Excerpt….
Four hundred years ago, religion was an even hotter topic in the British Isles. Faith was still a burning matter and conversions were gained upon the rack. It was those turbulent times that threw up two great literary giants — William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. This year is the four-hundredth anniversary of Marlowe's mysterious death in a tavern brawl in Deptford and so there is a lot of Marlowe about. Radio 3 is to broadcast all his plays and on the BBC World Service the Play of the Week was Marlowe's Diaries by Roy Kendall (30 May).
The play was based on the fictional supposition that Christopher Marlowe's diaries had been found, a device that gave colour and momentum to the narrative. An entry for 17 July 1591 finds him fulminating against the difficulties put in his way of publishing his slim volume, Against the Trinity. "Where in the New Testament does it say that there are three persons in God? Nowhere." The Trinity was an invention of the third century, according to this Marlowe, vibrantly played by Anton Lesser. William Shakespeare, played by Jeremy Northam, was no firebrand, rather a man of discretion, and the scenes between the two of them brought out the contrast between the fiery, dangerous spy and the diligent, cautious journeyman playwright. Philip Voss was the steely politician and ultimate betrayer of Marlowe, Pauline Yates the playwright's mother, full of bounce and argument, making it clear where the polemical genes came from. All the performances were excellent, with each voice skilfully cast to sound quite different from the others.
But the real star of this production was the sound effects. There was a time when the World Service did not bother with such things much, fearing that overuse was more likely to confuse than illuminate the listener, because of difficulties of reception in the target countries. Not so now. The director, Gordon House, wove a rich tapestry of sounds as background to Marlowe's story. Was that his cloak I heard swishing over his angry shoulders? The steady drip of the rain as plotters met underlined the tension of the moment; every footfall or horse's hoof made them jump and us with them. It was as good as being at the pictures. Well, they do say that the best pictures are on radio.
All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt. (Charles M. Schulz)
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