Henry Bolingbroke (Richard II) and Edward II (Edward II)

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About Liam Brennan

This is Liam's third season at Shakespeare's Globe. Last year, he played Orsino in Twelfth Night and in 2001 he played Macduff in Macbeth. He has also performed at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, the Traverse Theatre, the Salisbury Playhouse and the Sheffield Crucible. His television credits include Swine Fever and Taggart.

Character Notes 1

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

I was offered the part of Edward in Edward II last September, before I finished the 2002 Globe Theatre Season (where I played Orsino in Twelfth Night), and I accepted straight away. I live in Glasgow and I have been working on different projects in the meantime, but I did spend quite a lot of time between September and Christmas reading Edward II and familiarising myself with the play. Last season I also expressed an interest in the role of Bolingbroke in Richard II, but I had to wait a while to hear about that. I think that both Mark Rylance [Artistic Director, Shakespeare's Globe] and Tim Carroll [Master of Play, Richard II] felt that it might be too much for me to play both Edward and Bolingbroke; I love to be busy, but I’m a bit of a workaholic! Still, I knew that in terms of energy levels and workload I would be OK, and around Christmastime, Tim phoned to offer me the role of Bolingbroke as well. I started looking at Richard II during January and February and I actually did something I’ve never done before: I learnt quite a lot of the lines for Bolingbroke. I didn’t learn all of them but I probably know between about half and three-quarters at this point. It just felt like the right thing to do. A lot of actors say you shouldn’t do that, but I think so far it has been very helpful for me. People say you make lots of decisions whilst learning lines that you shouldn’t make before the rehearsal process, but I think I’ve managed to learn the lines with a kind of neutrality. I hope I did. I think if you have that kind of awareness then you can control what happens as you learn. Learning some of the text has given me the opportunity to start looking at the role of Edward before we start rehearsing. It has bought me that luxury. I might decide to wait, however, and just dive into Edward when we start rehearsals as a full company. My plan was to get to the point where I had that choice.

My first day back at the Globe was great. This is my third season which I can’t really quite believe. The first few days of rehearsals are always very similar: they follow an established pattern of meeting and greeting, talks from various different people and a tour of the building. We were also taken for an exploration of the Globe Theatre, just like the school groups and the public do when they come to visit. So that was all very nice and reassuring and welcoming and familiar. There are quite a lot of old faces and there are also five or six new boys in our company. I think that is a nice balance of old and new. There is a lot of talk about how extremely valuable it is to have played this space before – which of course it is – but I always think you can learn things from people who haven’t been here and experienced the space before. They will always have a sense of freshness and an openness to the unique Globe stage. Also, because several members of the company played the 2002 season with me, the new actors help to differentiate this season from the last one. It is a new experience for everyone.

At the end of the first day we all visited Middle Temple Hall where the production of Richard II will begin its run. I hadn’t been there before because although I was in Twelfth Night at the Globe last year I wasn’t in the Middle Temple production. It's a very, very beautiful place. I’m sure it will be lovely to play Richard II there. It's very atmospheric and very dark. I’d passed it a few times not realising I was so close to it, but it was a very special experience to go inside for the first time. The Middle Temple Hall space will provide a new challenge for me. It will be very different from the Globe space. I’ve never done a ‘Globe show’ anywhere other than on the Globe stage. At the moment we are reflecting the dimensions of the Hall in our rehearsal room: we have the long rectangular playing space marked out on the floor with the entrances marked at either end. Also, rather than imagining the audience of the Globe, who would be all around us, we are working and playing to three straight sides. We are trying to picture the Middle Temple space rather than the Globe space. We then have a little bit of a gap to adapt between finishing the run at Middle Temple Hall and starting technical rehearsals at the Globe, but it's only about four days I think!

After the first day we had a very gentle start really. We read through scenes as a company and talked about them; trying to make sure everyone understood everything that had been said. I spent time reading around the history of the period. I think the play is fairly clear about what happens but there is no harm in learning more: it makes me feel more comfortable if I have factual information that I can draw on for the role. Gathering information about who Bolingbroke was and where he came from was very useful because in a sense I feel that I’ve done a lot of the internal preparation for the role. This solid, internal grounding means that I will have less physical work to do externally. Every actor does their own amount and version of this private work, but we do talk about it together as a group; over the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of sharing of books and facts and things to help us give the flavour of the time and the period.

Last week we went off to the country and stayed for four days at a Victorian country house called Gaunt's House, which is built on the site of John of Gaunt's estate. While we were there we had an opportunity to improvise some of the scenes which occur outside of the play's action, for example, the death of Richard's father, King Edward IV, and Richard II's coronation. We spent time working through the scenes in our own words to make sure we understood the motivation and objective behind each line. We had the chance to try some of the scenes outdoors and to have a go at outdoor pursuits from the time such as archery and javelin throwing. We really came together I guess as a group. Everyone was away from their normal routine and environment for a few days and that was really good for us as it enabled us to focus on the play. I will remember those experiences. It is not so much that you can actually replicate something that happened there; it's more about retaining a sense of the flavour. It just stays at the back of your mind and hopefully will somehow feed into your performance.

Yesterday we began a more traditional rehearsal process of working through the play scene by scene. Within that framework a certain amount of time is spent on company dance rehearsals, and some sessions are dedicated purely to looking at verse, voice or movement. Time is also spent looking at character. I’m never quite sure what people mean when they talk about ‘working on character’. I find ‘character’ a slightly funny word. David Mamet has written a book (True and False – Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor: New York, Faber and Faber, 1997) which investigates this notion of ‘character’, and it's not particularly radical, but I very much agree with him. I just don’t find ‘character’ a particularly helpful word. I think that what we call the illusion of character is a marriage between the actor and the words on the page. I think you can become familiar with the role by just immersing yourself completely in the script. The trouble with ‘character’ is that for a lot of people it is an image which separates the actor from the person they’re pretending to be. You actually cannot escape or hide or run away from the fact that it is you up there on the open stage. You cannot give yourself a safety pack in performance by creating a character that is very, very different and alien from you. You really can’t hide anything. I think the illusion of character is created when you try not to put on things, or not to hide behind things, but just try and accept the fact that it is you and say the words bravely and truthfully and honestly.

Richard II will be an original practices production (see glossary for definition of original practices) and I am very much looking forward to it. It is surprising how quickly the original practice begins to feel ‘normal’ for the actor. I certainly found that last year with Twelfth Night. You feel as though the play has been freed up. When I first thought about doing Richard II and Edward II I was just very excited about doing those plays and it was down the line a little bit that I found out that they happened to be original practice productions. My approach to rehearsal would be the same regardless of whether this was an original practices production or a modern production. Original practices are always at the back of my mind but I don’t consider things any differently during the moment of working. I’m sure everyone is different. This morning in the rehearsal room, for example, some people were saying "should I be standing like this" or "should I be moving like that" because we believe that is how actors might have stood or moved in Shakespeare's time. I personally don’t find it helpful to be thinking like that at this stage. I just want to create a realistic person and then all of the other original practices information will just feed itself in. Apart from anything else, if you are wearing authentic armour you are forced to stand with a certain posture: you can’t move in the way you would in modern-day jeans when you are wearing armour because you physically can’t. Very soon in the rehearsal process I think it will simply become accepted as the way in which we are working for this particular production and will hopefully seem very comfortable for the actors involved. For example, it's amazing how quickly you begin to see the men playing women as women, really just because you have to!

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Character Notes 2

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Three weeks to go now. We are exactly half way through our rehearsal period and suddenly, the opening night seems very close! It's a little disheartening at this time because you've got more questions about what you're doing than you've got answers. You are right slap bang in the middle of lots of acting problems that you haven't solved yet and you keep thinking "oh no, we are half way through!". But by the same token, I think you do have a kind of 'actor body clock' that tunes in to the length of the rehearsal period: therefore, you shouldn't panic because your brain knows and your heart knows that it'll all be ok and so you just have to get on with solving those problems in your own time. It can feel a little as though you're lost in the forest at this stage and it's important to keep telling yourself that it really will all be OK. You do seem to make bigger strides the further you get on in the rehearsal process: it is certainly the case for me and I think most people would agree. As you're exposed to the play more and more, it gets better and better. You get the chance to do things a third and a fourth and a fifth time, as apposed to the first and the second and the third time. So it all just becomes more familiar. We, the company, are getting to know each other better as a group of people too. You get more relaxed and more comfortable with each other and therefore you find the courage to get a little bit braver in front of each other during rehearsals. Self-consciousness is beginning to wear off now: for people who are total strangers it's very hard to get up in the rehearsal room and be emotional and take chances and risk getting it wrong and risk making fools of ourselves. You need to feel comfortable as a group so that you can risk getting it badly wrong and so then you can say that is definitely not the way to go with the scene. I have to try things out to get them out of my system, but it takes a lot of courage.

We have now started rehearsing the scenes in a more traditional way. For each session a scene is selected and we typically start by sitting round and reading it - just once and relatively quickly - and then we all give a few quick thoughts about it. Basically after that we just get up on our feet and try out the scene. It is all very practical and we make the decisions on our feet. All of the scenes still feel fairly problematic! We are doing Act 5 at the moment. Today we have been working on Act 5, Scene 3 and it is very hard indeed. The Duchess of York and the Duke of York both come knocking on my door with different requests for what should happen to their son, Aumerle, because he has been caught out conspiring against me. There are several sequences in Richard II, and this is one of them, where I don't say very much and at the moment I'm not sure why. I seem to let people do an awful lot of talking. I keep thinking it would have been easier if Shakespeare had written the scene so that Bolingbroke could just cut across them and tell them what is going to happen because he has the power to do that. In fact it is written so that I do an awful lot of listening. I'm not sure why I don't just interrupt them. I seem to make my decision about what is going to happen to Aumerle at the beginning of the scene and yet I still let people go on and on and on. At the moment I'm trying to find a truthfulness to his silence, when in fact he is the person who can call all the shots and knows his own opinion from the very start. I think it's important as an actor to find reasons for Bolingbroke's behaviour: I have to solve the problem. You could just say 'because the playwright tells you'; there is an element of truth to that but I do need to find a sustainable explanation as well. I have thought of one reason why Bolingbroke lets them go on at great length: sometimes it can be very powerful to let someone talk too much. There are certainly occasions with Richard where that is the key to it. I think Bolingbroke lets Richard ramble on because he knows what Richard is saying isn't doing himself any good. It is the same in this scene with the Duchess of York. So, I have found a possible reason, but the challenge is to be able to communicate this reason to the audience. I don't know if one should even try to. Sometimes it's best to just have the thoughts to justify it for yourself. Some people in the audience will pick up on it. It's not always right to demonstrate - because we don't do that in real life. Sometimes we are just content with the knowledge that we have and we don't particularly show how we are feeling on the inside. I think we should obviously do the same in plays as we do in life. Some people will not see the reason whilst other people will think 'I bet I know what that guy is thinking - he is not showing me but if that was me I'd be feeling such and such'. The audiences here are big and hopefully there will always be a proportion of people who will share your thoughts.

I made an interesting little discovery today. I came in this morning with what I thought was a good idea for a cut of three lines of mine, but interestingly I found after doing it two or three times that actually I was wrong. I discovered it was one thing to sit and read it on the page and think 'I don't need those lines' when actually they are quite important. Sometimes you only find these things out when you're up on your feet and speaking the lines out loud. In the scene (Act 5, Scene 3) the Duke of York tells me that his son, Aumerle, has been conspiring against me. York basically says to Bolingbroke, 'kill him - I may be his father but he's a traitor so just kill him'. I read the proof the Duke of York has given me of this and then I begin my speech; "O loyal father of a treacherous son"(5.3.59). I had the idea that I could then cut the next three lines and skip to the end of the speech where Bolingbroke pardons Aumerle because of the Duke's honesty:

"Thy overflow of good converts to bad,
And thy abundant goodness shall excuse
This deadly blot in thy disgressing son." (5.3.63-5)

The three lines I'd been cutting were an ornate little description after "O loyal father of a treacherous son" where I compare the Duke to a fountain:

"Thou sheer immaculate and silver fountain
From whence this stream through muddy passages
Hath held his current and defiled himself-" (5.3.60-2)

It's not a very long speech, but it's a vital one; during those lines, I make the crucial decision to pardon Aumerle and I realised today that I'm making the decision too quickly if I cut those lines out; it makes my decision appear too artificial. If I put those three lines back in it just gives me time to go on a little psychological journey towards the decision I make at the end of the speech. The lines are crucial to the process. A fair few cuts have been made in other scenes. I couldn't say how many lines exactly but it is a long play and so we've cut quite a lot. Cuts are funny things. I suppose ideally (and I'm sure Giles Block, our Master of the Words, would agree) you can always find a reason for not cutting a word, however, the reality is we've got 600 people standing here at the Globe and if you didn't cut things plays would be lasting for four hours or even more. Just in a purely human and practical 'wanting people to come back' sense, you have to cut things down.

As well as working on scenes as a company, we also work in small groups entitled Lancaster, York and Hereford. These are groups comprising of five or six actors in which we look at voice and verse and movement, to a certain extent in isolation of the play, although everything we do is essentially rooted in it. There's no harm in looking at your body as an instrument and trying to tune it up to work for the play. Giles Block, the Master of the Words, works with us on verse. I find it really helpful. He works with us on passages taken from other plays; it can feel a bit personal if you're working in great detail on your own lines in front of lots of people. You can work with him individually on your own speeches if you need to. In a group situation it is refreshing to work on different texts: it feels a bit freer and a bit less personal. Lots of the same rules and hints apply whichever text you use. We'll take a scene in our group and we'll read it through in a circle, each person taking a speech at a time. We'll read it through once without Giles saying anything and then he'll just give us suggestions and pointers and ideas, and then we'll do it again a few times and ask him questions if we need to. We look at inflections in the verse, rhythm, antithesis, timing, observation of half-lines, and what the punctuation (although there's very little) may be trying to tell us. I really like working with Giles because he's very non-prescriptive: he never tells you what to do or says 'this is right' or 'this is wrong'. He says things like 'have you thought of this' or 'how do you feel about that'. He's just very approachable and actor-friendly really!

We are all heading off to Middle Temple Hall this afternoon to work with Stuart Pearce, our Master of Voice. I have only been over there for an hour and a half so far on our first day. I don't know what we are going to do there as yet, although I know what I hope we don't do! I hope we don't dive in and do a scene because I think that could be counter-productive. It would be really scary! We're at this funny half-way mark and I think if we play a scene in that space it will be really difficult to stop myself feeling that, no matter what happens from now on, the scene will be roughly set in the same form. I think it's too early to get caught like that, because it won't be terribly good. If we play a scene and it doesn't go very well that could be really discouraging. And so I hope that it might be more of a voice class in the space just to see what the sound is like, rather than an actual scene rehearsal. That may be the wrong attitude to take because sometimes it's good to be challenged and it's good to do things that scare you. The main problem is that anyone who is not in the scene would suddenly become an audience and we're just not at the stage yet where people should be judging anything. We are right in the middle of a discovery process. It's not about getting it right yet. I am looking forward to working in the space, however. We will probably go over there once a week from now on, until we finally move in for the technical rehearsals the week before the performance. Only three weeks to go!

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Character Notes 3

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

The voice session with our Master of Voice, Stewart Pearce, across the river at Middle Temple Hall actually went very well; it was good to be back and working in the space again. I’d only been there once before for a couple of hours on the first day and so this time it seemed friendlier and more familiar. We didn’t run a full scene and so I still don’t know exactly what we are going to sound like in the space. I do know a few people who are involved with the tours which operate at Middle Temple Hall and I haven’t heard them say that they find it particularly difficult and so hopefully it's not too bad. I’d imagine there's a bit of an echo when it is empty but that's OK; the audience will help to dull the echo to some extent. It was good to just spend some time in the building and to get a feel for it again. We spent some time playing around in the space just to become familiar with it. I don’t quite know when we’re going to move over there full time. We open on Wednesday 16 April for the first preview and so I would imagine we will hopefully be in there the Saturday before at least. If it was the Monday we would have to adapt to our surroundings very quickly, and so hopefully it will be the Friday or the Saturday which should give us time to feel more settled.

This week we have done a fair bit of work on the big public scenes, such as Act 1, Scene 1 and Act 1, Scene 3. They are difficult as they require a lot of people to be on stage at once and because they contain a lot of vital information for the audience to take onboard. We also worked on the parliament scene (Act 4, Scene 1) which again is vast. I found all of that work really helpful because I was nervous about these scenes. We had longer three hour sessions specifically working on each of them and the extended rehearsals enabled us to explore things to a greater extent and to become more comfortable with the scenes. They’re not perfect yet, but it feels like we’ve played around with them and we’ve had a good go. We’ve done some speed work (running through the lines very, very quickly to fix them in your mind) and so I’d say ‘the curse’ and the bad feelings are off them a little bit now.

Some scenes require a lot of work because they involve complicated movements or stage furniture. One such scene is Act 1, Scene 3. It's the tournament scene (well the near tournament scene because it is actually called off by Richard II before it really gets going) where the actual challenge between Bolingbroke and Mowbray takes place. We’ve got a little roped off arena in the centre of the stage and basically for this production we are saying that it isn’t a joust using horses, but rather a hand-to-hand combat with spears. The spears are about six feet long! So we will be in half-armour covering our bodies and thighs, with full helmets, and we will basically be going at each other with these giant spears (or we would do if it was allowed by the King). The only people in the roped off area are going to be Mowbray and I. We have to be very careful because the stage at Middle Temple Hall is very narrow and the audience members on the front row will be close to the action. We have rehearsed set technical moves and it is all precisely choreographed. We’ll do one move then shuffle, then another move and shuffle, and then the whole thing is called off by Richard. I think there will be a lot of tension created in the scene.

I am doing a lot of individual, personal work too in contrast to such epic scene work involving most of the cast. I’ve got a session with Giles Block [Master of the Words] on Thursday which I’m looking forward to. I’m trying to get one with Stuart Pearce [Master of Voice] but it's hard to track him down. We’re still working with Giles and Stuart and Glynn [McDonald, Master of Movement] within our small groups, but actually I think we’ve nearly finished those now as we have only one more session scheduled for next week. From now on the one-to-one sessions are more useful as they allow you to explore deeper into your role. I’m just trying to work in my own way and in my own time.

The work we’ve been doing with Glynn on movement has been very useful. Because the sessions are always first thing in the morning I think she tries to prepare us for the day that we have ahead of us. For example, if we are working with her and she knows we have a jig session planned, she’ll just kind of limber us all up and try to relax us. But if we are not scheduled to do anything so physical she’ll do a certain amount of work on archetypes. These archetypes are movement case studies of certain types of character; the lover, the joker/magician, the warrior and the king. The work is very useful in principal, but, by the same token, what exactly is a king-like person? How can we say there is such a stereotype? As I always say, you can watch the Windsor's on the television and see that they don’t behave physically in any way that would identify them as royalty. In no way do they behave differently from anybody else. In fact, in some ways they quite surprise me because the men often put their hands in their pockets. I’ve been told by directors in the past that you can’t do that when you’re playing a king or a prince – but the Windsor's prove that to be wrong. I think a lot of theories about posture and movement are very generalised; it's all much more complex then that. And Glynn recognises that. She does that kind of work but she identifies it as archetypes. She only concentrates on movement that is helpful to each individual actor; there's no question of you going on and doing ‘kingly’ acting or ‘peasant’ movement or whatever. I believe there's no such thing.

We’ve done a lot of movement this week because we have also been rehearsing the jig. I really enjoy it. I actually wish we rehearsed it more often: it is such good exercise! I was feeling a little bit under-rehearsed before this week so I’m pleased we’ve been doing more. Also, I think we need to work really hard as we have to give the audience something even more exciting and impressive then last year. Having said that, I feel the choreography is a little bit simpler than the one we did for Twelfth Night, but maybe it just seems that way because I’ve done it before – maybe that makes it seem less tricky. The jig will have to be restructured for the Globe production. Hopefully we’ll keep it as similar as we can so that we don’t get too confused. I suppose it will just be done in a different formation and hopefully we won’t get any new steps to master. It’ll be the same steps in different positions: I hope it will anyway as we have only a couple of days to re-rehearse it!

I’m growing to like Bolingbroke more and more I think. I don’t necessarily know everything about him yet or how to say a lot of the lines, but everyone has their own personal process in terms of development and I feel I’m on track with my own little time-table. I feel I know who he is - well who my Bolingbroke is anyway as apposed to the interpretation of him by any other actor. The process for me now is to get all of that information out; it is very easy to let it all stay private in my head and in my heart. It is all about fulfilling my responsibility to the audience, not by displaying or demonstrating things in an artificial way, but by sharing what is going on inside Bolingbroke's mind. I feel like I’ve worked all that out for myself and so now it's about opening it all up for the performance so that the audience can see it too.

I think Bolingbroke's a really interesting person. He never really opens up his thoughts to the audience: he never tells us the inner workings of his mind. For example, he doesn’t really ever tell us that he is aiming for Richard's throne. Lots of other people say that he is planning the usurpation but Bolingbroke never actually does. I think there's something going on which is to do with not even admitting it to himself. The whole situation made me think of two people that I happen to know a bit about historically: it helped me to compare Bolingbroke's situation to that of Michael Collins (an Irish Nationalist at the start of the twentieth century) and Lawrence of Arabia (British Military liaison to the Arab Revolt during the First World War). They are two men who if you had said to them right in the middle of their journey towards where they ended up ‘Are you actually planning to reach this position?’ they wouldn’t have known. If you’d said to Michael Collins ‘In two years time are you planning to be Commanding Chief of the Irish Free State Army?’ he would just not have understood the question. I think the same is true of T.E Lawrence: he knew he was involved but he didn’t necessarily have the end in sight. As far as he was concerned he was responding to events in the moment and was taking one step at a time. And I think that's kind of true of Bolingbroke. It's interesting because it's a very human reaction. For example, I think if you were to have sat him down and said to him ‘In two years time is the King of England going to be a street seller or is it going to be you?’ then he would have known there was more chance of it being him, but that doesn’t mean that the take-over was pre-planned. Everything he does screams out that that is what he is going for, but that is quite different from admitting, even to himself, that he is going for that. I mean, he certainly never admits it to anyone else and I think you could certainly make a case for the fact that maybe he doesn’t even admit it to himself. His first thought and his first realisation doesn’t occur until he actually gets there. I think it's very interesting because people do that a lot. There's a difference between just going along with events, acting as they happen, and not getting in your own way; then from seeing a goal and going straight for it. That's different.

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Character Notes 4

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

We have just finished our second full run through of the play; we did our first yesterday. Usually I always hate first runs because everyone wants to cut their wrists afterwards, but actually, weirdly enough I quite enjoyed it yesterday! And so predictably enough I thought this morning's attempt was really not very good. I just seemed more aware that bits of it weren’t right. But that's OK; that's what happens at first - you don’t really get two on the trot that you’re happy with. It was good to see all the bits that I was not involved in too; there were whole scenes that I’d never seen before. I really enjoyed watching them and piecing everything together. And as for the bits that I was in, I found myself getting really nervous before them! I kept telling myself ‘this is so silly’, and so I consciously managed to make myself enjoy it most of the time. I just needed to relax a bit.

The full run gives an energy to the play that you haven’t had before because you’ve never had the full story. There's a kind of engine driving it because you go through the whole life span of the play and you go through the life span of your character. That idea of ‘completeness’ supports you in your work. We haven’t had that before because we have just been coming in and doing scenes in isolation. So it does feel very different; I felt as if I was going into each scene with a very, very, very present memory of what I’d just done previously. That affects the way you play the scene. And all the time I was trying not to think about the next scene coming up, but subconsciously you do tend to think ahead! In many ways I think that just serves to energise the whole play.

The first run was too long, and I don’t think it was much shorter today for the second run. The first half of the play was about an hour and forty minutes (which is a bit too long), but the second half was probably OK for length coming in at about an hour. I thought Tim [Carroll, Master of Play] would do some cuts, but in fact he only did some tiny little ones. It will probably speed up with practice. During the run some things will slow up and some things will quicken up: it is constantly evolving.

I think the decisions I have made so far have been on the right track. There's been nothing as yet that has made me think ‘I’ve got that horribly wrong’. I’ve just got to do things with confidence and relaxation really and trust in the decisions I’ve made. After these two runs I’ve been struck by how everything seems to happen very quickly in the play. I have also noticed that a lot of Bolingbroke's action takes place off stage. He has to do a lot of thinking behind the scenes because things just move so quickly on stage. They really, really do. Bolingbroke's biggest bit off stage is his banishment, but then as soon as he comes back to England it's a real snowball of events; its just one thing after another, and then before we know it Richard has capitulated and Bolingbroke's being hailed king. I therefore have to be extremely focussed before I re-enter the stage from the banishment as so much has changed in the main plot. While he's banished he hears the news that his father (John of Gaunt) has died, and because he was banished he wasn’t able to be with him or at his funeral. Also Richard has seized all of his lands and all of his possessions, which would have come to him from his father. I think really that is the spark which brings him back. Whether or not he’d come back without that all having happened is the real question, but I don’t have to answer it so I won’t worry too much about that! For me it just means imagining all of this vital news and then making the decision to come back and do something about it.

I’m reasonably happy with everything at the moment. It will be good to have an audience to play to: there are a few points in the play where I say things directly to the audience and that's kind of hard for me at present without anyone there. It’ll be good to actually have an audience to experiment with. I’m still a little bit uncomfortable with Act 1, Scene 3 where there's a joust between Mowbray and myself. For the first time yesterday we were handed helmets and spears and so we need to practice that. We’ve kind of been stumbling with the scene just because we haven’t had the chance to get used to the armour. So there are a few technical bits to work on, but on the whole I feel on top of things. I feel OK about Bolingbroke too. I’m beginning to understand him more and more. This week I’ve noticed that as the play progresses he becomes increasingly quiet. He says an awful lot more at the beginning of the play then he does towards the end. It appears that as he gains power and respect and all the rest of it, the less he seems to say. I think that's an affect of the general approval for him. This may seem a bit generalised and a bit clichéd but I’m working on the idea of someone who only speaks when it's important for them to do so; on all other occasions he remains silent.

I think we’ve got a kind of musical afternoon planned for today. We are going to be doing a jig rehearsal first and then I think we’re going to be listening to some of the music that has been arranged for the play and plotting some of the scene changes that will involve musical accompaniment. Tomorrow we are going to do another run, and then Saturday is the first technical rehearsal so we’ll finally move over to Middle Temple Hall. We’ll have two or three very long days of acting from about 9.30 in the morning until 10.30 at night. We get a day off on Monday and then carry on with the tech on Tuesday. We’ve got the dress rehearsal on Wednesday afternoon and then the first preview is Wednesday night. It is so soon! There will be lots of things to sort out during the technical rehearsals; lots of little things you wouldn’t even think of such as if you’re standing near the audience you’ve got to be careful your not whacking them with your sword when you turn around! So we probably won’t work in much detail on the meaning or setting of scenes from now on because we just don’t have the time. But that's OK because you learn other things from the runs: it's just the next stage of development really. Obviously, once you open it will grow and develop some more and that's the final phase. It will change and develop yet again when we come back to the Globe. So it's going to be a really long few days coming up, but it will be good to get into Middle Temple Hall and good to get into costume and good to get used to things like having spears and swords. I’m looking forward to it!

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Character Notes 5

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Two weeks ago we came to Middle Temple Hall to begin our technical rehearsals for Richard II. By that time I was feeling reasonably familiar with the space as we’d been there a couple of times during our rehearsals and it was beginning to feel more comfortable. There are times at Middle Temple Hall when one feels a little constrained in the playing space. Small physical actions in that space such as raising an arm can make you feel like a big army tank – everything seems out of proportion. And sometimes when you are striding around in there you are very, very close to the front row of the audience. When I have the big spear in my hand for the joust it can feel a bit tight moving around. If you were really going to physically and vocally express yourself, in the ways that your instincts are telling you to, then I think it would just be a bit too much for the people closest to the stage. We found that things needed to be toned down a little - not so that we became artificial - but just so we were not too over-powering. And so the playing of the space seemed quite straightforward but, as always, the big shock was that we only had around thirty hours of tech to get used to working with the costumes and swords and properties and all that stuff. You feel suddenly so alien, and that is a horrible feeling. There are some nice things about a tech but that's the really unsettling, unpleasant thing. You suddenly think ‘everything feels so new’ and you have such a short period of time to adjust and get comfortable with the performance again. When you are wary of all the new practical things it can really throw you off-track with all the hard work you have done previously in rehearsal. You get this horrible feeling that you’ve left all the really important things back in the rehearsal room because you’re worrying about all this new stuff. You just have to trust, I suppose, that all of the character work is there in your head and your heart; even though you’re distracted by the new things you’ve actually got your character and all of the relationships with you. But we had two full days of tech and so by the time we came to the first preview, although it still felt very fresh and alien, hopefully we created the impression that it wasn’t looking too difficult or unfamiliar. It was satisfying to find that all of the preliminary work I did for the role of Bolingbroke could survive difficulties such as a big silly hat that I never envisaged would be that size, or a pair of boots that don’t quite fit as well as I’d hoped, or a sword which is heavier than I imagined. I just put my head down and got through all that.

We squeezed in a first dress rehearsal on the Tuesday evening. We were all very tired at the end of the day and it was really depressing as it didn’t go very well. Everyone was stumbling over all of the new things – swords and costumes and props. We had our main dress rehearsal on the Wednesday afternoon and it was really like doing an actual performance because we had a full audience there. It was a very partisan audience as it was an open dress rehearsal for anyone connected with the Globe who wanted to come; however, I wasn’t particularly aware of who was there because I can’t see faces clearly in an audience without my glasses on! So it was just a kind of anonymous audience for me. It was terrifying to have an audience there for our dress rehearsal but people seemed to really enjoy it. They were very supportive and it must have just been very focussing to have people there as it suddenly seemed to go quite well. There is something very helpful about having an audience there to speak to: there eventually comes a point in rehearsals when you’re looking into a director's eyes, or your fellow actor's eyes, and it just goes beyond the believable because they become too informed about the play's events and your character is too familiar to them. So it is actually really refreshing to be speaking to people who haven’t ever heard it all before. I think the audience can give you crucial notes on your performance if you are sensitive enough to pick up on them; for example, an audience can tell you when you should get a move on and when perhaps you should take things a little slower. They can tell you when they completely understand and you can sense when you’ve lost them a bit. As they are very close to you at Middle Temple Hall you can actually see the people in the first few rows and see when they are smiling and hear when they are laughing, which is very useful. The first audience at the dress rehearsal did affect my performance in some subtle ways. I think the notes they gave kind of told me to relax a little and trust what I was doing. I found I was going a little too fast a couple of times - not so that they didn’t understand what I was saying - but just that it was OK for me to take some time over speeches in certain places and at certain key points. When you first meet an audience you get a little bit self-conscious and my typical reaction to that is to go too quickly: when you do have people there to speak to they actually listen to you and then they kind of let you know what a natural, normal speaking pace should be.

We then did our first performance immediately after the dress rehearsal on the Wednesday evening. It didn’t give us a lot of time to reflect on what had just happened. The dress rehearsal finished at 5pm and then by the time we’d changed out of our costumes it was 5.30pm, and we were getting ready again for the first preview at 6.45pm. But it was an exciting day. The first performance of a show is always a very focussing experience, and it's never quite like that again. You’re very nervous on one level but on another level you’ve got this kind of cold calm. It's all very intense - a kind of intensity you’ll never really capture again. The intensity's not a completely bad thing and yet it's not completely helpful either to feel that tense. It does make everything feel quite exciting though!

I like to get in early before each performance – usually about two hours before. First of all I just relax and have a coffee. I like to have some time alone with my thoughts so that I can focus on the play and my role. I don’t do much of a physical warm-up but I always do some kind of vocal warm-up and run through most of my lines, particularly my big speeches. For me it all depends on what I have to do in the first scene: if I start tired and dishevelled and dirty then I’ll do very little before the show, whereas if I have to come on for my first scene and be all zingy and fresh then I’ll have a shower to wake myself up and I’ll usually walk quickly to work. In this way I can kind of replicate how my character should feel physically. For Bolingbroke I take a shower because he's very alter and alive, and I have to keep that energy throughout the first scenes. I’m usually in my costume early, and especially with these original practices costumes you have to leave time as you need a lot of help to get dressed. I like to be all ready about an hour before so that I have time to adjust. I like to spend the half an hour before the show by myself: some actors do groups warm-ups, but I’m not really into that and prefer to withdraw and keep quite quiet. For the Middle Temple production it is unusual because we have the audience filing through the dressing room as they enter the Hall. There are two dressing rooms and they mostly go through the main one, but they pass by mine too. It is a bit strange but I’m kind of used to it now. It is surprising that they seem to be very quiet; I suppose there is quite a lot for them to look at and it is presumably unusual for them to see actors preparing for a show. I’m sure it's not a traditional practice. The purpose of them walking through is to make the whole experience special for them. Also, because what we are wearing is so beautiful and complicated the designers wanted to make sure there is a chance for the audience to see all of that work. I think the audience enjoy it, although personally as an audience member I enjoy the freshness of someone just walking out onto the stage and then taking them as the person that they are in the play. I’m not sure I’d like to see the actor as himself before-hand.

We’ve done fourteen performances now at Middle Temple Hall and hopefully it's growing in confidence and strength all the time. It is oddly temporary though because we all know we’re only at Middle Temple Hall until the end of this week and then it's all change again when we move to the Globe. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. We’ve got our first rehearsal on the Globe stage today and we have another three afternoon sessions there this week. Basically we are working on making the transition. I think it will be easier for those of us who have played the stage before: I guess that those who haven’t are a little more nervous than those of us who have. I’m going to miss playing at the Middle Temple though. It's a beautiful, beautiful place and it has been a real treat to be working there. It really is something quite special and unique.

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Character Notes 6

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

It is the first night of Richard II at the Globe tonight. We’ve got a dress rehearsal at 1.30pm and then the preview at 7.30pm. I’m feeling OK about it just now. I woke up this morning and was all nervous but then I thought to myself ‘Come on Liam – just go for it’. It's a funny way to come into a show because it's not our actual first night – that was at Middle Temple Hall – and so it's a weird half and half feeling. Half of me is nervous, and the other half of me is just feeling weird. It feels oddly unfair! I mean, I did all that work and we opened at Middle Temple and I’d just reached a degree of confidence, comfort and assurance, and then it has suddenly all been taken away from me and I’ve had to change to another space. It seems a bit unfair – although that sounds really childish! I just want to wave a magic wand and have done with it so that I can get back to that feeling of confidence again.

Hopefully we’ll bring all of the character work and relationships with us to the new space – that shouldn’t be lost just because we’ve changed venues – and so it is the really mundane things left to worry about such as whether are you coming on and exiting through the right door, where is your sword, whether I can find my props in time, and so on. All that stuff. We’ve only had 48 hours to practice all that really and so I’m quite nervous about it. Obviously it's going to be easier for those of us who’ve played the Globe before; at least we’re familiar with the tiring house area backstage. I guess the guys who haven’t played at the Globe will be more even more nervous than me! But the nice thing is they don’t show it. They seem just the same. There's no difference between those who have and those who haven’t in the way that they carry themselves whilst on the stage.

It has been fairly easy to move the performance from one space to another. We’ve had to adapt bits obviously, but on the whole it has been quite straight forward. The main difference is the size of the playing space: we had been playing a long, narrow hall and now we’re playing a fat, wide stage. It's kind of about spreading things out sideways. There's also the height of the Globe to remember as well: I think that can get neglected sometimes. That upper gallery is a long way away, especially for the people who are sat up at the sides. And as ever, first and foremost the main difficulty has been coming to terms with the pillars. At Middle Temple Hall we were lucky in that it was a big open floor space and everyone in the audience could see everyone who was in the scene at any given time, but it's not like that here. The group scenes are the trickiest to perfect where we are all on stage at once, and also the jig, just because of the volume of stage traffic. The scenes where there are just two or three people speaking are fairly straightforward to re-set as there is plenty of room. They kind of look after themselves really - you just go on and hopefully find a good position. A lot of exploring will happen over the course of doing the previews and the first three or four shows. We’ll begin to experiment with the space once the audience are in.

We are using most of the same stage furniture that we had at Middle Temple Hall. The throne has been a little bit tricky because we have to trundle it on and off as required. It was fine at Middle Temple Hall because the shape of the stage meant we were able to leave it positioned at one end, but here it would block the main double door entrance. So that took a bit of work but I think we’ve cracked it now. It's scary if you enter through the same entrance in front of it because the stage management team push it on really fast and you almost get run down by it! The jousting scene is OK too. It wasn’t too tricky and we’ve actually simplified it a bit. At Middle Temple Hall Bolingbroke and Mowbray actually started the fight but now we don’t do that – we just square up to each other and then Richard stops the action immediately. Tim Carroll [Master of Play] decided that was better. I suppose most of the tension should be there in the build-up anyway. If anything maybe doing the first couple of moves of the fight were a release of that tension. So I think I know what Tim's doing with it and hopefully it will work. I think his idea is basically that, in terms of telling the story, if Richard can’t take the gamble by letting us do even a couple of moves or the pressure of either of us dying (which is basically what we’ve decided for this production as to the reason why he stops the fight) then why would he take the gamble of us even doing a couple of moves? You could always just get lucky with the first move and kill the opponent. I think we had just slightly misjudged that originally. Why would Richard take that chance if it's such a big deal and one of us could easily kill or badly wound the other?

I’ve been thinking over the joust again recently. I believe Bolingbroke is sure he can win. Obviously there's a flesh and blood human being at the centre of this and there is a certain amount of fear and adrenaline and nervousness that it is natural for him to be feeling, but aside from that I think he believes in going into a fight to the death that he will be the one who comes out alive. That is a necessary part of the whole preparation for it. I guess that in sporting situations like this (and modern day boxers must feel the same) self belief is eighty percent of it, if not more. I think that aspect runs right through Bolingbroke's character – we don’t see or hear him having any internal debates about the rights or wrongs of his actions. He's never less than whole-hearted in everything he does and while he has concerns about where all this is going to lead, in the heat of the moment he feels he has no alternative. He is instrumental in bringing about changes which are extreme but necessary. There's a certain amount of personal ambition tied up in his actions, but I think to reduce his motivation to personal ambition alone is wrong. Ambition is a complicated thing. People have all sorts of motives for doing what they do and often they don’t understand these reasons – they just feel some kind of destiny. History does throw up the right person. Sometimes you look at history and think that if a particular person hadn’t been around, then things would have been very different. That is true of Bolingbroke.

The best thing about performing at Middle Temple Hall is the place. It lends itself to certain scenes so beautifully; the parliament scene, for example. It occurred to me after a few shows that in that scene, when we’re sitting in those magnificent red and white robes on those wooden benches, we could almost be on a film set. People would have sat on benches like those in Richard's time. The Hall's beauty and antiquity also leant itself to certain court scenes as well – the wood, the stained glass, the atmosphere, and the smell meant we felt like we fitted in comfortably there. The backdrop and surrounding supported us. The audiences were really close to the action, too. When we start here [at the Globe Theatre] I expect we’ll get a different feeling again from the audience – a blast not of irreverence but roughness. There’ll be eating and drinking and fainting and commenting. I hope it's busy. I’ll remember tonight!

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Character Notes 7

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

We start rehearsing Edward II on Tuesday and Richard II opened on Sunday night, so it feels a bit like a play factory at the moment. But I know Richard II is going well. It's settled down and it's strong and people seem to be enjoying it. The audiences are picking up; we were a little quiet to begin with, but I suppose the weather doesn’t help – there's been a lot of rain. The press has been very good, for what it's worth. Sometimes I think I’d like to be one of those actors who don’t read reviews, but my curiosity just gets the better of me. It really is just curiosity. You have to stay balanced about it; by and large this time they seemed to like what I was doing.

The first night back at the Globe was a good show. We have just come back after a week's break from performing Richard II before we made the transition from Middle Temple Hall to the Globe Theatre. Hopefully anyone coming to see Richard II at the Globe would appreciate it as a Globe show without realising it had been in Middle Temple Hall and we were adjusting. This has been the first time I’ve done a Globe show somewhere else, but the change between venues has been pretty smooth and I don’t think there's any way around that transitional period. Now Richard II at Middle Temple Hall is becoming a memory: those performances are merging with Richard II at the Globe.

At some points in the play – as a result of the transition – I’ve developed my direct relationship with the audience. Mark Rylance is certainly using the facility in some of his big speeches. Though he hasn’t fundamentally changed what he does, whenever he addresses the public he's allowing for the fact that he has hundreds of listeners who sometimes laugh or disapprove or give some kind of reaction. To a lesser extent the same is true for me; I sometimes speak to people in a public way, but as Bolingbroke I’m never looking for the same kind of reaction. Richard is often seeking help from the audience, whereas Bolingbroke is not. There's definitely the feeling that you get something back from the audience when you’re confronted with the sight of hundreds of people listening to you: you can see them and you know what they’re thinking. And as the play goes on, you know they’re taking sides.

Shakespeare manages cleverly an absolute reversal of fortune for us both [Bolingbroke and Richard]. Richard does not become more likeable, because that's completely subjective, but it's obviously easier to feel sympathetic towards him as the play progresses. I’m the other way round, treated shoddily at the beginning then there's the reversal and Richard is alone with his thoughts in a dungeon while I have power and status. However badly he behaved earlier, you are confronted with a human being in adversity – lonely, hungry, cold – who speaks to us very directly about what he feels like. The audience have to negotiate that change. This morning I read a description of Bolingbroke as ‘opaque, solid and impossible to read’ and I think that's absolutely true; he never has a soliloquy or private conversation that lets us know what he's thinking. People have very, very different ideas about whether he's cautiously reacting to things as they happen or whether he's driven and has set on his goals early on. That's purely an audience member's decision. In a way it doesn’t matter what's in my head to a certain extent because I don’t tell the audience and I don’t show them. My actions are so staggered over the play that it's very difficult to decide whether Bolingbroke is reacting to situations or has planned everything. It's up for grabs and that gives a lot of scope for audience reaction.

I’ve been thinking about Edward II, reading and discussing things with Tim Walker [Master of Play, Edward II]. We’ve got Sunday and Monday off, and I don’t think we’ll have two days off again for a long time – in fact I know we won’t – so I’ve organised myself a little trip to Gloucester to look at the Cathedral and on Monday I’ll go to Berkley Castle where Edward was imprisoned and killed. I thought it might be a good thing just to have a little blast of it before starting rehearsals on Tuesday. That sort of background helps you feel immersed. There's nothing I can do with it onstage – I’m not just going to tell the audience that I went to Gloucester and looked at his tomb for half an hour – but it feels like it helps in some way. Onstage I will feel stronger and more comfortable for having done that. It gives me a sense of connection. Somebody – I can’t remember who – said that research is nothing to do with your performance; in a way it's all about confidence. And that makes sense to me. Research helps me to feel that at that moment in time no actor has any more right to stand and play that part.

While I learnt most of my lines for Bolingbroke early on, I haven’t learnt any lines yet for Edward II. It wasn’t particularly useful for Bolingbroke, and I had to give him headspace for a bit longer than I expected. When I thought about starting to learn lines for Edward, maybe two, three weeks ago, it just didn’t feel right. I felt instinctively that I still had to keep my head with Bolingbroke in terms of lines, so I’ve decided to go with that. I know there are lot of lines for Edward and it's extremely hard to learn, but you get there – you always do. I’ll have to be learning lines every free minute but that's fine.

I think working with Tim Walker [Master of Play, Edward II] will be good. He played Malvolio in Twelfth Night last year, and it's interesting to be directed by an actor who knows the stage. We discussed characters, but one of the good things about being directed by an actor is that he understands in a sense there's nothing to speak about yet – this Edward II will be coming together from the lines on the page for me over a six or seven week rehearsal period. That's when there's a character; at the moment there's just black marks on a white page. But we did talk about the history - period attitudes to homosexuality, the power of the church and ideas about kingship about eighty years before the reign of Richard II. And Edward II is very different, in terms of period and the sort of things we’ve been dealing with in Richard II. I guess a hundred years is a long time in the development of institutions – just look at how perceptions of the Royal Family have changed in the past decade.

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Character Notes 8

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

I went to Gloucester Cathedral the other weekend, to see where Edward II was actually buried. I like that you can do this sort of thing with characters who are also historical figures. You can’t say you’ve definitely achieved such and such as a result of a field trip, but I definitely feel good about going the extra mile to see a place connected with my character. Apparently it's one of the best examples of a medieval tomb in Europe – there's a very ornate alabaster cage with an effigy of Edward inside. The feeling of close physical proximity to a person that really lived and breathed… you can get that from a house or clothes, or by reading the books they read. It doesn’t have to be a tomb, just something that helps you think of the character off the page, as someone who was alive. It was sobering and a bit bizarre to sit there about two feet away from whatever's left of Edward – the effigy of him on the tomb presumably isn’t a bad likeness because it was put up only a few years after his death.

Rehearsals for Edward II have been very different to those for Richard II. Tim [Walker, Master of Play, Edward II] was aware that because we were doing another play, we would be tired a lot of the time and our focus would slip (you always find yourself concentrating on the show you’re doing) so he cracked the whip from day one, whereas Tim Carroll was more relaxed. Also, the Company had bonded as a group. Tim Walker wasn’t starting from scratch which perhaps had an affect on the way we rehearsed. Right now we’ll either rehearse Edward II during the day followed by an evening performance of Richard II, or if there's a Richard II matinee, we’ll rehearse a little bit in the morning, do the performance, then go back into rehearsal for the evening. Obviously, not everybody is called for each rehearsal, but I’ve been called for most of them. We jumped straight to the text in rehearsals; there were fewer of the introductory exercises we used for Richard II and Tim didn’t block very much, initially. We stood in a circle and worked through the scenes, doing whatever we wanted in terms of movement. There wasn’t an awful lot of ‘round the table’ discussion – I think Tim knew how fractured out rehearsal process was going to be (punctuated by as it was by performances of Richard II) and just wanted to get on with the play.

Recently my work in rehearsals has concentrated on the first chunk of the play, during which Edward is under constant attack. I really used to loathe that part of the play, up until Edward's military victory, and that's probably to do with my ego! I think it's because you come on in the title role, as king, and you want to feel comfortable and confidant – powerful, you know – but instead you’re under fire from the word go. The barons’ attack begins almost immediately. You’re compromised and you’re bullied and you’re being challenged and shoved around. As a King, Edward finds his position very uncomfortable and I think that tips over into how I feel as the actor who plays him. You have to cope with the fact you’re not being given the respect that is your due, and at the same time you’re in a very isolated position… all the associations attendant on a royal role are turned upside down. Everyone else is behaving very badly, as far as Edward is concerned, but he bides his time and takes all the flak until he decides enough is enough – that's when he takes to the battlefield. Now I’ve worked out that the lack of respect and isolation was what was making me feel odd, I enjoy the first part of the play as much as the rest of it.

My initial impressions of Edward have developed. He's a complete human being with moments of determination and moments of complete insecurity. I don’t know whether he's ultimately likeable, but he is understandable – he's a king who feels slighted and has enough power to make his displeasure known. The way he runs the country is certainly flawed. He doesn’t think about the way he should govern; he just wants to be allowed to love whomever he chooses. That's the fundamental thing I don’t think he can understand: why isn’t he allowed to love Gaveston? Of course, the reason is that a huge amount of power comes attached to a King's love – Edward goes completely over the top bestowing titles on his favourite, and in doing so upsets the precarious balance of power that was dependent on the patronage of the King. The influence and standing of the Barons is diminished, and they react. However, I’ve been imagining ‘what if…’ to help round out Edward's character, and I found one of the most interesting questions was ‘what if he was allowed to settle?’ Perhaps if he was given what he wanted, and the nobility did leave Gaveston alone, then Edward's attention might turn to good government. In fact, there's a point in the text that hints he isn’t as clueless about the state of the country as one might think. When the Barons agree to repeal Gaveston's exile, Edward showers them with honours and titles. I say to the elder Mortimer:

And as for you, Lord Mortimer of Chirke,
Whose great achievements in our foreign war
Deserves no common place nor mean reward,
Be you the general of the levied troops
That are now ready to assail the Scots.
(Scene 4, ll.360-64)

Clearly Edward is aware that English forces are about to invade Scotland. Little bits like that hint that in different circumstances he might be a different King. On one hand, he does get several chances to make changes and stabilise his rule – lots of people come up to him and say ‘this is what is happening. What are you going to do about it?’ On the other hand, for a king to stoop so low as to be bullied into action by the likes of Young Mortimer – well, realistically Edward can only respond by rejecting the advice on principle. There's also the question of Young Mortimer's relationship with Isabella. Gaveston accuses them of having an affair. Maybe that's just something he pulls out of thin air, but you could play it so as to emphasise it as a real possibility. The audience must decide as the action progresses; I’ve been keeping that suggestion of infidelity in the back of my mind, because the suspicion of an affair might help explain why Edward rejects Mortimer's advice so completely. Although Edward has his own lover and favourite, the double-standard of the time meant Isabella was not allowed the same freedom, and later when I say ‘she spots my nuptial bed with infamy’, I think Edward really does believe it. Perhaps, in the context of the time, Edward's irresponsibility is more closely linked to the practical sphere of government while Isabella's actions are related to moral issues.

I’ve also been working on Edward's relationship with Young Spencer. A sexual relationship between the two is strongly implied but it's never made explicit. There's a moment in scene 12 when the Herald reports that the Barons are up in arms because of Edward's close relationship with Young Spencer, who is described as ‘a putrefying branch/ That deads the royal vine’. Basically, they’re demanding the separation of the King and his new lover. Edward answers defiantly:

Away! Tarry no answer, but be gone.
Rebels! Will they appoint their sovereign
His sports, his pleasures, and his company?
Yet ere thou go, see how I do divorce
Spencer from me.
(Scene 12, ll.173-77)

There have been several productions that decided Edward should kiss Young Spencer at this point. I think there is a stage direction for an embrace. Edward's defiance is certainly bolstered by that movement: he gets even closer to Young Spencer instead of sending him away in accordance with the Baron's demands. However, I thought if I kissed Young Spencer, the sexual element of the scene would drown out everything else: the defiance, Edward's strength… all those things. Instead I just take Young Spencer by the hand and hold it right up in a very public way (as though I’m showing our hands to the waiting troops: I imagine the Globe audience as the army), then I turn the gesture into something slightly more intimate. I think that was the right way for me to do it. A big kiss would be reductive, as though I was saying ‘Oh, you’ve killed my boyfriend. Well just watch me with my new one.’ I hope holding hands will emphasise the defiance: ‘Your not going to tell me what to do or how to behave, and I will ally myself to whomever I choose – sexually and in every other way.’ The gesture becomes a public statement.

Working on Edward II and Richard II simultaneously has made me aware of how Marlowe and Shakespeare use language differently. Edward II has a different flavour – it's got a craggy feel about it, and the lines seem much more straightforward than Shakespeare. The poetic lyricism of Richard II offers an especially strong contrast. Marlowe's characters say what they mean in a more direct way. I’m not familiar with Marlowe's other plays, but the action in Edward II seems to drive forward with violence – events thump along after each other very quickly. I feel like I’m covering lots of ground; perhaps that's because in historical terms it actually covers a span of about twenty years (not that that's stressed in the play, but it seems to explain the drive behind the action). When I’m speaking as Edward, I don’t really notice whether there are nine or ten syllables in a line, but technically I’m aware that Marlowe has many more nine syllable lines. I’d say the technicalities do matter – the stress patterns in a line can suggest where emphasis falls, which in turn can give you clues about the meaning of the line – but technicalities only matter up to a point. I try not to get bogged down. Edward has some very powerful speeches, and people have remarked on their clarity, which I think is a really fantastic compliment. Edward often sets a course of action, planning out what he intends to do in a very direct way. I’ve noticed there's quite a bit of repetition too, but when the action is so fast-paced, that serves to reinforce what's going on. Telling the story clearly is an achievement in itself. We must be doing something right!

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