Royal Shakespeare Theatre

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, name given to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on the formation of the RSC in 1961. The first season included Vanessa Redgrave's enchanting Rosalind in As You Like It and Zeffirelli's disastrous Othello, while 1962 provided outstanding productions of The Comedy of Errors and King Lear, the latter directed by Peter Brook with Paul Scofield in the title-role. In 1963 the theatre mounted John Barton's three-play adaptation of the Henry VI trilogy with Richard III as The Wars of the Roses, followed a year later by Richard II and Henry IV, Parts One and Two. In 1968 there was Eric Porter's King Lear, and in 1970 another production by Peter Brook, an idiosyncratic reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Four Roman plays, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Titus Andronicus, under the joint title of The Romans, were seen in 1972, and in 1974 the season, which had previously begun in March and ended in December, was extended into January, an innovation which proved so successful that it was adopted permanently. A highly acclaimed production of Henry V in 1975, with Alan Howard, established a record by playing for over 100 performances at Stratford during the year; it was revived three times and widely seen in Britain and Europe, as well as in New York. In 1976 there was a popular musical version of The Comedy of Errors, and a year later the first production since Shakespeare's lifetime of the unadapted texts of the Henry VI trilogy. Terry Hands directed Derek Jacobi in Much Ado about Nothing in 1982, which went to New York. Antony Sher's memorable Richard III came in 1984 and John Wood's Prospero in The Tempest in 1988, which also saw the production of The Plantagenets, another three-play adaptation of Henry VI and Richard III.