BBC R3&4 - Gunpowder Plot - Guy Fawkes - Nov. 5

BBC R3 Sunday Feature - Terror, Faith & The Arts
Presented by David Skinner
Produced by Jessica Isaacs
Broadcast October 30, 2005
Coded from tape at 128/44.1

An examination of cultural responses to the 1605 Gunpowder Plot.

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BBC R4 - A J Walton's 'Gunpowder, Treason & Plot'
Directed by Margaret Ethal
Broadcast November 1, 1980
Coded from tape at 128/44.1
Thanks to Usenet for this file.

The Gunpowder Plot story drawn from contemporary records.

Cast
Guy Fawkes - Michael Spice
Thomas Winter - Christopher Scott
Robert Cecil - John Moffatt
James I - Frazer Carr
Sir William Wade - John Bott
Christopher Wright - Alexander John
Francis Tresham - Heydon Wood
Walter Raleigh - Robert Laing
Northumberland - Harvey Ashby
Thomas Percy - Gordon Reid
Gaoler - Sean Probert
Executioner - Gordon Reid
Robin Catesby - Anthony Hyde
Suffolk - Peter Robert Scott
Worcester - Graham Faulkener
Sir Edaward Cook - Leslie Glazer
Meg - Roweena Roberts
Flemmish Landlord - Chris Jenkinson
Popham - John Church
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It is 400 years since Guy Fawkes and others plotted to blow up King and Parliament on 5th November 1605. This failed plot had a profound effect on political, religious and cultural life of the time. David Skinner investigates how writers, artists and composers responded to the plot, some censoring their own work or blatantly playing the royalist card to survive, and some such as the catholic composer, William Byrd defying king and country and keeping true to his catholic faith.

David explores life in recusant catholic households of the time by visiting Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire and finding out about sung masses in secret chapels and priest holes where households hid Jesuits from the authorities. He also looks at the significant places associated with plot, including the Houses of Parliament - standing in the actual corridor where the gunpowder was stored and the Tower of London where Guy Fawkes was interrogated and tortured. David also discovers a broadside ballad giving an account of the plot, anthems in rememberance of deliverance recorded for us in Magdalen College Chapel and the Chapel of the Tower of London (and not heard for centuries) and the place of the Globe Theatre in establishing or breaking reputations of leading playrights of the time including Shakespeare and Ben Jonson (spy reports show that he met and dined with the conspirators a few weeks before the plot) . Antonia Fraser (author of a seminal book on the plot) gives her spin on the events and discovery.