Shakespeare projects round-up

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

shakespeare for grownupsProjects involving Shakespeare have, as ever, been coming thick and fast over the last couple of months. There are a tremendous variety of books, websites, and films (some still requiring help to get made).

First up is a book I’ve really enjoyed exploring, E Foley and B Coates’ book Shakespeare for Grown-ups: Everything you need to know about the Bard. The style is approachable and fun without being patronising and it’s well-designed, with illustrations that are useful rather than glossy. Each play is summarised in a single sentence, no mean feat in itself, and the most popular get a section to themselves that includes Key Themes (for The Tempest these are Power, the Supernatural and Colonisation), and Key symbols to look out for (the Moon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream). There is information about other artists’ responses to The Tempest, lists of doomed lovers in the Romeo and Juliet chapter, and references to Shakespeare’s anachronisms in that for Antony and Cleopatra. With sections on Shakespeare’s most redoubtable women and Shakespeare’s best minor characters it’s the sort of book I can imagine dipping into time and again. All the basics are here too: a chapter on Shakespeare’s life, another on his language, and one on the poems. Further fascinating facts for the Shakespeare fan is just what it says, with information about collaboration, a suggested chronology for the plays, some great quotes arranged by subject, and a Shakespearian quiz. And, heavens be praised, there is a really full index. I don’t know quite how they’ve managed to cram so much great stuff into  just over 300 pages, but I would say well done!

TeachingWillThumbnailThe next one is a book I haven’t actually seen, but one that sounds both inspiring and entertaining. From the publisher’s blurb:
“Teaching Will: What Shakespeare and 10 Kids Gave Me That Hollywood Couldn’t is about struggling actress Mel Ryane’s work to introduce the Bard to an underserved Los Angeles public elementary school. Every week Mel encounters unexpected comedy and drama as she and the children struggle toward staging a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

In the schoolyard, Mel finds herself embroiled in jealousy and betrayal worthy of Shakespeare’s plots. Fits of laughter alternate with wiping noses as she and the kids discover a surprising truth: they need each other if they want to face an audience and triumph. Teaching Will is an uplifting story of empowerment for dreamers and realists alike.”

Now on to some versions of Shakespeare’s plays:
Rob Myles has created a video that looks at the wooing of Katharina in a fresh way. His short film is entitled Katharina the Curst: “Our mission was ‘Reinventing Shakespeare’, so we retold Taming of The Shrew as a historical action romantic comedy set in Viking-era York.

Paradoxically, taking the story further back in time allowed us to reposition Katharina in a manner more palatable to modern audiences. In a time when Viking women could own property, divorce husbands and go into battle, such a life would seem hugely appealing to a Katharina raised in the Christian culture of the time. ”

This next one is a feature film looking for funding, with a Kickstarter campaign in full swing. It’s being run an American filmmaker, Devin E Haqq. Based on Julius Caesar, it will be called Ambition’s Debt, to be filmed in New York and set in a post-apocalyptic world. Here is Devin’s description of what he hopes to achieve:

“I want to change the face of what Shakespeare is “supposed” to look like by telling this story in a way that’s fresh and relevant and captures the diversity of our unique democratic society. My hope is, that by bringing Shakespeare’s words into this modern context, we will…encourage young audiences to think critically about the society in which they live.”

There’s more information on the Kickstarter page: if you want to help him make the film, you can make a donation there.

heroBack in London, a new novel by a German author called Root Leeb is just about to be published, entitled Hero. It’s the story of a dying man and his relationships with his children, The publishers describe how

“Leeb draws on the father-daughter constellation of King Lear in a family with many different parent-child relationships which makes for a very interesting story of not only family dynamics, but also how the patriarch of this family takes an eye-to-eye approach to his own death.”

Ready Set Go Theatre Company from New York are presenting Romeo and Juliet “through a unique 10 episode web series”. All episodes are available at the website above. It’s described as a “gritty,daring adaption” set in New York City, adapted for screen by John Robert Hurley, it’s their second Shakespeare web series. In order to “make the classics available to a new generation of theatre and film enthusiasts, …focused on making Shakespeare a vital part of the modern classroom. R & J (the web series) will have lesson plans included for every episode, and teachers will have all the information available for free when they contact RSG.” A trailer is available.

 

For an unusual take on Hamlet, Darrien Murphy is producing a film Hamlet’s Mouse-trap. Here is his description:

“The film was inspired by Hamlet, (hence the name) and is written in the Shakespearean tradition. “Hamlet’s Mouse-trap” is about a contemporary Romanov descendant who, consumed by grief over the murder of her mother, sets out to discover the perpetrators who killed her, whilst also experiencing a spiritual struggle about the costs of what she seeks.”

juliets-nurse-coverFinally, Juliet’s Nurse, by Lois Leveen. “It’s a novel imagining the 14 years leading up to the events in Romeo and Juliet, from the point-of-view of that unforgettably ribald/comic/tragic character, Angelica.” Leveen “writes literary historical fiction as a way to “teach” readers beyond academia; this novel draws on research in medieval and Renaissance Italian history, as well as Shakespeare’s play…   it’s intended for general audiences who will be drawn in by the characters and story line (and hopefully go back to read the play once they are done with the novel).”

I hope you enjoy exploring just some of these great Shakespeare-related projects coming our way!

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A new chapter in the history of Shakespeare’s Celebrations

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

POI-08-1I’ve spent much of the past year or so researching the history of the celebrations of Shakespeare’s birth in Stratford-upon-Avon.  It’s a long and complicated story with its origins in the 1769 Garrick Jubilee, and I’m happy to report that after a few years of uncertainty the celebrations are entering a new phase.  Shakespeare’s Celebrations has been formed as a partnership between the Town and District Council, determined to revitalise this unique annual event that takes place on the nearest Saturday to Shakespeare’s Birthday, 23 April. I was privileged to be invited to the launch on 30 October at which the aims of the organisation were outlined.

It is “dedicated to leading the world in celebrating William Shakespeare’s life, through developing the traditional and globally recognised Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations in his home town of Stratford”.  It was heartening to hear Town Clerk Sarah Summers describe the continuing organisation of the Birthday Celebrations as a “no-brainer”, Stratford gaining enormous worldwide recognition and admiration from its association with Shakespeare. Both actor David Bradley, a Stratford resident as well as being famous for his work on stage and screen, and Dame Janet Suzman, have agreed to be Patrons of the organisation.

Finance has always been at the heart of the discussions about the Birthday Celebrations, the question being “Who should pay?” The new scheme will both “ensure that the festival benefits the community and economy of the Stratford district and that it is financially independent of public subsidy and is sustainable in its own right”.  Town Mayor Councillor Ian Fradgley, quoted in the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, emphasised that the issue is not just about money but about community support and participation; the aim, he said, is to “establish a sustainable plan, which will benefit the entire town and wider community for years to come”.

Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations 2014

Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations 2014

Assistance is being sought in a variety of ways. A Friends scheme is in place, starting at just £7 a year for individuals rising to more substantial donations for businesses, and it is possible to sponsor a flag or a banner along the route of the procession. This is not a particularly new idea: street decorations have been a big part of the Celebrations for over 150 years. To begin with individual businesses decorated their own windows and the pavements outside them, before becoming organised street by street in the early twentieth century.

New volunteers are also being sought to help out. A small army of volunteers has taken on a number of roles for many years: stewards accompanying distinguished visitors, marshalls helping to control the crowds, or workers behind the scenes ensuring the celebrations, which take over almost every street in the town centre, run smoothly. The additional volunteers being actively recruited will increase the opportunities for community participation in the main procession. And for those who just want to support this historic event it will be possible to become a Friend of Shakespeare’s Celebrations.

The website is already launched containing more information about how people can take part, and Shakespeare’s Celebrations has its own presence on Twitter @Shakespearescel . If you care about Shakespeare and want the traditional celebrations of his birth to continue, please consider becoming a Friend or volunteer to help make them thrive.

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Exploring Shakespeare’s blank verse

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

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

But it’s obvious from the large number of YouTube videos that the element of Shakespeare’s verse that needs most explanation is the metre in which it’s written. Getting to grips with it is important whether the lines are going to be spoken out loud or not. Iambic pentameter is the offputting name for lines written in the most natural of all rhythms, the heartbeat. It goes:

DeDUM-DeDUM-DeDUM-DeDUM-DeDUM.

“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad”
or
“If music be the food of love, play on”

Shakespeare doesn’t make it simple, as no sooner has he established the regular iambic pentameter line than he creates lots of alternatives: feminine endings, short lines and other irregularities. In As You Like It Rosalind’s comment on Orlando’s verses written in her praise is that, “some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear.” Christopher Marlowe with his “mighty line” popularised the use of blank verse in drama, but it was Shakespeare who realised how much more effective it could be if the regularity of the lines was sometimes broken.

In my other post I mentioned John Barton’s series Playing Shakespeare, a series of masterclasses showing actors how to make the verse work for them. The series doesn’t only work for actors: as we read Shakespeare’s works to ourselves we can hear the iambic pentameter just as much as if it’s being read out. In the second programme, and chapter 2 of the book of the series, Barton explains that “Blank verse is probably the centre of the Elizabethan tradition and perhaps the most important thing in Shakespeare that an actor has to come to terms with. Or rather I should say than an actor needs to get help from. I stress that because many actors, particularly if they’re not familiar with Shakespeare, very understandably look at the verse as some kind of threat….It becomes a mountain to be climbed or else an obstacle to be avoided. But no, it’s there to help the actor. It’s full of little hints from Shakespeare about how to act a given speech or scene. It’s stage direction in shorthand… Shakespeare was an actor, and I believe that his verse is above all a device to help the actor. ”

Those clues that Barton talks about can help readers just as much as by actors. Here’s Programme 2 where John Barton explains what he means.

The RSC does have a bit of a monopoly on the subject with a whole section on its website about Shakespeare’s language:

Also from the RSC’s website here’s an explanation of the subject in written form.

cicely berry voice coachHere’s Cicely Berry, some RSC actors and one of the RSC’s team working with a group of children on the verse.

If you prefer something more imaginative you can find all sorts of weird and wonderful ways of explaining iambic pentameters on YouTube including rap, paper cutouts, diagrams on blackboards and kids fighting in the gym, but this straightforward example shows a teacher encouraging her pupils to create their own iambic pentameters.

The following extract is from one of Shakespeare’s most magical blank verse speeches. In Henry V the Chorus conjures up for the audience the atmosphere of the English camp on the night before the battle of Agincourt. The rhythm of the verse comes through even if you’re just reading it:

John Hurt, Chorus in The Hollow Crown

John Hurt, Chorus in The Hollow Crown

Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
From camp to camp through the foul womb of night
The hum of either army stilly sounds,
That the fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other’s watch:
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each battle sees the other’s umber’d face;
Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs
Piercing the night’s dull ear, and from the tents
The armourers, accomplishing the knights,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Give dreadful note of preparation.

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Remembering the days of Empire: The Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Ball, 1911

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Lord Alexander Thynne and the Duchess of Westminster as Henry VI and Queen Margaret, SMNT Ball 1911

Lord Alexander Thynne and the Duchess of Westminster as Henry VI and Queen Margaret, SMNT Ball 1911

The years leading up to the First World War saw interest in Shakespeare reaching a high. In Stratford there were events relating to the rise in folk traditions of singing and dancing, but in London the movement to found a National Theatre based around Shakespeare’s works was gathering steam with the 1908 foundation of the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Committee. The idea of a National Theatre had first been mooted over fifty years before, England being one of the few European countries with no national theatre.

The Committee’s major fundraising event was to be a Shakespearean Ball. On the Royal Albert Hall’s website this is described as “probably the most spectacular event ever held at the Hall”. I had barely heard of this event until it was mentioned at Professor Michael Dobson’s excellent inaugural lecture given earlier in October 2014, in which he examined the history of the idea of a national theatre and Shakespeare’s role in it. The whole lecture is available to be viewed here on YouTube. A Shakespeare Memorial Theatre already existed in 1908, but being situated in a small provincial town it was not national enough. Only the capital would do.

The ball was a magnificent party organised by the rich and famous, for the rich and famous. The main organiser was Mrs George Cornwallis-West. Earl Lytton enthused: “The decorations of the Hall itself, the beauty of the costumes, the rhythm of the moving figures in the great quadrilles, the colours, the lights, the gaiety – all produced an effect of brilliance and splendour which will long live in the memories of those who saw them”.

Many guests dressed as characters from Shakespeare’s plays, each one organised by a lady, so the Marchioness of Salisbury was in charge of The Merchant of Venice. Some leading actors appeared, such as Ellen Terry and Henry Ainley, but most parts were taken  by “the best-known people in London”. Some were dressed as the court of Queen Elizabeth: “Nearly all…were either direct descendants or the wives of direct descendants of the historical characters they played”.

Mr Graham Robertson as Borachio, Mr A Moson as Balthasar and Lady Alexander as Hero, SMNT Ball, 1911

Mr Graham Robertson as Borachio, Mr A Moson as Balthasar and Lady Alexander as Hero, SMNT Ball, 1911

“Here were no tawdry stage costumes, no mere imitations of reality. Here was the real thing. Real satins and ermines, real silks and brocades, real gold and silver embroideries, real lace of the finest periods…And among the sheen of wonderful stuffs there was the sparkle of jewels, real jewels, priceless heirlooms…Many single dresses cost upwards of a hundred pounds each, and many wearers were adorned with thousands of pounds’ worth of precious stones.” With so much expended on specially-made costumes, the figure of £10,000 raised for the Theatre Fund must have seemed rather small.

The Hall was decorated by Sir Edwin Lutyens. A blue sky hid the roof, there were grape vines, green turf, and “bowers in a tall hedge of clipped yew, with quaintly fashioned birds topping them, after the manner of old-world gardeners”..

The following day The Times devoted over a page to the ball and reports appeared as far away as New Zealand. Mrs Cornwallis-West compiled a magnificent volume, Souvenir of the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Ball that includes photographs of many of the participants in their finery. A copy is held at the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive in Stratford-upon-Avon. Stratford-upon-Avon, and its Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, is not mentioned, though the town’s most famous resident, Marie Corelli, took a box. A set of 29 portraits is to be found on the National Portrait Gallery’s website.

The Royal Albert Hall decorated for the SMNT Ball, 1911

The Royal Albert Hall decorated for the SMNT Ball, 1911

Slightly mysteriously, the image reproduced, which I’ve found on the Royal Albert Hall website, shows Stratford buildings: Holy Trinity Church, the Birthplace and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, but none of the descriptions mention them.

The following year Mrs George Cornwallis-West planned another Shakespeare-related fundraiser, a Shakespeare Exhibition at Earl’s Court, running from May to October. Like the ball, it was designed by Lutyens who supplied replicas of buildings such as the Globe Theatre and the ship The Revenge. Although there was an exhibition of original paintings and other objects from the period, the rest of the exhibition was more The Merrie England Experience. Inside the buildings were events such as dancing, madrigals, concerts of Elizabethan music, performances of the Pyramus and Thisbe scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the trial scene of The Merchant of Venice. There was a medieval tournament with real tilting. Balls were held including, on 27 June, the Venetian Bal Masque priced at 30 shillings. Food outlets included the Boar’s Head Tavern with anachronistic offerings such as afternoon tea.

Unlike the ball, which seems to have been admired by all, the six-month long exhibition attracted criticism. The expense of maintaining the various events was high, and Mrs Cornwallis-West “relied too much on her personal influence and not enough on the power of the press”. The society network that made the ball such a success did not work when interest had to be maintained over a long period.

Lady Cynthia Graham and Lady Juliet Duff as Amazons, SMNT Ball, 1911

Lady Cynthia Graham and Lady Juliet Duff as Amazons, SMNT Ball, 1911

Those who attended the 1911 ball felt they had been at a special, unforgettable event. In his essay in the Souvenir volume H Hamilton Fyfe wrote “The Shakespeare Ball of King George’s Coronation year will live in history…Those who were fortunate enough to see it have something to recollect all their lives”. In his epilogue to the same book, Israel Gollancz hoped “may they all dance again…at the Shakespeare Ball in the Shakespeare Commemoration week of 1916”, an event that of course never happened, with many of the countries whose representatives had danced together in 1911 embroiled in war against each other.

A hundred years on, the ball has been forgotten. It now seems like the final flowering of a way of life cut down by World War 1. Since 1923 the Royal Albert Hall has been the venue for another great but sombre event, November’s national Festival of Remembrance.

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Hugh Quarshie: Othello at last

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Hugh Quarshie

Hugh Quarshie

In 2015 Hugh Quarshie will at last be taking on the role of Othello. It’s been a long wait: having played a whole series of Shakespeare’s characters in the 1980s and 1990s, from the predictable Aaron in Titus Andronicus, through Hotspur, Tybalt, Banquo and Mark Antony, it looked as if Othello would inevitably be next.

But then, around 1998, Quarshie very publicly seemed to put himself out of the running. First given as a lecture, he published Second Thoughts about Othello. This included the often-quoted lines:” I am left with a nagging doubt: if a black actor plays Othello does he not risk making racial stereotypes seem legitimate and even true. When a black actor plays a role written for a white actor in black make-up and for a predominantly white audience, does he not encourage the white way, or rather the wrong way, of looking at black men, namely that black men, or “Moors”, are over-emotional, excitable and unstable… Of all the parts in the canon, perhaps Othello is the one which should most definitely not be played by a black actor”.

So has he, fifteen years and many episodes of hospital drama Holby City later,  had a change of heart?

Reading Quarshie’s lecture recently, it’s clear that these quotations have been taken out of context. While he raises the question about black men playing Othello, he certainly doesn’t dismiss the idea. His argument is in three parts: firstly that Shakespeare adapted his source for the play, a story by Cinthio, in order to make it more racist, secondly that interpretations of the play in performance have reinforced racist views; and, “thirdly, that, while it may never be possible to avoid the conclusion that Othello behaves as he does because he is black, a non-racist interpretation may nevertheless be possible, but only with careful editing of text and a radical re-reading of key passages”.

He considers a number of possibilities: “Perhaps black actors could simply decline to play the role on the grounds that it should only be played by a white actor… This would of course have the merit of allowing black actors to play Iago.”

But he continues “My feeling is that black actors should continue to play the role; the racist conventions have persisted for so long precisely because not enough of us have played the role and challenged the conventions. And I believe that a non-racist interpretation may be possible”. He was involved in a production at Greenwich Theatre with a light-skinned black Iago and black American Othello. This lessened the idea that Othello behaves as he does because he’s black. “My interest in that production was in Iago as…a man… not regulated by moral codes, cultural tradition or racial solidarity, but impelled by his imagination and intellectual curiosity. Another time perhaps”.

His ideal is to “produce a version of the play which shifts the focus away from race and onto character”. Othello should be driven by “compelling psychological, social and political reasons:… he behaves as he does because he is a black man responding to racism, not giving a pretext for it”. The production would need to avoid being a domestic tragedy and stress the political context. “The focus of this production would be the manner and the extent of Othello’s reaction to betrayal”.

Other black writers and actors have been excited about presenting a different kind of Othello. In 2004 playwright Kwame Kwei Armah wanted to see “a version of Othello in which the character is not inextricably linked to the notion of a unacceptably weak and intellectually vulnerable black male. I would like to see a production in which, for instance, Cassio is a black man of “high complexion”…. Not only would we see a light-skinned black male being promoted over Iago, but Othello’s insecurity would be based on a perception that Desdemona may really have an appetite only for black men. …This might…make the story, like Lear, about a frightened insecure man. Not a weak black man.”

Lucian Msamati

Lucian Msamati

Othello would no longer be the sole example of black behaviour. As Quarshie suggested, the RSC’s production will for the first time include a black Iago, Lucian Msamati. After holding a workshop to try out the idea of additional black actors, the company’s artistic director, Gregory Doran found ” with Lucian, every line became freshly minted and it challenged the whole play in a way I found completely revelatory. It may be a completely crazy idea but I think it’s worth pursuing because in the end…you just watch two really, really good actors doing it”.

In his essay The Sun God, published in the 2014 book Shakespeare and Me, eminent American actor James Earl Jones refers to Quarshie’s lecture: “what I would suggest, rather cheekily, is that the best thing he can do, after he has scared away all the other black actors who are crazy enough to listen to his theories about race in Shakespeare, is to pull up his socks and take on Othello himself”. Some decades ago James Earl Jones played Othello with great distinction, and here he is doing Othello’s first great speech at the White House in 2009.

We’ll have to wait until next June to see Quarshie and the team decide to play it, but here is part of the description of the play in the new RSC schedule leaflet. “He [Othello] is … an outsider whose victories have created enemies of his own, men driven by prejudice and jealousy to destroy him. As they plot in the shadows, Othello realises too late that the greatest danger lies not in the hatred of others, but his own fragile and destructive pride”.

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Shakespeare, politics and the history of Stratford-upon-Avon

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Queen Elizabeth 1, circa 1588

Queen Elizabeth 1, circa 1588

The Shakespeare Club’s October meeting consisted of a lecture by historian Nicholas Fogg on  Shakespeare and politics. It was perhaps no surprise that he had decided to look at the subject through a historical perspective, suggesting that to understand Shakespeare’s views of politics as shown in the plays, we need to drop some of our modern baggage as well as to take some on.

The world of politics has changed immeasurably since Shakespeare’s day. Politics was, for instance intimately bound up with religion, demonstrated by Measure for Measure which examines the responsibilities of the ruler in a setting where the main female character is about to become a nun, some of the scenes are set in a convent, and the ruler takes on the disguise of a holy friar.

He looked briefly at small-town politics, but suggested that although details of Stratford’s government surface in the character of the constable Dogberry, the town watch, and the beadle mentioned in King Lear, the Council on which Shakespeare’s own father sat contributed little to the characters and events of the plays.

Although local government may not have inspired Shakespeare, Nicholas Fogg examined the way in which local issues affecting ordinary people interested him. The poor are often seen as victims of the decisions made by those higher up the social scale. Though not mentioned by Shakespeare the dissolution of the monasteries a generation earlier had a knock-on effect as these sources of charity and protection for the unfortunate were not replaced, causing considerable hardship.

Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays show a fascination with the closely-knit web of nobles linked by blood who governed the country. Dynasties were created which fought it out amongst themselves, always trying to gain the favour of the monarch or, to replace him with their own leader .

Francois Gravelot's engraving showing the father who has killed his son and the son who has killed his father

Francois Gravelot’s engraving showing the father who has killed his son and the son who has killed his father

As the nobles argued, changed sides and betrayed each other civil war resulted. In the plays, it’s the common people who suffer: in Henry VI part 3 fathers and sons are shown in deadly conflict in one particularly poignant scene at the Battle of Towton. In all the History plays from Richard II onwards Shakespeare somewhere includes a speech about the history of the conflict being dramatised. It can feel like “the story so far”, but these speeches also serve the purpose of reminding audiences that the sins of the fathers are visited on their sons.

This blending of different social levels occurs again in Henry VI where the shepherd is the exemplar of order. The civil war Shakespeare writes about was only 67 years before his birth and there were a number of uprisings during his lifetime that could have resulted in a return to war. No wonder Shakespeare included this image, where the king, standing in for Christ, talks about being the shepherd to his flock, and, sitting on a molehill, he speaks about the sweetness of the life of the humble shepherd while battle rages around him.

The conflict between the king and his subjects reaches its height in Henry V where on the night before the battle of Agincourt the king, in disguise, has to defend the actions of the monarch against the ordinary soldier Michael Williams. Henry puts forward the doctrine of personal responsibility, and Nicholas Fogg brought us back to the present day with the thought that the same policy is still adopted by politicians today.

Although dismissive of the impact made by Stratford’s local politics on Shakespeare’s plays, Nicholas Fogg has returned in his latest book to the history of Stratford. It’s a subject he knows well.  In 1986 his book Stratford-upon-Avon: the Portrait of a Town was published. It was very different in tone from earlier history’s such as Levi Fox’s The Borough Town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Fogg concentrated on the very human story of the town and its inhabitants, not just its government, its architecture, or the history of the Shakespeare industry, although all were included. It did, however, end at the start of World War 1, a century ago.

Stratford-upon-Avon: the Biography

Stratford-upon-Avon: the Biography

He has now filled this gap with a new book, Stratford-upon-Avon: the Biography, published by Amberley Press. Although the book owes a great deal to the earlier one, there is a great deal of reworking in the early chapters, and several chapters have been added at the end to bring the story up to date. The two world wars feature heavily and recent events of interest to Shakespearians are included such as the revamping of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the changes to the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations. The book makes splendid use of past issues of the local newspaper, the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald. With his dedication to the recently-retired editor of the paper, Chris Towner, the author acknowledges the debt he owes to its weekly reporting of local scandals, crimes, celebrations and events from jumble sales upwards. The book also contains many stories from private individuals, testament to the author’s wide network of friends in the town and a reminder of how important enthusiasm and commitment is for the life of a small town, even one as famous as Stratford-upon-Avon.

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So how should Shakespeare really sound?

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
David and Ben Crystal at Shakespeare's Globe

David and Ben Crystal at Shakespeare’s Globe

The biggest perceived challenge to anyone getting to grips with Shakespeare for the first time is probably making sense of the language. All the old-fashioned words, the use of “thee” and “thou”, the poetic constructions, the grammar itself. Yet reading a modern English version of the plays is a poor substitute for the real thing.

One of the experiments encouraged by the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe has been into Original Pronunciation (OP). This matches the attempts to reconstruct the physical playing space, the use of music played on authentic instruments, costumes in authentic fabrics, made by hand, and the use of men to play women’s parts. A recent online article from the Telegraph includes some examples of how it’s thought Shakespeare might have originally sounded.

The Globe’s first OP production was Romeo and Juliet in 2004, followed in 2005 by Troilus and Cressida. David and his actor son Ben Crystal have been the driving force behind them and the recordings. Here is their 10-minute introduction to the subject, filmed at Shakespeare’s Globe.  Their Original Pronunciation website contains much information, and the British Library have also published a CD of extracts from Shakespeare in OP.

It might be thought that reverting to original pronunciation would add yet another layer of difficulty for those already struggling. But the strong interest in OP is at least partly owing to the fact that the accent is more approachable for people intimidated by the language and the expectation that it requires a posh English accent. It’s a subject that those dealing with speaking Shakespeare have been concerned about for years. Cicely Berry, for many years the RSC’s Head of Voice, fought against the perceptions that “there is some sort of mystique” about poetry. “You are either over-reverent about it, and the ‘poetry voice’ happens, or rebelling against the ‘poetry voice’ you ignore the form and go only for the logical sense, and the poetry then sounds like prose”.

The pronunciations suggested by the Crystals sound less formal than Received Pronunciation (RP), and may be easier to adopt. I’m happy to admit I don’t know a lot about this subject, and I know that the recordings are the result of years of research. But I still feel a little unsure about taking them too literally. OP has been described as a mixture of West Country, North Country, Irish and American. But even today there are huge differences between, for instance, the North Country accents of Liverpool and Newcastle. Surely regional accents were at least as varied in Early Modern England as they are now, so there would not have been a single OP accent. It has been suggested (though not in the recordings) that Shakespeare himself would have spoken with a regional accent of some kind (a precursor of Brummie perhaps).

The Crystals make much of spelling, which tended to be more phonetic than it is now, and of the use of rhyme. The couplet at the end of a sonnet usually rhymes, and if it doesn’t appear to, they suggest that the pronunciation must have changed. So “love” and “prove” as in Sonnets 116 and 117, must have been pronounced the same. Caution is needed here, though. The same logic would mean that “where” and “near” (Sonnet 61) would be pronounced the same, as would “gone” and “alone” (Sonnet 66), “wrong” and “young” (Sonnet 19) and “noon” and “son” (Sonnet 7). Isn’t it possible that something else is going on here, a deliberate “jolt”, to use John Barton’s word describing the effect of changing the stresses within a line in one of the same sonnets.

I’ve recently noticed the videos featuring John Barton, the RSC’s great director and speaking Shakespeare expert, on YouTube. First he appeared with RSC Artistic Directors Trevor Nunn and Terry Hands in a 1979 two-part South Bank Show Special called Word of Mouth. It’s now available in full.

 

In this shorter extract Barton talks about Original Pronunciation and gives a demonstration of it.

 

He later fronted a 9-part series, Playing Shakespeare, also available in full on YouTube. In the first of the series, Sheila Hancock suggests that when looking at how to speak Shakespeare’s language “it makes sense to start with our own tradition, because that’s what’s inside us and it’s what we know best”.

For me what makes a performance compelling isn’t the accent in which it’s spoken but the quality of the acting and speaking. If you’ve never watched any of this I implore you to do so, ignoring the fact that actors like Ian McKellen, Sheila Hancock and Ben Kingsley look so very young. Look for instance at programme 9 in which there’s a recording of Peggy Ashcroft playing Viola from the 1940s, still sounding fresh, and if you never heard Donald Sinden being serious, listen to his speech from Othello in programme 5. It’s still an astonishing series, over thirty years on.

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British Black and Asian Shakespeare

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Ira Aldridge as Othello, 1830

Ira Aldridge as Othello, 1830

We’re in the middle of Black History Month 2014, and it’s a good moment to draw attention to a major project on the history of non-white performers of Shakespeare. British Black and Asian Shakespeare is run by Professor Tony Howard of the University of Warwick with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Professor Howard has tracked the development of British Black and Asian actors on the Shakespearean stage from the 1930s to the present day and a database is being constructed that will document this work in full. There’s an 8-minute introduction to the project and its subject here.

The story begins back in the nineteenth century with the great black American actor Ira Aldridge who gained fame for his acting, in particular in Shakespearean roles. Aldridge came to Europe in 1824 and by the end of the 1820s had established himself as one of the most exciting of contemporary performers. As I’ve been researching the early celebrations of Shakespeare’s birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon I have wondered if it was Aldridge’s success that inspired the organisers of the 1830 celebrations to include, among the locals dressed up as Shakespeare’s characters, “Charles the Black”, a “man of colour”, as Othello. This was the most magnificent procession that had yet been seen, and was not matched for many years. A special pavilion was erected in Rother Street under the management of Francis Raymond who supplied the costumes that had been hired from the London theatres. Local newspapers and later reports mention the names of many who took part, but Charles was singled out by at least three of them. In the Theatrical Tatler, published in Birmingham, it was noted that “Some people extolled Othello who was personated by a black, in service (chiefly as Cook, I believe), at the Woolpack, Warwick.” I believe this was the first occasion when a black man had represented one of Shakespeare’s characters appeared in Stratford. Ira Aldridge himself did not perform in Stratford until 1851.

Paul Robeson as Othello, SMT 1959

Paul Robeson as Othello, SMT 1959

The most important black figure in twentieth century theatre was Paul Robeson who combined singing with acting on stage and screen. As a young man he performed Othello in London in 1930 with Peggy Ashcroft as his Desdemona, then played the role again at the end of his career in 1959 in Stratford-upon-Avon. In between he became a political activist in his native USA and his known communist sympathies made him a target during the McCarthy period when his passport was taken away. In spite of being much in demand in Europe he was unable to leave the USA, returning to Stratford to perform not long after his passport had been returned to him.

Next week, on Tuesday 21 October, at 1.45pm, BBC Radio 4 will be broadcasting a programme in the series Hidden Histories of the Information Age relating to Paul Robeson. In 1957 the transatlantic telephone cable was used to allow him to sing live from New York to an audience in London. At the time this was a technological marvel, but apart from the technical innovation the compelling reason for the broadcast was that Robeson was at the time banned from leaving the USA.

There is lots more information about Paul Robeson’s Othello and other more recent black Othellos in the podcasts linked to from this page.  There’s also a blog with up to date information about the project,  including a post by Dr Jami Rogers, now BBAS’s Honorary Fellow and Research Assistant, about the Shakespearean Glass Ceiling, reproduced in full here.

Nicholas Bailey, who is playing Macduff at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester

Nicholas Bailey, who is playing Macduff at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester

In celebration of Black History Month the Mercury Theatre Colchester is hosting the British Black and Asian Shakespeare’s exhibition until Saturday 18 October. It coincides with their production of Macbeth (also closing on Saturday)  in which BBAS Honorary Fellow Nicholas Bailey is performing Macduff. Jami Rogers went to the opening night of the play and her interview with Nicholas Bailey is available here.

In another interview, Bailey talks about the aims of the project: “What we are trying to do is get all the surviving Black and Asian actors we can to be interviewed about their Shakespearean life and we want to get testimony, via our website, from audiences about performances they have seen involving Black or Asian actors. What we want to do is create a true history because it hasn’t been written or talked about with any authority until now”.

 

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Shakespeare’s marvellous sweet music

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Elizabethan musicians

Elizabethan musicians

Shakespeare’s own use of music, and the many ways in which Shakespeare’s works have inspired composers in the centuries since he wrote them, are among the most recurrent subjects for this blog. And in the next few weeks there are a few events coming up that I would like to mention.

On Thursday 16 October there begins a series of lectures and recitals on the subject Shakespeare and Music.This is the Kingston Shakespeare Seminar for Autumn 2014, promoted by Kingston University On six Thursdays, late in the afternoon, this series of events will take place at the Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames or at the University itself. Best of all, each event is free.

The first three are as follows:
Thursday October 16 at 5.30pm. Chantal Schutz (University of Paris 111) with Jamie Akers, lute. “The scholar’s melancholy is emulation; the musician’s, fantastical”: Shakespeare and Dowland.

Thursday October 30 at 5.30pm. Christopher Wilson (University of Hull) “By the sweet power of musicke”: Effect in Shakespeare’s musical imagery.

Thursday November 6 at 5.30pm. At Kingtson University, Coombehurst Studio. Katy Hamilton with Michale L Roberts, Katie Coventry, Caitlin Frizzel, Julien Van Mellaerts and Paul McKenzie, piano (Royal College of Music). “The radical gap between words and action”: Singing Shakespeare.

The final three take place on 20 November, 27 November and 11 December, and you’ll find full details on the Cardiff Shakespeare blog here. At the time of writing the full details don’t seem to have made it to the Kingston University website.

Also on Thursday 16 October the Stratford Music Festival begins, carrying on until 25 October with a full programme of recitals of many kinds of music, performed in a great variety of venues: I particularly like the sound of the lunchtime concerts in Stratford’s beautiful Town Hall. Click on the link for the full programme.

Lute player by Bernardo Strozzi, 1635

Lute player by Bernardo Strozzi, 1635

For those with an interest in Shakespeare, the unmissable event is the concert on Tuesday 21 October at 7.30pm at the Guild Chapel, under the name Marvellous Sweet Music. Quoting the publicity:

Opera stars Mary Bevan and Benedict Nelson will join musicians from the RSC to perform twenty-one of the most famous songs in Shakespeare’s plays from over a century of productions.

The plays of Shakespeare are filled with music & song: they include more than 2000 references to music, over 400 separate musical terms & around 100 songs.

In this concert by the Royal Shakespeare Company, twenty-one of the most famous songs in Shakespeare’s plays are performed in settings dating back over a century, which highlight not only the changing style and aesthetic of theatre music across the decades, but also reveal some of the fascinating biographical stories of the composers themselves.

Those composers form a select and diverse group, including some of the great names of classical and popular music of the 20th Century such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Billy Bragg, Lennox Berkeley, Roberto Gerhard, Stephen Warbeck, Ian Dury, Nigel Hess, Laura Marling and Paul Englishby.

The concert is under the direction of Bruce O’Neil, RSC Director of Music, and it’ll be a great opportunity to hear some of the terrific music that has been written for the stage rarely to be heard again.

And finally, one for the diary: in December there will be a small exhibition on Shakespeare and Music at the Shakespeare Institute Library in Stratford-upon-Avon, which is sure to be worth a look. There’s more about the Library here including an email address for more information.

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Shakespeare and the memories of the German nation

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
The statue of Shakespeare in Weimar, Germany

The statue of Shakespeare in Weimar, Germany

The British Museum is just about to launch its new exhibition Germany: Memories of a Nation.  Following a successful formula, the Museum’s Director Neil MacGregor has a Radio 4 series under way that links museum objects with an idea or event. He’s tackling Germany over centuries of its history from many points of view. Last week he got to the concept of Germany as a nation, and this is where, perhaps surprisingly, Shakespeare broke in.

One programme looked at Fairy tales and forests, and how in the early nineteenth century after Germany’s defeat by Napoleon the work of the Brothers Grimm came to be influential. I’ve just been reading Philip Pullman’s version of the Grimm Tales, and reminding myself, as MacGregor pointed out, how very strong was the idea of the forest in German culture. In Grimm’s tales the forest is usually threatening: in Hansel and Gretel, for instance, the children are abandoned in the forest which contains the witch who intends to kill and eat them, and other examples are Snow White and Rapunzel. Shakespeare drew on the Northern European tradition of forests being dark and forbidding, where witches and fairies might be met. This is often overlooked in favour of his debt to Italian sources, but the fear of forests comes from the same sort of folk tales as were later collected by the Grimms. In both Shakespeare and the tales, though, the forest is also the place where character is tested and evil is overcome.

The real obsession of the Brothers Grimm was the German language, and the way in which it had grown from within. Language bound Germans together in a way that was different from French or English, both of which had been heavily influenced by other languages. And English has become the most universal of languages: it’s because of this that Shakespeare is himself such an international figure.

The programme One nation under Goethe looked at the way Goethe unified Germans, but also at how heavily influenced the German poet was by Shakespeare. In 1771, inspired by the Garrick Jubilee two years before, and aged only 22, Goethe held a celebration of Shakespeare in his own house. He proclaimed : “The first page of Shakespeare that I read made me aware that he and I were one… I had been as one born blind who first sees the light…I did not hesitate for a moment to renounce the rule-ridden theatre of the ancients… I leaped into free air and for the first time was aware that I possessed hands and feet…In the face of Shakespeare I acknowledge that I am a poor sinner, while he prophesies through the pure force of nature”.

Goethe’s famous love of Shakespeare came to be shared by many of his compatriots. In an article published in 2010 Lyn Gardner wrote an article about the long history of Shakespeare in Germany: ” the first complete works was published in the country between 1775 and 1782. A further eight separate translations of the complete works were published between 1818 and 1839″. There were German productions of the plays, German academic conferences, a German Shakespeare society, and a German statue of Shakespeare in Weimar.

It’s a fascinating series, and will undoubtedly be a terrific exhibition, running from 16 October 2014 to 25 January 2015. Even if you’re not likely to get there I’d recommend listening to the podcasts and taking a look at the BBC’s website which includes, as well as images of all the items MacGregor has chosen to talk about, some enlightening maps and illustrations showing how Germany has contracted and expanded since the days of the Holy Roman Empire.

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