During an early performance of Henry VIII (subtitled All is True), the Globe Theater caught fire and burned to the ground. No one was hurt except for someone whose pantaloons caught on fire and had them extinguished by a neighbor's bottle of ale.
I guess it's just as well. Shakespeare had more or less retired at this point. It was the second to last play he wrote, and it's co-authored by John Fletcher, who goes on to be a famous playwright of the era, but most famous of course for his association with Shakespeare and his appearance in Shakespeare in Love as the boy who loves Titus Andronicus.
Probably many Americans have learned the vast majority of their English history from movies. Camelot, The King's Speech, Robin Hood, A Man For All Seasons, The Other Boleyn Girl... anytime there is a dramatic interpretation of historical events, we know that there are going to be innumerable inaccuracies, and that's okay. Movies are meant to entertain... so are plays. But you would have hoped that Fletcher and Shakespeare would have been able to at least include some of the interesting things about Henry VIII's life...
Movies have always told me he was a dangerous and lusty monarch who left the Catholic church so he could get a divorce and then marry Anne Boleyn who he then had executed on false accusations of treason. This play is clearly a very careful handling of history in order to make sure that the King, who had died only 65 years before it was performed, would not be besmirched.
All of Shakespeare's histories are propaganda, but at least the one's chronicling the War of the Roses are terribly entertaining propaganda with geniuses like Falstaff, and heroic, banner-waving speeches ("Once more unto the breach, dear friends!"). This play is straight up boring, because you keep expecting Henry to get all horny and evil, but he really doesn't. He hits on Anne and turns on his first wife, Catherine, but everything is so tepid. The only really noteworthy thing about the play is that it was the last one performed at the Globe, which is sad.
I wonder if he had never written this play... is it possible that the original Globe would still be standing? I'd happily trade this play for the chance to see that massive wooden structure in whatever disrepair it might be after 400 years... yikes. Can a wooden building even last that long?
I've been trying to come up with something to say about this play for weeks and I'm sorry to say that this is the best I can do. At this point I just had to write something and move on. I'm approaching the end of Shakespeare's works and it's starting to make me kind of sad/reluctant. I've still got The Two Noble Kinsmen, some poems, maybe Edward III (partial authorship), and a play that was recently attributed in part to Shakespeare: Double Falsehood.
There’s a story about an Indian man who finds a very nice wild horse. “That’s lucky,” everyone says.
“Maybe,” the man says.
He gives the horse to his son, who gets thrown off while riding it and breaks his arm. “That’s unlucky,” everyone says.
“Maybe,” the man says.
They send a war party against another tribe, but the man’s son, whose arm is broken, has to stay behind. Many young men were killed. "That's lucky."
"Maybe."
That’s a lovely piece of folk wisdom I learned from Northern Exposure.
Early in The Tempest, Prospero discloses to his daughter the truth about their situation, that he was the deposed Duke of Milan, her response is:
O the heavens!
What foul play had we, that we came from thence?
Or blessed was’t we did?(1:2:59)
Miranda knows immediately that all events have the potential to prove foul or blessed, depending on how long you give them to play out. Prospero’s betrayal and banishment aren’t finished running their course until the end of this play. He manufactures a storm to revenge himself on his brother, who overthrew him, and the other lords who had a hand in his banishment. But by the end of the play, his intentions change. Ariel instructs him in forgiveness:
Ariel:
His tears run down his beard, like winter’s drops
From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works ‘em,
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.
Prospero:
Dost thou think so, spirit?
Ariel:
Mine would, sir, were I human. (5:1:16)
In a quest for vengeance, Prospero finds forgiveness. Much like the episode of 21 Jumpstreet where Penhall tells the story about how when he was a kid he got picked on by some douchebag bully. The guy ate his lunch, smashed his toothpick rocketship science project, and crashed his uncle's car with his prom date still in it. All the other cops tell stories about the bullies that picked on them when they were kids too, Johnny Depp has an especially touching story about getting beat up every day in 4th grade by a girl played by the Thor-obsessed little sister in Adventures in Babysitting. But Penhall doesn’t feel better until he goes and confronts his old bully at his house as an adult, only to find that he’s a cigarette smoking, little loser who shouts at his miserable wife and clearly has no joy in his life at all.
The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance. (5:1:27)
I might be pulling out some old Catholic School brainwashing here, but the lesson seems to be that forgiveness is vengeance. Despite being opposites, they accomplish the same thing: closure from one series of events and progress into another.
Forgiveness is vengeance. Fortune is Misfortune. Fair is Foul, familiar themes here.
In the very first episode of My So Called Life, Angela Chase and her friend, Rayanne, meet these two guys outside a bar. One of them grabs Rayanne and starts kissing her. Angela narrates: “something was actually happening, but it was a little too actual.” And she steps in to prevent a rape or abduction, the cops come, and it’s this whole little thing. But the next day, they go to school and laugh and laugh about how great it was. Granted they’re ridiculous teenagers, but you can relate. As the people say: someday we’ll look back on all of this and laugh…
There’s a horrible habit that writers have of telling each other that any thing interesting that happens in their life is “good material.” Every time I tell a writer about something, like the time that I got hit by a car, they say, man, that’s great material and I want to tell them to shut up. It’s not material. It’s my life.
Here’s a naïve thought: the power of writing is in universal truth, and its benefit to the world of readers. Your gut-wrenching break up is useless to the majority of humanity, unless you can find the universal truth in the story. When you know things like Shakespeare knew things, about the human condition and the way emotion works, and you lay those ideas into stories, then they resonate. Strike like lightning and thunder forth many Mississippi’s into the future.
I suppose I’m surprised when people think that getting hit by a car is great material, because you can get hit by a car at any moment. People get hit by cars everyday, right?
But if you knew who I was rushing to see when I got hit, or what happened between us in the next few weeks after the accident, then the story might get interesting. If I told you about pulling the quarter-inch shard of windshield out of my thumb the next morning, you might understand the way an event like that, unfortunate as it is, leaves glorious scars.
What I remember most was lying on the ground, having been thrown fifteen feet through the air, my helmet smashed to pieces, the driver of the car – an EMT – cradled my head and neck, and I thought I might never walk again. Never play soccer. Never ride a bike. And I felt just fine. Like I was going to be a new me, and that new me was someone I was looking forward to meeting. Because if you’re a new you, then it’s a new world… well, new to thee.
So is it possible to think of that misfortune -- of getting hit by the car -- as a fortunate event? I’m not foolish enough to label it one way or the other.
But I guess it did turn out to be decent material. For the moment anyway.
I used to write columns for the Kenosha Midweek Bulletin, and I used to write plays in Minnesota for No Refunds Theatre Co. The most popular of which is the infamous KUNG FU HAMLET. Now I work in television.
