Updates & more winter beauty

First, the updates.

Reading:

1. I finished Rodney Bolt’s History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe, in which Bolt offers an alternative look at the lives and works of Marlowe and Shakespeare. In addition to being charming, fresh, and irreverent toward poor W. S., it is a fascinating look at European culture during the Elizabethan age. Not light reading by any means, but well worth the effort.

2. According to my yearly solstice tradition, I read the opening of Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising. This “children’s” fantasy, originally published in the 1970s, begins in England on Midwinter’s Eve, with lots of eerie foreshadowing and tension (a tattered stranger in the woods, diving and raucous rooks, for starters). When the hero, Will Stanton, wakes on Midwinter’s Day (also his eleventh birthday), it is to find the world covered in snow, his family in a deep sleep, and a primeval forest grown right up to his house. Of course there is evil abroad…

I first received Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series of five books as a Christmas gift about eight years ago. Don’t know how I missed these as a kid, but I devoured them as an adult. Great fantasy reading; The Dark Is Rising received a Newbery Honor and The Grey King the coveted Newbery Medal itself.

Writing:

I am happily trucking along in my current work-in-progress (yes—with poems!). I am playing the superstitious “make as few notes as possible” game for now. The theory here is that the story should just flow right out of my subconscious, without the tiresome effort of plotting it all out beforehand (as if I would stick to it anyway). The truth is, I’ve been trying to write this particular story in various incarnations for years, so it should be simply seeping out of my pores.

And now, the promised winter beauty. Here are some photos that I took after the recent ice storm. Now that the sun is rising on this new day, I can see that we’re getting more snow to go on top of the ice.

Marlovian Poetry Friday

As I’ve been reading about Christopher Marlowe and his Elizabethan world, I decided for this Poetry Friday to delve into Dr. Faustus for the first time since my sophomore year in college. Here is the opening soliloquy:

How am I glutted with conceit of this!
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
Resolve me of all ambiguities,
Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I’ll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
I’ll have them read me strange philosophy
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg;
I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;
I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land
And reign sole king of all our provinces;
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge
I’ll make my servile spirits to invent!

Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, Act I, scene i

The source of the play is a German narrative about the scholar and black magician Dr. John Faustus, who barters his soul for the power of knowledge. According to Rodney Bolt’s History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe, Marlowe might have picked up the source book while he traveled in the Low Countries as a spy for Elizabeth’s government in the 1580s.

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-Up is at Wild Rose Reader.

Reading & writing update

Reading:

1. First of all, I had to set aside David Starkey’s Six Wives, because I had maxed out my library renewals. I’ll pick it up again later. I was confusing myself by skimming ahead to the Anne Boleyn chapters anyway.

2. I am nearing the end of Rodney Bolt’s History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe. It gets more charming by the page. Thank goodness, Kit has just escaped an assassination attempt in Deptford and gone underground in Antwerp. It’s a shame that all the plays he’ll write from now on will be attributed to that “upstart crow,” William Shakespeare. But at least the dashing Kit is still alive and more importantly, still producing great literature.

3. I started Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol as a read-aloud with Number-One Daughter a couple of nights ago. Ah, Dickens. Can’t beat him for sheer exuberance of language. Last night, my son joined in listening, though when we stopped, he informed me that the illustrated paperback version he had just read to himself was “better.” Patience, Mom. He’s only nine.

Writing:

1. I still like the idea of using poetry in my current WIP. I have allowed myself to add letters and journal entries for two of the characters. Wimping out? No. But plopping butt in chair and writing a bad love sonnet at 5 a.m. is not as easy as some might think.

Reading update: hodgepodge

I have been living in three different centuries: The 21st, even though I frequently don’t feel like it; the early 16th, while reading David Starkey’s Six Wives and watching the Showtime series The Tudors on DVD; the late 16th, while reading David Riggs’s The World of Christopher Marlowe and Rodney Bolt’s History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe. OK, technically that’s only two centuries, but close enough.

What I am really enjoying, aside from time-travel through the power of literature, is how the texts play against each other, and against the visual drama. For example, I have more insight into what the actors and producers of The Tudors are trying to accomplish, having read the sections of Six Wives that relate to Catherine of Aragon and to Henry VIII’s early years as King of England. One observation is that the drama takes great liberties with the timeframes of history, while yet preserving the essential themes: the lure and practice of power and the lengths to which people will go to gain and preserve it; the human pettiness, neediness, integrity, and strength that can be found in varying degrees in all people, whether kings or commoners. In this regard, what was true for the 16th century remains true for the 21st. For me, this is what makes the show so appealing. (Can’t beat the gorgeous costumes, either!)

[A writerly aside: Is this not what we try to do with fantasy, or any kind of fiction—take liberties with “reality” while preserving the essentials of the human condition?]

I have a similar situation with the Marlowe books. The Riggs book is a straight-up, in-depth history of the Elizabethan age, including the known facts of Marlowe’s life. Bolt, on the other hand, has created a sort of anti-history—melding the scant extant facts of the lives of Marlowe and Shakespeare to present intriguing insights into what we 21st-century folks have left: the plays. So far I have read in both books about Marlowe’s childhood and education. The Riggs book at once reinforces the history of the Bolt book, while providing a firm base for the flight of Bolt’s imagination.

[A parental aside: It appears that the educational system of Elizabethan times was as un-ideal as today’s.]

…you must cast the scholar off,
And learn to court it like a gentleman.
………..
You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute,
And now and then stab, as occasion serves.

Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, Act II, scene i, lines 30–31, 41–42

What to read?

I’m on the brink of finishing Crossing to Paradise by Kevin Crossley-Holland, so naturally on my weekly trip to the public library today, I had to stock up on future reading materials. Just like most people would never want to run out of food staples like milk or bread, so I get nervous when I’m approaching the last sliver of pages in a good book. I want to know where my next meal is coming from.

Truth be told, I have shelves full or at least stacks of books in every room in my house (OK, not the bathrooms). I am not going to starve. There are dozens of these books I have never even read. Many more that I would gladly read again and again. But going to the library is like walking into the grocery store when you’re hungry. And then you see the bakery case.

So what goodies did I bring home? After watching those crafty, power-hungry, and masterful monarchs in the David Starkey DVD series, Monarchy, I decided to continue feeding my Anglophilia. I checked out Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl and David Starkey’s Six Wives, about the queens of Henry VIII. Then, for good measure, I hopped onto the computer and requested History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe, by Rodney Bolt, and The World of Christopher Marlowe, by David Riggs, through interlibrary loan.

Let the feast begin!