More Fun With Shakespeare
Starting on PBS in... 20 min (at least locally)
Shakespeare Uncovered
Fridays 9 p.m. PBS
“Shakespeare Uncovered” must be one of the most enjoyable primers ever concocted about the Elizabethan plays that, with the King James Bible, have contributed more than any other source to the beauty and expressiveness of the English language. Each episode explores a play and is narrated by an actor who has performed in it. During a lively exegesis—and sometimes a deconstruction—of the work, we see snippets of various versions, ranging from a 1909 silent movie to contemporary stagings in ultramodern mode at Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience or in 17th-century style at the replica of London’s Globe Theater. Also delightful are visits to castles and countrysides where Shakespeare set his plays, and the refresher courses in history, plus trivia tidbits, that accompany them.
As the season begins, the curtain rises on Hugh Bonneville, whose first professional appearance, in 1986, was as an understudy to Ralph Fiennes in “A Midsummers Nights Dream.” An academic here refers to the play as “sexually transgressive.” But everyone else throws more light on it, detangling the multiple plots, exploring the custody battle between the two top fairies and wondering whether a young Shakespeare and his father visited Kenilworth Castle, only a few miles from Stratford-upon-Avon, when Queen Elizabeth stayed at the castle for 19 days in 1575. The glittering sights included a mermaid sitting astride a dolphin in a lake that was part of Robert Dudley’s last-ditch attempt to woo Elizabeth into marriage. The dolphin image later turned up in “Midsummer.” Why was the play not performed in England for a stretch of 200 years? Watch and learn.
Another work illuminated this season will be “The Taming of the Shrew” with host Morgan Freeman. After a hint of a trigger warning about domestic abuse, the episode ends with an invitation to embrace the play as a sexy love story. Other hosts will include Christopher Plummer navigating “King Lear” and a look at “Antony and Cleopatra” through the eyes of Kim Cattrall.
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