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highfantastical for last week's wonderful guest post.
Title: The Tempest; one of Ariel's ditties, sung to the sleeping Gonzalo. All sorts of resonances there; with Cricket Term as well as the idea of a warning against treason that may be imperfectly heard or understood.
Humfrey's inadvertent disclosures, as well as suddenly having much more time on his hands now his voice has broken, have left Nicholas with a bit of an identity crisis. And into this comes Essex's infamous command performance of Richard II. Any of the other Sharers might have been a touch more circumspect (though none has Nicholas's inside knowledge), but of course the conspirators ask August, Essex Fanboy #1, again giving them a misleading sense of how widespread their support is. I love the theme throughout the books of the playhouse mirroring the world; here August completely fails to see resonance between art and life.
The combination of motives that leads Nicholas to write to Poley is marvellous, I think: ranging from amour propre--'no need to run to Will in that childish way'--to the knowledge that the players are already, like it or not, implicated. That he can neither write Poley's name nor give the correct code phrase in the bookshop are also beautiful details.
I love Nicholas's discovery of two of Shakespeare's sonnets: Forest's choice is splendid, I think: not for her the player's boy running across 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' or 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds': instead, we get two much less well known examples, both of which take as their master image something distinctly domestic and homely. The first is 34, addressed to the young man who is sometimes identified with Southampton, the second 143, in which the poet addresses his mistress who has abandoned him in pursuit of the young man. It's typical of Forest, I think, to choose a pair of sonnets which indicate Shakespeare's bisexuality--and if we identify the young man of the sonnets with Southampton, then there's a fair old fling at his foppishness and cowardice in 143, in which he appears as an errant chicken. I can't quite work out whether Forest does identify the young man of the sonnets with Southampton, though; what do others think?
Nick being Cross! Gage-throwing! Infant!Hotspur in THAT Richard II is peculiarly delightful to me. (Might be just me.)
The peculiar mood of the Richard audience is nicely sketched, and the chilling appearance of Poley in the crowd. I feel sorry for anyone who just showed up for a bit of nostalgia and (as a Bolingbroke fan myself) clapped in the wrong places.
There are multiple ironies in Nicholas nearly running onto Edmund's sword as the truth of the conspiracy finally sinks in; all the deflected echoes of usurpation and betrayal in Hamlet, of course (which are later remarked upon at that fabulously jumpy Shrove Tuesday performance).
Title, Henry IV Part Two, which will be picked up at the end of the next chapter.
I confess I don't know how accurate this is as a portrayal of Essex's rebellion, but it's a marvellous study in the bathos of an unsuccessful coup, which Humfrey, as much as Nicholas, sees in theatrical terms. I think it's a great device to have Humfrey, with his characteristic mixture of clear-sightedness and shame at what he sees as his own timidity narrate the initial unsuccesses. What do people think of Humfrey's decision to leave Southampton? By an earlier, feudal standard, it's the most shameful act imaginable; even if Humfrey is not still quite Southampton's page. But there's a modern, bourgeois, individualist sensibility visible as well, which asks is this cause worth it? and which the implied authorial voice certainly does not condemn. Nicholas is uneasily poised for much of this chapter between Blount, embodying honour at all costs, and Humfrey, whose values and self-estimation are quite different. It's an interesting detail that what lands them in beseiged Essex House in the first place is Humfrey's insistence on returning for his lute; at once the symbol of his professional future but also Southampton's gift.
I believe it's a matter of historical record that Knollys was one of the hostages, but a lovely touch that he's 'haughty, angry' Malvolio released for real.
The scene of the siege is very effective, I think: Forest captures that air of tense unreality, the boredom and uncertainty, the false starts and longueurs. Nicholas's excitement contrasts with Humfrey's experience (I like the detail that he identifies, again despite class, with morose John Bates in Henry V: it's also interesting that Bates counsels a kind of know-your-place obedience against Michael Williams' independent-mindedness). A little later, reflecting on the irony of his position, considering his betrayal of Essex, Nicholas quotes Williams's reply to Henry's 'his cause being just and his quarrel honourable': 'That's more than we know'.
Parallels between the playhouse and the political world continue with Nicholas's reflections on the unsatisfying pacing of real life: when the arc of play would demand a death-and-glory sortie, in actuality, negotiations continue. Romance and realism contrast again in Nicholas’s comparison of honourable death in single combat with the threat of artillery being sent in; he finds solace in Henry V’s soliloquy ‘O God of battles.’ It underlines the difference between the playhouse and the world outside it (and incidentally, between early 15th and late 16th century warfare) but it’s also a powerful statement of the usefulness, relevance and necessity of art.
Humfrey’s suggestion that Nicholas leave dressed as a woman, and the latter’s furious reaction make for a truly memorable scene: summarising many of the anxieties about gender and maturity that haunt the institution of the boy player--it marks the definitive end of Nicholas's thinking of himself as a boy-playing-women, and his assumption of the identity of a man; it fixes a ne plus ultra on the acceptability of cross-dressing for Nicholas (and Elizabethan society at large? not for Humfrey, though): in the interests of art, yes; as a means of escape, definitively not: that is, it's only all right if the artifice is acknowledged, actually to pretend to be a woman and claim the dubious privilege of non-combatant status is insult and shame. It will be interestingly revisited a little later in the chapter.
Blount's ferocity is almost comically touching; echoes, of course, of of Henry V in his hoping with an outnumbered and outgunned force to exploit a breech. Nicholas's remembering the sonnet, and recognising he might be to Humfrey as the addressee was to Will, is moving in a quite different way; Forest again refuses a heteronormative understanding of romance, to which we later return, I think, with Nicholas's confused thoughts about his feelings for Bess. Speaking of, Humfrey's comment on Southampton's marriage is priceless, and it's really rather agonising that the boys don't perceive, as the reader must, what the letter indicates has happened.
Nicholas reacting with Falstaff's words on 'honour' to the shock of the surrender is a brilliant detail, as is the wonderfully bitchy reflection that the last person Southampton might want to see now is his indefatigably honourable page. But George's tears restore sympathy to a degree, and provide a very interesting foil to Humfrey's much more equivocal sense of shame. Humfrey shares the conviction, common to people of low self-esteem, that they are the only ones who have less than noble emotions.
Oh dear, poor Humfrey does have it bad for Nicholas, doesn't he? (This has been your regular &c.) But he gets his moment of withering repartee in response to George; and (almost better) follows it up immediately with: '"I daresay none of them--us--are worth it" ' The parenthetical correction really makes it. GO HUMFREY.
Interestingly, I was following a discussion elsewhere about--as Graham Greene puts it--the 'splinter of ice' in the heart necessary for artistic detachment, and there's a wonderfully explicit example in Nicholas's remembering George's expression as he breaks his sword for use onstage.
A moment of peril as the boys hide from the soldiers, ironising Nicholas's horror at the idea of dressing as a woman for purposes of escape, as he uses all the charm of Juliet, Jessica and Viola to beguile a fan into keeping quiet.
An apt moment as Nicholas escapes his association with Essex and his entourage in exactly the same spot where he entered eight years before, and of course--who could doubt it?--Poley is there. Wary of pushing it (it's already a bit too neat, I think) Forest makes Poley's death at Nicholas's hand quite understated, though she registers the shock of it too. "all but isn't quite" is surely what Miss Kempe would call 'an appalling sentence', but it is a wonderfully terse summary of the novels' commentary on courage and loyalty.
Title: The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Nicholas's tears over the homeliness of the kitchen and its cockroaches and his self-reproach for weeping when he has lost less than Humfrey has interestingly echo some of the modern Marlows' emotional repression (I think particularly of Peter, post-Traitor). He has just killed someone in self-defence, after all: he should probably be a bit easier on himself.
The conversation between Will, Humfrey and Nicholas is a reminder of just how many secrets and duplicities Nicholas has involved himself in: each of them has a slightly different idea of the truth, and this is very much a chapter of untangling those deceits, often through unwitting revelation. I like Will's quiet mercilessness here ('permanent reminder of the encounter', 'pages no more than dutifully in attendance'). He makes rather a frighteningly good interrogator, come to think of it, exploiting the boys' exhausted and shocked missteps to tease out their stories; it makes Poley look very amateur and Grand Guignol. (I don't think I quite mean this. Not quite.) Forest does slightly overuse the adverb 'drily' about Will's dialogue, I think.
Will and Nicholas's discussion of treachery, informing and betrayal is fantastic, I think: especially Will's admission that he'd have reluctantly done the same and that he was glad Nicolas didn't tell him, Nicholas's superstitious thought about his oath to Poley and Will's pragmatic response, the commentary on Richard III and Henry IV Part Two, the recurrence of the 'splinter of ice' motif as Nicholas says he now really knows how to play John Bates. The sense of art as necessary and nourishing, not an addition to life but an integral part of it, something that helps us to survive, is something I really value in Forest.
Will's advice that Nicholas should not be too open with Humfrey about what has happened is painful in its wisdom; Nicholas's reflection that he probably did the right thing to inform, but nonetheless the act is somehow shameful (and the very faintly Lawrie-ish echo of the unfairness of same), is splendidly observed.
Edmund's entrance, bewildered and somewhat less than sober, provides a comic framework for Humfrey's misery, and a brief moment of respite before the chapter ends on Nicholas thinking of Essex and Southampton's journey downriver.
Lots there to discuss! Have at it!
highfantastical for last week's wonderful guest post.Title: The Tempest; one of Ariel's ditties, sung to the sleeping Gonzalo. All sorts of resonances there; with Cricket Term as well as the idea of a warning against treason that may be imperfectly heard or understood.
Humfrey's inadvertent disclosures, as well as suddenly having much more time on his hands now his voice has broken, have left Nicholas with a bit of an identity crisis. And into this comes Essex's infamous command performance of Richard II. Any of the other Sharers might have been a touch more circumspect (though none has Nicholas's inside knowledge), but of course the conspirators ask August, Essex Fanboy #1, again giving them a misleading sense of how widespread their support is. I love the theme throughout the books of the playhouse mirroring the world; here August completely fails to see resonance between art and life.
The combination of motives that leads Nicholas to write to Poley is marvellous, I think: ranging from amour propre--'no need to run to Will in that childish way'--to the knowledge that the players are already, like it or not, implicated. That he can neither write Poley's name nor give the correct code phrase in the bookshop are also beautiful details.
I love Nicholas's discovery of two of Shakespeare's sonnets: Forest's choice is splendid, I think: not for her the player's boy running across 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' or 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds': instead, we get two much less well known examples, both of which take as their master image something distinctly domestic and homely. The first is 34, addressed to the young man who is sometimes identified with Southampton, the second 143, in which the poet addresses his mistress who has abandoned him in pursuit of the young man. It's typical of Forest, I think, to choose a pair of sonnets which indicate Shakespeare's bisexuality--and if we identify the young man of the sonnets with Southampton, then there's a fair old fling at his foppishness and cowardice in 143, in which he appears as an errant chicken. I can't quite work out whether Forest does identify the young man of the sonnets with Southampton, though; what do others think?
Nick being Cross! Gage-throwing! Infant!Hotspur in THAT Richard II is peculiarly delightful to me. (Might be just me.)
The peculiar mood of the Richard audience is nicely sketched, and the chilling appearance of Poley in the crowd. I feel sorry for anyone who just showed up for a bit of nostalgia and (as a Bolingbroke fan myself) clapped in the wrong places.
There are multiple ironies in Nicholas nearly running onto Edmund's sword as the truth of the conspiracy finally sinks in; all the deflected echoes of usurpation and betrayal in Hamlet, of course (which are later remarked upon at that fabulously jumpy Shrove Tuesday performance).
Title, Henry IV Part Two, which will be picked up at the end of the next chapter.
I confess I don't know how accurate this is as a portrayal of Essex's rebellion, but it's a marvellous study in the bathos of an unsuccessful coup, which Humfrey, as much as Nicholas, sees in theatrical terms. I think it's a great device to have Humfrey, with his characteristic mixture of clear-sightedness and shame at what he sees as his own timidity narrate the initial unsuccesses. What do people think of Humfrey's decision to leave Southampton? By an earlier, feudal standard, it's the most shameful act imaginable; even if Humfrey is not still quite Southampton's page. But there's a modern, bourgeois, individualist sensibility visible as well, which asks is this cause worth it? and which the implied authorial voice certainly does not condemn. Nicholas is uneasily poised for much of this chapter between Blount, embodying honour at all costs, and Humfrey, whose values and self-estimation are quite different. It's an interesting detail that what lands them in beseiged Essex House in the first place is Humfrey's insistence on returning for his lute; at once the symbol of his professional future but also Southampton's gift.
I believe it's a matter of historical record that Knollys was one of the hostages, but a lovely touch that he's 'haughty, angry' Malvolio released for real.
The scene of the siege is very effective, I think: Forest captures that air of tense unreality, the boredom and uncertainty, the false starts and longueurs. Nicholas's excitement contrasts with Humfrey's experience (I like the detail that he identifies, again despite class, with morose John Bates in Henry V: it's also interesting that Bates counsels a kind of know-your-place obedience against Michael Williams' independent-mindedness). A little later, reflecting on the irony of his position, considering his betrayal of Essex, Nicholas quotes Williams's reply to Henry's 'his cause being just and his quarrel honourable': 'That's more than we know'.
Parallels between the playhouse and the political world continue with Nicholas's reflections on the unsatisfying pacing of real life: when the arc of play would demand a death-and-glory sortie, in actuality, negotiations continue. Romance and realism contrast again in Nicholas’s comparison of honourable death in single combat with the threat of artillery being sent in; he finds solace in Henry V’s soliloquy ‘O God of battles.’ It underlines the difference between the playhouse and the world outside it (and incidentally, between early 15th and late 16th century warfare) but it’s also a powerful statement of the usefulness, relevance and necessity of art.
Humfrey’s suggestion that Nicholas leave dressed as a woman, and the latter’s furious reaction make for a truly memorable scene: summarising many of the anxieties about gender and maturity that haunt the institution of the boy player--it marks the definitive end of Nicholas's thinking of himself as a boy-playing-women, and his assumption of the identity of a man; it fixes a ne plus ultra on the acceptability of cross-dressing for Nicholas (and Elizabethan society at large? not for Humfrey, though): in the interests of art, yes; as a means of escape, definitively not: that is, it's only all right if the artifice is acknowledged, actually to pretend to be a woman and claim the dubious privilege of non-combatant status is insult and shame. It will be interestingly revisited a little later in the chapter.
Blount's ferocity is almost comically touching; echoes, of course, of of Henry V in his hoping with an outnumbered and outgunned force to exploit a breech. Nicholas's remembering the sonnet, and recognising he might be to Humfrey as the addressee was to Will, is moving in a quite different way; Forest again refuses a heteronormative understanding of romance, to which we later return, I think, with Nicholas's confused thoughts about his feelings for Bess. Speaking of, Humfrey's comment on Southampton's marriage is priceless, and it's really rather agonising that the boys don't perceive, as the reader must, what the letter indicates has happened.
Nicholas reacting with Falstaff's words on 'honour' to the shock of the surrender is a brilliant detail, as is the wonderfully bitchy reflection that the last person Southampton might want to see now is his indefatigably honourable page. But George's tears restore sympathy to a degree, and provide a very interesting foil to Humfrey's much more equivocal sense of shame. Humfrey shares the conviction, common to people of low self-esteem, that they are the only ones who have less than noble emotions.
Oh dear, poor Humfrey does have it bad for Nicholas, doesn't he? (This has been your regular &c.) But he gets his moment of withering repartee in response to George; and (almost better) follows it up immediately with: '"I daresay none of them--us--are worth it" ' The parenthetical correction really makes it. GO HUMFREY.
Interestingly, I was following a discussion elsewhere about--as Graham Greene puts it--the 'splinter of ice' in the heart necessary for artistic detachment, and there's a wonderfully explicit example in Nicholas's remembering George's expression as he breaks his sword for use onstage.
A moment of peril as the boys hide from the soldiers, ironising Nicholas's horror at the idea of dressing as a woman for purposes of escape, as he uses all the charm of Juliet, Jessica and Viola to beguile a fan into keeping quiet.
An apt moment as Nicholas escapes his association with Essex and his entourage in exactly the same spot where he entered eight years before, and of course--who could doubt it?--Poley is there. Wary of pushing it (it's already a bit too neat, I think) Forest makes Poley's death at Nicholas's hand quite understated, though she registers the shock of it too. "all but isn't quite" is surely what Miss Kempe would call 'an appalling sentence', but it is a wonderfully terse summary of the novels' commentary on courage and loyalty.
Title: The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Nicholas's tears over the homeliness of the kitchen and its cockroaches and his self-reproach for weeping when he has lost less than Humfrey has interestingly echo some of the modern Marlows' emotional repression (I think particularly of Peter, post-Traitor). He has just killed someone in self-defence, after all: he should probably be a bit easier on himself.
The conversation between Will, Humfrey and Nicholas is a reminder of just how many secrets and duplicities Nicholas has involved himself in: each of them has a slightly different idea of the truth, and this is very much a chapter of untangling those deceits, often through unwitting revelation. I like Will's quiet mercilessness here ('permanent reminder of the encounter', 'pages no more than dutifully in attendance'). He makes rather a frighteningly good interrogator, come to think of it, exploiting the boys' exhausted and shocked missteps to tease out their stories; it makes Poley look very amateur and Grand Guignol. (I don't think I quite mean this. Not quite.) Forest does slightly overuse the adverb 'drily' about Will's dialogue, I think.
Will and Nicholas's discussion of treachery, informing and betrayal is fantastic, I think: especially Will's admission that he'd have reluctantly done the same and that he was glad Nicolas didn't tell him, Nicholas's superstitious thought about his oath to Poley and Will's pragmatic response, the commentary on Richard III and Henry IV Part Two, the recurrence of the 'splinter of ice' motif as Nicholas says he now really knows how to play John Bates. The sense of art as necessary and nourishing, not an addition to life but an integral part of it, something that helps us to survive, is something I really value in Forest.
Will's advice that Nicholas should not be too open with Humfrey about what has happened is painful in its wisdom; Nicholas's reflection that he probably did the right thing to inform, but nonetheless the act is somehow shameful (and the very faintly Lawrie-ish echo of the unfairness of same), is splendidly observed.
Edmund's entrance, bewildered and somewhat less than sober, provides a comic framework for Humfrey's misery, and a brief moment of respite before the chapter ends on Nicholas thinking of Essex and Southampton's journey downriver.
Lots there to discuss! Have at it!
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Humfrey coming away from Ludgate.
Date: 2015-06-06 05:55 am (UTC)The contrast between Essex who lets his page be killed in the first volley, and Southhampton who has forbidden George to come is pointed. Certainly Essex isn't worth dying for.
When Southhampton gives Humfrey the letter to take it seems he is giving him implicit permission to leave with Southhampton's blessing. And he barely recognises the loyal George who is everything the feudal page should be. I love the subtlety of that moment of farewell.
The only thing that isn't explained in AF's account is how Essex and Southhapton withdrew from Ludgate. Did the soldiers let them through when their numbers were diminished by everyone slipping away? Or did they all just turn and come home another way? Why didn't the soldiers take them prisoner there and then?
Re: Humfrey coming away from Ludgate.
Date: 2015-06-06 03:39 pm (UTC)Re: Humfrey coming away from Ludgate.
Date: 2015-06-06 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-06 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-06 09:13 am (UTC)Forest's touch of the conspirators discussing their plans not only in public but in a space with such excellent acoustics would be implausible, if it weren't that damfool lot. I can quite believe it of them.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-07 05:12 pm (UTC)Though it's implied there is particularly good acoustics between lords room and the tiring house, as if that wasn't true of everywhere in the theatre, so they might not have realised their vulnerability?
I wonder as well how much of Niko has gone into Will
The character who seems straight out of Renault to me is August - I'm not sure why - but I'd remembered him saying "my dear" constantly as her actors do, but actually it's "hm".
no subject
Date: 2015-06-07 05:04 pm (UTC)Reading them with a more critical eye for this read through, I realise the plot depends crucially on two failures to perceive the truth: Humfrey's that what he's getting involved in is full blown treason, and Nicholas's that Southampton and so Humfrey might also be involved in the plot - and so that he is betraying them also to Poley.
I find the first believable - Humfrey's politically naive, I think, and wouldn't have been involved in the inner counsels of Essex and his cronies. His shock at hearing the truth from Blount is very nicely done.
It seems much less likely that Nicholas wouldn't realise from the start that Southampton (and so Humfrey) would likely be involved in any Essex plot. After all Humfrey has been dropping some pretty big clues to the effect that Something Is Up. Nicholas even imagined how he might theoretically write about this to Poley. Forest throws in the bit about how maybe it's all something to do with the Danvers brothers earlier quarrel with their neighbours - that seems pretty weak to me. Or is it? Maybe Nicholas is hiding the truth from himself - because after all, if he does realise, it's going to be incredibly difficult for him to decide what to do next. In any case, the bit where he suddenly does realise what he surely should have realised all along - and walks into Ned's foil - is very convincing.
I love Nicholas being likely to die for a cause he has actually informed against; also his bravery in a cause that isn't his, and his misunderstandings with Humfrey, and the fact that he saves Humfrey but can never tell Humfrey the truth or Humfrey will feel he was betrayed...all these layers of paradox. Very Forest. And the constant shifting in Nicholas's mind between seeing Essex and Southampton as the heroes, and perceiving their flaws.
the sonnets
Date: 2015-06-07 05:29 pm (UTC)That's interesting to hear a bit more about the sonnets chosen. As someone who knows approximately zilch about Shakespeare's sonnets in general and these sonnets in particular, I'd taken the second sonnet about the chicken to be referring to his relationship with his wife. It's such a domestic theme, plus it's also maternal in its imagery - and Ned has said that Anne loved her children more than her husband, so it seems as if Will's asking her to give him some of that same attention and affection.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-10 06:22 am (UTC)I hadn't read this book before. I read The Players' Boy as a child and enjoyed it, but not as much as I enjoyed the modern-day Marlows, possibly because it is so very episodic; on re-reading it was still enjoyable but also, at least from the point where Nicholas joins Will, much more "scenes from the life of a boy player" than a story per se. The Players and the Rebels is much plottier and all the better for it, I think. I suspect it would have worked better as a single book, in a lot of ways, as then the more picaresque bits would just have been an interlude between plotty episodes rather than a slightly awkward change of pace for the second half of the first book.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-14 02:34 pm (UTC)Yes, I agree with you completely, also about the first Players book feeling rather awkwardly like a book of two halves. I also think the second half of The Players and the Rebels is better than the first half, and I think again that's because the first half feels more episodic. As you say, the later chapters are amazingly compelling.
If only somebody who wrote Radio 4 adaptions were reading this - I think the two books would make a wonderful serial, somewhat edited down to make them more plot-driven. For that matter, it's surely criminal that such wonderful books are so little known - and I feel there would be a market for them, being such a perfect introduction for students/material for Shakespeare fans. Oh well...