My Own Shakespeare.

The BBC's Radio 4 blog as a post about the making of My Own Shakespeare which has now begun on that channel and Radio 3.  Interestingly the same recording session also yielded the play excerpts for Shakespeare's Restless World, including this rendition of To Be or Not To Be from Rory Kinnear:

Helen Mirren's Ophelias.

Philip Ward writes an excellent blog cataloguing and analysing the performances of Helen Mirren and in today's post, as well as nodding towards the bizarre Celestino Coronada film of 1976 mentions her appearance as Ophelia in the 1970 RSC production with Alan Howard as Hamlet:

"Ophelia is so often seen as an absence. She appears in only five of the play’s twenty scenes. We know little of what passed between her and Hamlet before the play opens. She doesn’t struggle with moral choices, as he does. ‘I think nothing, my lord,’ she tells him – a line that he chooses to interpret in the bawdy sense – but which the Gentleman echoes without irony when faced with the mad Ophelia, commenting that ‘her speech is nothing’, mere ‘unshaped use’. Mirren’s Ophelia was no shrinking violet. She was not prepared to go quietly."

Sounds enchanting.

The BBC's My Own Shakespeare project released as podcast.

My Own Shakespeare will be a series of short pieces of two or three minutes broadcast across BBC Radios 3 and 4 across the rest of May.

 "What does Shakespeare mean to us today ? Public figures from all walks of life talk about the piece of Shakespeare that inspires them most.The pieces are read by well known actors."

Catching all of these seemed like it was going to be an impossibility, but true to BBC form of late, they're releasing them all as podcasts and with indefinite availability.

The subscription page is here.

Shakespeare at the British Council.

A small archive of short films from the British Council's archive have been posted online including two excepts from Shakespeare plays recorded back in the 1940s "in order to enable those who have no opportunity of attending performances of Shakespearean plays in a theatre to see how the various parts are played by leading English actors and actresses".

"Famous Scenes from Shakespeare No. 1" is Julius Caesar - Act III, Scene 2 - The Forum Scene.  Felix Aylmer as um, Marcus Brutus and Leo Genn as Marcus Antonius, address a multitude of extras in a piece of high production values, filmed with a certain epic quality despite the obviously small shooting space thanks to some excellent production design from Compton Bennet and spacious direction from Henry Cass.

The accompanying trivia notes that Genn and Cass were previously involved in mid-thirties production of Caesar at the Old Vic, and this short piece retains stage theatricality.  It's also filled with the kinds of memorable faces Fellini loved to include in his films, not least of the main actors both of whom are very unlike the kinds of younger performers usually assigned these roles, but both of whom have loads of authority.

"Famous Scenes from Shakespeare No. 2" or Macbeth - Act II, Scene 2, and Act V, Scene 1 - Murder and sleep-walking scenes offer further evidence that these were prestige productions with the casting of Wilfred Lawson (Macbeth), Cathleen Nesbitt (Lady Macbeth) who were the leads in 1944's second biggest film, Fanny By Gaslight. On the evidence, it's a shame they were only given these two short scenes to work with.  A feature film would have been magic.

The lighting is moody.  Noirish.  Lawson and Nesbitt, even with their RP accents are exactly as one might imagine these ancient figures to be.  The starkest image is in the sleep-walking scene as Lady M appears silloetted against the archway before slowly stepping forward in the light, her concentration in holding her lantern despite her blank expression telling us everything we need to know about her state of mind.

Twenty years later, the British Council undertook to record the whole of Shakespeare's canon (as it was then) in conjunction with the Marlowe Society at Cambridge University along with professional actors.  They were released by Argo records.  Here's a review of their Twelfth Night at Gramaphone.  They're fairly orthodox stuff, but still well worth listening to if you're interested in theatrical history.

They're also still very accessible.  I've bought many of them through ebay and in charity shops, but most of them are also available as downloads through Amazon and iTunes and even more impressively to stream through Spotify.  Here is the Twelfth Night production reviewed above featuring Prunella Scales:



Spotify Classical Playlists has prepared a complete playlist, which also includes some other of the service's Shakespearean gems.

Classic Marlowe and Shakespeare BBC Radio series, Vivat Rex, repeated on Radio 4 Extra starting tomorrow.

Astonishingly amazing news:

"Vivat Rex is an epic 26 part drama following the English Crown from Edward II's accession in 1307 to the birth of Elizabeth I. It is told through the adapted works of Shakespeare, Marlowe and other playwrights of the period. Narrated by Richard Burton, it has a celebrated cast including John Hurt, Michael Redgrave and Derek Jacobi. The programme starts Monday at 10am on Radio 4 Extra."

While the main thrust of the series is a run of Shakespeare's history plays ala An Age of Kings, it begins with the rarely recorded and certainly unavailable Edward II by Marlowe and what must be Edward III as co-written by Shakespeare.

More about it here in this two year old post at The Stage which also has an old publicity photo of Burton, a microphone and a crown.  .

Should also be available to listen to via the BBC's programme pages.

Polonius stumbles.

Mark Lawson describes a famous Hamlet moment in a piece for The Guardian about theatre errors that aren't:

"Similar punishment for subtle acting was suffered by the late Michael Bryant, when he played Polonius in Richard Eyre's Hamlet at the National in 1989. Bryant's playing of the moment when the character loses the thread of his thoughts – "What was about to say? By the mass, I was about to say something …" – included such an authentically panicked chasm in the line that there was an audible gasp from the stalls. During the interval, I heard some people discussing their horror; his only consolation would be the confirmation that truly great acting must look spontaneous."

There are more similarities between theatre and circus than meets the eye. Do we like to think when an acrobat stumbles, it's for the first time, that they're in genuine danger, even though we subliminally know they've probably done it every night of their lives.

Bebe Neuwirth and Christina Ricci in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Theatre Bebe Neuwirth and Christina Ricci are appearing as Titannia and Hermia in an off-Broadway production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Not everything has been going to plan:

"On the night The (New York) Observer attended, a fire alarm set off by an overactive haze machine served to further drown out Shakespeare’s poetry. Only when the sound of sirens outside stopped the show did the audience stop laughing. Lying on the stage, Taylor Mac, as Puck, asked, “Does anyone know any campfire songs?”

"Returning from a dinner meeting to watch the show’s second half, Mr. Kulick was surprised to see a gaggle of firemen tramping into his lobby. One turned to him and said, “Haze machine, right? We’ve seen this before.”

Tickets available here should you be in the area. In this video, costume Designer Andrea Lauer discusses the design process. "I know, circuses!"

All's Well That Ends Well dual authorship?

All's Well That Ends Well may have been co-authored by Thomas Middleton according to Oxford scholars:

"The research by Prof Maguire and Dr Emma Smith, from Oxford University's English faculty, suggests that the playwright Thomas Middleton, a contemporary of Shakespeare's, appears to be the likely candidate.

"Writers have their own distinctive literary "fingerprints" - a kind of stylistic DNA - and a highly-detailed analysis of the language in the play shows "markers" strongly linked to Middleton.

"The rhyming and rhythms of sections of the play, the phrasing, spelling and even individual words suggest the involvement of Thomas Middleton."

At least it's a co-author. The last thing we'd need is for something to fall from the canon at this late stage. I hope the Arden edition isn't close to completion.

Globe to Globe festival's Hamlet.

The Hamlet portion of the Globe to Globe festival at Shakespeare's Globe is from Lithuania. Andrius Mamontovas, one of the country's great rock stars was asked to play Hamlet in 1996 and although he lacked any prior knowledge of the play or its playwright he saw it as an excellent way of smuggling in messages and music which were banned under Soviet control, the play itself having been banned by Stalin before his death.

 He's been playing the part ever since.  In the video embedded with this article, the BBC art correspondent David Sillito meets Mamontovas on his home turf and in an entertaining walk and talk along a local street, Mamontovas describes what the play means to him, the conversation interspersed with moments from the closet scene with his Hamlet attempting to shoo the ghost of his father away with a spade.

But the play is resonant throughout that part of the world, it seems.  As Tom Bird, festival director explains, "the most famous footballer in Armenia is Henrikh Mkhitaryan and his middle name is Hamlet. And no, Hamlet isn't Armenian for Hamish; it's Hamlet, the Dane. It's incredible it's seeped in to everything."

Doctors does Hamlet.

Garlands to Sylvia Morris for compiling this comprehensive list for Shakespeare Unlocked across the BBC, which includes the revelation that daytime soap Doctors is having a Shakespeare themed week which includes on Monday a rather familiar sounding storyline:

"Fall of a Sparrow

Rob witnesses a tragedy unfold as young Dane refuses to accept his mother has moved on so soon after his father's death. Whilst Curtis lies critically ill in hospital, news breaks about Heston's arrest, sending shockwaves...

That's Dane Hamley.  I will of course report back.  The entire list of the week's episodes is here.  Some are more obvious than others...

Shakespeare's Sonnets for the iPAD

A really exciting project underpinned by a fantastic academic publishing legacy. Here's the press release:

The Arden Shakespeare, Faber and Faber, Touch Press and Illuminations are delighted to announce that they are in the final stages of producing a spectacular edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets for the Apple iPad. The title features specially filmed performances of all 154 sonnets by a stellar cast that includes Fiona Shaw, Sir Patrick Stewart and David Tennant. It also features the complete Arden notes, providing unsurpassed commentary on the poems.

This digital edition follows Touch Press and Faber's iPad app The Waste Land that presents T. S. Eliot's great poem in an innovative and widely praised interactive format.

Since this is partly an Illuminations productions, that may explain one the extras on the superb recent release of Simon Callow & Jonathan Bate's Being Shakespeare  (directed by John Wyver) which included Callow reading 18, 29 and 31 directly to camera.

Much Ado About Nothing on BBC Radio 3's Afternoon on 3

Shakespeare Completely unmentioned on the BBC's press release for the Shakespeare season on BBC Radio is a series of concerts as part of the Afternoon on 3 strand which includes this Wednesday an abridged production of Much Ado About Nothing with Daniela Nardini as Beatrice and Liam Brennan as Benedick with Korngold's score played by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

The show begins at 2pm.

Here's the relevant page at the iplayer.

This press release was produced for the recording last year.

Shakespeare at the BBC: Shakespeare's Restless World

Ahead of today's first broadcast of their new landmark series, a kind of history of Shakespeare in twenty objects, the BBC has posted an "audio discovery" page filled with "a selection of other programmes and clips from the Radio 4 archive on the theme of Shakespeare's Restless World" (and also the connected exhibition at the British Museum).

Which is rather understating things.  As well as pointing to notable episodes of In Our Time and Great Lives, they've also resurrected and uploaded pertinent series from the past, offering a preview of what the Radio 4 website may be like when the aim of digitising the entire collection has been achieved.

It's obviously more fun if you go and investigate for yourself.  It's good to see documentaries from Radio 3 included, many of which aren't usually kept up on the website past the seven day limit, including the many fascinating Shakespeare related episodes of the concert interval filler Twenty Minutes.

Shakespeare on This American Life: Drama Bug

As readers of my other blog will know, I'm currently listening to All of This American Life in Order and little did I realise that I'd soon find something worth writing about here so I've decided to run a parallel series of posts for this blog in which I'll highlight any episodes with major references to Shakespeare.  For all I know, this could be the only one.  We'll see.

Episode 23, Drama Bug, first broadcast on the 5th October 1996 features a classic story from regular contributor David Sedaris about his early experiences as an actor and the second section concentrates on his appearance as one of the touring actors in an amateur production of Hamlet. 

I've embedded both parts above for speed, but this whole vintage episode is worth your time, with presenter Ira Glass shadowing a school putting on a production of Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers and the theatre going experiences of a man who breathes through an iron lung and also contracted the drama bug after seeing Hamlet.

Ruth Wilson on Hamlet.

The headline's a bit of SEO, especially since she's asked the question rather than proffers the opinion unsolicited, but Ruth Wilson really would be an excellent Hamlet:

""You know what? I'd love to play Hamlet. Shakespeare didn't write that many great roles for women. It's like you come in for one scene then spend four hours waiting backstage for the next line." So it would be good to wrest the role from the boys? "You bet. I don't shy away from a challenge that would scare the shit out of me. You need the fear always to be there. Otherwise you're in the wrong job."

I'd argue against the opinion that Shakespeare didn't write many great roles for women. I suppose it's clearly to say he didn't write many great tragic central roles like Cleopatra.

Wolfram Alpha on Hamlet.

Answer engine, Wolfram Alpha, have given their database an injection of Shakespeare and the ability to provide quite detailed information about the plays, from word frequency to ACT lengths and the percentage of lines given to each character.

The canon selected is pretty orthodox -- Edward III isn't included and Arden of Faversham is ignored -- but The Two Noble Kinsmen does have a full entry and that's still left out of some complete works.

What do we learn about Hamlet?

The most frequently used word is "the" with the most frequently capitalised "I" which is fitting given the play's depths of self-analysis.

"My Lord" is the two word phrase used most often which also underscores the royalty of the piece.

Surprisingly "England" is mentioned almost as often as "Denmark".

Worth noting:

The database puts the first date of publication as 1604 which is the date which appears on the cover of Q2, but doesn't take into account Q1 and ignores the date of the first production in 1599/1600, but that's just nitpicking.

Under the search for Hamlet there are other options, one of which is "referring to a fictional character".  Clicking on that takes the user to King Hamlet rather than his son but there doesn't seem to be a way to get to a profile of the prince.

Searching for Prince Hamlet, takes us to a definition page for the word "prince" and the connected person is the singer Prince.

But otherwise this could prove to be a useful academic tool, especially the option which allows for comparison between plays.

The Essential Shakespeare: Live (2005).

When Gregory Doran was announced as the new director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the general reaction was, “Of course he is.” For all his work elsewhere, apart from Michael Boyd, he’s the person most associated with the company in recent years and it’s of little surprise that when in 2005 the British Library decided to celebrate its massive archive of Shakespeare recordings collected across five decades, it was decided that he’d be the perfect man to select the clips. Across two discs, Doran carefully curates iconic productions which haven’t been released in any form, featuring Dench, Richardson, McKellan, Ashcroft, Rickman, Stewart and Sher.

There aren't any particularly left of field choices, no chunk of Cymbeline. That’s because a large proportion of productions in the Swan weren’t recorded and none at all at The Other Place, the usual venues for the less popular plays. As Doran notes, he had wanted to included Paul Scofield as Timon, but it’s lost forever. Theatre’s a transient medium and so we should probably just be pleased with what we have. But our frustration is that these are just fragments, In an ideal world we could all be Gregory Doran and be able to hear the whole of these productions ourselves, however poor the sound quality.



Act III, Scene I

”To Be Or Not To Be”

Hamlet: David Warner
Director: Peter Hall

Hamlet’s represented by Peter Hall’s legendary mid-60s production with David Warner in the title role, a revolutionary attempt to speak very specifically to youngsters and contemporary politics. In the programme notes, Hall suggested his Hamlet was “about the disillusionment which produces apathy of the will so deep that commitment to politics, to religion or to life is impossible”.  He also wanted to isolate Hamlet as much as possible with Horatio losing seventy-five key lines,  reducing to an acquaintance the friendship that’s otherwise a necessary tether to reality for the Prince.

Every copy of the text which bothers with a production history agree that it is one of the great innovative milestones. Of primary importance in relation to this clip is Hall’s decision to have Hamlet conduct his soliloquy’s from the edge of the stage into the audience, a piece of artifice which was still rare enough to be misconstrued by contemporary critics as Warner’s own “inexperience” rather than a valid approach to communicating the text and has become the norm in some venues especially the reconstructed Globe. It’s reputed that “One night, when Warner asked ‘Am I a coward?” someone shouted, “Yes!” (Arden 3, p24).

It worked. As the RSC edition reports a youthful audience camped outside the theatre for tickets.  But what must it have been like to be in that audience and have Warner ask the big question on everyone’s mind using words written around four hundred years earlier?  The day before this was recorded (at the Aldwych Theatre in London on the 9th March 1966), the U.S. had announces it would be substantially increasing the number of its troops in Vietnam, a decision which was being protested throughout the world and although the cold war had reached détente, obliteration was still an ever present possibility.

The electricity of the performance is evident in the clip. Cars can be heard passing by outside which demonstrates just how small the venue must have been, Warner having to really project, fighting for his words to be heard, which apt considering the how some of the youth watching will have thought about their place in society.  That audience is also very present, with faint female mutterings beneath the opening of the speech, coughs, someone opening a sweet, chair squeaks and a door clattering, all of which serve to give the recording even greater atmosphere, the magic of a live event, a humanity, which doesn’t exist in the blank, null setting of a recording studio.

“Who would bare the … whips and scorns of time?” The key moment in this reading is this pause in which we're not certain whether Warner is grasping for his next line or Hamlet trying to find the right word to communicate his point. As the speech continues its very clear it’s the latter, that Warner is almost asking his audience for an answer, as though they’ll finish the sentences for him.  Knowing what we know about Hall’s intentions, it’s also possible to hear this Hamlet holding himself up to the audience as a mirror saying, look at this, look what happens when you become as apathetic as I am, gripped by fear of the unknown.

For all that, it’s still a relatively aristocratic performance which is surprising to me since I’d heard comparisons with his turn in the thematically similar Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment in which he’s very specifically Northern.  It’s also reputedly naturalistic, but Warner still keeps an eye on the rhythm of the pentameter for all his observance of the punctuated pauses.  Perhaps that’s one of the frustrations of hearing just a fragment of a whole performance.  A single speech, however famous, is just a small part of a whole character arc and thought process. Hopefully at some point we will be able to hear the whole show and be able to judge it properly.

Shakespeare season on BBC Television and Radio.

The BBC has officially launched their summer Shakespeare season and in this interview the commissioning editor Mark Bell outlines the plans:

"I'm hoping it will show people just how rewarding Shakespeare can be. Yes the language is tough but it's well worth sticking with it. I wanted the season to explore the historical context in which Shakespeare was writing and also celebrate his language and try and understand what made him just so incredibly good at capturing all it means to be human."

There is a full radio schedule here and much about the television end, Shakespeare Unlocked here.  William Boyd's also given an interview about the collaboration with the RSC which includes clips of some of the new shows:

Classic FM: Favourite Shakespeare (1998).

In the late 90s, Classic FM Magazine asked its readers what they considered to be their favourite pieces of Shakespeare and the results were collected in a book and this double cassette. There are few surprises. Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?”) comes first with Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”) second, with both of Henry V’s iconic speeches in there somewhere (“Once more unto the breach”) and Jacques from As You Like It (“All The World’s Stage” providing a loose structure for the programme). “To Be, Or Not To Be” is ninth beating only the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.

The anthology attracted an excellent cast with Antony Sher, Imogen Stubbs, Victoria Hamilton, Alan Cox, Richard Griffiths and Derek Jacobi all appearing, the latter three eclectically offering us their three witches from Macbeth (and very good they are too). Each of the clips is introduced by John Brunning though it’s with the bare minimum of background information, sticking with a brief outline of the character and a reminder of who the actors are and where a given clip appeared in the poll.

The enterprise is bulked out with sections overlooked in the poll and there are some wonderful choices which aren’t usually included in such endevours like Wolsey from Henry VIII or Verse 12 of The Passionate Pilgrim. But not all the plays are covered. There’s no Measure for Measure, no Cymbeline (a pity since it would have been nice to hear Stubbs inhabiting her near namesake). About the only flaw is the lack of track listing for the music which appears between the verse, which is odd considering the source of the publication.

Act III, Scene I:

”To Be, Or Not To Be”

Hamlet: Alan Cox



Cox presents a reading of what sounds like the folio text, usually identified by the enterprises of great “pith” and moment instead “pitch” and an additional “these” before “fardles” but which has “away” replaced with “awry” towards the end. His piece of Hamlet has a real sense of wrestling with the questions therein, perhaps in an attempt to imbue the speech with the whole play’s worth of characterisation. There’s no sense that he’s playing for the benefit of whoever might be watching (unless it’s a double bluff).

But it is very much a reading, more about the text than performance, indicated by Cox adding an extra breath at the end of every line with or without punctuatation, which while creating emphasis messes up the stress patterns in places, with “and by a sleep to say we end […] That flesh is heir to” proving a real challenge thanks to the quick semi colon and another pause at the end of “consummation”. As John Barton says, Shakespeare is very clear as to were the pauses and breaths should go and this is an excellent example of what happens when other choices are made.

Angels and Ducats: Shakespeare's Money and Medals by Barrie Cook.

Even before the Euro, there were many units of currency which travelled across national borders, one of which was the ducat. The ducat was first minted in Sicily in the 1140s but would eventually spread across the continent for the next eight hundred odd years. Eurosceptics will be pleased to hear that Britain stuck with pounds, shillings and pence, but it still became one of Shakespeare’s most used currencies as a way of conveying extreme wealth. Ducat appears four times in Hamlet, most memorably in the prince's cry as he accidentally runs Polonius through as a reminder that he believes he’s killing his father-in-law.

But the ducat is just one of dozens of units of currency which crop up in Shakepeare’s plays as they span history and geography and in Angels and Ducats: Shakespeare’s Money & Medals, Barrie Cook, the curator of Medieval and Early Modern Coinage at the British Museum utilises this national collection to explain some of the history of these now obscure units of commerce and their meaning within the texts.  The book's published to coincide with a display opening in April which like the Summer exhibitions, relates the objects to the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, in theatrical economies of scale and the portrayal of royalty on the coins.

As Cook explains, for all the apparent obscurity that some of the language has now, Shakespeare was always concerned with making his stories lucid even if they were set in an earlier time and so although there was enough knowledge available to offer an accurate portrayal, he was unafraid to employ anachronisms as an aid to understanding. The Comedy of Errors, set in the ancient Mediterranean world pinions on the movement of “angels” and “ducats”. But they also provide a useful element of punning and allusion, “nobles” and “crowns” appearing in all the history plays both in plain speech and as a way of conveying satirically the authority being fought for.

But those of us perhaps slightly more interested in theatrical history will find most useful the chapter on how the business of acting was financed.  Cook has compiled a chart itemising the cost of visiting the theatre in Shakespeare’s day and production budgets. What’s surprising is that theatre goers preferred comfort over visibility, the yard nearest the action (albeit standing) far cheaper than the upper galleries some way away from the stage, the exact opposite of the charging mechanics in modern theatres and concert halls were the cheap seats are at the very back, which in some older auditoriums might as well be in the pub next door.

The well chosen illustrations demonstrate that the physical nature of the currency hasn't changed that much across the centuries and almost always feature some monarch on one side, an indication of the denomination on the other. Cook also briefly touches on medals and they too follow a similar format which explains why they’re thought of as such an important part of our history. Some of the only illustrations we have of the notable Romans are the profiles which appear in archaeological discoveries, references to which are another way that Shakespeare is able make these ancient times and peoples more tangible.

Angels and Ducats: Shakespeare's Money and Medals by Barrie Cook is published by the British Museum.  2012.  RRP:  £9.99 paperback.  ISBN: 9780714118215.  Review copy supplied.

Shakespeare's Britain by Jonathan Bate and Dora Thornton, with Rebecca Allen.

Perhaps sensing that some visitors to their Shakespeare: staging the world exhibition would rather have a more visual keepsake rather than a larger academic study, the British Museum have also published a much smaller, more focused distillation of the exhibition’s themes. Also authored by Jonathan Bate and Dora Thornton with additional work by Becky Allen the exhibition’s project co-ordinator, Shakespeare’s Britain concentrates on high quality images of the objects and shorter, punchier explanations for their relevance to Shakespeare’s story.

One of the consequences of the distillation is that focuses on the more distasteful elements of the exhibition, the engravings depicting executions, reliquaries containing disembodied eyes and torture devices for witches not to mention once of the lanterns reputedly used in the Gunpowder plot. We’re also reminded of how limited the medieval view of the world could be, with the native peoples from other parts of the world treated as curiosities, something Shakespeare himself referenced in The Tempest when Trinculo suggests he could display Caliban in London for profit.

Of the two, assuming you have the money, I’d still recommend the much larger catalogue which collects almost all the objects in the exhibition plus a few more and whose textual real estate is something which can be dipped in and out of in conjunction with a more general study of the plays. But Shakespeare’s Britain would probably the perfect gift for a curious teenager (assuming they still exist) who’s already somewhat aware of his biography but aren’t quite ready for a full blown academic study.

Shakespeare's Britain by Jonathan Bate and Dora Thornton, with Rebecca Allen is published by the British Museum. 2012. RRP: £9.99 paperback. ISBN: 9780714128269. Review copy supplied.

Shakespeare’s original pronunciation (2012).

Every now and then a project captures our imagination and if the number of RTs the link to the British Library’s press release on the @shakespearelogs twitter feed is anything to go by, there is much excitement about this release of extracts from the plays in what curator Ben Crystal and his advisor and father David Crystal are ninety-five percent certain is the original pronunciation as heard on the stage of the original Globe.

Even those of us who’re familiar with and love the work are sometimes desperate to hear a new interpretation of the words and since we know that sections of it have been rendered insensible through the natural evolution of our language, we can’t help tingling at the thought that we might, as the publicity suggests find new meanings, hear new jokes and enhanced poetic effects.

As Ben Crystal introduction in the accompanying booklet suggests, the accent is somewhat understandably like the West Country. But there are also find fragments of other regions, with Irish, Scottish, Cockney and Australian and yes, even Scouse surfacing between the syllables. The stress patterns are also somewhat close to American, explaining why the text has always seem so sympathetic to some of the best US actors.

 An introduction from David Crystal outlines the sources their creative decisions, which includes Ben Jonson’s English Grammar as an invaluable resource. But though he’s aware that the results are still experiment, he strikes a note of disappointment that since the work of John Barton and Helge Kokeritz in the 1950s, theatrical experiments even at the Globe reconstruction have been tentative.



Act II, Scene II: 

“My excellent good friends! How dost thou, / Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?”

Hamlet: Ben Crystal
Rosencrantz: Simon Manyonda
Guildenstern: Benjamin O’Mahony

In 2011, Crystal starred in an complete production of Hamlet in this original pronunciation as part of the Nevada Repertory Company, with a cast largely populated by undergraduates and advised by Eric Rasmussen (co-editor on the RSC Complete Works and Folio detective). That explains why of all the project's contributing actors he seems most comfortable with these new (or rather old) sounds ably supposed by his fellow cast members, National Theatre regular Manyonda and O’Mahony from the Tobbaco Factory.

The first thing to notice is the speed with which the text flows, especially in Hamlet’s solo section towards the end, and the rhythm which, although certainly available in some modern productions, has in the initial banter, hints of Samuel Beckett’s too and fro in Waiting for Godot and emphasises the filthiness of the initial metaphor (“strumpet”, “private parts”). Not that some sections don’t become oddly prosaic, especially the extra-syllable in “ambition”, the “sh” sound replaced by “si”.

The biggest surprise is in having heard the text acted so often with a regal accent, something grasping towards received pronunciation, we're suddenly given a prince and friends who sound not unlike characters propping up a bar in one of the regional soap operas.  There's also a naturally familial connection that sometimes isn’t quite communicated in the so-called traditionalist performances, where the usual clipped annunciation can sometimes create an isolation between the characters.



Act III, Scene One:

“To Be, Or Not To Be”

Hamlet: Matthew Mellalieu

Crystal shows surprising restraint in programming what’s arguably Shakespeare’s most famous speech as late as track eight, but it does give the listener a chance to become somewhat use to these new sounds. This isn’t easy but admittedly more pleasurable from the female actors, Joan Walker’s Sonnet 18 sounding almost as naughty as the Cadbury’s Caramel bunny. But I’m straying from the point. Once “To Be, Or Not To Be” arrives we’re ready for it.

Matthew Mellalieu's reading chooses to emphasise sounds over performance so the differences can be heard much more clearly. When Pebbles sang “Question” in such a curious way in the bottom end of her 80s song “Girlfriend” referencing this very speech, did she know she was utilising a four hundred year old pronunciation? The fs are silent (“O’ troubles”) as are the hs (“The t’ousand”). Double Es become singulars “(To slep”).  Cowards sound like “chords”.

The only way to really know how this original pronunciation works would be across a whole performance. The effect must be somewhat like a Northern Broadsides production in which we’re constantly aware of the extra layer of interpretation beyond the usual directorial hand in terms of deciding how the vernacular is communicated.  Hopefully, thanks to the interest in this cd, we'll be hear the experiment extended across a longer duration.

Shakespeare’s original pronunciation is published by the British Library. RRP: £10.00. ISBN 978 0 978-0-7123-5119-5. Review copy supplied.

Shakespeare: staging the world by Jonathan Bate & Dora Thornton.

Pirates! What’s often forgotten about Hamlet is that amongst the psychological introspection and political intrigue, the prince’s mortality is delayed by the left of field plot device of joining a band of pirates. But what’s all the more remarkable that for all the indignation contemporary Horatio actors include in their performance when reading this ludicrous tale, it’s not there in the text. That's because for Shakespeare and so presumably his audience it was a fairly normal occurrence. In that period there was a spate of incidents in which bored or bankrupt nobles “turned Turk” and joined a Mediterranean pirate ship. We might even wonder if, since some of the most notorious cases happened over a decade after Hamlet was premiered, the play actually promoted piracy as a valid lifestyle choice.

Opening in July, the British Museum’s summer exhibition, Shakespeare: staging the world (which is their contribution to Cultural Olympiad) seeks to illuminate objects from the collection like the robes of a Mediterranean pirate through the prism of his plays, his life and his world. As with any cultural achievement, Shakespeare's work will have been understood by a specific collective memory and while most of us non-academics are able to gain a sense of the words and stories, even if we’re particularly familiar some of the plays there will still be certain specific references beyond our understanding. By presenting the visitor with the things which would have been familiar to the people of the period, the British Museum hopes we'll a greater understanding of the more curious aspects of the texts.

In this accompanying catalogue exhibition curator Dora Thornton and her Shakespearean consultant Jonathan Bate provide even greater context for the objects either because they’re specifically mentioned in the text, are directly related to Shakespeare biography in some way or as is most often the case are thematically connected to the plays. To extent this is a natural progression from the chapter in Bate’s Soul of the Age, which forensically reconstructed Shakespeare’s library based on the sources he must have read. This is a selection of objects that would or at least could have been equally inspirational, even indirectly. Some selections might initially seem tenuous but keep with it and connections fire off in all directions.

The book is packed with explanations as interesting as Hamlet’s brief naval dalliance.  When Othello mentions the kind of Spanish rapier he's utilising as his means of his suicide, Shakespeare isn’t simply providing colour, he’s still telling us something about the kind of man the moor is, as interested in fashion as the ability to defend oneself. When he says that's constructed from ‘ice-brook’s templar’ he’s indicating that a cheap dagger simply isn’t good enough to bring him down (and even in texts when it's read as “Insbrook” also a source of good quality metal). On the opposite page is a more traditional Turkish sword with its familiar banana shape, which is fine and with a simple hilt and broad, bland blade, still deadly but without the panache or sleek, smooth shape of Othello’s death bringer.

Unlike Soul of the Age, the catalogue lacks a single argument as such, preferring instead to choose single topics (witchcraft) or a geographical locations (Venice or The Tempest’s unnamed island) and provide case study which oscillates between general and specific, submerging the reader in the mountain of facts and anecdotes perhaps in an attempt to mimic the experience of travelling through the exhibition.  Ours eyes shift curiously from a bear skull to Horary quadrant the woollen cap which was compulsory for people over the age of six on Sundays and holidays in the 1570s.  The effect is bewildering and requires some effort on the part of the reader to reorientate themselves as the authors shift us back and forth through centuries at the turn of the page, from Richards II to III in an instant.

But it’s always rewarding. The book is strongest when considering those Histories in the context of what would have been for him the contemporary monarchy. A portrait of Richard II by an unknown artist is shown to be the reason for Elizabeth I’s oft repeated quote “I am Richard know yet not that?” rather than an “illegal” performance of the play as is commonly thought having been found “fastened to the backside of a door of a base room” in the Palace of Westminster and put in a more prominent position on the Queen’s orders. Its structure, the monarch bolt upright in his throne, orb and sceptre in hand, also influenced the coronation portrait of Elizabeth also included (and perhaps this shot of Ben Wishaw as Richard II in the new BBC adaptation of Shakespeare’s play).

There’s certainly an argument to be made for a more structured approach and that in some respects the text is justifying the inclusion in the exhibition of some gorgeous objects not often given the opportunity for exhibition that only have a tangential connection to Shakespeare. But in other senses it doesn’t matter given how memorable they are. Each page is filled with surprising objects and although some, like the Murano jug reputedly blown by writer Thomas Coryat on his grand tour aren’t done justice in photography, there’s still some excitement in seeing a painting of some anonymous noble and then an adjacent photo of the very tunic he’s wearing still in pristine condition.  Those of you able to see the actual exhibition when it opens will be very lucky indeed.

Shakespeare: staging the world by Jonathan Bate & Dora Thornton is published by the British Museum. 2012. £25 in paperback, ISBN 9780714128245. £40 in hardback, ISBN: 9780714128283. Review copy supplied.

The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall visit Elsinore

The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall visit Elsinore, a photo by The British Monarchy on Flickr.

Twitter Hamlet.

The Toronto Sun reports English teacher Danika Barker is using Twitter to teach Shakespeare to her students at Central Elgin Collegiate Institute in St. Thomas:

You can make the role as big as you wanted." Barker said. "It wasn't . . . tweeting for the sake of tweeting. It was more like a strategy to get them to focus on what was really happening in the play and to become really invested in what was happening."

"Using Twitter kept every student involved in the play regardless of the size of their character's role.

"For example, students taking on a character who meets an early demise -- and there's plenty of them in Hamlet -- continued to tweet from the grave.

"Hamlet! My son! do not engage in this fight! you're falling into Claudius's trap if you fight laertes!" Hamlet's dead father tweeted before the prince was killed in a duel."

Worth visiting for the accompanying photo of Barker clutching an edition of The Shakespeare Encyclopaedia (reviewed by me here) which thanks to its weight can't have been an easy volume to hold at that angle.

Hamlet (Oxford World's Classics). Edited by G.R. Hibbard.

Who’s There?

The Oxford Shakespeare is a decades old project under the general editorship of Stanley Wells. They’re an off-shoot of the classic complete works which controversially for their time attempted to collect the plays as they were originally performed rather than taking into account their textual history (something which we’ll discuss below in relation to this text). Although the series began under the Clarendon Press imprint, over the years its become absorbed into the general Oxford World’s Classics literature imprint with cover designs to match.

The Cover.

This latest printing from 2008, features a detail from William Shakespeare Portrait by Max Jacob. A hunt around online doesn’t reveal the full image so I can’t say what facet of the full image this represents, a relatively messy and impressionistic image of Hamlet in his traditional black. The earlier 1998 printing offered Bernardio Licinio’s Portrait of a Young Man with a Skull, a much more traditionalist rendering of the prince and Yorrik.

Publication Data.

The Clarendon was in 1987 and as the copyright page suggests its simply been reprinted since which makes the introduction and version of the text twenty five years old despite the modern covers. But Wells’s has been a life long project only recently completed so this should be seen as part of a body of work rather than the organic changeable thing that the Penguin editions might considered to be.

General Introduction

Hibbard offers a good general survey of the usual play related issues, the sources, the dating, the themes. The text is new enough to encompass the contemporary hindsight that a proportion of the critical history is tainted because the scholars were utilising conflated editions of the play which bore no relation to what Shakespeare intended and that we should tread carefully when considering Hamlet’s procrastination.  Some long held beliefs still enunciated were as a result of Alexander Pope or Lewis Theobald’s well meaning tampering, though due respect is given to all of these early editors for bothering to produce scholarly editions in the first place.

Textual Introduction & Editorial Procedures

A survey of the origins of the three texts. Hibbard pays lip service to the theory that Q1 is a first draft but fall firmly on the side of it being a memorial manuscript further mangled in production which becomes relatively seductive when he notes the similarities with portions of Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (though its too early to include anything on the recent theory that Shakespeare’s hand may have been responsible for the 1602 emendations to that play). Q2 is another mangled manuscript, this time from Shakespeare’s foul papers with some correspondence with Q1 by the compositor.

Hibbard spends most time with F1 which he chooses as the basis for his text on the assumption that it was produced from a clean, revised manuscript of Hamlet by Shakespeare himself, a final revision of the material that increases the pace but also clarifies the story in other places. His argument is sound, but I still prefer the much later Arden 3’s approach of suggesting that all the close textual analysis in the world won’t definitively confirm which of the texts is definitive, so it’s best just to present all three (unless like the RSC edition that was much influenced by Hibbard work, the mission is to reproduce an edition of the folio in particular).

The Text.

F1 presented in a similar format to Arden with textual notes in a two column formation beneath the play. Like the later RSC, the Q2 sections not in F1 appear in an appendix at the back, including “Now all occasions do offend me" and like the RSC it “corrects” what’s actually in F1 and changes “sixteene” to “sexton” in the gravedigger scene as per Q2. No one to answer, but have to ask. How come, if by Hibbard’s argument, F1 is Shakespeare’s final word on his play and filled with revisions and clarifications, no one will be believe that one of his revision or clarifications was to make plain the much younger age of his protagonist?

Appendixes

The afformentioned Q2 passages. A list of alterations to textual alignment and the changing between texts of verse to prose and vis-versa. A synopsis of Der Bestrafte Brudermord, a German adaptation of the play. Manuscripts of music for the songs by Dr Frederick Sternfeld. Some notes on stage directions in 1.2.

How is it, my lord?

Perfectly affable, if very traditional edition which rigidly treats the play as a text rather than a script for production. Although there are images from its theatrical history, Warner at the RSC, Gielgud at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, they’re not named and that whole aspect of the play is kept at arms length. Since this appears to be a choice rather than oversight, it’s hard to criticise it for that.

Hamlet (Oxford World's Classics). Edited by G.R. Hibbard is published by Oxford University Press. £7.99 paperback. ISBN: 978-0-19-953581-1.

Does Pi = Hamlet?

Original pronunciation.

The British Library releases the first ever audio CD of Shakespeare spoken in the original pronunciation, Hamlet included:

"This CD promises to be entertaining as well as a unique and important resource for the study of Shakespeare. Thanks to the latest scholarship it takes us closer than we have been able to come before to how the works of the greatest English playwright were spoken and acted in his own lifetime.

"Under the guidance of Ben Crystal, actor and expert in original Shakespearian pronunciation in performance, a company of actors performs some of Shakespeare’s best-known poems, solo speeches and scenes from 18 of his plays. The selection of speeches includes Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be”, Antony’s "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” from Julius Caesar, Henry V’s “Once more unto the breach, dear friends”, and “All the world’s a stage” from As You Like It. Scenes are included from The Comedy of Errors, King Lear, Macbeth, Much Ado about Nothing and Othello."

A few extracts have been included with the press release and the experience of listening to familiar words in a less familiar idiom is beguiling, like hearing them again for the first time. This piece of Jacques from As You Like It brings a new sense of reality to the character, the pronunciation of "fool" to sound more like "full" bringing greater sense to the text.

Finding Ophelia.

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's Finding Shakespeare blog looks at various depictions of Ophelia, focusing initially on a 1789 painting by Benjamin West:

"The flowers in this painting do not necessarily depict the individual emotions such as remembrance and thoughts that they do in Shakespeare’s text, but instead we see a collection of wild flowers in Ophelia’s hair, in her clothes and on the floor. They symbolise other-worldliness and link her with nature and perhaps also mythology. They emphasise Ophelia’s incongruity with court and the characters around her."

There's also an excellent video of Anna Griffith revealing key items from their collection.

Patrick Stewart and Simon Callow in The Guardian

Patrick Stewart and Simon Callow have a joint interview in today's The Guardian about their competing West End shows, Stewart plays the bard towards the end of his life in Bingo and Callow is performing the latest iteration of his collaboration with Jonathan Bate now called Being Shakespeare:

"There's one thing they do agree on, though: contrary to the conspiracy theories, Shakespeare was definitely Shakespeare, not the Earl of Oxford or Francis Bacon. "It seems so unnecessary to go down that route," Callow splutters. "It's so clear that his is the work of a working writer who dealt with the common problems of life." Stewart shakes his head. "All the reasons that people give that Shakespeare could not have written Shakespeare are, for me, reasons why it has to be him."

Tell that to Derek Jacobi.