37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 33: King John (I’ve made it to the final five!)

The Life and Death of King John, first broadcast November 24th, 1984

• When was it written? Who knows? Somewhere between 1587 (when Holinshed was published) and 1598 (when someone mentioned this play in print.) It’s possibly his thirteenth play.
• What’s it about? After the death of his father Henry II and his brother Richard the Lionheart, weak King John is beset by enemies, including the French, who want their lands back, and the Pope, who wants more control over archbishops. His mom Eleanor of Aquitaine adopts Phillip, the bastard son of Richard, who becomes a loyal retainer of the king, even after Eleanor dies. John orders Arthur, a boy who is one of his rivals for the throne, killed, but then changes his mind, but then Arthur falls and dies while trying to escape, causing everyone to turn against John. John is poisoned by a monk and his son Henry becomes king. At no point is the Magna Carta signed!
• Most famous dialogue: None
• Sources: Holinshed, of course, but there was also a play around the same time published anonymously called The Troublesome Reign of King John. Either that one was based on this one or this one was based on that one.
• Best insult: a beardless boy, a cock’red silken wanton
• Best word: None stood out.
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I had never read it or seen it.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Claire Bloom is back, as Constance, and Phillida Law shows up as Lady Faulconbride.

How’s the cast?

• They’re fine. Leonard Rossiter (who died before the show aired) is an appropriately arrogant Richard. George Costigan stands out as Phillip the Bastard.

How’s the direction by David Giles?

• Tacky (see picture.) In interviews, Giles referred to his stylized sets as “emblematic” and “heraldic,” but they just look cheap. And there’s never any real sense that there’s a war going on. We get distant reports of battles, but with no immediacy.

Notes on Shakespeare’s most forgotten play:

The oddest thing about this play, is that it plays like a sequel to James Goldman’s 1966 play The Lion in Winter, but that’s a much better play. John and especially Eleanor are much more compelling there. It’s so odd to have Shakespeare playing second fiddle to another playwright.

This may be Shakespeare’s most forgotten play. To the degree that people on the street recognize the titles of Shakespeare plays, King John is the one they’re least likely to recognize. Does it deserve that fate? I would say no. The play is worth watching and not the weakest one I’ve seen as part of this series. The weakest thing about it is that so much of it (including all the fighting and John’s mysterious poisoning) happens off-stage.

The other big problem with this play is that, even though it’s a relatively early work, it’s already revisiting earlier, better plays. John is an odd combination of Henry VI (weakness in the face of the French) and Richard III (killing a kid to claim the throne) but not as compelling as either one. He doesn’t get a lot of soliloquies and generally lacks interiority. He ends up being somewhat unknowable.

Another oddity: John is primarily remembered for two things today, signing the Magna Carta and being one of the bad guys in the Robin Hood stories, but neither is mentioned in this play (though Robin Hood was name checked in the last play we looked at, The Two Gentlemen of Verona).

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Always Have an Exception to Your Rules

We’ve had lots of bad bastards in our 33 plays and no good ones, so I confidently declared earlier that there would be no exception to prove the rule, but not so fast! Shakespeare never wrote a play about Richard the Lionheart, but he does get to write about his bastard son here, and right away, he’s different from Shakespeare’s other bastards.

He’s witty, self-deprecating, and canny, quickly dropping his claim to legitimacy when he gets a better offer, then skillfully navigating choppy waters as things turn chaotic. He’s by far the most likable character in this play and our default hero.  He gets the concluding lines.  

Shakespeare was very supportive of primogeniture and traditional lines of succession, but here he shows us a way that even a bastard can make good, given some very unique circumstances. It’s always good for a writer to find ways to challenge their own prejudices.

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 32: Coriolanus

The Tragedy of Coriolanus, first broadcast April 21st, 1984

• When was it written? Probably around 1608 or 1609, possibly his 31st play
• What’s it about? Around the time of the founding of the Roman republic, general Gnaeus Marcius defeats the Volscian army at Corioli and gets the nickname Coriolanus. Returning home, many people encourage him to become a consul, but after he gives a disastrous speech his political rivals turn the common people against him and get him banished. He teams up with Aufidius, the Volscian general he defeated, and declares war on Rome, but his family is able to talk him out of it. He makes peace instead, and then Aufidius kills him.
• Most famous dialogue: None
• Source: The “Life of Coriolanus” in Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1579).
• Best insult: “You are no surer, no, than is the coal of fire upon the ice, or hailstone in the sun,” or “You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate as reek o’ the rotten fens, who loves I prize as the dead carcasses of unburied men that do corrupt my air”
• Best word: mammocked
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I had never seen or read it.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Noted ‘80s bad guy Joss Ackland does a great job as Coriolanus’s only steadfast friend in Rome, Menenius. (His reading of “Down with that sword” is chilling.)

How’s the cast?

• Alan Howard is a little stiff (no pun intended) as Coriolanus. Irene Worth is great as Coriolanus’s mother.

How’s the direction by Elijah Moshinsky? 

•  This is the most beautifully lit play I’ve seen so far, looking very cinematic.  And Moshinsky makes a clever decision to have cramped sets that look dangerously crowded even with just a few people, to create the sense that the roiling mobs are always a threat.  But Moshinsky’s biggest decision is to make the production so homoerotic, so let’s talk about that below…

Storyteller’s Rulebook: I Say Again, Not Everything Has To Be A Sex Scene

Earlier in this series we had Derek Jacobi’s Richard II, who was coded as possibly gay, and was a little fey. Then we had Troilus and Cressida with three gay-coded characters, all of whom seemed like caricatures. Now we get this play. With less support from the text, Moshinsky has decided to portray Coriolanus and Aufidius as two very masculine gay men whose every scene together, including their scenes of violence against each other, are played like sex scenes.

On the one hand, it’s nice to have two gay characters where neither is coded as effeminate, but on the other hand, it’s a brutal vision of male love. The intense homoerotic atmosphere of their scenes never seemed to me to be supported by the text, and always felt like an imposition, perhaps motivated by a belief of Moshinsky’s that there just wasn’t enough to this play without it.

I don’t know enough about this play to know how common this choice is. Tom Hiddleston was filmed in the role recently, and now I want to check that out to see if he played it this way too, or if the role could be made rich enough without it.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: A Play For Our Times

As with Henry VI, Part 2, this play was hard to watch, given what’s going on in the country right now. Shakespeare served at the pleasure of his monarchs, and one of his recurring themes was the inherent stupidity of democracy. He had already written about the downfall of democracy in Rome in Julius Caesar, due to the fickleness of crowds, and now we jump back 500 years earlier and find that, even at the beginning of Roman democracy, the crowds were just as jittery and easily swayed for evil purposes. (“The beast with many heads,” as Coriolanus calls them)

(Of course, if you’re going to play a Shakespeare lead, you have to know how to give a speech well, but this role is unique because it also requires that you know how to give a speech poorly. Coriolanus’s clumsy attempt at public speaking is the turning point of the play, and actors must love the chance to get to blow it for once.)

I know that, as a citizen of a democracy, I should be offended by Shakespeare’s wild-eyed contempt for voters, but given what’s going on right now, it’s hard not to see these two plays, bookending the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, as accurate depictions of the inherent idiocy of voters.

New Episode of "A Good Story Well Told" on Never Let Me Go!

Hey, everybody, it’s a new episode of my podcast “A Good Story Well Told” with Jonathan Auxier! In this episode, he shames me into finally reading Kazuo Ishiguru’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go. We get much discussion out of it, including the power and peril of basing your stories on pre-established conspiracy theories. I hope you enjoy it! 

 Here it is on Spotify.

And here it is on Apple Podcasts!

37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 31: The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, first broadcast December 27th, 1983

• When was it written? Sometime between 1589 and 1593. Some have made the case that it’s his first play, but others say it’s more likely to be his eighth play.
• What’s it about? Valentine and Proteus are best friends in Verona, both in love with women they aren’t allowed to love (Valentine loves Silvia and Proteus loves Julia.) But then Proteus meets Silvia and instantly decides to ditch Julia to pursue Silvia instead, and goes so far as to snitch on Valentine and get him banished to clear a path. In the forest Valentine joins a group of Robin-Hood-esque outlaws. Julia decides to dress as a boy and win Proteus back. Silvia isn’t interested in Proteus, so he considers raping her until Valentine stops him at sword-point. In the end, everybody ends up with who they started with and the friends are reconciled.
• Most famous dialogue: No famous dialogue here.
• Sources: Primarily The Seven Books of the Diana by the Portuguese writer Jorge de Montemayor, with a bit of Thomas Elyot's The Boke Named the Governour
• Interesting fact about the play: Those (in the minority) that conjecture that this was actually Shakespeare’s first play cite as their primary evidence how bad it is. I would argue the opposite: I found this to be very sophisticated, so I doubt it’s his first. It seems like a much more ambitious undertaking than A Comedy of Errors, which is more often listed as his first comedy. Writing about anti-heroes is hard. You generally want to master writing about likeable heroes first. I would argue that, since Proteus is a compelling and complex anti-hero, this is unlikely to be the first.
• Best insult:
• “She is peevish, sullen, froward, proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty”
• “Thou subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man!”
• Worst insult: “Silvia, witness heaven that made her fair, shows Julie but a swarthy Ethiope.” Well that’s problematic.
• Best word: sluggardised, braggardism
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I’ve never read or seen it before.
• Notable names in the BBC Adaptation: None

How’s the cast?

• They’re wonderful. Tyler Butterworth has very unfortunate 1983 hair that makes him a dead ringer for Shaun Cassidy, but other than that gives a great performance as one of Shakespeare’s most callow anti-heroes, John Hudson shows nice range as Valentine goes on his big personal journey from gentleman to criminal. Tessa Peake-Jones, as is always true in this series, is unconvincing as a boy, but does a great job otherwise. Tony Haygarth is very funny as Proteus’s servant Launce (and the dog playing Launce’s dog is great too) Paul Daneman is a real standout as a worldly wise Duke, about whom I will say more below.

How’s the direction by Don Taylor?

• Excellent. Shakespeare has many perfectly fine plays that are miscategorized as comedies and directors have to strain to squeeze jokes out of them, but this very funny production does not feel strained at all, and makes a convincing case that this is actually a very funny play (despite the possibility of rape at the end, which ends the comedy real quick, but I think that’s the point.) Taylor wanted realistic sets, but when he realized that the BBC couldn’t deliver, he decided to go in a more stylized direction, with aluminum poles for trees, and it works surprisingly well.

Rulebook Casefile: The Power of an Ironic Title

Look at that plot description again, then answer me: Who exactly are the gentlemen here? The one who betrays his friend and then considers raping that friend’s true love? Or the one who goes to live as a robber in the forest? Surely the title is intentionally ironic. Of course, these men are technically gentlemen, since that was merely an accident of birth, but to the degree that behavior can be described as gentlemanly, these guys lack it.

This is a play about how a new lust/infatuation can cause a man to betray not only his previous lady-love but his male best friend as well, which is unfortunately an evergreen topic. Valentine (named after the patron saint of love) and Proteus (a name that means changeable) begins the play with much lyrical talk about true love (as opposed to Launce, speaking in prose, giving a hilariously mercenary account of his own lover’s qualities) but one betrays his love and his friend, and the other proves to be a crook at heart.

The title drips with irony. The word “Gentlemen” might as well be in quotes, and the power of that ironic title adds new layers of meaning to the play.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: When Should Actors Be Allowed to Play Things That Aren’t Necessarily in the Text?

Shakespeare wrote rich texts, densely packed with meaning and overflowing with subtext. But that’s never enough for actors or directors. In production after production, you find actors injecting new meanings into scenes that simply aren’t supported by the text. (I’ve talked before about the urge to turn perfectly innocent scenes into sex scenes.)

But then you also have examples of great actors who push it right to the edge, delivering an unorthodox interpretation that is, in retrospect, justified by the text, but was invisible until the actor (and/or director) dug it out.

This production has a wonderful example. Valentine is illicitly in love with the Duke’s daughter, but so is Proteus. Proteus wants to steal his friend’s girl, so he betrays his friend to the Duke. It would have been easy to stick to the text and have the Duke be entirely appreciative of this warning that his daughter is about to run away with Valentine.

But Paul Daneman as the Duke gives us a lot more than is seemingly on the page. In this version, the Duke sees exactly what’s really going on. He can see what a scoundrel Proteus is and he’s disgusted by it, but has to pretend to be thankful for the tip. It’s an excellent example of playing against the surface text in a way that does not contradict the underlying text at all.

Rulebook Casefile: The Power of Props

Props are one of the most powerful tools any writer can have. I’ve written and made videos about how powerful it can be to invest objects with meaning, and create more meaning every time those objects are exchanged.

And yet, Shakespeare does not do this very much. It’s not uncommon to have whole scenes with no props.

This play, however, is a big exception. It struck me in the first scene, where there’s a lot of business with Proteus’s letter to Julia, that this was uncommon. Later, there is a hilarious scene where Valentine has a rope ladder hidden under his cloak that the Duke contrives to reveal.

Perhaps this is an indication that the play really did come earlier than is commonly supposed. We’ve seen with other early plays that Shakespeare didn’t understand Elizabethan stage conventions yet, sometimes to good effect. Was the tendency in his later plays, which were all-dialogue-no-business, a stage convention at the time but he didn’t grasp it yet? If so, this is a delightful departure.