Shakespeare in The Berkshires

Abstract

but an almost total failure, inspiring no resonances and decaying into a lifeless recitation of My Greatest Hits. Margaret Dent's Shakespeare's Wonderful Women aimed for less, being openly a selection of readings, and achieved it, turning each character into a personification of a single emotion and linking them with a biographical narrative full of myth and misinformation. Two actresses separately impersonated Ellen Terry in solo shows: though Page Hedden Wilson's was subtitled An Actress Who Loved and pretended to be one of Terry's Shakespearean lectures, she imagined Terry constantly drifting from the point into grandmotherly reminiscence; Bess Finney's Terry, openly reminiscing, gave more of a sense of the actress and interpreter of Shakespeare. Finally, the inevitable jabs at Shakespeare in the satirical revues. The topical Newsrevue turned striking miners' union leader Arthur Scargill into Henry V exhorting his men back to the picket lines with an updated version of Once more. Oxford made a running gag out of blackouts involving Richard III, who would enter only to forget his lines, or to start To be or not to be. The Bodgers showed a schoolmaster delicately criticizing a student production (Perhaps if Macduff had killed Macbeth instead of the way you did it....), while Cambridge graduates Tony Slattery and Richard Vanch offered a sly parody of RSC star Alan Howard and imagined an underwater Merchant. And Cambridge typified one level of collegiate humor with Richard III at dinner (brace yourself; you may not like this): Now is the dinner if his intent made poisonous supper. . . . I have a hunch it will work. . . . The joint envenomed too. . . The course, the course; I've poisoned the main course!