bingo pack draft 2 - citeseerx

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Contents

1. Edward Bond

2. The Works of Edward Bond

3. Synopsis

4. Cast and Creative Team

5. Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death

6. Edward Bond’s William Shakespeare

7. Land Enclosures

8. The Royal Court Theatre

9. Heightened Text: A Drama Exercise

10. Bibliography

If you have any questions or comments about this Resource Pack please contact us:

The Young Vic, 66 The Cut, London, SE1 8LZ

T: 020 7922 2800 F: 020 7922 2801 e: [email protected]

Compiled by: Adam Penford

Young Vic 2012

First performed at the Young Vic on Thursday 16 February 2012

Rehearsal and production photographs by Catherine Ashmore

The Young Vic Teachers Programme is supported by:

A Young Vic production

BingoBingoBingoBingo By Edward Bond



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1. 1. 1. 1. EDWARD BONDEDWARD BONDEDWARD BONDEDWARD BOND

Edward Bond is considered one of the greatest living British playwrights and has written over fifty works.

Over the last forty years, Bond’s fractured relationship with the British theatrical establishment has

attracted as much attention as his plays. He described the National Theatre as “a technical sewer” and

the Royal Shakespeare Company as “trivialising and vulgarising Shakespeare in a way that is truly

barbarous”. Recently, prominent British companies have begun to revive his hit plays, re-establishing a

tentative relationship with one of our most challenging, but innovative, playwrights.

Edward Bond

Bond was born in Holloway, London on 18 July 1934. Whilst he was evacuated as a child to East Anglia

for a period of time during World War II, he did also witness some of the horrors of the Blitz, and a

sense of violence and danger is often present in his work. His family were lower-working class; his father,

an agricultural labourer, could not read. Bond himself had little education and was not allowed to take

his Eleven-plus examination to see if he qualified for grammar schooling. The social injustices of his

working-class childhood were a profound force in shaping his political thoughts that later manifested

themselves in his plays. He left school aged 15 and had various factory and office jobs, before doing his

national service [a year’s service in the military, compulsory in the UK until 1960] in 1953 as part of the

post-war occupation forces in Vienna. Bond was struck by the undercurrents of violence in the city which

contrasted with the pretence of normal life being played out on the surface. Upon returning to London,

he decided to start writing for the theatre.



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Bond had first been introduced to theatre through the form of music hall as a child; his sister was a

magician’s assistant and the young Bond used to watch her being sawn in half. Aged 14, he was taken on

a school trip to see a production of Macbeth which proved a revelation: “I obviously didn’t understand a

lot of it, but I understood enough of it, and it was the first time that anybody had spoken to me seriously

about my life [...] I’d lived through a war and been bombed so I knew all about Macbeth being a tyrant,

but it seemed to me that somebody was telling the truth.” After returning from Vienna, Bond watched as

much theatre as he could and began to hone his writing skills by penning short dramatic sketches. After

submitting two plays to the Royal Court theatre, the London home of new writing, he was asked to

become a member of its writers’ group in 1958, studying alongside other playwrights.

A production photo from the 1965 Royal Court production of Saved

In 1962, Bond’s play, The Pope’s Wedding, was staged at the Royal Court in a Sunday evening

‘performance without decor’ [simply staged, with minimal set and costume] - his first professional

performance - but it was in 1965 that he made his name with the now infamous, Saved. The play

explored a group of young, working-class South Londoners struggling to survive in deplorable economic

conditions, and featured sexual and violent acts. The scene which caused the most controversy in the

press showed a group of bored, young males stoning a baby to death in its pram. The Lord Chamberlain,

whose job it was to vet plays that might be not be in the public interest, attempted to censor the stoning



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scene in Saved, but Bond refused to alter it, saying it would fundamentally alter the meaning of the play.

The Royal Court decided to stage the play as a ‘club’ performance, a loophole which the venue had

previously successfully exploited, meaning it was for a private, not public, audience and therefore not

under the Lord Chamberlain’s jurisdiction. They were still prosecuted however and given a conditional

discharge [a sentence without punishment upon the condition that the theatre stops the production]. The

case caused outrage in the theatrical community. Lawrence Olivier [1907-1989], then the Artistic

Director of the National Theatre, argued: “Saved is not a play for children, but it is for grown-ups, and

the grown-ups of this country should have the courage to look at it”. Saved became an international hit,

receiving thirty productions around the world between 1966 and 1969.

Bond’s next play at the Royal Court, Early Morning (1967), also attracted the Lord Chamberlain’s

attention as it featured a lesbian relationship between Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria.

However, the censorship law was repealed in 1968 and the Royal Court celebrated by touring three of

Bond’s plays in the UK and Europe. Lear in 1971 re-imagined Shakespeare’s King Lear and centred on a

paranoid autocrat whose daughters rebel against him. The play featured Bond’s trademark violence; a

machine extracted Lear’s eyeballs and knitting needles pierced a character’s eardrum. The Sea (1973)

was a notably different kind of play from Bond’s previous works, although it still had a sense of danger

and insanity running through its core. Located in a seaside town in 1907, Bond subtitled the play “a

comedy” and it featured one of his now most well-known characters, Lady Raffi, a domineering but

hilarious matriarch. Bingo was produced in 1974, examining Shakespeare’s last years in Stratford as

impotent landlord. The Fool premiered a year later, which also explored the position of the artist in

society, reinterpreting the life of the poet, John Clare.

Up until this point, the Artistic Director of the Royal Court, William Gaskill [1930-], had been Bond’s

greatest champion. They had faced the Lord Chamberlain together, and he had directed all of Bond’s

plays up to, and including, The Sea. The relationship began to break down in the mid-1970s however as

Bond became increasingly more authoritarian about how his work should be staged. Instead, during the

late 1970s, the Royal Shakespeare Company began to stage Bond’s work, although this also proved a

volatile relationship with Bond still complaining that he was not sufficiently consulted on how his plays

were staged. Bond decided the solution was to direct his own work, sometimes making this a condition of

a company being allowed to premiere a work, and in 1978 he directed The Woman at the National



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Theatre. The production was not a great success, Bond blamed the venue for being run “like a biscuit

factory”; the staff and actors blamed Bond for his abstract direction and unrealistic production demands.

In the 1981, Bond wrote a new play, Restoration, which used restoration comedy as parody to explore

the working classes support of Thatcher’s Tory government. The Royal Court, now under the new Artistic

Directorship of Max Stafford-Clark [1941-], allowed him to return to direct it, despite Bond taking

offence when Stafford-Clark made notes in the text’s margins suggesting improvements. Stafford-Clark

later said that Bond was the most difficult man he had ever met and Bond has not worked at the venue

since, refusing to participate in the venue’s 50th anniversary celebrations a few years ago. Bond’s

reputation as a difficult man was spreading and the National Theatre’s Artistic Director, Peter Hall

[1930-], refused to allow him to direct his new play, Human Canon, in the early 1980s, which the author

had specifically conceived for the wide Olivier stage at the venue. The War Plays, a result of various

individual commissions, formed Bond’s work during the mid-1980s. His attempt to direct them at the

Royal Shakespeare Company was disastrous and he left rehearsals before the premiere. This incident led

to Bond’s final break with the establishment and he has since refused to allow his work to premiere in

London at the larger, mainstream theatres. Bond’s subsequent new writing has mostly been performed by

amateur companies and foreign theatres; Paris became the temporary home of his work. He also writes

plays for youth companies and youth audiences: “I make no distinction between writing Lear and a play

for young people. In fact, I love writing for the young. They’re not interested in plays about paying the

mortgage”.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of determination by the establishment to showcase Bond’s

work in recognition of his status as a major British dramatist. The Sheffield Crucible revived Lear in

2004, the theatre company Headlong produced Restoration in 2006, and the author finally received his

West End debut in 2008 with The Sea, 46 years after his professional debut, although Bond did walk out

during rehearsals and never returned to watch the production. For many years, Bond had refused to grant

permission to UK companies to stage Saved: “My agent says he still gets more requests for that play than

any others. We get a request once a week, but I won’t let them do it in this country now. They will turn it

into a horror show [...] A performance will completely destroy a play.” However, last year, the artistic

director of the Lyric theatre in Hammersmith, Sean Holmes, succeeded in persuading Bond to allow him

to produce the play. Bond was satisfied with the production, (although interestingly several reviewers felt



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the production too reverential and therefore outdated,) and the venue will now be reviving Bond’s The

Chair Plays later this year.

Bond has said that he always knew the path that his work was going to take; that he roughly conceived a

whole series of plays which explored the human condition as a young man, and just started writing.

Bond’s plays are often represented as dark, violent and nihilistic, but underneath the pain there is usually

a glimmer of hope. Even the controversial, Saved, ends with its protagonist, Len, peacefully and

methodically mending a broken chair, an ending which Bond himself described as “almost irresponsibly

optimistic”. Bond himself articulated his viewpoint in a press interview in 2008: “You have to see how

people deal with a crisis, but in the end you cannot despair. If you’re going to despair, stop writing. If my

plays are staged and acted in the way which they are written, what comes across is a colossal affirmation

of life.”



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2. The Works of Edward Bond2. The Works of Edward Bond2. The Works of Edward Bond2. The Works of Edward Bond

Edward Bond has written around 50 plays and adaptations, some of which remain unperformed. He has

also written for television, film and opera. Below is a selection of his theatrical work.

PlaysPlaysPlaysPlays

The Pope's Wedding (1962)

Saved (1964)

Early Morning (1968)

Narrow Road to the Deep North (1968)

Black Mass (1970)

Lear (1971)

The Sea "a comedy" (1973)

Bingo "scenes of money and death" (1973)

The Fool "scenes of bread and love" (1975)

The Woman "scenes of war and freedom" (1978)

The Bundle or New Narrow Road To The Deep North (1977)

The Worlds (1979)

Restoration "a pastorale" (1981)

Summer "a European play" (1982)

Derek (1982)

Human Cannon (1986)

The War Plays: Red Black and Ignorant (1984)

The Tin Can People (1984)

Great Peace (1985)

Jackets or The Secret Hand (1989)

In the Company of Men (1992)

September (1989)

Olly's prison (1993)

Tuesday (1995)

Coffee "a tragedy" (1996)

At the Inland Sea, "a play for young people" (1995)



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Eleven Vests (1997)

The Crime of the twenty-first Century (1999)

The Children (2000)

Have I None (2000)

Existence (2002)

Born (2006)

The Balancing Act (2003)

People (2005)

The Under Room (2005)

Arcade (2006)

Tune (2007)

Innocence (2008)

A Window (2009)

There Will Be More (2010)

AdaptationsAdaptationsAdaptationsAdaptations

Thomas Middleton: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1965)

Anton Chekhov : Three Sisters (1966)

Bertolt Brecht: Heads (Round Heads and Pick Heads) (1970)

John Webster: The White Devil (1976)

Frank Wedekind: Spring Awakening (1974)

Frank Wedekind: Lulu (1992)



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3. Synopsis3. Synopsis3. Synopsis3. Synopsis

CastCastCastCast

William Shakespeare: William Shakespeare: William Shakespeare: William Shakespeare: He is in his later years, retired from London.

Old Man: Old Man: Old Man: Old Man: Shakespeare’s gardener.

Old Woman: Old Woman: Old Woman: Old Woman: The Old Man’s wife, she is Shakespeare’s housekeeper.

Son: Son: Son: Son: The Old Man and Woman’s son. He leads the rebellion against Combe.

William Combe: William Combe: William Combe: William Combe: Landowner and magistrate. He proposes the Welcombe Enclosure.

Judith: Judith: Judith: Judith: Shakespeare’s daughter.

Young Woman: Young Woman: Young Woman: Young Woman: A beggar.

Ben Jonson: Ben Jonson: Ben Jonson: Ben Jonson: Playwright, Shakespeare’s contemporary/rival.

Wally, Jerome and John: Wally, Jerome and John: Wally, Jerome and John: Wally, Jerome and John: Farm labourers.

2222ndndndnd

Old Woman: Old Woman: Old Woman: Old Woman: Shakespeare’s wife, Judith’s mother.

SynopsisSynopsisSynopsisSynopsis

Bingo takes place in Warwickshire over several months, stretching from 1615 to 1616.

Scene 1: Garden.Scene 1: Garden.Scene 1: Garden.Scene 1: Garden.

Shakespeare is sat in his garden reading with the Old Man next to him, trimming the hedge, when a

Young Woman arrives to beg. As Shakespeare goes into the house to fetch his purse, the Old Man hides

the Young Woman in the back garden where he plans to have sex with her. Seizing the opportunity to do

so, the Old Man exits into the back garden leaving Shakespeare alone. The Old Woman attempts to gauge

Shakespeare’s intentions with regards to Combe’s proposed land enclosure and warns him that it will ruin

the livelihoods of impoverished local families. Combe arrives to convince Shakespeare to sign a contract

indicating that he will neither oppose nor interfere with the enclosure, in exchange for the security of his

own land. Shakespeare states his terms and agrees to remain impartial in any ensuing struggles over the

enclosures. The Old Man enters dishevelled but excited followed by his son, who has discovered him with

the Young Woman. The Son admonishes the Old Man for his sexual misconduct. As a local magistrate,

Combe interrogates the Young Woman who explains that she is passing through Warwickshire en route to

her auntie in Bristol due to the death of her family in Coventry. Combe however, disbelieves her story-

sentencing her to be whipped for vagrancy and prostitution.



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Scene 2: Garden, six months later.Scene 2: Garden, six months later.Scene 2: Garden, six months later.Scene 2: Garden, six months later.

The scene opens with the Old Woman telling Judith about her husband's mental health and his misfortune

with the press gang. Shakespeare and Judith converse in the garden but it becomes clear that their

relationship is a curt one, with Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife also in question. Later,

Shakespeare and the Old Man are in the garden when the Young Woman returns. She is visibly suffering:

still shaking from the flogging, and physically destroyed having been living in burned out barns all winter,

supported by the Old Man. Shakespeare tells Judith to give the woman food and old clothing which

belonged to his wife, but Judith refuses. The Young Woman hides in the orchard when Combe arrives to

give Shakespeare the contract, which he signs. Judith tells Combe that the woman has returned; resulting

in the dispatch of Combe’s men to arrest her. Initially, Judith is angry at her father for tolerating the

Young Woman and Old Man’s misconduct and his lack of sympathy for the local people. However, she

soon feels both responsible and guilty at being the cause of the woman's punishment, and regrets turning

her in. The Old Man breaks down crying because he knows that the woman will be executed for arson.

Patrick Stewart in rehearsals for Bingo

Scene 3: Hill, on a pleasant warm day.Scene 3: Hill, on a pleasant warm day.Scene 3: Hill, on a pleasant warm day.Scene 3: Hill, on a pleasant warm day.

Hanging on a gibbet onstage is the body of the Young Woman who has been executed for setting fire to

barns. Shakespeare sits alone and silent when a pair of local labourers enter eating their lunch, they are

joined by the Son and Wally. The locals discuss the hanging and the Young Woman’s crimes, all the while

making thinly veiled comments about Shakespeare, prompting him to stand and exit the stage. The Son

and Wally become engrossed by the Young Woman’s body and become frenzied as they are overwhelmed



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by religious fervour. Judith enters and witnesses this, before being subjected to scathing judgments on her

father by the Son. When the Son and Wally exit, Shakespeare re-enters and recalls the violent scene of a

bear-baiting that took place in London near the theatre. He is clearly moved by the death of the Young

Woman and seems to be in despair at the suffering in the world. Judith herself is upset at the growing

sense of distance between Shakespeare and his family. She claims that Shakespeare treats herself and

her mother “...as enemies”. The Old Woman brings news of the arrival of a gentleman from London, and

despite her best intentions is unable to placate the difficult sentiments of Shakespeare and his daughter.

Richard McCabe as Ben Jonson in rehearsals

Scene 4: The Golden Cross, a tavern.Scene 4: The Golden Cross, a tavern.Scene 4: The Golden Cross, a tavern.Scene 4: The Golden Cross, a tavern.

It is revealed that Ben Jonson is the gentleman who has arrived from London. Shakespeare and Jonson

are sitting in the tavern drinking, Jonson has come with the news that the Globe Theatre has burned

down. Jonson asks Shakespeare what he has been writing, and the two discuss their lives and literature.

Their conversation is cynical, and their attitude towards writing is unglamorous: Jonson in particular

displays his insecurities as a writer. Hs also recounts a life of violence compared with Shakespeare's

quiet existence in the countryside. As the two get increasingly drunk, the Son and the farm labourers

enter. They had been destroying Combe’s enclosure fences and ditches under the cover of darkness, when

they encountered defensive resistance from Combe’s men. The Son and the labourers see themselves as

religious soldiers against the immoral acts of "...rich thieves plunderin' the earth". Combe enters the



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Tavern in order to warn and confront them, claiming that he represents progress and pragmatic realism.

As Combe exits, the Son and the labourers vow to redouble their efforts to destroy his enclosures.

Scene 5: Open Space, it has been snowing heavily.Scene 5: Open Space, it has been snowing heavily.Scene 5: Open Space, it has been snowing heavily.Scene 5: Open Space, it has been snowing heavily.

Shakespeare is walking home from the tavern when he encounters the Old man who is in an obvious state

of excitement. He has been playing in the fresh snow, building a snowman and throwing snowballs.

During Shakespeare’s exchange with the Old Man, several dark figures run across the stage. Judith

enters and castigates Shakespeare for neglecting her mother, his wife. Shakespeare responds by telling

her that after temporarily abandoning her mother, he attempted to earn Judith’s love by spending large

sums of money on her. Not only has he failed to win her love, but Shakespeare considers his actions to be

responsible for her vulgar materialism. This soured relationship between father and daughter seems to be

irrevocable and Judith leaves him to the cold. As Shakespeare sits alone in the snow, several more dark

figures run by backstage, and a gunshot is heard. The Old Woman enters to take Shakespeare home.

Scene 6: BedroomScene 6: BedroomScene 6: BedroomScene 6: Bedroom

Shakespeare is in bed, delirious and repeating the phrase, “Was anything done” as the Old Woman looks

on, checking on his fragile state. From outside the door we hear Judith calling for Shakespeare, her

mother is with her and they knock and scratch at the door calling to be let in. Shakespeare refuses to

respond to Judith and her mother, making them increasingly vehement and hysterical, demanding to be

let in. Finally, Shakespeare slips his will underneath the door which succeeds in placating them, but not

before Judith denounces, “We’ll never speak to him again. He’ll learn when it’s too late.” The Son enters

the room and after lying to his mother, confesses to Shakespeare that he shot his father, the Old Man,

during a scuffle with Combe’s men. Combe himself enters, upholding his magisterial duty and intending

to solve the mystery of the Old Man’s murder. At this, the Son hypocritically accuses Combe of bearing

the responsibility for his father’s death. As the two argue, neither notice Shakespeare ingesting the

poison pills that he had taken from Jonson. Combe and the Son finally leave, with matters unresolved and

the Son even absolving himself from the murder of his father. Both Combe and the Son are equally

unaware that Shakespeare is slowly dying. Judith enters to discover her father fallen onto the floor,

twitching and jerking. Paying little care to her dying father, she ransacks the room for a second will as

the funeral bell tolls and Shakespeare finally succumbs to the poison.



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4. Cast and Creative Team4. Cast and Creative Team4. Cast and Creative Team4. Cast and Creative Team

Cast Cast Cast Cast

Judith Catherine Cusack

Wally Tom Godwin

Old Woman Ellie Haddington

Joan/Second Old Woman Joanne Howarth

Jerome Kieron Jecchinis

William Combe Matthew Marsh

Ben Jonson Richard McCabe

Old Man John McEnery

Son Alex Price

William Shakespeare Patrick Stewart

Young Woman Michelle Tate

Creative TeamCreative TeamCreative TeamCreative Team

Direction Angus Jackson

Design Robert Innes Hopkins

Associate Design Mark Simmonds

Light Tim Mitchell

Music Stephen Warbeck

Sound Ian Dickinson for Autograph

Casting Gabrielle Dawes CDG

Dialect Majella Hurley

Voice Alan Woodhouse

Jerwood Assistant Director Anthony Lau



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5. 5. 5. 5. BinBinBinBingo: Scenes of Money and Deathgo: Scenes of Money and Deathgo: Scenes of Money and Deathgo: Scenes of Money and Death

Bingo premiered on 14th November, 1973 at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter. Bob Peck [1945-1999]

played the leading role of Shakespeare and John Gielgud [1904-2000] took over when the play opened at

the Royal Court in London the following year. The reviews were predictably mixed. Many took offence at

Bond denigrating England’s most famous genius, accusing the author of making presumptions about the

state of Shakespeare’s mental health without any historical evidence. Some critics praised the play as a

step forward for Bond, where the onstage violence that had alienated many audience members in Saved

was now represented in the words of the characters, and was consequentially more powerful. Others felt

that after the less-hysterical, and therefore more watchable, The Sea, Bond had relapsed back into

tedious despair.

Patrick Stewart as Shakespeare and Richard McCabe as Ben Johnson

In a press interview, Bond explained why he had chosen Bingo as a title for the play: “Art has very

practical consequences. Most ‘cultural appreciation’ ignores this and is no more relevant than a game of

Bingo and less honest.” This quote encapsulates Bond’s reason for writing. Many of Bond’s socio-political

contemporaries [see chapter 8] say that theatre should reflect the world, provoke the audience into

examining their lives, but Bond believes that theatre - his theatre - has the power to actually force a

change in society. It’s this belief that has led the writer to remove himself from commercial theatre,



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drawing a distinction between theatre, which is for entertainment, and drama, which can change the

world. Bond describes venues like the National Theatre and the RSC as ‘show shops’ creating ‘shop

shows’; producing an endless line of entertainments along a fixed model, designed ultimately to pleasure

an audience through a series of effects. He admires the Ancient Greeks and Shakespeare as tackling the

larger issues in society and believes only extreme characters, situations and events are effective in

communicating the messages which need to be heard.

Bingo director Angus Jackson in rehearsals

In Bingo, Bond tries to reconcile the historical facts about Shakespeare as a landowner who protects his

own wealth to the detriment of the local peasants, with the author who arguably understood and

articulated the human condition more than any other. (He cites Shakespeare’s, King Lear, a play he had

previously re-imagined a year earlier in Lear, as articulating radical social messages about class,

politics, and homelessness, but argued that the writer could only communicate those controversial ideas

by putting them in the mouth of a character who was seen to be mad.) Bond’s conclusion is that the only

outcome for Shakespeare’s hypocrisy would be despair, passivity and ultimately suicide: “Of course, I

can’t insist that my description of Shakespeare’s death is true. I’m like a man who looks down from a

bridge at the place where an accident has happened. The road is wet, there’s a skid mark, the car’s

wrecked, and dead man lies by the road in a pool of blood. I can only put the various things together and

say what probably happened.” Many critics have argued however that there is absolutely no evidence that

Shakespeare was depressed in his final years and therefore Bond’s whole thesis is irrelevant. However,



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the author rebuts this by clarifying that he isn’t actually interested in a historically accurate exploration

of Shakespeare’s biography at all, and the character of Shakespeare in the play simply represents the

relationship between any writer and his society.

The subtitle of the play is: ‘Scenes of Money and Death’ as it explores Bond’s political conviction that the

central problem in our society is commercialism. Shakespeare’s wrestle between his conscience and his

personal well-being is a consequence of capitalism, and Shakespeare’s battle is symbolic of the

fundamental conflict society experiences every day: “A consumer society depends on its members being

avaricious, ostentatious, gluttonous, envious, wasteful, selfish and inhuman. Officially we teach morality

but if we all became ‘good’ the economy would collapse. Affluent people can’t afford ten

commandments.” Bond’s solution to this problem is outlined in his preface to the play. He explains that

the only way that society can solve its problems is by introducing a new culture, and the concept of that

new culture already exists; democracy. He argues that what we currently classify as democracy isn’t

democracy at all because capitalism forces a class system on society which means nobody is truly free.

So, although many critics have described Bingo as too bleak and despairing, Bond’s stubborn faith in

humanity exists in his belief that society can be saved by remodelling the system we live by. Bond’s recent

emphasis on writing for a younger audience has been prompted by his belief that it is only through

educating the next generation that a change is possible, intercepting them before they become too reliant

on the current structure that they can no longer see other options. At the end of Bingo, Shakespeare asks

himself: “Was anything done?” Recently, an interviewer put the same question to Bond himself: “Not

enough. Not enough. [...] But I feel I’ve only just begun to understand the possibilities of drama. All I can

do is write the best plays I can and keep redescribing reality as I see it.”



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6. Edward Bond’s William Shakespeare6. Edward Bond’s William Shakespeare6. Edward Bond’s William Shakespeare6. Edward Bond’s William Shakespeare

Very little is known about William Shakespeare’s life and no portraits of the author survive which have

been proven authentic (despite the fact that many believe, wrongly, that the famous Chandos painting,

used widely as the definitive image of the author, has been authenticated). Whilst scholars have invested

considerable time and energy trying to locate more facts over the last four centuries, artists have spent

an equal amount of time making creative assumptions based on his work. It is known that Shakespeare

was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1564 into a middle-class family. It is assumed that the author

studied at the local grammar school and would have received a relatively strong education for a non-

aristocrat, including studying Latin. Shakespeare married the 26 year old Anne Hathaway [1555-1623]

when he was aged 18. Their first child (Susanna) was born six months later and the couple went on to

have twins (Hamnet and Judith); the boy died as a child. There are no records of Shakespeare’s life

between 1585 (when the twins are recorded as being baptised) and 1592 (when a source comments on

his presence in London), and this period is known as ‘the lost years’. By 1592, Shakespeare was a writer

in London and, by 1594, a part-owner of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a theatre company named after

their aristocratic supporter. The company built the Globe theatre to house their work in 1599, (the venue

was destroyed by fire in 1613 and rebuilt a year later). The company’s success continued to grow and in

1603 they were adopted by the new monarch, James I [1566-1625], and changed their name to The

King’s Men. Shakespeare evidently became a rich man through his plays and business investments during

his time in London, as records show that he bought a property in Blackfriars, and New Place, the second-

largest house in Stratford-Upon-Avon, where Bingo is set. The writer returned to his native Warwickshire

in his later years, and it was here that he died in 1616.

Edward Bond acknowledges Shakespeare’s influence on his work, which is at its most evident in Bingo

and Lear (1971). He has however criticised the playwright (as he does the Ancient Greek playwrights)

for being unable to dramatically integrate the problems we have as human individuals with the problems

we have in our society: “Even Shakespeare, for all his greatness, can’t always do that.” In Bingo however,

the playwright draws directly on the life of the Bard as source material, he explains the historical crux

which is at the centre of his play: “[Shakespeare]... could either side with the landowners or with the poor

who would lose their land and livelihood. He sided with the landowners. They gave him a guarantee

against loss – and this is not a neutral document because it implies that should the people fighting the

enclosures come to him for help he would refuse it. Well, the town did write to him for help and he did



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nothing.” Bond made several changes to the known facts of Shakespeare’s life in order to create the

drama he was interested in exploring. He outlines these in his introduction to the play and explains he

made them for dramatic convenience. Bingo doesn’t feature the author’s first daughter, Susanna, instead

her function in Shakespeare’s life (at least, as Bond imagines it) is given to the character of the old

woman, a servant of Shakespeare, whose son is a victim of enclosure. This was so Bond had a character

onstage that could provide a link between Shakespeare’s personal home life and the political impact of

his decisions on local society. Bond also explains that the character of William Coombe actually

represents several men who were involved in the enclosures. He also altered the date of Shakespeare’s

theatre burning down from 1613 to 1616 in order to condense and concentrate the events of

Shakespeare’s life. Bond explains the relation between the historical facts and his play: “It is based on

the material historical facts so far as they’re known, and on psychological truth so far as I know it. [...] I

admit that I’m not really interested in Shakespeare’s true biography in the way a historian might be.”

A painting we believe to be of Shakespeare, by Chandos

Bond’s depiction of Shakespeare’s London, as spoken by the protagonist, is frequently cited for

commendation by critics and audience members. Bond’s trademark violent imagery is at one with the

brutality of Tudor London and is vividly articulated by the character of Shakespeare. He describes

theatregoers as having to pass underneath severed heads on their way into the Globe theatre and “women



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with shopping bags stepping over puddles of blood”. Similarly, the scene between Shakespeare and his

playwriting contemporary, Ben Jonson [1572-1637], is frequently selected as the highlight of Bingo as it

is so evocative. Here again, Bond admits to taking liberties with the truth as it is believed that the poet

Michael Drayton [1563-1631] was also present at this final drinking binge between the two men. We

have a notion of the historical relationship between the two playwrights through records and because

Jonson wrote several times about Shakespeare, both during his lifetime and post-humorously. The Lord

Chamberlain’s Men produced several of Jonson’s plays and it is known that Shakespeare acted in at least

one of them. The relationship is often portrayed as that of rivalry; one story is that when Jonson was told

by an actor that Shakespeare never crossed out a line that he wrote because his first draft was always so

perfect, the playwright replied: “Would that he had blotted [crossed out] a thousand.” As portrayed in

Bingo, a contemporary of Jonson’s noted that the two playwrights did drink together in the Mermaid

Tavern and engage in debates. The source suggests that the learned classicist Jonson would have been

frustrated by the relatively-uneducated Shakespeare’s ability to win these arguments. Despite these

suggestions of animosity however, Jonson contributed a poem to the preface of the publication of

Shakespeare’s first folio after his death.

Patrick Stewart as Shakespeare

Bond’s portrayal of William Shakespeare isn’t historically accurate. He has altered biographical facts

and drawn personal conclusions in order to tell the story he wishes to convey. Indeed, this is not unlike

Shakespeare himself who constantly reinvented historical truth in order to suit his own artistic demands.

Commentator, John Elsom, writing in 1974 shortly after the play debuted concluded: “Bingo is about a



20

Shakespeare (not necessarily the Shakespeare); that is, a supreme artist whose talents could not touch

nor alter the society in which he lived, except negatively, by helping the system he hated.”



21

7. Land Enclosures7. Land Enclosures7. Land Enclosures7. Land Enclosures

Bingo depicts the later years of Shakespeare’s life when he was a landowner living in Stratford-Upon-

Avon. The writer owned a half share in a lease of tithes in nearby Welcombe. Tithing was a system by

which the peasants paid one tenth of their yearly earnings, either in money or goods, in return for land.

In 1614, William Combe proposed that the land at Welcombe should be enclosed and, despite knowing

the hardship it would cause the peasants who worked and lived there, Shakespeare agreed because his

own income would be guaranteed.

An act of enclosure meant that areas of common land previously used by all, usually for arable farming

(the growing of crops), were divided and hedged or fenced off, usually to allow livestock to graze on the

land. Prior to this, lands were shared between landowners, who raised crops, and villagers, who grazed

their livestock when crops were not being grown. (We are now so used to the concept of private

ownership that it is difficult to imagine the concept of large areas of common land. Perhaps a useful idea

is to imagine the act of enclosure as the equivalent of somebody in 2012 suddenly claiming an area of

public land - such as a local park - for themselves and fencing it off.) During the Tudor period (1485-

1603) – Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616 - the rate at which land was being enclosed

rose rapidly. This was mostly due to a rise in profitability of wool as foreign demand increased. Sheep

herding also required fewer labourers than crops so the profit margin was even greater. By the 1800s,

remaining unenclosed common land was mostly located in mountainous areas which were difficult to

farm, and relatively small parts of the lowlands such as village greens.

Enclosure had a great impact on the lives of the British people, particularly the peasants. Land was often

taken by force as the wealthy landowners simply drew up deeds granting themselves the territory. (Bond

demonstrates William Combe doing this in Bingo.) Some historians estimate that 3 out of 4 tenant

farmers [farmers who rented their land as opposed to owning it] had their land removed during the late

medieval period. As the nature of the land switched, labourers were made unemployed and many lost

their homes, either when they were knocked down during the enclosure or subsequently through rent

arrears. Many rural labourers were forced to travel to find work and great numbers were displaced, as

represented by the Young Woman in Bingo. Tudor law stated that if someone lost their home then they

were classified as a vagrant and, with no state support, it was likely that the individual would have to

resort to crime to provide for themselves.



22

The church recognised the negative impact that enclosures were having in the community and denounced

the procedure. The Government attempted to intervene by introducing anti-enclosure legislation in 1489

and several more acts over the following years. Initially, these laws didn’t ban enclosure, they simply

fined the perpetrators. They were ultimately ineffectual however as the Government couldn’t keep track

of when enclosure occurred. In the second half of the 16th century, revolts began to spread throughout

the country. As Bond depicts, tenants who had been forced from their land began to destroy the hedges

and fences, fighting with the local landowners and authorities. In 1607, the Midland Revolt and Newton

Rebellion occurred in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire (where Shakespeare lived).

The King forced the local authorities to support the gentry, despite the fact that many sided with the

peasants. The Newton Rebellion ended with 50 people dying in battle and the ringleaders of the revolt

being hanged and quartered. Shakespeare wrote King Lear at the same time as this civil unrest occurred

around England and Lear’s comments on the oppression of the working classes and the homeless are

often seen as the writer critiquing the society in which he lived:

“Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm.

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these?”

Henry VI and As You Like It also mention the enclosures, whilst Coriolanus features grain shortages,

which were a consequence of the practise. It is the juxtaposition of Shakespeare’s social conscious, as

revealed through the voices of his characters, with his passivity in the face of enclosures which Bond

explores in Bingo: “Shakespeare’s plays show this need for sanity and its political expression, justice. But

how did he live? His behaviour as a property-owner made him closer to Goneril than Lear. He supported

and benefitted from the Goneril-society – with its prison, workhouses, whipping, starvation, mutilation,

pulpit-hysteria and all the rest of it.”

The Newton Rebellion was one of the last times in history that the peasants and gentry fought one

another in England. Socialists see enclosure as the moment in history where the underclass lost their

battle for equality against the upper-classes. Many landowners became rich, or significantly increased



23

their wealth, as a consequence of enclosure. George Orwell [1903-1950] clarified the socio-political

context of enclosures: “Stop to consider how the so-called owners of land got hold of it. They simply

seized it by force, afterwards hiring lawyers to provide them with title-deeds. In the case of the enclosure

of the common lands, which was going on from about 1600 to 1850, the land-grabbers did not even have

the excuse of being foreign conquerors; they were quite frankly taking the heritage of their own

countrymen, upon no sort of pretext except that they had the power to do so.” It was the great socio-

political impact of this practise in Britain, and Shakespeare’s small contribution to the distress it caused,

that led Bond to write Bingo [see chapter 5 and 6].



24

8. The Royal Court Theatre8. The Royal Court Theatre8. The Royal Court Theatre8. The Royal Court Theatre

The emergence of Edward Bond as a controversial and innovative playwright formed part of a larger

movement within British theatre which centred on the Royal Court Theatre during the 1950s and 60s.

Post-war Britain was a dreary and repressive place to live and there was a feeling amongst the youth that

the country had little to offer them. This was reflected in the nation’s theatre, where the safe drawing-

room dramas of Terence Rattigan [1911-1977] and Noel Coward [1899-1973], which depicted middle-

class dilemmas, still dominated the West End. Then, in 1956, a play called Look Back in Anger

premiered and altered the course of British drama.

The Royal Court was the home of the newly established English Stage Company, led by George Devine

[1910-1966] and Tony Richardson [1928-1999]. Their aim was to discover new plays which would not

merely entertain but make sense of the world; a theatre which could educate and liberate. Over the next

decade, the Royal Court was responsible for launching the careers of many writers who pushed against

the boundaries of taste, form and theme, including Bond, Wesker [1932-], Osborne [1929-1994], Jellicoe

[1927-], N.F. Simpson [1919-2011], Arden [1930-], as well as premiering new plays by Brecht [1898-

1956], Pinter [1930-2008], Beckett [1906-1989] and Ionesco [1909-1994]. Devine later commented: “I

wanted to change the attitude of the public towards the theatre. All I did was to change the attitude of

the theatre towards the audience”. Devine championed the right to fail, believing that exciting art was

only produced when the creator felt safe enough to experiment, even if that meant the occasional flop.

The Royal Court became known as the leading UK venue for new writing, an artistic policy it still heralds

today.

Bond’s ContemporariesBond’s ContemporariesBond’s ContemporariesBond’s Contemporaries

John Osborne John Osborne John Osborne John Osborne

The venue’s success wasn’t straight forward however. Devine’s first advertisement in the press requesting

new plays only revealed one work of any interest from amongst the 750 submissions received. This was

the first play by an unknown actor turned writer, John Osborne. The play was Look Back in Anger. The

play explored the life of Jimmy Porter, a bored and frustrated young man, living in a dilapidated

Leicestershire flat with his friend, Cliff, and girlfriend, Alison. Osborne based the play on his own

experience of living in similar conditions whilst working as an actor in regional theatre. The play wasn’t



25

particularly revolutionary in form, a standard three-act drama, but the strength of Osborne’s anti-hero’s

voice struck the audience: “There aren’t any good, brave causes left.” The play wasn’t an overnight

success, many contemporary critics were irritated by the characters’ vitriol, but the most influential

newspaper reviewer of the period, Kenneth Tynan [1927-1980], gave it an outstanding write-up and the

BBC sealed the play’s fate by broadcasting an excerpt. Whilst the premiere of Look Back in Anger is now

seen as a turning point in British drama, the production was only a part in a series of plays which

transformed the genre. It was the media who reported that a revolution in theatre was taking place,

focusing on the succession of new writers emerging from the Royal Court. The venue’s press officer

assisted by unwittingly giving the movement a name; when asked to describe Osborne’s work (which he

disliked), he could only describe him as “an angry young man.” The phrase became a useful tagline for the

press when discussing the new movement of kitchen sink dramas which explored British working class

lives, usually in domestic settings, with gritty social realism. Osborne went on to write several more

successful plays - The Entertainer (1957), Luther (1961), Inadmissible Evidence (1964) and A Patriot

for Me (1965) – before bad reviews and a stormy personal life led to a decline in his work.

John Osborne

Arnold WeskerArnold WeskerArnold WeskerArnold Wesker

Another playwright to emerge from the Royal Court’s writers group was a working class Jew from

London’s East End, Arnold Wesker. His first work, The Kitchen (1957), represented Wesker’s experience



26

of working in a hotel kitchen, and explored cheap immigrant labour. It belongs to the ‘work play’ genre

which became popular in British theatre, depicting real work on stage. Wesker’s most enduring work is a

trilogy of plays – Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots, and I’m Talking about Jerusalem (1958) - about an

East End Jewish family between 1936 and 1956. Wesker is often viewed as a naturalistic writer for his

accurate and beautiful portrayals of normal people in every day scenarios, but a closer examination of his

work reveals a leaning towards romantic expressionism.

John ArdenJohn ArdenJohn ArdenJohn Arden

John Arden was another graduate from the Royal Court school, whose socialist plays caused controversy

and disgust. His first play, Live Like Pigs (1958), centred on a group of travellers forced to live in

council accommodation. His second hit, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (1959), portrayed a group of British

soldiers deserting their regiment because of the colonial atrocities they have committed abroad. Arden

originally wrote the play in response to British troops in Cyprus in the 1950s but it remains current as

long as the British army is involved in any overseas action. Whilst these two plays are now considered

20th century classics, Arden’s work was never as commercially successful as some of the other Royal

Court writers, and his name became synonymous with box office losses at the venue.

John Arden

All these Royal Court alumni suffered a similar fate to Edward Bond and were neglected by the

theatrical establishment in their later careers, usually due to arguments which centred on the lack of



27

artistic control they felt as artists. Arden felt increasingly marginalised by the Royal Court as his plays

made financial losses. He eventually retreated to rural Ireland in the 1970s following a row with the

RSC which made front page news when he picketed his own play, The Island of the Mighty, because he

felt he wasn’t allowed time to rewrite during preview performances. Arnold Wesker developed a

reputation for being difficult after suing the RSC for failing to produce a play, The Journalist, which

they’d commissioned. (The writer was especially frustrated because the National Theatre had done the

same thing with a different play the year before). He moved to Wales and, like Bond and Arden, now

writes mainly for community and young people’s theatre. Osborne remained in London and, unlike the

others, received a sustainable amount of royalties. However, as his plays got increasingly negative

reviews, and his rocky personal life impacted on his health and finances, he too became disillusioned by

the state of British theatre. In recent years, Bond, Osborne, Wesker and Arden have enjoyed a re-

emergence, with mainstream revivals of their most famous plays at the National Theatre, Lyric

Hammersmith, and Donmar Warehouse. Last year, 46 years after George Devine left as Artistic Director,

the Royal Court produced a sell-out revival of Wesker’s Chicken Soup without Barley. The current artistic

director, Dominic Cooke [1966-], was asked to assess Wesker’s neglect: “I think that what has happened

to his career is very striking... The theatre does tend to move forward very quickly, tastes change. He was

part of a theatre revolution, and there’s a saying that nothing tastes so stale as the revolution of the day

before yesterday.”



28

9999. Heightened Text: A Drama Exercise. Heightened Text: A Drama Exercise. Heightened Text: A Drama Exercise. Heightened Text: A Drama Exercise

The text of Bingo, like many of Bond’s plays, is written in a heightened form. It is more poetic and

theatrical than everyday speech. Both audiences and actors can be wary of this type of writing, but

professional theatre directors use certain exercises to assist the actor in approaching heightened text,

which in turn hopefully assists the audience in understanding the dialogue in performance. Below is an

example of the kind of exercises which an actor might use in rehearsal. It can be applied to any

heightened text, such as Bond or Shakespeare.

BingoBingoBingoBingo. Scene Five.. Scene Five.. Scene Five.. Scene Five.

Shakespeare:Shakespeare:Shakespeare:Shakespeare: The door’s opened, I drank too much, I must be calm. Don’t fall about in front of

them. Why did I drink all that? Fool! Fool! At my age... Why not? I am a fool.

Why did I come back here? I wanted to meet some god by the river. Ask him

questions. See his mouth open and the lips move. Hear simple things that move

mountains and stop the blood before it hits the earth. Stop it so there’s time to

think. I was wrong to come – mistakes, mistakes. But I can’t go back. That hate,

anger –

1. Start by speaking the speech aloud whilst walking around the room.

2. Now, pay particular attention to the punctuation. A good writer will always have carefully

considered their choice of punctuation and it is a clue to how they imagined the speech being

delivered.

- Walk again speaking aloud.

- Each time you arrive at a full stop (or question mark, exclamation mark or colon), stop walking,

pause speaking, and turn to face another direction and start the next sentence as you begin

walking again.

- Each time you arrive at a comma, turn to face the other direction, take a breath and continue

walking.

- (The difference between reaching the end of a sentence and reaching a comma should be that the

latter elicits less of a physical and vocal pause.)

3. Walk again speaking the text aloud, but only articulating the consonants. Ignore all vowels. You

will need to slow down your rate of speaking in order to ensure you really hit each consonant

clearly.

ThThThThe ddddoorrrr’ssss oppppennnnedddd, I drdrdrdranknknknk ttttoo mmmmuchchchch, I mmmmustststst bbbbe ccccalmlmlmlm.



29

4. Reverse this process and now only articulate the vowels. Where a vowel can be spoken in several

different ways (i.e. the syllable ‘o’ is pronounced ‘or’ in the word ‘door’, versus ‘o’ in ‘opened)

sound it the way it should be spoken in the context of that particular word. It helps to say the

whole word in your head.

Theeee doooooooor’s oooopeeeeneeeed, IIII draaaank toooooooo muuuuch, IIII muuuust beeee caaaalm.

5. Place a finger inside the side of your mouth, between your upper and lower teeth. Speak the text

aloud without biting (clamping) your finger with your jaw, whilst trying to make the text as clear

as possible. In order to achieve this, you will need to over-articulate and speak slower than in

everyday life.

6. You have now examined the text from a vocal viewpoint. Speak the text aloud whilst standing

still. You should discover that you are automatically articulating much more clearly than before

you started these exercises and the text is more pleasant to listen to.

However, it is not enough for an actor to speak heightened text beautifully. It is crucial that they also

understand what their character is thinking and feeling in order to communicate this to the audience.

A. Start by looking up any words or references in a dictionary which you are not familiar with.

B. Who the character is speaking to in the speech? In this example, Shakespeare is predominantly

alone on stage. Is he speaking directly to the audience or to himself? This is a decision for the

actor and director as Bond doesn’t specify in the play text.

C. Look at the practical context of the speech in the play / scene as given by the playwright. Bond

specifies in the stage directions at the beginning of Scene 5 that Shakespeare is drunk and that it

has been snowing. Shakespeare doesn’t have a coat so he must be cold. It is also night-time. All

these details will affect how the actor plays the speech.

D. Look at the emotional context of the speech within the play / scene. Shakespeare is angry and

frustrated and will commit suicide in the next scene. Again, this gives the actor a clue as to the

emotions he/she should be aiming to reproduce onstage.

E. Characters speak in a series of thoughts, just as people do in the real world. Divide the speech up

into individual thoughts on the page by putting a forward slash to indicate a thought-change. This

helps break the text into more manageable chunks. Sometimes it is the actor’s choice as to

whether something is a thought-change or not and could be argued either way, so there isn’t

definite right or wrong. Looking at the writer’s choice of punctuation often provides a clue to how

they intended the thoughts to be broken down.



30

ShakespeareShakespeareShakespeareShakespeare: The door’s opened,/ I drank too much,/ I must be calm. Don’t fall about in front of

them. / Why did I drink all that? / Fool! / Fool! / At my age... / Why not? / I am a

fool. / Why did I come back here? / I wanted to meet some god by the river. / Ask

him questions. / See his mouth open and the lips move. / Hear simple things that

move mountains and stop the blood before it hits the earth. / Stop it so there’s time

to think. / I was wrong to come – mistakes, mistakes. / But I can’t go back. / That

hate, anger –

By combining these vocal and mental/emotional exercises, an actor will be begin to make

sense of the speech both for themselves and for the audience.



31

10101010. Bibliography . Bibliography . Bibliography . Bibliography

BooksBooksBooksBooks

1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro (Faber and Faber: 2006)

Changing Stages: A View of British Theatre in the Twentieth Century by Richard Eyre and Nicholas

Wright (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC: 2000)

Plays One: Waters of Babylon, When Is a Door..., Live Like Pigs, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, Happy

Haven by John Arden (Methuen: 2004)

Plays One: Look Back in Anger, Epitaph for George Dillon, The World of Paul Slickey, Dejavu by John

Osborne (Faber and Faber: 2006)

In Search of Shakespeare by Michael Wood (BBC Books: 2005)

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre by John Russell Brown (OUP: 1995)

Plays One: Saved, Early Morning, The Pope’s Wedding by Edward Bond (Methuen: 1977)

Plays Two: Lear, The Sea, Narrow Road to the Deep North, Black Mass, Passion by Edward Bond

(Methuen: 1978)

Plays Three: Bingo, The Fool, The Woman, Stone by Edward Bond (Methuen: 1987)

Plays Four: The Worlds, Activist Papers, Restoration, Summer by Edward Bond (Methuen: 1992)

Royal Court Theatre Inside Out by Ruth Young and Emily McLaughlin (Oberon: 2007)

The Wesker Trilogy by Arnold Wesker (Methuen: 2001)



32

InternetInternetInternetInternet http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/jan/03/theatre http://www.enotes.com/edward-bond-criticism/bond-edward-vol-6 http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/apr/25/bingo-chichester-review http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/7635310/Bingo-at-Chichesters-Minerva-Theatre-review.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/bingo-scenes-of--money-and-death-minerva-theatre-chichester-1955033.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingo (play) http://www.birminghampost.net/life-leisure-birmingham-guide/birmingham-culture/theatre-in-birmingham/2009/10/21/dramatist-edward-bond-is-still-going-to-extremes-65233-24983934/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bond http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2006/sep/09/theatre.stage http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/bond_transcript.shtml http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/mmlib/includes/ajax/textile.preview.php?year=1960&title=1960s

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2007/mar/06/comedy1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2006/apr/29/theatre.biography http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2004/jan/03/theatre.stage http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/may/22/arnold-wesker-interview

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