Stratford-upon-Avon’s historic Town Hall

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Stratford Town Hall from High St

Stratford Town Hall from High St

Standing at the busy junction of Sheep Street, Chapel Street, Ely Street and High Street is Stratford’s Town Hall. From the outside it’s a dignified building built of Cotswold stone and facing towards the High Street, in a niche, is the statue of Shakespeare that was presented by David Garrick at the time of his Jubilee in September 1769.

There has been a Town Hall on this spot since 1633. The original building consisted of a covered market area at ground level with a room above that could be used for functions. In 1642 it was being used as a munitions store by Parliamentary forces when it exploded. It was repaired in 1661 but was mostly neglected and by 1767 it was “in a dangerous and ruinous state”, and a decision was made to rebuild it, re-using as much of the original material as possible.

This first building had the distinction of being the venue for the first recorded performance of a Shakespeare play in Stratford when on Tuesday 9 September 1746 John Ward’s touring company performed Othello, in aid of the bust of Shakespeare in the church which was “through length of years and other accidents become much impair’d and decay’d” “The receipts arising from which Representation were to be solely appropriated to the repairing the Original Monument aforesaid”. In the sole surviving playbill for this historic performance the words “in the Town Hall” have been added by hand.

Stratford Town Hall, the Chapel Street frontage

Stratford Town Hall, the Chapel Street frontage

The new building followed the plan of the first, but it was to be built in finer fashion. The idea of inviting a David Garrick to contribute came from lawyer Francis Wheler,  “in order to flatter Mr Garrick into some such hansom present… it wou’d not be at all amiss if the Corporation were to propose to make Mr Garrick an Honourary Burgess of Stratford”.  From this suggestion came the three-day Garrick Jubilee though the Town Hall, the starting point for the festivities, was hardly used apart from public breakfasts on each day. The statue of Shakespeare remained in the specially-built pavilion and was hoisted into position at some point later, though there is no record of this. The final event of the Jubilee, a ball, did occur in the Town Hall, when the highlight of the evening was the dancing of Garrick’s wife.

The decoration of the hall was remarked on: “neatly and magnificently decorated with Festoons and Ornaments in Stucco, with the Harp string etc very curiously expressed in Basso-Relievo”. Within the hall were several paintings including Gainsborough’s portrait of Garrick, one arm nonchalantly draped round  a pillar on which stood a head-and-shoulders statue of Shakespeare.

After the Garrick Jubilee the Hall was used for many regular social functions. For many years it was referred to as Shakespeare’s Hall, a reminder of Garrick’s grand Jubilee. After the formation of the Shakespeare Club at the Falcon Inn in 1824 it was only two years before they needed to move to the Town Hall for their annual dinner, which 225 gentlemen attended. These were boozy affairs with dozens of toasts, speeches and songs being sung. The dinner continued to be held on Shakespeare’s birthday until 1879 when the evening began to be marked by a performance at the new Memorial Theatre.

Over the years alterations became necessary. Social events such as hunt balls were becoming more elaborate, and magnificent celebrations were being planned for the 1864 Shakespeare tercentenary which included events at the Town Hall.  There was no plan to alter the upper room “said to be the finest in Warwickshire”. With the open area on the ground floor not really needed as a market the answer was obvious. This area was enclosed, and a new entrance and grand staircase was built.

From 1868 the Town Council moved its meetings into the newly-created rooms on the ground floor, and at the same time the boards giving the names of mayors and town clerks which are still a major feature were created.

The upper room of the Town Hall set up for a dinner

The upper room of the Town Hall set up for a dinner

In the twentieth century the upper room was also used for the Birthday luncheon attended by diplomats and other representatives of national and international organisations, until it outgrew the space. The Hall  continued to be the venue for a variety of local activities, including dances. It was after one of these in December 1946 that a fire broke out in the room. Many items relating to the traditions of the Town Council were saved, but the upper floor was gutted and the roof collapsed. The painting of Garrick was destroyed. Ironically it had only been put back a year before after being removed for safety during the war.

The Shakespeare sconce

The Shakespeare sconce

Huge efforts were made to rebuild the Town Hall, making it even better than before. The chandeliers were replaced and it was possible to cast new plaster sconces from the one which survived the fire. These were some of the room’s most attractive decorative features (they can be seen between the windows), and the opportunity was taken to include a different face on each one. Not surprisingly both Shakespeare and Garrick were chosen.

The Town Hall is not regularly open to the public, but the rooms are increasingly being used for events. They don’t allow 226 people to dine there nowadays, but I was lucky enough to attend a dinner there earlier this year that gave me time to reflect on the Shakespeare Club meetings and dinners, and even performances of Shakespeare’s plays, that have been held in this historic spot.

I’m indebted for many of the details in this post to Mairi Macdonald’s pamphlet The Town Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon, published by the Stratford-upon-Avon Society in 1986.

There is more information about the Town Hall on the Town Council’s website.

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Shakespeare and the Bake-Off

Posted on October 8, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

cakeThe final of the Great British Bake-Off screens on the evening of 8 October. Watching this immensely popular series over the last few weeks I wondered how much Shakespeare knew about how his food was produced, and whether he ever prepared food himself. Shakespeare has been reckoned to be a soldier, sailor, lawyer and many other professions, but never a cook or baker.

Yet in Troilus and Cressida he shows he understands all the stages of baking, Pandarus comparing it with the stages of courtship, both of which require patience.
Pandarus: He that will have a cake out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding.
Troilus: Have I not tarried?
Pandarus: Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting.
Troilus: Have I not tarried?
Pandarus: Ay, the bolting, but you must tarry the leavening.
Troilus: Still have I tarried.
Pandarus: Ay, to the leavening’ but here’s yet in the word “hereafter” the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too, or you may chance to burn your lips. 

He shows too that he knows the sort of ingredients that are used to make food for a feast in The Winter’s Tale.
Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice….I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates…nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o’ the sun.

Baking bread

Baking bread

For Shakespeare, cakes seem to be associated with the more unsophisticated characters in his plays. It’s Touchstone in As You Like It and the Clown in All’s Well who talk about pancakes, Doll Tearsheet who tells us that Pistol lives on “mouldy stew’d prunes and dried cakes”, Pistol who mentions “wafer-cakes”, and Dromio of Ephesus talks about cakes in The Comedy of Errors. Hugh Otecake and Alice Shortcake are mentioned by comic characters in Much Ado About Nothing and The Merry Wives of Windsor respectively. Almost the only reference to cakes from someone higher up the social scale is Sir Toby Belch’s famous attack on Malvolio: “Dost thou think, because thou art Virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”

Maybe this is because cakes tended to be associated with celebrations marking particular moments in the farming year. I’ve recently been reading P W Hammond’s Food and Feast in Medieval England which explains that at the end of ploughing it was traditional for seed cake to be served, for instance. Cake is never an essential part of the diet, but even now it cheers people up and the Bake-Off is a great restorative at a time when the news is full of gloom.

So what sort of sweet things might Shakespeare have known? We’re familiar with the idea that ingredients were very different in Shakespeare’s day. Honey was used for sweetening more than sugar, there was no coffee or chocolate, and fruits were strictly seasonal. Raising agents used in cakes, (other than yeast) were only invented in the mid-nineteenth century. But many familiar cake ingredients were available: cream, butter, eggs, flour, dried fruit, even exotic spices.

Hammond’s book tells a depressing story of the diet of most people in the fifteenth century. Not only was the choice of ingredients restricted, so was the method of cooking the food. Five acres of ground would produce enough grain for a family. Ideally most of it would be made into bread, but “Possession of an oven was rare (judging by archaeological evidence), and those without ovens probably asked neighbours or used the communal oven. It has been suggested, in fact, that, except in the south of England, the consumption of bread was rare and that cereals were eaten as the staple diet chiefly in the form of porridge and broths.” Not much chance of cake here, then, and even if progress was made by Shakespeare’s time there must have been many people for whom access to an oven was rare.

A modern wood-fired oven

A modern wood-fired oven

Without an oven cooking was restricted to pots over an open fire, so cakes as we know them would be off the menu, though pancakes and griddle cakes would have relieved the monotony. In any case ovens were difficult. They were usually insulated metal boxes, designed to keep heat in. First the oven would be heated up by burning twigs inside it, then when hot enough they would be raked out and the bread went in. The oven was sealed and the bread would be left to cook as the oven cooled down.

I once took part in a food festival in which we prepared some Elizabethan food (this is now done regularly at Mary Arden’s Farm, see their facebook page). My contributions included these Fine Jumbals, adapted from Lorna Sass’s book To The Queen’s Taste. I remember them being very good.

Fine Jumbals
Half a cup of sugar
2 egg whites
1 egg yolk
1 cup sifted flour
4 tablespoons cooled melted butter
1 and a half teaspoons rose water
Three quarters of a cup of ground almonds
A few drops almond essence
Aniseeds, or ground coriander seeds

Whisk the sugar and egg whites until thick. Add the egg yolk, flour, butter and rose water and mix well. Add almonds and essence. The mixture should be quite thick, thicker than a cake mix. Put teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto greased baking sheets, leaving room for spreading. Sprinkle with seeds and back at 375 degrees for 12-15 minutes until brown and the edges. Remove from sheets while hot.

More recipes for sweet Elizabethan treats are given on the Ugborough history group’s website.

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Presenting Shakespeare’s Venice on stage

Posted on October 6, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
St Mark's Square, Venice. Italian School

St Mark’s Square, Venice. Italian School

The RSC recently announced its Summer 2015 season, beginning in March. They’ll be focusing on the Italian city Venice, with three plays that are fully or partly set there: The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Ben Jonson’s Volpone. It’s sure to be interesting to take a look at the city through the eyes of two English renaissance writers. In his piece written for the RSC Members News, Artistic Director Greg Doran suggests “Venice to the Elizabethan mind was a mixture of Wall Street and the red light district of Amsterdam. It was a hub of international trade, and seedy corruption”.

Today Venice retains its air of glamour and sophistication, if not the seedy corruption. It was recently chosen as the venue for the lavish three-day celebration of George Clooney’s wedding to Amal Alamuddin, and described by George Clooney’s father in his speech as “The loveliest, most intriguing city on the planet”.

Shakespeare’s plays set in the city are also among his most controversial. Productions of The Merchant of Venice, along with The Taming of the Shrew (also set in Italy but not in Venice), regularly generate demands that they should not be performed. The three plays often offend modern sensibilities, raising issues regarding gender, race and religion and the rights of all people for equality and respect.  In the sixteenth century Venice and London were both thriving trading centres and using Venice as a location allowed both Shakespeare and Jonson to examine the same hot issues from a safe distance.

An early view of Venice

An early view of Venice

The 2012 British Museum exhibition Shakespeare: Staging the World devoted a whole section to Venice. In the book of the exhibition Jonathan Bate writes that it was “a fair city, an open society grown rich on maritime trade, a multicultural population, a place of fashionable innovation and questionable morals: in Venice Londoners saw an image of their own desires and fears, their own future”.  Many travellers wrote descriptions of this city. John Florio, in his Florio his First Fruites, published in 1578, wrote “You shal see a fayre citie, riche, sumptuous, strong, wel furnished, adorned with fayre women, populated of many people, abundant, and plentiful of al good things”.

A Venetian Courtesan

A Venetian Courtesan

Venice’s sexual sophistication  was certainly controversial. Venetian women were famed for their beauty, but prostitutes operated much more openly than in England. A catalogue printed in 1570 gave the names of 215 available women in Venice, complete with prices. The list included women ranking from courtesans downwards, only omitting prostitutes who worked within brothels. In such a setting it was possible for Othello to be persuaded by Iago to think that his wife was licentious:
In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks
They dare not show their husbands: their best conscience
Is not to leave’t undone, but kept unknown.

An English visitor, Thomas Coryate, was so impressed by the appearance and behaviour of women in Venice that he wrote about it, and other travellers recorded their fashions in records they kept of their experiences. Their extravagance was encouraged by the prosperity of the city.

Venice was above all a great city of international trade, as Shakespeare comments in The Merchant of Venice: “the trade and profit of the city/ Consisteth of all nations”. Setting his plays in this exotic location Shakespeare was able to examine the uncomfortable relationship between foreigners and the resident population. In London in the 1590s tension was high between English workers and immigrants, and Jews were a traditional target.

Neither Shakespeare nor Jonson paint a particularly attractive picture of Venice, but Jonson’s city is full of and corrupt parasites, whereas Shakespeare’s Venetians are human, for all their weaknesses. Jonson’s leading character, Volpone, is a con man who pretends to be at death’s door in order to get lavish gifts from those who hope to inherit his wealth. In this moral fable the plot is turned back on himself as he’s betrayed by his servant Mosca. The idea of Venice, you feel, held little fascination for Jonson.

The Venetian glass goblet

The Venetian glass goblet

In his book Shakespeare’s Restless World, British Museum Director Neil MacGregor chose to represent Shakespeare’s Venice with a luxurious glass goblet. Venetian glass, beautifully-decorated, was expensive and in demand all over Europe. As the goblet is made up of ingredients from many countries it represents the city’s trading links. Dora Thornton of the British Museum explains “The striking cobalt blue is likely to come from the Erzgebirge region on the German-Czech border. The white, which is made from tin oxide, is made using tin that has probably come from Cornwall or Britanny. And the gold, heavily used all over the rim and for touching up details and for the arms,  is probably from Africa”. On one side the glass is decorated with a glamorous Venetian lady, perhaps a courtesan, while the other side features a coat of arms that is almost certainly German. There was a large market in Germany for Venetian drinking glasses: indeed in The Merchant of Venice Portia’s German suitor is characterised as being a heavy drinker. The goblet then represents the preoccupations of Shakespeare and Jonson regarding Venice where beauty, indulgence, wealth and sensuality come together. We’ll have to wait to see how these qualities manifest themselves on the RSC’s stages in 2015.

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Cross-gender casting for Hamlet and Henry IV

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Maxine Peake as Hamlet

Maxine Peake as Hamlet

Gender issues in the performance of Shakespeare’s plays are being discussed in the press again with Maxine Peake playing Hamlet in a production at the Manchester Royal Exchange. Here is the review from the Observer by Susannah Clapp, and that of Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times.

As Susannah Clapp points out, it’s the first major female British version of Hamlet for 35 years, since Frances de la Tour’s. This is surprising, given the rich history of women playing the role, and the current near-obsession with gender, feminism in particular. In his programme note Tony Howard, the author of Women as Hamlet, Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction, suggests this may be to do with the rise of the director in post-war theatre. ” Put two women in charge of theatres – Sarah Frankcom at the Royal Exchange and Josie Rourke at the Donmar – and there is a sudden burst of parts for women over 40 by cross-gender casting.”

Peake is not the only woman playing a man’s role: there are female gravediggers, a Player Queen and Polonia instead of Polonius. It’s suggested, then, that these are being played as women, rather than women in male costume. Peake’s situation is not so clear-cut. ” She is a stripling prince, almost pre-sexual, who glides, without swagger and without girlishness.”

It sounds as if it may be a rather straightforward attempt to give an outstanding female actor a great part, and the production is justified by the strength of Peake’s performance. This has been the motivation for many earlier female Hamlets, such as Sarah Bernhardt and Sarah Siddons back in 1777. And Hamlet is “the most female of all of Shakespeare’s male protagonists”. In spite of the statement above, and her blonde haircut that makes her resemble the androgynous David Bowie, the verdict of the audience is that she is playing Hamlet as a man.

Katie West as Ophelia and Maxine Peake as Hamlet.

Katie West as Ophelia and Maxine Peake as Hamlet.

In another article Mark Lawson discusses the whole issue of gender in productions of Shakespeare. The all-female production of Henry IV Part 1, led by Harriet Walter, begins at the Donmar Warehouse on 3 October, running until 29 November. In some ways the questions about sexuality and gender are made simpler in single-sex companies like that Phyllida Lloyd is directing, and Edward Hall’s all-male Propeller. Although Lloyd’s production of Julius Caesar was well-directed and beautifully-acted I thought placing the whole play within the frame of a women’s prison made it a bit too easy for the audience: maybe Henry IV will be different.

Harriet Walter as Brutus in the Donmar Warehouse production of Julius Caesar

Harriet Walter as Brutus in the Donmar Warehouse production of Julius Caesar

Shakespeare can be a useful lens through which to examine our own prejudices and attitudes. And as the debate about gender and sexuality continues to shift, so do the productions of Shakespeare’s plays. King Lear has been another favourite because of what one critic of Kathryn Hunter’s performance called “the androgyny of old age”. Gender reversals can be unsettling and enlightening. I’m not aware of any female Macbeths, but I think it could be really interesting. How would the audience react to a woman killer, in particular of children? We’re all aware that women are taking more active roles in the armed forces, and cases of women committing murder are far from unknown.

The Observer review and the Mark Lawson piece each generated dozens of responses demonstrating how strongly people feel about the issue. It’s not a simple choice: there are several ways of crossing the gender divide on stage, and lots of reasons for doing so. If you want to follow up the subject, Jim Bulman’s edited book Shakespeare Re-Dressed: Cross-Gender Casting in Contemporary Performance was published by Farleigh Dickinson in 2008.

Finally a last-minute plug for the discussion that’s being held on Saturday 4 October at the Royal Exchange, Manchester. From 12-1 a panel including director Sarah Frankcom and academics Tony Howard and Maggie Gale, Chair in Drama at the University of Manchester will discuss The Female Hamlet. It’s free but ticketed. Book at 0161 833 9833. The production itself runs until 25 October.

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The Secret Life of Shakespeare’s First Folio

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Simon Russell Beale

Simon Russell Beale

Shakespeare’s First Folio is back in the news again, with a documentary presented by actor Simon Russell Beale having been broadcast on 9 September. It’s part of the series The Secret Life of Books, a fascinating look at the process of creative writing. The whole series is available to watch again until 7 October. Other authors and their books put under the spotlight include Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Even if you’re not able to get the episodes on BBC’s IPlayer there are a number of clips available on the BBC page, including one in which Beale examines a copy of the Folio with the guidance of Professor Sonia Massai, and another in which he performs different versions of the “To be or not to be” speech from Hamlet.

As they point out, it’s the lack of original manuscripts that has made the 1623 First Folio so important to all those wanting to study Shakespeare, though it’s by no means surprising that his drafts and working copies have disappeared: hardly any theatrical manuscripts from the time have survived. Frustration at this situation drove scholars in the past to extreme lengths, including forgery. Simon Russell Beale examines three plays which he knows particularly well: Hamlet, King Lear and Timon of Athens, to work out what if anything can be deduced from studying the Folio texts. Timon is the only one of the three that exists only in the Folio, and indeed no record exists of the play even being performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime. Can we find within the Folio texts the beginning or middle of the writing process, or is the Folio simply the final product?

As part of his investigation he looks at the process of printing itself, and the difference between the quarto editions of individual plays as against the folio, talking with directors Nicholas Hytner and Sam Mendes about what happens to any text as the play is being rehearsed and performed.

A copy of the First Folio, 1623

A copy of the First Folio, 1623

Beale and Nicholas Hytner consider the idea that Timon of Athens is a draft rather than a finished text: it’s a play which is so unsatisfactory that it is still rarely performed. Was it written by a Shakespeare on the verge of a nervous breakdown? They consider the possibility that the inconsistencies were caused by the fact that the play was a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, a playwright who specialised in bitter satire. Middleton is thought to have written much of the first part of the play, but as Beale notes, it’s the second part of the play, Shakespeare’s section, that poses the greatest number of problems, among with some great pieces of writing. Was Shakespeare supposed to come back and revise it? And why, then, didn’t he? Beale speculates that perhaps Shakespeare was, if not on the verge of a nervous breakdown, depressed himself.

Maybe Shakespeare moved on to another project, another play that shares some of the same dark features but which is far more successful, King Lear. Here Beale considers Shakespeares’s source material The True Chronicle History of King Lear and its relation to the finished play. Shakespeare changed the source play in many ways, most strikingly the end where Cordelia does not die, and Beale suggests that there must have been reasons why Shakespeare made such a radical and brutal change. Perhaps it’s due to the editing of the video, but it’s not made clear that there are a number of possible sources for King Lear, several of which do include the death of Cordelia, so Shakespeare may have been choosing from a number of alternatives rather than simply inventing something new. Beale and Massai conclude by agreeing that no matter how much individual ideas may vary, what makes Shakespeare so endlessly interesting is that his work is open to innumerable interpretations. Accompanying the series is a free app to download: just go to the BBC series page and follow the links.

To find out more about the Folio, here’s a link to pages from the British Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library. And if you want to look at Folios and Quartos online, the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quartos project digitised all the quartos they hold (click on The Texts to find individual copies). Several complete Folios have been digitised: one from the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and two on the Internet Shakespeare editions: one from Brandeis University and another from the University of New South Wales, and there’s a searchable First Folio from the University of Chicago.   The Secret Life of Books is only available to download until 7 October so if you want to watch it you’ll need to act quickly.

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Two Shakespeareans remembered: Donald Sinden and Jeffery Dench

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Jeffery Dench and Donald Sinden attending the Shakespeare Birthday celebrations. Photo by Stratford-on-Avon District Council

Jeffery Dench and Donald Sinden attending the Shakespeare Birthday celebrations. Photo by Stratford-on-Avon District Council

I was sorry to hear of the death on 11 September 2014 of Donald Sinden, like Jeffery Dench who died in March an actor who had made a considerable contribution to productions of Shakespeare’s plays in Stratford-upon-Avon. Both men will be fondly remembered for their outstanding performances in comedy, history and tragedy, though personally I remember them both best in comic roles. As the photograph shows, they both also took part enthusiastically in the annual Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations that honour Shakespeare in his home town.

Donald Sinden acquired national and international fame through acting in films and television, but as well as starting his professional work on stage he remained closely involved in theatre and its history. He was the longest-standing president of the Royal Theatrical Fund and as recently as 2013 presented a documentary series on Great West End Theatres for Sky Arts. Always in demand, he claimed to have been unemployed for just five weeks between 1942 and 2008. Here are links to obituaries from the BBC, the Daily Telegraph and The Stage.

Donald Sinden (seated) in The Wars of the Roses, 1963

Donald Sinden (seated) in The Wars of the Roses, 1963

His career at Stratford started in 1946 when his roles included Le Beau in As You Like It, Arviragus in Cymbeline and Dumain in the iconoclastic director Peter Brook’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. He played the Duke of York in The Wars of the Roses, the 1963 trilogy that defined the RSC in its early years. Later he played both Henry VIII and Malvolio in 1969, and pulled off another unlikely doubling with Benedick and King Lear in 1976.

After a long gap he made welcome returns to the Stratford stage in John Barton’s programme The Hollow Crown in 2002 and 2005 in performances that were part of international and national tours. Other participants included Derek Jacobi, Ian Richardson, Janet Suzman, Clive Francis, Alan Howard, Harriet Walter and Richard Johnson.

Jeffery Dench’s contribution was lower-key, but no less important. In his tribute, the Company’s Artistic Director Gregory Doran said “Jeffery was the kind of actor that made the RSC what it is: he did not necessarily always play the leading roles, but proved by his presence that the company’s vitality lies in its strength on depth”. His loss has been very deeply felt by Stratfordians amongst whom he lived, to whose charitable causes he gave time and energy. During a career that stretched over four decades he appeared in dozens of productions for the RSC, several of which also featured Donald Sinden. They first worked together in The Wars of the Roses, then later in Henry VIII, in the hugely successful revival of London Assurance, performed in London in the seventies, and in the 1979 Othello.

On Sunday 5 October a concert and reading to commemorate Jeffery Dench is being held by English Serenata, a music group consisting largely of professional musicians who work or worked with the RSC in Stratford. Gabrielle Leese, director and player, writes: “We chose the Shakespeare Garland because of all the work we have shared with Jeffery, this programme epitomises him and his career most. Not only is it a tribute to a fine actor, but it reflects the interest which the then full-time RSC band felt in their heritage of music for Shakespeare. However, principally it is English Serenata’s memorial to Jeffery, as our much loved patron, who toured with us many times and with the former English Serenata Youth Choir”.

Jeffery Dench and Ian Hughes in Merry Wives the Musical, 2006-7

Jeffery Dench and Ian Hughes in Merry Wives the Musical, 2006-7

She continues “no-one has evoked the atmosphere or Stratford, that busy little market town, more effectively than Jeffery…. The programme traces the story of Shakespeare and music inspired by his plays, as performed in Stratford-upon-Avon, from the time of Shakespeare’s death to Jeffery’s last performance at the RST in Merry Wives the Musical in 2007.” It will include music by distinguished composers including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Guy Woolfenden, Richard Rodney Bennett, James Walker, John Gardner, Howard Blake, Jeremy Sams and Nigel Hess, as well as personal reminiscences by friends and family.

Performers on the 5th will include RSC actors Katy Stephens, Sam Alexander and Oliver Dench (who is also Jeffery’s grandson), and soprano Lois Murray. The performance will take place at The Barn, in Bidford-on-Avon at 7.30pm and full information is available on English Serenata’s website.

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If music be the food of love, play on! Music Notes at the RSC

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Musicians on stage for The Taming of the Shrew in 2012

Musicians on stage for The Taming of the Shrew in 2012

Music and theatre have always been closely associated. You might not always be aware of it when you visit a theatre, but it is often created live by a team of largely unseen musicians.  The RSC, after its formation, insisted on having live music for its shows, and many distinguished composers have written music for the company and its predecessors at the theatres in Stratford. For many years, Guy Woolfenden masterminded the Company’s music, over the years achieving the distinction of having written music for all of Shakespeare’s plays. Before its transformation, the main theatre’s bandbox was above and behind the main theatre, its only communication with the stage being by closed circuit TV and headphones.

Members of the band did occasionally appear onstage, having to dress in costume for parades or the playing of an instrument on stage. But nowadays its more common to see the musicians, as for instance you do in The Two Gentlemen of Verona where they are positioned to each side of the stage at first gallery level.

Among the blogs which now form part of the RSC’s website is one I’ve only recently spotted, Music Notes written by Richard Sandland, the theatre’s Music Operations Manager. In his first post which was written on 1 August he talks about the work he’s done using the RSC’s Archives, kept at the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive where they are available for anyone to consult. Some years ago Richard unearthed, among a heap of uncatalogued music, the piece written specially for the 1879 opening of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, a great find and by the look of his posts, just the first of many.

In other posts he’s written about the TOP play Country Dancing, on the subject of Cecil Sharp’s activities in recording country folk songs and dances before they disappeared from memory, about John Wooldridge who after a wartime career flying Lancaster bombers for the RAF wrote the music for the 1951 production of The Tempest, and about Anthony Bernard who was in charge of the music at the theatre between 1932 and 1942. Richard is uncovering fantastic material on a subject that is very much neglected, partly because it is relatively inaccessible, the music itself existing only in manuscript. It’s great to hear the RSC’s music team is trying to improve access to this fascinating part of the history of their productions.

Actors in rehearsal for the RSC

Actors in rehearsal for the RSC

There is also a whole section on the RSC’s website devoted to the company’s musical activities. It’s also great news that the RSC is now recording and issuing the music it performs in its shows, and it seems to me that recently music in the Company’s shows is taking a much more prominent place. More please, Richard!

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Thomas Platter’s visit to Shakespeare’s theatre

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
The reconstructed Shakespeare's Globe

The reconstructed Shakespeare’s Globe

On 21 September 1599 a Swiss tourist, Thomas Platter, visiting London, went to the newly-opened Globe Theatre to see a play. As it happened, he saw Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The occasion made quite an impression on him, so much so that he wrote a long description. This is a translation.
On September 21st after lunch, about two o’clock, I and my party crossed the water, and there in the house with the thatched roof witnessed an excellent performance of the tragedy of the first Emperor Julius Caesar, with a cast of some fifteen people; when the play was over they danced very marvellously and gracefully together as is their wont, two dressed as men and two as women…

Thus daily at two in the afternoon, London has sometimes three plays running in different places, competing with each other, and those which play best obtain most spectators.

The playhouses are so constructed that they play on a raised platform, so that everyone has a good view. There are different galleries and places, however, where the seating is better and more comfortable and therefore more expensive. For whoever cares to stand below only pays one English penny, but if he wishes to sit he enters by another door, and pays another penny, while if he desires to sit in the most comfortable seats which are cushioned, where he not only sees everything well, but can also be seen, then he pays yet another English penny at another door. And during the performance food and drink are carried round the audience, so that for what one cares to pay one may also have refreshment.

The actors are most expensively costumed for it is the English usage for eminent Lords or Knights at their decease to bequeath and leave almost the best of their clothes to their serving men, which it is unseemly for the latter to wear, so that they offer them for sale for a small sum of money to the actors.

This is one of only a handful of accounts of what it was like to attend the theatre. From it theatre historians have drawn many conclusions about playhouses in Elizabethan England, and about the experience of the audience. It’s something of a miracle that this information has survived, but it began with Thomas Platter taking the trouble to write down his memories of the experience.

I’m interested in recording members of the audience to build up an archive about the modern experience of seeing Shakespeare in the theatre. You can find more information on the Listening to the Audience page.

This post was originally published in September 2012

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Shakespeare and Education

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Shakespeare at Play app

Shakespeare at Play app

Recently the Huffington Post published an article written by a teenager about how Shakespeare should be taught, specifically to ten-year olds. She remembered her own experience “when I moved up to secondary school I was thrown into the deep end; baffled with sentences that didn’t make sense, characters who moaned endlessly at an empty, starless nights, and story lines that concluded with every character dying at the end.” At fourteen “the way I was introduced to Shakespeare was not dry, boring or strenuous; I was helped along the way using a variety of methods: from hands-on active engagement, to learning monologues off by heart.”

Alix Long, the author of the piece, goes on: “Maybe it is not the actual language in Shakespeare’s plays that makes it hard for children to be interested in the story. Perhaps it is the way that we teach Shakespeare that causes the confusion, the difficulty, the anxiety”.

She examines several approaches that can be seen to work. Brendan Kelso’s books Playing With Plays “aim to amuse, inspire and actively engage children and adults alike”, using humour, energetic language and some of Shakespeare’s original words.  Ian Campbell, working at the Shakespeare by the Sea Festival in Canada put on a Shakespeare production specially for kids, for free, getting a terrific response from the children. And Debra Williamson takes Shakespeare back into the classroom, using resources that help introduce young children to Shakespeare. “I think your question to me really is the answer….you have to know your students, and within that group, find material that interests and engages them. My students loved choosing their own plays, creating their costumes, and feeling free…to showcase their … newfound love of Shakespeare.”

An Elizabethan hornbook, an early teaching aid

An Elizabethan hornbook, an early teaching aid

Enjoyment plus learning is always a successful combination. As Tranio suggests to his master in The Taming of the Shrew “No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en:/ In brief, sir, study what you most affect”.

Alix Long concludes: “I think those words can speak for themselves. If only we can eradicate the idioms ‘hard’, ‘confusing’ and ‘difficult’ from the language of students studying Shakespeare, then we can really start to change the way Shakespeare is taught, appreciated and understood by children, teenagers and adults in schools and wider society.”

Now she’s not saying anything particularly new, but it’s interesting that a teenager is already concerned enough to try to find an answer to the issue of why Shakespeare, which seems to be appreciated so readily by children, is still so badly taught.

Even though she has probably been exposed to digital media from an early age, she does not consider any method of engaging with Shakespeare that uses computers, smartphones, digital cameras or tablets. I’ve just been sent details of an app, Shakespeare at Play, that aims to bring people Shakespeare’s plays as they are meant to be experienced. Through the app the user watches a video of every scene, staged simply, simultaneously reading the text. It’s a simple idea using technology to help those who struggle with the words alone, and there are sample on the website.

shakespeare and the digital worldThe newly published book Shakespeare and the Digital World is much concerned with education, whether it’s teachers and students, publication or theatre companies trying to engage with audiences. The section of the book looking specifically at education examines work being carried out at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Sheila Cavanagh and Kevin Quarmby have undertaken a transatlantic experiment. “Captivated by the idea of offering students in…class the opportunity to offer practitioner-based text and theatre exercises through videoconferencing, these instructors set up jointly-led classroom sessions, with Quarmby interacting with Cavanagh’s…undergraduates from his office in London.” Students entered into a kind of rehearsal situation in which they work through a scene with Quarmby via Skype, with sometimes unexpected results.

Erin Sullivan writes about the attempts that have been made at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford to “align” online teaching for distance learners with that for those actually there. “Some of the best things about our community are decidedly analogue – impromptu research conversations in the garden, weekly play-readings of lesser-known Renaissance plays and seminars on Shakespeare’s life and works”. Reading and lectures are easily adapted, but seminars are difficult to replicate. Written conversations have been tried, but without the unselfconscious spontaneity of a group discussion “there is more premeditation, planning and single-mindedness in their answers”.

This is no bad thing in itself: in his essay Pete Kirwan considers the value of blogging  “as a means of enabling self-reflection, critical awareness and intellectual independence among students”. The solitary activity of blogging, then, has its place, but is only one element of the educational experience.

Shakespeare and the Digital World doesn’t set out to solve the problem of introducing Shakespeare to ten-year olds, but the analytical thinking, asking as Erin Sullivan does questions about the kinds of knowledge they want to help students acquire, how to develop this knowledge, and how to show it has been done, can be applied at any level.

Shakespeare and his World MOOC

Shakespeare and his World MOOC

Finally on the subject of education, the University of Warwick’s Massive Open Online Course Shakespeare and his World is to be re-run from 29 September 2014. I took it first time round and found it enjoyable, engaging and informative and I’d recommend it for any life-long learners wanting a different approach to the subject.

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Robert Bell Wheler, “the historian of Stratford”

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Wheler's 1814 Guide to Stratford

Wheler’s 1814 Guide to Stratford

2014 is being celebrated as the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, but in Stratford there is also another significant anniversary this year. It is just 200 years since Robert Bell Wheler published his Guide to Stratford-upon-Avon. Aged 21, Wheler had already, in 1806, written another book on the town, his History and Antiquities of Stratford-upon-Avon, comprising a Description of the Collegiate Church, the Life of Shakespeare, and Copies of several documents relating to him and his Family, never before printed. The guide was abridged from the earlier book with the addition of extra material and both were printed locally, by J Ward. They are both important as they contain, as the title page of the History suggests, transcripts of documents not at the time generally known, Wheler and fellow-antiquarian Captain James Saunders having been allowed access to the records of the town.

The map of Stratford from Wheler's 1814 Guide

The map of Stratford from Wheler’s 1814 Guide

The History also contains eight engravings of views of the town, biographical sketches of other “eminent characters”, and an account of the Garrick Jubilee from 1769. The Guide contains a map of the town, though one had been published several decades earlier, and enhanced biographical material as well as an additional chapter on “Shakespeare’s Ring”, which had been found near the church in 1810 and had been immediately acquired by Wheler “I purchased it upon the same day for thirty-six shillings, (the current value of the gold)”.

His chapters cover most of the sights included in modern guide books: a historical account of the town, the Birthplace, New Place, the Guild Chapel, the Church. Some buildings are known by a different name now (Shakespeare’s Hall is the Town Hall), and some, like the College, have been pulled down, their existence now only remembered in street names (College Street and College Lane are both near the Church and the College itself was situated very roughly where the Parish Hall is today). There is, quite rightly, a section on the Great Stone Bridge (Clopton Bridge), though I doubt if anybody would give two pages to the footbridge now known as Lucy’s Mill Bridge, which he calls simply Mill Bridge.

Here is Wheler’s account of the geographical location of the town:
Stratford is pleasantly situated upon the south-west border of the county of Warwick, on a gentle ascent from the banks of the Avon; which derives its source from a spring called Avon Well, in the village of Naseby, in Northamptonshire; and continuing its meandering course in a South-west direction approaches Stratford in a broad and proudly swelling stream, unequaled in any other part of this beautiful river. The name of Stratford is undoubtedly derived from its situation on the Great North road leading from London to Birmingham, Shrewsbury, and Holyhead; straete or stret, signifying in the Saxon language a street or highway; and the word ford, alluding to the passage through the Avon parallel with the great bridge.

Robert Bell Wheler was born and lived all his at the home of his father, Robert Wheler who died in 1819. With him lived his sisters Anne and Elizabeth, none of whom married. He went to the local grammar school and was articled to his father, a solicitor. Becoming a solicitor himself gave him the knowledge to examine and understand the documents relating to the history of the town. He seems hardly ever to have left Stratford except in 1812 when he was obliged to spend a month in London for his formal admission as a solicitor.

Shakespearean research, though, was Wheler’s passion. His Guide to Stratford contained, as well as information about places, biographies of both Shakespeare and his illustrious son-in-law, Doctor John Hall. He contributed articles on Shakespearian subjects to the Gentleman’s Magazine, and corresponded frequently with the influential London antiquary John Britton. Much of his correspondence, as well as other manuscript material still exists at the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive where they are a major source of information about the history of the town. He was secretary to the committee organising the 1816 celebrations marking the bicentenary of Shakespeare’s death, and was involved in the drive from 1820-23 to raise money for a mausoleum to be erected to the memory of Shakespeare, which eventually came to nothing.

The Wheler family grave

The Wheler family grave

After Wheler’s death on 15 July 1857 he was buried beside his father in the Churchyard of Holy Trinity. Buried in the same double grave are his two sisters, Elizabeth who died in 1852 and Anne who died in 1870. This grave is prominently positioned just to the left as you enter the graveyard: from the gravestones the house in which they all lived in Old Town can  be seen. As historians and solicitors father and son must have given much thought to their own ends.

When I was researching the American windows in Holy Trinity Church I was surprised to find that there is a window dedicated to Wheler which is positioned, appropriately, almost opposite the monument to Shakespeare.

The window in Holy Trinity Church dedicated to Robert Bell Wheler

The window in Holy Trinity Church dedicated to Robert Bell Wheler

They are the four upper lights in the second window from the east end, and they depict the raising of Jairus’s daughter. The brass plaque below the window reads: “The above four compartments of this window were enriched by stained glass in memory of Robert Bell Wheler the historian of Stratford who deceased 1857 aged 72 years”.

 

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