Tag: Summer 2015

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.

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

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). 

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.

These 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 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. 

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. 

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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-18^th 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.

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.

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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