V - “Very Palpable Hit”
Very often in Shakespeare performances, actors endure more than just “the odd hits” during fight scenes. For the final duel, Branagh and Maloney practiced throughout filming for the upcoming action sequence—often on Sundays (when they were already exhausted from the week’s filming), employing pencils and even just their fingers when rapiers weren’t at their beck. Such a lengthy scene requires a high level of disciplined choreography to prevent injury.
For actors in Shakespeare’s day, fencing would have been one of many skills required of them if they wanted work. They prided themselves on their dueling abilities, drawing upon their constant practice to feed the audience’s lust for battles and blood. One of the most prominent reasons why Macbeth is considered unlucky is the amount of fights involved, which inevitably lead to accidents. But the contests and skirmishes are part and parcel of Shakespeare, as they provide a crescendo—a frisson craved by the audience at the denouement of the action.
Duels and swordplay were especially popular in the swashbuckling films of Hollywood, with Errol Flynn carving out an entire career around his suave and athletic persona in crowd-pleasers such as Captain Blood (1935), The Sea Hawk (1940), The Adventures of Don Juan (1948), and the Technicolor epic The Adventures of Robin Hood (1939). But the first and most famous swashbuckler of all was Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., who dominated silent era films with his action adventures. As one of the founders of United Artists (alongside Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and Mary Pickford) and The Motion Picture Academy (now known as The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), he was the “King of Hollywood” in the early days.
Fairbanks drew upon his military academy education and passion for theatre to star in and produce classics such as The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), and The Black Pirate (1926). These films are endlessly impressive, considering he did most of his own wild stunts. When he was a boy, his father encouraged him to recite Shakespeare, inculcating him with appreciation for the Bard so much that when he was a child, he volunteered to scrub the stage of the Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado to pay for his ticket to see a Shakespeare play.
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| Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in “The Black Pirate” (1926) |
Fairbanks starred alongside his wife Mary Pickford in The Taming of the Shrew (1929), the first sound recorded film of a Shakespeare play ever produced. Pickford famously loathed filming, as their marriage was on the outs at the time, but she nonetheless believed Fairbanks gave one of his best performances. His Shakespearean stage experience is palpable, being “well spoken, with good accent, and good discretion,” as Polonius might say. It’s awkward to watch, however, as the marital strain is unflinchingly tangible, but the film is ultimately notable for its ambition and singular occasion of putting those two previously silent megastars together for a memorable match of verbal swordplay.
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