sign in sign up
<<
Home , Lord High Treasurer, Mary Stuart (play), Peter Oswald, The Robbers, William Tell (play)

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 :Mary Artist, Scientist, Stuart Translator 5 Life with 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 is imprisoned in —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 . 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 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. Burleigh, the high treasurer, tells Mary the execution should be carried out; the 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 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 , 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 ’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. People often seem to think that what I am trying to do is re-create Shakespeare, which would be the worst thing imaginable. I am not. I am trying to write contemporary plays that use iambic pentameter because to me it seems like the most natural form to use. Its beat is the beat of a heartbeat, and at its best it stimulates the listener’s heart. It is also free-flowing and in its metrical form it is very close to normal everyday speech. Actors just love it.” Imagine a playwright not only working to compose in dramatic verse, but also translating the work of another, which of course brings us to Mary Stuart. Friedrich Schiller’s play of 1800 tells the story of Mary Queen of Scots and her rival Elizabeth of England. Although the fictional meeting never happened, as Goethe said in anticipation of the 1800 production, “It will be good to see those two whores alongside each other.” Oswald’s translation of Mary Stuart, written in his characteristic style, a mixture of prose and poetry, opened in 2005 to rave reviews. It went on to London’s West End and to Broadway where it received seven Tony Award nominations. Peter Oswald continues to produce original works and translate the works of others. How well does he do with Schiller’s Mary Stuart ? Find out this summer as “Heads will roll,” or as Friedrich Schiller would say “Köpfe werden rollen.” In the interest of full disclosure, I Googled that.

6 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Life of Friedrich Schiller By Christine Frezza Friedrich Schiller holds the same high place in Germany as William Shakespeare does in England: every city seems to have a Schiller Street or place or square—there’s even a university named after him. Although he lived for only forty-five years, Schiller crammed so many activities and experiences into his existence that he might be said to have lived two if not three lives simultaneously. Although many may never have read or seen a Schiller play before, his 1785 poem, , whose lyrics are part of the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony are recognizable to most of the Western World. Born in southwest Germany in 1759, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller’s first desire was to become a minister. Instead, however, he was sent to military school at the wish of his father’s patron, the Duke Karl Eugen. There he studied the law, and when graduated moved to to study medi- cine, which became his first career. Schiller found a love for Shakespeare’s vitality in describing “the passions and secret movements of the heart in the specific expressions of the persons” (Schiller, quoted in Williams, Shakespeare on the German Stage vol. 1, p. 4) and incorporated his natural expressions in his own dramatic writings as a rejections of the French stiff neoclassicism which was prevalent in the last quarter of the eighteenth cen- tury. In 1780 Schiller became simultaneously a doctor in the army and began the draft of his first play, . Nobody at first wanted to publish it or even perform it because of its provocative nature. So Schiller published it anonymously at his own expense in 1781, and it was performed at the Mannheim theatre in 1782. The play was an instant sensation, and the director offered to produce any plays Schiller might write in the future. The Robbers’ success came from not so much from its plot (the noble brother, false- ly disinherited, becomes a self-proclaimed Robin Hood) as the realization of the hero, Karl, that crimes, even when committed for the best of reasons, do not make one a hero: “What a fool I was to think that I could make the world a better place with horror and to uphold the law by breaking it,” (The Robbers, V-2). Karl then turns himself in to the law’s punishment for his crimes. To the horror of governments, and the delight of those rejecting neoclassicism, the dominant genre in this Age of Enlightenment, young audiences were struck by the new spirit of and republicanism which was overtaking the arts, spurred by the American and French revolutions: “The play’s critique of social corruption and its affirmation of proto-revolutionary republican ideals astound- ed its original audience. Schiller became an overnight sensation. Later, Schiller would be made an hon- orary member of the French Republic because of this play” (Wikipedia.org). When the duke heard of the play’s success, as well as the fact that Schiller was now taking weeklong trips to Mannheim to work with the theatre there, he put him in jail for two weeks, forbade him to attend any more performances of the play, and limited him to publishing only papers on medical work. Faced with putting an end to his creative writing, Schiller quit his job and moved to Mannheim, where he continued to write plays, novels, histories, poems, and essays. Between The Robbers and his final complete play, , in 1804, and taken in his entirety as an author, Schiller’s output is prodigious and varied. He wrote six prominent plays, three histories, some novels and numerous poems, as well as editing two literary journals and co-authoring poems with Goethe and adapting some Shakespeare’s for production at . Between 1784 and 1805 (the year of his death) Schiller undertook a number of nondramatic endeavors in several German cities. While he lived in Dresden and Leipzig (during 1785) Schiller

Utah Shakespeare Festival 7 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 founded the literary journal Rheinische Thalia, the first issue of which featured Act 1 of his play, , as well as initial observations on the state of art and literature in Germany, which would be transferred to his great philosophical works, the Aesthetic Education of Man, published in 1794, and his essay On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry in 1795. The year 1794 was the beginning of Schiller’s close and lasting friendship with Goethe, the foremost German poet and dramatist of the period. The two collaborated to produce works which strengthened the practice of , which Goethe had established in the 1770s. Briefly stated, they wished to incorporate Greek classic ideals into a new form of literature which included the passion of German romanticism and combined these apparently disparate views into an organic while. To this end, they formed a network of scholars and artists, published a journal the Almanach, and co-wrote poems and a few plays. At Weimar, Schiller and Goethe joined in mutual expressions of their admiration for Shakespeare, though they were both turning back towards a more classic approach “In November 1797 . . . Schiller [writes] to Goethe “In the last days I have been reading the plays of Shakespeare which deal with the War of the Roses and now that I have finished Richard III, I am filled with true amazement. No Shakespearean play has so much reminded me of Greek tragedy” (Schiller, quoted in Michael Billington, The German Shakespeare [The Guardian, Jan. 29, 2005). Enriched by such artistic and philosophical companionship and finally financially secure, Schiller completed his great trilogy, Wallenstein, and Goethe produced it at Weimar, in 1799. In quick succession, there followed the publication and production of Mary Stuart and The Maid of Orleans. His works have been translated many times, most frequently since the bicentenary of his death in 2005. Several of them also have another life in Verdi’s : Luisa Miller, I Masnadieri, Giovanni d’Arco, and Don Carlos, and at least a co-credit for Macbeth, which is largely based not on Shakespeare’s original but on Schiller’s adaptation. Friedrich Schiller died of tuberculosis on May 6, 1805 and is buried next to Goethe in Weimar “guarding the ‘national’ theatre like two military heroes” (David E. John in Paul Kerry, Friedrich Schiller: playwright, poet, historian, 181). His lasting influence on theatre is perhaps best summed up in his own words: “The theater has the power to punish the thousand vices which justice must patiently tolerate; the thousand virtues which the latter must let pass without comment, on the stage are held up for general admiration. And here, at its side, are wisdom and religion. From their pure fountain it draws its lessons and examples, and clothes stern duty in charming and alluring robes. How it swells our soul with great emotions, resolves, passions—what a divine ideal it sets up for us to emulate!” (Translated by John Sigerson and John Chambless, Theatre considered as a Moral Institution, Schillerinstitute.org).

8 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 The Sins of Her Father By Diana Major Spencer Like the Divine Retribution of Greek myth, Henry VIII so affronts the gods that their vengeance pursues his heirs until the final mutual destruction of the last Tudors. Henry set the scene for Frederich Schiller’s taut drama, Mary Stuart, through his Act of Supremacy (1534), wherein he declared himself and his progeny supreme leaders of the church in England in perpe- tuity. Henry’s older sister, Margaret, wife to Scotland’s King, disapproved. Among his children, “Bloody” Mary remained devoutly Catholic in keeping with the heritage of her Spanish mother, Catherine of Aragon. Between Henry’s death in 1547 and Mary Stuart’s execution in 1587, his children and his sisters’ grandchildren swirled through a maelstrom of successional wrangling caused less by their proportion of Tudor blood than by Henry’s restructuring of Cristendom. To Catholics, Henry’s only sanctified wife was Catherine of Aragon; therefore, Catherine’s daughter, “Bloody” Mary, was the only legitimate successor to the throne, followed by Mary Stuart, the legitimate issue of Henry’s Scottish nephew, the late James V. Henry, however, declar- ing daughter Mary illegitimate, specifically excluded her from succession, deeming his marriage to Catherine “unlawful under God.” His son, Edward VI, as his short life ended, disowned both his Catholic sister, Mary, and his Protestant sister, Elizabeth, also passing over Catholic cousin Mary Stuart in favor of Protestant-leaning cousin, . “Bloody” Mary wrested the throne from Jane and reigned for five bloody years, poor Jane among her casualties. Protestant Elizabeth became queen at Mary’s death in 1558, the same year Mary Stuart married the Dauphin of France. Simultaneously Queen of Scotland, “legitimate” Queen of England, and, at seventeen, Queen of France, Mary Stuart steadfastly refused to rescind her claim to the English throne. Even so, she sought asylum in England in 1568 after being twice widowed, forced from the Scottish throne, deprived of her infant son (James VI), and impris- oned. The events of Schiller’s play represent the last few days before her execution in 1587. As the play opens, Mary Stuart, now age forty-four, is in her twentieth year of confinement in England, still refusing to acknowledge Elizabeth’s sovereignty. Schiller introduces her through the loyal eyes of Hanna Kennedy as guards ransack Mary’s quarters looking for evidence of “incite- ment to civil war.” Then, “Enter MARY, veiled, a Crucifix in her hand,” leaving no doubt about her religion, especially as she has asked “to be allowed the freedom to practice [her] religion but . . . still denied the sacraments” and demanding “a priest of [her] own church.” “Can I imagine,” she queries, “that she who has my crown and freedom, threatens my life, wants even to deny me heaven?” (emphasis mine). Schiller generates considerable sympathy for Mary in act 1, as she calms Hanna and explains to Paulet (a knight entrusted with her care from 1585 until her death) the import of her just-dis- covered letters to Elizabeth. She attributes this most recent assault to the ghost of her murdered husband, for which she claims ongoing penance. Puzzlement supplants sympathy as Hanna excus- es, without denying, Mary’s horrible crimes as acts of youth, possession, passion, and her third husband, Bothwell’s, seduction. Mortimer’s abrupt re-entry with fantasies of rescue, reinforced by Mary’s link with Leicester, Elizabeth’s favorite, further sobers our compassion. Mortimer (Paulet’s nephew), who presents himself publically as cold and aloof, reveals a deeply passionate spirit who “left the frozen sermons of the Puritans and travelled to the land of Italy” where he “never imagined [he] could feel so much.” “The church I was brought up in,” he tells Mary, “hates the senses, bans the image, worships nothing but the abstract word.” Then follows his ecstatic account of first seeing Mary’s likeness at the residence of her French uncle,

Utah Shakespeare Festival 9 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 a cardinal. “You are a Tudor,” Mortimer avers, “and the throne of England belongs to you, not to this specious queen conceived by Henry in adultery, declared a bastard by her father.” Mortimer describes his conversion to Catholicism as an aesthetic discovery and swears himself to Mary’s ser- vice—and liberation. Mary Stuart suggests others he might recruit to the purpose. Our compassion for Elizabeth is likewise ambiguous. In act 2, after Burleigh proposes the execution of Mary to prevent more uprisings, Elizabeth seeks council from gentle Talbot, who con- trasts the queens’ respective childhoods in terms that also contrast Protestant austerity, reason and duty against Catholic luxuriance, passion and desire: “No throne in sight for you,” Talbot comforts her; “only your grave. God taught you harsh lessons in the Tower of London . . . You learned early how to focus yourself, and hold true to what’s worth holding onto! No such luck for the other poor royal girl. Shipped off to France as a child, to the gay life! Nobody around her ever sober for long enough to teach her left from right. Addled by vice, swept downstream to destruction!” “I am not like the Stuart,” Elizabeth confides later to Leicester, “who gave herself exactly what she wanted, denied herself no pleasures, drunk a river of bliss! . . . [S]he declined the yoke I bowed to . . . I chose the harder road of royal duty.” Yet Elizabeth hesitates to act on Burleigh’s proposal to execute Mary Stuart, not willing to “tar- nish” her reputation—openly, at least. She signs Mary’s death warrant in the presence of her newest and weakest official, Davison, but remains stubbornly vague about how he should handle it. After Mary’s death, Elizabeth self-righteously condemns Davison to execution and Burleigh to exile, though she was never explicit in her intent. Duplicitous Leicester slinks away to France. The near-futile search for a persuasively straightforward human being in Schiller’s powerful drama intensifies its emotional engagement. The honorable characters, as Schiller sees them, Paulet and Talbot, have opportunities to violate their trust—through Burleigh and Elizabeth, respective- ly—and both men, thankfully, refuse. At the end of act 1, Burleigh challenges Paulet’s lack of attention to Elizabeth’s wishes: ”Is there no one . . . she seems to be saying [emphasis mine], who can save me from this monstrous dilemma: either to reign in fear forever, or to send a queen, my own cousin, to the block.” With sharper ears, Burleigh continues, “capable of hearing unspoken orders,” Paulet could arrange for Mary to suc- cumb to some mysterious illness. But to his credit and the great relief of the audience, Paulet takes a moral stand to “let no killer in here! While my household gods protect her, her life is sacred to me—as sacred as the life of the Queen of England.” He is the last Englishman to show compassion to Mary Stuart as she goes to the block. Gentle Talbot voices sympathy and caution throughout. His sixteen-year tenure as Mary’s guard is truncated, Burleigh suggests, by his compassion: “The lady was transferred from Shrewsbury into the keeping of Sir Anias Paulet, in the hopes that—[unspoken hint to Paulet]” (act 1). Talbot pleads for peace with both Mary and Elizabeth prior to their meeting in act 3. He cautions Elizabeth against signing the death order. He goes to the tower to visit Mary’s secretaries, who admit to giving false testimony against her. But too late: Burleigh has already set the execution in motion. When the news of Mary’s death arrives, Talbot asks Elizabeth’s permission to retire. She pleads with him to stay; he responds, “I lack the necessary flexibility . . . Live long, reign happily! Your rival is dead. Nothing to fear now. Or respect” [emphasis mine]. Schiller portrays two powerful women, cousins, both flawed, both queens, both with under- standable claims to the crown of England, who struggle at the heart of a no-win plot of weakness, manipulation, madness, cowardice, infidelity, avoidance, treachery, suspicion, attempted murder, and religious conflict. At the end Elizabeth is sad and alone, childless, the sole surviving Tudor. The sins of her father weigh mightily upon her head.

10 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880