"Hollow Crown" Topic

The BBC are running 4 Shakespere plays – Richard III, Henry IV 1 & 2 and Henry V.

It's all been shot on location and in period costume, and I wonder if anyone has a comment on how accurate the costumes are ?

Pete

I didn't think Bolinbroke's horned helmet was correct.

As far as I know the civilian costume is not bad but the military stuff is all over the place. Not enough plate armour for one thing and virtually no heraldry to speak of.

Production costs I assume.

The helmets looked distinctly odd and mass-produced as well, mostly like an early impressionist's version of medieval sallets ie: not really like sallets; no great helms or bascinets either. Hair styles bore no relation to early fifteenrh century tastes as well – a complete absense of pudding basins. Didn't any of the researchers bother watching Olivier's movie? They seemed to have used Brannaugh's remake as a goto.

The point I think is to create a general 'medieval' impression rather than anything accurate. The costumes seem to get increasingly 'renaissance' in style as the 4 plays progress. Long robes and hoods in Richard II, almost Elizabethan robes in Henry iv.

Its worth bearing in mind that the most 'authentic' costume for these plays is Elizabethan/Early Jacobean. Shakespeare's company played in the 'modern dress' of their time, with some concession to history or foreignness but not much. There is the contemporary illustration from Titus Andronicus with Titus, and Tamora the Gothic queen in made-up psuedo classical garb, and the attendant guards with halberds and morion helmets.

Fair point, Hobhood, and if the plays were being performed in the replica Globe, or in a studio set to portray an Elizabethan theatre – as at the start of Sir Larry's Henry V – entirely appropriate.
But if they are being filmed outdoors in a naturalistic setting, there is a strong argument for being true to the period in which the play is set.

Although I enjoyed the R2, I was very disappointed with H4 1&2. They were on only a couple of weeks after Sky Arts 2 had been showing the Globe productions of the same plays with an incredibly satisfying interaction with/response from, which left me feeling that this was the way Shakespeare should be done. The Hollow Crown ones hardly measured up.

Jeremy Sutcliffe, I know what you mean. Beale's Falstaff, though brilliantly acted was an odd interpretation when compared with the rumbustious, witty, earthy Roger Allam at the Globe. But the Hollow Crown was I think, a deliberately 'darker' view of the plays, pointing up the idea that the desire for power brings with it suffering and death. This was clear the opening of Henry V, showing his funeral procession, so that the triumph of Agincourt could be viewed in nostalgic retrospect.

But enough of drama babel – back to the toy soldiers.

In Richard III, Hollow Crown, there is a telescope or spyglass used--which is a huge fail to say the least, even in Shakespeare's day they were a new and still rare technology…how that got by the art director/producers is beyond me.

The armour and clothing fares little better, sad to say. For example--the greathelms worn by Bolingbroke and Mowbray--not only looked cheap--but would have been quite antiquated by the late 1300's. I could see how they might still be worn by poorer knights and men-at-arms at that time, but not by two lords of the realm.

Anyway, whether BBC or Hollywood, expecting historical accuracy in film is like asking for honesty in politics i.e. a losing proposition.

Y'all realize, of course, that this is a conversation you can only have about British television.

The way I see it is that if you're going to dress up the actors in authentic early XVth century 'civilian' clothing, why mess up the military equivalent? Poor research or just lazyness?