Knight of the Burning Pestle Part II Preview: The Saga Continues
Sorry I posted the notes from last class so late, but hopefully I can make up for it by bringing a lot of what we talked about back and honing in on some particularly juicy aspects. I've got a whole lot of questions for you!
I’d specifically like to continue teasing out the threads discussed last Thursday that have to do with affect (in narrative and performance), and the desires, interests, and appetites of spectators and how they are negotiated in this play.
I’d like to work through these topics by focusing on how the play stages heterosexual relationships and desire—something Professor McKay indicated is perhaps much more complex or fraught in early modern drama than homosexual desire.
-How does the play stage heterosexual relationships, desire, marriage, love, and what it means to be a wife in ways we haven’t seen before?
-How might they be undermined by remnants or the continuation of older discourses/structures called forth in the play (romance genre, patrilineal inheritance, previous views of marriage, virginity, chastity, constancy etc.)?
-how does the odd “new” form of the play effect/undermine/create/mirror/bolster these representations of heterosexual relationships and desire?
More specifically, I’d like to think about the conditions of possibility for affection in Knight of the Burning Pestle.
-What are the conditions of possibility for affection in performance (of audience for characters)? What creates/conscripts affection and charisma here?
-What are the conditions of possibility for affection within the relationships staged in the play? Within marriage? Within an apprentice (Jasper) or lower-tier and higher status (Luce) romance?
Other Interests of Mine
-Is there a way to read this play as being invested in “touching” particular, private, and contingent desires with “small smiles” rather than more symptomatic or didactic public desires for irony, satire, “in an invective way”? (Beaumont, Prologue) If so, how?
-Questions of performance and staging are always on my mind, most specifically for this play, how to play Rafe, a character whose prowess as an actor is constantly emphasized; does this indeed reveal the body beneath and point to virtuosity in performance, or would it be more effective considering his quixotic essence to play him against such indications of prowess?
-How also to deal with the many places in the play where the secret “tricks” of actors and the conditions for effective performance are given away and exposed to the audience, and what exactly does that do?
Showing posts with label Knight of the Burning Pestle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Knight of the Burning Pestle. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2011
NOTES FROM DAY ONE OF KNIGHT/MARA/OCT. 6th
Mara challenged us to think about the “bad romances” in Knight of the Burning Pestle, seeing the woman as commodity as a through-line from the old system of patrilineal inheritance to the new-market and capital based system emerging in the period, and how the play stages an illicit desire to see this “property” of woman carried off.
-The Caste to Class shift
-Courtesy
-the (ridiculous) exigencies of knighthood
-the theatre of the courtship ritual
-how virginity is refreshed by rape, the audience’s illicit desire to see rape (the carrying away of a woman/sexual violation) as a bad romance here made ok by Luce’s “asking for it”
-the assumption that women in the period would like to read these rapey narratives
We then discussed the oft-asked question of why the play flopped, bringing in our own experiences of the play, whether or not we found it funny, engaging, confusing, boring, etc.
-was the irony not pointed enough, as Witmore pointed out?
-too many layers?
-too offensive, did people not appreciate this takedown of the market class, or of the gallants, or even of the romance genre?
-the critique of audience appetites inherent in the play (George and Nell’s desires act as the focus, the lens through which the plays are mediated and interpreted)
-did audiences find themselves too distanced, that they weren’t being conscripted enough, but rather were being replaced?
-comparisons to other meta-theatrical moments in this period, especially Midsummer Night’s Dream and the difference of that sophisticated audience and their harsh critique of the earnest work of the players, and Shakespeare’s satire of that audience
-was it like going to see a certain genre of movie not getting expectations met?
-does it simply take too long to understand the bodies on stage?
-readerly pleasure vs. theatre flop
Affect and Audience in Knight
-George and Nell as adorable, affectionate, and as instilling affection
-possible to read all characters as funny, compelling, engaging
-idealized representation of apprentice/master relationship
-the way Nell invites us into her home to drink after the play
-Nell can also be read as stupid; as unruly subversive woman; as bad spectator who critiques bad spectatorship (the smoking gallants)
Witmore’s Article
-Knight doesn’t work as a boy’s play because the kind of irony normally available through bodies of boys was changed, even lost
- Bodies of actors aren’t left to bleed through, somatically impact the audience
- Bodily excess, actor’s body beneath/ Rudder’s claim- how readily did e.m. audience take boys for women? Absolutely!
-Nell herself is a boy pointing out boys’ beautiful bodies, they are aging out of boys company roles
-Middle aged drag-has to pull off trade class and woman, if its too draggy might be reason why play flopped
Knight in Performance
- May have taxed the companies too much, each character has tremendous comic potential
-Excess: too much demanded of characters, of actors
-perhaps too much to process, to grab onto, hard to read emphasis and right affect
-comparison to onstage competition between Lavinia and Titus
-isn’t staged often, could we stage it today?
Identification and Audience Appetites
-George and Nell misidentify allegiances: they favor Humphrey who has money and status but nothing else, instead of Jasper, who is an apprentice like their own Rafe
-Beaumont critiquing audiences’ desires as that which go against their own interests
-Nell doesn’t feel compassion for Luce as woman but sees her as daughter, as property
Final notes
-Professor McKay wants to discuss Knight in relation to two-eyed ness of Titus
-She would also like to take account of all the characters
-the complex tapestry of negotiating interest, appetite, and desire of spectators
-The Caste to Class shift
-Courtesy
-the (ridiculous) exigencies of knighthood
-the theatre of the courtship ritual
-how virginity is refreshed by rape, the audience’s illicit desire to see rape (the carrying away of a woman/sexual violation) as a bad romance here made ok by Luce’s “asking for it”
-the assumption that women in the period would like to read these rapey narratives
We then discussed the oft-asked question of why the play flopped, bringing in our own experiences of the play, whether or not we found it funny, engaging, confusing, boring, etc.
-was the irony not pointed enough, as Witmore pointed out?
-too many layers?
-too offensive, did people not appreciate this takedown of the market class, or of the gallants, or even of the romance genre?
-the critique of audience appetites inherent in the play (George and Nell’s desires act as the focus, the lens through which the plays are mediated and interpreted)
-did audiences find themselves too distanced, that they weren’t being conscripted enough, but rather were being replaced?
-comparisons to other meta-theatrical moments in this period, especially Midsummer Night’s Dream and the difference of that sophisticated audience and their harsh critique of the earnest work of the players, and Shakespeare’s satire of that audience
-was it like going to see a certain genre of movie not getting expectations met?
-does it simply take too long to understand the bodies on stage?
-readerly pleasure vs. theatre flop
Affect and Audience in Knight
-George and Nell as adorable, affectionate, and as instilling affection
-possible to read all characters as funny, compelling, engaging
-idealized representation of apprentice/master relationship
-the way Nell invites us into her home to drink after the play
-Nell can also be read as stupid; as unruly subversive woman; as bad spectator who critiques bad spectatorship (the smoking gallants)
Witmore’s Article
-Knight doesn’t work as a boy’s play because the kind of irony normally available through bodies of boys was changed, even lost
- Bodies of actors aren’t left to bleed through, somatically impact the audience
- Bodily excess, actor’s body beneath/ Rudder’s claim- how readily did e.m. audience take boys for women? Absolutely!
-Nell herself is a boy pointing out boys’ beautiful bodies, they are aging out of boys company roles
-Middle aged drag-has to pull off trade class and woman, if its too draggy might be reason why play flopped
Knight in Performance
- May have taxed the companies too much, each character has tremendous comic potential
-Excess: too much demanded of characters, of actors
-perhaps too much to process, to grab onto, hard to read emphasis and right affect
-comparison to onstage competition between Lavinia and Titus
-isn’t staged often, could we stage it today?
Identification and Audience Appetites
-George and Nell misidentify allegiances: they favor Humphrey who has money and status but nothing else, instead of Jasper, who is an apprentice like their own Rafe
-Beaumont critiquing audiences’ desires as that which go against their own interests
-Nell doesn’t feel compassion for Luce as woman but sees her as daughter, as property
Final notes
-Professor McKay wants to discuss Knight in relation to two-eyed ness of Titus
-She would also like to take account of all the characters
-the complex tapestry of negotiating interest, appetite, and desire of spectators
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