In Search of Shakespeare [DVD]

I never had the pleasure or even the opportunity to view this series on TV. Reading the reviews of the show and being a Shakespeare addist, I knew I had to see this, had to own the set. What with the new multi-region player (bought primarily for this very DVD) and the discs and the postage, this must have cost me $150. Well worth the price! I sat right down and watched it and in 2 sessions, had seen it all.

Beat out my Shakespeare 101 classes at university hands down for interest and content! Not only was the information exciting and (some) new (and perhaps speculative), but the host was engaging, the photography stunning (I am decided I MUST go to England next year!) and the locations fascinating.

You really do owe this to yourself if you have ANY interest in the Bard. If you're in the UK you can own it for pennies on the dollar (shillings on the pound?) than my costs. Highest accolades!

"So why go in search of Shakespeare? Can the life of a writer ever be as interesting or exciting as a conqueror, an inventor, or an explorer, a Napoleon, a Columbus, an Alexander the Great? Well yes, yes it can. More so, because the writers and the poets are the explorers of the human heart, and long after the conquerors are forgotten, THEIR legacy will be the most valuable to us as human beings."

Thus does Michael Wood address the viewer at the commencement of this magnificent four-part series. I've already reviewed the book on Amazon and praised it for containing so much more than the TV series, but of course the book does not have the fine scenes from Shakespeare's plays acted out by members of the Royal Shakespeare Company. And neither can the book convey the atmosphere of a visit to Stratford or the Forest of Arden or the many other places Wood visits in his search. Thankfully, we are preserved from actors playing a part in a docudrama.

It's good to see that the first episode - one whole quarter of the series - is spent by Wood looking at the first nineteen years of the poet's life. Wood calls this part `A Time of Revolution', and he bases his theory of the mystery of Shakespeare's on his place at the edge of fundamental changes in the English psyche, when it could be a matter of life or death depending on which horse you backed in the religious ferment of the time.

The second episode is again a wonder, for here Wood spends the whole time concentrating on the mystery of ten lost years. Was he in Catholic Lancashire? "It's easy to get carried away ...", says Wood, "This part of Lancashire is thick with Shakespearian co-incidences." But the series makes no extravagant claims, keeping its feet firmly on the ground.

`The Duty of Poets' is the title of the third episode, and derives from the writings of Robert Southwell, a Jesuit priest in hiding and a distant cousin of Will Shakespeare. His was a challenge, for he said that the duty of poets was not to provide popular entertainment, but to glorify God. Wood also explores what is known about Shakespeare's relationships with women - and men.

Ben Jonson claimed that Shakespeare "was not of an age, but for all time", and these last three words are used as the title of the fourth and final episode. In the midst of James's reign, the poet retreated back to Stratford, aged fifty, but then buys a large house in central London that was known as a safe-house for the Catholic underground. Is this an indication for the reason for the mystery of Shakespeare: the need to hide, the need to double-deal? We must make our minds up, but Wood puts forward a serious case. With the help of an actor with a Brummie accent, Wood also puts paid to the theory that Marlowe could ever have written Shakespeare's lines.

There is some beautiful camerawork here of the passing seasons in the English landscape. Another highlight of the series is the soundtrack by Howard Davidson. Why is it not available on CD?

The DVD boasts "previously unseen footage." This comprises twenty-three minutes of additional scenes, including more extracts from the plays performed by the RSC.

The peerless Dr. Wood (I assume he's got a Ph.D) was my sixth form pin up twenty five years ago when he began his BBC 'In Search of' series. He's done it again with a passionate and breathless recce round Stratford, Lancashire and London. Shakespeare's underground Catholicism is thumped home a fair bit, but the whole spirit of place thing, in the darkened Elizabethan rooms that another reviewer mentioned, is very very well done. Also, one tends not to hear much about Shakespeare's dalliances with the underworld, and with the hitherto unreported black community in Elizabethan London, and also his father's rise and fall, but it is all here and incredibly well done. I like the interspersing with RSC moments, performed in unusual but very Shakespearean locations. The only bit I didn't like was the assumption by one of the people interviewed that Shakespeare was a Brummie, or the inference that he spoke like Lenny Henry from Dudley in the Black Country. I am Warwickshire born and bred, and can assure you that the good people of Stratford upon Avon are not Brummies, nor are they from the Black Country. Warwickshire has a multitude of its own accents, thank you, without having to borrow from the neighbouring West Midlands, which didn't actually exist in its present form when Shakespeare trod the boards.

Altogether, though, an excellent piece of work by the enthusiastic and sexy Dr. Wood.