April 2012
Issue 4
Book Review Shakespeare, Sex, & Love by Stanley Wells By Amanda Ewing
“Theatre is a sexy business,” and so is the dynamic, passionate, world of Stanley Wells’ Shakespeare, Sex, & Love. Reading it on the tube, I can’t help feeling like I am fooling the gazing London public – they see a woman reading a Shakespeare book by a leading scholar, while just behind the dust jacket I’m reading an erotic Thomas Nashe poem: “suck out my soul with kisses […] in they breasts’ crystal balls embalm my breath, […] laid. Thy lips on mine like cupping glasses clasp; let our tongues meet […]” (43). Guilty, I look up. My fellow coach members are unsuspecting. Shakespeare, Sex, & Love is separated into two parts; in the first Wells draws attention to the sexually-charged language of Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, and in the second focuses on sexuality in Shakespeare’s plays. In both sections Wells draws on the primary texts of both Shakespeare and his contemporaries such as Nashe, Middleton, Marlowe, Forman, Bacon, Francis, and Drayton, in order to set Shakespeare in context and provide evidence of erotic, bawdy writing. Since David Garrick’s time at Drury Lane, scholars and critics have attempted to display Shakespeare’s texts as hallowed, glorifying them on the modern stage, while justifying the sexual language by stating that Shakespeare only breaks the integrity of his prose to cater to the sexual cravings of the groundlings. In the past, scholars and editors have even censored out sexual language, arguing that the sexual tone is not an accurate representation of the beauty of Shakespeare’s language. Wells quickly dashes that line of reasoning and argues that what makes Shakespeare unique is not an abundant use of sexual language, or a unique ability to cater to all classes, but rather a groundbreaking uniting of sex and animal lust with idealized Petrarchan love. Expanding on ideas briefly discussed in a previous book, Shakespeare & Co., concerning homosexuality in literature and drama, Wells examines how common homosexual overtones were in the16th century, resulting in one of the most stimulating arguments of Shakespeare, Sex, & Love. Critics often suggest Shakespeare was homosexual as many of his sonnets are clearly addressed to or even explicitly reference a man, and that the poems are somehow an illustration of his personal life. Wells suggests the sonnets are actually the product of a strained love triangle between Shakespeare, a young man, and the ‘dark lady’ mentioned in the sonnets. Wells doesn’t rule out Shakespeare’s wife as an intended recipient of some of the sonnets, yet argues that their sexual tension and shifting recipients hints at Shakespeare’s infidelity- possibly with both sexes. Following this argument, Wells delves into the community records of Stratford-UponAvon, as well as legal records of Shakespeare’s
contemporaries, in order to verify that sexual misconduct and adultery were commonly recorded crimes, punishable by fines and public humiliation. Where the first part of Shakespeare, Sex, & Love is largely devoted to the sonnets, in part two Wells is more concerned Shakespeare’s approach to sex and sexuality in his plays. Wells guides the reader through a variety of subjects related to sex: fun, desire, jealousy, and experience. He guides the reader through the playful sexuality of Shakespeare’s comedies (Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and all plays featuring Falstaff) to the darker sexual plays of Shakespeare’s dramas (Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello). He also uses Romeo and Juliet as a case study, dissecting its comedic sexual language, homoerotic jealousy, and the bawdy tension between Mercutio and the Nurse in contrast to the naïveté of Romeo and Juliet. Wells takes us behind the false wall and to the true, contextual, meanings of words such as ‘nothing’, ‘prick’, ‘pluck’, and ‘love’. This exciting unlocking of language takes the reader into what feels like a hidden Shakespeare. Even in the wake of the Romeo and Juliet chapter, the most striking restaging of Shakespeare in Wells’ argument is the introduction of the rape trick: “[…] I shall suggest that the bed trick, by which a woman inveigles a man into having anonymous sex with her, represents a kind of rape of the man by the woman”. Wells suggests that Shakespeare uses the female form, strength, and cunning as bait for the man – creating a complex situation where the woman has the upper hand and the man is victim. Additionally, because both man and woman would have been played by men on Shakespeare’s stage, this is a many-layered situation, engaging with subjects such as theatrical feminism, homoeroticism and gender doubling. Although a stimulating argument, it is weakened by the provocation and force of the word ‘rape’. Despite the shock factor, Wells raises an interesting point: Shakespeare’s women are not only strong in morale, but also in sexual conduct. Several train rides later I step off the train onto the platform, finished book in hand, reexamining the world around me. Shakespeare’s language has been rocked open – a language that is bawdy, layered, and surprisingly sensual. Wells has unveiled a new persona for the idolized man and his work: one where Shakespeare’s interest in sex in equal to his interest in love. Wells reveals the plays and sonnets as centering around the human condition as a sexual and spiritual joining where both sex and love are equally important. After all, no great love can exist without great sex – both an exciting and academic conclusion.
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‘Pure’ by Andrew Miller By Annie Hughes
Having recently come across the 2011 Costa Novel Award winner ‘Pure’ by Andrew Miller, I was quickly persuaded that it was a worthy winner, in that it truly is as the Sunday Telegraph described it, ‘irresistibly compelling’. Set in the crumbling Parisien graveyard ‘Les Innocents’ during pre-revolutionary France, it vividly renders this perturbed era in France’s history to life, capturing the sights, smells and sounds of a nation unsatisfied with their archaic ruling system, simmering with anger. ‘Pure’ is the story of a young hopeful engineer who is sent to Paris with the task of demolishing the ancient cemetery that was overflowing with the dead, in order to decimate the past to look forward to a brighter future. In this sense, the story of ‘Pure’ parallels the events of the iconic French Revolution of 1789, since both desire a new chapter in France’s history, but are faced with the difficulties of eradicating an ancient past which still seems all-pervading and potent. ‘Pure’ is perhaps first and foremost in my opinion a masterpiece of the senses, conjuring the sights, the tastes, and most unbearably of all the smell of this decaying Parisien cemetery,
overridden with the ancient bodies of the dead. Miller remarkably captures a description of this very distinct smell of ‘Les Innocents’, which clings to the clothing of the nearby inhabitants, turns their breath rotten and saturates their food. This sense of ‘Les Innocents’ totally consuming the neighbouring area with its smell, turning everything to mould, decay, even death, is potently evoked by Miller. ‘Pure’ therefore is a very sensual read, and the tastes and smells of the cemetery seem to rise out from the page and into the reader’s own eyes, mouth and nose, remaining there for hours after the book has been put down. After reading ‘Pure’, I do not think I will ever be able to visit Paris or pass a cemetery again without being haunted by that poisonous smell of ‘Les Innocents’. Finally, what I also found most remarkable when reading ‘Pure’ is that while it is a historical novel set in a time and place which is unknown to its reader, Andrew Miller’s narrative is so modern and so fresh that his subject topic about an archaic, dying system is rendered relevant to a modern audience. He captures this time of struggle and uncertainty vividly in the mind of a modern reader, making the French Revolution just as pertinent and crucial an event today as it was in France in 1789.
Theatre Review ‘Bingo’ – The Young Vic. 16th February – 31st March 2012 By Maia Jenkins
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“Was anything done?” asks a dying William Shakespeare, looking back over a failed marriage, a hated daughter, and an oeuvre that has done ‘nothing’ to alleviate the misery of the world he is leaving behind. The Young Vic’s revival of Bingo is potent stuff, churning up questions of innocence, evil, sin, forgiveness, compassion, grace, patience and mercy. It is structurally subtle, peeling back these many layers of human experience and creatively reimagining the man who - tiresome authorship questions aside- penned some of the most compassionate lines in the English language. The allusions are stark, but affecting. Quivering with disgust, Patrick Stewart’s Lear-era Shakespeare recounts the sadistic blinding of a bear, raising its paw “as if to beg for some sign of grace” from an Elizabethan crowd baying for “more blood, more blood”. Equally resonant is the relationship between Shakespeare and daughter Judith (played to suitably overwrought perfection by Catherine Cusack) as both parties fail to articulate and perform their familial roles. One particularly enjoyable scene sees the Bard and Ben Jonson – played by the charismatic Richard McCabe (“My whole life has been one long self-insult!”) – partake in a pub session ending with a drunken, delirious Shakespeare cowed and alone on an eerily familiar snow-filled stage. As the consummate Marxist playwright, writer Edward Bond expertly weaves his leftist sentiment into the writing, touching on issues of conscience, land ownership and the practical consequences of art. Was our William - “Soul of the age! The applause! Delight! The wonder of our stage!” in fact more of a Goneril than a Lear? By depicting his collusion with Welcombe landowners, Bingo suggests that the beloved Bard certainly benefitted quite handsomely from early-modern society’s burgeoning capitalism and systematic crushing of the poor. For an entire scene, an executed peasant girl dangles in the background while other characters squabble over food, flirt with their spouses and generally fill the space with the minutiae of their existences. Suffering and injustice, Bond seems to suggest, is the foundation upon which the rest of us build our comfortable lives. However, this political strain never feels like it is being thrust into our faces like a photocopied pamphlet. This is a play that champions humanity; a reminder that behind every work of art there is a human being who has laboured, struggled and, most crucially, lived through a life in order to create it. And that, one would hope, means that at least something has been done.
Flash Fiction By Alister MacQuarrie
Paradise Gardens was a synonym for luxurious simplicity. It was not the home of the truly rich – they seldom lived in the city at all, and if they had city apartments, they would have them in the dazzlingly expensive central business district – but those who led comfortable lives, and were in no risk of ever slipping down into discomfort. The Gardens were a spacious apartment complex out in the suburban Fourth Prefecture, a great white tower surrounded by actual gardens and itself a hollow cylinder, with a garden in the middle, slightly raised. It should have been shady; but in fact most of it was welllit, by a system of mirrors around the inner rim of the tower. It had a pond with lilies and carp, which had been bred to glow pleasingly at night. The roof housed palm trees, deckchairs, long trailing plants that spilled over beautifully and dangled down the pristine walls. The two police officers who visited on June 3rd felt out of place. They arrived sometime in the late morning, when a steady breeze was soothing the New Singapore heat and rustling the leaves against the side of the building. The whole complex had an eerie tranquillity. It seemed deserted, though they’d seen the residents sunbathing in the rooftop gardens as they landed. The car park too was nearly empty – most people were on holiday, or away for the day, or had left home to work. There was no one in the lobby; the automated porter opened the door for them, and directed them to the correct room. 8F, on the east face. Inside the building, of course, everything was as pleasantly balmy as outside, and had that same serene tropical feeling. They met only one resident going up, a young woman in a pale-blue Nehru jacket who gave them a brief smile as they passed her leaving the lift on the eighth floor. The corridors were all a sterile white, but outside the windows that took up the whole wall they could see the city centre, grey and smoky and bustling, as different as another planet entirely. 8F was more of the same. Stepping into it, the two officers were met with the same identical, overwhelming whiteness broken only by thin strips of green – here, a particularly lush greenwall, every leaf and frond positively glow-
ing with moisture, that dripped off and pooled in a little grey basin set in the floor. The sun coming in through the window made the little drops sparkle as they fell. There was one key difference from the rest of Paradise Gardens. It was the blood covering one wall. It was a vibrant red – still fresh. When they consulted the apartment computer, the officers would find it had been only half an hour since the shot was heard and the occupant’s vital signs ceased, and the whole place had been hermetically sealed while a distress signal was sent to the police. This was standard procedure for Paradise Gardens – though they had had no serious accidents for five years. Allison Church, found at 11:57 am, on her back in her own blood and with a licensed self-defence weapon in her hand, was unusual. Unusual for Paradise Gardens, but not for the officers. They’d been to the scenes of several suicides that month, not all as neat or successful as Allison Church. Most had been in apartments like this. While they were there, the officers had a look around the place. A good TV - subscriptions to more sites than they’d heard of. Paper books, but behind glass. Mostly for display. One had been taken out, though, and lay on the table by the sofa, along with an empty wine glass; a paper reproduction of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, in the original English. The parts of one of the characters had been highlighted in fluorescent yellow, with annotations. The subsequent investigation confirmed suicide, but could identify no particular reason for it. For the police, this was odd, but not unusual, and hardly something to spend time thinking about. Allison Church had had no consistent partners for at least a year, but was reported by her sister and friends to have been content. Her job – something non-specific in the city planning office – paid well. It involved dealing with a great many irritating people, but was not in itself stressful. She had been a patron of local arts. She was an amateur sculptor and actor. To all intents and purposes, her life and been comfortable and fulfilling. For reasons unknown, on the 3rd of January C136, at 11:24 am, she had simply dropped out of the world.
Carpe Diem
By Hirra Khan Tumbling and revolving and shaking eventually shook my brain into action So whilst he breathes acapella in perfect harmony with snoozing angels, I compose formal emails for work
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I.I.I (or, Insomnia In India) By Jack Barton
The fly resides, in The corner of my mind, in The dark of the room The ceiling fan stops Me sweating to death, but the Cold air dries my throat The sun lost its strength At six, seeping past the trees The dust kicks itself Cocooned in thin sheets I left awake eventually The dark, the whir, the fly’s scream.
Most Mornings We Experience By Joe Prestwich
Opening the eyes can be frightening. A roof – that’s there, But rolling the eyes like billiard balls To find the room Is too wearisome to behold. A pulsing. Suddenly. Is the body, the bed, moving? Taking a deep breath gives signs of life, But a sickly, grain-on-the-grape Kind-of-like-sick-in-the-mouth Taste. Memory? The evening returns in flashes Like a fast cutting psycho thriller. Stomach Turning Revelation hints That that thing that should never have been done was, Inevitably, done. Word’s probably out already. Is that the smell of bacon? The sound of talking? Is there life beyond the stale Entrails of the morning?
Sex
By Joe Prestwich Putting down the bottle, I stopped One of three and attempted to do That thing, banned till the Sixties When Dylan’s thick sound shot through Gardens of adolescence. Breaking The wall, lamplight glowing down Softly on soft praying lips, questioning Each others fruitless gaze.
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People can’t be controlled as politicians. Wanting, still shadowed by Thoughts of Doing. But that deep Penetration of darkness met with a sigh Suddenly becomes as roots in soil, or at once, As simple, and tender, as holding hands.
Feature Women on Top By Gemma Lucas
Books are great, right? We all like books. We all know where to find books: The British Library; Senate House Library; The Poetry Library; The Maughan… they all do books pretty well. So, what about a library that does more than books? A library that is a great mélange of book collection, museum and statements against patriarchal ideology; wouldn’t that be great? The Women’s Library in East London fits this bill. Their current exhibition All Work and Low Pay should be interesting to everyone (i.e. if you’re not interested, get interested! It affects you) and is particularly politically relevant right now. There’s a C word on everybody’s lips, don’t deny that you know it. It’s a C word that nobody wants to acknowledge and yet everybody wants to debate, the C word is of course, Cuts. Did you know about the gendered impact of the recent government, work-related cuts? There unfortunately still exists a distinction between ‘women’s’ jobs and ‘men’s’ jobs; women are much more likely to work in the Public Sector and this happens to be where most jobs are currently being axed. Women were already at a disadvantage with regard to state pensions (always have been) and the recent cuts make them even more vulnerable to pensioner poverty. Before the Equal Pay Act of 1970 companies and corporations had every right to set ‘male rates’ and ‘female rates’ for their workers (It is a man’s world though, right?) women, it was unanimously agreed were the “weaker vessel” (quote Shakespeare) and it was accepted that Aristotle was pretty clued up when he claimed that the male was “by nature superior”. It has now been 42 years since the abolition of overt and ludicrous discrimination and the All Work and Low Pay exhibition describes the often frustrating, demoralising and debilitating process of obtaining such a result for women from the 18th century through to the 20th century (and no doubt before and beyond). The exhibition also emphasises the physicality of women’s work; it turns out that the ‘golden age of housewives that is harked back to by a group whom I won’t name (it’s another c-word), didn’t actually exist. Women have always worked hard; they’ve just been overlooked and undervalued (if you want to find out why, check out the exhibition; as Virginia Woolf said: “The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself ”). Has anything really changed? Since the gun fired women sprinted; women are now lawyers, politicians, activists, authors; women have led countries, fought in wars, invented cures. You can’t study an English degree (or any degree; or exist in this world, really) without encountering the term ‘feminism’ or ‘feminist theory’ or the names de Beauvoir, Butler, Wollstonecraft or Cixous. Women are more ‘on top’ than they have ever been before and yet the battle is not quite won; equality not yet achieved. We must continue to read, write and fight for fairness. Next time you’ve an hour or two to spare check out the Women’s library. It’s an invaluable source for any student: get ready to feel inspired. All Work and Low Pay: The Story of Women and Work Until 25 August 2012, free of charge The Women’s Library London Metropolitan University 25 Old Castle Street
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Interview with Robin Simon Interview by Helena Goodrich Having studied English Literature and then Art History, Robin Simon started off as an academic at Nottingham where he devised the Art History and English literature joint honours course. He is now editor of the British Arts Journal, occasional arts writer for The Daily Mail and a part time lecturer at UCL. He is currently working on the 2013 Paul Mellon lecture series which will be given at the national gallery and then Yale University. So tell me more about what it is you’re looking at in the Paul Mellon lectures? I kept coming back to this idea of British art and the theatre; Hogarth famously remarked ‘I think of the characters in my pictures as players upon the stage’. This was an idea he got from contemporary French art theory; that a painter would benefit from looking at the theatre. Oddly enough this had also become almost a cliché of the British theatre; that actors should look at painters. This is a natural relationship which dates back to classical times. I wanted to investigate paintings as the theatre, looking particularly at Hogarth and Johann Zoffany who were the two great painters of the stage. To look at why this works you have to go back to questions about the hierarchies of art: at the top of European art was history painting and any history painting, according to theory, had to be founded upon a text. When Zoffany was asked to paint scenes of the theatre, he knew he had to illustrate specific texts so he would choose a line or two from a play; there’s nothing generalised about the pictures. This lends respectability to what are essentially portraits. In the 18th century there was a great passion for portraits too, and the theatrical scene was the ideal solution since you had to show the actors but it has a kind of air of history paintings, so it’s a particularly successful genre. Would these be paintings of actors from the time then? Yes, there’s a cult of celebrity and theatre in the 18th century was easily the most important spectacle available. There are two major theatres at work and when they were closed during the summer there were various fairs going on at Southwark and Tottenham which also had drama. So the actors, particularly David Garrick were huge stars. Garrick had a European reputation, he goes on grand tours and is greeted with acclaim wherever he goes; he was lucky enough to be painted by Hogarth then Zoffany. That’s interesting because we tend to think that the idea of actors as celebrities is a more recent phenomenon that coincided with the development of photography. The whole idea is that Hogarth and Zoffany made their money not by selling paintings but from selling the prints, the engravings after the paintings, so they’re very like photographs. Garrick was always writing to Hogarth saying ‘when are those prints coming out? My fans are demanding images of me’ which is very much like actors handing out photos at the stage door That’s an interesting relationship then between the actor and the artist The excitement of these paintings of the theatre is that it was vitally important not just for the actors to be recognised but the audience loved the idea that they would recognise the actor at the same time as they recognised them playing a part. It’s this sense of being both in and out of the action at the same time You have this ambivalent experience which is part of the theatre; you know one kind of reality and you enjoy another. Shakespeare was well aware of this because his characters are forever stepping in and out of roles so that the suspension of disbelief is occasionally deliberately broken and you’re forced back to the idea that you’re in the theatre; this is all entirely artificial and these actors are actually real people. There’s also sense that figures in Hogarth’s paintings are playing archetypes of the time? Definitely, Hogarth is very like Alexander Pope; Pope’s poems, and in particular his moral essays are incredibly similar to Hogarth’s progresses; The Harlott’s progress, The Rake’s Progress, Marriage a la Mode and there are passages in Pope that evidently inspire Hogarth. But they both enjoyed constructing a narrative with archetypes, they both refer to real people who everybody knew. Pope is always satirising contemporaries which gives an extra dimension and Hogarth also fills his ‘progresses’ with recognisable figures. Hogarth’s first success was drawing and then painting The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay. He goes to watch it day after day and just sits there drawing.
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So how do you approach criticising art? It’s about close analysis of the object, whether that’s a painting, a poem or even a building. The Tate years ago did a survey about how long people looked at pictures, they only timed those pictures that people stopped to look at, and it was actually only 15 seconds on average and those were the pictures they were looking at. There’s an exercise I do for undergrads; they have to pick a painting, and then look at it for two hours and not look at anything else. You have to give the work of art time in order to understand it.
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What are Kings, when regiment is gone, But perfect shadow in a sunshine day?
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Christopher Marlowe, Edward the Second
Editorial Team: Thomas Brewer. Coryn Brisbane, Helena Goodrich Presented by the English Society:
Shakti Bhagchandani Thomas Brewer Coryn Brisbane Miztli Cadena Helena Goodrich Maia Jenkins Francesca Paul Benjy Rabinovich Design by Thomas Brewer