Owain & Michael (Henry too, I guess)

Desmond Clifford

My heart leapt when I heard Michael Sheen will play Owain Glyndwr.  Sheen’s talent is a gift from heaven and charisma, I suppose, is also handed out at birth.  But all the rest, the passion, commitment, the advocacy, the putting-of-money-where-the-mouth-is, the sheer decency; all of that comes from him.

Whatever he touches turns to something purposeful and inspiring.

This is what a Welsh National Theatre is for.

Call me old fashioned, but a Welsh play, Owain & Henry, by a Welsh dramatist, Gary Owen, starring a Welsh actor on a Welsh stage, is surely what we’ve been looking for.

If he were Welsh, not Irish, this is what WB Yeats would have been doing 100 years ago. By the way, Yeats worried whether one of his plays, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, helped cause the Easter Rising in 1916:

“Did that play of mine send out

Certain men the English shot?”

We’ve been warned. Strange things can happen in a theatre.

Cameo

Shakespeare had a go. Owain was essentially a cameo role in Henry IV Part 2, but he steals the show. He is presented as vain, pompous, portentous, the original Welsh Windbag, touchy, quick tempered and verbose.

Shakespeare created a stereotype which lives still, and yet his Glyndwr is dazzling.

In a drama of angry alpha males only Glyndwr conveys wit and poetry as well as the will to power. His share of the Tripartite Indenture is a polity worth fighting for, while Mortimer and Percy’s shares were merely corporate dividends.

Chester, Worcester, Hereford and Shrewsbury were cursed and every time I travel from Cardiff to Manchester along the border, I lament those Lost Lands.

I am eager to see what Gary Owen makes of Henry IV. Shakespeare treats him largely as a functional authority figure with the dramatic shine reserved for Falstaff and the nepo-brat Prince Hal.

Henry IV parts 1 & 2 are in some senses a coming-of-age vehicle for the eventual Henry V. In the dog-eats-dog medieval world there are questions against Henry IV since he usurped the throne from Richard II; no one has full legitimacy in this world.

In part two of Shakespeare, Henry IV is ill and in decline and Glyndwr’s rebellion finally peters under Henry V.

What will Michael Sheen and Gary Owen make of Glyndwr?

Compelling

Shakespeare left the most compelling literary account. We also have John Cowper Powys’ historical novel “Owen Glendower” which, erroneously, includes a death scene; one of the important elements of Glyndwr’s story is that his death was unrecorded.

The preeminent modern scholarly account is the outstanding “The Revolt of Owain Glyndwr” (1995) by RR Davis.

Glyndwr is perhaps the most written about figure in Welsh history and there is a substantial popular and academic library.

We know relatively little about Glyndwr the person. The blank canvas makes him all the more compelling. There is an image on his seal but this doesn’t help us much.

Glyndwr’s rebellion began as a dispute among oligarchs but became a national struggle. He was the spark which struck, kindling a flame that never quite died.

Glyndwr cultivated a national vision for Wales. He tried to forge an alliance with the King of France and wrote a detailed letter setting out his proposals. He envisaged two universities, one in the north and one in the south, a vision which, if realised, would have created seats of learning as ancient as Oxford and Cambridge.

This would have created a different Wales, a nation without the cultural cringe which still stifles today.

For a few years, Glyndwr rampaged around Wales, laying siege and destroying castles allied to the English king. He established a Welsh Parliament at Machynlleth.

Back foot

Henry IV was for some years on the back foot fighting on several fronts against English as well as Welsh rebels. In the end, Glyndwr’s revolt melted. His English allies were defeated and the French didn’t deliver. By itself Wales simply lacked the power.

Rebellions were all-or-nothing affairs. The prize for victory was nationhood: a Welsh Prince and court, a parliament, universities, a Welsh Church, an army, a treasury, ambassadors, all the institutions of state.

But defeat was total too. Glendower’s home was overrun, his land seized. He was England’s Most Wanted but was never betrayed.

In his last days Glyndwr wandered alone, possibly Incognito. His death was unrecorded and this, ultimately, was his great gift to posterity.

With the rebellion over and the occupation complete, the process of subjection began in earnest.

With myth in place of might, dreamers fancy that Glyndwr’s spirit is out there somewhere, biding his time, waiting for the moment.

Victory was elusive, but so was defeat. The end of Wales?

Not quite, not then, and not since.

Some years back, in 2002, the BBC ran a poll to find “100 Welsh heroes”. Nye Bevan topped the poll and Glyndwr came in second though, oddly, on the broader “100 Greatest Britons” list, Bevan came in at 45 while Glyndwr placed at 23.  I voted Glyndwr.

He was a visionary for Wales and his legacy belongs to everyone.

This brings us to Glyndwr’s continuing significance.

He kept Wales alive by not lying down and accepting as inevitable the crushing power of the English Crown. The odds were against him, even with his allies Mortimer and Percy in the field.

Glyndwr drew a line in the sand. It wasn’t his intention, of course, but he enabled Wales to look history in the eye.

Without Glyndwr, we would be so much flakier.

Could Wales as a recognisable political entity have survived? I doubt even whether devolution could have happened.

Pardon

Owain refused offers of pardon from Henry V on his accession.

If he had accepted, he would have lived but we wouldn’t celebrate him today. Glyndwr lit a torch and, in his last days, chose to keep it lit.

I will be fascinated to see what Michael Sheen and Gary Owen make of him. I suspect Shakespeare’s romanticism won’t be the template. My guess is we’re likely to see a human being rather than a public Prince.

Imagine the lonely weight on his shoulders, the life and death of his soldiers but also of the nation itself.

Allies vanquished, the King of France not coming through, forces depleted, the end inevitable. How did that feel in the dead of night?

Michael Sheen made his name playing real people well-known to his audiences.  His genius as an actor is to inhabit rather than impersonate. On film: Tony Blair, Brian Clough, Kenneth Williams, David Frost; on stage, Jesus Christ (Port Talbot was the stage) and Nye Bevan. I saw his hallucinating Nye Bevan and wonder what Glyndwr will do in his quiet moments

Owain was the last Welshman to hold the title Prince of Wales and to be recognised as such by his countrymen.

His letter to the King of France requesting help is electrifying: “..my nation, for many years now elapsed, has been oppressed by the fury of the barbarous Saxon.” It was taken to Paris and placed in the King’s hands by Gruffydd Yonge, a cleric acting as Owain’s emissary.

Glyndwr offers a deal to switch the Welsh Church from loyalty to Canterbury to the French-controlled papacy. This was raw politics.

The letter is housed today in the French National Archive. It has only returned to Wales once, 25 years ago, when Rhodri Morgan secured its brief loan to the National Library of Wales.

It is signed: “Vester ad vota, Owynus, princeps Wallie”: Avowedly yours, Owain, Prince of Wales.  The last Welshman to sign so.

Thrilling.

Owain Glyndwr’s return.  This is what Wales has been waiting for.