Year's Work in Shaw

The Year's Work in English Studies is not a publication I generally review. By the time it comes out, the "year" is two years ago, but it can help in keeping up with recent trends.

Recently, a colleague in the International Shaw Society alerted me to a chapter in it written by Claudio Francesco Favazza, published this month, called "Modern Literature: George Bernard Shaw."

Much of the chapter is taken up by a review of a special issue of Shaw edited by Mary Christian on "Victorian Shaw." I wrote a piece for the issue on The Devil's Disciple, which Favazza astutely summarized:

A comparable concern with formal innovation and transformation underlies James Armstrong’s ‘Subverting the Melodramatic in The Devil’s Disciple’ (ShawR 44:i[2024] 48–61). Armstrong argues that in The Devil’s Disciple [1897] Shaw both adopts and overturns the conventions of Victorian melodrama, using them not for sensation but to expose the illusions of respectability, marriage and social order. He notes that the familiar opposition between a woman’s legal marriage and a ‘true’ marriage with another man—a theme common in melodrama—is here recast to question the legitimacy of marriage itself.

My interest in melodrama should be well known to anyone who reads this blog regularly. (I recently wrote a post about Augustin Daly's Under the Gaslight.) Though Victorian melodramas are rarely read or performed today, they can tell us a lot about the development of theatrical techniques. Favazza notes this, continuing:

Comparing the play with Sydney Grundy’s Slaves of the Ring [1894], the first melodrama Shaw reviewed, Armstrong shows how Shaw moves beyond conventional moral contrasts. Unlike Grundy’s heroine, who acts under illusion, Judith acts consciously, making her near-adultery all the more destabilizing. Armstrong also points out that the play resists the redemptive closure typical of the genre: Dick Dudgeon’s willingness to die is not an act of romantic sacrifice but a deliberate rejection of social norms. As he observes, Shaw even opposed stage interpretations that sentimentalized the relationship between Judith and Dick. In this way, Armstrong concludes, Shaw transforms melodrama’s emotional energy into a medium for cultural and ideological revolt. 

That's a fair assessment of the article. It's nice to know my work is getting read.

The Cenci

The story of the Cenci family is perhaps best known from a verse drama by Percy Shelley. However, Shelley based his play on real-life events at the end of the 16th century.

Shelley wrote in his preface to the play that it was based on a manuscript "copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome" detailing the events of 1599 that "ended in the extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that city."

An English translation of an account of the Cenci family from the 18th-century Annali d'Italia by Lodovico-Antonio Muratori exists partially in the hand of Mary Shelley (better known for writing other things). When it gets to the part where poor Beatrice Cenci is violated by her father, the translation glosses over the details, and a note by Mary Shelley states, "The details here are horrible, and unfit for publication."

Those details were not glossed over by Alexandre Dumas, who also wrote a play about the actor Edmund Kean in addition to some books about musketeers. In Les crimes célèbres, Dumas wrote about Count Cenci not only taking his daughter by force, but compelling her to take part in orgies involving men, women, and children. While Shelley shows Beatrice as escaping torture after she was arrested for the murder of her father, Dumas depicts her being interrogated while subjected to the rope and pulley, also known as the strappado.

An image of Beatrice being tortured also appears in the play about her by Antonin Artaud, which is based on Shelley's play but also contains elements from Dumas's version of the story. (It also might have been influenced by a historical novel by Stendhal on the ill-fated family.)

For many years, a portrait of a young woman attributed to the artist Guido Reni was thought to represent Beatrice Cenci. Even if it was not her, it certainly influenced Shelley and the many other artists who have endeavored to tell her story.

If you'd like to hear her story for yourself, Red Bull Theater will be putting on a reading of Shelley's play this November.

Midsummer Rain Site

The Riverdale Shakespeare Players, a new venture bringing together Riverdale Repertory Company and the University of Mount Saint Vincent, tonight had their debut performance, with a spectacular outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Well, the course of true love never did run smooth, and neither did the course of outdoor theatre. A flash-flood warning forced the Players to preform indoors at the Hayes Theatre at Mount Saint Vincent, rather than outside in Grace Plaza as originally planned.

Co-directors Sarah Stevenson and Esther H. Cohen put a positive spin on the matter, though, noting that if you have to move indoors, you might as well perform in a space with a chandelier (which the Hayes absolutely has). The stage was decorated with flowers and greenery, so the audience at least felt like they were outdoors.

The cast was game. Elana Weinberger was a regal Hippolyta opposite Alan Cutler as Theseus. Deborah Lupkin brought some magic as the Fairy Queen Titania, warring with King Oberon, played by James Duncan. Sam Yaggy brought the Fairy King some (questionable) assistance as Puck, who screwed up the poor lovers, played by Sadie Isseks (Hermia), Michael Kashtelyan (Lysander), Annie Cutler (Helena), and Aaron Levav (Demetrius).

Of course, it would be rude to leave out the Rude Mechanicals, led by Steven Pena as Peter Quince. Matt Gordon appropriately made an ass of himself as Bottom, Andrew Small found his inner falsetto as Flute, Jennifer Firestone built the wall as Snout, and Sarah Greenberg roared mighty roars as Snug.

A Midsummer Night's Dream will be back tomorrow at the Riverdale Y, and then on Sunday at Christ Church Riverdale. Hopefully, those performances will actually be outdoors, but there are rain sites for both, just in case.

For the latest weather-related announcements, you can check out the group's feed on Instagram.

Jack Cade on the Toy Stage

 In the past, I've written about toy-theatre adaptations of such plays as Black-Eyed Susan, The Castle Spectre, The Miller and His Men, Oliver Twist, and even William Shakespeare's Macbeth.

While all of those were popular on stages during the 19th century, toy theatres also presented less known stories, including that of Jack Cade's rebellion which is featured in the second part of Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy.

The Boys of England journal published a script for a toy-theatre version of Jack Cade; Or, The Rebel of London that is loosely based on incidents from The Second Part of Henry VI, sometimes borrowing Shakespeare's language, or at least his jokes.

In the first scene, Cade proclaims: "By my blood and sword, there shall be seven halfpenny loaves sold for one penny, and the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and always be full." This is a paraphrase from Act IV, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's play, though it leaves out the quip that follows it: "and I will make it felony to drink small beer."

Perhaps the most famous line in Shakespeare's play is "The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers." The script for the toy-theatre version shortens this to "Let us kill all the lawyers." A bigger difference is the portrayal of Alexander Iden, the man who killed Cade. Shakespeare shows him as a simple man content with a small inheritance who captures and kills Cade by chance.

The toy-theatre version of the play remakes Iden into a romantic lead in love with a young woman named Violet who has been accosted by Cade and his men. Shakespeare's Iden doesn't even realize at first that it is Cade he has slain, as he is simply trying to keep the peace. This contrasts greatly with the Iden in the toy-theatre play, who proclaims patriotically, "Thus perish all traitors and foes to old England and its monarch!"

It's not surprising that scripts for toy theatres frequently simplified plots, language, and characters, making them easier for young people to understand. I spoke about this two years ago in Glasgow at a conference of the British Association for Romantic Studies. An expanded version of that talk later appeared in Theatre Notebook, if you're interested.

The Adventure of the Dancing Men

Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" is an entertaining read, but would it make a good play?

In the hands of adaptor Susane Lee, the answer is decidedly yes. On the surface, it would seem to be the least adaptable tale in the Holmes canon. After all, it's the story of a secret code (similar to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold Bug") with half the fun being the cyphers made up of little stick figures which were originally published with the text of the story.

Those cyphers, and Holmes's brilliant (yet elementary) decoding of them, creatively appear onstage in the version currently being performed by Hudson Classical Theater Company outdoors by the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Riverside Park. Some of the cyphers are drawn in chalk by the villain, Abe Slaney (played by Max Bank. Others appear on papers the actors show to the audience.

Most brilliantly, though, the actors take on the shape of the cyphers (which look like little dancing men) as Holmes is explaining how he cracked the code. The company's founder, Nicholas Martin-Smith, plays Holmes on stage, ably assisted by Quint Spitzer as Dr. John Watson. Alison Logan also gives a memorable performance both as Holmes's landlady Mrs. Hudson and as Mrs. Saunders, the loquacious housekeeper who turns out to be a rather unreliable witness in the case.

Costume designer Joy Grad provides a delightful steampunk aesthetic for the show, which also includes dancing coordinated by Karen Eterovich. Tony Mita of New York Combat for Stage and Screen ably choreographs the fight sequences. The outdoor stage works for the story, which partially takes place in a garden anyway.

Having recently seen Red Monkey Theater Group perform their adaptation of a different Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet" I was pleased to see again how delightful it can be to watch Holmes and Watson come to life on stage

The Adventure of the Dancing Men is only playing until August 16th. Don't miss your chance to see it!

Supposes

The Italian Renaissance writer Ludovico Ariosto is most famous for his verse epic Orlando Furioso. However, he also wrote plays, including the highly influential comedy I Suppositi, notable for a 1566 English translation by George Gascoygne called Supposes.

Ariosto's first comedy, La Cassaria (The Coffer), premiered in 1508 at the court of Cardinal Ippolito in Ferrara. It was a hit, and the next year Ariosto premiered I Suppositi at the palace of the duke. Both plays were originally in prose, though Ariosto later wrote verse versions of them.

Both plays are also examples of commedia erudita, the learned comedy of scholars, which differed from commedia dell'arte, which was produced by professionals. Commedia erudita looked to classical Roman drama for inspiration. I Suppositi borrows in part from Terence's comedy The Eunuch and even more from Plautus's play The Captives.

In the first act, we learn that the young scholar Erostrata has switched places with his servant Dulippo. (Gascoygne spells the names Erostrato and Dulypo.) This is similar to the way Philocrates switches places with his slave Tyndarus in The Captives, but in Ariosto's play the motive is different. The false Dulippo (really Erostrata) uses his servant disguise to sleep with the beautiful Polinesta (Polynesta in Gascoygne's spelling).

Polinesta's father Damon, who is similar to the parsimonious Pantalone in commedia dell'arte, wants to marry her off without having to pay a dowery. That's why he favors a match with the old doctor of law Cleandro (Cleander as Gascoygne has it). Cleandro is like the Dottore figure in commedia dell'arte, and similarly has some long, rambling monologues. In the first act, he says (in Gascoygne's translation):

It becometh not a man to praise him selfe; but, indeede, I may say, and say truely, that my knowledge hath stoode me in better steade at a pinche than coulde all the goodes in the worlde. I came out of Otranto when the Turkes wonne it, and first I came to Padua, after hither, where by reading, counseling, and pleading, within twentie years I have gathered and gayned as good as ten thousande ducats.

That incident in Otranto, which the Ottoman Turks seized in 1480, putting much of the population to the sword and enslaving the rest, will become important later. First, however, we get a plot where the false Erostrata convinces a gentleman traveling from Sienna to pretend to be his father. Things get complicated when the real Erostrata's father arrives from Sicily. If this sounds a lot like the subplot in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, now you know where the Bard picked up some of his ideas.

Of course, Ariosto was borrowing from others as well. The parasite character in I Suppositi, Pasifilo (or Pasyphilo according to Gascoygne), is based of Ergasilus from The Captives. Like Ergasilus, Pasifilo is always on the lookout for a free meal. When told he should supervise what is prepared for supper, he replies:

By the masse, if you should have studied this sevennight you could not have appointed me an office to please me better! You shall see what dishes I will devise.

Ariosto's borrowings from The Captives goes far beyond just the parasite character.  We learn that Cleandro's son was sold as a slave to Erostrata's father, just as Hegio's son was stolen and sold as a slave in Plautus's play. In the end, Erostrato married Polinesta (without Damon having to pay a dowery) and Cleandro is content having recovered a son and heir. All ends happily.

Ariosto went on to compose other comedies, including Il Negromante (The Necromancer) and La Lena (Lena). He left another play, I Studenti (The Students) unfinished at his death, though it was completed by his brother Gabriele. It is I Suppositi, however, that has had the most influence of his comedies, at least in the English-speaking world.

Constancy Unrewarded

Faithfulness to a job has always been a fool's errand. Constancy is inevitably unrewarded. In fact, "Constancy Unrewarded" is the subtitle of Bernard Shaw's comical blank-verse drama The Admirable Bashville.

Shaw wrote the piece as a mocking adaptation of his most famous novel, Cashel Byron's Profession. Of course, Shaw is known as a dramatist, not a novelist. Being Shaw's most famous novel is like being the most popular kid on the math team. It's hardly something brag-worthy.

After being rejected by nearly every publisher in Britain, Shaw had the piece published in a socialistic periodical. The novelist Robert Louis Stevenson thought the best thing about the book was a footman named Bashville, who falls rather hopelessly in love with his aristocratic employer, Lydia Carew.

The relations between wealthy patrons and a servant class hardly even deemed human is on display on Broadway right now, not in an unlikely revival of The Admirable Bashville, but in the imported Korean musical Maybe Happy Ending, which I finally caught up with last week. Though ostensibly a futuristic piece of science fiction, the play skewers the relationships the wealthy have with the people they employ so long as it's convenient for them.

In Maybe Happy Ending, we are introduced first to Oliver, a Model 3 robot who has been left by his former owner James in what appears to be a studio apartment where he can listen to records and enjoy a lifetime subscription to Jazz Monthly. Oliver's orderly routine is interupted by the robot across the hall, a Model 5 named Claire, who in spite of her more convincing human-like manner has a less robust battery than the Model 3s and requires frequent charging.

Just as Bashville's love for Lydia can never be reciprocated, Oliver will forever pine for James, the former owner he idolizes. In Shaw's story, Lydia feels a tinge of guilt for not being able to reward her servant's constancy. Similarly, James in Maybe Happy Ending feels such remorse for having to retire his outmoded Model 3 that he sets Oliver up in what he hopes will be a humane resting place for retired robots, even though it's essentially just a glorified warehouse for unwanted junk.

Even more poignant in the musical is the story of Claire, the Model 5 who knocks on Oliver's door. Her former owner gifted her designer clothes and even a car. (Model 3s can't drive, but 5s can.) She is aware, however, that the woman she served did this because she is rich, not because she actually cares about her. Shaw's admirable servant eventually professes love for his employer, but robots like Claire are apparently incapable of love. We learn that Claire received a profession of love from her owner's husband, which led to the humans warehousing her so they could deal with their own messed-up relationship.

The thing is, while our society might treat employees like robots, we are in fact capable of love, pain, regret, and all of the other emotions our owners (oh, wait, employers) can experience. In Maybe Happy Ending, Oliver and Claire do eventually fall in love, or at least think they do. Being that both are now obsolete and replacement parts are no longer being manufactured, their time together is limited, though. Eventually, both will run out of battery life.

Today, A.I. thieves and other wealthy exploiters are making workers across the world increasingly obsolete. Offers of early retirement or retraining to older workers betrayed by the system they helped to build and maintain often seem like little more than warehousing for old robots. Perhaps it eases the consciences of those with power, but if we are to discover our own maybe happy endings, it will have to be on our own.

It seems there is no more help for the victims of economic exploitation in real life than there is for the discarded servants of fiction.