by Fearghus Roulston, PHD student working on the British Library's zine collections

The British Library’s Punk 1976-1978 exhibition, marking punk’s 40^th anniversary, hits some familiar and satisfying beats. Malcom McLaren as Situationist svengali; the Sex Pistols as trend-setting provocateurs; the cut-and-paste, DIY aesthetic of the posters and record sleeves that mushroomed up between 1976 and 1978. More than 100 audio selections feature everybody from the Adverts to X-Ray Spex. A less familiar element emerges from a glass box of fanzines – Alternative Ulster, Bored Stiff, Suburban Press, Secret Public, – that testify to punk’s status as a national scene that reverberated far beyond the King’s Road and the Roxy.

Fanzine created by and reproduced with kind permission of Chris Low

In Roger Sabin’s excellent 1999 collection of essays on the cultural legacy of punk, Paul Cobley makes an obvious point that bears repeating. Describing the hassle-laden experience of being a teenage punk in 1970s Wigan, he says: “Among the many myths of punk rock, probably the most insidious is that it was an entirely London-based phenomenon.” This myth has been pretty thoroughly deflated, of course, but a look at the zines in the library’s collection adds another puncture – Cobley adds that although provincial punk rock may be less spectacular than its London counterpart, “this is no reason to write it out of history”.

We have punk zines from Cardiff (Oh Cardiff, Up Yours!), as displayed in another recent blog post), from Nottingham (Repeated Patterns), from Belfast (Alternative Ulster), from Cornwall (Barricade) and from Aberdeen (Granite City). They display a lively and self-conscious engagement with the myth of punk on the part of participants in the scene, many of whom identify not only against a putative mainstream culture but also against the metropolitan, or trendy, London punk scene. For a researcher trying to understand punk as inchoate and localised and specific, or trying to map its regional manifestations beyond the usual periodization of 1976 to 1978, these are an invaluable resource.

Zines from the British Library collections. Top row: Intrusion (Orpington) ZD.9.b.109; It’s different for grils (Sheffield) ZD.9.b.108; City fun (Manchester) ZD.9.b.257; Repeated Patterns (Nottingham) ZD.9.b.555 Bottom row: Blades 'n' shades (Birmingham) ZD.9.b.986; No solution (Liverpool)  ZD.9.b.1416; Granite city (Aberdeen) ZD.9.b.1411; Sunset gun (Glasgow)  ZD.9.b.1414

Looking at zines as a way of historicising and contextualising the punk scene allows us to re-map its connections to other youth cultures of the 1970s and 80s, creating a fuller and more colourful picture. As Matt Worley has shown, zines also help to chart the line between punk and politics on both a local and a national level. At their best they offer up very personal, very direct evocations of cultural affiliation that both complicate and enrich our understanding of what is meant by ‘punk’.

And on International Zine Day, it is worth stressing the importance of these kinds of publications within the library’s broader remit. Punk is only one aspect of a multi-faceted and eclectic group of self-published pamphlets and booklets. The library holds zines on radical politics, activism, veganism, football, race, mental health, gender and a range of other topics. This esoteric subject base is worth listing at length because it suggests the rich possibilities such a collection offers for researchers interested in engaging with social life outside of the mainstream. It also allows us to think about this kind of social life in its own terms, rather than on terms that have been refracted through the national press or a retrospective historical lens.

Fanzine created by and reproduced with kind permission of Chris Low

The sample of punk zines above could be read as skewing very white and very male (More On, the genesis of which is described here, is an interesting exception to the general rule). Given that one of the most exciting elements of the contemporary revitalisation of zine publishing is the platform it has provided for non-white and non-male voices, particularly in the form of perzines (or personal zines), it’s exciting that as the library’s collection develops it can seek out other voices from outside of the mainstream in the form of this new wave of zines.

But this raises a new set of problems to finish on. What’s the relationship between archiving these documents and incorporating them into a culture they are trying to critique? Classification is difficult, especially for zines that range across a number of different topics. How does a curator or a librarian balance the demands of accessibility with the need to respect and engage with the creators of zines and their wishes? Some zines, especially those that deal frankly with personal topics, may have been intended only for a select and sympathetic audience. A sensitive, radical approach is proposed in the Zine Librarians Code of Ethics, but the conversation about how libraries engage with this kind of material is one that will continue as long as zines continue to proliferate. For researchers as well as zinesters and librarians, this conversation should be a productive and interesting one.

Further Reading

Punk Rock So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk, Roger Sabin (ed), Routledge, 1999

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20^th Century, Greil Marcus, Faber and Faber, 2011

‘Punk, Politics and British (fan)zines, 1976–84: ‘While the world was dying, did you wonder why?’, Matt Worley, History Workshop Journal, 2015

http://zinewiki.com/

http://zinelibraries.info/                                                                                                                                                      

by Jonathan Pledge, Curator, Contemporary Politics and Public Life

Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was a popular Victorian novelist who is credited with publishing both the first ‘sensation’ novel The Woman in White (1859) and the first modern English detective novel The Moonstone (1868). One of the many reasons his novels were so popular was his clever characterisation and his sharp satirical observations concerning the social conventions of Victorian England.

There is one passage in the The Woman in White that deals with Frederick Fairlie Esquire, the misthanthropic, hypochondriac aesthete, who having married off his ward, the beautiful Miss Laura Fairlie, and freed from his responsibility towards her, sets about recording his real love his ‘treasures and curiosities’.

‘His last caprice has let him to keep two photographers incessantly employed in producing sun-pictures of all the treasures and curiosities in his possession. One complete copy of the collection of the photographs is to be presented to the Mechanics’ Institution of Carlisle, mounted on the finest cardboard, with ostentatious red-letter inscriptions underneath. ‘Madonna and Child by Raphael. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire. Copper coin of the period of Tiglath Pilesar. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire.’ ‘Unique Rembrandt etching. Known all over Europe as THE SMUDGE, from a printer’s blot in the corner which exists in no other copy. Valued at three hundred guineas. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire.’ Dozens of photographs of this sort, and all inscribed in this manner, were completed before I left Cumberland, and hundred more remain to be done.’

What Wilkie is satirizing here is the mania for collecting and categorizing all manner of objects which, presaged by the establishment of the British Museum in 1753, reached a manic apotheosis in the Victorian era. Wilkie’s description of two photographers producing ‘sun-pictures’, or photographs, of various objects to order is an unusual one and the inspiration for this passage, I believe, is William Henry Fox Talbot today recognised as the originator of negative-positive photography.

 

Detail of a cover for a programme produced by the Reading Camera Club for the ‘W. H. F. Talbot Commemoration, 9th June, 1951'. Despite events like this, much like Wilkie Collins, Talbot languished in relative obscurity until being rediscovered in the late 1970s. NTA: 30727. (Add MS 88942/3/2/1).

At the time of the publication of The Woman in White Talbot was well-known as the former patent holder of the Calotype photographic process in which a negative image was produced by exposing chemically treated paper to light. Multiple positive images could then be produced from this negative. This idea was the basis for all photography until the advent of digital photography.

Talbot had been working on producing photographs, although at the time they were known as ‘sun pictures’, since 1839. He had patented the Calotype process – also known as the Talbotype - in 1841 and had become somewhat unpopular among both amateur and professional photographers for his numerous legal prosecutions in defence of his patent. He responded to criticism by pointing out that he had spent nearly £5,000 of his own money developing the Calotype process.

‘By Royal Letters Patent. Sun Pictures or the Talbotype photographic process’ (undated). NTA: 24281 (Add MS 88942/1/350). The Regent Street establishment was started after the Reading one but neither was successful.

In 1843 Talbot provided the capital for the setting up of a photographic ‘establishment’ at Reading, run by two associates Nicolaas Henneman and Thomas Malone, in order to mass produce photographs. Wilkie’s image of ‘two photographers incessantly employed’ would seem to suggest some sort of industrial process and indeed the publicity image for the Reading establishment below shows photographers with a variety of objects and people both taking and developing photographs.

Photograph of The Reading Establishment (1846). W. H. F. Talbot and Nicolaas Henneman. http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283065

A year after setting up the Reading Establishment Talbot published The Pencil of Nature a volume of original photographic prints, the first of its kind, of various scenes and objects complete with descriptive text.

Image and text for ‘Articles of China’ from The Pencil of Nature (1844). Talbot saw the potential of photography not only as an art, but also as a way of objectively recording objects. http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/pencil-of-nature/

Below is part of the text that accompanied plate III ‘Articles of China’,

‘From the specimen here given it is sufficiently manifest, that the whole cabinet of a Virtuoso and collector of old China might be depicted on paper in little more time than it would take him to make a written inventory describing it in the usual way. The more strange and fantastic the forms of his old teapots, the more advantage in having their pictures given instead of their descriptions.’

Reading this text it’s easy to imagine that this may have been the source of Wilkie’s satire. However, by 1859, there were many photographers producing any number of photographs on any number of subjects and doing so in studios set up precisely for that purpose most of them using the wet collodion process, developed by Scott Archer in 1851 in which a photographic negative was created by exposing a glass plate painted with a photo-sensitive solution. This technique had largely superseded Talbot’s own process primarily because Archer hadn’t patented it; he died penniless and destitute.

So besides Wilkie’s passage being about photography and its use as an instrument for cataloguing and recording objects by a team of photographers what specifically points to Talbot being the inspiration behind it?

Detail of the cover of ‘Inscription of Tiglath Pileser, B.C. 1150’ (1857). (Add MS 88942/3/1/7).

In the early 1850s Talbot had become interested in Assyriology, the scholarly study of the history, archaeology and culture of Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).

The lexicon for Assyrian cuneiform had been developed primarily by Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810-1895) and Edward Hincks (1792-1866) and there was much scholarly scepticism regarding the accuracy of translations. To counter this Talbot organised the simultaneous translation, by himself Rawlinson, Hincks and Julius Oppert (1825-1905) of a recently discovered text relating to the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I (c. 1115-1077 BC). When the translations were examined by a panel of independent experts they were found to be so similar that it was concluded that Rawlinson and Hincks’s lexicon was indeed valid. These collected translations were published as a single volume Inscription of Tiglath Pileser I by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1857 only two years before the publication of The Woman in White.

Therefore it is Wilkie’s specific reference to ‘Tiglath Pilesar’ that, in my opinion, confirms William Henry Fox Talbot, as the most likely inspiration for this passage in The Women in White.

 

Last week the New York Times revealed a host of new discoveries relating to Shakespeare’s coat of arms. Heather Wolfe, Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. has found nearly a dozen previously unknown documents that confirm that Shakespeare was an ambitious social climber. Four of the newly discovered documents are from the British Library and two others can currently be seen in our Shakespeare in Ten Acts exhibition. These exhibits relate to a dispute over whether Shakespeare deserved to be made a gentleman, proving that entry into the upper classes was far from straightforward even in the upwardly mobile Elizabethan era.

Coat of arms belonging to William Shakespeare. Harold Bowditch Collection, Mss 1180, R. Stanton Avery Special Collections, page 66 (detail).

Shakespeare’s father John, a glover, first applied for a coat of arms in 1575 but it was not awarded until a second application was made in 1596. Given John’s age (he was well into his sixties), it’s always been assumed that William re-applied on his father’s behalf and the new discoveries seem to bear out that theory. Half of the newly discovered documents associate the Shakespeare arms with William rather than John, suggesting that it was William who was particularly keen to boost his own social standing.

Shakespeare’s friend Ben Jonson had a dig at his fellow playwright’s new status as a gentleman in 1598 in his play Every Man Out of His Humour. A peasant is advised to purchase arms with the motto ‘Not without mustard’ – an illusion to the gold-coloured Shakespeare arms and their motto ‘Not without right’. But Shakespeare didn’t only have to put up with ribbing from his friends. A couple of years later the arms came under attack again, this time from the College of Arms, the very body which had granted them.

William Dethick (1543-1612) was the Garter King of Arms responsible for approving the Shakespeare grant and by all accounts he was a pretty unsavoury fellow. Arrogant and violent, he was known to have beaten his own father and wounded his brother. In 1576 he attacked another herald’s wife by pushing her head into the fireplace, tipping hot ashes, alcohol and the contents of a chamber pot over her and was only just prevented from killing her. Matters were hardly improved when he stabbed two people with a dagger during the funeral of the Countess of Sussex at Westminster Abbey. Needless to say he wasn’t too popular with his fellow heralds due to his habit of beating and slandering them, and he came in for a good deal of criticism for his professional judgement too.

College of Arms officials compiled records of grants which they believed Dethick should not have made and Shakespeare is included in the examples given. These manuscripts are full of snide allusions to the sort of ‘mean persons’ who’d been undeservedly elevated to the gentry, such as one Molesworth, a ‘seller of stockings’. Two drawings of Shakespeare’s arms are annotated with the words ‘Shakespeare the player’, denoting that William’s occupation was clearly a point of contention for the heralds who opposed Dethick. Acting, after all, was not an upper class profession and was considered somewhat on the seedy side (all that cross-dressing and travelling the country, sleeping who knew where!), even if you were patronised by aristocrats or royalty. The other reason for criticising the Shakespeare grant was due to the similarity of the black and gold arms with those of Lard Mauley. Dethick defended the grant on both grounds and emphasised the good standing of John Shakespeare who had been a Justice of the Peace and had married into the prestigious Arden family. While we don’t know for sure whether Shakespeare was aware of the controversy, the existence of angry letters from other individuals whose arms were questioned suggests that it’s likely he would have known and complained about the situation.

Ralph Brooke's complaint against coats and crests granted by William Dethick including the arms granted to 'Shakespeare the player', Folger Shakespeare Library V.a.350.   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

You can see the complaint against Shakespeare (on loan from the Folger Shakespeare Library) and Dethick’s response (on loan from the College of Arms) on display in Shakespeare in Ten Acts until the 6^th of September. To see more manuscripts relating to Heather Wolfe’s discoveries, including those held in the British Library, go to the Shakespeare Documented website.

by David Fitzpatrick, Content Specialist, Archivist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Shakespeare is almost universally respected among those writers who have followed him into the literary canon. However, as a recent European Studies blog post reminded readers, Tolstoy was one notable exception.

Towards the end of his life Tolstoy wrote an extremely harsh essay on Shakespeare entitled Shakespeare and the Drama, which was first published in English in 1907, in Tolstoy on Shakespeare, a small volume which, in addition to Tolstoy’s essay, includes Shakespeare and the Working Classes, an essay by Ernest Howard Crosby, author, fellow Georgist and friend of Tolstoy, as well as a letter from George Bernard Shaw to Tolstoy’s translator, which is somewhat more subdued in its criticism of the Bard.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy shoeless, 1901 by Ilya Repin (1844-1940)

In Shakespeare and the Drama, Tolstoy writes that his various attempts to read Shakespeare’s plays – in Russian, English and German – invariably produced feelings of ‘repulsion, weariness and bewilderment’. Using King Lear as his example (the main body of the essay is a scene-by-scene criticism of the tragedy), Tolstoy argues that ‘[i]n Shakespeare everything is exaggerated: the actions are exaggerated, so are their consequences, the speeches of the characters are exaggerated, and therefore at every step the possibility of artistic impression is interfered with.’

At this stage of his life Tolstoy was a committed Christian anarchist, and many of his objections to Shakespeare’s universal popularity appear to derive from perceived moral shortcomings, both in Shakespeare’s works and in the works of those who admired him. In his essay Tolstoy suggests that the fundamental reason for Shakespeare’s fame, both in Shakespeare’s time and in Tolstoy’s, was that Shakespeare’s dramas ‘corresponded to the irreligious and immoral frame of mind of the upper classes of his time and ours’. In Tolstoy’s view, over the course of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the exaggerated praise of Shakespeare’s dramas, sustained by an ‘unreasoning state of hypnotism’, allowed for the development of ‘a low, trivial understanding of the drama’, which resulted in the dramas of Tolstoy’s time (his own included, Tolstoy adds) being devoid of any spiritual substance.

George Orwell, 1933

Some forty years later, an essay by George Orwell entitled Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool examined Shakespeare and the Drama and discussed the possible reasons behind Tolstoy’s hatred of Shakespeare. In his essay Orwell highlights the weaknesses in Tolstoy’s arguments (for instance, he refutes Tolstoy’s claim that no motive is given for King Lear’s abdication), and suggests that Tolstoy may have attacked King Lear in particular because its plot bore some resemblance to his own life (Tolstoy, like Lear, renounced his title and estate in old age). As Orwell points out, although Tolstoy could not have foreseen it, even the ending of his own life (he died in a small village railway station, after fleeing his family home in the middle of the night) can be seen as a kind of ‘phantom reminiscence’ of Lear.

The family circle at Yasnaya Polyana, circa 1905

In Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool, Orwell regards Shakespeare’s works as having a predominantly humanist attitude, and suggests that this may be the main reason why the deeply religious Tolstoy could not appreciate them, nor understand why anyone else could. Moreover, Orwell argues that Tolstoy’s essay hardly deals with Shakespeare as a poet, and so fails to grasp the real reason for his enduring popularity (‘[h]is main hold on us is through language’).

In defence of Shakespeare, Orwell concludes that Tolstoy’s arguments are ultimately unanswerable since ‘[t]here is no argument by which one can defend a poem… [i]t defends itself by surviving, or it is indefensible.’ By this measure of literary merit Orwell finds Shakespeare, in answer to Tolstoy’s charges, to be ‘not guilty’.

A first edition of Tolstoy on Shakespeare is on display in the British Library’s exhibition, Shakespeare in Ten Acts, which runs until 6 September 2016.

 

by Zoë Stansell, Reference Specialist

Laurence Olivier was one of the great Shakespearean actors of the 20^th century, who enthralled theatre audiences with his magnificent performances of Shakespeare’s leading men. He brought Shakespeare to the screen with his films of Hamlet, Richard III and Henry V, which he wrote, directed and starred in. These films can still be enjoyed by those who never had a chance to see him on stage. We can discover fascinating insights into Olivier’s Shakespeare productions by examining his own annotated scripts. We can also view correspondence, photos, and even fan mail, relating to his Shakespeare plays.

These can be found in the Olivier Archive, which the BL purchased from the Olivier family in 1999. It is a vast archive, containing nearly 1000 files. The BL reference numbers for the whole archive are Add MS 79766-80750.

Anyone with a valid BL reader pass can view items from the archive in the BL Manuscripts Reading Room. Please see this link for the BL Archives & Manuscripts Catalogue, if you want to search it yourself: http://searcharchives.bl.uk/ .

Olivier was involved in so many Shakespeare plays it was necessary to pick one as an example. Macbeth seems a good choice because Olivier’s enthusiasm for the role, in which he excelled, means there are plenty of Macbeth-related items in the archive. Also, it’s familiar to many of us who studied it at school! Olivier appeared in the title role at the Old Vic in 1937. Macbeth is traditionally associated with bad luck and this production was no exception. According to the Old Vic website, manager Lilian Baylis died on the day of the dress rehearsal; Olivier narrowly avoided a falling stage weight; and the director and lead actress were in a car accident. To cap it all Lilian’s portrait fell off the wall!

There was an early TV broadcast by the BBC of scenes from this adaptation. It is described on this website: http://bufvc.ac.uk/shakespeare/index.php/title/av71012 . A file in the archive, Add MS 79975, contains ‘correspondence, mostly fan mail sent to Olivier, for his Old Vic performances of Henry V, Hamlet, and Macbeth: 1936-1938’.

Having spent an entertaining hour searching the file for a memorable fan letter about his Macbeth performance, I was thrilled (and appalled at the same time) to read an eight page critical analysis from, “a much older man who has followed your career with interest & sometimes enthusiasm”. According to the writer of the letter, Shakespeare himself would not have performed the role in this manner!

Apparently, Olivier’s reading fluctuates “between Richard III, Shylock (especially in make-up) & Lear”, his dagger scene “kills the ascending tension stone dead”, he shouts after the murder, and ruins the “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” speech by his stage movements.

More comments follow about Olivier’s “fatal” makeup and “raucous” voice and the letter concludes “that these criticisms are offered in the genuine, though possibly presumptuous, desire to serve”.

Who wouldn’t wish to be a fly on the wall when Olivier finished reading this letter? I wonder if he took on board these pointers and improved his subsequent performances! Alas, there is no evidence that he replied.

The file contains letters from other fans expressing more traditional admiration. There is also a letter from Lilian Baylis, dated 19/9/36, thanking him for his gift of “cyclorama”. If anyone is unfamiliar with the word “cyclorama” (I was), the OED entry says it is:  “Theatr. A large backcloth or wall, freq. curved, at the back of a stage, used esp. to represent the sky”.

Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh performed together as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford, in 1955.

BL Add MS 80731. Photos of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, in the 1955 Stratford production of Macbeth.

Vivien Leigh’s costume from this production is displayed in the Shakespeare in Ten Acts exhibition at the British Library, which runs until 6th September 2016. Here is the link for details of the exhibition: http://www.bl.uk/events/shakespeare-in-ten-acts

Critics such as Kenneth Tynan raved about Olivier’s Macbeth but were less impressed with Vivien Leigh’s Lady Macbeth. Tynan didn’t think much of any of her performances at this time, but apparently changed his mind in later life. The following files relate to this particular production: Add MS 80299 Correspondence and papers relating to Titus Andronicus, Macbeth, and Twelfth Night. Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; 1954-1958; Add MS 80682 Cuttings relating to Plays at Stratford, and elsewhere; 1954-1957: Macbeth; Twelfth Night; Titus Andronicus; The Deep Blue Sea; The Entertainer; Add MS 80731 Photograph Album of Olivier and Vivien Leigh in the Stratford productions of Titus Andronicus and Macbeth. Some of these photos are currently on loan to the Library of Birmingham for their Shakespeare exhibition, which runs until 3^rd September 2016. Here are details of the exhibition: http://www.libraryofbirmingham.com/event/Events/ourshakespeare.

Imagine how fabulous a film, with Laurence Olivier as Macbeth and Vivien Leigh as Lady Macbeth, would have been! Olivier put a huge effort into planning a film version of Macbeth but, unfortunately, lack of funding prevented it. The archive holds nine folders (Add MS 80508-80516) of papers relating to Olivier’s unsuccessful attempt to make the film, including set designs, photographs of potential locations and production budgets. There are also 13 drafts of screenplays (Add MS 80534-80546).
 

BL Add MS 80537. Unbound sheets from one of the 13 draft screenplays of Macbeth, with extensive annotations in ballpoint pen by Olivier. These pages show the scene where Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches.

The BL holds the archives of many other 20^th century theatre greats, who were contemporaries, friends and colleagues of Laurence Olivier. These include: John Gielgud (Add MS 81306-81590) Alec Guinness (Add MS 89015) Kenneth Tynan (Add MS 87715-88472) All of the above were involved in various Shakespeare productions, including Macbeth, whether it be as actor, director or writer. I’ll save their archives for next time! 
 

If you’re planning to visit the BL Shakespeare exhibition, you might like to enhance your experience with a talk from a reference expert about Shakespeare-related items in the BL’s vast collections (not all of which could be included in the exhibition). See this link for details: http://www.bl.uk/events/shakespeare-revealed-into-the-collections

 

 

 

Christine Tacq’s latest artist’s book Printess & the p is a reimagining of the timeless Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about a young woman who proves her nobility to her suitor prince, by detecting a pea through twenty feather mattresses. Only a princess would be so sensitive to be awakened by a pea. In this version, it is a woman printer, or ‘printess’, who is the person of discernment.

The first thing that is striking about Tacq’s latest work is the interspersed monotone plates sit in sharp contrast to the vibrant rich imagery of the colour spreads illustrating the narrative. This contrast is beautifully underpinned by using different paper. The colour reliefs are printed on Zerkall paper, while, intaglio collagraphs are on Fabriano paper. By cleverly changing the medium it reinforces the initial contrast at the physical as well as on a visual level.

The theme of contrast extends to the depictions. The seven richly coloured double-page spreads juxtaposed with the far more vulnerable black and white which offers an intimate glimpse into an inner darker world. Some of these prints spill out from the confines of the frame with hard edged intaglio  printing as if attempting to burst out from the page and ape the freedom a vibrancy depicted in the colour plates.   

Tacq’s skill as a book artist are illustrated in the way this volume unravels and draws in a complex range of themes and concepts, techniques; - and then presents them in such an appealing way. Her use of Optima for the text balances with the rich relief collagraphs

The Printess &the p was published in July 2014, it is a first edition of twenty five copies. The volume was printed by p’s &q’s Press, Thame in Oxfordshire and bound at the Fine Book Bindery.  

The covers are bound in hand-printed linen designed with relief-blocks and comes in a linen slipcase.

The images are created using the collagraphy technique in which the plate is constructed of adhered elements and inked with a roller or brush to produce in both relief and intaglio, and an embossed impression can be obtained by printing the plate dry without inking.

The way the imagery and the narrative intertwine to create this volume weighted with powerful subtexts which engage with concepts of feminism and identity. In some respects it offers a self-portrait of a printer.  

On returning the volume to its slipcase one evening after working with it I noticed a small piece of paper squashed in to the back of the slip case. On retrieving and unfolding it, it read:

“18 Excellent Copy, British Library? Excellent”

Because of the way the creases appear it was possibly placed on the spine as part of the quality assurance process. Nevertheless, to come across such a note adds to an authenticity of the artistic process and speaks to the huge range of skills and processes it takes to create a tome of such outstanding quality.

 

The Library’s copy of the Printess &the p will be accessible at British Library shelfmark RF.2016.b.35. in the near future.

Images reproduced with the kind permission of Christine Tacq.

Blog by Jerry Jenkins, Curator, Emerging Media, Contemporary British Published Collections

by Greg Buzwell, Curator of Shakespeare in Ten Acts

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream lends itself to spectacular visual excess. After all, if you can’t go over the top with a comedy set in a magical moonlit-woodland and populated by mischievous fairies then when can you? Many Victorian productions of the play concentrated almost exclusively on spectacle, cutting Shakespeare’s text and adding hosts of Amazons and allegorical processions celebrating the triumphs of Theseus, including his victory over the Minotaur. Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s production of the play in 1900 even went so far in its efforts to heighten the air of woodland magic as to include live rabbits hopping across the stage.

An extract from an 1847 playbill for A Midsummer Night’s Dream Playbills Vol 262, item 261

Later, in the 20^th century, film adaptations of the play appeared. A 1935 Hollywood film of Dream directed by Max Reinhardt and starring James Cagney as Bottom included dozens of extra fairies and a Satanic-looking Oberon on horseback accompanied by a troop of bat-winged henchmen. The set included sixty-seven truckloads of trees and shrubs (including a transplanted redwood tree) and covered over sixty-six thousand square feet. Blending in with this jungle-like excess Mickey Rooney, according to one observer at least, played Puck as though he were ‘the son of Tarzan’. The spectacular dance scenes featuring Titania’s attendants were choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska, formerly of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. For Hollywood, if A Midsummer Night’s Dream was worth doing, it was worth overdoing.

A play not noted for its restraint: a scene from the spectacular 1935 Hollywood adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Warner Bros / The Kobal Collection

In 1914, attempting something different, the theatre director Harley Granville Barker staged the play at the Savoy Theatre in a fashion that eschewed extravagance in favour of suggestion and symbolism. When the production came to Manhattan in 1915 Barker explained his challenge to realism and visual excess by observing: ‘What is really needed is a great white box. That’s what our theatre really is’. The world may not have been ready for such an interpretation in 1915, but in 1970 ‘a great white box’ is exactly what it got.

Poster for the RSC’s 1970 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featuring Sally Jacobs’s famous white-box set design. Courtesy of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The director Peter Brook probably knew nothing of Barker’s comment, but Brook effectively restated Barker’s challenge to illusionistic theatre a half century later. Brook, along with his designer Sally Jacobs, devised a white box setting for their 1970 production of the play in Stratford-upon-Avon. Large metal coils represented the woodland; a spinning plate on an acrylic rod became the flower containing the magic potion Puck fetches for Oberon; Puck entered the stage on stilts while Oberon descended to the stage on a trapeze. Circus tricks replaced the fairy magic. The intention was to move the play away from realism altogether and into the heightened realm of metaphor. Originally black drapes had hung behind the white box stage design but during the Paris leg of the world tour Brook removed them. Suddenly everything could be seen, including the tower-like structures from which the cables supporting the trapezes were fixed. The actors playing the fairies could be observed on the catwalk that ran around the top of the set, watching the action during the scenes in which they were not required. The creation of artifice and illusion was no longer of paramount importance.

The small cast was also at odds with traditional productions. Brook liked the dream-like associations of doubling given by many of the actors playing dual roles, recognizing that a small ensemble of performers would not only enhance the quality of actor involvement but also heighten the sense of dream-like theatrical metaphor. The costumes were far removed from the usual elaborate designs, rich fabrics and gossamer threads. Puck, played by John Kane, wore a yellow jump suit and a blue skull cap inspired by the costumes Brook and Jacobs had seen Chinese acrobats wearing in Paris. The young lovers meanwhile, the men in their tie-dyed shirts and the women in long white dresses, brought a touch of the ‘here and now’ to the production. The first staging of the play in Stratford took place in August 1970, not long after the 1967 summer of love and the student riots in Paris the following year. A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be seen as many things, but on one level it is a drama about youthful rebellion - perfect for the late-1960s zeitgeist of sexual freedom and the desire to escape stale orthodoxy.

 

Alan Howard as Oberon, Sara Kestelman as Titania and John Kane as Puck in Peter Brook’s 1970 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo by Reg Wilson © RSC.

Reviews of Brook’s Dream, as it became known, were largely positive. The reviewer in the Sunday Times wrote: ‘more than refreshing, magnificent, the sort of thing one sees only once in a lifetime, and then only from a man of genius’. Inevitably there were a few dissenting voices – the New Statesman commented that Brook had ‘remoulded’ the play ‘with the help of Billy Smart, Walt Disney, J. G. Ballard and … his own sleeping, hallucinating self’ (although that in itself sounds utterly amazing). Perhaps above all else the production showed that it was possible to put a completely new spin on Shakespeare, transforming a play with a tradition of performance stretching back over 350 years into something new, strange, challenging, inventive and wonderful.

Peter Brook’s 1970 staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the productions explored in detail in Shakespeare in Ten Acts. Peter Brook will be giving a talk entitled ‘The Esoteric and the Profane in Shakespeare’ at the British Library on the afternoon of Wednesday 15^th June and there will be a panel discussion about the 1970 production of Dream, featuring Peter Brook, Sir Ben Kingsley (who played Demetrius) and Frances de la Tour (who played Helena) later that evening.

by Melissa Addey, 2016 Writer in Residence at the British Library, funded by the Leverhulme Trust

As a writer of historical fiction, my favourite item at the British Library so far has been a letter in the Treasures of the British Library permanent exhibition. It’s a dark and shadowy space, with delicate lighting placed here and there so that you can make out the precious items on display.

The letter is from both Anne Boleyn and Henry the 8^th, to Cardinal Wolsey. On a single page, Anne begins the letter, asking about the progress of the desired annulment of Henry’s first marriage to Katherine of Aragon. The second half of the page is from Henry. “The wrytter of thys letter wolde nott cease tyll she (had caused me likewise) to sett to my hand; desiring yow, thowght it be short, to (take it in good part)”. In other words, Anne has nagged him to complete the letter and add his own nudge to the Cardinal.

It’s special for a number of reasons. To actually see the item is to know that these two people, so famous in our history, both held this page in their hands. It has their handwriting on it, such an intimate thing about a person, so peculiarly theirs.

Handwriting is something we are losing: I used to know exactly what my friends’ and family members’ handwriting looked like. I now have friends whose handwriting I don’t believe I’ve ever seen. The letter has their tone of voice. Henry’s reference to Anne nagging is really quite funny. It tells you something about their relationship at the time and makes you wonder how many of these letters were sent, gradually increasing from jocular confidence to frustrated rage. The letter is dated August 1528, quite early on in Henry’s attempt to marry Anne, something that didn’t happen for another five years. Seeing something like this is to reach back and touch history, to see people as human rather than legend. 

Detail from Henry VII’s Psalter, Royal MS 2 A XVI f3r, showing Henry VII.

When researching for a historical novel, it’s these items you’re desperately searching for. Not the big dates and official accounts, the official court robes and formal proclamations, although you have to have those as your backdrop. It’s the tone of voice and the scribbled asides, the letters and diaries, children’s toys and defamatory handbills, hearing the crack in someone’s voice. These are what let us touch history.  Because of my residency I’ve been spending a lot of time at the British Library and these up-close brushes with history are endlessly fascinating.

Currently the British Library’s Literary and Creative Archives and Manuscripts team are working on trying to acquire complete archives, such as diaries, manuscripts and collections of people like Alec Guinness (one of his letters to Evelyn Waugh includes the great line: “Graham’s last play seemed BONKERS to me…”), Hanif Kureishi (see some of the Kureishi Archive on our online learning resource Discovering Literature: 20th Century) and Kenneth Williams.

A page from the diaries of Kenneth Williams

Seeing these items, reading through them, looking at the notations or signatures, the rants or the ponderings, is like sitting next to that person and watching them be themselves. Not a front put on for others but their own selves, the people they are underneath.               

 

Laurence Olivier's shooting script for Henry V 1943 British Library Photo by Clare Kendall

In the current Shakespeare in Ten Acts exhibition at the British Library I stood with earphones on and quickly pushed buttons, hearing actors from Laurence Olivier to Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant say “To be or not to be’. I didn’t listen to the whole speech, just that one line and even in that line, with over ten actors, there was such a variety of choice and meaning to just six words. It made you think about the role and the person portraying Hamlet, the decisions they must have made in rehearsals, their own understanding of the text. It was a strange and intimate auditory experience and more personal than you would expect. As is a Christmas greeting message from the Beatles to their fan club: extraordinarily unpolished by today’s standards but unmistakably them.

Touching history should not be a smooth and polished affair. It should be rough and dirty. It should leave you with your fingers bleeding, your eyes open wide and a gasp or a giggle in your mouth. I’m off to trawl through the archives again.