Such stuff as dreams are made on

Emily, Harriet and Alex conjuring the storm in the RSC's display of Prospero's cell

Indiscriminate audience member?

I sometimes wonder whether I have a very child-like approach to entertainment. It is rare when I don’t enjoy something at the theatre, at the cinema, listening to the radio or watching TV. This sometimes annoys family and friends and I could be accused of having little discrimination. But at the theatre, for example, if the story doesn’t grab me I can imagine the rehearsals and production meetings and work out why the cast and crew have made the decisions they have. In a musical or large-cast production I imagine the director working out how to get everyone on and off slickly and working with lights and sound to create the atmosphere. I always find something to occupy my imagination.

Cast of Greg Doran's production of The Tempest at the RSC; photo credits by RSC website and Topher McGrillis

O Brave New World

In December 2016 (and about to be broadcast in the cinema) I saw Greg Doran’s production at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It is a play I have seen many times before and taught to both younger children and A-Level students since the focus can be on the weird story, the magic, slapstick comedy and amazing spectacle; or the focus can be on power, betrayal, art, love, the illusion of justice, masters/servants, appearance and reality, enslavement by parents and colonists and probably many other themes that are not springing to mind right now. Of course A-Level students still want to know about the magic, comedy and spectacle; and indeed many younger children can see Prospero’s (potentially abusive) treatment of Miranda, Ferdinand, Ariel and Caliban reflected in their own lives on a daily basis. It is a rich play, simple and complex at the same time, knotty and poetic all at once.

The extraordinary Andy Serkis as Iago, Monsieur Rigaud and his Performance Capture work. Mark Quartley rehearsing Ariel in the centre.

In collaboration with Intel

For the first time, as far as I know, a theatre director worked with Andy Serkis’s Imaginarium Studios. This Performance Capture studio was founded as a result of Andy’s expertise creating cinematic characters like Gollum in Lord of the Rings, King Kong in Peter Jackson’s film and Caesar in the rebooted Planet of the Apes films. With technology provided by Intel, the RSC production of The Tempest is indeed a visual treat, not only with the sight of Ariel growing, flying, swimming and concocting the illusions that frighten the shipwrecked characters, but also with beautiful artistic film and video by Finn Ross and lighting by Simon Spencer. Every production department works together in an example of total theatre. Greg Doran believes the effect might be similar to the original audience’s experience of the masque within the play, a convention that pushed the Jacobean theatre to its limits and, of course, pleased the theatre-loving James I.

Mark Quartley as Ariel and Simon Russell Beale in the RSC's The Tempest

These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits

In the midst of all the technology, though, the characters emerged strongly:

• Simon Russell Beale was at times a frightening and neurotic Prospero whose performance captured Prospero’s sad grandeur, his complex feelings of love and feelings of terrible guilt at his past actions. As always with this actor he commanded the stage in a sympathetic and winning way, able somehow to draw you in to his thought process with gesture, facial expression, volume, inflection, pitch and pause
• Mark Quartley was a muscular and dangerous Ariel with a face of profound concentration and compassion
• I thought Jenny Rainsford’s Miranda was spunkier than usual with more than a hint of rebellion and a sense that she would rule both Daniel Easton’s gentle Ferdinand and the kingdom with more force than her father ever could
• Tony Jayawardena and Simon Trinder made welcome returns to the RSC with bold performances as Stephano and Trinculo, the former a bully and the latter a bit sly, both of course very funny, stupidly drunk and clearly the best of friends
• Joe Dixon, one of my favourite actors, was an imposing, poignant and at once both aggressive and charming Caliban, a performance that allowed every thematic complication of the character to be palpable
• The “court” characters were also clearly and strikingly played: a grief-enraged Alonso by James Tucker, Oscar Pearce’s deliciously evil Antonio, a dimwit Sebastian by Tom Turner and a more-knowing-than-usual Gonzalo by the gorgeous Joseph Mydell 
• All the courtiers, mariners and spirits operated fluently and fluidly to suggest this was indeed a busily inhabited island, even if most of the inhabitants were in the imagination.

Stephen Brimson Lewis has designed this production and, in my view, is building up a legacy as one of the greatest theatre designers in history following his body of work, both for the RSC and elsewhere.

Simon Russell Beale in a performance of great power and variety

True Lovers run into strange capers

True lovers run into strange capers: Audrey and Touchstone in As You Like It

The trouble with Shakespeare

The trouble with seeking answers in Shakespeare is that there is always a contradictory opinion. He always seems to present (at least) two sides to every aspect of life. Love is both a joy and a madness. Love can be comic or tragic, sometimes both in the same play. Despite calling it “the greatest love story in the world” Romeo and Juliet is anything but a great love story – the lovers are immature runaways, both prone to taking drugs and both commit suicide – they are NOT ideal poster-teens for love, even though they do say some wonderful things to each other:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

Should this really be called a great love story?

If music be the food of love, play on

Duke Orsino, in Twelfth Night, says that the “spirit of love” is “quick and fresh” and he wants “excess of it.”
On the other hand, one speech later, he seems to see love as a tormenting predator that he needs to escape:

O, when my eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence!
That instant was I turn'd into a hart;
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E'er since pursue me.

Imogen Stubbs as Viola and Toby Stephens as Orsino

Faithful or Giddy?

Orsino also sees himself as typical of male lovers as being absolutely faithful and devoted to his beloved:

For such as I am all true lovers are,
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is beloved.

Only a few lines later, though, he contradicts this entirely, saying that men are notoriously fickle:

Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women’s are

Which is it, Orsino?

Big hearts kill what they love

Orsino boasts about the size of his heart and passion:

There is no woman's sides    
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion    
As love doth give my heart; no woman's heart    
So big, to hold so much….

Unfortunately his strength of feeling might cut off his nose to spite his face:

Why should I not, had I the heart to do it,
Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death,
Kill what I love?

Viola/Cesario with Orsino: Nell Geisslinger & Grant Goodman, Michael Sharon & Shelly Gaza

Each man kills the thing he loves

Shakespeare presents us with the sublime wonder of love and, in surprising places, sometimes within the same character, also presents us with love’s power to recklessly destroy. In The Merchant of Venice, Bassanio asks “Do all men kill the things they do not love?” Oscar Wilde, in The Ballad of Reading Gaol, famously altered that line with lines worthy of Shakespeare himself:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice and Oscar Wilde

They shall have good luck

Chris, cousin Ann and Mum, December 2013 and December 2014

White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits

I said it on Tuesday 1st December, of course, prompted by my brother’s reminder on Facebook…. It’s become a regular thing. Something that my Mum used to always say. And now Chris does. Every month. On the 1st of the month. I wonder how many people say it. And why they do.

Lost in Legend

There are other variations of “White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits.” Some people insist on “Rabbits, Rabbits, Rabbits.” Or “Pinch, Punch, First of the Month” along with a pinch and a punch. And in the West Country, apparently, you can retaliate to “Pinch, Punch….” with a swift and well-aimed “A Flick and a Kick for being so Quick.” But I grew up with the triple White Rabbits. So where did the phrase come from?

• The internet reveals the uncorroborated claim that RAF pilots would always say it before every flight, though not why rabbits and not why white…. 
• Some scholars think it’s connected to the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland and the fact that Lewis Carroll knew some Hebrew and the Hebrew saying “Have a great month” when transliterated verbally sounds a bit like “White Rabbits.” 
• Some believe it’s connected to fertility and wishing parents would have good luck getting pregnant because rabbits are notoriously fertile.
  

Double Double Toil and Trouble

As a child I thought it was something to do with guarding against the power of witches. I think the “Pinch, Punch….” saying might be connected to this too, as a pinch of salt was used in medieval times to ward away witches. I thought white rabbits were something kindly magicians made use of (appearing out of top hats, for example), so rabbits, I reasoned as a child, would be a good charm to counteract the creatures that I understood witches used. My primary knowledge of witchcraft came from the Weird Sisters in Macbeth and they make use of cats, hedge-pigs, toads, snakes, adders, blind-worms, lizards, owlets, dragons, wolves, sharks, goats, tigers and baboons, not to mention the body parts of Jews, Turks and Tartars or a "finger of birth-strangled babe"…. Three times White Rabbits was the very least protection you needed, I imagined….

Was there ever man had such luck!

Cloten says "Was there ever man had such luck!" in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline but a few scenes later Cloten has been beheaded. He needed some more potent signs of luck: a black cat, a horseshoe, a money spider, a 4-leaf clover, maybe? Touching wood, knocking on wood or shaking hands with a chimney sweep? Seeing two magpies or admiring a rainbow? Catching falling leaves? Crossing your fingers? Throwing salt over your shoulder?

Now, by the gods, I pity his misfortune

King Simonides pities the misfortunes of Pericles and within a few lines the unfortunate guy is rewarded with a new bride and (eventually) a happy end. Plenty of misery before his happy ending but no tangible signs of bad luck: new shoes on the table, for example. Opening an umbrella indoors. Seeing one lone magpie. Friday the Thirteenth. Cracking a mirror. Walking under a ladder. Spilling salt (before throwing some over your shoulder to counteract the misfortune.)

Just to be on the safe side

So it could go either way, it seems. Cloten thought he was a lucky man and lost his head; Pericles suffered blow after blow and got a happy ending. Better just say “White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits” in case. And try to remember to say it first thing before you say anything else…. Here’s to good luck for all in December!

 

I shall remember this bold language

Superhero-use of vocabulary

In the television series Heroes one of the characters in Season One says “you don’t have to have superpowers to be a hero.” Why is Shakespeare a hero of mine? Well, apart from

• the income generated for the country by Shakespeare tourism and culture
• the endless types of characters and plots he created that scriptwriters and other artists are still inspired by 
• the vast numbers and the scope of the themes in his plays and
• the memorable words and phrases he recorded

I'm also in awe of My Boy Bill’s superhero-use of vocabulary.

From 200 to 4,000 spoken words

A child between the ages of 2 and 3 rapidly picks up about 200 words to survive and thrive when speaking. 850 is the widely-agreed number of words in Basic English – the number that all native speakers have been shown to be able to recognize, use and understand. A less-educated rarely-reading adult eventually speaks between 2000 words and 4000 words, depending on the type of reading they do (this number is of base words, not declensions, conjugations and variations.)

If you count reading and writing, the numbers go up: 50,000 and counting

A native adult can recognize about 12,000 base words and a regular reader will take pleasure in being able to use about 17,000 words. If you count all the derivations of base words the numbers known and understood goes up to 50,000 but not all of these are actively used in either writing or speech. (Camp is a base word but it doubles if you count the noun and the verb and then quadruples if you count the subtle differences between different meanings; using “camp” to mean an iron age fort is not so familiar a noun as the verb “to camp” meaning to put a tent up and stay in it for a bit….! And as for the meanings of “camp” associated with flamboyant cultural excess, well you can see the complications of counting vocabulary use….)  

Shakespeare did not understand a Freudian slip (although they appear in his plays)

David Crystal suggests 50,000 to 75,000 is the kind of number an educated, native, 21st century reader of English would know and understand (even if they didn't use most of them.) Many of those words, of course, are based on inventions, substances, concepts and neologisms created since Shakespeare’s death in 1616. We can forgive Shakespeare if he would not recognize the words iPod or lycra or Watergate/Plebgate or Pluto (as a planet – or dwarf planet – or minor planet – even new nouns shift meaning on a daily basis.)  

David and Ben Crystal's fine book

Academic word counting

Computer technology has now allowed researchers to track with some accuracy the vocabulary in the works of different writers around the world. Average writers in any language in any era notch up around 20,000 to 25,000 words – and they are the ones who produce popular and extensive catalogues of work. Shakespeare’s total vocabulary is not actually as impressive and extensive as many people think - it's not the number of words he used that mattered - it's HOW and WHY he used them the way he did that makes him a hero to me.