Shakespeare Magazine 13

shakespeare
At last! A magazine with all the Will in the world
FREE
Issue 13
“To hell with the audience,
I’m talking to the gods”
IAN McKELLEN
on KING LEAR

“The successor to Camus’ The Rebel.”
Jim Douglas, author of Tokyo Nights
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message in tune with his original thinking, emphasising the importance of straying from the
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“IF YOU MAKE ANY STAND AGAINST POWER, THEN POWER WILL STAND AGAINST AND ON YOU.
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Welcome
Welcome
Photo: David Hammonds
to Issue 13 of Shakespeare Magazine
Every summer there is a Shakespeare Festival here in Bristol, and I
usually manage to miss most of it. This year was different. I saw an
eccentric play called Shakespeare’s Worst in a church hall. I saw an
inventive production of The Tempest in the open-air setting of the
Blaise Castle estate, and a ferociously funny Taming of the Shrew on
Brandon Hill. The latter also hosted a ludicrously amusing Comedy of
Errors by an all-male troupe who’d recently had their van stolen. I saw
four mad blokes doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a city farm,
and I saw a haunting Romeo and Juliet in a Victorian cemetery. I saw
a surprisingly enjoyable opera about Ophelia in a church. (I missed a
one-man King Lear because I turned up at the wrong church)
And I went to see a Bristol University professor talking about
Shakespeare in a pub. Needless to say, I enjoyed that.
I also enjoyed two things that weren’t part of the festival but were
happening at the same time – a production of Julius Caesar at the
historic Bristol Old Vic Theatre, and an extraordinary staged reading
of Hamlet by people of all ages and varying degrees of experience, the
culmination of one of the Old Vic’s adult courses.
The festival closed with a performance of Twelfth Night in the
verdant St George Park. It took place by a small lake, with the rain
absolutely bucketing down. At the end, clutching futile umbrellas, the
cast valiantly performed the song ‘The Rain it Raineth Every Day’.
It was a truly magnificent Shakespearean moment.
Enjoy your magazine.
Pat Reid, Founder & Editor
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shakespeare magazine 3

At last! A magazine with all the Will in the world
shakespeare
FREE
Issue 13
Contents
“To hell with the audience,
I’m talking to the gods”
IAN McKELLEN
on KING LEAR
Shakespeare Magazine
Issue Thirteen
November 2017
Publisher
JoAnn Markon
Founder & Editor
Pat Reid
Art Editor
Paul McIntyre
Contributing Writers
Julian Curry, Jem Bloomfield,
Jennifer Evans, Sara Read,
Duane Morin
Cover Portrait
Sir Ian McKellen by Sarah Dunn
Photography
Marc Brenner, Dawn Hamilton,
Manuel Harlan, Richard Lea-Hair,
Tanya Moutzalias, Chuk Nowak,
Historic Royal Palaces, Victorian
Illustrated Shakespeare Archive
Web Design
David Hammonds
Contact Us
shakespearemag@outlook.com
Facebook
facebook.com/ShakespeareMagazine
Twitter
@UKShakespeare
Website
www.shakespearemagazine.com
Newsletter
http://tinyletter.com/shakespearemag
Donate
https://www.paypal.me/
ShakespeareMagazine
6
“All the Men and
Women Merely
Players”
Ian McKellen, Fiona Shaw and
Patrick Stewart on how they
played three of Shakespeare’s
most iconic characters.
16 Shakespeare:
The Punk Years?
This year’s TV series Will had
plenty of attitude and style, but
was it Shakespeare?
22
Goat’s Dung,
Mummified Flesh
and Vomiting
The age of Shakespeare was a
great time for the written word,
but a really bad time to be sick.
27
The Bible
and the Bard
Why do some people believe
that Shakespeare was somehow
involved in the King James Bible?
.
32
“A Course of
Learning...”
Five things you absolutely
need to know if you’re new
to studying Shakespeare – for
students, and everyone else too.
40
Motor City
Confidential
Shakespeare Magazine meets
Sam White, the remarkable
founder and leader of
Shakespeare in Detroit.
46
Brain Candy
If you like
cartoons you’ll love Good Tickle
Brain creator Mya Gosling.
54
“Remember first to
possess his Books...”
A round-up of some of the
best and most entertaining
Shakespeare-related books
released so far this year.
64
The Word
of the Lord
Exploring Shakespeare’s
religious identity with Graham
Holderness, author of The Faith
of William Shakespeare.
shakespeare magazine 5

Shakespeare on Stage: Volume 2
“He should have
been able to control
his daughters, but he
couldn’t. And he can’t
control the weather.
The storm is introducing
him to the idea that he
is just a man, and an
old man at that”
Ian McKellen as King
Lear at Chichester
Festival Theatre, 2017.
Photo by Manuel
Harlan.
6 shakespeare magazine

Shakespeare on Stage: Volume 2
All the men
and women
merely players
For his latest book, experienced actor
Julian Curry – who himself has appeared in 21
of Shakespeare’s plays – spoke to 12 leading
colleagues about their experience of participating
in landmark Shakespearean productions, each
recreating in detail their memorable performance
in a major role. These extracts from the book
share insights from Ian McKellen on one of
Shakespeare’s most demanding roles,
King Lear; from Fiona Shaw on Shakespeare’s
Shrew, Katherine; and from Patrick Stewart
on his Las Vegas-set Shylock.
shakespeare magazine 7

Shakespeare on Stage: Volume 2
Ian McKellen
as Lear with
Danny Webb
as Gloucester
in King Lear.
Chichester
Festival Theatre,
2017. Photo by
Manuel Harlan.
IAN McKELLEN
on KING LEAR
Royal Shakespeare Company
Opened at the Courtyard Theatre,
Stratford-upon-Avon, 31 May 2007
Directed by Trevor Nunn
Lear has been described as a character who
never involves his brain in his gut reactions.
Does that ring true to you?
“I think he’s a man of habit. He’s got used to ruling
in the way he rules.”
He’s a loose cannon, isn’t he?
“Well, it’s an interesting character. He seems, at
the beginning of the play, to have set up a situation
which will amuse him. It will satisfy his desire to
retire, but not quite abdicate. He sets up a situation
which is a bit of a game to him. Right: which
of you three loves me best? He’s going to enjoy
hearing the answers. This is a great big day in his
life, when King Lear plans to give up many of his
powers in favour of his beloved daughter, whose
engagement is due to be announced. That’s why
Trevor [Nunn, the director] put two cushions on
the stage where the couple would eventually kneel
to be blessed by the King.
“However, it all goes wrong because it’s a stupid
idea, and he loses his temper, and is absolutely
cruel to the one he loves most – as you do when
you’re in a temper. But he’s an old man who is
greatly indulged and greatly feared. So you begin to
get a sense of what King Lear must have been like
in the past. He’s gathered all the power to himself
and said: I’m talking to God! So do what I say
or leave the country forever, out of my life! Does
that make him a loose cannon? Well, he’s a loose
cannon with a lot of cannonballs at his disposal.”
8 shakespeare magazine

Shakespeare on Stage: Volume 2
Some people think King Lear is suffering
from Alzheimer’s. Do you agree with that?
“Well, I don’t know. It’s very reassuring, isn’t it,
when someone comes along and says ‘Oh, King
Lear is a typical example of somebody who’s got
third-degree dementia.’ They put a label on it, as if
that explained the condition. It doesn’t, it just gives
it a label. I don’t think Lear does anything that we
can’t recognise as being absolutely plausible. When
you’re sitting on the ground with Gloucester,
a man you don’t know or recognise, and then
momentarily give him a name, it’s no help for
the director to say ‘You’re behaving like this, Ian,
because you’ve got Alzheimer’s.’ It’s enough for you
not to recognise the man you’re being very friendly
to. The important thing about the scenes in which
the Alzheimer’s is on display, as it were, is that he
does what he does. Let the audience put a label on
it if they wish. The actor’s job is just to ask: How is
he behaving? What is he saying? What is he doing
here? Who is he ignoring? What has he forgotten?”
You told me once about Macbeth’s sense of
humour. Has King Lear got one?
“Did he do some funny things?”
You laugh quite a lot.
“Well, I employ a man who makes jokes, the Fool.
So yes. Many kings have had their fools to just help
them keep sane, because when you are so powerful
you perhaps need someone who can say things that
nobody else could say.”
Soliloquies?
“He doesn’t have any.”
Hamlet’s got five and Lear’s got none.
“I know, it’s wretched, it’s absolutely wretched.”
Did Shakespeare make a mistake there, do
you think?
“Yes. Absolutely. Everybody else gets them.
Edmund gets them. He’s the most horrible
person, but he talks to the audience, so they all
McKellen as Lear. Photo by Manuel Harlan.
like Edmund. It’s the same with Iago. Othello gets
so frustrated because he doesn’t get to talk to the
audience, and nor does King Lear. It was an early
preoccupation in rehearsal, I kept saying to Trevor
‘Why doesn’t he talk to the audience?’ But you
have to say to yourself: To hell with the audience,
I’m not doing it for them, I’m talking to the gods.
And he’s got his Fool to talk to.
“It’s an interesting character trait, that where
other characters like Macbeth need the audience’s
reassurance and encouragement, King Lear doesn’t
seem to be that sort of person. He doesn’t ask for
help. He has substitutions for a soliloquy, but not
the thing itself. It’s when the gods let him down
“We were cold and wet, shaking with cold. It was
quite helpful to us to be extremely uncomfortable”
shakespeare magazine 9

Shakespeare on Stage: Volume 2
that you’d like him to turn to the audience. In fact
I think perhaps there were a couple of lines which I
did sneak in and say to the audience.”
You had real rain in the storm scene, didn’t
you?
“Oh God yes. Trevor was very insistent on that.
Then they weren’t able to light the scene, so the
audience could hardly see that it was happening.
But we were cold and wet, sometimes literally
shaking with cold. Actually it was quite helpful
to us to be extremely uncomfortable. I remember
saying in rehearsal that we should go out into a
storm and I’d take off my clothes to feel what it’s
like, and then remember it. But in the end we
didn’t need to do that, because we had to endure
the real thing on stage.”
I’m surprised you didn’t all get pneumonia.
You dried off quickly afterwards?
“You have to. Very uncomfortable.”
What do you think Lear’s doing? Why does
he want the storm? Why is he welcoming it,
asking for it?
“When it’s raining, and you’re outside in a real
old storm with thunder and lightning, and there’s
nowhere to go, you’re simply a victim. You can’t
control the rain and tell it to stop. It’s just there.
He’s trying to relate the reality of getting cold and
wet, and being frightened, with what it felt like
when his daughters broke all the conventions of
his rule by hurting him, thwarting him. He should
have been able to control them, but he couldn’t.
And he can’t control the weather. The storm is
introducing him to the idea that he is just a man,
and an old man at that. He had never thought of
himself as just a man: he’s King Lear.”
So it helps him come to terms with what’s
happened.
“And understand it, yes.”
Tamara Lawrance as Cordelia, Sinead Cusack as ‘Countess of Kent’ and Ian McKellen
as Lear. Chichester Festival Theatre, 2017. Photo by Manuel Harlan.
10 shakespeare magazine

Shakespeare on Stage: Volume 2
FIONA SHAW on
KATHERINE FROM THE
TAMING OF THE SHREW
Fiona Shaw as
Marla Painter
in the TV series
Channel Zero.
Royal Shakespeare Company
Opened at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre,
Stratford-upon-Avon, 8 September 1987
Directed by Jonathan Miller
The Taming of the Shrew has been called
barbarous, offensive and misogynistic.
What would you say about that?
“I’m sure it’s all of those. I’m not offended by it
myself particularly, but I think people could be,
yes.”
Depending on how it’s done.
“I think so, yes. I was directed by Jonathan Miller
who, of course, had a strong intellectual premise
for it, which is that Katherine was like a delinquent
child and has to be brought out of her delinquency,
and there’s no doubt she behaves badly at the
beginning. Jonathan felt that there’s only in or
out of the society, and at the end she opts to stay
in. But I think that’s more of a premise and a
conclusion than what the experience of the play
actually is.”
There was a programme note on ‘deprivation
syndrome’. Can you explain?
“It’s related to the delinquency I alluded to. I think
Jonathan felt that she was deprived of her mother’s
love.”
There’s no mother in the text, is there.
“That applies to so many female characters in
Shakespeare. There’s no mother in plenty of texts.
Juliet has a mother but she is not a very good
one. With Viola and all those heroines, there’s
no mention of a mother. There has been a lot
shakespeare magazine 11

Shakespeare on Stage: Volume 2
“Bianca is the favourite of the father. Katherine
is the unloved child who behaves unlovably”
Fiona Shaw
as Mombi in
the TV series
Emerald City.
written about this, the vulnerability of young girls
becoming women, they go through the initiation
into adulthood unprotected by a mother. Therefore
they have to face the world of men and the world
of society for a moment before they resolve –
usually in Elizabethan times – back into the home
and probably don’t come out again. That’s the
pattern on which it’s built.
“Katherine is particularly deprived because
clearly Bianca is the favourite of the father. She
is the unloved child who behaves unlovably,
which is a sort of circular thing that many people
experience. But I don’t think plays can be reduced
to family psychology or family dynamics, because
there is also the individual.”
You know how actors often look at what
other characters say about them, when
they’re developing their characters. In this
instance I wonder how helpful it would be,
because Katherine is described as being ‘a
shrew’, as ‘stark mad’, as ‘curst’, as a ‘fiend of
hell’. However, your own lines hardly seem
to give you an opportunity to justify such
extremes. Was that a problem?
“Plays are partly about the perspectives people
have on each other, but the actor must reveal the
character in as many ways as possible, and playing
up others’ views alone wouldn’t do that. Well,
she’s clearly not quiet, gentle and retiring. And it
would probably not help if you couldn’t believe
her to be as described. There’s no doubt that she’s
energetic. When she speaks she has great energy.
The first wooing scene [2.1] is wonderful because
she has absolutely got the capacity to reply to
Petruchio using his language and turning it back
on him. She’s got this table-tennis ability to hit
back. And that implies a conceptual framework
of her mind. You can’t add any old caricature to
playing a Shakespeare part, you have to play what’s
there. And you also learn the rhythm and pattern
of the person, and how your own pattern matches
or doesn’t match theirs. You’re trying to find it in
order to match, so that it humanises, and in doing
that you discover a lot about them. But it’s best to
follow their pattern.”
12 shakespeare magazine

Shakespeare on Stage: Volume 2
PATRICK STEWART on
SHYLOCK FROM THE
MERCHANT OF VENICE
because they believe it’s anti-Semitic. I was going
to direct it at the Santa Clara Shakespeare Festival,
but the chairman of the board put up a very vocal
set of objections to doing it. So I spoke with the
congregation in the synagogue, they told me what
all their complaints were, and I think I countered
them pretty effectively.”
Were they persuaded?
“No. They still wouldn’t allow it to be done, so I
never directed it. It irritates me so much because
the play is no more anti-Semitic than Othello is
racist. And even though there are characters who
express their anti-Semitism very strongly, very
cruelly and savagely, it’s no more cruel and savage
than a lot of what Iago says about Othello.”
Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: Insurrection (1998).
Royal Shakespeare Company
Opened at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre,
Stratford-upon-Avon, 19 May 2011
Directed by Rupert Goold
I believe you’ve been in The Merchant of Venice
five times, including a one-man show you
wrote about Shylock. What’s drawn you to do
it again and again?
“Well, this is with hindsight. I grew up as a bit of
an outsider, and given that I’ve only ever played
Shylock and never any other part in the play, my
identification was very much with him and that
character, and a sense that he gets badly treated
and that the play is misunderstood. I have taught
in colleges and universities where it is banned,
I’d like to focus on the most recent
production you’ve been in, the one set
in Las Vegas. Tell me about the opening.
You had gaming tables, mobsters, a miniskirted
hostess yelling ‘Keno, keno!’ –
whatever that is – and someone doing Elvis
impersonations. Am I right?
“Yes, yes, we did, we did.”
This was the opening, before anyone spoke
a line of Shakespeare’s text?
“Yes. It was very Rupert Goold in style. It began
with just an empty stage, and then gaming tables
came rolling on from the wings with a lot of
flamboyantly dressed showgirls and tourists and
croupiers and workers in the industry. And the
main individual in that section was the actor who
later proved to be playing Launcelot Gobbo. He
was an Elvis impersonator, he sang one of the
King’s hit songs dressed as Elvis, while the opening
developed into a riotous Las Vegas cabaret scene.
And Shylock walked very briefly across the back of
the stage.
“People would not even have been aware that I
shakespeare magazine 13

Shakespeare on Stage: Volume 2
was there, but I said: Everybody’s in this scene, I’ve
got to be part of it too in some way! And then the
scene dissolved, dissolved, dissolved, until sitting
alone at a café table was Antonio with Salerio and
Solanio.”
Tell me about Shylock’s first proper
appearance, in Act 1, Scene 3.
“In Rupert’s production it was set in his office,
which was very luxurious and beautiful. I chose to
play it almost exclusively for comedy, because I find
it very funny. And to mock the play’s description of
Shylock almost as an animal on the first occasion
we saw him. I was beautifully dressed in a pale grey
three-piece suit, looking very elegant and very, very
sophisticated and not remotely Jewish.”
No beard? No gaberdine? They’re mentioned
in the text.
“I had a small trim beard, nothing big and bushy.
But no gaberdine.”
‘You… Spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,’ he
says [1.3].
“There are garments that Jews wear on certain
festival days. I seem to remember rationalising it in
that way. But when he goes to do business he looks
like everybody else. I wore a toupee. I had beautiful
silver hair, perfectly cut with a parting, and looking
elegant and respectable and quite attractive – I
hoped. And one of the things we did was to
emphasise that Shylock was a serious moneylender.
He loaned huge sums to contractors, and
in fact he was also a property developer. We had
models of high-rise buildings that he was obviously
underwriting and building himself.”
So he was extremely rich.
“Very rich, yes. I had a walking stick that I carried
all the time, which I sort of needed because
Shylock had a bad leg. But it could double as
a weapon, something to defend himself with
if necessary. It also served as a golf club. In the
opening we put an upturned tumbler on the stage
and I had three rolled-up bits of paper – this was
my invention which Rupert embraced – and I
turned my walking stick upside down and was
potting the balls of paper trying to get them into
the glass, going across the width of the Stratford
stage. I never once got one in until the very last
performance, the last ball.”
You changed Shylock’s first line: ‘Three
thousand ducats’ to ‘Three million dollars’.
“Yes. Again I take full responsibility for that. My
first line became ‘Three million dollars, well.’
That was great. And of course I loved it because
it was the first thing the audience heard me say,
and if they knew what the line is normally, they
understood that it was kind of setting a tone for
what was to follow. So in that scene I had a lot of
fun, first taunting Bassanio, then on the arrival of
Antonio, through brilliant use of language, teasing
him, then antagonising and finally pacifying him.
Once Shylock realises the opportunity that is being
presented to him, to have Antonio and Bassanio
in his debt, it’s irresistible. He should have said
to them: I’m sorry, I can’t help you, you’ve come
to the wrong man. But he’s turned on by the
knowledge that this will give him leverage over the
Christians, because it’s a lot of money.”
‘Signior Antonio, many a time and oft / In the
Rialto you have rated me / About my moneys
and my usances’ [1.3]. How did you play that
speech in Las Vegas?
“I wanted to show him as a charming, intelligent,
witty man who may or may not have been
wronged, but who chose to treat it all as harmless
fun, even though it was painful inside, because
the objective is to seduce them both.
“He needs to get them to agree to borrow
money from him on his terms, which of course
start funny and become ghastly.”
Buy the book
Extracts taken from Shakespeare on Stage:
Volume 2 – Twelve Leading Actors on Twelve
Key Roles by Julian Curry, £14.99 paperback,
published by Nick Hern Books.
14 shakespeare magazine

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Will TV series
hakespeare:
16 shakespeare magazine

Will TV series
Left: Will stars
Olivia DeJonge
as Alice Burbage
and Laurie
Davidson as Will
Shakespeare.
The Punk Years?
Y
Earlier this year, audiences in the USA were
treated to Will, a ten-part television drama
about the young William Shakespeare.
Duane Morin (of Shakespeare Geek fame)
avidly watched and blogged about it.
So we asked him to sum it all up for us.
ears from now, I will look back fondly on the
summer of 2017 when, for ten glorious weeks, we
were treated to the wacky misadventures of William
Shakespeare on television. Will appeared on the
TNT network on Monday nights, and just like
that I was catapulted back to the days of must-see
TV. Forget about streaming or DVRing it. Monday
nights I was there in front of the television, just like
the good old days, with a bowl of popcorn close at
hand, laptop at the ready (both to live blog as well
as to research accuracy).
We’ve had Shakespeare as a series before. The
Canadian Slings & Arrows (2003-2006) is perhaps
the best-known example of how to do it well.
The still relatively new BBC Series Upstart Crow,
which launched last year, is rapidly gaining in
popularity, with two seasons complete and a third
already ordered. Shakespeare fans know how to
find those. Will, however, had the potential to
be different. This wasn’t a Shakespeare show that
happened to be on television, this was a television
show that happened to be about Shakespeare. The
potential audience for something like this would be
tremendous.
I was cautiously optimistic. I started imagining
coming in to work on Tuesday mornings hearing
co-workers discussing what happened on Will last
night, like they do with Game of Thrones.
Will on TNT, as I took to calling it – because
it makes Google sad when you try to search for a
generic word like “will” and expect it to know what
you meant – was supposed to be a “modern, punk
rock” retelling of Shakespeare’s lost years. I was
actually quite impressed with how well they kept
shakespeare magazine 17

Will TV series
Left: Will and
Alice with
actor Richard
Burbage
(Mattias
Inwood).
Right: Ewen
Bremner as
the villainous
Richard
Topcliffe.
Far right:
Olivia DeJonge
as Alice.
to that timeline, knowing well that the hits like
Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet – you know, the ones
people might actually recognize – wouldn’t come
for several years. Would an audience of people
who generally only know as much Shakespeare as
they remember from high school be entertained
watching him struggle through writing The Two
Gentlemen of Verona?
The sights and sounds of Shakespeare’s London
were ridiculously over-the-top right from the start,
and I loved it. The soundtrack is loaded with hits
from The Clash and Sex Pistols, to give you some
idea. Everybody’s dressed in bright colors, masks,
face paint... it looked far more like the modern
idea of a Renaissance Faire than was necessary,
but I could live with that. I did notice, as I read
comments on the web, that many could not. If this
wasn’t going to be historically accurate, they were
out. Not me. I was, as I’ve said many times before,
in it for the Shakespeare.
Apparently, the producers had a different
audience in mind, as the show also right out of the
gate tried to announce that it was just as good as
Game of Thrones. Shakespeare arrives in London
and watches a man being disemboweled. Not
“Will turns his head and the audience knows that
something disgusting has just happened”. I mean,
we see a man’s intestines pulled out right there on
screen. Lovely.
But modern standards are not defined by
violence alone, oh no! There must be sex! Fear not,
there’s way too much of that as well. I originally
“We’ve had Shakespeare as a TV series before, but
the potential audience for Will was tremendous”
18 shakespeare magazine

Will TV series
“The sights and sounds of Shakespeare’s London
were ridiculously over-the-top, and I loved it”
wrote, “I didn’t know people were allowed to get
that naked for that long”. It’s not like TNT is a
premium channel – it’s basic cable. They even dug
into the Elizabethan dictionary to pull out the
archaic word “swive’, which any modern reader
can probably figure out from context even without
somebody saying, “Hey, swive you!” Do they think
that sounds like Shakespeare? Check the text, it’s
not a word he ever used.
Once you get past the sex and violence, was
there actually an interesting story? I wish I could
say there was. The writers decided to make the
Catholic/Protestant thing the main mover of the
plot. Shakespeare’s not only Catholic in this one,
he’s entrusted with secret messages to deliver to
his cousin (I think?) in London, who is a big deal
in the Catholic uprising. This is hammered home
immediately – if you’re found to be a Catholic
sympathizer, expect treatment much like the poor
gentleman getting an inside look at his... insides.
So naturally, Shakespeare’s found out almost
immediately, by a street urchin who tries to rob
him. There’s your major story arc – when will the
truth be revealed? When will everyone find out
that Shakespeare is a dirty Catholic, and what will
happen to him?
I didn’t care. Because if the show was
pretending to tell Shakespeare’s timeline, then we
know what happens. There is literally no suspense.
You’re not going to kill off your title character. Bad
news for any characters that didn’t map directly to
a real-world equivalent, though.
shakespeare magazine 19

Will TV series
Laurie
Davidson plays
a cocky Will
Shakespeare
with bags
of youthful
swagger.
There were moments of greatness, but only
moments. They wanted to end big on Richard III
and built to it over several episodes, but for my
money, the show’s greatest moment came when
Shakespeare was trying to convince Kemp not to
quit the theatre, and described his plans for Falstaff
(though not by name). He told us his desire to put
characters on stage that would be unlike anything
ever seen before. Hearing that, and knowing what
it foretold, would have had me hooked for as many
seasons as it took.
At the end of it all, there were glimpses at
Shakespeare’s writing, but not nearly enough.
James and Richard Burbage and “Jack” Kemp
are all major characters, and if I’d gotten a show
where the four of them never left the theatre, just
sat around all day talking about roles, and doing
snatches of dialogue, I would have been in heaven.
That, however, wouldn’t have made a very popular
show, and it wouldn’t have had a large audience,
and it probably would have been cancelled after
just one season.
WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED
ANYWAY.
In the end, Will only got a single ten-episode
season, and by some measures was one of the
network’s worst-performing shows. If that was its
destiny from the beginning, I wish I’d gotten the
show I wanted. It couldn’t have done any worse.
But at least it would have had an audience among
the Shakespeare Geeks.
Read Duane’s Shakespeare Geek blog,
including all his episode reviews of Will.
20 shakespeare magazine

Medicine in Shakespeare’s time
Jennifer and Sara’s book,
displayed along with
tools of the trade for a
17th century physician.
Shakespeare’s son-in-law
Dr John Hall would have
used some of these in
Stratford-upon-Avon.
22 shakespeare magazine

Medicine in Shakespeare’s time
A set of early modern
bloodletting knives. (Image
courtesy of Wellcome
Library, London)
Goat’s Dung,
Mummified Flesh
and Vomiting...
Yes, this is what passed for state-of-the-art health care
in Shakespeare’s day. Jennifer Evans and Sara Read,
authors of Maladies & Medicine: Exploring Health & Healing
1540-1740 reveal six stomach-emptying (sometimes
quite literally so) cures from early modern England
B
ack in William Shakespeare’s time, the concept
of the four humours dominated ideas about the
body. The humours were fluids: blood, choler,
melancholy, and phlegm, which needed to be
kept in equilibrium in order for the body to stay
healthy. Illness was usually, although not always,
understood as an accumulation of excess or a
corruption of one of these fluids.
For the most part, medical treatments were
gentle ones designed to restore balance by drawing
out ill humours and purging the body of excess.
Remedies might also balance out the body by
counteracting the effects of diseases. For example,
cooling drinks might reduce the heat of the body
caused by fever. Shakespeare’s own son-in-law,
Dr John Hall, husband of his elder daughter
Susanna, practised these mainly conservative cures
in the first instance for many illnesses. So, in one
case he prescribed a double-folded linen cloth filled
with butter to be placed on the side of an elderly
lady with stomach ache.
Not all remedies were pleasant though,
particularly not when viewed from our modern
perspective. Practitioners could resort to drastic
means of purging the body, or could prescribe
medicines that contained unappetising ingredients.
Here are six remedies you would probably want to
avoid today...
shakespeare magazine 23

Medicine in Shakespeare’s time
Bloodletting
Above: The body of a plague victim
is dissected. Right: Cupping. (Images
courtesy of Wellcome Library, London)
Blisters
Many practitioners thought that raising blisters on
the skin was a good way of drawing out unwanted
humours and therefore disease. An anonymous
treatise from a 1577 book recommended the
notoriously dangerous green flies known as
cantharides (actually not flies at all, but small
iridescent beetles) which, we’re told, were easily
available from the local apothecary shop. These
were placed in a mortar with vinegar and some
breadcrumbs to make a paste, which was applied to
“the sore place, that is, where the most grief is” for
around seven hours.
Once dry, it had to be teased off with the tip
of a knife. After the skin blistered it had to be
burst and, as the author explained, “with your
finger thrust out the water softly”. The problem
with blisters was that while the “the pain of the
disease is gone”, the patient then had to heal from
the new sore.
Imagine if you felt poorly and your doctor
prescribed cutting open a vein in your arm or
ankle, with a lance and no anaesthetic, to remove
some of your “excess” blood. The amount of blood
removed was dependent on the condition. Because
blood was considered to be a “hot” humour,
phlebotomy was often used to take heat from the
body in the case of fevers. It wasn’t recommended
to be used on children, fortunately, since all their
blood was needed to help them grow. Doctors
didn’t let blood willy-nilly. As one sixteenthcentury
physician (who published a book as ‘A. T’
in 1596) instructed, before letting blood you must
consider “the age of the patient, the complexion,
the time of the year, the region, the custom, the
strength, and the vehemence of the disease”. Not
all bloodletting was done by cutting into the body.
As many people know, an alternative was to apply
leeches to the skin.
24 shakespeare magazine

Medicine in Shakespeare’s time
“Dung, usually from a cow, formed the main
component of several plasters to ease swelling”
Choler (left) and Melancholy (right),
two of the four humours. (Images
courtesy of Wellcome Library, London)
Induced vomiting
Most people today hate being sick, as they did
in the past. One early doctor, Philip Barrough,
described in his 1583 medical guide how
unpleasant feelings of nausea came from “a naughty
and wicked motion of the expulsive virtue of the
stomach”. But this innate urge to eject things
was put to good use in early modern times, when
emetic medicines that caused patients to be sick
were a routine cure.
Vomiting was also used to ward off ill health.
John Clarke, an apothecary, took “a vomit” once
every month or six weeks as a preventative against
all manner of infirmities. He wrote that if everyone
did the same then it would save 20,000 pounds of
tobacco which was currently being used by people
as a medicine. Clarke described how to make a
posset that would bring up a great quantity of
phlegm and other corrupt humours, leaving you
feeling clear headed and very well.
Mummified flesh
In Shakespeare’s time, remedies composed of
multiple ingredients could also include some
rather unappealing components. A text published
a few decades later (in the 1650s) claimed that
many “medicaments are taken out of a Live Man,
or from a dead man. From a live man, we have
Hairs, Nails, Spittle, Ear-wax, Milk, Seed, Blood,
Menstrual Blood, Secondines, Urine, Dung, Lice,
Wormes, Stones of Bladder & Kidneyes, &c. From
a dead man, Skin, Fat, Scul, Brain, Teeth, Bones
Mummy”. Preserved human flesh (mummy) was
found in several medicines including an unguent
to staunch blood recommended in a 1605 medical
text by Christoph Wirsung, a German physician.
Dead men’s flesh didn’t always have to be put into a
medicine. Many people waited at the gallows in the
hope that they could have their boils and swellings
stroked with the hanged man’s hand, which was
thought to have healing properties.
shakespeare magazine 25

Medicine in Shakespeare’s time
Animal
The method
known as
Trepanning
involved drilling
a hole in the
patient’s head.
(Image courtesy of
Wellcome Library,
London)
Breast milk
In early modern notions of the body, breast milk
was created from menstrual blood, which was
diverted after the birth of the child to the breasts
where it was ‘concocted’ into milk. It was thought
to have healing properties. William Copland’s
Treasurie of Health suggested that “The yolke
of an egge, mingled w[ith] Rose water, bran, &
womans milk” was a good medicine to assuage
pain and to drive unhealthy humours out of the
body. While Thomas Vicary’s English-mans Treasure
recommended a mixture of wormwood, plantain,
rose water, breast milk and egg white to heal
bloodshot eyes.
Dung
It wasn’t just parts of the human body and its
products that were used in medicines. Plasters
sometimes contained rather pungent components.
Dung, usually from a cow, formed the main
component of several plasters recommended to
ease swelling. Andrew Boorde’s Breuiary of Health,
for example, suggested a remedy made of goat
dung and honey. Christoph Wirsung’s medical text
suggested a plaster of bayberries mixed with goat’s
dung to ease the dropsy, a disease characterised by
watery swelling of the stomach.
Jennifer Evans is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hertfordshire,
Sara Read is Lecturer in English at Loughborough University.
Maladies and Medicines: Exploring Health and Healing, 1540-1740
is available now, published by Pen and Sword Books.
Visit the authors’ blog: earlymodernmedicine.com
26 shakespeare magazine

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Shakespeare and the Bible
The Bible
and the Bard
One of those strange literary legends that refuses to go
away is the notion that William Shakespeare had something
author of Shakespeare and the Psalms Mystery
investigation began with a message from the Globe...
Last spring I received an email from
Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Alongside
performing Shakespeare’s plays in a
reconstruction of a theatre from his time,
they do a great deal of educational work, increasing
people’s appreciation of the history and context of
the plays, and the world they arose from.
The email was from Dr Will Tosh, a Research
Fellow and Lecturer at Shakespeare’s Globe, who
had a peculiar question to ask: did Shakespeare
help write the King James Bible? I should point out
that Will had not come up with this idea himself,
and in fact did not believe it was true. He had
been asked by a member of the public if it was the
case, and had been rather taken aback. Because
of the public outreach work Will is involved with
at Shakespeare’s Globe, he is occasionally asked
odd questions like this: people present him with
myths and legends about Shakespeare and ask him
to confirm or deny them. Given the unparalleled
place Shakespeare holds in English-speaking
culture, it is not surprising that various stories have
grown up around his name. Scholars are fond of
speculating about what happened to him during
the “lost years” in his life as a young man, when the
historical records are frustratingly (or intriguingly)
28 shakespeare magazine
vague about where he might have been. (I was
once asked by one of my own students whether
Shakespeare had ever lived in her home town, a
small village in the North of England, because
there was a local legend that this was where the
great poet had spent the lost years.) Some stories
are more elaborate, such as the theories, believed
by a number of people, that Shakespeare did not
in fact write the plays ascribed to him, and that
his name was used as a cover by another person,
whether Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, the
Earl of Essex or Queen Elizabeth herself.
Will was used to dealing with these sort of
queries, but being asked whether Shakespeare had
written part of the King James Bible—specifically
the 46th psalm—was a new one to him. As he
explained in his message, the question was so
unexpected, and the idea seemed so impossible,
that his immediate instinct was to scoff at the
story. The idea seemed so bizarre, however, that he
wondered where on earth it could have originated.
He even wondered whether there was some obscure
manuscript somewhere which might have given rise
to this rumour, since it seemed so unlikely to have
sprung from nowhere. The very impossibility of
the story had made him pause. Since he knew that

Shakespeare and the Bible
The title page to the
(c. 1576 – c. 1621)
iStock
“The idea seemed so bizarre that he wondered
where on earth it could have originated”
shakespeare magazine 29

Shakespeare and the Bible
Words of
Power: Reading
Shakespeare and
the Bible.
my research concerned the connections between
Shakespeare and the Bible, and that I had just
published a book on the subject, Will got in touch
with me to ask if I had ever heard the rumour, and
what my opinion of it was.
Before going any further, I should explain the
details of the rumour itself. What I have called
the “Psalm 46 legend” in this book is the idea that
Shakespeare can be “found” in the 46th Psalm
in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible by
counting 46 words from the beginning and 46
words from the end. It states that in doing so, the
reader will find the word “shake” and the word
“spear”. Depending on which version you hear,
this may be connected to the idea that Shakespeare
was 46 years old when the KJV was published.
What this means also differs depending on the
version of the legend. One variation says that the
translators of the KJV hid Shakespeare’s name in
this way to show their enjoyment of his works.
Another version claims that Shakespeare actually
wrote the version of Psalm 46 which appears in the
KJV, and “signed” his work in this way. Either way,
it assumes a connection between Shakespeare and
Psalm 46, in a quite direct and personal way.
In fact I had heard the story before. Once years
ago from an editor for whom I was reviewing
crime novels, once as an odd tale from a friend of
a friend (though I can’t remember which friend)
and once from a fellow scholar as an example of the
sort of impossible thing people will believe about
Shakespeare. It is one of the stranger stories that
gets passed around about the man from Stratfordupon-Avon,
a species of literary urban legend.
Having used that term, I should state immediately
that I do not believe the story. As Will thought, it
simply does not make sense. For anyone reading
this book simply to find out whether Shakespeare
did or did not write the 46th psalm, this may be
pre-empting my conclusion somewhat (though
it may save them some valuable time.) In my
opinion, there is a wealth of historical, literary and
30 shakespeare magazine

Shakespeare and the Bible
“I did not think the story was true, but proving it
untrue opened up much more interesting issues”
textual evidence that he did not. Of course we can
never be 100 percent certain of almost anything in
historical research: a document could turn up, or
a source might reveal unforeseen implications, or
a technical analysis of an artefact could suddenly
throw out the careful balance of probabilities
drawn from the available evidence which produces
scholarly consensus.
But I am reasonably confident in saying
that—barring a personal letter turning up from
Ben Jonson asking William Shakespeare how he’s
getting along with that psalm they asked him to
write—this rumour is untrue.
That does not mean, however, that the
matter ends there. On the contrary, for me it was
where the story began. I wrote back to Dr Tosh,
explaining that I knew of the story, and agreeing
with him that it could not be true. In order to give
some more authority to this statement than my
personal “Nah, no chance”, I made a quick survey
of the relevant sources. I consulted some sixteenthcentury
Bible translations, the biographies of a pair
of bishops, confirmed the font used in the King
James Bible (JKB), searched another poet’s version
of the Psalms. After that I was in a position to write
a fuller response to the enquiry from Shakespeare’s
Globe, giving some solid historical and literary
justification for my opinion. That was not the
only reason I’d delved into the historical sources,
though.
The Psalm 46 rumour had always interested
me, partly because it was so bizarre, and I enjoyed
tracing the various ways in which it could have
possibly been true, and marshalling the evidence
to prove it was not. The story branched off into
questions about the translation of the King James
Bible, the theatre industry of Shakespeare’s time,
the religious politics of England under James I,
the way Early Modern books were printed, and
attitudes to the Bible. Though I did not think the
story was true, proving it untrue opened up much
more interesting issues.
One of the most interesting issues it raised was
that of the legend itself. Why did anyone believe
it in the first place? Who had the idea? Why
might it have suggested itself to them? What did
people find attractive about this rumour, and why
did they repeat it to others? Why, for example,
was it repeated in a respectable commentary on
the Psalms published by a major US Christian
publisher in 2014? Answering those questions
involved investigating a whole other set of issues:
the world of Edwardian literary culture, the temple
worship of Ancient Israel, the reputation of the
Bible in universities, and the sermons of modern
pastors.
Hovering over all of them were the bigger
questions of how Shakespeare became the most
famous author in the history of the English
language, and how the Bible has been treated
differently over the last few hundred years. From
a single question about the authorship of a psalm
in the King James Bible, I found myself chasing
down the passages of historical research in a dozen
different directions. This book is the result of
that headlong chase, and tells some of the stories
I came across along the way. As I said above, I do
not think Shakespeare wrote the 46th psalm. That
might be disappointing to some readers: it would
have been a weird and cool anecdote if it had been
true. But like anyone who deals with the literary
past, I think the real story is far more fascinating
and surprising than any urban legend. This book’s
title reflects that idea: the real mysteries around
Shakespeare and the Bible are not this peculiar
legend, but the deep and engrossing history of
these texts, the centuries of human emotion,
reflection and hope bound up with them. The
legend of Psalm 46 claims to tell us a secret, but
it directs our attention away from the deeper and
more rewarding mysteries.
Shakespeare and the Psalms Mystery
is published by Erewash Press
shakespeare magazine 31

Studying Shakespeare
“Did you know that,
as a King’s Man,
the 41-year-old
Shakespeare could
easily have been
blown up in the
Gunpowder Plot?”
An actor plays plotter
Guy Fawkes as part of
the 2005 Gunpowder
Treason event at the
Tower of London.
Photo by Richard Lea-
Hair/Historic Royal
Palaces/Newsteam.
32 shakespeare magazine

Studying Shakespeare
“A course
of learning
and
ingenious studies...”
Starting university? Shakespeare Magazine’s
Editor Pat Reid shares the FIVE things you
absolutely need to know if you’re new to studying
Shakespeare in depth (and you want to get the
most out of your English Literature degree).
hakespeare Magazine is based in the
English city of Bristol, which is also home
to one of the major British universities
(well, two if you include nearby UWE).
At this time of year, I can’t help but notice the
influx of new, fresh-faced young students as the
academic year begins, and I often take a moment
to reflect on my own, not-exactly-distinguished
university career.
Yes, the sad truth is I was a lousy student. But
I’ve learned a lot since then. And I reckon that if I
ever had the chance to be a student again, I could
actually end up with a pretty decent degree.
One of the reasons why students can
underperform is because it’s such an overwhelming
experience. You’re bombarded with so much
information about your subject that you end up
not knowing what you’re supposed to be doing.
It’s easy to find yourself wasting all your time and
energy on areas that are ultimately irrelevant.
So right from the start you need to work out
two things:
1. What are the key areas I need to cover?
2. How can I add something of myself that
will make me stand out from everyone else?
With this in mind, here are Shakespeare
Magazine’s Five Essential Tips that every new
student of Shakespeare should pay attention to.
shakespeare magazine 33

Studying Shakespeare
Martin
ONE: Get a grasp
of all Shakespeare’s
plays, not just
the big ones.
If you’re only familiar with a few of Shakespeare’s
most famous plays, like Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet
and Julius Caesar, the full list of 38 plays can look a
little scary. But it’s really important that you delve
into as many as possible if you want to be ahead
of the game. To lots of people, the least attractive
titles are Shakespeare’s History plays, because they
just look like a traffic jam of names and numbers
– Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry VI, Part 3, and
so on. However, be assured that once you start
actually getting into the Histories, this is where
you will find a lot of Shakespeare’s best and most
entertaining stuff.
It’s a similar story with Shakespeare’s Comedies,
which are an awful lot ruder and funnier than
many people realise. I’d even go as far as to argue
that contemporary hit comedies on TV such as
Peep Show and The Inbetweeners are the direct
descendants of Shakespeare plays like The Comedy
of Errors and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
A great way to investigate Shakespeare’s
complete plays is with the Shakespeare300 app.
It’s very cheap, and it gives you a clear and simple
introduction to each play, along with some really
useful information and statistics. Then, when you
start reading chunks of plays or entire works, the
www.playshakespeare.com website has another
excellent free app, Shakespeare Pro, where you can
easily access the complete plays.
Freeman
and Lauren O’Neil
in Richard III, 2014.
Photo by Marc
Brenner.
“Once you start getting into the Histories, this is
where you find a lot of Shakespeare’s best stuff”
34 shakespeare magazine

Studying Shakespeare
Queen Elizabeth I
in Horrible Histories
Special: Sensational
Shakespeare, 2016.
Photo courtesy of
the BBC.
TWO: Read up
on Shakespeare’s
biography and the
history of the times
he lived in.
You can’t study Shakespeare without being at least
partly a historian. It’s an inescapable fact that the
more you know about the historical background
to Shakespeare’s life and times, the greater will
be your understanding of the man’s works. For
example, there’s still a very strong perception
that Shakespeare was an exclusively Elizabethan
playwright. Outside the academic community,
many people don’t realise that a big chunk of his
career was actually spent as a King’s Man, working
for Elizabeth I’s successor King James I (who was
also King James VI of Scotland).
Once you get a taste for it, Elizabethan and
Jacobean (the era of King James) history is as
dramatic and compelling as any of Shakespeare’s
works. Did you know, for instance, that in 1564
the infant Shakespeare narrowly survived an
outbreak of plague in Stratford-upon-Avon? Or
that, as a King’s Man, the 41-year-old Shakespeare
could easily have been blown up in the Gunpowder
Plot? Or that the Globe Theatre was burnt down
in 1613 by a fire started by a cannonball – which
was fired as a special effect during a performance of
Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII?
Bill Bryson’s book on Shakespeare is still
probably the most readable introduction to
Shakespeare’s life and career. When you’re feeling
a bit more ambitious, you can try two books
by James Shapiro – 1599: A Year in the Life of
William Shakespeare and 1606: Shakespeare and
The Year of Lear.
shakespeare magazine 35

Studying Shakespeare
“Shakespeare is a massive subject. Find your tutor’s
specialist area and mine them for all they’re worth”
Sophie Okonedo
as Queen Margaret
in The Hollow
Crown: The Wars
of the Roses, 2016.
Photo courtesy of
the BBC.
THREE: Don’t
be afraid to ask
questions.
A pretty good rule for life is: if you don’t know
something, ask an expert. Obviously, you need to
put in a good amount of work yourself, and try not
to waste your tutor’s time with stuff that’s irrelevant
or trivial. But remember, your tutor or lecturer is
a font of expert knowledge, and they are there to
be tapped. Back in the Dark Ages when I was a
student, I felt embarrassed about the gigantic gaps
in my knowledge, and one or two tutors did make
me feel stupid for asking stuff. Today, of course,
my job as a journalist involves putting questions
to Shakespeare experts in order to get good
information to share with my readers. It’s exactly
the same with your university coursework.
Shakespeare is a massive subject, and you can’t
be expected to know everything. However, do
try to work on presenting your questions so they
stimulate an enthusiastic response. Find out your
tutor’s special areas of expertise and mine them for
all they’re worth. When asking a tutor a question,
it’s good if you can demonstrate that you’ve gained
a certain amount of knowledge of the subject, but
that you’re trying to acquire more. For example:
“My teacher at school said that in Shakespeare’s day
it was illegal for women to act on the English stage.
Is this true? Can you tell me what is the current
academic consensus on the subject?”
36 shakespeare magazine

Studying Shakespeare
FOUR: Remember
Shakespeare’s poems
– and not just the
Sonnets.
In his own lifetime, Shakespeare’s name as a writer
was perhaps most widely known in connection
with his two bestselling long narrative poems
– Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
Today, these once hugely-popular poems are often
forgotten, as so much attention is given to nowlegendary
plays like Hamlet, Othello and King Lear.
So if you want to score some extra points with
your tutors, make the time to read Shakespeare’s
poems, and demonstrate your knowledge by
including quotes and references in your essays.
The good news is that Venus and Adonis is
entertaining, quite saucy, and relatively easy to
read. And in combination with Lucrece, it’ll help
increase your knowledge of Classical (ie Greek and
Roman) literature which is essential background to
Shakespeare.
The bad news is that many people, myself
included, find Shakespeare’s Sonnets dense,
demanding and difficult. However, there’s only 154
of them and they’re only 14 lines each. Believe me,
you can do it. And once you’ve read Shakespeare’s
Sonnets, you can afford to feel proud because there
is now officially nothing in English Literature that
you can’t handle. For help with the Sonnets, try
William Sutton’s Sonnet Book. There’s also an
engaging YouTube series by the Sonnet Sisters.
William Sutton’s
edition of
Shakespeare’s
Sonnets uses a
simple colour
scheme to help
readers understand
each poem’s form
and content.
“Shakespeare’s Sonnets are difficult. But there’s only
154 of them, and they’re only 14 lines each”
shakespeare magazine 37

Studying Shakespeare
Maxine Peake as
Titania in the 2016
TV production of
A Midsummer
Night’s Dream.
Photo courtesy of
the BBC.
FIVE: Get used
to thinking about
Shakespeare all the
time.
During my school days, a great teacher named
Mr Murphy once pointed out that the best way
to get good at an academic subject is to make it
part of your everyday life. So for example if you’re
studying Economics, the student who reads the
Financial Times every day (and The Economist each
week) is going to learn more about the subject than
the student who just does their coursework and
nothing else.
It’s like that with Shakespeare. You’re going to
get out what you put in and, quite frankly, why
settle for doing the bare minimum, when there’s
so much fun to be had in reaching for the absolute
maximum. Everything you learn about Shakespeare
is going to help in some way, so here’s some of the
best ways to maximise your Shakespeare intake.
1. Read Shakespeare Magazine. Obviously.
Get every single issue completely free here.
2. Go and see any and all Shakespeare
plays in your vicinity. Can’t afford a ticket? Try
blagging a freebie by offering to review it for your
student magazine. See if you can help organise
student trips to major theatres such as the Royal
Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and
Shakespeare’s Globe in London. (While you’re in
Stratford, be sure to visit Shakespeare’s Birthplace
as well)
3. Get a part in a student production of
a Shakespeare play. One of the best ways to
experience Shakespeare is on the stage itself. Not
up for acting? There’s a plethora of backstage roles,
so there’s bound to be one that suits you.
4. Watch as many Shakespeare videos as
you can. The two series of The Hollow Crown are
a great starting point, as are any of the Kenneth
Branagh Shakespeare films, plus the Baz Luhrmann
Romeo and Juliet. Here’s a tip – watch them with
the subtitles on. You’ll find that you understand it
better when you’re seeing it, hearing it and reading
it at the same time.
5. Listen to Shakespeare podcasts. These are
great for listening to on journeys, or for a bit of
extra learning while you exercise, relax – or even
while doing the dishes. Three of the best ones
that we listen to on a regular basis are Reduced
Shakespeare Company, Emma Smith: Approaching
Shakespeare and Sheldrake on Shakespeare.
38 shakespeare magazine

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Shakespeare in Detroit
“Shakespeare has stood the test of time because
his narratives are eternally relevant”
40 shakespeare magazine

Shakespeare in Detroit
In the 1960s, Detroit was the industrial giant that had the
whole world dancing to the Motown beat. Today, after
decades of decline, the city is staging a street-level artistic
Interview by Pat Reid
Portrait by Chuk Nowak
Am I right in thinking that your interest
in Shakespeare all began from a teenage
conflict with your mother?
“My relationship began at eight years old when my
mom caught me listening to rap music. She gave
me The Complete Works at that time as a lyrical
alternative to the Salt-N-Pepa that I loved. I hated
Shakespeare at that time. The interest came a few
years later from repetitiously reading it.”
Detroit is one of the US cities that we’ve
always heard heard about here in the
UK – because of music, the auto industry
and, more recently, because of the huge
problems it’s been coping with. It’s exciting
and inspiring to hear about how you’ve been
using Shakespeare as part of your personal
campaign to regenerate your city. How did
Shakespeare in Detroit came about?
“I visited the Utah Shakespeare Festival when I was
living in Las Vegas. We took a bus trip with some
of the listeners from Nevada Public Radio, where I
was employed at the time. This was in 2008 or so
and I looked around and thought, ‘If they can do
this in the desert, we can do this in Detroit where
we have tons of historical spaces, parks and venues
that would be perfect for Shakespeare’. That was
my a-ha moment. It took me a while to get the
resources to finally produce a show. I moved back
home to Detroit at the end of of 2008 and times
were tough in the city and I really needed to focus
on making a living and taking care of myself.
“But a few years later, in 2012, I heard of Tech
Town, which is an incubator for people who have
ideas but don’t necessarily know what to do with
them. I created a business plan there. It took me
shakespeare magazine 41

Shakespeare in Detroit
The cast of SiD’s
Hamlet. Photo by
Dawn Hamilton.
another year to find funding. But we did. And a
few weeks after the city filed for bankruptcy, to
my surprise and delight 500 people showed up
for Othello at Grand Circus Park in the middle
of downtown Detroit. We pioneered the first
open-air Shakespeare experience in the city, to my
knowledge.”
What did you learn from that first
Shakespeare in Detroit production?
“Our first performance taught me that there is
a hunger for the arts in the city. People love the
checks and balances of our shared humanity that
the arts inspire, especially theatre. Shakespeare
has stood the test of time because his narratives
are eternally relevant. The bankruptcy in 2013
created this weird energy of the unknown in the
city – we didn’t know what was going to happen
next in our hometown. It was a scary time and that
is what Othello is all about – how do we embrace
the unfamiliar or the unknown? Do we accept each
other? How do we treat each other in the face of
uncertainty? I think everyone felt that in the park
that day. All of us were also looking for a way to
come together and spend time in solidarity during
a rough summer, and Shakespeare in Detroit
created that platform for a shared experience. I am
really proud of that.
“I am a Detroit native, born and raised. I have
been here long before it was cool to say you were
making art in the city and it made me so happy
to know that the team at Shakespeare in Detroit
created community on that day by bringing
everyone – from the homeless gentlemen who sat
on the church stoop across from the park, to the
business people who left their jobs and walked to
the park – to see Othello.”
Can you tell me how Shakespeare in Detroit
has progressed in the years since
its inception?
“We have grown practically. Our team is bigger
now. Meagen Mazur, Christine Pellecchia and Cal
Schwartz make me a better leader. Their energy for
the work, ideas and compassion for the city have
made our productions stronger. Shakespeare in
Detroit’s audience has also grown and that’s really
cool. We are so grateful to the folks who follow
us from site to site to see the work. Recently, we
had a donor by the name of Aamir Farooqi at The
Banyan Foundation give us a space on Detroit’s
Riverfront. The space is historical, the former
home of a soap factory – the Stone Soap Building.
We are all about respecting the integrity of the
city’s architecture and reviving spaces with art, so
this was truly a gift that aligned with our values
and mission.
“We have also progressed in that I have trained
with one of the best theatre companies in the
country and world, the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival. I was a Fellow there this year. Being able
to see some of the most effective, mission-driven
42 shakespeare magazine

Shakespeare in Detroit
“How many businesses can say they have 400 years
of proven customer engagement? We can.”
artistic leaders in the world work was one of the
greatest experiences of my life. So I have grown in
knowledge.
“Most of all, we have grown in spirit. We are
motivated by the progress we see in the city and
we want to be a part of it in a way that is authentic
and respectful of the city’s history but also
innovative and a great contributor to the future of
Detroit. I think it’s important to be both things
when revitalizing a city like Detroit that has such
a rich heritage in the arts – from car design and
craftsmanship to techno music and soul.”
Tell us about some of the Detroit locations
you’ve used so far?
“The locations we have used, in no particular
order are Grand Circus Park (Othello, Romeo and
Juliet), Recycle Here – the original Lincoln Motor
Co. (Antony and Cleopatra), New Center Park (A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, The Merchant
of Venice, Hamlet), The Jam Handy – a former
film studio (As You Like It), Heinz C. Prechter
Performing Arts Center (Julius Caesar), Marlene
Boll Theatre – a black box (The Tempest), The
Stearns Mansion – historical home (Henry V) and
Marygrove College (King Lear).
“My favorite was probably Antony and
Cleopatra. The recycling center did not have heat,
and the show took place at the tail end of what was
called ‘The Polar Vortex’ across the country because
the cold temperatures were so extreme. We had
small patio heaters but that was about it. But our
audience still showed up. Around 800 people saw
it over a four-show run. We pulled an ice cream
truck into the space to serve the audience whiskey
and coffee to keep warm. They all wore coats and
boots, hats and scarves, and remained in their seats
for all five acts. I was shocked. But that proved to
me how badass Detroiters are. I was also moved
by our actors, because we made all of the costumes
from recycled or repurposed materials and they
were freezing during the show. But you would
Henry V at
Detroit’s historic
Stearns Mansion.
Photo by Chuk
Nowak.
shakespeare magazine 43

Shakespeare in Detroit
“I try to explain that Shakespeare isn’t just about
literature and theatre. It’s also about commerce”
have never known it. They were so committed and
professional and didn’t even dare to shiver during
the show. My goal in life is to keep doing cool
things like that, but with heat. I don’t think I ever
want to be that cold again.”
Apart from the Shakespeare side of things,
you’ve had to be very entrepreneurial to
keep SiD moving forward. Can you tell us
about some of the major challenges you've
been facing?
“The challenges change all the time. Raising
funds is always a challenge. We have a lot of
people coming to the city now to create art, and
I wish that foundations, organizations and others
would equalize the support for those who I feel
are marginalized leaders – arts leaders of color and
leaders of smaller organizations, along with longtime
Detroiters or those of us born and raised here.
There are facts to back me up – a Helicon study
showed that arts funding has equity and inclusion
problems. Nationally, most of the funding available
to arts institutions goes to places with an operating
budget of more than $5 million. According to
that study, People of Color represent more than
90 percent of the Detroit population and only
17 percent of culturally specific groups receive
funding.
“We know it’s sexy to have someone come
here from New York to create or build an arts
institution, but I believe that the authenticity and
connection that we as hometown artists have can’t
be denied. We are hopeful that the disparities will
vanish with time. I have to be hopeful and keep
using my Detroit work ethic to keep making these
shows happen until these facts change.”
Shakespeare himself seems to have been
an entrepreneur, a canny investor, a bit
of a wheeler-dealer. Have you taken any
inspiration from him in the actual running
of your company?
“Absolutely. I don’t think the industry discusses
him as an entrepreneur enough. It took a lot of
creativity and stick-to-itness to make a lot of
his productions happen early in his career. That
inspires me every day. I also understand that he
didn’t really get the freedom to create the kind of
work he wanted until he became an entrepreneur
and started his own theatre company. We both
created our own companies in an urban landscape
with the dream of making the sort of art that
would be accessible for all. I hold his example close
to my heart, as it perfectly fits the essence of who
I am as a Detroiter. We work hard here – from
our artists to our factory workers and everyone in
between. As a matter of fact, Shakespeare could
have been a Detroiter.”
I've seen some wonderful photos of you
speaking at events while magnificently
dressed in full Elizabethan costume. Is
Shakespeare’s world something that appeals
to you on many levels?
“I have dressed in an Elizabethan costume for a
couple of speeches and a magazine cover. It was a
lot of fun. We have a beautiful costume designer,
Cal Schwartz, and I love to showcase his artistry
as much as I can. I also hate doing traditional
speeches of standing at a podium. So when I am
asked to speak I try to make my presentations
as dramatic and fun as possible, which usually
requires a costume. But I can’t say I am a fan of
corsets. Shakespeare’s world doesn’t appeal to me as
much as the words. It’s all about the text for us, and
we always see it through a Detroit lens. Our name
is Shakespeare in Detroit, after all. We are as much
about the city as we are about Shakespeare.”
I believe you’ve recently had some exciting
news about the next phase for Shakespeare
in Detroit. Please share...
“I mentioned it a bit earlier but, yes, our building
– our gorgeous building on Detroit’s Riverfront
juxtaposed between Downtown Detroit and
Windsor, Ontario (Canada). It’s dream real-
44 shakespeare magazine

Shakespeare in Detroit
SiD productions
feature gorgeous
costumes by
Cal Schwartz.
Photo by Dawn
Hamilton.
estate and I know we will play a major role in the
revitalization of East Jefferson in Detroit and the
Riverfront, as the arts is the greatest catalyst for
building communities. I try to explain to people
here all the time that Shakespeare isn’t just about
literature and theatre. It is also about commerce.
Places like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the
Stratford Festival (Stratford, Ontario) have created
towns around them with entities that include
banks, homes, grocery stores, restaurants, schools
and libraries.
“Now that Shakespeare in Detroit has a home,
we have the opportunity to become a worldwide
tourist attraction and bring people from around
the globe to the city, which will enhance the other
industries here. How many businesses can say they
have more than 400 years of proven consumer
engagement? We can. It’s all very exciting. We
are hopeful that renovations will be complete by
2020.”
Do you have any dreams for Shakespeare
productions in the city that you have yet
to fulfil?
“I want to do Titus. That is a huge dream of mine.
I will also put this out into the universe – I want
Robert Englund to come to Detroit and play our
King Lear when we open the new space. He is a
classically trained actor who just so happened to
become a horror film icon, but we want him to
come to Detroit and play the greatest role in the
canon, in my opinion. It would be a dream to have
him with us. I hope he reads this. How cool would
that be? I also hope that Shakespeare in Detroit can
venture into new works. Shakespeare will always be
our foundation but the idea of producing work by
new writers, maybe some local writers, also inspires
us. We want to be a well-rounded theatre company
that embraces the classics and the classics of the
future.”
Is there any chance of getting you guys over
to the UK any time soon? If so, which play
would you stage for us?
“I would love that. The Royal Shakespeare
Company is a benchmark for me. The sort of
inclusive, bold work that they do continues to be a
benchmark for SiD. Maybe we can be in residence
there one day. How epic would that be?
“I would love to do a Romeo and Juliet infused
with Motown Hits. This city has produced some
of the greatest love songs of all time. It would be
pretty monumental to do a contemporary R&J and
bring some of the music that is celebrated both
here and in the UK to the RSC. I would love to
direct that. Make that happen for me, Pat?”
Find out more about Sam and Shakespeare in Detroit.
shakespeare magazine 45

Interview by Pat Reid
Illustrations by Mya Gosling
46 shakespeare magazine
Obvious question, but how did it begin? Was
there a moment when you thought: ‘I know!
I’ll do a relatively crude stick drawing of
William Shakespeare, and add a few words,
and it’s actually going to be rather brilliant’?
“Good Tickle Brain evolved out of my family’s
tradition of sketching on family vacations while
waiting for meals to arrive. More often than not,
our sketches would document funny or bizarre
moments that had escaped being captured on
film. Not being a very talented artist, my sketches
generally took the form of stick figure scrawls,
and eventually evolved into stick figure comics.
In 2013, after my family’s annual visit to the
Stratford Festival in Canada, I decided to draw a
series of comics based on the plays we had seen that
season. I posted these on Facebook until a friend

“A Shakespeare play is just like any other story.
There is a beginning, a middle, and an end”
shakespeare magazine 47

gently suggested that maybe I should start my own
website to host them. And the rest is (relatively
recent) history!
“I originally intended Good Tickle Brain to
cover a range of subjects, not just Shakespeare.
However, the response to the Shakespeare comics
was so strong that they’ve gradually eclipsed
everything else.”
The idea of explaining a Shakespeare play in
three panels sounds preposterous, but you
actually do a more effective job than some
sources that use an awful lot more words.
How do you do it?
“People overthink Shakespeare a lot. When it
comes down to it, a Shakespeare play is just like
any other story – there is a beginning, a middle,
and an end. All you have to do is identify the
key bits that take you from A to B to C. This is
relatively straightforward for the tragedies. It does
get a little more challenging when you’re dealing
with things like Cymbeline.
“The fun thing about three-panel plays is
that, despite the simplicity, there is no ‘correct’
answer. I’ve run a couple of comic workshops with
school teachers and drama students, and it was
really fascinating to see how different people had
completely different takes on what was important
to include in a three-panel summary of a play.
I think that reflects a lot of the ambiguity in
Shakespeare.”
You’ve also very kindly demonstrated
exactly how to draw Shakespeare. That panel
in particular had my son and I laughing
uproariously when he was five. Is there a
part of you that wants Good Tickle Brain to
serve as an introduction to Shakespeare for
children?
“I want Good Tickle Brain to serve as an
48 shakespeare magazine

“I did get to boop a First Folio at the Folger Library,
which is pretty high up on my list of accomplishments”
introduction to Shakespeare for everyone, not
only children. I think it is very important to
introduce children to Shakespeare before they’re
old enough for society to convince them that
Shakespeare is scary and hard to understand, but
I think it’s equally important to reach out
to people who’ve had a bad experience with
Shakespeare and are convinced that Shakespeare
is not for them. I very much want my comics to
say ‘Hey, you know that Shakespeare thing you
hated when you were forced to read it in school?
It’s actually a lot more fun than you remember.
Give it another try’.
“The two pieces of reader feedback that I most
love to receive are (a) messages from teachers telling
me about how they are using my comics in their
classrooms, and (b) people who previously didn’t
like or didn’t understand Shakespeare telling me
how one of my comics made them interested in
actually seeing a play.”
Your fans include everyone from members
of the Reduced Shakespeare Company to
people at the Folger Shakespeare Library
and the American Shakespeare Centre – and
Shakespeare Magazine, of course. Do you
have a typical fan? And is there a particular
audience that you have in mind when you’re
working?
“I don’t think I have a typical fan any more than
Shakespeare has a typical fan. Shakespeare today
encompasses all races, genders, ages, abilities and
geographic locations. There’s still the lingering
perception that Shakespeare is the domain of white
males and, as someone who is neither, I am excited
to see increased diversity and inclusion in the
Shakespeare community.
“When I’m working on a new comic, I’m
primarily working to create something that
amuses me. I only know what I find funny, so
it’s pretty hard for me to write with anyone else
in mind. However, I do want my comics to be
comprehensible and entertaining – not only
to dyed-in-the-wool Shakespearean geeks like
myself, but also to people who have only a passing
familiarity with Shakespeare, or even no familiarity
at all.
“One of my best friends, who is a brilliant
person with more degrees than I can count, told
me that Shakespeare makes her feel stupid, which
I firmly believe is an absolutely valid complaint. So
much about the way that Shakespeare is taught and
presented makes people feel that they are somehow
stupid for not understanding material that is
objectively difficult. Well-meaning Shakespearean
advocates constantly insisting that Shakespeare
isn’t really difficult, and you just have to experience
him in the right way, only serves to intensify those
feeling of stupidity.
“I want my comics to be a bridge between
Shakespeare and people like my friend. I want
my comics to say ‘OK, this stuff isn’t necessarily
easy, but if you look at it this way, there’s actually
a cool story going on that you might like. Also, it’s
often ridiculous and makes no sense, and you have
permission to laugh at it’. So my friend is probably
my unseen audience. I want her to be able to
understand and enjoy my comics without having
an exhaustive knowledge of Shakespeare. I’m not
always successful, but I keep trying.”
The cartoons are sometimes deceptively
simple, even throwaway, and often
irreverent. But it’s clear that you have a deep
love of Shakespeare and a great deal of
intellectual curiosity. Are these cartoons a
form of self-education for you?
“I wouldn’t say they’re so much a form of selfeducation
as they are a form of self-expression.
Over the years I’ve haphazardly absorbed so much
random Shakespeare knowledge and trivia that I
just want to share it with people and show them
why I think Shakespeare is so much fun. I do read
Shakespeare books for entertainment purposes –
I’m particularly fond of actor production diaries,
and of anything James Shapiro writes – but I
rarely read something with the express intention of
turning it into a comic.”
shakespeare magazine 49

50 shakespeare magazine

You’re also impressively prolific, and Good
Tickle Brain is constantly evolving. Can you
tell us about some of the new projects you’ve
been working on recently?
“Ninety percent of my time right now is spent
churning out twice-weekly comics for my website
or exclusive content for my supporters on Patreon
(patreon.com/goodticklebrain). I have lots of
projects I want to work on, including putting
together a full-length book of some sort and further
developing the educational aspects of my work, but
right now most of my time and energy goes into
trying to stay one step ahead of the juggernaut I’ve
created. It’s very frustrating sometimes. When I
started working on Good Tickle Brain full time last
year, I thought I’d have a lot more time to work on
projects, but of course, as they say, work expands to
fill the time available for its completion, and that’s
certainly been the case for me.”
Any regrets about using ‘Good Tickle Brain’
as your alter ego? It’s an established brand
now, but it’s a bit lacking in gravitas! And
could you explain the reference for us, one
more time?
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but ‘lacking in
gravitas’ is, in fact, the entire point of my comic!
A part of the reason why Shakespeare is perceived
as being so inaccessible is that there is a great deal
too much gravitas surrounding Shakespeare. People
are constantly being told by society ‘Oh, this is
Shakespeare – this is something very serious and
profound’, which is intimidating, off-putting, and
couldn’t be farther from the truth. Shakespeare
is popular entertainment, and when we move
away from that, we not only move away from
Shakespeare’s raison d’être, we also end up moving
him away from future audiences. Good Tickle
Brain tries to push back against that tendency by
highlighting not the rarefied and the sublime, but
the ridiculous and the silly. ‘Lacking in gravitas’
is probably one of the best compliments anyone
could ever pay me.
“As for the reference, it’s a line from one of the
best scenes in all of Shakespeare, specifically Act II,
Scene 4 of Henry IV, Part 1. Falstaff, playacting as
Prince Hal’s father, is trying to quiet the inebriated
and slightly hysterical Mistress Quickly, and tells
her ‘peace, good tickle brain’. I’ve always loved that
line, and it was one of the first things to pop into
my head when I sat down to think about what to
call my little burgeoning enterprise.”
I also enjoyed your cartoon Keep Calm and
Muslim On, about the Muslim experience
in contemporary USA. Will there ever be
a crossover episode where Shakespeare
somehow turns up in that?
“Those comics are based on stories taken directly
from the life of my Muslim co-author, Andrea
Annaba, so it depends on whether or not she has an
amusing encounter with Shakespeare anytime soon!
I’m very fortunate to be working with Andrea,
who shares with me both a slightly off-kilter sense
of humor and a desire to use that humor to make
something that is often seen as inaccessible and
shakespeare magazine 51

“Over the years I’ve absorbed so much Shakespeare
knowledge and trivia that I just want to share it”
intimidating – in this case, Islam and her Muslim
American experience – approachable, fun, and
funny.”
One of my favourite things you’ve done
is a write-up on Queen Margaret on your
website. It’s a passionate and convincing
mini-essay on this amazing character. Are
you still a devotee of Margaret?
“Oh, absolutely. She’s one of the most underrated
characters in the canon, at least as far as general
public awareness is concerned – all the Shakespeare
geeks I know love her as much as I do. Historically
she was a fascinating woman who really pushed
the boundaries of female leadership, and, while
Shakespeare does cast her in a moderately villainous
light, there’s a lot of complexity in her character.
“Plus, you know, she gets to run around with
swords. Not enough ladies in Shakespeare get to
do that.”
Finally, what’s the most Shakespearean
moment of your life and career so far?
And do you have any Shakespeare-related
ambitions yet to fulfil?
“I did get to boop a First Folio in the vaults of
the Folger Shakespeare Library, which is pretty
high up on my list of accomplishments, but the
most Shakespearean moment of my life so far
was getting a chance to meet and interact with
the Robinson Shakespeare Company of South
Bend, Indiana (http://rclc.nd.edu/shakespeare/
robinson-shakespeare-company/). This is a group
of kids from all sorts of backgrounds who live
and breathe theatre and Shakespeare, and they
are phenomenally talented and driven. I vividly
remember one girl who couldn’t have been more
than ten years old standing up and performing
Cloten’s ‘meanest garment’ monologue from
Cymbeline, and it was electrifying. They weren’t just
reciting Shakespeare, they were owning Shakespeare
- the language, the characters, everything. Those
kids are the future of Shakespeare, and the reason
why Shakespeare will still be around long after
we’re gone
“As for Shakespeare-related ambitions, I
would love to see Shakespeare’s Globe in London,
visit the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the
Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-
Avon, and do the whole UK-based Shakespeare
pilgrimage thing. One of these days!”
Enter the wonderful world of
Good Tickle Brain via Mya’s website.
52 shakespeare magazine

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Why the city that made
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still rocks the world
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Richard III
Issue 4
Off with
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Two men. One epic journey. How
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Five great exclusive
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Why his new book is a
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From Russia
with love
David Tennant fans create
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My
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Behind the scenes of the
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As You Like It
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Shakespeare’s
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Hamlet
Shakespeare’s hottest ticket:
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH
is Burning at the Barbican
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The sound of
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Magazine has been produced on a microbudget
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Books roundup
“Remember
first to possess
his books...”
Feast your senses on just a small selection from the
multitude of weighty tomes that have loudly thumped onto
the Shakespeare Magazine desk since our last issue!
Viv Croot
Biographic Shakespeare
(Ammonite Press, £9.99)
Two things we’ve learned are that
Shakespeare fans love infographics,
and that Shakespeare infographics
tend to contain bad information.
Luckily, Biographic Shakespeare
– an entire book of Shakespeare
Infographics – is as thoughtfully
written as it is handsomely designed.
Miranda Kaufmann
Black Tudors: The Untold Story
(Oneworld Publications, £18.99)
While researching her doctorate,
Miranda Kaufmann discovered details
of over 360 Africans resident in
Britain between 1500 and 1640. Her
book Black Tudors focuses on ten of
them, detailing how these remarkable
but forgotten forebears lived, worked
and married as free individuals during
the age of Shakespeare.
Bernard Cornwell
Fools and Mortals
(HarperCollins, £20)
Best-selling historical fiction author
Bernard Cornwell goes from Sharpe
to Shakespeare with his new novel
Fools and Mortals, which is set in the
Elizabethan era. The hero of the tale
is a struggling actor named Richard
Shakespeare. No prizes for guessing
whose brother he is...
54 shakespeare magazine

Books roundup
Chris Riddell & Spymonkey
Great Shakespearean Deaths
Card Game
(Chronicle Books, £9.99)
Okay, so it isn’t a book, strictly
speaking, but this amusingly
irreverent Shakespeare card game is
certainly the perfect gift for all we
“bookish theorics” out there. Chris
Riddell’s illustrations are immediately
recognisable, while the Shakespearean
statistics are gleaned from Tim
Crouch and Spymonkey’s stage hit
The Complete Deaths.
Rebekah Owens
Devil’s Advocates: Macbeth
(Auteur, £9.99)
Why has Roman Polanski’s 1971 film
of Shakespeare’s Macbeth become
so marginalised in both film history
and Shakespeare Studies? Rebekah
Owens argues that the film is in fact
a powerful and innovative horror
classic. Aimed at the Media and Film
Studies Market, this is an instructive
read for any Shakespearean film buff.
Jacqueline Carey
Miranda and Caliban
(St Martin’s Press, £12.99)
Fantasy author Jacqueline Carey has
cleverly woven the characters and
events of Shakespeare’s magisterial
magnum opus The Tempest into a
poignant and dreamlike coming-ofage
fable. Miranda, Caliban, Prospero
and Ariel are all satisfyingly fleshed
out in an excellent companion read to
Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed.
Benet Brandreth
The Spy of Venice /
The Assassin of Verona
(Twenty7 Books, £8.99 / £16.99)
Proudly bearing the subtitle
“A William Shakespeare Novel”,
historical adventure romp The Spy
of Venice introduces us to youthful
hero William Shakespeare – who
bears more than a slight resemblance
to dashing author Benet Brandreth.
And this rip-roaringly zestful saga of
travelling players and Popish plots
continues in The Assassin of Verona.
Tracy Chevalier
New Boy
Edward St Aubyn
Dunbar
(Vintage, £12.99 / £16.99)
The two most recent releases in
the Hogarth Shakespeare series are
New Boy, Tracy Chevalier’s superb
transposition of Othello to a junior
high school in 1970s Washington
DC, and Dunbar, which sees Edward
St Aubyn replay King Lear as a
madcap black comedy set amidst a
dysfunctional corporate clan.
Bart van Es
Shakespeare’s Comedies
Jonathan F. S. Post
Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Poems
Stanley Wells
Shakespeare’s Tragedies
(Oxford University Press, £7.99 each)
We always welcome any new
Shakespeare-related additions to the
OUP’s popular and ever-expanding
Very Short Introduction series. Bart
van Es’ slim volume on the Comedies
came out last year, with Stanley Wells’
book on the Tragedies and Jonathan
FS Post’s contribution on the Sonnets
and Poems following in 2017.
Together, they cover an impressive
amount of literary and historical
ground, and convey a suitably sizeable
serving of Shakespeare knowledge.
shakespeare magazine 55

The faith of Shakespeare
The Word
of the Lord
What did Shakespeare believe, and how is it evident
in his works? We quizzed scholar Graham Holderness
on the powerful questions explored in his perceptive
book The Faith of William Shakespeare.
Interview by Pat Reid
Images: Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive
Your book demonstrates that religion is
evident all the way through Shakespeare’s
plays. And yet most modern productions
seem to have a very secular approach.
How did that happen?
“Around the middle of the 19th century, about
the time Christianity began to come under attack
from new scientific discoveries and theories
such as Evolution, scholars began to assert that
Shakespeare’s religious beliefs were of an orthodox
Protestant complexion, and that he was a
representative product of a Protestant ‘Golden Age’
of culture and political stability governed by Queen
Elizabeth I. Simultaneously other scholars began
to claim that Shakespeare grew up in a still largely
Roman Catholic context, that had not really been
supplanted by the Reformation. At the same time
the more enduring and influential hypothesis, that
Shakespeare was agnostic in matters of religion,
began to emerge. The view of a Shakespeare who
fitted comfortably within the Elizabeth Protestant
religious settlement remained the dominant
paradigm until after the Second World War, when
it was replaced by more secular, sceptical, agnostic
and atheist critical interpretations.
“Thus today most contemporary Shakespeare
56 shakespeare magazine

The faith of Shakespeare
“At the centre of a whirlwind of conspiracy, recusancy,
resistance and rebellion, Shakespeare keeps his silence”
Claudius praying in Hamlet, 1867. Image courtesy of Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive.
criticism and scholarship, if directed towards
religious matters at all, is likely to demote the
sectarian question – was Shakespeare Protestant or
Catholic? – to the more fundamental question of
belief – was he religious at all? Where Christians
such as Samuel Johnson and Alexander Pope saw
Shakespeare as a Christian like themselves, the
modern Anglo-American Shakespeare scholar, more
likely to be an atheist or agnostic, prefers to see
him as secular humanist, for whom religion was no
more than a social construct. Many scholars today
assume that religion did not play a very large role
in Shakespeare’s vision of life, and that he might
have kept his personal religious opinions to himself
simply because they were either uncontroversially
orthodox, or almost indifferent, not only to sectarian
controversies, but to the ultimate truths of religion.”
Obviously this plays a big part in your book,
but can you briefly describe the religious
landscape that Shakespeare grew up with
and was working in?
“In Shakespeare’s England, there was only one
religion – Christianity – and only one permitted
doctrinal form of that religion, that embodied
in the reformed Church of England. Church
shakespeare magazine 57

The faith of Shakespeare
attendance was obligatory, and absence from
church punishable by fine, or even imprisonment
for repeated offences. Since Henry VIII’s Act of
Supremacy (and excepting the reign of Catholic
Mary Tudor, 1553-8), the monarch was the
Supreme Head of the Church – hence loyalty to
one entailed conformity with the other.
“So if we ask ‘What did people believe in 16th
century England?’, there is one categorical answer...
They believed in the creeds of the Church of
England, and their religious behaviour
was wholly prescribed by its liturgical
practice, specifically through the Book of
Common Prayer. But since this orthodoxy
was forcibly compelled on people, we
might suspect that the personal beliefs
of many people actually diverged from
that orthodoxy. We
certainly know this
to be partly true,
since many who
conformed to the
church (‘church
papists’) continued to
believe as Catholics,
and there were many who tried whenever
they could to stay away from the church
and its sacraments (‘recusants’).
“At the same time, many Protestants
found the Church of England still
essentially unreformed, and attempted
in various ways to dissent from it, while
remaining formally members to escape
persecution. The Book of Common Prayer
began as a vehicle of the Reformation,
but was outlawed by Parliament in
1645, when Oliver Cromwell was Lord
Protector, as being irredeemably Catholic.
“In such an environment religious
diversity is not dispelled, but merely driven
underground. People continue to believe in very
different ways, but are for the most part unable to
reveal their true beliefs. The Elizabethan church
attempted to offer the kind of via media that would
enable varieties of religious opinion to occupy a
common ground, and routinely avoided prying
into matters of personal belief. Elizabeth herself
said she has no intention of ‘making windows into
men’s souls’. But religious controversy simmered
under the surface, and broke out at various times
into sectarian violence, or open defiance of both
the church and the state.”
Let’s get the inevitable conspiracy theory
out of the way! Why has the notion of
Shakespeare as a secret Catholic seemingly
gained ground in recent years?
“Shakespeare’s father John was born a Roman
Catholic (as were all English people before
1534), during the reign of Henry VIII.
It is probable his mother came from a
strongly Catholic family. In 1592 John
was twice named in government reports
as a ‘recusant’, one of those who ‘refuse
obstinately to resort to church’. Since
the mid-19th century some scholars
and critics have
been arguing
that Shakespeare
inherited his father’s
Catholicism, and
concealed it behind a
façade of Protestant
orthodoxy.
“The idea that William was a closet
Catholic appears very early in the
historical record, in various 17th century
anecdotes. Stratford Grammar School,
which he probably attended, was staffed
largely by Roman Catholics. Shakespeare’s
twin children Hamnet and Judith were
clearly named after their godparents,
Stratford neighbours Hamnet and Judith
Sadler, who were definitely Catholics. His
daughter Susanna was cited in May 1606
as a recusant who failed to appear at Easter
Communion – though it should also be
pointed out that she married a Protestant,
Dr John Hall. Shakespeare’s literary career kept
him in close association with Catholics such as the
Earl of Southampton.
“In 1613 Shakespeare purchased the Blackfriars
Gatehouse in London. This property, formerly
part of the dissolved Blackfriars Monastery, had
remained in Catholic hands since the time of
the Reformation, and was notorious for Jesuit
conspiracies, priest holes to hide fugitives, and
covert Catholic activity. In his will Shakespeare
58 shakespeare magazine

The faith of Shakespeare
Shakespeare scholar
Graham Holderness
is a sub-deacon
at St Michael and
All Angels Church
in Bedford Park,
London.
bequeathed the Gatehouse to his daughter Susanna,
and ensured that John Robinson, who lived in the
house, could continue his tenancy. In the same
year Robinson’s brother entered the seminary at
the English College in Rome. Despite the weight
of this evidence, it all remains circumstantial, and
neither proves nor disproves William Shakespeare’s
Catholicism. There is no doubt that Shakespeare
was closely hemmed in by Catholicism, but that
does not in itself make him a Catholic. At the very
centre of this whirlwind of conspiracy, recusancy,
resistance and rebellion, Shakespeare keeps his
silence.”
My own background is Catholic, and I grew
up in the north-west of England, not far
from the loci of some ‘Catholic Shakespeare’
myths. But they don't convince me. Is there
a sense that elements of Catholicism would
inevitably occur in Shakespeare's works?
He was living amid the debris of Catholic
England, so naturally this would provide his
building blocks?
“This is particularly evident in plays which
explicitly feature aspects of both Catholic and
Protestant culture, such as Measure for Measure or
Hamlet. In the former, the Duke’s influence over
the dramatic narrative is such as to make him a
kind of providential deity, arranging people and
events into concord with poetic justice. Some of
this is performed through his disguise as a Roman
Catholic friar – in fact he claims to be not only
a friar but a papal legate – which enables him to
move anonymously and with a kind of diplomatic
privilege through the scenes of the play’s action.
“He takes advantage of the ‘secret harbour’
offered by a monastery, and to some limited degree
takes a genuine brother, Friar Thomas, into his
confidence. He hears confessions, speaks often
of the confessional, and uses information gained
from confession to further his plans. He persuades
people to act in certain ways by exploiting the trust
people repose in his assumed sacerdotal identity.
When Angelo is unmasked, he recognises the Duke
as a kind of quasi-divine authority:
Then, good prince,
No longer session hold upon my shame,
But let my trial be mine own confession.
Immediate sentence then, and sequent death,
Is all the grace I beg. (5.1.358-366)
“There are two distinct methods of dealing with
sin and penitence at play here, the Catholic and
the Protestant. The former relies on auricular
confession, private absolution and personal
penance – the latter on public ‘general confession’,
collective absolution and the public exhibition
of shame. Angelo begs to be released from the
Protestant requirement for public confession,
the holding of a ‘session’ on his shame, and to
be permitted the privacy of trial and execution
shakespeare magazine 59

The faith of Shakespeare
Hamlet
encounters his
father’s ghost on
the battlements
at Elsinore
(Engraving
circa 1864).
Image courtesy
of Victorian
Illustrated
Shakespeare
Archive.
60 shakespeare magazine

The faith of Shakespeare
without open confession. The Duke however,
restored to his own identity, demands public
confession. Thus the play is brought to its comedic
resolution not by auricular confession and private
penance, but by public humiliation and general
absolution. Jestingly Lucio distinguishes between
private and public confession:
If you handled her privately, she would sooner
confess: perchance publicly she’ll be
shamed. (5.1.272-3)
“But such open ‘shaming’, conducted
on stage before the theatre audience,
common enough in the reformed church
of Shakespeare’s day (his own son-in-law
Richard Quiney was
sentenced to exactly
such a ritual of open
penance ‘in a white
sheet [according
to custom]’ for
fornication in 1616)
is exactly what the
Duke’s reformed Christianity requires.
“Shakespeare’s fictional Prince of
Denmark, Hamlet – together with
his friends Horatio, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern – is declared in the play
to have attended the real University of
Wittenberg in Germany, which happened
to be Martin Luther’s university, and a
seat of the Protestant Reformation. If
Hamlet is a Protestant prince, however, he
is the son of a Catholic king, whose spirit
declares that he has come directly from
Purgatory. Nonetheless when the Ghost
bids Hamlet ‘remember’ him, it is not for
purposes of intercession, but to provoke the son
to the non-Christian obligation of avenging his
murdered father. Hamlet’s vow of revenge sets him
into conflict with his own Renaissance Christian
culture, and with the Reformation education he is
assumed to have experienced at Wittenberg. And
this clash of cultures is arguably the key dramatic
conflict that drives the play.”
To complicate matters, you yourself have
actually written a novel, Black and Deep
Desires, where a Catholic Shakespeare is the
architect of the Gunpowder Plot! As the subdeacon
of an Anglican Church, weren’t you,
ahem, playing with fire here?
“Black and Deep Desires: William Shakespeare
Vampire Hunter fantasises that Shakespeare’s
Catholic sympathies, with the kind of apocalyptic
imagination dramatized in Macbeth, could have
turned him into a conspirator. But he does extricate
himself from the Plot, after experiencing
a vision in which the shade of Dante
shows him a new circle of Hell prepared
for terrorists. Later the novel has fun
playing with the power of religion over the
Undead. The Vampires are Catholics, so
Reformed Christianity proves ineffective
against them, and the
hunters are forced to
call on the old magic
of Catholicism to
defeat them.”
However, your own
conclusions in The
Faith of William Shakespeare are that
he was anything but Catholic. Tell us
a bit more?
“Recent scholarship and criticism have
begun to acknowledge that religion played
a vital role in early modern culture, not
least in the work of Shakespeare. But there
is no agreement about what Shakespeare’s
faith actually was. Some contemporary
scholars have characterised Shakespeare as
a ‘parish Anglican’, for whom religion was
a matter of habit, conventional custom and
social practice, rather than earnest personal
struggle. I have argued on the contrary
that Shakespeare was a loyal and faithful servant of
the Church of England, who attended its services,
structured his life around its rituals, absorbed and
reproduced its liturgies, and grew increasingly
attached to its doctrines. He was indeed an
‘Anglican’ (before the word was invented), with
a natural affection for the Catholic roots of the
church, who had moved by the end of his life
towards the more Protestant position articulated in
his will, and expressed in the religious perspectives
active especially in his later plays.”
shakespeare magazine 61

The faith of Shakespeare
Graham
You make the assertion that Shakespeare
knew his religious texts extremely well. How
would he have learned or absorbed it all?
And what were the main books he would
have referred to?
“That Shakespeare was a Christian writer, at
least by by virtue of cultural context and literary
inheritance, is indisputable. The Christian Bible
was one of his primary sources. He cited in his
plays some 42 books of the Bible – 18 from the
Old Testament, 18 from the New, and six from
the Apocrypha. Shakespeare must therefore have
regularly consulted the Bible as he was writing,
and recalled it from memory. Regular church
attendance would have familiarised him with the
annual lectionary of scripture that prescribed the
reading of the (almost) complete Old Testament
once, and the New (apart from Revelation) twice.
“The Bishops’ Bible is the version Shakespeare
would have heard in church, and memorised
(if that is how he acquired this material), and it
is certainly one of the translations from which
he quotes. He also used the Protestant Geneva
translation, which was published in 1560, and
became very popular, though it was never formally
used in churches. The other foundational religious
text that hovers continually behind Shakespeare’s
works is the Book of Common Prayer, specifically the
1559 version introduced after Elizabeth’s accession.
Arguably more important than the Bible in terms
of its influence on everyday religious practice, the
prayer book prescribed not only the offices for
Morning and Evening Prayer, and the celebration
of Holy Communion, but also the rituals for the
conduct of christening, marriage and funeral –
Holy Baptism, the Solemnisation of Matrimony
and the Burial of the Dead.
“It is possible to think of Shakespeare reading
the Bible in the same way as a modern sceptic
would, perceiving it as a work of literature rather
than the revealed word of God, mining it for useful
material, rather than believing in its religious
message. The prayer book is different, since it is not
a literary text for reading, but a liturgical script for
performance, like the text of one of Shakespeare’s
own plays. One can read the Bible in much the
same way as one can read any other book. But
frequentation of the Book of Common Prayer entails
participation in communal rites, active involvement
Holderness is the author of over
40 books, including drama, poetry and novels.
in the performance of liturgy, and willing assent to
the demands and obligations of a religious practice.
“We don’t know how often Shakespeare
attended church, especially in London – though
in view of his involvement in the management
and business of Holy Trinity, Stratford, it would
have been strange for him not to be a regular
churchgoer. And while we cannot know with
any certainty exactly how Shakespeare acquired
his biblical knowledge, we can state categorically
that his formal religious practice was shaped and
governed by the Book of Common Prayer.
“He was married, his children were baptised,
his son, his brother and his father were buried,
all by the rites prescribed in the 1559 Book of
Common Prayer. That Shakespeare was within the
environment of the prayer book on at least an
occasional, and more likely a regular basis, is one
of the few certainties to be relied on in this field
of inquiry. In fact it would not be wide of the mark
to claim that the faith of William Shakespeare
was the faith of the English Bible and the Book of
Common Prayer.”
The Faith of William Shakespeare by Graham
Holderness is published by Lion Hudson.
62 shakespeare magazine

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From Doctor Who to Hamlet and
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Off
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Two men. One epic journey.
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TOM
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From Henry V to Coriolanus:
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