Category: Asides

This post gets a lot of hits, and I puzzled over it for awhile. I then realised it’s because of the Shakespearean quote which is the title. So for all of you who have come here expecting to find more about the muse of fire, here’s some info to get you surfing on.

The quote is from the Prologue of Shakespeare’s Henry V. It is spoken by the Chorus, who wants the audience to let the actors work on their ‘imaginary forces.’ He asks the audience to put their imaginations to work, to pretend that the events of the play are happening before them … to ‘hear’ and ‘see’ and ‘feel’ things that are being spoken about. It’s Shakespeare speaking to us about the role of imagination in the Elizabethan theatre where the key ingredient was the spoken word.

And wanting a ‘muse of fire’? The Chorus is wishing to be inspired by the right kind of fiery passion to tell the story well. It’s something any actor today can relate to.

And here is the rest of my original post … I was using the quote as a shorthand way of saying ‘O I wish I had the words to tell you how I felt …’ I used pictures instead, thinking of another quote which goes ‘A picture is worth 1,000 words.’ (not Shakespeare) …

Groundling is back and refreshed and ready to go. What a splendid summer that was up there in Europe.

I’ll begin at the beginning with a picture or two that tell their own story about another beginning. Anyone who loves theatre will, I hope, relate to the images.

There are more on my Flickr set of those magical days in Greece and Turkey.

The Groundling has been engaged on another blog with a 31-Day Challenge thingy. Groundlings should know better. Anyhow this has all been about being a better commenter on other people’s as well as your own blog. It’s been distracting me from the business of this blog for a lot of the time, but there have been benefits. I’ve met up with some new bloggers in my other blog‘s niche (e-learning), but more particularly, have discovered some good new theatre blogs to hang out in … and comment on.

I manage to travel overseas once a year and get to see some top theatre in London and at other times New York … wherever I find myself in fact. So I’m starting to nose out what’s playing in London, my destination in a month or so. I subscribe to the National Theatre’s e-newsletter and have all too frighteningly easily grabbed a couple of seats online already. I like the swish of turning up at the Box Office, rattling off a number, and picking up tix. Heck I just like hanging out at the NT watching the world go by from the security of a foyer seat and an overpriced glass of wine … well I do come from the lucky country when it comes to wine.

Anyhow, where I’m going with this post … I’ve stumbled over Phil and Andrew, a couple of lively lads who write West End Whingers, a very witty and irreverent review blog on current offerings in the West End. They act as a salutary antidote to some of the more serious takes in the Guardian on Theatre a subset of their Culture pages. The Guardian is one of my favourite mainstream sites for entertaining, well-written and diverse critical writing. The Guardian also maintains a meta-blog page here where you can fan out to theatre writing on other blogs.

This morning doing a hot-link shuffle from the Guardian’s page, I found Natasha Tripney’s Between Interval Drinks: London theatre both West End and Fringe, because a girl cannot live on gin alone. Aha! This sounded like me. As the name suggests, the blog features reviews of big-house as well as fringe productions currently on show in London, and all told with a very personal voice; her mother’s opinions on a show also appear from time to time. Now this I understand; mothers like 2-year olds have an uncanny way of asking the right sort of hard questions from time to time. I left a comment and will be back.

The Groundling couldn’t let today go by without wishing William Shakespeare a happy 444th. There are celebrations this weekend in Stratford-on-Avon and at the Folger Library in Washington DC and elsewhere, when there will undoubtedly be a rush of tourists eager to engage in further bardolatry. In my own modest way I intend raising a glass of fine Australian wine in his memory this evening; something I suspect he would have approved. Maybe I’ll even recite a quick sonnet … number 14 perhaps?

To me, fair Friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters’ cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! Yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and my eye may be deceiv’d.
For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred, –
Ere you were born, was beauty’s summer dead

OK, so it’s been longer, much longer than 3 years since I first laid eyes on Will’s works, but they seem as fresh and green now as ever.

I reckon my first experience was in Grade 9; back then you actually got to study Shakespeare … lots of Shakespeare … at quite a tender age. Indeed I think I recall reading snippets in my primary school readers, but perhaps I am mistaken. I fell in love at the age of 13 with his works … that year it was Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar, and in my senior high school years King Henry IV (I) and The Merchant of Venice. We got to read the plays out loud in class; it was the best time in the week for me. The love affair continues unabated.

I’ve acted in half a dozen or so of the plays, directed as many again, seen most of them, and many several times; travelled to Shakespeare Festivals world-wide … there are plenty more to see … and even started one in my home-town. I’ve been to Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, visited his burial place in the Stratford on Avon Church and noted the warning not to disturb his bones … OK. When I get to London, I love to walk round Southwark and visit Shakespeare’s Globe … yes, like Stratford-on-Avon it’s madly touristy but hey, seated on those bum-numbing oak benches at the Globe, squint through your eyes at the stage on dusk on a summer evening and it doesn’t take much imagination or effort to feel the power!

Am I bardophilic? … perhaps … but there’s nothing quite like even the most average Shakespeare play (or movie) and a few lines of a sonnet to get the actorly pulse racing or the audience fired up. A Shakespeare role challenges and rewards like no other.

I’m sure something he wrote in another sonnet about his work living on into time was a quite conscious bit of strutting on his own behalf, nicely couched of course in romantic praise of the one to whom the sonnets were penned … no don’t get started!

So long as men can breathe and eyes can see
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Happy Birthday Will!

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