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Reading Paper 2

The Play�s the Thingy

I attended �The Play�s the Thingy�, by Angel of Death�s Husband, at a presentation at Jamestown as part of my activities with an Elizabethan period reenactment group. I am friends with the author, and a couple of the actors in the play. Mr. Death�s Husband says that he wrote the play to entertain volunteers at the Jamestown encampment, and he worked to write it using period style (to some extent) and language. I found the play very amusing, but my lack of thorough knowledge of Shakespeare�s works meant that I missed some Mr. Death�s Husband�s allusions eluded me.

The play involves elements from the London Masters of Defense, a group that was essentially a karate-school that instead taught the use of the rapier during Elizabeth�s reign. In order to advance in the school, you fought a �prize�. The plays plot revolves around a disliked student, dela Fosse, who demands to play his prize. The masters of the school, wanting him to fail, approach M. Vincente to fight in dela Fosse�s prize. It is made known early that M. Vincente killed the last person who attempted to play their prize.

The author understood that his play would be performed with little scenery, so he begins the play, and each new act, with a character addressed as �Chorus�. Chorus laid out the scene, in a tone similar to that of the prologue of Romeo and Juliet. However, the play is a comedy and Mr. Death�s Husband wastes no time in letting the audience know that. The introduction provided by the Chorus ends like this: �Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our thingy.�

I had to ask later why the play was named �The Play�s the Thingy�. Apparently in Act 2, Scene 2, of Hamlet, is the line �The play�s the thing wherein I�ll catch the conscience of the King.� To understand Elizabeth re-enactors (and, in my experience, most re-enactors), you have to understand and have watched many episodes of Black Adder. In one episode there is a long sequence in which someone�s thingy is compared to a turnip. I�m not ashamed to say that I�ve never seen this episode. But it is a well known episode, and is further evidence that shows the author was directing his work at a target audience.

The play�s language is extraordinary, and perhaps it is at the point where the author combines the Elizabethan tongue with modern constructs that this is most apparent. For example:

Conteville:

I tell you he�s an mountebank!

A prattering bursen-bellied hound!

A firking clumperton! This shittle-brained pinchfart;

This pickled herring of the puppet show nonsense! This�dela Fosse!

Vincente:

Stay not thy tongue, friend Conteville, tell us truly what thy feel.

Or, �Don�t hold back man, tell how you really feel�� The actor who played Vincente was magnificent. She (yes female, in an ironic twist from the days of boys playing girls in Elizabethan times) is the wife of the author, and he knew she would be playing the part when he wrote it. The comedic timing was perfectly tuned to her, and she easily would have carried the show, if it wasn�t for the antics of dela Fosse later in the play.

I�m somewhat new at Elizabethan reenactment, and my ear has not quite gotten to the point where I can easily follow a conversation, so at some points in the play I was somewhat lost. The author agreed to allow me to have a copy of the script to help me better understand the play and to write this paper. However, the play�s high point wasn�t a line of dialogue, but a piece of dramatic action the likes of which I have never seen. Dela Fosse, hoping to poison M. Vincente, dresses in drag and meets M. Vincente at a bar, where M. Vincente is drunk. At one point in the conversation M. Vincente turns away, and dela Fosse leans over, bearing his left (fake) breast and squeezes. Liquid squirts out of the breast and into the drink of M. Vincente. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen on a live stage.

It was also during this scene that I finally caught a Shakespearean allusion. During a discussion as to why dela Fosse, dressed as a whore (or in Elizabethan slang a �goose�), would not strip for him:

Vin: Why no, sweet wench?

Fosse: Uh, ...I am ashamed of it.

Vin: Ashamed? What for? Be it deep as a well, or as wide as a chuch door?

It wasn�t long after this segment of dialogue that the unavoidable line �Is this a dagger I see before me?� was uttered. All of these moments were from the second act, which was simply the funniest thing I had seen in years. I honestly had tears in my eyes.

The third act was somewhat less cohesive. The poison provided by dela Fosse mixes with a potion provided by the masters that was supposed to provide M. Vincente with the strength of Hercules. Vincente goes mad, and his dialogue becomes completely without meaning. The fast paced humor of the play becomes lost in a mad dash to tie up the loose ends. In fact the only funny part is when the mad Vincente steals the mask that was being used by the Chorus, and began running around the stage.

This play, even though it was an outright, unapologetic comedy, covered each of the major points we discussed in class regarding plays. There was a distinct plot, with obvious motivations for each character. For each motivation, there were obstacles to achieving them. For example, dela Fosse wanted his prize, and his obstacle was first the guild as a whole, and then more specifically Vincente. The guild didn�t want dela Fosse to get his prize, and Fosse, and a minor character named Grenville were the primary obstacles to them. The dialogue was believable where it was not overcome by the desire of the author to be funny. A string of 16th century English, followed by the greeting �Yo�, isn�t believable, but it was a deliberate act to add to the comedy of the situation. The dramatic action of the play was mainly the poison scene in act 2, and the antics of the poisoned Vincente in act 3.

It was interesting watching a play that was built for a small, select audience. There aren�t a lot of people who would have understood the nuances of the Masters of Defense guild structure, and someone who had trouble following a Shakespearean play would have similar problems with the language in this play. The play set an informal, familiar tone, and it felt as if you were being let in on an inside joke. That tone added immensely to the enjoyment of the play.

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