page_title: The Wars of the Roses (adaptation)
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: The Wars of the Roses (adaptation) / Theatrical / Politics
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Bertolt Brecht ADN-ZB/Kolbe 9.4.1980 [Datum Archiveingang] Bertolt Brecht geb. 10.2.1898 Augsburg gest. 14.8.1956 Berlin, Dichter, Theatertheoretiker und Regisseur. [Porträt Bertolt Brecht] Abgebildete Personen: Brecht, Bertolt: Schriftsteller, Regisseur, DDR (GND 118514768) Information added by Wikimedia users.English: Trimmed version of photograph released from the German Federal Archive of the German theatre director, dramatist, poet and theorist Bertolt Brecht in 1954. Ελληνικά: Πορτραίτο του Μπέρτολτ Μπρεχτ το 1948.
context_page_description: The Wars of the Roses was a 1963 theatrical adaptation of William Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy, which deals with the conflict between the House of Lancaster and the House of York over the throne of England, a conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. The plays were adapted by John Barton, and directed by Barton himself and Peter Hall at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The production starred David Warner as Henry VI, Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret of Anjou, Donald Sinden as the Duke of York, Paul Hardwick as the Duke of Gloucester, Janet Suzman as Joan la Pucelle, Brewster Mason as the Earl of Warwick, Roy Dotrice as Edward IV, Susan Engel as Queen Elizabeth and Ian Holm as Richard III.
  The plays were heavily politicised, with Barton and Hall allowing numerous contemporaneous events of the early 1960s to inform their adaptation. The production was a huge critical and commercial success, and is generally regarded as revitalizing the reputation of the Henry VI plays in the modern theatre. Many critics feel The Wars of the Roses set a standard for future productions of the tetralogy which has yet to be surpassed. In 1965, the BBC adapted the plays for television.
context_section_description: In terms of the dramaturgy of the plays, Barton and Hall were both equally concerned they reflect, but not directly refer to, the contemporary political milieu. According to Trevor Nunn, when Hall founded the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960, he "insisted upon one simple rule: that whenever the Company did a play by Shakespeare, they should do it because the play was relevant, because the play made some demand upon our current attention." This was very much in evidence during the production of The Wars of the Roses. Both Hall and Barton felt the civil chaos and breakdown of society depicted in the plays were mirrored by the contemporary political situation, in events such as the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Hall argued that "we live among war, race riots, revolutions, assassinations, and the imminent threat of extinction. The theatre is, therefore, examining fundamentals in staging the Henry VI plays." He also stated that during pre-production, "I realised that the mechanism of power had not changed in centuries. We were in the middle of a blood-soaked century. I was convinced that a presentation of one of the bloodiest and most hypocritical periods in history would teach many lessons about the present." Similarly, in her introduction to the Folio Society edition of the trilogy, Peggy Ashcroft challenged William Hazlitt's dismissal of the Henry VI plays as a depiction of England as a "perfect beargarden", writing "perhaps because we are more aware than ever before what a beargarden the whole world is, we see in these plays a microcosm of so many of the violent and tragic conflicts of our own time. The romantic view of Shakespeare, popular with the Victorians and lasting almost to the first half of this century has now changed, and we have become more aware of Shakespeare's political absorption and inspired interpretations of man's difficulty in governing himself and others."
  Barton and Hall were also influenced by certain politically focused literary theory of the time; both were subscribers to Antonin Artaud's theory of the "Theatre of Cruelty", and both had attended the 1956 London visit of Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble. Brecht's influence on The Wars of the Roses was especially pronounced, and many scholars have since cited Brecht's theories on drama in general, and historical drama in specific, as the impetus behind the 'rediscovery' of the Henry VI plays in the 1960s. For example, Ton Hoenselaars argues that Brecht
  provided a theatrical language and advanced a method of social analysis which together proved capable of turning Shakespeare's representation of politics in action into compelling drama [...] the impact of Brecht's view of the early histories as representations of the now historically distant decline and fall of medieval feudalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie was obvious [...] one of the major reasons why Brecht could trigger a truly international revival of interest in the neglected Henry VI plays was that by the 1960s, specific national interests were subordinated to supranational class concerns.
  Another major influence on the production was Jan Kott. Hall had read a proof copy of Kott's soon-to-be-influential Shakespeare Our Contemporary, prior to its publication in Britain, just before he began rehearsals for The Wars of the Roses. He was strongly taken by Kott's theory regarding Shakespeare's conception of the "Grand Mechanism" of history; as history continually revolves, each claimant to the throne rises, only to be subsequently deposed and crushed in an ongoing cycle. In the program notes for Henry VI, Barton and Hall included a quotation from Kott, which they felt was especially relevant to their production;
  There are two fundamental types of historical tragedy. The first is based on the conviction that history has a meaning, fulfils its objective tasks, and leads in a definite direction. Tragedy here consists in the cost of history, the price of progress that humanity must pay. The tragic figure th
caption: Bertolt Brecht's theories of dramaturgy were especially influential on The Wars of the Roses.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "ACD Systems Digital Imaging", "Image DateTime": "2013:05:15 06:16:18", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "122", "EXIF SubSecTime": "500", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "875"}