Tag Archives: London

Colloquy Session IV: Audience

Hello again, Ashley Pierce here again to live blog the 4th Colloquy about Audience on Tuesday October 23rd from 2:30 to 3:45 PM, as part of the 2013 Blackfriars Conference. In this session Garth Michael Clark, Becki Jones, Abigail Montgomery, Abigail Fine, Patricia Wareh, and Michael Boecherer discuss their papers that deal with various audience interactions, staging issues, revisions,  and audiences psyche.

A Midsummer Night’s Mess: Staging a Mechanical Play Towards Royalty by Garth Michael Clark

Dealing with the issues of the staging of the play with in the play moment in A Midsummer Nights Dream, Clark talks about how this can be problematic in various ways. Included in these problems are where the actors are position on the stage and how this can cut out certain members of the audience. Clark wishes us to keep in mind that we must “maintain a good relationship with all audience members…” by positioning this particular scene in such a way that either allow audiences on all sides or to limit the space audience members are allowed to position themselves. This will thus ensure no moments of alienation to the members of the audience, including the royals (who Clark argues could be placed either on the far most end of the balcony or placed on the stage with the actors).

Why a jig? Try a jig! by Becki Jones

Jones talks about the prospect of placing jigs at the end of various Shakespearean plays and how this effects the audience. More specifically, jigs that have been performed at The Globe theatre in London England, as well as ones that Jones had choreographed. Talking about the different types and movements of the jig and how this moment in the performance started to fall into the hands of the clown character to choreograph in 1600, which influenced the jig in disrepute and became increasingly bawdy. Jones requested that everyone refer to her YouTube to see the jig at the end of Richard II and how this worked to not only removed the dead bodies from the stage, but to also infuse life back into the theatre and audience.

“I am Richard…know ye not that?” Possible Tudor Critiques in Two Pro-Tudor Plays by Abigail Montgomery

In looking at Richard III and Henry VIII Montgomery talks about how audience members will think and see Richard III and Henry VIII and the parallels between the two men. Making comments on recent productions at the OCS and how even the costumes are ingrained in the minds of people and how they shape appearance choices. Montgomery also asks; “What, in particular, does Shakespeare argue about Tudor history through the portrayals, words, and actions of major women characters in these plays?” “What does the unsaid and the unperformed argue about Tudor history in these plays?” and “How much of this comes from Shakespeare, how much of it comes from the audience, and how much of it is jointly created in reading, performing, and watching the plays?”

The Profitable Art of Revision by Abigail Fine

Fine talks about how audience reactions would infer upon the revisions of plays in the early modern period. Actions from the audience such as booing, hissing, heckling, etc. would shape the play they were watching. Early modern audiences were not held to the strict actions of today’s audiences, instead playing an important role in shaping the plays and their revisions. Citing a moments in The Knight of the Burning Pestle in which “Beaumont leaves no space for the audience to perform/revise/relate as they normally would during a play.” This then angers the audience, forcing them to dislike the production because “the play had not been written with their pleasure in mind…” Fine says the early modern audience had a sense of rights when it came to revisions in a production and reacted poorly when said that action was removed.

Courtesy, Judgement, and the Audience in The Merchant of Venice by Patricia Wareh

Wareh suggests “that examining another fundamental concern of the text, courtesy, can also shed light on the play’s insistent ambiguity.” This is in regards to recent studies that have focused on the plays illumination through attention to economics and religious issues. Courtesy, as Wareh sees it, determines ways characters interact with each other but brings different forms of judgement together. Contrasting Shylock’s “single-minded pursuit of judgement” to the Christian characters “flexible judgement.” Wareh leaves us with the following thought; “The Merchant of Venice also invites the audience to examine their own judgement.”

“Putting a Spell on You”: The Performance of Language, Stagecraft, and Demonism in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors  by Michael Boecherer

Boecherer makes the statement that early modern audiences would be able to make correlations between Antipholus’s speech in The Comedy of Errors and their lives in London. This shines a light on witchcraft and how it would effect the audience as they watched the actions and heard the words from this Shakespearean play. The audience’s understanding of witchcraft and demonic spell work is essential to how they would interpret The Comedy of Errors, as well as how they would react to this play. Boecherer addresses the fact that witchcraft is not seen on stage in this particular play, but is instead talked about, which is enough to conjure images and tones in the minds of the early modern audience.

NKSC13 in Maps

As the No Kidding Shakespeare Camp trip to London was, in many ways, primarily a walking tour of some of the city’s best Shakespeare-related destinations, I thought it might be worthwhile to chart all of our itineraries through Google Maps. Cartography has always interested me, and somehow seeing each day’s journey plotted out on the map helps me to realize just how much ground we covered. Give or take a block or so, here’s where we went during our week abroad (click on any map to expand it to its full size):

Saturday:
Most of our number came in on mini-cabs, likely following this route:

Saturday1

Some of us, however, took the Underground (which, when you’re on your way in from Heathrow, begins above-ground, letting you see some of London’s suburbs). The Piccadilly Line’s Russell Square station is just a couple of blocks from Byng Place, where we were staying.

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Saturday evening, after we got settled into our apartments and had the chance for a quick catnap, we had our first tour of the neighborhood, culminating in dinner at Busaba, a Thai restaurant. Starting at Byng Place, we saw Russell Square and Bedford Square, passing by the Montague St entrance to the British Museum. We passed through Bloomsbury into the theatre district, getting a glimpse of the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane on our way down to Covent Garden. From there, we wandered down to Trafalgar, past the National Gallery. We would have walked the full circuit back up to Busaba then, but the weather turned decidedly English by the time we hit Trafalgar, and then a closure on the Northern Line forced us to cab it rather than take the Tube.

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Walking Distance: 2.3 miles, plus some extra yardage as we circumnavigated Covent Garden Market a bit.

Sunday:
 Sunday was our day of Museums. We started off in the morning by heading down towards Cheapside. Our stroll to the Tube took us through Russell Square Garden again, and then through a charming lane called Sicilian Avenue. Once off at the St. Paul’s station, we got a glimpse of the great cathedral and of St. Mary-le-Bow, then visited Postman’s Park before hitting the London Museum. After that, we took the Underground back up towards home base and walked to the British Museum.

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After lunch, we hopped back on the Underground and took the Piccadilly all the way down to South Kensington, just a short walk from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Dr. Ralph gave an excellent presentation as part of ShaLT, a series on Shakespeare’s London Theatres. Afterwards, we dashed across the river to the Globe for an evening performance of Macbeth.

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Walking Distance: 4.4 miles (not counting perambulations inside Museums or any side excursions taken during lunch or after the show).

Monday:
Monday began with a walking tour of Shoreditch, led by archaeologist and author Julian Bowsher. We hit the major sites of the early years of London’s theatrical culture: the excavation sites of the Theatre and the Curtain, as well as touring some of the other intersections and city gates that would have been familiar to Shakespeare as he began his career in that neighborhood. After a meal in Bishopsgate, we walked through Smithfield Market, site of Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Faire, and then to St. Bartholomew the Great (Dr. Ralph’s favorite church in the city). After that, it was back to St. Paul’s (to go inside this time), and from thence to the National Portrait Gallery for a guided tour through Elizabethan and Jacobean history with Mary Baldwin College’s Mary Hill Cole. That evening, our group split up to explore London, with many taking advantage of the city’s wonderful culinary and theatrical opportunities.

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Walking distance:  5.5 miles (whew!)

Tuesday:
On Tuesday, we were up early to catch a train from Paddington Station out to Oxford. After a tour of Christ Church College and Cathedral, we had lunch in the vicinity of the Covered Market before heading to University College for a tour and a chat with Dr. Tiffany Stern. By late afternoon, the weather had turned from the morning’s dreary downpour to cool, breezy sunshine — perfect for punting, so we headed down towards the Isis for some aquatic recreation. To celebrate our triumph afterwards, we hit the Turf Tavern, reputed to be the oldest tavern in Oxford, dating to the reign of Richard II. Some chose to head back to London after the pub, while others stayed to explore until it was time to catch the last train.

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And now, an example of why I love Google Maps so much: Having difficulty finding an address for our punting location to add to the map, I decided to zoom in, switch to satellite view, and scroll along the river — and lo and behold, I found the very punts we used to conquer the river!

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Walking distance: 3.9 miles (plus unknown distance punted)

Wednesday:
Wednesday morning began with a tour of the Blackfriars District, passing by Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the Inns of Court, where the playing companies sometimes staged shows, and which would have been the origin for many of the gallants attending shows at the Blackfriars Theatre. We visited Playhouse Yard, the former location of the Blackfriars priory and, eventually, the predecessor to our Playhouse, then crossed the river again for a tour of the Globe with Director of Education Patrick Spottiswoode and the matinee of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After the show, our campers had the evening free. Many met at the Anchor for a drink and some post-show discussion, before breaking up for further exploration. Ralph, Sarah, and I walked back by way of the National Theatre and Waterloo Bridge before finding dinner in the vicinity of Leicester Square.

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Walking distance: 3.5 miles (plus whatever routes, walking, Underground, or cabbing, that our participants took during our evening off — for Ralph, Sarah, and I, for example, that meant another 2+ miles on our feet before catching the Tube at Leicester Square)

Thursday:
 We took a bit of a slower start on Thursday, both to allow folk to rest up from previous days’ journeys, but also to allow the intrepid to go out in search of more theatre tickets, many of which are available at discount rates early in the morning. After convening mid-morning, we headed to Middle Temple Hall, one of Tom McLaughlin’s primary inspirations for the interior of the Blackfriars Playhouse. After a tour, we enjoyed an excellent lunch in the hall, then headed across the Thames, back to the Globe, where Peter McCurdy treated us to a lecture about the building of the Globe and the Wanamaker, and where director and actor Nick Hutchison led us in a great workshop on cue scripts and clues for performance in Shakespeare’s texts.

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Walking distance: a mere 2 miles! (plus whatever folk did on their own at night)

Friday:
On our final full day in London, we explored Southwark, the district south of the river which became a center of theatrical culture. We began with a tour of the ruins of the Rose Theatre, preserved underneath a modern building, then we walked through the district to Southwark Cathedral and the ruins of Winchester Palace. For lunch, we hit the George, an old tavern with a yard which may have seen performances of early modern plays.

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Then our group had the afternoon free to revisit favorite locations or to discover new delights. For me, this meant heading to Sir John Soane’s Museum, a truly charming collection of art and antiquities, then heading back to the British Museum to hit some of the rooms I missed the first time around (and to do a little souvenir shopping) — another 1.6 miles.

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In the evening, we had cocktails at Ralph’s apartment on Bedford Place before heading to the Haymarket Theatre for One Man, Two Guv’nors, a new play based on The Servant of Two Masters. After dinner, it was just around the corner to Mint Leaf for a final banquet.

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Walking distance: 2.1 miles in the morning, variant paths in the afternoon, then another 1.1 in the evening

Saturday, many of us headed back to Heathrow, while the rest took themselves to King’s Cross Station and points north.

Total Walking Distance: 24.7 miles for the week — and that only counts our official trips, not any of the independent evening journeys. What’s fOCSinating about this for me is to remember that, until fairly recently in history, walking was the primary method of transportation for most people. Few could afford horses and carriages, and even if you had them, they weren’t always practical inside the City of London, with its narrow streets crowded by stalls and pedestrians. If you didn’t want to brave London Bridge, you could hire a ferry to get across the Thames, but through most of the districts we toured, people four hundred years ago would have walked nearly the same paths. Though many of the sights have changed, thanks to the 1666 Great Fire and to a few centuries’ worth of building, rebuilding, and reconstruction, many of them remain remarkably similar. If you’re interested in seeing pictures to accompany those 50,000 footsteps, check out the NKSC13 album on Facebook.

Book Review: Shakespeare’s London, by Stephen Porter

ShxLondonShakespeare’s London: Everyday Life in London 1580 to 1616 is a thorough and detailed look at the English metropolis during the early modern period. While other books have taken similar approaches, none have honed in quite so specifically on a particular place at a very particular time. Porter uses not just Shakespeare’s life but his time in London as his fenceposts, and this allows him to delve, as we like to say in OCS Education, deep and narrow into a moment in history.

Porter is nothing if not comprehensive. The book wends its way through many aspects of early modern life, particularly with regards to economic realities and social conventions of the common citizens of London. Porter devotes a lot of time to industry and mercantilism, and not unjustly, since trade formed the basis for London’s explosive growth in following centuries. He discusses the various neighborhoods and their relative statuses at length, and the pictorial sections of the books include a number of illustrative maps (though, since they are early modern in origin and scaled down to fit the page, these are not always easy to read). Throughout the book, Porter liberally mixes primary source accounts in with his narrative, adding valuable details to the picture he’s painting. I particularly appreciated that during the heavily economic sections of the book, since it gave the real human interest factor back to what would otherwise have been a rather dry summary of trade deals and market fluctuations.

Major events to do with monarchs and nobles only get coverage for how they affected the bulk of the populace. One of my favorite examples has to do with King James’s influence on the cloth industry. England had always done quite a lot of trade in both heavy broadcloths and lighter linens, but typically sold them overseas “in the white,” undyed. English dyers just weren’t as adept as those in other countries, nor could they dye as cheaply, so although finished cloth fetched a higher price, England had chosen to rely on its strengths and focus on creating a huge output of undyed cloth. In 1614, King James decided, on the advice of a wealthy alderman (who, coincidentally, lent the king money), that the country would, from then on, only export dyed cloth. The Dutch responded by banning imports of dyed cloth, since that was one of their major industries. James then banned the export of wool, the main raw material which the Dutch used. This trade war did not go well for the English, who did not have the expertise to turn out quality material in high enough quantities to match previous sales of undyed cloths. In 1617, with the entire industry in England threatening to collapse, James changed his mind, with the Privy Council declaring that it was ‘now his Majesty’s pleasure and resolution not to disturb the trade of whites with any further essay, but to leave the same to the train and course of trade now in practice and according to the use before the former alteration’ (116-117).

The book also does a great job of tying the social history into the world of the plays. Porter frequently refers to various plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, illustrating how the temporal reality of London found its way into so many stories on the early modern stage. Playwrights like Dekker and Middleton often put London itself right up onto the stage, and Dekker was also a pamphleteer, whose observations about the world around him tell us much about life in the era. Shakespeare may never have written a city comedy, but that definitely does not mean that his London was absent from his plays. Porter relates the conmen and petty criminals of London to Mistress Overdone’s customers in Measure for Measure, and he suggests that “Shakespeare’s metropolitan audience at The Winter’s Tale no doubt smiled at the pretentiousness of the newly-rich shepherd and his son’s shopping list for their sheep-shearing feast,” based on recognition of the produce and spices traded out of London to country burghers (120). He points out that the Boar’s Head tavern in Henry IV was likely the same as that in Great Eastcheap, near to where the Lord Chamberlain’s men then played in the winters. The diseases and pestilence mentioned in so many of his plays were those that the people of London lived with and feared spreading. Any Shakespearean reference to apprentices reflected the vast population of young men in the city who, while vital to the economic structure, were also apparently prone to lethargy and rioting. Shakespeare’s London clearly lives in his plays, no matter if they’re set in Italy, Egypt, or Bohemia.

My biggest criticism of Shakespeare’s London is that I think this book could have benefited from a different organizational structure — perhaps by sub-dividing chapters or by simply having more chapters. There are only eight in the 250-page book, and so each one has a lot of topical ground to cover. As a result, sometimes the sense of storytelling is rather haphazard. A few chapters get a little “info-dump”-y, while others seem to have a strong narrative which then gets derailed. The best example of that is when the section on printhouses and print culture comes in the middle of a chapter which is otherwise about demographics and the early modern life cycle. The information is both interesting and useful, but it sort of comes out of left field. Printing also doesn’t get a mention in the index (which seems to focus more on proper nouns than on broader topics), so if you picked this book up specifically looking for information on that subject, it would be difficult to suss out where to find it. Information about the playhouses and playgoing culture is also scattered through a few different chapters. On the whole, though, Shakespeare’s London is chock-full of fantastic, detailed information, much of it straight from the original sources. I think it’s most comparable to David Cressy’s Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England: a compendium of information, almost overwhelming at times, but providing a wonderful window into the lives of everyday citizens who just happened to live four centuries ago. Shakespeare’s London is one of the “suggested reading” texts for the upcoming No Kidding Shakespeare Camp, and I’m looking forward to taking its insights with me as we travel through London in a few weeks.