How does it happen
that William Shakespeare, who died some 350 years ago, still comes home
more clearly and audibly to men's business and bosoms than perhaps any other
writer in world literature? Certainly almost every human utterance, with
the change of fashion and the elapse of time, loses its appeal; why does
not Shakespeare's? The answer to this question is not so difficult as might
be imagined. It is mainly because Shakespeare devoted himself to man in all
his more inevitable relations and qualities, that is, to you and me in all
our more inevitable relations and qualities. To be sure, he lived in a happy
time before the age of specialization and fragmentation of men, before man
was dethroned from his commanding position as the chief creature of God,
while he still embraced within himself all the features of God's universe,
and while he still believed, and was supported in his belief, in his own
illimitable possibilities. For to believe in the possibility of achievement
is to achieve. (...)
Shakespeare was
the perfect dramatist, since he had the power to enter understandingly
into every human heart; but he never did so dogmatically. He steadily refused
to put men into pigeon‑holes. He refuses to attenuate human life, which
he and his contemporaries regarded as of infinite variety. In their depictions
they did not use the strait‑jacket of consistent character into which writers
of fiction clamp mankind. All of Shakespeare's developed characters are
puzzles, and it is the integration of divergent characteristics within
them that makes them resemble men and act in human ways. Shylock is a puzzle;
so is Hamlet; so particularly is Falstaff. So, to be sure, are all men and
women. Man cannot be defined by any inherent quality or by any examination
of data. Shakespeare merely says that a man or a woman situated in such
and such a way did for various reasons behave in such and such a way. Every
Shakespearean character has his or her unmistakable style. Brutus and Hamlet,
Antony and Lear, Portia and Beatrice mirror their souls in their speech.
We cannot know
precisely what Shakespeare's Shakespeare was, and if we did, it would not
speak to us. Mozart's Mozart is not Karajan's Mozart, produced for our
hi‑fi age. Yet they are both Mozart. All ages look at the same old‑master
paintings, but they all see something different. If we could see a Globe
production, with Burbage at his best, I am perfectly sure we should not
understand it. Its meaning would not be communicated. The art of the theatre
is essentially ephemeral, relying on a synthesis of the writers', actors',
and audiences' responses. Now, only the texts of Shakespeare's plays remain,
and although they are evidence of man's highest genius, it is often difficult
for them to yield their meaning because the dialogue between the author
and his original audience has long been silenced. We are not Elizabethans.
All we can do, by diligent scholarship and hard work, is to try to express
Shakespeare's intentions in terms that modern audiences can understand.
This is, of course,
a dangerous assumption and can be an excuse for ignorance or lack of talent.
Happy endings have been written for Lear under this sanction. Yet the risk
must be taken if our performances are to have meaning. (...)
Yet in human
terms, the plays are very near to us. I doubt if animal man fundamentally
changes at all over the ages. The disciplines and dreams he invents for himself,
his religions, ethics, philosophies, moralities change radically. In these,
Shakespeare is often far away from us, for our own chaotic public thinking
is very contrary to the world order of the Elizabethans. So what man hopes
he is like changes, but not, alas, what he is really like. Shakespeare deals
in this constant.
But what is living
in the plays will not necessarily emerge by performing them dispassionately.
Interpretation is not a sin, but a necessity because the accretions of
time have to be stripped away.
from
"Shakespeare and the Modern Director", "Royal Shakespeare Company
1960‑1963"