The Theatre of the Elisabethans

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 808, 21 January 1955, Page 22

The Theatre of the Elisabethans

cluding Sir Lewis Casson and Dame Sybil Thorndike, Robert Harris and Esmé Percy, Claire Bloom and Pamela Brown, are to be heard in a series of 13 half-hour programmes on the Elizabethan theatre which will start from 3YC next week and later will be heard from other NZBS stations. Elizabethan Theatre is introduced at 9.30 p.m. on Sunday, January 30, by a discussion introducing H. S. Deighton, of Oxford University; William Empson, the well-known poet, who has held uni--versity posts in Japan and China; and Dr. Wilson-Knright, of Leeds University, who spent several years as Professor of English at Toronto University. Under the chairmanship of Val Gielgud, Head of the BBC’s Drama Department, the discussion ranges widely on the Elizabethan theatre, its roots and its development. Among the subjects examined are the difference in outlook between Shakespeare and Marlowe, and the reasons for the immense popularity of Shakespeare’s plays throughout the Commonwealth today. -; Each programme includes excerpts from Elizabethan drama, and in the first passages from The Spanish Tragedy, by Thomas Kyd, illustrate the creation of a stagecraft that has been accepted by ¥) sutng Ls players, in-

every playwright since the Elizabethan period-for although he was neither a great poet nor a great philosopher, Kyd was a great dramatist. The programme, which has the title. "Blood, Blood, Blood," shows how The Spanish Tragedy, which was the period’s first and greatest "tragedy of blood," foreshadowed the theme of Hamlet, In the excerpts Hieronimo is played by John Laurie and Isabella by Dorothy Green. In his Tragical History of Dr. Faustus Christopher Marlowe made the first dramatic statement in England that man is master of his fate. When it was made the English Renaissance had come of

age. Extracts from this play, heard in the next programme of Elizabethan Theatre, not only tell the story of Dr. Faustus but are also used to reflect Marlowe’s own character. Marlowe may have been, as some of his contemporaries said, trampling, lewd, intemperate, and _ so out-and-out a blasphemer that a list of his sayings was sent to the Queen; but when he sent Faus-

tus to the devil he sent him in the highest poetry and gave him for impulse to damnation the greatest virtue of the Re-naissance-desire for knowledge. "Faustus, Thou Art Damned!" in which Robert Harris plays Faustus and Esmé Percy is Mephistopheles, is followed by a series of programmes covering the plays of Shakespeare. The plays discussed and illustrated include Macbeth (with Sir Lewis Casson and Dame Sybil Thorndike), Much Ado About Nothing (with Pamela Browne and Richard Hurndall), the historical plays (with Cyril Cusack as Richard II, George Coulouris as Henrv IV. and Alan Wheat-

ley as Henry II), Othello (with Robert Harris, Paul Rogers and Beatrix Lehmann), Hamlet (with Hugh Burden, John Laurie, James VicKechnie and Marjorie Westbury), and Anthony and Cleopatra (with Howard Marion Crawford and Catherine Salkeld). There are also programmes about Elizabethan honour, especially as_ illustrated by Falstaff (played by Baliol

Holloway) and about the jester, the clown and the fool, illustrated with excerpts from King Lear and Twelfth Night. Other programmes in the series are "This Killing Spectacle," which includes excerpts from George Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois (with Michael Hordern, Claire Bloom and Richard Burton), and The Shoemaker’s Holiday, about ‘Thomas Dekker’s play of the same name, which gave a picture of Elizabethan city life, with its kindliness and good nature and its boisterous high spirits. Throughout Elizabethan Theatre the narration is by H. A. L. Craig, who wrote the programmes with R. D. Smith (who also produced them); and the scene for each play is set by Noel Iliffe.