The Deathday has been and gone. I was in Stamford doing a show about the 'authorship question' and so I missed it. My connection to the events were mostly via my phone with facebook and twitter. The general reaction on my twitter feed was interesting, because most of the people I follow or who follow me have a similar relationship with the bard. For example I tweeted:
"
Happy n-day wishes to all the great anonymous writers of early English drama, who never get celebrated because we don't know who they are."
And this was retweeted many, many times and favourited and generally went down well - and many other people posted similar things. I think this shows rather well the complicated relationship we all have with Shakespeare. On the one hand, I do like his work and would happily bite off the hand that offered me a good part in any of his plays (for example, I'm currently in a production of
The Tempest). On the other hand, I'm generally disenchanted with the pure mass of Shakespeare now available. In the last three years, from the build up of the last big anniversary to this one, from birth to death, we've had more than one complete works season, several history cycles and countless other productions.
Obviously, I have a bias. This little project is focused on the work prior to Shakespeare, but it is also partly named after him - because I acknowledge that Shakespeare is the marketing buzz word I need to get anyone to take even a moments notice. If I called this the Early Modern Drama Club then... well, I suspect I'd get fewer hits.
I also have to acknowledge that part of the point of my work is to illuminate the work of Shakespeare, to make the references in his work a little less strange, to give the bard some context. Some of the long term projects I would like to get off the ground would be back to back productions of source plays and Shakespeare's rewrites. On a smaller scale, I'm in the process of creating a storytelling show with
Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge as text (touring 2017), partly because I think it'll be fun and partly because I'm directing
As You Like It next year. Once again, Shakespeare is the excuse for a widening of the repertoire and an exploration of earlier (and contemporary) work. My work is, in a tiny way, part of a general trend in an extended interest in early English drama - there is more on offer and being produced by bigger companies too. But still in comparison with the bard, it seems like meagre scraps
Every so often people look at the mass of Shakespeare on offer and suggest a moratorium. 'Let's not do Shakespeare for a few years,' some wag says. I've suggested this myself. I've also suggested that the government should order the paying of 'royalties' for Shakespeare production - all funds to be used to fund new writing and theatre production - it would balance the field a bit. But, beyond being impossible and counter productive, it isn't really necessary. These trends come in cycles. Once these anniversaries are over, the major players will probably pull back a bit and look for something else - there'll still be a lot of Shakespeare out there, but maybe not quite so all encompassing. And it's in the interest of the big players to open out the repertoire. In basic economic terms, they need to diversify (with the emphasis perhaps on verse) or die.
The major players in the UK, the RSC and the Globe, have already opened up their programming to other writing from the period. Certain contemporaries of Shakespeare get a look in. A mixed season will get a Marlowe,
Jew of Malta or
Doctor Faustus perhaps, thrown in, or a bit of Jonson, Webster or even Ford. And it's great. I love it. The only problem I have with this is the lack of follow through.
Recently The Globe released in a box set all the DVD's of productions from the past ten years or so. They've all been released separately and many are ones also screened live in cinemas. Of the twenty plays in the box, nineteen were Shakespeare and one was
Doctor Faustus by Kit Marlowe. The RSC has been more modest in output, so far. But both the RSC and Globe have produced dozens of plays by other playwrights, in just the last few years, and some of those productions were very well reviewed - so why not distribute them further?
There is a good reason why not and these companies are not run by idiots. They will only market the plays they think will sell. I balk slight at trying to tell the Globe to try harder because they are a purely commercial outfit, but the RSC is heavily subsidised and, more importantly, I think they're missing the long term view of building interest in other writers. The Globe has released half of the Shakespeare canon on DVD, the RSC is working on it. Once they have released the whole canon once, maybe twice, maybe three times, where do they go?
Whilst I agree that a DVD of
The Jew of Malta, say, will not sell brilliantly, it gives students and schools (and dare I say it, people generally) the same opportunities to watch rather than just read a play. It could be sold as a two pack with
The Merchant of Venice, which is a logical pairing - and something that might interest schools. Mixing Shakespeare with his contemporaries in box sets is a really great way of mixing the interest out a bit, especially if the plays have references to each other.
Part of the reason Shakespeare has exploded in the world is due to film and television. By releasing a play, making it more familiar, you generally make it easier to sell a new production. The text becomes less scary and more familiar, and then productions can explore them further, open them up to a little expansion. (There is a point of overkill, as mentioned above, but you can only reach that after general success.)
We've got Shakespeare, everyone does Shakespeare - if you don't just mix it up a bit, but actively push and sell his contemporaries and predecessors, then you risk a debt spiral of never ending repeats of Hamlet till we all lose the will to live. If we can make these lesser known plays into as popular a ticket as Shakespeare then there's room to programme not just great other drama, but also have good houses for them.
I'm not even asking these companies to do more other work than they're already doing, just to risk showing it to more people than a few hundred a night for a few months. I've wanted to watch all the non Shakespeare plays the Globe and RSC have produced over the last few years - well received productions mostly, but I can't get there. Just one a year. Maybe two. That's all I ask.
Obviously, I would like you to do something from a bit earlier in the canon, but hey, one thing at a time.
