When the Mind Rebels

Lear as the aging, harsh military dictator.
Source: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/king-lear?play=1

Watching the National Theatre's production of King Lear in the sprawling Olivier Theatre, it was easy to be put off by the greatness of it. As can be expected from the man who directed the last James Bond movie, Sam Mendes doesn't hold back with a huge rotating stage, a larger than life statue of Lear, crashing thunder, a rising platform for Lear's hill in the storm, and a large company of men dressed as soldiers. This huge production was met by a huge performance by Simon Russell Beale as Lear, yelling most of his lines rather than speaking them. He appeared physically out of breath throughout much of the play simply because of the force of his performance.

Lear seeing Cordelia again, one of the few
 touching scenes of the play
Source: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows
/king-lear?play=1

In my initial reactions of the play, I was put off by Beale's performance. The yelling, even though it increased the volume, certainly didn't improve the clarity of the lines for a character who has some of the most interesting and beautiful lines that Shakespeare wrote in my opinion. Beale's Lear also seemed over physical, slapping Regan's bottom after she finishes telling him she love him and grabbing Cordelia by the neck in his rage at her silence. When his madness comes on later in the first half of the play, I couldn't honestly say that I felt that bad for him. And while his encounters with Cordelia later in the play were emotional and his heartbreak at her death was almost palpable, I never felt fully sympathetic for him after his off-putting nature in the beginning of the play.

Cordelia looks on as Lear stares off blankly
in the background
Source: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
shows/king-lear?play=1

When I got back to my flat Monday night, I read the interview with Sam Mendes and Simon Russell Beale that was included in the play's program. While Mendes spoke mostly in the interview about the choice to portray Lear as a political dictator, Beale's discussion of his research made my harsh judgement of his character waver. Beale admitted that for this role, he did research outside of the standard contextual research an actor does for a role; he also researched the symptoms of dementia and adapted those into his performance of Lear. Suddenly, his choice to play Lear as harshly as he did made sense. In the first scene of the play, Beale's Lear is a man realizing that he may not be mentally capable of ruling a kingdom for much longer and knows he needs to pass both his kingdom and responsibility for his person onto his daughters. That voluntary relinquishment of control, followed by the seeming rejection by his youngest and favorite daughter, leads an already unstable and scared man to react violently.

 Having witnessed the effects of dementia personally, I began to see how he weaved subtle elements of the disease into his entire performance, even prior to Lear's scripted madness. The bursts of anger, physical aggression, rapid changes in vocal volumes, jumbled speech, shuffling gait, wandering movements, and dazed moments of clarity suddenly became much more familiar. I understood Cordelia's agony when her father did not recognize her when he first woke up, and I understood the fear in Lear's eyes when he uttered that he was "on a wheel of fire," chained to his mental illness.

Lear with the Fool in the storm
Source: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/
king-lear?play=1

Lear's dementia, if we decide to read his madness in that manner, places him onto this unnatural "wheel of fire," destroying the one part of him that can mediate his relation to both nature and culture, his mind. As he loses control of his mind, he returns into nature in the middle of an intense storm in what seems to be a display of his madness. But nature gives Lear the constancy that he can no longer hold onto in his mind. Just as I watched my grandfather wander into the woods in his most confused moments and find a few moments of lucidity out among the trees, the audience watches Lear try to find some clarity by entering back into nature in the fullest sense, stripping himself of his connections of culture as he strips himself of his clothes. New enclosed places like the hovel or the French camp are more disorienting for Lear than storm-swept nature, so he resists entering those places and escapes back into the nature that he knows and understands. Nature, even in its harshness, becomes a constant, comforting force for Lear, so that even in his maddest moments, he clings to nature with flowers in his hands. Unable to process ever-changing culture any longer, Lear looks to constant nature: the movement of time, the harshness of a storm, the touch of a flower, and the delight of gilded butterflies.

Female Physicality in the Art of Reading and Writing

Readers and writers have often been used as the subjects of various pieces of art. Looking at depictions of women in these two pastimes at the Tate Britain Gallery, I noticed that the positioning of their bodies change between the two activities. As a woman who is both an avid reader and writer, I asked myself if these different body positions were reflective of how I personally and women in general physically engage in reading and writing. In addition, I wondered if these different body positions reflected differing aspects between the acts of reading and writing. While writing and reading are inherently connected, are their processes so different that one's physicality drastically changes between them?

[title not known], Charles Martin
Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/
martin-title-not-known-t10373

"The Reading Girl," Theodore Roussel, 1886-7
Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/
roussel-the-reading-girl-n04361

A perusal of the pieces at the Tate Britain that depict someone reading show that the female form reading is a popular subject, with a far greater number of female subjects appearing reading than male subjects. Charles Martin draw a number of ink drawings that depicted women often laying on a sofa in unexpected positions (in the drawing on display, the woman lays with her feet up over the back of the sofa and her head nearly hanging over the side), their noses buried deep in a book. While the choice to use female subjects may have simply reflected the fact that reading was a habitual and favorite pastime of many women during the 19th century, the act of reading presents women in a state of vulnerability, giving viewers a brief 'snapshot' (to use a modern term) into a woman's private life. In the Martin sketch, the woman has her hand up to her chest in a movement of emotion or surprise, representing the physical effect of the story on her through her body since her facial expression is not visible. This invites an examination of her body, laid out on the sofa in a position that would not be considered 'proper'. Thus, the viewer is the voyeur in this private, intimate scene in which it seems that the subject is not aware she is being watched. In the act of reading, she forgets the 'proper' placement of her body and the 'proper' expression of emotion, allowing the viewer a glimpse of her physicality that would often be hidden. Such physicality can be extended even farther, as Theodore Roussel shows in his painting of a nude woman reading. The woman sits relaxed in a chair, her legs extended in front of her and crossed at the ankles, her shoulders slouched so that her chin rests on her bare chest and a slight fold in the skin on her abdomen is visible. This is a woman in complete vulnerability as she reads, presenting her naked body in a diagonal line across the canvas. Again, there is no acknowledgement of the viewer as the woman's gaze remains fixed on her book, making the viewer into the voyeur again. Thus, reading becomes associated with vulnerability and the female form in such images, suggesting that the act of reading causes an abandonment of consciously arranged physicality that allows for the examination of natural female physicality. 

"Dear Mum," Zsuzsi Roboz, 1975
Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/
roboz-dear-mum-p06686

"Kathleen Raine," Gertrude Hermes, 1954
Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/
hermes-kathleen-raine-t00233

Viewing artwork that depicts women writing, the lithe, extended female form that often appears in depictions of women reading is replaced by a compressed, hunched female form. In a print by Zsuzsi Roboz, a naked woman sits at a bar writing a letter to her mother, based on the title of the piece, "Dear Mum." She sits with her back turned three quarters of the way away from the viewer, hunched over the bar with her legs crossed. Her left hand blends into her thigh, and her abdomen visibly rolls in on itself so that she occupies less physical space. The extension of her right elbow increases the space she occupies horizontally, but there are no extended lines on her body to be seen. She is compacted in the act of writing, making this action appear more protected than the act of reading. The viewer is not given the same access to the female writer as the female reader, as she is hidden under deep shading compared to the simple, clear lines of Martin's print and the strong colors of Roussel's painting. Switching to the medium of sculpture, the bronze of the poet Kathleen Raine by Gertrude Hermes appears as a half bust, with only her sternum up and her arms sculpted. The piece is supported by her arms, with her right arm down on the base in the act of writing and her left hand supporting her chin. In this position, Raine is also hunched over, with her head bent over the 'page' before her and her eyes trained there as well. Again, the viewer is not given the same sort of access to the female writer, with the rough appearance of the bronze making her even less accessible or approachable. But this depiction of the female writer also reduces her body so that the most prominent part of her is her arms, the body parts necessary for her to complete her craft. Female physicality is reduced in the act of writing, making writing more isolated and protected. 

It is strange to think of reading and writing as something that you physically engage in, when the process feels entirely cerebral. However, these artistic depictions of women reading and writing show that the acts are highly physical in different ways. I think these different physical stances allude to the difference in the mental processes involved in reading and writing. In reading, you open yourself up to the ideas and words of others, so that an obvious physical representation of this would be to show someone sitting or laying in an open stance. Reading is also often done as a pastime, so the open physical stance reflects the relaxation and comfort of such a pastime. When I am reading a book for recreation, I certainly contort myself into any number of positions, so I can agree with this open physical stance for reading. Writing, on the other hand, is a process of creating something from yourself, which makes it into something that needs to be protected and guarded. Thus, the female writers appear hunched over their work. But the act of writing on paper also requires such a position, as one must lean over the paper. The ability to write on computers now may change the physicality of writing. Being able to bring your laptop to you instead of having to move to your paper, you can be more open and comfortable in your stance when you are writing. But even as I am writing this on a laptop, I find myself hunched over my work, so perhaps the instinct to guard and protect one's words supersedes the option of physical comfort.

Preserving the Past, Moving into the Future

London strikes an interesting accord between the old and the new. This balance is visible on the city's skyline as St. Paul's dome appears next to the new, sharp facade of the Shard or from the Thames when you compare the Tower bridge with the sleek lines of the Millennium bridge. Historic landmarks back up into modern office buildings, English kings lie under car parks, and theatres sink back down into the marsh and face oblivion beneath corporate headquarters.

One old part of London that is trying to push back against the rapid movement into the future is the Rose Theatre on Bankside. While the Rose was the first theatre built on Bankside, its legacy has been dwarfed by its close neighbor, the Globe. The Rose, having never received a champion like the man responsible for rebuilding the Globe, Sam Wanamaker, was built over and the theatre's foundations slowly sank back down into the marshy soil.

The archeological site at the Rose.
Source: http://www.londontown.com/
NearByHotels/Hotels/33871/Directory/
Hotels-near-Rose+Theatre/

But that isn't all the Rose wrote. While the theatre may not have had the same kind of champion as the Globe, it certainly had its own staunch supporters. Archaeologists from the Museum of London uncovered two thirds of the theatre's ground plan in a dig in May 1989, but city infrastructure prevented them from finishing the dig. Soon after, the Rose Theatre Trust was formed to prevent the construction of a new building on the site that would destroy the theatre's remains. Actors, academics, and the public at large joined the campaign to 'Save the Rose,' with the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, and Lord Laurence Olivier speaking in support of the theatre. Lord Olivier's final recorded message,"Cry God for Harry, England, and the Rose," was played over loud speaker at one of the campaign's rallies. The campaign succeeded, and now the Rose is putting on productions and opening the site up to the public in the hopes that they can raise awareness about the theatre and its history and fund the completion of the dig and the reconstruction of the theatrical space.

Christopher Staines as Faustus.
Source: http://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/
reviews/02-2014/doctor-faustus-rose-theatre
-bankside_33438.html

The productions in the Rose emphasize the meeting of past and present that often occurs in London theatre. On Friday evening, I attended the theatre's production of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. To celebrate Marlowe's 450th birthday this month, the Rose brought Faustus back to the place it first appeared 420 years ago. Modernizing the production, the number of actors was reduced to one, Christopher Staines, who played Faustus and a host of other internal characters brilliantly. While this reduction of actors certainly required some scenes to be cut, the use of a loud speaker recording for Mephistopheles (perhaps harkening back to Lord Olivier's loud speaker announcement that helped save the Rose) and interaction with the audience kept the play from feeling starkly populated. Staines treats Marlowe's language almost reverentially in the first half of the play and the last scene of Faustus facing Hell, which made the break in language during Faustus's romp through Rome even more engaging. As Faustus makes himself into a clown as he tricks the Pope, puts antlers on a knight, and fetches grapes like a servant, Staines takes liberties with the language that make the disparity between what Faustus wants (to rule the world) and what Faustus actually does especially tragic.

Faustus's study, surrounded by candlelight

Faustus certainly seems grand as Staines runs out through the archeological sight, splashing through the water that perpetually stands in site, jumping off ledges, climbing up walls, and standing in the exact spot that Faustus's original portrayer would have stood. But as he pleads with Mephistopheles and with himself, the audience watches that grandeur slip away until he is left sitting in a chair contemplating damnation. The production internalizes Faustus's struggle, abandoning Marlowe's physical demons to emphasize Faustus's mental ones. This choice makes Doctor Faustus into a modern psychological drama, bringing Marlowe's play into the present while physically maintaining its ties to the past in the Rose.

When past and present collide, room is created for monumental change. When someone is willing to challenge the established order, like Christopher Marlowe's challenge to Christianity in Doctor Faustus or Charles Darwin's challenge to existing scientific ideas, society faces a choice: to accept or reject that challenge. When the challenge is accepted, ideas change, new discoveries are made, and society's fabric is essentially altered. And these earlier challenges set up the precedent for further challenges. Thus, because Kit Marlowe did something that had never been done before and actually evoked demons on the stage, space was created within the theatre and within Marlowe's own work for further experiments to occur, including Staines' one-man race through Faustus's mind. Staines remarks at one point that Marlowe is probably rolling in his grave at the changes he made to the play, but I think Marlowe would have appreciated the risks Staines took. After all, an innovator will always appreciate a fellow innovator. And it is such innovation, in theatre, science, art, literature, music, and life in general, that allows us to moving into the future, while respecting and preserving the past.

Finding Nature in a Big City

A typical sight outside of my bedroom
window

The view I'm used to

One of the things I've had to adjust to coming to London is the lack of green space that is not gated into a garden, park, or zoo. Back in Michigan, I live in the middle of a pine forest full of birds, squirrels, deer, and wild turkeys. Such a landscape offers hours of entertainment, watching the antics of the animals and simply taking in the beauty of the forest. And Oberlin certainly doesn't lack for green spaces, with even the courtyards by the dorms full of trees, shrubs, and flowers. Last spring semester, I watched a squirrel make a nest outside my window for two whole months and felt like a Disney princess when at least a hundred butterflies flew around me as I walked past King one evening. My entire life has been defined by the nature that I have lived in, so coming to a city where one or two trees at a street corner are dwarfed by hulking buildings and diminished the bustle of urban space has been a bit of a shock. The chickadees and cardinals I watched at home have been replaced by pigeons, and I've only seen one squirrel in the three weeks I've been here. I've seen more of the mouse inside of my flat than any other animals (besides the thousands of pigeons) outside. For that reason, I have found myself actively seeking nature in the city, which has both disappointed and rejuvenated me in different ways.

I recall that on my first night in London, walking bleary-eyed around my flat's immediate neighborhood in the rain, I remarked that there were more trees around the city than I had expected. I had expected a completely urbanized setting, devoid of trees entirely. Once I took in more of the city, however, I realized that while there may be more trees than I expected, even those trees are urbanized in a way. String lights weave in and out of them, pub signs are nailed into them, limbs are trimmed or cut off entirely so as to not interfere with the buildings, and the signs of city life (litter, graffiti, etc.) are written on the tree trunks. Obviously, these trees hardly offer a significant green space when London continues to press up against them.

Even the so-called "natural spaces" in the city bear London's influence. The city farms that provide a minimal break from urban space still bear the "city" in their names and some require payment from their visitors to enjoy the bit of naturalism they provide. Other natural spaces, such as Bloomsbury Square, give way to car parks and concrete playgrounds, leaving the children at play unable to enjoy the feeling of running through the grass. The plant and flower beds in Bloomsbury square also become an sort of exhibit, as each plant is labelled in the physic garden that is written about in detail on the plaque placed in the center of the bed. The pedestrians stay on the walkways, only looking at the plants around them. Such squares hardly offer an emersion into green space.

A monkey, up close and personal, at the
London Zoo

While squares may cultivate and contain a native natural scene for visitors to look on, the London Zoo creates a vision of nature's exoticism in the middle of Regent's Park. Enclosures that try to evoke the animal's native climates, such as the rainforest house and the butterfly enclosure, offer visitors a brief entrance into the warm humidity of such environments as they escape the wet, chilly London landscape. These enclosures allow visitors to get close to the animals, allowing the animals to freely move throughout the space around the visitors. Delighted children can come within feet of colorful birds and unsuspecting guests can be jumped on by the rambunctious monkeys (according to the zoo's website, the monkey's handlers have found an increasing number of items pilfered from visitors by the monkeys). Such enclosures defy the traditional image of a zoo in which people look on at animals from behind the glass, getting them closer to undomesticated animals than they can in their everyday lives in the city.

A zoo hardly offers the same type of natural space that I am used to at home or at Oberlin, but it did offer me some interesting insights into the thinking of the explorers we have been reading about when they collected specimens, both alive and dead, in exotic locations and brought them back to London. When green space is so hard to find in a city, one must create it themselves. And if you are already creating a green space, why not make it something different than has ever been created before? Additionally, when limited green space can be used as a commercial endeavor, why not impress your visitors with plants and animals they would not be able to see anywhere else? When seeing alone is no longer enough, why not let your visitors in the habitats of those new, exotic species? Thus, nature must be brought into the city, at a price, allowing for greater exploration, education, and commercial gain. As Banks's endeavors were influenced by both science and money, the commercialized green spaces in the city continue to be influenced by the same forces.

And I continue to search for nature in the city.

The Power of Spoken Poetry

In the study of poetry, we're always encouraged to read the poems aloud, as most poems were intended to be read. But if you like me and you both have a roommate and hate the sound of your own voice, reading poems aloud can be both difficult and a bit embarrassing. For that reason, I often wander onto the internet to find recordings of these poems read by people who sound much better aloud than I do. While such recordings greatly inform my reading of the poem, tapping into emotions and vocal emphases that cannot be portrayed on the page, these recordings also connect the poetry of the past to the culture and events of the present, emphasizing poetry's power to transcend time and remain relevant in a changing world. 

John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" is an inherently musical poem with his great use of alliteration and assonance and regular rhyme scheme, as would be expected from a poem about the musical nightingale. When read aloud, though, the emotion of the poem and the reverence the speaker has for the bird becomes obvious. I have returned time and time again to the reading of the poem below only partially because it was read by Benedict Cumberbatch (I'm a college-aged female; I'm not going to deny that that was part of the appeal). He captures the emotion and the desperation of the poem in slight vocal variances, drawing out Keats's repeated exclamations of "Away! away!" in a manner that makes the listener pay attention to a repetition that would normally be glanced over on the page. The fullness of the assonance of Keats's poem, emphasized by the spoken performance, is pulled into stark contrast with the lines filled with sharp consonants, so that such lines as, "In such an ecstasy!" serve as a sort of impactful pause in the otherwise lulling, soothing reading. The practice of reading the poem aloud also calls for a greater amount of attention to the punctuation of the poem, forcing one to pause at commas and dashes and emphasizing the lines differentiated with exclamation marks. Such marks give further insight into the mental process behind Keats's poem, where pauses in his train of thought and excitements occurred. Accompanied by fading violin music, Cumberbatch concludes the poem, with its final two questions, with a similarly fading voice, trailing off in the question of "Do I wake or sleep?" in a manner suggesting the descent into sleep, as words slow and slur until they are cut off. Cumberbatch's reading works to emphasize the emotions of the poem, lending the words the inherent human quality that is lost when they are viewed solely on the printed page. 

Recordings of poems also give us access to cultural meanings of the poems that are inherently obvious in the poems themselves. These readings can indicate the cultural meaning that has been added to the poems by their many readers. F. Scott Fitzgerald was said to have cried every time he read Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" and a recovered recording of him reading the first three stanzas allows listeners access to the love he held for the poem, while also drawing attention to changes in the published versions of the poems, so that Fitzgerald's version of the poem reads "where youth grows dumb, and fever-thin, and dies," while the Norton version reads, "Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies." Thus, listeners are given access to both the poem's publication history and its impact. 

Recordings of poems also speak to poetry's ability to transcend time to apply emotionally to current human events. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote "Adonais" as an elegy for John Keats, a poetic tribute to a man Shelley respected and admired. Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones read part of Shelley's elegy at the memorial concert for Brian Jones, the original band leader, two days after Jones was found drowned in his swimming pool. Jagger used Shelley's words of respect for his friend Keats to convey his own feelings towards Jones, thus using poetry as a way to deal with human grief. 

Finally, recordings of poem can find their way into popular culture. Since poems by Keats and Shelley often deal with universal themes of the human condition, they can often be applied to movies, television shows, music, and, unfortunately, captions on Facebook profile pictures. One recent example is the use of Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" in the television show Breaking Bad. Since I do not watch the show, I cannot speak to the appropriateness of such a pairing, but it does reflect poetry's ability to continue to affect popular culture centuries after it was written. 

Cry God for Harry, England, and St. George, but What About Katherine?

The view from the balcony

On Friday evening, I had the amazing opportunity to attend the penultimate performance of Shakespeare's Henry V with Jude Law in the titular role. Sitting among the lights in the balcony (I was nearly eye level with the chandelier), I had a bird's eye view of the stripped down stage, consisting of only gray-washed walls and doors, that truly challenged the audience to heed the Chorus and imagine the fields of Agincourt before them. When the doors in the back of the stage opened to reveal Henry lounging on his throne with a crown perched on his head, I knew that I was in for an interesting experience.

Henry rallies his troops.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25200156

I've always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Henry V. Shakespeare's second tetralogy, consisting of Richard II, Henry IV Parts I & II, and Henry V, has always captured my interest, and to most people's disbelief, Richard II is my favorite history play and ranks high on my list of favorite Shakespeare plays. Out of the other three plays in the tetralogy, Henry, Harry, Hal, Monmouth, whichever name you prefer, was my favorite character and I find his progression in the three plays from rakish boy prince to capable, strong ruler really interesting, especially considering his willingness to leave his friends behind to die without a second glance. Law played this change superbly, pausing ever so slightly when he learns that Bardoff is to be hanged in a moment of pained recognition that is quickly replaced with his usual kingly stoicism. This was the only moment of vulnerability in Hal Law played that felt genuine. Henry's greatest moment of vulnerability, when he kneels in prayer in the middle of his army's camp, was overwhelmed by a blazing spotlight, placing him a little too much in the light of Heaven for my taste. In contrast, Law played Henry's moments of strength almost too perfectly, shouting the St. Crispian's Day speech with such gusto that I had chills as his men shouted around him. Law certainly played King Henry as the capable, rallying military man that has come to be expected from the role.

Jessie Buckley in rehearsals.
Source: http://www.irishtimes.com/
life-and-style/people/i-like-feeling-out-
of-my-depth-how-jessie-buckley-went-
from-kerry-to-the-west-end-1.1591322

It is that military man quality in King Henry that pervades the tone of the entire play that frustrates me the most, however, especially in its treatment of Princess Katherine, played beautifully by Irish actress Jessie Buckley. As the play revolves around England's capturing of France, Katherine comes to embody the land that Henry fights for throughout the play. Because she appears in the play only to become Henry's queen and possession, the physical embodiment of the France that must become England, she is made into a foreign object whose mispronunciation of English represents the need for her education and correction. Thus, Katherine and her lady were the only French characters in the entire play who actually had French accents, because they undoubtedly needed to be corrected by Henry, as king and as England. Shakespeare's less than subtle pun on female genitalia that he gives to Katherine in her English lesson couples her with the body part that will be the most important in her role as Henry's queen, her womb. She becomes synonymous with her breeding capabilities and her country, making her less than a woman even before she's been committed to Henry.

Henry wooing Katherine
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25200156

The pervasion of Henry's militaristic qualities into Law's performance of Henry's wooing continued to lessen Katherine's status as a woman. Shakespeare's script obviously calls for Henry to be less than competent in his flirtation, as he calls himself a "soldier" who does not know the terms "such as will enter a lady's ear / and plead his love-suit to her gentle heart" (V.ii.102-104). Law in this scene lessened the inherent awkwardness and vulnerability of Henry's wooing by consistently mocking Katherine throughout the scene. Law went so far as to vocally break character as he asks her, "Do you like me, Kate?" in the tone you might expect from a teenage boy speaking to a girl on the street or in an underground station. The "love" Henry professes throughout the scene seems hardly plausible as Law flippantly ridicules Katherine's broken English, looking at her in dismay when she remarks that she cannot "speak [his] England" (V.ii.105). Law's firmness when he adds, "and you are mine," to Henry's roundabout logic of Katherine's ownership of France if they are married leaves little doubt that Katherine will become Henry's queen (V.ii.169). Even the strength Buckley gives to Katherine's character as she continues to resist Henry is diminished by Henry's continuous ridicule, finally stopping her voice entirely with over one hundred lines left in the scene as Henry stops her mouth with a kiss. Thus, she begins the scene in broken English and ends the scene in silence, as Henry declares his ownership of her and her France.

Years after Shakespeare's play was written, the age of British exploration and imperialism saw the real-life silencing of women as they stood as representations of their desired countries. In Sex, Botany, and Empire, Patricia Fara describes many of Joseph Banks's sexual exploits during his expeditions. One woman in particular, the Tahitian woman Purea, became the sexualized representation of her exotic country when word of Banks's sexual indiscretions came back to England. Poems inspired by the woman made her into a "common whore"and other satires alluded to her "handling" of the "sensitive plant" Banks (8, 13). This woman was denied a voice and reduced to her sexuality in these publications, just as Katherine is in Henry V. Thus, in both drama and real life, the women in the foreign countries that England sought to overtake became the silent, sexualized representations of their lands, forced to yield to the ridiculing advances of England's men, be they kings, botanists, or writers.

In any case, even if I have my complaints about the production and the play's unfair portrayal of Katherine, I got Jude Law to sign my program, so it's not all bad.

Reaching for Paradise

As English majors, we learn fairly soon into our academic careers that if a garden shows up in a text, we should probably start paying attention. Gardens offer a controlled space of nature for authors to play with, evoking nature's wildness while still maintaining such growth within human confines. The idyllic garden space then becomes a place where love can "take root," just as Benedick and Beatrice are fooled into loving each other while hiding in an orchard and a garden respectively, in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. This love that begins in a garden can then be moved into the civilized space of the house, leading to formal, civilized marriage. In contrast, the untamed garden becomes the image of decay, neglect, and moral laxity, so that Hamlet, in his adverse reaction to his mother's marriage to his uncle Claudius, claims that Gertrude is "an unweeded garden, / That grows to seed" (Hamlet I.ii.135-136). This fascination with garden spaces found in great amounts of literature derives from the Jewish and Christian creation story of the Garden of Eden.

In the story of Genesis, the Garden of Eden is formed as a literal paradise on Earth and God gives command of this paradise to Adam and his wife Eve. This paradise holds all of the plants and animals of the Earth and Adam and Eve live blissful, pain-free lives in their domain. However, once they are tempted by the serpent to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden, given the burdens of toil and pain, and barred from the garden by an angel with a flaming sword. After this expulsion because of this original sin, as many early and modern theologians believe Adam and Eve's sin was, the search for some sort of recreation of Eden has occupied both literal space and literary space spanning many periods of time. In the Renaissance, Sir Thomas More's Raphael Hythloday begins his tale of Utopia while sitting in a garden, tying this idealized island, with its own ordered gardens, to the controlled natural space. In the Victorian age, literal and imaginative recreations of the garden continued to occur, but these recreations begin to show that a paradise on earth is unattainable.

Linnaeus's Garden as a new Eden.
Source: http://makingamark.squidoo.com/botany-for-artists

One figure who tried to literally recreate Eden was Carl Linnaeus. Considering himself the second Adam in his quest to rename all of the species placed on Earth by God, Linnaeus rebuilt the University garden in Uppsala to look the way that he believed the original Eden would have looked. According to Patricia Fara, Linnaeus believed that all of the world's plants had been present in the Garden of Eden and had since diversified to suit different regions, but remained essentially the same. Under this logic, Linnaeus aimed to reverse the scattering process of the original Garden and to bring foreign plants to Sweden in an attempt to "recreate God's original Garden in Uppsala" (Sex, Botany, and Empire 31). Linnaeus laid out his garden with clear boundaries, shown in the figure, in order to "separate its internal order from the post-Fall wildness beyond" (31). He also sought to divide the garden in accordance with his naming system, and divided the garden into quarters to correspond with the four rivers of Eden and the four continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, and America). Linnaeus ruled over his garden from a house just outside his paradise, watching over his creation like the creator God of Genesis.

While Linnaeus's attempt to literally rebuild Eden in Sweden may have been far-fetched, (the idea of moving tropical plants to northern climates seems a bit naive), he did not face a complete rejection of his search for a new earthly paradise. Such rejections were left for the imaginative space of literature, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. As Frankenstein deals extensively with the imaginative situation in which man attempts to create life like a god, the novel is naturally rich with language of the loss of Eden and the fall of man, while also playing with language of the fall of Lucifer and the other rebellious angels into Hell. In both allusions, Victor stands as the God figure who turns his back on his creation, described both Adam and the "fallen angel" turned "malignant devil," Satan (280). But Victor's creation is tainted with language of filth and corruption. He first claims that he will break through the "ideal bounds" of life and death to become the "creator and source" of a new species, a species from whom Victor would claim thanks more completely from than any "father could claim the gratitude of his child," suggesting that he desires thanks equivalent to the gratitude expected from the Jewish people towards their God (59). But Victor terms his workshop that of "filthy creation" and remarks upon how his "human nature" often turns "with loathing" from his task, suggesting both the impurity of his creation and the limitations of man as human to be an agent of creation.

After Victor imbues his creation with life, the creature names Victor as his creator frequently throughout the novel and also aligns himself with both Adam and Satan when he claims that like Adam, he is "apparently united by no link to any other being in existence," and like Satan, when he views "the bliss of [his] protectors, the bitter gall of envy [rises] within [him]" (161). Thus, Victor, as the creature's creator, takes on the position of the God that turns away from his beloved creations, Lucifer and Adam, when they move against him and his will. The relationship between creator and creature violently departs from the biblical relationship in Frankenstein, however, when the creature vows vengeance on Victor for leaving him "wretched, helpless, and alone" and Victor vows to destroy his creation (161). Thus, the limits of human creation are explored, as Victor is not endowed with the godly love for his fallible creation and the creature does not continue to express his love to his creator as both Adam and Lucifer did, at least not while his creator is alive. Victor's attempt to recreate the godly creation of man as a human, through scientific, human means, fails and leaves him devastated, suggesting that the creation implied by Eden's paradise is unattainable by man once such a paradise has been lost.

Blurring the Line between Worshipper and Worshipped

In his "Ode to the West Wind,"Percy Bysshe Shelley speaks of the the "wild West Wind," the "breath of Autumn's being," with the reverence of a worshipper in the presence of a deity (1). Focusing on the coming death of winter, Shelley emphasizes the destructive power of the wind "who chariotest [the winged seeds] to their wintry bed" to lie "each like a corpse within its grave," contrasting its power with that of its "azure sister of the Spring" (9-12). His reference to the "Destroyer and Preserver" of the Hindu trinity places these seemingly disparate winds into a sort of encompassing single entity that both creates and kills. This transcendent aspect of the wind in the poem ties it not only with the Hindu trinity, as is explicitly referenced, but also with the three-personed Christian trinity and the Egyptian trinity of Amun, Ptah, and Re. The figure of Amun, sometimes pictured as a ram, also ties interestingly to this poem because Amun was considered the god of the wind. Thus, the worshipper of the West Wind in Shelley's poem can join with the worshippers of Amun, including the Egyptian pharaoh Taharqa.

During Taharqa's reign as pharaoh, he built or enlarged several temples to the ram god of the wind. Having shown such devotion to the god, it would seem logical for a statue to be constructed that places Taharqa in close proximity to his beloved deity. Just as Henry III wanted to be buried by St. Edward the Confessor in the hopes that such positioning in death would give him a "fast track" to heaven, the appearance of Taharqa standing within the legs of Amun visually ties him to the deity and emphasizes his desire for the god's protection.

Taharqa's position of deference to Amun, appearing miniaturized beneath the ram's head, also alludes to his desire to be used by the god, similar to Shelley's speaker's call for the West Wind to "make me thy lyre"(57). Dwarfed in the god's presence, Taharqa becomes like "a dead leaf thou mightest bear" and "a wave to pant beneath thy power"(43, 45). Taharqa's figure blends into Amun's or, depending on how you read the sculpture, Amun's figure blends into Taharqa's, so that worshipper and worshipped become one. Thus, Taharqa accomplishes what Shelley's speaker pleads for; Taharqa's desire for Amun to "be thou me" is realized as the division between man and god blurs in sculpted granite (63).


The pharaoh's deference to this god of the wind, this all powerful creator god, also alludes to his desire for a blessing of his rule. If he is given the god's protection, prosperity will also be brought to his rule. Thus, the god of the wind becomes a means for Taharqa to "scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth / Ashes and sparks, [his] words among mankind" (66-67). While Shelley writes these words in reference to the dissemination of his poetry, the desire for prosperity the words imply can apply to all figures, from pharaohs to commoners. Thus, Shelley, in his reverence for the West Wind, taps into the worship of the ancients.

The Limits of Nature and the Lure of the Occult

In the exploration of what nature is, one realizes that there are certain things that cannot be done within the laws of nature. Lead cannot be turned into gold; the dead cannot be brought back to life; death cannot be forestalled indefinitely. The recognition of these limitations has not stopped people from trying to find ways around them, however, in both real life dealings and the imaginative space of literature. As science develops and expands, the rebellious individual may be confined more and more to literature's imaginative space, but that does not stop a fascination with trying to find ways to outsmart and overcome nature.

An alchemist's pen, colored with gold at the tip to fool people
into thinking that the metal had actually been transformed. 

During the Renaissance, alchemy was still considered a respectable science, influencing the modern sciences of chemistry, medicine, and even physics. The experimental nature of alchemy, meant to find the elixir of life or a means to transform base metals into gold, influenced the development of later experimental physical sciences. The mystical nature of alchemy also tied it to spiritual practices in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity, contributing to a relation between alchemy and the occult. Well-known, reputable figures in Elizabethan England were known as alchemists and often also as occultists, as they sought answers to the questions that nature seemed to leave unanswered.

Paraphernalia used by John Dee to conjure
spirits and angels.  

One such figure was John Dee. Born in London in 1527 to a courtier in Henry VIII's court, Dee would later serve as court astrologer and magician to both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth (Cannon). He was also versed in the studies of geography and navigation, having published only one book in his lifetime about the "perfect arte of navigation" (Downs). Despite these more practical pursuits, his reputation as a cabalist and occultist shadowed his reputation for centuries. As the possessions of Dee's that are now housed in the British Museum suggest, that reputation was not unfounded. Dee used such objects to conjure spirits and contact divine beings, including angels, in his attempts to learn the secrets of the universe. While such pursuits may have led to Dee dying impoverished and in infamy under the charge of sorcery, he certainly demonstrated the desire to transcend nature that continued into the Romantic period.

As alchemy was abandoned for chemistry and modern science continued to develop and change, the medium through which one could express such desires to transcend nature also had to change. The written word became that new medium. Facing only the limits of imagination, authors such as Mary Shelley could propose scenarios in which nature was actually transcended. For Shelley, her novel Frankenstein offered the space to imagine what would happen if man had the power to overcome death. Shelley's protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, begins his scientific education with the works of Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, eagerly accepting "the dreams of forgotten alchemists" after being unable to content himself with "the results promised by the modern professors of natural science" (Shelley 49). Following his education under M. Waldman, Victor returns to the fold of modern science, but the promises of his previous alchemist teachers maintain a hold on him, leading him to seek a way to overcome death by reanimating life. In this manner, Shelley blends aspects of the science of ages past and contemporary science, as Victor seeks the "elixir of life" in the form of electricity. Thus, Shelley's thought experiment in Frankenstein alludes to a desire to return to the unachieved "promised impossibilities" through contemporary scientific means, suggesting that the human desire to transcend nature may never actually be quelled by scientific limitations (50). The practice may change, forced to move out of the laboratories and into the pages of a book, but the human desire for more knowledge, more control, and more power never ceases.

The Shadow of Art

London offers many incredible pieces of art to viewers from all over the world. From the Elgin marbles and the hulking statue of Rameses II to paintings from such artists as Monet, Van Gogh, and Raphael, London certainly offers unlimited sources of artistic inspiration. For those who wish to use that inspiration to write about those artworks, they face the limitations of language to describe a visual experience. Such limitations are not new, proven by John Keats as he also struggled to encapsulate the brilliance of the Elgin Marbles.

Keats did not shy away from ekphrastic poetry. In his "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Keats extensively describes the urn and seeks to discern the meaning of the images painted on it. But his experience of the Elgin marbles proved too much for him to describe the pieces as extensively. For that reason, he opens his sonnet, "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles," not with a descriptive engagement with the art, but with a more personalized, emotional reaction. Keats exclaims, "My spirits are too weak," as he looks on the marbles, unable to articulate further emotion (1). The art produces a physical effect on him as well, as he remarks that "mortality / weighs heavily on [him]" after he views the marbles (1-2). He adds that it is "a gentle luxury to weep" at the "most dizzy pain" produced by this experience of "Grecian grandeur"(6, 11-12). Keats is unable to encapsulate in language the visual aspects of the Elgin marbles, relying instead on a relation of his emotional experience of the art because his words rest in "a shadow of a magnitude" (14). His words are overshadowed by the memory of the looming temple the marbles came from as well as the magnificence of the marbles themselves. Keats, recognizing the inherent difficulty in writing about such a large number of detailed, intricate sculptures in the same manner he wrote about the urn, instead focuses on the overwhelming emotional experience of seeing artwork of such "magnitude."

After seeing the Elgin marbles for myself, I now understand the difficulty Keats faced. Even the air feels a little different in the almost unnaturally quiet rooms the marbles are housed in. The detailing on every figure is mind-boggling. And there are hundreds of figures, in friezes, metopes, and free-standing sculptures. As a person with a fondness for horses, I naturally spent a great deal of time examining the horse head belonging to a figure of the moon goddess Selene's chariot. The sculptor was able to capture the furrows between the horse's flared nostrils, the small folds in the skin where the bottom of the horse's head met its neck, and the exact shape of the horse's premolars. The flicked back ears, gaping mouth, and bulging eyes all suggest the horse's exhaustion from its night in the sky. The sculptor even included the ridges of veins and sinews in the face that only someone with experience around horses would have known to incorporate. If three sentences are necessary to describe only part of a single horse's head, Keats's task of attempting to describe the entire collection in a fourteen line sonnet seems implausible and even ludicrous. When faced with such grandeur, with art of such magnitude, it seems best to let the art speak for itself and only speak to one's experience. The art may cast a shadow, but sometimes there is nothing wrong with sitting in the shade.

What is Nature?

While attempting to start a blog post about some aspect of the relationship between nature and culture over the last two days, I find myself stopping mere sentences into the post and asking myself, ‘Is the thing that I am describing actually a part of nature?’ So, I begin this blog by positing and possibly attempting to answer the following question: What is nature?

This is what “nature” looks like, according 

to Google Images. Source: http://mrrecker.wordpress.com/

2013/10/26/walk-in-nature-reduce-stress/

As any twenty-something college student is wont to do, I took my query to Google. That choice was less than helpful. The Internet seemed to hedge around the definition of nature as well, taking me to sites about nature conservancy instead of nature itself. And Google Images presented me with idyllic, serene pictures usually found as default computer backgrounds. Obviously, I needed to look somewhere else.

Since the Oxford English Dictionary has become my best friend in college, I turned to its vast database of definitions next. I found that the OED definitions of nature are varied and disparate, therefore not really helpful for answering my question at all. The first three overarching categories of definitions pertain to human nature, concerning “physical or bodily power” and “mental or physical impulses and requirements.” It is only in the fourth category that the products of the earth make an appearance in the various definitions of the word, turning to the senses of the word that relate to the material world. Even in these definitions, however, nature remains indefinable  in a sense that no clear boundaries are drawn between what is and what is not nature. The first definition of the word under the category of the material world describes nature as the “creative and regulative power” that operates in the material world. The definitions remain in conflict with each other throughout the rest of this category. One defines nature as “the phenomena of the physical world collectively; esp. plants, animals, and other features and products of the earth itself, as opposed to humans and human creations.” The next definition calls nature “the whole natural world, including human beings; the cosmos.” Thus, it appears that nature can either include or exclude humans. Needless to say, these conflicting definitions did not leave me any clearer on what nature is exactly.

Is the mound of dirt nature or a lack of nature?

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/

theatre-reviews/10607806/Happy-Days-Young-Vic.html

My perusal of the OED led me to think nature is something that cannot be pinned down or placed into a convenient box that restricts what it is and is not. And I think that indefinable quality of nature allows for a great amount of interpretation of its appearance and role in various forms of literature. For example, the viewer’s individual definition of nature can greatly influence the way that Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days is interpreted. If one considers the mound of dirt that the main character, Winnie, is trapped in as a part of nature, then the play can be interpreted as a commentary on nature’s power to entrap humans. On the other hand, if one considers the mound of dirt as devoid of nature, with the exception of the small emmet that borrows into the ground around Winnie while carrying the suggestion of life in the form of the white ball of eggs, then the play holds interesting environmental implications in which Winnie’s entrapment can be interpreted as stemming from the destruction and subsequent absence of nature. Thus, the definition of nature remains open to the viewer, allowing for more and more interpretations of a text.

While the process of writing this blog post has led me to think that nature may in fact be indefinable, creating space within its evocation in literature for various interpretations of what nature is and is not and examinations of how those various interpretations affect the overall interpretations of the text, I still seek to find what I might consider my own personal definition of nature. I hope that further explorations during this semester will lead me to such a personal definition.