Orson Welles on Shakespeare

The W.P.A. and Mercury Theatre Playscripts

Richard France

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415937269
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134980000
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume is the only publication available of the fully annotated playscripts of Wells' W.P.A Federal Theatre Project and Mercury Theatre adaptations, including the "Voodoo" Macbeth, the modern-dress Julius Caesar and Welles' compilation of history plays, Five Kings.

Five Kings

PREFACE

Falstaff:	We have heard the chimes at midnight. Master Shallow.
Shallow:	That we have, that we have, that we have, in faith, Sir John, we have. Our watchword was ‘Hem, boys!’ Come, let's to dinner…Jesus, the days that we have seen! (II Henry IV, III.ii, 202–7)

Trudging through the snow, the bloated figure of Falstaff and his wizened companion pass across the opening frames of Welles's 1965 film Chimes at Midnight (also known by the title Falstaff). Its final frames show an outsized coffin on the way to the grave that Falstaff's erstwhile protégé, now Henry V, once predicted “doth gape/For thee thrice wider than for other men.”¹

Looming over this vast chronicle of civil rebellion and royal succession was that lump of a man, Falstaff, mocking both the heroic and the base. “Banish plump Jack,” he once protested, “and banish all the world.”² In Welles's film version of Five Kings, Falstaff has indeed become all the world.

A quarter of a century earlier, while rehearsing Five Kings for its theatrical opening, Welles revealed his intentions for the role of Falstaff.

I will play him as a tragic figure. I hope, of course, he will be funny to the audience, just as he was funny to those around him. But his humor and his wit were aroused merely by the fact that he wanted to please the prince. Falstaff, however, had the potential of greatness in him.³

A more recent interview demonstrates that his tragic vision of Falstaff remained unchanged. To Chimes at Midnight, however, something crucial had been added: Welles's realization that this character had it in him to become the protagonist of Shakespeare's chronicles. “The relationship between Falstaff and the prince is no longer the simple one that one finds in Shakespeare. It is a foretelling, a preparation for the tragic ending.”⁴ The friendship between Falstaff and Prince Hal, and its eventual betrayal, provided Welles with the sort of narrative line (and ironic counterpoint) that had eluded him in Five Kings.

The concepts upon which Welles had based his unique and startling productions were plainly evident. Not only had Macbeth been transported to Haiti, its protagonist had become an instrument in the witches' plan for world domination. Julius Caesar, on the other hand, was recast as the story of a modern dictatorship, one that seemed to speak of terror as though it were stalking the very street on which the Mercury stood. The high marks given Welles for aesthetic achievement and political relevancy notwithstanding, he had, in effect, made each of his W.P.A. and Mercury productions no less thrilling and immediate than the most popular cinematic events of the day.

In the face of such expectations, his approach to Five Kings both surprised and disappointed. John K. Hutchens of the Boston Evening Transcript was among the most unkind of the production's many critics. He also seems to have been exceptionally candid in saying that

It seems a ponderous marathon without style or particular point of view and utterly lacking in the magic with which this same Mercury Theatre once honored the Bard in the matter of Julius Caesar.⁵

And it did, indeed, appear as if Welles had decided to stage this sprawling compilation of Shakespeare and Holinshed as little more than a worthwhile challenge to his own redoubtable skills, to be judged on how well he managed to acquit himself in the performance of so Herculean a labor. It would have seemed utterly presumptuous for a lesser figure merely to tackle so massive an amount of material. However, Five Kings was the brainchild of none other than Orson Welles, known far and wide as the “Boy Wonder” of the American theatre.

Supposedly, the plan was to divide Five Kings into two parts, wit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Editor's Note
• Foreword by Simon Callow
• Acknowledgements
• INTRODUCTION
• MACBETH
• JULIUS CAESAR
• FIVE KINGS