Driving all three Henry plays is anger and grief about the destructive schism dividing the body politic of England, and an impassioned search for coherence and harmony. The trilogy reaches its nadir with the depth of man's inhumanity in Part III: the murder of Rutland, torture and murder of York, mutilation and murder of Clifford, and the greatest ever human slaughter on English soil at Towton. We travel through Shakespeare's hellish vision of an England out of joint with nothing more than Henry's trembling candlelight to guide us. When that, too, is extinguished by the murder of Henry, we are ready to say with Edgar that "This is the worst." And then comes Richard III.
The glimmer of hope toward the end of Part III comes not from the son of York cradled in Richard's murdering arms, but from Henry's miraculous prophecy and blessing of the young boy Richmond. In our production Richmond was played by the same actor (Sam Troughton in 2000/01 and Lex Shrapnel 2006/08) who had played John Talbot sacrificed to the devilish French in Part I, no longer as Young Talbot's ghost, but still scarred with John Talbot's exact head wounds, inflicted by the French in Part I.
There is something remarkable about following these characters over eight or nine hours in performance, especially as the plays are so unfamiliar, the audience not only has more time to suffer alongside the protagonists, but also has largely no idea what the outcomes will be. Did you find the plays a liberating prospect to work on in this respect?
Hall: It has never really bothered me when I've done A Midsummer Night's Dream and people know that Bottom is going to wake up with Titania. This knowledge never seems to spoil the experience of the audience so I didn't really notice a lack of foreknowledge watching the history plays. What you do get with these plays is an immediate piece of living English history. You can still see the characters from their pages alive and well today. Just as you still see Falstaff, Pistol, and Bardolph, you still see Jack Cade and his cohorts, the Clerk of Chatham, Clarence, Richard Duke of Gloucester, the father who killed his son: you see all these people, they're all there in front of you. They are quintessentially English. There's something about the way these people speak and behave, the places they talk about and their family history, that a British audience instantly plugs into. It's rooted in our DNA. There's an excitement about a five-hundred-year-old story talking to us today and these people being as recognizable today as they were then. There's something about the national character that Shakespeare captured in the history plays and it's still with us. If you look at relatively recent British history there have been two huge civil conflicts: the English Civil War and the Wars of the Roses. We don't have the great work of art about the English Civil War. The Wars of the Roses lives more strongly in our culture than the English Civil War--as a period, as a story, and as a piece of living history--because of Shakespeare.
Boyd: One potent case of our production benefiting from both these factors was how shocked and horrified audiences always were by the death, halfway through the trilogy, of Richard Cordery's seemingly indestructible Humphrey, and how grateful they were that I brought him back to haunt the ensuing chaos, and then to gloat on England's troubles as the King of France in Part III.
I always try to work on a Shakespeare as if it were a new text, but it is rare for most of the audience to be following the narrative innocently. Imagine what Hamlet would be like to watch if the shifts of his fate were as surprising as those of Margaret and Henry are to most people over the course of the tetralogy.
The plays depict brutal power struggles on a level surely unmatched elsewhere in Shakespeare, and reminders of death were ever present in the visuals of both your productions. Could you discuss that and give us an insight into the process of arriving at those design choices?
Hall: Our setting was an abattoir. People call each other butchers in the play and England is talked about as a slaughterhouse, which is what first led me to think of that image. The question is how do you do a historical play with an extraordinary amount of violence in it? How do you abstract that into a metaphorical world where people can be violent to each other in a way that doesn't involve restraint? In a stage fight when an actor is pretending to stab someone, what is actually at the forefront of their mind is being careful not to actually kill them. I wanted to work out a way of presenting the violence so that the audience could get a proper sense of it, with no danger to anyone onstage. So the actors could really let themselves go, but where there were dots that the audience had to join up so that their imaginations would be engaged. We used a butcher with a huge meat slab with real offal being chopped to pieces and pulled apart. It meant that you could get the full visceral experience of the violence. You could smell it. At one point we cooked some of the offal in a sizzling hot pan and it was eaten onstage. It engaged the imagination in a different way than a stage fight would. When Warwick died we had a large bucket being filled with a stream of blood running from a tap. It ran as the wounded Warwick gave his dying speech and then when he died the tap stopped. You saw his blood drain away in front of you.
8. Edward Hall's Rose Rage (2001) at The Watermill: "Our setting was an abattoir. People call each other butchers in the play and England is talked about as a slaughterhouse, which is what first led me to think of that image ... In a stage fight when an actor is pretending to stab someone, what is actually at the forefront of their mind is being careful not to actually kill them."
When we came to Jack Cade and the executions we used big red cabbages to represent people's heads. We put an actor's head at one end of a long chopping block and put the red cabbage on the other end and then smashed the cabbage with a baseball bat. The actor would roll off and disappear into the wings while everyone tore the cabbage to bits and ate bits of it. Not only did it work to watch, it was good for the company because they were doing something quite animal and were able to sort of explore the feelings of violence that might come with that kind of behavior. Imagination is a wonderful thing. We had a man playing a woman, Margaret of Anjou, walking on in tears with the head of her dead lover, as represented by a red cabbage in a sack, and no one laughed. Everyone understood exactly what was going on. To me that's interesting because you're embracing the idea of theater. You're absolutely free from any twentieth-century naturalism and free to explore the plays in a metaphorical way, which is the spirit in which they were written.
Boyd: Our complete 2008 cycle (in the order of writing) began with Henry V's coffin descending from the black heavens and ended with Henry V wooing Katherine of France on a stage made out of the coffins of the French dead.
We connected Joan to the other world with the reassembled sacrificial bones of a dead bird, and later the same actress (Fiona Bell in 2000/01 and Katy Stephens in 2006/08) reassembled the bones of her dead son Edward to empower her curses on the House of York. Memorial stones were assembled by York as he enlisted his dynastic forefathers to his claim to the throne, and his grandson later did the same, in miniature now, and as a game with only half-remembered significance. White feathers fell at Joan's death and later again at Towton and Tewkesbury where they intermingled with the red of blood and of the House of Lancaster.
Later in the cycle sand fell onto kings and told them their time, too, would pass. We were trying to dramatize two interlocking types of cycle: the blind and solipsistic cycle of revenge, and the Mystery Cycle, where revenge is finally halted by sacrificial love. A third cycle, of repeated history, would have been evident to the Elizabethan audience: the providential conclusion of Shakespeare's first tetralogy, with Henry Tudor finally triumphant over evil (so pleasing to the authorities and their censors), would have been qualified by theatergoers as they wandered home. It was, after all, another Henry Tudor who brought about the great religious and political divisions of their own time, for which the conflicts between York and Lancaster had just served as metaphor.
How do you see the roles of the female characters in the plays? In many ways, Henry is the most traditionally "feminine" character in a world inhabited by powerful, martial women.
Hall: I'm not sure I agree with that about Henry. I think he's a deeply spiritual man who is desperate not to do the wrong thing. The pressure around him is so intense that he gets to a point where he cannot do anything without ostracizing a group of people he doesn't want to ostracize. He falls into a catch-22 situation, which is also a metaphor for how difficult it is to stop a civil conflict like this happening. I think you have to be very careful with that character; he is a man under a lot of pressure and he is very sensitive. Feminine in terms of expressing vulnerability? No. Feminine in terms of sensitivity? Yes.
Boyd: Both Joan and Margaret exploit their femininity in the wooing of the French court and Suffolk respectively, and Elizabeth Grey, later Queen Elizabeth, exhibits femininity and vulnerability throughout her story, finding her tigress's strength only as the mother of two murdered children in Richard III. One of Shakespeare's finest and most characteristic achievements in the trilogy is to reverse for one scene our great animosity toward the adulterous, murderous couple of Suffolk and Margaret, and invite us to feel deep compassion for them as they are forced apart in Part II. Both here, and in her motherly protection of her son, Margaret is all woman.
The need in Shakespeare's women for self-determination is consistently denied by brutal patriarchy, and the author consistently reveals how this need is then sublimated into sexual, or supernatural, control. Joan of Arc, Margaret, the Countess of Auvergne, and Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, are just the first of many.
Shakespeare also gives his disempowered women astonishing insight. There is no more devastating critique of cannibalistic court politics than Eleanor's warning to her husband, Humphrey, on the eve of his arrest.
What was your vision of the character of Henry? He is often disregarded because he seems a weak, ineffectual, and uncharismatic pawn in a deadly game for which he is not suited, and yet it seems Shakespeare gives him opportunities to show tremendous strength and dignity.
Boyd: Henry's journey is both a paradox and a pilgrimage. He begins as an ignored and powerless child, overwhelmed by a factious court and the memory of his father, Henry V. Supported by the loyal and pragmatic counsel of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, he grows in stature, speaks better than anyone of the dangers of internal dissent on the field of France, and makes the best possible effort to balance and neutralize the opposing dynastic factions within the court. His moment of greatest human folly (and the undoing of the English court) is the moment where he most insists upon his will being done: his marriage to Margaret and crowning her Queen of England.
The mistake most often made in interpreting Henry is the anachronistic, modern assumption (Freud's couch again) that his victim-hood must be entirely the result of some internal psychological pathology, which ignores the external geological pressures which form his fate in his four-play journey. Henry is England embodied throughout the first trilogy, and the plays print themselves upon his mind and body as England suffers.
By coincidence, both our Henries were Nigerian and both practicing Christians (David Oyelowo 2000/01, Chuk Iwuji 2006/08). Both were alert to the savagery of civil war and both embraced the opportunity to play a lifetime pilgrimage where Henry grew in strength and authority the further he removed himself from power. Pragmatists who scoff at such a paradox are ultimately aligning themselves with the sterile Machiavellianism of Richard III and most modern power politics. Henry is seemingly omnipotent in death as he leads the armies of the dead and the living against the tyrant at Bosworth Field.
9. Michael Boyd's 2006 RSC production with Katy Stephens as Margaret and Chuk Iwuji as Henry VI whose "moment of greatest human folly (and the undoing of the English court) is the moment where he most insists upon his will being done: his marriage to Margaret and crowning her Queen of England."
Historically Henry VI became an unsuccessful candidate for beatification and sainthood, and Shakespeare is undoubtedly endowing him with the prophetic and miraculous martyrdom of England's one sainted king, Edward the Confessor. [Stephen] Greenblatt has talked eloquently of Shakespeare's boldness in staging purgatory on a Protestant London stage [Hamlet in Purgatory, 2002]. This portrait of Henry, at such a vulnerable point in Shakespeare's career, shows an even greater daring.
I remember reacting with an equal measure of surprise and glee at the appearance onstage of the character we realize is going to become Richard III in the future, who seems "good" at first before finally setting out his stall in a remarkable soliloquy in Part III. Do you see the family-centric struggles of Part II giving way to a sort of angel/devil binary between Henry and Richard toward the end of the saga, looking forward unavoidably to the one-man show that is Richard III?
Hall: The death of Richard's father has a profound effect upon him, and that's the thing that unhinges him completely. One cannot overemphasize the effect York's death has on his sons. For Richard, the relationship with his father almost allows him to ignore the fact that he's deformed, because his father is such a tower of strength to him and so envelops him with love. When he's gone I think that's the first time he has to look at himself in the mirror on his own. His brother Edward was famous for going into battle with his troops, on foot and with sword drawn. He was a real bruiser and the moment he got the crown he spent the next decade drinking and shagging. By the time he'd drunk himself to his grave and realized he was about to die, he hadn't organized what was going to happen next and it was too late. Mix those things together: you have the elder brother suddenly going bananas--he's got his money, he's got his crown, and he's going to enjoy himself. And you have a disgruntled younger brother who has lost his father and suddenly feels like he doesn't fit. Then you have a middle brother who doesn't know who he is--he's very articulate but is clearly blown whichever way the wind goes, and has already shown himself untrustworthy once. You add that all together and you can see where Shakespeare's going.
Boyd: From out of England's corrupt and wounded womb comes forth a distorted monster. The same forces which bring about the pseudo-judicial murder of Humphrey, the misshapen false rebellion of Jack Cade, and which bring England, Margaret, and Henry to the brink of madness, squeeze Richard and his teeth into the horrified arms of the midwife. That is the perspective as seen from the end of the trilogy and our productions did emphasize the cosmology of good and evil by casting the minor Vice figures of France in Part I as those who would later preside over England's descent into chaos in Part III and Richard III, but Shakespeare's secular humanist side was also evident: Henry's mentor Gloucester gives good counsel which is wholly secular, and Henry only retreats from this world toward the status of angel when he has no other choice. When there is no other place available where human truths can be cherished.
Richard of Gloucester refers to himself in terms of the Vice figure in the medieval morality and mystery plays, but he, too, excites our compassion as he absorbs horrific personal attacks from Margaret, Clifford, and eventually even his own mother. And the audience member who has empathized with Richard of York's arduous and impassioned three-play struggle for the throne can also carry a candle for all of his orphaned sons, including Richard, as they seek dynastic justice where their murdered father failed. Both Aidan McArdle (2000/01) and Jonathan Slinger (2006/08) had been tremendous and very different Pucks for the RSC, and their Richards reflected the same differences: Aidan winning us against our better judgment with great psychotic charm, and Jonathan gradually blackmailing us with the morbid exhibition of his physical and psychic wounds.
It's interesting, however, to view the plays alongside Richard III as structurally they work very differently in their democratic distribution of character. What were they like to work on with your respective companies of actors? Could you give us a little insight into the process of working on such a large-scale, ensemble-rich project?
Hall: If you have a smaller cast you absolutely have to decide who is on which side. You have to mark that out quite carefully so people know who is sitting on which side of the fence, and who is in the middle. Y
ou can use costume for that as well. You have to go through the family tree and look at where everybody is. When you conflate characters together you have to look at where that places them relative to the family. You have to make sure people are clearly identifiable all the way through, because the big fear audiences have about the history plays is that they won't know who anyone is. You have to help a little bit with that. It's a bit of a detective journey to begin with to work out exactly who is motivated by what. It is in the end like doing a soap opera. Family is the most important thing: it is a massive family squabble played out on a big stage.
What is absolutely crucial to making the plays work is to make sure you get the right political atmosphere. And it's very simple: there is no such thing as the middle way. There is no such thing as liberal compromise. If you are not for something, you are by definition against it. There's no in between. People's lives and lands and titles could be decided and disappear in a moment if they made a slightly wrong call, and even sometimes a small mistake. So it's an incredibly dangerous and difficult atmosphere to operate in. There is no such thing as debate, and you have to create that atmosphere and get people to understand that. It explains why people behave as they do, why they are so guarded and so mistrustful and so careful. Ultimately and famously in Richard III it partly explains why Stanley sits on the top of the hill with his army and refuses to join in the battle until he's sure which side is winning. That sort of political atmosphere is a key thing to understand and to communicate in the way you play those big court scenes. It could all fall apart for anybody in a second and no one's quite sure what's going to happen next. If you get that then you have real tension, the potential of a good thriller.