BBC Looks at Shakespeare's Changing World

This article was first published at  Technorati.

Fans of the BBC's much acclaimed series A History of the World in 100 Objects will probably want to take a look at a new series just getting started called Shakespeare's Restless World.  Hosted by British Museum Director Neil MacGregor, each episode runs for approximately 15 minutes and focuses on a significant object from the Museum and  what it shows about how the playwright and his audience were dealing with a world that was going through turbulent changes as earth shaking as the 20^th century venture into space. Episodes are broadcast Monday through Friday at 1:45pm and 7:45pm on BBC 4.  They are also available as podcasts. 

After a short introductory opening, the second episode looks at a medal cast to commemorate Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the globe and shows how his voyage symbolized the way the world was changed by the wave of exploration throughout Europe.  Not only did it feed the British public's nationalistic pride but it promised all sorts of exotic new experiences and knowledge.  MacGregor points out how exploration informed passages in  plays like A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Comedy of Errors.  He even suggests that the new interest in the wider world as evidenced by the publication of something like the first book of maps might have been one reason for the name given to the new theater built by Shakespeare's company.

The second episode looks at the role of religion in everyday life through a silver communion cup from Holy Trinity Church in Stratford on Avon dating from 1571-2.   The website indicates that the cup was brought to Stratford when Shakespeare was young to reinforce Elizabeth's support for Protestantism.  It demonstrates the significance of religion in politics during the period.

Twenty episodes are planned for the series over four weeks.  The object to be dealt with in each episode is pictured on the Shakespeare's Restless World website.  Included are things like design proposals for a new British flag after the assent of James I to the throne,  a Reliquary containing the right eye of Blessed Edward Oldcorne, and a musical clock. Perhaps a mite less ambitious than its predecessor, this new series is both informative and entertaining.  It is 15 minutes well spent.

From the Green Room: Kate Who?

There's nothing like being the only person in the room to understand an allusion in a forty year old play to make you feel your age. We are gathered for the read-thru for an upcoming production of Woody Allen's 1966 comedy, Don't Drink the Water. We come to the entrance of Walter Hollander, the character I am playing. "We're Americans," he yells (he is being chased into the American Embassy by a Communist mob), and to prove it he screams out some familiar bits of Americana, American icons presumably familiar to all. He mentions Willy Mays; no problem. He mentions Hershey Bars, also no problem. Then, out pops the last of his icons, Kate Smith. Kate Smith? It seems that every face in the room is looking askance. Kate Smith?

Now while I have very vivid memories of this very large woman—the one I always picture when the fat lady has to sing before it's over--most famous for her rendition of God Bless America, I am quite certain that I am very likely the only one with such memories. And while I probably have a good twenty years on the oldest of group, never mind the youngest, not all of them are kids. You would think at least some of them would remember the woman. What is it the poet says about snow and yesteryear?

Some years ago—another example--I was playing the drunken ex-professor, Dr. Lyman, in William Inge's Bus Stop, and I remember the young girl, a college student at the time, playing Elma, the counter waitress asking the director about a name Inge alluded to in one of her lines. Elma tells Cherie, the 'chanteuse,' that Bo, the cowboy that has scooped her out of the dance club, "looks a little like Burt Lancaster." She wanted to know who Burt Lancaster was. Burt Lancaster? If there are those in the twenty first century that need a footnote for Burt Lancaster, what can Kate Smith hope for.

And if Kate Smith can't manage to escape Lethe, what about What's My Line, The Ed Sullivan Show, Mr. Anthony, Sergeant York, Edsels, Walter Lippman, "a foggy day in London town," Chock Full O'Nuts, John Birch, and Zippos. All of which come up during the read-thru, and all of which evoke the ubiquitous blank stare on almost every face in the room, except one.

In November, in the Theater Factory's production of On Golden Pond, an old rotary dial phone—one of those blocky black behemoths that used to grace all our homes back in the fifties—and the thirteen year old computer whizz who was playing the young Billy needed an explanation of how it worked. He had never seen one before. When Norman Thayer, the octogenarian English professor talks trash about the Nash automobile he once owned, he's talking about the company that made the first car I ever owned: a 1962 Nash Rambler American, but he's talking about something that means absolutely nothing to the young lady playing his daughter, a mother of two in real life. She's not thirteen.

Allusions are only useful if they mean something to the audience. They are worthless if they go over everyone's head. This is the reason why we have a professorial industry devoted to the annotation of Shakespeare, for example. They can make us aware that Hamlet is punning when he verbally sends Ophelia off to a nunnery. They can relate all the details of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. They can explain the differences between the magic of Sycorax and that of Prospero. From the reaction of the rest of the cast to Kate Smith, it seems the time may at hand for an annotated Woody Allen to sit on the shelf beside the bard.

Trouble is, when it comes, it will only make us gray beards feel that much older. 'We don't need no annotations.' After all like Walter Hollander, Dr. Lyman and Norman Thayer, not only do we remember Kate Smith, weMy Short Modeling Career remember When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain and The White Cliffs of Dover as well.

Egeus: Thoughts on Some Shakespearian Fathers and Daughters

It is the first rehearsal for an outdoor production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Pittsburgh’s South Park. Theseus is on stage going on about the celebration of his nuptials. Hermia, Demetrius, Lysander and I are off stage right, ready to make our entrance. I, of course, am Egeus, the vexed and complaining father, ready to rant about his disobedient daughter and his trampled rights. I grab Hermia by the arm, thinking to drag her onto the stage, but the actress stops me.
“This is a comedy,” she says.

And she is right, a comedy it is, but it is a comedy with a father who would rather have his daughter dead than disobedient. Very funny: one might well want to question Shakespeare’s sense of humor. The last thing Shakespearian fathers seem to want is to have their daughters’ obedience turned “to stubborn harshness.” Disobedience it would seem is the worst of sins. A daughter with a mind of her own must be “bewitched.’ Her heart must have been “filched.” The “impression of her fantasy” must have been stolen. Of necessity something unnatural must have occurred.

It is not only “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Think of Baptista in “The Taming of the Shrew.” Docile Bianca is the model of feminine behavior; headstrong Kate is an aberration. Think of Duke Frederick in “As You Like It.” He banishes Rosalind a surrogate daughter, and Celia, his actual daughter who runs off with her. Celia tells him she cannot live without Rosalind, and he calls her a fool and banishes her anyway. Now while disobedient daughters in these plays manage to get away with it, after all these are, to paraphrase my actress friend, comedies, disobedience on the part of young girls does not always end so well. It is then that you have something approaching tragedy, and maybe even the real thing.

Lord Capulet rants and raves about Juliet’s refusal of Paris in a speech that could very well have been spoken by Egeus. And we all know how that ends.
An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend;
An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets. . . .
That the father’s unreasonableness may well have something to do with the result is in some sense beside the point. If in the comedies, a daughter can ultimately get away with disobedience, whoever is at fault, in the tragedies it doesn’t quite work that way.

In “Othello,” Brabantio, complaining to Duke about Desdemona’s marriage to the Moor, demands of Desdemona to whom she owes obedience. She answers that she perceives a “divided duty.” Of course since she is now married, this is no doubt true, still to have run off and married without her father’s permission, let alone his blessing augers no good. Brabantio’s parting words to Othello make this clear:
Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:
She has deceived her father, and may thee.
It is a warning with disastrous results, and perhaps illustrates what happens when independent young females refuse to pay attention to their fathers.

“King Lear” is of course the most notable example of father with a disobedient daughter, and for this disobedience, it is both father and daughter who suffer. Like Desdemona, Cordelia has a “divided duty:” to her father and to the truth. Like Desdemona, there will be husband to whom obedience will be due:
. . . when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty.

To both their regret, this is a truth Lear cannot recognize, and so he disowns her in favor of her hypocritical sisters.

In the end fathers must give up their authority voluntarily, or they must be made to give it up. Theseus must “overbear” Egeus. Petruchiio must come along and tame the shrew. Duke Frederick must have a change of heart, even if it happens offstage. That is when you have comedy. Father’s who sulk and give up their authority gracelessly or not at all are dooming their daughters as well as themselves. This is not to say that daughters in Shakespeare’s plays are in control. There always seems to be man somewhere: husband, father, duke, always a man in control. It is to say that in a paternalistic society, the father at some point must give way to some other man.

Shakespeare is, after all, a man of his age. Women going off on their own eschewing the male of the species are losing love’s labor.