Interview, Shakespeare 400: The Complete Works on Argo

The Marlowe Dramatic Society and Professional Players' recordings of the complete works of Shakespeare during the 1950s and early 60s were among the most ambitious and influential spoken-word releases of the twentieth century: originally released on vinyl, they featured great Shakespeareans such as Peggy Ashcroft and John Gielgud in their prime as well as capturing early cameos from emerging stars including Trevor Nunn, Corin Redgrave and Ian McKellen.

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in April, these seminal recordings have been remastered and issued on CD for the first time, complete with the original artwork and extensive new critical commentary from leading Shakespearean scholars.

I spoke to Kevin Long at Decca, who worked on the reissue project, to find out more…

How much work has been done to the sound in terms of remastering and editing?

There was a huge investment in the remastering of these recordings. Since 2015, over 1,600 hours of studio time went into remastering the original analogue tapes which had, thankfully, been stored safely in our tape archives. Even though they were well preserved, a lot of work was still needed to bring them up to modern-day CD standards. We discovered background noise on some of the tapes, including ‘print through’ which can cause pre- & post-echo. These were all cleaned up by de-noising the recordings, or had to be taken out manually. On some of the recordings up until 1961, traffic noise could sometimes be heard very faintly in the background, along with the odd lorry pulling away too - the first studio was the A.D.C. Theatre in Cambridge, which must have been next to a busy road. These unwanted sounds were carefully removed. In the boxset liner notes Dr Tony Wakeford, from the National Archives, also writes about the correspondence between the producer and the local Cambridge RAF air base (via Lord Tedder, Marshall of the Royal Air Force at the time), who mutually agreed to keep their flying times to a minimum when the recordings took place. From 1961 onwards the Decca Studio in London was used for the remainder of the recordings and this did not give any problems.

All the time and effort put into remastering these recordings has been more than worthwhile. All the plays, sonnets and poems are brought into the twenty-first century and they now have more depth than on any previous format - and most importantly, it was all done without compromising the integrity of the original recordings. Due to the historical status of the Argo recordings, careful audio restoration was very important - to quote one of the notes in the boxset booklet: "The project must surely rank alongside other major recording undertakings such as, for example, Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the complete instrumental works of Haydn, the complete works of Mozart or the Bach Cantatas and organ works".

These recordings date from the mid-twentieth century - how does the interpretative style compare to more recent/contemporary productions?

There is a clarity of enunciation that marks out these performances from many contemporary productions. The first thing you appreciate is the sheer expressive beauty and classical vocal training of these stage titans, such as Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellen and Trevor Nunn. But their clarity of diction also has the major benefit of making the text even clearer and makes these performances easier to understand, whether you are a native speaker or one of the millions of Shakespeare enthusiasts for whom English is not their mother tongue.

Are there any stand-outs in terms of debuts from actors who went on to become especially eminent Shakespeareans?

Most of the recordings used professional and well-established actors of the time (William Squires, Prunella Scales, Tony Church, Michael Hordern, Gary Watson, Margaretta Scott, Patrick Wymark, Peggy Ashcroft and John Gielgud), along with amateur members of the Marlowe Society. Originally Argo was not going to credit the individual cast-members on the LP, but this was later overturned. One of the most interesting things about the recordings is the choice of some of the amateur actors. There is no concrete evidence to suggest that these were their debut recordings, but some of the undergraduate performers in the Marlowe Society would certainly become famous as world-class Shakespearean actors, including Jacobi, McKellen and Nunn.

Can you tell us a little more about the extras: photos, booklet-essays etc...?

Along with the full cast-listings, original analysis of the plays, historical content, photographs from the recording sessions and original press reviews, the 224-page booklet also contains a very insightful article on Argo’s undertaking of the Shakespeare project, researched and written by Dr Tony Wakeford, Editor and Vice Chairman, Friends of The National Archives. It also features original LP artwork by the British illustrator Arthur Wragg, and notes by Dr Lucy Munro (Reader in Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature, King’s College, London), Professor Gordon McMullan (Director, Shakespeare Centre and Academic Director, Shakespeare 400) & Tim Cribb (Life Fellow, Churchill College/Senior Member of The Marlowe Society).

Do we get complete incidental music (including entr'actes etc), or only when it overlaps with the spoken texts? How much of the music on the set was composed specially for the productions and how much was existing repertoire?

All the music was recorded specifically and was supervised by Thurston Dart (along with Boris Ord) and it was performed by professional players (Philomusica of London) and by choristers of King’s College Cambridge. Dart was the perfect candidate to be in charge as he had already undertaken extensive research into Elizabethan and Jacobean music, so most of it is reproduced from this period. Many of the plays have the signature trumpet fanfares marking the beginning of each act (tuckets and sennets), but Dart also made wonderful use of kettledrums, horns, recorders, lutes and other typical Shakespearean-period theatre instruments, including hautboys, cornetts, curtals, citterns and harpsichords throughout.