Shakespeare on Toast

First, a very happy 448th birthday to Will… Your work never ceases to amaze. Well done. Take the rest of the day off.

Now! This coming Star Wars Day, I’ll be giving a talk at the British Library based on the CD of Shakespeare sonnets, speeches and scenes I curated for the BL.

Together with a fab line-up of actors, we’ll intercut the blah-blah-blah by performing speeches & scenes from Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation. Some will be from the CD, some won’t have been heard in OP for over 400 years… Come one, come all…!

For details of the event, and to purchase tickets, click here…

How did Shakespeare sound to the audiences of the day?

Ben Crystal, together with actors from the company formed for the new British Library Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation CD, offer us a rare chance to hear new meanings uncovered, new jokes revealed and poetic effects enhanced.

‘Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation’ is currently available on CD & to Download here.

You can have a sneak preview to Sonnet 116, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet here…

The first ever CD of Shakespeare sonnets, speeches and scenes that I curated for the British Library launched yesterday. Click here for the full press release.

It’s now available to buy, and the Live event will take place on May 4th, 2012, at the British Library.

The Telegraph ran a feature on it with some extracts to listen to, as did the New Statesman, and Mark Lawson interviewed me on BBC Radio 4’s Frontrow last night (available to download as a podcast, dated 14th March 2012).

Enjoy!

Back from Nevada & playing the lead in the Contemporary World Premiere of Hamlet in Original Pronunciation.

I’m about to finish curating a CD of extracts of Shakespeare in OP for the British Library, the first of its kind, which will be out in February 2012 on CD & download. See here for more details: Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation

And now, after 7 months of acting, three months of (mostly) writing…

I’m currently adapting Shakespeare’s long poem Venus & Adonis for the Engage Programme out of Bath Theatre Royal, Bath Lit Festival 2012, & Roughhouse Theatre, which will be playing early March 2012.

And I’m about to write a new series of books called Springboard Shakespeare for Arden Shakespeare, coming out September 2012

Probably slightly more regular updates found via my Twitter feed.

Wishing each & all an adventurous new year…

Apologies for the lack of posting to this site in recent months…

Unless you follow me on Twitter you may not know I was playing Demetrius in Iris Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream this last July, in the gardens of St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, London.

Nor that I curated a 70 minute CD of well-known – and not so well-known sonnets, speeches and scenes of Shakespeare for the British Library, the first of its kind spoken by professional actors, and out March 2012.

I’m about to adapt Venus and Adonis for Roughhouse Theatre & Bath Theatre Royal… and very excitingly, will be beginning work on a new series of books I’ve been commissioned to write for Arden Shakespeare…

Nor indeed, will you know that I am about to leave for Nevada, USA, to start rehearsals to play Hamlet…

It’s going to be an Original Pronunciation production, the first for 400 years, and will open November 1st.

I’ll be keeping an account and diary of the whole process – the first of which will be up very soon – and found via my Twitter feed…

Been looking forward to this for a while. My new talk coming soon to the British Library:

What would it have been like to go to the theatre in Shakespeare’s time? How did his plays tap into his audience’s views on life and love? How did the social, cultural and political developments of the time shape his writing? Just as the English language was going through great change, so was the city of London. The world was rocked too by the death of Elizabeth, and James’s accession to the English throne.

Shakespeare’s audience had a tremendous ability to suspend their disbelief, and a great appetite for story-telling; they would have been thrilled by his language play, by the new words he invented and by the semi-familiar worlds he and his actors took them to. His works are revitalised when seen through the eyes and minds of the people he was trying to entertain.

Actor and author Ben Crystal (Shakespeare’s Words, Shakespeare on Toast) dives into the hearts, minds, ears and words of Shakespeare’s world.

1-2pm, Friday 25th, The British Library – Shakespeare, Language & the Elizabethan Mind…

The Richard III Quarto, at the British Library Evolving English Exhibition, 13 November 2010 -- 3rd April 2011

I was asked to record the opening speech of Richard 3 for the British Library’s Evolving English Exhibition. Knowing the listener would be using headphones while reading the original Quarto edition, I found myself whispering the speech into the microphone. Have a listen and get inside Richard’s head… The Folio text is below.

Now is the Winter… in Original Pronunciation

Enter Richard Duke of Gloster, solus.

Now is the Winter of our Discontent,
Made glorious Summer by this Son of Yorke:
And all the clouds that lowr’d vpon our house
In the deepe bosome of the Ocean buried.
Now are our browes bound with Victorious Wreathes,
Our bruised armes hung vp for Monuments;
Our sterne Alarums chang’d to merry Meetings;
Our dreadfull Marches, to delightfull Measures.
Grim-visag’d Warre, hath smooth’d his wrinkled Front:
And now, in stead of mounting Barbed Steeds,
To fright the Soules of fearfull Aduersaries,
He capers nimbly in a Ladies Chamber,
To the lasciuious pleasing of a Lute.*
But I, that am not shap’d for sportiue trickes,
Nor made to court an amorous Looking-glasse:
I, that am Rudely stampt, and want loues Maiesty,
To strut before a wonton ambling Nymph:
I, that am curtail’d of this faire Proportion,
Cheated of Feature by dissembling Nature,**
Deform’d, vn-finish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing World, scarse halfe made vp,
And that so lamely and vnfashionable,
That dogges barke at me, as I halt by them.
Why I (in this weake piping time of Peace)
Haue no delight to passe away the time,
Vnlesse to see my Shadow in the Sunne,
And descant on mine owne Deformity.

*In the Quarto text the word is Love, not Lute
**I think my favourite bit is the way the rhythm begins to canter here…