Mary Stuart the Articles in This Study Guide Are Not Meant to Mirror Or Interpret Any Productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival
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Insights A Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival Mary Stuart The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced on the Festival’s stages. Insights is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C. Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director. Copyright © 2011, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print Insights, as long as you do not remove any identifying mark of the Utah Shakespeare Festival. For more information about Festival education programs: Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street Cedar City, Utah 84720 435-586-7880 www.bard.org. Contents Information on the Play Synopsis 4 Characters 5 Peter Oswald:Mary Artist, Scientist, Stuart Translator 5 Life with Friedrich Schiller 7 Scholarly Articles on the Play The Sins of Her Father 9 Utah Shakespeare Festival 3 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Synopsis: Mary Stuart Mary Stuart is imprisoned in England—nominally for the murder of her husband, Darnley, but actually because she has pushed her claim to the throne of England currently held by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. Even though Elizabeth ordered Mary’s imprisonment eighteen years ago, she hesitates over signing her death sentence. She realizes that even though Mary, a Catholic, is a threat to her Protestant throne, it may be even more dangerous to execute her, because of Mary’s many friends and allies in Scotland and France. Mary, of course, hopes for a reprieve. Mary soon learns that Mortimer, the nephew of one of her guardians, has converted to Catholicism and is secretly working with her French friends for her release. This is a dangerous situ- ation for Mortimer, but may be Mary’s only hope to avoid the scaffold. During all this, some of Elizabeth’s advisors are divided on how to deal with Mary. Lord Burleigh, the high treasurer, tells Mary the execution should be carried out; the Earl of Shrewsbury feels that the law has not been fairly applied; and the Earl of Leicester, who secretly supports Mary and has joined with Mortimer, says the sentence should stand, but that there is no need for her to die immediately. But, this is only some of the intrigue. Queen Elizabeth, herself, has also been scheming to somehow have Mary executed or murdered without the blame falling on her. In an effort to help Mary meet with the Queen, Leicester arranges for Elizabeth to “unknowing- ly” walk by Fotheringhay Park when Mary happens to be walking there also. Finally, the two come face to face for the first time. Initially Mary is restrained, but as the encounter progresses she grows fierce and acrimonious, saying that Elizabeth has defiled the throne of England. Elizabeth and her lords retreat without reply. Mary’s nurse, Hanna Kennedy, scolds her, but Mary is exhilarated by her own performance. To complicate matters further, Leicester is afraid his duplicitous support of Mary is about to be discovered. To reestablish his own reputation, he has Mortimer seized as a traitor. To avoid incrimi- nating Mary, Mortimer kills himself in the arms of the guards. Leicester, to even further move suspicion away from himself, declares that Mary should die. He is sorely surprised, however, when Elizabeth instructs him to carry out the execution—to clear away any lingering doubts concerning his allegiance. A mob is in the street clamoring for the execution of Mary Stuart. Burleigh and William Davison, the secretary of state, bring Elizabeth the death warrant to sign, but she is still apprehen- sive. She considers the pressures on her from her people to execute Mary and from France, Spain, and the Pope, to spare her life. She decides she can only be free when Mary is dead and signs the warrant. She returns the death warrant to Davison, but is purposely ambiguous about whether he is to hold the document or to have the execution carried out. Burleigh takes the warrant from him, with plans to carry it out. Mary, upon hearing of the impending execution, receives communion, makes her final requests, and scornfully takes leave of Leicester. Elizabeth, meanwhile, awaits news, exalting that Mary will soon be dead. Once the execution is completed, Mary transfers the burden of responsibility to Burleigh and Davison. She banishes Burleigh from her presence for not conferring with her about it, and she has Davison sent to the Tower. Leicester has secretly left for France. In short, Elizabeth is victorious and secure, but now utterly alone. 4 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Characters: Mary Stuart Elizabeth: Queen of England Mary Stuart: Queen of Scotland, a prisoner in England Robert Dudley: Earl of Leicester George Talbot: Earl of Shrewsbury William Cecil: Lord Burleigh, Lord High Treasurer Sir William Davison: Secretary of State Sir Amias Paulet: knight, guardian of Mary Sir Edward Mortimer: Paulet’s nephew Count Aubespine: the French Ambassador Count Bellievre: Envoy Extraordinary from France O’Kelly: Mortimer’s Friend Drugeon Drury: second guardian of Mary Stuart Melvil: Mary Stuart’s house steward Hannah Kennedy: Mary Stuart’s nurse A Page Sheriff Peter Oswald: Artist, Scientist, Translator By Ryan D. Paul In the interest of full disclosure, languages have never been my strong suit. In fact, the only col- lege class that I took on a pass/fail basis was Spanish 101. After the first few weeks in the class, I realized two things: first, if ever I found myself in a Spanish speaking country I could possibly locate the library (La Biblioteca) but could not find the bathroom, and second, my GPA was under attack by my lack of language skills. My personal failure at non-English comprehension only enhances my respect for those insightful individuals who can not only speak another language, but rearrange the characters so someone with my limited capacity can understand them. In other words—the transla- tor. Translation, like extreme paper airplane construction, is one of those mystic disciplines that combine art and science. The translator not only has to understand the grammatical construction of two different languages, but also has to recognize the subtle nuances that give language its meaning. This is especially important when translating lyric, narrative or dramatic works. In our present day lives, we often have no experience with the cultural cues that would evoke sobs of despair or guffaws of laughter from past audiences. This season, the Utah Shakespeare Festival hopes to provoke both those emotions as they present Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart translated from its original German by Peter Oswald. Utah Shakespeare Festival 5 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Peter Oswald rose to prominence when Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, saw Oswald’s version of the eighteenth century Japanese puppet play Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards in 1996 and commissioned him to produce a play for the Globe. The result, Augustine’s Oak, the story of St. Augustine and his 597 AD mission to rec- oncile the Celtic Christians with Rome’s authority, proved underwhelming, but did not deter the faith Rylance had in Oswald. The second play Oswald produced for the Globe hit the mark. The Golden Ass, is a bawdy comedic tale about an “insatiably curious young man who, wish- ing to turn himself into a wise owl, takes the wrong drug and finds himself transformed into an ass.” The play, inspired by the second century Latin novel by Lucius Apuleius, became a hit with both critics and audiences alike in the summer of 2002. Oswald’s star was on the rise; however, theatre companies struggled with the poetic form with which he chose to write. In a 2005 interview with London’s Guardian newspaper Oswald states: “I thought after the success of The Golden Ass, theatres would be more interested in what I am doing. I was wrong. I think it is partly that reading any play and knowing whether it is going to work on stage is hard enough, but a verse play is harder still. It is another obstacle to getting a play on and it is exacer- bated because there are so few people around with the skills to read them—those skills have been let slip.” Verse drama is a form of dramatic expression in which the play is penned in such a way that the lines are written in a poetic style. This tradition dates back to the ancient Greeks and went out of style in the nineteenth century with the success of playwrights such as Ibsen and Shaw. William Shakespeare produced his works at the height of the dramatic verse movement and, in fact, contributed to much, if not all, of its popularity. Some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines are written in this style. Test yourself and finish this quote: “Double double toil and trouble . .” So why did Oswald choose this form of what many audiences consider to be an inaccessible way to dramatically communicate? Oswald states: “Even T.S. Eliot admitted that verse drama was damned hard and said he thought you had to give your life to it. I do sometimes feel that there is a deep-rooted unwillingness to really engage with it in theatre.