Shakespeare Fans discussion

I am watching the BBC version...and I will tell you I was stunned to find...that the way the scene between Alexander and Cressida was played was with sexual tension. In fact, the following line...as she says "swell" they are standing very close like lovers and she looks down at his crotich.

So...BBC does not see Cressida as an innocent teenager....


Cressida "Nay, I'll watch you for that; and that's one of the
chiefest of them too: if I cannot ward what I would
not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took
the blow; unless it swell past hiding, and then it's
past watching."


Therasties ...is AMAZING!!! who ever is playing them is just incredible the whole play is worth it for them!!!!

You mean the version with Charles Gray as Pandarus (not Alexander)? Yes, I think it is brilliant.

Yes i dont know why i said alexander.

Pandarius.

And now Cresdida appears to be a pawn of Pandarius....he coaching her on how to talk its crazy!

What that BBC version brings out, which I think is so hard to see when reading the play, is just how funny it is. I mentioned it in the T&C read if you recall. I'll just copy here what I said:

I think one of the best of the series of S plays they [the BBC] did then. It has so much rich humour in it. The setting is purely Elizabethan, the Homeric story is forgotten. (So Aeneas is a very old man, not the future lover of Dido and killer of Turnus.)

Benjamin Whitrow (Mr Bennet in the Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth) is brilliant as the sly Ulysses, Nestor is an old fool, Aeneas is played by the actor who did Socrates in "Bill and Ted". Pandarus is done by Charles Gray, who I think was a villain in one of the Bond movies. The Greek camp is a shanty town with constant background noise. Priam is senile, Cassandra is quite mad, and has to be dragged off by carers, much to the embarrassment of the enormous royal family of Troy.

A must see!

Yes, I do remember you saying this...and one of the reasons I made sure to order a copy. I'm going to watch the BBC versions at the ends of our group reads.

I wish I had been doing this all along. The only one's I did watch at the end of group reads was The Winter's Tale and LLL.

The shanty town design was brilliant...as was the over all design of the sets for T and C. I loved the distressed unfinished sets. With chipped paints, all mixed media of wood, drywall, plaster, or not plaster...I took some pics on FB...which I shall post here....they are just off of my tv...so not fancy...

https://www.goodreads.com/photo/group...

Wow! This really has caught your imagination! The 1980s series BBC Shakespeares vary enormously in quality, I think, although personal taste obviously comes in there. (Lucinda and I often judged them rather differently.)

I have the whole box set, and still have not watched them all. Some were so groundbreaking they could change your whole view of the play. T&C was outstanding, and I think so was All's Well, and Measure for Measure.

I thought LLL was one of the poorest done, with actors too old for their roles as lovers and the direction very unfocused.

I agree about LLL....and thats why i thought the actors from the Globe version 2009.... to be in the stage and set of the BBC version would be perfect.

I highly recommend the Globe 2009 LLL

I agree that the BBC version of Troilus and Cressida is a delight. I also found their version of Two Gentlemen of Verona very well done.

I now need to get out the Henry VIII and see how that late play fared.