British Museum: Shakespeare

Annie, this post is for you. 

There is an exhibition at the British Museum happening right now that is quite possibly one of the COOLEST things I've ever seen - an exhibition dedicated to anything and everything Shakespeare. 

Definitely the most amazing trailer for a museum exhibition I have ever seen (seriously watch this):

The rooms and displays are all organized thematically, taking scenes from his plays and exhibiting paintings/clothing/swords/books/anything and everything that correspond to what life was like in Shakespeare's London. 

The best part of the whole thing was the collaboration the British Museum did with the Royal Shakespeare Company - in each room there was at least one, sometimes two, videos and/or voice-overs of actors and actresses doing monologues from the plays (Ian McKellen was by far the best as Prospero from Tempest, but we will get to that later), and these were projected onto the walls. 

I'll just go through a few of my favorite things since it was such an exhaustive presentation...

First: medieval

Shakespeare wrote many plays dealing with medieval subjects, i.e. Henry V. Why? Britain was transitioning into a Protestant nation at that time (Elizabethan Era, fresh off Henry VIII's mess) and they were looking for stability and a national identity. They embraced their medieval heritage as a result. 

This is a shield owned by Henry IV, father of Henry V. It is included to provide evidence of the reign of Henry V, who, in Shakespeare's Henry V, gave the fiercely inspirational speech about St. Crispin's Day in Act V, Scene 3

We few, we happy few

We band of brothers

For he today that sheds

His blood with me

Shall be my brother

Be he ne’er so vile

It was this type of thing - pride in medieval kings - that gave the English a sense of nationalism in this time of instability and insecurity. And such a cool shield!

Next was a couple rooms dedicated to the ancient/classical plays...think Antony and Cleopatra or Julius Ceasar.

Here, there is a video of an actor playing Brutus. He passionately performs the monologue of Brutus justifying his assassination of Ceasar...

Not that I loved Caesar less,

But I loved Rome more

And HERE is an actual coin from 43-42 BC that commemorates the assassination of Ceasar at the hands of Brutus:

Of course Shakespeare would not have actually seen this coin from ancient Rome, but it is included as a piece of evidence of the traumatic event that sparked Shakespeare's imagination. 

And how does this subject correspond to Shakespeare's contemporary England?  Conspiracy and assassination were still very real concerns to monarchs Elizabeth I and her successor, James I. By setting politically sensitive issues in the classical past, it allowed them to be aired aloud in the playhouse. 

 

 Another Shakespearian fixation...Venice.

To Londoners, Venice (Merchant of Venice, anyone?) meant luxury, fashion, and morally questionable women. It was an exotic and intriguing place to Londoners. The room was full of 15th and 16th century Venetian objects - everything from Venetian glass to rich fabrics of dresses to beautiful peacock feather fans. And then there were these beauties...

Yep, I'd wear them...would have to be the right time and place of course. 

They also had rolling text going along the walls in some places. In the Venice room, they had the speech Italian suitor Gremio made in The Taming of the Shrew detailing all of the expensive goods with which he would woo Bianca...

This was pretty cool as well - the type sword that Otello would have used to kill himself

As the label read: 

Othello’s chosen suicide weapon is a Spanish sword, a rapier with a Spanish blade famed for its quality. Blades were made by swordsmiths in Toledo and the trade was carefully policed in an attempt to prevent faking. This is a rare, genuine Toledo blade of the 1590s, signed by its maker. Othello’s noble weapon would have been immediately recognizable to Shakespeare’s audiences. Similar rapiers are worn as a desirable brand in contemporary portraits of fashionable adventurers from England. 

There were other sixteenth century objects like this lovely piece, the relinquary containing the right eye of Edward Oldcorne. The guy was unlucky enough to be labeled a traitor and as a result he was drawn, quartered, and his body parts were boiled before being put on display. His eye was gathered and kept in this container by Catholics as a relic. All a tangental way of getting to the POINT that this evidences the face that the Duke of Cornwall plucking out Gloucester's eyes in King Lear was a completely commonplace act.

(please note the caption on the stand below)

Also in this room is the lantern said to have been used by Guy Fawkes - one of the Catholic conspirators planning to assassinate the Protestant King James I in the Gunpowder Plot. Yet another artifact that reinforces the political and religious instability felt by James I during this time period

I found this next item quite amusing...the chalice below was originally a Catholic chalice used in Mass (background: in the 16th century, ONLY the priest would touch his lips to it). Post-Reformation, it was converted to Protestant use and instead of just the priest using it, everyone in the congregation would drink from it.

In an act of cheeky snarky-ness, someone has carved tiny letters into the decorative bit on the handle, writing "A POX ON YOU" - one letter per square. Clearly there were a few Catholics around that were still covertly (and wittily) asserting their bitterness...hahaha. Pox on you Protestants for stealing our chalices and forcing us to convert.

The next section I found particularly spooky was the room on witchcraft...there was a monologue running with three actresses reciting the speech of the three witches from Macbeth, Act I, Scene 3...I have never spoken to a real witch but if I had to imagine what one might sound like, this was it. 

Here they had displayed some wonderful torture equipment used for convicted witches...this went around your neck and over your head

Alone with this was a 1613 copy of the work by King James I, Daemonologie. This was his treatise on witchcraft where he outlined what demonic possession was and how to identify and persecute alleged witches. 

Alright, last room.

And what could that possibly be?? Tempest of course! 

This room had many objects and artifacts from the so-called Age of Exploration - a time when England was wound up in colonialist expeditions and dealt with issues of sovereignty and understanding the "savage." Caliban is such an intriguing character to explore these issues - quite a few parallels between him and, for example, Algonquin Indians or Inuit eskimos (Brits actually imported indian chiefs/etc to be displayed to the public - 21 North Americans made the trip over the course of the 16th century). Here is a print of Pocahantas after she married John Rolfe and moved to England (where she attended a Twelfth Night masque - the connections are endless!) PS she doesn't look like this in the Disney version...they also don't tell you she was captured and forcibly baptized...oh details

Definitely the most incredible monologue read aloud was that of Ian McKellen as Prospero...The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1:

Yea all which it inherit,

Shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial

Pageant faded

Leave not a rack behind

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on

And our little life

Is rounded with a sleep

The very last bit of the exhibition was about the "legacy" of Shakespeare, complete with a copy of Julius Ceasar that was previously owned by Nelson Mendela and signed by him. Noted by him in pen in the margins on the left was this quote from Act 2, Scene 2...

Cowards die many times before their deaths,

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear,

Will come when it will come.

Pretty incredible. 

Sorry for such a novel of a post but Annie, you are the only person I expect to have gotten to the end here ;-) and it was such a cool place to totally indulge in all my english nerdiness (I was there for over two hours...oops?)