Women taking power in Shakespeare’s plays

Posted on November 16, 2016 by Sylvia Morris
Glenda Jackson as King Lear

Glenda Jackson as King Lear

2016 seems to have been characterised by women staging a takeover of traditional male roles, at least as far as Shakespeare is concerned. While planning this post I was hoping to be able to link this trend to the election of a woman President of the USA, but, as we all know, we will have to wait for the shattering of that massive glass ceiling.

In the mean time we can perhaps take comfort from what seems to be a real movement on stage, though in fact Shakespeare originally wrote all his roles to be acted by men. Women began to perform on the public stage just a few decades after his death, though only after the national trauma of the Civil War and Commonwealth.

It’s been noticeable how many of the male roles being taken over by women are the powerful ones. In previous years it’s been the contemplative roles of Hamlet and Brutus, but this year we’ve seen Prospero, King Lear, Coriolanus and Cymbeline all taken by women. It will be interesting to see what kinds of parallels academics will find in years to come between the real political turbulence of the year and Shakespeare on stage.

Audiences have been watching the RSC’s Cymbeline for several months now, first in Stratford and now at the Barbican. Cymbeline is often seen as an ineffectual leader who allows others to dominate, leading to division and discord, but I found Gillian Bevan’s strong performance effective, particularly when, with the finding of her lost sons, her family and her country are reunited.

Heartstring Theatre's Coriolanus

Heartstring Theatre’s Coriolanus

On the other side of the world, the new Australian Heartstring Theatre has been created “to actively address the shortage of strong female acting roles”, and they are to be applauded for launching into the subject with Coriolanus, as they put it a tale of “bloody tale of war, power and pride”, quite a challenge for an all-female cast. Elsewhere there was an all-female nude The Tempest performed out of doors in Brooklyn and an all-female The Taming of the Shrew in Colorado. In the UK the cycling touring company Handlebards launched an all-female team to perform Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew.

In London, though, two great female actors have been taking male roles during the autumn. Phyllida Lloyd, who previously directed all-female versions of Julius Caesar and Henry IV at the Donmar Warehouse has now completed a trilogy with The Tempest. All three are being performed at the tiny King’s Cross Theatre. As before, one of our leading Shakespeareans, Harriet Walter, plays Brutus and Henry IV as well as Prospero. All three plays are performed in the setting of a women’s prison, their common theme of power, ranging from the getting of it, the holding onto it, or the letting it go. Reviews will be posted after the trilogy day on 22 November.

There has though been a great deal of advance publicity, not least Harriet Walter’s Open Letter to Shakespeare published in The Stage. Most of the letter is not in fact addressed to Shakespeare, but here’s a bit that is:

Despite the fact that the world has changed enormously since your day, the stories we tell about ourselves still tend to follow your template, with male protagonists whose thoughts and actions matter – and females who matter only in as much as they relate to those men.

I feel churlish for saying this, but many of us feel excluded, and I would love you to come back and do some rewrites.

Nowadays we are challenging all preconceptions about gender, both in terms of personal identification and public roles, so I hope you don’t mind but I have been playing men recently. I am only following your own example. It seems as legitimate for women to play men as it was for boys to play women.

Most recently Glenda Jackson, who first rose to fame in the 1960s, is back on stage after a gap of 25 years at the age of 80 playing King Lear at the Old Vic. One review claims she has “pulled off one of those 11th-hour feats of human endeavour that will surely be talked about for years to come by those who see it”.

Don Warrington as King Lear

Don Warrington as King Lear

There have certainly been plenty of other performances of this massive role to compare her with this year. A couple of weeks ago the BBC presented a documentary 2016: The Year of King Lear, noting that five major productions of the play had been put on, and questioning why the play resonates so deeply with contemporary audiences. Those interviewed include Tony Sher and Don Warrington, and features speeches beautifully delivered by another Lear, Michael Pennington. It’s half an hour long and available on Iplayer until towards the end of November 2016.

Finally, again for those wanting to investigate King Lear, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory is running a week-long residential course for adult readers on the play from 21-25 November at Mousehole in Cornwall. An actor from the company and the Company’s Artistic Director Andrew Hilton will guide the participants through the text, bringing their theatrical perspective to the discussion. It sounds like a fascinating way of spending a week at the darkest time of the year!

Share
Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare on Stage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Celebrating Ben Jonson’s First Folio

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Sylvia Morris
Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

As well as being the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, 1616 is also a significant date for anyone interested in the theatre and writing of the period. Between 6 and 25 November 1616 Ben Jonson’s Workes was published, a monumental 1000-page volume whose title promised serious literature, but, unusually, included nine of his plays. Shakespeareans are keen to note that this book gives us evidence of Shakespeare’s own acting career, since he appears in the cast lists for Every Man in his Humour and Sejanus. But Jonson’s Folio is more significant that this, its publication sometimes being described as a watershed. Up to this time plays were seen as ephemeral, published (when they were) as flimsy, unadorned texts, and Jonson suffered no little teasing for his presumption. After Jonson’s book was published others could follow his lead, particularly in the case of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio. Jonson had taken a close interest in the production of his Folio, a possibility denied to Shakespeare and bemoaned by John Heminges and Henry Condell, who took the work on themselves. After Jonson’s death a second folio was published, including a great deal of extra material, and in 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher’s work was also gathered into Folio form.

On 12 November a day conference is being held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Jonson’s Folio, at the University of Sheffield’s Centre for Early Modern Studies. The conference brings together specialists from a range of disciplines both to explore the text of the Workes and to consider Jonson in relation to the wider social and cultural forms of his day. These include music, the visual arts, clothing, and drinking, as well as the multimedia performance that was his 1618 walk to Scotland. The day is being split into three parts: the first on Jonson, books and editing, the second on Jonson and other media (music, dress, painting) and the third on Jonson and sociability that will look at the Ben Jonson’s Walk to Scotland project that I’ve written about before, and another that I haven’t heard of,  entitled “Intoxicants and Early Modernity”.

Places seems still to be available (only £15 including lunch) from the University of Sheffield’s Online Store where you will also find more details of the speakers. It sounds as if it will be an enlightening day!

One thing they seem not to be tackling, perhaps because it’s such a large subject, are the plays themselves and their afterlife on the stage. Jonson’s plays have proved popular, especially in Stratford where a great many have been performed. In 1937 Everyman in His Humour was presented in the new Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, and Volpone was staged in 1944 and 1952 (with Ralph Richardson in the title role). The Other Place too proved a successful venue for Jonson, especially Volpone with Richard Griffiths. The opening of the Swan Theatre in 1986 brought in a golden period for the exploration of the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, particularly Jonson. Everyman in his Humour formed part of the Theatre’s opening season and since then there have been successful productions of The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair, Volpone, Eastward Ho!  and many others.

The cast of Pan's Anniversary, 1905

The cast of Pan’s Anniversary, 1905

Predating all of these, though, was a production of Jonson’s masque Pan’s Anniversary, given an outdoor production on 24 April 1905 on the Bancroft Gardens. It was written around 1621, too late for Jonson’s 1616 Folio, but was published for the first time in the 1640 posthumous edition.

The masque is set in Arcadia, in a classical pastoral setting, featuring nymphs, a shepherd and a swordsman. With much music and dance, the masque contrasts the pastoral setting of Arcadia with warlike Thebes. As with many masques, Jonson’s aim was the flatter King James I, seen in the guise of Pan, and his pacifist sentiments.

The performers were amateurs, joined by a few actors from Frank Benson’s acting company, but Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, no less, were brought in to write suitable music. The Stratford Choral Union provided the chorus and orchestra and the Bidford Morris Men, dancing to their own music, were cast as the warlike Thebans. Forgotten today, this was a significant national cultural event, promoting the idea of “Merrie England” and the new interest in English folkdance and music that was soon to be taken up by Cecil Sharp. The ambitious performance was organised by Stratford’s Shakespeare Club, the brainchild of Mr F W Evans who was one of the committee, and other members of the Club took part: for instance Henry Hickling, the Club’s Secretary, played the Shepherd.

You will find much more about this and the rest of the Shakespeare Club’s surprising history in the new book The Story of the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon, 1824-2016: Long Life to the Club call’d Shakspearean, written by Susan Brock and Sylvia Morris, now available through the Club’s website.

Share
Posted in Legacy, Stratford-upon-Avon | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Russ McDonald Memorial Seminar

Posted on November 6, 2016 by Sylvia Morris

mcdonald-100Regular readers of this blog may remember, back in July, that I wrote about the death of the distinguished Shakespeare academic Professor Russ McDonald. At 5.15- 7pm on 7 November a special event is being held to commemorate his life and work, at the Senate Room, Senate House, University of London. It is being run by the London Shakespeare Centre. 

The speakers at the Russ McDonald Memorial Seminar will be as follows:

Dr. Hannah Crawforth (KCL) : ‘Shaping the Language: Words, Patterns, and the Traditions of Rhetoric’, in Shakespeare and the Arts of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 30-46.

Dr. Gillian Woods (Birkbeck) : ‘Planned Obsolescence or Working at the Words’, in Teaching Shakespeare: Passing It On, ed. By G. B. Shand (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), pp. 27-42

Dr. Eric Langley (UCL) Shakespeare’s Late Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 39-41 and 43-52. 

A group discussion about the legacy of Russ’s work will follow the speakers’ presentations, and drinks will be served after the papers.

london-shakespeare-centreIf you wish to keep informed of the events organised by the London Shakespeare Centre, including these seminars, they have their own Facebook page, or you can ask to be put on their mailing list by emailing gemma.miller@kcl.ac.uk

The London Shakespeare Centre is to be thanked for putting on this event, providing as it does a great opportunity to find out more about both the subject of the papers and the work of this much-missed gentleman and scholar.

 

Share
Posted in Legacy | Tagged , | Comments Off on The Russ McDonald Memorial Seminar

Publication Day for the Shakespeare Club’s story

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Sylvia Morris

shakespeare-club-history-book-jacket

November 1 2016: the official publication day for The Story of the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon, 1824-2016, the book on which Susan Brock and I have been working for the last eighteen months. While researching the history of the Birthday Celebrations we became intrigued by the forgotten side of the Club’s history. Up to that point we knew the bare facts of the Club’s early existence: it had been founded at the Falcon Inn, and had originated the Stratford’s Shakespeare Celebrations.

We uncovered much more. We hadn’t realised how instrumental the Club had been in forming some of the Shakespeare organisations we now take for granted, nor that it had overseen the first major restoration work on Shakespeare’s monument in the Church. Its members had sponsored the town’s first permanent theatre – not the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre that opened in 1879, but the Shakespearian Theatre, that opened in 1827.

The 1907 Celebrations showing the top of Bridge Street

The 1907 Celebrations showing the top of Bridge Street

Most interestingly, the early members of the Club who set all these things in motion were not the gentry but regular townspeople. Most of them were local tradesmen: butchers, grocers, bakers, stationers, with a few teachers and one or two landowners. After a period of stagnation, in the early years of the twentieth century numbers grew as local people were drawn in to organising the Birthday Celebrations organised by the Club. Ordinary people, including, I found, some of my own ancestors, used their talents to help celebrate the Birthday of the town’s local poet in their own way. It was their unacknowledged commitment, through the efforts of the Club, that made the Birthday Celebrations so successful. The discovery of these stories encouraged us to refer to the book as “an alternative history of Stratford-upon-Avon”.

To find out more, including details of how to buy a copy, visit the Club’s website, www.stratfordshakespeareclub.org, and this page on my website.

Share
Posted in Stratford-upon-Avon | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Publication Day for the Shakespeare Club’s story

Discord and dismay

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Sylvia Morris
Mark Rylance

Mark Rylance

It’s been a bad-tempered sort of week for those who take an interest in Shakespeare. On Sunday 23rd October actor and former Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Mark Rylance launched into an attack on business sponsorship of the theatre in general and on the RSC’s acceptance of sponsorship by BP in particular. It seemed like an old-fashioned sort of argument, with Rylance recalling what it had been like when he was in the RSC during the 1980s and expected to go along to corporate events. I remember being upset when the RSC first accepted sponsorship, with discussions about the probably effects on artistic standards and repertoire, preventing artists from pursuing their own visions. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that state sponsorship of the arts has, over the centuries, been the exception rather than the rule. Shakespeare’s own theatre only survived because it was popular, and his plays were ruthlessly adapted to make them appeal to the current fashion for centuries after his death. The theatres in Stratford were built because of the enthusiasm and generosity of the Flower brewing family and at least to begin with could only support a few weeks of theatrical activity a year. Maybe there is less opportunity to experiment, but at the RSC, BP has allowed the company to set up its scheme offering 16-25 year olds tickets for only £5 each. The arguments over BP date back a number of years but began in earnest with a letter in August signed by 214 public figures demanding the cancellation of BP’s sponsorship of the arts.

The RSC is not the only major arts organisation to receive sponsorship from BP: it also supports the British Museum, the Royal Opera House (which has been in a relationship with them for 28 years), and the National Portrait Gallery. BP have also sponsored sport: in London and Rio the company supported both the Olympics and Paralympics.

Rylance’s  interview starts about 26 minutes into the programme.

Emma Rice

Emma Rice

Then on Tuesday it was announced that Emma Rice would be leaving Shakespeare’s Globe in Spring 2018, having taken over from Dominic Dromgoole only at the beginning of 2016.This has been the Shakespeare story of the week, and again there is a feeling of déjà vu about the arguments: is the Globe a museum, a theatre, or a kind of laboratory for academic experiments? Like Mark Rylance’s discussions about sponsorship, it’s all been said before, and here are a sample of the pieces that have been written this week.

From the BBC , The Spectator, The Stage,  The Guardian, and The Telegraph.

Emma Rice's 2016 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream

Emma Rice’s 2016 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

What’s shocking about this announcement is that Rice has been pushed out after only a few months, when any Artistic Director needs time to settle into working in a completely new environment. Her first season, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has been very successful at the box office, but the Globe board seem to have fallen out with her over her use of lighting and sound, while they wanted to retain the stress on historical authenticity. This is a puzzling development, since, surely, it must have been apparent from her work at Kneehigh that she was not going to take the Globe in this direction.

In response to both of these events, on Broadcasting House on 30 October we heard Bury the Bard, a piece written and performed by playwright Adriano Shaplin. His deliberately provocative and probably tongue in cheek piece attacked Shakespeare as the “zombie general”, “crushing the arts with his dead arm”, a misogynist capitalist pig who “would take the money and run”. It starts about 36 minutes in.

Adriano Shaplin

Adriano Shaplin

Shaplin’s piece comes over as a bit of a rant, but he’s a much more interesting and thoughtful artist than this might suggest. From 2006-8 he was the International Playwright in Residence at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, seen by Artistic Director Michael Boyd as a “free-roaming provocateur, stirring up debate, raising the bar on just what could be said in the pub and rehearsal room”. In 2008 he was involved in this discussion at the Royal Society while the RSC were performing his play The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, on the subject of the development of science and the foundation of the Royal Society.

Maybe we’re all in need of a bit of a break at the end of the year in which the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death has been celebrated so vigorously. Everyone is certainly entitled to express their opinion. But the very fact that Shakespeare and the performance of his plays can provoke such interest and outrage means he’s not dead yet.

Share
Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare on Stage, Stratford-upon-Avon | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Howard Davies at the Royal Shakespeare Company

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Sylvia Morris

 

Howard Davies outside The Warehouse, 1978

Howard Davies outside The Warehouse, 1978

On 25 October 2016 theatre director Howard Davies died at the age of 71. He had a full and successful career working in theatres around the country, but for me he is associated with the Royal Shakespeare Company during what Sally Beauman called “an explosion of vitality”.

Although I’d visited the RSC a number of times in Stratford, it was while living in London in the late 1970s that I became a real RSC enthusiast. I loved the productions at the Aldwych Theatre but the Warehouse, newly converted into a studio theatre by the RSC, was the most exciting venue I’d ever been to. It was run by Howard Davies. The Warehouse (now the Donmar), received productions that had started at The Other Place in Stratford and also put on new productions, and here Davies brought in a policy of producing plays by contemporary British writers as well as work by more established political authors.  Among those showcased by Davies were Peter Flannery (Savage Amusement), Howard Barker (That Good Between Us), Barrie Keeffe (Frozen Assets) and David Edgar (The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs).  He built a particular relationship with Edward Bond, and at the RSC he directed many of Bertolt Brecht’s plays (Man is Man, Bingo, The Days of the Commune, Mother Courage). His first Shakespeare production on the main stage was Macbeth, with Bob Peck. When he directed Henry VIII the following year with Richard Griffiths as Henry, John Thaw as Wolsey and Gemma Jones as Katherine, it was not surprisingly described as “Brechtian”. Rather than presenting a series of magnificent tableaux Davies’s Henry was an intelligent, temperamentally withdrawn man moving, as Robert Cushman put it, “from dependence to despotism”.

At least part of the Company’s vitality was created by Davies’s work at the Warehouse. Writing in the 1978 RSC Yearbook at the end of the first Warehouse season he commented on the need to “demonstrate the range and versatility of our present acting company, and engender the excitement that comes from juxtaposing new and untried work with the well-tested, well-assimilated work of the previous season”, a process he described as “cross-fertilization”. Again quoting Sally Beauman, “Davies…wanted …to encourage writers to be part of the rehearsal process, so that plays might be considerably changed by rehearsal discoveries…. The Warehouse was to be a workshop as much as a showcase, and this first season was remarkably innovative…. It was an unapologetically Socialist season of new work that was a considerable break with anything the RSC had attempted in the past”. The company’s studio work had a direct effect on the rest of its work that only subsided when the Swan Theatre, with its completely different feel and aims, began to take over from 1986.

The cover of Edward Bond's play featuring the RSC's production

The cover of Edward Bond’s play featuring the RSC’s production

For me, as a member of the audience, mostly interested in the classical repertoire, the Warehouse work was a real eye-opener. Here it was possible to see top-notch acting at very close quarters and I well remember the excitement of seeing Jane Lapotaire and Zoe Wanamaker in Piaf, a transfer from Stratford’s Other Place of Pam Gems’ play on the sometimes grimy life of Edith Piaf, Peter McEnery in Jail Diary, and most excitingly Mike Gwilym, Patrick Stewart and Bob Peck in Edward Bond’s powerful play The Bundle, specially written for the new theatre. The plays put on at the Warehouse tended to examine social, eithical and political issues of the day. Jail Diary was based on the experiences of a man imprisoned in South Africa in the 1960s, and The Bundle, set in medieval Japan, looked at the moral dilemmas raised by the issues of poverty, social inequality and revolutionary violence.

Davies was clearly also an actor’s director, managing to get together astonishing casts for his plays. After his time at The Warehouse he continued to work with the company, directing one of its most successful productions, Les Liaisons Dangereuses at The Other Place in Stratford in 1985. From there the production went to London where it continued to be performed for several years, and to the USA (where a new production from the Donmar is coincidentally being staged in October 2016). The stellar cast included Lindsay Duncan, Alan Rickman, Juliet Stevenson, Fiona Shaw and Lesley Manville. In the same year Davies also directed a remarkable production of Troilus and Cressida on the main stage in Stratford with many of the same actors: Juliet Stevenson as Cressida, Rickman as Achilles, Lindsay Duncan as Helen, and another favourite, Anton Lesser as Troilus. Both productions featured elegant, unfussy sets and beautiful costumes that complemented rather than drawing attention away from the actors.

Troilus and Cressida - 1985 Royal Shakespeare Company Royal Shakespeare Theatre Directed by Howard Davies Designed by Ralph Koltai

Troilus and Cressida – 1985
Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Directed by Howard Davies
Designed by Ralph Koltai

The production divided the critics, but I loved it. Criticism centred around Stevenson’s Cressida, “a human being torn between love and survival, rather than a flirtatious plaything”. This interpretation might seem unexceptional today, but at the time it felt revolutionary. According to Michael Billington “Gone is the usual wanton flirt. Her love for Troilus is real and urgent, their enforced separation leads to hysterical breakdown and the famous scene where she is kissed by the Greek generals is tantamount to rape… Ulysses’s description of her as a daughter of the game becomes the violent reaction of a man humiliated by being expected to beg a kiss”.

Davies’s last work for the RSC was The General from America in 1996/7, but it’s his earlier, extraordinary work for the Company that many will also remember with admiration.

Share
Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare on Stage, Stratford-upon-Avon | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Howard Davies at the Royal Shakespeare Company

The Story of the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Sylvia Morris

full-cover-frontPosts to The Shakespeare blog have been few and far between over the summer, mostly owing to the fact that I’ve been working on a history of Stratford’s Shakespeare Club, though taking a month out to visit Australia also has had more of an effect that I expected. The book The Story of the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon: “Long life to the Club call’d Shakspearean”, co-written by myself and Susan Brock, winged its way to the printers a couple of weeks ago and we expect the copies to be delivered to us any day now. The laborious researching, writing, altering, proofing and checking has been a process that made me value the much more free and easy creation of blog posts where a few links to electronic resources is all that is required most of the time.

However, in a few days we will be facing the reality of proper publishing as hundreds of copies are delivered, and we have a new challenge in selling the books, to be officially published on 1 November. In recent months we have been joined by a small team who are helping us get the word out about it, and we are planning a series of launches (soft and hard), presentations and book signings.

One of the great pleasures of putting the book together has been working with the designer Chris Wheeler who has cheerfully turned the manuscript and a miscellaneous collections of image files into a book that will be a pleasure to look at as well as an enjoyable read. The story of the Club is certainly a more interesting one than either of us thought it would be, and so intertwined with the history of the development of Shakespeare in his home town that we have christened it “an alternative history of Stratford-upon-Avon”.

Who would have thought, for instance, that it was members of the Shakespeare Club who sponsored the building of the first purpose-built theatre in Stratford, and no, I am not talking about the Memorial Theatre but the one that opened its doors more than fifty years before, and on land once owned by Shakespeare. Or that it was the Shakespeare Club, consisting of local tradesmen, that boldly staged the first procession of Shakespeare’s characters to be seen in the town, to be seen by crowds of up to forty-thousand people.

Next Tuesday, 11 October, Susan Brock and myself will be giving a talk featuring some of our favourite characters from the Club’s history at the first meeting of the season, to take place at 7.45pm at Mason Croft in Stratford-upon-Avon. This will be an open evening and visitors are welcome free of charge. It will also be an opportunity to buy a copy of the book ahead of the official publication date for £12.99. This is just the first of the meetings for the winter and the full programme is available to see on the Club’s website where you can also download a membership application form should you wish to join. Further information about how to order a copy of the book is also on the site.

poi8-dsc_8799Ahead even of this, I’m giving an illustrated talk to Stow & District Civic Society on Friday evening 7 October on the related but separate subject of the history of Stratford’s Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations. This takes place in the centre of Stow-on-the-Wold, at 7.30pm. Full details of the talk and the rest of the Society’s upcoming programme are available on their website.

Share
Posted in Legacy, Stratford-upon-Avon | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Heritage Open Days 2016

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Sylvia Morris

heritage-open-daysThursday 8-Sunday 11 September are once again the annual Heritage Open Days when historic venues open their doors to the public, free of charge. Sometimes they put on special events in spaces that open regularly, but the real pleasure of the weekend is to get a look at places and items that we can’t normally see.

I’ve been checking the website to see what’s on offer for Shakespeare-lovers and delighted to find some real treats on offer. In Stratford-upon-Avon I must put in a special word for the free pop-up exhibition being put on using the collections of the SBT’s world-class library, archive and museum collections in the Queen Elizabeth Hall of the Shakespeare Centre. This year the theme is plants, gardens and gardening in Shakespeare’s time and nature as it is represented in the performance of his plays. This drop-in event includes children’s activities and talks from the Trust’s gardens team each day.

Stratford Town Hall

Stratford Town Hall

Elsewhere in town there will be Heritage pub tours (sounds unmissable) linking up with a display in the Town Hall on Flower’s Brewery. As well as being a major local employer the Flower family were enormously influential. In particular Stratford owes the building of the 1879 and 1932 Shakespeare Memorial Theatres to the Flower family. The brewery is no longer in existence. Flowers regularly served on the Town Council and over the weekend serving Councillors will welcome visitors into this beautiful and historic building.

I’m particularly excited to see that tours to Washington Irving’s parlour are to be organised on Friday and Sunday. In 1815, and on several subsequent visits, Irving, the most famous American writer of the day, stayed at the Red Horse Inn in Bridge Street. His room became a tourist destination for eager fans in its own right. In the early 1980s all but the frontage of the hotel was demolished to make way for the M&S store. About a year ago I heard that tucked away inside the building there was  a room in which some of the furniture and memorabilia relating to Irving was kept, but that it is not in a position where it can be simply opened to interested visitors. So this is quite special. Timed tours have to be pre-booked at The Old Slaughterhouse behind Sheep Street, and take place on Friday and Sunday.

Coventry Guildhall

Coventry Guildhall

Outside Stratford there are lots of interesting places to visit including the medieval guildhalls of King’s Lynn and Coventry, in which Shakespeare probably performed when his company was on tour. We are all familiar with the idea of professional theatres in London but academic work is now revealing much more about how much time companies spent in the regions in venues like these. Both would be worth seeing in their own right: the King’s Lynn building is the largest surviving guildhall in England and St Mary’s in Coventry, built in 1340, is one of the finest surviving examples of a medieval guildhall.

Another historic venue linked to Shakespeare is the Crown Tavern in Cornmarket, Oxford. It was rumoured that this was where Shakespeare stayed when journeying between Stratford and London, and the building contains some remarkably well-preserved Elizabethan wall paintings. Also open over the weekend is the church in which Shakespeare’s last descendant, his grand-daughter, was buried in a vault beneath the Lady Chapel at Abington in Northamptonshire. Elizabeth, the daughter of Susanna, became Lady Barnard by her second marriage but she had no children so, dying in 1670 she was the last of Shakespeare’s direct line.

Abington Church

Abington Church

There will be exhibitions of Shakespeare-related material at the David Wilson Library at the University of Leicester (including the 15th century bible used at the re-interment of King Richard III in 2015), and at the Library of King’s College, Cambridge. And there will be floral displays commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death at the church in Westbourne Road, Eccles, Greater Manchester.

Finally there are performances and activities to enjoy. At the Smithy Heritage Centre, Eccleston, Merseyside, they are holding a weekend of Tudor-style fun for all the family, with outdoor games, costumes, music and crafts. At Astley Hall in Chorley, Lancashire there will be the opportunity for hands-on musical moments from the past when visitors can handle period instruments or try a Tudor dance with a company of players in the setting of a garden filled with Shakespearean plants.

St Mary de Crypt Church, Gloucester is the atmospheric location for Twelfth Night, performed by  Tyger Productions, and Shakespeare songs will be performed as part of a programme at St Johns Church, Stamford, Lincolnshire. A medley of Sonnets and extracts from the plays will be performed on the lawn at Westbury Arts Centre, Milton Keynes, with an Elizabethan house providing the backdrop. At St. John the Evangelist Church in Leeds Trio Literati perform a selection of sonnets and other works under the title Sonnet Lumiere.

Organisers are to be congratulated for making so many efforts to put on such a variety of events. Wherever you are there should be something to take your Shakespearean fancy.

Share
Posted in Legacy, Stratford-upon-Avon | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

New digital projects for all

Posted on September 1, 2016 by Sylvia Morris
Kenny Meadows' illustration for Twelfth Night

Kenny Meadows’ illustration for Twelfth Night

New digital projects relating to Shakespeare keep on being launched, even during the summer break.

I’m particularly interested in Shakespeare illustration, so I love the Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive that features over 3000 illustrations from four major Victorian illustrated editions of Shakespeare. There is a full description of the project in this post by Johann Gregory at Cardiff University. He notes “Michael Goodman, a PhD candidate at Cardiff University, has painstakingly scanned, tagged and prepared these images and made them available under a creative commons license for others to play around with.” Gregory notes how differently the artists concerned have interpreted Shakespeare’s characters and scenes. Given that most people in the nineteenth century encountered Shakespeare as a writer to be read, rather than a playwright, these illustrations must have been influential, giving readers clues about how to interpret characters and scenes.

The Dalziel brothers' version of the scene from Twelfth Night

The Dalziel brothers’ version of the scene from Twelfth Night

Take the illustration of Aguecheek, Toby Belch and Maria from Twelfth Night in the 1846 engraving by Kenny Meadows. While Maria looks like a spirited girl who can look after herself, Toby Belch leers at her in a lascivious way that makes me feel uncomfortable. The image of the same trio twenty years later in 1867 by the Dalziel brothers shows Belch sozzled rather than lecherous, and Maria more genteel, cautiously leaning away, a very different interpretation of the same scene. 

At about the same time from 1864-68, H C Selous was creating dreamy, almost religious, painterly illustrations like the one of Prospero in The Tempest. You can see how, at around the time of the Shakespeare Tercentenary, the plays and the man himself became more respectable, celebrated up and down the country with elaborate festivities. An interview with Michael Goodman about the archive and why it’s important is at this website.

Prospero in The Tempest by Selous

Prospero in The Tempest by Selous

One of the issues for Goodman has been the debate about how far the images, scanned from books over 150 years old, should be manipulated and cleaned up. It’s a question that those digitising historic material have to ask, and one that is worth thinking about for anyone using these online resources. Goodman has strong feelings about it, so if you want to find out more here’s a link to a discussion about the project and its methodology. It’s worth noting that the images that make up the project are available to be freely used though, writing as someone who is happy to follow the rules as long as it’s easy to do so, I wasn’t at all clear what kind of credit was required for the images. I, clearly, aim to give publicity to the site so am including links, but I wish it was easier to understand the Creative Commons licensing system.  Goodman’s archive is designed to bring to light thousands of little-known images, for anyone to use but particularly for the academic community.

Global Shakespeare Explorer

Global Shakespeare Explorer

Another more light-hearted project has also been launched recently: Expedia’s Global Shakespeare Explorer. This allows you to take a look at Shakespeare’s life, his plays and his legacy through a series of nifty interactive maps, each of which is marked with quill pens to show places of Shakespeare importance. Boxes then open that  contain snippets of information. There are lots of ways the Shakespeare enthusiast could find this jolly site worth a visit. If you want to get a sense of where Shakespeare set his plays, you’ll get the visual representation of the map to show you where Shakespeare set which plays. And you can find out where Shakespeare festivals are held: Yerevan International Shakespeare Festival in Armenia, for instance, or the Summer Shakespeare Festival in Auckland, New Zealand are not among the best-known but show up on the map.

Being from the travel company Expedia it’s only to be expected that after the information about the place you’ll be offered the chance to find out about hotels nearby. So if the maps and information have whetted your appetite you can carry on to book somewhere to stay.

The site is far from exhaustive: where are the references to Paris, a city that features in several plays (All’s Well That Ends Well, Henry V, Hamlet among others), or to Cyprus, the location for much of Othello? Both of these are heaving with places to stay, though Milford Haven, the setting for the end of Cymbeline,is a more understandable omission. There must be dozens of other Shakespeare festivals and locations mentioned in the plays that would be more than happy to be added to the site for the publicity it would bring. Having said all that this is a fun site that those who are looking for somewhere unusual to go with a Shakespeare connection will enjoy.

Share
Posted in Legacy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New digital projects for all

Late summer in Stratford-upon-Avon

Posted on August 29, 2016 by Sylvia Morris
New Place sculpture

New Place sculpture

The summer holidays are coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean that Shakespeare-related attractions are winding down. In fact Stratford-upon-Avon is a destination that thrives all year round and in all weathers. 

In the year marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death there are a number of facelifts and new developments that make the town even more attractive to visitors and one, the re-imagination of New Place, Shakespeare’s home, has just opened. The site has been open to the skies since the 1750s when the existing building was demolished, and from the early 1800s there has been a general agreement that it should remain unbuilt-on. For many years it has been accessed through the house next door, Nash’s House (where Shakespeare’s granddaughter Elizabeth lived with her first husband Thomas Nash). The site of Shakespeare’s house has been visible only as a sunken bumpy area centred round a well, while further back there has been a colourful knot garden, and behind that the Great Garden, with its mulberry tree, said to have been grown from a cutting of the tree planted by Shakespeare. 

The SBT have set themselves a series of challenges: to show off the results of the archaeological excavation, to explain what the house was like and how people lived in it, to help people “meet the man behind the work”,  and to investigate how Shakespeare’s genius still inspires artists today. There are certainly successes. For years visitors have had little sense of the building that was once there, so now they enter through a magnificent gateway that stands where the front door once was. Once inside it’s possible to trace the outlines of the walls and to imagine it as a house. The circle of pleached hornbeams, with its wooden seating, provides a focal point and a place to contemplate Jill Berelowitz’s His Mind’s Eye, the bronze wind-blasted tree and sphere suggestive of the storm from King Lear as well as the force of the imagination.   

The Great Garden with the Mulberry Tree

The Great Garden with the Mulberry Tree

The gardens themselves are lovely. It’s good to see the knot garden again, apparently returned to the plan originally devised by Ernest Law in the early twentieth century, and the Great Garden containing its long borders, historic mulberry tree and the alto-relievo from the Shakespeare Gallery. On a warm afternoon people were sitting on the grass enjoying the peaceful atmosphere, as they have done for generations. Locals will be pleased to know it is easy to get a pass so they can visit the Garden free, and the whole site including the exhibition areas is wheelchair-accessible, a great advance.

For me it’s the simple things that work the best: I found the main part of the garden a bit fussy with too many things going on all at the same time. By reading the strips containing lines from the sonnets that are set into the paving, for instance, I completely missed seeing the old well, one of the original features, and some of the other sculptures. Inside the newly-built and refurbished exhibition areas it’s the other way round, with not enough detail to grab the attention, but this will surely change over time and the site as a whole is already well worth a visit.

For All Time

For All Time

Another project that is still to reach its conclusion is the restoration of the Swan Wing, the oldest part of the original Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. The promised exhibition, The Play’s the Thing, will be “a magical journey through 100 years of theatre-making”. It will open in October, up on the first floor of the building. Even now, though, it’s worth making your way up the stairs to see a stunning work of art, For All Time, by Steven Follen, a reference to Romeo and Juliet as well as Ben Jonson’s poem dedicated to Shakespeare. In the sculpture the mask-like face emerges from two thousand metal stars, each of which “hovers on a strand of wire”, a simple idea beautifully carried out.  

Also new for visitors this year is Shakespeare’s Schoolroom and Guildhall. The glorious upper room is still used as a teaching space so opening hours are restricted during term time, but for now it’s open from 10 to 5.

Shakespeare's Schoolroom

Shakespeare’s Schoolroom

I still haven’t managed to get inside to explore it properly since it reopened though I agree with historian Michael Wood’s assessment of it as “One of the most atmospheric, magical and important buildings in the whole of Britain” and “a memory room for the town and the nation” Downstairs is the less beautiful but equally important Guildhall, the centre of the town’s administration and the space where Shakespeare probably experienced professional theatre for the first time.    

The Guild Chapel, including its new organ and some of the medieval wall paintings

The Guild Chapel, including its new organ and some of the medieval wall paintings

The opening of these other buildings also allows the Guild Chapel, that stands between the two, to shine at last. It has been Stratford’s best-kept secret for too long. On the walls are some of the finest surviving medieval wall paintings in the country, two of the best of them about to undergo conservation work. The paintings were whitewashed over during the Reformation period and only rediscovered in the early 1800s, hence their ghostly appearance, but now information panels courtesy of Stratford’s Town Trust are in place to help explain them to visitors. Best of all the Chapel is free to visit (please make a donation).

 

Share
Posted in Legacy, Stratford-upon-Avon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments