The Shakespeare blog

Dylan Thomas’s centenary and Shakespeare

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

After Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas is said to be the most frequently quoted British poet, an extraordinary achievement for a man who died at the early age of 39. 2014 is the centenary of his birth, and although his actual birthday isn’t until October celebrations are well under way. Radio 3 has already staged a Dylan Thomas day on 5 May, and on this Sunday, 18 May, BBC 2 is screening a new drama A Poet in New York that focuses on the days leading up to his death in a New York hospital. Thomas is being played by actor Tom Hollander who has been interviewed about taking on the role.

Hollander as Dylan Thomas

Thomas’s poetry demands to be spoken out loud, and one of the biggest challenges to Hollander was finding the right voice for Thomas, who was a famous speaker of his own work.
“There was an initial huge relief on discovering that he didn’t sound that Welsh,” says the actor, producing his iPhone on which he has stored recordings of Thomas performing his poetry. “Listen… he sounded more like Richard Burton. There’s some Welsh music to it, but it’s an English voice… This was a time when aspirant Welsh people were losing their Welsh and becoming the Anglo-Welsh.”

Here is Dylan Thomas reading “Do not go gentle into that good night”

This poem was written at the time that Thomas’s father was dying, the son imploring his father to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” His father had been a great influence on him. An English Literature teacher at Swansea Grammar School, he read Dylan poetry from the age of two. By four the boy was able to recite speeches from Shakespeare. Both the tone of the poem and specific echoes refer to Shakespeare’s King Lear on the heath, where an old man rages against the elements:
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head!

The website Neurotic poets quotes from a letter Thomas is said to have written to an American fan:
The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone. What the words stood for, symbolised, or meant was of very secondary importance — what mattered was the very sound of them as I heard them for the first time on the lips of the remote and quite incomprehensible grown-ups who seemed, for some reason, to be living in my world. And those words were, to me, as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments, the noises of wind, sea, and rain, the rattle of milkcarts, the clapping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on a window pane, might be to someone deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing.

Although Thomas was a distinguished reader of his own poetry, and was recorded reading speeches from Shakespeare, it’s Richard Burton’s voice that is forever linked with Thomas’s poetry. His rich, dark, smoky voice with its Welsh intonation is a perfect match. As the image shows he recorded a great deal of Thomas’s work, but his 1954 recording of the opening of Under Milk Wood is brilliant, and easily available on YouTube as here.

If you’d like to read more, this is the official Dylan Thomas website, and here is the link to the Dylan Thomas Experience. Here’s also an L.A. Times page that includes links to Thomas-related webpages. And the BBC’s website also links to lots of background material.

Posted in Legacy | Tagged Dylan Thomas, New York, Richard Burton, Swansea, Under Milk Wood, Wales | 2 Comments

Penshurst, the Sidneys and rare Ben Jonson

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

Sir Philip Sidney

Next month, on 8 and 9 June 2014, a conference is to be held exploring the idea of connection between writing and location. Literary scholars and architectural historians will come together at Penshurst Place in Kent, the home of Sir Philip Sidney and the inspiration for Jonson’s famous poem. Entitled Dramatizing Penshurst: Site, Scripts, Sidneys,

This conference…, featuring a Globe Education ‘Read not Dead’ staged reading of Lady Mary Wroth’s Love’s Victory, offers a unique opportunity to explore how site and writing connect in the work of the Sidney-Herbert family. How does the architecture of the great house, the gardens and the estate function as a symbolic site of community for this literary coterie? How, in turn, do the plays, poems, letters and stories recreate the site, dramatizing it in fictive scenes? The conference will explore how Penshurst Place operates as a repository of memories and tradition and simultaneously as a place of literary innovation (in sonnet sequences, lyrics, female-authored drama and pastoral romance.

Sir Philip Sidney, eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney who was Lord Deputy of Ireland, is the most famous past inhabitant of Penshurst. Philip was highly-educated and accomplished, known as a poet and a patron to writers including Edmund Spenser whose Shepheardes Calendar was dedicated to him. As a courtier he was “the flower of chivalry” and appointed by Queen Elizabeth as ambassador to part of Germany. Also a soldier, he died at the age of 31 after being wounded in battle in the Netherlands. He was greatly mourned, being honoured with a state funeral and burial in St Paul’s Cathedral.

Sir Philip Sidney’s In Defense of Poery

His poetry and prose was not published during his lifetime and his memory and reputation was nurtured by the rest of his family who were also poets. As he died in 1586 it’s unlikely that Shakespeare and he met, but Shakespeare must have been aware of his reputation and of his literary works.

It was above all his sister Mary who was responsible for promoting his memory by publishing his literary works. She, her brother Robert and Robert’s daughter Lady Mary Wroth were all distinguished poets. The Sidneys were also connected to another powerful family, the Herberts. Mary Sidney, Philip’s sister, married Henry Herbert and their sons William and Philip were the promoters of Shakespeare’s First Folio in 1623. In an additional complication Lady Mary Wroth had an affair with one of the brothers, William.

Penshurst itself was immortalised by Ben Jonson’s 1616 poem in praise of the house, the estate and its owner Robert Sidney, Philip’s younger brother. It’s not the building itself, but what happens within it and the moral qualities of the masters of the house are what makes it special.
Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee
With other edifices, when they see
Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else,
May say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.

The detailed description gives an impression of a place of dreamy, sylvan perfection, apart from normal life, a paradise of plenty and hospitality for owners, servants and visitors alike.
Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,
Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours.
The early cherry, with the later plum,
Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come;
The blushing apricot and woolly peach
Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach.
And though thy walls be of the country stone,
They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan;
There’s none that dwell about them wish them down;
But all come in, the farmer and the clown,
And no one empty-handed, to salute
Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.

Ben Jonson by Abraham van Blyenberch, oil on canvas, circa 1617. NPG2752

A one-day conference is also being held at the University of Leeds on Friday 30 May to celebrate the publication of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson. The printed version was published in seven volumes by Cambridge University Press in July 2012. It provides fully-annotated and modernised texts for both students and the general reader. Earlier this year the edition was published online. Taking advantage of the possibilities of online publication it is fully searchable and as well as all the original introductions and commentary it also includes much additional material such as hundreds of digital images, lists of performances of Jonson’s plays, and essays on Jonson. Here is the link to the dedicated website.

Although the edition itself is only available on subscription this additional material is free to all. A pity, I think, not to include a sample of the online edition so people can at least see what they’re missing. Contributors to the day include several people who have been involved in the challenge of simultaneously preparing the work in two formats, with eminent professor David Bevington joining in from Chicago by Skype. It’s already being said that the new editions will result in a reappraisal of the man and his work. Jonson was the first playwright to preserve his writings for posterity and he would, I’m sure, love the attention this new edition will bring.

Posted in Shakespeare's World | Tagged Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, Lady Mary Wroth, Penshurst, Sir Philip Sidney | Comments Off

The Rape of Lucrece

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

Title Page of the 1616 quarto edition of The Rape of Lucrece

Exactly 420 years ago, on 9 May 1594, Shakespeare’s long poem The Rape of Lucrece was registered before being published later that year. In the dedication to the poem he had written the year before, Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare sounds somewhat apologetic at its lightweight tone: the poem focuses on the Goddess of Love’s steamy obsession with a beautiful youth. It’s known that it was a favourite of students. In the anonymous Parnassus plays, written and performed by the students of St John’s College Cambridge, the foolish Gullio says he will “worship sweet Master Shakespeare, and to honour him will lay his Venus and Adonis under my pillow” Perhaps the young Earl of Southampton, to whom it was dedicated, was not entirely happy with being associated with such a frivolous work. Maybe that is why Shakespeare vows ” to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour.”

This graver labour was The Rape of Lucrece, and although still sycophantic, Shakespeare in his dedication sounds more confident that he has hit the right tone. “The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance.”

Both poems were popular, going through several quarto editions. Both deal with uncontrollable physical desire. In both a powerful figure desires a subservient one, who subsequently dies. But the tone of the second poem is dark. A mature woman, married to an important man, is ravished and as a result takes her own life. This poem is one of Shakespeare’s least-read works nowadays, but it was highly regarded in its time. What was it about the poem that made it so admired?.

The story had inspired works of art such as Titian’s famous painting before Shakespeare’s time, and it stuck deep in Shakespeare’s imagination. Tarquin’s rape of Lucrece is almost re-played in his play Cymbeline, in the disturbingly voyeuristic scene where Iachimo hides in a trunk brought into Imogen’s chamber, and emerges to watch her as she sleeps. The story of the ravished Philomel, transformed into the nightingale in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is referred to in both The Rape of Lucrece and in Titus Andronicus where another rape takes place. Macbeth refers to “Tarquin’s ravishing strides”. As so often Shakespeare uses closely-observed images from the natural world, here to liken Lucrece to a deer after she has taken the awful decision to kill herself:

Tarquin and Lucretia by Titian, 1571

As the poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze,
Wildly determining which way to fly,
Or one encompass’d with a winding maze,
That cannot tread the way out readily;
So with herself is she in mutiny,
To live or die which of the twain were better,
When life is shamed, and death reproach’s debtor.

The question of why the poem proved so popular may relate to passages like this but also to sections of the poem where Shakespeare moves away from the narrative to consider wider issues. Lucrece, having made her decision to commit suicide to preserve both her and her husband’s reputation, bemoans the unfairness of life. Here she blames time, and what he calls opportunity but which we might call chance, accident, or coincidence, which has made it possible for the rape to take place. Not Tarquin, but time, is held responsible for her situation. The subject of how our lives are shaped by forces beyond our control was indeed more likely to appeal to the serious reader. And the debate about personal responsibility versus fate is one which he went on to dramatise particularly in tragedies like King Lear and Macbeth.

Here is part of this section:
‘Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly Night,
Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,
Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
Base watch of woes, sin’s pack-horse, virtue’s snare;
Thou nursest all and murder’st all that are:
O, hear me then, injurious, shifting Time!
Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.

‘Why hath thy servant, Opportunity,
Betray’d the hours thou gavest me to repose,
Cancell’d my fortunes, and enchained me
To endless date of never-ending woes?
Time’s office is to fine the hate of foes;
To eat up errors by opinion bred,
Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.

‘Time’s glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger till he render right,
To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
And smear with dust their glittering golden towers.

Posted in Plays and Poems, Shakespeare's World | Tagged Ovid, poem, quarto, The Rape of Lucrece, Titian, Venus and Adonis | 3 Comments

Shakespeare and Sherlock

Posted on May 6, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

Sidney Paget’s 1904 illustration of Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous characters in literature. So compelling has Arthur Conan Doyle’s brilliant detective proved to be since the stories were written over a century ago that he has been brought to life in scores of films, TV series and radio plays. And the character himself has inspired novelists and playwrights to write new stories. So powerful a hold does this fictional character have that a museum dedicated to him, furnished as if he had really lived there, is situated in Baker Street, London.

Nobody has opened a Hamlet museum, but if there was to be a Shakespeare character to have his own museum this would probably be it.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock

A few weeks ago it was announced that Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock in the TV dramas loosely based on the Conan Doyle stories, is to play Hamlet on the London stage in 2015. Then it was announced that Cumberbatch is also to play Richard III in the second crop of filmed versions of Shakespeare’s History plays from Henry VI to Richard III, informally called The Hollow Crown 2. Will he be as successful in either of these as he has been as Sherlock? If so, in which will he be better?

Cumberbatch is a fine actor with a strong background in theatre, even if not particularly in Shakespeare. And he’s just the latest actor who has played Sherlock Holmes also to have played Shakespeare’s most famous characters. In the Wikipedia article listing all the actors there are a surprising number who have played Hamlet and/or Richard III. Players of both include Christopher Plummer, John Barrymore and Ian Richardson. Distinguished players of Hamlet and Sherlock include Jonathan Pryce, John Gielgud, Michael Pennington and Peter O’Toole.

Poster for the RSC’s production of Sherlock Holmes, featuring John Wood

When Doyle himself wrote a play featuring Holmes he first approached two leading Shakespearian actors, Beerbohm Tree and Henry Irving (who both turned it down) before allowing American actor William Gillette to adapt the play. Gillette was already an established actor and playwright and when he performed as Sherlock he adopted the deerstalker hat and curved pipe which became Holmes’s trademark props. In 1974 distinguished Shakespearean actor John Wood played Holmes in the RSC’s production of Doyle and Gillette’s play. His student performance of Richard III had attracted critical attention, leading to his early stage success. As Holmes, one critic wrote “cool, authoritative, sardonic,” “he seemed made for the role”.

So did Conan Doyle have Shakespeare in mind when he wrote the character of Holmes? According to Ted Friedman, “Sherlock Holmes is familiar with the writings of William Shakespeare … Holmes quoted Shakespeare from 14 of his plays in various cases”. The most famous Shakespeare quote spoken by Holmes, though, is the brief sentence “The game is afoot” which comes in The Adventure of the Abbey Grange, and is from Henry V. It hardly indicates that Shakespeare provided a lot of obvious inspiration for Conan Doyle. Robert Fleissner, though, wrote a serious study that finds many connections between Doyle and Shakespeare in 2003 with Shakespearean and Other Literary investigations with the Master Sleuth (and Conan Doyle) Homing in on Holmes

There are plenty of authors of fiction who have linked the two authors: a couple of examples are Barry Day’s 1997 story Sherlock Holmes and the Shakespeare Globe murders and Barry Grant’s more recent mystery Sherlock Homes and the Shakespeare Letter.

Martin Freeman as John Watson in Sherlock

And no I haven’t forgotten that Martin Freeman, John Watson to Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, is to play Richard III on stage at Trafalgar Studios London this summer. Richard III and Dr Watson? An unlikely duo, but one that will give Martin Freeman an opportunity to show that he is a more versatile actor than his film and TV roles have suggested.

Posted in Legacy | Tagged Arthur Conan Doyle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Hamlet, Martin Freeman, Richard III, Sherlock Holmes | Comments Off

Live relays and encore showings: representing the live event

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

Vikings, life and legend

A week or so ago I attended the live relay for Vikings: life and legend, the British Museum’s current blockbuster exhibition. I expected it to consist mostly of TV historians Bettany Hughes and Michael Wood walking us round the exhibition showing us items on display, with some background about the history of the Vikings in the British Isles. In other words, I expected it to be like going to the exhibition accompanied by an expert.

What we got was quite different: Wood interviewed Neil MacGregor, the head of the British Museum about the origins of the exhibition and the new gallery in which it’s displayed, people with specialist knowledge were interviewed including boat-builders and yachtsman Robin Knox-Johnston, as well as experts and curators. I don’t mean to imply this wasn’t interesting or engaging, but I kept wondering what it was that made it different from watching a TV documentary since almost all the elements of the evening were pre-rehearsed and some were pre-recorded.

But then there were the unpredictable moments: the exhibition curator Gareth Williams and Bettany Hughes donning gloves before excitedly picking up one of the most precious items, the bowl in which a great Viking hoard was packed, and even better the moment when a Viking warrior in full armour stalked towards Michael Wood, removing his helmet to reveal, again, Gareth, sweating profusely, eyes gleaming as he demonstrated the use of the weapons a Viking raider would have carried. It was these that for me added value to the live experience.

Roger Allam as Falstaff, Shakespeare’s Globe

Live relays of plays in performance, and Encore performances where the film of the live relay is shown again, are now becoming quite common. With the live relay there’s always the risk of something going wrong as there is in the theatre, but otherwise what is the difference between the live and the Encore? I’ve recently been catching up on Erin Sullivan’s Digital Shakespeares blog, in which she has written several times about live relays, about the different ways in which they can be filmed and how they relate to the experience of being in the theatre. She does a lovely job of reminding readers of how much choice there is: should the relay include lots of close-ups and changes of camera angle so that it feels like a film, or take wide shots that remind the viewer of the presence of the audience? This post considers the style adopted by the Globe for its celebrated productions of the Henry IV plays with Roger Allam playing Falstaff.

Tom Hiddleston as Coriolanus, Donmar

While this one examines in great detail the filming of the Coriolanus with Tom Hiddleston at the Donmar. Perhaps inevitably given Hiddleston’s star status “the chief visual mode for this production was no doubt the close-up”, but not just for him. In the first scene between Volumnia and Virgilia “I counted 18 camera changes in the women’s opening exchange, which is Shakespeare’s text runs to about 25 lines if left uncut”. The Donmar is a studio theatre and this intensity does bring the cinema audience into close proximity with the performers, but I agree with her when she says “I still couldn’t shake off the feeling that I wanted the visual frame to slow down, and to back off. I wanted to see and explore more of the stage space on my own terms, to attend to Hiddleston’s powerful presence and even celebrity within the context of the whole theatre (audience included).”

Making the trailer for Henry IV, RSC

If you want to be made to think about how you represent a live theatre performance on film, John Wyver’s Illuminations blog explains the process of planning and filming the trailer for the RSC’s current production of Henry IV which is to be seen both onstage and in due course in cinemas.

Back with Digital Shakespeares, another post considers the connection between different kinds of live events. Why do we want to attend a live relay when, the following week, we can attend the Encore performance? Sullivan makes a parallel with the music festival.

In his introduction to the 1987 collection Time out of Time: Essays on the Festival, the anthropologist Alessandro Falassi writes that festival environments are centrally defined by three factors: ‘time, space, and action’. Time, in the sense of normal, mundane time disrupted and suspended; space, in the sense of either everyday or, conversely, rarely used spaces claimed for collective festival activity; and action, in the sense of the intensification of special activities such as prayers, performances, or feasts not typically a part of daily life. Falassi suggests that when these three things come together, normal life ‘is modified by a gradual or sudden interruption that introduces “time out of time,” a special temporal dimension devoted to special activities’.

There is, Falassi implies, no substitute for being there.

Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare on Stage | Tagged Bettany Hughes, British Museum, Coriolanus, Digital Shakespeares, Donmar, Erin Sullivan, Gareth Williams, Henry IV, Illuminations, John Wyver, Michael Wood, Vikings life and legend | Comments Off

Shakespeare and the brain: Conducting Shakespeare

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

An unusual experiment is to be carried out at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum on 2 May as part of the museum’s celebrations for Shakespeare’s 450th birthday. Called Conducting Shakespeare, It’s designed to find out how watching a performance of emotional scenes from Shakespeare can affect our brains.

Dr Alexis Kirke explains the thinking behind it:
“When watching people like David Tennant, Sir Patrick Stewart and Dame Judi Dench playing the classic Shakespeare roles, I am always struck by how utterly engaged you become in the experience. Your whole mind and body are in thrall to almost every word, and it is hard to put into words precisely what you are feeling. Biology can perhaps allow us to view that dramatic experience, and contribute to it, in a way that words cannot.”

The performance experiment – expected to last around 30 minutes – has been developed by Dr Kirke and Dr Peter Hinds, from Plymouth University, in collaboration with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The audience of around 100, including four hooked-up volunteers, will watch scenes from plays including Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet and Titus Andronicus being acted out by two recent graduates of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Melanie Heslop and James Mack.

Using a mathematical model, the “Valence-Arousal” model, Dr Kirke will then record the levels of physical and emotional response from the audience and direct the actors as to which scene should immediately follow it. The audience will be pitched from comedy to conflict, and from romance to tragedy.

Here’s a little more detail:
Four volunteers will be hooked up to bio-sensors monitoring brainwaves, heart-rate, perspiration and muscle tension. As the actors perform a scene onstage, the sensors will show the emotional response of the audience watching it – and in response to this, the ‘conductor’ of the piece will choose which scene should follow it. The performance will ‘remix’ Shakespeare across multiple plays, using technology to control the emotional arc of the performance.

At the time of writing, places were still available and you could even volunteer to be one of the four guinea pigs, so you could take part in this unique event. It will take place at 7pm, follow the link for more information.

I’ve never heard of anything quite like this before, though I know research has been done on the effect of listening to music on our brains. The power of the spoken word, as opposed to pure sound, may have quite different effects. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that Dr Kirke is from the University’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research, and here’s another quote:
Shakespeare always attempted to be in control of his audience’s emotions, manipulating both their mental and physical responses to his works. In essence, this is a natural extension of that but turns the tables somewhat in that the audience – consciously or subconsciously – will be the ones influencing the performance. His writing has a depth and profundity which stirs a range of feelings, but it will be fascinating to see how they can be used to create a new version of his works.

I look forward to hearing about the results of this unusual performance.

Posted in Legacy | Tagged biology, brain, Conducting Shakespeare, emotion, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Plymouth University, Victoria and Albert Museum | 1 Comment

Opening up resources for social media

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

Saturday 26 April, as well as the official celebration of Shakespeare’s Birthday, was World Intellectual Property Day. Shakespeare’s words have never in themselves been protected by any copyright law, but that doesn’t mean that he’s unaffected. Editions of the plays, photographs of performances, films, music, paintings, sound recordings, all are or have been protected to a degree.

Libraries caring for film and stills are traditionally very protective of material they hold, and the internet has generated new problems. But in the last few weeks there’s been good news: two great collections that administer intellectual property rights on their material have released massive amounts of it online for non-commercial use. They’ve done it in different ways, and for slightly different reasons, but it demonstrates how strong is the impulse for materials to now be opened up.

One result of the change is likely to be that enthusiasts are likely to help to enhance records, making it easier to find material. John Wyver, who runs the Illuminations blog and is a specialist in early television and the arts explains how this has already happened.

The first resource is the commercial Getty picture library of 35 million images. Not all are available royalty free, but the selection is still fantastic. Getty’s motivation is not simply altruism: it “made the move after realising thousand of its images were being used without attribution”. “Our content was everywhere already” said Craig Peters of Getty.

The photos can now be embedded in a way that links back to Getty’s site, making the images conveniently available while allowing Getty to continue to licence them commercially. Here too is a link to the BJPs guide to using the embed feature.

This example shows an unusual photograph of Orson Welles blacking up for his Othello.

#2673686 / gettyimages.com

The BBC article suggests that “In essence, it is admitting defeat. By offering the ability to embed photos, Getty is saying it cannot effectively police the use of its images in every nook and cranny of the internet”. To me, that’s not admitting defeat, but embracing an opportunity. Contributors to social media will increase the use of images and take them to new audiences. Not everyone is happy though. Photographers who post their work on the Getty site are concerned that their incomes will drop. I’m sure I’m not the only blogger who doesn’t use pictures I would have to pay for. Because there is so much choice (getting bigger all the time) I don’t need to. Many images on the internet are, though, uncredited which helps nobody and the new tool should improve this.

Time will tell, but it could be a canny move: the free pictures may encourage use of the site making it more of a destination in itself which may encourage more professionals to place their material with them.

The second great piece of news is that the entire British Pathe archive is now available on YouTube. This consists of 3,500 hours of high-quality filmed history from 1895-1969 originally shown as cinema newsreels. The films were digitised in 2002, partially funded by the UK National Lottery. I remember my excitement at finding a number of Shakespeare-related items on their site, and trying to view them via a slow dial-up link. Download times have certainly changed, but what will really make the difference is that they are now findable through YouTube, many people’s first port of call when searching for information. Pathe say that their aim is to make the archive more accessible to viewers all over the world but like the Getty material I expect they realise improving visibility will increase their chances of films being licensed for commercial use. Here is British Pathe’s explanation.

This is the film clip that I remember downloading painfully slowly, and watching in low resolution. It shows the so-called American Book, which was taken around the USA in 1928 to help raise funds for the rebuilding of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. I was intrigued because I recognised the massive book from the RSC collections stored in the basement strong rooms at the Shakespeare Centre.

Free resources are terrific for users, but not necessarily for he organisations that have to digitise, document, load and maintain them as well as caring for the originals. But it’s refreshing that attitudes are changing in favour of opening access. and it’s certainly good for the image of the organisations seen to be giving away valuable resources for free.

Posted in Legacy | Tagged copyright, Getty Images, intellectual property, Pathe News | Comments Off

Celebrating 450: the Shakespeare legacy

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

The parading of “Shakespeare’s Quill” in the 2014 Birthday Procession

As I write, we’re reaching the end of the celebrations for Shakespeare’s 450th anniversary. It’s an extraordinary record, and academic Jonathan Bate has recently written about Shakespeare’s status as universal cultural icon.

Bate suggests that although the 1964 celebrations were large, they were not as all-pervading as the 450 anniversary is. In spite of all the hullaballoo this year, I’m still not sure he’s right. In 1964 the SBT issued a handsomely-illustrated 56 page pamphlet called Celebrating Shakespeare including photos of many events and commemorative souvenirs, but didn’t attempt to be anything like inclusive. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust welcomed material documenting celebrations from around the world. The many that were received were carefully filed away in boxes and stored in strong rooms: maybe the difference between now and 50 years ago is not that more happens, but that we know more about it.

Parading past the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2014

I can’t resist one example of a tribute to Shakespeare which children’s writer Michael Rosen delivered on Radio 4’s PM programme on the 22nd. Rosen has a bit of a dig at current education policy, and it’s a subject that Jonathan Bate also covers. In his position on an advisory body, he has resisted the proposal that all 16-year olds should have to study not one but two Shakespeare plays: “It cannot be in Shakespeare’s interest for teenagers to associate him with compulsion” .

Bate salutes changes in attitude over the last 50 years that mean academics and theatre professionals no longer see themselves in opposition. “Much of the best modern scholarship has focused on the practicalities of performance in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, while the history of Shakespeare on stage and screen has become a thriving sub-discipline in its own right.” Theatre education departments are getting teachers and pupils to bring the plays to life by “speaking the lines aloud and fitting the word to the action.”

Part of the 2014 Birthday Procession

He suggests, “The crucial next step will be the adaptation of Shakespeare to the digitised classroom of the future. By the time the 500th anniversary is celebrated in 2064, textbooks will have been replaced by some version of the tablet computer” and he cites a project ” in which the plays can be simultaneously read and seen, with all sorts of contextual and explanatory information reachable at a click. ” Food for thought indeed.

In 2014 questions about how to celebrate proliferate. The new exhibition at Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Famous Beyond Words, focuses on how Shakespeare has for centuries inspired other artworks such as paintings as well as the celebrations themselves. On display is a perfect celebratory object, the 1623 First Folio: its publication was the first big memorial to its author’s achievement, combining Shakespeare’s work itself with poems and essays by people who knew him.

An unconventional addition for 2014: a 450th birthday cake

But the exhibition also begs the question “What are we celebrating?” Somehow we seem to be celebrating Shakespeare’s fame, rather than the work or the circumstances that help to explain it. But maybe that’s OK, particularly for a birthday party.

The Birthday celebrations in Stratford still follow the pattern established in the early nineteenth century with parades, banners, dinners, speeches and fireworks. The performance of one of his plays on the day of his birth was a late addition, first occurring in 1879 when the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was opened with Much Ado About Nothing.

Macebearers and Stratford’s Mayor in the procession, 2014

It remains both a national (nowadays international) event and a locally-organised one, the procession on a very human scale as people walk through the streets Shakespeare knew, giving an opportunity for those who already care for Shakespeare to show their respect. It’s also an opportunity for those who make their livings through Shakespeare, whether they be academics, shopkeepers or actors, to acknowledge their gratitude. As Bate says, “almost all countries in the world pay homage to William Shakespeare. His works are our most enduring cultural export.”

Posted in Legacy, Stratford-upon-Avon | Tagged Celebrating Shakespeare, education, Jonathan Bate, legacy, Michael Rosen, Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations, Stratford-upon-Avon | Comments Off

Shakespeare’s baptism at 450

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

The medieval font in which Shakespeare was baptised in Holy Trinity Church

Saturday 26 April 2014 is the 450th Anniversary of the baptism of William Shakespeare in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. Doubts may be cast over his exact birthday, but there is no debate about the exact date on which he was brought by his parents and their friends to be baptised in the ancient font that can still be seen in the church.

By great good fortune, this year the 26th falls on a Saturday. It was decided many years ago that the formal Birthday Celebrations should be held on the nearest Saturday to the 23rd, so this morning thousands of people will bring their floral tributes to the spot where we know that Shakespeare’s birth was formally celebrated on 26 April 1564, 450 years to the day.

The baptism record in Latin, “Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere” still exists, though the record is a copy made around 1600 from the original.

Regulations had been introduced in 1598 by which all parish registers recordings births, marriages and burials since the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign in 1558 should be kept on durable parchment rather than paper. Once the records had been transcribed into the beautiful leather-bound volume which bears the date 1600 on its cover, the original records were then discarded. The fact that these records are still in such good condition confirms that the decision to have these records transcribed by copyists was the right one.

Posted in Shakespeare's World, Stratford-upon-Avon | Tagged baptism, Holy Trinity Church, parish register, Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations | Comments Off

Celebrating Shakespeare’s 450th in Stratford

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

Some souvenirs of the 1964 celebrations

So how do you celebrate Shakespeare’s 450th birthday? The RSC are holding a fireworks display and on Saturday a day of events. The town is expecting bumper crowds on Saturday for its special parade, and for the first time in several years the traditional lunch for 500 people (all tickets were sold within days) is being held in a marquee on a lawn between the theatre and the church.

Back in 1964, for the Quatercentenary, celebrations were massive. Stratford was becoming ever more popular as more people had cars, and international travel was becoming the norm. The plays were screened on TV and in Stratford the RSC was drawing in younger audiences. In his book Celebrating Shakespeare Levi Fox listed the many elements that combined in this great celebration: “a major Shakespeare exhibition, outstanding musical contributions, poetry recitals, films, lectures, an international conference of scholars with folk dance and other local activities set against the background of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre’s productions of a cycle of history plays”.

In Stratford, at Shakespeare’s Birthplace, a new exhibition concentrating on the 1964 celebrations has just opened. Some of the events were described and illustrated in Fox’s book, including “countless festivals, productions and exhibitions, not to mention publications, postage stamps, medals and other commemorative souvenirs, publicized by the press, radio and television”.

The entrance hall of the 1964 Shakespeare Centre

There was though a desire to make something permanent out of this special year, and the opening of the Shakespeare Centre was a key part of the 1964 celebrations. The building was, to quote Levi Fox, “originally conceived as a kind of international birthday present to the memory of William Shakespeare”. This idea can be traced back to not long after Fox’s appointment to run the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in the 1940s. It was made possible by the gifts of Shakespeare-lovers from around the world, and included the work of international craftsmen such as the Hungarians Tibor Reich, a textile designer, and Paul Vincze, a medallist, and New Zealand glass engraver John Hutton.

The building symbolised what Levi Fox and the Trustees wanted the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to become: it was a combination of modernity and tradition, showing respect for the past, a love of all things Shakespeare, and an awareness that he can only live through the work of the present. Education at all levels was at its heart.

John Hutton’s glass panel of Bottom

In his book on The Shakespeare Centre, Fox described the new building as “primarily a place for study and research based on the Trust’s library and archive collections” combining as they did the collections of the Birthplace and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, a move he first suggested in 1946. Standing across the garden from the Birthplace the building’s uncompromising modernity did not please all, but from within its quality is apparent. Hutton’s gorgeous engraved glass panels featuring characters from Shakespeare’s plays can be admired both from within the building and from the garden, and soften the entrance hall in which Douglas Wain-Hobson’s hollow-eyed statue of Shakespeare stares towards the Birthplace. Every detail was considered: Tibor Reich’s green mottled carpet was inspired by seeing a forest from an aeroplane. Warm cherry wood was used for most of the panelling that covered many walls, and the original furniture came from Gordon Russell’s renowned Cotswold workshops.

The 1964 Reading Room with carved panel and glass vase

My favourite piece in the building is the carved wooden panel designed by Nicolete Gray, standing in what was the Reading Room of the Library where I worked for over twenty-five years. Ahead of its time, the lettering shows the name of Shakespeare not as a solitary genius, but as one among many contemporary writers. The panel is made in five different timbers and many styles of lettering. An impressive piece in its own right it was also totally appropriate for its location and did not overwhelm this compact room. On the central table was a large glass vase by John Hutton, based on the idea of a Greek vase, engraved with the dance of the reapers from The Tempest.

Fifty years on, will the 450th anniversary have a lasting legacy? In Stratford there is much uncertainty about the future of the traditional events, and questions are being asked about Shakespeare’s heritage in a world that has become increasingly complex.

The internet and social media are making huge differences to how people “meet” Shakespeare. But these are turning out to be just new ways of doing the same thing, encouraging people to appreciate and enjoy Shakespeare. I’m currently loving the MOOC Shakespeare and his World that uses the internet to bring real, physical, historic resources from the SBT’s Collections to the fore to explain the background to Shakespeare’s plays. It’s about using what we already have in a new way, and allowing thousands of people at the same time to hear academic Jonathan Bate’s analysis, and to share their responses with each other, free of charge.

Shakespeare’s schoolroom

Stratford isn’t short of Shakespeare-related buildings, memorials and collections that need support: just recently King Edward VI School has launched a project to open both Shakespeare’s schoolroom and Stratford’s medieval Guildhall to the public. The schoolroom stands above the Guildhall and both are in need of restoration. Part of this process will inevitably include interpreting the spaces to increase their potential for education and enjoyment. Anyone who’s visited these rooms will know how inspiring they are even now and it’s a fitting project for this anniversary year. It will take £1million project of which the school has to raise at least £200,000. Some details are here, and I’ll let TV historian Michael Wood give you the full story in his promotional film.

Posted in Legacy, Stratford-upon-Avon | Tagged King Edward VI School, Levi Fox, Quatercentenary, Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations, Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon | Comments Off

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