You have arrived in this place on this morning from somewhere different. Maybe a train ride, maybe courtesy of Salisbury Reds. Perhaps you have braved the traffic queues in your parents’ car, a quick period of mayhem on the basketball court, registration and now you are somewhere completely at odds with all of that. Peace punctuated by words and by music. Serenity amidst the tumult, time and space to think, to reflect and to worship. A different world. But I wonder what you will take away when you walk back out through the North Porch Door and return across that diagonal path to school?
Four centuries ago Shakespeare must have wondered pretty much the same thing. His audiences arrived from the bustle and squalor of medieval London streets and were transported into another world. CGI was very basic in the seventeenth century, so the members of the audience were asked to use their imaginations to the full – and I am going to be asking you to do the same this morning, helped by our guest reader James Bradwell. James was a student at Bishop’s and is now an actor at the Old Vic Theatre in Bristol.
In our first reading this morning (from Shakespeare’s Henry V), we are painted a picture of England and France at war, two armies facing one another across the English Channel. Think battlefields, soldiers, horses and the prospect of conflict, all conjured within a wooden theatre. The stage really is set…
Reading - Henry V Prologue lines 1-35
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.
Bible Reading - Jacob’s Ladder (Genesis 28)
Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”
Context for Reading 2
All plays come to an end. When the actors leave the stage then there is nothing – physically – to show that the performance happened. An empty stage, no props, no music, no characters to be brought to life by stirring prose and lilting poetry. And yet one of the reasons that Shakespeare’s writing has staying power to last through the centuries is because he writes about stuff that still matters today. Love. Power. Jealousy. Envy. Betrayal. Revenge. Bravery. Heroism and the frailty of mankind. In the next reading, from the Tempest, the magician Prospero muses on how everything fades and comes to an end. Human life is temporary. After the closure of the final act, the physicality of the play simply melts into the air and is no more.
Reading 2 - Tempest Act IV Scene 1 Prospero’s speech lines 165-176
You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismayed. Be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Reflection
And so what will you take away from this place when you leave this morning? A memory of language perhaps. Shakespeare’s poetry crystallises images in the mind that last, like the residual retinal patters from a flash photo. The image, fleetingly glimpsed in a mind’s eye of a medieval battle for supremacy. The lyrical musings of a powerful sorcerer contemplating the end of a tale of shipwreck and a magical island. Words, music and prayers, garlands woven around these columns of stone. A memory of stillness, of cold tombs, of an immense vaulted ceiling and of light, both white and coloured, streaming through high set windows.
But ask any ex-Bishop’s students what they remember of their time in school and services in the Cathedral always come up – perhaps because of the magnificence of the surroundings but also because of the timeless nature of what this place represents, and what it meant to them at the time. Bishop’s students have sat in the nave for decades and viewed what you see right now; a lived experience across many generations. The medieval masons who built this Cathedral had that aim in mind – to make a lasting impression on all who come in here to worship. Many who enter here leave with a memory of both the hymns but also the still small voice that echoes around the nave in moments of prayer. My view for what it’s worth, is that no-one can leave here unchanged. Like Jacob says “Surely the Lord is in this place - and I did not know it! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”.
SDS
