King John & Henry VIII

by William Shakespeare

  Following the generally adverse critical responses to the Goodbody and Barton productions, it is perhaps not surprising that the play was not attempted again at Stratford for nearly a decade and a half, when it was revived by Deborah Warner’s experimental but uncut production in 1988. Produced in the small and intimate, corrugated iron, boxlike space of the original Other Place, Warner’s production was—as she stated in interview with Geraldine Cousin—“wild, searching,” and “deliberately raw, big-brush stroke.”44 The first two weeks of rehearsals were spent in an ensemble exploration of the play in which the cast, as well as reading their own parts, were regularly asked to read other parts and to translate Shakespeare’s language into their own words. The eventual production used a sparse set, composed largely of a table, a few chairs, and several ladders, and the costumes were apparently improvised and of no particular period, leading at least one reviewer to note wryly that “some of the characters … look as if they have been dressed in a hurry by Oxfam,”45 while another commented more favorably that “The appearance is timeless-modern, the clothes spattered and well used, greatcoats thrown hastily over civilian trousers and City shirts as though the wearers had been surprised by sudden civil war.”46 The action was delivered at a fast rate, with characters moving on and off stage at high speed, and the production included live, circus-style music during the battle scenes, in order to suggest the farcical nature of politics and war.

  Susan Engel, who played Constance, also suggested the modern political relevance of the play when she said in interview that she found natural the scene where Constance sits defiantly (Act 3 Scene 1) “because sitting is what you do when you protest, in Vietnam or in Westminster.”47

  Nicholas Woodeson’s John appeared to be in the same satiric vein as Emrys James’s interpretation in the Barton adaptation, as well as Patrick Stewart’s John in the Goodbody version, with The Times, for example, describing him as “a jaunty tinpot monarch”48 whose insecurity is symbolized by the constant wearing of his crown chained to his waist. Perhaps the most controversial interpretation of the Warner production, however, was David Morrissey’s Bastard, which, far from the witty, “pickèd man of parts,” was presented as a loud and unpolished young man who appeared to react to events more with a naive spontaneity than “tickling commodity.” Critical reception for Morrissey’s Bastard was divided, with, on the one hand, Charles Osborne in the Telegraph opining that Morrissey “played noisily and often incomprehensibly,”49 and Paul Taylor in the Independent looking for the detachment of a manipulator and opportunist but finding “only the detachment of a football heckler,”50 and, on the other hand, Michael Coveney in the Financial Times describing him as “a ferociously talented and watchable newcomer.”51

  General critical reception of the production was also divided, with some commentators arguing that Warner’s “broad-brush” approach was too simplistic, although the overall balance was probably favorable, with several critics applauding Warner’s courage in taking on such a difficult play but producing it uncut and unadapted, and welcoming her honest exploration of the play—a view summed up in one review: “It has the distinctive look [Warner] has created of still having one foot in the rehearsal room.”52

  After the Warner production, it again languished at Stratford for over a decade until 2001. Gregory Doran’s production certainly seemed to strike a resonant chord of national weariness with politicians and the political process, and was seen by a number of reviewers as “a corrosively satiric study of sordid power struggles.”53 This was partly achieved through comic undercutting of both situations and language. Doran signaled from the outset that having John’s late entrance repeatedly heralded by actual fanfares, reminiscent of—or perhaps even an allusion to—a scene from the Marx Brothers’ film Duck Soup muted the declamatory fanfare. While introducing a comic element, the conspicuously empty throne did immediately raise the central issue of who is legitimately and morally qualified to occupy it. When John—played by Guy Henry, better known for his seriocomic roles—did enter, his dignity already undercut by the late entrance, he was in a farcical hurry, rapidly pulling on his crown and lacking any royal bearing: a nervous, comic mode he retained throughout the play. It soon became clear, however, that this was a political satire. Indeed, both the production itself and the manner in which it was received and discussed seemed to be symptomatic of an underlying distrust of the political process and politicians that’s certainly not new in British society, but appeared to be particularly widespread in contemporary Britain at the turn of the twenty-first century. Thus, Charles Spencer, writing in the Daily Telegraph, noted:

  4. 1988, Deborah Warner production. From left to right, Messenger (Julia Ford), The Bastard/Philip Falconbridge (David Morrissey), Arthur (Lyndon Davies). Perhaps the most controversial interpretation was David Morrissey’s Bastard, which, far from the witty, “pickèd man of parts,” was presented as a loud and unpolished young man who appeared to react to events more with naive spontaneity than “tickling commodity.”

  The play seems especially resonant at a time when disease haunts the land and when our leader’s chief concern seems to be whether he can get away with a quick election. Tony Blair has much in common with King John, whose fine words conceal a devastating lack of conviction.… It presents a world in which politicians seek the quick fix and the favourable spin, masking commodity (self-interest) with hollow, tub-thumping rhetoric. And if King John brings Blair to mind, the papal legate, Cardinal Pandulph, is pure Peter Mandelson.54

  Similarly, Michael Billington, in the Guardian, also related the play to modern political spin-doctoring:

  What startles one is the play’s modernity: it accords with our own scepticism about politics.… And you could hardly have a more outrageous example of spin than the Bastard’s belated attempt to terrify the French with the prospect of “warlike John” when the king lies desperately enfeebled.55

  While Doran’s production did succeed in making much of the high declamatory style palatable to a modern audience, effectively by sending it up, this was not without cost. Critics since Adrien Bonjour56 have noted the X-shaped or chiastic structure of the play: as John descends in regal and, more particularly, moral stature, so the Bastard rises. Indeed, for Bonjour, this balanced structure revealed the central theme of the play as personal integrity and supplied the unity other critics had suggested was lacking. In Doran’s production, however, John had little if any distance to fall since his dignity and, by implication, his moral stature were low from the outset. The kingly imprecation of the text, “Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France; / For ere thou canst report, I will be there: / The thunder of my cannon shall be heard” (1.1.24–26), was shouted offstage after Chatillon as John chased after the ambassador and hurled his crown at him. This tended both to disturb a satisfying and symbolic structural aspect of the play and to undermine both the Bastard’s moral rise and his role in the early part of the play as cynical debunker. “Mad world, mad kings, mad composition!”—the audience needed not a love child of Coeur-de-lion come from the country to tell them this: it was already patently obvious.

  Even the temptation scene (Act 3 Scene 3) was played in a black comic fashion, with the staccato climax delivered in a rapid-fire exchange that, although it seemed to lack a final “boom-boom,” nevertheless elicited hearty laughter from the audience. Yet this scene has historically been treated with gravity. In a contemporary review of Macready’s 1842 Drury Lane production, for example, The Times recorded Macready’s own interpretation of John in this scene in the following terms:

  A gloom, which came in sudden contrast to the previous bustle of the drama, seemed to usher in the conversation between John and Hubert. It was a foreboding look that John cast on Arthur, the tongue faltered as the horrible mission was entrusted to Hubert. For a moment the countenance of the king beamed as he said “Good Hubert,” but the gloom returned when he said “Throw thine eye on yonder boy.” That he did not look Hubert in the face when he prop
osed “death” was a fine conception.57

  The contrast with Doran’s version of the temptation scene is striking, prompting us to contemplate whether it is modern embarrassment at the potential sentimentality of the scene that makes a contemporary director prefer a black comic version. Given that, in the Doran production, Guy Henry’s John was a comic “nervy twerp”58 from the outset, however, it is perhaps hard to imagine how it could have been played otherwise. Indeed, while the strongly satirical aspects of the Doran production were generally well recognized and received, nevertheless certain of the comic aspects appeared to generate a degree of irritation in several reviewers. John Peter, in the Sunday Times, panned the production as “medieval England as Fawlty Towers,”59 while Michael Billington, in a generally favorable review for the Guardian, was forced to admit that the production had “occasional hints of Woody Allen in medieval England.”60

  To return to the contemporary political relevance of the Doran production, however, it seemed that this was largely highlighted by bringing out features already present in the text. Consider, for example, Act 4 Scene 3, where John yields up to Pandulph “The circle of [his] glory” and then reveals the other side of the deal—“Now keep your holy word: go meet the French.” In Doran’s production, this was done with sufficient bathetic contrast between John the prostrate penitent, stripped to a loincloth, and John the brusque wheeler-dealer, suddenly dropping the mask, as to emphasize strongly the cynicism involved and evoke laughter from the audience. The production also introduced other gentle political nuances. For example, Pandulph, after his insinuating persuasion of the dauphin to invade England is left alone on stage momentarily and, finding himself alone, he very slowly bursts into deep gales of laughter, revealing the pleasure he is taking in manipulating the political process.

  While Doran’s success in treating the play as a political satire may have been largely due to the readiness of an early-twenty-first-century, spin-doctoring-weary British audience to accept such an interpretation, the fact that much of the language of the play draws on contemporary political pamphlets, as discussed earlier, is key to understanding its modern political appeal: Shakespeare built the essence of political language—its equivocating, declamatory, chop-logic nature—into the text by drawing on actual political propaganda documents of his day, the essential features of which are still present in political discourse of the present day. More generally, the play’s episodic structure allows for a series of set debates, which are also redolent of the political process. In several of these, however, notably the debate before the walls of Angiers (Act 2 Scene 1), the process is constantly interrupted by the Bastard’s series of asides and punctuated by his cynical soliloquizing (“Mad world, mad kings, mad composition!”). This serves to undercut the political gravity and reveal it as political posturing. To make matters worse, the Bastard’s own entrance into the political arena—his plan to combine the English and French forces against the “peevish town” of Angiers—is accompanied with a certain pride (“Smacks it not something of the policy?”), leading us still to harbor suspicions about his sincerity even at the end of the play. The implication, then, is that Shakespeare’s text, in its structure, characterization, and language, presents an ironic, detached, and to a large extent cynical view of the political process. The relative success of Doran’s 2001 production of the play as a political satire may therefore be due to the rediscovery of this facet of the play.

  Given its Stratford track record, one might have expected to have waited at least another decade for another RSC production, but the RSC Complete Works Festival in 2006 occasioned its revival by Josie Rourke just five years later at the Swan. Rourke’s set was sparse, with two pivoting doors being the main prop, and some attempt at historical accuracy in the costumes. The production received mixed reviews, and seemed to suffer from comparison with the relatively recent Doran production. Rhoda Koenig, in the Independent, for example, argued that “The part of John, who is mean and craven, is not one of Shakespeare’s best, and one might think Richard McCabe’s plodding interpretation sufficient had one not seen Guy Henry’s mesmerising, creepily whimsical monarch. This actor is indecisive when he should suggest a deeper defect, and when he tries to be fierce, he does it with popped eyes or arms akimbo.”61 Similarly, Tamsin Greig, as Constance, had to live up to Kelly Hunter’s impressive interpretation of five years earlier, although her understated performance was by and large favorably received. Joseph Millson’s Bastard was generally perceived as powerful and mesmerizing, although Rhoda Koenig, while acknowledging the “impishness and sex appeal” of Millson’s interpretation, goes on to lament that “this actor, who seems to have attended the Douglas Fairbanks School for Bastards, becomes tiresome halfway through his first appearance, with his antic mannerisms. In the second half, the Bastard does act more normally, but before that he is exhausting rather than enlivening.”62

  Although Rourke’s production did not seem to resonate so strongly with the public concerning the politics of spin-doctoring as the Doran production had—perhaps because Doran’s production had taken place at a period of significant change in British politics, toward the end of the first “New Labour” administration—the political relevance was still noted, with Dominic Cavendish in the Daily Telegraph observing, “The parallels with our own disordered times are plain for all to see—and it’s hard not to think of the carnage in the Middle East on hearing Tamsin Greig’s beautifully understated Constance deliver her heartbroken lament for her lost Arthur (Ralph Davis) in the play’s most heart-piercing speech: ‘Grief fills the room up of my absent child.’ ”63

  Overall, the stage history of the RSC productions of King John reveals the fundamental problems in producing the play for a modern audience. In particular, while an Elizabethan audience would have had the Tudor image of the historical King John firmly planted in their mind, the modern popular image of King John does not quite accord with the image presented in the play. This, together with the large chunks of rhetorical and declamatory language, which do not particularly suit modern, realistic acting styles, has tempted some directors to produce the play with a comic aspect, which sits uneasily with the play’s bleak subject matter. Because of these problems, every production of King John is in some sense experimental in that the director has to experiment with ways in which to make the play relevant and enjoyable to a modern audience. A unifying theme of the RSC productions has been to examine the play’s modern political relevance, and in particular its political cynicism, which seems to be hardwired into its construction and language. In that sense, the RSC productions from Goodbody to Rourke may indeed have rediscovered in King John “a tract for the times.”

  THE DIRECTOR’S CUT: INTERVIEWS WITH GREGORY DORAN AND JOSIE ROURKE

  Gregory Doran, born in 1958, studied at Bristol University and the Bristol Old Vic theater school. He began his career as an actor, before becoming associate director at the Nottingham Playhouse. He played some minor roles in the RSC ensemble before directing for the company, first as a freelance, then as Associate and subsequently chief associate director. His productions, several of which have starred his partner Antony Sher, are characterized by extreme intelligence and lucidity. He has made a particular mark with several of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, including King John (2001), which he is discussing here, as well as the revival of works by other contemporary Elizabethan and Jacobean writers.

  Josie Rourke went to school in Eccles and attended sixth-form college in Salford before going on to train on the Donmar Warehouse’s resident assistant director scheme in 2000. Her first major breakthrough was as assistant director to Peter Gill at the Lowry Theatre in Salford Quays in 2002 for the premiere of his play The York Realist. She worked as a freelance director from 2002 to 2007 and as associate director of the Sheffield Theatres as well as a trainee associate director at the Royal Court. Josie directed Philip Massinger’s Believe What You Will and Shakespeare’s King John for the RSC in 2006, which she’s discussing her
e, and was appointed as artistic director of London’s Bush Theatre in 2007. She recently directed Men Should Weep for the National Theatre, while her Much Ado About Nothing with David Tennant and Catherine Tate opened in June 2011 at Wyndham’s Theatre. Widely regarded as one of Britain’s most exciting young directors, she takes over as director of the Donmar Warehouse in 2012.

  King John used to be a popular play which enjoyed spectacular “authentic” Victorian stagings but its popularity has steadily declined in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; why do you think this is the case and was it an advantage or disadvantage for your production?