From the earliest drama in English, to the closing of the theatres in 1642, there was a hell of a lot of drama produced - and a lot of it wasn't by Shakespeare. Apart from a few noble exceptions these plays are often passed over, ignored or simply unknown. This is a blog about what exists beyond Shakespeare, about the plays, fragmentary and extant, that shaped the theatrical world that shaped our dramatic history.
Showing posts with label Robert Crighton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Crighton. Show all posts
As mentioned in the last blog post, we're creating a Trump like characterisation for the eponymous character of the Duke Moraud in the lost play. So, as we've brought the Donald up, it's a good opportunity to talk about the word bigly.
Trump came under a lot of flack for possibly saying bigly during his campaigning to be President. "I'm going to cut taxes bigly..." etc. Lots of people pointed out that the word did exist and has many meanings accrued over time - but this is a blog about early drama, so let's have a little look at bigly.
I've come across it a fair number of times whilst working on mystery plays, so I did a quick look through my files and quickly came up with these examples. I suspect it was used more times than this - variant spellings will throw searching for words in a database and I don't have a complete collection of work on my computer - but here are a few random examples of the use of the word bigly in early drama. It's almost always used when referencing heaven, specifically the bliss of living in heaven. God talks about building a heaven of bigly bliss in Chester...
God:
A biglie bliss here will I build, a heaven without ending... (Chester 1)
And in the York cycle, a bad angel who falls in with Lucifer mentions that he's in bigly bliss...
Angel Deficiens:
So bygly to bliss am I brought... (York 1)
And Adam and Eve refer to the bliss of heaven after being cast out...
Adam:
Alas, wretches, what have we wrought?
To byggly bliss we both were brought...
And later...
Eve:
We are full well worthy iwis
To have this mischief for our mys,
For brought we were to byggely bliss,
Ever in to be. (York 6)
And at the other end of time, the Angel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that God will bring her to heaven soon...
Gabriel:
And therefore he bids thee look that thou blithe be,
For to that bigly bliss that berde will thee bring... (York 44)
So, bigly - something that is more than just big, but is biglier than big - is a perfectly legitimate word for a President of the United States of America to use.
Except that he didn't use it in the context of heaven or used as a prefix to bliss, so we can probably safely assume that Trump wasn't quoting the word in reference to it's late medieval usage. Oh well.
Milk Bottle Productions Presents...
The Summoning of Everyman
Adapted and performed by Robert Crighton With Simon Nader in bonus play - Duke Moraud
Everyman has been summoned by Death to meet his maker - and he doesn't want to go. This interactive performance brings his struggle directly to the audience, asking them to become part of the story, to stand in the footsteps of Fellowship, Good Deeds and even Death himself. Will you help Everyman make his peace?
Previous audiences have said of the show: “A one man tour de force... gripped from start to finish... a mix of pathos and humour all done with a light touch... a real privilege and honour being there... having volunteered, with no acting experience whatsoever, was guided expertly throughout by Robert... an hour very well spent... I’ve come to see it again! What more do I need to say? In awe of the intensity!”
[The show was presented at The Bread and Roses Theatre on Tuesday 8th to Saturday 12th August 2017]
There comes a time in every producers life when they end up using a cliche. Sometimes it seems desperate, sometimes it is - but in this case it was just the only way to go. We have put a 'modern twist' to our production of Duke Moraud, and we feel just a little bit dirty. In a good way.
Let me explain - we've been working on a version of the lost play Duke Moraud on and off for a while now. The script for the play is lost, except for the dialogue for the Duke - all we have is his dialogue. From inferences in the text we know it is similar to a story that survives in another format, so we know what is going on. The challenge for us is - how to stage it?
We could have written alternative dialogue for the other parts - but we seriously didn't no where to begin. Writing cod medieval verse always feels wrong. Additionally the plot of the play is somewhat problematic to the modern ear (more on that another time) and, whilst it seems reasonable to give the original the benefit of the doubt and history, it feels wrong to contribute to a slightly questionable moral stand point - especially as this is a morality play.
Also the play is presented as the second half following my revival of The Summoning of Everyman, and full dialogue would make it a very long evening - it would be a bit bread on bread. So I decided we would have one actor be Duke Moraud and have a second to act as general narrator and commentator on the play itself - this allowed us to a. keep the original text pretty much as writ and b. change the tone of the show by making it a bit more playful.
Then we started rehearsing. As per my usual practice I'd created a basic edit of the text, modernising the basic spelling but leaving obscure words and phrasing as writ, as well as a rough script for the commentary in between speeches. We then threw ourselves at the words, looking for an in.
The first try was fairly shit - but it was supposed to be. We were too loud, too over the top and, even with the commentary, we weren't communicating what was going on with any clarity. It also took twice as long as planned. We regrouped and began again. And again. Tea was drunk, clarity of meaning improved, but it wasn't working as well as we'd hoped. We planned our next rehearsal and went about our lives.
We met again and then... the idea happened. We felt unclean. It felt good.
The beginning of the play runs thusly - the Duke Moraud enters, greets the various people of the audience, and tells everyone to shut up on pain of pain. So far, so standard. He then tells the audience who he is and says what a great guy he is. He's got lots of stuff, he's got great clothes, horses, he is just great.
Now, we knew that this is boastful hyperbole by a character who shows himself later to be thoroughly horrid, but we just couldn't get that across. It read as a character being genuine about how great a person they were. In an outdoor space, where it probably would have been performed originally, we could out Herod Herod with grandstanding - but we're performing in a nice fringe venue, so it needed to be smaller and subtler. How do we show how prideful, nay delusional, how obsessed about how he is perceived, how small this Duke is. And then we thought...
He enters, announces himself, says what a great guy he is.
He's got lots of great stuff.
He's got lots of great clothes.
He is just lots of great.
He's Donald Trump.
At that moment we realised - we have to do the play with a 'modern twist' - because, obvious though it is, it worked perfectly. The more text we threw at it, the more resonance there was. Though the play Duke certainly goes much further than Trump has ever done - we are not suggesting for a second that the Duke of the play is actually him - the tone of how he speaks about people and women is perfect.
Now we have a way in, we can really tighten the linking script, make the story speak - because we no longer have to worry about getting the audience up to speed with who the Duke is. They will see it straight away. The Duke becomes less Trump like as we go along - as those parallels drift. And we're not Saturday Night Live, we don't have an axe to grind beyond making an old text speak today.
Milk Bottle Productions Presents...
The Summoning of Everyman
Adapted and performed by Robert Crighton With Simon Nader in bonus play - Duke Moraud
Everyman has been summoned by Death to meet his maker - and he doesn't want to go. This interactive performance brings his struggle directly to the audience, asking them to become part of the story, to stand in the footsteps of Fellowship, Good Deeds and even Death himself. Will you help Everyman make his peace?
Previous audiences have said of the show: “A one man tour de force... gripped from start to finish... a mix of pathos and humour all done with a light touch... a real privilege and honour being there... having volunteered, with no acting experience whatsoever, was guided expertly throughout by Robert... an hour very well spent... I’ve come to see it again! What more do I need to say? In awe of the intensity!”
The Deathday has been and gone. I was in Stamford doing a show about the 'authorship question' and so I missed it. My connection to the events were mostly via my phone with facebook and twitter. The general reaction on my twitter feed was interesting, because most of the people I follow or who follow me have a similar relationship with the bard. For example I tweeted:
"Happy n-day wishes to all the great anonymous writers of early English drama, who never get celebrated because we don't know who they are."
And this was retweeted many, many times and favourited and generally went down well - and many other people posted similar things. I think this shows rather well the complicated relationship we all have with Shakespeare. On the one hand, I do like his work and would happily bite off the hand that offered me a good part in any of his plays (for example, I'm currently in a production of The Tempest). On the other hand, I'm generally disenchanted with the pure mass of Shakespeare now available. In the last three years, from the build up of the last big anniversary to this one, from birth to death, we've had more than one complete works season, several history cycles and countless other productions.
Obviously, I have a bias. This little project is focused on the work prior to Shakespeare, but it is also partly named after him - because I acknowledge that Shakespeare is the marketing buzz word I need to get anyone to take even a moments notice. If I called this the Early Modern Drama Club then... well, I suspect I'd get fewer hits.
I also have to acknowledge that part of the point of my work is to illuminate the work of Shakespeare, to make the references in his work a little less strange, to give the bard some context. Some of the long term projects I would like to get off the ground would be back to back productions of source plays and Shakespeare's rewrites. On a smaller scale, I'm in the process of creating a storytelling show with Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge as text (touring 2017), partly because I think it'll be fun and partly because I'm directing As You Like It next year. Once again, Shakespeare is the excuse for a widening of the repertoire and an exploration of earlier (and contemporary) work. My work is, in a tiny way, part of a general trend in an extended interest in early English drama - there is more on offer and being produced by bigger companies too. But still in comparison with the bard, it seems like meagre scraps
Every so often people look at the mass of Shakespeare on offer and suggest a moratorium. 'Let's not do Shakespeare for a few years,' some wag says. I've suggested this myself. I've also suggested that the government should order the paying of 'royalties' for Shakespeare production - all funds to be used to fund new writing and theatre production - it would balance the field a bit. But, beyond being impossible and counter productive, it isn't really necessary. These trends come in cycles. Once these anniversaries are over, the major players will probably pull back a bit and look for something else - there'll still be a lot of Shakespeare out there, but maybe not quite so all encompassing. And it's in the interest of the big players to open out the repertoire. In basic economic terms, they need to diversify (with the emphasis perhaps on verse) or die.
The major players in the UK, the RSC and the Globe, have already opened up their programming to other writing from the period. Certain contemporaries of Shakespeare get a look in. A mixed season will get a Marlowe, Jew of Malta or Doctor Faustus perhaps, thrown in, or a bit of Jonson, Webster or even Ford. And it's great. I love it. The only problem I have with this is the lack of follow through.
Recently The Globe released in a box set all the DVD's of productions from the past ten years or so. They've all been released separately and many are ones also screened live in cinemas. Of the twenty plays in the box, nineteen were Shakespeare and one was Doctor Faustus by Kit Marlowe. The RSC has been more modest in output, so far. But both the RSC and Globe have produced dozens of plays by other playwrights, in just the last few years, and some of those productions were very well reviewed - so why not distribute them further?
There is a good reason why not and these companies are not run by idiots. They will only market the plays they think will sell. I balk slight at trying to tell the Globe to try harder because they are a purely commercial outfit, but the RSC is heavily subsidised and, more importantly, I think they're missing the long term view of building interest in other writers. The Globe has released half of the Shakespeare canon on DVD, the RSC is working on it. Once they have released the whole canon once, maybe twice, maybe three times, where do they go?
Whilst I agree that a DVD of The Jew of Malta, say, will not sell brilliantly, it gives students and schools (and dare I say it, people generally) the same opportunities to watch rather than just read a play. It could be sold as a two pack with The Merchant of Venice, which is a logical pairing - and something that might interest schools. Mixing Shakespeare with his contemporaries in box sets is a really great way of mixing the interest out a bit, especially if the plays have references to each other.
Part of the reason Shakespeare has exploded in the world is due to film and television. By releasing a play, making it more familiar, you generally make it easier to sell a new production. The text becomes less scary and more familiar, and then productions can explore them further, open them up to a little expansion. (There is a point of overkill, as mentioned above, but you can only reach that after general success.)
We've got Shakespeare, everyone does Shakespeare - if you don't just mix it up a bit, but actively push and sell his contemporaries and predecessors, then you risk a debt spiral of never ending repeats of Hamlet till we all lose the will to live. If we can make these lesser known plays into as popular a ticket as Shakespeare then there's room to programme not just great other drama, but also have good houses for them.
I'm not even asking these companies to do more other work than they're already doing, just to risk showing it to more people than a few hundred a night for a few months. I've wanted to watch all the non Shakespeare plays the Globe and RSC have produced over the last few years - well received productions mostly, but I can't get there. Just one a year. Maybe two. That's all I ask.
Obviously, I would like you to do something from a bit earlier in the canon, but hey, one thing at a time.
It's been a long time since I recorded this act, covering the prophet Esaias - as Bale writes it. This is Act Six of Seven, this prophet being the forerunner to the forerunner John the Baptist, who I've posted previously.
These recordings are very basic, they've been produced largely on the hoof, but they are I hope moderately clear. Whilst I'm going to get a move on an record the remaining five acts this year, they won't deviate from this template - narration, text. It's beyond my budget to have a score at this time, and that does limit the effect the words have. This isn't, as I'd first assumed, the easiest of plays to translate to audio - without music or a visual set of cues, it is quite difficult to keep focus. But one day I may get around to a more detailed production.
As I say, I hope to have this piece completed over the next few months - I might then create a shorter and more accessible version, to go with this no-frills approach. Who says we can't be playful?
God's Promises by John Bale - Act Six - Esaias
Narrator - Annie Eddington
God - Robert Crighton
Esaias - Mark Holtom
And below is a player with all the parts recorded so far - at time of posting this includes the Prologue, Act Six and Seven and Epilogue.
God's Promises, like all my audio work, is supported by my patrons - becoming a patron is easy, just go to www.patreon.com/robertcrighton and make a pledge.
It's happening - we're doing a Nativity in December. We're calling it The Nativity. Subtle, I know. It's going to feature six complete 'pageants' from the N-Town play, plus a little bit from another.
Our Nativity Line Up - Annunciation: a short passage Joseph's Doubts The Nativity The Shepherds The Kings The Purification Slaughter of the Innocents
Now there are a lot of other Nativity applicable pageants contained in the N-Town play and they're all very interesting, but the N-Town play is very odd and there are lots of different ways of cutting the cloth. It's all part of a longer term plan, so here's my thinking.
The N-Town play is a compilation - a composite of a number of different sources, edited together into the final manuscript. So, you've got the original pageants, performed individually or in some order from a greater whole, but they've been cut up and rearranged and turned into another play - the N-Town play. It's a bit like we've lost Shakespeare's history plays, but we've got a copy of the Barton/Hall script for TheWars of the Roses - though we don't know whether the text was created to be performed, or as a private document for an individual/family/institution, though most people tend towards for the latter.
The question is then, how do you perform it? Attempt each play individually, putting the additions or cuts to one side and try to get at the original (whatever that means) text, or perform the final form of the play - which it may never have been meant to be?
The long term plan is this - perform sections of the play in some detail in a number of locations around East Anglia (from whence the plays came), recording, archiving and noting the way the text works (or doesn't) in an individual way. We may go back to some plays and perform them with others. The Nativity sequence I've chosen above could be done quite differently, we're sticking to the main thrust of the story in this selection, but we could mix in a number of other plays, perform the Kings and Slaughter as one text, without the addition of Simeon and the Purification in the middle etc. So this isn't The Nativity, as such, in December we'll be performing A The Nativity. We'll possibly perform another very different The Nativity in the future.
Once we've played around with all the texts in an individualistic way, curating the material in different ways, we'll look at a complete staging of the whole play.
To some degree this is a text I am coming back to. I used the Passion Play 1 from N-Town as the primary text for a version of The Passion three years ago. I'm rather looking forward to covering that text again in a more consistent way sometime soon.
In the dim and distant past of 2013 we started a real in depth look at the Chester Plays - launching the Exploring the Chester Plays series as well as recording fuller audio productions for future release. We've nearly caught up with ourselves. The first five Explorings, covering plays 1 to 10, have now been archived and the first audio production has been edited. It's not perfect, but considering how rushed the sessions were, it's turned out quite well. Beyond a minor edit to bypass the issue of the Angels singing (sorry Mat, you ended up on the cutting room floor - we so can't do music of the period yet) it's a full recording of the text we used for Exploring in 2013 - though with more considered performances and sound to help tell the story. It is hopefully a good introduction to the play for the student who's never seen or heard the play in full before - i.e. almost everyone on the planet.
We've recorded play two which will follow in a similar fashion, and some bits from plays 3,4 & 5 - which may be completed at a later date.
And that'll be it for a while - we're moving on from Chester for the present (though we hope to finish the Exploring sessions at some point). We're based in East Anglia, so the N-Town play is a much more important 'cycle' to be looking at at in the future.
So, please enjoy our version of Play One of the Chester Plays - The Tanners Play covering the Fall of Lucifer.
God: Robert Crighton
Lucifer: Trevor Laver
Lightbourne: Richard Fawcett
Angels and Archangels: Helen Arbon, Neil Arbon, Adam Webster, Kevin Roychowdhury, AM Barrett, Annie Eddington.
Recorded at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury
Produced and edited by Robert Crighton
What is the text even? We don't have the original manuscript, which is conjectured to be a rushed copy of an original play. It was copied by two men, one by sight, one by dictation. It is written on the back of something else. It sits, unremarked and unstaged, for hundreds of years, is copied and then is lost in fire. We have this copy of a copy.
It was copied in Ireland, but was it a script from a touring company? A script from England or Ireland? A few English place names in the text suggest England, but it isn't absolute. The copying of the text may have altered the original, disguising any linguistic clues as to provenance.
It's old, it's about as old as drama gets in English (1350ish) and, even in its damaged state it is still performable. The story is simple. The King of Life boasts his mastery over all things. His soldiers, Strength and Health agree with him, his Queen does not, and warns him that death will take him. He rejects her and calls on his messenger Mirth (or Solace) to cheer him up, which Mirth does and is rewarded for his pains. The King then leaves with his knights and the Queen sends Mirth to the Bishop, hoping that the Bishop will change the King's mind. The Bishop laments the loss of faith in the kingdom and goes to the King, exorting him to turn to God and prepare for death. The King rejects him as well, and sends Mirth out to with a challenge to anyone who might try to best him - even Death himself - that he is King over all. There the text ends, but we know from the prologue that the King is then visited by Death who kills him.
The dramaturgy is deceptively simple. Characters enter, state who they are, state where they stand in the play and then, by and large, shut up. There are two set piece dialogues - exchanges between the King and Queen and the King and Bishop. The Bishop also gets a long set piece monologue. There the text ends and though we know broadly how the play ends, we don't know how the action would have been treated. The play could be viewed as a fairly simple demonstration of an argument.
Prologue - this is what will happen.
Main Body of Play - it happens.
Probable Epilogue - it happened.
It is unlikely that the play developed themes beyond the main - that man will die and should prepare for death/Death. The play was written not long after the Black Death had swept across Europe and reached England - preparing for death was a very pressing matter. The play doesn't engage in debate. The Queen warns the King he will die, his rebuttal is all bluster. He has no counter argument. Rather than engage with the issue he insults her, saying she wants him dead so she can marry another. The King leaves her to engage in more play and distraction from his end, possibly more than he would have done had she not spoken. She sends for the Bishop, who similarly warns the King to look to God. Again, the rebuttal is the same - he just insults the Bishop as a 'babbler' and questions his motives for speaking up. The King acts up even more and directly sends his messenger out to challenge Death - with predictable results. The argument lost, all that remains is for the King to die.
However, I used the word deceptively above for good purpose. The dialogue - repetitive though it is - is heartfelt. The King maybe a type, but he isn't a cardboard cutout. He rejects the Queen by having a temper tantrum, calling her a 'whore'. His speeches are emotive, violent and unfair, but in performance suggests fear. If he were really confident in his position he might laugh off the suggestion that Death would get him. As he isn't, he blusters.
When the Bishop enters he makes a long speech which is the only time that the outside world is expressly referenced. He talks of how the land is corrupt, the rich eating the poor. Again, though the text is corrupt, and very long, the speech is brilliantly constructed. A general lament about rich and poor, the unbalance in the land bleeds into anger - as his ire gets more direct and more pointed. The speech pulls back and he looks to God, offering a final prayer, at which point the King enters. The Bishop is now in the right frame of mind to make a reasonable, yet impassioned plea to the King, which is rebuffed.
Of the other characters, the King's knights have no inner life, they speak when commanded to and are yes men to the King. Mirth, the messenger, is different. It's a double role as a fool who sings and generally amuses, as well as serving the practical purpose of being the messenger sent after Death. He has two speeches that survive and possibly more that don't. Firstly the King calls him up, asking him to generally cheer him up - he appears to the King and gives a fairly grovelly speech saying how wonderful the King is - and, in passing, how great a servant he is as well. The King rewards his sycophancy with a title and lands and then leaves. I would suggest that possibly there is something missing in the text at this point - something lost during the initial copying - perhaps a song from Mirth, something more for which he deserves reward. It follows the rejection of the Queen by the King, who demands something to change his mood, but nothing in the text shows this to actually happen, beyond a fairly short bit of grovelling.
Mirth is then sent by the Queen to the Bishop. Questions arise as to loyalty of Mirth - he is clearly the Kings servant, but he goes to take the message for the Queen anyway. He is presumably mostly in it for the money, following whoever pays him. He sings as he goes - though no song is in evidence - the song helpfully covering a scene/location change. The beginning of Mirth's scene with the Bishop is missing, so we can only speculate how this might have run. A speech reiterating the words of the Queen, or some kind of back and forth?
Mirth reappears when the King has dismissed the Bishop - he is tasked with calling out Death and his speech to the people is not dissimilar to other messengers in Herod plays. The relationship between the King of Life and Herod and their messengers is marked. Though the King is nowhere near as violent or prone to ranting as a Herod, he is as proud and as changeable in his mood. Mirth clearly isn't keen on the message and I would like to image a scene where, having made the speech to the people, Death approaches Mirth and has a conversation with him - leading to the first death of the play. But I doubt that would have actually have been in the original play.
Making absolute conclusions about the play is difficult because of the half state it reaches us. The original copy was incomplete and difficult to read, and even this is now lost, so it is difficult to do more analysis of the text than was done when it was first transcribed. I've suggested that there may be other minor absences from the text, beyond those we know about. The King and Queen suffer from the first missing passage, where the Queen swears some kind of fealty to the King. We have the last four lines of this and this loss is felt. Here they are -
QUEEN: Baldly thou art my boot,
[remedy]
Trusty and full true -
Of all my rest thou art root,
I nill change for no new.
Interestingly this promise, that she wouldn't change him for another (i.e. remarry should he die) is one of the first things he will throw back at her when she defies his pride later - perhaps a clue to what the rest of her speech would have said lies in what he turns against her later? In so formal a play it is likely that repetition would be used throughout.
The next lost passage, as discussed above, is the relaying of the message to the Bishop. I suspect this would have told us more about Mirth than the Bishop and is no where near as keenly felt a loss as the earlier section.
The final lost passage is the death of the King. It is difficult to know precisely how this would have worked - the prologue speaks of the King dreaming about Death coming for him, slaying both father and mother and then him. Were we to be treated to a dream sequence? Or do we think this is beyond the dramaturgy of the play? More plausibly the King would enter having awoken from the dream, telling his court what he saw. Perhaps reports would come of the death of his family? Would Death come for him alone or kill the whole court? And then what? Death says goodbye or an Angel appears? A full trial for the King's soul in Heaven a la Castle of Perseverance seems unlikely, I would suspect it would be something reported. But all of the above is speculation, we don't know.
Staging Pride:
I was asked to produce a community production of something medieval for the Magna Carta in Clare celebrations for 2015 and I suggested Pride as the earliest example of its kind. This approved, I started to produce a text.
Firstly there were questions of clarity - it's an early play, so the incidence of unusual words was great. Then there were questions of distortion to the text - inferred lines and what to do with them. Then there was the question of what to do with the lost passages.
The last was the most pressing (and I've covered the earlier textual issues in an earlier post). For the first gap I decided to do next to nothing - I looked through passages of medieval verse and comparably lines of love, but decided to just use the remaining lines of the Queen - using a gesture from the King to indicted she come to him, her four lines being a neat and short summary of her feelings. All that was needed to tidy up the exchange was to compose the concluding two lines of the King's opening speech, so that the pattern of the stanza and the rhyming scheme remained intact - I cribbed from similar commonplaces in other texts to create a reasonable approximation. Lords of land beith
at my leading, All men shall a-bow in hall and in bower. No man shall ever dismiss my heeding Not of field, village, town or tower.
The second absence was trickier - I could have changed the action so that Mirth delivered a note to the Bishop - this would scan well enough. Instead I simply adjusted the Queen's lines to Mirth and made them into reported speech for Mirth to say on. This way the transaction felt more natural and less rushed.
Finally we come to the lost ending. How to deal with that? The BBC Radio version from the 1950's used the prologue to great effect, using it as a running narration throughout the play, taking up the storytelling for the end when the text ran out. This worked on radio where words and music are the complete world. But on stage it would feel half formed and also would make the play far too short. (Also, I hate just stealing someone else's idea - it's lazy.)
Using the prologue as a guide I looked for suitable substitutions in medieval drama - rather than writing a cod medieval text of my own. There are two good possibles. One is from The Castle of Perseverance, where we had the appearance of Death and the option of the soul in an afterlife. But I felt it didn't follow the theme of the punishment of pride enough and I dismissed it quickly. The other possible was from The Death of Herod of the N Town plays. A prideful King acclaims victory over a foe (Jesus in this case) and Death arrives to ruin the party. With a few adjustments to the King's line about who his foe was and some moving around of dialogue the scene runs well, ending with a repeat of the King's first lines defiantly claiming he is King over all, just as he is about to die. We then repeated the final lines of the prologue about his soul and ended the play with an Epilogue from a lost play, which deserves an airing - it is possible this is the first performance of this Epilogue in a production since the middle ages.
It was surprising how well the two texts flowed together, specially when, formally, they are very different. The Herod play is later, has a more sophisticated verse structure and longer lines, but the sentiments were very similar, so it worked well. The only real failure was joining the new ending to the older play. Mirth makes his speech to the audience, relating the King's challenge. He is then killed by Death - but I should have made that clearer, using a different approach to break into the new ending. There was a sense of losing the flow of the play at this point - especially as I was using a chorus of actors to play Death, rather than a clearer more traditional figure in a big cloak.
My initial staging decisions didn't help the staging either. The acting area was narrow and long and this cat walk style thrust made the play function in a very different way to it's original outdoor scaffold performance. I made a benefit of this by using the length of the space to create long 'walks of shame' whenever a character was made to choose who they supported. The Queen goes to the King at the start, joining him at his throne, taking a long walk to get to him. When she questions him she ends up the other end of the room to him and his two knights choose to move from her and walk to the King's end. This pattern was repeated with the Bishop. He was found in the centre of the room and the King's knights again decide to walk the length of the room, past the Bishop, to show loyalty with the King. Death's approach to the King was similarly long, killing his court one by one as Death processed down towards him.
Additional I tried to repeat these images several times in the course of the play - both during the action but also before hand, during the prologue. I broke the prologue up into sections for the whole company to say, and as they spoke, the action of the play were demonstrated - not quite a full dumb show, but near enough. This way the audience had some chance of following the story should the ancient dialogue be a bit much for them.
I'll be posting video and audio of the production online - though the quality of these recordings varies. The space had a difficult echo and the shape of the staging made it very difficult to document. The configuration of the play made it next to impossible to film or record a good audio copy. What I have will be online as soon as possible - I will also make available my version of the text so that others can plunder what is good and what is bad.
The Pride of Life: Surviving Text - from rehearsals of the reconstruction, this recording features only the surviving text, with white noise to indicate the breaks in the original manuscript.
The Pride of Life: Annotated Video Version
The Pride of Life: A Reconstruction (Single shot video of the performance, including additions)
Additional links: The Pride of Life is available in a number of editions and collections. I haven't come across any text that is ever less than massively intimidating to the general reader, but persevere and it will reward. Hopefully our flawed recordings will help - I've always found listening to the version of an early play whilst looking at the text immensely helpful to understanding, if only to reject the decisions of producers or editors. For an e-edition there is a fully edited text online on the University of Rochester website - and an introduction here.
The Pride of Life by Anonymous - Edited and reconstructed by Robert Crighton
Cast:
King of Life - Haydn McCabe
Queen of Life - Esme Stanway
Bishop - Robert Myson
Mirth - Clarissa Seeley
Strength - Michelle Allen
Health - Pat Curtis
Chorus - Katie Landon, Beth Norris & Kate Terry
Costumes by Mary Denton
Ian McCabe as the King of Life, at the dress rehearsal.
To accompany the back stage photos for the medieval drama from the Magna Carta in Clare celebrations we include the programme notes for Pride and Dame Sirith.
THE PRIDE OF LIFE:
The Pride of Life is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, surviving play in the English language.
There are many caveats to the above sentence.
Firstly, there are other surviving texts which come from about the same period in time, though it’s very difficult to put an exact date to these things.Pride comes somewhere around 1350.
Secondly, it doesn’t quite survive - not fully. There are big gaps in the text we have and the second half / third is completely lost, so it can’t be classed as an extant play.
Thirdly, though in English, the text is Irish in origin – at the very least by adoption, as this is where the manuscript was copied in the form which has come down to us.
So, on the face of it, not a very appropriate entertainment for a medieval banquet in 1215.
But what else is there? When I was first approached to do something for the Magna Carta celebrations I racked my brains as to what was most appropriate. We haven’t got any surviving plays in English prior to 1350 – and I didn’t think that the average persons knowledge of Latin would be up to it. Thinking a little sideways I considered some later plays about King John. But all three King John plays from the early modern period have one major deficiency.
They don’t mention Magna Carta. At all.
So I made a compromise – the earliest play that was doable and which features at least a thematic link to the story of King John.The Pride of Life is, as the title suggests, about pride and a prideful King at that.It resonates nicely.
For all the incompleteness of the text, it is performable thanks to the detail afforded by the banns that open the play – a prologue that tells the whole of the plot, including the ending. To make the play more whole I have added a section of another early English play – from an East Anglian Mystery play about the death of Herod – to round off the story dramatically, as well as a playless Epilogue that has survived as a fragment. It is possible this Epilogue has never been performed as part of a production for six hundred years as, being without a play to perform before it, why would anyone use it? One can never be certain of such things, someone else might have had the idea before me, but it’s an exciting thought.
The Pride of Life has been performed more recently than the mid 14th Century, though I haven’t had a chance to hunt out any specific productions – either student or professional. The BBC produced a reasonably accurate version for the Third Programme in the 1950’s as part of their The First Stage series. It used the prologue throughout the play (which, short as it was, was cut down and heavily modernised) to cover the gaps in the text. Sadly this recording is only currently available if you can find the LP release of the series (which thanks to ebay I have) – which I doubt will get a wider airing. I have therefore recorded our cast performing our text of the play and this audio recording (and video footage we hope to make of the last rehearsals and performance) will be put online for free to introduce interested people to the play.
As part of this production I have endeavoured to retain as much of the original text as possible and not overly modernise it. We have only cut four lines from the extant play and altered some readings where the corrupted text gave me some license to be bolder with changing lines. I have written two additional lines to one speech where a gap in the text doesn’t complete the rhyming scheme – though this reconstruction is based on patterns found in other plays of the period. For those who are interested the original play ends with the final lines of Mirth, just as Death kills him. Sadly none of the original dialogue for Death survived, which is a shame as he’s a marvellous conversationalist in most medieval texts.
I would like to thank the Magna Carta in Clare committee for hosting this Before Shakespeare* production and for producing such a welcoming atmosphere.
[*Our original incarnation - Ed]
Some rehearsal shots for Pride of Life - first full tryout with costumes.
Adam reading from his medieval mobile phone...
A Magna Carta Mumming
The first part of the
evening is a completely true account of the story of Magna Carta – told in the
fashion of a Mumming. Mumming is a
slippery term, it can mean a lot of different things depending when it was produced
and who it was for. It could involve
song, dance or drama. We’ve used a
loose folk ritual to create something new, something special for this
event. It isn’t an historical re-enactment;
it is a reimagining of a form designed to illicit a few cheap laughs, created
in the spirit of the medieval
entertainments of the day, not in absolute fact.
The Mummers Are: Michelle
Allen, Robert Crighton, Pat Curtis, Katie Landon, Beth Norris, Clarissa Seeley,
Alban Smith-Adams & Kate Terry.Costumes
by Mary Denton.
Dame Sirith
Edited
and performed by Robert Crighton
Dame Sirith isn’t quite a
fable, if only because it doesn’t have a moral.
It tells the story of a monk, Wilekin, who takes a fancy to the wife of
a merchant, one Dame Margery. When the
merchant is away the monk tries to woo Margery but she’s having none of it and
sends him away with a flea in his ear.
About to give into despair he meets a friend who recommends Dame Sirith
the hend (wise) to help him.
He goes to her and, after a
little bartering, she agrees to get Margery to relent. To do this she uses a small dog and a jar of
mustard... but we wouldn’t want to ruin the ending for you by saying
anymore.
Unlike our very fake
Mumming, Dame Sirith is genuinely medieval, appearing towards the end of the 12th
Century, and so is something that would have been about at the time of King
John.
This version is only lightly
modernised, so features many old words (gange is one of our favourites) and
unfamiliar phrasing – but hopefully through the modern day translation service
of the storyteller’s backchat it will be both clear and amusing.
And a few shots from backstage during the Mumming - and our strange array of Mummers!
I'm putting the final touches to the rehearsal script for The Pride of Life and a new project DameSirith. Both are being produced for the Magna Carta celebrations in Clare and we had our first read through on Sunday.
They are two very different pieces and editing them has been incredibly difficult. The Pride of Life is the easier because it is later (mid-fourteenth Century) but even so is one of the earliest dramatic texts we have in English. The read through was a testing ground for legibility. Using a projector to save printing a script that was inevitably going to change, we tentatively attempted the play, stopping occasionally for clarification. There was a certain amount of fear - many of the people in the room didn't know each other and the text was difficult - but we got to the end and nobody had died. (Except the King of Life, of course.) Then I mixed up the readers and we had another crack - and this time it flowed better, people had started to click into the medieval mind. That isn't to say I was going to leave it there. My pad was covered in notes for areas of text that weren't working, words that might need changing, sentences that we just too obscure.
I have rules for editing a play of this type, but they're not hard and fast. The play, ultimately, is the thing - if it doesn't work, then we will make changes. But we start with as light an edit as possible. Broadly the rules are these.
1. Modernise and standardise the spelling where possible. Much of the text will be clearer once the common words that exist today have been given normalised spelling. We're not attempting original pronunciation, so the only words which might cause problems will be the rhymes at the end of lines - generally I choose the most obvious rhyme sound and follow that, but sometimes you have to put your hands up in despair and say, it just doesn't work or it will need to be changed.
2. Do not change sentence structure, syntax or grammar - unless meaning is completely mangled. An audience will tune into the unfamiliar structure after a few minutes and the actors, through their own skill and expert understanding of the text, can signpost most confusions. However, there are always a few exceptions to this rule - in The Pride of Life there are several references to eyes, which seem to be commonplace tropes from the time, a truncated version of a cliched turn of phrase, which has fallen out of use. Even reading my notes on what the lines mean (the same reference is used I think twice) I'm at a loss as to what they really mean. If you need a minute to explain a three second sentiment, then you're on a loosing wicket and might as well draw stumps and walk back to the pavilion. I.e. Change or cut the line.
3. Sounds matter. Try not to lose too much of the texture of the sound of the text when striving for sense. Sometimes intent and the pure power of the sound is enough. Which brings us to...
4. The Teen and Tray rule. Where possible retain words which have no modern equivalent - so long as there is enough context for the meaning to carry. This is exemplified by teen and tray (spelling various) which have appeared in the Chester Plays and again in The Pride of Life. Broadly they mean sorrow and care, but there are no close modern equivalents. To change them steps the editor into the role of translator. The context in which these words appear make their meaning clear, the sentences often repeat the sentiment in other still used words and the actor make make the meaning of the words apparent. Say them out loud and they sound like they mean - they represent the essence of what can be preserved in a modern production of an ancient play. The Teen and Tray rule is the line this project tries not to cross to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater - because if you're just going to rewrite the play, what's the point of staging it in the first place?
Producing Dame Sirith is another matter entirely. As a much earlier text (late 12th/early 13th Century - i.e. relatively contemporaneous with King John) it flits between complete clarity, to dangerous obscurantism. The version that appears in the Penguin Classics edition is a translation, and I can understand why. It's not an easy read.
However, my approach to Dame Sirith is not to translate, but to commentate. Whereas in The Pride of Life we will play the final edit with a straight bat (to continue my cricket metaphor), for this piece of storytelling, we'll muck about a lot around the text. We'll probably have one or two 'medieval' storytellers, telling it as it is writ (my edit follows the above rules on the strict side), we'll then have other/s simultaneously translating the story, commenting on it, insulting the other storytellers and generally throwing bad jokes around. This will be a work in progress for the next couple of months - I don't know precisely how it will shape up in the end.
More on these projects soon - hopefully you'll start getting a taste of the texts with some audio/visual soon.
Popped round to our venue for the shows this morning and took a few snaps...
Clare Town Hall - we're mostly not using the stage itself - the performers will be among the audience
A mini minstrel gallery - where music will pour forth...
A short extract from a place not a million miles away from where I'm recording - Bury St Edmunds. It was found on the back of a scrap of paper with details of Rickinghall in Suffolk, at one time owned by the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds - hence it's name.
There are two extracts, dating from the early fourteenth century, in theory of the same speech by a King, one in Latin and Anglo-Norman and the other in English. The two speeches are similar in content, but not direct translations of each other. The Anglo-Norman version is slightly longer than the English, and gives more context and stage direction. The King is a tyrant, a Herod figure or something similar, who is speaking to this court and there is a direction for a messenger, who doesn't speak.
I've recorded just the English version, for obvious reasons, using this slightly modernised version of the text below. I've tried not to change too much, leaving words that have no easy modern equivalent as writ. I hope this makes the speech more understandable, without losing too much of the original.
Lordings Withouten lessing
[falsehood] Ye witten well that I am
King Here of all this land. Therefore I will that mine
baronage Ye that been of great parage
[parentage – high birth] That he come in to mine
will; For all that arn in burw
[burgh] or town I will he witten my resoun [understands
my account] And that is right and schil.
[reasonable]
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.
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.
