A Complete Astrophil

And so, nearly a year late, the recordings of all the sonnets and songs from Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney are now online.  It's been a difficult process recording them - some are very good, some are so so, and many are very similar to the one before or after it.
It is a complete story, the love of a man for a lady, one which is doomed, and his roller coaster emotions.  It has a truth to it, in that it is clearly true to the authors feelings.  That isn't to say the text isn't problematic.  Stella is revered, says little and is there to be won.  The authors jealousy is corrosive and unpleasant.  It is the product of a masculine culture, his idea of love being positively adolescent.
Problematic as it is, and surprising to me because I chose these poems almost at random, I can see a performance piece for it.  With a paired down selection of the material and a small team I could create a really dark, anguished and critical piece of theatre about this mindset.
Whether I will, time will tell.
In the meantime, here is the complete sequence for you to judge for yourself.

God's Promises by John Bale - Act 7

Discussing the play with John the Baptist

In late 2013 I started to record God's Promises but quickly got very behind.  Since those first tentative steps I have upgraded my equipment and, to some degree, feel I want to start all over again.  However, we did record the introduction, the final scene and the closing speech and these are now available to listen - in a rough edit.  There were several textual issues which I don't think we have succeeded in clearing.  Firstly, the text is very dense.  It features a lot of argument, the kind you might expect from a theologian, especially one such as Bale who had the Protestant axe to grind.

The Prologue: Baleus Prolocutor
So, the opening and closing speeches are to be spoken by Bale or someone as him.  (We decided to ignore this in the recording, so that there was at least one female part in the production.  It also meant we could use the same actor to read stage directions without them being confused as another character.)  They are outside the text, the author directly addressing his audience, or perhaps more appropriately, his flock.  Making this Tudor text clear was a challenge and one which, in the short time span available, I don't know has succeeded.  But you may judge for yourself.  Hopefully anyone thinking of reading the play can use the recording to help guide them into the text.

listen to ‘God's Promises - by John Bale. Baleus Procolutor’ on Audioboo

Act Seven:  John the Baptist
We spent a little longer recording the completed scene seven.  The play is a running argument, starting with Adam and ending with John, encountering various Biblical figures along the way.  All argue with God to forgive mankind, and only with John does God relent - though, of course, he has already relented, having already sent Jesus into the world.

Cecil Qadir as John the Baptist

John begins by pleading with God that the worst excesses of man are past - this is a long list of people and names from the Bible, showing up the virtue of many good men.  When God reveals his plan, and that John will be Jesus' messenger to the world, John says he won't be of any use, he is as a child.  God then gifts him a golden tongue (this is a literal stage direction) and he then ends the play with a speech about his mission, ending in a song of praise.  We couldn't think of a way of turning the golden tongue into an audio event and used a narrator, and as we have no budget for music at this time, this is also indicated by the narrator.
Again, as we rehearsed this scene we had a long discussion about clarity.  The final recording is clearer than the opening and closing speeches, as it is a dialogue.  If you read the precis first, I suspect what is being said is clear.  However, out of context, without reading the above, I suspect most people will struggle.
This isn't, I hope, just because of our performances.  I suspect that the text, its very denseness, will always make this play a difficult proposition.  It is, oddly, harder to follow than an earlier play - it is caught between the more rigid rhyming verse of the medieval street theatre and the later public theatre voice.  That doesn't make the play uninteresting, just difficult, and I hope listening will reward your effort.

listen to ‘God's Promises by John Bale - Act 7’ on Audioboo

The Epilogue: Baleus Prolocutor
I find, listening back, that the closing speech is much clearer - but that could just be me.  It's possibly tempered by the fact that I've gone through the play before listening to it and am more attuned - which would also be the case for the audience.  It's a reminder of the message of the play and the importance of the Protestant interpretation of Christianity.

The light of our faith makes this thing evident,
And not the practice of other experiment.

The other being the Catholic interpretation.  This is a polemical work, designed to reference the Catholic drama of the middle ages but retooled for Protestant ears.  This kind of religious propaganda is short lived, lasting from the reformation to the reign of Elizabeth, with both sides of the divide flinging drama of this sort at each other.  It was divisive, dangerous and could not last.  Perhaps the reason why these plays have fallen out of favour is this lack of context.  The play doesn't need to involve inner conflict, because the conflict was off stage, the danger is in the existence of the play, not necessarily in the dramaturgy.  The challenge for a modern producer is to find a way of making these stakes evident.

listen to ‘God's Promises - by John Bale. Baleus Procolutor (Epilogue) ’ on Audioboo

The Reynes Extracts - An Epilogue

Here is the second of the Reynes extracts – I have previously blogged about the other A Speech of Delight.  This second fragment is an epilogue – perhaps to the same play, but it could easily be for any play of the period – a generic plea to the audience to forgive the players if they weren’t any good and not report them if they’d fluffed their lines – and some productions had strict rules over the players of plays, with fines exacted for being incompetent.  This short epilogue also mentions a church ale, which follows on from the production, suggesting both play and the ale were fundraisers for the local church.  One of the things we see with small scale medieval playing was it was often done to raise money for specific causes – the church roof for example.  Times don’t change.  I'm planning to use this speech in a production next year, popping it onto a play that doesn't have a proper ending.  That way this little speech will get to live in the real world once again - possibly the first time in a production for many hundreds of years.

listen to ‘An Epilogue - A Medieval Fragment’ on Audioboo

An Epilogue

Now worshipful sovereigns that sittyn here in sith

Lords and ladies and Franklins in fay

With all manner of obeisance we recommend us right

Pleasantly to your persons that present be in play.

And for your suffering silence that ye have kept this day

In playing of our play without any resistance

Dearly we thank you with might as we may

And for your laudable listening in good audience

That we have had this day.

And if we have passed any point in our playing

Or moved any matters in our saying

That should be to your persons displeasing

We beseech you report it not away.

For truly our intent was well to do

And if any fault be there found in it is our negligency

And short time advisement cause it also

For little time of learning we have had sickerly

And every man is not expert in eloquency

To utteryn his matter gaily unto your audience.

Wherefore we beseech you of your great gentry

The best to report of us in our absence

In every ilke a place.

Sovereigns all insame [in company]

Ye that are come to see our game

We pray you all in Gods name

To drink ere ye pass.

For an ale is here ordained by a comely assent

For all manner of people that appearyn here this day

Unto holy church to the increasement

All that exceedeth the costs of our play.

The Ashmole Fragment

The Ashmole Fragment is a tiny little scrap left over from a play now lost.  It really is blink and you’ll miss it.  It features one character - Secundus Miles (second soldier) – who speaks his loyalty to his Emperor – to defend him from any gedling (rascal) and then to a high priest – offering his dagger to Mahound (or in modern terms Mohammed – a name generally used as an oath in medieval drama, ironically, by anyone who was a bit pagan).  It isn’t clear what the surrounding play was – something with a tyrant and priests, and whilst Herod springs to mind, there are plenty of other biblical stories that could use the same motif.

listen to ‘The Ashmole Fragment’ on Audioboo

SECUNDUS MILES:

Sure Emperor, dread ye no thing!

If there be any fresh gedling [rascal]

That would you grieve with any thing,

In word or in deed,

By the beard I shall him shake

That his skull shall all to crake [crack]

And his soul from him take

And roast him over a glede. [fire]

To the high priest

O Mahound, thou great God and true,

Lowuely [handsome] and also meek of hue,

Offer to thee I will new

A dagger that is good and fine.

And all else is lost.

A Speech of 'Delight'

Sometimes history is a bitch.  A tiny fragment of a play appears from no where and it's beautiful and lovely and interesting and that's all you get.  A Speech of 'Delight' is one such bittersweet pill.  It is one of two bits of medieval drama known as the Reynes extracts, dating to sometime in the late fifteenth century.  It is a chunk of dialogue by a character in (probably) a morality play – a character called Delight.  He (most probably young, as he is called a lad) is in conversation with other characters about his nature – and another character (female) hopes out loud that he isn’t someone interested in the 'holy'.  Which he isn't as Delight tells us how he delights in the world, on physical pleasures and the beauty of the world around it.  This would, in the original play, almost certainly have been a bad thing – being too attached to the physical world rather than the spiritual - his delight in the world probably leading to temptations and sin.  But, whilst a proud figure, it is also a really rather lovely speech – taken out of context it’s a joyful account of what the world has to offer.  Beautiful scenery, animals and, towards the end, beautiful women – which contains my favourite part of the speech.  Sadly, when he has finished introducing himself, he stops talking and, apart from an even shorter epilogue to the piece (to be looked at later), we know no more about it.

Below is the text I performed on my radio show, which I have recorded again as a dialogue.  I’ve made modernisations to the text, trying to leave in as much that is comprehensibly old as possible.  

We open with an exchange of dialogue – but without any indications who is speaking what.  Delight obviously enters to other characters already on stage.  The group already onstage is mostly male, but contains a woman.  In my recording I've had her speak both the opening lines and the reply, but it is possible that another male of the group speaks the first three lines instead.  You could cut it up a number of ways - but this is the most logical.

listen to ‘A Speech of 'Delight' - A Medieval Fragment’ on Audioboo

Enter DELIGHT

UNKNOWN CHARACTER/S:  

Lo, here is a lad light

All fresh I you plight

Gallant and jolly.

DELIGHT:  Will ye know what I hight?

My name, sirs, is Delight.

UNKNOWN CHARACTER (FEMALE):

I hope not full holy!

DELIGHT:

Holy, quoth she?  Nay, let be!

By Christ, it accordeth not with me

But sport, mirth and play

Me rejoiceth for to see

The world’s wonders and vanity

Therein delight I ay.

For me semet it is to delight

To behold the firmament light

The course of stars to ken

The sun with his beams bright

The moon how he refulsyth the night

The planets in her circumference ren.

The skies in her colours rake

The therke [dark] sladdes of clouds black -

This rejoiceth me above.

Then of the earth delight I take

To see the florent woods their leaves shake

The rivers running by, there in divers fishes move.

I see these high hills where is the wholesome air

Beneath, the redolent meadows with their flowers fair

The therke mists how it ascends

In the valleys of the corns ilke air

I see divers fowls to the woods repair

There sweetly singing me mekyl amends.

I see in these gay gardens, where wholesome herbs spring

There pererys [pear-trees], the pomerys [orchards], the vines that sweet fruits bring

The red roses and the lilies white

I see in the great sea there, ships ever sailing

Also how it ebbit and flowit and fishes there in swimming

The waves how they waltyr [roll] and see the qwall [whales or similar] fight.

In the hore heaths I see the hare start

The forant dear hunted, the buck and the hart

And the swift greyhounds run;

The fox hunted with hounds in the great covert

The swift flight of hawks, the fowls revert

The falconers running through thick and through thin.

Also I am greatly delightand

In fair course swiftly runand

In harneys [armour] glidring bright;

Stately houses beheldand

Glassed with stories glassand

Pinnacles full of flags gloriously dight.

Precious array, that pleaseth me greatly,

The sweet musician in divers melody

The comeliness of each creature

And the beauty of women specially

With their white paps, popped up prately –

They passeth all other, as me semet in sure.

Me seeing now these salacious siths

Therefore in them all my delight is

So sovereignlyche [supremely] aboven all

This world so preciously pight is

Therein delight I with all mine mirth is

As for well most special.

The Chester Plays 7 & 8 - The Shepherds & Magi and Herod

Play 7 - The Shepherds Play.  After a couple of weeks looking at some distinctly odd plays, which seem to suffer from that terrible disease being-severely-buggered-about-with, we're back into open territory again and we get down to a more straightforward kind of storytelling.  The Shepherds play is idiosyncratic, as each of the many Shepherds plays are, but it is a complete whole, it has only one hint at obvious alteration and nothing so invasive as with some of the earlier plays.  There was a palpable sense of relief for the readers at the event that this time we were doing a play with a neat beginning, middle and end, not a play which dances around and is interrupted by an Expositor, whose arguments were not necessarily convincing.  (See previous Chester blogs.)

listen to ‘Chester Plays 7.1: Shepherds’ on audioBoom

The Chester Shepherds play does have marked similarities with plays from the other cycles.  There is the sense of realism of their life, the complaints and difficulties of raising sheep - an important animal in late medieval England.  The first shepherd - who, like all his fellows is named (though for ease of use I will stick to numbers here) - speaks first about the practical vetting of sheep, of the herbs and simples used in keeping them healthy.  It is quite detailed and suggests specialist knowledge.  Two other shepherds gather and they start to arrange their food and here hit a question the text didn't quite answer.  The foods they describe are ridiculous in their excess - it is a comic list of delicious foods, which they seem to pull out of bags and coats for theatrical effect, different dishes appearing from different folds of coats and bags in an amusingly impossible way.  The audience is invited to ask themselves, 'where's the next food stuff going to come from next?'  It is a grotesque spectacle and presumably designed to show that they're actually relatively wealthy - less Shepherds and more landowners, as opposed to the man they use to look after the sheep and the various boys they also exploit (more on them later).
[But there's an alternative way of staging the scene.  Perhaps the food they talk about is mimed - a non-display of everything a relatively poor Shepherd can't have.  Bigger and bigger mimes of bigger and bigger plates of food, ending, finally, in their actual food, which could be quite meager fare.  But I seem to be a minority of one on this suggestion.]

listen to ‘Chester Plays 7.2: Shepherds’ on audioBoom

They settle down to eat something and call their herdsman to them - they blow a horn and presumably use the note to then sing - which the stage direction states they do.  Garcius then joins them and there is a clear social difference between them.  It is this sense of a hierarchy - that the Shepherds are top of a relative heap in the social world that opens the possibility that they DO have vast amounts of food on their person, for they are proved, shortly, to be a bit mean.
Their herdsman is a comic ruffian, who states clearly that he'll sleep where he falls and piss where he stands, and who refuses their offer of food, demanding instead (not unreasonably) to be paid.  He is willing to fight for his rights and wrestles with the shepherds for his due - and he wins.  The other Shepherds grumble about being bested and sit down to a grumble.

TERTIUS PASTOR. Though we be weary no wonder

what between wrastling and waking.

Oft we may be in thought we be now under
God amend it with his making.

listen to ‘Chester Plays 7.3: Shepherds’ on audioBoom

And it is with this mention of God that the star appears and they are shocked at its brightness.  They then turn even further from their earthly distractions and kneel and pray.  More music now, as the Angel sings of the coming Christ and they listen in wonder.  Once this concert is complete they struggle to agree what was sung.  They take it in turns singing chunks of text, comically and rather sweetly, getting it wrong and yet teasing out the meaning as they go - often responding emotionally to what was sung.

"He sang also of a 'Deo’ [Deus - in this context, Jesus]
me thought that healed my heart."

They then sing a song in response - 'troly loly loly loo' - and decide to visit the child - which means they have understood what the Angel was singing, because they decide to go before the Angel appears to speak with them in dialogue.  They travel towards the star and are in the general area of Bethlehem - the Angel is waiting for them and moves them on.  Though there isn't a stage direction for it these lines suggest as they make their final way they sing again.

And sing we all I rede

some mirth to his majesty

for certain now see we it indeed:
the king Son of heaven is he.

listen to ‘Chester Plays 7.4: Shepherds’ on audioBoom

Upon visiting the stable they speak in wonder at Joseph and Mary and their age difference, (his beard gets quite a mention).  Mary and Joseph explain how worthy and chaste the birth was - as per the previous play.  The shepherds all give their humble gifts, after swiftly emptying their pockets and deciding who should go first - by order of age it seems.

PRIMUS PASTOR. Who shall go first? The page?  [Garcius]

SECUNDUS PASTOR. Nay you be father of age
Therefore must you first offer.

And here's where some probable later interference comes in.  After the four men have had their bit, suddenly four boys, never referenced before - except possibly obliquely - appear and give homage as well, fighting between themselves as to who has the right to go first.  They suggest a later addition, where an opportunity for some young boys has been crow-barred in, rather like additional cute kids being added to an amateur pantomime cast to help get more mums and dads along to watch.  It has little to do with what came before or after and doesn't add much, just a repetition.
The shepherds then part, humbler and wiser, to devote themselves to holy orders or prayer.  It's quite a sad, moving ending to a play that is fun and knockabout for most of the text.

The next play (eight) is the meeting of the Magi with Herod and is a shorter affair.

listen to ‘Chester Plays 8.1: Magi & Herod’ on audioBoom

The Three Kings meet to recount the prophecies of Balaam, justifying the inclusion of play five in the cycle - it's the last of the Old Testament plays and directly links the prophesies with the coming of Jesus.  There is none of the business in other versions of the Kings meeting each other for the first time and going through a range of introductions.  They are already a unit and they know they're task - they frequently make this pilgrimage to look for a sign that the Christ child is coming.  The Kings, riding on horse back, go to pray at a mountain - literally the same mountain as in the Balaam and Balak play - both in terms of stage property/setting and location within the text - returning the scene of the original prophesy for guidance.  Once there they kneel and an Angel shows them the star.  Given the general direction, which must be to desert terrain as they now mount camels, they head off in earnest.
It's worth going over this action again.  In the space of a few minutes, we've met the three Kings, travelled with them to a mountain on horseback, seen a star and then watched them ride off on camels to the land of Herod.  This asks a lot of questions about how this play and the others were staged - because there seem to be a number of playing areas - pageant wagons/scaffolds, with journeying between them among the audience.  The horses could literally be horses that they ride into the space with - a dramatic entrance to the play.  They discourse on why they're there - but what they're saying isn't as important as their appearance - the audience will be busy adjusting to their appearance, watching them enter and pick their way to the mountain.  They either have servants with them, or ask the audience to help with the horses (something not completely implausible in a horse driven society) with this line:

Say fellow take this courser

and abide me right here.

Once on the mountain - quite possibly the same mountain as in play five - they ask God for direction.  A star then appears and they are so surprised at the appearance that they start speaking in French (an indication of their status) - luckily they repeat the sentiment in English.  Then an Angel appears to them and they kneel.  The Angel tells them to get up and follow the star to Jude - which suggests the Angel carries the star away with it, as there are numerous references to the star doing different things it's difficult to tell.  But if the Angel takes the star then they must follow and so they move onto camels.

Now, even if they had real horses for their entrance (for which we cannot be sure) they definitely didn't have camels - so these are probably comic - hobbyhorses for a bit of fun.  The text is quite light on the subject.

TERTIUS REX. A dromodarye in good fay

will go lightly on his way

an hundreth miles upon a day

such corsers now take we.

There is a stage direction saying they go about, 'riding' among the audience and perhaps following the Angel with the star, leading them a merry dance.  

Then the star disappears and the Kings are left (presumably in the audience) with no direction to follow.  And it is now they meet a messenger of Herod.  They tell him what they're looking for and he tells them that if they go to Herod with their tale of a rival they won't be thanked.

EXPLORATER. Hold your peace sirs I you pray!

For if King Herod heard you so say

he would go wood* by my fay     *[mad]

and fly out of his skin.

But they decide to go anyway, in the blinking of a stage direction.  Explorater, the messenger, goes ahead to the pageant wagon/scaffold to announce them where, with the aide of music, Herod makes his entrance.  They greet each other in Norman French, as Kings should do and Herod makes his usual boasts of power, as all Herods tend to do.  

listen to ‘Chester Plays 8.2: Magi & Herod’ on audioBoom

Again we see crossover with the Balaam and Balak play - as Herod has similarities to King Balaam in terms of stage craft.  He shifts between general boasting to rage in the turn of a stanza and there are stage directions for physical business, where he gestures with a staff or sword - though in what way this stage business worked isn't clear.  It maybe that when he's trying to be Kingly he uses his staff, and when he's enraged he uses his sword - but that's just a suggestion on my part, because he may only have one or the other, not both.  

On hearing of Jesus he consults his learned Doctor (though there could be more than one of them) to confirm the three Kings story and in his increasing rage at the number of prophesies he breaks his sword.  It isn't clear how much or well this Herod hides his anger from the three Kings - his first outburst would have been in their present, though he might have consulted the Doctor in a separate part of the stage.  Though his manner changes as he speaks to the Kings there isn't the sense that he's actively trying to fool them that he is overjoyed at the appearance of a rival King.  There is almost no exchange with the Kings afterward as he sends them on their way, asking them to pop in later with news.  The turn around is very shift, though not impossible, and you could hardly expect the Kings to witness him breaking his sword and need an Angel later to warn them not to return.

The Kings go and Herod has a drink to drown his sorrows, making the final speech to close the play, a speech drowned in self pity.  You can see him waving his staff and his broken sword and railing at the child who has passed him the drink.  Already in this play the plan for the slaughter of the innocents has been touched upon and the audience will know it won't be long till they see it.

Exploring the Chester Mystery Plays - Plays 7 & 8 - featured Liz Cole, Robert Crighton, Annie Eddington, Michael Harding, Kevin Roychowdhury, Alan Scott and Adam Webster.
Live Streaming by Tim Regester, Autocue by Marion Tuke, photos by Mark Pavelin - with Bex Johnson in dictionary corner.  Thanks to the Quay Theatre for hosting the event and the use of their broadband!