Ep 98: Dawn Tucker and Elizabethan Acrobats

03/02/20 • 28 min

That Shakespeare Life

Biron in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost declares “O my little heart:—

And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!”

And in Romeo and Juliet there are stage directions which call for Romeo to

[He climbs the wall, and leaps down within it]

These references have gone largely overlooked by theater companies who perform these plays, being glossed over in dialogue, or constraints of the theater space itself determining what precisely it will look like for Romeo to leap down a wall. Our guest this week, Dawn Tucker, Executive Director of the Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival, has done research into the history of leaping, tumbling, and feats of activity on stage in Shakespeare’s lifetime and discovered that acrobats were a key part of Elizabethan theater.

Tumblers, as they were called, travelled to England from places like Italy and the records of performance for playing companies like The Queen’s Men, show that acrobats were employed in the theaters, and that death defying leaps of acrobatics and performance were a regular part of performances in plays like Hamlet, As You Like It, and even Romeo and Juliet.

I had the pleasure of hearing Dawn speak on this topic of acrobatics in Shakespeare’s England at the Blackfriars conference last year, and I am delighted to welcome her to the studio today to share with us what she found inside the Master of the Revels accounts and Chambers archive about Shakespeare’s performance history.

Biron in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost declares “O my little heart:—

And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!”

And in Romeo and Juliet there are stage directions which call for Romeo to

[He climbs the wall, and leaps down within it]

Previous Episode

Ep 97: Mike Hirrel & 16th Century Props and Scenery

Ben Jonson staged a masque at court called The Fortunate Isles which begins with a spirit descending onto the audience, featuring a floating island so elaborately constructed that England’s premiere architectural professional, Inigo Jones, who is the designer behind Whitehall Palace, Banqueting House, and Covent Garden square, was hired to construct an apparatus specifically for this performance. While records do not detail the construction of this magical floating island, we know from various accounts it was impressive in its scope and execution. So, What does this mean about William Shakespeare? We know from Shakespeare’s plays that the bard includes very similar items in his plays as well. From magical floating islands and gods riding on dolphins in plays like Twelfth Night to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, where there is a stage direction that almost mirrors what we know happened in Jonson’s masque, when the text says “Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle” When these fantastic elements are used in the text, does that mean Shakespeare could have had an architectural designer build an elaborate floating island, or a descending eagle befitted with thunder and lighting inside The Globe theater?Traditional theater research into Elizabethan staging suggests that the set and scenery for this play would have been so sparse that the production relied on the strength of the dialogue to convey the elaborate and fantastic parts of the story, but if that is the case, why did Shakespeare map out Jupiter’s descent in the stage directions with such precision? Could Shakespeare have used elaborate props and circus-like movable scenery? Our guest, Dr. Michael Hirrel believes, the answer is yes.

Next Episode

Ep 99: Lynn Bowser and Argaty Red Kites

Shakespeare mentions kites seven times in his plays, often using the term to reference specific attributes of the bird to describe someone in the story. He'll refer to someone as "a kite" as if that's bad, or other times, he'll use the bird (or 16th century reputation of the bird) to suggest attributes like suspicion:

Although the kite soar with unbloodiebeak? (Henry VI Part II)

In the late 15th century, the King of Scotland decreed kites should be killed whenever possible, and that perspective on kites contrasted starkly with the later role of this unique bird in England, when kites were protected as an asset to London because they ate the vermin. This protection was short lived, however, and by the Tudor period Kites were again regarded as a nuisance to rural farm communities in England and Scotland. There are even surviving records showing that bounties were paid for the carcasses of red kites, as many people sought their extermination as pests. We can see this negative perspective on kites show up in Shakespeare’s plays, as every reference to kites in the works of William Shakespeare are derogatory. As we explore the role--on stage and in life--of the persistent red kite, our guest this week is Lynn Bowser, co-owner at Argaty Red Kites, which is Central Scotland’s only red kite feeding station.