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Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations

Wars of the Roses, 1980s–90s

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; Richard III

This series of television broadcasts based on Shakespeare’s history plays, which began in the late 1980s and ran into the early 1990s, was the second such series, having been preceded by one in the mid-1960s and then followed by another in the mid-2010s. The two main figures spearheading these broadcasts featuring the English Shakespeare Company were Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington.

Michael Manheim, in a 1994 essay titled “The English History Play on Screen” (132–39), argued that the characters in this series, unlike those in Jane Howell’s version for the BBC, “lack any sense whatsoever of true honour,” emphasizing instead the political ruthlessness of English leaders from the sixteenth century to the present. He said that Henry V is presented as merely foolish and Richard III as a complete monster, but he did admire the symbolic differences in costumes, which reflected clothing from different centuries (132–33).

In an essay from 2005 titled “The Bogdanov Version: The English Shakespeare Company Wars of the Roses,” David Fuller wrote that these “performances are in many areas interesting and vivid interpretations. But in the final plays of the sequence Bogdanov’s relentless stress on contemporaneity detracts from a full sense of what is neither particularly of Shakespeare’s age nor of our own—the desire to take revenge, the sufferings consequent on revenge being taken.” Fuller thought that “[p]artly as a consequence of aiming for an easily recognizable contemporary ‘relevance’—Cade as National Front demagogue; Queen Margaret as a [Margaret] Thatcheresque ‘Iron Lady’—we at least appear to know too much where we are. The dark comedy of 3 Henry VI and Richard III is too jocose.” Fuller observed that “[t]hroughout the series all kinds of devices allow the director an ideological domination that simplifies the plays’ moral complexities—or, more simply, negates alien or ‘unacceptable’ moral positions. The end result is often vigorous and compelling, but the great conflicting intensities of hatred and pathos in the final plays are not adequately embodied” (139).

Bibliography

1 

Fuller, David. “The Bogdanov Version: The English Shakespeare Company Wars of the Roses.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, 2005, pp. 118–41.

2 

Manheim, Michael. “The English History Play on Screen.” Shakespeare and the Moving Image, edited by Anthony Davies and Stanley Wells, Cambridge UP, 1994, pp. 121–45.

Citation Types

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MLA 9th
"Wars Of The Roses, 1980s–90s." Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations, edited by Robert C. Evans, Salem Press, 2025. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSSF_0052.
APA 7th
Wars of the Roses, 1980s–90s. Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations, In R. C. Evans (Ed.), Salem Press, 2025. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSSF_0052.
CMOS 17th
"Wars Of The Roses, 1980s–90s." Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations, Edited by Robert C. Evans. Salem Press, 2025. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSSF_0052.