The World of Shakespeare

Adam Simpson: The World of Shakespeare (2019)

I'm not sure if four times in a row constitutes a tradition, but this is the fourth time Bronwyn and I have seen the New Year in with a (for us, at least) maniacally difficult jigsaw puzzle.

In 2022 it was The World of Charles Dickens:

In 2023 it was The World of Dracula:

Last year, 2024, it was The World of Hercule Poirot:

This year, 2025, it's Shakespeare in the hot seat:

Adam Simpson: The World of Shakespeare (2019)

I've already written a number of posts about Shakespeare - one about the sources for his plays; another about the differences between the quarto and folio editions of his works; and, most recently, one about that perennial question whether Shakespeare was really Shakespeare - or somebody else of the same name.

The World of Shakespeare
Photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd (5/1/25)

To tell you the truth, it's a bit of a relief to get out from under that last question and down to the nitty-gritty details of Shakespeare's London: complete with rebel heads on pikes, Gloriana on a floating barge, and a variety of theatrical troupes performing his plays.

Adam Simpson: The World of Shakespeare (2019)

As you'll have gathered, Shakespeare for me has mostly been a matter of books: biographies, collected editions, contextual "interpretations" ... Watching Kenneth Branagh's absurd adaptation of As You Like It the other day on Neon, though, I was struck by just how much fun Shakespeare can be.

The play is, admittedly, a rather silly one - and Branagh's decision to set it in Meiji-era Japan made literally no sense at all - but it was all still so delightful: exiled maidens running around in drag (for no obvious reason), pinning their love poems on the poor, long-suffering trees; melancholy Jaques spouting long speeches about nothing in particular. What's not to like?

Kenneth Branagh, dir.: As You Like It (2006)

It reminded me of the good old days when we used to sit down dutifully to watch each new instalment in Cedric Messina's (then Jonathan Miller's) long-running BBC Television Shakespeare (1978-85). There were some real revelations there. Who would have thought that his early Henry VI trilogy could be made into so gripping a Brechtian presentation on the roots of power? Who knew that the long-neglected Pericles could be made into such a profoundly beautiful and moving drama?

I ended up writing a poem about it, in fact:

William Shakespeare (with George Wilkins?): Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1984)

The Late Romances: Pericles


We have reached the 3rd Act
& Pericles
is ranting on the deck

the young Marina
lies in her mother’s arms
(still cold & dark
before revival)

which is coast
which sea?
the billows surge
up to the heavens

bodies bound below
by mortal surges
&how fares the dead?

[8/6/86]

•

What can I say? I was young at the time ...

It's easy enough to get the chance to see the great tragedies, or the Roman plays, or the Richard II / Henry IV / Henry V tetralogy, but the virtue of this BBC version was that they did everything. Timon of Athens, Cymbeline, King John - you name it, it was there. The productions were wildly various in quality, mind you. Some were pretty hard to sit through, others delightful - but they gave you a sense of what each of those 37 plays could be.

As you can guess from the above, it was the late romances - Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest - which were the real thrill for me. You see the last two performed sometimes, but hardly ever the first two.

Michael J. B. Allen & Kenneth Muir, ed.: Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto (1981)

I spent a good deal of time poring over the volume above in the Auckland University Library. So much time, in fact, that I eventually had to buy a copy for myself: a doorstopper if ever there was one!

Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto

It's almost unreadable, to be honest - but if you need to track some errant detail of wording, there it is.

Charlton Hinman, ed.: The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare (1968)

The Shakespearean First Folio is a different matter. There are various facsimiles to choose from - it's unlikely that any of us will ever have the money (or the hubris) to purchase one of the few surviving copies of the original edition. You'd have to keep it in a bank vault, in any case!

The First Folio of Shakespeare

It's a very handsome volume - colossal, yes, but clearly laid out and printed, with a host of important creative and critical issues hanging on virtually every line.

In any case, if you're looking for an absorbing way to pass a few idle hours, I'm afraid I can't recommend The World of Shakespeare. It's by far the most difficult of the puzzles we've done to date. There are few tell-tale blocks of colour once you've laid down the blue of the Thames, and a ridiculous number of tricky spires, towers, turrets, gable rooftops and leafy gardens to fill in one by one.

There's certainly some satisfaction in getting it done, but I'm afraid that it's back to the grindstone now for me - as well, I fear, as the rest of you.

•

A Happy New Year to All in
2025!

•

Troy Town

Leo Deuel, ed.: Memoirs of Heinrich Schliemann (1978)

Troy Town is the traditional name for many of the mazes and earthworks of England. This may refer to the tricky way in which the walls of Troy were constructed, full of dead-ends and blind corners to baffle an enemy. Or, alternatively, it may be just because the razing of the city of Troy, leaving only a few mounds of earth behind, has been seen ever since as emblematic of such scenes of utter devastation.

Heinrich Schliemann (1821-1890)

Recently I've been reading a compilation of autobiographical pieces by Heinrich Schliemann, the (so-called) discoverer of Troy. Schliemann was a bit of a con-man, an inveterate exaggerator, and a self-promoter on a Barnum-like scale, but there was also a touch of genius in him. His instincts often led him to the right place at the right time when others' well-reasoned arguments led them astray.

His initial excavations at Hisarlik, the Anatolian hillock which he believed to be the site of Homer's Troy, were catastrophic. He dug a huge trench through the centre of the mound, in the process destroying many of the remains which might later have helped him and others reconstruct crucial layers of the ancient city. To some extent he made up for this in subsequent years as he found collaborators with a firmer knowledge of archaeological method, but the fact is that he probably did more harm than good as an actual excavator.

He was, however, largely responsible for the discovery of a hitherto unsuspected civilisation. Whether you call it Minoan or Mycenaean, the existence of an advanced, sophisticated culture in the Eastern Mediterranean, long before the Classical Age, was unsuspected before he began his explorations in the 1870s. In the process, Schliemann whipped up a frenzy of enthusiasm not just for treasure hunting but for scientific archaeology in the Europe of his time.

He remains an ambiguous figure, but his contribution to the debate over the historicity of Homer's Troy is undeniable.

Michael Wood: In Search of the Trojan War (1985)

But why should there even be such a debate? Is there anything intrinsically implausible in the story of Troy? Whether the war was fought because of the abduction of Helen of Sparta by the Trojan Prince Paris, as Homer claimed, or over trade-routes through the Bosphorus, as the Greek historian Herodotus preferred to describe it, the basic plotline of a destructive conflict between west and east hasn't changed that much over the past three millennia.

Nor have the ruinous results.

Al Jazeera: Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza Strip (31/10/23)

As I write, Netanyahu's soldiers are invading hospitals and exulting as they blow up mosques. They film themselves doing it, in fact. Shades of Ajax and Achilles looting and desecrating their enemies' bodies!

CNN: Israeli soldier films himself blowing up a mosque (17/2/24)

Has anything changed in the intervening period? The weapons have got more powerful, and the propaganda easier to slipstream around the world. Otherwise, it's business as usual for humanity: hatred, lies, contempt for anyone you can define as 'Other', on whatever flimsy pretext you can find.

Perhaps in another few hundred years archaeologists will be speculating on the various layers of pulverised debris they find in their excavations in ancient Canaan / Judea, modern Israel / Palestine. Maybe they'll conclude that the whole idea of an Israel-Gaza war was just a myth: after all, the subsequent layers of radioactive fallout will have wiped out any sense of whatever civilisation (if any) proceeded the bombardment.

For the moment, though, women and children are dying in their thousands. It seems impossible to exaggerate the terror and privations being suffered by the people of Gaza: 27,708 is this morning's total of dead. Just stop. How can that be so impossible to achieve? Have we learned nothing at all from those previous massacres and cataclysms?

•

Paul Klee: Angelus Novus (1920)

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

- Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940)

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Rear Window


A friend of mine
set up a camera
in the back of her car

and drove down the hill
to the beach and back
art film

scoffed her boyfriend
and yet
there was something

so strange in the way
it bucked and leapt
as it recorded 

the unchanging mountains
behind
with no hint of the wild sea in front

Benjamin’s angel of history
does that
sweeps on

looking back
unable to help
as the rubble and graves pile up

they used to project it at rock concerts

•

Demonstration in London (14/10/23)

CEASEFIRE NOW!

The Terror

The Terror
[2018 TV series created by David Kajganich, based on Dan Simmons's 2007 novel]

Friday, 28th June, 1850

A curious thing. We were in our small boat examining a piece of flotsam spotted by Abbot in the hope that it might have come from one of the ships. There was ice all around us, but being in deep water this neither obstructed nor threatened us in any way. The flotsam gave no indication of its origin, and as I inspected my pocket watch to note the time of our sighting for Pioneer's log, Abbot warned me against losing it overboard, pointing out to me that such was the depth of the water upon which we rowed that had I been careless enough to drop the watch it would have been telling yesterday's time before it struck the bottom.

Lt Sherard Osborn R. N.
Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal, 1852

That's not a quote from either David Kajganich's TV series The Terror, or even from Dan Simmons' book of the same name. Instead, it stands as the epigraph for Robert Edric's earlier novel The Broken Lands, which also attempted, a couple of decades earlier, to recreate the horror of Sir John Franklin's famous 'lost expedition.' Franklin set out in 1845 in the two (appropriately-named) ships Erebus and Terror to find the North-West passage, and not one of the participants, officers or crew, was ever seen alive again.

Robert Edric: The Broken Lands (1992)

There's a kind of poetic trippiness about Edric's version which perhaps befits what seems, in retrospect, a somewhat statelier time (not that the 1990s felt like that to us then). Evocative vistas, carefully honed epiphanies, and a general emphasis on style above substance distinguished much of the fiction of that decade.

I do still love that idea of the pocket watch sinking rapidly into the icy water, down and down and down, far enough down to strike "yesterday's time before it struck the bottom," though. I suppose it's as good an image as any for the art of the historical novelist - painting a vision so detailed and psychologically acute that it convinces all who experience it that that's how it must have been.

Edwin Landseer: Man Proposes, God Disposes (1864)

Not that Edric was the first to attempt it, by any means. There's always been something about the Franklin expedition which has appealed to myth-makers and psychogeographers. Edwin Landseer, better known for 'The Monarch of the Glen' and The Stag at Bay,' was much criticised for his vision, above, of polar bears gnawing at the exposed ribs of frozen sailors, when he showed it at the 1864 Royal Academy exhibition.

Perhaps, indeed, that was the motivation behind Millais's even more famous painting 'The North-West Passage' - promoting a message of imperial derring-do and bulldog intrepidity more acceptable to the Victorian establishment:

John Everett Millais: The North-West Passage (1874)

It seems only fitting that the figure of the Old Salt in Millais's picture should have been modelled on Lord Byron's old friend Edward John Trelawny. Trelawny, author of the novel Adventures of a Younger Son (1831) as well as the almost equally fictional memoir Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858), wrote a famous account of plucking the unburnt heart of Shelley from that famous bonfire on the beach after the latter was drowned at sea. Whether he really did risk the flames in that reckless manner is anyone's guess.

Louis Édouard Fournier: The Funeral of Shelley (1889)
[l-to-r: Trelawny, Leigh Hunt, and Byron; Mary Shelley, seen kneeling, was actually not allowed to attend]

All of which brings us back to The Terror. My own interest in the whole subject of the many, many expeditions in search of the North-West passage probably goes back as far as my childhood reading of the 'Classics Illustrated' comic below (which I'm glad to say I still own):

World Illustrated: Story of the Northwest Passage (No. 531)

A rather more sophisticated - though actually just as dramatic - account is given in Glyn Williams' more recent Voyages of Delusion (entitled, in America, Arctic Labyrinth: The Quest for the Northwest Passage):

Glyn Williams: Voyages of Delusion: The Search for the Northwest Passage in the Age of Reason (2002)

So you can imagine that as soon as I saw those images of poor old Ciarán Hinds contemplating his end in the snow, it was only a matter of time before I watched the whole series. It might have been nice if it'd been possible to do so on some convenient streaming service, but never mind, I'm now the owner of a brand spanking new DVD of the whole thing.

The Terror (2018)

Is it a masterpiece? Too early to say, I suppose, but certainly the mise-en-scène looks brilliantly, hauntingly real - as befits any production under the supervision of Ridley Scott, or at any rate his production company Scott Free. The performances from all the various principals - Jared Harris as Captain Francis Crozier, Tobias Menzies as Commander James Fitzjames, Paul Ready as Dr. Harry Goodsir, and Ciarán Hinds as Franklin - are flawless. It also contains the slimiest, most reprehensible villain since Shakespeare dreamed up Iago as the ideal foil for his hero Othello.

I don't really want to say too much more about it, for fear of ruining the suspense for those of you who haven't yet watched it. Suspense and mystery are, after all, the lifeblood of stories such as these. Suffice it to say that all is not as it seems in these frozen wastes, and that David Kajganich's vision is probably closer to Edwin Landseer's (above) than to John Millais's.

If you'd like something more decorous and meditative, stick to The Broken Lands. This particular version of Franklin's story is as violent and bloody as anything I've ever seen on TV. It's more for fans of H. P. Lovecraft's lurid melodrama At the Mountains of Madness than for admirers (if there are any still left) of the 1948 film version of Scott of the Antarctic.

Jared Harris (1961- )

The presence, in the cast, of Jared Harris, has the effect - or so I would imagine, at least - of reminding us of his more recent star-making turn in the HBO miniseries Chernobyl. The pompous inanities and downright lies of such people as Sir John Franklin and his allies back in London seem not too far away from the rather more serious untruths promulgated in the latter series. In both cases, it would seem, if you want the craggy face of integrity, you go to Jared Harris (a long cry from his role as the most villainous villain of all in the TV Sci-fi series Fringe).

Chernobyl
[2019 TV series created and written by Craig Mazin, directed by Johan Renck]

'Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.'
- Craig Mazin, Chernobyl (2019).

I wrote this poem some time ago, as a response to the (so-called) 'Polar-Bear-gate' scandal. It now seems to me strangely appropriate to the themes and atmosphere of the magnificent Chernobyl and the gut-wrenching The Terror alike:

•


Peter Gleick: Stranded Polar Bear (2010)

Stranded Polar Bear


The ripples imply
a boat’s passed by

or something larger
like a whale

the islet’s small
and artificial

looking
like the bear

enduring exile
Augustus sent

his family
to islands

small enough
to terrify

even the young
willing to die

until you realise
it’s a fake

that bear
was never there

even his shadow
clouds and drift ice

carefully placed
to make the point

that lying is okay
when the legend becomes fact

print the legend
said John Ford

by saying it
he showed

he didn’t mean it

Paul Nicklin: Polar Bears (2010)

Grenfell Tower

Grenfell Tower (19/6/17)

•

Grenfell Tower Block Fire

We built this city on rock ‘n’ roll
– Starship

Waving two children onto the ride
ahead of youit crashes

what does that say
about divine mercy

or coincidence?
they heard them calling out

from the upper floors
as the flames rose

someone threw out a baby
someone else caught it

the others died

•

I don't usually write these sorts of topical poems - let alone publish them - but I had a strange dream the night before it happened (the first incident in the poem), and I found myself turning this out without really meaning to. Such a terrible, terrible tragedy! (I was going to say "accident", but from what's come out since, if that's what it was, then it was an accident waiting to happen ...)

Phantom Billstickers

Phantom Billstickers: Poetry on Posters Programme (2014)

Sorry for the long delays between posts on this site. I guess it's not much of an excuse, but I have been rather busy setting up a Poetry NZ blog for "views, reviews, interviews, and other news" about the magazine.

In the meantime, though, I did get quite a kick from seeing my very first poetry poster, from the Phantom Billstickers, "New Zealand's largest and finest street poster and street media company."

The plan is that they're going to produce a poster for each of the readers at "Poetry Central," the Auckland Central Library celebration of Poetry Day (which falls on Friday 22nd August - 5.30 for 6 pm - this year), and plaster them up all around the event. The above is my contribution to the festivities.

Here's the list of readers:

1. Michele Leggott
2. Makyla Curtis
3. Murray Edmond
4. Ya-Wen Ho
5. Selina Tusitala Marsh
6. Alice Miller
7. John Newton
8. Jack Ross
9. Robert Sullivan

Auckland Central Library

•


Poets and Posters (Central Library, 22/8/14)

165 Richmond Rd, Ponsonby

474 Karangahape Rd, Auckland Central

Hawkes Bay Poetry Conference (November 1-3)

My trusty steed

I had hoped to have a complete pictorial record of the conference, but unfortunately the camera died on me shortly after my arrival in Hastings, so you'll just have to put up with these few atmosphere shots of the journey down, rather than the complete rogues' gallery which might otherwise have been possible:

Morning: Distant View of the Hauraki Plains

Once upon a time these drives were as easy as pie for me. Now Auckland to Havelock North, 540 kilometres-odd, 6-hours-on-the-road, leaves me as weak as a kitten. Still, never mind, there were some treats on the way. This medley of images from Taupo, for instance:

Taupo: the lake

Taupo: the town

Margaret Sweeney's Great Feat

Go Margaret! And then there was my brief stop-over in Napier looking for second-hand bookshops (though actually the best one I found was in Hastings, just down Heretaunga St., near the city centre):

Napier: the sea

Napier: the town

And then there was the fact that my room in the (aptly-named) Angus Inn Hotel was full of Rita Angus prints (together with one by Frances Hodgkins):

Rita Angus: Fog, Hawkes Bay (1966-8)

Rita Angus: Boats, Island Bay (1961-2)

Frances Hodgkins: The Pleasure Garden (1933)

But what of the conference itself? Well, it seems invidious to single out particular participants and readers from so many: four full plenary poetry readings, each with 12 ten-minute slots; four discussion panels, each with four speakers and a chair; a brilliantly inspiring opening reading by the poet laureate, Vincent O'Sullivan, together with a fine speech at the Saturday "working lunch" by Harry Ricketts ... I also enjoyed the trip to John Buck's Te Mata winery, so long associated with the poet laureateship (in fact, it might be said to have begun there).

It was a banquet, a feast, of all sorts of poetry: performance, personal, professional and perfunctory. I felt myself flagging at times, but as time went on it began to feel as if something was actually happening here, as if the sheer experience of immersion was having some cumulative effect.

Thanks to the organisers, Bill Sutton in particular, but also his able lieutenants from the Hawke's Bay Live POetry Society: Marie Dunningham, Trish Lambert, Dave Sharp, Carole Stewart and all the others who helped with the small groups sessions and the lunchtime discussion on Saturday (apologies for anyone I've left out).

It was wonderful to run into so many old friends: Rosetta Allan, Fiona Farrell, Bridget Freeman-Rock, Siobhan Harvey, Janet Newman, Sugu Pillay, Vivienne Plumb, Helen Rickerby, Barry Smith, and (of course) Alistair Paterson. Also to make some new ones (many of them people I'd corresponded with but never met): Doc Drumheller, Benita Kape, Maris O'Rourke, Nicholas Reid, Gus Simonovic, Pat White, Niel Wright ... together with many others.

Havelock North

I'll conclude, then, with a little verse I found myself scribbling during one of the sessions (I won't say which one):

The Counterfeiters


All New Zealand poetry
is crap
said David Howard's pal
on our ritual roadtrip north
to the Unicorn Bookshop
Warkworth

Oh I don't knowThere's Smithyman
Curnow
He wasn't impressed
Most
of you are trying to be as good
as Jenny or Billnot Homer or

Virgil
I had to admit he had
a pointbut what street-cred did
he have?
He'd spent the whole journey
wanking on
about André Gheed ...

[2/11/13]

I have to say that that remark from David's friend has stayed with me, which is the main reason I saw fit to share it with the assembled poets at the conference. What's wrong with setting our sites a little higher than the norms we've become accustomed to?

If these kinds of meetings become more common among New Zealand poets, who's to say what we mightn't achieve in the future? Right now my hopes are particularly high.

André Gide: The Counterfeiters [Les faux-monnayeurs] (1925)

•

Postscript (23/11/13):

Here are some pictures of the event, taken (for the most part) by photographer and poet Carole A. Steward, and posted on facebook by the irrepressible Gus Simonovic:

Janet Newman introduces the panel on
Form and Content in Contemporary Poetry:
r-to-l: Ben Fagan, Niel Wright, Jack Ross, Mary-Jane Duffy & Gail Romano.

Jack spouts on

The redoubtable Alistair Paterson

On the road to the Te Mata winery:
(note Gus Simonovic on the left, & Jack talking to Nicholas Reid in the middle distance)

John Buck shows us round the winery