Shakespeare Magazine 11
The shiny new-look Shakespeare Magazine 11 is adorned with a stunning cover image of Lily James and Richard Madden in Kenneth Branagh’s Romeo and Juliet. Also in Issue 11, SK Moore tells us about his compelling new graphic novel of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, while broadcaster Samira Ahmed turns her magnificently mercurial mind to the subject of Shakespeare. We have words with Pub Landlord comedian Al Murray about his recent brush with the Bard (and Judi Dench) at RSC Shakespeare Live. And our Editor raves about a 3-DVD box set of 1960s TV Shakespeare classic The Wars of the Roses. We chat with the great Don Warrington, star of Talawa Theatre’s earth-shaking King Lear at Manchester’s Royal Exchange – youthful co-star Alfred Enoch joins in too. Also this issue: we imagine what Tom Hiddleston’s Hamlet would look like, we explore the life of Elizabeth Siddal, Victorian Ophelia, and Bristol’s Insane Root scare the living daylights out of us with their Macbeth!
The shiny new-look Shakespeare Magazine 11 is adorned with a stunning cover image of Lily James and Richard Madden in Kenneth Branagh’s Romeo and Juliet. Also in Issue 11, SK Moore tells us about his compelling new graphic novel of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, while broadcaster Samira Ahmed turns her magnificently mercurial mind to the subject of Shakespeare. We have words with Pub Landlord comedian Al Murray about his recent brush with the Bard (and Judi Dench) at RSC Shakespeare Live. And our Editor raves about a 3-DVD box set of 1960s TV Shakespeare classic The Wars of the Roses. We chat with the great Don Warrington, star of Talawa Theatre’s earth-shaking King Lear at Manchester’s Royal Exchange – youthful co-star Alfred Enoch joins in too. Also this issue: we imagine what Tom Hiddleston’s Hamlet would look like, we explore the life of Elizabeth Siddal, Victorian Ophelia, and Bristol’s Insane Root scare the living daylights out of us with their Macbeth!
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Review: The Wars of the Roses<br />
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Wars of the Roses with a slight sense of trepidation.<br />
It’s well known that John Barton made literally<br />
hundreds of cuts and rewrites to <strong>Shakespeare</strong>’s<br />
text. Had he “done a Colly Cibber”? Would<br />
the effect be a kind of cod-<strong>Shakespeare</strong>an<br />
pantomime? I stopped short of watching the<br />
production with one eye feverishly checking an<br />
Arden <strong>Shakespeare</strong> text, but it was a gnawing<br />
concern. I soon relaxed, however, and I have to<br />
admit I couldn’t spot any obvious interpolations<br />
– and certainly nothing of the glaring “Yo, my<br />
lords, how’s it hanging?” variety.<br />
Now, big confession time: I haven’t watched<br />
the entire eight hours of the production yet. And<br />
not only that, I haven’t even watched it in the<br />
correct sequence. Rather comically, I started on<br />
the wrong DVD, but I found The Wars of the<br />
Roses so instantly engrossing that I couldn’t bring<br />
myself to stop and go back to the beginning until<br />
40 minutes had elapsed. And yet, isn’t that the<br />
whole point of owning the moveable feast of a<br />
<strong>Shakespeare</strong> box set? You watch it when you want<br />
to, and how you want to – and no one can tell<br />
you off for watching it wrongly.<br />
For instance, I particularly loved the staging<br />
of the Jack Cade rebellion, so when it finished I<br />
immediately watched it again. Roy Dotrice (who,<br />
impressively also plays Edward IV) is an anarchic<br />
delight as Cade. I also spent an hour or two<br />
happily zipping between any scenes I could find<br />
38 shakespeare magazine
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