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Productions of Shakespeare’s histories rely strongly on the casting and staging, far more I think than the comedies. The source material is denser, drier, and often requires that the actors convey a wealth of information to the audience about past or off screen events. While the casts are often small, each actor usually portrays several characters, so it requires much more focus on the part of the audience to keep track of events. I’m sure someone, somewhere tried Game of Thrones style sexposition – putting graphic acts on stage to distract from the dull but necessary context, but it’s not the usual option. The Colorado Shakespeare Festival has just concluded the Henriad: the plays concerning the reign of Henry IV and the rise of Henry V. They pulled it off with a strong style that shows an increasing dedication to production values, especially in stage combat and cultivating talent.

While Shakespeare worked to convey history (and as a historian it’s incredibly fun to compare his version to what we know or think from our point in time), he knew his audience would not stand for a dry recitation of kings and their accomplishments. As with much of his work, the histories come alive in the secondary characters, the side stories and counter stories.

Most of the histories hold more than a little darkness: rebellion, regret, murder, or loss. Shakespeare must always walk a line between irreverence and displaying the rulers’ humanity. Take King John, who contemplates killing the young prince who may one day supplant him, only to change his mind. The boy falls to his death during an escape attempt. Was this history or a fabrication to protect the notion of kings as divine and noble? The line of pure evil is skirted but rarely passed (Richard III being the most notable exception). The Henriad has its own sways between good and darkness. Rebels and villains rail, fight, lose and keep fighting. Treachery abounds. More than one noble hero, or prince, falls.

The Henriad focuses its side stories on Falstaff and his cronies, strengthening the story and making it more human since we’re given the regal side of the war beside the common. Falstaff and his clowns reflect the larger story in microcosm but in a funhouse mirror way that helps to understand the weight of the events through a comical and base reflection. The impact of their slackened duty has a real effect, helping to show the weight of Prince Hal’s own wasted time.

Henry V, portrayed throughout the cycle in the Colorado festival the last two years by the same actor (as Falstaff was in 2014), is a complex man. Torn between duty and the desire to enjoy his youth, Shakespeare made a great effort to show Henry’s complexity as he moves from Prince Hal to king. Bit by bit he rejects youthful folly, sometimes with two steps forward and then one step back, to become a conquering king whose rousing speeches (in Henry V) are some of the most quoted in Shakespeare.

I’ve been attending plays in Boulder for some time and lately the company seems to have taken a strong step forward in quality. The players are talented and the direction strong. I’m anxious to finish out the canon in the next few years and see where Boulder goes with the remaining plays on my list.

Shakespeare is one of those traditions I struggle with. As a Literature major, I see the inherit value in the plays, in their study, and I can always return to the themes he worked in. At the same time, those themes are problematic when you consider the mores of the characters against modern sensibility.

The romances are my favorites as they walk the line between tragedy and comedy. By design, they’re more complicated. I never tire of a Midsummer’s Night Dream or the Tempest, but this weekend I got the chance to see Pericles at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland and it bore the same level of consideration as the others.

First, let me say that I’ve never read Pericles. My professors were just obsessed with Hamlet and King Lear. I think I wrote ten papers on each of those before I graduated. They’re also clear masterworks, there’s no denying that. My relationship to the comedies is also clear: they lend themselves to modern interpretation. The romances though deal with heavy themes.

The OSF playbill gave me some context: that Pericles was immensely popular in Shakespeare’s time, so much so that it was chosen to be the play they reopened with when the Puritans lost their sway. Pericles becomes difficult when you look at it through the modern lens: a daughter is bargained, a woman turns to villainy for petty jealousy, and a near rapist is forgiven without punishment and even rewarded for this “honorable” turn. In this, and in the deus ex machine turn at the end, Pericles is an immensely Greek play and Shakespeare shows his classical leanings.

Yet the story remains compelling, and it does prove less male centric when the focus turns from Pericles himself to his daughter, Marina. In both heroes, there’s an emphasis on their virtue, that by the nature of their natural goodness, they can overcome the terrors the gods have allowed to occur.

The relationship of the gods to the play is one I could ponder for hours: though oft invoked, their intervention is scant and delayed, almost as though they mean to say “Sorry about those twenty years. We were busy.” In this there is also some of what you find in Much Ado about Nothing’s emphasis on the purity of women in that it’s Diana, virgin goddess, who intervenes (and perhaps Her intervention might have differed had Marina now remained chaste).

Regarding the production itself, Ashland always excels. The stage work in Pericles was simple and yet incredible, especially a scene where a pull stage of silk is whisked away to leave the hero shipwrecked. A swaying platform, used to mimic a ship’s pitch and yaw was utilized to great effect, particularly when used to demonstrate Diana’s temple statue, requiring the actress to balance, unmoving for the entire scene.

Pericles itself is a balancing act. It could be played for tragedy or comedy and it would be very easy for the production to sway every way. Ashland did right by it, though as with any of the romances, I’ll need several more viewings to feel like I’ve truly understand it which for me, is what makes it timeless.