Folio 305

WARWICK:

War! War! No peace! Peace is to me a war. KING JOHN, III.i

Why isn’t King John performed more often? It’s a fantastic play - it has everything - history, war, humour, violence, great female characters, the Bastard, romance (sort of), dance sequences… And in  my opinion the battle outside of Angiers is one of the funniest sequences ever written.

I don’t know, maybe I’ve just been lucky - both the productions I’ve seen have been truly fantastic. The RSC’s vivid, anarchic, modern production soaked in blood - which saw King John and the Bastard oozing sexual chemistry, whilst Blanche and the Dauphin Dirty Danced their way through their wedding. Whilst the Globe’s more traditional production was steeped in charm and glory and absolutely throbbing with feminine anger.

Maybe there are other productions out there that aren’t as good. Maybe there are productions out there that don’t feature Alex Waldmann, I can’t say. At any rate I’d be happier to see many more productions in the future.

PRODUCTIONS

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues. - ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, IV.iii

I feel that All’s Well That Ends Well is one of Shakespeare’s trickier plays to pull off - as I think it’s moral feeling is one of those that has shifted most greatly in the modern time, a difficulty compounded by the fact that very few of the characters are actually likeable. Bertram is something of a spoilt child but it’s hard not to pity him as he’s forced into a marriage that he doesn’t want, even if it’s primarily for reasons that seem unreasonable and classist to us now. Meanwhile, Helena, our heroine, not only tricks and manipulates Bertram, she lies to the audience. In soliloquys! I’m not sure if there are any other characters in the canon that do that. Even Iago and Aaron are forthright about their plans when it’s just them and the audience.

All of this can make it difficult to embrace the supposedly happy ending (you should have seen how wound up my high school English class got about Demetrius being left enchanted at the end of Midsummer Night’s Dream, god knows what we’d have made of Bertram’s situation) - especially when you see the King of France repeating the same mistake with Diana.

So not my favourite play and it requires careful handling but it’s definitely NOT impossible. The Globe’s production even managed to be quite charming - building up the idea from early on that Bertram had strong feelings for Helena that he was suppressing only because of her status (Sam Crane spent the entire play clutching a handkerchief she’d given him) and, whilst his behaviour towards Diana was still unpleasant, it at least made the ending satisfying. Plus everything was infused with a soft fairytale quality that I thought worked perfectly (and adding James Garnon to any Shakespeare production is a good idea).

PRODUCTIONS  

Everybody’s Got a Right to Their Shakespeare (Even John Wilkes Booth)

Among the bounty of items in the Ransom Center’s exhibit about the Bard will be the assassin’s script for ‘Richard III.’

“There are many accounts that suggest this was John’s favorite role, and certainly among his most popular. It is not too much of a stretch to suggest that he saw something of himself in the character of Richard, which is fascinating in light of the later assassination of Lincoln.”