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Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations

An Age of Kings

See also individual entries for Richard II; Henry IV, Part I; Henry IV, Part II; Henry V; Henry VI, Part I; Henry VI, Part II; Henry VI, Part III; and Richard III

An Age of Kings was a fifteen-part televised series, first broadcast in 1960 on the BBC and based on a number of Shakespeare’s history plays, including Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, Henry V, 1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI, and Richard III. It was rebroadcast in the United States in 1961 and has since been made available on DVD. It consisted of filmed versions of actual “live” performances (without editing) and starred scores of talented actors, often playing multiple roles (as in Shakespeare’s own day). For example, David Williams played Richard II, Tom Henry played Henry IV, Robert Hardy played Henry V, Julian Glover played Edward IV, Hugh James played Edward V, Paul Daneman played Richard III, and Mary Morris played Queen Margaret. Other well-known actors included Angela Baddeley, Eileen Atkins, Sean Connery, Judi Dench, Frank Pettingell, Terry Scully, and Frank Windsor. Each episode was sixty minutes long.

Stuart Hampton-Reeves and Carol Chillington Rutter, in their 2006 book titled The Henry VI Plays, discussed An Age of Kings (111–14), noting that it was directed by Michael Hayes (111), resembles soap opera (with each episode anticipating the next), and reflected the BBC’s history of broadcasting about royalty (112). Its sets were modest and had to be reused (113), but in addition to physical sets it provided “psychological interiors, too: soliloquies were spoken softly to the camera in close-ups, as if characters were whispering confessions to the audience. Stretching the resources he had available, Hayes made adventurous use of televisual effects to create vivid, sometimes hallucinatory images” (113). They reported that an episode titled “‘The Morning War,’ based on the first three acts of Part Three, was the most ambitious of the adaptations,” emphasizing the destruction of pastoral English landscapes (113), although some episodes did challenge nostalgic moods (113).

Patricia Lennox, in a 2008 article on the series titled “An Age of Kings and the ‘Normal American,’” in addition to describing in great detail how the series came to be promoted, broadcast, and used for teaching in the United States, also commented that in its initial British run, “the matrix where the strengths of television and theatre met was in the live broadcast. Like a theatre audience, BBC viewers saw each episode at the moment of performance. This audience of over three million,” Lennox noted, “shared the immediacy and energy of a live transmission, cameras running, no room for revision or covering up mistakes—an immediacy that sports events still retain” (184).

Bibliography

1 

Hampton-Reeves, Stuart, and Carol Chillington Rutter. The Henry VI Plays. Manchester UP, 2006. Shakespeare in Performance series.

2 

Lennox, Patricia. “An Age of Kings and the ‘Normal American.’” Shakespeare Survey, vol. 61, edited by Peter Holland, Cambridge UP, 2008, pp. 181–98.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"An Age Of Kings." Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations, edited by Robert C. Evans, Salem Press, 2025. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSSF_0045.
APA 7th
An Age of Kings. Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations, In R. C. Evans (Ed.), Salem Press, 2025. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSSF_0045.
CMOS 17th
"An Age Of Kings." Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations, Edited by Robert C. Evans. Salem Press, 2025. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSSF_0045.