{"id":1040,"date":"2016-03-11T16:15:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T15:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/?page_id=1040"},"modified":"2016-08-09T12:12:31","modified_gmt":"2016-08-09T10:12:31","slug":"master-evans","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/shakespeare-1616-2016\/playwright-or-figurehead\/from-longlist-to-shortlist\/master-evans\/","title":{"rendered":"Master Evans"},"content":{"rendered":"

The First Folio presents The Merry Wives of Windsor<\/em>\u00a0as Shakespeare would have designed it\u00a0in the summer of 1596 : with one of the company\u2019s \u2018leading ladies\u2019\u00a0assigned to the longest woman\u2019s part (Mistress Page), and the other by\u00a0means of I Henry IV <\/i>firmly attached to Mistress Quickly, only a boy of\u00a0sixteen would have been available to star as Mistress Ford. With Falstaff\u00a0designed for a senior actor of James Burbage\u2019s calibre, Master Ford would\u00a0be played by Richard Burbage (29), already an exceptional actor. And the\u00a0one every true boy player wants to be on stage with as his female lead.<\/p>\n

With Sir John Falstaff comes his servant Robin. Which means stage\u00a0experience to a boy who is not yet ready for a woman\u2019s part. And for a\u00a0boy of eleven at best, it is a great honour to have a scene with the\u00a0company\u2019s old master.<\/p>\n

Being a page boy, this kid may very well have doubled as the Page boy,\u00a0who, judged by his learning, is not a day older than little Robin. And William\u00a0Page is on stage with Hugh Evans, master of the schoolboys who perform\u00a0a masque in the final scene. And the man who composed their text, a\u00a0short poem.<\/p>\n

So far for theory : by the time the play was rushed into production, two\u00a0of these actors had died. And had probably been dead before Shakespeare\u00a0started writing. The best theory for him to write it being the occasion of\u00a0the Garter Feast at Windsor Castle on 23 April 1597. This on request of\u00a0the company\u2019s patron, Lord Hunsdon, as his contribution to the festivities\u00a0in which he was to be installed as a Knight of the Garter.<\/p>\n

If the Lord Chamberlain wanted his theatre company present on this\u00a0important day, he must also have requested his other charge to perform :\u00a0The Children of the Chapel Royal.<\/i> And surely enough, the 1623 Folio edition\u00a0has these boy choristers on stage in the two final scenes. Where they sing\u00a0under direction of Master Evans ; a Welshman who was in charge of the\u00a0Children\u2019s theatre productions. From 1598 or 99 onward he had Burbage\u2019s\u00a0Blackfriars Theatre for a base, and his best performers grew up to\u00a0become actors in Burbage\u2019s company. Which suggests the use of one of\u00a0the Lord Chamberlain\u2019s theatre companies as a\u00a0training facility for the other.<\/p>\n

Under Master Evans the Blackfriars was in legal respect a grammar\u00a0school. But not really in the same league as the one in Stratford, if a\u00a0certain playwright\u2019s portrait of its headmaster is anything to go by : the\u00a0real Evans was by learned profession a scribe. And the scene (4 ; 1) in\u00a0which his incompetence is exposed, is quite accurate on this school\u2019s\u00a0details ; Evans wears the clergyman\u2019s black, when testing the Page boy on\u00a0his ability to memorize rather unintelligible wordsequences. And then\u00a0allows him to join his classmates at missing out on school \u201cto play\u201d.<\/p>\n

The 1623 Folio edition therefore pictures a situation that, based on the\u00a0available facts, cannot be dated before 1599. The 1602 Quarto, however,\u00a0is far less specific : it does feature The Children of the Chapel, but lacks\u00a0both scenes in which Parson Evans is in charge of the boys on stage.\u00a0Which leaves only a few minor clues to enable his identification as their\u00a0schoolmaster. Or as the author of their song. A performance by the real\u00a0Evans would have made amends for that, but that seems an unlikely\u00a0scenario. And the author\u2019s haste to meet the deadline offers the simpler\u00a0explanation.<\/p>\n

The Merry Wives of Windsor<\/i> reportedly shows traces of time pressure,\u00a0but somehow Literature Studies has failed to connect a play that is\u00a0supposed to have been commissioned at very short notice, to a Quarto\u00a0edition that not just deviates on text, but lacks the entire final act,\u00a0except for a skeleton version of the play\u2019s indisposable final scene. It also\u00a0lacks the little page boy. But at least it has proper stage directions. At\u00a0which point the superior Folio version refers its professional users back to\u00a0the Quarto, because no director should take its improvements seriously\u00a0when it comes to entrances.<\/p>\n

From which observations follows that the \u2018corrupt\u2019 Quarto of 1602 is\u00a0exactly what it claims to be : The Merry Wives of Windsor<\/i> as it was\u00a0originally performed in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen.<\/p>\n

—<\/span><\/p>\n

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The First Folio presents The Merry Wives of Windsor\u00a0as Shakespeare would have designed it\u00a0in the summer of 1596 : with one of the company\u2019s \u2018leading ladies\u2019\u00a0assigned to the longest woman\u2019s part (Mistress Page), and the other by\u00a0means of I Henry … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1020,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1040"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1040"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1177,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1040\/revisions\/1177"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}