Shakespeare - Athena

A THEATRE FOR EVERY AGE
By Mark Olshaker
Every age, it is said, gets the Shakespeare it deserves. As James Shapiro
so eloquently points out in Shakespeare: The King’s Man, that was
true even during Shakespeare’s lifetime, as his distinction between
the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I demonstrate. The theatre
helped Jacobean audiences of all classes interpret and make sense of the
dynamic and uncertain times in which they lived, learning to navigate anew
during the reign of an unpredictable Scottish king whose mother had been
executed by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, less than 20 years before.
No longer would Shakespeare write the effervescent comedies of the
Elizabethan years. His Jacobean comedies were dark and unsettling, dealing
with such dangerous contemporary topics as betrayal, revenge, sexual
exploitation, and the legitimacy of rule. Professor Shapiro tells us that an
“Elizabethan Shakespeare” could not have written a tragicomedy like Measure
for Measure. Like the playwright’s Jacobean tragedies, his comedies would
mirror a different era, offering profound insights into the ambiguities of the
human condition.
Examples of theatre reflecting society and its values can be found in every
age. When Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans overthrew King Charles I, they banned
all plays as sordid and decadent. Following Cromwell’s death in 1658 and the
restoration of the monarchy two years later under Charles II, theatres reopened
and a new generation of playwrights reflected the views and energy of the
day. Relieved of the yoke of the Puritan Revolution’s enforced public piety,
audiences wanted to laugh. Restoration comedies such as William Wycherley’s
The Country Wife and William Congreve’s The Way of the World gave them an
outlet to delight in the foibles and strained manners of a high society they both
envied and secretly mocked. During this more sexually open period, women’s
roles were played for the first time by actual women, rather than men and boys.
Subsequent decades saw the beginnings of a new type of feel-good theatre,
but one that reflected a society preoccupied with making things “right” and
proper. This impulse reached its preposterous nadir in 1681 with Nahum
Tate’s rewriting of King Lear. Tate removed the Fool and his acerbic social
commentary and substituted a new, upbeat conclusion to Shakespeare’s
tragedy. In Tate’s version, Cordelia doesn’t die. Instead, she marries Edgar
and they live happily ever after—a model of how audiences were expected
to live their own lives.
In the Victorian period, a newly industrialized and increasingly powerful
Britain was displaying its prowess with stage spectacles, musical
extravaganzas, and elaborate comic operas. As the 19th century progressed,
Britain’s rather straight-laced society grew to favor domestic comedies and
sentimental dramas with elements of realism, like Arthur Wing Pinero’s
Trelawney of the “Wells.” Contrast this with the “angry young men” of
London’s Royal Court Theatre in the late 1950s, where John Osborne’s Look
Back in Anger stunned playgoers with its frank depiction of middle-class
life and frustrations in the years following World War II.
Nowhere, perhaps, does the relationship between theatre and society
emerge more clearly than in comparing productions of the same
Shakespearean plays in two distinct eras. For a vivid demonstration, we can
thank Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh, each of whom committed
memorable versions of Henry V and Hamlet to film.
Olivier’s Henry V, produced during World War II as a morale booster,
portrays a resolute and determined king, rallying the population in a
righteous cause against a formidable enemy. The beautiful film attempts
something midway between stage and screen. It begins with a staging in
Shakespeare’s Globe, but when Henry’s army reaches France, the movie
transports us to a semi-realistic, semi-storybook setting.
Branagh’s 1989 film is a Thatcher-era, post-Falklands War meditation on
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