Trivia Time: David Tennant and Shakespeare
...where we explore a few of the MANY times David's dabbled with the Bard
A few days ago, an announcement was made that David will be spending an afternoon with former RSC Artistic Director Greg Doran to discuss Shakespeare. Entitled David Tennant Meets Greg Doran: My Shakespeare, the event will be held on 25 October 2024 from 2:00-3:30 pm BST at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on Catherine Street in London. Tickets are on sale now and run anywhere from £37-£70.
Don’t miss it if you can help it!
(As a personal aside, I’m extremely jealous of all the people who will get to see this. But alas, I live in the US, and unless I can figure out how to flap my arms hard enough to get there, I’ll have to give it a miss. Ah, the travails of being a US-based DT fan are many when it comes to theatre!)
To take my mind off my theatre-going troubles, I thought it would be fun to play host to a Trivia Night, featuring a few of the bewildering number of intersections between David and the Bard of Avon.
So let’s do this!
The first intersection is one I featured back in July: an interesting workshop David helped to conduct on Shakespeare and gender-bending. If you somehow missed it and/or haven’t read it before, then please do!
On to the second intersection!
Back in 2002, a group of academics, teachers, theatre practitioners and enthusiasts met up at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon Avon. They were there to discuss founding a British Shakespeare Association. The organization they had in mind would unite scholars, teachers, actors and enthusiasts of all stripes (both professional and non-professional) in their appreciation of Shakespeare’s works. The BSA would also strive to educate and encourage communities - in their words, “promote the study, practice and enjoyment of Shakespeare.”
On 29-31 August 2003, the association’s first international conference was held at De Monfort University in Leicester. Judi Dench agreed to be the BSA’s patron, and they
established a format that the current conference still follows: a mixture of keynote lectures by distinguished Shakespeareans, seminars and paper sessions, and workshops for actors and teachers. The mix of speakers exemplified the BSA’s mission: Stanley Wells, Paul Edmondson and Catherine Belsey gave the conference its academic underpinning, whilst writer Andrew Davies, actor Sam West and director[s] Michael Bogdanov [and Gregory Doran] brought in other Shakespearean communities.
Oh! Before I forget, I’m gonna yell SQUIRREL! as I let myself get sidetracked for a moment about Sam West. West’s parents are iconic British actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales, who themselves have a very early connection with David…and his drama school days….and Shakespeare. HA! Read on to find out how:
Annnnnyway, back to Sam West.
West - who’d been a member of the RSC and had just come off starring roles as Richard II (2000) and Hamlet (2001) for that company - held a Shakespeare in Theatre acting masterclass/workshop at that first BSA conference. He brought along with him two other young actors from the RSC - Will Houston and David Tennant.
Not much is known about the breadth of David’s involvement in these acting masterclass/workshops, but one thing is certain: along with Sam West and Scottish actor David Rintoul, David participated in a detailed reading of two different quartos of Hamlet to assist scholars Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (editors of The Arden Shakespeare).
Thompson and Taylor were studying two texts - one written in 1603 (called the First Quarto, or “Q1”) and one written in 1623 (called the First Folio, or “F”). Part of their study concerned the metre of both plays - in other words, how they sounded…things like the rhythm and tempo of words and phrases. This mattered to them because ‘Q1’ was printed like a verse play, while ‘F’ seemed to adhere more to the iambic pentameter we tend to associate with Shakespeare today.
Thompson and Taylor wrote:
Ambiguities in this area can arise and editors can disagree because (1) Elizabethan prose is itself often rhythmical, blurring a simple distinction between prose and verse, and (2)…the line endings generally come where the phrases or clauses end. George T. Wright…called this ‘the phrasal line’ and associates it with oral delivery: ‘where the verse isn’t metrically clear, the lines usually contain one, two or three phrases that can be said in a single breath.’
This might relate to an oral element in the transmission of the text…as part of our research into this, we did some workshops with actors, both before and at the British Shakespeare Association conference at Leicester in August 2003. We used the dialogue between Hamlet and Ophelia at 7.138–93, trying out first the Q1 version (with the actors trying to observe the original Q1 ‘phrasal lines’), then the version following F’s prose.
The actors were divided between those who found the verse ‘more powerful’ and those who found the prose ‘more direct’.
So, as you can see, David’s acting and readings of these verses of Hamlet were instrumental in helping Thompson and Taylor develop their working theories on how to edit the Arden Shakespeare’s edition of the play.
I can imagine it was thrilling for David to read alongside the other actors, playing with Shakespeare’s words and phrases, feeling them out, and breathing life into them. After all, it’s what he’s done with Shakespeare ever since.
But if you’re like me, I bet you’re wondering whether David landed on the side of the verse was more powerful, or did he think the prose version worked better? It’s too bad we don’t know.
I’ll add another little tidbit of information about David’s stint at the 2003 British Shakespeare Association’s conference here from the Fact of The Day website that Diane Medas of The Play’s The Thing used to do.
It follows, in full:
While there, David spoke to a reporter from TES Magazine. TES stands for Teaching Every Student, and they are the largest network of teachers in the world. This little exchange is proof that David's political convictions have been with him a long time!
"Chatting to one of our reporters at the inaugural conference of the British Shakespeare Association about the sorry status of the bard in schools, Tennant wondered whose responsibility it was to turn things around.
"Who's the minister? Estelle Morris?"
On being informed Charles Clarke was now in charge in England, his face fell and, summoning the best eloquence he could muster from his native West Lothian, he exclaimed: "Oh well, we're fucked in that case."
Ha!
You know, while I’ve got your attention on the subject of David’s interactions with the British Shakespeare Association, here’s something which might interest you: did you know that each year, the BSA holds nominations for up to two Honorary Fellowships and for an Innovation Award?
Their Honorary Fellowships recognize “eminent individuals who have made major contributions to our understanding of Shakespeare through scholarship, education, and/or performance”. Their Innovation Award recognizes “an individual or organisation involved in Shakespearean studies, performance, and/or the cultural and creative industries that has substantially innovated engagement with and/or appreciation of Shakespeare and his works.”
It might come as a shock to you that to my knowledge, David’s never been awarded either of these two honors. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if David - who is arguably one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his generation - could be recognized in this manner?
Nominations for this year’s awards are open now and close 20 October. However, there’s a catch. Not just anyone can nominate (or I’d do it in a heartbeat!) The person making the nomination needs another person to second their nomination, and they have to write a 250-word formal proposal to the Chair of the Awards Committee. Oh, and both the proposer and seconder must be current BSA members in good standing!
But you know, you can join the BSA - wherever you are in the world - for an annual membership cost of £25 (or £15 for students, OAPs/retirees, and teachers). Not a bad price to have access to the wonders of Shakespeare.
…and to maybe nominate David next year, hmmm? *wink wink*
Now on to our last intersection of the day (and okay, okay...I know this one is a tenuous connection, but we're gonna do it anyway):
National Poetry Day in 2013 was on 3 October, and BBC Radio Berkshire did a whole Poetry Week in celebration. That year's theme was "water, water everywhere," but the poem David contributed doesn’t seem to have been related to that theme in any way, shape or form.
No, his contribution to BBC Radio Berkshire’s Poetry Week was to recite a poem called “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”, a ditty written by Cole Porter which originally featured in his 1948 musical, Kiss Me Kate.
You can hear David do it if you click below:
As you can probably tell, David did it quite tongue-in-cheek (which, by the way, was very much in the tradition of the original as well as in the movie version in 1953). And what’s more, he did it in a campy American accent!
Well, that’s it for this edition of David and Shakespeare. But never fear - there are plenty more where this came from. After all, David’s association with Shakespeare is a long and healthy one. I’m sure we’ll feature more in later posts.
Oh wow! To hear David recite “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me Kate, is a wonderful gift. It’s one of my favorite musicals, and remember wearing out my parent’s LPs of the original stage & film cast recordings. It could have a thin dotted line connection to the water theme…the Avon River maybe? I would hope someone would nominate he & the rest of the cast & crew for the “Macbeth”, especially since it’s a sound innovation. Thank you so much for your scholarship into David - it helps assuage the sadness of not being able to travel to London for these special moments. ♥️
Thank you for this. I must say that voice does not sound like DT to me at all. I agree with you. It's a shame he hasn't been awarded for his Shakespeare especially when reviewer have stated he's the best of his generation. And if I had to vote I would say he's for iambic pentameter. To me, it seems that what he talks about the most.