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Dateline: 21st April, 2010
Read Not Dead at the Globe Four rarely-performed Jacobean and Restoration plays will be revived this season at Shakespeare's Globe, as part of the ongoing Read Not Dead series.
Globe actors will present the ‘performances with scripts’ to complement the theatre season, including Thomas Betterton’s alternative King Henry IV (1700). Betterton decided to re-focus events on the comedic character of Sir John Falstaff and heighten the play’s humour – not to mention creating a great role for himself! Betterton’s play perfectly complements Shakespeare’s own Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, which play in repertoire throughout the season.
John Banks’ 1682 play Virtue Betrayed, or Anna Bullen picks up where Shakespeare’s Henry VIII left off, scrutinising Henry’s reign by concentrating on the fate and external pressures imposed on Anne Boleyn. Featuring the rampant king himself, Machiavellian schemers and even an eloquent toddler, the play was successfully staged for over fifty years alongside Shakespeare’s. Audiences can compare the tale of Henry’s most famous wife with two other portrayals playing at the Globe this season – Shakespeare’s Henry VIII and Howard Brenton’s new play Anne Boleyn.
John Fletcher succeeded Shakespeare as in-house playwright for the King’s Men, and in turn was succeeded himself by Philip Massinger. Fletcher and Massinger’s 1662 collaboration The Sea Voyage begins with a storm straight from The Tempest and takes us to a pair of islands, one barren, one lush. The former is home to several shipwrecked Europeans, the latter to a tribe of Amazons dreaming lustfully about men when the play’s hero Albert swims ashore...
Rounding off the Read Not Dead season, Fletcher’s earlier play The Chances (1617) is a Jacobean tour de force which unrolls a plot of revenge, farce, beautiful women and a mysterious package... Wandering Bologna’s streets in the dusk, Spaniard Don John is handed the bundle by a waiting-woman. Opening it - expecting money or jewels - he finds himself quite literally holding the baby.
Globe Education has staged - and recorded live for archive in front of audiences - over 150 plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries since the Read Not Dead series began in 1995. Audience members can also attend a Rarely Played discussion prior to each reading. Details
Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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