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Sunday, August 11, 2013

Sunday Review: Shakespeare Uncovered (TV)

The Man even before he was the King's

By Morris Dean

After the inspiration of James Shapiro's Shakespeare—The King's Man [my review], I turned to the 2012 BBC/PBS TV Series, Shakespeare Uncovered, a 2-DVD set I borrowed from my local public library. (Hear, hear for the Alamance County Libraries! May you have a similarly accessible public library near you.)
    Shapiro was the single narrator for the three sections of his program on Shakespeare during the Jacobean era (the reign of James VI). Six narrators divide up Shakespeare Uncovered's six TV hours to discuss plays mostly from Elizabeth's reign:
Ethan Hawke
  • Shakespeare's Women: Viola in Twelfth Night and Rosalind in As You Like It (Joely Richardson)
  • Macbeth [discussed in Shapiro's program] (Ethan Hawke)
  • Richard II (Derek Jacobi)
  • The Tempest [discussed in Shapiro's program] (Trevor Nunn)
  • The Henrys: Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2) & Henry V (Jeremy Irons)
  • Hamlet (David Tennant)

Reasons to want to view this series:
Mother and Daughter
    All of the narrators are actors and well-qualified to analyze about ten of Shakespeare's pre-eminent characters. And, in the case of Joely Richardson, we have her mother, actor Vanessa Redgrave, as well, with their penetrating conversation about Shakespeare's portrayal of women and the transition from males to females playing these roles after 1660.
Jeremy Irons as father Henry and Tom Hiddleston as son Henry
    Snippets of performances by several actors are presented for I think all of the plays discussed, including a silent film of The Tempest (1911). The cast of actors, besides the narrators, includes Simon Russell Beale, Kenneth Branagh, Ralph Fiennes, Mel Gibson, Tom Hiddleston, Michael Hordern, Jude Law, Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, Laurence Olivier, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Stewart, David Warner, Ben Whishaw.
David Tennant holding the skull of the man who
willed it for productions of Hamlet
    Like Shapiro's program, scholarly evidence is presented to show how some of these plays reflect their times, even the experimental fantasy of The Tempest. For example, the name Hamlet is very close to Shakespeare's son Hamnet, whose death informed Hamlet's grief for a dead father. The witches in Macbeth, the ghost in Hamlet, and Prospero's magic of The Tempest exploited the fact that most people of Shakespeare's time would have taken those things for real. Richard II was deposed, and the play was so likely to suggest plots against Elizabeth that Shakespeare was persuaded to avoid performances that could have gotten back to the Queen. Derek Jacobi demonstrates how Richard II even reflects in its essentials what happened to end Margaret Thatcher's "reign" less than 25 years ago.
    Jacobi states the case to support his belief that the actor William Shakespeare did not write the plays or poetry attributed to him. I had wondered why Jacobi gave the prologue in the 2011 movie Anonymous [my review], which dramatized the theory that Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford, wrote them. Now I know why Jacobi was asked or volunteered for the role.
    Those are only a few reasons for wanting to watch Shakespeare Uncovered. It has other riches to offer anyone interested in Shakespeare, acting, or the history of dramatic art.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
Please comment
Posted by Moristotle at 8/11/2013 12:00:00 AM
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4 comments:

  1. UnderthebellySunday, August 11, 2013 at 9:28:00 AM EDT

    I remember reading about the idea Shakespeare didn't write the plays. The argument set forth was and is good, but not quiet good enough for me. I believe no matter the dangers, a person's ego demands they interject themselves into their work.
    To write great plays and be willing to die unknown, is a little hand for me to buy. But, it maybe because I love a good mystery.

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  2. motomyndMonday, August 12, 2013 at 7:23:00 PM EDT

    Is it at all reasonable to ask if Shakespeare was basically 'The Beatles' of his day? Did he come to fame because his work was so great, or because people were as tired of Chaucer by the time Shakespeare came along, as they were of Frank Sinatra and Lawrence Welk, by the time 'The Beatles' hit the scene?

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  3. MoristotleTuesday, August 13, 2013 at 11:01:00 AM EDT

    A good book for answering your question might be James Shapiro's 2005 book, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. I've read about 40 pages so far, and it's clear that the situation was a bit richer than the scenario you pose. For one thing, because there weren't any newspapers, play-going was a main way Londoners followed what was happening....

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  4. MoristotleWednesday, August 14, 2013 at 4:12:00 PM EDT

    With respect to Jacobi's and others' belief that Shakespeare didn't write the works attributed to him, I enjoyed a brief passage about this in Christopher Hitchens's last book, Mortality, written during his agonizing weeks of treatments for metastatized esophageal cancer (of which he died in December 2011). In Chapter 6, Hitchens writes about the question whether, if he had been told in advance what pain he would be in store for, would he "have opted for the treatment?" [Short answer: "Yes."]
        He also questions Nietzsche's adage, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger":
      "In the course of his [Neitzsche's] mental decline, he became convinced that the most important possible cultural feat would be to prove that the plays of Shakespeare had been written by Bacon. This is an unfailing sign of advanced intellectual and mental prostration." [emphasis mine] I.e., what Nietszche was going through but not being killed by was not making him stronger.

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