by James Wyllie
The best BEER to drink is March Beer. If you have an aversion to sweet varieties of WINE, then avoid the ever-popular Sack, a dry, amber wine from Spain that has added sugar; Malmsey, from Crete; Muscatel, from France; and Rumney, from the Balkans. For lovers of a full-bodied red, there is Bastard from Burgundy or, for a lighter bouquet, Claret from Gascony. The premium white wines are from La Rochelle or the Rhineland. After the meal, you may want to order a shot of Flemish BRANDY (brandewijn).
AFTERNOON SPORTS AND THE TOWER
Eating done, you can plunge back into the hurly-burly of the city, or you might prefer something a bit more recreational. If you fancy a spot of SWORD PLAY, we can book you a fencing lesson at Ely Place in Holborn. Beginners (scholars) will get instruction in the rapier, quarterstaff and broadsword. Your teacher will be a member of the Company of Masters of the Art of Self-Defence. If PISTOL SHOOTING is more your thing, then head to ARTILLERY YARD, just to the east of Bishopsgate, an enclosed space with brick walls and targets at each end. Or, if ARCHERY appeals, make your way north out of the City to FINSBURY FIELDS, where there are 200 butts (targets) available for experts and novices alike.
Fans of the GRUESOME AND GROTESQUE might take a guided tour of the TOWER OF LONDON. However, do bear in mind that its dungeons and torture chambers are not just for show: they are very much in demand. Once inside, you will see THE PIT, a twenty-foot-deep hole where prisoners rot in total darkness; the infamous RACK, where limbs are stretched and bones broken; and THE LITTLE EASE, a cave too small to stand upright in. You will also be introduced to a particularly fiendish contraption known as the Scavenger’s Daughter, a multifaceted instrument that comprises an iron band to compress the victim’s feet and head into a circle, iron gauntlets to crush their hands, and jetters (irons) to encase their arms and ankles.
EVENING PURSUITS
You will be staying the night at THE BELL INN by St Paul’s Cathedral – the original Norman version of 1087. A LIGHT SUPPER will be served at 6pm with a musical accompaniment provided by fiddlers, bagpipers and ballad singers. The atmosphere will be very smoky; you can add to the tobacco haze by purchasing a small-bowled PIPE. Those with a competitive streak may fancy a game of CHESS or a crack at the BOWLING ALEE. There will also be GAMBLING going on around you, whether on card games – gleek, primero, one and thirty, new cut and trumps – or dice, which are almost always loaded. Don’t get involved unless you are very skilled with a blade; disputes over money and honour can escalate rapidly into duels to the death.
Whatever you do, you must be off the streets by the 9PM CURFEW, which is signalled by the ringing of church bells. Watches, with powers of arrest, patrol the city to ensure that the taverns are shut, the shops shuttered and all good citizens are safely behind closed doors.
SATURDAY 12 JUNE: SOUTHWARK
The City Gates reopen at dawn. BREAKFAST will follow shortly after: a bottle of beer and buttered white or brown bread, each loaf sealed so the baker can be identified, the price and weight set by the Lord Mayor. After breakfast you will have a couple of hours to kill before having to be at Blackfriars to catch a WHERRY (water taxi) over to Southwark. You may want to take a look inside ST PAUL’S. Though famed for its beauty, the cathedral is now in a pretty sorry state, having suffered the depredations of the Reformation – its icons, tapestries, sculptures and gold ornaments have all been ripped out. Nevertheless, it retains the awesome architectural scale and majesty we associate with Gothic churches. If you are feeling energetic, why not climb its three hundred steps to the roof, from where you will get uninterrupted views of London.
You may also want to browse the BOOKSHOPS congregated round St Paul’s Churchyard, selling editions in ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, French and English; top of the bestseller list is Foxes Book of Martyrs (1563). Also popular are almanacs, saucy Italian verse and home-grown plays, including some of Shakespeare’s. (We regret that you may not make any purchases). It is also worth a walk to nearby St Paul’s Cross, where you will be harangued by fiery EVANGELICAL PREACHERS, radical Protestants with a mission to remind you of your Sins and the dreadful ordeals awaiting you in the afterlife.
Once you are at BLACKFRIARS you will have no trouble finding a WHERRY. There are hundreds working the river, each one with two upholstered seats at the back, a canopy to shield you from the elements, and an oarsman up front who has done a two-year apprenticeship and been certified as competent by the Eight Rulers (overseers). The journey will cost you a penny.
As you cross the Thames you will be struck by the sheer number of vessels afloat. Asides from the wherries, there will be larger passenger barges with ten oarsmen, long tilt boats with a separate steerage boat attached, and dozens of large ships queuing up to unload their cargoes at the custom houses by London Bridge. Masses of fish inhabit the river’s murky grey waters, while swans glide over its surface.
AROUND THE GLOBE
Southwark stretches south for a mile from the riverbank, and is heavily built up. Its squalid tenements are crammed together along packed streets and are home to watermen, craftsmen and foreigners, who rub shoulders with an underworld of criminals and prostitutes. Many of Southwark’s three hundred inns double as BROTHELS, the most well-known being the CARDINAL’S HAT. Mixed in with all the usual frightful odours is the unpleasant smell of the stink trades of brewing and tanning.
Your best bet for LUNCH is the ELEPHANT TAVERN on Horseshoe Alley, right next to the Globe and only a short walk from where your wherry docks. Don’t expect fine dining: this is Southwark, and you’re here for the theatre. To guarantee your place for the 3pm performance be there at least an hour early. As the GLOBE – a hundred feet in diameter, with a flag flying from the roof and the motto Totus mundus agit histrionem (The whole world plays the actor) inscribed above the entrance – has a 3,300 capacity, the crowds gathering outside will swell considerably as you wait to go in. You will see a few noblemen on horseback, some on foot, well-dressed members of the gentry and gaggles of Law students from the Temple Bar and Inns of Court mingling with tradesmen, apprentices and labourers.
There will be CONJURORS AND JUGGLERS dazzling you with their skills, sellers offering refreshments: oranges, apples, nuts, gingerbread and bottled beer, as well as pipes and pouches of tobacco at threepence a pop. Be on the alert for PICKPOCKETS and PROSTITUTES on the prowl. The queuing arrangements will be more disorderly than orderly until you reach the GATHERERS who will take your money at the door.
Once inside the AUDITORIUM you will be impressed by the gilded decor, rich with classical motifs expressed in paintings, sculptures, tapestries and hangings. Here you will turn either left or right to enter one of the three galleries lined with wooden benches that surround the fifty-foot wide stage (2d admission). Be prepared to fight for a good seat, as there are roughly 1,000 other playgoers who want one too. If you want to rough it, you could pay just a penny to enter the seatless PIT, an open yard that slopes towards the stage, covered with ash, slag and hazelnut shells, crammed with over 2,000 people from the lower sort – the understanders – jostling for a good view of the action.
While you will be exposed to the full glare of the June sunshine, the five-foot-high stage will remain totally in the shade. You will immediately notice how bare and functional the performance space is. There are two exits/entrances on either side; between them is curtained area used for DISCOVERY SCENES, which might feature a character asleep in bed or in their death throes, while a canopy is supported by two wooden pillars.
Otherwise, asides from a few props – tables, chairs, etc, that are kept under the stage (Hell) – the boards are bare. There is a trap-door but it won’t be needed this afternoon. Just above the stage is a balcony that houses half a dozen MUSICIANS armed with trumpets, drums, other horns, recorders and lutes. Torches and candles provide whatever on-stage lighting is required, and rudimentary sound effects, such as horses’ hooves, birdsong and bells, are supplied by the BACKSTAGE TEAM comprising a bookkeeper, assistant stage keeper, a carpenter and t
wo further stagehands.
Throughout, the audience will be fully engaged with the action. Cries of mew indicate displeasure. Expect the galleries to rise to their feet during the most intense scenes, while from the Pit there will be boos, hisses, shouts of encouragement and cheering and applause for memorable speeches. Though rowdy, the punters are generally attentive and appreciative; some even bring table-books with them to note down significant passages from the play.
THE PLAY’S THE THING
Julius Caesar will last just over two hours, with no act breaks; the scenes, seventeen in all, will simply flow together to give the impression of continuous movement. Of the sixteen actors in the company – six of them boys who will take on the female roles – the leading man is RICHARD BURBAGE, the best of his day, and a pioneer of a more naturalistic approach to his craft.
Generally, the style of acting will be what we would call hammy. This is partly to compensate for the fact that much of the audience will struggle to see the performers’ faces, while any dialogue spoken quietly will simply be lost in all the crowd noise. As a result, voices are big and declamatory, the verse projected with a booming rhetorical flourish. Gestures will be equally theatrical; the actors have a repertoire of fifty-nine hand gestures to communicate different emotions and states of mind. Though all the cast are adept at thribbling (improvisation), today they will stick to the script. The actor’s costume is called his shape, while his place on stage is his habitation. Over the course of Julius Caesar, they will be wearing togas, tunics, cloaks, robes and armour (for the battle scenes), all the responsibility of the wardrobe keeper.
THE FIRST FOLIO OF JULIUS CAESAR – NOT YET PUBLISHED.
Once Julius Caesar begins, there will be many HIGHLIGHTS to look out for. After a group of plebs set the play in motion with their disparaging comments about Caesar’s ambitions to rule single-handedly, SCENE 2 will begin with blaring music from the balcony, heralding the entrance of the main characters and a throng of citizens. Night falls during SCENE 3, and the plot thickens as the would-be assassins make last-minute preparations for murder most foul, accompanied by a wild and unholy thunderstorm, courtesy of the sound effect guys: a sheet of metal will be used to make the thunder, fireworks for the lightning, a canvas tied to a wheel to produce the wind, and dried pies rattled on tin to create the rain.
The intense noise of the storm continues into the next scene, where Caesar ponders his potential fate, and then onto the killing itself in SCENE 8. When each conspirator plunges his dagger into Caesar’s stricken body, bladders of sheep’s blood, strategically placed on the actor’s body, will erupt, spilling their contents onto the stage. As Brutus delivers the final thrust, Caesar, dismayed by the treachery of his closest companion, will speak those three words of Latin that will echo down the ages: ‘Et tu, Brute?’
This coup de grâce is followed by the famous funeral orations of Brutus and Mark Antony; both actors will ascend to the musicians’ balcony to deliver their speeches. Mark Antony’s stirring tribute to Caesar, featuring the immortal opening lines, ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar not to praise him,’ will turn the people of Rome against the assassins and an angry mob will scour the city for them, happening upon the hapless poet Cinna in SCENE 10: thinking he is someone else, they will pummel him to death (more sheep’s blood).
The play is now entering its final third: Brutus and his fellow conspirator Cassius are with their army near the town of Philippi, preparing for battle with Mark Antony and Octavius. There will be a lot of drumming, trumpet blasts and off-stage shouting to help create a military mood. During SCENE 12, the night before the decisive battle, the ghost of Caesar will visit Brutus in his tent and issue the chilling warning, ‘Thou shalt see me at Philippi.’ To give their meeting a spooky, supernatural quality, stagehands will place lights behind coloured bottles; the shapes and shades shed by them will bathe the actors in unearthly hues.
The last four short, fast-paced scenes, encompass the battle and its grisly aftermath (lots more sheep’s blood). Fearing all is lost, first Cassius, then Brutus, will fall on their swords, leaving the victors, Mark Antony and Octavius, to bring proceedings to a close.
Before you file out, however, the next play will be announced, the actors will kneel together and offer a prayer to the Queen, and then the whole ensemble will perform a boisterous and ribald JIG to send you merrily on your way.
POST-PLAY
It is customary after the performance to promenade through PARIS GARDENS, a mere stone’s throw from the Globe. Here you will be able to buy alcohol and watch games of bowls and cards. You will also be close to its BEAR-BAITING ARENA. This hugely popular form of entertainment features star bears with names like George Stone, Harry Hunks and Harry Tame. Costing a penny to stand in the stalls, or tuppence for a gallery seat, punters will be treated to the sight of the bear being led in on a chained leash and then tied to a stake before being viciously assaulted by hunting dogs, usually Great English mastiffs. These ferocious contests can last several hours, before the combatants are too exhausted or wounded to continue.
DEPARTURE
With dusk fast approaching, and the streets becoming more dangerous for outsiders, you should make your way south-west out of Southwark, past farmsteads, woods and marshy ground. You will soon be at the fields where your journey began and from where you will depart.
The Birth of Bebop
15–16 FEBRUARY 1942 HARLEM, NEW YORK
DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, JAZZ music underwent a profound evolution and a new style was born – bebop. Drenched in the blues, this fast, rebellious music, with its insider cool and outside status, had an incalculable influence not only on jazz, African-American culture and popular music, but also on literature (the Beats, especially Kerouac), art (the abstract expressionists), comedy (modern stand-up pioneers such as Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl), European cinema (the French New Wave) and fashion (from movie stars to Mods).
On this forty-eight-hour trip, you will get a ringside seat at legendary venues, experience the humming buzz of New York nightlife, dance till you drop at the Savoy, the world’s premier ballroom and attend the ultimate jazz laboratory – the Jam Session – where Young Turks and giants of the swing era share the same stage together, interrogating and reinterpreting jazz standards. Out of this dialogue between the generations bebop is born. The trip is designed so you see and hear this collaborative process in action; you will enjoy both the glorious power of the Big Bands and the jagged dynamism of the New Thing.
BRIEFING: THE BEBOP REVOLUTION
This trip is all the more remarkable because the genesis of bop was lost to posterity. A strike over royalty payments called by the American Federation of Musicians, which lasted from 31st July 1942 to November 1944, banned all union members (and if you wanted to work you had to be in the union!) from doing any sessions – whether in the studio, on radio, or live – for any recording company. As a result, when artists like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie unveiled their music at the end of the war, it would seem like it had come from nowhere, fully formed, a perception that caused a damaging rift within the jazz community between Modernists and Traditionalists and obscured bebop’s true roots. Thus you have the unique opportunity to visit a moment in time when they all played on the same side of the street.
You’ll be spending time at three key venues in New York, all of which are based in the city’s jazz heartland of Harlem.
THE SAVOY BALLROOM
Opened in 1926, and taking up an entire block on 140th Street and 596 Lenox Avenue, the Savoy – The Home of Happy Feet – is the leading jazz dance venue not only in New York, but the whole world. Dance crazes first invented here soon spread across the USA and onto Europe. Owned by the entrepreneur Moe Gale and run by Harlem businessman Charles Buchanan, it costs half a million dollars a year to run, while taking twice that at the door. It is also home to BATTLES OF THE BANDS or CUTTING CONTESTS, during which the house band takes on out-of-towners
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For much of the 1930s the CHICK WEBB ORCHESTRA ruled the roost at the Savoy. The diminutive drummer and bandleader (severe spinal deformities led to his death in 1939 aged just 30) was a genius behind the kit and the first to record that perennial favourite “Stompin’ at the Savoy”. His all-conquering outfit, featuring the young Ella Fitzgerald, outplayed Benny Goodman in 1937 and Count Basie a year later.
For your visit, the Savoy’s house band will be the LUCKY MILLENDER ORCHESTRA, a hard-swinging outfit with a penchant for R&B-inflected monster grooves.
MINTON’S PLAYHOUSE
Minton’s is the focal point of the New York jamming scene and is located in the first-floor dining room of the Hotel Cecil, an elegant five-storey building on West 118th Street, near 7th Avenue. It’s owned by HENRY MINTON, a former tenor-sax man, and the first ever black union delegate, who had previously managed the Rhythm Club – which hosted big names like Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. With the musical tides flowing in fresh directions, Henry closed and then reopened Minton’s in 1940 and hired the ex-bandleader TEDDY HILL to run it.
Hill immediately installed a new house band brimming with young talent. Most notably, he recruited as his Musical Director the explosive drummer KENNY ‘KLOOK-MOP’ CLARKE, whose off-beat blows on the snare and bass drums had already raised eyebrows in the bands he’d played with. His redefinition of the drummer’s role – less tied to holding the beat and interacting more with the soloists – was one of the foundations of bebop. Clarke then brought in THELONIOUS MONK, a mercurial genius with a highly individualistic approach to the piano who was already on the verge of composing masterpieces like “Round Midnight” and “Ruby My Dear”.