The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0260 Monday, 3 April 2006
From: Al Magary <
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Date: Saturday, 01 Apr 2006 01:08:34 -0800
Subject: Oxford DNB's Bio of Tarlton: Actor and Clown
Peter Thomson's comprehensive short biography, from the Oxford DNB, of
Richard Tarlton (d. 1588), actor and clown, is accessible online and
free for a couple of days at http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/lotw/1.html
(You can subscribe, free, to the wonderful email Life of the Day, at
http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/freeodnb/)
"The only part that can be confidently assigned to him is that of
Dericke in _The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth_. The role was one
in which what was done must generally have had greater impact on the
audience than what was said, but what also characterizes this raw text
is the parade of opportunities it offers to Tarlton as Dericke to
indulge his metatheatrical talent as a maker of exits and entrances. On
the open stages of Elizabethan London it was impossible to enter or
leave the platform unobtrusively. Actors coming on to open a scene had
first to locate themselves in order to place the narrative; actors
leaving had to have a reason to go. Either way, they had a distance to
cover from or to the stage door. That distance was Tarlton's playground,
and The Famous Victories furnishes it richly.
"It was in the interest of playwrights to the Queen's Men to provide
suitable opportunities for the leading clown, but Tarlton's real chance
to shine came more consistently in the post-play jigs. These jigs,
though they included music and dancing, were essentially vehicles for
clowns. A handful of jigs, though none of Tarlton's, survive in
manuscript. They rely on song and allow for patterned dancing, but they
were essentially raucous afterpieces: framed as short farces, they
feature sexual misdemeanour and cross-dressing, and can easily
accommodate the defamatory mockery characteristic of Elizabethan libels.
Tarlton was the master clown of the jig...."
Cheers,
Al Magary
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