Veteran Shakespeare actor, Jeffery Dench

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

jeffery denchI’ve just heard the sad news that veteran Royal Shakespeare Company actor Jeffery Dench has died. He will be remembered fondly, and greatly missed, by thousands who saw him play a mind-boggling range of roles on the RSC’s stages.

His career with the RSC began in the 1960s when he was in the company’s landmark Wars of the Roses, followed by the David Warner Hamlet. He quickly established himself in comedy roles such as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night and Master Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

He had a particular talent for playing old men: one of the first things I saw him play was Adam in As You Like It in 1977/8, opening the play by getting in some wrestling practice with his Orlando (Peter McEnery/James Laurenson), despite his apparent age. Again in Merry Wives, he played Justice Shallow in both 1992 and, his last performance, in 2006. Both these have Shakespearean resonance: the faithful old servant Adam is supposed to have been a role written by Shakespeare for himself, and Shallow is involved in the discussions that might relate to the Lucy family of Charlecote. In one of the Histories, he also played a character called Thomas Lucy.

There was plenty of non-Shakespeare too: the Troll King to Derek Jacobi’s Peer Gynt in 1982, and the Water Rat in at least one of the revivals of Toad of Toad Hall.

One of the conspirators in the 1979 Julius Caesar

One of the conspirators in the 1979 Julius Caesar

It wasn’t all comedy: in 1974/5 he played Gloucester in Buzz Goodbody’s adaptation of King Lear, and as well as Pistol in Henry V he played a multitude of lords and soldiers in Terry Hands’ magnificent cycle of all three parts of Henry VI in 1977/8.

I came to live in Stratford in 1979 and saw all the plays repeatedly. He seemed to be in everything. As well as Brabantio in Othello and Cinna the conspirator in Julius Caesar he played Cymbeline in the play of the same name, his sister Judi playing his daughter Imogen. His most enjoyable performance of the year for me, though, was the doubling of Antiochus and the Pander in Pericles at The Other Place. In charge of the brothel where the innocent heroine Marina is held he was both frighteningly grotesque and blackly comic.

In the back row, as so often, Jeffery Dench as one of the company in Nicholas Nickleby

In the back row, as so often, Jeffery Dench as one of the company in Nicholas Nickleby

As part of the 1979 Stratford company he automatically became part of the company for what for me has been the RSC’s outstanding achievement, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, staged initially at the Aldwych in 1980-81, subsequently in New York, and filmed for Channel 4. Like almost everyone in the case he played many characters, though again most memorably the repellent old suitor Arthur Gride.

When not playing grotesque old men, he brought humour, warmth and integrity to  his parts. As a member of the audience, seeing Jeffery Dench’s name on the cast list was a guarantee of quality. Shakespeare did write brilliant leading roles for Burbage and others, but he also wrote for a known company of talented professionals. The RSC has been fortunate to have among its regulars a number of high-quality actors, safe hands that could carry the plays along with distinction. Jeffery Dench was one of those, and if there were to be a late twentieth-century version of the page in the First Folio “The Names of the Principal Actors in all These Plays”, his name would be on the list.

Full details of his RSC career can be found by searching by name on the RSC Performance Database

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Celebrating Shakespeare at 450 – updated

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

shakespeare birthday celebsWith less than a month to go, celebrations for the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth are getting into gear, and will continue right into the summer. A special website pulls together all the activities going on in Stratford over the weekend of 26/27 April, the nearest weekend to the actual day, 23 April. After a slightly low-key couple of years, several of the traditional elements are re-appearing including the use of New Place Garden for the procession to assemble and the return of the great marquee for the luncheon which will feature speeches from, among others, novelist Hilary Mantel and the retiring head of the National Theatre, Sir Nicholas Hytner. Quoting from the site,
Crowds will be lining the streets of this Elizabethan market town to see actors, foreign diplomats and civic dignitaries lead the 1,000-strong grand Birthday Procession from 10:30am on Saturday 26 April. They will be followed by a lively community pageant, street entertainers and the Stratford Morris Men.  Local people and visitors can join in too and walk with the pageant through the town to lay flowers on Shakespeare’s grave in the Holy Trinity Church.

But even before the birthday several big academic events are taking place. After several days celebrating Othello, on 10 April the British Institute of Florence is organising the 6th edition of the Shakespeare Graduate Conference on the theme  Forms of Nationhood, in collaboration with the Italian Association of Shakespeare and Early Modern Studies and the University of Florence

At the same time, from 10-12 April the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, a great gathering of Shakespearians not just from North America, takes place in St Louis. Here’s the program.

logo_Shake-450_teteseuleThe big event taking place in Europe to celebrate the 450th anniversary will be the Shakespeare 450 conference in Paris from 21-27 April, organised by the Societe Francaise Shakespeare. Not just European in scope there are sessions on Asian Shakespeare, Global Shakespeare, and Shakespeare in Brazilian Popular Culture as well as Shakespeare and Voltaire, Shakespeare in the Great War, Shakespeare in Cold War Europe, and the opening session entitled Pourquoi Shakespeare?

Not an academic conference, but for light relief you might like to read about another event, or even to enter it. The St Paul Pioneer Press is holding a contest to celebrate Shakespeare’s 450th birthday. This will take place in April and it’s the 45-second Shakespeare Film Festival Contest. There’s a video here to explain   and here is the website where you can enter and watch the videos.

After the birthday itself, conferences continue. Not actually Shakespeare-focused, the Malone Society conference is sure to attract Shakespeare scholars. It will take place on 17 May at Oxford University. The Society was established in 1906 for the  unfashionable purpose of producing accurate copies of the best editions of early plays. It’s rather wonderful that the Society is now finding that having spent years publishing and discussing the most obscure of texts its work is becoming mainstream as collaboration becomes more and more popular as a topic. This year they’re going to be looking at the anonymous play The Fair Maid of the Exchange.

On 3 June there will be a one-day symposium at De Montfort University, in Leicester, entitled Reforming Shakespeare: 1593 and After. This will look at “the kinds of alteration that have occurred  to Shakespeare’s writing as it has made its journey from author to readers and playgoers. ‘Reforming’ may take the sense of being given new shape as authorial or non-authorial adaptation, rewriting, borrowing or allusion and arguments about any of these processes… ‘Reforming’ can also suggest correction and improvement, including censorship, editing, and tidying up of text to make it conform to new conditions of reception.” There’s more on the flyer.

From 5-7 June attention shifts back to Stratford-upon-Avon for the Annual BritGrad conference taking place at the Shakespeare Institute. This covers many areas of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies. There’s lots more information here.

Then the British Shakespeare Association Conference will be taking place at the University of Stirling from 3-6 July 2014. Full details haven’t been released yet, but the conference will centre on questions of authority in Shakespeare. Here’s the website.

NEWS!
Since I first sent out this post I’ve been contacted by the Victoria and Albert Museum to remind me of their very extensive 450 celebrations. The information that follows gives details, and some links. Do enjoy these great events!

Our festivities will run throughout April – May, with special emphasis on the Festival Fortnight, 21 April – 4 May. The programme will include a huge range of talks, performances, screenings, tours, workshops, special activities and themed events for all ages. Most activities are free of charge.

A full programme can be found here:  some highlights include:

Conducting Shakespeare
Scenes from Shakespeare, with a twist. The programme will be ‘conducted’ in direct response to the emotional responses of volunteers from the audience (detected by a series of bio-sensors monitoring brainwaves, heart-rate, perspiration and muscle tension).

Propeller Professional Development Workshops
Set design, 3 May:  Sound, 28 April: Performance, 28 April:

The Bookshop Band
2 May, 19.30 and 20.45
Folk trio perform new songs inspired by the Bard
In addition, the V&A has produced a special Shakespeare Trail map, showing a journey through the Museum, visiting a range of objects related to Shakespeare.

The exhibition Shakespeare: Greatest Living Playwright is also on display in the Theatre and Performance galleries until 28 September 2014.

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Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
"Juliet's Balcony" in Verona

“Juliet’s Balcony” in Verona

Over the past few weeks a lively discussion has been going on at the Shakespeare noticeboard SHAKSPER under the title “Balcony”. The so-called balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet is probably Shakespeare’s most famous single scene, and no wonder as it’s the one where Romeo and Juliet, at night, passionately declare their love for each other and resolve to marry in spite of the feud between their families.

The discussion on SHAKSPER was triggered by an enquiry from Lois Leveen at the end of February who wondered “why/how the idea of “the balcony scene” developed and proves so persistent in the popular imagination. Why is the balcony so impressed upon the collective consciousness, when no character in the play, and nothing in the stage directions, refers to it as such?”

This was a follow-up comment to remind SHAKSPER contributors of the original question, as responses had gone off at a bit of a tangent, as these things do. For several weeks there have been a variety of posts. Some started discussing arrangements at The Globe, until others pointed out that with the first quarto being published in 1597 Shakespeare didn’t write the play for the Globe, and nobody is sure about the relationship of the second 1599 quarto to the Globe either. Despite evidence of the play’s popularity on stage and in print, there are no records of the play’s performance during Shakespeare’s lifetime.

c Walter Hodges illustration of the balcony scene

c Walter Hodges illustration of the balcony scene

Further posts have suggested a whole series of solutions to the issue of how the balcony scene was staged: a gap in the wall of the tiring house, a stage balcony that might also have been used by musicians, an elevated playing space, a temporary, portable structure, even a descent machine. I have long admired C Walter Hodges’ beautiful illustrations showing how different scenes might have been staged, and this one is for the balcony scene.

Incidentally, there is indeed no stage direction at this point, nor any mention of the word “balcony”. It’s one word that we might have expected Shakespeare to invent, but no. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first reference to 1618.  Almost immediately after the initial enquiry was made Professor Peter Holland came up with a great response to at least part of it, suggesting that the balcony, as a stage direction in Romeo and Juliet, is “first used in Thomas Otway’s adaptation, The History and Fall of Caius Marius (1680), p.18, in the marginal stage-direction “Lavinia in the Balcony.”

Looking at the source of the play, Brooke’s 1562 poem Romeus and Juliet, Brooke too has Juliet appearing at her window:
Impacient of her woe, she hapt to leane one night
Within her window, and anon the Moone did shine so bright
That she espyde her love.

Romeo and Juliet 1599 quarto

Romeo and Juliet 1599 quarto

There’s another little curiosity regarding the scene: at some point in the history of editing, the Balcony scene has been divided up from Act 2 Scene 1 and called Act 2 Scene 2.  Looking at the illustration of the second quarto text from 1599, it’s clear that Shakespeare conceived it as a continuation, and that this is how it was performed (and still is). With no stage direction, Romeo says “But soft, what light from yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun”. The RSC edition is one of few that prints the scene all in one.

As Lois Leveen suggested, the balcony scene has entered the collective consciousness, so much that a balcony in Verona has become the centre of a kind of Juliet cult.

This website acknowledges that “the two main characters never really existed and William Shakespeare never went to Verona”, but :
Juliet’s house (Casa di Giulietta) is one of the main attractions of Verona with the most famous balcony in the world. Every day crowds of people make their way through the narrow archway into the courtyard to admire and photograph the famous balcony. Couples of all ages swear eternal fidelity here in memory of Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet”.

The statue of Juliet in the courtyard in Verona

The statue of Juliet in the courtyard in Verona

Apparently, because of the demands of tourists to see the place where the action of the play really happened,
the city of Verona bought today’s house of Juliet from the Dal Capello family in 1905. Due to the similarity of their names they declared the house to be the family residence of the Capuleti family – a new tourist sensation was created!

Those who enter the courtyard of Juliet’s house for the first time will be struck by the thousands of small scraps of paper which cover the floor to the ceiling. All who write down their love vows to their partner and stick them on the wall will – according to the popular belief – stay together with their partner for the rest of their lives and will be very happy. Even touching the right breast of the bronze statue of Juliet in the small courtyard will bring luck to all who are trying to find their true love.

The Juliet mailbox

The Juliet mailbox

I visited the site a few years ago the walls were covered in graffiti. I gather than in recent years they removed the graffiti and now have hung panels on the wall onto which messages are allowed, though it sounds as if messages are still written on scraps of paper and stuck on with chewing gum.

In addition The Juliet Club receives over 6000 letters a year addressed to Juliet in Verona from heartbroken or lonely people (mostly girls). Each is individually answered, and the letters are kept in a special archive. A strange phenomenon, and testament to the power of Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy.

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Shakespeare in and out of the classroom

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

shakespeare weekShakespeare is universally agreed to be “a good thing” for people of all ages, and recently there have been many opinions about the best was of introducing him to children.

One of the good news stories of the week (and how we have needed one) is the success of Shakespeare Week, a terrific idea by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. The biggest barrier in schools has been the expectation that Shakespeare’s going to be boring. It’s to try to counter this idea that Shakespeare Week has been set up. Running from 17-23 March, the SBT is coordinating the efforts of  “schools, theatres, historic sites, museums, galleries, cinemas and libraries all over the UK. Together, we’re giving every child the chance to be inspired by Shakespeare’s stories, language and heritage.”

In the planning for around a year, the idea has proved a huge success:
Teachers in more than 2,500 primary schools across the UK have embraced the opportunity to introduce Shakespeare into their classrooms.  To date more than 20,000 free resources have been downloaded from the Shakespeare Week website for use in every subject, from scientific experiments and nature studies, to preparing a Tudor banquet, film-making and acting out scenes from one of the bard’s plays, the most popular being Macbeth.

A slightly different view has been put forward by Mark Powell of Salisbury Playhouse in an article suggesting we should “Kill Bill“. He’s actually identifying exactly the same problem the SBT is trying to address, that teenagers find Shakespeare boring unless they begin with a positive experience. Coming from a theatre background, Powell sees theatre skills as the key. And he makes some good points. Outings to theatres have become too costly and too complicated to administer, so children stay in school. To be successful, classroom teaching needs to be given by people with the necessary drama teaching skills, rather than by teachers of English who tend to pick apart the words. He suggests:
Let’s give English teachers a break, give drama teachers a boost and give young people an important sense of equality. You don’t need an expensive education to understand the words, but you do need the luxury of time, space and specialism to put his words on their feet and try them out.

Powell echoes the words and sentiments of the RSC’s Stand Up for Shakespeare campaign that launched in 2008. 15000 people signed up to their manifesto, the aims of which were that children should do it on their feet, see it live, and start it earlier.

The RSC Education campaign

The RSC Education campaign

In September 2013 Gregory Doran, RSC Artistic Director, was interviewed in The Spectator. He repeatedly focused on the need to involve young people, as the interviewer puts it to get Shakespeare “into the veins of the UK’s youth”. As well as using the RSC’s energetic Education Department to involve children in Stand Up for Shakespeare, Doran hopes the RSC’s main theatre offerings will appeal to them. “What I really want to do above all is generate some excitement”, he says, and his method of doing this it to bring in top-class actors who really want to play the roles, adding some glamour and making the RSC a place where audiences can expect to see great performances. The current six-year project to produce each of Shakespeare’s plays will encourage children at senior school to “collect” all the productions. Doran himself got the Shakespeare bug by attending a production in Stratford as a schoolboy and he hasn’t forgotten that if you catch them early, you may get them for life.

Other recent articles have included this one by teacher Genevieve White who explains the commonest reasons given by teachers for not wanting to teach Shakespeare – and why they’re wrong. As a teacher herself, and a reluctant Shakespeare learner, she includes this account of her introduction to Shakespeare at school:

I can still vividly remember the crushing boredom I experienced reading The Merchant of Venice as a fifteen-year-old high-school student. My classmates and I took it in turns to read aloud in a mumbled monotone, while our teacher dozed in her chair (occasionally waking up to summarise in simplified English). It was an uninspiring introduction to Shakespeare’s work. Sadly, I suspect it was not an unusual one.

And actor and educator Ben Crystal gives his opinion in a recent article about some of the best ways of involving children in Shakespeare.

Trevor Nunn

Trevor Nunn

All these people agree it’s worth the struggle of introducing Shakespeare to the young, not least because his work continues to speak to people throughout their lives. Eminent director Trevor Nunn is another person who came from a working-class background. In this Daily Telegraph interview he stated that Shakespeare is more relevant than the Bible. “Shakespeare has more wisdom and insight about our lives, about how to live and how not to live, how to forgive and how to understand our fellow creatures, than any religious tract.”

The statement is reminiscent of John Lennon’s famous 1966 line “We’re more popular than Jesus now”, which in the USA provoked the public burning of Beatles records and saw members of the Ku Klux Klan picketing Beatles’ concerts. Many people will disagree with Trevor Nunn, but are unlikely to be so extreme in their reactions. After all, Shakespeare often used the Bible for inspiration.

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John Lyly’s Galatea by Edward’s Boys

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

galateaGalatea is the first full play by Lyly that Edward’s Boys, the schoolboy troupe from King Edward VI School in Stratford, have performed, and I’d guess that it won’t be the last.

Nowadays Lyly is largely remembered as one of the prime influences on Shakespeare, particularly in his early comedies. I’d never seen a play by Lyly before, and was expecting to hear speeches full of the formal verbal flourishes used by Shakespeare in Love’s Labour’s Lost, but the style of Galatea is direct, witty and energetic. It was a bit of a revelation.

Lyly’s play was written in the late 1580s and was performed before Elizabeth 1 on New Year’s Day, probably in 1588.  In her programme note Dr Farah Karim-Cooper of Shakespeare’s Globe remarks “Their performances attracted members of elite society, the wealthy patrons in their finery who expected to see beautiful costumes and to hear melodious songs, fine music and the well-tuned voices of the boy actors”. It was the adult performers who were disreputable. The homoerotic overtones of last year’s production of Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage made for uneasy viewing, but this, with several of the same boys playing leading roles, has a very different feel.

Here there’s a real sense of freshness and enjoyment from the whole ensemble, and I would rather not single out individual performers. As usual with Edward’s Boys, there’s much physical inventiveness, as in the group of boys who metamorphose into the tree beneath which action takes place. Most of the strongest characters in the play are female, and putting teenage boys into women’s clothes wouldn’t seem to be the most obvious way of getting them to enjoy themselves. Struan Leslie is the Movement Director for the play, and comments “A crucial fact about being a member of Edward’s Boys: at some point you will play a girl”.

The title page of Galatea, 1592

The title page of Galatea, 1592

Leslie finds that in fact the boys relish it: “Boys bring to these plays an openness that is more fluid and unfettered than an adult company when men are portraying women…You never know where you are with boys”. I was surprised how much space there is within the play for individual interpretation, and how many of the boys grasp the opportunity. As well as the sweetly sincere heroines Galatea and Phyllida, girls who are dressed as boys by their fathers in order to avoid being sacrificed to Neptune, female roles include the deliciously haughty Diana, eyes flashing wildly on every appearance, followed by her gaggle of nymphs, and Venus, goddess of love.

Other roles are played with just as much gusto, such as the trio of north-country brothers (I still don’t know why the action takes place in Lincolnshire), who every now and then appear with a cheerful blend of good humour and song. The trident-bearing Neptune huffs and puffs, threatening dire consequences if the most beautiful virgin doesn’t get offered up to the sea-monster Agar. Cupid, possibly having the most fun of any of the performers, is first revealed as other actors melt away, in his characteristic pose balanced on one foot, bow drawn. On every possible occasion he cheekily mocks the pomposity of the goddess Diana.

With Diana an unmistakeable parallel to Elizabeth 1, would the queen have laughed at herself, played by a boy, in that performance at court? It seems likely that she would. There are many laugh out loud moments in the play, which builds up to the big dramatic scene in which the third-prettiest girl is offered up to Neptune. This difficult scene contains a long, heartfelt speech by the girl who accepts the necessity of her sacrifice only to find herself rejected because she isn’t beautiful enough. It’s a beautifully-written speech, moving between tragedy and comedy, containing long, static silences which the actor performed admirably. Eion Price’s blog post about the production focuses in particular on this scene, and the whole play has been reviewed on The Bardathon.

A scene from Galatea by Edward's Boys

A scene from Galatea by Edward’s Boys

The play does, then, have serious moments, and always there in the background is a question that would have resonated with Queen Elizabeth and her court: Can it ever be right for an individual to put their desires above the good of society as a whole?

Edward’s Boys are the ordinary pupils of a grammar school in a small Warwickshire town, not the highly-trained choristers for which the play was written. To emphasize this fact a number of boys appear in school uniform. But this company, led by Perry Mills, is doing something very unusual by performing plays written for boys, by boys. Their obvious exuberance, a quality Lyly must have wanted to bring to the fore, makes the performance a delight. The company’s reputation has been steadily building and on Sunday evening the audience included a clutch of Shakespeare academics and educators.

It’s a triumph for Edward’s boys, but also for John Lyly, proving that his plays deserve to be performed in their own right rather than just as footnotes to Shakespeare. Galatea still has two performances to go, in April, one at the Playbox Theatre in Warwick and one at the new Sam Wanamaker Theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe as part of the study day John Lyly and the Children’s Companies’ Repertoire on 27 April. If you don’t have your ticket yet, get one – it’s not to be missed.

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Falstaff and the loss of Merrie England

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Eduard von Grützner: Falstaff, 1896

Eduard von Grützner: Falstaff, 1896

This week Sir Antony Sher takes on the role of one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters, Sir John Falstaff, in the first of the Henry IV plays, for the RSC. It’s a role that has attracted many of the greatest actors of their day, in particular in the last seventy years or so, and it’s now seen as the key role within this pair of plays that say much about the state of England itself.

In the middle of the twentieth century Falstaff became the focus of attention in a series of productions and films of the Henry IV plays. One of the greatest was Ralph Richardson, who took the role for the Old Vic Theatre Company at London’s New Theatre in the autumn of 1945. It came during the second year of a three-year run at the New, dominated by an alliance between Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson, two of the most important actors of their time. While Richardson took Falstaff, Olivier played the heroic role of Hotspur in part 1 and the elderly, rambly Justice Shallow of part 2. The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford is celebrating these productions with an exhibition in their library that includes Olivier’s acting script for Hotspur, in which he made a few sketches of himself in the role. It’s a real treat to see this great item which will be on view until the end of March 2014. There’s a blog post with all the details here.

Ralph Richardson as Falstaff, New Theatre 1945

Ralph Richardson as Falstaff, New Theatre 1945

The Times suggested that Olivier had the “curious power of being at the centre of every picture”, but the greatest success of the productions was Richardson’s Falstaff. According to the Evening Standard, Richardson “made of Falstaff so much more than a mere buffoon, coward, liar and glutton that our hearts went out to him”, and went on “surely it is great acting when a man can win us to the cause of hypocrisy and align us against virtue”.

Years later, Peter Hall wrote a piece in the Guardian of 31 January 1996 on this production which he saw as a fifteen-year old. “The moment that gave me goose-bumps was the way Richardson did the Honour Speech. Although what he was saying was immoral he was desperately human. It was not a spectacular moment, just one of simple human realism: a bit soiled, a bit dirty and questionable – like life itself”.

A few years later, in Stratford, the Festival of Britain in 1951 was celebrated by a history cycle consisting of Richard II, both parts of Henry IV, and Henry V. The theatre was led by Anthony Quayle, who took the central part of Falstaff. Michael Redgrave played Richard II, Hotspur and the Chorus in Henry V, Harry Andrews played Bolingbroke in Richard II who becomes Henry IV, and rising star Richard Burton played Hal in both parts of Henry IV and Henry V. Quayle’s direction was a triumph, forcing critics to look afresh at some of Shakespeare’s best-known plays. Robert Speaight wrote “It is now possible to say that Shakespeare is better performed at Stratford than anywhere else in the world”.

Anthony Quayle as Falstaff, Henry IV, SMT 1951

Anthony Quayle as Falstaff, Henry IV, SMT 1951

According to The Times on 9 May, Anthony Quayle “deliberately presents a Falstaff who is scarcely likeable…There is always a shifty and calculating look in his eye”, though the News Chronicle on the same day was inclined to be indulgent: Quayle “has a mischievous twinkle in his roving old eye, a wicked old smile playing over his round mouth”. William Dobell’s painting of Quayle as Falstaff shows an unlikeable, disreputable, but vigorous man, unlike the cheerful, portly gent portrayed in the nineteenth-century painting at the top of the post.

Quayle himself felt that Falstaff was “a monster. he’s a desperate character and infinitely lovable”. And Richard David, in Shakespeare in the Theatre, suggests “As Falstaff, Anthony Quayle commanded the two absolutely essential qualities: a wholly winning gusto, and real, unpardonable wickedness”. Over two decades later Quayle played the part again in the BBC/Time Life versions of the plays. Seeing this, it’s tantalising to imagine how his younger self might have played it.

Orson Welles as Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight

Orson Welles as Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight

The third impressive interpretation of the role was Orson Welles, who was obsessed by the role for many years. He played it on stage in his own adapted versions before filming Chimes at Midnight which focuses on Falstaff and his relationship with Prince Hal. Filmed in 1964 it was released between 1965 and 1967.  Welles had always downplayed the comedy in the role, and said the core of the film was “the betrayal of friendship”. For him, Falstaff was “the greatest conception of a good man, the most completely good man, in all of drama”.

Writing of the Richardson/Olivier production, in the immediate aftermath of the Second world war, the Sunday Graphic called the Henry IV plays “a great and terrific outpouring of the English spirit”. After seeing the Quayle productions, Kenneth Tynan wrote ” for me the two parts of Henry IV are the twin summits of Shakespeare’s achievement… great public plays in which a whole nation is under scrutiny and on trial”.  And Orson Welles wrote of Chimes at Midnight: “the film was not intended as a lament for Falstaff, but for the death of Merrie England. Merrie England as a conception, a myth which has been very real to the English-speaking world… It is more than Falstaff who is dying. It’s the old England dying and betrayed”. Quite something for the new productions of Henry IV to live up to.

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Shakespeare’s sonnets

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
The 1609 Sonnets title page

The 1609 Sonnets title page

I’ve only occasionally written in this blog about Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and then mostly about possible biographical references in them, for instance to Anne Hathaway or to the death of his son Hamnet. These are hard to avoid: for hundreds of years now people have attempted to make a coherent story from the sequence of poems that received their unauthorised publication in 1609. Was there really a Dark Lady and a Fair Youth who were involved in a triangular relationship including Shakespeare? Hundreds of books must have been written trying to establish their identity. Then there is the intriguing nature of the publication itself. Was it authorized by Shakespeare? (It’s assumed not). What role was taken by Thomas Thorp (named as TT on the title page)? And who is the “onlie begetter”, Mr W H?

The title page of the 1640 edition of the sonnets

The title page of the 1640 edition of the sonnets

Questions abounded, and weren’t helped by subsequent publication history. The second, 1640 edition of the sonnets omitted some, re-ordered them, sometimes combining two sonnets into one, made them more acceptably by occasionally making “he”, “she”, and giving them titles such as “The glory of beauty”. There’s an examination of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s copies of this edition here.

No critical edition of the sonnets was available until Malone’s was published in 1780, so many readers encountered these poems only in the 1640 format. It was in the Romantic period that the idea of the sonnets being autobiographical took hold, Wordsworth famously claiming “with this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart.”  Opinions varied. Nicholaus Delius, in the middle of the nineteenth century, called them “the free outcome of a poetic imagination,”  and William Minto, some years later, regarded many as “exercises of skill, undertaken in a spirit of wanton defiance and derision of the commonplace.”

schalkwykEarlier this week Professor David Schalkwyk gave a lecture to the Stratford Shakespeare Club on the subject of the sonnets. He insists of looking at them as poetry rather than concealed autobiography. He has written many times about the sonnets, including his 2002 book Speech and Performance in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Plays, Shakespeare, Love and Service, published in 2008 and 2013’s book The conceptual investigations of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Professor Schalkwyk began by asking who is the “I” in the sonnets? Whose voice are we hearing, and who is “you” or “thou”?  These personal pronouns are non-specific and can be appropriated by anyone. Shakespeare assumes the persona of the poet, who in his turn plays, as he was to say elsewhere, “many parts”. There’s always someone else there, and the situation for virtually all the sonnets is a discussion or argument. The relationship between these people varies, from the authoritarianism of parent and child, master and servant, or the equality of friends, the uncertainty of lovers.

In his book The Genius of Shakespeare Jonathan Bate suggests the poems are persuasive because of what they leave out. “Since the poems imply a plot without actually spelling it out, there is room for readers to step in with their version of affairs. As the plays leave interpretive space for the audience …so the sonnets drop hints to draw the reader into their implied narrative”.

Both Bate and Schalkwyk made this connection between Shakespeare as writer of plays and the ways in which the sonnets work. He gives us the emotion of a siutation, and we are free to imagine an infinite number of appropriate scenarios. As Bate puts it, “This, then, is the genius of the sonnets: their power to generate readings”.

David Schalkwyk took as a powerful example sonnet 116, the sonnet frequently read at weddings. I’ve always felt uneasy at this, because the first four lines are awkwardly phrased, full of unsettling negatives. He suggested that rather than a confirmation of perfect love, it can be read as part of a lovers’ row, where one partner is threatening to leave a relationship and the other is determined to win the argument. His angry delivery was very persuasive. In his opinion, it’s definitely not suitable for a marriage. Here it is:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

The mystery of the sonnets remains. It isn’t even known when they were written, though the high point for sonnet sequences was the 1590s when Philip Sidney’s posthumously published Astrophel and Stella was followed by sonnets written by others including Fulke Greville and Edmund Spenser. Professor Schalkwyk has found that of the 154 Shakespeare’s sonnets, only 26 are collected into modern verse anthologies. This may be only 15% of them, but it’s considerably more than we remember of any of the others, and they’re remembered for their excellence as poems, not for what they might or might not reveal about Shakespeare’s life.

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The future of education for Shakespeare? MOOCs in action

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Sylvia Morris

The second of the two Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs)s on Shakespeare is now under way, and in case you fancy trying it out, is still open for enrolment. The first, the Shakespeare Institute’s Hamlet MOOC, has finished, though it’s to be hoped that it will run again. I found it thoroughly enjoyable. After an introduction with videos by Professor Michael Dobson, Fellows from the Shakespeare Institute took a week each to talk about their specialist subjects and how they relate to Hamlet. There were also sessions with actors, and I particularly liked actress Pippa Nixon’s close examination of the “To be or not to be” speech.

Jonathan Bate in Shakespeare and his World

Jonathan Bate in Shakespeare and his World

The current MOOC, Shakespeare and his World, is rather different in feel, created by the University of Warwick fronted by Professor Jonathan Bate, and designed to make use of the collections of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.  Bate has extensive experience of these materials and uses them in a very direct way to engage his virtual students with the subject under discussion.  His approach could offer an interesting model of how Museums, Libraries and Archives might really open up their collections.

I have to confess I’m already behind: so far I’ve only watched the opening sections on Shakespeare’s life, relatively easy to talk about using real objects like the Parish Church’s register. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the approach works with the plays themselves.

BBC’s Radio 4 has recently broadcast a series on the impact of technology on education, entitled My Teacher is an app.  There’s a link to the third programme here, in which, as it happened, Jonathan Bate featured.  It’s a debate between participants representing different points of view such as traditional education and the Open University. Both the Shakespeare MOOCs are by the company FutureLearn, a collaboration between more than a dozen of the top universities in the country with the exceptions of Oxford and Cambridge. The participants represented all shades of opinion, classicist Mary Beard suggesting that MOOCs could undermine traditional education, while the Open University commented that they have been using innovative technology for teaching for forty years. All agreed that there is no substitute for small-group teaching and discussion “eyeball to eyeball”, and that great teachers always have and always will make a difference.

As well as watching videos, and reading, students are encouraged to write their own comments and occasionally to complete a piece of written work. With the course being free, and perhaps thousands signed up, a range of methods of assessment are being tried, including the idea that students in groups assess each other’s work. This is the idea that’s most revolutionary about MOOCs: after all, videos and podcasts of professors’ lectures are hardly new. It’s going to be very interesting to see if they can make this valuable to students. There’s an article here on the latest in MOOC providers, and on the idea of collaborative working in teams.

One of the criticisms that has been levelled at MOOCs is that the percentage of students completing any course is very low, but of course a small percentage of a large number is still a lot. In any case who is to say that it’s necessary to complete a course, if it’s free and the person taking it isn’t interested in gaining a qualification? Katy Jordan of the Open University has just published this paper on initial trends in enrolment and completion.

A version of Richard III, one of the items discussed in Shakespeare and his World

A version of Richard III, one of the items discussed in Shakespeare and his World

Jonathan Bate pointed out that MOOCs aren’t all about university education anyway. The first person who signed up for his course was 89 years old. Many people will like the possibility of learning something new using in a structured course that’s not too much like being back at school. The FutureLearn site already includes courses on Ecosystems,  Moons, Roman history as well as practical subjects like Dentistry.

Just recently Donald Clark wrote an article looking at MOOCs, or VOOCs (Vocational Open Online Courses):
This is not about institutional learning, it’s about lifelong learning. The mistake is to take the concept of dropout from an institutional context and apply it to online courses, where one can sign up without too much commitment. There’s nothing wrong with trying a few MOOCs out to see if they’re at the right level or suit your needs.

We’ve gone for a solution that taps directly into subject matter expertise – experienced practitioners, experienced course designers and a delivery mechanism that goes straight to potential learners. That’s really what the  ‘Napsterisation’ of learning is all about, the democritisation, decentralisation and disintermediation of learning.

There’s lots of potential for organisations like U3A to run their own discussions around these courses, or for others to pick a few videos and incorporate them into their own work. Once you move away from the idea that MOOCs are all about tertiary education it becomes a much more interesting concept. The big question, that I have no answer to, is, “Who pays for it?”

But Shakespeare is, of course, a perfect subject. Even if you’ve seen every play in the theatre, read some biographies, attended some lectures, there are certain to be things you will enjoy in these MOOCs. And the current one will bring a new perspective through its use of Museum, Library and Archives objects. I’ve spent over thirty years being surrounded by items relating to Shakespeare’s works and I’m thrilled that it’s now possible for them to be brought to the attention of so many.

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Shakespeare and Stratford in World War 1

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
Recruitment in Stratford in the early years of the war

Recruitment in Stratford in the early years of the war

The outbreak of the First World War in late summer 1914 generated a huge recruiting campaign all round the country. In Stratford, where the summer Festival was taking place, a special performance of Henry V was mounted at the end of which the company marched on stage holding weapons including halberds and spears. The following day the leader of the company, Frank Benson, took part in the recruitment of soldiers in the neighbouring villages. The Benson company had always been great sportsmen and were known for their patriotism. Shakespeare was though of as the ultimate patriot, the plays dealing with foreign conflicts, Henry V and King John, often brought out at times of international dispute. And Stratford had a great reputation for recruitment: in 1914 a higher proportion of its young men than the national average signed up, and later on in the war the town gave generously to fundraising initiatives.

The WWI event at the RST

The WWI event at the RST

This last weekend the RSC held an event at which they have asked local people to share their stories of the First World War. The Foyer of the 1932 theatre was filled with people clutching mementoes, with representatives of the Warwickshire Regiment, family historians, RSC staff scanning and recording memories, and people from the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive showing off some of the objects they hold which have a war connection.

christmastruce_2014The RSC is involved is because in November the company will be staging a new play by Phil Porter, The Christmas Truce, inspired by the real-life famous football match held between German and British troops on the battlefield at Christmas 1914. This match was recorded by Bruce Bairnsfather, whose cartoons of life in the army became famous and who worked in the theatre for a time. Phil Porter is hoping to incorporate some of the stories that have been told during this weekend into his play.

But in 1914 the story was all about recruiting young men to fight. Looking at the old photographs of troops assembling to go off to war in the town centre it’s easy to make the connection with Shakespeare. The stirring battle speeches are the most famous, but Shakespeare also wrote about the business of recruiting in both parts of Henry IV. Both times, it’s his most famous comic creation, Falstaff, who is the one doing the recruiting. His contempt for his men, who he describes as”, “the cankers of a calm world and a long peace”, “scarecrows”, and “good enough to toss, food for powder, … they’ll fill a pit as well as better” must have been shocking even then. My Penguin edition of the play notes rather drily “Were he not a comic figure he could not but appear despicable here; the dramatic conventions of comedy protect him from the full implications of what he says”. The soldiers recruited in Stratford’s streets appear fit, but some look very young, and the photos are terribly poignant since we know how many never came back or if they did, bore the physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives.

George Harriss, front row centre, taken while on service in France

George Harriss, front row centre, taken while on service in France

The battlefields must have felt like a million miles from leafy Warwickshire. But Stratford, and Shakespeare, were affected by the war. During wartime the Bensons, much-loved thespians, certainly were. The Bensons’ son was killed in the war, and they devoted their time to war work, cancelling the Shakespeare Festivals for a couple of years. I have only a very simple story of World War 1 in Stratford. My great uncle, George Harriss, was the professional golfer working at Stratford’s Golf Course. He didn’t go to war until 1916 when he became a driver, remaining in France until 1919. Although he wasn’t injured, after the war he became increasingly ill and died in 1929. He had been a popular young man, extremely handsome, and his early death caused his family great sadness. All her life his sister, my grandmother, kept a Christmas card he sent back from France in 1918 looking forward to his return to Stratford. Those at home suffered terrible anxiety, and there was a real sense of solidarity among the women left behind. I have the autograph book belonging to George’s wife, May, from the period. In November 1914 one friend wrote a beautifully-decorated version of “Auld Lang Syne”, and another, writing in May 1916, quoted a poem on the importance of love and friendship in uncertain times. Many of George’s family were Shakespeare-lovers, proud of their town’s connections. In 1912 George wrote a few lines for May in her autograph book which she must have treasured while he was away. The lines come from The Two Gentlemen of Verona:
                           she is mine own,
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar and the rocks pure gold.

I’m indebted to Nicholas Fogg’s book Stratford: A Town at War, 1914-1945, for some of the facts in this post.

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Taking Hamlet around the Globe

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Sylvia Morris
C Walter Hodges' painting of actors outside a country inn

C Walter Hodges’ painting of actors outside a country inn

Touring has been an essential part of acting life for centuries: Shakespeare is thought to have seen his first plays as a child when a professional touring group came to Stratford-upon-Avon, and we assume he was one of the actors who regularly went on tour when he was working in London. The work of the Records of Early English Drama project has since the 1970s been painstakingly unearthing information about performances around the country, and a fuller picture is gradually emerging.

Actors have gone on touring with Shakespeare’s plays ever since. All the great names went on tour, including The Kemble family, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving. The Bensons, as well as performing in Stratford, toured almost obsessively, at times having two touring companies operating simultaneously, and in 1913-14 they embarked on an exhausting tour of the US and Canada that took up almost a year in all. British actors also went as far as Australia.

globe to globe hamletThe live video relays of productions might be thought to have reduced the need for companies to tour: why go through all the trouble of travelling, when it can be transmitted to a cinema? But Dominic Dromgoole says “Touring is in our blood”, and his Globe to Globe project will be going to the other extreme, taking one production, a fresh production of Hamlet, on a two-year tour that will take in every country in the world, beginning on April 23 2014.  He describes it as “a completely unprecedented theatrical adventure”. Here’s the link to the map.

This week the production has been in the news with the announcement of the cast list and more information about how it will work: twelve actors will share roles over the two years, with two actors playing Hamlet. Eight of the twelve will perform at a time, giving actors a chance for breaks and allowing for indispositions. Otherwise it would be an awful long time for anyone to put their life on hold.

The project has its own website with more details:
The small company of actors will travel to all nations in the world to stage Hamlet in a huge range of unique and atmospheric venues, from town squares to national theatres. They will travel by boat, train, car and aeroplane, planning their routes across the seven continents to minimise the tour’s carbon footprint as much as possible.

Hamlet is a great choice: not only is it Shakespeare’s most celebrated play, but there is a record of it being performed in 1608 by the crew of a ship of the East India Company off the coast of Yemen. This performance happened only a few years after the play was written, in 1608, an amazing record that tells us much about how widely Shakespeare’s play was known.

Many modern companies such as Cheek by Jowl and Propeller have made their names as touring companies, and in 2006 the National Theatre of Scotland was founded, as a national company without a permanent theatre.

Internationally renowned director Peter Brook who has worked in Paris and on tour for over thirty years, was asked his opinion of the tour:
The six simplest words in the English language are to be or not to be. There is hardly a corner of the planet where these words have not been translated. Even in English, those who can’t speak the language will at once recognise the sound and exclaim ‘Shakespeare!’ Hamlet is the most all encompassing of Shakespeare’s plays. Everyone, young or old can today find an immediate identification with its characters, their pains and their interrogations. To take Hamlet in its original language around the world is a bold and dynamic project. It can bring a rich journey of discovery to new audiences everywhere.

C Walter Hodges' painting of actors on the road

C Walter Hodges’ painting of actors on the road

Dominic Dromgoole has described the performers of the Globe to Globe Hamlet as “a squad of brilliant actors and intrepid adventurers”. Here is the list: Keith Bartlett, John Dougall, Ladi Emeruwa, Phoebe Fildes, Miranda Foster, Naeem Hayat, Beruce Khan,   Tom Lawrence, Jennifer Leong, Pawiri Paratent, Matthew Romain, Amanda Wilkin. You can find out more about them on the website. A couple of names jump out at me: both John Dougall and Keith Bartlett have performed extensively with the RSC in the past and both have taken part in the Company’s tours.

In As You Like It, Rosalind blames the experience gained in travel for Jaques’ melancholy: “I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad – and to travel for it too”. Nowadays we expect travel to bring us positive experiences, and at the end of their two years of touring the Globe to Globe actors should have much to celebrate.

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