Did you know... Sylvia Plath and Bartholomew Fair

In the fall of 1955, in her first term as a graduate student at Newnham College, Cambridge University, Sylvia Plath played the role of Alice in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (1614), produced by the Amateur Dramatics Club in Cambridge from November 24-December 3, 1955.

Alice's role is "mistress o' the game." The role has just a five lines (and a fight!). Did you know … what those lines were?

They were:

"A mischiefe on you, they are such as you are, that undo us, and take our trade from us, with your tuft-taffata haunches.";
"The poore common whores can ha'no traffic, for the privy rich ones; your caps and hoods of velvet call away our customers, and lick the fat from us.";
"Od's foot, you Bawd in grease, are you talking?";
"Thou Sow of Smithfield, thou!";
"Ay, by the same token, you rid that week, and broke out of the bottom o'the Cart, Night-tub."

(source, with some "corrections" made; I should add this source was not necessarily the script from which Plath read)

Plath originally got no part in the production, saying in a letter to her mother written on November 7, 1955, that "Acting simply takes up too much time. I was really glad I didn't get a part in the coming production of Bartholomew Fair (although, of course, it injured my ego slightly..." (Letters Home 194).

But, by November 21, 1955, Plath had been given a role. She writes to her mother, "I have five lines as a rather screaming bawdy woman who gets into a fight" (196).

Perhaps the fight served as training for February 25, 1956!?

Postscript: Prior to her role as Alice in Bartholomew Fair, Plath performed as the mad poetess Phoebe Clinkett from Three Hours After Marriage written by Alexander Pope. John Gay, and John Arbuthnot (1717) (read it here). This was one of three "nursery" productions the ADC produced on 22 October 1955 (the same day that Plath saw Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in Cambridge).

Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath inspires us all in various and wonderful ways. She is in many respects a form of comfort to us, which is something that Esther Greenwood expresses in The Bell Jar , about a bath: "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" We read and remember Sylvia Plath for many reasons, many of them deeply personal and private. But we commemorate her, too, in very public ways, as Anna of the long-standing Tumblr Loving Sylvia Plath , has been tracking, in the form of tattoos. (Anna's on Instagram with it too, as SylviaPlathInk .) The above bath quote is among Sylvia Plath's most famous. It often appears here and there and it is stripped of its context. But I think most people will know it is from her nove...

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de...

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last...

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