I studied A Midsummer Night’s Dream at school. Come to think of it, I studied it three years running as it was produced each year in our English Literature class by three consecutive teachers who did not listen to our complaints that we had done it before. After three years, three exams and endless papers on The Dream I was totally fed up with the wretched Helen and Hermione and sick to death of Titania and Bottom. I began to go off Shakespeare shortly after this.
Before being inflicted with this annual Puckfest, I was a huge fan of our Will. I used to stand, yes, stand at the back of the Old Vic and watch Shakespeare. I remember standing through a full length performance, no cuts, of Hamlet which must be nearly all of four hours. John Neville, later Sir John Neville, but then a young, dashing and handsome actor was Hamlet and I remember that Coral Browne played his mother, Gertrude. I cannot remember any of the other members of the cast at all, but I know I enjoyed it hugely.
I also remember going to the Mermaid Theatre and seeing Henry IV Part II with a very young Hywel Bennett playing Hal and Bernard Miles, the founder of the theatre, as Falstaff. The Round House in Chalk Farm, now recently revamped, put on When thou Art King which was Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V, in truncated versions obviously, compacted into one long fabulous evening.
At this time, and I am talking 1960s here, the BBC actually put out programmes of some artistic merit and there was an entire series of performances of all the historical plays under the banner title An Age of Kings. I well remember Richard Daneman as Richard III, Robert Hardy as Prince Hal and a very young Sean Connery as Hotspur. There was then another series combining Julius Caesar and Cleopatra over three Friday nights with Keith Michell (who later scored a huge hit as Henry VIII in another BBC programme). What with a Hamlet filmed in Elsinore, with Christopher (Captain von Trapp in Sound of Music) Plummer as Hamlet and a young Michael Caine lurking, and a showing of the Russian Hamlet with music by Shostakovich, we were well served at this time. The BBC Bardothon of the late 70s, on which money was lavished so profusely that all of £10 must have been spent on each of the sets, was not a patch on anything that had gone before and, really needs to be redone, if somebody currently at the BBC would have the guts to do it.
Some of the casting of this Bardathon was suspect to say the least: John Cleese as Petrucchio in Taming of the Shrew is a prime example. You kept expecting him to launch into his Monty Python Silly Walks at any minute and, indeed, some of his rages were classic Pythonesque moments. Bob Hoskins, complete with cockney accent, as Iago was another bit of miscasting. I took an OU course on Shakespeare this year and the two plays studied, The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet, were accompanied by the BBC videos. They were both unwatchable even if the Romeo and Juliet boasted in its cast a very young Alan Rickman (totally ungorgeous and with a dreadful pudding basin hair cut. He had yet to become sexy, that came later).
I remember getting hold of the Taylor/Burton/Zefferilli film of Taming of the Shrew which I saw in the cinema when it first came out in 1966. Of course, it is totally over the top with streets teeming full of colourful Italian peasantry quaffing wine, clouting each other across the back, and who seemed to have nothing else to do but dance and sing all day. Taylor/Burton were in the middle of their love affair/divorce/marriage at the time the film was shot and Zefferilli milked this for all he was worth with them fighting and screaming and having huge fights all over Padua. Elizabeth Taylor was surprisingly good and Burton gave a wildly hammy performance all grins and dirty laughs and looking as if was totally plastered most of the time (which he probably was) and the whole thing was a riot. It was shot in colours of gold, crimson, yellow ochre and burnt Sienna, and looked simply stunning.
The famous speech in the final scene of the play was delivered beautifully by Elizabeth Taylor and, whether you take issue with its content as most women do nowadays, I found myself very moved by it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince
OK so what is the point of this blog? It is too say that until this year, I had eschewed Shakespeare completely. I had sat through some appallingly acted performances (why do British Shakespeare actors have to rant all the time?), found the ‘rude mechanicals’ incredibly unfunny and realised that I could not take any interest in the plays at all.
I have to tell you now, in 2006, I have completely changed my mind and adore Will all over again. I will tell you why another day as this blog has gone on far too long and I am going to write one of equal length to explain why I now love the Bard.
