Shakespearean scholarship tends to accrue a lot of weird bullshit: When you’ve got thousands of PhD candidates desperately looking around for original and unique thesis material there’s a mass tendency to just throw stuff at the wall and hope that something sticks. Unfortunately, some of the stuff that sticks is basically a scholastic urban legend: Dramatic, catchy ideas that are nevertheless without any basis in reality whatsoever.

For example, the recent theatrical release of Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing has prompted quite a few mainstream articles talking about the double meaning of the title. “Nothing” and “noting” were homophones in Elizabethan England, which means that the title is effectively a pun — the play is both about “nothing” (i.e., about things which are not true) and “noting” (i.e., spying and eavesdropping). But the claim is also frequently made that “nothing” is a double entendre which meant “vagina” in Shakespeare’s day (i.e., “no thing” or that there is literally nothing between a woman’s legs). Thus the title of the play can be understood to also mean Much Ado About Pussy.

The problem is that, as far as I can tell, it’s not true.

The modern tradition of asserting that “nothing” means “vagina” in Shakespeare appears to date back to Stephen Booth’s 1977 edition of the Sonnets. But Booth doesn’t appear to give any evidence that “nothing” was actually used that way in Elizabethan slang. His claim is based almost entirely around “wouldn’t it be nifty if this sonnet said ‘pussy’ instead of ‘nothing’?” (He also maintains that “all” means “penis” because it sounds like “awl” which looks like a penis. And that “hell” also means vagina because… well, just because.)

This little “factoid” has become popular because it’s so delightfully dirty and you can use it over and over and over again. (Shakespeare uses the word “nothing” more than 500 times in his works.) But it doesn’t seem to have any basis in fact. (If someone can actually cite a primary Elizabethan reference to “nothing” being commonly used as slang for “vagina”, I’ll happily stand corrected.)

It reminds me of the claim that “nunnery” means “whorehouse” in Shakespeare, so that when Hamlet tells Ophelia to go to the nunnery he’s really telling her to become a whore. No. He isn’t. The only Elizabethan references to “nunnery” meaning “whorehouse” are in a comedy where a whorehouse being referred to as a nunnery is a joke specifically because a nunnery isn’t a whorehouse.

Claiming that this means “nunnery” was common slang for “whorehouse” is like watching Monty Python and claiming that “go”, “selling”, “sport”, “cricket”, “games”, and “photography” are all common slang words for sex.

(Although, to be fair, I think we all know that Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs is totally pornography.)

I’m producing and starring in a two-person adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece at this year’s Minnesota Fringe Festival. We’ve got three shows left:

Tuesday 8/9 – 10pm
Thursday 8/11 – 5:30pm
Sunday 8/14 – 7:00pm

All performances at the Theatre in the Round.

An intimate, intense, and terrifying adaptation of William Shakespeare’e epic poem. In this dramatic, storytelling staging, the vibrant, staccato beats of the Bard’s eternal verse pound out a tale of erotic savagery and violation.

Lucrece is the sweet and virtuous wife of Colatine. But when Colatine sings her praises to his fellow officers, he lights a blazing lust in the heart of Prince Tarquin. Tarquin flees the army, returns to Rome, enters Lucrece’s home under false pretenses, and in the blackest hours of the night forces himself upon her.

Lucrece’s ordeal, however, is only beginning as Shakespeare vividly captures her bleak and hopeless struggle to cope with unimaginable trauma…

You can visit the American Shakespeare Repertory’s website for my information. You can also listen to a podcast Fringe Mini interview I did with Joshua  Humphrey from Twin Cities Theater Connection.

How the hell did it get here so fast?

December was a somewhat frustrating month for me creatively. My creative vision became completely focused on a 10-minute transhumanist science fiction play written in verse. Although I spent quite a bit of time researching it, toying with it, and eventually laying out the largest chunks of it, the play just refused to gel. And so, after having it consume all of my creative thoughts and energies for the better part of a month, I’m left with nothing to actually show for it.

Ah, well. That happens upon occasion.

And the month wasn’t completely destitute.

The American Shakespeare Repertory staged The Merchant of Venice, the 19th reading in the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare. Supporting that production, I wrote several essays: The Textual History of Merchant, Elizabethans and the Jews (Part 1 and Part 2), The Pound of Flesh, The Great Conversion, The Soul of Shylock, and The Four Sallies.

I continued my work with the South High Theater Alumni Alliance, which gives a newsletter presentation of local theater productions starring alumni from one of the premiere high school theater programs (which also happens to be my alma mater).

I’ve also been working on converting Margaret Frazer’s stories and novels into Kindle ebooks. In December that included “This World’s Eternity”, “Shakespeare’s Mousetrap”, and The Outlaw’s Tale.

I’m also been working as the dramaturg for Walking Shadow Theater’s Drakul, an original adaptation by John Heimbuch. December saw the bulk of my work on this project to date, and I’m really excited about it: The script is not only the best and most faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that I’ve seen to date; it also tells a truly compelling story of the sequel to those infamous events.

The show will be running February 11th thru 26th in Minneapolis, MN. If you’re local (or passing through), you should check it out.

And I’m looking ahead to 2011. There’s some exciting stuff on the horizon.

Tonight at the Gremlin Theater in Minneapolis, MN, the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare continue with Richard II:

SEPTEMBER 29th, 2010
7:30 PM
Tickets: Pay What You Can!

Gremlin Theater
2400 University Avenue West
St. Paul, MN
Directions to the Theater

Richard II is the second part of a September Saga which reunites two plays starring Richard II which haven’t appeared on the same stage and starring the same acting company since the reign of King James I. It started two weeks ago with the little-known Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock.

Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock only survives in a well-thumbed manuscript. Literally well-thumbed: The edges of its pages, worn thin by apparently decades of use as a playhouse prompt script, are disintegrating.

But that’s not all: The manuscript’s cover sheet has been lost, taking with it the original name of the play and the author’s name. The last few pages are also missing, taking with them the end of the play.

Despite being battered and beaten, the play has survived. And it brings with it a host of mysteries of enigmas.

First, and perhaps foremost, is the play’s anonymity. Take any half-decent, anonymous play from Elizabethan England and it won’t be long before the question, “Who wrote this?” starts attracting answers of, “William Shakespeare”.

Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, on the other hand, is a very good play from Elizabethan England, so it shouldn’t be too surprising to discover that the name “William Shakespeare” has been periodically dogging its heels for at least the last couple of centuries. But the heat really cranked up in 2005 when Michael Egan picked up the torch. Egan didn’t just content himself with writing a mammoth tome making his case that Shakespeare was the author of “Richard II, Part 1″ (as he called it): He wrote four. And then he followed it up with a blitzkrieg of publicity.

Which, to make a long story short, is how the play finds its way into the apocryphal cycle of the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare.

PIECING OUT CONCLUSIONS

Putting together a script for Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock was a complicated project, and you can read more about the general problems I face in this essay. But what I want to particularly focus on right now is the most devastating loss suffered by the manuscript: Its finale.

At least one full leaf is missing at the end of the play, taking with it at least 120 lines (based on the number of lines per leaf in the rest of the manuscript). It’s unlikely that we are missing more than one or two leaves, as the play is already rather long at 2,989 lines and is clearly heading towards a conclusion.

The ending of a play, of course, contains the culmination of its plot, theme, and characters. Therefore, in order to discuss or analyze Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, one must hypothesize the nature of its ending. (If Godot shows up, Waiting for Godot looks like a very different play.) And if one is going to perform it, of course, a conclusion of some sort must be written.

It is perhaps unsurprising to discover that the hypothetical ending of the play has become a crucible for the authorship debate: Write the ending one way, and it strengthens the play’s ties to Shakespeare’s Richard II. Write it a different way and the plays become completely incompatible.

(If you’d like to, you can read the full play and/or the new ending before delving into the discussion of what I did and why I did it.)

CONCLUDING THE PLOT

Much like the authorship debate itself, there are basically two possibilities for the ending of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock:

First, the play could be viewed as a complete conflation of Richard’s reign: The cronies of Richard’s final crisis (Bushy, Bagot, Scroop, and Green) are transplanted into Richard’s first crisis (which historically featured an entirely different set of nobles). Gloucester’s death, which in real life took place between the two crises, is dramatically shifted to the culmination of the first. But instead of being resolved in a series of primarily political maneuvers, this crisis is instead resolved on the field of battle in the fashion of the second crisis.

Theoretically one could argue that this is not a prequel to Shakespeare’s Richard II, but rather supercedes it entirely: All one needs to do is provide an ending in which Richard abdicates his throne in order to complete the play’s masterful blending of every crisis in Richard’s reign into a single, unified narrative.

This theory runs into a rather significant stumbling block, however, when one notices that Henry Bolingbroke – Richard’s replacement and the future Henry IV – is conspicuously missing from the play. While it’s impossible to completely rule out a last minute revelation of the heir apparent (akin to Henry VII in Richard III or Fortinbras in Hamlet), it’s rather difficult to imagine how the play would simultaneously remove Bolingbroke’s father (the Duke of Lancaster), who has also been left rather inconveniently alive.

Thus we are forced to turn to the second possibility, in which Richard’s first deposition is carried out: Stripped of his friends and with their tyrannies revoked, Richard is allowed to keep his throne. Much like the historical record, there is a return to a sort of status quo, allowing for a relatively seamless continuity with the beginning of Richard II.

In addition to Richard’s fate, there’s the question of how the issue of Woodstock’s murder was to be resolved. It has been hypothesized that Lapoole’s entrance as a prisoner at the top of the scene must presage an ultimate revelation of Woodstock’s fate, but this isn’t necessarily true: Lapoole may merely be rounding out the crowd of Richard’s cronies who have been captured during the battle (and destined to be sentenced during the course of the scene). If the play is connected to Richard II, it’s notable that while Gloucester’s death is known at the beginning of that play, even Lancaster and York are left to speculate on the king’s guilt in the matter.

CONCLUDING THE CHARACTERS

Tying off the loose ends of the plot in R2: Woodstock is largely a matter of shuffling historical necessity and guessing which bits the author intended to include. More difficult to guess are the particular conclusions of each character’s arc, since each character – although largely drawn from the historical record – is nevertheless the unique creation of the author’s genius.

Of course, not every character in a drama is necessarily worthy of equal attention. Therefore, one needs to choose which characters are to be given the spotlight’s focus. In the case of R2: Woodstock, my best guess is that this focus belongs to Nimble and Tresilian (who have been the focus of the play’s B-plot), Richard (by necessity of his deposition if nothing else), and the king’s surviving uncles (partly as a continuation of Woodstock’s important legacy within he play).

As for Nimble and Tresilian, the thrust of their arc has already been initiated in Act 5, Scene 5, and is being drawn to a close when the script abruptly cuts off. It’s not difficult, therefore, to round off an ending in which the servant becomes the master (completing a cycle of class inversion found throughout the play) and Tresilian is brought to justice for his tricks in the culmination of a final trick played by Nimble.

Next we turn to Richard, who is most likely brought onstage as a captive by the Duke of York (who is conspicuously absent at the beginning of the final scene). Is he to be humbled like Tresilian? Perhaps. But if Richard is to end with his crown intact, it may make more sense to draw a contrast between his fate and that of his false judge. Let us instead suppose a Richard who, out of his need to find some strength to rely on, turns to the surety of his divine right to the throne: This harrowing experience can actually serve to strengthen and purify that belief, already found as a subtext throughout R2: Woodstock, into the central tenet of his existence (and thus setting the stage for Richard II).

Finally we come to the dukes of York and Lancaster. Throughout the play they have largely acted in concert as “headstrong uncles to the gentle king” (as Greene describes them in 1.2), but there have also been subtle divisions drawn between their characters: The “relenting Duke of York” (2.1) being contrasted against a Lancaster who is frequently “past all patience” (1.1).

Let’s suppose that in this final scene this division between brothers is brought into the open, perhaps driven by their different responses to Woodstock’s death. Lancaster, who had already sworn to “call King Richard to a strict account” (5.3) can follow their initial inclination to its extreme and depose Richard. York, on the other hand, can learn from Woodstock’s counsel and follow his example of temperance and patience, thus turning Woodstock’s death into a final sacrifice in accordance with Woodstock’s final prayer.

(And this, too, transitions the characters naturally to the beginning of Richard II.)

CONCLUDING THE THEMES

Even moreso than with plot or character, attempting to provide a thematic conclusion for the play bears the risk of stamping it with one’s own interpretation of the drama. Thus I have chosen to walk carefully, preferring to include thematic elements without necessarily seeking to summarize or pass judgment on them.

Occasionally, however, boldness is called for. In particular, I have chosen to take up key themes of Richard II. Many of these themes have already been highlighted in Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, but others which have not previously been present in the play are established as the transformation of one theme into another.

Thus, for example, a king who has been vain turns reflective. And whereas in the aftermath of Anne a Beame’s death Richard says of himself, “My wounds are inward, inward burn my woe.” In the face of fresher losses, we find that his woe has consumed entirely, transforming him into a hollow king.

Have I overstepped scholastic certainty? Of course. But the ending of a play should never be completely predictable. So if we limit ourselves to providing an ending which does nothing that is not already contained in the play as it exists, we would confine ourselves to an artistically and dramatically unfulfilling conclusion. In seeking to push the boundaries of the play beyond the known limitation of its final, broken page, aiming towards Richard II as lodestar provides at least some guidance where we might otherwise find ourselves stumbling blindly in the dark.

THE SCRIPT

Here are links to PDF copies of the new ending and the full script of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock. You can find more about the play at the American Shakespeare Repertory.

RICHARD II: THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK – THE NEW ENDING

RICHARD II: THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK – FULL SCRIPT

Permission to use this additional material in print or production is freely granted as long as the following notice is included on either (a) the title page or cover of the printed publication or (b) the cover of the production’s program, website, and any posters, postcards, or similar advertising:

New Ending Written by Justin Alexander
https://www.thealexandrian.net

Originally Produced by the
American Shakespeare Repertory
http://www.american-shakespeare.com

Not so long ago I wrote some essays in response to Ron Rosenbaum’s The Shakespeare Wars, leading off with one entitled “Thus Diest Common Sense“. Now I find myself writing a reaction to another recent book about Shakespeare, and once again common sense has found its way into the title.

In this case I’ve been reading Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? This is a rather excellent piece of work by James Shapiro which explores the totality of the “authorship question” (the conspiracy theory which claims that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare) from a refreshing angle: Instead of merely exploring the idea itself, Shapiro explores the history of that idea — the ways in which literary criticism, Shakespeare studies, and the “anti-Stratfordians” have evolved over the past four centuries. The result is a compelling and intriguing narrative in which Shapiro aptly makes the case that the “authorship question” is the natural reaction to the excesses of Shakespearean scholarship: If you raise Shakespeare to the level of a deity, it’s little wonder that people will have difficulty seeing the mortal man of William Shakespeare as being a suitable candidate for godhood. And if you insist on trying to patch the holes in Shakespeare’s biography by forcefully extracting autobiography from his plays and poems, then you open the doors for people to say, “Shakespeare can’t have written these plays because somebody else has a biography which has more in common with Romeo or Prospero or Hamlet.” (Or whoever the subjective critic chooses to pick as the “most autobiographical” of Shakespeare’s infinite variety of characters.)

Along the way, Shapiro deftly deflates one “anti-Stratfordian” claim after another with a mixture of rigorous, thorough, and essentially irrefutable scholarship. The result is extremely entertaining, and I recommend the book highly.

Unfortunately, the book is not without flaw. Shapiro occasionally falls into the same traps of fallacy and assumption which plague the pseudo-scholarship of the Oxfordians, Baconians, and Marlovians. For example, on page 177 he writes:

Enough incidents in Oxford’s life uncannily corresponded to events in the plays to support Looney’s claims that the plays were barely veiled autobiography. Like Hamlet, Oxford’s father died young and his mother remarried. Like Lear, he had three daughters — and his first wife was the same age as Juliet when they married. […]

Until now, critics had failed to identify these “cunning disguises” because they had the wrong man. Oxford’s authorship, Looney was convinced, made everything clear. Hamlet offered the best example, and Looney matches its cast of characters with those in Oxford’s courtly circle: Polonius is Lord Burleigh, Laertes is his son Thomas Cecil, Hamlet is Oxford himself, and Ophelia is Oxford’s wife, Anne. But such claims about representing on the public stage some of the most powerful figures in the realm betray a shallow grasp of Elizabethan dramatic censorship. Looney didn’t understand that Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels, whose job it was to read and approve all dramatic scripts before they were publicly performed, would have lost his job — and most likely his nose and ears, if not his head — had he approved a play that so transparently  ridiculed privy councillors past and present. Looney’s scheme also defies common sense, for Lord Burleigh was dead by the time Hamlet was written, and nothing could have been in poorer taste, or more dangerous, than mocking Elizabeth’s most beloved councillor soon after his death, onstage or in print.

Shapiro’s general point is true: If the play was actually written as allegory in the way that Looney described, then it would be politically dangerous to have written it.

… which would rather neatly explain why Oxford would choose to write it under a pseudonym, right? Rather than “defying common sense”, the scenario makes perfect sense.

Shapiro is also pulling another fast one when he claims that “Lord Burleigh was dead by the time Hamlet was written” because the Oxfordians re-date the composition and performances of all the plays to support earlier dates. (They have to. Oxford died in 1604 and Shakespeare kept writing plays until at least 1613.) Now, it’s absolutely true that the Oxfordian efforts to re-date the plays contradict the existing historical record and, frequently, the texts of the plays themselves. But it’s not fair to simply ignore the totality of the Oxfordian theory while you cherry pick bits of it out of context.

Does that mean that I think Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare?

Let’s not be ridiculous. Even if Shapiro, upon rare occasion, fails to provide the best possible rebuttal of the Oxfordian’s claims, it doesn’t change the fact that the theories of the Oxfordians (and Baconians and Marlovians) are complete nonsense.

For example, one of the favorite Oxfordian claims is that there’s no contemporary evidence identifying William Shakespeare as the guy who wrote the plays by William Shakespeare. This is absolutely true… as long as you ignore the dozens of published plays bearing his name on the title page; the contemporary references to Shakespeare writing the plays by critics, fellow authors, and members of the public; Master of the Revels accounts referring to Shakespeare’s authorship; and the effusive memorials and eulogies dedicated to Shakespeare’s memory and his work shortly after his death.

As long as you ignore all of that evidence, it’s true that there’s absolutely no such evidence.

The truth is that we have more historical evidence of William Shakespeare writing the plays bearing his name than we do for virtually any other Elizabethan playwright. (The exception would be Ben Jonson, who had the advantages of being a tireless self-promoter, living an extra twenty years, and becoming England’s first Poet Laureate.)

The truth is, this whole “anti-Stratfordian” nonsense should be dumped into the same bucket of nonsense in which we find flat-earthers, creationists, 9/11 conspiracy nuts, and people who think we faked the moon landings.

DEALING WITH OXFORDIANS

If you happen to find yourself in a discussion or debate with an “anti-Stratfordian”, here’s what you do:

(1) Ask them exactly what sort of objective evidence would convince them that William Shakespeare wrote the plays of William Shakespeare.

Then ask them to provide such evidence for their favored candidate.

Occasionally you might find one of them trying to pull a fast one on you. For example, they might say, “Proof that Shakespeare owned a book.” You might point to the contemporary references to Shakespeare’s literacy. Or you might point out that the entire argument that Shakespeare didn’t own any books is predicated on the fact that his will doesn’t itemize them… but his will doesn’t itemize a lot of stuff. It doesn’t mention tables or chairs, but that doesn’t mean his family ate off the floor. The books would have been either given to his sister Joan (who got the house she was living in and everything in it) or to his daughter (who received another batch sum of property).

But Oxfordians are likely to be impervious to such arguments, so you may need to fall back on Plan B: “Oh? Really? Anyone who can be demonstrated to own a book in Elizabethan or Jacobean England must have been the person who wrote Shakespeare’s plays? That’s going to be a mighty long list!”

(2) This is why most Oxfordians prefer not to deal with objective evidence. Instead, they found their theory on a close reading of the plays: By insisting that the author of the plays must have been basing them on autobiographical details, they can “demonstrate” that Oxford (who had three daughters) is more likely to have written King Lear (who also had three daughters) than Shakespeare (who only had two).

Such a claim is, of course, completely nonsensical.

But let’s run with it: Oxford didn’t have two sons. Ergo, he couldn’t have written the character of Kent in King Lear, so those sections of the play must have been written by somebody else. We have no evidence that Oxford was ever a woman who dressed up like a man and ran away to the forest with her cousin, so obviously he can’t be responsible for Rosalind in As You Like It. I think it safe to say that Oxford never even met a Fairy Queen or a Fairy King, so A Midsummer Night’s Dream is right out.

This isn’t particularly informative, but it sure is a lot of fun!