Introducing the film of The Dutch Courtesan
§1 We are delighted to be able to make available on the website, as promised, the film of our June 2013 production of The Dutch Courtesan. The filming was carried out at the first public performance, using a four-camera set-up, directed by my television colleague Patrick Titley, and with the sound recording under the control [read more…]
Director’s Blog
In this post is collected a series of notes from the play’s director, Michael Cordner, on the ongoing rehearsal process. Sunday 2 June Just passed the half-way mark in our short rehearsal period. The first attempt today on the play’s massive final scene, with its extraordinary twists and turns. Putting it on its feet [read more…]
About the Dutch Courtesan Project
In June 2013 John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan will be staged at the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York. This is the latest in a continuing series of productions of plays from the early modern repertoire there. This website has been created, both to track the Marston production as it [read more…]
Oliver Ford Davies: Performing Jacobean Verse
The Olivier Award-winning actor Oliver Ford Davies is a Professional Associate of the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York and gave the 2011 Cantor Modern Art Lecture at the University on Did Gertrude Know? Some Problems in Performing Shakespeare. In addition to a distinguished array of performances in leading Shakespearean [read more…]
Mapping The Dutch Courtesan
§1[*] The Dutch Courtesan divides opinion. For one scholar, it is Marston’s only “masterpiece in dramatic portraiture” (Bradbrook, 162), while, for another, it exemplifies the terminal “deliquescence of his talent” in the final phases of his playwriting career (Ure, 77). If views of the script’s quality diverge so radically, so do accounts of its major characters. [read more…]
Franceschina’s Voice
§1[*] Scholarship on The Dutch Courtesan has been fascinated by its title character’s idiosyncratic and wayward accent and, with very few exceptions, has expressed decisive views about its likely effect on audiences. According to one observer, Marston has burdened Franceschina with a “grotesque foreign lingo”, which irreparably cuts her “off from normal life” (Hunter, 320). [read more…]
The Dutch Courtesan, 1964
§1[*] In summer 1964 the newly established National Theatre made its first venture into the non-Shakespearean early modern repertoire with a production, by William Gaskill and Piers Haggard, of John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan. Across the preceding century those advocating the establishment of such a flagship enterprise had consistently featured in their propaganda a requirement [read more…]
A Mad World My Masters – Introduction
In 2011 I directed Thomas Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters with a student cast and production team on the largest stage of the Department of Theatre, Film and Television (TFTV) at the University of York. At its first performance on 23 June, it was filmed, using a four-camera set-up, by a team directed by [read more…]