SHAKESPEARE IN TEN ACTS

Ten iconic performances of Shakespeare's greatest plays reveal our national playwright in all his multifaceted splendour, with many surprises along the way. Married at 18 in Stratford-upon-Avon, we find Shakespeare 10 years later with a position in London's theatre world, no-one knows how, already making waves. Christopher Marlowe, who was assassinated the following year, dominated the theatre scene, and Shakespeare took over his pre-eminence in history and tragedy, adding his own comic genius to the mix. By 1600 he was a giant of London's literary scene, and the first of the featured performances in this book is Hamlet at the Globe, performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men shortly after dismantling their old theatre in Shoreditch and moving it across the river to the south bank. Hamlet's famous address to the skull of "poor Yorick" was thought to be a tribute to the company's clown Richard Tarlton. Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest, was performed at the Blackfriars Theatre in 1610, inaugurating an enclosed candlelit theatre space with a roof and elaborate stage machinery, and launching the enigmatic character of Prospero who has had centuries of classic interpretations from great actors including Beerbohm Tree, Gielgud, and McKellen. Othello is a play where the first black Othello (Ira Aldridge, 1825) and the first female Desdemona (probably Anna Marshall, 1660s) were big leaps forward in breaking down convention. Discussion of women in the theatre includes Sarah Siddons's celebrated Lady Macbeth and the strong-willed George Anne Bellamy, who specialised in tender roles such as Cordelia in King Lear, and although the 18th century rewriting of Lear to give a happy ending is regarded as sacrilege now, the authors show that some of Shakespeare's sources for the story followed that route. Moving into the modern era, Peter Brook's 1970 Midsummer Night's Dream revolutionised Shakespearean performance by casting aside centuries of pretty fairies, while Mark Rylance's 2002 all-male production of Twelfth Night was a different kind of innovation. 224pp, archive and colour photos.