Shakespeare References in Dear Me

Peter Ustinov’s autobiography Dear Me contains a lot of Shakespeare references. The first is to Shakespeare himself, with Ustinov writing, “And, after all, he was in good company, since as great a writer as Shakespeare could never decide exactly how his own name should be spelled” (p. 27). The next is to Othello, with Ustinov talking about his own jealousy, and how he considered jealousy to be a “base and fundamentally stupid vice.” He goes on: “Othello, clutching his handkerchief and rolling his eyes, has always struck me as a bit of an ass, and I only began to lose my lofty sense of ignorance in the face of jealousy when I became a father of more than a single child myself, and could watch human relations in their most unsophisticated form, in the nursery” (p. 55). We then get a mention of Romeo And Juliet: “How could Tristan and Isolde have survived if there had been a child, or Romeo and Juliet? All the poetry would have been lost in irritation at feeding time” (p. 63). Then, regarding his parents’ love story, he says, “Nor would Shakespeare have been right, as an author” (p. 63). A little later he again refers to Romeo And Juliet: “They realized they would have to part, like star-crossed lovers, since the weight of race and geopolitics lay too heavy in the balance; mere personal affection had to make way for great historical realities” (p. 77). And this: “with the result that the shipboard Romeo went to the B.B.C.” (p. 171). Regarding cigars, Ustinov writes: “What would we prefer, Uppmann, Hoyo de Monterey, Punch, Romeo y Julieta, Henry Clay?” (p. 173). This book contains a lot of reference to Romeo And Juliet, in part because Peter Ustinov wrote a play titled Romanoff And Juliet, and there are many mentions of this play. Ustinov writes, “When, many years later, I performed my play Romanoff and Juliet on Broadway, I used the sets of M. Jean-Denis Malcles, a leading French artist” (p. 89). And then later: “I had been writing Romanoff and Juliet” (p. 251). And then: “But by then, I had already completed Romanoff and Juliet, a three-act play absolutely neo-classical in form” (p. 256). And then: “The theme was a variation on the tragic love of Romeo and Juliet, with Romeo as son of the Soviet Ambassador and Juliet the daughter of the American Ambassador. The intractable families, the Capulets and the Montagues, were replaced by the governments of the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., and the scene was a small neutral country” (p. 257). And then: “Romanoff and Juliet opened at the Piccadilly Theatre in London and was an immediate success” (p. 258). And: “Was all this inherent in Romanoff and Juliet?” (p. 265). And “During the run of Romanoff and Juliet, I accepted an invitation to play tennis in the Soviet Embassy in London” (p. 266). And “I came out of Romanoff and Juliet, and was told by a celebrated doctor that I would have to wear a corset for life and that tennis was out of the question for the same length of time” (p. 267). And: “Before performing Romanoff and Juliet in America, I shot a film in Paris” (p. 268). And: “I was none too enthusiastic, since I felt I had exhausted the subject of the Russians and the Americans in Romanoff and Juliet, and I also sensed that nothing that might happen on the moon could not happen more effectively and more comprehensibly here on Earth” (p. 272). And: “The year of Romanoff and Juliet ended, and we went straight to Hollywood” (p. 273). And: “They said they would be interested in a film version of my play Romanoff and Juliet, so long as it cost no more than $750,000” (p. 285). And: “Bob Krasker was the cameraman, as he had been in Romanoff and Juliet” (p. 288).

But there are many other Shakespeare references in this book. At one point he mentions several plays that he wrote, including “a Pirandello-like drama entitled Uneasy Lies The Head, in which the characters created by reprehensible dramatist come to life and badger him into an introspective suicide” (p. 98). That play’s title is a reference to a line from The Second Part Of King Henry The Fourth, “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” Then we get a reference to Shakespeare: “‘I don’t know what kind of parts you can play,’ he said coolly – ‘Shakespearean clowns a la rigueur, and then… Shakespearean clowns are not wanted every day’” (p. 112). A little later, he writes, “Now I was offered the understudy of George Devine, who was going to play Lopakhin, which was not bad going for a Shakespearean clown in retirement before the start of his career” (p. 116). And then: “I enjoyed my success to the full, especially since I had made a small breakthrough without the overwhelming assistance of Shakespeare and one of his incomprehensible clowns, and without ever having had to understudy or to carry a spear in Laurence Olivier’s Macbeth, which some of my chosen contemporaries had had the privilege of doing” (p. 120). And, only two pages later: “Shakespeare gave his actors more elbow-room than they really needed” (p. 122). Then: “He had, apparently, been assistant stage-manager at the Shakespeare Festivals in Regent’s Park” (p. 138). Peter Ustinov mentions Shakespeare fairly often in this book. Here is another instance: “‘Because the greatest psychiatric literature was written before Freud,’ I suggested. ‘Shakespeare and Dostoievsky achieved by sheer observation and instinct what no one has been able to achieve since these seas were charted’” (p. 156). And then: “I left them arguing fiercely about Shakespeare, Dostoievsky, Freud, Jung, and their man at Watford” (p. 156).

Regarding his play The Moment Of Truth, Ustinov writes, “It was the title chosen because the producers feared the original one, King Lear’s Photographer, would sound facetious” (p. 164). And then he adds: “There are other King Lears on record: Hindenburg, Badoglio, Franco. It was the tragedy of a man who outlives his life, if I may coin a phrase, and of another man who pragmatically exploits the reputation of this living legend” (p. 164). A little later he writes, “One distinguished admiral was even compelled to admit to Edith Evans, ‘By Jove, I’m embarrassed to say that this is the first play by Shakespeare I’ve seen since Richard of Bordeaux!’” (p. 182). And no, the play in question was not Shakespeare’s. There is also a reference to one of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters: “He was then playing Falstaff at the Old Vic, and in the finest fettle” (p. 197). The Shakespeare references continue: “The conviction was growing in me that, whereas Shakespeare was admittedly the greatest of our playwrights, there was a general recognition of the fact that Sir Arthur Pinero was the best of them. To attempt any kind of an emulation of Shakespeare was, of course, foolhardy on a purely artistic level, but quite apart from that, it was also regarded as a form of heresy, an act of shocking self-confidence, whereas an emulation of Pinero was eminently acceptable” (p. 208).

Peter Ustinov also refers to Hamlet: “It is no error that ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’ is an essay in profundity which has become the property of all, even if the vast majority have not the faintest notion of how the speech continues. And yet, what the hell does it mean? It is merely a key to what follows, which is unknown to most people, and yet it is accepted as the acme of human vision by those who have never bothered to examine it or to open the door to which it is the key. ‘The evil that men do lives after them,’ ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown’, ‘To be or not to be’: Shakespeare, thank God was not afraid of squareness” (pages 220-221). The line “The evil that men do lives after them” is from Julius Caesar, and “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” is from The Second Part Of King Henry The Fourth. The book contains another mention of Othello: “Her name was Suzanne Cloutier, and she was a young French-Canadian actress who had played Desdemona in Orson Welles’s film of Othello” (pages 238-239). King Lear is then mentioned again: “the first playing a kind of free paraphrase on both Marshal Petain and King Lear” (p. 241). Later Ustinov writes, regarding Laurence Olivier, “He has played sufficient Shakespearean villains superbly well to have a great confidence in his own powers of persuasion” (p. 276). King Lear is mentioned again: “Knowing that Laughton was shortly to attempt the role of King Lear at Stratford, rather late in life, Larry gave him some hints as to where the dead spots were to be found on the stage as far as acoustics were concerned, a solicitude which Laughton interpreted as veiled hostility in the guise of ostentatious comradeship” (p. 276). More about Olivier: “His Richard III had a hypnotic power, an evil elegance and wit the like of which I had never seen before, and have not seen since, and in certain comic parts his imaginative brio is quite superlative. For my taste, his Hamlet, prefixed as the story of a man ‘who could not make up his mind’, was rather less suited to him, since of all actors he is the most difficult to imagine as one who has not made up his mind” (p. 278). Kiss Me Kate, which is based on The Taming Of The Shrew, is also mentioned: “Ponnelle meanwhile had a dress-rehearsal of Kiss Me Kate at Dusseldorf” (p. 292). And then we get a mention of The Tempest: “more especially since The Magic Flute is a kind of pantomime, with something of a popular farce and something of The Tempest, its grave moments sublimely elevated by Mozart on to a celestial plane” (p. 293). There is also a play on one of Othello’s most famous line, with Ustinov writing, “Don Giovanni, described by Mozart and Da Ponte as a Dramma Giocosa, had been brainwashed even more thoroughly than The Magic Flute by the intervening generations of those who loved their opera unwisely, but too well” (p. 294). Othello’s line is “Then must you speak/Of one that loved not wisely, but too well.” There is also a reference to one of Antony’s famous lines from Julius Caesar: “that the old teacher produced the unkindest cut of all, in guise of the greatest compliment he could pay” (p. 316). Antony’s line, referring to Brutus stabbing Caesar, is “This was the most unkindest cut of all.” This book actually concludes with a reference to Hamlet, Ustinov writing, “Don’t mention it, all too solid flesh” (p. 350).

Dear Me was published in 1977. It was published by Penguin Books in 1978, reprinted in 1979.