Elizabethan

Book Review: Year Of the King

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Today I pay tribute to a remarkable book written by a great actor, who has inspired me and countless others.

I was privileged back in 2011 to see Anthony Sher on stage playing is playing Edmund Kean in John Paul Sartre’s pastiche of Shakespeare entitled “Kean.” It was a very good casting because this actor very clearly had a lot of raw energy and at the same time charisma and wit. But at the same time, he also seemed to have tenderness, sadness, and insecurity behind his eyes. I didn’t realize it but this actor, Sir Antony Sher, who sadly passed away just last year, would change my life.

When I was still in college I knew that I was going to go to grad school, and I wanted to write a graduate thesis on Richard III. Through my research, I came to realize that this same actor produced what is still regarded it as one most acclaimed and influential productions of the play ever. In 1984, Sir Antony played an iconic Richard III at the Royal Shakespeare Company which was revolutionary for its raw energy, tragic emotions, and creative physicality. Mr. Sher played the role on crutches and was able to scuttle around the stage like a spider.

I feel very therefore very privileged that I was able to see him perform live and to research his performance for my thesis.

One of my greatest aids for this was Sir Antony’s own book about the process of writing Richard that he wrote while in the process of doing Richard, “A Year Of the King. It’s organized in the form of a diary and a lot of the pages are available for free on Google Books. I strongly recommend it. In this review, I’m going to praise his massive preparations for the role and talk about the effects of the production going forward in future productions of Richard III.

In 1982, Sir Antony was playing the Fool in a production of King Lear with Michael Gambon, (the future Dumbledore from Harry Potter). During the performance, Sher suffered a leg injury that required him to be on crutches for several months. In his diary, Sher records how angry being perceived as disabled made him feel. His physical therapy took place at the Remedial Dance Clinic, Harley St.

Six months later in August of 1983 Sher was cast in Tartuffe with Bill Alexander as director, (who would later direct him again in Richard III). A chance meeting with Trevor Nunn, (who was the Artistic director at the time), put the idea of Sher playing Richard into Alexander’s head. After another meeting with Terry Hands, Sher was offered the role.

Sher rehearsing for Richard.

“The truth of the matter was I was terrified of the verse, ashamed of my inexperience with it and nursing a fear that I was trespassing anyway. Wasn’t classical theatre the territory of handsome, rich-voiced Brittish giants like Gielgud and Oliver, and out of bounds for little Cape Town newbies like me?”

Sher, Year Of the King, page 9

Fighting with Olivier

Drawing of Olivier’s iconic Richard by Antony Sher, 1983.

When Antony Sher approached the role of Richard in his 1984 RSC production, his first intention was to make his portrayal of Richard’s deformity and disability different from Laurence Olivier’s. Sher and Olivier believed Richard is both physically and mentally deformed, therefore, Sher’s massive preparation for the role included thorough research into the physical effects of real disability and a deep examination of its psychological effects.

Unlike Olivier, Mr. Sher believed that Richard’s deformity was the key to understanding his character and that every aspect of Sher’s characterization stemmed from his interpretation of that deformity. This work produced a captivating physical characterization and a startlingly human re-conception of Richard’s mind.

The Physicality

Sher’s characterization of Richard’s body resulted in an image, which he referred to as “The Bottled Spider.” Richard had a massive hump in the center of his back, massive arms, and two crutches that fitted onto Sher’s forearms, allowing him to scuttle across the stage, giving the impression of a poisonous spider. Sher created this iconic physical characterization through a combination of textual research, sketches, medical research into real deformities, image research, and real-life experience. The guiding principles that Sher used in creating Richard’s deformity were creating a severely deformed character that the audience would identify with. At the same time, Sher attempted to create a physicality that he could sustain through the run of the show without major injuries (21 &30). According to Sher, the role of Richard III is notorious for crippling actors who sustain severe damage to their backs and shoulders (39). Thus Antony Sher’s Richard was physically designed to be both functional for the actor, as well as realistic and remarkable for the audience.

The first step towards Sher’s physical characterization of Richard was going through the text for clues. Sher found several references to what Richard’s deformity looks like in the speeches of Queen Margaret. Margaret refers to Richard repeatedly as various beasts, alternating between boars, hounds, and the bottled spider that would become so important to the final characterization. Before Sher settled on a spider as the animal Richard most resembles, he experimented with several others, including boars, apes and bulls. Sher did several sketches of bulls, which he saw in a BBC TV program. Sher was attracted to bulls and their raw power and massive shoulders. Sher wanted an animal that was threatening and powerful to give his portrayal a ‘tragic dimension’ (64).

Having to say ‘I was born in South Africa’ stuck in my throat like a confession of guilt.’

Sher, p. 25

Another image from the text that Sher thought about repeatedly was the image of Richard’s hump as a mountain. When Richard refers to his hump as “an envious mountain on my back,” Sher thought back to the Lion’s Head mountain in Kingstown South Africa. Sher grew up in South Africa and visited there during apartheid. The mountain spoke to Sher’s notion of Richard’s raw, tragic power. Sher sketched the mountain several times, and combined it with other images of bulls and spiders and this became the overall concept for Richard’s hump- an image of thick power that simultaneously weighs down the figure of Richard, and gives him his strength. 

I feel he should be severely deformed, not just politely crippled as he’s often played. Bill says one should identify with him: a man looking in from the outside and thinking, ‘I’ll have some of that.’

November 7, 1983
Sher and Brian Blessed in the final play.

The most memorable part of Sher’s physical performance as Richard was the way he manipulated the two arm crutches that he wore for the first half of the performance. Sher’s Bottled Spider image  mainly depended on his ability to manipulate the crutches. The crutches became part of Richard’s body (Cerasano 621) and, far from making Sher’s movements clumsy or stiff, they gave him the ability to transform himself into a strange four-legged creature that would move around the stage incredibly fast.

Director Bill Alexander told Sher during rehearsals that he intended to use the crutches in as many ways as possible. For example, the crutches also served as a weapon because of Sher’s ability to swing them around like clubs. One chilling moment of the performance occurred when Sher’s Richard entraps lord Hastings (Brian Blessed) by folding his crutch-arm across Hasting’s neck; foreshadowing Richard’s later decision to chop off Hastings’ head (Cerasano 621).

The problem in playing him extremely deformed is to devise a position that would be 100 per-cent safe to sustain over three hours, and for a run that could last for two years. Play him on crutches perhaps? They would take a lot of the strain off the danger areas: lower back, pelvis and legs. And my arms are quite strong after months at the gym. Also I was on crutches for months after the operation so they have a personal association for me of being disabled. They could be permanently part of Richard tied to his arms. The line, ‘Behold mine arm is like a blasted sapling wither’d up,’ could refer to one of them literally. The crutches idea is attractive, too attractive at this early stage. Must keep an open mind on the subject.

Sunday Nov, 19, 1983

Physical therapist Charlette Arnold, helped Sher get into clinics for people with real disabilities. She also provided Sher with books on back disorders, which led Sher to choose the disorder Kyphosis as the model for Richard’s hump. Kyphosis causes a large central hump in the back, which Sher immediately adopted because it resembled the mountain image of his sketches. Also, the central hump was different from Olivier’s side hump.

Sher’s research on back disorders was of great use in the coronation scene in which he and Lady Anne appear with bare backs. Bill Alexander hired makeup artist Christopher Tucker to create a lifelike prosthetic for Richard’s back. The audience was thus forced to see Richard as a naked, deformed man, contrasted next to the beautiful bare back of his wife, creating a powerful moment that re-enforced Richard’s humanity. Sher would also use a humanistic approach to his portrayal of Richard’s mind, which, like Richard’s body, he developed through extensive research.

Richard (Antony Sher) is killed by Henry Tudor at the play’s conclusion.

Psychology- Richard III on the couch

“In several copies I’ve looked at it’s called The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. Yet a tradition has evolved of playing it as black comedy. I’ve never seen anyone play Richard’s pain, his anger, his bitterness, all of which is abundant in the text. It seems to me that Richard’s personality has been deeply and dangerously affected by his deformity, and that one has to show this connection.

November 19, 1983 p. 30

In his research, Sher made the link between deformity and psychopathology. Unlike Oliver, who played Richard as a paranoic, Sher played Richard as a psychopath. In his research into psychopaths, Sher uncovered the idea that psychopaths often suffer childhood traumas. The text of Richard suggests that Richard’s mother hated him, and such a lack of affection could realistically change a boy into a psychopath. Through this probing of the text and research into psychology, Sher concluded that Richard’s deformity is a realistic source of desire for revenge.

Sher talked to his own psychiatrist, Monty Berman who provided him with insight into Richard’s mind. Monty helped Sher dispel the idea that Richard is a superhuman fiend. On the contrary, Richard’s persona is very similar to real live psychopaths. Berman theorized that the pain at being deformed, coupled with the violent upbringing Richard living through in the Wars of the Roses, could transform him into a remorseless killer.

Sher: “How do you explain Richard the Third then?”
Monty: “Well, how did you feel when you were on crutches last year?”
Sher: “I hated people staring at me.”
Monty: “What did you want to say to them?”
Sher: “F#$% off! What are you staring at?”
Monty: “Precisely. Anger. Richard is revenging himself on the whole world, destroying a world he sees as hating him.”

Monty: “We treat the disabled appallingly. They come up against dreadful prejudice. The disabled person experiences frustration and if given the chance, will lash out.”
Sher: “So are you saying Richard’s behavior is normal?”
Monty: “Under the circumstances, absolutely normal.”



Sher and Berman also believe Richard has the humor of a psychopath- a sardonic wit that has no regard for the feelings of his audience. Sher looked at the parallels between Richard III, and serial killer David Nilsen, who would invite people over for tea and strangle them, and boil their heads on his stove. Nilsen once told police with Richard-like humor that; “Having corpses was better than going back to an empty house.” One could easily hear the same sort of gruesome wit in the phrase: “I do love thee so, that I shall shortly send thy soul to heaven,” (R3 I,i).

A psychopath like Richard kills in order to try and feel emotion; “Each murder is an attempt to release anger, an attempt at catharsis, and each time it is unrelieved. It’s like promiscuous sex without love. Each climax is less and less fulfilling so the appetite grows until it is insatiable.” Thus Berman allowed Sher to break with the tradition of playing Richard as an inhuman monster, and play him as a very real, very tortured, human soul.

Although Antony Sher attempted to play Richard as a psychopath, his portrayal of Richard’s pain could become sympathetic. His observation of people in clinics and his own personal experience of being on crutches taught him about the cruelty that the disabled suffer. However, although he did great work to try and understand the condition of being deformed and disabled, his portrayal was still an affected disability; an act. In the book “Framed: Interpreting Disability in Today’s Media,” the author speaks about how watching an able bodied actor play disability can actually alienate the audience from the character he is portraying. The performance is seen as an act, a novelty, not an honest representation of real people. One way to eliminate this barrier between character and actor is to cast a Richard who really does suffer from a disability or deformity. I’ve talked in previous posts about how last month’s Public Theater performance was a deliberate attempt to move away from theatrical illusion and re-contextualize Richard’s deformity in the form of race, and contextualize disability by letting actors with disabilities play the heroic parts, while only Richard was able-bodied.

In a way, like Olivier, Sher’s performance is a new monolith that actors must work hard to distinguish themselves from. He spent an entire year building his Richard from the ground up, experimenting with new ways to portray his deformities, his disability, his psychology, and of course, how he looks and moves onstage. Reading this book, an actor gets a great appreciation for all the work Sir Antony Sher included in this wonderful performance, and hopefully, the book will inspire new and creative ways to portray this character in the future.

Thank you for reading. If you want to see some of Sher’s physical and psychological techniques in practice, please watch the thesis presentation that I did at the Blackfriars playhouse below. If you are interested in signing up for one of my acting courses, click here. Thank you!

Mafia Tropes in “Richard III”

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Last month, I took a short vacation to Las Vegas, where, as some of you know, I went to Area 15 and the Omega Mart Exhibit. I also visited the Las Vegas Mob Museum. I’ve been fascinated by the mob for years. The Mob (AKA The Outfit), has within its many threads a potent combination of corruption, seduction vice, and violence all hidden behind the veneer of honorable men who do what they feel they have to to protect their families and their communities.

Not surprisingly, while at the museum, I saw parallels between the history of organized crime and Shakespeare, specifically his most popular history play about a powerful family that takes over the crown of England in a brutal turf war, and then one of its most feared soldiers bribes, intimidates, and murders his way to the top; Richard III.

A Protection Racket: Feudalism vs. La Cosa Nostra


The structure of the mafia paralleled the feudal system. In a world where a police force didn’t offer much protection for marginalized communities, the mafia thrived by offering protection for these communities, (especially to immigrants and people of color in the 19th and early 20th century).


Much earlier than that, the feudal system of the middle ages, which started to crumble after Richard’s reign ended, was designed specifically so poor peasants could get protection from wealthy landowners after the fall of the Roman Empire. These lords offered the protection of their knights to these peasants i. Return for labor and a percentage of their income working the field. Like the mafia, these peasants paid tributes to their lords and these lords demanded loyalty. In the museum, there’s an interactive video where you can become a ‘made man,’ which means become an official member of a mafia crew. Like a king knighting a lord, this ceremony meant pledging your life to your superiors, and being at their beck and call no matter what. In addition, like medieval knights, mafiosos were not allowed to murder other made men without permission from their capo or boss.


However benevolent they might appear, In both cases the Dons and the medieval lords were extorting their underclass. Failing to pay tribute to their lords would cause the peasants to lose their lands, and any disloyalty to the mafia would be severely punished. These powerful, violent thugs used their private armies to intimidate the weak into giving them what they wanted.

Part II: The Two Families

To thoroughly explain the parallels between the Wars of the Roses and the mob, I need to make clear that Richard iii is more than just the story of one man’s rise to power, although there are also mafia stories that fit this mold such as Scarface, White Heat, and the real-life story of Al Capone.

As this hilarious “weather report” from “Horrible Histories,” makes clear, during the Wars of the Roses two powerful families, (each with a claim to the English crown) fought each other in a brutal turf war. As Shakespeare characterizes in his play Henry VI, Part III, the battles between the houses of York and Lancaster shook England like a mighty storm, and for a while it was hard to tell who would prevail: 

Henry VI. This battle fares like to the morning's war,
When dying clouds contend with growing light,
What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,1105
Can neither call it perfect day nor night.
Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea
Forced by the tide to combat with the wind;
Now sways it that way, like the selfsame sea
Forced to retire by fury of the wind:1110
Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind;
Now one the better, then another best;
Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,
Yet neither conqueror nor conquered:
So is the equal of this fell war.
Henry VI, Act II, Scene i

During the Wars of the Roses, it was King Henry’s incompetence and mental illness that gave the Yorkists the ability to challenge the House of Lancaster for the crown. In the 1920s, the passage of the 18th amendment, (which made alcohol illegal, and thus a profitable commodity for organized crime), that allowed the mob to rise to unheard-of power through illegally buying, distributing, and selling alcohol. As the photo and subsequent video shows, Prohibition largely led to the rise in organized crime in America, especially in Chicago. During Prohibition, the Italian Sough-side Gang fought for control of Chicago’s bootlegging trade and subsequently destroyed their competition from the Irish gangs through corruption, intimidation, and violence.

The Don rises- Richard Vs. Al Capone

Opening Scene from Ian Mckellen’s 1995 movie of Richard III.

Like the Italian and Irish gangs In Prohibition-era Chicago, the Yorkist and Lancastrian armies battled for the English throne. As Ian McKellen’s excellent movie (set in the 1930s) shows, Richard was instrumental in destroying the leading Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury, including Prince Edward and King Henry.

In Chicago, the most feared mobster soldier was Al Capone, who many scholars believe was responsible for killing off high ranking members of the Irish gang during the infamous St. Valentines Day Massacre, where the gang members were ‘arrested’ by South Side gangsters disguised as cops. As the Irish stood against the wall with their hands behind their heads, the phony cops pulled out Tommy guns from their coats and let out a hail of bullets on their unsuspecting quarry.

In Shakespeare’s play, the only Lancastrian to survive the war is Queen Margaret, wife to the murdered King Henry, and mother to the slaughtered Prince Edward. In this scene from Al Pacino’s “Looking For Richard,” she curses Richard for his cruel slaughters. It’s not surprising that Pacino was so drawn to Richard II that he starred in and directed this film. After all, Pacino is famous for playing mafia characters who slaughter their way to the top.

Once Capone killed the competition, he ruled a multimillion-dollar empire of bootleggers and maintained that empire through corruption, intimidation, and by constantly playing innocent, just like Richard himself.

Hypocrisy, Corruption and hidden violence

“Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see, but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.”

Niccolo Machiavelli

Both Richard III and mobsters are masters of double-speak, that is, seeming to say one thing and meaning something else. Look at this passage where Richard talks about killing his nephew, then denies it:

Las Vegas: The town that bedded and abetted the mob.

Photos from the museum that shows how the mob-controlled most of the Vegas casinos and skimmed casino profits illegally.

After Al Capone’s demise and the repeal of Prohibition, the mafia found another vice to capitalize on: gambling. As the video below indicates, using their connections with the Teamsters Union and midwestern bookmakers, the mob in the midwest financed, built, and run almost every casino in Las Vegas, including The StarDust and the Hassienda. Once the casinos were built, the mob extorted millions of dollars from the casinos every month!

The profits from the casinos bought the mob even more power and influence, but this skim depended on making sure the bosses controlled their underlings, and defended their casinos from cheaters and snitches, which is why they defended their casinos through intimidation and violence.

Murders in The White tower and the city of sin.

A series of quotes from Las Vegas Mobsters

“Simple, plain, Clarence. I do love thee so, that I shall shortly send thy soul to Heaven.”

—Richard III, Act I, Scene i

When Richard of Gloucester starts his quest to become king, he begins by convincing his brother King Edward to execute his other brother George. Richard bribes the murderers to kill George before the king can reverse the death sentence. Richard has thus eliminated another obstacle in his way, and gained two loyal followers who will do anything for his gold.

Richard hires two murderers to kill the duke of Clarence (Nigel Hawthorne).

The mafia dealt the same way with traitors, stool pigeons, and anyone who tried to challenge the bosses. Look at this tour of the Mafia museum, where the grandson of the gangster Meyer Lansky starts by reminiscing about the glamourous lifestyle of Las Vegas mobsters, but the tour quickly takes a dark turn as Lansky II talks about how his grandfather ordered brutal executions for anyone who crossed The Las Vegas Outfit.

The Mafia Museum, Las Vegas
Exterior of the Mafia Museum

It was an enormously interesting trip going to the Mafia Museum, and if you can get out to Las Vegas, be sure to visit, (don’t forget the password to visit the speakeasy bar in the basement!) It was eye-opening for me how prevalent the sort of corrupt protection racket that started in the middle ages and continued into most of the 20th century helped define The Wars of the Roses and the mafia. As long as the strong prey on the weak and the law can’t protect everyone equally, these kinds of violent thugs will be lurking in the shadows, waiting for a shot at the crown.

The Fashion Is The Fashion 5: Richard III

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Sketch I made for a production of Richard III.

Today I’m going to talk about the unique costume challenges in dressing the cast for a production of Shakespeare’s history play, “Richard III.”

Antony Sher in the 1984 RSC production of Richard III
Constance from King John
Production stills from the 2022 Public Theater production.
Contempory drawing of Joan of Arc
Laurence Olivier in his 1955 film “Richard III.”

The play is set in 1483, a time period where, even though many European countries were at war, many nobles had sumptuous, more form-fitting clothes with fur, gold, leather, and other exotic fabrics. If you look at the sketch I did above, I gave Richard designs using velvet, leather, fur, and gold. After all, Richard is a powerful duke even before he takes the crown. For more information about this period, visit Fashion History.edu.

Design for Queen Elizabeth Woodville by me.
1480-1489

Further, if you’re interested in finding pre-made patterns of 15th century-inspired costumes, go to your fabric store and look for kits like the ones I photographed below.

My design was based on a drawing by the 19th century illustrator HC. Seleous, and the color were taken largely from Richard’s royal portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. I also used a royal portrait of Elizabeth Woodville, queen to Edward IV, (Richard’s brother).

Royal Portrait of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, 1437-1492.
National Portrait of King Richard III.

Donning the Hump

Interestingly, x-ray photography has recently revealed that Richard’s alleged hump was added to his portrait after his death. In reality, the king only suffered from merely a curvature of the spine. Just like in Shakespeare’s play, the Tudor Chroniclers literally defaced Richard’s image to make him look like an evil, deformed maniac.

Costume designers are vital to help the actors realize the deformity when playing Richard III, and they have done so in many ways. Ian Holm wore a boot on his leg. John Harrel had a bowling ball fastened to his hand, and Antony Sher had a large hump in the center of his back, both a cloth one that was built into his clothes, and an elaborate makeup prosthetic for scenes where he was partially undressed. When I researched for my thesis, I consulted Sir Antony’s book “Year Of the King,” where the actor explained his research into real spinal deformities, and how he incorporated them into the performance. You can see how my actor Matthew figured out how the hump would impede his walk and other movements.

For the final battle between Richard and Richmond, one has to decide on the period and think carefully of the fitness of the actors. 1485 was at the height of the era of suits of armor, and many films have chosen to have Richard fight to the death, while encased in a heavy metal coat of plates.

Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2017 BBC TV mini-series “The Hollow Crown.”
Design for a suit of armour for Henry Tudor

However, this has not always been the case. Ian McKellen had Richard fight in a gas mask in a 1940s British military uniform, driving around on a jeep that gets stuck once Richard utters his most famous line:

Richard III is a play about political intrigue, mafia-like turf-wars, and literal backstabbing and the clothes need to reflect this brutal and Machiavellian world. The costumer needs to help all the actors, not just Richard realize their place in the corrupt medieval political landscape of The Wars Of The Roses, as these characters go from an uneasy peace, to the last gasp of civil war.

Ian Mckellen in the 1995 movie version of Richard III.

Richard the Third and Toxic Masculinity

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This past month, there was a free production of Richard III in New York’s Shakespeare In the Park, starring Danai Gurira as the title character. I have not seen this production, though I wish I had. I enjoyed the actress Ms. Gurrira in such films as “Black Panther,” and would love to see her do Shakespeare. What is more, the concept intrigues me. This project explores themes of toxic masculinity, racial identity, inferiority, and misogyny.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/10/1110359040/why-it-matters-that-danai-gurira-is-taking-on-richard-iii

Unsurprisingly, with so many heady topics in the production, this Richard III is still somewhat controversial. Some right-wing critics dismissed the whole production as a piece of ‘woke propaganda,’ but I feel this is unfair.

When Danai Gurira of Marvel’s “Black Panther” first takes the stage in the title role, the actress has no perceivable hunchback or arm trouble. And yet the dialogue suggesting Richard suffers from a lifelong physical issue (“rudely stamped”) has been kept in. Perhaps we are to use our imaginations. Who knows? We are certainly tempted to close our eyes.

By Johnny Oleksinski

I will not judge this production based on the acting because I haven’t been able to see it. What I will do is take a stance on the validity of the concept. Specifically, I want to ask if this play is a good examination of toxic masculinity and if it would it be worthwhile to see it portrayed by a black woman, as opposed to a white man. The short answer is an emphatical “Yes.”

https://variety.com/2022/legit/features/danai-gurira-richard-iii-toxic-masculinity-central-park-1235318196/

Richard’s Toxic Masculity

Richard III is definately an example of toxic masculinity. He is violent, full of hatred, vengeance, and mysogeny. He is constantly insulting women from Lady Anne, Jane Shore, Queen Elizabeth, and even his own mother. In fact, the source of Richard’s toxic attitude is that he blames his mother for his disability and deformity:

Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard;1635
What other pleasure can the world afford?
I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap,
And deck my body in gay ornaments,
And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.
O miserable thought! and more unlikely1640
Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns!
Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb:
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe,
To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;1645
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an unequal size;
To disproportion me in every part,
Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp1650
That carries no impression like the dam.
And am I then a man to be beloved?
O monstrous fault, to harbour such a thought!. 3H6, Act III, Scene i, lines 1635-1653.

Now I should clarify the difference between deformity and disability, which are characteristics that Richard III has as part of his character makeup. According to the Americans With Disabilities Act, a disability is defined as: “A physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.” This could include paralysis, autism, or any number of congenital or acquired conditions. Richard’s disability is primarily his limp (caused by his unequally shaped limbs), and his withered arm. What’s interesting in this production is that while the title role is played by an able-bodied woman, most of the rest of the cast have actual disabilites. Watch this clip of the famous courtship scene between Richard and Lady Anne, who plays her role in a wheel-chair.

While a disability is a legal term that is recognized by lawyers and governments alike, the term “deformity” is more subjective; it generally refers to any kind of cosmetic imperfection. In Richard III, this applies to Richard’s hump and withered arm. 

The Elizabethans thought that deformity was a sign of disfavor from God, and that deformed people were constantly at odds with God and nature, as Francis Bacon puts it in his essay, “On Deformity.”

As deformed people are physically impaired by nature; they, in turn, devoid themselves of ‘natural affection’ by being unmerciful and lacking emotions for others. By doing so, they get their revenge on nature and hence achieve stability.

Richard III has this drive for revenge in spades and I believe it manifests itself as a particularly terrible form of toxic masculinity. Richard definitely wants the crown to make up for his lack of ‘natural affection,’ but he is also especially malevolent towards women.

I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days

Seeing a woman play this kind of misogynist dialogue forces the audience to take it out of context and question Richard’s point of view. We see casual misogyny every day, and seeing a woman deliver it is quite illuminating.

Richard’s deformity and Blackness

Another provocative choice by Danai Gurira’s portrayal of Richard is the fact that she plays the role of Richard without the hump or withered arm. She herself explains that for her production, Richard’s perceived deformity, is actually represented by her being a black woman:

He’s dealing with the otherness compared to his family, in terms of not being Caucasian and fair like them.” The word ‘fair’, is used a lot in the play.

Danai Gurira’s

Shakespeare writes Richard as constantly striving to compensate for his deformities by being clever, violent, and eventually, by becoming king. As I wrote before in my review of Othello, for centuries black people have been portrayed as inferior; aberrations of the ‘ideal fair-skinned form’. So, to the Elizabethans, blackness itself was a form of deformity, and the rawness of addressing this uncomfortable fact in this production should be commended.

English people are already trained—and we have scholars like Anthony Barthelemy has talked about this in his book Black Face, Maligned Race, where the image of blackness, as associated with sin, with the devil, all of these things, makes it quite easy to map onto then Black people these kinds of characteristics. Then, those kinds of characteristics allow for the argument that these people are fit to be enslaved. – Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy, Race and Blackness in Elizabethan England Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 168

https://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unlimited/elizabethan-race-blackness-dadabhoy

So while I can’t speak to the production’s acting or staging, I will emphatically defend the notion that this production’s concept is valid. Richard III is an example of toxic masculinity through his self-hatred, violence, misogyny, and narcissism. In addition, as I’ve written before, in the Early Modern Period, blackness was considered an aberration or deformity, and seeing it in the person of Richard, with the implicit understanding that black people still face this kind of prejudice today, opens a much-needed dialogue that any production of Shakespeare shouldn’t be afraid to open.

In short, by re-contextualizing Richard’s deformity and disabilities, this production gets to the heart of the play’s moral for our times. The early modern period’s toxic attitudes towards deformity and disability created the Renaissance monster of Richard III. We in the 21st century must examine our own societal prejudices and toxic attitudes so this monster does not come to haunt us in real life.

Shakespearean Tropes In Meow Wolf’s “Omega Mart” (Spoiler alert)

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Giant Skull art as part of Area 15. Hamlet would be dazzled.

I just got back from Las Vegas where I had a simulating, terrifying, and extremely engaging trip to the Meow Wolf Area 15! If you haven’t heard of them, Meow Wolf is an arts and entertainment group which specializes in creating multimedia experiences, and their most popular and mysterious installation is their apocalyptic grocery store, Omega Mart.

Even if you’ve never been to Omega Mart, you might have seen their website, their ’employee training videos’, or the music videos that have been floating around the Internet. My journey began when I saw this video by the YouTube channel Food Theory. After seeing this video, I, like Matt Pat was compelled to go there myself and discover what Omega Mart was like.

My handwritten notes about the mysteries of Omega Mart that I wanted to explore once I got there.

“We take a lot from open world games [where] you can play the story lines or you can just mess around.  We like giving people that optionality (sic). If you’re a 5 year old kid and you aren’t into reading a bunch of material, you just want to run around and treat it like a playground, and that’s totally fine.”

Vince Cadleback, CEO of Meow Wolf
Video artwork that was projected on the wall of the Forked Earth room

A Note about the experience

Meow Wolf’s CEO has stated that the experience of Omega Mart is ultimately up to you. Similar to Sleep No More, this art installation (and it is an art installation) is much like an experiential theater experience in that there is no proscenium, and you do not sit down; it is not a passive watching experience but an active mystery. In Sleep No More, you followed various actors and watched them act out scenes in front of you. In Omega Mart, the story is more epistulary, meaning that there are no live performances, but you can unlock the story at your own pace through reading journal entries, corporate memos and websites, mini-games, and of course, actors performing in corporate videos, commercials, and even security footage. Like a modern video game, you can just walk around the open world and enjoy it, or you can unlock all the lore and piece together the mystery of Omega Mart yourself. This is story a story that is rife with greed, personal tragedy, family drama and maybe even murder. So of course my Shakespeare brain activated, and I wanted to see if I could find some Shakespearian tropes in the story of Omega Mart. I should mention that this kind of experience is often best when you let it become a surprise, so if you truly want to experience Omega Mart without spoilers, stop reading….

STOP RIGHT
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NOW RIGHT RiGHT St0p R$GHT N00000W!

 OK well if you’ve continued reading grab your tattoo chicken, apply your whale song deodorant and let’s get going!

The Characters

The drama of Omega Mart focuses on a single family, the Dram family: Walter, Charlie, Cecilia and Marin Dram. As you go through the various exibits in the Meow Wolf installation (not just the OmegaMart store), you begin to piece together what happened to them, how this family broke apart, and what Shakespearian tropes can we see within this story.

  1. Charlie Dram: Sir John Falstaff The whole story begins with Charlie Dram; an old garage attendant who lives in the fictional town of Seven Monolith Villiage in Nevada. As you can see in the brochure I photographed above, Charlie runs a small tourist attraction where he guides tours allowing people to see The Forked Earth- a dimensional rift between our world and an alien planet, that is also the fount of a powerful and dangerous place called The Source Well. At some point, Charlie goes into business with his family, who eventually cut him out of their lives.

Henry V. I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.

  • King Henry IV, Part II, Act V, Scene 5.
Walter Dram, CEO of Dramcorp
2. Walter Dram: King Lear. This being America of course it was inevitable that somebody would try to capitalize on the Source Well, specifically Walter dram Charlie's brother Walter. Mr. Dram, the CEO of Dramcorp found a way to harness the source and use it. It's not explicitly stated but it's highly implied that he took the Source to a place called Plenty Valley and started using it to revitalize crops out in the Las Vegas desert.
After harnessing The Source, Walter found that he was able to create produce that had unusual properties and from there he opened his grocery store, Omega Mart. If you go to the store, the products seem just a little off- they all have peculiar names, seem to have peculiar properties and in some extreme cases they seem to have inhuman properties like like lemons that are alive! 

Charlie calls these creatures  "mascots;" creatures that have that seem to be living cereal boxes. The source seems to have unpredictable and uncontrollable effects on natural products but because every Omegamart produce is doused with Additive S (which is Walter's addictive additive made from The Source), customers don't seem to care if they become addicted to any products that are laced with The Source.
 
Walter finds himself extremely rich and successful and opens up his corporation Dram Corp in 1977. Decades later in 2020, Walter promises to make his daughter Cecilia Dram his sucessor when he retires, but at some point, he must have reneged on that promise, proclaiming Kaz Matzumora the future CEO. What happened to accelerate the fallout between Walter and Cecilia, we're not sure, but it's quite possible that it has something to do with Cecilia's daughter Marin.

Better that thou hast not been born, then not to have pleased me better.

King Lear

So we have a rich and successful man, who, now that he’s getting old, desires to pass his empire on to younger people, including his daughter. At the same time, he refuses to let go of power, and is willing to throw family under the bus to get his way, as he did with Charlie, and would have done with Marin, (more on that later). Let’s just say, it is very easy to spot the parallels between Walter Dram, and King Lear. Look at this video below where Walter seems to repent for his greed and abandoning his family, though it takes place in an ethereal prison.

  • Lear. Pray, do not mock me.
    I am a very foolish fond old man,
    Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
    And, to deal plainly,
    I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
    Methinks I should know you, and know this man;
    Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant
    What place this is; and all the skill I have
    Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
    Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
    For (as I am a man) I think this lady
    To be my child Cordelia.
King Lear Act IV, Scene vii.

When I watched the Film Theory about Omega Mart, I thought Walter was like King Duncan in Macbeth, and his daughter Cecelia was Lady Macbeth, killing Walter to gain his power. The truth though, is much more complicated, and it centers around Walter’s granddaughter, Marin.

2. Marin Dram: Cordelia from King Lear, Miranda from The Tempest

if you look at the videos in Charlie’s office you can see Cecilia Dram (Walter’s daughter), drinking the Source. Within a minute she starts having cramps, and convulsions; she has been literally impregnated by the Source! Her daughter Marin was conceived by Cecilia Dram and the Source. But, there’s a catch; Marin, because she was created from the Source, cannot be too far from the Source Well. So, rather than living with her her mother and grandfather at Dramcorp, she’s forced to live in a yurt in Seven Monolith Village, very close to the Source Well.

Tarot cards found in Marin’s desk.

Marin’s diary expresses a deep sense of loneliness and a desire to explore the world, not unlike Prospero’s daughter Miranda in The Tempest. She also expresses romantic feelings for Rose, a girl who lives in Seven Monolith, (who according to Charlie, is the granddaughter of a woman who successfully translated the language of the aliens who created the Source Well). The wonderful music video “Marin’s dream” playing below, shows cogent references to Marin having bisexual feelings for Rose and fear towards her mother. This is partly because, since Marin is connected to the Source and her family has been exploiting The Source for profit, she is fearful that her mother will exploit her for her Source-given powers .

We are such suff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep

Prospero- The Tempest

It is further revealed that Marin is capable of creating living creatures with her own mind because of her connection to the Source. Below is a drawing by Marin of a hamster which then came to life in 7 Monolith! These powers make Marin highly desirable to both Celia and Walter. As Charlie mentions in the brochure, there are living product creatures called mascots and it seems likely that Marin is literally creating these creatures in her sleep!

At the end of the music video you can see Marin going through a portal in the wall. In Seven Monolith you can access numerous posters, emails, and phone calls that discuss and speculate about Marin’s disappearance. Some say she ran away from home, some say she was violently sucked into the portal, but the music video makes it very clear that Marin Dram chose to leave Seven Monolith Villiage, and to leave our universe as we know it. Why? It probably has to do with her mother, Cecilia Dram.

Cecilia’s letter to Charlie, May 2017

Cecelia Dram: Goneril and prosperO

Like I said before, I was expecting Cecelia to be the villain in the story- a power-hungry “thankless child,” (as King Lear puts it), who murdered her own father to take control of his empire. Now it’s possible that she did want to take the company at some point, but what also seems clear is that Cecelia is also seeking redemption for herself, and a reunion for her family.

Cecelia and Walter’s Disappearance

In a highly classified video that you can only access in the Dram Corp offices, Walter and Cecilia confront each other about Marin, and Walter seems to be intent on exploiting her gifts for profit. At this point, the video cuts out, but the audio tells us that Walter has fallen into the Source Well. It’s unclear whether he fell or if Cecilia or Marin pushed him, but what we do know is that Walter in every subsequent and email and communication with the board is referred to as “traveling.” When I first saw this, I thought that it meant that Cecilia had murdered Walter simply to gain control of the company, but it seems to be wilder than that; it seems that Cecilia might have thrown Walter into the source well to protect her daughter, but now wishes to get him back.

Once Walter falls into the Source Well, he actually absorbed so much Source that he no longer has a physical form; he seems to have ascended to a higher plane of existence and as you can see in this whiteboard, there’s a rumor that he is actually hiding somewhere in the Omega Mart facility. I won’t give away where he actually is though; you’ll have to discover it yourself.

Cecilia’s motives are the most interesting and ambiguous in the course of the Omegamart storyline. Her demeanor changes drastically after the disappearance of her father and daughter; it seems that she is trying to harness the power of the source not for profit but for but to cause her employees to “Ascend to a higher plan of existence.” Other members of the board in teleconferences seem frustrated with her, accusing her of no longer taking an interest in selling products anymore and that she seems to be coming down with strange cult-like behavior. Look at this highly confusing LED talk she gave one month after Walter’s disappearance:

So it’s ambiguous what Cecilia’s motives are- it could be that she’s attempting to create an army of Source-addicted zombies to do her bidding. It’s also possible that she is trying to figure out how to replicate the same experience as Walter and Marin. Maybe she wants to try and replicate what happened to them, so she can see them again.

Further evidence also supports that Cecelia is desperate to contact Marin and Walter by the fact that in addition to working on LAT, (her employee advancement program), Cecilia is also pushing her research team to create inter-dimensional portals. The clip above in which Cecilia talks to her DART scientists strongly implies what Cecilia really wants to do is to find her daughter in whatever dimension that she’s actually in. Notice that when the test subject mentions a teenage girl he sees in his dreams, Cecelia immediately drops everything to talk to him. Soon after that, DART starts working on DRAMNILATE, a technology that allows researchers to look inside people’s dreams, and test them on the exact same employee as before. Clearly Cecelia is hellbent on finding Marin anywhere, even in dreams!

Through the entire Omegamart storyline, it is ambiguous as to whether Cecilia is the hero or the villain. Her quest to find her family is noble, but she is hiding behind a mask of unbridled capitalism and exploiting a company that creates an addictive substance to do it. It seems almost Faustian that Cecelia has made a deal with the Devil to try and get her family back.

 Tell your piteous heart there’s no harm done. No harm.

I have done nothing but in care of thee,

Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who

Art ignorant of what thou art…

The Tempest , Act I, Scene ii.

So what does this have to do with Shakespeare? When I saw how Cecelia was protecting Marin I saw a king Lear trope; a greedy cruel old man who places his kingdom ahead of even his own family. Lear’s daughter Goneril lies to him and rejects him, but she does so to protect herself. Cecelia is alike a Goneril who protects Cordelia, the youngest and most innocent of Lear’s daughters, while Marin is like Cordelia herself.

Zenion creature (left), and illustration of Caliban (right).

This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou takest from me! When thou camest first,
I loved thee And show’d thee all the qualities o’ the isle,
Cursed be I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king!

Caliban, Act I Scene ii.

Looking at the totality of the Omegamart story, there are several connections to the Tempest Calliban the creature that lives on Prospero’s island bears striking similarities to the Zenions. He is described as being man and fish, much like the Zenions. Further, Caliban is not a native inhabitant of the island; he was brought over by the witch Sycorax and Prospero exploited him after Sycorax died, much like how the Dram family, especially Walter, exploited The Zenion’s magical Source.

In both cases, the Prospero character has both noble and ingnoble goals- Prospero wants to get himself and his daughter home, but also to revenge his exile to the island. Walter and Cecilia seem like Prospero split in two: there is a light side that wishes to defend Marin and see her safely home,and the dark side that wishes to exploit The Source and addict unwitting consumers.

I won’t give away how the story of omegamart ends but let’s just say that Walter gets across the notion that he has repented for his greed, and wishes to free the Source from the factory, much like how Prospero frees Ariel at the end of The Tempest. In both cases, YOU are the necessary person to help free Walter. Both Walter and the Meow Wolf team have hinted that there are new areas of Omega Mart that guests haven’t unlocked yet. Perhaps you will be the one to unlock the secret to free Walter, and the Source!

  • Prospero. Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
    And what strength I have’s mine own,
    Which is most faint: Let me not,
    Since I have my dukedom got
    And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell
    In this bare island by your spell;
    But release me from my bands
    With the help of your good hands:
    And my ending is despair,
    Unless I be relieved by prayer,
    Which pierces so that it assaults
    Mercy itself and frees all faults.
    As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
    Let your indulgence set me free.
Prospero. Act V, Scene i

Thanks for reading this post. If you enjoyed reading it, leave a comment below. Please also relate any Omega Mart stories you had at Area 15!

Review: Kenneth Branaugh’s Henry V

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Since July is my month to celebrate Shakespeare’s Henry V, I’d like to talk about one of the most celebrated versions of the play, Kenneth Branaugh’s Academy Award Winning film from 1989.

The Concept

Clip from Sir Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944)

Like many directors trying to re-adapt an old story, Branaugh began by looking at Sir Laurence Olivier’s 1944 movie version of Henry V, deliberately inverting a lot of Olivier’s choices.

Olivier’s version has a framing device where the audience watches the play in a movie-set recreation of the Globe Theater, (since Henry V was probably the first play ever performed when the Globe originally opened in 1599). For the first 30 minutes, you are not watching a movie but a filmed play, albeit one where your fellow audience members are dressed in costumes from 1599.

Stage Olivier
Olivier as King Henry stands on a reconstruction of The Globe Theater in his 1944 film.

While watching the play within a movie, and seeing ‘audience members’ clap and cheer for Henry, and boo and hiss the French, you get a keen sense of the theatrical illusion of the play, and its importance to English patriotism in 1599. This makes sense since the film itself was commissioned by Winston Churchill to help raise morale during the D-day invasion in 1944.

While Olivier’s film is theatrical and patriotic, Branaugh’s is cinematic and introspective. His film opens on an empty movie set with the Chorus (Derek Jacobi), giving us a tour of the set. He laments that, even with all the cinematic wizardry of modern movies, this movie cannot capture the true glory of Henry V.

Derek Jacobi as the Chrous in Henry V

Branaugh’s performance as the titular king is also quite different from Olivier’s. While Olvier is jovial and charismatic, Branaugh’s King Henry switches between cold and calculating, to intensely passionate. This isn’t to say that his acting is bad; but that Branaugh’s King Henry is a self-conscious actor. The king changes his performance to suit the scenario he’s in: diplomatic and calculating in the throne room, demented and violent on the battlefield, calm and confident with his troops, and pious and merciful in victory.

When I studied the play in college, my teacher posited whether Henry V is a Machiavellian king, and I think Branaugh’s certainly is, in that he knows kingship is a job; one that requires the king to constantly playing roles to get what he wants from people- love, awe, respect, or fear. He’s so good at acting, he even teaches his soldiers how to act like fearesome warriors in his famous “Once More Unto The Breach” speech.

Branaugh in King Henry V

What really sets Branaugh’s movie apart from Olivier’s is the way he handles battles. Again, Olivier in 1944 wanted to raise morale during WW2, when British soldiers were actually invading France to supplant a tyrant. Branaugh in 1989, had seen the world’s response to the Vietnam War, and the decades-long violence in his home country of Ireland. Therefore his version literally takes a dim view of war in general.

Branaugh’s world is not colorful or cheerful- the council scenes are full of candlelit shadows. Branaugh’s fireside chat with his soldiers is a smoky, shadowy look into the terror of men who know they must fight and die tomorrow. Look at the excellent performance of Michael Williams (Judy Dench’s late husband), who takes the king to task while looking at the campfire, almost as if he can see the fires of hell, coming for the English:

King Henry (Branaugh), talks in disguise to the soldier Williams (Michael Williams)
Comparison between Olivier’s 1944 version, and Branaugh’s 1989 movie portrayals of the Battle of Agincourt.

The most striking difference between the two films is how both directors stage The Battle of Agincourt. Olivier’s is a sun-kissed charge on white horses. Branaugh’s is a grimy, mud-stained mess, overcast with a fog of moral ambiguity. Even though the English win, they are meant to question whether or not they have been fighting for a worthy cause. Even after the King proclaims victory for God and country, and the music swells with the gorgeous notes of Non Nobis Dominine (composed and sung by Patrick Doyle), Branaugh has a long tracking shot of all the bodies slain on both sides in the battle. This is the film in a nutshell- a wonderfully acted, exciting, cleverly done thrill ride, that still pulls back and shows the inherently grim and destructive nature of war, that defiles all it touches.

Non Nobis scene from Henry V

The Plot Of the Play

  • King Henry takes the throne in 1413 after his father dies. No one thinks he will run the country effectively.
  • The Dauphin (the French Prince) provokes Henry into declaring war with France, (thus allowing him to claim the right of his predecessor, King Edward III).
  • Henry fends off the French at Harfleur, despite the fact that they are shooting at him with cannons.
  • Henry’s army starts getting sick. Henry decides to start heading back to Calais 
  • The French raise a massive army and it marches towards Agincourt. Mountjoy the French herald warns Henry he will be annihilated and urges him to pay the French a ransom if he is captured. Henry refuses and marches his troops to battle the French at Agincourt.
  • Against all odds, Henry’s army defeats the French at Agincourt, with only about 30 English deaths, and over 10,000 French.

Henry and the French King make peace, and the play ends on a joyous celebration of peace and matrimony, though the Chorus also reminds us that once King Henry dies, his son will lose France and England will be torn apart by civil war.    

Historical Context

My Favorite Moments

I love Branaugh’s performance and his take on the Battle of Agincourt, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention some of the other performances and moments of the play.

  1. Armed Ultimatum: In this wonderful scene, we first see the overconfidence of the French, especially the hot-tempered Dauphin (Michael Maloney), who admits that he deliberately goaded Henry into declaring war because he wishes to personally fight with King Henry. His father the King, (played by Paul Scoffield) is a timid, melancholic individual, (historians often called him Charles the Mad), and he seems like an easily manipulated monarch, ripe for conquest by King Henry. We then see the imposing figure of the Duke of Exeter (Brian Blessed), who comes in full plate armor to warn the French that though the French outnumber the English, the English are a hardy and powerful people, and that King Henry will not stop until all of France is his.

Supporting Cast

Branaugh mainly casts his movies out of his Renaissance Acting theater troupe, which is why in almost all his movies you see familiar faces like Brian Blessed, Derek Jakobi, Richard Clifford, Richard Easton Michael Maloney, Paul Gregory and Geraldine McEwan. As someone who’s seen all of Branaugh’s Shakespeare movies, I get the curious sensation that I know these people, trust them, and find myself rooting for them since I saw them in other roles. Maybe Branaugh hoped his longtime viewers would be concerned for the lives of his “Band of Brothers.”

Welcome additions include Micheil Williams as Williams, as well as his wife Judy Dench as Mistress Quickly. These actors are just as home playing grubby common English peasants as they are playing kings and queens.

Emma Thompson and Geraldine McEwan sparkle onscreen as the French Princess Katherine and her maid Alice. The first time I saw the film, their French was so good, I didn’t believe it was really them! Likewise, the awkward wooing scene between Thompson and Branaugh (who were married at the time) is so charming, you forget all the violence and atrocities that happened on both sides earlier, and giddily enjoy their romantic banter.

My Reaction

In short, Branaugh created, at least for now, the definitive Henry V for our times. It is a world where war is not glamorous and rarely just. Where common men die and rich men survive, though they must carry their sins on their back,( just as Branaugh carries the young boy played by Christian Bale). Yet it is also a story about the power of great leaders overcoming adversity, caring for their subjects, and doing the best they can to bring peace and stability to their people.

Bonus: Here’s an interview with Branaugh about the process of creating the film:

Branaugh in an interview with Bobbie Wygant in 1989.

Remembering David Warner

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https://www.rsc.org.uk/news/david-warner

I’m saddened to report the death of a great British thespian and a versitile character actor. David Warner rose to priminance at the Royal Shakespeare Company, whre he played a celebrated Hamlet, a saintly King H enry VI, and many many others.

Warner as King Henry VI, RSC 1965

https://www.thehamletpodcast.com/hall

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/stage/2022/jul/25/david-warner-was-gentle-inquisitive-and-stunning-on-stage

Warner’s stage career falls into two distinct halves: a youthful decade of riotous acclaim and a late-life flowering separated by a period from 1972 to 2001 when he forsook the stage to carve out a career in cinema. Yet in both youth and age he showed similar gifts: an innate gentleness of spirit, a sense of latent melancholy, an inquisitive intellect

Shakespeare Crafts: Shield

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Now put your shields before your hearts, and fight
With hearts more proof than shields

Coriolanus, Act 1, Scene iv.
Roman re-enactors demonstrate a testudo formation (The Tortoise). Wikimedia Commons.

Shakespeare uses the word “shield” over 30 times, often as a verb meaning ‘to protect.’ However, there are a few very important references to this ancient tool of defense, and constructing one can teach you a lot about the history of a culture, and that culture’s methods of waging war.

A Brief History of Shields

The seven-fold shield of Ajax cannot keep

The battery from my heart

Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, Scene 14.

As the quote above from Antony and Cleopatra mentions, the shield has been around since the dawn of history, certainly since Roman times. The Romans prized their large shields called scuta, which they used in defensive formations as the soldiers crashed through their enemies’ defenses.

DIY Roman shield
A replica of an ancient Celtic shield.

In medieval times, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings used new and more sophisticated shield formations in some of the most important battles in early British history. This included the Battle of Hastings in 1066, which ended the Anglo-Saxon era when the English abandoned the protection of their shield wall to chase the Norman invaders, who then annihilated their forces and proclaimed their leader William of Normandy, the conqueror of all England.

In this excellent video, historian and fight choreographer Mike Loads traces the history of medieval shields and shows step-by-step how to make an authentic Anglo-Saxon shield!

Man fighting with a sword and buckler.
Illustration of a man fighting with a sword and buckler

Swashbuckling

[Enter SAMPSON and GREGORY, of the house of Capulet, armed with swords and buckles]

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet begins with servants armed with swords and small shields called bucklers. These shields were designed to be used in single combat (duels) and were very light and agile. According to Mike Loads, young men would wear their swords and bucklers on their hips and make a loud racket as they walked through the streets. The shield proclaimed that they were armed and dangerous. This macho swaggering is the origin of the term “swashbuckling,” which is probably how these servants see themselves since they spend the first scene of the play trying to pick a fight.

What Is heraldry?

A series of heraldic devices from the Royal College of Arms.

Just as the sound of a buckler announced to the world that a young man was armed and ready to fight, the design on a nobleman’s shield announced his status, his house, and his family motto. The popular historical consensus is that once the medieval knight arrived on the battlefield, they started using their shields and tabards as a colorful display; one that made it clear that they were noble. In war, a knight or other nobleman could collect a hefty ransom if they captured another knight alive, so if you belonged to a rich noble house, your brightly decorated shield could save your life on a battlefield in more ways than one.

Each heraldic design would be registered in the College Of Arms, and many of them are still on record today. In Shakespeare’s Pericles, a group of knights presents their shields to King Simonides and his daughter Thaisa right before a joust and she reads their mottos. The shields are like the knight’s ID tags and help the princess know whom to award the prize money once the jousting is over:

Simonides. Are the knights ready to begin the triumph?
First Lord. They are, my liege;
And stay your coming to present themselves.
Simonides. Return them, we are ready; and our daughter,
In honour of whose birth these triumphs are,
[To Thaisa] 'Tis now your honour, daughter, to explain
The labour of each knight in his device.
Thaisa. Which, to preserve mine honour, I'll perform.
[Enter a Knight; he passes over, and his Squire]
presents his shield to the Princess]
Simonides. Who is the first that doth prefer himself?
Thaisa. A knight of Sparta, my renowned father;
And the device he bears upon his shield
Is a black Ethiope reaching at the sun
The word, 'Lux tua vita mihi.'
Simonides. He loves you well that holds his life of you.  Pericles, Act II, Scene ii.

How to make your own shield!

Since shields are an important part of Shakespeare’s plays, here’s how you can make a shield activity at home or in the classroom.

Making the basic shape

If you want to make a buckler, you need a round surface a little bigger than a dinner plate. You should be able to hold it and move it like an extension of your fist. If you want to make a basic 14th-century type shield like the ones I have below, cut out the familiar, ‘State of Ohio’ shape below. I made mine about 11 inches long, and 10 inches wide. I used cardboard but you can also use paper or wood or metal if you have real craftsperson talent.

Choosing a color and design

I got a lot of good information on how people chose designs for their shields by visiting English Herritage.org’s Guide to Heraldry: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/guide-to-heraldry. The website has a lovely catalog of the colors and designs real knights and barons and lords used to make their shields/ coats of arms stand out. You can choose a simple background with a plant, animal, etc. in the foreground, or you can divide the shield into a cross, a diagonal line called a Fess, or a triangle called a chevron.

The Personal Touch

You need not be constrained by historical precedent in coming up with your shield. Like any canvas, the only limits on your shield design are your imagination. Check out these designs I made with my kids!

Henry V inspired shield.
I wrapped this shield in heat-resistant blankets, and decorated it with stickers from the dollar store.
My daughter paints an apple tree on her shield. Why not?
My son used a stencil to make a dragon for his shield. We’re going to cover the dragon in glow0in-the dark paint.

Your Motto

Most mottos are single lines of text (usually in Latin), that illustrate what is important to the house that sports it. For example, Richard II’s motto was: “loyalté me lie,” (“Loyalty binds me.”). You could come up with a simple motto and Google Translate it into Latin or French, etc.

Regal coat of arms for King Richard III. Note the white boar, (Richard’s personal charge). Note also that he has combined the 3 red lions of the royal house of Plantagenet, with the blue and gold fleur de lis of the crown of France. Richard claims the throne of England and France and combining heraldic imagery is known as “marshaling.”

Now that you have your shield, with its own unique motto and design, it can be a useful tool to explain how people saw themselves in Shakespeare’s day. Nowadays we mainly see ourselves as individuals, but this kind of heraldry illustrates how knights, nobles and servants saw themselves mainly as part of a house, with its own values, its own traditions, and sometimes an us vs. them mentality against other houses.

This kind of household mentality is of course, at the core of Romeo and Juliet and the Wars of the Roses cycle of plays, and Shakespeare uses heraldry to illustrate this mentality. Look how the knights in the tournament scene from the 2013 film are dressed in their houses’ colors and the nobles and servants are also wearing those same colors:

Like sports fans who wear the jerseys of their favorite teams, shields and heraldry proclaim the allegiance of the servants and nobles who belong to powerful houses/ kingdoms. This kind of emblem can help students understand a piece of medieval and Renaissance history, and how that history shapes our own mentalities today.

References:

  1. English Heritage Guide To Heraldry: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/guide-to-heraldry
https://hemadigest.com/2019/02/12/sword-and-buckler-and-why-i-do-it/
2. Sword and Buckler and Why I Do It by Borislav Krustev. HEMA Digest, FEBRUARY 12, 2019.

3. https://www.thearma.org/essays/SwordandBucklerP4.htm#.YtysVlfMLq8