In 2014, I was
accepted to a BYU-sponsored teacher training in Cedar City. There, I was to
attend day-long workshops with Utah Shakespeare Festival. Before we went, we
were tasked with reading the three plays that we would see performed that
season (Measure for Measure, The Comedy
of Errors, and Twelfth Night). I
went with Gayle, letting her prowl around Cedar City (mostly at the fabric shops)
while I attended the classes, then she came with me to the different plays.
It was a
delightful summer.
The interesting
thing for me was that I was in a very foreign situation. I was surrounded by
drama teachers--almost no one there was, like I, an English teacher. And while
a number of them liked Shakespeare in that squishy, "He's good so I have to like him" way, there were
only a couple of actual Bardolators in the mix.
That's been
an interesting aspect to my experience with the Bard, and it's not a unique
one. Shakespeare is adored in the academy because of the complexity, continuity,
questions, and power that he conveys through his words. Shakespeare is beloved
in the acting community because he's a fantastic playwright, putting together
stories, words, and iconic action that audiences enjoy and actors thrive in. To
put it another way, both "camps"--academia and drama--claim
Shakespeare as their own.
There's some
validity to both camps, too. On the one hand, the preservation of
Shakespeare--his continued presence in schools, in the zeitgeist, in the
background of culture--comes in large part because of the robust analyses that
Shakespearean scholarship encourages. When I go to Barnes and Noble, I always
stop by the Shakespeare section. There are more copies of his plays than of
analysis, but there are biographies, memoirs, and other
"Shakespeare-related" works
aplenty. And while there are more copies of his plays (keeping in mind that he
wrote or co-wrote 40 of them) than analyses, there is no one with the same space
on the shelf. There isn't a diversity of, say, Arthur Miller scholarship versus
plays. You can pick up a copy of A Raisin
in the Sun, but you're not getting biographies of Lorraine Hansberry,
lengthy commentaries on her works, nor conspiracies about whether or not
Hansberry actually wrote the plays attributed to her. Even other poets fail to
have that sort of reader response.
But, without
the plays being in a continual state of production (Hamlet, for example, is being performed somewhere on planet Earth
every day of the year), I wonder if the academic side would continue to be. The
stage is what Shakespeare "wrote for", though I'm critical of the
assumption that's imbedded in that argument for a couple of reasons. One, the
authorial intent of Shakespeare in terms of experiencing his story seems presumptuous
here; and two, it's pretty clear that some of what Shakespeare wrote relies so
much on homophonetics that it's only by being able to see and read the puns
that you can actually catch the joke. Additionally, there's so much depth to his
writing that, even in the most capable of actors' hands, much meaning is lost
in the translation from page to stage. Nevertheless, there's an undeniable
power in seeing Shakespeare performed (well, of course; nothing kills a budding
Bardolatry like a bad performance). And hearing the most famous phrases in the
English language cited in context and as a natural consequence of the action on
the stage is always rewarding. Indeed, I hear appreciative gasps when, for
example, Romeo and Juliet are speaking at the so-called "balcony
scene", and Juliet says, "Parting is such sweet sorrow!" For some
in the audience, they are finally connecting what they've heard their entire
lives with the linguistic gift that Shakespeare has given us.
Because I'm
not trained in the theater, I approach the theatricality of Shakespeare
hesitantly. It's a world that I don't fully understand (though, as a teacher,
my job is very much a performative one), though I do understand Shakespeare. As
in other aspects of my life, he provides me a guide. I would never go to the
theater at all were it not for Shakespeare.
And I
wouldn't have found myself in workshops with actors and festival directors and
other teachers were it not for Shakespeare, either.
This
training, by the way, happened a few months after I'd returned from my first
trip to England, so there was a continuity of Shakespearean geekery that was
part of the experience. It was a lot of fun to meet the actors and have some
conversations about plays that aren't always staged (particularly Measure for Measure, which was not the
best play, nor the best version of it). I also enjoyed expanding my own repertoire
when it comes to Shakespearean thinking. I'm not an actor, but I enjoy good
acting. Learning some of the "behind the scenes" processes for
teaching and enacting Shakespeare was good for me.
Shakespeare
is good for me.