"Done Like a Frenchman": Henry VI, the Tyranny of the Audience and Spect-Actorial Adaptations

In early modern theatre, there are many examples of audiences recognising themselves in performances that they watch. It is this recognition which creates comedy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when the young married aristocrats comment on how absurdly the rude mechanicals perform a story of thwarted love which exactly mirrors the potential play which Dream so nearly becomes. The same idea is the source of dramatic tension in Hamlet, when Hamlet’s adaptation of The Mousetrap is performed as a trap to “catch the conscience of the king”; Hamlet’s commentary is a diversionary tactic, for Hamlet is not watching the play at all, he is watching the King’s reactions to it and it is when the King apparently recognises himself and stops the play that Hamlet believes his trap has worked. In the so-called bad quarto The Taming of a Shrew, Christopher Sly sees in the story of Petruchio and Katherina a taming fantasy of male dominance, but in the play’s final scene he is chased offstage by his shrewish wife. Sometimes, when recognising themselves in the play, audiences can change the play as well. Arguably, this already happens in Dream, where tragedy is made into a comedy and in Hamlet, where the play cannot continue once the King has recognised himself in the play

Kent’s Best Man: Radical Chorographic Consciousness and the Identity Politics of Local History in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI

In this article, the character of Jack Cade in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI is reconsidered through an exploration of the local history and traditions of Kent. I argue that Shakespeare, through Cade and his followers, created a sense of local historical consciousness which directly challenged the structures of chronicle history and manifests itself in various acts of self-affirmation. Shakespeare departed from his sources by giving Cade a Kentish identity. I also challenge the modern critical consensus that Shakespeare made Cade more violent than he was in the play’s chronicle sources

Othello: A guide to the text and the play in performance

Othello is one of Shakespeare's most theatrically striking plays. This Handbook focuses on Othello as a dramatic work which exploits the resources of the early modern stage and yet still challenges contemporary theatres. Exploring race and gender as performance issues throughout the study, Stuart Hampton-Reeves: • examines the play's earliest performances and the problem of staging darkness on Shakespeare's stage • analyses the play from a performance point of view scene by scene, line by line • surveys key productions and films, tracing the play's move away from mainstream theatres • draws together the latest criticism on Othello's treatment of identity and sexuality

Henry VI in performance : history, culture and Shakespeare reproduced

The long-neglected Henry VI plays have been 'rediscovered' by a number of post-war productions which have found new ways of bringing Shakespeare's civil war plays to modern audiences. The Wars of the Roses, directed by Peter Hall and adapted by Hall and John Barton, established the theatrical vitality of the plays and defined them for a generation as 'national' dramas. I argue that many of the most important and mythologised aspects of that production were contingent upon the difficult situation of the RSC in the early 1960s and that, in fact, the 'tradition' of playing the Henry VI plays as national dramas is an invented one, based upon the Tillyardian interpretation of them as 'matter of England' plays. Nevertheless, The Wars of the Roses has cast a massive shadow over subsequent productions of the Henry VI plays. Most notably, two productions in the late 1980s - the RSC's The Plantagenets and the ESC's The Wars of the Roses - were virtual revivals of the 1963 productions whilst even those that, at the time, seemed to be reacting against Hall and Barton - the RSC's trilogy of 1977 and the BBC's tetralogy of 1981/3 - in fact bore their influence in that they staged the plays as 'matter of England' productions. 'England' took on a different meaning however after the election of the Conservative Government in 1979. Mrs. Thatcher introduced market ideologies into the funding of theatres and this forced rapid, radical and often unwelcome changes to the culture of the large theatres: England became a divided and contested site and rubbed against the resolution that Hall and Barton had sought in 1963. In the third chapter, I will examine in detail three 1980s productions which were shaped by this situation, but also responded to, engaged with, and attempted to subvert the Thatcherite appropriation of national identity. Finally, I argue that all of these performances exhibit a deep anxiety about social changes and about the role of Shakespearean theatre within these changes

Factors Associated with Revision Surgery after Internal Fixation of Hip Fractures

Background: Femoral neck fractures are associated with high rates of revision surgery after management with internal fixation. Using data from the Fixation using Alternative Implants for the Treatment of Hip fractures (FAITH) trial evaluating methods of internal fixation in patients with femoral neck fractures, we investigated associations between baseline and surgical factors and the need for revision surgery to promote healing, relieve pain, treat infection or improve function over 24 months postsurgery. Additionally, we investigated factors associated with (1) hardware removal and (2) implant exchange from cancellous screws (CS) or sliding hip screw (SHS) to total hip arthroplasty, hemiarthroplasty, or another internal fixation device. Methods: We identified 15 potential factors a priori that may be associated with revision surgery, 7 with hardware removal, and 14 with implant exchange. We used multivariable Cox proportional hazards analyses in our investigation. Results: Factors associated with increased risk of revision surgery included: female sex, [hazard ratio (HR) 1.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.25-2.50; P = 0.001], higher body mass index (fo

Fighting

A highly engaging text that approaches Shakespeare as a maker of theatre, as well as a writer of literature. Leading performance critics dismantle Shakespeare's texts, identifying theatrical cues in ways which develop understanding of the underlying theatricality of Shakespeare's plays and stimulate further performances

Shakespeare in the theatre : Peter Hall

"Peter Hall is one of the most significant and influential directors of Shakespeare's work of modern times. Through both his own work and the management of two national theatre companies, the National Theatre and the RSC, Hall has promoted Shakespeare as a writer who can comment incisively on the modern world. His best productions exemplified this approach: Coriolanus (1959), The Wars of the Roses (1963) and Hamlet (1965) established his reputation as a director able to bring Shakespeare to the heart of contemporary politics. However, Hall's career has been very varied, and sometimes his critical failures are as interesting as his successes. The book explores Hall's work as a deliberate articulation of Shakespeare and national culture in the post-war years. The main focus is on his Shakespeare work, but critical attention is also given to non-Shakespearean productions, notably his 1955 Waiting for Godot (and his relationship with Samuel Beckett in general) and his 2000 Tantalus (and his work with John Barton), placing Hall's work in its cultural and creative context. Setting Hall's work against the post-war development of national culture, the book explores how his work with other writers and artists (including Beckett, Pinter and Barton) informed his approach to directing as well as his rehearsal methods and his approach to Shakespeare's text"-

States of the Nation: Henry VI, the London Olympics and the Spectacular City

This article discusses three productions of the Henry VI plays by different countries from the Balkans as part of the Globe's 'Globe-to-Globe' season in 2012. Each production is placed into the context of the complex cultural politics of the London Olympics