The Princes in the Tower, Grand Theft Hamlet, and Star Wars Macbeth
Plus: Richard Nelson on Shakespeare in Ukraine
A “Damning Discovery” About The Princes in the Tower
It has been an eventful year for Richard III. Last November, Philippa Langley announced that Richard definitely didn’t kill the Princes in the Tower based on a receipt from the Holy Roman Emperor for 400 pikes. This month, Professor Tim Thornton argues that Richard probably did kill the Princes in the Tower based on a will from James Tyrell’s half-sister-in-law listing a chain of office.1 Then there was the revelation of Richard’s Yorkshire accent last month. Let the re-litigating begin!
What The Times describes as “damning evidence,” Historian Matt Lewis dismisses as “nothing more than another desperate bid to keep the traditional story afloat.” What is certain is that the research that leads to these discoveries is motivated by the public’s continuing interest in Richard III which is in turn motivated by Shakespeare’s play. No one is diving neck-deep into the archives of Burgundian merchant Jehan de Smet for the fun of it. But if you can maybe bring up a “Damning Discovery” and maybe get a TV special out of it? Suit up.
No shade (well, maybe a little). Ever since Richard’s body was found in 2013 there has been a steady stream of researchers unearthing increasingly obscure documents and yelling “NO, I’M RIGHT!” at each other. One big mystery (“Where was he?”) solved, time to turn to the others. (“What did he do? And exactly how much child murder did it involve?”)
Thomas More usually gets dragged into the scrum since he wrote one of the books that Shakespeare used as a “Richard Bad” source. More has his own (literal) Saint vs. Sinner polemicists (Are you Team Man For All Seasons or Team Wolf Hall?) and Ricardians have positively Cromwellian2 levels of antipathy towards the man, scoffing at his Lancastrian loyalties and deriding his inaccuracies:
“[Tyrell] was not, as More writes, someone Richard had never heard of recommended to him by a page boy as he sat on the toilet…I find it amusing (by which I mean vaguely infuriating) that Ricardians are often caricatured as close-minded anti-historians desperately trying to prove Richard III innocent of all crimes. It strikes me that the traditional story frequently requires a closed mind and the ruthless, urgent pursuit of any scrap that can be magnified to prove More was correct. Ricardians are generally (not universally, I know) those with a more open mind…
I find the best thing to do in this situation is to let the libels fly. At the end of the day, “when you’re working on a topic like this, it’s almost impossible to achieve levels of proof beyond reasonable doubt” and unless King Charles allows DNA testing of the Westminster bones, all future discoveries are likely to be similarly speculative.
Richard Nelson on Macbeth in Kiev
Playwright Richard Nelson was on the Marks & Vincentelli podcast this week and briefly discussed his new play:
I'm going back to Kiev on December 31st for another 10 weeks to do a new play that I wrote for them. And it's about this subject: in 1920, A man named Les Kurbas, who was the father of the modern Ukrainian theater…brought a group of young actors into the farmlands, countryside, well south of Kiev. And he did that because there was a famine in Kiev in the middle of the Civil War.
And he put on productions, and one production they put on was Macbeth. And this was the very first time any Shakespeare play had ever been performed in Ukraine. And why is that? Because the Russians wouldn't allow it. The Russians would not allow Ukrainian spoken on the stage except in folk dramas or very, very farcical, low comedies. Because that's all the language they said it was good for.
According to a Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, during that production “Lady Macbeth fainted from hunger in the wings, and Kurbas used series of hand signals to warn the actors onstage that they were about to be shot at.”
I watched several of Richard Nelson’s plays on Zoom during the pandemic and his Uncle Vanya was *excellent.* I’m looking forward to this new work.
Robert Downey Jr. Does AI Prospero
Ayad Aktar’s play McNeal was not my cup of tea, but it isn’t every day you get to hear Robert Downey Jr. mention Pandosto onstage:
McNEAL: (Clocking, then:) That would be like saying—Shakespeare took Pandosto for Winter’s Tale, or Plutarch for Antony—
HARLAN: (Over.) Enough with you and the fucking Shakespeare, Dad.
Atlantic subscribers can read the entire play, which includes numerous Shakespeare references and ends with an AI-assisted Prospero crib.3
Quick Links
Al Pacino is always doing Shakespeare:
“Just when I / thought I was / out, they / pull me back / in” is as perfect an example of iambic pentameter as Richard’s “Now is the / Win-ter of our / dis-con-tent”.
“Oh get f*ucked. ‘You’ll never play the Dane.’” –Colin Farrell
I’m not at all clear what this year’s Broadway productions of Romeo and Juliet and Othello get for being on JP Morgan’s NextList ( a “journey through the forefront of innovation and culture”) but good on them.
Meanwhile, the RSC received $$ to research “responsible AI, immersive technology and creativity.”
Pepys is really into Hamlett. (He just saw it last week)
Is “Gonks Go Beat” the world’s worst Shakespeare adaptation on film?6
“Dorfman’s boob-forward wardrobe is symbolic of The Nurse’s maternal role”7
You can visit a copy of Love’s Labour’s Won at the Grolier Club.
Ian Doescher’s Shakespeare 2020 project is relaunching next month with The Two Gentlemen of Verona and will end in May 2028 with The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Grand Theft Hamlet: The Film is now available in select theaters.
Recommendations
4:48 Psychosis at the Royal Court has a “babes in arms” access performance8
“In the letter, Snyder admonishes landscaper Bill Herman for being difficult to reach, noting that he was able to easily contact both Fidel Castro and Ronald Reagan that day.”
As a beetle, would you prefer to be trapped for all time in amber or a Gaugin painting?
Yes, I know this is Oliver. Let be.
“Uncommon and clever gift book for the literary card sharp marrying quotes from Shakespeare with different poker hands…for a terrible hand, ‘What dreadful dole is here?’”
Her Othello, John Kani, will be at Shakespeare Theatre next month in Kunene and The King.
The trailer is…something. I think I’ve finally wiped Cymbeline from my memory but The King remains stubbornly fixed.
Via the newly-revived Exeunt magazine. Accessibility = good. Also that play is *rough*.
Who knew you could buy cuttlefish ink on Amazon?