This review is taken word for word from the issue of Plays and Players Magazine dated September 1972, Volume 19, number 12.

King Lear was Timothy's first real Shakesperian role and this review was done when the Prospect's production of King Lear was finishing it's world tour at the Aldwych Theatre in London.

The picture of Timothy as Edgar which is featured, is also taken from the same review. I have added a picture from my own collection of Timothy from Wuthering Heights though.

In and out of disguise Timothy Dalton by Peter Ansorge

"NOBODY SHOULD EVER PLAY EDGAR." That may sound paradoxical coming from an actor who has just finished a six-month stint as Gloucester's legitimate son in Prospect's recent world tour of King Lear. But Timothy Dalton, unshaven, fingering his gin and tonic in a Victorian pub, admits that he often chooses parts 'out of perversity.' Like Ian McKellen, Dalton likes moving around the country's reps, shunning a long-term commitment with one of the major permanent companies. But unlike McKellen who hit the the critial headlines by playing a duo of mainstream Elizabethan monarchs for Prospect, Dalton has won recognition for his playing of Edgar - an offbeat, apparently 'dud' Shakespearean role. One of the things the watchful Dalton most enjoyed about Edgar was the opportunities the part gave for observing other actors at work on the meatier roles. And Dalton does give the impression of an actor who is biding his time, secretly waiting for the opportunities, both on and off the stage.

"Edgar's a bum part really. There are only two parts to play in Lear - one is Edmund the other is the King. But Edgar is in a lot of the best scenes and he can watch everybody else work. I always choose and accept parts that are rather difficult. Things like Marchbanks, or Clive in Five Finger Exercise, parts I wouldn't be automatically associated with."

Nevertheless Dalton presented a far harsher, more consistent Edgar then is normal in Lear. What had triggered off this reaction to Edgar in Dalton? "He's often played as a naive, book-reading stooge. But thos makes the mad scene on the heath seem completely out of Edgar's normal character. His madness is seen as a series of acts. I never saw the part like that. Edgar goes through a very continuous journey. All he talks about on the heath is how the beggers, outcasts, and turley-gods live. Nobody knows how long he has been on the heath just think, for instance of the vagrants down at Waterloo station. You still see people sleeping in newspapers in 1972 - and that's pretty rough! But in Edgar's time a vagrant's life would have been unspeakable, awful. Any member of the aristocracy, like Edgar, who pretended to be a beggar would have had a traumatic shock. If I tried to live like a meths drinker today, it would be terrible. But for Edgar doing that then he would have gone a bit potty. He's chased, hunted, living on rats and, if we believe what he says old vermin. It would drive anybody bitter, angry, and mad. I could see that reaction very clearly - and it can't be a pretended madness. It's real."

Since playing Edgar and Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost for Prospect. Dalton has set his sights on a Shakespearean career. But he has, of course, already proved a sizable contender on film: Lion in Winter, Cromwell, Wuthering Heights (as Heathcliffe) an "Italian film which I don't speak about," and most recently, Mary Queen of Scots. He's grateful for the parts, but is less certain about the politics of film-making. He is obviously a litter bitter about the critical reception of Wuthering Heights.

Timothy as Heathcliffe in Wuthering Heights.

"In one sense Wuthering Heights was put down by the critics quite justifiably. But I'd like to get the record straight on two points. Firstly, Anna Calder-Marshall and I were damned for playing Catharine and Heathcliffe as too young. But Catharine died at the age of nineteen in the noval. The first part of the book covers them as teenagers. It's in the second part, after her death, that Heathcliffe grows into this towering, awful man. We based the relationship on a physical toughness which is there in the language and landscape of the book. It's a savage, analytical book. Now just at this time the film Love Story came out. The producers decided that this is where the money was - and they cut 30 minutes, key scenes of the film. All the 'nicer' scenes were left in. We filmed an ending of total despair - Heathcliffe collapsing on the moors haunted by Catherine's ghost. Three months later the producers went off and filmed two extras running down a hill hand in hand as ghosts living happily after. But those producers could never understand that the greatest romance is the hardest romance - the one that goes through the trails and the bad times, and ends up as some kind of torture. That's what the great poets have always talked about.

"More realism could be aimed at in most historical films. In Lion the costumes had mud around the bottoms however rich or opulent they were. One could have gone further by having straw on the floors and grease in people's hair. I think audiences would really like to see how people actually lived in the past. Bergman did it in The Seventh Seal for the Middle Ages. Well, why not do the same thing in colour and on Panavison?"

Equally, Dalton is slightly perplexed about the problems faced by a young actor in search of a theatre in present-day England. In common with the Actors' Company he feels there is a vacuum at the centre of the current system - the performer. "The older actors played all the parts before they were thirty. You can't do that now. When the Olivers and Gielguds played the great roles properly they'd already had their practice. The tragedy now is that a young actor who has a shot at those parts in England gets criticised on the standard of perfection. If they fail they won't get another chance. People come to see Lear or Hamlet with such preconceived ideas that the plays have become something other then they are. I would join a company if I knew what parts I was going to play. I wou'dn't go to play as cast.

"Both the National and the RSC don't seem to be as exciting as they used to be. You get to know everything about each other working in a permanent company. But the most exciting thing is working with new people, you fight off against each other. When you know everyone your're not going to be surprised any more - or sparked off into action. There seemed to be a violent switch towards ensemble units in the theatre at one point. But directors run out of production ideas. Perhaps the pendulum is beginning to swing back in the other direction now."

So where does an actor go? In fact Dalton took some time off a year ago for a first stab at Macbeth in, of all places Hawaii! He worked with actors and students at the University's drama department and learned "an awful lot." Dalton says he has Macbeth "right inside my system" and is prepared to say no more about the murderous Scot until he plays the part again. "In Hawaii we were allowed to draw our performances out of out own personalities. What people can bring of themselves, and out of what they understand, and how they react to life - is the most special thing. Because it's personal, peculiar and idiosyncratic."

Those last adjectives are no mean definition of Dalton's best work to date. Whether he is playing a modern role like Bob in Peter Terson's The Samaritan (Shaw 1971), or an historical hero. Dalton is able to cast a veil of ambiguity over a character which is both urgent and real. Dalton in fact likes disguises:- "I find it much easier to act when I get a bit disguised - like Edgar. I find it very hard merely to present aspects of my own personality on stage. It's much easier for me to play different parts, or disguises. By disguise I mean playing a part that is a long way from myself. It gives me something to latch on to. When I think a part is like myself I've got nothing to hold on to. Bob in The Samaritan - now he was a very particular kind of person whom I had to go out and find. Even Darnley in Mary Queen of Scots - I could go back and discover things about. I enjoy those parts most - like putting on the blond wig and all that crap."