{"id":44967,"date":"2015-01-02T09:44:02","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T09:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/samathieson.com\/sa-mathieson\/?p=44967"},"modified":"2016-09-27T16:40:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-27T16:40:40","slug":"charlecote-park-compton-verney-article-beacon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samathieson.com\/sa-mathieson\/charlecote-park-compton-verney-article-beacon\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Warwickshire mansions: the time capsule and the gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charlecote Park and Compton Verney were both built as grand private houses, occupied by their founding families until the 20th century. They are now both open to the public, but offer contrasting visions of Britain.<\/em><\/p>\n

Originally published on Beacon.<\/em><\/p>\n

Christmas provides the chance to gorge on culture as well as food. Christmas Day television included the Royal Ballet\u2019s new interpretation of Shakespeare\u2019s Winter\u2019s Tale<\/i><\/a>, featuring principal artist Edward Watson emphasising the madness of King Leontes in exiling his wife and daughter.<\/p>\n

On heavy rotation elsewhere was another great British institution\u2019s interpretation of Antony and Cleopatra<\/i>. Filmed on the sumptuous set of the 1963 flop Cleopatra<\/i>, this film manages to portray the seductiveness of its principal female character as well as the Bard\u2019s cheerfully base sense of humour. Carry on Cleo<\/i>, \u2018based on an original idea by William Shakespeare\u2019 as the credits announce, is of course the Carry On film that features Kenneth Williams\u2019 Caesar crying: \u201cInfamy, infamy, they\u2019ve all got it in for me\u201d.<\/p>\n

With nearly as sumptuous a staging as Carry on Cleo<\/i>, the main stage of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford is currently showing Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost<\/i> and Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Won<\/i>, the latter better known as Much Ado About Nothing<\/i>. The RSC has set the two plays just before and after the First World War. A shared cast plays, in many cases, similar roles in both productions: both have a verbally duelling couple at their centres \u2013 Berowne and Rosaline in Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost<\/i>, Benedick and Beatrice in Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Won\/Much Ado<\/i>, as well other stock characters such as the mentally negligible policemen, Dull and Dogberry.<\/p>\n

The two plays also share one of the most spectacular stage sets the RSC has built since reopening its main theatre. This set is modelled on Charlecote Park, a Tudor house a few miles upstream of Stratford on the Avon, where the young Shakespeare may have been caught poaching deer. The house was still in private hands at the time of the First World War, having been remodelled in the 19th century, and nicely links Shakespeare\u2019s era with that of the staging.<\/p>\n

The Charlecote set also allows the RSC to show off the capabilities of its main theatre: just before Christmas I was part of a Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost<\/i> audience that found itself enthusiastically applauding not actors but the entrance of a facsimile of the building\u2019s roof (below), floating up from the depths to replace what had seconds previously been a neatly-striped lawn.<\/p>\n