Shakespeare Full Circle

A brief essay discussing the modern understanding of Shakespearean performance—also touching on the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Seeing a local production of Much Ado About Nothing, recently, brought me back to the Authorship Question and where live productions of Shakespeare stand, right now, among the many entertainment options that we have.

For those of you who have not been keeping score at home: there is an Authorship Question which has been moving forward, by fits and starts, at least since Mark Twain wrote a book discussing the question in 1909.

The majority of disputants argue that William Shakspere �" a sometime actor, who (at best) attended a few years of grammar school, and (at worst) was functionally illiterate �" somehow knew Latin, somehow knew Greek, somehow knew things he couldn’t conceivably have known, somehow acquired the largest vocabulary of almost any writer in English (including words he invented himself), and wrote works that have been performed, and read, continually for almost 500 years.

In regard to the Stratford candidate, “somehow” becomes a powerful word. Like the real estate mantra �" “location … location … location” �" the belief that Mr Shakspere created the canon can also be summed up in three words: “somehow … somehow … somehow”.

In answer to this “majority report”, we have a skeptical, and maybe eccentric, minority (growing a little larger, now) persuaded that “William Shakespeare” was simply a name attached to plays, and verse, to draw attention away from their true author: the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.

The reason this controversy comes to mind when we’re discussing Shakespeare is the easy and natural way that believing in authorship by a member of the Elizabeth’s court reinforces the impression I have often felt: that, year by year, the Unedited Bard is becoming accessible to fewer and fewer people when these works are staged.

As a quick example, let’s snatch up a short speech from Much Ado, one of the most frequently performed of Shakespeare’s “rom-coms” �" Benedick pleading with his commander:

“Will your grace command me any service to the world’s end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the furthest inch of Asia, bring you the length of Prester John's foot, fetch you a hair off the great Cham’s beard, do you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather than hold three words’ conference with this harpy.”

And this is only one of hundreds of speeches in the canon that explodes the idea that these were “popular” plays �" for a common audience. The equivalent of television, offered to butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.

The groundlings �" paying a penny to stand in the yard at the Globe for three hours on a summer afternoon �" would have had no idea what most of this speech meant, although the gist of Benedick’s appeal would have been accessible to them.

Benedick has a strong over-exaggerated distaste for Beatrice, and wants to get away from her. Toward that end, he’s suggesting a list of absurd missions. Certainly, the audience would have recognized the tone �" but not the detail.

It’s strange to think that this could somehow be designed as fare for the workingman. Bear baiting was just up the street. It was cheaper �" and simpler. And over in less than three hours.

The only people who would have fully understood this passage were all at the Court, buzzing like flies around Elizabeth. A sophisticated group of men and women, multi-lingual, university trained, and with leisure to do things like discuss travel, recall Greek mythology, read history, debate religious thought, and consider the meaning of life.

They would have understood the details of Benedick’s speech: and savored it as a kind of “inside” humor. Entertainment written by one of the 1%, for the appreciation of the cultural elite: in the same way that modern universities still offer productions of Aeschylus, and other worthies, for the tiny minority of people who go out of their way to attend such things.

The appeal of these Court plays, when they arrived at a public venue like the Globe, would have been that the queen, and her people, had already seen them. (“This week only! Hamlet! As played before Her Majesty!”)

The material would have required some simplification (but no problems with copyright issues, so everyone could toss in their two cents). Theatre managers, writers, actors, and perhaps Mr Shakspere himself, might have tinkered with the speeches: understanding that a more common audience would need something less refined.

Yet even in the versions which have come down to us �" touched by more hands than just the author’s �" we still hear the elevated language offered to Elizabeth, and to the best minds in the realm: along with references to current events, court gossip, and political commentary.

The plays began as entertainment for the people residing at their cultural mountaintop. And to our cultural mountaintop they are returning: since the plays in their unedited forms, spoken at a regular conversational pace, amount to a foreign language for our time.

The modern, untrained ear is simply not ready for this much semantic freight.

In a live theatrical setting, you can hear incomprehension ripple through the entire crowd as small gems of articulate wit fly right over the heads of folks just trying to dip their toes into high culture.

You could say that part of a modern director’s assignment is to make sure that the actors emphasize the “summary” sentences sprinkled through the text: the ones that actually explain what’s going on �" so that most of the people watching have a prayer of having a clue.

The minority who understand all of what the players are saying are only able to understand because they are accustomed to coping with this avalanche of wit: either through education, or long experience.

We are back to entertainment created by the elite … for the elite consumer.

The human situations that Shakespeare presents are enduring: and will be interesting to human beings as long as we continue to exist. And yet, the real opportunities, in the future, will be for people who can simplify �" and cut down �" the classic texts to make them more palatable.

The modern paradox of the Shakespeare Canon is that �" in order to stay popular �" the qualities that make the plays “Shakespearean” will be leached out. While, venues will still exist where the plays are presented “untouched”: where specialized elites will be watching theatre that no one else really understands.