Clowning the Play

Nashman is a vastly knowledgeable actor, a trained clown and expert in physical comedy, but he also has long experience in modern and classical theatre. Our preparatory research had established that modern clowning techniques were an excellent means to unearth the sometimes obscure dramaturgical logic of the Queen’s Men texts. The plays are not designed for circus clowns with red noses, but we discovered that the grounded, physical comedic techniques that have emerged in recent times through the influence of Jaques leCoq and his many students, offer effective and dynamic means to discover what is funny in these plays. The texts can appear flat on first reading but we know they were written for a company renowned for its comic actors (McMillin and MacLean 128). offered us many classic clowning scenes and indeed features one of the first examples of a character that was relatively new to the Elizabethan stage at the time the Queen’s Men were performing: the simple rustic transposed to an urban setting. It is no coincidence that the term clown was synonymous with the term rustic in Elizabethan England and it was likely thanks to the popularity of the new clown characters in the plays of the period that the term began to denote a company’s principal comic actor. No actor contributed more to the development of the stage clown than the Queen’s man, Richard Tarlton. Tarlton is celebrated as the first Elizabethan star actor and Derrick is the role that perhaps best defines the new type of character he made popular on the stage. The character derives from a lower social stratum, he is a poor carrier, a lowly porter who enters the play having been robbed by one of the Prince’s servants. He appears to be the dupe, the comically suffering victim seeking justice for his wrong, but not knowing how to secure the same. However, once his initial conflict with the London watch is resolved peacefully he says: ’Tis a wonderful thing to see how glad the knave is, now I have forgiven him (), which establishes this clown’s special relationship with audience. It quickly becomes clear that he is smarter than the London watch who at first apprehend him but are then persuaded to help his quest for justice. Tarlton created a role in which he could play both a trickster and a dupe. As Wiles has observed, Tarlton presents himself initially as a victim, a person who appears simple-minded and offers himself as the target of ridicule, but then turns the tables on his aggressors and outwits them while continuing to present himself as so stupid that anyone should be able to outwit him (Wiles 17). We see this pattern in his initial interactions with the Watch (), in his performance of outrage when he believes he has been wronged by John Cobbler’s wife (), and in the way he tricks the French soldier on the battlefield (). Tarlton/Derrick plays the victim in order to draw his victims in and then quickly turns the tables on them. Ultimately in this play he is more of the trickster, and the hapless John Cobbler is his unwitting dupe. Having kindly accompanying Derrick to take the law () from the Lord Chief Justice, Cobbler gets a box on his ears for his pains (Scene 5). Derrick then inveigles his way into Cobbler’s house (), eats all his food, insults his wife, and threatens to smash his windows (Scene 7). When war is declared Derrick happily marches off to kill Frenchmen () dragging the cowardly John behind him. In the war, he manages to avoid all combat, tricking his officers into believing he is wounded (), and leaves the field of battle with a bag full of Frenchmen’s clothes (Scene 20). Derrick’s clownish exploits offer the comic counterpoint to the career of the English king.

In performance, Alon Nashman established an immediate connection with the audience, which he sustained throughout the play. As part of our general approach to the performances all actors were encouraged to address the audience directly whenever possible, but the lead clown developed the closest relationship of all. Nashman was master at bringing the audience in on his character’s jokes, and letting them see the trick and anticipate the series of comic reversals he inflicted on his victims. In rehearsal he worked closely with the ensemble, who were less experienced with clowning than he, developing their skills and creating comic business that served the intentions of the text. He worked closely with Jason Gray (Cobbler) who learnt the equally challenging task of playing the dupe; this might be summarized as the art of not seeing the banana skin. As our nine days of rehearsal progressed, the younger members of the company embraced the new clowning techniques. Scene 13, in which the French Soldiers brag about all the clothes they are going to take from the English, did not feature any of our master actors and the comic business around the throwing of the dice and the French Captain’s radish root was developed independently by the ensemble. The company’s focus on clowning had generated a permissive atmosphere in which comic creativity was allowed to flourish. Nashman’s training in classical and modern text-based theatre, however, ensured that the comic business created for the most part remained aligned with the evidence in the text. The performance annotations in this edition aim to reveal the interpretive process behind the creation of the physical comedy, indicating the textual references on which it was built as well as the places where I felt it departed from the text and followed a logic of its own.

The Spirit of the SQM Production

While Alon Nashman was busy developing Derrick’s storyline, Paul Hopkins was driving the rehearsal process on the Prince’s scenes. The first rehearsal of the first scene was a turning point in the development of the company’s working practice. I vividly recall Hopkins gathering his team of actors together in a huddle and establishing his concept for the performance. There was a striking coincidence between the prince’s role in the play and Hopkins’ behaviour in the rehearsal room, as he conspired with the younger actors to generate the excitement the youthful aristocrats felt about their highway robbery. Just as Derrick instigates the fun in the clowning sub-plot so Prince Henry is the trickster responsible for the escapades of the main plot. In performance, Hopkins sustained the palpable sense that Harry was driving the action for the benefit of the audience remained present even after his character had been crowned king. His intentions became more serious and his actions honorable, according to the military code of the times, but Hopkins maintained the spirit of a trickster underneath a more mature exterior. Although the two plots are only loosely connected by narrative, they mirror each other in fascinating ways that invite comparison between Derrick’s actions and the king’s. The casual enthusiasm with which Derrick plunders the battlefield of French shoes and apparel is not that different from the king’s sudden desire to add a French princess to his spoils of war. In the SQM productions, the clown and the king represented two new kinds of English hero, both men of the people, both full of nationalistic sentiment expressed with brash, plainspoken vigour.

Prince Henry is Not Hal

The appeal of the figure of Henry V for the English public arose from the enticing combination of his victory over the French and his wayward youth. Henry V is imagined in part as a kind of Robin Hood: an aristocrat mixing with the commoners and resisting the authority of the king. In this play, he is also figured as a prodigal son, a bad boy who repents his ways and is welcomed back into the fold by a joyfully tearful father. In the process of developing this role, we were careful to resist the influence of Shakespeare’s Prince Hal and in this I took more of a directorial hand. Hal famously informs the audience that his association with Falstaff and his cronies is a political guise intended to make him seem more glorious when his true virtue is finally revealed (). There is no such soliloquy in , and I encouraged Hopkins to commit whole-heartedly to his character’s criminality in the early stages of the play and then suddenly convert to virtue under the influence of his father’s tears. His sudden conversion is reminiscent of morality plays, a genre that was an influential element of the Queen’ Men’s theatrical milieu. In order to remain true to the monarchist and patriotic purposes of the original company, I wanted Hopkins to provide a young rebel with charismatic appeal who then transformed into a noble warrior-king; I was delighted to watch him do just that. The charismatic Hopkins developed a very close and playful relationship with the audience, charming them and asking them to identify with him as their hero: the ultimate English warrior king. The performance annotations to this edition track the specific choices that Hopkins made in the construction of his charismatic performance: how they served to align the politics with our knowledge of the Queen’s Men, and where I now feel his character could have been interpreted differently.

was the play that revealed to us that all the characters in the Queen’s Men plays are stage clowns to a degree. The impulsive, naïve spirit that is at the heart of clowning and the clown ’s openness to the audience infused all the SQM performances from this point on. Even Don Allison’s Leir, which was initially conceived as a shadow of his tragic cousin Lear, took on a more playful tone in the later performances following the rehearsal process for . McMillin and MacLean’s description of the Queen’s Men style as medley is something that I would now dispute. The consequence of clowning all the characters is that the artificial division between the tragic and the comic, the serious and the funny, is broken down and the two can live side by side in the same scene. The Cobbler’s Wife scene in (Scene 10) is one of the prime examples of this effect. It was one of the funniest scenes in performance but also one of the most poignant: the audience laughed at the spectacle of John Cobbler being dragged off to war while still sympathizing with the couple’s emotional farewell. Robert Cushman remarked on this scene in his perceptive review, writing: There is a scene (echoed in Shakespeare, though he spread it out among various episodes) in which soldiers, pressed into service, take leave of home and loved ones, the latter represented by one alternately heartbroken and lascivious wife. It’s part pathos, part broad farce; the actors played both modes, full out and simultaneously, and the results were both rich and instructive. (Cushman) The company’s ability to switch between the serious and the comic or to combine them in this way was one of the distinctive features of their style and distinguished their performances from the slow-burn character transitions of theatrical realism.

Morality Drama

Although actors have always relied on observation of human behaviour, it is anachronistic to apply the principles of psychological realism to the interpretation of Queen’s Men plays, which cannot be fully understood without reference to the sophisticated religious and political propaganda of the morality play tradition. Shakespeare’s second Henriad, although influenced by moral drama, is more directly informed by the political realist Machiavelli than the Queen’s Men’s play is, and thus represents the prince’s journey in terms of his political agency, the choices he makes to advance his political agenda. does not operate in this way and is far better understood through direct reference to morality drama rather than through reference to Shakespeare’s plays. At the time was performed, morality drama had developed into a complex form that was used to advance a variety of political, religious and moral arguments (White). The story of Prince Henry follows the conventional pattern of the form. He begins in a state of sin and folly but is converted by the sight of his sick father. The transformation is as sudden as St. Paul’s conversion at Damascus and should be understood in this way: the prince is a sinner one moment and a noble prince committed to a path of virtue the next. This approach created a significant acting challenge for the company, and especially for Paul Hopkins, who had to effect an emotional transformation the size and suddenness of which is not normally encountered in our accustomed repertoire of psychological realism. (The onsets of jealousy in Othello and Leontes are comparable moments from Shakespeare.) The annotations in this edition of the text draw attention to key choices made by the company that worked to bring this alternate performance tradition to life on the stage.

A Nationalistic Interpretation

The politics of the play hinge on the audience’s relationship with its central figure. In keeping with McMillin and MacLean’s understanding of the Queen’s Men, I interpreted as an open piece of political propaganda written to support the agenda of Queen Elizabeth I, the English monarch and patron of the company. The play is designed to appeal to English national sentiments and to promote patriotism. The development of Hopkins’ charismatic performance was key in our adherence to this interpretation of the original text and context. The close relationship he developed with the audience as trickster-prince subliminally aligned the spectators with his monarchist and nationalist agenda. However, our approach to the French characters was also a significant factor. There are two basic types of French characters in the play: wise Frenchmen who are afraid of the English king (King of France, Archbishop of Bruges) and proud Frenchmen who were overly confident of victory (Dauphin, Herald, the French Captain and his soldiers). It is a clever design that serves the political intent of the play well since it makes the French both worthy adversaries of the English king offering significant military resistance, and also overweening braggarts primed to be cut down to size. We therefore had the French king and Bruges played sincerely by Don Allison and Jason Gray and found ways to expose the pride and folly of the other characters. The French Herald confronts Henry twice expecting surrender and demanding ransom, both times Prince Henry wittily turns the Herald’s overconfidence into fear and sends him packing to his masters ( and ). The third time he returns humiliated by the French defeat and Henry takes pleasure in reminding him of his previous pride (). The movement of the French character from confidence to submission mirrors Derrick’s comic interaction with the French soldier who has Derrick at his mercy only to be tricked out of his sword (). The Queen’s Men appear to have taken particular pleasure in the fact that the boastful and insulting Dauphin was not allowed to play a part in the battle of Agincourt. We cast Derek Genova, one of the actors who played female roles in our company, in this role and his relatively small stature made the Dauphin’s bragging immediately ridiculous. The French soldiers and their Captain were given full clown treatment. They feature in a key scene prior to the battle of Agincourt where they eagerly anticipate all the clothes they will be able to steal from English following the obvious French victory in Scene 13. The association of the French with fashion is clearly long-standing. The text indicates they should speak in French accents and I encouraged the actors to make the accents as extreme as possible, playing into every French stereotype. Offering the French soldiers as objects of ridicule was another way the SQM productions were intended to serve the nationalist agenda of the play.

Although the company and the rehearsal process took charge of much of the creative work for this production, I took a direct directorial approach in the political interpretation of the play. The annotations in this edition track my efforts to maintain a sincere commitment to the nationalistic agenda and my ultimate failure to do so because the company was resistant to such politics (for sound reasons) and our audience was unwilling to respond to such nationalism with anything but irony. This phenomenon was noted by Robert Cushman in his review: This Henry’s attitude to all things and people French is unabashedly contemptuous and acquisitive. It must have warmed every patriotic Elizabethan heart. We now see things a little differently, and Paul Hopkins, playing the role here, could hardly avoid winking with us at his own outrageousness. His was altogether an irresistible performance, bold and fluent and charming. (At a couple of points he helped himself to the audience’s beer.) He went, as his remote predecessors must have done, with the flow; only now it was a different flow. (Cushman) Cushman’s astute observation encourages a healthy approach to processing audience response both in our modern performances and also in the reception we might imagine the play received in the past. Although production decisions are designed to make particular impact on an audience and will often have the effect intended, audience response is not something that can be dictated from the stage. The protestant, monarchist and nationalist agenda of the company was not something that was necessarily received as it was intended in Elizabethan England.See Cockett for a more in depth discussion. That said, I imagine this play in its original context was a very effective piece of political propaganda. The fun of this play, its riotous, interactive brilliance must surely have been hard to resist.

A Company of Men

is very much a men’s play about men being manly. It features only two small female roles, the comic Cobbler’s wife and Henry’s prize for victory, the French princess Kate. In the SQM productions, all female roles were played by men. Paul Hopkins’ charismatic and deeply masculine interpretation of Prince Henry gradually infected the rest of the cast. The atmosphere in the rehearsal room took on something of the tone of a locker room, and it was at this point in the process that one of our company boys (the male actors who took on female roles) had to politely insist that the actors playing men refrain from pinching his backside when he was in his dress. I would like to hope that this was something that would never happen in a modern mixed gender rehearsal room today (though I suspect sadly, I may be wrong). The absence of women in the cast permitted the boys to play as boys have learnt to play in a single sex environment and this affected the interpretation of the female characters in the play. Matthew Krist could play into the grotesque stereotype of the shrewish Cobbler’s wife without reservation and I encouraged Julian DeZotti to take Kate’s aside as the touchstone for his character: I may think myself the happiest in the world, that is beloved of the mighty king of England (). In the SQM production Kate’s desire for the mighty king of England outweighed any political obligation to serve her father’s political ends from the very start of the scene. DeZotti entered shyly, like a young girl walking into the presence of her school crush—ostensibly coming to represent her father’s interests, but already subject to her desire for the English king. The reinterpretation of classical roles by female actors since the advent of feminism has been one of the great joys of the late twentieth century, but within the all male rehearsal room of the SQM productions, although there was sensitivity to the gender politics of the plays, it was far less marked than is usual today in a mixed gender cast. Making the French Princess a passive schoolgirl besotted with the English king, however, works within the context of ’ nationalist agenda. The scene could be played to stress Kate’s successful re-negotiation of Henry’s unreasonable demands () and accord the French princess a higher degree of respect and agency. Ultimately, however, the scene is not about Kate, it is about the hero-king, and her desire for him is another sign of his irresistible power, providing further affirmation of the loyalty he must have stirred in the hearts of the English audience. In our modern performance, Hopkins gave some sense of how this character in the hands of a skilled and charismatic performer could become an inspirational embodiment of a victorious England, even while his performance and its reception was tinged with irony bred in our own times.

Interpreting the Stage Directions

As with any early modern drama, the surviving text of prior to editing can be very confusing. There are numerous missing entrances and exits, characters enter the stage when they are already on the stage ( and ), and speeches are assigned to the wrong characters (). In addition characters refer to a gate (note at ) curtains (note at ), a chair that can be removed a little back (note at ), and a bar (note at ), and yet no such set pieces appear in the stage directions. Where did they come from? How and when do they get on stage? Are the characters referring to something physical or asking the audience to use their imaginations? These are pragmatic questions that we had to grapple with in the rehearsal room just as Matthew Martin, the textual editor, has had to do in creating this edition of the play. Our production policy was to find a staging solution that satisfied the majority of stage directions in the surviving text. It was often impossible to satisfy them all, and our staging for the prince’s two visits to his father, which contain the greatest number of confusing stage directions, was of necessity inventive (Scene 6 and Scene 8). My annotations track the logic of our production choices and how and why they concur or differ from the editing decisions made by Martin.

Directly Engaging the Audience

My one regret about the SQM project is that we were not able record in front of a live audience. The actors’ unions were generous in negotiation, but we were limited to three days of shooting and the schedules of live performances did not align with those dates. I was, however, able to record the one scene from the play that did not feature any union actors. The recording is of the French Soldiers scene from the performance at the Tranzac Club on the first night of the SQM conference. I have embedded the video here in the hope that it will give readers a sense of the rambunctious, interactive quality of the SQM performance of the play (especially when it was performed with accessibility to beer). In the live version, you can see the clowning noted above in the action and observe how the actors found ways to direct the majority of their lines out to the audience. Most importantly, however, you can get some sense of the audience response to this approach to performance. The audience clap along with the Frenchmen and bang on the stage as the soldiers throw their dice at the Englishmans (), but others in the crowd accept the implied casting of the audience as Englishmen and boo the arrogant French captain. The politics of the performance are tangled up in this interaction. When the French Captain refers to the audience directly as poor English scabs (), the playfully antagonistic sentiment in the audience grows and Jason Gray (French Captain) reacts to the response of the crowd, as any good clown should do, by staring them down before continuing his speech. Such a moment in the context of the original Queen’s Men would have provided an opportunity for the English audience to express their patriotism, or not.See Cockett for more in depth discussion. Although the quality of the video below is very poor, the laughter in this scene should also give readers a sense of the winking irony that critic Robert Cushman detected in the actor’s performances and our very modern audience’s response to the play. The largely Canadian audience did not carry any hatred for the French and were enjoying the overt representation of nationalistic English sentiment in a way specific to their own culture and times. Listening to it carefully, I would argue that the laughter is directed at the outrageousness of the ridiculous French accents the actors adopted, rather than at French people for being ridiculous, but readers can listen and judge for themselves.

The full performance of , directed by Peter Cockett for the .