Posts Tagged ‘Royal Shakespeare Company’
“Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature”*…
In 1982, the BBC ran a glorious nine-part series developed and hosted by John Barton, co-founder and director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. A master class in playing Shakespeare, it features RSC members and alumni including Judi Dench, Ben Kingsley, Peggy Ashcroft, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, David Suchet, Sinéad Cusack, Susan Fleetwood, Sheila Hancock, Alan Howard, Donald Sinden, Michael Williams, and more…
Indispensable for thespians, the series is every bit as rich a resource for those of us who want simply to enrich our appreciation of the Bard. All nine episodes can be streamed on Acorn or You Tube.
* Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2
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As we declaim, we might recall that it was on this date in 1967 that Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead premiered at London’s Old Vic Theatre. A glorious piece of metatheater, the play expands on the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
The action of Stoppard’s play takes place mainly “in the wings” of Shakespeare’s, with brief appearances of major characters from Hamlet who enact fragments of the original’s scenes. Between these episodes, the two protagonists voice their confusion at the progress of events occurring onstage without them in Hamlet.
The title is taken directly from the final scene of Hamlet. In an earlier scene, Prince Hamlet has been exiled to England by the treacherous King of Denmark (his uncle Claudius, who of course has murdered Hamlet’s father to obtain the throne). En route to England, Hamlet discovers a letter from King Claudius which is being carried to England by Hamlet’s old but now untrusted friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The letter commands that Hamlet be put to death upon his arrival in England. Hamlet rewrites the letter to command that instead, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern be put to death. He then escapes back to Denmark. By the end of Shakespeare’s play, Prince Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius, King Claudius, and Queen Gertrude all lie dead.
“Jack shall have his Jill, Nought shall go ill”…
This Midsummer’s Weekend (June 21-23) the Royal Shakespeare Company will mount its 40th production of Midsummer Night’s Dream: the play will be performed by members of the company in real time, directed by Artistic Director Gregory Doran, culminating in a wedding, which those present can attend. Simultaneously, in cooperation with Google Labs and Google+, the RSC will be making the production available online.
In anticipation of the event, the RSC has posted this helpful introductory video, in which playwright Billy Shakespeare and his pet pig Francis (Bacon) explain the antic goings-on…
More information on the production at the RSC’s site; sign up to follow the progress with the RSC on Google+.
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As we remark at “what fools these mortals be,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1808 that Napoleon’s forces executed captured rebels in Madrid– an event memorialized in Goya’s “El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid .” Anxious for its strategic access to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Napoleon had occupied Spain, giving rise to a a Spanish resistance and the five-year Peninsular War, the first real guerrilla war. The executed prisoners were particpants in the Dos de Mayo Uprising (also memorialized by Goya in a companion painting).
In 1814, after the expulsion of the French, Goya secured a commission from the Spanish government to do the paintings. Though it drew on sources from both high and popular art, “El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid” was a clear break from tradition– a groundbreaking work that has become an archetypical image of the horrors of war. In the words of art historian Sir Kenneth Clark, “El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid” is “the first great picture which can be called ‘revolutionary’ in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention.”
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