hey uh y’all ever checked out some of this stuff by this dude Shakespeare?
for reasons I have been going down a Wars of the Roses rabbit hole. I knew almost nothing of this conflict before 2 weeks ago, but some wikipedia scrolling inevitably led me to Shakespeare’s Henry VI parts 1,2,3 and Richard III, which cover the lead up and most of the conflict
I ended up signing up for a free trial of Britbox which has these BBC adaptations from the 80s directed by Jane Howell. I expected these to be interesting in a cerebral way but also kind of a challenging slog (I haven’t touched Shakespeare since high school)
But after about 30 mins into the first one, I was absolutely hooked, and over the past week binge watched all four plays. Although the language is undeniably challenging, Shakespeare is so much easier to watch than read, since you can pick up a ton from context and vibes. I feel sure this is kind of a cliche realization, and I’m pretty sure my 9th or 10th grade English teacher explained this at the time because I remember a lot of reading aloud in class.
I don’t know if these are typical performances, but these particular adaptations are really lively and move along at a brisk pace. They are fully staged like plays and make no attempt to hide the fact that they are happening on a set, but that also includes some super long takes, sometimes one or more scenes flowing together with no discernable cuts? I know stage actors are probably used to performing like this, but I was a little surprised a TV production didn’t take more advantage of the ability to cut. The effect is that the plays kind of fly by, even though it’s 14 hours altogether it didn’t feel like it.
The actual performances are also really great, at least to this totally untrained viewer. The acting feels kind of dialed up like I would expect in a stage performance but not too much and many of the characters have opportunities for the performer to bring real charisma, warmth, humor, sadness, or villiany across a fairly long arc, because they have so many scenes across all 4 plays. There’s a lot of stirring pre-battle speeches followed by tortured death monologues. I also don’t know how this would be acted in a typical stage performance, but there is a LOT of turning and looking directly into the camera for a close up zoom to deliver anything from offhand remarks to longer soliloquies. Some of these are outright funny and the smirking, knowing asides (usually about some scheme to betray someone) are really entertaining
The camera work and overall direction of physical blocking is also quite fascinating. Because some of the takes are so long, and a scene might have a mix of characters interacting, the camera will sweep and pan through the performers who often end up seamlessly fading into the background but framed in shot while other conversations are happening that I found noticeably skillful, and it kind of helped to keep faces on screen to figure out who was being referred to sometimes
As far as the actual plays go, I gather these are not exactly considered top tier Shakespeare but as far as Wars of the Roses stuff goes, it’s great. Watching them all back to back like this, after a brief skim of some other historical material, reinforced not just how petty and selfish the conflict was at times but also the real tragedy and villiany of it all. The difference between Henry VI part 1, which has bright and colorful costumes and sets, with Joan of Arc and the Dauphin joyfully battling the English back and forth across the playground like set, to Richard III in which almost every character is dressed in black, and the battles are a chaotic hard to follow melee, is a stark comparison
I’m tempted to keep the Britbox sub for a month and check out some other plays, especially the Henry V stuff, for other reasons, but I’m also just as tempted to keep it just to rewatch some of this tetralogy. it definitely helps that I’m suddenly invested in the specifics of the Wars of the Roses now, but I think it’s also just a really fun watch. definitely did not have “get really into Shakespeare’s histories” on my personal 2023 bingo card