Eureka and After

John Southworth's Shakespeare, the Player, was a major find (as below) if only for its very useful dating of Shakespeare leaving Stratford exactly when I wanted him to. I've not seen anybody else do it and he does it with such good reason. He continues to be original throughout, often dismissing traditional anecdotes and replacing them with commonsense explanations based on evidence and circumstances although he is reluctant to question the idea of Shakespeare as uxurious which looks to me highly dubious.

It is a life based on the theatre, though, via detailed scrutiny of cast lists and tour schedules and the main thing that brings out is that much of the life was spent on the road and less in London that might be usually imagined. He would have been familiar with Ipswich, Gloucester, Bristol and other places in the southern half of England.

The other main  'revelation' from this close reading of the parts in the plays and the actors available is how Southworth matches them up and, most tellingly, makes Shakespeare a major player, with Richard Burbage, rather than the bit-part Ghost in Hamlet or older men elsewhere that most credit him with. He is, in this account, a player-manager, often on stage at the beginning of plays and at the end and overseeing the drama he has devised at first hand, like a harpsichord player directing a baroque orchestra.

I don't know to what extent the author claims to establish his findings as facts but, as with so much Shakespeare biography, it succeeds or fails in proportion to how credible it is and it rates among the very best of Shakespeare biographies for scoring highly on that.

To most readers it will be how the theatre groups worked that will be of most interest and Shakespeare leaving Stratford in 1580 won't matter to them quite as much, interesting though it is on its own account, but it matters to me and I haven't been so grateful for anything for quite some time.

Eureka Moment

On Tuesday I picked up Shakespeare, The Player, a Life in the Theatre by John Southworth in the ever worthwhile Oxfam Bookshop in Chichester. It's not as if I don't have plenty of books on Shakespeare biography already but one never knows what might come out of the next one. In this one, the life as an actor is pieced together with the usual makeshift methods of applying conjecture and supposition to a few established details but Southworth has a healthy disregard for some of the myths, legends and hearsay and has done more of his own original research to support his version of events. He has the dates of which theatre companies visited Stratford and when as well as noting a number of echoes in early Shakespeare plays from parts in Marlowe and Thomas Kyd that might have crept in from lines he had learnt.

All such work depends on the reader accepting the author's reasoning and many won't if the theory doesn't align with what they want to believe but some authors come with more credibility and cogent case-making than others and Southworth is more persuasive than most. I don't ask for much more than I already have in life but one thing I have been in search of is 'evidence' or something like it that Shakespeare wasn't in Stratford in 1584 at the time he needed to be to father the twins his wife gave birth to in February 1585. And this account has Shakespeare joining up with Worcester's Men, aged 16, and thus touring with them for an apprenticeship that would last seven years.

While he necessarily has William in Stratford when he needs to be to be because he assumes he is Hamnet and Judith's father, that is only because he thinks it is necessary but it is getting Shakespeare out of Stratford so early that is significant. It's what I've always wanted. It's nothing to do with poaching deer or going to teach in Lancashire, it's the move into the theatre with enough time to learn all about the business before beginning to provide the industry with plays of his own. This is very much the missing link required by Strange Fowl, the essay that has been so long a work-in-progress and a few paragraphs inserted will make it look so much better.

Of course it will not convince those who don't want to be convinced. It is a theory, not even originally my theory, but I can't find fault with it and nobody else has yet successfully done so either. This 'discovery' feels very like that significant jigsaw moment when a crucial piece fits in and it makes me much happier that it perhaps ought to but it is like finding something that one wasn't even sure was there to be found. I will return to Strange Fowl in due course with renewed enthusiasm. As with poems, or music, it matters less what anybody else makes of it - one can't help that- but I am the boy who got just what he always wanted. 

Simone Tavoni in Chichester

Simone Tavoni, Chichester Cathedral, June 25

Some concert programmes are themed, either loosely or very specifically, while others are apparently not. There is a game of Only Connect to be played in which a possible option is that what the pieces have in common is that they have nothing in common. Simone Tavoni's set today comprised 13 pieces by 5 composers, taking the sonata as three movements, in about 45 minutes and provided a wide-ranging miscellany rather than any discernable unifying principle. Unless, of course, anybody found an answer that was beyond my ken.

Baldassare Galuppi's Sonata no. 5, T27, required a light touch and was tidy and decorous. His dates were 1706-1785 but he's more Mozart than Bach. Fame is a fickle thing, pace Andy Warhol, and where some become household names others have to wait until I reach, erm, late middle age before I've heard of them but in his case I'm glad I eventually did.

Immediately dreamier and lingering were the Trois morceaux poetiques, op. 42, by Moszkowski, moving up a couple of gears for the momento giojoso which I'm surprised to find the internet translating as 'wonderful moment' and not 'playful momentum' which is what it also was.

A proper change of mood, though, came with the heavier resounding of three of Rachmaninov's  Études-Tableaux, op.39, which were, as one might expect, bigger in every dimension, rumbling and tumbling as if it were not only a different pianist but almost a different instrument one was hearing. Two of Chopin's Four Mazurkas, op. 33, were more subdued than he sometimes is and led into Almeria from the Iberia by Albéniz in which one was invited to provide one's own pictures, possibly of wide-angled panoramas, the surrounding landscape behind the moorish fortress and, I dare say, some nostalgia under big, starry skies.

A further Chopin Mazurka was carried over into the encore to complete a programme which brought out both the piano and the forte, Simone here providing more of the former which, even in the light of the grandiose Rach, seems to be his forte. As it were.   

Inspīrātĭo Ensemble

Inspīrātĭo Ensemble, St Mary's Church, Hayling Island, June 23

Moving on about a hundred years from the baroque recital in April, Inspīrātĭo today were Mikhail Lezdkan (cello) now joined by Béla Hartmann (piano) in what is a flexible collective of musicians. A proper summer's day outside and plenty of air circulating in the attractive indoors of St. Mary's made for an ideal place to be with gorgeous music and Piers Burton-Page's debonair commentary for company.

Beethoven's 7 Variations on 'Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen' are not the monumental Diabelli set but still find space enough for variegated moods, from jovial to reflective, regular interplay between the duo and Béla bringing forward the original spirit of Mozart into the piano part.

In his announcer's role, Piers covered both some musical history and some appropriate Shakespeare readings among which was a brief summary of largely obsolete instruments, the point of which was the arpeggione that Schubert's Sonata D. 821 was written for. Its Allegro Moderato was convivial with Misha's cello velvet and smooth, its charm extending into mischief; the Adagio necessarily broader with a tinge of regret about it but then the Allegretto quickened into a snappy riff with Béla almost like a cinema accompanist to Misha's on-screen capers.

In the second half, Mendelssohn's Sonata no. 2, op. 58, led me to wonder if his reputation might be yet higher if he wasn't quite so cheerful so much of the time. Perhaps one needs to be essentially tragic to be taken more seriously. His first movement here was all vivace, really, with Béla verging on the flamboyant in a piece that I'm sure he had many more notes in and was at least an equal partner. Misha was pizzicato in the Scherzando and Béla decorated the Adagio with what, my investigations found out, were 'arpeggiated chords' and so I'm grateful to have learned that new thing today. There were even more notes in the Molto allegro e vivace finale with Misha's cello at times seeming to conjure the bumblebee from elsewhere in the repertoire.

Some rest after those exertions was provided by some rich, deep waves of sleep in a piece entitled Traumerei as an encore and I enjoy a quiz. Probably Robert Schumann, possibly Brahms, I thought, but maybe I vaguely knew it anyway. I wish I could have had a go on the BBC's old masterpiece of a parlour game, Face the Music. I might not have been Robin Ray but I could have been a contender.

That was an idyllic afternoon in every way I can think of. Anybody who expects more out of life than that is ever likely to be disappointed.

Eva Doroszkowska at the Menuhin Room

 Eva Doroszkowska, Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, June 22

The Menuhin Room isn't playing it safe, bringing the music of Grażyna Bacewicz amongst others to its Saturday lunchtime series. Eva Doroszkowska's programme led us in gently with Lūcija Garūta's Meditation which soon became expansive but after that there was no hiding place. Her 4 Preludes were, as one might have expected, banned by the philistine arbiters of Soviet taste but technically demanding music that demands to be listened to as well as played properly can bring proportionate rewards with it. They were staccato and uneasy but with rapturous high drama, too, and Eva's impassioned playing set the tone for what was a closely themed set of C20th music by female composers from the Baltic states and Poland.

Ester Mägi's Three Sea Tableaux surged, rippled and glittered, often up and down scales, and gave the house Steinway one of the more rigorous workouts it's been given recently and revealed it in all its glory up to its busy finish. If we sometimes go to sit and gaze at the timeless movement of a languid summer share of the sea, this was not that sort of sea. None of this concert's music is likely to be heard on Classic FM's relaxing Calm Classics.

Mägi's The Ancient Kantele to finish was more mystical and mysterious perhaps but not lessening in intensity, ending on the widest span between crossed-over hands that I've ever witnessed.

Before that, though, the Bacewicz Sonata no. 2 was possibly the main attraction. There is so much going on in her music that one never feels one has got to the bottom of it, the first movement as unresting and ardent as all else if not more complex. The Largo was sepulchral and without becoming dissonant still wouldn't allow itself a clear conscience until the 'neo-classical' finale was exactly that, with recognizable elements of traditional toccata given cubist, abstract or other C20th treatment until its theatrical climax, all of which Eva delivered with panache.

The Menuhin Room broke no box office records today but it was heartening to see very fair numbers attend for such adventurous repertoire and the generous reception it was given convincingly made the case that quality of appreciation is as worth having as quantity.

Sometimes an encore isn't quite appropriate however well-deserved it might be but Eva's Rameau Le Rappel des oiseaux was an excellent idea, as if to return us back home to safety, order and everything in its place. It makes me think now of the ending of Brief Encounter,

You've been a long way away. Thank you for coming back to me.

Sport

I understand there's something that's almost compulsory on the telly right now. However, I was always of the maverick tendency and didn't like to go along with the herd instinct. I understand 4% of Scotland are in Germany and at first thought it was hilarious that they got Rosemary Tonked 5-1 first time out but that is to miss the point. For such devotees, although winning is allegedly the preferred option, it's being part of it that matters more. It is instead of church.

On the bus on the way back from Waitrose ( ! ) there were a number of young men in evidence making their way to pubs in their England shirts, gladly foregoing any attempt at expressing individuality in their apparel but adopting the uniform. I'm sure Roland Barthes or Claude Levi-Strauss would have made short work of the semiotics and anthropology of it all and equally understand the non-conformist in me that instinctively rebels against uniform. Not only was sports kit subverted as far as possible with socks often rolled down in pre- compulsory shin pad era and shirt untucked but wearing any other trousers than denim jeans when they were de rigeur for the student classes. That last bit was based on the gospel according to Rod Stewart in an interview in Sounds circa 1977 where he said he didn't own any such things. And then, about 30 years later, there he was wearing them on the video of Have You Ever Seen the Rain. You simply can't trust anybody.

 

There was a time, certainly into the 1990's, when I knew all about the football, the test match, then the snooker, the Tour de France, the Derby and most recently mainly the jump racing but I won't be taken for granted as anybody's captive audience if I can help it. A favourite line, whether with regard to Fulham FC, Notts cricket or any other professional outfit that my interest in was diminishing, was, well, I never saw any of them at my poetry readings. I retain some residual regard for amateur or Corinthian sport but not England.

I was very lucky to be English. It was never going to be anything else. One is either born, against very long odds, or is not. You were either going to be you or you weren't going to be anybody at all. It sometimes seems like a close call which one would have preferred but nationality is nothing to be proud of.

Recent difficulties with one of my bookmakers, as below a week or two ago, have even served to undermine the last vestiges of involvement with sport I had, there being little future in the gradual accumulation of small profits from horse racing if such firms are going to make it too difficult to transfer them out into the bank for onward spending. It's the industry's last ditch defence against anybody who dares to consistently beat them at their own game. They don't like it. Subservience, but mainly your money, is what they expect from you while conning you into thinking you are enjoying yourself.

Well, no, not me, I never lost control. You're face to face with the man can see precious little reason to care anymore. 

Brief Book Notes

It's hard to keep up, or even know what the 'day job' is, at present.

This is 'David Green Books' but you wouldn't think so. It looks more and more like David Green Music in the same way that the Third Programme was once BBC Classical Music Radio but by now Radio 3 readily shifts into musicals, jazz, 'world music' and anything else it sees fit to. And why not, we might ask. Because we'd like somewhere to go where it will be orchestral, chamber, choral or solo music by mostly old German men in wigs, thank you.

But I was glad of a tip for Paddy Kitchen's Gerard Manley Hopkins which served its purpose perfectly, not over-burdened with detail, footnotes and more than one really needs to know. It perhaps wasn't such a dark and desperate story as one imagined but that is to his credit given the welter burden of Jesuit teaching he submitted to. 

That such spirited, charged poems came out of a life so overawed by piety is almost a miracle in itself and it's hard to imagine how such righteousness could reduce us to such servility and yet, in other forms, it still does.

I was surprised how often the poems quoted were so familiar, Hopkins having been regarded as significant and avidly read at a formative age and so those lines are baked into whatever it is that constitutes any 'sensibility' I have, for better or worse. For better, I still think.

A re-read of Businessmen as Lovers by Rosemary Tonks revealed it as very 'forward' and 'frank' for 1969 when you think how soon it came after the lifting of the 'Chatterley ban' but that's not really the point. I've tried and failed with Jane Austen a few times, probably mostly because I can't tell which bits are the social comedy and which Jane thought were perfectly normal. I'm better off with Rosemary who is more contemporary and thus less evasive, perhaps less subtle, too, but rarely less than devastating. It's Rosemary 3 Jane 0.

And then, today, still returning to my own library back catalogue because that's what it's there for and there'd be no point living in a house this size were it not in order to contain the books and records, I read chapter 7 of The Return of the Native in Chichester Cathedral while waiting for the concert. It is Hardy's essay introducing Eustacia Vye, including,

To see her hair was to fancy that a whole winter did not contain darkness enough to form its shadow:

and in many ways it is perhaps Hardy's darkest book, Jude notwithstanding, and with it not being among those I read first from fourth-form Woodlanders onwards when I read on after bedtime so very taken with it, it is becoming almost my favourite.

Of course one reads things all the time but not all of them are all-time classics and it is great to go back to seminal, eternal, maybe even sempiternal, things to remind oneself why one read books in the first place.

The reason why this is David Green (Books) was that it was originally intended to be about my books and poems but there weren't enough of them and they're not of quite such sempiternal interest and so it diversified.

However, the very last DG book, using the last ISBN issued to the imprint, is set up and ready to go. Sixteen poems, not all masterpieces but just about worthy of print if all the others were.  Romanticism is ready to go to the printers but I'm not convinced I'm sufficiently excited about it to send it so we will have to see. We could wait another year or two and see what else turns up to be included.