Shakespeare Magazine 03

At last! A magazine with all the Will in the world 

SHAKESPEARE 

FREE 

Issue 3 

Hail 

Cleopatra! 

A screen history 

of Shakespeare’s 

most fascinating 

femme fatale 

South 

America 

Shakes! 

The Shakespeare 

Guide to Brazil 

Unto the 

Breach 

Love, war and 

Henry V with 

the Globe’s 

Jamie Parker 

The 

Politics of 

Power 

Staging Henry IV 

in Washington DC 

Shakesbeard! 

One actor’s amazing 

journey of Bard-related 

facial hair 

Celebrating 

The life and works of 

William Shakespeare

Hour-Long Shakespeare 

expertly abridged for performance and as an introduction to Shakespeare’s greatest plays 

VOL ONE 

Henry IV, Part 1, Henry V AND Richard III 

VOL TWO 

Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth AND Julius Caesar 

‘Matthew Jenkinson’s careful alterations of some of Shakespeare’s 

most important plays may give us less than 50% of each play’s 

lines, but they convey far more than that percentage of each play’s 

theatrical power. Moreover, they belong 100% to the highest 

traditions of both teaching and performing Shakespeare’s plays’. 

Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the 

Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon- 

Avon, and Professor of Shakespeare 

Studies, University of Birmingham 

Order now from 

www.johncattbookshop.com 

Coming soon: Vol 3: A Midsummer 

Night’s Dream, 

Twelfth Night and 

The Tempest

Welcome 

Welcome 

to Issue 3 of Shakespeare Magazine 

Photo: David Hammonds 

This issue was originally released in July 2014. The Rio 

World Cup was in progress, so we came up with a cover 

design inspired by Brazil’s national colours. This was 

intended to flag up our story on Shakespeare’s cultural 

influence in Brazil, you see. But sadly, the issue was 

nowhere near as successful as the ones that came before and 

after. With hindsight, I can understand now that when 

people looked at that cover they just didn’t see Shakespeare. 

And that’s a shame, because I think this issue contains some of 

our very best work. And I feel that I let down my contributors by not 

finding them a bigger audience. 

So here we are again, 17 months later. It’s the same issue, but it has 

an all-new cover, one that leaves you in no doubt that we’re all about 

The Bard. 

Inside you’ll find the aforementioned Shakespeare Guide to Brazil 

and a wealth of other features including a history of Shakespeare’s 

Cleopatra on screen, a rousing interview with Globe actor Jamie Parker, 

and a beautiful collection of French Shakespeare costumes. 

If you’ve already read this one, then I thank you for joining us again. 

If it’s your first time, then I hope you’ll read it avidly and share it with 

your friends. 

But above all, enjoy your magazine. 

Pat Reid, Founder & Editor 

SHAKESPEARE magazine 3

At last! A magazine with all the Will in the world 

SHAKESPEARE 

FREE 

Issue 3 

Contents 

Hail 

Cleopatra! 

A screen history 

of Shakespeare’s 

most fascinating 

femme fatale 

South 

America 

Shakes! 

The Shakespeare 

Guide to Brazil 

Celebrating 

The life and works of 

William Shakespeare 

Unto the 

Breach 

Love, war and 

Henry V with 

the Globe’s 

Jamie Parker 

The 

Politics of 

Power 

Staging Henry IV 

in Washington DC 

Shakesbeard! 

One actor’s amazing 

journey of Bard-related 

facial hair 

Shakespeare Magazine 

Issue Three 

July 2014 

Founder & Editor 

Pat Reid 

Art Editor 

Paul McIntyre 

Staff Writers 

Mary Finch 

Brooke Thomas 

Writers 

Francesca Amendolia 

Zoe Bramley 

Tony Howard 

Livia Lakomy 

Kate Madison 

Helen Mears 

Christopher Tomkinson 

Photography 

Piper Williams 

Thank You 

Mrs Mary Reid 

Mr Peter Robinson 

Web design 

David Hammonds 

Contact Us 

shakespearemag@outlook.com 

Twitter 

@UKShakespeare 

Website 

www.shakespearemagazine.com 

Much ado about Rio 6 

“There’s an awful lot of coffee in Brazil,” sang Frank Sinatra. And, as we 

discovered, there’s also a decent amount of Shakespeare. 

 

4 SHAKESPEARE magazine

Contents 

Screen siren 14 

Quite possibly the most famous woman in recorded history, Cleopatra came 

to Shakespeare via Plutarch, and to 20th century audiences via cinema and TV... 

 

“Beard to 

beard...” 24 

One actor. Several Shakespearean 

roles. And a staggering amount of 

facial hair. 

 

Washington 

heights 28 

For 20 years, director Michael Kahn 

dreamed of staging Henry IV, Parts 

1 and 2 in the US capital. In 2014 he 

made it happen. 

 

The history 

man 34 

From Hal to Henry to Hamlet, 

ex-History Boy Jamie Parker is the 

thinking man as actor. 

 

“See you these 

clothes?” 40 

There are some things the French do 

better than anyone else. Wine, cheese, 

kings named Louis... and absolutely 

stunning Shakespeare costumes. 

 


The Shakespeare Guide to Brazil 


The Shakespeare Guide to Brazil 

“Shakespeare is now well 

on his way to becoming a 

national treasure in Brazil” 

We may have crashed 

out of the World Cup in 

less than glorious style, 

but one English player 

has scored big in Rio and 

beyond. Livia Lakomy 

presents The Shakespeare 

Guide to Brazil! 

 



!hakespeare and Brazil. Brazil and Shakespeare. For all the talk of the 

Bard’s universality, it took some 200 years after his death for these words 

to fit together. There is no indication that Shakespeare had ever heard of 

Brazil – back then just a colony of Portugal – or that he thought of that 

part of the world as anything more than ‘the West Indies’, a continent of 

Calibans. In the past century, however, Brazilians have adapted – and 

adopted – Shakespeare enough times and with sufficient quality that he 

is now well on his way to becoming a national treasure. 

Actor and theatre impresario 

 

produce and act in a Brazilian 

adaptation of the Bard. 



The Real Theatro 

São João was the 

 

inaugurated in1813. 

 

Jean-Baptiste Debret. 

.'+-)/(##0-"1 

William Shakespeare had long been 

considered immortal before he made his 

mark on the Brazilian stage. In fact, there was 

little happening worthy of note on Brazilian 

stages before the Portuguese royal family 

ran away from Napoleon and settled in Rio 

de Janeiro in 1808. It was actor and theatre 

impresario João Caetano who, starting in 

1835, mounted the first national productions 

of Hamlet, Othello and company and made 

them a hit. It was through his work that the 

words Shakespeare and Brazil started going 

together. 

.#1+)%2)!"'21('+%#2 

The Shakespeare known in Brazil throughout 

the 1830s and ’40s had very little to do 

with the one born in Stratford-upon- 

Avon. The translations used as basis for the 

performances had been made not from the 

English originals, but from less-than-faithful 

French texts. Instead of Shakespeare’s wit 

and wisdom, audiences were presented 

with watered-down melodramas. Direct 

translations started being published only in 

the 1930s. But by the end of the century, 

readers and performers could chose from 

a variety of translations of almost all of his 

plays. 

From the Canadian 

Slings & Arrows to the 

Brazilian Som e Fúria 

a mini-series directed 

 

Fernando Meirelle. 

“Whenever Shakespeare is 

disguised as something else, he 

becomes a hit in Brazil” 

!"#$%&'()*+,-((# 

Who knew Shakespeare had the answer 

for one of Brazil’s most persisting literary 

questions? For decades, readers and critics 

have wondered about Dom Casmurro, 

the 1899 literary masterpiece by Machado 

de Assis. Did heroine Capitu really cheat 

on narrator Bento Santiago? According to 

Bento, yes – she was Desdemona, but guilty. 

Even though Machado openly uses Othello 

as a source, it was only in the 1960s that 

American critic Helen Caldwell made the link 

explicit and therefore made the case not only 

for Capitu but also for Shakespeare’s seminal 

impact on Brazilian literature. 



“Writing about 

football, Nelson 

Rodrigues made 

every match 

into a battle of 

Shakespearean 

proportions, as well 

as a metaphor for 

life” 

 

 

Tarsila do Amaral) coined the 

 



.,(/,'0($10--*20(*+3 

It seems logical that master wordsmith 

William Shakespeare would inspire great 

wordplay. Poet and cultural agitator Oswald 

de Andrade, in a brilliant turn of phrase, 

appropriated from him when defining the 

modernist movement he helped create in 

the 1920s: “Tupi or not Tupi, that is the 

question.” By mentioning the native-Brazilian 

tribe of the Tupis, he was asking the country 

an existential question worthy of Hamlet: 

what constitutes Brazilian art? The answer: 

anything that can be cannibalised and made 

your own, including 16th century English 

playwrights. 

Nothing to do with 

 

these images (from 

an exhibition of 

 

 

Brazil’s magic and 

 

!"#$%&'()$*+$'&,-) 

Though Shakespeare is incomparable, 

every country must have a playwright they 

can claim as their own Bard. In Brazil, the 

title deservedly goes to Nelson Rodrigues. 

Among other things, Rodrigues was a 

football aficionado. Writing about the 

beautiful game, he made every match into a 

battle of Shakespearean proportions, as well 

as a metaphor for life. Would Shakespeare 

approve? Well, he was the one who once 

wrote: “Am I so round with you as you 

with me, that like a football you do spurn 

me thus?” 



!"#$%"&'#$()*+ 

One would like to call her our ‘Dark Lady’ 

but in her 90th year of life, Brazil’s greatest 

eminence in all things Shakespearean, 

Barbara Heliodora, gives the impression of 

having always been white-haired – and wise. 

Translator, critic, essayist and academic, she 

once noted that “Portugal’s lack of theatrical 

tradition was passed on to Brazil. The 

Americans were colonised like us, but they 

got to inherit Shakespeare and company 

from their colonisers.” In her decades of work 

Heliodora has taken it upon herself to change 

this story. 

Soap opera 

e a Rosa: Petruchio 

and Catarina get 

married in 1920s 

Brazil. 

,$(&-&./$01)2 

Soap operas are one of Brazil’s biggest exports 

and it’s no surprise that many of their plots 

come from Shakespeare. Perhaps the most 

obvious and beloved example is that of 

2000’s O Cravo e a Rosa which, in spite 

of its title (literally ‘The Carnation and the 

Rose’), owes its main plot to The Taming 

of the Shrew. Without bothering to change 

character names, the action is transposed 

to 1920s Brazil. The soap was such a hit 

that it has already been re-aired twice in the 

appropriately named programme Worth 

Seeing It Again. 



!"#$%&'$%&(#)* 

It seems that whenever Shakespeare is 

disguised as something else, he becomes a hit 

in Brazil. As soon as his name is brought up 

in the actual plot, however, his reputation 

for being ‘too difficult’ gets in the way of 

popular acclaim. An example is the 2009 TV 

mini-series Som & Fúria, based on Canada’s 

excellent Slings & Arrows. Directed by Oscar 

nominee Fernando Meirelles, and doing its 

best to adapt Shakespeare to Brazilian reality, 

it just wasn’t popular enough to warrant a 

second season. But you should check out the 

DVD box-set. 

+&$,-&./"0, 

Following in Shakespeare’s footsteps – in his 

theatrical entrepreneur version – a Brazilian 

producer aims to build his own replica of the 

Globe Theatre by 2016, a project reportedly 

approved by Shakespeare’s Globe in London. 

His plans include not only the playhouse, but 

an entire cultural centre that will promote a 

series of events and festivals. If all the world’s 

a stage, why not a Globe stage in the Brazilian 

countryside? It certainly bodes well for the 

future of Brazil’s captivating cultural romance 

with Shakespeare. 

 

Barbara Heliodora: decades of work making 

Shakespeare accessible to Brazilians. 

 

 

go to the circus in Brazil. 

12+3454+6&!7+89!:9+29&;65469 

It has never been easier to fall in love with Shakespeare’s 

work – it seems to be everywhere. A simple internet search 

will result in his complete works, numerous adaptations and 

basically all the information you need. That is, of course, if 

you are fluent in English – which most Brazilians aren’t. To 

remedy this situation, several websites have been created in 

the past few years to make information about Shakespeare 

available in Portuguese. Some examples are Instituto 

Shakespeare http://www.institutoshakespeare.com.br and 

Shakespeare Digital http://www.shakespearedigitalbrasil. 

com.br 

One of the web’s best sources for performances of 

Shakespeare is MIT’s Global Shakespeare Video & 

Performance Archive. Alongside adaptations from around 

the globe, Brazil is very well represented and, of the two 

dozen or so archives available, the best known is of Grupo 

Galpão’s Romeo and Juliet, performed at Shakespeare’s 

Globe Theatre. This performance exemplifies the approach 

Brazilians take to Shakespeare – make it your own. Also 

worth a look on the website are Companhia Bufomecânica, 

Nós do Morro and Clowns de Shakespeare. 

http://globalshakespeares.mit 


Cleopatra 

Screen 

Carry on Cleo: 

Cabaret performer 

Meow Meow 

channels Cleopatra 

in this recent image. 


Cleopatra 

Capricious, complex and 

endlessly fascinating, Cleopatra 

is the most challenging of 

Shakespeare heroines. 

Tony Howard explores cinema 

and television’s many attempts 

to capture her elusive essence. 

 


Cleopatra 

Cleopatra depicted in 

an 1888 oil painting 

by John William 

Waterhouse. 

n 1970 Charlton Heston asked Orson Welles to direct him in 

a film of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. 

Orson: “Do you have a great Cleopatra?” 

Charlton: “We’ll pick an actress and you make her great.” 

Orson: “Believe me, if you don’t find a great Cleopatra, you 

can’t do this play.” 

Some Shakespeare plays, like Macbeth and Hamlet, have 

been filmed again and again. But not this one. Why? 


Cleopatra 

Eve Best as Cleopatra and Clive 

Wood as Antony in Jonathan 

Munby’s Antony and Cleopatra 

at Shakespeare’s Globe. 

Cleopatra fascinated late-Victorian painters 

and theatre managers alike. She’s at the heart 

of countless opulent paintings drenched 

in eroticism, orientalism and late-imperial 

splendour. The actresses who played 

Cleopatra – and drew crowds in to see her 

boudoir – included in 1891 the Prince of 

Wales’ mistress Lily Langtry, which blurred 

the line between scandal and art. Inevitably, 

film directors became fascinated too. 

Cleopatra: the movie 

From the moment that pictures could 

move, Cleopatra became a fantasy figure for 

spectators in the dark. Her mummy came 

to life in a Méliès short in 1899. Later the 

‘vamp’ Theda Bara played her in a silent 

epic based on a French drama by Victorien 

Sardou and a red-blooded H. Rider Haggard 

novel, plus some moments suggested by 

Shakespeare. 

Films about Cleopatra and her last lover 

always recall Shakespeare slightly because he 

followed his historical source, Plutarch’s Life 

of Antony, so closely and made its images 

iconic. But of course wordless silent cinema 

could only mimic scraps of the ‘infinite 

variety’ of Shakespeare’s Queen. It could offer 

passion, suffering and splendour but not her 

intelligence and wit. And as the Italian film 

mogul Carlo Ponti warned Charlton Heston, 

“It’s a poem play.” 

Even when sound came in, poetry 

“Charlton Heston reaffirmed 

the old theatre myth that 

Cleopatra was an impossible 

role, in which any actress 

must fail” 

frightened film-makers. In Cleopatra (1934) 

Claudette Colbert was delightfully playful 

and ironic, but her director Cecil B DeMille 

still relied on spectacle to make his mark. So 

instead of hearing Enobarbus’ great speech 

“The barge she sat in...”, moviegoers saw an 

astonishing symbolic sequence inspired by it. 

While men whipped leopard-skinned dancing 

girls, Cleopatra wined and dined Antony 

inside the massive uterine interior of her ship. 

As their passion mounted, its inner walls slid 

into slow rhythmic life. A drummer pounded. 

Tiered rows of oars pulsed back and forward. 

Symphonic music soared. 

Many Shakespeare plays were filmed in 

the years that followed, but not Antony and 

Cleopatra. Yet Charlton Heston called it 


Cleopatra 

“After a century of male directors, two eminent 

Cleopatras took control of the play – Janet Suzman 

and Vanessa Redgrave both directed it twice” 

“Shakespeare’s best screenplay”. The attraction 

of this empire-toppling romance was 

especially obvious to a star who’d made his 

name in Biblical epics, so when Orson Welles 

said no, Heston directed it himself – and used 

discarded battle footage from Ben Hur. 

Antony: the epic 

Though Heston’s Antony and Cleopatra 

(1971) is little-known, in some ways he did 

a commendable job. His script provided a 

more direct narrative than Shakespeare’s. 

For instance, he gave Enobarbus several 

minor characters’ speeches to strengthen 

his choric role, and when Antony overhears 

the great ‘barge’ speech it drives him to fly 

Turkish star Zerrin 

Tekindor as Cleopatra 

at Shakespeare’s Globe, 

2012. 

to Cleopatra. It’s a shock-cut transition that 

splits the film and the world in two. 

The casting? Heston first thought 

of movie stars for Cleopatra, including 

Sophia Loren and Ann Bancroft from The 

Graduate – “I don’t know if she’s ever done 

Shakespeare”. He rejected “the new girl” 

Glenda Jackson, who certainly had “done 

Shakespeare” (“She’s good, but not right 

for Cleopatra”) and instead he settled on 

the inexperienced Hildegard Neil. Heston’s 

published journals give ambiguous insights 

into his priorities and his sense of the role’s 

demands. “She can read verse, she can act...” 

“...I couldn’t tell whether she’s quite up to 

acting Cleopatra, but she seems to have the 


Cleopatra 

requisite erotic X.” After screen tests, his 

producers had their doubts. “Maybe so,” 

he wrote, “but I can’t wait for the perfect 

Cleopatra. Now is the time for me to play 

Antony.” Ignoring Orson Welles’ advice, he 

also ignored the demands and the complexity 

of the role. 

Heston devised some powerful action 

sequences to demonstrate Antony’s greatness 

– he fights an army single-handed, he and 

his horse plummet down a rock face, and 

while he negotiates with Octavius Caesar 

they watch two gladiators fight to the death. 

At times his passion for Cleopatra registers 

as brutal – he hits her – in fact almost 

insane. This is Antony’s tragedy, a study of 

humourless obsession. But Heston paid no 

such attention to his marginalised and undercast 

Queen. Hildegard Neil’s scenes are played 

out flirtily in a half-empty set. The basic 

camera set-ups and reaction-shots favour him, 

not her. And – crucially – she dies beside 

Heston’s Antony, not alone with her women. 

Theda Bara infamously 

played Cleopatra in a 

 

Reviews were bad. When the film couldn’t 

find a distributor in America, Heston 

considered a bizarre proposal to “reshoot the 

role of Cleopatra”. It offered “the nagging 

possibility of saving my lovely project.” “My 

lovely project” is the most revealing critique 

of this film. 

In one sense Heston’s approach wasn’t 

uncommon. He reaffirmed the old theatre 

myth that Cleopatra’s infinite variety made 

her an impossible role, in which any actress 

must fail. Laurence Olivier found it a 

problem that Antony, wavering unpredictably 

between Egypt and Rome, is only seen in 

decline. Typically and unsurprisingly, then, 

Stratford avoided Antony and Cleopatra 

from 1953 to 1972, the National from 1963 

to 1987. 

But meanwhile two solutions developed. 

To present Antony and Cleopatra as a sequel 

to Julius Caesar, so that we and Antony are 

haunted by memories of his triumphs there. 

And to treat this play as a study of character, 

of mutual infatuation in fading middleage. 

Putting it differently, the solution was 

television. 

Cleopatra in the house 

The TV screen proved itself this sprawling 

tragedy’s perfect home – unspectacular but 

intimate, more ‘real’. Two fine anti-romantic 

BBC versions portrayed Mary Morris (1963) 

and Jane Lapotaire (1981) as powerful and 

political mature women, grimly conscious of 

passing time. Their Antonies became pitiful – 

ashamed of their own weakness, and doomed. 

In 1963 Peter Dews edited three of 

Shakespeare’s Roman plays into a BBC 

serial called The Spread of the Eagle. Mary 

Morris, who had already been an actress for 

nearly 40 years, created a weather-beaten but 

imperious ruler, contemptuous of Rome. 

This monochrome small-screen Egypt (the 

final episode is on the BFI’s Screenonline 

website www.screenonline.org.uk) is a harsh 

enclave where the only beauty comes from 

the language. After nine 50-minute episodes 

tracing Rome’s rise from a small town 

(Coriolanus) into an imperial dictatorship, 

the death of Morris’s Cleopatra marks the end 


Cleopatra 

“A Seductress. 

Francesca recently 

played Cleopatra 

in Antony and 

Cleopatra (Harrisburg 

Shakespeare Company, 

Pennsylvania, USA) 

A Sorceress. 

A Witch...” 

Actress Francesca Amendolia 

explores the illusion and reality 

of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. 

“Cleopatra, that ‘triple-turned whore’, carries a 

lot of baggage. Those straight-road-building 

Romans could not encompass her, so they 

trash-talked her, their histories reducing her 

to an Eastern seductress, a sorceress, a witch. 

Shakespeare had only Roman sources, yet 

he saw through Roman fear and made 

her a still point in a whirling world of 

political change. Throughout the play, 

Antony and Octavius nervously vie 

for power while Cleo revels in her 

own authority. She is well-educated, 

powerful, passionate, sexual – and 

she owns every bit of it. Cleopatra 

is what every woman, every 

person, should aspire to be 

– fully and entirely herself, 

without apology.” 

Photo: Brianna Dow 


Cleopatra 

 

of a world. Years later, Antony and Cleopatra 

was the first play Jonathan Miller directed 

for the BBC TV Complete Shakespeare 

series. He took the whole project over, 

determined not to mimic Hollywood on the 

cheap (particularly after a disastrous Romeo 

and Juliet in a plywood Verona). Miller 

domesticated Antony and Cleopatra. 

Jane Lapotaire, then best known for 

playing Edith Piaf, stressed that the essential 

thing about Cleopatra was “her great 

charisma and intelligence”, her “inventiveness 

and excitement”. Her Antony, Colin Blakely, 

added: “Let’s face it, they are not really the 

most beautiful young couple in the world any 

more – except to each other.” 

Miller offered a Renaissance vision of 

Egypt and Rome. He based the production 

on works of art, especially by Veronese, 

and it became a series of late-Renaissance 

paintings come to life (limited life – there’s 

hardly any physical action). Here are glowing, 

chiaroscuro portraits of lived-in faces; great 

men and women are crammed into tiny 

rooms; the sea-battle is replaced by a painting 

and quotations from Plutarch. Miller exploits 

the camera’s power to break in on intimacy, so 

the opening scene is whispered (“If it be love 

indeed, tell me how much”) during a public 

procession. Lapotaire’s Queen mischievously 

undermines Antony’s struggle to maintain his 

dignity. In Miller’s interpretation, we begin 

close to the start of their relationship. This 

Antony wants to escape, and thinks he can. 

Miller’s team give each snatch of dialogue, 

each muttered confession or quarrel, great 

force. The text is understood – in fact 

characters are allowed to be inarticulate, 

searching for words instead of Reciting 

Verse. These lovers are a distraught and 

helpless couple – unable to control events or 

themselves, panicked into outrageous acts and 

then “frighted out of fear”. When Lapotaire’s 

Cleopatra picks up the asp, we see horror in 

her eyes, and then release. 

This emotional realism irritated many 

Joaquina Kalukango 

(front) as Cleopatra 

in the 2013 RSC 

production. 

critics – Antony and Cleopatra became the 

greatest soap of all time – and it’s true that 

Miller’s understated approach suppressed 

dramatic rhythm and political conflict. 

Another strategy for screening Shakespeare, 

of course, is to record a theatre performance. 

Can that work here? In 1972 Trevor Nunn at 

the RSC borrowed The Spread of the Eagle’s 

idea of staging the Roman plays as a cycle, 

and then adapted his Antony and Cleopatra 

for TV in a stripped-down, tightly-focused 

style, with little but the actors in white space 

or darkness. 

The RSC had the advantage of a powerful 

cast who’d played their roles for two seasons, 

and a visual style which surrounded them 

with blazing light. This evoked Egypt’s 

heat yet suggested transcendence. Less 

was more. Janet Suzman’s now-legendary 

Cleopatra was watchful, alluring and 

supremely self-confident – a passionate 

performer. The production looks dated now, 

with its museum-shop images of togas and 

Tutankhamen’s tomb, but it suggests grandeur 

“Wordless silent cinema could only mimic scraps 

of the ‘infinite variety’ of Shakespeare’s Queen” 


Cleopatra 

from the first moment when Antony and 

Cleopatra emerge dressed as gods. 

Ever since, Trevor Nunn’s minimalism has 

influenced most small-screen Shakespeare. 

His Antony and Cleopatra was politically 

significant as well. For the first time, a 

British Shakespearean production employed 

a substantial number of non-white actors 

(one was the young Joseph Marcell, currently 

touring as the Globe’s King Lear). This was 

important, and this continent-spanning 

drama remains a register of British theatre’s 

willingness to embrace wider ethnicities. 

In 1991 Yvonne Brewster’s Talawa Theatre 

presented an all-black production with Dona 

Croll as Cleopatra. Croll’s successors include 

such brilliant actresses as Cathy Tyson (1998), 

Josette Bushell-Mingo (2005) and Joaquina 

Kalukango in the RSC’s 2013 Anglo- 

American production where the directordramatist 

Tarell Alvin McCraney relocated 

the play to the Haitian revolution against 

Napoleon. 

So over the last 20 years the ground has 

shifted. After a century of male directors, 

two eminent Cleopatras have taken control 

Screen Queen 

Claudette Colbert 

played Cleopatra in 

 

of the play – Janet Suzman and Vanessa 

Redgrave have both directed it twice. And 

by casting black actors as Antony (including 

Jeffery Kissoon and David Harewood), they 

have both challenged old notions of racial 

difference and indeed identity. As Antony 

discovers, we shift and reshape ourselves 

continually, like the clouds. 

What’s next? This summer Shakespeare’s 

Globe in London is staging Antony and 

Cleopatra with Eve Best, so we can expect a 

Globe on Screen ‘live’ transmission to follow 

in cinemas soon, yet another redefinition of 

the genre. And after her mercurial but downto-earth 

Beatrice, the omens are good. 

“We’ve not had a great Cleopatra for some 

time,” the Stage reviewer has just written. 

“Best comes close to ideal.” Perhaps Orson 

Welles’s ghost will be pleased. 

 

Antony and Cleopatra is running at 

Shakespeare’s Globe until 24 August. Go to 

www.shakespearesglobe.com to book tickets. 

Beyond the screen 

at the Globe 

 

of English at the University of Warwick. This 

August the Globe will host his talks on two of 

Shakespeare’s greatest works and their onscreen 

counterparts. 

Thursday 7 August: Anthony and Cleopatra 

Wednesday 27 August: Julius Caesar 

Time: 6.00-7.00pm 

Venue: Shakespeare’s Globe, London 

Tickets: £7 (£5 concessions) 

Book tickets from www.shakespearesglobe. 

com or call 0207 401 9919 

Shakespeare at 450 

Howard on Shakespeare (in italics) is part of 

Globe Education’s summer season. 

To book tickets, call 0207 401 9919 or go to 

www.shakespearesglobe.com 


Shakesbeard! 

“Beard 

There’s lots of reasons to grow a beard. 

Sometimes you just want to look a bit 

more fierce than you usually do. 

to 

Beard...” 

Sydney-based actor Christopher Tomkinson 

returns to Shakespeare Magazine with his 

 

Acting in Shakespeare’s plays has 

usually involved hair on my face. I 

love it – my wife, not so much. From 

the bushiest of bushranger beards to 

outrageous handlebar moustaches 

wider than my face, there’s a never-ending follicular 

cavalcade around my smile. Here’s the journey of my 

last few shows and their Shakesbeards! 

Or more like a sailor – the Boatswain 

from The Tempest – roaring in futility 

against the surges. Because a real man 

of the sea doesn’t shave. 


Shakesbeard! 

Or older... This beard was trying to 

balance age and style while adding as 

many years as I could to a vain Baptista 

Minola (father of a shrewish daughter in 

need of taming). I painted it with evermore 

grey as the season went on. 

Sometimes you have to grow into a 

role – even while performing another. 

Here, a Weimar-inspired cabaret act 

is complemented by my upcoming 

Shakesbeard. 

Beards get itchy as they grow. Here, 

in a fit of itch-induced madness, the 

director has to stop me trying to shave 

with two sabres while we rehearse 

the final fight between Macbeth and 

Macduff. (Sport for Jove Theatre) 

My first big handlebar (for Charles the 

Wrestler in As You Like It) eventually 

reached these extreme lengths. The 

hardest part was getting the right wax 

to hold it in place. I had to try five 

different varieties before I found one 

strong enough! 

Sometimes a beard evolves. Here I am 

having an early costume check for the 

Ghost in Hamlet. 

At the start of the second season I 

looked like this. 

 


Shakesbeard! 

By the end of the second season it had 

reached this wild woolliness. It was 

good for winter! 

One hair piece can grow out of another 

as one ridiculous character emerges from 

the shavings of another. Hidden within 

the Ghost beard was a new handlebar 

‘mo’ for a new villainous cretin, and it 

wasn’t even for a Shakespeare. At this 

point my lady really did despair of ever 

seeing my face again. 

Finally a show with no beard – so they 

stuck this on my face instead! 

All’s Well That Ends Well (Sport for 

Jove Theatre). Your French military 

beard, streamlined and stylish. 

Attempting to recreate the Chandos 

Portrait with a true ‘Shakesbeard’ 

for Bell Shakespeare and Google’s 

celebration of the Bard’s 450th 

birthday. 

Finally I’m back to this – I’ve almost 

forgotten how to shave properly. 

 


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They love reading, writing, 

thinking, talking and sharing. 

 

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And they love to experience 

Shakespeare wherever they go. 

Shakespeare Magazine is only 

three issues old. 

But we already know our readers 

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To advertise in Shakespeare Magazine, 

contact shakespearemag@outlook.com 


Henry IV in USA 

This year, a theatrical epic was unleashed in the heart 

of the US capital. Mary Finch applauds the Shakespeare 

Theatre Company’s thrilling six-hour dual production 

of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 


Henry IV in USA 

Prince Hal (Matthew 

Amendt) faces the 

looming responsibilities 

of kingship. 

 



Hotspur 

Edward Gero is a Henry 

IV haunted by his past and 

tormented by his future. 

(John 

Keabler) rallies 

his troops at 

Shrewsbury. 



Half-way between the towering 

dome of the United States Capitol 

building and the unmistakable 

facade of the White House sits 

Sidney Harman Hall. Like its 

iconic neighbours, the Hall has seen 

plenty of battles for power in its time 

– albeit largely confined to the stage. 

And none have been more epic than 

the recent presentation of both parts 

of Henry IV by the Shakespeare 

Theatre Company. 

The seeds for the production were first 

sown 20 years ago, when the STC staged an 

adapted version of the story. 

“I put the two plays together,” explains 

the company’s venerable and much-honoured 

Artistic Director Michael Kahn. “I made an 

edit, as is often done, of Henry IV with Part 

1 and Part 2 together. As I was working on 

that I felt that I was cheating the audience 

from what really the experience of this 

could be.” 

Two decades later Kahn returned to Henry 

IV determined to deliver his full vision. What 

resulted was a narrative stretched across two 

powerhouse plays that explore the human 

experience with compelling virtuosity. 

At the centre of the production – and the 

story – is the totemic figure of Falstaff, played 

by veteran actor Stacy Keach. Now 73, Keach 

is well known on both sides of the Atlantic for 

his film, TV and voice-over work. But it’s the 

stage that is truly his home. For Keach, the 

“What is honour?” 

asks Stacy Keach’s 

Falstaff. 

“Even though Falstaff is 

funny, he is also a tragic 

character. He has a dark side 

as well as a light side” 

Stacy Keach 

experience of being on stage – especially on 

stage performing Shakespeare – is like entering 

a diamond mine. 

“You have to find in that particular 

performance the jewels that will come forth,” 

he explains, “as a result of the other actors and 

the direction and the audience.” 

The jewels of the performance become 

especially evident in the moments between 

Keach’s boisterous Falstaff and Matthew 

Amendt’s Hal, portrayed as a young man 

running from the responsibilities of adulthood 

and impending kingship. 

For Amendt, Hal is far more than just 

another character in a rising actor’s repertoire. 

He already has history with the character 

from playing the lead in Henry V (Guthrie 

Theater, 2009). But his familiarity goes way 



“It 

back to when he first read the plays at the age 

of just seven. 

“He felt like a big brother to me,” the actor 

says, “somebody to take care of me and keep 

me on the straight and narrow. Of course, as 

I got older the ambiguity of the plays and the 

cruelty of all the characters – Hal certainly can 

be very cruel – came through, and it became 

more challenging for me.” 

Keach likewise takes on the duplicitous 

nature of Falstaff, recognising that he is much 

more than a mere clown providing comedic 

relief. “Even though he is funny,” Keach says, 

“he is also a tragic character in many ways. He 

has a dark side as well as a light side.” 

The famous play-within-a play scene at the 

Boar’s Head Tavern gives both actors a chance 

to show the two sides of their characters. 

Posing as the king, Falstaff denies the 

accusations against him, while simultaneously 

disowning all his other comrades. When it is 

encompasses all of 

the things that happen 

in war when people you 

love die” Michael Kahn 

Bedroom battles with 

Hotspur (John Keabler) 

and Lady Percy (Kelly 

Curran). 

Hal’s turn to ascend the makeshift throne, he 

initially mimics the style of Falstaff, throwing 

out insults and jests. But in a moment, Hal 

loses his smile and replaces the mirth with 

tears. 

“It comes to this awful conclusion,” says 

Amendt, describing the end of the second 

play and the Prince’s brutal termination of his 

relationship with Falstaff, “and I think in our 

performance it’s as difficult for Hal as it is for 

Falstaff.” 

Of course, these plays go beyond the 



friendship of Hal and Falstaff. For the director, 

it was the uniquely wide-reaching scope that 

made these plays worth the full six-hours. 

“All problems of human existence are 

investigated in some way,” Kahn says. “Issues 

of class, issues of family, issues of politics, issues 

of power, issues of age and aging, friendship, 

ambition.” 

Adding romance and tragedy to the story 

is the fiery relationship between Lady Percy 

(Kelly Curran) and Hotspur (John Keabler). 

Under Kahn’s direction, Keabler and Curran 

embody a married couple that know each 

other well enough to argue bitterly yet still 

love deeply, making their final goodbye scene 

potently emotional. 

“In that goodbye scene she loses her 

“It comes to this awful 

conclusion. And I think it’s 

as difficult for Hal as it is 

for Falstaff” 

Matthew Amendt 

Falstaff, Justice Shallow, 

Bardolph and Justice 

Silence provide comic 

relief in Part 2. 

husband,” says Kahn, “and that encompasses 

all of the things that happen in war when 

people you love die.” 

Caught between the Shakespearean titans 

of Hal and Falstaff, in some ways the part of 

Henry IV himself is often overlooked. Edward 

Gero stamps his authority on the role, and the 

powerful deathbed scene between Hal and his 

father is pregnant with guilt and shame. 

“It’s a much darker play,” Keach argues. 

“And yet there is a great comedy in Part 2, with 

Shallow and Silence, and the relationship with 

Falstaff and the Lord Chief Justice.” 

Even though it took 20 years to make it 

happen, Michael Kahn knows the company 

have achieved something great in putting 

these plays on simultaneously – sometimes 

both in the same day. “If I never do another 

Shakespeare play again,” Kahn reflects at the 

end of the run, “I’ve done these two plays that 

I wanted to do. And it was an extraordinarily 

fulfilling experience.” 

 


Interview: Jamie Parker 

“I don’t know how to describe it, 

but something happens and it 

leaves you just feeling completely 

rejuvenated. It leaves you 

changed. It’s an elixir.” 

Jamie Parker 

Portrait: Piper Williams 


Interview: Jamie Parker 

The 

history 

man 

He was in the original cast of theatre phenomenon The History Boys. And he’s an 

audience favourite at Shakespeare’s Globe, where he wowed London audiences as 

Prince Hal and King Henry V. Helen Mears has an audience with actor Jamie Parker. 

How does it feel to step into the 

Globe’s famous Wooden O for the 

first time? 

“It’s terrifying. It’s actually kind of a moment 

of insanity, a bit like jumping out of a 

plane or doing a bungee jump. Something 

exhilarating where you’re very much out 

of your element. You rehearse in a normal 

rehearsal room, and I remember going onto 

the stage for the first time. I remember 

coming on through the upstage left stage 

door, walking down to the pillar and 

thinking, ‘Oh, big, isn’t it?’ Even empty the 

place is incredibly powerful, there’s nowhere 

quite like it. The simple lesson I’ve learnt 

there is the only thing you’ve got to work 

with is whatever’s going on in the room. So if 

it’s not going well, if your audience is not very 

attentive, it’s rainy, whatever, then that’s what 

you have to work with.” 

What was your first role there? 

“As You Like It, directed by Thea Sharrock, 

I played Oliver de Boys. It’s a beautiful play. 

I had no particular desire to play Oliver 

and it ended up being a quite significant 

experience. I don’t think you see As You 

Like It coming – a play about forgiveness, 

reconciliation, conversion, transcendence 

and joy. It’s somehow easier to think that 

plays about misery and doom and gloom 

are more truthful, are somehow more about 

what life is really like. Until a play like that 

comes along and, if you get inside it right, 



“As 

there are other things that life is really like 

as well. And it’s actually a lot harder to write 

about joy and laughter than it is to write about 

pain and misery. It’s quite extraordinary that 

Shakespeare had the guts to write that play as 

well as King Lear. To write the play that asks 

what would life be like if we could forgive each 

other and find reconciliation?” 

When did you first fall for the 

Bard? 

“I was eight years old, watching Kenneth 

Branagh’s film of Henry V. I was rapt for two 

hours. It’s very much a play for a male, nascent 

psyche. It’s about crossing the threshold from 

boyhood into manhood, so I was right in 

the crosshairs. I probably fell in love with the 

Chorus before I fell in love with Henry. That 

was the first time I had been handed that 

contract and been asked to sign it, saying we’re 

nothing without your imagination. We’re just 

fully grown adults in silly clothes unless you 

make us exist. To my mind no one has ever said 

it better. A little later I saw Olivier’s Henry V. 

I’d never seen a Shakespearean playhouse before 

and when I saw the oak boards, the groundlings 

and the pillars, that’s when it clicked. That’s 

when I went ‘Yeah, it’s that role and it’s that 

theatre.’ At that point the current Globe didn’t 

exist, but basically for 25 years before I started 

the role, I wanted to play that role, in that 

costume, in that theatre.” 

After drama school you spent 

two years with The History Boys. 

How did you find your way back to 

Shakespeare and the Globe? 

“I think one of the reasons it took me so long 

to get there was that by the time I’d left college 

I’d grown quite distrustful of Shakespeare 

productions in Britain generally. It had been 

a long time since I had felt intoxicated by 

Shakespeare as I had been intoxicated when 

I was a child – just feeling like you were 

hearing them for the first time. The standout 

moment was when I saw Mark Rylance 

playing Hamlet at the Globe. I’d never seen 

36 SHAKESPEARE magazine 

You Like It is a 

play about forgiveness, 

reconciliation, conversion, 

transcendence and joy.” 

anything quite like that before. I can pinpoint 

the moment where everything that I thought 

I knew about Shakespeare was turned on its 

head, which was where he was doing the ‘O 

what a rogue and peasant slave am I’ speech. 

He was unpredictable and you didn’t know 

what he was going to do next. During the 

speech he went ‘Hah!’ and a small child in 

the groundlings went ‘Hah!’ in reply and he 

suddenly engaged in this back-and-forth, 

almost in tongues. I remember thinking, 

‘Can you do that?’ But it worked. I’d never 

seen anyone be quite so irreverent with 

Shakespeare before. That was the moment 

when I realised that Shakespeare is really 

alive. I’d forgotten that boyhood dream but 

when the opportunity to work at the Globe 

came up, I took it. I didn’t see it coming 

and I didn’t work towards it – it just sort of 

happened and it happened at the right time.” 

What was so appealing about this 

opportunity? 

“It gave me a chance to work with Dominic 

Dromgoole again, he gave me my very first 

acting job. And it was a great joy to find out 

that Roger (Allam) was going to be playing 

Falstaff in the Henry IV plays, because I’d 

grown up listening to him. A lot of what I 

knew about performing Shakespeare had 

come from Roger and people like him. If 

the plays did have any success outside of 

Roger’s extraordinary presence on the stage, 

I’d like to think it was a kind of mentor-pupil 

relationship. There was that feeling that we’re 

on the same page and I’m coming up behind 

you. I’m going to try my best to top you, I 

know I can’t succeed, but I’ll try.”


Photo: John Haynes 

Jamie Parker plays 

the title role in the 

Shakespeare’s Globe 

production of Henry V. 



Photo: John Haynes 

Was it the chemistry between 

you and Roger that made those 

productions so popular? 

“All I know is that I felt his absence on Henry 

V profoundly. I hope that was to the benefit 

of the production because you should feel the 

absence of Falstaff in Henry V, and that’s not 

always the case.” 

Did performing the whole Hal-to- 

Henry journey provide insights for 

when you played Henry V? 

“Well, it was bound to have a profound 

effect. We worked a lot with Act 2, Scene 5, 

the moment that foreshadows Hal’s rejection 

of Falstaff. Dominic said to me to think 

about the way that Shakespeare was working 

with a particular acting company and that 

he wrote a great part for an established actor, 

a virtuoso role. But he also wrote another 

role for another younger actor who’s coming 

Olivia Ross as 

Princess Katherine 

opposite Jamie’s 

Henry V. 

up behind, and to remember that this is 

a competition going on for the audience’s 

favour. When we did ‘I know thee not, old 

man’, we tried it several different ways and 

Roger said to me, ‘You’re not doing enough 

with that line to stop me in my tracks. You 

need to top me.’” 

And when you yelled ‘Cry God for 

Harry, England and St George’, 

did you feel the groundlings would 

have run up on stage and followed 

you off? 

“There were days like that. There were a small 

handful of performances that I will take to 

my grave with me. There are rare moments in 

that theatre where you just feel it, something 

happens. I don’t know how to describe it, 

but something happens and it leaves you just 

feeling completely rejuvenated. It leaves you 

changed. It’s an elixir.” 



Why does Hal snub Falstaff at 

the end of Henry IV, Part 2? 

Does he have to do it? 

“I think that’s it. I think it’s necessary. 

That’s the question all the way through 

Henry for me. Practically every scene has 

that question of did Hal have to act that 

way? Henry V asks what life would be like 

if there was a young man who could display 

all of the qualities required to become a 

great chivalric king. What would they be 

like, what would they have to do and how 

would they do it? What does it mean to 

‘assume the Port of Mars’? That line brings 

with it mystic qualities that the actor is 

expected to embody when they come on 

to the stage. The moment when he rejects 

Falstaff is one of them. He has to. We’ve 

already had the Henry VI plays showing 

what happens when a King doesn’t do what 

needs to happen – you can’t have Falstaff 

sitting next to the throne of England and 

expect things to go well! 

“It strikes me as significant that these 

were the last of the History plays that 

Shakespeare wrote. We’ve had seven plays 

about life under disorder and misrule and 

kings who aren’t equal to the office and 

about what happens when fallible humans 

are put into a position anointed by God. 

That rejection to me is the moment where 

Henry goes ‘enough’. It’s not that he’s 

never fun ever again, but he realises the 

importance of good husbandry, of being 

decisive, of laughing at hardship, of giving 

due significance to the notion of good order. 

They’re things that Henry is written to 

embody and the previous seven plays have 

been written to lack.” 

“We’re nothing without your 

imagination. We’re just fully 

grown adults in silly clothes 

unless you make us exist ” 

Whose idea was it to play the St 

Crispin’s Day speech so small? I’ve 

never seen it done quite like that. 

“Not everybody liked it. I think some people 

have preconceived notions of what that 

speech should be. It was very delicate and that 

meant it could go badly. I’m glad we did it, 

because when it did succeed it spoke for itself 

and it suddenly became immovably strong as 

a presence in the theatre. What he’s saying is 

that we’re already dead and that’s how we’re 

going to live forever.” 

You recently did Hamlet for BBC 

Radio. Would you like to play that 

role on stage? 

“Yes, I would. It was great doing it. I’d never 

imagined it as a possibility but when it came 

up I thought ‘great’. It was weird though, 

because it was basically ‘Turn up and record 

Hamlet’, we only had a day of read-through 

and rehearsal. It was terrific. I’d basically 

known Hamlet all my life and that means you 

just know passages of it. It was great because 

it was like ‘you’ve read it, now just do it’!” 

You appeared in the film Valkyrie 

with superstar Tom Cruise. What 

was it like when he then came to 

see you at the Globe? 

“That was so surreal – talk about worlds 

colliding. It was brilliant. What a dude. He 

didn’t have to do that and I really didn’t expect 

him to come. He was brilliant and he met 

everyone afterwards. I was terrified that he was 

going to be bored but if he was he didn’t let on.” 

 

Jamie plays Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls 

at Chichester Festival Theatre from 11 August to 

21 September. 


Shakespeare costumes 

“See you these 

clothes?” 

An exquisite exhibition in Moulins, France celebrates a century of 

Shakespeare. Running until January at Centre National du Costume de Scéne, 

Shakespeare, the stuff of the world is a testament to the creative magic 

unleashed when French couture meets the Bard. 


Shakespeare costumes 

Left: Costume by Jacques Schmidt 

for Fortimbras in Hamlet, directed 

by Patrice Chéreau, Avignon 

Festival followed by Nanterre, 

Théatre des Amandiers,1988. Coll. 

Théâtredes Amandiers. 

Shakespeare, the stuff of the world runs until 

4 January 2015, priced just !6 for entry (concessions available). 

Go to http://www.cncs.fr for more details. For information 

about visiting central France: http://www.pays-bourbon.com 

Costume by Jacques Schmidt for Gertrude, worn 

by Marthe Keller in Hamlet, directed by Patrice 

Chéreau, Avignon Festival followed by Nanterre, 

Théâtre des Amandiers, 1988. Coll. Théâtre des 

Amandiers. 

 



Costume by Jean-Pierre Vergier for the King of 

Comedy, worn by Jean-Baptiste Malartre in Hamlet, 

directed by Georges Lavaudant, Comédie-Française, 

1994. Coll. Comédie-Française. 


Shakespeare costumes 

Costume by Thierry Mugler for Lady Macbeth, worn by 

Catherine Ferran in Macbeth Tragedy, directed by Jean- 

Pierre Vincent, Avignon Festival – Comédie-Française, 

1985. Coll. CNCS/Comédie-Française. 

 



Headdress by Abdelkader Farrah for Lady Anne, worn by 

Ludmilla Mikael in Richard III, directed by Terry Hands, 

Comédie-Française – Avignon Festival, 1972. Coll. CNCS/ 

Comédie-Française. 


Regulars 

Walking with Shakespeare 

Our City of London Tour Guide 

Zoe Bramley reports from the 

Shakespeare Trail. 

Last time, we visited the 

Blackfriars Gatehouse. But 

that’s just one connection 

Shakespeare had in the Blackfriars 

area, so let’s go and see our next lost 

building. 

The narrow alleyway running down 

the side of the Cockpit is Ireland Yard. 

Halfway down, you will come to the 

ruins of a churchyard on your right. 

The yard is at a raised level from the 

ground so walk up the steps, keeping 

your eye on the old stone ruins on your 

right. This is all that remains of the 

church within the monastery. 

There were approximately 400 

friars here between the 1200s and 

1538, when it fell victim to the 

Dissolution of the Monasteries in 

the reign of Henry VIII. It was in 

the Great Hall of the Blackfriars that 

Henry held a court hearing to test the 

validity of his marriage to Catherine 

of Aragon in 1529. As we know, 

Henry got his divorce, married Anne 

Boleyn, and all the religious houses 

fell one by one. 

Parts of the Blackfriars were sold 

off piecemeal. That’s how we have 

Shakespeare buying the gatehouse 

in 1613 and his theatre company, 

the King’s Men, opening an indoor 

playhouse in the dining hall. This 

posh new theatre attracted a higher 

class of clientele than the raucous 

Globe, and the company could 

charge a higher entrance fee. 

They began to experiment 

with different music, using softer 

instruments such as the lute and the 

flute. This is where Shakespeare’s 

final plays were performed – The 

Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Pericles, 

and Cymbeline. And by poignant 

Shadowing 

Shakespeare: 

Henry VIII 

and Anne 

Boleyn 

(painted by 

Holbein). 

coincidence the play Henry VIII was 

also performed, re-enacting the tense 

events of Henry and Catherine of 

Aragon’s divorce hearing which had 

taken place here 80 years previously. 

As you come back down the steps, 

turn right and walk to the end of 

Ireland Yard. Look up at the street 

sign which recalls a lost era. It says 

simply: Playhouse Yard. 

So that brings us to the end of 

our mini-tour. But if your feet are 

itching and you’re ready to discover 

further lost Shakespearean sites in the 

City, join us next time for some more 

suggestions. 

The Shakespeare Magazine Quiz 

Try as we might, we couldn't stretch an entire quiz out of the two references to 

football in Shakespeare's works. So this month's theme is the month of July... 

1July is named after 

Roman Emperor 

Julius Caesar. In 

Shakespeare’s play 

about Caesar’s 

assassination, who 

warns him to “beware 

the Ides of March”? 

2The historic battle 

of Shrewsbury was 

fought on 21 July 1403. 

In which play does 

Shakespeare chronicle 

this event? 

3Shakespeare’s 

eldest daughter 

married John Hall, a 

doctor. She died in July 

1649, aged 66. What 

was her name? 

4In July 2006, a copy 

of which book 

was sold at Sotheby’s 

auction house for £2.5 

million? 

5From which play 

does this quote 

come? “He makes 

a July's day short as 

December...” 

Answers: 1) The Soothsayer. 2) Henry IV, Part 1. 3) Susanna. 4) The First Folio. 5) The Winter’s Tale. 

SHAKESPEARE magazine! 45

Contributors 

Zoe Bramley is a City of 

London Tour Guide specialising 

in Shakespeare’s London and the 

Tudor City. She qualified in 2010 

and then launched the Shakespeare 

Trail, a guided walk which explores 

the hidden sites associated with our 

greatest playwright. Zoe’s fascination 

with Shakespeare began after reading 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream aged 17 

and wishing she could meet Bottom! 

Zoe can be contacted via 

www.shakespearetrail.com 

Mary Finch is in her fourth year 

studying English at Messiah College 

in central Pennsylvania. Will first 

grabbed her attention in secondary 

school and hasn’t let go since – she 

reads, recites and watches Shakespeare 

whenever possible. Besides going 

on irrational adventures to see 

performances with her friend Alison, 

Mary also has a passion for swing 

dancing, dabbling in calligraphy and 

tending to her ever-growing window 

garden of succulents. 

Piper Williams is a freelance 

fashion and portrait photographer 

from Portland, Oregon, now 

working out of Surrey. He spends 

his days time-travelling via historical 

docudramas, silent films and vintage 

radio broadcasts. These adventures 

are a catalyst for his imagery and his 

wardrobe. His current project, 1928, 

is a modern take on the Jazz and War 

age aesthetic. Also in the works is a 

Steam, Diesel and Cosplay-inspired 

series of Shakespearean characters. 

Meet thy makers... 

Just some of the contributors to this issue of Shakespeare Magazine 

Livia Lakomy is a Brazilian 

journalist and writer. Although 

Portuguese is her mother tongue, she 

spent much of her teens trying to 

make sense of Shakespeare’s English 

and singing along to Bob Dylan. 

She lives in New York, where she 

is earning an MFA in Nonfiction 

Writing from Columbia University. 

Her current projects involve essays 

on Brazil’s emotional history 

and translating writers from her 

hometown of Curitiba into English. 

Helen Mears teaches English 

Literature, Film and Media Studies 

at a Further Education college in 

Ipswich. She has loved Shakespeare 

since her schooldays and at weekends 

can be found volunteering at the 

Globe or the Sam Wanamaker 

Playhouse. She is currently studying 

for an MA in the Advanced Teaching 

of Shakespeare. She is at her happiest 

when watching Shakespeare, 

exploring castles and monastic ruins, 

or listening to Fall Out Boy. 

Christopher Tomkinson is an actor, 

director, writer and arts educator. 

For the last few years he’s worked 

most regularly with Sport for Jove, a 

Sydney-based theatre company with 

a special focus on Shakespeare and a 

tendency to run things in repertory. 

He wrote about their season of All’s 

Well That Ends Well and Twelfth 

Night in our previous issue. 


Next issue 

We hope you’ve enjoyed Issue Three of Shakespeare Magazine. 

We’ll be back next month, and here’s just some of the 

Shakespearean gems we’ll be bringing you. 

The Bard in the Balkans 

Hamlet came to Kosovo. We were there. 

 

“My kingdom for a... jeep!” 

 

McKellen talks Richard III in this classic archive interview. 

Look, Mum – no roof! 

Open-air Shakespeare this summer. 

 

 

United States of Shakespeare 

How America learned to love the Bard. 


Back issues 

 

 

At last! A magazine with all the Will in the world At 

SHAKESPEARE 

 

Celebrating 

450 years of the 

English language’s 

greatest-ever 

wordsmith 

 

last! A magazine with all the Will in the world 

SHAKESPEARE 

Character'd 

on thy skin..." 

" 

Blood meets ink in the world 

of Shakespeare Tattoos 

Aussie Rules 

Shakespeare! 

A double bill of the 

Bard in sunny Sydney 

Launch issue 

King David 

From Doctor Who to Hamlet and 

Richard II, David Tennant is a 21st 

century Shakespeare superstar! 

 

www.issuu.com 

 

www.shakespearemagazine.com

Shakespeare Magazine 03

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