Shakespeare’s Kings

An Age of Kings was originally live broadcasts on the BBC in the early 60's of the sequence of Shakespeare's history plays from Richard II (which I'd never seen before) through Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI (which I'd also never seen) and Richard III. They're now being sold as 5 DVD's.

They were using the then upcoming young actors, so it's fun to see a very young Judi Dench play Katherine flirting with Henry IV, and a young Sean Connery conspiring against Henry IV.

Another good thing about the series is that characters who reappear in several plays are played by the same actor in each, which wouldn't normally happen on stage, since someone of the stature to play Richard III in the play of that name, wouldn't be asked to do the bit part of Gloucester in Henry VI.

The actor who plays Prince Hal and later Henry V is Robert Hardy. Every time I see him, (most recently as a hanger on of Mr. Merdle's in Little Dorrit) I realize that I know him well, but can't quite remember where from. He has quite a long list of credits, many of which you've seen. His Henry V is a very youthful, athletic, endearing performance.

Another standout performance is by Paul Daneman as Richard III. He also has a long list of credits, but I mostly haven't seen them, but I may look some of them out now. I still haven't seen a production of Richard III that really reconciles the opening monologue, which seems to me to clearly say "I'm going to get the world because I'm so ugly that no woman will ever love me", with the seduction of Lady Anne, where Richard always seems to be played as a matinée idol who assumes that of course a grieving widow will just fall into bed with the man who murdered her husband, her father, and her brother. But Daneman rolling around on the floor laughing ("Was ever woman in such humor wooed; was ever woman in such humor won?") after the seduction scene is really fascinating.

Finishing watching the plays leaves me wanting to read some of the history -- surely there was gunpowder and not just swordplay at Bosworth Field? And did the battles really resolve themselves by the major characters killing each other? None of them ever got killed by a minor character?

In general, the productions are good for what they were. The music is what seems most old-fashioned to me, but luckily there isn't much of it. Richard III, the last of the plays, seems more truncated than the others, so one wonders if maybe they ran out of money.

Related posts:

1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
2. Little Dorrit
3. Wolf Hall