Jordan's Blog

When I set out on one of our final days to tackle the British Museum, I was excited by what I would encounter. The building, just by looking on it from the outside, is clearly massive. However, I still managed to underestimate it.

It took me an hour and a half to get through two exhibits within the museum: Ancient Greece and Rome and Ancient Egypt. Trying to keep moving, I didn't even get to stop and look at everything or read all of the information within the cases.

Above you can see the beautiful and extravagant memorial for William Shakespeare set inside Southwark Cathedral. Directly above the memorial is a window depicting Shakespeare’s plays, commemorating the work. Shakespeare isn’t buried at Southwark, but he lived there in his lifetime and went to the cathedral. Because of his life spent there, he is greatly memorialized for visitors to admire.

Now, William isn’t the only Shakespeare memorialized at this cathedral. In fact, his brother Edmond is actually buried on the grounds. So, naturally, he is memorialized at the cathedral as well. Below is the memorial displayed in the choir inside the cathedral.

I was extremely excited on the day I visited the British Museum to learn that there was an exhibit on writing. Being a writer myself, I was fascinated with the origins of writing, since my passion and work wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the development of the form. 

The writing exhibit was extensive, beginning with origins and ending with modern day uses such as social media. While the vast examples of writing over time was amazing to see on display and be able to physically be able to engage with the change in writing, I was most fascinated with the origins at the beginning of the exhibit. 

During one of our free afternoons, I spent lunchtime at Camden market. It was mainly a day of window shopping, but what I really took away from the visit was the diversity within the market. 

The first thing I encountered was high-end boutiques with pricey handbags and jewelry. I was thinking I couldn’t afford a single thing at this market just as I saw the Opera House in the corner of the market, which only seemed to confirm my initial thought that this wasn’t the place for me. 

Then, as I continued my journey through the market, I realized that the market was more than it first appeared. There was a cute carriage painted green where someone was selling fresh flowers. There’s an array of clothing shops as well as nick-nack shops and also family-oriented places like a toy store. 

When we stopped to eat, I noticed there was a variety of foods for people to enjoy. We stopped at a burger shop, which had amazing milk shakes, and then stopped at a small gelato shop with a line of local teenagers in line in front of us. 

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I visited the Borough Market, but moving to the center of the market I was immediately overwhelmed by all the smells of the stands. It reminded me of the farmer’s market back in my home town (where I get the best homemade dill pickles), but with a much more vast variety of foods. 

There was everything from cheeses, fruits and veggies, breads, to handcrafted items such as decorations and even small pieces of furniture. It was incredible how many people were walking around with arms full of bags, like they did their weekly grocery shopping going to stand to stand. Back at home, a farmer’s market is a place to grab a jar of pickles or things to throw a salad together, but we don’t normally expect to fill our cupboards. 

When we first got to England, we were warned that people in England aren’t as ‘friendly’. There was a warning to not get too close to anyone or make physical contact with someone because they aren’t comfortable with it there, and also not to make eye contact because it makes them uncomfortable. This made me concerned that I was going to have some unpleasant encounters with people while in London. 

However, people throughout my time in London eased my concern of encountering just unpleasant people. There were a few people that were enthusiastically helpful, and I assume that is due to London being such a tourist area. There were multiple cashiers that saw me struggling to count change at the counter and offered to count if for me if I set the change down for them to see. There was also an instant when Katie and I got lost and an older woman stopped us, without us having to stop her and ask, to give us directions because she could tell we looked lost and figured we were visitors. 

If I was able to take photographs inside Westminister Abbey, my photo galley would probably be packed with images of the vast array of tombs and monuments within the abbey. Further research into the burials that have taken place within the abbey confirm the number of tombs and/or monuments commemorating the dead at over 3,300. The place is very much reflective of strolling through a cemetery and appreciating the beauty of headstones, but without the possible judging eyes of onlookers. 

Perhaps if you’re going to the theater to see a Shakespeare play you’d like to splurge and pay for good seats the provide comfort and a good view. The pit tickets at a theater are what you buy if you don’t mind your feet hurting at the end of the show and want to save a few bucks. However, the Midsummer Night’s Dream play a group of us went to go see at the Bridge Theater, directed by  Nicholas Hytner, defied these standards. Even perhaps with the comfort factor taken out, the view from the pit was worth the mob of hot bodies and aching feet. 

Blog Post #4: A Body Preserved

The fact that some bodies do not go through their natural process of decaying fascinates me. Whether it is something unexplained or a scientific oddity, there is something intriguing about the idea that certain bodies evade decomposing and therefore leave their bodies available for people to find/study thousands of years later. 

Though Lady of Dai’s body wasn’t untouched, leading some to suspect divine intervention in some way, the article explains, “According to records, Xin Zhui’s body was swaddled in 20 layers of silk, immersed in a mildly acidic liquid and sealed within four coffins.This vault of coffins was then packed with 5 tons of charcoal and sealed with clay.The tomb was made watertight and airtight so bacteria wouldn’t be able to thrive — but it remains a scientific mystery just how the body was preserved so well.” The ancient Chinese people were clearly dedicated to the preservation of their monarchs, though the article says that all these measures doesn’t explain the level of preservation that took place within this body. The article went into detail concerning the corpse, pointing out, “her skin is soft, her arms and legs can bend, her internal organs are intact, and she still has her own Type-A blood, hair and eyelashes.” It is completely amazing and obscure to me that a body over 2,000 years old is still intact to the extent she is. The article also tells us, “ According to an autopsy, Xin Zhui was overweight, suffered from back pain, high blood pressure, clogged arteries, liver disease, gallstones, diabetes and had a severely damaged heart,” which inevitable led to her death at fifty due to a heart attack, which scientists seem to think is the oldest case of heart disease. The fact that she is preserved well enough for them to learn all of this about her seems to be a scientific anomaly. 

For this post, I’d like to focus on the idea of there being queer spaces in Shakespeare. When I read As You Like It for class, I didn’t necessarily read Celia as being in love with Rosalind, but merely viewed her as a jealous sister/cousin who didn’t want to lose her closest companion. However, once we broke down the relationship between the two, it began to make sense to me. 

The first piece that made sense once we discussed queer theory and how it can be applied to Shakespeare is the idea that same sex people who shared a bed, even through childhood, could thought to be in a sexual relationship with each other. When we mentioned in class that Rosalind and Celia had been sharing a bed, on top of the close relationship between the two and Celia insistence that Rosalind not get married or fall in loved, than it is completely plausible that they were in one of those relationships at the time that perhaps wasn’t talked about, but was well-known and accepted. Furthermore, when Celia makes the decision to run away with Rosalind, when she is banished by the Duke, it is reflective of the well-known story we have of Romeo and Juliet running away so they could live together in peace away from people who would suppress their relationship.

One of the murders on the London Murder Map stuck out to me as quite sad. A baby girl, named in the article as Alice of London, of three months old, was found in a ditch. It is said that a beggar-woman called Nicola of Cardiff had sat down on the bank of the river, pretending to bath the infant, and drowned her without catching any passerby's attention. It is said if Nicola, “The jurors had no idea what became of her. She had no worldly possessions. They did not suspect anyone else of causing the baby’s death. The body was viewed, but no wound, hurt or bruise appeared on it.” 

It does not explicitly who is parentage of the child was, so the language of this article confuses me a bit. Regardless of whether or not this Nicola was the mother of the child or not, this act does seem to be rooted in class. The title of “Alice of London” tells me that the woman, who is explicitly said to be of Cardiff, could possibly not be the mother of the child, but I am not certain as to whether the infant would be considered a Londoner in the time period simply because she was born there. If this child isn’t of Nicola than I suspect she was doing out of some kind of vengeance towards the parentage of such because of some wrongdoing. If she was the child’s mother, it is even more sad to consider, because that means she drowned her child who appeared to not be ailed in anyway. The woman is named a beggar and poor enough to not have a single worldly possession to herself, so I feel obliged to lean towards the idea that perhaps Nicola couldn’t care for the child and/or felt the child, growing up in the lowest level of citizenship, was better off dead. 

The start of Act II Scene IV of Shakespeare’s Henry the IV Part One starts off on a light note, it filled with fun and witty banter, and then ends on a heavy note. Prince Henry, from the beginning of the play, is goofing off with his friends and spending most of his free time at the Boar’s-Head Tavern. It is there that Prince Henry, though of noble birth and heir to the throne, is able to act as the common folk. Even more inappropriate to his position, he spends much of his time among criminals and taking part in treachery himself. 

Nothing within this tavern seems to be at all serious as the scene takes off, mainly focusing on Falstaff’s lie regarding how many men attacked them and what happened, until the prince admits he was the one that thieved the thieves. However, then Falstaff points out to Harry that he is going to have to confront his father regarding serious matters within the kingdom. Because Harry is so nervous about this encounter, him and Falstaff begin acting out as if Falstaff is King Henry and the prince was speaking to his father. However, when Falstaff makes a joke of the ordeal, Harry demands they switch rolls and the acting becomes more serious in nature. When Falstaff, playing the prince himself, acts as though he is pleading for the king to not dismiss Falstaff from Harry’s company, their game ends when Harry (playing King Henry) says “I do, I will”. 

After reviewing the Anglo-Saxon poem “Andreas” from Thursday’s class, I have come to one simple conclusion: the hero of the story, Andrew, is not who saves Matthew and the rest of the prisoners in Mermedonia. In fact, one can argue that the “Savior”, the “Son of Man” himself was the true hero in this tale. Andrew appears to have no part in the actual destruction and resurrection of the city besides being the living face for Jesus’ acts.

From the very beginning, though Andrew agrees to do as his Lord commands and takes on this quest, the act itself is impossible without the divine hand in the matter. He is days away from the city until he falls into a mystical sleep and is whisked there by Christ himself; if he hadn’t been transported there and taken the sea (the only human possibility to get to the city), he never would have been able to complete his task. Then, once he reaches the city, he is concealed by the divine, who is once again assisting him, so he is not discovered. When he reaches the prison, the guards immediately fall dead before him, followed by the “hand-grip of the Holy Ghost” (21) breaking down the door of the prison. He then does the work (at least) of breaking out all of the imprisoned people. After such events, Andrew sits back and watches the citizens turn on each other first before they eventually going after him, inflicting him with tortures, which his Lord heals and assures him will end. 

For this entry in my blog, I am going to discuss one of the topics that has come up within both our class sessions: the idea that Shakespeare has become more than just the name, but a brand of sorts. When we discuss “Shakespeare” modernly, the title often doesn’t begin with the first name “William”. That’s because it isn’t needed. William Shakespeare’s work has become almost a genre in itself. For example, a person is probably more likely to tell you they specifically saw a Shakespeare play rather than simply announce “I saw a play”. Or, similarly, if one says they saw “Hamlet” or they went to see a showing of “Macbeth”, there is an expectation about the language and atmosphere of the play apart from regular expectations for plays. Shakespeare, in opposition to other plays, stands out. The plays may have similar themes, plot, characters, but if it’s Shakespeare, it is viewed as separate from other theatrical works. 

Now, this brings me to the above memes added to this blog. When I looked up modern interpretations of Shakespeare, especially how he is expressed in social media, a lot of memes came up (like the above) that made it clear many people find Shakespeare’s language dense and too complex for the average, casual reader. While, as mentioned, Shakespeare is considered different from other writers’ works similar to his, it seems he is also viewed as something that is only accessible by a more advanced group of intellectuals. What I personally associate this misguided view of Shakespeare with is the fact that when younger education levels study Shakespeare they often don’t have the time to break down the language and context of the play; without knowing the difference in Shakespeare’s used language and the context each play revolves around it is easy to get confused and lost in his work. While I understand, as other English majors and scholars alike do, that Shakespeare isn’t going to be forgotten anytime soon (and hopefully never), there seems to be this yearning in pop-culture that appropriates Shakespeare plays to make it more appealing to the younger generations. That seems like the only likely explanation for the movie adaption of Romeo and Juliet, “Romeo + Juliet” (1996).

This movie, as it appears in the research I have done online, was pretty successful in its time. In fact. the overall rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 77%, noting that viewers tend to like this rendition of Romeo and Juliet. I’ll admit that this is the first movie I saw based off a Shakespeare play, when I was first introduced to his work in my freshmen English class. Unfortunately, I remember actually enjoying the movie at the time because it made me understand the events within the play itself. We discussed how problematic Romeo and Juliet is when presented to young teenagers, since the play ends in teen suicide. However, I think adaptions of Shakespeare plays such as this one (perhaps without the gunslingers and coupling suicide) are helpful to inexperienced viewers, making the language and plot within the original play more manageable. 

One of the concepts that de Certeau seems to be working with in his essay “Walking in the City” is the idea that people seem to be following social norms by going about their normal day in an urban setting. In any given space, de Certeau seems to be suggesting, there are underlining ‘norms’ set down by the way that society has been conducted that seem to subconsciously suggest a person to act a certain way, perhaps despite their personal inclinations. In class, for example, we talked about how society has set down normal gender roles for men and women based on their biological sex announced at birth. A man might not be interested in sports and a woman might not be interested in make-up, but society seems to be telling them that it is the normal things they are supposed to enjoy and, therefore, if they do not than they are acting ‘abnormally’. While de Certeau doesn’t go as far as to include anything as controversial as gender theory, he does seem to be suggesting that, similarly to stereotyping gender, our social environments, such as cities, seem to be setting down specific ways people should be living. 

What John Aubrey, as well as others who have tried to construct a biography of William Shakespeare, has proven is that there has been a lot of speculation as to what kind of life Shakespeare lived outside of the little facts we actually have. What is most interesting about the way Aubrey constructed this biography is that he relied solely on asking specific people what they knew of Shakespeare, and what they know about him. He collected some facts about Shakespeare that are well-supported and credible, such as him coming from Warwick, moving to London and becoming an actor, and him almost never blotting out a line in his life once it was written. 

However, there are also several things within this biography that appear purely speculative with no evidence to support the claim, as well as things he presents as fact that (as discussed in class) are proven incorrect. From the very beginning, Aubrey tells us that William’s father was a butcher when actually it is understood that he was in fact a glover. He also says that he suspects that Shakespeare left home around eighteen to pursue his acting career in London, but it is well known that William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway young and had children with her before leaving for London (meaning he probably spent several years in Stratford upon Avon before moving to London). Aubrey, in fact, never mentions Shakespeare’s marriage, or his children, and even makes it a point to say that he sent money to a sister, not a wife, making it seem as though he is dismissing the man having a wife or family at all.