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Hi friends,
Well this is totally delightful! A couple queries here after act one from a few different vantage-points. I’m interested to know your thoughts!
Thematic. There seem to be some parallels concerning counsel and consent. Three women in act one are betrothed, but all are contracted by a double negative. As the Saxon Lady says, “I were no woman to deny,” is not a signal of consent, but an acknowledgement that they are not in a place to deny ([A3-A4, B1]). This seems in some ways analogous to the lords offering counsel to their king not to marry “a Pagan, an Idolator” ([B1v]), by Cador, Edwin, and then the Hermit. A marriage to a non-English woman outside the consent of peers of the realm smacks something of H6 and Titus, among others no doubt some of you have ideas. There seems to be something to the line “Both States in Peace and Love.”
Dramaturgical. For a play that forecasts Merlin, this was surprising low-tech to me for the first act. There is some description of the battle—“holy man armed with cross and staff, went smiling on” in to battle where above his head “appeared such brightness”—but only by reportage and not display. A letter and a book are called for, perhaps the most basic of properties, and only one call for a trumpet flourish. This play thus far is very chatty, but otherwise very quiet in comparison to the “English history play” genre broadly—quite the opposite of what I was expecting! I wonder if this is to whet our whistle in anticipation of displays to come?
Likewise, while the Saxon soldiers seem afeared at the hermit/Merlin entrance, this is maybe not necessarily shock at his personal appearance? Do we envision something comely as a religious hermit or prophet of a Judeo-Christian imaginary, or something more wild man of the woods? If the former, is this a moment of theatrical deflation wherein the personal appearance of Merlin doesn’t live up to the battlefield performance? Or is a humble, Protestant display of simple garb the point? I am curious if others have thoughts about signals of anticipation and to what extent those are made good on or deflated (perhaps in the vein of the medieval vice tradition of entering past the halfway mark)?
Paratextual. Having started reading after I saw the compelling thoughts about asides, I tried to attend to them, particularly as they don’t seem to be consistently marked via mise-en-page. (As best as I can tell anyway? Thoughts on this?) I am having some difficulty envisioning the negotiation of space on stage, where different factions of peers (as opposed to ladies and saxons) are being managed in terms of implicit blocking, how vast this royal hall is envisioned to be within the world of the play, &c. Asides, in demarcating public and private speech, I often find a handy tool to see where the invisible velvet rope stanchions are for this community within the play.
The possibility for asides seems to be particular, again, to the moments of marriage proposals and courtly dissent. None of the comments uttered (the sex-appeal of a woman, the dissent from a lord) is ultimately covert or kept the subject of the statement. To the former, they are even commented on later as “childish compliments” ([B1v]). For blocking purposes, my preference would be to treat these as aside, but I wonder what’s gained by reading them not as cordoned speech? Perhaps that would make available a reading where the brutishness of this Arthurian court is rhetorically marked? Something vulgar in not containing speech we would typically consider private?
And I see a prosthetic belly is called for at the top of the next act! Sara B.T. Thiel’s chapter, “’Cushion come forth’: Materializing pregnancy on the Stuart Stage,” from Stage Matters: Props, Bodies, and Space in Shakespearean Performance (Farleigh Dickinson UP 2018) might be of interest to some in this regard.
Cheers!
ET
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Hi all, I’m Elizabeth (she/her), another first-timer for Merlin!
My work focuses on theatre and history and performance on the late sixteenth-century. Attending specifically to playing companies and the repertory system, this work complements my other pursuits as a dramaturg. I’m in Portland, Oregon, for the moment, but will be starting as faculty in the Hudson Strode Program at the University of Alabama in the fall.
So looking to chatting with friends old and new here!
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