Para1The opening scene of the first play in the SQM companyʼs repertoire, Scene 1 of King Leir became a testing ground for our working process. The company of actors had only just
been introduced to Elizabethan rehearsal practices and our initial approach to the
opening scenes of King Leir the company actors were still negotiating their way between their familiar proceses
of rehearsal and our disruptive experiment. Don Allison (Leir) was initially bemused by the text of this scene, finding it difficult to understand
and impossible to memorize, especially under the new pressures of the SQM rehearsal
process. In the interview below Allison describes how his response was colored by a recent experience with Shakespeareʼs
Lear. To him the text of the Queenʼs Men play lacked poetry and coherence: he struggled to understand it and especially to put the lines into
the emotional context of the character he was charged with playing.
Para2The scene provides conflicting information about Leirʼs state of mind, which puzzled
Allison and led to much exploratory work. The syntax in the opening speech, for example,
is convoluted to the point of obfuscating the sense and proved extremely difficult
to memorize as Leir skips from one thought to the next without making the connections
clear (Sc1 Sp1). Working past Donʼs initial response that the speech was badly written and a pale precursor of Shakespeare,
we took the position that the disruptions in the speech must be signs of Leirʼs grief
at the loss of his wife. Later in the scene, however, Leir is suddenly eloquent and
decisive (Sc1 Sp3) appearing to be a statesman in full control of his faculties. Having given the impression
in his opening speech that he is incapable of dealing with his daughters, Leir then
reveals that he has already made clear plans and is pleased that they are echoed by
the nameless Nobleman (Sc1 Sp5). This shift struck Allison as an inconsistency that required attention. Is Leir really overwhelmed by grief
when he comes to the scene with a plan for his daughters already in place? Allison experimented with the idea that Leir was an expert political manipulator and that
his initial speech was in part a performance of grief and helplessness intended to
elicit support for his political agenda from his courtiers. This strategy was playable
but undermined Leirʼs affection for his wife and made his character less appealing.
Para3We then pushed the scene in the opposite direction, experimenting with more extreme
expressions of grief, creating a version of Leir verging on madness. In rehearsal
this seemed at odds with the clear assertion and execution of his authority at other
moments in the scene. Furthermore, the opening speech contains so many important plot
points there was a limit on how far he could push this grief. We needed the audience
to understand what he was saying. As the ramblings of a grieving man this speech makes
psychological sense but as the introduction to Leirʼs character and a means to communicate
important past events, its lack of clarity was problematic.
Para4Much time was invested in this scene and gradually Allison brought the two poles of his interpretation together and performed Leir as a shrewd
and capable king who was feeling increasingly unsure of himself since the death of
his queen. He was pleased to find his noblesʼ wishes concurred with his own plans
and was emboldened to think of ways to deal with his one disobedient daughter Cordella,
but his emotional fragility was apparent. When Perillus challenged his plan for Cordella,
Don delivered the line I am resolved with vehemence (Sc1 Sp7). The disastrous sudden stratagem (Sc1 Sp7) of the love test was understood as a product of his grief.
Para5The process described here has more to say about the twenty-first century acting techniques
than about the play or the original company. In keeping with our training, Allison and I collected all the pieces of evidence in the text and related them to each other
in order to develop a performance that felt psychologically consistent. Having done
this work Allison was able to place Leirʼs lines within the emotional context he had built and perform them with conviction. This approach to acting has been developed
in the relative luxury of the modern rehearsal room but the original actors did not
dedicate the same time to ensemble rehearsal. From what we understand of Elizabethan
rehearsal, actors worked on their parts alone and generated performances in response
to the rhetoric found in their charactersʼ speeches. Don is an experienced classical actor and he too was responding to the variety of rhetorical
devices and styles employed by the playwright but even in the relatively pressured
SQM rehearsal process he had more time to arrange the pieces into a complete and consistent
characterization before walking on stage in front of a live audience.
Para6When the original Queenʼs Men actors approached the same material alone and without
access to the entire text, the sense of consistency and unity, necessary to give the
actor the confidence to step out on stage and play a character, must have been built
on other ground. Working on the SQM productions I came to the conclusion that they
must have relied on the notion that each character was a type of part. In this case,
Don is playing a king and each of his speeches is a rhetorical action performed by a king: the king grieves,
the king asserts his authority, the king hatches a plot and so forth. The nature of
the action is defined by the rhetoric of the part that is designed to have a particular
effect on the listener. An actor knowing how to play the part of a king need only
study the rhetoric of his part to understand the specific intentions of each speech.
Performed in sequence the speeches tell the story of a grieving king, trying to manage
his daughters alone for the first time, and making what will prove to be a disastrous
decision. Taking such an approach the performance of the king need not be less complex
than Allisonʼs but the route to achieving it would be more direct.
Para7Early modern actors likely did not spend time developing the particularities and idiosyncrasies
of a unique character psychology and were thus able to perform a larger repertoire
and prepare plays for the stage more quickly. The Queenʼs Men plays were not necessarily
conceived in such terms and the SQM company found that removing the idea that each
character should be a unique individual from the actorʼs work saved a lot of time
and was a major factor in enabling the company to get the three plays on their feet
with, what was for them, relatively little rehearsal. In the case of this scene, such
an approach would have been more direct, by-passing exploration of character psychology,
and would still have allowed for complexity, since the complexity is contained in
the rhetoric of Leirʼs various speeches. Reflecting on his experience working on the
SQM productions, Peter Higginson (Perillus) noted that a key value lay in the focus the process brought to the text
rather than the development complex characters away from the line.
Para8Shakespeareʼs plays, Lear, while using the same arguments, is more consistently eloquent and commanding in
the opening scene. King Learʼs emotional instability is made apparent from the start,
but the daughters are left to observe how full of changes Learʼs age is (Lr 1.269) and to suggest that he hath ever but slenderly known himself (Lr 1.273–274). Leirʼs opening scene gives the majority of attention to the kingʼs grief, the political
problem of succession, and the wisdom of the proposed course of action, but Shakespeareʼs
play shows more interest in the issue of Learʼs character. In the following scene
in the Queenʼs Men play, the sisters are driven by their jealous hatred of Cordella
rather than doubts about their fatherʼs judgment and age.
¶ Performing Skalliger:Type Characters and the Twenty-First Century Actor
Para9David Kynastonʼs development of the role of Skalliger is another good example of the relative efficiency
of performing stock character types rather than investing time in the psychological
motivation of characters. Skalliger is established as a Machiavel character at the
end of this scene and in the next scene; following Elizabethan tradition, we dressed
him in black to indicate the nature of his character. David, however, wanted more detail. In this scene, he was particularly interested in the
fact that Leir appears to have given him a special license to speak (Sc1 Sp2). When was he given this license? Did they have a previous meeting addressing this
issue or is he personalizing the general license to give advice contained in Leirʼs
first speech (Sc1 Sp1)? These were questions that were important to David as he worked to individuate his character. Early modern actors would have approached
this character as the type of the Machiavel and built their performance from there.
¶ Performing Gonorill and Ragan: Characters or Vices
Para10My direction to the boys playing these women was to think of these characters as the wicked sisters in a Cinderella
pantomime. I wanted them to be the Vices to Cordellaʼs Virtue. Having worked on Robert
Wilsonʼs The Three Ladies of London in preparation for the SQM productions, I was curious about the possible connection
between the women in Leir and in Wilsonʼs play, which shows how the Vice Lady Lucre corrupts the Virtues Lady
Love and Lady Conscience. Wilson became a Queenʼs man and his play could have been
part of the company repertoire as was its sequel: The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. The same actors may well have played the female roles in Wilsonʼs plays and in King Leir. Would the original actors have approached their performances in the morality play
and the romance differently or would they have treated the characters in similar fashion?
Para11Our twenty-first century actors initially followed their own familiar process, searching
the text for evidence to motivate their characters; specifically, they focused on
the fact that Cordella is a favorite at court (Sc2 Sp1), on the accusation that she imitates their innovative fashions (Sc2 Sp1), and on their fear that she may take a husband first and be granted pre-eminence
over them (Sc2 Sp2). There are solid grounds for psychological motivation here but, in my effort to
emphasize historical difference, I encouraged the actors simply to enjoy the presentation
of their charactersʼ wickedness rather than perform any justification. Conceiving
the characters as representations of virtues and vices pushed the company away from
their modern milieu of psychological realism and encouraged them to experiment with
alternative approaches to performing. In this scene, they played Gonorill and Ragan
as the vices Envy and Pride.
Para12Building on an perceived sexual innuendo on the word nothing in Scene 6 (Sc6 Sp10) the boys also played up their charactersʼ sexuality in this scene. When Gonorill swore by
her virginity (Sc2 Sp3), Kristʼs delivery implied that either she was no longer a virgin, or that the loss of her
virginity could not come a moment too soon. Ragan responded in like fashion when imploring
her sister to Swear not so deeply (Sc2 Sp4) giving the line an anatomical inference. The boysʼ performances conflated the charactersʼ sexual desires with their political aggression
and thus played into conservative patriarchal assumptions about the dangers of female
sexuality. Such moments of overt sexuality made me most aware of the politics of representation
brought into play when boys play women. I saw them as always performing women in quotation marks, framed by the
perspective of their own gender and biased accordingly. Others on the SQM team argue
that the gender of the actor became immaterial in performance. You may come to your
own opinion by watching video of the boys in action.
¶ Queenʼs Men Dramaturgy: Narrative Over-Determination
Para13Unlike Gonoril and Regan in King Lear the Queenʼs Menʼs sisters reveal their aggressive and deceptive intentions from the
start. Their target is their sister Cordella. Once their course of action is established
they spend the remainder of the scene gloating over their anticipated revenge on their
proud sister. Their clarity of purpose and the action that follows illustrates their dramaturgy,
typical of the Queenʼs Men, which McMillin and McLean refer to as narrative over-determination. The characters tell us exactly what they are going to do and in the next scene we
see them do just that. Performing them as Vices or pantomime villainesses added to
the sense of over-determination as Vice characters are certain to behave viciously. The sistersʼ openly wicked intentions
raise clear expectations of the action which then unfolds with the pleasurable predictability
of a fairy tale, pleasing through the resolution of conventional narrative expectations
rather than unexpected twists and turns.
Para14Although the actors had plenty of information on which to build psychological motivation
in this scene, the SQM company developed a style that was more demonstrative and pantomimic.
While the interpretation lacked subtlety and complexity, the actorsʼ relish of their
charactersʼ wickedness brought its own pleasures as may be seen in the video of the
performance.
¶ Performing Skalliger:Type Characters and the Twenty-First Century Actor
Para15David Kynastonʼs application to the character of Skalliger in the early stages of our production
process is typical of the twenty first century rehearsal practice and also indicative
of the necessarily different approach that must have been a part of the original actorʼs
technique. Skalliger claims in this scene that Leir has confessed in great secrecy (Sc2 Sp7) details of the marriage plans for his daughters, plans that were not shared in the
previous court scene. This evidence led Kynaston to wonder when exactly did his character speak to the king about the marriage schemes?
His exit line in the previous scene (1) implies that Skalliger hurries here directly. If he had done so, reasoned Kynaston, then the secret conference with the king must have occurred prior to the opening
scene of the play and, on the basis of this deductive reasoning, Kynaston decided that Skalliger enjoys a privileged relationship with the king. Kynaston also noted the inconsistency when Skalliger says I am glad I met you here so luckily (Sc2 Sp5) implying an accidental meeting when he left the previous scene with the express
intention of finding them.
Para16Kynaston built a convincing performance of the manipulative Skalliger through his careful
application to textual evidence but his investigative process would have been impossible
in the rehearsal conditions of early modern theatre. The Queenʼs Men largely rehearsed
alone and with only their parts in hand. Kynastonʼs elaborate cross-referencing depends on easy access to the full text and repeated
rehearsal of the scene. Without these options, it is likely that the original actor
would have identified the character as a familiar type: the Machiavel. An actor familiar
with the type and confident in its performance conventions can learn his lines and
walk out on the stage to speak them with conviction with minimal rehearsal. As the
SQM project progressed and less and less time was available for rehearsal the actors
became increasingly reliant on this approach to characterization.
Para17Reliance on type characters can lead to simplification and a lack of psychological
complexity but the simplicity of the approach held an honest charm and it was unquestionably
efficient. In this instance, psychological complexity was not required for the performance
of Skalliger, who has a short-lived and relatively straightforward function to perform
in the telling of the story. In a post-production interview Kynaston identified that
the additional time spent on rehearsal of King Leir was not as beneficial as the speed
of the later rehearsals that encouraged simpler and more playful responses to the
text.
Para18If we approach Shakespeareʼs play without any prior knowledge of the story, then we
may be uncertain whether Goneril and Regan are falsifying their love at the moment
when they first speak. Cordelia does not pass comment until after the elder sisters
have spoken, and initially Cordeliaʼs comments are enigmatic, she knows her love’s / More richer than my tongue (Lr 1.65–66). Kent subsequently defends the depth of Cordeliaʼs love and challenges the elder
sisters to live up to their words but does not say they are liars (Lr 1.128–138). Unlike the Queenʼs Men play Shakespeare does not confirm they are lying until after
they speak; it remains a matter of opinion until the sisters contradict their expressions
of love at the end of the scene and reveal their lack of respect for their father.
King Leir, in contrast, has taken pains to establish the moral framework for the audience by
having Gonorill and Ragan flaunt their wicked intentions in the previous scene.
Para19The two scenes can be distinguished by the degree to which they control the audienceʼs
interpretation of the action. The moral purpose of the Queenʼs Men scene is more clear-cut
than Shakespeareʼs and owes much to the morality tradition that was still central
to the theatre scene in the 1580s. Shakespeareʼs company also performed moral plays,
and I am not suggesting any absolute break from tradition here, but the dramaturgy
of his version of this scene allows for a greater freedom of interpretation. In contrast,
the Queenʼs Men dramaturgy is comparable to Bertolt Brechtʼs use of title cards that
describe the action of the scenes that follow—the audience is told what is going to
happen and can then focus on how it happens. By previously establishing the malicious
intentions of Gonorill and Ragan the audience is encouraged to adopt a particular
perspective on the morality of the action. The narrative over-determination discussed
in relation to the previous scene is dramaturgically central to the Queenʼs Menʼs
moralizing drama.
Para20The different dramaturgy invited a different approach to performance. Maintaining
their commitment to the wickedness of the sisters established in scene 2, the actors
made it perfectly apparent that they were lying to their father. This performance
choice met with resistance from the company since the sistersʼ lies were also apparent
to Don Allison, the actor playing Leir. One of the principal rules of psychological realism is that
if your character is lying, lie well, or else you will make your acting partnerʼs
character appear stupid and therefore undermine him or her in the eyes of the audience—blatant
lying is the territory of comedy not psychological realism or tragedy. Part of our
struggle with this scene involved separating the Queenʼs Menʼs play from Shakespeareʼs
and all the cultural expectations that arise from that association. The Queenʼs Men
Leir is not a tragedy; it is a moral romance and the dramaturgy encourages a playful approach
to all aspects of the story. In this scene, emphasizing the daughtersʼ deception pushed
the scene towards comedy, exposing the folly of the protagonist, an effect that was
very much in keeping with the playʼs morality.
Para21Each sister takes a moment to indirectly attack Cordella, the real target of their
deception. Gonorill refers to Cordellaʼs refusal to obey Leir in her choice of husband:
Matthew Krist (Gonorill) gave many of his lines in this scene a mock insouciance and Derek Genova (Ragan) inclined his head towards Cordella marking her as implied object of the challenge.
These performance choices emphasized the difference between the intentions of their
words as perceived by Leir and the actual intention understood by the audience. Our
awareness of the discrepancy was pleasurable and encouraged us to enjoy the sistersʼ
wickedness, while at the same time reminding us of the kingʼs folly.
Para22Developing the appropriate style for this scene and the play as a whole was a delicate
balancing act: over-emphasizing the comedy would have undermined the emotional import
of the scene, which, for all the characters, is extremely high. With rehearsal, the
company found the requisite balance and became comfortable with the mixture of comic
elements and high emotion that is characteristic of the Queenʼs Men dramaturgy. Don Allison (Leir), for example, began to add a touch of childlike naivety to his responses to
the flattery (Sc3 Sp7 and Sc3 Sp11), which illuminated his moral folly by highlighting his inability to recognize his
daughterʼs lies. The company became adept at shifting the tone of the scenes from
the comic to the serious. The audience laughed at the sisters obvious lies but the
laughter stopped when Allison (Leir) became consumed with fury at the line Peace, bastard imp (Sc3 Sp23).
Para23Shakespeare teases out Learʼs transition from confusion to fury with a 20 line exchange between father and Cordelia
(Lr 1.73–92), but King Leirʼs rage is more sudden: he responds to Cordella with What minion? and, prompted by Gonorill and Raganʼs pretended shock, he launches into a tirade
against disrespectful children. The SQM company found that the plays were full of
such sudden shifts of extreme emotion. In fact, each of the plays contains an important
conversion scene that is constructed to make a feature of this performance technique.
For actors used to psychological realism and its gradually shifting emotional states,
this device was alien. Half-hearted commitment falsified these moments and the actors
found that they simply had to jump into the new emotional state without reservation.
The fact that the audience may have been laughing immediately before, or that their
character was previously in an entirely different state, was no excuse for not committing
to the sudden shift in emotion. In this instance, by the time Leir interrupts Cordella
with Peace, bastard imp (Sc3 Sp23)—the kind of shocking epithet that Shakespeare reserved for later in his play—Don Allison (Leir) was fully committed to an overpowering and irrational fury.
Para24The audience meets Cordella in person for the first time in this scene. They have
heard of her resistance to her fatherʼs marriage plans, that Perillus esteems her,
and that her sisterʼs despise her for pride and arrogance, but they have yet to form
their own opinion. In the SQM production, Cordella was dressed in a relatively modest
satin blue dress that distinguished her from her more garishly costumed sisters. On
entering she took up a position stage left, on the margins of the scene but with easy
access to the audience beside her. Since the audience knows Gonorill is lying, they
also know that Cordella speaks the truth when she identifies her sisterʼs words as
flattery. From his position at the side of the stage, Julian DeZotti (Cordella) was able to develop an intimate relationship with the audience.
Para25I encouraged DeZotti (Cordella) to conceive of his character as a representation of feminine virtues,
the moral and theatrical counterpoint to her Vice-like sisters. Julian found this direction extremely limiting and over the course of the run developed
a better rounded character that in retrospect I believe was a truer reflection of
the character as represented in the text. In this scene, Julian played Cordella with a quiet, modest humility, but as elsewhere, the text implied
a strength of mind and assertiveness beyond the limitations of conservative patriarchal
ideals. Here, Cordella resists her sistersʼ arguments accusing them of manufacturing
their own false tributes: The praise were great, spoke from anotherʼs mouth,/But it should seem your neighbors
dwell far off (Sc3 Sp20). As Julian became more comfortable with his role and developed his characters for the other
plays, Cordella became increasingly assertive and admirable in her desire for self-definition.
Para26In relation to the other plays performed in the original SQM productions King Leir is comparatively consistent in style, the regularity of the versification creates
this illusion. Variety remains a guiding principle in the Queenʼs Menʼs dramaturgy
in this play and Scene 4 steers the action away from the serious matter featured in
the play up to this point. On the page, little appears to be happening, but the SQM
actors gave the scene a playful quality that brought the scene to life,raising expectations
of future fun while launching the storyline that would eventually bring the play to
its happy conclusion.
Para27Paul Hopkins, as the Gallian King, brought youthful charisma to the role, focusing on the kingʼs
desire for adventure and fun, and his apparent love of disguises seen here (Sc4 Sp5) and in scene 21 (Sc21 Sp21). By focusing on the kingʼs adventurous youth, he helped to separate the QM play
from the subsequent Shakespearean associations with the King of France. Shakespeareʼs
King of France provides the play with an example of magnanimity, he is a man willing
to marry Cordelia for her virtue alone. The Gallian King does the same but from a
different context—his character is derived from chivalric romance and has more akin
with the wandering knights Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes than with the noblemen who
populate Shakespeareʼs history plays and tragedies. Hopkins played this scene as if the business of kingship were a burdensome inconvenience
to the romantic king who was impatient to leave his land, councilors, and responsibilities
behind and embark on a grand quest for love.
Para28One of the premises of the SQM productions was that the three plays could have formed
part of the Queenʼs Menʼs repertoire in the 1580s and might all have been performed
by the same company of actors. This premise is impossible to prove but it was a determining
factor in our casting process. We adopted the principle that actors would have specialized
parts and would have taken on similar roles from play to play. One of our master actors
was assigned to play the lead comic roles in each play, roles we imagined might have
been performed by the famous clown actor Richard Tarlton in the original productions.
Current critical understanding suggested that Tarlton specialized in working class
characters. In fact the term clown had double meaning in his day referring to the principal comedian in a theatrical
company and to real-life country rustics. We know with a degree of certainty that
the role of Derrick in Famous Victories, was performed by Tarlton. Derrick is a typical example of the clown character that according to legend was popularized by Tarlton; this clown is a country
bumpkin newly arrived in the city.
Para29The choice of clown role was less obvious in King Leir. The witty Mumford, a jovial French courtier, seems an unlikely role for an Elizabethan
clown but working on the role with our own company clown, Alon Nashman, revealed telling points of connection that suggest that Mumford may indeed have
been a part for Tarlton. In this scene, for example, Mumford identifies his kinship
with the English noble Blunt family, who, in keeping with their name, he defines in
terms of their plain-speaking (Sc4 Sp6) and the prose he adopts to suit his disguise bears marked resemblance to the language
of Derrick and other clown characters.
Para30Imagining Tarlton playing this role adds a satisfying level of irony to the character,
enhancing the comedy and establishing a playful, teasing relationship between the
world of the play and the world of the Elizabethan audience. Mumfordʼs assertion,
for example that the French dames are more beautiful than the English (Sc4 Sp2) would have been given an amusing twist if spoken by the archetypically English clown.
Indeed, the very idea of the familiar English clown playing a French courtier would
have amused on a meta-theatrical level with audience and actor both enjoying the atypical
casting.
Para31The association with Tarlton aside, conceiving this character as a role for a principal
comedian is essential to understanding the dramaturgy of the play. Mumford and his
king become active agents in the unwinding of the plot and enable its turn from desperation
to hope and a happy resolution. Their fun-loving desire for romantic adventure and
pleasant company (Sc4 Sp7) is central to the spirit of the play and serve as an important contrast to the sour
envy and vindictiveness of Ragan and Gonorill.
Para32This key scene embodies the dramaturgy of the play as a whole. Cambria and Cornwall
both play their parts in the shocking treatment of King Leir, but here they are introduced
in a different mode. They each appear on stage accompanied by an exhausted and begrudging
servant. They also both have riding crops and letters, and express their eagerness
to reach their loves. Initially they donʼt notice each other and then they start to see each other (5). The repetition and mirroring in addition to what is apparently a classic double-take
are techniques of comic dramaturgy and only by embracing the implications of these
techniques could we unlock the spirit of the scene and the characters at this point
of the play. The rehearsal process, once again, involved breaking down our neoclassical
division of the serious and the comic, and separating our work from assumptions arising
from our knowledge of Shakespeareʼs tragedy.
Para33The comic tone of the scene is confirmed by the central double-entendre on the words
whole and hole (Sc5 Sp14). The joke constructs the characters as comedic lovers and reveals that sexual desire
is as much their motivating force as it is for Gonorill and Ragan, a fact emphasized
during the exchange between the sisters in the following scene, which quibbles comically
on nothing (Sc6 Sp10).
Para34Like the King of Gallia, Cambria and Cornwall enter the action as quasi-chivalric
knights, here riding desperately to meet the objects of their desires. They are products
of romance, not tragedy or history. The SQM actors gave their characters a level of
naivety that allowed them to live through the surprises and coincidences of the scene
without commenting ironically on them. The discovery of their shared purpose and the
fact that they would soon be brothers (Sc5 Sp13) emerged with a sense of joyful wonder. The audience could thus laugh warmly at them
rather than sneer with detached ridicule. The comic interpretation of their characters
in this scene proved problematic for the SQM actors when working on the more serious
side of their characters later in the play.
Para35The comic servants that accompany the knights are featured only in this scene. By
playing up the servantsʼ exhaustion we were able to establish a comic tone right from
the outset, priming the audience for a light-hearted reception of the two kings. The
servants entered behind their sprightly, eager princes and threw themselves in a heap
on the floor, addressing themselves directly to the audience. Upon their mastersʼ
exits the two servants lumbered off after them reluctantly, maintaining audience interest
until the stage was finally cleared for the opening of the next scene.
¶ Queenʼs Men Dramaturgy: Narrative Over-Determination
Para36As a director, this scene always seemed redundant to me. McMillin and MacLean identified
the tendency of the Queenʼs Men dramatists to show a thing and report it, a characteristic
of the dramaturgy that they described as narrative over-determination. Nothing surprising happens in this scene. The events are the logical consequence
of the earlier scenes and could more economically have been recounted third hand as
in fact Cordella does in the following scene (Sc7 Sp11). So what was the purpose of this dramaturgical technique?
Para37The scene opens with the sisters clarifying the root cause of their hatred of Cordella,
adding vanity to their list of vices. They inform us of Cordellaʼs plight but this
is information we will discover for ourselves in the next scene anyway. Leir enters
defending his decision to disinherit Cordella and abdicate his throne in favor of
Cambria and Cornwall, telling us that he expects their arrival within this two days (Sc6 Sp16), upon which words the duo expeditiously appear. Leirʼs next line: But in good time they are arrived already (Sc6 Sp16) always got a big laugh in performance. I always felt that the audience was laughing
at the clumsiness of the storytelling at this point. I read the compression of time
as a sign that the company was aware of the sceneʼs narrative redundancy. I feel that
a story editor today would suggest removing this scene, relying instead on Cordellaʼs
account of its events in the following scene to advance the story.
Para38My interpretation of the scene in performance was clearly colored by my own artistic
assumptions and training that told me that any scene should provide some significant
turn of events that advances the course of the action. I believe there is a degree
of validity to my argument and other early modern plays find more concise ways to
advance their stories but it is also important to acknowledge that the Queenʼs Menʼs
dramaturgy has its own charm. It proceeds at a more leisurely pace and often the pleasure
of localized humorous events outweighs concerns over the significance of each moment
in relation to the whole. The fact that Leir makes reference to time in two the lines
adjacent to the kingsʼ entrance implies the comic effect was deliberate. It also builds
on the sense of the loversʼ haste established in the previous scene and the punning
on the word nothing (Sc6 Sp11) mirrors Cambriaʼs confusion over the words whole and hole in the previous scene (Sc5 Sp15) establishing sexual desire rather than romantic affection as the key compatibility
between the sisters and the two kings—a contrast with the expressions of love between
Cordella and Gallia in the following scene (Sc7 Sp25). In the SQM performance, Cambria and Cornwall dashed onto the stage, breathless,
with a swirl of their capes to enhance the comic effect and the lusty relationships
between the kings and the two wicked sisters were established in a delightful and
distracting visual display. The basic narrative development—that they get married—is
thus cemented in the imaginations of the audience. It was not economical in terms
of time but it was more engaging and fun than the account of the same events given
by Cordella in the subsequent scene.
Para39In contrast to the buffoonery scene 6, scene 7 was one of the most delightfully romantic
scenes in the SQM performances. The focus returns to Gallia and Mumford, here disguised
as pilgrims, on the shores of Britain.
Para40Mumfordʼs clownish qualities are in full evidence here. The courtly formality of his
opening exchange with the king is gone and he speaks in familiar, colloquial verse
and prose. The scene begins with an extended gag in which Mumford fails to maintain
their disguised identities by repeatedly referring to his master as My lord (Sc7 Sp2). He demands a new name to help cement their identities, rejecting the kingʼs romantic
pretentions for the plain English Will and Jack.
Para41The characterʼs love of women was clear in his first scene and here he falls for Cordella
as soon as he sees her. He comments comically on her commitment to a life of labor
as a seamstress, giving his sexual desire expression until he is pulled out of his
lustful reverie by her commitment to a maidenʼs life. The exchange appears designed for performance by a principal comedian.
Para42Both of these exchanges craft the comic dialogue cleverly and were very funny in the
hands of our actors, but the real charm of the scene came from its juxtaposition with
Cordellaʼs heartfelt commitment to deal with her misfortune steadfastly. Without Mumfordʼs
interjections, Cordellaʼs struggles might have bordered on the tragic. With them we
could sympathize with her plight without great fear. The scene operated in a delightful
space between emotional sympathy and laughter, continually shifting us between emotional
identification with the lovers and laughter at Mumfordʼs jokes. The two responses
blend into each other as we enjoy the sudden courtship while appreciating the irony
of its expeditious development. Mumfordʼs rhyme, I like the wooing thatʼs not long a-doing (Sc7 Sp49), expresses a sentiment that the audience shared, and always got a big laugh. The
actors playing Gallia and Cordella learned to pitch their performances in such a way
to allow laughter without undermining the sincerity of their emotions. They did not
allow ironic detachment to overwhelm their speedy courtship but by enjoying its suddenness
themselves they allowed the audience to laugh along with their rapidly developing
affections. One of the overriding principals of the SQM productions was that we would
not encourage the audience to laugh at the plays themselves. This scene was an excellent
example of the careful tightrope the actors walked to avoid such laughter.
Para43The medley style creates a playful atmosphere within which the company explores an
important social issue. The king, disguised as a poor pilgrim, falls in love with
the princess brought to penury. Stripped of status by design or by misfortune, their
love grows from mutual affection rather than social compatibility. The scene advocates
for the importance of mutual affection in marriage—an idea that challenged the practice
of arranged and politically expedient marriages common amongst the nobility. The scene
develops the theme introduced at the outset of the play as Cordella freely chooses
her own husband without her fatherʼs permission, a fact that challenges patriarchal
authority. It was important to make the actors aware of the cultural barriers to such
marriages and foster an appreciation that Cordellaʼs willingness to love below her
station was remarkable to Gallia.
Para44While Gallia is impressed by Cordellaʼs commitment to love regardless of wealth and
social status, the audience is always aware that she is in fact in love with a king.
The multiple ironies surrounding their identities situate the action in the never-land
of romance where characters make choices free from the contingencies of the everyday
world. Their conversation tests their resolve and commitment to their love, but we
are aware throughout that the pilgrim is in fact a king and the seamstress a princess.
The scene makes its point without forcing it, charming us with romantic possibilities
rather than confronting its audience with the need for social change.
Para45Cordellaʼs opening speech was particularly challenging for Julian. She begins by bemoaning her fate that contrasts so starkly with the fortune of her
sisters. She blames both the fickle queen of chance (Sc7 Sp11) and her father (Sc7 Sp11) but finishes by questioning her own complaint and embracing her fate as the result
of Godʼs divine providence. This final turn proved challenging. The idea of divine
providence was alien to Julian but I pushed the interpretation as central to the concept of the play. In contrast
to Shakespeareʼs play, the narrative of King Leir is driven by Godʼs providential justice. The playʼs emphasis on divine providence
is a sign of its adherence to contemporary protestant dogma and to the companyʼs ideological
mission. Julian saw Cordella as far more active and determined in her commitment to make her living
as a seamstress; I wanted him to play it as a submission to Godʼs will rather than
as an assertion of her own or as a sign of self-determination.
Para46Our negotiations with this section of the text in rehearsal and performance were informed
by our own cultural attitudes and by those attitudes contained in the script. I resisted
emphasis on Cordellaʼs courage and self-reliance as it felt too contemporary. The
text implies a high degree of humility and I feared Julianʼs choice might emphasize individual self-determination to a degree not suggested
by the text. Cordellaʼs attitude is far removed from that expressed by Scarlett OʼHara
in her comparable struggle on her heath in Gone with the Wind, to choose a more contemporary example. But Julianʼs resistance to the passivity was also well-founded. Cordella is submitting to Godʼs
will, but she is also recognizing that God helps those who help themselves. She refuses
to be the victim here and has plans for her future—an idea that was not alien to mainstream
protestant theology.
Para47Julian was more comfortable developing his relationship with the Gallian King than with
God, and his work on this aspect of his character revealed a strength and proactive
quality beyond my conception of Cordella as a conservative, patriarchal ideal of woman.
This scene supports his interpretation as she first shows a steadfast commitment to
a life of labor and then proves bold enough to declare her love to the poor pilgrim,
saying: Cease for thy king, seek for thyself to woo (Sc7 Sp38). Cordella has finally chosen her husband and her commitment to romantic love enables
her to choose someone she believes is far below the social status she was born to.
Para48The company felt that this scene, like scene 6, was largely redundant in performance.
Perillus reports events that we have already seen on stage and then informs us of
Leirʼs mistreatment at the hands of his daughters, something we are about to hear
about in the next scene and witness in Scene 11. The actors asked if it could be cut
but we held to our policy of performing the plays in their entirety.
Para49In performance the scene did little but make me wonder why it was there. Did the company
lack faith in the power of their own story, thinking that the audience would have
forgotten about Leirʼs actions by this point? Did they want to highlight Perillus,
a character who will be a key motivator in the playʼs resolution? Is the playʼs narrative over-determination a dramaturgical technique devised to deal with an audience that was not paying attention?
Para50It is easy to exaggerate the idea of an unruly Elizabethan audience. Assessment of
the eye-witness accounts of audiences refusing to sit or stand silently in their place
must be balanced by the fact that the theatre of the period was largely aural and
depended on an audience that would listen to the words the actors were speaking. The
argument that the provincial audiences visited by the touring Queenʼs Men would have
been all the more unruly smacks of snobbery. That said, what other rationale accounts
for the repetitious quality of some of this play?
Para51The use of short monologue scenes like this one is a technique repeated throughout
the play. They punctuate the action on a relatively regular basis, each bringing a
different character into focus immediately before they play a key role in the development
of the story. Creating plays with many characters was one of the companyʼs innovations,
breaking with the morality tradition that typically focused exclusively on the spiritual
journey of one central character. Regular expository monologues may have been designed
to maintain a story involving such a large number of active characters. Some of these
scenes were more telling in performance than others: Raganʼs monologue (Scene 25), for example, deepens the playʼs engagement with themes of gender and power. Repetition
is an important rhetorical strategy of the period and the Queenʼs Men are not alone
including such devices, but scenes, like this one, that only repeat information already
received or about to be communicated through other means, seemed to elongate our contemporary
performance without enhancing it.
Para52The events of Leir 8 and 9 are captured in Shakespeareʼs Scene 3; by comparing how these plays treat
the material, we can recognize the differences in dramaturgy. Lear 1.3 begins with Goneril asking for confirmation from her steward that Lear has struck
one of her Gentlemen (Lr 3.1). Her complaint is short and to the point and situated within the business of running
a household. She leaves having given her steward instructions to slight the king,
an instruction that motivates the action of the next scene. In the Queenʼs Men scene
Gonorill asks for advice from Skalliger. Skalliger tells her to abridge (Sc9 Sp2) the kingʼs allowance (Sc9 Sp2) in half (Sc9 Sp2) at which she promptly informs him she has done so already but will half her fatherʼs
allowance again on Skalligerʼs advice. Delighted to find Skalliger conformable to
her own inclination, she exits. Skalliger, left on stage, calls her a viperous woman (Sc9 Sp4) and anticipates heavenʼs revenge on her and on himself before exiting, never to
be seen again.
Para53Shakespeareʼs scene is a tightly wound 23 lines compared to 43 in Leir. If we were
to judge the scenes in terms of dramaturgical efficiency and unity of action then
Shakespeare would win hands down, but what does the Queenʼs Men play do that Shakespeare
does not? In performance, Matthew Krist played Gonorillʼs initial speech with a brazen outrage, unleashing a vicious attack
on her father and then seductively inviting Skalliger to find a solution. She then
turned the tables at the end to reveal she has already taken action independent of
his advice. The turn surprised Skalliger as much as the audience and prompted his
commentary on her wickedness and his regret that he has to live by flattery (Sc9 Sp4). Conceived in this way, the scene becomes an opportunity for the actor playing Gonorill
to demonstrate the vicious nature of the character and for the company to pass moral
commentary on the corrupt world through the mouth of Skalliger. The key difference
between the Queenʼs Men play and Shakespeareʼs is the lack of evidence to support
Gonorillʼs opinion of her fatherʼs behavior. In Lear Kent does trip Gonerilʼs servant giving a degree of justification to her actions.
Leir has done nothing to provoke his daughters and his mistreatment arises from their
viciousness alone. The mode of the scene is moral demonstration and once more the
play reveals its indebtedness to the morality play tradition that was still a prominent
feature of the Queenʼs Men theatrical milieu. Working with the Queenʼs Men plays means
having to embrace the idea that the scenes can be episodic and their purpose local.
The plays have a clear moral function and fulfill the company mission, establishing
plays as moral entertainments, not (as some puritans argued) corrupters of souls.
When working with this material today it became apparent that searching for psychological
motivation was often less productive than embracing the broad, ethical attitudes represented
in the characters and playing them to the full.
Para54Skalliger reappears in this scene only to disappear from the play at its end. Before
he exits he reveals his distaste for his queen and for his own complicity in her mistreatment
of her father (Sc9 Sp4). For the actor playing the role, this parting comment gave his character depth and
moral complexity that are nevertheless abandoned with Skalligerʼs disappearance. The
play uses him to drive the intrigue at a few key moments and then simply removes him
from the plot without explanation. As described above, the purpose of his parting
comments was likely not connected to the development of character but to the presentation
of moral argument.
Para55From the point of view of modern playwriting technique, Skalligerʼs disappearance
is a problematic loose end and it remained odd to me throughout the performances.
The SQM audience, however, did not seem to care. They were willing to accept a form
of storytelling that was not overly concerned with tidiness and unity.
Para56One of the most substantial differences between this play and Shakespeareʼs is the
representation of the king. The kings are both accused of pride, vanity, and lack
of self-knowledge; his daughters complain that he criticizes and asserts his authority
even after abdication. In Shakespeareʼs play we see that there is some substance to
his daughtersʼ accusations (even the knowing fool agrees), but in King Leir there is no support for their mistreatment of their father. Leir is a good old man
who makes a terrible error of judgment, rewarding the sistersʼ flattery instead of
Cordellaʼs modest honesty.
Para57In this scene, Leir does nothing to warrant his daughterʼs aggression. His comment
about her breeding young bones (Sc10 Sp10), although taken as an insult by Gonorill, was read in performance as a hopeful surmise
that pregnancy might be the cause of his mistreatment. That is, Leir intended to reassure
Cornwall as well as make sense of the surprising reversal of affection he experiences
at the hands of his daughter.
Para58Leir eventually realizes his mistake and the play takes him through a process of recognition,
repentance and suffering, comparable to what we see in King Lear. The focus, however, does not fall on Leirʼs character development or the cultural
complexities of kingship; instead, the play presents us with a spectacle of Christian
suffering and an example of endurance and faith in Godʼs providential justice. Rather
than investigating the psychological complexity of the king as an individual, the
role challenges a contemporary actor to empathically connect with the ideas of faith
and despair. These ideas that were alien to our largely secular actors and it was
necessary to highlight their importance during the rehearsal process. The dialogue
between King Leir and Perillus, here and in the later scenes depends for its affect
on the gravity with which early modern Christians viewed the sin of despair.
Para59Jason Gray (Cornwall) found his characterʼs sudden exit from this scene difficult to motivate
(10). Looking at the issue from the point of view of psychological realism: why would
a character so keen to console Leir at the outset (Sc10 Sp1) suddenly abandon him to the anger of his daughter? Is he afraid of Gonorill? Does
he have an extremely low tolerance for domestic conflict? Does he feel that it is
not his place to interfere in the relationship once the depth of the conflict is clear?
Jason considered all of these options but I do not believe he ever found a solution to
the problem that fully satisfied him. As rehearsal progressed Jason increased the level of naivety that he brought to bear on his first scenes and used
this device to build motivation for his exit here. The result was a kindly and charming
king and husband who became befuddled by his wifeʼs behavior and was unwilling to
take sides; having put his foot in his mouth with his comment about a womanʼs words (Sc10 Sp9), he decides the wiser move is to absent himself from the family argument. Jasonʼs approach to his character has much in common with Shakespeareʼs initial treatment
of the kindly and somewhat ineffective Albany.
Para60His choices worked well enough for this scene but Cornwall later becomes very concerned
about Leirʼs welfare (Sc12 Sp1) and retrospectively it remained strange that he should just abandon him at this
point. Dramaturgically, however, his exit is convenient as it allows Gonorill to throw
Leir out without her husbandʼs knowledge. The important consequence of this is that
it makes Cornwall appear to be the dupe of his dominant wife, an idea that is picked
up in Raganʼs subsequent soliloquy in (Scene 25). From the point of view of conservative patriarchal ideology, this inversion of
authority suggests a further sign of the disorder brought about when fathers abdicate
their authority to daughters.
Para61In contrast to the portrayal of Leir as an innocent in this scene, Gonorill is indisputably
vicious. Her cruelty has no justification aside from her selfish desires that have
been made openly apparent from her first appearance on stage. The scene presents the
actor with another opportunity to revel in the characterʼs manipulative wickedness
and Matthew Krist continued to enjoy doing just that, beginning with a performance of the wronged and
loving wife that carried just enough irony to amuse the audience even while fooling
Cornwall (Sc10 Sp8), and then moving to a sarcastic moral outrage when she takes mock offence at the
implication that she might have been pregnant before she was married (Sc10 Sp11).
Para62As critics point out, Learʼs culpability is an open question in Shakespeareʼs play;
in Leir, this ambiguity vanishes as the play defines Gonorill and Ragan as evil from the
start and depicts Leir as a good man suffering as a consequence of one error of judgment
rather than because of a flaw in his character, a lack of self-knowledge, or his insensitivity
to those over whom he ruled—all of which are implied in Shakespeareʼs play. In King Leir, good is set more clearly against evil. Godʼs providential justice will lead the
good king through suffering and penitence to reconciliation and a happy resolution.
Para63Such providential orderliness is a stark contrast to Shakespeareʼs Lear. Even at moments of high conflict, as in this scene, the quality of pantomime in
the villainy invites a strikingly different response from the audience—its transparency
makes it more playful and less perplexing than the same wickedness in Shakespeareʼs
play. In performance we could have encouraged a less light-hearted approach coupling
the playfulness of the sisters with a fearful awareness of the influence of evil in
the world. The comedy of the devils in the morality tradition is often both funny
and spiritually frightening in this way and by not considering the spiritual dimension
here we may have diluted the emotional impact of the sisterʼs wickedness. The moral
dichotomy would remain clear-cut but the affect could have been more complex.
Para64Leirʼs treatment by Gonorill causes him to long for death and to weep. Perillus then
steps forward to rescue his master from despair, kindling his hope that Ragan will
treat Leir more kindly. The pattern of this scene is repeated later in the play and
much time is invested in these exchanges. In terms of action, it first appeared relatively
static to us: Leir despairs, Perillus persuades him to hope again. But in the world
of the play this action is highly significant and for this section we did draw on
the spiritual context of the conflict to give the action a greater sense of urgency,
stressing the dire consequences of despair for Christian believers.
Para65The exchange is constructed using patterns of rhetoric that give a formal beauty to
an emotional development that will subsequently shape the playʼs action. Perillusʼ
persuasions are drawn out across a series of rhetorical figures in which the friend
picks up on the complaints of his king and cleverly turns them into justifications
for his own loyalty. Leir then turns the tables on his friend by arguing that rationality
has no authority in a world where daughters can undermine sacred law (Sc10 Sp26) and condemn, despise and abhor their fathers (Sc10 Sp26). At this point, Perillus resorts to the eloquence of his own tears that weep in
sympathy with Leir and prove his own love for his master (Sc10 Sp27).
Para66The rhetorical patterning requires the actor to allow the character to be conscious
of his manipulation of language. Rather than attempting to give the verse a natural
quality as if imitating everyday speech, the actor must accept that the characters
are consciously and deliberately engaging in a rhetorical game as they each pick up
on the rhetorical figures and arguments of the other. The beauty and charm of the
technique come from the combination of rhetorical word-game and high emotional stakes.
Since the technique occurs twice more in the play (14) and (Sc23 Sp13), the appeal of this dramaturgy for a contemporary audience was obviously something
that the Queenʼs Men felt they could rely upon. Don Allison and Peter Higginson, the actors that performed this scene, are both adept verse-speakers and were able
to capture the appeal of the technique for our twenty first century audience.
¶ Queenʼs Men Dramaturgy: Narrative Over-Determination
Para67Here, another soliloquy is inserted between scenes to set up subsequent action and
provides another example of narrative over-determination. Raganʼs joyful mood provides
an instant contrast with the proceeding scene and her determination to send her father
packing (Sc11 Sp1) removes any element of surprise surrounding the action to come. The expectations
raised are clear. Leir will arrive and be as sorely abused by Ragan as he was by Gonorill.
The dramaturgy generates anticipatory fear for anyone empathizing with Leir but also
makes the development of the plot predictable. In performance, the archness of our
wicked sisters suggested another possible function of this dramaturgical strategy.
The affect has something in common with the Heʼs Behind You! gag from British pantomime. The lead actor stands on stage and asks the audience
to let him know if they see the villain, who promptly appears upstage and creeps towards
the hero. The mistreatment that is heading towards Leir is made so obvious that it
took on qualities of this routine. Once again, the play proved far more playful than
we first imagined, coming to it as we did, under the shadow of King Lear. The company developed a naive clown-like quality for the performances that served
this aspect of the plays very well and became one of the defining aspects of the SQM
style.
Para68Shakespeareʼs manipulation of expectation in King Lear is more complex and may well have been playing on residual expectations in his audience
arising from memory of the Queenʼs Men play. Shakespeareʼs audience is led to believe
that Cordelia was coming to save her father only to be surprised when the French army
loses and Cordelia is imprisoned. The martial Edgar then becomes the hope of salvation
and carries the hope of divine justice on his sword but although he defeats Edmund
in single combat, his effort comes to late to save Cordelia and the King. The Queenʼs
Menʼs dramaturgy confirms the power of Godʼs Providence; Shakespeare raises comparable
expectations only to disappoint the very expectations he raises. The Queenʼs Menʼs
play falls steadily in line with protestant ideology thus serving the political mandate
of the company as conceived by Walsingham and Leicester, according to McMillin and
MacLean. With the playful quality developed by the company the happy outcome was never
really in doubt in performance.
Para69The play goes out of its way to show that both Ragan and Gonorill dominate their husbands.
The SQM actors playing Ragan and Gonorill took great relish in manipulating Cornwall
and Cambria. In a modern context their empowerment was not controversial or threatening.
The audience enjoyed the characters and laughed at their obvious manipulation of their
husbands. Watching the performances, however, and imagining the same scenes performed
in their original context, I wondered how they would have been received. From a traditional,
patriarchal perspective, the queensʼ behavior would have been defined as an inversion
of natural order. Transgressive women were perennially popular figures in early drama—the Noahʼs
wife characters from Flood plays of York, Wakefield and Chester are pertinent examples.
The audience likely still laughed, but would part of that laughter have been scorn
directed at the ignorant husbands? Would the laughter have been enhanced by the element
of transgression in their behavior?
Para70The companyʼs performances of gender clearly engaged with the complex, contemporary
discourse generated in part by the presence of their patron, the female ruler of the
country. While in matters of religion and political authority their position is crystal
clear, in matters of gender their message is more difficult to define. The good Cordella
is presented in juxtaposition to her wicked sisters, but she too resists male authority
and her refusal to obey Leir in matters of marriage is depicted in a positive light.
I suspect that the humor surrounding the wicked queens that proved still to be enjoyable
today might have had a more contentious edge in the original performances.
Para71Matthew Krist (Gonorill) once more made his manipulation of the husband openly apparent to the
audience. In this scene, however, the series of tactics he employs do not work. He
played the aggrieved little girl (Alas, my lordSc12 Sp2), attempted calm reassurance (I know he is but stolʼnSc12 Sp2), and finally flirted with her husband (Therefore, my lord, be frolicSc12 Sp2) but to no avail. His character is forced to take the extreme measure of intercepting
the Messenger. The archness of Kristʼs performance gave the character the quality of a pantomime villainess.
Para72Matthew built on his interpretation of his characterʼs sexuality in this scene, using his
sexual charms to persuade the Messenger to risk his life in his characterʼs service.
The scene between him and Alon Nashman (Messenger) was highly charged and Gonorill left the stage fanning herself with her
letter.
Para73In this scene, Cornwall is more in control of his court and his wifeʼs efforts do
not deflect him from his concern that Leir has been mistreated. He does, however,
fail to see through his wifeʼs manipulative tactics or connect Leirʼs sudden departure
with the way he was treated by his daughter in Scene 10. As the play progressed Jason Gray (Cornwall) found it necessary to give his character more substance and move away
from the naivety that had worked so well in the earlier scenes.
Para74The text shifts the characterʼs name from Messenger to Murderer once he is engaged
by Ragan to kill her father. When first casting the play it seemed unlikely that a
character entitled Murderer should be a comic character but on close reading, so many of the lines are intended
to elicit laughter that a comic interpretation seemed most appropriate. As I was finalizing
the casting I noticed that the character of Mumford—assigned to the company clown—disappears
from the stage when the Messenger/Murderer appears, making it possible to double the
two roles, and assign them to Alon Nashman, SQMʼs chief comic performer.
Para75This casting created an opportunity for a virtuoso comic performance and increased
my suspicion that these roles might have been devised for Richard Tarlton. In this
scene, the Messenger refers to himself as a handsome man (Sc12 Sp12), which is possibly an ironic reference to Tarltonʼs famously funny face—the gag
is repeated by Derrick in Famous Victories, a role we can be almost sure was played by Tarlton. The Messenger speaks in colloquial
prose comparable to Derrickʼs and his reference to the oyster-wives of Billingsgate
(Sc12 Sp20) and his parish neighbours implies he is a London local. Tarlton was a familiar figure
in London and his clowning often played off his identity outside of the theatre, blurring
the distinction between man and clown.
Para76My obsession with Tarlton and this role created problems in the rehearsal room for
Alon Nashman who had a different reading of the character from my own. Alon saw the Messenger as a wily, sexually aware, and upwardly mobile courtier, who seizes
on the queenʼs favor to secure his personal advancement. I felt he was a less sophisticated
operator, a working class lad who stumbles into royal favor and clumsily negotiates
his progression to wealth and influence with a directness that derives from the streets
rather than from courtly politics. There is plenty of evidence in the text to support
the two interpretations and Alonʼs performance ultimately contained elements of both.
Para77Working this scene specifically, I looked for ways to bring out the comedy of the
interaction right from the start. Tarlton was famous for his entrances and exits and
with this in mind, I directed Alon to hurry onto the stage carrying his letter before him and a sense of urgent self-importance,
only to turn around and exit via the other curtain (12). Gonorill called him back creating a comic false exit and double-take. (This effect
is not apparent in the PQM video as the stage configuration for this performance forced
the actors to change the blocking.) Alon instinctively focused his attention on Gonorill, the potential source of his social
advancement, but I encouraged him to develop a closer relationship with the audience.
When Gonorill opens his letters, Alon first communicated his shock to the audience with a facial expression before addressing
the queen directly (Sc12 Sp9). He later used the reference to himself as a handsome man as an opportunity to flirt with the audience. Our rehearsal process involved a constant
negotiation between Alonʼs focus on his characterʼs objective and my desire to see the scene clowned to the
audience.
Para78Alon felt the sexual overtones in the Messengerʼs speech were the mark of a man confident
in his sexuality and willing to use it to manipulate the queen. I felt that the colloquial
phrasing of his speech kept him fixed in the material world of the clown rather than
the sophisticated courtier and that it should be played as a clumsy rather than wily
approach to the queen. In the final performance, Alon uses his sexual charms on the queen but also manages to involve the audience and
engage them with the fun behind crassness of his language.
Para79The Messenger suddenly adopts verse and sounds like a courtier rather than a clown
from the streets of London (Sc12 Sp22). He has more speeches in this vein later in the play that all lend weight to Alonʼs interpretation of the character. Alon played up the double entendre on the word
try me, noted in the textual commentary, and his performance of the line portrayed the character
as a wily and sophisticated social climber. In his next speech, however, the Messenger
describes the effect of his slanderous tongue comparing its work to the skinning of
a rabbit, a colloquial reference that implies the characterʼs connection to the world
of the working man or clown, and perhaps also the world of the con artist or cony catcher. The specific reference to the rabbit (cony) encourages such a reading.
Para80At the end of the scene, I wanted Alon to dash off following his line: I fly, I fly (Sc12 Sp30). I thought this might have been an opportunity for Tarlton, if he played this role,
to create one of his famous comic exits. Alon created his own comic exit by slowly strolling off the stage. The incongruity between
line and action was amusing and spoke to his characterʼs confidence and on-going flirtation
with the queen.
¶ Queenʼs Men Dramaturgy: Narrative Over-Determination
Para81Scene 13 is another short soliloquy inserted between two scenes that provides the
audience with largely unnecessary information. The fact that the playwright returns
to this device repeatedly suggests he felt it important to repeat plot points and
to keep the audience engaged with characters that they have not seen for a while.
Here we find Cordella in a state of great happiness longing only for reconciliation
with her father. Her soliloquy reminds the audience of her plight and raises expectations
about the action to come. Such soliloquies also serve the basic function of clearing
the stage and allowing an indefinite time to pass in which other actions in the story
can take place. When we return to Britain, Leir has finished his journey to Ragan.
Para82Probably the hardest scene that Julian had to play in the entire SQM repertoire, the sequence begins with Cordellaʼs self-criticism
with respect to her Christian duty and it ends with her forgiveness of those who have
previously caused her suffering. Most twenty-first-century actors find it difficult
to engage with such religiously motivated sentiment. Indeed, playing the good characters
in these plays is far more challenging today than playing the wicked ones. Despite
the relatively foreign affective register, the monologue has an arc to its structure
that a modern actor should find quite playable: Cordella moves from a display of pious
gratitude to God and wifely devotion to her husband to a brief complaint against her
father and then her sisters only to conclude by forgiving them and determining to
go to church to pray for her fatherʼs favor. The monologue has a clear and active
emotional journey, but displays of modesty, humble gratitude, and forgiveness are
not often featured in the modern actorʼs repertoire nor are they behaviors highly
valued by popular culture, which places more value on confidence, self-sufficiency,
and revenge. Working on this scene, I tried to encourage Julian to see her forgiveness as an active choice and a sign of strength. Cordella feels
bitterness and resentment towards her sisters but masters these negative emotions
through forgiveness, dedicating herself instead to prayer and faith in Godʼs divine
providence.
Para83As a director I have been trained to view every speech as an action linked in a causal
chain that carries the plot from beginning to end. Actors are trained to study their
charactersʼ objectives and treat each line, word, or gesture as a tactic used to achieve
those objectives, thus turning conversation into active dialogue that drives the plot
through to its conclusion. King Leirʼs emphasis on divine providence reduces the charactersʼ agency, making them subject
to the will of God who is the prime manipulator of events and ultimately responsible
for the happy resolution of the plot. At certain moments, such as this one, characters
put themselves into Godʼs hands, an action of sorts, but one that is far removed from
the action heroes that fill popular culture today. In retrospect, a better understanding
of the paradoxes of early modern providential thought would have helped us here. Cordella
has to find the strength of will to do what she knows God expects her to do. The human
struggle is still there to be played in spite of the belief that God has determined
the course of action from the start.
Para84The opening section of the scene is the second of the carefully crafted rhetorical
exchanges between Leir and Perillus and it unpacks many of the playʼs key themes.
Each of the two old men competes in his concern for the health and safety of the other,
offering point and counterpoint in their insistence on who is more deserving of sympathy
and assistance. The two good men of King Leir each try to outdo their support for the other, a situation that is repeated in the
climactic Scene 19. Perillus is unwilling to take the support of his master (Sc14 Sp3) while Leir insists he is to blame for Perillusʼ suffering and yet helpless to alleviate
it (Sc14 Sp4).
Para85The fact that his king should have become so powerless aggravates Perillusʼ grief
so Leir instructs him as follows: Cease, good Perillus, for to call me ‘lordʼ, / And think me but the shadow of myself (Sc14 Sp6).
Para86In terms of the relationship between the abandoned kings central to each play, Shakespeare
concerns himself with the idea of a king divested of authority that is central to
this short exchange. Leirʼs line quoted above is likely the inspiration for the line
Learʼs shadow given to the fool in the Folio (Lr 4.199) in answer to Learʼs question Who is it that can tell me who I am? (Lr 4.198). The striking difference is that when Leir deliberately requests that Perillus stop
acknowledging his social status Perillus firmly refuses, maintaining his respect and
honour for the king until the end—a sharp contrast to Learʼs Fool who is pointing out the pragmatic and symbolic consequences of his masterʼs
abdication. Perillusʼs persistence has its own correlative in Shakespeareʼs Gloucester
who still wants to kiss the hand of his master when he meets him on the heath (F:
2574), but even Gloucester is forced to acknowledge that his once great master is
now but a shadow of himself: O ruined piece of nature! This great world / Should so wear out to naught (Lr 20.125–136). The spectacle of the king brought to desperation found in the Queenʼs Men play
obviously fascinated Shakespeare, but his treatment of the issue of royalty and divine
right is markedly different from the Queenʼs Men play. King Leir maintains a constant sense of injustice at the inversion of hierarchy represented
by Leirʼs suffering while Learʼs suffering is portrayed as a sign of a common condition
shared by king and fool. Learʼs hand smells of mortality (Lr 20.125) whereas Leirʼs remains in touch with the divine right through to the end.
Para87Shakespeare also makes it clear that Lear will be met with little sympathy from Regan
but the extent of her inhospitality is surprising, as is the extreme violence her
husband inflicts on Gloucester. Shakespeareʼs dramaturgy balances expectation and
surprise where the Queenʼs Men play consistently fulfils expectations for divine justice.
The difference in dramaturgical approach bespeaks different perspectives that the
two plays take on the question of divine providence. Godʼs will is clearly done in
King Leir but Godʼs role in Shakespeareʼs play is famously uncertain.
¶ Queenʼs Men Dramaturgy: Narrative Over-Determination
Para88Ragan says here that she already believes that Leir has abused her sister (Sc14 Sp13), effectively rendering the arrival of Gonorillʼs message redundant. Once again,
the company seems less interested in creating a surprising turn of events than in
stoking fearful anticipation of a predictable course of events. This dramaturgical
strategy could possibly be a reflection of the protestant philosophy of divine providence.
In the following scene, her reaction to Gonorillʼs letter (Sc15 Sp5), while amusing, seems a little extreme given what she tells us here.
Para89Raganʼs aside I must dissemble kindness now of force (Sc14 Sp11) once more makes Raganʼs moral status crystal clear for the audience. Her dedication
to her father that follows is thus received ironically. The spectacle of the old man
unable to speak for weeping was made all the more moving by the audienceʼs awareness that Raganʼs sympathy was
insincere.
Para90This scene provides more support for Nashmanʼs interpretation of the Messenger as a sophisticated and ambitious courtier. The
Messengerʼs language at the start is courtly and his introductory exchange with the
queen mannerly (Sc15 Sp1). The phrase: The residue these letters will declare (Sc15 Sp3) is hardly the language of a workingman. When he persuades Ragan he is heartless
enough to commit murder his idiom shifts suddenly in mid-sentence. Beginning with
an educated reference to adamant (Sc15 Sp9), he finishes by making comparison between murdering and cracking fleas on his skin
(Sc15 Sp9), hardly the personal reference point a sophisticated courtier would wish to establish.
Para91Following the queenʼs exit his language becomes more colloquial as he delights in
the easy money he is making and suggests the queen might enjoy another kind of stab (Sc15 Sp11). Alon was convinced of the sophistication of the character and the importance of social
advancement as motivation for his actions and this remained central to his performance.
The key characteristic I pushed for was the brash directness I felt characterized
much of his language. He is intelligent and capable of adopting courtly language but
at heart he is an ambitious man of the streets fighting for what he wants out of life.
He, like Mumford, has well deserved to be called Jack (Sc7 Sp9).
Para92Treating the role as if it were designed for a clown presented difficulties to Alon and his resistance raised doubts about whether this conception of the role was supportable.
The role does not conform exactly to the traditional idea of an Elizabethan clown
but perhaps Tarlton, if he played the role, was extending his repertoire, exploring
new territory for his clown character. In his climactic scene with Leirand Perillus,
the clown becomes the focus of a moral dilemma and the action of the play turns on
his decision.
Para93The Queenʼs Men inject a little fun into this scene by having Ragan play out her reaction
to the letter in dumbshow and have the Messenger describe her reactions for the audience
as she performs them. The technique is reminiscent of the virginity test from Middleton
and Rowleyʼs The Changeling. In performance, the timing of the actions with the lines was funny: Genova (Ragan) would stamp and Nashman (Messenger) would say and stamps (Sc15 Sp5) with great delight in the queenʼs expected reaction to the letter. As he says: Here will be more work and more crowns for me (Sc15 Sp5). Placing this comic display directly beside Raganʼs resolution to murder her father
is typical of Queenʼs Men plays, which often refuse to separate serious and comic
elements.
Para94This section of the play was hard work for Derek Genova (Ragan). Once again, his character repeats information at length that we have already
received (Sc14 Sp13). She has already described her fatherʼs behavior in Cornwall and her fears that
he will undermine her power over her husband. We worked on the idea that the letter
exacerbates present fears and tips her into murderous intent, thus ending her performance
of fair weather (Sc14 Sp13) and changing the direction of the action.
Para95Scene 16 features two virtuous characters being nice to each other and it was hard
for the SQM actors to discover an element of conflict that would drive the scene and
give them something to play.
Para96Initially this scene was a struggle for Paul Hopkins (Gallia). The prince is presented here as a mirror of virtue (Sc16 Sp5), just like his wife, but playing into this ideal left the scene very flat. The formal
rhetorical style only exacerbated the issue. As rehearsals developed, Hopkins found
support in the text for the idea that the King is a fun-loving young man with a fondness
for disguise and adventure. He felt that this scene may be motivated by frustration
with his new wife whom he has showered with attention and love but who continues to
mope around the palace. Hopkins and DeZotti experimented with this idea in rehearsal finding that it helped drive the scene forward.
When pushed to an extreme it became funny but at the expense of our perception of
the sincerity of Cordellaʼs grief and Galliaʼs nobility. It is hard for us to appreciate
today the beauty of Cordellaʼs forbearance and dedication to her father, which by
modern standards might appear priggish. In scenes like this I monitored the cultural
context, taking perhaps an overly conservative view, but the actorsʼ desire to give
full life to their characters and find more playable moments counterbalanced my conservativism
while still honoring the spirit of the playʼs original context.
Para97As the performance developed the actors found they could maintain their charactersʼ
dignity by exploiting feelings of impatience. The scene became more and more flirtatious
as the prince tried to woo his queen out of her sorrowful mood. Galliaʼs call for
her to embrace the joys (Sc16 Sp3) and be blithe and frolic (Sc16 Sp7), as well as his choice metaphor of the root that will make her flourish with perpetual spring (Sc16 Sp3), were all coloured with a young manʼs passion for his lover. But at the end of the
scene, Hopkinsʼ Gallia was completely convinced by Cordellaʼs argument (Sc16 Sp4) and performed his response: Mirror of virtue, Phoenix of our age! (Sc16 Sp5) with deep sense of his growing admiration for his wife. In the performance in the
West Hall of University College (University of Toronto) Hopkins (Gallia) directed this line to the Dean of the college sitting in state at the back
of the stage, as if presenting his wife as en exemplar for the assembled audience.
His admiration led in turn to a conviction to resolve the conflict with her father,
promising not to cease until they are reconciled. It was clear that the last resort
of sailing to England was an appealing one to our adventurous prince.
Para98DeZotti (Cordella) had to balance Cordellaʼs pain, caused by her father, with her love for
her new husband. Both emotions characterize her as a good woman, dutiful to the two patriarchal figures in her life. Considering Cordellaʼs resistance
to her father in terms of marriage this scene is perhaps making the important point
that a woman can choose her own spouse and still honour her father. Freedom of choice
in matters of marriage was a key issue, of course, for the companyʼs patroness. Galliaʼs
argument that she has been grafted now to another stock (Sc16 Sp3) echoes her distinction between duty owed a father and that owed a husband at the
start of the play but his suggestion that she should forget her father (Sc16 Sp3) perhaps pushes the argument too far. Cordella wishes to return her husbandʼs joy
with joy but ultimately she is subject to natureʼs power (Sc16 Sp4): her filial love constrains her freedom to express the love and duty she bears her
new husband (Sc16 Sp4).
Para99The style of this scene, unlike the formal rhetoric of the majority of the play, creates
an illusion of everyday conversation. The deal between the queen and the messenger
turns on a single word Ay rather than through the kind of heavily patterned exchanges that characterize much
of the play. The short dialogue communicating the queenʼs murderous intention is sparse
and to the point and gives the scene a conversational tone. But on careful inspection
the scene is as carefully structured as the rest of the play. The exchange comes to
a neat rhetorical close when the queen hands the Messenger two purses for the two
hands he promises to use to murder Leir and Perillus (Sc17 Sp14). The stage image supports the language perfectly, focusing attention on the corrupting
influence of money.
¶ The Queenʼs Men Dramaturgy: Narrative Over-Determination
Para100Ragan warns the Messenger that the king and Perillus will speak fair (Sc17 Sp18), but the Messenger assures her that the sound of the gold in his bags will far outweigh
the power of their words. The play here sets up the conflict that is at the heart
of the spectacular Scene 19, where the Messenger clown becomes the subject of his own moral struggle. In comparison
to dramaturgy elsewhere in the play the foreshadowing here is relatively subtle: it
raises expectations for conflict without spelling-out the outcome in advance.
Para101The Messengerʼs manipulative tactics in this scene also give more weight to Alon Nashmanʼs interpretation of his character as a courtly and sophisticated manipulator rather
than the coarse clown I imagined. This scene also lacks the unequivocally comic asides
of the Messengerʼs other scenes and the Messengerʼs idiom, although direct, remains
courtly throughout, lacking the colloquialisms he uses elsewhere in the play. The
language of the scene supports Alonʼs interpretation of the character as a sophisticated, courtly manipulator. Alon still managed a balance between the two interpretations, here giving more weight
to the seductive, courtly sophisticate, but still presenting his greed for money as
an object of fun.
Para102The Messengerʼs unrestrained pursuit of financial gain has earned him friends and
favour at court, and it here prompts him to murder. Within the feudal world of the
Queenʼs Menʼs romance, money is at times represented as a destabilizing force and
a threat to social order. The Messengerʼs greed here inspires the promise of excessive
violence: I could tear ten in pieces with my teeth (Sc17 Sp17). This moment could conceivably be played for horrific effect in an attempt to make
an audience fear the consequences of unrestrained greed but we made the political
point through mockery rather than through fear by emphasizing the characterʼs clownishness.
There was no real sense that Alon would really tear anybody or any thing in pieces.
Para103This scene demanded another performance of mock-innocence from Genova (Ragan) as his character pretends that she is too modest to specify her criminal
intention. She uses the same tactic to deceive her husband in (Scene 22). Since the audience already knows of her intention, the queenʼs manipulation is
clear to them and adds a level of amusement despite the cruelty of her actions.
Para104The scene raised some titters occasionally but I always felt it left the audience
feeling as confused as the Ambassador. The opening of the scene has a stately quality
as Cornwall and the French Ambassador adopt the language of courtly diplomacy (Sc18 Sp5). Gonorill then leads the Ambassador into a series of misunderstandings through comic
double-talk. The humor depends on our knowledge of her hatred for Cordella and the
Ambassadorʼs ignorance of the same. It proved extremely difficult to make these obvious
jokes funny in performance. The comedy might have worked better if the audience had
been aligned sympathetically with the queen and the Ambassador had been in some way
deserving of her trickery, but this was not the case. In our production, we tried
to make the Ambassador a figure of fun, Phillip Borg gave him a slightly gormless quality and he was dressed with a floppy red hat but
it never really worked. Making him too ridiculous in order to encourage laughter would
have undermined the gravity subsequent scenes in which he is insulted and struck by
Ragan.
Para105As vehicle for comic business the scene failed in our performance, but perhaps the
Queenʼs Men were using comic devices to create an affect beyond simple laughter. Perhaps
the queenʼs equivocation was intended to be unsettling here rather than amusing? The
comic device worked not to create laughter but to make the audience uncomfortable
in an upside-down world of rhetorical slapstick. The scene is perhaps a sign of the
companyʼs willingness to experiment with theatrical and rhetorical tropes in order
to create a wide variety of performance experiences, what McMillin and MacLean describe
as their medley style.
Para106In this scene Cornwall shows sincere concern for Leir and conducts himself as an effective
statesmen with the Gallian Ambassador. The audience knows that he is being duped by
his wife, but this scene marked another step towards the more serious interpretation
of the character Gray developed for the later scenes.
Para107With the protagonistʼs life under direct threat, the stakes in this scene are extremely
high and yet it is filled with openly comic devices, double-takes, joking asides,
and false exits. The integration of clowning and high drama should be viewed as an
extremely advanced and experimental piece of dramaturgy.
Para108This scene in particular was a big sticking point in rehearsals for Alon and me. My insistence that the role should be clowned and played for laughs sat in
direct opposition to Alonʼs instincts that the scene relied on suspense and would only work if a sense of jeopardy
was maintained.
Para109Alon was in part correct: if we feel the Messenger offers no threat to King Leir and Perillus
then it is hard to emotionally engage the audience with the action of the scene. But
the text immediately offers the Messenger-actor a comic opportunity. The Messenger
enters without noticing the two old men and jokes with the audience about how embarrassing
it would be if he got robbed and the grey-beards got away (Sc19 Sp10), and then the stage direction reads: Sees them and starts (Sc19 Sp10). What is this, if not a classic comic double-take? Our rehearsal process was a constant
negotiation between our two interpretations and the final performance represents our
artistic compromise that satisfied the twin imperatives we identified in the text.
Para110The scene is full of potential for both a comic and serious treatment. When the old
men awaken and speak of their nightmares, the Messenger speaks in asides to the audience
in lines that have no clear comic intent and can be played to generate a sense of
threat as the Messenger promises to make their bad dreams prove too true (Sc19 Sp15). When Leir tries to engage him, calling him a proper man (Sc19 Sp24), the Messenger comments to the audience in an aside: ʼSblood, how the old slave claws me by the elbow? / He thinks, belike, to ʼscape by
scraping thus (Sc19 Sp25). In the SQM performance this often got a laugh largely due to the playful relationship
Alon had developed with the audience up to this point. Objectively speaking and taken
out of context, the line could be played to mark the murdererʼs despicable intentions.
The question is whether the playful relationship that Alon established with the audience is a product of the text or our performance alone.
I would argue that the dramaturgy of the play makes a close relationship with the
audience inevitable for this character. In other productions the relationship may
be made less playful than in ours but only by ignoring the fun of his colloquial asides
and playing his amoral, self-serving intent alone. The Messengerʼs clowning also has
a direct antecedent in the comedy of the Vice characters in morality plays.
Para111When Leir and Perillus assure the Messenger that he can seek favour with the queen
by sparing them, the Messenger plays a linguistic trick that results in his request
that they murder themselves and save him the trouble (Sc19 Sp38). The exchange could perhaps be played to highlight his cruel manipulation of the
old men. Performing the Messenger with only a cold-hearted humour would certainly
be possible, but the evidence of the text suggests a more playful approach. The king
and Perillus proffer to go out (19) three times, and three times the Messenger summons them back to the stage. In rehearsal,
these false exits edged the company towards slapstick rather than high tragedy as
the old men shuffled towards the exit, and then returned. The repetition enhanced
the effect and the whole sequence became a piece of virtuoso clowning climaxing with
the Messengerʼs triumphant: Do me the pleasure for to kill yourselves (Sc19 Sp38). In our performance this punch-line resulted in laughter, not raucous belly laughter
but also not coldly ironic.
Para112When Leir asks if the command to murder him came from France, the Messenger falls
back into the colloquial prose that we have seen in earlier scenes and that suggests
a connection to Richard Tarltonʼs clowning world of English urban life: From France? ʼZoons, do I look like a Frenchman? (Sc19 Sp42). The response plays into nationalist sentiment, is clearly designed to get a laugh,
and would be totally out of place in a scene designed exclusively to raise dramatic
suspense. Alon performed the opening of this speech to the audience, sharing his shock at being
called French (a joke that had metatheatrical connotations in our performance where
the same actor played the comic Frenchman, Mumford). He then turned to Leir on Sirrah with mock-outrage.
Para113Negotiating this scene in rehearsal led to a performance that balanced my wish to
play the scene for laughs with Alonʼs concern for maintaining jeopardy in such a way that the audience could laugh at
the Messengerʼs jokes and sympathize with the plight of the King.
Para114The opening of the scene establishes Leir and Perillus as helpless old men as they
enter exhausted, sit down with prayer books—their weapons of defence (Sc19 Sp23)—and fall asleep. The actors playing Leir and Perillus emphasized their age and weakness,
thus making their sudden falling asleep touchingly acceptable, despite their awareness
of potential danger. Observing my work with Alon in this scene, Don Allison, who played Leir, experimented with playing his own part for comedy, giving the king
a physically bumbling quality and exaggerating the naivety of his character during
the three false exits as the Messenger plays with his hopes for escape. In rehearsal
I found that this shifted the balance too far towards comedy and had exactly the effect
that Alon feared: the scene lost all sense of jeopardy and dramatic suspense.
Para115Asking Don to play the moment straight and maintain the dignity of our king and protagonist,
however, proved impossible. The three false exits depend on Leir believing the Messengerʼs
promises of safety enough to begin to exit only to be recalled immediately. The speed
with which this happens inclined the performance to clowning. Admittedly, we could
have made this sequence more serious by slowing the scene down and having the king
exit carefully with eyes warily on the dagger, but I feel this performance choice
would have been an imposition on the text. Ultimately Don, like Alon, found a middle ground: an element of naivety remained in his responses to the Messenger
but at a level that gave his king a vulnerability that increased audience sympathy
rather than identifying him as a gull or dupe and the object of unsympathetic ridicule.
Para116The reality is that the scene could be played either way—actors are always free to
make their own choices—but choosing one of the two options is only possible by ignoring
evidence that supports the alternative interpretation. Embracing both positions forces
us to imagine once again that for the Queenʼs Men the comic was not in opposition
to the dramatic. The scene demands both broad comedy and high drama and the ability
to shift from one to the other from moment to moment. Working with this material suggested
to me that on some level all the Queenʼs Men characters need to shift quickly from
emotion to emotion as a clown does, playing the moments for themselves rather than
concentrating on issues of continuity or psychological consistency.
Para117As was feared by Ragan, the old menʼs fair words prove very persuasive: in the final
stages of the scene the Messenger becomes the subject of a moral struggle. If his
earlier manipulation of the King and Perillus are derived from the trickery of the
Vice, the latter stages of the scene is reminiscent of Elizabethan clowningʼs other
theatrical forbear, the Mankind or Everyman figure.
Para118As Leir pleads with the Messenger to spare Perillusʼs life, the Messenger remains
committed to performing the murder because he seems to believe Leir has abused his
daughters and deserves to die. When Leir makes him swear that it is Ragan and Gonorill
who have commissioned the murder, the heavens thunder and the Messengerʼs conscience
is awakened: I would that word were in his belly again (Sc19 Sp58). The logical choice here is for the actor to deliver these lines to the audience
since neither Leir nor Perillus respond directly to his words. This performance choice
invites the audience into the moral dilemma of the clown character and the dramaturgy
of the scene from this point builds the audienceʼs engagement with the clownʼs moral
struggle. They are given privileged access to his internal battle as he remains committed
to murder when speaking to the king and Perillus but shares his growing doubts and
fears in a series of asides.
Para119The real beauty of the scene is that the Messengerʼs struggles remain comic in spite
of the high stakes of the action for him and for Leir and Perillus. At one point he
pauses to make a joke about the fact that his life as a proper man is of more value than Perillusʼs whose good days are past (Sc19 Sp69). With Leir kneeling before him praying for the life of his old friend, the Messenger
stands with daggers in his hands and says in a wonderful comic understatement: I am as hard to be moved as another, and yet methinks the strength of their persuasions
stirs me a little (Sc19 Sp74).
Para120In the SQM staging we placed the Messenger at center stage, facing the audience, with
daggers raised above the two old men who were kneeling on either side pleading for
each otherʼs lives. As Perillus invokes the divinity of the king (Sc19 Sp70), Alonʼs facial expressions communicated his characterʼs moral struggle. When the heavens
thunder as sign of Godʼs providential justice, Alon let one dagger drop, as instructed by the stage direction (19). The king expresses his delight that Perillus will be spared and calls for his own
death, but the heavens sound its moral imperative again, and the Messenger drops his
second dagger.
Para121The Messenger clown is converted but he remains a clown to the end. When Perillus
observes there is some spark of grace in him (Sc19 Sp80) he is annoyed rather than grateful, knowing that it is going to cost him money and
the queenʼs favor: Beshrew you for it; you have put it in me (Sc19 Sp81). He exits the stage for the last time with a rhyming couplet that jokes at the expense
of the physical valour of the old men: If any ask you why the case so stands, / Say that your tongues were better than your
hands (Sc19 Sp81). Alon Nashmanʼs clown took centre stage in this scene and was able to generate a powerful sense
of suspense and jeopardy while continuing to hit the comic moments from beginning
to end.
Para122The association made between the thunder sound effect and divine justice is one of
the most striking differences between this play and Shakespeareʼs. While Lear rages
futilely against the storm on the heath, the providential God of Leir intervenes in the action to save his anointed from the threat of murder. The alignment
of God with the monarch is unquestionable in relation to the playʼs protagonist and
his daughter Cordella. The kings of Cornwall and Cambria with their queens do not
receive his providential support but the text brings no attention to this political
anomaly. Leir remains the true monarch throughout and his good friend Perillus repeatedly
proclaims his divine authority. The thunder in this scene is perhaps the most transparent
affirmation of monarchical power in a play that very much serves the political agenda
of the companyʼs royal patron.
Para123While the Queenʼs Men playʼs perspective on divine right could not be more marked
in its contrast to Shakespeareʼs, the clownish events of this scene may well have
served as inspiration for Shakespeare. Blind Gloucesterʼs attempted suicide on the
cliff-tops of Dover is represented with a comparable mix of the comic and the serious.
The Queenʼs Men version—while mixing the comic and the serious—remains in a world
of romance that ensures the ultimate safety of the protagonist and reduces the distance
between the pain of the characters and the laughter of the audience. In performance
the suffering of Leir and Perillus had a child-like quality, generating a level of
empathy that could be experienced with the reassuring knowledge that all will be well.
¶ Queenʼs Men Dramaturgy: Narrative Over-Determination
Para124Repeating the dramaturgical strategy found earlier in the play, this monologue is
inserted between larger scenes to reconnect the audience with one of the strands of
the playʼs complex narrative. In this instance, the character actually brings us new
information. He decides to take his embassage to Ragan (Sc20 Sp1), where he later suffers further mistreatment. This monologue contains a decision
that will change the course of the action but not significantly since Gallia and Cordella
will meet Leir in person rendering his diplomatic mission redundant. The play provides
more information than a modern audience really needs but the repetition of this narrative
device implies the Queenʼs Men felt regular recaps of the narrative would appeal to
their own audience.
Para125The Gallian Amassador is a representative of Gallia and Cordellaʼs concerns in Britain
and proved a tricky character for the SQM company. The slightly tangential quality
of his narrative perhaps influenced our decision to treat him lightly in spite of
the fact he shows many signs of courage and nobility. Here we see the character set
his will against the powerful Gonorill who desires to know what his embassage did import (Sc20 Sp1) but who he says will hop without her hope (Sc20 Sp1). This is a man of some substance and our comic approach undermined his status in
the world of the play. Creating a character with gravity would have made his mistreatment
more shocking potentially increasing the audienceʼs desire to see the sisters get
their comeuppance, driving the action towards the eventual confrontation between Gallia
and Cornwall and Cambria.
Para126This scene gave Julian DeZotti (Cordella) the opportunity to explore a playful side of his character that we had
not discovered when working on her earlier scenes. Over the course of the SQM company
tour, Julian embraced the fun-loving side of Cordella apparent in this scene as a tonic to the
modest and over-virtuous interpretation I encouraged early on in the process. Part
of this decision was inspired by his growing aptitude for playing women and the fact
that Margaret of Fressingfield, his role in Friar Bacon, was equally virtuous and yet far more playful, implying a less restrictive approach
to the performance of Cordella might be appropriate. The text of this scene gives
ample support to this conclusion as Cordella engages in bawdy dialogue with Mumford
and her husband, matching them both in wit and humour (Sc21 Sp5). A playful and engaging representation of women seems entirely appropriate for the
Queenʼs Men, and may be seen as a subtle resistance to conservative patriarchal attitudes.
Para127In this scene, Mumford very much plays the clown, speaking largely in colloquial prose
and entertaining his monarch and his queen. The humour revolves around his sexual
desire for a wench he apparently left behind in England (Sc21 Sp4). Mumfordʼs reference to his pair of slops (Sc21 Sp10) lends further support to the idea that the role was played by Tarlton who is reported
as wearing slops, a particular kind of baggy pants fashionable at the time. Engaging the royals in
a mock-legal debate in order to persuade them to a trip to England, Alon emphasized the playful shift in language by raising his hand as if presenting an
argument in court at by this hand you promised it me (Sc21 Sp16). The style of the mock debate was sustained until the plan for a seaside visit was
confirmed.
Para128Hopkinsʼ interpretation of the king as fun-loving young adventurer worked wonderfully well
in this scene. The line Weʼll go disguised (Sc21 Sp21) delivered with great enthusiasm, was often met with laughter as Paul had established the princeʼs love of disguise so clearly in the earlier scenes. Hopkins gave the character a great range by committing whole-heartedly to the playful aspects
of the prince and yet maintaining the sincerity of his love for Cordella and his support
for Leir when appropriate.
Para129Derek Genova, who played Ragan, took great relish in deceiving Cambria, making his characterʼs
manipulation of her husband blatant to the audience who knew she had arranged to have
her father killed. He played the series of tactics apparent in the text with a verve
comparable to Matthew Kristʼs manipulation of Cornwall in Scene 12. First she claims the prime right to mourn her fatherʼs absence (Sc22 Sp2), then she raises fears of some charm (Sc22 Sp2) that may have conjured infernal fiends (Sc22 Sp2) and her statement that she would scratch out Cordellaʼs hateful eyes (Sc22 Sp2) was a clear provocation to do the same in her cause. When her husband puts his faith
in Godʼs providence, she pushes him further by emphasizing the size of her grief and
her resulting lack of patience (Sc22 Sp4). Derek maintained a playfully arch awareness of his characterʼs manipulative tactics rather
than engaging with the ethics of her actions and their potentially dire consequences.
In retrospect, I wonder if we might have given more weight to her character as the
play progressed. She has already attempted the murder of her father and here she aggressively,
although indirectly, pushes her husband into war with France.
Para130When the French Ambassador arrives she rudely challenges him and accuses him and his
king and queen of treachery against her father, threatening him ultimately with torture
(Sc21 Sp10) (1936–1949). The Gallian Ambassadorʼs consequent defense of his master and mistress
and his implication that Ragan may be the guilty party results in her striking him
(Sc22 Sp19). The motivation of this moment in the SQM production was a little diluted by the
playful quality of Raganʼs initial manipulation of Cambria. More commitment to the
viciousness of her attitude would have strengthened the scene.
Para131Following the Ambassadorʼs exit she resumes her manipulation of her husband, challenging
his manhood by complaining that she lives to suffer this disgrace (Sc22 Sp21) of the Ambassadorʼs impertinence while no man will take her part (Sc22 Sp21). Genovaʼs performance made it clear that Ragan was performing the role of the helpless woman
in order to persuade Cambria to take up arms against the French and her sister. Her
final provocation is to suggest that, should Cambria not respond with arms, Cordella
will return to claim a third part of his land (Sc22 Sp23). This final tactic appears to tip the balance as Cambria finally commits to defending
his land and revenging himself on Cordella and the Gallian king (Sc22 Sp24).
Para132In the SQM production, Raganʼs relentless pursuit of her objective was clear but the
scene might have been stronger if we had concentrated on raising the stakes of the
action rather than enjoying the playfulness of the dramatic ironies. Such an approach
would also have made the task of Scott Clarkson, playing Cambria, a little easier.
Para133This scene was a challenge for Scott as he thought it perfectly apparent that his
character was being duped by his wife and therefore that his character would appear
the fool. Within the conventions of 21st century psychological realism, the solution
to such scenes is to have the deception be performed so convincingly that the duping
appears fully justified. The playful SQM style that we developed for Ragan and Gonorill
was dependent on the audienceʼs awareness and enjoyment of the duping. Since the queenʼs
manipulative tactics were made perfectly apparent to the audience, they were also
perfectly apparent to the actors being duped. Jason Gray, playing Cornwall, faced similar problems in his scenes. The actors justified their
charactersʼ responses by introducing an element of naive insouciance to their characterizations
as young wandering knights of romance, but in these climactic scenes the interpretations
sat a little uncomfortably.
Para134The consequence of this choice was that Cambria became an object of comedy: the husband
duped. The effect was consistent with the SQM approach to the play as a whole but
the company style could have supported a more serious treatment of this scene and
character. Added tensions might have have increased the sense of jeopardy during the
long unraveling of the narrative that is to come.
Para135As with Cambria and Ragan, emphasizing the political weight and emotional import of
this characterʼs role would have increased the dramatic impact of this scene. In a
production of Shakespeare with a regular rehearsal schedule, I likely would have done
much more work with the actors to establish the social taboo of striking an ambassador
in order to communicate to a contemporary audience some sense of its historical shock.
Historicizing the action of the plays in such a way was one of my principle functions
as facilitator of the SQM productions but while I provided the cast with the necessary
background for this scene I donʼt think I emphasized its considerable gravity. The
slap and the Ambassadorʼs exit occurred at speed where a moment of pause might have
marked this moment as a significant escalation of conflict in the play.
Para136Raganʼs slap delivered to the French Ambassador has no direct consequence in the narrative.
Cambria does not attack Gallia, nor is Galliaʼs arrival in England a result of the
treatment of his diplomat. In terms of the causal pattern of action in the play, the
moment is a dead end, although it does emotionally prepare the audience for what is
to come. I suspect that it may have been the lack of connection to the subsequent
action that led me to miss the dramatic potential in this scene, accustomed as I am,
as a contemporary director, to tracking action from one scene to the next in causal
chains. But the Queenʼs Men did not place great value on a unified, causal chain of
action as we do today under the influence of neo-classicism and Stanislawski. Regardless
of its impact on the rest of the play, the scene would have been more engaging in
and of itself if we had increased its shock value and used it to indicate the depth
of Raganʼs depravity. I suspect such thematic and didactic function may well have
been more central to the conception of the sceneʼs original creators.
Para137The king divesting himself of his clothes would have been a highly provocative image
in a society that upheld sumptuary laws tying clothing tightly to social status. The
SQM company tried to bridge this cultural distance in their performance of this scene.
Para138The marinersʼ colloquial prose and transparent cunning invite comic treatment. Their
argument that a good, strong, motley gaberdine (Sc23 Sp5) and a good sheepʼs russet seagown (Sc23 Sp7) might be a fair exchange for the royal cloaks worn by Leir and Perillus is a transparent
deception, confirmed by their hasty exit before they repent them of their bargain (Sc23 Sp11). The exchange sets a light tone for the scene regardless of the dire condition of
the protagonists. The exchange of clothing would likely have been more striking for
the original audience familiar with early modern sumptuary laws that bound clothing
to status. Much of the resonance of this moment may have be lost to our audience today
but we tried to enhance the emotional affect of the king donning the scruffy and weatherworn
clothing of the mariners in performance.
Para139Peter Higginsonʼs emotive response as Perillus to his masterʼs new attire helped bring the social
significance home to our contemporary audience, and the image of Don Allison struggling into his motley gaberdine (Sc23 Sp5) was bathetic, signifying his great loss of status and giving him a foolish appearance.
Humour and sympathy intertwined beautifully in what was for me one of the most touching
moments in the show.
Para140Don Allison, playing Leir, increased the sense of his characterʼs age as the play progressed.
In this scene, Perillus takes the initiative and agency in his negotiations with the
mariners while Leir passively accepts their exchange and the loss of status it implies.
In performance, Don gave the moment a sense that Leir was embracing the transformation from king to clown.
The text notes that the cloak and hat are a convenient disguise (Sc23 Sp10) but Don gave the impression that Leir found the clownish clothes fitting, at a deeper level,
as a reflection of his foolish and downtrodden self.
Para141Leir and Perillus once more engage in a rhetorical game in which the king talks his
way towards despair and his old friend brings him back to hope. This passage is perhaps
the most beautiful example (Sc23 Sp15). Perillus picks up on all the material references in Leirʼs extended metaphors and
neatly ties up his counter-argument in his final rhyming couplet: Yet sheʼll continue in her former state, / The honey, milk, grape, sugar, mithridate (Sc23 Sp16). Leir explicitly acknowledges the power of rhetoric calling Perillus a pleasing orator (Sc23 Sp17). In performance, the charactersʼ awareness of the rhetorical form of their exchange
was matched by the actorsʼ self-conscious manipulation of the language.
Para142This scene between the two old men was touching in performance and reminiscent of
Shakespeareʼs scenes on the heath between Lear and Gloucester with its combination
of sympathy and painful comedy. Perillusʼ distress seeing his king in such extremity (Sc23 Sp20) recalls Gloucesterʼs response to Learʼs madness that prompts Learʼs famous line:
Ay, every inch a king (Lr 20.101). Donʼs performance of Leir in motley gaberdine conjured the idea of a king recognizing his mortality. I find it hard to imagine
that the emotional quality of this section of the Queenʼs Men play did not color Shakespeareʼs
creative process when tackling the same stage of the kingʼs journey, or that the exchange
of clothes in this scene did not inspire Learʼs unbuttoning on the heath.
Para143Lengthy, wordy, and arriving at around the two-hour mark of the performance, this
scene proved extremely difficult for the actors to perform but it was key to the success
of the play. The joyful, reconciliatory spirit of this scene marks a key difference
from Shakespeareʼs tragedy.
Para144The SQM staging of the arrival of a sudden banquet was developed from close analysis
of the stage directions and followed the projectʼs aim to satisfy the majority of
evidence in the text wherever possible. There were easier and more economical ways
to stage the banquet. Mumford could have laid a cloth on the stage and served out
food from his basket. This could have seemed like a banquet to the starving Leir and
Perillus and as Andrew Griffin, the textual editor, suggests, banquet can also mean a slight repast between meals (Note at Sc24 Sp13). But this solution would have ignored the two clear references in the stage directions
to a table. Andrewʼs suggestion that Mumford should enter carrying a basket and a
small trestle table at the start of the scene also has some merit. Mumford could then
set up the table and lay out the food when Cordella calls for some meat (Sc24 Sp12). But this would not satisfy the implications of Perillusʼ following lines:
There are two key factors here. First, Perillus refers to men and women in the plural;
the stage directions so far have only marked entrances for the Gallia, Mumford and
Cordella—two men but only one woman. Second, he says he sees comfort coming very near and the next line specifies that the comfort is a banquet which he then connects to the men and women he just mentioned. The verb coming implies the banquet is arriving from somewhere and since Perillus refers to more
characters than are presently on stage according to the stage directions then it is
possible that the banquet is brought on stage by new characters entering the scene.
This was the evidence in the text on which we based our staging.
Para145Although there is no mention of the country folk in the stage directions, it is not
uncommon for charactersʼ entrances not to be marked in early modern texts. Since Cordella
was talking about the country folk earlier in the scene, their appearance held a certain
amount of logic within the world of the play. That said, this logic is the logic of
realism in which stage action is made plausible by reference to the real word. Alternatively,
the table could simply be shoved on stage through a central entryway; this choice
would highlight the symbolic importance of the foodʼs arrival. One further option
we did not consider was that Gallia, Cordella, and Mumford might be accompanied by
attendants of both sexes that are not identified in the opening stage direction. This
performance choice would account for the reference to men and women and allow for the banquet to be set up speedily. They could also have brought in
stools so that Leir and Perillus could sit at the table as Cordella invites them to (Sc24 Sp16), something the SQM solution failed to satisfy.
Para146There is no textual justification for the song the country folk sing as they enter
but we discovered early in the process that our company like the original Queenʼs
Men were excellent singers and looked for any opportunity to exploit their talents.
Furthermore, bringing a table and food onto the stage is a clumsy business, not interesting
enough to stand alone, but too distracting to be executed behind dialogue. Covering
this action with a song therefore made theatrical sense. Most of all, however, the
song increased the focus on the symbolic importance of the action by making the arrival
of the banquet more arresting and magical. Following Perillusʼ prayer, the country
folk started to sing off-stage and he responded to the sound initially, slowly turning
to see the arrival of the table and food and reacting with a sense of wonder. Having
been thrown out of the homes of his other two daughters, Leir here receives hospitality
from apparent strangers. By adding the song and turning the arrival of the banquet into a small spectacle we were following the implications of the stage directions
but also implying a connection between the banquet and Godʼs divine justice—an idea
central to the play.
¶ Queenʼs Men Dramaturgy: Narrative Over-Determination
Para147From the point of view of modern dramaturgy Leirʼs speech is an odd one. The play
has already been under way for approximately and hour and forty minutes and yet the
playwright gives Leir 40 lines that reiterate the central action of the play to this
point, providing the audience with no new information to warrant the use of time.
There is some on-stage motivation for the tale since Cordella has not heard the story
but even so in a standard modern production it would be a strong candidate for the
cutting room floor. The SQM project was committed to performing the texts in their
entirety and we had the chance to consider the dramaturgical function of the reiteration
of the plot.
Para148The key for me was Cordellaʼs tears that begin even before the opening of the speech
(Sc24 Sp36). It is not the events of the plot or even the way in which Leir delivers the story
but rather their impact on Cordella that is important. Cordella is crying before the
tale begins but when she speaks again it is firm monosyllables: No doubt she will. I dare be sworn she will (Sc24 Sp41). Our conclusion was that she moved from tearful sympathy to resolution as she heard
of her sistersʼ impiety (Sc24 Sp39).
Para149Don Allison did an incredible job with this hugely difficult speech. As he grew into the performance
it began resemble an act of confession and penance. Leir suffered through the narration
of his own errors and his own suffering at the hands of his daughters and in doing
so cleansed himself of the past.
Para150The speech also strings out a dramatic irony, delaying the moment of Cordellaʼs self-revelation
to the point that it becomes almost ridiculous. Leirʼs following speech exacerbates
that effect by describing himself as he is constrained to seek relief / Of her to whom I have been so unkind (Sc24 Sp40). Once Cordella gently reveals herself, the two characters compete to outdo each
other in showing penitence, as they kneel to ask each other forgiveness and blessing.
Ultimately Cordella rights the patriarchal balance, insisting that she should kneel
to her father, not vice versa, and the sequence finishes with her kneeling to receive
her fatherʼs blessing.
Para151The repeated bobbing up and down of the two characters proved amusing in rehearsal
and performance and initially we tried to resist the laughter, which we felt worked
against the emotional import of the scene. Resistance was pointless and in retrospect
our instinct was likely the product of a neo-classical division of tragedy and comedy
arising from our own cultural assumptions. In the later performances the cast embraced
the laughter and found they could preserve the charactersʼ sincere intent to confess
fault and relieve each other of blame while still accepting the audienceʼs laughter
at the repeated physical business. Indeed, Mumfordʼs decision to kneel saying Let me pray too, that never prayed before (Sc24 Sp61) played out as a joking reference to the excessive kneeling made the mixing of humour
and sincerity fully intentional on the part of the company as it likely was on the
part of the playʼs creators. At its best the scene prompted a joyful laughter mixed
with tears for some and an ironic recognition of the patriarchal politics at play
for others.
Para152Shakespeareʼs version of the same moment in the story is an excellent example of how
he learned to bury deeply symbolic structures beneath a surface of sparse realism.
Traces of the Leir scene remain in Shakespeareʼs version. Cordella still asks her fatherʼs blessing
and, although it is not marked in the stage directions, Lear still kneels: O, look upon me, sir, / And hold your hands in benediction o’er me. / No, sir, you
must not kneel (Lr 21.56–58). The contrast between the extensive rhetoric of the Leir scene and Shakespeareʼs short, sparse scene is extreme, but accepting the power of
the Shakespeare scene need not undermine our admiration for the Queenʼs Men version
which has its own charm. Leir is a romance not a tragedy and the mix of laughter and tears is entirely in keeping
with the rest of the play. The same mix is present in Shakespeareʼs scene but personally
I find it is the kind of laughter that chokes due to the intensity of the emotion
summoned by Learʼs lines: Do not laugh at me, / For, as I am a man, I think this lady / To be my child Cordelia. (Lr 21.65–67). The laughter in the Leir scene in contrast is a joyous release and launches the characters and the play into
the final sequence of action—the conquest of Britain and the restoration of the king.
Para153Powerful women forced to act through the agency of men are familiar figures in early
modern theatre and Raganʼs monologue is an early example of this trope. This speech
has a close connection not to Shakespeareʼs King Lear but to Macbeth. Raganʼs wish that she were made a man (Sc25 Sp1) is reminiscent of Lady Macbethʼs call for the spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts to unsex her (Ham 1.5.36–37) and perhaps more specifically to Beatrice who does express a desire to be a man
(Ado 4.1.295) rather than Lady Macbethʼs more ambiguous wish to be unsexed.
Para154Derek enjoyed the opportunity this monologue offered him to deepen his connection with
his character as she reveals her anxieties and the depth of her wickedness. Because
he was alone on stage, I encouraged him to direct his final threat to the audience,
warning any man therein who repines at her to keep clear of her hands for fear of violence (Sc25 Sp1). Ragan and Gonorill are both a challenging representation of womanhood and the actors
took every opportunity they could to provoke responses from the audience.
Para155The playʼs interest in womenʼs agency is a sign of pressing concerns arising within
early modern society. For any conservative patriarchs in the audience, Ragan might
be easily defined as an example of the corruptible and corrupting female sex and the
play certainly presents her in such a negative light, but the presence of the companyʼs
female patron on the throne of England might encourage us to imagine more complex
responses. Raganʼs desire for freedom to act is so eloquently expressed in the lines:
Oh, God, that I had been but made a man, / Or that my strength were equal with my
will (Sc25 Sp1). How did the company expect their audience to respond? Is it our 21st century perspective
that leads us to sympathize with the villainess at this point or would she have found
similarly receptive members of her own audience? In our production, our commitment
to the preservation of historical distance led to a more negative depiction of Ragan
relying on a relatively simple interpretation of patriarchal dogma but at moments
like this, it became clear that the issues were more complex and open to a multiplicity
of responses. Genova (Ragan) used this moment as a source of motivation for his characterʼs actions throughout
the play.
Para156At the outset of the SQM rehearsal process the company was composed of 12 actors rather
than our target of 16, and this left us a little short for Scene 26. The stage direction asks for an army but we could not muster a single soldier, due
to the castʼs involvement in the previous and following scenes. Our solution was to
have the king and Mumford address the audience as the army. While the SQM actors spoke
to the audience throughout the productions, they did not cast the audience in a role
in this manner and this scene always felt a little awkward to me for that reason.
Para157In relation to an imagined original performance, it would have been counterproductive
to cast the English audience as an army of Frenchmen. The humour of Mumfordʼs punning
on Gaul and gall (Sc26 Sp4) would have worked better if addressed to a clump of hired men dressed to represent
the Gallian army.
Para158The following battle sequence operates much like parallel editing operates in film:
it alternates between one side and the other until the climactic stage fight. Location
shifts fluidly in the imaginations of the audience as the two sides enter and exit
the stage until a final climax somewhere on the coast of England. Without the restrictions of representational sets, the Queenʼs
Men were able to tell historical and romantic tales in which the audience traveled
across vast distances. The pioneering work of the company with history plays and romances
laid the ground for the style and conventions of the London professional theatres.
Para159Alon brought great energy to this scene, reveling in the puns and the gruesome nickname
Redshanks (Sc26 Sp4). While the casting cannot be proved, there is something fun about imagining Tarlton,
the great English clown, playing this rabble-rousing Frenchman. Mumford remains a
comic character but also must be believable as a valued lieutenant to the Gallian
king. Tarltonʼs skill as a master of fence would make him a strong candidate to play
this comic soldier.
Para160As the SQM production process progressed Paul Hopkins became an increasingly engaging prince. As with all the actors in the SQM company
work done on other plays fed back into Leir. Paul also played Henry V in Famous Victories and learned to carry that play on the strength of his energy and charisma, and the
ability to act as driving force for the action of the play transferred to this section
of Leir in which Gallia becomes the principle agent. Paul noticed the connection between his characters in this scene where Gallia commits
to march step-by-step with the soldiers at the forefront of the battle.
Para161Once again the Queenʼs Men subverted our expectations moving from heroic action into
broad comedy with the introduction of two comic English watchmen.
Para162Watchmen get a bad rap in Elizabethan plays: the watchmen in the Queenʼs Menʼs Famous Victories and Shakespeareʼs Dogberry, for example, are similarly lacking in their capacity
to do their job. This scene is structured around an elaborate joke led by the Second
Watchman and designed to persuade the First Watchman to abandon his post and come
to the pub. It is the kind of comic rhetorical exchange, featuring repeated double-takes,
that has been a feature of broad comedy down through the centuries. The scene justifies
the ease with which the French landing is assured on English soil and establishes
a slapstick quality that will be preserved through the climactic battle scenes. The
stakes of the action are high but the comic tone predicts the happy outcome.
Para163For the SQM staging of this scene I completely missed the significance of with a still march (28). My mistake was partly due to the fact that we did not have any actors available
to represent the soldiers marching. The stage direction is informing us that the French
army should creep onto the stage, maintaining the element of surprise until they rush
off the stage to attack the town following Galliaʼs battle cry God and our right for us! (Sc28 Sp1). It would have been strange to have the King of Gallia and Mumford stage the still march alone—in fact the scene was strange anyway without an army. The exit should have
been accompanied with battle cries from the army that set off the Alarum with which the next scene begins. Although this sequence is divided into separate
scenes marked by the exit of one group of characters and the entrance of another,
on stage it plays out as an extended battle sequence with the action flowing from
one scene into the next.
Para164The Queenʼs Men plays contain many extended stage directions, which is remarkable
in a period where stage directions are relatively sparse. The implication is that
the Queenʼs Men were fond of stage spectacle, and so the SQM company rose to the challenge
of turning the alarums and excursions indicated in the text into exciting sequences
of action. Our shortage of actors really started to show in this sequence as the same
performers dashed on and off stage, sometimes playing the same characters and sometimes
doubling. The SQM video of the battle sequence was shot at our final performance at
University Hall for which the company had to reverse the entire blocking due to the
new entrances and exits at this venue. The fight scenes are therefore a little clunkier
than they were at other venues, but they continued to capture the fun of the final
sequence of the play.
Para165The text informs us that the English should appear half-naked, that is, wearing only shirts and shifts, indicating their lack of preparedness due
to the surprise attack. In the SQM productions the English soldiers came rushing on
stage, tucking in shirts and throwing on doublets. The state of the English attire
becomes a running joke and indicates the comic tone set for this climactic battle.
Mumford later notes that he encountered naked women (Sc30 Sp5) so we brought him onstage for the opening Alarum (29). It helped to establish the idea of his interest in the half-naked women who were
to reappear at the end of the scene.
Para166The English Watchmen appear drunk, with each a pot (29) and the stage directions tell us that Mumford, once he had scared away the captains,
kicks down their pots (29). The SQM company saw the text as an invitation to create some slapstick comedy:
the drunken watchmen tried to exit the stage but their halberds locked together, and
Mumford skillfully kicked their pots out of their hands and caught them.
Para167The stage direction at the end of the scene calls for a repetition of the pattern
of actors running on stage briefly before dashing off again. Building on this textual
evidence the SQM company created a sequence that was increasingly farcical, fitting
for the comic end of the Queenʼs Menʼs romance. In this sequence Mumford encountered
the half-naked women for a second time. Alon Nashman (Mumford), executed a comic turn from warrior to flirt, bashing the heads of the
two watchmen together (who remained onstage for the SQM production) then exiting the
stage in pursuit of the two half naked boys who giggled a little provocatively as if impressed by his martial prowess.
Para168This invented moment of action was consistent with Mumfordʼs well-established interest
in women, especially English women. This scene and the ones that follow offer the
actor playing Mumford the opportunity to display prowess in swordplay and in slapstick
comedy. The scene seems the perfect vehicle for Richard Tarlton, the companyʼs leading
clown actor and a master of fence. Nashman also picked up on Mumfordʼs interest in women that is a repeated comic motif established
earlier in the play and carried through into the climactic battle. Mumford is a real
Jack-the-lad, a playful knave, joking, fighting and chasing women. The stage directions with their
invitations to slapstick comedy and the repeated verbal gags given to Mumford throughout
the battle make his character here seem primarily comical.
Para169Our opening skirmishes were so ridiculous that it was tempting to take the whole battle
ironically and play it for fun. But the text of Scene 30 does not invite a uniformly
comic treatment, given that Leirʼs confrontation with his parricidal daughters is
written as high drama. For example, Leirʼs attack on Ragan, Out on thee, viper, scum, filthy parricide, / More odious to my sight than is a toad (Sc30 Sp20), suggests a deep emotional engagement.
Para170Performing certain scenes in this play, like the aborted murder scene, it was necessary
to balance the comic with the serious. At other moments, like this one, the company
needed to shift from one mode to the other in an instant. As the SQM companyʼs actors
gained more experience performing the Queenʼs Menʼs plays, they became increasingly
adept at doing so. The company turned the mood here by first investing the chief of the town with a deeply felt response to the return of his king, and second by the strength
and power of Cornwall and Cambriaʼs attacks on the invaders.
Para171Cordella, Leir, and Perillus all pray to God to shield Gallia from all harms and ensure that victory may prosecute the right (Sc30 Sp6). Their speeches appeal to the chivalric principle that success in battle proves
the justice of the victorʼs cause. Godʼs providential hand has been apparent throughout
the Queenʼs Men play and there is little doubt at this point who is going to win the
battle. Shakespeare also makes repeated reference in his play to chivalric justice
(Edgarʼs challenge to Edmund, for example, is announced with formal tuckets) but he
then subverts the audience expectations by rising and surprising them with the death
of Cordelia and her father. With the happy ending of the Queenʼs Menʼs play as a reference
point for some members of the audience, Shakespeareʼs ploy would surely have been
all the more shocking.
Para172Once the battle is begun Cordella is sidelined in the action as one that is feeble and wants use of arms (Sc30 Sp6), though she still shows her strength in confrontation with her sister (Sc30 Sp16). She becomes here an exemplum of the dutiful woman, deferring to her husband and
her father.
Para173The bumbling knights errant of earlier scenes were set aside here momentarily—they
return as they lose the battle and flee the stage—to be replaced by aggressive antagonists
defending their rights.
Para174In spite of the shift in tone, Mumford is still given comic opportunities, first when
thanking Leir for the opportunity to fight for him against naked women (Sc30 Sp5) and second when expressing his disappointment that Gonorill and Raganʼs good faces / Should have so little grace between them (Sc30 Sp29).
Para175The sisters remain resolutely committed to wickedness right through to the end, lying
openly to defend their position and to ensure their husbands fight the invaders. The
SQM company boys took great relish in their barefaced lies (What hours? What thicket?Sc30 Sp24), their disrespect to their father and Perillus (Peace, peace, old fellow, thou art sleepy stillSc30 Sp28), and their aggression to their sister Peace, puritan, dissembling hypocrite (Sc30 Sp17). Their wickedness was the exact counterpoint to the pious dedication shown by Leir,
Perillus, and Cordella immediately before their arrival (Sc30 Sp6). For our modern audience, their blatant wickedness verged on the humorous in spite
of the companyʼs emotional investment in the scene. One wonders whether their actions
and words would have been amusing in this way within a Christian and patriarchal society.
I suspect the scene would have been more shocking to its original audience and worked
to affirm the moral perspective of the play that values Cordellaʼs strong but dutiful
femininity over the unleashed power of Ragan and Gonorill.
Para176This scene was extremely difficult to block on our postage stamp stage as it involves
so many characters. Imagining how the company would block such a scene with limited
rehearsal time we came up with the idea that the opposing groups of characters should
line up on either side of the stage and that when it was their turn to speak, they
would step forward and then return to their side once they had finished. This protocol
worked pretty well except for characters with single lines. Gonorill, for example,
first speaks a single line (Sc30 Sp14) and it was ungainly to have her step forward to speak that line and then return
to the side only to step forward again shortly afterwards. She therefore remained
in the forward position and was joined by her sister. The sisters then confronted
Cordella, Leir and Perillus together as each stepped forward to challenge them.
Para177The blocking protocol worked reasonably well and was something the company could use
as a basis for the scene and adapt when performing in different locations. On our
regular stage, the scene remained cluttered and created all sorts of sightline issues
for audience members at the side of the stage, but the final performance, recorded
on video, took place on a larger stage in University Hall at the University of Toronto.
Here the blocking worked a little better because there was enough space between the
actors on the side of the stage to allow for greater visibility. Watching the video,
however, you will notice audience members leaning to get a view of the actorsʼ faces
on the other side of the stage. On a larger stage, such as the stage at the Globe,
this scene would have been easier to manage with the opposing groups assembling at
the upstage corners. Using this technique on our small stage would have meant the
two parties would be standing about two feet apart.
Para178The end of the previous scene marks the beginning of the battle proper but the dialogue
in this scene depicts its final stages. The opening stage direction Sound alarum, excursions (31) followed by the curious Mumford must chase Cambria away, then cease (31) are all we have to indicate the final battle in the text. The first is a standard
marker for a battle scene with the plural excursions suggesting an extended sequence of short fights. The second stage direction indicates
a specific event that must happen within the battle in order to motivate the dialogue
to come. Aside from this specific instruction, the company was free to invent its
own battle sequence.
Para179The SQM company worked with a fight director to create a sequence that showcased the
fighting skills of Gallia in addition to Mumfordʼs relentless pursuit of the Welshman Cambria (Sc31 Sp3). Compared to the surprise attack on the town, the final battle was designed to feature
more impressive swordplay. Mumford in particular is shown fighting two soldiers at
once. For the final performance, the company had to completely re-block this fight
for the new space and the stage fighting consequently feels a little awkward in places
in the video. It should still give the viewer a sense of what we were trying to achieve
and how much can be made out of such brief stage directions.
Para180The scene is designed to place Mumford, rather than Gallia, at the forefront of the
battle. This seems an odd choice and the idea that the role might have been played
by Tarlton, the master of fence and great clown, helps justify the dramaturgy. The
scene is an excellent opportunity for the actor playing Mumford to demonstrate his
skill with a sword and with his tongue.
Para181The actors playing the two kings reverted to their initial bumbling characterizations
as they fled the field of battle. These characters stands as indexes of the Queenʼs
Menʼs principle of mixing broad comedy and high drama, they can be stately and commanding
at one moment and naïve and bumbling the next.
Para182Following the exit of Cornwall and Cambria the battle continues for a moment as indicated
as the stage direction Alarums and excursions, then sound victory (32). The SQM company used this section to shift the tone of the battle away from the
comedy produced by the two kingʼs exits and Mumfordʼs witty put-downs and set a more
serious tone for the final scene. Due to our shortage of actors, Mumford did not exit
at the end of the previous scene but continued to fight, saving a Gallian soldier
from death and disarming an English captain. When the trumpets sounded victory, Mumford
spared the Englishmanʼs life and returned his sword to him in an act of chivalry.
Para183Cordellaʼs resistance to her fatherʼs marriage plans have been forgotten and Leir
now believes that she lovedʼst him dearly, and as ought a child (Sc32 Sp5). Although Leirʼs patriarchal acceptance has apparently contained Cordellaʼs resistance,
the play makes it clear that Cordella is still an independent spirit, enjoying a marriage
founded on mutual respect. Julianʼs development of the character over the course of the run really brought out this
element of mutuality in her relationship with Gallia. In this final seen she can speak
with confidence in her husbandʼs love and support. Her husband does not command her
as he might, according to the law, but with all kind love entreats her (Sc32 Sp4).
Para184While his age prevents him from participating in the battle, Don Allison gave Leir a renewed vigour in these final scenes, thus restoring a sense of his characterʼs
nobility and demonstrating love for his old and new-found friends.
Para185The rightful king is restored to his throne but with a new understanding of the important
relationships on which his power rests. No longer blinded by grief or power, Leir
gives thanks where thanks are due, accepting his crown with the grateful knowledge
of the means by which it has been restored. The picture painted of the monarchy is
one founded on love and mutual respect is perfectly in keeping with the image being
promoted of Queen Elizabeth and her relationship with the people of England. The dramaturgy
of the play has moved the audience deliberately to this positive and reinvigorating
end. In performance the happy ending was easily predictable, arising as it did out
of the many reference to Godʼs guiding, providential hand.
Prosopography
Alon Nashman
Alon Nashman was an actor and musical director with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men
Project. He played Keeper and Miles in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and Derrick in Famous Victories (2006).
Andrew Griffin
Andrew Griffin is an associate professor in the department of English and an affiliate
professor in the department of Theater and Dance at the University of California,
Santa Barbara. He is general editor (text) of Queen’s Men Editions. He studies early
modern drama and early modern historiography while serving as the lead editor at the
EMC Imprint. He has co-edited with Helen Ostovich and Holger Schott Syme Locating the Queen’s Men (2009) and has co-edited The Making of a Broadside Ballad (2016) with Patricia Fumerton and Carl Stahmer. His monograph, Untimely Deaths in Renaissance Drama: Biography, History, Catastrophe, was published with the University of Toronto Press in 2019. He is editor of the
anonymous The Chronicle History of King Leir (Queen’s Men Editions, 2011). He can be contacted at griffin@english.ucsb.edu.
Anonymous
David Kynaston
David Kynaston was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played
Jaques Vandermast,Burden, and Serlsby in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and Jockey,Lord Chief Justice,Constable,Burgundy in Famous Victories (2006).
Derek Genova
Derek Genova was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played
Eleanor,1 Scholar,Hostess, and Post in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and Tom,Boy,Dauphin,Second French Soldier in Famous Victories (2006).
Don Allison
Don Allison was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played King Henry and Voice of the Brazen Head in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and King Henry and Charles VI in Famous Victories (2006).
Helen Ostovich
Helen Ostovich, professor emerita of English at McMaster University, is the founder
and general editor of Queen’s Men Editions. She is a general editor of The Revels Plays (Manchester University Press); Series
Editor of Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama (Ashgate, now Routledge),
and series co-editor of Late Tudor and Stuart Drama (MIP); play-editor of several
works by Ben Jonson, in Four Comedies: Ben Jonson (1997); Every Man Out of his Humour (Revels 2001); and The Magnetic Lady (Cambridge 2012). She has also edited the Norton Shakespeare 3 The Merry Wives of Windsor Q1602 and F1623 (2015); The Late Lancashire Witches and A Jovial Crew for Richard Brome Online, revised for a 4-volume set from OUP 2021; The Ball, for the Oxford Complete Works of James Shirley (2021); The Merry Wives of Windsor for Internet Shakespeare Editions, and The Dutch Courtesan (with Erin Julian) for the Complete Works of John Marston, OUP 2022. She has published
many articles and book chapters on Jonson, Shakespeare, and others, and several book
collections, most recently Magical Transformations of the Early Modern English Stage with Lisa Hopkins (2014), and the equivalent to book website, Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context containing scripts, glossary, almost fifty conference papers edited and updated to
essays; video; link to Queenʼs Mens Ediitons and YouTube: http://threeladiesoflondon.mcmaster.ca/contexts/index.htm, 2015. Recently, she was guest editor of Strangers and Aliens in London ca 1605,
Special Issue on Marston, Early Theatre 23.1 (June 2020). She can be contacted at ostovich@mcmaster.ca.
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of
Victoria, Director of The Map
of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama
Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she
co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old
Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s
A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML
and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice
(with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not
Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in
Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern
Literary Studies, Shakespeare
Bulletin, Renaissance and
Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval
and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives
(MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern
England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and
the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in
Early Modern England (Ashgate); New
Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter);
Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating
Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and
Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking
Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital
Technologies (Routledge); and Civic
Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern
London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
Jason Gray
Jason Gray was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played Friar Bacon in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and John Cobbler,Bruges, and Captain in Famous Victories (2006).
Jason Lamb
Jason Lamb was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played a
Country Folk in King Leir.
Julian DeZotti
Julian DeZotti was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played
Margaret in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and Lawrence Costermonger,Clerk,First French Soldier, and Katherine of France in Famous Victories (2006).
Kate LeBere
Project Manager, 2020–2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019–2020. Textual Remediator
and Encoder, 2019–2021. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English
at the University of Victoria in 2020. During her degree she published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History
Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management
in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth
and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet
during the Russian Cultural Revolution. She is currently a student at the University
of British Columbia’s iSchool, working on her masters in library and information science.
Martin Holmes
Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the
UVicʼs Humanities Computing and Media Centre for
over two decades, and has been involved with dozens
of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on
the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of
the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as
lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on
the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.
Matthew Krist
Matthew Krist was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played
Rafe Simnell,Richard,Friar Bungay, and Devil in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and Ned,Cobblerʼs Wife, and Drummer in Famous Victories (2006).
Navarra Houldin
Project manager 2022-present. Textual remediator 2021-present. Navarra Houldin (they/them)
completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During
their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs
Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and
sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.
Paul Hopkins
Paul Hopkins was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played
Prince Edward and Other Clowns in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and Prince Henry in Famous Victories (2006).
Peter Cockett
Peter Cockett is an associate professor in the Theatre and Film Studies at McMaster
University. He is the general editor (performance), and technical co-ordinating editor
of Queen’s Men Editions. He was the stage director for the Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men project (SQM),
directing King Leir, The Famous Victories of Henry V, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and he is the performance editor for our editions of those plays. The process
behind those productions is documented in depth on his website Performing the Queen’s Men. Also featured on this site are his PAR productions of Clyomon and Clamydes (2009) and Three Ladies of London (2014). For the PLS, the University of Toronto’s Medieval and Renaissance Players,
he has directed the Digby Mary Magdalene (2003) and the double bill of George Peele’s The Old Wives Tale and the Chester Antichrist (2004). He also directed An Experiment in Elizabethan Comedy (2005) for the SQM project and Inside Out: The Persistence of Allegory (2008) in collaboration with Alan Dessen. Peter is a professional actor and director
with numerous stage and screen credits. He can be contacted at cockett@mcmaster.ca.
Peter Higginson
Peter Higginson was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played
Mason,King of Castile, and Friend in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and Robin Pewterer and York in Famous Victories (2006).
Phillip Borg
Phillip Borg was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played
Thomas,Lambert,Constable, and Spirit in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and Lord Mayor,Porter,Captain,Third French Soldier,English Soldier, and French Secretary in Famous Victories (2006).
Scott Clarkson
Scott Clarkson was an actor with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men Project. He played
Edward Lacy in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and First Receiver,Cutbert Cutter,Canterbury,Herald, and Frenchman in Famous Victories (2006).
Scott Maynard
Scott Maynard was an actor and musical director with Shakespeare and the Queenʼs Men
Project. He played Clement and Emperor of Germany in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and Exeter in Famous Victories (2006).
Tracey El Hajj
Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD
from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science
and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched
Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life. Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence
at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships
between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021,
Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in
the English Department at the University of Victoria.
Bibliography
Jowett, John, ed. King Lear and his Three Daughters.
By William Shakespeare. The New Oxford Shakespeare. Ed.
Gary Taylor, John
Jowett, Terri Bourus, and
Gabriel Egan.
Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016.
2351–2433. WSB aaag2304.
Jowett, John, ed. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark. By William
Shakespeare. The New
Oxford Shakespeare. Ed. Gary
Taylor, John Jowett,
Terri Bourus, and Gabriel
Egan. Oxford:
Oxford University Press,
2016. 1997–2099. WSB aaag2304.
Pruitt, Anna, ed. Much Ado about Nothing. By
William Shakespeare. The New Oxford Shakespeare. Ed.
Gary Taylor, John
Jowett, Terri Bourus, and
Gabriel Egan.
Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016.
1441–1505. WSB aaag2304.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
QME Editorial Board (QMEB1)
The QME Editorial Board consists of Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter Cockett, General Editor (Performance); and Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text), with the support of an Advisory Board.
Queenʼs Men Editions (QME1)
The Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter
Cockett, General Editor (Performance); and Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text).
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/
Metadata
Authority title
King Leir: Performance Introduction
Type of text
Critical
Short title
Leir: Perf Intro
Publisher
University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series
Queenʼs Men Editions
Source
Born-digital, peer-reviewed document written by Peter Cockett. First published in the QME 1.0 anthology on the ISE platform. Converted to TEI-XML
and remediated by the LEMDO Team for republication in the QME 2.0 anthology on the LEMDO platform.
Editorial declaration
n/a
Edition
Released with Queenʼs Men Editions 2.0
Sponsor(s)
Queenʼs Men Editions
The Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter
Cockett, General Editor (Performance); and Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text).
Encoding description
Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status
published, peer-reviewed
Licence/availability
Intellectual copyright in this edition is held by the editor, Peter Cockett. The critical
paratexts, including this Performance Introduction, are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND
4.0 license, which means that they are freely downloadable without permission under
the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the editor, QME, and LEMDO in
any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or
repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation);
and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of QME,
the editor, and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the critical paratexts
in the classroom.
Production photographs and videos on this site may not be downloaded. They appear
freely on this site with the permission of the actors and the ACTRA union. They may
be used within the context of university courses, within the classroom, and for reference
within research contexts, including conferences, when credit is given to the producing
company and to the actors. Commercial use of videos and photographs is forbidden.
