Screening Shakespeare: to adapt or not to adapt?

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

10 things i hate about youLast week, the Stratford Shakespeare Club’s monthly lecture was given by Daniel Rosenthal, the author of  Shakespeare on Screen and the BFI Screen Guide 100 Shakespeare Films. In her foreword to the latter book the director of Titus, Julie Taymor, claims that “Shakespeare is the most produced screenwriter in cinematic history”.  With so much to choose from Rosenthal concentrated on genre adaptations of Shakespeare rather than filmed versions of the plays themselves.

Why are these adaptations made? For many the essence of Shakespeare is in the language, so if you deliberately choose to alter the language is what remains still recognisably Shakespeare? Rosenthal explained that  successful genre adaptations have to find the right parallels in time and space, but also exactly the right linguistic medium. He showed extracts from a number of films to demonstrate: Joe Macbeth places Macbeth into the mould of a gangster movie. It fits beautifully: Macbeth, a member of the Mafia, kills to get to the top, and traitors are executed without question. The problem of the appearance of a trio of witches on a heath is solved by Macbeth receiving supernatural warnings from a Tarot card reader in a night club.

Rosenthal suggested that each genre adaptation begins with a “What if” question. So for the film All Night Long the question is “What if Othello is the leader of a jazz band, Desdemona the singer, Cassio the manager and Iago the drummer who wants his own band?” In the steamy drug-taking atmosphere the jealousies of the play quickly get out of hand.  And in Ten Things I Hate About You the question is “What if The Taming of the Shrew is set in a high school in Seattle in 1999?

One of the most successful Shakespeare films ever made was Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo + Juliet. This looks and feels like a genre adaptation, set in contemporary California, using many of the techniques used in music videos. Many of the people who saw the film were hardly aware that it used Shakespeare’s original text, even if heavily cut.

Juliet and Romeo from the 2013 film

Juliet and Romeo from the 2013 film

A new film version of Romeo and Juliet has just been released, directed by Carlo Carlei, boasting sumptuous Italian locations and a “to-die for cast” including Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar nominated for her performance in True Grit and Douglas Booth, who played Pip in the BBC’s recent adaptation of Dickens’ Great Expectations. It also features Damien Lewis as Capulet. Lewis has a strong theatre background but will be better known to audiences for his role in the TV series Homeland. The screenplay written by Julian Fellowes, though, writer of the smash hit series Downton Abbey, has been heavily criticised. Rather than come up with a completely different language and setting as Rosenthal suggests, Fellowes has retained the best-known of Shakespeare’s speeches while rewriting others. His aim has been to make the play more approachable but writing pseudo-Shakespearean lines is rarely convincing, and the critics have given it the thumbs-down. The proof of the pudding though will be how successful it is in introducing Shakespeare to the young audiences for which it’s intended.

Earlier this year film director Joss Whedon scored an unlikely hit with his low-budget version of Much Ado About Nothing, filmed in his own house, over just a few weeks with a cast of people he’d worked with before. Rather than adapt it they let Shakespeare’s play speak for itself. Much Ado, Whedon shows, is a play that doesn’t need rewriting, and can easily speak to a modern audience.

Julie Taymor, in the introduction already quoted, explains why Shakespeare proves so perennially popular: “What is so alluring to a director is not only the quality of story but also the immense freedom in imagining the settings and the constant play between reality, fantasy and myth”.

Juliet and Romeo from the Baz Lurhmann film

Juliet and Romeo from the Baz Lurhmann film

In Stratford-upon-Avon the second Shakespeare Film Festival is in full swing. It’s jointly presented by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Stratford Picturehouse. If you’d like to get a dose of Shakespeare on film there is still plenty to see including a screening of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet on 20 October, Franco Zeffirelli’s raucous adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on 26 October, and one of Daniel Rosenthal’s favourite genre adaptations of any Shakespeare play, 10 Things I Hate About You, on 18 October. Most feature a pre-screening talk, and more information is available from the Stratford Picturehouse website.

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An obscure grave: did Shakespeare write the memorial verses at Tong?

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Sylvia Morris
The church in Tong

The church in Tong

A couple of years ago I wrote a piece about the two epitaphs inscribed at the ends of  a tomb in the church in the village of Tong, Shropshire. I was intrigued by them, and by the tradition that the verses were written by Shakespeare. Rarely mentioned in biographies, I had never previously come across the story.

Soon afterwards Helen Moorwood informed me she was writing a book on the subject, now published under the title Shakespeare’s Stanley Epitaphs in Tong Shropshire.

The notion that Shakespeare wrote epitaphs for members of the Stanley family is related to the theory that he worked for a time in Lancashire for Alexander Hoghton of Lea Hall, a Catholic landowner. Ernst Honigmann’s 1985 book Shakespeare: the Lost Years set out the story.

The epitaphs can be seen as a confirmation of the Lancashire theory, and Helen Moorwood gives a lot of space to discussing it. If true, it would explain how Shakespeare met people who cropped up later in his life, how he had access to books he’s known to have read, and what he was doing in his “lost years”, though Alexander Hoghton’s will, which might place him in Lancashire, is dated 1581, before they are usually reckoned to begin.

The existence of the epitaphs, though, doesn’t rely on the Lancashire theory. Helen Moorwood aims to solve the mystery of how and why they came to be where they are. On her way she explores many documentary resources on what she calls her detective hunt. As well as questioning the authorship of the verses, her exploration also raises the question of why, when they still exist intact, they have been neglected for so long. They are, incidentally, fiendishly difficult to photograph.

The effigies of Sir Thomas Stanley and his wife on the top of the monument

The effigies of Sir Thomas Stanley and his wife on the top of the monument

The tomb is for Sir Thomas (died 1576) and Lady Margaret Stanley (died 1596), with their effigies on the upper level and that of their son Sir Edward (died 1632) below. One of the reasons for disregarding the lines has been that the dates don’t match those of Shakespeare’s life. But it was not uncommon for people to have their tombs created while they were still alive, and Helen Moorwood estimates that Sir Edward commissioned his around 1601-2. Another issue may be the quality of the verse, but we need only look at the variety of verses on Shakespeare’s grave and monument to see that not too much should be read into them. It’s often suggested that Shakespeare wrote the doggerel on his gravestone but there’s no evidence, and none of the lines have much in common with Shakespeare’s acknowledged works.

Also in Holy Trinity Church, close to Shakespeare’s tomb, is the tomb to John Combe who died two years before Shakespeare. The story surrounding this tomb just shows how difficult it can be to pin down the truth. Shakespeare is said to have written some verses that were “fastened upon a tomb”. They refer to Combe’s money-lending activities, and were published in 1618. In spite of this I have found no fewer than five different versions of the inscription just among my own books. In 1634 Lieutenant Hammond who surveyed the monuments attributed lines to Shakespeare (though he didn’t quote them), but by 1672 they had been removed. It seems unlikely to me that the lines below were ever affixed to Combe’s dignified and very expensive tomb, and suspect the story has fallen prey to what Samuel Schoenbaum calls “the machinery of myth”. This version is in Shakespeare for All Time, by Stanley Wells.
Ten in the hundred here lies engraved
A hundred to ten his soul is not saved.
If anyone ask who lies in this tomb,
“O ho!” quoth the devil, “’tis my John-a-Combe”.

Shakespeare does seem to have been commissioned to write occasional verses. In March 1613 the Earl of Rutland’s steward recorded the payment of 44 shillings each “to Mr Shakespeare in gold about my Lord’s impresa“, and to Richard Burbage for painting and making it. The impresa was an insignia complete with mottoes used at the tournament to celebrate the anniversary of the King’s accession. There is no record of the impresa.

Helen Moorwood sets out to correct centuries of neglect by bringing the Tong inscriptions to the attention of scholars researching Shakespeare’s biography, and the book often reads like a personal crusade. She has gone to heroic lengths to sort out the complicated relationships within the Stanley family. Her own transcriptions of key documents will also provide a great starting point to future researchers.

Part of the inscriptions

Part of the inscriptions

This is her modernised transcription of the verses:
(at the foot)
ASK WHO LIES HEAR, BUT DO NOT WEEP;
HE IS NOT DEAD, HE DOTH BUT SLEEP.
THIS STONY REGISTER IS FOR HIS BONES;
HIS FAME IS MORE PERPETUAL THAN THESE STONES.
AND HIS OWN GOODNESS, WITH HIMSELF BEING GONE,
SHALL LIVE WHEN EARTHLY MONUMENT IS NONE.
(at the head)
NOT MONUMENTAL STONE PRESERVES OUR FAME,
NOR SKY-ASPIRING PYRAMIDS OUR NAME.
THE MEMORY OF HIM FOR WHOM THIS STANDS
SHALL OUTLIVE MARBLE AND DEFACERS’ HANDS.
WHEN ALL TO TIME’S CONSUMPTION SHALL BE GIVEN,
STANDLEY, FOR WHOM THIS STANDS, SHALL STAND IN HEAVEN.

Sir Edward Stanley

Sir Edward Stanley

The first known copy of these is a manuscript by antiquarian John Weever. Although Weever knew Shakespeare’s work, he does not suggest he wrote these lines. This document could be dated as early as 1620 but as both he and Sir Edward died in 1632, it must be before that date. Several other manuscripts from later in the 1600s suggest Shakespeare wrote the verses,  including one by Sir William Dugdale. Dugdale visited Shropshire in 1663 while researching his Antiquities of Shropshire,  and his notes include a transcription of the verses, with the word “Shakespeare” in the margin and the note “These following verses were made by William Shakespeare the late famous tragedian”. Sadly the book was never published, which would have fixed the date more positively. But assuming it’s genuine, it puts the date of attribution to Shakespeare well before he became fashionable in the eighteenth century.

The Tong inscriptions seem to me to merit at least as much attention as the other memorial verses attributed to Shakespeare. Helen Moorwood’s efforts may now lead to their proper consideration.

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If music and sweet poetry agree: Stratford-upon-Avon’s Festival

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Sylvia Morris
Performing the fanfare for the Stratford-upon-Avon Music Festival

Performing the fanfare for the Stratford-upon-Avon Music Festival

On Saturday morning Stratford-upon-Avon’s Music Festival began with a Festival Fanfare entitled Lend Me Your Ears, played by the brass ensemble from King Edward VI School. Performed on the steps of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre it was a reminder of the importance of music to Shakespeare and of live music to the theatre.

Rather than sticking to obvious music halls the Festival will include one free concert in a pub and another in one of the town’s hotels. And there will be performances in venues with Shakespearean connections including Holy Trinity Church, the Shakespeare Institute, the Town Hall and The Guild Chapel.

I particularly like the sound of the concert on Wednesday entitled “The Queene’s Speech”, by Charivari Agreable, which covers events leading up to Queen Elizabeth’s Tilbury Speech, the one that goes “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman…” . It will include readings of Queen Elizabeth’s letters, sonnets by Shakespeare, with songs and instrumental dances from the period by Byrd and Dowland among others. This takes place in one of the most atmospheric buildings in the town, the Guild Chapel.

Greg Doran

Greg Doran

On 6 October RSC Artistic Director Greg Doran was interviewed for the Radio 3 programme Private Passions, in which he chose some of his favourite music. His love of music is apparent from his productions of Shakespeare, and not surprisingly he selected several Shakespeare-related pieces of music, including part of Duke Ellington’s music originally composed for a production of Timon of Athens at Stratford, Ontario which he used for his own production of the play.

As you might expect for a person whose life revolves around the spoken word, especially poetry, most of his choices were of songs. Paul Englishby’s setting of Sigh no more ladies from Much Ado About Nothing was one choice, and other examples included a recording of Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow the Wind Southerly, a Japanese folk song, a Bach Cantata sung by Janet Baker and a traditional South African wedding song.

Evidence is now emerging that suggests the brain responds to poetry in very much the same way as it responds to music. New brain imaging techniques show that areas of the brain that deal with emotion and memory are more active when listening to poetry than prose. So Shakespeare may have been right when he wrote John of Gaunt’s lines in Richard II, spoken just before his death:
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past.

Professor Adam Zeman, quoted in the Daily Telegraph on 11 October explains “we are now seeing a growing body of evidence about how the brain responds to the experience of art”, “work that is helping us to make psychological, biological, anatomical sense of art”.

It was noted during the programme that most of Doran’s choices were of rather sad music, and typically he quoted Jessica’s comment in The Merchant of Venice “I am never merry when I hear sweet music”.  Shakespeare also made the connection between music, poetry, personality and the importance of art, with Lorenzo’s speech:
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.

The Stratford-upon-Avon Music Festival runs until 20 October and some of Paul Englishby’s music can be heard during the current production of Richard II at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Greg Doran’s Private Passions are available to listen again on BBC IPlayer.

 

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Celebrating Stage Management Day

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Sylvia Morris
Henry Irving as Hamlet

Henry Irving as Hamlet

Rather late in the day I heard that 10 October 2013 is being celebrated as the first Stage Management Day. Stage managers are some of the unsung heroes of the theatre world, people who the audience rarely sees, but who make every theatre performance happen. Their work varies according to the size of the theatre company, but stage managers always attend rehearsals, recording decisions that are made and passing on information about them to other departments. Once the play gets into the theatre, they coordinate the activities of other members of staff including lighting, music and stage crew, ensure that personal props are ready to be taken on stage as well as cueing the actors’ entrances and exits. In any live performance, particularly of a play of the complexity of Shakespeare’s, there are many things that can go wrong.  It’s a job that requires a cool head.

But as well as taking part in each and every stage performance, stage managers also contribute to the permanent record of theatre productions. The stage management team create the prompt book, the copy of the text of the play that contains the information described above. And the prompt book is the most important of the production records that will, hopefully, end up being archived.

irving hamlet programmeOn Wednesday morning I spent some time consulting a book created by a stage manager over one hundred and thirty years ago. Its survival alone is remarkable: prompt books tend to be heavily-used and this one certainly showed signs of wear. It is the prompt book for one of the most important Victorian productions of a Shakespeare play, Henry Irving’s Hamlet.

The occasion was a seminar organised by the Shakespeare Institute Library, and brought together a group of users of theatre archives, looking at potential uses of archive materials from the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive’s collections. As part of this seminar we were asked to look closely at a couple of items.

Ellen Terry as Ophelia

Ellen Terry as Ophelia

My group picked the Henry Irving prompt book and an image for his production at London’s Lyceum Theatre. Henry Irving became the most important actor of his time, and Hamlet, which he first played in 1874, was his first major Shakespeare role, to be followed by Macbeth, Othello, Richard III and many others. Hamlet ran for two hundred consecutive performances and it was brought back into his repertoire when he took over as actor-manager of the Lyceum Theatre in 1878 with the brilliant actress Ellen Terry playing Ophelia at the beginning of their twenty-year partnership.

In the Athenaeum review dated 4 January 1879 Joseph Knight described the production: ‘Scenic accessories are explanatory without being cumbersome, the costumes are picturesque and striking and show no needless affectation of archæological accuracy and the interpretation has an ensemble rarely found in any performance’.

Irving’s performance was intellectual and refined, and under his management the theatre became respectable, Irving being the first actor to be knighted. A flavour of his performance can be heard in this recording of him in 1898 delivering a speech from Richard III.

Irving is an actor whose charisma still reverberates with researchers. The Irving Society was founded in 1996 and continues to promote the appreciation of Irving and his cultural and artistic contribution. And the Henry Irving Archive is a digital resource for scholars and students that includes among other things a biography of Irving and a bibliography.

Irving was a keen letter-writer and the Henry Irving Correspondence Project is a wonderful resource that summarises 8642 letters to and from Irving, bringing together material from a number of different collections.

Henry Irving as Hamlet

Henry Irving as Hamlet

But although personal letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and opinions, they don’t tell us what Irving’s Hamlet production was like. For this, we need the prompt book. At the seminar, we were asked to think about the sort of evidence it supplied, and how this information might be used. This prompt book is a particularly excellent resource: to begin with the heavily-edited script gives a good idea of which elements of the play were deemed most important. The book contains information about actors’ moves as well as some diagrams showing the stage layout and positioning of actors for important scenes. One of the most useful features of the book is the insight it gives into theatre staging methods. And, very unusually, there is a water-colour illustration showing how the ghost appeared, standing on a rock in front of a turbulent sea. Did the stage-manager paint this scene, I wonder?  It must have been an impressive spectacle, probably relying on the use of stage machinery to produce the effect of waves.

As so often with theatre archives, the prompt book isn’t quite what it appears. The book has been dated 1874, the date of Irving’s original production. Yet as we noticed, the book is Irving’s own edition of the play, based on his stage version. This couldn’t have been available before the first performance and in fact it appears to have coincided with the 1878-9 production. Presentation copies of prompt books were sometimes created in memory of famous productions, but this isn’t one of those. From the additional cuts in the text, the markings in more than one hand, and the dilapidated state of the book itself, it was obviously used over a period. I’d guess that this book was created by the stage manager of the 1878-9 production, which he knew would be an important interpretation of the play and so, perhaps, made it particularly impressive. Stage managers deserve to be celebrated, and not just because they make sure the performance is all right on the night.

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Libraries for Shakespeare

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

reducedDSCN4252A week ago I went to take a first look at the new Library of Birmingham and its Shakespeare Memorial Room. I was a little apprehensive that it would have the appearance of a branch of Waterstones or even a shopping mall. But instead, I found a building that is both recognizably a library, but also a place buzzing with life. Here and here are links to a couple of reviews.

reducedDSCN4317With public libraries around the country forced to close because of financial pressure, and repeated declarations that the book is dead since the introduction of the e-book and the internet, it’s a statement of faith in the long-term viability of books. But more importantly, as City Council Deputy Leader Ian Ward declared: “With this amazing building, we have a new image redefining Birmingham as a city of learning, knowledge and the future”.

The way in which we all learn has changed enormously over the past few decades, and the Library of Birmingham reflects these changes. It’s a place to borrow books and CDs, but also to enjoy exhibitions, to attend events, to study, to learn new skills and to improve job prospects. But far from being an attack on the traditional role of libraries, these are all functions that Libraries have long aspired to. Andrew Carnegie, the philanthropist who paid for the building of thousands of public libraries, did so in order that poorer people could educate and enlighten themselves. The ancient Library of Alexandria was a centre for study and research, apparently including meeting rooms, lecture halls and even gardens in addition to the thousands of scrolls that made up the Library.

reducedDSCN4274The New Statesman’s report on the Library enthuses “It is bold, it is beautiful, it is barely believable”, and describes the incorporation of stunning new views across the city as “a democratising coup de theatre, giving the city back to its residents”

The library itself manages to be both spaciously impressive and intimate. In her blog about the library Serena Trowbridge applauds the building’s concentration on learning and culture, but comments: “Of course, the crucial question is what it will be like as a space in which to study, research and write”.  I hope this concern will be unfounded: moving away from the busy central rotunda I was pleasantly surprised to find quiet areas where it would be possible to concentrate without too many distractions.

reducedDSCN4284At the core of the building is the Golden Box, two floors hidden from the public in which are kept the Library’s world-class archive and photography collections. I was pleased to see these secure, air-conditioned spaces are located centrally rather than in underground storage areas which are prone to flooding. Being immediately above the archives, Heritage and Photography floor with the Centre for Archival Research also reduces security risks and keeps the distance these items have to be moved to a minimum.

reducedDSCN4326But what about the city’s Shakespeare Library? Birmingham has no direct associations with Shakespeare (one piece about the library rather over-enthusiastically suggested that Shakespeare was a Brummie), but he has been an essential part of the city’s cultural legacy for nearly a hundred and fifty years, affirmed by the creation of the Shakespeare Memorial Library room. Here is its history, taken from the website:

Created and designed to house the Shakespeare Memorial Library by John Henry Chamberlain in1882, a founder member of Our Shakespeare Club. He was responsible for re-building the old Central Library after the original building was gutted by fire in 1879. The Shakespeare Memorial room opened off the new wing of the L shaped reading room of the reference library on the first floor of the building. With the ever rising collection of material the Birmingham Shakespeare Library outgrew this room in 1906.

The carving over the door of the Shakespeare Memorial Library

The carving over the door of the Shakespeare Memorial Library

The room was highly praised and is in an Elizabethan style with carvings, marquetry and metalwork representing birds, flowers and foliage. The woodwork is by Mr. Barfield, a noted woodcarver, the brass and metal work by Hardmans. The ceiling decoration is stenciled.

Controversy surrounded plans to demolish the Central Library in 1971. Anthony Crossland the Environment Minister ruled that the Shakespeare Memorial room must be preserved and be readily accessible to the people of Birmingham… Eventually it was re-built as part of the School of Music complex in 1986. 

The Shakespeare Memorial Room is now situated on top of the Library of Birmingham and opened in September 2013. 

Here’s a piece by the BBC’s Will Gompertz including a visit to the Shakespeare Memorial Room.

Birmingham’s Shakespeare Collections lacked visibility in the 1970s Central Library. There were Shakespeare books on open shelving, but little to indicate the riches that were held in secure storage. It’s a problem with Special Collections everywhere, though the ability to digitise material helps to open access to these rare, fragile resources. Reinstating the Shakespeare Memorial Library Room gives the collection a focal point.

reducedDSCN4289The New Statesman describes Libraries as “buildings charged with meaning about how a society sees itself and what it values”.  I’d love to have seen this room as an integral part of the Library itself, where it could have been a strong reminder of the treasures hidden in the building, but as “the icing on top of the cake” it is still heartening to see the importance of Shakespeare to the cultural life of the city so positively affirmed. In due course I’m looking forward to seeing the Library’s new facilities acting as a springboard to inspire people with a love of Shakespeare by producing more material on the website, creating exhibitions and putting on imaginative events in collaboration with Birmingham Rep.

Just around the time of the design of the Shakespeare Memorial Library in Birmingham the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was being built in Stratford-upon-Avon. I’ve always been impressed that in the late 1870s this building incorporated a wing with a library on the ground floor, with an inner room for study and a public exhibition area, while upstairs it housed a picture gallery and across the road was a building that included a lecture hall. A truly multi-purpose complex, ahead of its time, designed to stimulate people’s enjoyment and knowledge of Shakespeare, and there in the midst of it all was a library.

In one of the stairwells at the Library of Birmingham is this image of Shakespearian actor Adrian Lester "reading" a Shakespeare-inspired book

In one of the stairwells at the Library of Birmingham is this image of Shakespearian actor Adrian Lester “reading” a Shakespeare-inspired book

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Shakespeare’s histories onscreen: An Age of Kings, The Hollow Crown and Richard II

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

An-Age-of-Kings-DVD-73166I’ve just heard the great news that An Age of Kings, the first filmed history cycle, is finally about to be made available on DVD to the UK (Region 2). Perversely, the series has been on sale in the USA (Region 1) for several years.

This hugely influential series was screened on TV in 1960. It launched a number of careers but, coming just at the moment when the RSC was being formed it also paved the way for the RSC’s own Wars of the Roses project which came to define the company.  Here’s the link to the Illuminations blog, and this description is quoted from the MovieMail page for the DVD set:

An Age of Kings is BBC Television’s compelling production of William Shakespeare’s great national pageant of eight History plays. In 1960 the series marked a significant television moment when its fifteen live episodes were broadcast fortnightly on Thursday evenings throughout the summer and autumn.

Each play from Richard II to Richard III was allotted two episodes, roughly an hour in length, excepting only Henry VI part 1 which was cut back to a single programme. The critic for The Guardian praised this ‘tremendous project’ and hailed it as ‘ambitious … exciting … a striking example of the creative use of television’.

David William as Richard II in An Age of Kings

David William as Richard II in An Age of Kings

The episodes were regularly watched by more than three million viewers. But in making An Age of Kings, the BBC was not principally in the hunt for ratings. Rather, this was Britain’s public service broadcaster demonstrating to and for the nation its unique strengths and abilities. Even so, An Age of Kings was repeated by the BBC only once, between January and April 1962.

For more than fifty years this television landmark has been entirely unavailable in Britain. Watching it today, although certain allowances need to be made for its 405-line monochrome images, the drama of power politics, betrayals, deceptions and deadly rivalries is as alive as ever. So too is the beauty of some of Shakespeare’s greatest poetry and prose.

An Age of Kings is distinguished by a rigorous approach to the text, by Michael Hayes’ frequently inventive direction and by numerous performances of the highest achievement. Here are Frank Pettingell and Angela Baddeley at a late stage in their successful stage and film careers, alongside Robert Hardy, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench and Sean Connery, among many others, at the beginning of theirs.

An Age of Kings was the first production in Britain, whether in the theatre or on the screen, of all eight Histories as a coherent single story. Its production remains the only occasion when a single company and production team has taken on all of the plays for television. More than five decades after it was first seen, the series is vivid and vibrant drama, with an unparalleled clarity and immediacy, sense of scale and poetic depth.

The hollow crownThis issue has been working the same, in reverse, with The Hollow Crown, the series that covered Richard II to Henry V, that first appeared on UK screens during the summer of 2012. Before the end of the year it was published on DVD for Region 2. So popular has the series been that it has generated a group dedicated to it on Twitter, @HollowCrownfans.  The hottest topic of debate has been the delay in broadcasting the series in the USA and the slow availability of the four plays on DVD for Region 1, and they’ve been using #HollowCrownDVD for their discussions. But now it’s been published on DVD and the series is currently being screened in many parts of the USA, where it’s also available to watch again for a limited period. It’s been terrific to hear the enthusiastic comments of viewers, many of whom had never seen Shakespeare before.

The RSC’s Richard II, which is about to begin its previews, is to be the first of the company’s productions to be live-streamed to cinema audiences. This will surely become available on DVD in due course, but the RSC has just announced that it’s releasing a CD of famous speeches and music from the production on 18 October. This will be a treat, though as the previews don’t begin until 10 October the recordings will have been made before the production has actually made its way onto the stage.

An Age of Kings will be published in the UK in December, a long-overdue addition to the range of versions of Shakespeare’s history plays available to purchase, as well as being essential for anyone interested in the history of Shakespeare in the media.

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State of Play: UK theatre audiences and actors

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

theatre audienceLast week a new report looking at the ways in which the ages and opinions of  theatre audiences are changing was published. State of Play: Theatre UK, was produced by Ticketmaster, who are not surprisingly interested to know who’s buying the tickets. But the statistic that took them by surprise was the growing percentage of under 25-year-olds now attending the theatre. In The Guardian, Alastair Smith, the editor of The Stage, said “There have been an awful lot of initiatives and theatre has tried very hard over the last few years to target younger audiences, and we’re seeing that pay off.” The National Theatre, RSC, Old Vic, Young Vic and other companies have offered young people tickets for as little as £5, and the signs indicate that people may continue to go to the theatre after their 25th birthdays.

More controversially, the report suggests that theatre audiences are changing in their attitudes to acceptable behaviour in the theatre. 13% think it’s acceptable to whisper (80% admit to it), 10% to take a photograph, 17% to eat, and nearly 47% of 16-19 year olds tweet about the show. But before established Shakespeare-lovers get worked up, the most popular shows are musicals which offer more opportunities for what might be seen as anti-social behaviour. The report doesn’t seem to ask about the use of mobile phones (as opposed to checking them), presumably because this is universally recognised as unacceptable.

The Daily Telegraph’s article concludes that the change in behaviour is caused by the widening social and age range of audiences, and seems to be in a bit of a time warp, commenting that “many now go to see West End shows in their daywear”.

trestle-theatre-audience-wBeing a good audience, though, is “much more than simply shutting up and slumping quietly in our seats”, as Lyn Gardner wrote recently. Theatre companies are beginning to recognise that “we are part of the theatrical equation”, and actors know how much audiences can vary from performance to performance. The Guardian suggests that with a sample of only 1500 the results should be read with caution. If people expect to behave as the results suggest they’re unlikely to experience what Lyn Gardner describes:
“But there are also those glorious nights when performers and audience seem perfectly attuned, firing off each other. These are the nights when the audience’s comic timing is as perfect as the actors and the quality of silence is golden, when everyone on stage and everyone in the auditorium knows that we have made this perfect evening together. ” Audiences can only expect to feel the intensity of the final scene of The Winter’s Tale, for example, if they’ve been paying attention.

Actors have to engage the audience, and Shakespeare, both actor and writer, describes the actor’s problem when talking about how Richard II is upstaged by the man who has deposed him:
As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious.

The issue of actors’ techniques and audience engagement is discussed by Dr Jami Rogers’ blogpost of 29 August. As both a trained actor and an academic, she observes that in one recent thrust stage production instead of “characters talking to each other during scenes of high emotion”, “each and every one of them was gazing outward towards the audience”.  The result is that “none of them are able to engage either emotionally or intellectually with the other characters; not a single person is having a conversation with anyone else on the stage. It serves to make it Brechtian rather than allowing the audience into this world.”

Audiences can also feel excluded if actors don’t enunciate, and a few months ago actor Imogen Stubbs led a discussion on mumbling.  Andrew Billen, TV critic for The Times, found it affects both TV and the stage: “Trends in acting haven’t necessarily helped. Method acting tries to capture the “truth” of a character – even if that character can’t be heard properly – rather than bowing to stodgy old considerations about being audible from the cheap seats.”

Other actors can go too far the other way. Hamlet speaks for every author who has written for the stage:
And let those that play your clowns
speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them
that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren
spectators to laugh too.

The Brighton Hippodrome, one of the theatres at risk

The Brighton Hippodrome, one of the theatres at risk

The good news is that young audiences are enthusiastic for live performance. But from seaside resorts to industrial cities all round the country, theatres are at risk of being demolished.

Lyn Gardner, again, suggests that time is up for some of these buildings, and that maybe another way should be found.  “Great shows need to reach the widest possible audience, and that means venturing out beyond our purpose-built cathedrals of culture. For years theatres have tried – often none too successfully – to entice more people into their buildings. If that doesn’t work, surely a better option is to present the work in non-theatre spaces alongside work from local artists?”

The Ticketmaster report also found the cost of theatre tickets was the biggest barrier for audiences, no surprise when West End tickets can easily cost £60. Taking some performances to unconventional spaces may enable more live theatre to take place. And nobody’s likely to complain because the audience haven’t got dressed up either.

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Shakespeare on the golf course

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Sylvia Morris
A miniature of four men playing a game resembling golf, at the bottom of the calendar page for September (London, British Library, MS Additional 24098, f. 27r).

A miniature of four men playing a game resembling golf, at the bottom of the calendar page for September (London, British Library, MS Additional 24098, f. 27r).

Golf may be one of the oldest of games, but it doesn’t seem to have been Shakespeare’s favourite as he never mentions it directly. He just might have played a few shots though: Mary, Queen of Scots, for one, is thought to have been an enthusiast. Its first documented mention was in 1457 when the game was prohibited in order to encourage the practice of the more useful skill of archery.

Several countries claim to have invented the game, with the Chinese, the Dutch and the Belgians all joining in, but Scotland claims to have created the modern game as opposed to just a game of sticks and balls. Its name, though, is thought to come from the Dutch or German word for club or stick, and it was originally known as “gowf”.

The whole page for September (London, British Library, MS Additional 24098, f. 27r).

The whole page for September (London, British Library, MS Additional 24098, f. 27r).

The charming image is thought to be the first representing the game. It is part of the page for September in a book of hours made in Bruges around 1540, known as the “Golf Book” because of it. The book is now held by the British Library. The man on the left is clearly playing a shot, and the pair in the middle may be discussing the next shot, or  deciding how soon to head for the Clubhouse over on the right. What, though, about the man on the right? Was kneeling down ever an acceptable putting technique? There’s more information here.

Golf now flourishes in Stratford-upon-Avon, but the first official Golf Club was only founded here in 1894. The Club was originally in Shakespeare’s mother’s village of Wilmcote, moving after a few years to the Welcombe Hills, on land which may have at one time belonged to Shakespeare. The Flower family owned much of the land at the time and offered the Club the use of two fields there. This site is now the Menzies Welcombe Golf Club, attached to the Welcombe Hotel. In 1925 Stratford-on-Avon Golf Club moved to its present site on the other side of the river, on the road to the village of Tiddington. The club was officially opened in 1928 by Sam Ryder of Ryder Cup fame who often played there and was at different times Vice President and Club Captain.

DSCN4128brass plaquesmallUntil recently I had never heard of any direct relationship between the Club and Shakespeare. But then a chance discussion while at my hairdresser’s provided a link. Just months after the Golf Club moved to the Tiddington Road, in March 1926,  the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre burned down. There was already a connection between the Flower family, who ran the theatre, and the Club. Fundraising to rebuild the Theatre began almost immediately and the Golf Club played its part.  Kept in the display cabinets at the current Clubhouse is a handsome brass plaque that testifies to this involvement. It shows the figure of Shakespeare, standing in front of the 1879 theatre. The quote from Hamlet “Will you see the players well bestowed?” ,  used during the fundraising campaign, is engraved on the plaque along with the date of the fire and the name of the Theatre.

DSCN4130firesmallTo make the point, on the left of the plaque is the theatre on fire, smoke billowing above the building.

On the back of the plaque is an explanation. Several of these plaques were made, though they were not all cast in brass. These were sent to Golf Clubs around the country in the hope that local competitions would be set up. “This façade model in antique brass represents one of the golf trophies won in competition in aid of the rebuilding and endowment fund”. As the plaque shows the old theatre rather than the redesigned building that opened in 1932 they were probably created soon after the fire, in 1926 or 1927.

The back of the model

The back of the model

They’re delightfully detailed, featuring Shakespeare’s coat of arms and Stratford’s, and though it was impossible to get a photograph it shows not just the Gower Memorial but the statue of Prince Hal holding the crown of England above his head. At the time of the fire the Gower Memorial stood outside the theatre, being moved to its present position only around the time of the 1932 opening.

In John Gee’s book celebrating the club’s centenary, Confident Century: Stratford-on-Avon Golf Club 1894-1994, there is a section, inevitably, on Shakespeare and golf. He quotes a facetious comment that appeared in the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald in 19 March 1987.

So far from there being difficulty to establish a connection the fact is that Shakespeare’s works abound in the most direct and explicit references to the pastime in question. Thus we find in Much Ado About Nothing an unmistakeable allusion to a characteristic St Andrews gesture in the words “‘I know you by the waggling of your head”, whilst in Titus Andronicus we encounter the pertinent query “What subtle hole is this? In Richard III, again, we meet the line “Put in their hands the bruising irons of wrath”, and in Henry VI part 2, the statement “I’ll call for clubs”. Falstaff’s ruling passion was evidently golf, for we know that on his death bed he “Babbled of green fields”, and there was certainly a course on Prospero’s Island, else why the question “why hath the Queen summoned me hither to this short grassed green?” There are we believe some commentators who prefer the reading “To tee or not to tee, that is the question”. But apart from this disputed passage we find in Hamlet a referenced to the fault of “Slicking too short”. Many other references might be given, but the foregoing are surely enough to prove that Shakespeare had an intimate knowledge of the game.

I’d like to thank Francis Prentice who started me off on the subject, and to Hugh Begg for kindly allowing me access to the plaque at Stratford-on-Avon’s Golf Club.

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Anticipating Richard II

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

RichardII-243x317There are now less than two weeks to go until the RSC’s most-hyped production of the last few years, Richard II, has its first performance. With David Tennant playing the leading role, all the Stratford performances were sold out months ago. Although information about the production was slight to begin with, since rehearsals began the RSC has been making material of many kinds available online. And well it might: this is the first RSC production to be transmitted, live, to cinemas, which means the production has a potential audience many times greater than could be reached in the theatre.

The RSC has been whipping up the anticipation by releasing production diaries in video form, and John Wyver, the RSC’s Media Associate has been writing fascinating posts for his Illuminations blog describing rehearsals.  As well as the RSC Live from Stratford-upon-Avon on 13 November, the production is also being streamed to large numbers of schools, and a free Education Pack The Director’s Process, is now available to download. It’s aimed at KeyStage 1, but it makes interesting reading for anyone who wants to know more about this production.

Michael Pennington in Sweet William

Michael Pennington in Sweet William

For this key production Doran has attracted a strong cast with years of experience of Shakespeare, some of whom have worked together before. Both Oliver Ford Davies, playing the Duke of York, and Jim Hooper, the Bishop of Carlisle, were in David Tennant’s Hamlet, and Greg Doran directed Michael Pennington (John of Gaunt) as Timon of Athens a few years ago. Pennington also narrated Doran’s puppet version of Venus and Adonis. And Jane Lapotaire, playing the Duchess of Gloucester, played Queen Katherine in one of Doran’s first productions, Henry VIII, in 1996. Back in the 1980s Pennington himself played Richard II for the English Shakespeare Company which he co-founded with director Michael Bogdanov. Over several years the ESC performed a complete history cycle which they toured around the country and which subsequently became even better known by being filmed. Michael Pennington is also performing his one-man show, Sweet William – My life with Shakespeare, at the Swan Theatre on 20 October. Pennington is one of the finest speakers and interpreters of Shakespeare and this is certain to be a treat.

The production of Richard II is also the beginning of Doran’s intended cycle of productions of all of Shakespeare’s plays. After a number of recent attempts by the RSC and other companies to perform all the plays within a short period of time, he’s allowing each one room to stand on its own. It’s notable, though, that with these history plays he’s following a chronological sequence: in 2014 both parts of Henry IV are to be performed.

Frank Benson as Richard II

Frank Benson as Richard II

The idea of the history cycle goes back well over a century: John Wyver reports in his blog that on the first day of rehearsal Greg Doran quoted W B Yeats’ description of his experience seeing Frank Benson’s Week of Kings at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1901:
“I have seen this week King John, Richard II, the second part of Henry IV, Henry V, the second part of Henry VI, and Richard III played in their right order, with all the links that bind play to play unbroken; and partly because of a spirit in the place, and partly because of the way play supports play, the theatre has moved me as it has never done before. That strange procession of kings and queens, of warring nobles, of insurgent crowds, of courtiers, and of people of the gutter has been to me almost too visible, too audible, too full of an unearthly energy.”

You’ll notice that this History Cycle omitted several of Shakespeare’s plays, some of which were thought to be unstageable. In 1906 Benson had another try, performing all the plays from Richard II to Richard III including all three parts of Henry VI but, inexplicably, the sole omission was that crowd-pleaser Henry IV Part 1. At the centre of this cycle was Frank Benson in the part for which he was best known, Richard II. It’s a play with a long and distinguished history, and we’ll be waiting to see what this one reveals about the here and now.

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Dido, Queen of Carthage: Marlowe and Shakespeare’s visions of Troy

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

200px-Dido1594titlepageDido, Queen of Carthage is one of Christopher Marlowe’s least-performed and least-read plays. It’s sometimes been suggested that this unpopularity has been caused by it being an early, perhaps undergraduate effort. Recently there has been a revival of interest in the play, at least partly explained by changing attitudes to homosexuality, and there have been several productions performed by adults. In London these include Shakespeare’s Globe in 2003, the Cottesloe Theatre in 2009, performances by Angels in the Architecture in 2006 and 2008 and in 2013 a production at the Rose. In the USA there have been productions in New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

But Dido was written specifically for a company of boys, to be performed for sophisticated audiences at indoor theatres. Edwards’ Boys’ recent production revives this tradition with a cast made up of schoolboys. The school setting is emphasised, the play beginning with the PE teacher’s whistle and boys in sports kit performing leapfrogs and handstands. Then the PE teacher, who turns out to be Jupiter, picks up and carries in his arms the small boy playing Ganymede. His speech begins:
Come, gentle Ganymede, and play with me;
I love thee well, say Juno what she will

Elisabeth Dutton, in her programme article wonders “How will the erotic relationship between Jupiter and his young lover Ganymede play out when played between boys?” For myself, it was the first of a number of uncomfortable moments. Pete Kirwan, in his Bardathon blog, mentions that Perry Mills, the director, had told him “the boys had wanted to dress Jupiter in gold tracksuit and jewellery to make a clearer Jimmy Saville connection”, but “the school uniforms made the relationship already explicit enough”.

I attended the first of two performances over the weekend, in King Edward’s School’s sports hall, along with many of the boys’ families and teachers, which may have made the experience particularly uneasy. This performance was in some ways a dress rehearsal for that on Saturday 21st September in the magnificent surroundings of the Banqueting Hall of Christ Church, Oxford.

Christ Church College Banqueting Hall, Oxford

Christ Church College Banqueting Hall, Oxford

The inventive staging made full use of the massive space, with boys making entrances and exits all round the hall. In Oxford, quoting Kirwan’s review of the translation of William Gage’s Latin play Dido, performed the same evening, “Christ Church itself was a significant player…. Lamp and firelight provided the illumination, casting the portraits of royalty and alumni in shifting shadows. The high ceiling and eye-straining distance between high table and the enormous double doors…allowed for extraordinary acoustics”

Aeneas and Dido, in the Rose production

Aeneas and Dido, in the Rose production

In Stratford the audience were treated to an introduction to the play by academic Andy Kesson, who explained “the story of Troy haunts the play”. Dido’s story links with the fall of Troy: Aeneas, the son of Venus, is one of the Trojans who escapes from the city after it is destroyed. On his travels, which are to end with him founding the city of Rome, he stops at Dido’s city of Carthage. She falls in love with him, rejecting her suitor Iarbus. But he abandons her and in despair she commits suicide, as does Iarbus and Dido’s sister Anna who has been secretly in love with Iarbus all along. Love wrecks everything, but from the beginning the fate of Dido and the rest of the mortals is in the hands of the irresponsible, bickering gods.

It wasn’t just Marlowe’s play that was haunted by the legends of the Trojan War. Shakespeare and Marlowe both expected their audiences to know the story, with Marlowe quoting directly from Virgil’s Aeneid in this play. Most of Shakespeare’s allusions are more subtle. He refers to the conflict repeatedly, for instance in Titus Andronicus, and the character Dido herself prefigures Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. The idea that love is controlled by supernatural forces is strong in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Desdemona’s love for Othello is sparked by the stories of his adventures, just as Dido falls for Aeneas as he tells her about his experiences in Troy.

Then there’s Hamlet, where the Prince and the First Player share a speech. Hamlet begins it:
One speech in’t
I chiefly lov’d. ‘Twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, and thereabout of it
especially where he speaks of Priam’s slaughter….
‘The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear’d
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
Now is be total gules, horridly trick’d
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Bak’d and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
To their lord’s murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o’ersized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.’  

In Marlowe’s play, Aeneas graphically describes Pyrrhus’s murder of Priam:
Then from the navel to the throat at once,
He ripped old Priam: at whose latter gasp
Jove’s marble statue ‘gan to bend the brow,
As loathing Pirrhus for this wicked act:
Yet he undaunted took his fathers flag,
And dipped it in the old Kings chill cold blood,
And then in triumph ran into the streets,
Through which he could not pass for slaughtered men:
So leaning on his sword he stood stone still,
Viewing the fire wherewith rich Ilion burnt.

But the play that kept coming to my mind was As You Like It. Not only does Rosalind adopt the name of Ganymede, but the shepherdess Phoebe refers to Marlowe, quoting a line from his poem Hero and Leander:
Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might,
“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight”

Among other verbal parallels, Phoebe speaks to Silvius after meeting Rosalind (as Ganymede):
but for my part,
I love him not nor hate him not. And yet
I have more cause to hate him than to love him

an echo of Dido, speaking to Aeneas:
It may be thou shalt be my love:
Yet boast not of it, for I love thee not,
And yet I hate thee not.

How consciously, I wonder, was Shakespeare referring to Marlowe in his play?

Anastasia Hille as Dido at the National Theatre

Anastasia Hille as Dido at the National Theatre

Marlowe’s bold, dramatic play stands in contrast to Shakespeare’s play about the Trojan War, Troilus and Cressida. Shakespeare isn’t interested in how the war started, or how it was to end. No gods influence it. With the romance of the adventure long evaporated, the conflict seems endless. The commanders of the Greek and Trojan sides display arrogance and weakness, their ineffectiveness leading to the exploitation of youth that sets the play’s tone of cynicism, disillusion and betrayal. While Dido, Queen of Carthage has become fashionable, it’s Shakespeare’s play that continues to show the “age and body of the time his form and pressure”.

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