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Blackfriars Conference 2011 – George T. Wright Keynote Address

Greetings! I’m Charlene V. Smith and it’s 10:30 am on Day 2 of the 2011 Blackfriars Conference. George T. Wright from the University of Minnesota is giving the Keynote today, entitled “Climbing Shakespeare’s Ladder, and Other Sound Patterns.” Wright is well-known among the both the conference attendees and the graduate students at Mary Baldwin due to his seminal work Shakespeare’s Metrical Art.

After some announcements from Sarah Enloe, director of Education at the OCS, Dr. Ralph Alan Cohen takes the stage to introduce Wright. Wright is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Minnesota. Besides Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, Wright has also written Hearing the Measures: Shakespearean and Other Inflections and Poetical Craft and Authorial Design.  Dr. Ralph says that when the graduate Shakespeare program at MBC began, he really wanted to use Shakespeare’s Metrical Art as a classroom textbook. He was worried that some students, less familiar with Chaucer and poetry, might find it difficult. He says he made the mistake of using a different book, but for year two of the program Ralph “switched to the Wright/right book.”

Wright begins by noting his growing interest in ladders in Shakespeare’s text, and that years ago he noticed too many actors underplaying long verse speeches and rhetoric. They were being cheated of their force, brought down to the prose moments of the play.

Wright grew aware of growing interest amongst British actors and directors in speaking Shakespeare’s verse. Wright was interested in how verse was heard by the ear of the audience. These actors and directors were looking for guidance and rules for shared lines, pauses, enjambed versus end stopped lines, etc. Wright cares much more about the weight given to stressed and unstressed lines as they are critical to the emotional intensity of the text.

Wright notes that there are three kinds of people interested in the meter of the verse: Actors, editors, prosodists. The questions each group asks are how shall we speak the lines, how shall we print the lines, and how shall we hear the lines, respectively. Wrights says that editors and actors must print and speak the lines in a way that allows us to read and hear the lines as metrically coherent.

Wright has consulted many texts of Shakespeare’s verse and has not found much dealing with the ladder. As an example, he presents an early speech from Julius Caesar, a speech Wright says in a perfect example of a ladder.

And do you not put on your best attire?
And do you not cull out a holiday?
And do you not strew flowers in he way
That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?
Be gone!
Run to your houses, fall upon your knees
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.
(1.1.48-55)

The first four lines step up, and the last three lines step back down the ladder. A ladder is sequences of clauses that keep elaborating on a topic until it’s been exhausted and then the actor has to run back down.

After 1593, Shakespeare’s line really find their range. Wright says we have the plague to thank, as it caused Shakespeare to write the sonnets. With the sonnets, Shakespeare was training himself to compose verse speech in a larger four line unit. Though many sonnets are end stopped at the end of each line, usually do to the rhyme scheme. The end stopping of the lines halts the rising of the verse. There is an inherent rise and fall in the structure of the sonner. The quatrains build up and then down.

Shakespeare then used more ladders in his blank verse. Wright demonstrates Shakespeare’s powerful buildup via ladders with Richard II’s “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground,” John of Gaunt’s This England, and Henry V’s famous St. Crispin Day speeches. Shakespeare had found a new way to be seriously expressive. Why say a thing once, when saying it differently and again and again will make it more memorable?

Wright notes that the performance of these ladders is not always the same, nor is it a continuous rise. The voice likes to back track a little, or down track a little, before it continues to the next level of the speeches. Wright speaks some of Macbeth’s speech, “Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, / Loyal and neutral, in a moment?” This speech goes up and down constantly, as if Macbeth doesn’t know where he wants to be.

Wright launches into Claudio’s speech from Measure for Measure, “Ay, but to die, and go we know not where,” a speech Wright calls, “one of the finest of all ladder speeches.” This speech goes up for many lines, and then steps down powerfully. The imagery is as over the top as the dramatic structure of the ladder, and Wright suggests that Shakespeare intended that.

Wright notes that every actor will not perform ladders the same way, but that the device should be recognized as respecting it creates a powerful effect. Shakespeare was an extraordinary writer but also an extraordinary listener.

Wright loves the increasing attention given in recent years to the performance of verse, but the more he reads about it the more questions he has. Metrical variations add texture to Shakespeare’s verse. Readers, editors, and voice professionals need to note these variations. Not just the normal variations such as trochees, but the rarer ones such as hexameter, broken-back lines, and epic caesuras, should be considered. Shakespeare uses these irregularities more than the other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, and we should wonder why.

Wright then takes a few questions from the audience. One person asks about Wright’s suggestions that we have some reservations when we hear a ladder, and wonders if that is connected to a feeling that the ladder is calculated. Wright likes the idea and the suggestions it gives for performance. Another scholar asks about evangelism and whether Wright thinks Shakespeare could have picked up some of the ladder technique from church. Wright thinks it is completely possible and beautifully quotes a poem of John Donne. Mary Baldwin professor Matt Davies mentions that the sonnets were metrically regular, and that so were the examples, there weren’t a lot of inverted feet in them, which might cause a trip in the ladder.  He asks whether regularity is essential to building a ladder. Other audience members respond to this idea and OCS actor James Keegan says he notes that sort of thing a lot in Tamburlaine. Keegan then notes that he feels contemporary actors are afraid of pitch, of singing the pitch, and has anxiety about it. Wright agrees, and says that they are afraid of going of the top. But Wright says he’d like to hear actors going over the top a bit more and notes that you can find fine examples of this, nodding to Keegan’s fine performance as Prospero in The Tempest the night before.

Blackfriars Conference 2011- Plenary Session III

Hi, I’m Deb Streusand, and I’ll be liveblogging Plenary Session III from 9 am to 10:15 am.

“Lie there, Religion”: Implications of the Vestment Controversy on the Early Modern English Stage
Margaret Rose Jaster, Pennsylvania State University Harrisburg

Jaster argues that one of the lasting effects of the Vestment Controversy might have been satirical treatment of Roman Catholic clergy on stage. She suggests that vestments served as a metonymic device for all things Roman Catholic, and that the cultural event we refer to as the Vestment Controversy did affect the early English stage. Vestments were regarded as “indifferent,” that is, not necessary to the honor and glory of God. The reformers despised the vestments as symbolic of excess, and wanted to return to a more pristine spiritual institution, free of such trappings. On stage, whoever dons the Roman Catholic vestments appears as a Roman Catholic cleric to the audience, even in the case of characters who are in disguise. In the anonymous play Look About You, the scoundrel Skink disguises himself as a monk in order to con the other characters. In Measure for Measure, Duke Vincentio dons religious garb for his own ends, but, scandalously, he actually confesses Mariana in the process. If the portrayal of characters in clerical garb was always satirical, it is possible that the Roman Catholics in the audience might have been horrified or indignant. If both reformers and Catholics considered vestments indifferent, however, and the characters misusing the vestments were not Roman Catholic at all, as in the case of disguise, the contention that vestments were used this way is not so controversial.

“The mirror of all Christian kings”: Choral Medievalism in the Henry V Folio
Christina Gutierrez, The University of Texas at Austin

Gutierrez argues that Shakespeare can be regarded as one of the most recognizable writers of medieval history. As a historical account, Henry V‘s double vision of its central character destabilizes audience perception of this historical period. She reads the play in the light of current medieval historiography and analyzes contemporary stagings of the play. She cites Umberto Eco’s argument that the Middle Ages have never ended in the popular imagination, arguing that “Medievalism constructs the Middle Ages to suit post-medieval values, concerns, and effects.” The play can be used to stage tensions between the historical past and the present moment. She cites the Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh movie versions, drawing a contrast between their respective treatments of Henry and of the Middle Ages. This ambiguity about how we should view Henry and his historical period comes from the text itself, particularly in the differences between how the Chorus describes Henry and how he is portrayed in person. The Chorus exists to provide a contrast to the Henry that the audience sees. In the 1600 Quarto, the choral passages do not appear. Scholars debate the reason for this absence-had they not been written yet, or were they redacted for political reasons? The Quarto’s portrayal of Henry is unambiguously heroic. Shakespeare may have meant this to be an image of Elizabeth I. Gutierrez discusses the productions of Charles Kemble and William Macready, who respectively cut and restored the Chorus. She argues that Macready’s restoration of the Chorus allowed the play to live in the gaps of time between the historical period being portrayed, Shakespeare’s time, and the time of the production. More recent productions have set the play in various modern conflicts, whether to promote patriotism or portray the folly of war. The play’s double presentation of its central character represents the duality of our view of the Middle Ages, allowing directors to make a choice as to how they will stage Henry and the play’s approach to war.

Linden Kueck performs as the Chorus in Henry V for this presentation. A.J. Sclafani performs as Henry.

Making Malapropism: Reconsidering Mistress Quickly
Emily Sloan-Pace, University of California, Santa Cruz

Sloan-Pace points out that Mistress Quickly is often read solely for her malapropisms and is not considered relevant enough to the Falstaff plot or to the play’s historical project to be worthy of much more analysis. She argues that in this typically upper-class genre, Quickly offers an alternative voice, representing the middle class and a female with linguistic agency in a play dominated by the mOCSuline and martial. Quickly is distinct for her control over the economy of her alehouse and her body. In 2 Henry IV, she becomes a developed character outside of her relationship to Falstaff and the other tavern characters. The characters outside of the tavern allow her agency by providing her with positive acknowledgement. Aside from Falstaff, men seem to respect Quickly, but in his company she is subjected to a constant barrage of slurs. Editors have allowed this barrage to color their view of Mistress Quickly. Yet the Lord Chief Justice, for example, immediately accepts Quickly’s claims over those of Falstaff, implying that the men in power respect her. The Justice’s refusal to view her sexually leads Falstaff to admit his debt, giving Quickly the power and thereby placing her in the mOCSuline role in this sexual exchange. Reading this scene in a non-malapropistic way provides a new view of this character as a respected figure who can employ language to her own ends.

How to Shrew
Joe Ricke, Taylor University and Hungry Shakespeare

Ricke begins his presentation in the character of Stephanie Stern, Tiffany Stern’s fictional younger sister, illustrating the ways in which we view the concept of “shrewing.” In his own person, he argues that the short answer to “how to shrew” is not “you’re beaten to a bloody pulp,” but that you are loud and argumentative, being tried as a shrew after an accusation made by a specific man or men. In a shrew play, the shrew must defend herself against the audience and her male accuser. Although some critics argue that Shakespeare’s shrew must be viewed in the light of contemporary concerns about shrewish women, we should consider his approach to the shrew in terms of the tradition of staged shrews in other shrew plays rather than viewing it as an anomaly of cultural hysteria. In Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare uses one of the most popular contemporary ways of talking about the battle of the sexes. In these plays, shrews are on display as shrews because of the characters who accuse them. They then defend themselves in dialogue. The ubiquity of the shrew plays challenges any simplistic view of the Early Modern perspective on shrewish women because of the plays’ allowance for dialogue and self-defense. We must also take into account the shrew’s characterization of the men around her as lazy and not contributing to the household economy, which further complicates any argument that the plays unequivocally portray the shrews in a negative light. “Saintly shrews” in the mystery plays turn out to be on the side of righteousness. In Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare portrays his own saintly shrew in the person of Paulina, showing that shrews can do good work by protecting others and themselves.

Kim Maurice portrays Kate in this presentation. A.J. Sclafani performs Petruchio. Maurice portrays Paulina and Sclafani Leontes in Winter’s Tale. These two actors also play scenes from an earlier shrew play concerning Noah and from Peele’s The Old Wives’ Tale.

Competing Heights in As You Like It
Jemma Alix Levy, Muse of Fire Theater Company

Levy lays out the textual contradiction between the descriptions of Rosalind’s and Celia’s heights in two different scenes, and reminds us that in production Rosalind is usually portrayed as taller. Editors and directors seem to have reached the consensus to that Le Beau’s statement that Celia is taller is a mistake. Levy discusses the performance potential of leaving this contradiction intact. What if Le Beau is referring to their current physical positions, or following the Duke’s requirement that he see Celia as taller? Levy argues that the explanation with the greatest potential in performance is that the two women may be so close in height that each appears taller at different times. Staging their heights in this way draws attention to the competitive aspects of Rosalind and Celia’s relationship. Competition is a theme throughout the play, but the competition between Rosalind and Celia is limited to the time when they are both presenting as female. While at Frederick’s court, they continually one-up one another. Since Rosalind is the speaker who describes herself as taller, while Le Beau is speaking in public in the court, the shift in height may reflect a shift in perspective rather than a mistake. By insisting she is taller, Rosalind earns the right to become male while they are in disguise, preventing comparison to her cousin for that period, which allows her to become a unique individual, an initiator rather than an onlooker. In the forest, they compete only when alone or with Touchstone, as in their conversation about Orlando’s poems, but this scene is interrupted, suggesting that it is no longer important who would have won. The cousins have changed in the forest, and the play replaces the language of competition with the language of equality. Now that the women have truly separated from each other, they seem prepared to embrace their equality. Levy argues that staging this contrast, rather than regarding it as a mistake, illuminates the characters and their relationship.

Linden Kueck and Charlene Smith portrayed a taller Rosalind and a shorter Celia. Smith and Kim Maurice portrayed a Rosalind and Celia of indistinguishable heights.

The presentations finish promptly and we have time for questions.

A questioner describes Quickly and Mistress Overdone as shrews of a sort, and wonders whether Overdone has agency in a fashion similar to Quickly. Sloan-Pace suggests that Mistress Overdone is portrayed more exclusively as a madam, but that men may also show her respect in a manner similar to how the men outside the tavern world treat Quickly. Ricke discusses these women as shrews in terms of the ubiquity of shrew plays and their portrayal of female agency.

The next questioner asks whether women were becoming more of an economic force in England at this time. Ricke replies that there is a dialogue about women’s struggle to gain the upper hand, as portrayed in contemporary ballads. The female character is given the opportunity to voice opposition in the dramatic tradition.

The next questioner asks Jaster about the representations of authentic churchmen on stage, as opposed to characters in disguise. Jaster thinks that even when the characters are supposed to be clerics, the authors are still being satirical, as in the portrayal of Canterbury at the opening of Henry V. The cultural moment provided too good an opportunity for satire for the playwrights not to have taken advantage of it, she argues. In Look About You, Skink explicitly identifies his clerical disguise with religion itself, addressing the words “lie there, religion” to his clerical cloak.

The next questioner asks Sloan-Pace about the relationship between malapropisms and justice scenes, as in Much Ado About Nothing. Sloan-Pace points out that in these cases it is the character of lowest class who is able to discover the truth.

The final questioner discusses the first OED definition of shrew, which applies to men. Petruchio is said to be almost as shrewish as Kate is, so the issue of shrewishness and gender is much more complicated than the exclusive assignment of that identity to women. Ricke discusses the English dramatic tradition of shrewish characters and related name-calling, where “shrew” is often used to refer to men, especially in the earlier plays. This word, he asserts, tells us as much about the person who’s saying it as about the person described.

Holly Pickett of Washington and Lee University moderates this session.

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – Plenary Session II

Hi! I’m Julia, I’ll be liveblogging Plenary Session II from 3:15 to 4:45.

Moderator: Hank Dobin, Washington and Lee University

Time to Play
Steven Urkowitz, University of Southern Maine

Urkowitz discussed the duration of performances in Early Modern Theater. Some scholars have tried to argue that all performances adhered strictly to the “two hours traffic of our stage,” even though some early modern plays are a good deal longer than others. He mentioned that a performance of a play would include music before and dancing after, so that even if a performance was expected to be more or less the same duration, the other entertainments could be shortened or lenghthened to accomodate the difference. He also discussed script cutting as a possibility raised by scholars such as Andrew Gurr, but Urkowitz dismisses the arguments that script cutting was necessary.

The Bookend Project:
Transforming Shakespeare’s Revenge Play from Violence to Virtue in Titus Andronicus and The Tempest
Tara Bradway, St. John’s University

Bradway, artistic director of the Adirondack Shakespeare Company, discussed one interesting comparison she and her performers discovered when the same actress played Lavinia and Caliban. Early in Titus Andronicus, Lavinia fails to play within the form of the iambic pentameter line, but later in the play she breaks out of the pattern, uses initial trochees and lines witn 9 or 11 syllables, and in so doing struggles for greater agency within her own life. Caliban also uses an irregular verse pattern to assert his agency within is position of servitude. Both characters are also marked by sexual violence, and both become more eloquent through silence. Miriam Donald performed as Lavinia, Benjamin Curns as Caliban, and James Keegan as Prospero.

Laughter in Time and Space
Casey Caldwell, Mary Baldwin College

Caldwell brought together two ongoing scholarly discussions (the study of laughter in Shakespeare, and the study of sound in Shakespeare) to point out that neither discussion integrates laughter as a sound. He goes on to point out that the Blackfriars’ status as an Early Modern reconstruction gives us a tension when we come into it bringing our own time period, as there is a tension between our time and the time to which the Blackfriars belongs. Laughter is a way of imposing our own imminence onto our surroundings, but we are not laughing at the space. In the same way, a sleeping Bottom (performed by Benjamin Curns) awakes from his dream and chooses to remain imminent by re-formating his perception of his experience and using it to commission a work of art.

Remember the Porter:
Knock-Knock Jokes, Tragedy, and Other Unfunny Things
Chris Barrett, Harvard University

Barrett discussed the Porter’s scene as an extended knock-knock joke; the first, she says, in the English language. The porter, as the keeper of the threshold, has no trouble playing both the host and the interrupter in the joke. A knock-knock joke has a formula that suggests not only fear, but a disruption of the rules of hospitality: the guest is an uncouth interrupter and the joke is always on the host. Implied is a laughing forgiveness for the transgression — thus pity and fear are integral to the knock-knock joke and also, as it happens, to tragedy.

Performing Verse/Prose Transitions
James Loehlin, The University of Texas at Austin

Loehlin presented several instances of transitions between verse and prose in Shakespeare, using examples from Hamlet and As You Like It, performed by Shakespeare at Winedale actors Isto Barton, Sonia Desai, and Kelsi Tyler. He demonstrated that when a character switches from verse to prose, the other characters onstage have an opportunity to confirm or deny that transformation. He also discussed lines within prose scenes that sound and scan like verse, and concluded that characters can manipulate verse/prose transitions to rhetorical effect.

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – Plenary Session I

I’m Charlene V. Smith, and I’ll be liveblogging Plenary Session I from 1pm to 2:15pm.

Leslie Thomson, University of Toronto
The Tempest and the Stage-Sitters

Thomson starts by pointing out that the King’s Men had already started using the Blackfriars by the time that Shakespeare started writing The Tempest. Thus he would have known that the most expensive seats would have been those on stage. Thomson asks what effect the gallants onstage might have had, for example they created a type of stage dressing, and caused an alienating effect by reminding the audience that they were at a play.

The stage-sitters would have completed with the players for staging space and for audience attention, so Thomson explores whether the plays at the time included elements meant to counteract this or remind the sitters to behave? Thomson argues that The Tempest is constructed to quiet the stage sitters using elements such as soliloquies, discoveries, masques, and other staging devices.

The Tempest‘s 78 uses of “now”and  numerous mentions of the island create a single shared time and location. Events in the play such as the shipwreck, banquet, and the masque draw attention to drama onstage as opposed to the drama offstage. The text also suggests a number of sitting, reclining, or leaning positions. Groups of figures are also regularly observed by others. All these features help point the audience’s attention to the play itself. Thomson then suggests that Prospero acts as a stage-manager, speaking directly to the playgoers, and controlling moments of action during the play.

Thomson concludes with the thought that the presence of stage-sitters couldn’t be ignored during the early modern era and therefore shouldn’t be ignored now. By considering their effect on the performance, we can gather a more accurate and fuller picture of early modern theatre.

Mark Z. Muggli, Luther College
“After the first death, there is no other”: Except in the Case of Falstaff

Muggli mentions that much attention has been paid to Falstaff’s reported death in Henry V, and says he instead wants to focus attention on Falstaff’s first death in Henry IV, part one. Falstaff, to avoid fighting in the battle, “falls down as if he were dead.” The “as if” is ambiguous.

Should Falstaff rise up thirty lines later to the audience’s complete surprise? Or should he fall down with a wink to the audience so that we know he is faking during Hal and Hotspur’s fight?

Muggli says that a Falstaff who informs the audience that he is faking is an impressive trickster, but he is only a trickster. A Falstaff that convinces the audience that he is dead is a Falstaff who has the power to resurrect himself.

Muggli mentions a production he saw recently where an overweight Falstaff apparently suffered a heart attack and falls down. To Muggli, it was convincingly real. While speaking to colleagues about this production, one disagreed, telling Muggli that “it was obvious that Falstaff was faking.” Muggli suggest the cultural legacy of Falstaff means that audiences, even nonspecialists, are aware that he does not die in the first play he appears, and so his resurrection can never truly come as a surprise.

Walter Cannon, Central College
Complex Hearing

Cannon describes complex hearing as a moment when a character hears something that he or she cannot respond to directly, either due to disguise, eavesdropping, decorum, tact, or prevailing social norms.
Cannon says the character’s reticence and a restraint can be used as a guide to emotional and psychological complexity.

To demonstrate his point, Cannon looks at two speeches of Edgar’s in King Lear. The first in 3.6 is a soliloquy in which Edgar speaks out-loud to himself. The second is the speech he delivers in 5.3 to Albany and Edmund. These speeches deal with Edgar’s disguise of Poor Tom.

Cannon points out that disguises are often used to gain or regain power, but Poor Tom gives Edgar knowledge, but not power. It is a disguise that puts an emotional burden on Edgar that he reveals after his fight with Edmund.

Cannon stages the speech in 5.3 in order to demonstrate that the onstage hearers guide audience response. Edgar faces entirely upstage, where Albany and Edmund are located. Edmund and Albany’s faces were therefore much more visible to the majority of the audience.

Bill Gelber, Texas Tech University
A “Ha” in Shakespeare: the Soliloquy as Excuse and Challenge to the Audience

Gelber begins by mentioning the large debate surrounding soliloquies: should they be internal and introspective or external and taken to the audience? To explore the answer, Gelber looks at Shakespeare’s use of a single word, “Ha.” “Ha” can be a shorter version of the word “have,” when elision is necessary, or it can be repeating to simulate a character’s laughter: “ha, ha, ha,” or it can be a word of chiding, especially when located after a question.

Gelber is interested in this final use, especially when it occurs in a soliloquy. Shakespeare uses it sparingly, and Gelber with the help of the actors explores two examples.

The first is from Measure for Measure, 2.2. Angelo asks, “Who sins most? Ha?” In this moment he is looking to the audience for an answer. Gelber argues that the “ha” here is an interjectional interrogatory used to explain Angelo’s previous aside in the scene with Isabella, an aside that is an abrupt and surprising admission of temptation. In this soliloquy, Angelo is making his case before a jury of playgoers.

Gelber then briefly looks at a couple examples where “ha” us used in dialogue, where it is used to provoke other characters to respond. Gelber says “ha” is used in much the same way in a soliloquy, only the other character is the audience.

Hamlet says “ha” in his “Am I a coward?” soliloquy. Gelber argues that the “ha?” seeks an actual response, otherwise why would Hamlet bother? This soliloquy assumes response. Gelber mentions the famous production of Hamlet starring David Warner where one night when Warner asked, “Am I a coward?,” a man called out, “Yes!” When Mark Rylance played Hamlet he performed this soliloquy at the edge of the stage, as close to the audience as possible in order to provoke a response.

Evelyn Tribble, University of Otago
Inset Skill Displays

Tribble’s paper is on early modern actors and their skill set. She bemoans that this aspect is not paid much attention in current studies. For example, the art of gesture is often dismissed as static and old-fashioned. Tribble feels that we should look at these skills positively and as part of an ecology of skill.

Tribble notes that the abundant stage directions in early modern play texts call for a wide range of physical and verbal abilities, including speaking, fencing, wrestling, vaulting, dancing, tumbling, and singing. Londoners could experience many of these skills in arenas other than the theatre, meaning that they were educated and informed.

Fencing displays were part of theatrical tradition and also civic life. and therefore viewers of drama were likely to have a high knowledge of the sport. Many plays also call for highly technical forms of dance. Dance had a wide cultural currency. Spectators attended performances at London’s dancing schools.

Tribble encourages us to consider how an early modern performer’s skills existed in a whole culture that cannot be discovered by looking at the printed page alone.

Katherine Mayberry, Grand Valley State University & Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company
Judging Spectators: The Manipulation of Audience Critical Response

Mayberry took the stage to discuss the use of prologues and epilogues in early modern drama. These speeches address the theatre audience as an audience; they define the audience role and give specific instructions. These prologues and epilogues frequently refer to the audience’s power to judge the performance, but manage to shifts the responsibility for the play’s success or failure onto the audience.

Playwrights use several tactics in their prologues and epilogues, including scripting and cueing applause, preemptively apologizing, anticipating criticism and dismissing them, and stating that the play will appel to discerning auditors.

Shakespeare cues the audience’s applause in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, and As You Like It. Puck says, “Give me your hands if we be friends.” This is a conditional phrase. The audience must either applaud or cease to be the players’ friends. Rosalind’s epilogue scripts the audience response: “bid me farewell,” and cues the audience: “when I curtsy.”

In the opening Chorus of Henry V, Shakespeare uses the tactics of preemptively apologizing, and anticipating criticism and dismissing it, specifically demands for onstage realism. The Chorus also enlists the audience in the creation of performance, thus suggesting if the play’s not successful the audience has failed.

Mayberry moves onto examples where the playwright is more insulting to the audience. Ben Jonson’s prologues were often antagonistic. He disparages the judgement of those who criticize the play.
Jonson doesn’t solicit the audience’s help, but places blame for negative response on the audience’s poor taste.

John Ford’s The Broken Heart offers auditors membership in an elite club of those with “noble judgement” and “clear eyes.” giving an incentive to like the play. Thomas Middleton’s No Wit/No Help Like a Woman concedes failure before the play begins: “How is it possible to suffice so many ears? So many eyes?”

Mayberry concludes that early modern authors recognized the audience’s power over playwright and performer and sought to control it. They sought to wrest that power back by orchestrating audience response.

The speakers in this session were aided by OCS actors John Harrell, Allison Glenzer, and Gregory Jon Phelps.

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – Welcome and Stephen Booth Keynote

Greetings to all — The 6th Blackfriars Conference has officially begun! A team of OCS employees and MBC MLitt/MFA graduate students will be live-blogging throughout the week, so that those of you who couldn’t be here to join us can still get a little taste of the scholarship and other exciting events. Our livebloggers for the week are: Christina Sayer Grey, the OCS’s Marketing Associate, graduate students Charlene Smith, Julia Nelson, and Deborah Streusand, and me, Cass Morris, the OCS’s Academic Resources Manager.

9:45 am – Welcome Address
The welcome opens with Ralph Alan Cohen introducing Amy Wratchford, the OCS’s managing director, Paul Menzer, director of the MLitt/MFA graduate program, Dean Catharine O’Connell from Mary Baldwin College, Steven Owen, Staunton City Manager, and OCS Director of Education Sarah Enloe.
Sarah and Ralph give everyone an overview of their packet materials, both those essentials of the conference, such as maps, nametags, schedules, and directories, and the fun bits: the Truancy Award (given to the person who spends more time exploring Staunton than actually attending conference events) and the swag, including a thermos and water bottle (so that the conference can “go green” and not offer plastic or styrafoam cups for water and coffee).
Ralph comments about the special late-night shows, 11pm performances of original (but Shakespeare-related) works. Ralph then warns everyone about the bear. It’s a bit infamous at our conference that, if your paper runs over time, you will have to exit, pursued by a bear. A thunder sheet gives presenters a 2-minute warning, and Sarah lets the bear out of the cage so that everyone can see what they’ll be baiting if they go on for too long.
Ralph calls attention to a few changes and additions to the program. In celebration of our partnership with Washington and Lee, who are now hosting the OCS archives, we will be holding a champagne reception at 4:45pm, immediately following the last paper session.
Farah Karim-Cooper and Neil Constable from Shakespeare’s Globe in London then take the stage to discuss their plans to build a new indoor theatre in London. Farah explains the history of the research behind their plans — that the architectural designs were originally thought to be created by Inigo Jones in 1616, but that later research revealed them to be a later creation. As a result, the Globe has decided to construct an archetype of Jacobean theatres, rather than re-creating one specific building. Neil then walks the audience through a short Powerpoint presentation which conveys the visual plans for the indoor theatre. He discusses the planned timeline for project completion, estimating that by the fall of 2013, the indoor theatre will be open and in use, allowing the Globe to perform 52 weeks a year — which will make the Globe and the American Shakespeare Center the only two Shakespeare theatres in the world who run shows continuously.
Ralph thanks everyone at the Globe for their support not only for the Blackfriars Playhouse but for their ongoing support of our goals to build Globe II, a re-creation of the 1614 Globe.
Ralph then moves into introducing Stephen Booth, Professor emeritus of English literature at the University of California at Berkeley. Booth is the author of On the Value of Hamlet; Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Edited with Analytic Commentary; King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition, and Tragedy, and Precious Nonsense: The Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson’s Epitaphs on His Children, and Twelfth Night. Ralph shares some anecdotes about working with Stephen over the years, then introduces him by saying, “Today Stephen is going to share with us some things about audience that he already knows and that we have never thought about.”
10:30am – Stephen Booth Keynote: “Shakespeare vs the Audience”, or, “The Audience as Lady Anne”
“You will notice, with pleasure, how briefly the previous speakers have spoken. That is all over.” Stephen then absconds with two cushions from the gallant stools, to further elevate his reading podium. Booth claims that we should look at Richard III as the greatest author analog in Shakespeare, relating Shakespeare’s joy in “rhetoric over circumstance” to Richard III’s delight in the rhetorical power to woo Lady Anne. He then moves on to the odd abortive ending of Love’s Labour’s Lost and to The Tempest, “Shakespeare’s greatest success in leading the audience to increasingly improbably responses”. Prospero, he says, is a failure both as a character (“he bores us”) and as a leader, who he characterizes as “casually unjust”. Booth argues that audiences come away with an impression of Prospero that reflects his final generosity, not his moment-to-moment cruelties. Similarly, audiences at the end of Romeo and Juliet feel they have seen the play the prologue promised, when the play itself undercuts much of the outline. The Winter’s Tale he categorizes as another instance of inappropriate responses to circumstances, with giant logic holes that the audience blithely ignores, and with characters such as Autolycus, “who seems to be there just to see if the play can get away with it”.
Not all of Shakespeare’s plays, however, achieve such a success of theatre over context, nor are they always consistent within a play. Booth relates Shakespeare’s overconfidence with language again to Richard III, whose triumph in his second wooing scene is less justified than his first. He then provides a list of plays where the contextual misalignments tempt the audience to dismiss or question circumstances: Richard III ends with Henry of Richmond, Macbeth with the bloodless Malcolm. In Much Ado about Nothing, “the unnecessary detail that asks audience’s minds to accommodate the presence of two people in Hero’s window who have no business in Hero’s bedchamber” and the subsequent request that they believe this would cause Claudio to believe Hero unfaithful, Booth says strains credulity. He moves next to the Chorus in Henry V, who asserts a confidence in the King that the play itself undercuts. In Hamlet, audiences agree with the Ghost for chastising Hamlet’s delay, even though both Ghost and audience know that Polonius’s corpse is right there and that the Ghost’s pointed language imitates the weapon Hamlet used. In Macbeth, audiences “ignore the comic klutz that Macbeth is” when his superstitions lead him to unnecessary murders (when warned against Banquo’s children, he kills Macduff’s). In King Lear, the “wicked” sisters Goneril and Regan give voice to what the audience must think about a father and a king overconfident in his own omnipotence, yet forty minutes later, the audience believes them as pure and entirely sympathetic victims. “Shakespeare manipulates audiences into unlikely acquiescence.” Julius Caesar makes the relation very plain through its association of the audience with the plebeian mob.
Booth warns that he may be leaving us with the impression Shakespeare felt the same contempt for audiences that Richard III felt for Lady Anne and Lady Elizabeth. He claims that he had no intention of giving us that impression when he began the paper, but now feels sure that he has, and asks us to “consider the evidence.”
The address ends early enough that we can open for questions. One question asks if the audiences might be seen to derive pleasure from being insulted by Shakespeare, as Groucho Marx became famous and adored for insulting audiences. Booth responds that he thinks the critical importance is that intelligent audiences like being insulted if they know they’re being insulted, whereas Shakespeare, he believes, “doesn’t offer a smirk” of knowledge at them. Another question asks if Booth believes Shakespeare gets us to consent to his treatment; Booth agrees, yes, he does. Another scholar comments that “we’re not really rationalists” when we’re in the audience. She brings up Measure for Measure, where the Duke manipulates Isabella, claiming that he’ll offer her comforts when he does nothing of the kind. She asks, “Where is the emotion?” and wonders if it’s up to the actors either to connect with the audience or to make them feel the disconnect.

A-ha: Finding the value in learning at two conferences

Conferences offer unique explorations in the teaching arena. They are often one-shot one-offs, with a completely new audience, as opposed to the classes teachers nurture through a semester or year-long class. They still offer opportunities to find “A-ha” moments, though. It is the a-ha, whether mine or a student’s or participant’s at a conference, that I look for every time I step in front of a group.

The methods to achieve that goal vary as much as the situation or the content. Sometimes, as in our workshop in January at the Texas Educational Theatre Association, we inundate students with chances for discovery by sharing snippets of every bit of mildly applicable information in one 75 minute period. A “taste” of the what and the why might include, for instance, in the case of Shakespeare’s Staging Conditions, the effect the following may have on preparation and performance:

    • rhetoric
    • cue scripts
    • iambic pentameter
    • diagonal staging
    • second person pronouns
    • embedded stage directions
    • audience contact

The hope for students inundated with information is that they will take it upon themselves to learn more, but because we knew that the survey method might prove too shallow for some participants, on Saturday, we dove deep into the “hard Shakespeare” of Claudius’s prevarications, the verse of Enobarbus (the barge speech), and the stage directions buried in Macbeth. Our approach in both workshops was very practical, and we heard many an “a-ha,” comments of newfound understanding and appreciation. In these sessions, for the teachers and students in the room, we modelled the methods and tools at their disposal. We, in essence, gave them the tools to unlock Shakespeare’s plays. These folks were pre-disposed to appreciate Shakespeare’s plays, but were unsure about the options and clues available within the text. We pulled back some mental curtains and showed them new/old ways to approach the material — to think about the stage as it was and the actors as they were in Shakespeare’s time. This method of teaching reveals something already present in the text, and readily available to the interested, something simply obscured by the passage of time and changes in practice.

At ACMRS, presenters challenged themselves and session participants to look for tools outside of the texts and the act of playing to “interpret” meanings in literature. Presenters approached their topics from the perspectives of literary theory and philosophy, and the names Latour (actor-network theory, which sounds more theatrical than it is), Marx (yes, the economist), Derrida (deconstructionism), and Burke (rhetoric and aesthetics) made regular appearances in papers throughout each session. I have to admit to some moments of “A-ha” as I thought of how the theory of Latour fit so nicely with the body parts in Titus and the deed box in A New Way to Pay Old Debts. In the OCS session, those theorists were not, not one of them, mentioned. Not even once. Our papers focused, like our work, on practical aspects: performance, space, sources, dramaturgy. But, I realized, as we heard papers and delivered ours, that we, the presenters, were all focused on the same objective. We were all looking for ways to get closer to the work. Ways to see what is there.

On my way to present in Texas, I was finishing a book Mom lent me at Christmas time. Cass and I would label this book “brain candy,” you know the kind… something quick and appealing that doesn’t make you think too much, but still enriches you in some way. This particular brain candy, Afternoons with Emily, fictionalizes the life of poet Emily Dickinson. It does so through the eyes of Emily’s neighbor, who is devoted to the education of children. I felt a connection to the heroine because of her passion to find the best way to help children want to learn. (I also appreciated the occasional Dickinson poem, and their place in the narrative. The author’s “backstory” helped the poems to infiltrate my conscience in new and meaningful ways.) In one passage, my personal educational philosophy poured out of the mouths of the heroine and her mentor as they discussed the school they would build:

“learning should be a process of bringing out what is already there….”

“ ‘educo,’ to lead out…”

education should give students “a sense of being valued as you learn, rather than punished if you don’t…”


Teachers and students seeking Shakespeare together, whether at TETA or ACMRS benefit from taking to heart these simple precepts. Recognizing the best methods to “bring out” what is already available to the student and to help them recognize the value in discovery drives the best teachers, classes, and conferences. Sometimes they may discover it by considering the context of player and playing, sometimes by considering it through theory and philosophy. Whatever the case, making the a-ha moments meaningful will encourage students to continue to seek and to make Shakespeare their own.

Shakespeare’s Plays as Primary Sources: The OCS at ACMRS

Last week, Sarah, former-intern Liz, and I went to Tempe, Arizona for the Arizona Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies conference. Their theme this year was Performance and Theatricality, so we saw it as a great opportunity to introduce the idea of the OCS to a new region and a new group of scholars. ACMRS scholars are primarily historians, not theatre practitioners, so they’re not a group that we’ve had as much interaction with. Sarah will be writing more about our experiences as practical-minded scholars in a more theory-driven world, but I wanted to share a general summary of our presentations. We decided to focus our panel around the idea of using Shakespeare’s plays as primary sources, capitalizing on the idea of his plays as both products of and reflections of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century England.

Liz, presenting at her first conference, opened our panel with an overview of Shakespeare’s Staging Conditions and how we learn about them through the plays. She discussed the indications in the texts that audience contact was not only in existence but actively planned for, incorporated into the structure of the plays. Sarah and I demonstrated by using one of our favorite “casting the audience” scenes: Portia and Nerissa describing in 1.2 of The Merchant of Venice. Liz also talked about Shakespeare writing for specific members of his company, about the early modern rehearsal process, and about the use of cue scripts. Sarah and I got up again to show how Shakespeare could lead an actor to an emotional response just by capitalizing on the effects of inserting false cues into a speech. In another example from The Merchant of Venice, Shylock speaks Salarino’s cue, “have my bond,” four times before it’s actually Salarino’s turn to speak. The effect is one of mounting frustration on Salarino’s part, entirely appropriate to the scene. Liz also discussed the primacy of language when studying Shakespeare, as his language demonstrates the efficacy of his stagecraft. She ended by talking about Shakespeare’s epilogues, which frequently ask pardon and approval from the audience.

Sarah, on her third conference since 2011 started, presented on using Shakespeare’s plays as primary sources for social history. She suggested that early modern theatre reflects early modern English societal customs in many ways, and that if the conventions on the stage were wildly different from those practiced in reality, the audiences would have known that and perhaps found the plays less compelling. Her paper narrowed the broad range of social history down to courtship, particularly the rituals of obtaining (or evading) parental permission for marriage. Sarah looked at, among other scenes, Petruchio’s wooing of Katharina and the dowry negotiations at play in The Taming of the Shrew.

My paper, and also my first presentation at a conference, was on the use of Shakespeare’s history plays to teach British history — not only as a structural outline for learning about the monarchs of the medieval and early modern periods, but also as a kind of historiography to learn how the English of Shakespeare’s day thought about their own cultural heritage. I built this paper off of a project from last year’s pedagogy course, where I designed a semester-long class around the subject. As I’ve worked further on the concept, I’ve aligned it strongly with the “Perspectives” section of our Study Guides, which encourages students to make connections between the world of the plays, Shakespeare’s world, and their own world. In my proposed course, I posit comparing modern American cultural myths to those that the English propagated about their own heritage. Finding the similarities and examining the differences could be a powerful way for students to relate emotionally to the past, and Shakespeare’s histories, filled with such captivating personalities, are an advantageous way to engage students with the concept.

I think the attendees received our panel quite positively. Several scholars stuck around after we finished, wanting to talk about the Playhouse, our programs, and the ongoing process of research and learning that occurs as we continue to work through early modern texts in our space. We also got to have, at the closing reception, a nice chat with the director of ACMRS, who wanted to know if we had any material for pre-schoolers. (Not just yet, but our new OCS Family Coordinator, Ben Ratkowski, may have something along those lines for us soon). I’m hoping we’ll see some of our new friends at the Blackfriars Conference in October.

Imprimis: Links and Tidbits, 4 February 2011

This week brought us scholarship through Twitter, a new podcast from the OCS, enlightening research on Shakespeare’s world, and the ongoing debate about the humanities in education.

  • I had a blast during #AskShakespeare Day. This idea, cooked up by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, brought scholars from all over the world together to answer questions about Shakespeare posed on Twitter. It was so wonderful to see how many people out there cared enough to ask questions about Shakespeare, and I got to trade ideas with some great scholars. We did see the authorship question pop up a few times, and plenty of people wanted to ask scholars and practitioners what our favorite plays and characters are, but we also encountered a range of other questions, some with concrete answers, but many that invited speculation: What race was Othello, really? Why do people talk about Hamlet having an Oedipus complex? Did Shakespeare pursue his own publication? What’s the most gruesome scene in an early modern play? (Votes went to the heart-on-a-knife in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and the head-bashing in Tamburlaine — both of which you’ll be able to see at the Blackfriars next year!). What’s the most underrated of Shakespeare’s plays? How would the plays have been different if women had been allowed on the stage? The whole experiment was so entertaining and a real intellectual rush. I think we should do it once a month. Of course, I’m happy to answer questions any day of the year — just ping @OCS_Cass.
  • The first Actor-Scholar Council podcast is up and waiting for you to listen to it. Greg Phelps, Tyler Moss, Sarah Fallon, John Harrell, Chris Johnston, and Jeremiah Davis joined a panel of scholars to discuss The Comedy of Errors. We’ll be recording the Council session on Look About You next week.
  • If you’re within easy traveling distance of Staunton, be sure to see Shannon Schultz’s directing project, an all-male version of Romeo and Juliet, on February 7th and 8th. The Staunton Newsleader interviewed Shannon about the project. (Please note that the Newsleader article has the performance time wrong: the show will start at 8pm both nights).
  • “Hellraising Antics of Shakespearean Actors Revealed”: The London Telegraph has posted an interesting article on what recent research has revealed about the theatrical world in which Shakespeare lived. Kidnappings, riots, thefts, vandalism, all brought to light courtesy of the new Early Modern London Theatres database.
  • If you still haven’t read James Shapiro’s Contested Will, here’s another review praising it as “an entertaining reappraisal of Shakespeare’s enduring fOCSination and a conspiracy story worthy of play by the great man himself.”
  • Dale Salwak of Citrus College, CA, shares his approach to getting his students to love Shakespeare. Cass says: I agree with a lot of what he has to say — that students say they hate Shakespeare because they really hate the way it’s been taught, that you don’t need to waste time teaching the plot, that it’s okay for art to make demands of the audience — but I still think he’s missing some key elements. His approach remains very page-based, with the augmentation of audio recordings. There’s so much to be gained by teaching the plays as plays and making the students take on the responsibilities and decision-making of actors.
  • And, because no edition of Imprimis would be complete without some links discussing the value of the humanities in education: How Liberals Killed the Liberal Arts, and The Humanities in America: An Endangered Species?

Imprimis will be on hiatus next Friday, as I will be at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference in Phoenix, along with Sarah and intern Liz, so you’ll get a double-issue on February 18th. Sarah and I will be Tweeting from the conference as well, and I’ll be posting about it when we get back.

Imprimis: Links and Tidbits, 14 January 2011

For reasons unknown, the Authorship Controversy seems to have been rearing its hideous head on the Internet this week, along with more connections to Shakespeare sprouting out of the Huck Finn controversy, and the continuing debate over the worth of teaching literature.

  • To start with, from last weekend’s Shakespeare Theatre Association Conference, our managing director, Amy Wratchford, blogged about Shakespeare’s relevance and about the value of discussing Shakespeare on Twitter.
  • This blogger equates being a Stratfordian to being a stroke victim. Cass says: If you’re not quite sure what to do with that (or can’t decide to whom that’s most insensitively offensive), you’re not alone.
  • The I Love Shakespeare blog defends the Stratfordian cause rather sassily, noting that the only way other theories make sense is if you “fudge the historical record with airy fiction.”
  • And then this article refutes the anti-Stratfordians, but then overshoots and goes into the “Shakespeare as a secret Catholic” theory.
  • An op-ed in the Washington Post theorizes that educators can’t be reformers.
  • The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles is putting Hamlet on trial, with Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy presiding. Sarah says: We did that!
  • A writer for NPR uses the Huck Finn censorship controversy to expound his thoughts on why Shakespeare needs translation. Sarah says: Oh, no. Interesting that he uses the word “bowdlerized” in his discussion, since that man is roundly criticized for doing exactly what this author proposes. The quote he uses from Measure for Measure: “Of government the properties to unfold / Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse / Since I am put to know that your own science / Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice / My strength can give you,” is, as in most of Shakespeare’s “hard language,” offering a tremendous number of clues to the actor and reader about what kind of character this is. When we look at Shakespeare as performance-based literature, the “hard stuff” becomes a tool for discovering insights about characters and playable moments. It becomes its own translation when staged.
  • Gilbert, Arizona is cutting literature from its high school curriculum. Sarah says: This came across my Google Alerts just moments after Cass posted our “book wish list.” A very scary tenet is working in Arizona, apparently. It seems they think kids need to read more non-fiction (and less Shakespeare) in order to become better prepared for the business world. Wonder if they realize how much business theatres generate, or how hungry people are for innovative, creative, and critical thinkers. They are doing their students a deep disservice. Cass says: And not just stage theatres — movies, books, and musicals generate how many billions of dollars in revenue each year? Not to mention how important it is to examine the stories a culture tells about itself and what they say about who who we are, who we’ve been, and who we want to become.
  • Finally, check out this review of James Shapiro’s Contested Will. Sarah says: And then come see us discuss the book at the Charlottesville Public Library on April 15th.

Here at OCS Education, we’re finishing the week on a rather busy note — a pair of workshops this afternoon, and then a board meeting tomorrow. Hope you all have had a good week and have a great weekend!

Imprimis: Links and Tidbits, 7 January 2011

Quite a few links for you this week, since we took a break from posting them over the holidays.

  • Just in time for the new semester, a list of Top Ten Tips for Studying Shakespeare. Sarah says: A good collection of recommendations.
  • A blog entry proposes approaching Shakespeare in the classroom more like a rehearsal. Cass says: A lot of the techniques here are similar to the ideas we build into our study guides. The more alive and active the text feels, the more the students get the idea that they’re working on something real, the easier it is to comprehend.
  • Can you judge a production company by their Romeo and Juliet? This blogger thinks so.
  • This workshop announcement from the University of Sheffield brings up a great point about the intersection of the literary and theatrical worlds. Cass says: The announcement also points out why we have the Romantics to blame for the idea of Shakespeare-as-literature-only (and I always like it when I have more reasons to blame the Romantics for things).
  • Addressing Shakespeare’s relevance, a professor at West Virginia University has written a paper linking Shakespeare to law school.
  • “Bringing the Bard behind Bars in South Africa”: With one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, South Africa has begun exploring new ways to rehabilitate offenders — and, as it happens, turning them into actors might be just the thing.
  • An opinion piece in The Washington Examiner critiques the NEA’s Poetry Out Loud competition. Cass says: We support Poetry Out Loud at the OCS — we even host one of the competitions — because we firmly believe in the value of reading verse out loud, but this article still makes some interesting points, particualarly regarding the competition’s selection bias towards modern poets over the more metrically regular verse of previous centuries. It’s not often these days that someone takes up in favor of stricter verse against free verse, so I’m pleased to see that.
  • An article in favor of technology as the future of education. Cass says: The author favors giving classrooms over to computers as entirely as possible, with teachers merely “facilitators” rather than actual instructors. I can’t help but feel that he’s missing something. I’m all for more focused use of technology in classrooms, but a computer can’t inspire, it can’t make something great for you — and a computer, no matter how well you program it, will never be 100% prepared for all of the questions and surprises that can arise from students. That human element is always going to be necessary.
  • Along those lines, here are a couple of articles debating one school district’s decision to bring iPads into the classroom. Interestingly, both articles use Shakespeare as an example. Cass says: I feel a little torn about this. I think the best argument in favour of the iPad (or other similar devices) is the textbook thing — great to cut down on paper, great to get rid of the weight in backpacks — and electronic devices offer so many more opportunities. You wouldn’t have to conform just to the standard textbooks used by the state. Teachers could choose for themselves what texts they wanted students to have access to. And it would also allow easier access to some of the great educational web resources that are out there. On the other hand, though, I feel more and more like more money should be put into the actual teaching at schools. Money to train teachers, to teach teachers, to give them the tools, rather than just using technology as a crutch. And, hey, maybe even money to pay teachers what they deserve someday. I also find it interesting how often Shakespeare is the catch-all for “education.”
  • And speaking of Shakespeare-as-litmus test, he’s also been brought into the recent controversy over a decision to publish a sanitized Huck Finn. Apart from the more generic Bowdlerization accusation, some commentators have opined that changing words for understanding is one thing; changing them for political-correctness is quite another. Even author Neil Gaiman got into it on Twitter, saying, “It’s public domain, so you can make Huck a Klingon if you want, but it’s not Mark Twain’s book.” Cass says: This is an interesting controversy for me, because it asks that question we frequently have to ask when cutting plays for performance: When have you changed so much that it’s no longer the author’s original work? Only the most stalwart of purists would say that you can’t change a single word (a tough argument to make, particularly in cases where we have quarto editions different from the First Folio). But when have you gone too far? If you cut 20 words? 20% An entire character? An entire scene? All the naughty words? Is it still Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice if you tone down the anti-Semetic language? Is it still Shakespeare’s Othello if you sanitize the references to Moors?
  • On the more light-hearted side of things, a man is re-enacting Will Kempe’s famous Nine Days Wonder, planning to morris dance from London to Norwich, to raise money for a community vegetable garden. Cass says: To my English friends, please, I beg you, if anyone sees this, post the video.
  • Hot on the heels of Miramax announcing Shakespeare in Love 2, we’re now hearing about the possibility of Shakespeare in Love: The Play.
  • Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the OCS has a considerable staff contingent attending the Shakespeare Theatre Association conference in Colorado. If you (like me) aren’t there but wish you were, follow the hashtag #STAA11 on Twitter. Our own Amy Wratchford and Sarah Enloe, as well as Richmond Shakespeare’s Grant Mudge, have been diligently Tweeting.

Enjoy your weekends!