Shakespeare & The 400th Year
"Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends."
“Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.” — A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1, Lines 454-55.
And so ends 2023.
I started this Substack to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio (and, if I’m being honest, to give me an excuse to spend more time pondering the works). I have plans for more Shakespeare and some surprises in 2024, but in the meantime, I thought I’d cast a light on the newsletters and sketches that were particularly popular. I also have some resources below if adding more Shakespeare into your life is one of your 2024 resolutions.
Cheers!
The Shake-Scene: 2023’s Top Posts
This year’s top three posts were:
“Shakespeare & His Great Dane” about Hamlet published on December 1, 2023.
“Shakespeare & the Horrors of Comedy” about The Comedy of Errors published on July 31, 2023.
“IDGAF (Shakespeare’s Version)” about Sonnet 19 published April 23, 2023.
Speak the Speech, I pray you:
This year’s most watched sketches were:
“Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.” — Hamlet.
“In nature’s infinite book of secrecy, a little I can read.” — Antony and Cleopatra.
“A woman that bears all down with her brain, and this her son cannot take two from twenty, for his heart, and leave eighteen.” — Cymbeline.
Additional Resources
My ultimate goal for this series is to whet people’s appetite for Shakespeare. To deconstruct that ‘high art’ facade we place on the works that leave people feeling intimidated. If you’re looking to add more Shakespeare into your life in 2024, I’d recommend watching the plays but reading a synopsis first. The language is admittedly intimidating (it gets easier, I swear), but the great Shakespearean directors and actors know how to make it accessible through performance. That said, it’s easier to enjoy the ride when you know what’s going on.
My go-to plot synopses are from the Folger Shakespeare Library (link). The Royal Shakespeare Company also has helpful landing pages for each of the plays that you can find here.
As far as places to watch the plays, you have a myriad of options:
You could travel to the vaunted theaters such as Shakespeare’s Globe in London, The Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, the Folger Theatre in Washington D.C., Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, or The American Shakespeare Center in Staunton Virginia.
You could watch a film adaptation such as Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Michael Hoffman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or the Hollow Crown Series done by the BBC to stage the history plays. The Shakespeare Sessions also did some wonderful audio play adaptations available as podcasts here.
You can even watch filmed versions of live theater productions such as those done by The National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, or The Stratford Festival.
And finally, there is the time-honored tradition of Shakespeare in the Park. I’m fairly certain there is a Shakespeare in the Park near you. For me, that’s the Houston Shakespeare Festival. But some of the bigger productions in the United States are The Public in New York, The Seattle Shakespeare Company, or the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Please shout out your local festival in the comments!
Then, once you’ve experienced Shakespeare and feel the unquenchable urge to dive a bit deeper into Shakespearean criticism, here are some places to start:
Podcasts: Dr. Emma Smith’s “Approaching Shakespeare” lectures offer a great introduction in how to look at the plays critically. She takes each play and raises a critical question, which she then interrogates using the text and scholarship. Available here. The Folger Shakespeare Library has a great podcast titled “Shakespeare Unlimited” available here where Barbara Bogaev interviews scholars, theater makers, actors, writers, and anyone with a unique perspective on Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Globe had a podcast called “Such Stuff” that is a wealth of interesting content available here. It hasn’t been updated since 2021, but still worth a listen. I also really love the podcast Shakespeare’s Shadows where the host interviews academics and actors with a character-centric approach to the works (i.e. looking at a specific character from those that study that character and/or play them). It’s available here.
Books: The Arden editions contain a wealth of interesting commentary and scholarship. I also recently read Women of Will by Tina Packer, which gives great insight into playing the women in Shakespeare’s cannon, This is Shakespeare by Dr. Emma Smith which discusses the richness resulting from the gaps in Shakespeare’s works, and The Shakespeare Thefts by Eric Rasmussen about his journey cataloguing the extant copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio.
Next up in my To Be Read pile are ShakesFear and How to Cure It by Ralph Alan Cohen, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, and Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance by Ayanna Thompson.
There are also some Shakespeare-inspired works on my radar that I hope to catch such as “& Juliet” (a 90’s pop jukebox musical premised on Juliet deciding not to die) and “All the Devil’s Are Here” (a one-man show by the great villain character actor Patrick Page).
Thank you all for your support this year and I look forward to more Shakespeare in 2024!
Don’t forget Kenneth Branagh in Henry V and his great “we few, we happy few ....” !