Quick study: Tiffany Stern on staging Shakespeare

TIFFANY STERN is the Beaverbrook and Bouverie Fellow and Tutor in English at University College, Oxford. She specialises in Shakespeare and theatre history from the 16th to the 18th centuries, and has written extensively on early modern theatre. She is a general editor of the New Mermaids series of classic plays, and is on the editorial board of the journals Shakespeare Bulletin, SEDERI, the Hare and Shakespeare Quarterly.
 
You believe Shakespeare’s plays were influenced by the theatres in which they were performed?
 
Yes. Some of Shakespeare’s earliest plays were written for London’s first ever round outdoor theatre, the Theatre, near Bishopsgate, where the early plays up to "Much Ado" were performed. The Globe was, in fact, the Theatre rebuilt on the other side of the Thames.
 
Why?
 
The Theatre was built on land that didn’t belong to the company. The man who owned the land claimed it back, so the story says the company went along in the night, deconstructed their theatre and got it across the river. Some romantics say they sledded it across the frozen Thames!  It’s interesting that the company then changed the name from the Theatre to the Globe: it’s probably why Shakespeare started writing things like "all the world’s a stage", a kind of metatheatrical joke. Most theatres ended up in Southwark because it was in the county of Surrey and had less strict legislature. Bear baiting, ale houses and prostitutes had settled there.
 
Did you have to go by boat?
 
Either you went by boat or crossed London Bridge. Both cost, and, if you paid a toll to go over London Bridge, the last thing you would see as you got off the bridge in Southwark would be the traitors’ heads hanging above the gate; that would remind you to be good as you went off into the bad lands. After the Globe, where the big plays like "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" were performed, Shakespeare’s company acquired the Blackfriars Theatre, a square indoor theatre. That’s where his later plays, like "The Tempest", "Winter’s Tale", "Pericles" and "Cymbeline" were staged—coterie plays with dancing, fine costumes, highly lyrical poetry and a classical five-act structure. A lot of people view Shakespeare's "late style" as a sign that he became more conformist in his old age, but it could equally be that he was writing for a posher theatre.
 
Why did he want a posher theatre?
 
The company was by this time The King’s Men, and they thought rather highly of themselves. Also, more sophisticated people wanted to see the plays, people not quite grand enough to be invited to the court productions, but who still didn’t want to be hanging around in the cold. Indoors you can dress in your sexiest clothes, and wear your jewels and swords. So Shakespeare was writing for an audience dressed in their finery who wanted to flirt and listen to music as well as see drama. Shakespeare always had half an eye on court. People like to think of him as a low-class man of the people and they forget just how much time he spent hanging round with royalty. He may even have used the Royal library to look at his favourite source texts like "Holinshed".
 
Which plays did he write with court in mind?
 
Any play he wrote after 1603 he would be expecting King James to see. The most obvious one is "Macbeth", because James believed he was a descendant of Banquo. When Macbeth is shown the line of kings that will extend until doomsday the witches show him eight kings, the last of whom is holding a looking glass. Some people think that the looking glass would have been held up to King James so that he could see himself at the end of the line of the kings that descends from Banquo.
 
Suggested Reading: “The Shakespearean Stage 1574-1642” (4th ed, 2009) and “Playgoing in Shakespeare's London” (3rd ed, 2004), both by Andrew Gurr
 
You also think Shakespeare was writing for particular actors.
 
Yes. He was writing for a fixed and limited company. That’s why his plays constantly feature different versions of the same character. For example, you’ve got a dear, bumbling old man who is Polonius in "Hamlet", but who is also Duncan in "Macbeth" and Menenius in "Coriolanus".
 
Can you actually match them to people?
 
A couple. The hero is usually Richard Burbage, the actor, and the fool or clown is William Kemp up until about 1600. Kemp performed boorish fools, like Constable Dull or Bottom. Then, in 1600, the company acquired a much grander fool, Robert Armin, who played the lute, so from then on you get wise fools who suddenly start singing, like Feste and Touchstone and the fool in Lear. Also, you can often see when one of the boy player’s voices has broken. In "Cymbeline" the boys propose singing a funeral song and then decide to speak it instead! The plays were fluid, and constantly revised. We have, for example, Hamlet in three different versions.
 
Did the actors learn a fixed script?
 
Yes, but they weren’t given entire play scripts because paper and scribes were expensive and there was no copyright. They were only given their own lines and a short cue. I co-wrote a book where we divided Shakespeare's plays back down into parts. In parts, you can see the enormous jolt between prose and verse with the eye; and the way different characters use different rhetorical devices—speaking in threes, always asking questions, for instance. Our thesis is that Shakespeare was conceiving plays not only as the full narrative arc, but as separate strips of texts with their own internal logic.
 
Suggested Reading: “Shakespeare in Parts” (2007) by Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern, “The Hamlets” (2008) by Paul Menzer, “The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre” by Richard Dutton (2009)