Of Fighters and Drinkers

I've been watching Henry IV, Part I piecemeal over the past couple weeks, the BBC Television Shakespeare version. It just kind of happened, I never have time to watch the whole thing but I've been itching to watch it again so I watch a little bit here and there. It occurred to me there's a sequence of scenes in which one guy does a verbal take down of another guy. There's Hal and Falstaff, then Hotspur and Glendower, then the King and Hal.

Although Anthony Quayle plays Falstaff as just starting to get some inkling of Hal's ultimate betrayal of him, and he acts indignant at first, the beauty of Falstaff is that eventually he takes it all in good humour. What really matters to him is coin in his pocket and sack in his belly. Hotspur unwisely makes his rebel ally, Glendower, the butt of a series of very funny but vicious jabs. The King is deeply disturbed by his son's loose living. The rashness of youth and the bitterness of political responsibilities hang over the latter two. It's easy to see why Falstaff was such a popular character, he longs for the human comforts we all do. Few of us appreciate the gravity of the King's preoccupations and only a few more people will have experienced Hotspur's profound restlessness.

I was watching the Hotspur and Glendower scene last night. One sympathises with Hotspur and his disdain for pomposity but it's astonishing how little thought he gives to the precariousness of his situation and his need for allies.

MORTIMER.
Peace, cousin Percy, you will make him mad.

GLENDOWER.
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

HOTSPUR.
Why, so can I, or so can any man,
But will they come when you do call for them?

GLENDOWER.
Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the devil.

HOTSPUR.
And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil
By telling truth; tell truth, and shame the devil.
If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,
And I’ll be sworn I have power to shame him hence.
O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the devil!

MORTIMER.
Come, come, no more of this unprofitable chat.

GLENDOWER.
Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head
Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye
And sandy-bottom’d Severn have I sent him
Bootless home and weather-beaten back.

HOTSPUR.
Home without boots, and in foul weather too!
How ’scapes he agues, in the devil’s name!

Squashing Beatles and Lollards

Still in the mood for Dalek episodes of Doctor Who, I stumbled across something else BritBox lacks in its collection of streaming episodes when I watched the First Doctor 1965 serial The Chase last week--the clip of The Beatles from Top of the Pops. This appears not to be an error like the missing footage from Revelation of the Daleks but something to do with a licensing disagreement for U.S. distribution.

Again, I was forced back to my old copy of a serial. It's particularly a shame because this is apparently the only surviving footage of The Beatles on Top of the Pops. Supposedly The Beatles were actually supposed to guest star on Doctor Who but their management disliked the idea. Instead, the Doctor (William Hartnell), Ian (William Russell), Barbara (Jacqueline Hill), and Vicki (Maureen O'Brien), watch a Top of the Pops performance on the Doctor's new Time-Space Visualiser, a device that allows one to view any moment in any point in time and space. Good thing this never fell into the wrong hands.

At Ian's request, they also watch a bit of Abraham Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address and on Barbara's request they view a meeting between Queen Elizabeth I (Vivienne Bennett) and William Shakespeare (Hugh Walters).

Their discussion about Falstaff incorporates two stories that actually have legitimacy among Shakespeare scholars--Falstaff was supposedly based, at least in part, on John Oldcastle, a fifteenth century sort of proto-Protestant called a Lollard. I always found this a little odd since Falstaff in the plays doesn't seem like a man of great religious conviction, heretical or otherwise. I doubt Queen Elizabeth was as amused by a shot being taken at Oldcastle, in any case, as she is shown to be in the clip on the Time-Space Visualiser. She went to a lot of trouble converting the country back to Protestantism after her Catholic predecessor, Queen Mary. Elizabeth's complicated relationship with Oldcastle's descendent, Sir William Brooke, also doesn't suggest she'd react as she's portrayed on the show. But her request that Shakespeare write a play about Falstaff falling in love, which eventually became The Merry Wives of Windsor, is a real story from the period and may be true.

Each episode of the six part serial, The Chase, feels very different, almost like standalone stories but roughly connected by the Daleks chasing the TARDIS through time and space in their own newly developed time machine. My favourite is the first episode. In addition to the clips on the Time-Space Visualiser, I love the group casually exploring a really eerie desert planet with bizarre, blackened, as though burnt, objects dotting the landscape.

Ian and Vicki recklessly just strike out in a random direction while the Doctor and Barbara decide to sunbathe. They're all so sweet and innocent. I also love the grouchy Dalek slowly emerging from under a pile of sand at the conclusion of the episode.

Sleeping Through the Revolution

One day you wake up and find the world has changed around you with seeming abruptness. There are strange faces and familiar ones look on you without recognition. Political opinions that once seemed perfectly mundane and inoffensive now excite outrage from everyone in your village. Finally you start to doubt your own identity--after all, some schools of thought would say your identity is defined by how you fit into society. You've had the Rip Van Winkle experience.

I felt like I had to do something to celebrate American Independence Day yesterday but every idea I thought of felt too depressing. All of the usual things that made me feel good about the U.S. just made me feel sad and slightly filled with dread. I found myself thinking longingly of another BBC Shakespeare production to watch. Maybe that's why I thought of Washington Irving whose collection of stories and essays, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, serialised from 1819 to 1820, largely consists of Irving's ruminations and daydreams about England. Ironic considering two of its stories, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", are two of the earliest and most famous examples of American fiction.

Maybe it's natural after such upheaval that someone would stop and ruminate on all that was inevitably lost. That's not exactly what Irving is up to, though.

I read "Rip Van Winkle" again last night and, like much of the rest of the collection, it's the kind of peculiarly effective comedy that comes from a blend of humour and melancholy. One of the funniest and potentially saddest aspects of it is, for as startlingly different as the world is when Van Winkle wakes up, in many ways it really hasn't changed at all.

It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war—that the country had thrown off the yoke of old England—and that, instead of being a subject to his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him . . .

Of course, few things seem to infuriate political people more than people who aren't political--anyway, it seems a solid pretext to get on a soapbox. Poor Rip, when he first tries to make a statement to pacify the assembled people at the inn when he returns home, says;

“Alas! gentlemen,” cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, “I am a poor, quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the King, God bless him!”

Here a general shout burst from the bystanders-“a tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!”

Even asking if anyone recognises the name Rip Van Winkle is no help, it only takes him into dark existential woods:

“Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?”

“Oh, Rip Van Winkle!” exclaimed two or three. “Oh, to be sure! that’s Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.”

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he went up the mountain; apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name?

“God knows!” exclaimed he at his wit’s end; “I’m not myself—I’m somebody else—that’s me yonder-no—that’s somebody else, got into my shoes—I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they’ve changed my gun, and everything’s changed, and I’m changed, and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am!”

That his now grown son not only has the same name but apparently the same characteristics and occupies the same place in the mind of the public must be bewildering. Both Rips are described as having a reputation for laziness though Rip Sr. "would never refuse to assist a neighbour even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man in all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them."

We're told Rip's chief trouble in life is his wife who endlessly upbraids him for his contented idleness. Irving's attitudes about women, displayed more fully in a preceding essay in the collection called "The Wife", are not misogynist but certainly influenced by a sentimentality typical of the 19th century. But certainly it's not impossible to suppose a man like Rip had a wife who was a bit brutal to him. She personifies the counterargument to one Irving is making for most of the collection--an argument for the usefulness of the useless. This is a distinguishing feature of the protagonists for both "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"--both feature protagonists whose occupation or lifestyle meet with disdain by the community. In many of the essays, Irving waxes eloquent on Falstaff, who is arguably the prototype for his protagonists--a useless, in many ways bad man who nonetheless inspires love in the audience and in other characters. He's arguably the original Homer Simpson.

Many re-evaluations of old works to-day tend to focus on the privilege of their authors and certainly that would be true in Irving's case. Though The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon was written at a time when Irving was contemplating the impeding loss of his family wealth due to his brother's poor business decisions. Irving's depression at the change in his lifestyle is evident in many of the stories and essays, especially the mostly melancholy vignette "The Voyage" that describes his journey over sea to England. On his arrival, "I had no friend to meet, no cheering to receive. I stepped upon the land of my forefathers—but felt that I was a stranger in the land." Not unlike Rip Van Winkle returning to his home town.

But the point of Irving's argument throughout the book is not that a privileged few deserve comfort and the freedom of idle contemplation but that it should be available to all. This is the point of his idolisation of European inn culture, of his search for the original Boar's Head of Falstaff. A place where everyone from Princes to footsoldiers could take their ease, be fed, and engage in discourse sometimes ridiculous, sometimes angry, but always with a basic sense of fellowship.

So it makes sense that Rip's supernatural slumber occurs after playing Nine Pins with a supernatural crew wearing the anachronistic, 17th clothes of the original Dutch settlers--who yet somehow know him by name. As though Rip has glimpsed some great continuous community of Irving's beloved inn culture.

The illustrations in this post are by Gordon Ross from my copy of a 1939 edition of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon.

Showing True Colours

Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer
But dare maintain the party of the truth
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me

So speaks one of the parties in the origin story William Shakespeare imagined for the War of the Roses in his Henry VI: Part I. It's not considered one of Shakespeare's best plays--in fact, not considered altogether a Shakespeare play but widely believed to be a product of collaboration, possibly with Thomas Nashe and Christopher Marlowe--but there's plenty in it that rewards reading or, as I did last night, viewing a production. I watched a 1983 production directed by Jane Howell. It's significant that a woman directs the production as it is a play in which its handling of gender has been a topic of much analysis. It's one of the chief points of interest in it alongside a neat depiction of how superficial rivalries can lead to substantial harm.

The play's also noteworthy as the earliest appearance of Sir John Falstaff, though he's generally not regarded as being the same character as the one who first appears in Henry IV: Part I. The Falstaff who appears in the Henry IV plays, and later in The Merry Wives of Windsor, is generally considered one of Shakespeare's greatest creations--some have said his greatest--while the man of the same name who figures into Henry VI has only a couple brief, undistinguished scenes. And, of course, chronologically the Falstaff of Henry IV would be dead by the time of Henry VI, though I would say this is no argument since The Merry Wives of Windsor is apparently set in Shakespeare's time. Falstaff does not seem a man bound by temporal physics, so I say one might as well regard the one in Henry VI as one and the same. Jane Howell evidently was of the same opinion because, like the Falstaff of the more famous plays, her Henry VI Falstaff is fat and has a big beard.

She also includes a broad comedic moment for him where he flees a battle and starts to snack on some bread when he thinks he's at a safe distance. But while the Falstaff of Henry IV has no direct historical analogue, the one in Henry VI seems to be based on the real Sir John Fastolf--in fact, some editions of the play spell the character's name "Fastolf"--who had a reputation for cowardice now considered to be undeserved. He certainly seems to have had the respect of one of the ablest commanders among his adversaries, Joan of Arc, who demanded her forces be wary of his approach to Orleans. She's recorded as saying to a subordinate, ". . . as soon as you hear of the arrival of Fastolf you will let me know, for if he gets through without my knowing it, I promise that I'll have your head cut off."

Henry VI: Part I also takes some liberties with Joan of Arc though the play accords her more valour and skill than it does Falstaff. Brenda Blethyn plays Joan in Jane Howell's production with a broad northern English accent emphasising her provincial background. Her lines often have the quality of clear common sense next to the male French commanders whom Powell portrays as a gang of bumbling buffoons, including the French Dauphin, Charles (Ian Saynor), whose devotion to her is portrayed as a bug eyed puppy love.

Far from the devout soul heart-breakingly portrayed in Carl Dreyer's film, this Joan turns out to be every bit the witch the Inquisition condemned her for being and a hypocrite, too. In her final scene she first calls herself a virgin then tries to save herself by claiming to be pregnant. Whether or not Shakespeare and his collaborators are really trying to smear Joan is more debatable than one might think, though. For one thing, it's the Duke of York who sneeringly condemns Joan, played in this production effectively by Bernard Hill (wearing a wig that seems to be trying to get away from him).

He's one of the two faction leaders in that garden scene where noblemen choose between red and white roses after a seemingly trivial argument turns ugly. York's pride and posturing are matched by Somerset's (Brian Deacon) and histories of rivalries and loyalties come to a head over flowers. The King who, despite lending his name to the play has a fairly minor role, tries to make peace by mingling York's cavalry with Somerset's infantry when sending them to France but this has the result of both taking it as an excuse to blame the other for not reinforcing Talbot. Their inaction leads to Talbot's defeat.

Portrayed in the play as the epitome of a great English knight, Talbot's defeat is a poignant symbol of the dangers of infighting. Trevor Peacock plays him in Jane Howell's production and really elevates the role, appearing world weary and heroic in battle scenes and humorously awkward and out of place in the king's court and the home of the Countess d'Auvergne (Joanna McCallum) who tries to entrap him--a scene Howell wisely plays again for comedy. The first part of the play has so much rapid actions and plot developments on top of each other that they do seem best suited for a sort of Keystone Kops tone, though this does sit oddly with more straightforward dramatic scenes later on.

Joan's attempts to save herself in the end could be ranked alongside Falstaff in their heights of cowardice and yet Falstaff's cowardice has been a fertile point of interpretation and reinterpretation over the centuries. Falstaff's speech condemning honour in Henry IV is seen by many as profound, including Orson Welles whose respect for Falstaff was clearly great. One could also interpret Talbot and his son's final scenes, in which both refuse to flee a battle as a point of honour and thus both perish, as another subtle argument against that kind of devotion to honour. I think it would be fair to see Joan as a more nuanced character.

Twitter Sonnet #1123

Approaching plans cement the silly bank.
The fishing tackle formed the brains of this.
As Terry-Thomas counts his teeth and rank.
As fragrance heaves ashore enforcéd bliss.
From air impressions build a golden chain.
Illusion's metal prised the place of wood.
The seeds for ants descend as palid rain.
Yet ev'ry leg could say just where it stood.
In silver orbits crickets jumped for Mars.
A tinsel building brought recurring dreams.
A billion people wait in idling cars.
Unwieldy stitches seal the jacket's seams.
A want of colour yet was brightest hue.
A light condemns the shapes to kinds of true.