This week By Jove’s Blog Editor and resident Classicist discusses looking to the past for inspiration.
Hello. We here at By Jove work with tales from the canon, myth, what I think of as the “Old Stories”. There are reasons for this – both artistic and philosophical – and historical precedents. I thought it might be an idea to have a bit of a chat about some of them. I shall start with some ancient examples of making use of the past, then move on to the specifics of the same phenomenon in By Jove’s work.
The majority of classical Athens’ laws were those put in place by Solon the lawgiver. The courts did not keep records of why cases went a certain way to refine and update the law with precedents as modern systems do. This meant in each case in which there was ambiguity about quite what the law meant the litigants tried to assert their own version. Though arguments based on grounds of morality, or the common good were used, they invoked Solon’s name on top of that. There wasn’t the slightest doubt about whether Solon’s laws were right. Why would there be? He was the great man who gave a key part of the foundations of her constitution and freedom from tyranny;In fact, so highly-regarded was Solon that when Rome conquered Athens they convinced her that the laws which they were putting in place were lost laws of his.
Herodotus starts his Histories with the line “This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that things done by man not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvellous deeds … not lose their glory.” (tr. A.D. Godley, Harvard, 1920). Referencing is a hard habit to break. Similarly, Tacitus’ Agricola opens with “The deeds and morals of famous men of old were set down” (my translation), he goes on to provide the reader with a similar treatment of his father-in-law’s career spent subduing Britain. The intent behind both of these is to give an exemplar account of things done for posterity.
In philosophy, too, we see a similar phenomenon; Plato famously puts his point of view into the mouth of Socrates, his great and departed teacher. Elsewhere, if we look at a writer whose work I’ve actually read, (I know, I’ve not read Plato, I’m an awful Classicist); in his De Rerum Natura Lucretius is not content simply to expound a controversial philosophy in a language that lacks the technical language to do so, he also makes special effort to praise Epicurus, the (long dead) man who came up with the system. At the beginning of Book III he takes time away from the argument he’s been building to praise Epicurus by saying “I follow you, O glory of the Greeks, and now press my feet into your veteran prints.” (My translation).
In all these examples we have people consciously appealing to the past to guide them and their peers. (If you want more literature-focussed examples of this you can look deeper into the the blog and read my mini-series Misusing Myth .) Looking to the past means we have a plethora of examples. Some of them are good so should be emulated. Some aren’t so good, but by looking at and understanding their mistakes we can forewarn ourselves and try not to be doomed to repeat them. Most of them are mixed and need to be studied first. For most people slaving over ancient exempla is less fun than a lovely bit of theatre, which is where By Jove comes in.
It’s fun to mix ancient with modern
Put as simply as possible, By Jove works with the Old Stories because they are excellent. These tales survived because generation after generation saw the value in them and realised they were still worth telling. The themes in these stories still resonate with people, they are universal. Love, hate, gender politics, familial pressures, revenge, jealousy, fear, hope, pride, prejudice, the need to find one’s place in the world (to mention the smallest fraction of things By Jove has touched on in our work) are all as fascinating to us 21st-century types as they were to the original authors and audiences of our source material.
“But Woody!” I hear you cry – don’t cry, it’s just a blog post on a theatre company’s website, everything is going to be alright. “But Woody, if these themes are so universal, why do you need to raid the canon to discuss them? Why don’t you just create new pieces of art?” That’s a very important question, obvious straw man. The answer is that we DO create new pieces of art. Everything we do at By Jove has to be either new writing or new writing in discussion with old. A better question would be “Why are By Jove so frank about their source material?” Well, first perhaps we’ll motivate people who’ve not read the original to do so; second, perhaps we’ll motivate people who have read the original to do so again in a new light, to question their assumptions about the work and develop a better, more nuanced understanding of the work and thus of that view of human nature; thirdly, wearing our canon-raiding on our sleeves lets us be “the stranger in your midst” as one of my professors likes to call it. Placing By Jove’s works obviously and clearly in relationship to Old Stories from times and places alien to us, we let ourselves become “The Other”. This Otherness, we hope, makes our audiences think “Isn’t it strange people from that time and place thought about X like that?” Then they can begin looking at their own assumptions on the world, keeping and building on the good ones, discarding the bad, and moving towards what one might call enlightenment. I believe that we can do this more effectively with new writing than if we simply re-staged the Old Stories. We don’t have to break through the wall of familiarity and reverence the originals invoke. Instead we get people scrutinising us to make sure we’re doing them justice. While they’re concentrating on that they’re paying attention, which means they’re ready when we fling our message at them.
Of course, if all this sound a bit too heavy and “Arts-Student-y” we honestly don’t mind if you just want to rock up and enjoy some high-quality theatre for a good night out.
One Hopes You’re Well,
yrs,
ADWoodward
