The Wars of the Roses (adaptation)
The Wars of the Roses was a 1963 theatrical adaptation of William Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy (1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI and Richard III), 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 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.
This article is about the stage production of Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy. For the historical conflict, see Wars of the Roses.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. The broadcast was so successful that they were shown again, in a differently edited form, in 1966. In 1970, BBC Books published the play scripts along with extensive behind-the-scenes information written by Barton and Hall, and other members of the Royal Shakespeare Company who worked on the production.
Theatrical[edit]
Rewriting[edit]
The most significant initial alteration to the original text was to conflate the four plays into a trilogy. This was not unprecedented, as adaptations from the seventeenth century onwards had employed truncation when staging the sequence, especially the Henry VI trilogy. In 1681, John Crowne adapted 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI into a two-part play called Henry the Sixth, The First Part and The Misery of Civil War. Henry the Sixth comprised Acts 1–3 of 2 Henry VI, with material added by Crowne himself, focusing mainly on the death of Gloucester, whilst Misery adapted the last two acts of 2 Henry VI and a shortened version of 3 Henry VI.[1] In 1699, Colley Cibber's The Tragical History of King Richard the Third used scenes from 3 Henry VI as a form of prologue to rest of the play,[2] establishing a tradition still in use in filmic adaptations of Richard III (see, for example, James Keane and André Calmettes's 1912 version, Laurence Olivier's 1955 version or Richard Loncraine's 1995 version). In 1723, Theophilus Cibber's King Henry VI: A Tragedy used Act 5 of 2 Henry VI and Acts 1 and 2 of 3 Henry VI.[3] In 1817, J.H. Merivale's Richard Duke of York; or the Contention of York and Lancaster used material from all three Henry VI plays, but removed everything not directly related to York.[4] Robert Atkins adapted all three plays into a single piece for a performance at The Old Vic in 1923 as part of the celebrations for the tercentenary of the First Folio.[5] In 1957, also at The Old Vic, Douglas Seale directed a production of the trilogy under the title The Wars of the Roses. Adapted by Barry Jackson, the trilogy was again altered to a two-part play; 1 Henry VI and 2 Henry VI were combined (with almost all of 1 Henry VI eliminated) and 3 Henry VI was performed in a shortened version.[6]
John Barton's adaptation would divide the plays up in a new way. The first play (Henry VI) featured a shortened version of 1 Henry VI and roughly half of 2 Henry VI (up to the death of Cardinal Beaufort). The second play (Edward IV) featured the second half of 2 Henry VI and a shortened version of 3 Henry VI. This was followed by a shortened version of Richard III as the third play. In all, 1,450 lines written by Barton were added to roughly 6,000 lines of original Shakespearean material, with a total of 12,350 lines removed.[7] Barton defended the controversial decision to cut from and add to the text on the grounds that the Henry VI plays "are not viable as they stand," arguing they needed to be adapted "in the interests of audience accessibility."[8] As an example of the alterations, in the original text, the character of the Duke of Exeter appears only in 1 Henry VI, whereas in The Wars of the Roses, he appears throughout all three plays, as a constant ally of Henry VI and the House of Lancaster. Numerous characters were also removed, such as Warwick's father, the Earl of Salisbury, a major character in 2 Henry VI, and some of the battle scenes were amalgamated to cut down on stage combat (such as the First Battle of St Albans and the Battle of Wakefield, which take place in 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI, respectively).
In his introduction to the published script of the plays, Peter Hall defended Barton's edits, arguing "there is a difference between interfering with the text of the mature Shakespeare and with the text of the Henry VI's. These plays are not only apprentice work, uneven in quality; we cannot be sure that Shakespeare was their sole author."[9]: vii–ix In tandem with Barton, Hall also argued the plays simply didn't work in unedited form;