The Development of the Pre-Show in English Shakespearean Performance, 1932-2014
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRE-SHOW IN ENGLISH SHAKESPEAREAN PERFORMANCE, 1932-2014 By ALISON STEWART A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY The Shakespeare Institute School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham March 2015 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract Productions of Shakespeare’s plays often feature an interpolated opening scene or ‘pre-show’. My thesis examines this phenomenon. Proposing threshold theory as a framework, I consider the interfaces between the classic text, the enacted play and the audience. Previous studies of modern pre-shows suggest three key purposes for the pre-show: narrative, concept, and theatricality, which I adopt as the structure of the second half of my thesis. Studies of early prologues and inductions trace cultural and artistic developments that pre-figure developments I trace in modern production. I consider in some detail Shakespeare’s own pre-show and introductory strategies and the problems they present to modern directors, before examining the earliest pre- shows of modern productions, in the 1930s to 1950s, the cultural and artistic circumstances that gave rise to them, and their reception among reviewers and scholars. Thereafter I trace the development of narrative pre-shows and the staging of embedded narratives, the rise of conceptual pre-shows and their origin in design and the New Criticism, and changing pre-show relationships with, and impact upon, audiences, ranging from the political to the commercial. I conclude that the pre-show is a significant innovation that has both accompanied and led a remarkable renaissance in Shakespearean performance. Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the great support of my supervisors on this project: Professor Kate McLuskie shared my first sense of intrigue about the topic, and suggested the most fascinating reading and research areas; Dr Jaq Bessell opened my eyes with her practical knowledge and generous discussions; and Professor Michael Dobson, who already played a starring role in my bibliography, took over my supervision at about the half-way stage and introduced a whole new range of expertise and theatre-going memory. Dr Martin Wiggins was an ideal mentor and support through some difficult times. My grateful thanks to them all. Jeannie Farr and Jo Robertson have been key supporters in and beyond the study: their enthusiasm for theatre, discussion, company, good food and wine, swimming and music, have sustained my efforts and my heart. Christie Carson, Juan Cerdà, Andy Kesson, Jimmy Tucker, Alfredo Modenessi, Emily Oliver, Lizzie Sharrett, Liz Brandow, Jenny Smith, José Alberto Pérez Diez, Lorne Campbell, Eoin Price, In Hwan Do, Paul Hamilton, and many others, have been interested and stimulating friends lighting beacons along the way. My family have been unfailingly supportive, particularly my husband Sandy, who made room in our lives for this project of my heart, my father, Malcolm Henry, who loved to share his store of school-learned Shakespeare before dementia took it, and then him, away, and my mother, Christine, whose zest for life and new experiences has fed my own from the beginning. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Title Page 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Why study the pre-show? 1 What is the role of a pre-show in a production of a Shakespeare play? 5 1. How seriously are we meant to respond to pre-shows? If we ignore them, 6 what difference does it make? 2. What sort of mediation do pre-shows provide between the world of the 9 audience and that of the play? 3. The pre-show as threshold 10 i. The ludic and experimental 10 ii. The creative and innovative 12 iii. The transgressive and resistant 15 4. The Pre-show as entry-point 20 The place of Shakespeare in twentieth century culture and society: what 27 impact have pre-shows had on the reception of the performed plays? Considerations of theatre history: How widespread is or has been the use 30 of the pre-show? Looked at over an extended period, does the pre-show offer some insight 32 into the uses of 'Shakespeare' in the wider cultural context? 2 SHAKESPEARE’S PRE-SHOWS 43 The Prologue 44 Conclusion: Prologues 67 The Induction 67 Non-textual openings 71 1. Dumbshow 71 2. Pageantry 73 3. Demotic Spectacle 82 4. Supernatural Spectacle 89 Conclusion 93 3 MODERNIST APPROACHES: EXPRESSING THE TEXT 95 Komisarjevsky’s Merchant of Venice, 1932 98 Komisarjevsky’s Macbeth, 1933 107 Komisarjevsky’s King Lear, 1936 113 Peter Brook’s early Shakespeare productions 117 Michael Redgrave’s Henry IV Part, 1951 124 Tony Richardson’s Pericles, 1958 129 4 NARRATIVE FUNCTION 140 Design as narrative pre-show 143 Stage action as narrative pre-show 153 Nunn’s pre-empting narratives 170 Pre-show narrative confusion 182 Conclusion 186 5 NEW CRITICAL THINKING AND THE CONCEPTUAL PRE-SHOW 188 Peter Hall 208 Trevor Nunn’s Winter's Tale, 1969: appropriating the contemporary 220 Two recent appropriations of the contemporary 232 Conclusion 236 6 USING THE AUDIENCE 237 The actor as actor 238 The actor as audience member: Michael Bogdanov’s The Taming of the 264 Shrew, 1978 Involving the audience 271 The audience as actors: Peter Hall’s Coriolanus, 1984 273 The actors among the audience: John Caird’s As You Like It, 1989 279 The actors among the audience: Silviu Purcarete’s Tempest, 1995 283 The audience in the action: two promenade performances 287 Conclusion 295 7 CONCLUSION 297 The rise of theatricality 297 The rise of narrative coherence 306 BIBLIOGRAPHY 313 List of Illustrations Plate 1 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA by Shakespeare: Margaret Whiting as Cleopatra; 146 Directed by Robert Helpmann; Set design by Loudon Sainthill; at the Old Vic Theatre, London, UK; 1957; Credit@ University of Bristol Theatre Collection/ ArenaPAL; www.arenapal.com Plate 2 King Lear 1950; Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, set showing Lear’s Palace, Act 191 1. Photographer Keith R. Ball. Reproduced by permission of Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Plate 3 Hamlet, 1956, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, set. Peter Streuli Shakespeare 199 Birthplace Trust Plate 4 The Tempest 1951, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, detail of drop curtain. 200 Photographer Keith R. Ball. Reproduced by permission of Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Plate 5 REX WHISTLER: Venice, Original illustration for Edward James: ‘The Next 201 Volume’. http://www.lja.uk.com/index.php?page=818 Plate 6 Twelfth Night 1958, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Show gauze (detail). Tom 202 Holte Theatre Photographic Collection Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Plate 7 Leonardo, ‘Vitruvian Man’, reproduced in programme for The Winter's Tale, 226 directed by Trevor Nunn, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1969 List of Tables Table 1 Opening stage directions to History plays 75 Table 2 Opening stage directions to Titus Andronicus 76 Table 3 Opening stage directions showing pageantry 79 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Why study the pre-show? This introduction will offer a rationale for my study of the pre-show as directors have used it in productions of Shakespeare in the last 80 years. The first section explains the nature of the topic, the questions I seek to answer, and the parameters I choose to work within, together with an exploration of terms. Next I examine some theoretical aspects of the work done by pre-shows as mediators of and thresholds to Shakespearean productions, and explore the field more widely through an examination of previous studies of the topic: essays on contemporary pre-textual performance by Robert Smallwood, Jean-Marie Maguin and Michael Dobson, and studies of early modern equivalents of the pre-show by Dieter Mehl, Thelma L. Greenfield, Douglas Bruster and Robert Weimann, and Tiffany Stern. Finally I reflect on the cultural place of the performance of Shakespeare’s plays in contemporary England, and its bearing on the uses of the pre-show over the period of my study, to give an outline of the shape of the chapters that follow. In 2005 I began seeing RSC productions of Shakespeare fairly regularly. My previous experience of Shakespeare had been predominantly via text, with little opportunity to see performances, so only now did I start to take account of differences between the two experiences, and to apprehend the long-running dispute and debate between textual and performed drama, or rather the particular Shakespearean branch of that debate. As my theatre-going experience advanced, I was particularly struck by the number of productions whose opening moments could not be represented by 'Enter [characters A, B, C...]', followed by the opening speech of the text. As some examples: in 2005, Nancy Meckler's Romeo and 1 Chapter 1 Juliet had a large group of actors in modern dress assembling onstage as the audience arrived, and a sequence involving rifles, sticks, and a ritualistic dance, before the familiar Prologue was spoken, and Dominic Cooke's As You Like It began when a group of characters in winter coats marched swiftly from upstage towards the front where they gathered to sing 'Under the Greenwood Tree', Christmas-carol style, before Orlando began his complaint to Adam as in the text. In 2006, Cooke directed The Winter's Tale as a promenade production: 'prommers' were offered a glass of bubbly as they arrived and invited to join a reception already underway, which metamorphosed into the Sicilian court festivities entertaining Polixenes on an imaginary New Year’s Eve.