pom-alanaf, Author at Out of the Box

August 16, 2015October 19, 2021 by pom-alanaf

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

For me, the bear is Senior Year and the impending task of entering adulthood. It’s fierce and ambiguous, just like in The Winter’s Tale, but unlike the poor soul devoured by Shakespeare’s brainchild, I plan to fight and conquer it.

In other words, my time as a SURP-CCEP researcher has come to an end. And, continuing the trend of Emma’s last post, I’ll be reflecting on my summer researching Shakespeareana. Before I get into that, here are a few cool drawings from the Philbrick art collection of actors as their characters.

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This summer, my fellow researchers and I came across many items that took Shakespeare and altered it to suit their needs. Some people took out anything they thought was inappropriate for families (which takes out a lot of the fun, honestly), some made tragedies into comedies, and some made the plays into short stories for children. To me, this points to a level of audience participation, or, an extension of the co-authorship of plays at that time, since fans of Shakespeare’s work would remake the plays in an experimentation of form. They were putting their own spin on Shakespeare, which as I have found working with multiple versions of the same play, opens up new readings of both the inspired and the original works.

Seeing these kinds of interpretations and alterations to Shakespeare’s plays shows me that Shakespeare is bigger than himself. By that, I mean he is not only a cultural icon, but he is also a genre in and of itself. He uses tropes that others reproduce in order to imitate his style. He has characters that he reuses. He even has overlapping and repeating plot points and structures. And even today, we tap into those structures that Shakespeare set in place, furthering and reinforcing the definitions of his self-perpetuating genre.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my work this summer, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my posts. Even if you don’t feel compelled to go out and read anything by the Bard, hopefully you’ll look at him in a new light.

Thank you for being my readers.

Until the Spring,

Alana

August 9, 2015September 15, 2021 by pom-alanaf

Falstaff’s Legacy

Sir John Falstaff, the boisterous, bumbling knight, is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters. It is even rumored that Queen Elizabeth loved the character so much that she commissioned the Bard himself to write another play with Falstaff as the lead. Now, his personality has become larger than life, in a way, taking on a life of its own beyond the context of the plays in which he appears.

Today, I’ll be talking about a book about Falstaff and his squad (conveniently titled Falstaff and His Companions). Located in our special collections, this book features illustrations of Falstaff and co. with excerpts from the plays in which they appear to provide context. what makes this book especially interesting is that all of the characters are in silhouette.

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There does not seem to be any particular reason for the illustrator to make the characters into silhouettes, other than a possible test of his skill. If he can make the characters recognizable as just a black outline, then he has managed to capture their essence without fretting over unnecessary detail.

Personally, I think using silhouettes gives the reader more control over how they view the characters and allows for variability of actor representation. If the illustrated characters are a blank slate, then anyone can fill the void without disrupting the image of the character.

Some of my favorite Falstaff images feature him interacting with other characters, like a little boy and a married woman.

In addition to showing Sir John in a different light, this book also takes the time to depict his companions, giving the reader a greater sense of depth while adding to visual representations of Shakespeare’s literary universe. Below, we have a few minor characters. The decorative designs underneath their silhouettes nicely augment their frames.

I had my doubts when I picked up the book, but Falstaff can still be captivating even without his devilish grin. It seems a testament to the power of Shakespeare’s characters that they can live even in shadow.

August 2, 2015September 15, 2021 by pom-alanaf

Titus Andronicus: The Original Sweeney Todd

Titus Andronicus is, frankly, often considered sub-par when compared to Shakespeare’s other works. It’s historically inconsistent and at times, the composition (plot, writing, characters) is clunky. Some of the characters’ actions seem far-fetched at times, and the play mixes several different periods of Roman history with little abandon or regard for the accuracy we see in later works.

But, I think we can cut this play a little slack in part because it was one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, and because there is something to be said for its shock value. I’m not just referring to the general gore and possible insanity of some of the characters, either. I’m talking about the ending of the play. Unlike, say, Cymbeline, A Winter’s Tale, or even Pericles, where I was able to predict part of the end (a happy ending where lovers were reunited) based on the general set-up and act structure, I didn’t know what was going to happen in Titus Andronicus. I suspected murder, but not to the extent we see in the play.

Shakespeare’s contemporaries didn’t like this play, with some even doubting that the Bard himself wrote it. They excluded the play from the First Folio, though it later appeared in following publications. Titus fell out of favor (and performance) for hundreds of years. Recently (think mid 1900s), though, it has seen a resurgence, perhaps due to our increasing cultural fondness for violent media like the shows Hannibal and Dexter. I think it’s fascinating to see increased representation of the play, which brings me to the image below.

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Here, we see Titus (missing a hand), carrying a platter of food, fresh out of the oven, to his diners. The dish is a revenge specialty: meat pie. But this is not just any kind of meat. Titus has made his daughter’s rapists into dinner. Not only does Titus murder the Queen of the Goths’s two sons, he has his daughter watch. At his dinner party, Titus serves the son-pies to Tamora herself (along with the rest of the diners). After seeing Tamora partake of his twisted confection, Titus reveals his secret recipe, sparking an all-out brawl. It ends in a bloodbath, with nearly everyone dead.

What I find interesting about this image is that it carries (at least) two interpretations, one for the knowledgeable reader and another for an uninformed peruser of the book itself. To the latter, this image of Titus may seem innocent and possibly even friendly. It looks like a battle-scarred Roman is taking dinner to his friends or family. Nothing scary there. But when you know the story, the tension builds. Since we see the moment before everything explodes, readers may feel a sense of anxiety, suspense, and/or dread. Since we know what’s coming, we may read Titus as mentally unhinged, murderous, or even grave instead of calm.

There is so much an image can do to augment a text. Even the decision to make Titus young in the Scripps edition influences how the reader sees him. Another portrait of Titus shows him as an old man (pictured below).

I’m not sure about you, but if this is how I saw Titus, I’d be even more shocked at his behavior, since I’d have a hard time imaging someone this fragile-looking would have the strength to brutally murderer two young men before killing his own daughter in the name of her purity and honor. I know he has the sword, but he seems so calm and soft (maybe it’s the light blue).

They say a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. With that logic, a Titus in any other image would be just as violent, regardless of how jarring it may seem.

July 26, 2015September 15, 2021 by pom-alanaf

The Bearded Lady

This week, while browsing the Denison collection, my fellow researchers and I found some cross-dressing images. I’ll save those for later, but on a similar note, we also saw some images from Macbeth in the Honnold/Mudd library. Why is it similar, you ask? Because Shakespeare’s witches are not exclusively female.

(For your viewing pleasure–a drawing of a staging of Macbeth)

The witches in the Scottish play, interestingly, are never singled out as such by the characters, referred only to as the Weird Sisters. But, we may recognize them as such (if we were simply watching the play instead of reading the attributed lines) by their appearance given the social context surrounding witchcraft during the Renaissance. When the sisters first appear to Macbeth and Banquo, the latter cannot place their gender. He describes them as wild, withered, and with thin lips. Banquo even uses female pronouns, but pronounces that they “should be women,/ and yet your beards forbid me to interpret/ that you are so” (1.3.43-44). Essentially, the sisters are old bearded ladies.

(Image found in the Norman Philbrick Art Collection of the Honnold/Mudd Special Collections)

Some of you may be wondering why bearded old women equals witch. Well, there are a few factors at play, one of which being that the majority of persecuted witches in Early Modern England were old ladies living on their own. Supposedly, these witches cursed their neighbors with things like bad crops or domestic troubles. Typically, the English witches were widows, meaning that they had more monetary power than their younger and married counterparts. Back then, one of the only ways women could own property or have control over their money was if they were a widow. If their husband had owned property while alive, the wife would inherit the estate after his death if there were no other heirs. So, unmarried widows without a family had the potential for social deviancy–they didn’t need to rely on a man to support themselves.

What does this have to do with Macbeth? The weird sisters fit the above description of solo old woman with power of her own. Instead of having economic independence, Shakespeare’s witches have magical prowess and the power of prophecy. Also, we may see the Goddess Hecate’s appearance in the play as paralleling the connection between witches and the Devil.

But let’s get back to the beards. My interpretation is that the facial hair is a way to mark the gender deviance of the witches and to point to a masculine element in their character. The magic and independence points to a stereotypically masculine presentation and authority, resulting in the shifting of the witches’ gender expectations. It may follow that the internal shift may manifest externally, in this case, through the presence of beards. As a result, the weird sisters are both male and female, matching the transgressive image of the Early Modern English witch.

July 19, 2015September 15, 2021 by pom-alanaf

Artistic Interpretations of The Tempest

This week, in preparation for our exhibit, I’ve been thinking more about versions. More specifically, different versions of the same thing. So today, I’ll be talking about four different versions of The Tempest. I found some pretty cool stuff in the Honnold special collections, as well as in the collection at Denison Library (Scripps College). Not only did I see beautifully illustrated editions with the unaltered text, but I even found two operas.

The first piece I’m going to highlight today is from 1756 and pairs down the play to three shorter acts. Most of the prose is the same, but the main difference is that the writer converted Shakespeare’s dialogue into airs to be sung.

So, as you can see here, Ariel opens the performance with a song, instead of the play opening to a ship in a storm. To me, this is just another example of Shakespeare’s transcendence across genre.

The Tempest seems to lend itself to opera (or at least theatricality), since in the 1850s, another edition, another version, emerges. A publisher in Paris printed an edition of The Tempest in Italian, another opera in three acts.

This book, however, contained the music and was put together more like sheet music instead of a play,as the previous one presents itself.

As you can see, the book contains the music as well as the corresponding lyrics. It even differentiates the parts, making it possible to easily see who is supposed to be singing. More than the previous English opera, this version moves one step further from the original through translation. Arguably, you could argue that there are two forms of translation, the first from English to French (since it’s a French publisher), and then from French to Italian. Yet, despite these changes, for translation will never be exact, we may still recognize this product as The Tempest. Yet it is not just Shakespeare’s anymore. Each translator and each composer left an artistic mark on the piece. Though the final product may be far from the original, it does mirror the mode of collaborative creation during Shakespeare’s time.

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In the vein of co-creative influence
and difference, I want to quickly talk about two illustrated editions and the
illustrator’s choices (which impact a reader’s interpretation). The first book
contains watercolor illustrations, creating a softer overall image. The second
takes a more whimsical, almost sinister or mischievous approach.

In this first edition, Ariel is more
human than magic. He could be a fairy or an ordinary man based on his
appearance.

In contrast, the second edition
portrays his as more spritely, with more pointed features, as well as more
magical characteristics.

We see Ariel as a formless force,
clearly a magical being, but also with the suggestion that he himself is
elemental, is the wind.

These two different sets of
illustrations further point to the versatility of interpretation in The Tempest (as well as many of
Shakespeare’s other works). In each one, we see an artistic twist, but in each
we can see the core of the source, Shakespeare’s magical tale of an abandoned
island where music is in the wind and creatures lurk just out of sight.

July 12, 2015September 15, 2021 by pom-alanaf

Court Masques and the Illustrated Component of Performace

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I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about court masques
this week, specifically about the style Ben Jonson worked to form. For those of
you who don’t know, court masques were theatrical productions for British
nobles containing music, dance, songs, and poetry in varying degrees. In
addition to the dancing, performance, and revels, they included elaborate set
designs and special effects.

Now, I know Jonson isn’t Shakespeare, but they were
contemporaries, and in many ways, the masques were like plays of the time.
Though the two inhabited different spheres, private versus public, and dealt
with different notions of fiction and reality within the space of the
performance, both may be read as literature. By that, I mean that the play
remained isolated, whereas the masque could blur the line between fiction and
reality because many times, nobles themselves would act in the performances.
Other times, the masquers would dance with members of the audience, uniting the
actors and observers in an in-between space of active entertainment. Such an
amalgamation between fictional characters and real life persons sets the tone
for further combinations of different realities.

Why, you ask, have I been looking at something that is
definitively not Shakespeare? Well,
it’s because I’ve been finding several items in the Special Collections that
fall into the category of masque using Shakespeare’s plots and/or characters. And
on the note of combining different realities, one in particular performs a sort
of literary mash-up or crossover, making characters from Macbeth and Henry IV
interact with Greek Gods, such as Apollo and Minerva, and even muses, like
Comedy and Tragedy.

Not only does this masque mix the different worlds of
Shakespeare’s plays, it also combines them with classical mythology. Not only
does this fall into the masque tradition of using Classical figures to augment
the performance, but it sets up Shakespeare as worthy of such comparison. In a
way, the masque suggests that Shakespeare’s characters are as powerful and
everlasting as the Greco-Roman gods.

The court masque, in a way, lives on through printed
editions of Shakespeare’s plays by drawing on the concepts of spectacle,
design, and illustration as accompaniments to the text of a performance. A few
examples show colorful scenes from The
Tempest and Macbeth.

Both place the characters in a fictional world, choosing
instead to make the scenes they depict works of literature rather than theatre.
Through these pieces (including the masques), we see a form of genre
manipulation taking place, showing the versatility of Shakespeare’s works.

That’s just another reason to appreciate Shakespeare. And for further genre manipulation, watch The Lion King (a version of Hamlet), or even take a gander at a graphic novel based on the Bard and his characters (called Kill Shakespeare, and you can find it here through the library).

July 2, 2015September 15, 2021 by pom-alanaf

The Third and Final SURP/CCEP Researcher Chimes In

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Hi all!

I’m Alana, a rising
Senior, English major, and Writing Fellow at Pomona College. Just two weeks
ago, I returned home to sunny SoCal after 6 months in Cambridge, UK. Currently,
I’m part-time (but that may change; we’ll see). Anyway, in addition to curating
exhibits and working in CCEPs with Emma and Pieter, I’m also going to use this
library time to get started on my thesis examining magical language in
Shakespeare’s plays.

When I’ve told people
that I’ll be writing about Shakespeare (and will possibly be pursuing a
Master’s in it as well), I’ve gotten two reactions. 1) That’s awesome! or 2)
Ew, Shakespeare is no fun. Well, part of what my aim for this blog is to make
the latter group see is that Shakespeare is fun. For example,
take a look at this picture of an actor portraying Richard III.

Just look at his facial
expression and body position and try to tell me that he’s boring. There’s so much sass.

More that just this
picture, though, I’ve come across a few cool illustrations while searching for
a direction for my research. One (see below) is from The Tempest,
one of the magic plays and one of Shakespeare’s last plays. In this one,
Prospero commands certain natural forces and spirits of this abandoned island,
and we can see the extent of his power in this image from a 1871 decorative
edition of Shakespeare’s works.

This same edition
contains this image (see below), featuring the Bard himself (again, look at
that body position and tell me this is serious). As the creator, Shakespeare
sits with some of his characters, including the transformed Bottom (he’s the
donkey) from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The banner at the top asserts something we
have seen come true: Shakespeare has endured for all time (so far).

There’s a whimsical feel
to this picture and places Shakespeare in the same plane as his characters,
possibly suggesting that they exist in the same world. Considering how writer had
come to be “our immortal Shakespeare,” it is no surprise to see him placed in
the same plane as his characters (from the Proem of F.G. Waldron’s The Virgin Queen: A Drama in 5 Acts;
Attempted as a Sequel to Shakespeare’s Tempest. 1797).

Along these lines, I
found a masque called Shakespeare’s
Jubilee (1769) which places characters from plays like Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, and The Tempest in one
common setting, one which the bard eventually enters. Not only does this masque
reflect trends of people imitating his works, it represents a fictionalization
of the writer into an idea subject to creative manipulation rather than a
static historical figure.

(The Bard, right there in the masque with characters he created.)

I don’t know about you,
but I think that’s pretty cool. If you do, too, please stick around for more
posts to come. It’s nice to make your Internet acquaintance!

–Alana