Mark Rylance: ‘When will we awake. How will we resist?’

At the turn of the millennium, I was artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, looking to commission a new play. Shakespeare focused on the powerful of his time, the kings and queens, dukes and duchesses; who would Shakespeare focus on in my time? A friend recommended Paul Kingsnorth’s first book, One No, Many Yeses, and I discovered what I was looking for. This led me to read his next book, Real England, which informed my collaboration as an actor with Jez Butterworth on his play Jerusalem. Paul became an inspiration and a friend.

Around this time, I remember he spoke about his interest in using fiction to address the issues raised in Real England: the corporate takeover of England’s canals, marketplaces, villages, pubs – the corporate takeover of England’s common culture. Fiction might better serve his concern that what was happening in England now was comparable to the Norman conquest of 1066.

Paul’s 2014 debut novel, The Wake, gives you a very intimate experience of the Norman invasion of England. The famous historical events – the Battle of Hastings, the death of King Harold, the preceding invasion of the Viking forces in the north – are experienced, as most of us experience historic events: at a distance. Yet the repercussions of these violent events rush over England like the waves of a tsunami and we encounter them viscerally through the life of Buccmaster, a proud fenland farmer.

Buccmaster lives with his wife, her maid, and two sons on the outskirts of a small village or “ham” in the fens. The fens are a “holy land” of low marshlands created when Britain was separated geologically from the European mainland nearly 10,000 years ago. One morning prior to the Norman invasion, while ploughing his field, Buccmaster witnesses a very strange occurrence: a fantastic bird with fiery eyes and human fingers. He understands it to be a warning, a prophetic awakening. “I tell thu sum thing is cuman,” he explains to his wife and then to the leader of the community. None believe him. But it proves to be true.

Buccmaster is obsessed with truth; “still I will stand and I will tell the triewth the triewth of what I done and for what I was feohtan”. He tells us his story himself, in the first person, so we understand much more about him than anyone else. This reminds me of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who shares more with his soul, the audience, than he ever shares with his royal family and friends. They are both, hence, very isolated characters within their stories but very intimate characters with us. Buccmaster also shares with Hamlet a life-changing spiritual encounter. Hamlet’s father’s ghost and Buccmaster’s prophetic bird both tell the truth. Hamlet’s uncle did kill his father. Something does come: the Norman invasion. What does one do with a gift of prophecy?

I was surprised to learn that the resistance to Norman rule lasted at least a decade. The modern word “murder” is related to “murdrum”, which described the killing of a Norman invader. As his story unfolds, Buccmaster is guided by the heroes of ancient myths. He hears their voices. He finds light for his path ahead in dreams, visions and visitations. He dives deep into the fens among the eels and enormous sunken trees of a bygone age to meet his guides. As with Prince Hamlet, the spirits that speak with Buccmaster are not compassionate but just and vengeful. They demand resistance to the established order. Are these influential voices real? Are they good?

A tight band of characters fill the pages of The Wake. The relationship between Buccmaster and a young man, Tofe, is as poignant as any father-son story I know. You will meet Ulf, the trusted source of news, and Grimcell, Buccmaster’s reticent comrade. Buccmaster’s wife, Odelyn, and brave sons, are central, as are his father and pagan grandfather. His pantheism is in harmony with his grandfather, and disharmony with the new Christian views of his father. The ruthless imperial Christianity of William the Conqueror and his army of pirates, blessed by the Pope, only confirms his antipathy.

The Wake is a thrilling story of the issues that face any resistance movement, its leaders, and followers, crafted by an author who has studied resistance movements all over the world and feels great concern for the direction we are taking.

There are uncomfortable resonances with English xenophobia in this novel; a hatred of “ingengas” as Buccmaster calls foreigners. But in choosing the Norman invasion to mirror our world today, Paul is talking about a different inward movement; the immigration of a totally alien system of life, a machine, not the irrational fears, conscious and subconscious, of an island people who have been invaded for longer than we can remember.

The most powerful character in the book enters only as a voice in Buccmaster’s psyche. “You are chosen,” it says. What does it mean, this voice that wakes you to the possibility of a mortal immortal fate? In this story that voice is named Weland, the ancient blacksmith of the Anglo-Saxons. What a great profession for that archetypal voice, forging the heavy metal of our souls. The story of Weland, which you get for free in The Wake, is like the story of Cupid and Psyche, which appears for the first time in The Golden Ass. It is a gem.

When Paul set about writing The Wake, he discovered two things. One, that modern English vernacular was inauthentic for this story: he needed to create a language, something much more aural and earthy in its look and sound. Two, that the gods of those times, particularly the pagan gods, seemed to demand a presence and attention in his writing. He had not set out to include them. So he tore up what he had and began again, listening to these old voices and their pre-Christian influences and creating a language indigenous to his story.

The language of The Wake looks daunting on the page, it is “uncivilised”. There is a good glossary, but most words are familiar, with different spellings. Truth, triewth. Dark, deorc, etc. I found if I read it out loud, its sound was easier to understand than its look. I recommend you do the same. You will sound something like a geordie who grew up in Scandinavia! There is a feel in your mouth and a sound in your ear that is very affecting and takes you somewhere else. My ear understands this book better than my eye. Reading aloud moved me physically into Buccmaster’s life of voices.

The Wake is about everything we could lose today. I agree with Paul: in our time, we face a dominant imperialist culture, much more threatening and powerful than William the Bastard’s army, which conceives our beautiful, soulful lives as fodder for a machine. When will we wake? How will we resist? I envy your first read of this incredible book.

A new edition of The Wake, with a foreword by Mark Rylance, is published by John Murray Classics

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Glossary

nebb – face

wiht – living being, creature, animal

ingenga – foreigner

lea – meadow, open field

hafoc – hawk

Photograph by Donald Cooper, Alan Rogerson via Alamy