Showing posts with label William Shakespeare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Shakespeare. Show all posts

17 March 2021

Groundlings and Underlings

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Southbank, London

We read Julius Caesar in my high school sophomore English class. It didn't make much of an impression on me because we just read it - much of it alone as homework - and Shakespeare needs to be seen and heard as a performance. 

When Cassius says "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." (Julius Caesar I, ii, 140-141) I don't think it made an impression on me. The famous quotation usually does not include those four final words. 

I went on to be an English major and read a lot of Shakespeare and learned a lot about Will and his theater. It was then that I learned that Cassius was saying something that was an anachronism thrown in for the underlings watching the performance. 

Shakepeare's underlings were called groundlings. They were patrons at the Red Lion, The Rose, or the Globe theater in the early 17th century. They were too poor to pay to be able to sit on one of the three levels of the theatre. For a penny, they could stand in "the pit", also called "the yard", just below the stage, to watch the play. 

They were up close to the action but they had to stand for a few hours and were usually packed in tightly with sometimes 500 of them there. The groundlings were commoners. They were also referred to as "stinkards" (hygiene not a priority) or penny-stinkers. The name "groundlings" came into usage after Hamlet used the term around 1600 in a not very complimentary way.

Hamlet:
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to 
you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as
many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier had
spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with
your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent,
tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,
you acquire and beget a temperance that may give
it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a 
robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to 
tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,
who for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumb shows and noise.

I only recently discovered that it is not a Shakespearean invention. The word had entered the English language to mean a small type of fish with a gaping mouth. Maybe from an actor's point of view on the raised stage, the faces of these patrons might have looked like open-mouthed fish. 

I had learned in college that the groundlings were not well-behaved and the upper-class folks that were high above them were happy to be there.

Untitled

Groundlings supposedly threw fruit and nuts they were eating at characters/actors they did not like. My professors also told us that Shakespeare would include characters (Falstaff et al), ghosts and jokes to keep the groundlings interested.

I guess if "all the world's a stage," then maybe we are all underlings when it comes to why we might not succeed. Don't blame Fate. Blame yourself. Take responsibility for your place in the Globe. 

15 August 2019

Pucks and Puckish

"Puckish" is an adjective that means impish or whimsical. We might describe someone as having "puckish humor."

the adjective has its origin with a character from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck is "that merry wanderer of the night." He is a shape-shifter and mischief-maker. He answers to the king of the fairies.

Puck (29391431162).jpg



William Shakespeare didn't totally invent the character who existed in Engish folklore. The traditional version of Puck was more malicious than the whimsical Shakespearean comedy character. The older Puck was more of an evil spirit or demon.

Back in Medieval England, this hobgoblin was known as the puke or pouke.  (No etymological connect to modern English "puke.") Those Medieval names go back to the Old Norse pūki, meaning "devil."

Shakespeare's much lighter Puck has stuck over the years and became the adjective that was appearing regularly in English texts in the 1800s.


We also have the hockey puck disk made of rubber that serves the same function in hockey as a ball does in ball games. This origin is more obscure. It may be related related to the verb to puck (poke) used in the game of hurling for striking or pushing the ball.

The shape of the sports puck is the origin for several other uses of the word.

A puck is also a graphics tablet accessory that is mouse-like and resembles the hockey puck and can detect absolute position and rotation.

The coffee grounds inside an espresso machine portafilter are also called a puck, because of its shape.

It is also sometimes used to describe a kind of a hard shaving soap that is used with a shaving brush and also resembles the hockey puck shape.