Author: erainbowd

There was, for awhile, no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.

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Wait, wait, wait – poets and players were duking it out?
There were fights between poets and players?
And people put money on them?

I’m not particularly interested in watching fights in general – but I might not be able to resist a poet/player rumble. In this corner, the poet with the plums, William Carlos Williams! And in this corner, the player with a plan, John Wilkes Booth!
Ding Ding!
Next up that retiring Belle of Amherst versus the actress with the wooden leg: Emily Dickinson takes on Sarah Bernhardt! Sarah may know how to sword fight but Emily does not stop for death. Match of the century. Centuries. . .
Place your bets, Ladies and Gentlemen – those poet shirts and pantaloons are getting torn tonight.

Faith, there has been much to-do on both sides, and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy.

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Why is the public so interested in rivalries? Child companies versus adult companies. Movie star versus movie star. Software company versus software company. I suppose it is inherently dramatic and where there is no drama, the public will create it.

I read this post today  and it does seem that there was some legitimate rivalry happening in Shakespeare’s theatre community but this line suggests that the public wasn’t helping. Perhaps people became more interested in the drama of the controversy than the dramas being staged. You’d think, though, a company that conscripted children without their parents’ permission might suffer in the public eye.

That wouldn’t play today, that’s for sure. But today, parents would likely be the pushers, trying to get their little Johnnys on stage and before the adoring public.

Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players – as it is most like, if their means are not better – their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim against their own succession?

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If only our field thought this far ahead. Theatre folk tend to be so intensely present oriented, they almost never think of the broader picture, of the future for anyone but themselves.

I loved Michael Chekhov’s essay about The Theatre of the Future, for this unusual big picture thinking – for its attention on what we make and its impact on what comes next.

The way I’ve seen most theatre folks operate, these children in this story would not say their writers did them wrong, they would more likely rail against the next crop of children and never think through how the system set them up to drop them down again. We theatre folk tend to think all our bad luck is personal, that each failure is ours alone – and almost never look at the systems in place that ensure that personal failure.

There’s a frankness to this line. One which indicates that the life of an actor was not at all glamorous – just a choice for someone whose means are not better. It’s not too glamorous now either. The actual day to day of the theatrical person is relentlessly mundane but it has a shine on it when you start and it clings to you a bit when communicating with the outside world.

Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing?

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The man playing Orsino had a deep rich baritone. It was lucky he was into Shakespeare because he had a Shakespearean voice – one that could boom out and bounce around even outdoors. One night, next to a fire in the grill on our company porch, he told me he had, as a child, been a part of a choir. He sang – this babyfaced, sweet-voiced kid – and was much lauded for his singing. When his voice changed, so did everything. A life ordered around a sweet voiced boy got turned upside down by the fluctuations of man-making hormones.

He quit singing. He couldn’t anymore, couldn’t depend on his voice and somehow or other, he found his way to theatre, where his voice became important once again, but in a new way.

And then we asked him to sing.

But how are they escoted?

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Is escoting the same as escorting? How is anyone escoted? The words must be related – they must share some sense of accompaniment mustn’t they, coming as it does, after “Who maintains ‘em?” Is the sense, perhaps, how do they get where they’re going? Perhaps a combination of escorted and transported.

But – once we look at the definition and the sense is Support. Hmmm. How are they supported? Pretty close to the previous question.

Who maintains ‘em?

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Dear Human Giant guys, Please create a Renaissance version of your sketch, Shutterbugs. Your agents would be in charge of an eyrie of children performing on the common stages – and given the way companies seemed to work back then, you would also act as their Fagin or Miss Hannigan. You’d probably all live together and you’d have to feed the little monsters but then you’d send them out to put on their shows and they would, with money, scurry back to you on their fat little legs, it would be like Real World Renaissance Theatre.

What, are they children?

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This line feels like a delayed response somehow. Rosencrantz has mentioned the children a long sentence before this one. Is there something about goosequills that somehow makes Hamlet understand what Rosencrantz said before? In which case, what do goosequills have to do with children? Or really, what do they have to do with anything? Is the idea that the warriors, with their swords slung at their sides tremble with fear when children come around?

The goosequills, it would seem are for the writers – , their mightier-than-sword pens – but the writers aren’t the children are they?

Or ARE they? Is it like Written By a Kid? I’d go see an Elizabethan Written By a Kid.

These are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages – so they call them – that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills and dare scarce come thither.

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There was a trend in pop culture, just as I was leaving my adolescence, to make baby versions of things. Muppet Babies. Tiny Toons. It seemed like everything had a double in children. Was there Baby Magnum P.I.? Probably not. But there could have been and it would have been hilarious. Sounds like that trend blew through the English Renaissance as well and there may have been The Baby King’s Men or perhaps the King’s Babies or previously, Lord Chamberlain’s Children. I picture toddlers wandering around the stage in little ruffs, with little swords and skulls – maybe some tiny sized goblets.
It probably wouldn’t be as funny as this kid as a drunk tourist video  – but it would likely be pretty entertaining.

But there, sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for’t.

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So there’s a company of children putting on shows and the shows would appear to feature some singing and loud crying. People love them doing the crying on whatever the topic or question might be. I’d love to know more about these children’s companies. It’s clear these were a trend in Shakespeare’s London and that this is a dig at them. And I suspect that this is someone’s thesis somewhere. And I’d be curious to read it.

These child companies remind me of one of my favorite TV sketches. It’s called Shutterbugs and in it, these showbiz agents behave just like showbiz agents do with adults, except they traffic in children. They make a movie featuring all children. It’s Lil’ 9-11 – those kids are crying out on the top of question.

Nay, their endeavor keeps in the wanted pace.

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This answer makes me think that Hamlet’s thinking of rustiness in the same way we might – that is that the players have slowed down and haven’t been performing as much. Rosencrantz indicating that they’re still at it, at the same old speed would suggest that the question had to do with a decline in production.
But no, these players are churning out shows the way they have always done. I would like to see the players home season before the little eyases turned up and chucked them out of business in the city.