Quick: Which of Shakespeare’s many female characters has the most lines?

It’s not Rosalind, Cleopatra or Juliet but Margaret of Anjou, one of just three Shakespeare characters to appear in four Shakespeare plays (and no, Falstaff isn’t one of the other two).

Appearing in each part of the Henry VI trilogy as well as Richard III, Margaret nevertheless languishes in relative obscurity because this first Shakespeare history cycle – often referred to collectively as his War of the Roses plays – is less frequently performed. American Players Theatre, for example, has never mounted the Henry VI plays and hasn’t staged Richard III in more than a decade.

All the more reason to check out this Sunday’s reading of Margaret in Madison. An adaptation of the War of the Roses plays by Marcella Kearns that relies exclusively on Shakespeare’s own words to give Margaret center stage, it will be presented by Madison’s newly formed Illyria Productions as part of World Premiere Wisconsin.

Putting Butts in Seats

A longtime Bardolater and Shakespeare educator who adores Shakespeare’s history plays, Kearns isn’t trying to making the case that these early Shakespeare plays are masterpieces.

“Shakespeare was still learning his craft,” Kearns said to me during a phone interview. “He hadn’t yet come into his own as a writer, although one sees the poetic potential. But these aren’t his best plays.”

So stipulated. But these particular plays were wildly popular when Shakespeare wrote them, for some of the same reasons that they’ve drawn increasing attention and have long attracted Kearns, who has been working on Margaret since 2013.

“My first experience of theater involved melodramas with clear heroes and villains, high stakes, action, and audience engagement,” Kearns said. “These plays, written by a young guy coming in and trying to put butts in seats, give us that.”

“I don’t have to dig deep with these plays,” Kearns added. “I can satisfy my taste for action and intrigue without having to think too hard. There’s swords. Betrayals. And high stakes, given that the main character is England itself and what its future will look like, presented through a spectrum of characters ranging from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high.”

Early Shakespeare, “more rhymed and end-stopped than the familiar blank verse of Shakespeare’s later plays, can carry its own considerable burden of expressive emotion,” writes Marjorie Garber in her spirited defense of the Henry VI plays in Shakespeare After All (2004).

“While there is no doubt that the later plays have a greater range,” Garber continues, early works like the Henry VI trilogy “have an extraordinarily fine sense of composition, theatricality, and – when they strive for it – emotional power.”

Kearns’ love for these plays is living proof that the result can be exciting, edge-of-your-seat drama. As she notes, so is the well-known fact that the War of the Roses plays inspired George R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. “Martin added dragons and then turned these plays into a series of books and a blockbuster HBO series,” Kearns said.

Woman Warrior

Both Kearns and Illyria founder Arden Gray are also drawn to the War of the Roses plays because of Margaret, an unforgettable character who evolves over the course of these plays from a demure maiden into a fiercely protective mother, battle-hardened general, and de facto ruler of England.

And that’s before ending her days as a cursing crone and prophet, at a time when people took curses and prophecies very seriously (I’m still haunted by memories of Tracy Michelle Arnold playing this wild and wizened but still formidable Margaret in APT’s 2012 production of Richard III).

Margaret is often labeled as a prototype for Lady Macbeth, but she is much more than that. A wily politician adeptly playing the men who try to play her, she also suggests Shakespeare’s Cleopatra.

“My students at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee love Margaret,” Kearns said. “She pushes beyond the boundaries of what one expects a female character to be. I’m hungry to see such a character. My students are hungry to see one, too. A woman in power? Yes, please. What is she capable of? She’s capable of intrigue, savagery and a sense of justice that equals that of any man.”

“There aren’t a lot of Shakespeare plays with such big and complex female characters,” Gray said to me during a phone interview. “I like how Marcy’s script highlights that. This is my first time reading these plays. It’s fascinating to watch a character go from young woman to crazy old queen. It resembles a full character study.”

Sailing to Illyria

Gray, a 16-year-old sophomore at Madison West High School, began performing Shakespeare through Madison’s renowned Young Shakespeare Players, a student-centered theater program where young performers between ages 7 and 18 enact uncut Shakespeare plays, in a process that emphasizes collaboration while fostering appreciation for the Bard’s texts.

In just the past three-plus years, Gray’s major roles as a YSP actor include Hero and Helena (the one in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Rosalind and Romeo, Sir Toby Belch and Edgar. Gray chose the name Illyria for her company because of how much she enjoyed playing Sir Toby last summer; “I wanted to make a nod to Twelfth Night,” she said.

“I’ve grown to really like Shakespeare, because his plays can be interpreted in so many ways,” Gray said. “They feature classic stories, but with broad themes with which you can make many connections.”

Gray also clearly likes YSP, which has made its Madison performing space available to Illyria for this production.

“What I like about YSP is that even though student directors are involved with each project, any actor is free after every scene to offer comments on how we might make the scene better,” Gray said. “I really enjoy these discussions, and that’s why I decided to become a student director” with YSP, Gray continued.

For all that, Gray’s decision to direct Margaret feels different; this time, she and her young cast are on their own. But while she admits to feeling a bit overwhelmed, she’s also “excited”; I could hear as much as we talked.

“I think it’s cool that this will be a student-led production,” Gray said. “While YSP is student-centered and involves students, it’s still run by adults.”

I asked Gray if it felt like the difference between riding a bike with and without training wheels. “Yes, that’s it,” she said, even as she credited YSP for “training us as students to run our own scenes” and thereby paving her way.

“One continually runs into young people in Wisconsin who’ve experienced more Shakespeare than I did when I was young,” Kearns said, specifically crediting organizations like YSP and Milwaukee’s First Stage for laying down “such a rich Shakespeare foundation in Wisconsin.”

“They’re ravenous for it,” Kearns said, speaking of the state’s young Shakespeareans.

“I love theater,” Gray said. “I hope I will always find a way to incorporate it into my life.”

Illyria Productions’ reading of Margaret takes place this Sunday, May 21, at 6:00 pm at the YSP Playhouse, 1806 West Lawn Avenue. For more information, visit https://worldpremierewisconsin.com/event/margaret/.