Easy Labour

Of the not-so-great Shakespeare plays, two have a special place in my heart for reasons that I don't quite grasp. It's just one of those things. I know their flaws but all I can see and feel are their strengths. The two plays are Love's Labour's Lost and The Merry Wives of Windsor and, curiously, I've never seen them live in the theatre.

But I have seen them done on television and film, and in the case of Merry Wives it was actually the version done by the BBC when the corporation produced all the plays around the 1980's that completely won me over - especially Richard Griffiths's brilliant Falstaff.

To some degree it was also a BBC production (I think) of Love's Labour's Lost that started me on my long love affair with the play, but this was a long time ago, so long I've forgotten who was in it, or even whether it was actually the BBC that did it. I was young enough at the time to consider watching a whole Shakespeare I'd never read quite a challenge, and remember being pleased with myself for grasping what was going on. Of course, it's quite easy to grasp the plot as there really isn't one, but at the time I regarded it as a bit of a feat. After that I found myself enjoying wrestling with the text on several occasions, assisted by the fact there are particularly good editions for both Oxford and Arden, eventually reaching the point of thinking I needed to see it in the theatre to see if a director could match the kind of magic in the imaginary production running through my mind.

Branagh's movie didn't, which was a bit of a disappointment, though I could understand why he avoided a reprise of his brilliant Much Ado About Nothing and found a lot to enjoy in what he did with the play. But today I finally saw the version I've been waiting for, as it were. It's one of those Opus Arte DVDs, shot at the Globe in 2009 and it does everything right. You get broad comedy, but done with a genuine feeling for the glorious language of the play, and an eye for the shadows amidst the bright summer laughter.

Just to mention one moment: the devastating entrance of Mercade with the news of the French king's death is timed to utter perfection and the Princess's reaction (the excellent Michelle Terry, just one of several outstanding players), one of real, sudden, appalling grief, has the weight to add necessary ballast to the meditation upon the nature of comedy that follows.

By the way, I've actually read literary critics who think Shakespeare's ending is clumsy. Have these people ever been in a theatre? Have they no lives?