Edward’s Boys in summer 2017

Posted on July 10, 2017 by Sylvia Morris

A scene from Edward’s Boys production of The Dutch Courtesan

I’ve written lots of posts mentioning Edward’s Boys, the brilliant troupe of boys from King Edward VI School in Stratford-upon-Avon who, under the leadership of Deputy Head Perry Mills perform plays that come mostly from the repertoire of the Boys Companies of Shakespeare’s own time.

Over the past couple of decades interest has grown in the wider field of early modern plays and theatrical practice, not just as they might reflect on Shakespeare’s plays. The current project Before Shakespeare is one, but there are others and Edward’s Boys are finding themselves much in demand right through the summer when it might be thought they would all be enjoying a few weeks off.

Towards the end of July they are involved in The Marston Project, on 22nd July 2017 performing selected scenes from the plays of John Marston at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. This is part of a series of events to mark the ongoing publication of The Complete Works of John Marston. When published, this will be the first complete critical edition of the work of this neglected playwright whose output included comedies, satire and tragedies. It’s a major project involving a team of fifteen scholars led by Martin Butler of the University of Leeds and Matthew Steggle of Sheffield Hallam University.  The performance by the boys is intended to provide clues for the scholars relating to how Marston’s work is received by an audience.

A preview performance, free of charge, is to be given the preceding evening at King Edward VI School in Stratford-upon-Avon. Tickets for all their performances in Stratford-upon-Avon can be booked here. Tickets for the performance at the Globe can be booked here .

Later in the summer Edward’s boys continue to be in demand, with a workshop on 25 August as part of the Before Shakespeare conference at Roehampton University, London. This is open only to conference delegates.

The poster for Edward’s Boys production of Summer’s Last Will and Testament

But Edward’s Boys major event this summer is to be a production of Thomas Nashe’s play Summer’s Last Will and Testament, dating back to 1592 when Shakespeare’s career as a writer was just beginning. The performances on 26 and 27 September will take place at the school in Stratford, followed by one performance on 29 September in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe and the final one by invitation only in the Great Hall, The Old Palace School, Croydon.

This production is linked to another major scholarly editing work in progress, The Thomas Nashe Project, in which Oxford University Press will be publishing all of Nashe’ known writings and some that are dubious. As well as the new edition, there are to be a number of additional events of which this is one, and the project will also be making multi-media resources about Nashe available on its website.

Nashe is one of the most interesting of Elizabethan writers. He is thought to have collaborated with Shakespeare on some of his earlier plays. He was a brilliant man, a graduate of Cambridge University, but never found a literary form in which he could develop his skills, and died in 1601 aged only 34 . He’s now best known as a satirist and commentator, his pamphlet Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem an indictment of Elizabethan society. Summer’s Last Will and Testament, his only surviving play, is thought to have received its first performance in early October 1592.  It was performed in the Great Hall of the residence of Archbishop Whitgift, Croydon Palace, which explains the venue for the final performance in September.  The play was written and performed during one of the worst periods of plague in London, and Croydon was well away from the pestilence in the City. Playhouses in London were closed to avoid spreading illness even further, the Queen and many other people who were able to having temporarily left the city. The play has an elegiac quality suited to the sombre mood of the time. “Weepe heavens, mourn earth, here Summer ends”.  The lovely if mournful song from the play, “Adieu, farewell earth’s bliss” is well known:

Beauty is but a flower,
Which wrinkles will devour.
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen’s eye:
I am sick, I must die.

Here’s to a busy and hopefully fulfilling summer for Edward’s Boys!

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Shakespeare, culture and the digital

Posted on July 6, 2017 by Sylvia Morris

On Monday 3 July it was announced that the DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) would change its name to the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. Sadly this has nothing to do with digital developments in the arts, as the Secretary of State stated that the focus of the Department had changed so that “half of its policy and delivery work now covers the digital sectors – telecommunications, data protection, internet safety, cyber skills and parts of media and the creative industries”. Unnoticed by most of us, the “Culture ” bit of the Department seems to have been somewhat demoted.

Digital developments, however, have been embraced by cultural organisations. One of the most popular has been the digital live streaming of performances of plays and operas, usually shown to paying audiences in cinemas but occasionally freely online to viewers worldwide.

Screenings have brought these cultural offerings to people who would never be able to get to a theatre performance, enlarging audience numbers, and have also created a great deal of academic interest. Theatre organisations have not always welcomed them, because producing a hybrid event watched by remote viewers could compromise their main job of staging live shows to live audiences. Knowing that a show is to be filmed, would it change the live production? Would the audience for live theatre be reduced or changed? And would the cinema audience behave and respond differently from a theatre audience? Erin Sullivan, of the Shakespeare Institute, has frequently addressed the issues on her Digital Shakespeares blog.

David Troughton as Titus in the RSC’s 2017 production of Titus Andronicus

In an attempt to make the process of judging audience reaction less subjective, the RSC is conducting an innovative research project in collaboration with Ipsos MORI to monitor the emotional engagement of audiences watching Shakespeare’s most violent play, Titus Andronicus. A carefully-selected group of volunteers watching simultaneously in the theatre and a cinema will wear heart-rate monitors during the performance, then will be interviewed on the strength of their reaction to the play which includes scenes of rape, multiple murders and mutilation. In the theatre, members of the audience often faint. Might audiences used to seeing more realistic violence on cinema screens be less affected by stage effects, or just be distanced from the horrors of the play?

The article on the RSC’s website tells us that this is intended to be a more scientific study than any undertaken so far. ” There has been previous research around the impact of cinema broadcasts, but this will be the very first time there will be direct measurement and comparison of the emotional experience of both theatre and cinema audiences for a Shakespeare play.”  It will take place on 9 August, and the results will be released in November. It’ll be interesting to see what the survey shows, with implications beyond the live digital screening of a Shakespeare play.

In Oxford from 10-12 July a conference will be held at which the issue of live screenings is sure to be raised. Convened by the Bodleian Libraries and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, Digitising the Stage: Rethinking the Early Modern Theatre Archive will look at the many ways in which digital technology is being used to enhance the study of stage performance.

The conference will include a whole range of approaches, including analysing early modern buildings, the creation of multimedia digital texts, describing the archives  themselves and papers examining the ways in which digital media can be used in teaching.

I’m not familiar with some of the newer developments, and I’m sorry I’m not going to be able to be at the conference to find out more. The RSC’s archives, which I cared for over many years, included materials in a huge variety of analogue and digital formats from wax cylinders to DVDs. I wholeheartedly welcome the creative use of technology to enable theatre archives created and stored in a variety of ways and in many different locations to be made more widely available.

Duke Humfrey’s Library, Oxford

I’m sure the archivists at the conference will remind the other participants that even in a world where everything is theoretically available anywhere you have an internet connection there are still many challenges. Many collections are not yet fully catalogued, let alone digitised, and copyright and other intellectual property rights remain hurdles to be overcome.

Despite the conference’s 21st-century subject, I notice participants are being offered a tour of Duke Humfrey’s Library, built between 1450 and 1480 and still in use, housing rare books including a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio. The fact that several copies of the Folio are available online for anybody to view does not stop people wanting to engage with the real thing. It’s going to be interesting to see whether the research into live versus cinema viewings will show similar results when published later in 2017.

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Hilary Mantel and Shakespeare: fiction versus fact

Posted on July 4, 2017 by Sylvia Morris

Hilary Mantel

This year’s Reith lecturer, the award-winning historical novelist Hilary Mantel, is in the middle of her five-lecture series on Radio 4, delivered on Tuesdays and repeated on Saturdays. Her subject is writing historical fiction, though rather than talking about the Tudor period which she has made her own, her subjects are more personal. She has maintained that historical fiction “can bring the dead back to life” in a way that factual history, with its focus on accuracy, does not. In her books, as in plays and paintings, “we sense the dead have a vital force still”. Should you wish to catch up, you will find the first here, with links to transcripts and other related material, on the BBC’s iPlayer site.

Her books Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies focus on the reign of Henry VIII, in particular the life and career of Thomas Cromwell. History has not been kind to him, characterising him as a ruthless fixer. Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII concentrates on the downfalls of Katharine of Aragon and Thomas Wolsey, with Cromwell a relatively minor figure, even after Cardinal Wolsey’s fall from favour.

One of the reasons Shakespeare’s history plays have continued to be popular is because they too bring the dead back to life, imbuing them with that vital force that Hilary Mantel talks about. Nowhere is this seen more forcefully than in Richard III, the villainous Richard being one of Shakespeare’s most compelling characters.

The statue of Richard III outside Leicester Cathedral

Many will remember the drama that unfolded when the remains of the historical Richard were discovered beneath a Leicester car park, followed by his reburial within the cathedral itself in 2015. I wrote several blog posts at the time including this one about the killing of the princes in the tower which Shakespeare, following his sources, laid on Richard.

Now two performances of Shakespeare’s play are to take place within the cathedral, on 19 and 20 July, by the Theatre Group Antic Disposition. They are taking their production to several of England’s cathedrals and churches including Ely, Salisbury and the Temple Church, London.

Not surprisingly the idea of performing Shakespeare’s play in the same space as the King’s tomb has been controversial, with the Richard III Society and Richard III’s Royal Supporters arguing it is disrespectful and insensitive. The full story, including the Dean’s response to their petition,  is told here by the Leicester Mercury.

Ben Horslen, one of the company’s artistic directors, explains their position:

“By bringing our production to Leicester, one of our aims is to enable the audience to explore the wider story around Richard, a more balanced and nuanced version than Shakespeare’s.

“We hope that performing this wonderful play, a core work of English Literature, in the remarkable setting of Leicester Cathedral, will present a unique opportunity for a wide audience to engage with Richard III, both the man and the myth, and the real history behind Shakespeare’s story.”

The tomb of Richard III

The decision has been defended by the cathedral authorities who have suggested the play allows people to “engage with different dimensions of this complex story”. “The legacy of myths, the mystery and the man himself will continue to interplay and at times this will arouse strong responses.

“These performances will be memorable as Richard’s earthly remains lie in our midst. Our commitment is to ensure that new generations keep on encouraging his legacy.”

Surely they have a point. The performances are certain to have an additional frisson, but could be wonderful experiences providing a direct opportunity to explain that Shakespeare’s brilliantly imagined king is an invention. And Hilary Mantel’s lectures are a terrific place to start for anyone wanting to understand more about the difference between the creative artist and the historian. Maybe the followers of the historical Richard could celebrate these performances. Shakespeare’s Richard is unforgettable: without him Richard III would probably only be remembered as the last of the Plantagenet kings of England and his bones would have remained buried under the car park for ever.

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Donald Trump and Shakespeare

Posted on June 18, 2017 by Sylvia Morris

A scene from the New York production of Julius Caesar

Shakespeare’s fascination with politics can be seen in many of his plays, not only those directly based on British history. The Roman plays too examine the workings of power, looking at how countries have been governed and how those who do the governing take control. The late plays are often called romances, but question authority and how it is wielded: in Pericles Marina, a victim herself, demands of the ruler of the city how he can tolerate and even participate in corruption by visiting a brothel.

Do you know this house to be a place of such resort,
And will come into ‘t? I hear say you are of honourable parts,
And are the governor of this place.  

If Shakespeare was alive today he would certainly be watching the worldwide political scene with interest. As long ago as January the Times Literary Supplement was publishing articles relating the then-new President to characters and episodes in Shakespeare’s plays.

Shakespeare would probably have made the most of the 140-character limitation, and would be writing beautifully-crafted tweets. President Trump’s tweets are more spur of the moment, and many subsequently are repeated in other media as well as on Twitter. One now-famous tweet featured the word “covfefe”. President Trump may have been half asleep while writing this one, and lots of people have had fun with it including writing humorous definitions of the new word. Pretty quickly somebody came up with another tweet suggesting this was actually a word used by Shakespeare. It would have been lovely if this had been true, but a bit of digging around shows it to be, inevitably, fake news.

The first clue was that the word was said to be in the First Quarto of Hamlet, published in 1603 and known as the “Bad” Quarto, “bad” being a word often used by the President. Rather than being buried in an obscure corner, the word appeared in the most famous speech in the play “To be or not to be”, one of the most corrupt sections of the text. Just to make it more convincing the tweet included a photograph showing the word in the quarto, a terrific bit of photoshopping. I had a look at online facsimiles of the Quarto and found that the word which had been replaced by “covfefe” was, appropriately, “vanity”. I take my hat off to the imaginative individuals who created this bit of clever light relief at a time when we’re much in need of it.

The President Trump/Shakespeare issue that has really hit the headlines, though, is the news that a production of Julius Caesar, staged in Central Park, New York, has created outrage. The actor playing Caesar has blond hair and dresses very much like the current President. There have been protests at performances, and it is reported that after Donald Trump’s son questioned it, two major funders, Delta Airlines and Bank of America, have pulled their funding of the theatre.

Stephen Greenblatt wrote an article on the subject, including the story about Queen Elizabeth’s own objections to a royal deposition, for the Washington Post.The Trump family shouldn’t fight Shakespeare

And this article in the Guardian documents the whole story.

Rather alarmingly, the Boston Globe has noted that theatres with Shakespeare in their names are now being targeted.

The theatre has of course defended itself, and the play: “Our production of Julius Caesar in no way advocates violence towards anyone. Shakespeare’s play, and our production, make the opposite point: those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save.”

Trump is not the first President or leading politician to be represented in this way, and he certainly won’t be the last. The extreme reaction to the impersonation, though, indicates the sensitivity of the current administration. In a recent tweet, Greg Jenner wrote “remarkable that a play written 400 years ago, about a man murdered 2000 years ago, is the focus of political debate in 2017 #JuliusCaesar”. Shakespeare himself knew how powerful the bloody murder of the ruler would be, with Cassius stepping out of the moment to consider its historical significance.

             How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

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Before Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Institute

Posted on June 11, 2017 by Sylvia Morris

A summer of great events for those interested in Shakespeare and his theatrical background is just getting under way. From 12-30 June 2017 the fifth play-reading marathon will be held at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. Up to now, these have focused on the development of a single creative writer. Subjects have been John Fletcher, Thomas Heywood, Philip Shirley and Thomas Dekker. As in previous years students, staff, alumni, and friends of the Shakespeare Institute will take part in unrehearsed, round-the-table readings organised by Dr Martin Wiggins.

Quoting from the Institute’s website, “this year we have decided to concentrate on all of the extant plays of a particularly fruitful and important period of the emerging English theatre. Not only do these works give an invaluable insight into the theatrical world in which the young William Shakespeare began his career as actor and writer, but they also reflect a significant moment of cultural change and creativity in which the theatre became a powerful and frequently controversial form of public art.” The period covered is 1581-1591, the eleven years immediately before Shakespeare became a fully-fledged playwright for the public theatres. Many of them are plays that Shakespeare must have seen himself, and must have inspired his own work. Only forty-one plays have survived from this period, and every one is being read, in chronological order.

This year’s marathon is being run in association with the Before Shakespeare project that is currently exploring the early plays and playhouses of the Elizabethan era, run by Andy Kesson.

Later this summer Before Shakespeare is running a conference at the University of Roehampton, London, from 24-27 August. It will cover a wide range of subjects including the playhouses themselves, writers, the plays that were performed, stagecraft and theatrical companies. The full schedule and details about how to apply are available here.

Also related to Before Shakespeare is a series of readings at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe, including Fedele and Fortunio by Anthony Munday on 18 June, the anonymous play Mucedorus on 16 July and, timed to coincide with the conference, John Lyly’s Sappho and Phao on 27 August.

A Read not Dead reading at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

Another event that readers of this blog might be interested in will be taking place at the Shakespeare Institute on the afternoon of Thursday 6 July: the first performance since the seventeenth century of a recently discovered play The Dutch Lady. It’s a Restoration comedy that will be introduced by the discoverer of the play, Joe Stevenson, and followed by a panel discussion with scholars of the drama of the period. More information is available here.

Here is the full timetable for the marathon:

The Fifth Annual Shakespeare Institute Play-Reading Marathon

BEFORE SHAKESPEARE, 1581-91

All readings take place in the Reading Room; live-tweeting will be displayed on screen.  The readings will be recorded for archival purposes.

MONDAY 12 JUNE

10.30: Robert Wilson, The Three Ladies of London

2.30: Love and Fortune

TUESDAY 13 JUNE

2.30: John Lyly, Campaspe

7.00: Anthony Munday, Fedele and Fortunio, and George Peele, The Arraignment of Paris

WEDNESDAY 14 JUNE

10.30: John Lyly, Sappho and Phao

2.30: John Lyly, Galatea, and The Famous Victories of Henry V

THURSDAY 15 JUNE

2.30: Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy

7.00: Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine

FRIDAY 16 JUNE

10.30: Robert Greene, Alphonsus, King of Aragon

2.30: Christopher Marlowe, 2 Tamburlaine

SATURDAY 17 JUNE

10.30: John Lyly, Endymion, the Man in the Moon

2.30: Suleiman and Perseda

MONDAY 19 JUNE

10.30: Thomas Lodge, The Wounds of Civil War

2.30: Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (A-text), and George Peele, The Battle of Alcazar

TUESDAY 20 JUNE

2.30: The Wars of Cyrus, King of Persia, and John Lyly, The Woman in the Moon

7.00: Christopher Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage

WEDNESDAY 21 JUNE

10.30: Robert Wilson, The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London

2.30: Robert Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay

THURSDAY 22 JUNE

2.30: George Peele (?), The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England

7.00: John Lyly, Mother Bombie

FRIDAY 23 JUNE

10.30: Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta

2.30: Robert Greene and Thomas Lodge, A Looking-Glass for London and England

SATURDAY 24 JUNE

10.30: John Lyly, Midas

2.30: King Lear and his Three Daughters

MONDAY 26 JUNE

10.30: The True Tragedy of Richard III

2.30: John Lyly, Love’s Metamorphosis, and Fair Em

TUESDAY 27 JUNE

2.30: Robert Greene, James IV

7.00: Arden of Faversham

WEDNESDAY 28 JUNE

10.30: Jack Straw, and Anthony Munday, John a Kent and John a Cumber

2.30: George Peele, David and Bathsheba

THURSDAY 29 JUNE

2.30: Robert Greene, Orlando Furioso, and Mucedorus

7.00: George Peele, Edward I

FRIDAY 30 JUNE

10.30: Locrine

2.30: William Shakespeare, The First Part of the Contention between York and Lancaster

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The power of poetry

Posted on May 25, 2017 by Sylvia Morris

In the last few months I’ve been finding it hard to concentrate on Shakespeare: it’s all seemed trivial compared with the important issues that confront us like deciding how England relates to the other countries of the UK, Europe and the world, how we are governed and what sort of country we aspire to be. This week’s awful bombing in Manchester, specifically targeting young people out enjoying themselves at a long-anticipated concert, has been followed by a raising of the security level to critical, the highest possible level.

Ironically this comes during a week in which the UK is enjoying the warmest weather of the year so far, our towns and countryside looking at their most beautiful. Like many people I’ve been taking refuge in early-morning walks, making the most of the peace of Stratford and the River Avon. And as I’ve been walking, Shakespeare’s words have come back to me. It is usually supposed that he immersed himself in the natural world during his childhood in Stratford-upon-Avon, knowledge that he repeatedly brought in to his poetry and plays throughout his career.

I often find the mood of the sonnets rather gloomy, even self-indulgent, but Sonnet 18 is more optimistic than many. It’s a celebration of the beauty of nature, defiantly life-affirming, bringing comfort even in the face of death. It reminds us of the importance of love and memory. As one of the most beautiful, it’s also probably the best-known and most often-quoted of them.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

We have seen the power of words and poetry to express emotion and meaning very powerfully in the last few days. In Manchester we have heard heartbreaking accounts of the events of Monday night and the despair of parents who have lost their children. It’s been amazing to hear them speak so bravely, and, at a time of their own terrible grief, for them to be able to think about the larger need to bring people together in a spirit of love.

Poets are uniquely skilled in putting feelings into just the right words. At the vigil held in the city the poet Tony Walsh delivered his ode to Manchester, its achievements and its spirit, an uplifting moment during this sober event. The link to the Telegraph report, including both his reading and the text of the poem, are both here.

The photographs and the video on this post were taken today, 25 May 2017, on Shakespeare’s Avon. I hope you enjoy them. Special thanks to James Stredder and, as ever, to Richard Morris who took the wonderful video of the new swan family.

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Bram and the Guv’nor: Henry Irving and his manager onstage together

Posted on May 16, 2017 by Sylvia Morris

Henry Irving as Hamlet

Through his novel Dracula and the numerous adaptations of it, writer Bram Stoker is probably now better known than the man who was his “Guv’nor”, the great late-Victorian actor Henry Irving. The two men had a working relationship that lasted almost thirty years, during which time Bram was Irving’s business manager at the Lyceum Theatre in London. Although Irving performed a wide range of plays, it was Shakespeare that was the heart of his career, and it had been Shakespeare that brought them together.

This week the relationship is being dramatised in a play, Bram and the Guv’nor, specially written by playwright Jefny Ashcroft and inspired by the Bram Stoker Collection which is cared for by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust on behalf of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Bram Stoker was a compulsive collector, and the Bram Stoker Collection consists of many boxes of material that he kept relating to the career of Henry Irving encompassing his work at the Lyceum Theatre and many tours. The play is part of the Arts Friendly Archives project funded by Arts Council England that brings people into contact with archive material by creating fact-based dramas. It’s a fascinating approach, that will be even more special because before and after the performances audiences will be able to view an accompanying exhibition of the original material that inspired it. Even better, tickets are free.

Bram Stoker and Henry Irving met in 1876 when, as a young civil servant who wrote short stories and theatre reviews on the side, Stoker went to see Irving’s Hamlet in Dublin. Impressed by his review, Irving invited Stoker to dinner and later treated him to a private reading. Later Stoker wrote “So great was the magnetism of his genius, so profound was the sense of his dominancy that I sat spellbound. Outwardly I was as of stone…The whole thing was new, re-created by a force of passion which was like a new power.”

One of the few photos of Henry Irving (in the top hat) and Bram Stoker (a few steps behind), leaving the Lyceum Theatre

So began one of the most extraordinary of theatrical partnerships, explored by Michael Kilgarriff of the Irving Society here. He describes how “Irving provided the star power and the driving force, Bram a bottomless well of loyalty and the administrative capability to keep the show on the road.” Bram was also “genial, the ideal Front-of-House meeter and greeter”, and some of the most intriguing items in the Bram Stoker Collection are hand-written seating plans for dinners hosted by himself and Irving. The Collection contains lots of printed material relating to performances including reviews, programmes and illustrations, but these little scraps are particularly telling. Stoker obviously took considerable care to place people around the table, these dinners being the places where business was done and plans made. Together he and Irving were what Kilgarriff calls “a matchless team”.

The Bram Stoker Collection contains little personal material, and, disappointingly for Dracula fans, hardly anything relating to Stoker’s most famous creation. There has been much speculation, though, about whether Irving’s stage presence as Faust was the inspiration for Count Dracula. It is not surprising that Jefny Ashcroft has chosen to focus on the writing of Dracula and the effect that it may have had on the relationship of the two men. This extract comes from the press release:

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth 1889 John Singer Sargent 1856-1925 Presented by Sir Joseph Duveen 1906 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N02053

“the play is set in 1897 and showcases Bram’s career as a business manager to Sir Henry Irving (played by Barrie Palmer), acclaimed actor-manager of London’s Lyceum Theatre. Irving, also known as the Guv’nor, was the doyen of the Victorian stage particularly applauded for his Shakespearian roles and performed alongside his leading lady, Ellen Terry (played by Jo Price). Unbeknown to them, Bram (played by David Reakes) is also writing a strange new book, Dracula and attempts to persuade Henry Irving, who he idolises, to play Count Dracula. But all is not what it seems, as friendship and professional pride come into conflict and sparks fly. “

By 1897 Irving had passed the peak of his success. With his leading lady Ellen Terry he had performed many of Shakespeare’s greatest plays including Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, King Henry VIII, The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing. He had made acting respectable, was favoured by Queen Victoria, and in 1895 was the first actor to receive a knighthood. Although Bram Stoker always remained out of the spotlight his talent was occasionally recognised. In 1888, on tour, the Chicago Daily News wrote ‘We know of no manager more vigilant, more indefatigable, more audacious than he. He knows how to make friends, how to keep them, and how to utilize them… In the manipulation of Mr Irving’s intricate and enormous business he exhibits a coolness, a shrewdness, and an enthusiasm that are simply masterful…Irving is fortunate in having so able and so loyal an associate.’

Bram and the Guv’nor is great opportunity to explore the relationship between these two extraordinary characters. Performances, lasting an hour, are free but people are asked to order tickets in advance. There are performances on 16, 17 and 20 May at the Shakespeare Centre in Stratford-upon-Avon.

 

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Shakespeare in the Gallery, Library, Archive and Museum

Posted on May 7, 2017 by Sylvia Morris

Fuseli, Henry; Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers; Tate; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/lady-macbeth-seizing-the-daggers-198821

Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums, known collectively as GLAMs contain many examples of the way in which Shakespeare has inspired creative people ever since his plays and poems were written. Paintings may be inspired by either a great performance of a play or by Shakespeare’s powerful words, characters and scenes. Writers have adapted Shakespeare’s plays into novels, television programmes and films. And there are representations of Shakespeare in all media from music and ballet to sculpture and glass. To me one of the greatest benefits of the internet is the increasing number of websites where, free of charge, people are able to gain access to both images and content relating to collections from around the world that remind us of our common humanity and the power of the imagination. 

The Art UK website is a fantastic resource for paintings held in public collections in the UK. To celebrate Shakespeare’s Birthday they have published an edition of their newsletter containing seven paintings inspired by Shakespeare from the cerebral, almost monochrome portrait by Blake to one of my favourites, the wonderfully eccentric Apotheosis of Garrick in which the great actor is raised to Mount Olympus where he is greeted by Shakespeare. Content Creator Molly Tresadern does a great job of putting the paintings in context and helping you look at them in detail. There are also lots of links to other bits of this brilliant site.  

A more quirky take on things inspired by Shakespeare is to be found on Culture 24’s Museum Crush site, another wonderful website. They’ve just published a lovely article in which Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Collection Librarian Mareike Doleschal picks some of her favourites in the Trust’s eclectic collection. The Secret Life of Shakespeare’s Books examines some of the intriguing and unexpected stories behind the historic books and documents cared for by the Trust.   

Both these sites contain loads of links to fantastic short articles where you can happily spend an hour or two, and bring together items you’d never be able to see in person. Have fun browsing!

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Celebrating Shakespearean stage actors

Posted on April 30, 2017 by Sylvia Morris

Judi Dench and Ian McKellen with the Gielgud blue plaque

On 27 April 2017 Dame Judi Dench unveiled a blue plaque on 16 Cowley Street in Westminster where Sir John Gielgud had lived from 1945 to 1976. It has taken a long time to appear since Gielgud died in 2000 aged 96 and most modern theatregoers will never have seen him onstage. Judi Dench met him in 1957 and worked with him a number of times including a hugely successful production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in both Stratford and London. She has given a number of interviews in which she recalled Gielgud’s ability as a speaker of Shakespeare. In BBC Radio 4’s Front Row from 26 April she said his strength was in presenting “the whole arc of the speech”. “John was sublime at being able to tell you exactly what it meant”, and she likened his ability in speaking Shakespeare with Frank Sinatra’s ability to phrase a song.

The clips of recordings of him sadly serve mostly to remind us how much fashion in verse speaking has changed, but Dench took the opportunity to highlight the need for modern actors, mostly trained to work on film or TV, to use their voices. In The Stage she commented   “If you’re not going to be heard, then stay at home and do it in your living room. It doesn’t require shouting, it requires learning about it and learning where your voice comes from, where your diaphragm is and how to use it.” Here are links to a couple of articles reporting her comments from the Independent and the Guardian.

Although late in life John Gielgud acted in many films, she suggested that he was “entirely a stage actor”, loving the camaraderie of the theatre as well as the immediacy of working with a live audience.

Shakespeare on Stage 2

I’ve recently been enjoying a new book that looks specifically at performances of Shakespeare. Entitled Shakespeare on Stage Volume 2, it is compiled by actor Julian Curry from interviews with twelve leading actors. Most of them are performances I’d seen and admired: Alan Rickman as Jaques, in As You Like It in 1985, Fiona Shaw as Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew in 1987, Harriet Walter as Imogen in Cymbeline in 1987, Michael Pennington as Timon in 1999 among others. All these were Royal Shakespeare Company productions, as was the famous Peter Brook A Midsummer Night’s Dream which Sara Kestelman, doubling Hippolyta/Titania, remembered so vividly from 1970.

I thought I would find myself drawn to the performances I remembered, but I found the ones I hadn’t seen just as compelling. Julian Curry is a skilled interviewer who has clearly done a vast amount of preparation before each interview. Maybe being an experienced actor himself also helped in getting frank answers to some of the questions.

I was fascinated by Eileen Atkins’ account of playing Viola at the Old Vic in 1961. She explained how she didn’t want to play her like Dorothy Tutin who she had understudied a few years earlier: “I couldn’t bear her pleading waiflike-ness. I found it all too coy and too cute. It wasn’t my kind of Viola”. It’s extraordinary how much these actors remember of the playing of these roles even decades later, and in the case of Alan Rickman, fortunate that the interview took place at all. Interviewed in 2012, he died early in 2016.

Although I saw it, I remember little of the detail of Simon Russell Beale’s Cassius in Julius Caesar at the Barbican in a cast that also included Anton Lesser as Brutus, John Shrapnel as Caesar and Ralph Fiennes as Mark Antony. Like many people I was puzzled that Beale was playing Cassius rather than Brutus, but he explains how director Deborah Warner persuaded him: “I think you have the psychological wherewithal to deal with a man who is neurotic”. He goes on “I’d always seen Cassius as a cold, successful political manipulator. But gradually…I realised that he’s not very good at manipulating…He panics again and again”. It’s fascinating to read how Beale came to the conclusion that it is the disappointed, sad and lonely figure of Cassius, not Brutus, who is the play’s most tragic figure.

The book also features a wonderful foreword from former Artistic Director of the National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner, in praise of actors. “Plays are by definition incomplete. They are instructions for performance, like musical scores, and they need players to become music”. Literary critics who have struggled to make sense of  Shakespeare’s characters are missing the point: “The solution is the actor. The playwright writes from the premise that the dots can’t be joined on the page, and writes with the confidence of an actor who knows that…his colleagues will do the rest of the job for him”. Several of the interviewees talk about this phenomenon, particularly Fiona Shaw who describes the experience of speaking Katherine’s part, “I had to play in the gaps” in the language.

An actor himself, Shakespeare wrote for other actors. Congratulations to those actors and theatre professionals working today who help to keep that heritage alive.

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Shakespeare and St George in Stratford-upon-Avon

Posted on April 28, 2017 by Sylvia Morris

14th century Russian icon of St George and the Dragon

23rd April is celebrated as the special day of St George, the patron saint of England. He’s one of the most popular of saints, venerated in Romania,  parts of Greece, Catalonia and Egypt, among many other places. Perhaps because of our current concerns about nationalism there seem to have been even more articles written and images posted on the internet than ever, many suggesting George is to be celebrated because he is a truly multicultural figure. The actual facts about his life and parentage are confused: he may have originated in Turkey, Syria or even Northern Africa, becoming a Christian martyr when executed for his faith by the Romans. He is associated with Lydda, which is now the town of Lod in Israel. 

The image of the warrior George as a knight on horseback spearing a dragon became widespread in the medieval period. Shakespeare mentions St George’s role as patron saint of England, most notably in Henry V’s rallying cry before the battle of Agincourt “Cry God for Harry, England and St George”. In a recent talk to Stratford-upon-Avon’s Shakespeare Club, Tim Raistrick, the Chairman of the Friends of the Guild Chapel, suggested that Shakespeare may have had his imagination fired by the paintings in the building, which included a magnificent representation of St George and the Dragon.

St George and the Dragon in Stratford’s Guild Chapel. From an 1804 drawing.

The illustration here comes from an 1838 publication, based on drawings made in 1804 by Thomas Fisher, and sadly does not represent what the paintings look like now, though the Chapel and its newly-restored wall-paintings are very much worth visiting. 

The wall paintings were placed there around the time the Chapel was largely rebuilt by Sir Hugh Clopton, in 1496. After the Reformation, all paintings in churches were obliterated, and the story has often been told that it was while John Shakespeare, William’s father, was the town’s Chamberlain, that this had been carried out. Crucially this was between 1563 and 1565, too early for William to have seen the paintings. But Tim suggested that at least some of the paintings may have survived for several decades as they are referred to in passing in contemporary documents. It’s a tantalising prospect, but rather a long shot.  Several years ago I wrote a post about the chapel before the restoration had taken place.

Another possible connection between Shakespeare and St George is through the Ascension Day pageant which took place in Stratford-upon-Avon. In his 1814 Guide to the town local historian Robert Bell Wheler interrupts his description of the Guild Chapel painting of St George with the note  ‘There was formerly upon Holy Thursday a procession of St George, whose armour or harness was placed upon one man, and the dragon was borne by another’. For him to mention it some two hundred and fifty years after it last took place it must have been very well-known. There are written references to the pageant and this harness going back to 1541, payments were made for the maintenance of George’s harness and bearing the dragon in 1556, and for the painting of the harness in 1557, when it was also noted that gunpowder was used in the portrayal of this fearsome beast.  

Then, on the accession of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth in 1558, just a few years before Shakespeare’s birth, the pageant seems to have been abandoned. All was not lost, though, as the harness was stored in the town’s Guild Hall where the rest of the town’s regalia and arms were kept. The Hall was directly below the schoolroom where Shakespeare was educated. Townspeople must have remembered these pageants, and would surely have shown off the harness to the pupils at the school, perhaps even have re-enacted how it was done.  

When Stratfordians eventually began to mark Shakespeare’s birthday for themselves, they also made the connection with St George. Stratford was a loyally patriotic town and, with a King George on the throne they immediately made the link between Shakespeare and England’s patron saint. At the first procession of Shakespeare’s characters, in 1827, the procession was led by the figure of St George, in armour and on horseback. Although most of the procession followed the plans set out by Garrick in 1769 (which was aborted because of the weather), St George was an addition. It’s even possible that his inclusion was a reference to those earlier pageants. St George featured again in 1830, this time represented by the upcoming young actor Charles Kean, son of the celebrated Edmund Kean.

Re-enacting St George’s battle with the dragon, 2017-style

This 1915 silent film clip from the British Film Institute notes that the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations, here led by actor-manager Frank Benson, coincided with St George’s Day. Perhaps the connection was made particularly strongly because the Great War was raging at the time. It continues today with Saint George becoming an even more popular figure: this website lists some of the events that took place in 2017 including re-enactments of St George’s battle with the dragon, traditional feasting, and the decoration of Trafalgar Square in red and white. In Stratford, Shakespeare of course is given pride of place, but the flag of St George is flown at the top of Bridge Street and the link is still made between England’s national poet and our patron saint.  

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