Shakespeare References in Talking To Myself

Chris Jagger’s autobiography Talking To Myself has several Shakespeare references. The first is to The Tempest. Chris is talking about books that his older brother Mick brought home. He writes: “Mick also came back with The Tempest once, and I was impressed enough by the famous speech ‘Our revels now are ended…’ to learn it by heart. The curious thing is that verse committed to memory so young can still be remembered, while plays I later learned I cannot recall at all” (p. 56). The second reference is to The Second Part Of King Henry The Fourth, and it comes during one of the recent diary entries sprinkled throughout the book: “I went to Bristol Old Vic last night to see an old friend, the actor Gerard Murphy as Falstaff in Henry IV Part 2. He was his usual bumbling good self and stood out from a sea of mediocrity” (p. 65). In that same entry his mentions King Lear: “I first went to Bristol Old Vic in 1966 for a Tyrone Guthrie production of Lear” (p. 65). Another diary entry has a reference to Julius Caesar: “Stu originally played the piano with the band, only to be dismissed by Andrew Oldham because he looked too Neanderthal – perhaps the unkindest cut of all” (p. 74). There he refers to Antony’s line about Brutus stabbing Caesar, “This was the most unkindest cut of all.”

Within each chapter, different sections have their own titles. One such section is titled “The Play’s The Thing,” a reference to Hamlet’s famous line, “The play’s the thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” In that same section, Chris Jagger mentions Macbeth: “My participation in the standard school play was limited to playing First Murderer in Macbeth, who nonetheless delivers a nice line – ‘The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day, now spurs the ‘lated traveler apace to gain the timely inn’ – before helping in the bloody dispatch of Banquo” (p. 99). And on the previous page there is a photo of Chris Jagger in his role in Macbeth. He also talks about boys playing female parts: “That was the fate of some boys, Barnard vigorously defending the practice because it happened in the Bard’s day” (p. 99). The next chapter has a subheading that reads, “Murder Most Foul” (p. 106), which of course is a reference to the Ghost’s line in Hamlet.

The next reference is to Shakespeare himself, with Jagger writing, “did I really want to go to rainy Manchester, to read theatre studies and Shakespeare?” (p. 109). Then there is another reference to Julius Caesar: “Never an actor, he had, however, taken walk-on parts, being on the set of Julius Caesar with Marlon Brando in the title role – and that was love at first sight. Kenneth was an artist and collector, and later modelled a head of Brando as Caesar, which was much admired by the up-and-coming star James Dean” (p. 262). Julius Caesar is mentioned again a few pages later, along with Macbeth: “Stella knew little of Shakespeare – Tennessee Williams was more her bag. In one class a male student was reciting a passage from Julius Caesar, which left her cold. Waving her arms about and quoting ‘blow wind, come wrack’ from the Scottish play, Stella explained that Shakespeare was ‘big stuff’” (p. 267). Then we get a mention of the sonnets: “John was charming and loved me reciting Yeats, Wilde and Shakespeare sonnets to him” (p. 268). There is another reference to The Tempest, with Chris Jagger writing, “spoke his lines into thin air” (p 271), referring to Prospero’s lines “These our actors,/As I foretold you, were all spirits and/Are melted into air, into thin air.” That’s followed by another mention of the sonnets: “I recited a Shakespeare sonnet, which took a couple of minutes, and they liked it” (p. 282). And then there is another mention of Shakespeare: “The boundary walls were mounted with busts of Shakespeare, the actor Garrick and the playwright Massinger” (p. 289). That’s followed quickly by a reference to King Lear: “Apparently, Kean liked to be applauded if appearing in, say, a King Lear costume at his own party” (p. 289). And then a reference to Richard The Third: “He once treated his Bute housekeeper to a trip over to Glasgow, to see him play the hunchback Richard III. When later asked how she liked it, she replied, ‘Och, what a terrible man! I looked at everyone in the play, Mr. Kean, but I could’nae see yer!’” (pages 289-290). Jagger offers a little more about Kean: “I imagine that Kean brought a degree of ‘realism’ to the theatre as he astonished the audience by following the ghost while playing Hamlet, whereas others had drawn away” (p. 290). Chris Jagger includes another mention of Hamlet: “Unlike musicians – who are always hanging around with mates, jamming and writing songs – actors don’t pop over to rehearse a scene from Hamlet on a rainy Thursday” (p. 301).

One section of a chapter uses as its title a line from Romeo And Juliet: “Two houses, both alike in dignity” (p. 306). Jagger then writes: “These were the first lines I spoke from the Bard as I appeared in Romeo and Juliet, in Plymouth, over 200 miles west of London. The play was moved to the Fifties, with Citizens friend Garry Cooper cast as Romeo, so we had some fun together. I was both ‘the prince’ and Mercutio; and for the latter role I took my cue from Henry Winkler’s role as ‘The Fonz’, playing as Romeo’s hip sidekick, with a lot of chat and lines that I sometimes struggled to remember” (p. 306). Then Jagger mentions Antony And Cleopatra: “One ballad he had was ‘Blinded by Love’, which went on to appear on 1989’s Steel Wheels; remembering my English A-Levels, I thought of Mark Antony and his infatuation for Cleopatra, and stuck in a verse using that idea (after all, Shakespeare had borrowed a lot of stuff from Plutarch)” (p. 315). Jagger also plays on a famous phrase from Henry The Fifth, writing, regarding the question he sometimes receives about not being a member of the Rolling Stones: “Apart from the age gape making that unlikely, there have been many bands of brothers and it usually ends in tears” (p. 321). The book’s final Shakespeare reference is to Hamlet: “I could take you to the theatre where David Garrick played Hamlet, but not the clubs where Hendrix or the Stones performed” (pages 370-371).

Talking To Myself was published on September 10, 2021.