A Lover's Quarell: Comparing Wyatt and Surrey

Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard (referred to in the reading and in the blog as Surrey) were two very similar writers. They were close friends and lived working under the infamous Henry VIII. Both were imprisoned multiple times by Henry and in some cases got each other out. When looking at their writing, there is a similar style, maybe because they wrote in the same climate and in the same time period. But if your focus is put on one specific poem by each, you can see that there must be something more going on than just writing in the same time and place.

When looking at Wyatt’s poem “The long love that in my thought doth harbor,” and comparing it to Surrey’s “Love, that doth reign and live within my thought,” you notice right away the similarities in the titles. If the poems are taken line by line, only a few differences remain to be seen. Beginning with Wyatt’s and Surrey’s first four lines, line one begins by speaking of the love that lies within each narrators thoughts. In line two both narrators are speaking of the simple thought of love, which is personified into “he,” and moving from a thought to a feeling in the narrators heart. Where, in the third and fourth line in both poems, “he” is clad in armor and is holding a banner. At this point the love as been symbolized to knight or warrior, and the “banner” is representing of the now thoughts of constant love the narrator’s heart is showing him.

Moving on to lines five to eight in both poems, Wyatt and Surrey both speak of how “she” teaches the narrator how to both love and suffer. “She that learneth me to love and suffer” (Wyatt, 5). Compared to Surreys, “But she that taught me love and suffer pain” (5). Line six in both speaks of the narrator’s carless and doubtful love and lust, moving onto line seven, speaking of modest looks towards “her.” Here, there is the slightest difference in lines, as Surrey’s poem takes a turn for the brighter in line eight: “Her smiling grace convereteth straight to ire.” While in Wyatt’s poem his line eight speaks “his hardiness taketh displeasure.” These difference in lines shows that these two narrators and beginning to have different views on the situation, Wyatt’s poem taking a darker side.

The poems sync up again beginning in line nine, where the narrators are speaking of fleeing cowardly to the heart, followed by line ten which continues the running and hiding, but a slight variance changes the mood yet again. Wyatt’s poem speaks of “pain and cry,” when fleeing to hide, while Surrey’s narrator merely “plain(s)” or complains. Yet both narrators end up losing their way by line eleven. In the last few lines, the narrators of both poems speak of leaving their “lord” and “master.” Wyatt uses master while Surrey uses the word lord, both speaking in lines twelve to fourteen of leaving this person. Surrey’s use of lord may be a religious reference, being backed by the fact that his poem is the lighter of the two, and Wyatt’s poem seems to be coming from a darker side.

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Plays

Today in class, I think I was very surprised. Everyone had very different and unique plays. I was thinking that everyone was gonna have a similar play style or topic. I was also pleasantly surprised how funny a lot of them were. I was thinking that everyone was going to do something serious. It was also cool how everyone sort of picked a certain type of play and used it to make their own. Some of the topics were pretty random, but still really funny. Like, Jen’s play. I was NOT expecting to hear a play about mammoths. Or as Dexter was saying mam-moths. It was an awesome change up. I also thought Michaels play was cool. It reminded me of Law and Order (bum bum).

Performing the plays was also a lot of fun. I think that Michaels was the coolest to perform. I got to be an attorney, which was pretty sweet. I also thought it was strange how funny everyone, well at least Dexter, thought mine was. Cuz it was supposed to be serious. But I think we had fun performing stuff anyway so it doesn’t really matter. It was also cool how everyones play had little twists in them, it seemed like we all used some sort of twist to make our story different from others.

Lastly, I would like to say this was my favorite writing assignment. Everyone got to write about whatever they wanted and make stuff up. Which is pretty easy to do. Also, my little brother, who is 9, loved helping me with this. He picked out the names for me, and also, while I was writing my play, it inspired him to write his own story. Which was amazing, because he hates reading. But I thought it was cute how he felt inspired to write a story like I was. I really enjoyed this class, because I love theatre, and getting a chance to write and share my play was awesome. And I loved listening to others plays, it lets you get an idea of what everyone is really like. Although I hope everyone doesn’t think I do drugs and sleep with lots of women because of my play. Cuz I don’t.

Pygmalion

First off, I have to say, the entire time I was reading this play, all I could imagine and hear in my head was the movie/musical My Fair Lady. If you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty much the Pygmalion story in a musical form, with a slightly different story line, and I highly recommend it if you had problems with Eliza’s accent. At any rate, I had all of the songs from My Fair Lady stuck in my head for the past 3 days. But, as annoying as it was, knowing the storyline in advance did help me to understand what was happening in the play, especially with Eliza’s accent. The vocal link Mrs. Pierce gave us to listen too was also helpful in understanding some of the strong dialect.

Before class today I didn’t realize how the play Pygmalion was connected to the ancient Greek and Roman myth. The likeness of the two stories is not as strong as in other adaption’s, but it is still there. Most modern adaptions would probably keep Galatea as a statue and Pygmalion as a sculptor; with maybe some name variation and change of venue and language. But the way Shaw uses the ancient story to adapt it to modern day is amazing. Thinking that Higgins was just using Eliza to sculpt a perfect member of society by his standards was pretty twisted. When comparing the play to My Fair Lady it’s interesting to see the difference in characters but the almost complete similarity in storyline. When watching My Fair Lady, you do not really get a sense of Higgins being a creepy old guy out to use Eliza for his own entertainment. While in the play, Pygmalion that is how I read his character.

Over the past few classes when we’ve focused on comparing the play with its film adaption, I’ve become more in tune with spotting the small differences between the two. So when I read Shaw’s play, I saw able to quickly compare our modern day musical adaption in my head and see how the directors of both may have changed some things around to use to their advantage. The moral story that each of the adaption’s tell, I think, is still similar. In each, once Higgins turns Eliza into a “sophisticated lady,” there is nowhere for her to go, physically and socially. She’s stuck between two classes that are both not going to easily except her.

Dr. Faustus

Dr. Faustus was another hard read. This Medieval stuff is really hard for me to read, and I’m not sure why. I love Shakespeare and it is not far from it in some of its style and conventions. Though I must say that this story was more interesting than some of our previous stories, so it was a lot easier to get through. I thought that Dr. Faustus was an interesting man. He gives up his soul to the devil as to gain magical powers, and uses these magical powers to impress people. You would think if you got magical powers you would use it to make yourself invincible, or make it so that you can fly, or that you’re the richest person in the world. But it seemed to me like Dr. Faustus just wanted everyone to find him interesting and to be liked by his colleagues and the upper class. I found this pretty different. Nowadays if someone received magical powers, they would most certainly use them more destructively; whether it is self destructive or dangerous to others. A modern day tale would more likely be Dr. Faustus wishing to be the richest person in the world, or to have superpowers. Another thing about Dr. Faustus that I found interesting, and I didn’t necessarily like, was his indecisiveness. He kept changing his mind about whether he should be doing what he was doing. I mean, his indecisiveness before selling his soul makes sense, but afterwards, there’s really nothing you can do. He keeps thinking that he should pray to God and hope that he can be saved, when instead he should be enjoying his powers. You’ve already sold your soul Faustus, stop whining! Although I do feel sorry for him because Mephistopheles does push him towards selling his soul, and he didn’t really get a good chance to make a decision on his own.

Also, I found the play that Mrs. Pierce had us watch pretty amazing. The fact that when the director read this play, he imagined that in his head, that’s pretty incredible, especially seeing the his final image come to life on stage. When most people think of plays they don’t imagine things like that. I certainly didn’t and neither did anyone else in the class. Seeing this play, in any form and produced by anyone, seems as though it would be much easier to follow that when simply reading it.

Everyman

Everyman was a great moral tale, and had a wonderful underlying theme. But the story itself was very repetitive and boring. I didn’t want to upset anyone in class by saying this, but I’m not a very religious person at all. I may be one of the least religious people in the class, so the story was hard for me to read because of the way it was being told. I was bothered by Everyman having to appease god for doing all his wrongs before he could move on, and how he was no followed by his friends because of the fact he betrayed god. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great story and I do believe you must take responsibility for your “sins” so that you can pass on happily, but the fact that it was based on God and Jesus made it hard for me to read.

I do love allegorical stories, and the allegory used to tell this story was one of the best I’ve read, but again, I didn’t agree with the basis of the story. Also, I didn’t agree necessarily with the order that everyone left Everyman. To me, it would probably be Fellowship, Cousins, Kindred, Goods, Five-wits, Strength, Beauty, Knowledge and Discretion. Of course, because I am not religious I’m sure that this changes the way I look at myself and the world, as well as death.

One thing I do not understand about the story was the point of the Doctor at the end. I understand that he was there to sort of give a summary of the stories events, but I believe that the Angel could have just as well given us a summary. Everyman could have also given us a summary of his feelings and realizations.

The other thing that bothered me about this was the language. I’ve read Dante’s Inferno, Paradise Lost, and almost all of Shakespeare’s plays, but this play really gave me trouble. I had to read all of the foot notes at least twice and then read the lines very slowly so that I could comprehend what was happened. But I still ended up pretty confused as to what was going one near the end. The language in The York Crucifixion was much more complicated but I liked that story better. It was light hearted and the tone helped me to follow what was going on.

Atsumori

This story was pretty interesting, and it wasn’t hard to follow for me. The part that made the reading difficult was the fact that there were so many stage directions I was trying to keep track of and all the characters switching back on forth between lines. This style of writing made sense for the culture and time period, but isn’t very effective now.

When we learned about the Noh theatre traditions, the play’s unique style and structure made much more sense. And when we watched the video and I was actually able to see the effect all of the stage directions had on the actual performance. Performing in the Noh theatre looked like it might be very difficult. Having to remember all of the specifics of the movements as well as your lines seem like a lot to have to remember. The audience had to be well informed as well, and also very intelligent to be able to follow along with the story and use the actor’s body movements to tell what was going on.

When we were in class and Ms. Pierce started explaining what was happening at the end of the play I got really lost. I had no idea what was happening at the end because of the multitude of stage directions and the fact that the Shite was changing between characters. When she explained what was actually going on with the Shite’s line it made so much more sense to the story.

Another thing I found interesting about the theatre of the Noh area is the similarities between the Japanese theatre and the Chinese theatre. The singing element of the plays seems like a very asian feature. We in America would think of these as musicals, but they use the singing as a dramatic effect to add emotion to the play as well as to tell the story.