[This photograph is of Peggy Ashcroft (later, Dame Peggy Ashcroft), one of the great actresses of the twentieth century.
She is responsible for my love of Shakespeare's plays. In 1953, I saw her play Cordelia in King Lear and Portia in The Merchant of Venice.]
Joan and Cliff enjoyed the theatre. Both were members of Bridlington's premier amateur dramatic society - The Green Circle Players (founded, led and directed by a tall, bespectacled, stangely angular woman who went by the name of Margaret Dick). Joan was the star of that company. Cliff played supporting roles; He was also an enthusiastic tenor in the Bridlington Operatic Society's annual presentation of Gilbert and Sullivan. In those days, during the Summer, Bridlington was treated to a season by the Harry Hanson Court Players. Each week they presented a different play , usually light comedies or sub-Agatha Christie thrillers. It was, as a company of players, at best, adequate. Some weeks, they needed extra players for very small roles and, rather than hire another professional, they looked for local amateurs. Joan played several maids, each with about one line - usually, "Oh, ma'am, It's the police to see you!". Cliff, who was a pharmacist, was often recruited to play the doctor who, at the beginning of Act Two, had to examine the corpse which had been discovered at the climax of Act 1. As their payment for appearing, they got their names in the programme, a mention in the town's weekly paper, "The Bridlington Free Press, and a couple of free tickets - which they passed on to me.
Joan was preparing for her elocution exams for the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music.Later, armed with these qualifications, she became a teacher of Speech and Drama. I became used to her suddenly stopping in the middle of the washing up, turning to me and declaiming :
"I am not mad; this hair I tear is mine.
My name is Constance. I am Geoffrey's wife.
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost!
I am not mad: I wish to God I were,
For then 'tis like I should forget myself."
which meant nothing to me (it is from Shakespeare's "King John") but sounded absolutely thrilling, and I used to laugh delightedly every time she performed it with resonance, agonised expression and the brandishment of a dish mop. Cliff, if he were present, would respond by singing "Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes" (G and S: The Gondoliers), always forgetting the words after the first couple of bars. I thought that they were both marvellous, and that the stage was an enchanted place.
Coronation year, a son who had passed the 11+ underage: what better way to celebrate than to take him for the first time to Stratford - upon - Avon? I was excited by the prospect: not by the chance of seeing Shakespeare's birthplace, nor that of going to see one of his plays in what Joan and Cliff called "a real theatre"; but by the fact that we were going to drive all the way there (and some of the journey would be on what was called The Great North Road) in Cliff's little black Austin. The distance seemed daunting. To start with, we were going South of the River Humber. That meant we would be moving out of East Yorkshire and into very foreign territory. (At that time, the Humber Bridge did not exist, so , to go South, you had to drive to Goole - clearly, a frontier town - and turn left). Then, we were going to break the journey and stay with cousins just North of Birmingham. It seemed the journey would be epic!
Epic it was - in that The Great North Road seemed to go on for ever, all of it looking exactly the same as the roads around Bridlington. We passed through drab towns. (For a frontier town, Goole was particularly disappointing: no cattle rustling in sight, no shoot-out occurring in the main street, no lawlessness; just a succession of grey, terraced houses, the front doors of which gave straight onto a littered pavement.) There were lots of lorries, belching filthy exhaust , but little traffic otherwise. Motorways were yet to be created across England, and there were very few dual carriageways. As we approached Birmingham, I perked up a little at the name of a nearby village, Water Orten, where, Cliff assured me there were beds of Watercress; There were a few ponds at the side of the road surrounded by trees, but they looked no different from the duck ponds we had in the Yorkshire Wolds (and they had much more exotic names like Burton Agnes and Wetwang). I was a bit bored by the time we reached the home of Joan's cousins.
There was a lot of laughter and noise there, and also three girls, (my second cousins, I guessed). They each had long red hair and wore blue gingham shortsleeved dresses, short white socks and sandals with straps. They were pleasant enough and took me to play in a nearby field; but it was difficult, for I could not penetrate their Midlands accent and , to them, I spoke "posh" (Joan and the Misses Potts had ensured that I did not talk with a Yorkshire accent - at least when I was "in society"), and, anyway, I just didn't like girls much. By and large, I thought they were boring.
So, it was a relief when, two days later, with a lot more laughter, and dashes back into the house for forgotten items, and noisy waving of goodbyes, Joan and Cliff and I finally drove back up to the main road towards Bimingham.
Birmingham was more interesting: it was so big - bigger than Hull -and full of cars and trams and buses and people. The little car squeezed though the city, past factories with belching chimneys and onto the road to Sollihull. Clff pointed out the cricket ground at Edgebaston to the left, and then, a little further on, to the right, the University with its central Italianate bell tower, which looked interesting, if rather bizarre, amongst the very English semi-detached houses. (Years later, I was to be an English student there and know the tower as "Joseph Chamberlain's public erection"; but, at that moment, of my destiny, I had no ken.) Up the hill to Solihull and then out again into the Warwickshire countryside and heading, at last, to Stratford - upon - Avon.
In 1953, Stratford was still the busy, smallish market town where Shakespeare happened to have been born. There were tourists, of course, but they were, by and large, tourists who actually knew why Shakespeare was so famous: many of them had actually read or seen onstage his plays. There were not the groups claiming ownership of Shakespeare and his "legacy": the town had not been taken over by the English Tourist Board or become part of the Visit Britain Campaign. The "Shakespeare Sites" had not been comandeered by the Levi Fox brigade, the theatre had not been swamped by the demanding ego of the R.S.C., and the hotels were still privatly owned by people who actually had been born and bred in the area. There was certainly nothing called "The Shakespeare Experience", and no garish MacDonalds. You could still walk to Anne Hathaway's Cottage through fields (and it was the original cottage and not the facsimile that is there today - the original burned to the ground as a result of an electrical fault); there was no pedestrianised precinct that passed by the house where Shakespeare was born, and the squarely modern Birmingham University's Shakespeare Centre , next door to The Birthplace, was still a gleam in Levi Fox's eye.
In 1953, I loved it, as I have never loved it since. I loved the Avon with its swans and I loved the old bridge with its buttressed arches that spanned the river. . I loved the hustle and bustle of the town centre below the crossroads. I loved Shakespeare's house because the traffic still swirled up and down outside it. If the cars and bicycles had been replaced by horses and carts, it would have been little different from the street he knew. I liked following the route he may have taken along the High Street to the Grammar School just after Sheep Street (Cliff told me that it was so named because it was the route taken by the shepherds bringing their flock to market. That made sense to me). I loved the old houses (now hotels) on either side of the High Street (The Shakespeare looked more posh, but the Falcon looked more historically real).Above all, I was attracted to the lane that led down past Hall's Croft to Trinity Church and the River,with its warm brick walls and gently swaying trees, the vigorous noise of the Town Centre reduced to a distant, somnolent hum. I stood perfeectly still and closed my eyes, savouring the summer smells and , for the first time in my life, felt that all this had been here for centuries, long before me, long before Cliff and Joan.....well, for ever, it seemed.
We walked along Waterside to the theatre. It was strange to approach it from this direction, for you arrived first at the Edwardian redbrick towered building which was all that was left of the previous theatre. Passing the old entrance, we came to the Stage Door of the modern theatre and then turned the corner towards the river where the Theatre Foyer was. There were steps leading up to the entrance.
I gaped. Posed on the top step was a tall woman, gazing down the river into the distance, as if in anticipation of a longed-for arrival. She wore an elegant checked tweed jacket and skirt. Her head was raised in profile. One hand rested on her waist, the other stretched before her and held the leads of two great Danes, that sat before her, alert and confident , staring in the same direction as their mistress.
"Who's that? I asked Joan.
"It is Rachel Kempton. She is an actress. Her husband is Michael Redgrave. He plays Shylock this afternoon. She is not performing today."
I stared, transfixed. With measured pace, as if she had become aware that she was no longer alone,Rachel Kempson turned her head and gazed at the throng entering the theatre. The hand on her hip moved to her side. The dogs stood, in unison. The trio exited the scene.
I was hooked.
We had seats on the front row of the balcony.I gawped at the chandeliers the red plush seats, filling up with that excited confident anticipation of an audience that knew the delights that were held behind the elegant proscenium arch with the thick red and gold velvet curtains. Would those curtains swish as they parted, I wondered, like they had for the Blue Doors in my favourite book, "The Swish of the Curtain" by Pamela Brown, about a group of children who wanted to grow up to run their own theatre company?
A roll of drums. The audience stood. The National Anthem played. As it finished, the audience sat down and quietened to a hush as the house lights dimmed and the footlights glowed and enriched the deeply glowing red of the curtains. With mre of a whoosh than a swish, they parted and rose to reveal the bright scene of Venice. Two men entered and moved towards the front of the stage. I leaned forward in my seat.
"In sooth, I know not why I am so sad;
It wearies me. You say, it wearies you....."
I know now, very clearly, what Antonio means when he speaks those opening words. I don't think I did then but I felt his loneliness. And still today, I am convinced that the central character of the play is neither Portia nor Shylock, although those are the roles in "The Merchant of Venice" that every actor wants to play. Not me: I never got to play Antonio, and, of course, now, I never shall; but he was the character I cared for most that afternoon in Stratford and the one with whom I still identify.
I had never read the play before, and I was gripped to know how everything was going to work out. The Trial scene came. Shylock was demanding his "pound of flesh". Antonio was prepared to die. Bassanio was filled with guilt at what he had helped to bring about. Portia (played by peggy Ashcroft) entered in the disguise of a lawyer.If Antonio was to escape death, only she would be able to achieve it - which, in my opinion, was only right. After all, it was because of her, that Bassanio had created the situation that Antonio was now in. She made "The Quality of Mercy" speech. Shylock was adamant. She looked upon the bond. Shylock refused the offer of more money. All appeared lost: it seemed that Antonio must die.That seemd so,unfair; and yet, he accepted it: The line, "I am a tainted wether of the flock" worried me at the time. (Many years later, I was to understand his feelings much more clearly. It still haunts me .)
He made his farewell to Bassanio; Shylock advanced towards him, sharpening his knife.
In the theatre, there was silence.
Portia: A pound of that same merchant's flesh is thine.
The Court awards it, and the law doth give it
Shylock:Most rightful judge!
Portia: And you must cut this flesh from off his breast.
The law allows it, and the court awards it.
In the theatre, there was an absolute stillness.
Shylock: Most learned judge! A sentence; come, prepare!
Shylock advanced downstage left to Antonio, who was now barechested and supported by Bassanio.
In the silence and stillness of the theatre, Shylock raised his knife to strike
Portia: Tarry a little, there is something else.
This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood
I have never forgotten the sound of an entire audience releasing its breath as they did, that afternoon , in the auditorium of that theatre in Stratford. Later, I thought about it. It seemed to me that I must have been one of the very few people in the theatre watching the play that afternoon who had not known beforehand how the trial scene worked out. So, how was it that, if most people knew the ending, they were still caught up in the action as if it were the first time they were seeing the play? How could people whom we knew were really actors involve us so completely in their fate? And how could Peggy Ashcroft convince us that afternoon that she was the beautiful, witty, rich Portia, and, a few nights later, persuade me that she was the rebellious youngest daughter of King Lear whose death in his arms made me feel so sad?
Whenever I have seen this play, or read it, or taught it, or directed it, at this moment of Act 4, I am transported back to that moment in my life when I first knew the power of theatre .
And it is Peggy Ashcroft's voice I hear.
