The Shakespeare graves in Holy Trinity Church

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Sylvia Morris
Dr Robert Bearman by the grave of Shakespeare
Dr Robert Bearman by the grave of Shakespeare

The fourth in the Friends of Shakespeare’s Church lecture series A Taste of History took the subject of The Shakespeare Family Gravestones and What They Tell Us. It is the only one of the five to focus on the Shakespeare connection with Holy Trinity: all the others have offered rather refreshing insights into what would, even without the Shakespeare connection, be a remarkable medieval church.

Nobody knows more than Dr Robert Bearman about the history of Shakespeare in Stratford. As Head of Archives and Local Studies at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust he was in charge of the priceless documents which he wrote about in his 1994 book Shakespeare in the Stratford Records. In the book he used his decades of experience of working with local documents to put those relating to Shakespeare into context.

So when he began talking last Wednesday it was no surprise to hear him saying that his approach to the story of the ledger stones relating to the Shakespeare family was to go back to the earliest documentation he could find. As with everything to do with Shakespeare, myths and legends have sprung up and acquired the status of fact in even the most respectable of biographies.  But Bob is an expert on disentangling the tangled web of fact and fiction. 

While everyone knows that the Shakespeare stone lies close to the monument, anyone who has never visited the church might not be aware that there are five of these ledger stones devoted to members of Shakespeare’s family. They are positioned in a line just inside the altar rail, left to right: Anne Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, John Hall and Susannah Hall. To make it more complicated they can only be read from the altar side. 

The first question asked by Dr Bearman was “How sure can we be Shakespeare was buried here?” He noted that in his will Shakespeare did not specify that he should be buried in the church, and left no money for a monument. By contrast John Combe, who died in 1614,  left £60 for his magnificent tomb. I had heard that Shakespeare was entitled to burial in the chancel by virtue of being a tithe-holder, but Dr Bearman was quite clear that the only deciding factor was whether you could afford the fees. There is, famously, no name on the stone, unlike the other four, just the curse. And on the monument itself the name is only “Shakespeare” rather than the full name.  

Dr Bearman confirmed that there was enough evidence to be confident that Shakespeare was indeed buried in the church, including the poem in Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio referring to the Stratford monument, by Thomas Digges:
shakespeare graveShakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give
The world thy Workes; thy workes, by which outlive
Thy tombe,  thy name must; when that stone is rent,
And Time dissolves thy Stratford Moniment
Here we alive shall view thee still.

Several different notes, some as early as the 1630s, reproduce the verse inscription, associating it with Shakespeare. Inevitably, there are anomalies: the verse on the monument declares that Shakespeare is buried within it, obviously not the case. It’s known that the monument was made in Southwark, near to the Globe, and Dr Bearman commented that perhaps the making of the monument itself was overseen by Shakespeare’s colleagues who were not aware of how it was to be placed in the church.  

What became obvious during the talk, though, was the cavalier attitude of those in charge of the church in centuries gone by. A plan of the chancel floor was made in 1836, showing a multitude of ledger stones placed there for people who had paid for the privilege. But since then most have these have been moved or covered up. Changes have happened as a result of, among other things, improving the heating in the church, and the steps have been moved. For many years the Shakespeare graves were in front of the altar rail allowing visitors to walk over them, a problem eventually resolved when the altar rail was moved further down the chancel in the 1880s. It seems, though, that in spite of  the large number of changes the five Shakespeare stones have remained in much the same place since the mid-seventeenth century. 

shakespeare's churchQuestions remain: Halliwell declared in 1883 that the original stone covering Shakespeare’s grave had been replaced because it was so worn, but Dr Bearman was unconvinced, not least because Halliwell changed his story when challenged. Other accounts of work done on the stone mentions cleaning and, in the 1840s, deepening the lettering, but not replacement.   

The story that Shakespeare was buried seventeen feet deep seems to be just that, a story that emerged many decades later. And as for the opening of the tomb, Dr Bearman was sceptical about all of the stories of accidental breaches that have circulated for a couple of centuries. A fuller account of the monument and graves can be found in Val Horsler’s book Shakespeare’s Church, published in 2010.

If you want to catch the last of these talks, it will be held on Wednesday 4 December, from 12.30, when Robert Bearman will this time be talking about the history of St Peter’s Chapel and the South Aisle.

 

 

 

 

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Shakespeare on film and TV

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

Stuff-of-Dreams-title-672x336In the past few weeks there have been several developments relating to Shakespeare on film and TV. On 26 January 2014 a programme entitled The Stuff of Dreams begins, run by the Institute of Psychoanalysis.  Once a month there will be a film screening hosted by a psychoanalyst in discussion with an actor or director who has worked extensively with the play being considered. The venue will be the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. The high-profile guests include Juliet Stevenson, Simon Russell Beale and Max Stafford-Clark. The first meeting will show Henry IV part 2, which formed part of The Hollow Crown, screened by the BBC in 2012. It will be hosted by psychoanalyst Michael Brealey with special guest Sam Mendes. Other films to be screened during the years include the Peter Brook King Lear and Orson Welles’ Othello.

Orson Welles' Othello, one of the film versions being shown

Orson Welles’ Othello, one of the film versions being shown

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, BBC’s  Director General, Tony Hall,  has announced plans for the corporation to digitise the BBC’s Shakespeare archive, making it available for free to those in education and learning in the UK. He said ” I want to really celebrate Shakespeare in 2016. We’ll find the gems in our archive: our extensive television and radio collection of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, programmes about Shakespeare, as well as scripts, stills and production notes. We will aim to make these available to schools across the country. Where rights allow or through BBC Store, we will make them available more widely still.” It’s very much to be hoped that these fabulous resources will be made available to everyone, not just those in formal education. Full details of this exciting development are not available yet but will be forthcoming.

One bit of the BBC’s Shakespeare history, in fact one of the most important bits of that history, is about to be made available in Europe for the first time. This is An Age of Kings, screened in 1960 and apart from a repeat in 1962 never seen since in the UK. The Illuminations blog gives more details:

A still from An Age of Kings

A still from An Age of Kings

“An Age of Kings has never previously been released for home video in the UK and it has been seen only very occasionally since the single repeat of the series in 1962. Yet it is a wonderful compelling account of all eight of Shakespeare’s histories, with a stellar cast including Robert Hardy, Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins and Sean Connery. This landmark production was broadcast live from, first, Riverside Studios and then Television Centre, on Thursday evenings once a fortnight from April to November 1960.”
Illuminations is releasing this cycle on 8 December as a 5-disc DVD set. An Age of Kings inspired the RSC’s Wars of the Roses cycle, and much else besides. Orders are being taken and there’s a link to the order page from the post, as well as a preview of Robert Hardy as Henry V performing the “Once more until the breach” speech”. I’ve already put in my request to Santa.

The Illuminations blog is written by John Wyver, who is responsible for a huge range of things relating to Shakespeare on TV and film. Although he is usually upbeat, I was interested to read his grumpy (his word) post about the importance of retaining the original aspect ratio for archive material when transmitting on modern TVs. He explains the issue:

“Filmmakers who wish to include older archive material in contemporary programmes have the option either of ‘pillar-boxing’ – that is, including the full frame and putting black bars to either side of the image – or of carving out a 16:9 frame from the middle of the 4:3 original and so losing around 30 per cent of the picture.”

He describes what was done to a recently-screened archive film about Benjamin Britten as “vandalism”. You can see more here.

It’s a close call, but if you’re within reach of Cardiff, John Wyver is talking at Cardiff University as the Cardiff MEMORI lecture on Thursday 28 November at 5.15 on the subject “Sad Stories of the death of kings: Monarchy, Government and Shakespeare’s Histories on Television, 1957-1965″. Full information is available here. This will include both An Age of Kings and the RSC’s Wars of the Roses trilogy, both influential series that inspired many people with an interest in Shakespeare, just as 2012’s Hollow Crown series has done.

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Shakespeare and literary shrines

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

mulberry wood tea caddyIn the past week there have been many stories in the media about Shakespeare tourism and its history. Early in the week a carved commemorative Tea Caddy made in 1759 of mulberry wood from the tree reputed to have been planted by Shakespeare, and featuring a bust of the poet, sold for £13,750, well above the estimate of £5-10K. It’s a reminder of how long Shakespeare has been celebrated in his own town as well as the healthy market in notable and historic memorabilia.

The Shakespeare Birthplace Light Spectacular was launched on Thursday, a light show which is going to be run at half-hourly intervals after dusk until just before Christmas, consisting of projected moving images, a recorded sound track and live performances of speeches from Shakespeare. Click here for details. It’s not the first time that the Birthplace has been used as a backdrop for images. Right back in 1769 David Garrick hung a transparency from the window of the Birthroom showing the sun breaking through the clouds accompanied by a suitable quotation suggesting that Shakespeare’s works cast their own light on the world. Illustrations created at the time show the Birthplace in a dilapidated state, and Garrick’s transparency and planned parade of Shakespearean characters (abandoned because of the weather), did at least show the importance which he and the Jubilee-goers gave to the Birthplace and perhaps the hope that it would be improved.

Here’s the Youtube video of the premiere.

The Bronte parsonage in Haworth

The Bronte parsonage in Haworth

On Friday, at the Shakespeare Centre next to the Birthplace the LitHouses group held its annual conference. This group was formed 10 years ago “dedicated to excellence in the presentation of the great homes and museums of English Literature.” The first meeting was also held in Stratford, which group leader Henry Cobbold, from Edward Bulwer Lytton’s house, Knebworth, described as “the spiritual home of English Literature”.  Support and networking has always been an important part of the group’s meetings: many of the houses taking part receive relatively few visitors but are run by passionately committed people. Around 25 houses were represented at the meeting, from the famous houses lived in by Jane Austen and the Brontes to the much less well-known John Bunyan and William Cowper. If you would like to know more about any of the houses, the links are on the website.

The conference was subtitled “Anniversary Assessment of Achievements and Aspirations. One of the aspirations shared by all the participants was the need to maintain visitor numbers, so publicity and marketing was an important theme for the day. In her introduction Viscountess Cobham, the Chairman of VisitEngland commented on the extent to which England is epitomised by its literature, and how “literary figures are global exports”.

Wordsworth's Dove Cottage in Grasmere

Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage in Grasmere

Literary houses and their collections may be cultural gems, but they present special challenges. One participant asked the question “How do you bring your writers to your visitors?” And a comment, read out during the meeting, highlighted the difficulty of representing the work of a writer within a building, since the work for which they are famous “transcends the place, the home and the collection”. It’s asking a lot for a building and a collection to be able to represent the essence of the writer especially when physical objects, may have little to do with the work itself. In Shakespeare’s case it’s particularly tricky as all the objects that might have had an association with him had been sold off by unscrupulous owners well before the SBT was founded in 1847. As shown by the mulberry wood box the trade in souvenirs was already in full swing in the 1750s and the first town plan, from 1759, marked the house in which Shakespeare was born showing that it was already a tourist destination.

The ways in which houses bring their writers to their visitors have become very imaginative. Poetry readings, performances of extracts from plays, and meetings such as book clubs have now become almost routine. During the Conference’s lunch break we were treated to another way in which Shakespeare’s plays are brought to a different audience. It was Takeover Day, and two local year 6 classes took over the running of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, including guiding in Shakespeare’s Birthplace, handling documents in the SCLA and selling tickets. They also wrote and performed their own version of Macbeth with only a couple of days preparation and the help of the Shakespeare Aloud actors. I particularly liked Lady Macbeth’s line, spoken after Macbeth had expressed his doubts about killing Duncan: “Don’t be so pathetic. Just do it!”, that showed a real understanding of the speech even if it raised a laugh rarely heard in the original.

The performance, coming in the middle of a day in which there had been much talk about visitor numbers, marketing and social media, was a reminder of the reason why literary houses exist. Some people are making their own secular pilgrimage, some are merely there out of interest, but all depend on the continuing appeal of the books that were produced by the extraordinary imagination of the human mind.

I subscribe to the weekly edition of Brain Pickings, always a thought-provoking digest of material. This week’s post includes an article about the writer Anne Lamott and her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. She defines very simply the job of the writer: “Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on” and quotes Susan Sontag’s similar thought, “That’s what a writer does – a writer pays attention to the world”. The most successful authors seem to share the experiences and emotions of their readers, and those who run the houses have the difficult job of developing that connection and making new converts for their writer. It’s a difficult job, but the commitment of those at Friday’s meeting to the promotion of “their” author was clear.

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Shakespeare and China

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Sylvia Morris
The Prince of Zi-Dan

The Prince of Zi-Dan

Shakespeare and China was taken as the subject for this month’s meeting of the Shakespeare Club, at which the speaker was the President of the Club, Professor Michael Dobson, Head of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon.

He began by talking not about Shakespeare productions and translations in China, but about how China itself came to be represented in early versions of Shakespeare’s plays in the UK. He observed that at Hampton Court Palace in 1604, the night after a performance of “A Play of Robin Goodfellow” (perhaps A Midsummer Night’s Dream), a masque was performed that included a flying Chinese magician. This possible link with A Midsummer Night’s Dream continued with Purcell’s 1692 semi-opera The Fairy-Queen, the libretto of which is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play.

In spite of its supposed setting of Athens, Shakespeare’s play and its forest are quintessentially English, but in the first English stage depiction of China Purcell’s final scene takes the audience to a Chinese garden. It was seen as a flattering reference to Queen Mary’s famous collection of Chinese porcelain, objects which were becoming extraordinarily fashionable. And by the 1750s David Garrick counted on the popularity of China when he attempted to put on a show entitled “The Chinese Festival”.

For modern audiences, who know and love A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it’s not at all obvious why anyone would think that Shakespeare’s play might be improved by incorporating Chinese scenes and characters. But by the time of the Restoration, Shakespeare was seen as old-fashioned stuff, fit for plundering.  England was becoming more European and cosmopolitan, and Shakespeare’s rustic drama was described by Pepys as “insipid and ridiculous”.

Professor Dobson, who had just returned from China, went on to talk about the history of Shakespeare in China and some current projects,  in particular the Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive, an ambitious international project.  It’s described on the website:
A S I A is a collaborative intersection between practitioners, individual scholars and three major Asian Shakespeare projects—the MIT Shakespeare Project, Relocating Intercultural Theatre (National University of Singapore) and A Web Archive of Asian Shakespeare Productions (JSPS Kaken/ Gunma-Doho Universities). A S I A is an extensive on-line archive of Asian Shakespeare productions dedicated to synergizing the field of Asian Shakespeare intercultural performance studies. This interactive, user-driven archive will feature new tools for use by scholars, teachers and audiences.

alexander huangMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also has a related site which contains video clips, information about major performers and companies, and commentaries as well as a catalogue of Asian Shakespeare productions. It is the brainchild of Alexander Huang who is an expert on the subject, having written the book Chinese Shakespeares.

Alexander Huang also curated the Folger Shakespeare Library’s exhibition Imagining China in 2009-10, and material relating to the exhibition is still on the Library’s website.

Moving away from Dobson’s lecture, the Chinese real fascination with Shakespeare has resulted in a number of high-level visits of Chinese leaders to Stratford-upon-Avon.

Kunju Macbeth, Shanghai Kunju troupe 1986

Kunju Macbeth, Shanghai Kunju troupe 1986

Elsewhere, another collaborative project fronted by Stanford University, Shakespeare in China, includes information and photographs relating to five specific productions of Shakespeare in China between 1980 and 1990. The website has been created to help the “western scholar or student interested in finding out about a little-visited corner of the globalised culture of Shakespearean performance — Shakespeare in the Peoples’ Republic of China”

Earlier in 2013 one of the highlights of the Edinburgh International Festival was a Chinese production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus from the Beijing People’s Art Theater.

Unusually, because it is seen as subversive in China, the production featured two of China’s most popular heavy metal bands, Miserable Faith and Suffocated.  This article explains how this worked, and the following is a quotation from it:

Coriolanus, 2013

Coriolanus, 2013

Four thousand curious ticket holders came to see if this experiment would work. Under China’s avant-garde and often controversial director Lin Zhaohua, the pace of action was set by electric guitars and rock beats, rather than marching drums and trumpets. Pushing the boundaries, Lin used stylized heavy rock to punctuate heightened moments of conflict in the story of Coriolanus, the heroic general who joins forces with the enemy after being rejected by the “common people.”

Metal has long been germinating in China, often giving voice to a defiance of authority and expressing the teenage urge to rebel, as it does everywhere. The scene didn’t really kick off until bands such as heavy rockers Tang Dynasty and thrashers Overload ignited the scene following the bloody Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

Shakespeare, it seems, is being embraced by both government and rebels in twenty-first century China just as it has been in so many other parts of the world.

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The Tempest in our time and its own

Posted on November 18, 2013 by Sylvia Morris
The frontispiece for The Tempest from Rowe's 1709 edition

The frontispiece for The Tempest from Rowe’s 1709 edition

A great authority on Shakespeare, the academic Anne Barton, died a few days ago. She always wrote with an awareness of the play as a piece of theatre and her thoughts were often reflected in her husband, John Barton’s productions.  In the programme for his 1970 production of The Tempest she explained the complexity of the play:
“Like an ice-berg, The Tempest seems to hide most of its bulk beneath the surface. The play constantly invites conjecture and amplification, but it is impossible to be sure of the correct answers to most of the questions posed”.

On last week’s Radio 4 programme In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg and his guests, Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, and Katherine Duncan-Jones, managed the considerable feat of discussing The Tempest from many angles in a mere 42 minutes. You probably won’t find a better short introduction to the play, its sources, original meanings and staging, and its modern interpretation. It’s now available as a podcast.

Effectively the royal playwright in the Jacobean period, Shakespeare often covered issues that were of special interest to the King. The contributors to the programme looked at issues including the concern that sons and daughters of rulers should make suitable marriages, and the supernatural, which King James was passionately interested in. The play can also be seen as a meditation on the theatre, with Prospero being associated with Shakespeare, or on the ethics of colonisation. Erin Sullivan talked about Montaigne’s Essays in which he talks about ideal methods of government and, of particular relevance to The Tempest, the essay Of the Caniballes.

On 18 November 1562, John Hawkins landed on the coast of Africa in an expedition often thought to mark the beginning of the English slave trade. He was “hoping to obtain some negroes”. To begin with he had little success, but he joined forces with a local leader, attacking a town and capturing several hundred people. “Now we had obtained between four and five hundred negroes, wherewith we thought it somewhat reasonable to seek the coast of the West Indies, and there for our negroes we hoped to obtain whereof to countervail our charges with some gains”.

Inuits brought back to London

Inuits brought back to London

As well as stories of this new trade, foreigners were brought back to England. In 1576 Martin Frobisher, searching for the North-West passage through to Asia, encountered an Inuit trader who he brought back to London. The following year he made the same voyage again and this time brought back three Inuits. These people were curiosities, and paintings were made of them. We can’t help being reminded of them when Trinculo talks about taking Caliban back to Europe:
Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver; there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.

Shakespeare combined these stories of exotic strangers with popular stories of shipwreck. The Sea Venture was wrekced on its way to Virginia in 1609. It was driven towards the Bermudas in a terrifying storm and it was assumed in England that the ship and its crew were lost. A year later it turned out that they had found refuge on an island where they had survived until they were able to set sail again for Virginia. There was huge interest in the story, and the RSC’s website contains a page on the subject that includes a clip from a programme in James Shapiro’s series The King and the Playwright: a Jacobean History.

An impression of the new Sam Wanamaker playhouse

An impression of the new Sam Wanamaker playhouse

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s plays which seem to have performance conditions very much in mind. Performances almost certainly took place in The Globe, but it’s known to have been put on at the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall and at the indoor Blackfriars Playhouse. With the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Shakespeare’s Globe complex nearing completion it will be only a question of time before we see this play in something like original conditions. The playhouse is described in an article in the Daily Telegraph.

Beerbohm Tree as Caliban

Beerbohm Tree as Caliban

Modern British productions almost always refer to the UK’s colonial past and the history of slavery. In the radio programme Bate mentioned the 1900 production by Beerbohm Tree. Tree unexpectedly took the part of the savage Caliban taking the view that “in his love of music and his affinity with the unseen world, we discern in the soul which inhabits the brutish body of the elemental man the germs of a sense of beauty, the dawn of art”. More recently the 1950 book by Oscar Mannoni, Psychologie de la colonisation began the examination of the mentality of colonisation and racism and greatly influenced the portrayal of Caliban on stage.

The Tempest has inspired many works of art from notable artists like Hogarth and William Hamilton, the sculptor Eric Gill, composers like Purcell, and popular culture like the films Forbidden Planet and Prospero’s Books. Also in 2012 the Olympics opening ceremony referenced this “strange and compelling play”. In 2012 an episode of the Radio 3 programme Night Waves was devoted to artistic reimaginings of the play, including consideration of many of the questions the play continues to ask.

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Restoring the medieval decorations in Stratford’s Guild Chapel

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

DSCN4553adjustedAlthough I’ve written about a number of the Guild’s surviving buildings, a recent enquiry reminded me that I’ve not really written about the Guild Chapel itself. It has its Shakespeare connections: William’s father John supervised the whitewashing over of the paintings in the Chapel in around 1563, just before his son’s birth, and Shakespeare must have known the chapel well both from his school days and from the time when he lived just across the road in New Place. The Friends of the Guild Chapel now support this special building.

There is known to have been a chapel on the site from 1269, when it would have offered religious services and masses for the dead relating to the Guild itself. Originally it seems to have been a small building, but the chancel was enlarged around 1450 and later in the century the main part of the building was rebuilt, more or less how it is now, paid for by Sir Hugh Clopton. In his will dated 1496 Clopton left money to the mason William Dowland, for the “belding and setting up of the Chapell of the holy Trinitie… and the Towre of a Steple to the same”.  This extract from the will is reproduced in Kate Giles’ and Jonathan Clark’s chapter in The Guild and Guild Buildings of Shakespeare’s Stratford, edited by J R Mulryne. This recent book contains full information about the chapel’s history.

DSCN4674The chapel is said to be “one of Europe’s most important surviving late-medieval Guild Chapels”. The wall paintings also date back to Clopton’s time. It’s not just the magnificent Doom over the chancel arch though: most of the walls of the church were covered in frescoes. Subjects included St George and the Dragon, the martyrdom of Thomas a Beckett and, in the image reproduced, the much less-known story of  the decapitation of the pagan King of Persia by the Christian King Heraclius. A number of determined antiquarians have been responsible for the documentation of the paintings, hidden by whitewash until they were rediscovered in 1804 during restoration work. Antiquarian Robert Wheler described them and Thomas Fisher quickly drew them. Fisher was later allowed to borrow hundreds of documents relating to the history of the Guild, some of which he copied meticulously. After his death in 1836 it was left to another antiquarian, John Gough Nichols, to publish them in a magnificent volume in 1838. Even though their importance was recognised, the images were subsequently destroyed or whitewashed over again. It fell to an expert on wall paintings, E W Tristram, to re-expose the Last Judgement images over the chancel arch in 1928.

DSCN4668During the 1950s, though, Wilfrid Puddephat, the Art Master at King Edward School, examined the walls of the Chapel in minute detail, painstakingly recording everything he found, so that the other paintings that were once on the walls of the chancel and nave could be more accurately identified. Some which were in very poor repair have since been covered by wooden panels and others are tucked away behind hinged panels which are opened only occasionally.

DSCN4671When first uncovered in 1804 Wheler noted the frescoes were “found to be nearly in a perfect state”. The Last Judgement or Doom remains the most visible of the decorations from Clopton’s time but even this is only a ghostly version of the original. Fisher’s vibrant paintings give a tremendous impression with on the left side St Peter receiving the righteous at the gate of heaven while, as described by Nichols, “On the opposite side are the wicked being turned into hell, its entrance represented, as was usual, by the mouth of a devouring monster; and within its fiery gulph they are suffering various torments from the busy demons”. This website contains many images of the wall paintings as they are now.

Digital visualisation of the Chapel

Digital visualisation of the Chapel

We can now also see a reconstruction of what the chapel might have looked like in its heyday courtesy of digital technology. This has been achieved by the Department of Archaeology at the University of York.
The project reveals the Guild Chapel at Stratford-upon-Avon to be one of the finest examples of mercantile and guild patronage of the period, shedding important light on the patronage of ecclesiastical art on the eve of the Reformation, and revealing important connections between provincial guild architecture of Warwickshire and internationally significant schemes in London and Paris. It also provides a ground-breaking model of the ways in which digital heritage technologies can be harnessed not only by historical archaeology, but within the arts and humanities more widely.

The work has been written up and published online in the open access journal Internet Archaeology*. This link is to a summary and this to the contents list.

And you might like to look at this website which talks about the use of virtual models of historic churches and building conservation in general.

DSCN4563croppedThe chapel is temporarily closed to allow a new organ to be fitted (this should be completed before the end of 2013), but on a recent evening visit I noticed some details, dating back to Hugh Clopton’s refurbishment, which rarely get a mention. These are the small stone sculptures high up on the walls of the nave. They are full of character, and traces of the original colours can still be seen on them: to go with the Doom, over on the north side is a skull, and on the south side are a whole series of images including a man with a large nose and an animal which it’s thought is a lion. It’s a lovely thought that these quirky characters have for over five hundred years been overseeing all the changes that have taken place in this ancient building.

And next Wednesday at 12.30 a lecture will take place at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, on the relationship between the Guild of the Holy Cross and Holy Trinity itself. The speaker will be Mairi Macdonald who knows more about this subject than anyone else. Admittance is free but this event is a fundraiser for the Friends of Holy Trinity Church. 

* Giles, K., Masinton, A., & Arnott, G. (2012). Visualising the Guild Chapel, Stratford-upon-Avon: digital models as research tools in buildings archaeology. Internet Archaeology, (32).

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Online courses for Shakespeare: here, there and everywhere

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

moocs future of educationIn the last year or two developments in online learning have thrown the world of education into turmoil. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have tremendous potential: in a radio programme a few months ago Coursera, the main US provider of MOOCs, stated its ambition “To provide higher education to everybody on the planet for free”, moving from classrooms of 50 to 50,000. The job of turning this ambition into reality is now exercising minds throughout the academic world. The Guardian’s recent article outlined the issues.

When I first heard about MOOCs I searched, predictably, for courses on Shakespeare. I was disappointed to find nothing on Coursera, and there still is nothing there. But in the mean time there have been other developments, and now through the UK provider FutureLearn, two courses on Shakespeare have been announced.  FutureLearn is led by the Open University and was created in December 2012 as the UK’s first provider of free, high quality MOOCs. “Its partners and course providers comprise more than 20 leading UK and international universities, and cultural institutions including the British Library, British Museum and British Council.”

The first Shakespeare offering is Shakespeare’s Hamlet – A Short Introduction. It comes from the University of Birmingham and will examine different aspects of the text, exploring why it is the most famous and much-discussed play ever written. Here is the link to the news from the University.

And this is the link to the page about the Hamlet course itself, including a trailer. In case you’re wondering, anybody can join these courses, and they are free. So you have nothing to lose if you begin the course and find it isn’t for you. It starts on the 13 January, running for 6 weeks and claims to require just 5 hours of your time a week. There’s sure to be some great content and I’m hoping to follow it myself.

Hot on its heels, a collaboration between the University of Warwick and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has just been announced. This will be entitled Shakespeare and his World and it will focus on his life, times and work.  It will be illustrated by rare items from Shakespeare’s time held by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, some of which have not previously been seen by the public.  Full details will be released on 25 November and the course will begin in March 2014.

In the mean time if you would like to take a look at an introductory course on Shakespeare that’s already available, here’s a link to one provided by  another MOOC provider, Saylor.

And a couple of months ago Jeffrey Kahan wrote on the subject:
Is Shakespeare MOOC-ready?  One big-name school, Harvard, is offering a Shakespeare MOOC, albeit, at this point, for noncredit through its Extension.  Across the pond, the British Shakespeare Association embraces (or at least states only happy thoughts concerning) the concept, and many British universities… are offering or are about to offer MOOCs.

moocThe link to the Harvard class is here. It appears to consist of a series of lectures from the esteemed Shakespeare academic Marjorie Garber designed to link with one of her recent publications, an opportunity not to be sniffed at.

And now, just announced by LibertasU, on Tuesday 19 November you will be able to “enjoy the experience of being in a live classroom from the comfort of your home or office” when Professor John Alvis will give a talk based on his upcoming LibertasU course: Shakespeare: the supreme dramatist – Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Henry V. It broadcasts at 8.30pm US Eastern Time, and if you want to take part follow this link:
Ours is not a typical on-line school where students log in, read a course outline, prepare and hand in assignments and have occasional discussions (usually via email) with other students and the lecturer. Nor is it a video conference with a group of talking heads. Rather, ours is a school where all of the students, along with the lecturer, are together in 3D virtual classroom. Imagine walking into a virtual space, sitting down with your fellow students and lecturers, and discussing, debating and exchanging ideas. This is the LibertasU experience.

Taking just 16 students, this appears to be looking through the other end of the telescope.

One of the most interesting aspects of the current situation is that every MOOC is at the moment a bit of an experiment, with different ways of delivering and assessing learning. If you’d like to know more about MOOCs and the ideas that people are coming up with here are a few additional links:

Here is a useful guide for UK students

Here’s an article from BDPA Detroit

An article from CampusExplorer

And another from Illinois

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The last of the actor-managers taking Shakespeare on tour: Donald Wolfit

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Sylvia Morris
Donald Wolfit as Hamlet, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, 1936-7

Donald Wolfit as Hamlet, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, 1936-7

Until relatively recently theatrical companies in England were run by actor-managers who performed with their own companies in London, at theatres in the regions, and abroad. According to Hesketh Pearson, in his book The Last Actor-Managers, “most of them won their reputations by playing the great Shakespearean characters; and though they often adapted the plays…it was entirely due to them that Shakespeare, or mangled Shakespeare, held the stage from the reign of Charles II to the reign of George V.”

Pearson’s book was published in 1950. He estimated the cut-off point for the actor-manager came at the end of the 1914-18 war. Among those he wrote about were Sir Herbert Tree, Sir Frank Benson, Lewis Waller, and Oscar Asche, all born between 1850 and 1890 and all strong-willed characters. Pearson’s opinion was that although actor-managers had not been perfect,  “the daring of an individual is preferable to the discretion of a committee”.

Donald Wolfit, born in 1902, was too late to truly be an actor-manager, though by temperament he belonged to this group. In spite of early success working at major theatres like the Old Vic, he always felt himself to be an outsider and yearned for his own company. In 1936-7 he spent two seasons at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. In his first season his varied roles included Orsino in Twelfth Night, Cassio in Julius Caesar, Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice, Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida and Kent to Randle Ayrton’s magnificent King Lear. His Hamlet gained him national recognition. In his autobiography, First Interval, he wrote about the curtain-call for his first performance:
How well I remember that first Hamlet at Stratford, the opening of the great parti-coloured curtain and the step forward to find out whether the great struggle in Hamlet’s sould had really been imparted to the audience.

He became famous for his curtain-calls at which he always appeared exhausted, holding on the curtain for dramatic effect. In 1937 he repeated his Hamlet and added Iachimo in Cymbeline and the Chorus in Henry V.

All called for the vocal skill and powerful personality which Wolfit had in abundance. During his years in Stratford he met and fell in love with the actress Rosalind Iden, and heartened by his success he created a theatre company of his own using actors who he had worked with in Stratford. From 1937 onwards touring became a way of life for him. He performed right through the war, aiming “to be the switch that could set the electric current of Shakespeare’s poetry and imagery throbbing through a crowded auditorium”. Between 1937 and 1945 he estimated he had undertaken 2240 performances of 15 different plays in countries including Canada, the USA, Egypt, France and Belgium and continued to tour after the war.

Donald Wolfit and Rosalind Iden's recording of Scenes from Shakespeare

Donald Wolfit and Rosalind Iden’s recording of Scenes from Shakespeare

Receiving a knighthood in 1957 brought him respect, particularly abroad. According to Ronald Harwood’s article in the Dictionary of National Biography:
Wolfit believed in the theatre as a cultural and educational force. His contribution was immense, for he provided people all over the British Isles, especially during the war, with the opportunity of visiting a playhouse, perhaps for the first time, and seeing Shakespeare with the leading roles played by an actor of extraordinary gifts.

He did have extraordinary gifts, even though his declamatory style was, and has remained, out of fashion on home ground. He undertook a new tour of the provinces and travelled to Kenya and Ethiopia where he and his wife Rosalind performed “a programme of extracts from their Shakespearian repertoire”, for which they became renowned. From 1959-60 They toured to Australia, New Zealand, India, Kuwait and Beirut, a journey of 29,000 miles.  In 1963 he performed in South Africa and Zimbabwe, visiting Harare, Cape Town and Johannesburg, insisting on giving a performance for non-whites. He also visited Kenya again, where he was seen by a young Felicity Howlett. This is her memory of his visit:
SIGNATURE PAGE-DONALD WOLFIT AND ROSALIND IDEN-2My father was the lighting director at the National Theatre, Nairobi and in 1963 Sir Donald Wolfit and his wife, Rosalind Iden, were invited to Nairobi to give some of their pieces from Shakespeare.
They gave some wonderful, nowadays I would think “over-the-top”, performances.  I particularly remember the death scene from ‘Othello’ and the mad Lear.
I was about 14 at the time and had never seen anything quite so captivating and I used to stand in the wings watching in awe.  One night as Donald Wolfit came off stage he patted me on the head and said “do you like Shakespeare, little girl”.  I simply nodded, too taken aback, by this great actor actually speaking to me, to say anything!
When they came to leave Nairobi they presented me with a signed copy of the Complete Works which has become my most treasured possession.  

Felicity Howlett's Complete Works open at Hamlet, with part of the original cover

Felicity Howlett’s Complete Works open at Hamlet, with part of the original cover

The inscription reads “from another lover of Shakespeare”. Ronald Harwood’s play and film The Dresser was based on his experiences as Wolfit’s dresser, and his observation, repeated in his biography, confirms Felicity’s impressions and that delightful inscription:
He developed a majestic persona, grandiose, passionate, often pompous. He could be frightening and brutal but also astonishingly kind and genuinely humble.

It may have belonged to a previous era, but his barnstorming style made a big impact, not least on Felicity in whom Wolfit inspired a life-long love of Shakespeare. She has lived for many years in Stratford-upon-Avon where she continues to follow the RSC’s work, and I would like to thank her for sharing her story and photographs of her treasured copy of the Complete Works with me.

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Revisiting Shakespeare’s restless world: an era in objects

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

shakespeare restless worldMost books on the subject of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods include chapters on seafaring and exploration, religious change, war, medicine and government, supported by illustrations of maps, religious paintings, contemporary buildings, portraits and printed works. The head of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor takes a different approach in his book Shakespeare’s Restless World, which has just been published in the USA. UK residents had the chance in 2012 to hear MacGregor’s radio broadcasts, and to visit the BM’s Shakespeare exhibition, and it’s good to have a reason to revisit the book after the gap of a year.

MacGregor follows the format of his hugely successful History of the World in 100 Objects. Each self-contained chapter effortlessly roams between the objects, the history of the period, Shakespeare’s works and our own world. The book is beautifully-illustrated, with images not just of the objects themselves but of other resources and of Shakespeare in performance.

The eye relic

The eye relic

The objects have been chosen carefully, and all are astonishing in their own way. Most are unfamiliar. Some, like the clock, the model of the ship and the Venetian goblet, are beautiful in their own right, made with tremendous skill. Others, like Dr Dee’s stone, are curiosities, or fantastic survivors like Henry V’s original funeral achievements. Some are gruesome, like the relic containing the eye of an executed Catholic priest, or commonplace, like the woollen cap that would have been worn every day by thousands of Elizabethan Londoners.

The pedlar's trunk

The pedlar’s trunk

My favourite chapter is the one about the Pedlar’s Trunk, entitled Disguise and Deception. The object immediately reminds us of the trickster Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale, but on closer inspection the trunk turns out to be not what it seems. It was used as a cover by an itinerant Catholic priest, who would have been in constant danger of discovery:

…the linen, silk and damask in this particular pedlar’s trunk are not bits of material waiting to be transformed into smart clothes for a young Elizabethan woman. They have already been made into the illegal vestments of a clandestine Roman Catholic priest

The restless world portrayed in these pages is a long way from “Merrie England”. It’s a world of political and religious upheaval, where violence, uncertainty and fear were common.

The cover disguising the Robben Island Shakespeare

The cover disguising the Robben Island Shakespeare

MacGregor also aims to make connections between Shakespeare’s world and our own, and to investigate the question of why Shakespeare has such a hold on not just the UK but the world. The book begins and ends with chapters that focus on these questions. Drake’s Circumnavigation Medal marked his round-the-world journey which began the story of the British Empire that reached its height in the nineteenth century when Shakespeare was our national hero and his works evidence of UK superiority. The final chapter, on the Robben Island Shakespeare, illustrates how truly international his influence has become.

As the quotation after which the book is named reminds us, Shakespeare’s plays are about experience, emotion and the search for meaning in life. In Measure for Measure, Claudio is condemned to die, and fears not dying, but death:

To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: ’tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

Claudio’s speech is only the second half of the discussion about life and death, though. It’s been started by the disguised Duke, who has visited him in prison and advised him to “be absolute for death”. But Claudio, a young man with everything to live for, fails to be convinced.

The book is subtitled “A portrait of an era in twenty objects”, and it tells many compelling stories about the period in which Shakespeare lived, and connects his plays with them. It is valid to ask how much physical objects can ever represent the concepts which Shakespeare wrote about, and some of the book’s reviews have been a little sniffy about making these links, but anyone interested in Shakespeare’s work and world will be surprised and intrigued by it. The book confirms the amazing way in which Shakespeare still shares with us  his own restless search for meaning in life and death.

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Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast? A taste of history at Holy Trinity Church

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast?

800px-Shakespeare_monument_plaqueThis line begins the English verse beneath the figure of Shakespeare on his monument. It was designed to draw attention to the grave of Shakespeare “with whome, quick nature dide”. Ironically, for hundreds of years visiting the grave of Shakespeare has become the main, if not the only reason for going inside Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. One estimate is that 200,000 people a year do just that.

There must be thousands of others who look at the church from the outside. It’s a beautiful building, in a lovely setting some way away from the town centre. Its terrace in the churchyard is a peaceful place to sit, enjoying the view across the river to the open recreation ground beyond.

But the emphasis on Shakespeare and the pressure of tour schedules means that most of the visitors don’t give the church or its surroundings the attention it deserves. Passengers need to be encouraged to stay to look at the rest of the building, not just Shakespeare’s tomb.

holy trinityThe Friends of Shakespeare’s Church is seeking to redress this balance by setting up a series of lunchtime talks about the building, its history and conservation. These are timed for Wednesdays from 6 November. They’re designed to fit in with lunchtimes, with each event beginning at 12.30, the talk lasting no more than 30 minutes from 12.45-1.15, and a sandwich lunch provided as an optional extra.

The lecture series is entitled A Taste of History, and full information is available on the Friends of Shakespeare’s Church website. The lectures are free, but donations are encouraged. The money raised will help to take further the work of conservation and restoration of this historic church.

The following information on the lectures is taken from the FOSC website:

The first talk on 6th November will be by Stephen Oliver, our Church architect, who will tell us how the history of Holy Trinity feeds into our conservation work. Stephen will thereby lay the foundation for the remaining talks and explain why we do what we do. 

Next up will be David Odgers (13th November), the conservation specialist who did such a wonderful job conserving the Clopton Chapel, and who told us about his work so engagingly. This time, David will discuss and point out the conservation work he’s just finished on the memorials in the Chancel, including the bust of William Shakespeare and the tombs of Dean Balsall (or Balsale) – mutilated as it is – and of Shakespeare’s friend John Combe. 

The third, excellent, speaker will be Mairi Macdonald on 20th November. Mairi’s topic is the Guild of the Holy Cross and its relations with, and presence in, Holy Trinity. There were tensions between the Guild and the Church, not quite amounting to fisticuffs but strong-minded nonetheless. Yet the Guild maintained two chapels in the Church and contributed to our services. No one knows as much as Mairi, as the editor of The Register of the Guild of the Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon, about the Guild and the Church. We’ll live and learn. 

The final two talks will be given by Robert Bearman (27th November and 4th December). Robert will talk first about ‘The Shakespeare Family Gravestones and what they tell us’, a topic of unfailing interest not to say controversy. His second talk will be about St Peter’s Chapel – with its rich history and potential beauty – as well as the South Aisle and the Beckett chapel. Robert, as former Head of Archives and Local Studies at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust will stimulate a great deal of interest, you may be sure, in these sometimes overlooked but richly historic areas of the Church.

All the speakers are experts in their fields and are sure to bring to light unknown details of the church’s history. You’ll learn more about this ancient, important building, and incidentally it will be a great way to spend your lunchtime.

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