0:00:08 > 0:00:12On a chilly Boxing Day night four centuries ago,
0:00:12 > 0:00:17the nation's leading theatre company was about to stage a new play
0:00:17 > 0:00:19for a new, powerful patron.
0:00:19 > 0:00:24England's recently crowned King James I.
0:00:25 > 0:00:29The play's author was William Shakespeare,
0:00:29 > 0:00:33and the play was Measure for Measure.
0:00:33 > 0:00:39I love the people, but I do not like to stage me to their eyes.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46Set in a dark world of vice and corruption,
0:00:46 > 0:00:48led by an elusive ruler,
0:00:49 > 0:00:53it was a play the Elizabethan Shakespeare could never have written.
0:00:57 > 0:01:00I've spent most of my life absorbed in Shakespeare
0:01:00 > 0:01:03and the world he inhabited.
0:01:03 > 0:01:06A few years ago, I wrote a book called 1599,
0:01:06 > 0:01:09the year that culminated in Hamlet.
0:01:09 > 0:01:13A book that contributed to the idea that Shakespeare was
0:01:13 > 0:01:16fundamentally an Elizabethan writer.
0:01:16 > 0:01:20But finishing that book made me think about what came later.
0:01:20 > 0:01:22The dozen or so plays,
0:01:22 > 0:01:24many of Shakespeare's greatest,
0:01:24 > 0:01:27that he wrote after Elizabeth died.
0:01:29 > 0:01:35Shakespeare's Jacobean plays are dark, complex, and ambiguous,
0:01:35 > 0:01:40and offer a unique window into the troubled decade of upheaval,
0:01:40 > 0:01:43plots, and often violent social change.
0:01:44 > 0:01:49A decade presided over by the brilliant but flawed King James.
0:01:49 > 0:01:53A decade of uncertainty and anxiety...
0:01:55 > 0:02:00..that stimulated unprecedented creativity in theatre,
0:02:00 > 0:02:02in art, in music.
0:02:03 > 0:02:07A decade that gave us the King James Bible,
0:02:07 > 0:02:10the Union Jack, and November the 5th.
0:02:12 > 0:02:15A Jacobean decade
0:02:15 > 0:02:19that challenged the nation's greatest dramatist
0:02:19 > 0:02:21to find a new voice,
0:02:21 > 0:02:25the voice of Shakespeare in the reign of King James.
0:02:40 > 0:02:42It is late March, 1603,
0:02:43 > 0:02:48London is in the grip of fear and anxiety.
0:02:52 > 0:02:55England's much-loved Queen Elizabeth is dying.
0:02:59 > 0:03:02Childless, she has no heir,
0:03:02 > 0:03:07and the Tudors, the nation's ruling family for over 100 years,
0:03:07 > 0:03:09will die with her.
0:03:13 > 0:03:17The country has veered violently between Catholicism
0:03:17 > 0:03:21and Protestantism during the last 70 years.
0:03:23 > 0:03:26Will a new monarch bring another change of religion?
0:03:26 > 0:03:29More bloodshed and strife?
0:03:35 > 0:03:37Living then in the heart of the city,
0:03:37 > 0:03:41England's foremost dramatist, William Shakespeare,
0:03:41 > 0:03:44captures the mood in his sonnet.
0:03:56 > 0:04:01Those uncertainties might yet bring the nation to violence.
0:04:03 > 0:04:08Shakespeare was moving through a city battening down before the coming storm.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11The authorities had called up 4,000 troops,
0:04:11 > 0:04:14an astounding number, given a population of 200,000.
0:04:18 > 0:04:21No-one, Shakespeare included,
0:04:21 > 0:04:23had ever lived through anything like this.
0:04:33 > 0:04:36Shakespeare had already written over 20 plays
0:04:36 > 0:04:38during the last decade or so.
0:04:39 > 0:04:43Many of them performed at the theatre across the Thames
0:04:43 > 0:04:48that he owned and ran with his company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men,
0:04:48 > 0:04:49the Globe.
0:04:53 > 0:04:58Year-round, rain or shine, it played seven days a week,
0:04:58 > 0:05:03packing up to 3,000 theatre-hungry Londoners into every show.
0:05:06 > 0:05:09Fuelled by Shakespeare, and a dozen other major writers,
0:05:09 > 0:05:13theatre had become the popular medium of the age.
0:05:13 > 0:05:16The pulsing heartbeat of the times.
0:05:16 > 0:05:21Played out on the stages of no fewer than eight London theatres.
0:05:21 > 0:05:25From Southwark, where Shakespeare's Globe
0:05:25 > 0:05:29jostled with the Rose and the Swan on Bankside,
0:05:29 > 0:05:32to Blackfriars, and St Paul's in the city,
0:05:32 > 0:05:36where children's companies were famed for their satires.
0:05:36 > 0:05:39From the Boar's Head in the East End,
0:05:39 > 0:05:43to the more boisterous Curtain and Fortune in the North.
0:05:43 > 0:05:49As many as 10,000 people a day watched the anxieties, hopes,
0:05:49 > 0:05:53and scandals of the times played out on a London stage.
0:05:58 > 0:06:05But in that late March of 1603, all those stages were silent.
0:06:08 > 0:06:11The playhouses closed on the orders of a government
0:06:11 > 0:06:13nervous of civil unrest
0:06:13 > 0:06:15while the Queen lay dying,
0:06:15 > 0:06:19and the succession remained in doubt.
0:06:21 > 0:06:26You could say that Shakespeare himself had helped fuel the atmosphere of tension and anxiety
0:06:26 > 0:06:30that had led to the closing of theatres.
0:06:30 > 0:06:33He had, after all, spent much of his career
0:06:33 > 0:06:38writing plays about regime change and its often bloody consequences.
0:06:38 > 0:06:45Audiences had stood here spellbound, watching Bolingbroke depose Richard II,
0:06:45 > 0:06:48and Richard III eliminate a host of rivals
0:06:48 > 0:06:51who stood between him and the Crown.
0:06:53 > 0:06:56They had seen Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, die,
0:06:56 > 0:07:00and Fortinbras, a foreign Prince from the north,
0:07:00 > 0:07:03swoop down and seize the throne.
0:07:03 > 0:07:10England now seemed hurtling toward a similar fate.
0:07:19 > 0:07:24The next great act in that drama of spring 1603
0:07:24 > 0:07:27opened on Cheapside, the city's main thoroughfare,
0:07:27 > 0:07:30in the early hours of March 24th.
0:07:32 > 0:07:36An expectant crowd gathered, Shakespeare among them perhaps,
0:07:36 > 0:07:39for he lived just a few hundred yards away.
0:07:40 > 0:07:45They hushed as England's Chief Minister, Robert Cecil, arrived.
0:07:46 > 0:07:47He had news.
0:07:48 > 0:07:52Elizabeth, England's Queen for 45 years,
0:07:52 > 0:07:55and the last of the great Tudor line, was dead.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06Her crown, he announced, had passed to her cousin,
0:08:06 > 0:08:09a foreign king - Scotland's King James...
0:08:10 > 0:08:15..already on his way south to claim his new kingdom.
0:08:18 > 0:08:22But questions and uncertainties were on every mind.
0:08:24 > 0:08:27Raised a Protestant, but with a Catholic mother and wife,
0:08:27 > 0:08:30where would James stand on religion?
0:08:30 > 0:08:34And how would he rule his unfamiliar new kingdom?
0:08:37 > 0:08:43Forgive the prop, it's visual shorthand news.
0:08:43 > 0:08:47But there were no newspapers in Shakespeare's day,
0:08:47 > 0:08:49there was only gossip and theatre.
0:08:49 > 0:08:53And with the theatres closed, it was only gossip.
0:08:53 > 0:08:56The English knew very little about the King of Scots,
0:08:56 > 0:09:00so the country was awash with talk about who had met or seen the King
0:09:00 > 0:09:02on his journey south.
0:09:02 > 0:09:05A troubling rumour came from Newark in Lincolnshire -
0:09:05 > 0:09:10a thief had been caught, working the crowd gathered to see the new King.
0:09:10 > 0:09:15James decided to execute him on the spot without trial.
0:09:15 > 0:09:18He probably thought this was a crowdpleasing gesture,
0:09:18 > 0:09:22but in England, this wasn't how things were done.
0:09:23 > 0:09:26This was another troubling uncertainty.
0:09:26 > 0:09:32Would England's foreign king ever truly understand basic English values?
0:09:36 > 0:09:41It was a key scene in this drama of uncertainty and regime change.
0:09:43 > 0:09:47An unpredictable king, fond of grand gestures,
0:09:47 > 0:09:50taking a personal hand in the law.
0:09:54 > 0:09:58James too, as his biographer Pauline Croft told me,
0:09:58 > 0:10:01was forming powerful first impressions.
0:10:03 > 0:10:07As he comes south, he's very impressed, indeed overwhelmed,
0:10:07 > 0:10:09by the wealth of the English nobility.
0:10:09 > 0:10:12That is quite clear. And that he stays in
0:10:12 > 0:10:14the two great Cecil houses -
0:10:14 > 0:10:16at Burley House and at Tybalt -
0:10:16 > 0:10:21he's living in a style that, as King of Scots, he had never encountered.
0:10:21 > 0:10:23So, one of the key points, I think,
0:10:23 > 0:10:27is that James assumes from the beginning the enormous, inexhaustible wealth of England,
0:10:27 > 0:10:32and doesn't realise that what he had seen was the very, very top level
0:10:32 > 0:10:34of the wealthiest of the nobility.
0:10:37 > 0:10:41James was a complex, contradictory figure.
0:10:41 > 0:10:44On the one hand, he was an admired intellectual,
0:10:44 > 0:10:48one of the most published authors of his day,
0:10:48 > 0:10:52who had written on subjects as diverse as theology and politics.
0:10:54 > 0:10:59He produced a celebrated treatise on witchcraft, Demonology,
0:10:59 > 0:11:04a book Shakespeare would turn to when he wrote Macbeth,
0:11:04 > 0:11:07and one of the earliest polemics on the dangers of smoking.
0:11:10 > 0:11:14On the other hand, he was extravagant with money,
0:11:14 > 0:11:19obsessed with hunting, and awkward with almost everyone he met.
0:11:19 > 0:11:22A man of ideas, he was,
0:11:22 > 0:11:24a man of charisma, he was not.
0:11:27 > 0:11:31James doesn't like crowds, he doesn't like public acclaim,
0:11:31 > 0:11:33he is worried about assassination.
0:11:34 > 0:11:36He is concerned that they don't really love him.
0:11:36 > 0:11:40He lacks that instinctive feel for the popular mood,
0:11:40 > 0:11:43and that's something that you can't teach.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50For all his faults though, James hit the ground running,
0:11:50 > 0:11:53initiating a big political shake-up.
0:11:57 > 0:11:59There was bad news for Shakespeare & Company.
0:11:59 > 0:12:02Their patron, the Lord Chamberlain, lost his job.
0:12:04 > 0:12:08And in one of James's first legal proclamations
0:12:08 > 0:12:11was another bombshell.
0:12:11 > 0:12:14Among new rules to protect the Sabbath,
0:12:14 > 0:12:17a ban on Sunday theatre.
0:12:17 > 0:12:19The best playing day of the week.
0:12:21 > 0:12:25It was a sop, no doubt, to England's radical Protestants,
0:12:25 > 0:12:27the theatre-hating Puritans.
0:12:31 > 0:12:33But the King also had a surprise up his sleeve.
0:12:36 > 0:12:40Just a week after banning playing on the Sabbath
0:12:40 > 0:12:45came another declaration about the theatre, this time naming names.
0:12:45 > 0:12:52William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustin Phillips,
0:12:52 > 0:12:57John Heminges, Henry Condell, Robert Armin,
0:12:57 > 0:12:59these were the names of the Chamberlain's Men,
0:12:59 > 0:13:02the best players in the land, Shakespeare's company.
0:13:04 > 0:13:08The document goes on to say that from now on,
0:13:08 > 0:13:12they would be the King's Players, authorised to perform at court,
0:13:12 > 0:13:13at the King's pleasure, at the Globe,
0:13:13 > 0:13:16and anywhere in the land.
0:13:16 > 0:13:21It must have come as a total surprise, they were made men.
0:13:21 > 0:13:25And from now on, Shakespeare would be known as the King's Man.
0:13:32 > 0:13:36For Shakespeare, it was a transformative moment.
0:13:36 > 0:13:42He was now a royal servant - the first playwright ever to become one.
0:13:44 > 0:13:48The prestige and security he subsequently enjoyed
0:13:48 > 0:13:51would change literary history.
0:13:54 > 0:13:57As for the King, having his own troupe of players
0:13:57 > 0:14:02was one more luxury that he'd never been able to enjoy in Scotland,
0:14:02 > 0:14:04a land with no theatres at all.
0:14:07 > 0:14:13So, King and King's Man stood on the verge of new futures.
0:14:14 > 0:14:18The one, looking forward to reopening the Globe,
0:14:18 > 0:14:24the other, to a splendid coronation in Westminster Abbey.
0:14:28 > 0:14:32But both events would be delayed for many months,
0:14:32 > 0:14:36because fate and disease intervened.
0:14:41 > 0:14:43London had been visited by plague before.
0:14:45 > 0:14:49But the outbreak of summer 1603 was severe.
0:14:50 > 0:14:53Theatres presented a high risk of infection,
0:14:53 > 0:14:56and they remained closed
0:14:56 > 0:14:59as the death toll rose from 1,000 a week in July
0:14:59 > 0:15:03to more than 3,000 a week by September.
0:15:06 > 0:15:11By the time it was over, 30,000 Londoners would be dead.
0:15:15 > 0:15:19The horrors of plague were yet another source of uncertainty.
0:15:19 > 0:15:22No-one could figure out what caused it.
0:15:23 > 0:15:27For some, it was the alignment of the stars,
0:15:27 > 0:15:30for others, the poisoned air.
0:15:30 > 0:15:33Some were convinced that dogs spread the disease,
0:15:33 > 0:15:36so they were rounded up and slaughtered.
0:15:36 > 0:15:38The Puritans were more certain.
0:15:38 > 0:15:41For them, it was a judgement from God.
0:15:41 > 0:15:42For what?
0:15:42 > 0:15:47Sin, and what could be more sinful than theatre?
0:15:54 > 0:15:58Sympathies with Puritan views held sway in the city
0:15:58 > 0:16:01and kept it a playhouse-free zone.
0:16:05 > 0:16:09But outside the walls, beyond the reach of London's authorities,
0:16:09 > 0:16:11were the suburbs.
0:16:13 > 0:16:16None so sinful as Southwark,
0:16:16 > 0:16:17home to the Globe.
0:16:21 > 0:16:24Southwark was a wild suburb,
0:16:24 > 0:16:26home to pleasures of all sorts.
0:16:26 > 0:16:31The number of inns, 400 in all, was spectacular.
0:16:31 > 0:16:35That's one pub for every 50 inhabitants.
0:16:35 > 0:16:38The area was so synonymous with prostitutes that playwright
0:16:38 > 0:16:43Thomas Dekker called them suburb sinners.
0:16:43 > 0:16:46What, with the inns and brothels and playhouses,
0:16:46 > 0:16:50petty criminals, actors, and prostitutes,
0:16:50 > 0:16:53it's no wonder that for the Puritans,
0:16:53 > 0:16:58Southwark was the very definition of Jacobean sinfulness.
0:17:11 > 0:17:14By December, the plague had subsided
0:17:14 > 0:17:17and Shakespeare and company got the call,
0:17:17 > 0:17:22ordered to Hampton Court to provide for the King's Christmas pleasure.
0:17:23 > 0:17:26But James had work on his mind too
0:17:26 > 0:17:31and had summoned another very different group at the same time.
0:17:31 > 0:17:32The Puritans.
0:17:34 > 0:17:38Among them, the theologically rigourous John Reynolds,
0:17:38 > 0:17:42no doubt appalled to find himself cheek by jowl with the Players.
0:17:44 > 0:17:49That Christmas, the King's Men had only old favourites to offer
0:17:49 > 0:17:51at Hampton Court's Great Hall.
0:17:51 > 0:17:53Shakespeare had written little of late,
0:17:53 > 0:17:58still finding his footing in this new Jacobean world.
0:17:59 > 0:18:03Between late December and early February,
0:18:03 > 0:18:0620 plays were staged in this room.
0:18:06 > 0:18:09Eight of them by Shakespeare's company.
0:18:09 > 0:18:14A fourfold increase in what had been expected of them by Queen Elizabeth.
0:18:16 > 0:18:19Unfortunately, nobody had the wisdom to record the names of these plays,
0:18:19 > 0:18:25but my best guess is they were classics like Romeo and Juliet, and Henry IV.
0:18:26 > 0:18:30While the evenings were rich in theatre,
0:18:30 > 0:18:35the real drama at Hampton Court that season was taking place by day.
0:18:36 > 0:18:41At the heart of that daytime drama was a theology conference
0:18:41 > 0:18:46that soon turned into a clash of royal power and puritan ideology.
0:18:48 > 0:18:50Shakespeare took it all in.
0:18:50 > 0:18:52Inspiration for the new play
0:18:52 > 0:18:56that may already have been forming in his mind.
0:18:57 > 0:19:02Court gossip Dudley Carleton wryly noted the amusing contrast
0:19:02 > 0:19:06between the richly garbed players and the severe Puritans
0:19:06 > 0:19:10here at Hampton Court that Christmas season.
0:19:10 > 0:19:14The Puritans were keen on learning once and for all
0:19:14 > 0:19:16where King James stood on religion,
0:19:16 > 0:19:21and were hoping to get him to purge the church of Catholic practices.
0:19:21 > 0:19:24King James could debate theology with the best of them
0:19:24 > 0:19:29and easily outmatched, and often bullied, the dispute-loving Puritans.
0:19:29 > 0:19:33He had no intention of delivering their anti-Catholic agenda,
0:19:33 > 0:19:38but instead, mollified them with an offer to his liking.
0:19:42 > 0:19:46What he offered was a new translation of the Scriptures,
0:19:46 > 0:19:49a new text, for newly Protestant times,
0:19:49 > 0:19:52purged of Catholic language.
0:19:55 > 0:19:59In the seven years in the making, would bear his name,
0:19:59 > 0:20:04and rank as one of the great achievements of the Jacobean moment,
0:20:04 > 0:20:06the King James Bible.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17It was enough to get the Puritans on his side.
0:20:18 > 0:20:21But James's power shake-up was creating enemies too.
0:20:23 > 0:20:27A new scene in this real-life drama of regime change
0:20:27 > 0:20:32was soon playing itself out in the Great Hall at Winchester.
0:20:37 > 0:20:41Some powerful English nobles, displaced by Scots,
0:20:41 > 0:20:46brought into government by the King, were plotting James's overthrow.
0:20:49 > 0:20:52The conspirators were a mix of disgruntled Catholics
0:20:52 > 0:20:55and even more disgruntled, and now disempowered, noblemen,
0:20:55 > 0:20:59who had failed to find favour with the new regime.
0:20:59 > 0:21:02Chief among them was the great Elizabethan hero
0:21:02 > 0:21:04Sir Walter Raleigh.
0:21:07 > 0:21:10The dashing, talented Raleigh was found out.
0:21:10 > 0:21:16He and his co-conspirators were rounded up, tried,
0:21:16 > 0:21:17and condemned to death.
0:21:22 > 0:21:25But the day of execution gave the King a chance
0:21:25 > 0:21:31to show that it wasn't just the King's Man who had a talent for high drama.
0:21:32 > 0:21:34Dudley Carleton was there
0:21:34 > 0:21:38and watched the condemned men mount the scaffold,
0:21:38 > 0:21:44noting that it was a foul day, fit for such tragic performance.
0:21:45 > 0:21:49Carleton records how all the actors were gathered together on stage,
0:21:49 > 0:21:52as at the end of a play.
0:21:52 > 0:21:55Then, at the very last moment,
0:21:55 > 0:22:01a man pushes through the crowd, one of King James's favourites, a Scot.
0:22:01 > 0:22:05He approaches the scaffold and addresses the offenders,
0:22:05 > 0:22:07reminding them of the heinousness of their crimes,
0:22:07 > 0:22:10to which they assented.
0:22:10 > 0:22:15Then, he pulls out a document and declares, "Behold,
0:22:15 > 0:22:18"the mercy of your sovereign,
0:22:18 > 0:22:22"who, of himself, has sent a countermand hither,
0:22:22 > 0:22:24"and given you your lives."
0:22:26 > 0:22:28It was a moment of spectacular theatre.
0:22:34 > 0:22:38Here was a King playing with ideas of punishment and reprieve.
0:22:38 > 0:22:42Searching for the limits of his own power,
0:22:42 > 0:22:46and finding the measure of his own performance.
0:22:50 > 0:22:52Shakespeare was taking all this in.
0:22:52 > 0:22:56And when the King's Men presented their next season at court,
0:22:56 > 0:23:00during the Christmas holidays of 1604,
0:23:00 > 0:23:02the law was something of a theme.
0:23:02 > 0:23:07A theme captured in one of the most extraordinary manuscripts
0:23:07 > 0:23:08to survive from the time.
0:23:10 > 0:23:17This is it, the Revels book, 1604 to 1605, Christmas at court.
0:23:17 > 0:23:19If there were one document I wish I could own
0:23:19 > 0:23:21that survives from Shakespeare's day,
0:23:21 > 0:23:24this is it, there's nothing like it.
0:23:24 > 0:23:27It gives you an incredible snapshot
0:23:27 > 0:23:29of performance at court that Christmas.
0:23:29 > 0:23:31The names of the playing company,
0:23:31 > 0:23:33the names of the playwrights, the names of the plays,
0:23:33 > 0:23:37performed on successive nights before King James.
0:23:37 > 0:23:41Here they are, all of the classics of the Elizabethan stage.
0:23:41 > 0:23:45Merry Wives of Windsor, Love's Labours Lost, Henry V,
0:23:45 > 0:23:47Merchant of Venice
0:23:47 > 0:23:50and, by order of the King, Merchant of Venice again,
0:23:50 > 0:23:54perhaps because he loved that play's exploration of justice and mercy.
0:23:55 > 0:23:59And here, among all these great Elizabethan hits,
0:23:59 > 0:24:04Shakespeare's first great Jacobean masterpiece, Measure for Measure.
0:24:09 > 0:24:14I love the people, but do not like to stage me to their eyes,
0:24:14 > 0:24:19though it do well, but I do not one issue around their loud applause
0:24:19 > 0:24:21and Aves vehement.
0:24:28 > 0:24:32With its crowd-shy leader, Measure for Measure
0:24:32 > 0:24:35seethes with the political and religious tensions
0:24:35 > 0:24:36of James's regime.
0:24:39 > 0:24:42Echoing the spring of 1603,
0:24:42 > 0:24:47the play begins at a moment of regime change.
0:24:48 > 0:24:52As the Duke of Vienna, out of the blue,
0:24:52 > 0:24:57hands all his powers to his bemused deputy, Angelo.
0:24:58 > 0:25:02To the hopeful execution do I leave you of your commission.
0:25:02 > 0:25:05Yet, give leave, my lord, that we may bring you something on the way.
0:25:05 > 0:25:08My haste may not admit it, nor need you, on my non,
0:25:08 > 0:25:12I have to do with any scruple.
0:25:12 > 0:25:14Your scope is as mine own,
0:25:14 > 0:25:20so to enforce or qualify the laws as to your soul seems good.
0:25:20 > 0:25:21Give me your hand.
0:25:23 > 0:25:28I love the people, but do not like to stage me to their eyes,
0:25:28 > 0:25:31though it do well, I do not relish well the loud applause
0:25:31 > 0:25:33and Aves vehement.
0:25:34 > 0:25:37Nor do I think the man of safe discretion who does affect it.
0:25:37 > 0:25:42The crowd-disliking Duke, like James, is elusive.
0:25:42 > 0:25:44The heavens give safety to your purposes.
0:25:44 > 0:25:45I thank you.
0:25:45 > 0:25:48Even his departure is a fiction.
0:25:48 > 0:25:49Fare you well.
0:25:51 > 0:25:53Disguising himself as a friar,
0:25:53 > 0:25:57he spends the rest of the play spying on his city,
0:25:57 > 0:26:02a city populated by prostitutes, pimps, and thieves,
0:26:02 > 0:26:04that reeks of Southwark.
0:26:04 > 0:26:07Brothel owner Mistress Overdone
0:26:07 > 0:26:11even moans that the plague has been bad for business.
0:26:12 > 0:26:15It's a world that a Duke has lost control of.
0:26:18 > 0:26:21He's very clear, he says what he is doing,
0:26:21 > 0:26:22that's what's extraordinary about it.
0:26:22 > 0:26:25He's very open about what he's doing. He, you know...
0:26:25 > 0:26:27the place is decaying
0:26:27 > 0:26:31and he needs to get someone to sort it out,
0:26:31 > 0:26:34but he doesn't want his name attached to it,
0:26:34 > 0:26:36and he doesn't really like being a public figure.
0:26:36 > 0:26:39I think he feels himself removed from the people,
0:26:39 > 0:26:42and therefore, he needs to see what's happening
0:26:42 > 0:26:46in order to understand it, in order to improve himself as a leader.
0:26:46 > 0:26:48I mean, it's not one million miles away from...
0:26:48 > 0:26:51what's that reality telly programme where the, you know...
0:26:51 > 0:26:54Undercover Boss, it's kind of what he does.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57And, to me, it's a play about, at the heart of it,
0:26:57 > 0:27:02it's a play about leadership, and what leading a nation means.
0:27:04 > 0:27:08The new regime of Angelo gets off to a flying start.
0:27:08 > 0:27:11He condemns a young man, Claudio,
0:27:11 > 0:27:15to death for getting his girlfriend pregnant.
0:27:15 > 0:27:19The kind of crime that the old regime had let slip.
0:27:21 > 0:27:25When Claudio's sister, Isabella, about to become a nun,
0:27:25 > 0:27:27comes to plead for his life,
0:27:27 > 0:27:29Angelo is every bit the tough guy.
0:27:31 > 0:27:34- He must die tomorrow. - Tomorrow?
0:27:34 > 0:27:37Oh, that's sudden!
0:27:37 > 0:27:41Spare him, spare him.
0:27:41 > 0:27:43He's not prepared for death,
0:27:43 > 0:27:45even for our kitchens, we kill the fowl of season,
0:27:45 > 0:27:49shall we serve heaven with less respect than we do minister to our gross selves?
0:27:49 > 0:27:52Good, good, my lord, bethink you.
0:27:52 > 0:27:55Who is it that have died for this offence?
0:27:55 > 0:27:57There's many have committed it.
0:27:57 > 0:28:01The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.
0:28:01 > 0:28:04Those many have not dared to do that evil,
0:28:04 > 0:28:07if the first that did the edict infringe
0:28:07 > 0:28:09had answered for his deed.
0:28:09 > 0:28:11Now, 'tis awake.
0:28:11 > 0:28:14Yet show some pity.
0:28:14 > 0:28:16I show it most of all when I show justice.
0:28:16 > 0:28:20The scene turns brilliantly from illegal debate,
0:28:20 > 0:28:23one that James would surely have loved,
0:28:23 > 0:28:24almost into satire,
0:28:24 > 0:28:30as the straightlaced puritan is suddenly overcome by Isabella's charms.
0:28:30 > 0:28:34Go to your bosom, knock there.
0:28:36 > 0:28:39And ask your heart what it doth know that's like my brother's fault.
0:28:39 > 0:28:43If it confess a natural guiltiness such as is his,
0:28:43 > 0:28:47let it not sound a thought upon your tongue against my brother's life.
0:28:55 > 0:29:01When they meet again, Angelo has an indecent proposal for the nun-to-be.
0:29:01 > 0:29:04Sleep with me, and your brother gets off.
0:29:05 > 0:29:08But the spying Duke fixes it all.
0:29:10 > 0:29:13A head trick saved Claudio's life.
0:29:13 > 0:29:15Angelo gets his comeuppance,
0:29:15 > 0:29:20and the Duke scatters pardons like James at Winchester.
0:29:24 > 0:29:27Shakespeare, though, delivers a twist at the end,
0:29:27 > 0:29:32with the Duke offering Isabella what she does not want,
0:29:32 > 0:29:34marriage.
0:29:38 > 0:29:41For me, the unsettled and unpredictable world
0:29:41 > 0:29:42of Measure for Measure
0:29:42 > 0:29:46perfectly captures the tone of James's England,
0:29:47 > 0:29:51where the character of the King and his reign remained elusive.
0:29:51 > 0:29:54Shakespeare had never before grappled
0:29:54 > 0:29:59with such a constellation of social and religious issues,
0:29:59 > 0:30:03where justice is easily confused with mercy,
0:30:03 > 0:30:07and neat resolutions no longer seemed possible.
0:30:15 > 0:30:18Jacobean England was no police state.
0:30:19 > 0:30:23But taking on contemporary politics was dangerous.
0:30:23 > 0:30:26Setting Measure for Measure in distant Vienna
0:30:26 > 0:30:30was enough to keep Shakespeare out of trouble.
0:30:30 > 0:30:32But others were less careful.
0:30:36 > 0:30:39In 1605, Shakespeare's great rival, Ben Jonson,
0:30:39 > 0:30:42and fellow playwright George Chapman,
0:30:42 > 0:30:44found themselves imprisoned,
0:30:44 > 0:30:49under the unpleasant threat of having their ears and noses slit.
0:30:54 > 0:30:58A former bricklayer, Jonson was no stranger to trouble.
0:30:58 > 0:31:00He'd narrowly escaped the gallows
0:31:00 > 0:31:03when he killed a fellow actor in a duel,
0:31:03 > 0:31:06and was jailed for his play the Isle of Dogs,
0:31:06 > 0:31:08probably for satirising Queen Elizabeth.
0:31:13 > 0:31:16The offending piece this time was Eastward Hoe,
0:31:16 > 0:31:19performed by one of London's children's companies.
0:31:24 > 0:31:28It was a city comedy, a genre Jonson had pioneered.
0:31:28 > 0:31:34Sharp, satirical, the genre was meant to be edgy.
0:31:34 > 0:31:39But the anti-Scots jokes in Eastward Hoe had crossed the line.
0:31:41 > 0:31:44I'm holding in my hand an exceedingly rare volume,
0:31:44 > 0:31:46one of only two surviving copies
0:31:46 > 0:31:49of the earliest printing of Eastward Hoe.
0:31:49 > 0:31:54It contains scandalous words that landed its authors in prison.
0:31:55 > 0:31:57They had gone too far,
0:31:57 > 0:32:00mocking their Scottish King's countrymen,
0:32:00 > 0:32:03wishing they'd go back to where they came from,
0:32:03 > 0:32:07or even better, set sail for the Americas.
0:32:08 > 0:32:11I'll read one of the offending passages,
0:32:11 > 0:32:14a classic piece of English xenophobia.
0:32:15 > 0:32:19"And for my part, and what 100,000 of them were there,
0:32:19 > 0:32:22"for we are all one countrymen now, you know,
0:32:22 > 0:32:25"and we should find ten times more comfort of them there
0:32:25 > 0:32:27"than we do here."
0:32:29 > 0:32:31This is another copy of
0:32:31 > 0:32:34Eastward Hoe, printed soon after.
0:32:34 > 0:32:37It looks almost identical,
0:32:37 > 0:32:39but the words that I just read
0:32:39 > 0:32:41are mysteriously missing.
0:32:42 > 0:32:45Jacobean censorship in action.
0:32:45 > 0:32:48Airbrushing was not a 20th-century phenomenon.
0:32:51 > 0:32:56Jonson was released, Chapman too, ears and noses intact.
0:32:56 > 0:33:01But it would not be Jonson's last brush with the authorities.
0:33:04 > 0:33:08His city comedies, often set in London in the present,
0:33:08 > 0:33:10could be dangerously topical.
0:33:10 > 0:33:12Much riskier territory
0:33:12 > 0:33:16than the work of his more politically savvy rival, Shakespeare.
0:33:16 > 0:33:22And the King's Man had another advantage.
0:33:22 > 0:33:26He was an inside man, a servant of the court,
0:33:26 > 0:33:29able, at times, to observe James at close quarters.
0:33:31 > 0:33:33As he did in 1604,
0:33:33 > 0:33:38at an event captured in one of the treasures of the National Portrait Gallery.
0:33:40 > 0:33:45These Spanish negotiators and their English counterparts
0:33:45 > 0:33:49had just signed an historic peace treaty,
0:33:49 > 0:33:53bringing to an end England's long war with Spain.
0:33:57 > 0:34:01What I love most about this painting is what's missing -
0:34:01 > 0:34:04the man they are all turning to face,
0:34:04 > 0:34:06King James himself.
0:34:06 > 0:34:09And behind him, his entourage,
0:34:09 > 0:34:12which included Shakespeare and the King's Men.
0:34:13 > 0:34:18As grooms of the chamber, they were officially the King's servants,
0:34:18 > 0:34:20issued four yards of red cloth for their livery,
0:34:20 > 0:34:23and expected to show up on demand,
0:34:23 > 0:34:25and not just to perform plays.
0:34:26 > 0:34:29They were there in August 1604,
0:34:29 > 0:34:31summoned to Somerset House
0:34:31 > 0:34:36to fill out an underweight English delegation at these peace talks.
0:34:36 > 0:34:39Bad timing, since this was peak season
0:34:39 > 0:34:42for summer performances at the outdoor Globe.
0:34:42 > 0:34:47Who better though than actors to stand around looking important?
0:34:47 > 0:34:51So, for 18 days, Shakespeare and his fellows did just that,
0:34:51 > 0:34:54and were paid a mere pittance for their services.
0:34:55 > 0:34:59For Shakespeare though, this was a rare opportunity
0:34:59 > 0:35:02to see the workings of power and diplomacy up close,
0:35:02 > 0:35:04to be witness to history.
0:35:06 > 0:35:10James had left the lengthy negotiations to others,
0:35:10 > 0:35:14spending most of his time out hunting.
0:35:14 > 0:35:16But when he returned for the treaty signing,
0:35:16 > 0:35:21he had a chance to indulge in another favourite pastime -
0:35:21 > 0:35:22extravagance.
0:35:25 > 0:35:28This extraordinary object,
0:35:28 > 0:35:30the Royal Gold Cup,
0:35:30 > 0:35:33is one of the great treasures of the British Museum.
0:35:34 > 0:35:37But it's a miracle that it's in Britain at all
0:35:37 > 0:35:39because, in 1604,
0:35:39 > 0:35:43as a gift from one of the departing Spanish negotiators,
0:35:43 > 0:35:45King James gave it away.
0:35:48 > 0:35:51Dora, tell me about this amazing object.
0:35:51 > 0:35:53Well, this is one of the finest
0:35:53 > 0:35:55pieces of a Parisian goldsmiths's work
0:35:55 > 0:35:57of the late middle ages to have survived anywhere.
0:35:57 > 0:35:59Enamelled in basse-taille enamelling,
0:35:59 > 0:36:01with these amazing scenes
0:36:01 > 0:36:02from the life of St Agnes,
0:36:02 > 0:36:04who was a holy virgin.
0:36:04 > 0:36:07It's incredibly pure gold,
0:36:07 > 0:36:09and it's heavy.
0:36:09 > 0:36:14So just in terms of bullion, imagine the weight of that cup in your hand,
0:36:14 > 0:36:17and just guess at its value for yourself.
0:36:17 > 0:36:21Around the stem has been added this wonderful collar
0:36:21 > 0:36:24with the enamelled roses of the Tudor dynasty,
0:36:24 > 0:36:26and we think that that was probably added
0:36:26 > 0:36:28early in the reign of Henry VIII.
0:36:28 > 0:36:31So, even though this object was made in 1370, 1380,
0:36:31 > 0:36:34it was already very old by the time Henry VIII altered it.
0:36:34 > 0:36:38It shows that it still had significance to the Tudor kings.
0:36:38 > 0:36:41Why would anyone give away something like this?
0:36:41 > 0:36:44I mean, there are a lot of treasures in England,
0:36:44 > 0:36:47James could have given away a lot of things, why this?
0:36:47 > 0:36:50Well, I don't know if James thought of it as anything more than
0:36:50 > 0:36:54a very expensive lump of gold, as a piece of bullion.
0:36:54 > 0:36:57I'm not sure he would have seen anything more in it than that.
0:36:57 > 0:37:00But we know that the Duke of Medina saw much more in it.
0:37:00 > 0:37:05He thought that it was one of the great royal treasures,
0:37:05 > 0:37:08that it had ancestral value to the English kings.
0:37:08 > 0:37:12I can't think of any other object that carries the weight of significance
0:37:12 > 0:37:14that this one does for Shakespeare's world.
0:37:18 > 0:37:19For James though,
0:37:19 > 0:37:23it was just another piece of England's inexhaustible wealth.
0:37:24 > 0:37:26He had always been extravagant,
0:37:26 > 0:37:32and by 1605, his debts were a heady four times those of the late Queen.
0:37:35 > 0:37:40His Privy Council wrote him a stiff letter expressing their concern.
0:37:41 > 0:37:44In an extraordinary speech to Parliament,
0:37:44 > 0:37:47James admitted that his first three years on the throne
0:37:47 > 0:37:50had been, to him, as Christmas.
0:37:52 > 0:37:54James would have been well advised
0:37:54 > 0:37:56to take more Privy Council instruction.
0:37:56 > 0:38:00And also, the fact that they never managed to get across to him
0:38:00 > 0:38:02that the financial resources of the English monarchy
0:38:02 > 0:38:05were much more limited than he thought.
0:38:05 > 0:38:09The problem is, James has no idea what he's giving away.
0:38:09 > 0:38:11He gives away far too much.
0:38:11 > 0:38:14He gives it in an ill thought-out fashion,
0:38:14 > 0:38:17rewarding favourites lavishly,
0:38:17 > 0:38:21not rewarding hard-serving Privy Councillors.
0:38:21 > 0:38:24So, it's not so much the largesse in itself,
0:38:24 > 0:38:29as the, um, the lack of sense about distributing it.
0:38:33 > 0:38:35Shakespeare was never crudely topical,
0:38:35 > 0:38:40but was always alert to the tensions around him.
0:38:40 > 0:38:46And his next play featured the destruction of a spendthrift rich man,
0:38:46 > 0:38:49Timon of Athens.
0:38:53 > 0:38:57"Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt,
0:38:57 > 0:39:01"since riches point to misery and contempt?"
0:39:08 > 0:39:13Timon of Athens is Shakespeare's coldest, bleakest play.
0:39:13 > 0:39:15Its subject is money,
0:39:15 > 0:39:18and the greed and corruption that flow from it.
0:39:18 > 0:39:21The play is set in ancient Athens,
0:39:21 > 0:39:23but when Timon rails against what he calls,
0:39:23 > 0:39:26"the coward and lascivious town",
0:39:26 > 0:39:29everyone at the Globe theatre would have recognised
0:39:29 > 0:39:34that Shakespeare was describing their own money-obsessed London.
0:39:42 > 0:39:45The play begins in a moment of high commerce,
0:39:45 > 0:39:50with a jeweller, a painter, and a poet all discussing their art and business,
0:39:50 > 0:39:52and how easy it is to extract cash
0:39:52 > 0:39:57from the town's wealthiest patron, Timon.
0:40:00 > 0:40:04But Timon's deep pockets, like England's, were not bottomless.
0:40:05 > 0:40:08In crisis, he calls on his friends.
0:40:08 > 0:40:13They rebuff him. Timon flees the city in despair.
0:40:16 > 0:40:19Timon has long been a neglected play,
0:40:19 > 0:40:22little read, rarely staged,
0:40:22 > 0:40:27but there was one 19th-century critic who saw its brilliance -
0:40:27 > 0:40:29Karl Marx.
0:40:29 > 0:40:34His favourite quotation, "Gold? Yellow, glittering gold,
0:40:34 > 0:40:37"this can make black, white,
0:40:37 > 0:40:39"foul, fair,
0:40:39 > 0:40:41"wrong, right."
0:40:44 > 0:40:47The high price of living in a money-driven world
0:40:47 > 0:40:51is made all too clear by the end of the play.
0:40:52 > 0:40:54Timon turns his back on the world,
0:40:54 > 0:40:57flees to the woods outside of Athens
0:40:57 > 0:41:00and, eventually, kills himself.
0:41:00 > 0:41:05He leaves behind a bitter suicide note, which reads,
0:41:05 > 0:41:10"Here lie I, Timon, who all living men did hate."
0:41:18 > 0:41:22Still finding his footing in these ambiguous times,
0:41:22 > 0:41:26Timon was a bold experiment for Shakespeare,
0:41:26 > 0:41:30his own dark version of a genre not his own -
0:41:30 > 0:41:32city comedy.
0:41:35 > 0:41:38But instead of a comical tale set in London in the present,
0:41:38 > 0:41:41Shakespeare locates Timon in ancient Greece,
0:41:41 > 0:41:43and gives it a tragic ending.
0:41:43 > 0:41:46Shaking his audience up at every turn.
0:41:52 > 0:41:55City comedies are about the intersection
0:41:55 > 0:41:57of social mobility and money.
0:41:57 > 0:42:00These are plays that mock the greedy
0:42:00 > 0:42:05yet, at the same time, celebrate Londoners' pursuit of wealth.
0:42:05 > 0:42:09'Timon of Athens' is a very Shakespearean take on the genre.
0:42:09 > 0:42:11But to pull it off,
0:42:11 > 0:42:15Shakespeare had to do something he had not done in a very long while -
0:42:15 > 0:42:18collaborate with another writer.
0:42:21 > 0:42:23Thomas Middleton fitted the bill.
0:42:23 > 0:42:27Flush with recent city comedy successes,
0:42:27 > 0:42:31the younger writer had the knack of the new genre.
0:42:36 > 0:42:40Timon's a difficult play, not often performed,
0:42:40 > 0:42:43but I was lucky enough to see a production here at the Globe,
0:42:43 > 0:42:46directed by Lucy Bailey.
0:42:47 > 0:42:51When I first started studying and teaching this play,
0:42:51 > 0:42:55no-one talked about collaboration and Shakespeare working
0:42:55 > 0:42:59with a writer of city comedies, Thomas Middleton.
0:42:59 > 0:43:02Did you feel, at various points, two hands in this play,
0:43:02 > 0:43:05or two consciousnesses involved in the creating of it?
0:43:05 > 0:43:08- Yes, I think almost black and white moments.- Really?
0:43:08 > 0:43:11Literally, you'd hit a moment and you'd know it was Middleton.
0:43:11 > 0:43:14When the writing switched to more character satire,
0:43:14 > 0:43:17small-time character satire of the immediate, say, senators,
0:43:17 > 0:43:20portraying them almost in a Ben Jonsonian way,
0:43:20 > 0:43:22that, I would feel, wasn't Shakespeare.
0:43:22 > 0:43:25It feels to me within the play that the interests vary.
0:43:25 > 0:43:29Timon, the extraordinary journey of this man, is Shakespeare.
0:43:29 > 0:43:32The mercantile London, the satire of that world, is Middleton.
0:43:32 > 0:43:34Why was he wanting to collaborate?
0:43:34 > 0:43:37Does he just feel that he needed someone
0:43:37 > 0:43:40who had Middleton's way of capturing these greedy people
0:43:40 > 0:43:42in a better way than he would,
0:43:42 > 0:43:44in a faster, more cartoony way than he could?
0:43:47 > 0:43:51Lucy's production had extraordinary timing,
0:43:51 > 0:43:56coinciding with the global economic meltdown of 2008.
0:43:59 > 0:44:03How were you able to harness what was going on in the world outside
0:44:03 > 0:44:08and bring it into a production of this play here at the Globe?
0:44:08 > 0:44:10It wasn't very difficult.
0:44:10 > 0:44:14It was easy to look around you and see parallels
0:44:14 > 0:44:19to what we were exploring in terms of Timon's excess of spending
0:44:19 > 0:44:23and the kind of blindness that he was showing in that spending.
0:44:23 > 0:44:26He was not aware that he was already bankrupt.
0:44:26 > 0:44:28A key moment for us,
0:44:28 > 0:44:31myself and the designer were travelling to the Globe
0:44:31 > 0:44:35and we were going through London Bridge and up on this billboard,
0:44:35 > 0:44:39it had these vultures picking and nipping at all these gold coins.
0:44:39 > 0:44:41It was advertising a credit card, a gold card.
0:44:41 > 0:44:46It didn't get it that this was actually a sick image.
0:44:46 > 0:44:48That was a perfect symbol of that time
0:44:48 > 0:44:51for this society and where it was going.
0:44:51 > 0:44:54And how Timon went, "That's it!"
0:44:54 > 0:44:57We used the idea of the vulture absolutely in our play.
0:44:57 > 0:45:00In fact, we dressed our people sort of subliminally.
0:45:00 > 0:45:02They were all vultures.
0:45:02 > 0:45:04If you looked closely, they all had feathers.
0:45:04 > 0:45:07And, of course, we put our actors above the audience
0:45:07 > 0:45:11and they behaved as vultures that would finally feed off Timon.
0:45:17 > 0:45:21Gold in Timon is destructive and pernicious.
0:45:22 > 0:45:26For James though, its glittering surface
0:45:26 > 0:45:29offered a perfect opportunity for self-expression.
0:45:33 > 0:45:36The coins he minted gave a unique insight into his vision
0:45:36 > 0:45:40of the Stuart brand and of the policies he planned to pursue.
0:45:44 > 0:45:48I'm holding in my hand a sovereign minted in 1603.
0:45:48 > 0:45:51A high value 20 shilling coin,
0:45:51 > 0:45:54the first James had issued after coming to the throne.
0:45:54 > 0:45:58He describes himself here predictably
0:45:58 > 0:46:01as King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland.
0:46:01 > 0:46:04A year later, a second sovereign was produced.
0:46:05 > 0:46:09Superficially, the same in weight and size and value,
0:46:09 > 0:46:12but this one came with a very different message.
0:46:12 > 0:46:16Here, England and Scotland are gone,
0:46:16 > 0:46:19replaced by a new political identity.
0:46:19 > 0:46:25Mag Britt. Magna Britannia. Great Britain.
0:46:25 > 0:46:28It's a familiar notion today,
0:46:28 > 0:46:31but for Shakespeare and his contemporaries,
0:46:31 > 0:46:34this would have been a bold, radical suggestion.
0:46:34 > 0:46:38In case anyone missed the message on the back,
0:46:38 > 0:46:41James, quoting from Ezekiel, declares,
0:46:41 > 0:46:44"Faciam eos in gentum unam."
0:46:44 > 0:46:47"And I will make thee one nation."
0:46:47 > 0:46:50This was James's big idea.
0:46:50 > 0:46:54The union of Scotland and England.
0:46:54 > 0:46:59The coin soon became known as the 'Unite'.
0:46:59 > 0:47:03But when he pitched the idea to Parliament,
0:47:03 > 0:47:06the reaction was bewilderment.
0:47:06 > 0:47:11What the English wanted now was stability, not more uncertainty.
0:47:13 > 0:47:15Maybe this was James's curse.
0:47:15 > 0:47:20A brilliant man with great ideas, but poor timing.
0:47:21 > 0:47:25King James felt that he embodied in himself
0:47:25 > 0:47:29the successful union of the two nations.
0:47:29 > 0:47:31But hardly anybody else felt that way.
0:47:31 > 0:47:35It's hard to know who hated the idea more - the Scots or the English.
0:47:35 > 0:47:38Queen Elizabeth and her Tudor forebears
0:47:38 > 0:47:42had done so much to foster a sense of England's exclusiveness.
0:47:42 > 0:47:46Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights had only reinforced that
0:47:46 > 0:47:48in their history plays.
0:47:48 > 0:47:53King James's idea flew in the face of all this and showed once again
0:47:53 > 0:47:57how poorly he had read the desires of his subjects.
0:47:57 > 0:48:03The union agenda created something unexpected and unwanted -
0:48:03 > 0:48:05an identity crisis.
0:48:07 > 0:48:11These new tensions and anxieties were great territory for a dramatist
0:48:11 > 0:48:16and a new play was soon forming in Shakespeare's mind.
0:48:23 > 0:48:29Early in the autumn of 1605, he set out along a familiar route.
0:48:32 > 0:48:36From his lodgings on Silver Street near the Roman wall,
0:48:36 > 0:48:39he walked down Noble Street,
0:48:39 > 0:48:45emerging soon on to the city's main commercial thoroughfare, Cheapside.
0:48:45 > 0:48:48He turned west at St Anne's,
0:48:48 > 0:48:52south along St Martin's Lane,
0:48:52 > 0:48:57then west again towards Newgate Market.
0:49:02 > 0:49:05There were bookstalls here in Shakespeare's day
0:49:05 > 0:49:07in front of Christ Church.
0:49:07 > 0:49:10A budding Newgate Market on my right.
0:49:10 > 0:49:13It was here, browsing at John Wright's shop,
0:49:13 > 0:49:17that Shakespeare came upon an unexpected find.
0:49:17 > 0:49:22An old, anonymous play from the 1590s, never printed before.
0:49:22 > 0:49:26It's from this moment that we can trace
0:49:26 > 0:49:29the creation of Shakespeare's greatest Jacobean play -
0:49:29 > 0:49:31'King Lear'.
0:49:34 > 0:49:37"O Lear, Lear, Lear!
0:49:37 > 0:49:41"Beat at this gate that let thy folly in
0:49:41 > 0:49:44"and thy dear judgement out."
0:49:50 > 0:49:53'King Lear' goes to the heart of the national angst
0:49:53 > 0:49:56created by James's union agenda.
0:50:00 > 0:50:05But as always, Shakespeare comes in from an oblique angle.
0:50:07 > 0:50:14The play begins in a united Britain that's about to be divided.
0:50:16 > 0:50:21A map before him, Lear splits his kingdom between his three daughters,
0:50:21 > 0:50:25but demands a show of love from each.
0:50:25 > 0:50:31His youngest, Cordelia, will not submit and is banished.
0:50:31 > 0:50:38So begins Lear's dissent into a hell of regret and betrayal.
0:50:39 > 0:50:41Detested kite!
0:50:41 > 0:50:42Thou liest.
0:50:42 > 0:50:46My train are men of choice and rarest parts
0:50:46 > 0:50:50that in the most exact regards support the worships of their name.
0:50:50 > 0:50:54O most small fault, how ugly didst thou in Cordelia show,
0:50:54 > 0:50:59which like an engine wrench'd my frame of nature from the fix'd place,
0:50:59 > 0:51:04drew from my heart all love and added to the gall.
0:51:04 > 0:51:07O Lear, Lear, Lear!
0:51:07 > 0:51:13Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in and thy dear judgment out.
0:51:13 > 0:51:16Go, go, my people.
0:51:19 > 0:51:23The King is soon driven out of the world of courts and palaces
0:51:23 > 0:51:31on to a primal windswept heath where he keeps company with a madman.
0:51:31 > 0:51:34Lear's eyes are opened to the suffering of the poor.
0:51:35 > 0:51:40"I have taken too little care of this," he says,
0:51:40 > 0:51:44while he tries to comfort his blinded friend, Gloucester.
0:51:46 > 0:51:50All this at a time when an unloved James
0:51:50 > 0:51:52was keeping perpetual Christmas,
0:51:52 > 0:51:57in hiding away from his people in extravagant self-indulgence.
0:52:00 > 0:52:03Only Shakespeare could have been so bold.
0:52:05 > 0:52:10Shakespeare, as a rule, did not invent the plots to his plays.
0:52:10 > 0:52:14He found them in the works of other writers,
0:52:14 > 0:52:18in which he discovered the aesthetic potential
0:52:18 > 0:52:21and the political resonance that was lacking in them.
0:52:23 > 0:52:28These are the ingredients that went into the making of King Lear
0:52:28 > 0:52:32and we can imagine them spread out in front of Shakespeare
0:52:32 > 0:52:34as he was at work on the play.
0:52:34 > 0:52:38The immediate stimulus for his new play was clearly this volume.
0:52:38 > 0:52:43A copy of that old, anonymous play he had recently picked up
0:52:43 > 0:52:48at John Wright's shop opposite Christ Church.
0:52:48 > 0:52:54Its title? 'The True Chronicle History Of King Lear'.
0:52:54 > 0:52:58Shakespeare, turning through the opening pages of this play,
0:52:58 > 0:53:03discovering how clumsily its anonymous author had handled
0:53:03 > 0:53:06the love test that King Lear put his daughters through,
0:53:06 > 0:53:10realised how much more he could do with this play.
0:53:10 > 0:53:12But it did not stop there.
0:53:12 > 0:53:14Shakespeare needed a subplot to the play,
0:53:14 > 0:53:17and he needed some atmosphere and texture.
0:53:17 > 0:53:19He found both of these
0:53:19 > 0:53:23in two of the great Elizabethan works of his predecessors.
0:53:23 > 0:53:26'The Faerie Queen' by Edmund Spenser,
0:53:26 > 0:53:29which talks about the death of Cordelia.
0:53:29 > 0:53:33And Sidney's 'Arcadia', another extraordinary Elizabethan work,
0:53:33 > 0:53:37in which she found the subplot of Gloucester
0:53:37 > 0:53:39and his sons, Edgar and Edmund.
0:53:39 > 0:53:43Shakespeare searched not only for history or subplots
0:53:43 > 0:53:46or philosophical richness,
0:53:46 > 0:53:49he also tried to find the sounds and the words
0:53:49 > 0:53:51that would feed into his play,
0:53:51 > 0:53:55and he found some of them in a really unusual source.
0:53:55 > 0:54:01Harsnett's 'Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures'.
0:54:01 > 0:54:05A strange book that describes how Jesuit missionaries
0:54:05 > 0:54:08had tried to persuade young English men and women
0:54:08 > 0:54:10they were possessed by devils.
0:54:10 > 0:54:13Shakespeare, in reading or re-reading this text,
0:54:13 > 0:54:18came upon the names of devils that go right into King Lear,
0:54:18 > 0:54:20in the speech that Edgar gives
0:54:20 > 0:54:23when feigning daemonic possession himself.
0:54:25 > 0:54:32Modu, Maho, Hoberdidance and Flibbertigibbet.
0:54:34 > 0:54:37There's one more thing that testifies
0:54:37 > 0:54:41to Shakespeare's brilliance as a creative artist...
0:54:42 > 0:54:45..which brings us back to that foundation text,
0:54:45 > 0:54:47'The Chronicle History of King Lear'.
0:54:47 > 0:54:51This play, as every theatregoer who had seen it knew,
0:54:51 > 0:54:57ends on a happy note, with Lear restored to his throne
0:54:57 > 0:55:00and to his loving daughter, Cordelia.
0:55:00 > 0:55:04He takes that ending and crushes it,
0:55:04 > 0:55:08turning comedy into the darkest of tragedies imaginable.
0:55:12 > 0:55:14Howl!
0:55:19 > 0:55:20Howl!
0:55:25 > 0:55:26Howl!
0:55:29 > 0:55:31O, you are men of stones.
0:55:32 > 0:55:36Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them,
0:55:36 > 0:55:38so that heaven's vault should crack.
0:55:43 > 0:55:45She's gone forever.
0:55:57 > 0:56:02The sight of King Lear with Cordelia in his arms howling with grief
0:56:02 > 0:56:06is one of the most haunting images in all of Shakespeare.
0:56:07 > 0:56:11By the end of the play, the tally of dead bodies is extraordinary,
0:56:11 > 0:56:14even by Shakespearean standards.
0:56:14 > 0:56:18The King himself, his three daughters, Edmund the bastard
0:56:18 > 0:56:21and, of course, the fool.
0:56:21 > 0:56:23It's the only Shakespearean tragedy
0:56:23 > 0:56:26in which the characters don't head off somewhere
0:56:26 > 0:56:28at the end of the play.
0:56:28 > 0:56:31Hope has vanished.
0:56:31 > 0:56:38As Kent puts it in the final lines, "All's cheerless, dark and deadly."
0:56:38 > 0:56:42The promise of a happy ending is gone.
0:56:52 > 0:56:55Lear speaks to a Jacobean England
0:56:55 > 0:57:00where the uncertainties of 1603 remained unresolved.
0:57:00 > 0:57:05Where James's unpredictable leadership and policies
0:57:05 > 0:57:08had only added more anxieties and questions.
0:57:10 > 0:57:12Questions that Shakespeare
0:57:12 > 0:57:17and his fellow writers were still grappling with.
0:57:18 > 0:57:21In three years as a King's Man,
0:57:21 > 0:57:25Shakespeare had been on an extraordinary journey.
0:57:25 > 0:57:28From the twisted comedy of 'Measure for Measure'
0:57:28 > 0:57:34with its strangely absent ruler and its collision with Puritan ideology,
0:57:34 > 0:57:38to the caustic anti-money world of 'Timon of Athens'.
0:57:39 > 0:57:42These early ventures were flawed perhaps,
0:57:42 > 0:57:47but in retrospect, necessary steps on the path to King Lear,
0:57:47 > 0:57:51one of the great achievements of this Jacobean moment.
0:57:51 > 0:57:55It had taken some time, but Shakespeare
0:57:55 > 0:57:58and other great writers had found a new register,
0:57:58 > 0:58:01a new tone for these new times.
0:58:01 > 0:58:05Times that threatened to grow darker still.
0:58:07 > 0:58:13Next - the regime comes close to destruction in the Gunpowder Plot.
0:58:13 > 0:58:18Shakespeare responds with his bloodiest play
0:58:18 > 0:58:22of violent overthrow - Macbeth.
0:58:23 > 0:58:25And old skeletons are dug up
0:58:25 > 0:58:31as the King tries to lay the ghosts of the past to rest.
0:58:43 > 0:58:48Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd