Hamlet: Fortinbras - the king is dead, long live the king

Hamlet, the play, begins with Denmark preparing to repel an invasion led by Fortinbras, a Prince of Norway.  This is soon dealt with and the audience sits back to enjoy the twists, turns and complication resulting from Hamlet’s meeting with the Ghost of his murdered father.  It isn’t until Act 4, scene 4 that, to everyone’s surprise, the matter of Danish sovereignty re-emerges.  However, it goes away again so quickly as to be thought dispensable by some directors and is cut - I think wrongly.  The audience needs a reminder of the initial threat to Denmark’s sovereignty to fully appreciate what happens at the very end when the crown falls into the Fortinbras’ hands almost, one might say, by sheer chance. I think this is a play about the succession to the throne and how rottenness, ghostly visitations, uncertainty, murder, piracy, madness, and villainy, fades into insignificance under the steady guiding hand of heaven - an idea that is easy to lose sight of in a secular world.

Claudius’ act of diplomacy towards Fortinbras yields a rich harvest for the state, if not for his court. It sets in train a sequence of events, for the most part played off-stage, that finally puts the right man at the top. Since the Norwegian Prince sheds no Danish blood, strictly observes protocol when setting out with his army to cross peacefully Danish land, and is elected to the monarchy by Hamlet, he succeeds to the throne squeaky clean. Although we are told very little about Fortinbras, what we are able to glean shows him to have ‘a little
touch of Harry’ about him. Like his famous prototype, Henry V, he is warlike and headstrong, nevertheless obedient to those in authority over him and, when it matters, an opportunist. Hamlet has this to say:

    Witness this army of such mass and charge,
    Led by a delicate and tender prince,
    Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff’d,
    Makes mouths at the invisible event,
    Exposing what is mortal and unsure
    To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
    Even for an eggshell.
                                               (IV.iv.7)

I am interested by the phrase ‘divine ambition puff’d’.  If Shakespeare is not using the word ‘divine’ loosely, and I think he is not - divine, and the idea of things divine, is used seriously in other parts of the play, ‘puff’d’ is a straightforward description of a man buoyed up by heaven’s will.   Divinity and Heaven are important in this play. Fortinbras is portrayed as a man of high mettle - and a very proper person to win the Danish throne.

Fairness. The carrot: to eat of, or beat with…

It is only fair to say that I’ve got a cold and so what follows is a grunge.

For me, fairness has to do with whether I feel effective or ineffective at any one time.  And Enthusiasm seems to be an important element in the matter.  I think it was the Scottish philosopher, Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that when a man is enthusiastic about something he has no need of an armchair.  The world is a rough old place.  If I am hurt in any way and cannot do anything practical to improve matters I feel ineffective.  The Government might think about helping us all to feel effective, what ever our circumstances – I am wary about giving us more and more choices, because to be inundated by choice comes perilously near to dividing our minds - to rule, I wonder?

 My picture of a donkey lashed by a carrot-whip says something about the country's present plight, something that I find hard to put into words - atchoo!

complaints - the law is an ass

The director inocently calls for the character of that name

I do wonder at the sense of the general principal of the new law that, to me, looks as though bosses will have to have a lawyer at his/her side at every minute of the working day just in case an 'unacceptible' word slips out. 

Theatre rehearsals are peppered with moments when the creative spirit breaks loose and words are said in haste - words, because they are often very witty are readily repeated. An actor manager in the Park outdoor theatre in London, finding an actress still pulling on a stocking when she was meant to be on stage, snapped, ‘it’s no good looking up your entrance now, dahling, you’ve missed it!’ I remember it sped round theatre land within minutes of it having been said some 60 or more years ago. If heard now think what might result if overheard by an employee of an histrionic sensibility and assertively litigious frame of mind! And its not only in the theatre that you find such people...

my paintings now arrived

Here are two light-hearted painting I did some years back.   

I find looking at people looking at pictures in art galleries as rewarding as what is on show.

The 'Flintshire' send up, is a nostalgic egg tempera painting I did when living in Aberdeen. They are in memory of those wonderful railway posters in the 1920s-30s, and of the magical Russel Flint - he of the fabulous nudes - but even of much better landscapes!

Both are about quarto size if not smaller. I like egg tempera. A lovely quiet medium. Acrylic is OK, not as good as oils for me. but I use acrylic a lot becuase it is handy, especially if  used by putting dabs of the stuff on kitchen baking paper,placed on top of old fashiond blotting paper, placed on a tray in which a little water has been added. The paint stays usable for sometime - days even if the tray is covered in between whiles.

Yesterday - I couldn't open these pictures and got cross - bingo, today, here they are - Wow!

Now am painting one of my mythological pictures - Orestes in the hands of the Eumenides, poor devil - I find now that I think more about the ancient greek drama than I do about any other - shall have a go at the Trojan Women next - the story is so full of meaning with today's displaced, killed, raped people haunting our daily news

The elastic bucket of faiths

‘A’ believes that vapourised chocolate is the basic essence of the universe, and that the Aztecs were correct (nearly) in acknowledging it as fundamental to life on the planet.  He admits that they made their mistake in killing those who enjoyed cocoa products.  If they had demonstrated to the setting sun that cocoa was life enhancing in itself, especially if taken in the form of an evening drink, with a desert spoonful of white sugar, a product that rains down from the sky when the moon is full, they would have flourished and would now rule the world.  He gives talks on this subject in pubs to be found in the NE of England and is fondly rewarded with pints of beer.

‘B’ has a firm belief in what he read in the Old Testament

‘C’ will, a year or two after she is born, believe in fairies and the wisdom of her teddy bear beyond anything.

‘D’ has complete faith in the words of the Koran

‘E’ puts his trust in the words of the Pope and the Bible

‘F’ is absolutely convinced that prayer wheels work

‘G’ puts her faith in the stars

‘H’ talks to her dead relatives.

‘I’ bowed low, once upon a time, to the statue of Pan at the gate to his property every morning before going to the market convinced that the god would protect all his interests.

J’ turned to Dr Henry Maudsley and said, I killed the man in the factory because I heard a voice telling me to do so’.   Etc etc.. 

It seems to me that faith is a magical bucket that grows bigger and smaller depending on the number of people who hold to ideas that are unprovable at any one time. 

Sadly, our beliefs can become so important to us that we are ready to kill each other to maintain what I think might be nothing more than states of mind - the product of synaptic activity.  I hasten to add that I do not hold to this idea any more than I think cats rule the world.  My interest is only in reducing the size of that bucket!…a bucket, I hasten to add, in which I hold little faith, since it is only a rather poor metaphor for something I do not basically understand, life being as complicated as it is.

I once walked onto a darkened stage shortly after a show had come to an end, and surprised myself by saying out loud, ‘excuse me’ to what was in fact an empty space. The apology was spontaneous, born out of the intensity of the acting that had gone on a few minutes before. For a brief moment, I felt the character’s presence again.   If I had had no knowledge of how we respond to our own psychological projections what would I have made of that?  I think I would have carried away with me a belief in theatre ghosts – and thus added to the capacity of that very elastic bucket of faith.

The sea of faith and Charles Darwin

Reading again Mathew Arnold’s poem, Dover Beach, I got for the first time - rather slow of me I admit - the inspired aural pun contained in the phrase ‘The sea of faith’.  In a word, references to the authority of the church, as in Bishop’s See, and to the watery images that are in the poem.  Together with the last line, 'where ignorant armies clash by night', the phrase has remained with me all this week.

Hourly broadcasts tell of the killing and wounding that go on while contending forces jockey for position and power, many deriving additional strength from a fervour that has little to do with the moderate philosophies that religions rely on to foster peaceable and kindly lives - philosophies that, as I understand the world, have come down the ages from physical experience. As Shakespeare has it, ‘there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently’ (Much Ado 5.1.36).  And in our impatience to find anaesthetics we have dulled not only pain but also our need for religious fortitude in coping with it.  Kate Hotspur in Henry IV Part One would have prayed over her husband’s agitated condition.  In today’s world, she would phone her doctor and before you know it Harry Hotspur would be admitted to a psychology unit specialising in treating Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome acquired from previous hard fought battles. The warrior presents with at least 5 of the necessary criteria.

I was reminded again in an article in the FT Weekend, 11 Sep 2010, written by John Cornwall, that the religious battle lines are always drawn up and that it is best to be on the qui vive.  In particular, the author asks if Pope Benedict is hastening the beatification of Cardinal Newman merely to put a damper on one of the Vatican’s most inspired critics.  Whether it holds or not, the piece emphasises the point that history is littered with people of faith playing politics, going for each others’ throats, and in a word, behaving like the rest of the natural world, even amongst their own kind.

Will the makers and shakers of all the religions eventually come to recognise that because they are human and part of the natural world they too are subject to the forces of Darwinism?  I doubt it, but if they allowed the point it might quieten a predilection for lusting after the blood of those who do not agree with them.  Also, and here is something I shall never get my head round, if the Creationists are the ultimate winners in this lottery of survival and are the ones to fly up to heaven - think El Greco’s 'Adoration of the name of Jesus' - how will they square it with themselves that they have got to the top of the tree as everything seems to do - by a Darwinian progress of good luck.  An answer might be that everything is ordained.  But again, doesn't that smack too much of the old penny dreadfulls, when, after the hero is left in the previous chapter facing a sure and horrendous death, 'with a bound he leaps free' at the beginning of the next.

Perhaps I should pop these and similar thought into a drawer in the hope that when I next look into it the moths will have got at them and there will be nothing there but dust….

The ghost in the machine - TV style

I was there when an actor died on set during a live performance of a TV play.

I was working as an announcer with Associated British Corporation otherwise known as ABC Television soon after it began broadcasting from Didsbury studios in Greater Manchester.   One day, in the canteen, grabbing a quick lunch, I found myself sitting opposite Gareth Davies, a friend from the days when we had been drama students together at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama.  I have good reason to remember our conversation.  I’d asked him how he was, not expecting a serious reply, but that’s what I got.  He told me that he had to be careful not to over exert himself.  By rights, he said, he should not be taking part in a live performance with all its stresses and strains but he needed the money.  Looking back, I now realise that this had been the last ordinary conversation he was to have.  For the rest of the day he was busily involved with preparing for a performance that evening that was part of the very popular ABC Armchair Theatre series.

The play was set in wartime Britain.  The characters were sheltering in an underground station in London while an air raid was going on above them. Every now and then a loud explosion would denote bombing getting nearer and nearer.  A large bang, accompanied by smoke and dust ushered in the first commercial break, leaving the audience to wonder what had happened to the wounded and dying – one of whom was the character played by Gareth.  

A minute into the commercial break with everything going well, we, in the control room were shocked to get the news that Gareth, had over played his part, and suffered a real heart attack, and was now dying where he had been hastily laid - behind the scenery. He died shortly after in his dressing room.  Because he had had lines to say once the second part of the play began, the director and actors, fuelled by copious amounts of adrenalin had gone into over-drive and were re-writing the script to cope with the sudden loss of an important character….

Years went by.  Sometime in the middle 1970s Marianne and I were half way through a two month theatre tour of Britain in which we had booked to perform at the old ABC Studio’s that in the meantime had been adapted to accommodate a drama college.  By then ABC had merged with another company and the building had been taken over by the local polytechnic.

Students who were there to greet us told us that recently one of the friends had been frightened by a ghost somewhere on a flight of stairs s going down to the green room, the actors' rest place.  At first we did not take what they said very seriously. But I remembered the sudden death that had happened exactly where we were then standing and told them the story.  It was the first they'd heard of it.  Some of them were very anxious not to meet this spectre – I wondered why: Gareth would frighten no one, it was not his style.

And here I think I must bring in the influence of having lived on an island off the west coast of Scotland where there is, or was when I lived there, a lingering belief in the ‘wee folk’, fairies, the giant, Fionn mac Cumhail, that is, if translated into fluent English, Fynn Macool; kelpies, ghosties, and things that go bump in the night.  Marianne and I decided to err on the side of caution with regard to the uncanny and do what we could to allay the students’ fears which were very real.  They were, after all students of the drama.   Keeping them well away, we duly descended the staircase and entered the green room, where, feeling very self-conscious, and rather silly, we talked to the air, the empty air.

We suggested to the invisible ‘ghost’ that it might be held to this earth because it was in a state of confusion about the manner of its arrival in its present state: was the death real or was it acted. I explained what had happened in the hope that it would help.   Just because we didn’t believe in what we did didn’t mean the ghost wasn’t real – or so we told ourselves.

I have hardly thought about this event for many years until yesterday when there was mention of Didsbury studios, and it all came rushing back to me.  Gareth was a very good actor, and as a mature student at Central had given a fine performance of Tartuffe in the play of the same name by Moliere. He was kind, humorous and clever, I remember him with affection.

I wonder if his ghost haunts the flats that now stand where the old cinema building once weaved its spell over the people of Didsbury. May I suggest if Gareth is looking over my shoulder as I write that he might turn his attention to the people who allowed the old building to be destroyed - they should have had more sense and had it listed.

For more information:
 http://www.manchestermovies.com/capitol-building-didsbury.shtml

Artistic heist, Walter Benjamin steals from Paul Klee, wireless grabs at Ravel - shock horror

On a rainy day in Manchester, last week, (August 2010) my partner showed me a copy of Angelus Novus, a picture by the artist Paul Klee. She had just read me an account of it by the German Philosopher, Walter Benjamin, in which he describes it as being of a figure rushing backwards into the future while witnessing the inevitable trail of utter devastation left behind - like being dragged through a hedge backward, I thought, and seeing a trail of broken twigs and torn leaves, but on a cosmic scale. It seems that Benjamin felt so convinced by his own reading of the picture that he felt he had the right to re-name it as The Angel of History. W.G Sebald refers to Benjamin’s account at the end of his second Zurich lecture in the volume On the Natural History of Destruction.

Although I knew something of Klee’s fragile work, I expected nonetheless to see a work of art as powerful as Benjamin’s description. Even so, I was surprised by Klee’s delicate, formalised image. Decked out in dots, dashes and all washed over in tired Champagne it remained firmly within the artist’s deceptively childlike, and gossamer creations. In taking his tremulous lines for little walks over the paper, he has given me a nimble depiction of a slightly tipsy flapper. She wears a lion’s mask and is decked out in a costume of a fabulous bird stepping out on the tiles doing the Charleston. What looks to be the mane, a masculine attribute, reminds me how, before the introduction of spongy rubber rollers, women used twisted pieces of paper to give shape to their hair while they slept. Her left eye looks straight out of the picture at me, but the right slews off centre further to the right, and tells of her having consumed too much of that Champagne.

Certainly it is possible to see it as being a symbol of a need to escape the memories of the carnage of World War I. But then I can see everything from that period as a messenger from that era. And this for me is a good thing, because it helps to diminish Benjamin’s take over of this single febrile image.

In general terms, my thoughts on this began with my first memory of Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro For Harp, Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet. This was when I was in my teens. As an accompaniment to a dramatic adaptation for radio of A. V. Morton’s retelling of the story of Jesus, In the Steps of the Master, it could hardly have been bettered. But for a long time after the music was spoilt for me by it having been reduced to a mere trigger to the memory of the radio play, which though good, was definitely the lesser of the two art forms. Today, by describing how I see Klee’s picture, I am trying to claim it back on behalf of the rest of us who want to look at it afresh and not as Benjamin would have us believe it to be. As with any picture it can be seen in as many ways as there are viewers to view it.

hamlet, gertrude and my book

Re: the BBC News this morning: a question in a school exam has raised some dust. My anwer to it would be that of course Prince Hamlet is more concerned for his mother than himself. Anyone with an ounce of history in their blood can understand that.  There's a hint at why this should be in my novella, William Shakespeare - Dark Phoenix. I apologise for not yet having it up on line.  I am still mulling over various quesions, such as, should I put it up for a fee, or for free, or for a donation, and should I give it a web page to itself? I hope, like Hamlet, to have made up my mind very soon.  I have retreated from finding an agent or a publisher.  It is too dispiriting waiting for replies that never arrive.  Besides, in this these hard time I can understand that there's too much risk investing in a story that could never be a blockbuster.  When all is said, it is too short, being only 52000 words long, and is about a bunch of fusty old actors getting their hose into a twist over the death of an eleven year old boy.

But I can say with confidence that is better written than anything I have yet put into this blog because my partner, a one time copy editor, has ensured that it is so. 

Once on tour, I had to whisper to my wife, Marianne, (1930-84) on stage, not to look up because the curtain above us was smouldering having come into contact with a bare electric wire - it is essential not to frighten the audience into panic  - hence my silly cartoon

Judge, The New Prometheus - find in pages to the left of my blog

My monologue ‘Judge’ (originally entitled ‘The New Prometheus’) was commissioned as a contribution to the Conference ‘Psychoanalysis, Trauma and Child Abuse’ at the City University of New York, Brooklyn, USA. It had its premiere on Friday, 24 April 1987.

The second performance was given before an invited audience of psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors at The Friends Meeting House, Cambridge, UK on Saturday 26 September 1987.

It was given its third performance before an invited audience at the former Supreme Army Headquarters in the Stauffenbergstrasse, West Berlin on Sunday 3 January 1988.  It took place in the building in which the Hitler bomb plot executions of 1944 had been carried out, which now houses the Museum to the German Resistance.

The Cosmic Problem, how I solved it (almost).

Waking early this morning, bright in mind but lazy in body, I thought to while away the time before I got up by solving a problem that is foxing the cosmologists of today.  Nothing can match the nest of a comfortable bed to the fostering of a straightforward answer to a large question.  I got it in five minutes.

I asked, why do the outermost bits of the cosmos speed up instead of slow down as I would expect.  When a bullet is sent on its way by an explosion, its speed and the distance it travels becomes immediately effected by gravity drawing it down towards the earth, and by the material through which it travels, such as air, metal, clothing, flesh and bone. Even if there is nothing it its way I would not expect it to move faster and faster - but the outer reaches of the cosmos do just that.

My understanding of the Big Bang is that it was not unlike the showy bit of a firework when it bursts onto the night sky in an expanding sphere of coloured sparks. As the initial thrust of the explosion loses its power the bits and pieces of burnt paper and cardboard begin to fall back toward the earth. Slowly at first, then quicker and quicker as gravity takes hold.

Burrowing back into the pillow -, I said to myself, it is plain common sense to infer that there’s something outside our cosmos that is pulling the outermost nebulae and stars away from us at ever increasing speeds.

Since cosmologists factor in Dark Matter because they can’t make their sums work without it, even though they are not sure what it is, what it looks like, or smells and tastes of, then they should also factor in a constant for HHG-Matter*, this being the attraction force outwith our cosmos.  Although I use the phrase ‘Big Bang’, the actual event might have been quite a small big bang when seen from the greater perspective.  It’s not difficult to imagine lots of little big bangs going off like fireworks all over the place each pulling and jostling the others, like they might be at a party of adolescents…at which point, as our planet bowled along in a bewildering number of directions, consequent distortians, all at a frightening velocity through space,  I slipped into a secure and happy sleep...

*: HHG= Huge Humongous Gravity

Tony Blair: "Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise, That last infirmity of noble mind"… John Milton

I use an old stage director’s trick to help make up my mind about people who somehow raise a question mark. To get it to work, I imagine the person in question within the proscenium, picture frame, of an old fashioned theatre - often as not their true character begins to emerge. Everything about them sharpens into significance and becomes as clear as if they were appearing in a play. We have all strutted and fretted our hour upon the stage.  Even in the first hour of our lives we are what I like to think of as a professional baby.  Even when asleep, we give perfect performances of ourselves.

A politician who raised a question mark for me was Tony Blair when urging us to vote for him on his way to becoming leader of New Labour.  Mystified by his popularity, I subjected him to ‘test by theatre’. Within the confines of my imagined proscenium arch he came over the footlights as a matinee idol, complete with flashing teeth, a daringly sincere eye and with the two sides to his face both ‘best’ and ever ready to be photographed.  We can all call upon what acting ability we may be blessed with to make a point - I have in mind, teachers and politicians.  I think it must be a rare treat to find someone using politics to forward an acting career.

A well-known rule of thumb tells us that we tend to marry those in whom appear traits and characteristics of our parents, or carers.  At the time of which I speak, it was no secret that Cherie Booth’s dad had been a successful professional actor. Tony Blair was Cherrie Booth’s choice of husband. At the time, I was living and working in Scotland, and must have askit masel, maybe, just a wee bitty, was mistress Booth’s choice influenced by that sma bit something in Tony Blair’s perrson that reminded her of her auld daddy? Och aye, mebbe! I’ll hae a wee dram on that forbye.

I was appalled, though not surprised, when Tony Blair joined President George W. Bush in pouring scorn on the view held by the United Nations' former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix, that Saddam could be disarmed without a war.  It was then that my harmless necessary theatre of fun was overshadowed by the shock and awe of the theatre of war.

Tony Blair appears to me to hug dramatic moments unto himself.  Even to marrying into the family whose antecedent, William Booth shot President Lincoln during a theatrical performance in 1865.  Keep the spotlights on me, seems to be Tony Blair’s slogan

I wonder if the danger to us, let alone his own soul, lies in his not recognising this aspect to his character - he just doesn’t know what a damn good actor he is.  His current performance is that of being our Middle East peace envoy. Give that man an Oscar.

I remember seeing three women teachers on TV insulted by a professor who they looked to for guidance on the subject because he upbraided them on their loose use of the word.  It was a sharp reminder to me that one goes further with a lump of sugar than a spoonful of vinegar.

I have little memory for words that I had not got under my belt by the age of 20. And a high proportion of those I tend to misspell. Yet I would not have them simplified for the reason that they, like me, carry within their eccentricities a history of their being in our speech and dictionaries. I enjoy words, even though they tease me unconscionably.  Thank goodness for spell checkers. I look forward to software that helps with rhythm in writing.

A year or two ago I faced with trepidation an operation to replace my left hip.  I needed something to take my mind off the approaching event.  I put to good use my difficulty with words.  I chose to learn verbs and case ending in Ancient Greek – How sensible! I hear you say?

Well, sensible or not, the ruse worked. That is, it worked for long enough to get me through.  I’ve forgotten most of it, but that doesn’t matter.

Here are two efforts I made to go with exercises I was working on in my copy of Teach Yourself Greek. Ancient Greek is the language of drama (the thing done), and of philosophy and poetry, and myth….And of getting over the fear of an operation. I suppose the sketches are too sketchy to mean much, but they are actually scans of my having to think hard about something not important to avoid thinking about something very important – like catching a killer bug in hospital…. perhaps there is something aseptic in ancient Greek because I didn’t catch anything nasty.

Dyslexia and looking at pictures

Dyslexic rahzbreez.

I sketched this to show solidarity with those of us who find words a challenge. I use ‘dyslexia’ as a carpetbag word to refer to the whole raft of difficulties attached to the written word. For instance, I have little difficulty in reading. But writing is a different matter. I think of it as mild dysgraphia. The first draught of anything I write - as now - is hesitant, lacks rhythm, has many repeated words, misspellings, and all in all is a general lumpy mess out of which I hew and hammer what I really want to say.

“Write as you speak!” is a phrase I have heard often. “well, if you sayso. Erum, yeswell, it was while I was…’mm, writing about speech, - sorry I’ll start again.

I think that that those who offer the ‘write as you speak’ kind of advice' must talk differently to the way I do, that is, full of hesitations, blurring, all accompanied by lots of body and facial language - for which there is no written alternative except in the form of stage directions, or the use of punctuation marks. But these are hardly subtle.

I begin a blogpost, as I am doing now in ‘Word’ so that I can check the spelling. When I am reasonably satisfied with what I have written I shall transfer it first to ‘WordPad’ saving it as ‘Richtext’ before moving it on to the blog - where you now read it.

I once met a dyslexic psychologist whose interest was in helping children to read and write. In his experience he found that dyslexics divide into those who avoid the use of the written word at every opportunity and those who are fascinated by them, written or read. There’s a character in Bleak House by Charles Dickens who props up copies of single letters from the alphabet all round his shop. He does this because they puzzle him. I think this is the first example in literature of dyslexia.

My ear is, and always has been, the arbiter when it comes to spelling. The word ‘raspberry’ springs to mind from when I struggled with it in primary school. I had been brought up in Birmingham, in the midlands of England for the first 8 years of my life by a Yorkshire father and a Derbyshire mother. Since going to The Central School of Speech and Drama in London in the early 50s I have had in my head at least four different sound patterns for that particular word. I refer to it especially because it has the sound of my name embedded within it. Had I been taught phonetics, my spelling would have been perfect in all four dialects as, roughly: razbriz, rasbuuriz, rasbarries and the BBC raspberries i.e (approximately) raahspriz.

I once acted as a guinea pig for my partner, a psychologist, who wanted practice in giving various psychological tests. What surprised us both was that I failed every one of the questions put to me in picture form.

We came to the conclusion that the well-intentioned person who had designed the picture questions must have thought that pictures are constructed like formal sentences that can be ‘read’ in only one way. But I look at pictures quite differently. In fact, I sometimes catch myself out trying to read a page of a book in the way that I look at a picture, and cannot, for a split second, understand why I do not understand it! Sometimes I get as much pleasure from the patterns of spaces between words as I do the story itself.

To get a tick from me and not a cross in the test a picture had to have that extra something that cannot be described in words. Otherwise why bother to print a drawing in the first place? Thus it was that not one of the drawings got my tick - except one. That portrayed a table with three legs where four in a three dimensional world would have been required to keep it upright. To that I gladly gave a tick because it was witty and I liked the way the whole picture had been placed on the page. I wonder how many strokes of the cane I would have got in the old days for such silliness.

hard work this art stuff!

My partner, Philippa, and I take pleasure in art-based programmes.  If we are given a good balance between still and moving pictures that are presented by a well informed and enthusiastic commentator it makes for easy watching at the end of the day.  Friends in the business tell me that these programmes are comparatively cheap to produce.  So lets have more of them.

Hugh Skeene, an art master at Buxton College in Derbyshire, who taught me during the 1940s, talked wittily to his classes about the history of art, and through those tried to get us to dip our toes into the deeper waters of not making artwork but making art work -  to create the otherwise indefinable.

Amongst the books on my desk is a copy of the Liddell and Scott Greek lexicon. I refer to it when the history of a word catches my interest and spurs me to do a bit of time travelling.  Today, after having difficulty remembering the order of the Greek Alphabet, at last I found what I was looking for, Ποιεω - something along the lines of ‘Poieuu’, meaning,  “to make, produce, execute, especially works of art.”  I was glad to find that my memory hadn’t played me false of when I first came across the word.   If I say it out loud and soften the P with a puff of air it gets near to ‘Phiew’.  The dictionary goes on, “to bring, to pass, bring about, cause, effect. perform the rites of sacrifice,” whilst in a slightly different form and in conjunction with another word it also refer to building a house -  hard work that, phew!

It’s like a second cousin twice removed to the Scottish word, ‘mackar’, or ‘maker’ meaning a poet or storyteller.  Michael Innes used the word in his detective story, A Lament for a Maker, in which, I suspect, he had had his wonderfully humorous eye on that quintessential of Scottish books, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner  by James Hogg.

Here is the living room in sunlight - even in Manchester! An acrylic I painted last year, 2009.

I challenge those who devise TV programmes to make instead of an entertainment out of the history or sociology of art but one that seeks to find the Phew! in it.

TAKING OFF: THE STORY OF THE MULL LITTLE THEATRE

To order a copy of Taking Off telling the story of the Mull Little Theatre please contact:-

Mairi McArthur, The New Iona Press, The Bungalow, Ardival, Strathpeffer, Scotland IV14 DS; or, mairimacarthur@yahoo.co.uk; or telephone 07881 92103. Special price including UK p&p: £5. Payment by cheque or Paypal. If you are ordering from abroad please add the appropriate amount for p&p;- the book weighs approximately 315 grms

'Please bring your dining chair with you!'
The setting was a guest house on the Hebridian island of Mull, one summer evening in 1966. The line was addressed to the after-dinner guests. The scene then moved across to a tiny, converted byre. And a unique adventure took off - the Mull Little Theatre.  This is the story of Barrie and Marianne Hesketh's life together - from their early acting careers and the steps that led them to Scotland - to the leap of faith that created the country's smallest professional theatre - through drama on and off stage, at home and on tour - and finally to Marianne's courageous struggle with terminal illness. A story of survival, told with spirit and humour.

'...a story of aristry and perseverance and love' (From the foreword by the late Paul Scofield)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage

15th June 2010
My partner, Philippa, and I, took a trip on the Metro into Manchester last night to hear the poet, Simon Armitage, read from his works.  The event was held in Chetham's Library, the oldest library in the English speaking world. I wanted to hear the poet because I much enjoy his translation of the Middle English poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a tale of decapitation and honour served.

Armitage’s West Yorkshire dialect gives just something extra to the words.  Poets are to be heard.

And thinking about the Yorkshire dialect – The theatre group, Northern Broadside has wonderful torsion and tension in its productions because of the use of it.

My dad was from a part of Yorkshire once known as the East Riding.  He told me the Yorkshire man’s toast:

Eat all, drink all and pay nowt.
Hear all, see all and say nowt.
And if tha dust owt for nowt
Do it for thi sen*
So here’s to me and my wife’s husband –
Not forgetting misen*

*(and if you do anything for nothing do it for yourself)

*(myself)

My dad had a Selby dialect and swore that anyone with the full Yorkshire ‘U’ sound, as in ‘electric buulb’ would have a good Latin tongue, His rendering of ‘Sic Luceat Lux Vestra!’  - would have had ‘em cheering in the Capital in Rome.  So let your light shine.

I get a nasty surprise that badly dints my view of the world.  No time to think before I grab at the first thing that ensures me a good view of myself.  What ever it might be, a scornful memory, a word from a friend, it adds up to the phrase, it isn’t my fault! 

My adolescent self makes an entrance to back me up. Get out from under, he says, get away, show them the cold shoulder – freeze them out. Hate them.   But the person who has landed me this nasty surprise is someone I have loved for many years, and damn it, still love. Electra, a play, written by Euripides well over two thousand years ago, stirs up this little drama at the back of my mind.  I am reading it in translation by Philip Vellacott.  The raw emotions on display bring their own disinfectant but at the same time they raise up spectres from my own past. 

Recollections of parental rows threatening my security jostle with those on show in the theatre in my head. Electra and her brother, Orestes must kill their mother whom they loved.  They are to mete out punishment for her brutal slaughter of their father who, in turn had sacrificed their sister.  In the Guildhall in London is a startling painting by the artist John Collier of the mother, Clytemnestra, in a blood bespattered chiton holding an axe, dripping yet more blood.

I cannot think of a greater contrast to the firm but delicate pictures by Philip Vellacott’s sister, Miss Elisabeth Vellacott – she was never known as anything else (she died in 2002). I had the great pleasure and privilege of knowing Miss Elisabeth Vellacott.  She led an art group that I joined when, for a short while, I lived in Cambridge as a Fellow Commoner at Churchill College.  Her work is as delicate as was the advice she dispensed.  I have very happy memories of her.

Toxoplasma gondii and Schizophrenia

As to the monologue, The Judge, it is not yet on the blog because I am tinkering with the scansion.  I want it to echo the way I said it in performance, but memory is playing tricks and I keep altering the rhythms. Its first title was The New Prometheus.  Things change.  On top of which, there is an alternative reason to the one I used that may explain why the judge went crazy.  Did his parents keep a cat, I wonder.

Browsing science web pages this morning, I  came across mention of 'Toxoplasma gondii and Schizophrenia'. From what I read, it seems that cat poo sometimes contains a bug that can infect the human brain and cause schizophrenia. Think o'that!   Instead of his father being the cause of his son's 'nervous illness', it was a cat picked up by the boy after it had done its business.

And what about those unfortunate men and women put to the fire paying the price not for witchcraft, but of a fondness for a familiar pet cat... I hasten to add that it appears from what I read this particular toxicity is  uncommon. 

building up the support cast

I learnt to value timelines when I was a student at Sheffield University studying physical geography.  A grasp of geological ages was essential.  Eventually, I moved from the university to the Central of School of Speech and Drama in London. I found I was better at acting than I was at writing academic accounts. It was the writing that I found so difficult, not my lack of interest in rocks, crystals and old maps.

(apropos of nothing very much here is a picture)

Time lines next became important to me when I trained to be a psychological counsellor.  This was in Cambridge, after my wife, Marianne, had died. My partner, a psychologist, had suggested that such a course would help me understand the process of grief, and maybe lead to a new profession.  The process of acting on stage with Marianne who had had no more than a few months to live had put me off theatre for a while.  During counselling exercises I found that to make notes of important events in ‘clients’’ lives helped define the moment of the initial trauma.  A timeline of my own life had proved helpful.

It was when I was well on the way to becoming a registered counsellor that I realised that my previous life in the theatre was returning and making inappropriate demands – I dropped counselling like a hot brick.  Holding a prime interest in drama can seriously endanger the outcome of any psychological intervention. However, what skills remained with me added to my understanding of what Shakespeare may well have experienced after losing his one and only son. 

Because so little is known about William Shakespeare I looked to get fun out of imagining what those near to him, and about whom we do have information, might have had to say about him.  My first attempt was to jot down imaginary conversations between Sir Robert Cecil, Minister of State, and Edmund Tilney, Master of the Queen’s Revels, both of whom would have had dealing with my hero.  It wasn’t long before other men and women of the time crept into my head and demanded a say.

A structure was required on which to hang these jottings, now fast becoming stories.  Not surprisingly, I turned to creating a timeline.  It began several years before William was born and stopped several years after he had died.  I filled it up with detailed information about international and national events, the lives of people in Court and, of course, of plays and players.

My book, William Shakespeare – Dark Phoenix, had its beginning on a warm day on the Isle of Mull when I asked Marianne, my wife (d 1984) if she could recollect a line from Shakespeare of which I could only remember that it was about education and psychological projection. ‘It is the eye of childhood that fears the painted devil’ came her quick answer. The words had little to do with education, but they made up the phrase I was looking for.

It was then that I saw how useful it would be to be able to look up a quotation not by a word or a phrase, but by a feeling, or even a vague thought.   I have a notoriously slippery memory for words – for an actor, not the most useful of attributes.  On the other hand, I do have quite a good memory for emotions.

I began, not very seriously, to make my first list of quotations and their associated emotions jotted down in a cheap notebook.  With the arrival on the market of the BBC computer, my list making became serious.   Now, with powerful computing on line, my database contains some 15000 references – and these, in the main, from only three of Shakespeare’s plays.

I began to see patterns in Shakespeare’s life that I had thitherto missed and wrote these up in several essays which, in the time-honoured way, I put in a drawer to be looked at later

Several years went by before I realised that the essays held the material for a novel – not about the William Shakespeare of whom we know so very little, but about the affect of profound loss on a creative mind. 

With regard to my monologue ‘The Judge’: I was reminded this morning of William James as we sat over breakfast listening to ‘In Our Time’ on the BBC.  William, the subject of the programme, was brother of the redoubtable novelist, Henry, and their gifted, depressive, diarist sister, Alice.  William was born in the same year as Daniel Paul Schreber, the judge. 

During the time I was a Fellow Commoner at Churchill College, Cambridge, I had the run of the University Library.  It was like being a small boy being given the keys to a sweet shop – and it was while I was browsing the shelves that I hit on the works of William James. 

I had enjoyed his brother’s novels, but felt always, that I needed to be in training and have my mental sleeves rolled up to the task. I felt exactly the same last month, April, 2010, when, for the first time I worked my way through Henry’s ‘The Golden Bowl’.  May I suggest that anyone tackling this or any of his novels to buy a book mark that grips the page exactly where one left off.  I have one from a National Trust shop, that uses two tiny magnets to do the job.

William, philosopher, psychologist, wrote equally wonderful prose, but there is no rolling up of sleeves, or running a mile before I open one of his books.  In the case of Henry, often as not, it helps me to get a grip by reading it out loud to myself – I suppose this an actor’s response to prose that leaves interpretation open to judgement.  I do this with the works of Ford Madox Ford (my desert island book author) – oh, yes, an all poetry.

But as to William, I find  that  a restful stare out of the window, a sip of tea  is all that is required to absorb, if not fully understand, his friendly prose. 

I was reminded that the family had its roots in Ireland – who is left, I wondered, to carry the torch for English literature – Chaucer, Shakespeare?  Come to think of it, I am not so sure that they were not Irish, their command of the written word being so formidable.

I am reminded I knew W.G Sebald,  (Max).  He came to dine several times. He laughed easily. I remember a conversation about theatre. He asked me about acting and we discussed madness, not that they necessarily go together - on the contrary. He sat with his back to a glass-fronted cupboard filled with books – one shelf given over to a history of art from the time I intended to limit my theatrical activity to scenic design.  I guess he found my scatty thoughts a rest from those of academic colleagues.  Thinking in pictures rather than in sentences allows me to enter a subject from any point and go in any direction – upside down sometimes…


William Shakespeare was not who I thought he was, - or, so I am warned in the press and on the radio today, 25th march 2010.  Old contenders are undergoing reassessment. It seems that I  must dust down my thoughts on the murdered Kit Marlowe, miraculously revived; take in to account the possibility of a consortium of playwrights; and once more consider the scientifically minded, Francis Bacon – the bookies favourite. Old stuff that I can well do without. But if WS is to be permanently scratched from the race, my favourite runner would have to be the urbane Edward de Vere, The Earl of Oxford, who was the choice of Dr. Sigmund Freud.  I put him forward not because I agree with the good doctor, but because he was ‘almost’ convinced by Shakespeare Identified (1920) written by the unfortunately named, J. T. Looney (Footnote: Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition, volume 20 p 63) – a joke in Shakespeare’s own vein surely – as with, ‘write me down an ass!’ 

Such matters are of vital importance for those whose livelihood depends on them. Mine doesn’t.  With my actor’s and director’s hats firmly pulled down over my ears, a rose is a rose by any other name, though on stage it may well smell of scene paint.  Regardless of who wrote what when and where it is the psychological insights and the power of the language to inspire performers and move audiences that count.

Until rock-solid proof to the contrary is presented, WS shall remain for me, the slight, balding, middle-aged man who stares from out the ubiquitous black and white portrait. He is the country boy who married and fathered three children and grew up to make good in the town.  One who was a clever business man, gentle, and hospitable, always ready, in his native 16th Century Warwickshire dialect, to buy a round,  ‘Woy daont yahow seet deeown an av a suup o loyatayll onme’ee’ay?’ (Why don’t you sit down and have a sup of light ale, on me, eh?)

At the age of 12 I memorised for homework Shakespeare’s description of life in a cold climate, ‘When icicles hang by the wall…’ I became a devotee for life, for though I was then living with my parents in Buxton, Derbyshire, a town well used to ice and snow, I too was born in Warwickshire and it wouldn’t be human of me if I didn’t take his part, cheering him on, as one fellow countryman to another.

I remember when and where the seed was sown for William Shakespeare – Dark Phoenix.  It was in 1967, when my wife and I were sitting on the doorstep of Druimard, the house where we lived with our family of three boys on the Isle of Mull, off the West Coast of Scotland.   We had just launched The Mull Little Theatre, and nothing ventured, nothing gained, had decided to present Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  All around were the magical blue hills.  And while Marianne read a biography of Sir Walter Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite seadog, I dreamt of how just the two of us might present such a complex play. She had got to the chapter describing how King James had had him imprisoned in the Tower of London when she made a link between the biography and William’s fantasy.



To order a copy of Taking Off telling the story of the Mull Little Theatre please contact:-
Mairi McArthur, The New Iona Press, The Bungalow, Ardival, Strathpeffer, Scotland IV14 DS; or, mairimacarthur@yahoo.co.uk; or telephone 07881 92103. Special price including UK p&p: £5. Payment by cheque or Paypal. If you are ordering from abroad please add the appropriate amount for p&p;- the book weighs approximately 315 grms

'Please bring your dining chair with you!'
The setting was a guest house on the Hebridian island of Mull, one summer evening in 1966. The line was addressed to the after-dinner guests. The scene then moved across to a tiny, converted byre. And a unique adventure took off - the Mull Little Theatre.  This is the story of Barrie and Marianne Hesketh's life together - from their early acting careers and the steps that led them to Scotland - to the leap of faith that created the country's smallest professional theatre - through drama on and off stage, at home and on tour - and finally to Marianne's courageous struggle with terminal illness. A story of survival, told with spirit and humour.

'...a story of aristry and perseverance and love' (From the foreword by the late Paul Scofield)

It took a further 42 years of fiddling about with ideas to finish what was begun in 1967. William Shakespeare - Dark Phoenix was completed in 2009 - and thank goodness the recent publication by Arden of a yet another play by WS has not required me to change a word of it!  I apologise that it hasn't appeared yet - I dont yet know how to turn my files into  pdf or, indeed, what to do when I've got them that far. As soon as it is up and running I shall flag it up for sure!

paper sculpture of Daniel Paul Schreber

William Shakeapeare - Dark Phoenix is the main title of my blog - however...

After re-reading 'Judge' a monologue about Daniel Paul Schreber, a piece I wrote and performed some years ago at the request of a forum of psychoanalysts gathered at New York University, I thought it might be fun to make a wire and paper model of Daniel Paul. You will find a little about him in another place in this blog, browse round. 

I began by using a length of wire bought from the local hardware shop and by bending and cutting and strapping it up with sticky tape I arrived at a basic maquette for the figure - I gave is extended heels so that they could be used to help the figure to stand up. 'Stand up and be a man’ – as the Nurse says in ‘Romeo and Juliet’.  Her double entendre has meaning in this case. Daniel Paul lived during an age when ‘standing up’ had only one purpose, that of making babies.  Masturbation was seen as a deeply shocking and dangerous practice – madness, blindness, and death following on. All upstanding great and good people claimed it so.  Freud had a thing or two to say about Daniel’s mental condition in its relationship to homosexuality, at the time, another much feared practice -- softening of the brain could follow, indeed, was the cause.  I wonder who were the most frightened – the men and/or the women?  Perhaps, in claiming these terrifying results that invariably followed on such practices men were able to frighten women into having lots of sex. 'Have some Madeira mi dear, and save me from a fate worse than death.'

To return to more sensible matters - for the models clothes, I use pastel paper.  I wonder how I shall create a face for Daniel, - he believed he was turning into the mother of superman, a process that would take thousands of years because to happen quicker would cause too much pain, what with stretching his pelvic girdle and all that...poor devil

Work in progress

Thanks for your comments and encouragement.  I am messing about with photos - I have taken several of Shakespeare, a puppet that Marianne, my wife (1930-84), and I, made for an experimental show shortly after we started the Mull Little Theatre in 1966. We were not puppeteers, but dolls don't have to be paid and they never answer back. The main reason we used puppets from time to time was because we just did not have the money to employ the number of Actor Equity members that we wanted to.   After I had taken Shakespeare out of his cardboard box and spruced him up I flopped him down in a chair. The regal pose he adopted asked to be photographed - unfortunately, it turned out rather wide and not an easy shape to fit into a blog page (see right).  For information about my novel, "William Shakespeare - Dark Phoenix" and a little try out telling about a monologue based on the real life of a mad German judge, Judge, please go to About Me - to the right of the main page of my blog. I shall not be putting up the book just yet. It is written, all 30 chapters,  but there are formatting decisions to be made before then. ...'The rain it raineth every day...'

William Shakespeare – Dark Phoenix by Barrie Hesketh

William Shakespeare – Dark Phoenix by Barrie Hesketh

A novel: historical fiction

When I first began work on the first draft of the book, I felt confident I knew my Shakespeare.  But I was wrong.  On re-reading the canon, I recognised that here was a man of flesh and blood, no longer a mere cipher or, indeed, a myth. 

Written from the perspective of an actor – and set against the background of the Essex Rebellion – I describe how iron enters William’s soul as he comes to terms with the death of his eleven-year-old son, Hamnet.  Spanning the years 1596 to 1601, the book traces Shakespeare’s process of self-discovery until, supported by his friends and strengthened by experience, he is on the threshold of creating the profound works of his later years…

Download sample chapter (PDF) - Chapter One: William Shakespeare - Dark Phoenix 

Brief Biography

BARRIE HESKETH, Actor and Theatre Director

1950s Received professional training at The Central School of Speech and Drama (London)

1961 The Cold Heart, a radio drama broadcast on the BBC, starring Wilfred Pickles

1966 Inaugurated The Mull Little Theatre with his wife, Marianne, (supported by The Scottish Arts Council, The Highlands and Islands Development Board and The Michael Marks Charitable Trust (Marks & Spencer).  Notable productions include Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Macbeth; world premiere of Chekhov’s Tatyana Rapin.  Toured UK, The Netherlands and Germany

1983: Barrie and Marianne awarded the MBE for Services to Scottish Theatre

1984 Ostrich, a comedy for two, written in partnership with Marianne, published by Samuel French, London

April 1984 Death of Marianne

1984/5 A Sprat to Catch a Whale, a play for two based on the collected correspondence between Bernard Shaw and Margaret Wheeler (as a young mother whose baby was mistakenly swapped whilst in a nursing home); performed in Scotland and on The Surrey Theatre Link

1986 Elected Member of the Senior Common Room, Churchill College, Cambridge

1987 The New Prometheus, a monologue based on the life of Daniel Paul Schreber, performed in New York, Cambridge and Berlin.  Adapted as an art film for Werner Kubny Filmproduktion (project not realised)

1997 Taking Off - The Story of the Mull Little Theatre, with Foreword by the late Paul Scofield, published by The New Iona Press, Inverness.  Highly recommended by the writer Neal Ascherson in The Independent on Sunday

1988 onwards A Subject Index of Shakespeare’s Works along Psychological Principles, a database (ongoing)

1990 onwards Six Essays on Aspects of Shakespeare’s Plays; Three Monologues for Miserable People (not yet submitted for publication), and William Shakespeare – Dark Phoenix