Commonplace 170 George & The Bard PART ONE.
Happy Bardsday one and all. It's April 23rd!!! It's the 400th anniversary of the death of the World's greatest writer - no, not George Gissing, but William Shakespeare. It is also St George's Day - no, not St George the Wakefield saint and martyr, but the Turkish or Roman or whatever chap often depicted fighting a dragon - the one that is England's patron saint. Her Maj is just getting over her 90th birthday party (gawd bless you, ma'am ) and we Brits are deliberating whether or not to remain in the European Union. It seems this is the hour - the planets are aligning (the 9th one hoving into view even as I type click) - and so there has never been a better time to think about the Glory that is the Bard of Stratford: the Glory that is England.
Alongside the Gissing family Cambridge Works of Shakespeare, George kept a Furnivall's edition (as mentioned in the Pierre Coustillas biography Vol 1). Furnivall was a Shakespeare scholar George could endorse. He produced a two-volume edition first printed at the start of the nineteenth century, as a response to the publishing phenomena that was 'Tales From Shakespeare' by Charles and Mary Lamb (1807), their take on some of the Bard's works. Furnivall was a man intent on re-igniting England's flagging love affair with it's Number One Literary Son, and he felt the Lambs' edition trivialised the works. 'Lambs' Tails', as it was affectionately known at my school, was intended to broaden Shakespeare's appeal and readership (not unlike the aims of a certain Commonplace Blog!) to include children and the likes of me, and it worked - for me. Furnivall's version included works left out by the Lambs, who excluded the likes of Coriolanus and Julius Caesar from their list.
Now, anyone with half an iota of knowledge of the cosmos will know that the Interconnectedness of Everything spoken of by Douglas Adams permeates our World on a Quantum level. So it should come as no surprise that the name 'Furnivall' or 'Furnival' is closely aligned with works by Shakespeare. Mr and Mrs Furnival were famous players who gave their Shakespearean performances in, amongst others, the Goodman's Field Theatre with Mr playing the Earl of Gloucester in 'The Tragical History of King Lear' in 1746. And Frederick James Furnivall (1825-1910) click was a man of many parts, one of them being he started the New Shakespeare Society in London in 1873. The New Shakespeare Society concerned itself with interpretations of the original language, giving explanations and definitions of contemporaneous, authentic usage, and historical context for when the plays were written. The Society preferred the old form of spelling Shakspere to the one in modern usage which would have appealed to George's love of history and the quaint old- fashioned.
It was whilst working for this that Furnivall met his future muse, Ms Teena Rochfort-Smith (1861-1883), remembered for her unfinished 'Four Text Hamlet', in which she compares varying textual versions. Their relationship blossomed and he eventually left his wife and child to live with the much younger Teena. Sadly, she was involved in a terrible fire when her dress caught a flame from a match - not the new fangled sort made later on by the Bryant and May girls of Bow, but you could see why there was a need for a decent safety match. See Commonplaces 166 and 167. This horrendous accident eventually ended her life after a week of intense pain, and the terrifying notion she was doomed. Frederick was distraught, and wrote this little book in celebration of her life click.
This was before her great work could be finished and published, but the MS was passed on to the New Shakespeare Society. Her family established the Rochfort-Smith Shakespeare Prize at her old school to commemorate her life.
A bit of Hamlet that might have suited George:
I am very proud, revengeful,
ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have
thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape,
or time to act them in.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Yes! It's a Commonplace Blog.
or an interesting tour of places associated with Shakespeare click:
JOIN ME IN PART TWO AND EXPLORE HOW SHAKESPEARE HELPED PAY GEORGE'S TUITION FEES.
Happy Bardsday one and all. It's April 23rd!!! It's the 400th anniversary of the death of the World's greatest writer - no, not George Gissing, but William Shakespeare. It is also St George's Day - no, not St George the Wakefield saint and martyr, but the Turkish or Roman or whatever chap often depicted fighting a dragon - the one that is England's patron saint. Her Maj is just getting over her 90th birthday party (gawd bless you, ma'am ) and we Brits are deliberating whether or not to remain in the European Union. It seems this is the hour - the planets are aligning (the 9th one hoving into view even as I type click) - and so there has never been a better time to think about the Glory that is the Bard of Stratford: the Glory that is England.
From Richard II scene I, spoken by John of Gaunt click:
This
royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This
other Eden, demi-paradise,
This
fortress built by Nature for herself
Against
infection and the hand of war,
This
happy breed of men, this little world,
This
precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which
serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a
moat defensive to a house,
Against
the envy of less happier lands,-
This
blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
 |
| Puck by Richard Dadd 1841 |
Now Let's address the George/Shakespeare connection. George often boasted of his familiarity with all of the Works. His father kept a Cambridge edition on his bookshelf, in later years, the memory of which gave George bitter-sweet pangs of nostalgia. One of George's party tricks, often performed for intimates was to recite great swathes of the text, or do impromptu readings to a captive audience. This was an age when reading out loud was considered a legitimate entertainment - Charles Dickens was a dab hand at it. George must have thought he knew the Bard's words well enough in meaning and delivery to perform them and risk the chance of looking a fool to anyone who knew them better.
 |
| St George by Hans von Hulmbach 1510 |
Alongside the Gissing family Cambridge Works of Shakespeare, George kept a Furnivall's edition (as mentioned in the Pierre Coustillas biography Vol 1). Furnivall was a Shakespeare scholar George could endorse. He produced a two-volume edition first printed at the start of the nineteenth century, as a response to the publishing phenomena that was 'Tales From Shakespeare' by Charles and Mary Lamb (1807), their take on some of the Bard's works. Furnivall was a man intent on re-igniting England's flagging love affair with it's Number One Literary Son, and he felt the Lambs' edition trivialised the works. 'Lambs' Tails', as it was affectionately known at my school, was intended to broaden Shakespeare's appeal and readership (not unlike the aims of a certain Commonplace Blog!) to include children and the likes of me, and it worked - for me. Furnivall's version included works left out by the Lambs, who excluded the likes of Coriolanus and Julius Caesar from their list.
Now, anyone with half an iota of knowledge of the cosmos will know that the Interconnectedness of Everything spoken of by Douglas Adams permeates our World on a Quantum level. So it should come as no surprise that the name 'Furnivall' or 'Furnival' is closely aligned with works by Shakespeare. Mr and Mrs Furnival were famous players who gave their Shakespearean performances in, amongst others, the Goodman's Field Theatre with Mr playing the Earl of Gloucester in 'The Tragical History of King Lear' in 1746. And Frederick James Furnivall (1825-1910) click was a man of many parts, one of them being he started the New Shakespeare Society in London in 1873. The New Shakespeare Society concerned itself with interpretations of the original language, giving explanations and definitions of contemporaneous, authentic usage, and historical context for when the plays were written. The Society preferred the old form of spelling Shakspere to the one in modern usage which would have appealed to George's love of history and the quaint old- fashioned.
 |
| Teena Rochfort-Smith in August 1882 |
This was before her great work could be finished and published, but the MS was passed on to the New Shakespeare Society. Her family established the Rochfort-Smith Shakespeare Prize at her old school to commemorate her life.
 |
| The Four Text Hamlet |
I am very proud, revengeful,
ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have
thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape,
or time to act them in.
 |
| Larry Oliver and his chum, Alice Poor-Yorick, deceased. Besties 4 eva. |
From Macbeth:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Yes! It's a Commonplace Blog.
or an interesting tour of places associated with Shakespeare click:
JOIN ME IN PART TWO AND EXPLORE HOW SHAKESPEARE HELPED PAY GEORGE'S TUITION FEES.
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