An Age of Kings

In a number of posts, I have written about how my introduction to Shakespeare and English literature came through a BBC television series called "An Age of Kings." Televised first in England live in the late 1950's, they were shown in the United States during the winter and spring of 1961. After the initial series was over, I do remember seeing at least some of the episodes a few years later. Since then, however, they have been unavailable in any format - a period of almost 50 years.

As a result it was fantastic to read on the Shakesper e-mail list that the full 15 episodes are now available via DVD. Bless Hardy Cook for his work in maintaining this list, there was apparently a story in the New York Times last week, but I missed it. The news was so exciting that I immediately went to Amazon.com and ordered the full set which should be here in about a week. Of course, my next step was to send an e-mail to my cultural buddy DT, as expected his reaction displayed new levels of his feelings about Shakespeare. If I read the Amazon website correctly, John Barton's series on acting Shakespeare which has also been unavailable for some time, will be issued in June.

The Age of Kings series included some great actors early in their careers beginning with Sean Connery as Hotspur. To me he has always been the ultimate Hotspur, far better than Tim Piggot-Smith in the BBC version or Ethan Hawke in the 2003 Broadway hit. The only one who came close in my mind was Lex Shrapnel who played the part in the RSC productions we saw last winter in Stratford. In fact, Shrapnel was great in a variety of parts in the plays including Williams in Henry V, young Talbot in Henry VI, Part I, and Richmond in Richard III, but I digress. In the Age of Kings series, Robert Hardy (pictured above) was my introduction to Hal/Henry V, I remember his performance as creating a positive image of the character and I look forward to seeing it again. Pictured with Hardy is a young Judy Dench as Princess Katherine of France, long before she would go on play several other English queens.

I look forward to the arrival of the these DVD's and revisiting something that moved me almost 50 years ago and still does so today. I am sure it will be the subject of future posts.