HOT POOP

Haven't been here since November...hopefully my millions of adoring fans have eagerly awaited new input from Il Duce.....News reports on my cheesy basic cable inform me that the average readership for any given blog is ONE. Terribly disappointing in a few cases, richly merited in the majority. And now, on with the news....
Well, just how much do you need to know about Perkin Warbeck - notorious Flemish boat-boy and Duke of York pretender??? Ann Wroe seems to think Perkin is worth some 500+ pages of carefully researched and written pages in her book "The Perfect Prince". Unfortunately, this is about 500 pages too much. While very well written, the subject of the book is revealed as such a vapid, hapless, non-entity, that one wonders why so much sound and fury were directed to such a popcorn-fart. Despite Ann's attempts to convey some sneaking doubt as to whether Perkin really was one of Richard III's "Princes in the Tower" miraculously escaped, the whole thing comes across as much ado about nothing. Not unlike the sort of nonsense N. Z. Davis indulged in as the subtext to her microhistory "The Return of Martin Guerre". Too much speculation concentrated on subjects and sources who simply cannot support the Byzantine interpretations placed upon them by their authors.
James Reston is lucky he has a famous father.....because his writing SUCKS. The information contained in his "Dogs of God" would have been extremely interesting if some other, more erudite and educated author had conveyed it; Little Jimmy actually gets in the way of his tale with his ham-handed approach to historical writing. SOS - Someone STILL needs to relate the strange and unpleasant convergence of certain trends in Spanish history around the year 1492.
ARTWORK:
My new painting of Orsino, Duke of Illyria in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", has just been delivered to my gallery, Mountain Shadow. I think it turned out quite well; as soon as I get a good digital photo, I will put it on my web-site for all to enjoy.....
NEW PAINTING BEGUN!
Yes, I'm afraid it's true, the latest work is already begun. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about Christopher Marlowe's "Tamburlaine", and I finally decided to do a painting inspired by this play. The scene is back-stage at The Theatre, with Edward Alleyn dressed as Tamburlaine about to go onstage. The outcome will be posted "soon" if the results warrant. Is it not passing brave........

Guaranteed All New Content!

Painting efforts are going well. My portrayal of Orsino from Twelfth Night is proceeding nicely. I received my copy of the Marlowe Society newsletter from Mr. Roger Hards, and the reproduction of my painting of Christopher Marlowe looks very good. Roger also did a very nice job on the description of the painting. I was thinking about possible future, Marlowe-inspired, works and the one that persistently presents itself to my mind is a major passage in Tamburlaine where the Scythian bad-boy makes a great deal of his color scheme of white/red/black and its unpleasant connotations. Interesting that Tamburlaine's preferred color scheme was also that of Nazi Germany! Anyway, perhaps something exotically oriental could be done with an actor playing Tamburlaine at the Theatre in Marlowe's time dressed in a white/red/black Elizabethan version of Turkish or Arabian fashion...
Latest Reading: Following up Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars and Bernard's The King's Reformation, I turned to an older biography of Henry VIII by J.J. Scarisbrick. I am almost finished with the last chapter, which is a summation of the reign. The last word seems to be that of opportunities wasted. Whether one signs on with Bernard's insistence of Henry as prime mover in all acts of his reign and follower of a consistent religious line or not, in the final analysis Henry is a supremely unlikable man who seems to have done the right things for the wrong reasons. His penchant for abbreviating the opposition is also an off-putting characteristic. I was surprised, when reading Henrician history, to realize that Thomas More wasn't really the saintly Paul Schofield fellow of "A Man for All Seasons"; his burning of heretics, hair-shirt, and vitriolic writings against those who disagreed with him theologically render him a fully rounded, and really strange, individual. But Thomas More's nasty habits do not justify Henry's treatment of him. If I am not mistaken, More had guardianship/custody of a lunatic who he would regularly beat with switches in his garden at Chelsea-on the ass. Perhaps Henry should have followed this example when searching for an appropriate punishment for More's refusal to take the Oath of Supremacy.....

Tudor Drama Blather

Having read around 20 plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries, I recently ordered a copy of J.M. Manly's 1894 edition of Specimens of the Pre Shakesperean Drama V2. This collection starts with a play I had always wanted to read because of its screwy title- Ralph Roister Doister. Unfortunately, the play isn't as entertaining as its title seems to promise. Nicholas Udall wrote this one in 1553, and the entire work is in rhyming couplets. While I enjoy a little bit of rhyming couplet such as Shakespeare displays in early works (the exchanges between Talbot and his son in Henry VI), an entire play's worth is a bit strained. No one ever approaches that real conversational tone so necessary for fully-rounded characters. Ralph himself is a thin, "stock" character of the swaggering coward type, lacking all the charm and rascally wit that could have made him into a Falstaff or Toby Belch. There is one good extended joke in the play revolving around a letter that, depending upon its punctuation, changes meaning radically.
Manly's third selection is Preston's 1569 play Cambises, again in rhyming couplets. The intro to this bizarre little number was later mocked by Shakespeare in Hamlet: "a lamentable tragedy filled with pleasant mirth" ! Anyone expecting to get a good take on ancient Persian history in this work will be extremely disappointed. Most of the action involves stock characters whacking each other, not unlike a punch-and-judy puppet show.
Things get a bit more interesting with Manly's 4th selection Gorboduc, by Sackville and Norton. This one is from 1561 and features, finally, blank verse in pentameter. However, the authors are writing before George Gascoigne's 1575 work urging the use of Iambic, so that the work lacks that rolling rhythm that would elevate it to the level of Marlowe and Shakespeare. The dialogue in this play, at times, comes agonizingly close to greatness, but never quite clears the hurdle.
Manly's 4th pick, Campaspe, by John Lyly, begins to approach "hot stuff" status. I had read Lyly's Endymion several months ago, and while these plays are very slow in pace, and simple in plot, they display an interest in beautiful language missing from Manly's previous selections. Lyly's ponderous pace and preciosity of language, however, create works that come across as set-pieces in a display case, lacking the wild immediacy of a Shakespeare or Marlowe.
I am now reading Manly's 5th play, Robert Greene's James the IV, and, even though Greene will be remembered forever for those nasty things he said about the "upstart" Shakespeare, his plays are very readable and enjoyable. There might even be some paintings in some of Greene's works......
Anyway, Manly's very interesting offerings have not, thus far, come anywhere close to demanding visualizations. Nothing in his first 4 picks has screamed "paint me!", so I am continuing to work on my new painting of Orsino from Twelfth Night. Having spent three days drawing with my white charcoal pencil on an umber-primed panel of 24" X 18", I have finally begun to paint. I always start with the most boring section of the work, so I am painting a strip of wall about 2 inches high between the tapestry and the floor. I want to keep this one pretty dark, so I am shading everything darker toward the edges in an attempt to keep the light centered around my seated figure. So far, so good. On my next Blather installment I want to get into my recent readings on Henry VIII and his religious settlement, a subject that my millions of adoring fans will undoubtedly be awaiting with baited breath. Stay tuned.
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Latest Blather

Greetings. Time for some new info on the blog, which may, or may not, be of intense interest to anyone. LATEST OILS: Having finished my painting of Christopher Marlowe (viewable on my web-site), and having crammed it with many agonizingly small motifs, I wanted to do something a bit simpler. Since I had been reading J. Israel's giant door-stopper of a book on the Dutch Republic, and I have Dutch ancestry, I thought I might do a Dutchman from the 1590's holding a matchlock musket. I used the colors of the House of Orange,orange/white/blue, to create a color scheme. The figure is dressed in mainly blue clothing and he is standing against a wall covered with blue and white House of Orange rampant lions. On the ground, I placed a basket of oranges, and put some loose oranges here and there. I am almost finished with the thing, but I'm not quite sure about it. I may have to do some more thinking and analyzing before I call it a day and order a frame. One never knows quite how any idea will work out until it is fully realized; I always assume that if I am not a little nervous about what I am painting, I am not working "honestly".Per Ardua Ad Astra!
I usually get to work on the next painting when I am half-way to completion on the latest work. I procrastinated a great deal on my new one, however, and I have had to do a lot of drawing lately to get it ready. It will be a study of Orsino from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. A few weeks ago I found a large, gray moth in the back yard - when it opened it's wings it revealed black spots filled with an intense magenta/pink. I want to use it for a design on a tapestry which will be on the wall behind Orsino. He will be seated in a large, carved chair and flanked by two greyhounds. I want something on the floor in front of Orsino, but I have two possibilities: one or two unopened letters that Olivia has returned, or a copy of the 1623 folio of Shakespeare's works opened to Twelfth Night. Anyway, the studio is filled with all of my insect/moth and dog reference books.....more later.
When I had my old web-site up, I used to get regular, monthly hits from someone on the Seychelles Islands. I have always wondered who, at this remote, romantic, Joseph Conrad-type location was checking in on my work ?!? Are you still out there? Parlez-vous Francais? Je parle un peu. Ecrivez moi, s'il vous plait!

AMAZING,STUPENDOUS,COLOSSAL GRAND OPENING!

Welcome to my new, improved, website. Now, at last, I will be able to communicate, in almost real-time, with my millions of adoring fans. All improvements are due to my wife, artist and computer-whiz, Brenda Semanick. When I had to choose a title for my blog, I found myself in a real dilemma as there were so many tempting possibilities. I finally whittled it down to a few favorites: "Precious Mementos", "Montclair Moments", or perhaps "Jovial Bonhomie and Gay Banter". Anyway, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and went, temporarily at least, with "Blather". If anyone has a favorite, or an exciting suggestion, please let me know. But don't send me a lot of scatalogical, expletive-laden stuff as you might bruise my tender psyche.

Hot News- My latest painting (which is viewable at Recent Works), "That Fine Madness", which is a portrait of Christopher Marlowe as Dr. Faustus, will be included in the next newsletter of the Marlowe Society. I sent a copy to Roger Hards, the Society's PR man, and he has decided to use the image. I was wondering what true, Marlowe fanatics would make of my efforts, and, apparently, they passed muster. Roger had to contact Cambridge University to get their permission to reproduce my painting because I used the putative Marlowe portrait found at Cambridge which they own the rights to. Because the Marlowe Society is non-profit, everything went swimmingly. If you haven't checked out the Marlowe Society web-site, it is well worth a visit.