Abstract
August 2014 was a very good summer. We drove leisurely as a family across France to Britain. On the way, we stopped to visit the beaches of Normandy, revisiting our book- and film-fashioned knowledge of the epic landing that was played out on those wide expanses of sand. Our son considered that it seemed an appropriate thing to do even as the countdown was beginning in Britain, France, and elsewhere to four years of centennial commemorations of World War One. He was right, of course: remembrance of Europe’s 1914–18 and 1939–45 diptych of horror cannot be segmented.
One of the plays we saw that summer was Two Gentlemen of Verona, directed by Simon Godwin, in Stratford-upon-Avon’s main house. A rarely performed comedy, in a contemporary staging that carried an Italian flavour, judging from the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) programme: it sounded just right. The pre-performance atmosphere that greeted us on entering the auditorium confirmed this, with its reconstitution of a Verona piazza (designer Paul Wills): ‘Antonio’s’ trattoria tables, with their red-and-white check tablecloths, streamers of pink hearts strung over the stage, an ice-cream stall, with a vendor actually handing out free cups of real ice-cream to eager members of the audience. It tasted good, too (according to our son).
The façade, with its wrought-iron balcony, of Sylvia’s house bathing in golden light preserved the Italian illusion even as the scenes shifted to chic, vibrant Milan. Sylvia (Sarah MacRae) was a prosperous, socially confident debutante, her father the Duke of Milan (Jonny Glynn) a cross between a Mafia boss and a B-film attempt at a Visconti hero. Crab, of course, performed by Mossup the dog, stole the show.
After the interval, the mood, as so often in Shakespeare’s plays, switched to a darker mode, with betrayal, banishment, kidnapping, with outlaws holed up in a vaguely militaristic camp in a threatening forest. The careful building up of tension through this dramatic change of set was spoilt however by an increasingly rushed pace of the action. The actors seemed to be in a hurry to get it all over, and the end was confusedly and urgently performed – to the extent that the cast did not take a final bow. Instead, we were invited to leave the theatre. This was no bomb alert or practical joke: the date was 4 August, the 100th anniversary of the day Britain had declared war on Germany. We were being hurried out, in time for a nationwide ‘Lights out’ tribute.
Quite a few critics were scathing about this production at the time (even those who saw the play in a less tightly scheduled context), but seeing it was, for us, a memorable experience, partly because of that layering of circumstances. At the same time, we were frustrated at the way the comedy was not allowed to play out its tempo, leaving us with the feeling that some of the tensions that Shakespeare builds up right to the final moments were being fluffed.
So, when France went into lockdown in mid-March 2020, timidly beginning to emerge on 11 May, it seemed a good occasion to see the play again, on several counts: to revisit a pleasant summer, when one could travel without fear and enjoy wide expanses of beach; to revisit, through Stratfordian stereotyping, memories of Italy. The choice was also suited to our mood. Lockdown may have been inspirational, creative, meditative, bonding, and so forth; it was/is also about sickness, death, and shocking social inequalities in the face of suffering. Friends have been ill, and spent long weeks on ventilators. We know kids on whom lockdown has taken a severe emotional toll. There were enough dark clouds, solace to be offered, we could not take on tragedies such as King Lear. Nor could we summon the intellectual energy needed for conceptual productions such as those being streamed by the Berliner Ensemble. We needed comedy, even – appropriately, perhaps – with that darker, Shakespearean seam.
Pace those critics, we enjoyed viewing the play again. Of course, there was no pre-show activity onstage, which was just as well: seeing that ice-cream vendor offering his wares would have been too frustrating. More than ever the design of the set seemed to celebrate an idealised, national culture where a lot happens out of doors: the priest sitting at one of the tables was the touch one expects to find in a British traveller’s account of his Italian tour. This was a world where one likes to sit and linger outdoors, a world to look forward to again. Nostalgia melded with concern for our Italian friends also under lockdown, suffering even while resiliently reinventing togetherness on their balconies.
What struck us, as it strikes anyone who sees and hears the play, is how Shakespeare seems to have packed into this, one of his earliest works, almost everything that he unpacks over the rest of his career: a balcony scene, an aubade, a Clotenesque wooer, banishment, a bullying father, running away, cross-dressing, male inconstancy and rivalry, female solidarity, treachery, outlaws, rings, a clown, a forest, a recognition scene; and, of course fluid poetry that works in Petrarchan and mythological language as well as burlesque and slapstick.
The context of viewing affects what you hear. So many of Shakespeare’s plays stage stories of voluntary or involuntary confinement: a daughter in Two Gentlemen, as in The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet; a bereaved sister at the beginning of Twelfth Night and her puritan steward at the end of the play; a woman who believes she is widowed in The Comedy of Errors. What also struck us during this lockdown viewing of Two Gentlemen is that Launce’s (Roger Morlidge) rent-a-mutt business would have come in useful to people in France whose movements were restricted largely to shopping for food or medicine, seeing a doctor, and walking their dog.
As when we saw the play, Julia (Pearl Chanda) sounded rather shrill in the first half of the play – possibly because having Lucetta (Leigh Quinn), herself rather shrill, as a companion didn’t encourage vocal sophistication. She moved into a more mature tone when she reappeared as Sebastian, as if the regendering had brought her poise. In a highly successful contrast to the males’ rivalry, Sylvia and Julia/Sebastian subtly displayed a potential for female solidarity. Through looks, asides, and blocking, their performance provided depth to the text’s empathy.
The play was not recorded live on 4 August. The cast took their time over their bows, to the audience’s enjoyment. Nonetheless, the feeling of a rushed end remained to some extent. The play closed with Julia and Proteus (Mark Arends), standing diagonally across the stage, contemplating a tentative reconciliation that abided by the 2020 norms of social distancing. But, before that, had Sylvia really intended to kill Proteus, only to be prevented by Valentine (Michael Marcus) even as he offered to ‘give her’ to his friend? Was she in such a state of anger and shock that she didn’t really take in what he was saying, which is why she went off with him placidly? Who is Sylvia? Certainly, this one had a mind of her own.
And once again, I was left with the same question: What happens to Eglamour?