What Country, Friends, is This? - Celia Rees

What country, friends, is this?

Viola asks at the beginning of Twelfth Night. What country indeed? This is Illyria, Lady the Captain answers her. Illyria is a fantasy world, created from Shakespeare's imagination, but what if it was a real place? What would it be like? Where would it be? That thought occurred to me as I settled down to watch a performance of Twelfth Night in Stratford. Not in the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre but on an open air stage set up by the river on a very hot day in June. My presence was purely serendipitous. I live near Stratford. I go there some Saturdays to the Farmer’s Market. As mundane and ordinary as that. A student theatre company were giving an outdoor performance, barking up their play, giving out flyers. The stage was made from boards set up on poles, the amphitheatre was a natural dell with the Avon as the backdrop. The changing rooms were a couple of bushes. It was only a hundred yards from the RSC, but nearer by far to the original Elizabethan touring companies than that grand theatre could ever be. 

Twelfth Night is my favourite Shakespearean comedy. It is short, actually funny and impossibly romantic, but it is the element of disguise that I’ve always loved. The heroine, Viola, is a girl who is really a boy who is pretending to be a girl who is pretending to be a boy. This ambiguity gives the play all the sexual charge and  frisson of the Blur song, Girls and Boys.

Liam Brennan and Samuel Barnett

Imogen Stubbs and Helena Bonham Carter in Trevor Nunn's 1996 film adaptation of Twelfth Night

As the play progressed, I began to think: what happens next? What happens after the end of the play? The play walks a knife edge between tragedy and comedy. It is perfectly balanced, but one false move and it could all go horribly wrong. The play ends, as all comedies should, with disguises removed, couples united, but I’ve always had the feeling that they are left slightly uncomfortable with each other. Not only that, but characters stomp off swearing revenge, are sent away and banished so as not to disrupt the happiness and harmony. What if the couples are not entirely satisfied with each other? What if the troublesome characters come back? And what if Illyria was a real place?

We know where it is supposed to be  - on the Dalmatian Coast.

Map showing the Roman state of Illyria

 

Medieval Dubrovnik

Orsino’s coastal dukedom would be very like the city of Dubrovnik, Italianate in style, a mirror of the city states across the Adriatic. A small maritime country, grown rich on trade,   but a glance at the map reveals its vulnerability  That very wealth would attract the greedy eyes of pirates, not to mention the attentions of its infinitely more powerful neighbours, the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire. Venice would be keen to annex such a strategic port to protect its Adriatic trade routes; the Ottomans would be more than happy to secure a foothold on the Adriatic. This vulnerability would inevitably affect what happened next. If the state disintegrated because of the internal tensions revealed but not explored in the play, then Orsino's dukedom would be up for grabs. 
My mind was busy while the actors ran on and off the stage and changed behind bushes. By the time they joined hands for their final bow, my thoughts had linked together and I knew I had an idea for a book.

Page from my notebook

I decided to begin my book some time after Shakespeare ends his play and I immediately broke two of my own rules: not to write about real historical characters (especially not famous ones); not to set a book in Elizabethan England. Rules are made to be broken, so I decided that Shakespeare would be a character in the book. There are hundreds of books written about him, thousands, whole libraries, but there are surprisingly few indisputable facts. This gave me a way into the man and his life. He would be Will Shakespeare from Warwickshire (my own county, so I feel a kind of kinship): actor, playmaker, theatre manager; not the impossibly famous William Shakespeare, Bard, Swan of Avon, whose home is a heritage centre 400 years later, his town a mecca for tourists from all over the world. He would be Shakespeare before he knew he was Shakespeare. If he ever did. I wanted to make him real, sexy, more Shakespeare in Love, more Joseph Fiennes than the baldy bloke in the Droeshout engraving from the First Folio.

Joseph Fiennes  - Shakespeare in Love

Droeshout Engraving, First Folio

He would be a jobbing writer with inky fingers, trying to make a living, juggling his life in London with his life at home in Stratford, trying to survive, keep his nose clean in the dangerous, violent, difficult and volatile world at the end of Elizabeth’s reign. Hard at work, trying to keep his Company going, writing and re-writing, always on the look out for stories to keep up with the need for plays and more plays. When he happens upon two street performers, a Fool and his beautiful young girl assistant, he finds one. He meets Feste the clown and Viola’s daughter, Violetta, survivors from the wreck of Illyria, but they bring with them more than just their story and Will Shakespeare’s life is about to get a whole lot more complicated.

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com

The Fool's Girl is published by Bloomsbury Children's Books.

The Tempest, Twelfth Night and me by Gillian Polack

Right now, my writing self and my research self are sharing the seventeenth century. I tend to think of Shakespeare as a sixteenth century writer, because a lot of his themes borrow from the Middle Ages (which is my main historical stomping ground) and because I associate him with Elizabeth I. The truth is, however, that he wrote well into the seventeenth century. He died in 1616.

This means he was a seventeenth century writer. It also means that many aspects of his world view reflect the sixteenth century. Shakespeare is on the cusp of change. This is one of the reasons his work can be interpreted in so many ways.

We tend to think of the seventeenth century as nearly modern. It’s the Time of the Rise of Reason and the Rise of Science and the Formation of Us. All this is true. At the same time, the seventeenth century had an underlying world view that was anything but modern. Shakespeare reflects this in his plays. He reminds us that we’re all formed by our pasts, even if we don’t remember those pasts or know much about them.

Prospero demonstrates the older world view in The Tempest. In fact, the whole Tempest demonstrates this. It shows the relationship between humans and non-human sentient beings in a great chain of being, for instance. 

I was first introduced to the great chain of being when I was in Year Eleven (age 15-16, for those who like to keep track of these things) and read Tillyard’s The Elizabethan World Picture. I fell in love with The Tempest when I read Mary Stewart’s This Rough Magic, not too long after. I had already read everything we knew of by Shakespeare and gone to every performance I could, for I was a sad Shakespeare addict, but I never liked The Tempest. I hated what was done to Caliban and playing tricks on people for purportedly moral reasons totally bugged me. Stewart helped me realise the glory of the language and the emotional impact of Prospero’s actions and Tillyard’s description of the world view Shakespeare used to structure The Tempest suddenly clicked: it all made sense.

Prior to this, Twelfth Night was my favourite. It’s also about the world order, but it’s strictly human. It played with the order of the world as I knew it. Australians from scientific families find it easier to understand humans and to understand rational thought, but take a bit longer to see the universe from alien eyes. And, in many ways, Shakespeare is quite, quite alien to our modern selves.

So, first, what is it about Twelfth Night that was easier to understand? 

It’s a love story, with disguises and nobles and beautiful speeches. One, in particular is the stuff of teenage pining. Find it at the right moment, and it becomes the precise description of a particular moment, which, of course, I did:

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,  
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love  
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills  
And make the babbling gossip of the air  
Cry out 'Olivia!' O, You should not rest
 Between the elements of air and earth,  
But you should pity me!

The fact that the speech was false, emotional blackmail, said by a heterosexual female in disguise was irrelevant. It called me, the way it called Olivia. 

These days, I wonder what the implications would be if Olivia and Viola were truly in love and the men in the story were mere distractions. We change over time. Our understanding of the world changes over time. Shakespeare is very forgiving of such changes. His plays fit many interpretations. One day I might write the story of Olivia and Viola and how they found love despite their society. 

When I was a teen, however, I learned the speech and ignored the context and the subtext and, in fact, everything but the text itself. And I’m not so sure that I understood the text itself. I found it beautiful, and, for an emotional teenager, that was enough.

And this is why Twelfth Night is easier for moderns. We can understand it (to a degree) through the text alone. We focus on whatever facet of love or comedy that suits us, and we enjoy the play.

For me, older, The Tempest is easier to delve into, emotionally. I’ve had to lose big things in my life, so Prospero is me. I’ve had to travel alone and in exile and so Prospero is again me. So, for many people (including me), The Tempest still has a modern ring. It’s accessible. It wasn’t accessible to me as a teen, but it is as an adult. Life experience changes things.

And yet, when I stopped to think about it, Prospero faded. All I could think of was what a perfect epitome of the early seventeenth century world view The Tempest represents. 

The historian in me loves pulling it to pieces and putting it back together again, because every time I read it or see it I gain a new insight into Shakespeare’s world. Sometimes I gain substantial insights because directors and actors don’t see Shakespeare’s very structured and complex reality. They humanise things and transform The Tempest into another Twelfth Night. The difference between human and non-human is faded and uncertain or the status of various players doesn’t reflect their position in the universe. The play itself gives such clear indications about class and about status, ranging from a jug of wine to a royal human so senior hierarchically that he has powers akin to angelic. 

We discover that the hierarchy is not fixed. The Tempest contains a social lesson as to what is possible and what is impossible. Caliban remains a monster and Prospero discovers he cannot reach godhood and must shoulder his human responsibilities. The love story is a mere excuse for an exploration of far deeper matters.

Maybe Twelfth Night is more than a diversion, too. I doubt it, though. I doubt it because of its name. The Tempest suggests that the world will turn topsy-turvy and the question is open: will people find their right places at the end. Twelfth Night, as a title, reflects the last day of Christmastide. A time of fun and for emotions and for bulwarking oneself against the long, long winter. Not the time for deep thoughts about the human condition.

My deep thought at the moment is that I need a cup of coffee. Coffee reached England about forty years after Shakespeare died. I wonder what his plays would have been like if fuelled by coffee?

Twelfth Night – Katherine Roberts

Today is Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas, when by tradition all decorations must be taken down and packed away unless you want to risk an unlucky year. Historically speaking of course, Twelfth Night was last night, January 5th… but if you still have holly around your fireplace and a few strands of tinsel lurking on your bare-needled tree, DON’T PANIC, because in more recent times Twelfth Night falls on January 6th. It all depends where you start counting (sunrise or midnight?), and considering all the merry making that happens around Christmas time, you (and I) can be forgiven for a little confusion in the numbers department.

But whether you are planning to celebrate the Christian feast of Epiphany, or prefer to undertake the ancient pagan custom of wassailing (though apparently real pagans prefer to do this on the old Twelfth Night of January 17th pre-Gregorian calendar, just to confuse things further), tonight is a good excuse for a final fling before the year kicks off. So here’s a last seasonal post to cheer you up, before you box all things sparkly and shove them into the loft/oubliette for another year.

picture courtesy of wikipedia (creative commons)

The Twelve Days of Christmas has always been one of my favourite carols, even though I always get muddled somewhere around seven and forget exactly how many lords, ladies, pipers etc. are dancing, playing or singing. Thankfully there’s a reason for this other than the early onset of Alzheimers because, like many popular rhymes and songs (and stories), the words tend to get changed and twisted around over the years.

During the 19^th century, your true love could have given to you:

A partridge in a pear tree, or a peacock.

Two turtle doves.

Three French hens.

Four calling, colley, corley, curley, collie, coloured, or canary birds. (Or calling canaries, perhaps?)

Five gold rings.

Six geese or ducks a-laying.

Seven swans or squabs (unfledged birds?) a-swimming.

Eight maids a-milking, ladies dancing, hounds a-running, or hares running.

Nine lords a-leaping, drummers drumming, ladies dancing, pipers playing, or bears a-beating.

Ten pipers playing, lords a-leaping, ships a-sailing, or cocks a-crowing.

Eleven ladies dancing (or spinning), lords a-leaping, lads a-louping (not quite sure what this means… anyone know?), badgers a-baiting.

Twelve lords a-leaping, ladies dancing, or bells a-ringing!

So it seems I have good reason for my confusion. And to add a few more interesting gifts into the mix, the song was probably French in origin, and the partridge a red-legged French breed rather than our fat grey type, though what happened to the French hens is anyone's guess.

Le premier jour d’l’année

Que me donn’rez vous ma mie?

Un’ perdrix sole

Qui va, qui vient, qui vole,

Qui vole dans les bois

The first day of the year

What will you give me, my [female] love?

One lone partridge

That goes, that comes, that flies,

That flies in the woods

Which continues along the usual lines with:

Deux touterelles (two turtle-doves)

Trois rameaux de bois (three wooden branches)

Quat' canards volant en l'air (four ducks flying in the air)

Cinq lapins courant par terre (five rabbits running on the ground)

Six chiens courants (six running dogs)

Sept moulins à vent (seven windmills)

Huit vaches mourdants (eight chewing cows)

Neuf boeufs cornus (nine horned bulls)

Dix pigeons blancs (ten white pigeons)

Onze plats d'argent (eleven silver plates)

Douze coqs chantants (twelve crowing cockerels)

Hmm, I’d rather have five gold rings than running rabbits any day… but perhaps they don’t sound so good in French? And eleven silver plates are rather more useful than baiting badgers, I'd say. The windmills would probably be useful to harness wind power and combat my rising energy bills... provided I can put them in someone else’s backyard, of course. I’d also like one of the lords (preferably a handsomely dark and rich one), some fresh milk from the maids' buckets, the swans (because I’m a hopeless romantic), a few of the better pipers, a ship to carry them all, and the peacock because I’ve always wanted one displaying its tail on my lawn, even if it is a very little lawn. Besides, I haven't got a pear tree.

So what’s your favourite version of the Twelve Days of Christmas? (feel free to mix and match as you please - it's your last chance before next year!)

Katherine Roberts' latest book is Lance of Truth, Book 2 of the Pendragon Legacy about King Arthur's daughter Rhianna Pendragon, which began with the Carnegie-nominated Sword of Light.

The final two books in the series will be published this year by Templar.

More details at www.katherineroberts.co.uk