"Third spear-bearer from the left"

[system]

Where does the phrase “Third spear-bearer to the left” come from? Is there an actual play out there that features this character? Or was it a specific performance? Or is it just one of those phrases? I must know, because once I know this, I will officially know everything.

[FRDE]

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/palatine/newsletters/2.htm

It is difficult to assess both King Lear and the third spear-carrier from the left in the same production (apart from the fact that both have found their way into it).

http://littleredboat.co.uk/?p=1517

Jack was a bit part actor.
Also a friend and a lover, but a bit part actor most of all.

The main thing he played a bit part in, in my time of his knowing, was King Lear.
By William Shakespeare.

He was the second spear carrier from the left. Or perhaps third.

I can’t actually find it in King Lear
I always associated spear carriers with Julius Caeser

[11811]

@abnorman

Where does the phrase “Third spear-bearer to the left” come from? Is there an actual play out there that features this character? Or was it a specific performance? Or is it just one of those phrases? I must know, because once I know this, I will officially know everything.

If the context were a movie rather than a play, I would imagine it came from the ending credits. Any number of movies list characters/cast members who are unnamed.

[tomndebb]

I’m not sure where an association between spear-carriers and King Lear developed. I note that both the pieces to which FRDE linked were written in 2001 and 2002 in the UK, so one might have influenced the other (or both been influenced by a third event).

The term spear carrier, meaning any non-singing/non-speaking part in an opera has been around for many years. (There are a lot of operas with platoons of spear carriers standing about emphasizing royal power or prestige.) Identifying someone as the nth from the left (or right) would seem to be a pretty natural way to describe a person of such little consequence to a performance that he could only be identified by his relative position in a group, since he never spoke or sang and never performed an action that could identify him and, because he could be replaced without the audience being the wiser, since beneath his costume and makeup anyone could replace him (substituting Samuel L. Jackson for Billy Barty excepted, of course).

I do not recall a specific “third spear-carrier from the left” reference, but I am sure I heard similar phrases forty years ago, and they did not sound new, then. (The term, itself, appears to have arisen in the early 1950s.) The earliest reference on the web that I have found dates to a bio of Tim Roth from 1997, but that might be simply the first time it appeared in the (still fairly recent expansion of the) www.
There was a humorous biography in the 1950s or 1960s with a title describing the position of a carrot from the left ot right. (The reference was to a school chorus line in which the author was the eponymous carrot.) I cannot recall the title or author or even whether the “biography” was genuine or fiction, and with so little information about a book that is so old, I am not going to try to make a direct connection between the phrases. However, the point is that similar phrases have been in use for quite a long time.

[Little_Nemo]

I would also assume that during the actual staging of a play or opera, the director would have to assign actual numbers; he can’t just say “everybody get on stage and form a crowd.” So the bit players were presumably specifically told at some point, “Frank, you’re first spear carrier on the left; Bill, you’re second; Bob, you’re third” etc.

[WhyNot]

@Little Nemo

I would also assume that during the actual staging of a play or opera, the director would have to assign actual numbers; he can’t just say “everybody get on stage and form a crowd.” So the bit players were presumably specifically told at some point, “Frank, you’re first spear carrier on the left; Bill, you’re second; Bob, you’re third” etc.

Nope, not in my experience on stage. It’s “Everybody form a crowd. Ok, you in the pink - take a jump to the left. Brad, upstage 3 feet. You, yeah, you, just a step to the right. Janet, go down a bit. OKAY, everyone got that? That’s your opening position!”

While I don’t know where it came from, I’ve always heard it used as a tongue in cheek reference to actor’s egos. “I did King Lear with the Connecticut Playhouse” sounds impressive until you are forced to admit you played “third spear-bearer from the left.” It’s even less impressive than “Spear-bearer”, which sounds like it *could *be a speaking part.