To Repay or to Requite

When you intend to pay an assassin with money, sometimes it's wise to make sure you both understand you're not offering sex. Otherwise you might end up with a tragedy something like Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's 1622 play The Changeling, a play I last night watched a very good BBC production of from 1974.

Set in Spain, the story follows a young noblewoman named Beatrice-Joanna who, having just gotten engaged to marry a nobleman named Alonzo, suddenly falls in love with another nobleman named Alsemero. Both men are besotted with her and so is a third man, De Flores, a servant to Beatrice-Joanna's family.

She hates De Flores but, circumstances being what they are, it occurs to her hiring De Flores to murder Alonzo may be the most delicate way of handling her problem. It's a motivation that's utterly cold blooded and yet, in a way, innocent in its scope. Conceivably the character could be played as someone who doesn't really understand the depths of what she asks, a childish weakness that De Flores might exploit. But Helen Mirren, in the 1974 adaptation, plays her as steely and cunning.

I believe she understands the crime she's asking for but I also believe she doesn't understand the sexual connotations De Flores can hardly be blamed for interpreting in their exchange.

BEATRICE

You are too violent to mean faithfully;
There's horror in my service, blood and danger:
Can those be things to sue for?

DE FLORES

If you knew
How sweet it were to me to be employed
In any act of yours, you would say then
I fail'd and us'd not reverence enough
When I receive the charge on't.

BEATRICE

[Aside] This is much,
Methinks; belike his wants are greedy, and
To such gold tastes like angels' food.--Rise.

DE FLORES

I'll have the work first.

BEATRICE

[Aside] Possible his need
Is strong upon him. [Offering him money] There's to encourage thee;
As thou art forward and thy service dangerous,
Thy reward shall be precious.

DE FLORES

That I have thought on;
I have assur'd myself of that beforehand,
And know it will be precious: the thought ravishes!

BEATRICE

Then take him to thy fury.

It simply never occurs to her that a servant would see sex with her as in the realm of possibility and it doesn't occur to him that she could possibly misinterpret his words.

DE FLORES

Oh, my blood! Methinks I feel her in mine arms already,
Her wanton fingers combing out this beard,
And being pleased, praising this bad face!
Hunger and pleasure, they'll commend sometimes
Slovenly dishes and feed heartily on 'em,
Nay, which is stranger, refuse daintier for 'em.
Some women are odd feeders.

De Flores is described as ugly by himself and others but he's played by Stanley Baker in the 1974 production; hardly an unattractive fellow.

At least not by to-day's standards. Jean Paul Belmondo was described as ugly in reviews that praised his looks in the early 60s; there is classical male beauty and there is a kind only a liberated mind wouldn't blush to call attractive. Maybe this production is interpreting another meaning to the ugliness ascribed to De Flores; a carnal, animal sexuality. Certainly Baker and Mirren's scenes together have that kind of excitement to them.

It's so wonderfully pulpy even as the consequences of the two misunderstanding each other are so terrible--but, then, they're already steeped in blood by that point. There's a real noir quality to it, too; they're not far from Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice. John Garfield would've made a great De Flores.

I love how Beatrice really starts to fall for him when he sets the house on fire to cover up another murder.

BEATRICE

Already! How rare is that man's speed!
How heartily he serves me! His face loathes one,
But look upon his care, who would not love him?
The east is not more beauteous than his service.

The 1974 production has great costumes and set designs--one of the nice things about productions of early modern plays not by Shakespeare is you can usually rely on them being set in the proper time and place. A subplot in the madhouse is amusing and well put together but the main appeal is in Baker and Mirren's chemistry. It's such a pleasure watching them.

That Old Summer Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream presents the director or production designer with a lot of potential for imagery. For the 1981 BBC Television Shakespeare version, director Elijah Moshinksy chose classic paintings as an influence, as he did with his other productions for the series, in this case Rembrandt and Rubens, according to Wikipedia. In this shot of Helen Mirren as Titania it's certainly easy to see Rembrandt's "Danae".

Mirren had previously performed in a film adaptation of the play in the role of Hermia for the superior 1968 production with Diana Rigg, Judi Dench, and Ian Holm. But the 1981 version is still very good. In addition to baroque influence for the lighting, Moshinsky's version is an extraordinarily still version of a play that typically has a lot of running around and shouting. The scene at the beginning, where Theseus (Nigel Davenport) hears the dispute between Lysander (Robert Lindsay) and Demetrius (Nicky Henson) for the hand of Helena (Cherith Mellor) looks like a living diorama with the sound of a ticking clock emphasising the low energy.

It works because it's so beautiful, inviting you to contemplate it like a painting. The play is set in ancient Greece, but like all the productions from when Jonathan Miller was producer, the costumes are contemporary to Shakespeare.

Pippa Guard plays Hermia, this being a surprisingly rare case where her physical differences from Helena resemble those in referenced in the play, including the running gags about her being taller.

HERMIA

Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him.
And are you grown so high in his esteem;
Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.

HELENA

I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,
Let her not hurt me: I was never curst;
I have no gift at all in shrewishness;
I am a right maid for my cowardice:
Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,
Because she is something lower than myself,
That I can match her.

HERMIA

"Lower"? hark, again.

The whole cast is good but aside from Mirren the only other really interesting performance is Brian Glover as Bottom.

The actor and wrestler well known for playing tough guys and criminals (Alien 3, Doctor Who, Kes) he presents an intriguingly dangerous take on the foolish actor. Since we learn the players all have day jobs, one wonders if this Bottom is a gangster. It's an effective interpretation.

The sets alone would be worth watching this one. It's available to rent on Amazon Prime for just under two dollars.

Perennial Subversions

In 1977, Helen Mirren starred in a BBC production of one of the most notorious plays in the history of the English stage, The Country Wife. First performed in 1675, this intensely lively play upends social morality at a breakneck pace, coming at a time when the general reaction against the Puritan ban on stage plays that ended fifteen years earlier was at full steam. At the same time, as the surprisingly informative Wikipedia entry for the play notes, the presumably royalist aristocracy is not spared in the play's off hand revelation of a vigorously amoral sexual network below the surface of society. The 1977 production directed by Donald McWhinnie has great sets and costumes and features appropriately energetic performances.

Helen Mirren has such an aura of intellect I wondered if she could play the initially naive and guileless title character, Margery, Mrs. Pinchwife. I needn't have worried. Maybe successfully playing dim is the mark of a truly intelligent performer. With slightly slow, almost slurred delivery, Mirren completely sells Margery's incredible innocence.

PINCHWIFE

I tell you then, that one of the lewdest fellows in town, who saw you there, told me he was in love with you.

MRS. PINCHWIFE

Indeed! who, who, pray who was’t?

PINCHWIFE

[Aside] I’ve gone too far, and slipped before I was aware; how overjoyed she is!

MRS. PINCHWIFE

Was it any Hampshire gallant, any of our neighbours? I promise you, I am beholden to him.

PINCHWIFE

I promise you, you lie; for he would but ruin you, as he has done hundreds. He has no other love for women but that; such as he look upon women, like basilisks, but to destroy ’em.

MRS. PINCHWIFE

Ay, but if he loves me, why should he ruin me? Answer me to that. Methinks he should not, I would do him no harm.

Of course, as his sister, Alithea (Ciaran Madden), remarks in aside from nearby, Mr. Pinchwife is pretty guileless himself, his dialogue often amusingly directing innocent Margery right into the arms of the sins he desires her to avoid.

Mr. Pinchwife is played by Bernard Cribbins, best known to-day for playing the sweet old man Wilfred Mott on Doctor Who. His take on the aptly named Pinchwife is more bombastic, ridiculous in his frequently backfiring attempts to keep her from London society, but also surprisingly frightening, as in one startling moment where he threatens to carve the word "whore" into Margery's face with a penknife. Cribbins holds the knife to within an inch of Mirren's eye--she admirably maintains a placid and innocent composure.

He's trying to make sure Margery stays away from the also aptly named Mr. Horner (Anthony Andrews), a gentleman notorious for making horns for married men, i.e. making them into cuckolds. Horner has a whole separate plot, one that particularly offended audiences, in which he pretends to be a eunuch to allow women the opportunity to meet with him without arousing their husbands' suspicions, an opportunity three women take with eagerness.

Of course, Pinchwife is himself ultimately responsible for Margery meeting Horner as Pinchwife brings her to the New Exchange dressed as a schoolboy, complete with candy apple. Horner's not fooled by the cross dressing for a moment, a subtle and effective joke at the expense of the familiar device from 16th and 17th century plays. Mirren takes to the role with infectious relish and as Margery very quickly starts to practise the machinations of a city woman her performance effectively shows the evolution in the young wife's understanding. The supporting performers are also very good and this production is well worth watching.

The Long Lives of Mistakes

William Shakespeare's Cymbeline isn't just a play where most people's plans go awry, it's a play where most people's plans go awry without them even knowing. It's a play not only about misinterpretation but the gruelling emotional journeys people embark on initiated by misinterpretation. It has the logic typically found in Shakespeare's comedies but with exceptionally gruesome effects (though Midsummer Night's Dream is certainly not as innocent as many people think). One of the highlights of the 1982 BBC Television Shakespeare adaptation is Helen Mirren as Imogen, waking up next to the headless corpse of a man she mistakes for her husband.

She doesn't hold back on any of the grief and horror you'd expect from such a circumstance. "Where is thy head? where's that? Ay me! where's that?" She infuses these simple lines with such pain. The full soliloquy is filled with misinterpretation and meditation on misinterpretation.

. . . I hope I dream;
For so I thought I was a cave-keeper,
And cook to honest creatures: but 'tis not so;
'Twas but a bolt of nothing, shot at nothing,
Which the brain makes of fumes: our very eyes
Are sometimes like our judgments, blind. Good faith,
I tremble stiff with fear: but if there be
Yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity
As a wren's eye, fear'd gods, a part of it!
The dream's here still: even when I wake, it is
Without me, as within me; not imagined, felt.
A headless man! The garments of Posthumus!
I know the shape of's leg: this is his hand;
His foot Mercurial; his Martial thigh;
The brawns of Hercules: but his Jovial face
Murder in heaven?--How!--'Tis gone.

Even the certainty she feels in recognising his remaining body parts is misinterpretation. But who would think clearly in such a moment?

The play is filled with very improbable things; long lost princes living in poverty, a poison requested being replaced by a sleeping potion, that same sleeping potion mistakenly thought a medicine then mistakenly thought a poison; a princess taken to be a young man (Helen Mirren also crossed dressed in As You Like It for BBC Television Shakespeare), that same princess believed by her husband to have been unfaithful; faithful servants mistaken for killers, a scoundrel taken to be an honourable man when he lies about a woman's honour--all of these incredible mistakes nonetheless create credible story of how the human mind works, how quickly it'll take hold on an interpretation and then ride it in a straight line of doom.

This is one of the most beautiful plays from BBC Television Shakespeare, its director, opera director Elijah Moshinsky, consciously modelling its look on Rembrandt and other painters from the Dutch golden age.

The costumes are 17th century, too, in spite of the fact that the play is set in Britain during the lifetime of Christ. This seems to have been a holdover from the previous season which was produced by Jonathan Miller who felt all the productions ought to have costuming contemporary to Shakespeare regardless of when the plays were set. Miller thought this was the only way the plays make sense since even the period plays make several references to Shakespeare's time. I prefer the plays be set in the time Shakespeare intended but there's certainly a lot of sense in that idea.

Cymbeline has an amazing cast that in addition to Mirren also includes Claire Bloom, Michael Gough, and Marius Goring, the last only appearing briefly during the appearance of Jupiter, played by Michael Hordern. Direct evidence of divine guidance only serves to underline the chaos of most of what we see, as does the incredibly improbable happy ending which somehow augments the feeling of anxiety at the apparently totally arbitrary efficacy of human endeavour. There's more cut from the text of the play than I'd like but at least 90% of it is in tact and this is still a very good production.