From Brattleboro Vermont, fake maps and Shakespeare
The people I am staying with love this little town. I can see why. It's only got one main street, but it's full of charm. The weather changes constantly, a marvel to me. Last night I opened the windows wide (you can do that in a very old hotel) to get rid of the stupid heater-heat, and utterly relished the thirty degree air coming in, but about two a.m. a storm blew through, startling me awake.
It's been such a wonderful week--the days with
asakiyume, as I mentioned last post, then coming down to CT. We went off to Yale, and walked around the gorgeous campus, ending up first at the art museum, which among many treasures has a current display of French (and other) caricatures, starting in the 1500s up through the present day.
Then over to the Yale library, which is made of white marble squares, smooth and creamy on the outside, but when you get inside, you discover that the marble squares are thin, and the outside light shines through. Here's a snapshot of me against the marble wall, so you can see the size:
The next day was Mystic Seaport, under wonderful gray skies and occasional moisture, never all that heavy. I loved it so much--regretting those at home sweltering in the heat and under fire watch, the beginning of the autumn fire season, which is usually far worse than the summer fire season, because it's tinder dry.
But I'm here, where it rains, and where I can wear shoes and socks and not die of heat stroke. I can wear long sleeves and a coat! The very coat I wore last year, which of course never gets touched at home.
Enough weather jazzing. At Mystic, we went aboard the tall ships and toured the buildings. There was a milliner's shop, and a nineteenth century rope walk, among other nifty things. Also, a huge diorama of Mystic Seaport in its ship building days.
Here is just a small segment:
and we also went to see the Vinland Map display. That was fascinating! So well organized. You walk into a typical sixties American living room. I recognized every one of the horrible examples of furniture, lamps, and decorative art. I knew many people who had them. That sets the scene for the cultural milieu when the news of the Vinland Map first broke, which caused a furor that I do remember hearing as a kid. What, Columbus didn't discover America? Say it isn't so!!!
If you Google the Vinland, you'll see that the map turned out to be fake, but the Viking settlements all along the upper reaches of the North American coast are real. I was ready to be convinced it was real, as the parchment, ink, and so forth look convincing, as well as the distortion of the land masses, except: where are the landmarks? Those early maps got all the proportions wrong, but those coasts were full of detailed info for navigating by sight of distinctive landmarks. Well, it was interesting to go through the decades of examination before it was proved to be fake.
Tuesday, we bombed up to Hartford to catch Henry V, which I have never seen on stage.
Beforehand we walked around downtown Hartford, which doesn't offer much to do other than looking at old buildings, and me looking at the astonishing green. But not everything is green. I found these marvelous grasses along a sidewalk, with such lovely colors:
The play was done in the round, with a mix of ordinary slop-around-Saturday clothes as costumes, and vaguely twentieth century military coats, plus the occasional pistol, rifle, and the judder of machine guns as background noise.
Overall I enjoyed the energy of the play, and admired how the small cast each did several roles, paying no attention to gender (the Duke of York was a tiny woman who looked about twenty-five) for casting. Some were better than others with Shakespeare's language, as one would expect.
No Shakespeare play is ever perfect, and probably wasn't in his day, either. His sense of history is deliberately skewed--it was no doubt a safety measure, as the government could, and did, land hard on players who got too pointed in their political commentary. By setting plays in a Bohemia that has a coast, and involving mythological figures, there is a remove that reminds the spectator (and Walsinghame's best), hey, this is all persiflage. So sedition or treason here!
I find that I want the pageantry, and especially I want the English language without American accent. I realize that there are many English accents, and furthermore that none of them are quite like the English spoken in Shakespeare's day, and yet the resonance, for me, is stronger when his words and especially the rhythms, are English English. I also would have found it more effective if the actors had been brandishing long bows, given what happened at Agincourt, rather than pistols.
That said, I still thoroughly enjoyed it.
And so yesterday we came up here to hike around, and poke into shops. As soon as we get breakfast, we may or may not hike along the lake, but after will head south again. Tomorrow, I'm off to the island.
This entry was originally posted at https://sartorias.dreamwidth.org/988134.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
It's been such a wonderful week--the days with
asakiyume, as I mentioned last post, then coming down to CT. We went off to Yale, and walked around the gorgeous campus, ending up first at the art museum, which among many treasures has a current display of French (and other) caricatures, starting in the 1500s up through the present day.
Then over to the Yale library, which is made of white marble squares, smooth and creamy on the outside, but when you get inside, you discover that the marble squares are thin, and the outside light shines through. Here's a snapshot of me against the marble wall, so you can see the size:
The next day was Mystic Seaport, under wonderful gray skies and occasional moisture, never all that heavy. I loved it so much--regretting those at home sweltering in the heat and under fire watch, the beginning of the autumn fire season, which is usually far worse than the summer fire season, because it's tinder dry.
But I'm here, where it rains, and where I can wear shoes and socks and not die of heat stroke. I can wear long sleeves and a coat! The very coat I wore last year, which of course never gets touched at home.
Enough weather jazzing. At Mystic, we went aboard the tall ships and toured the buildings. There was a milliner's shop, and a nineteenth century rope walk, among other nifty things. Also, a huge diorama of Mystic Seaport in its ship building days.
Here is just a small segment:
and we also went to see the Vinland Map display. That was fascinating! So well organized. You walk into a typical sixties American living room. I recognized every one of the horrible examples of furniture, lamps, and decorative art. I knew many people who had them. That sets the scene for the cultural milieu when the news of the Vinland Map first broke, which caused a furor that I do remember hearing as a kid. What, Columbus didn't discover America? Say it isn't so!!!
If you Google the Vinland, you'll see that the map turned out to be fake, but the Viking settlements all along the upper reaches of the North American coast are real. I was ready to be convinced it was real, as the parchment, ink, and so forth look convincing, as well as the distortion of the land masses, except: where are the landmarks? Those early maps got all the proportions wrong, but those coasts were full of detailed info for navigating by sight of distinctive landmarks. Well, it was interesting to go through the decades of examination before it was proved to be fake.
Tuesday, we bombed up to Hartford to catch Henry V, which I have never seen on stage.
Beforehand we walked around downtown Hartford, which doesn't offer much to do other than looking at old buildings, and me looking at the astonishing green. But not everything is green. I found these marvelous grasses along a sidewalk, with such lovely colors:
The play was done in the round, with a mix of ordinary slop-around-Saturday clothes as costumes, and vaguely twentieth century military coats, plus the occasional pistol, rifle, and the judder of machine guns as background noise.
Overall I enjoyed the energy of the play, and admired how the small cast each did several roles, paying no attention to gender (the Duke of York was a tiny woman who looked about twenty-five) for casting. Some were better than others with Shakespeare's language, as one would expect.
No Shakespeare play is ever perfect, and probably wasn't in his day, either. His sense of history is deliberately skewed--it was no doubt a safety measure, as the government could, and did, land hard on players who got too pointed in their political commentary. By setting plays in a Bohemia that has a coast, and involving mythological figures, there is a remove that reminds the spectator (and Walsinghame's best), hey, this is all persiflage. So sedition or treason here!
I find that I want the pageantry, and especially I want the English language without American accent. I realize that there are many English accents, and furthermore that none of them are quite like the English spoken in Shakespeare's day, and yet the resonance, for me, is stronger when his words and especially the rhythms, are English English. I also would have found it more effective if the actors had been brandishing long bows, given what happened at Agincourt, rather than pistols.
That said, I still thoroughly enjoyed it.
And so yesterday we came up here to hike around, and poke into shops. As soon as we get breakfast, we may or may not hike along the lake, but after will head south again. Tomorrow, I'm off to the island.
This entry was originally posted at https://sartorias.dreamwidth.org/988134.html. Please comment there using OpenID.