Lady Anne

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About Meredith MacNeill

Meredith graduated from RADA in 2001. She has appeared with the RSC, where her roles included Peasebottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is her first season at Shakespeare's Globe.

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.

The night before rehearsals started, I was so terrified I couldn't sleep. I guess it was a combination of excitement and anticipation; I had been looking forward to rehearsals for so long that when, finally, they were about to start, I wasn't sure what to do! In the morning, I was ready to leave the house long before I needed to be, and I just stood there with my bag and coat waiting for the right time to go. I didn't want to arrive too early, to seem too keen, but all the same I couldn't wait! I've wanted to work at the Globe for a long time. I'm originally from Nova Scotia in Canada, and the first time I came to London was to audition for drama school in 1997. I was only here for two nights, but while I was here I came to the Globe and saw Henry V. It was an amazing experience; I was blown away by the way that the actors and the theatre combined to break every 'rule' that people often think exists for performing Shakespeare. Mark [Rylance, Artistic Director, who played King Henry] delivered one of his speeches with his back to the audience; you would never do that in some other theatres, and yet it worked. It seemed as though there was an amazing freedom for actors to try things out here, to not be confined in any way, and I decided then that I really wanted to stand on that stage. Of course, everybody says 'I'm going to be there/do that one day' about things, but it was really nice to stand on the stage on our first day of rehearsals and think 'I did it', even if that moment passed and panic set in as soon as I realised that I'll actually be having to perform there in less than two months.

For the first week of rehearsals, we did a lot of games and exercises to help us get to know the other members of the company, but Barry [Kyle, Master of Play] also used each exercise to get us to think about the play. One of the first games we played was Grandmother's Footsteps. In this game, one person, (the 'Grandmother'), stands in front of the rest of the group and tries to catch the others as they sneak up behind them to take their place. The first time we did this game, we all had to try and sneak up on Liz Kettle, who's playing Edward IV, and then the second time, we tried it with Kathryn [Hunter, Richard III]. By making us all try and 'become king', playing that game also helped us start to think about how unstable the world of the play is; everyone is trying to gain the upper hand. Since the beginning of rehearsals, we have been working together as a company on movement and singing. Throughout the play, there will be occasions when those of us who aren't directly involved with a scene appear on stage as a chorus, for example, as the funeral procession of Henry VI. We have done a lot of movement work to help us move together as a group, like a flock of birds. This just takes practice; you have to be very aware of everyone around you and of who is 'leading' the group at any particular time (this can often change very quickly).

Our company is the first all-female company to perform at the Globe, but, to be honest, the fact that the some of the company are playing men hasn't really influenced the rehearsal process. Each of us is treating our characters as we would any other, irrespective of gender, trying to find out why and how they do what they do. Because Richard III is a history play, we've all been spending a lot of time researching what actually happened, or what people think happened, leading up to the Battle of Bosworth, and more importantly, who our characters really were. This has really helped me start to get to grips with the character of Lady Anne. I originally thought that Lady Anne was simply a victim, a little like Ophelia in Hamlet. After all, at the beginning of the play, she has nothing and no-one to support her; her parents are dead, her husband has just died and she has no friends at court who can help her. However, to view Lady Anne as a victim is to totally disregard how she is actually portrayed in the text, but if you look at the history of Lady Anne, who she is and what happens to her before the play starts, she, and her relationship with Richard, begin to make a bit more sense.

Lady Anne's father was the Earl of Warwick, also known as the Kingmaker, and perhaps the most powerful magnate in the land. During the reign of Henry VI, Warwick helped the Duke of York (Richard's father) and his son Edward (King Edward IV, Richard's brother) to fight King Henry before switching allegiance to the crown, (hence Anne's marriage to King Henry's son). When Anne was growing up, her father and Richard's father were fighting on the same side. According to some of the history books I've read, Richard and his other brother Clarence were sent to stay with the Earl of Warwick when they were young, so Anne and Richard, to a certain extent, grew up together and must have known each other fairly well. Recently, I have been struggling with my first scene as Lady Anne, act 1 scene 2. Just reading the scene, I found it very hard to believe that a woman could be wooed in such a way, and with such success, by her husband's murderer and I immediately realised that it could be very hard to convince an audience not to dismiss Anne's agreeing to marry Richard as pretence. You could play Lady Anne as a 'victim' in that scene; her reason for accepting Richard as her husband could simply be her own survival, but for me, this interpretation does not sit well with what Shakespeare has written. Some of the conversations between Anne and Richard remind me a little of those between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing; they are battles of wit:

RICHARD
Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman,
Of these supposèd crimes to give me leave
By circumstance but to acquit myself

ANNE
Vouchsafe, diffused infection of a man,
Of these known evils but to give me leave
By circumstance to accuse thy cursèd self. (ll. 75-80)

Instantly, Anne subtly changes what Richard has just said and throws it back at him; they are intellectual equals and she obviously feels that, despite her weak social position, she can counter him in this way. The scene suddenly becomes more believable if you consider that Richard and Anne knew each other as children; he isn't merely the murderer of her husband, but someone she has known for years. I am now much happier generally with the scene, and I feel that I can approach it honestly, but I'm still working out how we can present the scene to an audience and make them believe what they are seeing is genuine and true.

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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.

We’ve been continuing to do a lot of group work with Kathryn [Hunter, Richard III] on movement, and specifically, how to express different emotions through movement. For example, yesterday, we looked at the concept of grief; how would grief walk, how would grief look and so on. I initially thought this work was leading towards a ‘grieving chorus’ moment which we would use at some point during the play, but in fact, it was simply preparation for this week, when we will be exploring those scenes involving grief and mourning. This work is part of a continuous process of encouraging us as a company to remember that what we say (our lines) and how we move are intricately linked and should never be divorced for a moment.

At the moment, we’re starting to go over our scenes for the second time and really get to grips with the text of the play. At this early stage in rehearsals, it seems as though you have a lot of choices to make about your character and the way you will approach each scene, but it's interesting how the text helps you to make that choice. Lady Anne's first scene (i.2) is a fantastically theatrical scene; after all, she is wooed over a dead corpse by the man that killed her father and brother. During the first weeks of rehearsals, I was concentrating on what it would feel like to have your family killed and then to meet the murderer face to face. Before rehearsals started, I contacted several victim support organisations and talked to them about some of those people they’ve helped who, like Lady Anne, have come face to face with those who are responsible for causing them immense pain. Some of these people's reactions are quite different to what you might expect; some could do nothing but laugh, others were intensely angry, some overcome with grief; all different ways of dealing with intensely emotional situations. What I gained from this research is an intense understanding of how emotionally fragile Lady Anne must be in this scene. Although she puts on a brave face and curses Richard as viciously as she can, underneath this act is a woman in intense pain.

At the moment, we’re still exploring whether act 1 scene 2 is a public or a private scene. Although you could argue that wooing is often done in private, it has been pretty much decided that I will make my entrance through the yard, following the coffin of Henry VI. After making my entrance through the groundlings, it will be difficult to pretend that they’re not there! At the moment, I’m imagining them to be a crowd at Henry's funeral. I’ve also been wondering more about why Lady Anne agrees to marry Richard, and I’m beginning to think that it's because she has nothing left to hold on to. Everybody has those conversations which you walk away from thinking, ‘I wish I’d said…’. Well, Lady Anne does say exactly what she wants to, and when she's said it, her anger is spent. Without her anger, she doesn’t have anything left to keep her wits together, and I think this could be one reason why she agrees to marry Richard.

I had my first costume fitting this week, which was amazing. It was fantastic to spend time with Luca [Costligliolo, Master of Clothing] and his team, who are so dedicated to finding out exactly how Elizabethan clothing was and can be made. Luca designed my dress especially for me, based on portraits and illustrations of Elizabethan fashions of the time. The dress is an off the shoulder design, but nowadays dressmakers use elastic to secure such a dress in place. Obviously, there was no elastic in Elizabethan times, so they’re currently trying to work out how such a dress would have been made 400 years ago. At the moment they’re using calico, (an inexpensive modern fabric), to experiment with making such a dress without elastic, and when they find a way that works, they’ll then make the dress for real. The fabric they’re going to use is beautiful; I will be wearing a black gown with a fairly long train behind it. This has already caused some concern; my first entrance is through the yard, but we’ll have to work out an alternative exit for if it rains; the fabric is made entirely by hand, and if it rains, it’ll be ruined!

I’ve also started wearing a corset in rehearsals to help me get used to it. Everyone seems to assume that corsets are inevitably too tight, or certainly very uncomfortable, whereas that is not the case at all. Each corset is being made specifically for one actor, so my corset is in fact very comfortable, for me! Wearing a corset in rehearsals has helped me to discover the physicality of the character, as I am suddenly aware that there are certain movements that I will not be able to do in costume. For example; the corset, combined with tight sleeves, means that I will not be able to raise my arms very high in the air. These restrictions have forced me to reconsider how I will be able to show Lady Anne's grief in i.2; people in intense pain often double up at the waist, but because of the corset, I will not be able to do this. Being physically restricted in this way simply means that my lines, what Lady Anne actually says, become the most powerful tool she has for expressing her grief.

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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.

We’re getting towards the end of the rehearsal process, and the fear is kicking in. This is simply because we’re going to be performing on the stage in two weeks time; everyone is thinking ‘where did all the time go?’ Suddenly, rehearsals have become very serious and everyone is coming into work earlier and earlier; we’re determined to iron out all of the creases in the production before we open. For me, I am continuing to make discoveries about my character and about the play every day. Sometimes I worry that these discoveries are happening too late in the rehearsal process, that I won’t be able to use them to develop my performance in time, but at the end of the day you just have to calm down and say to yourself, ‘it’ll be ok’. There's no point worrying; we just have to get on with it.

We’ve done a great deal of work recently on movement and textual accuracy, making sure that we know exactly what each line means and where we might choose to move on-stage at any particular moment. Now, it's time to go back to our character's objectives and what they want at any particular moment. We tend to work on these more instinctive elements of performance at the beginning of rehearsals, and they can sometimes get lost as you focus more and more on finer textual details. At some point, you just have to stop thinking about the words and just say them. A friend of mine was helping me to learn my lines the other day, and I was trying to convey every thought and meaning I’d ever had about a line each time I said it. In the end, she stopped me and said, ‘just say the words,’ and the next time they were much better.

I’ve been thinking about Lady Anne's second scene, act iv scene 1. Whilst rehearsing that scene, we had a long discussion about whether Lady Anne, having become involved with Richard, might know that the princes are about to be murdered. The obvious question about the beginning of that scene is ‘Why do all these characters show up in the same place at the same time’? Could it be because they’ve been warned what might happen to the princes? In the end, we decided that they didn’t know; Shakespeare doesn’t directly suggest that they do, and it's more exciting to play it that way. If you step on stage in character without pre-knowledge of the princes’ deaths, the sense of shock when the ladies realise what's going to happen to them is more palpable to an audience. It is also in this scene when Lady Anne discovers that Richard has been crowned king. Again, the question came up of whether she knew this before her entrance and again, we decided that it might be more interesting if she finds out during the scene. Ironically, the news that she is to be crowned queen brings Lady Anne and Elizabeth closer together. Lady Anne's initial reaction is one of pain; she wants to die:

O, would to God that the inclusive verge
Of golden metal that must round my brow
Were red-hot steel, to seer me to the brains! (iv.1.58-60)

Whereas previously, her relationship with Queen Elizabeth has been strained, (Elizabeth's lines to Anne at the beginning of the scene are very short and precise), the announcement that she is about to become queen deepens their relationship, and Elizabeth begins to sympathise with her situation:

Go, go, poor soul! I envy not thy glory.
To feed my humour wish thyself no harm. (iv.1.63-64)

Their relationship deepens as the scene goes on, as Elizabeth is aware of the dangers and unhappiness that comes with being queen.

As I’ve mentioned, we’re starting to wear parts of our costumes in rehearsals. This is especially useful when it comes to dresses. I am now starting to wear a ‘practice’ skirt and farthingale (a frame of cane hoops that supports the skirt) in rehearsals, which is useful as wearing a farthingale seriously affects how you walk. I asked some of the guys in the White Company about how best to move in corsets and farthingales, and they were very helpful. It was a bizarre experience; even though I’m the one that's used to wearing dresses and skirts in normal life, I was being taught how to walk in Elizabethan dresses by a man. The key is to keep the toes of one foot in line with the heel of the other; a ‘pigeon step’. What's amazing is that you can still move around the stage at high speed, if you need to!

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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.

Now we’re starting to run the scenes, I can see that it is only in Lady Anne's second scene (iv.1) that she tells us how distraught and broken she is when we first see her. In iv.1, she has nothing left in her and wants to die:

Anointed let me be with deadly venom
And die ere men can say, ‘God save the Queen!’ (iv.1.61-62)

She tells us of how she was feeling in i.2; she describes her ‘angel husband’ (iv.1.68) and his father Henry VI, the ‘dear saint which [she] then weeping followed’ (iv.1.69). She was emotionally shattered in i.2, and now, in iv.1, she is full of guilt and remorse at being fooled by Richard into marrying him. By running the play, doing both scenes in sequence, we have realized that Lady Anne is not a strong character when we first see her, but is simply fighting for survival. Barry [Kyle, Master of Play] once gave me a note in rehearsals, suggesting that in i.2, Lady Anne might be wanting to go to a party. He was suggesting that people mourn in different ways; some are very reflective, others go out and are very active. Lady Anne is the second of these, possibly because she has to be; she is fighting for survival, not only in the face of Richard but in the face of the whole court. At the moment, I am thinking that her very first lines could be read as being highly political. She says:

Set down, set down your honourable load –
If honour may be shrouded in a hearse –
Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament
Th’untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster. (i.2.1-4)

At the moment, I am stressing the word ‘Lancaster’; the line could be taken as a political statement as she is at that moment struggling to survive in a court now ruled by the House of York. Therefore, Lady Anne does not start that scene as a strong character and then break down, instead, she makes the mistake of fighting Richard on his terms, trading blow for blow, and she inevitably loses. Queens Margaret and Elizabeth are more careful; they don’t try to beat Richard at his own game and therefore survive. I think you can see this in iv.4, when Richard asks Queen Elizabeth for Princess Elizabeth's hand in marriage. She confronts him, curses him and yet does not try to beat him on his terms. Before she leaves, she tells him to “Write to [her]” (iv.4.428) to know the princess’ mind; she is very clever, just putting a little distance between Richard and her. She does not agree to bring her to him. Of course, Queen Elizabeth then turns around and takes her daughter in the other direction to Richmond. Her experience helps her to survive.

It's been decided that I should come on stage as the Princess Elizabeth in the last scene of the play. Although she doesn’t have any lines, I am still thinking about her character, but essentially, she is only there to symbolise Peace; Richmond states that their children will ‘Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace” (v.5.33). The moment is not about Elizabeth, or Elizabeth and Richmond, but about a new England, so I’m not spending that much time investigating the backround of that character.

Playing the Princess does have quite a few practical implications; it means that I’m the only member of the company not involved in the Battle of Bosworth. As soon as I’ve come off stage as the ghost of Lady Anne, I’ll only have a very short time to get back into full costume as Princess Elizabeth. It should be about 7-10 minutes, and I hope that will be enough! Barry [Kyle] and the costume department are talking about it at the moment. Everyone seems to be saying ‘we’ll leave it until the tech’ (technical rehearsal). I hope it all works out! The tech is now very close, and I’m really curious to see what happens during a tech in the Globe, as it's an open space with no electric lighting. It's going to be a chance to check everything works in terms of entrances, exits, timings, music cues and, of course, costume changes. Hopefully, there’ll also be time to play different scenes a couple of times on the stage itself, as after that week, we’ll be into performances!

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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.

I was white with terror before the opening performance. Totally terrified. I think there were lots of reasons for this: the fear, the excitement, and wanting to do well in a theatre where I’ve wanted to work for so long. Plus, on top of that, I had to make my first entrance through a yard full of people, which I’d never actually done before. It was raining a lot during the tech, and it had been decided that whenever it was raining, I would make my first entrance through the tiring house so that my costume didn’t get ruined. But the weather was perfect for the first performance, so I made my entrance through the yard. This made me very nervous; what if they didn’t move and I had to push my way through them? As it turned out, that wasn’t a problem; the doors opened, we started to walk inside and the crowds immediately parted to make way for us; just like that.

My first scene as Lady Anne changed instantly when we had an audience to play to. For the first two performances, I think I was playing the scene too forcefully; trying to hold a personal conversation with everybody in the entire theatre, and simply trying to hard to make them understand what the character is going through. Now, I’ve realised that the key is simply to take more time over everything, to have a conversation with fewer people and take the time to really ask them for their help, to ask them ‘Do you understand my side of the story? Really?’ Each audience is incredibly energised; you can see them really paying attention, and just by looking at them, holding their gaze, you suddenly feel energised yourself. Not every member of the audience is happy to be spoken to directly; sometimes they’ll look at the ground or turn away when you speak to them, but that's a great help as well because it presents a challenge; I feel I have to persuade them to overcome their reluctance and look at me. Every performance is totally different to any other, because audience reactions play so large a part in what we, the company, are doing on stage. We’re working twelve hour days at the moment, rehearsing Shrew whilst performing Richard, and the energy the audience gives you during each performance is the only thing that is keeping us going!

Audience reactions are especially important in my first scene as Lady Anne. It's suddenly become very apparent that the audience will usually be on Richard's side during that scene and have little sympathy for Lady Anne. I suppose that's what Shakespeare intended, after all, the audience has been introduced to Richard at the very beginning of the play, but they know nothing about Lady Anne. In many ways, the scene between them is simply an illustration of Richard's charisma, to show how good he is at bending people to his wishes. In the Globe space, there is no way that the scene can be played as a private meeting between two people; the fact that you can see 1,600 people watching you makes it impossible to pretend that you’re alone; the scene becomes like a boxing match. The key is to embrace this, and make sure that Lady Anne gives as good as she gets, for as long as she can, and often the audience will respond to her as she does this. At one point, Richard declares that he didn’t kill her husband, and Lady Anne responds sarcastically; ‘Why then he is alive.’

Suddenly, an audience warms to Lady Anne in a way they haven’t done previously. In the end, I always have to lose that fight with Richard, but, for each performance, my objective is to show the audience that, despite the fact that she is highly distraught and confused, it is believable for her to accept Richard as her husband; it is not impossible to see how they could work together as a couple.

Now Richard III has opened, we’ve started rehearsals for The Taming of the Shrew, in which I am playing Lucentio. It's fantastic to be playing such different parts in the two plays; whereas Lady Anne is really quite tragic, Lucentio is a very comedic character. We decided very early on that there was a lot of potential for rough, raw physical, almost slapstick comedy in Shrew, and so we as a company asked for some workshops with an expert in physical theatre. As a result, we’ve been working with Marcello Magni [Marcello appeared in the 1998 Globe Theatre Season and is an expert in Commedia del’Arte, an improvisational and highly physical style of theatre], who is fantastic! We started with some simple exercises just to get us to think about how we move and how we physically react to certain situations. For example, we started by playing a game of tag. We all found a space in the rehearsal room, one of us was told that we were ‘it’ and would have to try and ‘tag’ the others, and Marcello told us that he would start the game by saying ‘ready, steady, go.’ When everyone was ready, he said ‘ready… steady…’ and just when we were waiting for him to say ‘go’, when everyone's bodies were extremely tense and everyone was aware of everyone else in the room, he suddenly said, ‘that's what relationships feel like’. And it's true! There is often that same sense of nervousness and anticipation about relationships that we were all feeling as we waited to start the game. We spent a lot of time with Marcello exploring how our characters could physically respond and react to what is happening to them, and how what we’re feeling is often subconsciously reflected in our movements, our physicality.

At the moment, I am just starting to explore the character of Lucentio. He is a scholar who has come a great distance to Padua in order to study, something I have a great empathy with as I have come a great distance to work in London! Lucentio is always looking to his servants, especially Tranio, to help him; he's not good at giving orders, but he's very good at receiving them

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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.

Phyllida has now taken Barry's place as Master of Play and the change has obviously had a massive effect on the rehearsal process, as interpretations are so individual and directors can have very different visions for the same play. We’d worked with Barry for two weeks before he had to go and that's a lot of time missed, though it's great that Phyllida has been able to come and direct. Certainly it's not a normal rehearsal process: everyone's had to just muck in and start afresh. I’ve found that's been quite hard to do in terms of letting go of the ideas which I’d started to build Lucentio's character on. My instinct was that he was a naïve lover and that humour was in that and truth was in that, but that's not how Phyllida sees him. She's concerned about playing a vulnerable man as a woman – how perhaps that wouldn’t be believable. The goal is to be believable as a man. We’ve done some experiments with a very macho Lucentio as well as exploring the master/ servant relationship between Lucentio and Tranio, and although I’m not sure Lucentio is a ‘macho’ man as such, the master/servant work has helped me to work on the possibilities for this aspect of his character. Phyllida is fantastic at experimenting and at the Globe you get such a long run: any initial conflict between what you’re being asked to do and your instinctive feelings about a character can be worked out as the run progresses. There isn’t a lot of time left for rehearsal even though we’re working almost double hours, from eight in the morning until nine at night, and so sometimes you say ‘yes, yes, yes. I’ll do that’ for the sake of the show, where under normal circumstances there would be more time to explore different interpretations. The macho stereotype interlinks with the notion of Lucentio as sensitive – you start to find that people only act in a macho way because they’re completely vulnerable and insecure.

I remember wondering about how playing a man might be different. I didn’t think I’d have trouble making that leap but we’ve been concentrating on that difference in more detail with Phyllida. For example, how you physically hold yourself when you feel upset – instead of shrinking men often take up more space, sitting further back in a chair rather than curling in at the shoulders. There are lots of moments like that where awkwardness and a ‘macho’ stereotype could interlink, so I’m starting to see ways that could apply to Lucentio. Marcello [Magne] came in one day to work with us and we continued looking at difference: he was really funny, making an example out of the instruction ‘pick up that water bottle’ – a man might go straight over and pick it up, while a woman might multitask ‘I’ve got to put that in my bag, then do this, then pick up the water bottle’. These are very general stereotypes and I think we’ve looked at that option more with Phyllida, it's essential for production of The Taming of the Shrew which we’ve got now. There's an element of satire: we send men up a bit, and when you’ve got a play that deals with female obedience staged by an all-female cast, it does lend itself to that sort of take. The last scene in particular when we’re betting on the women, and finally it's the shrew who comes when her husband calls, then the catfight between Katherine and the widow, well, there's a great freedom in having an all-female cast. You can get away with a lot in terms of sending it up. Though Phyllida is keen that Lucentio is quite a straight character, in love with Bianca, I find sometimes comedy is very tempting. I’d like to see what Lucentio is like when he really goes for it!

When I first read the play I pictured Lucentio as the archetype of a lover in the context of the commedia dell’arte: a lover with his head in the clouds, a light-footed man who no sooner sees something than wants it, then sees something else and changes his mind. In the opening lines of act one, Lucentio decides to study

Here let us breathe, and haply institute
A course of learning and ingenious studies (I.1.8-9)

then quick as a flash decides that actually he's in love and will disguise himself as a teacher and pretend he’d killed a man in order to get access to Bianca. I’m not sure if this is as straight as we’re playing it at the moment – he's a serious young man, but there's humour there too. In this production I’m definitely Tranio's foil.

Tranio has been Lucentio's servant for many years. He was raised by my father so servant-master relationship between us is unusual. I’m one hundred percent dependent on Tranio not only to carry my bags but also to help me make decisions. Amanda [Harris], Phyllida and I discussed this and we all agreed that the boundary between these characters is blurred. We decided that in Lucentio's very first speeches he must impress his authority and establish some sort of hierarchy in this relationship because after Act I scene1 he's disguised as the teacher and Tranio takes his place as a young gentleman. Though they’re frequently onstage together in the same groups of people, they don’t get a chance to communicate outside their disguises so we had to find another way to remind the audience of the master-servant relationship that underpins their role play as gentleman and tutor. We decided to use the green costume as a kind of marker – Lucentio came on in it and spoke his ‘master’ speeches then at different points showed flashes of it beneath the tutor's robe. Shakespeare uses clothes as markers in a similar way when Tranio takes Lucentio's cloak and hat (I.1.205), we watch him putting on a role as he outs on the costume. At the same time Tranio really enjoys his new status as master so we have to be careful that the disguises don’t completely drown out their underlying relationship.

Disguise adds more difficulty to a complicated subplot and Phyllida has been fantastic in stressing that our priority is to tell the story cleanly and clearly. I mean, that's where Shakespeare is great. Just by telling his story in The Taming of the Shrew, you get the comedy coming through, and we’ve got limited time so I really think this is a good idea. We learnt a lot about the power of the story when Kathryn was ill and couldn’t perform. Liza [Hayden] who was originally playing Biondello has been brilliant. The Globe doesn’t have understudies in the same way as other theatres; instead you go on with a book, and the other actors help get you into the right place at the right time. The way Liza read the text was absolutely amazing – and the audience laughed in the same places because the power of the story carries everyone along.

If you try to stick true to the character Shakespeare wrote then it's pretty hard to go wrong. I think the problem with Lucentio is that his character doesn’t really change. His speeches almost frame the play. At the beginning he says he will study, and at the end he invites everyone to his home ‘Feast with the best, and welcome to my house’ V.2.8. In terms of character not much has altered. When he first looked at Bianca he was quick to impose his ideal on her as Katherine's opposite:

But in the other's silence I do see
Maid's mild behaviour and sobriety (I.1.70-71)

Perhaps Lucentio comes to Padua to fall in love rather than to study. He shares Petruccio's ideas about how a woman should behave but is less aware of Bianca as a woman with her own mind… at the beginning he interprets her silent appearance in his own terms. When he bets on Bianca, he still has quite a simplified idea of their relationship – of course she’ll come when he calls. Reality starts to kick in when she sends word ‘she is busy and cannot come’. Other comedies end with the characters leaving to celebrate a marriage, but The Taming of the Shrew goes beyond this point. Lucentio starts to realise that the journey he believes has ended with his marriage is actually just a beginning, whereas Petruccio's character definitely changes and falls in love with Katherine. In our production it feels like Bianca and Lucentio keep a sort of immaturity about them. They married without understanding each other; he's been quick to impose his ideal on a pretty woman and she's found an attractive alternative to old Hortensio. Laura had to make decisions about whether she was actually in love with Lucentio, or was she desperate to avoid marrying Hortensio, or perhaps she was a flirt? Whatever Lucentio feels as love, he completely feels for Bianca. It's interesting to ask ‘why did she pick him?’ He has moments of doubt about the marriage

I may and will, if she be so contented.
She will be pleased, then wherefore should I doubt?
(IV.5.31-2)

There is that instant of uncertainty – is he doubting whether she will marry him, or whether he should marry her? I keep changing the way I do the lines because I haven’t decided yet. I like the possibility that he has questions that are very relevant for today – ‘is all this going too fast?’, ‘what about her family?’ etc. – alongside the alpha male stereotype.

We had our tech week in the middle of the heat wave. Spending the hottest day of the year in costumes lined with horse hair was just utter, utter hell. I can’t begin to describe it. Whereas Richard III was more complete for tech week, we had much less of an idea about where we were going with The Taming of the Shrew, so our first show was really our proper dress rehearsal. If we hadn’t already had the experience of Richard III on the Globe stage, we would never have been able to produce what we’ve come up with here. Everyone adapted so quickly because of having that experience and though obviously we had to get used to the stage with a different production, things went smoothly. Phyllida has been amazing. Armageddon could have hit us and she would’ve stayed calm, and that ability to keep your cool really affects the whole company. Still, the nerves on first night… it was unbelievable that we were opening. You have to be very practical about it and think ‘I just need to tell this story’. We had a great time in the end, and a lot of that is due to the audience. They’re different from an audience anywhere else, in that they work as hard as we do – it's the imagination they use in that space [the Globe] which is just incredible. We knew they’d catch us if we fell – you’re in safe hands at the Globe and that gives you confidence. I’m enjoying trying out things as the run goes on, like how to physically get closer to the girl I love, and how lines sound delivered in a slightly different way – what it's like to really think that you’ve killed somebody, for example. Nothing massive, nothing major though. Now we’re relatively comfortable with the production but I’m sure Lucentio, like Lady Anne, will change a lot as the season continues because we’ll get to know how far we can take things in that massive space. Next week I’ll be getting back to Lady Anne for Richard III.

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