Lineage

Internet silence the last few days (a habit likely to continue in the run-up to Term and beyond), because I've been head-down in books about Medieval history - I've got as far as the Wars of the Roses and have to concentrate very hard for long stretches of text in order not to be utterly confused. Mainly because everyone's bloody called "Henry". At least in the Old Testament most people have different names (for a while, at least) - difficult, but different. The most you can hope for in the Middle Ages is that the eldest sons die so the next king's called something different. I'm really mainly focusing on the Houses of Plantagenet, Lancaster & York, but that's more than enough to go on for the time being - as it is I have post-it notes everywhere saying things like:

HENRY IV = HENRY BOLINGBROKE, EARL OF DERBY, RICHARD II's COUSIN. Opposed by HENRY PERCY = 'HOTSPUR', EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND's SON, not to be confused with HENRY (V), PRINCE OF WALES...

...and so it goes on. Before the Henrys there were the first gaggle of Edwards; and after the Henrys more Edwards. For the purposes of this exercise I'll probably stop after Richard III - more than that won't stay in my head for long, so I'll come back to the Tudors in a few months. It's all good fun, though - finally I'm understanding what the Hundred Years War was all about (insofar as it was 'about' anything), though if I read one more time about it stopping and then restarting again I might just call it quits at Ninety Years and be in denial about the last decade or so. Who's going to notice? (Me, sadly). The only thing that doesn't seem to be improving at all is my spelling of Welsh names - I have to check every time, because I keep confusing the Welsh phonetics with the English phonetics, it's like half-knowing a language and then not being able to progress. The whole process is taking far longer than I'd planned for, though, as I'd intended to be doing this for about three days and it's already taken just over a week. I will finish tomorrow. Problem is, when I get my head into something like this I can't usually extract it until a reasonable stopping point rears up, which can become inconvenient. Still, I'm learning a lot, which can only ever be a good thing. Even if it does mean an echoing "Henry Henry Henry Henry" taking the place of tinnitus in my brain.

If there were more time I'd revisit the wonderful Histories of The Bard, if only because another factor of confusion is his fictionalization of things like Henry V's youth, and the turning of historical John Oldcastle into fictional Falstaff. And that's just one of the plays! The Histories are fantastic, and revisit them I will - although it might not be able to happen until it has to, for revision purposes.

Loosely connected to the Henrys (real and artistic) is the subject of Joan of Arc, another figure history has managed simultaneously to immortalise and almost obliterate with fictions and superstitions and - of course - politics. There's a highly recommended staging of Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan at the National Theatre (Olivier Theatre) at the moment (until September 4th), which I'd dearly love to see but probably won't be able to. The cast has some impressive names but, more importantly, Anne-Marie Duff apparently makes a convincing Joan (despite the 'Chair Thing' she appears to do - you can see it in the clip if you follow the link above). Inevitably, and probably quite properly, parallels are drawn in related essays and reviews (including those in the official programme) between martyrdom and terrorism - I'm not sure whether that is pointless or important.

[On the subject of stages and shows, it seems the British Muesum's Chinese Terracotta Army exhibition has already sold 30,000 advance tickets - if you want to go, book now!]

I've ordered Alison Weir's well-reviewed book about Edward II's formidable wife, Isabella, and intend to read it on the train to and from Cambridge next week - I'm going up to get some serious work done (it has to happen some time, wonderful though this freelance education is), and it should be some good light(ish) reading, but just related enough to what I should be doing to assuage the guilt necessarily concomitant to prescribed reading lists - victory!