Welles on Falstaff

"I think Shakespeare was greatly preoccupied, as I am in my humble way, with the loss of innocence. And I think there has always been an England, an older England, which was sweeter, and purer, where the hay smelt better and the weather was always springtime and the daffodils blew in the gentle warm breezes. And its the..you feel the nostalgia for it in Chaucer, and you feel it all through Shakespeare.

And I think that he was profoundly against the modern age, as I am. I'm against my modern age, he was against his. And I think his villains are modern people, just as they're likely to be continental. I always see the villains in Lear are non-Anglo Saxon, they're from over there; they're from, they represent the modern world...

Innocence is what Falstaff is. He is a kind of refugee from that world. He has to live by his wits, he has to be funny. He hasn't a place to sleep if he doesn't get a laugh out of his patron. So it's a rough, modern world that he's living in. But I think you have to see in his eyes--it's why I was so very glad to be doing it in black and white, if it's in color he must have blue eyes. You've got to see that look that comes out of the Age that never existed, but exists in the heart of all English poetry."

Okay, another. James Earl Jones reads Othello I.iii

Chiwetel Ejiofor Othello Act I Scene iii (2007)

OTHELLO:	Her father loved me; oft invited me;
	Still question'd me the story of my life,
	From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,		130
	That I have passed.
	I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
	To the very moment that he bade me tell it;
	Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
	Of moving accidents by flood and field
	Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
	Of being taken by the insolent foe
	And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
	And portance in my travels' history:
	Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,		140
	Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven
	It was my hint to speak,--such was the process;
	And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
	The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
	Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear
	Would Desdemona seriously incline:
	But still the house-affairs would draw her thence:
	Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,
	She'ld come again, and with a greedy ear
	Devour up my discourse: which I observing,		150
	Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
	To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
	That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
	Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
	But not intentively: I did consent,
	And often did beguile her of her tears,
	When I did speak of some distressful stroke
	That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,
	She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:
	She swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange,		160
	'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:
	She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
	That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me,
	And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
	I should but teach him how to tell my story.
	And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
	She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
	And I loved her that she did pity them.
	This only is the witchcraft I have used:

Olivier's Othello (1965)

Despite the blackface, he's incredible here. And a very young Maggie Smith as Desdemona. Compare to Welles scene of weird ritualistic creepiness. I like both versions, but Olivier's is more empathetic somehow, less a mad man than one tragically manipulated.