Ronald Watkins

Background

Arthur Ronald Dare Watkins was born on August 29, 1904, in Kingston Hill, Surrey (nowadays Kingston Vale, London), United Kingdom.

Education

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.

Career

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.

Achievements

• Ronald Watkins is known as a producer of Shakespeare's plays for a large portion of his Harrow School career. His run of Shakespeare productions began with Twelfth Night in 1941 and continued until 1964. Notable among his productions were Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra and A Midsummer's Night Dream. Watkins also wrote a number of books dedicated to the stage production of Shakespearean works.
  
  Watkins was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1996 "for services to the Globe."

Works

More photos

• book

  • Moonlight at the Globe

    (An essay in Shakespeare production based on performance o...)

    1946
  • On Producing Shakespeare 1950
  • Why Not Ask Shakespeare? 2002
  • The Poet's Method 1974
  • Hamlet 1974
  • Macbeth 1974

Views

Throughout 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.

Personality

Watkins played the double bass with the Harrow school orchestra and was a keen watercolorist.

Connections

In 1948, Ronald married Margaret "Bunty" Watson Brown.

Wife:

Margaret "Bunty" Watson Brown

Friend:

David Gordon

21 January 1908 – 13 September 1974

Major David George Ian Alexander Gordon, 4th Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair was a British peer, soldier, and the son of Dudley Gordon, 3rd Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair.

Friend:

June Gordon

29 December 1913 – 22 June 2009

Beatrice Mary June Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, commonly known as Lady Aberdeen, was a professional musician and patron of the Aberdeen International Youth Festival and founder and Musical Director of Haddo House Choral & Operatic Society.

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, TV, & Other Fields, Vol. 193 In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010