In which a post suddenly occurs.

Oh, look. A neglected blog. Time and again, I’ve thought about returning, about creating new posts or leaving some sort of note. I’ve thought about it, and I’ve thought about it (“Do I dare and do I dare?”, if we want to be Prufrock about it). Time crept up, intervened, and I drifted elsewhere, only thinking about it.

So. Here ends the casual thinking-about, and check it out: a post hath appeared. We’ll see how well this flies (whether I actually begin to post anything, at all), and where it goes. I am, after all, in a bit of a different place than when last I posted.

To explain a bit. This blog was originally established as part of a class at Wayne State University (to be a bit more specific, Lisa Maruca’s “18th-Century Media Matrix”; hence the 18th-centric posts). Students in the class were expected to keep more or less weekly blogs on or related to the week’s reading. Though I found that I rather enjoyed blogging, the blog fell out of use once the class ended and other pursuits arose. And even aside from the fact that the class ended, the situation’s changed a bit. After a semester of working toward an English MA, I chose to leave Wayne State; suffice to say that while the courses were intriguing enough, the path wasn’t taking me in a direction I’d like to go (may return to this subject in a future post, if the mad urge strikes).

What (or who, if you prefer) does that make me? Aside from a drifter, a bum, an inveterate wanderer (such designations stand true in some senses, exaggerated in others). Recently, a student and an intern of the theater-dwelling variety (dramaturgy in three cases), holder of various, not-so-long-lived jobs. Currently attempting to sort out various matters and options (perhaps “bum” is indeed an apt term for this, for me), substitute teaching here and there, seeking further employment and, oh, always on the prowl for further answers and further questions. None of which defines me, I don’t think, but all of which plays into it.

In any case. Certainly, the reading and studying (and, one might hope, brain-functioning) hasn’t just sort of ended with the classes. And I wish (and likely ought) to make a more concentrated effort to write down responses… To generally write, really. BS or otherwise (often, it all seems to boil down to BS, so eh, c’est the way). So, hey, looks like this blog may see a bit of life, after all.

The blog will doubtless wend away in different directions. While 18th-century Britain certainly intrigues and offers no end of matter for mulling, my inclinations of interest tend to run in other directions. What is to come? Can’t say for certain. Perhaps thoughts on current reading. Perhaps attempts at theater reviews. Perhaps accounts of the early evening habits of hedgehogs. Anything that comes to mind, so we’ll call it an adventure into new (for this blog) terrain, its content potentially much-scattered in terms of topic (I do so enjoy the scattered and fragmented, though will try to stray from posting too many fragments).

Fair enough for an introduction, or re-introduction? I think so, or will call it so. We’ll see how well I actually stick to this, but hey, here goes. Thrilling times and happy trails.

Fun with Farquhar, indeed.

The Beaux' Stratagem: A Play Guide

Should anyone be interested in taking a look, it is available for viewing. Finished? No. But part of the beauty of it rests in that very fact. Will be updating it until leaving for the presentation Tuesday (as much as other papers allow, hrm), and intend to keep working at it well beyond that time. So much more to be put together and set onto the site, including a glossary, framing material and articles of my own, a smattering of images, as many quotes as I possibly can collect... and so on, and so forth.

At the very least, the framework and idea of it can be seen. I think. I hope.

Suppose we shall see.

"But here's the point to get."

This as a bit of a tag-along to my previous post... We're moving to America of the late-1930s, a vastly different work, but thoughts on educating girls to more or less wake up to themselves brought Eugene O'Neill's Iceman Cometh to mind time and again, and though I might throw a bit of it out here, just for thought.

Through much of the play, itinerant salesman and all-around jolly guy Hickey prods his fellow barflies to wake up to themselves, to confess their shortcomings and let go of their pipe dreams, the unrealizable ideals that protect them from fully facing life's harsh truths. Meanwhile, his fellows shift uncomfortably between adoration of the Hickey they've long known--that is, the Hickey ever-willing to foster their delusions--and resentment toward the Hickey who now threatens them with the truth.

During the play's second act, Hickey attempts to explain his actions to the bar's denizens, protesting that this tearing away of delusions is for their own good:

But here's the point to get. I swear I'd never act like I have if I wasn't absolutely sure it will be worth it to you in the end, after you're rid of the damned guilt that makes you lie to yourselves you're something you're not, and the remorse that nags at you and makes you hide behind lousy pipe dreams about tomorrow. You'll be in a today where there is no yesterday or tomorrow to worry about. You won't give a damn what you are any more. I wouldn't say this unless I know, Brothers and Sisters. This peace is real! It's a fact! (p. 129)

Point being, so far as the post regarding Fielding's Governess is concerned, that realization of one's own faults seems to be linked to happiness, even to a sort of freedom. Only once delusions have been broken can life carry on... Or so Fielding seems in some ways to imply, and so Hickey here suggests.

Yet The Iceman Cometh has much to say beyond this point, and the matter of life beyond delusion is, well, a bit tricky. Whether the promoted peace is real, whether Hickey's mission of truth-telling proves effective... Well. We've not time to get into that, now, but we might note that there are a few pitfalls, and the recognition of one's shortcomings is no guaranteed path toward an improved life.

Again, a bit (a lot of a bit) of a leap from Fielding, but it was on the mind, so there you have it. Hickey's education methods... They are perhaps not so effective (or are perhaps too terribly effective, hrm).

Oh, and should anyone be at all interested in watching the scene noted above, check out this clip from the 1960 recording of the play, directed by Sidney Lumet. (Honestly, do; it's well worth the look.)

Note: The quotation cited is from the 2006 Yale Nota Bene publication of The Iceman Cometh.

The problem? Oh, hey, it's you. (And you, and you...)

As seen in The Governess, education prompts the development of self-awareness, a waking up to one’s own shortcomings and faulty tendencies. It is not enough that the students be shown or told of their faults; they must own them for themselves, must spill confessions and face the shame of these shortcomings. The recognition is a painful one, but a necessary step in finding happiness and in becoming part of an ordered society.

As the model student, Jenny Peace helps push her fellows into this self-recognition. After the apple-grabbing incident, Jenny determines to restore peace among the girls and enable them to “be happy” (54). In order to “persuade […] her School-fellows to be reconciled to each with Sincerity and Love” (57), Jenny must first reconcile each girl to herself. That is, rather than point out the admirable traits in other girls and simply suggest that each girl ought to adore her fellows, Jenny must locate and reveal each girl’s own faults. In each girl, some hostile habit rests deeply rooted, causing dissatisfaction with the self and others alike while distorting each girl’s view of the world and sense of how to live in it. So long as this habit of thought remains, the girls can never open up to others or see their worth. In approaching her task, then, Jenny reaches to uncover this root problem. She undertakes individual conversations in order to best guide each student, searching out their mistaken impressions of the world. It is only by helping to change each girl from within that she is able to urge an atmosphere of earnest harmony. And it is with this aim that she sets out to reform the girls “one by one” (57).

Her first quarry comes in the form of Sukey Jennett, and with this encounter, we see the basic method—the “Same manner” (57)—that Jenny will apparently use with each girl. During the course of her exchange with Sukey, Jenny constructs a careful argument of truths in which she notes that Sukey has received only pain from arguing, and rightly guesses that Sukey’s contention has led the girl to many a sleepless night. When Jenny suggests that Sukey wishes “to be revenged on” (55) her schoolmates for petty reasons, Sukey herself confesses, “if I could but hurt my Enemies, without being hurt myself, it would be the greatest Pleasure I could have in the World” (55). A startling admission, and Sukey herself soon comes to see it as such.

Indeed, when Jenny leaves Sukey to think on what has passed, the girl realizes “how much hitherto she had been in the Wrong; and that Thought st[ings] her to the Heart” (56). Sukey confesses alone and aloud,

But […] have I been always in the Wrong all my Life-time? for I always quarrelled and hated every one who had offended me.—Oh! I cannot bear that Thought! It is enough to make me mad! when I imagine myself so wise and so sensible, to find out that I have been always a Fool. (57)

The truth wavers on the verge of realization, but it is a hard admission Sukey faces. To truly confess her wrong (and there would be little good in a false admission) she must in a sense re-envision herself and tear away long-held assumptions of ways to act in the world. On her own Sukey (as is the case with so many of the girls) had been a sort of sovereign, secure in her assumptions, never truly tested and thus able to find herself in the right at all times. Yet coming into the world—or in this case, the school—she must revise her thoughts to suit a bigger picture, for what may seem beneficial to the self often clashes with the world. This recasting of the self proves a painful process, a fall of cherished sovereignty and a humbling that may seem enough to make anyone mad.

However difficult the change, Sukey comes around to an abashed, if somewhat mute, acknowledgement, meeting Jenny and “stammer[ing] out some Words, which impl[y] a Confession of her Fault” (57). If not the most assertive of admissions, it seems an earnest one, for the school is soon brought to a harmony that “surprise[s]” Miss Teachum with evidence of “their inward good Humour” (67-8). And indeed, there will be no more quarrels, and the girls will rest easy in one another’s company, creating a peace and awareness most useful for the purposes of education.

WORK CITED

Fielding, Sarah. The Governess. Ed. Candace Ward. Ontario: Broadview Press, 2005.

Everybody's adapting...

In lieu of an, eh, actual blog post, and in light of recent (and not-so-recent) discussions regarding authorship and appropriation, thought I might share a brief bit regarding The Beaux' Stratagem, discovered whilst poking at the production history.

Turns out that perhaps the most recent, larger-scale U.S. production of Stratagem came in 2006, under the direction of Michael Kahn with D.C.'s Shakespeare Theatre Company. The trick here? The text used was, well, something of an adaptation of an adaptation, or perhaps an adaptation with contributions by two authors separated by half a century.

...Eh?

During the late 1930s, Thornton Wilder (yes, the Wilder of Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth) apparently set to adapting Farquhar's play. He didn't finish the project, however, and Ken Ludwig (think Lend Me a Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo) picked it up in 2004, gave the play a final presumed polish, and there the newly revised Beaux' Stratagem stood, ready to hit the stage (or, at least, to head into the production process).

And consider the following quote (taken from an interview with Lincoln Konkle) from Ludwig on considering Wilder's unfinished adaptation of Farquhar's play: 

"I imagine that Wilder must have said to himself something like this: 'Here is a great piece of theatre with really remarkable comic exuberance and unusually wonderful characters, and it goes unperformed for decades at a time because it’s too long, too dense, and has too many complicated sub-plots. So why don’t I shake things up a bit? I’ll keep the exuberant story-line, the major characters and the great speeches, and I’ll cut out all the boring bits. And to make up for the cuts, I’ll add some new plot twists and write some new scenes. Then, perhaps, I can restore this play to the glory it deserves...'"

Wilder through the eyes of Ludwig, getting at Farquhar. Makes the head spin a bit, non?

And so arise the questions. Is this a matter of "restoring the play," or something more like creating a new work? Picking, choosing, and remolding can very quickly blur a work's (dare we say original... or perhaps simply earlier) identity. Where indeed is the original or are the originals here, and who may lay claim to creative talent? Having undergone the treatment of three separate playwrights (noting again that the writers were separated by decades or even centuries, so that none were in, eh, lively conversation), having been altered to suit more modern sensibilities and clear up supposed clutter, to whom does this new Stratagem belong? At what point does it become more Wilder and/or Ludwig's than Farquhar's? What does this shifted authorship mean? And, at bottom, does this matter of the author matter overmuch?

Whatever the answers, here we have another piece of print passed about, marked up and marked over, remade at the whim of whichever author happens to hold the pen. Seems rather a likely fate for an 18th-century work, given the many freely circulated and re-worked pages (shall we briefly return to Pamela and friends?).

At any rate. Check out The Shakespeare Theatre Company's show site for further information regarding the adaptation, and about Farquhar himself. A couple of theatre reviews will offer outside impressions of the adaptation. And if you'd like a glimpse for yourself, Google Books offers a preview of the adapted script.

Oh, those unities, crampin' our style...

In his “Conjectures on Original Composition,” Edward Young suggests that the most brilliant of authors must flaunt rules in order to create original works. “All eminence, and distinction, lies out of the beaten road; excursion, and deviation, are necessary to find it” (341), as he puts it…. Which is not to say that all antiquity is to be tossed aside, but to prompt authors to look beyond old prescriptions, to trust in their own abilities and ideas, “For by the bounty of nature we are as strong as our predecessors” (Young 341). Rules might prove “like crutches […] a needful aim to the lame” (342), but their “rigid bounds” (341) must be broken if authors are to find “that liberty, to which genius often owes its supreme glory” (341). It is only with room to roam and liberty to explore that the author may create an original piece.

This matter of long-held forms arose in the realm (yes, it was a veritable realm) of the theatre as artists ran headlong into the omnipresent matter of those pesky unities. Passed down by Aristotle, restrains of time, place, and action stamped their assertion and demanded adherence. French neoclassicists had fairly thoroughly embraced the unities—or what they held to be close enough to the unities—and the mania had bled its way onto the English stage. These were the rules, these were the ancient rules, and surely, they must hold.

To hold up for a moment, I ought to note that this is itself a bit of an exaggeration, though perhaps not too much of one. Time, place, and action could be and were churned through a variety of definitions, some looser than others; as Eric Rothstein points out in his study of Farquhar, even those—English and French alike—who supported the rules were ready to bend them. Yet if the standards weren’t always exact, they certainly loomed in existence, to be grappled with in plays and pieces of dramatic criticism (or what may now be shuffled under the heading “dramatic criticism”).

Fun with Farquhar: Final project proposal.

As suggested, I'm posting the final project proposal, just to give an idea of my current direction (and perhaps indicate in advance why it is that Farquhar'll likely be cropping up in further blog entries). So, here goes.

Project Proposal: A digital play guide for George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem.

For my final project, I intend to create a digital play guide (it might also be considered a dramaturgical resource or study guide) for George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem. In no small part, I am modeling this off of dramaturgical sites that I have come across or for which I have helped to create material (see below for examples). The site will include written pieces as well as images, excerpts, and links. My hope is that it might serve as an informative resource, along with a jumping-off point for further research and thought, for theatrical endeavors (such sources as a comprehensive production guide could certainly save some time and headaches), educational purposes, or for any particularly curious readers of the play. I have chosen The Beaux’ Stratagem because it seems a likely candidate for production and general study, and because it seems (unlike, say, She Stoops to Conquer) to lack such a resource.

The guide will eventually include the following sections (noting that the categories and contents might change somewhat as I accumulate and sift through information):

• The Play. A synopsis, setting information, a character list or guide, and quotes from the play. Links to (and any possible information on) available editions, whether purchasable or found through such sources as Google books.
• About the Author. A biography, perhaps some quotes from Farquhar’s other works.
• Historical Context. Any background related to the play and its setting that might help to illuminate pieces of the play. Might include anything from a glance at 18th-century Lichfield to a piece on 18th-century society or etiquette to images of the articles of clothing mentioned in the play. Hopefully including images and links galore, along with any miscellaneous observations, articles, and outlining pieces.
• Glossary. Information on terms, names, and places encountered in the play. If possible, terms used on the site (say, in “Historical Context”) will link to the glossary for quick clarification.
• Production History: A list of past productions and adaptations, to be fleshed out with any useful information or bits of miscellany (would like to include, for instance, any references to the plays found in diaries, any available playbills, etc.) and links to reviews (this particularly for more recent productions).
• Resources: Links, books, articles, films… Anything used in creating the site, and anything that might branch off into further study. As comprehensive as is useful, and annotated to whatever extent is possible.

This will, I believe, be something of a continual work-in-progress; I hope to update it as I find further information, and as theatres mount productions of the piece (that is, I would at least intend to update the production history).

For a couple of examples of the sort of resource I have in mind, see The Importance of Being Earnest (among others) at CENTERSTAGE (should say that I did contribute to and help [to some extent or another] plan those, so that general layout and such may be kept in mind while proceeding with this project) and She Stoops to Conquer at the McCarter Theatre. (The Guthrie's play guides also tend to serve as quite useful resources. Uploaded pdfs more than interactive websites, but often quite a bit of information included.)

As I've been vaguely hoping to create something of this sort for a little while, now (though the thought-focus had been more along the lines of, oh, O'Neill's Iceman Cometh, which may become a further project), I'm quite excited to play around with this and see what may come. So, hey, onward to the world of Farquhar, and all.