Read Online King John & Henry VIII by William Shakespeare - Free Book Online
Authors: William Shakespeare
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1931 (with Ralph Richardson as the Bastard); 1953 (directed by George Devine, with Richard Burton, and as part of a project to stage all of the plays in the First Folio), and in 1961. At Stratford there is a similar pattern, with seven productionsdirected by Michael Benthall between 1901 and 1948, and another in 1957 directed by Douglas Seale, before the five RSC versions discussed in detail below. In the provinces, the play was presented at the Old Vic, Leeds in 1941 (with Sybil Thorndike as Constance), and at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (with Paul Scofield as the Bastard) in 1945. There was also a BBC radio version in 1944 (again with Ralph Richardson as the Bastard), and a BBC television production in 1984, directed by David Giles. In 2001, however, the play experienced a double revival with both a Northern Broadsides production and Gregory Doran’s RSC production at The Swan in Stratford. Josie Rourke directed it again for the RSC’s Swan Theatre in 2006; Doran and Rourke discuss their productions in “The Director’s Cut.”
In summary, therefore,
King John
has enjoyed a chequered stage history, arguably the most variable in stage popularity in the whole Shakespearean canon: popular at the turn of the sixteenth century, it then exits the stage for a century and a half before returning as a staple of the London patent houses’ repertoires for some hundred years from the mid-eighteenth century, before seeing its popularity wane in the late nineteenth century and then virtually collapse in the twentieth. What accounts for these shifting fortunes?
One answer lies in the various shifts in styles of acting and theatrical production over the past four hundred years, as well as certain features of the play itself, notably its declamatory style, its emotional range and its episodic nature, which lend themselves well or ill to those fashions. Given these features, especially the play’s predominantly declamatory style and its wide emotional range, it’s little wonder that in periods which combined, in varying degrees, both “sensibility” and a declamatory style of acting, namely from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, it was relatively popular. Contemporary accounts of productions during this hundred years offer the striking impression of the approbation of the depiction of intense emotion in particular scenes, rather than a particular actor’s conception or rendition of a character as a whole, suggesting that the third characteristic discussed above—the play’s episodic nature—may also be contributory to its success in this period.
In the 1745 Drury Lane production, Garrick played John toSusannah Cibber’s Constance in a rendition both emphatic and passionate. 5 Similarly, according to contemporary accounts of her performance, Susannah Cibber also seized the opportunity to impress her audience with a number of set pieces in which she displayed an impressive range of emotion, passion, and emphasis, 6 although again it’s a particular episode that stands out: in her last, grief-crazed speech she pronounced the words “O Lord! My boy!… with such an emphatical scream of agony as will never be forgotten by those who heard her.” 7 When, in 1783, at the request of George III, Sarah Siddons succeeded Mrs. Cibber in the part,
she was ere long regarded as so consummate in the part of
Constance
, that it was not unusual for spectators to leave the house when her part in the tragedy of “King John” was over, as if they could no longer enjoy Shakespeare himself when she ceased to be his interpreter. 8
As the nineteenth century progressed, however, tastes shifted toward a more natural, realistic style of acting. In Macready’s rendition of John in his own 1842 production at Drury Lane, he used a range of contrasting tones and tempos. 9 Such shifts in tempo are in some ways reminiscent of accounts of Edmund Kean’s “anarchy of the passions,” 10 although in retaining an overall dignity
In summary, therefore,
King John
has enjoyed a chequered stage history, arguably the most variable in stage popularity in the whole Shakespearean canon: popular at the turn of the sixteenth century, it then exits the stage for a century and a half before returning as a staple of the London patent houses’ repertoires for some hundred years from the mid-eighteenth century, before seeing its popularity wane in the late nineteenth century and then virtually collapse in the twentieth. What accounts for these shifting fortunes?
One answer lies in the various shifts in styles of acting and theatrical production over the past four hundred years, as well as certain features of the play itself, notably its declamatory style, its emotional range and its episodic nature, which lend themselves well or ill to those fashions. Given these features, especially the play’s predominantly declamatory style and its wide emotional range, it’s little wonder that in periods which combined, in varying degrees, both “sensibility” and a declamatory style of acting, namely from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, it was relatively popular. Contemporary accounts of productions during this hundred years offer the striking impression of the approbation of the depiction of intense emotion in particular scenes, rather than a particular actor’s conception or rendition of a character as a whole, suggesting that the third characteristic discussed above—the play’s episodic nature—may also be contributory to its success in this period.
In the 1745 Drury Lane production, Garrick played John toSusannah Cibber’s Constance in a rendition both emphatic and passionate. 5 Similarly, according to contemporary accounts of her performance, Susannah Cibber also seized the opportunity to impress her audience with a number of set pieces in which she displayed an impressive range of emotion, passion, and emphasis, 6 although again it’s a particular episode that stands out: in her last, grief-crazed speech she pronounced the words “O Lord! My boy!… with such an emphatical scream of agony as will never be forgotten by those who heard her.” 7 When, in 1783, at the request of George III, Sarah Siddons succeeded Mrs. Cibber in the part,
she was ere long regarded as so consummate in the part of
Constance
, that it was not unusual for spectators to leave the house when her part in the tragedy of “King John” was over, as if they could no longer enjoy Shakespeare himself when she ceased to be his interpreter. 8
As the nineteenth century progressed, however, tastes shifted toward a more natural, realistic style of acting. In Macready’s rendition of John in his own 1842 production at Drury Lane, he used a range of contrasting tones and tempos. 9 Such shifts in tempo are in some ways reminiscent of accounts of Edmund Kean’s “anarchy of the passions,” 10 although in retaining an overall dignity
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