The Wars of the Roses (adaptation)
The production starred David Warner as Henry VI, Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret of Anjou, Donald Sinden as the Duke of York, Paul Hardwick as the Duke of Gloucester, Janet Suzman as Joan la Pucelle, Brewster Mason as the Earl of Warwick, Roy Dotrice as Edward IV, Susan Engel as Queen Elizabeth and Ian Holm as Richard III.
The production was a huge critical and commercial success, and is generally regarded as revitalizing the reputation of the Henry VI plays in the modern theatre.
In 1970, BBC Books published the play scripts along with extensive behind-the-scenes information written by Barton and Hall, and other members of the Royal Shakespeare Company who worked on the production.
[7] Barton defended the controversial decision to cut from and add to the text on the grounds that the Henry VI plays "are not viable as they stand," arguing they needed to be adapted "in the interests of audience accessibility.
G.K. Hunter, for example, who was critical of the production itself, praised the editing, commenting that Barton was able to "cut away the superfluous fat, tap out the unhealthy fluids, and rescue from the diffuse, stumbling, dropsical giant, a trim, lithe, and with-it figure, sharp and resilient.
"[10] Frank Cox referred to the plays as "a triumph of scholarship and theatrical awareness," arguing that "by inspired weeding, contradiction, and even in places by brazen invention, he has created from a seldom revived mass of sword-rattling chronicles, a positive addition to the canon of popular works.
"[11]: 20 Robert Speaight argued the additions were so well integrated into the existing material, he was at times unable to distinguish between the original Shakespearean blank verse and Barton's new verse, whilst J.C. Trewin noted that although the changes to the plays represented the most drastic alteration to Shakespeare since the days of the Restoration, the resulting production was of such a consistently high quality that any such changes could be forgiven.
Both Hall and Barton felt the civil chaos and breakdown of society depicted in the plays were mirrored by the contemporary political situation, in events such as the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.
For example, Ton Hoenselaars argues that Brecht provided a theatrical language and advanced a method of social analysis which together proved capable of turning Shakespeare's representation of politics in action into compelling drama [...] the impact of Brecht's view of the early histories as representations of the now historically distant decline and fall of medieval feudalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie was obvious [...] one of the major reasons why Brecht could trigger a truly international revival of interest in the neglected Henry VI plays was that by the 1960s, specific national interests were subordinated to supranational class concerns.
Hall had read a proof copy of Kott's soon-to-be-influential Shakespeare Our Contemporary, prior to its publication in Britain, just before he began rehearsals for The Wars of the Roses.
In the programme notes for Henry VI, Barton and Hall included a quotation from Kott, which they felt was especially relevant to their production; There are two fundamental types of historical tragedy.
Holm's Richard is not the dominating larger-than-life presence of the third play as he appears on the page, but is instead a small figure, nurtured by, trapped within and ultimately destroyed by the times that have produced him.
Tillyard's 1944 book Shakespeare's History Plays, which was still a hugely influential text in Shakespearean scholarship, especially in terms of its argument that the tetralogy advanced the Tudor myth or "Elizabethan World Picture"; the theory that Henry VII was a divinely appointed redeemer, sent to rescue England from a century of bloodshed and chaos initiated upon the usurpation and murder of the divinely ordained Richard II, a century which reached its debased and cruel apotheosis in Richard III.
"[20]: 76 John Jowett argues the production very much reinforced the teleological assumptions upon which the Tudor myth is based; "it generated an epic sense of history as a horrific process.
"[21] Randall Martin similarly writes "Barton created a compelling dynastic saga about the houses of Lancaster and York, as one falls and the other triumphs – or appears to do so.
"[22] Likewise, Nicholas Grene explains that "as Tillyard saw the history plays, they were the grandly consistent embodiment of the orthodox political and social morality of the Elizabethan period, preaching order and hierarchy, condemning factious power-seeking and the anarchy of civil war to which it led, commending the divinely sanctioned centralised monarchy of the Tudors.
"[24] The plays were approached as a collective analysis of power, with the behaviour of unscrupulous politicians contrasted with the political innocence and religious idealism of Henry.
They justify their behaviour by invoking the great sanctions – God, the King, Parliament, the People – that unscrupulous statesmen, motivated by the naked desire to be on top, have used throughout the ages.
"[11]: xiv In order to capture this sense of innocence, Barton and Hall took what was considered a huge risk – casting an inexperienced twenty-two-year-old actor as Henry; David Warner.
Henry is never active [...] He suffers only, and endures, never resisting, never striking back [...] Yet [Warner's] sad, distressed face, meeting each new misfortune with an absolute absence of protest or indignation, spreads over the darkest waters of the play a quiet and persistent golden glory.
"[25] Speaking of Henry's death, in which he gently kisses Richard after being mortally stabbed, The Observer's Kenneth Tynan wrote "I have seen nothing more Christ-like in modern theatre.
"[26] Writing in the Signet Classics Shakespeare edition of 1 Henry VI in 1967, Lawrence V. Ryan remarked that "unlike the almost featureless, nearly imbecilic Henry of historical legend and earlier productions [...] Warner showed the king as growing from youthful naiveté and subservience to the intriguers around him into a man of perception and personal integrity entrapped in and lamenting a world of violence not of his own making.
"[27] In his 2001 Oxford Shakespeare edition of 3 Henry VI, Randall Martin writes "Warner created a painfully shy, physically awkward, but ultimately saintly figure, who passed through agonies of doubt before reaching a Christ-like serenity.
"[28] Another lauded performance was that of Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret, whose role is usually heavily cut, and often eliminated from both 1 Henry VI and, especially, Richard III.
"[29] John Russell Brown singled out Ashcroft's performance during this scene as especially noteworthy, arguing that her performance, with its mixture of hatred, violence and laughter, "was a portrayal of weakness in cruelty, helplessness in victory [...] the cruel humour of the lines was played close to hysteria: "I prithee grieve to make me merry" was an almost necessary request to excuse Margaret's impulse towards helpless laughter, a physical and emotional relief and a breakdown of control.
"[31] Randall Martin wrote Ashcroft's full-spectrum performance [extended] the dramatic boundaries of Margaret's public agency and personal emotions.
[32]Another especially celebrated aspect of the production was the set, designed by John Bury, who used the work of Karl von Appen and Caspar Neher as his primary visual inspiration.
[33] Peter Hall himself wrote of the set, "on the flagged floor of sheet steel tables are daggers, staircases are axe-heads, and doors the traps on scaffolds.
One of the mightiest stage projects of our time, a production to remember all our lives, whose final third was carried through to the end with the same bloodstained power, the same attention to the verse and the depth of characters who speak it that characterised the first two-thirds.
Presented in the original three-play format, the box set also included a new "Making of" featurette, featuring interviews with David Warner and Janet Suzman.
