shakespeare magazine 02

At last! A magazine with all the Will in the world

SHAKESPEARE

King DavidFrom Doctor Who to Hamlet and Richard II, David Tennant is a 21st century Shakespeare superstar!

Blood meets ink in the world of Shakespeare Tattoos

Aussie Rules Shakespeare!A double bill of the Bard in sunny Sydney

Character'd on thy skin..." "

WHAT’S ON IN 2014

Welcome toBERKELEY CASTLE

ClaudieAged 5

(Princess for

the day)

OPEN from Tuesday 1st April (every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday)

www.berkeley-castle.com

JUNE (cont.)

8th Tudor Ladies 15th Gardens open for NGS Gardens open for the National Gardens’ Scheme (reduced £5 admission for gardens only)

JULY

6th Tudor Ladies 12th – 16th Archaeology Festival (with Jenner Museum & Church) 13th Gerard’s Regiment of the Sealed Knot 19th July -27th August Summer Activities Arts & Crafts Sundays, Storytelling, Jester, Archery

AUGUST

(to 27th) Summer Activities Arts & Crafts Sundays, Storytelling Mondays, Jester Tuesdays, Archery Wednesdays

SEPTEMBER

16th – 1st Oct Gold-work Embroidery Exhibition

OCTOBER

5th – 15th Celebration of Harvest

MAY (cont.)

25th – 28th May Knights & Princesses go FREECome dressed as a knight or princess this May half term and explore the Castle and Butterfly House FREE. Swords and Bows & Arrows are available from the shop for any knight who has lost his own weapons. Beautiful hats for Knights and Princesses to dress up in while visiting the Castle.

APRIL 20th & 21st Easter Dragons Meet our friendly dragons, join our Chinese dragon procession, be amazed by the stories about dragons

MAY 4th Tudor Ladies Come and meet our authentically dressed Tudor gentlewomen and find out what they can tell you about life 450 years ago 12th – 14th May Sorry, during this period the Castle & Grounds will be closed for filming

JUNE

ROSE MONTH Enjoy the stunning display of roses in the Castle’s rose walk and terraced gardens throughout June

WelcomeFirst of all, I must apologise for the fact that this issue is a few days late! I’m writing this on a plane to Alicante, having foolishly booked a holiday in the belief that the magazine would have already been published by now. !at’ll teach me.

to Issue 2 of Shakespeare Magazine

Welcome!

SHAKESPEARE magazine 3

Photo

: D

avid

Ham

monds

Still, I do think this issue is worth waiting for. Once again, I have to thank my brilliant Art Editor Paul McIntyre and our quickly-expanding team of contributors for their entertaining, informative and often dazzling work.

Part of Shakespeare Magazine’s mission is to provide a new voice for the world’s Shakespeare fans. And so it feels perfectly appropriate that David Tennant should be the !rst living person to appear on our front cover.

David is a fantastically versatile actor who’s done a terri!c job of bringing Shakespeare to a new generation of fans. And he seems to have achieved this while remaining steadfastly down to earth and unfailingly generous of spirit. Find out what the fans themselves have to say in our exciting cover feature. Enjoy your magazine.

Pat Reid, Founder & Editor

ContentsShakespeare Magazine

Issue TwoJune 2014

Founder & Editor Pat Reid

Art Editor Paul McIntyre

WritersZoe BramleyMary Finch

Rebecca FranksMargaret Gaskin

Ilana KimmelmanRafaella Marcaletti

Antje StrauchBrooke !omas

Christopher TomkinsonYasmin WaldeckEmma WheatleyAmanda MarkusPhotographyPiper Williams

Thank YouMrs Cathy KirbyMrs Mary Reid

Mr Peter Robinson Biblioteca Cristobal Zaragoza,

VillajoyosaWeb design

David Hammonds

Contact [email protected]

Twitter@UKShakespeare

Websitewww.shakespearemagazine.com

4 SHAKESPEARE magazine

Who is Hamlet! 18David Tennant’s Hamlet, as

performed by Doctor Who

Shakespeare news 6Shock and horror at the Globe!

X-Men stars have

played Macbeth?

King David 10

Shakespeare experiences

At last! A magazine with all the Will in the world

SHAKESPEARE

King DavidFrom Doctor Who to Hamlet and Richard II, David Tennant is a 21st century Shakespeare superstar!

Blood meets ink in the world of Shakespeare Tattoos

Aussie Rules Shakespeare!A double bill of the Bard in sunny Sydney


Contents!


When David met Richard 24

Shakespeare’s great !re 30

Sport most royal! 38

“Character’d on thy skin...” 42What it really means to adorn

Concord of sweet sounds 34

Exclusive giveaway 19tickets to Richard III in Covent

The London premiere of the latest X-Men

blockbuster delivered this Macbeth-themed

treat for Shakespeare fans.

Macbeths of Future Past

Mac attack: (l-r) Stewart,

McAvoy, McKellen, Fassbender.

!OPENING SCENE"

!News


News“All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players”

SHAKESPEARE

A s X-Men: Days of Future Past rocketed to the top of the global box

Macbeth

Macbeth

C rossing over the Millennium Bridge back into the City, the English Baroque splendour

of St Paul’s Cathedral looms before you. Turn left at Carter Lane and walk about 100 yards. On the left, a!xed to a nondescript grey building, is a plaque telling us that here is the site of the Bell Inn from where one Richard Quiney wrote a letter to his Warwickshire pal Shakespeare in 1598. Quiney was asking for a loan of £30, a huge amount.

Whether he got the money, we don’t know. But the letter was found among Quiney’s possessions after his death so he evidently decided not to send it.

Continue down Carter Lane and turn left down St Andrew’s Hill. We

are now in the Blackfriars area. At the bottom of the hill there is a cosy little pub called the Cockpit, named after the brutal cock"ghting matches that took place there in the Victorian era. #e bar still boasts an example of a cock"ghting ring but happily there are no blood sports on o$er today.

It would be understandable for anyone in search of Shakespeare to ignore this pub and head back over the river to the Globe. #e Cockpit is not on the tourist trail. But maybe it should be – because it boasts a Tudor cellar which was almost certainly part of a house which Shakespeare bought in 1613, the house known as the Blackfriars Gatehouse. He paid £140 and his mortgage was witnessed by

John Hemming, his fellow actor who later helped compile the First Folio of all Shakespeare’s tragedies, histories and comedies in 1623.

So what exactly was this gatehouse? Well, the narrow alleyway you'll "nd there is called Ireland Yard and once led into a Dominican monastery, the Blackfriars, so called because of the black gowns worn by the friars. Shakespeare’s gatehouse formed the entrance to the monastery. It’s uncertain whether he ever lived in the house himself but we know that he bequeathed it to his daughter Susannah in his will.

Find Zoe on Twitter: @shakespearewalk

Following Shakespeare’s footstepsCity of London Tour Guide Zoe Bramley continues her report from the Shakespeare Trail.

News!


T

.

Romeo and Juliet head for HOMEA fairy tale version of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet is coming to Manchester’s Victorian Baths.

1plays?

2

3 Much , when her

4

5

6loses her son?

Answers: 1) Imogen from Cymbeline is thought to originally be “Innogen” 2) Lady Macbeth, 3) “man” 4) Rosalinde from As You Like It 5) Rosalinde, As You Like It Act 3 scene 2, 6) Volumnia from Coriolanus

Women weren’t allowed on stage in Shakespeare’s day, but he still wrote

plenty of unforgettable female characters. How well do you know them?

A fter the success of broadcasting Richard II to schools in 2013, the Royal

Shakespeare Company is once again bringing top quality Shakespeare to classrooms all across the UK.

Both parts of Henry IV will be broadcast this month – Part 1 on Friday 6 June, followed by Part 2 on Monday 30 June. Broadcasts will include an interval as well as a live question and answer session.

With last year’s Richard reaching over 31,000 students, the RSC is expecting Henry to exceed that number, making it the “world’s biggest Shakespeare lesson.”

!ese broadcasts give many British kids their "rst experience of professional theatre – and often their very "rst taste of Shakespeare.

!e Henry plays are also screening in cinemas around the world.

Go to www.rsc.org.uk for more information.

Shakespeare in the ClassroomThis month the RSC’s Henry

IV, Part 1 and 2 will be seen in

hundreds of classrooms across

the UK.

!e Shakespeare Magazine Quiz


!News

success as Falstaff.

“G rotesquely violent and daringly experimental” is how Shakespeare’s

Globe !eatre in London describe their current production of Titus Andronicus directed by Lucy Bailey. And with audience members fainting during the most gory moments, it seems to be an accurate description.

!e most gruesome scenes include rape, murder, and mutilation powerfully performed by a cast including Michael Houston as Titus, Indira Varma as Tamora and Flora Spencer-Longhurst as Lavinia.

!e Daily Mail reports that during one production "ve people fainted after seeing Lavinia soaked in blood following her ordeal of rape and mutilation.

However, according to !e

Evening Standard, fainting is not uncommon and the Globe are prepared, with "rst aiders standing by at every production.

Despite losing audience members to swooning, the current production remains popular.

“If you have the stomach for it, the play is wonderfully gripping” says Charles Spencer, theatre critic with the Telegraph. Likewise Lynn Gardner from the Guardian says the “bloody tragedy is ingeniously disturbing, and much more than just a splatter fest.”

Even accounts of fainting and nausea admit that the play is well done. Helen Chandler tweeted: “Two people fainted at this evening’s performance of Titus Andronicus at the Globe. Best value entertainment in London by a bloody mile.”

!ere will be BloodMedia gleefully reports outbreak of mass fainting at the

Globe’s shocking new Titus Andronicus.

News!


Spencer-Longhurst's

!David Tennant fans


King David

David Tennant fans!


The combination of sensitivity, charm, razor-sharp intelligence and manic energy he brought to Doctor Who made David Tennant a superstar. But the actor’s greatest achievement has been alerting his legion of followers to the power and pleasure of the Bard. We asked fans from England, Italy, Sweden, Germany and the USA to share their personal experiences of Tennant performing Shakespeare...

!

A fall from grace for Tennant as the

doomed Richard II.

King David

“Since I was afraid that I wouldn’t understand a thing, I read the bilingual version of Richard II, !nishing it on our way to the theatre” Yasmin Waldeck

!David Tennant fans


David Tennant with Yasmin.

It made me realise how di!erent it is to be on stage than to be on the TV. I would have never expected such a powerful and authentic performance, even though I knew he was a good actor.

“When we got outside we waited with many many other people, but we were able to talk with David and we both had a picture taken with him. Our trip to London was really really worth it and I hope we can return soon to go to an English theatre again. All this really got me into Shakespeare and I love reading his works, which is not so common at my age.”

Yasmin Waldeck“I’m from Karlsruhe, Germany and I became a fan of David through Doctor Who. Even though I learned English in school for several years we never really talked about Shakespeare. To be honest, I think most people from my class wouldn’t understand a lot. Since I’m a fan of David Tennant, I watched several recordings of him playing Shakespeare and I loved it and I realised how captivating Shakespearean literature can be.

“When Richard II was announced, me and my boyfriend called the Barbican from the German landline and reserved two £5 tickets, since we don’t have a lot of money. Months later, we "nally booked our #ight and found a place to stay. $e day we picked up our tickets was really exciting for us.

“We’re both 19 and we never really went to the theatre to see a play, except when we were told to go there by our school. Since I was afraid that I wouldn’t understand a thing, I read the bilingual version of Richard II, "nishing it just in time on our way to the theatre. $is made it much easier for me to actually understand what was happening so I could focus more on the way they were acting and not just on the language.

“To be honest, I was really astonished by everything, because they just talked casually, as if it’s the easiest thing ever to speak that way. I was captivated by the play and I think David Tennant was marvellous in that role.

“His stage presence and how he spoke those Shakespearean words was extraordinary”Ilana Kimmelman

Ilana Kimmelman“I am 20 years old and I live in Santa Rosa, California. It’s an hour north of San Francisco in wine country. I became a fan of David when I started watching Doctor Who about four years ago. His role as !e Doctor is what got me interested in his other work. When I found out he did quite a few Shakespeare plays I got all excited because I love Shakespeare.

“I was very fortunate to see David Tennant perform Richard II in Stratford-upon-Avon in October 2013. I’m not from England, so seeing him perform on stage is not an everyday activity. I went with a friend of mine and we were both very excited to see our idol in person. After the "rst half of the performance we were both in a daze. Not only could we not keep our eyes o# of Tennant, but his stage presence and how he spoke those Shakespearean words was extraordinary. It comes so naturally to him. Almost e#ortless. !e whole cast was brilliant, but Tennant was the real star. After the play "nished we were extremely lucky to meet Mr Tennant in person. He was very kind and generous to all the fans that were there, and it is a moment I will cherish forever.”

David Tennant fans!

SHAKESPEARE magazine 13!

Ilana and David.

!David Tennant fans


Emma WheatleyHamlet, October 2008“Whilst performing the sword !ght scene with Ed Bennett one night, one of the swords broke and landed on stage. "ey all managed to avoid it during the rest of the !ght, with David even picking up a new sword along the way. It was completely #awless, as if it should have happened.”

Love’s Labour’s Lost, October 2008“In one scene Berowne was required to throw a hat towards a branch on the tree. Every performance I witnessed saw David miss, except once. "e crowd cheered, and without breaking character David said to the audience ‘Happens every time’, which resulted in a lot of laughter.”

Love’s Labour’s Lost, October 2008“At another performance a girl was sat in the front row reading along with a text book and making notes. David jumped down, sat next to her, took her book and signed it, all whilst giving his speech. In the same show David threw a letter into the crowd. "at letter is now in a frame on my Shakespeare bookcase, along with with a signed photo of David holding it.”

Hamlet, September 2008“My absolute favourite encounter with David was when we met him leaving the theatre

after he had been signing at the stage door. It was my birthday and I was seeing Hamlet with a friend. David very kindly stopped, asked us not to tell anyone where we had met him, and then said happy birthday to me, which made my day.”

Richard II, November 2013“Seeing David in Richard II was phenomenal. Seeing him go through so many emotions, from strong king to being reduced to a prisoner... "e abdication scene with Bolingbroke was magni!cent, and without a doubt my favourite stage performance of David’s.”

A day visiting the Shakespeare birthplace culminated in heading to the stage door and meeting DT.

Right: David showing off his hair extensions for Richard II.

“David threw a letter into the crowd. !at letter is now in a frame on my Shakespeare bookcase”Emma Wheatley

!

David Tennant fans!


Amanda meets David.

Amanda Markus“I became a fan of David Tennant when a friend recommended Doctor Who to me about two years ago. Me and three friends saved most of our studying money to go and see Richard II in January this year. I had just turned 18 and to go and see my number one idol perform seemed like an impossibility because I live in Sweden. But we decided to go to London anyhow, and seeing the play was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

“!e feeling when the trumpets sounded and David came out on stage in his majestic out"t made my eyes tear up. We were sitting in the very front row so it couldn’t get much more magical than that. David stood literally "ve metres away from me, and I had to pinch my arm just to make sure that it was real.

“!e play was brilliant. I don’t know if I’m the right person to say so, because I don’t think I understood all of it. My English is very limited and I must admit that I didn’t catch all of what the actors said. But just sitting there and watching my absolute hero in action was a feeling I don’t know if I can ever achieve again.

“!e amazing evening didn’t end when the play was over, because we rushed out to the stage door to get David’s autograph and take a photo with him. I didn’t get a photo that evening, but we decided that since we had travelled so far we would come back the next night and try again. And so we did.

“I managed to get a photograph of me and my idol the next evening, and I felt like the happiest person alive. !e ten-month-long wait from booking the tickets to when we actually sat at the Barbican !eatre to experience the play was all worth it. I am so glad I was able to experience all that.”

Alison Williams (left) and Mary Finch.

!David Tennant fans


“It was mature, serious and tragic, potently emotional and almost absurd at times”Mary Finch

Bryn Mawr by trolley, we realised we didn’t have directions from the trolley station to the cinema. Despite all of this, we arrived only 15 minutes late, though quite out of breath.

“In the three hours that followed, all the anxiety and stress of the morning was entirely forgotten as we watched the tragic story of Richard. I laughed. I cried. I gasped in surprise. David Tennant performed the role in an entirely unique way, and he only called back to previous performances once when he let a classic ‘Well…’ show his Scottish accent. !is role allowed an entirely di"erent side of his talents to shine through – it was mature, serious and tragic, potently emotional and almost absurd at times.

“We already knew Tennant as an actor and Richard II as a play (having fallen in love with Ben Whishaw’s Richard in !e Hollow Crown), but both of us were left speechless after the screening. In all honesty, we sat in silence for over #ve minutes as everyone else left.

“Experiencing all of this in a cinema was interesting. !ere is no way these screenings will replace the thrill of live theatre, yet for someone who lives where I do, it was a dream come true. Even with the problems of getting to the venue, seeing David Tennant in Richard II was worth every moment of the panic and frustration that preceded it.”

Mary Finch“While most 21-year-old students might go to great lengths to get to a party or see their favourite band, I prefer misadventures for the sake of Shakespeare. However, being landlocked in central Pennsylvania adds a special level of di$culty to this. I live in Grantham, a small town 20 minutes outside of Harrisburg, the state capital. Harrisburg is known for many things (like an extravagant Farm Show every autumn), but not for Shakespeare.

“When we heard that the Bryn Mawr Film Institute near Philadelphia would be screening the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Richard II featuring David Tennant, my friend Alison Williams and I were beyond thrilled. Alison had been a fan of David Tennant longer than I. In the spring of 2013, instead of watching the American cultural event that is the Super Bowl, she introduced me to Tennant by showing me his Hamlet. Of course it caught my attention, and after watching him in Doctor Who as well as some of his movies (!e Decoy Bride is a personal favourite), I knew this man had incredible acting talent. Richard II was 100 miles away, neither of us had a car, and #nal examinations started the next day, but it was an opportunity we couldn’t a"ord to miss.

“Getting there was an adventure in and of itself. In the course of the morning, our ride abandoned us, our train was cancelled, two di"erent buses we tried to take were not running that day, and when we #nally got to

Raffaella at New Place.

David Tennant fans!


“He is also so generous to the others actors and so sensitive in his responses that the play becomes a choral chant”Raffaella Marcaletti

“I live in Comabbio, a very small village in the north-west of Italy. I became fan of David in 2010. I saw his Hamlet and then I bought Taking Over !e Asylum, Single Father and Doctor Who to re"ne my judgment.

“I saw David in Richard II on stage at the Royal Shakespeare !eatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on the night before the live broadcasting. He is such a good actor because he gives life, soul and truth to the character he is playing. He is also so generous to the others actors and so sensitive in his responses that the play becomes a choral chant. David has that charisma and also a great ability to concentrate the atmosphere of the story into his character.

“When I went back to my hotel that night I had the strong impression of having been part of the story of Richard. I was sad that he hadn’t managed to "nd his humanity and the warmth he needed in

the end, as I would be for a real person.“When the play ended I noticed some

young people running to the stage door. Apparently David dedicated some of his time every evening signing programmes for his fans. I spoke to a couple of them and I discovered a true admiration and love for David, a more intimate and thoughtful fondness than I expected from a fan. I waited with them and had my programme signed.

“Tennant the actor gives new life to Shakespeare, but Tennant the man is very kind and unassuming. It was a very memorable day!”

For Dresden-based fan Antje Strauch,

David Tennant's Hamlet was such an inspiration

she decided to restage it – with the help of

friend Claudia Bochynek and her trusty Doctor

Who and Torchwood

Who is Hamlet!

!1"The play opens with an introduction by

Shakespeare himself.

#Toy Hamlet


!2"At night, Hamlet, his friend Horatio and a soldier see Hamlet's

father as a ghost:"I am thy father’s spirit,

doom’d for a certain term to walk the night…"

Toy Hamlet!


"3#Hamlet swears to avenge his father, the others are

sworn to secrecy:“Never to speak of this that

you have heard. Swear by my sword.” – “Swear!”

"4#Polonius gets the impression that Hamlet is crazy:“!ough this be

madness, yet there is method in't.”

"5#Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern arrive to check up on Hamlet, who welcomes them:

“My excellent good friends!” "6#

Trying to get a reaction from Claudius, Hamlet

sets up the performance of a play which features a

murder.

!

!Toy Hamlet


"7#Hamlet and Ophelia

watch the play:“Lady, shall I lie in

your lap?”

"8#Polonius is hidden behind the mirror and

Hamlet accidentally shoots him:“A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!”

"9#Hamlet returns from

England. At a cemetery he

no idea that the grave is dug for Ophelia:

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.”

Toy Hamlet!


"10#Laertes wants to avenge his sister’s death. Hamlet and

Laertes start to fence:“Another hit - what say you?”

"12#Hamlet is fatally wounded by Laertes’

sword and dies in Horatio’s arms. Gertrude, Claudius and Laertes are dead too:

“!e rest is silence.”

!

"11#Gertrude drinks from the winner’s cup. The poison

put into it by Claudius was meant for her son:

“!e drink, the drink! I am poison’d.”

You can see Antje's action !gure Hamlet in its entirety in her LiveJournal: http://dieastra.livejournal.com/28212.html

Iris Theatre returns for the sixth year of its celebrated summer season in the gardens of

St Paul’s Church in London’s historic Covent Garden. This year they’re presenting a new outdoor

production of Shakespeare’s Richard III (featuring David Hywel Baynes in the lead role) which

runs from 25 June until 25 July.

And excitingly, Shakespeare Magazine has FIVE pairs of tickets to give away.

Four winners will each get pairs of tickets for performances between Wednesday 25 June and

Saturday 28 June.

And one overall winning pair will get to join Iris Theatre for press night on Monday 30 June,

including interval wine and nibbles with the Iris team, and a signed programme!

EXCLUSIVE GIVEAWAYCompetition!


To be in with a chance of winning, simply send an email to

[email protected]

with ‘Richard Comp’ in the subject line.

Don’t forget to include your name, address, postcode and contact number.

The closing date for this competition is Monday 16 June.

Please make sure that you’re able to attend performances before entering the competition.

Very best of luck!

Win!

Tickets for

Richard III at

Iris Theatre

in Covent

Garden!

!Interview: David Hywel Baynes


When David met Richard

“Richard is de!nitely bringing out a side in me that I didn’t think was there.”

David Hywel Baynes

Playing him made me more considerate as a human. There’s nothing like playing the most honourable man alive to make you feel utterly dishonourable, so yeah, Brutus very much made me want to be a better person.”

Was there a moment when you

realised you were well and truly

bonded to the Bard?

“I think the moment I really started to feel a bond forming was when I started looking closer at the Sonnets. The Sonnets are written by a man baring his soul, and to really get to grips with the depth of character in his plays they are key to understanding the man that wrote them.

“Although he’s writing about kings, gods

Interview: David Hywel Baynes!


What was your formative

Shakespeare experience?

“All the roles I’ve played in the past have changed me in some way, and I think that’s what appeals most to me performing Shakespeare. I’m constantly surprised by the challenges each play presents to an actor, and each one makes you really look at yourself and what kind of person you are in comparison.

“I guess Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream really opened my eyes to the possibilities that were open to you in these texts. You can go so many different directions with a character like Puck and I love how free you can be with your imagination.

“I’d have to give Brutus a mention as well.

New York-based British actor David Hywel Baynes is known for his intensely

physical performances. As he prepares to take on the role of Richard III at

London’s Iris Theatre we talked to him about all things Shakespeare.

When David met Richard

David has found

that working on

Shakespeare in America

has challenged many of

his assumptions

and sorcerers, he has the ability to make these epic beings very human, and I don’t think he’d be able to do that without bringing a lot of himself to them. The more you look at his works, the more you get to know the man that wrote them, and the Sonnets really show just how human he was.

“To wear his heart on his sleeve with such personal material that he explores in the Sonnets, I feel is something that has to be considered when looking at his plays, and what his initial intent was when writing them. You can’t help but feel a connection with a man that writes plays about human nature and emotion that anybody can associate with.”

What are you bringing to the role

of Richard III that’s uniquely ‘you’?

“You’ll have to come and see to find out. I will say that Richard is definitely bringing out a side in me that I didn’t think was there, and what he is bringing out in me is incredibly fun and liberating.”

Is Richard evil – or just

misunderstood?

“I’d have to say that Richard first and foremost is a human being. I think if you take the play Richard III on its own then it’s all too easy to see why he’s seen as evil, but his villainy must have reasoning behind it.

“When you take Richard from the very first time we meet him in Shakespeare’s plays, in Henry VI, Part 2, he is a vastly different character. Over the course of Parts 2 and 3 he goes through quite a lot, to say the least, and there’s a big part of me that understands why he behaves the way he does. The original title of the play was The Tragedy Of King Richard the Third, so I think Richard has to be tragic. At some point you have to see the tragedy in him.

“I’ve been considering a lot whether someone is born evil – or are they made evil? I liken him to a pitbull that has been beaten and chained up his entire life. You’re creating a monster by doing that, and I think that’s where the tragedy really is in Richard.”

Has your interpretation been

influenced by the recent discovery

of Richard’s remains in Leicester?

“Not really. It just clarified the scoliosis and informed the physicality, to be honest. It’s interesting stuff reading about why he was buried in Leicester, and the theories behind how he ended up there, but in the end you have to stay true to the script and do the play that Shakespeare’s written. Trying to change what Shakespeare has written just because of new facts that have come out about Richard would be like banging your head against a brick wall.

“In the end you have to stay true to the script and do the play that

Shakespeare’s written”



David’s full-on

performance as Puck

in A Midsummer

Night’s Dream.

trying new things is integral, and self-doubt can really hold you back in that sense. It makes me feel like anything is possible as long as you believe in yourself.”

What’s your all-time favourite

Shakespeare film?

“The two I’ve enjoyed the most are probably Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, for very different reasons. I thought Branagh’s Henry really captured just how epic that story is, and who doesn’t want to actually see ‘Once more unto the breach…’ done in front of an actual battle?

“Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet brought Shakespeare to a whole new audience and I loved it. His commitment to make it accessible to a younger audience is something to be admired. Luhrmann really added his artistic stamp on the play as well, without his vision detracting from the overall story. That takes real courage and, more importantly, talent.

“Shakespeare was pretty liberal with the truth in the histories anyway, and he was writing for a Tudor monarch so he couldn’t really make Richard a hero. Elizabeth would not have been amused.

What is your favourite

Shakespeare quotation? And what

does it mean to you?

“There are so many, but the one that really stands out for me is a Lucio line from Measure for Measure: ‘Our doubts are traitors / And make us lose the good we oft might win / By fearing to attempt.’

“I just find it so profound and it clearly shows to me how deep a thinker Shakespeare actually was. We all have moments of insecurity in our lives and at points the fear of failure can cripple a great many of us. It has with me, that’s for sure. This line gives me hope and lets me know that it’s perfectly acceptable to fail sometimes, as long as you gave it a go in the first place.

“As an actor, pushing the boundaries and !

David’s Brutus in Julius

Caesar, with Daniel

Hanna as Casca.



“When it comes to other authors of the time, reading them makes me feel a bit like I’m cheating on Shakespeare”

“I’d love to see some of the plays taken on more by Hollywood nowadays. Imagine what a huge budget could do with a play like Macbeth.”

Have any Shakespearean actors

or directors been particularly

inspirational to you?

“As directors go, I’d have to say Nicholas Hytner’s work at the National over the last few years has been particularly memorable. His Othello with Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear last year was immense. I really like the way he makes the stories timeless and his modern settings never detract from the telling of them.

“As actors go, I could watch Mark Rylance on stage all day. I saw The Globe’s Twelfth Night and Richard III playing in rep on Broadway in New York. I was concerned watching his Richard because I came out thinking ‘I have to play the part in a few months and I’ve just seen it done perfectly’.

“Rylance really personifies what I like to call ‘rock and roll Shakespeare’. He has this ridiculous ability and confidence to make it seem like he is making up the lines on the spot, seeming to have little or no respect for what he’s saying, when really you can see that he is so respectful that he’s not just reciting them, he’s making them his own whilst keeping true to the story. His technique is so absurdly good, that going to see him on stage isn’t just going to see a show to me, it’s like an acting masterclass. I’ve learned so much from seeing him perform.

“I’d have to give Tim Carroll a mention as well for directing him in Twelfth Night and Richard. I thought his Twelfth Night was ‘Shakespeare Comedy 101’ and really showcased the Globe’s method in its best light.”

Do you have any favourite non-

Shakespeare authors or works

from the same era?

“I’m a bit of a puritan when it comes to other authors of the time and reading them makes me feel a bit like I’m cheating on Shakespeare. I do have a few, though. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus I think is amazingly dark and I love thinking about just how controversial that would have been back in the day.

“I also have a bit of a soft spot for Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, as it was the first play I saw by another author of the period other than Shakespeare. I have a real penchant for gritty, dark storylines.



Brutus stabbing

Caesar (Matthew

Mellalieu) with his

fellow conspirators.

You divide your time between

London and New York – how do

approaches to Shakespeare differ

in these cities?

“The truth of the matter is they don’t really. Everywhere you go in the world you’re going to find good and bad productions of any play, Shakespeare included, but it still gets performed a hell of a lot on both sides of the Atlantic.

“I’m really lucky living in New York because there are so many people that want to bring Shakespeare to the masses and, most importantly, children. The approaches to the performance of the plays, though, and the successes and failures of the performance, seem to me exactly the same.

“The best plays I’ve seen performed in New York and London alike are those that are honest and don’t try and bring something to the party that wasn’t invited by the author. Gimmicky Shakespeare is everywhere, but if the gimmicks take away from the story then you’re already onto a losing battle. The simplest and most honest productions are the ones that stay with me.

“As I said, I feel intensely lucky to live in New York as there are just as many people there that are just as passionate about the plays as I am. The talent of some of the actors I’ve met in New York, and their ability to perform Shakespearean language has astounded me since I moved there.

“When I arrived, I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t think Americans would be able to do it as well as us Brits. I’m very glad to say that I couldn’t have been more wrong. They hold these plays in just as high regard as we do, and there is a real understanding of how they should be done.”

David stars in Richard III at London’s Iris !eatre from 25 June to 25 July. He’s also leading a Richard III masterclass on Sunday 8 June. Details and tickets from www.iristheatre.com



With Laura Wickham

as Portia (Laura also

returns to Richard III

as Queen Elizabeth).

“Don’t try and bring something to the party that wasn’t invited

by the author. Gimmicky Shakespeare is everywhere”

The Great Fire

of London, with

Ludgate and Old

St. Paul’s (dated

1670, artist

unknown).


!Shakespeare’s Great Fire

Shakespeare’s Great Fire


By the time it was !nally halted – three days later – the con"agration had consumed four-!fths of the City of London that Shakespeare had known. And William Shakespeare’s own life – or anything that we can ever know of it – had been transformed; changed, profoundly and forever, half a century after his death.

As the "ames approached in September 1666, escapees from the City had bundled prized possessions onto carts or into rowing boats on the #ames. A surprisingly high number of keyboard instruments in these boats, mused Samuel Pepys, who decided to bury his wine and precious Parmesan cheese in the garden along with his important business papers.

But who among London’s "eeing inhabitants had found time or inclination to rescue grandad’s old box of letters? Or those closed account books going back to the last century? Piles of scribbled scrap paper used for wrapping books? Even the books themselves?

Fortunately, many members of the London Stationers Company, who between them printed, published and sold most of the books in England, had a secure haven for

!

Shakespeare’s Great Fire!

IIt was (as the old story begins) a dark and stormy night. In the heart of the City of London, an accidental !re sprang up in a royal baker’s and spread to the house next door. #e wind was high and, along

narrow City lanes, one half-timbered building after another was swiftly consumed. Some citizens called for houses to be pulled down as a !re-break but Lord Mayor Bludstone refused, earning a kind of immortality with his dismissive, “A woman might piss it out”. #e !re raged on unchecked.

their most precious stock. #ose who operated from stations in St Paul’s Churchyard were parishioners of St Faith’s. In the Middle Ages this church had been demolished when the Cathedral was extended, with a compensatory chapel built down in the Cathedral crypt. Here the stationers worshipped, and its heavy wooden doors would be su$cient to hold out the !re a goodly while.

And they did so – even after the lead roof of the poor, ruined Cathedral crashed to the ground after two days of !re. Did so right up to the moment, in fact, when, danger past, the chapel doors of St Faith’s were "ung open to retrieve the precious goods inside. And the inward rush of as-yet-uncomprehended oxygen met a superheated stack of board and paper, causing a !erce new blaze to spring up, destroying everything inside.

And thus, over just a few days that autumn, London and the world lost – what? A prompter’s script, or an old promotional playbill? A handwritten letter or two? A distinctive signature on a receipt or a marginal note in an old source-book? Why not a secret commonplace book or journal to rival Pepys’s own, with racy Elizabethan theatrical gossip jotted down in code alongside court intrigues and memorable sermons? Even as much as a lost play to satisfy seekers after the vanished Cardenio or the mysterious Love’s Labour’s Won?

With almost anyone who knew him already dead (Shakespeare’s only grandchild, just eight at his death, would herself die childless in 1670), !rst-hand knowledge of Shakespeare’s real life – the man that William Shakespeare had truly been, rather than the literary colossus – was now all-but snu%ed out.

Henceforth, the only sources of information available to searchers after the man and his works would be those things that had been written down already. And a signi!cant proportion of those had just gone up in smoke.

Four years before, Shakespeare had received a brief mention in #omas Fuller’s posthumously published book Worthies of England. Fuller had praised William

“With almost anyone who knew him already dead, !rst-hand knowledge of Shakespeare’s real life was now all-but snu"ed out.”

!Shakespeare’s Great Fire

Shakespeare’s plays in the book’s Warwickshire section, noting that the playwright was a Stratford man and had been buried “in the town of his nativity” (though he had left the date blank). Fuller also vividly described Shakespeare and fellow-playwright Ben Jonson’s friendly battles of wits. !ough, sadly there is no evidence that this was anything but Fuller’s own lively imagination at work. It was a brief enough biography for a life that had been "lled with so much drama, one way or another.

Not that anyone would have remarked the fact at the time: the age of Bardolatry had not yet begun. Indeed, the age of theatre itself had only recently returned from exile with Charles II. Nearly two decades of Puritan rule had all-but obliterated such godless cavortings from theatre-loving London. And, despite the advocacy of actors, it was by no means certain that long-dead William Shakespeare would ever regain his old popularity on stage.

Samuel Pepys, given his "rst opportunity to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1662, judged it “the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw”. !e previous November, John Evelyn’s diary had recorded: “I saw Hamlet Prince of Denmark played, but now the old plays began to disgust this re"ned age, since His Majesty’s being so long abroad.”

It is not hard to imagine performances falling #at. From the human and artistic resources at his disposal – his actors, his theatres, his audiences – William Shakespeare had created remarkable theatrical events. But how could those events be rebuilt in later ages with only the bare script, and a few original song tunes, to go on?

Over the intervening "fty years the language had changed, fashions had changed. Some actors did make an e$ort, seeking instruction from old men who claimed to have learned from older men who had been coached in their roles by Master Shakespeare himself.

Old men who had once played Shakespeare’s heroines had fewer disciples: during King Charles’ years of exile he had developed a European enthusiasm for female actresses and, for the most part, Restoration audiences followed their king.

!ese new theatres, too, with their proscenium arch and painted scenery, were quite unlike any theatre for which Shakespeare had written. His huge “wooden O” playhouses had been pulled down by the Puritans along with the bear and bull-baiting arenas, back in the 1640s. !e handful of indoor theatres had been turned to new uses. Virtually all record of the appearance of either, or their manner of performance, had been lost. !ose audiences who had seen William Shakespeare himself act upon the stage, had heard him speak the words he himself had written, were very old now, or dead, and disregarded.

But still, there were those scripts...

Restoration

inferno that

swallowed up

Shakespeare’s City.

“By the time it was !nally halted – three days later – the con"agration had consumed four-!fths of the City of London that Shakespeare had known.”

Margaret Gaskin’s biography of William Shakespeare is due out in 2016.


f

Concord of Sweet SoundsFor centuries,

composers have

striven to marry

their music to the

world and words of

the Bard.

Rebecca Franks

investigates

Shakespeare’s

hallowed place in

classical music.

or Robert Schumann, Shakespeare stood out for his universality. For Giuseppe Verdi, it was his understanding of the human heart. And they aren’t the only composers who have been seduced by Shakespeare’s plays, poems and sonnets.

From !omas Arne in the 18th century to !omas Adès in recent years, musicians have long been scribbling away to create Shakespearean operas and songs, symphonies and choral pieces. One recent book on the subject listed over 20,000 pieces of music inspired by Shakespeare. Here we take a tour through ten tales of the greatest of composers, and what the man from Stratford meant to them.


!Shakespeare & classical music

Mendelssohn’s later incidental music for the Dream included his famous Wedding March.

The original

Shakespearean composer

Shakespeare’s plays are packed with songs, yet little of the original music survives. At !rst the lyrics would have been set to pre-existing music, but after about 1609 a resident composer was employed by Shakespeare’s theatre, "e Globe. "omas Morley and John Wilson might have written for the Bard, but the only name that can be proven to have done so is Robert Johnson. A royal lutenist and composer, Johnson worked on "e Winter’s Tale, probably Cymbeline, and most notably "e Tempest in 1611.

Teenage prodigy pens

Shakespeare hit

Felix Mendelssohn was just 17 years old when he wrote his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826). It turned out to be one his most famous and popular pieces, showing o# his skill for painting pictures with notes. "e four magical opening woodwind chords transport the listener to a fairy realm, where el!n strings scurry in the woodland. Sixteen years later the King of Prussia commissioned him to write incidental music for the rest of the play.

The composer and the

actress

“Shakespeare, coming upon me unawares, struck me like a thunderbolt,” wrote Hector Berlioz. "e great French composer owed this revelation to the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who in 1827 appeared in Paris as Ophelia and Juliet. After seeing her act, the 24-year-old Berlioz was instantly smitten. "ey married, but love soon turned to hate. Still, Shakespeare proved a keeper, and Berlioz wrote a Roméo et Juliette Symphony, and the opera Béatrice et Bénédict, based on Much Ado About Nothing.

A year of Shakespeare

Robert Schumann, the quintessential German Romantic, arguably loved literature as much as he loved music. In 1852, at the age of 43, he spent the best part of a year rereading Shakespeare’s plays, which he’d always loved. It wasn’t so much for inspiration – in fact he composed little that year – but to !nd passages for a planned anthology of great authors’ writings about music, to be titled A Poet’s Garden.

Shakespeare on the shelf

Verdi was in many ways the musical equivalent of Shakespeare – a master of dramatic form and human emotion. "ough the Italian composer spoke little English, and Shakespeare’s plays weren’t often staged in his native country, that didn’t stop him loving the Bard above all other playwrights. He supposedly kept the complete Shakespeare, in Italian translation, in the bookcase by his bed. Verdi dabbled with ideas for several Shakespearean operas and completed three, all masterpieces: Macbeth, Otello and Falsta#.

“Shakespeare, coming upon me unawares, struck me like a

thunderbolt”Hector Berlioz

Below left: Hector Berlioz. Below: Harriet Smithson caught his eye playing Ophelia on stage; they married in 1833.


Shakespeare & classical music!

!

Wagner’s Shakespeare

mash-up

!e ever-ambitious Richard Wagner nicked bits from not one but several Shakespeare works in order to fashion his "rst opera plot, Leubald. In the mish-mash of a six-hour-long libretto can be found parts of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, Richard III, King Lear and Henry IV, Part One. !ere’s a pair of ill-fated lovers, Leubald and Adelaide, a sorceress and several ghosts, as well as various murders and a mad scene. Over the top? Well, Wagner was only 15 when he wrote it.

Signing off with

The Tempest

Sibelius was one of the 20th century’s greatest composers, with seven symphonies to his name. But for the last 32 years of his life he hardly wrote any music at all. One of his "nal big orchestral pieces was for a staging of !e Tempest, coincidentally also thought by some to be Shakespeare’s last solo-authored play. Written in 1925-26 for a production at the Royal !eatre in Copenhagen, Sibelius’s score is a masterpiece of orchestral colour and drama.

Romeo and Juliet’s

happy ending

!ey are the world’s most famous doomed lovers. Apart from in Proko"ev’s hands, where instead of dying they dance o# happily ever after. But this daring twist by the Soviet composer, who was penning music for a new ballet of the play, didn’t ever make it to the theatre. Soviet leader Stalin put his foot down, and Proko"ev was obliged to stick with Shakespeare’s tragic tale. !e original ending was recently discovered and has since been staged in New York.

Shakespeare’s

Oscar nominations

“For me, music made the "lm,” said Laurence Olivier, the director and star of the 1944 "lm of Henry V. !e music in question was by William Walton, who had "rst met Olivier in 1935 on the "lm set of As You Like It. !ey went on to work on three Shakespeare "lms together, with the superb scores of both Henry V and Hamlet (1948) earning the British composer Oscar nominations. Richard III (1955), though, didn’t complete the hat trick.

The problem with Lear

Verdi and Britten both thought about setting King Lear to music. Debussy even went

as far as writing a whole "ve minutes of incidental music for it. But for some reason, although several lesser composers have tried their best with it, King Lear has seemed to be the play

that defeated the greats. Most recently, the acclaimed Alexander Goehr was

inspired by a dream to write a King Lear staged as a

Japanese Noh play. But his 2010

opera Promised End didn’t go down

well with the critics. !e curse of King Lear strikes again.

!e Winter’s Tale – the "rst new full-

length Shakespeare ballet from !e Royal

Ballet since Romeo and Juliet – will be available

on DVD soon. Go to www.roh.org for further

details.


!Shakespeare & classical music

Early work Macbeth

three Shakespearean masterpieces.

Phot

o: ©

RO

H /

Clive

Bar

da

Sydney’s Sport for Jove take pride of place in Australia's vibrant Shakespeare scene. Actor Christopher Tomkinson tells us all about their latest Bard-related double-whammy.

recently leapt headlong into a repertory season of Twelfth Night and All’s Well !at Ends Well for Sport for Jove. I was playing Antonio,

the Sea-Captain in Twelfth Night and, in All’s Well !at Ends Well, an amalgamation of Lords our director, Damien Ryan, had cheekily named ‘Chitopher’ – a name stolen from elsewhere in the script.

While Twelfth Night is a famous crowd pleaser, All’s Well is

known as a ‘di"cult’ play – with no clear hero for the audience to love and a disquieting ending that leaves us with challenging questions rather than easy answers.

While excited to be telling a Shakespearean story the audience would be largely unfamiliar with (the last major production in Sydney was 30 years ago), it’s a big risk to invite audiences to take on an unknown Shakespeare. Would they come with us? Could we #nd a way of taking that ambiguous ending and bringing it to life?

!Diary: Sport for Jove


Mai

n ph

oto:

Seiya

Tagu

chi

Chris works up a sweat with Sport

for Jove.

Diary: Sport for Jove!


One of the great things about working with Sport for Jove is my trip to rehearsals. I bike across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was an invigorating ride that kept me !t and helped trim my !gure for the particular demands of this production of All’s Well.

!

"en the hard work of rehearsing begins. We started with an initial two-week block on All’s Well "at Ends Well. In the second fortnight we restaged our production of Twelfth Night – lines, songs, choreography and !ghts all came back quickly and easily in spite of the 12-month break. Here we are singing a rehearsal run to a close with "e Rain It Raineth Every Day. After this we bumped in to the !rst of our two venues.

Sport for Jove is very hands on. One of the things I love about this company is the opportunity to get involved in all aspects of production. Here we are laying the stage #oor in the rehearsal room – of course, there are six #ights of stairs to get the boards to this room.

!Diary: Sport for Jove


We returned to !nish creating All’s Well "at Ends Well, but discovered that our much-loved rehearsal room had been sold. So we decamped our forces to rehearse on an unused stage at our next performance venue.

"e introduction of our soldiers in the show involved lots of calisthenics. Climbing things on stage is always fun – although the endless repetition in rehearsal does get more than a little exhausting.

As opening night approached we shifted from our ‘rehearsal theatre’ into the ‘performance theatre’ next door and reconstructed the centre-piece of the All’s Well set on the stage – a glossy black cube that transforms from a bed to a climbing frame, to a sauna, helicopter, hospital, soldier’s barracks and more.

We performed a short season of Twelfth Night at "e Riverside "eatre, Parramatta. Here, towards the end of the show, Orsino tries to avenge himself on Cesario. As the heartbroken Antonio, I’m handcu#ed to the jetty up the back, unable to stop the murder. Don’t tell anyone, but I liked my character’s jacket so much I stole it at the end of the run.

Diary: Sport for Jove!


One scene that surprised many audiences was Shakespeare’s little-known nude shower scene in All’s Well. Damien staged Helena’s selection of her husband as a “meat market of men in a shower room”. !ere was vibrant rehearsal discussion of the idea’s merit, and varied levels of comfort amongst the cast with the prospect of nudity, but in the end we all dropped our kit and the scene was lit so beautifully it all became very sculptural.

All is smooth at the curtain, but of course the season had the usual number of mid-show crises. One night a drape detached from the set, so mid-scene I climbed four metres in pitch black (the scene was lit only by torch light) armed with ga"er tape to repair the rip. I delivered all my lines from this new position and no one seemed to miss me. In another performance I butchered the play’s most famous line, switching ‘faults’ for ‘virtues’ in the typically antithetical Shakespearean line: “Our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.”

My #nal part in the show was baking an All’s Well !at Ends Well-themed cake for closing night. Inspired by the play’s reference to ‘withered pears’ I used dried pears, sour grape juice, nutmeg, cinnamon and bay leaves. !e result had a sexy ambiguity of sweet, sour and spicy $avours, hinting at the darker side of love – just like the show...

More on Sport for Jove: www.sportforjove.com.au

Phot

os: P

iper

Willi

ams

!Shakespeare tattoos


“Most literary tattoos represent something deeply personal” Brooke Thomas

So what drives somebody to have such a permanent reminder of their favourite Shakespeare quote? To find an answer, just take a look at a literary tattoo blog such as Contrariwise or The Word Made Flesh. True, many of the tattoos featured here are presented without comment, but others are accompanied by stories from the owner which explain their reasons for choosing that particular quotation or image.

Although Shakespeare tattoos are relatively common these days, the reasons for getting them are incredibly varied. The most popular Shakespeare tattoos, or at least the ones that pop up on the web most frequently, are “to thine own self be true” and “though she be but little, she is fierce”. Many belong to people like me – students of English

Tattoos are no longer an explorer’s story from a far o! land, as they were in early modern England. Nor are they just for sailors, as they have been in the more recent past. No, tattoos today are almost as commonplace as hair dye, and everybody you can think of - celebrities, students, builders, your mum (probably) - is getting inked. What may surprise you, though, is that Shakespeare is an increasingly popular choice for tattoo inspiration.

Shakespeare tattoos!


A generation of literature fans are having the Bard indelibly marked on their skin.


Literature who specialise in Shakespeare. One young woman with the “fierce”

quote is five-foot-one Liz Robertson. She fondly recalls the theatre experiences of her schooldays, and uses her tattoo as a mantra for when times get tough. Another “fierce” woman is blogger ThePrimalPen, a recovering anorexic. Paige, meanwhile, is reminded that life is worth living by her “to be or not to be” tattoo, because she believes Hamlet chose “to be” and Shakespeare knows what he’s talking about.

Sisters Janine and Ursula Vero have “I.iii.66-71” tattooed on their arms, a reference to the passage in As You Like It that describes Celia and Rosalind as “coupled and inseparable”. Trainee midwife and mother Emma Medeiros has “sleep thou, and I shall winde thee in my arms” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

As you can see, although some people love tattoos purely for their aesthetic value, most literary tattoos represent something deeply personal, as well as the wearer’s connection to a particular text. Getting Shakespeare’s words tattooed in a visible place is a very public way of expressing a private connection with a story or a phrase. When I got the tattoo on my back, the first of three literary tattoos, I was writing my undergraduate dissertation on The Tempest, but this particular line had already been haunting me for years.“We all were sea-swallow’d, though some cast again,And by that destiny to perform an actWhereof what’s past is prologue, what to comeIn yours and my discharge”

It’s one of those lines that resonates beyond its context, as all the best ones do. In many ways my tattoo is a synecdoche of the skin. The line represents the play, which represents the works, which represents the cultural omnipresence that is Shakespeare, and his role in my life and career. My tattoo is a badge that declares me a Shakespearean.

It is also, however, on the personal side of the coin, a reminder that everything in the past, even the difficult bits, is prologue to a future that’s yet to come.

More from: Contrariwise www.contrariwise.org and !e Word Made Flesh www.tattoolit.com


!Shakespeare tattoos

Brooke’s tattoo artist is Samantha Ford of Silver Needles II in Southend-on-Sea.

PETERO’TOOLE !1932"2013#

Curtain!


“For in that sleep of death what dreams

may come When we have shu!ed

o" this mortal coil, Must give us pause.”Peter O’Toole’s mesmerising 1958 portrayal

of Hamlet at Bristol Old Vic.

Photo

gra

ph b

y D

esm

ond Tripp, courte

sy o

f Bristo

l O

ld V

ic.

Meet thy makers...

Rebecca Franks is an arts journalist and reviews editor of BBC Music magazine. She’s loved Shakespeare since her schooldays, when a local theatre’s workshops first revealed

the magic of Twelfth Night. While studying music at Cambridge, Rebecca

helped commission Shakespeare Deranged, three short operas based

on mad scenes in the Bard’s plays. She loves classical music and books, as well

as film and theatre, and blogs at www.beccamusic.blogspot.co.uk

Mary Finch is in her fourth year studying English at Messiah College

in central Pennsylvania. Will first grabbed her attention in secondary school and hasn’t let go since – she

reads, recites and watches Shakespeare whenever possible. Besides going

on irrational adventures to see performances with her friend Alison,

Mary also has a passion for swing dancing, dabbling in calligraphy and tending to her ever-growing window

garden of succulents.

Piper Williams is a freelance fashion and portrait photographer

from Portland, Oregon, now working out of Surrey. He spends

his days time-travelling via historical docudramas, silent films and vintage radio broadcasts. These adventures

are a catalyst for his imagery and his wardrobe. His current project, 1928, is a modern take on the Jazz and War age aesthetic. Also in the works is a Steam, Diesel and Cosplay-inspired series of Shakespearean characters.

Emma Wheatley lives in Redditch in the Midlands and works as a

shopping TV director. She first fell in love with Shakespeare during her GCSEs, studying Romeo and Juliet

in the year of Baz Luhrmann’s movie. In her spare time she loves to learn

more about Shakespeare.

Antje Strauch grew up in Dresden, Eastern Germany, which she believes helped her to think outside the box and develop the ability to be creative in every possible way. Working as a draftswoman in an engineer’s office,

she loves to read, write, draw and craft in her free time. She never tires of inventing new adventures for her collection of action figures (they also accompany her on travels to the UK). Antje worked on the Hamlet project with her friend Claudia Bochynek.

Margaret Gaskin is a former Publications Editor of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her book Blitz: the Story of 29th December 1940 (Faber), and the subsequent

Channel 4 documentary Blitz: London’s Firestorm (still available on 4oD) are an accidental outcome of

her deep exploration of Shakespeare’s London. Her current book project, Shakespeare in Reality, is due for

publication in 2016.

Just some of the contributors to this issue of Shakespeare Magazine

!Contributors


Next issue


We hope you’ve enjoyed Issue Two of Shakespeare Magazine. We’ll be back next month, and here’s just a few of the Bard-related

treasures we’ll be proffering for your perusal...

NILE FEVERWhy the world is still besotted with Shakespeare’s Cleopatra.

!Shakespeare Samba?Forget the World Cup – here’s the Shakespeare Guide to Brazil!

!!e Game’s Afoot...Is the video games universe a Shakespeare-free zone?

!Stormy WeatherRevisiting Derek Jarman’s 1979 Punk-Shakespeare

masterpiece The Tempest.

!

shakespeare magazine 02

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