Ben Jonson and the Theatre: Performance, Practice, and Theory

241 Pages·1999·5.343 MB·English

by  Richard Cave

Ben Jonson and Theatre
Ben Jonson and Theatre is an investigation and celebration of Jonson’s plays from
the point of view of the theatre practitioner as well as the teacher. Reflecting the
increasing interest in the wider field of Renaissance drama, this book bridges the
divide by debating how Jonson’s drama operates in performance. Ben Jonson
and Theatre includes:
(cid:127) discussions with and between practitioners
(cid:127) essays on the staging of the plays
(cid:127) edited transcripts of interviews with contemporary practitioners.
This radical re-evaluation of Jonson’s theatre is original and innovative in both
form and content. It explores the vibrant relationships between actors, directors
and academics in their approaches to Jonson. In an effort to open the repertoire to
the diversity of Jonson’s work, attention is given to rehearsal methods, workshop
practices, design, acting, directing, marketing and marginalised theatre history,
and all these are considered in the light of recent critical theory.
The volume includes contributions from Joan Littlewood, Sam Mendes, John
Nettles, Simon Russell-Beale, Genista McIntosh and Geoffrey Rush, Oscar-
winning actor for his role in Shine.
Richard Cave is Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Royal Holloway
College, University of London. Elizabeth Schafer is a Lecturer in Drama and
Theatre Studies at Royal Holloway College. Brian Woolland is a Lecturer in
Drama at the University of Reading.
Ben Jonson and Theatre
Performance, Practice and Theory
Richard Cave, Elizabeth Schafer
and Brian Woolland
London and New York
First published 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection
of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1999 R ichard Cave, Elizabeth Schafer, Brian Woolland
The right of Richard Cave, Elizabeth Schafer, Brian Woolland to be
identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by them in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Ben Jonson and theatre: performance, practice, and theory/[edited by]
Richard Cave, Elizabeth Schafer, Brian Woolland. p. cm.
‘This book has grown out of a conference held at Reading University
in January 1996’–P.3.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Jonson, Ben, 1573?–1637–Dramatic production—Congresses.
2. Jonson, Ben, 1573?–1637–Dramatic works—Congresses.
3. Jonson, Ben, 1573?–1637–Stage history—Congresses.
4. Theater—Production and direction—Congresses. I. Cave, Richard
Allen, 1943–. II. Schafer, Elizabeth, 1959–. III. Woolland, Brian,
1949–.
PR2642.D7B46 1999
822´.3–dc21 98–29160
CIP
ISBN 0-203-98137-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0 415 17980-7 (hbk)
ISBN 0 415 17981-5 (pbk)
Contents
List of illustrations vi
Notes on contributors vii
Acknowledgements x
Preface xii
Induction 1
Prologue: Who is Lovewit? What is he? 5
ANDREW GURR
PART I Ben Jonson and the theatre (as it is and as it might be) 19
1 Script and performance 21
RICHARD CAVE
2 Visualising Jonson’s text 31
RICHARD CAVE
3 Designing for Jonson’s plays 43
RICHARD CAVE
4 Acting in Jonson—a conversation with John Nettles 57
and Simon Russell-Beale
RICHARD CAVE
5 Directing Jonson 65
RICHARD CAVE
Interlude I Sam Mendes talks to Brian Woolland 79
PART II Working with Jonson 87
6 Introduction 89
BRIAN WOOLLAND
7 First encounters 97
BRIAN WOOLLAND
v
8 Jonson as Shakespeare’s Other 105
MICK JARDINE
9 Contradictions 117
BRIAN WOOLLAND
10 The gift of silence 127
BRIAN WOOLLAND
Interlude II Genista McIntosh: Casting and marketing Jonson 143
PART III Marginalised Jonsons 151
11 Introduction 153
ELIZABETH SCHAFER
12 Daughters of Ben 155
ELIZABETH SCHAFER
13 ‘Twill fit the players yet’: Women and theatre in 181
Jonson’s late plays
JULIE SANDERS
14 Jonson down under: An Australian Alchemist 193
ELIZABETH SCHAFER
Epilogue to this ‘venture tripartite’ 207
Appendix: The conference ‘Ben Jonson and the Theatre’, 211
University of Reading, January 1996
Bibliography 213
Index 219
List of illustrations
Plate 1 Bartholomew Fair: the Second Folio of the Collected Works of 1640, 74
showing the layout of the text for the scene where Cokes’s purse is
stolen.
Plate 2 Setting by Malcolm Pride for the Mountebank scene from the 1952 75
production of Volpone at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre,
Stratford.
Plate 3 Model of the setting designed by Chris Dyer for Trevor Nunn’s 76
1977 revival of The Alchemist in Stratford and London.
Plate 4 Anthony Ward’s basic setting for Sam Mendes’ revival of The 77
Alchemist at the Swan Theatre in 1991.
Plate 5 ‘The silent Placentia’ in the 1996 University of Reading production 138
of The Magnetic Lady.
Plate 6 Pug (John Dougall) being subjected to the gaze and predatory hands 139
of Lady Tailbush (Sheila Steafel), while Fitzdotterel (David
Troughton) feigns lack of interest, in Matthew Warchus’s 1995
production of The Devil is an Ass.
Plate 7 Joan Littlewood’s 1953 revival of The Alchemist for Theatre 140
Workshop.
Plate 8 Joan Littlewood’s 1955 staging of Volpone for Theatre Workshop. 141
Plate 9 Geoffrey Rush as Subtle and Hugo Weaving as Face in Neil 142
Armfield’s 1996 staging of The Alchemist at the Belvoir Street
Theatre in Sydney.
Notes on contributors
Richard Cave is Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts in the Department of
Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He has
authored numerous publications in a range of fields: Irish drama (particularly on
Wilde, T.C.Murray and W.B.Yeats, whose plays he has both edited and staged);
modern English theatre (New British Drama in Performance on the London Stage:
1970–1985); stage design (monographs on Charles Ricketts and Robert Gregory);
theatre history; the relation of dance with drama; and Renaissance theatre (studies
focused on Webster and Jonson).
Colin Ellwood is a freelance theatre director and Artistic Director of
Strangers’ Gallery Theatre Company. He was Assistant Director to Sam Mendes’
production of The Alchemist and has worked regularly for the RSC and the
Traverse Theatre.
Andrew Gurr is Professor of English at the University of Reading. He is a
director of the Globe project in London, chairing the New Globe Research
Department. He has edited several Renaissance plays, including Richard II and
Henry V for the New Cambridge Shakespeare. Other publications include
TheShakespearean Stage 1574–1642; Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London;
RebuildingShakespeare’s Globe (with John Orrell) and The Shakespearean Playing
Companies. He has written extensively about the archaeology and the sociology of
the London theatres of Shakespeare’s time.
Mick Jardine is Head of English at King Alfred’s University College,
Winchester. His research interests are in the early modern period, particularly
drama, and modern critical theory. He is currently working on a book on
Shakespeare’s Histories and a shared project on ‘The Shakespeare Phenomenon’,
a study of the cultural reception and reproduction of Shakespeare in the modern
world.
Joan Littlewood’s work with Theatre Workshop, Stratford East has become
legendary. High-profile productions include Oh, What a Lovely War!, A Taste of
Honey,The Hostage, The Quare Fellow; however, Littlewood also directed a large
number of classical plays, generally offending the critics with her overtly
politicised readings of the classics. Theatre Workshop was remarkable for its
commitment to a collective working practice, its complete lack of financial
support from government funding bodies and its trailblazing use of techniques
viii
(for example, in-depth research and free-ranging improvisations in support of
productions of classical texts) which now are taken for granted in British theatre.
Genista McIntosh is Executive Director of the Royal National Theatre,
where she has worked with both Sir Richard Eyre and Trevor Nunn. Prior to
this appointment she worked for many years as Casting Director for the Royal
Shakespeare Theatre.
Sam Mendes has been Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse since
1992. He has also directed regularly for the Royal National Theatre (including
the recent production of Othello with Simon Russell-Beale as Iago), and for the
Royal Shakespeare Company, for whom he directed The Alchemist in 1991 at the
Swan, Stratford and the Barbican. His productions have won numerous
accolades, including the Evening Standard, Manchester Evening News, Critics’ Circle
and Olivier Awards.
John Nettles is perhaps best known for his starring television role as Bergerac
and, amongst younger audiences, for his line of villains in pantomime; but he has
played extensively in radio and in the classical and modern repertory at Bristol,
Edinburgh, Exeter and Manchester. In several notable seasons with the Royal
Shakespeare Company his roles have included Thersites, Lucio, Bassanio and
Albany (1976–7); Leontes, Page and Octavius (1992–3); Meercraft in The Devilis
an Ass, Brutus and Buckingham (1995–6).
Geoffrey Rush is best known internationally for his Oscar-winning
performance as David Helfgott in Shine. However, Rush is also a Lecoq-trained
stage actor of great distinction. His work ranges widely over classical and modern
drama and Rush has often achieved great success working with director Neil
Armfield. Rush was particularly acclaimed for his Proposhkin in Armfield’s
production of Diary of a Madman, a production which toured Russia and Georgia
in 1991. Rush also has extensive experience as a theatre director in Australia.
Simon Russell-Beale was educated at Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Though he has
acted at the Traverse, the Edinburgh Lyceum and the Royal Court, much of his
earlier career was based in the Royal Shakespeare Company with whom he is an
Associate Artist. His many roles in Renaissance drama include Ariel, Edgar,
Richard III, Edward II, Thersites and Edward Knowell in Every Man in his
Humour. At Greenwich Theatre he has played Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi
and for the Royal National Theatre Mosca in Volpone and Iago. He recently
starred on television in A Dance to the Music of Time.
Julie Sanders is a Lecturer in the Department of English at Keele University.
Educated at the universities of Cambridge and Warwick, she is the author of
BenJonson’s Theatrical Republics (Macmillan, 1998) and co-editor (with Kate
Chedgzoy and Susan Wiseman) of Refashioning Ben Jonson (Macmillan, 1998). She
has published several articles, including work on Jonson, Margaret Cavendish and
Richard Brome.
Elizabeth Schafer is a Lecturer in the Department of Drama and Theatre at
Royal Holloway College, University of London. She is the author of
MsDirectingShakespeare: Women Direct Shakespeare; she co-edited (with Peta Tait)
ix
AustralianWomen’s Drama: Texts and Feminisms; she has also edited Thomas
Middleton’s TheWitch.
Brian Woolland is a Lecturer in the Department of Film and Drama at the
University of Reading. He has published extensively on theatre, film and
educational drama. He has edited The Alchemist for Cambridge University Press.
He also works as a director (productions include The Devil is an Ass and The
MagneticLady) and is a playwright, whose plays have been produced and toured in
several European countries.