Jacobean Drama is a Mirror of Our Times
The cynicism and hypocrisy satirised by the Jacobean playwrights reek of Blair's Britain. Malevolence rules in public life as critics rail at a regime grown rickety. At the centre of government there is inconsistency, intrigue and hypocrisy.
Malevolence rules in public life as critics rail at a regime grown rickety. At the centre of government there is inconsistency, intrigue and hypocrisy. Alliances become provisional and what counts as treason is just a question of chronology. Private vices have become public virtues in a Machiavellian state whose style provokes satire. And so the commentators see and jeer - and the growing crowd of mockers includes exiles who once crouched around the dissembling heart of the governing project.
But there is, as yet, no alternative. Cynicism can only breed still more cynics whose line, on and off the record, now stretches to the last syllable of recorded sound-bitten speech. Perhaps this is the regime's most vicious effect. For its style has infected its critics, who are energised to anger by the spectacle of such a ship of fools. Having discovered that some at the helm can smile and smile and yet be a villain, they excoriate. But, lacking the power to create, they can only expose in scabrous prose, disillusioned speech and angry gesture. As the cynical dogs bark in the night the caravan of power crawls on.
Drama, most gregarious of all the arts, holds a mirror to society. And, since Fortuna's wheel is a pretty constant revolver of human affairs, there are times when age speaks to age right across the centuries. Which is why the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of five plays by William Shakespeare's lesser-known younger contemporaries is now playing to packed audiences at the Gielgud theatre in London. Philip Massinger and John Marston, John Fletcher and George Chapman are liberated from the shadows of Jacobean theatre and spring to startling life showing that what was then is also the way we live now. This is the aesthetic as the political, and the historical as the contemporary.
The Jacobean cultural breakdown at the beginning of the 17th century, like ours at the beginning of the 21st, was drawn to the idea of a golden age only recently departed. Even before the death of Elizabeth I, the idea of an earlier, more heroic Elizabethan age had taken root. There had been a time when England was more outward-looking, more enterprising, better at dealing with foreign dangers - and a cradle for the arts of peace as well as those of war. In much the same way that Britons for half a century now have defined 1939-1945 as the high point of our civilisation. Both left and right have seen in the Churchillian national consensus a reference point by which the subsequent disappointments are to be measured. British bulldog for the right, incipient welfare-statist for the left - Winstonianism was our Elizabethanism right across the board.
The mythology comforts by concealing. The court of the aged first Elizabeth, like that of the second, had its scandals - especially as it ran into the sands of time. And the official version of the second world war misses out on the striking workforce and the often tepid morale. But in both cases it's the idealistic standard, as well as the reality of self-sacrifice, which has mattered and then reproached. And once the idea of a breakdown takes hold it soon becomes set in stone. The dispatching to the Tower of London of the archetypal Elizabethan hero - Walter Raleigh - defined the difference between James I and Elizabeth I.
Mr Blair has yet to jail a critic. And - unlike the stammering Scottish James - New Labour's fluent ersatz Scottish leader is no stranger but an intimate to the British people. And it is perhaps the very worst side of the national psyche that he comforts: its easy way with high sounding moral postures which, nonetheless, make few real demands. It is an act for a time of prosperity, not for one of austerity. And the personality-based nature of the New Labour project now seems as specious and sacrilegious as the cult of Elizabeth the Gloriana: that icon who piled on the make-up as the skin sagged and the teeth fell out.
Basic to the Jacobean breakdown was the idea of a court culture which had run out of time - a culture which was expensive, venal and remote. James had to turn to financial wheezes, like the invention of the baronetcy, in order to raise money. And the "inflation of honours" became one of the great scandals of the early 17th century. Just as the Blairite court shows too easy a way with money accepted from the rich and dodgy in return for the suspicion of favours.
Tax and spend undid James and decapitated his son. If Elizabeth won plaudits for her dealings with parliament it was because she was the Protestant princess, who only wanted money from parliament for genuinely popular wars. But James wanted money not only to finance lavish spectacles, such as the dramatic masques at court, but also to engage in some dubiously continental alliances. Our present court finds itself exposed on two continental fronts, ambiguous to the Euro-east and craven towards the American-west. But complicity in colonial adventurism always carries a domestic consequence. The Portuguese Christians of Fletcher's Island Princess, all braggadocio in their codpieces and crass invasiveness, arouse the Indonesian islanders who fear the loss of their native gods. It is, 400 years before the deed, a twin towers moment.
James and then Charles separated themselves from Westminster politics. It was an experiment which seemed to have everything going for it at the time. To govern "absolutely" was the smartest, chicest thing to do. It was an experiment endorsed by the latest continental philosophers. It was New. In London its best memorial is the Banqueting House in Whitehall - the building out of which Charles I stepped in order to be beheaded in 1649.
Because the satire of these plays eventually found a focus, and the anger one can still intuit in the playhouse turned into mass public opinion, a moral compass was found and parliament gained a voice. And once that happened the fizz was out of the bottle, as well as the blood spilt on the ground. The 1640s saw Britain in the vanguard of a democratic experiment which has never since been repeated here - as ideas of popular democracy, primitive socialism and republicanism were hammered out on the anvil of social revolution.
Jacobean melancholy is a long established and passive stage act. But in these plays there is a more active spirit at work - that of a savage criticism which heralds rebellion. For the tone is utterly different from the timorous conservatism of Shakespeare's politics, that sanctification of the status quo lest anarchy be unloosed. In much the same kind of transitional way, the ubiquitous satire which the government now excites seems unfocused. It cannot speak through a parliamentary opposition. It remains at the moment a question of mood and distaste. There's the suspicion of corruption - and a loss of innocence. It has all the elements of a national movement, something of that "noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep" of which Milton wrote in the Areopagitica in 1644. Mr Blair should rush to the Gielgud theatre for an uncomfortable night out.
Edward III, Eastward Ho!, The Roman Actor, The Island Princess and The Malcontent run in repertoire at the Gielgud theatre, London, until January 25
But there is, as yet, no alternative. Cynicism can only breed still more cynics whose line, on and off the record, now stretches to the last syllable of recorded sound-bitten speech. Perhaps this is the regime's most vicious effect. For its style has infected its critics, who are energised to anger by the spectacle of such a ship of fools. Having discovered that some at the helm can smile and smile and yet be a villain, they excoriate. But, lacking the power to create, they can only expose in scabrous prose, disillusioned speech and angry gesture. As the cynical dogs bark in the night the caravan of power crawls on.
Drama, most gregarious of all the arts, holds a mirror to society. And, since Fortuna's wheel is a pretty constant revolver of human affairs, there are times when age speaks to age right across the centuries. Which is why the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of five plays by William Shakespeare's lesser-known younger contemporaries is now playing to packed audiences at the Gielgud theatre in London. Philip Massinger and John Marston, John Fletcher and George Chapman are liberated from the shadows of Jacobean theatre and spring to startling life showing that what was then is also the way we live now. This is the aesthetic as the political, and the historical as the contemporary.
The Jacobean cultural breakdown at the beginning of the 17th century, like ours at the beginning of the 21st, was drawn to the idea of a golden age only recently departed. Even before the death of Elizabeth I, the idea of an earlier, more heroic Elizabethan age had taken root. There had been a time when England was more outward-looking, more enterprising, better at dealing with foreign dangers - and a cradle for the arts of peace as well as those of war. In much the same way that Britons for half a century now have defined 1939-1945 as the high point of our civilisation. Both left and right have seen in the Churchillian national consensus a reference point by which the subsequent disappointments are to be measured. British bulldog for the right, incipient welfare-statist for the left - Winstonianism was our Elizabethanism right across the board.
The mythology comforts by concealing. The court of the aged first Elizabeth, like that of the second, had its scandals - especially as it ran into the sands of time. And the official version of the second world war misses out on the striking workforce and the often tepid morale. But in both cases it's the idealistic standard, as well as the reality of self-sacrifice, which has mattered and then reproached. And once the idea of a breakdown takes hold it soon becomes set in stone. The dispatching to the Tower of London of the archetypal Elizabethan hero - Walter Raleigh - defined the difference between James I and Elizabeth I.
Mr Blair has yet to jail a critic. And - unlike the stammering Scottish James - New Labour's fluent ersatz Scottish leader is no stranger but an intimate to the British people. And it is perhaps the very worst side of the national psyche that he comforts: its easy way with high sounding moral postures which, nonetheless, make few real demands. It is an act for a time of prosperity, not for one of austerity. And the personality-based nature of the New Labour project now seems as specious and sacrilegious as the cult of Elizabeth the Gloriana: that icon who piled on the make-up as the skin sagged and the teeth fell out.
Basic to the Jacobean breakdown was the idea of a court culture which had run out of time - a culture which was expensive, venal and remote. James had to turn to financial wheezes, like the invention of the baronetcy, in order to raise money. And the "inflation of honours" became one of the great scandals of the early 17th century. Just as the Blairite court shows too easy a way with money accepted from the rich and dodgy in return for the suspicion of favours.
Tax and spend undid James and decapitated his son. If Elizabeth won plaudits for her dealings with parliament it was because she was the Protestant princess, who only wanted money from parliament for genuinely popular wars. But James wanted money not only to finance lavish spectacles, such as the dramatic masques at court, but also to engage in some dubiously continental alliances. Our present court finds itself exposed on two continental fronts, ambiguous to the Euro-east and craven towards the American-west. But complicity in colonial adventurism always carries a domestic consequence. The Portuguese Christians of Fletcher's Island Princess, all braggadocio in their codpieces and crass invasiveness, arouse the Indonesian islanders who fear the loss of their native gods. It is, 400 years before the deed, a twin towers moment.
James and then Charles separated themselves from Westminster politics. It was an experiment which seemed to have everything going for it at the time. To govern "absolutely" was the smartest, chicest thing to do. It was an experiment endorsed by the latest continental philosophers. It was New. In London its best memorial is the Banqueting House in Whitehall - the building out of which Charles I stepped in order to be beheaded in 1649.
Because the satire of these plays eventually found a focus, and the anger one can still intuit in the playhouse turned into mass public opinion, a moral compass was found and parliament gained a voice. And once that happened the fizz was out of the bottle, as well as the blood spilt on the ground. The 1640s saw Britain in the vanguard of a democratic experiment which has never since been repeated here - as ideas of popular democracy, primitive socialism and republicanism were hammered out on the anvil of social revolution.
Jacobean melancholy is a long established and passive stage act. But in these plays there is a more active spirit at work - that of a savage criticism which heralds rebellion. For the tone is utterly different from the timorous conservatism of Shakespeare's politics, that sanctification of the status quo lest anarchy be unloosed. In much the same kind of transitional way, the ubiquitous satire which the government now excites seems unfocused. It cannot speak through a parliamentary opposition. It remains at the moment a question of mood and distaste. There's the suspicion of corruption - and a loss of innocence. It has all the elements of a national movement, something of that "noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep" of which Milton wrote in the Areopagitica in 1644. Mr Blair should rush to the Gielgud theatre for an uncomfortable night out.
Edward III, Eastward Ho!, The Roman Actor, The Island Princess and The Malcontent run in repertoire at the Gielgud theatre, London, until January 25
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