York is the worthier.
CARDINAL
Ambitious Warwick, let thy betters speak.
WARWICK
The cardinal's not my better in the field.
BUCKINGHAM
All in this presence are thy betters, Warwick.
WARWICK
Warwick may live to be the best of all.
SALISBURY
Peace, son! and show some reason, Buckingham,
Why Somerset should be preferred in this.
QUEEN MARGARET
Because the king, forsooth, will have it so.
GLOUCESTER
Madam, the king is old enough himself
To give his censure: these are no women's matters.
QUEEN MARGARET
If he be old enough, what needs your grace
To be protector of his excellence?
GLOUCESTER
Madam, I am protector of the realm;
And, at his pleasure, will resign my place.
SUFFOLK
Resign it then and leave thine insolence.
Since thou wert king--as who is king but thou?--
The commonwealth hath daily run to wreck;
The Dauphin hath prevail'd beyond the seas;
And all the peers and nobles of the realm
Have been as bondmen to thy sovereignty.
CARDINAL
The commons hast thou rack'd; the clergy's bags
Are lank and lean with thy extortions.
SOMERSET
Thy sumptuous buildings and thy wife's attire
Have cost a mass of public treasury.
BUCKINGHAM
Thy cruelty in execution
Upon offenders, hath exceeded law,
And left thee to the mercy of the law.
QUEEN MARGARET
Thy sale of offices and towns in France,
If they were known, as the suspect is great,
Would make thee quickly hop without thy head.

(from Act I, Scene 3)

In this extract the good Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, makes the error of showing his irritation at Queen Margaret's persistent needling. He reaps a whirlwind of trumped-up charges; he's a marked man from now on. 

But whatever the immediate point at issue, the tone of debate in 2H6 remains constant: high-mettled, indignant, thin-skinned, factious, uncompromising, blameful, dismissive. Everyone has ammunition and everyone wants to use it.

Presumably as Warwick says "Warwick may live to be the best of all" he half-draws his sword. At any rate the threat of violence is palpable. 2H6 portrays a society on the brink of civil war... That war begins in earnest in Act V (with the battle of St Albans) We're not exactly in the same place today, except online: our Brexit civil war is a virtual one. But the rhetoric is unnervingly similar. 

Our director (me or another) could develop plenty of other Brexit angles too. Jack Cade's crusade against anyone who can write his own name might recall some modern remarks about having had enough of experts. The Earl of Suffolk's utter contempt for ordinary people is pure cosmopolitan elitism in action. Anti-French feeling courses through the play -- Cade regards being able to speak French as evident collusion with England's foes. Yet this is an entirely English power struggle, and we see that its big players are apt to exploit nationalism and xenophobia for their own ends.

But these analogies are, relatively speaking, just a bit of fun.While, on the contrary, the play's portrayal of spreading rancour and its consequences is a serious as well as thrilling thing to contemplate.

Here's Suffolk, the Queen, York and the Cardinal, rationalizing their murder of an innocent man. 

CARDINAL
That he should die is worthy policy;
But yet we want a colour for his death:
'Tis meet he be condemn'd by course of law.
SUFFOLK
But, in my mind, that were no policy:
The king will labour still to save his life,
The commons haply rise, to save his life;
And yet we have but trivial argument,
More than mistrust, that shows him worthy death.
YORK
So that, by this, you would not have him die.
SUFFOLK
Ah, York, no man alive so fain as I!
YORK
'Tis York that hath more reason for his death.
But, my lord cardinal, and you, my Lord of Suffolk,
Say as you think, and speak it from your souls,
Were't not all one, an empty eagle were set
To guard the chicken from a hungry kite,
As place Duke Humphrey for the king's protector?
QUEEN MARGARET
So the poor chicken should be sure of death.
SUFFOLK
Madam, 'tis true; and were't not madness, then,
To make the fox surveyor of the fold?
Who being accused a crafty murderer,
His guilt should be but idly posted over,
Because his purpose is not executed.
No; let him die, in that he is a fox,
By nature proved an enemy to the flock,
Before his chaps be stain'd with crimson blood,
As Humphrey, proved by treasons, to my liege.
And do not stand on quillets how to slay him:
Be it by gins, by snares, by subtlety,
Sleeping or waking, 'tis no matter how,
So he be dead; for that is good deceit
Which mates him first that first intends deceit.
QUEEN MARGARET
Thrice-noble Suffolk, 'tis resolutely spoke.
SUFFOLK
Not resolute, except so much were done;
For things are often spoke and seldom meant:
But that my heart accordeth with my tongue,
Seeing the deed is meritorious,
And to preserve my sovereign from his foe,
Say but the word, and I will be his priest. ...

(from Act III, Scene 1)

[York loathes Suffolk and the Queen, they despise both him and the Cardinal. It's wonderful how working together on a well-scoped project brings people together.]





Labels:

Thursday, January 24, 2019

precious times






Escaped convict. That was an idea in my childhood, it came from a story.

In these short days there's a lot to do. You don't want to cook in the dark, or wrap presents, or fix the heating. But sometimes it rains in the day, and then you might have to sit tight, because every time you open the door there's more water to contend with. Keeping the van dry is a constant preoccupation, like charging the phones. After a wet day you are certain to bring mud into the van when you get up at night for a pee.

You set the cabin light so it doesn't come on when you open the driver's door. You don't want to spotlight yourself as soon as you park up. Even if it's raining hard, you need to jump out, to fold the wing mirrors and get the bedding into the front: -- but not via the doors like you would on a dry night, instead you bundle it over the seats. Two carry mats, two four-season bags (one inside the other), two pillows, a fleece blanket, and the windscreen sunshade for a bit of privacy.

But rain is a good thing because it raises the temperature. Knowing the temperature is important. Making a HWB is boring but not as boring as trying to sleep when you're cold. But if you make the wrong call and brew up when you don't need to you'll overheat. A couple of degrees either way is all it takes. But after a time you stop looking it up on the phone, you just know.



Even on cold nights you must have the window open an inch or two, or the van condensates.

The stream of traffic starts at 5am. Before that, in the quiet hours, I'm watching the steam of my wee rising from the stiff ground, which without my glasses is a blurry marbled pattern of pale leaves.

Dawn's a precious time. I've put my bedding away, had a steaming wee, cleaned my teeth in the wood, scraped the windscreen if it needs it. Got the motor running and the radio on.Day begins with driving to a coffee and croissant somewhere. Gregg's is the cheapest and is good, but Wild Bean coffee is a little stronger. Both of them are lively places at 7 am.The scaffolders and quarry boys, the heavy dirty jackets, the emergency services and the midwives are all here fuelling up for the day.

Grey. galvanized railings, orange gantry. Pavement wet with frost melt, not rain. I'm full of the excitement of 08:45.





The daylight hours are busy. The launderette, the library, preparing food in the back, recycling rubbish, tidying, getting a shower at the public baths, getting some exercise, making sure I have a good poo. Now's the time to save some money and have a break from sitting in cafes. That comes later, it's dark by 17:00.

Oh those long evenings. McDonalds is the cheapest, you can make a 99p tea last a couple of hours and you can charge your phones and use wifi. You always check the parking restrictions, how long can I stay before I get fined?








Who's noticing me? Having found the places that work best for you, you're at risk of over-using them. "I noticed your van here every day..." Driver's-side window to driver's side window. That was Gerry the tinker, a nice fellow, but I took the warning. You have to keep moving, change your favourite lay-by, your favourite hangout. 

Regulars. Not as if I don't recognize them myself. The ungainly tranny who sits in the corner, the gregarious couple who always seem to have just had a few drinks, the talky bloke at the library who keeps saying "Excuse my French", the man in gaiters, the ones who just stare straight ahead, the sacked teacher who lives on a narrow-boat, and the stocky guy with the laptop who is at the usual table. I've never seen him go. I used to think I was different. 



Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Nationalism and universalism

Thoughtful article today by Umut Özkirimli, political scientist at the University of Lund.


Lund is in the deep south of Sweden, the power-base of the far-right Sweden Democrats. But it was also the author's experience of Swedish state and society, both for good and ill, that's produced the not so predictable questions raised here. 

Particularly struck by the starting point forfa model of cosmopolitan social contract, based on a negotiation of universal rights with the duties of citizenship. Extract follows:

*

I had to understand that the central question is, as the Swedish historian Lars Trägårdh puts it, whether it is possible to resolve the fundamental tension between, on the one side, “universal moral rules founded in notions of human rights”, and on the other, “nationally bounded claims derived from the idea of citizenship in particular nation states”.

My answer is yes, and the formula is simple: emphasise the connection between rights and duties; speed up the process of integration of newcomers (refugees or migrants) without demanding that they fully assimilate into the dominant culture, but asking them to respect the existing social contract; foster a sense of common destiny that does not necessarily require myths of common ancestry; and engage with the demand for recognition in a fair and equal way, without privileging either minorities or majorities.

*

Umut's perception that political correctness involves a "vigilantism" that denies empathy is worth pausing on, too.


Labels:

Thursday, January 17, 2019

women: poetry: migration : Chris Tysh, Cia Rinne


Crocus. Beckington (Somerset), 17th January 2019.



Two more caplets from the anthology women: poetry: migration ...


CHRIS TYSH

"You're now part of this trip
they kept me from"

"How silly," she adds,
"a thousand years have passed

and I'd recognize it at once"
With its milky white skin

frosty garlands and angels
cupolas and balustrades

the municipal casino
surrenders its arms

at the stroke of noon
It is not without magic

from Ravished     (a "transcreation" of a 1964 novel by Marguerite Duras, Le Ravissement de Lol. V. Stein. Published in full in Hotel des Archives: A Trilogy (2018).)

CIA RINNE

17 questions
(eine frage des charakters)

caractéristi/¿qué?
misanthropi/¿qué?
philosophi/¿qué?
hédonisti/¿qué?
sympathi/¿qué?
hystéri/¿qué?
grotes/¿qué?
exoti/¿qué?
pani/¿qué?
blo/¿qué?
ni/¿qué?
o/¿qué?
/¿qué?
¿qué?
qué?
ué?
é?
?



*

An excerpt from l'usage du mot . Here's another one:  https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/sent-letter-14673

[CT: born in France, lives in USA. CR: born in Sweden (to Finland-Swedish parents), lives in Berlin]




Previously:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2018/03/my-latest-book-purchase-arrived.html
https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2018/04/this-name-is-like-dyed-wool-of-living.html
https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2018/04/more-extracts-from-women-poetry.html




Honesty. Beckington (Somerset), 17th January 2019.

Labels: , ,

Saturday, January 12, 2019

Sir Walter Scott: The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte


In 1786, [Napoleon] became an adventurer for the honours of literature also, and was anonymously a competitor for the prize offered by the Academy of Lyons on Raynal’s question, “What are the principles and institutions, by application of which mankind can be raised to the highest pitch of happiness”. The prize was adjudged to the young soldier. It is impossible to avoid feeling curiosity to know the character of the juvenile theories respecting government, advocated by one who at length attained the power of practically making what experiments he pleased. Probably his early ideas did not exactly coincide with his more mature practice ; for when Talleyrand, many years afterwards, got the Essay out of the records of the Academy, and returned it to the author, Buonaparte destroyed it, after he had read a few pages. He also laboured under the temptation of writing a journey from Valence to Mount Cenis, after the manner of Sterne, which he was fortunate enough finally to resist. The affectation which pervades Sterne’s peculiar style of composition, was not likely to be simplified under the pen of Buonaparte.
In 1789, Buonaparte, then quartered at Auxonne, had composed a work, which might form two volumes, on the political, civil, and military history of Corsica. He addressed a letter to General Paoli, then residing in London, on the subject of the proposed work, and the actual condition of his countrymen. He also submitted it to the Abbé Raynal, who recommended the publication of it. With this view, Buonaparte invited M. Joly, a bookseller of Dole, to visit him at Auxonne. He came, he says, and found the future Emperor in a naked barrack room, the sole furniture of which consisted of a wretched bed without curtains, a table placed in the embrasure of a window, loaded with books and papers, and two chairs. His brother Louis, whom he was teaching mathematics, lay on a wretched mattress, in an adjoining closet. M. Joly and the author agreed on the price of the impression of the book, but Napoleon was at the time in uncertainty whether he was to remain at Auxonne or not. The work was never printed, nor has a trace of it been discovered.

(from The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Ch XIX in the full edition, but Ch I in mine)

Auxonne (pronounced "Aussonne") is in Burgundy, a few miles east of Dijon.

Louis Buonaparte, in one of the numerous corrective footnotes that he added to Scott's work, tells us that M. Joly's account was romanticized. Napoleon had been allocated a good, larger-than-average room, as it was known that Louis was going to be staying with him.

*

It's taken me a couple of years -- longer than Scott took to write it! -- but I've finally finished reading the Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (downloaded to the Kindle app on my smartphone). Mostly in the dark, while settling down for a night in the van. Not ideal, especially since the phone screen got shattered. That was last August, while we were messing about on the fitness machines outside the "aire" at Le Mans.

Some provisos. Scott's massive book was published in nine volumes (June 1827 onwards). The eighteen introductory chapters, about the French Revolution and the wider European context in which Napoleon first emerged, are most unfortunately missing from my text. This text, I should explain, formed part of a £1 collection of Scott's complete works in Kindle format. The OCR-produced text is atrocious. It swarms with typos and many passages, especially in the numerous footnotes, are simply incomprehensible. These footnotes interrupt the main text, and each other, without any warning. So I became resigned to giving up an anecdote in mid-sentence with no assurance of when, or if, I would get to hear the end of it.

I had two motives for embarking on the Life of Buonaparte : to read more of one of my favourite authors, and to redress some of my ignorance of a part of European history of enormous cultural significance.

I don't regret the time I spent, but I'm not sure I could honestly recommend the exercise to casual readers. The Life of Buonaparte was mostly written during the worst year of Scott's life (discounting the final ones, when his health had broken down and his writing  became a mere compulsive tic). In 1826-27 the dire background of bereavement, illness and bankruptcy didn't  stop Woodstock and the Journal from being great books. But the Life became increasingly a conscientious slog, a way to numb himself from his own pain and grief. Scott's characteristic humour and breadth of acute reference are almost entirely missing.

A French translation followed later in 1827, then German and Spanish. The book was a commercial success but the reviews were critical. French reviewers thought that Scott wrote too coolly of Napoleon; British reviewers thought that he wrote too warmly. Though these criticisms, and others, appeared flatly contradictory, yet you can't help wondering if the critics were united in sensing an endeavour that fell short of its potential . Scott didn't disagree. Soon after its publication, he told his friend John Leycester Adolphus, "I could have done it better, if I could have written more at leisure, and with a mind more at ease."

A visual of the full text, in both English and French, can be read here:

https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/napoleonic-pages-the-life-of-napoleon-buonaparte-emperor-of-the-french-with-a-preliminary-view-of-the-french-revolution-by-the-author-of-waverley-c-de-walter-scott/


There are hundreds of Lives of Napoleon. Napoleon died on 5th May, 1821, so this is certainly a very early one. (Good luck finding a list, by the way.)

It's very detailed, and yet I think a modern reader will repeatedly think of questions that seem to call for some attention but don't receive any.  At least, that was my experience.

The earliest volumes make the best reading. Scott's account of Napoleon's Italian campaigns is often thrilling. Scott is always happiest when he can be honestly enthusiastic about his protagonist, even (or especially) when the protagonist isn't on his side.

But as Napoleon's less admirable features accumulate -- the duplicity and atrocity in Egypt, the bonfire of democratic freedoms in France, the serial lying of the Moniteur, the monstrosity of appointing himself emperor -- so the author loses his zest.

He remains, however, scrupulously just. If we miss Scott the visionary novelist, the stirring poet, the chatty essayist, yet still we have Scott the adept compiler of history and, perhaps above all, Scott the lawyer. The best sections of the later volumes are when he pronounces weightily on a moral point. For instance, Napoleon's accountability for the execution, or murder, of the Duc d'Enghien; whether Napoleon had a moral case for interfering in Spain in 1809, or for declaring war on Russia in 1812;  whether Bernadotte was disloyal to Napoleon, once he had accepted the Swedish crown; whether there was any validity in Napoleon's claim that he had been betrayed by the British when they exiled him to St Helena, etc.

*

My desire to learn more about European history arose, of course, in reaction to the dismaying result of the 2016 referendum.

Well, at least no-one witters any more about history being over. History is unmistakably here and is moving with frightening speed. It's curious how almost everything I read now, historical or otherwise, seems to have something urgent to say about our own times.

But perhaps the most striking thing, in this case, is Scott's profound belief in the importance of genuine democracy; a theme that arises particularly in connection with Napoleon's practical despotism, though not only there. (By modern standards democracy in the early nineteenth century was  a distinctly limited affair, but as an alternative to absolutism it seemed very precious.)

I can't help contrasting his view with where we are today.  On the one hand, the willingness of today's right-wing populists to subvert democratic process by any means available, criminality and fraudulence not excepted, and the willingness of so many to overlook this.

On the other hand (and no less alarming) the refusal of so many of us earnest left-leaning progressives to understand our obligation to accept a democratic outcome regardless of whether we voted for it ourselves.

Surveys seem to show that young people are becoming less committed to democracy. Perhaps they see it as a system that has serially failed to counter the evils of capitalism and the catastrophe of environmental destruction.

But is that really an informed view? Hasn't it, rather, been failures in the implementation of true democracy that have made our systems of government less effective than they need to be?

Would disentranchising some or most people be likely to solve the enormous problems of capitalism and environmental destruction?

But this isn't, at root, about systems of government. It's about whether people, people such as ourselves, still recognize an over-riding social duty to behave with integrity.

I'm thinking in particular of the integrity to reject, not only the transgressions of the other side (everyone does that), but the transgressions of our own side. It's becoming a rare virtue. Perhaps many don't even regard it as a virtue. Who wants such unreliable people around? Especially in a battle?

But is battling, of all things, what we really need?

Granted that Scott was well-born, white, male, Protestant, and a firm Tory in a period when Tories were seriously hard-line, his unfailing belief that all questions are moral questions feels like something we might have to learn from at some stage. As history is speeding up, it might be soon.

Scott's novels: A brief guide

Labels:

Thursday, January 10, 2019

aloof,hospital


Photos from 1st January in Warminster, Wiltshire. Above, the mute, tight-lipped appearance of White Dead-nettle (Lamium album; Sw: Vitplister; Sp: Ortiga blanca). Below, Common or Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica; Sw: Brännässla; Sp: Ortiga mayor/Ortiga verde), with a noticeably more open appearance, mainly due to the longer leaf-stalks.



*

at seven fifteen
eastern streak

madrugada

but widening

so soon
the element
simplicity

of dawn
is gone

flit blackbirds
single use cups
while people pronounced
while queues will jazz

you could talk down
Harry Martinson and say
"dawn never comes".


*

... gleam of
the last full bottle...

so once more
I cast a glance at
the last full bottle...

while we met
and resentments flung us apart
even in those
minutes I sometimes nursed
the last full bottle




*


As you may have gathered, I've been taking a closer interest in winter greenery. Here's a plant I see everywhere (so it must be very common), but haven't yet managed to link to its summer appearance. The squared-off ends are very distinctive.



No mysteries with this one... Cow-parsley starting to get busy. (Anthriscus sylvestris; Sw: Hundkäx/Hundloka; Sp: Perifollo verde). Distinctive for the fresh yellow-green colour, and the feathery appearance of those crisped leaflets.



Here's a local plant that looks rather similar: Corky-fruited Water-dropwort (Oenanthe pimpinelloides; Not found in Sw; Sp: Enante de hoja de apio, i.e. celery-leaved Oenanthe). It's a local plant in the UK, but it happens to be common in Frome.

Oenanthe pimpinelloides. Frome, Somerset, 12th January 2019.

You can distinguish it by the more bluish colour and by the leaflets being flatter, hence looking less feathery.

Anthriscus sylvestris (left) and Oenanthe pimpinelloides (right).


Labels: , ,

Wednesday, January 09, 2019

William Shakespeare (kind of): 1 Henry VI








Talbot and son


[Image source: http://theshakespeareblog.com/2013/08/the-end-of-chivalry-john-talbot-the-terror-of-the-french/ . From a performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.]

“In what history did your grace find that incident?” said Burnet to the Duke of Marlborough, on hearing him quote some anecdote concerning the wars of York and Lancaster which was new to the Bishop. “In Shakspeare’s plays,” answered the Victor of Blenheim, — “the only history of those times I ever read.”


(From Sir Walter Scott's review-essay of Boaden's Life of Kemble  and Michael Kelly's Reminiscences)

*

This post records my delighted immersion in the online PDF of Paul J Vincent's wonderfully readable 2005 PhD thesis about 1 Henry VI.

"The Genesis of the First Part of Henry VI" (University of Auckland). [It's also rather wittily subtitled "when harey met Shakespeare" -- you'll see why.]



This was a great opportunity for me to get up to speed on what scholars have managed to establish about the origin of this problematic play. Vincent builds on the foundation of Gary Taylor's argument in "Shakespeare and Others" (which itself rehabilitates Gaw and Dover Wilson), but Vincent's conclusions have some significant differences from Taylor's. [Brian Vickers, as I've read, largely agrees with Vincent's analysis.] 

So, what are these conclusions? 

*

1H6 was written as a prequel to the already extant 2H6 and 3H6, but not by Shakespeare. It was the "harey the vj" performed by Lord Strange's Men seventeen times between 3/3/1592 and 31/1/1593 [see end of post for details. A very successful venture, judging from Philip Henslowe's diary.]

The subject of Talbot was chosen as a compliment to Lord Strange. Talbot was an ancestor of Lord Strange. [This is likely enough, but it's gracelessly executed. Sir William Lucy tells us, in IV.7, that one of  Talbot's  titles is Lord Strange of  Blackmere (Lucy is quoting the inscription on Talbot's tomb in Rouen), but the play's authors follow it with La Pucelle's sneer at the rigmarole of Talbot's excessive titles, so let's hope Lord Strange was fairly thick-skinned.]

These original authors were Thomas Nashe (Act I) and "Y" (Acts 2 - 5). Thus Nashe, commenting admiringly on the stage Talbot in Pierce Pennilesse (published 1592 and also dedicated to Lord Strange), was praising his own co-composition. We don't know the identity of Y, but apparently it was not one of the named dramatists with whom comparative textual analysis can be attempted, i.e. Nashe, Peele, Greene, or Marlowe -- or Shakespeare. [It would be interesting, I think, to see a stylistic comparison of Y with the anonymous author of Edward III.]

Around 1594 Shakespeare's company acquired the play, and Shakespeare then made some powerful though apparently incomplete revisions. Shakespeare added the new Temple Garden scene (II.4), probably intending it to replace the Tower scene (II.5), and he replaced the scenes of Talbot's downfall (IV.2 - beginning of IV.7)... though, once more, Y's IV.6 is accidentally preserved in F. Part of the motive of these revisions was apparently to make 1H6 a more powerful statement of the principal theme of 2H6 and 3H6: the disastrous consequences of civil discord. Perhaps the Lord Chamberlain's Men planned to perform all the plays in chronological sequence.

*

Vincent's conclusions differ from Gary Taylor's in two important respects. Taylor had assigned the Folio text to four authors: Z (Nashe -- Act I); Y (Acts III and V); X (Shakespeare -- II.4 and IV.2-5, start of IV.7); and W (the rest of Acts II and IV). Vincent shows that the evidence for distinguishing W from Y is insufficient: W is an unnecessary complication. He also argues that Shakespeare's contributions were all revisions and were not present in the original play. Thus he reduces the number of original authors from four to two: Z (Nashe) and Y.

[It's interesting that Vincent's analysis finds no trace of Marlowe in 1H6  -- I mean, in the light of OUP's 2016 announcement that they will credit all three Henry VI plays to Shakespeare and Marlowe. I've no business to comment on this theory, but the aggressive and transgressive spirit of Marlowe, evinced in all his other plays, is most conspicuously absent from Henry VI... ]

Vincent's authorship analysis (based on textual analysis, including matching the Literature Online database) seems -- so far as I can tell without re-doing the work, but it looks convincingly thorough -- more firmly established than his theory of provenance. The latter, however, does make sense of the longstanding problem of "hary the vj" belonging to a company that Shakespeare isn't known to have worked for.. Henslowe's diary of the Lord Strange/Rose era records no performances of any Shakespeare plays -- unless "harey the vj" is one... But if "harey the vj" wasn't originally written by Shakespeare, then everything falls into place. [Cairncross suggested, however, that in 1590-91, when in his view Shakespeare wrote the entire tetralogy, he was working for the hypothetical amalgamated Admiral's/Strange company. This would have been at the Theatre, and before Henslowe's diary begins (19/2/1592). This is complicated and highly disputable, judging from what I've read in Schoone-Jongen.]

Of course this poses a new question: how would Shakespeare's company acquire one of their former rival's most successful plays? Was it in early 1594, when the short-lived Earl of Sussex's men appear to have inherited plays both from Lord Strange's men (e.g. The Jew of Malta) and from Pembroke's company (Titus Andronicus)? That joint legacy might then have ended up in the hands of the Lord Chamberlain's Men (formed in late 1594).

If 1H6 is "harey the vj" and was new in March 1592, this tends to be an external argument for it being written later than 2H6. Vincent's thesis also gives a lot of detail about the traditional internal arguments for thinking 1H6 was written after 2H6. For instance,  that 2H6 doesn't mention Talbot, shows little awareness of the rose symbolism (but what about I.1.254?), shows the dissension of the nobles as having not yet begun, and has different conceptions of the characters of Humphrey of Gloucester and Margaret.

But some of these issues remain issues even when we accept Vincent's thesis. If 1H6 was always consciously intended to prelude the already extant 2H6 (as clearly shown by V.3 and V.5, and even by the misleading title "harey the vj": Henry is a minor character in the drama) why didn't its authors make Humphrey and Margaret more consistent with the play that already existed? Because they didn't have access to the text, and couldn't remember it in enough detail? Because they didn't see the "inconsistency" as an issue?

Vincent seems to go down the road of thinking  that V.3 and V.5 were a bit of an afterthought; a revision or eleventh-hour rethink. But according to his own authorship tests these scenes are by Y, the original author of Acts 2-5, not by Shakespeare. He concludes, rather ambiguously, that although the Suffolk/Margaret scenes were not part of the original conception they were nevertheless part of the original composition. In other words Nashe and Y were originally thinking of a Talbot play, then belatedly decided to introduce Suffolk and Margaret.  

I'm not persuaded that this ending was quite as unplanned as Vincent implies. V.1 had already introduced the topic of Henry marrying; evidently this was meant to lead on to something.

 (Incidentally I'm also not persuaded that Henry's lovestruck behaviour in V.5 shows a troubling inconsistency  with his character earlier in the play. It's almost axiomatic in drama of this period that people who disclaim any interest in love then proceed to fall violently in love -- think of Proteus in 2GV. It's not subtle or clever, but a jobbing playwright like Y would see the inclusion of this hackneyed motif as a plus.)

We can only go so far with this discussion before we have to address the question of the provenance of 2H6 and 3H6. Unfortunately  they lie outside the scope of his thesis, but Vincent says enough to show that he doesn't think they are pure Shakespeare compositions. (Unlike Richard III, apparently.)

*

Let me say now, if I haven't done already, that I'm firmly converted to the substance of Vincent's thesis. (With due acknowledgment to his predecessors: Gary Taylor -- who definitively toppled the twentieth-century consensus of single-authorship; Dover Wilson -- whose personal impression of three authors, though without any rigorous analysis, turned out to be spot-on -- and who was the first to notice the relevance of Essex's abortive Rouen campaign in 1591;  and before them Allison Gaw, Fleay, Malone, etc.)

I am not sure if it's worth recording these hesitations about certain details:

*

Act IV Scene 6 as an accidental retention

1. Act IV Scene 6 is assigned to Y. According to Vincent it was meant to be replaced by Shakespeare's IV.5 and is a fortuitous survival of the Y substratum. He makes the same argument for II.5 (the tower scene), which he thinks was meant to be replaced by Shakespeare's II.4 (the rose-plucking scene). Though it's a credible kind of mistake given the sometimes haphazard nature of Elizabethan play practice, I believe we should be cautious about positing accidental retention: it's a mite too convenient to the modern literary archaeologist. (Of course it has also been discerned in the texts of other plays, e.g. Love's Labour's Lost.)

IV.6 certainly has a number of inferior features compared to e.g. IV.5. However the theory that IV.5 was meant to replace IV.6 doesn't take account of the developing story. To summarize:

IV.5 begins with introducing "young John Talbot", who has evidently just arrived to join his father in what looks like a deathtrap. The two compete in heroism, each urging the other to flee. One of the more powerful arguments urged by Young Talbot is that he has never seen real fighting before. Consequently for him to fly before a blow has been struck would stain his reputation. The scene ends with both Talbots staying and sallying into battle.

IV.6 begins with their return from this foray. The elder Talbot has rescued the younger one, who was "hemmed about". But importantly, the younger Talbot had "warmed [his] father's heart"; he has struck fire from the Dauphin's crest, and inspired his father's "leaden age" into various similar feats against the other French leaders.  So Young Talbot is no longer a maiden soldier. When they now resume their debate, the situation is therefore different from in IV.5. Young Talbot no longer uses the argument that as a fleeing novice his reputation would be stained. He now uses the argument that, having tried battle and found it not so awful -- "The sword of Orleans hath not made me smart" -- he's all the more determined to stay and face whatever comes. Of course IV.7 will show us what that leads to. 

In short, IV.5 and IV.6 are a complementary pair, but not in the sense that one can replace the other. Both are needed to produce the artificial yet surprisingly moving impact of the sequence as a whole. 

What to make, then, of the inferior features in IV.6? It's not for an amateur to say, but I'd suggest that while the revising Shakespeare obliterated most traces of Y from the rest of the Bordeaux sequence, he made few or no alterations to this particular scene. (Perhaps it was the best of Y's scenes: Shakespeare would have based that judgment on dramatic effectiveness, not on quality of expression.) It appears to show that the remarkable switch to rhyming couplets for this sequence of scenes originated with Y, not with Shakespeare. 


Act II Scene 5 as an accidental retention

Let's take a look at the other place where Vincent, following Gaw, posits accidental retention. According to this view Act II Scene 5 (the Tower Scene, authored by Y) should have been omitted, replaced by Shakespeare's Act II Scene 4 (the Rose-plucking scene). 

The conclusion amounts to two separate though interlinked theses : first, that the extant II.4 (which has the fingerprints of 1594 Shakespeare all over it) did not replace an earlier Rose-plucking scene; second, that II.5 adds little to the play as it stands. 

In regard to the first thesis, Allison Gaw's strong argument is that II.5 has all the marks of introducing the character of Richard Plantagenet for the first time, i.e. emphasis on his name and on spelling out how he fits into the story. 

Strong, but not conclusive. I wonder if Y's other scenes did depend on a rose-plucking scene. 

In III.1, Richard and Somerset never address each other directly, only giving vent to their opinions in asides; it is true that we have already been told about their quarrel (in II.5), but don't these muffled explosions gain greatly in dramatic power if the audience has also witnessed their open hostility (i.e. as in II.4 or an earlier version of II.4)?  

II.4 aside, the first mention of the roses occurs in IV.1. But in IV.1, aren't these badges introduced a bit casually?  Would their symbolic import, and the huge significance of Henry pinning a red rose on his chest, make the same impact without a previous rose-plucking scene, along the lines of II.4? 

In regard to the second thesis, is it true that II.5 now has nothing to contribute to the play? Surely it does, because it and it alone lays out the historical background to Richard's claims. This kind of material was apparently important to early audiences, like the interminable speech in Henry V about the English monarch's claims to France, or indeed the very undramatic scene in 2H6 (II.2) where Richard of York's claims are again set forth. 

It might just be an effect of familiarity with the text that's come down to us, but it seems to me that the sequence II.4, II.5, III.1 works really well as a delineation of social breakdown. In II.4, we see the fact of the hostility expressed in open terms (and, incidentally, the shredding of democracy when it fails to produce the desired outcome). In II.5, we see one of the conflictual faiths being solemnly transmitted from one generation to the next, gaining all the time in existential significance. In III.1 we see the known hostility being temporarily restrained by other social considerations, but really undiminished in force and ready to break out whenever the opportunity arises. In purely theatrical terms, II.5 provides a welcome break between the two scenes of dissension; a scene of consensus and respect, but one where the peacefulness awakens only dread, because it's the solemn seeding of future violence. 

Shakespeare's Henry VI Part One

Vincent compiles and supplements a battery of authorship tests that show, with impressive consistency, the authorship of individual scenes. Only one of them (IV.7) switches midway. It starts with Talbot's lament and death:


Talbot. Where is my other life? My own is gone.
O where's young Talbot? Where is valiant John?
Triumphant death, smeared with captivity,
Young Talbot's valour makes me smile at thee.
When he perceived me shrink and on my knee,
His bloody sword he brandished over me,
And like a hungry lion did commence
Rough deeds of rage and stern impatience,
But when my angry guardant stood alone,
Tend'ring my ruin and assailed of none,
Dizzy-eyed fury and great rage of heart
Suddenly made him from my side to start
Into the clust'ring battle of the French,
And in that sea of blood my boy did drench
His over-mounting spirit and there died,
My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride. 

(IV.7.1-16)


That can only be Shakespeare, but when the French contingent troop onto the stage we're clearly back in Y's hands (from line 33). [Incidentally, except in Shakespeare's hands I find Talbot and what he stands for repellent. As I read I keep forgetting which side I'm supposed to be on.]

So Shakespeare's claim to 1 Henry 6  is founded on the scenes he wrote or rewrote in full: II.4, IV.2-5, IV.7a. 

But Shakespeare's shadow already lay across harey the vj. Nashe and Y had already taken some care to connect their work with the pre-existing 2H6 and 3H6. When the Lord Chamberlain's Men acquired Lord Strange's play, part of their makeover involved strengthening those connections. "Shakespeare's tetralogy" was acquiring an outer bulwark. 

It's feasible, even likely, that Shakespeare's work as a reviser extended further than the scenes where we can detect it.  He and his company might have cut some passages of the original text, or they might have re-sequenced passages, without us being able to tell. They might have changed words and phrases in the other scenes, even added the odd line here or there; these hypothetical small tamperings wouldn't be detectable by statistical authorship tests. 

In short, though 1 Henry VI is undoubtedly the least Shakespearean play in the First Folio, it may be more Shakespearean than we can ever know. 


Henry VI Part One: A Multiple-Author Play

1 Henry VI is a play that's always absorbing and often deeply impressive. And somehow my admiration for all three authors ends up enhanced; so are my feelings about the practice of multiple authorship itself. 

Nashe's Act I is a great start. Its formalities are great theatre, its rhetoric and imagery ripe. Yes, it has more than a few hyperbolic pratfalls. But it also has poetry such as this, before the walls of Orleans:

Pucelle. Assigned am I to be the English scourge,
This night the siege assuredly I'll raise;
Expect Saint Martin's summer, halcyon's days,
Since I have enterèd into these wars.
Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself
Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.
With Henry's death the English circle ends;
Dispersèd are the glories it included.
Now am I like that proud  insulting ship
Which Caesar and his fortune bare at once.  

(from I.2.129-139)

Nashe's conception of Joan La Pucelle as a Marlovian scourge of God contributes critically to the play's discomforts.

But Y, author of the original Acts II-V, has remarkable successes too. Y was a powerful and sometimes subtle dramatist, though in plain verse. His best scenes, e.g. III.1, IV.1, and V.5 are characterized by a commitment to a national history: this is the audience's own history, Coleridge's "history of the people to whom it is addressed". 

[Suffolk.]

. . . But with as humble lowliness of mind
She is content to be at your command;
Command, I mean, of virtuous chaste intents,
To love and honour Henry as her lord. 

King. And otherwise will Henry ne'er presume.
Therefore, my Lord Protector, give consent
That Margaret may be England's royal queen.

Gloucester. So should I give consent to flatter sin.
You know, my lord, your highness is betrothed
Unto another lady of esteem.
How shall we then dispense with that contract,
And not deface your honor with reproach?

Suffolk. As doth a ruler with unlawful oaths,
Or one that, at a triumph having vowed
To try his strength, forsaketh yet the lists
By reason of his adversary's odds.
A poor earl's daughter is unequal odds,
And therefore may be broke without offense. 

(V.5.18-35)

A large number of the plays of Shakespeare's time were multi-authored: at least a quarter, maybe even a third. But when we've said all we can in praise of the essentially communal nature of the dramatic art and in dispraise of the authoritarian figure of Sole Author, a lot of us tend to see the multiple authorship of this period as just a practical consequence of insatiable demand for playscripts and to see multi-authored plays as generally inferior. 

The multi-authored plays in Shakespeare's Works are either his least-celebrated plays -- Titus, Timon, Henry VIII -- or are scarcely multi-authored at all (e.g. Macbeth). 

Let's face it, multiple authorship doesn't tend to produce Julius Caesar or A Midsummer Night's Dream. . .

Even Dr Faustus and The Changeling are great plays in spite of rather than because of being multi authored.  (It's only fair to say that Richard Dutton, Oxford editor of Women Beware Women and Other Plays (1999), strongly disputes this common view of The Changeling.)

Well, 1H6 is minor Shakespeare too, but it does give me a feeling for how multiple authorship can be a positive quality, it can widen a play's vistas, the variety of authorial approaches producing a many-faceted drama. Perhaps when I understand more about the multiple authorship of 2H6 and 3H6 I'll see them as exemplifying these virtues too. Perhaps multiple authorship works particularly well with chronicle plays, where the team are kept on course by a common goal and a common guide (e.g. Hall, Holinshed). It's a bit reminiscent of that earlier large-scale communal enterprise, the mystery cycles' rendering of Christian history.


*

A few other thoughts.



In IV.1, Gloucester (Humphrey) is a voice of peace regarding the York/Somerset enmity.  It's true that earlier in the play he was a wrangler himself -- though, as Tillyard says, always more principled than his opponent Winchester. But surely his portrayal in IV.1 fits reasonably well with that of 2H6, and seriously undercuts the argument about his inconsistent portrayals in the two plays. [Cairncross went so far as to claim that Humphrey's behaviour at the beginning of 2H6 couldn't be understood without the background in 1H6.]

So maybe that answers the question about the prequel matching the (already extant) sequel. And David Nicol (see below) makes the interesting suggestion that Margaret in 1H6 is meant to seem a bit different (and yet not wholly different) from Margaret in 2H6.. the audience would have got an extra thrill from Margaret's true character being almost concealed.

But of course these perceptions also undercut some of the arguments for 1H6 having been composed after 2H6. If what we are looking at is not character inconsistency but character development, then that could also fit with the plays being planned and written in their natural sequence.

I should mention another argument that appears in Vincent's thesis. On the basis of Tamburlaine, he argues that "First Part" plays were bound to be complete in themselves; they needed to stand up on their own. Part II of Tamburlaine was a commercially-motivated afterthought. So the fact that 1H6's ending so patently points forward to 2H6 is clear evidence for it being, in fact, a prequel to a successful play that already existed.

That may well be true in this case, but the general argument has a weighty consequence. Because the endings of 2H6 and 3H6 are both highly inconclusive. These plays self-consciously do not stand on their own (the ending of 2H6, in particular, has "To Be Continued" written all over it). So is anyone prepared to argue that the sequence of composition must have been R3, 3H6, 2H6, 1H6

In truth, I don't see why what was certainly true of Tamburlaine should be the only way that things could be done in those highly experimental days. The audience of (say) 2H6 might have gone home thoroughly satisfied with today's entertainment yet eagerly looking forward to coming back for the next instalment: an early attempt at the franchise concept. 

*

The 1592-1594 closures of the London playhouses.

This information is dredged from David Nicol's astonishing (and still unfolding) blog of Henslowe's diary.

http://hensloweasablog.blogspot.com

This cluster of closures began on 23/6/1592, in response to a riot in Southwark. Initially the closure was meant to end at Michaelmas (29/9/1592), but in the meantime the plague had become strong, so the closure was extended to 29/12/1592.

This time the playhouses did re-open (the plague tended to slacken off in winter), but only for about a month. On 28/1/1593 another closure was ordered. The last Rose performance was The Jew of Malta on 1/2/1593. The day before, they had played "harey the vj".

The London theatres stayed closed for nearly a year. Apparently both Pembroke's and Lord Strange's companies collapsed during this recess.

On 26/12/1593 performances began again; the Earl of Sussex's Men now used the Rose. Among other plays they performed Titus Andronicus three times before the next closure (ordered 3/2/1594, last performance on 6/2/1594).

Performances at the Rose began again on 1/4/1594, but only until 9/4/1594. There was then another hiatus (reasons unknown) until 14-16/5/1594, and then another until, on 5/6/1594, regular performances finally resumed for an extended period.

*

Performances of "harey the vj" by Lord Strange's Men:

3/3/1592
7/3/1592
11/3/1592
16/3/1592
28/3/1592
5/4/1592
13/4/1592
21/4/1592
4/5/1592
9/5/1592
16/5/1592
22/5/1592
29/5/1592
12/6/1592
19/6/1592

---

16/1/1593
31/1/1593


*

Reflections on the arguments for 1H6 being later than 2H6.

These are basically of four kinds.

1. External evidence that the date of 1H6 is later than the date of 2H6. (Bearing in mind, however, that plays don't always have a single period of composition, owing to ongoing revision etc.)

2. Internal stylistic evidence that 2H6 is earlier than 1H6. Largely a theoretical category here. Obviously works best when the same author wrote both plays, which many think is only partially true in this case. [For what it's worth the Shakespearean scenes in 1H6 do seem to me to evince a more developed style.]

3. Internal evidence from 2H6, tending to show that 1H6 was not already in existence.  An example would be that Richard Duke of York isn't called "Plantagenet", as he repeatedly is in 3H6 and 1H6. 

4. Internal evidence from 1H6, tending to show that 2H6 was already in existence.

But 3 and 4 are much more problematic than may appear.

*

Inconsistency

Consider, for example, this matter of inconsistency between different plays:

It needs to be emphasized that inconsistency, as such, is not evidence for priority. It only becomes evidence for priority when accompanied by an explanation of how the inconsistency originated.

That's the principle, but in the present case inconsistency tends to favour 2H6 preceding 1H6, because those who favour 1H6 preceding 2H6 also tend to favour common authorship (normally Shakespeare's) and a planned sequence of plays delivered over a short period.

But "inconsistency" is highly assailable.

Firstly, what one person sees as inconsistency can be seen by another as consistent, or simply as development. After all, the action typically changes its participants: they behave in one way at one time, then events take place and they behave differently.

Secondly, even if the inconsistency is granted it may not demand any special explanation. Dramatists of Shakespeare's time weren't averse to a bit of inconsistency. Their art was intuitive and opportunistic.  There are even inconsistencies between such closely-knit plays as 1H4 and 2H4 , for instance in the personality of Falstaff. Sometimes an author ignores or contradicts the strict implications of earlier action because it makes for better drama. It's common and indeed characteristic for the dramatists to show what's essentially the same action or situation more than once: it's another aspect of their technique of development by variation. Audiences don't usually notice these things. They've forgotten that e.g. Isabella implied that she was going on her own to see Angelo, but then shows up with Lucio (Measure for Measure Act II Scene 2). And they accept that between scenes a character who has made a difficult decision may become doubtful and then have to make it all over again. 

Thirdly, even if the need for some explanation is granted, it doesn't follow that the suggested explanation is the only one that accounts for the facts, even if it's the only one being offered to us.

Here's an example. In the opening scene of 2H6 a bitterly disappointed Gloucester recalls how the privy council laboured to hang on to what Suffolk has just given away:

Or hath mine uncle Beaufort and myself,
With all the learnèd council of the realm,
Studied so long, sat in the council house
Early and late, debating to and fro
How France and Frenchmen might be kept in awe,
And had his Highness in his infancy
Crownèd in Paris in despite of foes?

(2 Henry 6, I.1.88-94)

There are lots of differences between this picture and what's portrayed in 1H6, but let's just focus on the "infancy".  Shakespeare normally uses "infant" and "infancy" to refer to babyhood or early childhood, as we still do today; to "mewling and puking in his nurse's arms". So here the Henry "Crownèd in Paris" is pictured as even younger than he actually was: in fact, Henry had just passed his tenth birthday. (The final chorus of Henry V (V.2.386) does the same.)

But that's rather odd, if Shakespeare had just come from composing 1H6, which elects to give Henry a speaking part. When Henry appears in III.1 and then IV.1 (the coronation scene), he has plenty to say. There's indeed much emphasis on his tender years and his "pretty" speeches, but when all's said he comes over as rather older than his historical age of ten. In Shakespeare's theatre, there was a practical lower-age limit for a speaking part: think of Arthur in King John or the boy princes in Richard III; they are youths, not infants. If Shakespeare needed to show a really young child, he used a doll (Marina, Perdita). 

So here's an inconsistency argument. Nevertheless, it's an assailable one. 

Elsewhere Shakespeare on a couple of occasions is evidently referring to the legal meaning of infancy, referring to a state of not being of age: i.e. younger than 21 (see e.g. 1H4 I.3.265). 

Contrary to what I wrote above, Mamillius in The Winter's Tale definitely stretches the practical lower age limit for a speaking part (though he's much more childlike and less voluble than the Henry of the coronation scene). If he's still unbreeched, as Leontes implies (I.2.188), then he can only be about seven. 

Most significantly, Pandulph in King John actually terms Arthur (who does have a speaking part) an "infant" (III.4.136). 

So what about the inconsistency now, does it still call for explanation, is it even there at all? To my eyes it is, but I have to acknowledge that this may be confirmation bias. 

*

These same thoughts apply to consistency.  For example, Talbot died in 1453, that is, eight years after Henry VI married Margaret. 1H6 and 2H6 are consistent in reversing the order of those events. Does this tell us anything about the sequence in which the two plays were written? -- Not really.

Or consider the matter of dependence. 2H6 is, we want to show, independent of 1H6 ; but this is difficult, because every chronicle play to a certain extent depends on a larger national history which is outside the play in question. The author(s) of 2H6 and 3H6 were very dutifully seeking, not so much to make their own artworks, as to present portions of the national history.  Hence chronicle plays are by their very nature prone to begin and end in the middle of things. The audience is assumed to have some awareness of historical context: that is, of prior history and of future history. The chronicle play therefore displays a certain dependence on the history beyond its own limits, whether that history had been embodied in previous plays or not. On the other hand no chronicle play can afford to assume that everyone in the audience has seen any other specific play. Therefore there is always a certain amount of re-presentation, where this is necessary. And there is a process of selection, whereby past historical events are only referred to if they directly forward the present action; that could account for the lack of reference to Talbot in 2H6, just as it accounts for the lack of reference to Cardinal Beaufort and Jack Cade in 3H6. Thus every chronicle play displays a certain independence. It's therefore difficult to demonstrate that 2H6 either does or doesn't depend on 1H6, because in a way it does and in a way it doesn't and neither of these observations really proves anything because that's just the nature of chronicle plays.





Labels: ,

Saturday, January 05, 2019

William Shakespeare: The Taming Of The Shrew












[Image source: https://shakespeareillustration.org/2016/08/02/katherina-and-petruchio/ . Engraving by H. C. Selous, that certainly does nothing to conceal the discomfort of the moment.]

It's an early play. There are strong reasons for thinking it was performed before the closure of the playhouses in mid-1592, and some less strong reasons for thinking it no earlier than 1591. Brian Morris' claim that it was Shakespeare's first play, c. 1589, is attractive and not impossible, but I feel reluctant to place it before 2GV; it's so closely related yet has so much more impact.

In fact even during Shakespeare's lifetime you have the sense that it had a bracing effect, it was both too good to ignore and a bit too hard to swallow. And that feeling has grown ever sharper.

Sometimes we can sense that Shakespeare is writing something he doesn't really believe in, he's dragging his heels. The last act of Titus Andronicus, and some of Timon of Athens, could be examples of this. The Taming of the Shrew couldn't be more different, it's composed with great vigour, with a consciousness of excelling. Maybe there are signs of authorial discomfort in the final scene, but we'll come back to that.

The most agressively offensive aspect of the play is its title.  Indeed, I remember feeling a bit affronted by it the first time I heard it, when I was about six. I was not so innocent, even then, as not to know that referring to someone by an insulting label was a way of refusing to recognize their individuality (of course, I wouldn't have had the words to articulate why, it just seemed rude).

I took it for granted that "shrew" was a gendered animal insult, like "cow" or "bitch".  But originally it wasn't. The OED casts significant doubt on whether the opprobrious term originally derives from the small highly-strung rodent, or whether it just meant a devil, an evil thing (cf. the older meanings of "shrewd": malignant, illwilling. In Piers Plowman the figure of Holy Church describes Lucifer himself as a shrew (B.I.129). In the Middle Ages it was applied to individuals of both sexes. Its meaning, generally, was the kind of person you want to avoid having any business with: typically, the kind of mean-minded person who always turns down a request for help, the kind of bloody-minded person who stands uncompromisingly on their rights; but a shrew can also describe a yob or low-life. Shrews make other peoples lives miserable. Shrews don't care what other people think.

This bunch of meanings was all still current in 1591, so when in the play Petruchio is described as a worse shrew than his wife, this is not an extended use of the term.

Nevertheless, by the time of The Taming of the Shrew the insult was increasingly used in a gendered context of railing, scolding women (OED shrewd 12 -- this usage goes back to the 14th century). One cause was the  popular folktale, in dozens of versions, of a husband taming a shrewish wife by starvation, sleep-deprivation, etc : the basis of Shakespeare's play. Contemporaries, hearing the title, would have a pretty good idea of what Katherina was in for.

The other context in which they would hear the word, also gendered, was in the proverb, "Everyone can tame a shrew but he who has her". The folktale and the proverb had a sort of dialogic relationship, they fed off each other.

Shakespeare's comedy dramatizes the folk-tale, but this necessarily questions it. Populating that crude old anecdote with people who breathe and feel, introduces a critical distance.

*

The "romantic" reading of TOTS is that Petruchio and Katherine, while they play out the Shrew tale, are really falling in love, growing in respect for each other, etc. I have a lot of sympathy for this view, though romantic isn't quite the right word.

The strongest analogy for their relationship is Beatrice and Benedick, who likewise maintain a war of words while clearly signalling their fondness for each other. Can we retrofit that happy strong relationship back into TOTS? To some extent. What both couples demonstrate is that communication is about much more than the words that are actually spoken. Interpretations of this kind infer a great deal from silence and from what is Not said. The director Lucy Bailey noticed, for example, that Petruchio never lectures Kate. It's a good point.

*

PETRUCHIO

When Petruchio wanders on stage, with Grumio in tow, that coincides with the end of the Sly framework (in the Folio). Originally there may have been more Sly scenes (as in A Shrew). But Shakespeare realized that in the fully developed Petruchio he had all the momentum the play required.

I say "fully developed" because Petruchio, like Pistol and Nym, took form as the author wrote. The opening of 1.2 is pretty forgettable, featuring generic knockabout with Grumio. This is pure 2GV master-servant in manner, just like the opening of 1.1 had been (Lucentio, Tranio).

But by the end of the scene Petruchio is transformed. He's become the figure we love to watch, dominant, unpredictable, swift in action and collected in dealing with what follows. He makes drama happen. He's unmistakably Richard III in his glory days; I mean in terms of how he wields the plot, not in moral or other terms. Like Richard he deals in soliloquies but his actions in company always come as a surprise, he's always one or two steps ahead. He also has the great advantage of not giving a damn what anyone thinks of him.

[Petruchio ....]

How does my father? Gentles, methinks you frown.
And wherefore gaze this goodly company
As if they saw some wondrous monument,
Some comet, or unusual prodigy?

I know you think to dine with me today,
And have prepared great store of wedding cheer,
But so it is, my haste doth call me hence,
And therefore here I mean to take my leave.

[Richard ...]

Who knows not that the noble duke is dead?

Petruchio's work on Katharina consists of always performing, never directly addressing their relationship, or Katharina's behaviour. That is compatible with the belief that there is an unspoken love discourse taking place. Indeed, could Petruchio succeed so well if there were no such discourse?

Petruchio's view of marriage is challengingly unromantic. He regards wealth (to add to his own) as an essential attribute. He claims not to care whether his wife is attractive. But he is determined to mould his wife into the right shape for a happily married life. If Katherina's attractiveness does modify his approach,we aren't told, we can only guess.

KATHERINA

Katherina ends up in a better place than she began. When we meet her she is a thoroughly unhappy girl, she makes herself miserable and she makes those around her miserable too.

It's evident she wants to marry... In her fury (after the nasty scene with Bianca) she accuses Baptista of holding her back, though she knows the opposite is true.  Katherina is apparently jealous of Bianca.

[Bianca's character is routinely blackened these days, by people who want to think that Katherina's outrageous behaviour towards her must be justified. For example, the Shmoop-author tells us: "we see her taunt Kate for being an old maid without marriage prospects". That's based on the sentences

Or what you will command me will I do,
So well I know my duty to my elders.

If you affect him, sister, here I swear
I'll plead for you myself but you shall have him.

But there's no evidence that Bianca takes pride in her unwanted suitors (certainly not Gremio). Bianca is just desperate to placate her sister. Of course Katherina might upset herself by her reaction to Bianca's innocent words. But her only explanation to her father is not something like "Bianca keeps aiming these subtle digs at me" but "Her silence flouts me, and I'll be revenged". That's the sort of thing unjustified haters say in Shakespearian drama: a little early hint of Iago.]

Katherina is proud to get married, and she thinks quite well of her lover, we suspect. She's genuinely distressed when she thinks he might not turn up at the church. Because of the social disgrace primarily, but not only because of that.

Tormented as she is by Petruchio's subsequent course of treatment, she retains a healthy taste for material things, not just tripes but caps and gowns. She isn't, in short, behaving like someone who's being tortured or brainwashed.

Social status is important to her; while at Petruchio's she remembers with fondness the giving of alms at Baptista's. At the end of the play, too, we see Katherina returning to Padua as a proud wife. Husband and wife now operate as a practised team. But it isn't exactly romantic. They have the mutual fondness and mutual respect of a wealthy, handsome couple who are going places. Katherina is no feminist; she's more driven by putting down other women than by any wish to lord it over her husband. In fact being regarded as a shrewish wife would lower both her and her husband's social status, and she knows it.

It's her strong social interest that motivates a now much happier Katherina at the end of 5.1. The couple enjoy looking on at the Lucentio denouement. (Much like Beatrice and Benedick, here.) Kate shows no particular concern about her sister's and father's involvement in the scene she's watching. It's just an "ado". But if the play ended here we could accept the romantic view of Katherina and Petruchio, kind of.

Katherina. Husband, let's follow, to see the end of this ado.
Petruchio. First kiss me, Kate, and we will.
Katherina. What, in the midst of the street?
Petruchio. What, art thou ashamed of me?
Katherina. No, sir, God forbid, but ashamed to kiss.
Petruchio. Why then, let's home again. (To Grumio) Come, sirrah, let's away.
Katherina. Nay, I will give thee a kiss. Now pray thee, love, stay.
Petruchio. Is not this well? Come, my sweet Kate.
Better once than never, for never too late.

*

Of course it's very well, from a man's point of view. "Sweet Kate" has learned how to wheedle and trade, and do it lovingly. Petruchio is willing enough to be the sugardaddy. It's hard for the actors to avoid showing the romantic love that must, we think, go along with this. Is romantic love, indeed, really anything other than a performance?

But for all that, the play's final scene makes an ugly impression,well captured by the engraving at the head of the post, in which Katharina is put through her paces like a dog or horse or falcon, in front of a boozy male crowd.

It's the setting, rather than the content, that feels debasing. In principle, I could accept the argument that sometimes it makes sense to have a boss. That's no different from a team in the workplace, and there's no intrinsic degradation in accepting that your manager gets to make decisions.

But after all, Katherina's portrayal of husbands is very idealized. Will her own Petruchio, for instance, really stay up on cold nights watching over his household? Surely that's what his servants do.*

[* There's an interesting parallel with this male brag in the vastly different context of 3  Henry 6 5.7:

(King Edward.)...Come hither, Bess, and let me kiss my boy.
Young Ned, for thee, thine uncles and myself
Have in our armours watched the winter's night,
Went all afoot in Summer's scalding heat....

And Gloucester's complaint about lack of respect for Henry V's labours, in 2 Henry 6 1.1:

Did he so often lodge in open field,
In winter's cold, and summer's parching heat,
To conquer France, his true inheritance?

Shakespeare seems to have associated enduring cold with noble manliness. Thus Cassius says to Brutus:

I was born free as Caesar; so were you:
We both have fed as well; and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he. (Julius Caesar 1.2)

Not just Shakespeare. Peele's David and Bethsabe has this:

But Joab and his brother in the fields,
Suffering the wrath of winter and the sun: ...

Some thirty years after The Taming of the Shrew, the shadow of this masculine image is still present in Middleton's Women Beware Women, but here it's transformed. The Duke, hustling Bianca into becoming his mistress, says "Let storms come when they list, they find thee sheltered". But he doesn't mean that he'll stay up at night: it's his wealth and property and power that are being set forth here. 

Later the bourgeois Leantio seems to come even closer (addressing the absent Bianca, who has abandoned him):

                            Canst thou forget
The dear pains my love took? How it has watched
Whole nights together, in all weathers for thee ... (III.2.248-250)

 For a moment the audience wonders when this could have been (for there was no opportunity during their brief married life) before it emerges that Leantio is talking about before their marriage, when he stood outside her familial home waiting for a chance to elope with her. So in very different ways both these images of male protection are curdled with a sense of acquisition. 

]


Anyway, how does the breadwinner argument apply, when the couple live off inherited wealth, part of it from Katherina's dowry? Of course Petruchio will run the farms, but that's just a circular argument: the master should be obeyed because he expects to be obeyed.

Surprising that Shakespeare doesn't mention child-bearing. Apparently he doesn't want to talk about separate spheres of responsibility. He prefers, in this speech, to emphasize the spoiled leisure of women's lives.

The speech halts. Despite some fine lines (e.g. the muddy fountain), it falls a bit flat. As if Shakespeare, committed to dramatizing his folktale, is self-conscious about how it doesn't tell a credible truth, it papers over the cracks. He tried to shape the tamed Katherine as a male fantasy, feisty but solid gold, utterly compliant to hubby, the envy of hubby's peers. But even so, this speech is not what his wishful heroine would really say, and he's too well aware of it. Now he's just trying to get shot of the task as best he can.

These notes on Shakespeare: full list







Labels:

Powered by Blogger