Bard 2009
I dub this year “Bard 2009” because I have a suspicion that Shakespeare will find a new fan base this year.
I regularly bemoan the inaccessibility of Shakespeare. Around his weighty texts an even weightier academia has built up. Although this is an essential part of Shakespeare studies and I would never wish to damage the good work of Shakespeare academics, I just feel that their work to advance our understanding of the Bard has simultaneously made it daunting to newcomers.
It is therefore unsurprising that people’s fear of Shakespeare comes out in phrases like “the language is too difficult to read,” “I never know what’s going on” and “the comedies just aren’t funny.”
But “Bard 2009” is set to be different. In the last few months of last year I reported Shakespeare’s accessibility on the Nintendo DS, a new book demystifying the Bard, and the excitement surrounding Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
In the first few weeks of this year we’ve already seen an increase in Shakespeare theater productions, and this week marks the start of the RSC’s Stand Up for Shakespeare Assemblies Week in the UK.
I feel that there is a momentum building up as, day-by-day, Shakespeare becomes more accessible to children, teenagers and adults. I really hope that this continues and that this time next year a whole new generation of people will have discovered the delight and wonder of Shakespeare.
Here’s to “Bard 2009.”
Photo © Phillip Dvorak / Getty Images
Comments
Here’s to "Bard 2009" and a new fan base for Shakespeare this year! Especially with Obama becoming president, many African Americans have a new sense of empowerment. What better way to exercise that renewed hope than to take Shakespeare as their own and absorb a language filled with such energy and power. The earliest black actors in America learned that lesson from the start, and performed Shakespeare as a way of gaining respect–of being taken seriously.
As the writer of a new children’s adaptation of Othello, which casts the characters as butterflies, I had the pleasure of digging deep into the play, and what I found was both shockingly dark and wonderfully beautiful. Yes, Shakespeare can be difficult, but it’s those of us who dare to confront that difficulty that will get ahead in this world. Everyone else can just complain that it’s too difficult.
Why do you say that people fear Shakespeare? Perhaps it is where you live. Here in New York, ordinary people love Shakespeare. They have grown up with free Shakespeare in the parks, there are at any time performances (some a lot better than others) and there are numerous reading groups, with very diverse members. I belong to one of them. Name another author for whom that is true.
Alice:
There is no question, that understanding Shakespeare takes an investment and some hard work, if you are not familiar with his writing. I’d taken many many courses in college and after 15 years, it’s taken me a while to re-familiarize myself.
It is difficult to expect people to make an investment when the payoff is better appreciation of just 15-20 plays. A good 40% of Shakespeare’s plays are rarely performed, and non-Shakespeare plays from that era are only occasionally revived. In fact, only a handful of plays written before Shaw’s time are performed today, and those tend to be the zanier comedies (Sheridan, Goldsmith, and Steele come to mind). The dramatists that followed Shakespeare—Villiers, Wycherly, Otway, Farquhar, Van Brugh, Etherege, even Dryden—are of little interest today. Moliere, translated from French, is the only competition for Shakespeare among those who wrote before 1720.
I concluded ten years ago that Shakespeare’s language is the main impediment to comprehensibility, not poor productions or uninspiring teachers or lazy students. Getting up to speed in a 400-year-old dialect is quite a chore. It requires more exposure than any responsible school curriculum could hope to offer. Shakespeare is more frustrating than scary, so “fear” may be the wrong word.
Many thanks for all your comments on this post – it’s really got me thinking. I just thought you should know that my thoughts have found their way into a rather long, rambling blog post.
You can read it here.
Cheers, Lee
http://shakespeare.about.com/b/2009/01/29/bard-2009-is-fear-the-wrong-word.htm
For anyone having difficulty with Shakespeare’s language I would recommend reading Barry Edelstein’s “Thinking Shakespeare.” I got the paperback for Christmas. It’s is delightful; it lights a new fascination for the ability of one man’s words to sweep a reader away.
On a different subject, I am trying to create a mini-Shakespeare festival in two very tough, rival, urban neighborhoods. The idea being: each neighborhood would do, say, seven scenes from various Shakespeare plays on a Friday’s night, the second group does likewise with different scenes the following night. Each rival group’s players and families attend each other’s production and several of each, joined together would be presented on Sunday afternoon for the public at large. I do believe in the transformative power of art, particularly Shakespeare’s art.
Anyone out there done this? Any tips?
Thanks