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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“I remember telling<br />
my schoolteacher<br />
‘I don’t buy that<br />
<strong>Shakespeare</strong>’s any<br />
better than anybody<br />
else, it’s just you lot<br />
saying he is’”<br />
Above:<br />
Documentary<br />
maker and Bard<br />
Evangelist<br />
Richard Denton.<br />
Left: Morgan<br />
Freeman<br />
presented the<br />
episode on The<br />
Taming of the<br />
Shrew.<br />
How did this project begin for you?<br />
“It began about five years ago when I was<br />
listening to a programme about King Lear on<br />
the radio, and I just went ‘God, we should do<br />
documentaries about every single play. Why<br />
hasn’t anybody ever done that? You know the<br />
old Prefaces to <strong>Shakespeare</strong> books by Granville<br />
Barker? Why not do it on television?’ So I<br />
started putting that together as a project,<br />
originally with the intention of covering<br />
all 37, but realising that would probably<br />
be impossible. I came up with a project<br />
to do about 20, and I went initially to the<br />
Americans, to PBS, WNET in America,<br />
and they said ‘Yeah, you got me at Prefaces’.<br />
So that was easy, they were game. And then it<br />
took me two-and-a-half years to persuade the<br />
BBC to do it.” [laughs]<br />
“That’s been the weird part of the journey,<br />
I suppose. The huge enthusiasm of the<br />
transatlantic and world audience for these<br />
My <strong>Shakespeare</strong> <br />
<br />
films, and the relative indifference to them in<br />
the UK. It’s very, very odd. When the BBC<br />
took the first series they then rather reluctantly<br />
put them out at obscure times. I remember<br />
one of the reviewers saying ‘What custard<br />
brain at the BBC decided to transmit this<br />
gem at ten past eleven on a Tuesday?’ So it<br />
was something of a nightmare. And then they<br />
didn’t want to have another series, they only<br />
wanted the first six. So then Sky Arts took on<br />
the second six, but obviously there’s a limit to<br />
how far their budgets go…<br />
“And to be honest with you, I don’t think<br />
it’s got a particularly large audience in the UK.<br />
It’s got a very nice audience in America and –<br />
I will say this – the people who did watch it<br />
in the UK were hugely enthusiastic about it.<br />
It’s separated out a group of people and given<br />
them something they’ve absolutely loved,<br />
but it’s not as large a group as we had hoped<br />
originally.<br />
SHAKESPEARE magazine 23
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