Legacy The King & the Playwright: A Jacobean History


Legacy

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"In 1607, London experienced its coldest winter in 40 years.

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"Stalls were built on the frozen Thames, whilst city dwellers

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"played bowls and skated across its frozen surface.

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"But beneath the ice, fish perished..."

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wrote the historian John Stow,

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"..and waterfowl and small birds were found dead upon the shore."

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It was an omen of the difficult years to come.

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The same year, Somerset House here would welcome a new

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and permanent resident, Anne of Denmark, James's Queen.

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The King did not move in with her, the ice would thaw,

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their marriage would not.

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At much the same time, Shakespeare's plays

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began engaging in the themes of fractured royal families,

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dynastic marriages and the loss of royal children.

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From the troubled Sicilia of The Winter's Tale,

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to the magical island of The Tempest,

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and the corruption of the court of Henry VIII,

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Shakespeare continued to collaborate with other writers,

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to experiment with lighting

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and music in plays that marked the climax of an extraordinary decade...

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..that gave us the King James Bible, the 5th of November,

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and the beginnings of Britain's Empire, and the future USA.

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A Jacobean decade that left a remarkable legacy,

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a legacy of the king and the playwright, William Shakespeare.

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It is 1610. King James has been on England's throne for seven years.

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He is a complex figure - brilliant but unpopular.

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His dream of union between England and Scotland,

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symbolised by a new flag and a new coin,

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is disliked on both sides of the border, and lies in tatters.

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His debts are rising, and relations with Parliament are strained.

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And his obsession with a young Scottish favourite,

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Robert Carr, is becoming a source of scandal and political instability.

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Clearly James is bisexual. He has no problems in his married life,

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he fathers children,

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but, equally, he falls madly in love, it would seem,

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with first Carr, and then with Buckingham,

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and doesn't hesitate to show physical affection to them

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in public, and that almost, more than the nature of the relationship,

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I think, is what scandalises ambassadors,

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scandalises his court.

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I mean, ambassadors are not naive men,

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they are perfectly well aware of bisexual

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and homosexual relationships,

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but it's a matter of propriety when it's the King.

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And James loses that sense of appropriate behaviour.

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James turns to his children to further his political ends.

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For his son, and heir, Prince Henry,

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and his daughter, Elizabeth, he hopes to arrange

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powerful dynastic marriages to shore up royal authority

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at home and abroad.

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Sifting the tone of the times as he always did,

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Shakespeare produces a new play.

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At its heart is a seemingly bucolic royal family that suddenly unravels.

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The Winter's Tale.

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Though The Winter's Tale is included among Shakespeare's

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comedies in the First Folio, it's about as grim as comedy gets.

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It begins cheerfully enough with Leontes, King of Sicilia,

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entertaining his childhood friend, Polixenes, King of Bohemia,

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who's been staying with him for nine months.

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Polixenes is ready to go home, but Leontes wants him to stay longer,

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so asks his wife, Hermione, to work her charms on him, which she does.

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Then, in the blink of an eye,

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Leontes is thrown into a jealous rage

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which plunges his family and his kingdom into chaos.

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Early on, there's no hint of what's to come.

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The Queen is proudly pregnant.

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Young Mamillius, heir to the throne, is admired by all.

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King Leontes looks happily on.

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Then, all of a sudden, Leontes is convinced that his wife

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is pregnant by his best friend, Polixenes.

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He even doubts the young prince's legitimacy.

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Give me the boy.

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I'm glad you did not nurse him. Though he does bear

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some signs of me, yet you have too much blood in him.

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-What is this? Sport?

-Bear the boy hence, he shall not come about her.

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Away with him, and let her sport herself with that she's big with,

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for tis Polixenes has made thee swell thus.

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Well, I'd say he had not.

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And I'll be sworn you would believe my saying.

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Howe'er you lean to the nayward.

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You, my Lords, look on her, mark her well, be but about to say,

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"she is a goodly lady," and the justice of your hearts

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will thereto add, "tis pity she's not honest."

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You, my lord,

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do but mistake.

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You have mistook, my lady, Polixenes for Leontes.

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I have said she's an adulteress I've said with whom,

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More, she's a traitor, and Camillo is a federary with her,

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and one that knows what she should shame to know herself,

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but with her most vile principal, that SHE'S a bed-swerver.

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The collapse of the court into chaos is rapid.

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Leontes sends the pregnant Hermione to prison

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and orders that the baby be cast out to die.

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Disastrously, his beloved son and heir, Mamillius,

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dies of grief over the treatment of his mother.

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And she, we're told, dies of grief soon after.

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The cracking of that world really was so powerful

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and so connected to the loss of the son.

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I'm curious about, in your production, how other characters

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responded to the death of the young boy?

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Well, I suppose it connects to a deep idea in the play about Eden,

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which is that there is mentioned quite often in the early

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part of the play, Polixenes, in particular talks about this,

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this sense of him and Leontes as having been young kids,

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he calls them twinned lambs, there are these young people.

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So, there is a feeling that before the terrible moment, the fall,

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connected by the jealousy, there was a time of innocence,

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and that innocence is for ever lost when Mamillius dies, it seems.

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Through his sexual jealousy, Leontes appears to have destroyed

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all hopes for his succession and legacy, but unbeknownst to him,

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the baby will survive, it is she who will give the royal house a future.

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An echo, perhaps, of James's hopes for his own children.

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16 years pass, Leontes' grief has worn him out.

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Then, in an extraordinary scene at the end of the play,

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Leontes visits a statue of Hermione,

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which magically comes to life before his eyes.

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Shakespeare had never attempted such a bold piece of staging...

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..and he could only do it now

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because in 1608 his company had taken possession

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of a second theatre.

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Blackfriars.

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An intimate indoor space, formally home

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to children's theatre companies,

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where the audience was smaller,

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but more upmarket than at the much larger Globe.

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Young writers like John Fletcher,

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who Shakespeare would later collaborate with,

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had been developing an increasingly sophisticated dramatic style there,

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and at London's other indoor stage, St Paul's.

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Located in the former Blackfriars monastery,

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at the heart of the city,

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nothing now remains of the theatre.

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But its ghost lingers in a solitary street sign.

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Playhouse Yard.

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Just across the Thames at the Globe though,

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work is about to begin on the construction

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of a replica indoor theatre.

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The first in Europe to be created

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out of the shell of an existing space.

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The Globe's resident academic, Farah Karim-Cooper,

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is immersed in the many questions that the new project is raising.

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Farah, I'm really excited to be here today.

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Tell me what I'm watching.

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Well, as part of the research for our indoor Jacobean theatre,

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we do practical experiments,

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and this one in particular is interested in the relationship

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between candlelight, cosmetics and costume in the indoor space.

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And what would be the difference between

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the kind of make-up you would use at the outdoor Globe

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and the indoor Jacobean theatre?

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The audience were sitting much more closely to the actors,

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some of them would have been on stage, as we know,

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so we use the same white base.

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On the Globe stage we would paint her much more thick, because people

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wouldn't have been able to see her from quite a distance away.

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Indoors you can see very well,

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but we would use on top of that a light dusting of crushed pearl,

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-which is what Amy's doing right now.

-Can I see that for a second?

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-So this is real crushed pearl?

-It is. It is real crushed pearl.

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In 1616, Thomas Tuke, who wrote the treatise against painting,

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said that the wealthier sort liked to use pearl on their faces.

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-So, this was expensive, then as now?

-It was expensive.

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Wow. So, what's the effect of crushed pearl?

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The effect is lustre, is the glow, the sort of neo-Platonic glow that

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beautiful women were supposed to have,

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and in the indoor theatre space,

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lit with candles, it would bring it out even more in candlelight.

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Ellie Piercy is playing Hermione in that crucial moment in

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The Winter's Tale when the curtain is drawn aside,

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and the statue is revealed.

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A moment that relies completely on visual impact.

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So, Leontes is standing here,

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looking at what he believes to be a statue of his wife.

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He's this close, wants to touch the paint on her face,

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and gets to watch, what to my mind is the most extraordinary scene

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in late Shakespeare, that clearly could only happen

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with this kind of atmospherics for its full effect.

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Yeah, absolutely, for its full intensity.

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It's a scene in which Shakespeare uses words about looking,

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marking, beholding over 20 times.

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So, he clearly wants us to focus on her in this moment.

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So, let's find out,

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I always knew that Shakespeare spoke of his audience as auditors.

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Late in his career he called them spectators.

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I can see why you're just drawn into the statue at this point.

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Absolutely. Shakespeare really wants you to look at her.

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As the music strikes, and the statue comes to life,

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Shakespeare pulls off a moment of pure theatrical magic.

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Leontes steps forward to embrace the living statue,

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and utters the words, "Oh, she's warm."

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And in that moment, somehow, his years of pain are washed away.

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In over 20 years of play writing,

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in which he had written over 30 plays,

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Shakespeare had never attempted anything as audacious

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as bringing a statue to life.

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What this experiment made so clear to me

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was that he must've understood

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that you needed the lighting, the intimacy, the music, the make-up,

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the atmosphere that Blackfriars afforded.

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Only in this theatre was it possible to create the kind of magic

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that we've just witnessed.

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Mamillius, though, the young prince presented

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as the future hope of the kingdom at the start of the play,

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is not brought back to life.

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But his sister, Perdita, is saved by a kindly shepherd,

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grows up in the countryside,

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and in the end marries Prince Florizel, son of Polixenes.

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The rift between the two families is healed,

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the legacy and succession of both kingdoms assured.

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In the real world,

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James's older children had also reached marriageable age.

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For both Henry and Elizabeth, the King still hoped to broker

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grand dynastic unions with European royal houses.

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Henry, now 16, formally became Prince of Wales in 1610.

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A key moment for James's dynastic goals that was

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immortalised in this beautiful deed of investiture.

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It's a gorgeous document, with a great seal attached

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by gold threads and lavish illustrations of a martial quality.

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And an extraordinary image.

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One significant both for the royal family and the nation.

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That rarest of images of Henry with his father, King James,

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at the very moment when he's become Britain's king in waiting.

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It marks a rite of passage, as Henry moves from child to adult,

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an adult with very real powers of his own.

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For England's people, it was also a moment of real significance.

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They had been ruled by three childless monarchs in a row.

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Now they had a Prince of Wales for the first time in over 60 years.

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Here at London's National Portrait Gallery,

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curator Catherine MacLeod is putting together

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the world's first major exhibition on the legacy of Prince Henry.

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What can you tell me about this painting?

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Well, what the portrait's about is Henry's wealth, Henry's status,

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all as expressed through material objects,

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and especially textiles, which we can easily forget

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were one of the most expensive things that people owned.

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And, of course, jewellery,

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and that's the other thing that's really prominent in this picture,

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Henry's wonderful hat jewels, with diamonds and pearls,

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and the brooch that has "HP," for Henricus Princeps.

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Then through the window, you can see what we think is

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the garden of Richmond Palace, which was one of Henry's palaces,

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and he had spent, and was spending, a lot of money on designing a fabulous

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garden for Richmond Palace, with all kinds of extraordinary things.

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A giant on a mountain, automata, fountains, caves,

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extraordinary things that really we don't associate with gardens today.

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It was one of the most expensive areas of Henry's patronage.

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So, I think this painting is really about him as a prince,

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a prince of status and wealth and material richness.

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Everybody thought he was very promising,

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he seemed to be good at everything,

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he conformed exactly to what people imagined a prince ought to be like.

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Do you have a favourite portrait, of these many portraits of Henry?

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Well, I think I have several favourites.

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I think one that sometimes gets a bit overlooked

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because it is not as glamorous as some of the other portraits,

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but it's really interesting, is this print of Henry,

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which shows him in armour to the waist.

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The head of Prince Henry is shown in profile,

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which is quite an unusual way of showing somebody at this time.

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And when profile portraits are made at this period,

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they usually refer explicitly to classical portraiture,

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to heads of Roman emperors on coins and medals,

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and that, I think, is being suggested by this head.

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The design of the whole print was made by Isaac Oliver,

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the miniaturist, and there's also a miniature by Oliver

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just of Henry's head in exactly that pose,

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showing his swept back hair and his big aquiline nose,

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a very distinctive profile,

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but in the miniature, Henry wears Roman armour

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and a Roman toga, so he's being explicitly compared to Roman heroes,

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Roman military heroes.

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Isaac Oliver, painter to King James,

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and one of the greatest miniaturists of the age,

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was one of the many artists and scientists

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drawn to Henry's new court.

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Over 100 books were dedicated to him,

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from a cutting edge work on perspective

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by the French engineer Salomon de Caus,

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who also designed Henry's gardens at Richmond,

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to the first English translation of Homer

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by the dramatist and poet, George Chapman.

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And Sir Walter Raleigh's remarkable History Of The World,

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a book that reflected England's widening horizons.

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And widening they were.

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At this moment, the English were establishing their first

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permanent colony in North America.

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Laying the foundations for the Empire, and for the future USA.

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This remarkable letter and map, showing the coast of Virginia,

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and the fledgling settlement of Jamestown,

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testify to the keen personal interest that Prince Henry

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took in the endeavour.

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Peter, I've never seen this map before, what am I looking at?

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You're looking at the first surviving map of the Jamestown colony.

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It was created in 1608,

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and is a copy of a draft map that was sent

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over to Prince Henry by its maker.

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There is Jamestown.

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But that black speck is the first established English colony,

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-permanent English colony, in the Americas.

-It is.

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And not only is Jamestown named here, and there's some

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Indian villages with Indian names,

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but it looks like the rivers themselves

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-have been given English names.

-They have indeed.

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Because here you see "King James, his river,"

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and here, in a tributary, you have "Prince Henry, his river."

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What's amazing to me is that Prince Henry is just

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a teenager at this time.

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Yet both the letter and the map are given to him,

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and directed towards his interest.

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So, he must have been extraordinarily

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interested in exploration.

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This is absolutely true. He was very much in the mood of the age.

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The Virginia venture, though, had bumpy beginnings.

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Most of the initial colonists were dead within the first year.

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But in 1609 a fleet, backed by hundreds of English investors,

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set sail to re-supply it.

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The ships, though, were hit by a huge storm,

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four made it to Jamestown.

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But one, the Sea Venture, was wrecked on Bermuda, with the death,

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it was feared, of all on board.

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News that was greeted with despair back in London.

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Then, in this town of news and gossip,

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came a truly unexpected report.

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The Sea Venture had indeed wrecked off the coast of Bermuda,

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but everyone on board had survived.

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Not only that, they had salvaged the ship, built two boats,

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and sailed nearly 800 miles to join their friends in Virginia,

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where their arrival was greeted as nothing less than miraculous.

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One of the passengers, William Strachey, wrote an account -

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A True Repertory of the Wracke of the Sea Venture.

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It was a tale not just of shipwreck and survival,

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but of an attempted coup among the survivors

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that was defeated by those in authority.

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Shakespeare surely read it, and saw its dramatic potential.

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In 1611, he produced a new play, magical, unsettling,

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bristling with the dynastic politics of the time.

0:24:560:24:59

The Tempest.

0:25:020:25:03

'The Royal Shakespeare Company is about to begin

0:25:200:25:24

'rehearsals for a new production of the play.'

0:25:240:25:28

One of the things that Shakespeare was really trying to do was

0:25:280:25:32

to begin by staging a storm.

0:25:320:25:36

'I am thrilled to have been asked to come in to talk to the cast.

0:25:360:25:40

'Something I've had a chance to do

0:25:400:25:42

'for the past few years with the RSC.'

0:25:420:25:45

I'm going to put you in a room,

0:25:450:25:47

much as Shakespeare was in a room at the time he was inspired

0:25:470:25:51

to write this play, so that you can feel how his imagination

0:25:510:25:56

was stimulated, or the juices started to get flowing for him.

0:25:560:26:01

Just feel the storm scene,

0:26:020:26:04

and think about how you are going to create The Tempest.

0:26:040:26:08

A true repertory of the wreck and redemption of this ship.

0:26:080:26:15

St James' day, July 24, being Monday.

0:26:150:26:18

"A dreadful storm and hideous began to blow out from the northeast,

0:26:180:26:23

"which swelling and roaring as if it were by fits,

0:26:230:26:28

"some hours with more violence than others,

0:26:280:26:30

"at length did beat all light from Heaven.

0:26:300:26:32

"For four-and-twenty hours, the storm in a restless tumult

0:26:320:26:35

"had blown so exceedingly

0:26:350:26:38

"as we could not apprehend in our imaginations

0:26:380:26:41

"any possibility of greater violence.

0:26:410:26:44

"Sir George Somers, who was in charge of the vessel,

0:26:440:26:49

"when no man dreamed of such happiness,

0:26:490:26:51

"had discovered and cried, 'land!'

0:26:510:26:54

"We found it to be the dangerous and dreaded island,

0:26:560:27:01

"or rather islands, of The Bermuda."

0:27:010:27:04

Unknown suppressed thing. Yeah, cool. Let's go from the top.

0:27:040:27:08

Is it helpful for you? Yeah, go on then.

0:27:080:27:10

Just even for the time...

0:27:100:27:12

Let's just do it, yeah, let's just do it. Fine.

0:27:120:27:13

The storm that opens the play has just happened.

0:27:130:27:18

The teenage Miranda has witnessed it, and is appalled at the suffering

0:27:190:27:23

she's seeing, thinking that her father,

0:27:230:27:27

the magician Prospero, caused it.

0:27:270:27:29

But I would fain die a dry death.

0:27:290:27:33

If by your art, my dearest father,

0:27:330:27:35

you have put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.

0:27:350:27:39

The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,

0:27:390:27:42

but that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek, dashes the fire out.

0:27:420:27:46

O, I have suffered With those that I saw suffer, a brave vessel,

0:27:460:27:51

who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,

0:27:510:27:55

Dash'd all to pieces.

0:27:550:27:58

OK, let's just pause there.

0:27:580:28:00

-I think, try, if you can, pulling down the very top.

-Yeah.

0:28:000:28:04

I think I'm just thinking storm.

0:28:040:28:07

Prospero tells her how they were washed up here 12 years earlier,

0:28:070:28:13

after he was overthrown in a coup by a treacherous brother.

0:28:130:28:17

My brother and thy uncle, call'd Antonio, I pray thee,

0:28:170:28:25

mark me that a brother should be so perfidious!

0:28:250:28:29

Being once perfected how to grant suits, how to deny them,

0:28:290:28:34

who to advance and who to trash for over-topping, new created

0:28:340:28:38

the creatures that were mine,

0:28:380:28:40

I say, or changed 'em, or else new form'd 'em,

0:28:400:28:44

having both the key of officer and office, set all hearts i' the state

0:28:440:28:49

to what tune pleased his ear, that now he was the ivy which had

0:28:490:28:56

hid my princely trunk, and suck'd my verdure out on't.

0:28:560:29:00

Be much bolder, and go, "Right, I'm going to listen."

0:29:000:29:03

'Prospero stage-manages everything in this play.

0:29:030:29:07

'His treacherous brother, Antonio,

0:29:100:29:13

'is among those shipwrecked on the isle,

0:29:130:29:16

'along with the King of Naples, his son Ferdinand, and assorted others.

0:29:160:29:22

'There's treachery and betrayal,

0:29:220:29:24

'just as there was on the Sea Venture.

0:29:240:29:26

'There's colonial politics and deep questions about the nature

0:29:280:29:31

'of leadership that resonate with the tensions of James's regime.'

0:29:310:29:35

It feels like the interest of the play lies

0:29:380:29:41

in the real dirty modern politics.

0:29:410:29:43

It's politics between houses, between countries,

0:29:430:29:46

between families, but it's also colonial politics.

0:29:460:29:49

I mean, colonial in the broadest possible sense,

0:29:490:29:51

not necessarily in a traditional British sense,

0:29:510:29:54

but you have a piece of land, someone has occupied it.

0:29:540:29:57

Now, someone else has occupied it and replaced them and enslaved them.

0:29:570:30:02

Somewhere in the past, there was a point where no-one occupied it

0:30:020:30:05

and so there is a whole series...

0:30:050:30:07

That's politics, that's incredibly political.

0:30:070:30:10

The political tensions in the play, though -

0:30:130:30:16

betrayal, colonialism, the nature of good government -

0:30:160:30:20

are resolved by a dynastic marriage.

0:30:200:30:24

Prospero engineers the joining of his daughter

0:30:280:30:32

with the young Prince Ferdinand.

0:30:320:30:35

We can imagine Shakespeare's audience feeling the echo

0:30:350:30:40

of James's plans for his own children and legacy.

0:30:400:30:44

Shakespeare's isle is a place not just of politics but also of magic.

0:30:480:30:55

To create the atmosphere, he turned to a resource

0:30:550:31:00

in which Blackfriars had long excelled - music.

0:31:000:31:05

The Tempest is rich in songs used not just as interludes

0:31:200:31:23

but as an active part of the narrative.

0:31:230:31:27

It is a song, Full Fathom Five,

0:31:330:31:35

sung by the sprite Ariel, that leads the young Ferdinand to Miranda

0:31:350:31:40

to seal Prospero's all-important dynastic ambitions.

0:31:400:31:45

# Full fathom five thy father lies

0:31:500:31:57

# Of his bones are coral made

0:31:570:32:02

# Those are pearls that were his eyes

0:32:020:32:10

# Nothing of him that doth fade... #

0:32:100:32:16

The words were Shakespeare's but to create the music,

0:32:160:32:20

who better for the King's player to collaborate with

0:32:200:32:23

than the King's lutenist?

0:32:230:32:25

# Hark! Now I hear them. #

0:32:250:32:29

The best court composer in the land, Robert Johnson.

0:32:290:32:34

So, tell me about Robert Johnson.

0:32:350:32:38

He's known as the King's lute player

0:32:380:32:41

because one of his main appointments was to the Court of James I

0:32:410:32:44

and he was really in charge, not only of lute music, but of

0:32:440:32:49

a lot of concerted music and music for plays and dramas as well.

0:32:490:32:53

So that was Full Fathom Five that Matthew sang so beautifully

0:32:530:32:58

and you played. That's one of the great moments in The Tempest

0:32:580:33:02

and I'm curious, when you're playing or thinking about this score,

0:33:020:33:06

what qualities this music has for you?

0:33:060:33:10

I think the main quality is magic.

0:33:100:33:13

I think that's what this song sets up

0:33:130:33:15

and what was needed at this moment in the play.

0:33:150:33:19

I think for the character of Ariel,

0:33:190:33:22

his magic is associated with his voice.

0:33:220:33:25

-It's the perfect play for magical effects.

-Absolutely.

0:33:250:33:28

I can just imagine a conversation

0:33:280:33:30

between these two extraordinary artists,

0:33:300:33:32

each one at the top of his game saying,

0:33:320:33:35

"Look, I'm creating this play about magic.

0:33:350:33:37

"We're doing it in Blackfriars and then moving to the Globe.

0:33:370:33:40

"I need something special.

0:33:400:33:42

"Here are some lyrics I've mapped out.

0:33:420:33:44

"Can you create something with this?"

0:33:440:33:46

That's right. I think the crucial thing is that it's a creative team.

0:33:460:33:51

Shakespeare could bring the text

0:33:510:33:52

and Robert Johnson could bring an idea of the melody

0:33:520:33:55

and then they could hand it on to whoever was singing and playing Ariel

0:33:550:34:00

to add some of his own performer improvisation

0:34:000:34:04

or his own vocal magic.

0:34:040:34:06

For some, though, the refinement and theatricality of plays

0:34:140:34:18

like The Tempest and The Winter's Tale

0:34:180:34:20

was all going in the wrong direction.

0:34:200:34:24

Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's great rival,

0:34:260:34:30

was no stranger to the rough end of Jacobean life.

0:34:300:34:34

He was a former bricklayer,

0:34:340:34:36

imprisoned for killing a fellow actor in a duel

0:34:360:34:39

and twice jailed for causing offence on stage.

0:34:390:34:43

His play, Bartholomew Fayre, written a few years later,

0:34:430:34:48

was set in the rowdiest annual gathering in London

0:34:480:34:52

and it begins with a sideswipe at Shakespeare,

0:34:520:34:56

dismissing him as one of those "that beget tales and tempests

0:34:560:35:01

"and such like drolleries."

0:35:010:35:03

The play has a terrific opening.

0:35:050:35:08

A crotchety old stage keeper comes on to sweep up

0:35:080:35:12

and he starts to complain that the playwright Jonson

0:35:120:35:16

is out of tune with the times.

0:35:160:35:18

He says, He does not hit the humours. He doesn't know them.

0:35:180:35:23

He has not conversed with the Bartholomew-birds, as they say.

0:35:230:35:28

But, of course, it's Jonson who knows these things

0:35:280:35:31

and not, by implication, Shakespeare.

0:35:310:35:34

The play, for me, is a direct challenge to the Tempest.

0:35:340:35:37

You don't need to send your characters to an uninhabited island

0:35:370:35:41

to show what life is really like.

0:35:410:35:43

Just bring them to a no-holds-barred London fair

0:35:430:35:48

where all humanity is on display, and monstrousness too.

0:35:480:35:53

Bartholomew Fayre was a wild creation,

0:35:540:35:57

first performed at London's Hope Theatre,

0:35:570:36:01

famous for alternating between plays and bear-baiting.

0:36:010:36:05

When Samuel Pepys saw the play many years later,

0:36:070:36:10

he called it profane and abusive.

0:36:100:36:14

Jonson, you feel, would have been delighted.

0:36:140:36:17

The two plays, Bartholomew Fayre and The Tempest,

0:36:190:36:22

have a lot to tell us about the sheer range of writing

0:36:220:36:25

and of audience sophistication

0:36:250:36:27

at this, the height of the Jacobean moment.

0:36:270:36:30

Jonson and Shakespeare were both at the top of their game,

0:36:300:36:34

packing them in, taking on the great issues of their day.

0:36:340:36:38

It's striking to me that each would turn to comedy.

0:36:380:36:42

Jonson, sharp and satiric.

0:36:420:36:45

Shakespeare's, dark and philosophical.

0:36:450:36:48

King James himself was part of this high-achieving Jacobean moment.

0:36:520:36:56

Yes, there were scandals and political problems

0:36:580:37:01

but he was also an intellectual,

0:37:010:37:04

the most widely published author ever to sit on England's throne.

0:37:040:37:09

An expert philosopher and theologian who left his own literary legacy.

0:37:090:37:15

He took the lead in the creation of a book

0:37:160:37:20

that deservedly still bears his name.

0:37:200:37:23

Commissioned by him in 1604 and finally published in 1611,

0:37:240:37:30

the year Shakespeare wrote The Tempest.

0:37:300:37:33

Here it is, the King James Bible.

0:37:350:37:38

If any object stands for what was best about James's legacy,

0:37:390:37:45

this is it.

0:37:450:37:46

The Puritans had asked for a new translation of the Bible

0:37:460:37:50

and James had obliged, overseeing the process

0:37:500:37:53

that led to what is certainly

0:37:530:37:55

one of the greatest achievements of this age or of any age.

0:37:550:38:00

To create it, the King assembled six collaborative teams

0:38:020:38:06

of the best scholars and theologians in the land.

0:38:060:38:09

Taking as their base text the 40-year-old Bishops' Bible,

0:38:090:38:14

their task was to create a new English scripture

0:38:140:38:18

of unparalleled beauty and theological rigour.

0:38:180:38:23

Here's one example of the magic they were working.

0:38:240:38:28

When they came to the 23rd Psalm in the Bishops' Bible,

0:38:280:38:32

they found, "God is my shepherd, therefore I can lack nothing."

0:38:320:38:37

By the time the various committees had hammered out

0:38:370:38:41

and reforged this line, we come with the King James Bible to

0:38:410:38:46

"The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want."

0:38:460:38:51

It's perfect.

0:38:510:38:53

Language that rivals Shakespeare

0:38:530:38:56

and would leave a lasting impression on the English language.

0:38:560:39:01

King James's dynastic ambitions too were taking shape.

0:39:050:39:10

He still hoped to find a high-born European Catholic bride for Henry.

0:39:140:39:18

In 1612, he secured for Elizabeth an excellent match

0:39:200:39:25

to the great Protestant prince, Frederick of Bohemia.

0:39:250:39:30

He arrived in London that October to meet his bride

0:39:320:39:35

and be part of the arrangements for their wedding.

0:39:350:39:39

This really was life imitating art,

0:39:430:39:46

a key moment in James's regime echoing both The Winter's Tale

0:39:460:39:50

and The Tempest, where the marriages of young royals ensured peace,

0:39:500:39:57

prosperity and a satisfying comic resolution.

0:39:570:40:01

But in the real world,

0:40:050:40:06

it was tragedy, not comedy, that lay in wait.

0:40:060:40:11

In late October,

0:40:290:40:30

the 18-year-old Prince Henry went swimming in the Thames.

0:40:300:40:35

By November 5th, when England celebrated

0:40:370:40:40

the seventh anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot,

0:40:400:40:43

the Prince had become gravely ill,

0:40:430:40:46

perhaps with typhoid contracted from the filthy river.

0:40:460:40:50

Doctors were called in to save him but to no avail.

0:40:520:40:57

The next day he was dead.

0:40:590:41:01

For four weeks, his body lay in state at St James's,

0:41:070:41:11

the same palace that 400 years later would be the focus of another

0:41:110:41:17

untimely royal death, Princess Diana's.

0:41:170:41:22

The musical and literary response

0:41:280:41:31

testified to the scale of national grief for the Prince.

0:41:310:41:35

John Taylor's Great Britaine, All In Blacke

0:41:360:41:41

with its black printed pages.

0:41:410:41:44

The great poet John Donne's Elegy on the Death of Prince Henry.

0:41:440:41:49

A funeral poem, Epicede, on an event for which only one word would do -

0:41:500:41:58

"disastrous."

0:41:580:41:59

What do you think the impact was on King James

0:42:060:42:08

and the rest of the royal family?

0:42:080:42:10

The Italian ambassador reported that James,

0:42:100:42:15

in the middle of doing official business,

0:42:150:42:18

would break off and cry out, "Henry is dead, Henry is dead!"

0:42:180:42:21

when it just overwhelmed him.

0:42:210:42:23

Anne was devastated, shut herself in her room.

0:42:260:42:28

There's a real sense of there being a close family there,

0:42:280:42:31

in spite of the fact that they lived in their separate palaces

0:42:310:42:35

and they had their own households and so on.

0:42:350:42:37

There was absolute devastation at Henry's death.

0:42:370:42:40

Also on the part of all the ordinary people.

0:42:400:42:43

There was just extraordinary mourning.

0:42:430:42:46

He had an enormous funeral with 2,000 official mourners

0:42:460:42:50

and people lining the streets.

0:42:500:42:52

In effect, it was the kind of funeral that would have been given

0:42:520:42:55

to a monarch, not to a prince.

0:42:550:42:58

There were parallel funerals, without the body, of course,

0:42:580:43:01

in Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge,

0:43:010:43:04

as well as the main actual funeral in London.

0:43:040:43:08

There are stories of people weeping as the coffin passed.

0:43:080:43:11

It was a terrible moment

0:43:110:43:13

in which everyone's hopes and expectations were gone.

0:43:130:43:17

With the royal family and nation still in deep grief,

0:43:220:43:26

Elizabeth's wedding to her Protestant prince went ahead

0:43:260:43:31

on Valentine's Day, 1613.

0:43:310:43:33

It was a bittersweet moment for the regime,

0:43:380:43:41

captured movingly in Elizabeth's wedding portrait.

0:43:410:43:45

She's still wearing a mourning armband for her dead brother

0:43:470:43:50

and the black brooch carries an image of him too.

0:43:500:43:55

Shakespeare and the King's Men were in attendance

0:44:000:44:04

to provide the entertainment at what must have been

0:44:040:44:07

muted wedding celebrations at the Banqueting House.

0:44:070:44:10

One of the plays performed was The Winter's Tale.

0:44:120:44:15

The bucolic image of the play's happy couple

0:44:170:44:21

represented all that was hopeful in this real-life dynastic wedding.

0:44:210:44:26

Everyone watching, though, must also surely have been thinking

0:44:270:44:32

about the death of the young prince Mamillius, hope of the kingdom

0:44:320:44:36

at the start of the play, just as the death of Henry

0:44:360:44:39

could not but cast its shadow over the whole affair.

0:44:390:44:43

Fate had delivered a tragic blow with the death of Henry,

0:44:520:44:56

softened by the political success of Elizabeth's wedding.

0:44:560:45:01

But just months later, a humiliating divorce trial

0:45:030:45:07

triggered a series of events that would do lasting damage to the King.

0:45:070:45:13

His daughter's wedding was not the first time

0:45:140:45:17

James had played matchmaker.

0:45:170:45:19

Seven years earlier, the joining of two teenagers,

0:45:230:45:27

Frances Howard and Robert, Earl of Essex,

0:45:270:45:31

had been designed to heal a rift between two rival noble families.

0:45:310:45:36

It had been an unhappy match and they had spent much time apart.

0:45:390:45:43

In the spring of 1613, Frances filed for divorce

0:45:500:45:54

claiming that the marriage had never been consummated.

0:45:540:45:58

The 21-year-old Essex hotly denied a slur on his manhood -

0:46:020:46:07

what young man wouldn't?

0:46:070:46:09

And so was summoned here, to Lambeth Palace, to answer the questions

0:46:090:46:14

of the Archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow commissioners.

0:46:140:46:18

And what questions! Was he capable of having an erection?

0:46:180:46:24

Had he had sex with his young wife?

0:46:240:46:26

If he couldn't with her, did he think he could with another woman?

0:46:260:46:30

The whole thing must have been mortifying to everyone concerned.

0:46:300:46:34

Frances, too, was examined

0:46:340:46:36

to determine whether or not she was still a virgin.

0:46:360:46:40

It was concluded that she was

0:46:400:46:43

though she was veiled at the time,

0:46:430:46:45

leading some to speculate she had pulled the old substitute trick.

0:46:450:46:51

Virgin or not, wedding bells rang out again for her

0:46:560:47:00

just six months later. Who did she marry?

0:47:000:47:04

None other than Robert Carr, the King's favourite,

0:47:050:47:09

and probably lover for the last few years.

0:47:090:47:14

They married with the King's blessing, though.

0:47:140:47:18

James even visited them in bed the morning after,

0:47:180:47:22

presenting them with a jewel worth £3,000, a small fortune.

0:47:220:47:28

Just like the wedding seven years earlier,

0:47:300:47:34

this was James's realpolitik at work.

0:47:340:47:37

The Howard faction still needed to be held in check.

0:47:380:47:42

Who better to plant at the heart of their family

0:47:420:47:46

than his own loyal favourite?

0:47:460:47:48

But unlike The Winter's Tale and The Tempest,

0:47:520:47:54

this story did not have a happy ending.

0:47:540:47:57

Rather, a scandalous one.

0:47:580:48:01

The denouement of this sordid tale would have delighted

0:48:010:48:05

even the most jaded tabloid editor.

0:48:050:48:08

It turns out that two years after the wedding,

0:48:080:48:11

Frances Howard was implicated in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury,

0:48:110:48:16

an adviser to her husband who had opposed the marriage.

0:48:160:48:20

Her husband, too, was soon implicated in the plot.

0:48:200:48:24

The two would have faced execution if King James had not intervened

0:48:240:48:29

but they would spend the next five and a half years there

0:48:290:48:32

in the Tower of London.

0:48:320:48:34

Given James's intimate connection with the young couple,

0:48:340:48:38

his involvement in the scandal would do little

0:48:380:48:41

to enhance his standing in the nation.

0:48:410:48:44

In this sharp political world that seemed tainted with scandal

0:48:470:48:51

and chicanery, Shakespeare turned to a younger writer,

0:48:510:48:57

John Fletcher, to collaborate on a play with its own share

0:48:570:49:02

of sex, scandal and divorce - King Henry VIII.

0:49:020:49:06

In revisiting the life and times of Henry VIII,

0:49:230:49:28

a ruler who had redrawn England's religious and political map,

0:49:280:49:32

Shakespeare had a chance to reflect one last time

0:49:320:49:36

on the nature of transformational leadership.

0:49:360:49:40

The play is anything but a celebration.

0:49:430:49:46

The King veers from slippery and high-handed to disloyal and brutal.

0:49:470:49:53

Early on, the Duke of Buckingham is tried and executed,

0:49:530:49:58

protesting his innocence to the end.

0:49:580:50:01

Cardinal Wolsey, the King's enforcer,

0:50:010:50:04

is revealed to be a manipulator and a liar.

0:50:040:50:08

At the heart of the play, Catherine of Aragon,

0:50:100:50:14

the King's loyal wife of 20 years, is dragged through a divorce trial

0:50:140:50:21

railing against the lies told against her.

0:50:210:50:24

Henry VIII, although it sounds when we call it Henry VIII

0:50:260:50:31

like a history play, was in fact, it seems, called All Is True

0:50:310:50:34

when it was first performed, which is a wonderfully playful title,

0:50:340:50:39

because not all that's in it is true, and since what the play offers

0:50:390:50:43

is a set of conflicting truths, they cannot all be true

0:50:430:50:47

because they don't actually match each other.

0:50:470:50:49

We hear information from one character

0:50:490:50:52

which contradicts information from another character.

0:50:520:50:56

In a sense, what you see when faced with political engagements

0:50:560:51:01

that are a bit awkward to dramatise, is the dramatist really relishing

0:51:010:51:06

the dramatic moment and making good theatre out of it.

0:51:060:51:09

The play culminates in a great moment of theatre.

0:51:110:51:15

The birth of Henry's daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth I.

0:51:150:51:20

A symbol of hope in this troubled regime.

0:51:210:51:24

The scene also looks further forward

0:51:270:51:30

to the reign of Elizabeth's successor, King James himself.

0:51:300:51:35

"He shall flourish," says Archbishop Cranmer,

0:51:380:51:42

"and like a mountain cedar

0:51:420:51:44

"reach his branches to all the plains about him.

0:51:440:51:47

"Our children's children shall see this and bless heaven."

0:51:470:51:52

It sounds like a eulogy

0:51:540:51:56

but given the scandals and problems of the reign,

0:51:560:51:59

Shakespeare's audience must surely have felt a hint of irony, too.

0:51:590:52:03

The play is characterised by a certain political, social

0:52:060:52:10

and cultural unease.

0:52:100:52:12

What was remarkable about Shakespeare's ability

0:52:120:52:15

in that play as in so many, is he was able to produce something

0:52:150:52:20

that couldn't be objected to politically and yet which engaged

0:52:200:52:24

with all sorts of complicated issues that would have encouraged

0:52:240:52:29

the audience to think and reflect on what they were seeing,

0:52:290:52:33

what they were hearing.

0:52:330:52:34

It is at least as much a critical play

0:52:340:52:37

as it is in any way propagandistic.

0:52:370:52:40

It's a very complicated play which doesn't seem complicated

0:52:400:52:44

when you watch it. It seems to be about ceremony,

0:52:440:52:47

about processions, about royal grandeur,

0:52:470:52:51

but all the time it is thinking about the lies that are being told.

0:52:510:52:56

It is thinking about the ways in which Henry tries to cover up

0:52:560:53:00

for his own crassness, his own violence,

0:53:000:53:02

his own unpleasantness and his own weakness.

0:53:020:53:06

The image of the monarch that is represented in that play

0:53:070:53:11

is a very ambivalent one.

0:53:110:53:12

It's extraordinary that ten years in to James's reign,

0:53:210:53:25

Shakespeare's view of monarchy remained so ambivalent.

0:53:250:53:29

It's as if the uncertainties and anxieties that had clouded

0:53:300:53:35

the early Jacobean years had never really diminished.

0:53:350:53:39

By 1614, James's reign was not over

0:53:420:53:47

but his greatest political ambitions were.

0:53:470:53:50

After years of wrangling,

0:53:520:53:54

Parliament refused to grant a massive loan

0:53:540:53:56

to deal with royal debt.

0:53:560:53:58

His most cherished dream, the Union of England and Scotland,

0:54:000:54:04

was now dead in the water.

0:54:040:54:06

Even the triumph of his daughter Elizabeth's dynastic marriage

0:54:110:54:15

turned to disaster.

0:54:150:54:17

Her husband was ousted from his Bohemian kingdom

0:54:170:54:21

and the couple spent the rest of their lives in exile.

0:54:210:54:25

Elizabeth became known ever after as the Winter Queen.

0:54:270:54:32

Shakespeare too suffered disaster.

0:54:380:54:41

During a performance of Henry VIII at the Globe in 1613,

0:54:430:54:48

a theatrical cannon misfired.

0:54:480:54:52

The thatched roof caught fire and the theatre burned to the ground.

0:54:520:54:58

Shakespeare, King's Man for a decade,

0:55:050:55:08

professional playwright for nearly 25 years,

0:55:080:55:11

would write no more for the stage.

0:55:110:55:14

He would turn to his rural Stratford estate,

0:55:140:55:18

dying in April 1616 at the age of 52.

0:55:180:55:23

He had been the most successful dramatist

0:55:270:55:30

of an extraordinary Jacobean moment.

0:55:300:55:33

His legacy, though, was far from assured.

0:55:350:55:38

But some of the players of the King's Men spent several years

0:55:430:55:47

on a labour of love, saving for all time

0:55:470:55:49

the Shakespeare we know and revere today.

0:55:490:55:54

Here it is, the First Folio of Shakespeare's Complete Works.

0:55:570:56:04

36 plays published in 1623.

0:56:040:56:09

No matter how many times I examine it,

0:56:120:56:15

it's always a huge thrill to turn the pages

0:56:150:56:19

of Shakespeare's First Folio.

0:56:190:56:22

It's one of the greatest treasures of this Jacobean moment

0:56:220:56:25

and of all literary history.

0:56:250:56:28

To understand what's truly miraculous about this volume,

0:56:280:56:33

you need to remember that only half of Shakespeare's plays

0:56:330:56:37

were published during his lifetime.

0:56:370:56:40

If his fellow players had not gathered together

0:56:400:56:42

his collected works, many of his greatest plays -

0:56:420:56:46

Macbeth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, The Tempest -

0:56:460:56:50

would have been lost forever.

0:56:500:56:53

King James died two years after the publication of the First Folio.

0:56:560:57:01

He never rectified his damaged relationship with Parliament

0:57:010:57:07

nor, fatally, did his son Charles,

0:57:070:57:10

whose struggles with England's MPs

0:57:100:57:13

led to civil war and his own execution.

0:57:130:57:17

The fate of his regime has largely consigned King James

0:57:200:57:24

to the dustbin of history.

0:57:240:57:27

Yet the legacy of this brilliant but flawed monarch lives on.

0:57:290:57:34

The King James Bible,

0:57:340:57:37

the fifth of November,

0:57:370:57:41

the vision of a united Britain under the Union Jack

0:57:410:57:46

that finally came to pass a century later.

0:57:460:57:49

He presided over a decade of unsurpassed creativity

0:57:490:57:54

when the work of a dazzling array of writers, artists and composers

0:57:540:58:01

lit up the stages and pages of this remarkable Jacobean moment.

0:58:010:58:06

Above all, a king and a reign

0:58:090:58:11

that fired the imagination of its brightest star,

0:58:110:58:16

William Shakespeare, the King's Man.

0:58:160:58:20

And that star still burns bright.

0:58:230:58:27

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