As the world celebrates Shakespeare's 450th birthday, Dominic Cavendish explains why seeing the plays in performance is not enough
Othello, directed by Nicholas Hytner, who admitted he struggled to understand Shakespeare Photo: Alastair Muir
The Telegraph - 23 Apr 2014
There will be fireworks outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre after the performance of Henry IV Part II on April 23 to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. The waters of the Avon will light up, the riverbanks will reverberate to pyrotechnical whizzes and bangs, and if Stratford’s sizeable population of swans are startled or squawk in alarm, what doth it matter? It’s the Sweet Swan of Avon, the great Bard himself, that counts.
Fireworks were very much on the menu for the tercentenary festival that commemorated Shakespeare’s birth in his hometown in 1864. At 9pm on April 23, “a grand display”, mounted by “Mr Darby, the Celebrated Pyrotechnist”, took place. That exhaustive tribute apparently began with “two superb balloons... each discharging an unique and beautiful Aerial display”. Some 63 exotic discharges later, the evening climaxed with a grand finale dubbed “The Vision of Shakespeare” – “formed of many thousand Lights, and gigantic Transparent Effects,… forming a Bouquet of the most beautiful Fires known in the Pyrotechnic Art”. Those seeking further hyperbolical elaboration can click here to read the programme
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