Directors shouldn’t meddle with Shakespeare

00:00 06:35

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. First, his top-dog status as the greatest artist ever to use the English language as his instrument. Secondly, his habit of absenting himself from his plays and leaving us to guess what he really thought or felt. Into this void, directors can insert their own ideas, which instantly acquire the lustre of Shakespeare’s authority.

The Bard is often criticised for his neglect of women, whom he fobbed off with far too few decent roles. This is particularly notice-able in the cycle of Henry plays where women are represented by the pub landlady, Mistress Quickly, and a couple of drunken trollops. To correct the imbalance, all-female versions of the Henry cycle have become popular which is due, in part, to Phyllida Lloyd’s acclaimed productions at the Donmar in 2015, starring Harriet Walter.