How Do You Like Your Shakespeare?

Yesterday evening I went to hear a colleague give his inaugural lecture as Professor in Shakespeare Studies.  John actually received his chair almost two years ago but it's taken the powers that be this long to get round to organising the event and we're all still trying to work out just why it was scheduled for a lecture theatre in the School of Sport and Exercise rather than the School of English, but as John is also a mountaineer it wasn't, perhaps, that inappropriate.  John is one of the great textual scholars and has worked on many of the best known editions of plays not only by Shakespeare but also by his contemporaries.  His most recent work is the just published Sir Thomas More for the Arden Early Modern Drama series and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy to see what he has to say about those scenes which are now thought to be by Shakespeare and which it appears we have in the Bard's own hand.

Last night, John chose to talk to the title Sit Down For Shakespeare and if that seems a somewhat unusual choice then you have to see it in the light of the Royal Shakespeare Company's recent educational thrust that aims to engage children through the performance aspects of the works and which is called Stand Up For Shakespeare.

Now, you can't teach Shakespeare in Stratford and not acknowledge that what the man was doing was writing plays and writing them to be performed.  Not only would none of us even think of taking an opposing stance but much of the work in the department is specifically performance based and, what is more, aimed at exploring what the performance practice of Shakespeare's time would have been.  However, John is a man who has given his working life to a close examination of the text and what he was exploring last night was the dynamic that comes about when you remember that, to quote him, 'Shakespeare is a book' and as such can repay the sort of close attention to detail which it is sometimes difficult to pick up in the hurly burly of live performance.  This isn't an example he gave but think of the number of times that Richard III is likened to specifically nasty animals throughout the play that bears his name.  In performance you are unlikely to pick this up, but when you realise what is going on you can see that one of the things Shakespeare wants us to know about the man is his bestial nature.  I could ask is he a man or is he an animal, but that would be unfair on some very nice animals I've known.

Citing that example allows me to take the point about the essential dynamic between textual study and performance a stage further because no serious actor would ever approach a part like Richard III without exploring the text in exactly the sort of detail John would prescribe and then utilising what they find to inform their interpretation.  In my memory we've had the bottled spider of Anthony Sher and the toad-like Richard of Simon Russell Beale, both direct reflections of elements of the text.

Taking the issue of dynamics a step further something that John did look at was Juliet's speech in Act II Scene iii of Measure for Measure.  Juliet, you will remember, is imprisoned along with her lover, Claudio, for having anticipated their marriage.  She, for the moment, is 'safe' because she is pregnant, but the disguised Duke has just come to tell her that Claudio is to die the following day.  Her response in just about every edition you will find is:

Must die to-morrow!  O, injurious law,

That respites me a life whose very comfort

Is still a dying horror.

I love this.  The Duke, disguised as a friar, has been trying to reconcile Juliet with her position and she tells him exactly what she thinks of the so called mercy she is being offered.  BUT, that word law is an emendation, substituted by generations of editors who thought that the word used in the First Folio of 1623 had to be an error, because what the First folio reads is

Must die to-morrow!  O, injurious love,

That respites me a life whose very comfort

Is still a dying horror.

Now, we could argue forever as to which is the more likely word for Shakespeare to have written.  Law, clearly fits, but so too does love and in more ways than one because it is the loving mercy of the church that the friar is offering (whatever you might think of the form it takes) and it is also the love between Juliet and Claudio that has resulted in her pregnancy which has saved her life.  But, why do we have to select one or the other?  Yes, of course, in a text or a performance you are going to have to make a decision, but if as a member of the audience (for which ever medium) you can hold the two in your mind together then think of the dynamic which that creates.  It is the very dynamic between the rule of love and the rule of law that is the central concern of the play as a whole.

No one is ever going to persuade me that Shakespeare was not first and foremost a man of the theatre, but equally I know from personal experience that close reading of the text can illuminate a performance for me in ways that would not have been possible if I had not taken the time to explore the detail of the words on the page.  So, I like my Shakespeare both ways, thank you, and I'm just so grateful that I have the opportunity to experience the performance and the textual aspects at the hands of such erudite practitioners in both disciplines.