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Mucedorus and the Birth of Merlin at the Los Angeles Globe

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Mucedorus and the Birth of Merlin at the Los Angeles Globe 368 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY with the attitudes of the other male characters in the production. The tribunes, Sicinius and Junius Brutus, were urban hustlers who confidently sported fashionable walking sticks, d la 1890s, when it seemed apparent that Marcius had lost his bid for power against them. In the final scene the envelope containing the terms for peace between Rome and the Volsces was refused and silently returned to the briefcase in which it was delivered. War would continue, as would the irrational forces that shape such conflicts, with or without proud and unresponsive leaders like Marcius. His life was given a wider perspective in this final, silent moment with the envelope, a perspective in which neither his guilt nor Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/41/3/368/5085016 by guest on 29 September 2021 our affection really figured. Peace is finally out of Marcius's hands, carried instead by the unseen and unspoken forces that have controlled people and events throughout history. Mucedorus and The Birth of Merlin at the Los Angeles Globe JOSEPH H. STODDER The plan of Globe Playhouse producers R. Thad Taylor and Jay Uhley to perform the fifteen most noteworthy of the apocryphal plays is continuing, but they are being offered at a slower pace than had originally been intended. After a promising beginning (Sir Thomas More in 1984, then seven plays between July 1985 and March 19871), the Globe was confronted by the restrictions imposed by the new Actors' Equity Association rules. The Los Angeles Theatre Plan of October 1988 removed the equity waiver (a release permitting low-budget houses to function without paying directors, actors, and crews) under which small theatres such as the Globe had been operating. The result for the Globe was that its production of little-known plays such as those in the apocryphal series had to be scheduled at less frequent intervals. Since the Globe's main revenue is drawn from productions of the more popular Shakespeare plays, specialized offerings are now relegated to summer months. Thus Mucedorus, the next play in the series, was not performed until July of 1987, and it was not until August 1988 that it was followed by The Birth of Merlin. Plans, as of early 1989, call for production of The Merry Devil of Edmonton and Locrine in summer 1989, concluding with Fair Em, Edmund Ironside, and Cardenio (Lewis Theobald's Double Falsehood, or The Distress'd Lovers) to be offered as budgeting permits under the new Equity Plan. Mucedorus was one of the most popular plays of its time and throughout the next half-century, going through at least seventeen editions between 1598 and 1668. By 1610 it was well enough known for the Citizen's Wife in Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle to make a casual reference to it as a play in which the grocery apprentice, Ralph, had acted. External evidence for Shakespeare attribution, as with a number of the apocryphal plays, is limited to the statement on title pages (1610 and after) that it had been performed "By his Highnes Servants usually playing at the Globe"—that is, by Shakespeare's company, at his theatre, and in his lifetime. As for internal evidence, attention has focused on the post-1610 additions, of a superior quality to the main text and variously attributed to Greene, Lodge, Peele, or to Shakespeare himself. C. F. Tucker Brooke, who is less tolerant of the possibility of Shakespeare's hand in the play than a more modern, less reverent editor might be,2 asserts that the additions were ' For my review of these seven productions, see Shakespeare Quarterly, 38 (1987), 243-48, and 39 (1988), 232-38. 2 See, for example, Arvin H. Jupin, ed., Mucedorus: A Contextual Study and Modern-Spelling Edition (New York: Garland, 1987). Jupin argues that Shakespeare's hand in Mucedorus need not be measured by literary quality only, but can also be seen in the play's extraordinary ability to meet the demands of its audience. SHAKESPEARE ON STAGE 369 written by "a person of true, but neither great nor mature poetic gifts who stood somewhat under the influence of Shakespeare."3 Whoever the author was, one fact remains: Mucedorus was hugely successful for most of a century. Director Bennett E. McClellan began his production of the play with the passage of fulsome praise for James I that was added, along with several scenes, to the 1610 edition. Since it was addressed to an unnamed "most sacred majesty," and since it had little relevance to the play, its effect was one of some confusion for this modern audience. In approaching these works, with their special value as historical artifacts, the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/41/3/368/5085016 by guest on 29 September 2021 Globe directors understandably endeavor to retain each detail, but sometimes risk unfortunate results, as the flawed beginning of this production demonstrated. McClellan next orchestrated a colorful procession of the characters across the stage, led by Comedy, in a flower-decked frock, with more flowers scattered in her hair, and with sparkling arms and legs. Her opposite, Envy, followed—all black, with sharp nose and arching eyebrows. Behind them came the rest of the cast in varied postures: Mucedorus; Anselmo; Mouse, the Clown; the Bear; Segasto; Amadine; and Adrastus. The progress ended in a graceful dance to a Renaissance measure. When the other characters had dispersed, Comedy was left alone, excitedly describ­ ing to the audience the entertainment she had in store for them. Suddenly Envy erupted, grim and menacing, from the Globe's trapdoor, terrifying Comedy with threats to "mix your music with a tragic end." Comedy, however, quickly regained her composure, and the two of them fell into an animated debate on the popular topic of the respective merits of comedy and tragedy. In this Induction, Comedy won a guarded victory, but Envy warned that he would infuse the action with tragic elements, beginning with "threats of blood" in the opening scenes of the play. Comedy responded by confidently reassuring the audience that she would nevertheless bring forth "from tragic stuff . a pleasant comedy." McClellan cleverly wove together the figures of Comedy and Envy throughout his production (in the text they reappear only as epilogue). Comedy had the responsibility of identifying, with placards, the frequently shifting settings as the action alternated between the court of Valencia, the Forest of Aragon, and the court of Aragon. Both Comedy and Envy also assumed choric roles, appearing periodically to influence a character or otherwise guide the action. The main plot of Mucedorus is thin and predictable, centering in the conventions of disguise and eventual recognition to resolve the complications of a courtship. The Aragonian prince, Mucedorus (Robert Standley), in love with Amadine (Lori Russo), the daughter of the King of Valencia, disguises himself as a shepherd in order to court her in her country, unrecognized and on a more simple, personal level. After he rescues her from a bear, she falls in love with him, but he is banished for having killed the king's captain, whom Mucedorus's rival, Segasto (Tony Weber), had sent to murder him. Forced into a second disguise, now as a hermit, Mucedorus again rescues Amadine, this time from Bremo, the wild man of the forest. What follows is thus a double revelation: first of his identity (as her beloved shepherd) to Amadine, then, after being restored to the king's graces, his identity within the identity—as Prince Mucedorus—to her father, as well as to Amadine herself. The play's great popularity did not rely, one would hope, on the spinning out of this basically hackneyed story. More likely, seventeenth-century audiences were delighted, as was this twentieth-century one, by such intriguing characters as Mouse, the Clown (Joe Barnaba), and Bremo, the wild man (Steve Welles). Barnaba's Mouse was a scintillating merry-andrew, darting in and out of the main action, infusing it each time not only with welcome low-comic relief but also with renewed energy. Some of his best scenes were those with the villain of the play—his master, Segastus—wherein Mouse regularly misused words by mispronouncing or juxtaposing them, or in other ways misconstrued messages. The flustered Segastus thus became the butt of the humor, to the delight of the audience. 3 The Shakespeare Aprocrypha (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918), p. xxvi. 370 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY Welles played Bremo as a satyr-like figure, more bestial than human, with a crude, primitive mentality. Bremo's first scene began with Comedy silently watching as Amadine waited in the forest for her rendezvous to elope with her shepherd, Mucedorus. From the upper stage, Envy, true to his promise to make Comedy's actors ' 'fear the very dart of death," beckoned Bremo from his inner-stage forest den to attack Amadine. As Bremo hungrily eyed his victim, lusting to "glut [his] greedy guts with lukewarm blood," Comedy intervened. At this point the text simply depicts Bremo as confused by a sudden inexplicable loss of strength combined with an alien pang of conscience, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/41/3/368/5085016 by guest on 29 September 2021 and thus unable to harm Amadine. McClellan, however, articulated the textual impli­ cations, employing Comedy as a counteractive Ariel-like agent who wafted Bremo away from his victim with flowing gestures. In his bemused state Bremo yielded to Amadine's charms, at least until, in a succeeding scene, she could be rescued by Mucedorus. Mucedorus is a frothy comedy, fast-paced and insistently entertaining.
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