Standing over King Arthur's Grave

Procrastinating doesn’t work.  Even when you try to escape doing work for school, it just comes back to haunt you. 

I am currently taking “Myths and Legends of the UK.” It's nothing like what I expected, and for many reasons, it’s certainly lacking.  The class could have been a lot better—I expected us to read myths, compare and contrast them, and then relate them to society and culture, explaining why these particular stories have survived and how they have impacted society.  Instead, we do a lot of summarizing, which is unfortunate, because the class had so much potential. 

Besides reading a Welsh epic and an Irish epic, we mainly focused on two very famous myths: Robin Hood and King Arthur.  I liked Robin Hood (I ended up writing two papers on it!).  I didn’t know much about King Arthur.  I knew a few of the names, and that was it.  Guinevere, Lancelot, Sir Gawain, Sir Galahad, Morgan le Faye, Mordred, Merlin…the list goes on and on.  Not only did we discuss the stories and the themes they bring up—chivalry, heroism, adventure, honor, love, war—but we talked about King Arthur the man.  We looked at the various characterizations and changes he went through in the different versions.  And finally, we explored the idea that King Arthur may have been a real man: a great king who fought off the Romans and helped establish England as its own country with its own rules and its own society.  There are some sources to prove this—accounts of men bearing a similar name, rumors of his tomb, of Camelot, of the Round Table and the Holy Grail. 

All of my other classes went on study trips, but Myths and Legends never got the chance.  That was a little sad, for I love being able to relate theory with the practical, like I did in Dublin for my Irish Literature study trip where I got walk the town that practically worshipped Joyce, Yeats, Shaw, Swift, Wilde, etc.  So I was a little disappointed that we weren’t going to “find Camelot.”

The last weekend before I was set to depart, I decided that I really wanted to do a day trip in southwestern England.  I was worried that I’d spent too much time outside of the place that I’ve called home for four months. So I talked to Su and Emma (ASE staff) and asked for some recommendations.  They pointed me in the direction of Wells and Glastonbury.  I’d heard of them through my guidebook reading, so I decided to go.  Wells was a short stop on the way (just a peek in the Cathedral) to Glastonbury.  Glastonbury was a cute English town, and already, I was glad I came despite the obscenely long bus ride (close to two hours to travel about 35 miles….I am looking forward to American highways!). I first hiked up the Tor, which is basically a giant hill in an otherwise flat region, to get splendid views, and learn about how it used to be a place of execution.

I then headed to the ruined Abbey because it looked neat. I didn’t find out until I was inside that Glastonbury Abbey is the main place Kind Arthur is supposedly buried!   I couldn’t believe that out of all the places I could have gone, I ended up at his tomb.  He was supposedly discovered in simple coffin, buries with his queen, in an old graveyard a few meters from the Abbey in the late 1100s, and was moved to a marble tomb in 1278.  People flocked to the Abbey—because King Arthur was a figure of worship. Everyone knew who he was; he was a hero. 

Unfortunately, during Henry VIII’s attack on the Catholic church, he destroyed many places of worship in the early 1500s.  Sir Dustan, the owner, tried to hold out, but he failed, and the Abbey was burned down.  Everything was lost—including the tomb.

Was it really Arthur and Guinevere? Could the legends have been based on real people? We may never know.  But standing over the “grave” of the king in possible sight of “Avalon,” I realized that it doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter if they were real or fictional or anywhere in between.  It is the legend that matters, the themes, symbols, messages it still sends.  A 1000 years later, people are still reading, studying and making pilgrimages to King Arthur and Guinevere. Loyalty to land, to your partner, to your countrymen—this is still relevant to today’s society.  Men still sing up for war to “honor their country.”  Chivalry, honor and love are still practiced towards others out of respect and admiration and loyalty.  King Arthur is still affecting society a thousand years after he (or at least his character) died.  Isn’t that amazing?

Macbeth: Blood, guts, gore, and wierd...children?

You don't go to Stratford and not see play.  We were scheduled to see two: one by Shakespeare, and one by a contemporary of his.  I was really worried that we were going to see Romeo and Juliet—one of my least favorite plays, and probably the most overdone of any Shakespearean play—so I was excited to hear that we were seeing Macbeth.

I’ve read Macbeth twice; once as a mere high-schooler, and the other, as a university student.  The second time around I picked up one a lot of things that I hadn’t really thought about before, especially relating to the portrayal of the witches and of women.  The witches are always shown a little bit different—from pretty young women, to disgusting hags, from clairvoyant but fairly harmless to aggressive and rather scary.  But they were always adults—and I think always women.

The director of the play went a little overboard with the special affects—he lowers Macbeth from the ceiling on a throne, he has a child run across the stage to scream the “shriek of the owl,” a ladder extends from the floor for Macbeth to climb during his “tomorrow” speech.  But the strangest thing that the director did was he changed the “weird sisters” into “weird children”!   The first appearance of the witches was literally hung (the looked dead) from the ceiling and later lowered.  There were two boys and one girl, not more than ten years old, making prophesies about death and destruction, carrying around creepy dolls (as the severed head, bloody child, etc).  They were creepy, that I can say.  But it didn’t work with the play!  It was a strange interpretation, and I don't think it added anything to the play.

When I read the play for class, there was a huge emphasis on the witches and Ldy Macbeth; Macbeth himself was sort of an afterthought, a villain, a corrupt man in the way that must be overcome.  Yet in this play, it was Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth.  The witches only appeared in two scenes (the famous “double double” scene was removed, as was all the other scenes but the first and last), and even worse, the actors later become Macduff’s murdered children, just to add to the confusion.  The ”evil” witches suddenly become innocent children? It seems as though this sends very mixed message, one that goes against the original play. 

Lady Macbeth, in this version, also seemed somewhat an after thought.  Even before she helps murder the king, she seems insane.  There was no slow progression to insanity—she already seemed insane from the beginning, not that we meet her for long. She is barely in the play before she becomes a murderer; they removed at leaset one opening scene with her in it. Even Macbeth himself—where this director put the emphasis on—seems crazed from the very beginning.  Banquo, a large passionate man with a commanding voice and style, was one of the few instances where it seemed like the original play shined through.

The play itself was decently well done—the set and costumes were all good.  The actors were decent (if somewhat “crazed”), there was blood everywhere (which made it exciting!) and some of the special effects (like water coming down from the ceiling when the king was crowned), where nicely done.  If you did no know the play, it probably would have been fine.  

But for somebody who has studied the play twice before, the changes seemed to really hurt the original play, twisting some of the messages around, like confusing good and evil, as with the witches, or placing emphasis on certain characters and not on others—before she died, Lady Macduff was only in one scene (thten she died and proceeded to follow Maduff around.) Macduff too had no role until the very end; before that he was in the shadows.