Shakespeare

[Elgarian Redux]

And, I am prompted to slip The Tempest right back into the tray.

You could do worse, Karl ....

I'll post an image of Caliban's Garden below. It employs collage (a reproduction of a 16th-century engraving) superimposed on a charcoal drawing. The artist is Mike Healey, whose work has enriched my imaginative life for over 25 years.

And here's an extract from an essay I published on 'myth and the imagination' in 2007 (9 years after the exhibition, Tempest mania was still going strong for me, as you see.) The text is a response to having lived with Caliban's Garden during that time (the picture forms the centrepiece to our Tempest display).

Caliban's Garden

We see a prominent foreground figure, set against an organic backdrop. Caliban's presence in the picture is inescapably physical, biological, creaturely. He assumes a monstrous aspect because he's presented to us naked and raw, a Renaissance anatomical diagram, clinically drawn and superimposed on the lush background. His garden is literally, we might think, the rampant sprouting vegetable world that entangles him; that gave birth to him; that will reclaim him in the end.

Yet this is the creature who in The Tempest, against all our expectations, against all probability, suddenly reveals the nature of his inner life:

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

These words change everything. The picture is transformed by them. The garden is no longer the source of Caliban; he is the source of it. This is the garden of his most unsuspected and intimate desires; the garden of his imagination, of his hopes and dreams. Caliban is enslaved by his physical appetites and needs. He's violent, lustful, gullible, and vengeful – yet he's also haunted and driven by his richly fertile, imaginative, spiritual response to the world.

    This picture, coupled with Shakespeare's words, makes one of the most profound statements about the human condition that I know. We're all Calibans, struggling to come to terms with our physicality and its limitations, buffeted by the relentless assaults, paradoxes, and conflicts of the material world. But also, as Calibans, we have our gardens of imagination, full of noises, sounds and sweet airs. Their roots go deep. We draw spiritual nourishment from them to fuel our response to the world. We write poems about it; we make pictures of it. Most importantly, we mythicize it...

[Karl Henning]

You could do worse, Karl ....

I'll post an image of Caliban's Garden below. It employs collage (a reproduction of a 16th-century engraving) superimposed on a charcoal drawing. The artist is Mike Healey, whose work has enriched my imaginative life for over 25 years.

And here's an extract from an essay I published on 'myth and the imagination' in 2007 (9 years after the exhibition, Tempest mania was still going strong for me, as you see.) The text is a response to having lived with Caliban's Garden during that time (the picture forms the centrepiece to our Tempest display).

Beautiful, friend, thank 'ee! And indeed, last night, the line "when I waked, I cried to dream again" especially shone a light upon me.

[Elgarian Redux]

Beautiful, friend, thank 'ee! And indeed, last night, the line "when I waked, I cried to dream again" especially shone a light upon me.

Your thoughts have shone plenty of light on me over the years, old chap.

I'm looking around to see what photos I've got lurking here. Here's Ferdinand, below (a pencil drawing). Each work was exhibited with a quotation from the play - not because the picture illustrated the text, but rather so that text and image worked together. I've tried to preserve that multifaceted character by labelling each work with the corresponding quotation on the dining room walls.

The quotation in this case is:

I am, in my condition, a prince, Miranda; I do think, a king.

The image (I imagine) tries to show Ferdinand in a state of flux, with a sense of potential corruption. Prince? Or King? And if King ... then what?

The pictures don't offer an interpretation of the play, as such, but rather provide a kind of parallel visual commentary with a surrealist flavour.

[Karl Henning]

Your thoughts have shone plenty of light on me over the years, old chap.

I'm looking around to see what photos I've got lurking here. Here's Ferdinand, below (a pencil drawing). Each work was exhibited with a quotation from the play - not because the picture illustrated the text, but rather so that text and image worked together. I've tried to preserve that multifaceted character by labelling each work with the corresponding quotation on the dining room walls.

The quotation in this case is:

I am, in my condition, a prince, Miranda; I do think, a king.

The image (I imagine) tries to show Ferdinand in a state of flux, with a sense of potential corruption. Prince? Or King? And if King ... then what?

The pictures don't offer an interpretation of the play, as such, but rather provide a kind of parallel visual commentary with a surrealist flavour.

Love the tone and shading. My impulse purchase last night is the 2010 film with Helen Mirren as Prospero. Will report. One of my favorite Library people tells me that I can stream the 1979 film, if I can find the Roku jigger I speculatively purchased some time ago, and figure out how it works.

[Karl Henning]

And, the next play I've kind of felt it's time I got to know it: The Winter's Tale.

[Elgarian Redux]

Love the tone and shading. My impulse purchase last night is the 2010 film with Helen Mirren as Prospero. Will report. One of my favorite Library people tells me that I can stream the 1979 film, if I can find the Roku jigger I speculatively purchased some time ago, and figure out how it works.

What's a Roku jigger, Karl? Is it the sort of thing that sneaks away and hides under the bed?

[Karl Henning]

What's a Roku jigger, Karl? Is it the sort of thing that sneaks away and hides under the bed?

It may as well have, for all the use I've not made of't.... it connects, methinks, to the TV via the HDMI slot, probably connects to WiFi, and may possibly revolutionize my telly experience.

[Elgarian Redux]

It may as well have, for all the use I've not made of't.... it connects, methinks, to the TV via the HDMI slot, probably connects to WiFi, and may possibly revolutionize my telly experience.

Ah - this brings clarity. I had an image of a little furry creature that jumps up and down a lot.

[Karl Henning]

Ah - this brings clarity. I had an image of a little furry creature that jumps up and down a lot.

And on a frankly trivial note: In the Firesign Theatre's Holmes spoof, The Case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, one character is a businessman with a pignut plantation and a pig-oil beer brewery. (A Chicago mobster observes, "this pig-oil beer runs through you like a hot car." So I am delighted at last to learn whence the Firesign pignut came.

[Karl Henning]

And, the next play I've kind of felt it's time I got to know it: The Winter's Tale.

This was (in addition to the interest of the play itself, of course) a good mental exercise for me. I'm out of practice approaching the plays with which I am not already familiar. (I wasn't yet familiar with The Tempest, either, and why I plugged right into that one were an interesting q.) At one point, my ear so lulled by the environment of the language, I might almost have nodded off. The production itself was a bit of a hodgepodge, or, that was my impression. I don't mean that derogatorily. That aspect might have made it more of a challenge for me to get an overall sense of the dramatis personæ (see "good mental exercise" above.) Were I more of a critic I might point at this or that element to serve a thesis that it is not one of the best plays, perhaps. But instead I found it engagingly entertaining, and isn't that the point?

[Elgarian Redux]

I'm going to continue harping on for a little while longer about The Tempest - or rather, Mike Healey's surrealist interpretations of the play.

I said that Caliban's Garden was the centrepiece of one wall of our dining room. On an adjacent wall is another magnificent centrepiece: Prospero's Library. Mike Healey came from a strong background in theatre and his artworks inspired by The Tempest are often theatrical in character, including several remarkable 3-dimensional 'stage sets'. Prospero's Library is one of these. Behind the frame is a box about 2 ft high and maybe 5 inches deep, creating a space into which he builds his strange constructions using reproductions of renaissance engravings, often involving a certain subversion of traditional perspective. One can explore this curiously magical space for considerable time.

It's very hard to photograph clearly, but I've had a shot, and here it is. It was accompanied in the exhibition by the quotation:  My Library was dukedom large enough, which I've retained.

[Karl Henning]

I'm going to continue harping on for a little while longer about The Tempest - or rather, Mike Healey's surrealist interpretations of the play.

I said that Caliban's Garden was the centrepiece of one wall of our dining room. On an adjacent wall is another magnificent centrepiece: Prospero's Library. Mike Healey came from a strong background in theatre and his artworks inspired by The Tempest are often theatrical in character, including several remarkable 3-dimensional 'stage sets'. Prospero's Library is one of these. Behind the frame is a box about 2 ft high and maybe 5 inches deep, creating a space into which he builds his strange constructions using reproductions of renaissance engravings, often involving a certain subversion of traditional perspective. One can explore this curiously magical space for considerable time.

It's very hard to photograph clearly, but I've had a shot, and here it is. It was accompanied in the exhibition by the quotation:  My Library was dukedom large enough, which I've retained.

Harp on, buddy!

[Kalevala]

All this reminds me of Margaret Atwood's brief "Gertrude Talks Back":

https://lucylit.weebly.com/uploads/6/1/5/6/61560063/margaret_atwoods_gertrude_talks_back.pdf

I'll have to check that out.  I've read some of her books and greatly enjoyed/appreciated them.

K

[Mandryka]

Hamlet after all is in his late teens/early twenties. Prime age for princes at loose ends who've lost out on succeeding their father on the throne to cause trouble.

We know that Yorick has been dead for 23 years, and that Hamlet knew him well -- that puts Hamlet at about 30 I'd say.

  Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his
trade that he will keep out water a great while; and
your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead
body. Here's a skull now hath lien you i' th' earth
three-and-twenty years.
HAMLET  Whose was it?
GRAVEDIGGER  A whoreson mad fellow's it was.
Whose do you think it was?
HAMLET  Nay, I know not.
GRAVEDIGGER  A pestilence on him for a mad rogue!
He poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once.
This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick's skull, the
King's jester.
HAMLET  This?
GRAVEDIGGER  E'en that.
HAMLET, taking the skull  Let me see. Alas, poor
Yorick! I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite
jest,

[(poco) Sforzando]

We know that Yorick has been dead for 23 years, and that Hamlet knew him well -- that puts Hamlet at about 30 I'd say.

  Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his
trade that he will keep out water a great while; and
your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead
body. Here's a skull now hath lien you i' th' earth
three-and-twenty years.
HAMLET  Whose was it?
GRAVEDIGGER  A whoreson mad fellow's it was.
Whose do you think it was?
HAMLET  Nay, I know not.
GRAVEDIGGER  A pestilence on him for a mad rogue!
He poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once.
This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick's skull, the
King's jester.
HAMLET  This?
GRAVEDIGGER  E'en that.
HAMLET, taking the skull  Let me see. Alas, poor
Yorick! I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite
jest,

I would agree with that.

[Madiel]

Today I learned that when Polonius says he played Julius Caesar in his university days and being killed by Brutus, it's probably a joke based on the same actor originally playing Julius Caesar and then Polonius. And another actor playing both Brutus and Hamlet.

[JBS]

We know that Yorick has been dead for 23 years, and that Hamlet knew him well -- that puts Hamlet at about 30 I'd say.

  Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his
trade that he will keep out water a great while; and
your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead
body. Here's a skull now hath lien you i' th' earth
three-and-twenty years.
HAMLET  Whose was it?
GRAVEDIGGER  A whoreson mad fellow's it was.
Whose do you think it was?
HAMLET  Nay, I know not.
GRAVEDIGGER  A pestilence on him for a mad rogue!
He poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once.
This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick's skull, the
King's jester.
HAMLET  This?
GRAVEDIGGER  E'en that.
HAMLET, taking the skull  Let me see. Alas, poor
Yorick! I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite
jest,

I missed that...

Meanwhile I've just gotten this out of the library



With particular emphasis on the 1590s, when the narrative poems and most of the sonnets were written. He points out that (starting in the mid-90s) the narrative poems were regularly printed and that in his own era Shakespeare was seen as a poet who wrote plays, not the other way round as we moderns might think.

[SimonNZ]

Shakespeare was seen as a poet who wrote plays, not the other way round as we moderns might think.

I was reading somewhere recently that for most of the public of the time the play's writer would have been as famous and known as the screenwriter of modern successful films are to most of us. Then as now it would have been primarily known as the star's vehicle.

[Mandryka]

I would agree with that.

Like everything else in life, it turns out to be highly debatable. Wikipedia is good on it

line about the length of the Gravedigger's career does not appear in the First Quarto of Hamlet; in that text Yorick is said to have been in the ground only twelve years. Furthermore, in Belleforest, possibly one of Shakespeare's sources for the story, it is said that Amleth has "not attained to man's estate". And in the original spelling of the First Folio (F1) text, one of the two authoritative texts for the play, the Gravedigger's answer to how long he has "been a grave-maker" reads "Why heere in Denmarke: I haue bin sixeteene heere, man and Boy thirty yeares." "Sixteene" is usually rendered as "sexton" (a modernization of the second quarto's "sexten"), even in modern texts that take F1 as their "copy text". But modernizing the punctuation—a normal practice in modernized texts—renders "Why heere in Denmarke: I haue bin sixeteene heere—man and Boy thirty yeares." In other words, this reading suggests that he has been a gravedigger for 16 years, but that he has lived in Denmark for 30. According to this logic, then, it is the Gravedigger who is 30, whereas Hamlet is only 16.

However, the difference between a sexton and a grave digger must also be taken into account. A sexton oversees many different jobs around the church and surrounding areas. A grave digger simply digs graves. There are sextons who also dig graves and some that do not. It is completely possible that the Gravedigger has been a sexton for 30 years, but has not been digging graves for that entire time. This could be another example of the character's very round-about way of speaking.

However, this reading has the disadvantage that in the Folio the length of time Yorick has been in the ground is said to be twenty-three years, meaning that he had been dead seven years by the time Hamlet was born. Another theory offered is that the play was originally written with the view that Hamlet was 16 or 17, but since Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed, not read, these lines were likely changed so Burbage (who was almost always the protagonist in Shakespeare's plays) could play the role.