Thomas Hardy and Shakespeare

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

Thomas Hardy: the jacket of the biography by Claire Tomalin

A few days ago, on June 2nd  it was the birthday of the novelist Thomas Hardy, a giant of literature whose long career spanned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In a discussion on this morning’s Radio 4 Broadcasting House (about 37 minutes into the broadcast) Michael Irwin and Claire Tomalin discussed Hardy’s writing and his continuing popularity. Once Hardy had become a successful novelist he turned back to his first love, poetry, and spent his last thirty years writing over 1000 poems.

 They discussed how Hardy’s love of poetry informed the prose writing in his novels, people and places being “poetically described”. In his most famous book, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Tess, always an emblematic figure, is seen in a series of striking landscapes, from dancing in the lush English countryside, standing to work incessantly on a symbol of the machine age, a steam-driven thresher, to sleeping in the middle of the ancient site of Stonehenge on the night before her arrest.  

Much of the emphasis on “one character alone in the landscape” has echoes in Shakespeare’s play King Lear, and there are many reminders of Shakespeare in Hardy. Michael Henchard, the Mayor of The Mayor of Casterbridge, is described by Hardy as having “introspective inflexibility”, a phrase which reminds me of the description of Lear by one of his daughters that he “hath ever but slenderly known himself”. Both characters suffer personal disasters as a result of their own actions.

 Hardy knew Shakespeare’s works well, quoting and referring to his work in many places, and not just the tragedies. The title of Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree is a direct quote from As You Like It. Hardy’s 1916 poem To Shakespeare After Three Hundred Years, written to celebrate the anniversary of his death, described Shakespeare as “Bright baffling soul, least capturable of themes”, and imagines Shakespeare’s retirement to a town peopled by those who knew little of his work.  

Years before, in August 1896 he and his wife spent several days in Shakespeare’s town, after the publication of the last of his novels, Jude the Obscure. While in Stratford-upon-Avon he purchased a copy of Hamlet. Perhaps he wanted to re-read the play while in Shakespeare country itself; the book contains annotations in his own hand. After Hardy’s death this text was given to his old friend the Shakespeare director, playwright and critic Harley Granville-Barker, and many years later this precious little book was purchased by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust where it may still be studied in the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive.

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Much Ado About Tate, Tennant, Best and Edwards

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

Catherine Tate as Beatrice and David Tennant as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing

It looks like being a vintage summer for Shakespeare-lovers with lots on offer around the country. In London two productions of Much Ado About Nothing have opened within a week so it’s already possible to see two sets of the sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice on successive nights if you can get the tickets. First to open was the Globe’s production starring Eve Best and Charles Edwards, and now the much-hyped commercial production starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate at Wyndhams Theatre in the West End has also opened.  On 16 June an outdoor production staged by the Guildford Shakespeare Company will begin.

  Both productions have been highly-praised and will provide terrific ammunition for argument, particularly since the productions highlight the differences between traditional style as exemplified by the Globe’s production and the modern (The Tennant/Tate production is set in post-Falklands Gibraltar).

 The play is one of Shakespeare’s most sure-fire hits, the sparring matches between Beatrice and Benedick some of his most sparkling exchanges. Back in the seventeenth century it was one of Charles I’s favourites. In his own copy of the Second Folio he wrote “Benedict and Beatrice”on the title page, presumably as a reminder of the play he’d so enjoyed on stage.

 It’s been a favourite for filming: Kenneth Branagh’s film of the play set in sun-drenched Tuscany was hugely successful in bringing young audiences to Shakespeare, and there have been many others. Franco Zefirelli’s famous 1965 National Theatre stage version starring Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens was filmed for TV and screened in 1967. The cast also included Derek Jacobi and, in a tiny part, Michael Gambon.

Until recently this version, like so much early TV, was though to be lost, but was uncovered in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

 A new research project has just started aimed at documenting plays written for the stage which have been screened on television since 1930. It will be fascinating to see how this develops over the three years it will run: it should make these rare recordings more widely available.

Stage productions are frequently filmed and let’s hope the opportunity to capture the Tennant/Tate production isn’t missed. The Globe regularly videos its own productions, as does the National Theatre, so their 2007-8 production starring Simon Russell Beale and Zoe Wanamaker is available at their archives.  In Stratford-upon-Avon videos have been made of productions since 1982 making it possible to see every production since the Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack one from that year at the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive. Many productions have also been recorded on sound tape and may be listened to at the British Library Sound Archive, including as the classic 1976-7 production starring Judi Dench and Donald Sinden.

 Finally, Dr Who fans sorry to hear that the Daleks are being given a bit of a rest from the TV series may enjoy this version of a scene from Much Ado About Nothing from the Dalek Masterpiece Theatre, courtesy of YouTube (love the cloak).

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Shakespeare’s Avon, Act 2: The inspiration for Ophelia?

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

A detail of Arthur Hodgson's painting of Ophelia

I’ve never had a lot of time for the myths and legends that surround Shakespeare’s life, many of which probably sprung up in order to satisfy the curiosity of visitors wanting to find out more about the man. I’ve always assumed the supposed inspiration for the drowning of Ophelia in Hamlet to be one of those, a story without any real evidence to support it. But on this sunny spring morning I took a walk up the Avon in search of a willow growing askant this stretch of river.

 Why the change of mind? I recently re-read Edgar Fripp’s book Shakespeare’s Haunts near Stratford, published in 1929. Fripp spent years searching the documentary records of the town and local area for people and events that might have been known to Shakespeare. He reports this story, and Samuel Schoenbaum repeats in his own book Shakespeare’s Lives. It runs that a young woman drowned in the Avon, near the village of Tiddington, a mile or so up the river from Stratford, on 17 December 1579. The records of the inquest still exist. The coroner, the Town Clerk of Stratford, agreed that the deceased “Going with a milk-pail to draw water at the river, standing on the bank, slipped and fell in, and was drowned”. The inquest established that her death was a simple accident, not a case of suicide. The circumstances find a strong echo in the description of Ophelia’s watery death in Hamlet.

There is a willow grows askant a brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

There with fantastic garlands did she come: ….

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds

Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook.

 At the coroner’s inquest it was important to establish whether the death was a simple accident or a case of suicide.  In the Tiddington drowning the body was taken up from its temporary grave for examination, and if the verdict had been suicide she would have been reburied in unconsecrated land and denied a Christian burial.

 Gertrude describes Ophelia’s death as an accident too, but the gravediggers gossip about the rumours:

 2nd Gravedigger: Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?

1st Gravedigger: I tell thee she is. Therefore make her grave straight. The crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.

 They go on to talk about the meaning of suicide by drowning:

 It must be se offendendo. It cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act … Here lies the water – good. Here stands the man – good. If the man goes to this water and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes, mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him he drowns not himself.

Willows growing on the river banks above Stratford-upon-Avon

There are plenty of willows growing along the river in and near Stratford, just as there are along many of England’s rivers. Sadly for me, though, the willows are now regularly cut back in order to keep the banks tidy and the river clear for the many boats that use it, so the photo, taken upstream of the town, is the best view I was able to find.

Fripp and Schoenbaum are keen not to assume too much for this story, but the 15-year old William Shakespeare would have heard it and it could have come to mind years later. The name of the girl who drowned, in a spooky coincidence, was Katherine Hamlet.

A view of the Avon at Stratford looking towards Holy Trinity Church

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Greatest Shakespeare speeches?

Posted on May 29, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

Simon Callow reciting his favourite speech from Henry V

Thinking about my favourite Shakespeare speeches has been a pleasant diversion for a damp and blowy bank holiday weekend. It started when a neighbour kindly gave me a press cutting about Simon Callow’s new TV series on Sky Arts 1 and 2. You can watch extracts from the show here.

Well, what are my favourite speeches? I soon realised I was building two different lists, one of speeches which I enjoy reading, and another of speeches linked in my mind to a particular performance. It’s the first of these that I’m looking at today. I’ve giving just the first line of the speech, and if you want to read the whole thing I’m including a link to the scene, taken from the MIT’s online text.

 1. Hamlet, Act 2 Scene 2

What a piece of work is a man!

I remember loving this speech when I had to study it at school, but Hamlet is so full of big soliloquies that this speech, part of a scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is often overshadowed. This speech features in both the lists I mentioned, Simon Russell Beale’s masterly performance of it seen on a National Theatre tour.

2. Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 2

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

A brilliantly constructed speech in which Shakespeare builds up the argument using rhetorical devices he would have learned at school. Wily Marc Antony damns Brutus and the other conspirators while appearing to praise them, eventually whipping the populace into a frenzy.

 3. Twelfth Night, Act 2 Scene 4

My father had a daughter loved a man.

I love the rhythm of that first line, and the subtlety of the way Viola tries to tell Orsino that she’s in love with him.

4. Richard II, Act 5 Scene 5

I have been studying how I may compare …

In prison, and deposed, Richard plays with ideas of rejection, desperation and loss.

 5. Henry V, Act 4 Scene 1

Upon the king! Let us our lives, our souls …

We all know the rousing speeches in Henry V, but this much quieter one is made on the night before the Battle of Agincourt. The king admits to feeling the heavy weight of his responsibilities.

6. King John, Act 3 Scene 4

Grief fills the room up of my absent child

This speech, expressing a mother’s grief on the loss of a child is one of the most intense expressions of emotion in Shakespeare.

7. The Winter’s Tale, Act 2 Scene 1

                    There may be in the cup

A spider steeped…

The image of the spider, unseen in the cup, could be said to argue that what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you.

8. Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 1

Is this a dagger which I see before me?

This bloodcurdling speech is made just before Macbeth commits the murder of his king. The imaginary dagger Macbeth sees shows that he is not simply a villain, but a man whose ambition overwhelms his conscience.  

9. The Tempest, Act 3 Scene 2

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises

Shakespeare gives some of the most beautiful lines in the play to the least civilised person on the island. In the past Caliban has been portrayed as a monster or a figure of fun, but nowadays there is much more sympathy for him not least because of this speech.

10. Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2

Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face …

The whole of the balcony scene is beautiful, but here Juliet speaks with complete honesty about her feelings for Romeo

 This is just my personal list. I’d love to hear about your favourites!

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Shakespeare and science fiction

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

Poster for the science fiction film Forbidden Planet, 1956

It’s hardly surprising that Shakespeare’s play The Tempest has been used as the basis for science fiction. A ship and its crew are wrecked on a distant, mysterious island, populated only by a man with magical powers, several strange creatures who act as his servants, and his daughter. The ship’s crew break up into several groups who interact with the island’s inhabitants, upsetting the status quo and threatening to overthrow the magician. This story of how people relate to and govern each other could and has been easily relocated from the strange and exotic island to a host of fictional settings.

 The British Library’s new exhibition, Out of this World, is an ambitious look at the history of science fiction, tracing its roots back Shakespeare’s period and even beyond, to books not normally categorized as science fiction like Thomas More’s Utopia.

 The Culture Show’s programme traced this history, including a discussion of the first work of science fiction in English, The Man in the Moon, from 1638. Interviews with curators pointed out that like much other art, science fiction is rarely about what it appears to be on the surface. The best science fiction wrestles with the place of the individual in society.

 I don’t know if the exhibition includes any references to Shakespeare, but this theme certainly finds expression in The Tempest. On his arrival on the island Prospero has set himself up as the ruler of the island, turning its existing inhabitants into his servants. Caliban complains

         I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own King: and here you sty me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o’th’island.

Among the shipwrecked courtiers is Gonzalo, who dreams of another kind of government. “Had I plantation of this isle … and were the King on’t, what would I do?”, he asks. He suggests a commonwealth where all would be equal:

                                            Riches, poverty,

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none.…

All things in common Nature should produce

Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,

Sword, pike, knife, gun or need of any engine,

Would I not have.

 The science fiction film Forbidden Planet was released in 1956, loosely based on The Tempest.  The Ariel parallel, Robby the Robot, was the first movie robot to become a hero in his own right. There was no Caliban in the film but an evil force “The Id”, was created by the writer Irving Block because “There are real monsters and demons inside each one of us, without our knowing”, a sentiment which forms the basis of Macbeth.

 Shakespeare’s plays are almost all given an unfamiliar setting, in either a far-off country or a safely distant period of English history. This enabled Shakespeare to write safely about current political concerns, but contemporary parallels were not lost on his audiences. In 1601 the Earl of Essex paid for Shakespeare’s company to perform the play Richard II, in which the king is deposed, hoping that the performance would rally support for the Earl’s rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. The play is comfortably set well in the past, but the connection was inescapable. The Queen is said to have responded “I am Richard II, know ye not that?”

 The theme of the individual in society is discussed in another of Shakespeare’s most political plays, Hamlet, and sure enough the play is raised in science fiction.  The television series Star Trek has made repeated use of Shakespeare’s plays and produced many spin-offs included the wonderfully tongue in cheek translation of Hamlet into “the original Klingon”. Shakespeare and science fiction was also the subject of a post written in 2010 as part of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Blogging Shakespeare.

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Shakespearian stars 1: Richard Burton as Henry V

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

Richard Burton as Henry V, 1955. Painting by Frank Salisbury, V&A Collections.

This is the first in a series about actors and their greatest Shakespearian parts.

 Henry V is a gift of a part for a young actor. It’s a varied role, particularly if  Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, which show Prince Henry before he becomes king, are played at the same time. During the course of three plays he turns from being a callow if watchful youth to a heroic, regal, ruthless and even romantic ruler.

 In 1951, to celebrate the Festival of Britain, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre staged a cycle of Shakespeare’s History plays from Richard II to Henry V. Several leading actors had been cast including Michael Redgrave as Richard II and the Chorus in Henry V. Anthony Quayle, who ran the company, was to play Falstaff himself. A young, little known actor called Richard Burton was recruited to play the key roles of Prince Hal and Henry V.

 Burton had all the necessary attributes: stage presence, good looks, energy, and that voice. He arrived in Stratford a relative unknown.  Kenneth Tynan, one of the most important theatre reviewers wrote: “His playing of Prince Hal turned interested speculation to awe almost as soon as he started to speak; in the first intermission local critics stood agape in the lobbies.” By the end of the season he had become a star.

 Tynan described Burton as “a brimming pool running disturbingly deep”, his voice “urgent and keen”. This sound recording was made of part of the performance in 1951.

 There was general agreement that he was more successful playing youthful Prince Hal than mature King Henry. Nevertheless he was hugely successful in this role, acting some of the most difficult scenes with sensitivity and subtlety. The back story to Henry V is that as a young man, Henry was widely known to have behaved badly with a group of unsuitable friends. When he becomes king there are still questions over whether he has left his unsavoury past behind. A C Sprague, in his book Shakespearian Players and Performances describes how Burton, as King, reacted to the news of the execution of his former friend Bardolph, who has robbed a church.

 As he listens, recollections crowd upon him, of this same Bardolph. So at any rate, young Richard Burton made me feel when, as Henry, he stood musing … then, after a slight pause, but gravely and without hesitation, said quietly: “We would have all such offenders so cut off”. 

Several biographies have been written about Burton’s colourful life. Tom Rubython’s  And God Created Burton is the most recent to hit the bookstands, and contains fascinating details about this period. I was familiar with the facts relating to the productions and the theatrical archives that still exist such as prompt books, reviews and photographs, but  hadn’t realised that behind the scenes Richard Burton’s ex-schoolteacher, guardian and mentor Philip Burton created friction with Anthony Quayle by accompanying Burton to Stratford and insisted on directing him in the acting of the part.

Tom Rubython's biography of Richard Burton

The book also claims that 1951, the year which Burton spent at Stratford, was the happiest of his life. It was certainly the year in which he achieved stardom when the doors to acting in Hollywood began to open. He’s not the only young actor for whom a season in Stratford has proved the launch pad for their career.

 Although Hollywood beckoned, this wasn’t his last brush with the stage, or Shakespeare. He went on to play Hamlet and Coriolanus at the Old Vic in 1953, and repeated the part of Henry V there in 1955. The painting above is of this later production, when he was hailed as the natural successor to Laurence Olivier. This was his last season on the London stage, but in 1964 he played Hamlet on Broadway directed by probably the most successful Hamlet of the century, John Gielgud. In 1967 he was directed by Franco Zeffirelli in a filmed version of The Taming of the Shrew, co-starring with his wife Elizabeth Taylor.  

 Although he was at one time Hollywood’s most bankable actor, and a legend in his own lifetime, there remains a feeling that as an actor Burton never reached his potential, being better known for the turbulence of his private life than for his acting.  His early death in 1984 aged only 58, combined with a career mostly in film, has meant that he is remembered for only a few classic roles. Chief among these is Henry V.

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Eating like Shakespeare

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

Autumn produce

Can you imagine life without tea, coffee and perhaps most of all chocolate? We think of these as essentials, but all are derived from plants which can’t be grown in this country, and which only began to be imported after Shakespeare’s lifetime.

Shakespeare’s such a familiar figure in some respects that it comes as a surprise to think that he never tasted some of the foods we take so much for granted.

Here’s a discussion of one particularly English treat:

Looking round my own garden at what food plants I’m growing, I realise how few of them would have been available to Shakespeare. Tomatoes and potatoes – no,  onions and spinach– yes,  garlic, apples, parsnips, lettuces, yes,  runner beans, sweetcorn, courgettes,  probably not, though plants related to some of them such as broad beans and squashes were commonly grown.

Few plants would have been ready to eat in springtime, so over-wintered roots like parsnips and turnips would have been valuable additions to the diet. Delectable asparagus spears and strawberries must have been a wonderful treat when they came in. Other foods once regarded as special, like the “pippins [apples] and cheese” mentioned as the finale to a dinner in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor would nowadays be regarded as pretty mundane.

 One of the reasons we know so much about what plants were grown in Shakespeare’s lifetime is because of the books about plants which were published. These were not just gardening manuals but include information about the virtues or medicinal qualities of the plants. Of these, John Gerarde’s Herball, first published in 1597, is probably the most famous and the most beautiful, with hundreds of woodcuts illustrating the plants. All sorts of plants are mixed up in this wonderful book: flowers, herbs, vegetables, trees, rather as  we’re now encouraged to grow vegetables in flower beds in our own gardens. Not all the plants listed by Gerarde are what they seem: his “potato” is what we now know as the sweet potato, and the rarer “potatoes of Virginia” are the direct ancestor of the vegetable that is now a staple part of our diet. 

 This week the Chelsea Flower Show puts plants originating from all round the world, now being grown in UK gardens, under the spotlight. The variety and quality of plants available to us from plant breeders is astonishing. At the other extreme, Richard Mabey’s book Flora Britannica lists traditional plants and encourages people to go back to the pastime of foraging for foods growing wild like blackberries and wild garlic.

 It’s been suggested that as Shakespeare lived for a time near to Gerarde’s garden in London this garden might have inspired some of his references to plants. Who knows? Shakespeare certainly couldn’t rely on a cup of coffee to get his creative juices going!

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Shakespeare’s Avon, Act 1: Clopton Bridge

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

Clopton Bridge, Stratford-upon-Avon

 This is the first of a series I’m going to be posting weekly on the subject of the River Avon and its connections with Shakespeare.

  Clopton Bridge was built about 100 years before Shakespeare’s time by Sir Hugh Clopton, a man with local connections who became a wealthy merchant and eventually Mayor of London. Back in Stratford he spent a great deal of money on various building projects, the most influential of which was this bridge.

 It might not look very impressive to us, but this stone bridge made a huge difference to the town. The antiquarian John Leland, writing following a visit in 1530, described it as a “great and sumptuous bridge … with fourteen arches”.

The town already had a weekly market, where people came from the surrounding countryside to trade goods, but before this bridge was built there was only a wooden bridge which became impassable when the river Avon rose. Leland explains that “Afore the time of Hugh Clopton there was but a poor bridge of timber and no causey [causeway] to it, whereby many poor folks and other refused to come to Stratford when Avon was up, or coming thither stood in jeopardy of life”. This substantial bridge made it possible for the town to become a thriving commercial centre where people could come to buy and sell goods. It also encouraged small industries like John Shakespeare’s gloving business to thrive.

Travellers passing through would stay at one of the town’s many inns. Sometimes there would be more exotic visitors – during Shakespeare’s early years several professional acting companies on tour performed in Stratford. It’s even thought that this could be how Shakespeare got the theatre bug.

 Far from being a rural backwater, it was a busy place where Shakespeare would have had the opportunity to observe many people whose lives were very different from his own. All these people were brought here by Hugh Clopton’s bridge, and when Shakespeare left Stratford to go to London to begin his career as an actor and writer, the first steps on his journey were made over this bridge.

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Shakespeare’s First Folio: “read him, … and again and again”

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

The title page of William Shakespeare's First Folio, published in 1623

Shakespeare’s First Folio has been in the news again recently due to two new exhibitions featuring this most famous of books.

 The Folger Shakespeare Library’s summer exhibition in Washington, DC, will be Fame, Fortune and Theft, looking at the book’s cultural significance as well as examining how it has been studied and collected over the centuries before becoming the highly-prized object it is today. It will also cover the story of the theft of the University of Durham’s copy and its recovery in 2008, in which the Folger took a crucial part. This story was the subject of a TV documentary in 2010, Stealing Shakespeare.

 Co-curating this exhibition is Anthony James West, who has examined all the existing copies of the First Folio in existence and published an authoritative census of these copies. Called as an Expert Witness for the Crown Prosecution Service in the Durham Folio trial, he was also responsible for the identification of the First Folio held by the Craven Museum in Skipton, Yorkshire. In March 2010 he was at the opening of the Craven Museum’s exhibit of the Folio, the only one on display in the north of England.

 Fewer than 50 copies of this book remain in England from the 700 or so that were originally published in London in 1623.  Three copies are in Stratford-upon-Avon in the care of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, one of which is on permanent display and seen by all visitors to Shakespeare’s Birthplace as part of the Life, Love and Legacy presentation. In all 232 copies still exist, this high proportion illustrating the value the books have always had for their owners. Eleven copies will be displayed in the Folger’s exhibition.

 The Folio’s importance for Shakespeare’s reputation as an author is that it published for the first time around half of his plays including Macbeth, Twelfth Night and The Tempest, which would otherwise probably have been lost. Several digital facsimiles are available to view on the internet, including this one from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

 It’s also important as a testament to the regard in which Shakespeare was held by his contemporaries. The book was put together by two of Shakespeare’s fellow-actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell. They explain that they have done this work “only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our SHAKESPEARE”.  Writing of the plays, they write “Do not envy his friends the office of their care and pain to have collected and published them…as he conceived them”. They urge us to “Read him, therefore, and again, and again”.

The prefatory material contains many phrases about Shakespeare which have become famous in their own right. Ben Jonson wrote “He was not of an age, but for all time” and coined the phrase “Sweet swan of Avon”.

 The idea that Shakespeare’s real monument is the book is repeated in several of the contributions. Leonard Digges celebrates the power of the printed word:

                          when that stone is rent,
And Time dissolves thy Stratford monument,
Here we alive shall view thee still.

 There’s no better argument for standing up for the libraries which care for and make available our written cultural heritage.

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A rose by any other word

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Sylvia Morris

The scent of roses is in the air already this year. With whole gardens devoted to its many varieties, no flower has a closer association with summertime in England. As national flower, it also has a special link with the history of the country.

 The Wars of the Roses were civil wars which raged from 1455-1485, and their continuing fame owes much to Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare imagined the famous scene in the Temple Garden in London, Act 2 Scene 4 of Henry VI Part 1, in which a group of arguing young noblemen pluck either red or white roses according to whether they support the house of Lancaster or York. In a theatre offering little in the way of visual resources, this scene was a brilliant stroke, together with the idea of making the supporters of each side continue to wear their roses, making it easier to follow the complicated twists and turns of the story.

An embroidered Tudor rose on display at Petworth House, Sussex

The conflict ended with accession of Henry VII and his marriage, and the double rose combining the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York came to symbolise not just the house of Tudor which he founded but the unity of England as a whole.

The Tudor rose, symbolising unity, appeared as a decorative emblem in many different places. The two examples here show it as a carving on the front of Harvard House, Stratford, and a piece of embroidery associated with Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

Roses have many symbolic meanings. For Shakespeare and for poets before and since, they have both positive associations with love, youth, beauty and sweetness and negative ones with blood, changeability and time. The combination of the rose’s beauty and its thorns symbolise the pleasures and pains of romantic and sexual love.

One of Shakespeare’s most famous lines contains a reference to a rose, spoken by his most romantic heroine, Juliet:

                   What’s in a name?
A rose by any other word would smell as sweet.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Theseus tries to persuade a young girl, Hermia that marriage (the rose distill’d)  is preferable to living as a nun:

But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.

And in Twelfth Night Orsino likens youthful beauty to a rose in bloom:

For women are as roses, whose fair flower
Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.

Viola replies

And so they are; alas that they are so!
To die, even when they to perfection grow!

In his plays about the Wars of the Roses, as well as using roses to signify the opposing sides, Shakespeare uses roses as powerful symbols. See this blog for a discussion about the tragedy of the Battle of Towton, fought in 1461, where the horrors of civil war are made real: a father kills his son, a son his father, and there is blood on the face of a corpse:

The red rose and the white are on his face, the fatal colours of our striving houses.

John Gerarde, in his Herball, published in 1597, comments on the importance of the flower :

The rose doth deserve the chief and prime place among all floures whatsoever; being not onely esteemed for his beauty, vertues, and his fragrant and odoriferous smell; but also because it is the honor and ornament of our English Scepter, as by the conjunction appeareth, in the uniting of those two most Royall Houses of Lancaster and Yorke.

Fortunately we’re now able to enjoy the flowers solely for their beauty.

Wild roses in a hedgerown near the River Avon in Stratford-upon-Avon

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