Shakespeare Magazine 07
Kenneth Branagh is cover star of Shakespeare Magazine 07, as the issue's theme is Great Shakespeare Actors. Stanley Wells discusses his book on the subject, while Antony Sher reveals what it's like to play Falstaff. We also go behind the scenes of the My Shakespeare TV series, and Zoe Waites chats about playing Rosalind in the USA. Other highlights include Shakespeare in Turkey, Shakespeare Opera, and the real story of Shakespeare and the Essex Plot. All this, and the Russian fans who made their own edition of David Tennant's Richard II!
Kenneth Branagh is cover star of Shakespeare Magazine 07, as the issue's theme is Great Shakespeare Actors. Stanley Wells discusses his book on the subject, while Antony Sher reveals what it's like to play Falstaff. We also go behind the scenes of the My Shakespeare TV series, and Zoe Waites chats about playing Rosalind in the USA. Other highlights include Shakespeare in Turkey, Shakespeare Opera, and the real story of Shakespeare and the Essex Plot. All this, and the Russian fans who made their own edition of David Tennant's Richard II!
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Great <strong>Shakespeare</strong> Actors<br />
Above: The “technically<br />
perfect” Judi Dench.<br />
Right: Ian McKellen is<br />
“a questing actor with<br />
a strong improvisatory<br />
streak”.<br />
himself was an actor. My first entry is on ‘Was<br />
<strong>Shakespeare</strong> the first great <strong>Shakespeare</strong> actor?’<br />
And the answer is no, but I thought it was a<br />
question worth asking.”<br />
But you did tread the boards<br />
at the Globe last year…<br />
“That was just a bit of fun. Patrick<br />
Spottiswoode, Director of Education at the<br />
Globe, asked me to read the part of Old<br />
Knowell in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His<br />
Humour in their series Read Not Dead, where<br />
you don’t memorise the role, you read it. And<br />
I agreed to do it. It was rather more arduous<br />
than I had expected it to be because it was a<br />
whole-day event. And also I was a bit surprised<br />
when I got there and looked around because<br />
some of these were rather eminent actors.<br />
However I think I held my own…”<br />
Is there one figure from the whole<br />
four centuries who you think is the<br />
most pivotal? Perhaps one who is<br />
not obvious…<br />
“The greatest? I think the obvious ones<br />
probably are the greatest. Edmund Kean I’d<br />
love to have seen. There was that famous<br />
remark about him by Coleridge: ‘seeing him<br />
act <strong>Shakespeare</strong> was like reading <strong>Shakespeare</strong><br />
by flashes of lightning’. It’s not entirely a<br />
compliment, it implies that there wasn’t a<br />
degree of continuity within the characters that<br />
he played. But I’m sure he was a terrifically<br />
exciting actor. The only one I can compare<br />
14 SHAKESPEARE magazine
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