Photo album Day 7!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2yHq7hZZ3VNEJQ9G8
Today marks the end of my course on Women, Theatre, and Imperial London. I stay in London until Monday morning (after moving hotels tomorrow), but our course is officially over. Two of our number have already landed back in the States, and the rest fly out tomorrow. It’s a bittersweet day, but I think everyone is ready for home. I’m nearly there, myself.
I met up with Rachel, Sarah, and Shabana this morning about 9 to visit the British Library before we broke up for our own research. We stopped for takeaway coffee and breakfast, then hopped the Tube and crisscrossed the city. We passed a really pretty hotel (a Renaissance, actually) both ways, so I took lots of pictures of that. Once in the courtyard of the Library, we ate breakfast and decided our plan. We’d all head to the Treasures room to see our respective favorite pieces, then either visit the Reading Rooms for requests, or move on to the Imperial War Museum and further research.
The Treasures room was quiet and chill, full of awed people looking at old animal skins covered in decorated cow. By that, I mean manuscripts dating from the 4th century CE through about the late nineteenth century (along with a few new displays). I started with music pieces, and moved my way clockwise around the room. Unfortunately, due to the nature of preservation and light damage to old ink, we were allowed no photos.
I spent some time with Handel, Bach, Mozart, and more, reminiscing about playing the pieces displayed with Susan – my aunt, the family music teacher, and a phenomenal composer who passed a few years ago. They were originals, and varied widely in style. I do wish I could’ve taken pictures, at least of the informative texts. I took some notes, but I wanted to save space in my notebook for the Reading Room.
Around the corner from the musicians was the English historical section. There they displayed the only copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a fourteenth century poem featuring one of Arthur’s knights in Middle English. There were other pieces – a letter from Jane Austen included – but by then we’d learned they’d taken down the Anglo-Saxon display only a few weeks prior. The Beowulf manuscript, the Lindisfarne Gospel, the Domesdaeg Boc, all back in the archives needing extra special permission to remove. We were extremely disappointed – really, the major reason Sarah had come was to see Beowulf.
One of the No Photographs Enforcers – aka staff gent – explained that since the pieces were so old and decayed, they could only display them for almost mere moments at a time, and they were very rarely on display anymore at all because of their vulnerability. All three are over a thousand years old, and Beowulf itself had been through a fire. Plus, the Victorians and their “preservation” techniques (for once I don’t actually loathe them outright, I’m just mad they didn’t research enough before doing the thing) glued the delicate pages into basically matboard with acidic glues. So, they’re dying in front of us and there’s really nothing we can do about it.
Friendly Staff Gent also told us about another bible, this one in Ancient Greek, that had been copied in the 4th century CE, and that it was the bible all translations were based on. It was a fascinating look, and I’ve written down the name of it (and MS#), but I’ll have to add it in later as I’m falling asleep over my keys again.
The Magna Carta and the Barons’ [Response?] were both on display, and they were cool to look at. Too, there were a good many religious texts from various centuries, many of them illuminated beautifully. The gold paint is still extremely vibrant. Some of the reds seemed to fade a bit, but the blues were still pretty bright, too. After we talked with Friendly Staff Gent, though, we all kind of lost the mood and moved on.
Rachel and I headed to get Reading Room cards, then into the Manuscript room for requests. She pulled up a letter from Jane Austen (which was cool as hell), and I did some research in hopes of finding a manuscript to study. Thing is, my topic is still so new and my plans to be in the Library itself (rather than Exeter) so sudden that I spent more time researching contemporary manuscript possibilities and secondary sources for bibliographic material that I didn’t get a chance to actually study a MS. I hope to go back in the next few days, maybe do more research on my own computer this time, but I also would like to see what other medieval displays are available in town. I did call up a journal we don’t have access to at GSU for an article on Anglo-Saxon “Geese and Swans” by an oft-quoted scholar, though, so not a total bust.
Rachel and I ended up leaving not long after that and headed for a late lunch at a close by fish and chips shop. I had a mushroom and chicken pie that was tasty, and Rachel got the fish, then we headed across the street to King’s Cross Station.
They do, actually, have a small Harry Potter display available for a photo op there. It’s not actually inside the train platforms 9-11, but rather between the two platforms. I’m sure they don’t want tourists clogging up commuters’ spaces. And holy gods were there tourists. They had a queue set up for the photo op that was absolutely packed, and a shop three rooms large that you could barely move in. They had a variety of swag, chocolate frogs included, but they only had the movie version of Ravenclaw, so I skipped out on buying anything for myself. Instead, I picked up a few gifts for my friends and husband, snapped a quick shot of the buggy in the wall, and we headed back.
I had an entire hour to myself in the room today. I didn’t give myself a chance to nap, since I’d have completely screwed my weekend up, but I did rest. Last night, though, I realized there were a bunch of plays in town that I either haven’t seen in a century, or haven’t seen at all. So I surfed instead of slept (as insomniacs do), and picked up a ticket for Wicked for only 25£. Not the best seat by any means (off to house left, though in Row D on main floor), but I could afford it, and the experience is that important to me.
I read the book not long after it came out, and haven’t reread it since. I’ve listened to the soundtrack more times than I can count. I’ve seen snippets and moments on YouTube and advertisements.
Seeing Wicked live was a treasure.
Seeing Wicked live changed my life.
The troupe was British, as was the costume designer. I don’t have any literature to back that up (I forgot to pick up the “who’s who tonight” guide, which I’ll have to do this weekend). However, the accents during speaking moments did give away the actors’ nationalities, and the costumes themselves were clearly English influenced. Madam Morrible’s costumes, for instance, had an intense bustle over the top of the garment that almost reminded me (along with the sleeves and fabric pattern) of a Japanese kimono. A woman in the chorus during “One Short Day” was legitimately a green Audrey Hepburn at the races in My Fair Lady. A few more outfits reminded me of my friend’s historical costume designs based on late Victorian dress. I’d be interested to see how different the musical is when performed as a traveling show in the US, and what differences there are visually, or if the costumes are based on a more strict guideline set by the original developers (kind of like a “comes with the score and script” thing?).
There’s so much to the musical you just can’t get from the soundtrack alone. Hamilton as a show only loses two or three key moments in the translation to soundtrack. Wicked, though, isn’t a “rock opera” style that Hamilton is, so there are spoken parts that don’t get recorded. I’d known the basic story, remembered vaguely about the book, but watching Elphaba’s face as she received the very hat I’d been hearing about for years – that one moment that someone actually does her a kindness, even if it comes from a place of not-so-good-ness – took my breath away. There’s so much we miss, we plebeians who can’t afford to see a Broadway show until it’s been off for over a decade, and in another country at that. I loathe that.
I do wish more of my colleagues had been able to join me. Anna brought her friend Destiny (they’re flying to Ireland in the morning, and so met up today), but Maria had already gone to Hamilton earlier, and everyone else was wiped out from research or didn’t have the service to see my text. That, and I only remembered to send it at like 4:30 this afternoon. Wicked fit into our class theme well and truly, discussing poignantly that Othering was damaging, that there were more sides to “truth” – and even questioning truth itself – and spending time questioning the validity of “goodness” and “rightness” from all sides, all with women’s voices. I also found it ironic that the oppressors of the play were cast as black actors. I’m interested to know if the casting book requires it to better foil our own world, if the director specifically chose them for their roles seeing that irony/playing it up for the audience’s benefit, or if they truly were the best for their roles and the irony came after. It’s also entirely possible it’s a bit of all of them.
Tomorrow, I’m off to my new hotel, and then I’ll probably hit up the V&A again for their medieval and theatre displays. I plan on a short day to start the recovery process, and also so I can plan out Saturday and Sunday. I’d like to hit up the Spire (?) and the British Museum, but I haven’t decided when, or what else to do, so tomorrow night will be working that out first. I hope I hit on everything for the evening, because “stick a fork in me!”
The Crafty Medievalist 