As a musician, I get where you are coming from. As a person of the theatre have to tell you, it ain’t even close to the same thing. The goal of every, I repeat EVERY, play is for the audience to experience something. If we did this for the other actors on stage, we might as well stay at home. So we do know exactly who his intended audience was, what we don’t know is if he *intended *to confuse them or not, but as a general rule confusing the audience is a bad thing. (Lots of exceptions, I know, but “don’t confuse the audience” is a good guideline when making theatre.)
Exactly? I repeat, EXACTLY? Do you have a time travel machine that takes you back to the Globe so you can do a survey of the crowd?
Let me ask again, who was his intended audience? The uneducated, unexperienced, unworldly person who is watching the play for the first time, or the educated, experienced theatregoer who has seen the play several times and can practically recite the text along with the actors? Is is someone who can hear a somewhat less straightforward turn of phrase, remember it, mull it over for a while, and glean some insight that wasn’t obvious at first?
Is it possible that a little confusion might be a good thing (part of that “something” you suggest EVERY play should offer), because it is the result of something new and innovative that causes people to think and learn? What about new forms of theatre or art that seemed difficult to understand at first but become clearer because of repeat exposure and experience? If new plays don’t stretch the audience in some way, why bother with new plays?
There is a phrase for plays written for that audience: “closet drama”. In the world of theatre, it’s a term of contempt.
You’re “defending” Shakespeare from the accusation that he occasionally let his pen run away with him by substituting the far worse accusation that he didn’t know his job.
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If actors do find the New Globe terrifying then it won’t be because of the lack of proscenium arch. There is an abundence of non-proscenium arch theatre spaces in the UK including the RSC Swan Theatre and Other Space at Stratford and the Olivier and Cottlesloe Theatres at the National Theatre (its medium sized auditorium, the Littleton, is adaptable from a proscenium as well). In fact most postwar theatres have some variation on the trust stage with the audience on three sides or in a horseshoe. It is only the older West-End commercial theatres that are the exception to this but I find it hard to believe that any actor experienced enough to land a role at the Globe would only have worked behind a proscenium arch.
Frankly, your statement that “the New Globe is providing the English with a valuable learning experience (Americans have been working with thrust stages and the like for almost a century)” (from an earlier post) can only be an extrapolation from some misinformation about what British theatre is actually like.
This is understandable since you don’t live here but I wish you handn’t given it such an air of certainty.
Matthew McIntyre
Leeds UK
Since John W covered the first part of your post:
No, it is not possible that confusion is a good thing because it is the result of something new and innovative that causes people to think and learn. If they are thinking and learning they will either be no longer confused by the end, or they will ONLY be confused at the very end. Either way you are walking on dangerous ground, and there are probably stronger choices than temporarily confusing the audience. New and innovative things should not be confusing. Surprising? Sure. Difficult to comprehend fully? Great. Actually leaving the audience saying, “what the fuck?” You probably did something wrong. Confusion is the result of you abandoning the audience and breaking the internal logic of the play. If you want the audience to gain anything from your work you need to keep them on the same page with you. If your purpose is not to impart something to the audience, find a different art form, because theatre isn’t the place for you. If the audience is confused they AREN’T learning or thinking, they are usually just pissed off.
There are a handful of playwrights that have successfully used temporary confusion to their benefit, but even then the period of actual audience confusion is brief and resolved by the fact that the play has its own internal system of logic. And as a director I find them to usually not be worth the cost. The best plays provide challenging and innovative ideas, without ever confusing the audience. Ionesco and Becket I think are excellent examples of people who were doing truly strange things that made perfect sense in their senselessness. A well done play by Ionesco is strange, (some might even say absurd 
) but never leaves the audience feeling like they don’t know what is happening.
I don’t remember what this had to do with Shakespeare, but I am sure someone will remind me. 
I do not live in Britain, but I have often visited, and have seen a good deal of theatre there, in Edinburgh, the West End, Regent’s Park, and Southwark, shows ranging from Daisy Pulls it Off and Forty Years On to Hadrian VII and The Merchant of Venice (the last at the New Globe). And, incidentally, my wife was a member of the Glastonbury Miracles Company in 1980.
So I’m not altogether ignorant.
In addition, I have two editions of The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, both of which allude to thrust stages as an exotic American innovation. I have no doubt that things have changed in British theatre in my lifetime, but when it comes to serious attempts to reproduce Elizabethan technique, we Yanks have something like a 50-year lead – not that we don’t have serious endemic faults of my own. As an amateur actor in my own right, I try my best to learn from both traditions.
And nothing can change the fact that the BBC-T/L videos were dead boring, though I’m quite fond of the RSC Dream – the one with Judi Dench dressed in little more than some body makeup and a few strategically located leaves.
What makes the speech all the more inspiring is the context. I think this is what impresses me all the more about Branagh’s version of Henry V as opposed to Olivier’s, which I think is overrated. Right before the speech, Westmoreland, Bedford, Exeter, and all of the King’s cabinet or advisors are whispering amongst themselves about the strength of the French army and how few soldiers the English have. They don’t intend the other soldiers to hear them. Then Branagh steps in, and in a LOUD voice asks “WHAT’S HE THAT WISHES SO???” I also think this film may be the be English-language film adapation of a Shakespeare play. Nothing Branagh did afterward ever came close. Much Ado About Nothing was ruined when Dogsberry came riding in on an imaginary horse when all the other characters used real ones, and the less said about Branagh’s Hamlet, the better…
Eddie Cunningham
Mr. Kennedy, I just noticed your post on my definitions of Political Science.
What qualifies you as an expert on Political Science?
Everything that is political theory is based on the work of the Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Mr. Kennedy, I didn’t invent Political Science, but I did spend 6 years of college studying it. Political Science isn’t like engineering or medicine. We don’t create, design, or analyze physical matter, but studying and discuss the ideas and the philosophy of society’s interaction with each other over some form of authority.
The ancient Greeks are the foundation of modern Western world philosophy. One branch of philosophy is Political Science. Politics is term that is original use to address the activities for control inside a Greek city-state. But the philosophers of ancient Greece ponder what would happen if two groups in separate cities worked together for a common aim. They decided that would be politics too. Then they decided that even if three groups worked together that would be politics. And if two nations (as we call them now) worked together that too, would be politics. They finally decide that this could go on indefinitely. They then turned and questioned what would happen if the activities weren’t as big as a city-state. Should we make up a new name for activities in a neighborhood, a street, and even a house? They decide it was all related under the term Politics. As for control over what, authority over what, and influence over what, the Greeks decided that it didn’t matter.
After the Middle Ages when philosophy was reborn, we took literally from the Greeks. And When Political Science was founded in the late 19th Century, the theory behind it was already worked out by the Greeks 2000 years before. The terms that were used in my description were the terms I was taught in college. I personally would say that “struggle over resources” sounds a hell of a lot better than “fighting over something.” The only thing I added was the word “scarce” because it doesn’t make sense to struggle over something readily available.
That is basically the same reasoning that goes into all the other words used in Political Science, Mr. Kennedy. The fact that in modern society we throw those words around without relating them to their true meaning is not unique to Political Science. We use words like Cancer, Atomic Bomb, journalism, and hundreds of other phrases that might make the respected scholars in those fields cringe. I am not an expert on Political Science but I do think I am more qualified than you to talk about Political Theory. If you want to debate me on Political Philosophy, then provide some examples of how you come to your conclusion and stop running with statements like “that’s not true.”
Again I will show my qualifications:
Wissdok
BA in Political Science
Masters in Public Administration
I would also like to say Mr. Kennedy that by simply going to a theatre doesn’t make you an expert on theatre design either. I drive a car, does that make me an expert mechanic? I don’t think one has to do with the other.
I think that Cecil Adams’ recent column about Shakespeare should be required reading for any high school or college student about to study the Bard. The point of this “the Emperor has no clothes” column is not that Shakespeare was a hack—far from it, in fact. But William Shakespeare was not a demigod with a quill who stood mountains above his fellow man. He was just an incredibly gifted writer who occassionally had his “off days”. I think this could be an inspiration to beginning writers when they realize that even Shakespeare couldn’t think of the right word all the time, and maybe even he needed an editor. It will give people the permission to not only analyze Shakespeare’s plays, but to criticize them as well. In other words, to appreciate his greatness, we must also be aware of his weakness.
One more thing I feel the need to add. Most people have labelled Shakespeare the greates writer in the history of the English language. Do we really need to qualify him by language, considering how many languages he has been translated into, and how many non-English productions of Shakespeare there are? I don’t know who the greatest non-English writer is (and no, I don’t believe the Gospels, New Testament, or Koran counts) but I sincerely doubt that that person has had the same scope or impact that Shakespeare has had.
Eddie Cunningham
It’s sometimes the little touches in Shakespeare that blow one away.
In Winter’s Tale II,i Leontes, a monarch distracted by causeless jealousy, likens his knowledge of his wife’s (supposed) adultery to a spider in one’s drink:
“There may be in the cup
A spider steep’d, and one may drink, depart,
And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge
Is not infected: but if one present
The abhorr’d ingredient to his eye, make known
How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
With violent hefts:”
Then Leontes says simply, “I’ve drunk and seen the spider.”
It’s such a memorable phrase; I always think of it when I’ve found out something that I wished to God I hadn’t found out.
Another one. Posthumus in Cymbeline has been deceived into thinking that his wife Imogen has been cuckolding him. Earlier in the play she had run up to him, overjoyed at seeing him after a long absence. He’d hit her and pushed her away with contempt. Now, at the end of the play, when the truth is known, she again runs to him, throwing her arms about his neck and weeping.
He responds with lines which never fail to move me.
“Hang there like fruit, my soul,
Till the tree die.”
The genius of Shakespeare is absolutely staggering. He’s the one writer that almost convinces me that there is more to Man than flesh, blood and bones.
Irrelevant.
Irrelevant.
Irrelevant.
Irrelevant.
I don’t believe for a minute that you were taught any such thing, because it isn’t in any way a rational definition of the word. (To begin with, it isn’t even remotely reversible.)
Then stop talking manifest nonsense.
An extreme materialist viewpoint (either Marxist or Capitalist) might hold something like, “All politics boils down to a struggle over resources.” I would quarrel strongly with that position, in fact, but it would be a possible position to take. But “All politics boils down to a struggle over resources,” and “The philosophical meaning of ‘politics’ is ‘a struggle over resources’,” are not interchangeable propositions. As before with “democracy”, you seem to have a problem dealing with abstractions.
I don’t care about your “qualifications” as long as you’re talking nonsense.
I’ve also done theatre, on a semi-professional level, for decades, and my wife spent several years as a professional director. One of our best friends is the only man in the entire world who has directed professional productions of every one of Shakespeare’s plays. I was also the first person to edit and annotate the text of Lewis Theobald’s Double Falshood, the 1727 play based on the lost Cardenio by Shakespeare and Fletcher.
I believe that Cervantes is generally reckoned to be the greatest Spanish-language writer, and I think that Dante might be considered the best in Italian. And, of course, both Don Quixote and The Divine Comedy have also been widely translated and widely influential. Shakespeare has undoubtedly been more influential on English-speaking people, but that’s only to be expected… Can anyone say how Shakespeare’s influence on English compares to Cervantes’ on Spanish, or compare the two of them in some third language?
Wow! I’ve had your site bookmarked for some time. I’ll take this occasion to thank you for the wonderful job you’ve done in putting this rare work online. I still live in hope that an old quarto of Cardenio will be found some day (perhaps along with Love’s Labours Won, if that play ever actually existed!)
BTW how do most Shakespearian scholars regard the play now? It seems certain that a genuine play called Cardenio existed, authored by Shakespeare and Fletcher. Reading the play, I sometimes catch distant echoes of Shakespeare or Fletcher, but then again there is a definite 18th century feel to many of the lines. (Not that I’m an expert, just an avid reader of the old dramatists.)
I have to ask: what’s so bad about his Hamlet? I’ve seen it before, and I didn’t have any problems with it.
The movie never recovers from the beginning which is appallingly bad. From the script, I gather Branagh intended the audience to believe that Horatio and the guards run away from a statue that comes to life. What I see on the screen shows them running away from a statue that isn’t moving at all. And Jack Lemmon’s performance is so bad it’s painful. Ironic, since most film fans consider it a huge mistake that Charleton Heston won a Best Actor award for Ben Hur over Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot, and most of those same fans would agree that Lemmon is a far better actor than Heston. Yet Heston was perfect in delivering the soliloquoy of the Player King, and Lemmon looks completely lost. First impressions count. That’s also the problem I have with Much Ado About Nothing. I can accept a film where actors ride imaginary horses rather than real ones Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and I can accept films where actors ride real horses. But if the main characters are riding real horses, Dogberry should ride one too, even though he is a comic actor. When Michael Keaton galloped on screen on an imaginary horse, I lost my ability to suspend disbelief.
Eddie Cunningham
Obviously, there isn’t. But that is not what I am asking. I am asking who is the best writer, irrespective of language? Considering the languages Shakespeare has been translated into, and the non-English language productions inspired by his works, I’d have to say Shakespeare is ahead by a wide margin. I suspect #2 may be Cervantes or Hugo, but I can’t tell for sure. I think as time goes on, Gabriel García Marquez may climb to #3 or perhaps even #2…
Eddie Cunningham
Mr. Kennedy, I must admit I was not familiar with Double Falshood till I read your post. What I did find in thirty minutes of research is a controversy far more compelling than any debate between Oxfordians and Stanfordians. Most scholars don’t recognize your claim that *Double Falshood *is based on Cardenio, unless you count Wikipedia. What I did find in my research online and my house full of reference books was that the growing consensus in the last decade or so, is that if the “lost” work were ever found, it would be the *Second Maiden’s Tragedy *usually credited to Middleton. A Who’s Who of Shakespeare scholars has already proclaimed it as the “lost” work. As you probably know, there have already been several performances of Cardenio based on the Second Maiden’s Tragedy. When it was performed in England in March of 2004 the BBC reported it as the “lost” work of Shakespeare discovered in the British Museum by Charles Hamilton. And I should point out the Encyclopedia Britannica, not normally on the cutting edge of controversy, says that the *Second Maiden’s Tragedy *is the Cardenio.
You’ve just confessed that you knew nothing about Double Falsehood until John Kennedy mentioned it. After a quick scrabble through your ‘reference books’ and the net you are now armed cap a pe to debate him on it, are you?
Boy, you’re priceless!
In 1990, Fletcher scholars looked at it, apparently for the first time, and decided it had his fingerprints all over it. Since Theobald apparently had no idea that Fletcher was involved (the two bits of paper that prove that Cardenio existed and that it was credited to Shakespeare and Fletcher hadn’t yet been discovered in 1727), it would be strange for him to have imitated Fletcher. In fact, a good many people in 1727-28 said that Double Falshood seemed like Fletcher to them, and Theobald seems to have agreed. This may be why he seems to have lost interest in the play in later years, since no-one seems to have thought of the possibility of collaboration.
It’s much easier to spot Fletcher than Shakespeare, because Shakespeare is so damned good at hiding himself inside his characters. But at least one modern computer study on word frequency finds Shakespeare in some parts of Double Falshood.
And, yes, there’s a lot of the 18th century in Theobald’s text. The Augustans were convinced that they knew more about “proper” drama than Shakespeare did, and tended to view him as a genius who had the bad luck to live among barbarians. Theobald, in fact, was one of the mildest of the offenders, at least when he was wearing his editor’s hat; he always insisted that editors should try to establish what Shakespeare actually wrote, rather than what they thought Shakespeare should have written. (He is regarded as the father of scientific textual criticism in modern languages.)
Actually, the Wikipedia article is mostly by me.
Which proves once again that you don’t know what you’re talking about. The identification of Cardenio with The Second Maiden’s Tragedy is not taken seriously by any Shakespeare scholar. The late Charles Hamilton was an autograph dealer who, because he had successfully identified the so-called “Hitler diaries” as forgeries, jumped to the conclusion that he was an expert on Elizabethan handwriting. (Real palaeographers regard him as a joke.)
This is simply not true; not one genuine Shakespeare scholar agrees with Hamilton. You might want to check out someplace where real scholars congregate, such as the SHAKSPER mailing list.
Scholars do not base their findings on press releases.
Would that be the same Encyclopaedia Britannica that has spent the last 35 years apologizing for its old “Witchcraft” article?
But, leaving all that aside, if you had actually read Hamilton’s book, you would know that he accepts that Double Falshood is based on Cardenio, which is an entirely different issue from whether Cardenio is The Second Maiden’s Tragedy.