Shakespeare’s quill

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Sylvia Morris

Nick Robertson holding the quill. Photo by Mark Williamson

Many traditions and myths relating to Shakespeare have built up in the almost four centuries since his death. As part of the celebrations for Shakespeare’s birthday this year the tradition of placing a new quill pen in the hand of the Shakespeare monument in Holy Trinity Church was revived. The honour of replacing the quill went to the Head Boy of Shakespeare’s Schoool. It was a tradition that many people had heard of, but when did it start, and why did it ever stop?

The archivist at King Edward’s, Shakespeare’s School, knew that the Captain of School had replaced the quill in 1893 at the time when the school began processing down to the church to celebrate the birthday. A local historian remembered an attempt to revive the tradition in the 1960s by the then vicar. But the fullest account I’ve found is in Val Horsler’s book Shakespeare’s Church. She remarks that the tradition began in 1861 when the monument was cleaned and  repaired. The original stone quill had been stolen, and replaced, numerous times, and the monument had been damaged by “sacrilegious visitors and senseless nonentities” scratching their names in the stone and chipping off fragments of it. The damage could have been worse: the monument is above head height on the wall, beyond the reach of most who were accustomed to taking home souvenirs from other sites like Shakespeare’s Birthplace.

The author suggests that a real quill was used because it was so easy to replace if stolen, and for a number of years it was replaced on the Birthday, the tradition stopping when it became difficult to source suitable feathers. If you’re interested in the history, the Museum of  Writing has a blog which features a video on A Short History of the Quill, showing how a quill pen was made.

The ceremony at John Stow's monument

Val Horsler’s explanation of why the tradition began is certainly plausible, but I wonder if those mending the monument in the 1860s might also have got the idea from another monument that was created around 1605 in London, to John Stow. This is in the churchof St Andrew Undershaft in the City. John Stow, often referred to as the Father of London History, published The Survey of London in 1598. For many years a memorial service to Stow was held annually by the Merchant Taylors Company of which he was a member, at which the quill he holds was replaced. Nowadays the service takes place every three years and it’s attended by a group of London Historians. As you can see from the photograph the monument is easy to reach: the person replacing the quill appears to stand on a single wooden step.

John Stow's monument

Stow’s monument, showing him, quill in hand as he writes in a book, is notably similar to Shakespeare’s and, being only a few years old, could have been chosen as a model when Shakespeare’s monument was designed. It’s to be hoped that the charming custom of replacing the quill as part of the annual Birthday celebrations will continue, even if doing so requires the use of a ladder.

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Stratford to Stratford: Opening the Olympics with Shakespeare

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Sylvia Morris

Danny Boyle and his team with the model for the opening ceremony

At last the London Olympics are about to begin. It’s estimated that a billion people worldwide will watch the opening ceremony on Friday 27 July. No pressure then on film director Danny Boyle, its creator. Clues about the ceremony have been filtering out, and here’s an article complete with film clip.

What was clear from early on was that Shakespeare was going to play a part in this opening ceremony with its title, “Isles of Wonder” inspired by The Tempest. It will open with the ringing of the  largest harmonically tuned bell in Europe, perhaps inspired by Ariel’s song Full Fathom Five, which ends “Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:/Hark! now I hear them, – Ding-dong, bell.”

The first part of the evening will feature England as a green and pleasant land, the kind of pastoral paradise celebrated in part of the British Library’s Writing Britain exhibition.

Details have been kept deliberately hazy, but the rural vision of the countryside will be overtaken by industrialisation and war before a celebration of the modern world of technology, multiculturalism and even the National Health Service. Clearly Boyle has decided to celebrate the British sense of humour and eccentricity as well as its history. One of the people who attended the dress rehearsal was interviewed on Radio 4 and while she refused to give away any of the details she described it as “surreal and eccentric, but pure pleasure”.

At some point Kenneth Branagh, who has brought Shakespeare to more people than any other through his films, and who’s performed many times with the RSC,  will deliver a speech from The Tempest, presumably that which has inspired the event, Caliban’s:
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d,
I cried to dream again.

It’s interesting that they’ve chosen to take inspiration from The Tempest, a play sometimes charged with imperialism (though at the time it was written England didn’t have an empire). In the dark side of the play a ruler is deposed by his brother, and sent off with his child in a rotten ship, clearly not expected to survive. It includes betrayal, murder and family hatred. But The Tempest is also a play in which love and reconciliation win out in the end, a reference to the positive ideals of the Olympic Games.

The Tempest is also a play full of magic, and we’re going to get a sense of the mystical landscape of the British Isles, both rural and urban. Boyle promised an opening ceremony where everyone will feel involved. He said “I hope it will reveal how peculiar and contrary we are – and how there’s also, I hope, a warmth about us.”

The Olympic stadium

It certainly sounds like an Olympic opening ceremony like no other. Danny Boyle again: “Our Isles of Wonder salutes and celebrates the exuberant creativity of the British genius in an Opening Ceremony that we hope will be as unpredictable and inventive as the British people”.

As in Caliban’s speech, music will feature heavily with a rock festival at one end of the stadium and the Last Night of the Proms at the other. The musical soundtrack will include the themes from James Bond, Doctor Who and The Archers as well as the Sex Pistols’ irreverent song God Save the Queen. There will be a medley of  Indian-inspired medley of songs, and Paul McCartney is said to be going to round off the ceremony by playing a set.

In Stratford-upon-Avon there will be a huge 25 metre screen positioned outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre showing us the action in the other Stratford. Founder of Stratford Vision, Denys Shortt suggested “how better to celebrate than to watch the opening ceremony outside the iconic RSC in Bancroft Gardens.” It’s going to be a huge treat to enjoy the ceremony and there’s sure to be a great cheer for England’s greatest cultural export in the Stratford where he was born.

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John Taylor, the water poet

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Sylvia Morris

John Taylor

John Taylor, known as the Water-Poet, was one of the characters of Elizabethan and Jacobean London. On 25 July 1622 he undertook an impressive publicity stunt, attempting to row down the Thames from London to the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, a distance of forty miles, in a boat made of paper. For oars he used two fish tied to canes. Not surprisingly he ran into problems, but claimed to have  completed the journey. His poem about the adventure appeared in one of his published collections. Here is an extract, after he set off with a friend in the flimsy vessel:
The water to the paper being got,
In one half hour our boat began to rot.
In which extremity I thought it fit
To put in use a stratagem of wit,
which was, eight bullocks bladders we had bought
Puffed stiffly full with wind, bound fast and taut,
Which on our boat within the tide we tied
One each side four upon the outward side.
The water still rose higher by degrees,
In three miles going, almost to our knees.
Our rotten bottom all to tatters fell,
And left our boat as bottomless as hell.

According to Taylor, they somehow stayed afloat all night:
Thus three hours darkeling did I puzzle and toil
Soused and well pickled, chafe and muzzle and moil,
Drench’d with the swassing waves and stewed in sweat
Scarce able with a cane our boat to set.

It was clearly a tall tale, but the stunt gave him plenty of publicity and helped to increase the sales he was able to make from selling copies of his poem.

John Taylor had been born in Gloucester in 1578 and in his teens became a Thames waterman, the equivalent of a modern taxi driver. He fought at sea against the Spaniards and rose to become the organiser of pageants for special occasions. He also fancied himself as a poet, his poem The Sculler being one of his earliest published works. It forms part of the British Library’s current exhibition Writing Britain.

By 1630 he was able to publish a magnificent collection of his works, over 150 poems. None of the poems are very good, but they are studied for what they reveal of the life and times of people in the early modern period. He was well-enough known to be able to draw attention to pet subjects: he gained the support of King Charles 1 when he campaigned against the pollution and hindrances to navigation of some of England’s rivers. This blogpost explains some of Taylor’s stunts.

With his links to the theatre (watermen ferried people to the playhouses on the south bank of the Thames from the city on the north), and his interest in poetry, it’s impossible that he didn’t know Shakespeare, and it was John Taylor who wrote one of the earliest references to Shakespeare’s death. He compiled a list of poets whose work and name had survived because their poems were printed. It appears in the poem In Praise of Hemp-seed, published in 1620, which contains the following lines:
In paper, many a poet now survives
Or else their lines had perish’d with their lives.
Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More,
Sir Philip Sidney, who the laurel wore,
Spenser, and Shakespeare did in art excell,
Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniell.
Sylvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington,
Forgetfulness their works would over run
But that in paper they immortally
Do live in spite of death, and cannot lie.

John Taylor’s immortality was ensured by making use of the power of the printing press. In fact, as far as we know, Taylor was much more concerned to keep his name alive for all time than Shakespeare ever was.

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Here come the girls: women directors at the Royal Shakespeare Company

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Sylvia Morris

 

Kate and Petruchio from Lucy Bailey's 2012 production of The Taming of the Shrew

Outgoing Artistic Director Michael Boyd recently announced his last planned season for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2013. In an interview he stated that “The theme of the season is heroines”, as several of the plays feature dominant women, and with no fewer than five of the eight plays being directed by women, it will be “a celebration of women in the theatre”. Three of the plays are Shakespeares, and will be performed in the RST: The Winter’s Tale, directed by Lucy Bailey, As You Like It, directed by Maria Aberg and All’s Well That Ends Well directed by Nancy Meckler.  Some people have commented that the emphasis on women is long overdue.

Stratford-upon-Avon’s record for employing women directors has never been good. In her 1998 book MsDirecting Shakespeare, Elizabeth Schafer commented “Women directors have been particularly scarce on the often maligned main stage at Stratford”,  and up to the time of her book only six women had directed in the RST.

Perhaps we can blame this on the fact that the house dramatist is male, and his major characters are men. The shortage is mostly in the rehearsal room, as quite a number of women have held influential roles within the organisation, from Lady Benson back in the early years of the Memorial Theatre to administrators like Elsie Beyer in the 1940s and women Governors like Ellen Terry and Lady Flower. Nobody though has ever come close to the career of Lilian Baylis at the Old Vic in London.

Viola and her household in Twelfth Night, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre 1939

I’ve been looking back at the two earliest female directors to work in Stratford, Irene Hentschel and Dorothy Green. Their careers at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre as it was then neatly book-end the second world war. Hentschel was already a well-known director, mostly of Ibsen, and her 1938 production of J B Priestley’s play Time and the Conways had been a success in London. She was invited to direct Twelfth Night in 1939.  The newspapers concentrated on the fact that she was both a newcomer and the first woman to direct at Stratford, but she was not intimidated. One critic wrote that Hentschel “has celebrated the occasion by kicking up her heels with gay abandon”. It was a production that refused to be conventional. Instead of the usual dignified mature lady, Lesley Brook played Olivia as an immature girl. Olivia’s household looked severe, but “the primness is all on the surface. Ruffle it to the least degree, and in…Olivia you discover a warm-blooded girl”.

The designers, the all-female team Motley, designed the costumes to reflect the characters rather than setting the play in a single period, so Orsino was Byronic, Malvolio Dickensian, and Toby Belch Edwardian. Their set made the most of the capabilities of the new theatre (then only 7 years old). Using the stage lift, the garden set could be raised to reveal the kitchen set underneath, connected by a wrought-iron spiral staircase. Reviewers were unsettled by the director’s unusual approach, admitting it was refreshing – but perhaps in the build-up to the war reassurance would have been more welcome than innovation.

The second female director was Dorothy Green. She was well known and popular, having acted major roles such as Cleopatra both in Stratford and London over several decades. Her 1943 production of The Winter’s Tale is almost lost: the prompt book still exists but there are hardly any photographs and only a few reviews. This absence has more to do with the reality of a nation at war than Green’s production. What reviews there are talk about its dignity and restraint, and the fine performances she drew from Baliol Holloway as Autolycus and Abraham Sofaer as Leontes.

Paul Scofield as Henry V, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre 1946

After the end of the war she was given another chance, directing Henry V in 1946 with the rising star Paul Scofield in the lead. This was a tricky play to direct, with the stirring wartime Olivier film fresh in people’s memory. No stage version was going to be able to compete, and Green wisely took a different approach to appeal to audiences tired of war. It was judged “straightforward Shakespeare, relying on the spoken word rather than a producer’s tricks”, and Scofield, a lyrical rather than a bravura performer, excelled in the night scene before Harfleur and the courtship of the French princess. The Stage commented “it gives Henry more appeal for a war-scorched generation than he could otherwise command”. The subtle production “did not soar… but neither did it crawl”. After the war, women were encouraged to resume lives of domesticity rather than continue to do “men’s jobs”, and it’s this, rather than any failing by either of these two women, that resulted in a delay of ten years before another woman was to direct.

This lack of opportunity must have had a long term effect on women’s ability to make progress in the theatre except on the stage itself. Even there, as Janet Suzman suggests, apart from a handful of great roles like Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, female roles are less rewarding than those for men. These roles would have been challenging, to say the least, for boys to play. Who knows what Shakespeare would have come up with if he’d been able to write for more powerful women actors?

As I write this blog post it has been announced that a woman, Erica Whyman, has been appointed RSC Deputy Artistic Director to join Gregory Doran’s new team in January 2013. This news should ensure that under Doran the development of women at the RSC will continue to grow.

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Robert Southwell

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Sylvia Morris

Robert Southwell

While browsing in Michael Wood’s book In Search of Shakespeare I found one of those possible Shakespeare references that you’d just love to be true.

It relates to the Jesuit Robert Southwell. Born and brought up in England, he first went to the continent to pursue his religious studies aged only 15, and after several years in France and Italy returned in 1586 aged about 25. Catholic priests were outlawed and he knew that detection would mean death: he embraced the idea of dying a martyr.

For six years he moved from safe house to safe house, including a time at Baddesley Clinton near Stratford, where he narrowly avoided capture. It’s still possible to see the priest’s hole where he hid. His luck ran out in 1592 when he was captured. Over the next three years he was tortured and imprisoned in the Tower of London, then prosecuted for treason and brutally executed on 20 February 1595.

What set Southwell apart was that he was an accomplished poet writing on religious themes. It sounds unlikely given the persecution of Catholics, but some of his writings were published during his lifetime and others were circulated in manuscript. After his death, more work was published, and proved popular for several decades. Thomas Nashe imitated some of his poems proving that their merit was recognised outside Catholic circles, and Ben Jonson was a great admirer of his work.

As well as writing poetry himself, Southwell also wrote about the purpose of poetry, which he maintained should be written to the glory of God. He wrote that most poets “have wedded their wills” to “unworthy affections”, that is, worldly love. Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis was exactly the sort of poem he most wished to supplant, and there are clues that indicate that he knew the poem, which he must have read in prison, where he also did much of his writing.

His most famous poem, The Burning Babe, was published in a collection in 1595, the same year he died. Shakespeare refers to this poem in Macbeth. In Act 1 Scene 7, Macbeth is persuading himself not to murder the virtuous Duncan. He speaks about how Pity, in the form of a baby, would condemn the deed:
And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s Cherubins, hors’d
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

This inexplicable image begins to make sense when Southwell’s poem is read. It refers to the nativity of Christ, born to be a sacrifice to mankind.
A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, though scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed,
As though his floods should quench his flames, which with his tears were fed.

The full text of the poem is here.

More recently it’s been suggested that another poem by Southwell is an even closer match to Shakespeare’s speech. The poem is called New heaven, new warre, and again Christ is likened to a newly-born baby, fighting the battle for men’s souls. Here is one stanza:
With teares he fights and wins the field,
His naked breast stands for a shield,
His battering shot are babish cryes,
His Arrowes looks of weeping eyes,
His Martial ensignes colde and neede,
And feeble flesh his warriers steede. 

Michael Wood, though, highlights a more mysterious connection between them. It seems that Shakespeare, Southwell and the Earl of Southampton were all distantly related, sufficiently, according to Wood, for Southwell to address William as “cousin”.

One of Southwell’s works was entitled  St Peter’s Complaint, a collection of religious poetry to which he wrote a preface directly criticising modern poets:
Worthy cosen, Poets, by abusing their talent, and making the follies, and faygnings of love the customary subject of their base endeavours, have so discredited this facultie, that a Poet, a Lover and a Lyar, are by many reckoned but three words of one signification.

On the title page, the letter is addressed “To my worthy good cosen”. It was published after Southwell’s death in 1595, but had circulated in manuscript for some years before that. Southwell’s poems were popular, and St Peter’s Complaint was republished in 1616. On this title page, the address is “to my worthy good cosen Maister W. S.”. Shakespeare died in 1616.

What are we to make of this? Scholars have tried unsuccessfully to find another relative of Southwell’s with the initials WS. And why the change in 1616? Was it to protect Shakespeare while he lived? More than twenty years after the death of Southwell, who was to know, and who took the decision to change the title page?

We’ll probably never know. In his book Wood emphasises any evidence that implies Shakespeare could have been a Catholic, and it’s possible that this is pure wishful thinking. What is certain, though, is that Shakespeare knew Southwell’s poetry, and Southwell almost certainly knew his. While he may have disapproved of the subject matter, he must have admired the skill.

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David Tennant’s Hamlet and screening Shakespeare on TV

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Sylvia Morris

David Tennant as Hamlet

Tucked away on the BBC2 TV schedule at 11.20 on Tuesday evening is the last of the Shakespeare Uncovered series, David Tennant on Hamlet. Not only does it feature David Tennant, whose own Hamlet for the RSC in 2008 was a massive hit, but he takes the opportunity to speak to other notable recent Hamlets Jude Law, Simon Russell Beale and Ben Whishaw. Simon Russell Beale is having quite a Shakespeare summer himself having just played Falstaff in the BBC’s The Hollow Crown series and is now beginning to play Shakespeare’s least-known leading man, Timon of Athens, at the National Theatre.

I mention this particularly because, with all the Shakespeare, not to mention all the sport, this summer the BBC’s scheduling has been pretty erratic. The first two parts of The Hollow Crown were meant to be on at 9pm, but one was delayed by the tennis at Wimbledon. The second two in the series have been scheduled for 8pm, an hour earlier. I was listening in on  #hollowcrown on Twitter on Saturday and it was clear from people’s tweets that many hadn’t got that message. So here’s your warning: on Saturday evening, the culmination of the series, Henry V  begins at 8pm. Don’t be late!

Jeremy Irons as Henry IV

Shakespeare Uncovered has been a fascinating mix, including contributions from Joely Richardson along with her mother Vanessa Redgrave looking at Shakespeare’s women, Ethan Hawke on Macbeth, Trevor Nunn on The Tempest, Derek Jacobi on Richard II and Jeremy Irons on the Henry IV and Henry V plays. The programmes have each been very different, and on Tuesday, it’s David Tennant’s turn to talk about the gloomy Dane. Indications are that it’ll be good stuff.

David Tennant’s Hamlet was filmed for TV and it’s a fair bet that we’ll be seeing a few clips from this version during the show. Just recently there’s also been a discussion going on about the whole subject of filming Shakespeare for TV, sparked off by The Hollow Crown, and perhaps encouraged by the amount of productions like those from the Globe and the National which are now made available to watch in cinemas. This year the Globe to Globe productions, staged from April to June, were also filmed and are gradually being made available on the Space.

But the issue that’s got people going is Richard Eyre’s contention in a recent article that filming stage productions, even fine adaptations like the David Tennant Hamlet and the recent African Julius Caesar, both directed by Gregory Doran, is not the same as, and not as  good as, reimagining the plays for the small screen, as The Hollow Crown has done.

Angela Down as Helena, Ian Charleson as Bertram, in the BBC All's Well That Ends Well

From the end of the 1970s to the mid-1980s the BBC undertook an ambitious filming of all of Shakespeare’s plays for transmission on TV. Respondents to Richard Eyre’s piece on the Illuminations blog have taken widely differing views of these plays. They are often remembered as clunky, studio-bound and unimaginative. But at the time they were a revelation. For many people they were the only Shakespeare they would ever get to see. Hardly anybody had video recorders, and if I remember correctly, the programmes were shown only once with no repeat. And only the most popular plays were released on video. Ironically some of these were the poorest productions. So it’s only within the last few years since the whole 37 have been released on DVD that some of the best, like Pericles, have been seen again.  The Shakespeare Centre Library acquired the complete series as they came out and people came from all over the country to see them.

DVD cover for Antony and Cleopatra featuring Jane Lapotaire

Although the productions were not as glamorous as The Hollow Crown many of them featured top-notch actors:  Ian Charleson as Bertram, Jane Lapotaire as Cleopatra, Felicity Kendal as Viola, Alan Howard as Coriolanus, Mike Gwilym as Pericles, and without this series there would be no recordings of some of these at the height of their powers. It’s now commonplace for theatre companies to record their productions, even if the recordings aren’t anything like broadcast quality, but at the time of the BBC series neither the RSC nor the National Theatre were recording their output.

Anthony Quayle as Falstaff from the BBC production of Henry IV

The series also featured great veterans like John Gielgud as John of Gaunt and Anthony Quayle as Falstaff. Quayle had been a renowned Falstaff on stage back in 1951 and although thirty years later his performance was probably only an echo of the original, these recordings have ensured that there is some evidence of these performers’ work.

I’ve been asked whether The Hollow Crown and Simon Schama’s Shakespeare will be screened in the USA, or released on DVD. I’ve done a bit of detective work and the answer seems to be yes, to all questions. But you may have to wait until the end of this year or the beginning of the next.

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Peter O’Toole’s Shakespeare

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Sylvia Morris

Peter O’Toole as Hamlet, for the National Theatre

The actor Peter O’Toole has recently announced his retirement from stage and screen, shortly before his 80th birthday. His reason? “The heart for it has gone out of me: it won’t come back.” It occurred to me that it’s unusual for actors to deliberately retire. Some, like Sir John Gielgud, never lose the appetite: he lived to be 96 and played cameo roles in no fewer than 4 films only 2 years before his death. Few follow the path set by William Charles Macready, the greatest actor of the mid nineteenth century, who left the stage in his fifties and spent the last 20 years of his life in happy retirement.

Peter O’Toole has always been an unusual actor. He went into acting almost by chance, and after drama school spent three years in rep at the Bristol Old Vic in around 70 different plays. By the time he came to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1960 he’d already won a best actor award, and had begun a film career. At the age of 27 he took three significant parts in Stratford: Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew and Thersites in Troilus and Cressida.

All three parts showcased O’Toole’s confidence and intensity. Most of the reviewers commented on his dignity as Shylock, and the Evening Standard reviewer commented that he was “a human being of stature driven to breaking point by the inhumanity of others”, leading to him being “possessed” in the trial scene.

Peggy Ashcroft as Kate and Peter O’Toole as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, 1960

The Taming of the Shrew enabled him to showcase a different range of talents, “the most aggressive, virile, dominating Petruchio in years” according to one reviewer, a “whirlwind of masculine ego”. At six foot three, with intense blue eyes and trademark charm, he played the part “without undue swagger and braggadocio but with an inspired touch of the fantastic”. His Kate was the spirited 52-year old Dame Peggy Ashcroft. According to the prompt book for the production, in their first scene together she kicked a stool from under him, threw it at him, slapped his face and bit his hand. His response was to kneel by her side to put her shoe back on for her. However it’s clear that by the end of the scene Petruchio was in control. Here’s a section of a commercial recording of The Taming of the Shrew featuring O’Toole and his then wife Sian Phillips from around 1962.

His performance of the bitter Thersites in Troilus and Cressida was less successful, though reviewers disagreed about how the part should be played. Some found him “all rage” while others commented that he was “subdued” and “underplayed the invective”.  In all, though, it was a triumphant season.

Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia

One consequence of taking on the most promising young actors is always the risk that other people will also find them promising, and the planned London season was abandoned when he took the film role of Lawrence of Arabia. The film made him a screen legend.

He hadn’t finished with Shakespeare. In 1963 he played Hamlet, directed by Laurence Olivier, in the opening production of the newly-formed National Theatre, another opportunity to show his versatility. He and Orson Welles were interviewed by the BBC’s Monitor arts programme on the play.

He’s been nominated for 8 Oscars, but has never won one, though in 2003 he was awarded an honorary Oscar. His output has been prodigious, and varied. He gained a reputation for hell-raising with actors like Oliver Reed, Richard Harris and Richard Burton.

His career has always had its ups and downs. In 1980 he joined the Old Vic for another major Shakespeare play, Macbeth. The production was hotly anticipated, but universally derided. The Observer wrote “Chances are he likes the play, but O’Toole’s performance suggests that he is taking some kind of personal revenge on it.” I saw it on tour, finding on arrival at the theatre that our group were sitting in the front row of the stalls. It was a strangely old-fashioned production with some eccentric moments including the entrance of the ghost of Banquo in the banquet scene, literally dripping in stage blood. Although most of the costuming was “traditional” I have a pretty clear memory of O’Toole wearing a pink jogging suit for the action sequences.

He’s recently mentioned  his great love of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which he keeps with him constantly, and knows by heart. Here’s a link to a scene from his film Venus in which he delivers Sonnet 18. And in this radio interview he recites “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” impromptu: we can all forgive him forgetting the final couplet.

Nobody would wish Peter O’Toole the fate of Henry Irving, who died in the lobby of the Midland Hotel in Bradfordjust after coming off stage, or of Edmund Kean who collapsed on stage into the arms of his son Charles while they were appearing in Othello.  After a career that has spanned over 55 years it’s to be hoped that he has years of contented retirement ahead of him.

15 December 2013: the death of Peter O’Toole has been announced today.

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Stratford’s French connection: the Gower Memorial

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Sylvia Morris

For Bastille Day, a post about a much-loved monument that originated in France. If you’ve ever visited Stratford-upon-Avon the chances are you’ve seen the Gower Memorial, even if only from the window of a bus. It now sits alongside the main road into the town near Clopton Bridge, with the Royal Shakespeare Theatre visible behind. But how many people realise it could claim to be the most accomplished Shakespeare statue in the world?

Its history goes back over 130 years, when a number of memorials to Shakespeare were contributed to the town. After much debate it was decided that the most suitable grand memorial in the town should be a theatre, leading to the opening of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1879. However this didn’t prevent a number of other memorials including the American Fountain in 1887.

The story of the Gower memorial is long and complicated. It’s named after its creator, Lord Ronald Gower, a talented artist whose work has been undervalued because he was a gentleman amateur with every advantage: wealth, education and position. His mother was a close friend of Queen Victoria and he knew the politicians he sculpted, Disraeli  and Gladstone, personally. He was also a friend of Oscar Wilde and of John Millais, who painted his portrait. According to The English Illustrated Magazine of 1895, he “has known everyone worth knowing, from Garibaldi and Longfellow to the Empress Eugenie.”

The statue of Falstaff

Gower had a passion for art, and was a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery where he became an authority on Shakespeare portraiture. In 1875 he moved to France to pursue his interest, joining the workshop of Albert Carrier-Belleuse which specialised in statuettes of historical personages. Rodin was a former apprentice.  The connection did not last long and Gower soon set up up on his own in collaboration with a talented Italian sculptor Luca Madrassi. He was to spend a number of years in Paris.

The Leicester Square, London statue of Shakespeare had been unveiled in 1874, and in 1877 the foundation stone for the Memorial Theatre in Stratford had been laid, shifting his thoughts there. His first reference to the idea of creating his own monument dates from the same year. There were already two statues of Shakespeare in Stratford though neither was conspicuous and his ambitious plan was to include four statues of characters from the plays as well as a bust of Shakespeare crowned by figures representing Comedy and Tragedy.

The statue of Hamlet

In 1881 a plaster cast of his proposed Shakespeare monument was put on display in Paris. The creation of bronze sculpture is a complex process, and Gower sculpted the figures in clay before creating the plaster casts. The figures and decorative bronze work were cast in France by three different specialist foundries.

The choice of characters was Hamlet representing Philosophy, Prince Hal representing History, Falstaff representing Comedy and Lady Macbeth representing Tragedy. With the exception of Falstaff the statues all show the  characters at a recognisable moment in the play. Hal holds his father’s crown aloft before placing it on his own head, Hamlet contemplates the skull of Yorick, and Lady Macbeth obsessively washes her hands while sleepwalking. The original concept of a bust of Shakespeare was rethought only a year or so before the completion of the monument when the seated but dynamic figure of Shakespeare was created.

The Statue of Lady Macbeth

The monument was put in place in 1888 outside the Memorial Theatre, Shakespeare facing Holy Trinity Church. Each statue was set in the alcove between the masks and flowers, creating a more integrated composition than how it appears now. Apart from an address by Oscar Wilde, the October opening ceremony was low-key. It was several years before Gower would allow his name to be added to it, and although large, it’s an unpretentious monument by a modest artist.

The statue was untouched by the fire which destroyed much of the Memorial Theatre in 1926, but the designs for the new theatre would have left the Gower Memorial around the back so in 1933 the whole thing was transported a few hundred yards  to the main road. The figures were moved away from the monument, and shifted around to follow its angles rather than its sides. It may not now have the impact that its creator intended but it’s seen and enjoyed by more people than he could ever have anticipated.

The statue of Prince Hal

Sadly, it’s the figure of Shakespeare himself who is difficult to see, being so high up that only the local bird population get close to him. I always find it irritating that the figure of Shakespeare is rarely cleaned to remove what the birds leave behind. It also originally held a quill in his right hand, lost at some point in its history and never replaced, a particularly sad fate for a sculpture of the most celebated writer in the world.

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Lives of Shakespeare

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Sylvia Morris

For a man about whom we are supposed to know next to nothing, an awful lot of books have been written about Shakespeare’s life. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece about Nicholas Fogg’s new biography of Shakespeare, and in researching it I caught up with some new ones, as well as some old favourites. Here are a few notes about some of them. 

Bill Bryson. Shakespeare
Easily the most popular biography, Bryson acts as our guide, only one step ahead of us his readers. As you’d expect it’s entertaining and skilfully put together. He makes the subject approachable by telling stories about other people’s search for the truth: his story about the Chandos portrait, for instance, doesn’t just go into the complexities of Shakespeare portraiture but also explains how it is that much of what we hope to find out about Shakespeare is lost, confusing or impossible to verify. Not the most accurate, but neither is it misleading.

Katherine Duncan-Jones. Ungentle Shakespeare
With its controversial title, the author is clearly trying to rescue Shakespeare from the lazy generalisations and assumptions of “genius” with which biographers used to credit Shakespeare. Her emphasis is to show Shakespeare as a man among men, and a writer among writers. It’s not meant to be exhaustive, so Duncan-Jones doesn’t tangle with some of the issues she’s uncomfortable with like the possible Lancashire connection, and the Sir Thomas More document.

Nicholas Fogg. Hidden Shakespeare
The latest biography, which I wrote a whole post about recently. It’s both factually dense and a good read, a balance not always made by other biographers. And unlike some of the others, you don’t get the feeling that Fogg is trying to make clever points or write sparkling prose. You’re aware as you read it that it’s a subject he’s comfortable with and knows intimately because he’s been thinking about it for years. 

Stephen Greenblatt. Will in the World
Greenblatt’s book is engaging and as forcefully written as you would expect from such a senior academic, but he slips into the method of assuming he can raid the plays and poems for the story he wants to find about Shakespeare’s experience. With no actual evidence, for instance, he assumes that the story of the sonnets is the primary love interest of his life. “There is no room for wife and children”. It’s very persuasive, but there’s a lot of speculation filling in the gaps between the facts. 

Graham Holderness. Nine Lives of William Shakespeare
Holderness’s book was only published in 2011. He’s taken an unusual approach: he takes 9 sections of Shakespeare’s life, and writes first a chapter about the facts relating to it, then a piece of fiction based on those facts, each in a different style. One is written in the style of a Sherlock Holmes story. It’s great fun, but is Holderness just trying to show us what a clever writer he is?

Park Honan. Shakespeare. A life
Park Honan is a professional biographer, and in this, as in his other biographies he concentrates on the factual record. If you want reliable information, Honan’s your man, but for me his reluctance to enter into much consideration of areas of Shakespeare’s life which aren’t strictly in the record can make his writing dry.

Lois Potter. The Life of William Shakespeare
Potter’s book is new this year. She’s a newly-retired, highly esteemed scholar and she has written a biography for the connoisseur. She writes with great authority on the plays as literary and theatrical texts, and on the theatre of the time, and includes discussion of Shakespeare’s collaborations. Each play has a few pages devoted to it, an approach none of the others takes. I’ve not had an opportunity yet to read this book in detail, but on first sight it certainly doesn’t disappoint. Probably not for the beginner though.

Samuel Schoenbaum. William Shakespeare: A compact documentary life
Schoenbaum’s reasonable, measured voice always persuades me that he must be right, but I’m aware that, written nearly 40 years ago, it may sound dated. Holderness certainly finds it so. He accuses him of “patrician prejudice”, finding him unwilling to recognise that Shakespeare could have undertaken manual labour in his father’s workshop, or to have poached deer not just as a juvenile prank but out of economic necessity. New readers might agree, but for anyone wanting to read up about Shakespeare’s life, I would still have Schoenbaum on my list.

Rene Weis. Shakespeare Revealed
This is a very readable biography, less densely written than some of the others, and considers much evidence without being dismissive of it. Weis is a genial guide, sometimes perhaps a little too genial, and like Wood, he’s interested in the Warwickshire background, showing great interest in place-names. Unusually he suggests that many of the names mentioned in The Taming of the Shrew are correct, rather than being made up, as most assume.

Michael Wood. In Search of Shakespeare
In Search of Shakespeare was published as a book at the same time as the four-part documentary of the same name was screened on BBC TV. Reading the book alongside watching the series would be a great introduction. Wood’s an enthusiastic guide who has made a special study of the history of Britain, so he’s very strong on Shakespeare’s Warwickshire background, while being generous to Anne Hathaway and allowing Shakespeare to be attached to his family. The emphasis on the “was Shakespeare a Catholic?” question is a bit too much for me at times.

So which, out of this selection, is the best biography of Shakespeare? All modern biographers are trying to get away from the idea which took hold in the Romantic period that Shakespeare was a solitary genius, and most are cautious about finding the man’s life in the plays though few are able to ignore it altogether. All have their good points, but Schoenbaum’s reading of the documents still gets my vote, so my recommendation would be to read him and bring him up to date with at least one of the others. You won’t go far wrong with any of them.

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Shakespeare’s Birthplace: a shrine to the Victorians

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Sylvia Morris

What is the best way to commemorate the life of a writer? Why do we so often treasure the houses they lived in, and what do we hope to get out of visiting them?

There have been a number of recent attempts to answer this question such as Nicola Watson’s book The Literary Tourist, and Julia Thomas is the latest author to examine this issue, her book Shakespeare’s Shrine  concentrating on a single house, Shakespeare’s Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. Her book delves into the strange, eventful history of the building highlighting the eccentricity of people involved and events surrounding it, a story in itself so odd that I’m surprised it has received so little attention.

The fate of Shakespeare’s Birthplace became a cause celebre leading up to the auction of the house in 1847. People had been trying to get closer to Shakespeare by visiting his house for at least 70 years by then during which time disreputable practises such as visitors being allowed to cut a sliver off relics like the so-called “Shakespeare’s chair” had flourished.  It was also possible to arrange a sleepover, spending the night in Shakespeare’s birthroom, breathing in the air which nourished and inspired the poet. During the early nineteenth century there had also been undignified disagreements between one custodian, Mary Hornby and the owner of the property, Mrs Court.

Shakespeare and his family

Thomas suggests that Shakespeare’s Birthplace developed in the way it did as a product of the Victorian period with its interest in propriety and class, the terraced cottage turned into a respectable house. Victorian love of domesticity put extra stress on hearth and home, and she reproduces two telling images, both popular in the Victorian period. In one, an idealised Mary Arden tends to her baby son William in his cradle, and in the other, entitled Shakespeare and his family, Shakespeare, the Victorian patriarch, reads aloud from his latest play to his admiring family.

Shakespeare had been called “divine” for many years, so it’s not surprising that when attention shifted to his home it should also be described in religious terms, “hallowed”, ” a place of pilgrimage” and as in the title of the book “a shrine”.

Much of the evidence for this public interest was collected by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust itself, founded after the purchase of the house. Creating a building and a foundation suitable for the attention of patriotic Englishmen was part of the aim of forming the Trust. As Thomas describes, though, although the house was purchased by public subscription the full amount was not forthcoming, the first of many difficulties over money.

The author suggests that Stratford itself was the invention of the Victorians. Most of the memorials to Shakespeare in the town date back to this period, as did the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and it was the Shakespeare connection that encouraged the early arrival of railways to Stratford and the growth of the tourist trade with the creation of souvenirs, guide books and postcards.

Such was the interest in Shakespeare that many memorials were suggested, some very amusing. Who knew, for instance, that at one stage in the 1860s there was a plan to create, admittedly in London, a hundred-foot tall metal statue of Shakespeare which would tower over the capital? The building was going to contain attractions on three floors, and visitors to the statue would be able to look out over London through the glass eyes of Shakespeare. It sounds remarkably like the Statue of Liberty, but some decades earlier, and was probably based stories of the ancient Colossus of Rhodes.

The earliest image of Shakespeare's Birthplace

In another chapter she analyses the images of the outside of the building. Before the age of photography when at last the appearance of the building could be verified, images varied according to the artist, publisher and, presumably, what kind of impression they wanted to give, of hovel or gentleman’s residence. The earliest image showing the appearance of the building dates back to the 1750s and the discussions about what was an appropriate method of restoring or preserving the building show that this is not a new subject.

Thomas’s book is densely written, and admirably referenced. Its extensive bibliography demonstrates the depth of her research and she has produced a well-told account of the strange but true story of one of England’s best-known buildings.

 

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