King John & Henry VIII (53 page)
Read King John & Henry VIII Online
Authors: William Shakespeare
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In Sir Henry Wotton’s description of the burning down of Shakespeare’s Globe when the thatch caught light from a celebratory cannon during a performance of this play, he voiced the objection that its realist dramatic qualities were “sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous.”
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Many critics since have been disconcerted by its “low-key emotions and intimate verbal style”
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which creates a sense of the ordinariness and realism of the characters, but has subversive potential: “it images directly the contradiction between the sacred royal office and the fallible human individual who holds it, making historical actions intelligible as everyday transactions.”
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Historical productions of the play focused on pageantry and featured the roles of Katherine and Wolsey as star vehicles. The role of the king has tended to provoke controversy because Shakespeare’s Henry is not the monstrous Bluebeard of popular myth. Richmond argues that “At this pivotal point in his career Henry’s role must remain as unclear, even incoherent, as it probably seemed to its original audience—and just as bewildering as contemporary politicians often appear to us now, without the advantage of hindsight.”
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Despite describing the part of Henry as “a stinker,”
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Donald Sinden was able to utilize his natural charm and charisma in the part in Nunn’s production and win over most of the critics. He believed that the play showed “only a veneer of the truth” and found “all the speeches ambiguous.”
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Richmond thought that “This tension between surface characterisation and the latent reality known to the
audience by hindsight is what lent memorable force to Sinden’s performance.”
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Many critics commented on the paleness of his makeup (and all commented on half his beard coming off during the trial scene on the opening night). K. E. B. of the
Nottingham Evening Post
found Sinden “a Henry of distinction and, praise be not over-padded. His gradual accession of authority from the time that Wolsey dominated and deceived him until he emerged as the ruler in fact as well as in name, bluff but not blustering, was a delight to watch.”
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Nunn had dispensed with Prologue and Epilogue. This is Sinden’s own description of the ending:
At the end of the play … the assembled characters sang a magnificent “Gloria” and then left the stage in stately procession. Only Henry remained in a spotlight, holding the infant Elizabeth who had just been christened. Here I tried to do a most difficult thing. The end of the play is a cry for peace in the time of the future Elizabeth I and in a few brief seconds I, as Henry with no lines, looked into the future, saw the horror that was to come, questioned why, realised the failure of the hope, crashed into the twentieth century and pleaded silently that where the sixteenth century had failed, those of the future may succeed. Many people told me it was a most moving moment.
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Richard Griffiths, who played the part in Davies’s 1983 production, is on record as calling
Henry VIII
“a belting good play,”
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and was proudly proclaimed as the only actor to play the part without padding. He played Henry in a deliberately naturalistic way, in keeping with the downplaying of the pageantry. Ned Chaillot thought he made him “a likeable rogue,”
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while J. C. Trewin suggested, “There will probably be argument about Henry, as Richard Griffiths presents him; but it is a pleasure to have a King who is not simply an angry boomer behind a Holbein mask.”
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Sheridan Morley, however, complained that he “never inspires the remotest terror or authority.”
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Paul Jesson in Doran’s production, which played up the pageantry, attempted more bluffness while at the same time making Henry human. As Benedict Nightingale saw it, Paul “Jesson’s splendidly
bluff, blunt King learns to see through fake and value honesty,” and he goes on to blame Shakespeare for Henry’s lack of villainy, complaining that “The principals are all relentlessly good mouthed.”
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Shaun Usher found it an impressive performance:
Jesson has the presence to fulfil that wide-as-he-is-tall image from the school history books, and the skill to convey arrogant yet sentimental sensibility with deep veins of deviousness and humbug. Previously, Henrys have been upstaged by Catherine of Aragon, or dwarfed in surrounding pageantry; Jesson is never in danger of being deposed.
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Queen Katherine was played in the past by theatrical legends such as Sarah Siddons, Ellen Terry, Sybil Thorndike, and Edith Evans. The part requires intelligence, spirit, dignity, and pathos: a part “Dame Peggy Ashcroft seemed born to play.”
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She brought great personal commitment to the role and, according to Trevor Nunn, felt the play did less than justice to Katherine’s historical dilemma and hence attempted to incorporate extra material from the transcript of the trial, which he vetoed. Ashcroft, by common consent, triumphed. John Barber singled hers out as “the one outstanding performance of the night,” describing how,
When besotted with Anne Bullen, the King spurns his Queen; she reacts first with fire then with melancholy, at last with a pitiful pride. The actress finally came to resemble a Rembrandt portrait of a shrivelled old lady. She speaks always like a queen and even when dying and desolate can hang a word on the air like a jewel.
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Keith Brace was also struck by her final scene:
Dame Peggy more or less created her own play in the death of Katherine, where the emotions aroused were out of proportion to the actual emotional content of the words spoken. She carried the scene at her own slow, but never wearying pace. It was, ironically, more Brechtian as a statement about death rather than a re-enactment of death than all those silly headlines.
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8.
1969, Trevor Nunn production. Peggy Ashcroft as Katherine who reacted “first with fire then with melancholy, at last with pitiful pride. The actress finally came to resemble a Rembrandt portrait of a shrivelled old lady.”
Gemma Jones, too, in Davies’s 1983 production made a fine Katherine, intelligent and dignified in standing up for the rights of the people in council, committed to her husband. Davies offered a fuller staging of her celestial vision and, maintaining her dignity, she became a figure of pathos in her death.
Jane Lapotaire played Katherine in 1996, emphasizing her status as an outsider by employing a soft Spanish accent and having her ladies sing and dance sevillanas to a flamenco guitar at the beginning of Act 3. Her Katherine was very human, vulnerable, and angry. Benedict Nightingale thought her “a fine Katherine of Aragon … who brings patience, dignity and, in her final encounter with Cardinal Wolsey, a moving mix of queenly outrage and simple pain.”
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The celestial vision was simply represented by a shining light playing across her, bathing her sleeping figure: “Hers is the pathos of the evening.”
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The chosen part of Kemble, Irving, and Gielgud; it was played in Nunn’s production by Brewster Mason, a huge, intimidating figure and an RSC stalwart. Gordon Parsons thought he played the part “as a benign, scarlet slug of a man,”
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but Charles Landstone thought him “too coarse as Wolsey, bringing sarcasm in place of pathos to his famous dying speech.”
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John Thaw, fresh from his TV success in
The Sweeney
, played the part in Davies’s production. His performance was not to everyone’s taste: “John Thaw played Wolsey much in the role of a shopkeeper. Even in the lines where his downfall causes him to reject worldly ambition, you feel it wouldn’t take much for him to open his shop elsewhere.”
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Ned Chaillot, however, argued that, “With Mr. Griffiths going lightly from strength to strength, there is room for a touch of the tragic in the characters of Wolsey and Katherine, and John Thaw’s Wolsey achieves the tragic in realizing how ill he has served his God.”
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Ian Hogg, Wolsey in Doran’s production, discussed the play in an interview with the
Birmingham Post:
On the rare occasions [the play] is done it tends to be very highly dressed up, because people doubt the power of the text. But Greg Doran, who is directing this production, has relied a lot on the speed of the words, which moves it at a great lick. If you weigh it down with big scene changes you lose that momentum.
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9.
1983, Howard Davies production. John Thaw as Cardinal Wolsey “achieves the tragic in realizing how ill he has served his God.”
Michael Billington saw him as “a chunky Ipswich over-achiever with a cottage-loaf face who undergoes genuine repentance,”
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and Naomi Koppel in the
Evening Standard
thought that “Ian Hogg steals the show as Cardinal Wolsey, charting the rise and fall of the butcher’s son from Ipswich who cannot quite rid himself of his accent.”
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In all three productions, the three leads were strongly played and well-balanced. Each production also featured outstanding performances in lesser roles.
Richard Pascoe played Buckingham in 1969. Philip Hope-Wallace argued that he delivered his “great speech of farewell to life … as well as I have heard it.”
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Emrys Jones’s Cranmer in the same production brought “a hang-dog charm to the part of Cranmer—his hectic football game with the boys while awaiting questioning by the council is a masterstroke.”
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Queen Anne is a small part without a great deal of scope but in 1969, “Janet Key made Anne Bullen radiantly beautiful, which is about all the part allows.”
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Davies had given the prologue to Henry to deliver and to balance out the proceedings, gave Sarah Berger as Anne the Epilogue. He also made the “Old Lady” younger and added a bevy of other young women in Act 2 Scene 3. Claire Marchionne in Doran’s production made her seem less than demure in the masque at Wolsey’s and brought her on at the end, where she put her hand to her neck, presumably to serve as a visual reminder of her ultimate fate. Cherry Morris’s Old Lady in 1996 was Welsh (as one reviewer commented, there were a lot of accents in this production) and her performance was singled out for its vitality:
as the Old Lady, Cherry Morris is brimful of sheer human essence. By some strange fluke, Shakespeare is at his best in the few lines he gives to this minor character. Listening to her, we are keenly alive in the moment as nowhere else in the play.
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The Chamberlain does not generally get a mention, but Guy Henry’s performance in 1996 was picked out by a number of critics for the sophistication and clarity he brought to the part: “There is plenty of wry humour, particularly in Guy Henry’s Lord Chamberlain, and also in Cherry Morris’s down-to-earth Welsh lady-in-waiting.”
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Perhaps in recognition of their presence onstage as assets, Doran used Guy Henry to speak the Prologue and Morris in place of the Third Gentleman, enlivening the scene while commenting on events such as Anne’s coronation.
Originating perhaps as an occasional play for the wedding celebrations of James I’s daughter Elizabeth,
Henry VIII
was immensely popular, especially for the celebration of royal occasions, until the twentieth century, when, rather than being played on its intrinsic dramatic merit, it seems frequently to have been relegated to the status of a “festival play” and revived out of a sense of duty. All three RSC productions, though, have proved successful, if controversial, demonstrating that in the right hands it’s still a play with real theatrical virtues: