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We are not a Cowed Audience!

A Shakespeare audience

At some point in the late 19th century, theatre quietened down and stopped being for everyone. The communal exhilaration that had been going for 2,500 years... was finally and comprehensively shushed.  No one knows how, really. Perhaps it was the culmination of an aristocratic plot to rid the fun-houses of proles...  Whatever the reason, theatre is stupidly quiet now.

So begins Toby Parker-Rees in his article Shout if you enjoy theatre - why have audiences gone so quiet?  Which Anzan Hoshin Roshi shared on our Google+ Shakespeare community.

I responded with a comment that ended up rather lengthy for a post:

As an audience member, I, too, prefer quiet ... at least in general. I simply wouldn't want to be part of an audience that's loud, rowdy or interrupting ... again at least not in general. Still, a few years ago, friends invited me to an abridged staging of all of Shakespeare's plays, performed in about two hours. It was in Dubai, and this sort of production was perfect for an audience that probably wanted Shakespeare as a brisk, funny medley. I remember us laughing, reacting and applauding frequently throughout the performance. The troupe did a fine job of actively engaging us, and we responded noisily!

As far as the Parker-Rees' article is concerned, I found it to be very informative and interesting, too. Yet, I couldn't really take it very seriously, either, as I wondered if it was actually meant to be a sardonic one. I feel rather relaxed and unself-conscious in the theater - stage or film - even in my relative quiet and even in that proper decorum that Parker-Rees seems to lament. There is plenty of noise, interruption, hullabaloo in different segments of modern-day life (e.g., rush-hour traffic, bustling cities, construction sites) that I long for the quiet absorption and vicarious release of theater-going.

Sporting events is probably where we have more of the audience of old, which Parker-Rees seems to pine for. Whether at the stadium itself or at home watching on TV, my friends and I yell, jump and curse freely, depending on how our home team is playing. So I'd argue against his notion that somehow we've become more of an aristocratic, cowed audience. Yes, we may have evolved with the times, but as an audience we have a wider range of entertainment options at our disposal and therefore greater freedom to be whatever: We are quiet when we want to be, and we are noisy when we want to be.

The roaring crowd at the Stanley Cup rally for the Chicago Blackhawks (image credit:  ESPN)

The Zeitgeist of Correctness and Inhibition

North Plainfield High School teacher Kristyn Rosen shares her reasons for wanting to move away from teaching Shakespeare's "safe" plays and towards plays that ask difficult questions, like 'The Merchant of Venice' and 'Othello.'

Baltimore teacher Amber Phelps describes how she would use Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice' in an American Literature unit.

You can argue that these are just video clips by the Shakespeare Folger Library, and we ought not be surprised that these two teachers say very little about why they'd like to teach the more difficult plays.  But perhaps ironically, they end up saying a lot about entrenched issues that still plague American culture.  That in its Zeitgeist of hypersensitivity (i.e., political correctness [PC]) this culture inhibits even our teachers from raising those issues openly and giving them the latitude to teach our children what they need to learn, in order to help resolve these very issues.

Phelps speaks pedantically of "people of non-normative genders, races and classes," showing that we're good at sidling into robotic phrases as a way to safeguard ourselves from the PC police.  

'The Merchant of Venice' is about the titular merchant Shylock, who as a Jew is the subject of some derision in the play.  Maybe what Phelps and Rosen mean is, they'd like at least to raise the issue of anti-semitism in the classroom, plus weigh a host of legal and moral slants that define the character of Shylock.  For example, he has his chance to exact revenge on others concerning these extraordinarily tough issues, after a business transaction went awry:

To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

Years ago I watched 'The Merchant of Venice' at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, in which the director, in contrast to the clips above, boldly laid the issues out, shook the table, and demand we make sense of it all.  For one, Shylock was played by an African-American actor.  For another, Portia was played by an Asian-American actress.

David Richards, who reviewed this staging in a 1994 article for The New York Times, admired the boldness but was mixed, at best, about its impact on the audience.

Which Shakespeare Things Do You Say?

(image credit)

Note from Becky: 

I still don’t know how something I scribbled in a hurry at 3am got so many notes in the space of a day? Shakespeare is clearly too awesome. I spelt “bated" wrong, awk :) Someone said this looks like a serial killer’s notebook, which made me laugh a lot. They’re not wrong, I’ve been a sleep deprived zombie lately. 

Which she corrected:

(image credit)

An educational publisher recently asked me if they could print this scribble in a textbook, so I needed to rescan it to send them a better image. I erased the “i" from “bated breath" and also replicated it digitally, for anyone who has trouble reading my messy handwriting (myself included!) Feel free to use accordingly.

Thank you to every single one of you who has reblogged/shared the post. It has almost reached 70,000 notes and it makes me happy to see that. The fact of the matter is, every time this image has been shared, the chances that somebody will learn something which they didn’t already know increases. Many people are put off by classic literature because the language is foreign to them. They can read the words, but they don’t understand them. This might discourage them from pursuing it further. So I’d like to think you haven’t simply reblogged an image on the internet. You might be responsible for opening the door of curiosity for somebody else. [emphasis added]

As Mahatma Gandhi said: Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever :)

Theaters Where I Have Seen Shakespeare

American Players Theater, in Spring Green, Wisconsin

Goodman Theater, in Chicago

Shubert Theater, in Chicago

DePaul University, in Chicago

Shakespeare Globe, in London

Dubai Community Theater and Arts Center (DUCTAC)

The Hamlet of Kenneth Branagh

 

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

 

Save me and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards!—What would your gracious figure?
...
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command?
O, say!

Not a whit. We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is ’t to leave betimes? Let be.

Here's a good explanation of this defining passage, from Yahoo! Answers:

Hamlet says this to dismiss Horatio's suggestion that he should reject the fencing duel against Laertes. The reason is that it is useless to defy God's will and purpose, while 'we defy augury", meaning that he doesn't believe in bad omens, because they are just spurious signs that do not truly come from God. "The fall of a sparrow" is a reference to Matthew 10:29 where Jesus assures his disciples of divine providence: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father". It is interesting to compare it with the proverb "Man proposes, God disposes", which is usually said to comfort our friends when things don't always work out as planned. Note that Hamlet here doesn't really express whether he believes things would work out in his favor or not, but simply that he should be ready and do his part, just like the "man proposes" part in the proverb, and leave the rest at God's disposal. 

"If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come" basically means that if something is or isn't supposed to happen (according to that special providence), it will or will not happen no matter whether it is a good or bad thing. Nobody except God would know when everything is supposed to happen. 

This is a defining moment for Hamlet. Now he is a man of faith and conviction, in contrast to the man he was before who was constantly in doubt.

Sustained Interest in Shakespeare

Will Shakespeare be Popular in the Future?

I'd like to believe that Shakespeare will be popular long into the future, but of course interest will wax and wane. If I remember correctly, Shakespearean plays and the Bible are among the most read in English. So interest isn't likely to wane dramatically anytime soon!