Background
Arthur Ronald Dare Watkins was born on August 29, 1904, in Kingston Hill, Surrey (nowadays Kingston Vale, London), United Kingdom.
Windsor SL4 6DW, United Kingdom
Ronald Watkins was educated at Eton College.
King's Parade, Cambridge CB2 1ST, United Kingdom
Ronald Watkins was educated at King's College, Cambridge.
Arthur Ronald Dare Watkins was born on August 29, 1904, in Kingston Hill, Surrey (nowadays Kingston Vale, London), United Kingdom.
Ronald staged his first Shakespeare production, Henry V, aged six, after seeing his brother perform in Henry VI Part III. Ronald played the French Princess with his schoolgirl neighbour as the maid. He won scholarships to Eton and to King's College, Cambridge, where he took a Double First in Classics.
Later in life, Ronald was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Arthur Watkins joined the staff of Harrow School in 1932, as a teacher of English and Classics. In 1940 a German bomb severely damaged the Harrow Speech Room. When Watkins produced his first Shakespeare play - Twelfth Night - at Harrow School in 1941, the damaged stage lacked a proscenium curtain and stage lighting. Watkins turned these problems to his advantage, realizing that the minimalist conditions of his stage were similar to those of Shakespeare's own theater. Inspired by the work of John Cranford Adams, Watkins gradually transformed the Harrow Speech Room into an approximation of an Elizabethan stage. The Shakespeare productions became an annual tradition at Harrow, and between 1941 and 1964, Watkins staged 21 plays. In 1952 some of Watkins's former student actors formed the Old Harrovian Players, and this alumni company returned each year to present its own Shakespeare play at Harrow.
In 1962 Watkins's friends David and June Gordon (Lord and Lady Aberdeen) invited him to direct a Shakespeare play at Haddo House, their country estate in Aberdeen, Scotland. The concert hall at Haddo House was converted into an Elizabethan stage, and Watkins put on a Shakespeare production there in alternate years from 1962 to 1970.
Watkins retired from his teaching post at Harrow in 1964 and embarked on a 20-year career as a traveling lecturer, touring Europe, the United States, and Canada to promote "The Cause." In 1965 and 1967 he was visiting professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Watkins donated his library and personal papers to Wake Forest University in 1999.
Watkins's publications include Moonlight at the Globe (1946) and On Producing Shakespeare (1950). He also co-authored, with Jeremy Lemmon, the series In Shakespeare's Playhouse. Watkins donated the manuscript of his final work, Why Not Ask Shakespeare? (2002), to Wake Forest. The manuscript was edited by Prof. Don Wolfe of Wake Forest University and published posthumously.
(An essay in Shakespeare production based on performance o...)
1946Throughout his long career, in stage productions, lectures, and writings, Watkins argued for the primacy of language in Shakespeare's plays and attempted to discover and replicate how Shakespeare himself staged and produced the plays.
Watkins played the double bass with the Harrow school orchestra and was a keen watercolorist.
In 1948, Ronald married Margaret "Bunty" Watson Brown.