News & Notes — A Chimes at Midnight Primer

Here’s a little primer to help audiences unfamiliar with Shakespeare appreciate Chimes at Midnight which Welles claimed as his best work.

Welles and Shakespeare:

Welles’ relationship to Shakespeare goes back to when he was given A Midsummer Night’s Dream, his first primer. At 15, Welles was playing both Marc Anthony and Cassius in a production of Julius Caesar that was only one of several adaptations Welles crafted at the Todd School for Boys. At 21, he directed the groundbreaking WPA Negro Theatre production of the so-called Voodoo Macbeth, set in Haiti, and a year after, his stunning and acclaimed, modern dress, anti-fascist Caesar. As Welles biographer Simon Callow notes, “from early manhood Welles never passed a day of his life without thinking of Shakespeare and planning projects based on his plays.”

The Five Kings:

In 1939, at age 24, Welles’ earlier efforts to compile a number of Shakespeare’s historical plays reached fruition in the Mercury Theatre production of a 3 ½ hour The Five Kings, based primarily on what scholars refer to as “the Henriad,” a “tetrology” of Shakespeare’s plays (Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II, and Henry V) that collectively tell the story of the future Henry IV’s usurpation of the throne from Richard II, his subsequent defeat of civil revolt, the ascension of his son, Prince Hal, to the throne, and the heroic Henry V’s consolidation of English hegemony through his victory in the Battle of Agincourt. Welles’ extravagant and ill-managed production was canceled before it reached Broadway, and signaled the beginning of the end of the Mercury Theater and Welles’ relationship with his advocate, erstwhile collaborator John Houseman. In his memoir, Houseman would write: “The name of our disease was success- accumulating success that had little to do with the quality of our work but seemed to proliferate around the person of Orson Welles with a wild, monstrous growth of its own.”

In 1960, a version of Five Kings, now titled Chimes at Midnight and focused primarily on the relationship between Prince Hal and Falstaff, with Welles as Falstaff, was produced at the Gate Theater in Dublin (the theater where Welles found his first professional success as an actor at the age of 16), but with no more success than the original.  Four years later Welles, found the money to make the film version under the pretense of making a different film for his Spanish producer (Treasure Island).

Falstaff:

From his very first appearance in Henry IV Part 1, the comedic character that Samuel Johnson called “the unimitated, unimitable Falstaff” has remained one of the most popular of all Shakespeare’s creations.  The fat, lying, thieving, cowardly knight is simultaneously the character whose witty repostes call out the presumptions and hypocrisies of the established order and question the basic tenets of honor and nobility. The thematic richness of “the goodly hoch-poch” that results when “vile Russetings (rustics or clowns) are match’t with monarchs, & with might kings,” as Shakespeare’s contemporary Joseph Hall put it, is the source of volumes of commentary about what is best and most enduring in Shakespeare.

Chimes at Midnight thematic emphasis away from Hal and toward Falstaff facilitates the play’s already potent subversive potential. Welles saw in Falstaff a basic “goodness” that is like “bread and butter,” a humanness that counters the inhumanity of political machinations and war. Reflecting themes taken up in Magnificent Ambersons and other Welles films (and reflecting what critic James Naremore sees as Welles’ “romantic quarrel with industrialism”) Welles saw Falstaff as an emblem of a better, more innocent, more human past. “Every country has its ‘Merrie England,’ a season of innocence, a dew-bright morning of the world, and Falstaff- that pot-ridden old rogue- is its perfect embodiment,” In Falstaff’s defense, he argued. “All the roguery and the tavern wit and the liar and bluff is simply a turn of his- it’s a little song he sings for his supper. It isn’t what he’s about.”

In terms of Welles’ own biography, there are additional reasons for his embrace of the Prince Hal/Falstaff storyline, and why Chimes at Midnight is seen as the most personal of all Welles’ films. As a young man, Welles, awash in accolades and success, heard “the chimes of midnight” more frequently than most, and enjoyed exploits that more than matched Falstaff’s in drink and food and amorous revelry. By the time he came to the point where it was necessary to deceive producers and employ everything he learned about cutting corners to cobble together Chimes of Midnight, at age 51, he was hearing in the chimes their additional meaning. The theatrical and cinematic wunderkind and erstwhile companion of artistic royalty had been totally rejected by Hollywood. He was unable to make films, and well on his way to becoming a caricature of himself he would become in TV commercials promoting, ironically, the most sacred of Falstaff’s vices: wine. Welles, like Prince Hal, also knew more than most about the rejection of fathers and the allure of surrogates. Chimes at Midnight is one of those occasions where all the humanity and complexity of Shakespeare finds its perfect vessel. It’s nothing short of a tragic/comic miracle.

Barry Snyder, 4/27/2016