Narrated by Kenneth Branagh
Abridged; 9 Hours
$30 U.S.
Copyright 1994
ISBN: 1-56511-134-6 (cassette; also on CD)
My rating: 4 stars out of 5
Suitable for: history enthusiasts, anglophiles, thespians, Kenneth Branagh fans
Kenneth Branagh must feel he belongs in the 17th century, so competently does he narrate the diction of the era. The listener will have little trouble following Pepys' (pronounced “peeps”) tale of a bureaucrat's dissipatory existence in Tudor England.
Branagh, film enthusiasts may recall, is the founder of the Renaissance Theatre Company and has starred in and directed numerous adaptations of Shakespeare's plays for the silver screen, notably 1989's Henry V, 1993's Much Ado About Nothing, 1996's Hamlet, and 2000's Love's Labour's Lost.
Pepys, it turns out, was a theater junkie, constantly vowing to spend less money on plays, which he sometimes attended nightly. He saw a great many of Shakespeare's plays. The listener may note the amusement in Branagh's voice when Pepys pans A Midsummer Night's Dream as “the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.”
Samuel Pepys kept his diary for nearly ten years, from 1660 to 1669, starting in his late twenties. He gave up writing them, much to our regret, when his eyesight began to fail under the strain of writing by candlelight. Pepys was commissioner of the navy, a corrupt bureaucrat, which was not unusual for the time, and a prolific philanderer. No belle dame or demoiselle was beyond his desires, from the wives of noblemen to his wife's teenage handmaid.
The manner in which Pepys kept his diary is rather curious. He wrote it in a sort of shorthand and when he describes his sexual liaisons, and there were many, he reverts to a mixture of French, Spanish, and what I assume is Latin. A speaker of any of the languages would have little problem discerning what he is describing. The rest of us can guess. Branagh's voice slips into a lower register as he reads these scenes, becoming throaty and sensual, effectively evoking Pepys' grasping desire.
Pepys must have kept his diaries locked away, as he was married to a literate French woman whom he assumed was a Huguenot, but who later confessed to him being a secret Catholic, a big deal at the time. Using a pidgin French to describe sexual encounters seems an odd choice given the circumstances. In any case she discovers his dabbling with her maid, and threatens to slit her nose, which seems to be a practice of the time.
We are lucky that Pepys had a catbird seat on some of the salient events of the time, including the London Plague, the Great Fire, and war. Pepys also described the more commonplace: a handful of executions, infestations of lice and bedbugs, political intrigue, and the lives of courtiers and commoners.
After spending more than nine hours in Pepys' world as performed sympathetically by Branagh, one grows to like the lout (Pepys) despite his utter lack of devotion to anything but his own pleasure. It is with sadness that we learn his eyesight is failing and that all the well-intentioned but fruitless remedies cannot correct the condition. Pepys stopped writing his diary in 1669.
The quality of Branagh's reading encourages the listener to find out more about Pepys and perhaps read the diaries, which are freely available online. I include a few links here.
The Diary of Samuel Pepys (http://www.pepysdiary.com/)
This website, maintained by Phil Gyford, has an encyclopedia of terms, a list of the people mentioned in the diary, articles related to the diary, and a daily entry from Pepys' diary pegged to the current month and day.
Historic Figures: Samuel Pepys (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/pepys_samuel.shtml)
This site from the BBC is helpful in understanding the historic and cultural context of Pepys' England. Illuminating content includes “Sex, Lice and Chamber Pots in Pepys' London” and a detailed interactive British History Timeline.
The full text, for free, online. Download it or read it from the website. If you're not familiar with Project Gutenberg, I suggest you check out their vast catalog of free, public-domain books and other materials. Their audiobooks are of varying quality, as they are read by either volunteers of differing abilities and computers. Some are quite excellent. Steer clear of the machine-read books, however, unless you're desperate. No one, it should be noted, has yet narrated Pepys. Perhaps they are discouraged by Branagh's inimitable performance.
Internet Movie Database: Kenneth Branagh (IMDb) (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000110/)
All you need to know about Kenneth Branagh and more.
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