"The Symposium" (1965) and "The Death of Socrates" (1966): two recommended videos
Gratis post
The same year (1965) he appeared in Help! with the Beatles, Leo McKern presented Socrates’ philosophy of love in a BBC play based on Plato’s The Symposium. The following year (1966)—the same year he portrayed Thomas Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons, one year before he was Number Two in The Prisoner, and nine years before he played the eponymous main character in the long-running television series Rumpole of the Bailey—McKern took the role of Socrates himself in The Death of Socrates. Frankly, I can’t think of any actor who could have been more ideally cast.
Both plays were the work of Leo Aylen and Jonathan Miller (the same Jonathan Miller who contributed to Beyond the Fringe, which you may recall from two posts ago), and both are faithful to the source material. If you watch them, incidentally, I’m sure some of you will espy a few familiar faces among the actors, including Michael Gough, who later became Batman’s butler.
Both Dialogues are of great importance to the history of Western philosophy and mysticism, and these plays are entertaining introductions.
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The Symposium (The Drinking Party)
The Introduction on YouTube describes the play in this way:
Jonathan Miller's Sunday Night Play from 14/11/1965.
Jonathan Miller plays Plato's "Symposium" as a picnic organized by an OxBridge don for his students. The entertaining script is faithful to the drinking party recorded by Plato, where Socrates asks each guest to explain the nature of Love. By a series of questions, Socrates leads the guests to conclude that Love is the Highest Good, and that God is Love. This Socratic dialogue may be said to be the basis for Western Philosophy.
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The Death of Socrates
The YouTube intro:
Sunday Night Play The Death of Socrates. First transmitted 3 Jul. 1966.
Written and Directed by Jonathan Miller.
Starring:
Ronald Adam as Crito
Freda Dowie as Xanthippe
Peter Eyre as Simmlas
Henry Livings as Cebes
Roddy Maude-Roxby as Phaedo
Leo McKern as Socrates
Darroll Richards as A Warder
Sorry I didn’t see this earlier!
Dear Addison (if I may),
New subscriber here—I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Troy Tice, and I’m a French-to-English academic translator. I came across your writing through your brother and am really looking forward to browsing your Substack.
I’m especially interested in contemplative spirituality (across traditions), idealist theories of consciousness, and what historian of religion Jeffrey J. Kripal calls “impossible” phenomena: ghosts, near-death experiences, UFOs, fairy encounters, precognitive dreams, levitating saints and lamas, demonic possession, and other strange and so-called supernatural experiences. Much of my long-term intellectual focus is on encouraging historians to take such experiences seriously.
Anyway, I don’t want to take up too much space in the comments, but I’m excited to follow along and learn from your writing.
All the best,
Troy