Lloyd Evans has narrated this article for you to listen to.
A strip club, a prison, a mental asylum, a Great War field hospital, an addiction clinic, a Napoleonic palace. These are the typical locations for a modern production of Shakespeare, whose interpreters seem to agree that any setting is better than the one chosen by the playwright.
The assumption today is that the Bard needs help from directors who can see where he went wrong and know how to get his ideas across with greater force and clarity. Aside from the Greek tragedians, no other playwright attracts this sort of condescending vandalism. If a director were to set The Cherry Orchard on a spaceship or in a Guyanese penal colony, he’d be asked to see a psychiatrist. If he did the same with The Tempest,he’d be given a grant from the local council.
The assumption today is that the Bard needs help from directors who can see where he went wrong
Shakespeare has become the useful idiot of activists and social engineers for two main reasons.
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