Medieval Echoes

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past."

-T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton" Four Quartets


"So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity."

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

"Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought."


Call me pretentious (again), but I had to include these quotes.

I just went and saw Henry VI, parts i, ii, and iii, in addition to Richard III, all at the RSC's theater in Stratford, all by the RSC, and, together with the Henriad which I saw in January (mentioned earlier in "The Difference Between a Cow and a Bean" and "The Dirty Duck"), means that I have seen all eight major Histories, and only had to read one of them. It's odd, I can't think of any other way to see any of them, including the often-performed Henry V or Richard III. In the second scene of Richard III, when the body of Henry VI is wheeled on and Richard tries to seduce Ann in front of it, how can that have any meaning without seeing the rest of Henry VI? Henry's wounds open up again in the presence of Richard and bleed before him, but without seeing Henry's pilgramage in the other plays, or the scene where Richard murdered Henry (or did Henry martyr himself? He spends the scene subtly prompting Richard to murder him), if you hadn't seen Richard rip a Bible to shreds and proclaim that he was no man's brother, that he was himself alone, and then whimper, how could this scene be anything other than an awkwardly timed seduction? What on earth does one think of ex-Queen Margaret when she comes on and curses the entire cast of the play (in this production she carried her dead son Edward's skeleton around in a bag for the whole play, and opened it during the curse, assembling another part of the skeleton with each prediction), except that she's some crazy deposed monarch? Actually, she's lead armies against the Yorks, had one of their young children murdered and stuffed the blood-soaked hankerchief into the father's mouth, sacrificed much for her son Edward's sake, divorced Henry VI for his attempts at peace, but you can't get any of that without having to sit around for another 10 hours of Henry VI.

The effect of producing all eight, from the RSC's perspective, is that no show is divisible from the others (though for some reason they set Richard III, and only it, in a semi-modern world with uzies and Kevlar vests, but even then it draws on the other seven.). The weighty significance that people put on one moment, or one scene, or even one show (like Richard III) was nullified, spread out into the larger whole, and ultimately for the better. No one had any "Here's My Famous Speech" moments. It was all just the rampant course of history. This fits in with the theme of the plays as well, so much is gained in the course of the Histories, and so much is lost. Henry V takes his entire play to gain land in France. By Henry VI, that land has been lost because of the War of the Roses. There's nothing close to the certainty of the Divine Right of Kings, although people throughout the play keep trying to invoke it. No one can trust each other because they've spent the whole time stabbing each other in the backs. By the end of Richard III, when Henry Tudor finally takes Richard down and ends the War of the Roses, you're happy just to be on the upper end of the wheel, but you're fully aware that history repeats itself.

The other thing I really liked about the play, as in the script, is the character of Henry VI. In Richard II, Shakespeare told the story about a more introverted, sensitive man who happened to be born as a king, and what a tragedy it was that he was such a thoughtful person (somewhere - Richard can be a serious ass most of the time), but he couldn't manage a state. Henry VI is another such person, a generally good person who was born a king, and crowned at a very young age. Throughout Henry VI, part i, you see him innocent and young, and oblivious, as machinations happen all around him, and you think "Oh gosh, he's gonna get it by part iii, SO bad." Part ii begins like that, but then he actually realizes how much he's been used (as the War of the Roses begins all around him), and gosh darn it, he stands up for himself (or tries). And he doesn't die (yet)! It's so refreshing to see someone who's a pretty okay guy not get corrupted by a position of power. He doesn't make the best political decisions, but he holds his own. And then by part iii, it's not that his incompetance finally undoes him, it's that he realizes that he wasn't cut out to be king, though he tries to use his power to stop the War of the Roses, rather than getting too caught up in it. By the time Richard gets to him, Henry is more a king in ceremony than practice, and although he's been captured by the Yorks, he uses his time to study the Bible and meditate. In such an inherently war-time drama, it's good to get an outside perspective from the violence, and that's exactly what Henry helps you do. And it's even better to see a potentially tragic character get his act together and pursue self-actualization, without having to die for trying (he dies cause Richard can gain things out of it). Richard II approaches this state by the end of Richard II, but he realizes it right before the murders come to get him.

And it's these two characters, Richard II and Henry VI, that I really care for the most, out of all the Histories. It's these two that only ever get a shot at the deeper meanings behind what they're doing, from Richard's "now doth time waste me" (mentioned in The Dirty Duck), to Henry's contemplation on a grassy hill:

"Would I were dead! if God’s good will were so;
For what is in this world but grief and woe?
O God! methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run,
How many make the hour full complete;
How many hours bring about the day;
How many days will finish up the year;
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the times:
So many hours must I tend my flock;
So many hours must I take my rest;
So many hours must I contemplate;
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean;
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:
So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass’d over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah! what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroider’d canopy
To kings, that fear their subjects’ treachery?
O, yes! it doth; a thousand-fold it doth.
And to conclude, the shepherd’s homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
Is far beyond a prince’s delicates,
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couched in a curious bed,
When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him."

Yum yum yum.

And having just come from a "what on earth am I doing in England?" crisis, to a "oh, I'm a capable person" revelation, it's good to see an unsure king discover who he is and what he can do.

And speaking of capability, my adventure in Stratford didn't just include the plays.

We had tickets to the Henrys, that's for sure, but Richard III had long since sold out. But, the theater reserved ten tickets that it released only on the day of the performance, first come, first serve. So, after Kenyon-Exeter resolved to be a part of this, I, and I alone, woke up at 6-ish in the morning, and was at the door of the Courtyard Theatre, with both a meager breakfast of digestives, hobnobs, and coke, along with a copy of The Everlasting Man, and I was the first in line. I waited there until 9:30 - the rest of Kenyon-Exeter showed up at around 7:30, but one other person had arrived in the meantime, meaning that we didn't get all ten tickets. Patrick Smyth and Ann Pedke, among other people, ended up waiting in line for no-shows right before Richard III, and the two of them ended up scoring SWEET seats house center, ground floor.

But I waited for hours for Shakespeare tickets, and that is enough reward for me. I've never woken up early to get in line for anything before! Not a concert, not Star Wars, nothing. It's intense.

Plus, the girl who showed up in the meantime, who got the second spot in line, was really nice, and we ended up sitting next to each other cause we both got crappy early reserve tickets. Her name was "Veritie," and as soon as I heard it, I said "oh... 'Truth.' " She said not many people get that. And she was pretty and stuff.

I just thought it was very Morality Play of me to sit watching Richard III, which centers on a character based on Vice characters, while I was sitting next to Truth, who was a pretty, early-twenties Uni student.

And I had one final moment of Shakespeare geekdom. I'd never seen or read all of Richard III before. In fact, of the Histories, I'd only ever read Richard II beforehand. I'd never seen the end of Richard III, but when we got to it, and Richard was killed, and Henry went to crown himself, he says the following:


"Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord,
That would reduce these bloody days again,
And make poor England weep in streams of blood!
Let them not live to taste this land’s increase,
That would with treason wound this fair land’s peace!
Now civil wounds are stopp’d, peace lives again:
That she may long live here, God ..."

-- And then, the actor paused, I mean he'd been pausing all the while, but there was just enough time for my thoughts to align themselves. I had been going with the meter, going with the logic, and it was the very end so I was extremely attentive, and, although in retrospect I suppose it wasn't that hard to do, I intuited the last two words of Richard III. I mouthed them with the actor silently while he spoke them out loud:

"... say amen."