Double Falsehood

(No, don't worry - not another verbal assault on certain politicians; not this time, at any rate.)

A couple of weeks ago, a school-age daughter of very good friends phoned me out of the blue to ask how many plays Shakespeare wrote. Now, I'm often accused of never giving a straight answer, but on this occasion I was happy to reply -

"Nobody knows. It's true. We just don't know. If the school tells you it's 37, who are we to argue? But it's wrong. The real answer is, we don't know. Next question?"

I was in Stratford today - lovely old Stratford - for a talk about the publication of a new Shakespeare play. This is the latest in the Arden Shakespeare series. It's called Double Falsehood. And it's by Lewis Theobald (pronounced: "Tibbalt"). And by John Fletcher. And by William Shakespeare.

It's actually an early eighteenth-century version of an earlier play by Shakespeare. Quite possibly the last play Shakespeare wrote. Then, it went by the name of Cardenio, and was based on a story from Don Quixote (a bit of useless information - Shakespeare and Cervantes died on exactly the same day).

What makes this play enormously interesting for me is that the Lord Chamberlain, who probably commissioned it for performance at the court of King James, was Robert Carr, onetime favourite of the King. By the time the play was performed, Carr was married to the dazzling Frances Howard and King James was in love with another young man, George Villiers. And while Carr was happily embedded with the crypto-Catholic faction at court, Villiers was quickly adopted by the Puritan hardliners who were determined to see Carr and his Howard in-laws crushed.

Carr. Cardenio. Get it?

Anyway, Carr's fall from grace came shortly afterwards. In order to marry him, Lady Frances had been forced to divorce her hopeless husband, after which Carr's bosom pal turned against her. Evidently, this chap must have known something because he was suddenly imprisoned in the Tower of London. Where, after a short while, he died. The assumption at the time was that he'd been poisoned.

Carr and his wife eventually stood trial for the supposed murder of his friend, Sir Thomas Overbury. They were effectively pardoned (four lesser mortals had already been executed for their roles in what probably wasn't a murder anyway). But Carr and the crypto-Catholic faction were ruined. And by then, Shakespeare himself was dead. In fact, he died the day before the jurors received their summonses to attend the hearings.

It was only typical of Shakespeare that he would have been batting for the Catholic faction - just as it was typical of his great rival, Ben Jonson, to be the pet poet of the Puritan bunch. But given the way Shakespeare died, and given that he died rather suddenly in the midst of the greatest scandal to engulf the notoriously scandalous reign of King James I, and given that Ben Jonson was with him, or not far away, when he died, the role of Shakespeare's lost play Cardenio in all this courtly intrigue is ... well, intriguing. Because it was Shakespeare's contribution to a bitter factional war at the heart of the English government, one that involved the two leading poet-playwrights of the day, the leading lords and ladies, the king's two favourites, the country's foreign and domestic policies and the greatest issue of the age (religion), not to mention claims of murder, witchcraft, treason and sexual perversion ...

Frankly, I'm looking forward to getting hold of my own copy of Double Falsehood. It won't be quite what Shakespeare wrote, but it can only help to advance our knowledge and our understanding of the man and his times. It might even offer a clue or two as to why Shakespeare had to die when he did. The whole Carr thing had got way too embarrassing for the King, and Carr's enemies (including Ben Jonson) were not prepared to let that master of eloquence William Shakespeare speak out. And so, there was a 'merry meeting', and Shakespeare died.

Yep - plenty of interest in Double Falsehood, the closest thing we have to Shakespeare's lost play, Cardenio.

The Life of Will

What's this? Two blogs in a week? Has he gone mad?

No. It's just that I'm so lucky. Stratford-upon-Avon is a thirty-minute bus ride from the top of my lane. It'd be even quicker if the bus didn't have to explore every village in between - but that wouldn't be quite so much fun.

So this afternoon I popped over to Stratford (by bus) to attend a talk about Shakespeare biographies. It was kind of an informal interview, as Professor Stanley Wells (Chair, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) asked David Bevington (University of Chicago) about his new book.

There have been quite a few biographies of Shakespeare published in recent years and I've read pretty well all of them. David Bevington has examined how all these biographies differ from one another.

His is rather a slim book.

The fact is, Shakespeare biographies are tiresome because they are almost all the same. Okay, you get Germaine Greer trying to convince us that Mrs Shakespeare was just brilliant (oh yeah? hardly a marriage made in heaven!), Rene Weis looking at the Shakespeare's neighbours in Stratford, Charlie Nicholl looking into Shakespeare's London lodgings on Silver Street, James Shapiro concentrating first on a year-in-the-life (1599) and now on all the theories about Shakespeare not really being Shakespeare.

(Actually, the best thing I heard at the talk was an argument against somebody else - e.g. the Earl of Oxford - having written the plays of Shakespeare; basically, if there had been such a conspiracy, Ben Jonson would not have been able to keep quiet about it. So there.)

Anyway, I did contemplate asking the esteemed gents up on their podium to what extent they felt that most Shakespeare biographers basically just say whatever somebody said before. And then illustrating it by pointing out that all biographers insist that Anne Whateley (the woman named in Will Shakespeare's first marriage licence, issued 27 November 1582) didn't exist, but that I've found a will at Worcester County Records Office which proves that she did exist.

I didn't say that out loud, though, probably because there might have been a commotion. How dare anybody introduce any controversial new facts into such a genteel symposium? Prof. Stanley Wells might have had a coronary, for crying out loud!

But oh, I would so love to have shouted out, "Ben Jonson murdered Shakespeare!"

And yeah, I do believe that's the truth. Don't know if I'll blog about it, though. Ought to try and write the book, really.

It's annoying, though. The two experts briefly skirted around the subject of Will Shakespeare's religion in such a way that they might as well have said, "Hmmnn - best not go there!" Which leaves me thinking -

What is the point of a Shakespeare biography? Is it meant to tell us anything about Shakespeare the man? Or is it an exercise in not rocking any boats?

Hilariously, Stanley Wells countered the suggestion that Shakespeare might have been Catholic by pointing out that so much of the documentation about him was connected with the reformed English ("Anglican") Church. But there wasn't any other Church available at the time. Catholicism had been banned. So Wells was basically using the Germaine Greer defence - an argument which is patently senseless and tantamount to saying that so-and-so was in the army and homosexuality isn't allowed in the army, so therefore so-and-so can't have been homosexual ... hardly watertight, as arguments go.

The curse of Shakespeare biography, it would seem, is not the lack of information (there's plenty) but rather the pressure to produce an 'orthodox', meaningless, fundamentally safe and pointless book about a man who was much more exciting (as were his works) than these people want to admit.

We need a revolution in Shakespearean biography, dammit!!! And maybe I'll get to throw the first petrol bomb, given half a chance.

Digging Shakespeare

A chance to volunteer on the archaelogical dig taking place at Shakespeare's last home. What do we think about that? Should I go for it?

Of course I should. As you walk along Chapel Street in Stratford at the moment, large panels prevent you from looking over the wall at New Place into the dig that's going on there (although an open-top bus tour seems to give you a good view as you go by). But to be in there, as part of it, rummaging among the foundations ...

The house only seems to have been known as New Place after Will Shakespeare bought and refurbished it in 1597. Before that it was the Great House, a 'pretty house of brick and timber' built a hundred years earlier by a local worthy and onetime Lord Mayor of London.

Royalty stayed there in 1643, in the form of Henrietta Maria, the Catholic queen-consort of King Charles I. The Queen was a guest of Will's daughter, Susanna.

In 1756, a preacher, the Rev. Francis Gastrell, was living there. Outraged at the number of visitors and passers-by who wanted to see a mulberry tree in the New Place grounds, which supposedly had been planted by Shakespeare himself, the reverend took an axe to the tree.

The very next year, a mysterious document was discovered hidden away among the rafters of the roof in the house where Will Shakespeare grew up. It proved to be a handwritten copy of a Jesuit Last Testament and Will of the Soul, signed by Will Shakespeare's father.

In the meantime, Gastrell had a few of his windows broken by people angry at his felling of the Shakespeare mulberry. Finally, in 1759, he freaked out altogether and demolished New Place brick by brick.

The town seemingly did nothing to stop him. Whether a lone preacher could destroy a three-storey house on a busy street without anybody noticing, or whether (as seems much more likely) he had a substantial mob to help him, the town bided its time and then sent him packing. He was marched out of town accompanied by booing crowds, and a local bye-law was passed forbidding anybody with the surname Gastrell from ever living in the town again.

Like so much of the Shakespeare story, we are usually expected to accept that Shakespeare's final home was simply destroyed by an angry clergyman - and that's that. Whatever you do, do not draw any conclusions from that astonishing act of vandalism, least of all that there may have been some sectarian issues hanging around the memory of Will Shakespeare.

Whatever you do, do not imagine that a Protestant preacher destroyed a part of our national heritage because of its Catholic associations with our national poet. No, no, do not think that. It's just one of those things, okay? And maybe we shouldn't have mentioned that Jesuit will. Don't want anybody getting any ideas, do we?

But as a way of getting just that little bit closer to the Bard, what could be better than sifting through the soil of his demolished house?

Of course, I'm not actually working on my Shakespeare book just now. I'm sweating away on my Arthur book. But Stratford's just a few minutes away. Shame it's not Arthur's grave I could get to in a few minutes. Heigh-ho ...

(PS: Hi, Shayne!! Great to see you! I'll get some blog links organised soon, I promise.)

Round the Block

All last week, I was thinking "I'll write a blog about writer's block!"

How's that for irony - meaning to write about writer's block but just never quite managing to do it.

But I was going to. Because I don't believe in it. Or, rather, I know it happens, but I don't think of it as 'writer's block' at all. Whenever it happens to me (yep - guess what last week was like) I know it's because mentally I'm trying to take a short-cut.

When you write something, you shouldn't imagine that it's set in stone. The first draft will have garlic and sapphires in it, and the second draft should restructure it and give it a better shape, and the third draft (really) should round it off with a final polish and that little extra zing.

The first draft ought to be just a determined effort at getting everything down on paper in some form or other. We can worry about how good it is, how well it's working, later.

But so-called writer's block happens (I believe) when you're working on the first draft but you want it to be as good as the third draft.

Working in TV, there'd be the occasional nightmare when a script editor would phone, just days before deadline, and ask you to change all the locations, or alter the ages of the characters, or something equally dumb. Which meant that, in just two or three days, you had completely to rewrite the script. That's when I began to learn about writer's block. There was a dreadful panic when it came to putting any word on the page - a vertiginous sense that 'This is it' and that it had to be right, first time, every time.

Great way to panic yourself into writer's paralysis, folks.

Anyway, so, having figured that out, it's easy to know how to deal with writer's block. Just write. Write whatever. And then come back later and clean it up.

Simples.

But I didn't write that last week because I'd had a couple of trips to my nearby town of Stratford, and I'd watched Shakespeare in Love, and I was wondering - why do so many actors read Shakespeare all wrong.

Take that famous balcony speech:

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

How often have you heard the first line spoken as if it read: 'O Romeo, Romeo, where are you Romeo?'

Is that what it says? No. What it says (or means) is: 'O Romeo, Romeo, why are you Romeo?'

It's all about his name. And at a time when the State was trying to impose a Protestant form of religion on a rather conservative country, a name like "Rome-o" would surely stand out as a declaration of tribal Catholicism.

So Juliet asks, "Why are you 'Romey-o'?" Why can't Romeo change his name (his surname, Montagu, was shared by one of the most Catholic families in England, and Shakespeare's then patron, the Earl of Southampton, was related to them: Southampton's mother had been born a Montagu) and therefore deny his faith?

Or, failing that, Juliet will renounce hers. The Protestants wore little woollen skull caps in church. Juliet is a Capulet.

So it should be read with something like the former Troubles in Northern Ireland in mind. This is a life-and-death situation.

But I didn't blog about that, either.

Shakespeare Land

On Valentine's Day I was given the choice of where to go for a bit of fresh air. We're not short of choice round here, but I plumped for Stratford-upon-Avon.

Stratford's got some great shops. And some nice places for tea/coffee/beer. Or you can just wander round soaking up that Shakespearean vibe; maybe even visit his grave, walk past his old house (demolished in 1759) or see where he was probably born.

Stratford's just 15 minutes away from us. I've been going there since I was literally a baby. And my wife was born there. She still has relatives in the town. My brother, meanwhile, ran an art gallery in the centre of Stratford for a year or two. So, in many ways, the place feels like home.

Well, the Valentine's Day trip was a success - a couple of good books, for instance - and a night or two later I was treated to an early birthday meal when the Divine Kim (my wife) took me to The Garrick Inn, which has been serving food and drink since before Shakespeare bought his house just up the road from there. The Garrick is next door to Harvard House - the facades of both are wooden and wobbly and knobbly. And, I have to say, my meal was fantastic.

I can forget how lucky I am living so close to Shakespeare's town. I know it so well - although sometimes I wonder which century I know best: Stratford in the sixteenth, seventeenth, twentieth or twenty-first centuries? (as for the last of all those, just don't mention the redevelopment of the Bancroft Gardens - most unpopular!)

But where we live is in the midst of a much wider Shakespeare territory. Some of my favourite spots are in the areas where the Shakespeare family originated, and which later turned out to be hotbeds of religious and political resistance to those two awful monarchs, Elizabeth and James. And, in the opposite direction from Stratford is the ancient city of Worcester.

Kim and I visited Worcester County Records Office last Friday to track down a will. It's an important document, because it reveals the existence of a woman whom historians have argued for many years simply did not exist. Shakespeare's 'first' wife.

So that's one thing I can be thankful for. Writing a book (or two) about Shakespeare, I couldn't be in a much more favourable position. I can almost see the panicked gunpowder plotters riding by.