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

My Exits and My Entrances: Goodbye, SURP

That’s right, my SURP is over. I am now out of Claremont to hang out with my family (and then come back to do my junior year of college – oy). This week’s post will be a little lighter on the critical analysis of specific works of and relating to Shakespeare, and a little heavier on me talking about my time this summer.

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Although please, enjoy this picture of Yorick smoking a pipe…I know I do. As to my work this summer, it has done a lot for me for my future in research, especially considering I didn’t really know what research was when I first got here. This summer has been one of embracing ambiguity and going on random tangents that may or may not be helpful to answer research questions that are not actually fully formed. But it is possible to do important intellectual work whether for myself or for the research, even when you don’t know what the research is.

An important part of research, and something that I’m still working on, is taking my expectations or assumptions and flipping them. I came into this summer viewing Shakespeare’s words as the ultimate versions of his works, which meant that all kooky adaptations were a bit of an affront to the original Shakespeare. Although I still think there is a lot to be gained from reading the original plays, with all their possibilities, the idea of an “ultimate” Shakespeare is not the best way to go about enjoying or trying to understand the work. I needed to rethink my expectations for “ultimate,” by trying not to have an idea in my head about what ultimate means.

I’m still not sure exactly what I expect from Shakespeare, nor what that means about the orignal plays or the experience of viewing/reading Shakespeare. But I have learned a lot about research and my own thoughts this summer, and I’m glad to be able to hopefully share some of those thoughts in the exhibit this spring.

Thanks for reading these blog posts, and good luck with your lives! Enjoy the exhibit in Special Collections and Denison in the spring.

Signing off, Emma

 

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.

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.

Ruff and Tumble

Try as I might, I can never seem to internalize the fact that people in Shakespeare’s time really wore the tights and ruffs and doublets as fashion. I can’t picture anyone choosing to wear that unless it was a joke, or a costume party, although that is probably just an effect of the fact that I’m commenting on these fashions ~450 years in the future (I guess skinny jeans are sort of like the modern version of Elizabethan hose so I really can’t talk), but regardless, I can’t see those outfits without interpreting them as a throwback to Shakespeare rather than a representation of the world at that time – Shakespeare is likely the most culturally significant person from that time, but all over the world people dressed somewhat similarly, and seeing a whole style of dress as a reference to a playwright whose work is often not performed in Elizabethan dress ignores the trend of fashion all over Europe.

For your viewing pleasure today I have a few images of French nobility dressed as they would have been in the late 1500s. Side note: the sassy hand gestures in most portraits of people from the past consistently give me happiness.

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IMG_7063.jpgIMG_7066.jpgThese pictures have some elements that remind me of the French period dramas I love so much: the socks with the tie at the top, the fan that Lady In Pink carries.  The rest of the clothing – the wide skirts, the almost ludicrously large ruffs, the doublets, and yes, the hose – are all staples of Elizabethan fashion. As it turns out, ruffs were clothes for both the nobility and the lower classes – after the addition of starch, they could be worn over and over again, and thus became popular for many classes of people. These outfits were normal for everyone.

More interesting to me (besides reminiscing about historical fashion in movies) is my reaction to seeing people in these clothes. As I mentioned, my first thought upon seeing these, and likely the first thought for many other people, is, “Whoa. Shakespeare throwback.” History tends to crystallize into the greatest hits of a century or a decade or what have you; Elizabethan times are Shakespeare and the plague and ruffs, for me. My focus on Shakespeare makes me wonder what other history and life I’m unaware of; of course, Shakespeare is the most talented playwright of that time, but just because J.K. Rowling is the most successful young adult fiction writer of our time doesn’t mean that everything else in that genre is worthless.

In terms of this SURP, my time is almost up; I have one more week (and one more blog post!) to go. If you’ve liked the sort of analysis my co-researchers and I have been putting forward, come see the exhibit in Spring 2016, and come talk to us at the poster conference this September 3! 

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).
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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. 

Now, a Joke: Richard III, Othello, and Shylock Walk into a Bar…

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Here
we have “The Muster of Bays’s Troops,” what appears to be a satirical cartoon featuring
many fictional characters getting ready to fight a war by singing a little ditty.
Most of these characters are unfamiliar or insignificant in terms of
Shakespeare (although it is fun to see Punch of Punch and Judy in there), but
scattered around the battlefield we see King Richard (#2), Shylock from
Merchant of Venice (#8), and Othello
from the play of the same name (#17, holding the flag in the middle).

These
three Shakespearean characters span the range of Shakespeare’s works; Richard
(I believe he is Richard III but I
can’t really tell) is from a history, Othello a tragedy, and Shylock a comedy. Unfortunately,
as I am not yet an expert on mid-18th century humor, and because the
internet was mostly unhelpful, I can’t tell you why these three characters
specifically made the cut, or even what this piece satirizes…Bibliotheca histrionica, a catalogue of the
theatrical and miscellaneous library of Mr. John Field which will be sold by
auction
-the catchiest of titles- briefly mentions this image as a “satirical on Garrick and Lacy, with verses.”
David Garrick was a widely celebrated actor, well known for his performances of
Shakespeare. In the cast list of this image, King Richard is specified as the
performance of “G—–,” which I am interpreting as a reference to Garrick.

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In
the song attached to this piece, characters are often referred to not as the character,
but as the actor who portrays them, which places the reader at a distance from
the characters and emphasizes the strong relationship that often arose between
actor and character. It also seems to suggest that the character no longer
matters; Garrick could be playing anyone at all and still have his spot in the
image. Character is secondary to actor.

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In
this song, each character is mentioned briefly as part of the army that will
overwhelm the rebels. Part of the joke, I think, is that these men are mostly
unassuming/unimpressive… The viewer should “See puny Richard with high Heels, / In G—–‘s
Figure perking…And Serjeant Punch,
pure Sport afford, / With mauling these Rascallions.” Punch is dressed like a
jester, and although known for, well, punching, he is not the commanding physical
or leaderly presence one might expect from a sergeant. Richard here is
emasculated and used as an example of a non-intimidating fighter.

Although
the writer here uses specific details from the plays – Shylock has sworn to “have
your Lights and Liver” – these characters do not seem meant to be faithful
representations of Shakespeare’s characters. They pass out of the realm of
being specific characters in his plays to being convenient archetypes or
examples to carry on a joke. In the Hamlet
burlesque (comedic, irreverent retelling of Hamlet in one act), the preface brings up the people who would be
offended by mistreating the Bard and his characters in such a way, and mentions
that there is no writer better suited to a burlesque. Not to change his plays
and characters in such a way would imply that Shakespeare’s work is not strong
enough on its own to withstand a liberal retelling, that Shakespeare’s
reputation is fragile and can be ruined by a parody. This idea reframes extremely
different productions as not taking away from the brilliance of Shakespeare but
adding to it by showing how recognizable the play is even in something like a
burlesque, and as a symbol of how far Shakespeare inspired the next writer to
go. 


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The Bearded Lady

his 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.

Shakes-Pierre

I wasn’t always the Shakespeare-reading fiend I am now; my introduction to his plays was slow, and I didn’t really enjoy it until I took a class where we read a new play every two weeks. His language is old and complicated, and it felt like it required so much hard work to get something out of it that it didn’t feel worth it to read Shakespeare. So much of Shakespeare comes from wordplay and old idioms that are incomprehensible to the modern reader. Trying to read it in modern English can feel a bit like translation for a number of reasons. So how does one go about approximating Shakespeare in translation between languages? French, my studied language of choice, has not changed nearly as much as English has in the last 450 years, and the language structure is different enough to significantly change meter and rhyme schemes. 
I looked at a copy of Hamlet translated into French in Special Collections, specifically at the scene (III.ii) in which Hamlet lays his head in Ophelia’s lap just before the play and makes a LOT of lewd puns. How well do puns and double meanings carry over? How would a translator even begin to do that job? Here is one part of that scene (just after he asks if he can put his head in her lap), in the original English and French:
HAMLET: Do you think I meant country matters?
OPHELIA: I think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET: That’s a fair thought to lie between maid’s legs.
OPHELIA: What is, my lord?
HAMLET: Nothing. 
Hamlet is referring to oral sex, being highly inappropriate but not talking about sex on the primary level of meaning. Everyone present would likely have known exactly what he was getting at, but he never explicitly says it. It adds to the discomfort of the scene, and shows even more how much Hamlet has slipped out of his mother’s control. 
Now in French (although please, remember: my French is imperfect!):
HAMLET: Pensez-vous donc que je voulusse,            Do you thus think that I want, 
comme les paysans grossiers, indécemment              Like coarse peasants, to sit
m’asseoir sur vos genoux?                                          indecently in your lap?
OPHÉLIA: Je ne pense rien, monseigneur.                 I don’t think anything, my lord.
HAMLET: C’est une riante image… (1)                        That is a laughable image…
OPHÉLIA: Quelle image, monseigneur?                     What image, my lord?
HAMLET: Rien.                                                            Nothing.
The crudeness of “That’s a fair thought to lie between maid’s legs” is impossible to express without being too obvious. The French text simply provides the English for that line. Each line seems wordier, making this scene a bit clunkier than it was before. I am always impressed by translators, and I think it’s important that people from all countries be able to enjoy any work of literature they want, but is it still the same Shakespeare in another language?
The thing is, as unfortunate as it is that French can’t really approximate some of these great lines nor the Elizabethan language style, there’ a good chance that these great lines aren’t quite right in English either. There is no such thing as a Shakespeare manuscript; the earliest copies of the plays, Quartos and Folios, often differ so much from each other that they are almost different plays. We are guessing at what the original Shakespeare is. So while the French is missing something central, chances are that I am also missing something big in the original language.

Lear Woodcuts at Denison

I’m back with more material from Denison Special Collections today.Along with the extra-illustrated Shakespeare works, one of my favorite items was this series of woodcuts from Claire van Vliet. They’re in a 1986 printing, The Tragedie of King Lear, that replicates the spelling, punctuation, lineation, and italics from the First Folio of 1623. There were too many good cuts for me to post, so I’ve included some of my favorites below (click to enlarge the images).
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Here we see the height of the storm in Act 3, followed by a cowering, mad King Lear:
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I find this cut especially interesting because of Lear’s animalistic features–they seem to mimic the Fool’s lines, “[Wise men] know not how their wits to wear, their manners are so apish.” The portrayal of Lear as being animalistic recently got attention from Michael Clody, who brings up numerous instances where the King himself evokes animal features. They ultimately form a sort of primal cry at the point of Cordelia’s death, as Lear shouts “Howl, Howl, Howl, Howl!” The scene is portrayed below, in van Vliet’s most dramatic image:

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Clody writes that this scene fundamentally merges the man and animal within Lear, as the “Howl” also evokes the question, “How?” The cries of “Howl” or “How” are not answered (nor, if we take “Howl” to be a command, is it followed); Clody says Lear trades an “objective communal truth” to explain what has just happened. for simply the “experience that the cry is.”
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Here we have Lear (right) and the blinded Gloucester (left), posed symmetrically in a way that highlights their similar persons and situations. Lear’s plot and Gloucester’s subplot echo each other in more ways than we could discuss here. This moment comes in Act 4, Scene 6, when Gloucester and Lear meet after the storm. Both have, as Stanley Cavell observes, given into destruction–Lear to the storm, and Gloucester to the cliffs of Dover at his attempted suicide. Gloucester cries, “O ruined man! This great world/ Shall so wear to nought,” implying that Lear’s fate is not only Lear’s, but that of the world (or perhaps just the kingdom) around him. But of course, it is Gloucester’s fate as well; both come to their demise by the end of the play. The symmetrical image above, then, shows Lear seeing a reflection of himself in Gloucester (we can quite easily imagine a mirror between them). And while Gloucester sees no mirror, “O ruined man!” could just as easily refer to himself, such that Lear indeed acts as a reflection.
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Lastly, we have the reconciliation of Lear and Cordelia in Act 4, Scene 7. Lear in this image seems to have worn down even further since the scene prior, further resembling the weakened Gloucester.

Reading with Extra-illustrated Shakespeare

This past week, my fellow CCEPS-SURPers and I went to Denison Library at Scripps College to plan for an exhibit they will be housing in the spring. The collection at Denison has some truly impressive artwork, including a book of surreal Lear woodcuts that particularly caught my attention. Today, though, I want to show you the extra-illustrated Henley Shakespeare, which is absolutely stunning.
The Henley Shakespeare works were commissioned by Ellen Browning Scripps for publication over the first five years of the 20th century. Twenty-six copies were commissioned–one for each letter of the alphabet. Denison has “S,” for Scripps (naturally). The editions on their own are quite a sight, bound with red goatskin and featuring silk endpapers. Each book has two plays (besides the sonnets), with a portrait of one heroine each on the front and back inside covers.
But what’s most striking about these editions is, surprisingly, not the beautiful bindings, but rather the artwork that’s inside inside. Most notably, at some time in this copy’s history (we don’t know when), an unknown artist (or unknown artists) went through each play and added their own art nouveau illustrations, right on the page. Take a look at this title page for Measure for Measure:

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If the woman above is a character from Measure for Measure, it’s not obvious who it is–it seems to be meant more as an eye-catching embellishment. The gold painted on, found on each play’s title page and the start of many acts and scenes, is particularly attractive. Another gold-painted embellishment from this play bears mention:
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Here the artwork has quite clearly taken precedence over the text, as a number of words on the left-hand page are obscured by the opaque gold. The fact that the illustration is in the middle seam would seem to indicate that the illustrations (or at least this one) were actually drawn and painted before this copy was bound. This illustration again doesn’t seem to relate directly with the text, but I thought it was worth displaying simply for its extravagance. 
Some of the other illustrations are more directly related to the scenes at hand, and are perhaps more intellectually interesting, as they constitute interpretive acts on the page itself–the artist and the playwright interacting within the text observed by the reader. Take a look at this watercolor of Cordelia from Act I, Scene I of Lear:
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The frustration on Cordelia’s face is particularly striking. It’s not obvious which line her glare is linked with. If we take it to be an illustration from the first line, it lends a not-so-subtle sarcasm to her first farewell. Referring to her sisters as “the Jewels of our father” is certainly not a genuine line, but whether her spite is forward or veiled is a rather large difference; is Cordelia trying to call out her sisters as fakes, or is she trying to save face as she leaves by appeasing them? Either way, after the coldness of Regan and Goneril, Cordelia is by no means trying to save face; her prophecy is scathing, such that the painting could just as well illustrate her “Well may you prosper.” 
I would find it more interesting if the painting were of the first line, simply because it would constitute an interpretative decision of a more ambiguous feature of the scene. The text leaves open whether Cordelia’s initial farewell is outwardly bitter or attempting sincerity; but this ambiguity cannot so easily be displayed in a realization of this text, whether on stage or in art. The ambiguity gives way to an interpretation that represents primarily one, rather than all, of the text’s possibilities.