Visit to the Garrick Club

A couple weeks ago my masters program were invited to visit the Garrick Club, a gentlemen's club in Covent Garden with an extraordinary collection of theatrical paintings. It was founded in the early nineteenth century as a theatrical and literary society for actors and educated men interested in the theatre (it is named after the Shakespearean actor David Garrick). Almost from the beginning, the club has collected paintings of actors, mostly portraying them in costume for a specific role. Walking through the rooms of the club, you can quite literally see the history and traditions of the English stage: Garrick, Kean, Bernhardt, Olivier and others are all represented, in plays by Shakespeare (which seemed to predominate) but also others.

It's quite an interesting phenomenon that such an industry obviously grew up around painting actors and actresses as a certain character they were famous for playing. Perhaps this was the beginning of the actor as icon culture; but, other than movie posters, I'm not sure that it's still current to collect pictures of actors as a particular role. One interesting thing that we noticed was that the paintings often put the actors into a natural-looking landscape rather than painting a portrayal of stage scenery. It was as if the actors were represented in the painting more as the characters than as themselves.

Since most of the masters program are female, we ranged from amused to indignant when we learned that the Garrick Club is one of the last of the gentlemen's clubs not to admit women into their membership. Apparently (we learned), there is a vote every year on the issue, and every year it is voted down. But I have to say: the women's restroom we were shown as a place to leave our bags made more than one jaw drop. Women are allowed to be guests of members, and it is obvious they are taken care of when they're there.

The UCL Shakespeare masters program with a smattering of our professors. I'm almost exactly in the middle.

First reactions to new Shakespeare portrait

Time magazine has now published an article on the new painting with much more information than was given by The Times last night, including our first look at the new painting.

If it looks familiar, it's because Wells and Cobbe believe they have proved that this painting was the original for several others that we already had. It's an oil painting on wood, and tree-ring dating has shown that the wood dates from 1610, six years before Shakespeare's death.

My first reaction to seeing the painting is to wonder at the elaborate costume Shakespeare is wearing. It's easy to tell that this was a costly outfit and, in a time when laws governed the type of dress different occupations and classes of society were allowed to wear, a statement of status. My favorite painting of Shakespeare before had always been the Chandos portrait (right) which depicts him with a simple open collar and a small gold hoop earring: the uniform of an artist, probably something like a sweater, scarf and beret today. This painting is a representation of a well-to-do gentleman (Shakespeare by this time had applied for and received a coat of arms and gentleman status on behalf of his father John Shakespeare); for years it was mistaken as Sir Walter Raleigh.

It also seems likely that it was commissioned and first owned by Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton. We knew that the two enjoyed a close relationship--as patron and poet, at least; and Southampton was also a great theatre-goer--but if he did value having a portrait of Shakespeare enough to commission this handsome painting, that suggests a close relationship indeed. Stanley Wells, in fact, is quoted in the Time article as, in the light of this new painting, giving more credence to an old story that Southampton once gave Shakespeare £1000 pounds, which was quite the fortune in Elizabethan England.

I'm willing to be convinced by Wells and Cobbe and consider this to be an actual portrait of Shakespeare. And, I confess, I just like it: the sly smile, the animated face, the wide forehead, the beard. I hope that the painting can give us more clues about Shakespeare's life, but the most important thing is the pleasure of knowing that yes, this is what Shakespeare looked like.

Shakespeare's auburn hair

I was going to sit on this news until tomorrow, but The Times beat me to it. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, headed by Stanley Wells, the pre-eminent Shakespearean and general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare, and Alec Cobbe, an art restorer, believe they have found a new portrait of Shakespeare that was painted during his lifetime.

If they're right, this will be the only known likeness taken before the playwright's death. Wells said he thinks it was made in 1610, when Shakespeare was 46, six years before his death. It is believed to have originally belonged to the Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton and Shakespeare's patron, to whom both of his narrative poems were dedicated. Southampton is one of the possible candidates for the youth to whom the majority of Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed. It has belonged to the Cobbe family for three centuries, but until a recent exhibition of possible Shakespeare portraits by the National Gallery, they were unsure who the subject of the portrait was.

Obviously the painting will undergo a lot of scrutiny. I have high hopes that, should it be proved authentic, it will tell us something about the famous playwright. I believe I can say that René Weis, professor at University College London, agrees with Wells that the painting is authentic. We will know more after Wells and Cobbe unveil their findings on iTV tomorrow night. Until then, I'll leave you with just two words: auburn hair!

Pancake day

One thing that amuses most Americans in England is that the English have never had what we call pancakes. It turns out there is a reason for this: the English have a whole holiday devoted to their version of a pancake, Pancake Day. The Tuesday before Lent is known as Pancake Day and is celebrated by making large thin 'pancakes' (they're more like crepes) that can be eaten, it seems, with almost anything. Originally this served to clear out all the rich ingredients in the pantry before the fast for Lent began.

I got to experience my first Pancake Day celebration this weekend; a friend combined it with her birthday party and asked us to meet her at a pancake restaurant in Chelsea. My first pancake was covered in bacon, apples, and maple syrup, and the second had fruit salad and ice cream. Yum!

Shakespeare celebrated Pancake Day too. It's referred to twice in his plays, once in All's Well That Ends Well:

Countess: Will your answer serve fit to all questions?

Clown: As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffeta punk, as Tib's rush for Tom's forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday, a morris for May-day, as the nail to his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding queen to a wrangling knave, as the nun's lip to the friar's mouth, nay, as the pudding to his skin.

And once in a rather obscure joke in As You Like It that can possibly be explained if the play was first performed at a celebration of Pancake Day. It was traditional for Pancake Day celebrations to include the performance of plays for the monarch:

Touchstone: Mistress, you must come away to your father.

Celia: Were you made the messenger?

Touchstone: No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.

Rosalind: Where learned you that oath, fool?

Touchstone: Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught: now, I’ll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn.

Celia: How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?

Rosalind: Ay, marry: now unmuzzle your wisdom.

Touchstone: Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave.

Celia: By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

Touchstone: By my knavery, if I had it, then I were; but if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no more was this knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.

What happens in London

I have been saving up things to write about for quite a while and not having time to do it that I thought I would put them all up together and be done with it, but my entry got longer and longer, so I think I will need to break it up. For your reading pleasure, therefore, a montage of experiences of London:

I will start with the place where Londoners seem to spend most of their time: in a pub. I think pubs fill some of the function that a Starbucks might have in the States--but also, where Americans prefer meeting friends for a meal, it seems that Brits are more likely to invite someone just to have a drink (or tea). In any case, the people on my Shakespeare course got the idea that it would be fun to meet at a Shakespeare-themed pub. We did find one, one night, by accident, but since them we've been stumbling across them all over London. There are "Shakespeare's Head"s near Regent Street and Holborn, "The Shakespeare"s in Barbican and Victoria--there are even a few named after characters, like "The Falstaff" and "Othello".

The other most common London experience would probably have to be transport problems. I feel, first, that I ought to preface my horror stories by saying that I am always impressed by how well the public transport here works. Millions of Londoners don't even need cars because the tube, bus, taxi, and trains are so good.

But, with the amount of people who use the tube, problems are bound to happen. One day last term, I was trying to get from where I live, near Elephant and Castle in south London, to King's Cross in north London. I was on my way to a graduate conference at the British Library and had meant to be early so that I could stop by the university to run a few errands. I got on the train as planned, and was happily reading a copy of the London Review of Books when, at the next station, and for an unknown reason, there were so many people wanting to board the train that I thought there was no possibility they would all fit. Fit they did, and though I felt very much like a sardine, I supposed that many of the other passengers would change trains at the next station, Bank, which is one of the busier stations. But just before the train arrived at Bank, it was forced to stop in the middle of the tunnel. The lights flickered as the conductor turned the engine on and off. Everyone tried not to look at one another, not to talk. The heat was immense, and no one could take off their winter coats in the cramped conditions. We were left to sweat for twenty minutes before the conductor finally explained that someone had torn down some of the large paper ads that lined the tracks, and the paper needed to be cleared before the train could move. We were promised a quick arrival.

By this time the heat was so much that people were having trouble breathing. A girl standing behind me suddenly decided that she needed to get to the vent for some air and somehow managed to push and climb to the end of the car. A man in the middle chose to vent his feelings by cursing and yelling, and a boy near me, who must have been claustrophobic, began really to be sick. His poor father was trying hard to help him to breathe normally, but it was lucky a woman near them was able to pull out a plastic bag.

After a while the train was turned on, it lurched forward, and stopped. It rolled back. This was repeated for several minutes. On top of everything, the train was broken. As I remember, we were stuck for nearly forty minutes before we could be pulled into Bank, and I think everyone who had been on it must have felt as queasy as I did for the rest of the day.

That's my only gothic tale of transport problems--I promise. I think that day was probably the start of when I began to try to take the bus everywhere. And I'll leave off there, with the promise of pairing my tube story with a bus story soon.

Puppets and libraries

If life can settle down in London, it appears finally to be doing so: I have moved into my flat, purchased necessary furniture, set up an internet connection, started school. Now a routine can start to form, which doesn't mean that days can't exist (like today) that seem so out of the ordinary to be a little surreal.

My daily schedule has generally been starting rather early, with toast and jam for breakfast with a cup of tea. I discovered a wonderful magazine called the London Review of Books which makes great reading over breakfast or on the tube, so I generally carry that around with me. I have class two days a week, though I am generally in the area of London where UCL is more days than not: the course convenor for my MA told us that the British Library should become "like a second home," and I have a feeling those words were more prophetic than advisory; so most mornings I think I'll be leaving pretty early if not to go to class than to set up in one library or another for a day of reading and writing.

This morning, that was my plan. I woke up early and was making my second cup of tea when my flatmate Becky's boyfriend, Ollie, popped in and announced that he had free tickets to a show at the Little Angel Puppet Theatre to see Sleeping Beauty. Of course I can't turn down a chance to see a puppet show, so at 10am I found myself in Angel, which turned out to be a charming area with lots of antique shops and patisseries, in a tiny theatre behind a garden with a tiny stage for tiny puppets. Most of the audience were under five years old except for a sprinkling of mothers and the little group of postgraduates sitting in the back that Ollie convinced to come. But all of us really enjoyed it: there's something really charming about puppets.

After lunch I said goodbye to Becky and Ollie and headed over to the British Library. I had reserved a copy of a play published in 1728 to read in the Rare Books Room. The BL is a copyright library, so they have--literally--everything. But you cannot check anything out: if you have a Reader's Pass, you can order books to read inside the library. There is a somewhat elaborate process to be allowed to read a book. You must leave all of your belongings except what is allowed in the reading rooms (pencils, paper, laptops on silent, etc.) in the cloakroom. Everything that you take with you must be placed in a clear plastic bag. At the entrance to the reading room you must flash your Reader's Pass and then proceed to an empty seat. Noting your seat number, you may either proceed to a computer to order reading material (which may take 70 minutes to arrive) or, if you were smart enough to order it online ahead of time, to an issue desk to retrieve your book. You then sit with it at your desk until you are done, at which point you may return it to the issue desk and request that they keep it for you for three days. On exiting, your clear plastic bag is inspected for stowaways.

Despite all this, it's an amazing experience to visit the BL. Once you make it through their security measures, they are remarkably lenient about what you can be allowed to read. I almost couldn't believe that they would just hand me a copy of a rare play from 1728 this afternoon, but they did. I sat in the middle of the reading room in a comfortable leather chair and alternated between taking notes on the text I was reading and enjoying watching the people around me. People watching is rapidly becoming one of my favorite activities to do in London, and the British Library seems to be a great place to do it if you're interested in older scholarly (and sometimes slightly eccentric-looking) types.

The play I was looking at is called The Double Falshood, or Lovers Distressed by Lewis Theobald, though Theobald claims that he only edited it and that the text is actually the lost play Cardenio by Shakespeare. Reading it, I find it hard to believe that it could actually have a Shakespeare manuscript behind it. It was entertaining, and certainly accomplished and polished poetry, but there wasn't anything special about the language itself.

I ended the day with more puppets: Ollie shares my love of the Muppets and so we all watched some episodes of The Muppet Show together. A good end to a satisfying day, really.

Flats update and what bedsits are

It seems strange to think that yesterday I spent most of the day complacently writing and reading, thinking that by the end of the day, I would either have a bedsit room or have made an offer on a flat. Neither happened, but I think it's for the best.

Last night and this morning were frantic, between deciding not to take a two-bed flat we had been close to wanting, adding a third flatmate, and suddenly finding that the hostel I planned to stay in this week didn't have any rooms available. I have a place to stay now until the 22nd--I had to book a room in the YMCA for three days until I can move into a little hotel in Bloomsbury, but it isn't as bad as I expected. As for the flats, we are, so to speak, back to square one, but I have a feeling the looking and deciding will go faster this time.

I did like both the bedsits I saw over the past few days, but I would much rather live have flatmates, so there are people around to talk to! The first I saw was an elderly lady renting out a spare bedroom in her house. She lived there with her daughter, son-in-law and grandson. The room was spacious and nice, but no washing machine, no dishwasher, no oven, and no going out at night. She gave me tea and cookies and we had a nice chat, but it didn't take too long to decide I would pass. The second was a middle-aged woman renting out a room in her house. She lives there by herself as her son is getting his MA somewhere up north. It was much smaller, but had a very large desk and full use of the house. She knew quite a bit about literature and so we had a chat about my thesis topic over tea. The area she lives in is called the Shakespeare Collective, apparently--the street names are after characters from the plays: Cressida, Miranda, Prospero, and I think I saw Lysander. I love how London is so full of literary history than even streets get named after famous literature. I walked out of the YMCA tonight and saw, just across the street, a pub called The Shakespeare. I love it.

Coming soon: Lego Shakespeare Tours London

Are english departments politicizing literature?

I’ve been reading Harold Bloom recently, partially because I’ve never read much of his work before and partially because I’m interested in his view of literature. He subscribes to an aesthetic theory of reading literature (if you can call it a theory), which means, I believe, that he reads literature looking for beauty and pleasure. He juxtaposes this to the other camps that exist within English departments in universities: the Marxists, the feminists, the New Historicists, the cultural materialists, etc.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have trouble grasping the differences between these groups. Richard Dutton, who I took a graduate course in Renaissance literature from at OSU, called my handle on these ill-formed, if I remember correctly. I asked him for some literature to help me correct this, which I dutifully read, but I don’t think it helped. Perhaps a reason for this is that I have always been flummoxed by why anyone would choose to read every piece of literature with a prescribed viewpoint.

I almost wrote “with a certain handicap.” Dare I compare reading say, Shakespeare, through a Freudian lens as playing tennis with one hand tied behind your back? Or maybe with a patch over one eye.

The next question, obviously, is whether Bloom’s aestheticism is another camp or, as he wants us to think, the natural position from which these other literary theories are aberrations. To use an image from Lewis: is Bloom’s theory the wood between the worlds, or is it just another pool within the wood?

My instinct is to agree with Bloom that reading aesthetically is the norm from which other readings wander. As a child, I didn’t choose books because I thought they advanced the cause of women, I read them because I liked them.

I had the curious feeling when I graduated from OSU that I was rediscovering how reading can be fun. For three years, I barely read anything because I wanted to; I was too inundated with class readings to have time for anything else. But once I graduated, that changed. I could enjoy reading again!

Bloom thinks that universities teach students not to enjoy reading. I’m somewhat inclined to agree. It’s no fun reading anything if you’re trying to politicize it, as Bloom charges that these camps of literary theory do. But then where would a person who wants to read for beauty and pleasure fit in? In a university? I don’t know.

This question, among others, has been troubling me recently as I try to decide whether I ought, in a couple years, to pursue a Ph.D. I doubt there is a simple answer.

Shakespeare in the news

This morning, there was an article in the Houston Chronicle about the recovery of a 1623 First Folio (the first ever printed edition of Shakespeare's complete works) that was stolen a decade ago from Durham University in England.

I couldn't help laughing as I read the article; the whole story seems like it should be the synopsis of a novel, not a real news event. Ten years ago someone broke into a glass case with a crowbar, took the First Folio and seven other old and rare books, and to disguise the fact of the robbery, laid a painter's cloth over the case (which apparently worked, at least for a time).

Then, for ten years, no one heard anything about the missing books, of which the First Folio alone is now estimated to be worth $30 million. That was, until two weeks ago, when a mysterious man with a British accent showed up unannounced at the Folger LIbrary in Washington, D. C. He claimed to be an international businessman working for a family in Cuba who had a copy of what seemed to be the First Folio in their library. He wanted to know if it was authentic.

He left the volume with the Folger experts, who requested time to study it. Before long they discovered not only that it was authentic, but that it was the stolen Folio from Durham. The British police were alerted, and the man was arrested back at his home in England.

I won't comment on how ridiculous it is that the man thought he could get away with selling a stolen copy of the First Folio to a bunch of Shakespeare experts. It might be compared with stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and then trying to sell it back to them a decade later. (I found this in a garage sale in NYC, really I did...)

Thinking about how entertaining this story is led me to reflect on the many other stories (and myths) surrounding Shakespeare. One of my favorites is that after the Third Folio was printed, Oxford got rid of its First Folio, considering it an extra. It took them a while to realize their enormous mistake, and after a couple hundred years had to purchase it back. I wondered, then, reading the story this morning, whether there existed any Shakespeare news blogs on the internet (and whether they were enough news to make such an idea viable).

I was glad to find that there is at least one that a short Google search led me to: Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet. A short look told me that yes, there is enough news out there to make a blog out of (though it occurs to me that there might be more than even this blogger is finding); however, I was almost put off from reading the blog by the second post, dated July 8.

Apparently the British government is introducing a new program to start sharing Shakespeare with students as young as five. This blogger's reaction was: "Is it appropriate to introduce so complex an author to such young children?"

In a word: yes!

This seems to betray a disgustingly snobbish and high-minded view of literature. Perhaps this blogger was envisioning a kindergarten teacher trying to explain the complexities of Hamlet's character or the structure of Pericles. If this were the case, I'd have to agree, that isn't appropriate. But the study of Shakespeare doesn't always have to be scholarly. As fun as it is for scholars and critics to pick apart the finer points of the plays and poems, these works were meant to be enjoyed, not studied.

If a teacher can get five year olds to read Shakespeare and enjoy it, then surely we should encourage it. The lives of those children will be enriched, I'm sure. Learning to enjoy literature is never a bad thing.