History on Display: Henry VIII at Chicago Shakespeare Theater
My Own True Love and I recently went to see Henry VIII at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. As far as I’m concerned, the play isn’t one of Shakespeare’s best,* but the performance was a theatrical tour de force. As always. CST knows how to do it right.
Written in 1613, ten years after the Queen Elizabeth’s death, the play tells the story of Henry VIII’s efforts to dissolve his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, his not-quite-subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, and his break with the Catholic Church. It ends with the baptism of the newly born Elizabeth and Archbishop Cranmer’s triumphant prophesy that the infant princess will be “a pattern to all princes living with her,/And all that shall succeed.” Under her reign,
…every man shall eat in safety,
under his own vine, what he plants; and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbors;
God shall be truly known; and those about her
From her shall read the perfect ways of honor…
The original audience would have been even more aware than their modern counterparts of the story that followed: Henry VIII’s later marriages, the religious conflicts of the later Tudor reigns, and the glories and contradictions of Elizabeth’s reign. CST cleverly foreshadows all of it. (I was particular taken with the use of dance as a visual metaphor that ties the story together.)
Shakespeare (or possibly CST artistic director Barbara Grimes), depicts Henry as dissolute, demanding inconstant, and charismatic, Katherine as fiery and tragic,** and Anne Boleyn as a bit of a floozy. Cardinal Woolsey, who plotted to keep England Catholic, is complicated and slimy; his Protestant rival Cranmer is virtuous and smug. With the possible exception of Katherine, it was hard to warm up to any of them. Instead, the character that caught my attention was the young Thomas Cromwell,*** who transforms himself over the course of the play from Cardinal Woolsey’s devoted secretary to an advocate of the English Reformation.****
Looks like it’s time to learn a little something about Mr. Cromwell, or at least read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.
The play runs through June 6. If you’re in the Chicago area, do yourself a favor and see it.
*It is generally believed that Shakespeare wrote the play in collaboration with an up-and-coming young playwright, John Fletcher (1569-1625). Fletcher became one of the most influential playwrights of his time; today he is best remembered for, well, nothing. (Unless you’re a specialist in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, in which case you know him as one of the most influential playwrights of his time.) Proving once again that readers can’t judge which contemporary literary works will become classics and which will become dissertation fodder.
** I’m not sure whether Shakespeare or actress Ora Jones was responsible, but Katherine blows everyone else off the stage in her scenes.
***Not to be confused with Oliver Cromwell, who led the Roundheads during the English Civil War.
****Like pretty much everyone who became involved with Henry VIII, he was later executed when Henry became unhappy with one of his own choices. But not in this play.
The Ballet That Caused a Riot
On May 29, 1913, an excited audience, fashionably dressed according to poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau* in “tails and tulle, diamonds and ospreys,”** waited for the curtain to rise at the Theatre des Champs-Elysées. Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe was premiering a new ballet with choreography by Nijinsky and music by Igor Stravinsky– The Rite of Spring.
The Ballet Russe was a breeding ground of early twentieth century modernism.*** Diaghilev produced work that was innovative, exciting, challenging. The music for Stravinsky’s two previous ballets, The Firebird and Petrouchka had been agreeably avant-garde, just enough to make the fashionable crowds who attended the ballet feel proud of their sophistication but not enough to be unenjoyable.
The Rite of Spring, subtitled Scenes of Pagan Russia, was a different pair of toe-shoes. When the curtain opened, the audience saw the dancers sitting in two circles in a wasteland scene dominated by massive stones. When the music began, the dancers moved: knees bent, toes turned in, stamping and stomping in a dance style that was the antithesis of classical ballet. The music and dance alike were dissonant, brutal, and self-consciously primitive, telling the “story” of a pagan rite in which a chosen victim dances herself to death as a sacrifice for the spring will come.
The fashionable audience hissed and booed, primitive in their own way. Soon the noise from the audience drowned out the orchestra. The dancers couldn’t hear the music on stage; Nijinsky shouted out the count from the wings to help them keep time. Artist Valentine Gross, whose sketches of the Ballet Russe were on display in the lobby, later wrote, “The theatre seemed to be shaken by an earthquake. It seemed to shudder. People shouted insults, howled and whistled…There was slapping and even punching.”
Maybe not a riot by soccer standards, but pretty shocking for a night at the ballet.
* Best known today for the film Beauty and the Beast (1946).
**Large artificial plumes, not large fish-eating birds of prey.
***Over the course of his career, Diaghilev would commission librettos by Cocteau, sets by Picasso, Braque, and Matisse, and music by Ravel, Satie, and Stravinsky.
The First Memorial Day
My Own True Love and I just got home from a Memorial Day service in Grant Park. It was held at the foot of a statue commemorating General John A.Logan. Before today, Logan on horseback was just another obscure Civil War statue. One I hadn’t paid much attention to.
Never again.
Like most Memorial Day services, whether the day is cold and rainy like today or blazing with the first heat of summer, the ceremony was moving. A young Marine captain, veteran of the Iraq war, reminded us that Memorial Day is not Veteran’s Day–that the purpose is not to thank the living* but to honor the dead. A woman who left Vietnam as a toddler at the end of the Vietnam War played an achingly beautiful version of Taps. I was not the only person who cried.
We always attend a Memorial Day service if we can. We chose the service in Grant Park by chance. It turns out that celebrating Memorial Day at General Logan’s feet is particularly appropriate. Logan was a Civil War general, a congressman and senator from Illinois, and an unsuccessful candidate for Vice-President. In his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, he was also one of the principal founders of Memorial Day.
On May 5, 1868, Logan issued GAR General Order 11, establishing the first Memorial Day:
I. The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form or ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.
We are organized, comrades, as our regulations tell us, for the purpose, among other things, “of preserving and strengthening those kind and fraternal feelings which have bound together the soldiers, sailors, and marines who united to suppress the late rebellion.” What can aid more to assure this result than by cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foe? Their soldier lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains, and their death a tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms. We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the Nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders. Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and found mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten, as a people, the cost of free and undivided republic.
If other eyes grow dull and other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain in us.
Let us, then, at the time appointed, gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with choicest flowers of springtime; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us as sacred charges upon the Nation’s gratitude,–the soldier’s and sailor’s widow and orphan.
II. It is the purpose of the Commander-in-Chief to inaugurate this observance with the hope it will be kept up from year to year, while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades. He earnestly desires the public press to call attention to this Order, and lend its friendly aid in bringing it to the notice of comrades in all parts of the country in time for simultaneous compliance therewith.
With the exception of the jabs at the Confederacy, I couldn’t say it better myself.
Remember the fallen. Thank the living. Pray for peace.
* Though I urge you to thank, or hug, a veteran while you’re thinking about it.