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Shakespeare

Love Me, Love my Play

When did you last go to the theatre? All right, I know the pandemic has prevented you from going.  Even before the Event most people didn’t so that’s no criticism of you. It’s a form of story-telling that has become bit recherche over the last few years.  As I say: no criticism of you.  Or theatre, it’s just the way it is in this current age of barbarism. I bite my lip.

If you do go to the theatre (apart from musicals which don’t count) it’s probably something by William Shakespeare.  Now, I don’t intend to get into a debate about Shakespeare here: let’s just accept that he is the greatest playwright in the English language and move on.  The fact that he only wrote 39 plays in his career and some of us turn out that many on a wet Thursday afternoon has nothing at all to do with it. Neither is it anything to do with the quality of his work but rather the phenomenon that enables those of you who are not great theatre goers to have at least a nodding acquaintance with him.

 Whether it’s Titus Andronicus or Romeo and Juliet you probably feel more comfortable forking out your hard earned cash on a ticket for one of his works rather than something a bit more up to date. You may be watching some bizarre rendition with some sort of “contemporary twist” that will probably leave you completely baffled but Shakespeare’s name will definitely be on the poster. Even though he’s unlikely to be collecting any royalties.  When you studied him at school, whatever play you did will have been described as “This year’s Shakespeare” by the exam board, regardless of which actual text was their victim.  By some mysterious happenstance of history, his work is part of your literary landscape in a way that others aren’t.

Shakespeare, you might say, is a brand.  If you were stopped in the street by a market researcher with a clipboard, you could probably associate his name with a colour or a perfume (Dark brown?  A sort of woody, tobacco-ey essence with flashes of polished steel, deep purple and scarlet and the aroma of rich oriental spices?)  His is a global brand.  Probably one of the greatest brands second only to some of the great religious leaders.

What seems to draw us to the Shakespeare brand is familiarity.  I mean With Shakespeare himself.  The man.  Or at least our image of him more than the titles of his plays.  We might even recognise him if we met him at a party and even feel comfortable enough to have a few words of gossip to share with him. He may be a bit weird looking with his receding hairline and funny little beard and speak in a funny midlands accent but he’s bound to know about house prices in Stratford or could recommend the best place to eat on the South Bank. The rest of us playwrights, standing over there stuffing ourselves at the free buffet and charging into the broom cupboard when we meant to be heading for the loo are rather more distant prospects for a sensible conversation. 

Shakespeare is a safe bet and when you go to see one of his plays it is his voice which you hear guiding you through the labyrinths of plot and poesie.  I mean would you ever go and see Pericles Prince of Tyre or Cymbeline if they were by some hack from Bournemouth?  Alas, my brand is thin and odourless in comparison.

 “He’s my favourite playwright of all time.  I mean, we did him at school and I didn’t really get the jokes. But, you know, now. He’s actually the only playwright I’d actually pay to see…” -  Nancy Gibbons

Somehow, whatever you go and see by him, William Shakespeare seems to be the star of his plays as much as any of his characters or even the famous actors playing the parts.  William Shakespeare inhabits his plays and whether it is Hamlet or Titania’s words spoken my Sir Ian or Dame Judy, it is Bill’s voice that we hear.

Some playwrights are born great and some of us achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon us like a big fruit trifle with cream and a cherry on the top.  Shakespeare was lucky as well as being a genius.  He was working at the right time in the right place under the right circumstances.  He was part of a well connected company, had powerful sponsors and good friends who collected up his works and published them after his death.

In the late 1590s there were four versions of the Romeo and Juliet story being staged in playhouses across London.  The story goes that the management at the Globe seeing that they were losing out turned to their house hack Will Shakespeare who dusted off an old script of Pyramus and Thisbe he had been working on and came up with the version we know and love.  So what spirit is it that inhabits Shakespeare’s version that means it is the one that has come down to us today and makes it one of the most popular love stories of all times?  I mean, apart from the fact that he was well connected in the business with rich and powerful friends and so on. Oh, I’ve said that already, haven’t I? There is undoubtedly a voice and tone that exists beyond the characters of the lovers.  There is some understanding of the human condition and, just to bang in the point, a sort of gossiping style that is eternally human and enables us to participate as humans. We like to say that for all his rich and powerful friends he had the common touch.

It’s complicated

Theatre is a very complicated way to tell stories.  It requires a huge amount of effort by many individuals.  There are many layers of interpretation by many dedicated and committed professionals meaning that there are many narrators.  The actors, the director, the designer and the technicians all have an input on how the finished product is presented.  And, in live theatre even the audience participates because you make choices throughout the performance about which part of the stage you are looking at, which character you fancy, how you follow the different threads of the story and so on.  And somewhere within this strange, hybrid, layered process is the playwright.  After everyone else has made their contribution to the look, the style, the context and how the words are spoken, what remains is the playwright.

The story-teller’s voice can still be heard above the whirring of the stage machinery. we recognise Shakespeare’s presence in his stories.  And that means We can give him our confidence as a gossip buddy.  And we will follow him through the story because he is meant to be good, isn’t he?  Even if we don’t get all the “My Lord Westmorland has gone to Dorset to seek an audience with Rutland before My Lord Middlesex has hied him to York.” malarkey and his jokes are of the “Just tell me when to laugh” variety.

You like to seek out story tellers with definite voices.  Some of them are easily recognisable, Oscar Wilde or Roald Dahl for example.  Some slip more easily into the background but it is by the choice of language, standpoint, style that you come to know them.

For a story teller you’re unfamiliar with, it’s harder to strike up a relationship. Young writers may have to work for years to find a voice that will chime with you.

Meanwhile, they can latch on to a particular genre, Science Fiction, murder mystery.  Perhaps they can build up a voice by creating a never ending series.  You, the reader, seek the familiar.  Not necessarily because you are lazy, or publishers can’t be bothered but because you need someone to hold your hand and introduce us.  Because for the tale to be told you and I have to be on gossiping terms.