The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606

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1606, Alister McGrath, Antony and Cleopatra, Drama, Elizabeth I, English History, Gunpowder Plot, In the Beginning, James I, James Shapiro, King Lear, Literary History, Macbeth, Medieval History, Scottish History, Shakespeare, The Year of Lear, Theatre, Timon of Athens, Union Jack

You might want to read this justifiably well-received literary history multiple times. The title “The Year of Lear” is a slightly misrepresents the scope of the book. It provides an interesting critical analysis of the literary development of the play “King Lear” in historical and cultural context, but it does the same for “Macbeth“, “Antony and Cleopatra” and other Shakespearean plays. The author, James Shapiro, is an expert on Shakespeare. He previously published “A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599”. It spotlighted Shakespeare’s Elizabethan plays of that year: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and Hamlet. Coincidentally a local theatre company in NYC is staging to mixed reviews, excerpts from all four plays in one four hours plus production, where the actors take on multiple roles. 1606 was the year for Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. Some were performed later, and Timon of Athens was a collaborative effort that may have been dated 1605.

What is most interesting about this book is how we are products of our times. The transition from Elizabeth I to James I required flexibility by playwrights and theatre companies. The latter were dependent upon the public largesse of the Crown and the popularity of the actors. Shakespeare’s the King’s Men, was James I’s official company, even though Shakespeare’s Queen’s Men was associated with Elizabeth I. Political and theatrical transitions were smooth for the time. Dramatist wrote for specific actors who could make or break a company.  King Lear was written for Richard Burbage the lead actor of the period. He was curiously also the embodiment for Richard the Third, Hamlet and Othello. The playwright had to be sensitive to the politics of the period. Criticism not masked in the writing could result in time in the Tower or execution. Antony and Cleopatra, written after Elizabeth’s death, may reflect the virgin Queen’s relationship with the Earl of Essex (who she executed), even though it is drawn from Plutarch’s Life of Antony. Shakespeare counterpart Ben Jonson, who wrote Volpone for Burbage, spent time in the Tower for offending King James.

The historical context of this book is current and  compelling. The Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605 although unsuccessful in its attempt to kill King James and to blow up Parliament understandably resonated throughout the kingdom, as 9/11 left a cultural impact on the U.S.. Catholics, and in particular Jesuits, were the targeted group. Gowrie Day, the 5th of November, was a day of collective memory. A plot by Catholic English gentry seemed unimaginable given its magnitude. Spain and other Catholic governments were suspected. There even was a conspiracy theory that the Catholic hating Salisbury orchestrated the plot.  Many of the plotters were known or had association with Shakespeare and his family and it was orchestrated from Warwickshire. James’ response was moderate and no worse than Elizabeth’s prosecution of the Jesuits. James’ primary goal was to unify Scotland, England and Wales and he needed moderation to accomplish this. Queen Anne was also a silent Catholic. His kingdom, like Lear’s, was divided. The Union Jack and other trappings of unity were created by James to enlist Parliament in his desire for Great Britain. He was unsuccessful. Parliament held the purse, the Crown was as dependent as a theatre company.

James did not have Elizabeth’s swagger and Antony and Cleopatra may have been a masked dig at James being the less charismatic. As Shapiro would have it, the play was nostalgic for a more heroic period. The Armada was defeated during her reign. James’ legacy was the King James Bible (see my review of the interesting cultural and religious history of this Bible by Alistair McGrath, In the Beginning). He also began the colonization of the New World with the establishment of the Jamestown colony. Over time, perhaps he is the one with the greater legacy.

Communication was relatively slow, but the plague was fast and near constant during this period, particularly in London. It interrupted the theatre schedules, eliminating younger companies that were not subsidized. As Shakespeare was 42 in 1606 this was beneficial to the Kings Men. Shakespeare did not stage masques which were a financial plum. Although some Shakespearean plays incorporated masques (Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer’s Nights Dream, the Tempest and Henry VIII), the costly staging (often by Indigo Jones) of dance, pantomime, and song that engaged the Crown and aristocracy in the production were awarded to others.

As is the case with Broadway, plays were often revivals and adaptations of earlier plays that the public knew and would attend. The spectators expected to see a different play every night, so volume restrained creation of original works. King Lear was an adaptation of an earlier, King Leir. Shapiro contrasts the two, with King Lear being substantially the darker. Shakespeare borrowed language for Lear and Edgar from Samuel Harsnett’s treatise on faking demonic possession A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures. Often better to be a borrower than a creator be.

The literary references and analysis, the self-censoring of language, the etymology of Shakespearean usage in their historical and cultural context, are a few of the other virtues of this book. If you like history, language, and Shakespeare, this book will be as you like it.

 

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The Blue Between Sky and Water

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Arab Fiction, book reviews, Hamas, Israel, Novels, Palestinian Fiction, Political Fiction, Reading Suggestions, Susan Abulhawa, The Blue Between Sky and Water, World Fiction, World Literature

An imagined village that historically was on the trade route from Cairo to Damascus. Once ruled by the Mamluks, today is in Gaza.

“A river, brimming with God’s assortment of fish and flora, can through Beir Daras, bringing blessings and carrying away village waste, dreams, gossip, prayers, and stories, which it emptied into the Mediterranean just north of Gaza. The water flowing over rocks hummed secrets of the earth and time meandered to the rhythms of crawling, hopping, buzzing, and flying lives.”

The author, Susan Abulhawa, is a political activist whose family immigrated to the U.S. after the Six Day war with Israel. Her parents had lived in East Jerusalem, initially moving to Kuwait. She reportedly spent some time in foster care, and the character Nur perhaps reflects some of her experience. The story is a saga of a Palestinian family displaced after Israel’s War of Independence, told through the eyes of women. It is a story of family and traditional Palestinian values, in part, in contrast to American values and those of richer Palestinians. The underlying theme is of unprovoked displacement, occupation, and struggle to regain their freedom and village of Beir Daras. The novel begins with a recitation of the Israel-Arab/Palestinian conflict and the rise of Hamas, who the author supports.

“Declassified documents, obtained years later, revealed the chilling precision with which Israel calculated the calorie intake of 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza to make them go hungry, but not starve.” The author’s statement is based on a April 15, 2006 article in the Observer section of The Guardian, and attributable to Dov Weissglass, then an advisor to the then Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert :

“‘The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,’ he said. The hunger pangs are supposed to encourage the Palestinians to force Hamas to change its attitude towards Israel or force Hamas out of government.”

The authenticity of the quote and its context were later called into question (see https://bbcwatch.org/tag/dov-weisglass/ ). Without the undercurrent theme I might have been able to enjoy the story more, but its historical inaccuracies and unbalance, seem aimed at propaganda for recruits. Given that the author lives in Pennsylvania and did not bear the suffering that those in Gaza have experienced, this is bothersome to me. She admits that the venue is derivative from Ramzy Baroud’s book My Father Was a Freedom Fighter. To her credit she is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine.

The story  never demonstrates the starvation and deprivation that I expected it to. The families do not have all that they want and do suffer from bombings, but no family member is ever without food nor has diet limitations. They have periodic celebrations. It does not feel like a pogrom, if that was the author’s intent. Perhaps this was edited out. Perhaps the intent was not to directly create a political novel, but to do so indirectly. The preface and epilogue only intermittently reflect the novel and might have been omitted.

The more literary writing reflected in the initially quoted paragraph of this review is never repeated. This novel is principally story-telling. The characters are well-developed, particularly the matriarch of one of the family lines, Atiyeh m. Nazmiyeh, and Nur a granddaughter of a related family line, who is American born, and suffers in foster care before emigrating to Gaza. The interplay between these two characters and Nazmiyeh’s daughter, Alwan, is interesting, as Western American women (and Westernized upper class Palestinian women) values are unacceptable to retained traditional values. The atomic, individualized world of Americans, is rejected by the communal, familial orientation of traditional Arab (and Persian) cultures. The author is reflects the values of her characters, and is honest in doing so.

As this is principally a women’s novel, only the stories of a few males by marriage, birth, or relationship, are told. Nazmiyeh’s eleven sons are not part of the tale. Are they part of the resistance or are they merely trying to earn a living to survive? Perhaps the author can write a sequel based on their stories given her political activism.

If you are a supporter of Hamas you may like this novel or may find it too mainstream. Personally I am troubled by an agenda that keeps sending young people and families to their death, rather than to try to coexist and build a better life for those which it purportedly represents (and did at one point).

 

 

 

Fifteen Dogs

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Andre Alexis, Apologue, Book review, Canadian Fiction, Canadian Literature, Dogs, Fiction, Fifteen Dogs, Linguistics, Novels, Reading Suggestion

I came across Fifteen Dogs at the Brooklyn Book Fair last year. I had not read anything by Mr. Alexis. It is an apologue. Apollo and Hermes wager whether dogs granted human consciousness and language will die happy or sad. Part of the pack of 15 dogs dominates those who are attracted to their new-found capabilities. They want to remain as dogs. Those who accept their new skills find it disruptive. Communication with humans is not always understood nor accepted. Human males treat them as circus performers. Female humans are drawn closer to them. The dogs presumed genetic pack hierarchy of male dominance makes it hard for these dogs to treat their female human friends as equal. Nature (genetics) is pitted against culture (epigenetics).

The book is anthropocentric. While it recognizes that dogs (and other animals) have their own language, it assumes that they may not be able to understand human language because they cannot speak it. It is known that in their own language birds actually have dialects like humans. The dogs in this novel are multi-linguistic although they prefer English. Whether dogs might have these natural skills is unknown.

There is no deep philosophy nor moralizing in this book. The book contains poems written by the dogs who have accepted their new linguistic skills. The author notes that these are written in the genre invented by Francois Caradec called oulipo. These poems purportedly can be understood by both dogs and human. They may give dogs a reason to hate poetry.

Given the wealth of outstanding literature that goes unread I would suggest you pass up on Fifteen Dogs. For me it wasn’t fetching.