Two Gentlemen of Verona & An Introduction to ‘A Year with
the Bard’ – “How
use doth breed a habit in a man!”
Having lived with the Bard for many years, I have started on my 2013 New Year's resolution No. 2 - to re-read all Shakespeare’s work in the order they were written. Since it is hard to exactly determine the order which Shakespeare wrote specific plays and poems, I have used a number of sources and my knowledge of the plays and come up with the following 'possible order'. For those of you thinking about reading all of Shakespeare’s works in your lifetime, or a year or a month or a day, let's start with some simple mathematics. This will help you (and me) get straight what reading the complete works of the Bard involves.
Before this, just a little note on years and dating of writing and performances in Shakespeare's time. From the 12th century until 1752, England still used the Julian calender (now known as the Old Style), although many Catholic countries had adopted the Gregorian calender (New Style) in 1582. What this means is that although today and in many Catholic countries in Shakespeare's time the New Year begins and began on January 1st, it did not in England in Shakespeare's time. Continental dating was also 10 days later than English dating during that time.
The period of 1585 until 1592 are referred to as Shakespeare’s ‘lost years’ since little is known about his life and whereabouts during this period. One story goes that a travelling troupe visited Stratford upon Avon in 1587 and being short a player, the 23 year old Shakespeare was paid to stand in and he did such a good job that they invited him to look them up in London.
This story then alludes to the fact that in late April 1588 (straight after his 24th birthday), Shakespeare acquired a license to travel and he took to the road for the seven day walk or three day (220 km) horse ride to London. Shakespeare probably went to London by horse. If he took a horse, he would have walked up the road from the Tudor house we now call ‘The Birthplace’ (the house Shakespeare was born in and where in 1588 his father John Shakespeare, his mother Mary Shakespeare, his wife Anne and three children) for about 400 metres to get the horse. He was probably travelling in a group of four to ten riders since highwaymen still roamed the roads and tracks. He would have crossed the River Avon on one of the two bridges and dropped down into the emerald green of the Warwickshire countryside and then probably got off his horse as they ambled up the winding dirt track near the Cotswold’s escarpment. On the way he would have passed his mother’s birthplace and the birthplace of his wife Anne Hathaway in Shottery. He then would have gone onto Chipping Campden and Moreton-in-Marsh and probably would have stopped at Woodstock for the evening or if the weather was good, they have made it all the way to Oxford.
The next day would have started with a hard climb up the trail through the Chiltern Hills. Shakespeare would have seen the chairmakers along this route and probably made note that when he made his fortune, this would be the place to acquire chairs and furniture. The reward after the hard hills would have been Dorney Lake and they would have stopped somewhere around here for the night and probably dabbled travel sore feet in Dorney Lake.
Then Shakespeare would see London for the first time. It was a city of over 180,000 in 1588 and it was a city where he would spend more than almost half of his life or 26 years of his 52 year life. As Shakespeare entered London and came to a junction of Watling Street, he would see an area known as Tyburn. He would have heard of it. The gallows would probably have had the naked body of a thief still swinging in the gentle April breeze. Shakespeare knew this place well from family stories of what had happened to some of the more forthright Catholics in his family. The warning would have served as a reminder of what could happen to those who clung to the old religious ways. He then went down what is now Oxford Street before dismounting his horse, paying the horseman and entering the Bell Inn just south of St Paul’s Cathedral for his first of many nights in London.
Shakespeare’s name does appear in a ‘compaints bill’ in a law case dated 1588 and then a subsequent mention is made of this bill on October 9, 1589. Later biographers allude to Shakespeare escaping Stratford to avoid prosecution on deer poaching charges by Thomas Lucy. Some claim that he worked as a schoolmaster for Alexander Hoghton in Lancashire. Still others believe that he worked in Titchfield as a tutor and perhaps even a schoolmaster for the third Earl of Southhampton, Henry Wriothesley (whom Shakespeare later dedicated his poem Venus and Adonis to).
Other stories say that Shakespeare brought down to London to tend horses for theatre patrons. What ever the truth, we know that in the early 1590's that Shakespeare probably lived at Shoreditch (near to The Theatre which was built in 1576), that he had acted in a number of plays (and was probably paid three shillings a week or £10 a year as a inexperienced actor) and that he had written a number of plays by 1592 (receiving probably about £8-£15 a play as a untested playwright). We know some of this because the dissolute and penniless playwright Robert Greene, as he lay on his deathbed, took a swipe at the young Shakespeare as shown in a pamphlet Greene wrote entitled ‘A Groatsworth of Wit’:
Having lived with the Bard for many years, I have started on my 2013 New Year's resolution No. 2 - to re-read all Shakespeare’s work in the order they were written. Since it is hard to exactly determine the order which Shakespeare wrote specific plays and poems, I have used a number of sources and my knowledge of the plays and come up with the following 'possible order'. For those of you thinking about reading all of Shakespeare’s works in your lifetime, or a year or a month or a day, let's start with some simple mathematics. This will help you (and me) get straight what reading the complete works of the Bard involves.
Before this, just a little note on years and dating of writing and performances in Shakespeare's time. From the 12th century until 1752, England still used the Julian calender (now known as the Old Style), although many Catholic countries had adopted the Gregorian calender (New Style) in 1582. What this means is that although today and in many Catholic countries in Shakespeare's time the New Year begins and began on January 1st, it did not in England in Shakespeare's time. Continental dating was also 10 days later than English dating during that time.
Shakespeare probably wrote 884,647 words and 118,406 lines so
that will be about 2424 words a day for me (or you) to read and comment on if I (or you) want to read
the complete works of Shakespeare in one year. Another way of looking at it is
that Shakespeare probably wrote 37-39 plays. This is made up of 16-19 Comedies
but we must remember that Comedy in Shakespeare's time does not mean something
that is necessarily funny but is defined as a piece with a happy ending often a
wedding or set of weddings. To make up the 19 in this category, I have added the 2 'problem' plays which are
problems because, well, we don't know what to categorise them. The third play I have thrown into this category is 'Love's
Labour's Wonne' which is referred to but no copy has ever been found. He wrote
10 Histories most of which were written in the first half of his career except
for 'Henry VIII' which was one of his last plays (and probably written in collaboration with other playwrights). Shakespeare wrote 10
Tragedies which are among his most famous plays. Shakespeare 'borrowed' the plots of many of his plays from others and probably only three of Shakespeare's plots are original (those of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest). Although they are sometimes
neglected by modern readers, his 5 narrative poems and 154 sonnets were what
Elizabethan and Jacobean readers would have consumed in print more than any
other type of Shakespeare text. This means I am aiming to read and write about
one play or narrative poem each week and take two weeks to do the sonnets.
I believe that I should read Shakespeare's works out aloud since that is how most of his works were intended to be heard. After consulting a couple of sources, I have looked at the possible order in which the plays were written and the probable time it would take to read the plays out aloud. The order I have decided
to read the plays and poems are:
1589 Two Gentlemen of Verona (2 hours 15 minutes to read or perform)
1590 The Taming of the Shrew (2 hours 40 minutes to read or perform)
Henry VI
Part 2 (3 hours 10 minutes to read or perform)
1591 Henry VI Part 3 (2 hours 55 minutes to read or perform)
Henry VI
Part 1 (2 hours 45 minutes to read or perform)
Titus
Andronicus (2 hours 35 minutes to read or perform)
1592 Richard III (3 hours 50 minutes to read or perform)
1593 Venus and Adonis (1 hour 10 minutes to read or perform)
1594 Edward III (3 hours 5 minutes to read or perform)
1594 The Rape of Lucrece -1594 - (1 hour 55 minutes to read or perform)
Sonnets are started around
here but I will deal with near to their year of publishing
The Comedy of Errors (also known as ‘The Night of Errors’) (1 hour 45 minutes to read or perform)
The Comedy of Errors (also known as ‘The Night of Errors’) (1 hour 45 minutes to read or perform)
Love
Labour’s Lost (2 hours 45 minutes to read or perform)
1595 Love Labour’s Won (probably 2 hours 45 minutes to read or perform)
Richard II (2 hours 50 minutes to read or perform)
Romeo and
Juliet (3 hours 5 minutes to read or perform)
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream (2 hours 15 minutes to read or perform)
1596 The Life and Death of King John (2 hours 35 minutes to read or perform)
The Merchant
of Venice (2 hours 45 minutes to read or perform)
Henry IV
Part 1 (3 hours 5 minutes to read or perform)
1597 The Merry Wives of Windsor (2 hours 35 minutes to read or perform)
Henry IV
Part 2 (3 hours 15 minutes to perform)
1598 Much Ado About Nothing (2 hours 35 minutes to read or perform)
1599 The Passionate Pilgrim (25 minutes to read or perform)
Henry V (3 hours 15 minutes to perform)
Julius Caesar (2 hours 40 minutes to read or perform)
As You Like It (2 hours 40 minutes to read or perform)
Hamlet (4 hours 20 minutes to perform)
1601 The Phoenix and the Turtle (3 minutes to read or perform)
Twelfth
Night (2 hours 30 minutes to read or perform)
1602 Troilus and Cressida (3 hours and 30 minutes to perform)
1603 Measure for Measure (2 hours 50 minutes to read or perform)
1604 Othello (3 hours 35 minutes to read or perform)
1605 Timon of
Athens (2 hours 30 minutes to read or perform)
1606 King Lear (3 hours 35 minutes to perform)
Macbeth (2 hours 25 minutes to read or perform)
Macbeth (2 hours 25 minutes to read or perform)
Anthony
and Cleopatra (3 hours 40 minutes to perform)
All’s Well
That Ends Well (2 hours 55 minutes to read or perform)
1607 Pericles, Prince of Tyre (2 hours 25 minutes to read or perform)
1608 Coriolanus (4 hours to read or perform)1609 Sonnets (1 hours 55 minutes to read or perform)
1608 Coriolanus (4 hours to read or perform)1609 Sonnets (1 hours 55 minutes to read or perform)
A Lover’s Complaint (Poem - 25 minutes to read or perform)1610 The Winter’s Tale (3 hours 20 minutes to read or perform)
Cymbeline (3 hours 55 minutes to perform)
1611 The Tempest (2 hours 15 minutes to read or perform)
1612 Cardenio (2 hours 25 minutes to read or perform)
1613 Henry VIII, or All is True (3 hours 15 minutes to perform)
The Two Noble Kinsmen (3 hours 10 minutes to perform)
Therefore I think that it will take about 111 hours and 30 minutes to read Shakespeare out aloud (and probably the same time to blog about it). I have often thought that all of Shakespeare's works could be performed over 24 hours in 5 venues (these venues could be called The Theatre, The Rose, The Curtain, Blackfriars and The Globe). 10-12 performers probably performed each Shakespeare play so either 12 actors or up to 456 performers could perform or read the plays and poems.
I wanted this blog and this book to have a little about Shakespeare’s life, a lot about each play, to use a number of quotes and try to give some sense of each play and its characters, plot and context. I decided early on that the best way to get through all of Shakespeare was to read for about an hour a day and blog about five times a week. This meant that I settled into the routine of reading an act of a play a day, or one long narrative poem or about 15 shorter poems a day. This meant that I will read about 4 plays or works of Shakespeare every month. So let’s go over a little about William Shakespeare and what we know about him up until 1590.
Therefore I think that it will take about 111 hours and 30 minutes to read Shakespeare out aloud (and probably the same time to blog about it). I have often thought that all of Shakespeare's works could be performed over 24 hours in 5 venues (these venues could be called The Theatre, The Rose, The Curtain, Blackfriars and The Globe). 10-12 performers probably performed each Shakespeare play so either 12 actors or up to 456 performers could perform or read the plays and poems.
I wanted this blog and this book to have a little about Shakespeare’s life, a lot about each play, to use a number of quotes and try to give some sense of each play and its characters, plot and context. I decided early on that the best way to get through all of Shakespeare was to read for about an hour a day and blog about five times a week. This meant that I settled into the routine of reading an act of a play a day, or one long narrative poem or about 15 shorter poems a day. This meant that I will read about 4 plays or works of Shakespeare every month. So let’s go over a little about William Shakespeare and what we know about him up until 1590.
Gulielmus
(old spelling of William) Shakspere (spelling was not standardized of surnames
in English at this time) was born probably on April 22nd or 23rd
in 1564 to Mary Arden (daughter of a wealthy farmer and landowner) and Johannes
(John) Shakspere (glovemaker and whitawer or soft white leather maker). He was
one of seven siblings and William was definitely baptized on April 26th 1564
in Stratford (a market town of 1,450 people which mainly dealt with haymaking,
barley and hop growing and beer brewing. His early days were probably spent at John and Mary Shakespeare's Henley Street house in Stratford upon Avon (this may be the house in Henley Street which is still standing and signposted as Shakespeare's birthplace). William probably started his education at
the local Grammar school King’s New School soon after his father became a town
councilor in 1572 and stayed at school probably until he was 14 in 1578. In the
Folger Library in Washington D.C. in the United States of America, there is a
1568 law textbook entitled ‘Apxaionomia’ with the name ’Wm. Shakspere’ written
inside the book. It is likely that he worked for his father or elsewhere after
that or that he got an apprenticeship or worked as a tutor after that.
On
November 27th, 1582, when he was eighteen, “Wm Shaxpere” of
Stratford took out a licence to marry “Annum Whateley de Temple Grafton” but
then this is struck from the record and on November 28th, 1582, a
bond is recorded for the marriage of “William Shagspere” to “Anne Hathwey of
Stratford and six months later the baptism of their first child, Susanna, is
recorded on May 26th 1583. You do the Maths on that one. On February 2nd 1585, the
baptism of Shakespeare’s twins Hamnet and Judith was recorded.
The period of 1585 until 1592 are referred to as Shakespeare’s ‘lost years’ since little is known about his life and whereabouts during this period. One story goes that a travelling troupe visited Stratford upon Avon in 1587 and being short a player, the 23 year old Shakespeare was paid to stand in and he did such a good job that they invited him to look them up in London.
This story then alludes to the fact that in late April 1588 (straight after his 24th birthday), Shakespeare acquired a license to travel and he took to the road for the seven day walk or three day (220 km) horse ride to London. Shakespeare probably went to London by horse. If he took a horse, he would have walked up the road from the Tudor house we now call ‘The Birthplace’ (the house Shakespeare was born in and where in 1588 his father John Shakespeare, his mother Mary Shakespeare, his wife Anne and three children) for about 400 metres to get the horse. He was probably travelling in a group of four to ten riders since highwaymen still roamed the roads and tracks. He would have crossed the River Avon on one of the two bridges and dropped down into the emerald green of the Warwickshire countryside and then probably got off his horse as they ambled up the winding dirt track near the Cotswold’s escarpment. On the way he would have passed his mother’s birthplace and the birthplace of his wife Anne Hathaway in Shottery. He then would have gone onto Chipping Campden and Moreton-in-Marsh and probably would have stopped at Woodstock for the evening or if the weather was good, they have made it all the way to Oxford.
The next day would have started with a hard climb up the trail through the Chiltern Hills. Shakespeare would have seen the chairmakers along this route and probably made note that when he made his fortune, this would be the place to acquire chairs and furniture. The reward after the hard hills would have been Dorney Lake and they would have stopped somewhere around here for the night and probably dabbled travel sore feet in Dorney Lake.
Then Shakespeare would see London for the first time. It was a city of over 180,000 in 1588 and it was a city where he would spend more than almost half of his life or 26 years of his 52 year life. As Shakespeare entered London and came to a junction of Watling Street, he would see an area known as Tyburn. He would have heard of it. The gallows would probably have had the naked body of a thief still swinging in the gentle April breeze. Shakespeare knew this place well from family stories of what had happened to some of the more forthright Catholics in his family. The warning would have served as a reminder of what could happen to those who clung to the old religious ways. He then went down what is now Oxford Street before dismounting his horse, paying the horseman and entering the Bell Inn just south of St Paul’s Cathedral for his first of many nights in London.
Shakespeare’s name does appear in a ‘compaints bill’ in a law case dated 1588 and then a subsequent mention is made of this bill on October 9, 1589. Later biographers allude to Shakespeare escaping Stratford to avoid prosecution on deer poaching charges by Thomas Lucy. Some claim that he worked as a schoolmaster for Alexander Hoghton in Lancashire. Still others believe that he worked in Titchfield as a tutor and perhaps even a schoolmaster for the third Earl of Southhampton, Henry Wriothesley (whom Shakespeare later dedicated his poem Venus and Adonis to).
Other stories say that Shakespeare brought down to London to tend horses for theatre patrons. What ever the truth, we know that in the early 1590's that Shakespeare probably lived at Shoreditch (near to The Theatre which was built in 1576), that he had acted in a number of plays (and was probably paid three shillings a week or £10 a year as a inexperienced actor) and that he had written a number of plays by 1592 (receiving probably about £8-£15 a play as a untested playwright). We know some of this because the dissolute and penniless playwright Robert Greene, as he lay on his deathbed, took a swipe at the young Shakespeare as shown in a pamphlet Greene wrote entitled ‘A Groatsworth of Wit’:
"...for
there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers
hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a
blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is
in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey".
'Two Gentlemen of Verona'
So onto reading Shakespeare and blogging. I started with 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' (1589 or 1590). It has
about 18,000 words so I set myself 5 days to read it.
It is a great romp of a play filled with good and hideous puns. It seems to be based on a Spanish prose romance called Los Siete Libros de la Diana (The Seven Books of the Diana) by Jorge de Montemayor. It was published in Spanish in 1559 but an English translation done by Nicholas Collin was published in 1578. Shakespeare however gave the piece melodrama and stylistic comedy.
Highlights of Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona are the melodrama of Proteus' farewell in the opening, Julia and Lucetta's conversation on how to fall in love is also a highlight along with Launce's Act II speech about Crab his dog, "Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping..." II iii 1-32. launce was probably originally played by Will Kempe. The play is even more strongly about friendship versus giving yourself over to love than I remember. Of course, after criticising Proteus falling in love, Valentine falls in love with Silvia in Milan and Proteus upon travelling to Milan is shown to be fickle when he also falls in love with Silvia. The scene where Julia and Lucetta decide to go off to Milan and decide to disguise themselves as men is Shakespeare's first foray into men playing women playing men. Of course, Proteus' lack of loyalty of love for Julia and friendship for Valentine is forgiven. The two couples (Valentine and Silvia and Proteus and Julia) are united at the end. This is a soppy play with some good moments, some good and bad puns. Shakespeare use of language is masterful even at this stage. The action and surface relationships are resolved in the play but more complex issues and aspects of the characters are left hanging at the end of the play.
Highlights of Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona are the melodrama of Proteus' farewell in the opening, Julia and Lucetta's conversation on how to fall in love is also a highlight along with Launce's Act II speech about Crab his dog, "Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping..." II iii 1-32. launce was probably originally played by Will Kempe. The play is even more strongly about friendship versus giving yourself over to love than I remember. Of course, after criticising Proteus falling in love, Valentine falls in love with Silvia in Milan and Proteus upon travelling to Milan is shown to be fickle when he also falls in love with Silvia. The scene where Julia and Lucetta decide to go off to Milan and decide to disguise themselves as men is Shakespeare's first foray into men playing women playing men. Of course, Proteus' lack of loyalty of love for Julia and friendship for Valentine is forgiven. The two couples (Valentine and Silvia and Proteus and Julia) are united at the end. This is a soppy play with some good moments, some good and bad puns. Shakespeare use of language is masterful even at this stage. The action and surface relationships are resolved in the play but more complex issues and aspects of the characters are left hanging at the end of the play.
The play seems to me remarkably egalitarian in the way that a
servant like Lucetta is shown as intelligent and full of 'Jeeves-like' wisdom.
Shakespeare also uses the forest as a place where class, social norms,
preconceptions, gender, sexuality and beliefs are suspended.
What is most difficult as a play is that it is made up mostly of
scenes that are duologues. I would suggest the modern solution to this is
to stage it with one actor playing many of these parts. A young Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey
could do it well. Another solution would be a famous ventriloquist
comedian like Edgar Bergen, Ramdas Padhye or the Swedish ventriloquist act
Zillah and Totte. Another solution would be a good double act like Australian
comedian Chris Lilley ('Summer Heights High' and 'Angry Boys') and Barry
Humphries (aka Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson). Otherwise quick
appearances and disappearances and fast paced scenes is the simplest staging solution.
Next: 'The Taming of the Shrew'
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