Stratford

From Bath Time!

My Shakespeare class took a day trip to Stratford on Avon, and it was pretty great. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible, very wet and cold, so we didn't explore very much. We did get to see Shakespeare's birth place. It's a building. And not even the original building.
We also got to visit the Shakespeare Center and look through their archives of previous performances. We looked at photos from the play, a copy of the script (showing what they cut and altered,) and reviews. We looked at different productions of "Taming of the Shrew," from 1960, 1978, 1982 and 2003. The 1960 one looked cool, Peter O'Toole was Petruchio, and Ian Holm was Grenio. The reviews said it had "warm human undertones," and was "more than farcical." Sounds good. Much better than the 1978 version, which was apparently a "wild orgy of destruction." That looked like a weird production, they tried to combine modern English with Shakespeare's original text, and it's messy.
Then we got to see Henry VI, part I, a play that is rarely read and rarely performed. Our Shakespeare professor explained that this is the case with most of the "histories." probably because the tragedies and comedies are easier to follow. And he's right, Henry VI was hard to follow. The general plot: the French are stupid and evil, and the English are noble. So, not much has changed?
The play was really well done, and did its best to hold our attention with all sorts of cool spectacle. Because the play takes place during a war, they found cool ways to depict the battles. There was a great deal of swordplay, but also lots of rope-swinging and acrobatics. There were ladders on ropes that would come down from the ceiling, used to depict watchtowers. Then enemy Frenchmen would swing in and kick at them, and actors on the ladders would fall and dangle from their harness. We sat in the balcony, and that's where a lot of the actors would prep themselves for swinging down to/over the stage.
One interesting thing was the depiction of Joan of Arc. Obviously, since she's with the French, Shakespeare needs to make her evil. So instead of being a Saint, she's a whorish master of the dark arts. The French promise her that if she helps them out (by predicting the future and casting spells on their enemies,) then history will remember her as a Saint, and all will praise her memory.
My favorite part was probably the section with Talbot and his son. Talbot is supposed to be the most feared English commander throughout France. One of the soldiers comments on how he just needs to should Talbot's name in order to win battles. However, thanks to Joan, the war takes a turn for the worst, and Talbot's pretty certain he's going to die. However, on the battlefield he finds his son, who he hasn't seen since he was very young. He begs his son to flee and take revenge if he dies, but his son refuses. So they fight and die together. There's a really great monologue Talbot delivers as he's dying, about how "these old arms are now the grave of young Talbot." Or something like that. The guy who played Talbot was really great, and it was a nice moment of human emotion tucked away in a play about large themes and grand spectacle.