BBC Shakespeare: The Hollow Crown, BBC2 / BBC HD

[aeolium]

Have to say that I am just a little bit surprised that so few people have commented on what is after all the major BBC cultural initiative of The Hollow Crown.

I watched and enjoyed Richard II, a play I love, but I am really not that keen on either of the HIV plays and even less on HV - I am much more interested in the poetry than the drama in Shakespeare, and there is so much more of the former in RII. I was away last week so missed HIV pt 2 and HV, but reading people's comments here will not be too concerned to catch up with them on iplayer.

I wonder why these plays in particular were chosen by the BBC, a sort of companion-series perhaps to the RSC's The Plantagenets which dealt with the HVI plays and RIII.

[Nick Armstrong]

I was away last week so missed HIV pt 2 and HV, but reading people's comments here will not be too concerned to catch up with them on iplayer.

I also thought RII was great, and prefer it as a play. But I would earnestly recommend that you watch H IVpart2 - the poetical sections, esp between Falstaff and the women, were terribly well done

[jean]

Our preset DVD recorder started recording at exactly the time the play actually started.

This is a great improvement on what the old videorecorder could manage.

Out of interest, at what time did it stop recording?

I think it got the whole lot, but I haven't managed to watch it yet!

I had to catch Henry V before it fell off the iPlayer last night.

do we feel that the location shooting, with real castles, real horses, real fires in real fireplaces etc. etc. adds anything to the plays? or is this the only way to make it palatable to the modern audience? will it make seeing a stage performance a let-down henceforward?

I have never understood so clearly how the English longbowmen defeated the French so easily.

This sort of production does make a nonsense of the Chorus, though. I can't remember whether it was included in the Olivier film, and I never saw the Branagh.

[gurnemanz]

This sort of production does make a nonsense of the Chorus, though. I can't remember whether it was included in the Olivier film, and I never saw the Branagh.

We saw a modern dress production at the National a few years ago with strong Blair/Iraq war allusions. As far as I remember, the chorus was a female librarian in a cardigan and Henry's dubious war justifications were flashed up on telly screens with French sub-titles. In the tavern scene the young blokes being summoned to arms quickly switched over to the snooker.

[french frank]

This sort of production does make a nonsense of the Chorus, though. I can't remember whether it was included in the Olivier film

It was, but it opened in the Globe theatre so made perfect sense - if you understood the references.

I have never understood so clearly how the English longbowmen defeated the French so easily.

What did you understand? I thought part of the reason was that crossbows took so much longer to 'reload'.

[jean]

It was seeing that hail of arrows sweeping across the sky and bringing down the French horsemen, who never even got the chance to use their swords.

I knew it, but I'd never seen it before - certainly not in the recent Globe production.

[Northender]

I believe one possible explanation is that the mud created following a heavy burst of rain impeded the more heavily-armoured French.

[french frank]

Re the Chorus in the Olivier film:

Not sure that I liked the opening music , but love the lines:

Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass ...

[vinteuil]

I have never understood so clearly how the English longbowmen defeated the French so easily.

.

I can very much recommend John Keegan's The Face of Battle - A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme.

In the penguin copy, Agincourt is chapter two, pages 78 - 116, including:
The Campaign
The Battle
Archers versus Infantry and Cavalry
Cavalry versus Infantry
Infantry versus Infantry
The Killing of the Prisoners
The Wounded
The Will to Combat

He is excellent on the psychology of what men actually experienced and how they really behaved in battle, as well as on the more traditional areas of strategy, tactics, logistics, etc.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I have never understood so clearly how the English longbowmen defeated the French so easily.

Over-simplified:

1) The English were positioned in a part of the field that created a bottleneck for the attacking opponents.
2) It was raining, creating muddy conditions (as mentioned by Norths)
3) The French cavalry couldn't retreat when the English archers opened fire. The troops behind the ones trying to halt pushed them further into the field of fire, and caused chaos.
4) The English cheated! The Chivalric code should have meant that aristocrasy could only fight aristocrasy (anyone could kill a peasant); instead, lowly English foot soldiers attacked and killed any "higher" class French cavalryman who'd been de-horsed and couldn't get up from the mud in their heavy armour.

[vinteuil]

Over-simplified:

1) The English were positioned in a part of the field that created a bottleneck for the attacking opponents.
2) It was raining, creating muddy conditions (as mentioned by Norths)
3) The French cavalry couldn't retreat when the English archers opened fire. The troops behind the ones trying to halt pushed them further into the field of fire, and caused chaos.
4) The English cheated! The Chivalric code should have meant that aristocrasy could only fight aristocrasy (anyone could kill a peasant); instead, lowly English foot soldiers attacked and killed any "higher" class French cavalryman who'd been de-horsed and couldn't get up from the mud in their heavy armour.

Ferneyhiccup's summary is pretty good. The French were channelled between two bits of forest, and when the first line of French horse collapsed backwards the ones behind them had nowhere to go and the whole French side was thrown into chaos.

The key part is probably the test of will between the English archers positioned behind pointy stakes aimed at the oncoming French, and the French cavalry bearing down on them. As Keagan puts it :

"A horse, in the normal course of events, will not gallop at an obstacle it cannot jump or see a way through, and it cannot jump or see a way through a solid line of men. Even less will it go at the sort of obviously dangerous obstacles which the archers' stakes represented. Equally, a man will not stand in the path of a running horse: he will run himself, or seek shelter, and only if exceptionally strong-nerved and knowing in his ways, stand his ground. Nevertheless, accidents do happen. Men, miscalculating or slow-footed, and horses, confused or maddened, do collide, with results almost exclusively unpleasant for the man...."

The English archers were trained to 'receive cavalry' as the phrase goes; the French cavalry in principle were trained to 'charge home'.
In the end it was a battle of wills - a 'game of chicken' if you like. The French blinked...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Oh, yes: I forgot to mention the "pointy stakes" (they were shown in the Brannagh film and in this BBC production) .

[Northender]

Just finished watching Richard II - very impressed. As a televised adaptation of a stage play - and how else should we judge it - I don't think it could be bettered. I was particularly struck by the evocation of Palm Sunday.

[Nick Armstrong]

Just finished watching Richard II - very impressed. As a televised adaptation of a stage play - and how else should we judge it - I don't think it could be bettered. I was particularly struck by the evocation of Palm Sunday.

What did you think of Rory Kinnear - at the beginning... and then at the end?

[Northender]

I thought he played the part beautifully, changing from an Angry Young Man of whom John Osborne would have been proud into a suitably majestic figure who was aware of what lay in store yet faced the future with a kind of heroic stoicism of which Scott of the Antarctic would have been equally proud.

I felt that, by the time the coffin containing Richard II was brought in, he had already conveyed very subtly, but nonetheless very clearly, the growing realization that he - and all his followers and descendants - were going to pay a dreadful price, not so much because they had performed evil deeds, but because it had been borne in on him that the fate of all monarchs is sealed in advance, and he just happened to be the latest wearer of the crown. In the end, he was as much of a victim as he was at the outset. The difference - conveyed by gesture, expression and silence as by words - was that he no longer railed against the situation in which he found himself.

What I also found quite fascinating was the skilful way in which the continual changes in Richard's attitude were reflected in his speech patterns - compare, for example, the brusque put-down in response to John of Gaunt's 'This England' speech and the consequent rapping out of orders with his high-flown oratory while attempting to retain some shreds of royal dignity and the subsequent plainness of his language once he had accepted his fate.

Among a very strong supporting cast, I would single out Messrs Suchet and Morrissey. I know DS has his detractors, but anybody who can play, to give just a couple of examples, a Maxwellian monster such as Sebastian Melmoth (correct spelling?) in 'The Way We Live Now' and the irritating, slightly fey Hercule Poirot, with the same degree of conviction as that with which he played the part of York has my admiration.