Back by Popular Demand: #TeamKindness, #TeamKnave and #TeamFurioso
Ahead of tomorrow night’s Read Not Dead: Back By Popular Demand voting event, we caught up with three of the teams to find out why they’re so excited about the plays…
A Woman Killed With Kindness
Thomas Heywood was a prolific playwright. He claimed that he had written or collaborated on 220 plays although only about two dozen are known to have survived. Of these A Woman Killed With Kindness is regarded as his masterpiece. Indeed, it is seen as the pinnacle of English domestic tragedy.
In an era when tragedies commonly dealt with mighty kings and great historical themes, Heywood chose to write about the very heart of gentry households. His characters are ordinary people, not unlike the audience at the Rose Playhouse where it was first performed in 1603, not unlike the audience at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in 2016. The prologue makes it clear that this play will be unusual for its time
“Look for no glorious state, our Muse is bent
Upon a barren subject, a bare scene”
Heywood presents that most familiar of tragedies – adultery and the subsequent tearing apart of the family. However, he takes only a cursory look at the events leading to the adultery itself and instead concentrates on the devastating effect on the protagonists, following through to the final moments in the story
“In golden letters shall these words be fill’d:
‘Here lies she whom her husband’s kindness kill’d’.“
He weaves in a second plot to contrast with the destruction of a blissful marriage – a brother’s attempts to resolve his debts by forcing his virtuous sister into sex with his creditor. The lifelike domesticity of most scenes and the heartfelt reactions of the characters speak powerfully to audiences of any period. Who has not felt
“O God, O God, that it were possible
To undo things done, to call back yesterday”?
Intense and accessible, A Woman Killed With Kindness has split critics: it has been called on the one hand “childish and primitive”, no more than “Elizabethan hokum”, whilst on the other “a consummate masterpiece” and “absolutely the best Elizabethan drama of its kind”. Such division shows how fascinating thisplay is.
A Knack to Know a Knave
‘Anonymous’ is one of the most prolific writers of all time, and while we tend to overlook uncredited plays today, we do so at our peril. A Knack to Know a Knave is a play so unique that it defies all attempts to find an author. It’s a play that looks back and forward, an early modern play that’s both early and modern. Dastardly courtiers with daddy issues and romancing kings racked by jealousy rub shoulders with a hero called Honesty, drawn straight from the medieval morality tradition. This is a fantastical mash-up of morality, chivalric romance, devil play and courtly debate. On one level, it’s a moving play about learning who you can trust. On another, it’s incredibly funny.
Want to know what Will Kempe got up to before he became the resident clown in Shakespeare’s company? Come see how he turns the simple act of asking for permission to brew beer into a headline comic set-piece. Want to hear the worst fatherly advice ever delivered? Come hear the deathbed speech of the Bailiff of Hexham, so rotten that the Devil has to carry him off himself. And want to see the most gratuitous raising of a demon ever staged? We’ve got two.
But most importantly, this is the play that will teach you the knack to knowing a knave; see this play and never get cheated again, guaranteed.*
*Terms and conditions apply
Orlando Furioso
…in which Colin Ellwood pitches in verse.
“A Groat’s worth of sh…I mean wit”
So asked to do this Colin was perplexed
A groat of words to state his pedigree
Before he drew Orlando to the Globe
And how he came upon this fearsome knight,
Yburied long in archive dark and dim.
What gave him leave to front this fearsome act?
He then resolved to check his own cv
To see if he had any knightly form
To warrant Furioso’s
noble charge.
To plumb the line of all his lineage
(And see if he was fit for this great task)
His name- yclepped
Ellwood - he researched.
It meant ‘Elf Ruler’ he found out, perplexed
Which was no help for searching civic files.
Adrift in search of elves then, none he found.
Until within the Globe he had new hopes.
Since Faery lore is certayn back in town.
And Kneehigh elves do gambol all about
Four tallish elves came forth to join the band
And one wise Merlin - Hutchins known by name.
I needs to stop this verse it’s getting twee
Fine actors are not elves you will agree.
We now commend this knight to your wise vote
You could not make a more deserving choice.
And now Team Furioso mean to show
The virtue of this fascinating play
Its striking popularity when new
Its trenchant resonance for us, today
Want to help us decide which Read Not Dead play to re-stage at the end of the season? Join us at our Back By Popular Demand voting event at 7pm on Thursday 2 June. Find out more about the plays, and buy tickets