An Age of Kings
| An Age of Kings | |
|---|---|
North American DVD cover
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| Genre | Drama, Tragedy, History |
| Created by | Peter Dews |
| Developed by | Eric Crozier |
| Written by | William Shakespeare |
| Directed by | Michael Hayes |
| Theme music composer | Arthur Bliss |
| Composer(s) | Chrisopher Whelen |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 15 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Peter Dews |
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Production company(s) | BBC Television |
| Distributor |
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| Release | |
| Original network | BBC Television Service |
| Picture format | Black and white, 4:3 |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | 28 April – 17 November 1960 |
An Age of Kings is a fifteen-part serial adaptation of the eight sequential history plays of William Shakespeare (Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, Henry V, 1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI and Richard III), produced by the BBC in 1960. At the time, the show was the most ambitious Shakespearean television adaptation ever made, and was a critical and commercial success in both the UK and North America.
The concept for the series originated in 1959 with Peter Dews, a veteran BBC producer and director, who was inspired by a 1951 Anthony Quayle directed production of the Henriad at the Theatre Royal and a 1953 Douglas Seale directed repertory cast production of the three parts of Henry VI at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and subsequently, The Old Vic. At the time, An Age of Kings was the most conceptually ambitious Shakespeare project ever undertaken, containing over 600 speaking roles, and requiring thirty weeks of rehearsal prior to performance. Each episode cost roughly £4,000. Adapter Eric Crozier cut the text of the eight plays into sixty-, seventy-, seventy-five- and eighty-minute episodes, which each episode roughly corresponding to half of each play. The only exception to this was 1 Henry VI, which was reduced to a single hour-long episode.
Dews sourced most of his cast from The Old Vic, using many of the same actors who had appeared in Seale's production, although in different roles (Paul Daneman for example, played Henry VI for Seale, but played Richard III in Age of Kings). Dews also used actors with whom he had worked whilst directing undergraduate plays at Oxford University. He gave the job of directing to his assistant, Michael Hayes. The initial plan was for the series to be the inaugural production in the BBC's newly built BBC Television Centre in London, but when the studios opened, the series wasn't ready, and was instead broadcast from the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. Peter Dews described the set as "a large permanent structure; platforms, steps, corridors, pillars, and gardens, which will house nearly all the plays' action and which will, despite its outward realism, be not very far from Shakespeare's "unworthy scaffold"." The entire production was shot with four cameras running at any given time. For battle scenes, a cyclorama was used as a backdrop, obscured with smoke. Almost the entire series was shot in medium and close ups. All ten episodes were broadcast live, and a 16mm "telerecording" was made by literally filming a television screen.
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