{"id":5312,"date":"2013-03-05T11:42:57","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T16:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/collation.folger.edu\/?p=5312"},"modified":"2015-12-10T18:47:48","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T23:47:48","slug":"the-seven-ages-of-man-rendered-movingly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/2013\/03\/the-seven-ages-of-man-rendered-movingly\/","title":{"rendered":"The seven ages of man, rendered movingly"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my last post<\/a>, I described this month’s crocodile mystery as more of a rhetorical device than a question to be answered: what does this box prompt us to imagine what might be? ((All images in this post can be viewed in larger sizes through the gallery at the end.))<\/p>\n

\"what
what would this box reveal?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And what does it contain? Both a stage and a book. But it’s not just any stage and not just any book. The Globe Theatre is the setting for a miniature book that picks up on all the possibilities of staging: \u00a0“Presenting the Seven Ages of Man \/ by Mr William Shakespeare \/ As Rendered Movingly by Mrs. Maryline Poole Adams.”<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The
The Seven Ages of Man, rendered movingly by Mrs Maryline Poole Adams<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Seven Ages of Man speech is a set piece that has been illustrated by countless artists. It’s the basis of the gorgeous stain-glass window<\/a> that dominates the Gail Kern Paster Reading Room at the Folger, and it’s the inspiration for nineteenth-century advertising cards<\/a>. It’s a lovely piece in its own right, especially when delivered by a good Jaques:<\/p>\n

All the world\u2019s a stage,
\nAnd all the men and women merely players.
\nThey have their exits and their entrances,
\nAnd one man in his time plays many parts,
\nHis acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
\nMewling and puking in the nurse\u2019s arms.
\nThen the whining schoolboy with his satchel
\nAnd shining morning face, creeping like snail
\nUnwillingly to school. And then the lover,
\nSighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
\nMade to his mistress\u2019 eyebrow. Then a soldier,
\nFull of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
\nJealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
\nSeeking the bubble reputation
\nEven in the cannon\u2019s mouth. And then the justice,
\nIn fair round belly with good capon lined,
\nWith eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
\nFull of wise saws and modern instances;
\nAnd so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
\nInto the lean and slippered pantaloon
\nWith spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
\nHis youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
\nFor his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
\nTurning again toward childish treble, pipes
\nAnd whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
\nThat ends this strange eventful history,
\nIs second childishness and mere oblivion,
\nSans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. ((Folger Shakespeare edition, 2.7.146-173))<\/p>\n

And it can be a haunting speech, depending on the staging, when Orlando enters at the end of the speech with the old and weak Adam.<\/p>\n

But what does it mean that this book renders it movingly? In part, it’s a pun on moving: this is a miniature moveable book, with parts that move and pages that pop-up. Adams’s depiction of the mewling and puking infant gives some sense of the babe’s arms and tongue waving:<\/p>\n

\"the
the mewling and puking infant<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The book is quite small, as you can tell from my fingers holding it open. The box it’s in is 9 x 7 x 4 cm; the book itself is 6.5 x 5 x 2 cm. ((The book is kept in the box, of course, and the box itself is housed in a case, both to protect it and to keep it from falling behind the other books in the vault. The case, for the curious, is 19 x 15 x 6 cm.)) The size of the book is part of what gives it its charm. The pictures contribute, as well. Here’s the sighing lover, singing to his mistress, whose eyebrows look quite skeptical:<\/p>\n

\"a
a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s a sweet little book. But it’s the last scene that makes the book more than just sweet.\u00a0Its depiction of oblivion does indeed feel “sans everything”:<\/p>\n

\"mere
mere oblivion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But if we pull on the tab at the top of the page, we find something else:<\/p>\n

\"but
but is it really sans everything?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sudden lush color, the fantasy of wine and woman\u2014is this mere oblivion? For me, it makes the end of the speech less bleak, less lonely. And as someone who loves books and who loves performance, I marvel at how well this book performs for us. It is movingly rendered in a way that asks us to participate in its performance (it cannot move without us) and to receive its ministrations (we are moved by it).<\/p>\n

My post last week suggested that the power of boxes was in the tantalizing moment before we open them and find out what’s inside. I linked that desire to discover with what we sometimes feel when we do research: there’s always a gap between what we find in a catalog record and what we experience when we hold the book in our hands, between what we imagine we might find in its pages and what we discover once we start reading and looking. If this box and this book create a performance that moves us, perhaps we can think of the library\u2014the biggest of the containers holding this work\u2014as a place that performs and moves as well. How do libraries encourage us to open them up and discover what’s inside? What are our prompts to question what is oblivion and what is yet to be seen? How are we rendered movingly? These might be big questions to load onto a little book, but what does Shakespeare do for us, if not prompt us to wonder!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my last post, I described this month’s crocodile mystery as more of a rhetorical device than a question to be answered: what does this box prompt us to imagine what might be? ((All images in this post can be viewed in larger sizes through the gallery at the end.)) And what does it contain? Both a stage and a book. But it’s not just any stage and not just any book. The Globe Theatre is the setting for a miniature book that picks up on all the possibilities of staging: \u00a0“Presenting the Seven Ages of Man \/ by Mr William Shakespeare \/ As Rendered Movingly by Mrs. Maryline Poole Adams.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[163,107],"class_list":["post-5312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collation","tag-artists-books","tag-moveable-books","post-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}