Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer?

"Belike then my appetite was not princely got, for, by my

troth, I do now remember the poor creature small beer."

Shakespeare and beer are two of my most pleasurable passions. And as Hamlet says, "Oh, ’tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet." Fortunately for me, the Bard was steeped in the everyday activities and traditions of merry old England, and pub potables was one of the most prominent subjects in many of his plays. As I've come to know from deep research (i.e. personal experience in pubs), imbibing remains an essential and obligatory part of British life. Here in America, beer has enjoyed a renaissance in the last decade. Craft brews are the bee's knees, and I'm just thankful that Florida is proving a haven for such fermented artistry. 

In Shakespeare's day, ale and wine were the few beverages that were safe to consume, and it's safe to say that it wasn't as tasty as that nice IPA or hefeweizen available at an ABC Liquors. Prince Hal's "small beer" was likely a watery ale of low alcohol percentage, just enough to kill the bugs that would be in well water. It was generally made with the second or third runnings of a stronger beer's mash, such as that of a barleywine (oh boy, now THAT stuff will put hair on your chest). 

Now Falstaff's poison of choice was "sack," which is cousin to the small beer in the quality department. The sack he had access to was low-grade wine that was relatively infection-free, but tasted questionable enough that one would need to add flavor enhancements. Sir John famously says in 1 Henry IV, "If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked." Sack was a fortified wine, like a sherry, and was already very sweet, so imagine how indulgent sack and sugar must've been. In The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Falstaff demands, "Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in't." This request hints at the origin of "toasting" with wine: the Romans would add to their pitchers some burnt toast, whose charcoal would reduce the acidity and unpalatable flavours of slightly off vino they were used to drinking. 

Now I'm craving something far more tasty and refined to pour into my pint glasses I recently picked up at the Guinness brewery, so I'll let you go with these classic quotations. SLÁINTE/CHEERS!

“Come, come; good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well us’d…”

Iago, “Othello,” Act II, Sc. III

“Would I were in an alehouse in London, I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.”

Boy, “King Henry V,” Act III, Sc. II

“We’ll teach you to drink deep, ere you depart.”

Hamlet, “Hamlet,” Act I, Sc.II

“Come, thou monarch of the wine,

Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!

In thy fats our cares be drow’d,

With thy grapes our hairs be crown’d!

Cup us till the world go round,

Cup us till the world go round!”

Enobarbus, “Antony & Cleopatra,” Act II, Sc. VII

“Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer?”

Prince Hal, “King Henry IV, part Two,” Act II, Sc. II

“… and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things… 
nose-painting, sleep, and urine.
Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes 
the desire, but it takes away the performance." 

Porter, “Macbeth,” Act II, Sc. III

“With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls

Than our priest-like fasts…”

Menenius, “Coriolanus,” Act V, Sc. I

“For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.”

Autolycus, “The Winter’s Tale,” Act IV, Sc. III

“Drink a good hearty draught, it breeds good blood, man.”

Arcite, “The Two Noble Kinsmen,” Act III, Sc. III

But if you mouth it: Notes on pronunciation

Forsooth.

I'm frequently entertained by tumblr. Sometimes, the posts surprise me with how insightful and clever they can be, and they always prove that Facebook and Pinterest will always be inferior due to their lack of GIFs. But there's one that shows up every so often regarding British accents. It claimed that Americans never stopped having a "British" accent, and that the current accent we regard as "British" is some over-poshified version of English developed over the centuries and that Shakespeare sounds "better" in an American (read: original British) accent.

Hold your diphthongs, there, glossophile. If American is the closest to Shakespeare's tongue, then why don't many of the rhymes in his sonnets work? Granted, even with a received pronunciation (RP) English accent, not all the rhymes work either, but this just proves there's 400 years of complex sociolinguistic history involved.

I recently came upon this short NPR story about Shakespeare's Accent. It features examples from the British Library's sound recording collection of Shakespeare's most famous scenes, as read by actors and actresses using an accent that is as close to the original as feasibly possible (90-95% accuracy). It results in a phonemic Rorschach test. It will sound familiar to almost any English speaker who hears it. It's not strictly any specific accent you'll ever hear, but if you have a sensitive ear, you'll recognize that it contains flecks of several regional British accents that contributed to what we think of as American (or even Australian) today.

I always challenge myself to guess where British actors come from just by listening to them. Then I check the IMDb and see how close I came. I once guessed that Richard Armitage came from somewhere close to Sheffield (South Yorkshire), because his vocals reminded me of Sean Bean. Richard's from Leicester after all, but I like to think that guessing within a two-county radius isn't bad for a non-native, non-linguistics graduate.

The truth is, Shakespeare sounds mellifluous, full stop. It's challenging to practice recitations in different accents. It serves to color the speech and give it a different emphasis. I'm no actress, but I have friends who are. (We've all had a go at pretending to be foreigners while we visit Disney parks as we were growing up. Orlando is the most anonymous place in Florida, where people come from all over the world, and fakers aren't likely to be given a second glance.)

If you're of the accent-loving clan, I recommend trying it yourself. Recite Hamlet in Scottish, or MacBeth in Irish. Or try Iago as a Southern belle. I dare you not to have fun.

For a quart of ale is a dish for a king

Sing a song of bollocks!

It's not every play that is honoured with having one of its quotes printed on one of those neon Tyvek wristbands at a beer festival, but The Winter's Tale recently joined those very exclusive ranks. Last year, I attended the first annual Florida Brewers Guild Beer Fest in Ybor City, and I enjoyed it so much that I went again last weekend. Being the self-taught Shakespeare/Beer Geek I am, I was doubly tickled by the fest's chosen quote of the day: "For a quart of ale is a meal for a king."

Of course, I've only seen it quoted as "dish"(at least the Folio version printed it that way) and not "meal," but hey, it's the thought that counts. I recognized it right away as a line from Autolycus' semi-bawdy song because I had already memorized the entire thing. It's a merry and cheeky tune that serves as his grand entrance into the play. He's a rogue and a conman, and so proud of it that he belts out his intentions as soon as he steps in front of the audience. Despite his disreputable occupation, Autolycus magically manages to be empathetic enough in his three whole scenes because he accidentally helps reveal the true identity of Perdita--the long lost daughter of the king, abandoned when she was a baby, raised by a shepherd in the country. 

This song is basically Autolycus' version of "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music, outlining how he loves to pilfer laundry hanging on shrubbery, listen to birds sing as he beds whores, wander aimlessly through the night, and of course, drink copious amounts of ale. 

The Winter's Tale, Act IV, Sc. III
Autolycus: When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.
The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!
Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;
For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.
The lark, that tirra-lyra chants,
With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,
Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay...
...But shall I go mourn for that, my dear?
The pale moon shines by night:
And when I wander here and there,
I then do most go right.
If tinkers may have leave to live,
And bear the sow-skin budget,
Then my account I well may, give,
And in the stocks avouch it. 

Now is the winter of our discontent

Dali's tribute to Sir Laurence of Olivier's Richard III

I saw this play my first year of college as a requirement of a fun summer session History of Theatre class at UF. The guy who played Richard was one of the TAs in the class, and was quite remarkable. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, and all the essential scenes (the wooing of Anne, the murder of Clarence, the ghosts on the field of battle) stuck out even though, at the time, I had no background information about the play whatsoever.

The first 41 lines of Richard III are possibly the most famous first 41 lines in the history of drama. I wasn't even thinking of that when I stared at the seemingly endless mass of words before me. It wasn't a terribly difficult decision to make--it is a glorious statement of a soliloquy and in a play full of memorable moments ("A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"), it still stands out as the epitome of a (flawed and twisted) heart unpacked with words.

INTIMIDATION ALERT!

Keep calm and carry on, Caity. Time to break out some technique: tap into the code of the prose, aka, iambic pentameter. By identifying the underlying rhythm of each line, I found the words stuck in my brain like song lyrics, and the task became much easier.

now IS the WINter OF our DISconTENT
made GLORious SUMmer BY this SON of YORK

Now we're cooking with lime.

Following the meter, this modern reader often tripped on syllables ("glorious" is three syllables, no?) that were probably not there 400 years ago. Therefore, something like "glorious" would be crammed into "GLOR-yus" and the difference between "supposed" and "suppos'd" became glaringly obvious after a while. I love English. It's so achingly anal sometimes.

So I tackled this bugger, and though it was a mother of a bastard while I was wrestling with it, it's now one of my favorite ones to recite aloud. Its potential for scene chewing is evident in the words, and for an untrained solo actress like me, it makes the speech that much easier to remember.

Richard III, Act I, Sc. I

Gloucester: Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreathes,
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes...