Tag Archives: John Barton

Hall, Barton and Goodwin: three grand old men of the RSC

At the end of August it begins to feel that summer is coming to a close and autumn is on its way. While this can feel like the time when things start to close down for winter, for many people … Continue reading

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Remembering John Barton, teacher and mentor

In the days since his death on 18 January 2018, tributes have flooded in for theatre director John Barton. He was invited to help form the RSC by Peter Hall in the early sixties and both were hugely influential. While … Continue reading

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John Barton

It has just been announced that this morning, 18 January 2018, John Barton died. The Royal Shakespeare Company, that owed him so much, has published a wonderful tribute written by their Artistic Director Gregory Doran. John Barton’s name is nothing … Continue reading

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The Wars of the Roses at the Rose, Kingston

In an interview published in February 2014 Trevor Nunn explained that it was his aim to direct all of Shakespeare’s plays “before I hang up my boots”, with only seven left to go. “I’m very keen to do a particular … Continue reading

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Remembering Richard Pasco, Shakespearian actor

  On Wednesday 12 November Richard Pasco became the third eminent Shakespeare actor with close associations to Stratford-upon-Avon to die in 2014. Sadly there has been little immediate media interest, unlike that which met the death of Donald Sinden, and, … Continue reading

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Exploring Shakespeare’s blank verse

About 10 days ago I wrote about the ways in which actors approach speaking Shakespeare’s poetry to bring it alive in performance. That post was mostly looking at OP or original pronunciation as opposed to modern speech, and some time ago … Continue reading

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So how should Shakespeare really sound?

The biggest perceived challenge to anyone getting to grips with Shakespeare for the first time is probably making sense of the language. All the old-fashioned words, the use of “thee” and “thou”, the poetic constructions, the grammar itself. Yet reading … Continue reading

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Staging the caskets: The Merchant of Venice

  As a man of the theatre, Shakespeare must always have written his scenes with an idea of how they would be performed, though given the limited technical scope of theatres at the time he does sometimes seem to have made it … Continue reading

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Michael Attenborough and Shakespeare

Last week Stratford’s Shakespeare Club was lucky enough to be given a look into internationally-renowned director Michael Attenborough’s views of Shakespeare. Attenborough is currently Artistic Director of the Almeida Theatre in London, though he is resigning from that post after … Continue reading

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Round the globe with Much Ado About Nothing

What are we learning from the World Shakespeare Festival? A few weeks ago Sonia Massai headed a panel entitled Global Shakespeares. In her subsequent post on the RSC’s MyShakespeare site she says “‘Global Shakespeares’ can only be understood in relation … Continue reading

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