Shakespeare and Easter

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Sylvia Morris
Easter Eggs

Easter Eggs

Over the Easter weekend we’ve probably all eaten too many Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. As the first festival of spring, it’s also traditionally our first opportunity for getting outdoors after the cold, dark days of winter, when we enjoy the return of life to the countryside with spring flowers, baby lambs and trees coming into leaf.

Easter is the most important festival in the Christian calendar, its message of resurrection after death and the forgiveness of sin being central to Christianity. Shakespeare rarely mentions Easter specifically, but this message of suffering, forgiveness and rebirth is deeply rooted in many of his plays.

Easter lambs

Easter lambs

Easter follows the six abstemious weeks of lent, when in the past food was naturally scarce at the end of winter. Many people still give something up, usually alcohol or chocolate. In the days leading up to Easter the Good Friday crucifixion of Christ is remembered. In Richard II, Shakespeare’s king draws parallels between himself and Christ, in particular the story of Christ’s betrayal leading to his crucifixion. This post from Blogging Shakespeare examines these connections in detail.

Easter Sunday celebrates Christ’s resurrection and is a time for feasting, hence the chocolate. The Christian festival is closely related to pagan fertility rites celebrating the rebirth of the natural world in spring. The word Easter itself comes from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of the dawn, Eostre. Like the dawn of every new day, Easter marks the return of warmth to the earth, when plants begin to grow and animals begin their breeding season.

The ideas of hope and renewal are so deep in Shakespeare’s mindset that they permeate his plays. The most direct references to resurrection come in the plays that he wrote towards the end of his career, where a series of women appear to come back to life:  Thaisa in Pericles, Imogen in Cymbeline and most explicitly, Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. She has been thought to be dead for sixteen years, and in the final scene of the play her statue appears to come to life. What must it have been like to be in the audience for the first performance, when the miracle of resurrection happened before their eyes? The audience, for once does not know what is going to happen. When Claudio is revealed as being alive  in Measure for Measure, or Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, the audience already knows they aren’t dead. But not this time. There’s even an echo of Christ’s command to his disciples not to touch him when Paulina commands Perdita not to touch her “The statue is but newly fix’d, the colour’s not dry”.

Shakespeare’s people are not brought back to life by miracles, but by being concealed and rediscovered. The Tempest might not have such an obvious Easter theme as The Winter’s Tale, but it has echoes everywhere. The back-story is the betrayal, years earlier, of Prospero by his brother. Prospero and his baby daughter seem to those who are shipwrecked on the life to come back to life after years of being assumed dead. The final scene of The Winter’s Tale focuses on those who observe the resurrection, but The Tempest is seen from the point of view of the person in control, Prospero. Prospero has divine power over life and death: “Graves at my command have wak’d their sleepers, op’d and let ’em forth” and he has power over all the humans on the island. He has the opportunity to take revenge on those who deposed him and sought his death.

But Prospero chooses to become a vulnerable human being, freeing himself of resentment against those who betrayed him and forgiving them, a parallel with Christ’s crucifixion. Finally, he puts his fate into the hands of the audience:
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

It’s an extraordinary moment in the play which is thought to have been the last he wrote, and in which that final speech has sometimes been interpreted as Shakespeare’s farewell to the stage.  One of Prospero’s last acts while in control is to set free Ariel, the spirit who has served him while he has lived on the island. Contemplating freedom at last, Ariel sings about his idea of  paradise, and it’s a vision of the English countryside in springtime:
DSCN8692blossomWhere the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Shakespeare remains important to us because although he wrote at a particular place and time in history, his work applies to people no matter where or when they live, and regardless of their beliefs. He absorbed universal ideas of suffering, death, forgiveness and rebirth, linking them with pagan ideas about the cycle of the year bringing life back to the earth. For Shakespeare this is the most important and most optimistic time of the year – enjoy it!

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“The best bit of Shakespeareana ever penned” Washington Irving and Stratford

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Sylvia Morris

washington irving3rd April 1783 was the birthday of the great American writer Washington Irving,  one of the first tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon to describe his visit in detail. While living in England he made several visits to the town to see the sites associated with Shakespeare, in 1815, 1821 and 1831. His Sketch-book was published in 1820 and the account of his visit to Stratford exactly two hundred years ago did much to encourage other Americans to follow in his footsteps.

Irving’s essay was so popular that in 1900 an edition was published by Edward Fox at the Richard Quiney Press, edited by Richard Savage, Librarian at Shakespeare’s Birthplace and W S Brassington, Librarian at the Memorial Theatre. The book was dedicated to the town’s Shakespeare Club and notes that it was printed in the house once lived in by Judith Shakespeare, The editors added a preface and many illustrations from the hand-written, beautifully-illustrated transcription of Irving’s essay made by Captain J Saunders, a contemporary of Irving’s.  This very local publication was a tribute to Irving’s work, “perhaps the best bit of Shakespeareana ever penned”.

Washington Irving: the 1900 edition

Washington Irving: the 1900 edition

Irving’s description of the Birthplace, in 1815 under the care of the infamous Mrs Hornby, is often-quoted. Irving was spun many a tale, but was disposed to be charitable: “There is nothing like resolute good-humoured credulity in these matters, and on this occasion I went even so far at willingly to believe the claims of mine hostess to a lineal descent from the poet”.

He walked out to Charlecote and back: “Under the wizard influence of Shakspeare I had been walking all day in a complete delusion. I had surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry, which tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow. I had been surrounded with fancied beings; with mere airy nothings, conjured up by poetic power; yet which, to me, had all the charm of reality. I had heard Jacques soliloquize beneath his oak: had beheld the fair Rosalind and her companion adventuring through the woodlands; and, above all, had been once more present in spirit with fat Jack Falstaff and his contemporaries, from the august Justice Shallow, down to the gentle Master Slender and the sweet Anne Page”.

He was enchanted: “The Avon, which winds through the park, makes a bend just at the foot of a gently-sloping bank, which sweeps down from the rear of the house. Large herds of deer were feeding or reposing upon its borders; and swans were sailing majestically upon its bosom”. Visiting in March, he was surrounded by birds singing, in particular the lark, the “little songster, mounting up higher and higher, until his body was a mere speck on the white bosom of the cloud, while the ear was still filled with his music”.,

Back in Stratford the romance of the Church took hold: “As I trod the sounding pavement, there was something intense and thrilling in the idea, that, in very truth, the remains of Shakespeare were mouldering beneath my feet. It was a long time before I could prevail upon myself to leave the place”.

The Sexton's cottage

The Sexton’s cottage

Although some of his descriptions are tongue in cheek, he was charmed by some of the town’s inhabitants. “In the course of my rambles I met with the gray-headed sexton, Edmonds… He had lived in Stratford, man and boy, for eighty years… His dwelling was a cottage, looking out upon the Avon and its bordering meadows, and was a picture of that neatness, order, and comfort, which pervade the humblest dwellings in this country. A low whitewashed room, with a stone floor carefully scrubbed, served for parlor, kitchen, and hall. Rows of pewter and earthen dishes glittered along the dresser. On an old oaken table, well rubbed and polished, lay the family Bible and prayer-book, and the drawer contained the family library, composed of about half a score of well-thumbed volumes…”.

Inside the Sexton's house

Inside the Sexton’s house

Here he also met John Ange, a friend of Edmonds from youth. “The sexton and his companion had been employed as carpenters on the preparations for the celebrated Stratford jubilee, and they remembered Garrick, the prime mover of the fete, who …was “a short punch man, very lively and bustling”. John Ange had assisted also in cutting down Shakspeare’s mulberry tree…” Sadly Irving does not recount more of their stories, but they do give an indication that even in 1815 there was rivalry for the attentions of tourists in the town.

“I was grieved to hear these two worthy wights speak very dubiously of the eloquent dame who shows the Shakspeare house. John Ange shook his head when I mentioned her valuable collection of relics, particularly her remains of the mulberry tree; and the old sexton even expressed a doubt as to Shakspeare having been born in her house. I soon discovered that he looked upon her mansion with an evil eye, as a rival to the poet’s tomb; the latter having comparatively but few visitors. Thus it is that historians differ at the very outset, and mere pebbles make the stream of truth diverge into different channels even at the fountain head”.

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Stratford’s alehouses: the Dirty Duck

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Sylvia Morris
The pub showing its official sign, The Black Swan

The pub showing its official sign, The Black Swan

In 1556 John Shakespeare’s first official appointment in Stratford was as ale-taster, requiring him to check the measures, prices and quality of beer provided by inn-keepers. As a market-town, Stratford always provided refreshment to visitors, locals and traders, and by the mid-nineteenth century the local Flowers brewery was making some of the best beer to be found in England. In 1851 the Board of Health listed all the Licensed Houses in the town, of which there were eighty-five. Many have since been demolished, changed use, or have different names. Quite a few owed their names to the town’s Shakespeare connection. There was once a Globe in Great William Street and a Falstaff Inn at the top of Henley Street. Others, like the Falcon, the Garrick and the Shakespeare Hotel itself have kept their names and are still trading today. Sadly, bearing in mind the number of scenes Shakespeare set in the London tavern, there has never been a Boar’s Head Inn in Stratford.

Part of Shakespeare’s Birthplace itself became a pub after Shakespeare’s time, the Swan and Maidenhead. Shakespeare was called “Sweet Swan of Avon” in the 1623 First Folio, and there are still several pubs in the town with “swan” in their names.

The bar at the Dirty Duck

The bar at the Dirty Duck

Legends abound about Stratford’s pubs and Shakespeare’s links with them, usually vigorously promoted by their landlords. However I wasn’t aware, until I read it in notes written by Fred Morris, that the Black Swan/Dirty Duck at one time claimed a Shakespeare connection. He repeats the story, found in WS Brassington’s book Shakespeare’s Homeland, that the Dirty Duck “bears the reputation of having sheltered Shakespeare when he fled across the river from Sir Thomas Lucy’s men” (an event which probably never took place). The story continues that the Dun Cow Inn on the Birmingham Road (no longer in existence) “was the reputed rendezvous of the Poet and his companions after their poaching expeditions, and it is said that the venison was cooked before the ample fireplace of that inn”. Fred Morris adds the sad but accurate note that this is only a tradition. Although I never met him, Fred was my father-in-law and spent his retirement researching the history of Stratford’s many pubs. Most of his meticulous notes are now at the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive where photocopies can be easily consulted.

Laurence Olivier and David Warner share a space in the bar

Laurence Olivier and David Warner share a space in the bar

The Black Swan/Dirty Duck, though, has a strong connection with Shakespeare that continues to this day and that makes it famous among visitors. For at least a century it has been the favourite drinking-hole of actors from the Shakespeare Memorial/Royal Shakespeare Theatres. The central part of the building has been a public house since 1738, known as the Black Swan since at least 1776. The bar to the right of the entrance was originally a separate house, incorporated into the pub in 1866 because of growing use of the river for pleasure. The building to the left became part of the pub in 1937. The bar is famous for the photographs of actors, many signed, that decorate its walls, and after performances it’s still the place where actors (and theatre audiences) gather for a drink.

The theatre’s connection with the pub goes back over 100 years. Len Parish (stage name Leonard Parrish) was part of Frank Benson’s company from 1910 to 1915, playing over 50 different parts including Old Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice and Bardolph in The Merry Wives of Windsor. A collection of his writings, including plays, poems and letters, are now at the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive.

Many are reminiscences of his time with the Benson Company. One poem, entitled Stratford Ale, was written in the bar-parlour of the Black Swan, and is dedicated to three of his fellow-actors and drinking partners.  These are the first two verses:
DSCN6052barThis golden ale of Stratford Town
Be the drink for good company
A tankard full, and over the brim,
No less than a quart for me;
And the same for the other three.

You old Jimmy and Frank and Mac,
Gad, but ‘tis fine to greet
You careless lads! See over there
The same old oaken seat
Where we – all of us – used to meet!

In Shakespeare, alehouses are places where the disreputable Falstaff and his cronies hang out, or where the foolish hold boozy, noisy parties. Malvolio, woken up by Toby Belch’s late-night party in Olivia’s kitchens, asks:
My masters, are you mad? or what are you? Have ye no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Do ye make an alehouse of my lady’s house, that ye squeak out your coziers’ catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? 

DSCN5198dirty ducksmallStratford’s pubs nowadays, including this one, are more respectable, but I like the fact that the sign hanging outside the Black Swan/Dirty Duck shows both faces of the public house, the dignified Black Swan on the one side and the mischievous, boozy Dirty Duck on the side facing the theatres. I’ve heard that it was the actors who gave the pub its nick-name by which it is universally known, and it’s a tradition that’s unlikely to be changed.

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Celebrating Shakespeare with Kenneth Branagh

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Sylvia Morris
Kenneth Branagh

Kenneth Branagh

Kenneth Branagh is best known as one of his generation’s finest Shakespearean actors and directors for both stage and film, so his latest project, a sweetly traditional film of the fairy tale Cinderella, comes as something of a surprise. It boasts some of our top female actors with Cate Blanchett playing the evil godmother and Helena Bonham Carter the Fairy Godmother, and it’s already yet another success for Branagh.

This piece contains a recent video interview with Branagh in which he discusses Shakespeare as well as the world of fairy tales. If there is one thing that characterises Branagh’s career, it’s the diversity of work he takes on.

 

Kenneth Branagh as Macbeth

Kenneth Branagh as Macbeth

Cinderella is a long way from Branagh’s last big success onstage, Macbeth, produced in Manchester and screened by NT Live in 2013. As well as starring in the production it was co-directed by him with Rob Ashford. Michael Billington, in his Guardian review, wrote that it “reminds us what an intemperately exciting Shakespearean actor he is”. Dominic Cavendish wrote that he “shows us the vestigial civilisation beneath the martial exterior. He is first full of amicable disbelief, paces alone in breathless cogitation, falters before the act of betrayal – here bloodily shown on the altar itself, snuffing out surrounding candles – and becomes more unhinged and volatile as events are set in unstoppable motion.”

The thrillingly atmospheric production transferred to New York in Branagh’s rather overdue US stage debut. Now there are rumours that he will team up with Martin Scorsese to make a film of the play based on this production. Branagh has said agreement is close: “The fingers are hovering above pieces of paper. Everyone wants to do it; it’s just a question of schedule. I’m very, very hopeful it’s going to happen.” If those pages are signed the film will be a big event whenever it happens.

Lily James and Richard Madden in Cinderella

Lily James and Richard Madden in Cinderella

Branagh’s next stage project is a trilogy of plays later in 2015 at the Garrick Theatre in London. The season will include Romeo and Juliet, starring Richard Madden and Lily James (the prince and Cinders in Cinderella), followed by The Entertainer  written by John Osborne in 1957 in which Branagh will take the famous role of aging vaudeville performer Archie Rice, written for Laurence Olivier, and The Winter’s Tale. Ever since his first RSC season Branagh has been compared with Olivier, and even played him in the film My Week with Marilyn. Branagh will direct both Shakespeares.

This piece in the Telegraph describes how:
Branagh wants to combine his love for Shakespeare with his newly-found affection for fairy tales. “Until now I hadn’t thought about making a fairytale as a movie but now I realise I am being drawn to them. So a Shakespeare play that I have been interested in working on for a long time is The Winter’s Tale which I see very much as a fairytale. Later on this year we will do The Winter’s Tale on stage in London and in terms of films, it’s always in my thoughts.”

 

Kenneth Branagh in the film of Henry V

Kenneth Branagh in the film of Henry V

It’s hard to imagine a more varied career than Branagh’s, first acting in modern plays and Shakespeare onstage, at 23 the youngest Henry V who has ever performed in Stratford. After the RSC he ran his own theatre company, Renaissance, for whom he also performed, inviting distinguished actors such as Derek Jacobi and Judi Dench to direct Shakespeare for him. Many people have been introduced to Shakespeare by Branagh’s films, beginning with Henry V, followed by Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost and As You Like It. His stage production of Twelfth Night was later adapted for television. His TV and film credits are too many to mention, and he was knighted in 2012.

In Stratford it’s just been announced that Kenneth Branagh is to lead the town’s celebrations of Shakespeare’s birthday, receiving the Pragnell Shakespeare Birthday Award during the luncheon on Saturday 25 April.  The award has been presented every year since 1990, when the great actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft was the first recipient. It is sponsored by Pragnell Jewellers of Stratford-upon-Avon, and is made to someone who has made an outstanding contribution to Shakespeare studies or on the stage. Others who have received it include director Peter Brook, actors Judi Dench and Simon Russell Beale, academic Professor Stanley Wells and reviewer Michael Billington. In the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald’s report, Branagh said “I am honoured to be this year’s recipient of the distinguished Pragnell Shakespeare award. To be in the company of such illustrious predecessors is both touching and meaningful. I look forward very much to returning to Stratford, a town I love”.

Branagh’s presence is sure to generate excitement about the Celebrations, not just for those who know him from his Shakespeare work. Will there be large numbers of small girls dreaming of becoming a princess among the crowds of onlookers?

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Museums of the future, engaging with the past

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Sylvia Morris

Museum-Week-01This week, 23-29 March 2015, Museums have been celebrating Museums Week, and promoting their collections and services. By coincidence the big news for lovers of culture has been the reburial of the remains of King Richard III, making a strong connection between the distant past and the present. The finding of his skeleton, the forensic work leading to a positive DNA match, the drama of the legal challenge have made for a gripping story, and events have been given a huge amount of airtime including live screenings, coverage that cultural events never normally receive.

Recently the cultural temperature of the country was taken and the results were published in the Arts Index 2015. This showed that attendance and participation in the arts has risen, though overall funding in England has fallen further and faster than at any time in history.

Many people are questioning why we visit museums and galleries, and how usage in changing. In this article, four influential people in the museum world suggest what they think museums will look like in five years time. David Anderson, from National Museums Wales wants them to be centres for “public creativity and local enterprise”. Christoph Vogtherr, from the Wallace Collection sess his principle aim as “safeguarding the artworks and making them available” and museums should be wary of the “overpowering voice of digital mediation that suggests instant gratification”, connecting us to the past. Maria Balshaw from the Whitworth Art Gallery wants museums to “allow us to see beauty and fill us with wonder. They should be sociable spaces, which quietly undo social hierarchy and inequality”. Robert Hewison, critic, curator and academic, thinks “Museums are much more than repositories of objects; they are meeting places for people and ideas.” Culture in general, it is hoped, can help to solve the challenges of our time: intolerance, inequality and social isolation.

None of these responses suggests how technology might be used. The Wellcome Collection is trying to create a digital experience to last longer, and have a deeper impact, than the quick dive-in that most people experience online.

In the USA the Smithsonian’s recently reopened design museum the Cooper Hewitt is focusing on involving visitors’ interaction with the collections, rather than on events. As a design museum it explains the design process, but they believe “the heart of the museum is in its collection and its visitors”, and are offering them “something that can’t be found anywhere else” based on the museum’s unique items. They have brought in touch-screen tables that allow people to examine objects, immersion rooms that allow visitors to create their own designs based on the collections, and digital “pens” that provide information about objects, allowing people to save material about their personal choice of items.

oculusAnother approach is virtual reality, and the use of machines like the oculus, developed for playing immersive 3D games. These might allow people to “visit” museums in the future, and this post on Europeana includes some suggestions of how they might be used. It’s not my idea of a museum visit, and I can’t imagine it would do much to promote the idea of museums being social spaces, but might encourage larger numbers of virtual visitors.

museum selfieAt the other end of the scale, an issue that has attracted much attention over the past year has been the decision of many museums and galleries to allow photography, including the taking of selfies. In fact in January 2015 the second Museum Selfie day took place, intended to be a fun way of encouraging museum visits. On Sunday of Museum Week, people are being told to be creative by taking a selfie with a favourite work of art (some, like this, quite witty).

Many galleries and museums have relaxed their rules about photography, and London’s National Gallery was one of the first major collections to do so with early warnings that it would become “selfie central” being unjustified.  John Wyver defended the practice in his Illuminations blog.

selfie stickThen just when the issue had quietened down the selfie stick appeared on the scene.  Nick-named “the wand of narcissism” these have been banned by organisations that welcomed selfies, such as the Smithsonian Museums in Washington, DC. By encouraging groups to pose near artworks there’s more potential for damage, as well as disturbing other visitors.

But for some this shows museums to be out of touch: “If their mission is one of service to the public, then they should be doing everything they can to encourage attendance and engagement with the artworks”.  Most UK museums and galleries haven’t made a decision yet.

hamlet selfie hamlet todayThis post hasn’t had a lot to do with Shakespeare, but experiencing the crowds in Leicester for Richard III’s reburial was a reminder that what people really respond to is some kind of real experience. Watching events unfold on the TV, looking at artworks online, or seeing a theatre production relayed live to a cinema are great substitutes, but aren’t the same as being there. Like people taking a selfie next to a famous painting, people take photographs in the auditorium of the theatre before the show begins: it’s a modern equivalent to keeping a diary. The next stage is to dream up ways that collections and performances can offer more satisfying experiences and deeper levels of understanding about ourselves and our shared humanity.

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Still looking for the truth about Richard III: who did kill the princes in the tower?

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Sylvia Morris
The coffin of Richard III in Leicester Cathedral

The coffin of Richard III in Leicester Cathedral

Like many thousands of others I visited Leicester on Monday 23 March 2015 to file past the coffined remains of Richard III before they are reinterred in the Cathedral on Thursday. People waited up to four hours, and many in the queue held white roses, the symbol of the house of York, others wore boar-shaped brooches. We met people from Ludlow, Norfolk, the North East, and South Wales, and although they had followed the excavation, they seemed to be compelled as much by witnessing a unique event as by the honouring of a long-dead monarch. We also visited the Richard III Visitors’ Centre and the Guildhall, all close together. Even after Thursday there will be much to see in the city and at the site of the Battle of Bosworth where Richard died, just a few miles away.

In the exhibition, apart from the fascinating forensic and archaeological investigations relating to the finding of the body, I was particularly interested in the discussion of Richard’s achievements as a king, and the section about Shakespeare’s play. After 500 years in which we have been told Richard was a monster they are understandably keen to emphasise the positive side of his life. Richard brought in laws to protect the rights of his subjects, such as the right for those accused of crimes to be considered for bail instead of being imprisoned until trial. I may have missed it in the crowded exhibition, but I didn’t notice a reference to the other side: Richard ignored the law of the land by summarily executing Lord Hastings, a member of his council, without any form of trial.

In his play Shakespeare makes much of this dramatic event, writing a whole scene (Act 3 Scene 4) around the downfall of Hastings. In the play, Hastings’ reluctance to accept Richard’s coronation is enough for Shakespeare’s Richard to condemn him, but although the scene is in essence correct, the truth was probably more complex. The historical facts seem to confirm Richard as an opportunist, not above acting ruthlessly in the face of a threat, rather than Shakespeare’s plotter.

The statue of Richard III at Leicester Cathedral, with white roses

The statue of Richard III at Leicester Cathedral, with white roses

In the middle of Henry VI Part 3 Shakespeare gives Richard a wonderful speech about his ambition to be King. Here’s an extract:
And yet I know not how to get the crown,
For many lives lie between me and home….
Why I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
And cry “Content!” to that that grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions…
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?

The worst crime of which Richard is accused is the murder of the little princes in the tower, the sons of Edward IV aged 12 and 9. A Channel 4 documentary Richard III: The Princes in the Tower was screened on Saturday evening.

In Shakespeare’s play Richard is of course guilty. “Shall I be plain?” he says: “I wish the bastards dead”. The documentary considered other possibilities, but it’s a pity it was, as this review put it, “all spectacle and no substance”.

Richard III: the Princes in the Tower

Richard III: the Princes in the Tower

Specialists and academics gave their opinions, but there was no discussion, no comment on what anyone else said, held together by some unconvincing dramatized sequences. The programme did at least clarify the sequence of events, and noted that Shakespeare was only repeating the contemporary view of events promoted by, among others, Thomas More. The conclusion of most of those who were consulted was that Richard probably had been responsible for the murder, possibly persuaded by Buckingham.

With breathtaking political naivety one of the speakers suggested Richard had no motive for the murder, since once the princes had been proclaimed illegitimate and Richard was crowned, he had no need to fear them. He should read Richard II, where the king considers the fragility of anyone’s hold on the crown:
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;
All murder’d.

In another investigation, The Daily Mirror asked a retired Scotland Yard detective, Peter Kirkham, to review the evidence. Although he doesn’t go into all the alternatives, he concludes: “As a professional investigator, my favoured hypothesis is that the princes were murdered on the orders of Richard III. He was the only individual with the clear motive and the opportunity.”

Antony Sher as Richard III, RSC 1984

Antony Sher as Richard III, RSC 1984

One of the results of the reconsideration of Richard’s character could be a reluctance to perform Shakespeare’s play. On Monday, actor Antony Sher, who played a full-blooded Richard in 1984, was interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme. He insisted we must never stop doing it. Richard is “a fantastic, powerful, charismatic figure” in one of Shakespeare’s great plays. “It’s exciting, it’s funny, it’s dangerous”. And although we “must not come to Shakespeare’s play expecting a history lesson” it’s a politically important play because it is a “study in tyranny”. He also performed part of the famous opening speech in the play. It’s right at the end of the broadcast, 2 hrs 55 minutes in.

We’ll probably never know the truth about the disappearance of the princes in the tower, or exactly what sort of a man Richard III really was. But Shakespeare’s play has helped to ensure that, 500 years on, we’re still talking about him.

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Shakespeare and the Greeks

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Sylvia Morris
Helen McCrory as Medea, National Theatre 2014

Helen McCrory as Medea, National Theatre 2014

Every few years the tragedies of ancient Greece seem to come back into fashion, and just now, in 2015, several theatres are staging revivals or adaptations of these powerful ancient plays.

On 24 March the Almeida’s new season goes on sale with productions of several Greek tragedies. It begins in May with Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy, an “apocalyptically bloody family feud”, adapted into a “leaner modern reading”. This will be followed by an adaptation of The Bacchae, with Ben Whishaw as Dionysus and a new production of Euripides’ tragedy Medea with Kate Fleetwood.

One of the reasons for the current popularity of these plays may be the great dramatic roles they provide for women. The Almeida’s follows an acclaimed production of Medea at the National Theatre last autumn featuring Helen McCrory as Medea. This production of this story of a mother’s murder of her children was highly acclaimed.

Kristin Scott Thomas as Electra

Kristin Scott Thomas as Electra

Also at the end of last year Kristin Scott-Thomas played a powerful Electra at the Old Vic. The Guardian review wrote: “Drained to a dust grey, rigidly held, eyes fixed wide, it is the face of an obsessive. She is both galvanised and ground down by her terrible purpose, of avenging her father’s death by arranging the murder of her mother… It is hard to watch Electra without thinking of Hamlet. She is the prince without vacillation. The avenger who acts. She is also the proof that we don’t need to cross-dress Shakespeare to give a woman a mighty role.”

At the Barbican until 28 March Juliet Binoche is playing Antigone in a production that will then go on international tour and will be filmed for BBC4. It’s a pity then that the production has not been more positively received.

Later on this year, from the end of August to October, Shakespeare’s Globe is also doing a version of the Oresteia in which “the original trilogy will be distilled into one thrilling three-act play”.  The trilogy relates the story of how Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter before leaving for the Trojan War, triggering a whole series of other murders over many years: Agamemnon is killed by his wife Clytemnestra on his return, and their son Orestes has to avenge his father’s death by murdering his mother. The unfolding of this unending cycle of revenge is one of the greatest of stories.

There are a number of parallels between Hamlet and Orestes. Both lose their fathers by murder, and both are denied their father’s throne. In their revenge both their mothers and their new husbands are killed. But whereas a resolution is found at the end of the Oresteia, Hamlet ends with the violent death of nearly all the main characters.

Bronze statue of a Greek actor in female dress

Bronze statue of a Greek actor in female dress

Public booking has just opened for the RSC’s production of Hecuba, another play about the Trojan War being staged at the Swan Theatre in autumn 2015. It’s to be another new adaptation, directed by Erica Whyman.
Troy has fallen. It’s the end of war and the beginning of something else. Something worse.  As the cries die down after the final battle, there are reckonings to be made. Humiliated by her defeat and imprisoned by the charismatic victor Agamemnon, the great queen Hecuba must wash the blood of her buried sons from her hands and lead her daughters forward into a world they no longer recognise. Agamemnon has slaughtered his own daughter to win this war. But now another sacrifice is demanded… In a world where human instinct has been ravaged by violence, is everything as it seems in the hearts of the winners and those they have defeated?

Shakespeare’s play about the Trojan War is Troilus and Cressida, but rather than using any of the original plays, or indeed the Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid as sources, Shakespeare took his story from medieval writings such as Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cressid, and Chaucer’s version of the story in Troilus and Criseyde that focuses on the love story rather than the war itself.  Troilus and Cressida is quite a late play, but the story appears in one of Shakespeare’s earliest works, The Rape of Lucrece. References to the Trojan War are scattered through Shakespeare’s plays. In Henry IV Part 2 Pistol calls Doll Tearsheet a “lazar kite of Cressid’s kind”, and the sack of Troy itself provides the speech which Hamlet asks the First Player to perform.
One speech in’t I chiefly lov’d. ‘Twas AEneas’ tale to Dido, and thereabout of it especially where he speaks of Priam’s slaughter… ‘
The rugged Pyrrhus, like th’ Hyrcanian beast-‘ ‘
Tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus: ‘
The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear’d
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
Now is be total gules, horridly trick’d
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Bak’d and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
To their lord’s murther. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o’ersized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.

If you would like to read more on the subject, there’s an introduction to Greek tragedy on the National Theatre’s website.

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“These late eclipses”: the moon, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and happiness

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Sylvia Morris
Solar eclipse

Solar eclipse

On the morning of Friday 20 March the UK will experience a near-total eclipse of the sun. Even where skies are not clear, the sky will darken and we will experience a sort of twilight. The birds will fall silent until the light returns. The moon, travelling across and partly or totally obscuring the face of the sun is one of the most powerful of events. In many cultures eclipses were terrifying. Vikings believed that wolves were eating the sun, the Chinese thought they predicted the death of the Emperor, and the ancient Greeks thought eclipses were signs that the gods were angry, and about to visit destruction on humans.

We don’t know that Shakespeare ever experienced a full solar eclipse. There was a partial eclipse in 1590 and a more major one on October 12 1605, which is probably what he refers to in King Lear, where the Earl of Gloucester predicts “These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us… Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack’d ‘twixt son and father.”

After killing her, Othello suggests Desdemona’s murder was an act so serious that:
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.

It’s not the only celestial event: at the moment there is a “supermoon” which means the moon is close to the earth making it appear larger than usual. Othello also refers to this phenomenon, blaming the moon’s influence for the rash of murders.
It is the very error of the moon,
She comes more near the earth than she as wont,
And makes men mad. 

This weekend is also the spring equinox. Throughout the play it’s plain that Othello is superstitious, claiming the handkerchief he gives Desdemona has magical power. Apparently some Christian ministers believe the conjunction of these three events predict the beginning of the end of the world. Superstition, it seems, is not dead.

Starveling from the Austrian Burgtheater production in 2007

Starveling from the Austrian Burgtheater production in 2007

The moon is mentioned many times by Shakespeare, in many different contexts, and no play is more full of references to it than A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One of the Mechanicals, Starveling, represents the Moonshine by which the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe met. “This lanthorn doth the horned moon present”.  At their first meeting, Oberon addresses Titania with the bad-tempered “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania”, and even before that Hippolyta has made the link between the moon and marriage.
And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities.

In one of the last speeches of the play, where the fairies bless three newly-married couples, Puck reminds us of the moon’s more malign influence:
Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf behowls the moon,
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores
All with weary task fordone.

New-Intl-Day-HappinessIn spite of this, no play has a happier ending than A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Friday 20 March 2015 is also International Day of Happiness. The focus this year is on the importance of human connection, and the isolation felt by many in modern society. Most of Shakespeare’s comedies leave at least one character out of the celebrations: Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Jaques in As You Like It, Shylock and Antonio in The Merchant of Venice. It’s hard to find real happiness in the ending of The Taming of the Shrew, though that is at least partly down to modern sensibilities. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, though, leaves all the couple married, Oberon and Titania reconciled, and, presumably, the Mechanicals rewarded for their play.

A boisterous Bergomask dance is followed by the fairies’ blessing.  Nothing helps to promote a happy mood more than music, in Shakespeare and elsewhere. We all know how much music influences how we feel, Cleopatra calling it “moody food /Of us that trade in love”. In the theatre it has long been used at the end of a play to leave the audience happy. Happiness-inducing songs have been featured on Radio 4 this week along with a discussion about the power of music over our moods.

While on the subject of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there’s a great opportunity coming up for someone to pursue a fully-funded PhD on A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Play for the Nation. It will be a collaboration between the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham (located in Stratford) and the RSC, with the aim of studying the nationwide tour of the play that is one of their 2016 projects. A different set of local amateur actors will impersonate the “rude mechanicals” at each venue. Partner theatres are all round the country from Truro and Canterbury in the south to Belfast, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Glasgow. The student will “research this rich and complex artistic and social event. Granted access to planning meetings, rehearsals, documentation and performances, the student will study the methods and processes of the RSC and its amateur partners and produce a PhD thesis about their interactions: at the same time the student will be trained in academic theatre history and cultural studies by the university.” Full details are here: applications must be in by 17 April.

Have a wonderful, happy day!

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Shakespeare Week 2015

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Sylvia Morris

shakespeare weekWe’re right in the middle of Shakespeare Week, running from 16-22 March. There have been Shakespeare weeks before, but last year, in 2014, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust embarked on a mission to give primary school children a great first encounter with Shakespeare. Jacqueline Green, Head of Learning and Participation, explains “We chose to engage with primary-school aged children as it is at that age that we are most open to new experiences and we describe it as a celebration because, for us, the key to sustaining a life-long interest is enjoyment.” As Tranio puts it in The Taming of the Shrew:
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en;
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.

The SBT’s role was to coordinate events run by schools and organisations around the country, hosting a dedicated website on which events were posted and where online resources could be posted. It was aimed squarely at primary school children, and it’s been a great success, reaching half a million of them at over 2,500 schools in its first year. In 2015, 7087 primary schools are signed up.

Lyn Gardner of the Guardian has just asked “Are children are well-school’d in the Bard?” (Judging from the responses to her article, the answer is, mostly, no). Too many children are bored, or worse, made to feel stupid by not understanding or enjoying Shakespeare. Reading round the class is unanimously given the thumbs down, but people who get to love Shakespeare at school often credit an enthusiastic teacher.

The great pity is that if children have a negative experience at school, the feeling remains with them for the rest of their lives, and as one respondee put it, “Shakespeare only gets better as you get older”. After people have left school they may be lucky enough to encounter a good production of a play that will awaken their interest in Shakespeare, and this article in the Daily Telegraph suggests where to see performances this week. The live relays of productions to cinemas take Shakespeare to audiences who might never go to a theatre, and the online MOOC courses can provide an easy, free alternative way of thinking about the man and his work.

All the more reason, then to be pleased that the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust have this year expanded their reach beyond the schools and into libraries. Libraries welcome people of all ages and backgrounds to go in by themselves or as a family, providing a pleasant, safe and free environment. They might read a book, borrow a DVD or find out about a club or event they would enjoy. Jacqueline  Green again: “What more natural partner could there be for a project that aspires to reach out to everyone than public and school libraries? They are at the heart of every community and the portal to so many journeys of discovery. The Society of Chief Librarians lent their support to Shakespeare Week from day one so we are particularly delighted to be working with them, the Association of Senior Children’s and Education Librarians, the Reading Agency and CILIP to bring Shakespeare vividly to life in communities nationwide.”

Shakespeare Week display at Windermere Library

Shakespeare Week display at Windermere Library

On holiday a couple of weeks ago I found that libraries in Cumbria, although  not putting on events, are promoting the week by a series of displays drawing attention to items available to borrow.  You can find how libraries up and down the country are responding to Shakespeare Week by looking at the interactive map or the list on the website. They all look enjoyable, many promoting their collections or offering reading activities and discussion. Here are a few examples:

  • In North Yorkshire, at Thirsk Library, they are encouraging children to contribute to a comic strip version of Hamlet throughout March.
  • Essex Libraries are running drop-in events at several of their branches including a short film about Shakespeare as a young boy.
  • There’s a coffee morning at Wombourne Library, Near Dudley, this morning, 18 March on the subject of Shakespeare, aimed at adults as well as children
  • On Saturday 21 March at Manchester Central Library there is an opportunity to follow a murder mystery trail Murder Most Foul, with clues to examine and suspects to interrogate
  • At Grimsby Library on Saturday morning Shakespeare Chatterbooks will feature reading, crafts and quizzes for 6-11 year olds and their families.
  • You can follow the Shakespeare Trail at St Thomas Library, Exeter.
  • Lots of activities are taking place in libraries on Merseyside, for example there are quizzes for adults and children at Parr Library all week.

In Stratford of course the houses associated with Shakespeare are all bursting with activities (see the events list), and many other places are staging events: at an interactive recital at Tatton Park in Cheshire on Saturday morning participants can hear Elizabethan songs, take part in a jig, and look at the sort of musical instruments used at the time. On Sunday morning in Basing House, Basingstoke, a professional storyteller will be staging “a fully interactive re-telling of The Tempest”. There’s still time to take part so check out what’s going on locally, especially at your own public library.

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Votes for women: Shakespeare and the suffragettes

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Sylvia Morris
Miranda, painted by Frederick Goodall

Miranda, painted by Frederick Goodall

Last time I looked at the suffrage movement in Stratford, and its connections with the Shakespeare festivals. Both in Stratford and elsewhere in the early twentieth century Shakespeare’s plays provoked discussion about the suffragette cause.

Not all of Shakespeare’s women are good role models, but in the nineteenth century many of them were seen as ideals of womanhood. Illustrations in The Graphic Gallery of Shakespeare’s Heroines, and books like Mary Cowden Clarke’s The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines (1850-52) concentrated on Shakespeare’s younger, modest heroines including Juliet, Ophelia and Miranda.

Later, it was Shakespeare’s more troubled women who became the focus of attention. In her posthumously-published lectures, Ellen Terry, who sympathised with the suffragettes, wrote “Have you ever thought how much we all, and women especially, owe to Shakespeare for his vindication of woman in his fearless, high-spirited, resolute and intelligent heroines?”

Lecturing to Shakespeare Club on 10 March, Sophie Duncan talked about some of these female characters and how the suffrage movement associated themselves with them. Here is a link to her podcast on the same subject.

Shakespeare was seen as a pillar of the establishment, enormously popular in the UK and a symbol of its values in the Empire. Being able to say that Shakespeare was on their side was a great plus for the suffragettes, struggling to be taken seriously by the political establishment.

One reason why Shakespeare’s women appealed to the suffrage movement was the strong bond of friendship that is portrayed between many of them: Rosalind and Celia, “whose loves /Are dearer than the natural bond of sisters.” Nerissa and Portia have a closer relationship with each other than with their husbands, and before they fall out even Helena and Hermia “grew together,/Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,/But yet an union in partition;/Two lovely berries moulded on one stem”. In Much Ado About Nothing the outspoken Beatrice stands up for Hero when she is wrongly accused, but needs the intervention of Benedick to challenge Claudio: “O that I were a man!”

In her essay Suffrage Critics and Political Action, Sheila Stowell documents how theatre became a focus for suffragette protests. They formed their own theatre groups, and here is a history of the Actresses Franchise League and biographies of many of its members.

In The Winter’s Tale in particular Shakespeare seemed to be firmly on the side of the suffragettes. Paulina takes matters into her own hands to preserve Hermione after she has been accused of infidelity. For the 1912 production of the play at the Savoy Theatre, directed by Harley Granville Barker, Lillah McCarthy played Hermione and Esme Beringer Paulina. All three were known suffragists, and the review in the The Suffragette noted:“the dauntless, potent, unflinching Paulina – the eternal Suffragette whom all the greatest geniuses of all ages have loved to portray. Paulina, penetrating to forbidden chambers and telling tyrants to their faces of the wronged woman and the helpless child; Paulina turning full on the unjust king the flood of her fierce eloquence, while his attendants fawn and cower for fear of his insane wrath… The real heroine of The Winter’s Tale is the woman who makes things happen – the militant Paulina, just as the real heroines of the twentieth century are the women who make things happen – the militant Suffragettes”.

Mary Kingsley as Joan of Arc

Mary Kingsley as Joan of Arc

One of Shakespeare’s less popular women, Joan la Pucelle in Henry VI Part 1, became a symbol of the suffragette movement. According to Nick Walton in his blog for Blogging Shakespeare, “Joan’s clamorous voice sets Shakespeare’s play afire, and her commanding characterization made her a natural feminist icon for the women’s campaign for universal suffrage before the First World War.” Mary Kingsley, a professional actress and active suffragette, played Joan in Stratford in 1889, and a portrait was painted of her in the role at the height of suffragette activity in 1914. This photograph shows her as a warrior dressed in gleaming armour, holding a sword, her long hair flowing to her shoulders, an inspiration to other women.

Katherina, in The Taming of the Shrew, is a violent woman more difficult to reconcile with the view of Shakespeare as a supporter of votes for women. In Stratford, Constance and Frank Benson had established a long tradition of playing Kate and Petruchio. Their verbal sparring was accompanied by knockabout farce, with Kate being thrown unceremoniously over Petruchio’s shoulder and carried off stage. It was a wildly popular production performed at most of the Shakespeare Festivals. By 1912, though, changes were occurring at the Memorial Theatre and for the two performances of the play the well-like suffragist actress Violet Vanbrugh took the role of Kate. For the first performance Arthur Bourchier, Vanbrugh’s real-life husband, played Petruchio, but for the final performance of the Festival, she played the role opposite Benson himself. There’s a full account in Susan Carlson’s essay The Suffrage Shrew.

Vanbrugh’s performance was much lower in key than Constance’s, with Kate giving Petruchio no excuse for violence. Some of the critics noted that faced with this Kate, Petruchio came over as a loud-mouthed bully. It was certainly a view of the future.

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