Tuesday, August 2, 2016

The Quality of Mercy by Peter Brook

The Quality of Mercy – reflections on Shakespeare by Peter Brook
  
Having recently seen for the second time Peter Brook’s wonderful production of Hamlet with Adrian Lester in the title role I became inspired to read this little book bought a few months ago.
             It is a modest collection of essays and all the more interesting for its modesty. In the first essay Brook calmly refutes the silly notion that someone else wrote Shakespeare by pointing out that these plays had to have been written by someone who spent every waking hour working in the theatre and, quite simply, none of the other candidates spent all that much time in the theatre at all. He concludes with the simple statement that the question is out of date.
            In another he describes his problems with producing a Romeo and Juliet with young actors, breaking with the tradition that only experienced older actors could handle the challenge, but how it all became stiff anyway because of sticking too faithfully to each scene and losing the flow of the whole.
            Titus, Lear, Prospero all make their appearances and Brook ends his book thus: ‘Shakespeare. Quality. Form. This is where our work begins. It can never end.’
            A most pleasant read.
           

            

3 comments:

  1. Fan of Peter Brook I am not, but this book does look interesting. Good argument against the Oxfordian gang. The only better one I've encountered is the one by E. K. Chambers: he simply ignores the "problem". That was in 1930, of course, but anti-Stratfordians were already around and getting strong.

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  2. Any special reason you don't like Peter Brook? I haven't liked all of his productions as much as this one but generally I find his interpretations interesting. E.K. Chambers seems to have had a good way of handling the 'question'. If only the anti-Stratfordians would let it go...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Any special reason you don't like Peter Brook? I haven't liked all of his productions as much as this one but generally I find his interpretations interesting. E.K. Chambers seems to have had a good way of handling the 'question'. If only the anti-Stratfordians would let it go...

    ReplyDelete