Visiting Jane Austen’s House Museum

A few days ago, I finally managed to visit Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. It was great. 

This is where Jane Austen revised her first three novels, and wrote her last three novels Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. The table’s much smaller than I thought! 

I don’t know what flowers Austen had in her garden back then, but here are a few photos of mine of the flowers now. 

Also wandered around Chawton. Tiny, charming village. 

In case anyone wonders if I have visited Shakespeare’s Birthplace Museum in Stratford-upon-Avon, here are a few photos from 2023. 

The Rape of Lucrece—I have now read everything in the Shakespearean canon

1/ Published in 1594 (apparently written during a plague), The Rape of Lucrece was around the same time as Henry VI Part 1 (if we assume, as many scholars do, that it’s written after Part 2 and Part 3), Richard III, and The Comedy of Errors. Early Shakespeare. 

I can’t help wondering what a narrative poem, or epic poem, by Late Shakespeare would have been like.

One thing that fascinates me, now that I’ve read the Phaedra plays by Euripides and Racine, is that Shakespeare depicts sexual assault a few times (rape in The Rape of Lucrece and Titus Andronicus, attempted rape in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Tempest, sexual coercion in Measure for Measure); he depicts women getting falsely accused of cheating a few times (Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale); he even depicts women sexually assaulting men a few times (Venus and Adonis, All’s Well that Ends Well and arguably Measure for Measure—the bed trick); but he doesn’t seem to have much interest in the subject of women making false rape allegations. If only! A Phaedra play written by Shakespeare would have been fascinating. 

2/ I don’t have a lot to say about The Rape of Lucrece, so I’m just gonna poke at it from different angles.

The word “black” appears a lot through the poem: “so black a deed”, “blackest sin”, “black payment”, “black lust”, “Night’s black bosom”, etc. Contrasted with that is white—the colour of chastity and innocence. 

“When at Collatium this false lord arrived,

Well was he welcomed by the Roman dame,

Within whose face beauty and virtue strived

Which of them both should underprop her fame.

When virtue bragged, beauty would blush for shame;

    When beauty boasted blushes, in despite

    Virtue would stain that o’er with silver white.

But beauty, in that white intituled

From Venus’ doves, doth challenge that fair field.

Then virtue claims from beauty beauty’s red,

Which virtue gave the golden age to gild

Their silver cheeks, and called it then their shield;

    Teaching them thus to use it in the fight,

    When shame assailed, the red should fence the white.

This heraldry in Lucrece’ face was seen,

Argued by beauty’s red and virtue’s white.

Of either’s colour was the other queen,

Proving from world’s minority their right.

Yet their ambition makes them still to fight;

    The sovereignty of either being so great,

    That oft they interchange each other’s seat.”

The odd thing—odd to me—is the coupling of the colours white and red throughout the poem. 

“O how her fear did make her colour rise!

    First red as roses that on lawn we lay,

    Then white as lawn, the roses took away.” 

Again, white and red together: 

“Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin.” 

Again: 

“… But she with vehement prayers urgeth still

    Under what colour he commits this ill.

Thus he replies: ‘The colour in thy face,

That even for anger makes the lily pale,

And the red rose blush at her own disgrace,

Shall plead for me and tell my loving tale.

Under that colour am I come to scale

    Thy never-conquered fort; the fault is thine,

    For those thine eyes betray thee unto mine…’” 

 

3/ The poem is thick with comparisons to animals and birds, which we see in Homer, in Ovid, in other poets, so I’d like to draw attention instead to other metaphors and similes that I find more interesting. 

“Far from the purpose of his coming thither,

He makes excuses for his being there.

No cloudy show of stormy blust’ring weather

Doth yet in his fair welkin once appear,

Till sable Night, mother of dread and fear,

    Upon the world dim darkness doth display,

    And in her vaulty prison stows the day.”

I like this: 

“… And extreme fear can neither fight nor fly,

    But coward-like with trembling terror die.”

Lots of interesting lines in the poem: 

“Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.” 

This is Lucrece after the rape: 

“‘.. O hateful, vaporous, and foggy night,

Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime,

Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light,

Make war against proportioned course of time;

Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb

    His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,

    Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.

‘With rotten damps ravish the morning air;

Let their exhaled unwholesome breaths make sick

The life of purity, the supreme fair,

Ere he arrive his weary noontide prick.

And let thy misty vapours march so thick,

    That in their smoky ranks his smothered light

    May set at noon and make perpetual night…’” 

All these metaphors are brilliant. The problem with Shakespeare’s depiction of Lucrece’s mind after the rape is that for some time he seems to get carried away by rhetoric, by metaphor, by language—Lucrece rails at Night, at Opportunity, at Time—that many stanzas are devoid of emotional depth and feel hollow, compared to numerous tragic passages in his plays. It gets better in the passages where Lucrece decides to kill herself: 

“My honour I’ll bequeath unto the knife

That wounds my body so dishonoured.

’Tis honour to deprive dishonoured life;

The one will live, the other being dead.

So of shame’s ashes shall my fame be bred,

    For in my death I murder shameful scorn;

    My shame so dead, mine honour is new born.”

That’s moving. But then Shakespeare gets bogged down in rhetorical digressions again when Lucrece looks at a painting of Troy—clearly inspired by the scene in the Aeneid—and compares herself to Troy and Tarquin to the brutal, treacherous Greeks (especially Sinon). It’s over-long, it’s mannered, it delays the climax. 

I like this passage though: 

“‘… Why should the private pleasure of some one

Become the public plague of many moe?

Let sin, alone committed, light alone

Upon his head that hath transgressed so;

Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe.

    For one’s offence why should so many fall,

    To plague a private sin in general?” 

But I shouldn’t be so negative. Colin Burrow’s introduction to The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems offers a thought-provoking analysis of The Rape of Lucrece, particularly the idea about reading (Tarquin reading/ interpreting the signs, Lucrece “reading” the painting, Lucrece imagining that strangers can read the guilt on her face, and so on) and the extent of Lucrece’s guilt (as Tarquin gives her a simulacrum of choice—either yield her body to him, or get raped, killed, placed next to the dead body of a slave, and forever defamed). The poem raises interesting questions about rape, choice, consent, and about Lucrece’s feeling of guilt and sense of inner taint. It’s also interesting because Lucrece is a victim of rape, but in choosing to name her rapist and then kill herself, she shapes the way her story will be told. 

4/ Having finished The Rape of Lucrece means I have now read everything in the Shakespearean canon. It was a good idea to save it—I understood the references to the Trojan War, and the allusions to the Aeneid. 

If I am to rank Shakespeare’s works, at the top would be most of the plays (the tragedies, then the Roman plays, then the history plays, then the comedies and romances), then the sonnets, then the narrative poems. The Rape of Lucrece I don’t like as much as Venus and Adonis—a lighter, sexier poem—but it’s definitely more sophisticated than Shakespeare’s early plays and the collaborations at the end of his career. 

PS: Please spare some thoughts and prayers, as we in the UK are experiencing an infernal heatwave. No air con and it’s especially bad in my room as I live in a literal little white attic. I’m getting baptised in hell-fire. I’m seeing demons. 

My 10 favourite literary works

A list of the 10 literary works I think about, or revisit, most often: 

• The Iliad 
• The Odyssey 
• King Lear 
• Othello 
• Shakespeare’s Sonnets 
• Don Quixote 
• War and Peace
• Anna Karenina 
• Moby-Dick 
• Mansfield Park

This looks quite basic, does it? But the central figures of my personal canon do happen to be Homer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, so I can’t pretend they’re not, just to avoid being called pretentious. 

I refuse to choose between the Iliad and the Odyssey, the same way I refuse to choose between War and Peace and Anna Karenina. 

2 epic poems, 2 plays, 1 sonnet sequence, 5 novels (4 of which are over 700 pages). 2 in ancient Greek, 5 in the English language (4 English and 1 American), 1 in Spanish, 2 in Russian. 2 from the 8th century BC, 4 from the 17th century, 4 from the 19th century. All Western. 9 written by men.

If you have been reading my blog and/or my tweets, I’m sure I’ve been annoying enough about these works for any choices to be a surprise. Maybe the Sonnets, as I don’t blog about them, but I do revisit them often—there’s a Shakespeare sonnet for every mood (I went out yesterday and on the way home thought of Sonnet 34—guess what happened). The only surprises, I guess, are the exclusions of Greek tragedies (couldn’t pick one) and Chekhov’s stories (what do you do with short stories on such a list?)—a longer list of my personal canon would include Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, The Tale of Genji, all of Shakespeare, Molière, the (dirty) poems of Hồ Xuân Hương, Tom Jones, Hong lou meng (better known as Dream of the Red Chamber or Story of the Stone), Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens, John Keats, Madame Bovary, The Brothers Karamazov, the plays of Henrik Ibsen (especially The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm), the short stories of Akutagawa, the short stories of Flannery O’Connor, The Metamorphosis (Kafka), Invisible Man, Lolita, Pnin, the poems of Hàn Mặc Tử (especially Đau thương), etc. 

The only thing that bothers me, which is perhaps irrational, is that my literary tastes are strongly Western. I am Vietnamese, I can read well two languages (my Norwegian isn’t on the same level), I spent years promoting East Asian classics, but in the end, my favourite 18th century novel is still Tom Jones, not Hong lou meng; my favourite female writer is still Jane Austen, not Murasaki Shikibu; the central figures of my personal canon are still Homer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, not Nguyễn Du… Japanese cinema may be the one I know and love the best after English-language cinema, but in literature, my tastes are markedly Western. 

Does this mean I have lost my roots? Mất gốc? (The Vietnamese phrase carries much harsher overtones). 

I suppose the main thing is that I’m most fascinated by human nature and the human mind, and most interested in characters, which is probably also why I much prefer the Greeks to the Romans (you probably have noticed, with horror, the absence of Virgil and Ovid on my personal canon). Generally, Japanese writers—at least the ones I have read—don’t seem to explore the complexities and contradictions and irrationalities of people as we see in Western literature. Their characters are more opaque, even impressionistic; on the one hand, Japanese novels convey that sense of human mystery, the sense that we can never truly know another human being, which I like; but on the other hand, the characters also feel less alive, and don’t leave deep impressions on my mind like Akhilleus, Cleopatra, or Andrei Bolkonsky. The characters in Hong lou meng in comparison are alive, especially Shi Xiangyun (Sử Tương Vân) and Weng Xifeng (Vương Hy Phượng), but they don’t have the depth and complexity of Elektra, Hamlet, or Anna Karenina, and frankly I think Cao Xueqin takes a lot more pages to give life to a character (which Shakespeare can do in five words: “I was adored once too”). 

I’m also not much of a poetry person, despite liking the little I have read of Donne, Keats, Bùi Giáng, etc. I have The Oxford Book of English Verse, and lately have been slowly getting through The Oxford Book of Sonnets, trying to be less of a philistine, but unfortunately still have a strong taste for narratives and characters. My favourite poet (restricting to only those I can read in the original) is therefore a dramatic poet (and before you ask, I read Shakespeare’s sonnets as dramatic monologues, not autobiographical pieces). 

(If I were pretentious, as some people might call me, I would pretend to love poetry, but I acknowledge my failing).  

My tastes are also predominantly classic. When I first got into literature properly, I was mostly reading the 20th century, then slowly went further back, and further back. Over the years, those 20th century novels for some reason haven’t had a lasting impression, haven’t been part of my mental furniture—I barely remember much of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Toni Morrison. But it’s not just because I read them in my late teens and early 20s, not just because I read them before finding my favourite writers—since my discovery of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and others, I have read and enjoyed modern books only for them to have caused nothing but a few ripples in my mind—I haven’t found myself thinking about Muriel Spark, R. K. Narayan, or Soseki, for example. Even Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, which I read only last September and considered highly, has left no imprints. Shouldn’t they resonate more, being more recent? But they don’t, and I don’t know why. My favourite 20th century writer right now is possibly Primo Levi, but that’s non-fiction. 

It’s curious which works of literature speak to us and haunt our minds. 

Metamorphoses: “nothing retains its form”

Detail from the title page of Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished by G.S. London, 1626.

1/ It’s a good idea to read Ovid after having read the Greeks: Ovid sometimes skips over details, expecting one to know Greek/ Roman mythology and literature; he sometimes fills in the gaps. For example, Ovid’s story of the debate between Ajax and Odysseus about who deserves to get the arms of Achilles is interesting because I’m acquainted with Odysseus from Homer and have also read Aias (or Ajax) and Philoctetes by Sophocles—neither Homer nor Sophocles depicts that scene (in the surviving texts)—so in a sense, Ovid fills in that gap. He also gives us the perspective of one of Odysseus’s companions whom Circe turns into pigs, which we don’t get from Homer. 

Moreover, as he creates Metamorphoses after the Aeneid, he writes about both the Akhaians and the Trojans, moving from Achilles, Ajax, and Odysseus to Hecuba and Aeneas, though he glosses over the story of Dido (the best part of Virgil’s poem). Funnily enough, Polyphemus, the cyclops that Odysseus tricks and blinds (which leads to his 10 years of suffering), has his own story here: an unrequited love for a nymph called Galatea. 

2/ In Metamorphoses, there are a couple of characters who would now be considered trans. If we leave aside Tiresias, the seer who transforms from a man into a woman for several years then back into a man, we have two female characters who transform into men: Iphis, raised as a boy because of her father’s sexism, falls in love with a woman, wishes to become a man, and has her wish granted; Caenis gets raped, and asks to be transformed into a man, known as Caeneus. This might offend some of you, but one thing I find interesting is that these two characters match two types of trans men (women identifying as men) that I often come across (online and in real life): tomboy lesbians who think they should be men because they’re attracted to women and think they don’t fit into the idea of femininity; and woman who reject womanhood and identify as trans (or non-binary) after experiencing sexual abuse. 

That said, I shouldn’t let contemporary politics ruin Metamorphoses. This is mythology, and we have some cool scenes of Caeneus fighting rapey centaurs.

3/ In most cases, Ovid “reduces” the characters we have encountered in the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid—naturally, because of length—but he expands on the character of Circe: jilted by Glaucus because he loves Scylla, she turns Scylla into a sea monster; rejected by Picus because he loves Anens, she transforms him into a bird. Circe in the Odyssey is to be pitied. Here she is more powerful. Here she is vengeful and malicious. 

But then she’s not that different from the Greek/ Roman gods, is she? Metamorphoses is mainly about the lust of men and the jealousy of women. 

I like this image of Anens: 

“Tiber was last to see her; tired and worn, 

With grief and journeying; she laid her head 

By his long riverside, and there, in tears, 

Breathed weak faint words in cadences of woe, 

As dying swans may sing their funeral hymns; 

Until at last, her fragile frame dissolved

In misery, she wasted all away

And slowly vanished into empty air.” 

(Book 14) 

(translated by A. D. Melville) 

4/ In Metamorphoses, the transformations are generally of the gods putting on disguises, or human beings getting turned into things, bodies of water, trees, animals, the other sex, or gods. The oddest transformation is when the Trojan ships are transformed into sea nymphs. 

“… And one wind’s strength 

The fostering Mother called in aid to break 

The hempen hawsers of the Trojan fleet, 

And on their beam ends drove the ships to sea

And sank them. Timbers softened and the wood 

Was changed to flesh; the curved prows turned to heads,

The oars to toes and swimming legs; the sides 

Remained as sides; the heel that underlay 

The centre of the ship became a spine. 

The rigging soft sleek hair, the yards were arms, 

The colour sea-blue still; and in the waves

They used to fear they play their girlish games, 

Nymphs of the sea, born on the granite hills, 

Now natives of the soft sea-deeps, untouched 

By memories of their birthplace…” 

(ibid.)

This is weird. This is unlike any other metamorphosis in the poem. 

5/ In Book 15 (the final book), Ovid has a section called “The Doctrines of Pythagoras”, which is perhaps the finest part of the poem. 

“… In all creation 

Nothing endures, all is in endless flux, 

Each wandering shape a pilgrim passing by. 

And time itself glides on in ceaseless flow, 

A rolling stream—and streams can never stay, 

Nor lightfoot hours. As wave is driven by wave 

And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead, 

So time flies on and follows, flies and follows, 

Always, for ever new. What was before

Is left behind, what never was is now: 

And every passing moment is renewed.” 

You can see why Ovid is fascinated by transformations. You can see why Metamorphoses speaks to Shakespeare. 14 books are about mythology and legend, and the final book is about life, about change as the nature of life: seasons come and go, people age and die, nations rise and fall, animals transform their shapes, and out of corpses, new forms of life are born. 

6/ Now that I’ve finished reading Metamorphoses, I’m going to say I still prefer the Greeks to the Romans, though perhaps in the case of Ovid (and Virgil), much is lost in translation. As I wrote before, because Ovid moves from one myth to another, there’s no sense of forward movement and it’s sometimes frustrating. But I did love some parts of the book, it’s a brilliant collection of stories, and it’s good to read Ovid, to know one of the important ancient writers, and to see his influence on Shakespeare—not only obvious references as one finds in A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Twelfth Night, but Shakespeare’s fascination with metamorphosis in general—every single Shakespeare play has some sort of disguise, acting, or transformation. 

I’m going to have to read How the Classics Made Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate. 

What makes a good screen adaptation?

I have seen 7 screen adaptations of Anna Karenina. That probably tells you I’m a bit mad. But as a lover of literature and cinema, I’m also fascinated by adaptations—what makes a good one? 

Let’s start with Anna Karenina. Among the 7 versions I have seen, the best is without doubt the 1977 series by the BBC, with Nicola Pagett. We all know filmmakers have to make cuts, we all know filmmakers have to simplify the story, but the problem with most adaptations of Anna Karenina is that they don’t convey the complexity of the characters—Karenin in early adaptations tends to be portrayed as a monster whereas Karenin in some later adaptations is portrayed more sympathetically, with Anna and Vronsky presented as shallow and selfish—the 1977 series is the only one which depicts the complexity and self-contradictions and multiple facets of Anna, Karenin, and Vronsky; the only one which reminds me of the qualities for which I love Tolstoy’s novel. 

If we talk about War and Peace, Bondarchuk’s film series from 1966-1967 is popular, but I would argue that it only focuses on the epic-ness of the book. It is technically spectacular but shallow and hollow, stripping the story of depth and complexity, removing Tolstoy’s philosophical and religious ideas, reducing Pierre’s search for meaning, simplifying the “thinking characters” (Pierre and Andrei), paying little attention to emotional conflicts between characters, etc. The 1972 series by the BBC, though imperfect, shows a much better understanding of Tolstoy’s characters and ideas, and respect for the text. 

This doesn’t mean I think only faithful adaptations are worthwhile, doesn’t mean I think filmmakers have to be slaves to the sources. When I complain about film adaptations, people sometimes accuse me of being a purist, but I’m not. I find it fascinating when a classic story is moved to a different setting, a different culture: the story of Dangerous Liaisons for instance is moved from 18th century France to feudal Korea in Untold Scandal, and modern-day America in Cruel Intentions; Fingersmith, set in the Victorian era, is adapted into South Korean film The Handmaiden. 

Sometimes it doesn’t work quite well: Bride and Prejudice does a few clever things, moving the story of Pride and Prejudice to modern-day India and making Mr Darcy American, and it’s fun enough, but it doesn’t have the sense of urgency of Jane Austen’s novel, either in the sisters getting married or in the Wickham sub-plot; the Mrs Bennet character is therefore just vulgar and annoying; and Lalita (the equivalent of Elizabeth Bennet) comes across as nationalistic and more confrontational than witty, which gets tiresome after a while. But sometimes it works wonders: in Ran and Arashi ga oka, Kurosawa and Yoshida take King Lear and Wuthering Heights respectively as a starting point, and create something different, something very Japanese, something that stands on their own. As I wrote in a recent blog post about Wuthering Heights, Arashi ga oka is its own thing—Onimaru is not Heathcliff; Kinu is not Catherine; Hidemaru is not Hindley; Mitsuhiko is not Edgar Linton; Tae is not Isabella; Yoshimaru is not Hareton; young Kinu is not Cathy—the characters can be mapped onto Emily Bronte’s characters but they are different and their relationships are different. And yet it captures the violence, savagery, eroticism, and strangeness of Emily Bronte’s novel, which the supposedly faithful adaptations of Wuthering Heights don’t do, as most adaptations only focus on the love story, reduce the malice and brutality, and often cut the second generation.

A similar example is Clueless: loosely based on Emma and set in an American high school, it is its own thing, loved by both Jane Austen’s fans and people who have no idea it’s inspired by a 19th century novel; yet at the same time, Amy Heckerling captures the essence of Austen’s novel much better than some supposedly faithful adaptations do. What I mean is that Emma might be snobbish, she might misperceive everything, she might make a mess of people’s lives, but she means well and wants to do good and has self-reflection—we also see this in Cher in Clueless, whereas Anya Taylor-Joy and especially Gwyneth Paltrow portray Emma as bitchy, catty, even two-faced, nothing like Austen’s character. 

The trouble is that most screen adaptations are not faithful adaptations which take the text seriously and show great understanding of the source story (such as the 1995 Pride and Prejudice); but they are also not interesting adaptations which take the novel as a starting point and become their own work of art (such as Jan Švankmajer’s Alice). Most adaptations are usually somewhere in the middle. 

Take for example the 2005 Pride and Prejudice: it doesn’t transcend its source material and become its own thing; what we have instead is a film which focuses on the attraction and romance but neglects the theme of pride and prejudice, and the development of Elizabeth and Mr Darcy; Matthew Macfadyen’s Darcy doesn’t show much change throughout the story; and Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth often behaves out of character (can you imagine Jane Austen’s Elizabeth eavesdropping on her family members then bursting in on them? Or watching Georgina behind a door then running away like an intruder, with no manners? Or snatching a letter from her father’s hand?).

Or, take the 1999 Mansfield Park: it takes liberties but doesn’t become an original work of art; it’s just an awkward adaptation by someone who doesn’t accept Fanny Price as written by Jane Austen and turns her into something else, and has her accepting Henry Crawford at first, going against the text.

The 2022 Persuasion also seems to be an odd thing that is neither approach: perhaps I shouldn’t comment as I haven’t seen the whole film, but from what I have seen, it is neither a faithful adaptation, depicting the Regency era, nor an independent film with the story moved to the modern era; instead, Carrie Cracknell has characters of different skin colours wearing Regency costumes but speaking modern slang, and changes the character of Anne Elliot beyond recognition (it is perhaps aimed at the audience of Bridgerton).

And this is something lots of people don’t seem to understand: whenever someone criticises a film adaptation for misrepresenting or betraying the text, some people just say fidelity is unimportant and the film is its own work of art, but most of the time it isn’t—most of the time it doesn’t have enough strengths and originality, most of the time it doesn’t transcend its source material—all we’ve got is just a poor film that doesn’t quite transfer a great work of art onto the screen. 

10 favourite adaptations of literary works (in chronological order): 

• Rebecca (1940) 
• The Innocents (1961), from The Turn of the Screw 
• Tom Jones (1963) 
• Woman in the Dunes (1964) 
• Anna Karenina (1977) 
• Ran (1985), from King Lear 
• Arashi ga oka (1988), from Wuthering Heights 
• Alice (1988), from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 
• The Age of Innocence (1993)
• Pride and Prejudice (1995) 

The Other Bennet Sister and “diverse casting”

In my previous blog post about the TV series The Other Bennet Sister, I wrote about all the changes made to the characters of Pride and Prejudice, and the resulting loss of subtlety and complexity. Now I’d like to address the racial aspect of the series. 

In The Other Bennet Sister, Mary is the black sheep, the one bullied or at least neglected by everyone else in the family, the one assumed to have no prospects. The optician’s son however takes an interest in her, and asks her to dance with him at the ball, so she does, and she dances with him twice. Charlotte Lucas then tells Mary to be careful: two dances imply liking; the third time is going to be remarked upon. Then Mrs Bennet appears and, displaying a cruelty and harshness not seen in Jane Austen’s character, tells Mary not to dance with or speak to him any longer, as he’s an optician’s son, and an association with someone in trade would ruin the prospects of her sisters. 

The remarkable part here is that we can all see that he’s Indian, but nobody mentions his race, as though class is the only barrier. 

From what I can see, there are other non-white characters in the rest of the series, and this is something we see again and again: Netflix and the BBC and Channel 4 and ITV and other companies randomly cast black and brown people in adaptations of 19th century novels and other period dramas. This has gone on for years and seems to have become standard practice. And I have always disliked it. Why do you assume that I need to see someone “looking like me” represented on the screen? Why do you assume that I need to share the same race or ethnicity as a fictional character in order to find them relatable? Why do you assume that I would relate to a character just because we have the same race? What do I have in common with, for example, the characters in Crazy Rich Asians? Why would I want to see actors of the same ethnicity as me randomly cast in adaptations of classic European novels, like Hong Chau playing Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights? Do we not have our own stories? Do we not have our own classics? Do production companies not understand how insulting this is? 

More importantly, “diverse casting” in period dramas is a whitewashing of history, as though 19th century Britain had been a colourblind society, as though people of all races back then had been equal, as though racism had never existed. If someone grows up watching these films and TV series—every single one has black and brown people as middle-class and upper-class characters, on equal footing with white characters—that person is going to have a very distorted understanding of the past. Bridgerton may have the excuse that it’s a fantasy world, but what excuses does The Other Bennet Sister have? 

I’m going to note too that this is very different from casting in Shakespeare. My favourite King Lear production has a black Lear (Don Warrington). My favourite version of Coriolanus has a black Coriolanus (David Oyelowo). Shakespeare’s plays are full of artifice—race-bending is no big deal as long as it doesn’t draw attention to itself and the play is taken seriously. But film and TV are supposedly more naturalistic; if it doesn’t present itself as a fantasy world as Bridgerton does (which I have never watched), it would be taken to be meant to be realistic; and the depiction of Britain in the late 18th, early 19th century as a colourblind society is unrealistic. I would even say that the erasure of the racial prejudice of the past—erasure of the experiences of victims of racism—is a racist lie. 

Unfortunately I seem to be the only one having these opinions. 

Metamorphoses: “He dropped like an ox/ Slaughtered in sacrifice”

1/ I don’t know if classical literature is more violent—graphic—than modern literature, but Metamorphoses is full of violent images. 

“… And, in his madness hunting her, tracked down

His wife and snatched Learchus from her arms, 

His little laughing son with hands outstretched, 

And wildly smashed the baby’s head against 

A granite block…” 

(Book 4)

(translated by A. D. Melville) 

Jeez. That’s from the myth of Athamas and Ino.

The myth of Perseus, who kills a monster and rescues Andromeda from the rocks and has to fight a bunch of men who want Andromeda and the kingdom, is reminiscent of the killings in the Iliad or the Odyssey. Full of vivid, horrible details. 

“Even so the weapon found a mark and struck 

Rhoetus full on the forehead. Down he fell 

And, as the iron was dragged out of his skull, 

His heels drummed on the ground and his red blood

Spattered the banquet board…” 

(Book 5) 

More graphic: 

“… this time, as he bent

The spring crescent, Perseus seized a brand

That smoked upon the altar there, and struck 

The lad and smashed his face to shattered bones.” 

(ibid.) 

The quote in the headline comes from the same scene. 

However, Ovid is not Seneca. Ovid may depict extreme violence, like Homer and Sophocles do, but Seneca seems to have a perverse delight in gore. When Ovid tells the myth of Niobe, who mocks the gods and has to see all her 7 sons and 7 daughters killed, he describes the killings quickly—some of the sons die from a single arrow, the deaths of the sisters are more or less grouped together—one can guess that Seneca would expand and add more horrific details. For instance, when Seneca retells the myth of Oedipus (creating a play much inferior to Sophocles’s version), he adds a scene of a ritual sacrifice, with gory visions:  

“MANTO Father, what is this?

Instead of gently quivering as they should,

They make my whole hand shake; there is fresh blood

Proceeding from the veins. The heart is shrunken,

Withered, and hardly to be seen; the veins

Are livid; part of the lungs is missing,

The liver putrid, oozing with black gall.

And here – always an omen boding ill

For monarchy – two heads of swollen flesh

In equal masses rise, each mass cut off

And covered with a fine transparent membrane,

As if refusing to conceal its secret.

On the ill-omened side the flesh is thick

And firm, with seven veins, whose backward course

Is stopped by an obstruction in their way.

The natural order of the parts is changed,

The organs all awry and out of place.

On the right side there is no breathing lung

Alive with blood, no heart upon the left;

I find no folds of fat gently enclosing

The inner organs; womb and genitals

Are twisted and deformed. And what is this –

This hard protuberance in the belly? Monstrous!

A foetus in a virgin heifer’s womb,

And out of place – a swelling in the body

Where none should be. It moves its limbs and whimpers

Twitching convulsively its feeble frame.

The flesh is blackened with the livid gore.…

And now the grossly mutilated beasts

Are trying to move; a gaping trunk rears up

As if to attack the servers with its horns.…

The entrails seem to run out of my hands.

That sound you hear is not the bellowing

Of cattle, not the cry of frightened beasts;

It is the fire that roars upon the altars,

The hearth itself that quakes.” 

(translated by E. F. Watling) 

I’m giving you the whole speech so you can see how gross it is, but the sacrifice scene is longer. 

The main difference between Ovid and Seneca is vision: despite the violence, despite the rapes, despite the brutal acts, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses I find a lightness of touch and a kind of transcendence that I don’t see in Seneca’s plays. 

2/ However, Ovid’s version of the myth of Bacchus and Pentheus, because much shorter, is not as nightmarish and disturbing as The Bacchae by Euripides. I can’t claim to understand The Bacchae, having read it once, but it is a discomforting, haunting play and I can see why it’s said to be Euripides’s greatest play. 

3/ Now that I’m reading Ovid, I’m starting to think there’s something to the theory—is it Jonathan Bate’s?—that Shakespeare swaps the locations in The Winter’s Tale, erroneously giving Bohemia a coast, in order to reinforce the association of Perdita with Proserpina, who is taken by force from Sicily. 

“… Here Proserpine  

Was playing in a glade and picking flowers, 

Pansies and lilies, with a child’s delight, 

Filling her basket and her lap to gather

More than the other girls, when, in a trice, 

Dis saw her, loved her, carried her away…” 

(Book 5)

The scene of Perdita with the flowers evokes the image of Prosperina—she even directly names her. And her happy scene, as in Ovid, is interrupted by the violence of a man. 

The rape of Proserpina, painting by Nicolas Mignard. 

Now look at these lines in Metamorphoses: 

“Behold, the daughter I have sought so long 

Is found…” 

(ibid.) 

Do they not make you think of The Winter’s Tale? 

4/ Metamorphoses is a vast, colourful poem, but there are a few recurring themes: the lust of the male gods (especially Jove, the Roman equivalent of Zeus), the jealousy of Juno (Hera), the hubris of human beings, and the capriciousness of the gods. 

The myth of Arachne is one of my favourites in Ovid. 

PS: I’m currently in the US, on a work trip. 

Metamorphoses: “Of bodies changed to other forms I tell”

 1/ First, I’m going to note that I picked up and looked at 6 different translations of Metamorphoses: Mary M. Innes translates it into prose, which I do not want; the versions by David Raeburn and Stanley Lombardo are clear but prosaic and tedious; Allen Mandelbaum takes a more poetic approach, his translation sounds good but is apparently quite loose; the Arthur Golding translation sounds very good and would be something I’d like to read, as it apparently inspired my boy Shakespeare, but it’s not very faithful and too twisty for the first read of the poem; so I decided on A. D. Melville, who seemed to strike a better balance between beauty and fidelity. 

One thing I’ve noticed doing some research on translations is that there doesn’t seem to be any strong consensus on good translations of Ovid. When people talk about Homer, Robert Fagles has a huge following; Robert Fitzgerald, the one I read, is also popular, especially for the Odyssey; Richmond Lattimore is often recommended for the Iliad; Peter Green from recent years is often recommended by classicists for accuracy; Emily Wilson is controversial, etc. I don’t see that kind of consensus about Metamorphoses—who is popular? As far as I know, there’s not even much noise about Stephanie McCarter even though she, like Emily Wilson, adds the female/ feminist perspective and criticises the bias of male translators. 

I’d say though that in a standard London bookshop, I almost always spot multiple translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey (usually Fagles, Emily Wilson, Green, E. V. Rieu, sometimes Fitzgerald, Lattimore) but Metamorphoses is usually only available in the Raeburn translation, which I do not at all like—I had to go to the Waterstones at Torrington Place to consider multiple options. 

2/ The thing about reading classics, especially something as influential as Metamorphoses, is that you get to encounter old friends. Book 1 for example has the story of Io, desired by Jove (Jupiter) and turned into a cow—I have met her in the play Prometheus Bound.

Ovid has a lightness of touch that makes him very different from Virgil, but sometimes there’s a very moving passage, such as this one about Io: 

“She browsed on leaves of trees and bitter weeds, 

And for her bed, poor thing, lay on the ground, 

Not always grassy, and drank the muddy streams;

And when, to plead with Argus, she would try 

To stretch her arms, she had no arms to stretch. 

Would she complain, a moo came from her throat, 

A startling sound—her own voice frightened her. 

She reached her father’s river and the banks 

Where often she had played and, in the water, 

Mirrored she saw her muzzle and her horns, 

And fled in terror from the self she saw.” 

(Book 1) 

(translated by A. D. Melville) 

Book 3 for example has many figures I know: Semele, Bacchus, Tiresias, Pentheus from Homer and the Athenian plays; Cadmus, Narcissus, and Echo from popular culture. 

I picked up Metamorphoses expecting much of it to be about beautiful women being chased by gods and turned into trees or animals, but it’s a much vaster, richer work, containing over 250 myths, moving seamlessly from one story to another. Each myth has some kind of transformation (the myth of Callisto in Book 2 even has three different transformations). It’s not hard to see why so many writers and artists love Metamorphoses—in the case of Shakespeare, it clearly appeals to the Shakespeare of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. I can’t help wondering though, if Shakespeare’s fascination with transformation—each play has some kind of disguise or acting or metamorphosis—is because of his experience as an actor, or due to inspiration from Metamorphoses. 

3/ At some point I’m going to read Jonathan Bate’s How the Classics Made Shakespeare, but right now I can see traces of Metamorphoses in Twelfth Night. 

“ORSINO […] How dost thou like this tune?

VIOLA It gives a very echo to the seat

Where love is throned.” 

(Act 2 scene 4) 

That is clearly a reference to Echo, who has unrequited love for Narcissus; and the figure of Narcissus can be seen in Orsino (and Olivia). 

“VIOLA Make me a willow cabin at your gate

And call upon my soul within the house,

Write loyal cantons of contemnèd love

And sing them loud even in the dead of night,

Hallow your name to the reverberate hills

And make the babbling gossip of the air

Cry out “Olivia!” O, you should not rest

Between the elements of air and earth

But you should pity me.” 

(Act 1 scene 5, Twelfth Night) 

This passage—one of the most beautiful passages in all of Shakespeare—seems to echo Ovid’s story of Echo. 

There are also multiple metamorphoses in Twelfth Night: Viola disguises herself as a man and names herself Cesario; Malvolio transforms himself, when he believes he’s the object of Olivia’s affection; Feste wears various disguises when he joins in the prank on Malvolio; Viola’s twin Sebastian appears and gets mistaken as Cesario, and in a sense becomes Cesario at the wedding. 

4/ I don’t need to mention that the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe becomes the play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and inspires Romeo and Juliet, which is well-known, but now that I’ve read it, I wonder if the death of Antony in Antony and Cleopatra also traces back to Ovid’s poem. 

“At Thisbe’s name he raised his dying eyes

And looked at her, and closed his eyes again.” 

(Book 4) 

Shakespeare expands the scene, but like Pyramus, Antony also kills himself because he thinks Cleopatra is dead, and realises before dying that she is still alive.

Painting of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus by Scarsellino. 

5/ One of my favourite stories in Metamorphoses is the myth of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis. Did you know that the word “hermaphrodite” came from Hermes + Aphrodite? I didn’t. I like the juxtaposition of the myth of the Sun and Leucothoe, and the myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, and it’s such a strange, fascinating myth. If I’m not mistaken, it may have been Ovid’s invention, different from other myths of Hermaphroditus.

Edward II by Christopher Marlowe

 1/ The Greeks, once known, are seen everywhere. References to the ancient Greeks are scattered all over Marlowe’s play. 

 “QUEEN O miserable and distressed queen!

Would, when I left sweet France, and was embarked,

That charming Circe, walking on the waves,

Had changed my shape! or at the marriage day

The cup of Hymen had been full of poison!

Or with those arms, that twined about my neck,

I had been stifled, and not lived to see

The king my lord thus to abandon me.

Like frantic Juno, will I fill the earth

With ghastly murmur of my sighs and cries,

For never doted Jove on Ganymede

So much as he on cursèd Gaveston…” 

(Scene 4)

This is a moving scene. The play is about King Edward II’s obsessive relationship with his minion Gaveston and its impact on the realm—Marlowe begins the play with Gaveston and Edward, then writes about the resentment of the nobles, then lets us see that the one who suffers most is Queen Isabella—it is moving. 

Mortimer Senior also references the Greeks (and the Romans) when defending the King’s relationship with Gaveston: 

“MORTIMER SENIOR […] Thou seest by nature he is mild and calm,

And, seeing his mind so dotes on Gaveston,

Let him without controlment have his will.

The mightiest kings have had their minions:

Great Alexander loved Hephaestion,

The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept,

And for Patroclus stern Achilles drooped.

And not kings only, but the wisest men:

The Roman Tully loved Octavius,

Grave Socrates wild Alcibiades.

Then let his grace, whose youth is flexible,

And promiseth as much as we can wish,

Freely enjoy that vain lightheaded earl,

For riper years will wean him from such toys.” 

(ibid.) 

Even Edward compares himself and Gaveston to Hercules and Hylas in Scene 1. 

(But then a play about a gay relationship would mention the Greeks, wouldn’t it?) 

2/ Edward II is very different from Marlowe’s other plays. Firstly, it’s about English history. Secondly, whereas his other plays tend to have a dominating character—a Machiavelli or an overreacher—pushing everyone else to the background, Edward II is a much more balanced play and has at its centre a weak king (though in the second half, Mortimer threatens to upset the balance of the play and seems like a typical Marlovian figure). It’s also a more subtle play, with characters plotting and saying things they don’t mean and switching sides.

I can see the influence of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays on Edward II, and in turn, the influence of Marlowe’s play on Shakespeare’s Richard II. 

“EDWARD Nay, then, lay violent hands upon your king:

Here, Mortimer, sit thou in Edward’s throne;

Warwick and Lancaster, wear you my crown.

Was ever king thus overruled as I?” 

(Scene 1) 

Later: 

“EDWARD My swelling heart for very anger breaks.

How oft have I been baited by these peers,

And dare not be revenged, for their power is great!

Yet, shall the crowning of these cockerels

Affright a lion? Edward, unfold thy paws,

And let their lives’-blood slake thy fury’s hunger.

If I be cruel and grow tyrannous,

Now let them thank themselves, and rue too late.” 

(Scene 6)

Edward II and Richard II both explore weak kings, favouritism, and political instability; they both raise questions about the role, power, and responsibility of the king, though I think Shakespeare goes further; Marlowe focuses more on the gay relationship between the king and Gaveston.   

About halfway through the play, Gaveston is killed; his position is then filled by Spencer, an opportunist and flatterer. 

The contrast between Gaveston and Spencer is interesting, because Marlowe lets us see that King Edward II and Gaveston love each other. The former may be an ineffectual king and the latter may be an obnoxious upstart and they both may be cruel to the Queen, but their love for each other appears to be genuine.  

“MORTIMER Why should you love him whom the world hates so?

EDWARD Because he loves me more than all the world.” 

(Scene 4) 

Marlowe does complicate things—what is the relationship between Gaveston and the king’s niece?—but he does give us Gaveston’s soliloquy at the start of the play, and in a few scenes, in Edward’s absence, Gaveston talks about him and not anyone else. It is Spencer who is like the flatterers in Richard II. 

3/ The scene in which Edward seeks refuge in a monastery is so moving. 

“EDWARD […] Stately and proud in riches and in train,

Whilom I was, powerful and full of pomp;

But what is he whom rule and empery

Have not in life or death made miserable?⁠

Come, Spenser, come, Baldock⁠, come, sit down by me;

Make trial now of that philosophy

That in our famous nurseries of arts

Thou sucked’st from Plato and from Aristotle.⁠

Father, this life contemplative is heaven.

O, that I might this life in quiet lead!...” 

(Scene 19)

In Shakespeare, there are many speeches about the burdens of being a king (King John, Henry IV…), or about the downfall of a king (Lear, Richard II…). What caught my attention was the word “whilom”—formerly, in the past—which I had never seen in Shakespeare, and possibly had never seen before. 

The abdication scene is even better, and again I can see Marlowe’s influence on Richard II. 

There are some very good lines: 

“EDWARD […] The griefs of private men are soon allayed;

But not of kings…”

(Scene 21)

This is followed by an image of “the forest deer” and “the imperial lion”—Edward refers to himself as a lion quite a few times, but he’s not much of a lion, is he? 

I like these lines from the same speech: 

“But what are kings, when regiment is gone,

But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?” 

This is also good: 

“EDWARD I know not; but of this am I assured,

That death ends all, and I can die but once.” 

(ibid.) 

4/ I note something interesting Marlowe does a few times throughout the play, though I don’t know what you call these pairs of lines—thesis and antithesis? 

“KENT For he’ll complain unto the see of Rome.

GAVESTONE Let him complain unto the see of hell.” 

(Scene 1) 

“EDWARD Lay hands on that traitor Mortimer!

MORTIMER SENIOR Lay hands on that traitor Gaveston!” 

(Scene 4) 

“QUEEN [to Gaveston] Villain, ’tis thou that robb’st me of my lord.

GAVESTON Madam, ’tis you that rob me of my lord.” 

(ibid.) 

“WARWICK Saint George for England, and the barons’ right!

EDWARD Saint George for England, and King Edward’s right!” 

(Scene 12) 

“GURNEY Your passions make your dolours to increase.

EDWARD This usage makes my misery increase.” 

(Scene 23) 

“EDWARD III My lord, he is my uncle, and shall live.

MORTIMER My lord, he is your enemy, and shall die.”

(Scene 24) 

“LIGHTBORNE What means your highness to mistrust me thus? 

EDWARD What means thou to dissemble with me thus?” 

(Scene 25) 

The best wordplay in Edward II, however, is when Mortimer decides to kill Edward and wants to cover his tracks:  

“MORTIMER […] This letter, written by a friend of ours,

Contains his death, yet bids then save his life.

Reads. ‘Edwardum occidere nolite timere, bonum est’,

‘Fear not to kill the king, ’tis good he die.’

But read it thus, and that’s another sense;

‘Edwardum occidere nolite, timere bonum est’,

‘Kill not the king, ’tis good to fear the worst.’

Unpointed as it is, thus shall it go…” 

(ibid.) 

According to a post I came across, the line comes from Holinshed—sent by Adam de Orleton, not Mortimer. 

5/ In 1970, the BBC broadcast a double feature done by Prospect Theatre Company: Edward II and Richard II with Ian McKellen playing Edward and Richard, Timothy West playing Mortimer and Henry Bolingbroke, Paul Hardwick playing the Earl of Warwick and John of Gaunt, and so on. 

Both are wonderful productions—the entire cast is perfect. Ian McKellen is great, as always (I saw Richard II back in November); Timothy West has a lot more to do as Mortimer; but I especially like Diane Fletcher as she helps me understand better the character of Queen Isabella and her changes throughout the play. 

The more I think about Edward II—such a great play—the more annoyed I get with the Marlovian theory, i.e. the conspiracy theory that Marlowe faked his death and was the real Shakespeare. It’s a distraction from a much more worthwhile pursuit of rereading, rewatching, analysing, getting immersed in Shakespeare’s plays; it’s also a distraction from the brilliance of Marlowe’s actual plays when we should be celebrating and promoting Edward II and Doctor Faustus. 

If you are in the UK and have a school/ university email address, both productions are available on the ERA website. Otherwise, they’re on Youtube, though the quality is a bit lower.