Arts & Culture
Aye, there's the nub
Published 28 March 2005
Amnesia - Michael Coveney on the persistence of a noble theatrical tradition
I was recently alerted to an area of Shakespearian performance that has so far evaded the attention of all the scholars. The nub of the matter is, well, the nub. Essentially, a nub is a passage of all-purpose, pseudo-Shakespearian blank verse that sounds fine, but means little, and is used by an actor to cover a lapse of memory.
It was being discussed on a radio programme presented by Ken Campbell, the madcap director and performer who auditioned three times for the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s and was three times rejected. He had no great desire to do his Fool in King Lear or his Feste in Twelfth Night - though both, I'm sure, would be well worth seeing - but he was keen to take the stage at Stratford-upon-Avon, dry up in the middle of a scene and launch into a formidable nub.
Donald Wolfit, the last great actor-manager, nubbed famously along these lines: "List, I sense a nubbing in far glens, where minnows swoop the pikey deep which is unpiked less pikey be, cross-bolted in their crispy muffs and choose the trammelled way . . . Oh freeze my soul in fitful sleep lest wind-filled sprites bequim the air and take us singly or in threes in mad agog or lumpsome nub, aghast to Milford Haven."
The point was that you had to indicate that you had "dried" by using the word "nub" early on, and there was a long-standing tradition of ending the speech, for no good reason, on the words "Milford Haven". Some scenes of Cymbeline are set in Milford Haven, but there seems no special reason why it should be the preferred location for a good nubbing.
Cod Shakespeare speeches, as in the Victorian burlesques and pantomimes, are rife, but not even the learned Richard W Schoch refers to the nubs in his great work Not Shakespeare (which, incidentally, itemises such invented gems as "To be or not to be, that is the question; oh dear, I'm suffering from the indigestion").
"Nubbing" was, in the 17th century, a slang synonym for "hanging", and it crops up in the novels of Henry Fielding. From this, the RSC honorary associate director John Caird (who co-directed Nicholas Nickleby and Les Miserables with Trevor Nunn) deduces that the theatre purloined the term to define the actor's practice of landing a colleague in the soup. Thus, a "nubbed" actor would be left dangling in front of the audience by the impromptu nub of another actor keen to get himself off the hook while making someone else look foolish.
According to Caird, the young Peter O'Toole, when at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, had a few nubs up his sleeve. One can imagine O'Toole falling back on his nub after a particularly hung-over matinee, said Caird, or indeed using it to spice up a dull evening - rather in the way that Michael Gambon or Judi Dench allegedly cause mischief with a misplaced word or an unexpectedly unbuttoned corset.
O'Toole's best nub required an actor to carry a purse with him at all times, explained Caird. On being lost for words, you clap the actor standing next to you on the back, look sharply into the wings and say: "Here come the lords of Ross and Willoughby, bloody with spurring and fiery-red with haste; take thou this purse, thou naughty knave, and meet me straightway in the marketplace." You then hand the actor your purse and stride off into the prompt corner to reacquaint yourself with the text.
Caird and Campbell both fear that nubbing may be a moribund art form. But Campbell is determined to honour the past when he presents a demonstration of nubbing as part of the Shakespeare birthday celebrations at the Globe this April.
And now, methinks, I must away to horse, my nub is sorely pressed and, hark, the eagle, soaring high and cawing like the creature of the night, the shard-born raven, proclaims we are bemused and struck so far from finding our next line that happy is the man at home in Milford Haven.
Ken Campbell will be revealing his nubbing skills in a one-man show, Shall We Shog?, on Shakespeare's birthday, 23 April, at Shakespeare's Globe, London SE1 (020 7401 9919). Tickets are priced £5-£29, and the performance starts at 7.30pm
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