Despite being born over 450 years ago, it seems we still can’t get enough of that Shakespeare chap. Here in Durham you can almost guarantee that as you’re reading this, someone, somewhere, is rehearsing for a Shakespeare play. To name but a few; just recently we’ve had Coriolanus at the assembly rooms, played by an innovatively female-dominated cast, the weird and wonderful A Midsummer Night’s Dream being performed at Hilde Bede, and Castle Theatre Company putting on a long awaited production of Hamlet in the Town Hall. The guy is everywhere! So why is it that even outside the curriculum, we just don’t seem to get bored of Shakespeare?
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hilde Bede Theatre
The first person I decided to question on the subject was Lucy; an English student with a love for theatre, and who recently performed in HCTC’S Coriolanus:
Lucy claims to genuinely enjoy having a part in a play written by William Shakespeare. She says, with an enthusiastic grin on her face, ‘it was just really interesting seeing how the play’s dynamic could change, because we changed all the pronouns: the fighting parts were played by women instead of men. I’ve performed Shakespeare before, but I’ve never been in a fighting role, and it felt really empowering.’
So Lucy likes the guy, that’s obvious, but she’s the English/Drama/bound-to-love-Bill type of person. I asked her she thought entire audiences seemed to like him too:
“I think because it’s the basis of lots of drama that has followed. And I think lots of the storylines can still be relevant- it’s just so versatile. RSC and other big companies do productions where they experiment with the costumes, the setting, the time period… because the plays were so well written and crafted, they can still be enjoyed and appreciated by modern audiences. Shakespeare also, for his time, wrote women well, like Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A 21st century audience wants to see a woman like that- someone feisty.”
Coriolanus, Hill College Theatre Company
It occurred to me that maybe people wouldn’t enjoy them so much if it weren’t for all these innovative adaptations and modern directorial choices. Lucy, however, is fairly certain that even if Shakespeare isn’t modernised it can still be relevant. “It’s useful for drawing audiences in, and getting people interested in his work for the first time, but traditional Shakespeare, performed well, can still be really resonant, because it’s more the character and the stories that we relate to, rather than the setting.” And like myself, Lucy also likes to think that our fixation with Shakespearean drama will continue. She confidently argues that every play has the essential themes of love and death at its core- two things that are never going to go away. “I see Shakespeare being popular for a very long time yet.”
Hamlet, Castle Theatre Company
I like Lucy’s thinking. Having been on both sides of the curtain, she has a pretty good knowledge of what makes a play good, and why Shakespeare is so often a crowd-pleaser. But what about the average student? Why do non-English/Drama nerds go to watch? My other victim of interrogation was Jack- a Modern Languages student, sporty and sociable, who would quite happily be described as one of your typical ‘lads’.
But despite being of a supposedly predictable breed, Jack has a favourite Shakespeare play: Macbeth. When I asked him why he liked it so much, he replied with an answer which sounded surprisingly similar to my chat with Lucy. “I really liked that it proved how themes from renaissance theatre can still be applied to modern scenarios. It was a modernised production that I saw, which appealed to the cinema culture- it wasn’t done traditionally.”
Jack, like Lucy, seemed to enjoy the adaptability of the play, and so my final question was to ask if he thought all Shakespeare plays should be modernised. And the reply, again, was in agreement with Lucy: after a bit of thought, Jack concluded that it should depend on the consumer. “If someone has little knowledge of that kind of drama, and is trying to get into, modern adaptations could help them understand it better.”
Hamlet, Castle Theatre Company
So I think it’s safe to say Shakespeare isn’t leaving Durham any time soon. Both the committed drama enthusiast, and the average occasional theatre-goer, seem to think the guy still has a lot to say, and that people still want to hear it. Personally, I think that’s great. To be watching someone passionately deliver lines that came from someone’s head nearly five centuries ago is just amazing. Shakespeare not only knew how to please a crowd, but how to continually satisfy generations of crowds. Good job Bill.