 |
|
|
|
 |
|
 Thursday 9.00-9.45am, repeated 9.30pm. |
|
|
|
Programme details |
Thursday 18 June 2009 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Audience reactions to this edition |
|
|
Beth - Titus Andronicus
Grateful thanks to the person who mentioned the Oliver 1950'sproduction. For some fifty years I've recalled the impression the play made on me. As an enthusiastic Aus.teenager I'd seen Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh in Sydney on their tour after the war. I started saving to come to England (Sea trip took five weeks & four days and ticket cost £50 for shared cabin) and I'm still here! Great memories of Stratford, Old Vic, Royal Court etc. I was sure I'd seen Titus Andronicus staged in a London theatre - a very powerful & haunting performance in which the actors utilised long red streamers to symbolise blood, and there's so much of it! I wonder if any other 50's play-goer can confirm this imaginative interpretation of the play's stage directions which must be a difficult aspect of the live performance? Was Oliver also the director?
Alan Logsdail - Titus Andronicus
The BBC TV production of Titus Andronicus of 1985 and directed by Jane Howell is quite superb and has powerful and moving performances by Trevor Peacock, Eileen Atkins, Hugh Quarshie and others. The snag is you have to buy the complete set of 37 dvds to see it!
REVENGE
Hamlet questions the ETHICS of revenge?? When does he say anything like "Maybe I SHOULDN'T do this"? He's all for it, he just can't DO it, and he tells us WHY. Thinking too precisely. ('Conscience' in 'To be' doesn't mean MORAL conscience, it means Thought). The play is not ABOUT revenge, revenge is its DEVICE to explore a much deeper question: the relationship of thought to action in rational man.
YY
I generally like the podcasts - they would profit from adding a few minutes on "modern day relevance" for each topic though. Latest example - revenge drama - the potentially very interesting discussion on modern day equivalents (Eastwood, Tarantino) was shut down immediately...
Stevie; revenge tragedy
Interesting discussion, but I was surprised that a) there was no mention of the rise of the Jacobean private theatres (the discussion only took account of the outdoor playhouses and performances at court); b) very little discussion of the centrality of women in many of the tragedies (although I think Julie Sanders tried to introduce this late in the debate); c) an assumption that revenge tragedy ended with Middleton - John Ford would be miffed; and d) the persistence of the intentional fallacy... the idea that we knew what Shakespeare was thinking, or what he was trying to say about the morality of revenge when writing Hamlet. Jeepers. It's as if critical theory never happened.
John-Elizabethan & Jacobean Revenge Tragedy
The contrast between taking justice in one’s own hands and the law of the state seem to be at the root of revenge plays. As you said this wild justice puts the law out of office. We also have the contrast between pagan, Senecan forms of justice andChristian ideas of conscience and mercy. The state is trying to take full control.Things that came up were 1) use of ghosts to haunt the living with the crime,usually children of the victims.2) barnstorming language and rhetoric(hence popularity);3)the play-within-the-play;4) madness feigned and real;5)multiple revenges;6)revenge crime surpassing original crime(e.g. children served up in pies: Titus Andronicus and Thyestes);7)influenceof Seneca;8) murder of the good by the bad;9)a period of disguises;10)eruptions of violence and catastrophe;11) use of soliloquy to unpack emotion.The English playwrights use the revenge plot to explore themes of decadence and corruption in the late Elizabethan/Jacobean courts. The influence of legalistic issuesand the Inns of Court are brought to bear upon older medieval concepts of justice.As in Beowulf we have writers looking back to pagan sources and mourning their passing. In Hamlet we we get reflective conscience to doubt simple acts of revenge.We still get bodies.There is the interrogation of the simple ethic of revenge: what would you do in Hamlet’s place? So a strong Christian context and the idea of divinity hedging the king.A battle between classical pagan codes and Christian notions of forgiveness.Patterns of revenge are given contemporary resonance in the history play with their dynastic, factional disputes. Jonathan Bate told how plays were summoned to be played at court and playwrights were sailing close to the wind, hence the unknownauthor of The Revenger’s Tragedy(probably Middleton). This is cynical towards the Jacobean court, known for its corruption, and shows an unremitting savagery.There is a threatening gleefulness in the death-dealing climax of the masque-within-a-play. This plays with the mechanics of revenge-the use of abstracted names to give essence of character(Vindice), the macabre use of the poisoned skull to trick the duke to kiss it,the use of the masque to assassinate and murder,the corrupt family unit, the restoration and the moral conclusion. I thought everycontributor was equally good at moving the subject along or bringing somethingnew to bear and Melvyn was at home in this subject.
Col Farrell re Revenge Tragedy
I know of no real evidence that the Bard allowed his plays to be slashed to fit a "two hours' traffic" limit. Surely the point is that they acted it quicker: no complex scene or lighting changes,no indulgent pauses or naturalistic meandering. Plot detail is reiterated to allow the audience to catch up if they missed it the first time. The axing of Fortinbras and "How all occasions..." is always a regrettable loss. I'm glad to see from the Home Page that next week is about the Sunni and Shia split not, as I thought I heard it, a spat early on in the career of Sonny and Sher. C.F.
Melvyn Bragg Titus Andronicus
As a student in London in the early 50's I saw Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh in Titus Andronicus. During the pie scene the whole audience screamed. I have never forgotten it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg Download or subscribe to this programme's podcast |
|
