Alexander's other productions for the RSC included " A Midsummer Nights Dream " ( 1986 ) with Sean Bean as Robin Starveling, " Twelfth Night " with Harriet Walter as Viola, and Deborah Findlay as Olivia 1987 / 88, " The Merchant of Venice " with Antony Sher as Shylock in 1987, " Cymbeline " with David Bradley and Harriet Walter in 1998, " Much Ado About Nothing " in 1991, " The Taming of the Shrew " in 1992, and " Titus Andronicus " in 2003.
22.
WITH : Alex Jennings ( Theseus / Oberon ), Lindsay Duncan ( Hippolyta / Titania ), Barry Lynch ( Philostrate / Puck ), Alfred Burke ( Egeus ), Monica Dolan ( Hermia ), Daniel Evans ( Lysander ), Kevin Robert Doyle ( Demetrius ), Emily Raymond ( Helena ) John Kane ( Peter Quince ), Desmond Barrit ( Nick Bottom ), Mark Letheren ( Francis Flute ), Howard Crossley ( Tom Snout ), Kenn Sabberton ( Snug ), Robert Gillespie ( Robin Starveling ), Ann Hasson ( First Fairy ) and Emily Button, Jane Colenutt, Crossley, Gillespie, Tim Griggs, Kane, Letheren, Darren Roberts and Sabberton ( Fairies ).
23.
In July 1584, the English government Lord Burleigh dated 10 October 1584, he said that " the work was so difficult as to have extended over three years . " He then wrote from Askeaton that he had " travailed hard in superintending the survey, passing through bogs and woods, scaling mountains, and crossing many bridgeless rivers and dangerous waters, " waters in which he lost some of his horses, and was twice nearly lost himself; that his son had broken his arm, and that " the service was so severe that many of the men had fallen sick . " He described the towns and villages as ruined, and wrote that " not one of thirty persons " was left alive after the famine caused by crop destructions, and " those for the most part starvelings ".
