Simon Forman, Shakespeare and the stage

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

Simon Forman

12 September 2011 is the 400th 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.

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Shakespeare and the Internet series

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

I’ve recently contributed a post to a new series of blogs published by James Harriman-Smith at Open Shakespeare, part of the Open Knowledge Foundation. The subject of the series is Shakespeare and the internet and my post, called Finding Needles in Haystacks, will be the first one to appear on Monday 12 September. It sounds like it’s going to be a great series, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the other contributors have to say.  This is now live here!

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Shakespeare’s mothers and sons

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

 

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

Towards the end of Shakespeare’s 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.

 

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The Nicholas Nickleby phenomenon: a Royal Shakespeare Company triumph remembered

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, one of the most successful productions in the RSC’s history, has rightly been marked with an event in the RSC’s programme celebrating 50 years of outstanding theatremaking.

 The adaptation of Charles Dickens’ comic novel opened in June 1980 at the Aldwych Theatre, initially for an eight-week run. The eight and a half hour two-part production became a sellout, playing for two more seasons at the Aldwych, then being filmed at the Old Vic before transferring to Broadway from September 1981-January 1982. The filmed version was shown as the first major drama broadcast on Channel 4. In 1985-6 the RSC revived the production with a new cast, performing it in Stratford-upon-Avon, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Los Angeles and Broadway and since then a shortened version has also been performed at Chichester. Information can be found on John Caird’s website.

I’d always loved Dickens as well as Shakespeare and found the combination irresistible. I went to the very first all-day performance, and saw each version at least twice, attending all three of the last nights at the Aldwych. On Sunday several of the original members of cast got together again: Christopher Benjamin, Suzanne Bertish, Janet Dale, Patrick Godfrey, Julie Peasgood, Edward Petherbridge, Emily Richard, Timothy Spall and David Threlfall, as well as co-director John Caird, adapter David Edgar and designer John Napier. A group of five musicians performed some of Stephen Oliver’s original music and the actors performed some scenes from the production interspersed with film clips and reminiscences.

 This triumph was born out of near-disaster. John Caird explained how the RSC was faced with a drastic cut in Arts Council funding at the end of 1979. Instead of putting on two or three new productions inLondonin 1980 Trevor Nunn decided to put all the company’s available resources into one spectacular production. They may have been short of money, but they weren’t short of talented actors who were already used to working together and other creative people happy to improvise. The rehearsal period began in November in Stratford with a five-week workshop period. Each actor précised a chapter of the book, and researched an aspect of Victorian life. Only at the end of this period were parts allocated.

 David Edgar had been commissioned to adapt the novel. He was impressed early on by the way that all the complex interweaving plots of the novel echoed each other, stories of dysfunctional families all driven by money. He was able to add some interweaving of his own: rehearsals for the Crummles theatrical company’s production of Romeo and Juliet were cross-cut with real dramas. Juliet’s distress at being cast off by her parents when she refused to marry their choice of suitor was alternated with scenes showing Kate Nickleby’s helplessness at being pursued by the sinister Sir Mulberry Hawk (played memorably by the late Bob Peck). Smike, cast as the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, heartbreakingly repeated his line “Who calls so loud”, when dying in Nicholas’s arms.

 

The Crummles Company. Photograph by John Napier

Dickens was a writer with a real social conscience, but no real political views. His opinion has often been quoted as “if men would behave decently the world would be decent”. The production’s success relied in great measure on the choice of Roger Rees to play Nicholas, a bit of a prig in Dickens’ book. James Fenton wrote “I can think of few actors who are better at conveying, through facial expressions alone, a frank acquaintance with grief. It was a good move to cast such an engaging actor in the part of young Nickleby…because a striking character was required to add savour to the original”

 The play generated a fantastic hoax. Using forged headed notepaper a press release was sent out and letters were written to the company explaining that as a result of the success of Nicholas Nickleby the Royal Shakespeare Company was to be renamed the Royal Dickens Company. Several people were taken in by the scam, discovered to be the work of director Ken Campell.

Some of the initial reviews were disappointingly luke-warm. Michael Billington’s Guardian review was read out, followed by two letters written in response, one of which was my own. Word of mouth ensured the play’s success, helped by Bernard Levin’s review several weeks later which left no-one in any doubt that he thought the show

So richly joyous, so immoderately rife with pleasure, drama, and entertainment, so life-enhancing, yea-saying and fecund…  – so Dickensian.

 The evening ended with the “Farewell” song. In a lovely spontaneous touch David Threlfall, (Smike), invited Julie Peasgood, (The Infant Phenomenon) to dance, followed by the rest of the people on stage, treating the audience to the unexpected sight of David Edgar waltzing with Timothy Spall.

 A number of clips are on YouTube. This one is from a documentary with, about 3 minutes in, a live recording of the scene where Fanny Squeers invites Nicholas to tea.

 This clip is the same scene as filmed without a live audience, including the wonderful game of cards.

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The curse of Macbeth strikes again

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

Poor Jonathan Slinger, the RSC’s current Macbeth, seems to be the latest casualty of the so-called “curse of Macbeth”. He didn’t acquire his broken arm during any of his dangerous onstage moves but, rather prosaically, by being knocked off his bike in the street.

 Macbeth has been thought to be unlucky for centuries, perhaps ever since it was written. The spell cast by the weird sisters around their cauldron, conjuring ghostly apparitions and prophecies of Macbeth’s doomed future, is said to be genuine, and would have terrified superstitious members of Shakespeare’s audience.

 Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog…
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble…
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab…
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

 Ironically this part of the scene is omitted from the current production, the weird sisters being played by three children.

 The play has frightened actors as well as audiences. When Sarah Siddons first read the play in preparation for playing Lady Macbeth she recorded her impressions in her diary:

 I went on with tolerable composure in the silence of the night ‘til I came to the assassination scene. The horrors of the scene rose to such a degree that made it impossible to get further. I snatched up a candle and hurried out the room in a paroxysm of terror. My dress was of silk and the rustling of it, as I ascended the stairs to go to bed, seemed to my panic-stricken fancy like the movements of a spectres pursuing me. I capt my candlestick and threw myself on my bed where I lay without daring even to take my clothes off.

 The play turned out to be lucky for Sarah Siddons. She held audiences spellbound in the role of Lady Macbeth, playing it for over 25 years right up to her farewell to the stage in 1812.

 Some of the many mishaps blamed on the play are documented in Richard Huggett’s book The Curse of Macbeth. The Astor Place riot in New York in 1849 was said to be sparked off by the rivalry between Edwin Forrest, the leading American tragedian and English actor William Charles Macready, who were appearing in competing productions of Macbeth. A crowd 20,000 strong assembled, said to be organised by Forrest, and soldiers called in to control the riot mistakenly fired into the crowd killing 31 people.

 There have been accidents during rehearsals. Laurence Olivier was preparing for the opening night at the Old Vic in 1937 when he lost his voice and was nearly killed by a heavy weight falling in the wings. Then Lillian Baylis, the theatre’s manager, died of a heart attack two days before the first performance.  In 1967 Peter Hall was directing Paul Scofield in the play when Hall collapsed with a severe attack of shingles. It was feared that he would lose his sight.

 Many accidents have happened onstage, but is Macbeth really more prone to these than other plays? The stage is always a health and safety nightmare, though precautions are in place to make it as safe as possible. In the 1997 Hamlet, Susannah York fell off the stage late in rehearsals breaking a bone in her heel. Diana Quick replaced her at short notice and played the part for six weeks. Darrell D’Silva, the RSC’s most recent Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, had an accident which damaged his hand while handling a firearm in rehearsals.

 It seems unlikely that any of these are attributable to a mention of Macbeth, but Jonathan Slinger’s accident isn’t going to dispel the longstanding reputation of “The Scottish Play”.

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One-man shows and Shakespeare’s theatre

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

Ian McKellen as Romeo and Michael Pennington as Mercutio

Last week I saw Eduardo de Filippo’s play The Syndicate, currently touring UK towns and cities. It stars two great Shakespearean actors, Ian McKellen and Michael Pennington. Watching them in this subtle play it occurred to me that the last time I’d seen them together onstage was in 1977 in Romeo and Juliet at the Aldwych, where they’d played Romeo and Mercutio respectively. It was a heady time for the RSC. What I loved was the sense of company: Romeo and Juliet set in Renaissance Italy one night, a musical version of The Comedy of Errors in a Greek tourist resort the next, many of the same actors in both, performing with terrific panache.

 

Simon Callow in Being Shakespeare

Both men have since had outstanding careers in Shakespeare and other drama. They’ve both also performed one-man shows about Shakespeare, Acting Shakespeare by McKellen and Sweet William by Pennington. This year I’ve also seen Simon Callow in his show Being Shakespeare and Roger Rees in What you Will. Incidentally Roger Rees played Benvolio in that same production of Romeo and Juliet.

John Gielgud performing Ages of Man

One-man shows about Shakespeare have a long history. John Gielgud, one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century, performed his Shakespeare recital Ages of Man from 1957-1979.  The recital was based on an anthology by the influential Oxford professor George Rylands, and Gielgud won a Tony Award, an Emmy and a Grammy for it. This interview with Gielgud includes, towards the end, a clip from the film of Ages of Man;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65seXyvD7H4 

Ellen Terry as Queen Katherine in Henry VIII

The idea for Gielgud to put on his own Shakespeare performance came from his great-aunt, Ellen Terry, easily the most famous actress of the late nineteenth century. When she became too old to play them onstage, she performed extracts from her famous roles in Shakespeare’s Heroines.

 Just recently Judi Dench was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s arts programme Front Row. One of Mark Lawson’s questions was about solo shows, and her answer was very revealing about her approach to working onstage.

 I wouldn’t do a one-woman show. It would be death for me. I would not know who to get ready for. I suppose it’s the support, and what appeals to me is the fact there’s a group of people…so there’s author, director, cast, audience and it’s something to do with that process of telling that story that I love… but I don’t want to do it on my own.

 I suspect that love of collaborative working in the theatre is something that Shakespeare would recognise. He wrote for a group of people he knew, and he would have imagined as he wrote how they would speak the lines, how they might move. He’d have heard stories of seafaring, gossip and odd turns of phrase in alehouses and in the streets. The film Shakespeare in Love shows Shakespeare writing in private, while picking up snippets (and even play titles) from all kinds of sources, and bouncing ideas around with friends and colleagues.  

 There’s a lovely section near the beginning of Romeo and Juliet where Romeo, who has been desperately in love with the unattainable Rosaline, meets his friends for an exchange of high-spirited laddish banter. His friend Mercutio says:

 Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as nature.

One-man plays are hugely enjoyable, giving actors the chance to show off their virtuosity, but it’s the interaction of theatre that really gives it appeal for audiences as well as professionals.

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Henry V, star of England

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

31 August is the anniversary of the death of that “star of England”, King Henry V. He died in France, where he had been on a military campaign to capture more of the country, in 1422 aged only 35.

 If you haven’t seen Henry VI Part 1 you might not be aware that this play begins with the funeral of Henry V in Westminster Abbey.  The Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester seem to be trying to outdo each other in their praise:

 Bedford
Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry’s death…
Gloucester
England ne’er had a king until his time:
Virtue he had, deserving to command;
His brandish’d sword did blind men with his beams;
His arms spread wider than a dragon’s wings;
His sparkling eyes, replete with wrathful fire,
More dazzled and drove back his enemies
Than midday sun fierce bent against their faces.

This rare clip is from the English Shakespeare Company’s production, to my taste rather underplayed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qTK0UsdQw4
 

Laurence Olivier

Shakespeare came to write Henry V some years after Henry VI , when he was on top form. Taking as his subject the greatest of English kings, he rose to the occasion with writing that is both superbly powerful and subtle. It’s a play that divides opinion. Richard Dutton, in his essay The Second Tetralogy, asks “Is it a celebration of national glory, with Henry a truly heroic warrior prince? Or is it a dark satire on warfare and the abuses of power, a prelude to the tragedies soon to follow?”

 

Kenneth Branagh

These questions weren’t raised in the Olivier film of the play, released during the dark days of the Second World War and quite deliberate propoganda. Modern productions though nearly always tackle them, and no matter how persuasive the great heroic speeches, today’s audiences are left in no doubt that the play is not as straightforward as it looks. In 1984 Kenneth Branagh’s stage performance for the RSC was dubbed the first post-Falklands Henry and Adrian Lester’s 2003 National Theatre performance was plainly a response to the war in Iraq.

 

Adrian Lester

Henry’s early death was seen as a national tragedy, the more so in retrospect since his son’s disastrous reign was overtaken by civil conflict and his father’s gains in France were lost. For Raphael Holinshed, writing his history of the country, Henry V was “a king, of life without spot, a prince whome all men loved, and of none disdained, a capteine against whome fortune never frowned, nor mischance once spurned…A majestie was he that both lived and died a paterne in princehood, a lode-starre in honour, and mirror of magnificence”.

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Your actions are my dreams: Shakespeare and conspiracy

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

A week on Sunday it will be exactly ten years since the awful events of 9/11 in which thousands of people died and which sparked the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 On Monday it was revealed that a poll undertaken in the US and UK suggested that 1 in 7 people believe the US government was involved in staging the attacks.

A documentary on this subject was screened in the UK on the same evening.  Further programmes will take a more sober look at the events, but even this one raised difficult questions. Why, with so much evidence to show it was a terrorist attack, are  so many people willing to believe that the government launched it on their own citizens? The lives of people who died that day have been devalued because conspiracy theorists deny one of the crashes, adding to the distress of their families and the people who dealt with the aftermath.

 Jonathan Kay is a journalist who has taken an active interest in conspiracy theories, and he’s concerned that these theories are growing in popularity, whether they are about the moon landings, JFK, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, or, of course, the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. Although this last one seems trivial in comparison with the others, it displays many of the same characteristics. 

Kay claims never to have won an argument with a conspiracy theorist, because no sooner is one point countered than, rather than changing their view, they move to the next disputed point. Any small slip by anyone giving evidence is jumped on. Another journalist, Guy Smith elaborates:

The deeper you dig in the dark world of conspiracies, the more you realise that different theories share much in common. The conspiracy theorist seizes on any apparent inconsistency and from that germ of truth the story is built up.

The books that have been written about Shakespeare over the past two hundred years or so offer material a-plenty for conspiracy theorists. In that time thousands of books have been written and hundreds of different stories reported, many of them with little foundation, so there is no shortage of inconsistencies on which to build.

 In recent years orthodox scholars have grasped the nettle and challenged the conspiracies. The chapter in Jonathan Bate’s book The Genius of Shakespeare begins:

there is a mystery about the identity of William Shakespeare. The mystery is this: why should anyone doubt that he was William Shakespeare, the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon?

In only 35 pages Bate sets out the arguments, while James Shapiro’s Contested Will and Irving Leigh Matus’s Shakespeare in Fact are excellent fuller studies.

 These theories remind me of Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, who is so convinced in his own mind of his wife’s infidelity that he refuses to believe her or anyone else. He changes his mind only when a source which he trusts, the oracle, confirms her innocence. It’s been suggested that a belief in conspiracy theories is to do with anxiety. In an age of uncertainty, where religion is in decline, and where there’s no trust in government to do the right thing, these theories at least suggests that someone is in control. The alternative is to believe that 19 young men, armed with nothing more than plastic knives, could swiftly destroy some of the most powerful symbols of the American way of life.

 Why should this anxiety transfer itself to belief in Shakespeare’s authorship, something that can make no real difference to anyone’s life four centuries on? Do doubters see themselves as champions wanting to give the right candidate the admiration to which he’s entitled? Or is it about knocking the orthodox candidate off his pedestal?

 During his lifetime and for centuries after it nobody doubted that Shakespeare, the man from Stratford-upon-Avon, wrote the plays and poems attributed to him. None of  the alternative candidates ever made any sort of claim, nor did their families or descendants. Shakespeare wrote and acted in some of the most popular plays of the time, that appealed to ordinary people as well as the court. He worked with the best actors of the day, knew the best writers, and collaborated with some of them.

 It’s not a glamorous story, but I’m happy to trust Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, William Camden and many others, who knew Shakespeare and didn’t need to make it up.

If you’d like to join in the debate, see my last post for information about the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s campaign about the authorship question.

 

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Shakespeare and Anonymous: authorship, truth and drama

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

The film poster for Anonymous

I’m part of an online group currently running a lively discussion thread on “Was Shakespeare a fraud?”. This is based on the soon-to-be-released film Anonymous, directed by Roland Emmerlich and written by John Orloff, on the subject of the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays and the political context within which they were written.

 Over the years I’ve dipped into quite a few of the books on the subject in response to enquiries. I never succeeded in get any of the enquirers to read a good biography of Shakespeare, but I did get a sense of what were perceived to be the main issues in the debate.

 The first is that there’s no single document linking Shakespeare of Stratford with the writing of the plays, and the second is that he didn’t have enough education to have written them. These issues have been examined exhaustively by Dave Kathman and Terry Ross at the modestly named Shakespeare Authorship page, which I heartily recommend you to read if interested in any angle of this discussion. 

Kathman analyses the first question by teasing it apart. Those who question the authorship see the man who was born in Stratford, the actor in London, the shareholder of the Globe and the author as at least two different people. But if you look at the documents together, they show they are all the same man.  Doubters claim that evidence from after Shakespeare’s death, like the church monument and the First Folio, which positively link the Stratford man with the writings, is inadmissible.

 There’s no reason to be sceptical about Shakespeare’s schooling at the Stratford grammar school. The teachers’ names and their salaries are recorded, and other local boys received a good education, but the attendance records for the school no longer exist. Most documents of the period haven’t survived. For example, of all the documents written by Christopher Marlowe, only a single signature still exists on a document he witnessed for someone else. It’s spelled Christofer Marley. No document links Marlowe with the anonymously published two-part play Tamburlaine. If Shakespeare’s contemporaries were subjected to the same scrutiny as Shakespeare’s their authorship might be doubted too.

 A few years ago I went to the London National Gallery’s exhibition Searching for Shakespeare. In one large room they gathered together most of the significant documents relating to the theatre in Shakespeare’s time, and in so doing, pointed out just how rare these are. The Plat [plot] of the Seven Deadly Sins, a scene by scene outline posted backstage to remind actors of the order of scenes, is a rare survivor. There’s just one drawing of the interior of a public theatre, and one sketch giving an impression of how a scene from a Shakespeare play was staged. None of these are official records, all have survived and been found by pure chance.

 It’s interesting that people now suggest Shakespeare the author was highly-educated, because several people suggested otherwise during his lifetime, and soon after his death his plays were seen as unlearned. The very first mention of Shakespeare in London, by Robert Greene, a writer and scholar, calls the writer, unmistakeably identified as a “Shake-scene”, an “upstart crow, beautified with our feathers”.  Ben Jonson, a man who himself had no university education, wrote in the First Folio that Shakespeare had “small Latin and less Greek”, and in private described Shakespeare as “wanting art”.

 The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is about to launch a campaign to inform people about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s beginning on 1 September, with 60 minutes with Shakespeare and with a webinar on the same day.

Having read the following plot outline which was in a Time Out article earlier this year I’m not sure if anybody expects the film Anonymous to be taken seriously:  ‘Anonymous’ posits the idea that Oxford was not only the author known as William Shakespeare but the illegitimate son of Elizabeth. Moreover, the pair had an incestuous relationship that produced a son, the Earl of Southampton.

The film’s director, Roland Emmerich, clearly doesn’t expect this story to be seen as true: When Shakespeare wrote “Henry V”, he made things up and we’re making things up too.’

 John Orloff, like most writers, was more interested in the story than factual accuracy:‘I have done a lot of non-fiction-based movies and there is a point where you have to go with the emotional truth, not the literal truth, because the drama is the primary concern.’

And that last point, at least, is something Shakespeare would have agreed with.

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Time and the gilded galleon

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

A visit to the British Museum is always a great reminder of the ingenuity, skill and imagination of the human race over thousands of years and in all parts of the world. In all areas of endeavour there are people who have lived up to Hamlet’s description of mankind:

 What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god

The mechanical galleon

 Shakespeare’s time was one of constant new invention. He contributed to the development of the English language, inventing hundreds of new words, and wrote poetry and plays that stretched the imagination of his audience. This inventiveness in the arts was paralleled in the world of science and exploration. Competing countries all across Europe needed new technology to explore by sea, and the ships which crossed the oceans and fought battles by firing cannon were the most sophisticated objects in existence.

 One of the most intriguing broadcasts in the 2010 radio series The History of the World in 100 objects was the Mechanical Galleon,  displayed in the Clocks and Watches gallery of the British Museum. This link is to the catalogue entry.

A sea monster

This spectacular model was made in Germany around 1585, in the style of the galleons of the Spanish Armada, standing only 40cm high, not including the masts. The detail includes cannons, sea monsters among the waves, and tiny men on the masts.  It’s thought to have been made for Augustus 1, Elector of Saxony whose inventory includes the following:

 “A gilded ship, skilfully made, with a quarter and full hour striking clock, which is to be wound every 24 hours. Above with three masts, in the crows’ nests of which the sailors revolve and strike the quarters and hours with hammers on the bells. Inside, the Holy Roman Emperors sits on the Imperial throne, and in front of him pass the seven electors with heralds, paying homage as they receive their fiefs. Furthermore ten trumpeters and a kettle-drummer alternately announce the banquet. Also a drummer and three guardsmen, and sixteen small cannons, eleven of which may be loaded and fired automatically.”

 Following the music and drumming, the ship, powered by clockwork, moved across the table on which it stood and as a finale the front cannon would fire, followed by all the others. More than just an executive toy, the ship is a symbol of the power of the Holy Roman Empire and of Western Europe’s obsession with exploration, travel and conquest. Scientific developments aimed at improving the accuracy of navigational instruments were appropriated for domestic uses in everyday life, and allowed the creation of objects like this that allowed the rich and powerful to show off.  Amazingly, nobody can be absolutely sure this is the one that belonged to Augustus 1. They were so fashionable that several similar ones were made, the must-have trophy for the wealthiest elite.

 Clocks and watches are now so commonplace we can probably hardly imagine how rare they once were.  Shakespeare often mentions clocks, which for most people meant church clocks chiming the hours.  According to Falstaff he and Hotspur “fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock”. The word “clock” is derived from the Latin word for “bell”, and some clocks didn’t even have a dial.

 During Shakespeare’s time many of the watch and clock makers in London were immigrants from Germany and the Low Countries. Some of these are represented in the same gallery of the museum. Wealthy households would have had their own clocks: this beautiful table clock was made for the Mardaunt family in Bedfordshire around 1600. Mercutio refers to a clock’s hour hand: “the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon”.

 

Pocket watches

Personal watches and sundials were also carried, though these examples in the Museum were obviously not just for use. Malvolio imagines that when married to Olivia, he will have such a decorative status symbol: “I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch”.

 As Orlando points out in As You Like It “There’s no clock in the forest”, and Rosalind suggests that without a clock “time travels in divers paces with divers persons”, fastest with “a thief to the gallows”. Jaques reports the clown Touchstone “drew a [sun]dial from his poke” which reminds him of the inevitability of aging as time passes, “from hour to hour we ripe and ripe”.

 Time’s now stopped for the gilded galleon, silent and motionless in its glass case, but it remains both a tribute to the person who made it and a symbol of the time in which it was made.

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