Hampton-Reeves, Stuart (1997) Henry VI in performance : history, culture and Shakespeare reproduced. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

The long-neglected Henry VI plays have been 'rediscovered' by a number of post-war
productions which have found new ways of bringing Shakespeare's civil war plays to modern
audiences. The Wars of the Roses, directed by Peter Hall and adapted by Hall and John Barton,
established the theatrical vitality of the plays and defined them for a generation as 'national'
dramas. I argue that many of the most important and mythologised aspects of that production
were contingent upon the difficult situation of the RSC in the early 1960s and that, in fact, the
'tradition' of playing the Henry VI plays as national dramas is an invented one, based upon the
Tillyardian interpretation of them as 'matter of England' plays. Nevertheless, The Wars of the
Roses has cast a massive shadow over subsequent productions of the Henry VI plays. Most
notably, two productions in the late 1980s - the RSC's The Plantagenets and the ESC's The Wars
of the Roses - were virtual revivals of the 1963 productions whilst even those that, at the time,
seemed to be reacting against Hall and Barton - the RSC's trilogy of 1977 and the BBC's
tetralogy of 1981/3 - in fact bore their influence in that they staged the plays as 'matter of
England' productions. 'England' took on a different meaning however after the election of the
Conservative Government in 1979. Mrs. Thatcher introduced market ideologies into the funding
of theatres and this forced rapid, radical and often unwelcome changes to the culture of the large
theatres: England became a divided and contested site and rubbed against the resolution that Hall
and Barton had sought in 1963. In the third chapter, I will examine in detail three 1980s
productions which were shaped by this situation, but also responded to, engaged with, and
attempted to subvert the Thatcherite appropriation of national identity. Finally, I argue that all of
these performances exhibit a deep anxiety about social changes and about the role of
Shakespearean theatre within these changes.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN2000 Dramatic representation. The Theater P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. King Henry VI -- Stage history -- Great Britain, Theater and society -- Great Britain
Official Date:	September 1997
Dates:	Date Event September 1997 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Rutter, Carol Chillington
Extent:	237 leaves
Language:	eng

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