Blank Paper and Luxurious Textiles

Susan Frye’s excellent work, Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England examines the many ways in which early modern women’s work in text and textiles re-defined femininity. In this passage she examines the ways in which Giacomo and Innogen speak of different material objects to symbolize Innogen and her body in Cymbeline.

“Innogen’s own language picks up on the extent to which textiles have become metonymic of her body when Pisanio shows her the letter in which Posthumus orders her murdered for her infidelity. But Innogen envisions herself as a completely worked garment rather than the blank sheet of chastity on which a man might write. Before she begs Pisanio to carry out her husband’s order, she castigates herself for having lost Posthumus’s faith in her, calling herself  “a garment out of fashion,” which, too “rich” to be translated into a wall hanging, must be reduced to rags: “And, for I am richer than to hang by th’ walls,/ I must be ripp’d:--to pieces with me!” (3.4.50-53). As a garment too elaborately made--too complete in its own identity to be cut up and translated into a wall hanging--Innogen must be ritually destroyed, ripped to pieces. To Giacomo, she may be the blank white of the sheet, but Innogen sees herself in terms of luxurious, colorful textiles, even as she imagines herself as that rich cloth ripped to pieces” (186).

In this project we’re looking at ways of re-defining the “blank page” of femininity, and it is exciting to see that redefinition happening as the texts are being written. What other characters use textiles as metaphors for themselves? Or for other characters? And what does it say about them?

Notes from the Director: All's Well, Fairytales, and Gender

I think, in the midst of the lovely work Clara has done and continues to do, it is time that I chime in about my end of this project. When Clara first had the idea for a pop-up book production, I spent days considering what play would suit the medium—what play would be right for such a fairytale aesthetic.

Eventually, I settled on All’s Well That Ends Well. For me, pop-up books conjure images of story time, of the fairytales I spent my childhood immersed in. My love for these stories has resurfaced in recent years when I discovered the delights of The Decameron and was fortunate enough to stumble across Andrew Lang’s beautifully-illustrated series of books, each named for a different colored fairy.

And I see All’s Well as just such a fairytale—but, somewhat unusually, with a female protagonist. So many fairytales feature a male hero who undergoes a series of trials only to be rewarded with a beautiful princess to marry. In this case, however, the hero is a woman—a woman pursuing a lover herself. And this shift is where some of the trouble seems to begin.

I was in a class this morning where the problem of the All’s Well’s ending came up in a review of a production of the play. The reviewer, Bernice Kliman, described the problem of the play in the form of a question: “what on earth does Helena—a fine woman, as Shakespeare’s text insists—admired by all right-thinking characters, see in that callow youth, Bertram?” Our professor insisted that the real problem was why everyone was so willing to attack Bertram for refusing to marry a woman he didn’t love. And I think this criticism is fair—Bertram does not begin this play as a villain; he cannot help that he does not love Helena. But in fairytales, this never seems to be a problem. The princess is simply never asked—no one cares whether she loves or does not love the hero. So why do we care so much if Bertram does? Why does the play make a problem of this?

And it is this that excites me about All’s Well—the way the questions of gender and marriage coincide without easy solution. The way the play uses and challenges the structures of fairytales. With the beautiful work Clara has done, considering paper in its early modern relationship with gender and modern relationship with digital media, I am excited to begin exploring this play in production.

Images by H. J. Ford

Some Academics

When beginning this blog I mentioned that my work for this blog is related to my work as a MFA candidate at Mary Baldwin College. So far this blog has been mostly curiosities, items to think about or look at. This past week The American Shakespeare Center hosted the Blackfriars Conference in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, (for more information about this conference see the ASC's description or for more information about the specific contents of the different paper sessions you can read all about them as they were liveblogged by the education department). With so many kindled ideas in one space, the sparks fly and everyone catches the academic fire. In response to the work of many of the scholars at this conference I put together a plan for the directed inquiry Linden and I will work on this spring, and thought I would share it here. The work planned out will clearly morph with the needs of the semester, but here is a plan of what you might expect to see on this blog over the upcoming months.

Objective for this Directed Inquiry:
To research and construct all elements of design for our production of All’s Well that Ends Well, paying particular attention to the construction of the set, costumes and props as signifiers creating meaning along with the words and bodies of the actors.

Things we need to accomplish in this DI:

Design and make the set
--Research the images/sketch out what we want to make
--Research how to make it
----Research the construction of popups
----Research the construction of large pop-ups

Design and make the costumes
--Find out what we have to work with
--Decide what else we need to do
----Alter the clothing/sew costumes
----Design and construct all paper pieces of the costumes

Design and make the props
--Figure out what they are
--Design and make all the props

Design the poster
Design the programs

Other things:
Reading the play-searching for images/props
Word searches: paper, letter, book
Researching Folklore
Researching folklore and Shakespeare
Researching fairytale imagery

Possible schedule:

Week one:
Re-read the play for images and props. Do word searches in the play. Go to the public library read fairytales, look at pop-up books-- draw pictures of ideas and things we like best. Write blog post.

Week two:
Research folklore and Shakespeare. Write blog post.

Week three:
Research pop-up construction. Design and construct a possibility of set design. Write blog post.

Week four:
Make sure we have all the cast’s measurements. Brainstorm about costumes, determine what have already with wits and with old laundry, etc. Sketch some ideas. Write blog post.

Week five:
Hit up all the thrift stores, procure patterns for any costumes we plan on building from scratch and go to Valley fabrics to get some materials. Write blog post.

Week six:
Make a plan for how the costumes are going to be constructed, who is helping, which tasks to tackle first, etc. Fill in the next three weeks with very specific details of task delegation. Write blog post.

Week seven:
Work costumes. Write blog post.

Week eight:
Work costumes. Write blog post.

Week nine:
Work costumes. Write blog post.

Week ten:
Research all the props and determine what they are and will need to be. Make a plan for all the props, and get started on them. Write blog post.

Week eleven:
Complete the rest of the props. Write blog post.

Week twelve:
Design the poster and program. Research the construction of extra large pop-ups. Write blog post.

Week thirteen:
Construct the pop-up set. Write blog post.

Week fourteen:
Construct the pop-up set. Write blog post.