Jew of Malta at the Swan Theatre Review

Review: Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, RSC at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Christopher Marlowe’s Jew of Malta was perhaps the most popular of the 1590s, but for a modern viewer, the issue of the play’s overt anti-Semitism pushes itself forward as the most pressing concern. After the Holocaust, how it could it not? And the resurgent anti-Semitism in Europe today only adds to our unease about a play in which the Jewish anti-hero is such an outrageously roguish mass-murderer. The similarities and dissimilarities to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice are worth considering. Both Marlowe’s Barabas and Shakespeare’s Shylock are unpopular, miserly businessmen. However, Barabas is a pantomime figure, whereas Shylock is a more rounded character who seems to have a life beyond the play. Barabas’ boastfulness and failure are typical of the villains in traditional English ‘Vice’ plays. Marlowe adds a perceived Machiavellian self-interest to Barabas, but this is complementary to the villain rather than a departure. Shakespeare gives Shylock sympathetic lines, such as the ‘Hath not a Jew Eyes?’ speech, whilst still giving him detestable qualities, which makes him seem much more human and ‘real’ than Barabas. Still, there may be a little more to the Jew of Malta – both in terms of warming our attitude to Barabas and in terms of themes which extend beyond the play’s crude anti-Semitism. This RSC production is a success in bringing both aspects to the audience’s attention.

Fernese

As the title suggests, the play is set on Malta, a largely Christian community with a Jewish minority, governed by the Knights of St John but nominally ruled and threatened by the growing menace of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. After neglecting to pay tribute to their Turkish overlords, an Ottoman fleet arrives to demand ten years’ worth of unpaid tribute. The Christian governor, Fernese, calls the island’s Jewish merchants to a meeting and delivers an ultimatum: turn over 50% of their wealth to the government, convert to Christianity and pay nothing, or lose everything. The other Jews agree to hand over half their wealth but Barabas, the wealthiest man on the island, refuses and so loses everything. In vengeance, Barabas engineers a feud between the governor’s son and his friend in which they are both slain. This leads to further crimes; including the poisoning of an entire nunnery (including his daughter Abigail), the murder of a friar, the framing of another friar for murder and the betrayal of the island to the Turks. Finally, Barabas even betrays the Turks but improvidently trusts Fernese and ends up himself betrayed to a grisly death.

The prologue, spoken by ‘Machiavel’, asks us to watch sympathetically the doings of his friend Barabas but, as many modern versions have emphasised, the most successful Machiavellian in the play is the arch hypocrite Fernese, who betrays his alliance with the Turks and in the end betrays Barabas, whilst accusing Barabas of treachery. One area where Fernese’s Machiavellianism falls down is his leaving Barabas alive after confiscating his property (as well as the other Jews who have lost half their wealth). The Prince says men will more easily forgive the murder of their father than the theft of their wealth and Barabas spells out the Machiavellian sentiment when he says that ‘I esteem the injury far less to take the lives of miserable men than be the causers of their misery’. Barabas can be Machiavellian at times, especially in the use of deception to achieve his aims, but he is far from perfect. In the end, in possibly the least psychologically realistic part of an often psychologically unrealistic play, Barabas trusts Fernese. In this production, Barabas’ explanatory soliloquy for this strange about face is put instead into the mouth of Abigail’s ghost/hallucination, which both humanises Barabas (is she the personification of his guilt, the personification of a subconscious desire to die?) and makes more believable the absurd and un-Machiavellian reasoning for trusting a man he has so badly harmed.

Barabas is converted

The prologue’s claim that ‘there is no sin but ignorance’ is given extra emphasis in this production by giving it both at the very beginning and then repeating it in its usual place slightly later on. The effect is to underline the anti-religious aspect of the play, which in itself take something away from the anti-Jew angle. If Marlowe was accusing all of ignorance, and including all religions in that accusation, then the specific aspects of anti-Judaism are simply facets of a broader assault taking in Christianity too. One has to be sceptical that the original audience would have viewed it that way (or the majority of them at any rate), but this interpretation does make the play more palatable to a modern, more secular audience, used to the anti-religious musings of Dawkins & co. Marlowe uses complex ironies to devastating effect, as in Fernese’s hypocritical exclamation that ‘covetousness, oh ‘tis a monstrous sin’ as he steals Barabas’ property. Even the friars argue about who will get Barabas’ wealth, and one exclaims upon Abigail’s death, ‘Ay, and a virgin too, that grieves me most’, suggesting that Ithamore may have been right when he said ‘hath not the nuns fine sport with the friars now and then?’ Friar Jacomo (Matthew Kelly) and Friar Barnadine (Geoffrey Freshwater) are excellent – slimy, smirking, seedy and greedy.

The current production makes Barabas more sympathetic by having him enter holding baby, leading ceremonial march of Jewish men, and singing (I think) a Hebrew lullaby. Likewise, before the madness of his vengeance takes control, his relationship with his daughter Abigail is both warm and realistic. Barabas’ vengeance stems from what appears to be almost a nervous breakdown in this version, brilliantly portrayed by Jasper Britton, whose complex and charismatic Barabas is outstanding. In contrast, the original text makes the change less comprehensible: Barabas begins as a contemptible Jew and then becomes a rampaging pantomime villain. Shylock’s resentment is realised much more fully. Shylock realises he is hated by the Venetians (‘I am not bid for love’), so his anger (‘thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause’) is understandable (especially when is tipped over the edge by the elopement of his daughter with his ducats). Barabas’ justifications are less clear-cut (though having all of your wealth confiscated because of your race and religion is hardly a trivial matter), but this RSC adaptation accentuates the daily humiliations poured on Barabas by his Christian neighbours, ranging from mocking laughter, to spitting on him, to physical violence. All this serves to make us sympathise with Barabas. Likewise, Barabas’ joyful, cheeky laughter on seeing Abigail dressed as a fake nun and laughing like a schoolboy with Ithamore (admittedly after wiping out a nunnery) is endearing. And, though evil, he is at least multi-talented: miser, murderer, trader, engineer, governor, lautist. Barabas is simply too immoral to be real, and has no problems pretending to convert to Christianity to further his ends, whereas for Shylock conversion is a real punishment. Barabas is closest to Richard III – except he has more justification for his hatred and he is a lot funnier in the way he goes about his vengeance, like the House of Cards’ Frank Underwood on coke.

Nevertheless, Barabas is a caricature of everything anti-Semites accused the Jews of doing, which makes him much less subtle than Shylock. It is tempting to think that these traits were played up to play them down, in effect to be such a parody of anti-Jewish tropes that the anti-Semitic tropes appear nonsensical to any sane observer. This might be the case or it might not (it doesn’t take much research to discover that anti-Semites today seem to seriously entertain some absurd beliefs about Jews). Still, perhaps carried away on a wave of Barabas’ charisma or suffering from a surfeit of post-modern irony, I don’t think Barabas’ confession to Ithamore is supposed to be taken seriously:

            As for myself, I walk abroad o’nights

            And kill sick people groaning under walls:

            Sometimes I go about and poison wells…

Did the original audience believe such wild libels or, like the Swan Theatre’s twenty-first century audience, did they think that Barabas was taking advantage of anti-Jewish gullibility (in this case to impress an anti-Christian Muslim)? In other places, Barabas does use others’ preconceptions of Jewish difference for his own ends (e.g. saying that Abigail’s weeping over an unhappy engagement is really a Jewish custom). Ithamore responds with his own tall tales of anti-Christian atrocities – although in the age of IS, perhaps I should not be so quick to discount their intended earnestness.

Ithamore

Marlowe was writing in the English morality play tradition and, although he introduced some innovations in melding this genre with that of tragedy, and in adding the heavy dose of dark humour, his characters remained as representations lessons or types, rather than people. Shakespeare took the Marlovian original theme, and enhanced it using folk tales, classical allusions and techniques and a greater emphasis on well-rounded characters, in a fusion of English and Renaissance attributes to create something new and brilliant. So the humanity in this production usually comes from the talent of the actors. Andy Apollo as Ludowick is suitably posh and irritating as the governor’s son – ensuring we had no sympathy for his death. Colin Ryan as Don Mathias is also irritating, but too boyish and not attractive enough to be an authentic love interest for the beautiful Abigail (Catrin Stewart). Lanre Malalou acted well as Ithamore but he played it too slavish, too damaged, as if he has suffered a lifetime of abuse and slavery: facial tics, stooping, stuttering, but he was only just enslaved, according to the Spanish admiral he was captured shortly before being sold on Malta. Either they have seen ‘slave’ and fitted all our modern guilt and hang-ups into the term, or the actor is a believer in Homer’s idea that Zeus ‘takes away half of a man's virtue, when the day of slavery comes upon him’ (Odyssey). The problem was the approach rather than the technique. The battle scenes were somewhat weak. Over-stylized and choreographed, they are like a line dance or something the Jets and the Sharks might get up to in West Side Story.

Overall, the Swan’s Jew of Malta is highly recommended – it is brisk, there is plenty of action, the play’s timely themes are cleverly engaged with, and this performance uses a high level of physicality to highlight nuance (rather than to simply get cheap laughs, although there are plenty of laughs too). The acting is of a high quality and the director’s interpretation has reached the perfect balance between black humour and tragedy. After such a spirited and thoughtful adaptation of Marlowe’s great Jewish comic tragedy, expectations are high and mounting for the RSC’s latest production of Shakespeare’s great, Jewish, tragic comedy in May.

Mini Film Review: The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea is the 2011 film adaptation of the 1952 Terence Rattigan play. On the surface, this is a gloomy but now conventional story following the aftermath of bored housewife Hester, played by Rachel Weisz, deserting her husband for a man who will never love her. The dull husband, played by Simon Beale, has a decency which forces us to challenge Hester’s decision, but the film’s real power flows from the heroine’s tragic insight – she knows the romance will fail from the very beginning.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film is its bleak depiction of post-war London. Attention focuses on the working class squalor of bombed out London, which gels perfectly if starkly with the film’s darker themes; however, the scenes in London pubs, each one a rowdy, drinking choir, reminds us of what was lost when jukeboxes and televisions became pub fixtures. Much maligned karaoke nights may be a snugger fit within the British social landscape than we usually imagine. Hester’s naive ecstasy when trying to join the singing without knowing the words is exceptionally moving.

In an important departure from the play, Hester finds no solace in new friendship, so the hope she needs to carry on must come from an inspiring but uneasy leap of faith that life may still be worth living. During the first few minutes of this slow-burning and sometimes painful story, a similar degree of faith may be needed by the viewer – but such faith is well rewarded.

Classical Association Conference 2015

Theorizing Reception Panel at the Classical Association Conference 2015

I presented a paper ('The Classicizing of the American Mind: Plato versus Theory in the Culture Wars')at the recent CA conference held at the University of Bristol recently. Carol Atack has given the panel a write-up over on the Legacy of Greek Political Thought blog...

The Shoemaker's Holiday Review

Review: The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Thomas Dekker, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon. 14 February 2015

Shakespeare’s contemporaries get a raw deal in the game of glory but, although they were all dealt a poor hand, some still managed to win bigger shares of the pot than others. Partly for the seedy and mysterious glamour of his life and death, Christopher Marlowe lives on in our collective imagination; and Ben Johnson also managed to find a little space in our hearts. But we’d have to work our way a long way down the list before we got to Thomas Dekker. This is in some ways unfair. Like Shakespeare, he was competent in different genres, including a successful side-line as a pamphleteer, and he was perhaps ahead of Shakespeare in seeing the future of comedy. Modern rom-coms like Love, Actually are closer to Dekker’s city comedies, set in London and featuring ordinary folk, than Shakespeare’s tales of Italian aristocrats. And whereas the little we know about Shakespeare’s private life suggests it was a fairly ordinary (some might say boring) journey towards comfortable respectability, Dekker’s life included such fascinating if unfortunate titbits as a seven year stretch in the slammer. Even so, there is no dishonour in being outshone by Shakespeare. The real indignity has been inflicted by Google: search for Thomas Dekker and you’ll find our playwright appearing below his modern namesake, an actor renowned for appearing in TV versions of The Terminator and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

So, it’s nice of the RSC to put on a Dekker at the Swan Theatre. The Shoemaker’s Holiday consists of two intertwined love stories. One story revolves around the aristocratic Rowland Lacy and the rich but un-aristocratic Rose Oatley, both of whom are despised by the others’ families. Rowland is tasked with rounding up men to send as soldiers to fight in France under Henry V (the play was put on shortly after Shakespeare’s Henry V and is in some ways a comedic response) and he rounds up married shoemaker Rafe, who is sent to France, from whence he eventually returns a cripple to find out that his wife thinks he is dead and is about to marry somebody else. Rowland deserts the army and stays in London disguised as a shoemaker, taking Rafe’s job so that he can continue to woo Rose. SPOILER ALERT: the two couples wind up together at the end.

The play begins to go wrong almost immediately by including a needless introduction which gives much of the plot away before the play begins. The introduction does say that ‘Nothing is purposed here but mirth’, which is at odds with the anti-war theme picked up by some critics and focused upon in the RSC programme. But were Elizabethans anti-war in a recognizably modern way? Or were they more fatalistic – war was a tragic but inevitable part of life, to be avoided if possible, to be accepted if necessary.

The humour is juvenile: fart jokes, names like Cicely Bumtrinket, much pissing, talk of bums, a character named Firkin, around whom there are numerous uses of ‘Firk you’ and ‘Firked’, a couple of ‘prick’ puns, and everything is excessively, needlessly, tediously spelled out. Where the humour does initially work well, it is often repeated until it becomes stale. The phrase, ‘Prince am I none, yet am I nobly born, as being the sole son of a shoemaker’ is said at least four times. To ‘Dance the shaking of the sheets’ is a good description of sex, but repeating it smacks of desperation. Likewise, the play overall dragged on much too long, with seemingly irrelevant issues cropping up at the end such as a new hall where the shoemakers could trade leather two days a week: presumably this was once topical, and perhaps interesting, now it is neither. Despite the over-simplicity of the story, the needless repetition and the reliance throughout on the lowest common denominator, the play is paradoxically more difficult to understand than anything by the much more complex Shakespeare. The reason is Dekker’s over-reliance on jargon, whereas Shakespeare had the gift of being able to use simple language in clever ways.

David Troughton as Simon Eyre

Perhaps the biggest weakness, for what is, after all, a love story, was that the two pairs of lovers are both incredibly dull. The actress playing Rose Oatley, Thomasin Rand, gave a game performance, but neither she nor the others had much to work with. The most interesting character is Simon Eyre, whose language is odd but not especially clever: much of it relies on the incongruity of calling London bums ‘Brave Hyperboreans’, ‘Mad Mesopotamians’, ‘Babylonian Knaves’, ‘True Trojans’ and so on. The programme describes Eyre as Falstaffian and there is something in this, which fits in nicely with the Agincourt link: Shakespeare had killed off Falstaff so by introducing his new Falstaff and having him befriend King Henry V , Dekker was perhaps trying to tap into Falstaff’s, and Shakespeare’s, popularity. Even so, the programme goes a little too far in suggesting that Eyre shares Falstaff’s moral qualities. Eyre is a much more upright, though less interesting, character; extremely loyal to his workers and the soul of generosity. David Troughton, playing Eyre, was excellent but again let down by some mediocre dialogue: I suspect he would make a fantastic Falstaff. It was a very nice idea of the director’s to have the clothes of Eyre and his wife change as their social standing improved during the play. They begin the play in rags but by the end of the play she is Queen Elizabeth I and he is Henry VIII.

From a social perspective, there is more here for the common man than we would get in the average Shakespeare play: cross class love affairs, the victories of the apprentices over the gentlemen, the rise of Simon Eyre to Lord Mayor, and the sympathetic portrayal of an entire profession (the ‘gentle craft’ of shoemakers). Even Henry V turns out to be an egalitarian at the end: ‘Does thou not know that love respects no blood?’

Historicist readings of Shakespeare attempt to explain his plays based on the historical context, explaining why and how he covers certain themes because of the society he lived in. This can be an enlightening approach, but it can also blind us to what is unique about Shakespeare: his genius. Watching a play like this reminds us of a simple truth: Shakespeare is better remembered than his contemporaries because his plays are better than theirs. But if Shakespeare was the towering genius that the old ‘Great Men’ historians might have portrayed, could he have been so great as to transcend his historical context? If we moderns can discover ‘history’ then we are exempting ourselves from its grip (by knowing ideas are historically determined, then can’t we disregard the ideas we recognize as determined by our own historical context?) But in discarding such ideas, does that leave us with nothing, nihilism, or does it free us to recognize eternal ideas? And if we can put aside our historically determined ideas (a big if) isn’t it possible that other people (like Shakespeare) might have done so in the past? Perhaps the ability to transcend his historical conditioning was one of the factors that made Shakespeare such a great playwright (ok, this is getting a little circular). The Socrates of Plato’s Republic argued that society is a cave of opinion, from which only a few philosophers find their way out into the sunlight of real truth. Many of today’s intellectuals accept that society is a cave of opinion, but think there is nothing at all outside the cave. All supposed truths are mere opinions. On this evidence, Dekker is firmly ensconced inside the cave. Take away the play’s topicality and there isn’t much left. The Shoemaker’s Holiday is an interesting picture of the Elizabethan cave, but it doesn’t point the way to any deeper idea of what it is to be human. A number of Straussians have examined Shakespeare’s plays for the eternal problems, believing that Shakespeare was able to see that sunlight of real truth. Maybe there’s something in it.

Welcome Back... and Five Memorable Midlands Outings

Five Memorable Midlands Outings

Ok, this is supposed to be a ‘DC’ diary and I don’t live in DC anymore but… as I’d like to start keeping track of my cultural encounters again, this seems as good a place as any to put them. It’s been a year and half since I returned from Washington and during that time there have been a few interesting trips to the theatre, of which these five are the most memorable as I’m sitting here at this moment…

1)   Mozart’s Magic Flute at the Curve Theatre, Leicester. April 2014. This performance was put on by the English Touring Opera company. I would guess that some of the people who like and understand opera look down a little at the really popular examples of the genre: Carmen springs to mind, and the Magic Flute is also in that category – so popular that a real aficionado can’t really demonstrate their superiority by praising it. To make matters worse, this version of the Magic Flute has been translated into English, which probably makes it about as déclassé as Cats. Still, being an operatic dunderhead, I loved it. My experience of opera largely consists in watching the film Amadeus, but this was a much jollier affair. The Queen of the Night’s aria, so manifestly the handiwork of a composer with swagger, was simply mind blowing; and the song of the bird catcher and his new missus is a delight. Sitting on the front row and getting to look straight down and close-up on the orchestra doing their stuff was fun too. Philosophically, I found the enlightenment mumbo jumbo a little hard to swallow, and ended up rooting for the dark powers of reaction and superstition by the finale (but what’s new?)

2)  Antony and Cleopatra at the Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon. November 2013. Cleopatra would be one of history’s great characters even if Shakespeare had never mentioned her. Seducing Caesar, ruling half the Roman Empire with Mark Antony and frolicking away madly in oriental luxury while Octavian plotted against her. And then her final epic victory, defeating defeat by serpentine suicide. But with Shakespeare’s assistance, she has left the other feminine enemies of Rome (Boudicca, Zenobia) in her wake to became the ultimate icon of feminine power and mystery, even achieving that acme of honours: her own Lego mini-figure: 

               

So the performance of Cleopatra should decide the success of the production. In this case, it didn’t. Joaquina Kalukango as Cleopatra was not the force of nature the role calls for but, somehow, the play managed to be a winner anyway. Perhaps it was Jonathan Cake as a particularly hunky and sculpted Antony, or the stand out performance of Chukwudi Iwuji as Enobarbus, or perhaps it was the experience of seeing such an epic play in such an intimate theatre, but the result was a triumph all the same.

3) The Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon. August 2014. The BBC made the effort to produce television versions of Shakespeare canon in the late 1970s. The budget can’t have been great and some of them fell a little flat, The Two Gentlemen of Verona included. This version at the RST didn’t have a particularly famous cast and walking into the theatre to see the stage set up like an Italian piazza, complete with café and gelateria, set a few alarums ringing. I needn’t have worried. The audience interaction was fun (although being introduced to Julia as Silvia’s boyfriend was initially a little discombobulating), the acting was great and some of the scenes were weirdly hypnotic (the nightclub dancing scene was a little like Twin Peaks set in Milan). But one role makes or breaks the Two Gents: Crab the Dog. In this case, an up and coming actor by the name of Mossup was a revelatory force of comic genius.

4) Much Ado About Nothing at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon. October 2014. Ok, ok, I should probably stop watching this. In Washington alone we had this and this. But it’s just so gosh darn enjoyable. In this case, the result was a little disappointing. The first intimation of trouble was renaming it Love’s Labours Won and arguing in the programme that Much Ado is really an alternative name for one of Shakespeare’s plays considered lost, the sequel to Love’s Labours Lost (except with, er, a completely different group of characters and plot). The slapstick didn’t quite hit the right notes (although the rest of the audience sounded their appreciation) and the setting (England immediately after World War I) wasn’t remotely compatible with the warmth of the dialogue. Setting it in Italy (the Kenneth Branagh film), California (the Joss Whedon film) or somewhere latino (the version in DC) reflects both the characters’ names, the summery feel and the pure joy we feel in rooting for Shakespeare’s most likeable couple. The sombre shroud cast over proceedings by the horror of the Great War, not helped by the wintry stage décor, took something special away from what might otherwise have been an excellent production. Later in the play, time seemed to skip forward a few years and we had the flappers of the roaring twenties, which suited the play much better. Michelle Terry was brilliant as Beatrice, although Dogberry was played as somebody with genuine mental health issues, which again undercut the humour, and Benedick (Edward Bennett) was so camp that an entirely new dimension was added to the play (intentionally or not). Imagine, if you will, a Benedick played by this guy’s double. Beatrice at one stage dressed up in a suit a tie which on its own might not suggest much but, with Benedict's Matthew Kelly impression, it did raise an interesting question… did Benedick and Beatrice want to remain single because they were gay, and was their eventual union then a lavender marriage?

As an aside, why did we change enigmatical to enigmatic and politic to political?

5) Antigone at the Lakeside Theatre, Nottingham. October 2014. This adaptation of Sophocles’ tragedy stuck closely to the plot whilst setting it today in gritty urban interiors. Classics is a rich, white person’s thing, populated by progressives who genuinely want it to be less white and rich, so I suspect this version got good reviews from lots of people who felt a lot of right on condescension towards it. Unfortunately, for me it was memorable only in the way that the things we really want to forget are the things we can’t forget. Putting ancient works in new settings can work fantastically well, for example the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Antigone itself has been cleverly adapted, or perhaps used, since it became almost unrecognizable, in the anti-apartheid play, The Island. This is not one of those times. It is not even a brave crack at one of those times. It is New Jack City minus the charisma crossed with Eastenders minus the humour. No. Just, no.

Anyway, with this brief round-up out of the way, next up will be a more in-depth review of Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday at the Swan Theatre in Stratford.

Legacy of Greek Political Thought in America

Classical Association Conference 2014: Legacies of Greek Political Thought in America panel, 11-14 April 2014

Working on behalf of the Legacy of Greek Political Thought group, I recently organised a successful panel for the 2014 Classical Association Conference. The challenge was to provide a narrow enough focus that the four papers provided an integrated and coherent narrative, while still appealing to a varied audience of classicists. With that in mind, the panel was focused upon American receptions of Greek political thought, and its aims were to examine and challenge the links between ancient Greek political thought and its modern invocations in the United States.

The Great Seal of the United States (reverse)

The reverse of the Great Seal of the United States is a reminder of the Founding Fathers’ ambition to create ‘A New Order of the Ages,’ unlike any previous society. Yet correspondence between the Founders shows a keen awareness of and engagement with past societies. In ‘Is there space for a Greek influence on American Thought?’ Nicholas Cole (Oxford) considered the American revolutionary period and addressed this paradox head-on. Nicholas argued that Greek history and thought made important contributions to American thinking, and that these help to explain the development of American thought in the early republic. But historians need to move beyond the narrow debate on political borrowings towards an appreciation of the wider multiplicity of ways that early Americans engaged with Greek thought.

Aesop Said So, Hugh Gellert

Vaulting forward to the twentieth century, Sara Monoson (Northwestern) explored contrasting attitudes to antiquity in ‘Classical sources and the promotion of literacy in radical critique: Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads (1933) and Hugo Gellert’s Aesop Said So (1936).’ Her paper focused on the presence of classical imagery in 1930s expressions of radical critique by visual artists.   In his controversial mural for the Rockefeller Center in New York, Diego Rivera used the imagery of damaged yet formidable classical statuary to suggest the corrosiveness of weighty traditions and to question the value of harking back to antiquity. Though sharing his political viewpoint, Hugo Gellert challenged that view of antiquity. He produced books that combine text and illustrations to find other narratives in the sources (chiefly, the figure of Aesop as a view ‘from below’) that were, to him, able to inspire class consciousness and a sophisticated examination of problems like the greed and corruption of the high and mighty.

In the first of two papers looking at the conservative thinker Leo Strauss, Liz Sawyer (Oxford) presented ‘Leo Strauss, in context: Classical Literature as Political Philosophy in 1950s/1960s American Universities.’ She examined how Strauss’ use of classical literature, especially Aristotle, Plato and Thucydides, fitted within the broader context of how political philosophy and Western literature were taught in the 1950s and 1960s. By studying Strauss’ writings in the light of the educational methodologies of his time, Liz demonstrated how Strauss’s legacy as the ‘founding father’ of today’s neoconservative movement developed. In the final paper, ‘The original neoconservative? Leo Strauss’s version of Xenophon’s version of Socrates,’ I argued that Strauss’s interpretations of Xenophon have been overlooked by political commentators seeking to praise or malign the (exaggerated) Straussian influence on American politics. Using Strauss’s commentary on Xenophon’s Oeconomicus as a case study, I argued that Xenophon, a much more deeper and more nuanced thinker than often portrayed by classicists, rather than Plato or Thucydides, is the classical key for unlocking Strauss’s political ideology.

The focus on Greek thought in America gave the panel coherence, whilst differences in the subject matter and methodological approaches of the speakers ensured variety. Each of the other papers gave me fresh insights into my own work, and the discussions which followed were almost as fruitful as the papers themselves (and gave no indication that any audience members might have over-indulged at the previous night’s gala dinner). Having spent the build-up to the conference worrying about my own paper, which passed in a flash, it is only in retrospect that the real benefits of attending a conference like this became apparent – the unexpected connections and the perceptive and creative conversations with fellow delegates made attending this CA conference an enriching experience.