Attention Shakespeare Blog Readers! The Shakespeare Blog has a new URL. For those who, like me, have to be reminded what a URL is, it basically means a new address for the site. Here it is:
http://www.enotes.com/blogs/shakespeare/
If you have already saved this Blog in your Favorites (come on, I know you have), just replace it with this new URL. Why the change? Well, one of the main reasons is to make the blog as accessible as possible to Shakespeare aficionados surfing the web. One of the great things about this site is the responses we get back from readers. Whether you read the Blog regularly or just once, your comments add to the valuable discussion about the endless array of issues and questions surrounding Shakespeare and his plays. Ultimately, we would like to add even more people to that discussion.

The whole point of this or any blog is to find out what is important to us. What side of the authorship debate are you on? Are high-concept productions innovative or sacrilegious? Are the histories overlooked? Are the tragedies overrated? Are the comedies still funny? Have we talked about certain plays (Hamlet) to death and beyond? Are there plays that haven’t received much “air time” (e.g. King John) that you would like to hear more about? Your ideas help fuel the topics for future blogs. In fact, if there are topics, productions or other areas that you would like to see blogs about, let me know. Thanks, and see you at the new URL!

The feedback on the British students’ protest of Shakespeare’s Anti-Semitism continues to mount. There are strong opinions both for and against the protest, further underlining the idea that this is no simple matter. One op-ed piece pointed out one specific point of contention that further complicates things. The students in question protested an exam about Shakespeare based on his Anti-Semitic depiction of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. This writer was quick to point out that Merchant was not covered on the exam. The play in question was The Tempest, and the editorial noted that the students’ complaints did not include the racist or colonialist issues present in the play that was actually covered by the exam.

Rather than re-debate the merits of the students’ argument (and question their motivations), I am intrigued by a question underneath this editorial. Is it possible to separate a writer from his or her work? Assuming no one found anything offensive about, say, Twelfth Night, could students study it without feeling their identities or values were being compromised? For those who love Shakespeare, that seems like an easy “yes,” but that’s because for most of us The Bard is not a controversial figure. What if, however, Adolf Hitler had written a sparkling romantic comedy in his youth? Would it be okay to do it? I do not think the students’ argument is anywhere near this extreme example, but the discussions it has generated bring up questions that must be addressed by scholars, teachers, actors, directors and anyone with a passion for Shakespeare.

The title Breaking the Shakespeare Code might bring to mind a certain globe-trotting thriller featuring Tom Hanks with some seriously ill-conceived hair. At least, it did for me. It would open with a scene in Shakespeare’s Globe wherein a middle-aged historian finds what appears to be an original copy of Pericles with a cryptic note that suggests young Will led a double life as a spy. Then, blah, blah, blah, secret societies, a plucky female usher half the historian’s age, maybe some druids and a trip to Stonehenge, and it all wraps up at Stratford where the Ark of the Covenant is buried in the Bard’s parents’ graves.

In actuality, the new play Breaking the Shakespeare Code bears less resemblance to the Mission: Impossible films than to the current two-character Steve Buscemi indie Interview. Like Buscemi’s film, the play is a two-hander, in this case about the relationship between a male acting coach and his young, female (natch) student. Shakespeare’s words become less a means for performing than for negotiating an ongoing power struggle. Whether or not the play is successful will be a matter of opinion, but it does put a new spin on Will’s plays. Rather than attempt to integrate a high-concept context into one of Shakespeare’s plays, it instead places his words deliberately out of context to examine the intricacies of human relationships.

From about 1585 to 1592, nobody knows what the hell a certain Bard-to-be was up to. Due to a lack of clear documentation, that period of Shakespeare’s life is often referred to as his “lost years.” For centuries, historians have floated numerous theories both mundane and extraordinary as to how Will busied himself in the immediate period after leaving his wife and children in Stratford-upon-Avon, but none have offered concrete evidence. A new European film suggests that Shakespeare traveled to the continent and found himself in direct contact with the great Spanish writer Cervantes.

The idea is certainly intriguing, as Shakespeare and Cervantes were contemporaries. Coincidentally, they also died on the same date (April 23, 1616; though it was not the same day, as Spain and England followed slightly different calendar systems). Ultimately, I think the film points to a larger need to mythologize Shakespeare and other historical and literary figures. Like his doomed British contemporary Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare has sometimes been theorized as having been involved in espionage; that his “lost years” were lost on purpose. While meeting with other luminaries or risking life and limb for the Crown are not implausible suggestions, there is a certain fanboy quality to them, regardless (or perhaps because) of how well-researched they are. After all, would his achievements be any less noteworthy if in other aspects of his life, Will from Stratford was, well, ordinary?

I’d like to invoke Chandler Bing for one second to ask what may be an obvious question, “Could Shakespeare BE any more sexist?” You could also swap out the word “sexist” for “racist.” Despite that, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice and Othello remain popular in production, despite decidedly non-P.C. elements. Now, I’m not trying to go all Tipper Gore on you. I’m all for free speech and I think offending people is a great form of communication; however, at the end of the day, Shylock and Othello still stand in the shadows of stereotype and a complex cultural history. In the final scene of Shrew, Kate still puts her hand on the ground for her husband to step on. Is there a middle ground between letting the ugly elements all hang out and trying to shoehorn Shakespeare into a public service announcement for the evils of racism and domestic violence?

A current production of Shrew in Albuquerque makes an attempt. In this version, the sexual politics are tackled head-on by cross-gendered casting (both male and female). To give the conceit context, the play is set in a decidedly New-Wave 1980s, when rockers like Bowie and Boy George became poster children for culture of sexual ambiguity. While productions like this don’t answer the complicated questions raised by the plays, they create a framework for approaching them from multiple perspectives.

Forgive me if I sound like Andy Rooney, but do you ever wonder why so many summer theatres are called Shakespeare Festivals? The Stratford Festival of Canada, arguably one of the best festivals in North America, recently announced that they would be adding “Shakespeare” back into their name, effectively rechristening it The Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada. Shakespeare had been a part of the festival’s name when it was founded in 1952, and I’m not sure whether its disappearance or reappearance is more puzzling.

For starters, many Shakespeare Festivals do not simply produce Shakespearean works. Let’s face it: Will only wrote about thirty-something plays, the exact number of which varies according to whether or not you view plays like Henry VIII or Two Noble Kinsmen as collaborations or corruptions. As a result, most festivals’ seasons are about 20-30% Shakespeare. The rest of the productions are typically a melange of classics, contemporary successes, and world premieres.

So, what gives? With a few notable exceptions (such as The Shaw Festival), there don’t seem to be as many festivals organized around other authors. I can’t help wondering if the “Shakespeare”-ing and re-”Shakespeare”-ing of North American theatre festivals is a kind of branding. Just as the name Tom Cruise can still get audiences to go see the increasingly irrelevant and ridiculous Mission: Impossible films (it’s okay, I hate myself for making this analogy, too), maybe Shakespeare’s literary and theatrical cachet continues to fill festival seats.

Kenneth Branagh is back and he’s taking the Bard to the East. Branagh has kept a rather low profile on the big screen since his last Shakespearean effort, 2000’s ill-received Love’s Labour’s Lost, but now he’s reunited with the playwright who made Branagh a marquee name for a new adaptation of As You Like It. The film, which debuts on HBO rather than in theaters, is noteworthy for two main reasons. For starters, Branagh does not appear in the film, a first in his Shakespearean films. Second, he has reset the play in Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century. Now, if you’re envisioning a snarky Best Week Ever clip featuring the song “Turning Japanese,” Branagh wants you to know that this is not Shakespeare meets The Mikado. Although Branagh’s eclectic cast is notably Caucasian (despite the new setting), there’s a historical justification. His concept is to set the play during a period when an influx of Europeans on Japanese soil marked the beginning of the country’s westernization. The goal? To create a commentary on the intersection of these cultures and the West’s exoticization of the East. Whether the conceit will pay off remains to be seen, yet in doing so Branagh is ironically honoring Shakespeare’s own storytelling. The playwright notoriously ripped off the work of other writers (to the extent that people still debate his authorship), so there’s an interesting meta-commentary about appropriation in Branagh’s approach that asks the question, “Whose story is it anyway?”

Washington Shakespeare Company is giving Shakespeare a dressing down. As the capper on a half-year festival, they are staging Macbeth au natural and drawing decidedly mixed reviews. While I’m sure some critics are tsk-tsking the production for pandering to prurient interests, I suspect a different motive: concept exhaustion. We’ve all seen King Lears set in feudal Japan or As You Like Its restaged in S&M clubs; even the novelty of going back to a plain old Elizabethan staging of Shakespeare no longer seems like a rediscovery. So what else are a director and a cast eager to re-re-re-conceptualize Elizabethan drama supposed to do? Take it back beyond the basics and strip the play (and the actors) down. Maybe it’s not a bad idea. Although, in a theatrical climate where even Harry Potter himself is letting it all hang out (in a recent stage production of Equus), maybe a Macnude Macbeth isn’t all that Macnovel.

They might have taken a lesson from a recent L.A. production that staged Hamlet in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. In this case, the setting provides all the needed shock value as the crypts of real-life Hollywood royalty such as Douglas Fairbanks (one of the original founders of United Artists) become backdrops for the scenes. Now, I don’t know if there’s a Doug Fairbanks, Jr., Jr. out there, but I can’t help wondering if he’s thrilled about the idea of a bunch of thesps cavorting about on grandpa’s grave, regardless of how much iambic poetry they’re reciting.

Suddenly, a bunch of naked people doesn’t seem so bad in comparison.