Head First
Shakespeare’s Mother: The Secret Life of a Tudor Woman
Shakespeare’s Mother: The Secret Life of a Tudor Woman was partly a biography of a specific woman – Mary Arden, the mother of William Shakespeare. But there’s not really enough surviving detail about her life to get the full picture from, so the gaps were filled in with more general information about the sorts of lives women (and men) of the time lead. The presenter, Michael Wood, did a good job of stitching the two sorts of information into a coherent whole, so it didn’t feel disjointed or patchy.
Mary Arden is an interesting person to look at the life of, not just because of whose mother she is, but also because of when she lived and what sort of person she was. She lived through a time of great change – she was born around 1537 near the start of the English Reformation, and died in James VI & I’s reign having lived through the whole of the Tudor changes of religion. It’s easy to forget that these changes all took place within a lifetime. Her personal situation also changed a lot over this time, showcasing some of the increased social mobility of the era.
Mary was born the youngest daughter of a relatively well-to-do husbandman, and had seven older sisters. Her family were part of the local gentry so in marrying her John Shakespeare was moving up the social scale. John & Mary Shakespeare were a part of the growing middle class in England. John was primarily a glover, but also involved in other trades. They marry in the 1550s, and begin having children – Mary was to bear eight children in all, of whom 5 survived to adulthood. William was her third child, the first son and the first to survive infancy. The programme used this as a hook to explore the dangers of childbirth in this period for both mother & offspring, and infant mortality (and the effect it would have on the parents).
John and Mary rose in the world both socially and financially during the early years of William’s life. John is a respected member of the Corporation of Stratford upon Avon and eventually even becomes Mayor of the town. They owned land both in the town and outside – Mary had inherited her father’s land when he died. Which is particularly interesting as she was the youngest daughter – perhaps she was his favourite? Perhaps she was the best at the financial management necessary to run the farm? John Shakespeare was also involved in less respectable financial trading. He leant money at interest (strictly forbidden by the church), and also got involved in the illegal wool trade. This was a very lucrative business – all wool trading was supposed to be done through Crown approved channels at Crown approved prices, and paying duty on the trade. So there was money to be made by a middleman who avoided the official routes. Michael Wood speculated that Mary was also involved in the trading – in part because as the person who would be at the house most of the time she’d be the obvious point of contact. And in part because there are indications she was good at financial management.
The wool trading was to be the Shakespeare family’s downfall. There was a clampdown on this illegal activity, and John Shakespeare was one of those who was caught. The family were financially ruined, and spent several years living in fear of their debts being called in. John stopped attending church or the meetings of the town corporation, because those were places where his creditors might find him to demand their money. This, of course, had social consequences for the family. They also had to sell off land to pay back the debts that were called in, and even take young William out of school. The family’s fortunes only turned around after William had moved to London and begun to make a name for himself (and money!) as a playwright and actor. Once he had money he provided for his parents and so Mary lived on into a comfortable old age.
I was mostly interested in the tidbits of information about Mary herself so that’s what I’ve discussed most in this blog post, but the programme also did a good job of covering the social situation & changes of the time. For instance it looked at what the religious and social changes actually meant to the ordinary person of the time. And at some issues specific to women – childbirth in particular as I mentioned. Also how women lived in general – housework, household management etc.
In Our Time: The Eunuch
Modern Western culture is unusual in having no role for eunuchs in the machinery of bureaucracy – throughout history in a variety of different cultures castrated men have played an important part in governance (and in some cases in the arts). The In Our Time episode about eunuchs took a compare and contrast approach to three cultures in which eunuchs were particularly important. The three experts each had a different speciality: Karen Radner (University College London) talked about Assyria, Shaun Tougher (Cardiff University) discussed Rome and Michael Hoeckelmann (King’s College London) was an expert on China. The aim was to draw out the parallels between the three situations but it didn’t quite gel into a cohesive picture for me – particularly the Rome section as it always seemed to be different to the other two. So although all three threads were interwoven in the programme I’m separating out the Roman bit in this write up.
In Assyria and China the origins of using eunuchs in the bureaucracy came from the idea that they were safe to have around the royal women. They were trusted palace servants whose lack of family ties were an important part of that trustworthiness. In addition the future ruler was often brought up with & by his eunuchs, so the bond formed between them was particularly strong. In both these societies being a eunuch was seen as a way to get ahead if you were from a poor family.
Whilst a lack of family ties was part of the rationale for creating eunuch servants it seems that the level to which this was true varied over time in Assyrian and particularly Chinese culture. Eunuchs might seek favours for their birth families, using their closeness to the ruler to their family’s advantage. The position of eunuchs in Chinese culture was cyclical and later in each cycle eunuchs would start adopting children and posts might become “hereditary” – which rather defeats the original purpose of using eunuchs in these roles. This cycle was tied to the history of the dynasties of Chinese rulers: as a dynasty began to decline the eunuchs would gain more power. Then when a new dynasty conquered/overthrew the previous one they’d stamp their authority more firmly on their servants.
Radner, talking about the Assyrians, was keen to point out that as a farming society they would’ve been castrating their livestock and so knew the effects (on size & strength) before they started to do this to people. A noteworthy feature of eunuchs in Assyrian society was that they were also the ruler’s bodyguards as well as his bureaucrats. Not quite the effete image that we have of eunuchs (mostly based on Italian castrato singers, I think).
In Assyria the eunuch was created by cutting between testicles & penis – the minimum necessary operation. However in China the entire apparatus was removed, and kept in a jar to show the Emperor on demand. Chinese eunuchs were an interesting exception to the normal Confucian idea where family was more important than anything – and this is a part of why they were restricted to serving the Emperor. He was the only person important enough (as semi-divine Son of Heaven) to be able to over-ride the proper order of things. And there’s a paradox as well: eunuchs had status and power, yet castration was also used as a punishment. The two things co-existed but were entirely separate (you didn’t become a eunuch after punishment by castration).
In contrast to these two cultures, in Rome having eunuch servants was a status symbol. They are a part of the Roman obsession with Greek culture, and the Greeks had got the idea from Persia (via Alexander the Great’s conquest). So a eunuch servant was a luxury, and having one showed that you were sophisticated and rich. It wasn’t restricted to the ruler (or ruling class), even though later (in Byzantine times) the eunuchs became important in the bureaucratic machinery of the Empire. They also became prized for their singing voices – and in Europe this lasted into the 20th Century.
As I said at the beginning of this post, the programme felt a little disjointed – perhaps they needed to pick a different third culture (if there is one). Tho I can see why Rome would feel the obvious choice.
May 2015 in Review
This is an index and summary of the things I’ve talked about over the last month. Links for multi-post subjects go to the first post (even if it’s before this month), you can follow the internal navigation links from there.
Books
Fiction
“The Sea Thy Mistress” Elizabeth Bear – third book in the Edda of Burdens series. New.
Total: 1
Photos
Looking for the Greener Grass.
Total: 5
Radio
The Photon – In Our Time episode about light & photons.
Total: 1
Talks
“The Ark Tablet: How the Life of an Assyriologist Could be Transformed by a Single Tablet with Sixty Lines of Writing” Irving Finkel – the fourth talk in the BSS Study Day on cuneiform.
“Egyptian Fortifications in Canaan” Rupert Chapman – talk at the May EEG meeting.
“The Royal Game of Ur: From Ancient Grave to Modern Rebirth” Irving Finkel – the third part of the BSS Study Day on cuneiform.
Total: 3
Television
Non-Fiction
Cleopatra: A Timewatch Guide – a rather substandard programme about how our ideas of Cleopatra have changed over the years.
Total: 1
Trip
Egypt Holiday 2014: Seti I Temple at Abydos.
Egypt Holiday 2014: Ramesses II Temple at Abydos.
Egypt Holiday 2014: Dendara Temple.
Total: 3
Look to the Stars
All Seeing
“The Ark Tablet: How the Life of an Assyriologist Could be Transformed by a Single Tablet with Sixty Lines of Writing” Irving Finkel (Part 4 of BSS Study Day)
The last talk in the Bloomsbury Summer School’s Cuneiform Study Day was about the ark tablet that Irving Finkel has recently published a book about. There was also a TV documentary about the discovery of the tablet, and the building of a boat using the information in the tablet as a starting point (which I’ve written about before). The talk was mostly unconcerned with the TV programme, but about halfway through Finkel did go on a digression about the awfulness of it (as he saw it) – the “turning it into ‘good’ TV” process made it shallow and theatrical in all sorts of ways he didn’t like. He did think the boat was cool, tho!
Finkel started off by giving us some context for Flood Stories in cuneiform texts (which is exactly what I complained the TV programme didn’t do). George Smith in 1852 was the first person to read a cuneiform tablet containing a version of the Ark Story. This was the first time it was shown that a Biblical story pre-dated the Bible. The impact of this in society at the time was huge (much larger than it would be today), as it’s such a fundamental Old Testament story. There are close & specific links between the story that Smith read and the Biblical version, too. One of these is the releasing of the two birds to see if there is any land yet. However the boat as described in that text is cubical, so those who were particularly upset said that showed it was all a coincidence. The tablet that Smith read is part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and is actually one of the more recent cuneiform texts with a Flood Story. Since Smith’s discovery other (older) versions have been found. Although details differ, including the protagonist, they all share a common point that the gods had decided that the creation of humanity had been a mistake. The gods thus cause a flood to wipe them away, but one man is saved by one god warning him.
The new tablet that Finkel has translated & published dates to around 1800BC. It was initially brought to the British Museum along with various other bits & pieces by a man who’d inherited it from his father (who’d picked up these things on various trips). Finkel thought it was a letter at first glance, but then when he read the first lines it was clear that it was a Babylonian Flood Story and it didn’t match the ones he’d seen before. Which was very exciting, but sadly the chap who owned it took it away again and it was a while before Finkel had the chance to properly study it.
This version of the story includes a “How To” manual for building the ark. Unusually it describes a boat that is round – shaped like a coracle. Coracles are normally pretty small scale, but this one is much bigger. Finkel made the point that it didn’t need to go anywhere (coracles are normally propelled by oars, so it might be difficult to move a larger one) – for the occupants to survive the flood it only needed to float. The numbers and instructions in the text are surprisingly specific – not like mythological numbers generally are. If you calculate how much of the materials you would need to make a boat of that design the figures come out within 1% of those in the text. And the instructions match up well with those in a book published in the 1930s (AD) talking about coracle building in the more modern Middle East. So this is effectively the story being interrupted for an (accurate) info-dump about boat building. Finkel pointed out that this would’ve been of interest to the audience for the story, particularly if it was told orally (as it probably was) – there would be many fishermen and other river-goers who might want to know just how big this big boat was and so on. (It made me think of things like Tom Clancy’s novels where the story gets interrupted for a loving description of exactly what sort of gun is being used).
After his digression about the TV programme Finkel talked about his interest in the broader picture into which this tablet fits. Primarily – how did this ancient Mesopotamian legend end up retold in the Jewish Bible? Clearly the Exile of the Jews in Babylon must have something to do with it. Judea is invaded twice by Nebuchadnezzar, and this is documented in both the Old Testament and in the bureaucratic records of the Babylonian Empire. The texts corroborate each other to a pretty high degree – for instance there are people named in the text of the Hebrew Bible who are also mentioned in Babylonian documents. The second invasion of Judea is when Jerusalem was sacked and the bulk of the Jews were forcibly marched to Babylon. Finkel talked a bit here about what it must’ve been like for the Jews – his analogy was that in terms of culture shock it must’ve been much like it was for the rural Eastern European Jews who emigrated to New York in the 1930s.
The Book of Daniel talks about the young nobles of the Judeans being instructed in the language and literature of the Babylonians during the exile. This was a policy on the part of the Babylonians intended to indoctrinate the Judean elite with Babylonian culture, so that they would be less likely to rebel and instead be assimilated. Evidence from the Bablyonian side of the education of the Judeans includes a tablet which lists the Aramaic alphabet in cuneiform signs. The cross-cultural mixing went both ways – written around this time is a Babylonian tablet musing about monotheism and postulating that all the other gods are manifestations of Marduk. I.e. that Adad is “Marduk of the Rain” and so on.
At the time one of the ways students learnt to read & write was copying out set texts. From student tablets that have been found archaeologists have some idea of the school curriculum of the time that the Judeans were in Babylon. The stories they would’ve been copying included not only the Flood Story, but also one with a baby discovered in bulrushes and other legends of early rulers who lived unfeasibly long lives. And these all have parallels that end up in the Hebrew Bible.
This was a good talk to end the day on, and answered several of the things I was curious about after the TV programme. I intend at some point to read his book about the tablet, too. Overall this was a very interesting study day. Finkel is a very good speaker – my write-ups of his talks are sadly a rather dry rendition of the actual performance.
“The Sea Thy Mistress” Elizabeth Bear
The Sea Thy Mistress is the third book in Elizabeth Bear’s The Edda of Burdens series, following on from the end of both of the preceding books (All the Windwracked Stars (post) and By the Mountain Bound (post)). It’s pretty much impossible to talk about this book without some spoilers for the other two, so be warned there are spoilers ahead even for this one.
Both the previous books are stories about the end of the world, whether it be by a bang (BtMB) or a long drawn out whimper (AtWS). The Sea Thy Mistress is about a new beginning, and the tension comes from the vulnerability of the newborn world. At the end of All the Windwracked Stars Muire willing took up the role of Bearer of Burdens and brought life back to the world. But the Lady Heythe has ridden out of the first ending of the world into this new beginning. The world changed while she wasn’t there but she only aims to finish the job she started in By the Mountain Bound.
This story is also Cathoair’s story. With Strifbjorn’s soul but not Strifbjorn’s memories he’s an apt central character for this part of the trilogy. He (and the world) are at root the same as the previous man (world) but he (and the world) is also distinct and his (its) own individual self (world). And I hadn’t thought about it till writing this, but I think there’s a similar resonance for the world & the protagonist of each of the previous books. Muire & the world didn’t quietly give up & die in All the Windwracked Stars, instead they kept on going and even appearing to live despite the despair and/or dying that was concealed inside. I find it harder to articulate how the Wolf and the world match in By the Mountain Bound, but I still feel they do – something about being broken by someone using their very nature against them.
This story might take place a few decades after the end of All the Windwracked Stars, but it’s still a direct sequel. Cathoair hasn’t got over the traumatic events of the end that story. Muire is still gone, Astrid is still dead by his hand. He’s an immortal now – a new angel for a new world, and as such has a purpose and is alive. But he’s not really alive, more going through the motions. That starts to change when he becomes responsible for bringing up his son – Muire was pregnant by Cathoair when she made her sacrifice and the babe has been born and sent back to the living world (the Bearer of Burdens is presumably not a role that meshes well with bringing up even an immortal child).
And it is into this new life that Heythe walks. Of course the reader knows more than the protagonists do about Heythe – except the Wolf, but the Wolf is not trusted by Cathoair. And so Heythe has the cracks and flaws in Cathoair & the world that she needs to drive her wedges in and try to prise it all apart again. But this book is not a tragedy, and this new world is not as fragile as it first seems – there’s genuine hope at the end that the wounds of the last world are healed.
This has been one of my favourite of Bear’s series that I’ve read. I like what she’s done with Norse mythology, and I like the world & the people she’s created to inhabit it. I left it a bit long to write up this book, so I think I’ve forgotten some of the things I wanted to say about it, which is a shame. But I’m sure I’ll re-read it some day 🙂
Looking for the Greener Grass
In Our Time: The Photon
The episode on In Our Time about photons was summed up near the end by all the experts agreeing with an Einstein quote that if you think you understand what a photon is then you’re deluding yourself! So that makes it a trifle daunting to write up the episode but is reassuring in that the reason the subject feels slippery & hard to grasp is because it is 🙂 The three experts who joined Melvyn Bragg in discussing photons were Frank Close (University of Oxford), Wendy Flavell (University of Manchester) and Susan Cartwright (University of Sheffield).
Close opened the discussion by giving a summary of the 19th Century view of light. The key idea at this time was that light was a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The electromagnetic spectrum is the name given to waves formed electromagnetically – an electrical field builds up, which generates a magnetic field, the electrical field fades away as the magnetic field builds up, and a new electrical field builds up as the magnetic field fades away. These waves can have any frequency, and scientists showed the light was a part of this spectrum (i.e. that this is what light is). The existence of non-visible frequencies was predicted after this.
This didn’t, however, explain all the known observations of light. Cartwright discussed the “black body problem”: as you heat something up it starts to emit light, first red, then yellow and so on up to the bluer wavelengths. Planck figured out that this sequence can be explained if you assume that the light comes in little packets of energy (quanta), and that the amount of energy in each packet is determined by the frequency of the electromagnetic light wave. I don’t think I’d heard of the “black body problem” before, but I was aware of the existence of Planck’s constant – which is part of this theory.
At the time Planck was thinking about this problem it was assumed that the quanta were a property of the heated object and not of light itself – after all it was “known” that light was a wave and waves don’t come in discrete particles. Flavell explained that Einstein suggested that light might need to be thought of as a particle as well, but most people thought that was ludicrous. It wasn’t until after experiments done by Compton on interference patterns, which produced results that could only be caused by light being made up of particles, that it became accepted that photons are both waves and particles.
Having brought us up to speed on the history behind the theory of light’s paradoxical existence as both a wave & a particle the experts moved on to discuss more of the properties of photons. Photons are massless, consisting only of energy. This is why they travel at “the speed of light” – that’s the speed of a massless particle, anything with mass must travel slower. Photons are bosons one of the two broad classes of particles – the other being fermions. The classes are distinguished by how many can exist in the same quantum state at the same time. There can only be one fermion in each quantum state (and this is why we don’t fall through matter), but there can be more than one boson in each quantum state. Photons are also the mechanism by which the electromagnetic force is transferred around between objects.
The wave/particle duality of photons is one of the pairs of things that can’t be measured at the same time. This is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which I had heard of before but hadn’t realised applied to more than position/speed of particles. The experiments that demonstrate this practically are some of the weirder experimental data I’ve heard of, a proper demonstration of the counter-intuitive nature of quantum physics. If you look at light passing through a diffraction grate, then you see interference patterns – this is light acting as a wave. However, if you measure it at the level of single photons passing through, then you have “forced” the light to act like a particle by counting them and there are no interference patterns. And bizarrely if you measure like this and then delete the data the patterns reappear!?
My write-up of this has definitely not done the subject justice – physics is my weakest subject by far, especially quantum physics. Still interesting to learn a bit about, tho 🙂