SHAKESPEARE

Synopsis

Series looking at the poetry of the past six centuries.
1: Establishes the continuity and variety of English verse throughout the past six centuries using extracts from poems, with readings from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton, Swift, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, Yeats and Ted Hughes, whose poem ‘The Thought Fox’ is itself an image of the way in which a poem can be conceived by a poet. As in all the programmes, the poems are ‘set’ in suitable locations in England and America and the readings are illustrated with paintings from the appropriate period.
2: Julian Glover and Nicholas Gecks read translations of Old English or Anglo-Saxon poetry which was composed between the mid-7th century and the Norman Conquest. The main reading is a part of Julian Glover’s own adaptation of Beowulf, the heroic epic of the 8th century, which incorporates lines in the original language with its rich rhetoric. Other Old English verse featured includes three short ‘riddle poems’, part of The Seafarer (a monologue about adventure and exile) and The Dream of the Rood (a lyrical meditation ‘spoken’ by the cross on which Christ was crucified).
3: Emphasises the storytelling function of verse with illustrations from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Gary Watson reads the general prologue in the original Middle English which is accompanied by subtitles. Gielgud provides an introduction to Chaucer and his work which is followed by a re-enactment (by a group of actors) of ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ in Neville Coghill’s modern version.
4: Two anonymous carols are used to represent the numerous songs that made up the folk tradition. Readings from John Skelton ('To Mistress Margaret Hussey’) pinpoint the moment when the late medieval period merged into the Renaissance. The themes of love, death and ambition are identified in the poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Chidiock Tichborne, Thomas Nashe, Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe and Michael Drayton. The review of this period culminates in the reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 ‘The Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame’. Readings are by Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud, Julian Glover and others.
5: Illustrates the variety of Shakespeare’s genius expressed in the many moods of his plays. The scenes and speeches featured are the prologue to Henry V, the nurse’s speech from Romeo and Juliet, one of Hamlet’s famous soliloquies, the recognition scene between Cordelia and King Lear, Enobarbus’s speech lauding Cleopatra, the dirge from Cymbeline and Prospero’s farewell speech from The Tempest, which Gielgud describes as ‘a true epilogue to Shakespeare’s career’. Readings by Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Dame Peggy Ashcroft.
6: Analyses Donne’s verse, discussing, in particular, the ‘shock tactics of his rhetoric’. Four of Donne’s love poems - written whilst a young man - ‘The Flea’, ‘The Good Morrow’, ‘The Sun Rising’ and ‘The Apparition’ are read by Julian Glover as examples of the power, vigour and audacity of his verse. Two religious poems, ‘Death Be Not Proud’ and ‘A Hymn To God The Father’, represent his later work. Peggy Ashcroft reads three religious poems by George Herbert. Gielgud mentions the work of the Cavalier poets and reads ‘To His Coy Mistress’ by Andrew Marvell.
7: The life and work of John Milton. Ian Richardson reads Milton’s verse:- the sonnet to his dead wife Katherine and a number of passages from Paradise Lost, upon which this programme concentrates. The passages featured are: Book 1 - the opening passage and the confrontation between Satan and Beelzebub in Hell; Book 3 - the great hymn to light; Book 4 - Satan’s confrontation with Gabriel; Book 12 - the concluding passage in which Michael leads Adam and Eve out of Paradise.
8: A passage from ‘A Satire Against Reason and Mankind’ by Rochester introduces the great age of satire. Discusses the literary and political satire of the Poet Laureate Dryden, with readings from ‘MacFlecknoe’ and ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ which attacked members of Charles II’s court such as the Duke of Buckingham. The verse of Jonathan Swift was lighter and more genial in tone than his prose; examples are ‘On Poetry, a Rhapsody’ and ‘Verses on the Death of Dr Swift’. In contrast is the ferocious wit of Alexander Pope, illustrated in readings from the ‘Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot’ in which he pillories his enemy Lord Harvey and the conclusion to ‘The Dunciad’ which was an attack on pedantry, pretentiousness, commercialism and bad writing in general.
9: Extracts from Christopher Smart’s ‘Jubilate Agno’, the address to his cat Jeoffry, written in Bedlam, read by Ian Richardson, who also reads William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’. Four more Blake poems are read by Peggy Ashcroft: ‘Holy Thursday’, ‘London’, ‘A Poison Tree’ and ‘The Clod and the Pebble’. John Gielgud reads Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’. Wordsworth’s ‘The Solitary Reaper’ is read by Julian Glover.
10: Julian Glover reads Wordsworth’s verse, some of it spoken in Dove Cottage, including ‘Upon Westminster Bridge’, ‘Daffodils’, ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Steal’, and a long extract from Book 1 of ‘The Prelude and Extempore Effusion on the Death of James Hogg’.
11: Nicholas Gecks reads Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ and extracts from ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ and ‘Adonias’. Ian Richardson reads ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ by Keats and Peggy Ashcroft reads ‘To Autumn’. Ends with Gielgud reading part of Byron’s ‘Don Juan’ Canto 1 ‘But now at thirty years my hair is grey’.
12: Ian Richardson reads five extracts from Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’. Other works include Emily BrontÎ's ‘The Visionary’, Christina Rossetti’s ‘When I Am Dead My Dearest’, Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’, Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ and part of Swinburne’s ‘The Garden of Proserpine’. Other readers are Ashcroft, Gielgud and Glover.
13: Lee Remick speaks Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The City in the Sea’, Julia Ward Howe’s ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and four poems by Emily Dickinson, which are filmed in Dickinson’s own bedroom in her carefully preserved home in Massachusetts. Stacy Keach performs a long extract from ‘Song of Myself’ by Walt Whitman and Herman Melville’s ‘Shiloh’.
14: Readings from Thomas Hardy, Gerald Manley Hopkins, E A Houseman and Rudyard Kipling. Ashcroft and Glover read from Hardy: ‘The Ruined Maid’, ‘In Church’, ‘At Castle Boterel’, ‘I Looked into my Glass’ and ‘He Never Expected Much.' Ian Richardson reads four poems by Hopkins: ‘Pied Beauty’, ‘The Windhover’, ‘Spring and Fall’, and ‘I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark’. Nicholas Gecks reads Houseman’s ‘Tell Me Not Here’ and ‘In Valleys Green and Still’. Gielgud reads Kipling’s ‘The Story of Uriah’.
15: Concentrates on six major poets writing between the wars. Cyril Cusack reads Yeats’ ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, ‘The Second Coming’ and ‘Politics’. Nicholas Gecks reads ‘Anthem for a Doomed Youth’ by Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas’s ‘Old Man’. Stacy Keach reads Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’. All the parts in ‘A Game of Chess’ from T S Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ are taken by Isla Blair and Ian Richardson. John Gielgud reads W H Auden’s ‘Music des Beaux Arts’.
16: Anthony Hopkins speaks Dylan Thomas’s ‘The Force that through the Green Fuse’ and ‘Do Not Go Gentle’. Julian Glover reads Philip Larkin’s ‘Church Going’ and ‘The Explosion’. Stacey Keach reads two poems by Robert Lowell: ‘Skunk Hour’ and ‘For the Union Dead’. Ted Hughes’ description of the coming of inspiration to a poet, ‘The Thought Fox’, is read by Sir John Gielgud.

Language

English

Country

Great Britain

Medium

Video

Technical information

Colour / Sound

Year of release

1984

Availability

Out of distribution (2006)

Credits

Writer

Anthony Thwaite

Cast

Ian Richardson
John Gielgud
Julian Glover
Lee Remick
Peggy Ashcroft

Additional Details

Production type

Documentary/Educational/News

Subjects

English language and literature

Keywords

poetry; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); sonnets; poetry - British

Notes

Notes

VF 94 Review

History

Episode 5 SHAKESPEARE 1564-1616 was broadcast 30 May 1984.

Documentation

Reference: ‘Six Centuries of Verse’ by Anthony Thwaite (Methuen).

Uses

Students of English literature.*

Sections

Title

Introduction, An

Synopsis

1: Establishes the continuity and variety of English verse throughout the past six centuries using extracts from poems, with readings from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton, Swift, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Emily BrontÎ, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hard

Title

Old English

Synopsis

2: Julian Glover and Nicholas Gecks read translations of Old English or Anglo-Saxon poetry which was composed between the mid-7th century and the Norman Conquest. The main reading is a part of Julian Glover’s own adaptation of ‘Beowulf’, the heroic epic o

Title

Chaucer (1340-1400)

Synopsis

3: Emphasises the storytelling function of verse with illustrations from Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’. Gary Watson reads the general prologue in the original Middle English which is accompanied by subtitles. Gielgud provides an introduction to Chaucer and

Title

Medieval to Elizabethan (c1400-1600)

Synopsis

4: Two anonymous carols are used to represent the numerous songs that made up the folk tradition. Readings from John Skelton ('To Mistress Margaret Hussey’) pinpoint the moment when the late medieval period merged into the Renaissance. The themes of love,

Title

Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Synopsis

5: Illustrates the variety of Shakespeare’s genius expressed in the many moods of his plays. The scenes and speeches featured are the prologue to ‘Henry V’, the nurse’s speech from ‘Romeo and Juliet’, one of Hamlet’s famous soliloquies, the recognition sc

Title

Metaphysical and devotional (c1590-c1670)

Synopsis

6: Analyses Donne’s verse, discussing, in particular, the ‘shock tactics of his rhetoric’. Four of Donne’s love poems - written whilst a young man - ‘The Flea’, ‘The Good Morrow’, ‘The Sun Rising’ and ‘The Apparition’ are read by Julian Glover as examples

Title

Milton (1608-74)

Synopsis

7: The life and work of John Milton. Ian Richardson reads Milton’s verse:- the sonnet to his dead wife Katherine and a number of passages from ‘Paradise Lost’, upon which this programme concentrates. The passages featured are: Book 1 - the opening passage

Title

Restoration and Augustan (1660-1745)

Synopsis

8: A passage from ‘A Satire Against Reason and Mankind’ by Rochester introduces the great age of satire. Discusses the literary and political satire of the Poet Laureate Dryden, with readings from ‘MacFlecknoe’ and ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ which attacked

Title

Romatic pioneers (1750-1805)

Synopsis

9: Extracts from Christopher Smart’s ‘Jubilate Agno’, the address to his cat Jeoffry, written in Bedlam, read by Ian Richardson, who also reads William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’. Four more Blake poems are read by Peggy Ashcroft: ‘Holy Thursday’, ‘London’, ‘A Po

Title

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Synopsis

10: Julian Glover reads Wordsworth’s verse, some of it spoken in Dove Cottage, including ‘Upon Westminster Bridge’, ‘Daffodils’, ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Steal’, and a long extract from Book 1 of ‘The Prelude and Extempore Effusion on the Death of James H

Title

Younger Romantics (1800-1824)

Synopsis

11: Nicholas Gecks reads Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ and extracts from ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ and ‘Adonias’. Ian Richardson reads ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ by Keats and Peggy Ashcroft reads ‘To Autumn’. Ends with Gielgud reading part of Byron’s ‘Don Juan’ Cant

Title

Victorians (1837-1901)

Synopsis

12: Ian Richardson reads five extracts from Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’. Other works include Emily BrontÎ's ‘The Visionary’, Christina Rossetti’s ‘When I Am Dead My Dearest’, Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’, Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ and part of Swi

Title

American pioneers (1849-1910)

Synopsis

13: Lee Remick speaks Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The City in the Sea’, Julia Ward Howe’s ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and four poems by Emily Dickinson, which are filmed in Dickinson’s own bedroom in her carefully preserved home in Massachusetts. Stacey Keac

Title

Romantics and realists (1870-c1920)

Synopsis

14: Readings from Thomas Hardy, Gerald Manley Hopkins, E A Houseman and Rudyard Kipling. Ashcroft and Glover read from Hardy: ‘The Ruined Maid’, ‘In Church’, ‘At Castle Boterel’, ‘I Looked into my Glass’ and ‘He Never Expected Much.' Ian Richardson reads

Title

Earlier twentieth century (1914-39)

Synopsis

15: Concentrates on six major poets writing between the wars. Cyril Cusack reads Yeats’ ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, ‘The Second Coming’ and ‘Politics’. Nicholas Gecks reads ‘Anthem for a Doomed Youth’ by Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas’s ‘Old Man

Title

Later twentieth century (c1934-84)

Synopsis

16: Anthony Hopkins speaks Dylan Thomas’s ‘The Force that through the Green Fuse’ and ‘Do Not Go Gentle’. Julian Glover reads Philip Larkin’s ‘Church Going’ and ‘The Explosion’. Stacey Keach reads two poems by Robert Lowell: ‘Skunk Hour’ and ‘For the Unio

Production Company

Name

Thames Television

Distributor

Name

Network

Email

shop@networkonair.com

Web

http://networkonair.com/ External site opens in new window

Phone

01992 657707

Address

19-20 Blythe Road
Berghem Mews
Hammersmith
London
W14 0HN

Notes

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