The Two Noble Kinsmen, King Edward III, and Double Falsehood, presented by Atlanta's New American Shakespeare Tavern (March-June 2011)
Joanne E. Gates
Jacksonville State
University
jgates@jsu.edu
Joanne E. Gates, "Review of Shakespeare and Fletcher's The Two Noble Kinsmen, Shakespeare's King Edward III, and Lewis Theobald's Double Falsehood (occasionally attributed to Fletcher and Shakespeare) presented by Atlanta's New American Shakespeare Tavern (March-June 2011)." EMLS 16.1 (2012): 18.http://purl.org/emls/16-1/revtav.htm
The Two Noble Kinsmen. Director: Troy Willis. Costume Design: Anné Carol Butler. Lighting Design: Harley Gould. Fight Director: Drew Reeves. Choreography: Katie Grace Morton. Music Written or Arranged by: Debra Peterson, Clarke Weigle, Stuart McDaniel, Amy Vyas. With Andrew Houchins ( Theseus, Duke of Athens), Drew Reeves (Pirithous, an Athenian General), Daniel Parvis (Palamon), Matt Nitchie (Arcite), Paul Hester (Bavian, Wooer to the Jailer’s Daughter), Winslow Thomas (Jailer/Keeper) Clarke Weigle (Doctor), Nicholas Faircloth (Gerrold, a schoolmaster) Mary Saville (Hippolyta) Kathryn Lawson (Emilia), Amee Vyas (Jailer’s Daughter), Stuart McDaniel (Prologue/Epilogue), Debra Peterson (Woman) Eve Butler, Erin Considine, Becky Cormier Finch (Three Queens).
Edward III. Director: Andrew Houchins. Costume Design: Anné Carol Butler. Lighting Design: Harley Gould. Fight Director: Drew Reeves. With Drew Reeves (King Edward III), Matt Felten (Edward, Prince of Wales, his son), John Curran (Lord Audley), Stuart McDaniel (Lodwick, King Edward’s Secretary), William S. Murphey (John the Second, King of France ), Nicholas Faircloth (Charles, Duke of Normandy, his son), Stephen Hanthorn (Philip, his second son), Josie Burgin Lawson (Philippe, Queen of England), Mary Russell (Countess of Salisbury).
Double Falsehood. Director: Andrew Houchins. Costume Designer: Anné Carol Butler. Lighting Design: Mary Ruth Ralston. Fight Choreographer: Drew Reeves. With Daniel Parvis (Duke Angelo / Master of the Flocks), Jeff Watkins (Citizen), Matt Felten (Roderick/Gerald), Jonathan Horne (Henriquez), Jacob York (Don Bernardo / Shepherd), Kelly Criss (Leonora/Maid / Shepherd), Clarke Weigle (Camillo / 1st Gentleman), Nicholas Faircloth (Julio / Violante’s Servant), Mary Russell (Violante).
- The New American Shakespeare Tavern
of Atlanta, Georgia, reached its goal of completing performances of Shakespeare's
entire 39-play canon on March 17, 2011 with their official opening of Edward
III, a play still not included in some editions of the complete works. More
remarkably, the play ran in repertory with The Two Noble Kinsmen, opening
just a week earlier. The Tavern claims to be the only American theatre to have
accomplished performances of the 39-play canon. This enterprise had begun the
previous June with a public notice about a financial crisis that led to the awarding
of a $50,000 challenge grant; the canon completion project emerged amid this
effort to revitalize the financial standing of the company (Rhue). Coming as
it did on the heels, more or less, of Eric Piepenberg's New York Times article
on those who pursue the completion of a personal canon, the Tavern’s announced
project gave me the opportunity to complete my own 39-play canon of attendance
at performances, having seen Shakespeare at two Stratfords, in London, Boston,
Minneapolis, New York and New England, and most recently, in Montgomery,
Alabama.
- When the Tavern announced their
ambitious project, they had yet to mount Henry VIII and Timon of
Athens. Timon (not seen by this reviewer) ran in November 2010, with
Maurice Ralson playing Timon and just three other credited roles, the rest
assigned to an eight-performer "ensemble" playing multiple parts.
More ambitiously, Henry VIII played in repertory with Maxwell Anderson's
Anne of the Thousand Days in October 2010. At the Henry performances,
the audience was greeted with the announcement that the company had completed
the traditional thirty-seven play canon (that is, all plays in the First Folio,
plus Pericles). Just as Henry required
a full commitment to a large cast with very minimal doubling, so too did the
ambitious Two Noble Kinsmen. It was all the more remarkable, then, that Kinsmen
was performed in tandem with the very different yet surprisingly
Shakespearean Edward III. In the midst of preparing this bill, artistic
director Jeff Watkins explained after the performance of Double Falsehood,
the company discovered that the Arden Shakespeare series had published Double
Falsehood, and that the iPhone Shakespeare app lists it as Shakespeare's
fortieth play.[1]
Without delay, the Tavern added Double Falsehood to their summer 2011
repertory, aware that the Royal Shakespeare Company had also announced their
intention to embrace the play (other groups have also staged the work; see
Hammond 123-31; 156-8 and Soloski). In rehearsing the play, Watkins explained
in his pre-show speech, the company came to the conclusion that Double
Falsehood was no more Shakespeare's than the eighteenth century version
that Lewis Theobald directed and published (claiming that it was the "lost"
Cardenio and that he had surveyed three manuscript copies, one of which
was in the "Handwriting of Mr. Downes, the famous Old Prompter"; (qtd.
in Hammond 21). The Tavern thus considers its claim to have performed the
complete canon to be based on the 39-play accomplishment, and in production
gave Double Falsehood a brilliant and campy dismissal. Still, given
that the Arden Shakespeare series now includes the play and that notable
Shakespearean authorities Gary Taylor and Stephen Greenblatt have been involved
in producing their own reconstructed versions of Cardenio, the Tavern's
mounting merits some comment here.
Fig. 1: The Two Noble Kinsmen. Arcite (Matt Nitchie) and Palamon (Daniel Parvis). Photo: Scott King
The Two Noble Kinsmen
- Performing two of the remaining non-Folio
additions to the canon made for an appropriate way to announce the Tavern’s accomplishment.
The Two Noble Kinsmen, securely established as co-authored by
Shakespeare, is a curious blend of Chaucer's The Knight's Tale with a
fascinating subplot about a Jailer's Daughter driven mad by unrequited love for
Palamon. This production rightly followed the established production history in
giving the Jailer's Daughter (Amee Vyas) both strength and charm. Her gradual
descent into madness (with an insane "logic" that rivals Ophelia's
stage time) and her subsequent recovery by the trick of her Wooer pretending to
be Palamon, was performed in such a way as to feel genuinely restorative.
- The two kinsmen, Palamon and
Arcite, were equal centerpieces of the main plot. In this production, Palamon
and Arcite included the audience in their friendship and predicament; many times
they took their non verbal gestures to the house for extra effect. For example,
when they were brought in on stretchers in their second scene, captive and
wounded, Theseus gave the order to treat them well and heal their wounds; in
response, they gave each other a triumphal fist-bump. I thought their
"toying" with the manacles on their writs a bit overdone (at one
point early in their captivity, Arcite slipped one manacle completely off his
wrist, made a double-take to the audience, and then slipped it back on). Equally
awkward was the Daughter's dependence on one prominent prop, a metal file that
seemed uncharacteristically modern. The most appropriate marking of the
cousins' unusual predicament—sworn compatriots until sight of the beautiful
Emilia causes their antagonism—came when they brought their differences to the
height of a formal contest, Arcite supplying and dressing Palamon in stolen
armor. Neither really wanted to defeat the other, so every imaginable
hesitation was inserted for comic yet tension-filled effect. They squared off,
almost gave it up, touched swords, backed away, came at it again, clanged
swords (a solid ring of finely burnished steel rang through the theatre and
hung in the air) until, just when they had begun to get serious, Theseus and his
train appeared and disrupted their secret bout.
- The production ran long; with the
exception of reducing Palamon and Arcite's knights to two apiece instead of
three, the company performed the complete text. Especially rewarding was scene
3.5 in which the Schoolmaster and Morris Dancers present their entertainment to
Theseus and the royal court. The wonderful choreography and music blended the
awkwardness of the "mad as a March hare" Jailer's Daughter and the countryman
in a monkey suit (the Bavian instructed to "carry your tail without
offence / Or scandal to the ladies" [3.5.35-6]) with a robust and
celebratory performance. In this production, the Jailer's daughter did not
become one of the female dancers needed to complete a missing couple (a
possibility hinted at in the text when the dancers lack one of their women [3.5.38]
and when a Countryman later says of the Jailer's Daughter, "If we can get
her dance, we are made again" [3.5.74]); instead, she was a supportive
character who handed out the ribbons for the maypole. The Morris dance and
Maypole celebration provided a robust pre-intermission scene.
Fig. 2: Maypole scene in The Two Noble Kinsmen. Nicholas Faircloth (Gerrold), Amee Vyas (Jailer's Daughter), Paul Hester (Bavian). Photo: Scott King
- Those who have studied or taught the play might have
been underwhelmed by the lack of gravitas in this production's characterization
of Emilia. Kathryn Lawson was elegant in her 2.2 flower scene with the matronly
Debra Peterson a convenient foil as the woman who assists Emilia in gathering
flowers. When the focus turned back to Palamon and Arcite and their spat, we
knew the main plot of the play was finally engaged. The audience erupted into a
perfect, all-comprehending laugh at Palamon's "I saw her first!" Later,
however, Emilia's dilemma over the two portraits of the lovers came off as fraught
and over-shrill. Lawson's portraits of the two kinsmen were tiny lockets on
small chains or ribbons she had draped over the palm of her hand so she could
inspect and cherish each. Peterson played her soliloquy in scene 4.2, (beginning
"Enter Emilia, alone, with two pictures") mostly on the
ground, agitated and almost writhing. Perhaps, though, there is a point to be
made in the fact that Emilia's agony over her inability to choose drives her to
a madness not unlike the madness of Jailer's daughter who by this point is
delusional. Either way, the queen's sister's dignity was restored by the moving
last scene.
- Likewise, there were strengths amid
the minor diversions elsewhere. Early in the play, the three queens of Thebes
chanted and sung their appeal to Theseus, dressed in black and hauntingly
solemn and supplicative. In the scene that begins Act V, the three altars of
the gods were staged simply, with sound effects only, and a single rose in a
vase the only register of Diana's signal to Emilia. (There was no attempt to stage
the silver hind, nor the full rose tree from which a single rose should fall.)
The strength of the cast in the subplot was anchored by the Jailer who stood
out especially in the late scenes. When his Daughter grew most delusional,
imagining the machinations of a sailing ship, she asks "Where's your
compass?" The Jailer affirmed his "Here" (4.1.143) by pounding
his heart and standing firm in support of her directions.
- Many scholars have pointed out the
play’s resonances with Shakespeare's canon: Ophelia is reincarnated as the mad
Jailer's Daughter, who references Desdemona's willow song; the commoners who
group to rehearse and then entertain Theseus during wedding festivities seem a
revisiting of the same device from A Midsummer Night's Dream; the Schoolmaster
Gerrold is a comic echo of another pedant, Holofernes in Love's Labour's
Lost. Another close allusion emerged while I witnessed the action for the
first time: the Jailer's Daughter's concern that a ship in the distance has
tumbled on the rocks (scene 3.4) is richly evocative of Miranda's concern at
the beginning of the Tempest.[2]
When the shipwreck vision re-emerges in her mad scene, and the Jailer's Brother,
his Friend and the Wooer assist in getting her under control, they cooperate by
complying with her commands to manage a ship that needs steering. Her
"Bear for it, master; / Tack about!" was physicalized as she rode her
helpers off, as if on a ship. This moment nicely echoed the promise made by the
Prologue (effectively highlighted with a gesture by Stuart McDaniel), that the
company would, if it were "too ambitious" to aspire to Chaucer, "tack
about / And something do to save us" (26-7); the Prologue's hand gesture
of a tacking ship was thus realized in the group portrait of the Jailer's
daughter riding her way to safety as the group carrying her tacked in a
diagonal weave.
- Equally restorative was the
Jailer's daughter's final scene. Clarke Weigle’s over eager and broad comic performance
as the Doctor might be thought to be in accordance with the scene as written,
as he prompts the Wooer to offer sex to the Daughter as a curative, while she believes
him to be her Palamon. Yet critics find some ambiguity in the text, for the Jailer's
Daughter's last lines are, "But you shall not hurt me. . . . If you do,
love, I'll cry" (5.2.110-11). Amee Vyas convinced her audience that there
was one right way to play the resolution, and that was with the sweet comfort
that her Wooer (embodied by Paul Hester as a diminutive copy, just her size, of
the Palamon of Daniel Parvis) would love her to her satisfaction. The two left
the stage enwrapped in each other's arms: he carried her off with her knees
encircling his upper torso, the two kissing wholeheartedly.
Fig. 3: Amee Vyass as Jailer's Daughter, The Two Noble Kinsmen. Photo: Scott King
- Even though the last scene contained a rushed and
almost garbled expository speech by Drew Reeves as Pirithous explaining the
twist of fate that causes Arcite's horse to fall on him and crush the victor,
the impact of the surprising dénouement was hardly diminished. Especially
powerful was the fierce cry of "Hold, Hold, Hold" at the moment that the
defeated Palamon was slated to have his head chopped by an effectively realistic
battle axe (5.4.40) — it seemed that all who were backstage were screaming the
line, just as the axe was drawn back to strike a blow. Touching stage portraits
included Emilia giving Arcite her farewell kiss and accepting Palamon as the
fate the gods decreed. Harold Bloom has argued that Theseus's final speech must
also be Shakespeare's final speech for the stage (697, 712-13), rather than the
closing lines of The Tempest. Kristen Hall's program essay,
"Shakespeare's Rare Plays" posits the same theory, asking readers
whether they agree that Theseus, not Prospero, was awarded "Shakespeare's
last grand speech for the stage" (10). Stuart McDaniel then had the
unenviable task of holding the audience through the extra-apologetic Epilogue that most editors acknowledge to be Fletcher's.
But his clear diction and earnest delivery connected his summary to what the
attendees had experienced. Despite the complicated syntax of the eighteen-line
epilogue, McDaniel allowed the audience to
absorb the sobering finale so that it could then reward the full ensemble for its
ambitious undertaking.
Edward III
- Edward III leaves
the impression of a rare find, a re-discovered play that has very distinct
Shakespearean imprints. Yet it presents difficulties in production. It is
simpler than most of Shakespeare's histories (scholars such as J. J. M. Tobin point
out that its lack of a comic subplot is an argument against Shakespeare's
authorship; 1733), but its rough edges are glaring. Despite this, the producers
at the Tavern stress in their program notes that the early action associated
with the wooing of the Countess of Salisbury and the later, mostly battle
action, make a unified play. The 1998 New Cambridge edition of the play, edited
by Giorgio Melchiori, is not the only text available; Eric Sams edited the play
for Yale University Press in 1996 and it has also found its way into the second
editions of Shakespeare's complete works published by Oxford University Press, W.
W. Norton and the Riverside Shakespeare. Scholars pursue elaborate word
and phrasing parallels: any half-trained ear will notice the close emotional
link between the Countess of Salisbury sequences and the poet's self criticism
and the lure of the "Dark Lady" in the sonnets. The action of the
latter part of the play is clumsy for the mature histories yet nevertheless
enough of a rough theatricalization of Holinshed that thematic resonances between
this early history and others ascribed to Shakespeare resonate. On stage, this was
especially apparent in the manner in which King John of France, his sons and
couriers were portrayed. The production proved the company's facility with
Shakespeare’s history plays and effectively stressed the contrasts between the
obviously destined-to-lose French and the noble English, who had touching life stories
succinctly embedded in the arc of the battle sequences. William S. Murphey played
the French King John with just enough seriousness at his own importance that
the audience understood him as buffoonish without his overplaying it. A series
of three dire reports from French Heralds was pointedly dramatic, partly due to
the fact that the Heralds were each dressed with a giant fleur de lis
covering the costume front. Repeatedly, it seems, Edward the king challenges
his son, Prince Edward, to prevail in an assignment. Whenever doubt is
expressed, the younger warrior triumphs. The king withholds knighting him until
he has won a battle, but that feat is efficiently accomplished. This production
gave solemnity and high ceremony to the awarding and dressing of Edward in his
armor at the conclusion of 3.3, a useful decision, since Edward may be known as
"the black Prince," but there is little else in the play that
suggests he got the name from his black armor.
Fig. 4: Prince Edward (Matt Felten) and King Edward III (Drew Reeves). Photo: Jeff Watkins
- Most riveting in a series of battle
schemes is the dramatic exposition depicting the action when the sky is
darkened by ravens. This causes the French to cower and the outnumbered English
to persevere. Even though he is without enough arrows for ammunition, Prince
Edward vows to make use of "the ground itself," that it is
"armed with fire-containing flint; command our bows / To hurl away their
pretty-coloured yew, / And to it with stones." (4.6.13-16). One versed in
the traditional canon discovers that the themes in the latter part of the play
form an important bridge between the father-son themes of the Henry VI plays
and the mature and multi-layered conflict between Prince Hal and Henry IV. Based
on Holinshed and William Painter, the text is ragged and presents no obvious
connection to other history plays; however, director Andrew Houchins, in his
program notes, asserts that the chronicle-derived action does contain a strong
theme threaded through the incidents that make up the play: repeatedly "a
person form one high station in life (a King, a father, a Prince) is taught by
a person from a lower station (a son, a commoner, a prisoner) what it is to be
noble and honorable in a time of war." Add to this the Countess of
Salisbury's dramatic lesson to the love-smitten King Edward and his Queen's
last act plea for the lives of the French citizens, and one has the play in a
nutshell.
- The preliminary sequence of action
that is derived from Painter's Palace of Pleasure deals with Edward's
sudden fiery passion for the Countess of Salisbury. He has driven the Scottish
King David away without a fight, but his hot desire comes out of nowhere (and
is echoed elsewhere in Shakespeare by Angelo in Measure for Measure).
The first articulation of his desire is resonant of other lovers sick for a
lady in early comedies. When Edward attempts to dictate a love letter to her, the
scribe to whom he sighs, Lodwick, over-comically played by Stuart Daniel,
reminds us of the Nurse's insinuations about Romeo (or Celia's jolly cynicism
at Rosalind's predicament). Yet the richness of the love imagery and
contortedness of the situation seems to derive from the sonnets. (Edward
employs the Countess's father, Warwick, to demand his daughter break her
marriage vows. Warwick agrees with his daughter's willingness to die rather
than submit, condemning the king with a whole line directly echoing sonnet 94: "Lilies
that fester smell far worse than weeds" (2.1.451). But the Countess's
own, bold, coup de théâtre, comes when she seems to have no other
recourse: King Edward insinuates that their love is one that necessitates the
death of both their spouses, so, in this production, Mary Russell as the Countess
dramatically drew from a concealed holster two huge daggers, one from each hip,
proclaiming them to be her "wedding knives: / Take thou the one, and with
it kill thy queen, / ... And with this other I'll dispatch my love" (2.2.172-3,
174). She then forces the king to give up his folly by threatening to stab herself.
The sudden resolution of the King's dilemma--complete acceptance of her moral
rejection of his effrontery--is as much an awkward twist as the manner in which
Shakespeare's resolution is different from his source in the Palace of
Pleasure. Yet this production handled the sudden lesson for the King in a
convincing way: he immediately called all forward to witness his shame and
conversion, and the earnestness of Drew Reeves' acceptance of his
transgression conveyed powerfully his ability to own up to his faults.
Fig. 5: King Edward III. Drew Reeves as the title character and Mary Russell as Countess of Salisbury. Photo: Jeff Watkins
- Any production of even a less familiar
play can reveal missed opportunities. The elder knight Audley, played effectively
by John Curran and serving as Prince Edward's mentor throughout, movingly asks
to be taken to the king when he has been wounded and is close to death. Though Audley
is present in the final tableau, Shakespeare has not scripted any reunion and
this production underplayed his presence. The six citizens of Calais that
appeal to Edward's mercy were reduced to two. However, other opportunities were
not missed: Queen Philippe's fifth act presence is yet another surprise in the
structure of the play, for no mention of her precedes her arrival. Yet Josie
Burgin Lawson gave her an effective role in persuading her king Edward to have
mercy on the citizens. She later emoted persuasively in anticipating her son's
defeat and then celebrating his victory.
- On the whole this production was a
solid success. Drew Reeves acquitted himself admirably as Edward, after a weak
performance as Pirithous in Kinsmen. Matt Felten as Prince Edward bore a
filial resemblance to Reeves and took on the challenges assigned him with
powerful assertions that made the play function as a celebration of England's
glory.
Fig. 6: Final tableau, King Edward III. The French princes and King John kneeling; King Edward, Queen and Prince Edward front right. Photo: Jeff Watkins
Double Falsehood
- That the Tavern achieved its
original goal of completing the 39 play canon and then elected to stage the
contested play Double Falsehood as a coda, is a testament to their
superlative company style and rich ensemble of performers and directors.
- The director and ensemble took the
approach of letting the play as originally published speak for itself. This is
in contrast to Shakespeare scholars Stephen Greenblatt and Gary Taylor, who
have each experimented with expanded texts that set the play which Lewis Theobald
claimed in the 1720s was the lost Shakespeare and Fletcher's Cardenio
within a constructed wider context. These adaptations resort to creating something
of a frame around the action of the text, either a modern scenario about
experiments in rehearsing the apocryphal play, or an attempt to re-situate the
action within the wider narrative of Don Quixote. Names in these
expanded adaptations revert to those in Cervantes, presumably because a brief
record ties Shakespeare and Fletcher to a listing for the promptbook "The
History of Cardenio" in 1653 and because the scholars assume they are being
true to Shakespeare in giving the play more of a framing action or subplot (Hammond
78-85, 124-31). The Tavern production, by contrast, simplified the action,
sometimes engaged in doubling, and embraced both the Spanish setting of the
play and Theobald's invented names. Thus, this Tavern presentation ignores the Don
Quixote connection or any mention of the Cervantes version of the character
Cardenio, here and in Theobald rechristened Julio). It follows Theobald’s plot,
in which the prodigal son Henriquez takes advantage of getting his good friend
Julio called to court so he can make arrangements to court Julio's lover,
Leonora. Meanwhile he takes advantage physically of the commoner Violante. Henriquez's
older brother Roderick manages to sort out the complications --which includes
Violante disguised as a shepherd and Leonora retreating within a convent--and
bring the offending brother to true repentance.
Fig. 7: Jonathan Horne as Henriquez in Double Falsehood. Photo: Jeff Watkins
- The production emphasized artifice.
Jonathan Horne played Henriquez with the flare of a Faustian Zorro, dressed in
a redlined cape and making love to his long stemmed red rose when he had no
woman handy. The performers of the distressed females, along with others in the
cast, sometimes played their speeches meant for each other in a false pose,
half-turned to the audience, thus heightening the artificial conventions of the
eighteenth century theatre. Less successful for the production's style were
certain decisions in doubling. Most of these choices allowed for servants and
lesser roles to be efficiently dispatched, and the shepherd atmosphere of the
second half of the production was filled out nicely with effective doubling.
However, Duke Angelo (Daniel Parvis) doubled as Master of the Flocks. This
character emerges out of the strange tonality of the pastoral and detects the
real sex of the disguised shepherd and proceeds to accost the "lad"
in disguise, Violante, before being quickly interrupted. Even though Parvis was
well enough altered for his second role, the mirroring in the Master of the
Flocks of the father whose son has also "violated" Violante made me wonder
the doubling was partly intended to underscore the cliché, "Like father,
like son." Yet, to his credit, the director dealt with rather than excised
the difficulty of this part of the text. The surprise sexual advances were
appropriately exaggerated so that we still knew we were in the comic world of
the play's madcap misadventures.
- One of the cleverest aspects of
this production was that everyone who pronounced the Spanish “Julio” over-pronounced
the "h" of the first consonant sound, adding a hard "c" to
form "(K)hoooolio," forming a highly entertaining running gag. Whether
lover, enemy, father, or the character referring to himself in the third person, all over-enunciated
"Julio" to show a rich range of emotions. But the production made it
clear, in Nicholas Faircloth's characterization of the lovable bloke who is
taken advantage of, that he truly deserved to recover his lady. (Let no
production attempt to rechristen this character Cardenio again!)
Fig. 8: Nicholas Faircloth as Julio and Kelly Criss as Leonora, also doubling as Shepherd. Photo: Jeff Watkins
- One sight gag also added clarity to
the frantic plot. When the action moved to the rural setting for the latter
half (acts 4 and 5, after the intermission), we "saw" Roderick give Henriquez
the idea for infiltrating the convent where Leonora has taken refuge. The
brothers did not simply arrive at the idea independently, as the text suggests
("To feign a corpse ... We must pretend we do transport a body / As 'twere
to's funeral ... a vacant hearse pass'd by / This for a price we'll hire, to
put our scheme into act" [4.2.234-243]) Instead, they actually witnessed
a dead body being carried into the convent on a bier, and the lines they
exchanged were supercharged with comic emphasis. Equally entertaining for those
discovering the play as a new experience were minor roles, especially those of
the fathers of the principals. The production permitted Don Bernado all the
range of a typical Shakespearean father, misguided in his first instincts and
so insisting on his daughter Leonora's marriage to Henriquez, but corrected of
his disabuse by the end. Especially prominent in the myopic father category was
the acting of Clarke Weigle as Julio's father Camillo, who was comically crotchety,
but --when he discovered his son to have been restored-- effusively gracious.
Fig. 9: Three fathers of Double Falsehood: Don Bernard (Jacob York), Duke Angelo (Daniel Parvis), Camillo (Clarke Weigle). Photo: Jeff Watkins
- Although the "camp" of
the production style and the wild twists and turns of the plot assured the
audience that the performers were in command of their material, it would be
difficult for any viewer with some experience of the full canon to experience
this production and believe the text had origins in Shakespeare. As such, it
contrasts with the unsophisticated popular references to Double Falsehood as
a new Shakespeare play that have emerged in the wake of the play’s increasing
fame. One troubling development in authorship attribution, one addressed by
Artistic Director Jeff Watkins in his welcome speech to this production, is
that applications on portable electronic devices such as the iPhone and Nook
are presenting Double Falsehood as if it is Shakespeare, with no
front matter, nor any explanation of the curious history of its emergence as a highly
contested lost text, long after previous generations had considered and
rejected its status.
Fig. 10: Climactic action: Double Falsehood. Photo: Jeff Watkins
Epilogue
- A word on the performance style and atmosphere of the Shakespeare Tavern: A simplified dinner menu, with choices served while going through a cafeteria line, puts this company into the category of “dinner theatre.” However, the discipline of performance venue, the company's commitment to an "original practices" performance style, and the dedicated volunteer servers keep the emphasis on the show. This reviewer saw one production two decades ago and recognized its simple yet straightforward approach to performing Shakespeare had important merits. But it was a true delight to rediscover the company in its vibrant strength in an age when many Shakespeare festivals and companies sprinkle their offerings with so much that is not Shakespeare that it becomes hard to justify their retention of the name. The company is also to be commended for offering Shakespeare to school audiences. (The same 2010-2011season that completed the canon with the challenges of Henry VIII, Timon, Kinsmen, Edward III was also offering Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, primarily as school matinees.) At the time of writing, the Tavern's next season comes with the announcement that the company will repeat their feat of performing the entire canon, this time genre by genre, in rough chronological order, with the early comedies announced as the first performed. Given the strength of shows in the obscured and marginalized works of the canon, the Tavern makes a superlative destination vacation for those who crave the real thing--and have the discernment to appreciate the difference.
Works Consulted
Note: act, scene and line references to The Two Noble Kinsmen and Edward III conform to Blakemore and Tobin; those to Double Falsehood conform to Hammond.
- Bloom, Harold. "The Two Noble Kinsmen." Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. 693-713.
- Evans, G. Blakemore and J. J. M. Tobin, eds. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
- Hall, Kristin. "Shakespeare's Rare Plays: Two Noble Kinsmen, Edward III”. Program for The Two Noble Kinsmen and Edward II, New American Shakespeare Tavern. March 2011. 8-11.
- Hammond, Brean, ed. Double Falsehood or The Distressed Lovers. Arden Shakespeare. London: Methuen, 2010.
- Holman, Curt. "Shakespeare Tavern Sets Record by Completing Bard's Canon." 15 Mar. 2011. Creative Loafing Atlanta. Available:<http://clatl.com/atlanta/shakespeare-tavern-sets-records-by completing-the bards-canon/Content?oid=2942870>.
- Melchiori, Giorgio, ed. King Edward III. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1998.
- New American Shakespeare Tavern (aka) Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern. <http://www.shakespearetavern.com/index >. Website includes cast lists for entire 2010-2010 season at this page: <http://www.shakespearetavern.com/index.php?/performances/season_overview/season/2010_2011_season/>.
- Piepenberg, Eric. "Quixotes of the Theater, Chasing Complete Works." New York Times. 15. Jan. 2010. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/theater/16completists.html>
- Potter, Lois, ed. The Two Noble Kinsmen. Arden Shakespeare. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1997.
- Proudfoot, Richard. "Canon." In Shakespeare: Text Stage, Canon. Arden Shakespeare. London: Thomson Learning, 2001. Print. 73-96.
- Ruhe, Pierre. "Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern Approaches Bard's Complete Works." Atlanta Journal Constitution. 25 June 2010. Available: Access Atlanta <http://www.accessatlanta.com/atlanta-events/atlanta-shakespeare-tavern-approaches-557451.html>.
- Sams, Eric, ed. Shakespeare's Edward III. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1996.
- Soloski, Alexis."A Lost Shakespeare? It's a Mystery." New York Times. 10 Mar. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/theater/disputed-shakespeare-play-at-classic-stage-company.html>.
- Tobin, J.J.M. Introduction to Edward III. In The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans and J. J. M. Tobin, 2nd. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. 1732-4.
