Minions and Henchmen

06 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, Theatre and Performance, Villains

Tags

carabiniers, Falscappa, Gilbert and Sullivan, Henchmen, Jacques Offenbach, Les Brigands, Major General, Minions, Pirate King, The Keystone Cops, The Pirates of Penzance

As ever, dear readers, welcome. In our last, entitled “Henchmen and Minions”, we had a brief look at henchmen—that is, the servants—in groups—of evil-doers, from orcs

to Imperial stormtroopers.

These were a grim lot, doing their masters’ work and showing no signs of remorse or regret and mostly very competent at doing so.

In this posting, we thought that we would take the opposite tack and look at minions—for our purposes, we’ll define them as the Light Side of the Dark Side. Often, unlike Sauron or Cardinal Richelieu in our last post, their bosses are hardly the object of fear themselves.

We begin with two combinations of comic ineptitude: government mounted police vs bandits and policemen vs pirates.

In 1869, Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)

composed the music for Les Brigands (“The Bandits”).

The plot concerns the adventures of a group of Italian banditti, led by a chief called Falsacappa, (“Fake Cape”, suggesting that he’s only wearing the costume of a bandit and is, in fact, someone not so bold?)

who are scheming to pull off a major heist. Here (along with that of Falsacappa) are some of the original costume designs.

These bandits talk (and sing) as if they were blood-thirsty killers, mostly, but that seems to be all that they do, except indulge in petty crime. Their opponents, the carabiniers (here’s an original design for their uniforms),

the ancestors of the modern carabinieri,

although the costume design makes them look much more like French Napoleonic carabiniers,

a pair of cavalry units, rather than mounted police, are even less impressive. In fact, as they march onstage, they recite this (our crude translation):

“Nous sommes les carabiniers, gauche, gauche
La sécurité des foyers, gauche, gauche
Mais, par un malheureux hasard,
Au secours des particuliers
Nous arrivons toujours trop tard…”

“We are the carabiniers, left, left.

The security of homes, left, left.

But, by an unhappy chance,

In helping private citizens,

We always arrive too late.”

They are also so loud as they tramp along that they always alert criminals that they are coming (and there’s a song about that)—just look at this sheet music cover to give you an idea.

As for a leader, he seems just to blend in with his hapless men.

In 1871, WS Gilbert (1836-1911)

of (eventual) Gilbert and Sullivan (1842-1900) operetta fame,

published a translation of Les Brigands, which became the standard 19^th-century translation. The characters in the Offenbach clearly also influenced Gilbert, who, in 1879, created The Pirates of Penzance.

Led by a Pirate King, who looks the part, but…

the plot concerns some extremely tender-hearted pirates, who, being orphans themselves, always let people—and ships—go if the crews claim to be orphans.

Their opponents, who appear to be Metropolitan policemen (“Bobbies/Peelers”),

are extremely timid and jump at the slightest sound—which is not surprising, as their chief is an elderly major general whose greatest claim is that he knows everything about war—except for war.

Inept or timid policemen seem to be very popular as minions—early film featured The Keystone Cops from 1912-1917.

If earlier figures, like the carabiniers and the Gilbert and Sullivan police were dim or fraidy-cats, the Keystone Cops were an absolute disaster, causing more problems than they ever solved–

which brings us to our last exhibit

and perhaps enough said.

Thanks for reading, as always, and, as always,

MTCIDC

If you would like to see the Keystone Cops in action, here’s a LINK to one of their films, “For Better But Worse” at the Internet Archive.

(There are more there.)

Water Which?

12 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Poetry, Theatre and Performance

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alaric Hall, Alberich, Antonin Dvorak, Apollonius, Argonautica, Arthur Rackham, Elves, ETA Hoffmann, Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, Hans Christian Andersen, Heinemann, Heracles, Hylas, Jason and the Golden Fleece, John William Waterhouse, Judy Collins, mermaids, naiads, Nemean Lion, Old English Poems, Rhine Maidens, Richard Wagner, Rusalka, selkies, silkies, sirens, swan-maidens, The Great Silkie of Sul Skerry, The Little Mermaid, Tommy Makem, Undine, waeteraelfadl, Water Elf Sickness

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

Just today, our English friend, Michael, sent us an interesting CD set, “Old English Poems, Prose & Lessons”. We turned the jewel box over and our eye was immediately caught by #12 of the listings on the back, “Charm Against Waterelf Sickness”.

In Old English, “waterelf sickness” is a compound which can be read two ways: “waeteraelf-adl” (“water-elf sickness”) or “waeter-aelfadl” (something like “watery elf-sickness”). Alaric Hall, in his extremely informative dissertation, “The Meaning of Elf, and Elves, in Medieval England” (2005), 116, leans towards the second possibility, but, with our western classical background, we immediately imagined a “water elf” and, from there, we thought of naiads—female water spirits–in fresh water, like streams and pools. (If you would like a comprehensive listing of all the subvarieties of such spirits, here’s a LINK to an article on the subject.)

Probably the most famous story about such creatures appears in Apollonius of Rhodes’ 3^rd-c. BC, Argonautica, the story of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece.

Two of Jason’s crew on the Argo are Heracles (seen here dealing with the Nemean Lion)

image2herc

and his companion, Hylas (seen here about to get into trouble).

Ancient travel in the Mediterranean often meant coasting, with frequent stops for water, and, in Apollonius’ story, Hylas had gone ashore and found a pool, but was ambushed by a group of naiads, who pulled him under.

(This is John William Waterhouse’s famous 1896 painting of the scene.)

We meet woman waterfolk in much of western folk tradition—and this is excluding those on salt water, including mermaids,

selkies/silkies (who are shape-changers, between seals and humans),

and even sirens.

For fresh water, we had those naiads, but also swan-maidens, often enchanted into water bird forms.

(Here’s a LINK to a whole little collection of stories about such creatures.)

As well, we have the Rhine Maidens,

who, in Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, guard the Rhine gold, deep under the river, but who lose it to the craftsman dwarf, Alberich, with whom they flirted—with evil consequences.

We mentioned mermaids as salt water creatures and, in Hans Christian Andersen’s (1805-1875)

“The Little Mermaid” (1837), we have the story of the mermaid who falls in love with a handsome prince and trades her voice for human form.

(This is the first page of Andersen’s original manuscript.)

There had been an earlier Romantic version of the water spirit and the human (in this case, a knight) in Friedrich de la Motte Fouque’s (1777-1843) novella, Undine (1811).

This, in turn, became an early Romantic opera, Undine (1816), the text by the author, the music by another famous Romantic author, E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822).

The theme which runs through all of these meetings of water spirit and human is the uneasy relationship which seems the only possibility for them, virtually always leading to unhappiness, and this is true of our last water spirit, Rusalka, the subject of an opera, Rusalka, (1901) by the Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

Like Andersen’s Little Mermaid, the water spirit (“rusalka” can mean “water spirit” in Czech) falls in love with a prince, trading her immortality for human love.

(This is an image of the original Rusalka, Ruzena Maturova.)

If we said “leading to unhappiness” is the usual conclusion to such romances, Rusalka is even worse. When she is betrayed by the prince, Rusalka becomes a water demon, luring people to their deaths in her pool—a far cry from the happy ending of the Disney movie!

So, what about our charm against waeteraelfadl? Here’s a translation:

“If a man is in the water elf disease [waeter aelfadle], then the nails of his hand are dark and the eyes teary, and he will look down. Give him this as medicine [laecedome]: everthroat, hassock, the lower part of fane, yewberry, lupin, helenium, marshmallow head, fen mint, dill, lily, attorlathe, pulegium, marrubium, dock, elder, fel terre, wormwood, strawberry leaves, consolde. Soak with ale; add holy water to it. Sing this gealdor over it thrice:

I have bound on the wounds the best of war bandages, so the wounds neither burn nor burst, nor go further, nor spread, nor jump, nor the wounds increase [waco sian?], nor sores deepen. But may he himself keep in a healthy way [halewaege?]. May it not ache you more than it aches earth in ear [eare?].

Sing this many times, “May earth bear on you with all her might and main.” These galdor a man may sing over a wound.”

(translation from Karen Louise Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)

Unfortunately, this looks more like a cure for a skin disease than for an ill-fated affair between water spirit and human!

Thanks, as always, for reading and, also as always,

MTCIDC

You can find Alaric Hall’s dissertation (now a book) at: http://www.alarichall.org.uk/phd.php.

pps

Child Ballad 113, “The Great Silkie of Sul Skerry” is about the male version of such a creature. For a haunting performance of this, with a modern tune, sung by Judy Collins (with Tommy Makem on pennywhistle), here’s a LINK.

ppps

The most famous aria from Dvorak’s opera is a song sung to the moon by Rusalka, “Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém“, and we find it one of the most beautiful arias we know. Here’s a LINK so that you can hear it, too.

pppps (we think that this is a record, even for us)

In 1909, the publisher Heinemann released a translation of de la Motte Fouque’s Undine with illustrations by Arthur Rackham. Here’s a LINK so that you can download it and add it to your library.

Games with Shadows

25 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Narrative Methods, Theatre and Performance

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Tags

Claude Debussy, cuntastori, Estampes, gamelan, Hacivat, Indian shadow puppets, Indonesia, Javanese, Karaghiozis, Karagoez, Lotte Reiniger, Mahabharata, Marionettes, metallophones, Mimmo Cuticchio, Pagodes, Paris Exposition, puppets, Ramayana, shadow puppets, Teatro dell'Opera dei Pupi, Turkey, Wallace and Gromit, wayang kulit

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

From our childhood, we’ve been interested in puppets. We began with marionettes.

(These, by the way, are from Palermo, in Sicily, and come from the famous Teatro dell’Opera dei Pupi, whose chief puparo, or puppeteer, is a hero of ours, Mimmo Cuticchio,

who is also a street-corner storyteller, a cuntastori, who, with only a cape and wooden sword, can make anything happen.)

All kinds of puppets interest us, however, from the most elaborate, like marionettes,

to the most basic–

and what can be more basic than Cookie Monster?

In our last, we briefly mentioned the work of Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981),

who, in a long career, created hundreds of figures in silhouette, employing them to tell both traditional stories as well as original ones.

Her method was to draw and cut out figures, then film them with stop-motion photography—if you know the adventures of Wallace and Gromit, you’ll have seen the clay figure version of this method.

Her figures, as we wrote, reminded us of traditional shadow puppets, once popular in many parts of the world, from Karagoez, in Turkey (KAH-rah-goes on the right, with his friend, Hacivat—HA-tsih-vat)

to his Greek cousin, Karaghiozis,

to Indian shadow puppets

to their direct descendants, the wayang kulit, or “leather puppets” of Indonesia.

Not only the look of these puppets, but how they’re managed against a screen reminded us of Lotte Reiniger’s work.

We say “direct descendants” because, considering the two main stories Indonesian puppeteers tell, as well as elements of the puppets themselves, it’s clear that this part of shadow puppet tradition has come to the island from farther west, those two stories, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, being traditional Indian epics, like the West’s Iliad and Odyssey.

(If you don’t know Indian epic, we would recommend this English version of the Ramayana. It’s meant for children, but it’s nicely told and keeps to the basic story—we also like the fact that the author’s first name, Bulbul, (“Nightingale”) is that of one of our main characters in our new novel, Grey Goose and Gander.)

Lotte Reiniger’s puppets are cut from what appears to be black cardboard and therefore lack color.

Traditional puppets are made of buffalo leather, scraped thin, and painted in such a way that they almost look like figures from medieval stained glass windows.

image12puppet

They are large and are supported on a rod, with thinner rods allowing the arms to move.

The stage is a large, white screen

image14screen

and the shadows are created by a lamp behind it. Traditionally, an oil lamp is used, but you can now see performance pictures with an electric light which, to us, is too bright and rather spoils the old-fashioned, smoky effect.

Because of the bright colors of the puppets, some people actually prefer to sit behind the screen,

where they can also better hear the accompanying orchestra, a gamelan, or group of metallophones.

image17gamelan

Here’s a LINK to music used in performances. We recommend it, believing it to be very beautiful, as well as being very different, both in sound and structure, from western classical music (and, if you read us regularly, you know that we’re passionate about that, as well). In fact, it has even influenced western classical music, particularly that of Claude Debussy (1862-1918).

Debussy first heard a gamelan in 1889 at the Paris Exposition,

was impressed with what he heard, and began to play with effects which echo gamelan compositions. “Pagodes” from his 1903 collection, Estampes (“Prints”) is a good example. Here’s a LINK so that you can compare it with the gamelan.

The performances themselves are an interesting mixture, typical of what was originally an oral tradition. Although plot lines are taken directly from epic, they act as a mere skeleton for the play. The puppeteer, like someone rebuilding a body on a skeleton, adds his own material—dialogue, subplots, extra characters, jokes, and, sometimes, political commentary—to (literally) flesh out the basic frame. It’s interesting, too, that the characters can be on two levels. On the upper level, they are all princesses and princes, kings and queens, nobles and generals.

On the lower level, they can be demons,

who act not only as servants, but as interpreters, a very necessary function as the upper level characters tend to speak in Old Court Javanese, an archaic language which the audience wouldn’t understand. The lower level speaks the local language and so can guide the audience through the (often complex) plot, as well as make local references and jokes.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to see wayang kulit outside of Indonesia or in any language besides those of Indonesia, but one of us has been fortunate to see several performances in English by the US puppeteer, Larry Reed, of Shadowlight Productions. These shows are about two hours long (very short in comparison with Indonesian performances, which can go on all night) and feel like 10 minutes, the magic being in the shadows, the plot, and the quick wit of the puppeteer. Here’s a LINK to Shadowlight to tell you more.

We want to end on a different note, however. A long time ago, we saw a very good amateur production of The Hobbit as a play. At the time, we were struck by how much could be done very simply on stage and, in particular, how Smaug could be brought to life with a small group of actors bunched together, swaying in a strobe light (that’s one of those flashing lights which alternates light and shadow effects) and all speaking at once. Ever since, we’ve thought about shadow plays and The Hobbit—just look at this dragon from a production by the Great Arizona Puppet Theatre—what do you think, dear readers?

And thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

If you’re bitten by the puppet bug, and would like to know more, visit The World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts at this LINK.

Theme and Variations.5

18 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, Literary History, Theatre and Performance

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Arthur Rackham, Aschenputtel, Brothers Grimm, Cendrillon, Charles Perrault, Cinderella, CS Evans, Disney, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe, Jardin des Tuileries, Julie Andrews, La Belle au Bois Dormant, Lotte Reiniger, My Fair Lady, Ombres Chinoises, Oscar Hammerstein, Richard Rodgers, Sergei Prokofiev, Shadow puppet plays, Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky, wayang kulit, Zolushka

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In this post, we come to the end of our series on other ways of presenting fairy tales, in which we have taken two by the author who is usually cited as beginning the modern Western tradition, Charles Perrault (1628-1703).

In 1697, Perrault had published this,

entitled Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe (“Stories or Tales of/from Past Time”), with a kind of subtitle, Contes de Ma Mere L’Oye (“Tales of My Mother Goose”).

The volume contained only 8 stories, with two being “La Belle au Bois Dormant” (“The Beautiful Girl in the Sleeping Wood”)

and “Cendrillon” (“Cinderella”), which we chose to be the basis of our posts.

So far in these posts, we’ve looked at “Sleeping Beauty” in everything from ballet to Disney and “Cinderella” in early operas and silent films. In this final post of the series, we want to begin by saying, as we did in our first post, that “Cinderella” exists in two basic forms, that of Perrault, from 1697, and that of the Brothers Grimm,

from 1812.

In this version of the story, the fairy godmother is removed and replaced by birds seemingly sent by Cinderella’s dead mother.

We mention this because this is the version followed by our next creator, Charlotte (Lotte) Reiniger (1899-1981)

in her 1922 film, Aschenputtel (“Cinderella”)

This is a silent film in which delicately-cut paper figures through stop-motion photography are manipulated to tell the story.

Here’s a LINK so that you can enjoy the short (about 13 minutes) film. And, if you enjoy that, there are more of Reiniger’s works on YouTube for you to see.

To us, her work very much resembles wayang kulit, the traditional shadow plays of Bali,

as well as the Ombres Chinoises, (“Chinese Shadows”—Chinese shadow puppets) brought to France in the 18^th century.

It also closely resembles two works illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939),

his Cinderella (1919)

and The Sleeping Beauty (1920).

In each of these, Rackham employs silhouettes to tell the story (in versions by CS Evans), giving both the look of stories told by moonlight.

We could easily show you all of the illustrations, marveling at them right here, but, instead, we give you a LINK to an on-line version of The Sleeping Beauty (with apologies for not being able to locate an on-line Cinderella).

In one of our previous posts in the series, we discussed Tchaikovsky’s ballet, Sleeping Beauty, now we add to this Cinderella (Zolushka) by the Russian composer, Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953),

premiered in 1945. Here’s a LINK to a suite of music from it, along with two sheets of costume designs from the original production, suggesting what a sumptuous spectacle it must have been.

Prokofiev and his collaborators followed Perrault and the fairy godmother was back. Here’s the pumpkin coach from a more modern—but still Russian—production.

And this coach brings us to our next and next-to-last item.

We grew up with this image of the story in our heads, as well as its music.

This is the 1950 Disney version, which stuck fairly closely to the Perrault, but, along with the fairy godmother, kept the helpful birds (changing their color)

and added a gang of equally helpful mice.

To which we add our final piece. In 1957, the well-known composer/lyricist team of Rodgers and Hammerstein created a first, a made-for-television musical production of Perrault’s version, starring someone who was already becoming a star by appearing as Eliza Doolittle in Lerner and Lowe’s My Fair Lady, Julie Andrews.

In five postings, we’ve traveled from 1697 to 1957 and visited a number of places in between, all of which was based upon two traditional stories recreated in new tellings by Charles Perrault. Is it any wonder, then, that in 1910, this bust was erected to his memory in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Theme and Variations.1

20 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Theatre and Performance

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Bibliotheque nationale Francaise, Charles Kemble, Charles Perrault, costuming, David Garrick, Edward Burne-Jones, Extravaganzas, Faulconbridge, Folger Library, Giambattista Basile, Gianfrancesco Straparola, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe, Histories or Tales of Past Times, James Robinson Planche, King John, La Belle au Bois Dormant, Les Contes Des Fees, Madame d'Aulnoy, Mercure Galant, Mother Goose, Punch Magazine, Richard "Dicky" Doyle, Shakespeare, Sleeping Beauty, Sur La Lune

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

For a current writing project, we’ve gone back into our fairy tale collection (we recommend, by the way, the wonderful Sur La Lune site to help you to build yours—here’s a LINK) to reread the fairy tales of Charles Perrault (1628-1703)–

although he wasn’t the person who first called them that—that was his contemporary, Madame d’Aulnoy (1650/1-1705),

who called her stories contes des fees—“stories of fairies”.

In 1695, Perrault had circulated an illustrated manuscript of such tales, calling it Contes de ma Mere l’Oye—“Tales of My Mother Goose”.

In February, 1696, he published one of them, “La Belle au Bois Dormant”—“The Beautiful Girl in the Sleeping Wood” in an early magazine, the Mercure Galant (maybe in English something like “The Courier of Style”).

(If you’d like to read the story in French as it was first published, here’s a LINK to the BnF, the Bibliotheque nationale Francaise, where it is available on-line, which we think is just magical.)

Then, the following year, the collection was published under the title Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe (“Stories or Tales from the Past”).

The term “contes de ma mere l’Oye” appears to have been known in literary circles from at least the 1650s and indicated rustic/countryside stories—in a sense, folktales—and Perrault had used traditional material, some of which had first appeared in print in Italian in the 16^th century and could be found in the folktale collections of people like Gianfrancesco Straparola (1485?—1558) and Giambattista Basile (1566-1632).

Perrault’s stories, which include what we call “Sleeping Beauty” (you can see that that’s a mistranslation) and “Cinderella”, first appeared in English in London in 1729, translated by Robert Samber, its title being identical with the 1697 French.

In this post and (at least) two following, we thought that we would choose two of these fairy tales and see in what different forms they’ve been presented since first appearing in 1697.

Because it was the first to be published, we’ll begin with “Sleeping Beauty. (This is a Pre-Raphaelite version by Edward Burne-Jones, 1833-1898. It is one of a set of four and has a very interesting history—here’s a LINK so that you may found out more, if you wish.)

Our first work, entitled surprisingly enough, The Sleeping Beauty, is what its author, James Robinson Planche (plahn-SHAY), 1796-1880,

would call an “extravaganza”, meaning, in this case, something like a modern musical comedy. First produced in 1840, it combined dialogue in rhyming iambic (more or less) couplets with songs set to already existing tunes. Based upon Perrault, it used spectacle, everyday references which a London audience would have immediately picked up on, and gentle political/cultural satire to entertain. Unfortunately we don’t have any images of this production, but here’s a LINK to volume 2 of Planche’s “extravaganzas” so that you can form your own impression. If you know the works of the Victorian dramatist/composer team of WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, you will see that Planche is their direct ancestor.

For many years, beginning in the early 1800s and continuing into the 1860s, Planche was Mr Theatre, in London, writing or co-writing at least 175 shows of various sorts. These works, like Planche himself, have faded away, but he did leave one mark. In 1823, Planche had had a conversation with a famous actor, Charles Kemble (1775-1854),

in which he suggested that, whereas money was always being spent in the theatre on spectacles, almost nothing was done for the plays of Shakespeare. In fact, Shakespeare’s plays had always been costumed in the clothing of the period of the actors, rather than the dress of the time of the events. Here’s a print of the well-known 18^th-century actor, David Garrick (1717-1779) in four of the roles for which he was famous: Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, and Hamlet—by dress and props alone, perhaps we could guess that the actor with the two daggers was someone playing Macbeth (or perhaps an assassin from the 1760 version of Game of Thrones), but otherwise?

Kemble, in turn, told Planche that he would willingly put on an historically-accurate production of several Shakespeare plays, beginning with King John, if Planche would do the necessary research and design. Planche agreed and here’s a playbill of the result.

Reading the fine print, it’s even possible to see that Planche cited at least some of his sources—everything from funerary statuary to manuscript illustrations. Whereas we don’t, unfortunately, have any illustrations to show for The Sleeping Beauty, we can show you what a difference Planche made to attempting to make Shakespeare appear in period dress. Here’s Kemble playing Faulconbridge, a major character in King John, in 1819.

The historical John lived from 1166 to 1216—why would he be dressed as a sort of cosplay Roman legionnaire? And here is an engraving made from Planche’s 1823 design, with Kemble again in the role of Faulconbridge.

The Kemble/Planche look caught on—and is with us, in some form, to this day. (The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, owns a set of the 1823 colored engravings—here’s a LINK so that you can see other costumes for the production.)

Even as his life in the dramatic world was fading, Planche continued to be a literary figure—as well as a literary recycler. In 1868, he collaborated with a prominent British illustrator, Richard “Dicky” Doyle (1824-1883),

on a verse version of “Sleeping Beauty”: An Old Fairy Tale The Sleeping Beauty.

Doyle was, in fact, a very versatile artist, having, for instance, worked for the satirical magazine Punch, but his lasting fame lies in his fairy/fairy tale illustrations.

Doyle’s work was prized, but his work ethic was, apparently not: commissions came and went, sometimes filled, sometimes not, and it seems that he never quite completed the illustrations to the Planche, (perhaps why Planche’s introduction is dated 1865 and the publication date is 1868?), but here’s a sample to show what he could do, when focused. (And here’s a LINK to the book, so that you can see all of the illustrations for yourself, as well as read Planche’s text.)

So as not to overwhelm you, dear readers, we’re going to pause here, but we’ll continue in our next by looking at other forms—opera, ballet, and animated feature—which Perrault’s story has inspired, taking our story from 1890 to 1959.

In the meantime, thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Circuses (But No Bread)

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Theatre and Performance

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A.J. Bailey, American Civil War, Amphitheatre, Barnum & Bailey, Ben Hur, bread and circuses, Charles Dickens, Circus, Circus Maximus, Claude Debussy, closing, clowns, Colosseum, Elephants, equestrian, gladiators, Hard Times, Jimbo's Lullaby, John Bill Ricketts, Jumbo, Juvenal, London Zoo, macadamized roadways, Museum, P.T. Barnum, panem et circenses, parade, Philip Astley, racing, railways, Ringling Bros, Rome, tents, travel, Valley Pike

Welcome, dear readers, as ever, to our latest posting.

We’re taking a slight detour from our usual work on adventure and fantasy because we’ve just read something on the BBC website. It was announced there (as on other news websites) that the famous Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey Circus will close for good in May of this year.

If you are clownophobic (and it seems that many people are), this may be a relief to you.

evil_clown_horror_fantasy_dark_abstract_hd-wallpaper-687546.jpg

If you love elephants (we do), you may be glad to see them freed from their slavery to humans (here—but not yet so in the rest of the world, perhaps).

If you, like us, love popular entertainments and their traditions, you may feel more ambivalent—or even ambivalent about feeling ambivalent—as we do.

After all, the word “circus” brings back a very ancient past—Rome and the Circus Maximus: the center for the Roman passion for chariot racing.

Imperial Rome: Circus Maximus (pen & ink and pencil on paper)

If you know the 1959 movie Ben Hur, you’ll know the amazing chariot race scene (set in Antioch, rather than Rome), which gives you an idea why this was the favorite Roman competitive spectator sport.

It’s also the basis of the remark by the Roman satirist, Juvenal (c.100AD), that the formerly independent people of Rome had gradually given up their rights and now anxiously awaited only two things: panem et circenses, “bread and circuses”, meaning a free grain dole and free public entertainment.

It’s a bit of climb from there to modern circuses, of course. There were animal shows in Roman arenas (places used for blood-sport spectacles, mostly), like the Colosseum in Rome.

7colosseumexterior

8gladiators

(You’ll notice, by the way that we’ll show gladiators, but not beast-fights.)

But, afterwards, with the exception of private menageries kept by monarchs and nobles over the centuries, there was nothing like the modern circus until 1768, in London, where an ex-cavalry sergeant, named Philip Astley,

gave a demonstration of equestrian skill which soon brought him both fame and fortune. A competitor came up with the name “circus”, but it was Astley and his “Amphitheatre” who started it off.

And also inspired Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

to portray a comic (and not so comic) traveling version in his 1854 novel, Hard Times.

The first American circus, founded by the English equestrian, John Bill Ricketts, appeared in 1792, in Philadelphia.

By the early 19^th century, these had become traveling tent shows, which brought a little something exotic to rural communities in the US before the Civil War.

But then enter P.T. Barnum (1810-1891).

(He’s the taller one on the left.)

Beginning in the 1830s, Barnum had a very long career in show business, including all sorts of hoaxes, a number of them displayed at his famous New York City museum—

After two disastrous fires, Barnum moved on, in 1870 founding his own circus, with a typically bombastic name: “P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome”.

Never one to stand still, Bailey was an early user of the railways to move his circus.

In a world made up almost entirely of dirt roads for wheeled traffic, this was a very good idea. The most advanced roads were “macadamized”—meaning that they had layers of crushed stone, like the Valley Pike in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Otherwise, travel on anything other than a dry day could look like this—

In 1881, Barnum took on a partner, A.J. Bailey—

and, in 1882, he bought, from the London Zoo, an elephant, Jumbo.

From Jumbo, we get “jumbo-sized” and, of course, Claude Debussy’s (1862-1918),

“Jimbo’s Lullabye”, from his “Children’s Corner Suite”.

Meanwhile, the Ringling Brothers, of Baraboo, Wisconsin (now home of an impressive circus museum), put their own show on the road.

Early in the 20^th century, the Ringlings bought Barnum and Bailey and, after a short time running two separate circuses, they joined them to become Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, which is now about to fold its tents forever.

We have never been big circus-goers, but one of our grandmothers used to tell the most haunting story. When she was a little girl, she sat on the front porch of her house and watched the circus—probably in fact Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey—all its wagons pulled entirely by horses—parade down her street and, when she told the story, she returned to that porch and took us with her. So, as a small tribute to an old tradition, we close with a few images of those circus parades of the now far past.

26barnum1883

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Nought’s had, all’s spent

03 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Theatre and Performance, Villains

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A Shadow of the Past, Birnam Wood, Eowyn, Fangorn Forest, Gandalf, Gondor, Isengard, Istari, King Duncan, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Macduff, Orthanc, Palantir, Saruman, Sauron, Shakespeare, The Lord of the Rings, The Weird Sisters, The Witch-King, Tolkien

In “The Shadow of the Past,” Gandalf, giving Frodo backstory of the Ring, makes a confession:

“I might perhaps have consulted Saruman the White, but something always held me back.”

“Who is he?” asked Frodo. “I have never heard of him before.”

“Maybe not,” answered Gandalf. “Hobbits are, or were, no concern of his. Yet he is great among the Wise. He is the chief of my order and the head of the Council. His knowledge is deep, but his pride had grown with it, and he takes ill any meddling. The lore of the Elven-rings, great and small, is his province. He has long studied it, seeking the lost secrets of their making; but when the Rings were debated in the Council, all that he would reveal to us of his ring-lore told against my fears. So my doubt slept– but uneasily. Still I watched and I waited.” (The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

In terms of the spiritual life and safety of Middle-earth, Gandalf’s confession foreshadows much evil to come. Both Gandalf and Saruman are Istari, one of a group of five divine beings sent specifically to counteract the activities of Sauron.

Gandalf suspects that “the chief of my order and the head of the Council” is false, and his suspicion will prove to be true, but what has happened to Saruman? Gandalf suggests that it has something to do with the ring, but, in fact, the ring is only emblematic of the real problem: the lure of control.

Here is Saruman attempting to seduce Gandalf into joining him:

“I said we, for we it may be, if you will join with me. A new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all. There is no hope left in Elves or dying Numenor. This then is one choice before you, before us. We may join with that Power. It would be wise, Gandalf. There is hope that way. Its victory is at hand; and there will be rich reward for those that aided it. As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it.” (The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

Instead of fulfilling his role as a counter-balance to Sauron, Saruman proposes first to control Sauron, and then even to become Sauron. As Saruman says, “Why not? The Ruling Ring? If we could command that, then the Power would pass to us.” (The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”) This use of the first person plural pronoun is not convincing:

“Saruman,” I said, standing away from him, “only one hand at a time can wield the One, and you know that well, so do not trouble to say we.” (The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

But what is it which Saruman wants to do with that ring?

“We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means.” (The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

Knowledge, rule, order? We immediately want to know, knowledge of what, and who is ruling whom, with what order? And the answers are all the same: Saruman’s knowledge, Saruman’s rule, Saruman’s order. But what has happened to Saruman to so turn him away from the purpose for which he was sent?

Saruman’s headquarters are at Orthanc, a tower set in a stone circle at Isengard.

Originally, this had been the site of a Gondorian strongpoint, but, as Gondor waned, it fell into disuse until taken over by Saruman with the permission of the Steward of Gondor, Beren. When we think of wizards, we imagine them as wanderers, like Gandalf and Radagast, and even more so, the two Blue wizards who have wandered so far as to have disappeared almost entirely from the history of Middle-earth. Could the very fact that Saruman would want a permanent base have been a hint that his plans went beyond the directive he had received in Valinor?

And there is worse to come. Within Orthanc, Saruman has discovered a Palantir, a far-seeing stone of Numenor.

Who else might have one of these stones? Unfortunately, one of them is in the hands of Sauron.

And the seduction of Gandalf began with the seduction of Saruman, as Gandalf says:

“Saruman…I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant.” (The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

This figure for good being drawn away from the proper path reminded us of a similar situation in Shakespeare. Macbeth has been a successful general for Duncan, the king of Scotland. For his latest victory, he has been well-rewarded by the king, but just as in the case of Saruman, there is some part of him which wants more. Thus, when, after the battle, he and a companion meet three strange women on the edge of the battlefield, their prophetic words touch him in a place perhaps untouched before, but there.

MacbethAndBanquo-Witches

They first hail him by titles King Duncan has yet to give him–but will. Then they hail him as King of Scotland itself, and his corruption begins. It may have gone no farther than unquiet dreams had there not be a second element in his seduction: his wife.

Ellen-Terry-as-Lady-Macbeth-by-John-Singer-Sargent-1889

It is she who completes what these three strange women began, not only nurturing Macbeth’s ambition, but even planning the murder of King Duncan.

Lady_Macbeth_Cattermole Like Saruman, Macbeth is overcome, gives in, murders Duncan, seizes power, but, also like Saruman, can not retain it and, interestingly, an element in his defeat closely resembles an element in Saruman’s defeat: trees.

As his reign suffers resistance and becomes bloodier and more confused, Macbeth sees a series of apparitions, including one which reassures him–or so he thinks–that

“Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care

Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are.

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until

Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill

Shall come against him.” (Macbeth, 4.1.94-98)

But his enemies, to disguise their numbers and movements, camouflage themselves with foliage from Birnam Wood,

Macbeth’s fortress is successfully taken, and Macbeth is killed in battle, his head taken by an avenging enemy, Macduff.

Where Macbeth has had Birnam Wood, Saruman suffers from the Forest of Fangorn–

Tolkien, Nasmith, painting, illustration, Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion, Hobbit, Middle-earth

The Wrath of the Ents, by Ted Nasmith

(We would add one more Macbeth parallel for The Lord of the Rings. Another seemingly reassuring apparition has told Macbeth that he can only be killed by a very special person:

“Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn

The power of man, for none of woman born

Shall harm Macbeth.” (Macbeth, 4.1.81-83)

That person turns out to be Macduff, born from a Caesarian section.

Do we need to remind our readers of what Eowyn says in reply to the Witch-king’s “Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!”)

After the fall of Isengard, Saruman is imprisoned in his own tower. During his imprisonment, he is deprived of the Palantir, but Sauron’s seduction has been thorough and, even when offered another chance, there will be nothing left for him in the future but being a petty spoiler and then the victim of his own slave, someone he had once seduced.

jwyatt-sarumande

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Ambiguity in Oz

06 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Theatre and Performance, Villains

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Adventure, Aldus Manutius, Captain Cyril Turner, condensation trail, Epsom Downs, James Pollard, Let's eat grandma, Oz, punctuation, skywriting, Surrender Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz, the Wright brothers, Wicked Witch

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

It was a bright, breezy morning yesterday and we were looking up at a contrail (short for “con(densation) trail”)

which brought to mind this message:

from the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz. At this moment in the movie, the four friends (and Toto),

seemingly welcome in the Emerald City, have been enjoying their welcome when the happy music stops at a shriek, and they look up to see the Wicked Witch of the West skywriting.

In the US in 1939, artificial flying objects would hardly have been a surprise. After 1903,

and certainly after the Great War

aircraft were increasingly common—even up to massive dirigibles.

Skywriting—

is said to have been first commercially employed in 1922 at Epsom Downs, in England,

where Captain Cyril Turner wrote “Daily Mail” over the race track.

(This is a painting by James Pollard from 1835, but we couldn’t resist its detail.)

It appeared over New York City for the first time shortly afterward.

In Oz, however, the usual airborne objects appear to have been:

crows

witches

monkeys

(To which we might add 4. balloons—although there is only one and it’s not a native product.)

Thus, a thing like a flying house

would have been more than a little disturbing (and still is, here in this world)—especially when it landed on a major political figure.

As well, although witches fly in Oz, as far as we know, they are not given to delivering messages by air.

(This message, by the way, was:

made by using a hypodermic needle filled with black ink to write on the bottom of a glass tank filled with colored water
originally longer—here is what it first said:

)

Equally disturbing to us, however, is the ambiguous (from Latin amb-, “both” and ag- “to drive”—hence, “to go in two directions”) nature of the message—all due to a (potentially) missing comma.

Modern western punctuation took several centuries to appear and mature, beginning with the work of the early printer, Aldus Manutius (the Elder—1449-1515) in the later 15^th century.

On the whole, modern native English-speakers tend to use the same practices, although an inverted prepositional phrase in American English, for example, has a comma, where British English does not.

Uninverted: There were about twenty fresh crabs in the sink.

Inverted (US): In the sink, there were about twenty fresh crabs.

Inverted (UK): In the sink there were about twenty fresh crabs.

When this is spoken by any native-speaker, there is a slight pause after “sink” and the point of the comma (a point which goes back to 16^th-century rhetorical texts, in which punctuation is intended to be used like rests in music, as a series of directional signals as to pauses) is to signal that natural pause.

There is no ambiguity either way in the model sentence, but what about in the Witch’s command?

As it stands, “Surrender Dorothy”, without a comma, is a kind of general imperative—it could perhaps be addressed to all of Oz—and thus easily explained in a longer construction, like “Oz! Surrender Dorothy”—perhaps with the original conclusion “or Die!”

But is this the Witch’s intention? Insert the comma and you have a command directed specifically—and solely–to Dorothy: “Surrender, Dorothy!” (As we learn when Dorothy is in the hands of the Witch, the deleted part of the message “Or Die” is not quite accurate—the Witch wants the Ruby Slippers, but can’t get them without killing the wearer, so that the real message should be “Surrender, Dorothy—and Die!”—which is hardly likely to be persuasive!)

There is a cartoon about English punctuation which has circulated for some years:

In the version without the comma, it’s an invitation to eat grandma. With the comma, it’s an invitation to eat with grandma. In the case of the Witch’s message, what do you think: is it a command to Oz, or to Dorothy?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Beaux Gestes? (1)

20 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Theatre and Performance

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Tags

Cicero, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Elizabethan, Film, Galadriel, Globe theatre, Hamlet, Hildebrandt, Mirror of Galadriel, Quintilian, rejection, Roman theatre, The Argonath, The Lord of the Rings, The Phantom of the Opera, The Popular Entertainer and Self-Instructor in Elocution, theatre, Theatrical gesture, Tolkien

Dear Readers, welcome, as always.

In this posting, we want to begin to consider a pair of contrasting gestures in The Lord of the Rings, where they may come from, and how they may mirror each other.

We begin with Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”.

In this scene, she has offered Frodo and Sam the chance to look into what appears to be a small pool of enchanted water, where she tells Frodo “You may learn something, and whether what you see be fair or evil, that may be profitable, and yet it may not. Seeing is both good and perilous.”

Sam goes first and endures a nightmarish depiction of the future of the Shire—although Galadriel warns him that it is perhaps potential, not fated future.

Frodo has, in turn, an even worse experience: the eye of Sauron himself appears and Frodo can feel that it is trying to discover the Ring. It is something of which Galadriel herself is well aware, but she comforts Frodo, saying, “…I perceive the Dark Lord and know his mind, or all of his mind that concerns the Elves. And he gropes ever to see me and my thought. But the door is still closed!”

To emphasize this, “She lifted up her white arms, and spread out her hands towards the East in a gesture of rejection and denial.”

To modern people, like us, trying to visualize what Galadriel is doing , this might seem a very “theatrical” gesture. The closest we could find in our image bank of Galadriel actually doing it wasn’t more than a suggestion.

And, in fact, the image we’ve chosen (obviously not Galadriel!) to depict this comes from a book published in 1898, with the intriguing title, The Popular Entertainer and Self-Instructor in Elocution.

This brings us back to a time in history when public speaking was a polished art and men (primarily—although the women’s rights movement from the mid-19^th century had its speakers, as well) practiced stylized gestures to help them convey their meaning in lecture halls, theatres, and open spaces. Older public statues sometimes capture such a speaker in mid-gesture—as in this of the British intellectual and politician, Edmund Burke, in Bristol.

Such combinations of gesture and speech are derived from a tradition which stretches all the way back to the last century BC/first century AD in the works of the Roman orators/writers Cicero

And Quintilian.

These men described the art of public speaking, and Quintilian, in particular, discusses the use of gesture to expand and underline the spoken text emotionally. This tradition was continued from the Renaissance and beyond initially in translations of the two into local languages, but then in expansions of their ideas. Such gestures were also found useful for the young popular theatre and continued to form part of an actor’s training into the twentieth century. Here, for instance, is the 18^th-century actor, David Garrick, in a role for which he was famous, Hamlet. And you’ll notice that same gesture of rejection: arms extended, hands spread.

(This is not, by the way, the same gesture we see depicted on the Argonath. That seems to us more to convey the message: Stop! You have reached the boundary of Gondor—go no farther!

argonath hildebrandt.jpg

This is the Hildebrandt twins rather mild version. A fiercer one would be that from the film.)

To us, such gestures may seem very overdone, if not downright silly—as in this from the 1925 film of The Phantom of the Opera.

lchaneysrphantom

And it is probably film itself which has changed our view. Originally, these gestures were developed to extend a speaker’s ability to convey thought and feeling in a public space—a big place where there was no elaborate sound system with microphones and speakers to help.

In a big, noisy place like an Elizabethan theatre, such an extension would have proved just as useful.

Hodge's_conjectural_Globe_reconstruction.jpg

And, until artificial vocal magnification was invented in the 20^th century, it would have continued to help.

Film began as an offshoot of the stage—after all, what other model was there for actors? Film was much more intimate than the stage, however, even before sound films arrived at the very end of the 1920s. The heavy make-up and big, stylized gestures brought over from earlier drama must have seemed even more exaggerated, in time, to audiences, and everything was gradually scaled down. What Tolkien saw as a young man,

however, having been born in 1893, would have been the product of that earlier time—a time all the way back to the Romans—and thus, when he wants to depict strong emotion, he clearly uses what would have been more appropriate for an older time, just as he uses older language, borrowed from people like William Morris and Tennyson, when he wants to add a certain weight to the words.

In our second posting, we want to continue our exploration with what we feel to be an opposing gesture—and the final gesture—of Saruman.

greg-hildebrandt-isengard-orthanc-saruman-607429-1300x962.jpg

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Category Archives: Theatre and Performance

Minions and Henchmen

Water Which?

Games with Shadows

Theme and Variations.5

Theme and Variations.1

Circuses (But No Bread)

Nought’s had, all’s spent

Ambiguity in Oz

Beaux Gestes? (1)