Simon Forman, Shakespeare and the stage

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

12 September is the anniversary of the death of the colourful astrologer-cum-physician Simon Forman – or perhaps it was 11 September, or even 5 September, accounts vary.  Whichever is correct, Forman was a well-known, even notorious figure in Shakespeare’s London, said to be the inspiration for Ben Jonson’s play The Alchemist, and a great example of the vibrancy of English life.

Simon Forman was born in 1552 in a hamlet outside Salisbury. Following a grammar school education he attempted to study at Oxford but was forced to cut short his formal education due to lack of money. He did most of his studying while working as a teacher. He was found with magical books and imprisoned, but despite his lack of training in 1592 he still managed to set himself up as an astrologer and physician in London. His casebooks, now at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, give details of 10,000 consultations. They show that he dealt with a wide range of matters, and began each consultation with an astrological reading. One common question was whether a man or his wife would die first. There’s a transcript of Forman’s formula for working this out here

Here’s an example using a fictional couple:

Mary & Jhone being man & wife which shall die first. Mary the number of her letters are 4 & the number of the letters of Jhone are 5 & Jhone is the elder & she was a mayd & he a bacheler & neyther of them was contracted to any other before, & the number of boath of the names being added togeather make 9 then because Jhone is the elder I begin with Jhone & say Jhone mary Jhone mary 9 times & the number doth end on Jhone. Therfore dico quod Jhoanna prius morietur.

The Casebook Project is currently under way to digitise and transcribe Forman’s casebooks as well as those of his follower Richard Napier, aiming to  make available a huge amount of information about the preoccupations and beliefs of the people who consulted these men. Here’s a link to an article by expert Lauren Kassell about Forman and the project.

The Royal College of Physicians fined Forman for practising medicine without a licence, and in 1601 they complained that he was the worst of the “unlearned and unlawful practitioners, lurking in many corners of the City”. We’d find the methods of most of the scientists of this period hard to take seriously today. Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, John Dee, was a famous, learned and highly regarded mathematician, but was better known for practising alchemy and being associated with the occult. Even the highly-regarded physician John Hall, Shakespeare’s son in law, prescribed alarming-sounding remedies to his patients.

 

The unicorn from Topsell

It wasn’t just the workings of the human body that fascinated the Elizabethans and Jacobeans. They strove to document and explain the world around them, but were defeated by the complexity of the world that was opening up to them. Myth and fact sat side by side: Topsell’s 1607 History of Four-Footed Beasts contains information about domesticated animals like horses and goats as well as the mythical unicorn.

Forman was a compulsive record keeper, describing performances he attended at the theatre. He went to see Macbeth, and was impressed by the medical and magical elements of the play, especially the presence of a doctor making notes of Lady Macbeth’s words as she sleep-walked. You can find the full description here , but this is an extract:

 In Macbeth at the Globe, 1610, the 20 of April, Saturday, there was to be observed, first, how Macbeth and Banquo, two noble men of Scotland, riding through a wood, there stood before them three women fairies or nymphs, and saluted Macbeth, saying three times unto him, “Hail, Macbeth, King of Codon; for thou shall be a King, but shall beget no kings,” etc. Then said Banquo, “what all to Macbeth, and nothing to me?” “Yes”, said the nymphs, “hail to thee, Banquo, thou shall beget kings, yet be no king”; and so they departed …

And Macbeth…through the persuasion of his wife did that night murder the King in his own castle, being his guest; and there were many prodigies seen that night and the day before. …

Then was Macbeth crowned kings; and then he…contrived the death of Banquo…. The next night…the ghost of Banquo came and sat down in his chair behind him. And he…saw the ghost of Banquo, which fronted him so, that he fell into a great passion of fear and fury, uttering many words about his murder, by which, when they heard that Banquo was murdered, they suspected Macbeth. …

Observe also how Macbeth’s queen did rise in the night in her sleep, and walked and talked and confessed all, and the doctor noted her words.

Forman is supposed to have predicted the date of his own death, and it’s somehow appropriate that the exact date and circumstances aren’t clear. The Casebook Project should throw light on many areas of life in Shakespeare’s London.

This post was first published in September 2012

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David Garrick’s Jubilee

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

The story of Stratford’s rise from being a typical market town into an international tourist destination is often said to start in 1769 when the greatest actor of the day, David Garrick, put on a three-day celebration of Shakespeare. The fact that this happened in Stratford, not London, raised more than a few eyebrows. Garrick had originally been invited to dedicate a statue of Shakespeare for the niche on the new Town Hall. A true showman, he decided to use the opportunity to mount an entertainment on a grand scale in which he would take the starring role.

The new Town Hall was elegant, but not large enough for the kind of show Garrick had in mind. The temporary wooden amphitheatre that he built was designed to seat 1000 with a stage large enough for 100 performers. It was built, as you can see from the picture, near to the River Avon, much too near as it turned out.

Garrick’s Ode was the centrepiece of the whole festival, with musical accompaniment written by the composer Thomas Arne and performed by the entire orchestra and chorus from Drury Lane Theatre London. In Stratford it was received enthusiastically by an audience reported to be 2000 strong despite the torrential rain. The Jubilee itself was not the success Garrick had hoped for, but all was not lost because he took advantage of the interest it raised among the fashionable in London.

Detail of the engraving showing David Garrick speaking the Ode to Shakespeare

He wrote a play, The Jubilee, dramatising the events of the three days. He was able to include the procession of characters from Shakespeare’s plays which had been rained off in Stratford as well as the declaration of the Ode itself. According to Vanessa Cunningham’s book Shakespeare and Garrick the script indicates entrances for 320 individuals, three horses and one dog. This spectacular entertainment was performed 153 times between 1769 and 1776, a record for any London production.

It isn’t quite true that there was no tourist industry in Stratford before the Garrick Jubilee. There is evidence of people visiting places known to Shakespeare right back into the seventeenth century. The Jubilee strengthened the association of the town with Shakespeare and planted the seed of the idea of a prolonged festival in Stratford, eventually culminating in the building of a permanent theatre as a memorial to Shakespeare to which audiences would come from all round the world.

This post was first published in 2011

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Come, here is the map: Mercator at the British Library

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
The map of the British Isles from Mercator's Map of Europe

The map of the British Isles from Mercator’s Map of Europe

Now available on the British Library’s Online Gallery of Virtual Books is the Mercator Map of Europe. You might assume from the name that it’s an early printed atlas, but this book is far more interesting than that.

It was actually compiled by the great Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in the 1570s for his patrons, whose son, the crown prince of Cleves, was planning the grand tour of Europe. And this book is a kind of scrapbook, put together with enormous care. Some of the maps are unique, and according to the BL, “the atlas is the most important surviving body of Mercator’s work in a single volume”. Here is a description from the BL’s introduction:
Mercator compiled several maps from copies of wall maps of the British Isles, Europe, and the world that he had available in his workshop. He carefully cut up and pasted parts together to fit the atlas format. He created aesthetically balanced regional maps, removing tables and illustrations that did not wholly fit on the page and making space for customised scale-bars for each of the “new” maps. The process gave him a chance to experiment with the creation of regional maps as a step towards his long-term ambition of producing an atlas. For the rest of the atlas he used hand-drawn maps by himself, an urban map of Ancona in Italy, and numerous maps from an atlas published in 1570 by his friend and rival Abraham Ortelius.

Some of those which he raided for the compilation included his 1569 world map, 1554 map of Europe, and Ortelius’s great Theatrum Orbis Terrarium, 1570. Every page of the book is now available, and online can be enlarged so the astonishing detail can be seen.

Maps feature quite often in Shakespeare’s plays, most crucially for the plot in King Lear where the dividing of the map also symbolises the disintegration of order. Maps are usually reassuringly factual, helping us to make sense of the world, so it’s particularly interesting to see this atlas in which maps are cut to pieces and stuck together. The maps of England are based on two copies of Mercator’s 1554 Europe map, fitted together. The commentary accompanying the English map suggests that although English and Scottish mapmakers were advanced in the sixteenth century, there were no printers to make their maps widely available, so manuscript maps were all that would have been available. In fact maps were guarded by the government, who recognised the dangerous potential of accurate maps to assist invaders.

It is suggested indeed that one of the original maps from 1564 may have been created by the Scottish Catholic Priest and map-maker John Elder, who had a subversive aim, hoping that his accurate maps might help France or Spain to invade England and overthrow the Protestant government. It’s rather reminiscent of the scene in Henry IV Part One where the conspirators, who plan to be joined by Scottish powers, consult a map to see how they might divide England once they have removed the King from the throne.

Map of Italy from Mercator's Map of Europe

Map of Italy from Mercator’s Map of Europe

Elsewhere in the Atlas are a number of maps of Italy, a reminder of its importance to Europe even though it was at the time made up of a number of individual states over which other European powers fought long-term wars. Shakespeare locates many of his stories of passionate love, hate, deception and violence in the Italian cities of Verona, Venice, Rome and Mantua among others.

Mercator’s great atlas is a fascinating object that repays close examination, and is accompanied by both written and audio commentary for each page of maps.

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Shakespeare’s mothers and sons

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

Hermione (Barbara Robertson) and Mamillius (Zach Gray), Photo by Michael Brosilow, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, 2003.

For Shakespeare’s towards the end of his life, early September must have been a sad time, not just because it signalled the end of summer. Both parents died at this time of year: his father was buried on 8 September 1601, and seven years later, on 9 September 1608, his mother Mary. We know little about Shakespeare’s parents. John came from the little village of Snitterfield where his father rented a farm owned by Mary’s father Robert. He was an ambitious young man, moving into Stratford-upon-Avon, learning to be a skilled glover, and getting himself onto the newly-established local  council. Mary’s family lived in the village of Wilmcote, part of the “ancient and worthy family”, the Ardens. Mary was the youngest of eight sisters, and must have been a capable young woman as she was named as one of the executors of her father’s will as well as being a major beneficiary. John was lucky to catch a woman with an inheritance. The date and place of their marriage is unknown but probably took place during 1557, the year following Mary’s father’s death. There’s no evidence that either was educated, but their country background doesn’t mean they were completely illiterate.

Scientific studies are now proving that the first few years of a child’s life are crucial to their development. In Shakespeare’s time women were responsible for the rearing of young children, and his mother’s influence would have been very important. As John and Mary’s first surviving child, following two sisters who died young, William must have been dearly cherished.

Shakespeare writes several scenes showing young boys and their mothers in a close and affectionate relationship.  In The Winter’s Tale Mamillius begins to tell his mother a story before the cosy scene is broken apart by Hermione’s arrest on suspicion of infidelity.

Hermione        Come sir, …; ‘pray you, sit by us,
                          And tell’s a tale.
Mamillius        Merry, or sad, shall’t be?
Hermione                                    As merry as you will.
Mamillius        A sad tale’s best for winter: I have one
                        Of sprites and goblins.
Hermione                                            Let’s have that, good sir.
                        Come on, sit down, come on, and do your best
                        To fright me with your sprites: you’re powerful at it.
Mamillius        There was a man –
Hermione                                            Nay, come sit down: then on.
Mamillius        Dwelt by a churchyard; I will tell it softly,
                        Yond crickets shall not hear it.
Hermione                                            Come on then,
                        And giv’t me in mine ear.

 

Engraving of Constance and Arthur in King John

Many of the children in Shakespeare’s plays are parted from their mothers by death or politics, the separation made more poignant by the distress of their mothers. In King John, Constance’s son Prince Arthur has been taken away from her:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child.
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief? …
O Lord! My boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!

Richard III’s greatest crime is the killing of the little princes in the Tower of London. This event is the catalyst that unites three women, not natural allies, in cursing the man responsible for many deaths. A series of ritual incantations express their rawness of emotion, and can be one of the most powerful moments in the play.

Shakespeare knew what it felt like to lose a child, both from observing his own mother when as a 15-year old boy his 7-year old sister Ann, died, and from his own experience of losing his son Hamnet in 1596, aged only 11.

This post was first published in September 2011

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The Two Gentlemen of Verona meet Shakespeare in Love

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
The RSC's 2014 production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The RSC’s 2014 production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona

On 3 September 2014 the RSC’s production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona is to be broadcast Live from Stratford-upon-Avon to cinemas. I’ve written before about the way this enables people who would never have the chance to see plays in a theatre to get something like the live experience. The Two Gents is a particularly good example, because it’s a play rarely performed on stage. There have been three RSC productions in the Swan Theatre, one of which, in 1991, was particularly successful, and a cut-down version was performed in the RST in 1981, but it was last given a full production on the main stage back in 1970. The current production has received terrific reviews, and greeted with enthusiasm by audiences. The stage version closes on 4 September: with a hit on its hands the RSC must have wondered if they should not have scheduled extra performances.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona is possibly Shakespeare’s first play, and I agree with Charles Spencer, writing in the Daily Telegraph, that part of its fascination is that ” it contains the seeds of so much that he wrote later.” “This is the first of his plays in which the heroine disguises herself as a boy to go in search of her beloved, the first in which the characters find themselves in all kinds of trouble in a wood, the first in which love and youth triumph over the opposition of hidebound and obstructive parents.”

In that sentence alone we’re reminded of Twelfth Night, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet, as well as the much later play Cymbeline in which Shakespeare revisited some of the same ideas.

Silvia in the RSC's 2014 production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Silvia in the RSC’s 2014 production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Spencer also notes “It all works a treat in Simon Godwin’s production, niftily designed by Paul Wills and set in modern Italy, with a dolce vita buzz of scooters, nightclubs and open air cafés. ” Well yes it does, but I’m surprised that the reviewers seem happy to accept Godwin’s view of the play as a bit of a romp. I certainly missed the poignancy of Julia’s dilemma, forced to go between her own lover and the lady with whom he is now in love. I was pleased, though, when Silvia was released from her distractingly glamorous designer outfits to rail at Proteus in pyjamas and finally an outfit she might have gone running in. I thought I heard an echo of another early Shakespeare play, which I’ve never noticed before. In Richard III, Clarence dreams of being accused: “Clarence is come: false, fleeting, perjur’d Clarence,… Seize on him Furies! Take him unto torment”.

In Two Gents, Silvia addresses Proteus in an encounter that reminded me, though mildly, of the scene in which Richard III woos Lady Anne:
Thou subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man!
Think’st though I am so shallow, so conceitless,
To be seduced by thy flattery,
That hast deceived so many with thy vows?

A scene from Shakespeare in Love, 2014

A scene from Shakespeare in Love, 2014

Only a week or so before seeing the RSC’s Two Gents, I’d enjoyed the West End version of Shakespeare in Love. It is of course The Two Gentlemen of Verona that Viola has seen and so completely fallen for. It contains several passages about love, one of which is probably the first such declaration Shakespeare wrote. In the play, Viola has learned it, and performs it for the benefit of members of the household.

In Shakespeare’s play, Valentine, Silvia’s true lover, is banished from her:
What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?
What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?
Unless it be to think that she is by
And feed upon the shadow of perfection.
Except I be by Silvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale;
Unless I look on Silvia in the day,
There is no day for me to look upon;
She is my essence, and I leave to be,
If I be not by her fair influence
Foster’d, illumined, cherish’d, kept alive.  

I’m always surprised that this beautiful passage is so rarely quoted in anthologies or spoken in recitals. Perhaps for obvious reasons it’s one of my favourite Shakespeare speeches, while the well-known song “Who is Silvia”, dreamt up by her other suitors Proteus and Thurio, is nothing like so good.

To hear both, get down to your local cinema on the 3rd September. And to get you in the mood for the opening, buy an ice cream on the way in: only a lucky few in the theatre each night are offered a free sample of gelato.

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Mary Anderson, an American actress abroad

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Mary Anderson as Rosalind

Mary Anderson as Rosalind

On the 29th August 1885 a special performance took place at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. The famous Mary Anderson and her Company staged As You Like It as a Benefit for the Shakespeare Memorial Fund.

Although her name is now almost forgotten, Mary Anderson was a young actress who had caused a sensation both in her native USA and in England, and demand for tickets was high. The benefit performance raised £100 that paid for two of the three terracotta panels representing Comedy, History and Tragedy facing the theatre from Chapel Lane. The new Library and Picture Gallery wing of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was to be beautified with these panels.

The terracotta panel of Mary Anderson playing Rosalind

The terracotta panel of Mary Anderson playing Rosalind

The two she paid for showed, appropriately, Mary Anderson herself playing Rosalind, and the graveyard scene in Hamlet, while the History scene, from King John, was paid for by the architect of the building, W F Unsworth. All three panels were made by German sculptor Paul Kummer. They are beautifully detailed, much finer than those on the Old Bank, for instance, but currently covered in netting to prevent the attentions of pigeons, are difficult to see. On the As You Like It panel is shown the tree on which the love-lorn Orlando has been carving Rosalind’s name.

Mary Anderson as Juliet

Mary Anderson as Juliet

Mary Anderson was born in California in 1859 and took up a theatrical career at the tender age of 16 with a performance as Juliet in Louisville, Kentucky. In spite of having barely any training in acting she became an instant success, with a melodic voice and as the photographs show she was a great beauty. She went on tour in this role and in 1877 also took on Lady Macbeth.  Her success continued and she travelled to Europe in 1879, and again in 1883-5 when she undertook the role of Rosalind which she performed in Stratford-upon-Avon. Her Orlando was Johnston Forbes-Robertson, who was later, at London’s Lyceum Theatre, to become one of the finest of Hamlets, with a beautiful voice and exquisite elocution.

Mary Anderson as Hermione

Mary Anderson as Hermione

In 1887 she was back in the UK again, with The Winter’s Tale. In an innovation that has since been repeated a number of times she doubled the roles of Hermione and her lost daughter Perdita, while Forbes-Robertson played Leontes.  The production was successful artistically, but it was also seen as a vehicle for the celebrity actress. For their first performance, on April 23, Shakespeare’s Birthday, it was reported that “Three thousand persons…filled the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, from floor to ceiling”. The production had an amazing run of 164 performances, and was taken back to the USA. Here she took it on tour until in March 1889 she collapsed during a performance in Washington, DC suffering from nervous exhaustion.

After just fourteen glittering years, and at the age of 30, Mary Anderson announced her retirement from the stage.  The following year, 1890, she married Antonio Fernando de Navarro, an American sportsman, and they settled at Court Farm, in the beautiful Cotswold village of Broadway in Worcestershire, only a few miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. Although from then on she rarely appeared in public, she did take part in some special performances during World War 1. In Stratford she was persuaded to come out of retirement for two star-studded special performances on 5 and 6 May 1916 for the Tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death.

These special events were compilations of great scenes from Shakespeare’s plays, and Anderson played Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene. On 5 May, the first and grander of the two shows, the Doctor was played by Ben Greet, who had also brought his company to Stratford in the early years and was by 1916 the director of the Old Vic in London. After her retirement she published two volumes of autobiography, A Few Memories (1896) and A Few More Memories (1936). In 1940, aged 80, she died in Broadway, fifty years after she had given up the stage.

The terracotta panel, showing her, dressed as Ganymede in a forest scene in As You Like It, is a lovely, if much-overlooked reminder of Mary Anderson’s glittering career.

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Keeping Shakespeare’s spirit alive at New Place, his final home

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Part of New Place Garden

Part of New Place Garden

In August 2014 a further consultation is taking place on the future of New Place, Shakespeare’s last home, the final public consultation day being 30 August. Since the first consultation last year, I’ve spent a lot of time reading about how we in Stratford have celebrated Shakespeare’s life and works.

New Place itself has an interesting history. The original house was built towards the end of the 1400s, being purchased by Shakespeare around a hundred years later in 1597, though it’s thought he moved into it much later, perhaps as late at 1610. It had been built by the Clopton family who acquired it again towards the end of the 1600s and rebuilt it around 1702. It was this second house that was demolished by Rev Gastrell in 1759. The only thing we know for sure about Shakespeare’s occupation of New Place is that he died there.

Reading up about the history of Shakespeare celebrations I found documents written in 1861 when the whole site was acquired by J O Halliwell, who saw it as his role to save it. He “made [it] over in trust to the Corporation of Stratford-on-Avon, on the condition that the Gardens of the great National Poet shall never be built upon, and that the public shall for ever have free access”. Another document repeats that it is “for the free use of the public for ever…and that no building should ever be erected on it”. Halliwell’s intention that the Corporation would take over the site stalled, but when in 1876 the property was formally made over to the Trustees of Shakespeare’s Birthplace his hopes must have been the same.

The foundations of New Place

The foundations of New Place

The next year the Trustees issued a series of regulations regarding admission to the house and gardens, allowing paying visitors to the house access to the gardens, with the public having free access to the gardens on Saturdays through the Chapel Lane gates. Householders could pay 5s (25p) a year, ten times the cost of a visitor’s ticket, for a key. This system must have been a nightmare to administer, but wasn’t uncommon for people to pay for access to gardens: 1n 1933, before  the Gower Memorial was moved  to its current public spot, people were charged a shilling (5p) to view it, a cause of local resentment.

The foundations of New Place and its gardens, especially including the Great Garden, have been seen for many years as the place in which the spirit of Shakespeare lives on. There is nothing to distract the visitor in the gardens, which are beautiful in an old-fashioned, relaxed English style, with clipped hedges, old trees, flower beds and the ornamental Knot Garden. Only the Knot Garden has a formal air, plants confined within their allotted spaces surrounded by low box hedging, full of colour in the summer.

The Knot garden, looking towards the Guild Chapel and Falcon Hotel

The Knot garden, looking towards the Guild Chapel and Falcon Hotel

In 1927 the young writer J B Priestley visited Stratford. Here is an extract from the essay, Seeing Stratford, which he wrote as a result.
And there was one moment, the other afternoon, when I really did feel I was treading upon his own ground. It was when we were in the gardens of New Place, very brave in the spring sunlight. You could have played the outdoor scene of Twelfth Night in them without disturbing a leaf… The little Knott Garden alone was worth the journey and nearer to Shakespeare than all the documents and chairs and monuments…I remember that when we left that garden to see the place where Shakespeare was buried, it didn’t seem to matter much. Why should it when we had just seen the place where he was still alive?

Having looked at the plans it seems to me that the best way of preserving Shakespeare’s spirit at New Place is to keep it natural, remembering that Shakespeare loved gardens, flowers and plants. After years of working in the noise of London he chose to come back to the small country town. Opening up the existing garden gates to allow free access to people during the property’s opening hours would be a great act of generosity for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust,  providing a haven of peace in what is itself nowadays a very busy town. For visitors from abroad, and even from our own cities, it’s the lawns, flower beds, trees and birdsong that are unusual, and the beautiful River Avon, better than any artificial water feature, is only yards away.

So I would say honour the intentions of J O Halliwell, to whom we owe the preservation of the site and give the Great Garden back to everybody. Vandalism has been said to be an issue, but could surely be solved by better supervision. Remember the words of  J B Priestley, and tread softly in this special place full of echoes of the past and overlooked by buildings imbued with centuries of history.

If you wish to take part in the consultation, go to Stratford’s ArtsHouse (Civic Hall) on Saturday 30 August from 11-2, or look at the website.

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The pioneering Flowers of Stratford-upon-Avon

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Edward Fordham Flower in 1864

Edward Fordham Flower in 1864

Today there are few places where you will see the name of Flower in Stratford-upon-Avon apart from in a pub, but a hundred or even fifty years ago Flowers Brewery was one of the major employers in the town with a large building along the Birmingham Road, before being taken over, after which the making of beer ceased.

The brewery in Stratford was founded in 1831 by Edward Fordham Flower and by the 1860s two of Edward’s three sons, Charles and Edgar, were running the brewery in partnership with their father. It was a hugely successful business that made the Flower family wealthy. But the influence of the Flower family in the town has been much more wide-ranging, indeed without the Flower family the Royal Shakespeare Theatre would probably not exist.

I’m going to confine myself to Edward Fordham and his eldest son Charles Edward, the key figures in enlarging the Shakespeare industry in the town. Soon after founding the brewery Edward began to be involved in the running of the town. He must have been a man of extraordinary energy. He became Stratford’s mayor four times, the final time coinciding with the Tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth in 1864, when the most magnificent of celebrations were planned including the building of a massive pavilion and over a week of events including performances of plays by Shakespeare featuring some of London’s famous actors.

Celebrations were also planned in London, with committees of well-known men behind them, and the Stratford organisers felt under pressure to put on a good show despite their inexperience in staging theatrical events. In the end they need not have worried. The Times, writing about the London committee commented “in various circulars which we have all seen the committee is described as made up of 400 persons, some of high status and repute. But these are mere names”. When it came down to it the London celebrations were greeted with “utter apathy”, with theatres merely putting on Shakespeare productions already in their repertoire, and a note that “even the proposed banquet has fallen through”.

For many in Stratford, the celebrations were seen as successful, but the jollifications came at a price. It had been hoped sufficient money would be raised to pay for a memorial to Shakespeare, but in fact Flower ended up having to cover the considerable deficit himself. James Cox, who followed Flower as the next mayor, wrote a retrospective complaining that the festival had been too ambitious, and should have limited its aims: “the erection of a monumental memorial was the one thing the committee should have striven for”. An additional aim had been to fund scholarships for worthy students, but this too had to be abandoned.

Charles Edward Flower, painted in 1891

Charles Edward Flower, painted in 1891

The Tercentenary also planted the seed of the idea for a permanent theatre for Shakespeare, not merely a temporary pavilion or the small theatre that stood, almost unused, in Chapel Lane. And it was Edward’s son Charles who took it upon himself to do something about it. The proposal to found a permanent theatre in such a provincial place was greeted with scorn. Just before the foundation stone of the theatre was laid in 1877 the Daily Telegraph wrote: “We beg distinctly and indignantly to protest against the whole paltry and impertinent business… They have no mandate to speak in the name of the public or to invest with the attribute of a national undertaking …[what is] to be half theatre and half mechanics institute… The Governors and Council are respectable nobodies”.

Flower kept silent, but he did not forget this insult. When he rose to speak at the ceremony for the opening of the theatre over two years later he referred directly to this article: ” A new line of criticism has been taken up by some who say we are presumptuous in undertaking it. They say we do not represent literature, science, scholarship, clergy or law; they say we are not inhabitants of that great metropolis which ought to monopolise such great works. They say, in fact, we are a set of Respectable Nobodies! All I can say is that, the “Nobodies”, having waited three hundred years for the “Somebodies” to do something, surely blame ought not to attach to us; rather let criticism  be given to those great social and literary “Somebodies” who have done nothing.”

He continued: “It is quite true we are nobodies. We know that, and therefore do not despair because we cannot accomplish great things at a single effort. We shall be ready to go on quietly and patiently with our work, knowing that we do so in a true spirit of love and reverence for the great man for whose memory we do it”.

“Many of the great somebodies would have been willing enough to have joined our ranks, only that we desired to admit those only who were willing and able to give some real assistance: we don’t want names only. How many similar projects have been started, with long lists of committees, and patrons, and presidents – great and illustrious names, and names only – which have collapsed because the real hard-working element has been overwhelmed by the ornamental superstructure”.

An early plan of the SMT (in the end some of the details, especially the tower, were changed)

An early plan of the SMT (in the end some of the details, especially the tower, were changed)

Anybody who feels for the underdog couldn’t help but cheer at this dignified but powerful speech. But even this did not stop the comments. Flower himself had to dip his hand into his own pocket again to ensure the theatre was completed, and the it became known, again disparagingly towards the business in which Flower had made his money,  as “The theatre built on beer”.

Today, we are likely to feel rather differently about someone with such philanthropic aims. Flower was true to his word. although he contributed massively to the theatre, it was always for Shakespeare’s benefit, not for Flower’s. I particularly like the way that in the portrait of Charles Flower above, just by his elbow on the right of the picture is part of an image of the 1879 building which he had been responsible for. Within the RST there are barely any references to the family that made it all happen. Without them Stratford might never have got anything more with which to celebrate its most famous son than a memorial statue. Instead Shakespeare got the memorial that he needed, a theatre devoted to the performance of his plays, a tradition that has carried on ever since 1879 and shows no sign of failing.

There is more about the history of the Flower family’s involvement with brewing in this blog .

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Remembering Bosworth and the death of Richard III

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
The 2013 re-enactment of the cavalry charge at Bosworth

The 2013 re-enactment of the cavalry charge at Bosworth

22 August marks the anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth at which in 1485 the ruling king of England, Richard III, was killed. With Henry VII taking the throne it was the end of the Plantagenet era and the beginning of the reign of the Tudors. In 1548 Edward Hall described the scene in his book The Union of the Two Noble Families of Lancaster and York:
For when they which were next about his person saw and perceived at the first joining of the battle the soldiers faintly and nothing courageously to set on their enemies,… [they] determinedly advised him to save himself by flight: and when the loss of the battle was imminent and apparent, they brought to him a swift and a light horse to convey him away. He which was not ignorant of the grudge & ill will the common people bare toward him, casting away all hope of fortunate success & happy chance to come, answered (as men say) that on that day he would make an end of all battles or else there finish his life. Such a great audacity & such a stout stomach reigned in his body, for surely he knew it to be the day in the which it should be decided & determined whether he should peaceably obtain & enjoy his kingdom during his life, or else utterly forgo & be deprived of the same, with which too much hardiness he being overcome hastily closed his helmet, and entered fiercely in to the hard battle, to the intent to obtain that day a quiet reign & regiment or else to finish there his unquiet life. 

Shakespeare’s fictionalised version is slightly different of course, but his Richard too fought bravely on the battle field before being savagely killed. Even without the distortions that were later introduced, which Shakespeare repeated, the details of the battle and the death of Richard have long been disputed. For more information about Richard III take a look at Matthew Lewis’s blog post written in 2013.

The boar badge

The boar badge

In the last few years a series of events have provided us with much more information. In 2010 archaeologists discovered weapons, armour and cannon balls in a field about a mile away from the assumed site of the battle. It was confirmed as the correct site when a silver badge in the shape of Richard’s emblem, the boar, was discovered. The brooch would have been worn by one of Richard’s knights who fought with him and may well have died with him. This article goes into more detail. The existing Bosworth Battlefield heritage centre remains where it was, and visitors walk the mile to the actual site.

The present memorial to Richard III in Leicester Cathedral

The present memorial to Richard III in Leicester Cathedral

Then came the dig in Leicester in 2012 which, almost unbelievably, discovered a skeleton under a car park, followed in February 2013 by evidence that showed beyond reasonable doubt that the remains were those of Richard III. Then the “Plantagenet Alliance” challenged the agreed site in which Richard was to be buried, suggesting this should be in York rather than Leicester. This was eventually over-ruled and the reburial will now take place in Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015 following several days of events in Leicestershire.

The design for Richard III's tomb in Leicester Cathedral

The design for Richard III’s tomb in Leicester Cathedral

The remains, currently at the University of Leicester where the research has been carried out, will be put in a lead-lined coffin and taken by hearse to Bosworth where events to mark the king’s last day will be carried out. A service will then take place at Bosworth and the coffin will be taken to Leicester cathedral where it will lie for three days so that members of the public can pay their respects before the actual reinterment. They are anticipating a great deal of interest in this “fitting, dignified and memorable ceremony” which will be strictly by invitation only, and broadcast live on Channel 4. The Visitors Centre in Leicester is now open and the City of Leicester has already devised a number of Richard III-themed walks and events. The University of Leicester has been central to the discovery and recently ran its FutureLearn MOOC (free online course), England in the Time of Richard III. It has now finished but it’s to be hoped that it will be repeated in early 2015 given the intense interest in the subject. If you want to find out more, the link above includes a trailer for the course. My husband has just completed the course and greatly enjoyed it: a visit to Leicester and Bosworth is now a priority. Shakespeare may have got some of the details wrong, but the interest in Richard III in the twenty-first century is at least partly the result of the brilliance of Shakespeare’s Richard, one of the most compelling dramatic characters ever created.

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Holy Trinity’s American tributes to Shakespeare in glass

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
The American Window in Holy Trinity Church

The American Window in Holy Trinity Church

The affection that Stratford is held in by Americans has been demonstrated in a number of buildings and monuments: the American Fountain in Rother Street, opened in 1887, for example.

Less well-known is the American Window in the south transept of Holy Trinity Church. The first sections of this magnificent stained glass window were dedicated on 23 April 1896, and completed a few years later by the company Heaton, Butler and Baines. The subject is the Madonna and Child with the Adoration of the Magi at the centre, with figures on either side symbolising the links between England and America. The transept is often used for private worship or afternoon prayers, and the window is not easy to see in detail. Val Horsler, in her book Shakespeare’s Church: a parish for the world describes it: “English and American holy men [occupy] the outer lights, including Archbishop Laud, who was the first to suggest sending a bishop to America, plus Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus, William Penn and the Pilgrim fathers landing at Plymouth Rock. Also depicted are St Eric, Bishop of Greenland, and Dr Samuel Seabury, first Bishop of Connecticut. Underneath is inscribed “The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and the Kings to thy brightness. AMDG The Gift of America to Shakespeare’s Church”.

The Seven Ages of Man window in Holy Trinity

The Seven Ages of Man window in Holy Trinity

Even though a little inaccessible, the American Window is well-known, but I only recently realised that there is another, older window in Holy Trinity Church which was paid for by Americans. This one is the window on the left of Shakespeare’s monument on the north side of the chancel, the third one from the east end. It must be looked at and maybe photographed by thousands of American tourists every year without them realising its significance. All the windows on this side of the chancel depict old-testament scenes, while those on the other side illustrate stories from the new testament. It illustrates the Seven Ages of Man speech from As You Like It, personalities from the bible being used to represent each of the different ages. Designed by Lavers and Westlake, It was “Dedicated to Holy Trinity and Shakespeare by a great number of New World inhabitants in 1890” While the American Window was the gift of America, presumably in the form of a single gift, it took twelve years to raise the funds from individual visitors to the church in order to create this tribute to Shakespeare.

The first four ages

The first four ages

I wrote over three years ago about the stained glass windows in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre that depict this speech, dating from the 1880s. I mentioned other windows from around the world that take the same popular subject, without realising there was another set so close. These windows have suffered from fading, so some of the details, especially the faces, have disappeared. As is so often the case with monuments in churches, they are also so high up that it’s hard to see exactly what is depicted, but the window for the infant depicts Moses in the bulrushes and the second window, the schoolboy, shows the child Samuel being taken by his mother to the temple

The last three ages of man

The last three ages of man

The scene for the Justice is the judgement of Solomon, and in the final window I assume the old man “sans everything” is Methuselah. I’m sure somebody has identified all the scenes and if anyone has them I’d be delighted to hear. These windows, and the story of their creation, deserve to be better known.

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