Out of the Margins

"A playful explosive row at dinner," reads Mark Rylance's personally annotated working script from 1999: "Rushes skipping onto the stage". 

This is one of those rare 'you really can't get this sort of thing anywhere else' lots (it actually applies to all 55 of them in this auction, but this one especially!). A historical, annotated-at-the-time working script of "The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra" from 1999, by the Academy-, BAFTA-, Olivier- and Tony-award winning Mark Rylance, when he famously played Cleopatra. 

The play Mark Rylance performed in was an Original Practices Production, directed by Giles Block at Shakespeares Globe, running 30 July-26 September 1999. ‘Original Practices’ refers to a unique and radical experiment that was generated at the Globe and used historical performance to transform modern theatre practice. The reconstruction of a Shakespearean amphitheatre was premised on the idea that it would provide the ideal context for testing out what academics knew of early modern playing conditions. This led to an exceptional partnership between research and creative practice during Mark Rylance’s Artistic Directorship (1995-2005) in an attempt to discover and recreate Shakespeare’s company’s working practice. The acting script was the property of Mark Rylance (Cleopatra) who donated the script to a benefit auction for Shakespeare's Globe following his last season (autumn 2005); since then the script has been in the hands of a Private Collection and we are now so very lucky to be able to offer it as part of this auction. 

Mark Rylance's annotated script and 'plat' of Anthony and Cleopatra (1999) places a great emphasis on the motivation of his character throughout, summarising and specifing the neccessary stage-business required: "Be present, playful, infinite variety, don't cloy, connect with him" and "Let him win me, seduce me". There are contextual reminders ("Very unusual for a messenger to bust in like this, we usually ignore them") and you can almost hear the conversation in the rehearsal room, as in this comment on Anthony's Roman duty from Cleopatra's point of view, in Mark Rylance's handwriting: "His boring side. His suburban side. Mowing the lawn of Rome". The script, and additional pages of notes on his character ("What Cleopatra says about herself", "What others say about Cleopatra", "Costume plot and cues"), comes in a beautiful protective oak box.