(See centre column)
A Dramatic Surmise by Ifan Kyrle-Fletcher of a thousand years in the Theatre of the West.
This is the Second Session of the Utopian National Commission, held in the Council Chamber of the Proserpina Cinema de Luxe, Utopia (A.D. 2032), being a consideration of theatrical entertainments in the early seventeenth century in the West Region, including:
1. 'The Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis' (1654)
A New Italian Comedy by James Howel
Characters: Chiron, Peleus, Neptune, Thetis, Jupiter, Juno, Prometheus, Mercury, Quire of Deities Scene : Upon the Pierian Mount
2. 'For the Honour of Wales' (1619)
A Masque by Ben Jonson
Characters: Griffith, Jenkin, Evan (a Welsh attorney), Howell. Rheese, Two Women, Musicians
Scene : A Mountain, Craig-Eriri, in Wales
3. 'King Henry IV,' Part I (Act III, Scene 1)
By William Shakespeare
Characters: Mortimer, Hotspur, Owen Glendower, Lady Mortimer, Lady Percy
Scene: Bangor-in the Archdeacon's House
The whole presented to the Commission by James Howel, Historiographer-Royal to Charles II, and embellished with the music of Elizabethan and Jacobean composers
Music played by the Western Studio Orchestra, conducted by Reginald Redman
Tonight at 9.35.
In the first programme of this series an attempt was made to produce the earliest forms of drama in the West Region against the background of the simple life of the Middle Ages. The second programme aims at showing the important changes which followed the play's movement from the countryside to the Court and from unsophistication to verbal and intellectual subtlety. The vitality of Elizabethan and Jacobean times is vividly expressed in the waitings of James Howel, a Carmarthenshire Welshman who went to London early in the seventeenth century, became the bosom friend of Ben Jonson, and moved freely in the literary and political circles of the day. The figure of Howel will be used in the play as a focus to enable twentieth-century listeners to appreciate more clearly the robust characteristics of the Golden Age of English drama and the men who made it famous.
