One of the many great things about the history plays is the way that they present a cross-section of the societies of the time. Now it's been said that the term "chronicle" is a more accurate term for the plays in question, because they are primarily concerned with the highest levels of power, and to a considerable extant this is true, but they also provide some unforgettable glimpses of life in a wide variety of social levels and settings. And it's a great mental exercise (and great fun) to try to imagine the stories of the characters we encounter, i.e. the events that may have led them to the particular place and time that they occupy in the play(s). In Henry IV, Part One for example, there is a very unusual scene (2.1) involving two carriers and an ostler working at an Inn in Rochester that shows that their concerns are quite removed from the problems of those at the top (managing wars, quelling rebellions and so forth). Or perhaps they are meant to personify the dissatisfaction felt throughout the land. Either way, it's a scene filled with remarkable detail of gritty fifteenth century life. Here's an excerpt:

SECOND CARRIER

Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that

is the next way to give poor jades the bots: this

house is turned upside down since Robin Ostler died.

FIRST CARRIER

Poor fellow, never joyed since the price of oats

rose; it was the death of him.

SECOND CARRIER

I think this be the most villanous house in all

London road for fleas: I am stung like a tench.

FIRST CARRIER

Like a tench! by the mass, there is ne'er a king

christen could be better bit than I have been since

the first cock.

SECOND CARRIER

Why, they will allow us ne'er a jordan, and then we

leak in your chimney; and your chamber-lie breeds

fleas like a loach.

FIRST CARRIER

What, ostler! come away and be hanged!

SECOND CARRIER

I have a gammon of bacon and two razors of ginger,

to be delivered as far as Charing-cross.

FIRST CARRIER

God's body! the turkeys in my pannier are quite

starved. What, ostler! A plague on thee! hast thou

never an eye in thy head? canst not hear? An

'twere not as good deed as drink, to break the pate

on thee, I am a very villain. Come, and be hanged!

hast thou no faith in thee?

Great news: Raul Bhaneja's brilliant Hamlet (Solo) is still on the boards. In fact, it's coming to Montreal's Centaur Theatre for three performances this weekend. In an acting tour de force, Bhaneja plays seventeen roles, each one physically, verbally and psychologically distinctive - I think his Polonius is the finest I've seen, for example. And it poses some very interesting questions regarding topics such as the true nature of personality, and the necessity of thinking like an actor to appreciate drama. It also brings to mind the fact that this particular play has sparked creativity in so many ways - with productions such as this one and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead being two obvious examples. And there are many others, with even more to come. It's a remarkable work for this reason alone, and this version is a must-see.

My next lecture series begins on January 18 (full schedule below) and its subjects will be the English Histories and the 2011 Stratford Season. The eleven plays to be covered are, with a couple of exceptions (Richard III, Twelfth Night, and perhaps The First Part of Henry IV), not among the most frequently performed or read of Shakespeare's works, which is a large part of the reason that I've chosen to focus on them. They deserve more attention, to put it simply. For example, although the history plays may seem removed from us in terms of time (the eight in this series are set during the fifteenth-century War of the Roses), they are nevertheless vital and immediate in terms of content. Their political sophistication is unsurpassed in literature, and the characters and families they contain are unforgettable. In fact, one of the great themes is the effects that political decisions have on families, and vice versa. I'll have plenty more to say about all of this in posts to come, and at the lectures, of course:

George Wall

Shakespeare Lectures

The English Histories & The 2011 Stratford Season

Richard II

Tuesday, January 18 at 11 am

Wednesday, January 19 at 7 pm

The Two Parts of Henry IV

Tuesday, February 1 at 11 am

Wednesday, February 2 at 7 pm

Henry V

Tuesday, February 15 at 11 am

Wednesday, February 16 at 7 pm

The Three Parts of Henry VI

Tuesday, March 1 at 11 am

Wednesday, March 2 at 7 pm

Richard III

Tuesday, March 15 at 11 am

Wednesday, March 16 at 7 pm

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Tuesday, March 29 at 11 am

Wednesday, March 30 at 7 pm

Twelfth Night

Tuesday, April 12 at 11 am

Wednesday, April 13 at 7 pm

Titus Andronicus

Tuesday, April 26 at 11 am

Wednesday, April 27 at 7 pm

The Atwater Library

1200 Atwater

Westmount, Quebec

(514) 935-7344

Admission: $20

Further to yesterday's post, in which I quoted from Stephen Orgel's excellent introduction to the Oxford Tempest, I would like to add two points for consideration. The first is that Shakespeare was certainly aware of the importance of collaborators in getting his work out there in front of people to do what it should, i.e. to communicate. And these collaborators included his sources, his playwright colleagues, his actors and fellow theater professionals, and his audiences, all of whom, the evidence shows, were held in high regard by Shakespeare. The second is that although it could be argued that drama itself, a form of expression which by its very nature requires high levels of participation and interpretation, deserves as much credit as Shakespeare for the creativity that his work has inspired in others, I would simply contend that it would be difficult to imagine the passage in question being written about any other writer. In other words, the openness, the possibilities, the necessity of interpretation are not in his work by accident.

Every so often I come across a passage that seems to me so elemental in its ideas that I feel obliged to quote it without any edits. The following comes from Stephen Orgel's fascinating introduction to the Oxford Edition of The Tempest (1987), and among its many important points, it should help playgoers (me included) to realize that a performance is more finite in its possibilities than is a text. Or, as Emily Dickinson put it, "A pen has so many inflections, a voice but one." Here's the unabridged excerpt:

"But all interpretations are essentially arbitrary, and Shakespearian texts are by nature open, offering the director or critic only a range of possibilities. It is performances and interpretations that are closed, in the sense that they select from and limit the possibilities the text offers in the interests of creating a coherent reading. In what follows I have undertaken to be faithful to what I see as the characteristic openness of the text that has come down to us, and to the variety and complexity of its contexts and their implications. To do this is to indicate the range of the play's possibilities; but it is also to acknowledge that many of them (as is the nature of possibilities) are mutually contradictory. There is nothing anomalous in this. The text that has come down to us is poetry and drama of the highest order, but it is also, paradoxically, both less and more than literature. It is, in its inception, a play script to be realized in performance, with broad areas of ambiguity allowing, and indeed necessitating, a large degree of interpretation. In its own time its only life was in performance, and one way to think of it is as an anthology of performances before Ralph Crane transcribed it for the printer in 1619 or 1620. As a printed text, it is designed to provide in addition the basis for an infinitude of future performances, real and imagined. For all our intuitions of autobiography, the author in it is characteristically unassertive, and offers little guidance in questions of interpretation or coherence. For Shakespeare and his company, the text was only the beginning, not the end, of the play."

The attitude that Shakespeare had toward collaborators, sources, actors and other writers seems best described as one of appreciation. It's clear that he recognized that what he was engaged in was part of a larger framework, both as a playwright working in Elizabethan/Jacobean London, and as a literary artist "for all time", to use Jonson's famous words, and that to be successful (as he was) would require working with and learning from other people. His level-headed attitude toward himself is also a model to learn from. A series of accomplishments of the magnitude that we're considering here doesn't happen without a disciplined and philosophically advanced self-image. In fact, it's interesting to think of him, on a personal level, in contrast with some of his most famous characters, Lear or Hamlet for example, who have trouble seeing themselves accurately. Harold Goddard concludes his very interesting essay in The Meaning of Shakespeare (1951) by calling Shakespeare "an unfallen Hamlet", after having explained that the prince, the character most approaching the capacity of Shakespeare, having to choose between force and art, fatally selects the former. It's purely conjecture, but it must be said that it's difficult to imagine Shakespeare ever having done the same.

Because there is so much that we don't know about the actual process involved in the writing of the plays, we will probably never be able to ascertain with any real accuracy the importance of collaboration to Shakespeare. But there are some clues. Of all the forms of literature, it seems obvious that drama is the most collaborative. The mere presence of the actors and audience alone would seem to prove that contention. Also, in Shakespeare's time, there was much less concern for copyrights and fame than there is now. Rather the idea seems to have been to simply get the plays onto the stage, and the people into the theatres. The fact that Shakespeare never seemed to have any sort of involvement with the publishing of his plays seems to prove this point; only his early poetry got this type of attention from him. Then there is the matter of collaboration with other playwrights. And while scholars generally agree that approximately a quarter of the plays show evidence of having had more than one author, this is an area that remains contentious as well. A final point for today: Shakespeare's collaboration, whatever it entailed, is evidence of strength, not weakness. The fact that each play contains different themes, technical feats, poetic ideas, philosophical content, psychological observations, and approaches to language - and that all of it was done with unparalleled attention to detail - it all points to only one possible conclusion: Shakespeare was a great listener. More on this tomorrow.