Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

ISSN 1554-6985 VOLUME VIII · (/current) NUMBER 2

FALL 2013/WINTER 2014 (/previous)

EDITED BY (/about) Christy Desmet and Sujata (/archive) Iyengar

CONTENTS

Shakespeare and the Ali'i Nui (/1760/show) (pdf) Theresa M. (/1760/pdf) DiPasquale

The Fiendlike Queen: Recuperating Lady Macbeth in William C. Contemporary Adaptations of Macbeth (/1077/show) (pdf) Carroll (/1077/pdf)

"This same strict and most observant watch" (1.1.71): Sébastien Gregory Doran's Hamlet as Surveillance Adaptation Lefait (/1072/show) (pdf) (/1072/pdf)

A Republican Dream? — Americans Question Kim C. Shakespeare (/1031/show) (pdf) (/1031/pdf) Sturgess

S ERVICE SHAKESPEARE

E DITED BY MICHAEL P. JENSEN

"What service is here?" Exploring Service Shakespeare Michael P. (/1039/show) (pdf) (/1039/pdf) Jensen

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Macbeth Behind Bars (/1028/show) (pdf) (/1028/pdf) Yu Jin Ko

Performing A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Isabelle Homeless (and Others) in Paris (/969/show) (pdf) Schwartz- (/969/pdf) Gastine

"The World's Common Place": Leveling the Sheila T. Shakespearean Playing Field (/1054/show) (pdf) Cavanagh (/1054/pdf)

Michael The Utah Shakespeare Festival / Southern Utah University Bahr and Annual Shakespeare Competition (/1055/show) (pdf) Don (/1055/pdf) Weingust

"Teach him how to tell my story": Access at the Oregon Jim Amberg Shakespeare Festival (/957/show) (pdf) (/957/pdf)

"You speak all your part at once, cues and all": Reading Michael P. Shakespeare with Alzheimer's Disease (/1017/show) (pdf) Jensen (/1017/pdf)

The Bard's Speech: Making it Better; Shakespeare and Geoffrey M. Therapy in Film (/1015/show) (pdf) (/1015/pdf) Ridden

B OOK REVIEW

Review of Spectral Shakespeares: Media Adaptations in the Twenty-First Century, by Maurizio Calbi (/918/show) Pauline Reid (pdf) (/918/pdf)

C ONTRIBUTORS

Contributors (/1073/show) (pdf) (/1073/pdf) © Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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Shakespeare and the Ali'i Nui

(/current) THERESA M. DIPASQUALE, WHITMAN COLLEGE

ABSTRACT | ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS: KAMEHAMEHA II AND (/previous) KAMĀMALU | HAWAIIAN KING AS SPECTATOR AND PERFORMER OF SHAKESPEARE: KAMEHAMEHA IV | SHAKESPEARE AND HAWAIIAN POLITICS: KAMEHAMEHA V AND LUNALIO | CONTRASTING ALI'I (/about) APPROPRIATIONS: LUNALILO AND LILI'UOKALANI | NOTES | REFERENCES

(/archive) ABSTRACT A variety of nineteenth-century English and American texts evoke Shakespeare in descriptions of the ali'i nui, the high chiefs of Hawaii; these appropriations reveal the perspectives of haoles (Caucasian foreigners) on Hawaiian royalty and provide a point of departure for analyzing some provocative Shakespeare appropriations in the discourse of the royal Hawaiians themselves. Shakespeare allusions in texts by and about nineteenth-century Hawaiian monarchs illustrate the relationship between Hawaiian history and the English literary canon, demonstrating the ways in which the ali'i adapted European cultural commodities to indigenous uses. They also cast light on Hawaiian rulers' attempts to negotiate the American presence in Hawaii, revealing Shakespeare's place at the intersection of Hawaiian, British, and American cultural history.

When the English came to the South Pacific, Shakespeare came with them. A copy of his complete works was almost certainly on board the Endeavour when Captain James Cook made landfall in New Zealand on his first voyage (Carr 1983, 196). In the following century, travelers from Europe and the United States — missionaries, journalists, businessmen, and actors — began to interact with the inhabitants of the Pacific, including the people of Hawai'i; and throughout the 1800s, many English and American writers used images drawn from Shakespeare in their efforts to describe the ali'i nui, the Hawaiian high chiefs.1 http://borrowers.uga.edu/1760/show Page 1 of 38 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

A variety of nineteenth-century English and American texts turn to Shakespeare to describe Hawaiian royalty; these appropriations reveal some of the ways in which the haole (Caucasian foreigners) viewed the ali'i nui, including nāmō'ī and nā mō'ī wāhine (the kings and queens).2 Studying Shakespearean descriptions of the ali'i nui by British and American writers also provides a point of departure for analyzing some provocative Shakespeare appropriations in royal Hawaiian discourse: two nineteenth-century Hawaiian monarchs, Lunalilo and Lili'uokalani, used Shakespeare to fashion images of themselves, claiming England's Bard as their own and transposing his language for their own purposes.

Building upon Thomas Cartelli's richly nuanced account of Shakespeare appropriations in various post-colonial contexts, my study of these haole and ali'i texts focuses on Shakespeare quotations and allusions that characterize and either undermine or support the indigenous Hawaiian monarchy. Many blur the line between "proprietary" and the "transpositional" appropriations, to use Cartelli's terms. They are proprietary in that both haole and ali'i appropriators tend to imply their endorsement of Shakespeare as an artist; they engage in "an avowedly 'friendly' or reverential reading of the appropriated material" (Cartelli 1999, 18). For Shakespeare's language and characters were valuable commodities that functioned, within both haole and ali'i frames of reference, as marks of prestige; they were signs that could bridge or reinforce cultural and political borders, including the boundary between nineteenth-century American republicanism and the markedly English variety of constitutional monarchy that, for a time, prevailed in the Kingdom of Hawai'i. But as Cartelli points out, "Appropriations of Shakespeare are . . . the product of a host of . . . informing conditions that may be said to shape the form a given appropriation takes" (19). Seen in context, many nineteenth-century Shakespeare appropriations used in descriptions of the ali'i nui are, notwithstanding their proprietary endorsement of Shakespeare, also transpositional: that is, they relocate a Shakespearean character or theme within a new "interpretive field to underwrite or enrich a presumably related thesis or argument" (17). What makes these related theses and arguments so interesting in the case of texts by and about nineteenth-century Hawaiian monarchs is not only that they illustrate the relationship between Hawaiian history and the English literary canon, but also that they demonstrate the ways in which the ali'i adapted European cultural commodities to indigenous uses and cast light on Hawaiian rulers' attempts to negotiate the American presence in Hawaii.

Readers may respond to the encounter between Shakespeare and the ali'i nui by dismissing it as neither more nor less than an example of Shakespeare's colonizing power. The Hawaiian particularity of the kings and queens may at first seem swallowed up, either by the framing force of Shakespeare's language or by the degree to which their use of that language represents a departure from Hawaiian language and culture. This impression is not entirely false; the ali'i nui enthusiastically embraced vast quantities of non-Hawaiian culture, including European languages, fashions, manners, and ideas; their appropriations of Shakespeare are proprietary. But as Marshall Sahlins points out, http://borrowers.uga.edu/1760/show Page 2 of 38 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

"commonsense bourgeois realism, when taken as a historiographic conceit, is a kind of symbolic violence done to other times and other customs" (Sahlins 1995, 14). In order to appreciate the particularities of individual haole and ali'i allusions to Shakespeare, and the degree to which even wholeheartedly proprietary appropriations can transpose Shakespearean language to a Hawaiian "interpretive field," one must avoid such violence and carefully trace the ways in which some haole and Hawaiian appropriators "travel from their local conditions to Shakespeare, becoming, in their encounters with the texts, voyagers within foreign terrain" (Orkin 2005, 2). My goal, then, is to tell the story of how a number of very different nineteenth-century people made that voyage in a number of different ways and, in so doing, to reveal Shakespeare's place at the intersection of Hawaiian, British, and American cultural history.

The story is a complex one, without a clearly defined trajectory; but it nevertheless unfolds in four discernibly distinct parts. In the first, the early nineteenth-century King Liholiho and his queen Kamāmalu are described by English and American writers in terms that link them to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, framing them as exotic yet familiar examples of decadent royalty and positioning them as either comic or tragic examples of pagan majesty. In the second, the mid-nineteenth century Hawaiian king Alexander Liholiho becomes an Anglophile and Shakespeare aficionado, but his dignity and authority as ruler of Hawai'i are still variously undermined or reinforced by haole writers who use the language of Shakespeare to describe him or communicate with him. In the third part of the story, Americans' use of Shakespeare allusions in describing Hawaiian monarchs becomes distinctly political in character. American and American- Hawaiian journalists, writing about Kamehameha V and his successor Lunalilo, turn to Shakespeare to portray the first as a benevolent autocrat and the second as a democratic hero who will dismantle the Hawaiian monarchy, remaking Hawai'i in the image of the American republic. In each of these first three parts of the story, Shakespeare is a highly versatile commodity; appropriated Shakespearean texts provide haole writers with language and images capable of capturing their widely varying responses to Hawaiian royalty, while at the same time, a range of Shakespearean imports — from a sailing vessel with a Shakespearean name to a Shakespearean tragic identity — serve indigenous Hawaiian monarchs as desirable foreign merchandise invested with new and distinctively Hawaiian value.

But in the fourth and final part of the story, two of the ali'i nui make the transition from the consumption of Shakespearean goods to the active production of their own Shakespeare appropriations. Lunalilo (who reigned 1873-1874) and Lili'uokalani (who reigned 1891-1893) both put the language of Shakespeare to use. Both revere Shakespeare, both consider him an ally, and both use him to advance a cultural and political agenda. Most interestingly, however, the two monarchs' agendas are radically different and incompatible. Lunalilo's improvisational oral performance of Richard III advertises his blithely anti-authoritarian assimilation into an American cultural framework, while Lili'ouakalani's formal print allusion to Measure for Measure attempts http://borrowers.uga.edu/1760/show Page 3 of 38 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

— unsuccessfully, but brilliantly — to turn English cultural capital into Hawaiian mana strong enough to resist American power and restore the lost sovereignty of her beloved islands.3

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS: KAMEHAMEHA II AND KAMĀMALU The earliest recorded encounter between Shakespeare and a Hawaiian king came neither on the page nor upon the stage, but over the waves in the form of a yacht called Cleopatra's Barge.

Figure 1. George Ropes, Cleopatra's Barge (1818) This vessel, purchased by King Kamehameha II (Liholiho) in 1821, was the first pleasure yacht built in America. Constructed in 1816 in Salem, Massachusetts for the wealthy George Crowninshield, Jr., the craft was originally to be called Car of Concordia (Johnston 2002, 1-2, 20, 24).4 By the time Crowninshield embarked on a much-publicized cruise to Europe aboard his new vessel in March 1817, however, he had renamed her Cleopatra's Barge. "The reason for this was never revealed," notes naval historian Paul Forsythe Johnston, "but may have been due to a reading of some lines from Act II, scene 2 of William Shakespeare's romantic tragedy Antony and Cleopatra" (2). Johnston goes on to quote several lines from Enobarbus's famous speech describing Antony's first encounter with the Queen of Egypt: The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,

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Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. (Antony and Cleopatra, 2.2.197-203)5 While it is true that no documentary evidence is extant regarding Crowninshield's intentions, the name Cleopatra's Barge most certainly would have functioned in the early 1800s as an evocation of Enobarbus's speech. The speech is not, of course, entirely original; Shakespeare borrowed many of the images and even transcribed some words directly from North's translation of Plutarch (1579, 981-82). And Dryden reworked parts of the speech in act 3 of All For Love, placing the lines in Antony's mouth (Dryden 1678, 35). But at the time Crowninshield was choosing a name for his yacht, the Enobarbus speech was frequently included in miscellanies as a prime example of Shakespeare's eloquence, and print references to the historical Cleopatra often included the speech as though it were an accompanying illustration.6 Clearly, when Crowninshield re-christened his newly-built yacht, he could be certain that the name Cleopatra's Barge would associate him (by virtue of his new acquisition) with Shakespeare's portrait of exotic wealth and self-indulgence. And it did: Cleopatra's Barge drew crowds of gaping admirers everywhere she sailed on her maiden voyage, a six-month Mediterranean cruise. After Crowninshield's return to America and his unexpected death in November 1817, his brother bought the yacht at auction, then sold it to the owners of Bryant & Sturgis, a Boston firm. They, in turn, made plans to sell the vessel to King Liholiho of the Sandwich Islands.7

Liholiho, who reigned as Kamehameha II, was the son of Kamehameha I, a ruling chief of the island of Hawai'i who had subdued the other ali'i of his own island and — using weaponry and ships acquired from the British — conquered the chiefs of the other islands in the archipelago, uniting all of Hawai'i under his rule by the year 1810 (Kuykendall 1938-67, 1:29-51). During the reign of Liholiho, largely through the influence of his father's wife, the regent Ka'ahumanu, the kapu laws of ancient Hawaiian religion were abolished.8 After Liholiho's death, Ka'ahumanu would convert to Calvinist Christianity and promote the missionary agenda in Hawaii. But Liholiho, a hard- drinking polygamist, was less interested in religion than in luxury. His appetite for European and American goods was enormous, reflecting the traditional importance of conspicuous consumption as a key to prestige and power among the ali'i. As Marshall Sahlins puts it, "[T]he customary conflicts between the king and ranking chiefs . . . more and more appeared as demonstrations of indigenous mana in the most appropriate forms of foreign wealth . . . Trade goods were glorious extensions of sacred chiefly bodies already stretched to their organic limits" (Sahlins 1988; reprint 1994, 432, 433). Thus, when Bryant and Sturgis sent Cleopatra's Barge to the Sandwich Islands in June 1820, Liholiho agreed to buy the vessel for the enormous price of 1.07 million pounds of

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sandalwood; he took possession of the vessel on 4 January 1821. In November of the same year, Bryant and Sturgis agent Charles B. Bullard wrote to his employers, "If you want to know how Religion stands at the Islands, I can tell you — All sects are tolerated, but the King worships the Barge" (quoted in Johnston 2002, 12).

By 18 April 1822, however, "a routine overhaul" revealed that the yacht was "almost completely rotten abaft the mainmast" (Johnston 2002, 14). An English visitor, Gilbert Mathison, described the situation by casting Liholiho as an amalgam of the two title characters in Antony and Cleopatra: "She was called Cleopatra's Barge, and to catch his Sable Majesty was fitted up in a style of considerable elegance; but she had not been long in his possession, when the timbers on one side were found to be decayed" (Mathison 1825, 463). Here, Liholiho is both an Antony caught in the toils of a deceptive and inwardly corrupt beauty and a contemporary male incarnation of the queen who, in Shakespeare's tragedy, describes herself as "with Phoebus' amorous pinches black" (Antony and Cleopatra, 1.5.28). As Mathison saw it, the dusky monarch had been utterly seduced by the barge's appearance. Liholiho, however, was not content to play the dupe; making clear to the sellers that he would not pay the full amount agreed upon (although he did still make some payments after the discovery of the yacht's condition), the king ordered a complete renovation.

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Figure 2. John Hayter, Portrait of King Liholiho (Kamehameha II) When the craft was again seaworthy in May of 1823, she was renamed Ha'aheo o Hawai'i — pride of Hawaii. In bestowing a Hawaiian name upon his prized vessel, Liholiho no doubt intended to claim her definitively as his own; at any rate, discarding its American name was a way of jettisoning some troublesome cultural cargo.9

The change in the name of the king's yacht did not entirely disassociate Kamehameha II from Cleopatra, however. Near the end of the month preceding that in which he renamed the yacht — on 24 April 1823 — Liholiho began a lavish two-week festival in commemoration of his father's death and his own accession. Among the guests was Hiram Bingham, leader of the first group of ABCFM missionaries to Hawaii, who had arrived in 1820.10 In his 1847 memoirs, Bingham describes the ceremonies of 8 May, http://borrowers.uga.edu/1760/show Page 7 of 38 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

the final day of the celebration, stressing that, while European carriages and dresses, as well as Christian prayers, had been included in the opening day's events, the rites observed on the final day were "chiefly Hawaiian, quite imposing . . . and as a display of aboriginal taste and customs . . . striking and interesting." Particularly impressive was the grand entrance of "the favorite queen, Kamamalu," who was "borne in state by about seventy subjects, upon a singularly constructed carriage — whale-boat upon an extensive wicker-work scaffold of transverse poles and light spars lashed together, and supported on the heads, hands, and shoulders of a column of men in their martial dress."

Figure 3. Queen Kamamalu Carried in Procession The memory of this spectacle injects a shot of Shakespearean orientalism into Bingham's prose: Seated as a Cleopatra in the middle of the boat, having a scarlet silk robe around her waist, a coronet of brilliant feathers on her head, and a large and superb umbrella of scarlet silk, fringed and tasselled, supported over her by a warrior chief, who was girded with a scarlet girdle, and had on a lofty feathered helmet, she rode, a queen, above the heads of the admiring multitude. (Bingham 1847, 184) The author here takes for granted his readers' familiarity with images made famous by Shakespeare, including not only the feminine majesty of the boat's occupant, but the presence of a vast audience of people who "gaze on Cleopatra" (Antony and Cleopatra, 2.2.217). Bingham's reference to "the admiring multitude" is closer to North's Plutarch than to Shakespeare: the word "multitudes" — in the phrase "multitudes of people" — appears twice in North's prose account (Plutarch 1579, 981). But the relationship between storyteller and audience is the same in all three texts. Plutarch informing his

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second-century Greek readers (and, in North's translation, readers of early modern England), Enobarbus enlightening the curious Romans Agrippa and Maecenas (and, with them, the seventeenth-century London audience watching Shakespeare's play), and Bingham painting a Polynesian scene for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant readers in mid- nineteenth century America all strive to evoke, for those who have never seen such a sight, the image of a majestic queen from a dark and distant land. Like Enobarbus, Bingham presents himself as an authoritative eyewitness who "will tell you" (2.2.190) of outlandish spectacle.

As Bingham goes on to portray her in the remaining paragraphs devoted to her, Kamāmalu arguably remains a type of Cleopatra, her opulent life crowned with tragic eloquence and pathos. When she and Liholiho left Hawai'i on a voyage to England, Bingham says, the queen "distinguished herself, as she was wont to do"; in "an elevated and poetic impromptu," delivered as she embarked, she "poured forth eloquently her parting salutation — her last farewell" (Bingham 1847, 203).11

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Figure 4. John Hayter, Queen Kamamalu (1824) For Bingham, this performance epitomized what might have been, had "this noble woman . . . from her childhood been trained in the Christian religion, or had she been indulged with some years more of thorough instruction." But it was not to be; for while in London in spring 1824, the royal pair contracted measles. "By the morning of the 8th of July," Bingham reports, "the hope of the queen's recovery was abandoned. With tenderness, and many tears, the royal pair took leave of each other." Liholiho expired soon after, less than half way through the five years he had declared that it would take to "accomplish a thorough reformation in himself" and convert to Christianity. "What a lesson to the nation!" Bingham declares, "How impressively did divine wisdom show the vanity of the mirth and wine, the pomp and pride, the distinction and power, of which these departed ones, for a brief period, could once boast" (204, 259, 266-67).

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In early nineteenth-century Hawaii, then, Shakespeare appropriation worked in two contrasting, yet complementary, ways. For Liholiho, the acquisition of an American yacht with a Shakespearean name and its conversion into Ha'aheo o Hawai'i, was an accumulation and display of Anglo-American goods that substantially increased his mana. For Hiram Bingham, the portrayal of Kamāmalu as a doomed yet noble Cleopatra was a means of establishing his own authority, both as an eyewitness to exotic alien culture and — more surprisingly — as a New England Calvinist interpreter of Shakespeare's most spectacularly decadent tragedy.

HAWAIIAN KING AS SPECTATOR AND PERFORMER OF SHAKESPEARE: KAMEHAMEHA IV While in London, Liholiho and Kamāmalu were taken to the New Theatre Royal in Drury Lane; the production they viewed from the Royal Box was an Orientalist fantasy, William Moncrieff's melodrama Zoroaster, presented on the same bill with the opera Rob Roy Macgregor.12

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Figure 5. King Liholiho and Queen Kamamalu at Drury Lane Theatre (1824) It is unlikely that Kamehameha II ever saw or read a Shakespeare play. Twenty-five years after Liholiho's death, however, on 26 December 1849, two members of the Hawaiian royal family were again present for a play in London's Drury Lane: a performance of The Merchant of Venice. The theater-goers were fifteen-year-old Prince Alexander Liholiho (the nephew, adopted son, and heir-designate of Kamehameha III) and his eighteen-year-old brother Lot (who would reign as Kamehameha V after Alexander's death). They had left Hawai'i in September 1849 with the American-born Dr. Gerrit P. Judd, Kamehameha III's most trusted adviser. Judd was on a diplomatic mission to the United States, Great Britain, and France, and was combining his official duties with a grand tour for the two princes, so that they might acquire "knowledge and experience of the world and of courts" (Adler 1967, ix-x).13 The young men had been educated at the Chiefs' Children's School, an institution set up by Kamehameha III to educate the next generation of ali'i (Kanahele 1999, 23-27).

Having voyaged first to San Francisco, they had crossed the isthmus of Panama by boat and ground transport, then sailed up the Atlantic coast to New York, where they stayed a few days before embarking for London via Halifax.

Figure 6. Prince Alexander Liholiho with Dr. Jerritt P. Judd and Prince Lot

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In the English-language journal that he kept throughout his journey, Alex (as he was called) recorded his impressions of the Drury Lane performance. Though the prince does not mention that the play on the program was Merchant of Venice, he does note, " [I] was much pleased with the Pantomimes. But I liked the Drama better than anything else I saw" (Kamehameha IV 1967, 30). In his appreciation for the Shakespeare play, the royal Polynesian teenager was demonstrating sophistication not much in evidence at Drury Lane on the night he was present, for according to the Times of London, Shakespeare's comedy was ignored by the majority of the audience, "a set of jovial souls, determined not to hear a word of the play, but to reserve all their attention for the pantomime." According to the Times report, the only portion of Merchant that the audience "consented to hear" was the trial scene; the crowd was much more receptive toward Harlequin and Good Queen Bess, a "pompous caricature" featuring one "Mr. R. Romer" in the role of Elizabeth ("The Christmas Pantomimes" 1849).

Prince Alexander's remark that he was "pleased with the Pantomimes" indicates that he was not offended by the English tendency to make light of crowned heads. What did anger him was the taste of American racism he got during his extended stay in the United States after returning from France and England.14 Alexander Liholiho came home to Hawaii, then, having developed a strong preference for British Victorian mores and cultural tendencies. He ascended the throne as Kamehameha IV in 1855 and, in 1856, married Emma Rooke, who had both Hawaiian and British blood: her Hawaiian ancestors were very high-ranking ali'i nui, and her maternal grandfather was John Young, an Englishman who had been the adviser of Kamehameha I. Emma had, in keeping with ali'i custom, been raised as the hānai (adopted) daughter of a prominent couple other than her birth parents: in Emma's case, an English physician named Thomas Rooke and his wife, Emma's maternal aunt Grace Kama'iku'i Young Rooke. Like her husband, Emma had been educated at the Chiefs' Children's School. The couple married in an Anglican ceremony, and in 1862, Alexander established a new branch of the Anglican Communion — the Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church — as Hawai'i's national church. The king himself translated the Book of Common Prayer into Hawaiian (Kanahele 1999, 1-7, 23-40, 62, 145-55).15 Thomas Nettleship Staley, the first Anglican Bishop of Honolulu, would describe him as a man of "elegant tastes . . . who could enjoy Kingsley, Thackeray, Tennyson, and was ever quoting Shakespeare" (quoted in Hopkins 1866, 446).

A number of Shakespearean anecdotes and allusions cluster about the reign of this most Anglophilic Hawaiian monarch.

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Figure 7. King Kamehameha IV Examining these against the backdrop of Honolulu theater history provides a sense of how deeply invested the ali'i had become, by the late 1850s and early 1860s, in specifically British constructions of royalty. Such an investigation also demonstrates how the scope and dignity of royal Hawaiian power were qualified in American discourse during the mid- to late nineteenth century and beyond. Most intriguing of all, Shakespeare allusions made in connection with the king of Hawai'i during this period reveal the degree to which Shakespeare continued to serve as a powerful source of what Marshall Sahlins (discussing the appetite for foreign commodities among the ali'i of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries) has called "European mana" — haole goods, customs, and behaviors that conveyed a specifically Hawaiian kind of power upon their possessors within a Hawaiian context, while at the same time marking them as "civilized" in the eyes of British and American observers (Sahlins 1981, 26, 31). http://borrowers.uga.edu/1760/show Page 14 of 38 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

Very shortly after Alexander Liholiho's accession in 1855, while the kingdom was still in mourning for the new king's predecessor, the soon-to-be famous actor Edwin Booth came to Honolulu on his way home back to San Francisco after a performance tour in Australia.16 According to an 1882 account by Edwin's sister Asia Booth Clarke, Alexander Liholiho went to some trouble to see Booth perform Shakespeare: The king of the Sandwich Islands had lately died, and, the court being in mourning, his successor was unable to attend the theatre publicly; but expressing a desire to witness Booth's production of Richard III., his Majesty was accommodated behind the scenes. The arm-chair used for the stage-throne was placed at the wing, with Edwin's theatrical robe thrown over it, and the king seated himself upon it; his escort, who were a Frenchman and a huge Kanaka, the latter wearing a military jacket, white trousers, and a long sword, stood by his side. Edwin was compelled to trouble the king for the throne in the coronation scene, and his Majesty good- naturedly stood until it was returned for his use. Kamehameha IV. was an educated gentleman, speaking English fluently; he told Edwin that when he was a little boy he had seen the elder Booth perform Richard III at the Chatham Theatre in New York. (Clarke 1882, 141) This narrative provides a view of the Hawaiian monarch as non-threatening in his westernized accomplishments and tastes; his behavior blends cultural gravitas (strong interest in Shakespeare and mastery of English) with down-to-earth good humor American audiences would be sure to appreciate: what could be better than a royal personage who gives up his throne when politely asked to do so, even while watching a play about ruthless ambition and the bloody history of the English monarchy? The image of the king flanked on one side by a European and on the other by a "huge" indigenous man armed with a European weapon might, in another context, have made him appear either dangerous or ridiculous. But positioned as it is within the account of Kamehameha IV as Shakespeare enthusiast, it casts the king as an urbane participant in an amusingly choreographed history play.

Interestingly, when Montrose J. Moses recounts the same events in a 1906 book, he adopts a relatively mocking and dismissive post-annexation perspective. As Moses tells it, the king was "loath to let his subjects find him at a place of amusement. So he sat behind the scenes on Richard's throne, watching the three-hours' traffic of the stage, and was ignominiously deposed whenever the throne was wanted as a stage property" (Moses 1906, 41). Gone is Clarke's hint of regret at impropriety ("Edwin was compelled to trouble the king"); gone is the Hawaiian monarch's polite cooperation; gone is the very specific explanation that the king had to stand only once, for the "coronation scene," as well as the information about the king's education and theatrical sophistication. Instead, the reader is treated to a joke at the expense of an "amusement"- seeking native chief who hides his frivolous activities from his own subjects, whose only throne is a "stage property," and who can be popped out of it repeatedly on cue.17

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Booth's 1855 Richard III was by no means the first Shakespeare staged in Honolulu. In early March 1834, a group calling itself the Oahu Amateur Theatre had mounted its first production (James Kenney's farce Raising the Wind) at the palace of Kamehameha III; shortly afterward, performing at Major Warren's Hotel, they had presented several Shakespeare vignettes: the final scene of Othello on the evening of 3 April, with the final scene of Hamlet and act 2, scene 7 of As You Like It following on 1 May (Hoyt 1961, 14-15). The first fully-equipped theater building in Honolulu, The Thespian, opened for its inaugural performance on the evening of 11 September 1847, with Kamehameha III seated in the royal box (The Polynesian 1847, 70-71). And by 1853-54, an actor named William St. Maur was performing scenes from Hamlet at the Honolulu theaters built after the Thespian had burned down: the Varieties and the Royal Hawaiian. Journalist John F. Thrum recalled hearing that St. Maur had "created quite a sensation in the dress circle of the Varieties one night while playing the Ghost of Hamlet's Father, and nearly scaring the life out of the first Mrs. A. P. Everett, who was so overcome that she was carried out of the theatre in a swoon" (Thrum [1882] 1905, 98).

Given Victorian-era theatrical practice, the Shakespeare productions audiences saw in mid-nineteenth century Hawai'i were often partial and modified versions. A broadside advertising an evening's entertainment at the Royal Hawaiian on 10 December 1853, for example, announces that "a selection of scenes will be performed from Shakespeare's | sublime Tragedy of | HAMLET | Including the celebrated | Ghost and Closet scenes." A February 1856 Royal Hawaiian production of "Shakespeare's beautiful Comedy in 3 Acts, of | KATHERINE & PETRUCHIO! | or, the | Taming of the Shrew" is clearly Garrick's adaptation (Forbes 2001, Items 1960 and 2190).18 And when Edwin Booth performed Richard III in Honolulu, the audience was seeing Colley Cibber's version of the play (1700), which includes bits and pieces from the Henry VI plays, as well as original material scripted by Cibber, such as the famous non-Shakespearean line, "Off with his head. So much for Buckingham" (Spencer, ed. 1965, 331).

Another well-known Cibber innovation is a line that Richard speaks as he emerges from the agony of self-doubt brought on by his ominous dreams on the eve of battle; in answer to a retainer's reproachful warning, "Be more yourself, my lord," Cibber's Richard declares, "Richard's himself again" (Spencer, ed. 1965, 339). This line, which Kamehameha IV had heard performed by Booth in 1855, would return to haunt the king during a tragic episode of his own reign a few years later. In early September, 1859, Alexander Liholiho "heard . . . idle and malicious" rumors involving a breach of propriety on the part of his private secretary, Henry Neilson, and Queen Emma. Brooding, the king drank himself into an alcoholic haze, acquired a pistol, sought Neilson out, and without a word, shot him at point blank range. The bullet passed through Neilson's body and, miraculously, he survived. Sober again, the king realized that "his suspicions of Neilson and the queen were without any merit" and "was so filled with guilt and remorse that he decided to abdicate." Rumors swirled; the papers were filled with reports and editorials, some supporting the king and others hostile toward http://borrowers.uga.edu/1760/show Page 16 of 38 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

him; the members of the privy counsel had all they could do to talk him out of his plan to relinquish the throne (Kanahele 1999, 112, 113, 114-24).

When Alexander at last decided that he would not abdicate, Robert C. Wyllie (a Scotsman who was Hawaii's Minister of Foreign Affairs and one of the king's closest friends) drew on both the spirit of Scottish Romanticism and Cibber's version of Shakespeare to advise the monarch on how to proceed: "I wish to direct your mind from brooding over one overpowering Idea," he wrote, "Let that idea be gone for ever; let 'Richard be himself again' . . . [let] the breaking up of the government never be again pronounced" (Private correspondence, 27 September 1859; quoted in Kanahele 1999, 115-16). Wyllie's choice of allusions here sends a richly mixed message. On the one hand, the distraught king is to identify with Richard on the eve of his fatal battle, a beleaguered tragic hero for whom the pangs of conscience are an unaffordable luxury. On the other, he is to see himself as suffering from a condition to which only a supremely sensitive feminine being would be subject. For the italicized phrase "one overpowering Idea," while appearing in many a work of fiction, here is probably an allusion to the heroine of the popular 1815 novel Clan-Albin: A National Tale, by Scottish novelist Christian Isobel Johnstone.19 The strong but deeply emotional Flora, informed that her husband has been killed, feels grief wash over her as "one overpowering Idea" almost insupportable in its intensity.20 Wyllie's two allusions — to Cibber's Shakespeare and to Johnstone's novel — are seemingly incompatible. Yet they send the guilt-stricken king the message he needs to hear: though he has all the exquisite sensitivity of a Romantic heroine, he must not indulge it; like the Richard of Cibber's play and like the flamboyant Shakespearean hero-villain who inspired him, he must hold the course. The projection of a strong and unyielding image is essential to the maintenance of sovereignty.

Wyllie's allusion to Richard III was all the more powerful in that it provided the Hawaiian king with a royal English alternative to the Shakespearean role assigned him by one of his enemies, an American merchant named Gorham Gilman. Writing in the Honolulu newspaper The Friend, Gilman had held forth on his view: It seems almost impossible to believe that the King could have any real distrust of the Queen . . . her whole life and character from childhood was against any cause for such a thought . . . Some evil demon, some devilish Iago must have distilled some damnable poison into the King's mind to have caused him to commit such an insane act! (quoted in Kanahele 1999, 122-23)21 Gilman's remarks cast Alexander Liholiho as Othello, pathetically susceptible to the insinuations of a malevolent whisperer. Like Othello, the king is all too willing to believe he has been cuckolded by a trusted white retainer. It is no wonder, then, that despite the ominous implications of Wyllie's letter, which encourages the king to press on like Richard III on the eve of his defeat and thus does not presume to suggest that all will be well, Kamehameha IV followed Wyllie's advice. In nineteenth-century Hawaii, it http://borrowers.uga.edu/1760/show Page 17 of 38 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

may well have seemed preferable to the Anglophilic Alexander Liholiho to follow the example of a doomed English king rather than be cast as the gullible dark-skinned victim of "some devilish Iago."

SHAKESPEARE AND HAWAIIAN POLITICS: KAMEHAMEHA V AND LUNALIO Kamehameha IV having established a version of Hawaiian kingship strongly reminiscent of the British monarchy, late nineteenth-century American appropriations of Shakespeare in descriptions of Hawaiian kings begin to reflect Americans' ambivalence toward monarchic government. No one put the Bard to work more effectively in allusions of this sort than Mark Twain, who was gaining notoriety in America as a deeply scathing, frequently hilarious, and always informative journalist. Writing letters from Hawai'i during his 1866 visit to the islands as a reporter for the Sacramento Union, Twain used Shakespeare at several points, often to satirical effect.22 Surprisingly, however, he also applied Shakespearean touches to a sympathetic portrait of Alexander Liholiho's brother and successor, Lot, who ruled as Kamehameha V from 1863 to 1872. Notwithstanding his low opinion of monarchy in general, Twain judged Lot to be attractively unpretentious and conscientious (Twain 1979, 54-55).23 "Some people in California have an idea," Twain notes, that the King of the Sandwich Islands is a man who spends his time idling about the town of Honolulu with individuals of questionable respectability, and drinking habitually and to excess. This impression is wrong. Before he ascended the throne, he was "faster" than was well for him or for his good name, but, like the hero of Agincourt, he renounced his bad habits and discarded his Falstaffs when he became King, and since that time has conducted himself as becomes his high position. He attends closely to his business, makes no display, does not go about much, and in manners and habits is a thorough gentleman. (Twain 1979, 121-22)

This passage from Twain's letter of 23 May 1866 invites American readers to revise their notions of dissipated native chiefs and to view Kamehameha V through a Shakespearean lens. Once a playboy Hal, Lot has become the Henry V of Shakespeare's Henry V: a king as famous for his dramatic self-reformation as for his military exploits; a king even a no-nonsense American can love; a king who not only rejects vice, but wins the undying loyalty of the common man in the "band of brothers" speech that makes the "hero of Agincourt" so memorable. Twain had no illusions, however, about Kamehameha V's authoritarian approach to rule; in the same letter, he tells of how the king rejected Hawaii's 1852 constitution, which savored strongly of American republicanism, and — in 1864, after a constitutional convention failed to produce a new document to his liking — simply put in place a constitution of his own making that greatly strengthened the power of the monarchy. "But," Twain concludes, "he uses his vast authority wisely and well" (Twain 1979, 106-107).24

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did not endear him to the group of American haole residents who would eventually bring about the demise of monarchy in Hawaii. This faction, often referred to as the "missionary party" because its members were grandchildren of the American missionaries who had come to Hawai'i in the 1820s, was delighted when — Lot having died without issue and having failed to name his successor — he was succeeded by his dissipated but witty cousin, Prince William Charles Lunalilo.

Lunalilo's path to the throne was distinctly democratic.

Figure 8. King Lunalilo When Kamehameha V died childless in 1872, there were several people who might have succeeded him. The 1864 constitution provided, if the reigning monarch had not named a successor, for the Hawaiian legislature to elect the new king or queen, choosing from among the eligible ali'i nui. This group included a number of women descended from

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Kamehameha I, including the dowager Queen Emma (the widow of Kamehameha IV), Bernice Pauahi Bishop (Lot's hānai sister), and Ruth Ke'elikōlani. But Lot did not think Ruth (a Hawaiian traditionalist who knew English well but would speak only Hawaiian) fit for the position, and the other two had no desire to rule. Of the remaining candidates, Lunalilo arguably had the strongest blood claim to the throne, his mother having been a niece and step-daughter of Kamehameha I; he was, moreover, the preferred choice of the "missionary party" because of his willingness to democratize the government, which contrasted strongly with the leanings of his principal rival, David Kalākaua, who favored a strong monarchy and a return to native Hawaiian cultural traditions. Lunalilo was the people's darling and thus won the popular vote, which preceded the official ballot in the legislature, by an overwhelming majority; the legislature, having no desire to antagonize the prince's many supporters, confirmed the popular vote and declared him king.

In a February 1873 editorial, Honolulu's American missionary newspaper, The Friend (which had published Gorham Gilman's disparaging remarks about Kamehameha IV as an "insane" Othello) exulted over the triumph of Lunalilo: The events occurring during the month of January, 1873, will form a most important chapter in Hawaiian history. The month opened with a noteworthy and unheard of thing in Hawaiian annals. At the call of a Prince aspiring to the throne, the legal voters throughout the Kingdom . . . cast over twelve thousand votes for him who has since been enthusiastically proclaimed the King of the Hawaiian Islands. Such a triumphant expression of the popular will would be worthy of record even in a Republican form of government. The minds of the King and his subjects are harmonious. His Majesty is reported to have said that he wanted his Government as Republican as would be consistent with the existence of Monarchical and Constitutional forms. If the sovereigns of some older and more populous nations than Hawai'i had manifested equal confidence in the people and the justice of their claims to the throne, there would not have been the ground for the oft-quoted saying of Shakespeare: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." A sovereign ruler supported by the will of the people may dismiss his soldiers to till the ground and his courtiers to seek their livelihood in some useful employment more dignified than that of obsequious and sycophantic attendance at Court. Hereafter we hope the will of the people may find free expression under this King, or whoever may be his successor in office . . . When a sovereign asks the people to place the crown upon his head, it is an acknowledgement that political power emanates from the people. (The Friend 1873, 12) In a self-consciously "Republican" appropriation of Shakespeare, the editorial advocates a form of kingship that bears no resemblance to the ideas of rule with which the late- Elizabethan audience of Shakespeare's history plays would have been familiar, and it http://borrowers.uga.edu/1760/show Page 20 of 38 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

implicitly rejects a similar Hawaiian definition of kingly duty according to which the ali'i nui are higher beings born to function as caretakers of their people. This definition had prevailed during the reign of Kamehameha V and would, after Lunalilo, be central to Kalākaua's and Lili'uokalani's ideas of rule.25 But The Friend — no friend to monarchy — puts Shakespeare's line to use in a way that undermines such paternalistic beliefs.

Indeed, the appropriation of Shakespeare here is, while strongly proprietary, at the same time audaciously transpositional; for the editorial drastically distorts the philosophy of kingship that King Henry's remark conveys in its original context in order to advance the American-Hawaiian agenda. As The Friend sees it, a crowned head lies uneasily because it embodies an unsound institution, a despotic system in which able-bodied men serve as the king's armed guards rather than as productive farmers and in which the sovereign is surrounded by "obsequious and sycophantic" courtiers who lack any notion of gainful employment. The monarch's slumbers are disturbed because his power relies upon the support of these parasites, and he lives in constant fear lest the people, realizing the corruptions of the ruling class, rise up to overthrow him. But in Henry IV, Part Two, the famous concluding line of Henry IV's act 3, scene 1 soliloquy has nothing to do with fear of the common man; Shakespeare's ailing ruler feels that he bears a weight of which the people can have no notion. He is threatened by the nobles who, having helped him acquire the crown he plucked from the brow of Richard II, now resent his exercise of sovereignty over them. The aging usurper who ponders the challenges posed by these rebellious lords is in no way at odds with the commons; indeed, as Henry tells his son, Prince Hal, in Henry IV, Part One, his meteoric rise was in part a function of his popular appeal.

It is such popularity that The Friend assumes will allow King Lunalio to rest easy, confident in his own security. Having come to the throne through means the editors deem sufficiently "Republican," he need not fear. But the advantage gained by a sovereign like Lunalilo, the editorial goes on to say, is not so much that he can govern without anxiety, as that he can divest himself of military power and courtly dignity: that is, that he can be a king in name only, abandoning all vestiges of royal prerogative. In short, The Friend hints, Lunalilo is just the man to preside over the demise of the Hawaiian monarchy. The editorial proved prophetic: though the anti-monarchists would have to wait twenty more years before the last mō'ī wahine, Lili'uokalani, would be overthrown, the reign of "the People's King" was the beginning of the end for ali'i rule.26

CONTRASTING ALI'I APPROPRIATIONS: LUNALILO AND LILI'UOKALANI Two very different appropriations of Shakespeare texts in the discourse of King Lunalilo and Queen Lili'uokalani complete the unfolding story of Shakespeare and the ali'i nui, demonstrating the very different routes these two indigenous rulers took in "travel[ling]

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from their local conditions to Shakespeare" (Orkin 2005, 2). For each, Shakespeare remained a foreign commodity with particular value in a Hawaiian context. But for Lunalilo, the value involved the establishment of a democratic persona that would appeal to American-Hawaiian observers by reinforcing their notions of themselves as champions of freedom, while in Lili'uokalani's hands, Shakespeare became a means of challenging that familiar American self-image.

As king, Lunalilo was "seriously hampered in the exercise of his duties by two handicaps — chronic alcoholism and pulmonary tuberculosis" (Korn 1958, 305). It was the latter that eventually killed him, but the former seems not to have prevented him from attaining a reputation as a superb performer: a composer, singer, and raconteur of consummate wit and panache. Stories of his personal magnetism abound. In his 1885 memoirs, the German-born actor Daniel Edward Bandmann says that Lunalilo was "a man of excessive fun and merriment of soul" who "hated intensely conventionality in manners." Once, when Kamehameha V was late for a banquet, Bandmann notes, the prince "rose and said: 'Gentlemen, we will wait no longer for the king; we will let the band play, "God Save the King"; and, if his majesty does not appear during that time, we will let the band play, "God d— the king"'" (Bandmann 1886, 279, 281).

To Bandmann's jolly portrait may be added the specifically Shakespearean anecdotes provided by others. Lunalilo's Attorney-General, A. Francis Judd, recalled in an 1891 biographical sketch of the king that he had been so notoriously irresponsible as a young man that his father had petitioned the courts to keep him under guardianship even after he came of age and had confined his income to a small allowance. "When his allowance was paid him," Judd says, "he invested it in drink and when intoxicated, rioted in low company. Nothing pleased him more when in such a state, than to have about him a crowd, to whom he could quote Shakespeare . . . He was reverenced and loved by the Hawaiians, for he was the most democratic, loveable prince that could be imagined — a very 'Prince Hal'" (Judd 1936, 38).

The young monarch-to-be is also described in the journal of Lady Jane Franklin, who visited Hawai'i in the spring of 1861: Prince William Lunalilo . . . is a young man of about 24 yrs of age of remarkable talent, good-looking, well-read & of very gentleman-like manners, understanding & speaking English better even than his own language, but with all this hopelessly given to drink, & lost to all the promise of his earlier years . . . This young prince was a great admirer of Shakespeare, & used when in a state of undue excitement to go about the city on horseback, gathering the people about him at the corners of the streets & reciting passages from his plays. (quoted in Korn 1958, 305-306) This account of Lunalio as equestrian street-performer is filled out with more specific detail by Helena G. Allen, whose 1983 book The Betrayal of Liliuokalani is not systematically annotated, but is based largely on Allen's extensive conversations with

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Queen Lili'uokalani's hānai daughter, Lydia K. Aholo. The book includes many stories about Lili'uokalani's contemporaries, including her school-mate and erstwhile love interest, Lunalilo. In his youth, Allen explains, Lunalilo was known as "Prince Bill," having taken his "democratic" name of "Prince Bill" from his Christian name of William. "Prince Bill" suited him. He was vibrant, eager, enthusiastic toward life, in a word, joyous; his greatest love was music and Shakespeare. Astride his horse, he rode through the streets of Honolulu, greeting everyone, haole and Hawaiian alike, alii or commoner. "My kingdom for a horse!" was his favorite Shakespearean cry. And quite appropriately, for he had no kingdom, and he loved his horse! (Allen 1982, 76) Allen's account is at least third hand: Lydia Aholo, who is her source for many of the stories she tells, was not born until 1878, four years after the death of Lunalio, and was in her nineties when Allen recorded her stories of Lili'uokalani's youth. But the portrait of Lunalilo in this passage rings true, and his performance of a light-hearted Richard III is particularly fascinating. No tragic warrior-villain, the horse-seeking Richard of Lunalio is a raucous young roisterer, happy to exchange a kingdom not yet his for the pleasure of mounting a fine, prancing steed. He has not a care in the world, and he cares not a fig for power or the burdens of rule. Just as he is "Prince Bill," so his version of the Bard is Bill Shakespeare, stage magician, inventor of memorable lines, patron saint of toastmasters, supremely middlebrow entertainer.27 Lunalilo's populist Shakespeare anticipates later, more radical Hawaiian "local" appropriations of the "Bard," such as James Grant Benton's 1974 pidgin adaptation of Twelfth Night, Twelf Nite o Wateva! (1983) and Troy Apostol's 2010 production of Julius Caesar at the Hawa'i'i Shakespeare Festival, which was set in ancient Hawaii, incorporated mele (chant) and hula, and featured actors wielding ancient Hawaiian weapons.28

Lunalilo died of tuberculosis after just over a year as monarch. He was succeeded by the man he had defeated in the 1873 election: David Kalākaua, a strongly committed Hawaiian traditionalist who ruled from February 1874 to January 1891. But Kalākaua's reign was disrupted by the interference of the haole missionary party, which in 1887 forced him to sign the "Bayonet Constitution," severely reducing the power of the monarchy and restricting the voting rights of the native Hawaiian population (see Kuykendall 1938-67, 3:366-72). With the 1893 overthrow of Kalākaua's sister and successor, Lili'uokalani, and the annexation of the Hawaiian islands by the United States in 1898, both the monarchy and Hawaii's independence came to an end.

Lili'uokalani's memoir Hawaii's Story, by Hawaii's Queen was published in 1898 as the annexation of Hawai'i by the United States was about to be signed into law by President McKinley.

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Figure 9. Queen Lili'uokalani Midway through the book, Lili'uokalani describes her predecessor's vision of Hawaiian monarchy; in doing so, she reveals her understanding of her own role as queen and prepares her intended audience of American readers to understand what she believes should be the relationship between their powerful democracy and the sovereign Kingdom of Hawai'i: If he [Kalākaua] believed in the divine right of kings, and the distinctions of hereditary nobility, it was not alone from the prejudices of birth and native custom, but because he was able to perceive that even the most enlightened nations of the earth have not as yet been able to replace them with a ruling class equally able, patriotic, or disinterested. I say this with all reverence for the form of government and the social order existing in the United States, whose workings have, for more

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than a century, excited the interest of the world . . . Kalākaua's highest and most earnest desire was to be a true sovereign, the chief servant of a happy, prosperous, and progressive people . . . He was rightly jealous of his prerogatives, because they were responsibilities which no civic body in his kingdom could safely undertake to administer. (Liliuokalani 1898, 370-71)29 Lili'uokalani here describes not only her late brother, but herself; the self-portrait that emerges from her pointedly-titled memoir makes clear that she shares Kalākaua's beliefs and refuses to relinquish her identity as Hawaii's Queen.

Though that identity is in many ways compatible with the idea of anointed monarchy that haunts the usurpers and tyrants of Shakespeare's history plays, the Shakespeare allusion Lili'uokalani employs in her book does not at first seem designed to bolster her monarchic authority. Instead, she quotes a passage from Measure for Measure in which a subaltern character protests against tyrannical rule, and she casts the American press in the role of abusive overlord: . . . [T]he native people of Hawaii are entirely faithful to their own chiefs, and are deeply attached to their own customs and mode of government; . . . they either do not understand, or bitterly oppose, the scheme of annexation. As a native Hawaiian, reared and educated in close intimacy with the present rulers of the Islands and their families, with exceptional opportunities for studying both native and foreign character, it is easy for me to detect the purpose of each line and word in the annexation treaty, and even to distinguish the man originating each portion of it. I had prepared biographical sketches and observations upon the mental structure and character of the most interested advocates of this measure. They have not refrained from circulating most vile and baseless slanders against me; and, as public men, they seemed to me open to public discussion. But my publishers have flatly declined to print this matter, as possibly it might be construed as libellous. And just here let me say that I have felt much perplexity over the attitude of the American press, that great vehicle of information for the people, in respect of Hawaiian affairs. Shakespeare has said it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant. It is not merely that, with few exceptions, the press has seemed to favor the extinction of Hawaiian sovereignty, but that it has often treated me with coarse allusions and flippancy, and almost uniformly has commented upon me adversely, or has declined to publish letters from myself and friends conveying correct information upon matters which other correspondents had . . . misrepresented . . . Possibly the press was not conscious of how cruelly it was exerting its strength, and will try, I now trust, to repair the injury. (Liliuokalani 1898, 369-71) Lili'uokalani's critique of the American press is intensely topical, taking its emotional energy from the onslaught of current events, but the point is conveyed in Shakespearean

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terms, as she ventriloquizes the supremely chaste and sternly rigid virgin Isabella from Measure for Measure.

Isabella speaks the line Lili'uokalani quotes during her first interview with the puritanical Angelo, who — acting as deputy to the absent Duke, and carrying out the Duke's orders that he should revitalize Vienna's long un-enforced sex laws — has condemned Isabella's brother to death for impregnating his fiancée before marriage. Isabella, a novice nun who abhors sexual sin, is reluctant to plead for her brother's life, but ends up doing so with such grace that the straight-laced Angelo falls in lust with her and attempts to extort sex from her in return for her brother's life. Before there is any hint of Angelo's desire for Isabella, however, her argument to him addresses the lack of precedent for such draconian law and the idea that power can easily be abused: So you must be the first that gives this sentence, And he that suffers. O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant. (Measure for Measure, 2.2.108-111) Recontextualizing the line that Lili'uokalani quotes from this speech makes clear that the queen's choice of Isabella as her Shakespearean mouthpiece is heavily fraught with meaning.30 As a woman and a private individual confronting the man who has been placed in a position of supreme civic authority and who has the power of life and death over her brother, Isabella does not hesitate to use her rhetorical skills to comment on the public sphere. Lili'uokalani has been removed from that sphere by force; she does not, like Isabella, desire to withdraw from the world into the realm of cloistered virtue. But having been forced into the position of a private individual, she is no less willing than Shakespeare's icy heroine to define tyranny and speak truth to power. That Isabella addresses a deputy who has been vested with the absolute authority of the absent duke, while Lili'uokalani addresses the American press as the voice of a supposedly democratic society, only reinforces the queen's irony. Only in their gigantic strength are editors and publishers like monarchs; but if they use that strength to abuse the disempowered, to crush the weak, and to trample on the small, they resemble the worst of monarchs.

They also resemble a sexual predator intent on possessing a pure and sexually unavailable woman. For in Measure for Measure, it is not so much Isabella's eloquence as her inaccessible virgin beauty that pierces Angelo's resolve and turns his self- righteousness into shameless self-indulgence. In casting the American press in the role of a powerful man who attempts to coerce a vulnerable virgin into surrendering her body, Lili'uokalani hints that there is an element of sexual assault in her enemies' use of "vile and baseless slanders" and "coarse allusions" in attacking her; what is more, she suggests that the imminent seizure of Hawai'i by the United States is a form of rape.

The queen's Shakespearean critique of the press appears near the conclusion of her

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book's final chapter; only nine brief paragraphs follow the one in which it appears. Prevented by her publishers' double standard from naming names, she uses these paragraphs to describe the members of the American-Hawaiian "annexationist party" in the aggregate, stressing their sense of privilege and warning that bringing them into the American polity through annexation may be dangerous for the United States, since "these men are anything but ideal citizens for a democracy" and will stop at nothing to retain their power (Liliuokalani 1898, 371). Even more boldly, she attempts to convince readers who see themselves as freedom-loving Americans that annexation will destroy the very essence of the United States: "Is the American Republic of States to degenerate, and become a colonizer and a land-grabber? . . . There is little question but that the United States could become a successful rival of the European nations in the race for conquest, and could create a vast military and naval power, if such is its ambition. But is such an ambition laudable? Is such a departure from its established principles patriotic or politic?" (372).31

With these questions, the queen begins a transition from political discourse into the language of prophecy. In doing so, she deepens and complicates her allusion to Measure for Measure; for in that play, Isabella follows up her image of the tyrannous giant with a fiery, prayerful sermon: Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would never be quiet, For every pelting petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder, nothing but thunder. Merciful heaven, Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak Than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As makes the angels weep . . . (2.2.113-25) Isabella speaks in this passage with the power of a prophet authorized by God to castigate the presumption of "proud man." Similarly, Lili'uokalani sees herself as the holder of a sacred trust who can and must prophesy. She thus concludes her appeal to the American public by making an explicit appeal to their shared Christian beliefs and warning that they will answer to God if they turn a deaf ear to her plea: Oh, honest Americans, as Christians hear me for my down-trodden people! Their form of government is as dear to them as yours is precious to you. Quite as warmly as you love your country, so they love theirs. With all your goodly possessions, covering a territory so immense that there yet remain parts unexplored, possessing

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islands that, although near at hand, had to be neutral ground in time of war, do not covet the little vineyard of Naboth's, so far from your shores, lest the punishment of Ahab fall upon you, if not in your day, in that of your children, for "be not deceived, God is not mocked." The people to whom your fathers told of the living God, and taught to call "Father," and whom the sons now seek to despoil and destroy, are crying aloud to Him in their time of trouble; and He will keep His promise, and will listen to the voices of His Hawaiian children lamenting for their homes. It is for them that I would give the last drop of my blood; it is for them that I would spend, nay, am spending, everything belonging to me. Will it be in vain? It is for the American people and their representatives in Congress to answer these questions. As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler of all nations deal with the grand and glorious nation of the United States of America. (Liliuokalani 1898, 373-74) The first explicit biblical reference in this passage is to 1 Kings 21, in which King Ahab covets the vineyard of his subject Naboth, who will not sell it to him because it is "the inheritance of [his] fathers"; when Ahab's evil wife Jezebel has Naboth executed on false charges of blasphemy, the king is able to seize the dead man's property, but God sends the prophet Elijah to tell Ahab that he will be punished for this outrage: "Thus saith the LORD, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine." The message of the vineyard story is summed up in Lili'uokalani's direct quotation of Galatians 6:7, where St. Paul cautions that "God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." But both of the queen's explicit allusions are closely related to Jesus' dictum from the Sermon on the Mount: "[W]ith what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" (Matthew 7:2). This is the biblical text evoked by the title of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and by the Duke's lines at 5.1.404-405 of that play.32

As the deliverer of this biblical and Shakespearean message, Queen Lili'uokalani completes her complex allusion to Measure for Measure, a distinctively royal and specifically Hawaiian appropriation that depends upon and illustrates not only her knowledge of Shakespeare, but also her sacred authority as Hawai'i's queen. Though it fails to save Hawai'i from annexation, the impassioned prose of the deposed mō'ī wahine effectively taps into the power of a Shakespeare play, redirecting the flow of English literary mana to cast a dark shadow over the United States' presence in the South Pacific.

The story of Shakespeare and the ali'i nui, which begins with the importation of an opulent American yacht called Cleopatra's Barge and ends with Lili'uokalani's attempt to keep the forces of American expansionism at bay, is a tale with several familiar character types and plot developments. In many places and times, members of the elite among a colonized people have appropriated Shakespeare, along with other European http://borrowers.uga.edu/1760/show Page 28 of 38 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

cultural commodities, both in proprietary texts that establish them as civilized in the eyes of westerners and in texts that transpose Shakespeare's language, placing it into the service of indigenous resistance.33 The encounter between Shakespeare and Hawaiian royalty is unusual, however, in the degree to which the ali'i nui make use of Shakespeare largely to negotiate with American rather than English imperialism. In pursuit of that negotiation, they fashion versions of themselves vis-à-vis two very different Shakespeares: one American, populist, and democratic; the other monarchist, critical of American values, and magisterially prophetic. Neither of these Shakespeares is presented as an icon of English cultural hegemony. Rather, Lunalilo's Richard III and Lili'uokalani's Measure for Measure present, for American audiences, in Hawai'i and North America respectively, two antithetically opposed versions of the relationship between Hawai'i and America. Lunalilo's quintessentially low-brow performance of Shakespeare persuades the business-oriented missionary party of American-Hawaiians that he will rule democratically and make the Kingdom of Hawai'i safe for American commerce. Lili'iuokalani, addressing an audience of genteel readers in the United States, taps the language and posture of Shakespeare's Isabella to critique the values of the American missionary party in Hawai'i and to prophesy, in the dim pre-dawn of the American Century, that tyranny may cloak itself under the mantle of democracy.

NOTES 1. An ali'i is a "Chief, chiefess, officer, ruler, monarch, peer, headman, noble, aristocrat, king, queen, commander"; an ali'i nui is a "high chief" (Pukui and Elbert 1986; this dictionary is my source for Hawaiian- English translations throughout the essay). Note that the plural forms of Hawaiian nouns usually do not differ in spelling from the singular form; plurality may be indicated through the use of the plural definite article nā. (A rare exception is the noun wahine [woman], the plural of which is nā wāhine — the long "a" sound being indicated with a macron called the kahako). On the word "Hawaiian," which is an English word spelled without the 'okina (the symbol indicating a glottal stop), see Brightman and Subedi 2007 and Orsorio 2001, 376-77, n.1). In this study, while a number of the primary sources I quote use the word "Hawaiian" as a noun meaning "Hawaiian native" I use the word only as an English adjective meaning "of Hawai'i" — that is, of the archipelago itself or of the Kingdom of Hawai'I — and as a noun meaning "the Hawaiian language." The adjective "American-Hawaiian," which I use at several points, refers to nineteenth-century Caucasian residents of Hawai'i who were descendants of missionaries and other settlers who came to the islands from the United States in the early nineteenth-century. Due to typesetting limitations, Hawaiian diacritical marks are missing from the captions identifying my illustrations. 2. Used as a noun, haole means "White person, American, Englishman, Caucasian; . . . formerly, any foreigner"; as an adjective, it means "American, English; . . . foreign, introduced, of foreign origin." On the provenance of the term mō'i, see Stoakes (1932).

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3. Mana is "Supernatural or divine power, mana, miraculous power; . . . authority" (Pukui and Elbert, 1986); the English word "mana" — which appears in Pukui and Elbert's definition — is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as meaning "Power, authority, or prestige; spec. (in Polynesian and Melanesian religions) an impersonal supernatural power which can be associated with people or with objects and which can be transmitted or inherited" ("mana, n." OED Online, June 2013 [Oxford University Press, 13 June 2013]). 4. Johnston is my source for all facts and figures in the story of the Barge; see also Alexander (1906). 5. Here and throughout, Shakespeare quotations are taken from The Norton Shakespeare, second edition (Shakespeare 2008), and cited parenthetically by title, act, scene, and line numbers. 6. Early nineteenth-century publications that present Enobarbus's speech as an example of Shakespeare's verse or quote it in connection with historical and geographical information include The Poetical Preceptor 1806, 239-40; Knox, ed. 1816, 635-36; Griffiths 1805, 302; the entry for "barge" in Encyclopedia Perthensis 1816; and Bourn 1815, 805. See also John Carr (1809), who finds the scenery along the Rhine so lovely that he "envie[s] not the aquatic pomp of Cleopatra" (116). He illustrates his point with four lines from Enobarbus's speech; in the French translation of Carr's book by Louise Félicité Robert (1809), Shakespeare's English is retained. 7. This place name, assigned to the Hawaiian archipelago by Captain Cook, honors John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. It appears in European and American publications throughout the nineteenth century. 8. Scholars offer a variety of anthropological, historical, and political explanations for this remarkable event; see Harfst (1972); Seaton (1974); Sahlins (1981, 55-66); and Kashay (2008). 9. I have found no record of Liholiho reading Shakespeare or seeing a performance of his plays, but he may have investigated the significance of the name given to the vessel by its original owner. The English clergyman William Ellis, who came to Hawaii in the early 1820s as a representative of the London Missionary Society, wrote that the king's "mind was naturally inquisitive. The questions he usually presented to foreigners were by no means trifling; and his memory was retentive . . . I have heard him entertain a party of chiefs for hours together, with accounts of different parts of the earth, describing the extensive lakes, the mountains, and mines of North and South America; the elephants and inhabitants of India; the houses, manufactures, &c. of England, with no small accuracy, considering he had never seen them. He had great thirst for knowledge and was diligent in his studies." Ellis also remembers hearing the king remark "one day, when he opened his writing desk, that he expected more advantage from that desk than from a fine brig belonging to him, lying at anchor opposite the house in which we were sitting . . . I have sat beside him at his desk sometimes from nine or ten o'clock in the morning, till nearly sunset, during which period his pen or his book has not been out of his hand more than three quarters of an hour" (Ellis 1827, 456-

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57). 10. The American Board of Commisioners for Foreign Missions, often referred to by the acronym ABCFM, was founded by a group of New England Congregationalists in 1810 and celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2010. For a history of the organization, see the Congregational Library's digital exhibit "Of Faith and Courage: The History of the ABCFM" (2010-2011). 11. Bingham translates Kamāmalu's chant into metrically irregular English verse; for the Hawaiian text with a translation by a nineteenth-century native speaker, see Kamakau 1992, 256-57. 12. The playbill, which announces that the Hawaiian king and queen will be guests in the royal box, is reproduced in Scott 1968, 33. 13. Adler's edition is my source for all facts and dates relating to Alexander Liholiho's journal. 14. In his diary entry for 5 June 1850, Alexander describes how, after he had seated himself on the train in Washington, DC, he was accosted by the conductor, who told him "to get out of the carriage rather uncerimoniously [sic], saying that I was in the wrong carriage"; after being informed of Alexander's identity, the conductor told him to keep his seat and — when the prince pressed for an explanation — refused to elaborate on his reasons for assuming that Alexander had seated himself in the wrong carriage. He had, the prince writes, "probably taken me for somebody's servant, just because I had darker skin than he had. Confounded fool." The prince goes on to observe that it was "The first time that I ever received such treatment, not in England or France, or anywhere else. But in this country I must be treated like a dog to go & come at an Americans bidding." His irritation is clearly fueled in part by his class consciousness, which leads him to find Americans "saucy": "Even the waiters in their hotels in answering a bell, instead of coming and knocking at the door, they stalk into the room as if they were paying one a visit . . . In England an African can pay his fare for the Cars, and he can sit alongside of Queen Victoria. The Americans talk and they think a great deal of their liberty, and strangers often find that too many liberties are taken of their comfort, just because his hosts are a free people" (Kamehameha IV 1967, 108). 15. Portions of the translation, including a Preface written by the king, are available online at http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Hawaii/index.htm (http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Hawaii/index.htm). 16. Edwin Booth was the son of the renowned Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and the elder brother of another actor, John Wilkes Booth, who would assassinate President Lincoln in 1865. 17. Moses also omits the king's remark about having seen Junius Brutus Booth perform. This part of Clarke's story may have been inaccurate, as Alexander was a teenager, not a little boy, when he visited New York, and the itinerary of his visit to America does not place him in New York on a date when he could have seen a Booth production of Richard III. Compare the Chronology in Adler's edition of Alexander Liholiho's

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journal (Kamehameha IV 1967, xv-xix) with the list of "Recorded Engagements" for 1849 and 1850 in Archer 1992, 274-76. 18. See also items 2057, 2059, and 2060. 19. Clan-Albin was anthologized in The Novelist's Magazine in 1833 and reissued in one- volume editions in 1853 and 1854. 20. Johnstone's narrator describes a "horrid and unnamed state, when hideous sensation combines with mental agony . . . when one overpowering idea . . . throbs in the brain," affecting "a nature too gentle to combat with such horrors" (Johnstone 1815, 138-39). 21. Gilman would later reprint his remarks on the Neilson affair, recontextualizing them so as to present himself as a friend and admirer of the king (Gilman 1905, 89-90). 22. On the prevalence of parody and burlesque in nineteenth-century American allusions to Shakespeare, see Levine 1988, 13-16. 23. On Twain's impressions of Hawai'i as a source for his satire on feudalism in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, see Day's Introduction to Twain 1979, xiii. 24. The 1864 constitution would remain in force until the "Bayonet Constitution" of 1887 was forced on King Kalākaua by the "missionary party" (Daws 1968, 184-86). 25. Kamehameha V advocated limited suffrage, believing it would be rash to "jump by one bound from feudalism" — which "involves unquestioning obedience to the will of a superior, who ruled and thought for those under Him" — to pure democracy (Cabinet Council Minutes, 3 March 1864; quoted in Daws 1968, 184). See also Twain 1979, 106-107. On ali'i responsibility for commoners' well-being, see Lili'uokalani 1898, 2-3. However, see also Sahlins 1981, 10-11 on the Hawaiian concept of ruling chiefs as predatory, shark-like gods who came from afar and overthrew benevolent indigenous ali'i. 26. The epithet was used in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser extra of 8 January 1873 (quoted in United States Department of State 1873, 502). 27. See Levine 1988, 45-81 on how this populist version of Shakespeare gradually disappeared from mainstream American culture in the later 1800s. 28. On the term "local" and its relevance to contemporary theater in Hawai'i, see Carroll 2000. 29. Lili'uokalani's name as it appears on the title page of this 1898 volume, along with other Hawaiian words included in the text, are printed without the 'okina and the kahako (the macron which indicates a long vowel). 30. Bott correctly notes that the allusion showcases Lili'uokalani's "superior command of English" (Bott 1997, 150); but the queen is not, as Bott argues, seeking to demonstrate "that she is familiar with even the lesser known works of literary icons."Measure for Measure was frequently performed in the nineteenth century and "reached its height of popularity between 1888 and 1898, when Madam Modjeska revived it four different years in New York City alone, and played it frequently in other cities in the United States" (Morris 1912, xii). Lili'uokalani relies on the play's popularity, not its obscurity. 31. Here, as at several points in her account of her travels in the United States, Lili'uokalani is blind to U.S. appropriation of native North Americans' lands.

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32. "Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; / Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure." Biblical passages are quoted from the King James translation. 33. See Loomba and Orkin 1998, Cartelli 1999, 85-180, and a range of essays analyzing specific examples in Dionne and Kapadia, eds., 2008.

REFERENCES Adler, Jacob. 1967. "Introduction" to The Journal of Prince Alexander Liholiho, by Kamehameha IV. Edited by Jacob Adler. N.p.: University of Hawaii Press. ix-xiv. Alexander, W. D. 1906. "The Story of Cleopatra's Barge." Papers of the Hawaiian Historical Society 13: 24-31. Allen, Helena G. 1982. The Betrayal of Liliuokalani, Last Queen of Hawaii, 1838-1917. Glendale, Calif: Arthur H. Clark. Apostol, Troy, dir. 2010. Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare. The ARTS at Mark's Garage. Honolulu, Hawaii. 9-18 July. Archer, Stephen M. 1992. Junius Brutus Booth: Theatrical Prometheus. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Bandmann, Daniel E. 1886. An Actor's Tour, or Seventy Thousand Miles with Shakespeare. Third revised edition. New York: Brentano. Benton, James Grant. 1983. Twelf Nite o Wateva! In Kumu Kahua Plays. Edited by Dennis Carroll. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 185-238. Bingham, Hiram. 1847. A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands. Hartford: H. Huntington; New York: S. Converse. Bott, Robin L. 1997. "'I know what is due to me': Self-fashioning and Legitimization in Queen Liliuokalani's Hawaii's Story, by Hawaii's Queen." In Remaking Queen Victoria. Edited by Margaret Homans and Adrienne Munich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 140-56. Bourn, Thomas. 1815. A Gazetteer of the Most Remarkable Places in the World. Second edition. London: Printed for the Author and sold by J. Mawman et al. Brightman, James D. and Lilette A. Subedi. 2007. "AAPI Culture Brief: Hawai'i." NTAC- AAPI Culture Brief Series 2.7. Available online at http://www.ntac.hawaii.edu/products/briefs/ (http://www.ntac.hawaii.edu/products/briefs/) [accessed 11 February 2014]. Carr, D. J. 1983. "The Books that Sailed with the Endeavour." Endeavour n.s., 7.4: 194- 201.

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Carr, John. 1809. Voyage en Hollande, Vol. 1. Translated by Louise Félicité Robert. Paris: Collin. Carr, John. 1807. A Tour Through Holland, Along the Right and Left Banks of the Rhine. Philadelphia: Printed for Conrad and Co. Carroll, Dennis. 2000. "Hawai'i's 'Local' Theatre." TDR: The Drama Review 44.2: 123-52. Cartelli, Thomas. 1999. Repositioning Shakespeare: National Formations, Postcolonial Appropriations. London: Routledge. Clarke, Asia Booth. 1882. The Elder and the Younger Booth. Boston: J. R. Osgood and Co. "The Christmas Pantomimes and Burlesques." 1849. Times of London. 27 December. Daws, Gavan. 1968. Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands. New York: Macmillan. Dionne, Craig, and Parmita Kapadia, eds. 2008. Native Shakespeares: Indigenous Appropriations on a Global Stage. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate. Dryden, John. 1678. All for Love, or, The World Well Lost: A Tragedy. London: Printed by Tho. Newcomb, for Henry Herringman. Ellis, William. 1827. Narrative of a Tour Through Hawaii, or, Owhyhee. Second edition. London: H. Fisher, Son, and P. Jackson. Encyclopedia Perthensis; or Universal Dictionary of the Arts, Sciences, Literature, &c. 1816. Second edition. Edinburgh: John Brown. Forbes, David W. 2001. Hawaiian National Bibliography, 1780-1900. Volume 3: 1851- 1880. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. The Friend (Honolulu). 1873. 22.2 1 February. Gilman, G. D., and T[homas] G. T[hrum]. 1905. "The Kamehameha IV.-Neilson Tragedy." Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1906. Honolulu: Tho[ma]s G. Thrum. 86-91. Griffiths, J. 1805. Travels in Europe, Asia Minor and Arabia. London: Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, and Peter Hill. Edinburgh; by John Brown, Edinburgh. Harfst, Richard H. 1972. "Cause or Condition: Explanations of the Hawaiian Cultural Revolution." Journal of the Polynesian Society 81.4: 437-71. Hopkins, Manley. 1866. Hawaii: The Past, Present, and Future of Its Island-Kingdom. Second edition. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Hoyt, Helen P. 1961. "Theatre in Hawaii — 1778-1840." Sixty-ninth Annual Report of the Hawaiian Historical Society. Honolulu: The Advertiser Publishing Company. 7-19.

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Johnston, Paul Forsythe. 2002. "A Million Pounds of Sandalwood: The History of Cleopatra's Barge in Hawaii." The American Neptune 62.1: 1-41. Johnstone, Christian Isobel. 1815. Clan Albin. Vol. 4. Edinburgh: Printed by John Moir for Macredie, Skelley, and Muckersy. Judd, A. Francis. 1936. "Sketch of Lunalilo's Life." Forty-Fourth Annual Report of the Hawaiian Historical Society for the Year 1935. Honolulu: Printshop Company. 36-43. Kamakau, S. M. 1992. Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii. Revised edition. Honolulu: Kamehameha Schools Press. Kamehameha IV. 1967. The Journal of Prince Alexander Liholho. Edited by Jacob Adler N.p.: University of Hawaii Press. Kanahele, George S. 1999. Emma, Hawai'i's Remarkable Queen. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kashay, Jennifer Fish. 2008. "From Kapus to Christianity: The Disestablishment of the Hawaiian Religion and Chiefly Appropriation of Calvinist Christianity." The Western Historical Quarterly 39.1: 17-39. Knox, Vicesimus, ed. 1816. Elegant Extracts in Poetry, Selected for the Improvement of Young Persons: Book Third and Fourth. London: Printed for F. C. and J. Rivington [etc.] by G. Woodfall & H. Bryer. Korn, Alfons L. 1958. The Victorian Visitors. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kuykendall, Ralph S. 1938-67. The Hawaiian Kingdom. 3 vols. Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Levine, Lawrence W. 1988. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Liliuokalani. 1898. Hawaii's Story, by Hawaii's Queen. Boston: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard. Loomba, Ania, and Martin Orkin. 1998. "Introduction" to Post-Colonial Shakespeares. Edited by Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin. London: Routledge. 1-19. Mathison, Gilbert Farquhar. 1825. Narrative of a Visit to Brazil, Chile, Peru, and the Sandwich Islands. London: C. Knight. Morris, Edgar C. 1912. "Introduction" to Measure for Measure, by William Shakespeare. Edited by Edgar C. Morris. New York: Macmillan. vii-xvi. Moses, Montrose J. 1906. Famous Actor Families in America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.

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"Of Faith and Courage: The History of the ABCFM." 2010-2011. Original exhibit layout at the Congregational Library in Boston, Mass., by Christine Reynolds, 2010. Digital layout by Robin Duckworth, 2011. Available online at the website of the Congregational Library: http://exhibits.congregationallibrary.org/exhibits (http://exhibits.congregationallibrary.org/exhibits) [accessed 11 February 2014]. Orkin, Martin. 2005. Local Shakespeares: Proximations and Power. London: Routledge. Osorio, Jonathan Kamakawiwo'ole. 2001. "'What Kine Hawaiian Are You?' A Mo'olelo about Nationhood, Race, History, and the Contemporary Sovereignty Movement in Hawai'i." The Contemporary Pacific 13.2: 359-79. Plutarch. 1579. The liues of the noble Grecians and Romanes . . . translated out of Greeke into French by Iames Amyot . . . and out of French into Englishe, by Thomas North. London: Thomas Vautroullier. The Poetical Preceptor; or, a Collection of Select Pieces of Poetry; Extracted from the Works of the Most Eminent English Poets. 1806. Sixth ed. London: Printed for W.J. and J. Richardson; Wilkie and Robinson; G. Robinson; F. and C. Rivington; Scatcherd and Letterman; C. Law; Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme; and Lackington and Co. The Polynesian (Honolulu). 1847. 4.18. 18 September. Pukui, Mary Kawena and Samuel H. Elbert. 1986. Hawaiian Dictionary. Revised and enlarged ed. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Full text available online through Nā Puke Wehewehe 'ō elo Hawai'i (Hawaiian Dictionaries) at: http://www.wehewehe.org (http://www.wehewehe.org) [accessed 11 February 2014]. Sahlins, Marshall. 1995. How "Natives" Think: About Captain Cook, For Example. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sahlins, Marshall. 1988. "Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of 'The World System.'" Proceedings of the British Academy 74: 1-51. Reprinted in Culture/power/history: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory. Edited by Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. 412-57. Sahlins, Marshall. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Scott, Edward B. 1968. The Saga of the Sandwich Islands. Crystal Bay, NV: Sierra-Tahoe Publishing. Seaton, S. Lee. 1974. "The Hawiian kapu Abolition of 1819." American Ethnologist 1: 193- 206. Shakespeare, William. 2008. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al. Second edition. New York: W. W. Norton.

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Spencer, Christopher, ed. 1965. Five Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Stoakes, John F. G. 1932. "The Hawaiian King (MO-I, ALII-AIMOKU, ALII-KAPU)." Papers of the Hawaiian Historical Society 19: 1-28. Thrum, John F. 1905. "Reminiscences of the Stage in Honolulu" [1882]. Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1906. Honolulu: Thomas G. Thrum. 93-104. Twain, Mark. 1979. Mark Twain's Letters from Hawaii. Edited by A. Grove Day. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. United States Department of State. 1873. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. Part 1, Volume 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

PERMISSIONS Figure 1. George Ropes, Cleopatra's Barge (1818). Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cleopatra%27s_Barge_1818.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cleopatra%27s_Barge_1818.jpg) Figure 2. John Hayter, King Liholiho (Kamehameha II). John Hayter [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Figure 3. Queen Kamāmalu Carried in Procession. Ephraim Eveleth, History of the Sandwich Islands: With an Account of the American Mission Established There in 1820. Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union, 1829. 66-67. Google Books. Figure 4. John Hayter, Queen Kamāmalu (1824). Lithograph by John Hayter of London [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Figure 5. King Liholiho and Queen Kamāmalu at Drury Lane Theatre (1824). Wikimedia Commons. Figure 6. Prince Alexander Liholiho (the future Kamehameha IV) with Dr. Jerritt P. Judd and Prince Lot (the future Kamehameha V. Hawaii State Archives. Call Number: PP-97-8- 009. Wikimedia Commons. Figure 7. King Kamehameha IV. Honolulu Advertiser. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2006/Jul/02/sesq1kamehamehaiv_b.jpg (http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2006/Jul/02/sesq1kamehamehaiv_b.jpg). Figure 8. King Lunalilo. Honolulu Advertiser. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2006/Jul/02/sesq1lunalilo_b.jpg (http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2006/Jul/02/sesq1lunalilo_b.jpg).

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Figure 9. Queen Lili'uokalani. Honolulu Advertiser. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2006/Jul/02/sesq1liliuokalani_b.jpg (http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2006/Jul/02/sesq1liliuokalani_b.jpg)

ABSTRACT | ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS: KAMEHAMEHA II AND KAMĀMALU | HAWAIIAN KING AS SPECTATOR AND PERFORMER OF SHAKESPEARE: KAMEHAMEHA IV | SHAKESPEARE AND HAWAIIAN POLITICS: KAMEHAMEHA V AND LUNALIO | CONTRASTING ALI'I APPROPRIATIONS: LUNALILO AND LILI'UOKALANI | NOTES | REFERENCES | TOP

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The Fiendlike Queen: Recuperating Lady Macbeth in (/current) Contemporary Adaptations of Macbeth

WILLIAM C. CARROLL, BOSTON UNIVERSITY (/previous)

ABSTRACT | LADY MACBETH'S LITERARY HERITAGE | LIBERATING LADY MACBETH | RECUPERATING (/about) LADY MACBETH | NOTES | REFERENCES

(/archive) ABSTRACT Many adaptations and appropriations in recent decades have attempted to recast the "fiend-like queen" Lady Macbeth in a more positive light — a difficult task, given her actions in Shakespeare's play. These representations move far away from earlier texts in which "Lady Macbeth" is little more than a synonym for a murderous woman. Several recent works of popular culture seek, instead, an explanation or rationale for her participation in Duncan's murder through reference to her earlier marriage and son by that marriage (both suppressed in Shakespeare's play), to her situation as a woman in a culture of Celtic masculinity, and even to a supposed daughter, with whom she is ultimately reunited. The result is a repentant, heroic, even justified Lady Macbeth. Among the works discussed are Gordon Bottomley, Gruach (1919), Susan Fraser King, Lady Macbeth: A Novel (2008), Lisa M. Klein, Lady Macbeth's Daughter (2009), and A. J. Hartley and David Hewson, Macbeth: A Novel (2012).

Perhaps today's Lady Macbeth needs Women's Liberation. — Ruby Cohn (1976)

For Terry Eagleton, "to any unprejudiced reader — which would seem to exclude Shakespeare himself, his contemporary audiences and almost all literary critics — it is surely clear that positive value in Macbeth lies with the three witches. The witches are the heroines of the piece, however little the play itself recognizes the fact" (Eagleton

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1986, 2). Eagleton's notorious comment points to just one of many attempts in recent decades to recast the witches in a more positive light, usually as demonized projections of patriarchal anxieties. Such efforts have had considerable success. The work of feminist scholars such as Diane Purkiss, Dympna Callaghan, Peter Stallybrass, and Helen Ostovich, among many others that could be named, has gone far to place the play's witches in contexts of patriarchal, religious, social, and political discourses.1

Lady Macbeth has proven to be a harder case to rehabilitate, at least on the stage (as seen recently in Kate Fleetwood's harrowing depiction in Rupert Goold's version). Her place in critical history, Cristina Alfar has observed, "is one of almost peerless malevolence" (Alfar 2003, 112).2

Figure 1. Richard Westall, Lady Macbeth Sleepwalking In the nineteenth century, as Georgianna Ziegler has shown, "two images of Lady Macbeth — as barbaric and passionate or domesticated and caring — figure the http://borrowers.uga.edu/1077/show Page 2 of 22 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

conflicted notions about women's roles" in the Victorian period (Ziegler 1999, 137). Ziegler shows how Mrs. Siddons's overpowering portrayal influenced the view of Lady Macbeth throughout the century. In contrast to Lady Macbeth's frequent demonization, another actress, Ellen Terry, wrote that "It seems strange to me that anyone can think of Lady Macbeth as a sort of monster, abnormally hard, abnormally cruel, or visualize her as a woman of powerful physique, with the muscles of a prize fighter! . . . I conceive Lady Macbeth as a small, slight woman of acute nervous sensibility . . . on the terms of equals [with her husband]" (quoted in Ziegler 1999, 128). No, Terry wrote in a letter to a male supporter, "she was not good, but not much worse than many women you know — me for instance" (quoted in Auerbach 1987, 258).3 Madeline Leigh-Noel, writing in 1884, saw Lady Macbeth as "a lonely woman, deprived of the love of a child and often solitary, lacking the companionship of her lord" (quoted in Ziegler 1999, 135). Other writers in this period saw Lady Macbeth as not a lonely housewife, but the amoral/immoral product of some distant barbarous age; as Anna Jameson wrote, "Lady Macbeth is placed in a dark, ignorant, iron age; her powerful intellect is slightly tinged with its credulity and superstition, but she has no religious feeling to restrain the force of will" (Jameson 1901, 374); hence, she is not really connected to the Victorian concept of "woman" at all.4 Such attempts to "understand" Lady Macbeth anticipate but differ from twentieth- and twenty-first century adaptations in significant ways.

In many adaptations of the past century, especially those claiming to use feminist approaches, a very different picture of the "fiend-like queen" has emerged. These representations move far away from earlier texts in which "Lady Macbeth" is little more than a synonym for an ambitious, murderous woman, or a dessicated housewife. The several post-2001 works I will examine in this paper instead seek an explanation or rationale for her participation in Duncan's murder through various strategies: by reference to her earlier marriage and son by that marriage (as found in Holinshed's Chronicles of Scotland but suppressed in Shakespeare's play), to her situation as a woman in a culture of Celtic masculinity, and even to a supposed daughter with whom Lady Macbeth is ultimately reunited. The result is a repentant, heroic, even innocent — and above all, a maternal — Lady Macbeth.

My argument will be that these recent recuperations of Lady Macbeth, while "feminist" in intention if not outcome, participate in a larger cultural movement of adaptation that seeks to normalize the dramatic text as a whole. To borrow the phrase if not the exact concept from Foucault in Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1979), I see these attempts to fill in gaps, resolve plot-lines, expand on characters' "inner lives," and provide "coherent" psychological "motives" as part of a normalizing process designed to produce "docile [dramatic] bodies" susceptible to logic and obedient to linear plots and post-modern psychoanalytic analysis.

LADY MACBETH'S LITERARY HERITAGE

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In the Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare (1807), to take a typical and highly influential nineteenth-century example (written by Charles, not Mary), Lady Macbeth is simply "a bad, ambitious woman" (Lamb 1909, 137), "a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose" (139), though — somewhat oddly — her "manners were in the highest degree affable and royal," and she could play "the hostess with a gracefulness and attention which conciliated every one present" (142) at the banquet; she dies "unable to bear the remorse of guilt, and public hate" (145) — though where the "public hate" appears in the play, other than in Malcolm's final description of her, is unclear. Rejecting "the commonplace idea of Lady Macbeth, though endowed with the rarest powers, the loftiest energies, and the profoundest affections, [as] nothing but a fierce, cruel woman, brandishing a couple of daggers, and inciting her husband to butcher a poor old king" (Jameson 1901, 356), Anna Jameson (1832) went on not to defend or rationalize Lady Macbeth's actions, but to explicate the character's dramatic power: "She is a terrible impersonation of evil passions and mighty powers, never so far removed from our own nature as to be cast beyond the pale of our sympathies; for the woman herself remains a woman to the last — still linked with her sex and with humanity" (361).5

Mary Cowden Clarke (1853), however, imagined a more complex woman. Her essay is perhaps the earliest, and certainly the most famous instance of the now prevalent strategy of providing "explanation" and filling in perceived lacunae in the play's narrative. Clarke's Lady Macbeth is partly the product of inheritance, as her own mother had "pride of blood, the daring aspiration of her nature . . . [and] ambition," while also scorning "such qualities as she discovered in her husband" (Clarke 1887, 99). In Clarke's prequel, the infant Lady Macbeth appeared to her father as "this tender blossom, this human bud awaiting with yet half-closed petals its future development" (102). Yet her mother remained aloof, and so "the babe sucked bitterness, perverted feeling, unholy regret, and vain aspiration, with every milky draught imbibed" (104). Soon, the contaminating effects of the mother began to manifest themselves, as the infant Lady Macbeth's hand "clenched angrily, and struck and buffeted at the golden rays [of the sun] they could not seize," though soon enough she catches a silvery moth, and "the next instant, the little fingers were unclosed; to one of them stuck the mangled insect, crushed even by so slight a touch" (107). Years later, she will destroy a bird's nest — a martlet, not yet temple-haunting (126) — sending all the young to their death without a further thought. The path from crushing moths and killing birds to regicide seems inevitable. Early on, "the indulgence of her will, the right of command, the custom of seeing herself obeyed in all things, became habitual to her . . . She could scarcely speak, ere her voice assumed the tone of authority" (109). When she becomes a woman, Gruoch6 does not hesitate to use her "surpassing beauty . . . [evidenced] by the brilliancy of her complexion, by the lustre of her golden hair, and above all, by the magic of a commanding presence" (139) to wield influence over others, including, of course, Macbeth: "their mutual looks and discourse grow more and more animated, and reveal more and more how each is struck and enchanted with the other" (140). Their marriage soon bears a fruit neither the play nor the historical record ever imagines, a son http://borrowers.uga.edu/1077/show Page 4 of 22 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

"Cormac" (164), who dies in infancy — at which point, more or less, Shakespeare's play begins. Clarke's account offers a far greater understanding, if not exactly sympathy, of the character, describing an evolutionary process — malevolent maternal influence, bad milk, and an overly-indulgent father, in addition to some evil seed — where Lamb simply saw a bad woman. Clarke's introduction of the themes of milk, the maternal, and Lady Macbeth's child would be taken up in vastly more detail by later adapters.

Gordon Bottomley's play Gruach (1918; pub. 1921) is one of the earliest texts to offer a relatively sympathetic, even proto-feminist view of Lady Macbeth.

Figure 2. Title Page of Bottomley, Gruach The play takes place the night before the wedding between Gruach and Conan, Thane of Fortingall. The setting is the small castle owned by Morag, Conan's mother, where they all live; the place, we are told more than once, is a "threatening prison" (Bottomley 1921, 33), Gruach a restless but subjugated prisoner whose wedding gown is "as heavy as fetters" (16). That night, the King's messenger, Macbeth, arrives, and he and Gruach instantly connect so powerfully that she will leave with him that same night; she plans their escape, telling him that she will go first and that he should "step then upon my footprints" (56). For Bottomley, Gruach must escape her confinement to Conan, and the claustrophobic life he represents, if she is to survive. Her escape represents a commitment to nothing less than life itself: This is my hour of fate, this is the time http://borrowers.uga.edu/1077/show Page 5 of 22 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

When I must break the blind restricted seed That I am now, move with the winds of life And yield my mental issue to them again, Or in this present burial rot and change. (45) In a note left to Morag, Gruach simply says "I would live, so I leave you" (55). Like a romantic maiden of the previous century, she says to herself, "O, let me dream anew, and in a dream / Of uttered scorn sting vivid life to spring / Back to my sinking heart" (55).

But in addition to Gruach's quest for life at any price, Bottomley also reaches back into the chronicles to invoke her royal blood— a move, as we shall see, now common in contemporary adaptations. As Morag says, Her father was of dead King Kenneth's breed, And though her line is dispossessed, she is yet Royal in some men's minds, heiress of peril But also of great chance. (11) The unwitting Conan, coming down to an empty room on his wedding day, admits that "I would not wed her if she had no land" (66). Gruach herself puts Macbeth straight: "I am of a more ancient house of kings / Than you" (47).

LIBERATING LADY MACBETH Ruby Cohn's plea for Lady Macbeth's "liberation" has not gone unanswered.7 Several recent representations of Lady Macbeth leverage her royal blood as part of an explanation, indeed justification, for the actions we know she takes in Shakespeare's play. In Susan Fraser King's Lady Macbeth (2008), though it is primarily a prequel to the play, Gruadh begins the novel writing from her fortified castle, six months after the death of Macbeth, sending her defiance to Malcolm.

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Figure 3. Cover, King, Lady Macbeth Her lineage is everything — "I am granddaughter to a king and daughter to a prince, a wife twice over, a queen as well" (King 2008, 2) — and in King's account this explains Gruadh's first marriage at thirteen, her pride, and her later actions; her second marriage, to Macbeth, came about because the victor in a combat often married the widow of his victim. King's more historically-informed story — complete with a detailed genealogical chart at the beginning — rests with little ambiguity on the early modern succession politics that Shakespeare had so thoroughly mystified in his play, where there is no hint of Lady Macbeth's royal past.8 Here, by contrast, is a conversation between Gruadh and her father, Bodhe: Bodhe narrowed his eyes. "Old Malcolm [i.e., Malcolm II, not the Malcolm Canmore of the play] wants to keep the kingship in his bloodline. Duncan will name his own son as his tanist, and so it goes. We dispute that." I nodded. "Straight descent is not the Celtic way."9 "Exactly. Our branch, not theirs, must rightfully supply the next king of Scots." (King 2008, 60) Gruadh will join forces with Macbeth, in part, because she has been denied her lineal rights. After Duncan's murder, Macbeth tells her "Your ancient bloodline holds the key http://borrowers.uga.edu/1077/show Page 7 of 22 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

in this. . . . Because of your blood, you will not be called consort, but full queen, and crowned as such" (273). Pushing sympathy even further, King also makes Duncan responsible for the murder of Gruadh's father. By providing Gruadh motives for murdering Duncan, then, King rationalizes her character, transforming her actions into a rough form of restored justice.

Moreover, King (like Klein, below) will retrieve from the historical record Lady Macbeth's only surviving child, from her first marriage to Gilcomgan: her son Lulach.10 The historical reality of this male heir, in a royal line, has been thoroughly erased by Shakespeare, where the only trace remains, perhaps, in Lady Macbeth's infamous "I have given suck and know / How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me" (1.7.54-55). Gruadh therefore fights not only for her own right, and for her lineage back in time, but also for her son's future, while Duncan — not the helpless, feminized bleeding body of Shakespeare's play — becomes a killer, and his son Malcolm no better. Indeed, King, like some other adapters, will transform the murder of Duncan into a patriotic act, intended to free Scotland both from his treachery, and from his weakness and inability to deal with Danish invasions and other subversions on the margins of his kingdom.

In line with this conception of a "patriot" Macbeth, Gruadh is also newly imagined as a medieval eco-friendly preserver of traditional Scots folkways. It's not just that "Straight descent is not the Celtic way," as Gruadh agrees with her father, but only in the North, where they rule, do the traditions of the "Celtic way" survive, beneath a veneer of Christianity. Here there is respect for the land, a kindly and protective (if paternalistic) concern for the local populace, not to mention hints of magic and mystical powers. Gruadh herself has "the Sight," the Celtic ability to see (darkly) into the future. Duncan, by contrast, is an outlier, unable to conquer without foreign assistance and insensitive to the old ways. "So long as we stay Celts," Gruadh says, "and do not become Roman, or English, or Viking instead. I fear that the Scottish Celts will lose the old wildness, the old ways, for there is much that is good and beautiful in that" (King 2008, 191). Gruadh links herself as well to the Celts' "long, proud history of warrior women" (62), and takes up the sword more than once.

These mitigations — revenge, lineal right, patriotism, cultural preservation — offer to explain the later Lady Macbeth of the play, but no historical-textual invention has been as powerful, or as prevalent, as the sympathy-inducing accounts of Lady Macbeth's often-multiple miscarriages. In King's novel, Gruadh gives birth to Lulach (the posthumous son of Gilcomgan) just after her forced marriage to Macbeth. After a long period of coldness, Gruadh comes to admire and desire Macbeth ("I long to invite him to my bed," [King 2008, 148]), and soon is pregnant; however, "One night I went to bed with indigestion and an aching back, and by the next day no longer carried a child." Her reaction is to be "Cold as stone . . . bearing the devastation in silence" (182), but miscarriage after miscarriage follows ("my tiny hatchling slipped out of me on a slide of blood," 212), and she is no longer cold but heartbroken ("My heart still ached for a

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child," 217). Indeed, her maternal instincts become even stronger in protection of Lulach, who after the death of Macbeth (ambushed by a treacherous Malcolm) is crowned King of Scots,11 marries, and has a daughter. King ends her novel with Gruadh most definitely alive, concerned about Lulach's fate, secure in Elgin for the time being, and defiantly rejecting suggestions from Malcolm that she marry him: "I am done with sorrow and intend to seek a little peace and magic. For now" (330).12

Lisa Klein's novel Lady Macbeth's Daughter (2009) takes the maternal theme even deeper into fantasy. Although also claiming to offer a narrative based on some part of the "historical" record, Klein nevertheless invents, as her title indicates, a daughter.

Figure 4. Cover, Klein, Lady Macbeth's Daughter Grelach gives birth to Albia at the beginning of the novel; the child, though, is deformed, with a "crippled leg" (Klein 2009, 1), and is taken by her servant Geillis to raise as her own. Grelach is led to believe the child is dead, since Macbeth had ordered that the "spawn of evil" be taken to the heath and left "for the wolves" (8). The motif of the abandoned child, lame but healed by the good country folk, is pursued through the expected revelations at the end. Albia — who also picks up the sword, following the ways of strong Celtic women warriors, and who also has the Sight (99) — is horrified when she eventually learns her parentage years later, rejects all that her father Macbeth

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has done, and only at the last minute forgives Grelach. Along the way, Klein invokes a phenomenal number of clichéd tropes from the romance/adventure genres of The Hunger Games, Twilight, and Disney's Brave (including the red hair). Some of Klein's inventions go far beyond even the highly implausible, such as Albia's love for Fleance (who, according to the chronicles, had long since fled the attempt on his life when his father Banquo was killed, and was already in Wales, busily impregnating the Welsh princess with an illegitimate child).13

Klein's novel focuses primarily on Albia, but it also gives a fairly full, and expiatory, version of Grelach, through roughly alternating chapters of first-person narration. Grelach too suffers multiple miscarriages ("Like a wounded animal, I cry out as I feel the child slip from my womb . . . a baby boy, perfectly formed but still and silent as Death" [Klein 2009, 20-21]). Even worse, she doesn't love Luoch (i.e., Lulach), who entered the world when the midwife "pulled from me a black-haired boy covered in wax and blood" (3), nor does Macbeth consider Luoch his heir; Grelach also cannot love Macbeth, though she joins forces with him through the usual pride in her lineage: "How dare Duncan — whose grandfather shut my kin out of the succession — now try to extend his rule to the next generation! The injustice of it brings my blood to the boiling point" (50). Like Gruadh in King's novel, Grelach does not die a suicide but survives Macbeth's death, is spirited away by one of her ladies, and is then brought to a difficult but (could it be otherwise?) tearful reconciliation with her daughter (Grelach has only recently learned that her daughter survived). As she asks forgiveness, "tears begin to course down [Grelach's] cheeks" (240), and the novel ends when Albia silently takes her mother's hand: "I see myself taking both her wounded hands in my own. The creases around her eyes and mouth, like so many rivers inked on Scotland's map, seem to relax, softening her expression. I glimpse my mother when she was my age. With my fingertips, I stroke the skin of her hands until the bloody spots begin to fade, then disappear" (242). The key sentence permitting this reunion, and the culmination of the entire mother-daughter narrative, is Grelach's assertion of maternal love, loss, and necessity: "'All that I did,' she says, letting the tears roll down her cheeks unstopped, 'was born from my despair . . . at losing you, Albia'" (241).

Hartley and Hewson's Macbeth: A Novel, not a prequel like King's and Klein's, more or less follows the play's plot.

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Figure 5. Cover, Hartley and Hewson, Macbeth The maternal theme is struck with Skena giving birth,14 six years earlier, to "a boy, the only child they'd ever had, the only one they ever would, a sickly babe who barely opened his eyes in his short life"; afterwards, "Skena's womb was judged torn and fruitless" (Hartley and Hewson 2012, 53). Hence, there is no string of miscarriages, and no Lulach. Still, Skena blames Duncan's forcing them to move to Inverness for the miscarriage (68), and vows, "Since Duncan's cruelty stole from me my child, I will be nothing but a vessel of hatred for him" (81). Duncan is further demonized by his boundless lechery: he not only makes a pass at Skena, but is seen, in some detail, forcing a kitchen girl to fellate him: "The older he gets," one guard says, "the younger he likes them" (115-16). So this Duncan really deserves to be murdered. Hartley and Hewson even have Lady Macbeth herself finish off Duncan, who, as in standard horror movies, isn't quite dead when she enters the room to place the daggers: "Duncan's long, bony fingers rose and clawed at her throat . . . the daggers in her hand found life, stabbed at him, his neck and face, his scrawny arm . . . at last, she tore his talons free and fell back, staggering, crying, panting" (135). This account goes as far as absolving Skena — herself now the actual regicide — as one can imagine, from pedophile Duncan's vampire-like resurrection to the personifications and passive verbs ("the daggers . . . found life, stabbed at him") that displace her agency.

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when he accidentally drinks the poison procured for Duncan's guards, and Skena tearfully washes his body in preparation for burial (Hartley and Hewson 2012, 146-52). As if to rub it in, Banquo brazenly attempts to blackmail Macbeth into naming Fleance as his heir — "Take him as your own" (179) — hence providing justification for his own murder. At the end, urged on by the witches, who have reappeared to her when she flees Dunsinane, Skena slits her wrists: "after the brief, exquisite agony, [she] lay back in the scented heather, wondering at the beauty of the stars and sky," free at last (281).

David Greig's brilliant 2010 play, Dunsinane (2010), offers the most provocative and challenging recent account of Gruach I have encountered, though it also employs many of the same rationalizing and humanizing tropes found in the works described above. The play is a sequel, beginning when Macbeth has been killed and the victorious English general Siward and his troops encounter Gruach (rumors of her suicide had been spread by a fanatic, malicious Malcolm, who is as far from the Lambs' "young and lawful king" who "should have succeeded" Duncan as can be imagined). Greig's starting point was the question: "'What happens after the dictator falls?' Macbeth is a play about the toppling of a dictator; we would see in it a mirror of Ceausescu or Gaddafi, with Lady Macbeth as the manipulating figure," with clear allusions to the Western invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan (Brown 2011). The play follows a devastating tragic arc, as the rational, "enlightened" Siward becomes ever more confused by Scotland and the Scots, and as a result ever more brutal in his methods; the Scots — Gruach in particular — remain a complete mystery to the invaders.

For Greig, Gruach "has the weapon of her intellect and the weapon of her sexuality. Too many depictions of Lady Macbeth portray her as a depraved woman, and her sexuality is tied up with a lust for power. I was much more interested in the idea that this is a woman who has a number of very powerful aims, which are rational. She believes that her clan, her faction, should be in charge, and it is her right to be queen. To achieve this she will use all means at her disposal, including her sexuality" (Brown 2011, my emphasis). Greig's Gruach becomes the focal point of Scottish opposition to the occupying troops; indeed, she becomes emblematic of Scotland itself. At one point, she seduces Siward and later, for cynical reasons, agrees to marry Malcolm (only to escape his imprisonment before the ceremony and flee to the countryside).

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Figure 6. Gruach in Greig, Dunsinane Her resistance is rendered patriotic to the highest degree, inextricably linked to her royal identity. Her character "emerged very suddenly with a single line," Greig has said (Brown 2011): in response to Siward's question, "What is your place here?" Gruach replies, "My place here is Queen" (Greig 2010, 27). For much of the play, she asserts Lulach's right to the throne even as she hides him in the countryside. In one passage of incantatory rhetoric, she responds to Siward's request that she "renounce" her son's "claim" to the throne: My son doesn't claim. My son is the King. It's not a matter about which he has a choice. My son is my son. My son is the son of his father. My son's father is dead. My son is the King. (34) Siward can only respond by asking "What would you do — if you were me?". The answer is simple and devastating: "If I were you I would not be here" (34).

After many episodes of increasing savagery, through which the English occupiers hoped to win the hearts and minds of the people,15 Siward kills a "Scottish Boy" who may or may not have been Lulach, only to have Malcolm tell him that the Moray do not accept that the dead boy is Lulach, and worse, that "it's more likely that by killing this boy you http://borrowers.uga.edu/1077/show Page 13 of 22 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

have given him eternal life" (Grieg 2010, 125). In the final scene of the play, Siward then takes the boy's body to Gruach, thinking she will give up her resistance, only to be shown a baby said to have been fathered by Lulach: "This child is now the King" (134), Gruach informs Siward, and she describes to him a lineage of birth and resistance that, in effect, will stretch to the crack of doom. The play ends with Siward not harming the baby, and walking out, without destination, to disappear into the snow: "And then there is only white" (138). Gruach not only survives, but somehow endures, a heroic, mystical figure of beauty, resistance, and agency.16

In "liberating" Lady Macbeth, these adapters employ various strategies — demonizing Duncan, Malcolm, and even Banquo, making the Macbeths patriots, preserving the old Celtic ways, and so on. These adaptations for the most part also deny Lady Macbeth the option of suicide — certainly nothing could be further from the mind of Greig's Gruach or King's Gruadh (nor from some of the historical records, which have her surviving Macbeth's death; Holinshed is silent on the question). These appropriations openly declare what might be called a "realist" vision of what the play should have been but failed to be, whether through Shakespeare's dereliction or the vagaries of the early modern publication process. Noah Lukeman, for example, felt compelled to give the world The Tragedy of Macbeth, Part II: The Seed of Banquo (2008) because, he concluded, "Macbeth is unfinished" (Lukeman 2008, v): the witches' prophecy about Banquo's seed becoming kings remains unfulfilled, Lady Macbeth's "child" is "omitted from the play" (vi), and the "princely" Donalbain remains in Ireland at the end. "Was Shakespeare thrice careless?" Lukeman asks (v), in as fine an example of bardolatry as one could wish, if not for his other question: "would the greatest of English dramatists, who was careful with every syllable, actually neglect to resolve an entire subplot, indeed, the very driving action of his play?"17 No, the answer comes, it could only be that he was "preparing for a Macbeth, Part II" (v), which Lukeman has kindly delivered. Even the more serious and scholarly Hartley and Hewson declare that "we decided to like the Macbeths, not to excuse their actions, but to try to explain them, to afford them an inner life that went beyond whatever the play could tell us, and then to watch them make a series of bad choices that escalate till they are dragging tragedy at their heels" (Hartley and Hewson 2012, 319), so their novelization proceeds, as so many adaptations do, in "filling out what is passed over" in the play (311).

RECUPERATING LADY MACBETH Many adaptations attempt to recuperate, rationalize, and understand Lady Macbeth by turning to the "historical" record to recover Lady Macbeth's royal lineage; it is worth repeating that there is not a whisper of this lineage in Shakespeare's play or Holinshed's, Buchanan's, or Leslie's accounts of Macbeth.18 The scholarly case for retrieving Lady Macbeth's historical lineage has been made by Olga Valbuena, who notes that historicist critics (such as Norbrook) have thoroughly investigated the conflict of succession issues in the play but "have not addressed the historical Lady Macbeth's dynastic claims and

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revenge motive lurking at the margins of historical and dramatic master texts or the public transcript" (Valbuena 2003, 81). Sid Ray, quoting this passage, says with self- satisfaction that this lineage provides a "motive" for Lady Macbeth's actions, giving Lady Macbeth's actions "a political rather than personal resonance" (Ray 2008, 119), as if this is an improvement on the play.19 When such critics describe Lady Macbeth's lost lineage as one of the lacunae in the play, the implication is that Shakespeare has suppressed this information, but as we have seen, he had no access to it in the first place, whereas the succession questions (mystified in the play) were openly treated in Holinshed, Buchanan, and other probable sources. The retrieval of this information (often in very partial form, and often incorrect) amounts to a sentimental rescue mission based on a conflation of a literary character with (some) elements of a historical figure.20

Ironically, this historical turn even more firmly inscribes Lady Macbeth in patriarchal discourse than Shakespeare's play does, as her "royal" lineage stems entirely (if necessarily) from her male predecessors. Greig's phrasing of Gruach's defiance — "My son is the son of his father. / My son's father is dead. / My son is the King" — reproduces the early modern period's parthenogenetic fantasies in which the female has no role in reproduction and lineage. The resurrection of Lady Macbeth's royal lineage, moreover, deflects her motivation to, in part, a restoration of past (masculine-derived) right rather than the play's looking-forward desire ("Thy letters have transported me beyond / This ignorant present, and I feel now / The future in the instant" [1.5.54-6]). The "royal lineage" narrative, finally, ultimately deprives Lady Macbeth of the agency — for good or bad — that the play actually grants her.21

Finally, in addition to her royal lineage, virtually every recent adaptation has invoked, often on an elaborate scale, Lady Macbeth's maternity (or lack of it) as to a greater or lesser extent determining her actions and identity: her miscarriages multiply like Falstaff's assailants, or her son Lulach must be saved, or a daughter invented.22 This focus on Lady Macbeth's maternity23 also emphatically reinscribes her in patriarchal discourse, since the activities of her womb constitute her primary identity, and that womb is dysfunctional, capable only of miscarriages and deformity when not simply barren.24 This move, too, devalues or deflates the agency Shakespeare grants her in the play; it is a horrific power, and it crumbles into nothingness, but it belongs to her. The result of these womb failures, as Adeline Chevrier-Bosseau points out, is that Lady Macbeth "becomes some kind of socially acceptable hysteric — not a degenerate woman, perverted by her unnatural lust for power, but a natural descendant of Eve, born to suffer, a 'normal' member of the weaker sex, an enduring mother, suffering because of the cruelty of men and heroically taking revenge in the name of her lost children" (Chevrier-Bosseau 2013).25

Similar normalizing strategies have frequently been employed on other Shakespeare plays (above all Hamlet).26 Such moves routinely iron out the wrinkles of eccentricity,

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the irregularities characteristic of dramatic hybridity. Anyone is free to appropriate the Scottish play to their own purposes, of course, but many of the efforts described here not only inadvertently deny agency to Lady Macbeth and imagine her in feminine stereotypes, but also more generally attempt to normalize and domesticate the play's wildness, its strangeness, its ellipses, refusals, and erasures. But what's done cannot be undone.

NOTES 1. See Stallybrass 1982; Callaghan 1992; Callaghan et al 1994; Purkiss 1999; and Ostovich 2009. 2. See Alfar's (2003) useful survey of critical arguments contesting the origins and nature of Lady Macbeth's "evil." 3. As Auerbach points out, Terry's resistance to Mrs. Siddons's portrait of Lady Macbeth as a virago exposed a conceptual crux: "If Lady Macbeth was not a monster, she exposed a side of woman's nature that most men and many women did not want to know about" (1987, 252). On Victorian conceptions of Shakespeare and Lady Macbeth, see (among others) Gilbert and Gubar 1979 and Poole 2004. McDonald 2005 provides lucid summaries of each actress's career (Mrs. Siddons, pp. 36-48; Terry, pp. 94-100). Thompson and Roberts 1997 provide a fascinating compendium of women writing on Shakespeare, 1660-1900. 4. Smith 2010 surveys how "Lady Macbeth entered American politics and eventually the White House" (1), matching actresses' landmark performances with their current First Lady; her analysis does not include the more recent texts analyzed in this essay. 5. Terry had written in her notes that Lady Macbeth "is full of womanliness . . . capable of affection — she loves her husband — Ergo — she is a woman — and she knows it, and is half the time afraid while urging Macbeth not to be afraid as she loves a man. Women love men" (quoted in Auerbach 1987, 255). 6. Lady Macbeth's name is variously spelled Gruoch, Gruach, Gruadth, Grelach, etc. in the adaptations I discuss. I will use the spelling given in each version, reserving "Lady Macbeth" for Shakespeare's character. The name appears in a contemporary document as "Gruoch filia Bodhe" — Gruoch daughter of Bodhe (Aitchison 1999, 48). She is not named in Boece or Holinshed (Shakespeare's main source for the play). 7. Cohn's chapter on the play surveys adaptations of the play from Davenant through the early 1970s, with useful accounts of Welles, Brecht, Ionesco, and Marowitz in particular (Cohn 1976, 60-105). 8. On the historiography of the Macbeth story, see Farrow 1994 and Aitchison 1999; on succession theory in the period, see Nenner 1995; on Shakespeare's knowledge of Holinshed and Buchanan on these issues, see Norbrook 1987. 9. On tanistry in the play, see Stevenson 1927 and Rolls 2002. 10. He "received the crown, as lawful inheritor" and ruled for a brief time after Macbeth's

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death, until Macduff "slew him" on behalf of Malcolm Canmore (Holinshed 1808, 5.278). 11. Macbeth promises Gruadh that "if we never make a son between us, I will name Lulach my heir" (King 2008, 244). 12. The historical Malcolm had in fact married first Ingibiorg (probably the daughter of Thorfinn), helping to make peace with the Norsemen. He then married Margaret, the granddaughter of Edward Ironsides; their daughter married Henry I of England, with significant consequences for the succession in England (Holinshed 1808, 5.279). 13. Holinshed 1808 (5.272) continues: the furious father "conceived such hatefull displeasure towards Fleance, that he finallie slue him, & held his daughter in most vile estate of seruitude, for that she had consented to be on this wise defloured by a stranger." The illegitimate child, Walter, eventually returned to Scotland to become chief steward (hence the name Stewart, or Stuart), founder of the line that led to James I. So Fleance was not only absent in the chronicles, but dead. On the use of Fleance as avenging figure in contemporary film, opera, and drama, see Carroll 2013. 14. "We liked the sound of it," rather than Gruoch, the authors say in an afterword (Hartley and Hewson 2012, 319). 15. The play echoes American actions in Vietnam, as well; in one instance, Siward orders a village destroyed, its people burned, because they would not say if Lulach was present. 16. Macbeth himself barely figures in the play and is never seen. We learn only that he did not die bravely fighting, but "was running when we caught him. A spear in his back." Macduff then cuts the throat of the wounded tyrant — "It was a pleasure" — and cut off his head (Greig 2010, 25). 17. Lukeman, to be fair, is in good company. Bertolt Brecht, for one, also saw the omission of Fleance at the end as an aesthetic failure; his exasperated comments can stand for many similar remarks. Observing that all the other prophecies are fulfilled in the play, Brecht noted that "If aesthetics has played a role in the writing" of the play, then the spectator is left in the lurch when "the expectation already awakened . . . to see Banquo's son mounting the throne" is denied: "When Banquo is murdered, he escapes, and Macbeth complains bitterly that he now really must worry because of Fleance. He seems to be just as convinced by the fulfillment of the prophecy as the spectator. But then Fleance, whose escape is made a big deal, never again returns. One can only suppose that the author has forgotten him or that the actor who played Fleance was not good enough to make a bow at the end" (Brecht 1963, 103; my translation). 18. Nor is there any hint of royal lineage in Holinshed's account of Donwald's ambitious wife, as they join in murdering King Duff; this wife is widely considered to be Shakespeare's inspiration for Lady Macbeth. Holinshed's account of Lady Macbeth consists of a single sentence: the prophecy of the three weird sisters encouraged Macbeth and "speciallie his wife lay sore upon him to attempt the thing, as she that was verie ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire to beare the name of a queene" (Holinshed 1808, 5.269).

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19. Ray's essay first describes Gruoch's lineage, missing in the play, as a way to analyze several films which either do not do justice to Lady Macbeth or exploit the actress playing her (Orson Welles, Polanski), or "deepen the character by suggesting that Lady Macbeth has a history worth revealing" (the 2006 Australian film of Macbeth and Heights [2005]; Ray 2009). The history that is revealed in these films, however, has nothing to do with her lineage, but primarily her maternity. 20. Even if Shakespeare had had access to this historical material, the question that Anna Jameson asked in 1832 still remains valid: "what is all this [chronicle history] to the purpose? The sternly magnificent creation of the poet stands before us independent of all these aids of fancy: she is Lady Macbeth; as such she lives, she reigns, and is immortal in the world to imagination. What earthly title could add to her grandeur? What human record or attestation strengthen our impression of her reality?" (Jameson 1901, 354). 21. Greig's version is the exception: based on conversations with a historian of the period, he developed his Gruach from a "speculation" that she "was the real power in the land . . . Macbeth was just the muscle employed by her to hold on to the throne" (Brown 2011). 22. Rebecca Reisert's young adult novel The Third Witch is unusual in that it adopts all of the mitigating strategies: thus, Lady Macbeth is heard telling Macbeth "Your blood is as royal as his [Duncan's]. My blood is more royal. My poor, dead babe whose little body molders in the ground — even the blood of my babe — gnawed by worms and other crawling things of the darkness is more royal than our greedy king's" (Reisert 2001, 115); yet the novel does not really attempt to mitigate Lady Macbeth's behavior. The narrative of Caroline Cooney's young adult novel, Enter Three Witches: A Story of Macbeth (2007) follows the action of the play from the point of view (primarily) of Lady Mary, daughter of the Thane of Cawdor. Cooney also resists the maternal theme, for while this Lady Macbeth was "always in a state of wanting" (Cooney 2007, 37), yet "Lady Macbeth was not motherly and would not offer comfort [to Mary]" (74), and no hitherto unknown child appears in the novel (though Fleance once again returns in triumph, and marries Lady Mary). 23. The focus on her maternity or lack of it has of course been prominent in critical studies since Bradley, memorably parodied in L. C. Knights's famous essay, "How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?" (originally published in 1933; Knights 1946). For an informative contemporary account of the question, with special attention to Shakespeare's "radical revision of the descriptions of [lactation by] ancient Scotswomen he found in his historical source," see Rackin 2005 (120-36). 24. Defying this tradition, the Polish production in the Globe Theatre's "Globe to Globe" festival in 2012 featured a heavily pregnant Lady Macbeth. In a striking historical irony, Mrs. Siddons was quite visibly pregnant while acting the part in 1794, but criticized only in personal terms, with no connection to the character per se: Mrs. Piozzi wrote that "She is big with Child, & I fear will for that reason scarce be well received: for people have a notion She is covetous, and this unnecessary Exertion to

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gain Money will confirm it" (quoted in McDonald 2005, 15). By contrast, Anna Jameson's vivid and passionate defense of Lady Macbeth as a woman — "the woman herself remains a woman to the last — still linked with her sex and with humanity" (Jameson 1901, 361) — proceeded without ever mentioning or imagining the character as (ever) pregnant. 25. Mary McCarthy offered a similar reading in her famous essay "General Macbeth": "the very prospect of murder quickens an hysterical excitement in her, like the discovery of some object in a shop . . . the unimpeded exercise of her will is the voluptuous end she seeks," so that "her wifely concern" is merely "mechanical" (McCarthy 1962, 234). 26. The second subtitle of Ann Thompson's essay — "Why So Many Prequels and Sequels?" — indicates her interest in Hamlet adaptations, yet her answer disappoints: "he [Hamlet] is an itch we simply cannot stop scratching" (Thompson 2013, 29).

REFERENCES Aitchison, Nick. 1999. Macbeth: Man and Myth. Thrupp: Sutton. Alfar, Cristina Leòn. 2003. Fantasies of Female Evil: The Dynamics of Gender and Power in Shakespearean Tragedy. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Auerbach, Nina. 1987. Ellen Terry, Player in Her Time. New York: Norton. Bottomley, Gordon. 1921. Gruach and Britain's Daughter. Boston: Small, Maynard, & Company. Brecht, Bertolt. 1963. "Vorrede zum 'Macbeth.'" In Schriften zum Theater I: 1918-1933. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Brown, Mark. 2011. Interview with David Greig. 8 May 2011. Available online at: http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage-visual-arts/david-greig-pushes-beyond- macbeth-with-dunsinane-1.1099317 (http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage- visual-arts/david-greig-pushes-beyond-macbeth-with-dunsinane-1.1099317) [accessed 29 July 2013]. Callaghan, Dympna. 1992. "Wicked Women in Macbeth: A Study of Power, Ideology, and the Production of Motherhood." In Reconsidering the Renaissance: Papers from the Twenty-First Annual Conference. Edited by Mario A. Di Cesare. Binghamton: MRTS. 355-69. Callaghan, Dympna, Lorraine Helms, and Jyotsna Singh. 1994. The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics. Oxford: Blackwell. Carroll, William C. 2013. "Fleance/Macbeth: The Return of the Repressed." In Shakespeare on Screen: Macbeth. Edited by Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne- Guerrin. Rouen: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre (forthcoming).

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Chevrier-Bosseau, Adeline. 2013. Personal Communication. Clarke, Mary Cowden. 1887. The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines. New York: Armstrong. Cohn, Ruby. 1976. Modern Shakespeare Offshoots. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cooney, Caroline B. 2007. Enter Three Witches: A Story of Macbeth. New York: Scholastic Press. Eagleton, Terry. 1986. William Shakespeare. New York: Blackwell. Farrow, Kenneth D. 1994. "The Historiographical Evolution of the Macbeth Narrative." Scottish Literary Journal 21: 5-23. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage. Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. 1979. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale University Press. Greig, David. 2010. Dunsinane. London: Faber & Faber. Hartley, A. J., and David Hewson. 2012. Macbeth: A Novel. Las Vegas, Nevada: Thomas & Mercer. Holinshed, Raphael. 1808. The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. 1587; 6 vols. London. Jameson, Mrs. [Anna]. 1901. Shakespeare's Heroines. London: Dent. King, Susan Fraser. 2008. Lady Macbeth. New York: Three Rivers Press. Klein, Lisa. 2009. Lady Macbeth's Daughter. New York: Bloomsbury. Knights, L. C. 1946. "How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?" 1933; reprinted in Explorations. London, Chatto and Windus. 1-39. Lamb, Charles, and Mary Lamb. 1909. Tales from Shakespeare. London: Dent. Lukeman, Noah. 2008. The Tragedy of Macbeth, Part II: The Seed of Banquo. New York: Pegasus. McCarthy, Mary. 1962. "General Macbeth." Harper's Magazine; reprinted in Macbeth. Edited by Sylvan Barnet. New York: New American Library, 1963. McDonald, Russ. 2005. Look to the Lady: Sarah Siddons, Ellen Terry, and Judi Dench on the Shakespearean Stage. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Nenner, Howard. 1995. The Right To Be King. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

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Norbrook, David. 1987. "Macbeth and the Politics of Historiography." In Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of Seventeenth-Century England. Edited by Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ostovich, Helen. 2009. "Is There Life After Sex? Macbeth and Post-Sexuality." Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 19: 13.1-13. Available online at: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/si-19/ostomacb.html (http://purl.oclc.org/emls/si- 19/ostomacb.html) [accessed 13 December 2013]. Poole, Adrian. 2004. Shakespeare and the Victorians. London: Thomson Learning. Purkiss, Diane. 1996. The Witch in History. New York: Routledge. Rackin, Phyllis. 2005. Shakespeare and Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ray, Sid. 2009. "Finding Gruoch: The Hidden Genealogy of Lady Macbeth in Text and Cinematic Performance." In Shakespeare and the Middle Ages. Edited by Martha W. Driver and Sid Ray. London: McFarland. 116-34. Reisert, Rebecca. 2001. The Third Witch. New York: Washington Square Press. Rolls, Albert. 2002. "Macbeth and the Uncertainties of the Succession Law." Shakespeare Bulletin 52.2: 43-44, 48. Shakespeare, William. 1997. Macbeth. Edited by A. R. Braunmuller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Gay. 2010. Lady Macbeth in America: From the Stage to the White House. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stallybrass, Peter. 1982. "Macbeth and Witchcraft." In Focus on Macbeth. Edited by John Russell Brown. London: Routledge. 189-209. Stevenson, J. H. 1927. "The Law of the Throne: Tanistry and the Introduction of the Law of Primogeniture: A Note on the Succession of the Kings of Scotland from Kenneth MacAlpin to Robert Bruce." The Scottish Historical Review 25.97 (October): 1-12. Thompson, Ann. 2013. "Hamlet: Looking Before and After: Why So Many Prequels and Sequels?" In Reinventing the Renaissance: Shakespeare and his Contemporaries in Adaptation and Performance. Edited by Sarah Annes Brown, Robert I. Lublin, and Lynsey McCulloch. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 17-31. Thompson, Ann, and Sasha Roberts, eds. 1997. Women Reading Shakespeare, 1660-1900: An Anthology of Criticism. New York: Manchester University Press. Valbuena, Olga L. 2003. Subjects to the King's Divorce: Equivocation, Infidelity, and Resistance in Early Modern England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Ziegler, Georgianna. "Accommodating the Virago: Nineteenth-Century Representations of Lady Macbeth." In Shakespeare and Appropriation. Edited by Christy Desmet and Robert Sawyer. London: Routledge. 119-41.

PERMISSIONS Figure 1. Richard Westall, Lady Macbeth Sleepwalking. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Figure 2. Gordon Bottomley, Gruach and Britain's Daughter. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23282974M/Gruach_and_Britain%27s_daughter (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23282974M/Gruach_and_Britain%27s_daughter). Figure 3. Susan King, Lady Macbeth. http://www.susanfraserking.com/books.htm (http://www.susanfraserking.com/books.htm). Figure 4. Lady Macbeth's Daughter by Lisa Klein, published by Penguin, $16.95. Figure 5. A. J. Hartley and David Hewson, Macbeth: A Novel. Photo courtesy of Andrew Hartley. Figure 6. Siobhan Redmond as Lady Macbeth in David Greig, Dunsinane. Photograph by Richard Campbell.

ABSTRACT | LADY MACBETH'S LITERARY HERITAGE | LIBERATING LADY MACBETH | RECUPERATING LADY MACBETH | NOTES | REFERENCES | TOP

© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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"This same strict and most observant watch" (1.1.71): (/current) Gregory Doran's Hamlet as Surveillance Adaptation

SÉBASTIEN LEFAIT, UNIVERSITY OF CORSICA (/previous)

ABSTRACT | INTRODUCTION | SURVEILLANCE AND VISUAL REFLEXIVITY | THE GHOST BEHIND THE (/about) MACHINE | SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES ON REALITY: SURVEILLANCE AND AESTHETIC DISTANCE | UBIQUITOUS SURVEILLANCE AND THE WORLD TURNED FILM | CONCLUSION | NOTES | REFERENCES (/archive)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I focus on the specificity of Gregory Doran's adaptive system to argue that in his TV film of Hamlet (2009), surveillance provides a focal point. Doran treats surveillance as the main mechanism in an adaptation procedure that renews Hamlet's investigation of the link between the scopic regime of reality and that of drama. To adapt this reflexive quality of the play and provide its mise-en-abyme pattern with new relevance, the film translates issues related to unmediated perception into the language of mediated perception. To this end, including surveillance is a major enhancement, which proves more efficient than the stereotyped use of film cameras within the diegesis. The play exposes the mechanisms of dramatic illusion in terms of direct perception. It relates the magic of the theater to the creation of a discrepancy between what the spectators watch and what they, more or less willingly, believe they see. Doran's adaptation reworks this discrepancy. As a result, the film produces a form of specularity adapted to screen societies. The director preserves the structure of Hamlet's analysis of spectacular processes, but uses the ambiguity of watching in contemporary societies to provide the play with new topicality.

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INTRODUCTION A stage-to-television transposition of his 2008 Royal Shakespeare Company production, Gregory Doran's Hamlet aired on BBC Two in December 2009 and was released on DVD in the U.K. in January 2010. The main specificity of this TV-film adaptation is its surveillance look, noticeable at the very beginning through viewfinder marks in the film's shots. By focusing on surveillance, the director chooses one of the many options offered by a play that has been subjected to many different novel perspectives since the invention of film (Bevington 2011, 210). Yet even though this may seem an unoriginal option, especially given the increasing number of contemporary films and TV series that exploit surveillance as a theme or style, this choice is particularly appropriate to an adaptation of Hamlet for television. Strikingly, Doran does not limit his use of surveillance to the moments in the play when watching is used as a disciplinary mechanism, as shown by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1979, 207-208). This evinces a radical decision: to turn the play's use of surveillance as a cog in the plot into the film's scopic regime.1

My argument in this paper is that, rather than merely seeking to apply his signature to the TV film's visuals, Doran uses surveillance as a means of appropriation by basing his adaptation strategy on a subtle understanding of Hamlet as a play about drama. Indeed, if, as Christy Desmet and Robert Sawyer have shown, appropriating Shakespeare's plays is necessary because "meaning changes with context" (Desmet and Sawyer 1999, 12), the presence of a surveillance subtext in Hamlet calls for appropriation for at least two reasons. The first is cultural. In the British society into which Doran's TV film was released, a debate around the installation of CCTV devices for safety had been going on for many years. In fact, the TV film was aired amidst a certain amount of political upheaval related to the controversy over surveillance in the United Kingdom. The 2007 publication of the United Kingdom Security and Counter-Terrorism Science and Innovation Strategy, which had led to the instigation of wide surveillance databases, officially "to aid the pursuit and disruption of terrorist organisations" (Coaffee 2009, 285), was then bringing criticism of surveillance to the foreground. Doran's adaptation of the play to current events thus emphasizes the way in which Shakespeare links "the oppressive practices of political performance and surveillance at Hamlet's Elsinore" to the condition of citizens in interventionist states (Hackett 2013, 11), thus engaging in a characterization of the surveillance society of twenty-first century Britain.

The second reason is aesthetic. Released as it was at the end of the first decade in the new millennium, Doran's TV film inserted itself into the British surveillance society, which was itself situated in a new optical context, challenging the meaning of the play's visual reflection on optical paradoxes (Ackerman 2011, 49). My starting hypothesis is that this new optical context is that of a visual culture extensively shaped by surveillance practices, a view that reinforces Burnett's remark that "in a

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terror-haunted world, film itself might constitute an optical disciplinary mechanism" (Burnett 2006, 32). Doran's strategy of adaptation continues a development initiated by earlier filmic versions, which Burnett calls "the process of mediating the connections binding surveillance and cinema" (32). Providing visual treatment for the references to surveillance in Hamlet, a "play of monitoring, watching, eavesdropping, and trap-setting" (Hawkes 2002, 70), and thus exploiting the natural resemblance between the cinematic apparatus and contemporary surveillance devices, has gradually turned into a cliché of Hamlet adaptations. The three films studied in Burnett's article explore various ways of situating the play in the current context by linking Hamlet's predicament of being constantly watched to the condition of human beings in surveillance societies. Scott and Simonson's version (Hamlet 2000b), released in 2000, links surveillance to architecture and conveys the sense of a divine gaze encompassing the characters' actions. Almereyda's adaptation, released in the same year, relates surveillance practices to the condition of postmodern men and women, which the film defines as cinematic (Hamlet 2000a). Cavanagh's Hamlet (2005), finally, investigates the political implications of the play's surveillance space. To this list, one should add Hamlet Goes Business (Kaurismaki 1987). The film, which Burnett does not discuss in his article, shows Hamlet using a barely hidden microphone to spy on Klaus, a modern-day Claudius who is the CEO of a Finnish rubber-duck manufacturing company. Hamlet's uncle then uses an archaic CCTV device — a camera connected to a TV set in the next room — to spy on the conversation between his nephew and Lauri Polonius. In this film as in the other three, Elsinore's "walls have ears" type of surveillance is technologically updated to approach or match the current state of monitoring practices.

It is my contention that Doran's Hamlet exploits the reflexivity of the play's references to surveillance in a more complete and relevant way than the adaptations above, except for Almereyda's film, which, as I will show in this article, uses surveillance in a way that is quite similar to Doran's to produce a much different perspective on contemporary societies. Moreover, as a TV adaptation of the play, Doran's version benefits from a higher degree of similarity between the grain of surveillance pictures and that of television images. This may be the reason why Doran resorts to surveillance at the level of his TV film's visuals at least as much as by using it as a prop within his adaptation. I propose to call this process "surveillance adaptation," which means not only that the director adapts the surveillance content of the play, but also, and primarily, that he adapts the play to a contemporary scopic regime that derives part of its essence from the spread of surveillance practices in everyday life. The expansion of surveillance, from a diegetic to extradiegetic feature, is a way of reinvestigating the paradoxes of watching explored in Hamlet in light of twenty-first century visual culture.

To make this point, I will examine the play's references to surveillance in order to characterize the effect they induce. I will then analyze Doran's use of technological http://borrowers.uga.edu/1072/show Page 3 of 29 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

surveillance in renewing the scope of the play's surveillance elements. Finally, through a comparison with Almereyda's adaptation, I will show that Doran's TV film uses surveillance to appropriate Hamlet by applying the play's reflexive elements to contemporary societies.

SURVEILLANCE AND VISUAL REFLEXIVITY This perspective on adaptation is based on the premise that Hamlet questions fundamentally the sense of sight, and that surveillance is, in turn, a key element in triggering this reflexive trait. Because the interest in using surveillance as the core of Doran's adaptation strategy lies in its ability to rekindle the play's reflexive system, this point needs to be clarified at the outset. While analysts such as Benjamin Bertram have noted the importance of ocular proof in the play (Bertram 2004, 16), few have noted that surveillance turns this issue into a metatheatrical feature. As McMahon shows, surveillance is a given for the characters, and chiefly for Hamlet himself: his resorting to monitoring activities is a matter of when, rather than if (McMahon 2012, 102). At the beginning of the play, surveillance allows the sentinels to spot the ghost for the first time. It leads them to organize a watch with Horatio in order for him to determine, as a scholar, whether the presence of the ghost is actual or pure hallucination. For Claudius, surveillance fits into a plan designed to establish that Hamlet is mad with ambition and about to take revenge. For Polonius, it is supposed to confirm his theory that Hamlet is, in fact, madly in love with Ophelia. Finally, for Hamlet himself, spying on Claudius as he watches the performance of the mousetrap is meant to be a way of finding him guilty of his father's murder. Those cases show that, in the play Hamlet, surveillance does not merely fit into a disciplinary process. Since it magnifies direct perception, it supposedly has the potential to provide access to visual evidence. In all of the cases above, however, the practice provides a link to the truth that cannot be considered totally reliable. Paradoxically, in Hamlet, by expanding the human eye's abilities to watch, surveillance in fact denies its ability to actually see. Because of this double bind, surveillance becomes a reflexive feature enabling Shakespeare to investigate the trustworthiness of visual evidence and to conclude that sight is a poor witness to the truth.

The second defining feature of surveillance in the play is its ability to convey both this visual reflexivity and the methodical doubt that results from it to the whole performance rather than to a few specific moments. In 1.2, Claudius's advice that Hamlet should remain "in the cheer and comfort of our eye" (1.2.116), with its polysemous use of the royal plural, brings together the monarch's gaze on his nephew and the one cast by the audience on the central character. In 2.2, Polonius's observation to Claudius that "sometimes [Hamlet] walks four hours together / Here in the lobby" is immediately confirmed by Gertrude's reply that "So he does indeed" (2.2.158-59). The exchange expresses the intriguing fact that Hamlet is under constant watch not only by the King's counselor, but also by the Queen. It also

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suggests that the King himself spies on Hamlet for extensive periods in order to seek an explanation for his madness. All eyes, it seems, are turned to Hamlet, including those of the spectators, who also watch him "four hours together" — four hours being approximately the time of the play's traffic on stage.

The ghost of Hamlet's father, finally, plays a key role in implying that Hamlet is under watch, both diegetically and extradiegetically. The spirit enters the stage whenever he wants to communicate with the characters. In 3.4, for instance, he intervenes when Hamlet begins to stray from the task the ghost has assigned him. The ghost's appearances signify that he continuously supervises the play's events. He is a liminal spectator concerned with the plot, who also influences the play's genre, since he is intent on watching a revenge tragedy. The ghost thus performs what George Banu calls "surveillance de parcours," a phrase Banu uses to describe a stage producer's supervision of his show during the performance (Banu 2006, 144-51).

Hamlet 3.4 studies visual evidence in transliminal terms. The ghost has an external view on events of the plot that can become internal at will. He is constantly breaking the invisible fourth wall and therefore "directing attention to [the] artificial conventional construct that forms the border between a work of art and those who perceive it" (Chambers 2010, 43). Rather than merely showing himself, the spirit intervenes as a presence whose actuality rests in his constant observation. In this scene, upon noticing that his son's fear of his divine supervision has faltered, the ghost has come to remind Hamlet that he is watching him. The ghost's intrusion, therefore, is mainly necessary as a reminder that he sees everything that Hamlet does or neglects to do. This memento is his best guarantee that, by feeling under watch, Hamlet will be under control, and that he will direct his course according to his father's vengeful wishes. The ghost's presence thus corresponds to the deterrent or incentive functions of surveillance that Michel Foucault describes (Foucault 1979, 201). His sole purpose is to direct Hamlet into wreaking the ghost's revenge, and he fulfils this aim in two stages. The first involves proving to Hamlet that the ghost is real and that, consequently, he will be watching to make sure Hamlet kills Claudius. In the first act, the ghost arranges to be seen by several other characters in order to convince his son that he exists. The spirit performs the second stage in 3.4, when he confirms to Hamlet that he is watching everything by intervening immediately when his son is about to misbehave.

The ghost, who monitors events from the outskirts of the stage, can cross at will the "ontological boundary" of drama (McHale 1987, 121), existing simultaneously as a character and as a spectator who sometimes gives stage directions to the play's main character (Tassi 2011, 86). However, because his existence is nonetheless illusory, the spirit generates a verfremdungseffekt ("alienation effect"). He reminds the audience that, in the context of dramatic performance, the intent eyes of spectators lurking in the darkness around the stage receive signs of existence that can hardly be interpreted

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as reliable since, like the ghost, the characters eventually prove to be mere spirits by melting into thin air. Doran exploits the naturally reflexive potential of surveillance in a dramatic context that Banu describes when he explains that "surveillance grants the spectator a status that is both Brechtian and Aristotelian" (Banu 2006, 27, my translation). By making surveillance an essential part of his TV film's narrative regime, he acknowledges its metadramatic potential, applying the relativity of sight to the entire spectacle rather than to specific moments. To adapt this reflexive quality of the play, the TV film translates issues related to unmediated perception into the language of mediated perception, and treats the spirit as a ghostly presence that symbolizes the essence of audiovisual fiction.

THE GHOST BEHIND THE MACHINE Doran's TV film of Hamlet starts with what I propose to call a "primary surveillance shot."

This phrase updates the terminology coined by Gaudreault and Jost to describe the various ways in which filmmakers construct subjectivity. In particular, it descends from "primary internal ocularization." To Gaudreault and Jost, with primary internal ocularization, the fact that a character is watching what is shown on-screen is suggested rather than directly shown. To that effect, the picture is structured as a clue or trace which allows the spectators to immediately connect what they are seeing with the reality-capturing instrument that has shot or reproduced the real world, through the construction of an analogy with their own perception. (Gaudreault and Jost 1990, 131, my translation) In Doran's first shot, visible traces define the reality-capturing instrument under use http://borrowers.uga.edu/1072/show Page 6 of 29 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

as a CCTV (closed-circuit television) camera or similar surveillance appliance. The shot includes a different color pattern from the next shot in the TV film. It gives a high-angle point of view on a corridor in the castle of Elsinore and includes rectangular viewfinder marks at the corners of the screen, complete with a cross at the center.

This opening shot, however, differs from the way in which such shots usually feature in movies dealing with surveillance. As a rule, a primary surveillance shot merely suggests that what is on the screen reflects what a CCTV camera has captured. Consequently, the effect leaves unanswered the question of the subjectivity of the shot. A primary surveillance shot, in other words, may reflect nobody in particular's point of view, if there is nobody behind the control monitor to which the camera is linked (Niney 2004, 192). If someone watches a surveillance tape, the primary surveillance shot may also convey a delayed subjective point of view. Alternatively, it may reflect unidentified subjectivity, if the shot suggests that someone is controlling the CCTV unit without revealing their identity. Finally, including surveillance shots in a movie may be a merely stylistic choice, endowing the TV film's narrative regime with the supposed objectivity of CCTV (Niney 2004, 15).

Rarely, however, does including a primary surveillance shot construct such ambiguous subjectivity as the one featured at the beginning of Doran's TV film of Hamlet. When Francisco enters the field, the camera, which is located in a corner of the corridor, at first remains static. When he turns right around the corner, however, the camera pans left two times, then tilts up once to follow him in his course. Those camera movements can, of course, be ascribed to the usual visual regime of film, in which the need for the audience to see justifies tracking the characters. The appearance of the TV film's full title after a few seconds encourages this reading because it links the surveillance aspect to post-produced intervention into the pictures. Nevertheless, the surveillance traces are visible in the shot, and the camera movements are underlined by an electrical engine noise in the soundtrack. For those reasons, it is impossible to interpret the fact that the camera follows Francisco as merely a narrative decision. While the scopic regime of television remains, the noise made by the CCTV camera for each movement counters any suspension of disbelief in the spectators. The soundtrack reveals that a directorial entity activates and controls the camera. Because the sequence bears the marks of surveillance, however, this entity cannot just be the director of the TV film. The opening suggests that the CCTV camera is diegetic, as a character whose face remains unseen operates it. The presence behind the surveillance camera, therefore, draws its mysterious quality from being liminal, just like the ghost who, in the play, occupies threshold locations.

After a brief switch to a non-surveillance regime, characterized by color and by level camera angles, Doran introduces another primary surveillance shot that shows a different location along the corridor and thus seems to be taken by a different CCTV

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camera. This suggests that someone is switching from one camera to the next, using the surveillance apparatus to follow Francisco. When the ghost "appears" to the guards and to Horatio, the TV film elaborates his presence indirectly.

The spirit becomes a subjectivity affecting the contents of the shot, which a hand-held camera moving towards the sentries seems to have captured. The ghost's presence is a reflection cast in the reaction shots of horrified looks on the characters' faces. For a while, however, the spectators do not see the ghost on screen. The sequence of the ghost's first visit to the characters in the play ends with the same kind of primary surveillance shot as the one opening the TV film. The three guards are now in the field of the CCTV camera, suggesting that the spirit of Hamlet senior, after intervening in the diegetic world as a filmic point of view, has returned to its more distant position behind a CCTV control panel.

To preserve the reflexive dynamics of liminality in the play, Doran chooses to transform the stage's fourth wall into a screen. He thus updates a metadramatic feature by making surveillance work as an interface between reality and its more or less fictionalized version on a CCTV screen — a phenomenon that Gendelman, borrowing from Paul Virilio, calls "real-time reciprocal telesurveillance, 24 hours a day" (Gendelman 2012, 75). The ghost commands a capturing machine that is at once a TV camera and a surveillance instrument located within the fictional world of the TV film. Thanks to surveillance, Doran renews the meaning of the spirit's liminal gaze. According to McClure, "by creating a frame or liminal space, the theater allows a culture to look at itself" (McClure 1999, 19). In the TV film, however, the object reflected on now is twenty-first century visual culture, in which crossing the border between onscreen and offscreen spaces has become an easy operation. In keeping with this new permeability of the partition between mediated and unmediated spaces,

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and with the possibility for people to stage their onscreen appearances, Doran's adaptation of the first scene establishes the ghost as a visual presence without univocally making him a surveillant or a TV film director.

For the ghost's second intervention in the scene, the term "appearance" is even more appropriate than for the previous one.

During his second incursion, the ghost finally features in shots that are not affected by a surveillance point of view. Nevertheless, here and there in this sequence, Doran includes primary surveillance shots in which the ghost does not appear. Those surveillance shots show Horatio and the guards, for no apparent reason, sawing the air and cringing in fear. Such a non sequitur is a way of illustrating the spirit's fantastical nature. The ghost, it seems, is not merely liminal but also polymorphous. He is, at the same time, behind the camera and within its field, watching and being watched.2 This visual paradox complicates the viewing of the TV film. The creature is visible to TV cameras, yet the surveillance cameras are blind to its presence. Because those two perspectives contradict each other, Doran's introduction of two scopic regimes rather than one makes the ghost's presence uncanny.

By including surveillance at the very beginning of his adaptation and exploring the ambiguities it creates, Doran introduces an element that Shakespeare does not include until 3.4. The main visual conundrum in the closet scene is that Hamlet can see his father's ghost, while Gertrude cannot. This apparent visual inconsistency has more obvious metadramatic implications than the ghost's unexpected return, suggesting that he has been watching Hamlet all along. In the closet scene, Shakespeare relates the magic of the theater to the creation of a discrepancy between what the spectators watch and what they more or less willingly believe that they see. Doran's adaptation reworks this discrepancy, based on the observation that it does not apply as such to http://borrowers.uga.edu/1072/show Page 9 of 29 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

TV film spectacles. In this approach, the decision to translate the play's surveillance dimension into its technologically updated form plays an essential part. Surveillance condenses two types of watching: the innocent watching of a show and the motivated watching of citizens for control purposes. The TV film's gradual shift from an extradiegetic surveillance regime to the diegetic surveillance operations that prolong the ghost's supervision and ultimately help perform his revenge illustrates the thinness of the divide between the former and the latter.

This surveillance ingredient in the TV film's scopic regime thus translates, in a nuanced way, the play's investigation of the conjunction of fiction and reality. Merely using filmic tools without pointing to their possible surveillance use would have flattened the play's reflexivity by insisting upon the difference between the degree of television's objectivity and that of direct perception. In that case, Doran would have tried to solve a problem whose topicality had gotten lost in a widespread awareness that TV film pictures, even documentary extracts, are at best a relatively objective representation of reality, and at worst a figment of imagination (Niney 2004, 230-52). This remark does not mean that willing suspension of disbelief no longer exists. Rather, it shows that issues of belief, in a filmic context, do not take unmediated perception as an absolute. Consistent with this observation, Doran translates one of the problems of Hamlet into the scopic regime of mediated perception. The question is no longer "Can I believe what I see?" It is, rather, "Can I believe the moving reproduction of reality I am watching is the best possible reflection of the scene I would see with my own eyes?"

To treat the visual riddle of Hamlet's closet scene, Doran's TV film takes these new optical circumstances into account by exploring the correlation between the scopic regime of surveillance, which is supposedly objective, and that of audiovisual fiction, which evokes the ideas of deceit and illusion. In Shakespeare's play, the ghost thus turns watching into a selective operation: his presence is for Hamlet's eyes only. In Doran's TV film, the ghost's intervention in the events taking place at Elsinore involves mediated perception rather than direct sight. In the sequence adapting 3.4, the ghost reveals himself to Hamlet by resorting to the filmic construction of subjectivity.

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In one of the shots, Hamlet peers into the air. The back of his mother begging him to come to reason occupies half of the screen. Then comes a reverse shot, revealing the presence of the ghost next to Gertrude. The shot insists on the discrepancy between Hamlet's perception and his mother's by showing how Gertrude and Hamlet senior can look into each other's eyes without seeing one another. The succession of the two shots also hints that the ghost may have stepped into the field of the camera only in the subjective shot, so that only his son can see him. His presence demonstrates the ghost's ability to manipulate what the spectators see and to turn some of the characters into spectators. In 3.4, this ability takes a more subtle form than the rotating of a CCTV camera, as featured in the opening sequence, but it has not changed in its essence. By crossing the threshold between what the camera captures and what it does not, the ghost creates a picture of himself that Hamlet will interpret as objective. For the spectators, this picture stands as the epitome of the ghostly nature of films, which, whether on the big screen or on TV, offer their audiences "spectral after-images of people that were presumably in front of the camera" (Ford 2008, 171). The shot recalls that audiovisual creations cannot exist without the eyes of the spectators, who can only make them real by seeing them in the right way. TV film presence, therefore, is presented as a miracle that rests on obtaining from the spectators the sort of believer's gaze that Hamlet casts at the ghost in this sequence, rather than the one Gertrude does. It is similar to theatrical presence in that it results from the distortion of visual perception to induce belief, yet different from it because creating the distortion involves other strategies.

SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES ON REALITY: SURVEILLANCE AND AESTHETIC DISTANCE

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In the play Hamlet, the ghost's existence relies on a theatrical trick from which one can spin out all the ropes of drama. In his treatment of 3.4, Doran translates the ghost's presence into a filmic illusion. The rest of the TV film consistently pulls more filmic ropes to adapt the play's metatheatricality, mainly by materializing and displacing the invisible fourth wall that separates fiction from reality. In fact, as Ackerman has shown, delving into "the relation of the ghost to [the] notion of the theatrical," the spirit helps Shakespeare "[thematize] the problem of [. . .] visual markers in the theatre." The ghost, because of his liminal presence, identifies drama as an art that "declares its subject by marking its spatial limits" (Ackerman 2011, 41- 42). Yet as a character who embodies the partition between actual and fictional existence, the spirit necessarily makes this line shifting and unstable. According to Clément Rosset, this double perspective is the essence of illusion: "The one who is illusioned [. . .] turns the single event he or she perceives into two events that do not coincide, so that the thing he or she perceives is displaced and rendered unable to fuse with itself again. It is as if the event had split into two parts, or, more precisely, as if two aspects of one event had started existing autonomously" (Rosset 1976, 16, my translation). The question facing stage producers and film directors — to show or not to show the ghost — thus becomes arduous, as either option may damage the character's ambiguity, which is his most essential feature.

It is hardly possible to solve this quandary without resorting to the notion of double spectatorship. As Maus shows, in the Renaissance the problem of seeing someone as they are was solved by introducing diverse types of spectatorship: that of God who sees everything, as opposed to that of human beings, whose vision obviously is limited (Maus 1995, 167). Hamlet's perception of the ghost thus offers him a connection with a divine and omniscient gaze. When the ghost appears on stage, the audience immediately shares in this divine perspective. Nevertheless, with double spectatorship, "the requested naivete is followed by the admiration of the connoisseur over the artistry itself" (Bussels and Oostveldt 2012, 147). The belief in the ghost, if it is religious in nature, is necessarily coupled with the suspicion that he may be a (devilish) figment, all the more so since, as a Protestant, Hamlet is not supposed to believe in Purgatory (Dover Wilson 1970, 61-62).

In the play, a seesaw movement occurs between those two extremes, paralleling the fluctuations of Hamlet's procrastination. The question of whether one should trust the sense of sight extends to the whole performance, as it becomes a vital factor for prolonging the plot. If Hamlet decides the ghost is an illusion, or if he changes his perspective to consider the spirit a demon, he will abort prematurely his revenge scheme. Hamlet's situation resembles that created by dramatic illusion, when the spectators willingly cast a distortive look upon the stage. The objectivity of the parts of reality that theater necessarily uses clashes with the subjective operation that makes them disappear, or appear other than they are. The possibility for Hamlet's perspective on the ghost to change at any moment thus recalls the point that dramatic http://borrowers.uga.edu/1072/show Page 12 of 29 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

illusion is a matter of focal length: finding the right viewing distance can make things be or not be. Changing that distance from the spectacle breaks the continuity of illusionism, which, as Robert Stam has shown, starts a reflection on the spectacle by the spectacle itself (Stam 1992, 7).

By multiplying centers of vision and placing them now within, now outside the spatial limits of dramatic illusion, Shakespeare generates aesthetic distance in an attempt to account for visual paradoxes that are both spectral and essentially theatrical. Varying the spectator's focal length on the show, which amounts to making the line between fiction and reality ebb and flow, is a crucial element in Shakespeare's characterization of the visual culture of his time, when many people still believed in ghosts (Davidson 2012, 1-3) and when theatergoers "saw, simultaneously, the real actor and the assumed role" (Mooney 1990, 2). Once again, Doran's use of surveillance efficiently preserves this reflexive feature in the play, and then applies it to a different context. Doran exploits surveillance to translate the mobility of the fourth wall that characterizes the play into the culture of mediated audiovisual fiction. Contemporary surveillance, as a natural junction between the diegetic and the extradiegetic worlds, is in keeping with Shakespeare's notion of liminal spectatorship, linked to the ghost's situation at the threshold between onstage and offstage spaces. Surveillance enacts the crossing of the threshold between the real and the fictional.

Doran's treatment of the ghost's first manifestation to Hamlet in act 1 exemplifies his use of surveillance as an interface.

As in the beginning of the TV film, the ghost appears as a subjectivity superimposing itself on a shot depicting the bemused faces of Hamlet and Horatio. As they turn around to realize that the ghost has appeared where previously there was nothing, he

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appears as a dark shadow in one corner of the screen. Before he appears full-screen, the spirit is just a gaze cast on the other two characters and reflected in their reaction. In the next shot, however, the ghost becomes a spectator who has just turned actor by entering the field of the camera, beyond which he was waiting. While he had remained invisible to them when he was behind the camera, the ghost shows himself to Hamlet and Horatio when he walks before the camera. His existence, therefore, springs from the scopic regime of fiction. When submitted to another scopic regime, such as that of surveillance in the opening sequence, the ghost remains invisible. Some of the next shots in the sequence confirm this relativity. As Marcellus and Horatio, with their back to the camera, look at the ghost talking to Hamlet in 1.5, proof of his existence only lies in the observation that they all see him.

From an extrafilmic perspective, the sequence includes many signs that the ghost is not a ghost. One of them occurs when Hamlet mentions that his father has been "cast up again." Although the accepted meaning of the phrase is that he has been thrown up from the underworld, the polysemy of the term "cast" also suggests that he has received another part to play. In Hamlet, the pun calls attention to the fact that theatrical existence depends solely on "casting" and that the ghost can exist again only by being "thrown up" once more on the stage (Wilson 2000, 166). In the TV film, Doran's casting adds another layer to the meaning of the phrase, as Patrick Stewart plays both the ghost and King Claudius, who has already appeared in 1.2. When the ghost appears to Hamlet, the choice of actors explicitly adds another reason for Hamlet to doubt that the visitor is a ghost. Barring the possibility that Claudius and the father of Hamlet were twins, the spirit could just be Claudius in disguise. From a diegetic standpoint, this interpretation would be farfetched. It would be absurd for Claudius to dress up as a ghost and denounce himself. Nevertheless, casting the same actor as Hamlet's father and as Claudius is an explicit trace of extradiegetic intervention. This sign links the presence of the ghost to an artificial operation by the production crew. The same analysis applies to the ghost's metallic voice when he talks to Hamlet, whose booming quality comes from an amplification effect. This effect reminds the spectators that they could not hear the spirit if he did not take advantage of a sound system.

Later in the sequence, the spirit orders Hamlet to swear that he will conduct his revenge scheme, which he does, and the other characters swear they will not give him away. At this moment, Doran directly associates the amplified nature of the voice to the ghost's presence in Elsinore's surveillance network.

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Rather than thundering from the attic to exact an oath from the characters, the spirit roars so loud that he causes the camera to shake. The shot, which displays from a high angle view Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus, seems to be taken by a CCTV camera. The viewfinder marks featured in the opening sequence, however, are no longer present. This implies that the cameras used to shoot the TV film now operate surveillance. The threatening voice, however, is an interesting addition to this primary surveillance shot. It suggests that the CCTV system featured in the castle is complete with loudspeakers that can be activated at the slightest sign of misdemeanor, to remind the characters that they are under watch. At this point in the TV film, the ghost's invasion of the surveillance apparatus fulfils a new purpose. From within the machine, the spirit now directs the characters. The ghost has moved from the outside of the plot to the inside, but he repeats, by his very crossing, "the machinations of representational devices" (Miller 2003, 19). The fact the TV camera has become a tool for surveillance visually solidifies this transgression. From this moment on, the many occasions when Hamlet talks to the camera to address his father directly emphasize his awareness of a supervising look. With the switch to a different utilization of the camera, Doran translates the spirit's extradiegetic gaze into diegetic watching without interfering with the contents of the shot. The world circumscribed by the camera's gaze, however, is characterized differently than in Shakespeare's play because of this technological update. The sense of being watched by a superior entity that is able to dictate our fates, which is a key component in the traditional "world as stage" metaphor, thus receives appropriate treatment with regard to current screen and camera societies.

UBIQUITOUS SURVEILLANCE AND THE WORLD TURNED FILM In the play, the ghost comes to Hamlet to tell him a tale, the contents of which will

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dictate his future actions. He initiates a plot, the rest of which will be acted out in front of his eyes without his having to intervene constantly. In the ghost's scheme, Hamlet will take over from his father's actions in the diegetic world by becoming his acting pawn. The protagonist is thus to serve as an instrument of enactment. He will organize a performance of the initial revelation by directing a production of The Murder of Gonzago, which Falco calls "a rough simulacrum of the ghost's tale" (Falco 2007, 124). In the TV film, because the ghost watches through cameras, the unraveling of his plot becomes a TV production. Consistent with this trope, Hamlet's role in the performance is that of TV film director. Doran highlights the mediated nature of Hamlet's collaboration with the ghost when the prince starts using cameras. The mousetrap sequence then shows that this passion comes from the urge to act out his father's revenge in a filmic way, with direct consequences for the play's mise-en- abyme pattern in this scene and for its effect on the audience.

Before he launches into his "Now I am alone" speech, Hamlet creates a moment of intimacy for himself by tearing apart the surveillance camera gazing down at him. This move shows that he understands that just because all the other characters have left does not mean that he is alone. Being free from the ghost's control is crucial for this speech, in which Hamlet explains his plan to "catch the conscience of the King" (2.2.558). The scheme consists in spying on the spectators during a performance that is reminiscent of Claudius's supposed murder, in order to spot any sign of guilt in his reaction. This surveillance protocol may lead to two conclusions. If Claudius responds significantly to the murder scene, there will be reason to believe he feels guilt or fear for the murder he has committed. If he does not budge, this will mean either that he has extreme self-control, or that the ghost's tale is a lie. As a result, the mousetrap is a test of the ghost's revelation at least as much as of Claudius's guilt (Miola 2000, 121). As a plan designed to prove the ghost right or wrong, the ploy clearly indicates that Hamlet does not take the ghost's story of assassination at face value. Such evidence of doubt culminates when Hamlet declares "The spirit that I have seen / may be a devil" (2.2.551-52). This is why Hamlet disconnects the surveillance unit, in order to free himself briefly from the ghost's control. The prince's practical wisdom about the ways of surveillance evinces his consciousness that the ghost's tale may have been designed to fool him. Hamlet considers the possibility that the tale's narrator — or author — has captivated and captured him into committing murder and corrupting his soul.

In Doran's adaptation, what is at stake in the mousetrap sequence is TV realism rather than dramatic verisimilitude. The surveillance ingredient translates the theatrical specularity of the scene into the visual language of television. The succession of shots that leads to the moment when Hamlet starts rehearsing The Murder of Gonzago with the players illustrates this use of surveillance as a transition.

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The sequence before the rehearsal scene ends with a close-up on the CCTV camera that Hamlet had broken previously, before his "Now I am alone" speech. A few seconds after this shot, the sequence in which Hamlet advises the players about how they should perform the mousetrap play opens with a shot of the actors. Then comes a shot of Hamlet with a camera in his hand, shooting the rehearsals. The succession of shots, however, points to surveillance as the motivation for his use of a camera. Hamlet eventually turns the appliance onto Claudius to focus on his reaction, thereby taking over from the ghost's watch with his own insider's point of view.

The complementarity between the two kinds of devices is even more noticeable since the primary surveillance shots that characterized the beginning of the TV film have been absent for some time. In the same sequence, the way in which Doran chooses to treat Hamlet's famous advice to "hold the mirror up to nature" (3.2.18-19) illustrates the transition from the ghost's extradiegetic surveillance to Hamlet's diegetic capturing of events.

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Hamlet borrows a mirror from one of the actors, then uses it childishly to reflect an intense source of light and project a ray onto the face of other players. Hamlet's mirror thus becomes a spotlight channeling the spectators' gaze to faces and to what they express. It acts as a metaphor for Hamlet's subsequent use of his camera to focus on Claudius's visage. At the sequence's climax, Hamlet takes a close-up shot of Claudius in key lighting, magnifying his reaction to the performance.

The mousetrap sequence is a mirror held up to Claudius (Shurgot 1998, 253). The show is an instrument forcing him to look at what he has done. It also places his reaction in full light, the better for Hamlet to observe it. To do so, he lies down on

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Ophelia's lap, his small-size camera in hand. They attend the scene from behind the players, who perform on a stage area marked out by a rug.

This staging fits the production circumstances of the play in the Elizabethan age, as described by Philip Edwards in his editor's introduction to Hamlet (Shakespeare 2003, 51). The play within the play is performed directly in front of the King and Queen, with Hamlet on the other side looking at both the performance and the sovereigns. From this position, the prince has a clear view of Claudius and Gertrude facing him, looking at the performance in frontal view from the other side. Hamlet, however, merely pretends to use the camera to capture the performance. In fact, he points it at Claudius's face to observe his response as if through a magnifying lens. In so doing, he brings the King's attitude into sharp focus, and assists, from a diegetic perspective, the TV camera directing the spectator's gaze to this key feature in the sequence. One of the sequence's most meaningful shots epitomizes the collaboration between Hamlet's amateur film and Doran's narrative. The picture summarizes the surveillance function of Doran's camera. It shows, in extreme close-up, the climactic moment of the dumb show when a man pours poison into the sleeping King's ear. The actors perform this action against a blurred background, which the camera then brings into sharp focus, to reveal Claudius's face and allow the spectators to read the tension in his features.

When Lucianus pours poison into Gonzago's ear during the version of the pantomime with dialogue, Hamlet's camera captures the signs of panic on the King's face.

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This gives an alternative function to the performance. While it does not bring unequivocal evidence that Claudius killed Hamlet's father — the murderer in the mousetrap play being "nephew to the King," Claudius may interpret it as a threat — the prince's use of the camera undoubtedly shifts the focus from stage to the audience, and particularly to one of its members. Adding Hamlet's camera to the mousetrap sequence therefore emphasizes that the machine has revelatory capacities, since one can use it as a magnifying glass. The camera, as a prop, refers to the revelatory abilities of the reality-capturing devices that Turvey analyzes in his work on film and the revelationist tradition (Turvey 2008, 4). More important, the sequence uses the camera's power to bring the spectator's gaze to bear on a specific part of the show in http://borrowers.uga.edu/1072/show Page 21 of 29 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

ways that are almost impossible in a theatrical configuration. The audience of a theater can only be encouraged to focus on Claudius's reaction in verbal or indirect ways, through injunctions to "look" or pointed fingers. Comparatively, Hamlet's camera stands out for the ease with which it makes the audience focus on the spectators of the show rather than on the show itself.

This displacement from the performance to the audience, however, is disappointing. It provokes Hamlet's conviction that Claudius is guilty rather than bringing evidence of it. In the play, the equivocal nature of the visual evidence that Hamlet obtains by spying on Claudius unveils the purpose of the inset, which is to create a mise-en- abyme pattern. Indeed, "the play within the play [. . .] appears as a preferred field of self-reflexivity" (Fischer and Greiner 2007, xiii; see also Meier 1999, 184). For the specularity of the play within the play to work, therefore, the camera's ability to direct the spectators' eyes is undeniably an asset, provided that the specular pattern is adapted to the watching practices of our time. Doran makes Hamlet shoot a film of the spectators rather than making him shoot the mousetrap movie before showing it to the King, as was the case in Almereyda's adaptation which, for Rasmus, "tries to translate most of the play's self-referential quality to the new medium [of film]" (Rasmus 2001, 157). To adapt this central aspect of Hamlet, Almereyda places his diegetic spectators in front of a screen. He thus makes them mirror the condition of the audience in a movie theater, which conveys the notion that all spectators, like those of Hamlet's mousetrap film, are unwilling actors in a worldwide cinematic production. Metz describes the process of cinematic mise-en-abyme patterns, such as Almereyda's, as follows: "the film included in the film was an illusion, which necessarily means that the film including the other film (i.e., the movie we are watching) was not, or not that much after all" (Metz 1975, 51, my translation).

Doran adds an important line to this "all the world's a film" subtext, generating a more convincing angle on the play's mise-en-abyme framework. The director turns a destiny-oriented vision of life, triggered by the theatrum mundi cliché as a metaphor of fate, in which "individuals could be viewed as puppets in a drama of which they remained unaware" (Porter 1997, 77), into a reading of contemporary societies, which clearly focuses on how they turn individuals into TV film actors. In his adaptation of the mousetrap sequence, Hamlet captures with his camera both the performance and its audience, which hints that their filmic condition is a shared characteristic. The lens of Hamlet's camera thus brings two kinds of actors, the willing and the unwilling ones, together within the same frame. Doran's adaptation thus reflects the filmic condition of an audience made up of "merely actors." While they are both being shot, the performers and the spectators in Doran's TV film do not share exactly the same predicament. With Hamlet's use of his camera, only the latter are under watch, in the surveillance meaning of the term, for signs of misbehavior that will be held against them. Claudius's reaction to the performance strengthens this interpretation. Rather than interrupting the show by shouting for the lights to come back in the room, he http://borrowers.uga.edu/1072/show Page 22 of 29 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

walks up to Hamlet with a lamp in his hand, in order to blind the prince's camera with the light.

Doran's TV film therefore uses surveillance to produce a relevant translation of "Hamlet's extreme sense of theatre [which is] his ceaseless perception of theatre [. . .] as an inescapable or metaphysical mark of the human condition" (Cavell 2003, 187), into a perspective that defines the current condition of humankind as filmic. As a result, the TV film's renewed reflexivity apparently leads to a conclusion that is similar to Almereyda's. Nevertheless, the surveillance subtext to Doran's TV film undeniably gives more conviction to the idea that our life is a TV film-fiction than does Almereyda's film. Doran bases his adaptation on the shared feeling that we are being watched, that cameras are constantly capturing our lives. His premise therefore is that the entire world is literally being caught on film. As a result, the metaphorical vision of life as a movie, which Sarah Hatchuel, among others, has analyzed (Hatchuel 2004), seems less radical. In fact, if one considers the vehicle of the metaphor to be any film rather than specifically a fiction film, this vision is no longer metaphorical. Hamlet's shooting of diegetic fiction and diegetic nonfiction in the same TV film encourages this interpretation, which is even more appropriate to a TV context than it is to a cinematic one, TV being characterized by the succession, on the same screen, of documentary pictures — for instance, in the news broadcast — and fiction films.

One of the TV film's symbols, the shattered mirror that replaces the arras of 3.4, synthesizes the director's angle, using Hamlet to focus on the stakes of hypervision and transparency in contemporary societies. The mirror is a direct reference to a similar staging trick in Hamlet Goes Business and to Branagh's treatment of the "To be or not to be" sequence in his adaptation (Hamlet 1996). Nevertheless, the device, which corresponds to a Shakespearean metaphor and has often been used to translate the play's reflexivity, here evolves into a new version of itself, in keeping with the current state of people's relationship with their image. As the latest evolution of a device that stems from Hamlet but has been used very differently in successive productions or adaptations of the play, a fact Doran all but ignores, the mirror here produces a new image: Hamlet's fractured reflection used for the TV film's poster (Figure 1).

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Figure 1: The TV film's DVD cover In the broken mirror, Hamlet's face is split into pieces to convey the cubist notion that multiple perspectives on the self constitute modern identities. That the mirror is a two-way mirror further complicates this image of the human condition. The object is a looking glass in the full sense of the phrase. It enables someone to look at themselves while someone else is looking at them from the other side. Polonius used the mirror to spy on Hamlet, causing him to smash the mirror — and his own reflection — to smithereens. In Doran's TV film, the mirror's symbolism includes its use for surveillance, which ascribes the splintered character of contemporary identities to surveillance practices fitted to their "fragmented, tentative, experimental, and ever-changing nature" (Gabriel 2000, 130). The multiplication of surveillance centers looking at us from various perspectives splits our image. So do the webcams and TV cameras we use as distorting mirrors, as clean slates with which to http://borrowers.uga.edu/1072/show Page 24 of 29 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

reconstruct identities (Danesi 2010, 221), to produce embellished and selective visions of ourselves for our Facebook page — images, that is, in which it will be easier for us to reflect ourselves.

CONCLUSION As Jean I. Marsden suggested more than twenty years ago in an often-quoted text, Shakespearean appropriations "present a view of Shakespeare embedded not only in his own culture but in ours, forcing us to consider both the impact we have on the plays and the impact they have on us" (Marsden 1991, 8). Doran's TV film offers a good instance of this perspective: it acknowledges the importance of monitoring, of oneself or of others, in twenty-first century visual culture, analyzes the impact of this visual culture on what the play can be or should be today, and rekindles the play's influence on our awareness of the dubious nature of audiovisual fiction.

By using surveillance as the main mechanism in his adaptation procedure, however, Doran takes appropriation a step further. Rather than just adapting the play's meaning to a different context, Doran's adaptation of Hamlet analyzes this context. The TV film mediates the connections between diegetic and extradiegetic monitoring practices on a larger scale than its predecessors, and appropriates the play by reviving its reflexive dynamics. To do so, Doran borrows reflexive structures from Hamlet that are related primarily to surveillance practices. By adapting them to the circumstances of current surveillance societies, he appropriates the tragedy, and draws from it appropriate conclusions about the estate of humankind in a world that may be out of joint, but for different reasons than in the early modern age, when monitoring practices were merely instruments of control. The TV film of Hamlet thus generates powerful perspectives on contemporary societies, where identities are disseminated on various screens, where reflexivity seems bottomless, and where perception itself seems to have become a ghost. In Doran's Hamlet, surveillance creates this situation, as it impacts how we view ourselves and others, and displaces the dividing line between fiction and non-fiction. The screen thus becomes the new ontological boundary, as being increasingly depends on finding the camera that will make one feel and look real.

NOTES 1. As Dallas G. Denery, II recalls, "Christian Metz [. . .] introduced the expression 'scopic regime' to name dominant and structuring relations between observer, image and object. The scopic regime of the cinema, for example, is defined by the absence of the seen object (which simply means when we see something on the silver screen, we really only see its projected image, not the thing itself)" (Denery 2005, 9). The reference is to Metz 1982, 61-63. http://borrowers.uga.edu/1072/show Page 25 of 29 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)26 PM

2. Patrick Stewart, who is cast as Claudius, also plays Hamlet's father. The surveillant gaze is thus shared between two personae who are both characterized by their watching activity.

REFERENCES Ackerman, Alan L. 2011. Seeing Things: From Shakespeare to Pixar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Banu, Georges. 2006. La Scène surveillée, Essai. Arles: Actes Sud. Bertram, Benjamin. 2004. The Time Is out of Joint: Skepticism in Shakespeare's England. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Bevington, David M. 2011. Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burnett, Mark Thornton. 2006. "'I see my father' in 'my mind's eye': Surveillance and the Filmic Hamlet." In Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-first Century. Edited by Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 31-52. Bussels, Stijn, and Bram Oostveldt. 2012. "One Never Sees Monsters without Experiencing Emotion." Translations of the Sublime: The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of Longinus' Peri Hupsous. In Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture, and the Theatre. Edited by Caroline Eck, Stijn Bussels, Maarten Delbeke, and Jürgen Pieters. Boston: Brill. 139-61. Cavell, Stanley. 2003. Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chambers, Robert. 2010. Parody: The Art That Plays with Art. New York: Peter Lang. Coaffee, Jon. 2009. Terrorism, Risk, and the Global City: Towards Urban Resilience. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate. Danesi, Marcel. 2010. Geeks, Goths, and Gangstas: Youth Culture and the Evolution of Modern Society. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press. Davidson, Jane P. 2012. Early Modern Supernatural: The Dark Side of European Culture, 1400-1700. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger. Denery, Dallas G., II. 2005. Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World: Optics, Theology, and Religious Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Desmet, Christy, and Robert Sawyer, eds. 1999. Shakespeare and Appropriation. London: Routledge.

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Dover Wilson, John. 1970. What Happens in Hamlet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Falco, Raphael. 2007. "Tragedy in Retrospect: Hamlet's Narrative Infrastructure." The Shakespearean International Yearbook 7: 123-39. Fischer, Gerhard, and Bernhard Greiner. 2007. "The Play within the Play: Scholarly Perspectives." In The Play Within the Play: The Performance of Meta-Theatre and Self-Reflection. Edited by Gerhard Fischer and Bernhard Greiner. Amsterdam: Rodopi. xi-xvi. Ford, Hamish. 2008. "Difficult Relations: Film Studies and Continental European Philosophy." In The SAGE Handbook of Film Studies. Edited by James Donald and Michael Renov. London: SAGE Publications. 164-79. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage. Gabriel, Yiannis. 2000. Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gaudreault, André, and François Jost. 1990. Le Récit cinématographique (Cinematic Narrative). Paris: Nathan. Gendelman, Norman M. 2012. "Zero-degree Seriality: Television Narrative in the Post- network Era." In Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in Twenty-First Century Programming. Edited by Melissa Ames. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 69-81. Hackett, Helen. 2013. A Short History of English Renaissance Drama. London: I. B. Tauris. Hamlet. 2009. Dir. Gregory Doran. UK, BBC Wales. Hamlet. 2005. Dir. Stephen Cavanagh. UK, Derry Film Initiative. Hamlet. 2000a. Dir. Michael Almereyda. USA, Double A Films. Hamlet. 2000b. Dir. Campbell Scott and Eric Simonson. USA, Hallmark Entertainment. Hamlet. 1996. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. UK, USA, Castle Rock Entertainment. Hamlet Goes Business (Hamlet liikemaailmassa). 1987. Dir. Aki Kaurismäki. Finland, Villealfa Filmproduction Oy. Hatchuel, Sarah. 2004. "From Meta-theatre to Meta-cinema in Screen Versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream." In Shakespeare on Screen: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Edited by Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Publications de l'Université de Rouen. 151-66.

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Hatchuel, Sarah. 2004. Shakespeare: From Stage to Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hawkes, Terence. 2002. Shakespeare in the Present. London: Routledge. Marsden, Jean I. 1991. Introduction to The Appropriation of Shakespeare: Post- Renaissance Reconstruction of the Works and the Myth. Edited by Jean I. Marsden. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. 1-10. Maus, Katharine Eisaman. 1995. "Proof and Consequences: Inwardness and Its Exposure in the English Renaissance." In Materialist Shakespeare: A History. Edited by Ivo Kamps. London: Verso. 157-80. McHale, Brian. 1987. Postmodernist Fiction. New York and London: Methuen. McClure, Laura. 1999. Spoken Like a Woman: Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama. Princeton: Princeton University Press. McMahon, Chris. 2012. Family and the State in Early Modern Revenge Drama: Economies of Vengeance. New York: Routledge. Meier, Paul E. 1999. "King of Infinite Space: Richardson's Hamlet (1969)." In The Cinema of Tony Richardson. Edited by John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. 177-87. Metz, Christian. 1982. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Translated by Celia Britton et al. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Metz, Christian. 1975. "Le signifiant imaginaire (The Imaginary Signifier)." Communications 23: 3-55. Miller, Edward D. 2003. Emergency Broadcasting and 1930s American Radio. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Miola, Robert S. 2000. Shakespeare's Reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mooney, Michael E. 1990. Shakespeare's Dramatic Transactions. Durham: Duke University Press. Niney, François. 2004. L'Épreuve du réel à l'écran: Essai sur le principe de réalité documentaire (The Print of Reality on Screen. An Essay on the Principles of Documentary Reality). Bruxelles: De Boeck. Porter, Roy. 1997. Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Middle Ages to the Present. London: Routledge. Rasmus, Agnieszka. 2001. "'I could a tale unfold . . . ': From Metatheatre to Metacinema: Films within the Films in Shakespeare on Screen." Cadernos de Traduçâo 7. Florianopolis: UFSC: 147-68.

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Rosset, Clément. 1976. Le Réel et son double (Reality and its Double). Paris: Gallimard. Shakespeare, William. 2003. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Edited by Philip Edwards. New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shurgot, Michael W. 1998. Stages of Play: Shakespeare's Theatrical Energies in Elizabethan Performance. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Stam, Robert. 1992. Reflexivity in Film and Literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-Luc Godard. New York: Columbia University Press. Tassi, Marguerite A. 2011. Women and Revenge in Shakespeare: Gender, Genre, and Ethics. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press. Turvey, Malcolm. 2008. Doubting Vision: Film and the Revelationist Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilson, Luke Andrew. 2000. Theaters of Intention: Drama and the Law in Early Modern England. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

ABSTRACT | INTRODUCTION | SURVEILLANCE AND VISUAL REFLEXIVITY | THE GHOST BEHIND THE MACHINE | SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES ON REALITY: SURVEILLANCE AND AESTHETIC DISTANCE | UBIQUITOUS SURVEILLANCE AND THE WORLD TURNED FILM | CONCLUSION | NOTES | REFERENCES | TOP

© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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A Republican Dream? — Americans Question (/current) Shakespeare

KIM C. STURGESS, UNIVERSITY OF QATAR (/previous)

ABSTRACT | JOSEPH C. HART | DELIA BACON | WALT WHITMAN, IGNATIUS DONNELLY, MARK (/about) TWAIN | CONCLUSION | REFERENCES

(/archive) ABSTRACT In late 2011, Anonymous, a large-budget movie from filmmaker Roland Emmerich — the producer of such films as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and The Patriot — was promoted on posters and in TV commercials by posing the question "Was Shakespeare a Fraud?" While contemporary media executives chose the advertising "tag line" for this film, the roots of their exploitative question go back to 1856 and the lead article, by American Delia Bacon, in Putnam's Monthly, A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art. For the first time in the public press, a scholar argued that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon did not write the plays and poems that bore his name. Important to this re-mythologizing was Bacon's thesis that the plays promoted a republican political philosophy that ultimately led to the creation of the United States of America. This article startled some in nineteenth-century society and, via a tangled web, more recently has resulted in the script and publicity campaign for the movie Anonymous. The origins of this speculation about Shakespearean authorship, together with related commercial sensationalism, can be linked to the appropriation of Shakespeare's plays to support American republican ideology.

This essay will demonstrate that the origins of speculation about Shakespearean authorship, together with related commercial sensationalism, can be linked historically to a process of appropriating the plays to support American republican http://borrowers.uga.edu/1031/show Page 1 of 14 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)27 PM

ideology. Society is now used to corporate media companies exploiting the dead and famous to sell cinema tickets and DVDs. No one is safe from hack writers and Hollywood movie producers: from the Christian "messiah" to British Kings, fictions have been produced and sold as fact. In late 2011, the name of Shakespeare was added to this list when a screenplay written by American John Orloff became the large-budget movie entitled Anonymous, from Roland Emmerich. This film from the producer of such "blockbusters" as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and The Patriot was screened in multiplexes around the world. The movie was promoted on posters and in TV commercials by posing the question, "Was Shakespeare a Fraud?" Although this strange question might be well known to academics in the field of English Literature, it was something quite new for the majority of the Saturday night cinema-going audience.

While contemporary media executives chose the advertising "tag line" for Anonymous, the roots of this exploitative question go back to the nineteenth century. Once William Shakespeare was widely accepted as a literary exemplar, a new academic phenomenon was born that appeared to challenge the still-developing bardolatry. While some academics in Britain were beginning to "play with" the simplistic theory that Shakespeare might have possibly been anti-monarchist, more significant questions, first published in America, were raised about the authorship of the plays. However, this was not simply a challenge to the accepted identity of the playwright. The most prominent name behind the authorship controversy attempted to irrevocably link the playwright with the republican ideology that lay behind the foundation of the American nation.

JOSEPH C. HART

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The first published challenge to William Shakespeare's authorship was made in an obscure book by Joseph C. Hart, a New York lawyer and journalist and later a Consul for the United States. In 1848, Hart published The Romance of Yachting, a book presented to readers as an account of a sailing trip across the Atlantic Ocean to Spain. Despite the title, the book contained a discourse on "several favourite and prevailing historical assumptions, which the author [. . .] made [the] object of [his] dissent" (Hart 1848, 7). Among these "dissents," Hart proposed to rename the city of New York, removing what he argued was the "[English] badge of colonial slavery" (11), and he attacked the tradition of the iconic New England Puritans, preferring to champion the role of the "Knickerbocker race" (42) of Dutch New Amsterdam. Hart then, with more than thirty-five pages of text, presented a well-argued and considered attack on the idea that all thirty-eight plays assigned to Shakespeare had a single author and that this author was William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. According to Hart, it was "a fraud upon the world to thrust his surreptitious fame upon us." Significantly, he suggested that in future years, "the enquiry will be, who were the able literary men who wrote the dramas imputed to him?" (216; emphasis in original). This question, from the year 1848 onward, appears to be the starting point for much subsequent scholarship. However, Hart did not himself make any claim to identify who the "able literary men" might have been. For the American Hart, the issue was one of English conceit, a fraud originated primarily by Nicolas Rowe in 1709. Hart concluded his expression of dissent by asking his readers, "How much good Christian ink has been spent in writing up a worthless subject, I mean Shakspeare in person" (242).

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While Hart may have initiated the process, it is an American woman who should be acknowledged for first publicizing the question of Shakespeare's authorship. In January 1856, Ohio-born Delia Bacon became the first person to raise the issue in an American journal. Along with challenging Shakespeare's authorship, Bacon offered readers a new and radical approach to the process of appropriating Shakespeare. For this new development, the plays were to be distanced not just from the rural folk background and monarchist traditions of England but also from the Warwickshire yeoman family. The difference between Delia Bacon's approach and that of Joseph Hart was that she sought to link the plays with a group of men whom she believed were prophets of republican America. Her lead article in Putnam's Monthly, A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art startled many in nineteenth-century society and still continues to interest publicity-seeking academics and celebrities.

DELIA BACON

Delia Bacon's assertion that Shakespeare was not responsible for the plays credited to his name was recognized by the editor of the respected magazine as controversial, if not mildly heretical. The editor of Putnam's, while recognizing a journalistic "scoop," http://borrowers.uga.edu/1031/show Page 4 of 14 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)27 PM

felt the need to distance his magazine from any possible criticism provoked by the article. A footnote to "William Shakespeare and His Plays; An Inquiry Concerning Them" stated that In commencing the publication of these bold, original, and most ingenious and interesting speculations upon the real authorship of Shakespeare's plays, it is proper for the Editor of Putnam's Monthly, in disclaiming all responsibility for their startling view of the questions, to say that they are the result of long and conscientious investigation on the part of the learned and eloquent scholar, their author; and that the Editor has reason to hope that they will be continued through some future numbers of the Magazine. (Bacon 1856, 1) The editor at Putnam's thus indicated his support for the credentials of Bacon but distanced the magazine from the consequence of her thesis.

With this first article, Bacon set out to create, or in her view, to discover the real author or authors of the plays. Her new view of Shakespeare rejected the idea of a mere rural poetic genius in favour of a reformist political writer and democratic republican philosopher. This "new" Shakespeare was to be liberated from any moral taint, or "player's mercenary motive" (Bacon 1856, 15) associated with the theater of Elizabethan Southwark, in order to fulfil a greater destiny as a proto-American and as a type of "founding father." Bacon, connecting Shakespeare with contemporary nineteenth-century scholarship on the Greek poet Homer, pointedly chose to employ emotive and nationalistic language, referring to Shakespeare as, "our poet — our Homer" (2). With this reference, Bacon appeared to claim Shakespeare on behalf of the American people, fully conscious of the heady political atmosphere of mid- nineteenth-century America. For Bacon and her audience, Americans were the inheritors of the mantle of a western civilization that had begun with the Greeks, been passed via the Romans to the English, and now found its true home with Anglo- Americans. The new Shakespeare that Bacon sought to liberate from what she regarded as Tudor oppression, was now part of American tradition and she argued that it was his "works [. . .] that have given our English life and language their imperishable claim in the earth" (2). While Homer may have provided the "song of the nation" (1) for the Greeks, Bacon now sought to credit Shakespeare with having performed a similar service for America.

For Bacon, the Homeric "Shakespeare," while a repository of the tales of Anglo- centric history and civilization, was too much a passive person of mystery to be worthy of veneration in republican America. While Shakespeare was considered culturally Anglo-Saxon and therefore a member of the "race" then considered by some Americans predestined to advance mankind, Bacon argued that his background and lowly business interests prevented him from creating pre-eminent philosophical texts. The Putnam's article makes it quite clear that for Bacon, Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was merely a vulgar actor. Indeed, she compared him to her http://borrowers.uga.edu/1031/show Page 5 of 14 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)27 PM

American contemporary, Barnum, "the prince showman [. . .] in that stately oriental retreat of his, in Connecticut" (Bacon 1856, 12). Shakespeare, the financially motivated actor-manager without university education or formal credentials, did not reflect the image of a bold leader of democratic and republican revolution, as idealized by nineteenth-century American intellectuals and politicians.

Bacon set out to prove that the plays were in fact written by a revolutionary and social visionary who, despite state oppression, strove to inspire a new world. For Bacon, this "New World" was founded in what had become the United States of America, and if the link to the works of Shakespeare could be legitimized through scholarly endeavor, then an inheritance that would inspire, unite, and elevate Americans would be revealed and serve as her personal patriotic contribution. Bacon chose to refer to the author of the plays alternatively as "the scholar" or "philosopher." Her interest in rejecting the authorship of William Shakespeare appears not to have been an attempt to unmask a case of Elizabethan fraud but rather to reveal the link between the plays and an "immortal group of heroes" (Bacon 1856, 4) that, in her later work, were to be called "the Elizabethan men of letters." She believed that this group of anonymous men, perhaps akin to the influential American writers known as "Publius" responsible for the famous Federalist papers, were behind the enlightened train of thought that resulted in the foundation of the colony of Virginia and subsequently, the United States of America. Throughout the article, Bacon makes it clear that she does not seek to remove the name of Shakespeare from the plays and poems. Her more weighty argument was that the name "Shakespeare" was the collective noun that described a moment in history when a group of men, all "subject to an oppressive and despotic censorship [and threatened with] cruel maimings and tortures old and new," sought to promote "the freedom of the new ages that were then beginning" (17). With this assertion, Bacon sought not a new personal name for Shakespeare but a new ownership of the name and the "moment." If Shakespeare could be identified as the collective voice of a struggle for republican freedom, then the owners of this important heritage were now the American Nation. Bacon passionately informed her readership "that [the] moment was there; it is chronicled; we have one word for it; we call it — Shakespeare!" (17).

Bacon had now restated the aspect of appropriation that had been visible in so many poems and orations in America throughout the early nineteenth century. Bacon's impassioned argument can be seen as an appeal to American readers to acquire the works of Shakespeare, not just as a collection of entertaining plays, but more importantly, as prophetic text intended for the ethnic group who were destined to civilize the continent of North America. Bacon continued to create the links between the American Nation and Shakespeare with her rhetorical question, "Which of our statesmen, our heroes, our divines, our poets, our philosophers, has not learned of him; and in which of all their divergent and multiplying pursuits and experiences do they fail to find him still with them, still before them?" (Bacon 1856, 10). http://borrowers.uga.edu/1031/show Page 6 of 14 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)27 PM

While Delia Bacon was later to overtly champion Sir Francis Bacon as the leader of the "men of letters," she resisted the temptation to dwell on the sensational, preferring to argue that the name Shakespeare represented a group of men and a "moment." Bacon followed her Putnam's Monthly article with a substantial book of 675 pages. With enthusiastic support and several letters of introduction from none other than Ralph Waldo Emerson, she had, since 1853, been in her temporary base in England preparing the evidence to support her provocative claim. It was Emerson who was to introduce her work to George Putnam and Emerson who had written to Bacon after receiving her article in manuscript, offering his opinion that "The account of Englishmen, and what is servile in them, and the prophetic American relations of the poetry, struck me much" (Emerson 1991, 490). His identification with the idea of the "prophetic" nature of Shakespeare for America, so important to Bacon's thesis, must have been great encouragement. Emerson had the credentials of a respected American intellectual and support from him in nineteenth-century America was, as Walt Whitman demonstrated with early editions of Leaves of Grass, very valuable. While Emerson did not necessarily accept Bacon's "proof" for her theory, the idea of a "hero" philosopher with a dream or "chimera" that would result in the foundation of the United States proved to be very attractive. It is easy to speculate that Emerson supported Bacon in her literary endeavors because she personally represented "The American Scholar" and her thesis, if true, would provide the American Nation with a more secure claim to this "representative man."

When Delia Bacon's The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded finally appeared in April 1857, it proved to be a development of the earlier narrative of a struggle for freedom and the attempt to establish a new social order in Elizabethan England. However, what had previously been coherently argued in Putnam's Monthly, either due to her passionate commitment to her cause, possible deteriorating mental condition, or anguish that another person (in England) was about to usurp her thesis, unfortunately had now become a rambling and difficult text. Once more, as the book title indicates, the key issue for Bacon was not the putative new identity for the previously hidden writer of the plays. Rather than any single author, it was the philosophy that Bacon intended to "unfold."

In her book, Bacon analyzed passages from several plays, including King Lear, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus, offering a general conclusion that the philosopher behind the plays intended to challenge "the expediency and propriety of permitting any one man to impose his individual will on the nation" (Bacon 1857, 326; emphases in original). Connecting America with the philosophy of the plays, Bacon suggested that that great question, which was so soon to become the outspoken question of the nation and the age, could already be discussed in all its vexed and complicated relations, in all its aspects and bearings, as deliberately as it could be today;

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exactly as it was, in fact, discussed not long afterwards in swarms of English pamphlets, [. . .] exactly as it was discussed when that "lofty Roman Scene" came "to be acted over" here, with the cold-blooded prosaic formalities of an English Judicature. (332) Bacon demonstrated that she was fully aware and engaged with contemporary political developments in America by referring to her group of Elizabethan reformers as "Know-Nothings" who adopted secrecy to avoid punishment for the "crime" of asking a "forbidden question" (xx). Bacon also appeared to address her various compatriots who, rather like the transcendentalists, attempted to find new philosophies. Her message to these people on philosophy was that "We have had them; we need not look to a foreign and younger race for them; we have them, fruit of our own stock; we have had them not cloaked in falseness, but exposed in the searching noon-day glare of our western science" (566).

The Preface to Bacon's book was written by novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who at that time was United States Consul in Liverpool. Bacon had requested his assistance in May 1856, when her financial difficulties had worsened. Again, the issue of American "national interest" is evident in the manner of Bacon's appeal to Hawthorne. Her letter to Hawthorne closes with, This is not Consular business exactly, I suppose . . . But I think when President Pierce appointed one so eminent as yourself in the world of letters, to represent him in this country, he deserved the return which he will have if through your aid this discovery should be secured to the country to which it properly belongs [i.e., America] instead of being appropriated here — or instead of being lost rather as it is more likely to be. (Hawthorne 1987, 200) Naturally, he responded to this appeal to his personal and official patriotism. In his Preface to Bacon's book, Hawthorne revealed that he had written his contribution largely on the strength of his reaction to the Putnam's Monthly article, as he had not been able to read the complete book prior to its publication. It is perhaps significant that Hawthorne felt prepared to endorse this large work on the strength of so short an article and a single meeting of "above an hour" (Hawthorne 1863, 53). Hawthorne acknowledged the possible reaction of some contemporary Shakespeare "idolaters": The first feeling of every reader must be one of absolute repugnance towards a person who seeks to tear out of the Anglo-Saxon heart the name which for ages it has held dearest, and to substitute another name, or names, to which the settled belief of the world has consigned a very different position. (Hawthorne 1857, xv) But any "repugnance" felt by Hawthorne himself was put aside as he adopted Bacon's main thesis, that there was a single unifying "new philosophy" contained within the plays that "no professor could have ventured openly to teach in the days of Elizabeth

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and James" (ix). An allusion to the struggle for freedom and the association with America is again made clear in the Preface as Hawthorne suggests that "the great secret of the Elizabethan age was inextricably reserved by the founders of a new learning, the prophetic and more nobly gifted minds of a new and nobler race of men" (xi). As Hawthorne wrote this sentence, the "nobler race" he appeared to have in mind and would benefit from this "reserved great secret" was his own Anglo- American "race."

In his Preface, Hawthorne provided a partial explanation to a question that might have been posed by readers of Putnam's Monthly, writing that "unexpected obstacles prevented further publication" of Bacon's thesis in the serialized form of journal articles (Hawthorne 1857, xii). These "obstacles" appear to have been an editorial decision to reject the next three articles due to a perceived lack of "proof" for Bacon's claims. Additionally, the three magazine article manuscripts were inexplicably "lost" by William Emerson and Sophia Ripley while in transit to the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Emerson 1991, 490). Hawthorne, in the Preface, also hints that "another evil followed" this misfortune (Hawthorne 1857, xii). The particular new "evil" was that Bacon and Hawthorne were both aware that William Henry Smith, a non- American, was about to publish a book suggesting the name of an alternative author for the works of Shakespeare (see Smith 1856 and Smith 1857). The implied sensitivity to, and awareness of, the issue of nationality was emphasized further by Hawthorne, who stated that "it had been the author's original purpose to publish [the book] in America; for she wished her own country to have the glory of solving the enigma of those mighty dramas" (Hawthorne 1857, xiii). Hawthorne again stressed the importance of American "ownership" by informing the readers that "it was [however] written [. . .] in the land of our own PHILOSOPHERS and POETS" (xiv; capitals and emphasis in original).

Delia Bacon's article in Putnam's Monthly and her subsequent book, while perhaps not finding a large readership in the United States, did provoke both widespread comment and review in the "popular press." Newspaper and magazine editors, hungry for copy, selectively quoted passages that allowed them to communicate the main points of interest to their readers: namely, that Sir Francis Bacon or Sir Walter Raleigh wrote Shakespeare and that both men shared a proto-American ideology. One such periodical was The Daily Picayune from New Orleans. The editor, after satirizing the question of "Who wrote Shickspur?," referred to both a Boston Post review and Bacon's earlier article in Putnam's Monthly. The main comment about Bacon's 675-page text was that Miss Bacon makes a careful and close examination into the life and writings of the great men of that time — Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, and others. She appears to consider them as a band of reformers, for whom the world was not prepared, and who were compelled to conceal their plans of reform; and that

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they were the real authors of the plays which were brought out in the name of Shakespeare. ("Who wrote Shickspur?" 1857, 4) This concise summary encapsulated Delia Bacon's self-declared life's work in a manner that allowed the American reader simultaneously to ridicule the English and celebrate American progress.

While Hawthorne's preface to Bacon's book could be considered a public endorsement, several years after her death, in "Recollections of a Gifted Woman," a form of sketch and partial eulogy, he broadly condemned her authorship theory as a "despotic idea" (Hawthorne 1863, 44), suggesting that it ultimately caused her decline. However, while now publically he rejected her thesis, he described Bacon as a "gifted woman." He omitted any mention of his original Preface to her book.

Following the publication of Delia Bacon's book, writers on the subject of Shakespeare have often appeared to be solely preoccupied with the identity of the playwright. Bacon's academic argument that the author of Shakespeare was proto- American in character and that he or they shared American republican ideals has largely been ignored in favor of the sensationalism that surrounds the names of the various candidates proposed as author for the plays. However, while the quest for a secret identity of the playwright has included persons from various countries, Americans particularly seem to have been motivated to pursue this line of enquiry. Between 1857 and 1884, more than two hundred and fifty-five books, pamphlets, essays and articles were published in America on the subject of Shakespearean authorship. While for Peter Rawlings, "the widespread appetite for the Baconian hypothesis in America is easier to dismiss than to take into account" (1999, 14), the desire to associate the plays known as Shakespeare with a republican revolutionary playwright provides one possible answer.

WALT WHITMAN, IGNATIUS DONNELLY, MARK TWAIN

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Perhaps influenced by this tide of nineteenth-century publications, even Walt Whitman felt the need to comment on the subject. In "What Lurks Behind Shakspeare's Historical Plays" (1884), an article first published in 1884 but later to be included in his Democratic Vistas, Whitman suggested that "it is possible a future age of criticism, diving deeper, mapping the land and lines freer, completer than hitherto, may discover in the plays named the scientific (Baconian?) inauguration of modern Democracy" (Whitman 1964). While Whitman's piece did not mention Delia Bacon or other theorists, it can be supposed that he intended the article to be his comment on the authorship debate. The acceptance by Whitman of the idea that Shakespeare could have been a proto-American may explain why, now in his "dotage," here and elsewhere he appears to have softened his previously expressed hostile opinion on the possible "undemocratic" nature of Shakespeare's plays. The fact that Whitman was in some small way engaged with this authorship issue can be again seen from the 1891 "death-bed" edition of Leaves of Grass, where he included a short poem entitled "Shakspere-Bacon's Cipher," a reference to a book by Philadelphia-born Ignatius Donnelly.

Donnelly, to exploit further American public interest in the authorship story, published evidence suggesting that within Shakespeare's plays lay "The Great

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Cryptogram" (Donnelly 1888) its existence providing proof that Sir Francis Bacon was the secret author of the plays. Donnelly's thesis was later recycled substantially in a book by Sir George Greenwood; it was this book that reportedly inspired Mark Twain's subsequent enthusiastic mock autobiography, provocatively entitled Is Shakespeare Dead? (1996). Twain, writing about his own early apprenticeship as a Mississippi riverboat pilot in 1857, described how he took part in heated debates with his instructor about the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy. The fact that two professional sailors (one a high-school "drop-out"), both working in the harsh environment of the Midwest, more than 1,100 miles from any East Coast metropolitan city, felt motivated to debate the authorship of Elizabethan drama suggests how widespread the American interest in the Shakespeare "authorship" controversy had become.

CONCLUSION The "academic" debate first publicized in nineteenth-century America continues to this day with a recent book from Columbia University's James S. Shapiro (2010). The authorship "issue" was given an even more sensationalist spin in 2011 with the script from Orloff and the movie Anonymous. This big screen Hollywood appropriation of Shakespeare promoted the bizarre and "wild" theory that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was both the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth and her lover, father of her subsequent illegitimate child, and the secret author of "Shakespeare." Conspiracy theories and secrets sell books, and from its gestation with Joseph C. Hart and later development by Delia Bacon, to the intervention of Twain, the consummate "hack writer," to today's celebrity actors and the present day movie producers, significant numbers of American writers have amused themselves speculating about the theory of a mystery playwright waiting to be discovered. However, behind what could be described as a political and perhaps "patriotic" desire to unmask an anonymous, "secret" republican person behind the plays of Shakespeare lies a more fundamental, mercenary need. That "need" manifests itself in a desire to profit financially by associating their fictional output with the most renowned and read literary work in the English language — work known throughout the world as Shakespeare.

REFERENCES Anonymous. 2011. Dir. Roland Emmerich. U.K. Sony Pictures. Bacon, Delia. 1857. The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded. London: Groombridge and Son.

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Bacon, Delia. 1856. "William Shakespeare and His Plays: An Inquiry Concerning Them." Putnam's Monthly, A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art 7 (January): 1- 19. Donnelly, Ignatius. 1888. The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cipher in the So- called Shakespeare Plays. London: Samson Low, Marston, Searle, Rivington. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1991. Volume 8 of The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edited by Eleanor M. Tilton. New York: Columbia University Press. Hart, Joseph C. 1848. The Romance of Yachting: Voyage the First. New York: Harper & Bros. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. 1987. The Letters, 1853-1856. Edited by Thomas Woodson et al. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. 1863. "Recollections of a Gifted Woman." Atlantic Monthly 11.63 (January): 43-58. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. 1857. Preface to Delia Bacon, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded. London: Groombridge and Sons. Rawlings, Peter, ed. 1999. Americans on Shakespeare, 1776-1914. Aldershot: Ashgate. Shapiro, James S. 2010. Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? New York: Simon & Schuster. Smith, William Henry. 1857. Bacon and Shakespeare: An Enquiry Touching Players, Playhouses, and Play-writers in the Days of Elizabeth. London: John Russell Smith. Smith, William Henry. 1856. Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare's Plays? A Letter to Lord Ellesmere. London: William Skeffington. Twain, Mark. 1996. 1601, and Is Shakespeare Dead? 1909; New York: Oxford University Press. Whitman, Walt. 1964. Volume 2 of Prose Works 1892: Collect and Other Prose. Edited by Floyd Stovall. New York: New York University Press. Whitman, Walt. 1884. "What Lurks behind Shakspeare's Historical Plays?" Critic 27 (September). "Who Wrote Shickspur?" 1857. The Daily Picayune, New Orleans. 11 June.

PERMISSIONS Title page of Joseph C. Hart, The Romance of Yachting. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/romanceofyachtin48hart (https://archive.org/details/romanceofyachtin48hart).

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Title Page of Delia Bacon, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/philosophyofplay00bacorich (https://archive.org/details/philosophyofplay00bacorich). Title Page of Ignatius Donnelly, The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cipher in the So-called Shakespeare Plays. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/greatcryptogramf00donnrich#page/n3/mode/2up (https://archive.org/stream/greatcryptogramf00donnrich#page/n3/mode/2up).

ABSTRACT | JOSEPH C. HART | DELIA BACON | WALT WHITMAN, IGNATIUS DONNELLY, MARK TWAIN | CONCLUSION | REFERENCES | TOP

© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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"What service is here?" Exploring Service (/current) Shakespeare

MICHAEL P. JENSEN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, SHAKESPEARE (/previous) NEWSLETTER

(/about) ABSTRACT | NOTES | REFERENCES

(/archive) ABSTRACT This introduction to the cluster on Service Shakespeare introduces the essays, considers the current state of the field, and suggests topics for future consideration.

The reason for this issue of Borrowers and Lenders is to explore some current facets, though not so much the limitations, of the still-emerging area of Shakespeare studies commonly called Service Shakespeare. It is an attempt to partially answer the questions, "What is Service Shakespeare currently like, and what has it the potential to become?" The idea for the issue began with Michael Dobson's 2012 Shakespeare Association of America (SAA) seminar, "Voluntary Sector Shakespeare." Most papers studied amateurs mounting a Shakespeare performance, but three papers were different from the rest. Those by Amy Scott-Douglass, Isabella Schwartz-Gastine, and me were about volunteer productions that served communities in need.1

The first such community I was aware of is served by the Shakespeare program at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in Oldham County, Kentucky, the subject of the moving documentary Shakespeare

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Behind Bars, directed by Hank Rogerson and released in 2005. I soon learned of other theater programs in different correctional facilities. Indeed, most of the literature and media on Service Shakespeare I have seen to date is about Shakespeare prison programs. A partial list includes a 9 August 2002 episode of the National Public Radio series This American Life that looked at act 5 of Hamlet performed by inmates at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, Amy Scott- Douglass's Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars, published by Continuum in 2007, and Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard, by Laura Bates, which was published by Sourcebooks in 2013. Certainly, there was room for prison Shakespeare in this issue, but prisons must not limit the subject. Good proposals had to be turned down because so many were about Shakespeare in prisons. One reason for my proposal to Borrowers and Lenders was simply to learn how varied the manifestations of Service Shakespeare would be.

After receiving approval from B&L, I posted the call for papers on a couple of internet sites visited by Shakespeare scholars and copied that message to my own list of contacts. Responses poured in, some from people telling me they already worked in Service Shakespeare, meaning that the name is probably too entrenched to change. I have a problem with the classification "Service Shakespeare" as I do with all taxonomies, and would like to have avoided it. "Service" does not seem quite right, since "therapeutic" is sometimes more accurate, and what if Shakespeare should be tried but fail to serve a community in need? This leaves an opening for wags to call the field "out of service Shakespeare," or worse, "disservice Shakespeare." Furthermore, taxonomies always seem to break down sooner or later. Most labels are inaccurate to some degree or become so over time. Why should "Service Shakespeare" be any different? The best we can do is attempt to understand what service programs have in common and the ways they differ, and they will differ because each is designed to solve different problems.

The one spot saved for a prison paper in this cluster went to Yu Jin Ko's fascinating and useful look at Macbeth performed as part of the Shakespeare Behind Bars program. This paper confirms that the striking parallels between the lives of the prisoner actors and the characters they portrayed in The Tempest in Shakespeare Behind Bars is no fluke, but persists through other plays and other actors, helping the prisoners come to terms with their crimes, learn empathy for those they wronged and the families of those they have wronged and the prisoner's own families, who are deprived of having a normal http://borrowers.uga.edu/1039/show Page 2 of 7 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)27 PM

relationship with them. These parallels help non-actors give compelling performances. Though it would not have been appropriate to fully develop this idea, given the other goals of the paper, the Shakespeare Behind Bars program interrogates by example some of W. B. Worthen's theories about actors and performance, as argued in his book Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance (1997). Professor Ko had me weeping as I read his Coda.

Some of these themes are very much the subject of Schwartz-Gastine's otherwise very different paper, which studies a group of disabled (in many different ways) non-actors (mostly) who give compelling performances in a favorite Shakespearean comedy in and near Paris. The author carefully sets-up the basic situation of a couple of directors on a mission to create theater for and by people from ostracized communities in plays that speak to these communities and their needs. The result is a transformative experience for some homeless, mentally ill, destitute, addicted, and other disadvantaged people who are the majority of the cast. The process is liberating and expressive of the deepest needs of some participants. The things that alienate the actors from mainstream society become advantages on stage. The issues in this paper are complex, nuanced, and never wholly good or bad or right or wrong. The paper is about striving and its rewards.

Schwartz-Gastine brings a welcome international look at Service Shakespeare, which is furthered by Sheila Cavanagh's paper on the World Shakespeare Project (WSP), conducted from her base at Emory University. The WSP teleconferences Shakespeare classes with classes in Native American tribal schools in the U.S. and students from several countries around the world. Cavanagh, in introducing the WSP, presents examples of cross-cultural learning in multiple directions. Students from diverse parts of the world understand Shakespeare via their own cultures. As each group shares with others, the result is a heterogeneous understanding of Shakespeare. Just as exciting is the exposure students from one culture have to students from another. They learn some of the myriad ways to have a life, whether they are discussing Shakespeare, or not. Cavanagh's paper blurs the line between service and education in ways that I hope will get us thinking.

Also blurring those lines is the paper by Michael Bahr and Don Weingust, which is about the annual Shakespeare competition for high and middle school students in Cedar City, Utah. There can be no question that education is a big part of the competition. Students learn about Shakespeare from the portions of the plays they present, about

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theater practice, and about much else, but the service aspect is also intrinsic to the competition, giving students everything from social interaction, team preparation, a sense of empowerment, feedback from theatrical professionals and educators, and in some cases, scholarships. The host institutions, Southern Utah University and the Utah Shakespeare Festival, benefit as well in their recruitment for the school and for future attendees for the Festival. Of all the papers in this issue, this is the most difficult to summarize because of the many educational and service benefits that result from the competition, plus some of the more philosophical questions raised by Bahr and Weingust about the relative advantages and disadvantages of competitions and noncompetitive festivals.

Theaters in the United States are required by law to meet certain access requirements for people with disabilities, but the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) goes much farther than required with a energetic and growing outreach to visually and hearing impaired people. Just-retired Access Coordinator Jim Amberg details the programs that help disabled audience members follow the on-stage action and dialogue, describes the outreach the Festival has made to disabled communities, and notes OSF's commitment to hiring actors from those communities — and one actor in particular, who has become a draw to bring hearing impaired theatergoers to the Festival from around the country. This program is not just a model of how other theaters might reach out to these communities; it is also models the rewards to a theater company that does.

My own paper raises questions about Shakespeare as a therapy. It is an account of reading an abridged version of Twelfth Night with a group of early stage Alzheimer's patients as an exercise in building self-esteem and the rather stunning success that surprised those of us facilitating the group. While the feeling of accomplishment shared by most participants was one of our goals, this degree of success raises the issue of advocacy in Service Shakespeare. The therapeutic effects of music, art, photography, and similar activities have been formally studied by Alzheimer's researchers and the benefits documented in medical journals. Medical journals have no interest in an anecdotal story such as mine; they want the data of a proper research study, and correctly so. Perhaps this issue of Borrowers and Lenders is a place such a study can be suggested to the Alzheimer's research community, while helping to define the field of Service Shakespeare to the Shakespeare community.

The only article that sounds a note of caution is by Geoff Ridden, who

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studies the films My Left Foot (1989) and The King's Speech (2010), with a generous stopover at The Madness of King George (2004). Beginning with a distrust of imperial Shakespeare's presence in modern culture, Ridden notices that My Left Foot and The King's Speech both use Shakespeare as therapies for their disabled protagonists. He also notes that the films are fictional accounts of real lives and that Shakespeare was not actually used as a therapy for these people, only in the fiction of the films. Ridden sensibly warns us that just because we have been trained by popular culture to accept the therapeutic use of Shakespeare, we should be aware that popular culture may make Shakespeare seem more at service than is warranted.

"What is Service Shakespeare currently like, and what has it the potential to become?" I knew that both of these questions were unanswerable when I put them in the first paragraph, but I hope these essays move us in the direction of possible answers. When making notes to myself as I shaped the proposal for this essay cluster, I wrote the following paragraphs, asking some more specific unanswerable questions. I suspect that life, service, and Shakespeare are too varied, complex, and prone to evolve for us to have any final answers, but that does not mean we should not ask the questions. I hope that the questions not engaged in this issue will become a challenge to you as you think and, perhaps, someday write about Service Shakespeare. What are its parameters of Service Shakespeare? Are there limits? Where is Shakespeare not in service, but could potentially help? What services might Shakespeare programs give to children, students, the military, the elderly, the sick, the mentally ill, the poor, and the homeless? Can Shakespeare serve religious communities? Are Shakespeare clubs and reading groups an aspect of Service Shakespeare? We know that Shakespeare can boost the self-esteem of early stage Alzheimer's patients, but can he serve the self-esteem of other populations? Does service only make sense in the context of communities in need? Is education a category of Service Shakespeare, or are they distinct? Can they overlap? When do they overlap?

In a different sense, Shakespeare has served communities such as Ashland, Oregon, Stratford, Ontario, and Stratford-upon-Avon. In what ways has he been both a service and a disservice to communities such as these? Does it make sense to think of Shakespeare employment in terms of service? If Shakespeare social programs have legitimately been of help to people, what do we say to those alarmed about imperial Shakespeare? Do their warnings matter when the lives of people have improved? Further, how do we answer the concerns of those guided by http://borrowers.uga.edu/1039/show Page 5 of 7 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)27 PM

Disabilities Studies literature, their best practices, and approved language if there are successful programs that follow different guidelines or practices?

Shakespeare is the literary 900 pound gorilla, but how important is the "Shakespeare?" Can some other writer do? When can some other writer do? Is Shakespeare and his prestige ever needed, and if it is, when? What of dramatic representations of Service Shakespeare, especially on radio, television, and the stage, and in film, where Shakespeare has been/may be used to serve fictional or historical characters in need? How might Service Shakespeare be manifested in books, both fiction and non-fiction, in addition to those books and articles about Shakespeare prisons programs? Surely there must be programs that attempt to, but fail to serve different populations. We should ask why they failed — was Shakespeare inappropriate, or did the problem lie in the execution or the concept of the program? Does this have larger implications for non-Shakespeare service programs that succeed and fail?

Some of the essays that follow address some of these concerns, but there is much left to study. Shall we get this conversation started?

NOTES 1. Scott-Douglass's essay will be published as "Shakespeare for Soldiers and Seniors," The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare, ed. Bruce R. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

REFERENCES Bates, Laura. 2013. Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks. Scott-Douglass, Amy. 2007. Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars. London: Continuum. Worthen, W. B. 1997. Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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Macbeth Behind Bars

(/current) YU JIN KO, WELLESLEY COLLEGE

ABSTRACT | BACKSTORIES | EDUCATING THE HEART | ARNOLD VS. MILL | CONTAMINATION | (/previous) UNHALLOWED SPLENDOR | TASTE OF POWER | CODA | NOTES | REFERENCES

(/about) ABSTRACT

(/archive) Macbeth has a long history as the kind of morality fable that has served the age-old Horatian objectives for literature of pleasure and instruction. However, the play also has a stage history of inviting terrifying but highly sympathetic portraits of Macbeth, especially as actors (and the culture at large) became more and more interested in studying inner psychology. The interpretive tradition has sometimes found the tension between straight moral instruction and sympathy for evil difficult to reconcile. This difficulty clearly gets ratcheted up in unpredictable ways when actual inmates who are in prison for violent crimes, including murder, perform the play in prison. My critical review works through some of the issues that surfaced during a Shakespeare Behind Bars production of Macbeth at the Luther Luckett Correctional Institution in La Grange, Kentucky.

BACKSTORIES The messenger to the Macduff castle in 4.2 of Macbeth plays a role that is not entirely necessary to the story, but is emotionally crucial to the scene. As Lady Macduff's desperation grows during the bantering trade of barbs with her son, the messenger enters to deliver the following (ultimately fruitless) warning: I doubt some danger does approach you nearly. If you will take a homely man's advice, Be not found here; hence with your little ones. To fright you thus, methinks I am too savage; http://borrowers.uga.edu/1028/show Page 1 of 14 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)27 PM

To do worse to you were fell cruelty, Which is too nigh your person. Heaven preserve you! (63-70)1 Apart from creating dramatic tension, the messenger's intervention serves to underscore Lady Macduff's and the country's vulnerability; this seemingly unwarranted expression of concern proves to be no match for the cruelty of Macbeth's henchmen. In the Shakespeare Behind Bars (SBB) production of the play by inmates at the Luther Luckett Correctional Institute (14 May 2009), this was one of many very powerful moments. The inmate playing the messenger (George Cohen) was clearly an amateur actor, and yet he brought an emotional urgency to the role that was striking. The messenger's warning seemed to issue clearly from direct knowledge of the "danger" and "cruelty" alluded to, but carried with it a pleading appeal that indicated some unexplained emotional investment in the safety of Lady Macduff and her children. In a talk-back with the inmates after the performance, Cohen explained what was behind the emotional connection he found with the scene: in his family life, he had in fact been a kind of messenger who always brought bad news, namely, that he was in trouble again; this role gave him the chance to do what he wished he could have done for his parents (even though it did not work out as intended in the play) — deliver news that might do some good.

Such personal backstories in fact informed many of the performances in this production, including that of Lady Macduff in the same scene. She was played by a lanky, youngish man (Larry DeClue) who, like many in the cast, was in prison for a violent crime and drew on his experience for the role. During the nine-month long rehearsal process, he said he reflected a great deal on the direct and many indirect victims of his crime, including his own mother, who was in the audience, and who, like Lady Macduff in the scene, was a single mom left with a kid who was "a bit of a smartass." He tried to bring to the role what he imagined to be the hurt and anxiety his mother lived with, as well as the terrifying horror his actual victim experienced at his own hands. And in fact, the emotional rawness of the performance was riveting. In the colloquy with her son, his Lady Macduff was barely able to keep it together, slipping intermittently into teary panic or desperate tenderness; then, as she was attacked by a posse of murderers, she let out a convulsive, blood-curdling shriek that shook the audience.

One might object at this point, as William Worthen has in a different context, that the "biographical invention" that actors of all stripes customarily engage in imposes a false and anachronistic coherence onto the set of "centrifugal energies" that constitutes the character (Worthen 1997, 132). One might also add that obsession with personal history and character (as in the writing of the father of character criticism A. C. Bradley, or in the rehearsal practices of American Method Actors) deflects attention from and displaces the potentially more relevant social history that underlies the play's original discursive field. From a different angle, one might also argue that my account

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aestheticizes or takes pleasure in the representational fidelity of violence and victimhood. In the case of these inmate actors, however, I would suggest that theatrical character-building is precisely what brings them to understand more fully the social and material character of the play's action and violence. Indeed, a quick examination of the philosophical mission behind the Shakespeare Behind Bars program reveals how essential the practice of "character criticism" is to not only personal rehabilitation but also social reintegration, though it will also reveal how the program embodies some of the unresolved tensions that have animated discussions about the moral purpose of art from as far back as Plato and Aristotle.

EDUCATING THE HEART As the program's new Artistic Director (and play's director) Matt Wallace indicated in an address before the performance, and as reinforced by the mission statement included in the Program Notes, SBB tries to help with an inmate's "reintegration into society" by using Shakespeare's plays and an extended rehearsal process to "educate the heart" of the participants, most importantly so that they can develop "empathy" and "take responsibility for" their crimes (Shakespeare Behind Bars 2009). In this vision, the "healing power of the arts" consists in part in its capacity to reflect human experience in ways that allow sympathetic understanding of others. At the heart of this process is character analysis. As Curt Tofteland, the founder of the program and previous Artistic Director, writes in an essay jointly coauthored with inmate Hal Cobb, "exploring the imagined life of the character" leads to the "self-reflection" that is necessary for "a metamorphosis of the heart." This inner "transformation" is ultimately what lies at "the heart of character criticism" (Tofteland and Cobb, 2012, 431-32). Hence, studying the possible motivations of even a throwaway character like the messenger can lead to thinking about why one might have failed so often at summoning the goodness in oneself to act kindly and how this failure might have hurt others. It should be noted that since 1995, when the program began, the recidivism rate of the numerous "graduates" of the program who have been released has been zero.

It is still not all so straightforward, of course. The SBB mission statement, and its participants, make frequent reference to the most often-attributed, and perhaps most widely admired, quality of Shakespeare, namely his universality, or his capacity to "reveal. . . our common humanity," (Tofteland and Cobb, 2012, 430) in Tofteland's words. As Dr. Johnson memorably noted, however, a corollary to Shakespeare's universality is the capacity of Shakespeare's art to foster sympathy for characters who are very deeply compromised morally. Thus, as someone who, like others in the eighteenth century, subscribed to the twin Horatian dictum that poetry should, in the words of Sidney's Defence of Poetry, "teach and delight" (Sidney 1966, 25), Johnson famously found himself lamenting that Shakespeare often seemed "to write without any moral purpose" (Johnson 1958, 271). Johnson's dilemma has also been a common

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one for those, especially educators, who have tried to define Shakespeare's greatness by means of a moral vocabulary. Indeed, this dilemma is still with us, and is visible in the practices of the SBB program, despite the fact that the conception of instruction and pleasure went through a marked broadening during the Victorian era and has culminated in a new vocabulary that remains visible in the ethos of SBB.

ARNOLD VS. MILL One strand of this moral vocabulary can be seen in the SBB effort to "relate the universal themes of Shakespeare to the lives of other human beings and to society at- large" (Shakespeare Behind Bars 2009). This strand ultimately derives, I believe, from Matthew Arnold, for whom modernity was a form of chaos that needed urgent ordering. If, as he famously wrote in "Dover Beach," we are as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. (Arnold 1891) then the visionary guidance of past figures like Sophocles — who, equally famously, "saw life steadily and saw it whole" ("To a friend," Arnold 1891) — could bring us what he called "intellectual deliverance" (Arnold 1960, 19). Faced, that is, with "a copious and complex present" with its "spectacle of a vast multitude of facts awaiting and inviting" comprehension, the modern man could acquire, by studying the classics, "that harmonious acquiescence of mind which we feel in contemplating a grand spectacle" that has become "intelligible" (20). Alongside Arnold's most revered hero Sophocles was Shakespeare, whose timeless universality manifested itself in being able to illuminate and center the modern world as it groped about in an increasingly complex and confusing world.

Another, and equally important, strand of the nineteenth-century defense of poetry came from a most unexpected source, John Stuart Mill, who would discover in poetry the answer to a spiritual crisis he endured from following the very utilitarian principles he saw as the basis for human advancement. As told in his Autobiography, Mill discovered poetry and the utility of its "pleasure" (especially through Wordsworth) after realizing that his utilitarian "training" had left a profound sense of emptiness that only dedicated attention to "the internal culture of the individual" could cure. For Mill, the primary "ethical" use of poetry lay in its capacity not to teach ethics per se, but to "cultivat[e] the feelings" in particular and more generally to "enrich" and develop the self into a more inwardly complete human being: into a being, that is to say, with more than a touch of what has come to be called Romantic subjectivity (Mill 1989, 113). To be sure, there is much overlap in the visions of Mill and Arnold, seen in their praise of Wordsworth and in the following characteristically Arnoldian pronouncement on culture from Culture and Anarchy: "Culture . . . places human perfection in an internal condition, in the growth and predominance of our humanity

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proper . . . [C]ulture . . . is a study of perfection . . . which consists . . . in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances" (Arnold 2006, 36-37). But it is possible to trace SBB's primary mission to "educate the heart" to Mill's emphasis on the cultivation of feeling itself as the ethical core of reading poetry.

CONTAMINATION The problem, however, is that, as Johnson proleptically intimated — and as Plato, I daresay, feared about the ancient poets — Shakespeare's power can overrun Mill's purposes all too easily. That is to say, the feelings that a play or a particular role can arouse and cultivate are precisely those that can throw an actor, spectator, or reader into the forms of chaos, internal and external, that Arnold sought such urgent deliverance from. More concretely, as Curt Tofteland recognizes, building a character involves "identification" and exploring "parallels" (Tofteland and Cobb, 2012, 431) with the character, which, in the case of Macbeth, can mean identifying with a hallucinating murderer given to fits of nihilistic fury and apocalyptic monomania. Indeed, for Harold Bloom, what makes Macbeth terrifying is its "power of contamination" (Bloom, 524, emphasis in original), a power that derives from a ruthlessly anti-Aristotelian, anti-purgative dramaturgy in which Macbeth "so dominates the play" that we are "unable to resist identifying" with him (517). In fact, a part of what made both the SBB performance of Macbeth and the language the actors used to describe their experiences powerful was the conflict between what might be called the moral purpose of the action and the feelings cultivated by the play.

The role of Macbeth is the obvious place to start — with another quotation from Bloom because it captures so well the approach that the actor, Ron Brown, took: "Despite Macbeth's violence, he is much closer to us than are Hamlet and Lear . . . The consciousness of Hamlet is wider than ours, but Macbeth's is not; it seems indeed to have exactly our contours, whoever we are" (Bloom 1998, 534). I should note some things first. Ron Brown is an African American man with a movie star's looks who was, sadly one can only say, incarcerated for murder at the age of nineteen. At the time of the performance, he was also a thirteen-year veteran of the SBB program, and had acquired a knack for voicing the script with naturalistic ease while illuminating its often complex and contorted structure. He was, to put it another way, far beyond a community theater actor who had performed in college productions. This is all to say that Ron Brown is someone who tackles his roles, not only as an inmate in a rehabilitation program, but as an actor who continues to hone his skills, including, of course, the skill of character-building by drawing upon his reservoir of life experiences. And his Macbeth was very much, and chillingly, an insider job in a way that resembles but surpasses Bloom's sense of uncanny identity.

Brown's Macbeth was first of all a thuggish but cerebral character who was always

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either trying to work it all out in his head or desperately turning to his meditations as a defense — to convince himself against his gut impulses, to suppress his fear and frightening imagination, to make sense of the chaos, butchery, and the abiding finality of an overwhelming sense of emptiness. His meditations upon first encountering the witches ("This supernatural soliciting / Cannot be ill, cannot be good" [Macbeth, 1.3.131-32]) had the feel of a mind newly incited to criminal possibility working methodically to overcome internal objections and surges of fear with cold calculation and reassurances. The sentence "Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings" (138-39) was spoken to chide himself with the reminder that what he has to fear in actuality now is far less than what he fears in his mind. Hence, the following lines were spoken to express disgust and exasperation with himself, as though almost in the third person: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man That function is smothered in surmise, And nothing is but what is not. (140-43) The climax of the internal deliberations came in the following aside — "Come what come may, / Time and the hour runs through the roughest day" (148-49) — spoken as if to say, "Whatever horrible things might happen, time will take care of it and I'll be able to laugh about it on the throne."

Similarly, the soliloquy that begins "If it were done when 'tis done" (1.7.1) brought Macbeth back to the state of conflicted deliberation but with a different climax, articulated most clearly to his wife: "We will proceed no further in this business" (32). The ensuing verbal duel, in which Lady Macbeth famously takes Macbeth's manhood to task, had the feel of a familiar spousal battle, though with the highest of stakes. It was a combination of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and a so-called reality television show — something with the intensity of high drama and the open and sometimes degraded rawness, as well as tenderness, of unvarnished marital relations. It was in reference to this scene, in particular, that Ron Brown said he was shocked at how exactly Shakespeare got the way a criminal's mind worked: Telling yourself that you'll be able to make a clean break once you just kill this one guy. That you can make different choices later when it's all done and over with. And then having your mind and heart race with fear about the consequences, while still not understanding how far those consequences reach until you've lived through it all. And always having the chance to say "No" and put a stop to it before it happens, but always finding a convenient way to avoid responsibility, saying, She put me up to it, I wouldn't have done it if she hadn't been such a bitch, or he hadn't pressured me, of if someone or other hadn't put it in my mind in the first place. All of which means you have to keep up the bluster, especially if a woman challenges your manhood. You get caught up and keep

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making bad choices, doing all manner of horrible things to people, because someone said you weren't a man. (Brown 2009)

I provide this rough paraphrase, first to convey how intimately Brown inhabited the role, as though indeed the contours of Macbeth's mind were his, and second, to indicate some of the "lessons" that Brown felt one could learn from this play. The continuing bloodshed was for Brown a symbol not only of how difficult it is to leave the life of crime once the dominos are set in motion, but also of how many people suffer directly and indirectly from one man's crimes. For Brown, becoming a man while he was in prison had much to do with owning up to his own responsibility for causing so much suffering. It also meant acknowledging things in himself that had not fit in with his younger ideas about manhood, such as fear. In this context, Brown pointed to what was a key line for him, which occurs directly after Macbeth murders Duncan and encounters his wife while lamenting his inability to say "Amen": "I am afraid to think what I have done" (2.2.55). Brown noted that the folio punctuation for the entire set of lines is as follows: I'll go no more: I am afraid, to think what I have done: Look on' t again, I dare not. (Shakespeare 1623, spelling normalized) Brown took the comma after "I am afraid" as an indication that the simple declaration could stand alone, as the first external acknowledgment of fear; "to think what I have done" was thus spoken as if to say, "O my God, what have I done?" Hence, for Brown, even after the much more fundamental choice of murder, other choices remained for Macbeth, such as whether or not to follow the dictates of the more "feminine" part of himself that acknowledged fear. This insight guided Brown's choice to use the great speeches of 2.2 ("Amen," "Sleep no more") as the first moments in which Macbeth outwardly displayed the fullness of the emotional eruptions inside. These eruptions were the true demons from which he was running. Indeed, Brown played Macbeth in subsequent scenes as someone who would fall into the bravado and criminality of a coward ("We are men, my liege" — "Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men" [3.1.92-93]; and "What man dare, I dare" [3.4.100]) or would try to convince himself that he had overcome all forms of weakness. So much of the play, for Brown, was about what it truly means to be a man, and how horrific the consequences of pursuing a screwed-up notion of manhood can be.

UNHALLOWED SPLENDOR Such insights into mistaken notions of manhood certainly reinforce sound ethical principles, and I do not wish in any way to diminish their force, but it would also be true to say that, in performance, some of the most powerful and striking moments came after Macbeth had plunged fully into bloodshed and the stage felt overtaken by the phantasmagoria of his mind. The vacillation, the efforts at self-reassurance and the

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surface eruptions of fear and horror in Macbeth never stopped, but the chilling, sometimes desperate and sometimes maniacal, ways in which he embraced violence, his solitude, and his nihilistic visions showed Macbeth at his most sublime. Again, I would adduce Bloom to highlight how the most mesmerizing moments tend to be those in which Shakespeare's "purposiveness without [moral] purpose" (Kant 2012, 46-47; cited in Bloom 1998, 518) seems most visible: Come seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, And the crow makes wing to th' rooky wood. (3.2.49-54) I am in blood Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er. Strange things I have in head, that will to hand, Which must be acted ere they may be scanned. (3.4.137-41) I have supped full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me. (5.5.12-14) I 'gin to weary of the sun, And wish th' estate o' the world were now undone. Ring the alarum bell! Blow wind, come wrack, At least we'll die with harness on our back. (5.5.49-52) I choose these lines not only because of their power, but also because they were memorable in Ron Brown's performance. In these lines, the hesitation and veneer of bravado were replaced most of all by the terrifying look of someone who had attained a kind of ferocious sublimity from having crossed over to a different world.

Ron Brown, along with many others, spoke passionately and eloquently about how playing his role had the eerie effect of reaffirming his humanity, because he felt the role illuminated the humanity within even a murderer. In part these sentiments reflected the credo of SBB that "innate goodness still lives deep within" even "incarcerated men" who "have committed heinous crimes" (Tofteland and Cobb 2012, 430). But I have to confess that in my impression, in the totality of the actorly experience that reaffirmed his humanity, the element of the sublime as I have been trying to describe it assumed a crucial role. In some ways, that is to say, Brown may have experienced his humanity at its most intense in the thrilling sublimity of having transgressed human law and limitation, as well as in the horrific intoxication of experiencing violent chaos in its absolute form. These are dangerous feelings better

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left uncultivated, perhaps. And yet — and here is the paradox — without this amoral intensity and decidedly "unhallowed" (Titus Andronicus, 2.3.956) splendor, ethical insights might never have really registered. If Ron Brown had become more capable of seeing his life steadily and seeing it whole as the result of his nine-month journey with the role, at least some of it may have been because the most morally disturbing moments made the character worth knowing, and thus the "lessons" from the character's journey through the play worth knowing.

Something similar could be said of the performance of Lady Macbeth by Hal Cobb (the inmate whose story and performance of Prospero were featured in the Shakespeare Behind Bars documentary film, 2005). Hal Cobb is unusual among inmates in having theatrical training and experience, though, as he hints in the documentary film and the essay jointly written with Totfteland, playing a role was something he had done throughout his life, largely to hide his homosexuality and eventually, until he surrendered to the authorities, the crime of murdering his first wife. (He had dropped a hairdryer into the tub while his wife was taking a bath and had made it look like an accident.) The following is what Cobb says in reference to both his acting classes and what had been his customary behavior in life from his earliest days in a bible belt family: "I learned to skate across the surface of emotion, and with just the slightest emotional connection manufacture the imagined pretense needed to act" (Tofteland and Cobb, 2012, 435). It was not simply that he pretended to feel certain emotions; it was as though, in true actorly fashion, he set out to manufacture the motive and cue for passion as well. The largest consequence of all this performing was not necessarily inauthenticity, but habitual "repression" (435) and a vicious circle in which repression led to horrific behavior as darker emotions "erupt[ed] into [his] life and the lives of others" (435), which then induced more repression. The following journal entry points not only to the effect of his crime on Cobb himself, but also to that crime as the cause of more violent eruptions: I didn't know how to wrap my mind, heart and soul around the whole concept, my responsibility for it, the pain I had caused others, the horror of the cover up and daily denial among extended family and the church family of which I was "a leader." I blocked the truth out. I couldn't deal with the reality of it, or the notion that I could kill anyone, let alone the one person I'd felt had really loved me. (435)

But this was not just in the past; Cobb remains painfully aware in his essay of how stubbornly his habit of repression persists. Hence, confronting his crime truthfully and taking "personal responsibility" (Tofteland and Cobb 2012, 443) for it has continued to involve struggling to learn "how to feel" as well as "how to deal with what" he is "feeling" (441). Crucially, this has entailed (through programs like the Victim- Offender Reconciliation Program) emotionally understanding the wide and terrible impact that his crime has had on his victim and the lives of those connected to the

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victim. It has also required learning to forgive those against whom he holds a "grievance story" (438) — those whom he blames for his predicament — as a condition for seeking "redemption and forgiveness" (431). It is in this broad context, then, that cultivating the feelings is, for Cobb, a form of expanding his moral "awareness" and retrieving his "humanity" (432). And for Cobb, far more than the chapel services offered by prison, it is Shakespeare who offers the means: "Shakespeare is my church. Shakespeare is my church" (Scott-Douglass 2007, 20).

TASTE OF POWER From the above account of Hal Cobb's narrative, one might expect that his Lady Macbeth was a study in repression, with moments suggesting an underlying fragility beneath the murderous intentions and ruthless rhetoric. Certainly this was a part of the portrayal, and it did endow Lady Macbeth with a certain humanity. However, what was most remarkable about Cobb's performance was the way in which he humanized ruthlessness itself. The performance was not, that is to say, simply an instance of an actor complicating his character by displaying cracks in a façade that later crumbles entirely. This Lady Macbeth poured herself into her ambitions with relentless determination, neither as a posture nor as the proverbial embodiment of evil, but as a volatile but deeply reflective and shrewd woman overtaken in extreme form by a single-minded purpose. She meant every word, with detailed precision, when she called upon the spirits: Make thick my blood, Stop up th' access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between Th' effect and it. (1.5.43) This was not just a general invocation to evil spirits but a methodical blueprint for the absolute internal control Lady Macbeth needed to realize her fell purpose. Blocking the passage to feelings was a brutally efficient tool that she took up not only naturally but with a certain triumphant sweep. Cobb talks of how his "heart constricts and [his] chest tightens in an attempt to shut down access" (Tofteland and Cobb 2012, 436-37) when he tries to delve into his feelings, suggesting that he has to fight constantly against what has become his body's most natural reaction. His Lady Macbeth was not so conflicted. Shutting down the visitings of nature was an exercise of power befitting the taste of power she seemed so clearly to imagine.

And yet, Cobb's Lady Macbeth never came across simply as a cold-blooded, inhuman killer. If she was derisively impatient with her husband, she was impassioned about their objective in ways that resonated with her husband on the level of shared human desire; she remained his "dearest partner of greatness" (1.5.12). Likewise, her cover- up strategy of framing the chamberlains for the murder came across as a deliberate

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attempt to go into it together with her husband: What cannot you and I perform upon Th' unguarded Duncan, what not put upon His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt Of our great quell? (1.7.69-72; emphasis added) But it still was not primarily the connection she established — or tried to establish — with her husband that humanized Lady Macbeth. Though it is still not entirely clear to me how it was that Cobb managed to invest Lady Macbeth with pathos from so early on in the play, somehow, ineffably, her very ruthlessness came across as the product of her humanity. One of SBB's mantras goes, "We don't choose the roles — the roles choose us" (Tofteland and Cobb 2012, 434). The role seems clearly to have chosen Hal Cobb, and certainly gave him the opportunity to explore the dangers and consequences of stopping up access to deep human feelings.

Cobb's performance was most striking for what felt like the freedom that Lady Macbeth achieves — unhinged as it may have been at times — in her state of going beyond the compunctious visitings of nature. That is to say, what erupted in Lady Macbeth in her state of repression were feelings that lie perhaps far more deeply in the human heart. Cobb managed to wrap his mind, heart, and soul around the reality of a being who is capable of horrific acts and who — at least for a time — relishes the power of that capacity. But paradoxically, it was in this state of savoring her power, rather than in later scenes, when doubt crept in visibly, that Lady Macbeth's ruthlessness acquired pathos. To be sure, my awareness of Hal Cobb's backstory must have contributed to my response to those early scenes (disclosure: I had read early drafts of what would become the essay referenced above and had a hand in editing it with Curt Tofteland). Somewhere, I could sense the pathos of Cobb's own recognition of what wreckage lay ahead for Lady Macbeth. But I believe it went beyond that. Inseparable from this recognition was, I felt, a more dangerous and complicated recognition. Identifying parallels (to return to Tofteland's phrasing regarding character analysis) in Cobb's case would have risked experiencing what Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil called "the pathos of distance" (Nietzsche 1966, 201) — the pain involved (in part) in recognizing the distance between the ordinary and the sublime. Cobb inhabited the role of Lady Macbeth with the kind of intimacy that comes from deep identification, but Lady Macbeth also embodies (at least early in the play) the transcendent state of dispassion he never quite reached — mercifully. Educating the heart through Macbeth surely risks the "contamination" that comes with terrifying identification; and yet that identification may be the most morally purposive action that an actor — or reader — can perform.

CODA I attended this performance of Macbeth at the invitation of Curt Tofteland, and so, as

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the inmates were mingling with friends and family in the audience after the talk-back, Curt came over to confirm dinner plans. As we were talking, the thought occurred to me for a split second to invite Hal to join us, and in that instant the reality of prison life hit me with a new force. We could leave, but the actors could not, because they were prisoners. Of course one must remember the victims of the crimes that these men committed and recognize the damage that the victims and their loved ones continue to suffer. But after watching the inmates perform and talk, it was difficult to avoid thinking of what a colossal and tragic waste of human potential it was for these men to be locked up for so many years. It was then, however, that maybe the most obvious point behind the Shakespeare Behind Bars program hit home: even inside, the men have to keep living, sometimes with no hope of parole or release. In the end, Shakespeare Behind Bars offers one way to give that life the moral dignity of a purpose.

NOTES 1. Quotations from the works of Shakespeare come from The Riverside Shakespeare, third edition (1997).

REFERENCES Arnold, Matthew. 2006. Culture and Anarchy. Edited by Jane Garnett. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Arnold, Matthew. 1960. "On the Modern Element in Literature." In Vol. 1 of The Complete Works of Matthew Arnold: On the Classical Tradition. Edited by R. H. Super. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Arnold, Matthew. 1891. The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold. London: Macmillan and Co. Available online: http://archive.org/stream/poeticalworksofm27739gut/pg27739.txt (http://archive.org/stream/poeticalworksofm27739gut/pg27739.txt) [accessed 28 June 2013]. Bloom, Harold. 1998. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books. Brown, Ron. 2009. Talk-back, The Tragedy of Othello, Luther Luckett Correctional Institution, La Grange, Kentucky. 14 May. Johnson, Samuel. 1958. "Preface to Shakespeare." In Rasselas, Poems, and Selected Prose. Edited by Bertrand H. Bronson. Third edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

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Kant, Immanuel. 2012. Critique of Judgement. Translated by J. H. Bernard. Mineola, N.Y.: Courier Dover. Mill, John Stuart. 1989. Autobiography. Edited by John H. Robson. New York: Penguin. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1966. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. Scott-Douglass, Amy. 2007. Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars. New York: Continuum. Shakespeare, William. 1997. The Riverside Shakespeare. Edited by G. Blakemore Evans and J. J. M. Tobin. Third edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Shakespeare, William. 1623. First Folio. London: William Jaggard, Edward Blount, L. Smithweeke, and W. Aspley. State Library of New South Wales. Internet Shakespeare Editions. Available online at: http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile/book/SLNSW_F1/745/?zoom=4 (http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile/book/SLNSW_F1/745/?zoom=4) [accessed 12 February 2014]. Shakespeare Behind Bars. 2009. Program Notes for The Tragedy of Macbeth. Luther Luckett Correctional Complex, 11-14 May 2009. Sidney, Philip. 1966. A Defence of Poetry. Edited by J. A. Van Dorsten. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tofteland, Curt L., and Hal Cobb. 2012. "Prospero Behind Bars." Shakespeare Survey 65: 429-44. Worthen, William. 1997. Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ABSTRACT | BACKSTORIES | EDUCATING THE HEART | ARNOLD VS. MILL | CONTAMINATION | UNHALLOWED SPLENDOR | TASTE OF POWER | CODA | NOTES | REFERENCES | TOP

© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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Performing A Midsummer Night's Dream with (/current) the Homeless (and Others) in Paris

ISABELLE SCHWARTZ-GASTINE, UNIVERSITY OF CAEN, FRANCE (/previous)

ABSTRACT | INTRODUCTION | WORKSHOPS AND THE PLAY | THE PERFORMERS | THE (/about) ROLES | CONCLUSION | NOTES | REFERENCES

(/archive) ABSTRACT The production of A Midsummer Night's Dream given in March 2010 by the company Théâtre du Bout du Monde in Paris had an unusual cast composed of amateurs, helped by professionals. The two directors, Miguel Borras and Philippe Guérin, have conducted workshops for amateurs in various locations: a bank, a primary school, a center for homeless people, an assisted living home for the elderly, and a ward for people struggling with mental illness at the local hospital. The members of these heterogeneous groups were given roles in the production despite their difficulties. Instead of trying to minimize or hide the disabilities of these amateurs, the directors integrated them into their dramaturgy, turning challenges into assets. The amateurs were paired with the professional members of the company, so that the mechanicals, the four Athenian lovers, and even Theseus, could rely on experienced actors if they failed to remember the details of their parts. Thanks to the inventiveness of the directors, this production managed to explore new perspectives of this play that resulted from the (dis)abilities of these amateurs, creating a strong impression of ensemble work.

INTRODUCTION

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In March 2010, three performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream in a French version entitled Le Songe d'une nuit de mai1 were given in the auditorium of a center devoted to Amateur Practices,2 right in the middle of the fashionable district of Saint-Germain des Prés in Paris. Since the end of the nineteenth century, A Midsummer Night's Dream has been the most frequently performed play of the Shakespearean canon in France. First considered as a romantic comedy and loosely adapted, often with a female Puck, in heavy elaborate sets (Théâtre de l'Odéon, 1886) or performed in continuity against painted backcloths (Camille de Sainte-Croix, the Founder of the Compagnie Française du Théâtre Shakespeare, 1912), the interpretations soon focused on the "rude mechanicals" (A Midsummer Night's Dream 3.2.9).3 The play became a favorite with travelling companies and open-air festivals, exploring the vis comica of the plot (Jean Dasté, 1957; the Footsbarn Theatre, 1993, 2008; Paul Golub, 1995; Nele Praxilou, 2002). Even the Comédie-Française in Paris has performed the play in repertoire several times (influenced by Jan Kott's interpretation, Jacques Fabbri, 1965; conceived as an Argentinian tango, Jorge Lavelli, 1986; Muriel Mayette-Holtz, 2014). This season it is also in the repertoire of another subsidized theater separate from the Comédie-Française, in the south of France: the Théâtre National de Toulouse (Laurent Pelly). Amateur companies tend not to choose canonical plays; however, Dream is one of the exceptions (along with Molière's comedies), possibly because they think that their amateur acting can pass for the amateur skills of the mechanicals. Another reason, of course, is that the plot is very familiar to audiences.4 This particular staging, which had been performed before, attracted my attention because it was performed as part of a conference on Amateur Creation and presented very unusual characteristics.5 After a period of rehearsal (from January to May 2010), it premiered from 6-9 May 2010 in the Theatre of the Mairie, the Townhall of Nanterre, a suburb northwest of Paris, and again on 25 May at the Festival of Theatre and Companies in the same town. This staging took its inspiration from themes explored in the previous decade through a series of amateur workshops.

After introducing the directors and their workshops, I shall examine how some of them and their characters functioned and argue that far from being just another amateur staging or a charitable initiative, this production is a different exploration of the Shakespearean text, a valuable contribution to the already rich understanding of the play. We shall see that the production does these modern amateurs proud.

WORKSHOPS AND THE PLAY This was a project of Théâtre du Bout du Monde, a company of

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professional actors based in Nanterre, that held several workshops there and in the adjacent tenth district of Paris. Le Théâtre du Bout du Monde (The Theatre of the Far End of the World) was founded in 1990 by Colombian-born Miguel Borras, who trained at the National School of Acting of Paris (Le Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique); Philippe Guérin, a former student of the Charles Dullin School of Acting, who joined Ariane Mnouchkine's Théâtre du Soleil for a time, and has since created several theater companies; and André Bonnet, who was not involved in this production.6 The Company had already staged twenty-six productions mixing street arts, drama, and music.

The company serves as a link between artists who have have come to Paris from other countries. The company is therefore composed of many varied nationalities, artists who have trained in different circumstances and with different methods. The founding principle of the company is that it should be fully integrated in the district where it is based and open to the ideas of its members, most of whom are local residents of this suburb of Paris. Borras is strongly against any tendency to withdraw within closed communities. All can benefit from the exchange: the actors within the company, the actors within their new surroundings, and local people with each other, enabling all to acquire a keener knowledge of themselves.7 There are a few wage-earning posts in the company, but other members are brought in when needed for particular projects. These include professional actors who share Borras's political and artistic outlook. Influenced by Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed,8 the company wants to reach people who otherwise feel excluded from society for personal, medical, or social reasons. Their aim is to prove that while these people might feel like social outsiders, they have the capacity to join together in a theatrical event. As stated in the presentation text of Dream, "Another thing dear to us is to mix people of varied origins and backgrounds around a theatrical play."9 Since 2002, one of Guérin's workshops has had an arrangement with the National Theatre of Nanterre (Le Théâtre des Amandiers),10 and with the town of Nanterre to work on extracts of one of the plays, which is performed in repertoire during the winter season. In 2009-2010, the stage manager and director of the Théâtre des Amandiers, Yannis Kokkos, staged A Midsummer Night's Dream in the main auditorium with professional actors.11

For the 2009-2010 season, the company chose to work on the theme of transformation: the transformation of a person through play-acting; the transformation of a person through love and desire; and the transformation of reality through theatrical illusion. This general theme was inspired by the work that Philippe Guérin had been doing on extracts of Shakespeare's 12 http://borrowers.uga.edu/969/show Page 3 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

comedy in some of his workshops.12 Borras and Guérin's final aim was to stage a play involving the participants from all their workshops in a single production.

Borras and Guérin chose to use Pascal Collin's adaptation of Midsummer Night's Dream titled Le Songe d'une nuit d'été, changing the title to Le Songe d'une nuit de mai because the month of May is referred to so often in Shakespeare's play. They felt that it was a clear version written in every day contemporary French, devoid of the numerous mythological allusions of the original, and thus it suited their purposes, those of their actors, and their potential spectators.13 The directors chose A Midsummer Night's Dream because, as has been alluded to and will be detailed below, some of the participants had already worked on extracts and were familiar with some ideas in the play, and so would be better prepared to perform the longer version.

Four different workshops participated in the production. Except for one workshop in the north of Paris, the other three were based in the suburb of Nanterre and were largely supported and subsidized by the local authorities. Philippe Guérin's "CASH" Workshop has been conducted bi- weekly at the local hospital in Nanterre since 1995. The workshop meets in a wing called the Center d'Accueil et de Soins Hospitaliers: Shelter and Hospital Care Center, or "CASH." The center helps people (not necessarily patients) with health or other problems on both a short and long-term basis. This center is a shelter for those who have no income or face difficulties living independently. Some participants have spent time in prison, struggle with drug, alcohol, and other addictions, or have been thrown out of their homes by parents, partners, or property owners. Others have been diagnosed with medical pathologies, including serious health problems resulting from old age, stroke, or psychiatric trauma. These pathologies limit the ability of those helped by the center to cope on their own. CASH also welcomes residents from the local retirement home. Some of these people may be transferred to the hospital if they need more care over time.

Guérin wants to get the best from his amateur actors without pushing them too far, so he must be aware of their physical, psychological, and mental situations, taking into account the possibility that some may be absent or tardy or have difficulty expressing themselves, relating to others, and learning their parts. However, his enthusiasm is without limits, and so is his flexibility to adjust to the moods and needs of workshop participants. Guérin's aim is to create a quality production with a group composed of heterogeneous long-term members, resulting from a common effort as the group coheres. The goals of this workshop are to strengthen the self-image

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and self-confidence of the participants, enable them to relate to the others through group activity, and help them realize that they have great potential.

The workshop concludes with Guérin's amateurs performing their extracts on the stage of Nanterre's prestigious professional theater. In exchange, they are invited to attend some rehearsal sessions of the play by the professional actors and attend one of their performances. For these amateurs, it is a marvelous experience to be able to see famous actors and directors in professional surroundings, to speak to them as equals, and to attend a performance with the general public. Attending this performance allows participants to forget the negative image that society usually sends back at them. Five of the six mechanicals, as well as Theseus and Titania, were members of this workshop.

Guérin also runs the EMMAÜS Workshop, based in the tenth district of Paris. It is part of the EMMAÜS Association, the well-known network set up by Abbé Pierre for the homeless.14 This workshop rehearsed the scenes featuring the four Athenian youths. It focused on the trials that Hermia and Helena face, first in Athens and then in the woods at night, and on the utter confusion that prevails for all four lovers. In the woods where the fairies rule, the four young Athenian lovers find that values are changed without any apparent reason. The former vows of fidelity and friendship are twisted, and they cannot control anything in an environment that is ruthlessly against them.

THE PERFORMERS Guérin saw a parallel between the situation of Shakespeare's lovers in A Midsummer Night Dream and the situation of his workshop members, who live in a world that they find utterly hostile, the woods of the modern world, and within a completely hermetic situation they cannot always comprehend nor escape. However, the play is a comedy with all problems solved at the dénouement. Guérin wanted to show his workshop that life could turn out much better than they expected. He stressed the idea that transformation of the self is always possible, thanks to the work the members do through the play, which is a totally different kind of activity from their life on the street dealing with basic material needs. This workshop is a relief from an existence where members are excluded from many public places, a life that drags on endlessly without structure or purpose. People living on the margins of society want love and have sexual needs, just like everyone else. Should they try to have love in their lives or give up? According to Guérin, this play can give hope to participants who would like to find love someday because the misunderstandings between

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the lovers are over at the play's close, the horrors of wandering in a hostile wood end, and the four young Athenians find peace and happiness.

Guérin put the question of love and seduction in very blunt terms, because these are crucial problems for members of this workshop. How can people who have been homeless for some time, people whose appearance has suffered as a result, express feelings of attraction for someone with similar problems or for someone in mainstream society? Why should they be excluded from love, or rejected by their initial lovers as Helena is at the opening of the play and Hermia is in the tangled woods? Guérin wanted to show that his participants can be, like the four young Athenians, transformed by love and find the energy to achieve the things they want. Because there were more than four amateurs willing to perform these parts, each of the roles was shared to allow for the participation of all workshop members in the production. This device required other dramaturgical choices, which will be analyzed below.

Five little girls were cast as the fairies. They came from the theater workshop at the final year of the local primary school, L'école Paquerette (The Daisy School), which was directed by Stéphanie Correia, a professional actress and member of the Théâtre du Bout du Monde, who took the part of Hippolyta. Knowing that Shakespeare's fairies are male characters, according to old English folklore, Borras first planned to present the girls as a set of undistinguishable, unsexed, small creatures wearing similar dungarees, but he gave up this idea when he found that they were far too girlish to be convincingly unisexual. He instead chose to emphasize the girlish side of the fairies, presenting them in the image of fairies from Walt Disney cartoons. They wore huge, bright-yellow bows in their long hair that matched their ballet tulle skirts and shoes. To complete the visual cliché, they held magic wands in their hands as an ironic reminder of nineteenth-century fairies. More prosaically, the wands prevented the girls from fidgeting about or moving their arms without dramatic purpose. They hopped lightly up and down the stage in a charming group, provoking indulgent laughter from the audience.15

The set was created by children belonging to two distinct organizations, under the leadership of the visual artists Virginie Berland and Françoise Lemoine: the workshop of the local primary school (Ecole La Fontaine) and a local association called Zy'va, composed mostly of immigrant children.16 All of the children were asked to create a tree, taking inspiration from their own background. So there were African and South American trees side-by-side with traditional European pine-trees, all made up in transparent plastic material that shone according to the variation of the

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lighting. Together, the trees formed a strange place, full of frightening shadows which, in subdued lighting, was transformed into an exotic dreamland. Hanging from the rigging loft, the trees were lowered to the stage-floor during the woodland scenes.

Figure 1. Hippolyta and Theseus in act 5, with the set featuring a tree behind them The professional actors themselves came from different countries with different backgrounds and had been trained in varied acting techniques. Spectators, however, could not have guessed this unexpected diversity, the result being so unified. There was more diversity in the colour of the actor's skins, from deep black to pale white, including two little girls of Chinese origin. The cast seemed to mirror humanity.

Professional actors were also asked to take part. All had a long standing connection with the company and understood the differences between this company and traditional professional theaters. They provided coherence to the production by helping the amateur participants sustain their parts. They were asked to learn all the parts in their scenes because their partners might know their words one day and forget them the next. Miguel Borras told them to "serve your partners, help them to be as good as possible, and thus, their success will eventually be yours too, and you will also be successful thanks to them and what you have been able to bring them." Among the professionals, the actor playing Peter Quince, Emmanuel Peironnet, got his start in one of the workshops run by Philippe Guérin. He joined when he was homeless, worked with Guérin for a long time, then eventually became

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a professional actor.17

Here are some of the pairings of professional and amateur actors. Professionals Stéphanie Correia (Hippolyta), Isis Perrone (Hermia), Raymond Dikoumé (Demetrius), and Oumria Mouffok (Helena) were paired with amateurs from the CASH or EMMAÜS workshops. The professional playing Oberon (Gora Diakhaté) had a particular status as the "king of shadows" because he mostly plays alone or with Puck, who certainly did not need any special care (A Midsummer Night's Dream 3.2.348). Although technically an amateur, the senior playing the part of Puck, Catherine Bloch, then seventy-five, is extremely experienced. During her working career, Bloch was a leading member of the theater workshop that Miguel Borras runs in the bank where she worked. She originally trained as a professional actress, winning First Prize at the National School of Acting and had some parts with the Charles Dullin Company. Bloch gave up professional acting to earn a dependable income for her family. Since retiring, she has been acting steadily in amateur productions, especially with this company.

THE ROLES Instead of choosing actors to fit to a concept, Miguel Borras and Philippe Guérin adjusted the staging to their participants. They took into account the abilities and impediments of their amateurs, both seeing their potential capacities for a role and finding solutions matched to a disabled actor's needs. This problem solving made sense of the play and created further meanings on aspects of the play. Rémi Clignet from the CASH workshop was cast as Theseus because of his tall stature and dignified attitude. A former academic, he had lost some memory as the result of a stroke and wears an audio-aid in his left ear.18 He has partly recovered his capacity to speak, but still has a throaty voice and walks with a hesitating jerk. Miguel Borras explained that Clignet worked on the text, in connection with the gestures, during rehearsals — which helped him to remember his speeches when he was asked to repeat the movements he had memorized with the cast.

Clignet's part is all the more important because Theseus opens the play and sets the tone for the action, although he appears only in acts 1 and 5. His slow progression across the stage at the opening of the performance could be interpreted as the dignified gait of the victorious warrior against the Amazons, the proud ruler of Athens who progresses "with pomp" (A Midsummer Night's Dream 1.1.19) to impress his people. Clignet's very cautious delivery increased his sense of authority, as if he were addressing

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the whole court in a very solemn manner, aware of the importance of every word in a context of his political leadership. He held a long stick topped with a metal sphere, which could be seen as the official emblem of sovereignty, but in fact the main purpose of this prop was to help him keep his balance.

Figure 2. Hippolyta and Theseus in act 1

For the opening scene of the play, Hippolyta (Stéphanie Correia, a professional actress) held Clignet's left arm on the audience side to support him physically as he entered. This gave the impression of a subdued wife- to-be, a valid portrayal of the character, though in conflict with many feminist interpretations. The looks she cast at Thesus (she was always on the lookout in case something went wrong) could well be understood as a show of total surrender, admiration, and mutual love. This couple looked even more attuned to each other as, at the beginning of the first performance, Hippolyta finished off the end of a line that Clignet had forgotten as if the line were her own. I am sure this detail passed unnoticed by the members of the audience, but to me it expresses the intimate personal attention between these characters, proving their closeness to each other. It also proved the actress's ability to maintain the dignity of her partner, to give him support and confidence in his rendering of the part. The following evening, Theseus delivered his speech without help.

The situation of the four lovers in the Athenian wood can be confusing to spectators, so movement had to be as clear as possible. Because several

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amateurs were sharing the same role and because the scene is so complex, Philippe Guérin precisely choreographed the movements of his actors to help them remember the sequence. Splitting the parts had been a careful negotiation among his EMMAÜS workshop members because some did not want to give up lines to those they considered unable to perform the part. Guérin could not impose his views in an authoritarian manner, which would have put the amateurs off altogether. He found a strategy that did not hurt their dignity.

Figure 3. Two Athenian Lovers in act 2: Helena and Lysander

The directors emphasized Puck's role as the "wanderer of the night" (A Midsummer Night's Dream 2.1.43). It was one of Puck's pranks to change the actors playing the lovers, an echo of the mistake of having poured the magic juice over the eyes of the wrong Athenian. Puck moved close to the http://borrowers.uga.edu/969/show Page 10 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

couples with a grin and a sneer, the lights were dimmed, and after having clapped her hands, Catherine Bloch led the amateur actors to seats in the first row of the auditorium, brought the other two on stage, and placed them on the same spot and in the same position, wrapping around the neck of the new pair of actors the scarves that identified the mark of each character. The trick was played and repeated several times, making it a component of the character of Puck, who thinks that the humans are fools and plays pranks on them for her amusement. The part of Lysander was given to three different amateur actors. Philippe Guérin had them all learn the whole part so that a player could be replaced more easily if someone did not come to perform, which is always a possibility. For stability, there was only one Helena, Oumria Moukkok, one of the professionals. She worked independently with each of her three Lysanders before she rehearsed with the three together.

Figure 4. Two Athenian Lovers in act 3

Fatima was another member of the CASH workshop who had attended erratically, but she insisted on taking part in this production. She was cast as Hermia. Isis Perrone, a professional, shared the role and could take over if "Hermia bis" ("The Second Hermia," as they had nicknamed Fatima) failed to appear. The spectators did not know about this last-minute arrangement, nor were they confused by it. When Fatima played her part, a new dimension was explored in this scene because Fatima and her Lysander were much older than is normally expected for these parts. This highlighted the fact that love and passion can strike mature people with the

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same intensity, urgency, and youthful naivety.

Five of the actors from the CASH workshop who had great personal difficulties were cast as the rude mechanicals. Philippe Guérin was extremely patient, though firm, when someone wanted to leave the premises to smoke a cigarette or go to the toilet just before they were due to play. The directors did not want the mechanicals to seem clumsy (a mistake often made by amateur actors), but used their disabilities to give a foundation to their parts and cohesion to the group. This is why the mechanicals played their parts in everyday clothes (oversized checked shirts and trousers or dungarees), and were asked to perform naturally, avoiding excessive caricature. For instance, Marie-Thérèse Boulogne,19 playing Snout, is missing her front teeth from years in the street. She is very difficult to understand. Boulogne worked hard on her elocution, but she played a very convincing Wall, a character who also has trouble being understood. Snout soon abandoned Wall's words for a pantomime.

Figure 5. Three Mechanicals Rehearsing in the Woods: Flute, Snout, and Snug

Gérard Lacaille, playing Robin Starveling, was given Peter Quince's prologue to read as the interlude begins. Lacaille has a continuous tremor in his hands. He was not asked to stand behind the others or perform with his hands in his pockets, as some directors might suggest. He was placed right in front of the other actors at the beginning of the Epilogue, holding a piece of paper on which his role was supposed to be written. So, in the

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complete silence of this crucial moment, there was only the noise of the ruffling of paper in Lacaille's hands. That was understood as the fear and nervousness of a character who dared to present a performance at Court. The directors turned his impediment into an advantage that suited the message of this production.

Figure 6. The Mechanicals: Snug, Snout, The Prop Manager, Starveling (Gérard), Flute, and Peter Quince

Geoffrey cannot read or write, but he enjoyed being on stage, so the "slow of study" lion was the perfect part for him (A Midsummer Night's Dream 1.2.56). There was even an extension of his part during the Epilogue. Here, Peter Quince played a lion tamer who cracked his long whip at the lion, which kept dancing in a circle with a supposedly fearful grunt as an ironic allusion to the mechanicals' earlier fear of frightening the ladies. The lion was non-threatening, and Geoffrey seemed delighted when performing. Philippe Guérin recalled the night when Geoffrey had not arrived by ten minutes before the performance. The other amateur-mechanicals were very upset, and Philippe Guérin was devising a solution when Geoffrey turned up. He was so pleased to have found his way in the suburban train, metro, and streets on his own that during the performance he transmitted tremendous energy to the rest of the mechanicals.

As with all the professional actors in the company, Emmanuel Peironnet as Peter Quince worked very closely with the amateurs in his scenes, in order to keep them focused on their parts. This necessity again produced

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meaning. Quince was not superseded by an over-enthusiastic Bottom who, in the prologue, keeps making all the mistakes Quince had corrected during the rehearsal in the woods. This Quince was very much in control of the situation, quietly helping with the cues and movements of his cast, even giving a knowing glance to the audience as if requiring their indulgence for the mechanicals' ineptness. Quince gave their scenes a spin that made any difficulties on the part of the amateur actors seem part of the performance.

Figure 7. The Mechanicals: Snug, Snout, Starveling, Flute, and Peter Quince

Nick Bottom was also an outsider. A former homeless man and addict, Pascal Rico joined the workshops at a desperate time in his life. As the years went by, his desire to act developed with his talent. He is now employed by the company to lead workshops and projects for children and teenagers and teaches French to immigrants, among other activities. Acting and teaching drama have become important parts of his life, and indeed Bottom's cue, "Man is but an ass if he go about t'expound this dream" (A Midsummer Night's Dream 4.1.201-202), can well apply to him. During the conference, Rico explained how difficult it had been for him to memorize his lines when he first started: he had to write them repeatedly in copy- books. This painstaking preparation was not in any way obvious on stage. Rico's performance was utterly natural both when he was alone, with the other mechanicals, and with Titania. A big bulk of a man in his early fifties, he filled the space, moving and shouting as the character is meant to do.

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Philippe Guérin cast himself as Philostrate, taking responsibility for the rehearsal of the mechanicals' play. In the wings, he was a very considerate director, supporting all his actors and making last-minute adjustments necessary for his amateurs to keep the performance in line with the general action and meaning of Shakespeare's play. Comparisons between professional and amateur theater companies are inappropriate because each belongs to dramatically different spheres, but this difference makes amateur practices worth studying.

This production was even more special because the twenty-five performers came from very varied backgrounds, yet gave a great feeling of unity on stage. Indeed it was a challenge to put together some amateurs on the grounds that they co-exist in the same district (a north suburb of Paris) whether because they lived there (like the little girls from the local primary school) or because they had ended up in the local hospital, the adjoining seniors' residence, or homeless center. The directors of this unusual Dream used the capacities of their amateur actors and helped them discover that physical or mental disabilities can be an advantage and meaningful. None of these amateurs was considered as inferior or patronized in any way. They were all persons with their own idiosyncrasies, which contributed to the creation of the project. In so doing, they built the self-esteem of their amateurs and produced further insights into the meaning of the play.

CONCLUSION The Théâtre du Bout du Monde company is aptly named because some of the professional actors come from the other side of the world, and also because some of the amateurs have come a long way to find a space where they can express themselves and regain their dignity as human beings and get a new grip on society. Indeed, when one had attended the conference and heard the directors explain the set-up and composition of the various groups, or heard some of the participants speak about their experiences, one could not but admire the results on stage, where magic and artistry prevailed. This is what can happen when the director believes in the ability of all the members of the cast to go beyond what they had thought were limitations: It was a dream come true.

NOTES 1. The translation/adaptation by Pascal Collin (2008), entitled Le Songe d'une nuit d'été, was composed for Yann-Joël Collin's staging of the play at l'Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe the same year. http://borrowers.uga.edu/969/show Page 15 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

2. MPPA = Maison des Pratiques Artistiques Amateurs, Etablissement Culturel de la Ville de Paris, Danse, Musique, Théâtre, Auditorium Saint- Germain, 4 rue Félibien, 75006 Paris (http://www.mpaa.fr (http://www.mpaa.fr) [accessed 2 July 2013]). 3. All references to A Midsummer Night's Dream come from the Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al. 4. See Jean Jacquot, Shakespeare en France: Mises en scène d'hier et d'aujourd'hui (1964); Estelle Rivier, Shakespeare dans la maison de Molière (2012); Isabelle Schwartz-Gastine, A Midsummer Night's Dream — William Shakespeare (2002); and Marie-Madeleine Mervant-Roux, ed., Du Théâtre Amateur: Approche historique et anthropologique (2004). 5. Conference on Amateur Projects, 4-5 March 2010, "Rencontre autour d'une création singulière"; 4 March discussion: "Projet Social, Création Artistique: Duel ou Duo?"; 5 March discussion: "Amateurs, Professionnels: Confusion ou Collaboration?" I had been asked to contribute on Shakespeare and Dream in a presentation titled "Un amateur devenu professionnel (Shakespeare) met en scène une troupe d'amateurs (les artisans athéniens)" or "An amateur turned professional (Shakespeare) stages a company of amateurs (the Athenian mechanicals)." See the website of the company, below. 6. Phone call to Tristan Schumaker, 9 January 2014. 7. Théâtre du Bout du Monde, 3 rue des Aubépines, Nanterre, 92 000. Phone: 00 (0)1 47 84 23 38. Email: [email protected]. Site: http://compagnie-tbm.blogspot.com (http://compagnie-tbm.blogspot.com) [accessed 2 July 2013]. 8. Site: http://www.theatreoftheoppressed.org (http://www.theatreoftheoppressed.org) [accessed 2 July 2013]. 9. Presentation of Le Songe d'une nuit de mai, read by Miguel Borras, May 2010. The translation is mine. 10. Théâtre des Amandiers, 92000 Nanterre (Site: http://www.nanterre- amandiers.com (http://www.nanterre-amandiers.com) [accessed 16 February 2012]). 11. Théâtre des Amandiers, Le Songe d'une nuit d'été Main Auditorium, 14 May to 16 June 2002. Staging, scenography, costumes: Yannis Kokkos; French text: Jean-Michel Déprats; lighting: Patrice Trottier; Choreographic movements: Richild Springer; Artistic collaboration: Anne Blancard; Assistant set: Muriel Trembleau; hairdressing, make up: Les Marandino; with: Gaël Chaillat, Guillaume Durieux, Alain Fromager, Laëtitia Lebacq, Antoine Mathieu, Jean-François Perrier, Dominique Pinon, Nicolas Pirson, Edith Scob, Bruno Sermonne, Richild Springer, Catherine Tartarin. (Site: http://nanterre-amandiers.com (http://www.nanterre-amandiers.com) [accessed 16 February 2012]).

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12. Philippe Guérin has had a long-standing connection with this comedy, as he took part in the production at the 1988 Valreas Theatre Festival, which used François-Victor Hugo's prose version of the play. 13. All the comments and quotes by Miguel Borras and Philippe Guérin refer to my personal interview with them, dated 17 June 2011. 14. Association EMMAÜS: Site: http://www.emmaus-france.org (http://www.emmaus-france.org) [accessed 16 February 2012]. 15. Contrary to the regulation concerning the professional stage, these children could take part in several performances running; they were in the care of a child-minder to keep them busy, quietly occupied in between their on-stage scenes. 16. Zy'va is a shortened slang form used by immigrant youth for on y va: "let's go." 17. During the 2008-2009 season, he took part in one of the productions of the Théâtre des Amandiers: Les Fiancés de Loche, by Georges Feydeau, staged by Jean-Louis Martinelli (see http://www.nanterre- amandiers.com/2008-2009/les-fiances-de-loches (http://www.nanterre- amandiers.com/2008-2009/les-fiances-de-loches) [accessed on 15 June 2013]. But his one-year status came to an end in June 2011, and he cannot claim much unemployment benefit as he has not had enough work days to meet with the requirements of the acting profession. In May 2012, along with other former members of the CASH workshop, he took part in a production entitled Chantier Beckett, which also was directed by Jean- Louis Martinelli, but was considered a mere amateur production (see http://www.nanterre-amandiers.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/2018.pdf (http:www.nanterre- amandiers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2018.pdf) [accessed 15 June 2013]). 18. In the DVD, he can be seen adjusting his audio-aid during the Epilogue. 19. She was one of the six actors involved in Chantier Beckett, see above, note 17.

REFERENCES Collin, Pascale, translator and adapter. 2008. Le Songe d'une nuit d'été. Paris: Editions Théâtrales. Jacquot, Jean. 1964. Shakespeare en France, mises en scène d'hier et d'aujourd'hui. Paris: Le Temps. Mervant-Roux, Marie-Madeleine, ed. 2004. Du Théâtre Amateur. Approche historique et anthropologique. Paris: CNRS-Editions.

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Rivier, Estelle. 2012. Shakespeare dans la maison de Molière. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Schwartz-Gastine, Isabelle. 2002. A Midsummer Night's Dream — William Shakespeare. Paris: Armand Colin. Shakespeare, William. 2008. A Midsummer Night's Dream. In The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: Norton. 839- 96.

PERMISSIONS Figure 1. Hippolyta and Theseus in act 5, with the set featuring a tree behind them. Photograph, Tristan Schumaker. Figure 2. Hippolyta and Theseus in act 1. Photograph, Tristan Schumaker. Figure 3. Two Athenian Lovers in act 2: Helena and Lysander. Photograph, Tristan Schumaker. Figure 4. Two Athenian Lovers in act 3. Photograph, Tristan Schumaker. Figure 5. Three Mechanicals Rehearsing in the Woods: Flute, Snout, and Snug. Photograph, Tristan Schumaker. Figure 6. The Mechanicals: Snug, Snout, The Prop Manager, Starveling (Gérard), Flute, and Peter Quince. Photograph, Tristan Schumaker. Figure 7. The Mechanicals: Snug, Snout, Starveling, Flute, and Peter Quince. Photograph, Tristan Schumaker.

ABSTRACT | INTRODUCTION | WORKSHOPS AND THE PLAY | THE PERFORMERS | THE ROLES | CONCLUSION | NOTES | REFERENCES | TOP

© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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"The World's Common Place": Leveling the Shakespearean (/current) Playing Field

SHEILA T. CAVANAGH, EMORY UNIVERSITY (/previous)

ABSTRACT | EQUAL PARTNERS | "ALL THE TIES BETWEEN US" | "LAY THE FUTURE OPEN" | NOTES | (/about) REFERENCES | ONLINE RESOURCES

(/archive) ABSTRACT Based at Emory University, the World Shakespeare Project (WSP) uses videoconferencing to connect students and faculty from India, Morocco, Brazil, Argentina, England, and several North American Tribal Colleges in Shakespearean performance exercises and discussions. As much as possible, the WSP endeavors to facilitate both cooperative and collaborative research and pedagogy so that each partner institution contributes and gains something substantive through these collaborations despite disparate socioeconomic, geographical, religious, educational, technological, and cultural divides among the participants. In the context of what here is being termed "Service Shakespeare," therefore, these partnerships problematize the concept of "service"; the WSP supports an exchange where common ground is identified wherever possible, while each partner also offers distinctive contributions specific to its own cultural, historic, and geographical particulars.

EQUAL PARTNERS The World Shakespeare Project (WSP) uses videoconferencing to connect students from locations across the world in Shakespearean performance exercises and discussions. Based at Emory University, the WSP currently partners with faculty and students in India, Morocco, Brazil, Argentina, England, and at several North American Tribal Colleges.1 The WSP facilitates both cooperative and collaborative research and pedagogy despite the disparate socioeconomic, geographical, religious, educational, technological, and cultural divides among participants. As http://borrowers.uga.edu/1054/show Page 1 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

much as possible, moreover, the WSP endeavors to "level the playing field" so that each partner institution contributes and gains something substantive through these collaborations. In the context of what is here being termed "Service Shakespeare," therefore, these partnerships bear a challenging requirement that problematizes the concept of "service."

In each instance, the WSP supports an exchange in which common ground is identified wherever possible, while each partner also offers distinctive contributions specific to its own cultural, historic, and geographical particulars. In their introduction to an examination of "Globally Networked Learning Environments (GLNEs)," Doreen Starke-Meyerring, Ann Hill Duin, Talene Palvetzian, and Melanie Wilson astutely note that "questioning and stepping out of one's habitual ways of thinking, addressing power imbalances, and overcoming culturally and ideologically sedimented practices are not easy tasks" (Starke-Meyerring, Duin, Palvetzian, and Wilson 2008, 22). The WSP acknowledges these challenges, while embracing what it hopes will be an important role in redefining higher education in the twenty-first century.

Variations in resources frequently confound efforts to build academic partnerships between diverse populations. In fact, as Dennis McGrath, Richard Donovan, Barbara Schaier-Peleg, and William Van Buskirk from the National Center for Educational Alliances sagely suggest, education "too frequently intensifies inequalities rather than countering them" (McGrath, Donovan, Schaier-Peleg, and Van Buskirk 2005, xi). Recognizing this danger, the WSP goal is not, therefore, to "bring" Shakespeare to a population outside standard educational structures. Instead, the WSP fosters collaborations where significant academic work can occur despite substantial variations between the cultural and educational backgrounds of its participants. The colleges and universities we work with differ from each other enormously, but they are all engaged in the business of providing students with an accredited undergraduate education. Incorporating places as diverse as Spirit Lake, North Dakota; Ifrane, Morocco; Córdoba, Argentina; and Purulia, West Bengal; the growing WSP network contains institutions facing a host of individualized challenges within distinctive, but fundamentally congruent, educational missions. Importantly, therefore, WSP interactive videoconferencing sessions encourage students to interact as peers, regardless of their educational and personal background.

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Figure 1. Cankdeska Cikana College, North Dakota

Some of our partner institutions primarily enroll students whose parents received little or no formal education. In many such instances, these undergraduates have never travelled outside their immediate, rural environments. Other WSP students, representing a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, live in urban areas, such as Kolkata, Casablanca, or Buenos Aires. In both North America and India, we collaborate with institutions characterized as "tribal" colleges, which predominantly serve local American Indian or Eastern Indian indigenous students.2 In addition, most of our international partners (and some of our Emory students) speak English as a second or third language. Despite disparate family backgrounds and experiences of formal education, however, each student population faces a historic and linguistic distance from Shakespeare that helps equalize the learning experience. None of these students is expert in Shakespeare, despite the fact that some have stronger traditional educational backgrounds than others. Furthermore, each of them brings areas of relevant expertise, even though few of them initially recognize this. We have found that linguistic ability, historical knowledge, backgrounds in performing arts, and even facility in math and science can enhance our communal Shakespearean studies. Students training as translators at the Universidad Del Salvador in Argentina, for instance, commonly provide more nuanced sight-readings of Shakespearean English than do typical Emory undergraduates. One North American chemistry major, in contrast, consulted Romeo and Juliet

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and early modern herbal texts in order to determine what poisons killed the young lovers, while an astronomy student calculated whether Puck could circle the world in forty minutes — as he promises Oberon — without leaving the earth's atmosphere (A Midsummer Night's Dream 2.1).3 (Notably, the mathematical answer, without magic involved, is "No, he cannot.") Students at Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College in Michigan immediately recognized correlations between The Tempest and their own tribal histories, just as Eastern Indian students at Sido Kanhu Murmu University in Dumka, Jharkhand applied their personal experiences of vicious local moneylenders to their enactment of the trial scene from The Merchant of Venice. Repeatedly, when students transform individual skill sets into communal expertise, they illuminate Shakespearean drama during a process that also heightens intercultural awareness.

The WSP's commitment to building bridges between complexly diverse educational partners correlates with similar efforts being undertaken through other international projects. Robbin D. Crabtree, David Alan Sapp, José Alfonso Malespín, and Gonzalo Norori, for instance, rightly note "gross asymmetries in the experience and distribution of the benefits of globalization" (Crabtree, Sapp, Malespín, and Norori 2008, 88), which they endeavor to address in a partnership linking Jesuit universities in the socioeconomically disparate educational systems of Nicaragua and the United States. Although the WSP collaborates with institutions spanning an even broader economic and technological spectrum, it shares this faculty group's determination to "promote partnerships in developing countries and with groups who are most marginalized in the current world political order and information economy" (87). Our partners accordingly include students from regions providing limited opportunities as well as from backgrounds offering comparative affluence. Not surprisingly, crafting an appropriate and productive balance between our distinctive collaborators remains an ongoing, yet invigorating challenge.

Former Director of the Global Classroom Project, Tyanna Herrington of the Georgia Institute for Technology, speaks of the need for "truly joint collaboration with input from students as well as their professors" (Herrington 2008, 37). Our work is designed to create and sustain the kind of "effective, egalitarian learning environments" that she advocates (37). Our rubric often leads us in unexpected directions as we endeavor to include disparate cultural experiences into our textual and performative explorations. Since every population encounters concerns with gender roles, for example, the WSP often includes Taming of the Shrew in its pedagogical repertoire. This curricular choice was originally intended to open up discussions about the ways in which different personal, religious, and historical contexts might shape student responses to this play, but this text has prompted unforeseen conversations. One of the scenes included, for instance, depicts Katherine's thwarted efforts to eat, while Grumio tempts her with the possibility of food: GRUMIO: What say you to a neat's foot? KATHERINE: 'Tis passing good: I prithee let me have it. GRUMIO: I fear it is too choleric a meat. How say you to a fat tripe finely broil'd? KATHERINE: I like it well: good Grumio, fetch it me. (Taming of the Shrew, 4.3.17-21)

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At Emory, students generally grimace during discussions of this episode, particularly when British WSP co-instructor Kevin Quarmby describes his mother's preparation of neat's-foot jelly as a home remedy for childhood ills. The prevalence of unexpected foods in this dialogue (which also features "fat tripe finely broiled" as a gustatory temptation) frequently revolts Emory undergraduates accustomed to more conventional American cuisine.

Our partners in Morocco, however, typically respond to this text with warm nostalgia, since it recalls familial and religious traditions of ritual sacrifice during annual observances of Eid-ul- Adha.4 Accordingly, at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech and at Université Hassan II Ben- M'sik in Casablanca, consideration of this text sparks animated recollections of positive childhood experiences. Both faculty and students eagerly describe the significance of age, gender, and family placement in determining how the ritual sacrifice proceeds. Unlike Emory students who recoil at the foodstuffs being proffered, Moroccan undergraduates respond from a culture where such items remain commonly available.

Figure 2. Butcher Shop in Casablanca, Morocco, image provided by Kevin Quarmby

Clearly, Shakespeare had no thought of North African religious traditions while composing this scene from Taming of the Shrew. Neither North American nor Moroccan dietary habits bear

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directly on standard academic interpretations of this interchange between Petruchio's starving wife and his taunting serving man. Nevertheless, the discussions this interlude typically provokes with modern international undergraduates demonstrate the diverse intellectual and cultural riches emanating from the WSP's collaborations. The WSP uses many performance exercises that it terms "on yer feet" exercises and that were developed by Kevin Quarmby during his stint as a Globe Education Lecturer at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. Although these performance exercises and discussions occur through videoconferencing, they typically generate a level of shared intellectual enthusiasm that focuses considerable attention upon the Shakespearean scene at hand.5 By the conclusion of classroom "on yer feet" presentations of these lines, with their attendant, wide-ranging conversations, students in both locations have gained a better understanding of Shakespeare's text as well as a broader awareness of American and Moroccan dietary and religious practices.

Université Hassan II Ben-M'sik was established in a rough area of Casablanca in the 1970s in order to bring higher education to this neighborhood's socioeconomically disadvantaged population. Emory University, in contrast, generally enrolls students raised in comparative privilege. Neither group, however, enters these communal electronic classrooms with a detailed understanding of Taming of the Shrew. Nevertheless, by the end of these sessions, students can speak knowledgeably about the issues presented in these scenes as well as about the lives of their international collaborators. Since Emory students typically begin these classes with no concept of Morocco, both academic and cultural advances tend to be considerable. As Starke-Meyerring and Wilson recognize, such interactions can prompt considerable intellectual realignments, allowing "learners to recognize and challenge the culturally bounded assumptions, habitual and normalized ways of thinking, knowing and doing; to inquire into, question, and negotiate diverse ways of knowing; and to learn how to build shared learning and knowledge cultures across traditional boundaries" (Starke-Meyerring and Wilson 2008, 106). The WSP regularly encounters similar educational transformations during its videoconferencing sessions.

Unscripted conversations frequently introduce valuable, unexpected, new material into shared WSP discussions. A group of students at Nistarini Women's College, in Purulia, West Bengal, for instance, presented a performance of the witches' scenes in Macbeth in their local Manbhum dialect that was transmitted to London and Atlanta through videoconferencing. According to Soma Dey, a student who played one of the witches, "Manbhum is the original name for the region of Purulia. It is the indigenous dialect that native inhabitants of Purulia talk in" (Dey 2012). Dey described correspondences between local beliefs and practices and this rendition of Macbeth: Macbeth is all about ambition and that is one thing which is on the rise everywhere in our times. Moreover, in the interiors of rural Purulia, witchcraft is something that is widely believed in. Witches are called "Dahin" in the Manbhum dialect, and they are believed to be the embodiments of evil and destruction. So when we played the witches we featured them just as witches are believed to be like in Purulia — not very old, like Shakespeare's hags, but young, vicious women with kohl-lined eyes, with their sarees trailing behind — possessed —

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wild-eyed and vengeful. (Dey 2012) When asked about other localized alterations to the text, Dey explained, "our Macbeth was a tribal 'Sardar' — a tribal chief and the illegitimate son of Duncan who had planned to kill both his father Duncan and his stepbrother Malcolm to make his way to be the next chief" (Dey 2012). As these excerpts indicate, the Purulian Macbeth introduced numerous salient issues for discussion about the play and about West Bengal, including the nature of witchcraft and of political power. Such intersections between Shakespearean text and local cultures remain the hallmark of WSP interactions, regardless of which partners are involved.

Figure 3. The Macbeths, Nistarini Women's College, Purulia, West Bengal, India

As part of a 2011 electronic exchange with Nistarini Women's College, Emory students held a videoconferencing discussion about the differences between vocabulary choices in American English and the translation decisions faced by Bengali faculty and students who daily communicate in several different languages and dialects. In various WSP contexts, students in Purulia and Atlanta have also considered correspondences between Shakespeare and distinctively Bengali cultural traditions, such as Chhau dancing and Baul singing. Over the past several years, our Indian faculty partners, in concert with arts practitioners in Purulia, Kolkata and Santiniketan, West Bengal, have been exploring intersections between Shakespearean performance and these genres. The colorful and athletic Chhau dancers present stories drawn from major Indian narrative traditions, while Baul singers incorporate distinctive instruments into religiously-based performances that include both voice and movement.6 The WSP uses recorded and live performances to prompt discussions analyzing Shakespeare's potential role in such diverse arts traditions. Here, we also include scenes from Synetic Theater's "wordless Shakespeare," which

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draws from its artistic directors' dance and theater background in the Republic of Georgia. Synetic's decision to abandon Shakespeare's verbal text as part of their award-winning presentations facilitates the kind of unconventional thinking that best supports WSP discussions and projects. Students in Eastern India approach their familiar, regional art forms as welcome mediators between their prior experiences and challenging Shakespearean texts, while Atlanta students welcome the opportunity to consider how local traditions from various regions can shed new light on Shakespeare and on intercultural dialogues.

Figure 4. Chau Dancer, Purulia, West Bengal, India

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Figure 5. Baul Singers, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India

Currently, WSP collaborator Dr. Aparajita Hazra (formerly of Nistarini Women's College) is working on a Bengali adaptation of King Lear in her new post at Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, also in Purulia. The WSP plans to share this performance with students during the 2013-2014 academic year. Incorporating Bengali perspectives, including highly developed but relatively obscure arts such as Chhau and Baul, into global classroom exchanges consistently broadens awareness of such significant cultural traditions, while deepening knowledge of Shakespeare, since many aesthetic and philosophical questions raised in this early modern drama resonate through the East Indian arts practices.

The WSP is fortunate also to work with Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, West Bengal. This institution, founded in the early twentieth century by Bengali literary Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, boasts close ties to the Baul tradition. In addition, Tagore's great- granddaughter, Souraja Tagore, who lives in Kolkata, is an accomplished dancer and a post- graduate Shakespeare student.

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Figure 6. King Lear at Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, Purulia, West Bengal Recordings of Souraja Tagore's choreography linking Shakespearean heroines with Indian dance traditions further enrich our cross-cultural conversations. According to Visva-Bharati University's Vice-Chancellor Sushanta Dattagupta, "Santiniketan has to look outside and collaborate with good institutions and scholars from all over the world." He further notes: "[Rabindranath] Tagore excelled at collaborating" (Express News Service 2013). In this same spirit, the "Global Learning Rubric" devised by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) promotes the principle that "effective and transformative global learning offers students meaningful opportunities to analyze and explore complex global challenges [and] collaborate respectfully with diverse others" (AACU 2013). The WSP endeavors to create such worthwhile global collaborations. Accordingly, just as Moroccan religious and societal practices enhanced investigations of Shrew, integrating the mythological, spiritual, and folk traditions affiliated with Baul and Chhau opens up space for students to discover how local arts traditions can be incorporated into Shakespearean performance and to consider the ritualistic, cultural, and performative bases of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. One of our regular collaborators, award- winning documentary maker Steve Rowland, interviewed the directors of the entire 2012 Globe to Globe Festival in London. This remarkable event, hosted by Shakespeare's Globe, included Shakespeare's complete canon, performed in thirty-seven different languages. Steve has participated in both live and electronic WSP sessions, and he accompanied us on our site visit to http://borrowers.uga.edu/1054/show Page 10 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College. Whether in person or on screen, his magnificent recounting of the Globe to Globe performances and the perspectives of their directors enhances our corresponding investigations, helping students to dissect and analyze the power of international Shakespeare.

Figure 7. Souraja Tagore, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

Incorporating Indian performing arts traditions into Shakespearean classroom discussions prompted one group from Atlanta to create a masterful dance production featuring scenes from Othello. These students are members of SaRaas, the nationally competitive Garba-Raas dance team at Emory, who perform traditional folk dances from the Indian state of Gujarat. "Garba," characterized by swaying and circular movements, is religious in origin, while "Raas," another devotional dance style, involves the energetic hitting of dandiyas (sticks) with a partner. The analytical paper that accompanied this student performance linked costuming and movement choices to lines from the play. Othello is dressed in a black "kurta" or traditional tunic, for instance, to reflect his purported "sooty bosom" (Othello 1.2.71). Similarly, this dancer's aggressive movements and gestures emanate from textual analogies between Othello and a "Barbary horse" (Othello 1.1.113). This dance project reflects the WSP's consistent privileging of what Starke-Meyerring and Wilson term "active, experiential, and collaborative pedagogies" (2008, 106). It also concurs with Applied Theatre theorist Nicola Shaughnessy's contention that "the experiential engages in dialogue with the social, cultural, and critical" (Shaughnessy 20012, xix). Students and faculty in numerous countries, including the United States, can draw new awareness about India and Shakespeare from such undertakings, then use them as models in their own settings. At the same time, such assignments facilitate curricular development, aligning with

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the AACU's "Intercultural Knowledge and Competence" rubric, which promotes "a complex understanding of cultural differences in verbal and nonverbal communication" and encourages students to interpret "intercultural experience from the perspectives of [one's] own and more than one worldview" (AACU 2013). Since students in these disparate regions face different curricular demands, the WSP endeavors to make all of its course modules adaptable to individual circumstances. This WSP commitment to diverse "audiences" of students marks its intersection between conventional classrooms and applied theater. By using videoconferencing to diversify its participatory base, it expands the possibilities for students to integrate insights and information from multiple sources, thereby increasing their ability to create new knowledge while forming productive global networks.

Figure 8. Emory SaRaas dancers, Othello and Desdemona

"ALL THE TIES BETWEEN US" Significantly, the WSP's twenty-first century efforts to transcend geographical distance in order to bridge conversational divides intersect closely with surprisingly related historic attempts. In 1865, for example, the year that the American Civil War ended, William Thomas Henley's factory alongside the Thames in North Woolwich, England manufactured the shore ends of the second transatlantic cable that would span the ocean. The first cable, laid in 1858, generated considerable excitement, as Michael Sechrist describes: Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom swiftly transmitted an official message to U.S. President James Buchanan. What had previously taken two weeks to send by ship now took less than a day. Common citizens thought it was nothing short of magic. Within hours of http://borrowers.uga.edu/1054/show Page 12 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

receiving Queen Victoria's message, joyous celebrations broke out across major U.S. cities. (Sechrist 2010, 40) While the telegraph initially seems far distant from twenty-first century electronic advances, these early cables actually helped create a technological process that continues to dominate global communication, even though other connective models have largely supplanted the telegraph itself. Andrew Blum's recent account of the Internet describes some of these unexpected parallels between seemingly unrelated technologies: [The Internet] is, in fact, a series of tubes. There are tubes beneath the ocean that connect London and New York. Tubes that connect Google and Facebook. There are buildings filled with tubes, and hundreds of thousands of miles of roads and railroad tracks, beside which lie buried tubes. Everything you do online travels through a tube. (Blum 2012, x) Refuting common misperceptions that the Internet functions by satellite, Blum notes the continuing role played by modern cables in connecting the world. Surprisingly, therefore, the twenty-first century equivalents of Henley's nineteenth-century shore ends still facilitate international conversations and play a significant part in the WSP discussions.7 This historical trajectory underscores an important point that is often obscured. What constitute "new" media shifts through time, but relevant technology and personnel often offer both practical and serendipitous continuity that can influence long-term developments. Yesterday's chalkboard bears close resemblance, for example, to contemporary smartboards.

International communication demands the interplay of people and connective technology, a constant requirement in a world that, deceptively, seems to be dominated by change. Furthermore, as Michael Saylor reminds us, technological innovations can offer a transformative "ability to deliver [globally] a First World education" (Saylor 2012, x). He also claims "every now and again, a truly disruptive technology appears" (4). Saylor is here describing the effects of mobile computing, but the WSP demonstrates that videoconferencing can also disrupt conventional educational patterns, particularly since we collaborate with remote colleges in areas such as India, where significant, earlier electronic communication tools such as the telegraph are just now disappearing.8 Students in these regions, therefore, need access to more recent technologies if they are to participate in global educational encounters. The economic resources needed in order to implement such innovations cannot be taken for granted, however. Accordingly, the WSP provides both encouragement and practical support for important technological improvements in these regions, whenever possible. Thus far, institutions in Morocco, India, and Argentina have been able to use their participation in the WSP in order to obtain financial assistance for technological improvements on their campuses. As much as possible, the WSP relies on widely available technologies such as Skype and Facetime in order to minimize technical and financial demands upon our partners.

It is exciting, however, when technological renovations become possible because of our collaborations. As noted, the WSP desire for substantive and expeditious international communication reflects its placement within a long-standing technological and educational

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tradition that predates the telegraph and presumably will outlive the Internet. The kind of intellectual exchange that historically demanded personal travel or comparatively slow communicative devices can now occur instantaneously. Although we still encounter challenges resulting from variant time zones and examination schedules, in addition to the cultural and socioeconomic differences described above, the WSP's ability to better Puck's time for circling the world opens abundant new educational and intercultural possibilities.

"LAY THE FUTURE OPEN" As the WSP continues, we plan to develop additional curricular materials that take optimal advantage of the talents and needs presented by our collaborators. Supported by a grant from the Royal Society of the Arts U.S.,9 we are currently extending our partnerships with North American Tribal communities to include tribes in Montana. Thanks to the efforts of Gretchen Minton from Montana State University, this new aspect of our initiative will enable us to connect with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, whose mission is "to make quality, live theatrical productions of Shakespeare and other classics accessible to communities in Montana and surrounding states with an emphasis on underserved, rural areas who would not otherwise have this opportunity" (Montana Shakespeare in the Parks 2013; emphasis in original). This facet of our work will be enriched further by a new partnership with fellow Royal Society of the Arts colleagues Scott Jackson, Executive Director of Shakespeare Notre Dame, and Eunice Roberts, a London arts practitioner allied with Actors from the London Stage. At the same time, our collaborations with international partners will continue to be a major focus.

In addition to links between Atlanta and our partners abroad, however, we hope to bring students from India, Morocco, Brazil, and Argentina into "live" conversations and performance exercises with these North American institutions that were founded for reasons that resonate with the WSP mission. According to the AIHEC website, Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs): were created in response to the higher education needs of American Indians and generally serve geographically isolated populations that have no other means of accessing education beyond the high school level. TCUs have become increasingly important to educational opportunity for native American students and are unique institutions that combine personal attention with cultural relevance to encourage American Indians — especially those living on reservations — to overcome the barriers they face to higher education. (American Indian Higher Education Consortium 2013) While expanding efforts to bring our partners into communication with each other as well as with Emory students, we will continue our investigation into the comparative merits of designing assignments that are either "collaborative" or "cooperative." As T. M. Paulus explains, "The primary difference between the two is whether tasks are divided up and completed individually (cooperative) or completed together through dialogue (collaborative)" (Paulus 2005, 112). Thus far, students have expressed considerable interest in the idea of working collaboratively, but often default to "cooperation" when time differences, fear of insufficient English language skills, scheduling conflicts, and other obstacles intrude. The WSP's inherent goal of facilitating

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collaborative learning between international partners continues to present challenges, therefore, that will undoubtedly inform our future directions.

Just as the historical and technological trajectory from telegraph to videoconferencing has only accommodated in part complex desires for global communication and enhanced international education, the WSP recognizes both the "high risk" and the "high potential" that accompany its pedagogical journeys. While claims of Shakespeare's "universality" rightly remain vexed, the place of his drama within international educational communities makes these plays a valuable site for testing new possibilities for global learning. In a similar vein, although "all the world's a stage" (As You Like It, 2.7.139-66) suffers from over-quotation, its sentiment remains vital, as Shakespeare provides an exciting conduit for significant advances in what Starke-Meyerring and Wilson helpfully designate as "Globally Networked Learning Environments."

NOTES 1. While this essay is written by Sheila T. Cavanagh, the WSP has benefited from the work of Kevin Quarmby, as well as assistance from many Educational Technologists at Emory University. In particular, Stewart Varner, Jason Brewer, Brenda Rockswold, Leah Chuchran, and Wayne Morse, Jr. have offered invaluable consultations. The WSP is grateful to the Royal Society of the Arts and numerous divisions at Emory University for financial support. 2. In North America, these colleges are part of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. The WSP was honored to address the presidents of these Colleges at a 2012 AIHEC board meeting in Minnesota. 3. All references to Shakespeare's plays are to the Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works (1986). 4. Eid-ul-Adha is also known in Morocco as "Eid el-Kbir." The Moroccan celebration of Eid-ul- Adha is similar to its observances in other countries. As elsewhere, animal sacrifices are carried out in Morocco as a dedication to the Lord. Generally a cow, sheep, or a ram is slaughtered, and its meat is then distributed among the poor people. The festive days have people visiting their nearest mosques for prayer services and sermons, following which people visit each other's homes and relish festive meals together. As in other countries, Eid-ul-Adha is celebrated here as a three-day festival. 5. Quarmby's decades as a professional actor, which preceded his academic career, contributed significantly to the development of the WSP's performance modules. When the WSP began, Quarmby participated through Skype from London. He is now Assistant Professor of English at Oxford College of Emory University, which is located forty miles from the Emory Atlanta campus. Students from Atlanta and Oxford share classes via videoconferencing. 6. The Purulia District website offers a detailed description of Chhau (or Chau) dancing, which uses martial arts-based choreography, elaborate costumes, and distinctive music to perform mythological narratives: See http://purulia.gov.in/distAdmin/departments/dico/chau_dance.html (http://purulia.gov.in/distAdmin/departments/dico/chau_dance.html). Chau dancing makes important economic and cultural contributions to Purulia. William Dalrymple offers a concise

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description of the Baul tradition in his Guardian article about a 2009 Baul performance in London (Dalyrimple 2009). I offer my deep gratitude to the Shakespeare Society of Eastern India, particularly Professors Amitava Roy, Tapu Biswas, Indrani Deb, and Chhandam Deb for their facilitation of numerous encounters with the Chhau dancers and Baul singers of West Bengal. 7. Remarkably, this particular historical progression is reflected genealogically through the WSP, since its former co-director, Kevin Quarmby, is grandson to Samuel Edwin Sellers, the Henley's general manager who oversaw the introduction of the world's first digital radio sixty one years after the company's successful transatlantic cable came ashore in Cornwall. 8. Telegraph service was recently abandoned in India, an occurrence that received international press coverage ("India Scraps the Telegram" 2013). 9. Cavanagh and Kevin Quarmby are both Fellows of the Royal Society of the Arts. We appreciate the support of the RSA and particularly acknowledge David and Sharon Turner and Lynn Broadbent of RSA US.

REFERENCES AACU. 2013. Global Learning VALUE Rubric. Available online: http://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/documents/All_Rubrics_001.pdf (http://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/documents/All_Rubrics_001.pdf) [accessed 27 September 2013]. American Indian Higher Education Consortium. 2013. Available online: http://www.aihec.org/index.cfml (http://www.aihec.org/index.cfml) [accessed 11 February 2014]. Blum, Andrew. 2012. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. New York: HarperCollins. Crabtree, Robbin D., David Alan Sapp, José Alfonso Malespín, and Gonzalo Norori. 2008. "Realizing the University Mission in Partnership with Nicaragua: Internationalization, Diversity, and Social Justice." In Designing Globally Networked Learning Environments. Edited by D. Starke-Meyerring and M. Wilson. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. 87-103. Dalrymple, William. 2009. "Singing and Dancing with the Bauls of Bengal." Available online: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/11/william-dalrymple-bauls-bengal (http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/11/william-dalrymple-bauls-bengal) [accessed 5 October 2013]. Dey, Soma. 2012. Written notes on performance, given to Sheila T. Cavanagh in Purulia, West Bengal, India. Express News Service, Bangalore. 2013. "Santiniketan Needs to Collaborate." The New Indian Express 23 September. Available online: http://newindianexpress.com/cities/bangalore/Santiniketan-needs-to- collaborate/2013/09/23/article1798769.ece (http://newindianexpress.com/cities/bangalore/Santiniketan-needs-to- collaborate/2013/09/23/article1798769.ece) [accessed 5 October 2013]. http://borrowers.uga.edu/1054/show Page 16 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

Herrington, Tyanna. 2008. "The Global Classroom Project: Multiple Relationships in Global Partnering." In Designing Globally Networked Learning Environments. Edited by D. Starke- Meyerring and M. Wilson. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. 37-51. "India Scraps the Telegram." 2013. Available online: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10118966/End-of-an-era.-Stop.-India- scraps-the-telegram.-Stop (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10118966/End- of-an-era.-Stop.-India-scraps-the-telegram.-Stop) [accessed 5 October 2013]. McGrath, Dennis, Richard Donovan, Barbara Schaier-Peleg, and William Van Buskirk, eds. 2005. The Collaborative Advantage: Lessons from K-16 Educational Reform. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Education. Montana Shakespeare in the Parks. 2013. Available online: http://www.shakespeareintheparks.org/about.php (http://www.shakespeareintheparks.org/about.php) [accessed 11 February 2014]. Paulus, Trena M. 2005. "Collaborative and Cooperative Approaches to Online Group Work." Distance Education 26.1 (May 2005): 1112525. Available online: http://www.umsl.edu/~wilmarthp/mrpc-web-resources/PAULUS--Collaborative-and-Cooperative- Approaches-to-Online-Group-Work-%20The-impact-of-task-type.pdf (http://www.umsl.edu/~wilmarthp/mrpc-web-resources/PAULUS--Collaborative-and-Cooperative- Approaches-to-Online-Group-Work-%20The-impact-of-task-type.pdf) [accessed 5 October 2013]. Saylor, Michael. 2012. The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything. New York: Vanguard. Sechrist, Michael. 2010. "Cyberspace in Deep Water: Protecting the Arteries of the Internet." Available online: http://www.porthcurno.org.uk/userfiles/misc_pdfs/ksr_2010_final_sechrist.pdf (http://www.porthcurno.org.uk/userfiles/misc_pdfs/ksr_2010_final_sechrist.pdf) [accessed 5 October 2013]. Shakespeare, William. 1986. The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Shaughnessy, Nicola. 2012. Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre, and Affective Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Starke-Meyerring, Doreen, and Melanie Wilson. 2008. "Visionary Pedagogies in Globally Networked Learning Environments: Questioning Assumptions and Raising New Questions." In Designing Globally Networked Learning Environments. Edited by D. Starke-Meyerring and M. Wilson. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.105-113. Starke-Meyerring, D., Ann Hill Duin, Talene Palvetzian, and Melanie Wilson. 2008. "Enabling and Sustaining Globally Networked Learning Environments: Visionary Partnerships and Policies." In Designing Globally Networked Learning Environments. Edited by D. Starke-Meyerring and M. Wilson. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. 19-36.

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Starke-Meyerring, D., and M. Wilson. 2008. Designing Globally Networked Learning Environments. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

ONLINE RESOURCES Actors from the London Stage. http://shakespeare.nd.edu/actors-from-the-london-stage/ (http://shakespeare.nd.edu/actors-from-the-london-stage/). Eid-ul- Adha.http://www.theholidayspot.com/eid_ul_adha/around_the_world.htm#uMz4GkSmYBLPVurr.99 (http://www.theholidayspot.com/eid_ul_adha/around_the_world.htm#uMz4GkSmYBLPVurr.99). Making sacrifice for Eid-ul-Adha. Village Journals. Alpha Naseeb. http://www.naseeb.com/villages/journals/making-sacrifice-for-eid-ul-adha-80667 (http://www.naseeb.com/villages/journals/making-sacrifice-for-eid-ul-adha-80667). Purulia Government Website. http://purulia.gov.in/distAdmin/departments/dico/chau_dance.html (http://purulia.gov.in/distAdmin/departments/dico/chau_dance.html). Rowland, Steve. Executive Director, Shakespeare Central. http://www.shakespeareis.com/ (http://www.shakespeareis.com/). Royal Society of the Arts U.S. http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/where-you-are/usa (http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/where-you-are/usa). Synetic Theatre. http://www.synetictheater.org (http://www.synetictheater.org). Université Hassan II Ben-M'sik. http://www.flbenmsik.ma/ (http://www.flbenmsik.ma/). World Shakespeare Project. Directed by Sheila T. Cavanagh. http://www.worldshakespeareproject.org (http://www.worldshakespeareproject.org). World Shakespeare Project. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/worldshake (https://www.facebook.com/worldshake).

ABSTRACT | EQUAL PARTNERS | "ALL THE TIES BETWEEN US" | "LAY THE FUTURE OPEN" | NOTES | REFERENCES | ONLINE RESOURCES | TOP

© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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"The World's Common Place": Leveling the Shakespearean (/current) Playing Field

SHEILA T. CAVANAGH, EMORY UNIVERSITY (/previous)

ABSTRACT | EQUAL PARTNERS | "ALL THE TIES BETWEEN US" | "LAY THE FUTURE OPEN" | NOTES | (/about) REFERENCES | ONLINE RESOURCES

(/archive) ABSTRACT Based at Emory University, the World Shakespeare Project (WSP) uses videoconferencing to connect students and faculty from India, Morocco, Brazil, Argentina, England, and several North American Tribal Colleges in Shakespearean performance exercises and discussions. As much as possible, the WSP endeavors to facilitate both cooperative and collaborative research and pedagogy so that each partner institution contributes and gains something substantive through these collaborations despite disparate socioeconomic, geographical, religious, educational, technological, and cultural divides among the participants. In the context of what here is being termed "Service Shakespeare," therefore, these partnerships problematize the concept of "service"; the WSP supports an exchange where common ground is identified wherever possible, while each partner also offers distinctive contributions specific to its own cultural, historic, and geographical particulars.

EQUAL PARTNERS The World Shakespeare Project (WSP) uses videoconferencing to connect students from locations across the world in Shakespearean performance exercises and discussions. Based at Emory University, the WSP currently partners with faculty and students in India, Morocco, Brazil, Argentina, England, and at several North American Tribal Colleges.1 The WSP facilitates both cooperative and collaborative research and pedagogy despite the disparate socioeconomic, geographical, religious, educational, technological, and cultural divides among participants. As http://borrowers.uga.edu/1054/show Page 1 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

much as possible, moreover, the WSP endeavors to "level the playing field" so that each partner institution contributes and gains something substantive through these collaborations. In the context of what is here being termed "Service Shakespeare," therefore, these partnerships bear a challenging requirement that problematizes the concept of "service."

In each instance, the WSP supports an exchange in which common ground is identified wherever possible, while each partner also offers distinctive contributions specific to its own cultural, historic, and geographical particulars. In their introduction to an examination of "Globally Networked Learning Environments (GLNEs)," Doreen Starke-Meyerring, Ann Hill Duin, Talene Palvetzian, and Melanie Wilson astutely note that "questioning and stepping out of one's habitual ways of thinking, addressing power imbalances, and overcoming culturally and ideologically sedimented practices are not easy tasks" (Starke-Meyerring, Duin, Palvetzian, and Wilson 2008, 22). The WSP acknowledges these challenges, while embracing what it hopes will be an important role in redefining higher education in the twenty-first century.

Variations in resources frequently confound efforts to build academic partnerships between diverse populations. In fact, as Dennis McGrath, Richard Donovan, Barbara Schaier-Peleg, and William Van Buskirk from the National Center for Educational Alliances sagely suggest, education "too frequently intensifies inequalities rather than countering them" (McGrath, Donovan, Schaier-Peleg, and Van Buskirk 2005, xi). Recognizing this danger, the WSP goal is not, therefore, to "bring" Shakespeare to a population outside standard educational structures. Instead, the WSP fosters collaborations where significant academic work can occur despite substantial variations between the cultural and educational backgrounds of its participants. The colleges and universities we work with differ from each other enormously, but they are all engaged in the business of providing students with an accredited undergraduate education. Incorporating places as diverse as Spirit Lake, North Dakota; Ifrane, Morocco; Córdoba, Argentina; and Purulia, West Bengal; the growing WSP network contains institutions facing a host of individualized challenges within distinctive, but fundamentally congruent, educational missions. Importantly, therefore, WSP interactive videoconferencing sessions encourage students to interact as peers, regardless of their educational and personal background.

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Figure 1. Cankdeska Cikana College, North Dakota

Some of our partner institutions primarily enroll students whose parents received little or no formal education. In many such instances, these undergraduates have never travelled outside their immediate, rural environments. Other WSP students, representing a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, live in urban areas, such as Kolkata, Casablanca, or Buenos Aires. In both North America and India, we collaborate with institutions characterized as "tribal" colleges, which predominantly serve local American Indian or Eastern Indian indigenous students.2 In addition, most of our international partners (and some of our Emory students) speak English as a second or third language. Despite disparate family backgrounds and experiences of formal education, however, each student population faces a historic and linguistic distance from Shakespeare that helps equalize the learning experience. None of these students is expert in Shakespeare, despite the fact that some have stronger traditional educational backgrounds than others. Furthermore, each of them brings areas of relevant expertise, even though few of them initially recognize this. We have found that linguistic ability, historical knowledge, backgrounds in performing arts, and even facility in math and science can enhance our communal Shakespearean studies. Students training as translators at the Universidad Del Salvador in Argentina, for instance, commonly provide more nuanced sight-readings of Shakespearean English than do typical Emory undergraduates. One North American chemistry major, in contrast, consulted Romeo and Juliet

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and early modern herbal texts in order to determine what poisons killed the young lovers, while an astronomy student calculated whether Puck could circle the world in forty minutes — as he promises Oberon — without leaving the earth's atmosphere (A Midsummer Night's Dream 2.1).3 (Notably, the mathematical answer, without magic involved, is "No, he cannot.") Students at Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College in Michigan immediately recognized correlations between The Tempest and their own tribal histories, just as Eastern Indian students at Sido Kanhu Murmu University in Dumka, Jharkhand applied their personal experiences of vicious local moneylenders to their enactment of the trial scene from The Merchant of Venice. Repeatedly, when students transform individual skill sets into communal expertise, they illuminate Shakespearean drama during a process that also heightens intercultural awareness.

The WSP's commitment to building bridges between complexly diverse educational partners correlates with similar efforts being undertaken through other international projects. Robbin D. Crabtree, David Alan Sapp, José Alfonso Malespín, and Gonzalo Norori, for instance, rightly note "gross asymmetries in the experience and distribution of the benefits of globalization" (Crabtree, Sapp, Malespín, and Norori 2008, 88), which they endeavor to address in a partnership linking Jesuit universities in the socioeconomically disparate educational systems of Nicaragua and the United States. Although the WSP collaborates with institutions spanning an even broader economic and technological spectrum, it shares this faculty group's determination to "promote partnerships in developing countries and with groups who are most marginalized in the current world political order and information economy" (87). Our partners accordingly include students from regions providing limited opportunities as well as from backgrounds offering comparative affluence. Not surprisingly, crafting an appropriate and productive balance between our distinctive collaborators remains an ongoing, yet invigorating challenge.

Former Director of the Global Classroom Project, Tyanna Herrington of the Georgia Institute for Technology, speaks of the need for "truly joint collaboration with input from students as well as their professors" (Herrington 2008, 37). Our work is designed to create and sustain the kind of "effective, egalitarian learning environments" that she advocates (37). Our rubric often leads us in unexpected directions as we endeavor to include disparate cultural experiences into our textual and performative explorations. Since every population encounters concerns with gender roles, for example, the WSP often includes Taming of the Shrew in its pedagogical repertoire. This curricular choice was originally intended to open up discussions about the ways in which different personal, religious, and historical contexts might shape student responses to this play, but this text has prompted unforeseen conversations. One of the scenes included, for instance, depicts Katherine's thwarted efforts to eat, while Grumio tempts her with the possibility of food: GRUMIO: What say you to a neat's foot? KATHERINE: 'Tis passing good: I prithee let me have it. GRUMIO: I fear it is too choleric a meat. How say you to a fat tripe finely broil'd? KATHERINE: I like it well: good Grumio, fetch it me. (Taming of the Shrew, 4.3.17-21)

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At Emory, students generally grimace during discussions of this episode, particularly when British WSP co-instructor Kevin Quarmby describes his mother's preparation of neat's-foot jelly as a home remedy for childhood ills. The prevalence of unexpected foods in this dialogue (which also features "fat tripe finely broiled" as a gustatory temptation) frequently revolts Emory undergraduates accustomed to more conventional American cuisine.

Our partners in Morocco, however, typically respond to this text with warm nostalgia, since it recalls familial and religious traditions of ritual sacrifice during annual observances of Eid-ul- Adha.4 Accordingly, at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech and at Université Hassan II Ben- M'sik in Casablanca, consideration of this text sparks animated recollections of positive childhood experiences. Both faculty and students eagerly describe the significance of age, gender, and family placement in determining how the ritual sacrifice proceeds. Unlike Emory students who recoil at the foodstuffs being proffered, Moroccan undergraduates respond from a culture where such items remain commonly available.

Figure 2. Butcher Shop in Casablanca, Morocco, image provided by Kevin Quarmby

Clearly, Shakespeare had no thought of North African religious traditions while composing this scene from Taming of the Shrew. Neither North American nor Moroccan dietary habits bear

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directly on standard academic interpretations of this interchange between Petruchio's starving wife and his taunting serving man. Nevertheless, the discussions this interlude typically provokes with modern international undergraduates demonstrate the diverse intellectual and cultural riches emanating from the WSP's collaborations. The WSP uses many performance exercises that it terms "on yer feet" exercises and that were developed by Kevin Quarmby during his stint as a Globe Education Lecturer at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. Although these performance exercises and discussions occur through videoconferencing, they typically generate a level of shared intellectual enthusiasm that focuses considerable attention upon the Shakespearean scene at hand.5 By the conclusion of classroom "on yer feet" presentations of these lines, with their attendant, wide-ranging conversations, students in both locations have gained a better understanding of Shakespeare's text as well as a broader awareness of American and Moroccan dietary and religious practices.

Université Hassan II Ben-M'sik was established in a rough area of Casablanca in the 1970s in order to bring higher education to this neighborhood's socioeconomically disadvantaged population. Emory University, in contrast, generally enrolls students raised in comparative privilege. Neither group, however, enters these communal electronic classrooms with a detailed understanding of Taming of the Shrew. Nevertheless, by the end of these sessions, students can speak knowledgeably about the issues presented in these scenes as well as about the lives of their international collaborators. Since Emory students typically begin these classes with no concept of Morocco, both academic and cultural advances tend to be considerable. As Starke-Meyerring and Wilson recognize, such interactions can prompt considerable intellectual realignments, allowing "learners to recognize and challenge the culturally bounded assumptions, habitual and normalized ways of thinking, knowing and doing; to inquire into, question, and negotiate diverse ways of knowing; and to learn how to build shared learning and knowledge cultures across traditional boundaries" (Starke-Meyerring and Wilson 2008, 106). The WSP regularly encounters similar educational transformations during its videoconferencing sessions.

Unscripted conversations frequently introduce valuable, unexpected, new material into shared WSP discussions. A group of students at Nistarini Women's College, in Purulia, West Bengal, for instance, presented a performance of the witches' scenes in Macbeth in their local Manbhum dialect that was transmitted to London and Atlanta through videoconferencing. According to Soma Dey, a student who played one of the witches, "Manbhum is the original name for the region of Purulia. It is the indigenous dialect that native inhabitants of Purulia talk in" (Dey 2012). Dey described correspondences between local beliefs and practices and this rendition of Macbeth: Macbeth is all about ambition and that is one thing which is on the rise everywhere in our times. Moreover, in the interiors of rural Purulia, witchcraft is something that is widely believed in. Witches are called "Dahin" in the Manbhum dialect, and they are believed to be the embodiments of evil and destruction. So when we played the witches we featured them just as witches are believed to be like in Purulia — not very old, like Shakespeare's hags, but young, vicious women with kohl-lined eyes, with their sarees trailing behind — possessed —

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wild-eyed and vengeful. (Dey 2012) When asked about other localized alterations to the text, Dey explained, "our Macbeth was a tribal 'Sardar' — a tribal chief and the illegitimate son of Duncan who had planned to kill both his father Duncan and his stepbrother Malcolm to make his way to be the next chief" (Dey 2012). As these excerpts indicate, the Purulian Macbeth introduced numerous salient issues for discussion about the play and about West Bengal, including the nature of witchcraft and of political power. Such intersections between Shakespearean text and local cultures remain the hallmark of WSP interactions, regardless of which partners are involved.

Figure 3. The Macbeths, Nistarini Women's College, Purulia, West Bengal, India

As part of a 2011 electronic exchange with Nistarini Women's College, Emory students held a videoconferencing discussion about the differences between vocabulary choices in American English and the translation decisions faced by Bengali faculty and students who daily communicate in several different languages and dialects. In various WSP contexts, students in Purulia and Atlanta have also considered correspondences between Shakespeare and distinctively Bengali cultural traditions, such as Chhau dancing and Baul singing. Over the past several years, our Indian faculty partners, in concert with arts practitioners in Purulia, Kolkata and Santiniketan, West Bengal, have been exploring intersections between Shakespearean performance and these genres. The colorful and athletic Chhau dancers present stories drawn from major Indian narrative traditions, while Baul singers incorporate distinctive instruments into religiously-based performances that include both voice and movement.6 The WSP uses recorded and live performances to prompt discussions analyzing Shakespeare's potential role in such diverse arts traditions. Here, we also include scenes from Synetic Theater's "wordless Shakespeare," which

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draws from its artistic directors' dance and theater background in the Republic of Georgia. Synetic's decision to abandon Shakespeare's verbal text as part of their award-winning presentations facilitates the kind of unconventional thinking that best supports WSP discussions and projects. Students in Eastern India approach their familiar, regional art forms as welcome mediators between their prior experiences and challenging Shakespearean texts, while Atlanta students welcome the opportunity to consider how local traditions from various regions can shed new light on Shakespeare and on intercultural dialogues.

Figure 4. Chau Dancer, Purulia, West Bengal, India

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Figure 5. Baul Singers, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India

Currently, WSP collaborator Dr. Aparajita Hazra (formerly of Nistarini Women's College) is working on a Bengali adaptation of King Lear in her new post at Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, also in Purulia. The WSP plans to share this performance with students during the 2013-2014 academic year. Incorporating Bengali perspectives, including highly developed but relatively obscure arts such as Chhau and Baul, into global classroom exchanges consistently broadens awareness of such significant cultural traditions, while deepening knowledge of Shakespeare, since many aesthetic and philosophical questions raised in this early modern drama resonate through the East Indian arts practices.

The WSP is fortunate also to work with Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, West Bengal. This institution, founded in the early twentieth century by Bengali literary Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, boasts close ties to the Baul tradition. In addition, Tagore's great- granddaughter, Souraja Tagore, who lives in Kolkata, is an accomplished dancer and a post- graduate Shakespeare student.

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Figure 6. King Lear at Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, Purulia, West Bengal Recordings of Souraja Tagore's choreography linking Shakespearean heroines with Indian dance traditions further enrich our cross-cultural conversations. According to Visva-Bharati University's Vice-Chancellor Sushanta Dattagupta, "Santiniketan has to look outside and collaborate with good institutions and scholars from all over the world." He further notes: "[Rabindranath] Tagore excelled at collaborating" (Express News Service 2013). In this same spirit, the "Global Learning Rubric" devised by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) promotes the principle that "effective and transformative global learning offers students meaningful opportunities to analyze and explore complex global challenges [and] collaborate respectfully with diverse others" (AACU 2013). The WSP endeavors to create such worthwhile global collaborations. Accordingly, just as Moroccan religious and societal practices enhanced investigations of Shrew, integrating the mythological, spiritual, and folk traditions affiliated with Baul and Chhau opens up space for students to discover how local arts traditions can be incorporated into Shakespearean performance and to consider the ritualistic, cultural, and performative bases of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. One of our regular collaborators, award- winning documentary maker Steve Rowland, interviewed the directors of the entire 2012 Globe to Globe Festival in London. This remarkable event, hosted by Shakespeare's Globe, included Shakespeare's complete canon, performed in thirty-seven different languages. Steve has participated in both live and electronic WSP sessions, and he accompanied us on our site visit to http://borrowers.uga.edu/1054/show Page 10 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College. Whether in person or on screen, his magnificent recounting of the Globe to Globe performances and the perspectives of their directors enhances our corresponding investigations, helping students to dissect and analyze the power of international Shakespeare.

Figure 7. Souraja Tagore, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

Incorporating Indian performing arts traditions into Shakespearean classroom discussions prompted one group from Atlanta to create a masterful dance production featuring scenes from Othello. These students are members of SaRaas, the nationally competitive Garba-Raas dance team at Emory, who perform traditional folk dances from the Indian state of Gujarat. "Garba," characterized by swaying and circular movements, is religious in origin, while "Raas," another devotional dance style, involves the energetic hitting of dandiyas (sticks) with a partner. The analytical paper that accompanied this student performance linked costuming and movement choices to lines from the play. Othello is dressed in a black "kurta" or traditional tunic, for instance, to reflect his purported "sooty bosom" (Othello 1.2.71). Similarly, this dancer's aggressive movements and gestures emanate from textual analogies between Othello and a "Barbary horse" (Othello 1.1.113). This dance project reflects the WSP's consistent privileging of what Starke-Meyerring and Wilson term "active, experiential, and collaborative pedagogies" (2008, 106). It also concurs with Applied Theatre theorist Nicola Shaughnessy's contention that "the experiential engages in dialogue with the social, cultural, and critical" (Shaughnessy 20012, xix). Students and faculty in numerous countries, including the United States, can draw new awareness about India and Shakespeare from such undertakings, then use them as models in their own settings. At the same time, such assignments facilitate curricular development, aligning with

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the AACU's "Intercultural Knowledge and Competence" rubric, which promotes "a complex understanding of cultural differences in verbal and nonverbal communication" and encourages students to interpret "intercultural experience from the perspectives of [one's] own and more than one worldview" (AACU 2013). Since students in these disparate regions face different curricular demands, the WSP endeavors to make all of its course modules adaptable to individual circumstances. This WSP commitment to diverse "audiences" of students marks its intersection between conventional classrooms and applied theater. By using videoconferencing to diversify its participatory base, it expands the possibilities for students to integrate insights and information from multiple sources, thereby increasing their ability to create new knowledge while forming productive global networks.

Figure 8. Emory SaRaas dancers, Othello and Desdemona

"ALL THE TIES BETWEEN US" Significantly, the WSP's twenty-first century efforts to transcend geographical distance in order to bridge conversational divides intersect closely with surprisingly related historic attempts. In 1865, for example, the year that the American Civil War ended, William Thomas Henley's factory alongside the Thames in North Woolwich, England manufactured the shore ends of the second transatlantic cable that would span the ocean. The first cable, laid in 1858, generated considerable excitement, as Michael Sechrist describes: Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom swiftly transmitted an official message to U.S. President James Buchanan. What had previously taken two weeks to send by ship now took less than a day. Common citizens thought it was nothing short of magic. Within hours of http://borrowers.uga.edu/1054/show Page 12 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

receiving Queen Victoria's message, joyous celebrations broke out across major U.S. cities. (Sechrist 2010, 40) While the telegraph initially seems far distant from twenty-first century electronic advances, these early cables actually helped create a technological process that continues to dominate global communication, even though other connective models have largely supplanted the telegraph itself. Andrew Blum's recent account of the Internet describes some of these unexpected parallels between seemingly unrelated technologies: [The Internet] is, in fact, a series of tubes. There are tubes beneath the ocean that connect London and New York. Tubes that connect Google and Facebook. There are buildings filled with tubes, and hundreds of thousands of miles of roads and railroad tracks, beside which lie buried tubes. Everything you do online travels through a tube. (Blum 2012, x) Refuting common misperceptions that the Internet functions by satellite, Blum notes the continuing role played by modern cables in connecting the world. Surprisingly, therefore, the twenty-first century equivalents of Henley's nineteenth-century shore ends still facilitate international conversations and play a significant part in the WSP discussions.7 This historical trajectory underscores an important point that is often obscured. What constitute "new" media shifts through time, but relevant technology and personnel often offer both practical and serendipitous continuity that can influence long-term developments. Yesterday's chalkboard bears close resemblance, for example, to contemporary smartboards.

International communication demands the interplay of people and connective technology, a constant requirement in a world that, deceptively, seems to be dominated by change. Furthermore, as Michael Saylor reminds us, technological innovations can offer a transformative "ability to deliver [globally] a First World education" (Saylor 2012, x). He also claims "every now and again, a truly disruptive technology appears" (4). Saylor is here describing the effects of mobile computing, but the WSP demonstrates that videoconferencing can also disrupt conventional educational patterns, particularly since we collaborate with remote colleges in areas such as India, where significant, earlier electronic communication tools such as the telegraph are just now disappearing.8 Students in these regions, therefore, need access to more recent technologies if they are to participate in global educational encounters. The economic resources needed in order to implement such innovations cannot be taken for granted, however. Accordingly, the WSP provides both encouragement and practical support for important technological improvements in these regions, whenever possible. Thus far, institutions in Morocco, India, and Argentina have been able to use their participation in the WSP in order to obtain financial assistance for technological improvements on their campuses. As much as possible, the WSP relies on widely available technologies such as Skype and Facetime in order to minimize technical and financial demands upon our partners.

It is exciting, however, when technological renovations become possible because of our collaborations. As noted, the WSP desire for substantive and expeditious international communication reflects its placement within a long-standing technological and educational

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tradition that predates the telegraph and presumably will outlive the Internet. The kind of intellectual exchange that historically demanded personal travel or comparatively slow communicative devices can now occur instantaneously. Although we still encounter challenges resulting from variant time zones and examination schedules, in addition to the cultural and socioeconomic differences described above, the WSP's ability to better Puck's time for circling the world opens abundant new educational and intercultural possibilities.

"LAY THE FUTURE OPEN" As the WSP continues, we plan to develop additional curricular materials that take optimal advantage of the talents and needs presented by our collaborators. Supported by a grant from the Royal Society of the Arts U.S.,9 we are currently extending our partnerships with North American Tribal communities to include tribes in Montana. Thanks to the efforts of Gretchen Minton from Montana State University, this new aspect of our initiative will enable us to connect with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, whose mission is "to make quality, live theatrical productions of Shakespeare and other classics accessible to communities in Montana and surrounding states with an emphasis on underserved, rural areas who would not otherwise have this opportunity" (Montana Shakespeare in the Parks 2013; emphasis in original). This facet of our work will be enriched further by a new partnership with fellow Royal Society of the Arts colleagues Scott Jackson, Executive Director of Shakespeare Notre Dame, and Eunice Roberts, a London arts practitioner allied with Actors from the London Stage. At the same time, our collaborations with international partners will continue to be a major focus.

In addition to links between Atlanta and our partners abroad, however, we hope to bring students from India, Morocco, Brazil, and Argentina into "live" conversations and performance exercises with these North American institutions that were founded for reasons that resonate with the WSP mission. According to the AIHEC website, Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs): were created in response to the higher education needs of American Indians and generally serve geographically isolated populations that have no other means of accessing education beyond the high school level. TCUs have become increasingly important to educational opportunity for native American students and are unique institutions that combine personal attention with cultural relevance to encourage American Indians — especially those living on reservations — to overcome the barriers they face to higher education. (American Indian Higher Education Consortium 2013) While expanding efforts to bring our partners into communication with each other as well as with Emory students, we will continue our investigation into the comparative merits of designing assignments that are either "collaborative" or "cooperative." As T. M. Paulus explains, "The primary difference between the two is whether tasks are divided up and completed individually (cooperative) or completed together through dialogue (collaborative)" (Paulus 2005, 112). Thus far, students have expressed considerable interest in the idea of working collaboratively, but often default to "cooperation" when time differences, fear of insufficient English language skills, scheduling conflicts, and other obstacles intrude. The WSP's inherent goal of facilitating

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collaborative learning between international partners continues to present challenges, therefore, that will undoubtedly inform our future directions.

Just as the historical and technological trajectory from telegraph to videoconferencing has only accommodated in part complex desires for global communication and enhanced international education, the WSP recognizes both the "high risk" and the "high potential" that accompany its pedagogical journeys. While claims of Shakespeare's "universality" rightly remain vexed, the place of his drama within international educational communities makes these plays a valuable site for testing new possibilities for global learning. In a similar vein, although "all the world's a stage" (As You Like It, 2.7.139-66) suffers from over-quotation, its sentiment remains vital, as Shakespeare provides an exciting conduit for significant advances in what Starke-Meyerring and Wilson helpfully designate as "Globally Networked Learning Environments."

NOTES 1. While this essay is written by Sheila T. Cavanagh, the WSP has benefited from the work of Kevin Quarmby, as well as assistance from many Educational Technologists at Emory University. In particular, Stewart Varner, Jason Brewer, Brenda Rockswold, Leah Chuchran, and Wayne Morse, Jr. have offered invaluable consultations. The WSP is grateful to the Royal Society of the Arts and numerous divisions at Emory University for financial support. 2. In North America, these colleges are part of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. The WSP was honored to address the presidents of these Colleges at a 2012 AIHEC board meeting in Minnesota. 3. All references to Shakespeare's plays are to the Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works (1986). 4. Eid-ul-Adha is also known in Morocco as "Eid el-Kbir." The Moroccan celebration of Eid-ul- Adha is similar to its observances in other countries. As elsewhere, animal sacrifices are carried out in Morocco as a dedication to the Lord. Generally a cow, sheep, or a ram is slaughtered, and its meat is then distributed among the poor people. The festive days have people visiting their nearest mosques for prayer services and sermons, following which people visit each other's homes and relish festive meals together. As in other countries, Eid-ul-Adha is celebrated here as a three-day festival. 5. Quarmby's decades as a professional actor, which preceded his academic career, contributed significantly to the development of the WSP's performance modules. When the WSP began, Quarmby participated through Skype from London. He is now Assistant Professor of English at Oxford College of Emory University, which is located forty miles from the Emory Atlanta campus. Students from Atlanta and Oxford share classes via videoconferencing. 6. The Purulia District website offers a detailed description of Chhau (or Chau) dancing, which uses martial arts-based choreography, elaborate costumes, and distinctive music to perform mythological narratives: See http://purulia.gov.in/distAdmin/departments/dico/chau_dance.html (http://purulia.gov.in/distAdmin/departments/dico/chau_dance.html). Chau dancing makes important economic and cultural contributions to Purulia. William Dalrymple offers a concise

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description of the Baul tradition in his Guardian article about a 2009 Baul performance in London (Dalyrimple 2009). I offer my deep gratitude to the Shakespeare Society of Eastern India, particularly Professors Amitava Roy, Tapu Biswas, Indrani Deb, and Chhandam Deb for their facilitation of numerous encounters with the Chhau dancers and Baul singers of West Bengal. 7. Remarkably, this particular historical progression is reflected genealogically through the WSP, since its former co-director, Kevin Quarmby, is grandson to Samuel Edwin Sellers, the Henley's general manager who oversaw the introduction of the world's first digital radio sixty one years after the company's successful transatlantic cable came ashore in Cornwall. 8. Telegraph service was recently abandoned in India, an occurrence that received international press coverage ("India Scraps the Telegram" 2013). 9. Cavanagh and Kevin Quarmby are both Fellows of the Royal Society of the Arts. We appreciate the support of the RSA and particularly acknowledge David and Sharon Turner and Lynn Broadbent of RSA US.

REFERENCES AACU. 2013. Global Learning VALUE Rubric. Available online: http://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/documents/All_Rubrics_001.pdf (http://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/documents/All_Rubrics_001.pdf) [accessed 27 September 2013]. American Indian Higher Education Consortium. 2013. Available online: http://www.aihec.org/index.cfml (http://www.aihec.org/index.cfml) [accessed 11 February 2014]. Blum, Andrew. 2012. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. New York: HarperCollins. Crabtree, Robbin D., David Alan Sapp, José Alfonso Malespín, and Gonzalo Norori. 2008. "Realizing the University Mission in Partnership with Nicaragua: Internationalization, Diversity, and Social Justice." In Designing Globally Networked Learning Environments. Edited by D. Starke-Meyerring and M. Wilson. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. 87-103. Dalrymple, William. 2009. "Singing and Dancing with the Bauls of Bengal." Available online: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/11/william-dalrymple-bauls-bengal (http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/11/william-dalrymple-bauls-bengal) [accessed 5 October 2013]. Dey, Soma. 2012. Written notes on performance, given to Sheila T. Cavanagh in Purulia, West Bengal, India. Express News Service, Bangalore. 2013. "Santiniketan Needs to Collaborate." The New Indian Express 23 September. Available online: http://newindianexpress.com/cities/bangalore/Santiniketan-needs-to- collaborate/2013/09/23/article1798769.ece (http://newindianexpress.com/cities/bangalore/Santiniketan-needs-to- collaborate/2013/09/23/article1798769.ece) [accessed 5 October 2013]. http://borrowers.uga.edu/1054/show Page 16 of 19 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

Herrington, Tyanna. 2008. "The Global Classroom Project: Multiple Relationships in Global Partnering." In Designing Globally Networked Learning Environments. Edited by D. Starke- Meyerring and M. Wilson. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. 37-51. "India Scraps the Telegram." 2013. Available online: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10118966/End-of-an-era.-Stop.-India- scraps-the-telegram.-Stop (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10118966/End- of-an-era.-Stop.-India-scraps-the-telegram.-Stop) [accessed 5 October 2013]. McGrath, Dennis, Richard Donovan, Barbara Schaier-Peleg, and William Van Buskirk, eds. 2005. The Collaborative Advantage: Lessons from K-16 Educational Reform. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Education. Montana Shakespeare in the Parks. 2013. Available online: http://www.shakespeareintheparks.org/about.php (http://www.shakespeareintheparks.org/about.php) [accessed 11 February 2014]. Paulus, Trena M. 2005. "Collaborative and Cooperative Approaches to Online Group Work." Distance Education 26.1 (May 2005): 1112525. Available online: http://www.umsl.edu/~wilmarthp/mrpc-web-resources/PAULUS--Collaborative-and-Cooperative- Approaches-to-Online-Group-Work-%20The-impact-of-task-type.pdf (http://www.umsl.edu/~wilmarthp/mrpc-web-resources/PAULUS--Collaborative-and-Cooperative- Approaches-to-Online-Group-Work-%20The-impact-of-task-type.pdf) [accessed 5 October 2013]. Saylor, Michael. 2012. The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything. New York: Vanguard. Sechrist, Michael. 2010. "Cyberspace in Deep Water: Protecting the Arteries of the Internet." Available online: http://www.porthcurno.org.uk/userfiles/misc_pdfs/ksr_2010_final_sechrist.pdf (http://www.porthcurno.org.uk/userfiles/misc_pdfs/ksr_2010_final_sechrist.pdf) [accessed 5 October 2013]. Shakespeare, William. 1986. The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Shaughnessy, Nicola. 2012. Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre, and Affective Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Starke-Meyerring, Doreen, and Melanie Wilson. 2008. "Visionary Pedagogies in Globally Networked Learning Environments: Questioning Assumptions and Raising New Questions." In Designing Globally Networked Learning Environments. Edited by D. Starke-Meyerring and M. Wilson. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.105-113. Starke-Meyerring, D., Ann Hill Duin, Talene Palvetzian, and Melanie Wilson. 2008. "Enabling and Sustaining Globally Networked Learning Environments: Visionary Partnerships and Policies." In Designing Globally Networked Learning Environments. Edited by D. Starke-Meyerring and M. Wilson. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. 19-36.

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Starke-Meyerring, D., and M. Wilson. 2008. Designing Globally Networked Learning Environments. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

ONLINE RESOURCES Actors from the London Stage. http://shakespeare.nd.edu/actors-from-the-london-stage/ (http://shakespeare.nd.edu/actors-from-the-london-stage/). Eid-ul- Adha.http://www.theholidayspot.com/eid_ul_adha/around_the_world.htm#uMz4GkSmYBLPVurr.99 (http://www.theholidayspot.com/eid_ul_adha/around_the_world.htm#uMz4GkSmYBLPVurr.99). Making sacrifice for Eid-ul-Adha. Village Journals. Alpha Naseeb. http://www.naseeb.com/villages/journals/making-sacrifice-for-eid-ul-adha-80667 (http://www.naseeb.com/villages/journals/making-sacrifice-for-eid-ul-adha-80667). Purulia Government Website. http://purulia.gov.in/distAdmin/departments/dico/chau_dance.html (http://purulia.gov.in/distAdmin/departments/dico/chau_dance.html). Rowland, Steve. Executive Director, Shakespeare Central. http://www.shakespeareis.com/ (http://www.shakespeareis.com/). Royal Society of the Arts U.S. http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/where-you-are/usa (http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/where-you-are/usa). Synetic Theatre. http://www.synetictheater.org (http://www.synetictheater.org). Université Hassan II Ben-M'sik. http://www.flbenmsik.ma/ (http://www.flbenmsik.ma/). World Shakespeare Project. Directed by Sheila T. Cavanagh. http://www.worldshakespeareproject.org (http://www.worldshakespeareproject.org). World Shakespeare Project. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/worldshake (https://www.facebook.com/worldshake).

ABSTRACT | EQUAL PARTNERS | "ALL THE TIES BETWEEN US" | "LAY THE FUTURE OPEN" | NOTES | REFERENCES | ONLINE RESOURCES | TOP

© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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The Utah Shakespeare Festival / Southern Utah (/current) University Annual Shakespeare Competition

MICHAEL BAHR, UTAH SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL (/previous) DON WEINGUST, CENTER FOR SHAKESPEARE STUDIES, SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY / UTAH SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL (/about)

ABSTRACT | ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENT, AND ORGANIZATION | LOGISTICS | COMPETITIONS VS. (/archive) FESTIVALS | CULTURAL MILIEU | NOTES | REFERENCES

ABSTRACT The Utah Shakespeare Festival / Southern Utah University Shakespeare Competition brings upwards of 3,000 students from over 100 high schools and middle schools to Cedar City, Utah each fall to compete in one of the longest- running programs of its kind in the nation. The Competition, mixing elements of competitive and non-competitive gatherings, provides a centerpiece for early academic-year educational programming in Shakespearean literature, theater, dance, and music. The Competition provides significant opportunity for "service Shakespeare," not only for competing students, but also for the sponsoring Shakespeare Festival and University and for many of the University's students, while raising and addressing questions in the controversy over competitive versus non-competitive educational programming. The Competition has developed within a cultural milieu that has contributed significantly to its success.

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Students wait to perform, near USF's Green Show stage (2013) Two young actors stand atop a six-foot-high platform, flanking another standing at a microphone, each in a drab-green military overcoat. A mid-twentieth-century sounding recorded voice recites the opening lines of Shakespeare's Richard III. As it reaches, "In the deep bosom of the ocean buried" (1.1.4),1 the two flanking characters each place a hand on a shoulder of the one at the microphone, and one of them stabs him. The soldier-assassins pull from the area of their victim's wound a red cloth meant to suggest the stylistic gushing of blood, which reveals itself to be a Nazi flag, the swastika at its center visually echoing those on the player-soldiers' sleeves. The stabbed character falls behind the flag and disappears from the platform. From the moment of the stabbing, the dozen other actors standing below the tall platform, dressed as concentration-camp internees, begin to shriek. Appearing among them at center stage is Richard, Duke of York. The shrieks turn to lines from the play, and the chorus soon falls into a repeated chant of the refrain spoken by the spirits of Richard's victims who appear to him before the battle of Bosworth Field: "despair and die."2 The internee chorus members fall to the stage, where they remain as the scene turns to Richard's wooing of the lamenting Lady Anne. After the victorious Richard asks his audience whether any woman was ever in this "humour woo'd" and "won" (1.2.232-33), Elizabeth, widow of King Edward IV and mother of the young boys sent to the Tower, confronts him and demands her children. She too urges Richard to "despair and die." The assassin-soldiers from the opening moment now accompany Richard and carry machine guns. The Duke of Clarence insists that his brother Richard loves him. Two murderers disabuse him of this filial expectation and take his life. The action returns to the scene in which

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Elizabeth had confronted Richard, but now it is Richard's mother, played by a high- school actress of extraordinary talent well beyond her tender years, who warns Richard that "Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end; / Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend" (4.4.195). As she speaks, Richard mounts the tall platform as the flag revealed in the beginning moments rises up behind him. A warning siren blares as two spotlights, operated by members of the company hidden behind the tall platform, search the skies. The two armed soldiers line up the internee chorus at center and force them to their knees. As a brown-shirted soldier offers the fascist salute, the armed soldiers fire their machine guns, and the internee chorus falls again. The armed soldiers take up positions on the platform's steps below and to Richard's sides as the spotlights continue their scanning. Richard speaks from a combination of the play's opening monologue, where he decries being "Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time / Into this breathing world, scarce half made up" (1.1.20-21), and his final scene, where, awakening from his dream, he despairs that "No creature loves me" (5.3.201). Then, since he "cannot prove a lover," Richard determines to "prove a villain" (1.1.28 and 30), and pulling a luger from his coat, presses its barrel under his chin and fires. He tumbles backward off the tall platform as the Nazi flag behind him emulates his fall. A chanted prayer for the dead intones briefly, and the company ends its scene to thunderous applause, which continues even as the players and their fellow crew members begin rapidly disassembling their set to make way for the next group to perform.

In just somewhat over ten minutes, this group of high- school students from American Fork, Utah, directed by Neal Johnson, has performed an expressionistic and constructivist, re-historicized rendering of this early Shakespearean historical http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 3 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

tragedy. In the process, the students have grappled not only with challenging language some four hundred years removed from their own, but also questions of history, team preparation, and the particulars of performance. They have come together towards a common goal, rehearsed extensively, and delighted an auditorium full of young persons and others, inspired by their efforts. In addition to this opportunity to perform, this group had the benefit of feedback from a panel of theatrical professionals and professional educators, who in a brief, class-like setting, have praised them for their efforts and pointed the way toward further improvement.

Members of this group, like the two-and-a-half to three thousand of their fellows joining them in Cedar City, Utah on the first weekend of October 2012, have participated in workshops given by other professional theater-makers and educators, seen the work of many other groups performing and competing at this event, and had the chance to attend full performances not only of the Southern Utah University Theatre Department's production of As You Like It, but the resident, Tony-Award winning Utah Shakespeare Festival's production of Hamlet.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival (USF) and Southern Utah University (SUU) annual Shakespeare Competition brings together hallmarks of both a competition and a festival and provides the impetus for many hours of effort, educational opportunity, http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 4 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

and enjoyment for students from Southern California to Wisconsin and beyond. While some theater and Shakespeare educators disagree about the relative value of competitions and non-competitive performance festivals, the popularity of this event, the feedback from its participants, and the ways in which it impacts its stakeholder communities leave little doubt but that it serves its constituencies well. These communities include not only the students in attendance, but those participating in preliminary festivals and competitions at their middle and high schools or in their local communities, their families, friends and larger communities, and the hosting Shakespeare Festival and University.

What follows describes the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, its origins, development, and organization and the process of the competition for students. It goes on to discuss the logistics of the Competition, the coaches/instructors bringing students and some of the feedback they have provided, and some of the controversy around the question of competitive versus non-competitive gatherings of this sort. The latter part of this discussion considers types of "service Shakespeare" engaged by the Competition, non-competitive aspects of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, and the cultural milieu in which the Competition has developed and thrived.

ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENT, AND ORGANIZATION The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is one among a field of school competitions and festivals based around performance of the work of William Shakespeare. The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition has been operating nearly continuously for longer than even some better known regional and national competitions organized by much older organizations, such as that of the Drama Teachers Association of Southern California (DTASC), featured in the 2011 documentary Shakespeare High (Rotaru 2011).3 With the exception of a year in the 1990s, when those involved with the Competition kept the tradition going with a similar event in a nearby venue, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition has been held annually in Cedar City since 1977, some fifteen years after Fred Adams founded the Utah Shakespeare Festival there. Serving between 2,500 and 3,000 students annually, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is among the largest in the nation. The mission of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition states that it "cultivates the art of theatre, dance and music, by providing active observation of peer and professional performances, educational creations based on Shakespeare's plays and poems, and personal evaluation by working theatre and dance professionals."

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Puppetry on the Auditorium Theatre stage

In the 1970s, Ray Jones, a drama teacher from Provo, Utah, had been participating in the Foothill Shakespeare Festival in Bakersfield, California, created by revered Bakersfield secondary teacher Peg Pauley. Jones would stop into Cedar City with his students and suggest to USF Founder Fred Adams and Managing Director R. Scott Phillips that they should organize a Shakespeare competition in southern Utah, reminding them that they possessed all of the necessary resources. Adams and Phillips heeded Jones's call, and in 1977 hosted ten schools, traveling three hours or more to Cedar City to join in the new Competition. It was an instant hit, and interest in the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition spread widely.

Some five years later, in 1982, this article's co-author, then high-school student Michael Bahr, won a scholarship to study at SUU (then Southern Utah State College), competing as what he refers to as "the world's smallest Petruchio." Bahr still recalls the adjudication that he received, and the extraordinary experience he enjoyed. By 1982 there were somewhere between twenty and thirty schools participating — all high schools, of varying size.

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Student actresses viewing through a makeshift casement (2012)

The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition continued to grow, and by the end of the 1990s was hosting some four to five dozen schools. The competing schools were divided into four separate divisions with other schools of like size, including students from Arizona, Nevada, California, and Idaho, as well as both public and private schools within Utah. The "non-sanctioned" Competition had grown more popular even than the Utah High School Activities Association (UHSAA) drama contest that took place in the spring, in part because the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, drawing on personnel from and the wide reach of the University and the Shakespeare Festival, featured a higher and more consistent quality of adjudicators, and adjudication standards that were well-defined and regularized.

In 2000 and 2001, the UHSAA went through a philosophical shift, leading to a de- emphasizing of competition in school events. The spring drama competition was reconceived as a festival, along the lines of music competitions that provide a type of adjudication but not on a competitive basis. In the wake of this non-competitive reconceptualization, participation plummeted. Participating schools were no longer clear about how to prepare. At the same time, participation in the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition grew significantly.

The next phase in the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition was the development of http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 7 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

a "Tech[nical]. Olympics," which roughly followed the format of technical theater competition from the American College Theater Festival (ACTF). The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition Tech. Olympics featured events such as hanging and focusing lighting instruments, establishing sound reinforcement, organizing property tables, rigging scenery, and executing aspects of theatrical stage management.

Adjusting lighting-instrument shutters, Tech. Olympics (2010) Participation in the Tech. Olympics required a minimum of six participants from a particular school. After participants competed, adjudicators would provide instruction to the less experienced students. The Tech. Olympics took on a decidedly teaching-oriented format. This portion of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition has proven to be a great success.

In the middle of the first decade of the new millennium, now SUU Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Shauna Mendini, suggested the inclusion of a dance division, with performances based on Shakespeare's works. Along with dance, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition added musical performance, initially based on madrigal works. Musical performances could be conceived of as creatively as students and their instructors might choose, just as Shakespeare's work might inspire a wide range of possible dramatic performance. The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition sported monologue, duo-scene, and ensemble

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competitions, and at the request of some instructors, the duo-scene category expanded also to include trio work. Scenes featuring four or more performers are

Tuacahn (Utah) High School, performance from Macbeth (2012)

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A trio performs on the stage of the outdoor Adams Shakespearean Festival Theatre (2012) entered in the ensemble competition.

As the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition developed, the Divisions came to be configured as follows: the largest schools, of over 2000 students, joined the Buckingham Division; schools of 1,701-2000 students joined the Oxford; those of 801-1,700 students filled the Cambridge Division; and schools of under 800 students participated in the Westminster Division. The Stratford Division hosted junior high and middle school students, and the Essex Division featured students from schools that were not part of the UHSAA. As of the 2012 competition, 106

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schools participated.

Because of funding cuts and challenges in acquiring on-campus space for the Competition, the host organizations decided to cancel the 1997 Competition, with the intention of regrouping and returning the following year in a non-competitive festival format. A secondary school educator in northern Utah at the time, Michael Bahr wrote a pointed letter to then USF Education Director Gary Armagnac, imploring him not to cancel the Competition that year. Bahr called the Competition the most important event of the year for his program and his students, described how this fall event set the pedagogical tone for the academic year, and mentioned that once his students had been able successfully to perform the work of Shakespeare, they were able to do anything dramatic that they chose. The work of modern playwrights became easy by comparison. Bahr was not alone in harboring these feelings, and a number of drama teachers got together and planned to run their own competition that year, holding it at a performance space near St. George, Utah, about an hour's drive south of Cedar City. The format was non-competitive, featuring ratings as per music festivals. While the event was not officially sponsored by USF/SUU, a number of regulars from both organizations participated. The following year, the Competition returned to USF and SUU in a competitive format and was organized again by R. Scott Phillips, who had originated the Competition some twenty years earlier. Yet one year later, Bahr was hired as Education Director for the Utah Shakespeare Festival and took over organization and management of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, the popularity of which continued to grow at a substantial rate. The UHSAA, which had shifted earlier to a non-competitive format, decided to re-embrace the competitive model of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition.

The present organization of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition features a wide variety of schools, including a mix of public, private, and charter schools, but also home-school groups and individuals from a community not school-affiliated, that banded together to compete. Geographical representation has increased as well, beyond the inter-mountain region and southern California, regularly including a group from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and another from Sacramento, in northern California. Competition performances have been given not only in English, but also in Spanish. Some of the schools participating include Utah schools for visually and hearing-impaired students, including notable performances by students from the Jean Massieu School for the Deaf, which has performed with spoken interpretations for hearing members of the audience. This outstanding group was chosen to perform in the Showcase round during the 2012 Competition, held before the closing awards assembly, for an audience of some 800 other students, coaches, and adjudicators. Upon completion of its performance of a scene from Richard III, all of the students in the audience waved their hands in the air silently, in the American Sign Language sign for applause. The hearing interpreter tapped http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 11 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

performers on the shoulders to draw their attention to the audience's response. A similar response from an audience of more than twice that size at the 2013 Competition Awards Ceremony greeted the winning of an award by another group of non-hearing students.

In recent years, overall numbers of students participating have ranged from about 2,500 to 3,000, including participants from schools in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Wisconsin, and sometimes Wyoming. Some fifteen to twenty of the schools participating are junior high or middle schools. Some of the smallest schools bring seven students; others bring sixty to ninety.

Students arriving at the Randall L. Jones Theatre Ensemble scenes can feature fifty to sixty students. Students in the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition often perform scenes and speeches from plays that most school students have never heard of, from Troilus and Cressida or Cymbeline to the multi-numbered history plays. Dance groups often feature from fifteen to twenty or so performers.

Of the 106 schools participating in 2012, about half were from Utah. About half of the Utah schools are from the greater Salt Lake Valley area. Overall of Utah Schools, about two-thirds are from somewhere along the Wasatch Front, with the

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other third from farther outlying areas.

The process and elements of the Competition are organized around the students' experience of it. Groups usually travel on the Thursday before the Competition. Events begin on Friday morning, with about 800 of the students and their instructors/coaches attending an opening ceremony, where they hear from those involved in the Competition and from representatives from the University, including often the University President or Provost, the Dean of the College of Performing and Visual Arts, the Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance and the Program Director of Theatre, and SUU's Director of Shakespeare Studies, among others. Many students attend a special 9:00 a.m. Friday performance of the Utah Shakespeare Festival's fall Shakespeare offering: in 2012, the production was Hamlet, featuring long-time Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor and former Utah Shakespeare Festival regular Danforth Comins in the title role, directed by well- known west-coast actor and director Marco Barricelli. 2013's offering was the somewhat more challenging Richard II, starring USF Co-Artistic Director David Ivers and directed by former Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director and well-known actor and director Henry Woronicz. The other USF fall shows are running during this time, and all are sold out during the Competition weekend. Performers are treated to theaters full of extremely energetic and focused young audience members. Actors describe loving these audiences and the energy that they bring. An on-stage kiss, for example, can elicit a much more vocal response than may be the case at other performances. The Shakespeare Festival offers reduced- price tickets during this weekend, including half-price seats for Competition participants.

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Students gather for a dance workshop (2013)

The intention behind the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is not to develop a competitive environment that just creates winners and losers, but rather one that enables a learning environment, both during the competition itself and in the students' local preparations before coming to Cedar City. Students come to the Competition to be adjudicated on their work, but in the process have the opportunity to share that work with a large number of other students, who learn not only about the quality of the interpretive offerings of their fellows, but also about the interpretive possibilities of the plays. Students competing gain professional adjudication, which takes the form of classroom-style evaluation. Judges are trained to be both very positive and usefully critical in their in-person teaching sessions that form the live adjudication, as well as in the written comments that they provide, which instructors and coaches often share with students during their bus rides home afterward. The Competition-cum-festival also provides a wide variety of workshops, mentioned below.

Every student performing a monologue or in a duo/trio scene performs three times, each time before a different judge and alongside perhaps five or six different competitors, and in addition to written evaluations, will gain in-person feedback from each round's judge at the end of that round. Ensemble scenes perform only once, but for a panel of three judges who, in addition to filling out independent adjudication forms, provide spoken critiques of the scenes afterward. Ensemble http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 14 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

judges do not confer with one another before providing their critiques. Competitors receive both a rating and a ranking. Each monologue or scene is rated by each adjudicator as being either Fair, Good, Excellent, or Superior. Judges are discouraged from marking a presentation as Fair. Judges choose one of these four ratings and are not allowed to mark in spaces between these ratings, enabling quantitative assessments by those tabulating judges' results. Judges select a rating for each of several component parts of the students' work: Voice, Body, Character, and facility with Text. Each of these categories has individually rated subcategories. Larger group scenes also are rated on Ensemble-specific criteria. Dance groups are adjudicated similarly, with the categories of Craftsmanship, Performance, and Text themselves broken into subcategories. Based on the ratings in these categories, judges assign a level of Overall Effectiveness, reflecting the average or dominant labels (of Fair, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding) assigned to each of the particular categories.

In addition to these ratings, judges assign rankings. Within each competitor grouping, the adjudicator(s) will assign each competitor or competing group a numerical ranking from one through five, indicating an estimation of relative accomplishment within that particular adjudication group. Only one competitor or ensemble within each competitive group can receive a ranking of one, two, or three. While the ranking system has five possible places, in practice no individual or group is ranked lower than fourth. In this way, there is no last-place finisher, regardless of how many individuals or groups make up that particular competitive group. No matter how much improvement may be possible, no one "loses." In addition to ratings and rankings, judges are asked to provided copious narrative evaluation at the bottom of each evaluation sheet. The judges providing these ratings and rankings, and offering in-person coaching to the students after their performances are primarily actors, directors, dancers, choreographers, and educators, professionals who come from all over the country.

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Students receiving coaching on the SUU Campus (2013) Many of the judges are members of the Utah Shakespeare Festival acting company from the summer, fall, and touring seasons. In selecting judges for the acting and dance competitions, USF particularly seeks to engage excellent teaching artists, who possess developed capacities for assessing and developing student work, and who are skilled at articulating performance principles. For the Tech. Olympics, USF selects artists and artisans who work extensively in each of the designated practice areas.

Because monologue and duo-/trio-scene participants perform against a different group of participants each round, they get to see some fourteen to seventeen other students/groups perform in their adjudicated rounds. Each competitor also is assured that she or he will not be in an adjudication group with anyone else from her or his school, and will never perform before the same judge twice. Accomplishing these requisites depends upon a computer program developed by Competition organizers to provide random assignments within Divisions that accomplish these objectives.

Adjudicators are asked whether each scene might be designated as particularly stellar, and should be considered for inclusion in a non-competitive "Showcase" round. This round takes place while the rest of the tabulations are being accomplished, in advance of the Competition's concluding Awards Ceremony. The Showcase round, which takes place simultaneously in multiple performance http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 16 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

venues, each with upwards of 800 attendees, features some of the most remarkable performances at the Competition. This opportunity, a reward in and of itself, also allows attendees to see standards that some might aspire to in subsequent visits to the Competition. Primarily, the Showcase round provides the chance for large numbers of students to watch the performance of Shakespeare for its own sake. The remarkable performance described in this article's opening pages was one such Showcase entrant. The designation of a performance as worthy of the Showcase round may result from adjudicators' evaluation of its novelty, risk-taking, interpretive acumen, or other perhaps less tangible factors that may not necessarily correlate with a performance's likelihood of winning its respective Division. As such, students sometimes can be concerned about why a piece may have been invited to the Showcase round, yet not be designated as a Division winner. This feature expresses one of the ways in which the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is a hybrid event, comprised of elements both of competition and festival.

During the Showcase round, the "Tabulation Room" is busy determining which performances have won, placed, or shown within their respective Divisions, and which student performers from ensemble scenes, based on judges' recommendations, are in line to win scholarships for Utah Shakespeare Festival educational programs or to attend Southern Utah University. Judges sometimes recommend scholarship winners who are not playing leading roles in their respective scenes, but who otherwise possess special talent and/or apparent work ethic and capacity to excel. Once tabulation is complete, the Awards Ceremony begins. Some of the most extraordinary performances eligible for the Showcase round are shared instead as a prologue to the passing out of awards. These Awards- Ceremony performances are made up of scenes and dance performances.

LOGISTICS The logistics of the Competition are affected by many factors. For many schools, funding is a challenge. Some are only allowed a certain total number of trips per academic year, whether for football, baseball, arts programming, or otherwise. As a secondary school teacher, Michael Bahr once brought a group of highly motivated students with him to a school board meeting seeking special dispensation to travel to the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition. Despite the challenges posed by the most recent recession, the overall numbers of students attending the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition in recent years has held steady. While some of the larger public schools have had challenges bringing students to Cedar City, charter school participation has increased. Major costs for attending schools include those for transportation, housing students in or near Cedar City, food, and competition participation fees. Many schools engage in fundraising to help meet the costs of bringing students to the Competition, including through such events as evenings of Shakespearean performance and bake sales. Fees cover the costs of administrative

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preparation and conduct of the Competition, the myriad workshops made available to participants, and rental of some spaces from the University. Fees also help subsidize transportation, housing, meals, and modest honoraria for many of the non-resident professional theatrical practitioners and educators brought in to adjudicate the many rounds of the Competition.

Around the time when Michael Bahr took over running the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, in 1998-99, about fifty schools participated, bringing approximately 1,200 to 1,500 students. The total cost for running the Competition then was about $12,000. The doubling in size of the Competition over the past fifteen years has increased costs by about $10,000, which includes adding dance events and the Tech. Olympics. The average cost for running the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is about ten dollars per student participant.

The logistical challenges for the hosting Utah Shakespeare Festival and Southern Utah University, as well as those for Cedar City, are significant. Some thirty-five or more rooms on campus are dedicated solely to the event, which takes place at least in part while classes are underway. Six separate performance venues are required for ensembles (including all available theater spaces, some of which are hosting University and professional performances during this period). An additional ten or more rooms are needed for the large number of workshops offered. Running the Competition requires more than 150 volunteers. Master of Fine Arts Arts- Administration students facilitate logistics for the Competition, including ten graduate students who serve as members of the administrative inner circle, along with five additional staff members of the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Some six to eight more volunteers/staff members are involved in running the Tabulation Room, calculating adjudicators' handiwork. Student volunteers act as timers, easing the burden on judges, and as runners, moving scoring sheets and other information and hard goods to keep the Competition running smoothly. Staff on campus are likewise put to the test, as the campus population of some 8,000 students, only a portion of whom are on campus at any given time, swells by upwards of 3,000 persons, who are on campus almost the entirety of each day of the Competition. The Competition is a particularly busy time for food service workers and those in the bookstore. Perhaps most impacted are members of the custodial staff, who are charged both with cleaning up after the student-competitor invasion, and at times, arranging rooms again in ways that support the normal workings of the University. Overstating the impact in a way that some found mean-spirited, a political cartoon in the student newspaper once depicted a line of buses driving away over the mountains, with the SUU campus left behind in rubble, captioned "High School Shakespeare Competition." The Competition clearly puts the resources of the hosts to the test, but the hosts are more than happy to endure extra effort and expense for the opportunities and rewards created by the Competition. Michael Bahr was once approached by a member of SUU's custodial staff following a Competition. The http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 18 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

Custodian had encountered a massive pile of refuse on top of and in the immediate vicinity of a trash can, but on the top of the pile found a note from a student- attendee of the Competition. It apologized for the amount of trash for which he and his fellows had been responsible, acknowledged the work of SUU's custodial staff, and specifically thanked the custodian who might find that note for his or her efforts. The custodian was both moved and energized by the thoughtfulness and respect exhibited by that anonymous competitor.

The instructors and coaches bringing students to the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition wear many hats. These often extremely talented educators not only prepare their students as instructors and coaches, but often direct, design sets, lights, and sound, publicize and fundraise for the schools' activities, and provide advocacy for the work within their local communities and schools. Success at the Shakespeare Competition, and far more than in terms of winning trophies and accolades for students, tends to follow the best instructors and coaches, and Michael Bahr has seen new schools excel when an excellent coach has relocated. Likewise, he has seen schools drop out of the Competition following the departure of an energetic instructor/coach. It is clear that a great deal of the good that results from the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is a result of the caliber of work done at the local level by instructors and coaches who are motivated to make the efforts necessary to create from the Competition the quality pedagogy that leads to student success.

Remarkably, in 2012 coaches/instructors from seventy-eight of the 106 schools responded to a post-Competition survey. The responses expressed a wide variety of opinions, but enormous and overwhelmingly positive support for the Competition and its organization. Some instructors/coaches felt, for example, that costumes should not be allowed, suggesting a possible competitive advantages for schools able to afford nice ones, and hurt feelings for schools not so able. Some appreciated how much time students had to socialize during the Competition. One mentioned being offended by the inclusion of a quite-amazing student performance from Titus Andronicus that referenced the play's off-stage ravaging of Lavinia, suggesting that the representation of rape was not appropriate for an event for high-school students.

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Scene from Titus Andronicus (2004) Some instructors/coaches advocated yet additional Showcase opportunities and a further downplaying of the event's competitive aspects. Others mentioned feeling somewhat defeated when competing against a charter school whose focus is on theatrical performance. Many described the joy and enlightenment provided by seeing other schools' efforts, and related the extraordinary experiences that their students gained, both as producers and consumers of Shakespearean performance, and how the Competition created the opportunity and focus for extensive and rewarding work at the local-school level.

COMPETITIONS VS. FESTIVALS An area of controversy concerns whether such events are best conducted in a competitive or non-competitive, festival-type environment. Those on the two sides of the divide approach the question from varying standpoints on matters of culture and philosophy. Competitive performance models have a significant history, not only in the United States, but some would suggest, back to the beginnings of the history of dramatic performance. The surviving plays of classical Greece were entrants in the competitive Festival Dionysia. Other advocates of competition describe the art and craft of theater as innately competitive, where there are always only so many positions for the often significantly larger numbers of would-be

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participants. Theatrical performance, even on the school level, always features winners and losers when it comes to gaining roles. Those advocating festival-style events suggest that the key should be opportunity over competition, and argue that the educational environment does not benefit from an imposition of an artificial opposition that may stifle student interest, creativity, and enjoyment. The value is in each student's opportunity to have a close encounter with dramatic text, to create from it and to share the results of that work, with both creator and audience member able to appreciate and learn from the experience.

One of the leading advocates of the festival model is Patrick Spottiswoode, the Director of Education at Shakespeare's Globe in London, and the third full-time staff member hired as part of Sam Wanamaker's quest to build a replica of Shakespeare's open-to-the-air playhouse. Spottiswoode describes the festival model as "more nurturing, mutually respectful, collaborative and celebratory." Spottiswoode describes how he had worked once with a student in North Carolina who told him that a festival with which Spottiswoode was associated "was the first time [that student and his colleagues had] worked in co-operation with other schools in their area rather than in competition trying to 'beat them.'"4 Spottiswoode describes Shakespeare competition as having an unsavory "X-Factor" or "Idol" approach, in which "the wrong sort of adrenalin is excited." He points out that "the emphasis is placed on results rather than process." Spottiswoode has worked on a variety of these types of events, both at Shakespeare's Globe and across the greater globe, and finds that "the festive approach allows students to enjoy/respect each other's work without worrying/questioning as to 'are they better than us?'" The more collaborative vision of such events "fosters a celebration of each other's work." One of Spottiswoode's concerns is for students who may seem to be appreciating the work of their fellows at competitions, but somewhere inside, are urged by the nature of competition to hope for their competitors' failure, in order to boost their own chances. From the co-author's observations of the behavior of students at the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, such competitive ill- wishing seemed rarely if ever to be discernible. Spottiswoode points out, and the co-authors are very much in agreement with him, that competitions featuring students presenting recitations of Shakespeare's sonnets are very far indeed from being about "playing" Shakespeare, and are rather much more about competition. Sonnets are of a non-dramatic literary form and lend themselves neither to collaboration nor performance. Under Spottiswoode's leadership, the Shakespeare Theatre Association (STA) sought to urge the English Speaking Union to move from its competitive, often sonnet-recitation-focused competition to embrace a festival approach. The ESU, however, chose not to embrace the STA's suggestion.

Spottiswoode is by no means alone in his preference for a festival approach. Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts offers its Fall Festival of Shakespeare in a non-competitive manner, where more than 500 young persons http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 21 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

involved in preparing Shakespearean performances at their local schools have the opportunity of performing on the company's main stage. The Shakespeare's Globe Center New Zealand hosts with the University of Otago the Sheila Winn Shakespeare Festivals, a series of twenty-three springtime festivals featuring five- and fifteen-minute scenes performed by high-school students, along with a national festival held in Wellington and featuring scenes by groups from across the country.

Competitive models include the ESU's National Shakespeare Competition, where students recite monologues or sonnets from Shakespeare in regional competitions feeding state and national gatherings, leading to the recognition of a national winner. The sponsoring ESU, which seeks to promote English language, literature, and culture more broadly, has chapters in fifty-eight countries beyond the United Kingdom. Its competition in the United States regularly sports celebrity adjudicators, including well-known performers and members of the larger Shakespearean community. Other competitions include those of the Drama Teachers' Association of Southern California, whose annual competition is the subject of Alex Rotaru's documentary film Shakespeare High (cited above), and a variety of state competitions, including the annual UHSAA drama competition.

There are losers in a competition, something of concern not only to festival advocates, but also organizers of competitions. Competition is a common feature across a variety of disciplines in the United States, from sport to business to artistic endeavor. One of the questions surrounding a competitive model is whether it is possible to have winners and thus gain the motivational advantages of competition without having losers, and risk the negative reinforcement associated with competition. The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition seeks to accomplish a hybrid form that uses both elements of competition and festival, which accounts in part for its success.

Michael Bahr finds that fair competition can be a powerfully motivating force and hearkens to the Latin root of the term "compete," competere, which is "to strive after (something) in company or together" (OED v.2). The attitude some coaches advocate, of "win-at-all-costs," does a disservice, according to Bahr, to true competition. Bahr's ideal for establishing competition is the creation of a level playing field. He believes that the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition accomplishes this objective, including through the quality of its adjudicators and its computerized system of assigning performances, as well as its ranking system, which recognizes winners but does not designate losers. As Bahr describes, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition annually spends some five thousand dollars on "pieces of plastic," the trophies that are spread widely among the Competition's many entrants.

The feedback provided by adjudicators is organized as a performance-classroom

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environment might be and is offered in a non-competitive manner, though indeed judges also assign letter ratings and rankings on scoring sheets. One of the important questions for Bahr is the extent to which instructor/coaches are capable of using feedback gained during an adjudicated session as a teaching opportunity for their students. By and large, Bahr finds that the evaluations help to drive an overall raising of the level of the work.

The events that for many students precede entry into the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition are logistically necessary. There simply are not enough hotel rooms in the vicinity of Cedar City to accommodate all of the students who begin on the local level, seeking to make it to the larger Competition. Indeed, the combination of the thousands of student-competitors, their instructors/coaches, friends, and families, together with the relatively small number of non-Competition-related USF patrons that weekend far exceed the number of hotel rooms available anywhere nearby, and hotel rooms from well north of Cedar City south to St. George are booked as much as a year in advance for Competition weekend.5 While the festival sponsored by Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts is non- competitive, it only is able to provide space for twenty-five schools. Bahr finds that the events in Cedar City are only the tip of an iceberg, with the larger weight of work taking place at the schools in advance of the gathering on the SUU campus. Bahr believes that the more important question in the matter of competition versus festival is how each actually is implemented. Bahr describes having taken students to a particular festival-format gathering when he was a secondary school teacher and found it to be "dark and dangerous." He values the notion of measuring one's work against the work of others, and finds that such measurement leads overall to better work, deeper commitment, and ultimately more meaningful learning opportunities for students.

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The watch, in a scene from Much Ado About Nothing (2012) Bahr describes secondary students as valuing structure, as wanting to know what they can and cannot do. While a festival format has the potential to provide such structure, Bahr finds that the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition clearly provides it. Bahr finds the value of structure to be even greater for students in at-risk schools, where a high proportion of students are statistically more likely to drop out or otherwise fail academically. A number of students from such schools regularly attend the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition. Bahr says that students "want to be challenged . . . want to be pushed," and benefit even from the perhaps-artificial challenge that is competition. He finds that the Competition's structure helps students to achieve the goal of obtaining a close, creative encounter with some of the best dramatic literature available. With each performance adjudicated by three separate judges, students are likely to gain feedback that speaks in different ways to the issues at hand, increasing the likelihood that such feedback will strike a given student in a way that she or he is able to process. Many schools, with long distances to travel at the end of the Competition, choose to forego the Awards Ceremony, and do so with the full blessing of Competition organizers. The motivation for these schools is not vanquishing opponents, but doing their best. Bahr describes as the norm at the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition seeing many students from different schools hugging one another and applauding wildly for each other.

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The co-authors are by no means opposed to the festival format, but Bahr wonders what would happen if the arguments applied to the competition-festival debate were likewise applied to athletics. There is nothing innately competitive about the skills of throwing and catching. Should these arts be pursued only for their own sakes, as showcasing the skills involved, and not be turned into the win-lose structures that are, for example, high-school baseball? Would the participating athletes be motivated to train as hard, reach as far, and please their constituencies as fully? Bahr is also quick to point out that the Shakespeare Competition, while a flagship endeavor of the Utah Shakespeare Festival Education Department, is by no means its only one, the rest of which are not competitively oriented. These other activities include a schools tour, a great deal of class and performance opportunity, and the Bard's Birthday Bash, a gathering of some 2,500 students from nearby elementary schools celebrating the work of Shakespeare through students' performances, games and other activities. The Shakespeare competition-versus- festival debate is a larger one about competition in education more generally.

One of the ways in which the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition goes beyond a competitive model is in the additional programming that it offers. Crucially, the Showcase round of the Competition provides large numbers of students with the chance to see the work of others in a non-competitive format. The University and professional performances on offer are, for many, highlights of the Competition. Additionally, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition offers a variety of workshops to students attending. A number of these workshops are offered by judges who also are members of the USF acting company, some of whom are extremely accomplished teachers. Workshops are scheduled in multiple blocks throughout the Competition, so that students may attend when not performing. There are at least thirty-six acting workshops offered on a variety of performance topics, including but also going well beyond Shakespeare, and with such titles as "Playing with Original Practices," "What Are Judges Looking For," "Augusto Boal," "Rehearsing Like a Pro," "Stage Combat," "First-Folio Shakespeare," "The Actors' Breath," and a very popular workshop on "Juggling."

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Shakespeare Competition participant (2004) Technical workshops are offered as well, including in the areas of scenic painting, lighting, sound design, and specialty topics, such as how to build a staircase, fantasy and non-human makeup, LED lighting, projections, fog and special effects. Multiple dance workshops host large numbers of students and cover a variety of techniques, including jazz, modern, ballet, African, hip-hop, tap, and others, and topics such as improvisation, body conditioning, and composition. The 2012 USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition featured sixty-seven workshop offerings on some thirty different topics.

One of the very popular offerings for students interested in the technical arts involves opening up the process of changing over the set in the Randall Jones Theatre from one play to the next. During the 2012 Competition, this event allowed over four hundred students to witness the changeover from Les Miserables to Hamlet, accompanied by a discussion from USF technical staff members talking the students through it, including breakout discussions after the main changeover work.

One of the instructors/coaches attending the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition describes an experience that captures the level of immersion that students gain at an event such as the Competition, and the buffet of Shakespearean options that students have the chance to sample. While in the men's room, this instructor/coach heard one student saying to another that he had just seen the greatest scene: there http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 26 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

was this girl, and she goes up, and she has this guy stand on this molehill and put on the crown, and says something about taking this handkerchief, and it was dipped in someone's blood. The student said that he thought it was from a particular one of the plays, when a young voice from inside one of the stalls piped up, saying, "No, it's from Henry VI."

With so many events taking place, one may count on encountering the unexpected. A student may take ill and another need to step in at a moment's notice; a group might learn that it has been selected to perform in the Showcase round, but hasn't the time to get back to the bus and put on costumes again and must perform without props and in street clothes. A student might perform an incredible monologue before the Awards Ceremony, and only later do the judges and others learn that the student is severely affected by Asperger's syndrome.

Together with the service that the Competition provides educationally for students who take part in it, and in the myriad local competitions that precede it, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition provides multiple other instances of "service Shakespeare." It helps to develop audiences for the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and for Shakespearean performance more broadly. It becomes an extremely effective recruiting tool for Southern Utah University. During a start-of-academic-year meeting for SUU Theatre majors, co-author Weingust heard Michael Bahr ask those assembled how many had participated in the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition while high-school students. Weingust witnessed approximately half of the students in the room raise their hands. The Competition also provides an outlet for significant numbers of at-risk students, who find in Shakespeare an alternative to some of the riskier temptations teens may face, and even provides opportunities for students participating from youth correctional facilities. Through volunteering options, the Competition also provides a great deal of service-learning opportunity for SUU students. Many SUU theater, dance, and music students serve as volunteers, often gaining the opportunity of sitting in on, hearing, and assisting the professionals who provide participants with oral evaluations in addition to the written ones.

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A dance group prepares (2013)

CULTURAL MILIEU The Competition, the larger success of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and of Southern Utah University's focus on Shakespeare more widely, is in some ways connected with their relationship to the cultural/religious composition of the State of Utah. The dominant culture in Utah revolves around the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (or LDS, whose members are often referred to as Mormons). LDS members comprise approximately 62 percent of the State's population (Canham 2012). Outside of Salt Lake City, which has a slightly non-Mormon majority, the population density of LDS members can be even higher. There are ways in which LDS culture and Utah's pioneering history, along with the State's broad political ideological leanings, with regard to theater in general, Shakespeare specifically, and notions about competition, can be said to be inextricably bound up with the success and longevity of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition.

Unlike in some Christian cultures, the LDS Church has a long and warm history with theatrical and musical representation. Brigham Young, Joseph Smith's successor as Church leader who brought members west in the 1840s, is famously reported to have said, "If I were placed on a cannibal island and given the task of civilizing its people, I would straightway build a theatre for the purpose" (Pearson 1984, quoting Hansen 1967). Young also is reported to have said that, "Many preachers of the day have said that fiddling and music came from Hell, but I say that there is no fiddling or music in Hell. . . . Music belongs in Heaven, to cheer God, angel[s], and man" (Collier 1987). Indeed, before completion of the Temple in Salt Lake, Brigham Young ordered the building of a theater, which became a key stop on the major railroad lines, bringing important theater companies and actors to http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 28 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

the Salt Lake Valley.

Theater might even be said to be structurally a part of the Church, in that many LDS churches contain alongside the sanctuary what is called a "Cultural Hall," which contains not only a basketball court but also a stage. According to Bahr, Utah Shakespeare Festival founder Fred Adams recalls a time when the Church would purchase royalties for a play and distribute it to the young men's and women's improvement organizations to help facilitate productions. Similar actions take place to this day, where large stakes (units of the Church made up a number of congregations) in California might put on large productions of plays or hold dance festivals.6

While other denominations make use of scripture in modern vernacular, the LDS Church makes use of the King James version of the Bible. Young persons attending church on Sundays, engaged in religious instruction, and sharing Bible passages during the practice of "family home evening" hear passages from the Bible not in the vernacular that they speak with their friends, but in the vernacular of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. For a young member of the LDS Church, hearing a service at a church of another denomination using a more modern translation of the Bible is jarring, as might be a performance of Shakespeare to an experienced audience member if performed in present-day English rather than in the original. Likewise, other foundational LDS texts, such as The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine of the Covenants, or the Pearl of Great Price are written in verse and very much have the sound of early modern English. For example, usage of the more intimate second-person pronoun forms "thee," "thy," and "thou," which are unfamiliar to most persons in the United States today, would not feel particularly strange to a young person accustomed to hearing them regularly in worship. The co-authors believe that this familiarity with early modern English from a very young age makes the language of Shakespeare more accessible to a significant proportion of young Utahns. The language of Shakespeare clearly is one that can be accessible to young persons. Elementary-age students in the United Kingdom read Shakespeare as a part of their curricula. Michael Bahr believes that for students so accustomed to an early modern vernacular, at the elementary level there is little difference for students between the language of Shakespeare, and, for example, Dr. Suess; it is not until junior high or middle school that students are made to think that Shakespeare is somehow particularly difficult. Both Shakespeare's work and the text of the King James Bible are dense, have rhyme, meter, and some outlandish words, and are made up of themes and plot lines. The co-authors believe that Utah is fertile ground indeed for the incorporation of Shakespeare into the curricular and extra-curricular work of students.

Utah is perhaps the reddest of red states along the political spectrum. President Barack Obama lost the Utah vote to John McCain in 2008 by twenty-nine

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percentage points (CNN 2008), and by forty-eight points to LDS Church member Mitt Romney in 2012 (Utah Secretary of State 2014). In a state so leaning, an emphasis on competition might be considered a mainstay of political ideology. All of these factors make the Shakespeare Festival and Competition congenial to their local constituencies.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival / Southern Utah University Shakespeare Competition provides a focus for the study and performance of Shakespeare for thousands of students each year. The Competition serves a number of constituencies, not the least of which are these students, but which also include the larger communities from which participants hail, the host organizations, and one might even suggest, arts culture and society more broadly. The Competition is deeply connected to the dominant culture within which it developed, but transcends any particular group or groups. The question of whether competitive or non- competitive performance events serve their constituencies best is open to debate, but clearly the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition has thrived by combining elements of a competition and of a non-competitive festival. As evidenced by the educational choices made by many of the Competition's participants, this event has had a significant impact on the lives of very many, and promises to continue to do so.

NOTES 1. Citations to Richard III are to Hammond 1981. 2. A version of this curse is offered by the Ghost of Prince Edward at 5.3.121, then verbatim by the Ghost of Henry the Sixth at 5.3.127 and by other characters afterward. 3. Shakespeare High may be described as being of a sub-genre with Hank Rogerson's documentary Shakespeare Behind Bars (Rogerson 2005) and the later Still Dreaming (Rogerson forthcoming; still in production as of this writing in early January 2014), as what may be considered as "Shakesploitation" films, which use Shakespearean performance as a lens for examining significantly personal experience. I offer this generic ascription as an alternative to the use of the term as applied to teen-oriented Shakespeare films by Richard Burt (2002). After events in 1964, 1974, and 1975, beginning in 1983 the DTASC competition became a regular event (held in all but two years); the competition of the English Speaking Union of the United States (ESU) was founded in that same year. Both DTASC and the ESU were founded as organizations in 1920. 4. Quotations from Patrick Spottiswoode are taken from personal correspondence with co-author Don Weingust in July of 2013. 5. Even when the Utah Shakespeare Festival is in full swing during its summer

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season, there are never more than 1,600 patrons in its theaters during any performance times. Most patrons making the trip to Cedar City stay multiple days to see several different performances. 6. For a discussion of the LDS Church's association with contemporary drama, see Oppedisano 2009.

REFERENCES Burt, Richard. 2002. "Afterword: T(e)en Things I hate about Girlene Shakesploitation Flicks in the Late 1990s, or, Not-So-Fast Times at Shakespeare High." In Spectacular Shakespeare: Critical Theory and Popular Cinema. Edited by Courtney Lehmann and Lisa S. Starks. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 205-32. Canham, Matt. 2012. "Census: Share of Utah's Mormon Residents Holds Steady." Salt Lake Tribune. 17 April. Available online: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home3/53909710-200/population-lds-county- utah.html.csp (http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home3/53909710-200/population-lds- county-utah.html.csp) [accessed 6 January 2014]. CNN. 2008. "Election Center 2008: Results: President: Utah." Available online: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/individual/#mapPUT (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/individual/#mapPUT) [accessed 6 January 2014]. Collier, Fred. 1987. The Teachings of President Brigham Young. Vol. 3: 1852-1854. Salt Lake: Collier's Publishing. Hammond, Antony, ed. 1981. Richard III, by William Shakespeare. Arden Shakespeare 2. London and New York: Methuen. Hansen, Harold. 1967. A History and Influence of the Mormon Theatre from 1839- 1869. Provo: Brigham Young University Press. Oppedisano, Callie. 2009. "'Worthy of Imitation': Contemporary Mormon Drama on the Latter Day Stage." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Tufts University. Pearson, Carol Lynn. 1984. "Drama and Religion: The Best of Friends." New Era (August). Available online: https://www.lds.org/new-era/1984/08/drama-and- religion-the-best-of-friends (https://www.lds.org/new-era/1984/08/drama-and- religion-the-best-of-friends%20) [accessed 13 February 2014]. Rogerson, Hank. Forthcoming. Still Dreaming. U.S. Philomath Films. Rogerson, Hank, dir. 2005. Shakespeare Behind Bars. U.S. Philomath Films. Rotaru, Alex, dir. 2011. Shakespeare High. U.S. Trigger Street Productions. http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 31 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

Utah Secretary of State. 2014. "Utah Election Results: President." Available online: http://electionresults.utah.gov/xmlData/300000.html (http://electionresults.utah.gov/xmlData/300000.html) [accessed 6 January 2014].

ABSTRACT | ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENT, AND ORGANIZATION | LOGISTICS | COMPETITIONS VS. FESTIVALS | CULTURAL MILIEU | NOTES | REFERENCES | TOP

© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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The Utah Shakespeare Festival / Southern Utah (/current) University Annual Shakespeare Competition

MICHAEL BAHR, UTAH SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL (/previous) DON WEINGUST, CENTER FOR SHAKESPEARE STUDIES, SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY / UTAH SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL (/about)

ABSTRACT | ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENT, AND ORGANIZATION | LOGISTICS | COMPETITIONS VS. (/archive) FESTIVALS | CULTURAL MILIEU | NOTES | REFERENCES

ABSTRACT The Utah Shakespeare Festival / Southern Utah University Shakespeare Competition brings upwards of 3,000 students from over 100 high schools and middle schools to Cedar City, Utah each fall to compete in one of the longest- running programs of its kind in the nation. The Competition, mixing elements of competitive and non-competitive gatherings, provides a centerpiece for early academic-year educational programming in Shakespearean literature, theater, dance, and music. The Competition provides significant opportunity for "service Shakespeare," not only for competing students, but also for the sponsoring Shakespeare Festival and University and for many of the University's students, while raising and addressing questions in the controversy over competitive versus non-competitive educational programming. The Competition has developed within a cultural milieu that has contributed significantly to its success.

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Students wait to perform, near USF's Green Show stage (2013) Two young actors stand atop a six-foot-high platform, flanking another standing at a microphone, each in a drab-green military overcoat. A mid-twentieth-century sounding recorded voice recites the opening lines of Shakespeare's Richard III. As it reaches, "In the deep bosom of the ocean buried" (1.1.4),1 the two flanking characters each place a hand on a shoulder of the one at the microphone, and one of them stabs him. The soldier-assassins pull from the area of their victim's wound a red cloth meant to suggest the stylistic gushing of blood, which reveals itself to be a Nazi flag, the swastika at its center visually echoing those on the player-soldiers' sleeves. The stabbed character falls behind the flag and disappears from the platform. From the moment of the stabbing, the dozen other actors standing below the tall platform, dressed as concentration-camp internees, begin to shriek. Appearing among them at center stage is Richard, Duke of York. The shrieks turn to lines from the play, and the chorus soon falls into a repeated chant of the refrain spoken by the spirits of Richard's victims who appear to him before the battle of Bosworth Field: "despair and die."2 The internee chorus members fall to the stage, where they remain as the scene turns to Richard's wooing of the lamenting Lady Anne. After the victorious Richard asks his audience whether any woman was ever in this "humour woo'd" and "won" (1.2.232-33), Elizabeth, widow of King Edward IV and mother of the young boys sent to the Tower, confronts him and demands her children. She too urges Richard to "despair and die." The assassin-soldiers from the opening moment now accompany Richard and carry machine guns. The Duke of Clarence insists that his brother Richard loves him. Two murderers disabuse him of this filial expectation and take his life. The action returns to the scene in which

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Elizabeth had confronted Richard, but now it is Richard's mother, played by a high- school actress of extraordinary talent well beyond her tender years, who warns Richard that "Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end; / Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend" (4.4.195). As she speaks, Richard mounts the tall platform as the flag revealed in the beginning moments rises up behind him. A warning siren blares as two spotlights, operated by members of the company hidden behind the tall platform, search the skies. The two armed soldiers line up the internee chorus at center and force them to their knees. As a brown-shirted soldier offers the fascist salute, the armed soldiers fire their machine guns, and the internee chorus falls again. The armed soldiers take up positions on the platform's steps below and to Richard's sides as the spotlights continue their scanning. Richard speaks from a combination of the play's opening monologue, where he decries being "Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time / Into this breathing world, scarce half made up" (1.1.20-21), and his final scene, where, awakening from his dream, he despairs that "No creature loves me" (5.3.201). Then, since he "cannot prove a lover," Richard determines to "prove a villain" (1.1.28 and 30), and pulling a luger from his coat, presses its barrel under his chin and fires. He tumbles backward off the tall platform as the Nazi flag behind him emulates his fall. A chanted prayer for the dead intones briefly, and the company ends its scene to thunderous applause, which continues even as the players and their fellow crew members begin rapidly disassembling their set to make way for the next group to perform.

In just somewhat over ten minutes, this group of high- school students from American Fork, Utah, directed by Neal Johnson, has performed an expressionistic and constructivist, re-historicized rendering of this early Shakespearean historical http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 3 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

tragedy. In the process, the students have grappled not only with challenging language some four hundred years removed from their own, but also questions of history, team preparation, and the particulars of performance. They have come together towards a common goal, rehearsed extensively, and delighted an auditorium full of young persons and others, inspired by their efforts. In addition to this opportunity to perform, this group had the benefit of feedback from a panel of theatrical professionals and professional educators, who in a brief, class-like setting, have praised them for their efforts and pointed the way toward further improvement.

Members of this group, like the two-and-a-half to three thousand of their fellows joining them in Cedar City, Utah on the first weekend of October 2012, have participated in workshops given by other professional theater-makers and educators, seen the work of many other groups performing and competing at this event, and had the chance to attend full performances not only of the Southern Utah University Theatre Department's production of As You Like It, but the resident, Tony-Award winning Utah Shakespeare Festival's production of Hamlet.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival (USF) and Southern Utah University (SUU) annual Shakespeare Competition brings together hallmarks of both a competition and a festival and provides the impetus for many hours of effort, educational opportunity, http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 4 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

and enjoyment for students from Southern California to Wisconsin and beyond. While some theater and Shakespeare educators disagree about the relative value of competitions and non-competitive performance festivals, the popularity of this event, the feedback from its participants, and the ways in which it impacts its stakeholder communities leave little doubt but that it serves its constituencies well. These communities include not only the students in attendance, but those participating in preliminary festivals and competitions at their middle and high schools or in their local communities, their families, friends and larger communities, and the hosting Shakespeare Festival and University.

What follows describes the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, its origins, development, and organization and the process of the competition for students. It goes on to discuss the logistics of the Competition, the coaches/instructors bringing students and some of the feedback they have provided, and some of the controversy around the question of competitive versus non-competitive gatherings of this sort. The latter part of this discussion considers types of "service Shakespeare" engaged by the Competition, non-competitive aspects of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, and the cultural milieu in which the Competition has developed and thrived.

ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENT, AND ORGANIZATION The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is one among a field of school competitions and festivals based around performance of the work of William Shakespeare. The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition has been operating nearly continuously for longer than even some better known regional and national competitions organized by much older organizations, such as that of the Drama Teachers Association of Southern California (DTASC), featured in the 2011 documentary Shakespeare High (Rotaru 2011).3 With the exception of a year in the 1990s, when those involved with the Competition kept the tradition going with a similar event in a nearby venue, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition has been held annually in Cedar City since 1977, some fifteen years after Fred Adams founded the Utah Shakespeare Festival there. Serving between 2,500 and 3,000 students annually, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is among the largest in the nation. The mission of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition states that it "cultivates the art of theatre, dance and music, by providing active observation of peer and professional performances, educational creations based on Shakespeare's plays and poems, and personal evaluation by working theatre and dance professionals."

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Puppetry on the Auditorium Theatre stage

In the 1970s, Ray Jones, a drama teacher from Provo, Utah, had been participating in the Foothill Shakespeare Festival in Bakersfield, California, created by revered Bakersfield secondary teacher Peg Pauley. Jones would stop into Cedar City with his students and suggest to USF Founder Fred Adams and Managing Director R. Scott Phillips that they should organize a Shakespeare competition in southern Utah, reminding them that they possessed all of the necessary resources. Adams and Phillips heeded Jones's call, and in 1977 hosted ten schools, traveling three hours or more to Cedar City to join in the new Competition. It was an instant hit, and interest in the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition spread widely.

Some five years later, in 1982, this article's co-author, then high-school student Michael Bahr, won a scholarship to study at SUU (then Southern Utah State College), competing as what he refers to as "the world's smallest Petruchio." Bahr still recalls the adjudication that he received, and the extraordinary experience he enjoyed. By 1982 there were somewhere between twenty and thirty schools participating — all high schools, of varying size.

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Student actresses viewing through a makeshift casement (2012)

The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition continued to grow, and by the end of the 1990s was hosting some four to five dozen schools. The competing schools were divided into four separate divisions with other schools of like size, including students from Arizona, Nevada, California, and Idaho, as well as both public and private schools within Utah. The "non-sanctioned" Competition had grown more popular even than the Utah High School Activities Association (UHSAA) drama contest that took place in the spring, in part because the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, drawing on personnel from and the wide reach of the University and the Shakespeare Festival, featured a higher and more consistent quality of adjudicators, and adjudication standards that were well-defined and regularized.

In 2000 and 2001, the UHSAA went through a philosophical shift, leading to a de- emphasizing of competition in school events. The spring drama competition was reconceived as a festival, along the lines of music competitions that provide a type of adjudication but not on a competitive basis. In the wake of this non-competitive reconceptualization, participation plummeted. Participating schools were no longer clear about how to prepare. At the same time, participation in the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition grew significantly.

The next phase in the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition was the development of http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 7 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

a "Tech[nical]. Olympics," which roughly followed the format of technical theater competition from the American College Theater Festival (ACTF). The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition Tech. Olympics featured events such as hanging and focusing lighting instruments, establishing sound reinforcement, organizing property tables, rigging scenery, and executing aspects of theatrical stage management.

Adjusting lighting-instrument shutters, Tech. Olympics (2010) Participation in the Tech. Olympics required a minimum of six participants from a particular school. After participants competed, adjudicators would provide instruction to the less experienced students. The Tech. Olympics took on a decidedly teaching-oriented format. This portion of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition has proven to be a great success.

In the middle of the first decade of the new millennium, now SUU Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Shauna Mendini, suggested the inclusion of a dance division, with performances based on Shakespeare's works. Along with dance, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition added musical performance, initially based on madrigal works. Musical performances could be conceived of as creatively as students and their instructors might choose, just as Shakespeare's work might inspire a wide range of possible dramatic performance. The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition sported monologue, duo-scene, and ensemble

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competitions, and at the request of some instructors, the duo-scene category expanded also to include trio work. Scenes featuring four or more performers are

Tuacahn (Utah) High School, performance from Macbeth (2012)

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A trio performs on the stage of the outdoor Adams Shakespearean Festival Theatre (2012) entered in the ensemble competition.

As the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition developed, the Divisions came to be configured as follows: the largest schools, of over 2000 students, joined the Buckingham Division; schools of 1,701-2000 students joined the Oxford; those of 801-1,700 students filled the Cambridge Division; and schools of under 800 students participated in the Westminster Division. The Stratford Division hosted junior high and middle school students, and the Essex Division featured students from schools that were not part of the UHSAA. As of the 2012 competition, 106

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schools participated.

Because of funding cuts and challenges in acquiring on-campus space for the Competition, the host organizations decided to cancel the 1997 Competition, with the intention of regrouping and returning the following year in a non-competitive festival format. A secondary school educator in northern Utah at the time, Michael Bahr wrote a pointed letter to then USF Education Director Gary Armagnac, imploring him not to cancel the Competition that year. Bahr called the Competition the most important event of the year for his program and his students, described how this fall event set the pedagogical tone for the academic year, and mentioned that once his students had been able successfully to perform the work of Shakespeare, they were able to do anything dramatic that they chose. The work of modern playwrights became easy by comparison. Bahr was not alone in harboring these feelings, and a number of drama teachers got together and planned to run their own competition that year, holding it at a performance space near St. George, Utah, about an hour's drive south of Cedar City. The format was non-competitive, featuring ratings as per music festivals. While the event was not officially sponsored by USF/SUU, a number of regulars from both organizations participated. The following year, the Competition returned to USF and SUU in a competitive format and was organized again by R. Scott Phillips, who had originated the Competition some twenty years earlier. Yet one year later, Bahr was hired as Education Director for the Utah Shakespeare Festival and took over organization and management of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, the popularity of which continued to grow at a substantial rate. The UHSAA, which had shifted earlier to a non-competitive format, decided to re-embrace the competitive model of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition.

The present organization of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition features a wide variety of schools, including a mix of public, private, and charter schools, but also home-school groups and individuals from a community not school-affiliated, that banded together to compete. Geographical representation has increased as well, beyond the inter-mountain region and southern California, regularly including a group from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and another from Sacramento, in northern California. Competition performances have been given not only in English, but also in Spanish. Some of the schools participating include Utah schools for visually and hearing-impaired students, including notable performances by students from the Jean Massieu School for the Deaf, which has performed with spoken interpretations for hearing members of the audience. This outstanding group was chosen to perform in the Showcase round during the 2012 Competition, held before the closing awards assembly, for an audience of some 800 other students, coaches, and adjudicators. Upon completion of its performance of a scene from Richard III, all of the students in the audience waved their hands in the air silently, in the American Sign Language sign for applause. The hearing interpreter tapped http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 11 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

performers on the shoulders to draw their attention to the audience's response. A similar response from an audience of more than twice that size at the 2013 Competition Awards Ceremony greeted the winning of an award by another group of non-hearing students.

In recent years, overall numbers of students participating have ranged from about 2,500 to 3,000, including participants from schools in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Wisconsin, and sometimes Wyoming. Some fifteen to twenty of the schools participating are junior high or middle schools. Some of the smallest schools bring seven students; others bring sixty to ninety.

Students arriving at the Randall L. Jones Theatre Ensemble scenes can feature fifty to sixty students. Students in the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition often perform scenes and speeches from plays that most school students have never heard of, from Troilus and Cressida or Cymbeline to the multi-numbered history plays. Dance groups often feature from fifteen to twenty or so performers.

Of the 106 schools participating in 2012, about half were from Utah. About half of the Utah schools are from the greater Salt Lake Valley area. Overall of Utah Schools, about two-thirds are from somewhere along the Wasatch Front, with the

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other third from farther outlying areas.

The process and elements of the Competition are organized around the students' experience of it. Groups usually travel on the Thursday before the Competition. Events begin on Friday morning, with about 800 of the students and their instructors/coaches attending an opening ceremony, where they hear from those involved in the Competition and from representatives from the University, including often the University President or Provost, the Dean of the College of Performing and Visual Arts, the Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance and the Program Director of Theatre, and SUU's Director of Shakespeare Studies, among others. Many students attend a special 9:00 a.m. Friday performance of the Utah Shakespeare Festival's fall Shakespeare offering: in 2012, the production was Hamlet, featuring long-time Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor and former Utah Shakespeare Festival regular Danforth Comins in the title role, directed by well- known west-coast actor and director Marco Barricelli. 2013's offering was the somewhat more challenging Richard II, starring USF Co-Artistic Director David Ivers and directed by former Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director and well-known actor and director Henry Woronicz. The other USF fall shows are running during this time, and all are sold out during the Competition weekend. Performers are treated to theaters full of extremely energetic and focused young audience members. Actors describe loving these audiences and the energy that they bring. An on-stage kiss, for example, can elicit a much more vocal response than may be the case at other performances. The Shakespeare Festival offers reduced- price tickets during this weekend, including half-price seats for Competition participants.

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Students gather for a dance workshop (2013)

The intention behind the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is not to develop a competitive environment that just creates winners and losers, but rather one that enables a learning environment, both during the competition itself and in the students' local preparations before coming to Cedar City. Students come to the Competition to be adjudicated on their work, but in the process have the opportunity to share that work with a large number of other students, who learn not only about the quality of the interpretive offerings of their fellows, but also about the interpretive possibilities of the plays. Students competing gain professional adjudication, which takes the form of classroom-style evaluation. Judges are trained to be both very positive and usefully critical in their in-person teaching sessions that form the live adjudication, as well as in the written comments that they provide, which instructors and coaches often share with students during their bus rides home afterward. The Competition-cum-festival also provides a wide variety of workshops, mentioned below.

Every student performing a monologue or in a duo/trio scene performs three times, each time before a different judge and alongside perhaps five or six different competitors, and in addition to written evaluations, will gain in-person feedback from each round's judge at the end of that round. Ensemble scenes perform only once, but for a panel of three judges who, in addition to filling out independent adjudication forms, provide spoken critiques of the scenes afterward. Ensemble http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 14 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

judges do not confer with one another before providing their critiques. Competitors receive both a rating and a ranking. Each monologue or scene is rated by each adjudicator as being either Fair, Good, Excellent, or Superior. Judges are discouraged from marking a presentation as Fair. Judges choose one of these four ratings and are not allowed to mark in spaces between these ratings, enabling quantitative assessments by those tabulating judges' results. Judges select a rating for each of several component parts of the students' work: Voice, Body, Character, and facility with Text. Each of these categories has individually rated subcategories. Larger group scenes also are rated on Ensemble-specific criteria. Dance groups are adjudicated similarly, with the categories of Craftsmanship, Performance, and Text themselves broken into subcategories. Based on the ratings in these categories, judges assign a level of Overall Effectiveness, reflecting the average or dominant labels (of Fair, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding) assigned to each of the particular categories.

In addition to these ratings, judges assign rankings. Within each competitor grouping, the adjudicator(s) will assign each competitor or competing group a numerical ranking from one through five, indicating an estimation of relative accomplishment within that particular adjudication group. Only one competitor or ensemble within each competitive group can receive a ranking of one, two, or three. While the ranking system has five possible places, in practice no individual or group is ranked lower than fourth. In this way, there is no last-place finisher, regardless of how many individuals or groups make up that particular competitive group. No matter how much improvement may be possible, no one "loses." In addition to ratings and rankings, judges are asked to provided copious narrative evaluation at the bottom of each evaluation sheet. The judges providing these ratings and rankings, and offering in-person coaching to the students after their performances are primarily actors, directors, dancers, choreographers, and educators, professionals who come from all over the country.

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Students receiving coaching on the SUU Campus (2013) Many of the judges are members of the Utah Shakespeare Festival acting company from the summer, fall, and touring seasons. In selecting judges for the acting and dance competitions, USF particularly seeks to engage excellent teaching artists, who possess developed capacities for assessing and developing student work, and who are skilled at articulating performance principles. For the Tech. Olympics, USF selects artists and artisans who work extensively in each of the designated practice areas.

Because monologue and duo-/trio-scene participants perform against a different group of participants each round, they get to see some fourteen to seventeen other students/groups perform in their adjudicated rounds. Each competitor also is assured that she or he will not be in an adjudication group with anyone else from her or his school, and will never perform before the same judge twice. Accomplishing these requisites depends upon a computer program developed by Competition organizers to provide random assignments within Divisions that accomplish these objectives.

Adjudicators are asked whether each scene might be designated as particularly stellar, and should be considered for inclusion in a non-competitive "Showcase" round. This round takes place while the rest of the tabulations are being accomplished, in advance of the Competition's concluding Awards Ceremony. The Showcase round, which takes place simultaneously in multiple performance http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 16 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

venues, each with upwards of 800 attendees, features some of the most remarkable performances at the Competition. This opportunity, a reward in and of itself, also allows attendees to see standards that some might aspire to in subsequent visits to the Competition. Primarily, the Showcase round provides the chance for large numbers of students to watch the performance of Shakespeare for its own sake. The remarkable performance described in this article's opening pages was one such Showcase entrant. The designation of a performance as worthy of the Showcase round may result from adjudicators' evaluation of its novelty, risk-taking, interpretive acumen, or other perhaps less tangible factors that may not necessarily correlate with a performance's likelihood of winning its respective Division. As such, students sometimes can be concerned about why a piece may have been invited to the Showcase round, yet not be designated as a Division winner. This feature expresses one of the ways in which the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is a hybrid event, comprised of elements both of competition and festival.

During the Showcase round, the "Tabulation Room" is busy determining which performances have won, placed, or shown within their respective Divisions, and which student performers from ensemble scenes, based on judges' recommendations, are in line to win scholarships for Utah Shakespeare Festival educational programs or to attend Southern Utah University. Judges sometimes recommend scholarship winners who are not playing leading roles in their respective scenes, but who otherwise possess special talent and/or apparent work ethic and capacity to excel. Once tabulation is complete, the Awards Ceremony begins. Some of the most extraordinary performances eligible for the Showcase round are shared instead as a prologue to the passing out of awards. These Awards- Ceremony performances are made up of scenes and dance performances.

LOGISTICS The logistics of the Competition are affected by many factors. For many schools, funding is a challenge. Some are only allowed a certain total number of trips per academic year, whether for football, baseball, arts programming, or otherwise. As a secondary school teacher, Michael Bahr once brought a group of highly motivated students with him to a school board meeting seeking special dispensation to travel to the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition. Despite the challenges posed by the most recent recession, the overall numbers of students attending the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition in recent years has held steady. While some of the larger public schools have had challenges bringing students to Cedar City, charter school participation has increased. Major costs for attending schools include those for transportation, housing students in or near Cedar City, food, and competition participation fees. Many schools engage in fundraising to help meet the costs of bringing students to the Competition, including through such events as evenings of Shakespearean performance and bake sales. Fees cover the costs of administrative

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preparation and conduct of the Competition, the myriad workshops made available to participants, and rental of some spaces from the University. Fees also help subsidize transportation, housing, meals, and modest honoraria for many of the non-resident professional theatrical practitioners and educators brought in to adjudicate the many rounds of the Competition.

Around the time when Michael Bahr took over running the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, in 1998-99, about fifty schools participated, bringing approximately 1,200 to 1,500 students. The total cost for running the Competition then was about $12,000. The doubling in size of the Competition over the past fifteen years has increased costs by about $10,000, which includes adding dance events and the Tech. Olympics. The average cost for running the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is about ten dollars per student participant.

The logistical challenges for the hosting Utah Shakespeare Festival and Southern Utah University, as well as those for Cedar City, are significant. Some thirty-five or more rooms on campus are dedicated solely to the event, which takes place at least in part while classes are underway. Six separate performance venues are required for ensembles (including all available theater spaces, some of which are hosting University and professional performances during this period). An additional ten or more rooms are needed for the large number of workshops offered. Running the Competition requires more than 150 volunteers. Master of Fine Arts Arts- Administration students facilitate logistics for the Competition, including ten graduate students who serve as members of the administrative inner circle, along with five additional staff members of the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Some six to eight more volunteers/staff members are involved in running the Tabulation Room, calculating adjudicators' handiwork. Student volunteers act as timers, easing the burden on judges, and as runners, moving scoring sheets and other information and hard goods to keep the Competition running smoothly. Staff on campus are likewise put to the test, as the campus population of some 8,000 students, only a portion of whom are on campus at any given time, swells by upwards of 3,000 persons, who are on campus almost the entirety of each day of the Competition. The Competition is a particularly busy time for food service workers and those in the bookstore. Perhaps most impacted are members of the custodial staff, who are charged both with cleaning up after the student-competitor invasion, and at times, arranging rooms again in ways that support the normal workings of the University. Overstating the impact in a way that some found mean-spirited, a political cartoon in the student newspaper once depicted a line of buses driving away over the mountains, with the SUU campus left behind in rubble, captioned "High School Shakespeare Competition." The Competition clearly puts the resources of the hosts to the test, but the hosts are more than happy to endure extra effort and expense for the opportunities and rewards created by the Competition. Michael Bahr was once approached by a member of SUU's custodial staff following a Competition. The http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 18 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

Custodian had encountered a massive pile of refuse on top of and in the immediate vicinity of a trash can, but on the top of the pile found a note from a student- attendee of the Competition. It apologized for the amount of trash for which he and his fellows had been responsible, acknowledged the work of SUU's custodial staff, and specifically thanked the custodian who might find that note for his or her efforts. The custodian was both moved and energized by the thoughtfulness and respect exhibited by that anonymous competitor.

The instructors and coaches bringing students to the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition wear many hats. These often extremely talented educators not only prepare their students as instructors and coaches, but often direct, design sets, lights, and sound, publicize and fundraise for the schools' activities, and provide advocacy for the work within their local communities and schools. Success at the Shakespeare Competition, and far more than in terms of winning trophies and accolades for students, tends to follow the best instructors and coaches, and Michael Bahr has seen new schools excel when an excellent coach has relocated. Likewise, he has seen schools drop out of the Competition following the departure of an energetic instructor/coach. It is clear that a great deal of the good that results from the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition is a result of the caliber of work done at the local level by instructors and coaches who are motivated to make the efforts necessary to create from the Competition the quality pedagogy that leads to student success.

Remarkably, in 2012 coaches/instructors from seventy-eight of the 106 schools responded to a post-Competition survey. The responses expressed a wide variety of opinions, but enormous and overwhelmingly positive support for the Competition and its organization. Some instructors/coaches felt, for example, that costumes should not be allowed, suggesting a possible competitive advantages for schools able to afford nice ones, and hurt feelings for schools not so able. Some appreciated how much time students had to socialize during the Competition. One mentioned being offended by the inclusion of a quite-amazing student performance from Titus Andronicus that referenced the play's off-stage ravaging of Lavinia, suggesting that the representation of rape was not appropriate for an event for high-school students.

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Scene from Titus Andronicus (2004) Some instructors/coaches advocated yet additional Showcase opportunities and a further downplaying of the event's competitive aspects. Others mentioned feeling somewhat defeated when competing against a charter school whose focus is on theatrical performance. Many described the joy and enlightenment provided by seeing other schools' efforts, and related the extraordinary experiences that their students gained, both as producers and consumers of Shakespearean performance, and how the Competition created the opportunity and focus for extensive and rewarding work at the local-school level.

COMPETITIONS VS. FESTIVALS An area of controversy concerns whether such events are best conducted in a competitive or non-competitive, festival-type environment. Those on the two sides of the divide approach the question from varying standpoints on matters of culture and philosophy. Competitive performance models have a significant history, not only in the United States, but some would suggest, back to the beginnings of the history of dramatic performance. The surviving plays of classical Greece were entrants in the competitive Festival Dionysia. Other advocates of competition describe the art and craft of theater as innately competitive, where there are always only so many positions for the often significantly larger numbers of would-be

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participants. Theatrical performance, even on the school level, always features winners and losers when it comes to gaining roles. Those advocating festival-style events suggest that the key should be opportunity over competition, and argue that the educational environment does not benefit from an imposition of an artificial opposition that may stifle student interest, creativity, and enjoyment. The value is in each student's opportunity to have a close encounter with dramatic text, to create from it and to share the results of that work, with both creator and audience member able to appreciate and learn from the experience.

One of the leading advocates of the festival model is Patrick Spottiswoode, the Director of Education at Shakespeare's Globe in London, and the third full-time staff member hired as part of Sam Wanamaker's quest to build a replica of Shakespeare's open-to-the-air playhouse. Spottiswoode describes the festival model as "more nurturing, mutually respectful, collaborative and celebratory." Spottiswoode describes how he had worked once with a student in North Carolina who told him that a festival with which Spottiswoode was associated "was the first time [that student and his colleagues had] worked in co-operation with other schools in their area rather than in competition trying to 'beat them.'"4 Spottiswoode describes Shakespeare competition as having an unsavory "X-Factor" or "Idol" approach, in which "the wrong sort of adrenalin is excited." He points out that "the emphasis is placed on results rather than process." Spottiswoode has worked on a variety of these types of events, both at Shakespeare's Globe and across the greater globe, and finds that "the festive approach allows students to enjoy/respect each other's work without worrying/questioning as to 'are they better than us?'" The more collaborative vision of such events "fosters a celebration of each other's work." One of Spottiswoode's concerns is for students who may seem to be appreciating the work of their fellows at competitions, but somewhere inside, are urged by the nature of competition to hope for their competitors' failure, in order to boost their own chances. From the co-author's observations of the behavior of students at the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition, such competitive ill- wishing seemed rarely if ever to be discernible. Spottiswoode points out, and the co-authors are very much in agreement with him, that competitions featuring students presenting recitations of Shakespeare's sonnets are very far indeed from being about "playing" Shakespeare, and are rather much more about competition. Sonnets are of a non-dramatic literary form and lend themselves neither to collaboration nor performance. Under Spottiswoode's leadership, the Shakespeare Theatre Association (STA) sought to urge the English Speaking Union to move from its competitive, often sonnet-recitation-focused competition to embrace a festival approach. The ESU, however, chose not to embrace the STA's suggestion.

Spottiswoode is by no means alone in his preference for a festival approach. Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts offers its Fall Festival of Shakespeare in a non-competitive manner, where more than 500 young persons http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 21 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

involved in preparing Shakespearean performances at their local schools have the opportunity of performing on the company's main stage. The Shakespeare's Globe Center New Zealand hosts with the University of Otago the Sheila Winn Shakespeare Festivals, a series of twenty-three springtime festivals featuring five- and fifteen-minute scenes performed by high-school students, along with a national festival held in Wellington and featuring scenes by groups from across the country.

Competitive models include the ESU's National Shakespeare Competition, where students recite monologues or sonnets from Shakespeare in regional competitions feeding state and national gatherings, leading to the recognition of a national winner. The sponsoring ESU, which seeks to promote English language, literature, and culture more broadly, has chapters in fifty-eight countries beyond the United Kingdom. Its competition in the United States regularly sports celebrity adjudicators, including well-known performers and members of the larger Shakespearean community. Other competitions include those of the Drama Teachers' Association of Southern California, whose annual competition is the subject of Alex Rotaru's documentary film Shakespeare High (cited above), and a variety of state competitions, including the annual UHSAA drama competition.

There are losers in a competition, something of concern not only to festival advocates, but also organizers of competitions. Competition is a common feature across a variety of disciplines in the United States, from sport to business to artistic endeavor. One of the questions surrounding a competitive model is whether it is possible to have winners and thus gain the motivational advantages of competition without having losers, and risk the negative reinforcement associated with competition. The USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition seeks to accomplish a hybrid form that uses both elements of competition and festival, which accounts in part for its success.

Michael Bahr finds that fair competition can be a powerfully motivating force and hearkens to the Latin root of the term "compete," competere, which is "to strive after (something) in company or together" (OED v.2). The attitude some coaches advocate, of "win-at-all-costs," does a disservice, according to Bahr, to true competition. Bahr's ideal for establishing competition is the creation of a level playing field. He believes that the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition accomplishes this objective, including through the quality of its adjudicators and its computerized system of assigning performances, as well as its ranking system, which recognizes winners but does not designate losers. As Bahr describes, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition annually spends some five thousand dollars on "pieces of plastic," the trophies that are spread widely among the Competition's many entrants.

The feedback provided by adjudicators is organized as a performance-classroom

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environment might be and is offered in a non-competitive manner, though indeed judges also assign letter ratings and rankings on scoring sheets. One of the important questions for Bahr is the extent to which instructor/coaches are capable of using feedback gained during an adjudicated session as a teaching opportunity for their students. By and large, Bahr finds that the evaluations help to drive an overall raising of the level of the work.

The events that for many students precede entry into the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition are logistically necessary. There simply are not enough hotel rooms in the vicinity of Cedar City to accommodate all of the students who begin on the local level, seeking to make it to the larger Competition. Indeed, the combination of the thousands of student-competitors, their instructors/coaches, friends, and families, together with the relatively small number of non-Competition-related USF patrons that weekend far exceed the number of hotel rooms available anywhere nearby, and hotel rooms from well north of Cedar City south to St. George are booked as much as a year in advance for Competition weekend.5 While the festival sponsored by Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts is non- competitive, it only is able to provide space for twenty-five schools. Bahr finds that the events in Cedar City are only the tip of an iceberg, with the larger weight of work taking place at the schools in advance of the gathering on the SUU campus. Bahr believes that the more important question in the matter of competition versus festival is how each actually is implemented. Bahr describes having taken students to a particular festival-format gathering when he was a secondary school teacher and found it to be "dark and dangerous." He values the notion of measuring one's work against the work of others, and finds that such measurement leads overall to better work, deeper commitment, and ultimately more meaningful learning opportunities for students.

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The watch, in a scene from Much Ado About Nothing (2012) Bahr describes secondary students as valuing structure, as wanting to know what they can and cannot do. While a festival format has the potential to provide such structure, Bahr finds that the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition clearly provides it. Bahr finds the value of structure to be even greater for students in at-risk schools, where a high proportion of students are statistically more likely to drop out or otherwise fail academically. A number of students from such schools regularly attend the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition. Bahr says that students "want to be challenged . . . want to be pushed," and benefit even from the perhaps-artificial challenge that is competition. He finds that the Competition's structure helps students to achieve the goal of obtaining a close, creative encounter with some of the best dramatic literature available. With each performance adjudicated by three separate judges, students are likely to gain feedback that speaks in different ways to the issues at hand, increasing the likelihood that such feedback will strike a given student in a way that she or he is able to process. Many schools, with long distances to travel at the end of the Competition, choose to forego the Awards Ceremony, and do so with the full blessing of Competition organizers. The motivation for these schools is not vanquishing opponents, but doing their best. Bahr describes as the norm at the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition seeing many students from different schools hugging one another and applauding wildly for each other.

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The co-authors are by no means opposed to the festival format, but Bahr wonders what would happen if the arguments applied to the competition-festival debate were likewise applied to athletics. There is nothing innately competitive about the skills of throwing and catching. Should these arts be pursued only for their own sakes, as showcasing the skills involved, and not be turned into the win-lose structures that are, for example, high-school baseball? Would the participating athletes be motivated to train as hard, reach as far, and please their constituencies as fully? Bahr is also quick to point out that the Shakespeare Competition, while a flagship endeavor of the Utah Shakespeare Festival Education Department, is by no means its only one, the rest of which are not competitively oriented. These other activities include a schools tour, a great deal of class and performance opportunity, and the Bard's Birthday Bash, a gathering of some 2,500 students from nearby elementary schools celebrating the work of Shakespeare through students' performances, games and other activities. The Shakespeare competition-versus- festival debate is a larger one about competition in education more generally.

One of the ways in which the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition goes beyond a competitive model is in the additional programming that it offers. Crucially, the Showcase round of the Competition provides large numbers of students with the chance to see the work of others in a non-competitive format. The University and professional performances on offer are, for many, highlights of the Competition. Additionally, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition offers a variety of workshops to students attending. A number of these workshops are offered by judges who also are members of the USF acting company, some of whom are extremely accomplished teachers. Workshops are scheduled in multiple blocks throughout the Competition, so that students may attend when not performing. There are at least thirty-six acting workshops offered on a variety of performance topics, including but also going well beyond Shakespeare, and with such titles as "Playing with Original Practices," "What Are Judges Looking For," "Augusto Boal," "Rehearsing Like a Pro," "Stage Combat," "First-Folio Shakespeare," "The Actors' Breath," and a very popular workshop on "Juggling."

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Shakespeare Competition participant (2004) Technical workshops are offered as well, including in the areas of scenic painting, lighting, sound design, and specialty topics, such as how to build a staircase, fantasy and non-human makeup, LED lighting, projections, fog and special effects. Multiple dance workshops host large numbers of students and cover a variety of techniques, including jazz, modern, ballet, African, hip-hop, tap, and others, and topics such as improvisation, body conditioning, and composition. The 2012 USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition featured sixty-seven workshop offerings on some thirty different topics.

One of the very popular offerings for students interested in the technical arts involves opening up the process of changing over the set in the Randall Jones Theatre from one play to the next. During the 2012 Competition, this event allowed over four hundred students to witness the changeover from Les Miserables to Hamlet, accompanied by a discussion from USF technical staff members talking the students through it, including breakout discussions after the main changeover work.

One of the instructors/coaches attending the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition describes an experience that captures the level of immersion that students gain at an event such as the Competition, and the buffet of Shakespearean options that students have the chance to sample. While in the men's room, this instructor/coach heard one student saying to another that he had just seen the greatest scene: there http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 26 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

was this girl, and she goes up, and she has this guy stand on this molehill and put on the crown, and says something about taking this handkerchief, and it was dipped in someone's blood. The student said that he thought it was from a particular one of the plays, when a young voice from inside one of the stalls piped up, saying, "No, it's from Henry VI."

With so many events taking place, one may count on encountering the unexpected. A student may take ill and another need to step in at a moment's notice; a group might learn that it has been selected to perform in the Showcase round, but hasn't the time to get back to the bus and put on costumes again and must perform without props and in street clothes. A student might perform an incredible monologue before the Awards Ceremony, and only later do the judges and others learn that the student is severely affected by Asperger's syndrome.

Together with the service that the Competition provides educationally for students who take part in it, and in the myriad local competitions that precede it, the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition provides multiple other instances of "service Shakespeare." It helps to develop audiences for the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and for Shakespearean performance more broadly. It becomes an extremely effective recruiting tool for Southern Utah University. During a start-of-academic-year meeting for SUU Theatre majors, co-author Weingust heard Michael Bahr ask those assembled how many had participated in the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition while high-school students. Weingust witnessed approximately half of the students in the room raise their hands. The Competition also provides an outlet for significant numbers of at-risk students, who find in Shakespeare an alternative to some of the riskier temptations teens may face, and even provides opportunities for students participating from youth correctional facilities. Through volunteering options, the Competition also provides a great deal of service-learning opportunity for SUU students. Many SUU theater, dance, and music students serve as volunteers, often gaining the opportunity of sitting in on, hearing, and assisting the professionals who provide participants with oral evaluations in addition to the written ones.

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A dance group prepares (2013)

CULTURAL MILIEU The Competition, the larger success of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and of Southern Utah University's focus on Shakespeare more widely, is in some ways connected with their relationship to the cultural/religious composition of the State of Utah. The dominant culture in Utah revolves around the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (or LDS, whose members are often referred to as Mormons). LDS members comprise approximately 62 percent of the State's population (Canham 2012). Outside of Salt Lake City, which has a slightly non-Mormon majority, the population density of LDS members can be even higher. There are ways in which LDS culture and Utah's pioneering history, along with the State's broad political ideological leanings, with regard to theater in general, Shakespeare specifically, and notions about competition, can be said to be inextricably bound up with the success and longevity of the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition.

Unlike in some Christian cultures, the LDS Church has a long and warm history with theatrical and musical representation. Brigham Young, Joseph Smith's successor as Church leader who brought members west in the 1840s, is famously reported to have said, "If I were placed on a cannibal island and given the task of civilizing its people, I would straightway build a theatre for the purpose" (Pearson 1984, quoting Hansen 1967). Young also is reported to have said that, "Many preachers of the day have said that fiddling and music came from Hell, but I say that there is no fiddling or music in Hell. . . . Music belongs in Heaven, to cheer God, angel[s], and man" (Collier 1987). Indeed, before completion of the Temple in Salt Lake, Brigham Young ordered the building of a theater, which became a key stop on the major railroad lines, bringing important theater companies and actors to http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 28 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

the Salt Lake Valley.

Theater might even be said to be structurally a part of the Church, in that many LDS churches contain alongside the sanctuary what is called a "Cultural Hall," which contains not only a basketball court but also a stage. According to Bahr, Utah Shakespeare Festival founder Fred Adams recalls a time when the Church would purchase royalties for a play and distribute it to the young men's and women's improvement organizations to help facilitate productions. Similar actions take place to this day, where large stakes (units of the Church made up a number of congregations) in California might put on large productions of plays or hold dance festivals.6

While other denominations make use of scripture in modern vernacular, the LDS Church makes use of the King James version of the Bible. Young persons attending church on Sundays, engaged in religious instruction, and sharing Bible passages during the practice of "family home evening" hear passages from the Bible not in the vernacular that they speak with their friends, but in the vernacular of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. For a young member of the LDS Church, hearing a service at a church of another denomination using a more modern translation of the Bible is jarring, as might be a performance of Shakespeare to an experienced audience member if performed in present-day English rather than in the original. Likewise, other foundational LDS texts, such as The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine of the Covenants, or the Pearl of Great Price are written in verse and very much have the sound of early modern English. For example, usage of the more intimate second-person pronoun forms "thee," "thy," and "thou," which are unfamiliar to most persons in the United States today, would not feel particularly strange to a young person accustomed to hearing them regularly in worship. The co-authors believe that this familiarity with early modern English from a very young age makes the language of Shakespeare more accessible to a significant proportion of young Utahns. The language of Shakespeare clearly is one that can be accessible to young persons. Elementary-age students in the United Kingdom read Shakespeare as a part of their curricula. Michael Bahr believes that for students so accustomed to an early modern vernacular, at the elementary level there is little difference for students between the language of Shakespeare, and, for example, Dr. Suess; it is not until junior high or middle school that students are made to think that Shakespeare is somehow particularly difficult. Both Shakespeare's work and the text of the King James Bible are dense, have rhyme, meter, and some outlandish words, and are made up of themes and plot lines. The co-authors believe that Utah is fertile ground indeed for the incorporation of Shakespeare into the curricular and extra-curricular work of students.

Utah is perhaps the reddest of red states along the political spectrum. President Barack Obama lost the Utah vote to John McCain in 2008 by twenty-nine

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percentage points (CNN 2008), and by forty-eight points to LDS Church member Mitt Romney in 2012 (Utah Secretary of State 2014). In a state so leaning, an emphasis on competition might be considered a mainstay of political ideology. All of these factors make the Shakespeare Festival and Competition congenial to their local constituencies.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival / Southern Utah University Shakespeare Competition provides a focus for the study and performance of Shakespeare for thousands of students each year. The Competition serves a number of constituencies, not the least of which are these students, but which also include the larger communities from which participants hail, the host organizations, and one might even suggest, arts culture and society more broadly. The Competition is deeply connected to the dominant culture within which it developed, but transcends any particular group or groups. The question of whether competitive or non- competitive performance events serve their constituencies best is open to debate, but clearly the USF/SUU Shakespeare Competition has thrived by combining elements of a competition and of a non-competitive festival. As evidenced by the educational choices made by many of the Competition's participants, this event has had a significant impact on the lives of very many, and promises to continue to do so.

NOTES 1. Citations to Richard III are to Hammond 1981. 2. A version of this curse is offered by the Ghost of Prince Edward at 5.3.121, then verbatim by the Ghost of Henry the Sixth at 5.3.127 and by other characters afterward. 3. Shakespeare High may be described as being of a sub-genre with Hank Rogerson's documentary Shakespeare Behind Bars (Rogerson 2005) and the later Still Dreaming (Rogerson forthcoming; still in production as of this writing in early January 2014), as what may be considered as "Shakesploitation" films, which use Shakespearean performance as a lens for examining significantly personal experience. I offer this generic ascription as an alternative to the use of the term as applied to teen-oriented Shakespeare films by Richard Burt (2002). After events in 1964, 1974, and 1975, beginning in 1983 the DTASC competition became a regular event (held in all but two years); the competition of the English Speaking Union of the United States (ESU) was founded in that same year. Both DTASC and the ESU were founded as organizations in 1920. 4. Quotations from Patrick Spottiswoode are taken from personal correspondence with co-author Don Weingust in July of 2013. 5. Even when the Utah Shakespeare Festival is in full swing during its summer

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season, there are never more than 1,600 patrons in its theaters during any performance times. Most patrons making the trip to Cedar City stay multiple days to see several different performances. 6. For a discussion of the LDS Church's association with contemporary drama, see Oppedisano 2009.

REFERENCES Burt, Richard. 2002. "Afterword: T(e)en Things I hate about Girlene Shakesploitation Flicks in the Late 1990s, or, Not-So-Fast Times at Shakespeare High." In Spectacular Shakespeare: Critical Theory and Popular Cinema. Edited by Courtney Lehmann and Lisa S. Starks. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 205-32. Canham, Matt. 2012. "Census: Share of Utah's Mormon Residents Holds Steady." Salt Lake Tribune. 17 April. Available online: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home3/53909710-200/population-lds-county- utah.html.csp (http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home3/53909710-200/population-lds- county-utah.html.csp) [accessed 6 January 2014]. CNN. 2008. "Election Center 2008: Results: President: Utah." Available online: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/individual/#mapPUT (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/individual/#mapPUT) [accessed 6 January 2014]. Collier, Fred. 1987. The Teachings of President Brigham Young. Vol. 3: 1852-1854. Salt Lake: Collier's Publishing. Hammond, Antony, ed. 1981. Richard III, by William Shakespeare. Arden Shakespeare 2. London and New York: Methuen. Hansen, Harold. 1967. A History and Influence of the Mormon Theatre from 1839- 1869. Provo: Brigham Young University Press. Oppedisano, Callie. 2009. "'Worthy of Imitation': Contemporary Mormon Drama on the Latter Day Stage." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Tufts University. Pearson, Carol Lynn. 1984. "Drama and Religion: The Best of Friends." New Era (August). Available online: https://www.lds.org/new-era/1984/08/drama-and- religion-the-best-of-friends (https://www.lds.org/new-era/1984/08/drama-and- religion-the-best-of-friends%20) [accessed 13 February 2014]. Rogerson, Hank. Forthcoming. Still Dreaming. U.S. Philomath Films. Rogerson, Hank, dir. 2005. Shakespeare Behind Bars. U.S. Philomath Films. Rotaru, Alex, dir. 2011. Shakespeare High. U.S. Trigger Street Productions. http://borrowers.uga.edu/1055/show Page 31 of 32 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)28 PM

Utah Secretary of State. 2014. "Utah Election Results: President." Available online: http://electionresults.utah.gov/xmlData/300000.html (http://electionresults.utah.gov/xmlData/300000.html) [accessed 6 January 2014].

ABSTRACT | ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENT, AND ORGANIZATION | LOGISTICS | COMPETITIONS VS. FESTIVALS | CULTURAL MILIEU | NOTES | REFERENCES | TOP

© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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"Teach him how to tell my story": Access at the (/current) Oregon Shakespeare Festival

JIM AMBERG, OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL (/previous)

ABSTRACT | AUDIO DESCRIPTION | ASL INTERPRETED PERFORMANCES | OPEN (/about) CAPTIONING | CONCLUSION | NOTES | REFERENCES | ONLINE RESOURCES

(/archive) ABSTRACT The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), under the leadership of Artistic Director Bill Rauch, has become an industry leader in its commitment to access. This paper summarizes the Festival's access generally, then examines three areas that are unusual: audio description, open captioning, and sign language performances. The results are that OSF has been rewarded with a thriving and growing patronage from the disabled community and that community has been enriched by access to an art that often excludes them. Brief note is also made of the way Shakespeare language is altered or augmented by each of these means of presentation.

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The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) is at the forefront of U.S. theater companies in its commitment to making all of its performances and programs accessible. Like most arts organizations, it offers accessible restrooms in all three theaters, Braille and large print playbills, accessible seating areas for patrons in wheelchairs, and complimentary Sennheiser assistive listening devices for the hard of hearing. OSF is unusual in presenting substantial numbers of audio described performances for the blind and visually impaired, sign interpreted performances for Deaf patrons, and captioned performances for patrons with impaired hearing. In the past six years, my position as Access Coordinator has increased from twenty to forty hours a week as the Festival's access programs grew and the number of patrons served by those programs exploded. There are quite a few reasons for this, but one of the most important was the hiring of Bill Rauch as the Festival's sixth artistic director in 2008. Bill's background in community based theater includes a career-long commitment to accessibility.1 Almost immediately, there was a perceptible change in the way in which the Festival's management approached access issues. Instead of providing access because it was required by law, it became part of the way OSF did business, and we started looking actively for ways to expand our access programs.2 This sent an important message to the Deaf community, and very quickly the number of patrons coming to Ashland for sign-interpreted performances increased dramatically. In a time when many theater companies are actually eliminating or reducing greatly their commitment to sign interpreted performances, OSF increased the number from six to nine performances a year, with the ultimate goal of interpreting all eleven of the plays we produce in a season.

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Instead of sign interpreted performances, many theaters now offer open captioned performances. This is a service for hearing impaired patrons whose hearing loss is profound enough that neither their personal hearing aids nor our assistive listening devices provides enough sound amplification or clarification to follow the dialogue. We started out slowly, hiring a company out of New York City to caption performances for us. However, we quickly realized that our budget would not allow us to fly someone to Ashland from New York every time we wanted to caption a performance, so OSF is now one of the very few theater companies in the country to provide in-house captioning. As a result, we offer far more captioned performances than we would otherwise be able to provide. Each play is captioned at least twice, and in 2013 OSF will caption thirty-five performances.

The Festival has been offering in-house audio description for our visually impaired patrons for over twenty years. Audio description is a live description of on-stage action delivered to the patron through the same type of assistive listening devices used by our hearing impaired patrons. All of our assistive listening devices have two channels, so the same devices can have multiple uses. We are even able to provide sound amplification and audio description on the same device when a patron is both blind and hearing impaired. In effect, the describer becomes the patron's eyes, sitting in the control booth and describing the play into a microphone, which is then broadcast to the patron sitting in the house. The describer uses the same rehearsal script as the actors, not to repeat the lines said on stage, but instead to know the best time to break in between the actors' lines with the description. In addition, the describer has prepared about a ten-minute introduction in which information about the set, costumes, and play's background is delivered to the patron before the play begins.

Most theater companies offer audio description for just one performance of a show. If the patron cannot attend that performance, they are out of luck. We have six audio describers on staff. They are paid a flat fee for each script they prepare and then an additional stipend each time they describe a performance. With six paid describers, we are able to offer live audio description for every performance of every play if it is requested. In 2012, OSF audio described 123 of its approximately 800 performances. Patrons needing audio description come from all over the country, and we add new patrons each season. Having summarized these services, let us look at each with more depth and note some of the challenges of presenting Shakespeare's plays with these aids.

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AUDIO DESCRIPTION The Festival's six audio describers begin their preparations before the play officially opens. As stated above, they work from the same script used by the actors. As scripts change during the rehearsal process, the audio describers are informed of the changes. The on-site work begins during tech rehearsals. At that time, the describers take notes about the set and the costumes, which they will use as they write their show introductions. During dress rehearsals and preview performances, the describers actually sit in the booth and annotate their scripts with the on-stage activity. The true challenge of audio description is to provide as much description in as few words as possible. Ideally, the description does not speak over the actors' lines, though at times this is inevitable.

Because the Festival offers audio description on request, the six audio describers on staff must be available all season. The Access Coordinator uses availability and individual preference to assign a primary describer, as well as an understudy, to each of the eleven plays. The Festival's Access Coordinator also accumulates a list of performances for which description has been requested and distributes the list to the describers as early as possible in the pre-season. As an indication of just how much this service continues to grow, the 2013 season is only three months old as this is written, and there are already requests for audio description for ninety- seven performances. Officially, the Festival requests two weeks advance notice in order to describe a performance. However, the Box Office and House Management both know that we will do anything we can to accommodate a request, even if we receive the request on the day of the performance. Several times every season, visually impaired patrons come to the Box Office to purchase a ticket for that day or arrive at the theater with a ticket in hand and either do not know what audio description is or that OSF offers the service. Invariably, we have been able to provide description either by the main describer, the understudy, or sometimes by the Access Coordinator if no one else is available. There have even been times when the patron arrives just before the performance is scheduled to begin, the house manager explains the service to the patron, calls the describer, and the describer gets to the theater as soon as he or she can and describes the rest of the show. We know how much audio description enhances the experience for the patron, and our Box Office records show time and time again that once they experience OSF's commitment to provide this service, they will come back again and again to enjoy it. One patron has returned to the Festival for multiple audio described performances every year since we began offering the service, and another has been coming for fifteen years, now accompanied by her second guide

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dog.

All plays present challenges to audio describers, especially when there is a lot of choreography or there is little opportunity to speak between the lines. In the case of the 2012 productions of Troilus and Cressida, there were a relatively small number of actors playing a large number of parts. Normally when this happens, the actors make a concerted effort to change their voices for each character they play. This production of Troilus and Cressida was set in modern Iraq, and the Festival brought in several actors of Middle Eastern descent to perform in the play; when they changed their voices, however, their accents still sounded Middle Eastern. Even some of our sighted patrons had difficulty distinguishing the characters, and it was especially challenging for patrons with visual impairment. As the audio describer, I literally had to identify each of the many characters throughout the entire play, rather than just a few times, as I usually do. In our 2012 production of the Marx Brothers' musical comedy, Animal Crackers, there was a lot of choreography; the describer, Honey Marchetti, familiarized herself with the various dance styles used in the production and was actually able to use specific terms to describe the movement on stage. Animal Crackers was unique in that the actors playing the Marx Brothers characters in the play were actually encouraged by the director to ad lib whenever the mood hit them. As the run of the play progressed, the ad-libbing seemed to get crazier and crazier, to the point of occasionally bringing audience members on stage to participate in the insanity. The describer really had to be on her toes because no two performances were ever the same. By the end of the run, Marchetti had virtually abandoned her prepared script and was just doing her best to convey what was going on to her patrons. (Attached is a PDF file of two pages with audio described notes (/media/899/amberg_note.pdf) from OSF's 2013 production of The Taming of the Shrew, directed by David Ivers. These notes indicate where in the script the describer breaks in and what is said. See /media/899/amberg_note.pdf (/media/899/amberg_note.pdf).)

ASL INTERPRETED PERFORMANCES American Sign Language interpreted performances of live theater in the United States have been declining as theaters must make difficult decisions about where to allocate their limited financial resources. Many theaters now offer open captioning, a text display of the exact words spoken in a performance, on a display board positioned so that everyone is a particular seating area can see it. As an alternative, however, and because of increased interest from the Deaf community, OSF has in the

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last few years expanded the number of sign interpreted performances. In 2013, the Festival will sign interpret ten performances. The plays to be interpreted are selected by the Access Coordinator, with input from the Deaf community and the sign interpreters. Deaf patrons attending interpreted performances and interpreters working for the Festival are given questionnaires that list the plays for the next season and ask which plays they would most like to see interpreted. The results of those questionnaires are tabulated and strongly influence the choice of plays that are interpreted. Eventually, once the funds become available and the Deaf community indicates that it will support four interpreted weekends rather than the three we currently offer, the Festival will interpret all eleven of its plays.

Because theatrical sign interpretation is a specialized skill that most ASL interpreters are not trained to do, OSF cannot offer interpreted performances by request. There are virtually no interpreters in the immediate area who have the training that OSF's Deaf patrons have come to expect, so we hire interpreters from all over the country, bring them to Ashland for a week of rehearsal, and house them while they are here. Making Shakespeare's plays accessible can present special challenges. This is especially true for sign interpreted performances. Normally the sign interpreters translate any script they are interpreting from standard English into American Sign Language and then devise the signs that will best convey the meaning of the original script. With Shakespearean English, however, they must translate the text twice: from early modern English to modern English, and then into ASL.

A deaf actor acts as the sign master who coaches the ASL interpreters for each show. We generally use three interpreters per show because of the large number of characters that typically appear in our plays. The interpreters divide up the characters in the play so that they each have about the same number of characters to interpret. In most circumstances, each time the actor speaking on stage changes, so does the interpreter. So, if we are interpreting three plays with three interpreters per play plus a sign coach, we often have ten interpreters at the Festival at the same time. We group the interpreted performances over three weekends during the season, one each in the spring, summer, and fall, so that our out of town patrons have the opportunity to see more than one interpreted show while they are in Ashland. An example of how this works is our recently interpreted performance of King Lear (2013), directed by Bill Rauch in the Thomas Theatre. Three interpreters worked this show, dividing the characters as follows:

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Interpreter 1: Lear, Edgar, Messenger, and Oswald (sometimes). Interpreter 2: Edmund, Goneril, Kent, Burgundy, King of France, Regan (sometimes), Oswald (sometimes), and soldiers. Interpreter 3: Fool, Cordelia, Cornwall, Albany, Regan (sometimes), Gloucester, soldiers. As long as there were three or fewer characters in a scene (act I, scene 2 for example), the interpreters' job was relatively straightforward. As the character on stage is speaking the lines, the interpreter interprets what the character is saying. In a scene such as act 5, scene 3, the final scene in the play, there are nine named characters, and the interpreters' job becomes not only interpreting the lines but also making sure the Deaf patrons know which character is speaking. They use several techniques to minimize the possibility for confusion. The most obvious is to change their facial expressions to match the emotions of the character speaking. Facial expression is a major component of American Sign Language, and speakers of ASL know when to watch for changes in facial expression to indicate a change of speakers. A second technique is the use of sign names. Before the show, the interpreters assign a sign name to each character that they can then use either to identify the character as he or she is speaking or when another character refers to him or her by name. We have added additional sign interpreted performances if the demand is great and, more important, if we have enough seats available in the area of the theater where the interpreters stand, and if the interpreters who are assigned to the show are available to return for an additional interpreted performance. This happens very rarely.

The average number of tickets in the special section set aside for these performances is about forty. This is a huge increase from five or six years ago, when we were lucky to sell ten tickets in the section. Reasons for this increase include a more concentrated use of e-mailing and social media by our marketing department to reach the Deaf community, both locally and across the country, and the lure of Howie Seago's presence in our acting company. Howie has been a tremendous ambassador, using his many connections in the national Deaf community to attract new Deaf patrons to our shows. We also offer a reduce ticket price for all seats in our sign interpreted sections, as well as a reduced price for our backstage tour if we have requests for a tour to be interpreted. One of our hearing actors, John Tufts, has now learned so much sign language that he conducts the backstage tour in ASL himself, although we still provide interpreters just in case he needs assistance. Tufts's initial interest in learning ASL came from working with Seago on stage, but he now enjoys the beauty of the language itself.

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Contrary to what many people assume, American Sign Language is not a translation of American English into representational signs. Instead it is a separate language, with its own structure and syntax. Howie Seago "speaks" his lines using sign language, and, like Tufts, many of our hearing actors have also learned some ASL. The interpreters direct the attention of the Deaf patrons to Seago when he signs on stage, instead of interpreting his lines. They do, however, interpret all the other actors' lines, even if the actors are signing, not only because the interpreters are usually more proficient in ASL than the actors on stage, but also because the sight lines from the patrons to the actors are not always ideal. With both the actors and the interpreters signing, the patrons can decide who they primarily want to watch.

OPEN CAPTIONING The most recent addition to services provided by OSF Access Department has been open captioning. First introduced at OSF in 2007, the Festival is now recognized as a national leader in providing captioned performances to our hearing impaired patrons. Opera companies often provide supertitles that give brief summaries of dialogue. Instead, the Festival captions a word-by-word transcription of the entire script on a Light- Emitting Diode (LED) screen as the actors speak the lines. Special seating sections are created so that patrons requesting captioning can read the display board and watch the stage simultaneously. OSF currently has on its staff multiple experienced captioners. Like the audio describers, the captioners are assigned to specific shows and run the program when a captioned performance of that show is scheduled.

Preparing an open captioned script at OSF is a multi-step, time consuming process. Several years ago our IT Department wrote a program that the captioner uses to upload the actors' rehearsal script from the Final Draft software program used in the rehearsal hall to the computer used by the captioner. The program removes all stage directions and breaks the script into lines of twenty-six characters because the LED board that we use displays that maximum number of characters per line. That includes punctuation and spaces between words, as well as the actual dialogue. Once the script has been uploaded and broken into lines of twenty-six or fewer characters, the real work begins. The captioner is provided the same DVD of the production as the understudies are given and studies this, along with the script, to match the captioning on the display board as closely as possible with the cadence of the actors delivering their lines on stage. There are times during any stage production when no words are spoken, and the captioner must be sure there is nothing on the display

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board during those moments so that the patrons' attention will be directed to the stage and not the display board.

Following are a few lines from the recently captioned performance of King Lear. First is the script, as presented by the actors on the Thomspon stage, starting in February 2013. Act 4, scene 5, original text: LEAR: No, they cannot touch me for coining, I am the King himself. EDGAR (aside): O thou side-piercing sight! LEAR: Nature's above art in that respect. There's your press- money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper; draw me a clothier's year. Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace, this piece of toasted cheese will do 't. O, well flown, bird! In the air — hewgh! Give the word. EDGAR: Sweet marjoram. LEAR: Pass. GLOUCESTER: I know that voice. LEAR: Ha! Goneril with a white beard? They flattered me like a dog, and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there. To say "ay" and "no" to every thing that I said "ay" and "no" to was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter, when the thunder would not peace at my bidding, there I found 'em, there I smelt 'em out. They are not men o' their words: they told me I was every thing. 'Tis a lie. I am not ague-proof. Here is the captioned script, broken into twenty-six character lines and "messaged" by the captioner to parallel the way in which the actor speaks the lines. The blank lines in the middle of Lear's speech indicate times when the actor pauses. During pauses, the reader board goes blank to allow the patron's attention to move from the board onto the stage to watch what the actor is doing during the silence. Captioned script: LEAR: No, they cannot touch me for coining, I am the King himself. EDGAR: O thou side-piercing sight! LEAR: Nature's above art in that respect.

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There's your press-money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper; draw me a clothier's year. Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace, this piece of toasted cheese will do-'t. O, well flown, bird! In the air — hewgh! Give the word. EDGAR: Sweet marjoram. LEAR: Pass. GLOUCESTER: I know that voice. LEAR: Ha! Goneril with a white beard? They flattered me like a dog, and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there. To say "ay" and "no" to every thing that I said "ay" and "no" to was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter, when the thunder would not peace at my bidding, there I found 'em, there I smelt 'em out. They are not men o' their words: they told me I was every thing. 'Tis a lie. I am not ague-proof. Once the script is ready, the captioner rehearses during live performances. The laptop is plugged into the Festival's network, and the captioner sits in the control booth and manually advances the prepared script as the actors are delivering their lines. Timing is very important here; the captioning

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should be in synch with the dialogue without giving away the lines before the actors actually speak them. This is particularly important in comedy. One of the first shows I captioned was The Music Man, and I inadvertently advanced the script a little too quickly and revealed a laugh line before the actor delivered it. I heard about that from the stage manager after the show, and so now really try to avoid going too fast. As one can imagine, the slightest lapse of focus can throw off the script, so the captioner has to concentrate fully every second of the show.

CONCLUSION As with any new service, it takes time to develop a group of patrons who come to the Festival specifically because we offer captioning. People with significant hearing loss have been advocating for captioning for many years, and more and more movie theaters and sports venues now offer it. This is not nearly as true with live theater, but OSF has been very fortunate to partner with the Oregon and Washington Captioning Advocacy Projects (ORCAP and WACAP), two groups in the Northwest that promote the use of captioning. Interestingly enough, this partnership developed from what could have been an adversarial relationship. When OSF first started captioning and was offering very few captioned performances, we were contacted by these groups, expressing their concern that our efforts to provide this accommodation were woefully inadequate. We knew how committed we were to captioning, but because we were doing it ourselves, we had a timeline that we thought was reasonable for an organization starting from scratch. We tried over and over via letters and emails to convince the lawyers representing ORCAP and WACAP that our intentions were legitimate and that in time we would provide a truly significant number of captioned performances. Only after members of their Boards came down to Ashland and met with us personally did they believe that everything we claimed in our letters was true. Now they actively distribute our lists of captioned performances to all their members, and each season we have more and more patrons from the Portland and Seattle areas come to the Festival for live captioned performances, when they would not have thought of coming before. I have every reason to believe that OSF will continue to offer not just open captioning, but ASL interpreted and audio described performances well into the future, and that it will adopt new assistance technologies as they become available.

NOTES

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1. Community based theater should be distinguished from community theater. The latter usually puts on amateur productions of well-loved plays. As co-founder and former Artistic Director of the Cornerstone Theater Company, Rauch and his team went to rural and urban communities not served by theater and created site specific works to speak to that community. This was sometimes done via adapted versions of Shakespeare, as well as new works created for that community. Details about their work may be found at the Cornerstone website, http://cornerstonetheater.org/ (http://cornerstonetheater.org/) [accessed 28 May 2013]. 2. In Bill's second season he hired Howie Seago, a nationally known Deaf actor, to join the acting company. The first part of a five-part YouTube interview with Seago may be found at the link below. He discusses the beginning of his career and his skills as a Shakespearean actor. The link is currently available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEfNDrZsU0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEfNDrZsU0) [accessed on 20 May 2013].

REFERENCES Text and open captioning script for King Lear. 2013. Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

ONLINE RESOURCES Cornerstone Theater website. http://cornerstonetheater.org/ (http://cornerstonetheater.org). Audio described notes from OSF's 2013 production of The Taming of the Shrew, directed by David Ivers. /media/899/amberg_note.pdf (/media/899/amberg_note.pdf).

ABSTRACT | AUDIO DESCRIPTION | ASL INTERPRETED PERFORMANCES | OPEN CAPTIONING | CONCLUSION | NOTES | REFERENCES | ONLINE RESOURCES | TOP

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"You speak all your part at once, cues and (/current) all": Reading Shakespeare with Alzheimer's Disease (/previous) MICHAEL P. JENSEN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, SHAKESPEARE (/about) NEWSLETTER

(/archive) ABSTRACT | INTRODUCTION | DOING SHAKESPEARE | CODA | NOTES | REFERENCES

ABSTRACT This is the story of reading an abridged script of Twelfth Night with a support group for early stage Alzheimer's disease patients. Though the reading was difficult in many ways, the result was a tremendous boost to the self-esteem of the participants because they did something perceived as difficult and worthwhile. The paper looks at why this was such an unexpected success, examines the readers and their challenges, and concludes with the recommendation that Shakespeare or other literature be studied as a therapy for people with Alzheimer's disease.

INTRODUCTION "We did Shakespeare!"

This statement was made by at least a half-dozen dementia patients to their caregivers after the meeting of an early stage Alzheimer's support group.1 This paper tells the story of how these patients came to read an

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abridgement of one of Shakespeare's plays, discusses why they spoke of their reading with such enthusiasm, and concludes by asking whether literature might be used as a therapy to improve the lives of people with Alzheimer's disease.

I wear two hats in life. Under the Shakespeare hat, I have been adjunct faculty and lectured in several academic and popular venues. I edit the "Talking Books" column in Shakespeare Newsletter and have published more than forty articles, reviews, and chapters in books about Shakespeare and the writers of his era. Switching to my Alzheimer's hat, I was a secondary caregiver to my wife's father and step-father during their struggles with Alzheimer's disease and was motivated by the second of these experiences to co-author Alzheimer's: The Answers You Need (Elder Books, 1998) with Helen D. Davies, co-director of the Stanford/VA Alzheimer's Research Center. Ours was the first book to help newly diagnosed patients get through the next few years of their lives. Davies talked me into revising our book in the late 2000s. While I was in her office for that first revision meeting, Davies asked, "Do you want to work here?" I worked at the clinic for about a year and a quarter, fulfilling a variety of low-grade duties. One was to serve as co- facilitator of an early stage support group, the target readership of our book. Early stage Alzheimer's patients were once considered too impaired to be helped by support groups. While counseling patients, Davies found a complex emotional life under the muddiness of the way in which early stage patients expressed themselves, an emotional life that could benefit from therapy. With the support of Jared Tinklenberg, Primary Investigator for Alzheimer's research and the clinic's Director, Davies's first Alzheimer's support group started in the early eighties. It was a success because the group helped patients express their concerns and frustrations and taught them coping mechanisms that would, at least for a time, make their lives better. Group meetings are places where patients and their caregivers learn about resources they may not find on their own, and the sessions give patients an opportunity to be with people who experience life much as they do, people who understand their concerns and fears. The group is a place where patients can make mistakes without embarrassment, and importantly, gives patients an opportunity to socialize, which helps them continue to function. Not all the patients in the group had Alzheimer's. Some suffered from other dementias, but most were Alzheimer's patients. This group was later split into two: one group for patients and one for their caregivers. The patient group had different goals in different weeks. These included building self-esteem, coping with frustration, improving communication, and helping patients accept their limitations and thrive http://borrowers.uga.edu/1017/show Page 2 of 12 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)29 PM

within them.

DOING SHAKESPEARE I was introduced to the group as a Shakespeare scholar and co-author of Helen Davies's book; everybody knows Helen, and two or three members asked if the group could do something with Shakespeare. I gave a non-committal "Great idea, we'll try to figure something out," knowing that these decisions are made by the three co-facilitators, in collaboration with Davies. One objective of the group is to give the members activities at which they can succeed, since the disease has brought so much failure to their lives. I was not inclined to act on the request at first because I had no idea what activity a group of people with early stage dementia could do successfully with Shakespeare.

It was expected that some group members would not remember me the next week, so I was introduced again. Requests to do something with Shakespeare were repeated. I then realized that we should take this request seriously. The three co-facilitators had our regular meeting with Davies after that second session to discuss what happened in the group, and what, if anything, we could do with Shakespeare. Three assumptions were unspoken, but shared by members of our group: Shakespeare is hard, Shakespeare is rewarding, and Shakespeare is worth doing. His place as a pillar of modern culture was assumed. Nobody questioned Shakespeare's status or how he came to his cultural preeminence. People in an early stage support group are not interested in deconstructing Shakespeare with the tools of French philosophy and cultural studies, nor for that matter are they able to. These three assumptions were exactly what made a Shakespeare project desirable.

The only activity that seemed feasible was to have those who could still read perform an abridged script, and I knew where to find one. From 1951 to 1974 in the U.S., the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) had a half-hour annual radio show for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).2 Two minutes of each broadcast usually were taken up with credits and plugs for the Festival. The rest of the program was an excerpt or abridgement from one of the plays performed by OSF that year. I chose the script for a 1964 production of Twelfth Night, in part because of the larger than usual number of female parts that survived the abridging, and to avoid turning the group's thoughts towards death, which might happen if we performed a tragedy or history. After a quick OK from OSF Publicist Amy Richard, lots of photocopies, and the use of a highlighter to mark different parts in different scripts, we scheduled

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the reading as one activity in a series on building self-esteem. I prepared topics for the group to discuss between the end of the reading and the break that usually came after one hour. Discussion topics would include how it feels when others look down on you, how it feels to be the butt of a joke and the best way to speak to the jokers, and how many of the problems in the play and in life could be fixed with better communication. These are not the issues scholars usually discuss when working on the play, and were not intended to be. The goal was to find analogues between the play and life as Alzheimer's patients experience it, especially experiences that contribute to or damage self-esteem. It was down to me to tell the group about the OSF radio show and that we would reenact the broadcast, then give a synopsis of the play and assign the roles.3

I cast the reading rather badly. The ability of an Alzheimer patient to speak well does not necessarily indicate an ability to read well, since reading engages somewhat different parts of the brain and those parts may not be impaired to the same degree.4 Though aware of this, I had nothing else to go on and so gave the most able conversationalists the largest parts, with the exception of the part of Viola. The reason is given below. Half of the readers struggled, while some who could be unfocused in conversation benefited from the concentration that reading an assigned part gave to them. I was able to suggest afterwards that one man might be a better communicator when reading written responses, though I was not able to follow up to learn if this tactic was tried.

The script was originally written for a twenty-four minute broadcast. I edited it to eliminate the plugs for OSF and the closing credits. Professionals could probably have performed our version in about twenty-two minutes. It took our group an hour and a quarter due to false starts, the need to prompt some group members that it was their turn to read, and the general slowness of the poorer readers struggling with their lines and sometimes reading another character's lines, which half reminded me of Peter Quince's "You speak all your part at once, cues and all" (A Midsummer Night's Dream 3.1.93-94).5 Despite my own reading disability — I am mildly dyslectic — I appointed myself to read the narrator's part. OSF's adaptor for this script, Carl Ritchie, used a narrator to explain the cuts in the abridgement, and reading this part gave me the chance to add even more clarification when needed and then cue the next speaker without seeming to interrupt the reading. I rehearsed my part privately so as not to stumble too much when I read with the group.

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Among the revelations of our reading was how well an Irish accent works for Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Our Sir Andrew is low functioning in some areas, but speaks and reads very well. Andrew's first line came out in a brogue, and at the end of the line he asked me, "Do you like him Irish?" I did not at first, but my feelings mattered less than his, so I told Sir Andrew to have fun with it. Sir Andrew is an outsider in Olivia's household, and the accent marked him so. This gave our reader, who has a bit of an imp in his personality, the chance to feel different and interesting, and this exercise was intended to build self-esteem. Though Sir Andrew is clueless and not an imp, our reader's impishness enlivened the character's boast about dancing (Ritchie 1964, 7) and gave the reading energy throughout.

I chose for Malvolio a reader whose personality in some ways matched that character. He was fairly high functioning and for this reason, often stayed aloof from others in the group. He said privately that he looks down on the other group members and only attends as a way to gage how well he is doing compared to them. Surely, this offers some sort of analogue to Malvolio's personality, perhaps is an aspect of it, and while his reading lacked the distain most actors give it, our Malvolio's natural character was in the right direction. Choosing our Sir Toby Belch was another attempt at creating a personality analogue. A boisterous former professional athlete read the part, but his reading was so inhibited by the disease that he struggled to recognize and then say each word, which came out one word at a time with pauses in between. This kept our reader's personality from coming through. Because Fabian has only short lines in this abridgement, I gave the part to a very nice man with Lewy bodies, one of several non-Alzheimer's dementias. He was from a privileged background and once had a very demanding job, but at this point he was so unfocused that he often fell asleep in our meetings. As I had hoped, reading a script aloud helped our Fabian stay awake that week. Maria was an excellent conversationalist with a terrible short term memory. She remembered much from her past, including her professional education, but often forgot what she had done twenty minutes before. Though anxious to participate, her reading was painfully difficult, and while she read most of the words correctly, she did not read with comprehension. She was an excellent listener, however. Maria understood the portions of the script read by others. Her education and former profession gave Maria an above-average understanding of human needs and fears. When we finally took our break, Maria spoke to me about the other characters, quickly summing up the psychological problems of three or four of them and indicating what they should do to function better in the story. These comments http://borrowers.uga.edu/1017/show Page 5 of 12 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)29 PM

came from a very modern understanding of human psychology, of course, one that was probably not shared by Shakespeare, but it was interesting to see her apply what she had learned in the past to these characters and their problems.

While the biggest disappointment was that some group members had lost their ability to read aloud smoothly, the best surprise was how well Viola read. The woman I asked to take the role of Viola/Cesario was fairly new to the group and had resisted our encouragement to participate meaningfully. She claimed that she did not have dementia, though she clearly did. Viola only attended because her family insisted, and only spoke when asked a direct question. Typically sitting with legs and arms crossed for the length of the two hours, she primarily gave one and two word answers when possible, a full sentence only if necessary, and never a second sentence. Casting her was calculated to get her to participate in some way. She refused to read at first and then surprised us by changing her mind when I began to ask Maria to read the part. Viola commanded the room with her clear, bold, well-spoken reading. It was a marvelous cold reading, and not just by the standard of Alzheimer's patients. Her family later told us that Viola had been a professional actor decades before, but retired to raise her family. Our angry Viola became the functioning Cesario, sitting forward in her chair, eyes on her script, both the reader and the character doing the best they could under difficult circumstances.

Because the reading lasted so long, we took our break late and had no time to discuss personal issues related to the play that I had prepared. We stuck to the plan for a different self-esteem related activity during the rest of our session. Participants usually speak of the last activity after these meetings, not the first. They have not necessarily forgotten what they did earlier, but more recent activities dominate. Not this week. When they joined their caregivers in the hallway after the sessions, our participants mentioned the Shakespeare reading. These brief hallway conversations are usually of a "What did you do?" type, answered with "We talked," or a similar line, as everyone heads for the exit. This week, "We did Shakespeare" was said by one patient after another in my hearing. "We did Shakespeare."

"What do you mean, you did Shakespeare?" asked one caregiver, and others asked this in their own ways. The patients usually replied that they had read a Shakespeare play, though I needed to remind them which play, and the facilitators tried to answer caregiver questions in ways that did not violate patient privacy.6 Patients and caregivers

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lingered in the hall for several minutes, some for ten and fifteen, as we answered questions and many patients gushed about their accomplishment.

Fabian took my arm as we walked out and began reciting the "quality of mercy" speech from The Merchant of Venice. He forgot it after a few lines and indicated some frustration over this: I believe the lines that he remembered where these: The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. T'is mightiest in the mightiest. (The Merchant of Venice 4.1.181-86) Then he told me about a time he acted up in class and was forced to stay after school. The schoolmaster — his word — forced him to memorize Portia's speech during that detention. "I've remembered those words ever since," he said, forgetting that he had just forgotten much of the speech. I did not feel the need to remind him.

Patients also spoke of the experience at home between meetings, so part of Davies's next caregiver group was given to answering questions about why we had read Shakespeare in the patient group, though she could not comment on specific patients both because Helen was not with us during the reading and because of HIPAA rules. The patients also brought the reading up in our meeting, which took place at the same time. It is rare for group members to mention the activities of the previous session, but several mentioned reading Shakespeare. The heady feeling of accomplishment presumably made the reading more memorable than most other activities. It did not matter that the script had been difficult to read, that some of our readers lost their place when reading, read the wrong part, missed their cues, or read the cues of others. Most seemed to forget the negatives to revel in the accomplishment, and they wanted to do it again. Some patients still remembered doing Shakespeare in the meeting following that, which was without precedent in my experience, and some asked when we could do Shakespeare again. Viola's husband cornered me at the clinic holiday party and suggested King Lear for our next reading; they had once appeared in the play together. I thanked him for the suggestion, but gave a non-committal response because of my continuing concern that the discussion following might go in the wrong direction. http://borrowers.uga.edu/1017/show Page 7 of 12 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)29 PM

Alas, a second reading was not to be. I spent another week in Ashland soon after our reading, tasked to get another script. I chose a Taming of the Shrew script from 1967 because it fit the most needs and because the treatment of women in the script could be turned into a group conversation about self-esteem issues, settling family strife, feelings of power and powerlessness, and other useful topics. This time, the discussion would be planned for after the break so that we would be sure to get it in. During my absence, Davies had brought in a new co- facilitator who worked very well with the group. Since people with memory problems often have difficulty adjusting to change, Helen did not want to change back, which saddened me, but the needs of the patients were more important than mine. Without me to direct the reading and the following discussion, further Shakespeare readings were not considered practical.

CODA A few months later, I asked my former co-facilitators how some members of the group were doing. Because part of my job was to chart the progress or decline of patients, this is not a HIPAA violation. Everyone had declined, of course, since Alzheimer's is a degenerative disease. At the time of that conversation, Sir Andrew was still an imp, just a slower imp. Malvolio still felt superior to everybody, but had less cause. Sir Toby had declined to the point that his natural boisterousness became distracting. Asking him to leave the group was being discussed, perhaps putting the co-facilitators in the position of Malvolio inviting Sir Toby to leave if he could not separate himself from him misdemeanors. Fabian continued to sleep at meetings. Since he received little benefit from attending, he was asked not to return, in order to make space for someone who would benefit more from the group. Maria declined rather quickly. The exercise was of the most benefit, perhaps, to Viola. Her arms and legs are permanently uncrossed. She became one of the most active and vocal participants in the Early Stage Support Group. I am sure she has declined since, but her story demonstrates a point that Helen Davies and I made again and again in our book. You will probably live with Alzheimer's for many years. You should make those years as rich as you possibly can.

I am glad that Shakespeare helped enrich the lives of the people in our group and wonder if the creative use of Shakespeare as a therapy might help other Alzheimer's patients. Music and the visual arts have received multiple studies and encouraging results as therapies.7 The Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, California recently began a program of

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docent-led tours tailored for dementia patients, with a course to teach patients digital photography. This is not currently being studied by researchers, but I hope that will follow.8 Patients are encouraged to express themselves in writing, especially autobiographical writing, and many have learned to keep journals to exercise long-term memory and to help them recall recent events.9 The arts, generally defined, do seem to have some therapeutic value for Alzheimer's patients.

More specifically with literature, there are scholars working with Shakespeare and other literature directly with Alzheimer's patients: Katharine Craik at Oxford Brookes University, Matt Kozusko at Ursinus College, and Amy Scott-Douglass at Marymount University. On the less scholarly front, for several years in Brooklyn, the poet Gary Glanzer has been using poetry as a therapy for people who have dementia. I have not, however, found a proper scientific or cognitive study on the benefits of reading or listening to literature as therapy. I hope this short, anecdotal, unscientific article will put this topic into conversation in the Alzheimer's care community with the result that a longer, non-anecdotal scientific study of the benefits of Shakespeare or other literatures will be undertaken to ascertain their therapeutic efficacy.

NOTES 1. I did not decide to write about this experience until recently, so notes were not taken at the time. This account, therefore and ironically, relies more than I would like on my imperfect memory. I believe everything is accurate, but some specifics have been forgotten and so are omitted. I realize that some things may be remembered as I wish to remember them, but this was not done deliberately. I am grateful for the support of a number of dedicated and caring professionals during my time at the Stanford/VA Alzheimer's Research Center, including Helen D. Davies, MS, APRN, BC, Psychiatric Clinical Nurse Specialist; Jerry Tinklenberg, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the Stanford School of Medicine; my direct supervisor, Program Manager Pauline Luu; Research Assistant Christine A. Coughlin; and especially my co-facilitators, Clinical Research Coordinator Virginia L. Dao and Clinical Nurse Specialist and Research Assistant Christiane Baker Pitts, MA, RN, BSN. 2. The program ran for sixty minutes in 1953 and 1954, then reverted to the shorter time slot. In 1957, NBC changed the length to twenty-four

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minutes to accommodate network announcements and news. For a history of the program and its impact on the town of Ashland, Oregon, see the somewhat mistitled article by Michael P. Jensen, "A Midsummer Night's Dream on Radio: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Radio Series" (2012). I also describe most of the episodes in "Radio: Entries by Play" (Jensen 2007). 3. This paper has elements in common with the "feel good" newspaper and magazine stories that are usually accompanied by photographs of happy participants, the use of first names, and some background on the lives of the patients involved. Quite rightly, the Stanford/VA Alzheimer's Research Center holds patient privacy as the highest priority after patient care. It would be a violation of doctor/patient privilege for me, as a former agent of physician Jared Tinklenberg, to give any clue that could lead to the identification of the patients involved. It is also against the U.S. Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. I could be fined or put in prison for merely giving enough information for a clever person to figure out who the patients are. This is why I did not specify the year of this exercise in my second paragraph. I shall identify each patient only by the role he or she played in the reading. 4. I am not an expert, but as I understand it, reading and speaking are both two-part processes. The optics of reading goes to the Visual Cortex, and the words read are then understood in Wernicke's area. Conversation is a combination of Wernicke's area, where ideas are generated as well as understood, and Broca's area, which produces speech. Degeneration in Wernicke's area will tend to affect both reading and speech. If Wernicke's area is free of plaque and tangles inside of nerve cells, but the Visual Cortex is affected, it is difficult to read. If Wernicke's area is normal but Broca's area is affected, patients will have difficulty expressing thoughts that may be clear in their heads. Reading aloud involves all these areas, and so is a three-part process. If degeneration has not yet affected these centers, or not affected them very much, then reading aloud is usually fairly fluid. 5. All references to Shakespeare's plays are to the Oxford Complete Works, second edition (2005). 6. What happens in each group stays in that group. It is a HIPAA violation to tell a caregiver what a patient did or said in our group, and vice versa. Patients and caregivers may, of course, reveal these things to one another and give us permission to comment. 7. See Koger, Chapin, and Brotoms 1999; Kumar, Tims, Cruess, et al. 1999; and Britons and Marti 2003. For art therapy, see Sterritt and Pokorny 1994; Rentz 2002; and Abraham 2004.

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8. Perspectives: A Newsletter for Individuals with Alzheimer's or a Related Disorder (2012): 6. 9. Two recent articles are Ramanathan 2009; and Ryan, Bannister, and Anas 2009. A published journal by an Alzheimer's patient is Cary Smith Henderson, Partial View: An Alzheimer's Journal (1998).

REFERENCES Abraham, Ruth. 2004. When Words Have Lost Their Meaning: Alzheimer's Patients Communicate Through Art. Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger. Britons, M., and P. Marti. 2003. "Music Therapy with Alzheimer's Patients and their Family Caregivers: A Pilot Project." Journal of Music Therapy 40.2: 138-50. Henderson, Cary Smith. 1998. Partial View: An Alzheimer's Journal. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press. Jensen, Michael P. 2012. " A Midsummer Night's Dream on Radio: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Radio Series." Shakespeare Survey 65: 121-37. Jensen, Michael P. 2007. "Radio: Entries by Play." Shakespeares After Shakespeare: An Encyclopedia of the Bard in Mass Media and Popular Culture. Edited by Richard Burt. 2 vols. Westport, Conn. and London: Greenwood. Koger, S. M,. K. Chapin, and M. Brotoms. 1999. "Is Music Therapy an Effective Intervention for Dementia? A Meta-Analytic Review of Literature." Journal of Music Therapy 36.1: 2-15. Kumar, A. M., F. Tims, D. G. Cruess, et al. 1999. "Music Therapy Increases Serum Melatonin Levels in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease." Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 5.6: 49-57. Perspectives: A Newsletter for Individuals with Alzheimer's or a Related Disorder. 2012. 17.2. Ramanathan, Vaidehi. 2009. "Scripting Selves, Stalling Last Shadows: (Auto) Biographical Writing of Alzheimer Patients and Their Caregivers." 2009. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 6.4: 294-314. Rentz, C. A. 2002. "Memories in the Making: Outcome-based Evaluation of an Art Program for Individuals with Dementing Illnesses." American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias 17.3: 175-81.

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Ritchie, Carl. 1964. Twelfth Night. Unpublished script, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 1964. Oregon Shakespeare Festival Archives. Ryan, E. B., K. A. Bannister, and A. P. Anas. 2009. "The Dementia Narrative: Writing to Reclaim Social Identity." Journal of Aging Studies 23:3: 145-57. Shakespeare, William. 2005. The Complete Works. Edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Second edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Sterritt, P. F., and M. E. Pokorny. 1994. "Art Activities for Patients with Alzheimer's and Related Disorders." Geriatric Nursing 15.3: 155-59.

ABSTRACT | INTRODUCTION | DOING SHAKESPEARE | CODA | NOTES | REFERENCES | TOP

© Borrowers and Lenders 2005-2020

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The Bard's Speech: Making it Better; Shakespeare and (/current) Therapy in Film

GEOFFREY M. RIDDEN, SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY (/previous)

ABSTRACT | SHAKESPEARIZATION AS CIVILIZATION | SHAKESPEARIZATION AS THERAPY | NOTES | (/about) REFERENCES | ONLINE RESOURCES

(/archive) ABSTRACT This paper will argue that Shakespeare has become so prevalent and powerful in popular entertainment as a shorthand to signal high culture that his name and his works can be invoked as therapeutic even in circumstances in which, historically, they did not feature. I will first seek to chart the place and power of the process of Shakespearization. I will then examine the prevalence in popular film of figures with disabilities. Finally, I will consider the particular fictional role that Shakespeare can play as a form of therapy for some of these historical protagonists with disabilities, a role that Shakespeare did not fill in their real lives.

SHAKESPEARIZATION AS CIVILIZATION It is a commonplace for Shakespeare to be used to signal high culture in works that are intended for a popular culture audience, both in print and on screen.1 For example, in the 1996 thriller A Matter of Honor, by disgraced former politician and writer of popular fiction Jeffrey Archer, the central character uses a simple device to maintain his grip on sanity and to avoid being forced to reveal secrets under torture by the KGB: he recites the names of the plays of Shakespeare. So powerful does this device become for him that the practice builds to a climax: the more excruciating the torture, the more obscure are the plays that the plucky British agent is able to recall. Eventually, after

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Two Noble Kinsmen, his torturers give up: he has beaten them through Shakespeare. He has demonstrated his cultural superiority (Archer 2004, 285).

In literary narratives, being in control or being "civilized" is quite frequently represented as the same as being Shakespearized — a term that Emerson seems to have coined (see Bristol 1990). However, this term is by no means entirely positive in its valency, even in its earliest usage. In a footnote to a 2010 essay, Ronan Ludot-Vlasak observes: As the title of Michael Bristol's book Shakespeare's America, America's Shakespeare indicates, "the interpretation of Shakespeare and the interpretation of American popular culture are two mutually determining practices" (Bristol 3). The verb "shakespearize" is used by Ralph Waldo Emerson in "The American Scholar," an essay in which he calls for the advent of an American literature that breaks from European literary models: "The English dramatic poets have Shakespearized now for two hundred years." (Ludot-Vlasak 2010, n. 2, 11). To quote that 1837 speech a little more fully, what Emerson writes is this: "Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakespearized now for two hundred years" (Emerson 1837, 28). In Edna H. L. Turpin's 1907 edition of the essay (which is the basis of the Gutenberg version from which I have quoted), she adds this note to the first of the two sentences quoted above: "The conventional is the continual foe of all true art," and this note to the second: Emerson is continually stimulating us to look at things in new ways. Here, for instance, at once the thought comes: "Is it not perhaps possible that the transcendent genius of Shakespeare has been rather noxious than beneficent in its influence on the mind of the world? Has not the all-pervading Shakespearian influence flooded and drowned out a great deal of original genius?" (Emerson 1837, 283) Turpin's reading of Emerson seems to be that Shakespearizing has a detrimental influence on any succeeding serious literature.

By the late twentieth century, Terence Hawkes was able to identify just how far the influence of Shakespeare had spread, encompassing not only high culture, but many aspects of everyday life. In the introductory pages to Meaning by Shakespeare, he spends some time on Hamlet and on what that play, that character, and that word had come to represent: Hamlet scores high marks, inevitably. It comes to function as a universal cultural reference point, a piece of social shorthand. Bits of its language embed themselves in everyday speech until it starts to seem like a web of quotations. In the end, it enters our way of life as one of the resources through which that way of life

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generates meaning. As an aspect of the works of 'Shakespeare', the play helps to shape large categories of thought, particularly those which inform political and moral stances, modes and types of relationship, our ideas of how men and women, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, uncles and nephews, sons and daughters ought respectively to behave and interact . . . In other words, Hamlet crucially helps to determine how we perceive and respond to the world in which we live. (Hawkes 2012, 4) In this essay, we shall consider whether this "social shorthand" signifies any less pernicious a practice than Emerson's "Shakespearizing."

I should like to turn to the idea of Shakespeare as therapy, starting with an illustration from a film based on a play, both of which refer to Shakespeare. This is a straightforward test case, because, unlike the films discussed later in this paper, this film version is not radically different from the original play on which it is based, although both the play and the film are selective in the history that they represent. Let me pose a question: in which text do the following lines occur? "His affections do not that way tend." "The oldest hath borne most." The answer is that they occur in Alan Bennett's 1991 play The Madness of George III, and in the 1994 film version of that play, The Madness of King George, for which Bennett himself wrote the screenplay.

In the stage version, as the King loses his sanity, the Prince of Wales has this interchange with his mother: QUEEN: I am his wife. Do I not care for him too? PRINCE OF WALES: Perhaps, madam. But in his current frame of mind His Majesty does not seem to care for you. His affections do not that way tend. (Bennett 1992, 32) In trying to account for his father's behavior, the Prince falls back on Hamlet, using the words of Claudius to discount one possible cause of George's insanity. Bennett makes good use of one of Shakespeare's most famous madmen, and his play reverses the roles of fathers and sons, mothers and lovers to add further levels of irony for those acquainted with Hamlet.

At the climax of the play, Bennett references Shakespeare's other famous mad role. The madness of George has been characterized as a failure to control language, and the turning point in his progress to sanity comes when Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor, visits the King and finds him acting out a scene from King Lear. He returns to Westminster with the news: THURLOW: I've been with His Majesty and have had two hours'

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uninterrupted conversation with him. DUNDAS: Oh God, you mean he's talking again? THURLOW: No dammit. Well, yes. But not fifty to the dozen, and not nonsense either. He's actually a damned clever fellow. Had me reading Shakespeare. Have you read King Lear? Tragic story . . . DUNDAS: Lord Chancellor . . . THURLOW: The point is, the King is better. DUNDAS: Better than he was? THURLOW: No. Better in every respect. (Bennett 1992, 83) Perhaps the two points to bear in mind from this conversation are that Shakespeare figures both as an index of the King's intelligence and as the means of judging that the King is "better." George remains sane for the remainder of the play and regains control of his kingdom. Thurlow, on the other hand, is ignorant of King Lear, and therefore does not appreciate the significance of the scene which he has witnessed. He is represented as not having been Shakespearized, and therefore as being inferior to the King. The acquisition of Shakespeare conveys superiority: intellectual superiority, certainly, but perhaps also moral superiority. Thurlow is as ignorant of Shakespeare as are the KGB torturers in Jeffrey Archer's novel; it is common in narratives that those who are in possession of Shakespeare are represented as heroes.

The King has played Lear in 4.7, the scene in which Cordelia is re-united with a father who has apparently recovered his sanity. The difference between the Lear we see in this scene and the one we met in the previous scene is very pronounced, almost as marked as that between the George we see acting out Shakespeare and the jabbering George earlier in the play. George demonstrates his sanity through his command of Shakespeare, acting out the part of a recovered lunatic; he signals his new resolution at the end of the play, as he prepares for the service of thanksgiving for his recovery, by referencing the closing lines of King Lear: The oldest hath borne most. You that are young Shall never see so much nor live so long (5.3.319-320). This is not, of course, a direct quotation, because these lines are not Lear's: he is dead by the time these lines, whether they are spoken by Albany or by Edgar, are voiced on behalf of the survivors: "We that are young" (my italics).2

In his 2002 essay, Brian Gibbons argues that Bennett's treatment of King Lear is closer to Tate's version than to Shakespeare's. Bennett follows the plot of "King Lear" as revised by Tate, but preserves the language of Shakespeare, rather than inserting the much less familiar language of Tate. Gibbons also argues in this essay that there are echoes of Measure for Measure and Richard II in Bennett's play. It is true that Bennett gives a more optimistic version of King Lear than Shakespeare, just as his version of King George's story is more optimistic than the reality of history. In Bennett's play,

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King George's version of King Lear ends with Lear reunited with Cordelia and able to speak the closing lines of the play; his King George closes the play in 1789 (Bennett 1992, xiv), a sane man. In reality, he had a relapse in 1802 (xiv), was totally insane from 1810 onwards, and died in 1820.

Before considering the two films that are at the center of this paper, I want to turn briefly to Emma Thompson's 1995 screen adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, an example of a subtle and extended use of referencing Shakespeare as what Hawkes might term "a social shorthand" (Hawkes 2012, 4), a method to indicate high culture. In Chapter 10 of Austen's novel (1995, 28), Marianne and Elinor discuss Mr. Willoughby's opinions on Cowper, Scott, and Pope, but, in the comparable scene in Thompson's film, Marianne and Mr. Willoughby, by turns, recite Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (Thompson 1995, 97). Nora Stovel has provided a detailed examination of the differences between Austen's novel and Thompson's screenplay in her article for Persusasions (Stovel 2011). I believe that the implication of this particular change is that modern cinema audiences cannot be guaranteed to recognize the names of Cowper, Scott, and Pope, whereas they most definitely can recognize the name of Shakespeare. Indeed, the sonnet becomes a pivotal feature of the film, because, at the climactic moment of the narrative, Marianne declaims it through her tears to a silent landscape (Thompson 1995, 177) — a scene that has no equivalent in the novel.3 There is, however, a reference to Hamlet in the novel that is not included in the film. In Chapter 16, Mrs. Dashwood takes up a volume of Shakespeare and exclaims: "We have never finished Hamlet, Marianne; our dear Willoughby went away before we could get through it. We will put it by, that when he comes again . . . But it may be months, perhaps, before that happens" (Austen 1995, 51; emphasis in original). It is ironic that this text, in both novel and film formats, should be one of the few to include a character, in the shape of Willoughby, who is in possession of Shakespeare but who behaves badly.

The novel is greatly interested in literary sophistication. In Chapter 22, Lucy is described as being "naturally clever": "Elinor frequently found her agreeable; but her powers had received no aid from education; she was ignorant and illiterate" (Austen 1995, 76). The film has two other moments when poetry is quoted — one quotation from Cowper (Thompson 1995, 50) and one from Spenser (187) — but in neither case is the poet identified: the poetry speaks for itself, and the audience need not be distracted by attributions. If attributions were included, they might suggest that Ferrars (a Cowperite) and Brandon (a Spenserian) really had outshone the Shakespearean Willoughby.

SHAKESPEARIZATION AS THERAPY "Shakespearizing," as we have seen, is a long and ingrained habit, so we should not be surprised at the ways in which Shakespeare's Hamlet is used in two films separated by

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more than twenty years, from the late 1980s to 2010: My Left Foot (1989) and The King's Speech (2010). Specifically, I will examine changes between the original events on which these films are based and the films themselves, in terms of their representation of Shakespeare as therapy. First, however, I would like to comment upon that phenomenon of actors frequently winning Oscars for playing characters with disabilities. On 2 February 2009, in her witty article for ABC News, "10 Surefire Ways to Score Oscar Recognition," Sheila Marikar placed at the top of her list this category: "No. 1 Star a Handicapped/Disabled/Mentally Ill Character" (Marikar 2009). She notes that so frequently are Oscars awarded on this criterion that it becomes the material for parody: "On a recent episode of NBC's '30 Rock,' the self-absorbed Jenna Maroney wailed about wanting to win an Oscar playing a disabled version of '60s crooner Janis Joplin: 'The academy loves dead singers and the handicapped, and Janis was both!'" (Marikar 2009). Although Janis Joplin's "handicap" was confined to excessive drug- taking, Maroney's point is well made. The list of such Oscars is long and goes back at least to 1970, when John Mills won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Ryan's Daughter. The films include Rain Man (1988), The Piano (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), and Shine (1996). The film Shine is a particularly telling instance of how disability figures in the Oscar process. Its star, Geoffrey Rush, won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the disturbed pianist David Helfgott, although he had less screen time than Armin Mueller-Stahl, who played the younger Helfgott and received only the award for Best Supporting Actor. Those films nominated for Oscars that did not win include Leonardo de Caprio's first Oscar nomination in 1993 (What's Eating Gilbert Grape), Billy Bob Thornton's nomination for Sling Blade (1996), and Russell Crowe's 2001 nomination for A Beautiful Mind.

Marikar quotes from this speech from the 2008 film Tropic Thunder, in which Kirk Lazarus suggests to another character that it has been an error to choose a role based on too great a disability: Check it out. Dustin Hoffman, "Rain Man," look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. Count toothpicks to your cards. Autistic. Sure. Not retarded. You know Tom Hanks, "Forrest Gump." Slow, yes. Retarded? Maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and he won a ping-pong competition. That ain't retarded. You went full retard, man. Never go full retard. Don't believe me? Ask Sean Penn, 2001, "I Am Sam." Went full retard. Went home empty handed. (Marikar 2009) This phenomenon of able-bodied actors winning Oscars for their portrayal of disabled characters has proved an irritation for disability groups. At the time when Colin Firth won his 2011 Oscar for his role in The King's Speech, "Disability Bitch," the anonymous author of the opinion page Ouch on the BBC website, wrote this: " [G]enerally speaking, I do hate all non-disabled actors who try to play us a lot. They're just slightly rubbish, in my considered experience, and disabled actors often get upset that abled folk are stealing jobs away from them, despite apparently being born to play http://borrowers.uga.edu/1015/show Page 6 of 16 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)29 PM

certain roles" ("Disability Bitch" 2011). We shall return to the views of "Disability Bitch" in a little while, but it may be worth noting one exception to her observation. Harold Russell, a U.S. army veteran, lost both hands during World War II and won two Oscars for his role in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), one for Best Supporting Actor and an honorary Oscar for "bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans": he is the only actor to receive two Oscars for the same role. It is also the case that a different form of inequality is practiced within this phenomenon; there are many more men than women in these roles, and men are in the featured roles of both films we are about to consider.

Having considered the general processes of "Shakespearization" and the popular appeal of films that have disability at their center, I want to turn to my two specific test cases. My first instance is the 1989 film My Left Foot, the account of the life of Christy Brown and his "progress" from an inarticulate man suffering from cerebral palsy to award-winning writer. Although Shakespeare does make an appearance in Brown's book, My Left Foot (1954), on which the film is based, the film considerably alters the nature of this appearance. In Chapter 15, Christy is in the Clinic and is given his copy of the complete works of Shakespeare by Sheila, a girl who has visited the Clinic and with whom Christy has formed a deep friendship. She gives him the book just before she leaves for America to be married: I remember how, on the morning she left the Clinic for good, she got me to recite for her Hamlet's heart-breaking speech, "To be or not to be." As I spoke it all the children were shouting and laughing around us . . . Discovering all the beauty of Shakespeare gave me an almost physical sense of joy. Often in the middle of one of his plays I'd pause, breathless, and wonder at the incredible loveliness of his imagination and the soundness of his reasoning. (Brown 1954, 176-77) What is noteworthy here is that Christy understands what he is reading: there is no sense that he struggles to perform the speech from Hamlet; moreover, he reads it in public before an audience of delighted children.

In the award-winning film version of My Left Foot, Shakespeare makes an altogether different kind of entrance. He appears when Christy is at his lowest ebb, and his entrance comes in private, at Christy's home. This is a professional intervention of Shakespeare — smuggled into Christy's bedroom by a doctor in a tailored suit. The suit and Shakespeare are in stark contrast to the clothing and the setting of Christy's home. "I've brought you a speech I would like you to learn," says the doctor — and what a speech it is that she brings: the most famous of all Hamlet's soliloquies, and the very same speech that features in Brown's autobiography. Within the context of the film, the speech is, on the one hand, a piece that is easily recognizable to the audience, even as Christy makes his first halting attempts to recite it. Without that quality of instant recognition, the speech would have much less impact because the cinema audience has to see immediately that Christy is being subject to the process of Shakespearization: http://borrowers.uga.edu/1015/show Page 7 of 16 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)29 PM

that recognition cannot be left to chance.

It is, furthermore, a speech that, in the film, is recognized even by Christy's parents, who have not been represented as likely to enjoy or appreciate Shakespeare. Indeed, so strong is the antipathy of Christy's father that, although he has been Shakespearized enough to recognize the speech from Hamlet, and to join in the "reading," his "performance" quickly metamorphoses into this parody: "Whether tis nobler in the mind to have to suffer this fucking rubbish." By this stage in the film, the position of the father has been clearly established: he is a wicked father who spends any available money on drink and who disapproves of his wife's efforts to save to buy Christy a wheelchair. He further alienates the sympathies of the audience through this crude response to Shakespeare, and we are encouraged to feel no great sense of loss at his death. He is a more extreme version of the KGB torturers in the Archer novel or of Thurlow in The Madness of George III, all characters who have failed to acquire Shakespeare.

In the film, unlike the autobiography, Christy struggles to learn this unfamiliar and decontextualized speech, which he performs in private for the doctor, not in public before a delighted audience. The only access that his family has to his performance is via eavesdropping: they are not to be allowed access to this new part of Christy's work — the Shakespeare part, the high-culture part. It is, perhaps, strange that the film's writers and director chose to select this speech as a test for Christy, the educational hurdle over which he must jump. This is a speech that weighs up the merits of life and death, existence and suicide, scarcely material for the therapy of a young man in depression. No thought is given to what the speech might mean in the context of Hamlet, in terms of the transaction of ideas from actor to audience: what is at stake is a demonstration that Christy can speak the words of the Bard, and the speech needs to be the best known of Shakespeare's speeches, whatever that speech might mean.

The use of Shakespeare in the film, as opposed to the autobiography, is a shift away from a joyful, shared experience, accepted as perfectly natural by all those involved, to a rite of passage, a test, the outcome of which is represented as surprising. It is a watershed in the depiction of Christy's life because it confers on him an extraordinary status, that of the "cripple" who can appropriate Shakespeare, or be appropriated by Shakespeare. In the film, Christy's ability to master this decontextualized speech has all the hallmarks of a freak show, so great is the apparent gap between what he might be expected to achieve and what he has done in "achieving" Shakespeare. Christy's ability aligns him with those child actors so popular in the nineteenth century, or the children on YouTube videos in the twenty-first century: their ability to perform Shakespeare is lauded and applauded, not because of the intrinsic value of the words they say, but as an astonishing and extraordinary feat — it is felt to be remarkable that they can do this at all. One of the most celebrated of these child Shakespeareans was William Henry West Betty, known by the stage name of the Young Roscius (Kahan 2010). Born in

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1791, he became so well-known that the January 1805 edition of The Monthly Review, Or, Literary Journal (edited by Ralph Griffiths and G. E. Griffiths) refers to no fewer than four biographies and memoirs of this "theatrical phænomenon" (Griffiths and Griffiths 1805,100). The review concludes that some of Betty's "biographers consider him as a phaenomenon almost miraculous, and are inclined to think that Nature broke the mould in which she had formed him, in order that there should never be another like him"(100). Dickens later satirized the whole business of child performers in Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), in that the daughter of Vincent Crummles takes the stage as the Infant Phenomenon.

The film version of My Left Foot additionally demonstrates through the Shakespeare speech a desire to change Christy, to "normalize" him, and it also demonstrates a fear of what that change might bring. As Dr. Cole starts to work with Christy, his mother asks the potent question, "Is that our Christy?" On the one hand, the question signals her awareness that a change in her son could mean a loss of her power over him, the power of the caregiver; on the other hand, it is a recognition that Christy has an identity of which his disability is only a part, that a Shakespearized Christy is a different Christy and not "our Christy." Perhaps, also, there is a questioning of the value-system implicit in what Dr. Cole is doing: she is teaching Christy to declaim Shakespeare. Is that what "our Christy" would do of his own volition, even a Christy not born with cerebral palsy? After all, this is not what his siblings are doing. His father may produce that Shakespeare parody as he listens to Christy's first stumbling efforts to recite Shakespeare, but he is willing to condone the exercise "so long as he gets better" — a tellingly ambiguous comment which encompasses not only an improvement in Christy's physical well-being, but a whole range of other possible "improvements," as well. We might recall that Thurlow, in The Madness of George III, also believed that, by acquiring Shakespeare, the King had become "better in every respect."

The disabled hero in films of this kind has to become more than ordinary; he has to move to be a genius or savant. Moreover, he has to achieve this status within the parameters of an abled culture: Christy acquires Shakespeare (even with a Northern Irish accent), and thereby acquires Literature with a capital "L." The climax of the film is an awards ceremony at a high-culture event, complete with tuxedos and classical music. In this film, Christy is at the boundary between "abnormal" as disabled and "abnormal" as genius. He is for painting what the heroes of Shine and Amadeus are for music. After all, in terms of his representation in Amadeus, is not Mozart insane? Tom Hulce was nominated for an Oscar for playing this role in the 1984 film; he did not win.

There was, however, an awful irony in having Christy played by Daniel Day-Lewis. This film was one of two occasions within a relatively short period of time on which this actor delivered Hamlet's lines. The other was on stage at the National Theatre in 1989, and the strain of playing the central character in Hamlet proved so great for him

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that he left the production and has never appeared on stage again. In reality, perhaps ironically, Shakespeare did not prove to be good therapy for this particular actor. As I was in the process of writing this paper, Daniel Day-Lewis won his third Oscar for his performance as a Shakespeare-quoting Lincoln. Geoffrey O'Brien had this to say about those quotations: Kushner's script is more than just elegant in its compression and exposition. It is steeped in the traditions of a political dramaturgy that were familiar to Shakespeare and Schiller but that have not often been practiced in American historical films. The moments when Lincoln quotes Hamlet ("I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams"), Banquo ("If you can look into the seeds of time, / And say which grain will grow, and which will not"), and Falstaff ("We have heard the chimes at midnight, master Shallow") are a way of nodding to that ancient bond of theater and politics. Acknowledging the need at every turn for shorthand and quick characterization to fit the events into the available time, the film never pretends that the whole story has been laid out. (O'Brien 2012) Once again, Shakespeare proves a useful shorthand.

Like Christy Brown, Bertie, the future King George VI, had difficulties with his speech. It might seem that the disability at the center of The King's Speech is of a different order from that at the heart of My Left Foot: after all, cerebral palsy and stammering are hardly in the same league. But the stammer would prevent the future King from doing his job and achieving his potential, and therefore is a major hurdle for him to overcome. Bertie is faced with the one of the difficulties that beset Claudius in Robert Graves's 1934 novel, I Claudius, but Claudius did not have Shakespeare, whereas, in The King's Speech, Bertie does.

On 3 March 2011, "Disability Bitch," in the web page cited above, wrote this about her positive reaction to The King's Speech: "Maybe this . . . was helped by the fact that its writer, David Seidler — now an Oscar winner in his own right — was himself a stammerer in childhood." He most certainly was, and the interview of David Seidler, conducted by Tommie L. Robinson, Jr. for The Leader, the online journal of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), was one of my starting points in writing this section of my paper. Thanks to the fact that Robinson and his colleagues were so generous with their time, I was able to discover something of the truth about the methods used by Lionel Logue in his treatment of Bertie, and to find that the truth was very different from the narrative presented in the film.4 The film is shot through with Shakespearean allusions, which were charted on a blog on Tuesday, 4 January 2011 by "KJ," Keith Jones, Associate Professor at Christian College, University of Northwestern St. Paul, Minnesota. KJ's entry, "Shakespeare in The King's Speech," notes that the allusions are wide-ranging: "Othello, Hamlet, The Tempest, Macbeth (one character mentions "The Scottish Play"), King Lear (possibly), and, most http://borrowers.uga.edu/1015/show Page 10 of 16 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)29 PM

notably, Richard III." KJ helpfully singles out three particular Shakespearean references. The first, which is also the first allusion in the film, is a quotation from Othello, spoken by Logue to the Duchess of York on her first visit to Logue's office. KJ observes that this reference serves to "establish Logue's character as a man educated in and apt to use the works of Shakespeare in his everyday conversation."

The second allusion comes as Logue auditions for a play, and chooses, as his audition piece, the opening speech from Richard III, complete with withered arm. The third occurs as Logue begins to treat Bertie's stammer, and, as part of that treatment, requires the Duke to recite Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be or not to be." The first of these allusions is a shorthand to establish Logue as being Shakespearized: the quotation from Othello — "Poor and content is rich enough" — is immediately attributed by Logue to Shakespeare. The second quotation introduces the notion of a deformed King of England. The third takes us to the familiar ground of Shakespeare as therapy.

In considering first the use of Shakespeare as therapy, I have found no evidence that Logue ever used Shakespeare as therapy, either with Bertie or with any of his patients. Caroline Bowen, an acknowledged expert on Logue, told me in an email that: Lionel Logue kept records of appointments and payments, but did not record what he did in his sessions with clients. The Shakespeare scenes in The King's Speech screenplay are pure David Seidler, and not based on anything found to date in archives, notebooks, letters and diaries. Many people who saw Logue either as his (speech and drama/elocution) students, or as his clients with speech impairment, have written to me since 2002, and none have mentioned Shakespeare or anything "literary" for that matter. (Bowen 2012a) On her own website, Dr. Bowen cites the recollections of Duncan C. M. Smith as being typical of those of Logue's patients; those recollections describe a treatment largely based on breathing exercises, and with no mention of Shakespeare (Bowen 2012b).

In the book The King's Speech, there are references to Logue's acting and his therapy, but almost nothing about Shakespeare. This book is not, as one might expect, the script of the film, but instead an account of the life and career of Lionel Logue published before the film was made, with a preface updated after the filming. We learn of Logue performing Dickens (A Christmas Carol, Logue and Conradi 2010, 17) and of his founding a "school of acting" at which students performed One Summer's Day and Our Boys (27), but nothing of Shakespeare.5 The closest we come to the therapy used in the film is when Logue is quoted as believing that stammerers "tended to have fewer problems with poetry than with prose" (Logue 2010, 42), and when he writes that "Few people know their own voices because it is difficult to 'hear' oneself. Therefore I advise all who can manage it to hear their own voices reproduced. People are usually surprised when they do this, so seldom do they know how they sound" (Logue and Conradi 2010, 99-100). The only occasion in the book when Shakespeare is mentioned is in this

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reminiscence from Logue's grandson Mark in the prefatory pages: "I became fascinated by a scene in which Rush's character hovers over my father and his elder brother, Valentine . . . while they are made to recite Shakespeare. It reminded me of a similar scene when I was a boy and my father obliged me to do the same" (Logue and Conradi 2010, xii). What is noteworthy here is that the film sets off a memory for Mark Logue, but not a memory of Lionel, his grandfather, the speech therapist, but of Lionel's son. Mark Logue never knew his grandfather.

To return to the second allusion in the film, Logue's use of the opening of Richard III as his audition piece, KJ spends some time in carefully tracing all the allusions to Richard III in The King's Speech and concludes that together they work to develop a view of George VI as the antithesis of Richard III, or, perhaps more specifically, as the antithesis of Shakespeare's representation of Richard III. When Logue fails his audition, he is told, "I'm not hearing the cries of a deformed creature yearning to be King." Shakespeare's Richard was deformed, and suffered from a range of disabilities much closer to those of the Emperor Claudius than to those of Bertie. The allusions to Richard III in The King's Speech help establish just how limited Bertie's deformities really are.

It is, perhaps, not inappropriate that Shakespeare should figure so prominently in narratives as a form of therapy because madness, disability, and disease figure so prominently in his plays. As we have seen, madness features prominently in King Lear and in Hamlet. It is taken seriously in those plays, as it is in Measure for Measure, Macbeth, and Cymbeline. As we know, insanity was not always treated sympathetically in Shakespeare's time, and visiting asylums for entertainment continued to be a popular pastime well into the eighteenth century, as Jonathan Andrews has recorded (Andrews 1997). It is unsurprising, therefore, to find comic treatments of madness in Twelfth Night and in The Comedy of Errors that are every bit as grotesque as anything in Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling. The insanity of Titus in Titus Andronicus is also played frequently for comic effect. The word "madness" occurs on sixty-two occasions in Shakespeare, sometimes figuratively, but predominantly in a literal sense, and there are doctors in several of the plays. In addition to madness, Shakespeare includes epilepsy in Othello and in Julius Caesar, and as we have seen, a mixture of deformities in his representation of the character of Richard III. Despite all this, Shakespeare's plays continue to figure as a means of therapy in popular films, because, it seems, even the words of a madman can make you better, as long as those words are written by Shakespeare.

What is, perhaps, surprising is the shift that has taken place in the representation of the relationship between doctor and patient in the centuries between Shakespeare's time and our own. In both My Left Foot and The King's Speech, the writers and directors are as interested in Dr. Cole and Lionel Logue as they are in the men being treated. The epiphanies that take place in these films are revelations for the therapists as well as for

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their patients, and this is also evident in a radio play about George VI that preceded the film: A King's Speech, written by Mark Burgess and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in April 2009. In this version of the narrative, which focuses on a different event, the King's preparation for his radio broadcast on Coronation Day, 12 May 1937, Lionel Logue (played by Trevor Littledale), who has left his antipodean accent behind in Australia, uses Tennyson rather than Shakespeare to help the King (played by Alex Jennings) to overcome his stammer. Perhaps the audience for a radio play might be expected to be familiar with the works of Tennyson, whereas a film has to play safe and represent the therapy of high culture through the citing of Shakespeare, whether or not Shakespeare was indeed the therapy in real life, and, as will be clear from essays elsewhere in this issue, whether or not Shakespeare's works in reality function very often as an effective therapy.

NOTES 1. Some of the ideas behind this paper were included in my 1999 article, "Shakespeare as Therapy," in the journal Acta Universitatis Nicolai Copernici. I am most grateful to the editors of that journal and to the authorities of UMK for permission to revisit that article. 2. The lines are Albany's in the first quarto and Edgar's in the first Folio. See Warren 1989, 148-49. 3. The novel's several references to Harley Street, simply as a residential address, also show how social shorthand can shift in meaning. These references are not included in the film, because "Harley Street" now has a particular and different meaning. 4. I am most grateful to Tommie L. Robinson Jr., Gary Dunham, Margaret Roger of American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), and especially to Caroline Bowen. 5. The plays referred to here are probably One Summer's Day, the 1900 play by Henry V. Osmond, and Our Boys, the 1875 comedy by Henry James Byron.

REFERENCES Andrews, Jonathan. 1997. The History of Bethlem. London: Routledge. Archer, Jeffrey. 2004. A Matter of Honor. London and New York: St. Martin's. Austen, Jane. 1995. Sense and Sensibility. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co. Bennett, Alan. 1992. The Madness of George III. London: Faber. Bowen, Caroline. 2012a. "Re: King's Speech and Shakespeare." Personal communication to author. Electronic Mail. 5 September.

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Bowen, Caroline. 2012b. "Tales of Lionel Logue." Available online: http://www.speech- language-therapy.com/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=111:tales&catid=11:admin (http://www.speech- language-therapy.com/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=111:tales&catid=11:admin) [accessed 17 June 2013]. Bristol, Michael. 1990. Shakespeare's America, America's Shakespeare. London: Routledge. Brown, Christy. 1954. My Left Foot. London: Secker and Warburg. Disability Bitch. 2011. "We Own the Oscars." Ouch! It's a Disability Thing. 3 March. BBC News. Available online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/opinion/b1tch/db_we_own_the_oscars.shtml (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/opinion/b1tch/db_we_own_the_oscars.shtml) [accessed 17 June 2013]. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1837. "The American Scholar." Edited by Edna H. L. Turpin. New York: Charles E. Merrill, 1907. Repr. 2005. Project Gutenberg. Available online: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm) [accessed 17 June 2013]. Gibbons, Brian. 2002. " The Madness of George III: Shakespeare, the History Play, and Alan Bennett." In In the Company of Shakespeare: Essays on English Renaissance Literature in Honor of G. Blakemore Evans. Edited by Thomas Moisan and Douglas Bruster. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 314-30. Griffiths, Ralph, and G. E. Griffiths. 1805. The Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal. Online. Google Books. Available online: https://play.google.com/books/reader? id=2AEwAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=readerauthuser=0&hl=en (https://play.google.com/books/reader? id=2AEwAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=readerauthuser=0&hl=en) [accessed 17 June 2013]. 100. Hawkes, Terence. 2012. Meaning by Shakespeare. 1992; London: Routledge. Kahan, Jeffrey. 2010. Bettymania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press. The King's Speech. 2010. Dir. Tom Hooper. UK. Weinstein. KJ [Keith Jones]. 2011. "Shakespeare in the King's Speech." Available online: http://bardfilm.blogspot.com/2011/01/shakespeare-in-kings-speech.html (http://bardfilm.blogspot.com/2011/01/shakespeare-in-kings-speech.html) [accessed 17 June 2013].

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Logue, Mark, and Peter Conradi. 2010. The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy. New York and London: Sterling. Ludot-Vlasak, Ronan. 2010. "Looking into the Attributes of Transcendent Genius: George Henry Boker and Robert Conrad's Use of Shakespeare." Transatlantica 1. 16 July. PDF 11 pages. Available online: http://transatlantica.revues.org/4889 (http://transatlantica.revues.org/4889) [accessed 17 June 2013]. The Madness of King George. 1994. Dir. Nicholas Hytner. UK. Goldwyn. Marikar, Sheila. 2009. "10 Surefire Ways to Score Oscar Recognition." ABC News. Online. Available online: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Oscars/story? id=6784894&page=1 (http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Oscars/story? id=67848947&page=1) [accessed 17 June 2013]. My Left Foot. 1989. Dir. Jim Sheridan. Ireland. Miramax. O'Brien, Geoffrey. 2012. " Lincoln: A More Authentic Wonderment."" The New York Review of Books Blog. 21 November. Available online: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/nov/21/lincoln-authentic-wonderment/ (http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/nov/21/lincoln-authentic-wonderment/) [accessed 17 June 2013]. Robinson, Tommie L., Jr. 2011. "The Triumph of David Seidler." The ASHA Leader. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 15 March. Available online: http://www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2011/110315/The-Triumph-of-David- Seidler.htm (http://www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2011/110315/The-Triumph-of- David-Seidler.htm) [accessed 17 June 2013]. Sense and Sensibility. 1995. Dir. Ang Lee. UK/USA. Columbia. Stovel, Nora. 2011. "From Page to Screen: Emma Thompson's Film Adaptation of Sense and Sensibility." Persuasions: The Journal of the Jane Austen Society of North America 32.1. Available online: http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol32no1/stovel.html (http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol32no1/stovel.html) [accessed 17 June 2013]. Thompson, Emma. 1995. The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay & Diaries. Maidenhead, Berks.: Newmarket Press. Warren, Michael. 1989. The Parallel King Lear, 1608-1623. Berkeley: University of California Press.

ONLINE RESOURCES Bowen, Caroline. Speech-language-therapy dot com. http://www.speech-language- therapy.com (http://www.speech-language-therapy.com).

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Jones, Keith. 2008. Bardfilm. http://bardfilm.blogspot.com/search?q=king%27s+speech (http://bardfilm.blogspot.com/search?q=king%27s+speech). Ouch Disability. BBC News Blogs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/ouch/ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/ouch/).

ABSTRACT | SHAKESPEARIZATION AS CIVILIZATION | SHAKESPEARIZATION AS THERAPY | NOTES | REFERENCES | ONLINE RESOURCES | TOP

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PAULINE REID, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

(/current) REFERENCES

Calbi, Maurizio. Spectral Shakespeares: Media Adaptations in the (/previous)Twenty-First Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Maurizio Calbi's Spectral Shakespeares: Media Adaptations in the (/about) Twenty-First Century appears on the threshold of adaptation studies. Calbi patterns his work from studies of the many late-twentieth century Shakespearean film adaptations. His book draws theoretical breath from (/archive) W. B. Worthen's concept of the destabilizing, ephemeral nature of performance and Peter Donaldson's claim that contemporary Shakespearean films reflexively display adapted incarnations of media just as much as they display Shakespeare. Yet Calbi's specific analysis opens the door to radical new guests/ghosts of Shakespearian adaptation from the past decade, including non-English language films, twitter feeds, and multicultural and multimedia encounters. Calbi frames this new generation of adaptations as uniquely "post-cinematic" (Calbi 2013, 3) or disseminated, compared to the "relatively placid" (2) adaptations of the late 1990's.

Calbi first takes readers from the more comfortably Anglophone Shakespeares — Scotland, PA, the BBC Shakespeare Retold Macbeth — to the more unfamiliar territory of lesser-known or non-Anglophone films: The King is Alive, Souli, and Sud Side Stori. Indeed, Calbi's investigation perhaps reaches its most compelling point when he combines his interest in postcolonial retellings of Shakespeare with his book's Derridean framework. In the context of postcoloniality and cultural confrontation, intellectual discussions of dislocation, translation, and hos(ti)pitality reveal their concrete, political exigency. Spectral Shakespeares concludes with three chapters that consider issues of remediation and multimodality through, respectively, cinematic and digital appropriations of Shakespeare in Alexander

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Fodor's Hamlet, Klaus Knoesel's Rave Macbeth, and Such Tweet Sorrow. It is this unique focus on the intersections between multicultural and multimodal Shakespeares that sets Calbi's book apart as an insightful, original contribution to adaptation studies. Calbi makes readers remain uneasy with his Shakespearean specters. His initial reading of twenty-first century Shakespeares as "fragmentary" and multiple does not simply leave us with friendly ghosts at textual play (2); instead, he posits the current intersections of global/local, homely/foreign, and connected/disconnected in new media Shakespeare as inequitable, disturbing contact zones.

With the groundwork having been laid by deconstructionist theory and previous adaptation studies, Calbi could thankfully dispose of outmoded debates about "pure" or original Shakespeare in his introduction and move quickly into what the concepts of mediality and alterity mean for current adaptations, rather than taking up too much of readers' time arguing for his scholarship's very existence. His insightful analysis of his chosen texts demonstrates their value to future scholarship. Of particular importance to scholars who study Shakespeare outside of media and adaptation studies is Calbi's argument that certain adaptations go beyond merely interpreting or putting their own spin on the adapted Shakespearean text: instead, they recreate it (8). For example, Calbi's second chapter makes the provocative claim that The King is Alive reveals and recreates King Lear as "essentially an ensemble of fragments" (8l, emphasis in original). In other words, the future — in this case, current and future adaptations of Shakespeare across new mediums — fundamentally (re)create the textual past. This stance may appeal to readers interested in the connections between the Shakespearean text and its historiography, which of course will always already be in flux.

Calbi's focus on media in itself is a rich avenue for an application of Derridean hauntology to Shakespeare: media are both embodied and disembodied, material and ephemeral, and often both meticulously produced and endlessly reproduced. Media is both an amorphous, dislocated body and, as Calbi argues, a dislocater that sets our own bodies out of joint and subverts humanist notions of an autonomous, corporeally unified subject position (13). This focus on re- and dis- located bodies re-emerges in Calbi's first chapter, where he ties Macbeth's carnage to issues of meat-eating and vegetarianism in Scotland, PA. This relocation of human bodies to animal blurs the human/nonhuman boundary. In his analysis of The King is Alive, Calbi charts how King Lear speaks through the characters of the film, http://borrowers.uga.edu/918/show Page 2 of 5 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)29 PM

possessing their bodies and creating a sense of "dispossession" (44). This inhabitation of the present by the specter of the past occurs through prosopopoeia, a rhetorical practice where one speaks as another, absent person; Paul de Man and Derrida famously situated prosopopoeia as the figure of reading through its appeal to an invisible, absent audience and its use of the past to inhabit, or haunt, the present. In Calbi's reading of The King is Alive, Lear's act of speaking through current actors thus figures and disfigures Shakespeare and his spectators. Further, Calbi performs an act of critical dis- and re-location of political bodies in his emphasis on the films Souli and Sud Side Story. Calbi moves Shakespearean criticism away from its Anglophone center toward what is considered the global periphery: Africa and Italy's immigrant community.

Calbi's reading of Sud Side Story, in particular, contemplates the position of the contemporary spectral bodies, those of Nigerian "guests" in Italy's polity. Sud Side Story adapts West Side Story to Italy's Berlusconi era, just as West Side Story appropriated Romeo and Juliet. The reiteration of a cross-cultural star-crossed love unveils political tensions within the Italian community's hos(ti)pitable treatment of the Nigerians. While the film portrays identity as fluid, Calbi claims, pious appeals to polite multiculturalism are shown as ineffectual. Calbi's interpretation of Sud Side Story's adapted balcony scene is particularly illuminating. Toni and Romea (the Romeo and Juliet of the film) wordlessly interact in the scene through body language. Calbi frames this unspoken scene as a conscious citation of silent film conventions, an "archaism" that stands in for a Shakespearean past (93). Not only do these contemporary adaptations cite earlier cinematic Shakespeares, but they also cite the past-ness of early cinema as a spectral figure of the Shakespearean text. Shakespeare therefore operates as a spectral figure for a generalized literary, filmic, or narrative past that new, present media recreate.

A radically different Romeo and Juliet, Such Tweet Sorrow, occupies Calbi's concluding chapter. Like Sud Side Story, though, this Tweet- speare reflexively cites itself and the conventions of social media formats as a medium. For example, in a cultural parallel to endlessly citational lolcats, Juliet is a teenage "Twihard," an obsessive fan of a literary work that has also certainly been dramatically (re/dis)possessed and disseminated by social media participants. Additionally, rival Twitter followers position themselves as #TeamCapulet and #TeamMontague (139). This citationality parodies both social media itself and overwrought criticisms of social media as a signifier of http://borrowers.uga.edu/918/show Page 3 of 5 Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3/4/20, 5)29 PM

cultural decline. The immediate response by bloggers and critics who have debated whether this was "Shakespeare," or an unfortunate production, less consciously paralleled the "flame wars" of social media culture. Calbi unpacks moments when fragments and older incorporations of the Shakespearean text peek out from the new form, for instance, in Juliet's bold sexual awakening, which is simultaneous with her increased twitter-literacy (147), and in Mercutio's "larger than life" social media persona (149). The audience response to Such Tweet Sorrow marks the problem of Shakespeare's presence/absence as both infinitely perennial and infinitely participatory in the social media sphere. Calbi marks the re-inclusion of fragments from the Shakespearean text itself by the production's followers, as well as the call for an even more radical retelling of the text by the online campaign to save Mercutio (154-55). Calbi cleverly positions the role of Twitter in this production as pharmakon. Calbi's analysis of the pharmakon recalls Derrida's famous essay, "Plato's Pharmacy," in which a pharmakon acts as both medicine and poison. Likewise, Calbi argues, social media introduces a participatory connectivity that acts as an addictive, sticky web for its users.

Calbi reacts to Such Tweet Sorrow with a slightly more skeptical tone than he shows in his film criticisms. He takes a more critically conservative stance by returning to the question of authenticity that he subverts in his previous chapters. Yet this platform and others in the social media sphere will surely be the new nexus in which similar critical questions of spectrality, remediation, and authenticity are posed over the next several years, perhaps even to the extent that all cinematic Shakespeares, even at their most spectral or peripheral, will also seem "placid," stable, and central by comparison. I predict that Calbi's concluding chapters will seem prescient as the spectral Shakespeares of new media will soon begin to haunt the thresholds of our scholarship in droves.

REFERENCES Calbi, Maurizio. 2013. Spectral Shakespeares: Media Adaptations in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Contributors

(/current)

After a thirty year career in education as a teacher and administrator, Jim (/previous)Amberg began working at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as a volunteer in the summer of 2001, distributing assistive listening devices and doing data entry work for the Education Department. The next year, he began audio (/about) describing and eventually also served as an usher and house manager. He was Access Coordinator in the Audience Services Office from May 2007- November 2012, wrote most of the open captioned scripts for the 2009-2012 (/archive) seasons, and ran the LED reader board for most of the captioned performances. He continues to audio describe (The Unfortunates and Cymbeline in 2013) and house manage for the Festival.

Michael Bahr is the Utah Shakespeare Festival's Education Director, with programs reaching 35,000 students annually. He has taught theatre as a high school teacher in California and Utah, created two community theater companies, and teaches theater education courses for Southern Utah University (SUU). A passionate advocate for educational theatre, Bahr serves on numerous boards including SUU's Center for Innovative Education, Utah State Office of Education Professional Outreach Program in the Schools, and the Executive Committee of the Shakespeare Theatre Association. He has testified on the economic impact of the arts in rural areas to the United States House of Representatives.

William C. Carroll is Professor of English at Boston University. Among his publications are The Great Feast of Language in Love's Labour's Lost, The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy, and Fat King, Lean Beggar: Representations of Poverty in the Age of Shakespeare. He has also published the following scholarly editions: Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women (New Mermaids); Shakespeare, Macbeth: Texts and Contexts (Bedford Shakespeare); Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Arden Third Series); Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (New Cambridge

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Shakespeare); and Thomas Middleton: Four Plays (New Mermaids). In 2005-2006 he served as President of the Shakespeare Association of America.

Dr. Sheila T. Cavanagh, founding director of the World Shakespeare Project (http://www.worldshakespeareproject.org (http://www.worldshakespeareproject.org)), is Professor of English and Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Emory. She also held the Masse- Martin/NEH Distinguished Teaching Professorship. Author of Wanton Eyes and Chaste Desires: Female Sexuality in the Faerie Queene and Cherished Torment: the Emotional Geography of Lady Mary Wroth's Urania, she has also published widely in the fields of pedagogy and of Renaissance literature. She is also active in the electronic realm, having directed the Emory Women Writers Resource Project (http://womenwriters.library.emory.edu (http://womenwriters.library.emory.edu)) since 1994 and serving for many years as editor of the online Spenser Review.

Theresa M. DiPasquale is the author of Literature and Sacrament: The Sacred and the Secular in John Donne (Duquesne University Press, 1999) and Refiguring the Sacred Feminine: The Poems of John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton (Duquesne University Press, 2008). Recent publications include "From Here to Aeviternity: Donne's Atemporal Clocks" and "Donne, Women, and the Spectre of Misogyny." She is the Gregory M. Cowan Professor in English Language and Literature at Whitman College, where she regularly teaches courses on Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare, and Shakespeare adaptation.

Mike Jensen is author of over 300 publications as sole or co-author, including Alzheimer's: The Answers You Need (Elder Books, 1997). He co- facilitated an early stage support group at the Stanford/VA Alzheimer's Research Center and contributed chapters to Shakespeare After Shakespeare: An Encyclopedia of the Bard in Mass Media and Popular Culture, two volumes (Greenwood Press, 2007); Shakespeare on Film, Television. and Radio: The Researcher's Guide (British Universities Film and Video Counsel, 2009), and The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts (Edinburgh University Press, 2011). He is a Contributing Editor for Shakespeare Newsletter.

Yu Jin Ko is Professor of English at Wellesley College. He is the author of Mutability and Division on Shakespeare's Stage (University of Delaware, 2004) and co-editor of Shakespeare's Sense of Character: On the Page and From the Stage (Ashgate, 2012); he has also written numerous articles on

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Shakespeare, especially Shakespeare in performance.

Sébastien Lefait is Lecturer in English at the University of Corsica. Besides articles about films and about Shakespeare's plays, he has published articles about the new forms of film adaptation. His work also focuses on the relationship between surveillance and audiovisual productions. He is the author of Surveillance on Screen: Monitoring Contemporary Films and Television Programs (Scarecrow Press, 2012) and has recently coedited a volume entitled In Praise of Cinematic Bastardy (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012). His current research focuses on the use of surveillance in TV series and in the theater and on the assets of surveillance in the context of cinematic adaptation.

Pauline Reid is a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia. Her project, "Through a Glass Darkly: The Early Modern Book as Spectacle," explores the intersections between print culture, visual rhetoric, and phenomenologies of sight.

Geoff Ridden was a member of the faculty at the University of Winchester (formerly King Alfred's College) for over thirty years. He currently lives in Ashland, Oregon, where he teaches at Southern Oregon University and gives occasional classes in connection with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF). He has written extensively on Renaissance literature and drama, and, since 2008, has reviewed the OSF's Shakespeare productions for the online journal Early Modern Literary Studies. He has also acted in a number of Shakespeare plays.

Isabelle Schwartz-Gastine is professor of Renaissance Drama at the University of Caen, France. Among other affiliations, she is a member of the Société Française Shakespeare (The French Shakespeare Society), The Stratford International Conference, The European Shakespeare Research Association, and The International Shakespeare Association. Her field of research is in performance studies, concerning the staging of the Shakespearean canon on the French stage. She has written many articles and chapters on this subject in international publications or books (Revue d'Histoire du Théâtre, Société Française Shakespeare, and The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare). She wrote a monograph on A Midsummer Night's Dream (Paris: Armand Colin, 2002), and one on King Lear (Neuilly: Atlande, 2007), and has edited several volumes. She is the translator of a volume of poetry by Debjani Chatterjee, I Was That Woman, Cette femme-là . . . (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000).

Kim Sturgess grew up in the UK but has spent periods living in the USA and

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Qatar. His first book, Shakespeare and the American Nation, was published in 2004 by Cambridge University Press. A second book, This Precious Isle, was published by Troubador in June 2011. Recently he was Co-Director of The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged, a community drama project staged at the Qatar National Theatre, February 2013. Kim is Assistant Professor of English and American Literature at Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.

Don Weingust is Director of Shakespeare Studies and Associate Professor of Theatre at the Center for Shakespeare Studies of SUU and the Utah Shakespeare Festival, where he is also a dramaturg. A Berkeley Ph.D., he has performed Off-Broadway and in regional repertory, is a member of Actors Equity Association, the International Shakespeare Conference, and is on the Editorial Board of Theatre Survey. He is founding Chair of the Shakespearean Performance Research Group of ASTR, author of books for Routledge (Acting from Shakespeare's First Folio: Theory, Text, and Performance) and Palgrave Macmillan (Original Practices, forthcoming), and many articles, including for the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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