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TNT series "Will"
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message 17: by David Jul 22, 2017 12:48PM
David (Shaxton) | 278 comments I find most of the material in the TV series suspicious. Need a love-interest for our Will when he first arrives in London? Give Richard Burbage a beautiful sister and call her Alice!
Overall, I do not like how both the writer and the director have decided that everything about Shakespeare and London at the time should be so frenetic. Maybe it makes for higher ratings (I wouldn't know), but I find it off-putting. What I'd like to see is a more original take on the times, one that might even allow for a little sweetness and light.
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All of us I am sure are excited bout this new tv series....but talk about it here...don't interrupt the Sonnets discussion.
Thanks!
I will catch up here as soon as I can...I plan on watching the series...this could be fun...?!
How many episodes is it? What is TNT? Is it all British actors?More info needed for non-Americans . . .
Not too sure about the dialogue: "A pastoral? It's crap like that got us into this mess in the first place." But it looks fun and it would be nice to see an episode.
How do they tackle the fact that he had a wife and kids back in Stratford?
I like this Laurie Davidson interview,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dnkq...
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David (Shaxton) | 284 comments I find most of the material in the TV series suspicious. Need a love-interest for our Will when he first arrives in London? Give Richard Burbage a beautiful sister and call her Alice!
Overall, I do not like how both the writer and the director have decided that everything about Shakespeare and London at the time should be so frenetic. Maybe it makes for higher ratings (I wouldn't know), but I find it off-putting. What I'd like to see is a more original take on the times, one that might even allow for a little sweetness and light.
Mod
"London in 1509 was certainly no backwater. With a population of around 60,000, it was far larger than any other city in England and, containing as it did Westminster and the City and Southwark, it was at the centre of English political power and financial muscle. Yet these centres were independent in purpose, governance and location, and a trip from the City to Westminster would take in open ground, with hunting on Soho Fields a common activity. London was primus inter pares, not king of the world.
By the 1660s...London ruled. Only Paris and Constantinople were larger.
By the 1660s, things were very different. London ruled. With around 350,000 inhabitants, it dwarfed all other English cities; abroad, only Paris and Constantinople were larger. It was a single, unified, city; a heaving morass of people and buildings; a metropolis so dominant that it deserved its own superhero."
and...
"The transformation was caused by a combination of court and port. While monarchy and government had been modernising slowly for a century, the pace accelerated rapidly after Henry VII seized power in 1485. To bolster a precarious grip on power, Henry instituted wide-ranging reforms that centralised the government and caused regional power-bases to lose their attraction for the ambitious - London was now the place to be.
By the time of Henry VIII's accession in 1509 the necessary pieces were in place for an era of prosperity."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/...
I am starting a topic thread on the tv show "Will" here. I have copied and patented a discussion that opened up in the Sonnets read...to here...
Please check out how you can create a new topic here...if you need help...and don't know what to do personal message me and I will help you set up a new topic.
Here are the posts about the tv series in USA called WILL
Janice(JG) George | 86 comments Is anyone watching the TNT series Will? I wonder just how much of the history is authentic and how much for the drama. It is a fascinating story about the competition between theater owners. And Christopher Marlowe is not treated too kindly.
If the theater scenes are somewhat authentic, then the rowdiness of it all has been a revelation to me. It also really helps me to understand S's plays... and also his dilemma. Were there serious/tragic-comic plays before S began writing them, or were they all mostly comic, lewd & slapstick?
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message 10: by David (new) Jul 14, 2017 08:53AM
David (Shaxton) | 278 comments I've watched the first two episodes. The writer and director have taken many liberties, to be sure, but it would be impossible to dramatize Shakespeare's life without taking liberties galore.
As for the rowdiness at the theaters, I know that's a common interpretation, but I don't know how much firm evidence there is. Anyone?
The only extant drawing of a Shakespeare production (of Titus Andronicus):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Here's a podcast of an interview with writer Craig Pearce and director Shekhar Kapur.
http://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unl...
It's more of an advert for the TV series than an interview, but it gives insight into how many liberties the two took.
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message 11: by Martin (new) Jul 14, 2017 10:35AM
Martin | 1029 comments I think this most interesting topic (the TNT series) would attract more response if moved to one of the other sections, "S and movie versions" oe "S inspired work" perhaps. I don't know if Candy could oblige . . .
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message 12: by David (new) Jul 14, 2017 12:35PM
David (Shaxton) | 278 comments I agree. And it might be a good way to generate more interest in the Shakespeare Fans group generally, at least if the TNT series proves to be popular.
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message 13: by Janice(JG) (new) Jul 14, 2017 11:18PM
Janice(JG) George | 86 commentsDavid wrote: "I agree. And it might be a good way to generate more interest in the Shakespeare Fans group generally, at least if the TNT series proves to be popular."
I'm enjoying the series, it's well-done, and Will becomes a very relatable guy.
And it's a good idea to move this discussion in general, but I forgot to include my main point in my original post which had to do with sonnets, and which was that I had read or seen, years and years ago, reference to the fact that sonnet writing with the local poets had been a competition at the same time S may have been writing his sonnets. This was represented in the scene at the pub when Will was first challenged to be as smart with words as he claimed, and it became a wagering contest between he and the red-head (don't remember his name) to come up with what a Variety reviewer called a "rap battle" ... but if my information is correct, this was not an atypical event. Variety panned the series, called it a punk rock version, and my thought was -- maybe the times weren't so different after all.
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message 14: by Gabriel (new) Jul 15, 2017 12:06PM
Gabriel | 119 comments Does anyone know if the TNT series 'Will' which you're dfiscussing is available in the UK? I just read a short synopsis online, which says he's shown as a secret Catholic. Can't see any evidence for that in the plays. The Pope's emissary in King John is a pretty nasty piece of work, and the pre-Henry VIII (ie pre-Protestant) clerics in the history plays tend to be very dubious characters, eg the Archbishop of Canterbury at the start of Henry V. In Henry VIII Elizabeth is prophetically adulated for creating a country in which 'God shall be truly known'. Admittedly this may have been just ideological flannel. My feeling from the plays is that he's pretty sceptical about all religion, though deeply concerned with morality. Of course everyone's family had a recent Catholic past, so he would be familiar with all that and much of the imagery and concepts would still have been common currency.
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message 15: by Janice(JG) (new) Jul 20, 2017 02:58PM
Janice(JG) George | 86 commentsGabriel wrote: "Does anyone know if the TNT series 'Will' which you're dfiscussing is available in the UK? I just read a short synopsis online, which says he's shown as a secret Catholic. Can't see any evidence fo..."
I thought there might be another thread to discuss this TV series, but I can't find one.
I think the possibility of S being Catholic is very intriguing. It could explain a lot of things, including his very love-based morality, but also some of his more obscure sonnets which seem not to be created for any general public but are meant for particular ears. If being Catholic was as threatening as the series is making it out to be, then S could ill afford to seem pro-Catholic in any way. After all, Marlowe was a known spy and Catholic, and he did not survive.
By the way, the whole depiction of Kit Marlowe is fascinating, and I'm very curious where and how the creators of this series have researched the times and characters to visualize such a full-spectrum story.
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message 16: by Gabriel (new) Jul 21, 2017 02:39AM
Gabriel | 119 comments I'm not convinced about Shakespeare being Catholic, nor Marlowe. I think we have to look at the evidence of the plays. Surely love-based morality isn't limited to Catholicism? In (Marlowe's) Dr Faustus the Pope gets boxed on the ears. Marlowe's 'Massacre at Paris' is also a huge explicit indictment of the (French Catholic) Duc de Guise for the massacre of the (Protestant) Huguenots. It doesn't add up.
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message 17: by David (new) Jul 22, 2017 12:48PM
David (Shaxton) | 278 comments I find most of the material in the TV series suspicious. Need a love-interest for our Will when he first arrives in London? Give Richard Burbage a beautiful sister and call her Alice!
Overall, I do not like how both the writer and the director have decided that everything about Shakespeare and London at the time should be so frenetic. Maybe it makes for higher ratings (I wouldn't know), but I find it off-putting. What I'd like to see is a more original take on the times, one that might even allow for a little sweetness and light.
reply | delete | flag *