The Jew of Malta

I hadn't planned on seeing Red Bull Theater's reading of The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe, but when my friend Susan told me she had an extra ticket, how could I resist?

Matthew Rauch starred as Barabas, the titular character who might have influenced not just William Shakespeare's Shylock, but also a slew of villains from Aaron the Moor to Richard III to Iago.

Like Shylock, Barabas is a victim of unfair treatment, but his quest for revenge goes outside the bounds of what can be considered reasonable. At the beginning of the play he is stripped of all his possessions by Ferneze, the Governor of Malta. Ferneze was played in the reading by Derek Smith, who gave a memorable performance as Lodovico in Red Bull's previous production of the John Webster tragedy The White Devil.

While Barabas and Ferenze give unflattering depictions of leaders of the Jewish and Christian worlds, the Islamic world is represented by Selim-Calymath, the son of the Ottoman Emperor. While Marlowe doesn't make any of these leaders come off very well, I found Calymath to be the least odious, at least as portrayed by Jason Bowen, who was excellent a couple of years ago in Lynn Nottage's Crumbs from the Table of Joy.

By far, however, the most sympathetic character is Barabas's daughter Abigail, played by Priyanka Kedia. Her father first forces her to become a nun so that she can retrieve a treasure hidden in a convent, then makes her the center of a love triangle that kills two young men, including Ferneze's son Don Lodowick, played by Samuel Adams. Distraught, Abigail converts to Christianity so she can enter a convent for real, earning the scorn of her father.

Barabas's partner in crime (who later foolishly betrays him) is a slave from Thrace named Ithamore. Steven Boyer, who is perhaps best known for playing an emotionally disturbed teenager with a penchant for puppetry in the Robert Askins play Hand to God, was delightfully evil in the reading as Ithamore.

The play, which had its first recorded performance in 1592, is famous for its use of a cauldron in which the protagonist is boiled alive. Philip Henslowe's prop list for the Lord Admiral's Men listed a cauldron that was likely used in the play's premiere and subsequent revivals.

Red Bull is not slated to revive the play in a full production anytime soon, but they will be presenting a new adaptation of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid beginning this May. It's on my list of things to see!

The First Duchess

When John Webster's play The Duchess of Malfi was first published in 1623, it did something extraordinary for the time: it listed the names of the actors who had played various roles.

Now 1623 was also the year two actors first published a folio edition of the work of William Shakespeare, and that edition contained a list of "The Names of the Principall Actors in all these Playes." However, that list didn't tell readers which actor had played which role.

In contrast, when the quarto edition of The Duchess of Malfi lists "The Actors Names" it actually gives the play's characters followed by which actor played each part. According to the play's title page, the piece had been performed both at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre as well as at the outdoor Globe. It also appears to have been performed in different years, since some roles list two different performers, the first one generally a bit older than the second.

Only one actor, however, is listed for the title character, and that is R. Sharpe, presumably Richard Sharpe, who was born around 1602, and so would have been only about 12 years old when the play premiered (before the end of 1614). The second set of actors appear to have taken over their roles sometime after the death of Richard Burbage in 1619. So if we hypothesize a revival around 1621, Sharpe would have been only about 19 then, still young enough to play female roles in the Jacobean theatre.

While little is known about the life of Sharpe, there is a wealth of material about his co-star in the premiere of The Duchess of Malfi, Burbage. Known for such roles as Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear, Burbage played the character of Ferdinand, twin brother to the Duchess of Malfi. The twins' younger brother, a Cardinal, was initially played by Henry Condell, who was one of the two actors who compiled Shakespeare's First Folio. While he lived until 1627, he might have taken on more of a managerial position in the company later on, and he was replaced in his role by Richard Robinson. Joseph Taylor replaced Burbage as Ferdinand, and both Taylor and Robinson were listed as "Principall Actors" of Shakespeare, as well.

One of the most curious things about the quarto of Webster's play is that it first lists Bosola, a comparatively lower-class character who would generally be placed after the upper-class folks. However, Bosola is a central figure in the play, and he was apparently quite competently played by John Lowin (listed in the First Folio as "John Lowine"). Known for playing the title characters in Shakespeare's Henry VIII and Ben Jonson's Volpone, Lowin might have distinguished himself so well in the part of Bosola as to earn top billing for himself.

Antonio, who marries the Duchess in the first act, was initially played by William Ostler, who died in December of 1614. (That's how we know the play must have premiered before then.) He was replaced by Robert Benfield.

It is the Duchess herself, however, who fascinates audiences the most in the play. It would have been interesting to have seen a young boy like Sharpe originating the role!

Webster's Siblings

John Webster loved portraying disturbing sibling relationships in his plays. His first tragedy, The White Devil, is notable in that the beautiful adulteress Vittoria (the titular White Devil of the piece) is aided in her crimes by her brother Flamineo.

When all their plans go sour, Flamineo even proposes a suicide pact with his sister, suggesting she shoot him with a pistol and then kill herself. Vittoria dutifully shoots her brother, but not herself, only to be surprised when Flamineo rises from the ground, announcing he had not loaded the pistols he gave her.
 
This darkly comic twist turns tragic, though, when the enemies of the sister and brother arrive to dispatch them. Vittoria goes bravely to her death, and Flamineo quickly forgives her betrayal of him, remarking “Thou’rt a noble sister: / I love thee now.” United in life by their sinful actions, they unite in death, as Vittoria’s stoic resolve helps reconcile Flamineo to his fate.
 
The siblings in Webster’s next play, TheDuchess of Malfi, instead are at odds from the very beginning. In the first scene, the title character’s twin brother Ferdinand places a spy in the duchess’s household. He also sternly warns his sister, who is recently widowed, that she shouldn’t remarry. “They are most luxurious / Will wed twice,” he tells her, though he appears to be most concerned with losing her inheritance should she have children with a second husband.

Ferdinand schemes together with his elder brother, the Cardinal of Aragon, who also seeks to prevent their sister from marrying. The cardinal’s moralizing about the lusts of women is contradicted by the fact that he keeps a mistress himself. When the still youthful countess arranges a secret marriage to her steward, the play portrays it as the most natural thing in the world, and the murderous obsessions of the brothers with their sister’s sex life appear sick and perhaps even quasi-incestuous.

After completing The Duchess of Malfi, Webster wrote a third tragedy, The Guise, which sadly has been lost. Presumably, the play was about recent French history, so it might have resembled Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris. Fashions were changing, though, and tragicomedy was on the rise. Webster’s fourth and final solo play (he also had written and would continue to write numerous collaborative works) was one such tragicomedy, The Devil’s Law Case.

Like The White Devil and the Duchess of Malfi, the tragicomedy The Devil’s Law Case features siblings with a problematic relationship. Romelio, the villain of the piece, might have a name that resembles Romeo, but unlike Shakespeare’s hero, Romelio simply wants to use love and marriage to advance his own material ends. His sister Jolenta (whose name echoes Juliet) is courted by two different men, the noble Contarino and the valiant Ercole. However, Romelio can’t even fathom that they could be interested in her for love.

Romelio disparages Contarino in the opening scene, declaring: “He makes his colour / Of visiting us so often, to sell land, / And thinks, if he can gain my sister’s love, / To recover the treble value.” Other characters can recognize Contarino’s honest motives, but being a villain himself, Romelio can only see villainy in other men. He arranges for Jolenta to marry Ercole instead, though she clearly returns Contarino’s affections.

In the second act, the two rivals for Jolenta’s love quarrel and fight a duel, both receiving grievous injuries. Ercole appears to die, and Contarino, on the verge of death, writes his will, naming Jolenta his heir. Learning this, Romelio resolves to kill Contarino before he can recover, hoping to secure the inheritance for himself. As in The Duchess of Malfi, a scheming brother is more concerned with his sister’s property than her happiness.
 
Romelio’s villainy goes even further though, since he has gotten a nun pregnant, and is hoping to pass off his bastard as Jolenta’s child by Ercole. That way, Jolenta will receive not just Contarino’s estate, but through her child, Ercole’s estate as well. Though he badgers Jolenta into cooperating at first, she ultimately flees from him, attempting to escape to Rome together with the poor nun her brother got knocked up.
 
Because this is a tragicomedy, Ercole turns out to still be alive, and Contarino recovers from his wounds (ironically, because of Romelio’s assassination attempt). Romelio’s villainy is so great, though, that his own mother files a law suit claiming (falsely) that she cheated on her husband. This could get Romelio declared a bastard, ensuring that all inheritances stay with Jolenta.

That isn’t necessary in the end, and order and justice are restored in the fifth act. Still, if this is how Webster portrays siblings in his plays, one hopes he was an only child!

The White Devil

John Webster's play The White Devil is a bit of a mess. Webster usually collaborated as a playwright, and The White Devil, which premiered at the Red Bull Theatre in 1612, might have been his first solo work, which could explain its rather complicated nature.

The plot, based loosely on events surrounding the historical Italian noblewoman Vittoria Accoramboni, is ridiculously complicated, and filled with the fantastical instruments of death Webster helped to make popular in Jacobean revenge tragedies. According to the play's printed preface, it was a failure when first performed at the open-air Red Bull. When it was revived at the indoor Cockpit Theatre in 1630, however, it was a success.

Webster seems to have been ahead of his time. The play requires the intimacy of a small, indoor theatre to get its full effect, and it looks forward to other bloody revenge tragedies like Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women, Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling, and Webster's own The Duchess of Malfi, as well as John Ford's masterpiece 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. A portrait is perfumed with poison, and when a woman kisses it, she is murdered. A death is faked with bullet-less pistols. In the final bloody slaughter, a brother and sister bound to a pillar meet their ends with tragic defiance.

Years ago, when I saw the show performed by the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, it was a revelation. In spite of the labyrinthine plot, I was able to follow every twist and turn. When a conjuror had a character put on a charmed nightcap and see visions of murders being committed far away, the audience just went with it. Seeing the dumb shows performed before our very eyes in a dark, intimate space, created an atmosphere charged with electricity. We were being treated to a glimpse of what might have happened in the Cockpit so many years ago. The costumes were a mixture of modern and period, but the feel of the play was pure magic.

I was very excited when I heard that the Red Bull Theater Company was going to be doing The White Devil this year. The company is named for the open-air playhouse where the show was first performed, and Red Bull specializes in the Jacobean aesthetic. Lately, the company has strayed a bit from its mission statement to focus on Jacobean drama and related work, stretching concepts of Jacobean aesthetic to produce such plays as Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector. They usually do good work, though, and while I was a bit surprised that Red Bull founder Jesse Berger wouldn't be directing, the director for The White Devil, Louisa Proske, has a long list of opera credits, so I remained hopeful.

While the play is still worth seeing, it didn't quite measure up to the Pittsburgh production of my memory. The piece is done entirely modern, with beautiful contemporary costumes designed by Beth Goldenberg. Virtual Reality goggles replace the charmed nightcap, and a tournament becomes a video game the characters play in celebration. The opening scene takes on the feeling of a video conference call, with a massive projection of a character's face on the set. The video, complete with intentional slips into poor quality for verisimilitude, isn't poorly done, but the production tends to lean on it like a crutch.

There are some good performances, though, chief among them Derek Smith as Lodovico, the banished count who enacts revenge upon Vittoria and her brother Flamineo. Lisa Birnbaum is stunning as Vittoria, the titular White Devil, though that part can be upstaged by the role of her cunning brother Flamineo, played here by Broadway veteran Tommy Schrider. The other part that tends to shine is Monticelso, the powerful cardinal who later becomes pope in the play. Robert Cuccioli plays the churchman with a perfect mixture of gravitas and hypocrisy.

The White Devil isn't the only literary work to tell the story of the ill-fated Vittoria. The French novelist Stendhal and the German Romantic Ludwig Tieck both had their own takes on the 16th-century beauty who came from a family of impoverished nobility, went to Rome to make her fortune, and married the nephew of a cardinal. The powerful Duke of Bracciano fell in love with her, and her husband ended up murdered, probably with the help of Vittoria's own brother.

That history is closely followed by Webster's play, though The White Devil does take some liberties later on for dramatic effect. If you'd like to see it on stage, check out the Red Bull Theater website. You can also put in for $20 rush tickets through TodayTix, though you might have to pay some pretty steep fees.

Death's Jest-Book

While still in his teens, the Thomas Lovell Beddoes published his first play, The Bride's Tragedy. At the time, Beddoes was a precocious student at Pembroke College, Oxford. His dream, however, was to write for the stage.

In his dedication of the play to one Rev. H. Card, Beddoes expressed his admiration for contemporary plays and praised "the flourishing condition of dramatic literature" in Britain. But alas, in spite of favorable reviews in the press, the theatres did not rush out to produce The Bride's Tragedy.

After leaving Oxford, Beddoes went to Germany to study anatomy, and there, in 1825, he began a new play, one he would continually rework and revise until his suicide in 1849. That play, Death's Jest-Book, Beddoes obsessively rewrote in reaction to the comments of his friends,.

The play pays homage to Jacobean revenge tragedy, including the work of Cyril Tourneur, Thomas Middleton, or John Webster. Beddoes's uncompromising portrayal of characters descending into death and madness led the critic Alan Richardson to conclude the play "can be placed as one of the first major responses to English Romanticism, anticipating a tradition that embraces The City of Dreadful Night and The Waste Land."

Death's Jest-Book is subtitled "The Fool's Tragedy," so I will concentrate on the character of the fool, Isbrand. Brother to the knight Sir Wolfram, Isbrand is brought into the service of the Duke of Munsterberg as a jester. The Duke has wronged their family, and Isbrand seeks revenge, but the forgiving Wolfram has reconciled with the duke and is even setting off to the Middle East to rescue him after an ill-fated expedition during the Crusades. In a brilliant prose passage, Isbrand mocks his brother:

Stay: you have not my blessing yet. With what jest shall I curse you in earnest? Know you this garb, and him who wears it, and wherefore it is worn? A father slain and plundered; a sister's love first worn in the bosom, then trampled in the dust: our fraternal bond, shall it so end that thou savest him whom we should help to damn? O do it, and I shall learn to laugh the dead out of their coffins!

Though Wolfram saves the dukes life, the two men are in love with the same woman, and the duke basely murders his rival. Wolfram is so honorable, he will not name his murderer even as he lies dying. When the duke returns, however, Isbrand is plotting. In Act II, the jester bequeaths his fool's cap to Death, in a passage that gives the play its name:

Let him wear the cap, let him toll the bells; he shall be our new court-fool: and when the world is old and dead, the thin wit shall find the angel's record of man's works and deeds, and write with a lipless grin on the innocent first page for a title, 'Here begin's Death's Jest-book.'

This idea, that death makes a cosmic joke of all earthly existence, pervades the play. The knowledge that life is a joke, however, does not prevent Isbrand from getting caught up in his own delusions of grandeur. Though he sometimes speaks in cynical prose, his language also rises into verse, as in this passage from Act III, where a ruined church-yard leads his to rhapsodize:

                                                            This is a sweet place methinks:
                    These arches and their caves, now double-nighted
                    With heaven's and that creeping darkness, ivy,
                    Delight me strangely. Ruined churches oft,
                    As this, are crime's chief haunt, as ruined angels
                    Straight become fiends.

As Isbrand plots, the Roman Mario offers his services to help overthrow the duke and establish a republic. Isbrand plays along, but secretly plots to make himself duke. His ambition rises higher than to be a mere duke, though. At the close of Act IV, Isbrand dreams of mastery over the entire universe:

                    And man is tired of being merely human;
                    And I'll be something more: yet, not by tearing
                    This chrysalis of psyche ere its hour,
                    Will I break through Elysium. There are sometimes,
                    Even here, the means of being more than men:
                    And I by wine, and women, and the sceptre,
                    Will be, my own way, heavenly in my clay.
                    O you star-mob, had I been one of You,
                    I would have seized the sky some moonless night,
                    And made myself the sun; whose morrow rising
                    Shall see me new-created by myself.

Even in death, Isbrand tries to remain defiant, but as he lies stabbed and bleeding at the end of the play, he sees that he, too, is nothing but a fool. His last lines are:

                    I jest and sing, and yet alas! am he,
                    Who in a wicked masque would play the Devil;
                    But jealous Lucifer himself appeared,
                    And bore him--whither? I shall know to-morrow,
                    For now Death makes indeed a fool of me.

As Richardson comments, "the attempt to rise above others demands a psyche continually at war with itself" and eventually "Isbrand himself perceives the emptiness of his pretended autonomy." A bleak ending for a bleak play.