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Shakespearean Drama, the Plague Years, and Consolations for Today Jyotsna G

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Shakespearean Drama, the Plague Years, and Consolations for Today Jyotsna G SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA, THE PLAGUE YEARS, AND CONSOLATIONS FOR TODAY JYOTSNA G. SINGH THANKS to WILLIAMSTON THEATRE .We thank you for your continuing support to Williamston theatre This talk is also dedicated to ALL THE Theatre Practitioners Critics and Scholars whose work inspired this talk and to whom I am indebted include the following: Profs. Emma Smith, Stephen Greenblatt, Rebecca Totaro, Ernest Gilman, and Paul Yachnin, and James Shapiro. SHAKESPEAREAN LONDON – 1616 C. THE GLOBE THEATRE LEFT CORNER FOREGROUND OUTSIDE LONDON CITY LIMITS NOT RESPECTABLE. IN SOUTHWARK- CENTER BACKGROUND ST PAUL’S CHURCHYARD, PLAGUE BURIALS AND BOOK SELLERS vEarly modern London was an expanding metropolis filled with diverse life, from THE MONARCH to courtiers, merchants and artisans to prostitutes, beggars and apprentices. vThus Shakespeare’s London was home to a cross-section of early modern English culture, with increasing evidence of its GLOBAL ROLE . Trading companies brought wealth to the city. Levant Company, East india Company, Royal African Company. Its populace of roughly 100,000 people included royalty, nobility, merchants, artisans, laborers, actors, beggars, thieves, and spies, as well as refugees from political and religious persecution on the continent. Drawn by England’s budding economy, merchants from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and even further afield set up shop in London. As a result, Londoners would hear a variety of accents and languages as they strolled about the city – a chorus of voices from across Europe. Also found in the population were foreigners outside the European Christian world; Moors, Turks, Indians from the New World, and also some Sub- Saharan Africans. These could be ambassadors or servants. THIS IS HOW AN OUTDOOR PLAYHOUSE SUCH AS THE GLOBE LOOKED AT THE TURN OF THE 17TH CENTURY. IT IS AN EARLY COPY OF A DRAWING OF THE SWAN PLAYHOUSE MADE BY JOHANNES DE WITT, A DUTCH VISITOR TO LONDON, IN 1596. THE COPY IS THE ONLY KNOWN ELIZABETHAN REPRESENTATION OF THE INTERIOR OF A PUBLIC THEATRE. POPULARITY OF PLAYS IN SHAKESPEAREAN LONDON. PUBLIC, COMMERCIAL THEATRE v Playgoing was part of the city's daily life and all levels of society shared the experiences of the theatre. Aristocrats were familiar with the dramas of the day from acting parts at school, seeing plays at Court and, later, becoming patrons of the stage. Apprentices and merchants also enjoyed the theatre and often took an afternoon off work to go and see a play. v NEW PLAYHOUSES AND COMPANIES OF ACTORS Consequently, when Shakespeare began working in London around 1588 the market was good for new companies and, between 1567 and 1622, nine new outdoor playhouses were built. Boy companies competed against the adult companies and were actually able to earn more money than their more experienced rivals.Shakespeare was part of The Lord Chamberlain's Men. Later called the King's Men, they first worked in The Theatre and then in the Globe. Performing to a potential audience of 3,000 people, they required an interesting and varied stock of repertoire.Each day the company presented a different play, rehearsing it in the morning before performing it in the afternoon. SHAKESPEARE AND THE PLAGUE YEARS - SHAKESPEARE LIVED HIS ENTIRE LIFE IN THE SHADOW OF BUBONIC PLAGUE, WHICH HAD FIRST RAVAGED THE COUNTRY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. IT RETURNED WITH DEADLY FORCE, WITH SOME OF ITS WORST OUTBREAKS OCCURRING IN 1592-93, 1603-1605-1606, 1625, 1636-38 AND, FINALLY, IN 1665. On April 26, 1564, in the parish register of Holy Trinity Church, in Stratford-upon- Avon, the vicar, John Bretchgirdle, recorded the baptism of one “Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere.” A few months later, in the same register, the vicar noted the death of Oliver Gunne, an apprentice weaver, and in the margins next to that entry scribbled the words “hic incipit pestis” (here begins the plague. On that occasion, the epidemic took the lives of around a fifth of the town’s population LONDON C. 1600 GEORGE WITHER’S HYMNS AND SONGS OF THE CHURCH (1623) SET BY ORLANDO GIBBONS, INCLUDES A SONG “ FOR DELIVERANCE FROM A PUBLIC SICKNESS. MANY ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE IMAGE OF THE PLAGUE DOCTOR, POPULARISED BY THE VENETIAN CARNIVAL (FIGURE 1). HIS PERSONAL PROTECTION EQUIPMENT INCLUDES HIS FAMOUS BEAK CONTAINING HERBS AND SPICES TO FILTER AND PURIFY THE AIR, A GLASS LENS COVERING HIS EYES, AND A LEATHER MASK PROTECTING HIS FACE, ALL DESIGNED TO PREVENT THE INHALATION OR ABSORPTION OF THE CORRUPT VAPOURS OF PLAGUE. PESTILENCE AND PLAGUE WERE SEEN IN TERMS OF INFECTED AIR, RATHER THAN RATS AND FLEAS. ”CORRUPT AIR, THE CAUSE AND VEHICLE FOR THE TRANSMISSION OF PLAGUE” A DETAILED BOOK OF ORDER AND RESTRICTIONS SET DOWN KING JAMES I IN 1603. Orders, thought meete by his Maiestie, and his Priuie Counsell, to be executed throughout the counties of this realme, in such townes, villages, and other places, as are, or may be hereafter infected with the plague, for the stay of further increase of the same. Also, an aduise set downe by the best learned in physicke within this realme, containing sundry good rules and easie medicines, without charge to the meaner sort of people, aswel for the preseruation of his good subiects from the plague before infection, as for the curing and ordering of them after they shalbe infected. The first half of King James’ Book of Rules is dedicated to physical orders enforced to try and control the plague in London and the surrounding areas. Houses were ‘to be closed up’ for six weeks if one of the inhabitants fell ill, and the sick were encouraged to be “restrained from resorting into company of others” for fear of spreading infection. If they did leave the house, they were to mark their clothes so as to warn others of their disease – they could be overseen by watchmen and breaking these orders could be punished by a spell in the stocks. Moreover, “clothes, bedding and other stuffe as hath been worne and occupied by the infected of this disease” were collected and burnt.. VARIOUS CURES… CLOSURE OF THE THEATRES – IN LONDON As a shareholder and sometime actor in his playing company, as well as its principal playwright, Shakespeare had to grapple throughout his career with these repeated, economically devastating closings. There were particularly severe outbreaks of plague in 1582, 1592-93, 1603-04, 1606, and 1608-09. While the theaters were closed for an epidemic in 1592-3, the fledgling playwright produced his hugely successful narrative poems “Venus and Adonis” (a piece of beautiful erotica in which the goddess Venus throws herself at the unwilling Adonis) and “The Rape of Lucrece” (a queasily voyeuristic poem about sexual assault). Again in 1603-4, when plague prevented the coronation celebrations for the new king, James I, and one in five Londoners succumbed to the disease, Shakespeare was probably writing his study of civic corruption, “Measure for Measure.” in the years between 1606 and 1610—the period in which Shakespeare wrote and produced some of his greatest plays, from “Macbeth” and “Antony and Cleopatra” to “The Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest”—the London playhouses were not likely to have been open for more than a total of nine months. HOW DID THE DISEASE, THE CLOSURE OF THE THEATRES, IMPACT SHAKESPEARE’S LITERARY WORKS? IMAGERY OF DEATH AND DYING IS PERVASIVE IN HIS PLAYS. MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SOCIETIES WERE NO STRANGERS TO DEATH. SMALL POX, SYPHILIS ”SWEATS” “FLUXES,”” FEVERS” IN SHAKESPEARE’S AND OTHER PLAYS OF THE PERIOD CHARACTERS ARE KILLED AND MURDERED. INTIMATIONS OF CORRUPTION, POISONS, AND CONTAGIONS ABOUND. LONDON IS A “DISEASED CITY” DURING THESE YEARS. DOES THE ACTUAL PLAGUE MOVE ON TO THE STAGE IN SHAKEPEAREAN OR OTHER PLAYS? DOES IT FIGURE IN THE SONNETS AND THE LONGER NARRATIVE POEMS? The plague as an actual event figures prominently in only one of Shakespeare’s plays.. Friar Laurence in “Romeo and Juliet” has asked a fellow friar to deliver a crucial message to the exiled Romeo in Mantua, informing him about the clever drug that is going to make Juliet appear to have died. Franciscans, who as an order went either barefoot or in sandals, were required by their rules to travel in pairs. Hence the messenger had to locate another Franciscan in Verona (“in this city”) to accompany him.n“Rom and Juliet” has asked a iato deliver a crucial message to the exiled Romeo in Mantua, informing him about the clever drug that is going to make Juliet appear to have died. Franciscans, who as a discalced order went either barefoot or in sandals, were required by their rules to travel in pairs. Hence the messenger had to locate another Franciscan in Verona (“in this city”) t to accompany him . FRIAR” Going to find a barefoot brother out, One of our order, to associate me, Here in this city visiting the sick, And finding him, the searchers of the town, Suspecting that we both were in a house Where the infectious pestilence did reign, Sealed up the doors and would not let us forth, So that my speed to Mantua there was stayed . The Friar found this intended companion visiting the sick, and both were therefore suspected of having been exposed to the disease. As a result, they were put into quarantine. “The searchers of the town”—that is, the public-health officers—literally locked them in by nailing the doors shut. The quarantine has evidently only just ended. Friar Laurence returns to the key question—“Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo?” —and receives a dismaying answer: I could not send it—here it is again— Nor get a messenger to bring it thee, So fearful were they of infection.
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