What's the Pity, Precisely?

Among other the other problems it may cause, incest can spoil everyone's plans. John Ford's early 17th century play, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, shows the far-reaching effects of a brother and sister's decision to enter a sexual relationship. Lacking the depth of insight found in Shakespeare, Ford's play is nonetheless a stimulating thought experiment, an illustration of the dangers inherent in reordering nature according to one's own will and whim.

I sought out this play because of a song on David Bowie's Blackstar, his final album, called "'Tis a Pity She was a Whore". Although the lyrics bear little resemblance to the story of the play, it seems the title was meant as a reference to it. The lyrics of another song on the Bowie album, "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" bear more resemblance to the play.

I watched a 1980 BBC production starring Cherie Lunghi as well as several actors I recognised from Doctor Who, including Tim Pigott-Smith from Masque of Mandragara, Bernard Archard who played Professor Scarman in The Pyramids of Mars, and Colin Douglas who played the lighthouse keeper from Horror of Fang Rock. For no reason in particular, the setting and costumes place the action in mid-19th century England. The play was originally set in Italy--it was common in English plays of the time to illustrate moral depravity by setting their action in Catholic countries, particularly Italy and Spain, where clergy, like the friar in Romeo and Juliet, can be shown ushering the protagonists to their destruction.

In her introduction to the play in the Norton English Renaissance Drama, Katharine Eisaman Maus draws direct comparisons between Romeo and Juliet and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore in discussing the lovers' rash disregard for their society's expectations. There's a Friar in this play, too, though he does not approve of Giovanni's (Kenneth Cranham) passion for his sister, Annabella (Lunghi), when Giovanni confesses to him.

Since Giovanni has shown no interest in other women, his father despairs of the family line's survival, both in terms of flesh and finance, as he finds himself in desperate financial straits. So he's trying to marry his daughter, Annabella, off to the wealthy nobleman, Soranzo (Anthony Bate). So the loss of Annabella's virginity is a grave matter indeed, in both senses of the word "grave".

Meanwhile, Soranzo is trying to extricate himself from entanglement with his former mistress, Hippolita (Alison Fiske). In this matter, and in the trouble that results when he discovers Annabella is pregnant by another man, he employs his murderous Spanish servant, Vasques (Pigott-Smith).

In contrast to the patriarchal expectations and machinations of society, Eisaman Maus concludes her introduction by saying that one feels "nostalgic for Giovanni's reckless disregard of social laws." I can't say I agree with that. In the name of love, he irrevocably ruins his sister's life. Her father may have been desperate but he specifically says he wouldn't force Annabella to marry anyone she didn't want to. Who knows what would have happened if Giovanni hadn't broached the subject of incest with her? She may have eventually found a suitable match. Maybe not someone she felt great passion for but someone with whom she could have lived in relative contentment. Eisaman Maus makes a point of how both Annabella and Giovanni are inexperienced so she can't be entirely faulted for interpreting her own feelings for Giovanni so disastrously. The title of the play, spoken by an authority figure at the end, is likely meant to show up the exceeding harshness to women of society's judgement of such things, but on the other hand, it is a pity that it was so easy for Giovanni to have sex with her. He was wrong to propose the relationship but she was also wrong to agree to it.

Looked at in the light of nature versus society, it's easier to see the connexion between the play and Bowie's song. He sings about a sexual relationship with a woman that can't be more because of some kind of "war". Since war is a construct dependent on abstract human conceptions of territory and citizenship, it is a contrary force to purely physical love, part of a set of abstract forces that run contrary to human instinct. If you look at the song as part of an album generally about Bowie being on the verge of death, it may be part of a lament, a recognition of his own fatigue, that he must, even at this final stage of his life, adhere to a society's expectations that run contrary to his instincts or desires.

To Repay or to Requite

When you intend to pay an assassin with money, sometimes it's wise to make sure you both understand you're not offering sex. Otherwise you might end up with a tragedy something like Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's 1622 play The Changeling, a play I last night watched a very good BBC production of from 1974.

Set in Spain, the story follows a young noblewoman named Beatrice-Joanna who, having just gotten engaged to marry a nobleman named Alonzo, suddenly falls in love with another nobleman named Alsemero. Both men are besotted with her and so is a third man, De Flores, a servant to Beatrice-Joanna's family.

She hates De Flores but, circumstances being what they are, it occurs to her hiring De Flores to murder Alonzo may be the most delicate way of handling her problem. It's a motivation that's utterly cold blooded and yet, in a way, innocent in its scope. Conceivably the character could be played as someone who doesn't really understand the depths of what she asks, a childish weakness that De Flores might exploit. But Helen Mirren, in the 1974 adaptation, plays her as steely and cunning.

I believe she understands the crime she's asking for but I also believe she doesn't understand the sexual connotations De Flores can hardly be blamed for interpreting in their exchange.

BEATRICE

You are too violent to mean faithfully;
There's horror in my service, blood and danger:
Can those be things to sue for?

DE FLORES

If you knew
How sweet it were to me to be employed
In any act of yours, you would say then
I fail'd and us'd not reverence enough
When I receive the charge on't.

BEATRICE

[Aside] This is much,
Methinks; belike his wants are greedy, and
To such gold tastes like angels' food.--Rise.

DE FLORES

I'll have the work first.

BEATRICE

[Aside] Possible his need
Is strong upon him. [Offering him money] There's to encourage thee;
As thou art forward and thy service dangerous,
Thy reward shall be precious.

DE FLORES

That I have thought on;
I have assur'd myself of that beforehand,
And know it will be precious: the thought ravishes!

BEATRICE

Then take him to thy fury.

It simply never occurs to her that a servant would see sex with her as in the realm of possibility and it doesn't occur to him that she could possibly misinterpret his words.

DE FLORES

Oh, my blood! Methinks I feel her in mine arms already,
Her wanton fingers combing out this beard,
And being pleased, praising this bad face!
Hunger and pleasure, they'll commend sometimes
Slovenly dishes and feed heartily on 'em,
Nay, which is stranger, refuse daintier for 'em.
Some women are odd feeders.

De Flores is described as ugly by himself and others but he's played by Stanley Baker in the 1974 production; hardly an unattractive fellow.

At least not by to-day's standards. Jean Paul Belmondo was described as ugly in reviews that praised his looks in the early 60s; there is classical male beauty and there is a kind only a liberated mind wouldn't blush to call attractive. Maybe this production is interpreting another meaning to the ugliness ascribed to De Flores; a carnal, animal sexuality. Certainly Baker and Mirren's scenes together have that kind of excitement to them.

It's so wonderfully pulpy even as the consequences of the two misunderstanding each other are so terrible--but, then, they're already steeped in blood by that point. There's a real noir quality to it, too; they're not far from Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice. John Garfield would've made a great De Flores.

I love how Beatrice really starts to fall for him when he sets the house on fire to cover up another murder.

BEATRICE

Already! How rare is that man's speed!
How heartily he serves me! His face loathes one,
But look upon his care, who would not love him?
The east is not more beauteous than his service.

The 1974 production has great costumes and set designs--one of the nice things about productions of early modern plays not by Shakespeare is you can usually rely on them being set in the proper time and place. A subplot in the madhouse is amusing and well put together but the main appeal is in Baker and Mirren's chemistry. It's such a pleasure watching them.

Shapes of Villainy

How very different Richard III is with Queen Margaret around. When Jane Howell's production aired in 1982 it was as a conclusion to a series, the first three parts of which were made up by Shakespeare's three Henry VI plays. This gave Howell the rare opportunity to produce Richard III without trimming or removing scenes involving Queen Margaret, a major character in the Henry VI plays but considered superfluous to productions that present Richard III as a standalone story. The difference in seeing Richard III with its intended connecting tissue is enormous, presenting a more complex world for Richard to inhabit and introducing greater nuance and complexity to Richard himself. The performances continue to be good and the linked casting wonderful.

Played by Ron Cook, Richard comes off as both more and less strange than usual. He's a relatively new player on this stage that has already seen plenty of ruthless ambition and bloody betrayal, he having not appeared until the end of Henry VI Part 2. Wikipedia quotes Jane Howell as saying of Richard in this production, "you've seen why he is created, you know how such a man can be created: he was brought up in war, he saw and knew nothing else from his father but the struggle for the crown, and if you've been brought up to fight, if you've got a great deal of energy, and physical handicaps, what do you do? You take to intrigue and plotting." At the same time, though, Richard is much cleverer and much readier to discard bonds of loyalty and family than anyone else who came before. He's a fourth generation blackguard, more streamlined than his predecessors.

Both in Henry VI Part 3 and Richard III Richard talks repeatedly about how his physical appearance has determined his fate. As he says in his famous opening soliloquy:

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain

This reflects a perspective on reality that had currency in Shakespeare's time, that beauty in some way really did represent virtue and ugliness the opposite. It's key to the scene where Richard seduces Anne Neville, here played by Zoe Wanamaker (familiar to Doctor Who fans as the ever in need of hydrating Lady Cassandra). A lot of productions and commentaries miss this, that Richard telling Anne that her beauty forced him to commit murder doesn't sway her merely as a point of flattery. The power of appearances was very real.

So the interpretation of the scene is a tricky challenge for directors and actors. We have to believe Richard really seduces her or the scene is simply grotesque and absurd. In his introduction to the play in The Norton Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt says the scene is more about "Richard's restless aggression transformed during the rapidfire exchange" but he also characterises Anne as, "shallow, corruptible, naively ambitious, and, above all, frightened." No matter how effective Richard is, it takes two to tango, seems to be Greenblatt's idea. But I think it's worth considering Anne's situation a little deeper. Is it mere naive ambition that forms part of her decision to marry Richard? She's a surviving member of the defeated faction of bloody wars--marriage promises not merely power but the possibility of some security for her and hers. This might be accounted for in the "frightened" part but whether she's shallow or corruptible is by no means certain.

Wanamaker plays her with quick eyes, ferocity, and intelligence and when Richard's rhetoric starts to make headway she seems shaken. She looks like a woman who's suddenly unsure of everything she thought she knew, which is just about right.

Greenblatt writes a lot about Richard's erotic power--and cites an amusing incident from the diary of a law student named John Manningham from Shakespeare's time about a woman who fell for the actor Richard Burbage for his portrayal of Richard III. Though I would suggest the attraction Richard holds for the audience is less in his aggression and more in the brashness of his self-confidence, the vulnerability of his repressed self-loathing, and the interplay between these qualities.

Richard's perception of his own ugliness is part of his worldview reiterated from Henry VI Part 3, a decision to own the world's perception of him and use it to his advantage. Of course, it proves a component of his downfall and is essential to what makes the play a tragedy instead of just a beautiful bonfire. When he tries to convince his brother's widow, Elizabeth (Rowena Cooper), to urge her daughter to marry him, he implicitly admits to the crimes Elizabeth accuses him of. When she asks what he can promise to make this an attractive match for her daughter, Richard can only say, "The time to come," meaning as he consolidates power he'll be able to reshape reality to his will, as previous rulers have done.

As I intend to prosper and repent,
So thrive I in my dangerous attempt
Of hostile arms! myself myself confound!

He's climbed this far, at this point he's king, on the belief that he was formed at birth as something by nature wicked. But this requires his brain to operate in two realities at once, he can't be wicked without having some nature that recognises wickedness and this leads to the extraordinary misery of the dream sequence.

Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

Margaret (Julia Foster) never goes to war with herself like that. As a murderer she has more focus which gives her curses almost the quality of a natural disaster. The appearances of the ghosts seem natural when the play is filled with references to her curses. Margaret becomes a personification of warfare's bloody legacy.

The restoration of Margaret to the play helps emphasise all the women. She has a conference with Elizabeth and Richard's mother (Annette Crosby) where she first enumerates the crimes against her the other two women have been complicit in. Yet Elizabeth pleads, "O thou well skill'd in curses, stay awhile, And teach me how to curse mine enemies!" And Margaret seems amenable to this. It's as though at this point she has become a free floating force of malevolence. Curses are always so much eerier when they come from the damned.

I really like this production. My only complaint is that Howell reuses actors in different roles a lot. An actor who played a character who died will show up later playing someone else. Sometimes Howell seems to be making a point with this, as when the actors who played Richard's brother and father turn up on Richmond's side at the end of the play. And likely in Shakespeare's time the same actors were playing multiple roles (I've always loved the theory that Cordelia and the Fool in King Lear were played by the same actor). But it dilutes some of the power from the linked casting a bit and gets confusing at times. Otherwise, this is a really nice production.

Twitter Sonnet #1140

A knowing face above a shirt was worn.
Above the trees the atmosphere condensed.
From metal wombs the submarines were born.
Propellers trace where water hunts commenced.
A wall of rock requites an egg for time.
Between the fingers thread is moved a foot.
The pitted tweed began a sodden climb.
On windy top the house became but soot.
A scavenged club bespoke forsaken arms.
A time to come delivered bugs to space.
A ballast floats for hollow wooden harms.
A waterbug proceeds with stickly grace.
A drinking weed began to walk the pond.
But frogs and pads create a sitting bond.

At the Pleasure of the Distortion

Is it possible to like a film whose whole mission is to frustrate and unbalance the viewer? The Birthday Party, the 1968 film based on Harold Pinter's 1957 play, isn't exactly a relaxing experience. It certainly has a nice cast. I admire the ingenuity that went into it though I think it's no surprise we don't see its brand of wrecking ball post-modernism anymore.

Directed by William Friedkin, now best known for The Exorcist, the film version certainly channels some horror from the "comedy of menace". The premise seems mundane enough--a poor, middle aged couple live in and run a cheap boarding house, their only tenant being a young man named Stanley (Robert Shaw).

It seems generally agreed that Stanley is a wash-up, which possibly explains why he's constantly angry and filled with resentment. Or his angry and resentful because he's considered a wash-up? Meg (Dandy Nichols), half of the couple who owns the house, talks about how Stanley once had a career as a pianist, a career he might be exaggerating in stories to her. But she doesn't care--she sits gazing affectionately while he tells a story, something that seems to frustrate him.

It's possible Stanley in this is an reflection of Pinter himself since his frustration at Meg settling into enjoying his story seems to reflect the attitude of the film and play. Though, when she buys him a drum, thinking it's a suitable birthday gift for a pianist, one can understand a frustration with an audience whose affection doesn't seem to be based on an accurate perception of the artist.

The Wikipedia entry for the play goes through a list of many of the ways Pinter subverts his own exposition. Meg and her husband constantly talk about how it's a boarding house but Stanley insists its not a boarding house; the film's title refers to the party held to celebrate Stanley's birthday but Stanley insists it's not his birthday. But things don't get really strange until two strangers show up.

McCann (Patrick Magee) and Goldberg (Sydney Tafter) speak to each other in tones of hushed urgency but Goldberg is broadly genial with everyone else while McCann is quiet and morose. They say they're in town for "a short holiday" but the impression given is that they have some secret hidden motive. Stanley seems to think they're there for him and there's a suggestion of some past association with them. Maybe they're gangsters, we never find out. As they are members of two of the most persecuted peoples in history, the Irish and the Jews, there's a suggestion of politics. Stanley gushes to McCann about how much he loves the Irish and would be happy to drink with him and I wondered if the two strangers were meant to be manifestations of symbols for a political cause Stanley (or Pinter) once belonged to, now felt alienated from, and now feels threatened by as reminders of his ideological infidelity.

McCann in particular has a partisan quality. He's deeply offended when Meg mixes Irish and Scotch whiskies. Magee is well suited to the ambiguous, possibly symbolic role; he's just so wonderfully weird.

Pinter grew up in a Jewish family but later became an atheist which would fit with Stanley's feelings of guilt regarding Goldberg. In another bit of destabilisation, McCann says Goldberg has "always been a good Christian." Despite his name and his frequent use of Yiddish words, Goldberg only replies, "In a way." The story never allows Stanley, or us, a confirmation of any impression which means there are always teasing possibilities in everything. Some might call it a freedom but Stanley seems more and more confined until by the end of the film he can't even speak.

Meg's possibly arbitrary decision that to-day is Stanley's birthday could simply be taken as funny, a sign that she wants to express her affection for him, but it also works as another form of destabilisation. It's a reminder to Stanley how little control he has over his life; the idea that terms of encouragement, as much as terms of threat, are determined by outside forces without reason makes the possibility of him being able to form any plan or express any idea based on an objective, measurable reality impossible. So it's fitting that the party culminates in a peculiarly horrific game of Blind Man's Buff.

One could say Stanley is like Alice at the Mad Tea Party except he lacks Alice's self-confidence. In light of The Birthday Party, Alice's persistence looks exceptionally admirable.

Twitter Sonnet #1127

Above the looking cloud reflects the cake.
A timer clenched the cooking mit for done.
The only cooks in space were on the take.
Around the clock we put the stringy sun.
The glass permits an orange for yellow late.
A squeeze began to take an hour short.
A whiskey cured the brightly burning pate.
Exchanges got a sherry swapped with port.
A jacket binds a winking gut to spine.
The gilt impressions light the queenly eye.
The draping pearls replaced the common twine.
The airy curtain breathes an ebon dye.
A happened cat derails a training dog.
The paisley glow chauffeurs the candy bog.