Shakespeare in France

Abstract

Shakespeare in France often resembles a legless cripple. Apart from Richard II, Julius Caesar, a few well-known comedies, and four major tragedies relentlessly performed (three Hamlets running concurrently in and around Paris in November 1977, four King Lears forthcoming in 1982), more than half of Shakespeare's plays get performed only once every thirty or forty years. It is to be hoped that the presentation at summer festivals in 1980 of Love's Labor's Lost, The Winter's Tale, and two versions of Henry VI (with and without Richard III) will herald a new era of rediscovery for the lesser-known plays. (I will mention merely for reference's sake Jacques Rosner's Macbeth, set in Nazi Germany and put on at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris. This production was noteworthy only for Michel Bouquet's interpretation of the title role as an aloof, sophisticated, cold-blooded monster, a prey to his intelligence.) One of the major events in recent French Shakespearean production was Dens Llorca's spellbinding nine-hour spectacle based on the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III but looking back, in its first narrative part, to Richard II's deposition.