The Day of the Theater in Malmö

[Ann]

The fog descended on Malmö at around 8.00 a.m. this Friday, and it didn't lift until around noon Sunday. I hate fog! Talk about gray weather, and it gets so cold, too. Worse, most of southern Sweden had brilliant weather and around 15 degrees Celsius. But since we were sitting under the fog, temperatures here barely rose above 5 degrees!

Click to view full size image

Oh well, I ventured out into the fog yesterday all the same, because if was "Teaterns dag", the day of the theater. You only pay about seven dollars to see as many plays as you have time for in a day.

So I saw three plays and... okay, I guess. The first thing I saw was only a few excerpts from some plays. One was Beowulf! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf wrote:

Beowulf ( /ˈbeɪ.ɵwʊlf/; in Old English [ˈbeːo̯wʊlf] or [ˈbeːəwʊlf]) is the conventional title[note 1] of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.

Remounted page from Beowulf,
British Library Cotton Vitellius A.XV,
en.wikipedia.org

So this is an Old English heroic epic poem about a king who was a Dane! The Danish Vikings brought the story with them to England when they went there to conquer the fair land of the Anglo-Saxons, and Beowulf became part of the English literature, while he is all but forgotten in Scandinavia.

I love the first word of Beowulf, "HÞÆT". It is clearly the same word as the Scandinavian "vet", "know". So Beowulf begins with an exhortation, "Know!" I love it.


We didn't get to see much of Beowulf at all during "Teaterns dag" yesterday. In fact, we were shown nothing, but the actors talked about Beowulf and read some lines from Beowulf in Old English. It was fun to listen to!

Beowulf's burial mound
in Västergötland, Sweden.
http://beowulf.software.
informer.com/wiki/

Edward Tulane doll made by The Raggy Rat Lady XXX

While I was listening to the actors talking about Beowulf, I had a huge bunny rabbit puppet dressed in a white tie and tails sitting in the chair in front of me! Yes, because the bunny rabbit was Edward Tulane, and that was another story, a kiddie story about a spoilt bunny rabbit doll who is washed into the sea and is forced to learn about life and love. Anyway, it was quite surreal having that rabbit sitting in the chair in front of me, as if I had stumbled right into Alice in Wonderland or something!

Photo: Sydsvenskan

Well, after that I saw "Legenden om Sally Jones", "The Legend of Sally Jones". Sally Jones is a gorilla whose mother is shot by hunters, and she is smuggled out of Africa around the year 1900. The smuggler pretends that the gorilla baby is a human baby named Sally Jones, which is how gorilla Sally got her name. Later, Sally Jones is sold, stolen and kidnapped and sent all over the world. In this picture, Sally is in the possession of a greedy German lady who teaches Sally to steal. "Anything that glitters gets you a banana!"

Sally is about to be saved by a friendly sailor.
Photo: Peter Westrup.

All in all, "Sally Jones" was a nice play. The various roles were played by only five actors. Only the actress playing Sally played the same character all the time. In spite of some rather horrible things that happened to Sally, it was a fun and rather uplifting story.

Finally, I saw something called "Den hypnotiska tapeten", The Hypnotic Wallpaper. The premise of the play was that in the 1970s, the supremely ugly and wildly patterned wallpapers that people looked at all day made them crazy and made them want to "transcend". Looking at a 1970s wallpaper for any length of time affected people in the same way as, say, LSD. The play seemed to say that in the 1970s people had ugly hairstyles and wore ugly clothes and were slightly out of their minds. Well, I don't know. I remember the 1970s rather fondly, and I and my friends were not crazy, and we weren't doing drugs. Even our wallpapers were moderately OK!

But the people in the play danced well, or danced enjoyably (which is not always the same thing). Some of the music they played while they danced was really good, too. Even so I was slightly irritated at the whole thing, but the rest of the audience applauded and stomped their feet, so maybe I was the one being ungrateful!

Ann

[neufer]

[b][color=#0000FF]Remounted page from Beowulf, British Library Cotton Vitellius A.XV[/color][/b]

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Oh well, I ventured out into the fog yesterday all the same, because if was "Teaterns dag", the day of the theater. You only pay about seven dollars to see as many plays as you have time for in a day. So I saw three plays and... okay, I guess. The first thing I saw was only a few excerpts from some plays. One was Beowulf!

Beowulf ( /ˈbeɪ.ɵwʊlf/; in Old English [ˈbeːo̯wʊlf] or [ˈbeːəwʊlf]) is the conventional title[note 1] of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.

So this is an Old English heroic epic poem about a king who was a Dane! The Danish Vikings brought the story with them to England when they went there to conquer the fair land of the Anglo-Saxons, and Beowulf became part of the English literature, while he is all but forgotten in Scandinavia.

I love the first word of Beowulf, "HÞÆT". It is clearly the same word as the Scandinavian "vet", "know". So Beowulf begins with an exhortation, "Know!" I love it.

We didn't get to see much of Beowulf at all during "Teaterns dag" yesterday. In fact, we were shown nothing, but the actors talked about Beowulf and read some lines from Beowulf in Old English. It was fun to listen to!

<<In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats in Scandinavia, comes to the help of Hroðgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall (Heorot) has been under attack by a being known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in Sweden and later becomes king of the Geats. After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus in Geatland.

The earliest known owner of the Beowulf manuscript is the 16th-century scholar Laurence Nowell, after whom the manuscript is named, though its official designation is British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.XV because it was one of Robert Bruce Cotton's holdings in the Cotton Library in the middle of the 17th century. Kevin Kiernan argues that Nowell most likely acquired it through William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, in 1563, when Nowell entered Cecil’s household as a tutor to his ward, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.

The poem is known only from this single manuscript, which is estimated to date from close to AD 1000. Kiernan has argued from an examination of the manuscript that it was the author's own working copy. He dated the work to the reign of Canute the Great. The poem appears in what is today called the Beowulf manuscript or Nowell Codex (British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A.xv), along with other works. The earliest extant reference to the first foliation of the Nowell Codex was made sometime between 1628 and 1650 by Franciscus Junius (the younger). The owner of the codex before Nowell remains a mystery.

Reverend Thomas Smith [another tutor of Edward de Vere] and Humfrey Wanley undertook the task of cataloguing the Cotton library, in which the Nowell Codex was held. Smith’s catalogue appeared in 1696. The Beowulf manuscript itself is mentioned in name for the first time in a letter in 1700 between George Hickes, Wanley’s assistant, and Wanley. In the letter to Wanley, Hickes responds to an apparent charge against Smith, made by Wanley, that Smith had failed to mention the Beowulf script when cataloguing Cotton MS. Vitellius A. XV. Hickes replies to Wanley "I can find nothing yet of Beowulph." It has been theorised that Smith failed to mention the Beowulf manuscript because of his reliance on previous catalogues or because either he had no idea how to describe it or because it was temporarily out of the codex.>>

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Sir Robert Cotton is noted for collecting ancient manuscripts and shelving them under busts of Roman emperors. The abbreviation Cotton Vitellius AXV indicates the location of the Beowulf manuscript in his library. The manuscript and a bust of Sir Robert are in the British Museum.
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• Bulfinch's Mythology: Beowulf

<<Then began a fearful combat, which ended in Beowulf's piercing the dragon's scaly armor & inflicting a mortal wound, but alas! in himself being given a gash in the neck by his opponent's poisoned fangs which resulted in his death. As he lay stretched on the ground, his head supported by Wiglaf, an honored warrior who had helped in the fight with the dragon, Beowulf roused himself to say, as he grasped Wiglaf's hand:

[b][color=#FF00FF]Beowulf's burial mound in Västergötland, Sweden.[/color][/b]

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• "Thou must now look to the needs of the nation;
  Here dwell I no longer, for Destiny calleth me!
  Bid thou my warriors after my funeral pyre
  
  Build me a burial-CAIRN HIGH on the sea-cliff's head;
  So that the seafarers BEOWULF'S BARROW
  
  Henceforth shall name it, they who drive far and wide
  Over the mighty flood their foamy keels.
  Thou art the last of all the kindred of Wagmund!
  Wyrd has swept all my kin, all the brave chiefs away!
  Now must I follow them!"

These last words spoken, the king of the Geats, brave to seek danger and brave to look on death and Fate undaunted, fell back dead. According to his last desires, his followers gathered wood and piled it on the cliff-head. Upon this funeral pyre was laid Beowulf's body and consumed to ashes. Then, upon the same cliff of Hronesness, was erected a huge burial CAIRN, wide-spread and lofty, to be known thereafter as BEOWULF'S BARROW.>>

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Ben Jonson's _Timber; or, Disco(VER)i(E)s
. as They Have FLOWED Out of His Daily Reading_
..............................................................

I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoEVER he penn'd) hee nEVER blotted out line. My answer hath beene, Would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. And to justifie mine owne candor, (for I lov'd the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature : had an excellent Phantsie ; brave notions, and gentle expressions : wherein hee flow'd with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop'd : Sufflaminandus erat ; as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne power ; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter : As when hee said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him ; Caesar, thou dost me wrong. Hee replyed : *Caesar did nEVER wrong* , but with just cause : and such like ; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his vertues. There was EVER more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned.

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CAESAR DID NEVER WR-ong
{anagram}
EDWARD VERE'S CAIRN
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[list] _BEOWULF_ by Robert Nye[/list][/b]...................................................................
Beowulf died on the floor of the cave with Wiglaf by his side.

Beowulf winked one eye. "Tell them what you like, the ones out there, but remember the world will need to be a little older before it understands this last exploit of Beowulf. Yes, and all the others too! Meanwhile, it must have an ordinary kind of hero to believe in. Make sure you give them that, Wiglaf. It WILL sERVE for now. And one day if my name should live, someone will stumble on this story and put the pieces together again and come up with the truth of it." Later, whenever Wiglaf was asked about Beowulf's last moments, all he would say was "Beowulf was Beowulf."

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• [Hamlet (Quarto 2) 5.2]

Ham.: O god Horatio, what a wounded NAME

• Things standing thus vnknowne, shall I leaue behind me?
  If thou did'st EUER hold me in thy hart,
  Absent thee from felicity a while,
  And in this harsh world drawe thy breath in paine
  TO TELL MY STORY: what warlike noise is this?

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• Othello Act 1, Scene 3

OTHELLO: she thank'd me,

• And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
  I should but teach him how TO TELL MY STORY.

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