William Shakespeare and John Fletcher: The History of Cardenio (1613)

The wedding scene (cf. Double Falshood Act III Scene 2)

[Image source: https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/portales/quijote_banco_imagenes_qbi/ficha_imagen/?id=5571

 . An illustration by Alphonse Lalauze (1838 - 1905) for Don Quixote, Ch 27.]

ACT I. SCENE I.

SCENE, A Royal Palace.

Duke Angelo, Roderick, and Courtiers.

RODERICK

My gracious Father, this unwonted Strain
Visits my Heart with Sadness.

DUKE

                                               Why, my Son?
Making my Death familiar to my Tongue
Digs not my Grave one Jot before the Date.
I've worn the Garland of my Honours long,
And would not leave it wither'd to thy Brow,
But flourishing and green; worthy the Man,
​Who, with my Dukedoms, heirs my better Glories.

RODERICK

This Praise, which is my Pride, spreads me with Blushes.

DUKE

Think not, that I can flatter thee, my Roderick;
Or let the Scale of Love o'er-poize my Judgment.
Like a fair Glass of Retrospection, Thou
Reflect'st the Virtues of my early Youth;
Making my old Blood mend its Pace with Transport:
While fond Henriquez, thy irregular Brother,
Sets the large Credit of his Name at Stake,
A Truant to my Wishes, and his Birth.
His Taints of Wildness hurt our nicer Honour,
And call for swift Reclaim.

RODERICK 

                                          I trust, my Brother
Will, by the Vantage of his cooler Wisdom,
E'er-while redeem the hot Escapes of Youth,
And court Opinion with a golden Conduct.

DUKE

Be Thou a Prophet in that kind Suggestion!
But I, by Fears weighing his unweigh'd Course,
Interpret for the Future from the Past.
And strange Misgivings, why he hath of late
By Importunity, and strain'd Petition,
Wrested our Leave of Absence from the Court,
Awake Suspicion. Thou art inward with him;
And, haply, from the bosom'd Trust can'st shape
Some formal Cause to qualify my Doubts.

RODERICK 

Why he hath press'd this Absence, Sir, I know not;
But have his Letters of a modern Date,
Wherein by Julio, good Camillo's Son,
(Who, as he says, shall follow hard upon;
And whom I with the growing Hour expect:)
He doth sollicit the Return of Gold
To purchase certain Horse, that like him well.
This Julio he encounter'd first in France,
And lovingly commends him to my Favour;
Wishing, I would detain him some few Days,
To know the Value of his well-placed Trust.
​
DUKE

O, do it, Roderick; and assay to mould him
An honest Spy upon thy Brother's Riots.
Make us acquainted when the Youth arrives;
We'll see this Julio, and he shall from Us
Receive the secret Loan his Friend requires.
Bring him to Court.

[Exeunt.]

(Lewis Theobald's Double Falshood, or The Distrest Lovers, Act I Scene 1)

*

This opening scene is the one that feels most like Shakespeare. A typical Shakespeare opening, you might say, thinking e.g. of King Lear or The Winter's Tale. 

                                          worthy the Man,
Who, with my Dukedoms, heirs my better Glories.

I want to believe that Shakespeare wrote that. It means: something befitting the man who inherits not just my Dukedoms (Roderick being the eldest son) but what is better than worldly titles and possessions, i.e. whatever good principles I happen to possess (Roderick being the good son, in contrast to his wayward younger brother). 

It's just a normal low-key line of late Shakespeare, but how swift and intuitive! It's supercharged with meaning, yet it isn't weighty; a dream-language vivid with semi-emergent images. 

Still, this can't be altogether the scene as Shakespeare wrote it. For one thing, Julio was certainly Cardenio in 1613 (as in Don Quixote), but you can't simply retrofit the name "Cardenio" into the three lines that name "Julio". (And Henriquez was probably Fernando, but at least those names are metrically equivalent.)

And then there are the lines that look disquietingly like sub-quotations. I wish 

And court Opinion with a golden Conduct

didn't remind me so much of Macbeth's "I have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people" (I.7.35-36).

And I wish 

Making my old Blood mend its Pace with Transport

didn't remind me so much of 

This were to be new made when thou art old

And see thy blood warm when thou feelst it cold

(Sonnet 2). 

It isn't really Shakespeare's thing to half-quote his own work. But it might be the kind of thing Theobald would do to bolster his play's Shakespearian credentials. Start thinking like that and you soon suspect everything. 

And then there's the basic skimpiness of Double Falshood, the brief scenes, few characters, absence of spectacle, bare-bones realization. It's a glaring contrast with the unhurried plenitude of Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. To produce something like this from something like that would entail not just slashing but significant rewriting. 

But I'm also tempted to hear Shakespeare in these lines:

... Will, by the Vantage of his cooler Wisdom,

E'er-while redeem the hot Escapes of Youth...

"E'er-while" in the sense of "before long" apparently indicates Theobald, but Shakespeare does use "escape" in the sense of "escapade" elsewhere, though not often (Othello, Measure for Measure).

                        Thou art inward with him;
And, haply, from the bosom'd Trust can'st shape...

This too isn't how Shakespeare normally uses one of his favourite words, but the connection of "bosom" with sharing our secret thoughts (trusted confidante, bosom friend) appears in Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale and one of the Shakespeare scenes in Henry VIII.

But if we can't be very confident about which particular words go all the way back to the 1613 Cardenio, at least we can get a general sense of how Shakespeare and Fletcher reshaped the story they found in Don Quixote. 

The two characters in this opening scene are essentially their own invention: the duke and the elder son are very minor figures in the Cardenio story as told by Cervantes.

The denouement of Cervantes' Cardenio story (Don Quixote Ch 36) was going to be tricky to stage. Don Fernando's (= Henriquez's) change of heart occurs in the public forum of an inn: his own inner nobility, Luscinda's intention to die rather than yield to his will, Dorothea's inspiring assertion of her rights, the pleas of the barber and Sancho Panza and even Fernando's own followers, and perhaps above all the sound moral advice of the good curate, all play a part in his conversion. Even so, it's a close-run thing: headstrong aristocrats like Don Fernando don't usually pay much heed to their social inferiors. The scene in the novel is elaborate, populous, long on speeches but light on dramatic turns or physical action. (On stage, if someone puts their hand to their sword you want them to draw it.)

Shakespeare and Fletcher decided, I suppose, that in the theatre Don Fernando's change of heart would be most credibly and swiftly effected by the shaming presence of his own father and brother. Instead of being the only aristocrat in the room he would stand exposed before his elders and betters. And that way, too, they could cleanly detach the Cardenio story from the world of Don Quixote: no La Mancha inn or curate or Sancho Panza would be required. 

Besides, their reworking brought to the fore the parent-child relationship that had driven so much Shakespearean drama, especially since King Lear. The parent was nearly always a father; the child nearly always of marriageable age. The History of Cardenio was going to be squarely grounded on the interplay between parental authority and parental love (both gift-love and need-love). It's surprising how relatively unimportant those themes are to the Cardenio story in Don Quixote. In Double Falshood there's even a moment when its twin themes of parental authority and rape collide, in Leonora's eye-opening expression: 

I've heard my Mother say a thousand Times

Her Father would have forced her Virgin Choice...

(II.3)

It's a more powerful line out of context than in, and I suspect it belongs to a later age than Shakespeare's. The big themes of Cardenio were part of a developing debate about society and freedom that continues to this day.

*

I'm late to the party as far as Cardenio is concerned. It began when I finally set about reading Don Quixote, and here I encountered the madman in the Sierra Morena (Ch 23) who eventually names himself as Cardenio (Ch 24). Something twitched in my memory and I thought, Oh, is this the guy that Shakespeare's lost play was about? 

Fateful thought! Well, I soon brought myself up to speed. There's a mass of information and speculation online about Cardenio, and within a few days I was reading Lewis Theobald's Double Falshood (1727), which I was thrilled to discover on Wikisource. 

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Double_Falshood;_or,_The_Distrest_Lovers

Every other Shakespeare fan seems to have opinions about this, so here, somewhat baldly, are mine -- (All these statements are disputable!)

*

Double Falshood is distantly derived from a lost play written by Shakespeare and Fletcher in early 1613 and titled The History of Cardenio. The story came from Thomas Shelton's translation of the first part of Don Quixote, published the previous year. (Fletcher may have been able to read Don Quixote in Spanish, like Beaumont did, but Shakespeare wasn't big on Spanish.)

The text of Shakespeare and Fletcher's play is lost, except perhaps for one surviving song.*

It was Shakespeare and Fletcher's first collaboration and it was a hit, as witnessed by two royal command performances. In pretty short order the same team followed it up with Henry VIII, then The Two Noble Kinsmen. Shakespeare's output had slowed after 1607, but with Fletcher he briefly resumed the high churn of earlier years. 

A text of Cardenio came into the bookseller Humphrey Moseley's hands and he registered it in 1653 but never published it; it's from this entry that we learn the correct title and the authors' names. 

The text also came to William Davenant's company and in the 1660s they adapted it for performance. The Davenant adaptation -- or alteration, as Restoration playwrights put it -- was probably pretty drastic. For the Duke of York's Men old plays were just raw material; they were in the business of making plays for modern audiences. Davenant's The Law Against Lovers combined Measure for Measure with bits of Much Ado About Nothing: Benedick becomes Angelo's brother. When Davenant made an adaptation of The Two Noble Kinsmen  called The Rivals, he changed all the characters' names, changed the setting, changed most of the original words -- especially Shakespeare's  --, reduced the length by half, and gave it a happy ending: Philander (Palamon) accepts the claim of the Provost's daughter, and gives up his own claim to Heraclia (Emilia); a resolution much like that of the Cardenio story, in fact. (I'm saying Davenant for short, but he didn't tend to put his name to these adaptations and perhaps others were involved).

Sixty years later Lewis Theobald acquired manuscripts of the Davenant adaptation, which he then further adapted to produce his Double Falshood in 1727; a success, apparently. He publicized it as by Shakespeare, to the derision of Alexander Pope and others. The extant play is short, and the names have been changed; Cardenio, for example, has become Julio. But even Pope admitted (in private) that Double Falshood seemed to be based on an old play. 

*

My opinions are thus of the romantic variety, since I'm thinking that the extant Double Falshood does offer us a very distant, blurry and selective image of the lost Cardenio. It's a common position, but there's definitely no consensus. Brian Vickers, the king of Shakespeare authorship studies, doesn't buy it. 

It's easy to see arguments for both sides; the evidence is distinctly mixed. The language of Double Falshood seems stylistically and linguistically much more Jacobean than The Rivals. Is that because Davenant didn't purge it so thoroughly, or because Theobald salted the mine (to borrow Robert Folkenflik's phrase) ... or a bit of both? You can find plenty of people mulling it over online. 

For a quick sense of just how conflicting the evidence is, I'd recommend Robert Folkenflik's 2012 review of Brean Hammond's edition of Double Falshood:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/hlq.2012.75.1.131

I've also enjoyed browsing through the wide-ranging essays in The Quest for Cardenio (2012), ed. David Carnegie and Gary Taylor. There's a limit on the number of pages you can preview, but you can have fun getting round it. 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZxHbuvet1XkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=cardenio+double+falsehood+taylor&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=cardenio%20double%20falsehood%20taylor&f=false

Thomas Shelton's 1612 translation of the first half of Don Quixote:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OAQPAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=don+quixote+dorothea+thomas+shelton&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

*

Comparing Don Quixote (DQ) and Double Falshood (DF). 

The names

Fernando (first named in DQ Ch 23), Duke Ricardo's second son (Ch 24) = Henriquez in DF

Cardenio (first named in DQ Ch 24) = Julio in DF

Luscinda (first named in DQ Ch 24) = Leonora in DF

Luscinda's unnamed father (DQ Ch 24) = Don Bernard in DF, which is curiously insistent on the title. (In DQ, the families of Cardenio and Luscinda have similar social status, and nothing else in DF implies otherwise.)

Cardenio's unnamed father (DQ Ch 24) = Camillo in DF. This is also the name of a character in The Winter's Tale.

Duke Ricardo (DQ Ch 24) = Duke Angelo in DF, but the name doesn't appear in any speeches, only the Dramatis Personae. Angelo is also the name of a lead character in Measure for Measure (and a very minor one in The Comedy of Errors).

The peasant girl (DQ Ch 24), later named as Dorothea in DQ Ch 28 = Violante in DF.

Fernando's elder brother (DQ Ch 27), later named as Don Pedro de Aguilar (DQ Ch 39) and described as the marquis (DQ Ch 42) = Roderick in DF. The name isn't common in Jacobean or Restoration plays. You might expect Shakespeare and Fletcher to have preferred Rodrigo or Roderigo (as previously used in Othello), but Shakespeare was never too bothered about linguistically appropriate forms. Roderick was the name of a lost play from 1600, recorded by Henslowe (one suggestion is that it concerned Roderic, the last Visigothic king of Spain).

The plot

In DQ, the Cardenio story is told in dribs and drabs (mainly Chs 23, 24, 27, 28, 29 and 36). It's interleaved with other material mostly concerned with Don Quixote, but also e.g. the substantial tale of Anselmo, Lothario and Camilla. The Cardenio and Don Quixote stories have some crossover, e.g. at one point Don Quixote gets into an argument with Cardenio (about chivalric romances of course); the good curate who has come to the Sierra Morena to extricate Don Quixote also relieves Cardenio's mad fits and Dorothea's fears; Dorothea, Don Fernando, Luscinda and Cardenio all participate in the curate's schemes to return Don Quixote to his home. In fact it's not until Ch 47 that they finally take their leave from the novel.

DQ's Cardenio narrative doesn't have the constraints of a stage play. As narrators of their own stories Cardenio and Dorothea can go into a lot of detail about their inner thoughts. The events aren't always told to us in time sequence, and the story has a larger time allowance than DF. Don Fernando's betrayal of Dorothea takes place before he even meets Cardenio, let alone Luscinda. DF, naturally, wants all the leads in action from the start. It rejigs the plot so the double falsehoods of Henriquez (Fernando) run in parallel; when he rapes Violante (Dorothea), he is already set on obtaining Leonora (Luscinda) and has already taken steps to isolate her from Julio (Cardenio) (DF II.1). Even the investigations that will finally expose him are already being prepared (I.1). DF is often inadequately realized, but it's skilfully designed. 

In DQ the Duke's offer to take Cardenio into service is genuine and unprompted. At the duke's court Cardenio meets Fernando for the first time. In DF Henriquez (Fernando) already knows Julio (Cardenio) -- they met in France --and has dispatched him to the ducal court to get him out of the way. (DF in fact conflates two separate events in DQ: Cardenio entering the Duke's service and Fernando sending Cardenio to his elder brother, along with a request to detain him as long as possible.)

In DQ Don Fernando makes promises he doesn't intend to keep and Dorothea allows herself to yield; if she hadn't yielded, she says, Don Fernando seemed in a mood to use force. Dorothea reasons that it's better to consent, even though she doesn't trust his promises: she can then claim that she married him in good faith, while as a rape victim she would have no rights at all. In DF Henriquez (Fernando) makes the same promises but Violante (Dorothea) doesn't yield, and he does rape her. One of the authors behind DF saw dramatic potential in Fernando/Henriquez actually doing what Dorothea had said he seemed in a mood to do; though in DF itself the potential is only partially realized: Henriquez worries specifically about the rape (not about the betrayal), but Violante only speaks of the betrayal. In both narratives there's no doubt that Dorothea/Violante is attracted to Fernando/Henriquez, but of course that isn't an automatic reason for consenting to sex, either then or now. You can be raped by someone you love: DF deserves some recognition for putting that storyline into a play. 

In DQ Don Fernando absents himself and Cardenio from court because he fears Cardenio will be duty-bound to inform the Duke his master what Fernando got up to with Dorothea. He makes up a story about them going to buy horses, and they take up residence at the house of Cardenio's father, where an incautious Cardenio can't resist showing off his beloved Luscinda to Don Fernando. In DF Henriquez (Fernando) is already staying at the house of Julio's (Cardenio's) father when the play begins. 

In DQ Cardenio has been afraid to ask his father for permission to marry Luscinda, and in fact takes up his pal Fernando's treacherous offer to ask it on his behalf. In DF Julio (Cardenio) does ask his father.

In DQ Don Fernando's elder brother is only marginally involved in the Cardenio story: he assists Don Fernando by keeping Cardenio hanging around, but he has no role in the denouement of the Cardenio story. The colourful glimpse of him in DQ Chs 39-40 as a sonneteering galley-slave may have suggested DF's contrast of a good elder brother with a wayward younger brother.

In DQ Cardenio at the wedding does not (as in DF) leap forth sword in hand to threaten others, but instead departs in despair, intending to kill himself. 

In DQ Dorothea is threatened with rape by her own servant -- she throws him off a precipice -- as well as by the Master of the shepherds (Ch 28). DF only includes the latter.

In DQ Dorothea's rich peasant father is named Clenardo (Ch 29). DF doesn't go into details about Violante's (Dorothea's) family, it only says she's of humble birth. 

In DQ (Ch 36) Fernando and his companions (not his brother) abduct Luscinda from the convent and arrive at an inn where they encounter Dorothea and Cardenio (along with the curate, Sancho Panza, etc). The resolution occurs when Dorothea calls heaven to witness that Fernando is her husband, and he is (rather slowly) brought round to accepting her claim, surrendering Luscinda to Cardenio. In DF the resolution is effected by Roderick and the Duke.

In DQ it's Dorothea who is the dynamic force; our sympathies are all with her and Luscinda. Cardenio is generally characterized as a bit feeble (something still discernible in DF's Julio). 

*

Cardenio and Luscinda

[Image source: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/apr/28/cardenio-review . Photo by Tristram Kenton from a 2011 RSC production. Cardenio was played by Oliver Rix and Luscinda by Lucy Briggs-Owen.]

*

* Like many others I think this song comes from the 1613 Cardenio :

Woods, rocks, and mountains, and ye desert places

Where naught but bitter cold and hunger dwells,

Hear a poor maid's last will killed with disgraces.

Slide softly while I sing, ye silver fountains,

And let your hollow waters like sad bells

Ring, ring to my woes, while miserable I,

Cursing my fortunes, drop, drop, drop a tear and die.

Griefs, woes, and groanings, hopes and all such liars

I give to broken hearts that daily weep;

To all poor maids in love, my lost desires.

Sleep sweetly, while I sing my bitter moanings,

And list may hollow lovers, that ne'er keep

Truth, truth in their hearts, while miserable I,

Still cursing my fortunes, drop, drop, drop a tear and die.

[Source: https://lostplays.folger.edu/Cardenio#%22Woods,_rocks_and_mountains%22_(music) . This rendering is somewhat emended. The sole text for the second verse has "lies", "desirings", "And last my hollow lovers".]

The song survives in numerous transcripts, though only one of them includes the second verse. The lute music is by Robert Johnson (1583 - 1633), who also wrote music for songs in The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline and The Tempest. The content is a perfect fit for the disguised Dorothea bathing her feet in the wilderness (cf. her lament in DQ Ch 28). The words look like Fletcher's rather than Shakespeare's. The song's presumed replacement in Double Falshood Act IV Scene 2 feels particularly un-Jacobean.

A fine 2013 performance of "Woods, rocks, and mountains" by Musicke in the Ayre (Soprano: Jeni Melia, Lute: Din Ghani):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_H9opoQT7E

*

These notes on Shakespeare: full list

The bells of St M's

Tues 22nd

Didn't feel as well as
yes: although all avowed(?)
I was better. Throat
hurt much more to sides
...  Egg for break -
horrid swollowing. Dr C
came about 11.15 & Sh after
that. Sh & Lu going Shanklin
tomorrow by the early
train. He left & Lu came
with Punches. I wrote
note to B

                 I not
so perky as yes & M
against my entreaties said
something re food & nurse
then took offence & rejectid
...
...
....'never been spoken to'
etc  Edinburgh training
etc etc Awful fuss  on my
"complaints". I upset &
cried wee. Sat up for supper
Dr C came in even tho' said
no as M. had said
she wanted him to have look
at throat - paining & he prob.
needn't looked at it - so I
was really quite furious.
I tried to make as good as I
could of it all & he crankily
departed I howled. Nurse
"Miss Gibbonsed" me & shut
her door tight I woke at 1.30
& 4.30 - dry throat, spluttered
etc, but didn't ring the bell
for the cranky thing. She
came in about 6.30 & gave
me junket & then tea.

Wed 23rd

Dr C came, a bit less
cranky. I said there
had been a perfect
storm in the tea cup
here & we all exelarated (?)
the rumpus ... He
asked me if I had liked
my fish. I gave a
hesitating no & he said
doubtful? & he said re
bones ... nurse
is disapeed about no
of bones. He quite annoy-
ed & talked re: cook  ...
... re:
complaints & I said I
hadn't. He said no,
not you - seemed quite
friendly & O.K. again.
Departed & nurse jabber-
ed some but seemed
quite brisk. Read &
talked. A.R. came
about 11.15. brought
... games. I told her
re bust & we made
jigsaw puzzle - the
2nd - nice. Fish
for dinner ... 1 bone!
...
...    P knew
story of bust. He departed
& M & I talked re bust
etc
...
She left about 6.30, nurse
brought in brandy
essence, not very loving


Thur 24th

...

Decided to stay here
till Mon. Up to lunch -
squashed (?) chicken.
Rested till 3.15 but as
nurse didn't come & I
tried write up bits of
this. Nurse came in ...
... & Ellen came
...  Played
Cabouche & Carpet - felt tired
...
...  may have exhausted
myself more, been used to
not having bad throat when
playing with her. Showed
her various things &
talked sundries, nurse
in off & on. Ellen left
at 6.30. I got washed. I
said something re slough
not coming off & no food
etc & she murmured re
"not being spoken to ... Miss
Gibbons" etc. Goodness knows
why. Blew over. Up to supper
... fish
...
... choking fit 11 - 11.30
Had to ring. Thought would
never stop ....
glycerine. Woke wee at 4
& then on nicely

Fri 25th

Slept quite wellish. Had tea 7.15.
Nurse gave me another jigsaw
puzzle to do - Homeward Bound.
Cow's "tum" missing! Fin. it in
even. Dr. C. came 11.15 talked
re: going home ...
Throat getting on
I got up - & sat in chair. S & P
came more talk re ...
...
... P. left first then came
for S. 12.45...
...  Slept a wee. Matron
came in about 3.45 & gave
me tea.  M. came talked
re: going. Settled yes & packed
some. Then nurse came ...
talked. & then settled no. I
wanted to go by then &
M & I cranked some. M
left about      Round
waist hurt back & front.
Chill? indi? wind? muscle?
a hump in bed? Told
nurse. She gave me an
enima - O. K. Did one
twice.  ....
...
... Fin Lu's book.
Quite fair. Back to bed.
Nurse O.K. again. Showed
me 2 photos & laughed
& talked. I let out some
re "the miss". Lives here
about ... married etc. Hope
O.K. ....
O.K. Must be careful
though. No letters or
anything. A G & G Rosa
go Bexhill tomorrow.
Nurse gave me ...
... throat - looks vile ....

Sat 26th

Had good night. Woke &
coughed twice, but nothing
much. Slept on till about 8
break & Dr. C. came. M. here
before him. He seemed
satis: M piled on agonies.
He left  & I sat up, dressed
all but blouse. M. and I cracked.
Throat hurt somewhat to
talk. Had basket chair
in from outer room. -
... Had comfy
snoozy rest in noon
3.45. Rose came in. Had tea.
Ellen came before fin. H...
with ... & ... Did
one. We did a puzzle ...
... with patience
book - 86 pieces but
quite a puzzle. Ellen left
about 6 as nurse ....
.... & wanted me
back in bed. She said
flowers at home for me
from Mrs Clarke. I
asked her to bring my
camara to take view
from window. Hope will
be decent day as want
.... today.
Windy very & rain, no
letters again. Bed &
Rose gave me supper.
Read Home Chat & wrote
diary. Throat ....
    ....  - hope no
bone in it. Haven't made
clear what great joy &
comfort it is & has been
to  be so near St. M's. Joy
to hear the quarters strike
& the bells for service.
Rose sat in room some
after & before supper &
crochet. Settled me
about 9. Looked at G.s patience
book. Mr T's is on it.
Read Home Chat.

Sun 27th

Had quite a good
night, woke & coughed
a wee about 3   Didn't
drink tea  Thick groats
& egg etc for break & got
up soon after    Dressed
all but tie. Sat & looked
at paper & began "4 leaf
Clover" Nurse came in
off & on. ...
....

Bells rang for service
at 8. 11 12 & 6.30 - nice.
Horrid rainy & windy
morn. Letter from B -
all O.K. Rested in
chair in noon. Dr. C.
came & said getting
on satis. ...
... up myself for lunch
& trifle - nice. Tea &
Ellen came before fin:
she brought camara &
she took one of view
of St M's from window -
hope O.K. Light fair:
she & I did the big puzzle
S. sent me yes  ...
hard but interesting. A R
came in for mo ...
... Helen .....
staying there. (T.P)
Ellen said on leaving
that she had sent me
flowers ...  to say
before. Of course I
didn't thank. Ellen to
fetch me at 12.30 to-
morrow before tea. ...
... In
morn I and nurse went
well walking round
passages and in to the
1st room I had,
Ellen left around 6.45.
Nurse & I fin. puzzle. Then
I sat & watched windows
of St M's ...
...
...
...  She & I had
some serious converse
re: my purposeless life
at supper time. Bed &
wrote diary. Throat
felt better today on right
side. Jaw very stiff
but not so slippy.

Mon 28th

Slept well - woke about 5.30
& then slept on. Drank tea.
Poached egg for breakfast etc.
Had throat swarfed &
got up. Nurse did my hair
partly loose. Packed up
my things. Nurse & I -
all. wish I had given
her scent or something.
Read 4 leaf clover. Dr C
came & saw throat.
Seemed satis. Told
various tales re ...
in ... shire, where he
once worked - interesting.
left, lunch. Read &
fin packing, Ellen
came about 12 & cab
about 12.20. ....
... didn't say goodbye.
Nurse saw me to
cab  Shook hands &
thanked for all her
loving kindness & got
in - all well wrapped
up. Round up St M's hill
Sorry to say goodbye to
St. M's.  ...

*

Rescued from cardboard recycling: a notebook containing scrawled diary entries, frequently indecipherable. Miss Gibbons (who after she got home wrote them up neatly in another book) certainly presented me with a "hard but interesting" puzzle!

It was part of a hoard of old treasures that someone had dumped: I randomly retrieved the three items shown above. Some recurring surnames in the other items I looked at (Gibbons, Gall, Corbin) suggested family papers.

*

The first item that came to hand -- because it literally dropped into it while I was forcing my own cardboard into the over-full skip -- was The Floral Text Book. It proved to be a kind of printed calendar (i.e. like a W.H. Smith Diary) that had been used as a shared resource for recording the birthdays of various Gibbons, Galls, Corbins etc. A couple of the entries had been neatly excised with a pen-knife, leaving a window in the page; and leaving me to speculate on the reasons you'd want to suppress a name.

On each facing page the pre-printed calendar is adorned by the publishers with the names of flowers, their associations, and appropriate verses. Thus:


SYRINGA - MEMORY

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain,
  Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain.
Awake but one, and lo ! what myriads rise !
Each stamps his image as the other flies.
                                                                 Rogers.

       The leaves of memory seemed to make
       A mournful rustling in the dark.
                                                              Longfellow.

LABURNAM - FORSAKEN

Lay a garland on my hearse
     Of the dismal yew ;
Maidens, willow branches bear ;
     Say, I died true.

My love was false, but I was firm
     From my hour of birth.
Upon my buried body lie
     Lightly, gentle earth.
                                          Beaumont and Fletcher. 


There must be about three hundred verse selections, and Scott, a bit surprisingly, appears only once.  Among the more frequent names are Adelaide Procter, Tennyson, Wordsworth, J.R. Lowell, O.W. Holmes, Lord Southesk, Christina Rossetti... (Even George Eliot, not often thought of as a poet these days, shows up twice.)  But anyway, here's the Scott extract.


CYPRESS - MOURNING

    Oh ! Lady, twine no wreath for me
       Or twine it of the cypress tree !
    Too lively glow the lilies light,
    The varnished holly's all too bright ;
The may-flower and the eglantine
May shade a brow less sad than mine ;
But, lady twine no wreath for me,
Or weave it of the cypress tree.
                                                        Sir W. Scott. 

Here are the flowers and their associations for the month of January. As you'll see, some attempt was made to choose appropriate plants for the season. I've compared them with the other books tabulated in Brent Elliott's excellent paper and given the earliest instance of each association (the later books usually repeat them, unless they've come up with something else).

Fennel - Strength.     (Charlotte De La Tour, pseud. Louise Cortambert, 1819)
Colt's-foot - Justice shall be done (La Tour, though most versions append "you" until The Language and Poetry of Flowers (1880s))
Daisy - Innocence     (La Tour)
Turnip - Charity.      (Henry Phillips, 1825)
Mezereon - Desire to please.   (Phillips)
Grass - Submission.        (John Ingram, 1869)
Moss - Maternal love.       (La Tour)
Olive - Peace.              (B. Delachénaye, 1811)
Sage - Domestic virtues.    (Lucy Hooper, 1844)
Gorse - Love for all seasons (Anon, The Language and Poetry of Flowers, 1880s)
Orange - Generosity.        (La Tour)
Scotch Fir - Elevation.      (La Tour)
Hazel - Reconciliation.     (La Tour)
Meadow Grass - Endurance.   (None, but Phillips has Canary Grass: Perseverance)
Ivy - Friendship.    (La Tour)
Heather - Solitude.    (Delachénaye)
Cypress - Mourning.   (La Tour)
Shepherd's Purse - I offer you my all.  (Kate Greenaway, 1884)
Fir - Time.        (Hooper)

These January associations, as you can see, are nearly all attested in Elliott's lists, but that's not the case throughout; there are many "original" associations.

This esoteric topic has a Balzac connection (who else?), as is well described in Brent Elliott's paper. It's a flower-symbolism episode in Le Lys dans la vallée   (The Lily of the Valley, 1835-36) -- which as it happens is my current Balzac "loan" from the shelves of a café in Bath. In the novel the hero spends hours scouring the area for special combinations of blooms to arrange in the vases of his beloved's salon; a communication between the pair that is instantly comprehended. This is his  -- comparatively rudimentary -- first effort:

Imagine a stream of flowers gushing out of two vases, falling down in fringed billows, and from the heart of which leaped my vows in white roses and silver-cupped lilies. Upon this cool surface gleamed the cornflowers, forget-me-nots, adder-wort, all the blue flowers the shades of which, borrowed from the sky, so well match the white ; is it not a twofold innocence, that which knows nothing and that which knows all, the child's thought and the martyr's thought ? Love has its heraldry, and the countess secretly deciphered it. She gave me one of those incisive looks which resemble the cry of a sick person touched upon a sore : she was both confused and delighted. 

(The third of the blue plants is actually "vipérine", viper's bugloss.)

From this beginning the hero graduates to intense study of the spirit of nature in individuals and locations, to an understanding of every type of grass, to scouring burning plains and precarious cliffs for rare specimens, to an intoxicating page-long "symphony of flowers" of fantastic complexity, all founded on the scent of sweet vernal grass (flouve odorante):

Vous comprendrez cette délicieuse correspondance par le détail d’un bouquet, comme d’après un fragment de poésie vous comprendriez Saadi. Avez-vous senti dans les prairies, au mois de mai, ce parfum qui communique à tous les êtres l’ivresse de la fécondation, qui fait qu’en bateau vous trempez vos mains dans l’onde, que vous livrez au vent votre chevelure, et que vos pensées reverdissent comme les touffes forestières ? Une petite herbe, la flouve odorante, est un des plus puissants principes de cette harmonie voilée. Aussi personne ne peut-il la garder impunément près de soi. Mettez dans un bouquet ses lames luisantes et rayées comme une robe à filets blancs et verts, d’inépuisables exhalations remueront au fond de votre cœur les roses en bouton que la pudeur y écrase. Autour du col évasé de la porcelaine, supposez une forte marge uniquement composée des touffes blanches particulières au sédum des vignes en Touraine ; vague image des formes souhaitées, roulées comme celles d’une esclave soumise. De cette assise sortent les spirales des liserons à cloches blanches, les brindilles de la bugrane rose, mêlées de quelques fougères, de quelques jeunes pousses de chêne aux feuilles magnifiquement colorées et lustrées ; toutes s’avancent prosternées, humbles comme des saules pleureurs, timides et suppliantes comme des prières. Au-dessus, voyez les fibrilles déliées, fleuries, sans cesse agitées de l’amourette purpurine qui verse à flots ses anthères presque jaunes ; les pyramides neigeuses du paturin des champs et des eaux, la verte che- velure des bromes stériles, les panaches effilés de ces agrostis nommés les épis du vent ; violâtres espérances dont se couronnent les premiers rêves et qui se détachent sur le fond gris de lin où la lumière rayonne autour de ces herbes en fleurs. Mais déjà plus haut, quelques roses du Bengale clairsemées parmi les folles dentelles du daucus, les plumes de la linaigrette, les marabous de la reine des prés, les ombellules du cerfeuil sauvage, les blonds cheveux de la clématite en fruits, les mignons sautoirs de la croisette au blanc de lait, les corymbes des millefeuilles, les tiges diffuses de la fumeterre aux fleurs roses et noires, les vrilles de la vigne, les brins tortueux des chèvrefeuilles ; enfin tout ce que ces naïves créatures ont de plus échevelé, de plus déchiré, des flammes et de triples dards, des feuilles lancéolées, déchiquetées, des tiges tourmentées comme les désirs entortillés au fond de l’âme. Du sein de ce prolixe torrent d’amour qui déborde, s’élance un magnifique double pavot rouge accompagné de ses glands prêts à s’ouvrir, déployant les flammèches de son incendie au-dessus des jasmins étoilés et dominant la pluie incessante du pollen, beau nuage qui papillote dans l’air en reflétant le jour dans ses mille parcelles luisantes ! Quelle femme enivrée par la senteur d’Aphrodise cachée dans la flouve, ne comprendra ce luxe d’idées soumises, cette blanche tendresse troublée par des mouvements indomptés, et ce rouge désir de l’amour qui demande un bonheur refusé dans les luttes cent fois recommencées de la passion contenue, infatigable, éternelle ? Mettez ce discours dans la lumière d’une croisée, afin d’en montrer les frais détails, les délicates oppositions, les arabesques, afin que la souveraine émue y voie une fleur plus épanouie et d’où tombe une larme ; elle sera bien près de s’abandonner, il faudra qu’un ange ou la voix son enfant la retienne au bord de l’abîme. Que donne-t-on à Dieu ? des parfums, de la lumière et des chants, les expressions les plus épurées de notre nature. Eh ! bien, tout ce qu’on offre à Dieu n’était-il pas offert à l’amour dans ce poème de fleurs lumineuses qui bourdonnait incessamment ses mélodies au cœur, en y caressant des voluptés cachées, des espérances inavouées, des illusions qui s’enflamment et s’éteignent comme des fils de la vierge par une nuit chaude.  

Here's Katharine Prescott Wormeley's rendering, interpolating the names that I'd give to the species named by Balzac:

Natalie, you will understand this delightful intercourse through the details of a bouquet, just as you would comprehend Saadi from a fragment of his verse. Have you ever smelt in the fields in the month of May the perfume that communicates to all created beings the intoxicating sense of a new creation; the sense that makes you trail your hand in the water from a boat, and loosen your hair to the breeze while your mind revives with the springtide greenery of the trees? A little plant, a species of vernal grass, is a powerful element in this veiled harmony; it cannot be worn with impunity; take into your hand its shining blade, striped green and white like a silken robe, and mysterious emotions will stir the rosebuds your modesty keeps hidden in the depths of your heart. Round the neck of a porcelain vase imagine a broad margin of the gray-white tufts peculiar to the sedum of the vineyards of Touraine, vague image of submissive forms; from this foundation come tendrils of the bind-weed with its silver bells, sprays of pink rest-harrow mingled with a few young shoots of oak-leaves, lustrous and magnificently colored; these creep forth prostrate, humble as the weeping-willow, timid and supplicating as prayer. Above, see those delicate threads of the purple amoret [quaking-grass], with its flood of anthers that are nearly yellow; the snowy pyramids of the meadow-sweet [meadow-grass], the green tresses of the wild oats [barren brome], the slender plumes of the agrostis, which we call wind-ear; roseate hopes, decking love’s earliest dream and standing forth against the gray surroundings. But higher still, remark the Bengal roses, sparsely scattered among the laces of the daucus [wild carrot], the plumes of the linaria [cotton-grass], the marabouts of the meadow-queen [meadowsweet]; see the umbels of the myrrh [cow parsley], the spun glass of the clematis in seed, the dainty petals of the cross-wort, white as milk [croissette does mean cross-wort, but I wonder if Balzac meant something like meadow bedstraw], the corymbs of the yarrow, the spreading stems of the fumitory with their black and rosy blossoms, the tendrils of the grape, the twisted shoots of the honeysuckle; in short, all the innocent creatures have that is most tangled, wayward, wild,—flames and triple darts, leaves lanceolated or jagged, stalks convoluted like passionate desires writhing in the soul. From the bosom of this torrent of love rises the scarlet poppy, its tassels about to open, spreading its flaming flakes above the starry jessamine [jasmine], dominating the rain of pollen—that soft mist fluttering in the air and reflecting the light in its myriad particles. What woman intoxicated with the odor of the vernal grasses would fail to understand this wealth of offered thoughts, these ardent desires of a love demanding the happiness refused in a hundred struggles which passion still renews, continuous, unwearying, eternal!Put this speech of the flowers in the light of a window to show its crisp details, its delicate contrasts, its arabesques of color, and allow the sovereign lady to see a tear upon some petal more expanded than the rest. What do we give to God? perfumes, light, and song, the purest expression of our nature. Well, these offerings to God, are they not likewise offered to love in this poem of luminous flowers murmuring their sadness to the heart, cherishing its hidden transports, its unuttered hopes, its illusions which gleam and fall to fragments like the gossamer of a summer’s night?

The green tresses of Barren Brome

[Image source: https://peterorchard.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/barren-brome-sterile-oats/ .]

*

The last of my three items is a 1956 volume of The Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society.

Here's an extract before I let this, and the rest, pass on to where they were going before I shoved my hand in. Lady Frederick Cavendish left the following account of a visit to the Governor's House, Barbados, January 4th 1872.

Most affably received by the good-natured pursy Governor Rawson, and pleasantly lodged in a clean white temple of the winds looking out upon a very pretty garden. Sir Graham Briggs, with all his blushing honours fresh upon him, came here with us, and was beyond kind in seeing after our luggage and ourselves; we drove with him in the evening along the coast, and very refreshing and enjoyable I found it to have nothing beautiful to look at, only the pleasant curious sight, so utterly unlike Jamaica or Santa Cruz, of excessive cultivation and swarming population. The people are far more ragged than in Jamaica, stark naked children being common; the numbers are such that they are forced to work for the lowest wages or starve, and thousands ought by hook or crook to be emigrated to St. Lucia or even Jamaica, so as to force up wages and bring about a more decent state of things. However, all looks thriving, and one can't pity nakedness in this climate as one would in England. There is a ceaseless cool breeze and the Gov. announced wintry weather viz. therm. down to 81! 

[Lady Cavendish is slightly misquoting Cardinal Wolsey's soliloquy in Henry VIII: 

This is the state of man: today he puts forth

The tender leaves of hopes; tomorrow blossoms

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost ....

The lines were much admired. It was a "Shakespearean" tag that today is credited to his co-author John Fletcher, who thus makes a second appearance in this post.]

"Death hath a thousand doors to let out life"

In Aubrey Burl's Brief History of Stonehenge, one of his chapter-epigraphs quoted this line by the Jacobean dramatist Philip Massinger.


     Death hath a thousand doors to let out life.


I can't remember now what the chapter in question was about, but probably it was about the skeleton of a man with a stone arrowhead in his ribs, found near the earth ring and carbon-dated to soon after the erection of the great sarsen circle.

Of this or another male skeleton - perhaps the Archer at Durrington - Burl tells us that his ankle bones were worn down, indicating a life that involved prolonged squatting.

Apparently this tell-tale clue from the ankle bones is well-known among human archaeologists. A Google search turned up Merry E. Weisner-Hanks' Concise History of the World (2015), where we read  (p.33):

This has led scholars to assume that in Paleolithic society men were also responsible for hunting, and women for gathering. Human remains provide some evidence for this, as skeletons and teeth indicate the type of tasks the person did while they were alive. At Chinchorro on the north coast of Chile, for example, male skeletons from the period 7000-2000 BCE often show bone growths in the ears, the result of diving in the cold coastal waters for seals and shellfish (today this condition is called "surfer's ear") , while female skeletons show changes in the ankle bones resulting from prolonged squatting, perhaps to process the marine products or gather and process terrestrial foods. Such a division of labour is not universal, however....

Simon Mays' book The Archaeology of Human Bones (1998) explains:

In the squatting position there is extreme dorsiflexion of the feet. [This] puts continous pressure on the ankle ligaments which tends to elongate them, permitting greater dorsiflexion of the joint between the tibia and the talus.... Habitual extreme dorsiflexion of the ankle joints... [leads] to the formation of anterior extensions to the joint surfaces... [known as] squatting extensions.

He notes that among a group of skeletons of medieval peasants from Wharram Percy, 71% of the women and 44% of the men had squatting extensions. (Burl, reporting that the bones were "worn down", may have misunderstood.)

The earliest, and for many thousands of years the only, piece of  human furniture, was the chest.

The first vital essential was to have somewhere to put important stuff. The chest was the beginning of property and the first private space. (Living spaces were not private.) To be able to "keep" something was much more important than such fripperies as a bed or a chair.  So there was a lot of squatting in ancient times.

When we go backpacking, we revert to those days. Our backpack is our chest. It's the only piece of furniture we really need.

*

Alm. Do, tyrant,
No more a father, feast thy cruelty
Upon thy daughter ; but hell's plagues fall on me
If I inflict not on myself whatever
He can endure for me !

Vice. Will none restrain her ?

Alm. Death hath a thousand doors to let out life,
I shall find one.  If Portia's burning coals,
The knife of Lucrece, Cleopatra's aspics,
Famine, deep waters, have the power to free me
From a loath'd life, I'll not an hour outlive him.

Pedro. Sister !

Leon. Dear cousin !

[Exit Almira, followed by Pedro and Leon.]


Vice. Let her perish.



(from A Very Woman (1634), Act V Scene 4).


The Plays of Philip Massinger:


https://archive.org/stream/playsofphilipmas00massrich#page/524/mode/2up

*


A Very Woman isn't often mentioned these days, though Francis Cunningham considered it one of Massinger's best. It was registered in 1634, but is considered a revision of a play written around 1619-22, either by Massinger and Fletcher, or perhaps by Fletcher alone.

So Massinger may not have written his most famous line. Anyway, the thought had appeared in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (1612-13) and seems to have become theatrical common currency.

But this is the most beautiful and resonant expression of that thought. (It's one of those quotations that gains power and interest by being detached from its original context.)

The faint suggestion of Life being a restless visitor importunate to leave, and of a house-proud Death being no less eager to sweep his guest towards the nearest of many exits .... there's a certain sombre thrill in that thought, as we turn briefly  aside from the contrary observation -- that's to say, with what amazing tenacity Life fights and endures and clings to its existence -- to consider that, after all, Life is fragile and a miracle, and how lucky we are to have it now, and Life does always depart in the end, and not in such a very long time either, from the perspective of the centuries...