Shakespeare

[Steve Minkin]

We've had no volunteer Welshwomen stepping forward for Lady Mortimer's role, so I'm putting the call out there again for someone to fake a few lines in Welsh. The great jazz drummer Billy Higgins recorded several Brazilian-influenced tracks in which he sang in faux-Portuguese, laughed about it in interviews. The rest of us will never know.
Here's the scene, from the BBC's Hollow Crown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4utuu5KjjU

For the lines to scan, Glendower should be pronounced with two syllables – glin-dour. The original Welsh spelling was Glyndwr. (The Welsh should borrow some vowels from the Hawaiians.)

In the opening scene, Westmorland tells the king about the atrocities committed upon his soldiers by the Welsh women. Shakespeare spares us the gruesome details in this play; his primary source, Hollingshead's history, did not: " . . . cut off their privities and put one part thereof into the mouths of euerie dead man, in such sort that the cullions hung down to their chins; and not so contented, they did cut off their noses and thrust them into their tailes as they lay on the ground mangled and defaced."

In I,ii, Falstaff uses the phrase "call me a villain and baffle me." Baffle here means to treat with contempt, deriving from the original, technical meaning of Baffle, which was the formal degradation of a dishonored knight, accompanied by the confiscation of his armor and being suspended upside down in public.

We will be reading all the scenes, of course; this time that will include two brief scenes involving peripheral characters that are rarely performed -- II,i (just before the highway robbery) and IV, iv (just before the Battle of Shrewsbury).


Gads Hill is a place name, the site of the highway robbery. Gadshill was a famous, historical highwayman who worked Gads Hill, and appears in the play as the source of the information that leads to the robbery.


Falstaff was originally called Sir John Oldcastle, a Protestant martyr burned in 1417. The name was changed after the first successful performances but before the printing of the first Quarto of the play because Oldcastle's family objected to the portrayal, and one of Oldcastle's descendants was the Lord Chamberlain and probably had the power to compel the change. A couple of other names were changed at the same time: Russell became Bardoll (who becomes Bardolph in 2HIV and HV and some editions of 1HIV), and Harvey became Peto.


PRINCE HAL: . . . I am not yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the north; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife 'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.'
II, iv


HOTSPUR (dying): O, Harry, thou hast robb'd me of my youth!
I better brook the loss of brittle life
Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;
They wound my thoughts worse than sword my flesh:
But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool;
And time, that takes survey of all the world
Must have a stop.
V, iv


"Men of my generation have had Spain in their hearts . . . It was there that they learned . . . that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, and that there are times when courage is not rewarded."

-- Albert Camus


Buena Vista Social Club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xERUB8KUB4o

Steve

[Steve Minkin]

Greetings, gentle Bardophiles!

I'm pleased to report that my sister, Emily, has not only agreed to play Lady Mortimer, but will actually learn a little Welsh for the role! Thank you!

The Arden Edition (Kastan) notes that in the 18th and 19th Centuries the scene in question was often cut just before Glendower returns with Lady Percy and Lady Mortimer, "not only keeping the focus on the political action but also avoiding the need for Welsh speakers and an actress who can sing."

The concept of 'false kings' runs through this play in many guises, a subplot in a minor key, echoing the claim that the deposition of Richard was illegitimate and Henry is a false king. The two major examples are the scene in the inn in which Falstaff and Hal take turns playing the King and the battle scene (V, iv), in which Douglas kills several of the King's gentlemen who are disguised as the King, to confuse the rebels. Kastan argues that the implications of this are disturbing, and suggest " . . . that kingship itself is always and only a counterfeit, an action that a man might play."

In the plays closing lines, Prince Hal recognizes Douglas's valor and pardons him ("ransomless and free"), another example of something his father did, historically, which Shakespeare assigns to the son to swell his virtues. (He is to be the hero of the next two plays, after all.)

KING HENRY
. . . and began
To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
More than a little is by much too much.
III, ii


Call for readers in two weeks, reading in four.


Steve

Mardi Gras music by The Meters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inpnfjKAmnE

[Steve Minkin]

Cheers!

Two weeks and a day until our reading -- do you plan to join us for our reading of Henry IV, Part 1, at 6:30 on Wednesday, September 5th?

At this point, based on e-mails and conversations, I think I have these folks listed as coming:

Steve
Rita
.......


That makes 18, and we're still counting. Last reading we had a record 15 readers. I think we're now at the limit of this group's maximum size, based on physical space and the number of lines in a play. This is a somewhat enviable problem, but still a problem. Up until now, in our group's eleven-year history, we have always encouraged new readers to join the group and welcomed them in immediately. But at this point we will have to go to something like a wait-list.

In Orson Welles' 'Chimes At Midnight' (another plug for my favorite Henriad film), the key conversation in III, ii in which Hal wins the confidence of the king is left out, as is Hal's rescue of the king from Douglas in the battle scene -- this delays the reconciliation between the king and prince until the deathbed scene in Part II. It also allows the Wellesian twist that the king believes the fat knight over the prince in claiming credit for killing Hotspur – and if there is any doubt about the contempt Hal has for Falstaff, it is dispelled by the time that scene is over.

If you're not on the list for our reading on Septmber 5th and plan on coming, or if you are on the list and can't make it, please let me know!


Thanks, 
Steve

Aretha's great late album -- Who's Zoomin' Who?  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOjjxXw ... MA&index=4

[Steve Minkin]

Cheers!

Two weeks and a day until our reading -- do you plan to join us for our reading of Henry IV, Part 1, at 6:30 on Wednesday, September 5th?

At this point, based on e-mails and conversations, I think I have these folks listed as coming:

Steve
Rita
.......


That makes 18, and we're still counting. Last reading we had a record 15 readers. I think we're now at the limit of this group's maximum size, based on physical space and the number of lines in a play. This is a somewhat enviable problem, but still a problem. Up until now, in our group's eleven-year history, we have always encouraged new readers to join the group and welcomed them in immediately. But at this point we will have to go to something like a wait-list.

In Orson Welles' 'Chimes At Midnight' (another plug for my favorite Henriad film), the key conversation in III, ii in which Hal wins the confidence of the king is left out, as is Hal's rescue of the king from Douglas in the battle scene -- this delays the reconciliation between the king and prince until the deathbed scene in Part II. It also allows the Wellesian twist that the king believes the fat knight over the prince in claiming credit for killing Hotspur – and if there is any doubt about the contempt Hal has for Falstaff, it is dispelled by the time that scene is over.

If you're not on the list for our reading on Septmber 5th and plan on coming, or if you are on the list and can't make it, please let me know!


Thanks, 
Steve

Aretha's great late album -- Who's Zoomin' Who?  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOjjxXw ... MA&index=4

[Steve Minkin]

Wednesday, September 5, 6:30

Enclosed is the casting grid for our reading on Wednesday. If you have trouble opening or deciphering it, please let me know. There will be hard copies available at the reading.

We're expecting 16 readers, one more than our record-setting last reading.

We've lost two male readers for the play, David and John F, to literary and editorial claims on their time. And here we are in a play with so few lines for women to begin with! To the extent that there is a problem with doing all the histories in succession, it is the dearth of women's roles. (The upside, of course, is that it makes the historical vectors easier to follow.) When we finish with this tetralogy, we will have read nine straight histories (the two tetralogies plus Edward III) – interrupted only for Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (also devoid of women, although Elizabeth Taylor certainly makes her presence felt in the film version). We had Joan of Arc and Queen Margaret in the first tetralogy, but not much else.

So I think after we finish with the histories we'll redo As You Like It, recovering from all these male power struggles with a pastoral comedy stage-managed by Shakespeare's sunniest heroine. Bloom writes that although he loves Falstaff, Hamlet, and Cleopatra, he wouldn't want to actually encounter any of them in real life. But Rosalind . . well everybody loves Rosalind!

See you Wednesday at 6:30!
Steve

Rock version of Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor (hence the title, Asia Minor), made it to #8 Pop in 1961.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10blhurNWGs



+++++++++++++


A teacher posted a question/ complaint on the main Shakespeare discussion board I frequent on why he should have to teach Shakespeare to his HS students when it's so hard for them to understand it, and suggestions on how to teach it if he has to.
This was my reply, which earned a Thank You from the board's founder:

Cheers!

It's daunting. I'm a lifelong student, have hosted three Shakespeare reading groups, have read all the plays (almost all multiple times), seen almost all in performance . . . and yet I'm still constantly challenged.

Some of this, as you say, is the language. I would strongly recommend that for first time students you use the "No Fear" editions of Shakespeare. They provide a modern 'translation' of the text on the right hand pages, the original text on the left hand pages. It enables one to follow the dramatic flow without a dozen interruptions a page to check on odd words or phrases. After all the readings I 've done, these are often my first go-to editions when I'm reentering the study of a play.

Also, I certainly wouldn't do a whole play to start with. With students raised on short-attention span digital documents, I would start with fragments, the microcosms of Shakespeare's greatness -- lines, poems, passages. Let the students see how great phrases of Shakespeare have a power and weight and poignancy that is unmatched in literature. Passages like:

When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

or

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.


or

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Or

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds, 
Or bends with the remover to remove. 
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 
It is the star to every wand'ring bark, 
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
If this be error and upon me prov'd, 
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.


Then I might try a survey of the more straighforward stories of Shakespeare (none of which are original except for The Dream and The Tempest), like Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello . . . I loved Marchette Chute's "Stories From Shakespeare" as a child, long before I braved the plays.

Then you might try a whole play. My choice for a 'first play' would be "As You Like It." With Rosalinde at the play's center, you have somebody who is both inescably lovable and totally in control. And you have a number or wonderful set pieces in the play, such as:


"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything"
and
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
There are profound reasons why this writer has affected so many millions of people around the world on such a deep level. It is no longer a user-friendly journey to begin to explore the canon, it requires attention and work. But I think if it's presented right it can be so rewarding at ever step that some students will continue the journey on their own, after the class is over.
The arguments of the non-Stradfordians always boils down to 'how could this country bumpkin have written these beautiful, insightful, iconic works?' And the retort is 'How could anybody have written these poems and plays?" The more one explores them, the more wise and wonderful they seem. He is always one step ahead of us.
I'm sure the reason it's in the curriculum is to ensure that some students get at least a glimpse of the greatness of Shakespeare's works, a glimpse of the greatness of art. And I'm sure it's a challenge for the modern teacher to find a way to expose them to that. Of course, the greater the teacher's appreciation and understanding of the subject, the easier it is to teach it.

[Steve Minkin]

Cheers!

Fine reading of Henry IV, Part One last night, with a group record sixteen in attendance.

We're looking at the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas for Henry IV, Part Two. So that would be the Wednesdays of November 28, December
5, 12, and 19. Please let me know how these dates work for you.

There is less plot and action in Part Two, although the King dies and Prince Hal becomes Henry V. Part Two has been described as a portrait or cross-section of English life at the time. One can think of the difference between Henry IV, Part I and Part II as the like the difference between time and space, or chess and go – "In chess, forces converge, and time is crucial, and each game unfolds a history. In go, space matters most, and each game explores a geography, and ends with a completed map." ("A No Doubt Mad Idea," Minkin, 1979).

Part Two contains Falstaff's great speech on the virtues of strong liquor. After an unsatisfactory conversation with Prince John, Falstaff says:
"I would you had but the wit. 'Twere better than your dukedom. Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me, nor a man cannot make him laugh. But that's no marvel, he drinks no wine. There's never none of these demure boys come to any proof, for thin drink doth so overcool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of malegreen-sickness, and then, when they marry, they get wenches. They are generally fools and cowards, which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapors which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood, which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice. But the sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extremes. It illumineth the face, which as a beacon gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm, and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage, and this valor comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work, and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant, for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled with excellent endeavor of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack."

A note on the pronunciation of "Zounds!" Everybody except me last night pronounced it rhyming with "pounds," while I – for the first time -- pronounced it rhyming with "wounds." "Zounds" was short for "God's wounds," but in Shakespeare's day "wounds" rhymed with "pounds" – so the historically accurate pronounciation is what all the rest of you were using. The last film version I saw of it (The Hollow Crown) had it rhyme with "wounds," which I like as a modernization because it more clearly evokes the original phrase. Haven't tried working it into everyday conversation yet, but I have my eyes peeled for an opening.

[Steve Minkin]

Cheers!



Let's take a look at November 28 as the tentative date for our next reading. If anyone has any problems with it, speak!



This play ends with a dance! Epilogue concludes his speech by saying his tongue is tired, but that he will dance until his legs are tired, and he finishes with a jig. (Will Kemp was famous for his jigs.) We have enough dancers in the group that we ought to finish with a brief jig ourselves, this time!



The Jerusalem Chamber is a room in Westminster Abbey, conveniently moved to the palace for the play, the name deriving from an inscription around its fireplace. At the very end of RII and the very beginning of 1HIV, King Henry talks about going to Jerusalem to fight in the crusades and atone for his sin of deposing an anointed king. Henry is thwarted by the rebellion against him, and never does go. At the close of Part 2, as he is dying, he is moved at one point to a different room. He asks what the first room he was in was called, and is told it was 'The Jerusalem Chamber.' So the king says he wants to die there, to die in Jerusalem.


It's a tidy little story, and one that Hollingshead (but only Hollingshead) provides. But it's also a tale that was told in several earlier, medieval stories – a prophecy of death in Jerusalem followed by death in a room or a church with that name – so it is almost certainly apocryphal.



We know that the in the earliest staged versions of the play, Falstaff was called Oldcastle. That was changed in later versions, and reinforced with a quite modern 'non-denial denial' in the play's Epilogue, saying Falstaff will die of a sweat in an apparently ironic reference to the Oldcastle's death by burning, immediately followed by a denial that Oldcastle is the man. When Shakespeare wrote the play, the Lord Chamberlain was Henry Carey. Carey died unexpectedly in July, 1696. The next month, a descendant of Oldcastle, William Brooke, was installed in the office, and in the months that followed the character's name was changed. There is some evidence that Brooke was present at a Christmas performance of the play before the queen, and was so embarrassed at the portrayal of the his ancestor that he disrupted the show.


The real Oldcastle fought heroically for Henry V in Wales and France. He was a Lollard, a follower of Wycliffe, and considered an early Protestant martyr. When he was first accused of heresy, the king protected him, as a war hero. But eventually Henry decided that the church had authority in matters of heresy, and the church sent him to the tower. He escaped, led a rebellion against HV that was brutally suppressed, and was hung by chain and burned.


It's possible that Shakespeare's initial use of the name Oldcastle was casually done – there was an earlier play that portrayed Oldcastle as a drinking buddy of Prince Hal, and the family made no objection to that. Or it may be that Shakespeare, as a Catholic, chose Oldcastle because he WAS a Protestant hero.





We don't usually spend much time on the differences between the various original editions, except in the ways that they may impact the editions we bring to the readings. But 2HIV's history in print is unusual enough to be worth a look. One of the two Quartos – altered and augmented in light of material from the other Quarto and the Folio – is the preferred text, and this will vary from one modern edition to the other. Usually the Folio version is preferred; but because the rights to RII and 1HIV were in dispute when the printers started setting type for the Folio, they set HV before the other plays, and didn't leave enough space (the two HIV plays are among the longest in the canon), so the pages for those plays, and especially 2HIV, are crowded in the Folio, and contain errors. On the other hand, there are eight significant passages in the Folio that don't appear in the Quarto. Pope (in the 1720s) claimed they were added later by Shakespeare; Samuel Johnson (in the 1760s) argued that were parts of the original text which had been cut from the Quartos by actors who had played in abridged versions of the scenes. Everybody seems to agree that all the passages are by Shakespeare. In any event, we can probably expect to see more divergences between our editions than usual.


Steve


"Bella ciao" ("Goodbye beautiful") is an Italian folk song that was adopted as an anthem of the anti-fascist resistance. It was used by the Italian partisans during the Italian Civil War between 1943 and 1945 in their struggle against the fascist Italian Social Republic and its Nazi German allies. "Bella ciao" is used worldwide as an anti-fascist hymn of freedom and resistance. The song has much older origins though in the hardships of the mondina women, the paddy field workers in the late 19th century who sang it as a protest against harsh working conditions in the paddy fields in North Italy. --Wikipedia


And Mark Ribot's latest album (due out Friday) -- Songs of Resistance 1942-2018 -- contains a striking version of the song, vocals by Tom Waits:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq9AVCGy9e4

[Steve Minkin]

Not a single dissent on the November 28th date, so that looks like it.

This is a sprawling and somewhat static play, little of a what-happens-next feel to it; most of the drama is centered on the individual scenes rather than overall play. And in place of the climactic battle scene of Part 1-- with fire-breathing heroes like Hal, Hotspur, and Douglas -- we have a series of long-winded speeches culminating in a kind of lawyerly swindle in IV, i.

I mentioned last time that Part 1 is more like a history and Part 2 more like a geography. So here are some random snapshots of the landscape, first arresting sights this time around:


Act I opens in the castle of Northumberland, father of Hotspur, killed by Prince Hal in the last play and his rebellion suppressed. But before Act I comes a prologue by RUMOR, who describes himself like this:
"Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wav'ring multitude,
Can play upon it."
And Rumor is here in Northumberland's region to spread lies about the Battle of Shrewsbury, to say
" . . . that Harry Monmouth fell
Under the wrath of noble Hotspur's sword,
And that the King before the Douglas' rage"
And so Hotspur's father, Northumberland, hears
"The posts come tiring on,
And not a man of them brings other news
Than they have learnt of me. From Rumour's tongues
They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs."

The Archbishop encourages Northumberland and his allies to revolt in I, iii, because Henry IV's popularity with "the blunt monster with uncounted heads,/ The still-discordant wav'ring multitude" is falling:
An habitation giddy and unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

FALSTAFF’S PAGE
Away, you scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe. (That last phrase being the Elizabethan equivalent of 'whip your butt.')
II, i

Prince Hal praises Poins (II, ii) for being a good sounding board because he thinks exactly like everybody does:
"It would be every man's thought; and thou art a blessed
fellow to think as every man thinks. Never a man's thought in
world keeps the road-way better than thine. Every man would
think me an hypocrite indeed."

Falstaff's buddy Bardolph has a 'no relation' namesake in this play: Lord Bardolph, one of Northumberland and the Archbishop's rebel allies. I have the impression that Shakespeare does this in other plays, but the two Cinnas in Julius Caesar are all I can think of.

Falstaff's double-entendre in II, iv, of a military action and of acquiring and battling an STD:
For to serve
is to come halting off, you know; to come off the breach with his
pike bent bravely, and to surgery bravely, to venture upon
charg'd chambers bravely—

Perhaps the most poignant line in the play, Doll Tearsheet in II, iv:
Come, I'll be
friends with thee, Jack. Thou art going to the wars; and whether
I shall ever see thee again or no there is nobody cares.

'Ancient' = Ensign, so Ancient Pistol is Ensign Pistol. The other meaning also holds, so – as the Arden edition suggests – Ancient Pistol can be read as "Old Prick," which would be in line with Doll's opinion of him.

Pistol repeats the line:
'Si fortune me tormente sperato me contento.'
An ungrammatical mashup of French, Spanish and Italian for the popular saying: If fortune torments me, hope contents me.

Act III opens with the King bemoaning his insomnia, that the lowliest of his subjects sleeps soundly under the roughest conditions, while he – 'with all appliances and means to boot' – is denied 'gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse.'
"Then, happy low, lie down.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

SHALLOW: . . . She was then a bona roba. Doth she hold her own well?
FALSTAFF: Old, old, Master Shallow.
SHALLOW: Nay, she must be old. She cannot choose but be old . . .
III, ii

The king and prince aren't fully reconciled until IV, iii. The king is dying, Hal comes to attend him, thinks him dead, and walks off with the crown. The king awakes, accuses Hal of greedily seizing the crown before his time. Both of the following two speeches by Hal and King Henry are quite beautiful -- Hal argues that he was berating the crown for draining the life from his father; and King Henry admits that his talk of pilgrimages to the Holy Land were intended to distract the people from thoughts of rebellion, and he advises Hal to "busy giddy minds/ With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,/ May waste the memory of former days." And Hal invades France in the next play.

King Henry V's rejection of Falstaff takes place in the play's final scene, V, v. The last time we see the new king before this is in V, ii, in which we see Hal at his most admirable, granting the Chief Justice, who had previously thrown him in jail, his support and confidence for having done his duty to his father and to the law.

At the end of V, 3, Pistol quotes a fragment of a lost ballad previously sung by Petruccio in Taming of The Shrew, and from there used by Cole Porter as the title of a song in Kiss Me Kate, Where Is The Life That Late I Led:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L44c6lf0xOg


KING HENRY V: Presume not that I am the thing I was,
For God doth know – so shall the world perceive –
That I have turned away from my former self.
So will I those that kept me company. . . .
Till then I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not come near our person by ten mile.
V,v

Bright moments,
Steve

[Steve Minkin]

Still looking at Wednesday, November 28, 6:30 for our reading of 2HIV.

The oddest thing about Henry IV, Part 2 is the complete reset on Hal. He finishes Part 1 having heroically defeated Hotspur, been redeemed in the eyes of his father, and having turned his back on Falstaff and company. And yet Part 2 opens with no mention of his triumph at Shrewsbury, he is still considered a n'eer-do-well by his father and the public, and he still hangs out with low-lifes (although his interactions with Falstaff are minimal in this play). The hurdles for Hal are all put back up in Part 2, and he has to overcome them again, "what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice." (Dylan). If you actually see or read the two plays in succession, unaltered – as we are going to do – the transition is bizarre.

This play has always suffered from being something of a poor rerun of the earlier play, 'a diminished shadow of its predecessor' (Booth). The prince's interactions with Falstaff – which provided many of the sparks of the earlier play – are reduced here to one early scene and the final rejection. I mentioned earlier that the climactic battle scene is replaced with long speeches and a lawyerly swindle. Part 2 "offers policy in place of honour, substitutes disease and death for the celebration of the living, and calls into question the official version of history . . ." (Bulman) Part 2 is as much the 'obverse' of Part 1 as its sequel. (Davison)

In this second play, Falstaff enters the stage asking his page what the doctor thinks of his urine, and the page answers that the doctor said "the water itself was a good healthy water; for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for." Fallstaff is older, sicker, more cynical, more manipulative, and there is more of him in this play. Part 1 has a pretty even balance in lines between Falstaff, Hotspur and Hal, and slightly less for the King. In this play, Falstaff has almost twice as many lines as Hal or the King. In addition to the staff and patrons of the Boar's Head Tavern, Falstaff also exposes us to the world of rural legal authorities in the persons of Shallow and Silence. With most of the royal-related history relegated to Part 1 and the tail end of the this play, Shakespeare gets to portray a wider circle of life in England than he does in any of the other histories.

There are three macro-contexts in which to view this play, and each has its own history and emphasis – as a play by itself, as the second part of two-play 'Falstaffiad,' and as the middle section of a three-play Henriad (1HIV, 2HIV, HV).

Throughout most of its history, 2HIV was presented as stand-alone production. It was never as popular as its predecessor, and never as well-regarded; but it was still a successful play in its own right. The 1920 Old Vic production of the combined plays as a single ten-act play started the 20th Century trend of doing both plays together (though usually not in a single performance). The rejection of Falstaff at the end makes more sense dramatically if the first play is included. "When the two plays are presented together, Henry IV almost inevitably becomes the story of Falstaff." (Bulman, Arden). It's the story of Falstaff's rise and fall, and Falstaff is always played by the same actor in major productions of the two plays together. That movie I keep plugging – Orson Welles' Chimes At Midnight – is probably the quintessential Falstaffiad. Kevin Kline's Falstaff at Lincoln Center in 2003 was well received, in a version that combined the two plays and – as Welles did -- cut much of the historical plot to focus more fully on the fat knight.

The tradition of performing the three Henry plays (The Henriad) or, rarely, all four plays of the second tetralogy or all eight plays of both tetralogies, can be traced to the publication of the influential scholarly work 'Shakespeare's History Plays' (1944) in which Tillyard advanced the idea that all eight plays together comprise an interpretation of history he calls The Tudor Myth, tracing English history from Richard II through three Henrys to the end of the War of The Roses in Richard III. And Prince Hal, Henry V, is the hero king of the cycle, the epitome of English virtue. When three (or four or eight) plays are performed, Falstaff recedes into the background, and the saga becomes Hal's.

The Hollow Crown's rendition of the second tetalogy emphasizes the historical at the expense of Falstaff and the broader view of English life, although their tavern and country life scenes are so vividly staged that it partially makes up for the loss of text. I heartily recommend the Hollow Crown version of 2HIV – the performances of Jeremey Irons (Henry IV), Simon Russell Beale (Falstaff) and Tom Hiddleston (Henry V) are all powerful and moving. The climactic scenes between the father and son kings are as good as I've seen. " . . . commit/ The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?" (IV, iii)

For the past half century, this interpretation – that Hal is the central character – has been the dominant view in theatrical production and criticism.

Some critically successful modern versions have taken this in a dark direction, playing Hal as a cynical and manipulative politician, Falstaff as a menacing opportunist, and the entire ensemble as a demonstration of the corruptibility of man, an illustration that power "is based on predation and betrayal." (Greenblatt, and that sounds just about right to me)

Pistol anachronistically misquotes several Elizabethan playwrights. His "hollow pampered jades of Asia" (II, iv) is a mangling of Tamburlaine's cry of "Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia!" as he whips three Asian kings harnessed to his chariot.

In both plays, the central tavern scene is Act II, Scene 4, with the Prince and Poins conspiring to play a trick on Falstaff. At the close of the scene, as Falstaff prepares to leave for the wars, the Hostess says, "Well, fare thee well. I have known thee these twenty-nine years, come peascod-time, but an honester and truer-hearted man—well, fare thee well." And though we may have little evidence of Falstaff's honesty or heart, the preciseness of her memory of meeting him and the depth of her feeling and loyalty to him are undeniable.

We have two reemergences of the name Mowbray, which we heard in the opening lines of the whole tetralogy. Mowbray was King Henry's adversary at the beginning of Richard II (when King Henry was Bolingbroke). We later learned that Mowbray died in Jerusalem, where Henry hopes to die. In this play, Mowbray's son is one of the rebels. It is also revealed by Shallow (III, ii) that, in his youth, Falstaff had been a page to the elder Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.

After his coronation, Hal (now Henry V) sees that his brothers, the Chief Justice and others look fearful, and he acknowledges that and reassures them:
Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear.
This is the English, not the Turkish court;
Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,
But Harry Harry. (V, ii)
Amarath was a Sultan of Turkey who strangled his brothers after his ascent to the throne, to thin out the competition.

Falstaff and the Chief Justice are polar opposites, the avatars of freedom/ chaos and law/ order. At the opening of the first play, Falstaff is Hal's father figure; by the end of the second, Hal explicitly tells the Chief Justice "You shall be as a father to my youth." At the beginning of Part 2, Falstaff fails in his attempt to borrow a thousand pounds from the Chief Justice; by the end of the play he succeeds in borrowing that amount from Shallow, and stiffing him. When Falstaff hears of Hal's coronation, he tells Pistol, "Let us take any man's horses: the laws of England are at my commandment. Blessed they that have been my friends; and woe to my Lord Chief Justice!" When Falstaff shortly afterwards thrusts himself before the new king, Hal doesn't even address him directly at first, saying, "My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man."

The distance between the charismatic rogue of Part 1 and the clown that is the Fallstaff of The Merry Wives of Windsor is huge; but distance between the cynical has-been of Part 2 and The Merry Wives' Falstaff is unimaginable.


The Pennywhistlers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPcOWRN_6lE


Happy trails,

Steve

[Steve Minkin]

Happy Belated Halloween! (Rita looked formidable as Ruth Bader Ginsburg this year.)

Call for readers in a couple of weeks.
Reading in four weeks, Wednesday, November 28, 6:30.

How would you all feel about us doing The Knight of The Burning Pestle (by Francis Beaumont) after we do As You Like It (after we do Henry V after we do 2HIV). It's a short play, its largest role is for a woman, and there is some genuine enthusiasm for it in our group.

I'm open to suggestions for plays for the coming year or two. We're finishing up our long history cycle: this will be our eighth of nine plays, both tetralogies plus Edward III. We'll save HVIII for another year – it's an outlier, a late-collaboration, and – by all reports – not much of a play.

There is by now, due to the entropy of the historical record, a kind of built-in dadaist effect to the plays that surfaces now and then. In the thrust-and-parry conversation between Falstaff and the Justice in Act I, the Justice accuses Falstaff "You have misled the youthful Prince," to which Falstaff counters, "The young Prince hath misled me. I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog." The Arden edition notes: "an obscure joke, now lost . . ." So we have this charming and intriguing phrase, at this point seemingly unmoored from any reference and sense – pretty Dada!

Notwithstanding Shakespeare's two-plays' worth of good intentions and reconciliations between Hal and his father, the historical record is considerably grimmer. The historical Prince Hal made at least three attempts to seize the crown from his father by coups or armed revolts.

When Mistress Quickly unloads on Falstaff to the Justice, Falstaff slanders her: "My lord, this is a poor, mad soul, and she says up and down the town that her eldest son is like you."

Mistress Quickly equals Queen Margaret in appearing in four different plays, the most of any characters in Shakespeare. But -- unlike Margaret -- Hostess Quickly has a protean identity over the plays. In 1HIV she is a married woman who owns a tavern. In 2HIV she is a widow who complains that she is owed money and has been strung along for years by Falstaff, who had once promised to marry her, she runs a bawdy house and speaks almost exclusively in double entendres and malapropisms. In The Merry Wives of Windsor she is the unmarried housekeeper of Doctor Caius and is pursued by Pistol. In HV, she is Nell Quickly, wife of Pistol (although formerly engaged to Nym), and witness to the death of Falstaff.

The country scenes with Shallow and Silence and the recruits can be located by various clues in the Cotswolds, a gorgeous region in southwestern England that Rita and I visited last year, and clearly the wrong direction for Falstaff to go from London to recruit soldiers for a war in the north.

A geeky but interesting fact from the Arden edition: the character Silence is given a deviant spelling of 'Scilens' or 'Silens' nine times in the play's First Quarto and the only other time these misspellings appear are in the handwritten collaborative manuscript of the play Sir Thomas More, in the section believed to have been written by Shakespeare.

The swindle in IV, i that defeats the rebels is Westmorland's plan. When the exchange between the rebels and Prince John begins to get testy, Westmorland reins in the Prince, "Pleaseth your Grace to answer them directly/ How far forth you like their articles," gets him back him on track to act agreeably with rebels so they can double-cross them later.


Everything is music.
Everywhere is the best seat.

-John Cage

[Steve Minkin]

Somebody just posted this on PlayShakespeare.com, an interesting and entertaining half-hour video of McKellen talking about playing Shakespeare, playing Shakespeare, and joking around, mostly centered on The Scottish Play. (Show was produced by David Susskind, source of the video is a Newfoundland[!] archive.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... 5QcYpYCu4Q

[Steve Minkin]

Cheers!

Our reading of Henry IV, Part 2 is in two weeks – please let me know if you plan to join us at 6:30, Wednesday, November 28th.

March 8, 2017 was the date of our reading of HVI, Part 1. We have one play to go after this one, so it will take us about two years to complete the nine histories. I was initially reluctant to go along with Joe's idea to do the whole cycle, but I find myself glad we did as we now approach the finish. The three HVI plays and Edward III were new (or lesser known) to all of us, and all of those plays had something unique and worth doing in them, and they led us to Marlowe. And I've come to a greater appreciation of the two lesser known plays of the second tetralogy – Richard II and our current play, Henry IV, Part 2 – with this reading.

Still, two years of wars and power struggles ought to be enough for a while. So – following our reading of HV -- I think we'll put a two year moratorium on war plays, Roman plays, and bloody tragedies, and maybe show a little bias toward comedies and the late romances.

Here's a YouTube clip of that powerful 'crown scene' (IV, iii) from The Hollow Crown version of this play, Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY25JoCieAc


Rita and I really enjoyed the new film CanYou Ever Forgive Me, based on the true story of a down-on-her-luck, frumpy and cranky writer of literary and historical biographies. Happenstance and necessity combine to lead her to a successful career forging letters from Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, Marlene Dietrich and others. Choice soundtrack, too – Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Chet Baker, Peggy Lee . . .


Have a happy Thanksgiving!

And please let me know if you plan to attend on the 28th.

Steve

Rachid Taha, R.I.P. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=034zgPTnmVc

[Steve Minkin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXUg0cbEzaE

A solid Stratfordian presentation, ie, an on-target rebuttal to those who think Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare.

[Steve Minkin]

Greetings merry bardophiles!

Wednesday, February 27, at the appointed hour of 6:30, we will hold our second reading of Henry V, our eleventh consecutive history and the conclusion of this history binge! (As You Like It on deck and The Knight of the Burning Pestle in the hole.)


Is Shakespeare's Henry V an exemplary national hero or a cold-hearted, opportunistic manipulator? Or both?

In Shakespeare's time, HV was the epitome of all that was best in the English, the hero-king, the victorious army commander whose time in Eastcheap taught him how to communicate with the common man and made him an inspirational leader to the troops under him. Shakespeare fleshes that out. But he also shows HV being harsh, unfeeling, opportunistic and ruthless. And so Bardophiles have differed radically in their takes on HV.

WH Auden is of the Henry-the-Machiavellian school, and TW Craik, editor of the Auden edition, is of the benevolent-hero faction – so it might be instructive to examine their contrasting takes on a couple of the same scenes and passages.

KING HENRY: I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;
Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon.
IV, i

Auden writes: "Only scoundrels like Richard III and Henry V talk of religion. [Henry] doesn't know God in a personal way, but thinks he can manage him. His offer of two chantries in penance for the killing of Richard is a bribe . . ."

Craik counters: "To see the King's prayer as a calculated piece of insurance, buying off divine punishment with chantries and masses, not only makes God mocked but also goes quite against the tone of the speech."

And of the play's final scene, Henry's courting of Katherine:

Auden: "The most brutal scene in Shakespeare is Henry's wooing of Katherine. It is cold and calculated, and most shocking is Henry's certainty of success. Richard's wooing of Anne is a tour de force. Henry's wooing of Katherine is too easy . . ."

Craik: "Observe how deftly Shakespeare turns one particularly dangerous corner, just after Henry has made his second, more elaborate proposal of marriage:

KATHERINE: Is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of France?
HENRY V: No; it is not possible you should love the enemy of
France, Kate: but, in loving me, you should love
the friend of France; for I love France so well that
I will not part with a village of it; I will have it
all mine: and, Kate, when France is mine and I am
yours, then yours is France and you are mine.

Henry's repartee will delight an audience that was half afraid of seeing him on the defensive . . .

KING HENRY: . . . therefore tell me, most fair Katharine, will you
have me? Put off your maiden blushes; avouch the
thoughts of your heart with the looks of an empress;
take me by the hand, and say 'Harry of England I am
thine:' which word thou shalt no sooner bless mine
ear withal, but I will tell thee aloud 'England is
thine, Ireland is thine, France is thine, and Harry
Plantagenet is thine . . .'

The generous tone of this can be questioned only by a mean-spirited spectator (or reader)."

I suspect Shakespeare wrote so as to support both interpretations of his clear-eyed hero-king, displaying a realistic ambivalence to his subject.

One historical note: in exalting its hero, the play suggests that at the Battle of Agincourt it was King Henry's spirited speeches to his troops ("We few, we happy few, we band of brothers") that was decisive, inspiring his men to defeat an army that greatly outnumbered their own. The play completely ignores the English archers, who comprised nearly 80% of the English army at the time and whose longbow attacks are given credit for the victory by historians. In addition, the play compresses the war and makes it seem as though the French capitulated after the play's climactic Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Actually the English needed to wage a later Normandy campaign (1417-19) and enter into an alliance with Burgundy before it sealed the victory in 1420.

And now, 600 later, put February 27, 2019 on your calendar!

Our daughter's gender-reveal party tomorrow (who among us has ever had a gender reveal party?!) and then Rita and I are off for Buenos Aires, Montevideo, the Falklands/ Malvinas, Tierre del Fuego, penguins and glaciers, Puerto Montt, Santiago . . . Our son will house-sit and dog-tend.

Have a great holiday season and a vintage new year!

Steve


Nancy Wilson, R.I.P.

How Glad I Am: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVxovMQ_-4
Guess Who I Saw Today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr-r2UmW1R8

[Steve Minkin]

Greetings and Happy New Year to our band of Bardophiles!

We're cruising the stormy south Atlantic – the sea is rockin' and rollin' so much we're going to have to skip the Falklands/ Malvinas (which is getting walloped by the storm). The ship's line dance lessons today had an extra level of difficulty with the boat heaving around, and all the outside promenades are closed to the passengers! But otherwise, a great trip so far -- fabulous day in Buenos Aires, highlighted by a truly magnificent tango show, world class bandoneon player backed by a great group, terrific tango dancers as well as some dazzling gaucho dances (using bolos for both percussive and visual effects). Then a nice low-key day in Montevideo, a lovely little city with many parks and a beach that runs the length of the city. Then, yesterday, a million-penguin colony (!) near Puerto Madryn (along with a dozen or so guanacos and a single frantic armadillo). Since we're skipping the Falklands, next up is Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego.


IF you speak French passably enough to read the French in this play, AND you plan to join us for our reading on Wednesday, February 27, 6:30, please let me know – there are several male roles that require some French, as well as extensive passages in French by Katherine and Alice.

One of the curiosities of the films (and, to a lesser extent, modern stage versions) is the constant apologizing by the Chorus for the limitations of the Elizabethan stage and cast to portray such an epic story, ranging across the channel and encompassing tens of thousands of warriors. Chorus implores the audience to use their imaginations to transform a few soldiers into armies, the small stage to represent half a continent, a stage backdrop of ships and banners to represent the English fleet moving toward Harfleur, etc. But of course modern films can actually portray all of these scenes realistically, making no demands at all upon the audience's imaginations.

One more note on Chorus – his final speech is poignant and bittersweet, celebrating the triumphs of the play's hero and yet looking ahead to the monumental failures of his son, Henry VI, a story already familiar to Shakespeare's audience through the plays of the first tetralogy.

Like the voice of Chorus in the play, both famous film versions – by Olivier and Branagh – present an entirely admirable Henry V, pretty much ignoring the more troubling parts of the play as they relate to Henry in order to present a dramatically unambiguous English hero. Both films, however, wordlessly restore the historically decisive role of the British long-bow archers, who are completely missing from the text.

Notwithstanding the positive portrayals of Henry in the films, we should take another look at the more potentially troubling aspects of Henry in the play. The more cynical view of Henry has a lengthy history, and is generally on the ascendant in modern renditions. Edward Berry writes "By far the most controversial of the histories, Henry V remains at the centre of a long-standing critical debate . . . Is it a celebration of national glory, with Henry a truly heroic warrior prince? Or is it a dark satire on warfare and the abuses of power, a prelude to the tragedies soon to follow?"

For a more critical view of the title character, we can start with Hazlitt (1817), who sees Henry as a favorite of the author's, but "we feel little love or admiration for him. . . The truth is, that we could never forgive the Prince's treatment of Falstaff.' The memorable phrase for this – "The rejection of Falstaff" – comes from A.C. Bradley, who argues that Shakespeare intended the rejection (at the end of 2HIV) to be accepted by the audience as a purging of immorality; but he had generated so much sympathy for Falstaff prior to this that the scene fails to work as the author intended.

Stephen Greenblatt (in 'Renaissance authority and its subversion') writes: “The play deftly registers every nuance of royal hypocrisy, ruthlessness, and bad faith – testing, in effect, the proposition that successful rule depends not upon sacredness but upon demonic violence – but it does so in the context of a celebration, a collective panegyric to 'This Star of England,' the charismatic leader who purges the commonwealth of its incorrigibles and forges the martial national state." He notes that Fluellen's reference (in IV, vii) to Henry killing Falstaff ("The king has killed heart," says the Hostess in II, i), is immediately followed by the King's triumphant entrance, suggesting that Elizabethan authority fostered dissent in order to control it.

Let's look at three parts of the play that seem to suggest that more is at work here than moral heroism – the initial justification for the invasion, the threatening of Harfleur, and the killing of the French prisoners.

The initial justification for the invasion: Henry is looking for a reason to invade France. His father on his death bed has advised him that foreign campaigns can serve as useful distractions from domestic dissent, and a victory over France would solidify his legitimacy to hold the throne. The clergy (Canterbury and Ely) are concerned that laws passed under Henry IV and due to go into effect would strip the church of half its property. So they provide Henry V with 'historical justifications' for his claim to be ruler of France, clothed in the morality of the church's holiness and fueled by the promise of a huge financial backing for the invasion. Henry (cynically?) accepts their supposedly divine approval and cash infusion.

The siege of Harfleur: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends . . ." Henry threatens the governor and leading citizens of the city with the most vicious and unprincipled threats, demanding that Harfleur surrender or " . . . in a moment look to see/ The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand/ Desire the locks of your shrill shrieking daughters,/ Your fathers taken by their silver beards/ And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,/ Your naked infants spitted upon spikes . . ." Clearly this is hyperbole – Henry demands ethical behavior from his soldiers and heavily penalizes those who violate his commands. Bardolph is executed for stealing from a French church. And yet the threats against Harfleur are horrific, and lend credence to Greenblatt's claim that "successful rule depends not upon sacredness but upon demonic violence."

Killing the prisoners: when the French rally for a second assault, the king orders the prisoners killed so his soldiers are freed for battle. Later, after the slaughter of the boys guarding the luggage (including Falstaff's former page), Henry declares "I was not angry since I came to France/ Until this instant . . ." Gower then claims the king ordered the prisoners killed because of the atrocity of the murder of the boys. But Henry had in fact ordered the killings before he learned about the boys.

Nowhere in the play does Henry learn of Falstaff's death.

When we did 1HIV, we discussed the change in names from Oldcastle to Falstaff, and the likely reasons why. When Fluellen likens Henry to Alexander the Great because they both killed their friend (IV, vii), Samuel Johnson writes that "This is the last time Falstaff can make sport." Fluellen refers to "the fat knight . . . I have forgotten his name." And it has been conjectured that the knowledgeable audience would have shouted out "Oldcastle!" before the actor playing Gower could say, "Falstaff."

Please let me know if you are French-capable and are likely to attend.


Bright moments,
Steve

[Steve Minkin]

Call for readers in two weeks, reading on February 27.

Hazlitt's slicing and dicing of Henry V "cannot be bettered," (Bloom), so here are some extended sections from the opening of Hazlitt's essay on the play:

"Henry V is a very favourite monarch with the English nation, and he appears to have been also a favourite with Shakespeare, who labours hard to apologize for the actions of the king, by showing us the character of the man, as ‘the king of good fellows’. He scarcely deserves this honour. He was fond of war and low company:—we know little else of him. He was careless, dissolute, and ambitious—idle, or doing mischief. In private, he seemed to have no idea of the common decencies of life, which he subjected to a kind of regal license; in public affairs, he seemed to have no idea of any rule of right or wrong, but brute force, glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and archiepiscopal advice. His principles did not change with his situation and professions. His adventure on Gadshill was a prelude to the affair of Agincourt, only a bloodless one; Falstaff was a puny prompter of violence and outrage, compared with the pious and politic Archbishop of Canterbury, who gave the king carte blanche, in a genealogical tree of his family, to rob and murder in circles of latitude and longitude abroad—to save the possessions of the Church at home. . . Because his own title to the crown was doubtful, he laid claim to that of France . . . Henry V, it is true, was a hero, a king of England, and the conqueror of the king of France. Yet we feel little love or admiration for him. He was a hero, that is, he was ready to sacrifice his own life for the pleasure of destroying thousands of other lives: he was a king of England, but not a constitutional one . . . How then do we like him? We like him in the play. There he is a very amiable monster, a very splendid pageant. As we like to gaze at a panther or a young lion in their cages in the Tower, and catch a pleasing horror from their glistening eyes, their velvet paws, and dreadless roar . . ."

Bloom asks, " . . . is that all Hal matured into: an amiable monster, a splendid pageant?" And he answers, "Yes; for this, Falstaff was rejected, Bardolph was hanged, and a great education in wit was partly thrown away . . . power keeps it habit through the ages."

Henry himself seems somewhat aware of the human sacrifices he has made for the sake of pageantry: "What infinite heartease/ Must kings neglect that private men enjoy?/ And what have kings that privates have not too,/ Save ceremony, save general ceremony?" (IV, i)

Garber argues that by this play Henry has become Hotspur, hell bent for glory, the fewer soldiers with us the more glory for each of us, victory or death . . . But Garber also notes that Henry is much better than Hotspur at knowing his army, bonding with them, and inspiring them, "a little touch of Harry in the night."

Let us consider the tidy little scene in which Henry deals with the three traitors, II, ii. First he asks them to consider his pardoning of soldier who spoke against the king while he was drunk. The three traitors advise the king not to be so lenient, to be firm and punishing so as to serve as a warning to others. When he exposes their conspiracy against him, he tells them that his natural inclination for leniency has been blocked by their cautioning him to be stern and harsh. There's a dramatic elegance to how it's done, but also a cynical manipulation. And yet, Henry's words to Scroop in this scene, a man whom he took to be a close friend, do seem to be authentically felt and display a vulnerability Henry rarely shows elsewhere in the play.

Fluellen tells the King "All the water in Wye cannot wash your majesty's Welsh plood out of your pody, I can tell you that." Here, at the tail end of the tetralogy, that's an eerie echo of Richard II's "Not all the water in the rough rude sea/ Can wash the balm from an anointed king," from the beginning of the tetralogy.

Enclosed are some photos from our cruise, the two of us in Ushuaia, the world's southernmost city; the open air German Museum in Fruitillar, settled by Germans in the mid-19th century to kick-start agriculture in central Chile; and a sunset over a couple of the hundreds of rugged, uninhabited islands of south Chile.

Still looking for French readers, so far we have Vina, Emily, and John.

Safe journeys,
Steve

[Steve Minkin]

Greetings gentle Bardophiles!

It is a mere two weeks until our reading of Henry V! So the question of the day is: Do you plan to join us for our reading on Wednesday, February 27, at 6:30?

So far we have . . .
And we're still looking for French speakers, so if you're reading with us and can speak French well enough to pass, please let me know. So far we have . . .

Our favorite holdover from 2HIV is Falstaff's clever Page /Boy, a gift to Falstaff from Prince Hal. In this play, in France, he serves Bardolph, Pistol and Nym. But he has 'a soul above buttons' and in III, ii he announces his intention to find better company than the lowlifes from the Boar's Head:

Boy: As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to them all three: but all they three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man . . . They would have me as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or their handkerchers: which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another's pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them, and seek some better service: their villany goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.

Tragically, he never gets to realize his ambition, dying off-stage in the slaughter of the boys guarding the luggage.


As some of you know, the French member of our group, Stephane Berland, is the producer of one of Europe's great jazz recording labels, Ayler Records. He regularly records some of the iconic artists of contemporary jazz, including Marc Ducret and Joelle Leandre. Marc recently recorded an album for Ayler based on Macbeth, for which he also wrote some striking, original notes about the play. At Stephane's request, Joe M and I have helped in working up English translations of Marc's notes from the French to be included in the (bilingual) liner notes. So when "Lady M" is released, it will contain credits for no fewer than THREE members of our little band! We'll let you know when the album is out.

Please let me know if you plan to join us on February 27th!


Happy trails,
Steve

Zorba, teach me to dance!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubkGD0Av4yk

[Steve Minkin]

Greetings!

Second call for readers, Henry V, 6:30 pm, Wednesday, February 27.

So far we have eleven: . . . If you're not named here and plan to come, please let me know, I'll try to cast this weekend.

We're still looking for French speakers, and we're using the term 'speakers' in the loosest sense here; that is: readers who can manage to read the French passages so they sound more or less French. So far we have . . .

In ordering the killing of the prisoners, King Henry also orders the killing of any prisoners to be taken after that round of killings: “we'll cut the throats of those we have, And not a man of them that we shall take/ Shall taste our mercy . . ." (IV, vii) Pretty vicious. I think of Hazlitt's question: "How then do we like him? We like him in the play. . . As we like to gaze at a panther or a young lion in their cages in the Tower . . ."

In III, v, Exeter uses a subtle dancing metaphor – he says the French women are tiring of the French men and prefer the lusty English invaders, and advise the French men to go to English dancing schools to learn “lavoltas high and swift corantos . . . ” Lavoltas involved a quick body turn followed by a leap, and the corantos featured a rapid running step, implying that the French men's talent was to turn and run.

In III, vii, the Dauphin spins an over-the-top rhapsody about his wonderful horse, saying he once wrote a sonnet to his horse. This is a kind of grotesque echo of Edward III, who you may remember was so taken by the Countess of Salisbury that he enlisted the help of Lodwick to write love sonnets. Lodwick asks the king if he is writing to a woman, and King Edward replies, “ . . . thinkest thou I did bid thee praise a horse?”

The Dauphin is not alone in his extravagant pre-battle confidence. Constable suggests “Let us but blow on them,/ The vapour of our valour will o'erturn them. . . a very little little let us do . . . And all is done.”

After Pistol is forced to eat the leek in V, I, he laments the death of . . . well, depending on the edition, it's either Nell (Hostess) or Doll. The Folio and Quartos have 'my Doll.' But many modern editions, including the Arden, change this to "my Nell." You can read the relevant footnote here, for line 82, V, i: https://books.google.com/books?id=Muprm ... on&f=false
Not mentioned in that footnote is the theory that Shakespeare had originally planned to include Falstaff in the scene, and the line was mistakenly left in after it was switched to Pistol. You can read of that here, in the paragraph that begins "Some evidence suggests . . ."
http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/m/do ... ed%20play/


This is one of the few plays of Shakespeare that we can date pretty precisely. Chorus opens Act V by talking of Henry's lack of need for public show and admiration, how he discouraged a big celebration of triumph in London upon his return from France. Chorus then compares this with the huge celebration that would await “the general of our gracious Empress,/ As in good time he may, from Ireland coming/ Bringing rebellion broached on his sword . . .” This is almost certainly a reference to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who left England to suppress the Irish rebels at the end of March, 1599. He returned in late September, having been outfought and outplayed by the Irish. The Queen placed him under house arrest and stripped him of all his posts. So it is generally agreed that the play was first performed between March and September. (Essex was pretty beaten up by July, so maybe between March and June, before the reports of his early failures reached London.)



Please let me know if you plan to read with us and are not yet on the list!

Thanks,
Steve


Don Shirley, the subject of the current film, “The Green Book”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJb3HZsK7lg

[Steve Minkin]

Cheers!

I trust we've all recovered from the floods! I want to take a new count of readers for our rescheduled date of Wedneday, March 13 for our reading. I know we've picked up at least a couple more, are now up to thirteen:

If you plan to join us and are not on this list, please let me know!

The Branagh film does something special in III, vi. This is the scene that opens with Pistol pleading with Fluellen to intervene to save Bardolph's life. Bardolph has been arrested for stealing from a French church, and sentenced to be hung. Fluellen rejects Pistol's pleading and soon after tells the king, describing Bardolph's landscaped face and asking if he knew the man. Here the Branagh film ramps up the drama by having Bardolph himself wheeled in on a wagon, in chains, to be hung. The film then cuts to a remembered drinking contest between Bardolph and Falstaff, with Bardolph saying to Hal, "Do not, when thou art king, hang a thief," and Hal replying, "No thou shalt." That was actually an exchange between Falstaff and Hal in the very first scene in which we see either of them, the second scene of Act One in 1HIV. The film cuts back to HV, the noose put in place around Bardolph's neck while the king tears up.

Both the Olivier and Branagh film reincarnate Falstaff for the play and replay the rejection scene at the end of 2HIV.

Steve


Enescu -- Romanian Rhapsody no 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhcpN0l4s_s

[Steve Minkin]

The end of history has been a theme of Hegel, Fukuyama and others, but we're merely at the end of our cycle of History plays, our long journey through both tetralogies and Edward III. And regardless of where one stands on the character of Henry V, the play itself is a gem, full of sparkling humor and soaring poetry.

A wonderful bit of serendipity tonight – we had a last minute cancellation from JohnL, who was swamped with work. BUT Conrad and Elizabeth's daughter, Jenna, is visting them from Italy, and came to the reading expecting to be a spectator. She picked up John's parts without batting an eye and – as one might expect from someone who grew up in Conrad and Elizabeth's house – read fabulously! Many thanks!

Eleven in attendance. Emily wondered if Act IV's eight scenes was the most in any play and I said that off the top my head I thought there was an act in Anthony and Cleopatra that ran into double digits. Actually, Act III of Tony and Cleo has thirteen scenes and Act IV has FIFTEEN scenes, which I'm assuming is the most. If you recall the play, there are many changes of locale, and some of the scenes are very short. Act IV, scene 11 consists of four lines by Octavius Caesar.

Next up, our third reading of As You Like It in late May, Shakespeare's sunniest heroine for the springtime.

And The Knight of The Burning Pestle (Beaumont) slated for the summer.


Ornette Coleman – Lonely Woman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh8RrSUvLgU