I am just ecstatic to talk about this year’s hit Broadway Musical Six. It swept the Tonys, and has opened up touring productions across the country, and I JUST GOT TO SEE IT!
This vibrant, clever retelling of Tudor her-story was created by TOBY MARLOW & LUCY MOSS in association with the Chicago Shakespeare Festival. The show is incredibly smart, and creative, and delves into the lives of some fascinating women, re-told as a singing contest with the characters singing their lives for you to judge what it was like being the queen of England and living with the turbulent and fickle Henry VIII.
What really appeals to me in this show is that like Hamilton, the musical takes these six semi-mythical women and tells their story in a way that is fresh and exciting. It bridges the gap between Tudor History and the modern-day by equating being a queen with being a celebrity, with all the drama of ambitious parents, romantic drama, public opinion, and even being exploited and sexualized by a male-dominated society. This comes across in the music, the costumes, the lyrics, and even the lighting!
Why “Six” Slaps
The costumes are brilliant and iconic. Catherine Of Aragon is like a cross between Beyonce, a saint, and a medieval knight. The lighting is incredible! You could tell the whole story using the lighting design as it pulsates, dances, changes into different colors, turns into different shapes, and finally flashes the name of the show in triumphant gold letters.
One particularly brilliant way the music works in “Six” is the fact that it uses the song “Greensleeves” as a motif both musically and thematically. One big theme of the show is how, unlike Henry VIII, most of the history of his six queens is lost and replaced by legends and even songs. The first line of the show is the famous rhyme about their fates: “Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.” As the video above helps illustrate, Marlowe and Moss know that most people only know the rhyme about their deaths and the myth that Henry wrote a song about one of them; that their lives are overshadowed by their deaths and the misconceptions that people have written over the years. Howard Ho points out how the song musically forces itself into the first number, “Ex Wives,” but by the end of the show, the six queens break free from these musical bars! You can hear the change of key and notes during this performance at the Tonys, which puts the opening number and closing reprise together.
The Cast of “Six” perform live at the 2021 Tony Awards.
But how do the queens go from “one word in a stupid rhyme,” to a group of powerful, individual queens singing in harmony, without the man who made them famous? That’s what the solo numbers in “Six” do so incredibly well- tell each queen’s solo stories as rocking ballads, hilarious dis-tracks, soulful love songs, and… well stay tuned.
Catherine of Aragon was Henry’s first wife and is still universally beloved, even though Henry decided to divorce her. As the epitome of a stand-alone power queen, it makes sense that Six modeled her character, costume, and songs after Beyonce, with a Shakira-inspired Spanish beat for good measure:
My favorite thing about her solo, “No Way” is how the writers paraphrase her real-life speech during the divorce trial in 1529. Below are the lyrics and the real speech:
Alas, Sir, where have I offended you? Or what occasion have you of displeasure, that you intend to put me from you? I take God and all the world to witness that I have been to you a true, humble and obedient wife, ever conformable to your will and pleasure. This twenty years and more I have been your true wife, and whether it be true or no, I put it to your conscience.
— Katherine of Aragon, 1529
2. Anne Boleyn
In some ways, the version of Anne Boleyn in “Six” is less a pop version of the real queen and more of a commentary on the nature of celebrity. If you watch the video, you can see how in life she was admired for her beauty and fashion but hated for her comments on Queen Katherine, her scandalous love affairs, and her brash nature. This explains the spiky pop-punk princess look they gave her, (which evidently resonates with many audiences since I saw at least two girls cosplaying as Anne in the audience). Sort of like a celebrity who gets canceled on Twitter or Princess Diana, Anne shows how a person can be undone when they dare challenge an established order, especially the Royal Family.
After the show, I found it a bit weird that they portrayed Anne Boleyn as a jetsetting airhead, but then again she is one of the best-known queens in history, so they can get away with it. In reality, Anne Boleyn was highly educated and a member of an ambitious and social climbing family who basically pushed her to woo Henry. As you can see in this clip from “Anne Of A Thousand Days,” Henry and Anne’s family bullied her constantly to become the King’s mistress after HE ALREADY GOT HER SISTER PREGNANT, so Anne knew that the only way to keep Henry from ruining her life was to convince him to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry her.
Of course, this strategy didn’t save Anne in the end, which says more about how cruel Henry VIII was, chewing up women and spitting them out in his ravenous quest for a son. So is this an accurate portrayal of Anne’s life? No. Is it fun, ABSOLUTELY!
III. Jane Seymore
I’m more than I seem, or am I?
“Six” The Musical.
This version of Jane Seymore was inspired by Adele, so appropriately, she has a heart-wrenching power ballad about her turbulent relationship with Henry. Sadly, we don’t know much about Jane’s real life, so the song takes some liberties. If you go to the Hampton Court Website, you can actually vote as to whether Jane was a devoted wife or a social climbing gold-digger. Probably the real woman was something even more complicated, though we’ll never know for sure.
IV. Anne of Cleaves
Anne of Cleaves is the funniest part of the show! Many of us have heard the story that Henry divorced Anne after he found her ‘ugly.’ What “Six The Musical” does is amend the story, by pointing out that after he divorced her, Henry gave her a castle and a huge retainer, allowing her to live like a queen, without being married to a king! Accordingly, her song is a Rhianna-style dis track that shows off her awesome lifestyle, and spits in Henry’s stupid face!
As fun as this, rags-to-riches story is, the truth is less fun- Anne was the sister of a German duke, so Henry’s lord Chancellor Thomas Cromwell probably forced Henry to marry her for diplomatic reasons (source: Hampton Court: “Anne of Cleaves”). Naturally, Henry didn’t like being told what to do- I suspect he resented Anne before even meeting her because he didn’t get to pick her himself.
As for whether Anne was actually ugly, the truth is really surprising- Henry actually disguised himself as a peasant during a masked ball when he first courted Anne, and she foundhim repulsive. At the time, Henry was 49 years old, and in very poor health. As such, he was intermittently impotent and blamed his inability to conceive a child with her on her supposed ugliness to save face.
Even though Anne in the show hates Henry, in reality, once the marriage was annulled, Anne and Henry remained good friends for years! She attended his next wedding to Katherine Howard, and, just like in the show, Henry treated her much better after the divorce:
‘YOU SHALL FIND US A PERFECT FRIEND, CONTENT TO REPUTE YOU AS OUR DEAREST SISTER. WE SHALL, WITHIN FIVE OR SIX DAYS …DETERMINE YOUR STATE MINDING TO ENDOW YOU WITH £4000 OF YEARLY REVENUE…YOUR LOVING BROTHER AND FRIEND.’
Henry VIII, 1548, six months after their wedding, when the annullment went through.
V. Katherine Howard
Without question, Katherine Howard is portrayed as the most tragic of Henry’s six wives and her song is a huge sucker punch. The writers never let you forget that Katherine’s first affair was when she was 13, and she died at age 19. Like Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymore, Henry picked Katherine for his queen among his ladies in waiting and her song “All You Wanna Do” satirizes his and many other men’s lustful appetites. The song begins as a raunchy, sexy pop ballad in the vein of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and “Womanizer” about Katherine Howard’s love affairs, but then devolves into a cry for help, as Katherine confesses how she was abused, used, and manipulated by the men in her life, (including her own cousin Thomas Culpepper) until she was beheaded in 1542. It masterfully satires both Henry’s cruelty and the hypersexualization of teenage pop stars which certainly took its toll on Britney Spears and Ariana Grande, Katherine’s major ‘Queenspirations.’
VI. Katherine Parr
Historically, Katherine Parr had to turn away her fiancee Thomas Seymore (just like Anne Boleyn was previously engaged to Henry Percy) once the king set his eyes on her for his wife, so her song is a sad, soulful Alicia Keys-inspired bittersweet song where she tearfully says goodbye to Thomas to spare his feelings and probably his life.
Not only does this song once again show how Henry’s selfishness and his lust ruined the lives of the women he married, (as well as the men who already wanted to marry them), but it also sets up the main idea of the show:
His-Story overthrown
In the final number, the wives turn the tables on Henry- they have spent centuries being defined by him, but in reality, he is just as much defined by them! Going forward, history should not define these great women as just, “The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth,” but to celebrate their individual lives and contributions to history. Katherine Parr mentions this when she points out that in life, she fought to allow women to be educated, she wrote books, and was a scholar of theology. Historically, Henry and Katherine would argue about religion and he nearly executed her after she disagreed on points of theology, but Katherine kept her life by claiming she was “Not disagreeing with [him], but simply learning from [him].”
I Don’t Need Your Love is sung by Catherine Parr in SIX: The Musical. The first part of the song refers to her love of Thomas Seymour, whom she probably wanted to marry rather than Henry (and did marry after Henry’s death). However, the song also protests at the fact that women are often defined by their relationship with men, rather than as people in their own right. Catherine wants to be remembered for what she did, rather than the men she married or loved.
Katherine Parr, Six.
The final number completes the idea of the ‘historemix’ by having the Six queens/pop stars come up with a re-imagined happy ending for themselves, one that doesn’t include the pain that Henry inflicted on them: Katherine A becomes a singing nun, (like Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act), while Anne Boleyn starts writing lyrics for Shakespeare (which is a fun idea since he does mention “Greensleeves” twice). Jane Seymore forms a band with her many surviving children, Katherine Howard goes solo, and Katherine Parr joins the other queens in a supergroup. It’s not at all historical, but it is a fun and sweet way to put an epilogue on these (mostly) tragic lives.
It’s odd, however, that the show invents an epilogue instead of talking about the six queen’s greatest legacy- Queens Elizabeth and MaryI. For a show that wants to highlight the often-forgotten legacy of these queens, it is an odd oversight. Remember Catherine and Anne gave birth to queens who eventually ruled England without a king. Jane Seymore gave birth to a king, and Catherine Parr helped raise them and restored them to the line of succession- She’s the reason her stepdaughters were able to become queens in the first place.
My issues with the epilogue aside, it is great to see history be recontextualized and shared in such an accessible way. We all know that European history is dominated by the names of white guys- king whoever, duke what’s-his name. To see important women in history be given a voice by a multi-ethnic cast is a great way to make it resonate, and using the metaphor of pop stars works extremely well in this context- these women mostly didn’t choose stardom, but they deserve it for what they went through.
Brava.
Educational links related to the six wives of Henry VIII:
Hello everyone! I’m back from break and happy to celebrate one of my favorite holidays with you- the one that gave its name to one of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies- Twelfth Night
I’ve been in this play three times and I’m continually struck by how fun, romantic, and progressive it is. It raises questions about gender roles, social norms, bullying, and even catfishing and heteronormativity! It’s a fascinating and thought-provoking play and it’s my favorite of Shakespeare’s comedies!
Shakespeare’s early comedies are about young love, infatuation, and being ‘madly in love’ (sometimes literally). His middle plays are about mature relationships between men and women and the need for commitment. I would argue that Twelfth Night, (and possibly Much Ado About Nothing), are the best examples of Shakespeare telling meaningful stories about romantic relationships.
Images from various productions and paintings of “Twelfth Night.”
In honor of “Twelfth Night,” I’ve created a coupon for my course on Shakespeare’s comedies from now till January 31st: Get $10 off my class “Shakespeare’s Comic Plays” with coupon code HTHESYTIT110 until Jan 31, 2023. Get started at https://outschool.com/classes/shakespeares-comic-plays-868BR5hg and enter the coupon code at checkout.
To finish I wanted to give you a complete production of Twelfth Night for your viewing pleasure, but I can’t decide which one, so I will post a bunch today!
1. 1996 TV movie starring Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean)
One really fun thing I like to see each Thanksgiving is the live previews of some of Broadway’s hottest shows. You may remember that I first became acquainted with the musical “Something Rotten,” after seeing a live performance at the Macy’s Day Parade. I am just ecstatic to see and talk about this year’s hit Broadway Musical Six. It swept the Tonys, and has opened up touring productions across the country.
The Cast of “Six” perform live at the 2021 Tony Awards.
This vibrant, clever retelling of Tudor her-story was created by TOBY MARLOW & LUCY MOSS in association with the Chicago Shakespeare Festival.
The show is incredibly smart, and creative, and delves into the lives of some fascinating women, re-told as a singing contest with the characters singing their lives for you to judge what it was like being the queen of England, and living with the turbulent and fickle Henry VIII. What really appeals to me in this show is that like Hamilton, the musical takes these six semi-mythical women and tells their story in a way that is fresh and exciting.
Part I: Shakespeare’s “Henry VIII:” How NOT to tell a queen’s story
Around 1613, Shakespeare wrote his final play- his 10th history play which loosely told the life of English king Henry the Eighth.
I happen to know a lot about this play since I was in it back in 2008, as you can see in the slideshow above. As you might notice, this play doesn’t tell the story of all of Henry’s wives. We only see the last few years of Catherine of Aragon’s life, and the beginning of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. Most of the drama actually centers around Henry and his scheming advisor, Cardinal Wolsey. Maybe I’m biased because I played this role, but frankly, Woolsey is treated in the play as a stereotypical Machiavellian villain, who conveniently leads the king astray so he can be the hero of the play. Woolsey does all of Henry’s dirty work; taking over his government, spearheading his divorce to Catherine, and trying to dissuade the king from listening to Anne Boleyn’s Protestant ideas, dismissing her as a “spleeny Lutheran.” Shakespeare leaves it ambiguous as to whether Henry actually told Woolsey to do any of these things so the audience will blame Woosey, instead of the king.
I’ll be blunt, aside from the courtroom scene at Blackfriars, where Katherine pleads for Henry not to dissolve their marriage, and the fun dances and costumes in the scene where Anne flirts with Henry, the play is really quite boring. though I blame Jacobean censors more than Shakespeare for this. Even after the entire Tudor dynasty was dead and buried, powerful people in the English government controlled what Shakespeare could say about them.
Part II: The women take wing
During Shakespeare’s life time, the wives of Henry VIII were bit players at best. With the exception of Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn (who in most narratives have often been cast as either virgins or whores), the lives of Jane Seymore, Anne of Cleaves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr were barely told until the 20th century, where new feminist scholarship sparked renewed interest in these women and how they lived.
TV series like The Tudors, movies like The Other Boleyn Girl, and of course books and documentaries by
Well, I can’t yet give an objective view of the plot and characters of “Six,” because I haven’t seen it…(yet). But until then, let’s just say that like “Hamilton,” it is great to see history be recontextualized and shared in such an accessible way. We all know that European history is dominated by the names of white guys- king whoever, duke what’s-his name. To see important women in history be given a voice by a multi-ethnic cast is a great way to make it acessible.
Bravo.
Educational links related to the six wives of Henry VIII:
Last month, I took a short vacation to Las Vegas, where, as some of you know, I went to Area 15 and the Omega Mart Exhibit. I also visited the Las Vegas Mob Museum. I’ve been fascinated by the mob for years. The Mob (AKA The Outfit), has within its many threads a potent combination of corruption, seduction vice, and violence all hidden behind the veneer of honorable men who do what they feel they have to to protect their families and their communities.
Not surprisingly, while at the museum, I saw parallels between the history of organized crime and Shakespeare, specifically his most popular history play about a powerful family that takes over the crown of England in a brutal turf war, and then one of its most feared soldiers bribes, intimidates, and murders his way to the top; Richard III.
A Protection Racket: Feudalism vs. La Cosa Nostra
The structure of the mafia paralleled the feudal system. In a world where a police force didn’t offer much protection for marginalized communities, the mafia thrived by offering protection for these communities, (especially to immigrants and people of color in the 19th and early 20th century).
Much earlier than that, the feudal system of the middle ages, which started to crumble after Richard’s reign ended, was designed specifically so poor peasants could get protection from wealthy landowners after the fall of the Roman Empire. These lords offered the protection of their knights to these peasants i. Return for labor and a percentage of their income working the field. Like the mafia, these peasants paid tributes to their lords and these lords demanded loyalty. In the museum, there’s an interactive video where you can become a ‘made man,’ which means become an official member of a mafia crew. Like a king knighting a lord, this ceremony meant pledging your life to your superiors, and being at their beck and call no matter what. In addition, like medieval knights, mafiosos were not allowed to murder other made men without permission from their capo or boss.
However benevolent they might appear, In both cases the Dons and the medieval lords were extorting their underclass. Failing to pay tribute to their lords would cause the peasants to lose their lands, and any disloyalty to the mafia would be severely punished. These powerful, violent thugs used their private armies to intimidate the weak into giving them what they wanted.
Part II: The Two Families
To thoroughly explain the parallels between the Wars of the Roses and the mob, I need to make clear that Richard iii is more than just the story of one man’s rise to power, although there are also mafia stories that fit this mold such as Scarface, White Heat, and the real-life story of Al Capone.
As this hilarious “weather report” from “Horrible Histories,” makes clear, during the Wars of the Roses two powerful families, (each with a claim to the English crown) fought each other in a brutal turf war. As Shakespeare characterizes in his play Henry VI, Part III, the battles between the houses of York and Lancaster shook England like a mighty storm, and for a while it was hard to tell who would prevail:
Henry VI. This battle fares like to the morning's war, When dying clouds contend with growing light, What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,1105 Can neither call it perfect day nor night. Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea Forced by the tide to combat with the wind; Now sways it that way, like the selfsame sea Forced to retire by fury of the wind:1110 Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind; Now one the better, then another best; Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast, Yet neither conqueror nor conquered: So is the equal of this fell war.
Henry VI, Act II, Scene i
During the Wars of the Roses, it was King Henry’s incompetence and mental illness that gave the Yorkists the ability to challenge the House of Lancaster for the crown. In the 1920s, the passage of the 18th amendment, (which made alcohol illegal, and thus a profitable commodity for organized crime), that allowed the mob to rise to unheard-of power through illegally buying, distributing, and selling alcohol. As the photo and subsequent video shows, Prohibition largely led to the rise in organized crime in America, especially in Chicago. During Prohibition, the Italian Sough-side Gang fought for control of Chicago’s bootlegging trade and subsequently destroyed their competition from the Irish gangs through corruption, intimidation, and violence.
The Don rises- Richard Vs. Al Capone
Opening Scene from Ian Mckellen’s 1995 movie of Richard III.
Like the Italian and Irish gangs In Prohibition-era Chicago, the Yorkist and Lancastrian armies battled for the English throne. As Ian McKellen’s excellent movie (set in the 1930s) shows, Richard was instrumental in destroying the leading Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury, including Prince Edward and King Henry.
In Chicago, the most feared mobster soldier was Al Capone, who many scholars believe was responsible for killing off high ranking members of the Irish gang during the infamous St. Valentines Day Massacre, where the gang members were ‘arrested’ by South Side gangsters disguised as cops. As the Irish stood against the wall with their hands behind their heads, the phony cops pulled out Tommy guns from their coats and let out a hail of bullets on their unsuspecting quarry.
In Shakespeare’s play, the only Lancastrian to survive the war is Queen Margaret, wife to the murdered King Henry, and mother to the slaughtered Prince Edward. In this scene from Al Pacino’s “Looking For Richard,” she curses Richard for his cruel slaughters. It’s not surprising that Pacino was so drawn to Richard II that he starred in and directed this film. After all, Pacino is famous for playing mafia characters who slaughter their way to the top.
Once Capone killed the competition, he ruled a multimillion-dollar empire of bootleggers and maintained that empire through corruption, intimidation, and by constantly playing innocent, just like Richard himself.
Hypocrisy, Corruption and hidden violence
“Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see, but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
Both Richard III and mobsters are masters of double-speak, that is, seeming to say one thing and meaning something else. Look at this passage where Richard talks about killing his nephew, then denies it:
Richard III (Duke of Gloucester). I say, without characters, fame lives long. [Aside] Thus, like the formal vice, Iniquity, I moralize two meanings in one word.
Las Vegas: The town that bedded and abetted the mob.
Photos from the museum that shows how the mob-controlled most of the Vegas casinos and skimmed casino profits illegally.
After Al Capone’s demise and the repeal of Prohibition, the mafia found another vice to capitalize on: gambling. As the video below indicates, using their connections with the Teamsters Union and midwestern bookmakers, the mob in the midwest financed, built, and run almost every casino in Las Vegas, including The StarDust and the Hassienda. Once the casinos were built, the mob extorted millions of dollars from the casinos every month!
The profits from the casinos bought the mob even more power and influence, but this skim depended on making sure the bosses controlled their underlings, and defended their casinos from cheaters and snitches, which is why they defended their casinos through intimidation and violence.
Murders in The White tower and the city of sin.
A series of quotes from Las Vegas Mobsters
“Simple, plain, Clarence. I do love thee so, that I shall shortly send thy soul to Heaven.”
—Richard III, Act I, Scene i
When Richard of Gloucester starts his quest to become king, he begins by convincing his brother King Edward to execute his other brother George. Richard bribes the murderers to kill George before the king can reverse the death sentence. Richard has thus eliminated another obstacle in his way, and gained two loyal followers who will do anything for his gold.
Richard hires two murderers to kill the duke of Clarence (Nigel Hawthorne).
The mafia dealt the same way with traitors, stool pigeons, and anyone who tried to challenge the bosses. Look at this tour of the Mafia museum, where the grandson of the gangster Meyer Lansky starts by reminiscing about the glamourous lifestyle of Las Vegas mobsters, but the tour quickly takes a dark turn as Lansky II talks about how his grandfather ordered brutal executions for anyone who crossed The Las Vegas Outfit.
Exterior of the Mafia Museum
It was an enormously interesting trip going to the Mafia Museum, and if you can get out to Las Vegas, be sure to visit, (don’t forget the password to visit the speakeasy bar in the basement!) It was eye-opening for me how prevalent the sort of corrupt protection racket that started in the middle ages and continued into most of the 20th century helped define The Wars of the Roses and the mafia. As long as the strong prey on the weak and the law can’t protect everyone equally, these kinds of violent thugs will be lurking in the shadows, waiting for a shot at the crown.
You probably know that I love to speculate and do a little historical detective work and find out whether Elizabethans like Shakespeare celebrated our modern holidays and then compare and contrast how they celebrated them back then versus how we do today. Valentine’s Day is a day we associate with love and poetry, so of course, I wondered if the most celebrated poet of the Renaissance celebrated it himself!
Based on my findings, if Shakespeare celebrated Valentine’s Day, he probably did mainly what we did- writing letters and poems to his beloved and maybe sending a trinket of love. It’s unlikely he celebrated it like modern Catholics do to honor the martyrdom of a Catholic saint. In my research, I was surprised to learn that Valentine’s Day has been celebrated for hundreds of years and has its roots in a holiday that Shakespeare describes in one of his most famous plays.
Part I: The Feast of Lupercal: Valentine’s Day’s Dark Ancestor
According to NPR’s podcast: “The Dark Origins of Valentine’s Day”, like Christmas, Halloween, and many other holidays, the Christian holiday of St. Valentine’s day was designed to replace the pagan holiday of Lupercal, which was a Roman fertility festival where men engaged in basically what we’d now call- swingers’ parties or key parties where they’d draw a woman’s name from a lottery and… couple for the night.
The Lupercal was also synonymous with the founding of Rome. Lupa is the name of the wolf that saved the infants Romulus and Remus, who would become the first kings of Rome. If you click here, you can read an article about a recent archeological discovery; a cave found under Rome that was once revered as the place where Romulus and Remus lived with Lupa:
Shakespeare actually starts his play of Julius Caesar on the Lupercal, and makes reference to its status as a fertility festival. In Act I, Caesar is watching Antony run a race and tells him to be sure to touch Calpurnia, owing to the superstition that if a man touches a barren woman on Lupercal, it will make her capable of bearing children:
Caesar. Calpurnia! Calpurnia. Here, my lord. 85 Caesar. Stand you directly in Antonius' way, When he doth run his course. Antonius! Antony. Caesar, my lord? Caesar. Forget not, in your speed, Antonius, To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say, 90
The barren, touched in this holy chase, Shake off their sterile curse. Antony. I shall remember: When Caesar says 'do this,' it is perform'd. Caesar. Set on; and leave no ceremony out. Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene ii, Lines 84-95
Shakespeare leaves out that, according to tradition, Antony should be naked and anointed with goat’s blood and slap Calpurnia with a goatskin thong, but that was part of the Roman Lupercal festival.
St. Valentine was either a Catholic priest or bishop who was martyred in the 3rd century AD (Source History.com). According to tradition, he conducted Christian marriages in defiance of Roman law, and rejected the concept of Lupercalian coupling, which is why Emperor Claudius murdered him. Thus, the holiday is intentionally meant to replace Lupercalia, and celebrate monogamous relationships under the Christian God. The popular story is that before his death, he sent a letter to the young daughter of a family he converted to Christianity and signed it: “Your Valentine,” thus starting the tradition of signing cards in this manner. In the 5th century, Pope Gelasius made Valentine’s day an official Catholic feast day to replace Lupercal once and for all.
Part III: The oldest surviving Valentines
Evidence is sketchy on how the traditions of Valentine’s Day evolved, in the Middle Ages, but in Catholic Europe, the concept of celebrating married love on Valentine’s Day spread, and poets like Chaucer and Shakespeare helped popularize it.
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in the 14th century of how birds would choose their mates on Valentine’s Day:
For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.
According to History.com, there’s a possibility that Chaucer invented the idea of a St. Valentine’s feast, and forever linked it with the celebration of love:
The medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer often took liberties with history, placing his poetic characters into fictitious historical contexts that he represented as real. No record exists of romantic celebrations on Valentine’s Day prior to a poem Chaucer wrote around 1375. In his work “Parliament of Foules,” he links a tradition of courtly love with the celebration of St. Valentine’s feast day–an association that didn’t exist until after his poem received widespread attention. The poem refers to February 14 as the day birds (and humans) come together to find a mate.
This theme has been repeated in other pieces of literature. In John Lydgate’s 15th-century poem, “A Valentine to Her that Excelleth All”, he writes of how it was the custom on Valentine’s Day for people to choose their love:
To look and search Cupid’s Calendar and choose their choose by great affection.
John Ludgate: “”A Valentine to her that Excelleth All”
The Paston’s oldest surviving valentines
In the 1470s in a series of correspondence, from Margery Brews to her husband John Paston refers to the latter as “My right well-beloved Valentine, John Paston, Esquire.”
Margery also wrote adoring letters to John, who was probably away frequently, fighting in the Hundred Years War, and advising Margary’s kinsman, John Fastolfe, (whom Shakespeare mentions in Henry VI, Part I. Her poetry is very tender and must have comforted her husband much:
And if ye command me to keep me true wherever I go,
I wis I will de all my might you to love, and never no mo(re).
And if my friends say, that I do amiss,
They shall not me let so for to do,
Mine heart me bids ever more to love you
Truly over all earthly thing,
And if they be never so wrath
I trust it shall be better in time coming.
Margery’s letters are some of the earliest surviving Valentine’s poetry. Her letters prove that the tradition of giving poetry to one’s beloved during February was around in the 15th century, and probably while Shakespeare was a child in the 16th.
Shakespeare’s contributions to Valentine’s Day
Shakespeare mentions Saint Valentine’s Day twice in his works. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, (a play that is set in Ancient Greece and has connections to Lupercal), he builds on Chaucer’s claim that Valentine’s Day is the day that birds couple for the night. Duke Theseus and Aegeus discover the four lovers asleep. They are surprised that they are sharing the same ground, since Lysander and Demetrius (as far as the old men know), are rivals for Hermia’s affection.
Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past: Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?
— A Midsummer Night Dream, Act IV, Scene ii.
Egeus. My lord, this is my daughter here asleep; And this, Lysander; this Demetrius is; This Helena, old Nedar’s Helena:1685 I wonder of their being here together. Theseus. No doubt they rose up early to observe The rite of May, and hearing our intent, Came here in grace our solemnity. But speak, Egeus; is not this the day1690 That Hermia should give answer of her choice? Egeus. It is, my lord. Theseus. Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns. [Horns and shout within. LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS,] HELENA, and HERMIA wake and start up]1695 Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past: Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?
Shakespeare has a much darker reference to Valentine’s Day in Hamlet:
Ophelia has gone mad with the loss of her brother, her father, and Hamlet breaking her heart. She starts wandering the castle and can only communicate through songs. She sings a very melancholy song that alludes to the superstition that if two single people meet on the morning of Saint Valentine’s Day they will likely get married: Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose And donned his clothes And dupped the chamber door Let in a maid then out a maid Never departed more.
Ophelia seems to be darkly admitting that she and Hamlet have had pre-marital intimate relations and she is no longer a virgin, The song implies that Ophelia entered Hamlet’s chamber a maid (that is, an unmarried virgin), but is let out a maid (unmarried), while the Hamlet very clearly has taken her virginity. Hamlet re-enforces this suspicion by commanding her to go to a nunnery, one of the only recourse for single mothers. It is reasonable to assume that Shakespeare is implying that Ophelia is in fact pregnant, and is driven mad with sorrow that she now has to deliver her baby without any form of support from her father (who is dead), from her brother (who is in France), or her baby’s father, who wants her to leave and never return. Ophelia’s song is a lament that she wishes the superstition were true, and Hamlet had indeed married her.
It’s unlikely that Shakespeare celebrated Valentine’s Day as a religious holiday, after all, Queen Elizabeth had made England a Protestant country. Celebrating a saint day could have been seen as idolatrous in Protestant England. Nevertheless, Shakespeare and other romantic writers helped transform Valentine’s Day into less of a religious holiday, and more as a secular celebration of love and monogamy, very different from its bloody, promiscuous roots.
The Shakespearean Student 