"Show us the hand of God That hath dismissed us from our stewardship!" Okay then...

"Oi!"

 Thanks to Gemma for this portrait of "Charles the Martyr" in which the condemned monarch's consecration looks a lot more like simple astonishment at having his crown snatched by a baby in a cloud. As for Richard II, I have now recorded the first act of its sequel, but with such excitement that my body clock's running amok again so please forgive this place holder.

"I'm Enjoying This! I'm Enjoying This!" A Final Banging On About the Formal Run of Richard II

 Firstly, I admit that, contrary to the date given above, this post is actually going out on Monday evening. So I'm glad to be getting back into Full Shakespeare, but I'm also going to blame it for how late I'm now getting everything else done, and indeed it.

 

 

At least the weather's broken. (Does pinterest count as a source?)

 Secondly, I recently received some typically clarifying thoughts from Gemma Brockis about the "Formal Run" of Richard the Second (viewable HERE) which I hope she won't mind me sharing: "He's normally played as a bit of an odd ball or outsider," she writes, "But if he's powerful then his descent feels weirder. Which it should... In making it glamorous, and epic, you kind of don't care so much about liking people." Which is a relief. She also uses the word "majestic" which eluded me, and is spot on; really I should rename these the "Oddball" and "Majestic" runs. 

 But what exactly is Majesty? How does one picture it?

  It's not really seen as a heterosexual, cis, male quality these days, and I wonder if that's a Post-Revolutionary thing. Not just because capital-R, poets-on-crags-with-pamphlets Romanticism promoted a more egalitarian, no-frills idea of masculinity, but because – and this is something I only realised yesterday – for the majority of its history since the French Revolution, Britain hasn't actually had a king: 1800-1837, a couple of Georges. 1837-1901, sixty-three years of Queen Victoria. 1901-1952, an Edward and a George and an Edward and a George. 1952-2020, sixty-eight years of Queen Elizabeth. Another friend wondered whether, if Britain had actually had more kings, we'd still have a royal family at all, or whether the men would have blown it. Playing the "Majesty" of Richard feels apt then, but also, at least initially, inescapably female, which reads as camp, which is presumably why no-one does it that way now.* Even Fiona Shaw played Richard as an "odd ball".

 Another problem – and perhaps the source of a lot of my initial impatience with this play – came from unfavourably comparing it to Marlowe's Edward the Second, in which a King's misplaced love for his favourite, and his subjects' hatred of that love, drives the whole story. There, it doesn't matter what you think of the Crown; a man is imprisoned for an unrequited love, his tragedy is clear, and in the shadow of that tragedy, Richard's own fall feels squeamishly underwritten. But Richard's sexuality, or lack of it, isn't actually a contributing factor to his tragedy, it just provides Bolingbroke with slurs whose utterance make him as despicable as everyone else. Rather, this is a tragedy about a God-appointed show off. When Richard's understanding of himself as a king is contradicted, he reinvents himself as a saint, and in prison we see him discover this is even more naive an ambition, and that he might as well pretend to be a clock. He's entirely ready for death, until it comes, and good for him. This is a play about a failing artist. Audiences like those, and so do actors.

 And there's something genuinely fun about the old-school use of an actor's voice to do everything but imitate natural human speech, a fun that transmits, even though its power is ungenerous, and of no use to anyone else on stage. Nowadays, it's something we see women use more than men. Men just shout. It's an isolated voice, and Gemma's right, it doesn't matter if we actually like the owner. Here's another way of looking at the Formal Run then: Richard nailed the performative aspect of Majesty to the bitter end, but botched the policy. He may or may not have been Elizabeth the First but – and again, this is something that only occurred to me yesterday – bloody hell, does he remind me of Margaret Thatcher.

 

 

*UPDATE 28 Feb 2025: It's interesting or me to read this after rewatching Ruper Goold's "Hollow Crown" film of the play, with Ben Whishaw, which does a brilliant job of staging how universe-dismantling the handing over of the crown feels, a proper act of magic. So much of what I thought I'd discovered in this play is right there.

Days, Hours, Minutes and Richard the Seconds

 

 In yesterday's post Henry the Sixth imagined himself measuring out his life as a shepherd. Today Richard the Second imagines himself as an actual clock. We're back at Act Five. I tried to differentiate this a little more from the previous run by having Richard lose his voice in prison, but it made him even harder to understand so that's not what you'll see. You will see a lot of sweat, so apologies, particularly for one specific drop which threatens to upstage me for possibly two whole scenes. I thought it might help something or other if I left it hanging on the end of my nose unwiped. Help what? Empathy? Realism? Continuity? Who knows, these are shot on the fly. Also it might sound like I'm doing an Alec Guinness impression, but that's unintentional and ultimately okay surely. I'm sure he would have made a great Richard.

 Thought so - Shakespeare's always been very good to the wonky looking and fey. I'm getting maybe a little too used to editing footage of myself gulping, sighing and giving wry, sideways looks however, so it will be good to move onto something more rambunctious, which Henry the Fourth is certainly supposed to be. Here are some questions to accompany your viewing of Act Five in the meantime, should you so wish: Is York's discovery of Aumerle's plot actually directly responsible for Richard's death? Should I have read some Holinshed before embarking on this? Should I have read some Ovid too while we're at it? I'm supposed to be a Shakespeare enthusiast so why have I never gone anywhere near his two massive influences? Should I stop using a sepia filter? Orson Welles said people shot in colour just look like meat, so maybe not? Oh, and is it the groom who's playing the music in prison? Here is a playlist of the "Formal" (better) Run in its entirety. And here's the final act:

Mirror, Mirror On The Floor

 This is one of Paul Hogarth's covers for the Penguin editions, the ones we'd read in school. Not all his covers were as on the nose as this. While Richard the Second doesn't really cut it as a saint I think this run's is a better loser than the First Run's. I didn't want him to be showing Bolingbroke up this time so much as showing him the ropes, showing him round the sausage factory, guiding Bolingbroke's hands over the levers. (I only realised while editing that the "Norfolk" mentioned, who died in Venice, is Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk banished in Act One. I wonder what he died of.) Here's Act Four again. At one point I say "off my hand" instead of "off my head" but what are you gonna do...

Jesus As A Dick

 The dream of the 1390's is alive in Portland. And Act Three of Richard the Second (the Second) will be posted below as soon as it's uploaded. I don't think I'd be giving this run nearly as much old-school, Look-At-Me welly if I hadn't tried the first run without, so I'm glad I did both, but I'm definitely prefering this one – this play makes so much more sense to me as a musical. Let a set piece be a set piece. If Richard is actually messianic, his surrender makes perfect sense: Flint Castle is his Gethsemane, and who doesn't want to play that? A world's emerging, a blazingly strange, Golden-Age-of-Hollywood/Military-Dictatorship hybrid that, for all I know, is exactly what Elizabethan England was actually like. It would be good if I had longer fingers.

Titus Bemoan (York's from Wales now. And Lancaster's from York.)

 

I looked up what a "gorget" is (source).

 Pah, just missed midnight, and I'm still a post behind if I want to average one a day (there was no post on Wednesday the 29th) but anyway, Act Two of the definitiver Richard II is now uploading, and will be posted below once done. There were ninety minutes of recording to cut down this time, but I'm glad I'm having another run, now I'm clearer what's going on: Richard having no idea actually how hard he's pushing people's buttons is a lot more interesting to play longterm, Bolingbroke feels like someone people might now be genuinely happy to meet, and – upping the Celtic quotient – York's more fun to play now he's not so stiff-jawed and uptight and sounds like Titus Andronicus, another ill-starred old soldier whose loyalty to the state turns him against his own son – that's all in the future though; right now, it's just a more enjoyable voice to complain in. York should bark. Its partly his overestimation of the power of that bark that loses him so many allies. And it's nice to recast a voice. If you're following these videos, I think that's Mark Antony's voice as Mowbray, and possibly Cassius' as Harry Percy, but his part's going to be built up.

"You'll be back..." RICHARD THE SECOND RICHDUX

 Richard Pasco now models Ian Richardson's cape. I hear the two actors tossed a coin each night to see who would play Bolingbroke and who would play Richard. 

Imagine turning up to the wrong one.

 Here is the first act of Richard the Second THE SECOND... From the defeated republic of Julius Caesar, via the elected dictatorship of Titus Andronicus, to the now seemingly unchecked power of God's Anointed, it's interesting how the further back in history Shakespeare goes, the more recognisably democratic become the

systems he writes about. Take that, progress! This isn't Rome then. Kings are a proper thing now, second only to God, and this one has definitely had his uncle Gloucester murdered. Mowbray is definitely the one who did it, and the only hope of avenging that murder is the King's cousin Bolingbroke. Them's the stakes. And the prouder I play Richard, the humbler I can play Bolingbroke, even though the humble man is still going to have to kill the proud man. So maybe the play's about that. Of course by going full Gloriana - or, okay, full Ian Richardson - there is a risk if not a complete inevitability of turning Richard into a full-on, Disney-style queer-coded villain. But... 

 

 Well firstly, those guys are great. But secondly, it might still be a better starting point for understanding this play than what I had before, because if you simply play the King as a wag you make it too easy for the audience to side with him against his huffing and puffing subjects, and that lets him off the hook. There is a system in place where he's the Sun and his subjects have to function within that, which is not their fault. This isn't Rome, as I said. And it isn't Marlowe's Edward the Second. Richard isn't martyred for love. This is the play the Earl of Essex staged as a prelude to revolution. This is taboo. Here's Richard the Second again then, but more alien, with eggshells, stiller shoulders and less busy mouths. Let's see.

"Yet I'll hammer it out."

Mardy cast call, 1995. I'm the top row, slunk third from left, and between me and 
Tom Lyall is Jamie "Apollo" Bamber who played my dad.
 

 Here is the final act of the first run of Richard the Second. Below, not above. As I'm going to be doing the play all over again I won't say much about Act Five this time round, except that I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Having a proper argument to perform, like that between York and the Duchess, is much easier to get a handle on, as are soliloquies that are actually spoken alone. Richard's talk of populating his cell with imaginary kings and beggars tempted me to perform King Lear next, packed as it is with absurdly shifting personalities and brutal fortunes and written, according to the convenional wisdom, in plague-occasioned isolation. But that would be giving up. I'll stick with the Histories. One detail: I was going to let the viewer choose what music Richard heard, as I'd done with previous musical cues, but he mentions it going a little out of time so I decided to insert the track myself so I could have a bit of a fiddle with it. It's iMovie's "Fifth Avenue Stroll" and I chose it for its simple instrumentation, and its associations with the eternally intered employees of Lightning Fast VCR Repair. Thank you to everyone who's seen this through with me.

 And here is the whole first run, if you fancy it. I'm definitely pleased with bits. I'm by no means disowning it, just interested to see what it will be like with less screaming...

 Oh and here's me rattling the cup for millionaires...

King Richard the Second THE SECOND

 Yesterday...



 This afternoon...



This evening...

 And let's skip over the fact I managed to misspell not only "definitely" but "just". Don't worry, Act Five of Richard II is still on its way, even though I don't know how to stop iMovie having a maddening twiddle with the exposure every cut, but it doesn't matter any more because it turns out those recordings were just a dry run and yes, I'm going to do it all over again. That is how I've decided to solve the problem posed in the last post. I'm not sure the decisions I've been making have been the right ones, but at least they were big, and that means I can make another performance with all different decisions, and, I don't know, people can pick their favourite. Not that I expect anyone to watch both – Act Four currently has four views – but they can choose between a shouty one or a recite-y one. I mean, if the Clarenden Press, Oxford can have two King Lears in their complete works, I can have two Richard IIs, and maybe that's how I'll learn something. 

 I've just finished re-recording Act One this evening on the old phone, with – I think – a very different playing of the King, and just a little more care over what's being said, and a bit more stillness. And maybe this new one won't be as good, but that doesn't really matter, as I'm excited about the project again, excited by the freedom of it again. And, most importantly for me, I'm showing off again.

Act Crack'der?

 Yeah.

 Here are some SPOILERS!!!! for Act Four of Richard the Second, which is posted below... Excitingly, the far better resolution of this new phone means you can really make out the details now, like the unnoticed mote of schmutz beneath my eye for the majority of a scene in which I'm supposed to be staring into a mirror. Maybe Richard can see the speck, and chooses to leave it. Maybe it reads like that. Other innovations include: swapping which hand holds the crown when switching between Richard and Bolingbroke and then working out how to edit this so I don't look like I'm speed-milking a cow; sparing myself seven years of bad luck by simultaneously running, at different speeds, a recording of me tapping a mirror, rather than actually breaking one (that came out alright I think); and having nearly everyone turn Scottish, it seems. The biggest decision, though, has been where to mark the points of injury while tracking the increasingly inevitable – the moments of genuine distress – since there's such a sustained performance of grief from both Richard and the Queen, and they must be enjoying some of it. What's surprising then? What's the worst news? It was watching Mark Rylance at the Globe that I first realised Northumberland is essentially asking Richard to sign his own death warrant, which was useful. As was the BBC's Richard II with Derek Jacobi (not pictured), when I first saw the King's surrender at Flint Castle played as a private aside to Aumerle, rather than howled down to Northumberland, which makes a lot more sense (or is, at least, a lot easier to act). That's what's hard: working out how to make this easy. Nearly there.

"Fred" and Flint

  Oo. I had one of these (a fanned cape, not an Ian Richardson)

.
 Before the Globe reopened and this could be tested, it was taught for some reason that open air theatres in Shakespeare's day required a broader and bellowier, more unrealistic performing style to compete I suppose with the visible bustle surrounding the actors, but this theory never considered the possibility it might actually be easier to connect with an audience you can see than one sat in the dark, no matter how hermetically sealed, or that broad daylight might actually require greater realism. Mark Rylance, the Globe's first actor manager in nearly four hundred years, proved this beautifully. He was not a bellower. He mumbled. He even stumbled. I last saw him at the Globe playing Richard the Second as a man who, like Alfred Ill in Dürrenmatt's The Visit, realises long before everyone around him that they're going to have to kill him (The Visit's very good), and he was superb, and there was a flub: As the King's world suddenly collapses around him he feels compelled to admit to his followers "I live with bread, like you" but when Rylance played the scene Richard, apparently in a state of shock, said instead "I live with Fred..." and I still remember that flub seventeen years later, a mistake made completely in character, a sign of craftsmanship. So when I found the speech on youtube yesterday I admit I was surprised to see, three minutes and twenty-eight seconds in, Rylance making exactly the same flub. "I live with Fred..." It's possible I saw him on the same night this was recorded. But it's not likely. What an artisan. Here's me bellowing, and Bolingbroke being a cock...

Whoever's in Charge

"Fortress built against infection" my bum. (Source)

 Who's pulling the strings in Richard II then? Who's in charge? I used to think it was just, I don't know, "History", and maybe that's a grown-up narrative, but more likely it's just more mythologising. Maybe this is why it's such a relief when Northumberland turns up. Finally here's a character who not only wants something but actually seems to be doing something about it - it's called a "plot" for a reason - but even he turns out to be just a messenger. Bolingboke's already landed. So what are we watching? It's not unlike the News. Not the current News I mean, just News in general. No criticism of Richard's abuses of power goes without an even deeper criticism that he's Bad For The Brand. Really it's all about "judging the mood", and only looks like Democracy because it can take down anyone. Typically though, Richard's ability to push so many buttons seems to be the quality Shakespeare finds most attractive. Here's Act Two then, and if Gaunt's death bed scene feels a little like Dennis' Dad's death bed scene from Jabberwocky, well I can only say "you're welcome."

"Grief Bounceth" - Full Shakespeare's Full Return

"What's my motivation? Is it hair?"

 Okay, that wasn't really the line: what the Duchess of Gloucester was meant to say was "Grief boundeth", but I think "bounceth" actually makes more sense as a metaphor so that's what I went for. Oh, the power! The power of doing Shakespeare all on my own. And the shouting! Doing all of the shouting on my own. Here then is episode twenty-one of "Simon Goes Full Shakespeare" in which I finally test the waters of the Histories by doing the one with the most standing around in: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, an opaque anti-drama that still nearly managed to get its author executed for treason, but more of that later in the week.

Gemma Brockis fans might be also able to spot in this photo a Gemma Brockis.

 Maybe I'm a little too acquainted with this play (see the photo above from 1995 of me asking if Bolingbroke might have, in addition to hair, fingerless leather gloves). There were quite a few things I forget to explain in the video's introduction for example, like what a "gage" is, or "lists", but hopefully it'll still make some kind of sense. I look forward to hearing any thoughts you might have, whether you know what's coming, or have no idea. According to Simon Schama's History of Britain, Richard II introduced both the handerchief and the spoon to England. Might the play be about that? Let's see!


 

(I like that Mowbray gets played off in the middle of one of his speeches.
The fanfare was just too long so I brought it in early, but I do like it.)

Pineapples, Poop, and Princes to Act

 The Royal Museums Greenwich's weekly webcasts are back, with an episode on the newly reopened Cutty Sark (or "Skimpy Skirt" if you don't speak Scottish). The glamour of pineapples is discussed, traders who still sail are buttonholed, and Helen Czerski is on hand as usual to ask every question playing on your mind as if by magic. I give a couple of readings too, including a dramatic account of a storm at sea for which I had to repeatedly say "poop" with a nautical accent and a straight face. And in other news...

 God, I'd have loved to seen Gene Wilder play Richard II, but in his absence I've decided I myself shall take on the role of that most pineapply of monarchs as well as every other role in Richard II of course as I return to Simon Goes Full Shakespeare next week. I know I said I'd do the War of the Roses next, but this play comes earlier historically even if it was written later, and has far fewer characters than Henry VI, far fewer explosions, and far more sadness, self-indulgence, and sass, so seems the more comfortable choice. Also I've got the hair. I'll save further spoilers for next week, but here's where I found that painting of Richard looking like a pineapple, and here's where I found that pineapple that looks like Richard II.