Greg Doran is the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the director of Richard II, currently staged in Stratford-upon-Avon until November 16th 2013. He explains that these history plays reflected the struggles to form a national identity and to reconcile personal power. In this respect, William Shakespeare puts key politicians of Richard II's reign under the microscope.
Pretty Emma Hamilton, playing the Queen to Richard II, appreciates Doran's introductions and warm-up among the actors. Definitely it must be a thrill to perform for The Royal Shakespeare Company. I knew Richard II was a boy, age 10, when he assumed the throne. But I didn't realize that his wife was only 6 years old, when they married, and was 10 years old herself, when he died. She was Isabella of Valois, who was Richard II's second wife, after his first wife, Anne of Bohemia died two years before.
Some critics of Da Vinci Code and Gladiators accuse these films of veering away from historical truth. Maybe it's simply their job to criticize so, and maybe even an exercise they positively enjoy. Fine. Otherwise I'd think their criticisms were ignorant: These films are works of art, imagination and license, not documentaries, so of course they are not going to be factual, at least not completely.
That said, historian Helen Castor notes that while we marvel at the architecture of Westminster Abbey, we rely on works like Shakespeare's histories to see the people who populated it. Most that medieval historians have are formal government, technical records, and consequently they always have to employ their imagination to supply the human element, as Castor puts it. She sees Shakespeare's histories, with his keen pulse on human nature, as a fantastic resource that feeds into our collective understanding of what happened.
No comments:
Post a Comment