needling

[ricardienne]

So yesterday I got to wait for two hours at the DMV to renew my learner's permit (because I'm embarrassingly 19 1/2 and still afraid to get behind the wheel). [I know. Driving isn't that hard. Lots and lots of people have learned how to drive, many of whom probably have less good hand-eye coordination than I do (not that I have wonderful coordination, but playing cello must help some!), and it is a necessary skill, and so on.] At voglia_di_notte's instigation, I was reading Henry IV Part One, but I finished it, so I started reading Holinshed exerpts in the back. From the bit about the reconciliation of King Henry and Hal, there was this description of the latter:

"He was appareled in a gown of blue satin full of small eyelet holes, at every hole the needle hanging by a silk thread by which it was sewed."

Isn't that lovely! Of course, I have many questions: how small were these eyelet holes? Wow widely or narrowly spaced apart? How long were the silk threads hanging? I suppose one could get an interesting patterned effect by varying the lengths of the threads according to some rule. Even all regularly, it would be beautiful to see: all of those little silvery things swinging back and forth and catching the light, like a walking mobile. I should think it would be a bit dangerous to embrace people in, however, and particularly your father who already suspects you of wanting to off him.

It always happens that whatever costume project I'm on, I want to be doing a different one, because I would give up on the Elizabethan dress in a minute to start some sort of houpplande-type thing with needles hanging off it right now! But I am not going to waste either my cloth or what I've started. I need to start working faster. This evening, I finally tried on my corset again, and then ripped the side seams out before I could persuade myself that it was the right size. As usual, I made it too big -- and corsets tend to stretch. I tried pinning it smaller, but I think I shall have to baste it, because cloth stuffed full of straws does not like to be pinned. Specifically, when I try it to put it on, it all falls apart. This means that if last night we had scorpions, tonight we are likely to have pins on the floor.

I got my cello back from Zoran today. He didn't like my Eudoxas, as I suspected, and advised me I should try either Prim G and Spirocore C or Larsen G and C to get a better balance. He let me play the cello he had just made, and I stupidly attempted the opening of the Schumann -- in the wrong key. That certainly showed how much I've been practicing.

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was just thinking about Prince Hal when you posted this! And YAY for reading 1H4; I've had the Henry IVs on the brain lately, because I am going to go see them in Chicago in a few weeks.

I should think it would be a bit dangerous to embrace people in, however, and particularly your father who already suspects you of wanting to off him.

Indeed, yes. In one of Shakespeare's sources for the Henry IVs, the rather rambunctious play The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, the significance of this garment is discussed a few times. Here's a scene where Prince Hal, who is rather alarmingly parricidal in this play, explains it to his tavern buddies:

JOCKEY: Will you go to the court with that cloak so full of needles?
PRINCE HAL: Cloak, eyelet-holes, needles, and all was of mine own devising, and therefore I will wear it.
TOM: I pray you, my lord, what may be the meaning thereof?
PRINCE HAL: Why, man, 'tis a sign that I stand upon thorns, till the crown be on my head.
JOCKEY: Or that every needle might be a prick to their hearts that repine at your doings.
PRINCE HAL: Thou say'st true, Jockey, but there's some will say, the young prince will be a well toward young man and all this gear [i.e. nonsense], that I had as lief they would break my head with a pot, as to say any such thing. But we stand prating here too long. I must needs speak with my father, therefore come away.

King Henry, of course, gets the point (erm, so to speak):

Ay, so, so, my son, thou fearest not to approach the presence of thy sick father in that disguised sort. I tell thee, my son, that there is never a needle in thy cloak but is a prick to my heart, and never an eyelet-hole, but it is a hole to my soul: and wherefore thou bringest that dagger in thy hand I know not but by conjecture.

The prince, who despite his parricidal sentiments (note the dagger!) can be moved to penitence by a much less severe tongue-lashing, then repents and casts off his "ruffianly cloak."

I bet it did look pretty cool though!

(Also, it is absolutely bizarre to read that Henry-Hal scene from Famous Victories, because its Shakespearean analogue is one of my favorite parts of the canon; it is absolutely gut-wrenching, and the one in the source text is, as you can probably tell from the little bit of it I posted, not.)

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

I did not realize that it was Garment of Significance, although it doesn't seem to have the same significance in Holished as it does in Famous Victories, does it. I wonder where else it shows up.

You are right: the Henry-Hal scene from Famous Victories (which was also included in the back of my copy -- I should have read further before posting) is not gut-wrenching in the least. It makes one realize just how good Shakespeare was.

Now I need to find our copy of Henry IV Part Two, and see if John is as prissy as I remember him being.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to bet that he is. Prince John is SUCH a smug little git. "God and not we hath safely fought today," indeed. Slimy little bastard!

I know I have seen at least one chronicle account of Hal's reconciliation with his father that discussed of the Garment of Pointiness -- it may have been from Hall's chronicle (a likely source for Famous Victories, which would have been published before the 1587 revision of Holinshed), or possibly from one of the medieval sources, I'm not sure. I don't know as much about the medieval historiographical background of the Henry IVs as I do about that of Richard II. I shall have to do some digging on EEBO, as now I am curious.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

That should say "the MEANING of the Garment of Pointiness." D'oh.