let s take just macbeth. what would it have meant if macbeth, we d never come across macbeth? stammers it s hard to compute, isn t it? because. ..because we didn t. so, it s there. and there are shakespeare plays that we have lost. there s at least two. there s cardenio and love s labour s won, which some people would say was actually a different title for much ado about nothing. who knows? we know these plays were performed and existed and they didn t make it into the first folio for whatever reason. so, we have lost some. who knows how many more we might have lost? so, it s difficult to quantify. but, i mean, without the first folio, without macbeth, as you like it, the tempest, with only some of those plays surviving, would we have a royal shakespeare company? i m not sure. would we have those great performances that have sort of defined what british theatre is? this royal throne of kings, this scepter d isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of mars.
Richard Pilbrow, who has died aged 90, was the doyen of British theatrical lighting designers, and one of the last survivors of the team assembled by Sir Laurence Olivier in the 1960s to design the new National Theatre on the South Bank. He was also the author of the lighting designer’s bible, Stage Lighting (1970), nicknamed “the Old Testament”, and its revised 1997 edition, “the New Testament”.
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