The Regal Throne: Power, Politics and Ribaldry

In seeking to ‘demystify’ Shakespeare, Nicholas Dobson enriches the reader’s experience with lively commentary underpinned with quotations and notes for each play. As well as fulfilling Dobson’s aim of highlighting the ‘enduring relevance’ of these plays, this volume would be excellent prep before the lights dim and Prologue appears.

When it comes to Shakespeare, I had a baptism of fire, watching a youthful Ralph Fiennes and Amanda Root in Troilus and Cressida. According to The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, this play has ‘an exceptionally learned vocabulary’. But it wasn’t just Shakespeare’s dazzling language that left an imprint on me and sparked a passion that found an outlet as a local newspaper reviewer. Someone in the audience would chuckle or give a sage nod to show an intellectual grasp of some elusive nuances. Here, Dobson, who was a lawyer for 35 years and did a degree in English studies, would be a handy companion.

His treatment of Henry V is typical of Dobson’s approach. Dobson’s lively commentary describes what is going on in each scene, and is punctuated with subheadings such as ‘Traitors Dispatched and the Death of Falstaff’ and ‘Agincourt (with Some Comic Interludes…)’. Rather than a select glossary as in The Oxford Shakespeare, Dobson offers extensive notes with quotations from Elizabethan historian Raphael Holinshed. Above all, Dobson succeeds in showing ‘how Shakespeare presents the misty spectrum of human behaviour’.

An insightful ally for all readers of Shakespeare.

Pictured above: Kenneth Branagh in Henry V

Nicholas Goodman is a sub-editor at the Law Society Gazette