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Culture Other

Tippety-tap

In celebration of this very amusing put-down of President Bush, here’s a bit of the master himself:

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Culture Other

The Mammoth Brigade of Black Comedians

Advertisement for the Christmas entertainment at Gatti's Palace of Varieties in 1892

More fascinating stuff from the British Library collection; this poster is from 1892.

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Culture Me

How now, nuncle!

Hot news of the day: I’m an uncle. My sister-in-law had a baby girl yesterday. So send positive mind rays in the general direction of Cheltenham, please.

The word ‘nuncle’ is, as I expect you know, a variation of ‘uncle’ formed by mishearing ‘mine uncle’ as ‘my nuncle’. The same with ‘Ned’ as a variation on ‘Edward’. ‘Adder’ and ‘apron’ went in the other direction: it was originally ‘a nadder’ and ‘a napron’. Similarly, while I’m on the subject, ‘pea’ is formed by misinterpreting ‘pease’ as a plural, and the same with ‘cherry’, which also originally ended in an s, as it does in the French cerise.

I vaguely thought that ‘nuncle’ was widespread in Shakespeare, but I did a search online and it turns out that only one character uses it: the Fool in King Lear, who uses it fourteen times. So I don’t know whether it was a genuine misunderstanding or just a whimsical usage. Almost baby-talk. Or informal/affectionate: in which case the fact that the Fool uses that kind of language in addressing the King is an indication of his special freedom. I suppose I could consult the OED and see if it tells me.

Looking for nuncles in Lear reminded me of what an incredible piece of writing that storm scene is, with the interplay between the mad Lear, Edgar pretending to be mad, and the Fool whose job is to act mad. Language is stretched almost to meaninglessness, and there’s an edge to it, a nastiness, that helps counterbalance the ladlesful of pathos. I find the overt artificiality fascinating as well; having the three ‘mad’ characters on stage together, and of course the blinded Gloucester who doesn’t know that one of them is his son. Obviously throughout his career Shakespeare made liberal use of coincidences and unlikely plots, but some of the late plays, like Lear, seem to move away from realism in a much more profound way. As a comparison, in Twelfth Night, when people keep getting confused between Viola and Sebastian, the unlikeliness of the situation is part of the joke. I’m not sure it even makes sense to look at Lear in those terms. it’s clearly true that the plot of King Lear is unlikely, but it seems ridiculous to say so. It’s somehow not the point.

KING LEAR:
Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here’s three on’s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come unbutton here.
[Tearing off his clothes.]

Fool:
Prithee, nuncle, be contented; ’tis a naughty night to swim in. Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher’s heart; a small spark, all the rest on’s body cold. Look, here comes a walking fire.
{Enter GLOUCESTER, with a torch.}

EDGAR:
This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.
S. Withold footed thrice the old;
He met the night-mare, and her nine-fold;
Bid her alight,
And her troth plight,
And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!

It wasn’t a time with a very sensitive approach to mental health issues; people used to go to visit Bedlam for the entertainment value of seeing the madmen. And indeed there’s a scene in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi where a bunch of actors basically come on stage to act mad for the amusement of the audience in the same freak show manner; the contrast with the portrayal of madness in Lear is striking.

Shakespeare really was a very good writer. I’m always tempted to be sceptical about his status, towering untouchably over English literature; my bloody-minded reaction to the cult of Shakespeare which treats him as though he never wrote a bad line, let alone a bad play. We’re less reverential about art these days—less reverential about everything—but still, the big names have a halo around them, as though entry into the canon equated to canonisation. I’m torn between feeling that serious, unironic celebration of the power of art is a Good Thing and a sense that once something gets tainted with sacredness it is defanged.

Anyway, I seem to have rambled from my new niece, via cherries, to ART. I shall stop before I wander any further off-topic. Hopefully responding to the birth of a daughter by quoting King Lear isn’t too much of a bad omen :)

» The photo Cherry was posted to Flickr by moogs and is used under a Creative Commons by-nc licence.

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Culture Other

‘We The People’ at the Globe

I finally visited the Globe theatre for the first time this week. That’s not because I’ve been avoiding it—every time I walked past on the way to Tate Modern, I thought ‘I really must go to the Globe some time’— but I never got round to it.

Since the whole point is that it’s a reconstruction of an Elizabethan theatre, it might have made more sense to see a play from the period, but in fact I saw We The People by Eric Schlosser.

Ben Franklin and an air stewardess

N.B. Picture may not be representative of actual play.

Dealing with the play first: it was a dramatic reconstruction of the process of writing the U.S. constitution, based on primary sources. Schlosser, who wrote Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness, is primarily a journalist/non-fiction writer, and this is a very straight presentation of history on the stage. He does his best to bring out the personalities of the men involved and find human interest and humour to leaven the mix a bit, but to be honest, a committee of lawyers and politicians discussing constitutional law doesn’t make for dynamic theatre. It was interesting and somewhat entertaining, but it all felt a lot like being in school.

I heard Schlosser on the radio talking about the play and saying that one of the things that interested him was that Americans tend to treat the constitution as a semi-sacred document (my paraphrase) and that he wanted to bring out its history as a document written by human beings, a product of compromise and a particular historical moment. Which is a worthwhile project, and I think he was successful, although for me the constitution never had those associations particularly.

With the subject of nation-building in the air at the moment, it’s worth being reminded that the process in our own countries’ histories was slow and erratic. A lot has changed in the meantime which might provide a framework and some help, but still, we can’t be surprised if countries like Iraq, Bosnia and even Russia take many years to even achieve stability, let alone all the features of a mature democracy. There’s no guarantee that they will ever achieve those things.

One touch worth noting: at various breaks in the action, a couple of musicians, dressed, like the rest of the cast, in C18th clothing, and played and sang West African music. One was playing a many-stringed instrument that I think was probably a kora, and the other some kind of stringed instrument played with a bow. Schlosser explains:

It’s a reminder of those who were not invited to the room. Slavery was crucial to the economy of the United States, but slaves had no voice whatsoever in society. In the play the music offers them a means to be heard. And it’s wonderful music.

I like the idea, although I’m not sure how well it worked theatrically. I’m not sure how many of the audience made the connection. And in a rather literal play, it seemed a bit out of place. Considering they were supposed to represent the voiceless, it’s an unfortunate irony that the musicians’ names aren’t listed on the website. They were named in the programme, but I don’t have it with me; one was Senegalese and the other was Gambian.

As for the theatre: it’s a striking building and has a plausibly authentic feel, although I believe it’s reconstructed on the basis of fairly thin evidence. I think probably the most interesting difference from a conventional theatre isn’t that it’s in the round—I’ve been to quite a few productions staged like that over the years anyway—it’s the natural lighting. Stage lighting provides a natural focus on the actors and away from the audience, and it helps the audience concentrate. In daylight, the actors don’t have that advantage. I don’t think this particular play made especially good use of the theatre, in fact; the actors moved among the audience standing in the pit sometimes, but most of the play consisted of men talking to each other and was naturally static; it could as easily have been staged in a proscenium arch theatre. Frankly it could almost have been a radio play. I’d be interested to see something more dramatic there sometime. Shakespeare, perhaps.

Oh, and if you visit and you have a seat, get a cushion. They rent them in the theatre. The seats are wooden benches, and it’s tough on the buttocks. They also rent out seat backs for some lumbar support, which is what I had, but I didn’t think it was very comfortable.

» The picture of Benjamin Franklin and an air stewardess is a section of a photo by Matt Wright and is used under—and therefore available under—a by-nc-sa Creative Commons licence.

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Culture Nature

Too wit to woo

I heard an owl last night, for the first time in years. I think there are quite a few tawny owls in London—they’re a basically woodland species and fairly well suited to a suburban mix of woodland, park and gardens. A few years ago I used to hear them quite regularly here, but as I say this is the first for a long time. I guess it’s probably a young bird dispersing from its parents’ territory.

Tawny Owl, Sparham Pools (Norfolk), 24-May-07, originally uploaded by Dave Appleton.

There’s something incredibly atmospheric about hearing animal calls at night. It’s hard not to hear the quavering calls as somehow mournful, although presumably the owls aren’t actually permanently depressed. It makes a change from foxes; we’ve got a lot of young foxes around at the moment (one wandered into the house the other day) and they make a complete racket.

From Love’s Labour’s Lost:

WHEN icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all around the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl—
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Most of Shakespeare’s owls are referred to as screeching or shrieking; indeed he sometimes calls them ‘screech-owl’. Those are probably barn owls. But ‘tu-whit tu-whoo’ is the call of the tawny owl. In fact it’s the call of a pair of tawny owls; the female does the ‘tu-whit’ followed immediately by the male saying ‘tu-whoo’. That wasn’t what I heard last night, though; mine was saying ‘hoo… hu-hu-hu-hoo’. So it was just a male owl on its own.

And on an unexpectedly sinister note; according to Wikipedia “This species probably injures more people than any other European bird. It is fearless in defence of its nest and young, and strikes for the intruder’s face with its sharp talons. Since its flight is silent, at night in particular it may not be detected until too late.”

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Culture

The Nicholas Brothers

These online videos can’t do justice to dancing, but how cool is this?

That’s the Nicholas Brothers in Down Argentine Way. Not impressed yet? This is them in Stormy Weather: