Shakespeare – Georgia Haze

Blogtober Day 23: Did Horace Walpole Invent Horror?

Posted on October 23, 2020November 2, 2020 by Georgia Haze

If you type ‘Who invented horror?’ into Google, Horace Walpole’s name pops up at the top of the search results. This is due to his authorship of his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, a tale of ghosts and an old castle which features the subtitle ‘A Gothic Story’. Although Google seems sure, I wanted to explore whether there were any other people in history who could possibly lay claim to the title of ‘inventor of the horror genre’.

So, what exactly is horror?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines horror as ‘a type of book, movie, etc. that is designed to frighten people’. This is incredibly vague and somewhat subjective. Were there really no works of fiction created with the intention of frightening people until 1764?

The Ancient Candidates

Let’s go back, way way back to the time of gods and monsters. The ancient Greeks had all manner of frightening beasts in their mythology, from Cerberus to the Hydra to the Minotaur. The ancient Greeks are also known for their love of theatre and storytelling. Although horror wasn’t in the classic triad of ancient Greek theatre genres, there were some pretty brutal murders and disturbing taboos explored in the tragedy plays. However, there was rarely anything too graphic or scary on the stage, despite some of the nastiest-sounding murders in fiction stemming from these plays, they were usually described rather than shown. That doesn’t mean the dialogue didn’t conjure up pretty horrific images. There’s a famous speech delivered by a Messenger in Euripides’ Medea that describes a rather brutal poisoning: ‘Her eyes no longer kept their wonted form nor did her shapely face, and from the top of her head blood dripped, mingled with fire, and her flesh dropped from her bones like resin from a pine-torch, torn by the unseen jaws of the poison, a dreadful sight to behold.’

Even without showing these murders on stage, these scenes were likely intended to be frightening. But, if we fly ahead in history and take a look at some of the best-remembered plays of the English Renaissance I think we’ll find a few more examples of pre-Walpole horror seeping into literature. Shakespeare’s tragedies had characters dropping like flies, if they survived to the end, they were in the minority. But, it’s not the murders I want to focus on as much as the supernatural elements. Nowadays, there’s an understanding that good horror speaks to its contemporaneous audiences and plays on the specific fears of their time. One of the most talked about topics and sources of genuine fear for many in the Jacobean period was witchcraft. King James I was obsessed with witches, he even wrote a book about them called Daemonologie. Shakespeare was no fool, he knew that in order to stay in favour with the royals, he had to write about what interested them (hence why the Tudors are bigged up in the history plays) so the Weird Sisters are given full license to be creepy and spooky as Hell in his Scottish play.

However, much as we see with the ancient Greek theatre, true horror and frightening scenes weren’t always portrayed on stage and theatre is naturally a trickier art form to show horror due to the limitations of stagecraft. Maybe it was only a matter of time until someone like Walpole took these theatrical tremors of horror and put them into a book with the rise novel in the 1700s due to technological developments in printing presses. Walpole himself even drew similarities between his novel and Shakespeare’s works, suggesting he didn’t necessarily see what he was doing was particularly original.

Why does it matter?

It doesn’t really. It’s a fairly arbitrary issue. The definition of horror is so vague that pinpointing the first work of fiction to ever intentionally strike fear into its audience is basically impossible. I think Walpole did do something meaningful with his novel but I’m not sure if it’s fair to claim he invented horror.

As a genre, horror is often regarded as not being very high brow. It’s associated with base and popular but forgettable storytelling, from cheaply made movies to Victorian penny dreadfuls. Even Euripides is the often the most criticised of the ancient Greek tragedians.

I personally think there is real skill in being able to scare an audience or reader. It’s not an easy task. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating what’s popular because sometimes that’s what ends up making history. In fact, if it wasn’t for this line of thinking, Walpole might not have claim to the title at all. In the first edition of The Castle of Otranto, not only did Walpole use a pseudonym, but he put a note at the start of book stating that it was a translation by a William Marshal from a Medieval Italian manuscript. It was only when the book became so popular that Walpole identified himself as the real author and therefore the modern ‘inventor’ of horror.

Blogtober, History

Blogtober Day 8 : The Spooky Mystery of Shakespeare’s Missing Skull

Posted on October 8, 2020November 2, 2020 by Georgia Haze

For today’s Halloween-themed Blogtober post I thought I’d share one of my favourite spooky mysteries with you. This is the story of Shakespeare’s missing skull.

William Shakespeare’s body is buried in Holy Trinity church in Stratford-upon-Avon. However, an archaeologist investigation for a 2016 Channel 4 documentary using ground-penetrating radar suggests that his skull is not.

Rumours started circulating that the grave was missing a head after an 1879 magazine report claimed his skull had been removed by trophy hunters nearly a full century beforehand. But, other than some obvious disturbance and repair work on the stone itself, there was no clear evidence to back this report up.

That was until the documentary, however. The archaeologists discovered that beneath the ledger stones of the Shakespeare family were several shallow graves and at the head-end of the Bard himself’s resting place, it seems as though the grave had been filled in to support the weight of the stone. This suggested the grave really is missing the head after all and the team concluded that the grave had indeed been disturbed.

One of the most unnerving details about this whole situation is that, despite having died nearly 180 years before the magazine article claims the skull was taken, his epitaph seems to have seen the grave robbing coming:

Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare,

To dig the dust enclosed here.

Blessed be the man that spares these stones,

And cursed be he that moves my bones.

There have been attempts to reunite the skull with the grave but the problem is that the location of the skull is still a mystery to this day. There are multiple theories are to where the skull might be but these have all led nowhere so far. The biggest dead end came from a mystery skull in St Leonard’s Church in Beoley. Allegedly another old magazine article claimed the Bard’s skull had ended up in Beoley after the grave robbers who stole it were unable to sell it. When this lead was followed up by the documentary, it turned out the skull was that of a 70-year old woman and not Shakespeare at all.

One much more wild theory was that the skull was stolen by Dr Frank Chambers and sold to Whig politician and Gothic author, Horace Walpole. Walpole is perhaps best-known now for Strawberry Hill, a “Gothic castle” he designed to house his collections of art, miniatures, ceramics and more. Could it be that Shakespeare’s skull was another one of his collector’s pieces, the phrenological answer to literary genius? It’s probably just a far-fetched story but it is a compelling one.

Considering how far science has come, it would now be possible to get a DNA match on Shakespeare’s real skull so maybe it will turn up one day. As for the identities of those who stole it in the first place, I don’t think we’ll ever discover who they were. It would be fascinating to know if the curse England’s most renowned writer placed upon them ever came back to haunt them though… after all, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dream of in our unique philosophy.

Bye for now!

Theatre

Emilia at the Vaudeville Theatre Review

Posted on June 2, 2019October 25, 2020 by Georgia Haze

Last night I saw the last performance of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Emilia at the Vaudeville Theatre. It was a play I’d been meaning to see for some time and ultimately I ended up leaving seeing it to literally me last opportunity but I’m so glad I didn’t miss out.

Emilia tells the life story of Emilia Bassano Lanier, an Elizabethan poet and proto-feminist. She was one of the first published female poets in the English language and is thought to be the “Dark Lady” from Shakespeare’s sonnets. All this was pretty intriguing for me. If she was such an important figure in English literature, why had I never heard of her and why did she never even get a mention on my English Lit degree? Because her story has been silenced and her work forgotten for years.

The play stars an all-female diverse cast of very talented women. The three actresses who played Emilia, who each took on the role for a different portion of her life, were fantastic. Saffron Coomber who played Emilia 1 took the character from a bright-eyed child, scared to go to court but still mostly untouched by tragedy to a grown woman who had experienced the unfairness of the world she was living in repeatedly and had faced great losses, both personal and professional. The part of the play when Saffron walks from the stage for Adelle Leonce to take her place as Emilia 2 was genuinely incredibly moving and I think it was this section that created the most humour. Seeing the stage transformed into the Globe (the show was performed at the Globe before transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre so this scene must have been amazing to watch at the Globe itself) and the actors going into the boxes to watch a scene from Othello was brilliant. This scene created comedy and gave a lot of fuel to Emilia’s fire when Emilia 2 realises not only has Shakespeare stolen her words, he’d also put them into the mouth of one of his characters who is, unsubtly, called Emilia.

It was Emilia 3, played by Clare Perkins, who had the most powerful speeches however. At the end of the show, her final monologue is more like a rally cry for women to not forget their history and to keep fighting for equality in their present and future. It’s a powerful moment which is followed by an amazing dance sequence which sees the whole cast punching the air and shouting.

Overall I really loved the humour, history, quirkiness and raw emotion of the play. To see what Emilia went through, even creating a school to educate women, is so inspiring and I can’t praise the cast and creatives enough for bringing this incredible story to light and for making me feel so genuinely proud to be a woman.

I do think the men were played more as caricatures than human beings most of the time but women have been for years so maybe it’s just evening the playing field. Shakespeare is still shown to be literary genius, I particularly liked the last exchange between Emilia and Will when he’s trying to make sense of her and Henry Carey is at least understanding of Emilia’s plight even if he’s still just interested in getting his leg over.

I love the current focus on retelling the stories of women forgotten in history in London theatre right now in shows like Emilia, Six and Sylvia. And it’s not just these shows that are forming a feminist revolution on the stage, walking around the West End district you see female faces on so many theatres with the likes of Waitress, 9 to 5, Wicked and Tina on right now. It just feels like a good time to be a female theatre fan. Emilia was funny and inspiring and I hope it goes on to have a life beyond this short run at the Vaudeville so even more women can see it and hear Emilia’s incredible story.