Shakespeare’s Bottom - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Shakespeare’s Bottom

Folk

Comedy

and AuthoritySlide2

Mystery plays

Who?:

members of the town Guilds; paid for their performances

Where?:

pageant wagons on the streets of the town (also the streets themselves)

When?:

religious festivals like Corpus Christi day or St. George’s

daySlide3

Mystery plays

Corpus Christi festival

(‘Body

of Christ’): officially recognised in 1311

Stories from the Bible, from the Creation to Doomsday

York, Chester, Coventry,

Towneley

; many others now lost

Pageant wagons (e.g. 24 at Chester, 32 at

Towneley

, 48 at York)

Guilds: often appropriate to story, e.g. Shipwrights present Noah’s Ark, Bakers present the Last Supper, Pinners the crucifixion, etc.

Community

celebration

Performed until late 1570sSlide4

The Second Shepherds’ Pageant:class

1 SHEPHERD.

Lord, what these weathers are cold!

And I am ill happed.

I am near-hand

dold

, so long have I napped;

My legs they fold, my fingers are chapped.

[…]

We are so hammed,

Fortaxed

and rammed,

We are made hand-tamed

With these

gentlery

-men. (1-18)

1 SHEP.

Patriarchs that have been, and prophets

beforn

,

They desired to have seen this child that is born.

They are gone full clean; that have they

lorn

. (692-4)Slide5

The Second Shepherds’ Pageant:anachronism

Names:

M

ak

, Gill, ‘Parkin, and Gibbon Waller … / And gentle John Horne’ (562-3)

MAK

.

Christ’s cross me speed! […] Now Christ’s holy name be us among! (268, 278)

3 SHEP.

Now

trow

me, if

ye will – by

Saint

Thomas of

Kent,

Either

Mak

or

Gill was

at that assent

. (458-9)

1 SHEP.

But,

M

ak

, is that sooth?

Now take out that Southern tooth,

And set in a turd! (214-16)

1

SHEP.

I thought that we laid us full near England. (353)Slide6

The Second Shepherds’ Pageant:the trickster

MAK.

Lord,

what they sleep hard! – that may ye all hear.

Was I never a shepherd, but now I will

lere

… (287-8)

MAK.

Do way!

I am worthy my meat,

For in a strait I can get

More than they that

swink

and sweat

All the day long. (309-12)Slide7

The Second Shepherds’ Pageant:burlesque

3 SHEP.

Mak

,

take it to no grief, if I come to thy

bairn.

MAK.

Nay, thou dost me great

reprief

,

and foul hast thou

farn

.

3 SHEP.

The

child will it not grieve, that little

day-

starn

.

Mak

,

with your leave, let me give your

bairn

But sixpence.

MAK.

Nay

,

do way! He sleeps.

3 SHEP.

Methink

he

peeps.

MAK.

When

he wakens he

weeps.

I

pray you go

hence.

3 SHEP.

Give

me leave him to kiss, and lift up the

clout.

What

the devil is this? He has a long

snout! (575-85)Slide8

The Second Shepherds’ Pageant:burlesque

MAK.

Now, Lord, for thy names seven

, that made both moon and

starns

Well

more than I can

neven

,

thy will, Lord, of

me

tharns

.

I

am all

uneven;

that moves oft my

harns

.

Now

would God I were in heaven, for there weep no

bairns

So

still

. (190-4)

MARY

.

The Father of Heaven, God

omnipotent,

That

set all on

seven,

his

Son

has he

sent.

My

name could he

neven

,

and

light ere

he

went.

I

conceived him full

even

through might, as

he meant;

And now

is he born

. (737-41)Slide9

Locus and platea

In his influential study

Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theatre

(1978, reprinted 1987), Robert

Weimann

identified a ‘dual perspective’ in both medieval and Elizabethan drama which ‘encompasses conflicting views of experience’ (1987: 243).

Weimann

analysed this in terms of

locus

and

platea

.Slide10

Locus

and

plateaSlide11

Locus and platea

Locus

Localised setting (e.g. a palace, a house): “a rudimentary element of verisimilitude” (

Weimann

1987: 75);

Mimesis;

High status characters: royalty, nobility;

Sacred;

Heightened language (usually verse);

Officially sanctioned historical narratives;

Elevation

Platea

Unlocalised

setting (literally a ‘place’): “a theatrical dimension of the real world” (

Weimann

1987: 76);

Direct address and audience interaction;

Low status characters: rustics, servants;

Profane;

Vernacular language (prose);

Anachronistic subversion and reference to the present;

Debasement and satire

Slide12

Locus and platea

‘What is involved is not the

confrontation

of the world and time of the play with that of the audience, or any serious

opposition

between representational and non-representational standards of acting, but the most intense

interplay

of both’ (

Weimann

1987: 80-1).Slide13

The De Witt drawing of the Swan Theatre, c. 1596Slide14

The Peacham illustration of Titus Andronicus

, c. 1595Slide15

Platea dramaturgy in Titus Andronicus

Enter the Clown with a basket and two pigeons in it

TITUS.

News, news from heaven; Marcus, the post is

come.

Sirrah

, what tidings? Have you any

letters?

Shall

I have justice? What says

Jupiter?

CLOWN

.

Ho

, the gibbet-maker? He says that he hath taken them down again, for the man must not be hanged till the next

week.

TITUS

.

But what says Jupiter, I ask

thee?

CLOWN

. Alas, sir, I know not Jupiter; I never drank with him in all my life

. (4.3.77-85)

CLOWN.

God and Saint Stephen give you good-

e’en

. (4.4.42-3)Slide16

Platea dramaturgy in Titus Andronicus

Phyllis

Rackin

:

‘Shakespeare

locates his highborn men in a variety of historical worlds, but his commoners belong to the

ephemeral

present moment of theatrical performance, the modern, and socially degraded, world of the Renaissance public

theatre’ (1991

: 98

).

‘…

women and commoners have no history because both are excluded from the aristocratic masculine world of written historical

representation’ (1991

: 103

).Slide17

Will KempeSlide18

Will Kempe

Played many of Shakespeare’s first great clown roles, probably including:

Dogberry

Bottom

Falstaff

Clowns like Lance, Lancelot

Gobbo

Actor and shareholder in Shakespeare’s company

Famed for his improvisations: Richard Brome’s 1638 play

The Antipodes

refers to

Kempe

as having held ‘

interloquutions

with the Audients… to move mirth and laughter’ (

Gurr

2002: 256).Slide19

Kempe as platea figure

Left: from the first quarto of

Much Ado About Nothing

(1600).

Below: from the second quarto of

Romeo and Juliet

(1599).Slide20

Kempe as platea figure

David Wiles

points out that all of the roles Kemp is thought to have played

‘are

structured in order to allow for at least one short scene in which he speaks directly to the

audience’

(2005: 107).

This monologue, he notes,

‘is

normally placed at the end of a scene, and thus seems to provide a format within which the clown may extemporise without risk to the rhythm of the play or direction of the

narrative’

(2005: 107

).Slide21

Platea dramaturgy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

From the first quarto of

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

(1600).Slide22

Platea dramaturgy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

From the first quarto of

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

(1600).Slide23

Platea dramaturgy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Francois

Laroque

:

‘The

function of the clown was thus to cut down intellectual pretension and to draw attention to what Mikhail

Bakhtin

has called

“the

material bodily lower stratum

,”

that is, the world below the belt and the sphere of human appetite, thus allowing the spectator to distance himself/herself from high-minded activity and discourse. The opposition functions particularly well… in

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

, where the myth of romantic love is subverted through the debunking and the bungling of

Pyramus

and

Thisbe

by the

mechanicals’ (2002: 70).Slide24

‘The material bodily lower stratum’

In

carnivalesque

imagery, according to Mikhail

Bakhtin

, the human body ‘is presented not in a private, egotistic form, severed from the other spheres of life, but as something universal, representing all the people’:

‘The people’s laughter which characterized all the forms of grotesque realism from immemorial times was linked with the bodily lower stratum. Laughter degrades and materializes. […] To degrade also means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore relates to acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth. Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a destructive, negative aspect, but also a regenerating one.’ (1965: 19-21)Slide25

Carnival and Elizabethan society

Elizabethan society was strictly hierarchical:

Every degree of people in their vocation, calling, and office hath appointed to them, their duty and order. Some are in high degree, some in low, some kings and princes, some inferiors and subjects, priests, and laymen, Masters and Servants, Fathers and children, husbands and wives, rich and poor, and everyone hath need of other: so that in all things is to be lauded and praised the goodly order of god, without the which, no house, no city, no commonwealth can continue and endure or last. (From

Homily on Obedience

, 1559)Slide26

Carnival and Elizabethan society

Built into the structure of Elizabethan society were a series of ‘safety valves’: periods of licence in which the strict social order would be temporarily reversed:

Shrove Tuesday

Misrule (Christmas – especially Twelfth Night)

May Day

summer games

These festivals often involved an invasion of the local church or churchyard with music, singing, dancing, joking, bawdy humour, role-play and outrageous costume.Slide27

May-games

From Philip

Stubbes

,

The

Anatomie

of Abuses

(1583):

‘Against

May, Whitsunday, or other time,

old

men and

wives

run gadding

overnight

to the woods, groves, hills and mountains, where they spend all night in pleasant pastimes; and in the morning they return, bringing with them birch and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withal. … I have heard it credibly reported (and that viva voce) by men of great

gravity

and reputation, that of forty, threescore, or a hundred

maids

going to the wood over-night, there have scarcely the third of them returned home

again

undefiled.’Slide28

Misrule

Stubbes

again:

‘First

, all the

wildheads

of the parish,

conventing

together, choose them a grand captain (of all mischief) whom they ennoble with the title of “my Lord of Misrule”, and him they crown with great solemnity, and adopt for their king. This king anointed

chooseth

forth twenty, forty, threescore or a hundred lusty guts, like to himself, to wait upon his lordly

majesty…

Then march these heathen company towards the church and churchyard, their pipers piping, their drummers thundering, their stumps dancing, their bells jingling, their handkerchiefs swinging about their heads like madmen, their hobbyhorses and other monsters skirmishing amongst the rout. And in this sort they go to the church (I say) and into the church (though the minister be at prayer or preaching) dancing and swinging their handkerchiefs over their heads in the church, like devils incarnate, with such a confused noise, that no man can hear his own voice

.’Slide29

Carnival

As Michael Bristol explains:

‘Central to the experience of Carnival is a particular use of symbols, costumes and masks, in which the ordinary relationship between signifier and signified is disrupted and conventional meaning is parodied. Parody and travesty, the rude, foolish, sometimes abusive mimicry of everyday categories, create the topsy-turvy world of

carnivalesque

misrule.’ (Bristol 1983: 641)Slide30

Misrule in the theatre

From John Webster’s

The

Duchess of

Malfi

(c. 1613):

ANTONIO.

I must lie here.

DUCHESS.

Must! You are a lord of misrule.

ANTONIO.

Indeed, my rule is only in the night. (3.2.9-10)

From

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

:

OBERON.

How

now, mad

spirit?

What

nightrule now about this haunted grove?

PUCK.

My

mistress with a monster is in love

. (3.2.4-6)Slide31

May-games in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

LYSANDER.

If thou

lov’st

me then

,

Steal

forth thy

father’s

house

tomorrow night,

And

in the wood, a league without the

town,

Where

I did meet thee once with

Helena

To

do observance to a morn of

May,

There will I stay for thee. (1.1.163-8)

OBERON.

…she

his hairy temples then had

rounded

With

a coronet of fresh and fragrant

flowers… (4.1.50-1)

EGEUS.

I wonder of their being here together

.

THESEUS.

No doubt they rose up early to

observe

The

rite of

May… (4.1.130-2)Slide32

References

Bakhtin

, M. (1965)

Rabelais and His World

, trans. H.

Iswolsky

, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Barber, C. L. (1972)

Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy: A Study of Form and its Relation to Social Custom

, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Bristol, M. D. (1983) ‘Carnival and the Institutions of Theatre in Elizabethan England’,

ELH

, 50: 4, 637-654.

Eagleton, T. (1986)

William Shakespeare

, London: Basil Blackwell.

Gurr

, A. (2002)

Playgoing

in Shakespeare’s London

(2nd ed.), Cambridge:

C. U. P.Kershaw, B. (1992) The Politics of Performance: Radical theatre as cultural intervention, London: Routledge.Slide33

References

Laroque

, F. (2002)

‘Popular Festivity’

in

Leggatt

, A. [ed.]

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy

, Cambridge: C. U. P., pp. 64-78.

Palmer, D. J [ed.] (1984)

Comedy: Developments in Criticism

, London: Macmillan.

Rackin

, P. (1991)

Stages of History: Shakespeare’s English Chronicles

, London:

Routledge

.

Weimann

, R. (1987)

Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the

Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function, Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press.Wiles, D. (2005) Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse, Cambridge: C. U. P.